Diplomacy & Crisis News

China’s Chengdu Aircraft Corporation has now produced between 200 and 250 J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighters.

Given that most of these airframes rolled off the line in the past year or two, this shows a significant increase in production capacity since the J-20 took its maiden flight in 2011. 

What Is the J-20?

The J-20 is only the fourth fifth-generation fighter ever designed. It is the first highly advanced aircraft developed entirely in China, making it a landmark achievement for that country’s aerospace and defense industry. Built to counter American F-22s and F-35s, the Mighty Dragon has all the hallmarks of a fifth-gen aircraft, from stealth technologies and supermaneuverability to supercruise and advanced electronics and avionics. 

Development began on the J-20 as far back as the 1990s, and in 2008 Chengdu was awarded the final contract to design the fighter for the People’s Liberation Army. Major upgrades came in 2021, when the Russian-designed AL-31FM2 was replaced with the homegrown WS10 engine. That served further proof of the burgeoning might of Chinese aerospace, as the WS10 is remarkably more capable than the Russian import, allowing the J-20 to enter a supercruise regime while unlocking the supermaneuverability granted by thrust vectoring.

Production Increase

Beginning last fall, more production lines have come on for the WS10 and the J-20. Chinese leadership sought to counter the growing number of F-35s in the region. Currently, U.S. allies Japan, South Korea, and Singapore all field the Lightning II, not to mention the U.S. F-35s and F-22s stationed in Japan. 

China has been able to significantly increase how many completed units are delivered by using so-called pulsating production lines. This method involves moving every unit in production simultaneously, rather than allowing them to stack at work stations that may take more time. The method is not new — German aircraft manufacturer Junkers used it as early as 1926 — but the sophistication of modern fighter aircraft makes it more challenging. 

China Vs. The West

Some experts have pointed out that there are now more operational J-20s than F-22s. This conveniently ignores that F-22 production was halted after only four years due to the lack of a near-peer competitor — only 30% of the initial planned order was produced. Had the J-20 existed at the time of F-22 production, it seems likely the U.S. would have fulfilled the Air Force’s plan for 750 of the airframes. 

Furthermore, while many comparisons are made between the J-20 and the F-35A — the U.S. Air Force variant — it is important to remember that the naval services also operate the F-35 in the B and C variant. Added together, the U.S. has more than 500 operational F-35s, more than twice the number of J-20s. 

When it comes to F-35 production, Lockheed Martin has planned to deliver 156 airframes per year. Although they missed their target this year, instead hitting only 100-120, when combined with those F-35s already operational, this still creates a nearly insurmountable gap in active fifth-generation fighters, especially when considering the allied nations now beginning to produce the Lightning II. 

China’s increased production is impressive—many experts did not expect Chengdu to deliver 100 J-20s until at least 2027. However, the Chinese aerospace industry is still lagging behind the West when it comes to delivering highly advanced fighter aircraft. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel.

China’s meteoric rise in the short space of thirty years to become the second-largest economy in the world and a global power has been by far the biggest story of the twenty-first century. It has also unfortunately been accompanied by a great deal of worry by a fearful West, which together with the global mainstream media, has painted an ugly picture of the country’s remarkable pace of development.

One of the most visible manifestations of this progress is Huawei, a Chinese company and now the world’s largest maker of telecoms gear. Yet the company’s growth has been accompanied by fear and mistrust from the West—particularly from the United States, which regards the firm as a potential threat to U.S. national security.

A great part of Huawei’s supposed infamy can be boiled down to two things. The first is that the company is actually very well-run and extremely innovative—a fact that Westerners, convinced of their own technical superiority and the relationship between technological innovation and a particular set of political/cultural values, find unnerving. The second is the view that because it is a Chinese tech firm, and its founder was in the military as well as a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it must be controlled by the Chinese government. This latter view demonstrates how little is understood of modern China, especially the relationship between China’s commercial ecosystem and the state.

This lack of knowledge relating to Huawei’s origins, methodology, and relationship with the Chinese stake makes it a recurring target. It would behoove Washington to know more about the company and how it came to be first.

Huawei’s Origins

For those unaware of the struggles within China after the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it is worth remembering that even in the 1970s and 1980s there were parts of China where famine was not unusual. One such region was Jiangsu province, where people were forced to forage in the forest for berries, nuts, and anything edible they could get hold of to survive. Bear in mind that this was also a time during which neighboring Hong Kong (and Singapore, too) saw fast food like McDonald’s and KFC become ubiquitous. This period of persistent poverty and suffering in China was a result of ongoing internal struggles and ill-considered policies that failed to support the country.

One man who grew up during this period was Ren Zhengfei. His family was so poor that he would forgo some of his meager rations so that his siblings could eat, and would instead mix his meals with rice bran to sustain himself. He used to go into the forest to pick anything edible for the family to survive.

An early life of struggle motivated him as a young man to embark on a most remarkable journey. Ren joined the Chinese military after studying architecture and engineering. He eventually left the army with bigger entrepreneurial plans, driven by a desire to contribute to society. He taught himself the workings of computers and other nascent digital technologies. After several failed forays into business, and in a last roll of the dice in 1987 at age 43, he formed Huawei, meaning “committed to China and making a difference,” with the intention of selling program-controlled switches.

The company is now, in many ways, one of the most recognized brands in the world—partly due to its innovations and market capitalization, and partly for being caught in the geopolitical struggle between the West and China.

Ren’s story of deprivation and desperation stands in stark contrast to that of many of the founders of today’s tech giants. It should also provide a clue into the resilience of the company, the sense of positivity that it is imbued with, and how it plans to withstand current external pressures. The launch of a new smartphone, demonstrating that Huawei has managed to overcome U.S. sanctions and can innovate by itself, has drawn rapt attention. Similarly, although it did not make the global headlines, the company also recently announced the introduction of its own Enterprise Resource Planning software, which ends its reliance on Oracle’s software. Many more innovations are expected, proving the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention.

What makes Huawei so innovative? Understanding this requires looking at three aspects of the company and how it is run, which provide insights for observers.

Huawei’s Governance and Ownership System

It is often wrongly assumed that Huawei operates as a commercial extension of the CCP, and is run similarly, where the founder Ren Zhengfei holds absolute authority, closely overseeing a very top-down, hierarchical system.

The reality appears rather differently. The privately-held company is 100 percent, employee-owned with  Ren holding 0.7 percent of the company’s shares. This governance structure is unique to Huawei and draws from extensive studies of best practices from across the world, customized to suit its needs.

The company operates under a collective leadership model with numerous checks and balances, where shareholder representatives and those sitting in decisionmaking bodies are democratically elected. The shareholders’ meeting, the company’s premier decisionmaking forum, decides on the company’s major matters such as capital increases, profit distribution, and election of the members of the board of directors and supervisory board. Employees are represented by the Trade Union Committee, and the Representatives’ Commission is the employee vehicle through which the Union fulfills shareholder responsibilities and exercises shareholder rights. The shareholding employees with voting rights elect the Commission on a one-vote-per-share basis, after which the Commission elects the company’s board of directors and supervisory board on a one-vote-per-person basis. These events are transparent and even live-streamed to all employees.

As the founder of Huawei, Ren’s influence and authority comes from the respect he has gained for his achievements—a particularly Chinese approach towards organizational harmony and order, rooted in a culture of respect for elders and leaders.  While Ren carries veto rights on board decisions, it is a matter of record that he has exercised this right only a few times and typically on technology and business direction, as is common in most privately held firms anywhere in the world. He is depicted internally as one who prefers to share his vision and ideas through company-wide addresses that serve as guidance on directionmaking.

The main motivation for setting up such a governance structure is to ensure the company's longevity and to enable it to achieve sustainable growth. Being a privately held company has allowed Huawei to design structures and set targets for the long-term,  able to focus on its core vision and mission—inclusive of customers and employees.

While recent sanctions have impacted Huawei’s smartphone business and short-term profits (there was a 69 percent year-on-year decline in net profit in 2022), Huawei has continued to make strategic investments and devoted even more capital to research and development (R&D). In 2022, they invested 25 percent of their revenue in R&D, equivalent to 161.5 billion yuan, more than any company in the world outside America in absolute terms, and more than the tech giants as a percentage of revenue. For comparison, Amazon, the world’s biggest spender on R&D, and Alphabet invested around 14 percent of their revenue on R&D in the same year.

Despite not being able to launch high-end 5G phones globally, the smartphone business units have not laid off any staff. This is also a cultural difference that is often misunderstood and unappreciated, where the employee is seen as being part of the family. This is such that, when hard times arrive, everyone bears with it and goes into “survival” mode. The launch of the new Mate 60, Mate 60 Pro, Mate 60 Pro+, and Mate X5 which is a new version of its foldable phones, is a testament to the wisdom of this strategy.

Huawei’s governance structure is what allows it to reinvest in the company, its facilities, R&D, and its employees, even during times of business downturn and external pressures.

A Culture of Learning from the World and Global Openness

Huawei’s emphasis on hard work, based on the Confucious tradition of collective resilience, has enabled it to attract talent who firmly believe they can overcome obstacles and create solutions that best achieve the company’s official goal of “Staying customer-centric and creating value for customers.” Employees are not driven only by the financial rewards on offer, but also by a sense of purpose and the need to be engaged in finding solutions to problems. The company’s appeal has enabled it to attract the best talent China has to offer.

In coming up with the company’s current corporate governance model, what is noteworthy is that Huawei’s leadership spent time studying the governance models of successful, long-lasting companies from around the world, including Japanese family-owned companies and corporations from France, Germany, and the United States. They actively considered the merits and weaknesses of different models, learning from lessons of success and failure, taking these ideas and customizing them for Huawei.

The design of Huawei’s supervisory board is a good example. It drew inspiration from German corporate governance structures and the governance principles developed by Fredmund Malik. However, Huawei’s structure is different from German companies in that the representatives of shareholders sit at the top. In addition, the supervisory board does not only supervise the board of directors but plays an active role in developing the leadership pipeline at different levels of the company and setting regulations for how the company operates.

The participation of employees is also unique. All members of the supervisory board and board of directors are Huawei employees. It is also a requirement that shareholder representatives nominated to the board have contributed to the company and demonstrated the requisite leadership skills.

A similar mindset of learning from different models was applied to succession planning and the establishment of its rotating co-chair system five years ago. Huawei places an emphasis on developing leaders within the company. To achieve the system it wanted, it studied different leadership structures from established companies with similar approaches, including family-founded companies.

By retaining top talent, the company believes it can overcome the limitations of any one individual and provide checks and balances. Huawei presently has three rotating co-chairs. When co-chairs are off duty, they visit other countries, meet employees, learn about the business, and, importantly, have space and time to think, which is given a lot of emphasis.

Huawei’s open worldview and its appreciation for other cultures are most dramatically reflected in its R&D campus in the city of Dongguan, nicknamed the “European city,” where 30,000 staff work in twelve different “villages” modeled after nine different European countries. Manicured gardens surround life-size replicas of the most famous cities and architecture in Europe, including the Palace of Versailles, Heidelberg Castle, Amsterdam, and Verona. Dotted across the villages are numerous restaurants and cafes, a reflection of Ren’s advocacy of coffee culture. There is also an electric train service so that no one needs to drive within the campus. The concept for the campus was conceived as part of a design competition and was selected for its uniqueness, setting it apart from the usual tech company or Chinese-inspired designs.

The organization and its employees clearly continue to have an appreciation for promoting global culture exchanges and learning from non-Chinese models of success. Prominent observers have taken notice of this.

A Commitment to Social Obligations and Making a Difference

Many might be surprised to learn that Huawei considers sustainability to be an integral part of its business priorities. It has four sustainability strategies, all of which are aligned with its vision and mission: Digital Inclusion, Security and Trustworthiness, Environmental Protection, and Healthy and Harmonious Ecosystem. Each of these strategies is integrated with the company’s business and product development. For example, Huawei’s products and solutions are increasingly designed to help the business and their clients reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

While the company does release annual sustainability reports, these do not adhere to the typical Western ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) or CSR (corporate social responsibility) reporting. Similarly, the company does not place too much of an emphasis on philanthropy and has not set up a foundation or philanthropic arm. Instead, it invests in developing cost-effective and sustainable solutions using its technology and working with local and multilateral partners to achieve its objectives in countries where the needs are most critical. 

Consider TECH4ALL, the company’s long-term digital inclusion initiative, dedicated to producing innovative technologies and solutions that enable an inclusive and sustainable world. They have applied AI and cloud to learn the sound of endangered animals, rainforests, and wetlands, to remotely monitor and prevent illegal hunting and logging. This application has been used in many countries in Latin America and Europe and has the potential to be deployed in other fields.

Another example is RuralStar. As part of its commitment to rural development and bridging the digital divide to boost development in remote areas, Huawei invested in innovating simpler and smaller technology for data transmission. The RuralStar solution allows a base station to be constructed on a simple pole instead of a dedicated tower, with low-power features that can be powered using six solar panels. RuralStar is widely recognized as one of the greenest and most cost-effective solutions available for remote and rural communities. Notably, the business decision to service rural areas comes at an estimated 30 percent reduction in profit margins compared with the traditional focus on high-density urban areas only. Globally, this technology services small villages of several thousand residents at a 70 percent cost reduction compared to traditional solutions. Following its first pilot in Ghana in 2017, over sixty countries have implemented RuralStar and over 50 million people in rural areas have benefited. As an example of how such projects are funded, in 2020 in Ghana, the Ministry of Communications and the Ghana Investment for Electronic Communications signed a financing agreement with Export-Import Bank of China for Huawei to deploy more than 2,000 RuralStar sites for Ghana to provide voice and data services for over 3.4 million people.

Within its goal to drive digitalization, Huawei has also been consistently investing in green transformation. Beyond a significant increase in the use of renewable energy within their own operations (a 42.3 percent increase from 2020), an increased energy efficiency of their products is also an important metric in their innovation process. A company reports a 1.9 times increase in energy efficiency in their main products since 2019, which in turn helps their customers and industry partners reduce their carbon footprint.

More broadly, Huawei’s digital power technology is being deployed and used in many solar farms globally. The idea is to manage watts with bits to help better produce clean energy and cut emissions. By the end of 2021, Huawei Digital Power had helped customers generate 482.9 billion kWh of green power and save about 14.2 billion kWh of electricity. These efforts have resulted in a reduction of nearly 230 million tons in CO2 emissions, equivalent to planting 320 million trees.

The ability to choose to meet its social commitments and to take concrete steps towards realizing its corporate vision beyond the mission statements is relatively unique to Huawei. At a time when companies are striving to meet ESG goals and overcome the fundamental tension between short-term priorities and investments for sustainable growth, Huawei works to overcome such challenges by seeing its products and services as key enablers of sustainable development. It is committed to developing information and communications technologies for reducing carbon emissions, promoting renewable energy, and contributing to the circular economy.  Huawei strives to promote energy conservation and emission reduction in its own operations and to use more renewable energy. This is possible to achieve due to internal consensus across the leadership team to make strategic choices aligned with their sustainability agenda, the desire to invest in long-term ambitions, and the capacity to innovate new products that allow them to achieve their sustainability goals.

A Company That Isn’t Going Away

Huawei’s success on the global stage, based upon excellence in delivering new innovations, demonstrates that China has much to teach the rest of the world. Yet this success came about via a strategy of openness and a willingness to learn from others. The company’s critics, scrambling to respond to recent developments, ought to take note.

Chandran Nair is the founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT). He is the author of Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World.

Image: Shutterstock.

For more than a year and a half, heavy sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have unquestionably hit Russia’s defense sector.

Without the materials and monetary means to expand and maintain its military arsenal, Russian forces have lost scores of weapons in its “special military operation” and have been unable to fully restock them. 

From main battle tanks (MBTs) to airframes, Moscow’s pre-invasion fleets of inventory have been slashed in half in some cases. The Kremlin is hoping that its ongoing Army 2023 exhibition will lure potential foreign customers to invest in its military equipment and partner with the rogue state amidst the large international boycott it faces. 

According to Russian news outlets, more than 1,500 domestic defense enterprises and 85 foreign companies are using this year’s exhibition to showcase new products. The Chief of the Defense Ministry’s Main Innovative Development Department has revealed Russia’s T-14 Armata tank is an impressive product that foreign customers should look out for.

In fact, Osadchuk indicated that the new armored vehicle would demonstrate its capabilities at some point during the exhibition. 

Introducing the T-14 Armata

In July, the few Armata tanks that were sent to aid Russia’s frontline efforts in Ukraine were allegedly withdrawn from the conflict altogether. Russian state-run news outlet TASS first reported that the MBTs were taken out of the war following their brief stint in combat operations.

The Armata made its debut appearance in Kyiv this spring when videos depicting a T-14 firing upon Ukrainian positions circulated in May. The introduction of this “cutting-edge” MBT was highly anticipated, especially considering the dismal performance of Moscow’s other tanks throughout the war.

Since February 2022, experts estimate that Russia has lost half of its tank fleet. In fact, Moscow is so short on armored vehicles that it even turned to its antiquated storage piles of Soviet-era MBTs, including the World War II relic T-54.

The Armata played a brief role in Russia’s invasion

The Kremlin often boasts that its new Armata platform is the best of the best and can outperform any near peers. However, obviously, the T-14 Aramata tank has not performed as well as expected since it only lasted two months on the battlefield before being withdrawn altogether.

The Armata was publicly introduced in 2015 when it was showcased during Moscow’s annual Victory Day Parade. By 2020, Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced that the T-14 had been combat-tested in Syria However, following the launch of Russia’s Ukraine invasion in February 2022, the country’s Armata production line ceased. 

Perhaps the greatest difference between the T-14 platform and previous Russian MBTs is its unmanned turret. In the Armata, all crew members are positioned in a protected and separated compartment where their survivability is much higher.

As detailed by Military Watch Magazine, “The tank’s frontal base armour protection of over 900mm, paired with Malachit explosive reactive armour and the AFGHANIT active protection system, provides an extreme degree of survivability.

The T-14’s sensors and armaments are also highly prized and major improvements over those of older vehicles, with its Vacuum-1 APFSDS projectiles having an extreme penetrative capability considered sufficient to frontally penetrate any of the vehicles currently in the Ukrainian theatre.”

Maya Carlin, a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. 

Policymakers often assume the United States can deter China from invading Taiwan or win if deterrence fails. But that is no longer a safe assumption. Indeed, it is very possible that the United States will be unable to deter China for the remainder of this decade. Worse still, there is a real chance the People’s Liberation Army will be able to defeat U.S. forces in a fight over Taiwan. 

We are in this situation because Washington has consistently failed to prioritize investing in our ability to deter China. But now we have no other choice: If we wish to avoid war with China, or prevail if it comes, then we must urgently focus on strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific by surging investments in the region, even if it means doing less elsewhere. This may not be the choice Washington wants to make, but we have spent decades deferring these investments—and now the bill is due. 

America’s Deterrent Has Weakened—But Few Realize How Bad It Is

The Trump and Biden administrations rightly identified China as the greatest threat to American interests. The Chinese Communist Party seeks hegemony in the Indo-Pacific. If it succeeds, it will have control over the world’s largest market zone, with dire implications for Americans’ security, freedom, and prosperity. To deny Beijing’s ambitions, however, we must be able to prevent it from using military force to dominate its neighbors. Most urgently, this requires strengthening deterrence against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which the Department of Defense (DoD) has designated as its “pacing scenario.” 

It is no secret that America’s ability to deter China has eroded, but the severity of that erosion is not widely understood. Fortunately, this is starting to change. In 2019, the United States Studies Centre reported, “America’s military primacy in the Indo-Pacific is over and its capacity to maintain a favourable balance of power is increasingly uncertain.” Last year, The Heritage Foundation’s Index of U.S. Military Strength concluded, “[T]he U.S. military is at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.” The RAND Corporation found similarly this year: “[I]t has become increasingly clear that the U.S. defense strategy and posture have become insolvent.”

Things are especially dire in the Pacific. The Trump and Biden administrations both embraced a strategy of denial to deter China. This strategy rests on our ability to prevent China from successfully invading Taiwan, especially by quickly disabling or destroying hundreds of Chinese ships in the invasion fleet. Yet it is not clear the United States can do this. As RAND found, “Neither today’s force nor forces currently programmed by the [DoD] appear to have the capabilities needed to” defeat an adversary like China that can “seize the initiative and move quickly to secure their principal objectives.” Instead, our existing approach “leave[s] open the possibility of a rapid victory by China.” To make matters worse, Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) Admiral John Aquilino testified this year that trends in the Indo-Pacific are going “in the wrong direction.”

Despite years of warning about U.S. force posture, for instance, U.S. forces remain concentrated at a relatively small number of major operating bases in Northeast Asia. This posture incentivizes China to strike preemptively before U.S. forces disperse. It also makes it easier for China to find and engage U.S. forces during a campaign. While the Biden administration has secured or improved access in Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and other nations, it is unclear when many of these locations will be ready for contingency operations. Nor is it clear whether hosts will restrict U.S. activities in their territories. Washington can sidestep some restrictions by doing more in U.S. territories, but construction in Guam and Tinian has long suffered from self-imposed regulations, supply chain issues, and funding delays. 

Meanwhile, hardening, redundancy, deception, concealment, and rapid recovery are long-acknowledged complements to dispersal, but they, too, remain works in progress in the Indo-Pacific.And while DoD plans to improve missile defenses on Guam, it is unclear if they will be effective against all threats, including hypersonic weapons and saturation raids. It is also unclear how DoD will protect Guam from attacks by Chinese special operations forces. As America trudges along, however, China is forging ahead with its own hardening and dispersal initiatives. As Thomas Shugart wrote, “What is clear is that at-scale survivability improvements can be done…within the region. They’re just not being done by us.”

U.S. forces are losing ground in other areas, too. In the air domain, for instance, China’s air forces will enjoy a significant numerical advantage near Taiwan. At the same time, China’s increasingly capable threat sensors and post-processing capabilities, airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, stealth fighters, and long-range air-to-air missiles might even allow Chinese air forces to see and shoot U.S. aircraft first effectively. U.S. forces might respond by taking advantage of better pilots, innovative concepts like “pulsed airpower,” or allied contributions like Australia’s E-7 Wedgetails, but they will still be limited by the aging U.S. AEW&C fleet, insufficiently long-range air-to-air missiles, and munitions shortfalls, especially at standoff ranges. 

America’s navy is also in trouble. China’s navy is the largest in the world and rapidly growing, with highly capable surface combatants and large fleets of paramilitary and civilian vessels available for amphibious operations, counter-targeting, and targeting. At the same time, China’s dense network of sensors and strike assets will make it harder for U.S. aircraft carriers and other ships to operate near Taiwan, limiting their ability to help blunt a Chinese fait accompli. U.S. submarine forces are still better than their Chinese counterparts. Still, they may be unable to fully capitalize on their qualitative advantage due to potential torpedo shortfalls and constraints on the number of attack submarines in the Indo-Pacific, especially in the initial period of war. Other munitions shortfalls and the ongoing retirement of guided-missile cruisers, guided-missile submarines, and attack submarines will further limit the Navy’s ability to deliver sustained firepower against Chinese targets. And things will get worse before they get better, with the Navy expected to shrink in the near term and recent testimony suggesting it may still struggle to resource a Taiwan fight in subsequent years. 

Things do not get easier outside of the air and naval domains. Space is widely recognized as a vital warfighting domain. However, according to public testimony, U.S. military space architecture is not resilient enough for a wartime environment and probably will not be until at least 2026. U.S. forces reportedly face a similar deficit in electronic warfare. According to Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), the United States has not fielded the “combat capability output that we need.” China also reportedly fields the world’s largest cohort of state-sponsored hackers, and recently publicized hacks by Chinese operators suggest the United States may not be able to count on an advantage in cyberspace either. Notably, any deficits in electronic or cyberwarfare will affect—potentially severely—U.S. forces’ ability to project power in the air, sea, and other domains as well. And none of this accounts for the logistics difficulties U.S. forces would face in a region defined by long distances and austere conditions, which would need to be overcome by sealift and air refueling fleets already facing readiness issues. 

All the while, the nuclear shadow is darkening. China is investing heavily in its nuclear forces, including theater nuclear forces that can be used for operational effect. This will exacerbate the operational difficulties facing U.S. forces. For example, a Chinese nuclear attack on Guam could significantly impact U.S. forces’ ability to execute conventional operations in the Western Pacific. China’s expanding nuclear arsenal will also limit America’s ability to use nuclear coercion to offset a conventional military disadvantage, should U.S. leaders wish to do so. 

“Everything Needs to Go Faster”

The challenges facing U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific are severe, but they should not be seen as insurmountable. The United States may no longer enjoy superiority over China in most warfighting domains, but this kind of superiority is not strictly necessary. As Elbridge Colby has argued, our goal in a Taiwan contingency is essentially defensive, so we do not need to dominate the Chinese. We need only be able to prevent them from conquering Taiwan.

However, the United States is not moving fast enough to achieve even this limited objective. This is largely due to a lack of prioritization: The United States simply has not invested adequately in deterring China. This year, for instance, the Biden administration’s defense budget left U.S. Indo-Pacific Command with $3.5 billion in unfunded priorities, while U.S. European Command had a mere $160 million in unfunded priorities. Nor has the administration shown any serious urgency in requesting or taking advantage of congressionally authorized funding for Taiwan military aid. Some in Congress, at least, have demonstrated leadership in authorizing military aid for Taiwan, but appropriators have been reluctant to fund it fully. This is despite the United States committing $113 billion in assistance to Ukraine since February 2022 and the Biden administration having just requested another $24 billion. 

This is not the behavior of a nation on the brink of war—and potential defeat—against a nuclear-armed rival in the world’s most important region. As Admiral Aquilino put it: “Everything needs to go faster.” 

Moving faster in the Indo-Pacific will require more forces, more funds, and more political capital. For instance, the United States can shift submarines, ships, aircraft, and certain ground units to the Indo-Pacific to strengthen our deterrent posture and rapid response capability. Additional resources would also help to accelerate the dispersal and hardening of operating locations; increase weapons production and stockpiling; accelerate the adoption and development of new capabilities that could make a difference in this decade; preserve relevant capacity by delaying submarine, ship, and aircraft retirements; intensify intelligence-gathering on Chinese forces, including any critical and targetable logistics vulnerabilities; and fully fund efforts to arm Taiwan with the weapons it requires to defend itself.

But substantial and sustained defense spending increases appear unlikely for the foreseeable future. Addressing the threat from China will, therefore, necessitate reallocating resources from other parts of the defense budget. This is the essence of prioritization, and it will require the United States to do less and rely on allies and partners more in other theaters. No doubt, this is a difficult choice. But Washington has spent years avoiding hard decisions. As a result, we face a real risk of war and even defeat in this decade. That is a risk we should not accept, but the only way to avoid it—or at least reduce it as much as possible—is to finally do what we should have been doing all along: prioritize deterring China.

Alexander Velez-Green is Senior Advisor to the Vice President for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He previously served as National Security Advisor to Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

The air-raid application went off on our phones around 2 am. During the previous ten days that we spent in Kyiv, we learned to trust the nigh-impregnable air defenses of the Ukrainian capital. Odesa, however, was a different matter. We arrived in the port city two days after the Russians renewed their brutal bombing campaign following their withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative. We couldn’t immediately shed the feeling of the relative safety of Kyiv: we muted the warning—voiced by Mark Hamill—on our phones and went back to sleep.

The explosion ten minutes later, followed by a bright white flash, occurred so close to our hotel that the windows of our rooms reverberated from the shockwave. Jumping out of bed and grabbing our electronics, wallets, and passports, we quickly followed the arrows pointing us to the shelter. Our guide from Kyiv, Andy, the previous day pointed out to us that the only Ukrainian-language signs in the hotel were the ones guiding the residents to the shelter—everything else was (still) in Russian. The irony was not lost on us.

Our hotel didn’t have a “real” shelter—we took cover in the non-functioning spa in the basement. A blonde woman in her twenties was already lying on a couch in a bathrobe, resting her head on a bunch of pillows that she must have taken from her room. She was sleeping. “Did she come when the sirens went off, or was she already there not wanting to get up in the middle of the evening,” we wondered.

As the onslaught of rockets and drones went on, people continued to slowly trickle in. A middle-aged woman with a toddler. Older men wearing work fatigues. There was no panic, only calm, quiet resignation. Some of them didn’t really look like guests from the hotel. A few dozed off in sitting position, others were tiredly scrolling on their phones. The whole scene, all these quiet, tired people sitting together in a dimly lit room in the small hours reminded us of the waiting room of a rural railway station before dawn. After half an hour the spa was full of “commuters.”

We started checking the Twitter and Telegram channels covering the bombings. “Explosions reported in Odesa RIGHT NOW!” As we gradually learned during our previous stays in war-torn Ukraine, the decision of whether to go to a shelter or not once the sirens started shrieking was a complex one. The most important factor, as in real estate, is location, location, location.

Roughly a year ago, during our first trip to Ukraine the rule of thumb was the following: avoid the city centers, they are prime targets. Instead, stay in the suburbs. However, the massive influx of NATO air-defense systems during the fall and winter of 2022 flipped that equation. Ukraine positioned these new assets to protect major urban centers while suburbs and the agglomeration of big cities are less protected. Moreover, Ukrainian air defenses can sometimes only intercept Russian missiles and drones above the suburbs, resulting in burning metal pieces raining down on the area. During our stay in Kyiv, Andy showed us the recent minor damage to the windows of his apartment complex in Sofiivska Borschahivka—just outside the city limits of Kyiv.

Another loud explosion, this one sounded really close. Generally speaking, urban centers were safer, but the Russians had been throwing everything they had at Odesa since the grain deal went defunct. In Kyiv, Maksym Skrypchenko, president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, told us that the massive concentration of Western air defenses around the capital is a source of some resentment elsewhere in Ukraine, where air defense capabilities are more limited. He jokingly added that the Verkhovna Rada was the safest place in Kyiv not just because of the air defenses, but also owing to its close proximity to the Chinese embassy. The Russians would never dare target the Rada with their missiles that tend to miss. By chance, our hotel in Odesa was right next to the local Confucius Institute—we should be safe, right? Well, the next morning we learned that the Chinese Consulate in the port city was also lightly damaged that evening.

More than an hour passed since the beginning of the assault. Andy was already sleeping on a reclining chair next to us. We were still riding our adrenaline wave. According to the Twitter channel “Ukraine Front Lines” the Russians were launching volley after volley of missiles and kamikaze drones at Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Chornomorks—the Ukrainian port cities that were previously covered by the grain deal. Social media is an essential tool in assessing the severity of any air raid. The sirens go off even when a pair of Russian bombers are spotted over the Black Sea. However, no one would take cover in a shelter because of two lousy Tu-22M cruising dozens of miles off the coast. This evening, however, it was a sustained major attack—the third day in a row.

Coming Back to Odesa

A lot has changed in Odesa since our previous visit in January 2023. Arriving by car, we were surprised to see that the military checkpoints set up on the roads leading to the city had been significantly scaled back, the soldiers were only doing random checks instead of thoroughly examining every vehicle. We’d seen the same in Kyiv: most of the patrolling soldiers were gone from downtown, while the tank traps and sandbags on the square in front of our hotel had been replaced by workers planting flowers, bushes, and saplings in the summer heat. The roads were also being repaired in the capital. Plugging potholes and planting geranium has been a source of contention between the major of Kyiv, Vitalij Klicsko, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—the latter calling these works a waste of money during the war. The partial road closures made the insane traffic jams in the busy capital even worse: we arrived late at almost every meeting we had.

The return to normalcy was even more marked in Odesa though. The wider area around the opera house felt like a fortified military installation in January complete with patrolling soldiers preventing anyone from taking pictures. Even an innocent selfie with the façade of the opera was strictly verboten during that winter of darkness. Even then, the flame of culture never fizzled out: stumbling on wet cobblestones, with only the built-in flashlights of our phones guiding us, completely disoriented from the deafening roar of the portable generators on the streets we were among the people who made their way to the opera in January to attend a performance of the Barber of Sevilla.

Winter was over now: the electrical grid was fully functional. The generators, like the military installations, were gone, and we could finally take the vaunted picture of the opera house. The Potemkin stairs, immortalized by Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 movie, were still off limits though. However, even this closure projected a sense of normalcy: there were no concrete blocks stacked atop each other as giant Legos, no tank traps, sandbags, or barbed wire. Just a regular five-foot-tall aluminum fence, some tape, and a few small signs.

We expected to find Odesa in a similar shape to the Eastern industrial metropolis of Dnipro—calm, fully “functional,” but at the same time eerily empty. The Pearl of the Black Sea, however, was bustling with life. Families with small children playing in the city garden, merchants selling cotton candy, balloons, and beverages. University-age students drank and sang in packed bars and on the street while queues in front of restaurants offered live music. Nothing indicated that Vladimir Putin renewed his carnage of the port city two days before. If anything, it only boosted the sales of the “Putin Huylo” beer—the drink named after a popular Ukrainian insult comes in a bottle featuring a cartoon of the Russian president in an obscene position. The waiters in Odesa just kept recommending it to us.

One thing was obviously missing from the city though: the statue of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia (1762–1796) was removed in December, 2022 only to be replaced by a Ukrainian flag.

After the launch of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, popular attitudes toward Russian cultural heritage, as well as towards the Russian language itself went through a seismic shift. According to a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll conducted in December 2022, 58 percent of the participants thought that the Russian language was not important at all for citizens of Ukraine. In 2017, three years after the annexation of Crimea, and the beginning of the war in Donbas, only 9 percent of polled Ukrainians thought so. The same survey found that 80 percent of the polled population would like to see Ukrainian as the main language in all spheres of communication. This is despite the fact that only 57 percent claimed to use only or mainly Ukrainian in their everyday life, with 24 percent using both languages equally and 15 percent relying predominantly on Russian.

Such change in attitudes doesn’t come without conflict, and it doesn’t proceed at a uniform pace in a diverse country like Ukraine. Derussification has been steaming ahead in Kyiv since the start of the full-scale invasion: while the Ukrainian capital was already scrapping Pushkin and Tolstoy from its map, the mayor of Odesa opposed the removal of the monument to the Empress of Imperial Russian as late as August 2022.

Not everyone is fine-tuned to the everyday implications of the new reality brought about by Putin’s brutal invasion, especially in Odesa, a predominantly Russian-speaking metropolis on the eve of the war. Only three hours before the sirens heralded in another evening of terror, we stumbled into a group of people in their early twenties singing along with a guitar, in Russian.

Our guide, Andy—himself a singer—immediately went ballistic. “They are singing a song from Polina Gagarina! She appeared at a pro-Putin rally to support the invasion wearing the letter Z!” Indeed, after the highly controversial event held in Moscow in March 2022, Gagarina was banned from Estonia and Latvia. The silver medalist of the 2015 Eurovision competition is now also sanctioned by Canada for “peddling Russian disinformation and propaganda.” Andy darted to the organizers, but they were dismissive, “It’s just a pop-song that people like. People are singing along.”

Enter the ongoing process of derussification. Since June 2022, there has been a ban in Ukraine on playing music by post-1991 Russian citizens on any media. The police were swiftly called. By the time they showed up, however, the singing shifted to patriotic Ukrainian songs. The officers calmly explained to us, that the law in question does not apply to a bunch of youngsters singing Russian pop songs on the streets. Unlike in Kyiv, where there has been a “temporary” ban on singing in Russian on the streets. It is highly questionable, however, if the enforcement of this symbolic act by the city council would stand in a court of law. The police officers wrapped up our conversation by adding that they will have a little chat with the performers about what is appropriate to sing between two Russian missile barrages, and what might be not.

The Next Day

The Telegram and Twitter channels went silent around 3:30 am. However, that didn’t mean that the air raid was officially over; it just signaled that the Russians stopped launching missiles and drones. We waited a good fifteen minutes, just to be on the safe side, and then we joined a couple of people smoking outside of the hotel. The eerie quiet was sporadically punctuated by the wailing of rushing ambulances in the distance. We’d just finished our third cigarette when the sirens finally sounded the monotone, high-pitched “all clear.” We went back to the spa/shelter to grab our belongings. The blonde woman in the bathrobe was already gone. We woke Andy up and finally went back to our rooms.

A mere four hours later at breakfast nothing was out of the ordinary. A perfectly dressed, smiling staff was serving us our beloved sirnykys—the heavenly Ukrainian cottage cheese cakes. Odesa was the same bustling metropolis that day: Arcadia beach already felt like one big party at 3 pm, with loud music coming from every bar and restaurant. Crowds of people danced along on the boardwalk sipping their cocktails. Bathing in the Black Sea though was still a no-no until mid-August because of the naval mines bobbing around under the crashing waves. Instead, for 100 hryvnias (approximately $2.7) anyone could throw darts at the picture of Putin in the hope of winning a bottle of whiskey. On Arcadia beach, the shriek of the air-raid sirens around 7 PM was almost drowned out by the dance music blasting from the clubs. Anyway, this time it was just a pair of Russian planes spotted by the Ukrainian Air Defenses. The party went on unabated—up until the start of the military curfew at midnight, when people wished each other “a quiet night.”

We couldn’t shake the feeling that the dancing on Arcadia beach in the hot July sunset and the evenings spent in shelters came hand-in-hand. Far from being some grotesque Danse Macabre, what we witnessed on the boardwalk felt more like a celebration of life, the life that the war cannot take away from Ukrainians. A safety valve to vent the stress, an intense flash of normalcy to keep the spirits up during those clear summer nights when rockets are falling from the sky instead of shooting stars. Finally, a snub at the aggressor: extensive damage to critical infrastructure causing power and heat outages couldn’t beat the population into submission during the winter, and evenings spent in shelters without sleep during the summer won’t do it either. Maybe desperately clinging on to these shards of a normal life is what propels the country to continue its struggle.

All in all, for millions of Ukrainians another ordinary day came to a close, and they soldiered on.

Monika Palotai is a research fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute and a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Kristof Gyorgy Veres is a senior research fellow at the Danube Institute and a non-resident expert at the Warsaw Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.

The recent Camp David Summit marked a significant milestone, emphasizing the United States’ commitment to fortifying its Indo-Pacific partnerships in both economic and security realms. A standout accomplishment of the summit was the formalization of trilateral collaboration, anchored in the Camp David Principles. These guidelines reinforced the shared strategy of these nations amid a dynamic geopolitical landscape. Beyond outlining overarching principles, the summit paved the way for regular ministerial consultations and extensive cooperation spanning issues from defense to trade. The gathering also builds upon the thaw in South Korea-Japan relations, which have notably advanced since the inauguration of South Korea’s conservative president, Yoon Suk-yeol.

South Korea’s Media Echoes to the Summit

The summit received widespread praise from the American media, which heralded it as the dawn of a “new era of cooperation.” Central to this narrative was the proactive role of President Yoon. His endeavors to mend historical rifts with Japan, particularly by addressing the issue of Japan’s wartime forced labor, were deemed crucial. Many in the media lauded President Yoon’s conciliatory approach, a key driver behind the summit’s success.

Yet, responses within South Korea’s media were more nuanced. Conservative publications like Chosun Ilbo and Joongang underscored the landmark nature of the event, lauding South Korea’s pivotal role in the trilateral alliance and its promise for the nation’s future aspirations. Positive commentary in American media often buoyed these perspectives, particularly highlighting President Yoon’s leadership.

On the other hand, progressive newspapers such as The Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun voiced more restrained views. Their commentary focused on potential compromises made by Seoul, especially in its negotiations with Tokyo. They underscored concerns about the neglect of critical issues, like the Fukushima Nuclear Plant’s water discharge decision.

Tensions Rise Over Fukushima Water Release

Japan’s decision to discharge water from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean triggered heated criticism in South Korean media. Among progressive South Koreans and advocates of the Democratic Party (DP), there is a perception that President Yoon’s diplomatic strategy has occasionally sidelined environmental and historical concerns. Recent polls, including those conducted by Hankuk Ilbo and Yomiuri Shinbun, revealed a staggering 83.8 percent of South Korean participants voicing opposition to the water discharge. Remarkably, this sentiment cuts across political lines. A subsequent survey by Hankuk Gallup echoed these results, underlining broad skepticism spanning the political landscape in South Korea.

Seizing on this widespread unease, the opposition party unleashed pointed critiques against Japan’s decision and Seoul’s implicit endorsement, branding it a grievous insult to humanity. They caution that this episode will taint Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and President Yoon’s legacies. The opposition’s sustained efforts to censure President Yoon and the People’s Power Party (PPP) over their foreign policy are not a recent phenomenon. They have persistently criticized the South Korean administration’s choice to negotiate with Japan on the wartime forced labor issue, a decision the current government views as integral to reinforcing the ROK-U.S.-Japan trilateral partnership.

South Koreans Worried About Japan’s Sincerity

The water release issue underscores South Korea’s reservations about Japan’s commitment to reconciliation. Although a recent poll indicates South Korean sentiment towards Japan is at its most favorable since 1995, the South Korean media remains wary. They spotlight the incongruence between Japan’s vocal expressions of collaboration with South Korea and the actual deeds of its parliamentarians. The visit by prominent politicians, including former Japanese ministers, to the Yasukuni Shrine—a symbol of Japanese colonialism from the Korean perspective—on August 15th intensified public skepticism about Japan’s genuine intent to heal historical rifts and strengthen ties with South Korea.

The recurring actions that ruffle the sensibilities of South Koreans, paired with calculated political rhetoric, resonate especially with those disenchanted by the current administration. A Gallup study revealed that of the 45 percent of respondents critical of President Yoon, foreign policy emerges as a significant point of contention. Within this group, 17 percent took issue with the administration’s perceived tepid response to the Fukushima water discharge, 13 percent aired grievances with diplomatic policies, 10 percent criticized Yoon’s perceived intransigence, and 5 percent spotlighted specific disputes with Japan.

Following the water release, criticisms of Yoon’s foreign policy could intensify, with opponents highlighting Seoul’s purported failure to protect vital national interests. As the 2024 legislative election looms just five months away, the opposition is poised to leverage these Japan-centric concerns more aggressively. They aim to bolster the prevailing sentiment among South Korean citizens against supporting candidates from the ruling party, counterbalancing the government that, in their view, already aligns with the majority opinion.

Japan’s Next Moves Are Crucial

While the unpopularity of Yoon’s decisions may not be the primary factor influencing his actions, internal party discord, exacerbated by potential electoral losses, could pragmatically affect Yoon’s future maneuvers. Yoon’s immediate momentum rises from the robust backing from his core party loyalists. However, if the ruling People’s Power Party faces defeat in the upcoming elections, the opposition may consolidate its already dominant position in the National Assembly.

Given this backdrop, it becomes crucial for Tokyo to exhibit gestures of genuine reciprocity. This includes a sincere acknowledgment of the water release concerns and a pledge to cooperate closely with Seoul to ensure maritime environmental safety. While the fruits of security and economic cooperation will take time to manifest, the immediate repercussions of decisions like the Fukushima water discharge may influence electoral contests.

A policy that lacks popular endorsement is inherently unstable and vulnerable to changes in government. The risks posed by unpopularity threaten the long-term viability of the ROK-Japan rapprochement. This principle is pertinent to South Korea’s domestic arena and extends to the fluctuating landscape of American politics. If South Korea and Japan falter in cementing their collaborative efforts, a change in U.S. leadership less invested in trilateral cooperation might derail progress. Thus, a resilient South Korea-Japan partnership, buoyed by committed leadership and popular support, becomes pivotal to navigate and withstand the vicissitudes of regional politics.

Jinwan Park is a political science student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, having previously studied for two years at Keio University in Japan. His past experiences include roles at the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. Consulate in Busan, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Image: Shutterstock. 

In June 2023, after four months of meticulous planning, the Ukrainian Army launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, concentrating its efforts on Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia. This confrontation with the Russian Army bore one significant difference from the initial skirmishes of the Russo-Ukrainian War: the Russians were prepared. In contrast to February 2022, when the Kremlin embarked on an overly ambitious and hastily executed invasion that quickly transformed into a colossal military debacle, the Russian military had devised a strategic and feasible plan to counter Ukraine’s offensive moves. Realizing that hopes for an outright victory had vanished, Moscow began anticipating a Ukrainian counteroffensive. By November 2022, it had constructed an extensive defensive line running through its captured territory in southern and eastern Ukraine. According to British intelligence, this defensive corridor includes layers of trenches, razor wire, earthen berms, dragon teeth, and truncated pyramids. The combined area of Russia’s anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields is roughly equivalent to the entire state of Florida.

In light of these circumstances, one must consider the strategic agenda behind Russia’s decision to invest so many resources into one of the most extensive defensive fortifications in the world. As with most defensive lines, its primary objective is simply to impede the advance of Ukrainian forces and maintain control over the territories it currently occupies. However, considering the sheer size of the fortifications and the ongoing 600-mile-long frontline engagement with Ukraine’s counteroffensive, it becomes evident that sustaining control over all occupied territories may prove challenging, given Moscow’s limited resources and the existing strain on its military forces. For this reason, Russia likely chose a defensive strategy to give its troops time and room to breathe and prioritize more limited objectives in the coming year.

As Ukraine initiates its counteroffensive across the southern and eastern theaters of the war, Russia’s top priority is defending its positions in the strategically located Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The advance of Ukrainian forces in this region directly threatens Russia’s land bridge connecting Donetsk to Crimea. Preserving the integrity of this land bridge is Russia’s utmost priority, as its absence would divide Russian troops into two separate blocs. To supply ammunition and reinforcements to the Kherson-Crimea front, Moscow would have to rely on either shipments, airlifts, or convoys across the Kerch Bridge—all three of which have proved highly vulnerable to Ukrainian firepower. In April 2022, Ukraine demonstrated its offensive capability against the Russian Black Sea Fleet by deploying its subsonic R-360 Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles, which led to the sinking of the Russian Navy’s Moskva flagship. This event highlighted Moscow’s vulnerability, especially considering that the Moskva’s primary role was to provide aerial defense protection for Russian vessels. Additionally, the flagship had maintained a safe distance of fifty nautical miles from the Ukrainian coast. Given the 170-mile operational range of Ukraine’s Neptune missiles and Kyiv’s recent deployment of “sea drones” against the bridge connecting the Russian mainland and Crimea, it becomes evident that without a direct land route between Donetsk and Crimea, supplying troops in the Kherson-Crimea region would become highly challenging.

The other major objective of Russia’s defense is likely to prevent Ukrainian forces from crossing the Dnieper River, particularly at its narrow delta, where it enters the Black Sea. The pace and depth of the Dnieper can serve as a “natural moat,” granting the Russian Army advantages for defense purposes. Preserving this natural barrier is of utmost importance. If Ukrainian forces advance across the river and into Kherson Oblast, they will diminish the “buffer zone” between Crimea and Ukraine, leaving the Crimean Peninsula open to artillery bombardment or land invasion. Following the recent incremental progress of Ukrainian forces toward the southern bank of Kherson, the strategic importance of this region has grown. Any further advances in this direction could grant Ukraine the tactical advantage in establishing a stable front along the southern bank of the Dnieper. Consequently, reclaiming this territory, or at the very least minimizing its breadth, may become a paramount objective for the Russian military.

Russia’s objective of maintaining a territorial shield between its occupied territory and Ukraine also extends to Donetsk and Luhansk, which the Kremlin officially annexed in 2022. Securing control over these regions holds immense psychological importance for the Kremlin. Over nearly a decade, Russia has employed extensive internal propaganda efforts to present these territories as integral parts of the “Russkiy Mir” (Russian World). Therefore, any Ukrainian inroads toward Novorossiya (New Russia) would not only raise doubts among many Russians regarding their leadership’s wisdom in invading Ukraine but also question the competence of their military commanders. Losing territories captured through “grey zone” tactics in 2014 would severely damage the morale of Russian soldiers and civilians. For this reason, preventing Ukraine from advancing into the regions occupied since 2014 serves as both a political and military objective for the Kremlin. In this context, Russia needs to protect the towns that are logistical gateways to Donetsk and Luhansk, such as Pisky and Bakhmut.

While Russia may have specific priorities in its defense against the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian high command is still aware of the importance of maintaining a relatively aligned defense line. In fact, Russia has constructed the most extensive defensive fortifications in Europe since World War II—precisely because they understand that without “strategic depth” in Ukraine, a breakthrough by Ukrainian forces could result in a rout of their forces, similar to the one that took place in northern Ukraine in the fall of 2022.

Finally, aside from direct military results, Russia has one hidden objective: to buy time. Russia aims to hold back Ukrainian troops to provide its defense industry with the necessary time to rebuild its offensive capabilities after they were significantly degraded by poor decision-making in the early days of the war.

Historically, Russia has frequently overcome its major adversaries by luring them into successive defense belts. This tactic exhausts the enemy’s equipment and manpower, allowing Russia to regroup and bolster its military. This strategy proved effective during confrontations like the Great Northern War (1700–1721) against Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, and Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa in 1941. In each scenario, Russia’s defensive maneuvers smoothed the transition to an offensive posture.

Given this historical backdrop, it is plausible that Russia’s aim in the present conflict is to exhaust Ukraine’s military capacities and provide the necessary reprieve for its own military. Recent reports indicate that Moscow has brokered an agreement with Iran to produce 6,000 Shahed drones inside Russia, underscoring the Kremlin’s intent to maintain robust offensive capabilities. Furthermore, stopping a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive in its tracks could deliver a severe blow to the morale of the Ukrainian populace. Already grappling with the daily onslaught of missile and drone strikes, economic strain, and forced displacements, such a setback might catalyze Ukrainian public sentiment in favor of a political settlement. It may do the same for Western sentiments as well. If Ukraine fails to make progress in the counteroffensive, public support for costly military aid transfers to Kyiv may drop and provide ammunition for restraint-oriented politicians. Such arguments may lead to a re-evaluation of Western support and even a push from some NATO nations for a peace deal on terms favorable to Moscow.

Simply put, Russia is exhausting its military resources beyond its long-term capacity to demonstrate that a decisive Ukrainian victory is impractical.  As Russia’s military capabilities strain under the weight of protracted engagement, the notion that such exhaustive efforts can ultimately yield a viable outcome for its campaign becomes increasingly untenable—but by holding out long enough and by inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Ukrainians as their counteroffensive continues, the Kremlin hopes to achieve its aims before this happens. It is up to Ukraine and NATO to determine if these efforts will bear fruit.

Arman Mahmoudian is a lecturer of Russian Studies and International Affairs and a researcher at the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute.

Image: Shutterstock. 

At a juncture where sustainable peace seemed achievable, Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan—arriving finally two years after the end of the Second Karabakh War, with the mediation of Brussels and Washington—appeared to be a positive development. Regrettably, this promising trajectory now faces the risk of unraveling, jeopardizing all progress made after the recent escalation around Lachin Road and claims about humanitarian conditions.

On April 23 of this year, Azerbaijan strategically positioned a checkpoint in Lachin, a pivotal juncture along the internationally recognized border between Azerbaijan and Armenia. This checkpoint held significant importance as it served as the sole road connecting the Armenian-populated territory in Karabakh to the Republic of Armenia. Initially, the road functioned without major disruptions. However, tensions escalated following an attack on its checkpoint on June 15, prompting Azerbaijan to impose limitations on its operations. Azerbaijan also contended that this road had been exploited for illicit activities such as smuggling mines, weapons, and individuals affiliated with the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) into the region.

On July 26, a convoy of nineteen trucks carrying humanitarian aid was dispatched by the Armenian government, but Azerbaijan barred its entry into the region. This provided Armenia with a pretext to instrumentalize humanitarian issues to bring the matter before the UN Security Council for discussion on August 16. It was not coincidental that certain speakers during the Security Council discussion recommended refraining from employing humanitarian concerns as political leverage. Ahead of the UN Security Council session, significant resources were channeled into a global media campaign, involving politicians, celebrities, and even controversial figures like Luis Moreno Ocampo. The intention behind this was to shape a pro-Armenian sentiment within the international audience and to impose psychological and moral pressure on Azerbaijan, the global community, and the members of the UN Security Council.

Matters have only escalated since. On August 29, the Azerbaijan Red Crescent Society, affiliated with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, dispatched two trucks loaded with flour to aid Armenian residents in Karabakh through the Aghdam Road. This effort was aimed at breaking the ongoing deadlock and addressing concerns of manipulation surrounding the delivery of aid. However, the trucks encountered concrete roadblocks erected by individuals associated with radical groups who staunchly advocate for the sole use of the Lachin Road and vehemently oppose any alternative routes to the region. A few days later, the spokesperson for Charles Michel, president of the European Council, emphasized the importance of a step-by-step approach, which would involve a carefully sequenced operation for the full utilization of the Ağdam and Lachin routes.

Peace Is Achievable Solely via Sincere Negotiations

Rather than engaging in direct and honest dialogue with Azerbaijan without any mediators—as also endorsed and urged by the United States to address any concerns, including humanitarian matters—Armenia is putting significant effort into exploiting humanitarian issues for its global propaganda purposes. Conversely, following the conclusion of the Second Karabakh War, Armenian propaganda has focused on attempting tirelessly to portray Azerbaijan through an “Israelization” lens and positioning Armenia as a victim in a manner reminiscent of the Palestinian situation.

The intent behind this approach is unmistakably clear, evident not just to those in Baku but also conspicuously acknowledged in Yerevan: to establish the notion within the international community that Karabakhi Armenians cannot viably coexist under Azerbaijan’s jurisdiction. This narrative is constructed to morally validate the concept of remedial secession or separatism for Karabakhi Armenians.

As previously articulated within this platform, for Azerbaijan the dark reality of occupation hides behind the glitzy façade of remedial secession or self-determination and efforts to link the claim to liberal values, like in Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Donbas, and Luhansk. Additionally, the discussions and promotional efforts aimed at advancing a remedial secession agenda are perceived by Azerbaijan as an endeavor to divert the attention of the international community from the twenty-seven-year-long occupation of Azerbaijani territories, the plights of up to one million internally displaced persons, their inability to return to the liberated lands because of widely planted landmines, and the complete destruction of urban centers and rural communities like Aghdam. Indeed, acknowledging these responsibilities and addressing the complexities arising from this prolonged situation holds the utmost significance in ensuring enduring peace for the times ahead. Disregarding or deflecting focus away from the twenty-seven-year-long occupation could cast a shadow over the prospects of future peace, potentially leading to a less hopeful outlook.

Following their defeat in the 2020 conflict, Armenia lacks the military capability to directly challenge Azerbaijan and assert its claims over Karabakh. Moreover, Armenia's demands are not substantiated by international law. In light of these constraints, Armenia’s primary recourse remains the pursuit of “moral justification” on the global stage to substantiate its claim over Karabakh.

At the same time, prominent Armenian analysts, including figures like Richard Kirakosyan, advocate for a strategic approach acknowledging Armenia's military inferiority to Azerbaijan. They propose delaying the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan to allocate time for rebuilding and modernizing Armenia's military capabilities.

Significantly, the program outlined by Pashinyan’s government for the former Nagorno-Karabakh Oblast, endorsed by Armenia’s National Assembly following the 2021 elections, contains a provision obligating Pashinyan’s administration to secure the Karabakhi Armenians’ right to remedial secession. The recent acknowledgment of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan by Pashinyan’s government is not contradictory to this obligation; instead, it aligns with the commitment made in 2021 to pursue remedial secession. This alignment is evident in the range of actions and policies pursued by the Pashinyan government, including its recent international initiatives related to Lachin.

As a result, the statement made by the U.S ambassador to Armenia, Kristina Kvien, at the beginning of June, asserting the potential for Karabakhi Armenians to coexist securely under Azerbaijani governance, faced considerable backlash—even in the wake of the recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. This criticism prompted the ambassador to walk back her comments the following day, stating that the United States “does not presuppose the outcome of negotiations on the future of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

Enough is Enough

Beneath the surface of this intricate political struggle lies the enduring plight of ordinary people from both sides of the conflict. Amidst the Russian military presence and the remnants of Armenia’s armed forces, individual stories such as that of Izaura Balasanyan emerge, encapsulating the persistent suffering endured. Her story also sheds light on the intricate complexities that impede the path to normalcy and reconciliation for two populations separated by a protracted three-decade-long conflict.

In September 2021, faced with mounting needs and an avaricious landlord, Izaura made a fateful decision driven by desperation: escaping the confines of the Armenian-controlled territory. Her goal was to reach the comparatively promising Azerbaijani-controlled territories. However, her journey was abruptly halted when Russian peacekeepers apprehended her and handed her back into the custody of local Armenian security services.

Since then, the fate of this unfortunate woman has remained cloaked in uncertainty, her story fading into obscurity. Remarkably, her plight has failed to attract the attention of any international institution, leaving her ordeal unexamined and her voice unheard. This stark reality underscores the challenges faced by countless individuals akin to Izaura, trapped in the labyrinthine nexus of radical nationalism and a three-decade-long conflict.

The tale of Izaura serves as a clear example of those opposing the reintegration of these two communities and those acting as a barrier between them. In 2022, with the mediation of the United States in Washington, Armenia and Azerbaijan reached an agreement to commence dialogue for the reintegration between Baku and the Karabakhi Armenians. Interestingly, immediately following this accord, Moscow sent a Russian billionaire, Ruben Vardanyan, who lacks native ties to Karabakh, to the region to undermine the reintegration dialogue. He subsequently expelled all proponents of dialogue from the local de-facto administration. Despite his resignation, both he and Russia continue to uphold the trajectory that was established to impede all reintegration efforts.

Nevertheless, accountability extends beyond Russia and the radicals it supports. It encompasses politicians, experts, and journalists who, regrettably, remain detached from the anguish experienced by individuals like Izaura. Their disengagement underscores the urgency of comprehending the broader context enveloping these narratives.

Blame Games

Paradoxically, while politicians silence the cries of desperate individuals like Izaura, who were taken hostage and who are marginalized, they concurrently appeal to the global stage about the existence of humanitarian crises. In a contrasting stance, local leaders such as Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan and others advocate for a balanced approach. Stepanyan advises restraint in sharing social media posts containing videos of uplifting occasions like weddings and other events that radiate inspiration and prosperity. Conversely, he advocates for refraining from disseminating videos depicting lavish lifestyles—a narrative that clashes with the established official stance.

Consequently, the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has now found its way into the realm of conflicting narratives within the sphere of social media. On these platforms, Armenians are diligently amplifying efforts to underscore the allegedly pressing humanitarian situation on the ground. In a contrasting display, Azerbaijani social media users are sharing recently published videos featuring Armenian counterparts participating in weddings, extravagant restaurant celebrations, and gatherings within Karabakh that radiate joy and prosperity. This clash of narratives reached its peak during a session of the UN Security Council. The Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs presented images of purportedly distressed children, prompting the Azerbaijani ambassador to counter with joyful and abundant photographs depicting life in Karabakh.

The clash of narratives occasionally crosses boundaries, prompting Karabakhi Armenian activist Artur Osipyan to advocate for a more balanced stance when making claims about hunger. Osipyan points out the potential negative consequences of stretching the truth excessively, as falsehoods can erode their credibility. However, it's worth noting that Osipyan later clarified his statement, indicating that his initial words had been misunderstood and taken out of context.

Karabakh Is Not an Island with One Port

Nonetheless, the intention behind the aforementioned words is not to disregard the potential consequences of the ongoing deadlock on the ground. Rather, the aim is to propose a viable exit or solution to the international community, with the intention of assisting both sides involved.

Tensions run high in both Azerbaijan and Armenia. Oftentimes, choices and declarations are shaped with a keen focus on their respective domestic audiences. With the pivotal elections in Yerevan in September,  Prime Minister Pashinyan is facing allegations of lacking firmness and not pursuing all possible avenues. Alarmingly, some voices are even shamelessly advocating for cynicism, going as far as suggesting the use of children and women as shields.

For Armenia and the local separatists, their foremost concern revolves around unhindered access via the Lachin road. Conversely, Azerbaijan asserts its rightful ownership of both Lachin and Karabakh—a status further acknowledged by Armenia’s prime minister. Consequently, Baku maintains that it holds the right to determine the routes and roads through which essential goods and supplies should be transported to the region. Despite Baku’s offer to extend aid and provisions through the Azerbaijani town of Aghdam, certain radical factions among the Karabakhi Armenians turned down this proposal. There are also notable figures who were dismissed from their positions, and they advocate for Karabakhi Armenians to engage immediately in sincere dialogue without the involvement of any mediators.

As Hikmet Hajiyev, the assistant to the president of Azerbaijan, recently emphasized, Armenia’s strong rejection of using the Aghdam Road while simultaneously insisting solely on retaining the Lachin Road is interpreted in Azerbaijan as an indication that Armenia’s intentions lean more towards pursuing the separatism of Karabakhi Armenians rather than their reintegration to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani officials draw parallels between the perspectives of U.S. officials on analogous instances involving separatist elements in Ukraine and Russia, juxtaposing these with the situation involving Karabakh separatists and Armenia. Notably, during a 2014 United Nations Security Council gathering, then-U.S. ambassador Samantha Power unequivocally stated that Russia had no legitimate basis for delivering assistance to Ukrainian separatists. Curiously, in the context of Karabakh, Ambassador Power advocates for Azerbaijan to unblock the Lachin Road for the delivery of aid to separatists. This divergent stance displayed by certain Western officials has been perceived by both the Azerbaijani government and its populace as a form of double standard, one that ultimately exacerbates the existing deadlock.

In fact, the way out from the artificial deadlock entails a decisive choice between prioritizing the reopening of the Lachin Road or emphasizing humanitarian considerations and exigencies.

Should the latter carry greater weight, then a straightforward solution emerges, rendering the ongoing crisis artificially prolonged. It is important to note that the Armenian populated territory in Karabakh is not an island, nor can it be solely reliant on the Lachin Road. The International Committee of the Red Cross, USAID, and other international humanitarian organizations possess the capability officially to address Azerbaijan to explore alternative routes, such as Aghdam, for the delivery of essential supplies to Karabakh, should the Lachin route remain an insurmountable obstacle.

Fuad Chiragov is Deputy Director of the Center for Studies of the South Caucasus (CSSC).

Image: Shutterstock.

PAK DA Looks Doomed - Russian aircraft designer Tupolev, now part of the United Aircraft Corporation - a powerhouse conglomerate that includes the likes of Sukhoi and Mikoyan-Gurevich - is well known for its large aircraft designs.

In the 1930’s, it held the record for the largest aircraft, the ANT-20 Maxim Gorky. Since then, the company has built on its pedigree with the Tu-95 strategic bomber, introduced in 1956 and still in service today; the Tu-154, one of the most ubiquitous short haul passenger jets in Russia and the former Eastern Bloc; and the Tu-144, the first ever supersonic commercial airliner.

Currently, Tupolev is working on their next project, the PAK DA, Russia’s first stealth bomber.

Introducing the PAK DA

The Russian Air Force has had a stealth bomber in the works for quite some time.

Initial requirements were formulated in the 1990s and by the first decade of the 2000’s, Tupolev had begun work on the design.

While for most combat aircraft, faster is better and aerospace engineers have worked to achieve that goal, in the case of the PAK DA, Tupolev has actually gone the other way and intends to produce a subsonic bomber incapable of flying faster than Mach 1.0.

Instead, the design focuses on stealth capabilities, seeking to produce a result similar to the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit bomber which relies on low observability rather than speed to survive.

B-2 Clone? 

Stealth technology is not the only way the PAK DA appears to mimic the B-2. The Spirit is a highly recognizable aircraft due to its shape - it has often been called a flying wing. Essentially this means it does not have the typical parts of an aircraft, a fuselage, wings, and an empennage or tail assembly with various stabilization and flight control surfaces. Instead, the aircraft relies on a sophisticated flight control computer to maintain stability while aloft.

The lack of a tail assembly plays into the stealth aspect as well, greatly decreasing radar cross section.

Many details of the PAK DA remain unknown, however, its type of payload has been confirmed as conventional, nuclear, and even hypersonic weapons. Being able to launch such high speed ordnance is yet another reason which precludes the need for high speed flight.

Rather, being able to stealthily loiter outside an enemy’s air defenses while hypersonic missiles penetrate to the target will be the name of the game.

One of the challenges of stealth aircraft is weapons storage. Typically, combat aircraft store missiles, bombs, and rockets, on pylons or “racks” attached to the wings and fuselage. This both generates drag and reduces stealth profile making them easy to see.

To combat this, stealth aircraft are designed to store their weapons internally, which can make increasing the payload difficult. This doesn’t seem to be an issue for the PAK DA however, which is rumored to have a payload of 30T, more than the 20T limit of the B-2.

Currently, it appears that Tupolev has built at least one full scale mockup of the PAK DA and perhaps several smaller models for wind tunnel testing. Prototypes are expected to begin rolling out over the next several years and the first flight is projected for 2025.

While Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Maturov has said “there is no talk of using foreign parts in a project of this type,” it remains to be seen whether Western Sanctions due to the ongoing war in Ukraine will have an impact on the development of the new bomber.

What The Experts Told Us

"Clearly, Russia wants the PAK DA. However, I have no idea how they could afford it. Further, I would also add they don't have the microchips needed to make this work or technology due to sanctions related to the Ukraine war. For now, the PAK DA, I would argue, is just a dream," explained a former aviation expert who is retired from a major U.S. defense contractor. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

NOTE: This piece has been updated to include expert commentary. 

During my recent stay in Germany’s picturesque town of Heidelberg, I got into a rather heated conversation with a number of African, Indian, and Chinese postgraduate researchers from the town’s medieval university on the BRICS group and whether or not they can spawn a new movement akin to the Non-Aligned Movement of the last century.

Their argument that the last two decades have been extraordinarily good for developing countries and their mostly poor citizens, does make some sense. Indeed, Harvard University’s celebrated economist Dani Rodrik likewise noted that the economies of developing countries have expanded at unprecedented rates, resulting both in a large reduction in extreme poverty and a significant expansion of the middle class.

Such superlative performance was and still is—so argued my interlocutors from the developing world—primarily driven by China and India—countries that, along with Russia, Brazil, and South Africa, make up the BRICS group.

There is no doubt that the BRICS group has become increasingly formalized and institutionalized over the past decade, hosting regular summits and establishing collective bodies. But can they pose a challenge to the G7?

The recent 15th BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg saw six new countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, being invited to join the bloc in a move alluding to China’s and Russia’s ever-strengthening ties at a time when tensions with the West are reaching boiling point. Even long-time US allies such as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, along with Argentina and Ethiopia are also set to enter BRICS from Jan. 1, 2024.

Despite Russia being heavily sanctioned by the West, it was surprising to see BRICS pull off a side event of sorts in Moscow—dubbed the Cloud City International Innovation Forum—where representatives of some thirty countries talked about their vision of cities in the future and how technology could be incorporated with modern city designs. Among the speakers were Nobel Prize winners, Professor of Economics Mohamed Yunus (2006) and the UN Secretary General's Advisor Rae Kwon Chung (2007), as well as Serbian film director Emir Kusturica, a longtime acquaintance of President Vladimir Putin. The forum was attended by major urban practitioners from all corners of the world including Erol Ozguner, director of information technology of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Khaled El-Attar, deputy minister of communications and IT of Egypt, Abdulrahman Ibrahim, Medina city’s development authority, and Daouda Gueye, vice mayor of Dakar for technology, who discussed how modern technologies could help improve the quality of life and find effective solutions and ensure technological sovereignty. As someone born in Yugoslavia, the event harkens back to the days of the Bandung Conference, when Josip Broz Tito, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Sukarno laid the groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement.

Both Moscow and Beijing are keen to breathe new life into the BRICS bloc to show the world that there are alternatives to the patchwork U.S.-led alliance and institutions that have dominated global affairs for decades. Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the BRICS countries have only distanced themselves further from the West. Neither India, Brazil, South Africa, nor China are taking part in sanctions against Russia. Trade between India and Russia, and Brazil’s dependence on Russian fertilizer, have reached near historic levels.

Oliver Stuenkel notes that all BRICS members see the emergence of multipolarity as both inevitable and generally desirable—and identify the bloc as a means to play a more active role in shaping the post-Western global order. Member states share a deep-seated skepticism of the U.S.-led unipolarity and believe that the BRICS nations increase their strategic autonomy and bargaining power when they become independent of the West, the United States in particular. And over the past decade, India and China have enabled each other’s rise as emerging technology powerhouses. Chinese tech giants have invested billions of dollars into India’s biggest startups, while its smartphone makers dominate the country’s market and Indians have flocked to Chinese apps like TikTok.

So should the BRICS alliance be perceived as a counter to the West or more a forum for increased sovereign and autonomous thought? That depends on what one’s country’s ideological orientation is. Some, such as Iran and Argentina, are jumping on the bandwagon because they sense an economic opportunity. To others, BRICS serves as an attempt, if inchoate, to create an alternative to the existing world order.

The potential for synergies between the BRICS countries is enormous. In their current form, the BRICS make up around 31.5 percent of world GDP when adjusted on a purchasing power parity basis. Taken together, the expanded BRICS countries currently produce around 26 percent of global oil output and 50 percent of iron ore production used to make steel. They produce around 40 percent of global corn production and 46 percent of global wheat production. More importantly, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are home to 3.2 billion people, 42 percent of the world's population. In effect, these countries hold 42 percent of one of the most valuable resources on the planet: personal data.

China’s GDP is more than double that of the other four BRICS combined: almost $18 trillion compared with Brazil ($1.6 trillion), Russia ($1.8 trillion), India ($3.2 trillion), and South Africa ($400 billion). Joseph W. Sullivan wrote in Foreign Policy how in 2022 the BRICS ran a trade surplus of $387 billion—mostly thanks to China—and that all the talk of those countries coining their own currency may not be too far-fetched after all. The BRICS would also be poised to achieve a level of self-sufficiency in international trade that has eluded other currency unions as they are not united by shared territorial borders and hence are more likely to produce a wider range of goods than any existing monetary union. Finally, half of the BRICS countries’ population is already online, contributing significantly to domestic and international economic activity. These countries are working to welcome digital innovation and massively investing in their digital capabilities, crafting new data protection frameworks and increasingly requiring tech companies to store data about a person in that person’s home country. China has the most ambitious approach, making major investments in 5G networks, artificial intelligence, and high-tech manufacturing in a bid to be an even larger global technology power than it already is.

Russia and China have increasingly presented themselves to developing nations as economic and military alternatives to the West—that will neither attach demands on democracy nor human rights to diplomatic relations. Both Russia and China are upping the ante in recruiting these developing countries that are non-aligned and neutral.

Although they might find Russia an increasingly awkward partner, most Asian nations pragmatically choose to maintain their relationships for a combination of economic, military, and diplomatic reasons. The combination of China’s manufacturing might and India’s software and service prowess provides across-the-board capabilities. David Moschella and Robert D. Atkinson recently noted that parallels between America’s dependency on China for manufacturing and its dependency on India for IT services are striking.

In that context, Russia sees the relevance of the BRICS Innovation Forum as a means of strengthening relationships with friends and allies in an era of major geopolitical tectonic shifts. While many in the West hoped that Russia’s invasion would rally nations in the developing world behind the rules-based order, many in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East have largely rejected Western framings of the conflict as a battle between might and right.

For them, non-alignment in the form of BRICS is much more comfortable than being pigeonholed as part of a Western position—or, indeed, an Eastern position.

Harun Karčić is a journalist and political analyst covering the Balkans and Turkey. Over the past decade, he has authored numerous articles on Islam and foreign influence in the region, including Saudi, Iranian, Turkish, and more recently Chinese and Russian. He also regularly reports on Muslim minorities in Europe and rising right-wing nationalism. He tweets @HarunKarcic.

Image: Shutterstock.

Waning American support for military aid to Ukraine displays a marked partisan division, among both the public and politicians in Washington. In a poll conducted for CNN and published in August, respondents were asked whether the United States “should do more to stop Russian military actions in Ukraine” or had “already done enough.” Among Democrats, 61 percent said it should do more, and 38 percent said it had done enough. A majority of Republicans—59 percent—said the United States had already done enough, and only 40 percent said it should do more.

Such views among the Republican Party faithful are being reflected in the posture of many Republican candidates on the campaign trail. In Congress, the loudest voices opposing aid to Ukraine are coming from some members of a Republican caucus that is divided on the issue.

No single explanation underlies this pattern. Multiple factors are in play, including ones that are legitimate parts of a healthy foreign policy debate and ones that are not. The following are the principal factors involved, beginning with the two that can be part of a healthy conversation about foreign policy.

Calculated response to the course of the war

Although it might be hard to point to evidence of careful analysis, especially among respondents to public opinion polls, opposition to further military aid to Ukraine can be an understandable response to how people see the war going. Many view the current Ukrainian counteroffensive as yielding meager results at a high cost. This leads to an opinion that more aid to Ukraine would be throwing good money after bad. A related view is that further aid discourages the Ukrainians from accepting the inevitable outcome of a compromise settlement and only prolongs a needless expenditure of blood and treasure.

This is not, of course, the only reasonable way to interpret the story of the war so far. Even those who see an eventual negotiated settlement as inevitable may favor additional military aid to Ukraine as necessary in persuading the Russian leadership to accept a compromise peace agreement. But opposition to more aid is a legitimate, defensible posture, and one that Republicans can hold just as much as anyone else.

In the CNN poll, self-declared independents expressed views on this issue closer to Republicans than to Democrats. This may suggest that for Republicans as a whole, partisan considerations are playing no greater role in positions about the war in Ukraine than they are for Democrats, although the result masks the sharp divisions among Republicans on the issue.

Traditional isolationism

Opposition to aiding Kyiv’s war effort may be based at least as much on general foreign policy ideology as on interpretations of the specific war being waged in Ukraine. Isolationism, with an eschewing of involvement in other nations’ conflicts, has a long pedigree in America, and has been a prominent strand of opinion in the Republican Party. Some of the most prominent isolationist figures of the twentieth century were leading congressional Republicans such as William Borah and Robert Taft. The only senators to vote against ratification of the United Nations Charter were two other isolationist Republicans, William Langer and Henrik Shipstead.

The isolationist strand is competing against another ideological strand in the Republican Party, one that is partial to using military means to assert interests abroad and that favors standing tall against aggressive tendencies of regimes in Moscow. The conflict between these two ideological traditions is reflected in the split among congressional Republicans today regarding the war in Ukraine.

Making political life difficult for a Democratic president

The partisan warfare mode of addressing issues of the Ukraine war was demonstrated in the early days after the Russian invasion when the reflexive response of some Republican politicians was to blame President Joe Biden for the war, just as they might, as a matter of habit, try to blame him for any other untoward happening in the world. Senator Ted Cruz’s comment at the time that “Joe Biden sought to appease Vladimir Putin from the very beginning” was a ludicrous as well as puzzling way to wage partisan warfare when one compares Biden’s posture toward Putin with the posture toward the Russian president of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump. 

That a Democratic U.S. president has been leading not only U.S. but also international support for Ukraine stimulates the Republican instinct to oppose whatever a Democratic president proposes. That instinct, like the isolationist tradition, has been colliding with Republican inclinations to oppose Russian aggression. The resulting confusion within the Republican caucus was aptly described by Democratic senator Chris Murphy when he said of his Republican colleagues, “I think many of them really do want to help Ukraine, but they are so used to opposing a Democratic president on everything and anything that they can’t figure out how to get out of their own way.”

Sympathy for Russia as “anti-woke”

The culture war to which the Republican Party devotes much attention and effort intersects with the issue of the war in Ukraine because Putin is waging a cultural war with similar themes, which has won him admiration among much of the American Right. Putin is “anti-woke,” former Trump political advisor Steve Bannon approvingly declares. Putin has used his own culture war, with its religious and anti-LGBTQ themes, as a device not only to help build support within Russia for his war in Ukraine but also, by appealing to culture warriors in the West, to weaken Western support for the Ukrainians. 

To the extent this strategy is even partially successful, it is another reason for Republicans to balk at added military support to Ukraine. Apart from any isolationist or analytical reasons for such opposition, Russia is seen as not the bad guy, and maybe even the good guy, in the conflict.

The projection of domestic social and cultural preferences onto a foreign policy issue is not new. Something similar happened in the early years of the United States, when attitudes of Federalists and Democratic-Republicans toward Britain and France sometimes had less to do with protecting U.S. interests abroad than with how partisans saw in each of the two warring European powers social patterns that they either sought or feared in the United States itself.

The Trump-Russia connection

That the Republican Party is still largely in thrall to Trump is reflected in his huge lead in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and in how most of those ostensibly running against him say they would support his candidacy even if he were a convicted felon. It follows that Trump’s extraordinary relationship with Putin and Russia colors Republican attitudes toward the war between Russian and Ukraine, and all subsidiary issues such as military aid to Ukraine.

The most evident foundation for that relationship was Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election in favor of Trump. More opaque but evidently no less real given Trump’s secretive dealings with Putin while still in office have been Trump’s business or other connections with Russia. All this augments any disinclination to aid another state in defending itself in a war against Russia.

Added to this disinclination have been related efforts to demean Ukraine and to associate it with corruption supposedly involving Biden or his family—the notion that was at the center of Trump’s caper that led to his first impeachment. Some other Republicans, in an apparent effort to deflect attention from Russia’s pro-Trump election interference, have falsely suggested that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election in favor of Democrats. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, continued to push this notion even after it had been investigated and debunked.

Conclusions

First, Republican opposition against aid to Ukraine is over-determined. This opposition is thus likely to continue growing.

Second, among the reasons for that opposition are some that are not legitimate ingredients of a healthy foreign policy debate and are likely only to confuse and pollute that debate.

But third, the illegitimate ingredients should not be allowed to overshadow sound reasons to question an open-ended supply line to Ukraine. The future course of the war in Ukraine has yet to be determined, and the jury is still out on which approach toward the war is best for U.S. interests and for bringing a stable peace to that part of Europe. All the arguments both in favor of and opposed to added military aid to Ukraine need to be carefully considered, regardless of any other reasons some participants in the debate have for taking the stand they do.

Paul R. Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. His most recent book is Beyond the Water’s Edge: How Partisanship Corrupts U.S. Foreign Policy. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

Image: Consolidated News Photos / Shutterstock.com

On August 28, 2023, U.S. Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced in a statement that President Joe Biden will meet Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong on September 10 in Hanoi to “explore opportunities to promote the growth of a technology-focused and innovation-driven Vietnamese economy, expand our people-to-people ties through education exchanges and workforce development programs, combat climate change, and increase peace, prosperity, and stability in the region.” Biden’s trip is expected to see an upgrade of a “comprehensive strategic partnership”––the highest rank in Vietnam’s diplomatic hierarchy. In the context of China’s increasingly aggressive behaviors in the South China Sea, the possibility of a U.S.-Vietnam alliance is increasingly debatable.

Hanoi appears to leave the door open for deepening security cooperation with the United States. Despite the potential of an elevated partnership between the United States and Vietnam being forged during the Biden trip, I argue that the likelihood of a strategic alliance is highly unlikely. Apart from Vietnam’s adherence to the “Three No’s” policy, it is unlikely for both states to enter into an alliance for two reasons. First, Vietnam and the United States have non-overlapping interests in the South China Sea. Second, Vietnam has a deep-seated suspicion of U.S. peaceful evolution.

China’s recent assertive actions in the South China Sea may prompt Vietnam to consider aligning more closely with external powers like the United States. Many scholars believe that the U.S. presence in the South China Sea serves as a crucial factor in counterbalancing China’s aggressive behavior. However, whether the United States is willing to form an alliance with Vietnam against China is still highly doubtful, as Hanoi itself is uncertain on what position it would play in U.S. China strategy. Put differently, what cost would the United States be willing to bear to help Vietnam in the South China Sea disputes?

Vietnam is one of the main claimants having very high stakes in the South China Sea. The most important goal in Vietnam’s maritime policy is to defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is critical to the Communist Party of Vietnam’s legitimacy. In the short term, Hanoi aims to maintain the territorial status quo and protect its waters in order to keep conducting regular economic activities such as oil drilling and fishing. In the long term, Vietnam attempts to recover its lost territories in the South China Sea. Hence, security and resources are two of Vietnam’s existential interests in the South China Sea.

While the United States has increased its naval presence in the disputed waters of the South China Sea to indicate its strong opposition to China’s activities, the United States has not employed its forces to protect claimant states’ security and resource rights. Instead, the United States has justified its interests in terms of upholding freedom of navigation by conducting freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) in defiance of Chinese claims. For instance, the United States deployed its Navy ships and Air Force jets to patrol the waters of the Philippines in order to protect “freedom of navigation and overflight rights,” and called on China “to abide by its obligations under international law.”

Thus, we should not assume that the United States has high stakes in the South China Sea. If the United States does not protect its allies’ security in the sea, it may lose their trust. However, the United States does not suffer any direct losses to its truly vital security interests. Accordingly, while Vietnam’s concerns over territorial security, resources, and legitimacy may push policymakers in Hanoi to pursue an alliance with the United States policy, Hanoi needs to think twice about how far the United States is willing to go to defend Vietnam’s security. The exaggeration of U.S. interests in the South China Sea could undermine Vietnam’s long-term maritime policy.

Although Vietnam and the United States share significant concerns about China’s hegemonic maritime ambitions in the South China Sea, Vietnam remains highly skeptical about U.S. intentions regarding democracy, human rights, and religion, constraining the possibility of an alliance. In fact, according to the Vietnamese Communist Party propagandists, “Vietnam is still a major target of the hostile forces and reactionaries’ ‘peaceful evolution strategy,’” and “[g]iven the duplicity of several Western administrations, there remain plots and activities that take advantage of cooperative relationships to carry out the ‘peaceful evolution strategy’ in Vietnam, notably support of several administrations for individuals and organizations hostile towards Vietnam. These organizations still capitalize on American standards on ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights,’ ‘freedom of speech,’ ‘freedom of religion,’ etc., to slander Vietnam about violation of democracy and human rights, and use it as a driver to bolster the domestic forces politically and spiritually.”

Just ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Hanoi on April 15 this year, the United States condemned Vietnam’s jailing of a political activist and called for his release and the release of other human rights activists. The U.S. State Department spokesperson added that “Vietnam is an important partner in the Indo-Pacific, and that partnership can only reach its full potential if its government takes concerted steps to meet its obligations and commitments under international law and improve its human rights record.”

The Vietnam-U.S. alliance has always had two sides to it, and Hanoi needs to consider this dichotomy thoroughly before entering into an alliance. On the one hand, the alliance would strengthen Vietnam’s defensive capabilities against China’s intimidating behavior in the South China Sea. On the other hand, the alliance possibly impairs the Vietnamese government’s capability to implement self-reliant defense policies.

All this said, regardless of the shared concern about China, it is unlikely that Vietnam and the United States will join in an alliance due to the non-overlapping interests between the two states in the South China Sea and Vietnam’s deep-rooted suspicions of U.S. political intentions. 

Thi Mai Anh Nguyen holds a Master of International Relations from the University of Massachusetts Boston. She studies Vietnam’s foreign policy, U.S.-Southeast Asia relations, China’s foreign policy, and non-Western international relations theories.

Image: Shutterstock.

More F-35I Adir Fighters for Israel? This week, Israel’s Defense Ministry submitted an official request to the U.S. military’s Joint Program Office to purchase a third squadron of F-35 fighters.

If accepted, the current Israeli Air Force (IAF) fleet of 50 F-35s will increase to 75. 

Jerusalem announced earlier this summer that a potential F-35 acquisition was internally approved. The chief executive of Lockheed Martin Israel responded to the latest request in a statement: “We are proud to support the Israeli Defense Forces in providing the F-35 and honored that the Israeli government has announced its intent to purchase additional F-35s.” 

The proposed $3 billion dollar deal would elevate the IAF’s already formidable aerial capabilities.

Israel’s Unique F-35I History

Israel’s relationship with the F-35 Lightning II dates back to 2010, when the fifth-generation aircraft’s nine-nation co-development group gave the Jewish state the green light to procure a specialized version of the jet, which became the F-35I.

Lockheed Martin rarely allows client state-requested modifications to be incorporated into the F-35, but Jerusalem wished to layer its own electronic warfare capabilities on top of the platform’s existing avionics. 

In addition to these homegrown sensors and countermeasures, the IAF incorporated its own helmet-mounted displays and other data gathering and processing capabilities to their own model — the Adir, or “Mighty One.”

According to the Eurasian Times, the IAF’s drive for operational and developmental independence with its fleet of F-35 fighters stems from the service wanting an added layer of protection in case a cyber attack targets the F-35 platform. 

Is the F-35I Adir the Best F-35 Variant?

Surrounded by hostile neighbors and threatened by Iran’s nuclear aspirations, Israel has specific security needs that require ultra-advanced electronics. The Adir’s EWS enables the IAF to jam the electronics and guidance systems of adversarial ground-fired anti-aircraft weapons.

The Iran-aligned proxy groups operating around Israel’s borders make this capability especially significant. 

However, considering Iran’s distance from Israel, the F-35’s subpar range is a concern. The IAF could struggle to use the aircraft for aerial and ground attacks on targets more than 1,000 miles away.

Israel has made great use of the platform. In 2018, the Jewish state became the first country to use the stealth fighter in a combat role in the Middle East.

As detailed by Lockheed’s chairman, “With C4I technology integrated into the Adir, the F-35 is particularly critical to countering Hezbollah’s vast rocket threat through rapid identification and prioritization of targets for the IAF. They can fly in what we call ‘beast mode,’ carrying up to 18,000 pounds of internal and external ordnance, in a mix that can include 5,000-pound-class weapons.”

F-35I Adir Fighter. 

Two Israeli Air Force squadrons fly the F-35I Adir — the 116th Lions of the South Squadron, and the 140th Golden Eagle Squadron at Nevatim Base. Israel’s air force will certainly be pleased to add 25 new F-35Is. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. 

This week marked a huge milestone for the Air Force’s F-15EX Eagle II platform.

According to the 53rd Wing, the new fighter successfully completed the first phase of its initial operational test and evaluation program with the launch of an AGM-158 Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile.

During this phase, the Eagle II fighter participated in 19 Large Force Exercise events where it flew alongside the service’s fifth-generation airframes.

The JASSM was launched during exercise Combat Hammer. While the exact details of the shot remain highly classified, the jet’s employment of the longest non-nuclear Air-to-Ground munition in the Air Force’s inventory is quite the feat for the platform. 

Maj. Calvin Conner, 85th TES F-15 division commander commented that “Proving the F-15EX capability to employ three JASSMs after witnessing validation of the Air-to-Air dominance role it can play with a 12 AMRAAM loadout is incredible,” adding that “The firepower a 4-ship of F-15EXs brings to a combatant commander is tremendous.” As the service’s first ever airframe to carry out an Integrated Test and Evaluation program, the latest Eagle variant is a unique addition to the Air Force’s arsenal of aircraft. Equipped with more weapon stations than other Eagle predecessors, an enhanced processor and fly-by-wire control system, the F-15EX will add to the service’s already formidable fleet.

A brief overview of the Eagle II

Back in 2018, the Air Force discussed the development with an F-15 successor to replace aging variants with manufacturer Boeing. The service desired a new fighter that could carry up to 22 air-to-air missiles with the Advanced Missile and Bomb Ejector Rack, an AESA radar and other sophisticated attributes. Boeing proposed two prototypes, a single seat and a two-seat variant, which the USAF opted for the latter. Although the new Eagle variant is not expected to survive into the next decade, the airframe was procured by the Air Force at a time when F-22 Raptor production ceased to exist, the F-35 Lightning II was delayed and its existing arsenal of older F-15 models were badly aging. 

As detailed by the Air and Space Forces, “Due to insufficient FY22 procurement, the F-15C/D fleet has continued flying beyond its designed service life, posing a serious risk of structural failure. Similar infrastructure, support, and training requirements will permit existing F-15 units to quickly transition to the F-15EX.”

The Bomb Truck: Specs & Capabilities

By 2020, the new F-15EX program was approved under the National Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year, which was signed in December 2019.

The same year, the first F110-GE-129 engine for the new fighter was delivered to the Air Force. By 2021, the latest Eagle iteration took its first flight.

Equipped with powerful engines, the F-15EXX can fly at a speed of Mach 2.5 (times the speed of sound), making it the fastest fighter jet across the globe. Comparably, the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor can fly at speeds of Mach 2.25.

The new Eagle can notably store up to 30,000 pounds of munitions, a huge threshold when compared to the F-35 Lightning II’s internal storage capacity of 6,000 pounds. 

Although the Eagle II’s service tenure will be short once it enters service with the Air Force, it will surely be impressive. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

Multiple administrations in Seoul and Washington have recognized the importance of cooperation in emerging technologies, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI). The 2021 joint statement, for instance, commits both nations “to collaboratively develop a future-oriented partnership.” This year’s follow-up joint statement further underscores the significance of “strengthening public and private cooperation” by leveraging AI talents. In essence, fostering AI bilateral cooperation aligns with the national interests of both South Korea and the United States. Even within its trilateral context, the urgency of this need is evident in the latest Camp David summit’s call to “maintain focus on building robust cooperation in the economic security and technology spheres.”

However, the call for AI cooperation still lacks clarity, primarily due to the lack of concrete discussions about the necessary steps for making this collaboration a reality. Facilitating cooperation that aligns with national interests requires a mutual approach, as defined by two key aspects according to the international relations scholar Robert Keohane. First and foremost, collaboration relies on a conditional framework similar to quid pro quo dynamics. A reciprocal action follows prior actions taken by the partner and contributes to their shared goals. Following this principle, there's a notion of equivalency, meaning that any assistance received should ideally be met with proportionate gestures or resources.

Exploring AI cooperation between South Korea and the United States raises a fundamental question: Can a reciprocal framework be implemented? Within the context of contingency, the feasibility of applying the principle of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” seems uncertain. This challenge is particularly evident in the landscape of private enterprises in both countries, frequently caught in competitive dynamics. A notable example of this competitive spirit is Naver. This major Korean IT company intends to advance a customized AI model to address non-English-speaking nations’ distinct linguistic and politically nuanced needs.

Furthermore, in the South Korean context, six prominent companies have either introduced or are developing their own generative AI models. These efforts are driven by a shared goal to provide personalized and finely-tuned services, particularly for the domestic user base. The ultimate objective of these initiatives is to enhance user experiences by delivering services tailored to the nuances of the local landscape.

The recent conflict stemming from the Inflation Reduction Act, which revolves around consumer subsidies for electric vehicle manufacturers, vividly illustrates the power imbalance. This case highlights the breach of the reciprocity principle. Although South Korea succeeded in having its manufacturers included in the list of eligible recipients for these subsidies, a substantial portion of its domestic subsidy fund ultimately benefits American manufacturers. This situation underscores a violation of the contingent facet of reciprocal cooperation.

For instance, this discrepancy is evident when purchasing a Tesla Model 3 in South Korea. Consumers receive approximately 4 percent of the total vehicle cost as a tax credit. In stark contrast, the principle of reciprocity weakens when attempting to acquire an equivalent electric vehicle, such as the Hyundai Ioniq 6, within American borders. In this context, the absence of available tax credits for purchasing purposes becomes apparent, with a limited 15 percent tax credit reserved solely for leasing agreements. This comparison highlights the inequitable nature of reciprocity in consumer incentives for electric vehicles.

In the broader context of national AI capacity, a discernible disparity exists between the United States and South Korea, as highlighted by data from the Emerging Technology Observatory’s Country Activity Tracker dataset. Notably, the United States stands out as the foremost producer of internationally collaborated articles, contributing to nearly half of all AI-related scientific publications. Interestingly, U.S. researchers collaborate extensively with their Chinese counterparts, co-authoring 32 percent of these articles, while collaboration with South Korean researchers remains relatively modest at 4 percent.

Conversely, South Korean researchers actively collaborate with U.S.-affiliated researchers, accounting for 44 percent of their joint publications. In terms of direct investment in AI companies, South Korea invests $1.7 billion in the U.S. sector, while American investors direct $2 billion. The former accounts for 30.5 percent of Korea’s total disclosed AI investment inflow, whereas the latter represents 0.5 percent of the American total. This analysis accentuates the substantial gap in AI research and investment levels between the United States and South Korea. It also underscores South Korea’s significant reliance on American investment and academic capacity, while the United States may consider South Korea as one of several potential collaborators.

The series of analyses underscores the impracticality of achieving genuine reciprocal AI cooperation between the two countries. This leads to another pertinent question: What should be the guiding principle for such collaboration? Unlike traditional reciprocity, diffuse reciprocity emphasizes moral values like mutual trust and good faith instead of rigid equivalence in exchanges. This innovative approach promotes cooperative endeavors that advance the collective good, transcending the limitations of direct quid pro quo arrangements.

Since they share democratic values, Seoul and Washington must explore collaborative avenues that amplify individual efforts and promote the broader welfare. Diffuse reciprocity emerges as a promising framework to shape the future trajectory of AI and emerging technology collaboration between Seoul and Washington.

Both nations possess the capacity to complement areas where the other may exhibit vulnerabilities or require further advancement. According to OECD.AI data, the United States has an extensive research and development infrastructure, marked by its wide-ranging international research collaboration and significant investments from the public and private sectors. This fusion of academic and industrial strength positions the United States as a formidable leader in technological innovation. On the other hand, South Korea exhibits a resilient AI workforce and the potential to cultivate a conducive research environment, highlighted by its transformation into a hub for AI talent inflow. As such, the convergence of South Korea’s skilled workforce and America’s robust research infrastructure promises synergistic outcomes.

In fostering research networks and nurturing cooperative relationships with other nations, Seoul and Washington find common ground with key partners, including Canada, India, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and France. These shared allies not only prioritize democratic values in their foreign policies but also exhibit a strong commitment to scientific advancement. Leveraging this shared foundation, the diffusion of cooperative efforts between Seoul and Washington can potentially radiate benefits across these interconnected networks.

By infusing their cooperative endeavors with a sense of shared purpose and mutual trust, both nations can pursue ambitious goals that transcend the constraints of traditional reciprocal arrangements. At the same time, this collaborative synergy arises from the inherent power imbalance between the two nations, with each contributing unique strengths to address their respective shortcomings. In doing so, they will strengthen their bilateral partnership and contribute to advancing democratic values and technological progress on a global scale.

Sanghyun Han is a Ph.D. student in International Affairs, Science, and Technology at Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. He has previously worked with research institutions in both Washington D.C. and Seoul, such as the Atlantic Council, the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, and the East Asia Foundation.

This article was prepared as part of the CSIS Korea Chair’s 3.0 Program, where the author is part of the inaugural cohort. The author would like to thank Victor Cha, Evan Ramstad, and other Young Leaders for their insights.

Image: Shutterstock.

On April 18, 2007, a Chinese man named Wang Xiaoning filed a lawsuit at the U.S. Federal Court in the Northern District of California over his arrest by the Ministry of Public Safety for his pro-democracy activities. His detainment in China involved torture by the authorities. Despite his cautiousness in utilizing pseudonyms and publishing pro-democratic materials anonymously, the arrest was made possible through cooperation from American multinational technology company Yahoo, which handed over private email records, copies of email messages, and other content of the electronic communications. This has led to national attention in the United States. However, the case was later withdrawn after the plaintiff received an undisclosed settlement amount from Yahoo.

With the sixteen-year-old legal precedent of Xiaoning v. Yahoo!, Inc. (2007), there's been a shadowy history of U.S. businesses’ contributions to China’s mass surveillance and censorship programs. As uncovered through Doe I v. Cisco Systems, Inc. (2014), it has been an open secret that Cisco was involved in the development of China’s notorious censorship program, the Golden Shield Project, in the 1990s to early 2000s. Based on the timeline of these events, which is a decade old, these cases may no longer seem to be relevant in the present day. But as the human rights violations of Uyghurs and intelligence activities of China have been highlighted throughout the exacerbation of U.S.-China relations, the informational technology companies’ involvement in aiding and abetting foreign intelligence activities in alleged human rights violations will continue to face scrutiny.

In the case of China's human rights violations against Uyghurs and political dissidents, it has been acknowledged that the artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms that have been used to oppress these individuals have originated from American venture capitalists’ investments in the AI industry. Also, law enforcement surveillance devices ranging from police scanners to DNA forensic devices are still being exported to China from the United States, despite the existence of regulatory efforts such as the International Trafficking Arms Regulations, National Defense Authorization Act, and Export Administration Regulations. Amid the concerns pertaining to the private sector’s technological contribution to digital authoritarianism in foreign countries, many U.S.-based companies that have been publicly identified for alleged violations have asserted that they are in compliance with the relevant U.S. bylaws and these issues are inevitable collateral damage from the complicatedness of global supply chain.

Furthermore, as demonstrated through the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative ruling in Nestle USA, Inc. v. Doe I (2021) on the limitation and criteria of the extraterritorial applicability aspect of Alien Tort Statute (ATS)—which requires substantial conduct in the United States but doesn’t apply to foreign companies—these corporate activities have not borne any significant legal repercussions thus far since these issues have been deemed as a force majeure from the complicatedness of the global supply chain. As of July 2023, however, the Ninth Circuit has held in Doe I. v. Cisco Systems, Inc. (2014) that the claims of aiding and abetting human rights abuse by Cisco on the grounds of the Torture Victims Protection Act and the ATS, as shown by the U.S. District Court’s initial dismissal of the motion under ATS in 2014. Indeed, the motion to establish a claim for secondary liabilities of these corporate activities has been often challenged by the plaintiffs’ failure to satisfy mens rea (carried out acts that had substantial effects on the perpetration of a specific crime) and actus reus (substantially assisting the act of crimes) criteria of the court.

As shown with Russia's utilization of the global supply chain to acquire sanctioned semiconductor chips and other utilities for military operations, the limitations pertaining to sanctions are clearly evident as effective sanctions enforcement requires active multilateral cooperation at both the public and private level. Even though the high degree of interconnectedness due to globalization has created opportunities for sanction evasions, these transnational security challenges demand continued attention from the relevant authorities. These security challenges pertaining to human rights violations may seem irrelevant to many Americans, but they are becoming corrosive to U.S. national security and may leave Americans at risk of becoming victims to foreign adversaries’ intelligence gatherings.

With the absence of a singular law that protects overall data privacy, foreign intelligence agencies’ aggressive data collection activities, ranging from social media platforms to the gaming industry and including the collection of sensitive personal data through both purchase and breach of databases from data brokers, are posing a growing threat. In fact, reports indicate that massive data collection efforts may already be an effective tool for foreign intelligence operatives.

By acquiring information on targeted individuals, foreign adversaries are better positioned to infiltrate and intimidate their targets. Recent indictments from the Department of Justice have shown that the Chinese and Iranian governments have aggressively sought the expanded use of these opportunities by utilizing American private investigators for their transnational repression campaigns in the United States. Furthermore, in contrast to the United States, where the concept of governance on overall data privacy is not comprehensively adopted through a unilateral law at the national level, the legal governance of overall data privacy has become one of the most important agendas for Beijing's security apparatus.

In the case of China, subsequent to the implementation of the Cybersecurity Law in 2016, the Data Security Law (DSL) and Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) came into effect in 2021. These privacy protections have shown that China has benchmarked Europe's General Data Protection Regulation and strengthened its protection efforts on overall data privacy. Both the DSL and PIPL have outlawed sales of personal data from China to foreign actors without prior approval from the Chinese government. The PIPL also contains an extraterritorial impact by posing legal repercussions on the entities that are complicit such as the revocation of a business license in mainland China if there were to be any issue of concern pertaining to data that has been collected in China, no matter where the location of collection was made.

Since the effectiveness and importance of open source intelligence and data collection for modern-day spycraft has been highlighted throughout the Russia-Ukraine War, China has responded to these security concerns through the enforcement of the amendments to the pre-existing 2014 Counter-Espionage Act in July of 2023—which includes a broad definition of national security and defines the collection of information pertaining to national security interests as an act of espionage. These legal devices have reinforced China’s efforts to limit the open-source intelligence capabilities of its potential adversaries. Whilst having to reinforce its legislative efforts to counter foreign intelligence’s capabilities, China’s intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, is known to have recently increased its investments in open-source military intelligence and data collection. 

As multilateral security cooperation in cyberspace has recently been emphasized throughout the realm of international security, the United States and traditional security allies like South Korea have been increasing their bilateral cooperation in cyberspace to counter threats that are being posed by adversaries like North Korea. However, apart from international security cooperation at the government level, the structure of these security challenges that are being posed by adversaries is more oriented toward challenging the core values of liberal democracy, and its objectives are accomplished through exploiting the legal loopholes. Thus, the active exchange of knowledge and open discussion on the concept of privacy and the extent of these cybersecurity challenges amongst the liberal democratic states are needed more than ever.

Jong Min Lee is currently a master’s candidate with a concentration in International Security and Public International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. His main areas of interest include non-conventional warfare, neo-authoritarianism, and transnational threats. He is also a graduate of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, where he pursued a concentration in Security Policy and Global Public Health.

Image: Shutterstock.

For many years, the U.S. retained air superiority over its adversaries.

However, as China and Russia expanded their respective fifth-generation airframe programs, America’s aerial arsenal became less menacing. Beijing’s Chengdu J-20 and Moscow’s Su-57 have specifically threatened America’s former monopoly on next-generation platforms.

In order to rectify these tipping scales, the U.S. Air Force is developing its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. A new sixth-generation fighter will be the center of the program, which is expected to enter service sometime in the late 2030’s. 

The history of the NGAD program:

The NGAD program was conceptualized nearly one decade ago, when DARPA studies was initiated to explore new technologies for air superiority systems for both the Air Force and Navy.

Over the next few years, the Aerospace Innovation Initiative was launched and the NGAD as we know today was created. Intended to replace the aging F-22 Raptor fighters, the new air dominance program is actually a suite of capabilities and not just a singular airframe. Propulsion, advanced weapons, digital design and stealth are some of the key technologies the NGAD program will feature. 

Last year, manufacturer Lockheed Martin released mock-up images for the next-generation program. These images, and the little information that has been released by the Air Force, sums up what we know about the program. The highly classified program will be developed by either Lockheed Martin or Boeing. Northrop Grumman was also a contender, however, reports suggest that the manufacturer took itself out of the bidding process this summer. The mock-up images released by Lockheed depict a sleek and tailless airframe with refueling drawn from the LMXT tanker concept, which enables greater stealth and lower observability. 

What (little) we know:

Although we don’t know how fast this sixth-generation airframe will be able to cruise, Lockheed’s rendering appeared on the manufacturer’s Instagram handle alongside images of well-known speedy airframes, including the Raptor, the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-117 Nighthawk. The F-22 can fly at speeds nearing Mach 2.0 (times the speed of sound) at altitudes reaching 60,000 feet. Analysts predict that the NGAD fighter will be able to fly with comparable capabilities. 

As a “family of systems,” the NGAD fighter will fly alongside drone “wingmen.” Earlier this year, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced plans to procure at least 1,000 of these sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

As explained by Sandboxx News, “At the heart of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft concept is the need for capable artificial intelligence agents that can fly NGAD’s drone wingmen, take cues from local human operators, and even serve as advanced co-pilots inside the crewed fighter itself to help reduce the massive cognitive load pilots must manage while flying their aircraft in combat. The Air Force’s Project VENOM is among the efforts underway to make exactly that happen.” 

Aviation buffs and industry experts alike are anticipating the release of more information surrounding the Air Force’s NGAD program. The new fighter has some tough shoes to fill, however, considering the legacy of the F-22 Raptor platform, NGAD could be amazing. 

Author Expertise 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. 

Late last week, Iranian officials drew headlines with their claims of being able to detect and track American F-35s flying over the Persian Gulf. This prompted a flood of claims on social media about the $1.7 trillion stealth fighter program no longer offering a strategic edge over the aggressive nation.

“Over the past days, several of these planes were flying over the Persian Gulf and were fully monitored by our radars from the moment they took off,” an unnamed Iranian official was quoted as saying by the Beirut-based Al Mayadeen news, an outlet that is frequently criticized for its bias toward authoritarian regimes in Iran, Syria, and the militant group Hezbollah.

Is this claim true? The truth is… it’s pretty likely – but that wouldn’t have the implications many may think it does. Stealth fighters have long been detectable via certain radar frequencies and that’s neither new nor troubling for military planners. This story, like many that have come before it, is leveraging popular misconceptions about stealth, rather than the science associated with this technology, in an attempt to paint modern 5th generation fighters as less capable than they truly are. And make no mistake, the F-35’s detectability is not unique to its airframe – every 5th-generation fighter regardless of origin can be detected under the right circumstances.

It’s targeting those aircraft that can be tough.

The F-35 Claim from Iran

According to several Iranian-bases news outlets, Brigadier General Reza Khajeh, the deputy commander of operations of the Iranian Army Air Defense Force, was the first official to come forward with the claim that Iran has been detecting and potentially even tracking F-35s in the region. This claim follows the deployment of about a dozen F-35s to the U.S. Central Command region following a series of aggressive encounters involving Russian aircraft over Syria and Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz.

F-35 stealth fighter. 

According to General Khajeh, all flights in the region have been monitored by Iranian air defense systems, bolstered by what he referred to as “eavesdropping systems,” going on to claim that they have yet to detect a sortie via those listening methods that they weren’t also able to track on radar.

And based on the responses we’ve immediately seen popping up on social media, it’s clear that many are convinced, based on these claims, that Iran has cracked the code to peering through the most advanced fighter on the planet’s stealth capabilities.

Understand Stealth

Stealth aircraft are designed to delay or sometimes even defeat detection via a variety of means, including radar and infrared, but it’s commonly understood that stealth is not invisibility. That is to say that under the right circumstances, these aircraft are often detectable – especially when we’re talking about stealth fighters, in particular.

However, there is a significant difference between being able to detect a stealth fighter and being able to effectively target one, and these claims out of Iran (and subsequent media stories) rely on the average reader’s lack of awareness when it comes to this important distinction.

Modern stealth fighters are designed to delay or prevent detection specifically from high-frequency radar arrays that are capable of providing a “weapons-grade lock” – or radar arrays that can guide a missile to a target. Lower frequency radar arrays are not capable of guiding weapons with this 

Radar Issues

Different radar arrays broadcast in different wavelengths and frequencies for different reasons. The types of design elements that can help delay or prevent detection from one type of radar frequency won’t necessarily help prevent detection from another.

As a result, stealth fighter designs are specifically intended to limit detection from the types of radar arrays that can effectively guide a weapon to its position. While stealth aircraft are still not invisible to radar arrays that work within these bands, the goal is to make their radar returns small enough to delay detection, allowing the stealth fighter to either engage a target or escape without ever being targeted itself.

Radars operate by broadcasting electromagnetic energy (radar waves), usually in the L, S, C, X, or K bands. Each band uses a different wavelength and frequency, with only higher frequency (smaller wavelength) systems providing the image fidelity needed to accurately target an aircraft.

In other words, only certain types of radars can be used to guide a missile toward a target and get it close enough to destroy it. Lower frequency arrays are often capable of spotting stealth fighters in the air, but because of their larger wavelengths, can’t provide accurate enough data to actually lock onto an aircraft with a missile.

Stealth fighter designs only limit detection against higher frequency radar arrays, including parts of the S-band and the C, X, and Ku bands to prevent being targeted. Because these fighters are still visible on lower-frequency radar bands operating on S and C bands, these arrays can be leveraged effectively as early warning systems, notifying defensive forces that stealth fighters are in the area, and allowing for other defensive systems to be oriented in the right direction. But importantly, low-frequency arrays can do little more than point systems toward the area a stealth fighter is in. An effective stealth fighter design remains difficult to target via a high-frequency array even with this head start.

Stealth Fighters Are More Than Just Stealth

It’s not at all uncommon for stealth fighters like the F-35 to fly with radar reflectors on to both render them more detectable and mask their actual radar profiles while operating in regions with enemy air defense systems that are eager to gobble up data about their radar returns. These reflectors, often called Luneburg lenses, aren’t always easy to spot with the naked eye, but they render even the stealthiest aircraft easy to detect on radar.

In other words, it’s entirely possible that American F-35s operating in the Middle East may be flying with these lenses on specifically to make it more difficult for enemy air defense systems to work toward figuring out how to detect these aircraft more readily.

And considering the United States sent these fighters to the region as an intentional message to aggressive Iranian and Russian forces, advertising their presence is an intentional decision. That much was made clear by the Pentagon’s public announcement of their deployment prior to the F-35s even arriving in the region.

“In coordination with our regional allies, partners, and the U.S. Navy, the F-35s will partner with A-10s and F-16s already in theater helping monitor the Strait of Hormuz,” Air Forces Central (AFCENT) spokesman Col. Mike Andrews said in a statement last month.

In other words, there’s a multitude of reasons why Iran might be able to detect F-35s operating over the Persian Gulf, from Luneburg lenses to low-frequency radar arrays. In fact, it would be somewhat damning if they couldn’t. But just as Russia leveraged confusion about the definition of modern hypersonic missiles to claim their Kh47M2 Kinzhal was more than a simple air-launched ballistic missile, Iran is now leveraging confusion around the word stealth in a similar manner.

So, did Iran detect F-35s over the Persian Gulf a few weeks back? It’s pretty likely. But is that anything American military planners are sweating?

Almost certainly not.

Alex Hollings is the editor of the Sandboxx blog (where this first appeared) and is a former U.S. Marine who writes about defense policy and technology. He lives with his wife and daughter in Georgia. 

Last week, China released a new map called the 10-Dash map as a successor to Dash-9. This map represents an escalation by Beijing to further extend its unilateral redrawing of international boundaries. It is an extraordinarily provocative move. It also violates the International Law of the Sea. 

With the 9-dash line, China brazenly claims waters which are thousands of miles away from its territory, but along the coast of smaller nations. The latest map further solidifies those claims and expands upon them with the addition of one more “dash” around Taiwan. The United States must not stand idly by as China tries to redraw the world map.

Beijing's intent is to, first, acquire more territory and resources as some of these areas are rich in hydrocarbons; second, increase pressure on Taiwan by edging closer to its boundaries; and third, flex its muscles with its neighbors while testing U.S. reaction and resolve. 

The publication of the 10-Dash map indicates that China is getting bolder in pursuing its strategic objective to change the regional balance of power and pursue regional hegemony.

The countries of Southeast Asia, who are directly threatened by this Chinese action, are furious and have responded strongly, with some stating that they will take measures necessary to defend their territory. But it is not clear what those measures will be, and their collective failure to respond effectively to 9-Dash has clearly emboldened China to push ahead. 

The latest Chinese action has serious implications for the United States, and it would be a mistake to just dismiss this as bluster. We have treaty commitments to some of the countries threatened, including the Philippines. Our supply chain for several strategic items depends on unfettered access to the region. We simply cannot allow the arbitrary expansion of Chinese power to stand.

Countries in the region are watching for a U.S. response and are more open than previously to the prospect of greater security and military cooperation with the United States. Chinese hegemony in the region will change the global balance of power and directly threaten our vital national interests.

What should we do? Having just returned from a trip to Southeast Asia, I recommend the following measures be taken:

1. Deter Chinese escalation and aggression. For this, we will need to address gaps in our capabilities and those of our allies. Burden-sharing must become a hallmark of our rebalancing of power in the region. We must learn from our mistakes in Europe during the containment of the former Soviet Union. We should not and need not carry a disproportionately heavy amount of that burden.

2. Addressing the chasm in shipbuilding should be a priority. China’s shipyards have a capacity that far exceeds U.S. shipyards, by orders of magnitude—some estimate the gap is 25 million gross tons per year in China vs. 100,000 gross tons per year in the United States. Furthermore, China builds ships for a much lower cost. We must expand our industrial base for manufacturing ships. We should also take advantage of allied capabilities. For example, South Korea has the capacity to produce ship hulls. Some of our laws and policies stand in the way of cooperative production, but there are shelf-ready solutions. The rules should be changed to allow neutral components to be manufactured elsewhere, with the more sensitive capabilities subsequently installed in either the United States or another allied country.

3. Burden sharing and pooling resources should extend to maintenance and repair work on our and allied ships to get them back into commission more quickly. For example, we are in an advantageous position with our nuclear submarines, but many are in maintenance for extensive periods largely because of the legal requirement for only American entities to do the work. This requirement should be appropriately reviewed and adjusted. 

4. Our aircraft and those of our allies are vulnerable to Chinese missiles on airfields without hardened shelters. Our allies should assume a greater portion of this burden by assuming broader responsibility for hardening these facilities across the region. 

5. The United States must assume the role of dispute mediator among the bickering nations affected by China’s Dash-10 provocation. Each nation is clear that the move is a violation of their borders, their sovereignty, and their security. They all have a strong shared interest in meeting this threat. But bilateral disputes among them are impeding their ability to act. This is an important opportunity for the United States to quietly step in as a mediator and work behind the scenes to help resolve these disputes. Such a strategic move would enable the affected countries to pursue joint cooperative policies against Chinese provocations.

These steps are necessary if we are to avoid further aggressive moves by China. The geopolitical risk is outsized. Without taking such bold measures, China may well miscalculate its capacity to continue this encroachment and overreach. There is a distinct potential for this strategic trend to lead them into a major regional conflict. We must take concrete steps like these now in order to preclude such a development.

Zalmay Khalilzad is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Image: Shutterstock.

In early May 2011, a CIA-led operation conducted by members of the Navy’s elite SEAL Team 6, also known as DEVGRU, took out the most infamous terrorist leader of the modern era, Osama Bin Laden. The mission, known internally as Operation Neptune Spear, was successful, though not everything went according to plan.

The plan called for the use of two highly classified and heavily modified UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters built specifically for clandestine operations. One of these stealth Black Hawks was meant to hover above Bin Laden’s walled compound for operators to fast rope in, while the other landed nearby to deploy troops, interpreters, and dog handlers to secure the perimeter.

But just as the mission started, things began to go wrong when one of the stealth helicopters crashed inside the compound.

Thanks to the pilot’s quick reaction, none of the operators or crewmembers onboard the helicopter were seriously injured, and the mission was ultimately successful. In order to prevent the stealth technology within the rotorcraft from falling into the wrong hands, the helicopter itself was destroyed prior to the special operations team’s departure.

But the exotic-looking tail section of this highly classified platform remained intact and left behind. It was clearly shown in pictures of the compound shared by media outlets around the world the following day.

Initially, the media didn’t seem to realize what they’d just shown the world… or perhaps the story of Bin Laden’s death simply warranted too much attention to address the uniquely angular and alien-looking tail rotor shown in the photographs. But it wasn’t long before journalists and aviation buffs around the world recognized how unusual the tail section really was, and came to a stark realization: Stealth helicopters are a reality. They’re in service. And none of us in the world at large, or even in the conventional side of the U.S. military, knew about it. At least, not until now.

Stealth is far more than a singular approach to radar evasion.

As detection and targeting capabilities continued to mature, so too did the technologies inherent to what we call “stealth.” Today, stealth designs take great pains to reduce not just radar detection, but also electromagnetic, infrared, acoustic, and even visual detection. It can be extremely difficult to incorporate these stealth design elements into fixed-wing aircraft, but one might argue that it’s even tougher when it comes to adding stealth to helicopters.

As retired U.S. Air Force helicopter pilot and former Air Force Weapons School instructor Mike McKinney put it, helicopters pose a number of unique challenges to the stealth enterprise because “they routinely operate within the heart of the threat envelope and their physical configuration does not allow for the use of many masking techniques.” 

In other words, it isn’t enough to build modern stealth helicopters that can delay radar detection: rather, they also need to minimize the heat produced by the engines, the detectability of their radio transmissions, and importantly, in the case of low-flying rotorcraft, the noise produced by their propellers. Helicopters have large propellers, which are basically narrow wings being spun overhead. These tend to produce a significant radar and acoustic signature, while the helicopters’ powerful engines pump out a ton of heat, all in a platform that’s slower and less agile than modern fixed-wing aircraft.

But it’s also important to understand that stealth isn’t a thing that a platform has or doesn’t have. It might be better to think of stealth as a segment within a spectrum of observability. On the broadly observable side, you have easy-to-spot platforms like the B-52 Stratofortress or the F-15 Eagle, and on the opposite “low observable” side, you have platforms like the F-117 Nighthawk and F-22 Raptor.

The degree of stealth required for a platform to be considered stealth in any given era is based not on clearly defined universal requirements, but rather on how a platform compares to the means of detection used in its day and to similar platforms of its class. Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57, for instance, may boast a worst-in-class stealth profile when it comes to its 5th-generation peers, but it is significantly stealthier than its 4th-generation predecessors. Its radar return may be thousands of times larger than an F-22, but it is dozens of times smaller than an F-15’s, pushing it far enough toward the low-observable side of the spectrum for many to consider it a stealth fighter.

The 90-degree angles inherent to helicopter design, as well as the ways in which these platforms operate, almost preclude them from ever achieving the sort of low observability that’s possible in bomber or fighter designs, but it is possible to design a helicopter that’s far less observable than its in-class peers and precursors, earning that coveted “stealth” designation, even if it will not be nearly as sneaky as its fixed-wing sisters-in-service.

About the Author

Alex Hollings is the editor of the Sandboxx blog (where this first appeared) and is a former U.S. Marine who writes about defense policy and technology. He lives with his wife and daughter in Georgia.