Diplomacy & Crisis News

On April 15, clashes between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out in the capital city of Khartoum and in the Darfur region of Sudan. Almost a month later, an estimated 500 people have been killed and thousands of civilians wounded. The war between these two rival military groups comes after months of disputes; the two sides worked together to oust the civilian prime minister in October 2012, but as negotiations over the division of power stalled, it led to increased tensions which escalated into the armed conflict we are seeing today. This fighting has the potential to spill over and spark further chaos abroad. Particularly worth paying attention to is neighboring Egypt to the north.

In the past month, it is estimated that over 90,000 Sudanese refugees have journeyed into Egypt; the real numbers are likely much higher, as thousands are waiting at the border—without shelter, safe drinking water, and reliable food—to cross over. Yet Egypt itself is not the ideal safe haven: it is currently grappling with an economic crisis, severe food shortages, and a devaluation of its currency, the Egyptian pound. Over the past year, Cairo has been borrowing large sums of money from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, further increasing its debt. If Egypt cannot rectify its worsening economic situation, the resulting instability may lead to widespread civil unrest, protests, and an exacerbated humanitarian crisis that could ripple throughout the North African region.

The Conflict in Sudan…

International efforts to halt the conflict in Sudan are well underway, with Saudi Arabia hosting conversations between the two rival factions in partnership with the United States. Talks are set to continue throughout the month of May. Meanwhile, though both the SAF and RSF have called for a ceasefire, the fighting continues. Both groups have likewise proposed several truces since the fighting began in April, but none of them have held. Each blames the other for not adhering to the terms of a truce, suggesting that the likelihood of any success at the negotiating table will be negligible.

As such, the conflict in Sudan continues to rage, displacing over 900,000 people internally, along with an estimated 120,000 crossing borders into neighboring countries such as the Central African Republic, Libya, Ethiopia, Chad, and Egypt. This number is expected to grow significantly in the coming weeks, with United Nations Human Rights Council estimating that as many as 800,000 people could cross various borders in the next six months. Given that Sudan was already home to a diverse population of refugees, and housed as many as 1 million displaced people from other various regional conflicts that have taken place over the past decade, the current crisis easily has the potential to ripple across the region.

As refugees scramble to get out of Khartoum and neighboring Sudanese regions, the majority are fleeing to Egypt in particular, as policies toward refugees in other North African countries, such as Libya and Tunisia, are less than desirable. Although Chad is now accepting small numbers of refugees, it had originally closed its borders due to internal stressors, leaving only the Egyptian-Sudanese southwest border into Argeen and Qustul-Ashkit as the only viable option for refugees fleeing the violence.

…Has Consequences for Egypt

This is quite the turnaround, as up until the conflict broke out Sudan was a major Egyptian economic partner, with trade revenues coming close to $1 billion annually. Egypt had also set forth strategic plans for agricultural investment in Sudan, which have since been put on hold due to the conflict, further hindering any plans for its economic recovery.

As the gateway to North Africa for Western countries, Egypt is a key trading and political partner with many states in the region. The United States’ total bilateral trade with Egypt totaled $9.1 billion in 2021, while EU trade exceeded €37 billion in 2022. In addition to Egypt’s economic value to the West, it also serves a strategic role in the Arab League, assisting in providing regional peace and stability. The country is also known for its vast natural resources, including petroleum, natural gas, phosphates, and iron ore; interest in these resources has only heightened since the war in Ukraine called energy supplies into question.

Yet Egypt itself is in a precarious economic situation, facing record-high inflation. In a conversation with a Japanese newspaper, Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi expressed concern that the influx of refugees from Sudan would place an increased economic burden on Egypt. Moreover, there are also security concerns: as thousands gather at the southwest border between the two countries, the chances for terrorism, human and drug trafficking, and smuggling activity are at an all-time high.

The border region between the two countries has a history of violence, with extremist groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda often using the area to carry out illicit activities in the region. Since the border has also been a hub for human trafficking, the substantial increase in refugees increases the odds for extremist group members to cross over into Egypt. In response to this threat, Cairo has dispatched anti-terrorism troops to the border to protect refugees and improve security.

The West Must Act to Prevent Further Instability

Nonetheless, the fighting in Sudan has put the nation at risk of collapse, with Egypt at risk of following suit due to its already fragile economic situation. The potential for increased destabilization and conflict throughout the region must be taken seriously. The international community must assist Egypt in processing and providing for these refugees.

Yet with both sides of the Sudanese conflict having tens of thousands of fighters, foreign backers, and resources, it is difficult to say when this war will end and how many people will continue to be displaced as a result. If peace talks in Saudi Arabia do not go well, this conflict has the potential to mirror other conflicts that have devastated entire regions, such as Lebanon and Syria. Aiding Egypt in its mitigation of the refugee crisis is one step that the West can take to prevent this from happening. The United Nations has pledged $445 million to ease the crisis, which will be sent to countries that are receiving refugees throughout the region. The United States, in partnership with the European Union, should provide direct assistance to Egypt to ensure that both Egyptians and the refugees crossing the border have access to secure food sources. Additional foreign aid should be provided to assist in stabilizing the Egyptian economy, incurring the security of U.S. and EU trading interests through the Suez Canal. These measures could include infrastructure packages and efforts to help stabilize the Egyptian pound.

As the conflict continues, it is imperative that the West take action. Egypt’s economy continues to deteriorate, and external stressors—including and especially the conflict in Sudan—could have monumental destabilizing impacts on the rest of the region, with consequences that could eventually affect both the United States and Europe directly.

As Washington engages both the SAF and the RSF in Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks, it should encourage reconciliation and a more permanent and successful solution. Otherwise, everyone involved will have to confront the consequences of failure: an increasing refugee crisis, additional stress on the Egyptian economy that could push it over the edge, and regional destabilization.

Riley Moeder is a Senior Analyst at New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, focusing her research on drivers of fragility in North Africa.

Image: Shutterstock.

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One of the biggest determinants on how the war in Ukraine will progress is closely tied to the amount of support each side in receiving by way of weapons and ammunition. While Russia is seeking allies to supply it with additional arms while pushing their arms producers to renovate and create more tanks and munitions, Ukraine’s NATO allies are also seeking further production and funding. The limit Ukraine’s allies have is that much of their advanced equipment is running low, even among NATO stockpiles, and require a lot of political support. The creation and distribution of newly formed arms for Ukraine is tied to the national economies of their allies, paid and supported by citizens in those countries. While support for defending Ukraine against Russia has been high, there is always a natural end of these phases of support. The end of these policy honeymoons are often accompanied by dwindling discussions and information on the conflict or issue, no matter how horrific the conflict might be.

The world during 2014 was an example of how some conflicts are given attention, while others are often avoided or outright ignored after a period of time. The conflict in Ukraine in 2014 was not a major event for people outside of Europe after the initial period, even after an airliner was shot down as part of the conflict in the East of Ukraine by an Anti-Aircraft system supplied by Russia. The war in Syria that bled into Iraq did initially receive a lot of attention due to the extreme violence, but even that conflict was eventually ignored, even when refugees in Western countries were being threatened by ISIS fighters in the middle of Western cities. Even natural disasters have been ignored, with Haiti’s natural disaster illiciting a lot of funding without long term solutions, with many still living in temporary shelter many years later. Afghanistan is currently experiencing this lack of policy attention, and the recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria was major news abroad for only about a week it seems.

While the end result of conflict in Ukraine in 2014 and mistakes made in Afghanistan more recently created many of the current problems, the level of attention given to these policy issues are often intentionally managed. This is not done by the degree of importance, but by the advantage an issue might give a small interest group in pursuing their larger goals, even if it has negative long term consequences. This management of attention of policy issues can help a cause, but in many cases it develops into a strategy to ignore serious issues for the sake of unserious discussions. This might be the biggest threat to Ukraine at the moment, but it is also a major threat to many innocent people worldwide when English language media go into their honeymoon management mode, picking and choosing who is saved and who is intentionally given up on. Some might say it is just politics, but if your politics is intentionally hurting others, it is simply negligence.

Après avoir perdu deux guerres contre l'armée russe, le maquis tchétchène compte aujourd'hui une majorité de djihadistes. En réponse, le pouvoir local, allié de Moscou, exalte la tradition soufie et la polygamie. Cette manipulation de la religion n'a pas empêché la recrudescence des attentats. Au grand (...) / Tchétchénie, Caucase, Islam, Religion, Répression, Russie, Relations bilatérales, Police, Terrorisme - 2018/04

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In five days of fighting that ended with a Saturday night ceasefire, terrorists in Gaza fired more than a thousand rockets into Israel—1,468 rockets to be precise. Thanks to bomb shelters and the Iron Dome missile defense system, the barrage only claimed the lives of two victims inside Israel, one of them a Palestinian construction worker from Gaza. Four Palestinians also died when rockets fell short of the border, hitting homes in Gaza, according to Israel’s military.

This latest round of hostilities is at odds with what Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, described last week as the “fundamental direction and trend of de-escalation that we have supported and encouraged” throughout the Middle East. Before a gathering of experts on regional affairs, Sullivan explained that the positive developments of the past two years were no accident, but “the result of what we have tried to lay down as a comprehensive policy framework.”

By itself, a single flare-up in Gaza does not discredit Sullivan’s broader point. He stressed he was “not pulling out the victory flag” and warned that conflict can resume at any time. Yet a closer look at the violence in Gaza shows that the events of the past few days are part of a trend that runs counter to the White House’s claim that regional tensions have diminished since Biden took office. Specifically, Sullivan underplayed the role of Iran’s clerical dictatorship in stoking conflict across the region and in Gaza in particular.

Israel’s adversary in the latest round of fighting was not Hamas, but the lesser-known and smaller Islamic Jihad. The latter is also a U.S.-designated terrorist organization committed to the destruction of Israel and its replacement with an Islamic state. What makes Islamic Jihad different is the exceptional degree of its subordination to the regime in Tehran. The group is an instrument Iran employs to escalate tensions with Israel on demand.

Tehran does not rely on a single proxy, however. Rather, it seeks to surround Israel with Iranian confederates. There is Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, along with Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza. They often refer to themselves the “axis of resistance.” Last month, during the final days of Ramadan, Israel had to contend with near-simultaneous attacks from Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. The scale of the attacks was limited, but they underscored that Iran and its proxies can press Israel on four different fronts at once. Tehran calls this “the unification of the arenas.”

Sullivan’s address skirted this dynamic entirely. In his view, one of the administration’s three most important achievements in the region entailed “Ending a war in Gaza in eleven days [in May 2021], then working to keep the peace even as it’s punctuated by periods of heightened tension.”

First of all, Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did most of the heavy lifting that led to the May 2021 ceasefire—a role that Cairo played again in this round of fighting.

More importantly, the peace is not being kept. Violence in the West Bank and Gaza has been growing since Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched a wave of attacks on Israeli civilians in March. Iran continues its efforts to arm Hezbollah with precision-guided munitions that can target Israeli infrastructure and population centers more effectively.

The threat that looms larger than proxy wars is Iran’s rapid advance toward a nuclear weapons capability. Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before Congress in March that “Iran could produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon in less than two weeks, and would only take several more months to produce an actual nuclear weapon.” The White House’s response to this problem is to say that it’s all the fault of the previous administration. As Sullivan explained, the administration is “engaging Iran diplomatically regarding its nuclear program, and we continue to believe that it was a tragic mistake to leave the [2015 nuclear] deal with nothing at all to replace it.”

This diplomatic engagement has not reined in the Iranian nuclear program. In fact, Iran took its most provocative steps toward a nuclear weapons capability—such as enriching uranium to 83 percent purity—after Biden took office and made clear he would offer extensive sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran returning to the 2015 agreement.

The clerical regime is also displaying unusual audacity outside the region. Its agents sought to kidnap Iranian-American dissident Masih Alinejad on American soil and assassinate senior officials who served in the Trump administration. British intelligence likewise reported multiple Iranian plots to kidnap or kill enemies of the regime on British soil. Iran also continues to hold both U.S. and British hostages. And it is arming Russia with weapons, including attack drones, that help to devastate Ukrainian infrastructure.

There is one adversary, however, with whom the Iranian regime is now on better terms: Saudi Arabia. In March, China stunned foreign observers by brokering a deal for Tehran and Riyadh to restore diplomatic relations and reduce regional tensions. The Biden administration sought to play down concerns that Beijing had stolen a march on Washington. If the deal promotes de-escalation then it is a good thing, officials argued—a point that Sullivan echoed in his remarks.

In the short term, there may be some actual reduction in tensions, especially in Yemen, where Riyadh and Tehran have been fighting a proxy war since 2015. But their newfound comity is better understood as an expression of the Saudis’ realization that they cannot hold the line against Iranian destabilization of the region if the United States does not engage the threat seriously.

There are good things the Biden administration wants to accomplish in the Middle East. It seeks to “strengthen and expand the Abraham Accords” to include normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Sullivan said. In contrast to his predecessor, Biden has not wavered on the importance of maintaining a small contingent of U.S. troops in northeast Syria to prevent both the resurgence of the Islamic State and, to some extent, the expansion of Iranian power.

Yet if the White House persuades itself that tensions are truly subsiding across the Middle East, it may find itself unprepared for the significant escalation the Iranian regime is planning against America’s allies across the region.

David Adesnik is a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Image: Shutterstock.

In a gruesome display of brutality, Russian soldiers recorded themselves beheading a defenseless Ukrainian soldier, sparking outrage and condemnation. The footage surfaces while Russia holds the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) presidency—much to the opposition of Ukraine and its allies. The brazen paradox of an international aggressor presiding over an institution of peace underscores the absurdity of Russia’s UNSC presidency.

The legitimacy of Russia’s UNSC seat has been questioned, in no small part due to the lack of formal approval from the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Russia’s succession of the USSR’s seat in the UNSC is not a result of an automatic operation of law, but rather the result of a political choice—whether logical or not. Despite having never been voted into UN membership by the UNGA, Russia was given the USSR seat in 1991. Article 4 of the UN Charter requires new members to be admitted through an UNGA vote; however, Russia sidestepped this stipulation by claiming to be the sole legitimate successor of the USSR’s UN membership. The tacit consent of Russia’s UNSC seat is now at the forefront of international debate. All successor states of former Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were obliged to be admitted by an UNGA resolution—only Russia was granted silent approval to proceed not according to precedent or law.

The United Nations is also discredited by the mockery that is Russia’s UNSC presidency. Russia at the helm of the UNSC has an internationally-sanctioned channel to disseminate propaganda which risks the UN becoming a mouthpiece. The UN’s credibility helps legitimize disinformation that Russia circulates through “narrative laundering,” whereby Russia cultivates proxies to spread disinformation to mainstream media. By clouding or legitimizing disinformation sources, Russia promotes fragments of false narratives, which aim to discredit Ukraine. Russia’s strategic communication strategies enable it to bring anti-Ukrainian propaganda to the Global South, particularly to Africa and Latin America, to shape public opinion favorably. Such actions undermine the UN and erode trust in its legitimacy.

This is not the first time that the UN is unable to address Russia’s defiance of international law. In 2009, following Russia’s invasion of South Ossetia, Russia vetoed the extension of the UN observer mission in Georgia. This shifted international attention from the invasion and set Russia on a path of continued impunity. Following the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russia’s UNSC presence ensured that neither a resolution reaffirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity nor action reversing the annexation could be taken. When the Syrian Government used chemical weapons against civilians in 2018, Russia vetoed proposals for a meaningful response to the war crimes to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power. These examples reinforce the continuity of Russian harm to the UN’s mission and illustrate the imperative of UNSC reform. They also highlight institutional risks arising from Russian veto rights in the context of the Ukraine war. If unreformed, the UN’s fate might resemble that of the League of Nations, which failed to prevent World War II due to non-reaction to Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland.

To reform the UNSC, the UN Charter needs to be amended—amendments require ratification from two-thirds of UNGA members including all permanent UNSC members. Past reform attempts have been an uphill battle; however, there are short-term tools to address Russia’s repeated disregard of the institution’s mission.

First, investigations into the transfer process of the USSR’s permanent seat to Russia should be launched. These investigations operate on the assumption that Belarus and Ukraine, as founding UN members, had an equally justified claim to the seat—a characteristic no other original members share. Second, Belarus should be disqualified from the permanent seat due to complicity in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Third, rules on procedural matters should be invoked and a vote on replacing Russian UNSC representatives initiated. This decision requires a nine-member UNSC majority and cannot be vetoed by permanent members. By referencing Russia’s violations of the UN Charter through its disrespect of Ukrainian sovereignty, these tools can counter Russian disinformation and restore institutional credibility.

Long-term reforms should not be off the table. At a minimum, reforms should allow for temporary suspension of a member’s presidency. The basis for suspension could be an UNSC simple majority vote declaring a member temporarily unfit to fulfill the presiding role. This vote should be held based on a set of criteria, including the invasion of another country. The basis could also be UNGA support of suspension exemplified by resolutions against a UNSC member’s conduct.

Almost eighty years after World War II, the UN faces a similar fate as the League of Nations when it failed to prevent the largest catastrophe of the century. If the UN fails to take meaningful action against Russia, it could spell the end of the institution’s legitimacy and encourage similar future UN Charter violations. The international community must address Russian recklessness, lest Russia escalates its war crimes and hijacking of the international order. 

Svenja Kirsch is a Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. She is affiliated with the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship. She works on the future of European security amid the war in Ukraine and specializes on the future role of NATO and the EU, cyberwarfare, and Europe’s role in great power competition.

Vladyslav Wallace is a Ukrainian-American Belfer Young Leader Student Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. He works on U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy and specializes in matters related to Eurasia such as human rights and democracy.

Image: Vitalii Vodolazskyi / Shutterstock.com

This week, world leaders will converge in Hiroshima, Japan, to kick off the G7 Summit. This gathering of leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany, Canada, Italy, and others presents a well-timed opportunity to lay the groundwork for an international artificial intelligence regulatory framework.

Unfortunately, AI development isn't even listed on the agenda.

Instead, the spotlight will likely focus on U.S.-China relations, a trilateral meeting about Indo-Pacific cooperation between the United States, Japan, and South Korea, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, with the overarching theme of the summit revolving around outreach to the Global South and how the G7 can encourage a rules-based order. All are worthy topics, but it looks like the conversation on AI regulation and development is at risk of being sidelined altogether. That would be a missed opportunity to address rapid innovation in AI and its inevitable societal implications.

The G7 should initiate the development of a codified and widely adopted agreement or treaty setting clear rules prohibiting dangerous AI development. This agreement should consider prominent state approaches to AI regulation while addressing industry and open-source development standards as distinct components to AI development. It might encourage the adoption of a risk-based AI regulatory framework, which would limit dangerous AI applications while enabling competition in the AI space. The G7 should also anticipate reluctance from less aligned nations, such as China, and formulate strategies to align international interest in establishing international rules and standards around AI development.

Since the debut of GPT-3, policymakers worldwide have grappled with regulating AI as a groundbreaking technology. Today, industry-led pacts to limit training of large language models (LLMs) beyond GPT-4 provide some respite, allowing for a regulatory catch-up. But this weak, implicit pause on training future LLMs is precarious, and regulators are ill-prepared for the imminent evolution in the AI landscape. The G7 needs to address this and work toward establishing international norms for AI regulation. If they don’t, humanity could reap the consequences.

International norm-setting is urgently needed. A bipolar AI race between the United States and China may lead to a race to the bottom. Due to the extreme uncertainty presented by further AI development, it is crucial to govern the rollout of advanced AI models, allowing international lawmakers and regulators to anticipate and be prepared to address the spillover effects of further AI development.

The growing competency of the open-source AI development community poses a substantial hurdle to regulation. Open-source development blurs the lines of responsibility for different AI applications and makes AI regulations harder to enforce, despite being initially encouraged by tech giants. With such a chaotic approach to AI development, how do we hold AI developers accountable for myopic AI advancement? While many countries are considering how to regulate AI, a risk-based AI regulation framework has been the most pragmatic solution. This approach, which paved the way for the UK’s risk-based AI Framework launched in March 2023, fosters innovation while ensuring the cautious development of AI applications with potentially negative impacts. Under a risk-based framework, AI regulation is considered in the context of specific AI use cases as opposed to curbing AI development unilaterally.  Adopting a risk-based approach allows regulators to mitigate against existential threats presented by underregulated AI development while allowing countries to be competitive in the AI space.

Recent developments, like Italy’s resolved ban on ChatGPT after OpenAI addressed the nation's data privacy concerns, suggest that there are ways to reach a consensus between the AI industry and state regulators. The summit could serve as a platform to explore similar data standards and privacy concerns on a larger scale, providing a path to align AI development with international expectations through multinational agreements.

The genie is indeed out of the bottle. The G7 nations must collaborate on a strategic plan to address emerging norms and suggest an international approach to mitigating the perverse downstream effects of AI. Their focus should be two-pronged: encouraging proactive AI innovation while minimizing negative spillovers instigated by AI. Their ultimate goals should be encouraging all states to engage in a dynamic, collaborative approach to international AI regulation.

Cassandra Shand is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge and a Young Voices Innovation Fellow. Twitter: @CassandraShand.

Image: Shutterstock.

La situation tchétchène concentre un ensemble de facteurs qui expliquent le degré de violence inouï exercé contre les hommes qui ont des pratiques homosexuelles ou qui sont soupçonnés d'en avoir. Pour échapper à une répression qui, avant les purges étatiques, s'exerce au sein même des familles, des (...) / Caucase, Tchétchénie, Répression, Fascisme, État, Sexualité, Police - 2018/04

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“Prometheism,” an ideology and strategy devised in the early part of the twentieth century to combat Russia’s imperialism, is being revived in Europe’s east. The ideology—whose name is derived from ancient Greek mythology, in which the god Prometheus stole fire from the Olympian gods and gave it to humans as a symbol of knowledge, technology, and advancement—represents freedom, progress, and national liberation from Russian imperialism. Poland and Ukraine stand at the forefront of this developing movement, aimed at weakening Russia from within by supporting a host of national and regional groups seeking sovereignty and independence.

The Promethean strategy was originally developed by revolutionary fighters for Polish independence. In response to Russia’s mass invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the approach has now been revived and unofficially adopted by both Ukraine and Poland. Both Kyiv and Warsaw are laying the foundations of a new power center in Europe, having put aside their historic disputes to share a strategic vision that the Russian state must never again be allowed to threaten its neighbors. With a combined population of some eighty million, two of Europe’s most powerful armies, and substantial prospects for economic development after the war, both countries will be strengthened by a closely synchronized foreign and security policy.

Poland’s priorities are to help Ukraine defeat the Russian military, gain membership in NATO, and position a major NATO force in the country on a permanent basis. It also seeks to accelerate Ukraine’s membership in the European Union and provide a major boost to its post-war economy. A vital component of Ukraine’s revival and reconstruction is to guarantee that Russia no longer poses a threat to its territory and statehood. In this context, Prometheism offers an important strategy to embroil Moscow in its own internal problems while dismantling its imperial possessions.

Current “neo-Prometheism” is the third stage in its historic development following the collapse of Tsarism and Sovietism. The first Promethean Movement emerged during the death throes of Tsarist Russia and heralded the national liberation of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland from Mosvow’s control as an example to other captive nations. Lenin’s Bolsheviks staged a coup in 1917 in order to restore the collapsing Russian empire under an internationalist communist ideology. After several years of war and reconquest, they managed to subjugate several new states that had declared their independence, including Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and a number of republics in what is now the Russian Federation, including in the North Caucasus and Middle Volga.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Prometheism was both an anti-imperial and anti-communist movement that promoted the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the creation of independent states. It encouraged any centrifugal forces, whether ethnonational or regional, that could undermine Moscow’s control. It was also based on the calculation that if Russia again succeeded in subjugating Poland, then it could dominate all of Central Europe. According to modern Poland’s founding father Józef Piłsudski and his supporters, Poland could only be protected against Moscow’s expansionism by pushing Russia back eastward and keeping it permanently enclosed within the borders of the sixteenth-century Grand Duchy of Muscovy. Poland’s plans for a wide-ranging Promethean revolution in the post-Tsarist empire were bolstered by its defeat of the Red Army in 1920, but were subsequently thwarted by the Treaty of Riga signed in March 1921. The treaty did not guarantee Poland a lasting peace, while the partition of Belarusian and Ukrainian territories prevented the creation of independent states and allies along Poland’s eastern border.

During the interwar period, Warsaw established a Promethean League that included representatives of nations that sought to gain independence from the Soviet Union and Polish strategists and activists that worked behind enemy lines. The Promethean agenda was followed by several public institutions dealing with Eastern Europe, and in the late 1920s became state policy until the signing of the Polish-Soviet non-aggression Pact of 1932. The Promethean project suffered a major setback when Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany signed their own non-aggression pact in 1939 to divide up Europe’s east and subsequently launched World War Two by invading Poland. As a result of the war, Moscow’s post-war communist empire captured half of Europe and stifled all national dissent, but Promethean ideology survived, mostly in émigré circles.

During the 1970s, Polish émigrés Jerzy Giedroyc and Juliusz Mieroszewski developed a doctrine that followed the Promethean tradition by advocating reconciliation among all Central-East European countries, the independence of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, and for a future independent Poland to give up any claims to its former eastern territories that were seized by the Soviet Union after World War Two. This policy was adopted by all democratic governments after the fall of Communism in 1989 and was central to developing trust between Poland and its newly independent neighbors. This second stage of Prometheism bore results in the early 1990s when the Soviet bloc was dissolved, the Central European countries liberated themselves from Moscow’s control, and the Soviet Union itself collapsed into fifteen new states, including Ukraine. In effect, this constituted the second phase of dismantling the Russian empire.

No Polish government or any significant political party has harbored aspirations to absorb, partition, or suborn Ukraine or Belarus. On the contrary, since the rejection of Soviet imperialism, Warsaw has campaigned for the freedom of independent states to enter the multi-national institutions of their choice. For Poland, NATO and EU membership and a strategic partnership with the United States became cornerstones for the defense of its independence. Warsaw also endeavored to secure and stabilize its eastern borders by helping immediate neighbors move closer toward European institutions. In addition, Poland has revived the post-World War I “Intermarium” project among Central-East European states including Ukraine. This is not depicted as a substitute for either NATO or the EU, but as a proposed alliance to enhance regional cooperation in national defense and economic development and as mutual protection against any resurgence of Russian imperialism. Poland’s multi-national regional efforts have included the Three Seas Initiative to enhance economic and infrastructural connections between the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas.

Moscow’s full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022 was an attempt to recapture wider swathes of its former empire. The plan has not only failed militarily, but it has backfired geopolitically by reviving a multi-national neo-Promethean movement that is supported by both Warsaw and Kyiv. The third historical stage of this broad multi-national project is the permanent rupture of the centralized Putinist-Muscovite inner empire, disguised as the Russian Federation. Although the fracturing of Russia is not official state policy, both Warsaw and Kyiv have hosted meetings among representatives from national and regional movements that seek liberation from Moscow. Although most activists operate in exile, they also maintain links with their home republics and regions inside Russia. An embassy for the independent Chechen-Ichkerian government in exile will be opened in Kyiv in May and other national movements are likely to follow suit. Several Ukrainian officials, Polish parliamentarians, and a number of experts have stated that Russia’s demise is essential for any durable regional security.

A growing multi-national movement unofficially supported by Kyiv and Warsaw held its first Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum in Washington in April with representatives from over a dozen republics and regions demanding independence from the Russian Federation. Moscow’s failing war in Ukraine and its increasing isolation from Europe and the rest of the democratic world provide a unique opportunity for building new states to ensure the dissolution of Europe’s last empire. Activists representing a diverse assortment of nations from Chechnya and Tatarstan to Siberia, Buryatia, and Sakha in the Far East believe that conditions for imperial collapse are ripening. Moscow’s enormous military losses and the country’s accelerating economic decline are revealing the incompetence of Russia’s ruling elite. Moscow is increasingly perceived as an exploiting colonial metropolis that has failed to provide either security or welfare for its subjects.

Ukraine’s military victory will also demonstrate that Russia’s claimed borders are transient. The loss of occupied Crimea and three Ukrainian regions officially annexed by Moscow will symbolically and practically demonstrate that Russia is losing territory. Other regions can also free themselves from Moscow’s control as regime capacities weaken in holding together the diverse and unwieldy Russian state. Warsaw and Kyiv believe that it is crucial for independent voices beyond the narrow Moscow-centric liberal opposition to bring their message to the United States and Western Europe, similar to the “captive nations” during the Cold War whose independence was supported by the U.S. government and Congress.

The key message for Western leaders is that encouraging regions and republics to cooperate in designing a “post-Russia” will help contain the violent disintegration that many in the West fear. The regime in Moscow is likely to promote violence to try and keep the country together, as occurred during the collapse of the twentieth-century Russian Empire and to some extent during the disintegration of the Soviet Union, with military crackdowns in several Union Republics. Moreover, it is unclear how many states will arise from the demise of the Russian Federation, what their precise borders will be, and what sort of governments will gain power. Nonetheless, nations trapped inside Russia who want to coexist peacefully with their neighbors will welcome Western support and mediation over statehood, borders, resources, and institutions. Hence, preparations to recognize the independence of new states seeking freedom, democracy, self-determination, and international cooperation are fully in line with Western values and interests.

Aspiring states also want to focus attention on the positive outcome of Russia’s rupture. A shrinking state under international sanctions with a collapsing budget and escalating internal pressures for the formation of new states will have severely reduced capabilities to attack its neighbors. Moscow’s ability to entangle Europe in energy dependence, engage in political corruption, and spread disinformation will all be curtailed. NATO’s eastern flank from the Arctic to the Black Sea will become more secure and enhance economic development, business investment, and regional cooperation. Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia can regain their occupied territories and petition for EU and NATO integration without fear of Russia’s reaction. Belarus can also secure its independence. Despite frequent threats from Moscow, a shrunken Russian state will not use nuclear weapons against internal adversaries and its leaders will not commit suicide by attacking the West. As during the Soviet collapse, they will seek to retain as much power and assets as possible to ensure their political survival.

The Promethean strategy has a positive view of Russia’s citizens rather than the patronizing stereotypes evident among many Western policymakers who see them as passive followers of autocratic rulers. With open support from the West for pluralism, democracy, and regional sovereignty, Russia’s citizens will realize that they are not globally isolated. They will also need information that Moscow suppresses, particularly on the political and economic advantages of forming new states that cultivate cooperative relations with all neighbors.

Russia’s rupture and the emergence of over a dozen entities is likely to be a prolonged process that can generate new instabilities for which Washington needs to prepare and minimize any spillovers and escalation of regional conflicts. However, the positive results must also be acknowledged, as several arising states can become new allies for Western and Eastern democracies, whether across the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Oceans. American leaders should not fear the collapse of a failed empire but view it as an opportunity to intensify multi-national cooperation, open new markets, and help embryonic democracies to develop. They also need to understand that Polish-Ukrainian neo-Prometheism is based on an optimistic vision of Europe and Eurasia, in which freedom ultimately prevails over imperial subjugation.

Janusz Bugajski is a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington DC. His recent book is Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture. His next book is titled Pivotal Poland: Europe’s Rising Strategic Player. He has just toured Ukraine with the Ukrainian translation of his Russia Rupture book.

Image: Shutterstock.

Two recent diplomatic events brokered by the West in the ongoing peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan indicate that the United States and the European Union have become fully engaged in brokering a deal to normalize relations between the two sides. The outcomes of these two events also represent the final nail in the coffin for the secessionist ambitions of the Karabakh Armenians and their supporters.

The West has thus now unambiguously aligned its position on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan with support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. This is due not only to a renewed realization of the advantages of upholding this cornerstone principle of world order centered on the UN Charter, but also to the recognition that Azerbaijan is the indispensable country for the advancement of the West’s strategic energy and connectivity ambitions in the Caspian Sea basin, and Eurasia more broadly (a more useful term here might be “Silk Road region”).

This, in turn, implies a strong connection between supporting the establishment of enduring peace between Baku and Yerevan along lines proposed by the former in spring 2022 and broader Western interests in what Zbigniew Brzezinski called the “strategically pivot states” of Eurasia, like Azerbaijan. And this, in turn, implies the relativization of a values-first U.S. foreign policy in the face of more solidly realist geopolitical and geoeconomic considerations. In the present case, this involves understanding the implication of the contrast between the fact that Azerbaijan’s president was the “first post-Soviet leader to publicly distance himself from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” with the assessment that Armenia is a satellite of Russia and an ally of Iran—notwithstanding perhaps genuine yet tactically unfulfillable overtures to the West.

The foregoing is an integral part of the background against which we can measure the achievements of the two recent events brokered by the West involving the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process. The first was held in Washington and hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 1–4 May 2023. Delegations led by the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan (Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, respectively) produced significant enough progress on the text of a peace treaty to set the stage for the second recent event: a meeting between the leaders of the two states (Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev, respectively) in Brussels on May 14, 2023, which was hosted by EU Council president Charles Michel.

The statement read by Michel at the conclusion of the Brussels meeting (we can safely assume it was drafted with Armenian and Azerbaijani input) suggests that peace has never been closer—both its tone and substance reflect Blinken’s remark at the end of the Washington meetings that “an agreement is within sight, within reach”—whilst still leaving unanswered the question of whether it is close enough.

Four basic observations are warranted in this regard.

First, the Brussels meeting was the first one between President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan in many months. It took quite a long time for Michel to overcome the opposition of French president Emmanuel Macron, who insisted on personally participating in the continued EU facilitation of the peace talks, which Azerbaijan deemed unacceptable. An intra-EU compromise seems to have finally been worked out. Without American support, however, the peace process would have likely reverted entirely to Russian mediation. Not only did the United States pick up the ball after the EU needlessly dropped it, but Washington and Brussels seem now to be closely coordinating their efforts: the outcome of the American thread of the process looks to have been seamlessly woven into the European one.

This concerted Western effort is all the more important since it does not necessarily appear to be at zero-sum odds with Russian mediation. This effectually makes the South Caucasus the sole geopolitical theater in which the White House and the Kremlin are presently not in overt opposition, which suggests a tacit realization by each that their respective interests in this part of the world are not entirely incompatible. The veracity of this hypothesis, however, will be tested soon on May 19, when foreign ministers Mirzoyan and Bayramov travel to Moscow for further talks brokered by the Russian side.

Second, the fact that Aliyev met with EU Commission vice president Maroš Šefčovič on the same day that Michel hosted peace talks in Brussels suggests that the two main branches of the EU—the Council and the Commission—are also closely coordinating their approaches. Further evidence is the meeting that took place between Bayramov and the head of the EU diplomatic service, Josep Borrell, one day later, also in Brussels. Of note is that the Aliyev-Šefčovič and Bayramov-Borrell meetings took place two weeks after the latest round of the EU-Azerbaijan Energy Dialogue between EU Commissioner for Energy and Energy Minister Parviz Shahbazov, which also took place in Brussels.

Both the timing and outcome of the Aliyev-Šefčovič meeting represents a critical signpost. It demonstrates that the bilateral strategic energy partnership is further deepening, both in terms of the provision of more Azerbaijani natural gas but also renewables from Azerbaijani (and Georgian) sources in the years and decades ahead. All this flows directly from the terms of the historic Memorandum of Understanding that was signed in Baku between Aliyev and President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen in July 2022.

Why is the Azerbaijan-EU strategic energy partnership important in the context of the peace process? Because it shows that the EU is broadening its understanding of the consequences of Azerbaijan’s indispensability, as characterized above. The imperative of fulfilling the unique potential of the aforementioned strategic energy partnership ensures the EU remains constructively neutral in its role as a facilitator of the peace process. This appreciably reduces the influence of “spoilers” like the Armenian diaspora operating in parts of the EU, particularly in France (and, by extension, parts of the United States). It also compartmentalizes the “Macron effect” by indicating clearly that the French president’s participation in informal Aliyev-Pashinyan-Michel meetings scheduled to take place on the margins of the European Political Community summits in June (Moldova) and October (Spain) will be supplemented by the participation of German chancellor Olaf Scholz, whom Baku considers to be less partisan than his French counterpart.

In other words, when it comes to engaging strategically with the Silk Road region, particularly in the context of providing support to Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization and the anticipated peace dividend, the EU is no longer even pretending that geopolitics and geo-economics are not intrinsically linked. This is a direct consequence of the EU’s decision to impose sanctions on Russia, in close coordination with the United States.

Third, the press statement made by Michel after the Brussels meeting shows that the five peace principles that Azerbaijan put forward in Spring 2022, as noted above, continue to be the primary basis of the negotiations.

Going into some of the textual details is warranted, because the Michel statement is refreshingly clear on several fundamental points, two of which should be highlighted. One, the document says that Aliyev and Pashinyan “confirmed their unequivocal commitment to the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration,” which recognized all the Soviet-era union republic borders as the sovereign borders of the newly-independent states. The immediate sequel explicitly mentions the square kilometer area of both countries, which unmistakably signifies no support for what the Michel statement calls the “former Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast” as anything other than constituting an integral part of Azerbaijan. The message is clear: the Michel statement extinguishes the secessionist hope of the Karabakh Armenians and their supporters. The territory former NKAO, which is known in secessionist circles as “Artsakh,” has no legal personality whatsoever.

Two, the entire paragraph of the Michel statement on what Baku calls the Zangezur Corridor is very encouraging from the standpoint of regional connectivity. The document says that the Armenian and Azerbaijani position on “reopening the railway connection to and via Nakhchivan” are “very close to each other.” This implies that a road connection is unlikely to be part of the agreement, at least not initially. But it indicates that a rail link will probably become a reality in relatively short order. What still needs to be finalized, the document says, are some modalities—including customs arrangements—and a concrete timetable on construction. But the text indicates that Aliyev and Pashinyan agreed to instruct their technical negotiating teams to get this done. Presumably, this means that Michel (and perhaps Blinken) will push Armenia not to renege on its commitment to actually achieve a breakthrough on the Zangezur rail link. The document does not indicate what, if any, role will be played by the Russian FSB Border Guard Service in this context, which, after all, is one of the provisions of Article 9 of the November 10, 2020 tripartite statement. In fact, the Michel document does not mention Russia at all.

The fourth observation concerning the Michel statement centers on what else the document did not say. One, the text says absolutely nothing about arrangements having to do with the Lachin Corridor. The omission here likely implies that this topic falls outside of the EU thread of the peace process and lends credence to Baku’s position that these arrangements—now and in the future—effectually have nothing to do with Armenia, either.

Two, the Michel statement also says nothing about the establishment of any sort of new foreign on-the-ground monitoring presence or oversight or anything similar—whether in the context of the delimitation of the Armenia-Azerbaijan border or in the context of the providing for the Karabakh Armenian population. Regarding the former, it does not exclude the possibility of Armenia making side deals with Russia, the CSTO, or the EU in this regard, although Azerbaijan is unlikely to take kindly to such unilateral or uncoordinated steps. Baku’s reaction to the establishment and subsequent deployment of a small, two-year European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA) speaks to this point, as does the Armenian perception of its ineffectiveness. Regarding the latter, the statement does indicate Michel’s “encouragement” for Azerbaijan to “develop a positive agenda with the aim of guaranteeing the rights and security of this population, in close cooperation with the international community.” This, understandably is a perfectly reasonable standard for what is now accepted as being a domestic matter (more on this below), which can be achieved through the resumption of what the Michel statement calls a “transparent and constructive dialogue” between the central authorities in Baku and the local Karabakh Armenian population.

There are two evident implications of the foregoing. One, foreigners are unlikely to actively participate in Baku’s talks with the Karabakh Armenians in anything resembling the manner in which they have in the peace talks between Baku and Yerevan. This suggests that the Armenian side has dropped its earlier demand for the intra-Azerbaijan (Karabakh) discussions to take place within an “internationally mediated” mechanism. Two, no new foreign civilian, much less military, presence on the ground is likely to be established to “guarantee” the implementation of whatever ends up being agreed between the central authority and the Karabakh Armenians.

If Armenia actually strikes a deal with Azerbaijan, then normalization with Turkey will swiftly follow. The resulting peace dividend would provide Yerevan with significant diplomatic, economic, and security benefits whilst bringing Armenia back into the regional fold after three decades of political isolation. Although a derailment remains a possibility, the train does appear to be nearing its station. Not only because the West now truly seems to understand the “geostrategic stakes and is making a smart play,” as Mike Doran recently wrote, but also because all external stakeholders, including Russia, appear to have concluded that the continued pursuit of their respective interests lies in maintaining, even strengthening, their ties with Baku.

All things considered, Azerbaijan’s intensifying centripetal allure may indeed turn out to be the reason the peace process crosses the finish line.

Damjan Krnjević Mišković is Professor of Practice at ADA University and Director for Policy Research, Analysis, and Publications at its Institute for Development and Diplomacy, serving as Co-Editor of Baku Dialogues. He is a former senior Serbian and UN official (2004–2013) who previously served as managing editor of The National Interest (2002–2004). He is also a member of the Board of Editors of Orbis. The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author.

Image: Shutterstock.

There is no other way to say it: the outcome of Turkey’s elections is a huge setback for the country’s political opposition. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the “Nation Alliance’s” candidate, seeking to defeat incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gained 45 percent of the vote, coming in second after Erdogan, who achieved 49.3 percent. Kilicdaroglu and Erdogan will now face a runoff election on May 28. Whoever crosses the 50 percent threshold will win the presidency. Many who voted for Kilicdaroglu are understandably demoralized and stunned at the outcome. This was supposed to be the occasion when Erdogan was finally dethroned. Alas. Critics are crying foul play, while others declare that it’s not over yet, and there is still a chance to defeat Erdogan at the runoff. How expected was this outcome and what are the chances for Kilicdaroglu to defeat Erdogan on May 28?

It depends on who you talk to. A variety of established observers of Turkish politics in the media, academia, and policy world predicted for months that Erdogan’s downfall was imminent. This certainty was predicated on the overly-confident claim that the country’s depressed economy, the impact of the earthquake, and Erdogan’s deepening authoritarian slide were all straws that broke the camel’s back and frustrated the citizenry. Therefore, Erdogan would lose. On the other hand, more cautious observers highlighted several red flags, mainly related to the nature of Turkey’s authoritarian regime, arguing that it was too soon to pop the champagne. This latter group of observers was somewhat callously labeled as “pessimists” and ignored. The actual result on election night was that much more stunning, because of the false euphoria generated by Turkey’s mainstream independent media, respected scholars, and policy analysts.

Bottom line: expectation management should have guided analysts’ analysis, which unfortunately gave way to them becoming cheerleaders for team Kilicdaroglu. Within days of the election, allegations started surfacing from across the country, specifically from voting precincts that there may be widespread fraud in the reporting of results. This may or may not be true and should obviously be investigated. That said, one should bear in mind that these objections will likely get tied up in courts and the Supreme Election Council, will likely certify the results anyway. We may never find out the true vote count, but more importantly, it demonstrates that the Nation Alliance was wholly unprepared to mitigate what the so-called “pessimist” camp had been warning about for months.

Even if the results are tainted, it does not change the basic outcome that Erdogan beat Kilicdaroglu and Erdogan’s People’s Alliance gained a majority of seats in parliament. This is not because it is right, but because this is what is likely to be imposed by the YSK. To be fair, both Erdogan and his governing Justice and Development Party lost votes since the 2018 election, and contrastingly, Kilicdaroglu gained the highest percentage of votes in his Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) history since 1950.

While these are important details, voters only really care about who will win the presidency on May 28. At present, this looks more likely to be Erdogan. Kilicdaroglu’s campaign, in the last few weeks focused exclusively on principles, encapsulated around the slogan “Rights, Rule of Law and Justice!” On stage, Kilicdaroglu and his surrogates promised to free the country from Erdogan’s yolk of injustice and rebuild a more equitable economy that benefited ordinary citizens. This was likely the right strategy, but it underestimated the role of identity. The most plausible explanation that explains why Erdogan received nearly 50 percent is based on the polarizing campaign he ran. In his campaign rallies, Erdogan drove home the point that every vote for Kilicdaroglu and the CHP would be one which would close down mosques, allow same-sex individuals to marry, and undermine Turkey’s family values. Moreover, Erdogan screamed from podiums that voting for the CHP would result in Kurdish terrorists being released into the streets. Ultimately, this seems to have resonated with voters, and in the event that Erdogan succeeds in clinching the presidency in the second round, Turkey’s political landscape is likely to be represented by hyper-nationalism, homophobia, and anti-Westernism.

If Kilicdaroglu has any chance of defeating Erdogan on May 28, he has to look and behave like a winner. This has not been the case since election night. He has barely been seen in public. As the results were becoming increasingly clear in the early hours of May 15, an emboldened President Erdogan confidently stepped outside his party headquarters balcony in Ankara and addressed thousands of his supporters. Moments later, the six leaders of the Nation Alliance assembled on stage in a closed auditorium with only journalists present and whined about how election results were being falsely reported. Supporters of Kilicdaroglu are justifiably frustrated. They have all been aware that serious challenges exist to prevent a free and fair election from taking place. The question they desperately want to be answered is: what are Kilicdaroglu and his alliance going to do about it? Complaining about it is unlikely to satisfy voters, as well as change the outcome of what they fear to be an Erdogan victory in less than two weeks. A serious strategy change must be adopted by the CHP leadership if they want to even contemplate winning.

On the other hand, if Erdogan does clinch the presidency on May 28, he will be in charge of the country for another five years. He will also have a parliamentary majority and many now fear that he will use this opportunity to eradicate the remaining vestiges of democracy. Remaining journalists, independent media outlets, and academics who have been vocal critics of Erdogan fear that they may no longer have room to breathe in a country that has all but stifled freedoms. If Kilicdaroglu does lose, there’ll be immense pressure for him to resign as chairman of the CHP. If that happens, the charismatic mayor of Istanbul, who arguably was the lifeblood of the Nation Alliance’s campaign, is well-positioned to become the next leader of Ataturk’s party. However, he has a lawsuit pending against him, which could see him slapped down with a political ban. In addition to losing his political rights, Erdogan could appoint an unelected caretaker mayor of Istanbul, which he has long desired, since losing the country’s largest city in the 2019 local elections.

Sobering times await Turkey and its brave, yet beleaguered citizens.

Sinan Ciddi is a nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power. Follow Sinan on Twitter @SinanCiddi.

Image: Shutterstock.

Within days of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, the State Department undersecretary of state for political affairs, Victoria Neuland, declared that the U.S. objective in the conflict is the “strategic defeat” of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

One month later, Nuland doubled down. “It is clear that Russia will lose this conflict. ... It is only a matter of time.”

At Davos one year ago, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen added Europe’s voice to the American chorus. “Putin's aggression must be a strategic failure,” she said.

It is well and good, and indeed to be expected, that when the guns start sounding leaders will seek to rally their troops to the cause. Remember George W. Bush’s famous, if premature “mission accomplished” declaration, well before the decisive conflict in Iraq commenced.

But when the real work of waging war commences, President Joe Biden, and the public whose endorsement he seeks, must, in word as well as deed, answer the question: What indeed does such high-sounding rhetoric really mean? How will we know when we have arrived at such a solemn and expansive if indefinite objective as Russia’s strategic defeat? 

Putin has paid very close attention to the statements coming from Washington. He cannot afford to have illusions about Washington’s objective or dismiss its intentions as hyperbole.

“The goal of the West,” he declares, “is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. To finish us off. That’s exactly how we understand it all. It’s about the existence of our country. But they cannot fail to understand that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield.”

In a war notable for Washington’s incremental, and so far strategically unsuccessful, escalation of the means—military as well as economic and financial—employed to attain Russia’s strategic defeat, the clarity of U.S. aims today is no more definite than it was at the war’s outset. 

Both Washington’s political class and the public at large have become minor-league strategists. They prefer to focus on simple and often simplistic calculations to ascertain the direction of the conflict—how many tanks and artillery shells Washington is sending to Ukraine—even as they avoid more significant questions raised by Washington’s commitment to Putin’s ruin that a sober appreciation of costs and benefits would challenge if not reject outright.

Indeed, by declaring such an outsized and unambiguous purpose—for that is what a pledge to achieve Russia’s “strategic defeat” requires—the Biden administration risks a policy debacle not unlike Barack Obama’s famous declaration that Syria’s “Assad must go.” That policy has now entered its final act in Syria, where President Bashar Assad has just been unconditionally readmitted to the Arab League.

The antonym of strategic failure is strategic victory, and that indeed is what Iran is now announcing these very days in Damascus.

Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi’s deputy for political affairs, Mohammad Jamshidi, noted prior to Raisi’s recent arrival in Damascus that the visit is a sign of “the Islamic Republic of Iran’s strategic victory in the region.”

Jamshidi explained that the very same Arab nations that supported Washington’s campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran are now reconciling with Tehran—with China’s and Russia’s support—and coordinating Syria’s return to the Arab fold. Washington’s role has been reduced to that of a spoiler, exiled to the periphery of dynamic events aimed at ending Syria’s civil war.

Obama’s call for regime change in Syria, for all of its increasingly evident faults, at least had the advantage of clarity.

In contrast, after a year of war in Europe, Washington, even as it claims that Putin is “scaling back his near-term ambitions” in Ukraine, admits that the chance of Russian concessions at any negotiating table this year “will be low.”

Clearly, the Biden administration is no closer to defining a scale for measuring the degree to which the war’s essential achievement in Washington’s calculus—that is Russia’s strategic defeat—has been, or indeed can be, achieved.

While the diplomats chatter, months of war have dragged on in battles more reminiscent of the static battle lines of World War I than the shock and awe of Washington’s Iraq invasion.

I admit that I am no military expert, but Europe’s bloody history advises that betting against the Russian army is a dangerous and costly wager.

Historian Mark Perry, of blessed memory, never tired of describing the Soviet Red Army as a formidable and, indeed, an implacable foe whose strength and power derived from the immensity of Russia’s unassailable command of the Eurasian landmass. He would often note that during World War II, Josef Stalin executed almost 200,000 of Russia’s own for desertion. In other words, Russia conducts war in a historical and geographic context different, indeed foreign, to our own.

To command the strategic defeat of any enemy, let alone a nuclear-armed Russia, is no mean feat. Recent history offers few examples of this scale of victory—the Taliban’s recent expulsion of Western forces, Israel’s June 1967 triumph, perhaps even Bush’s Operation Desert Shield come to mind—but even these military achievements proved short-lived or incomplete.

Washington’s commitment to Putin’s (or is it Russia’s?) strategic defeat seeks to leave Russia unable to achieve even the most modest of its war objectives in Ukraine as well as weaken Moscow’s sovereign capabilities to resist NATO’s expansion. Events of the past year have at least made it clear that Washington’s commitment to Russia’s strategic defeat has not been accompanied by a U.S. guarantee of Ukraine’s “victory,” however defined.

Geoffrey Aronson is a non-resident fellow at the Middle East Institute and a former advisor to the EU and others on regional political and security issues.

Image: Pimen / Shutterstock.com

At this year’s Victory Parade commemorating the Soviet defeat of Nazism during the Second World War, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin compared Russia’s struggle against the Ukraine today to the Soviet war against Nazi Germany: “Today, civilization again is at a breaking point. Again, a true war has been unleashed against our motherland.”

He continued: “Western globalist elites still talk about their exceptionalism, pitting people against each other and splitting society, provoking bloody conflicts and coups, sowing hatred, Russophobia, [and] aggressive nationalism. The Ukrainian nation has become hostage to a coup which led to a criminal regime led by its Western masters. It has become a pawn to their cruel and selfish plans.”

While Armenia attended Putin’s Victory Parade in Moscow, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev stood in solidarity with the West and declined Putin’s invitation to attend this anti-Western charade.   Only six countries including Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan attended this anti-Western charade.  Due to his grave crimes against humanity, which include raping and torturing Ukrainian prisoners and abducting Ukrainian children, most of the civilized world is now boycotting Putin’s Russia.

The fact that Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev had the courage to boycott the Victory Parade, even though Russian Peacekeepers are stationed in Karabakh and threatening the stability of his country, a sign that Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev is a true ally of the West and an excellent friend of the United States of America. 

According to a statement issued by the US State Department, “The United States established diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan in 1992, following its independence from the Soviet Union. Together, the two countries work to promote European energy security, expand bilateral trade and investment, and combat terrorism and transnational threats.”    When the United States was fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan was part of their international coalition on the ground there, fighting against the terror.   Azerbaijan also assisted the United States in Iraq and Kosovo as well.   They actively partake in NATO’s Partnership for Peace Program. 

In support of the US-led War on Terror, apart from troop contributions, Azerbaijan provided overflight, refueling, and landing rights for American forces bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.   They shared information to combat terror financing.  They detained and prosecuted suspect terrorists.   They provided the US with over one-third of the non-lethal equipment including fuel, clothing and food used by the US military when they were in Afghanistan.   And today, Azerbaijan is helping Europe to obtain energy security, without the use of Russian or Iranian oil.   

In 1919, the late US President Woodrow Wilson stated the following about Azerbaijan: “Do you know where Azerbaijan is? Well, one day there came in a very dignified and interesting group of gentlemen who were from Azerbaijan. I didn’t have time, until they were gone, to find out where they came from. But I did find this out immediately: that I was talking to men who talked the same language that I did in respect of ideas, in respect of conceptions of liberty, in respect of conceptions of right and justice.”

What the late Woodrow Wilson said about Azerbaijan in 1919 is also true today.   For this reason, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev did not participate in Putin’s public relations stunt in Moscow, thus choosing to heed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s call to isolate the Kremlin.     For this reason, the United States can count on Azerbaijan to always be an ally of the United States.   

/ France, Audiovisuel, Information, Médias, Presse, Terrorisme - Médias / France, Audiovisuel, Information, Médias, Presse, Terrorisme - Médias