Diplomacy & Crisis News

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said in an interview released on July 21 that the airline could resume a small number of flights to Ukraine as early as the end of 2023 should Ukraine open part of its airspace for commercial aviation. The executive revealed that the Ireland-based airline was weighing two options for resuming business in Ukraine—the first being “the war finishes, and everything reopens in one day or two” and the second “more likely” situation in which the airline resumes a “small number of flights” during wartime at the year’s end.

Despite this chatter, Western regulators should prohibit such wartime flights to avoid risks to the lives and safety of those onboard and ensure commercial aviation does not become a convenient stairway for those seeking to escalate the Russia-Ukraine War.

O’Leary is not alone in expecting, if not hoping for, the partial wartime reopening of Ukrainian airspace to commercial flights, despite the air traffic management body Eurocontrol forecasting that the closure of Ukraine’s airspace to civilian aircraft will persist until 2029.

In April 2023, France’s Minister for Transport Clément Beaune told European Pravda that Ukrainian authorities were “working hard” to open airspace for civilian planes either “fully” or “partially.” “As I understand it, Ukraine already has certain considerations for this event, and Kyiv is working hard on it. However, of course, the main issue is still security,” Beaune said.

From a purely symbolic standpoint—holding off the debate on feasibility and risk—the resumption of flights to Ukraine might allow Ukraine and its supporters to celebrate a victory, making claims that Russia’s ability to destroy Ukrainian latent power and infrastructure is waning due to the supposed ‘bravery’ of the Ukrainian armed forces. As such, a resumption of flights could temporarily boost Ukrainian morale. However, the risk and feasibility of such a move indicate that it is dangerous and should only be encouraged once the war ends.

The leading threat vector airlines will encounter during wartime flights to Ukraine is Russia’s anti-air capabilities. Consequently, O’Leary’s comparison of the risks of flying to Israel falls apart when one realizes that Russia’s ground-to-air and air-to-air attack capabilities are far superior to those of Palestinian militants.

The weaponry currently available to Palestinians can only threaten aircraft when parked at an airport or flying at low altitudes. These include rocket-propelled grenades, artillery rockets, and Strela-2 shoulder-launched anti-air missiles. Conversely, Russia enjoys a full spectrum of sophisticated anti-air capabilities beyond unguided rocket artillery, rocket-propelled grenades, and shoulder-launched missiles.

In range and speed, Russian air defense systems, many intended for ballistic and cruise missiles, can conveniently down civilian aircraft, including those flying at cruising altitude. As such, they would make civilian airplanes easy targets.

The 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the Donbas by a Buk surface-to-air missile is a notable warning to any airline that seeks to send airplanes into a warzone where Russia and Ukraine are engaged in combat. With ranges of 250-400 km, Russian S-400s from Belarus can down any approaching aircraft in Western Ukraine, rendering major and minor airports in cities such as Lvov, Ternopol, Vinnytsia, and Ivano-Frankivsk dangerous for civilian aviation. Buk and S-300s can assist Russian air defenses, although their ranges are lesser than the S-400s. Other parts of Ukraine, including Kiev, are also unsafe for civilian aircraft, considering their proximity to Belarus, Crimea, or Russia and its newly annexed regions in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk.

Russian air-to-air capabilities are no less dangerous. The Russian air force can fire long-range air-to-air missiles from a distance, notably the Vympel R-37 missile. While Ukrainian fighter jets could dodge this missile, according to reporting from Forbes, civilian jetliners lack the hardware for jetfighter-like evasive maneuvers.

One might be tempted to point to the Patriot missile systems in Kiev and their relative success at intercepting Shahed drones and cruise missiles. However, the relative success of Ukrainian air defense is not a reliable indicator of civilian aviation safety.

Air defense system interceptors risk producing shrapnel when they strike missiles near jetliners—the shrapnel either from the interceptor or the intercepted projectile. Once shrapnel shreds the fuselage or enters the engine, it can severely damage a civilian plane, possibly causing destruction sufficient to down it.

Aside from the risk of shrapnel, Russian strikes on Odessa demonstrate that successful interceptions in Kiev are no reason for celebration—Russia can still develop and deploy missiles that evade air defenses and deliver immense destruction.

Furthermore, the threat of airstrikes on airbases and runways, especially those shared by Ukraine’s air force, renders the authorization of civilian flights to Ukraine a negligent and reckless move for regulators and airlines.

Passengers choosing to fly on such wartime flights to Ukraine will be making a suicidal gamble. The other risk of allowing such wartime flights is that they could catalyze military escalation.

Though Ukrainian officials and their supporters can present civilian airplanes as civilian transport, such flights can become, in essence, “dual use” when used to ferry Ukrainian officials, male conscripts, soldiers, and Western intelligence personnel in and out of Ukraine. Civilian passengers would become human shields for strategically important cargo onboard such flights.

Russia could briefly tolerate such flights to avoid escalation. However, analysts should not mockingly dismiss Russian restraint as a weakness. If Russia feels pressed too hard with the possible exploitation of civilian transport for military purposes, it might not be long before the military strikes a commercial plane.

The sinking of the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, which catalyzed U.S. entry into World War I, is a helpful analogy to understand the risks here. The German attack on the ocean liner killed 1,198 people, including 128 American citizens—a fact British propaganda did not fail to emphasize. However, Lusitania was no harmless vessel. Like several other civilian vessels at the time, it was carrying war munitions headed for Britain, arguably a legitimate military target. This inconvenient fact, nonetheless, failed to deter war advocates pushing the United States to intervene in Europe.

As Western countries increasingly edge toward the escalation cliff, such flights could ferry clandestine war cargo, Ukrainian officials, western intelligence officers, and soldiers to Ukraine, making them an attractive target for Russian forces. The presence of civilians onboard, including possibly citizens of other NATO countries, will make the aircraft’s downing a tripwire that pro-escalation activists and politicians in Ukraine and the West might exploit to pressure NATO into further escalation with Russia.

Citizens of Western and European countries, airport workers, and regulators must play a crucial role in resisting the implementation of wartime civilian flights to Ukraine, even if their governments give tacit consent.

In his interview with Interfax-Ukraine, O’Leary said that whether flights to Ukraine would resume is contingent on European regulators deeming any total or partial opening of Ukrainian airspace safe for European regulators. This gives one hope that reason—not premature celebration over the supposed “successes of Ukrainian resistance” or escalatory brinkmanship—will triumph in the regulators’ decisionmaking calculus.

Andrew Jose is a freelance news reporter and analyst covering politics, foreign policy, and transnational security. He has written for several notable publications, including The Jewish News Syndicate, Stacker, The Daily Caller, and The Western Journal. Andrew is a Master of Arts in Security Policy Studies candidate at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. He received his Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar.

Image: Shutterstock.

Until this past week, Niger was the bastion for the United States and its Western allies in the volatile central Sahel region of Africa. Not only does the country host more than 1,000 U.S. military personnel on two airbases and some 1,500 French troops engaged in anti-terrorism operations, but in the wake of coups in Mali (2020) and Burkina Faso (2022), and an improvised succession in Chad (2021) after the assassination of that country’s longtime leader, Nigerian president Mohamed Bazoum led the last democratically elected government in the region. Niger was also a key development partner. Yet with the overthrow of the Nigerien government announced by the commander of the Presidential Guard and the European Union cutting off its budget support for the country in response, years of patient effort and billions of dollars of investment to support what was thought to be an anchor for regional security and stability seems to have been lost in the blink of an eye.

While the situation remains fluid, the regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), met in an emergency summit on Sunday and decided to impose sanctions on the coup leaders, freeze financial transactions with the Nigerien government, close land and air borders between members of the bloc and Niger, and give the junta a one-week deadline, after which it would take additional measures which “may include the use of force.”

Policymakers need to keep in mind four points in the days ahead:

First, avoid facile narratives and simplistic conclusions about a complex political-military situation. The putsch was barely underway when headlines like “Niger Coup Leader Joins Long Line of U.S.-Trained Mutineers” began appearing. Aside from being simply wrong—the commander of the Presidential Guard, Brigadier General Abdourahamane “Omar” Tchiani, emerged at the head of the junta, not Brigadier General Moussa Salaou Barmou, the Fort Moore- (formerly Fort Benning) and National Defense University-trained chief of the Nigerien Special Operations Forces as the Intercept headline proclaimed—those repeating these tropes also evidence a lack of basic understanding of internal dynamics within the armed forces of a country like Niger.

The clichéd accusation of American training leading to coups is particularly inapt in the case of Niger, where much of the $500 million that the U.S. government spent on military assistance to the country since 2012—one of the largest security assistance programs in Africa—has gone to training and equipping specialized units such as the Special Operations Forces as well as aerial medical evacuation teams, logistic companies, and even two battalions for United Nations peacekeeping operations. The unintended, but foreseeable, consequence of this intensive program was to create new elite units within the Armed Forces of Niger (FAN), which rose in prestige as they accumulated resources. At the same time, the 2,000-strong Presidential Guard, hitherto a quasi-Praetorian corps, declined relatively, giving rise to tensions within the FAN. Ironically, however, while the Special Operations Forces units are dispersed across the country combating jihadist insurgents, the Presidential Guard is stationed in the capital of Niamey, where they were well-positioned to act on their frustrations. (Until things clarify, I would caution against reading too much into General Barmou’s sullen appearance on Nigerien television, standing silently with other senior officers behind the spokesman of the putschists as the coup declaration was read: he may have had little choice in the matter since the only personnel he normally has in his headquarters are operations planners, intelligence analysts, and logisticians—hardly the force with which to resist, much less launch a countercoup.)

Notwithstanding the self-justifying claims of General Tchiani about the “continuing deterioration of the security situation” leading to “the gradual and inevitable demise of our country,” the evidence is that the sustained investment of Niger’s partners in FAN Special Operations Forces seems to have been paying off. As The Economist reported: “While death and destruction have soared in Mali and Burkina Faso, less than a tenth of the deaths in the three countries last year were in Niger, despite its also having to deal with separate jihadist violence perpetrated by Boko Haram, a group that spills over from north-east Nigeria. Deaths from conflict in the first six months of this year in Niger have been the lowest of any similar period since 2018.”

Second, while security is a necessary precondition for state legitimacy, it is by no means sufficient. While serving as U.S. special envoy for the Sahel, I repeatedly emphasized: “The heart of the crisis in the Sahel is one of state legitimacy—a perception by citizens that their government is valid, equitable, and able and willing to meet their needs. Absent states’ commitments to meeting their citizens’ needs, no degree of international engagement is likely to succeed.”

To their credit, both President Bazoum and his predecessor, President Mahamadou Issoufou, understood this and made building up Nigerien state legitimacy a center of their domestic political agenda. America and its allies have generously supported these development efforts. Until last week’s coup caused the European Union to cut off budget support to Niger, the EU allocated approximately €125 million per year for improved governance, education, and sustainable growth programs. France, acting through the official French Development Agency provides approximately €100 million per year. In fiscal year 2022, the United States provided $101 million in development assistance, primarily through the U.S. Agency for International Development, plus $135 million in humanitarian aid.

Moreover, last year, the Nigerien government adopted a five-year Economic and Social Development Plan (Plan de Développement Economique et Social) built around three pillars: developing human capital, inclusion, and solidarity; consolidation of governance, peace, and solidarity; and structural transformation of the economy. At an international conference in Paris in December 2022, the Nigerien government received pledges from various international partners amounting to some $23.4 billion of the estimated $30 billion price tag for the ambitious plan, to be paid out between 2022 and 2026.

The problem, however, is that transformative change takes time and that was one commodity that the Nigerien government not only did not possess much of—but clearly had even less of than it thought it had. The critics of “militarization” of the response to the crisis in the Sahel may be wrong in their instinctive disparagement of security assistance, but they have been not entirely incorrect in observing the often-stark disparity between military and non-military aid programs.

Third, be realistic not sensationalistic about the involvement of malign outside actors. The coincidence of the coup and the opening of the second Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg—a meeting that President Bazoum was pointedly not attending—immediately raised suspicions of possible involvement of the Wagner Group, which is entrenched in the Central African Republic and Mali and has its tentacles in Burkina Faso, Sudan, and elsewhere in the Sahel belt. Researchers from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Lab have documented how, as the coup unfolded, Russian Telegram channels stepped up longstanding propaganda campaigns that “portrayed Bazoum as a vassal of the West, and Niger under Bazoum’s leadership as being ‘directly dependent on France’ and ‘part of the remnants of the French neo-colonial empire.’” Some channels even claimed that the coup leaders were associated with Wagner. Yevgeny Prigozhin did not go that far, but did not shy from making what amounted to a sales pitch to the Nigerien junta for the services of his mercenary company, posting on social media:

What happened in Niger has been brewing for years. The former colonizers are trying to keep the people of African countries in check. In order to keep them in check, the former colonizers are filling these countries with terrorists and various bandit formations. Thus creating a colossal security crisis…The population suffers. And this is [the reason for] love for PMC [private military company] Wagner, this is the high efficiency of PMC Wagner. Because a thousand soldiers of PMC Wagner are able to establish order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the peaceful population of states.

While it would be a mistake to ascribe too much to Prigozhin’s screed or overestimate his ability to deliver after the tumult within his global criminal network since his own short-lived mutiny against the Kremlin in late June, it would also be one to discount his ambitions (or those of Russia) as simply bravado or to overlook the role that foreign actors have played in a long-running, sophisticated effort on social media to discredit the Nigerien government. It was not by accident that Russian flags and signage have popped up at pro-coup demonstrations from the very first day of the mutiny. (What I replied to one high-level U.S. official when asked three years ago for my take on Russian flags appearing after the coup in Mali applies equally to the white, blue, and red colors now seen in Niger: “Where does one buy large quantities of industrially-produced Malian flags in Bamako, let alone Russian ones?”)

But even if Prigozhin is not able to deliver on his boasts of expansion in Africa, that concern in Washington, Paris, and other Western capitals that he might prove sufficient to divert resources to counter the potential threat on the continent and away from where they might otherwise have been deployed. It is a risk that will require sober assessment.

Fourth, understand the options available are limited and be pragmatic in making choices amongst them. With French forces kicked out of Mali and Burkina Faso after the coups in those countries and the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the former about to be drawn down, there is no sugar-coating the strategic setback that the possible loss of the U.S. and French bases in Niger—which not only support the counterterrorism fight against the regional affiliates of Al Qaeda and Islamic State but also surveilled the ongoing civil conflict in Libya—would represent in the short and intermediate terms. Yet, assuming that the putsch is not reversed, if the U.S. administration is to conform to the law as well as remain true to American values, it will have little choice but to declare what occurred in Niger a coup, with all the consequences that such would entail in terms of security cooperation with the country’s new rulers. In this case, given that ECOWAS has categorically rejected “any form of resignation that may purportedly come from His Excellency President Mohamed Bazoum,” it would be difficult to avoid the legal determination that a coup has taken place. As a result, so-called Section 7008 restrictions would be triggered, blocking foreign assistance delivered to the regime and military training and equipment from the Defense Department. The problem is that this is precisely the type of sanction that creates openings for the West’s geopolitical rivals.

In Niger, it is not only Russia—whose entrée into Mali, it is worth recalling, was the denial by the Biden administration of an export license for a non-lethal military part, a refusal that was not required by law—waiting at the wings, at least according to Prigozhin, but also probably China, whose state-owned oil company CNPC has nearly completed a 2,000-km oil pipeline running from eastern Niger to the Port of Seme terminal on the Atlantic in Benin that will be Africa’s largest. Is it any surprise that, having “taken note” of the African Union and ECOWAS condemnations of the coup, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning limited herself to an anemic call for “relevant parties in Niger” to “solve their differences peacefully through dialogue?”

In practical terms, the coup in Niger leaves Chad as the only country left now in the central Sahel to which the United States can turn as a possible security partner, although doing so requires Washington to be cognizant of the unique challenges there. It was no accident that the ECOWAS Summit dispatched Chad’s Transitional President Mahamat Idriss Déby to Niamey to deliver its decisions to the junta and to seek to check in on President Bazoum. For their part, U.S. policymakers will need to become more creative over time, seeking opportunities to reopen channels to and maybe even flip the allegiances of some regimes currently aligned with Wagner, including the Central African Republic, Mali, and Burkina Faso.

In the end, whether the coup in Niger succeeds or is reversed somehow, the dynamic has certainly shifted. Irrespective of the immediate outcome of the current crisis in Niamey, to safely navigate the strategic challenges ahead in the Sahel, the United States and its allies will need to be clear-eyed about both the stakes and the even more limited options they now have remaining in that fragile African region.

Ambassador J. Peter Pham, a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Senior Advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, is former U.S. Special Envoy for the Sahel and Great Lakes Regions of Africa.

Image: Shutterstock.

U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken’s visit to Guyana on July 6 was significant, both for the country and for South America more broadly, for a number of reasons. Following so closely on Mike Pompeo’s September 2020 visit, the first ever by an American secretary of state, Blinken’s was confirmation of Guyana’s growing economic and geostrategic importance to the United States. With Guyana’s huge oil reserves and potential to be a major player in energy security in the Americas, this hitherto relatively unknown small state has suddenly become a country of real interest to the most powerful nation in the world.

The courting of Guyana is quite logical given the current geopolitical context of Latin America: the political pendulum swinging to the left in the region; neighboring Venezuela’s political and economic woes, along with its dramatic decline in oil production; the threats posed by transnational organized crime; and U.S. competition with China for geopolitical influence in the wider region. The United States clearly has ample reason to keep Guyana close.

Former Secretary Pompeo’s visit was linked to the fraught period following the 2020 Guyanese election. It was a sign of support for the country’s democracy and recognition of its emergence as an oil producer. Pompeo’s visit brought a firm indication of U.S. interest in enhancing the bilateral relationship, particularly with regard to security and market opportunities, amidst concerns about the erosion of democracy in Venezuela and China’s growing footprint in the region. U.S. interest in developing a robust, private sector-led trade and investment relationship is even stronger today. Secretary Blinken’s visit, however, marks a turning point.

The official announcement of the visit flagged the following issues for discussion: food and energy security, decarbonization, climate resilience, regional migration, and building local capacity. After their meeting, both President Irfaan Ali and Secretary Blinken stressed the solidity of the bilateral relationship based on shared values, common interests, and, more tangibly, the fact that the United States is Guyana’s number one trading partner. Responding to President Ali’s remarks, highlighting, among other things, the aspiration to position Guyana as “a global leader on energy security, food security, and climate security,” Secretary Blinken said their talks had focused on energy security, climate adaptation, and hard security. He also endorsed Guyana’s dual commitment to fighting climate change and to exploiting its hydrocarbon resources to finance the transition to low carbon development, stating that “Guyana will soon be the highest oil-producing country per capita in the world, but it’s also a leader in forest conservation, demonstrating that it’s possible to prioritize climate mitigation and environmental protection while responsibly using fossil fuel resources.” This statement is not insignificant in the context of the debate on fossil fuels and global warming.

While there was no mention of the Guyana-Venezuela border controversy or any public expression of U.S. support for Guyana, it would be reasonable to expect that the matter was privately discussed. One would hope that such support is a constant, even if nothing can be taken for granted. Nor was there any specific mention of new bilateral cooperation initiatives to help build capacity and strengthen national institutions. But, in underscoring the partnership between the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and Guyana, on the “gas-to-energy project that’s going to cut emissions by 50 percent,” Secretary Blinken also made a direct pitch for greater U.S. private sector involvement: “American companies can bring unparalleled expertise, high labor and environmental standards, and transparency to help power Guyana’s dynamic growth, to advance regional energy security, to deliver tangible benefits to all the people of Guyana.”

This second visit in less than three years by a secretary of state to a country with a population of fewer than one million people and not wracked by war or any comparable crisis is a strong message that the United States wishes to remain Guyana’s strategic partner of choice, and is ready to compete with other interested parties.

In the broader context, Blinken’s visit immediately followed his participation in the annual meeting of Caricom Heads in Trinidad on July 5, and built upon Vice President Kamala Harris’ meeting with Caribbean leaders in the Bahamas in June. Both encounters were aimed at advancing the implementation of the U.S.-Caribbean Partnership to Address the Climate Crisis 2030 (PACC 2030), through three joint action committees, launched at the Ninth Summit of the Americas in June 2022.

U.S. outreach to the Caribbean and Guyana is very welcome, albeit a little late given the longstanding challenges faced by the region’s governments in accessing cooperation and concessionary financing for development. And with 2024 being a U.S. election year, continuity of engagement cannot be assumed.

Much will depend on how much the three action committees can achieve in terms of addressing energy security, food security, and access to finance in a relatively short time period. In this respect, Guyana has a key role to play. As President Ali already has lead responsibility for food security.

In the meantime, the Guyana government should do all it can to capitalize on Blinken’s visit, to offer a welcoming environment for U.S. private sector investment, particularly in the fields of energy—both non-renewables and renewables—and infrastructure.

The stage is set for the rolling out of a framework to facilitate U.S.-Guyana private sector partnerships to bid for tenders and promote business activity. Such a framework with clear guidelines, transparent tender processes, and a minimum of bureaucratic red tape could also attract business and investment from the Guyanese-American diaspora, which can draw on the resources of U.S. federal agencies like EXIM.

All this would pave the way for meeting Guyana’s broader infrastructure and development needs, particularly in areas aimed at economic diversification, including agriculture, fisheries, air travel, tourism, education, health, and information technologies. As Secretary Blinken implicitly recognized, the United States can directly support the country’s economic transformation, thereby contributing, in his own words, to the delivery of “tangible benefits to all the people of Guyana.”

Dr. Riyad Insanally was a career diplomat for thirty-one years and last served as Guyana’s ambassador to the United States of America and Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States, from September 2016 to June 2021. He is currently a Fellow at the Caribbean Policy Consortium, a nonresident senior fellow at the Caribbean Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, and Senior Advisor for the Caribbean at the Transnational Strategy Group in Washington DC.

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The right way to use U.S. leverage with Netanyahu.

China is digging in at home and asserting itself abroad.

The Biden administration has been making efforts to expand the Abraham Accords by brokering an agreement on the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis have set out their goals, which alongside their desire for progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue include several major “asks” from the United States: a security guarantee, easier access to U.S. arms purchases, and U.S.-Saudi cooperation on the development of a nuclear power industry.

What are the prospects for success? Should the United States be willing to offer Saudi Arabia some form of security guarantee or “major non-NATO ally” status? Can the United States and Saudi Arabia find a formula to overcome disagreements on nuclear safeguards? How does this impact the recent moves toward a Saudi-Iranian détente? These are only a few of the relevant questions. The Center for the National Interest hosted a virtual discussion of these issues with two leading experts on July 27, 2023.

Jonathan Lord is Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Prior to joining CNAS, Lord served as a professional staff member for the House Armed Services Committee and had previously served as the Iraq country director in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and as a political military analyst in the Department of Defense.

Firas Maksad is a Senior Fellow and Director of Strategic Outreach at the Middle East Institute (MEI). He is a recognized expert on the politics of Lebanon and Syria, the geopolitics of the Arab Gulf, and the broader dynamics of the Middle East region. He is also an adjunct professor at George Washington University.

Greg Priddy, Senior Fellow for the Middle East at the Center, moderated the discussion.

Image: Shutterstock.

Taking advantage of disputes between adversaries is an attractive idea and the United States has had success at this in the past. The most spectacular example was how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were able to take advantage of the growing Sino-Soviet dispute to improve U.S. relations both with China and the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. But there have been other examples as well. 

In his 2021 book, The Power to Divide: Wedge Strategies in Great Power Competition, Timothy W. Crawford described how in 1940-41 the United States and the United Kingdom succeeded at dissuading Spanish leader Francisco Franco from allowing German forces into Spain and attempting to seize Gibraltar from Britain by providing food assistance to his civil war-ravaged country. In the late 1940s, the United States was able to take advantage of the growing dispute between two communist leaders—the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and Yugoslavia’s Josip Tito—to help communist Yugoslavia exit the Soviet bloc and be neutral throughout the rest of the Cold War. In the early 1970s, Nixon and Kissinger were able to leverage Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat’s disillusionment with the Soviet Union to facilitate Egypt’s move from being a Soviet ally to an American one. In the mid-1980s, the previously hostile U.S.-Iraqi relationship underwent a dramatic improvement for a few years on the basis of common antipathy toward Iran. A second rapprochement between Washington and Moscow occurred in the late 1980s/early 1990s on the basis of what appeared to be not just a convergence of foreign policy interests but political values as well. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration embarked on the normalization of U.S. relations with America’s erstwhile adversary, Vietnam, which has developed into a stronger relationship ever since partly on the basis of their common concern about China. In the mid-2000s, the George W. Bush administration and Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi turned the previously hostile U.S.-Libyan relationship into a cooperative one partly on the basis of their common concern about jihadist forces which both governments regarded as a threat.

Some of these rapprochements lasted for many years or are still in effect while others were far briefer. More recent U.S. efforts at improving relations with adversaries, however, have either failed to make significant progress or have been reversed by subsequent administrations. The George W. Bush administration’s success in improving ties with Libya ended abruptly when the Obama administration worked with several other governments to bring about its downfall in 2011. The Obama administration’s efforts to improve ties with both Cuba and Iran were reversed by the Trump administration. The Trump administration’s attempts to improve relations with Russia, North Korea, and even (oddly enough) Iran also failed. The Biden administration’s efforts to improve ties with Iran enough to restore the Iranian nuclear accord have so far been unsuccessful, though its efforts to improve ties with Venezuela have been somewhat more so.

This is unfortunate for American foreign policy. The United States now has many adversaries, including formidable states such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and various jihadist groups. There are also a number of minor adversaries which cooperate with Russia, China, and/or Iran: Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and others still. In the current war between Russia and Ukraine, Iran and North Korea are both supplying arms to Russia while China is supplying Russia with vital economic support.

It would be beneficial for the United States if it could drive wedges among its various adversaries. And there are numerous disagreements and tensions among them that might provide Washington with opportunities for doing so. At present, though, the United States does not seem able—or even willing—to do this. Why? There are several possible explanations.

One identified by Crawford in The Power to Divide is opposition from existing allies to a state offering concessions to an adversary to induce it to alter its behavior. The cases examined by Crawford, though, all occurred either during World War I or just prior to or during World War II. In these cases, the allies in question were all peers or near peers of the state seeking to drive a wedge between adversaries by offering concessions to one of them. Even if the allies were all (more or less) on board, though, such efforts did not necessarily succeed. But opposition from an ally to an effort to woo an adversary made such an effort more difficult to mount due to unwillingness to risk souring relations with or even losing an existing ally in an uncertain attempt to either gain a new one or just to disrupt alliances between one’s adversaries.  Opposition from an existing ally also tended to make a state’s efforts to woo an adversary less credible to that adversary. 

Since the United States has not had peer or even near-peer allies but only smaller allies since the Cold War up through the present, Washington would appear to be in a very different position than that which the allied nations faced during World War I or World War II. Despite this, however, American allies that are by no means equal to the U.S. in military and economic strength have had an outsize influence on undermining recent American efforts to improve relations with adversaries and reducing their ties to more powerful ones. Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular expressed vociferous opposition to the Obama administration’s efforts in conjunction with the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China to reach a nuclear accord with Iran. Although such an accord was achieved in 2015 despite their opposition, both cheered President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement in 2018 and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has opposed the Biden administration’s efforts at reviving it. A great power whose policies are so subject to influence from its smaller allies will clearly have difficulty in wooing adversaries whom those allies regard as implacable threats—even though improved ties between the United States and an adversary might better serve to reduce the threat from it to America’s existing allies.

Still, small allies can only succeed in disrupting American efforts to take advantage of disputes between adversaries if there is something about the American foreign policymaking process as well as American domestic politics that allows them to do so. And this points to a second explanation, also identified by Crawford, for why the United States cannot successfully pursue wedge strategies: American domestic politics. Improving relations with adversary states is often highly unpopular in the United States. Political forces opposing this are often stronger than political forces supporting it. Allied governments fearing a U.S. rapprochement with an adversary can work with diaspora communities in the United States to oppose it. Diaspora communities from the adversary Washington seeks rapprochement with often oppose it too, especially if they were dispossessed by the regime in power there. Republicans have criticized the Biden administration just for considering lifting some sanctions against Iran and Venezuela in an attempt to change their behavior. (By contrast, Republican efforts to pursue such rapprochements are usually not opposed by Democrats and have had better success in overcoming objections from fellow Republicans.) But as in previous cases (including the Nixon administration’s rapprochements with the Soviet Union and China, the Clinton administration’s normalization with Vietnam, the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and even the Trump administration’s efforts to improve ties with North Korea) have shown, Washington has been able in the past to overcome allied and domestic opposition to the pursuit (even if unsuccessful, as in the case of Trump and North Korea) of rapprochements with adversary regimes not undergoing fundamental internal change. Some might argue, though, that heightened political tensions inside the United States in recent years make the pursuit of pursuit or even rational discussion of a host of policy issues more difficult now.

There is, however, a third possible explanation for why the United States is less able now to take advantage of disputes between adversaries than it was in the past: several of America's adversaries have become much more successful themselves at exploiting differences not only between the United States and its other adversaries, but also between the United States and its traditional allies. China’s enormous trade relations with so many of America’s traditional allies have given many of them an incentive to resist isolating Beijing in ways that the Trump and Biden administrations have sought. Many non-Western governments—including all of America’s traditional allies in the Middle East—have largely refused to join America and the West either in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or supporting Ukraine militarily. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates not only have maintained good relations with Russia after the start of its war in Ukraine but have recently been pursuing their own rapprochements with Iran.

All of these factors may play a role in explaining why it has seemingly become more difficult for the United States to take advantage of disputes among its adversaries. But while they may be obstacles, they are not insurmountable ones. 

Objections of smaller allies might be overcome if Washington did a better job of explaining what advantages they may receive from the United States improving ties with common adversaries as well as the continuing or even worsening problems that could result if such a policy does not succeed. A firmer U.S. position which warns of the dangers of interfering in U.S. domestic politics as well as points out the inconsistencies between their objecting to American efforts to improve relations with adversaries when they themselves have sought to do so with different or even the same ones would also be in order.

The United States must also do a better job of explaining to the American public why improving ties with adversaries can be useful while not exaggerating what the benefits of doing so are. Washington needs to explain how improving ties with one U.S. adversary which has grown wary of another can be beneficial to the United States while not doing so can mean that alliances among adversaries might persist despite serious differences between them. Above all, Washington must convey to the American public that it pursues rapprochements with adversaries not out of altruism or naïve expectations (as the opponents of such rapprochements loudly claim), but in pursuit of realpolitik interests.

Finally, the success of America’s adversaries in taking advantage of differences between Washington and several of its traditional allies shows that American diplomacy needs to focus not just on taking advantage of differences between America’s long-established adversaries, but also on blunting growing rapprochements between its adversaries and traditional U.S. allies. Indeed, it is because America’s adversaries have been as successful as they have in exploiting differences between the United States and some of its allies that it is now especially important for the United States to increase its own efforts at exploiting differences both between its adversaries and between its adversaries and Washington’s traditional allies. The U.S. inability to do this successfully—whether as a result of allied obstruction, domestic political opposition, or any other reason—will only serve to enhance its adversaries’ ability to do so.

Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has contributed numerous articles to The National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan almost two years ago, in August 2021. Contrary to what some may have hoped, resistance to the Taliban regime remains sporadic at best, and the strongest opposition group is now likely the terrorists of the Islamic State. The Taliban have proven their ability to maintain stable governance over Afghanistan. Since there is no clear alternative to Taliban rule and no will in the United States for another military intervention, working with the new regime to further American interests appears to be the least-worst option.

The Taliban Can Help Against Rivals

Engaging with Kabul could improve America’s position against its rivals, primarily China. A U.S.-sympathetic Afghanistan will encourage China to bolster its defenses in the areas bordering Afghanistan. This additional military burden would be relatively light for Beijing, but it is a low-hanging fruit and an inexpensive win for Washington. Every People’s Liberation Army soldier guarding the Afghan border is a soldier unavailable for a military invasion of Taiwan. Conversely, if Washington lets Beijing’s influence dominate Afghanistan, it will help China secure its western borders. A China-aligned Afghanistan will allow Chinese planners to focus on projecting power outward instead of border security.  

Cooperating with the Taliban will also harm China in a more indirect way. Pakistan is a close partner of Beijing, and the two have hostile relations with India. But in recent years, New Delhi has become a key U.S. partner for containing China in the Indo-Pacific region. Meanwhile, U.S.-Pakistan relations worsened significantly since the 2010s. Hence, by pressuring India, Pakistan is a hindrance for Washington. The more Islamabad is free to focus its energy against New Delhi, the less New Delhi can focus on pushing back Beijing.   

Although Pakistan has armed and funded the Afghan Taliban since its creation in 1994, the two have had a falling out since the takeover of Kabul. Border disputes along the Durand Line poison the bilateral relationship, leading to deadly skirmishes. Furthermore, Islamabad resents the new regime’s lack of help in fighting the Pakistani Taliban.

This brewing conflict opens a historic opportunity for the United States. If Washington can help build a strong and stable Afghanistan, Pakistan will have to maintain significant forces to defend its western border. Islamabad will have fewer capabilities to challenge India in its east. That would be a win for the United States, as the Indians would have more forces available to counterbalance China.

As seen through recent deadly border clashes, Iran-Taliban relations are similarly contentious. The Taliban follows a fundamentalist, Sunni interpretation of Islam, while Iran is predominantly Shia. During the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan from 1996–2001, Tehran opposed the treatment of the Shia minority and supported the Northern Alliance, an opposition group to the Taliban. The Iranians also probably fear that Kabul will partner with the Gulf powers, thus threatening their rear. 

Engaging Afghanistan can help Washington further its objectives regarding Iran, both for negotiation and containment purposes. If the United States wants to reach an agreement with Iran to freeze its nuclear and missile programs and scale down its regional ambitions, a friendly Afghanistan would become a bargaining chip and additional leverage to pressure Tehran. Iran’s domestic political and economic situation is already difficult, and it is increasingly wary of its northern neighbors. Turkey now occupies parts of northern Iraq and Syria, and the Iranians have a growing antagonism with Azerbaijan; they do not want a strong, hostile Afghanistan rising on their eastern border. Hence, if entente with Iran appears impossible, Kabul would become a valuable partner to counterbalance Iranian power throughout the Middle East. 

Now that the United States has withdrawn from Central Asia, Kabul has little to fear from Washington. The Taliban fully understand that American planners are overwhelmingly focused on great power competitors like China and Russia and have no bandwidth left to attack their regime. Meanwhile, Kabul has to contend in its immediate neighborhood with hostile Iran and Pakistan, a rising China, and a lurking Russia. Distant America is thus a partner of choice for this weak state surrounded by actual or potential threats.

Fighting Trafficking and Terrorism

Other benefits would come from working with the Taliban: it is the most straightforward and efficient way to fight terrorism in Afghanistan. The Taliban themselves never participated in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. They are now the only sizable force present on the ground and have proven their ability to contain terrorism. Since they seized power, Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their consorts have been unable to reestablish sanctuaries.

For instance, in July 2020, before the fall of the Ghani government, the United Nations reported that Al Qaeda had between 400 and 600 fighters in the country. In June 2023, the UN assessed that Al Qaeda had fewer than 400 fighters and 60 senior officials in Afghanistan, and the U.S. intelligence community believes this figure to be overinflated. Contrary to what some feared, no resurgence of Al Qaeda occurred under the Taliban regime.

Indeed, some discreet cooperation against terrorism between Kabul and Washington is already ongoing. A journalist  reported for Foreign Policy that “U.S. and Afghan security and diplomatic sources say the United States relies on intelligence provided by the Taliban.” While the Taliban are capable of holding their own against terrorist groups, other, far more worrying nests of terrorism exist in the failed states throughout the Middle East and Africa.

The Taliban government can also help fight disruptive drug trafficking. The West has long worried about Afghanistan’s role as a leading producer of opioids, fueling the use of illicit drugs. In 2022, Kabul banned the cultivation of poppy from which opium is extracted. The ban was highly effective, and production collapsed. Other opium-producing countries may ultimately replace the loss, but it is still a step in the right direction. Since the ban will likely destabilize the already troubled Afghan economy, establishing normal economic relations with Kabul will encourage the Taliban to remain on track.

What Should the United States Do?

Concerns about engaging with the Taliban regime are understandable, given its history of violence and repressive rule. Critics may argue that America should not legitimize or endorse the regime. However, one must distinguish engagement from endorsement. By engaging with the Taliban government, the United States can gain economic and diplomatic leverage to hold them accountable in case of mischief and push for meaningful reforms. Over the long run, engaging Kabul may even urge respect for human rights and foster a more inclusive Afghan society. Isolation and sanctions only marginalize pro-Western voices and embolden extremist elements. On the other hand, engagement would allow the United States to make gains regionally and globally at little cost.

Washington should prioritize three courses of action. First, it must help stabilize the Afghan economy to strengthen the country over the long run. A costless policy is to give Afghanistan back its billions of dollars of financial assets held in the United States and elsewhere. Ending the sanctions is also crucial, as they did little to shake the Taliban’s rule and only harmed the Afghan people.

Second, even small-scale military assistance would significantly bolster Afghanistan. The Taliban’s military maintains large quantities of U.S.-provided weaponry, sometimes even using them in skirmishes against Iran. As time passes and wear and tear do their work, Kabul will find it harder to keep this equipment operational. Washington should thus allow U.S. defense companies to sustain American weaponry there and furnish new ones if necessary. Furthermore, encouraging the Afghans to use U.S. equipment will create a path dependency for the Taliban, offer additional leverage, and keep them away from Chinese and Russian defense industries. 

Third, establishing normal diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime would further U.S. interests. Exchanging embassies would promote trade and investment in Afghanistan and persuade likeminded international partners to do the same. It would also facilitate cooperation to fight terrorism and crime. 

Only through engagement can the United States contribute to a more prosperous and secure Afghanistan while safeguarding its interests.

Dylan Motin is a Ph.D. candidate majoring in political science at Kangwon National University. He was previously a Marcellus Policy Fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society and a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies. His research focuses on balance-of-power theory, great power competition, and Asian affairs.

Image: Shutterstock.

Les tensions avec le Kremlin couvaient depuis des mois, mais la rébellion du groupe Wagner a tout de même surpris. D'ordinaire, les mercenaires obéissent à leur donneur d'ordre, dont ils accomplissent les basses besognes. L'Afrique en sait quelque chose, qui a vu passer nombre de ces « affreux », (...) / Armée, Russie, Afrique, Sécurité, Matières premières - 2023/08

What Ukraine revealed about military power.

Last December, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled Japan’s National Security Statement (NSS), pledging to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2027, turning Japan into the third-largest military spender in the world. While many commentators see this as a reactive move toward Chinese aggression and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the NSS indicates Japan is deliberately and proactively creating a new vision for the Indo-Pacific: “As a major global actor, Japan will join together with its ally, like-minded countries and others to achieve a new balance in international relations, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.”

To pursue this goal, Japan implemented a new diplomatic posture by moving toward ending trade disputes and normalizing defense ties with South Korea. Additionally, Japan’s NSS calls for strengthened cooperation with the United States: “Japan, while ensuring the bilateral coordination at its strategic levels, will work in coordination with the United States to strengthen the Japan-U.S. Alliance in all areas, including diplomacy, defense, and economy.”

Japan’s NSS, in short, highlights that the country aims to become an increasingly active player in Asia and that increased cooperation with the United States is key to maintaining prosperity for both countries.

Tokyo’s willingness to increase spending and cooperation in defense should be seen as a great boon to America’s defense strategy. According to a recent wargame by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, every single optimistic scenario alteration regarding Japan results in a “major change” toward a successful defense of Taiwan, whereas the worst-case scenario of Japan remaining neutral leads to a decisive Chinese victory. This resulted in the paper recommending U.S. leaders to “[prioritize] deeping military and diplomatic ties with Japan.” In particular, operational coordination between the United States and Japanese military was seen as especially important by “participants who had experience with the Japanese military.” However, increased strategic cooperation between the United States and Japan should not be limited solely to the military sphere; Japan can play a vital role in achieving a broad array of America’s strategic objectives.

Under the Biden administration, an American counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed to the G7 but has struggled to get off the ground. One of the issues contributing to this failure is, according to one analyst, “little understanding of the policy strategy or delivery mechanisms.” In essence, the American response suffers not only from a lack of funding, but also from an incoherent organizational structure and vision for actually delivering on promised projects.

Meanwhile, Japan already has a system for offering development funds and furthering its foreign policy goals in the form of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which disburses funds on behalf of their Official Development Assistance, a subdivision of their Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In fact, this system was established back in 1974, arguably making it an inspiration for China’s BRI. Aside from funding development projects, the agency sends personnel abroad and trains personnel in developing countries, amounting to 197,000 experts sent abroad and 649,000 accepted trainees since 1954. Considering current political realities in the United States and a lack of appetite in Europe to create “grand new projects” due to the war in Ukraine, it is prudent to coordinate with Japan’s already well-established system rather than create a new system from scratch. 

Another pillar of America’s strategy is rebuilding its industrial base, as demonstrated by the passage of industrial policy-oriented legislation such as the CHIPS Act and the Build America, Buy America Act. A key part of this task is improving the quality and quantity of personnel in the industrial sector. Currently, there is a talent shortage in the manufacturing sector which will expand to 2 million unfilled openings by 2030 if current trends persist. The Buy American Act is already struggling to find domestic suppliers for many critical goods, particularly in the construction industry. According to industry officials, no domestic manufacturers exist for dock cranes, trucks, boat lifts, and similar equipment. Furthermore, the recently built Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) chip fab in Arizona has “...yielded very little benefit for TSMC or Taiwan” due to steep construction costs (ten times higher than in Taiwan) and a shortage of qualified personnel.

Japan, meanwhile, has a strong manufacturing base in those sectors, but lacks design talent and ranks dead last in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for the average annual entry rate of new enterprises. Considering that America’s venture capital ecosystem remains the largest in the world and accounts for 43 percent of chip design talent demand, it would be in the best interest of both nations to pursue personnel exchanges and corporate cooperation.

This is already occurring in some key industries: Japan’s Rapidus, a company formed to put Japan back on the leading edge of the semiconductor industry, has partnered with U.S. tech giant IBM to manufacture the latter’s 2nm chip design. However, the focus shouldn’t only be specialization (i.e., America providing chip design while Japan builds them): both nations should instead look to improve on each other’s weaknesses. For example, President Joe Biden could pass an amendment to the Buy America Act that allows for a temporary exemption for equipment the United States cannot currently produce in exchange for Japanese companies either sending some of their engineers to America (to teach current firms the best practices for producing the equipment) or opening joint ventures in America (for producing the equipment).

The latter has been done before, albeit under far less amicable terms. Following Toyota’s rapid expansion into the American car market in the 1980s, Congress implemented a voluntary export restraint with the Japanese government, limiting automobile exports to the United States to 22 percent of the U.S. market. This action, alongside the looming threat of import tariffs on Japan, encouraged Toyota to create a joint venture with U.S. automotive manufacturing giant General Motors (GM) to produce cars in America, leading to the formation of New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. The goal was for Toyota to learn how to run a factory in America while General Motors would learn how to implement the Toyota Production System successfully to increase the quality of its cars. This venture proved incredibly beneficial to both companies: Toyota is now the second-largest carmaker in America, operating fifteen factories across the United States and employing around 176,000 Americans, while GM’s procurement and production system is “world-class and every bit as efficient as the Japanese automaker’s system” according to the White House Automotive Task Force. If such a productive outcome could come from a mix of desperation on GM’s part and coercion on Toyota’s part, then even greater heights could be achieved today with America and Japan having clearly aligned interests.

Additionally, on a cultural level, American analysts more seriously cooperating with their Japanese counterparts concerning Beijing will result in a more effective China strategy. Due to their shared and turbulent history, many Japanese diplomats were ahead of the curve when it came to many of the issues that resulted from China’s ascension as a great power. Early last year, Sasae Kenichiro, a former Japanese ambassador to America, wrote in an article by The Economist stating that: “We warned the US: this is not a small compartmentalized issue between Japan and China, but a sign of a growing power in the region” Unfortunately at the time, these warnings fell on deaf ears. As one China specialist at Tokyo University lamented in the same article: “Fifteen years ago, if I talked to [Western colleagues] about the negative aspects of China, I was treated as a right-wing, China-hating, Japanese scholar.”

This needs to change. Ideally, the United States should have nearly as many personnel dedicated to understanding and working with Japan as there are for China. The America-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of the current geopolitical order in the Pacific, and it is time for both nations to work toward strengthening bilateral ties to maintain that status.

Siddhartha Kazi is an undergraduate student studying Industrial Engineering at Texas A&M University.

Image: Shutterstock.

More than forty years ago, I wrote a book titled Negotiating Peace that analyzed the diplomatic and military dynamics of bringing a war to an end. It drew material from the endings of wars through nearly two centuries, as well as a closer examination of a few major cases that had extended periods of simultaneous combat and negotiations. It also drew on theoretical work, chiefly by economists, about bargaining. Parts of the book got rather technical—it included differential equations—but it also had a more digestible prescriptive side. An appendix titled “Lessons for the Statesman at War” included forty-four pieces of advice for how best to employ diplomatic and military instruments to achieve a peace that will maximize the interests of one’s own nation.

Much of this advice is at least potentially applicable to the current war in Ukraine—from the standpoint not only of decisionmakers in Kyiv and Moscow but also of policymakers in Washington, in terms of what they should expect or hope to promote. The actual applicability of some of my apothegms will depend on events yet to unfold, but the following outlines a few of the major lessons.

The ending of the war in Ukraine will almost certainly entail some form of bargaining between Ukraine and Russia, and will leave a situation that represents a compromise between the interests of the two nations. It is rare in interstate conflicts for one belligerent to eradicate the other so that it has no need for any bargaining or compromise. It is not so rare in intrastate warfare, in which an insurgency might eliminate and replace an incumbent regime or the regime might crush the insurgency solely through military means (such as Sri Lanka’s final eradication of the Tamil Tiger insurgency in 2009).

But the eradication of a nation-state is a different matter and a less feasible outcome. Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein managed to do that temporarily when he used armed force to swallow Kuwait in 1990, but a U.S.-led intervention reversed that outcome the following year. The objective of Russian president Vladimir Putin in launching the current war in February 2022 may have been to eliminate Ukraine as an independent country, either through formal incorporation into Russia or by installing a puppet regime in Kyiv. It now is clear that Russian military force is insufficient to achieve any such outcome. And obviously, Ukraine cannot eliminate the Russian state.

Even a war that is said to end in a surrender does not involve totally imposing the will of one side on the other and involves a negotiated compromise. No surrender is unconditional if the side surrendering still has some ability to fight. The surrender of Japan in 1945 was a deal in which Japan agreed to stop fighting and thus spared the Allies what would have been an extremely costly military conquest of the main islands of Japan. 

Another possible ending of an interstate war is for one or both belligerents simply to withdraw from the battle (as occurred with the border war between China and India in 1962), leaving a frozen conflict with or without occupation of the disputed territory. Such an outcome is possible in Ukraine, but an explicit war-ending agreement has multiple advantages for all concerned. It provides a framework that facilitates prisoner exchanges, peacekeeping protocols, and other useful measures. It provides a degree of certainty that reduces the risk of misinterpretations of the other side’s actions leading to renewed warfare. 

In any event, bargaining, possibly tacit, is still taking place even without a formal written agreement. The withdrawal from battle leaves a state of affairs that affects the interests of each belligerent in both positive and negative ways, and which each side must compare with the “no agreement” situation of continued warfare to decide whether to accept the bargain that this state of affairs represents.

An implication of the foregoing is that to speak of the termination of the war in Ukraine in terms of “winning” or “losing” the war is not helpful in understanding likely scenarios for termination and in preparing for those scenarios.

The end of the war is likely to be preceded by a period of bargaining—perhaps in formal negotiations—accompanied by continued combat, rather than a military outcome being fully established before work begins on constructing a political outcome. Traditionally there tended to be a temporal separation between military operations and peace diplomacy—such as with the end of World War I, when the guns were silenced by an armistice at Compiègne in November 1918 and a peace treaty was negotiated at Versailles the following year. But that sequence was mainly a legacy of the limitations of pre-modern communications, when day-to-day coordination of military operations and diplomacy was difficult (except for someone like Napoleon Bonaparte, who combined military field command and ultimate political authority in his own person). That difficulty no longer exists, and belligerents have an incentive to continue using their military instrument in ways that they hope will add heft to their diplomacy.

Regardless, silencing the guns—and ending the suffering of Ukrainians from a continued war, and with it the threat of escalation into a wider war—ought to be considered the most important component of terminating this war. Moreover, even an agreement that is labeled as merely an armistice and not a full resolution of political issues may be the only peace agreement that a conflict ever gets. That has been true, for seventy years and counting, of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. This is one of the reasons that the Korean War—which was one of the major cases I studied in researching the book—has been mentioned by some other observers as a model for terminating the war in Ukraine.

Belligerents will become willing to negotiate a peace agreement when they both have demonstrated, to themselves and to the enemy, the limits of what they are able and willing to do militarily, and there is little or no prospect for either side to change the situation on the battlefield appreciably with one more offensive effort. Another analyst, I. William Zartman, has called such a situation a “hurting stalemate.”

A war that has not reached a stalemate and is going either too badly or too well for a belligerent is likely to lead that belligerent to resist peace negotiations for the time being, for different reasons. Too badly, and the impulse is to keep fighting to shore up the situation on the battlefield, in the hope of looking and being stronger in whatever negotiations eventually take place. Too well, and the tendency is to expand one’s war objectives and to hope to accomplish them without the need for negotiation and compromise. The first year of the Korean War illustrated each of these tendencies, as the front line moved up and down the peninsula with the initial North Korean invasion, the U.S.-led intervention under the United Nations flag, the later Chinese intervention, and another UN push that finally brought the line to what became a stalemate near the 38th parallel.

An implication of this pattern for the war in Ukraine is that it is a mistake to talk about hoped-for breakthroughs by the Ukrainian counteroffensive, with Russian forces thrown backward, as being a precursor, and maybe even a necessary precursor, for peace negotiations. Given Putin’s stake in the conflict, his reaction might be just like the U.S. reaction to the two major communist offensives that threw friendly forces backward in Korea: to see this as making it all the more necessary to assume increased military costs and risks to improve the battlefield map before sitting down to talk peace.

One other lesson, regarding the substance of any possible peace agreement, is already worth mentioning. Notwithstanding the value of a written peace agreement in lending precision and certainty to the postwar situation, sometimes some uncertainty can have value in helping the parties come to any agreement at all. This was true regarding the uncertain future of the South Vietnamese government in the years following the peace agreement between the United States and North Vietnam in 1973. Although the concept of a “decent interval” involved a domestic political motive for President Richard Nixon, leaving the fate of the Saigon regime somewhat to chance was a way to reconcile the United States’ refusal to explicitly abandon that regime with Hanoi’s objective to rule all of Vietnam.

In Ukraine, the bargaining gap that must be bridged is between Ukraine’s disinclination to formally cede any of its territory and Putin’s need to show some gain from his costly military misadventure. Some political issues probably will have to be in effect punted, with their eventual outcome uncertain, if any peace agreement is to be reached, despite the future risk of misunderstandings and festering grievances. Mechanisms such as referenda that leave some future outcomes to chance may be part of a formula for ending this war.  

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was as a 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. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a contributing editor for this publication.

Image: paparazzza / Shutterstock.com

Malgré une avalanche de poursuites judiciaires, M. Donald Trump demeure le favori de son parti pour l'élection présidentielle de l'an prochain. Un thème de politique étrangère, la guerre d'Ukraine, fait l'objet de débats passionnés entre les candidats républicains. Les uns reprochent au président Joseph (...) / États-Unis, Élections, Conflit russo-ukrainien 2022-, Politique - 2023/08

The CCP’s Dangerous Historical Distortions and the Struggle Over Taiwan.

More than a century and a half after the end of the American Civil War, historians still debate the reasons for the Northern defeat of the South. President Abraham Lincoln’s effective leadership? General Ulysses Grant’s winning military strategies? The failure of the Confederacy of the eleven states of the South to win support from Britain and France?

But there is a general consensus among researchers that in many ways, the Union’s victory in the war was preordained that the agrarian economy of the South was no match for the industrial capacity of the North that helped it to manufacture its arms and build its transportation infrastructure.

On another level, the conflict between the South and the North amounted to a struggle between the past and the future, between a world built on an agricultural economy based on the exploitation of slave labor and a rising universe of manufacturing industries and commercial centers; between those who fancied themselves as the romantic knights of Walter Scott’s novels and an emerging urban population whose values reflected those of the Enlightenment.

From that perspective, the kind of civilizational clash is evident in the current evolving cold civil war in Israel. Although it may be seen as a struggle over judicial reform, it is really one between the future—the demonstrators who represent Israel’s Westernized economic and cultural elites—and the forces of the past—the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students and ultra-right West Bank settlers.

Israeli pundits have proposed that the conflict is between two opposing forces: “Judea,” the Jewish settlers who seek to annex the occupied Palestinian territories and establish in Israel an apartheid system joined by ultra-Orthodox theocrats whose sons don’t serve in the military and don’t study basic math; and “Israel,” the high-tech entrepreneurs of the celebrated start-up nation, retired air force pilots, and other members of the nation’s productive economic sector.

It's a struggle whose outcome would determine Israel’s future. Will Israel remain a progressive liberal democracy and an advanced industrial and high-tech economy? Or will it be transformed into a backward theocracy with a third-world economy, a binational state, and eventually a Middle Eastern community like Lebanon with never-ending fights between ethnic groups, religious sects, and tribal factions?

Not unlike the leaders of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War, those who lead “Judea” live in a fantasy in which they would be able to rule forever on another nation, in which the United States needs Israel more than Israel needs the United States, and if the world refuses to abide their dictates they would lead a fight to the end a la Masada, this time with nuclear weapons added to the mix.

But more likely than not, the war between Judea and Israel would not end in an apocalyptic nightmare. Instead, with the situation deteriorating, Israel’s best and brightest young would emigrate from a collapsing Jewish state to Silicon Valley, to Wall Street, to London and Berlin.

After all, why should they risk their lives to defend young healthy men who refuse to serve in the military and help subsidize the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parasitic economy and the West Bank settlements that threaten the long-term chances for peace? Why should they live in a country where women and LGBTQ people are discriminated against and Arabs are treated as second-class citizens?

Policymakers and lawmakers in Washington need to take into consideration these dramatically changing political realities in Israel and recognize that the country’s pragmatic political and military elite may soon be swept away and replaced by politicians whose values and interests don’t align with those of the United States.

To put it differently, if there was a time when Americans were worried that irrational ayatollahs in Tehran would have access to nuclear weapons, they should now find themselves worrying about what would happen if a Masada-obsessed Jewish fanatic would have control over Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Unless that is, the lessons of the American Civil War are applied and Israel defeats Judea.

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

Image: Noa Ratinsky / Shutterstock.com

Avec l'Histoire d'un Allemand , Sebastian Haffner (1907-1999) évoquait une période cruciale de l'histoire de son pays à travers les souvenirs d'un « petit individu anonyme et inconnu » : l'enfant puis l'étudiant en droit qu'il était à l'époque. Écrit en 1939 au Royaume-Uni, où il venait de s'exiler, ce (...) / Europe, Allemagne, Mouvement de contestation, Socialisme, Communisme, Marxisme, Nazisme, Histoire, Répression - 2018/06

Les agro-industriels du Sud ressemblent à ceux du Nord : ils rêvent de profits faciles en développant les cultures commerciales au détriment de la paysannerie vivrière. C'est ainsi qu'est né le projet ProSavana, qui associe le Japon et le Brésil au Mozambique. Mais la résistance inédite des paysans (...) / Multinationales, Afrique australe, Afrique, Mozambique, Japon, Brésil, Mouvement de contestation, Agroalimentaire, Agriculture - 2018/06

Le 1er juillet, les Mexicains éliront 500 députés, 128 sénateurs, 9 gouverneurs et un nouveau président. Favori des sondages, le candidat de gauche Andrés Manuel López Obrador propose une réponse modérée au cocktail explosif qui ravage le pays : violence, corruption et misère. Mais l'élite (...) / Amérique latine, Mexique, Élections, Inégalités, Parti politique, Politique, Amérique du Nord, Corruption - 2018/06