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Alors que la Moldavie traverse d'importantes turbulences économiques liées à la guerre en Ukraine, son gouvernement accuse Moscou de vouloir déstabiliser le pays et renforce sa coopération militaire avec le bloc euro-atlantique. Une telle politique, censée garantir la sécurité du pays, pourrait aussi (...) / Géopolitique, Économie, Minorité nationale, Moldavie, Sécurité, Conflit russo-ukrainien 2022-, Politique - 2023/06

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As Joe Biden concluded his attendance at the Group of 7, or G7, meeting in Hiroshima, at which his administration orchestrated the group’s opposition to China, Xi Jinping unveiled a plan of his own in a counter-diplomatic move. After a China-Central Asia Summit in northwest China last week, Xi announced plans to boost Central Asia’s development by increasing trade, building infrastructure, and helping bolster its defense production capabilities and law enforcement. This points towards a considerably increased Chinese role in Central Asia.

China’s new initiative in the region is likely to instinctively cause hostility in Washington, but that would be a mistake. The United States does not need and cannot afford to seek primacy everywhere; and for geographical reasons alone, Central Asia will always be a region where American influence will be inferior to that of China and Russia. By engaging in great power competition there, Washington would only divert the United States’ attention and resources from more important regions. In the worst case, it would contribute to regional instability and even conflict.

China’s move comes at a time of waning the United States’ influence in Central Asia after its withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as waning Russian influence as Russia wages its war in Ukraine. Central Asia has historically been part of Moscow’s traditional sphere of influence, but in the last decade, the region has seen an exponential increase in economic cooperation with Beijing. Last year, trade between China and Central Asia reached a record of $70 billion, with Kazakhstan at the forefront with $31 billion.

Because Russia and China share something similar to a great power “entente” in Central Asia, where Russia is the primary security partner and China is the primary economic power, neither struggles with the other for influence. Both, however, fear that of the United States, and would (successfully) unite strongly to resist it. In addition, both fear the spread of Islamist extremism and ethnic nationalism, which could increase problems with their own Muslim minorities—something that would, it should be pointed out, also threaten American interests. The lack of major terrorist attacks against the United States in recent years does not mean that this threat has gone away.

China’s generous package to Central Asia of 26 billion yuan ($3.8 billion) of financing support and grants makes an embarrassing contrast with the pitiful $50 million offered to the region by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken during his trip there earlier this year—a difference however that accurately reflects the relative importance of the region to China and to the United States. While the G7 issued a statement condemning China’s belligerence in the South China Seas and its human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, Central Asian governments appear to welcome a greater role for China.

China last Saturday expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the communique issued by G7 leaders. China’s foreign ministry retaliated with protest and stated that the G7’s “approach has no international credibility whatsoever" and that the G7 was conducting a smear campaign against China. China also expressed issues with the bloc not showing clear opposition to Taiwanese independence. Additionally, contrary to what the G7 touts, China insisted the bloc was instead responsible for “hindering world peace and inhibiting the development of other countries.”

The G7 and China’s response demonstrate all too clearly that confrontation between the West on one side and China and Russia on the other is increasing and spreading throughout the world, with both sides vying for influence in the Global South. As the global reactions to the war in Ukraine demonstrate, Russia and China have been successful at getting the Global South to see the West as an entity that exploits non-Western states for selfish reasons, and certain Western policies concerning third-party sanctions violations are only adding fuel to the fire.

G7 leaders are adopting new sanctions on Russia designed to reduce Moscow’s ability to circumvent sanctions through third-party deals with states in the Global South. Yet seeking to “punish” non-Western states for trading with Russia will only exacerbate already existing resentment in the Global South over an overly imposing America and what countries may perceive as a violation of the right to their sovereign decisionmaking.

During the G7 meeting, issues concerning economic dependence on Russia and China were also raised among the group of industrialized nations with their invitees Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. While the diplomatic pressure for less dependence on Russia and China is understandable for American geopolitical aspirations, it would be naive to assume that the Global South would sacrifice any significant source of income to their country for the sake of American power. In fact, America would probably lose influence if it pressed countries to act in ways that would be counter to their own national interests.

In a similar effort to sway the Global South, at the G7 summit, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky met with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and Indonesian president Joko Widodo to pressure their respective nations into “taking sides” in the war in Ukraine. As traditionally non-aligned countries stemming from the time of the Cold War, and possessing colonial histories that make them deeply skeptical of the West, these nations are unlikely to succumb to rising pressure to overtly support Ukraine. The West should understand that before it pushes them any further away.

On that score, Central Asia is one region where the United States should not try to compete for primacy. Russia and China have far more economic, political, and military investment than the United States does in that region and always will have. If Washington starts to compete with them in Central Asia, it will only turn the region into a zero-sum game between great powers where the United States would be unlikely to gain more influence than Russia and China due to their geographic proximity. Spending valuable resources just to create a constant competition that Washington will inevitably lose is a very poor investment—especially as, following its withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States has no vital or even significant interests in this region. Such competition would also put the region's stability at risk. So far, countries in Central Asia have been comfortably applying a multivector foreign policy towards China, Russia, and the United States, with America very much third in line. This policy has allowed them to develop economically without encouraging great power competition in their region.

China’s plan for Central Asia risks setting the stage for a new domain of great power competition in the Global South. The United States should refrain from taking the bait, as it were, and should apply similar pragmatism and restraint to other nations in the world that have chosen to be non-aligned in this renewed global struggle. If Washington tries to pressure them into allying with America, it may actually end up driving them into the arms of China and Russia.

Suzanne Loftus is Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute’s Eurasia program. She specializes in Russian foreign and domestic policy, nationalism and identity, and strategic competition between the great powers.

Image: Shutterstock.

As someone who teaches military officers and national security professionals, both at the U.S. Naval War College and at Harvard Extension, I wholeheartedly endorse the points made by Josh Kerbel and Jake Sotiriadis in a recent National Interest column:

…today’s complex strategic environment requires a fundamentally different set of skills. To be sure, we need a strong understanding of strategic foresight, future literacy, and complex systems. We must also acknowledge that today’s hyper-connected strategic challenges are not so much solvable as they are merely manageable. Strategic foresight—which involves the practice of envisioning alternative futures in order to better sense, shape, and adapt to change—can help. It cultivates a tolerance for uncertainty, which cognitive psychology tells us can reduce judgmental bias and promote non-linear thinking.

I would submit, however, that producing better, more innovative strategists capable of providing guidance for navigating this “complex strategic environment” produces a reciprocal charge to policymakers to up their own game. Nothing has frustrated me more over the years than to see creative strategic approaches wither on the vine of policy and political failures.

Reading this essay in conjunction with recent reporting about Washington’s inability to translate wide-ranging, ambitious proposals for Latin American integration and development into concrete policy gains exacerbates my frustration. President Laurentino Cortizo of Panama sums it up: “The speeches are very pretty.” The fault lies not in the strategic thinking, but the dysfunctionality of the U.S. policy process. What makes this so personally painful is for a decade I have seen students coming through our strategic education process chart out how the United States needs to compete using all tools of statecraft against the growing Chinese presence in Latin America—but policymakers are largely unable to act on them, except at the margins. Ricardo Zúniga, who serves in the Biden administration as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere, acknowledges that the U.S. effort relies on a cobbled-together approach because the big-picture strategic proposals have no way of being translated into action. He told the Financial Times, “Our political reality right now is that there’s not support for expansion of free trade agreements” (which requires Congressional legislation) and instead rested upon “taking advantage of trade facilitation and ... nearshoring opportunities” (by using executive authorities to interpret pre-existing regulations and policies). This is the same challenge Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo faces as she attempts to stretch executive actions to try and capture some of the strategic benefits (in terms of trade and technological cooperation) among U.S. partners in the Indo-Pacific basin—via the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which is a poor person’s substitute for the ambitious goal of creating a trading community binding the Pacific rim to the United States.

Yet the lack of binding commitments always undermines the reliability of such proposals. The problem is exacerbated because executive actions are highly dependent on who sits in the White House. An enterprising entrepreneur might have concluded, at the end of 2015, that President Barack Obama’s decision to use his executive authority to commit the United States to the Paris climate framework and to reach a nuclear deal with Iran might create opportunities: a United States committed to reducing emissions (and also engaged in the first wave of economic sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea) might support the rapid development of Iran’s underutilized natural gas reserves (to help offset European dependence on Russia and to use natural gas as a bridging fuel towards a long-term green energy transition). Had Hillary Clinton succeeded in her 2016 presidential bid, that might have been a gamble that paid off. By 2017, however, President Donald Trump had reversed both of those executive actions.

How confident are IPEF countries that announced regulatory changes would last into the next administration—or that President Joe Biden himself might reverse those decisions if domestic interests complained about losses from these efforts? Germany and South Korea both have seen how the administration is whipsawed between promoting the notion of increased trade and technological collaboration among the states of the democratic community, and advancing proposals that sound suspiciously like an “America First” approach. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai is not wrong when she says, “There are actually a lot of countries around the world that really want to be economically engaged with us.” But her efforts to, as she herself describes it, pitch “America as a reliable and positive partner” runs up against these concerns. And, it bears noting, the U.S. approach to Ukrainian security guarantees—to rely not even on an executive agreement, but an even less-binding “memorandum”—shows the risks when certain obligations and courses of action are not solidified into U.S. law and practice.

What this has meant, as my colleague Ali Wyne has often said, is that the United States has tended, over the last decade, to respond to what China does, rather than proactively setting the agenda. And I would argue that while China’s efforts may fail, it is not strategically wise to predicate U.S. policy on expectations of Chinese failure. As we have seen with Russia in Ukraine, Moscow’s ability to prolong its invasion has far outlasted expectations of Russian collapse.

Moving forward, there are two immediate recommendations for policymakers. The first is to return to the legislative process: for Congress and the executive branch to write new laws, enhance regulations, define authorities—and commit funding. Full-fledged free trade agreements may be politically problematic at this time, but there are other legislative building blocks that can be enacted, building on the success of proposals like the CHIPS and Science Act. It requires political figures to assess trade-offs, set priorities, and be prepared to compromise to get proposals in place, following President Ronald Reagan’s old adage about it being better to get 60 percent of what one wants than to go over the cliff flags flying. This includes painful but necessary discussions about where U.S. domestic interests might be negatively impacted, and how that damage might be mitigated.

The second is to also set—and abide—by priorities in our foreign policy. Building a lasting and durable coalition both to develop a security cordon across the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic basins but also to promote the technological, energy, climate and health partnerships needed to secure the peace and prosperity of the United States and its allies means that Washington has to be able to accept what elements on its “preferences” list it is willing to set aside. For instance, the Biden administration’s proposals for new infrastructure development funds to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative is going to require commitments from U.S. Gulf allies to deploy their sovereign wealth funds and for India to help reorient supply chains away from the Chinese hub. Yet the United Arab Emirates and New Delhi are not fully committed to joining Western measures to increase economic pressure on Moscow for its actions in Ukraine. Balancing their noncompliance with such measures with the fact that any coalition to offset China requires their active participation requires a nuanced and delicate approach.

Just as in 1989–91, the world today is undergoing major shifts in the global system. We have every right to ask our strategists to be able to assess, analyze and propose ways to secure U.S. national interests in this changed environment. But our policymakers must be prepared to accept their responsibilities to take the hard choices involved in translating strategy into policy.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a professor at the Naval War College and the Editor of Orbis. He also co-hosts the Doorstep podcast for the Carnegie Council. The views expressed here are his own.

Image: Shutterstock.

Great power competition is old hat. Systemic rivals are already passe. The Second Cold War has started. China and Russia started it. It is past time to acknowledge this and start fighting back.

The Chinese regime is an existential threat to the peace and prosperity of the United States and its allies, partners, and friends. Xi Jinping’s appetites are global—from occupying democratic Taiwan to reshaping land borders with India, from redrawing maritime boundaries with its neighbors to imposing strategic dependencies on other nations and blackmailing them economically—all the while building both nuclear and conventional forces to intimidate any opposition.

Xi also greenlit Vladimir Putin’s aggressive war against Ukraine and forged a de facto alliance between China and Russia. Over the past decade, the two autocrats have held an astonishing forty one-on-one meetings—a frequency surpassing their engagements with any other foreign leader by more than twofold. While the United States and other democratic countries were isolating Putin diplomatically, Xi paid a visit to Moscow in March of this year, concluding his trip with a remarkable statement: “Right now there are changes—the likes of which we haven't seen for 100 years—and we are the ones driving these changes together.” The Russian president agreed. Russia, in short, has made itself part of the China challenge.

The thought of living in a world dominated by China and Russia is intolerable to Americans and all freedom-loving peoples. Like any war, a cold war is a contest of will between determined, committed adversaries. It is high time that the United States and its allies start fighting back. We thought long and hard for the list of indicators that would demonstrate America was serious about protecting its interest from the onslaught of aggressive forces that want to remake the world. Here is what we came up with.

Say You are Serious

The Biden administration has never communicated clearly to the American people and the world what we are up against. When it comes to China, Biden’s mantra is weak tea a decade out of date: “compete where we must, but cooperate where we can.” When it comes to Russia, Biden declares the United States will “support Ukraine as long as it takes,” without giving thought to explaining in detail what the plan to deal with Moscow as a threat in the long term. This makes our adversaries sound more like a nuisance than a threat, akin to saying that it’s not our business what Hannibal Lecter does next door, as long as we don’t go over for dinner.

That does not cut it. China has 1.4 billion people, the second-largest economy in the world by various measurements, and a nuclear arsenal that will soon rival that of the United States and Russia. They already dominate many of the world’s most critical supply chains. Beijing is a destabilizing influence on every continent. It is among the world’s worst dictatorial regimes, abusers of human rights, and polluters. Russia is a nuclear peer, meddles in every theater where the United States has vital and important interests, and has violated every norm of responsible behavior. If we can’t label them the cold war adversaries they are—we have lost before we begin.

Secure Your Own Territory

What nation leaves its borders wide open in times of cold war? This is madness. Under Biden’s presidency millions of illegal aliens from all over the world are pouring into the United States through our southern border. In 2022 alone, the Customs and Border Patrol encountered almost 100 people on the terrorist watchlist. Apprehensions of Chinese nationals, many of them men of military age, crossing into the United States illegally are up over 800 percent over the same period last fiscal year. Nobody checks their backgrounds and they are released into the United States on their own recognizance with a court date to be determined at some point in the future. Until America regains control over its open southern border, no nation in the world will believe America is serious about defending its interests.

Claim the Moral High Ground

America is in a contest with brutal dictatorships. The Biden administration must stop describing its China policy as competition, confrontation, and cooperation. This language implies an equivalence between the United States, a democratic country that respects international law, and Xi’s China, a brutal dictatorship that routinely violates key international norms, including through its support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Biden administration should communicate more about America’s freedom and achievements and less about its flaws. Some of the criticism of America’s shortcomings undermines the legitimacy, cohesion, and confidence of the American polity. It simply must be stopped.

Strengthen Deterrence

America cannot prevail unless we demonstrate the will to defend America’s interests. That’s not done by being the world’s policeman, babysitter, or any other metaphor. It is not about muscular actions like regime change or supposed “nation-building.” Nor does the United States have any inherent responsibility to protect some illusory world order. It is simply this: we must have armed forces with the capacity to protect America’s vital interests and be unafraid in our determination to safeguard them.

Grow and Protect the Economy

America can’t win without economic might. Too many Biden economic actions, from energy policies to inflation and infrastructure, have made the economy worse and ballooned our national debt. We must adopt policies that foster economic growth at home, including unleashing American energy, tax cuts to incentivize entrepreneurs, and targeted deregulation. Economic security is national security.

We must expand the safeguards that prevent China from exploiting America’s economy. We are efficient today at stopping Chinese companies that want to invest in U.S. companies in national security-sensitive sectors. We must also prevent U.S. investments in Chinese companies related in any way to the military or repression establishments in the People’s Republic.

Challenge Allies to do a Lot More

Putin’s war in Ukraine served as a global wake-up call for America’s allies. For instance, twenty countries in Europe are increasing their defense spending—but the figures ultimately amount to only about one percent in real growth over last year’s level.

The willingness to spend more on defense is not the long pole in the European tent—the big challenges are inflation, energy costs, debt servicing, and weak economies. There are serious fiscal structural challenges to Europe spending a lot more on its own defense. This is a key point because it’s not just about telling Europe to “defend yourself because the United States has to pivot to Asia.” Post the Ukraine war, Europe now agrees that it must do more for its own defense.

America’s task nowadays is to encourage Europe to overcome self-imposed constraints on economic growth. This is particularly true regarding energy, where the “green agenda” is hamstringing Europe—energy prices are so high now that there are serious concerns that European companies will move to countries with cheaper energy, resulting in the old continent deindustrializing.

Make the Case for a Freedom-Based Development Model

The unfortunate reality is that many developing countries have little interest in joining one camp or the other on the basis of ideals such as freedom. Their primary focus is on lifting the standard of living of their people. America must be very clear that our free market economic system is superior to the Chinese economic model controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and to the Russian model controlled by the kleptocracy in the Kremlin.

Contra popular notions, the China-Russia model has less to offer. In 2021, the United State’s GDP per capita was $63,670. In stark contrast, after seventy-four years of Communist Party rule and twenty-three years of Putinism, Russia’s level was $27,960. And after seventy-two years under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, China’s was only $16,997.

America ought to partner with developing countries to help them on the path of prosperity, not write blank checks of foreign aid. Economic partnerships that encourage foreign direct investment are the better answer for development. Partnerships are the answer even on security matters: Active diplomacy, encouraging foreign direct investment, security cooperation on strategic projects, and building stronger bridges can do more than raw military force.

Check the Checklist

When Washington starts delivering policies that achieve the ends we have laid out here, it will be a sign the United States is serious about winning the new cold war. Until then, we are just a target.

Dan Negrea is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center. He served at the U.S. Department of State in leadership positions in the Policy Planning Office and the Economic Bureau.

Dr. James Jay Carafano is a Heritage Foundation vice president, directing the think tank’s research on issues of national security and foreign relations.

Image: Shutterstock.

Last month, Lebanese authorities began a new campaign of harassment against Syrian refugees, and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the recipient of billions of American taxpayer dollars, is putting muscle behind the policy. The LAF has conducted dozens of raids in recent weeks, arresting hundreds of Syrians and forcibly deporting many of them to Bashar al-Assad’s Syria in violation of international law.

Herein lies the irony: at the outset of the Biden administration, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged to put “human rights at the center U.S. foreign policy.” But in Lebanon, U.S. policy is predicated on a paradox. On the one hand, Washington’s stated policy is one of support for accountability, rule of law, and respect for human rights. On the other hand, the administration remains wedded to the misguided belief that Lebanese institutions, like the LAF, are a positive counterweight to Iran-backed Hezbollah, the country’s dominant political and military force. In truth, however, the LAF answers to the Lebanese government, which at the moment is beholden to Hezbollah. So Washington ends up propping up the very order it claims to oppose.

At best, then, the recent LAF campaign against Syrian refugees reflects failed U.S. policy. At worst, the deportations reveal the administration’s stated policy to be nothing more than empty rhetoric.

Lebanon is home to 805,000 registered Syrian refugees but Lebanese officials estimate the actual number is upwards of 1.5 million. (The United Nations stopped registering new refugees in 2015, on the order of the Lebanese government.) In a country with a native population of only 5 million, the presence of so many refugees is impossible to ignore.

Four years ago, untrammeled corruption led to the implosion of the Lebanese financial sector, resulting in a historic economic collapse from which there has been no sustained recovery. Two-thirds of the country now lives in poverty and the refugee population continues to serve as a convenient scapegoat for a political class unserious about genuine economic or political reform. Worse yet, Lebanese officials are now using the refugees as pawns in a political game with Damascus.

The latest chapter in this story began in late March when, on a visit to Lebanon, the European Union Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic announced €60 million in humanitarian assistance for Lebanon. But, Lenarcic said, the European aid is “not a sustainable long-term solution” to Lebanon’s malaise. The financial crisis “was not created by the Syrian refugees” and it is incumbent upon Lebanese officials to implement critical reforms.

Lebanon’s caretaker Social Affairs Minister Hector Hajjar begged to differ. “Dear [Lenarcic],” Hajjar tweeted, “The Syrian displacement does not alone bear responsibility for the situation in [Lebanon], but it bears a huge part.” Hajjar proceeded to unload on Lenarcic a list of grievances against the refugees.

And so, Beirut started cracking down, deploying the U.S.-subsidized LAF as its enforcer. The LAF intensified raids and began summarily deporting refugees without any legal process; one refugee told reporters the LAF raids entailed “no search of the apartments, no questioning nor any suggestion of wrongdoing.”

In late April, an LAF official disclosed that some fifty refugees were forcibly deported to an uncertain fate in Syria. That number reportedly ballooned to 600 by early May. Back in Syria, the returnees face potential arrest, torture, and conscription.

According to deportee testimony, some of those expelled are held by the Syrian Army’s Fourth Division, which the U.S. Treasury sanctioned in 2020 for aiding in “the large-scale displacement of Syrian civilians.” The risks of remaining in Syria are prompting some to shell out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for gangs to illegally smuggle them back to Lebanon.

The United States and international community have provided Lebanon billions in humanitarian aid to address the refugee file, but that has not stopped Beirut from taking unilateral action before: in July, caretaker Minister of the Displaced, Issam Charafeddine, announced a government plan to repatriate 15,000 Syrian refugees per month. The plan was opposed by the United Nations and human rights NGOs who argued Syria remained unsafe for returning refugees. Charafeddine dismissed these concerns as a “fear campaign.”

The timing of the renewed campaign, including the increased role of the LAF, suggests that the Lebanese government and its military are leveraging Syrian refugees to serve their political agenda—namely, reconciliation with Assad. This round of forcible returns is taking place against the backdrop of Damascus’ readmission into the Arab League, and Beirut is eager to exploit the new political landscape.

While Beirut and Damascus have coordinated on the refugee file in the past, official engagement ran through Lebanon’s General Security Directorate. With Assad out in the cold, ministerial-level engagement was politically problematic. But now that the Arab states have opened the door for this type of engagement, the Lebanese are eager to walk through it.

Sure enough, Lebanese ministers convened in late April and delegated individuals to coordinate with the Assad regime on refugee returns. And, Lebanon’s caretaker Minister of the Displaced announced soon after Assad’s welcome that caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati is willing to lead a ministerial delegation to Syria. In the likelihood that Hezbollah succeeds at installing its ally and Assad’s personal friend, Suleiman Frangieh, as Lebanon’s president, this official track between Beirut and Damascus is posed to strengthen.

This brings us to the current moment. Speaking at the Arab League Summit on May 19, Mikati called on Arab states to invest in Syria’s reconstruction and “establish a roadmap” for Syrian refugees to be repatriated.

Predictably, it was Hezbollah that choreographed this entire dance. In a speech earlier this month, the leader of the U.S.-designated terror group directed Beirut to “restore normal relations with Syria,” adding that “there is no excuse anymore after Arabs restored ties.”

In short: the LAF, as an instrument of the Hezbollah-run Lebanese political order, exploited Syrian refugees to facilitate a political maneuver and potentially extract foreign aid and investment. The former head of Lebanon’s General Security admitted as much to the press on the eve of a donor conference in Brussels: “Come and pay, come and do something for us, so that we slow down [these deportations],” he said.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has done little more than pay lip service to “humanitarian issues in the region.” The administration continues to support the LAF, and even advocate energy deals between Syria and Lebanon that would profit Assad, as officials in Washington express qualified approval of reengaging Damascus. U.S. officials continue to reiterate that the return of Syrian refugees must be “voluntary, safe, and dignified,” but the LAF, apparently, gets a pass.

If the Biden administration is serious about human rights, it’s time to reconsider aid to the LAF.

The United States has invested over $3 billion in the Lebanese Armed Forces since 2006. In January, the Biden administration announced a new plan to subsidize LAF salary payments: $72 million will be funneled to the LAF and Lebanese Internal Security Forces through the United Nations Development Program. The scheme is legally suspect because it involves repurposing Foreign Military Financing (FMF) funds for functions outside FMF purview and circumvents statutes prohibiting the government from directly paying foreign military salaries.

For all its rhetoric about human rights, the Biden administration continues to underwrite Lebanese state institutions, such as the LAF, even if those institutions neither counterbalance Hezbollah nor conduct themselves responsibly. That American taxpayer dollars perennially flow irrespective of the LAF’s behavior suggests Washington’s stated policy, however well-intentioned, is hollow.

Natalie Ecanow is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Image: Shutterstock.

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