Diplomacy & Crisis News

Some Republicans are calling it “woke capitalism.”

Beijing’s relationships in Central and Eastern Europe are falling apart.

The beleaguered Netanyahu government needs Washington’s backing on Iran—but unpopular judicial reforms and casual talk of ethnic cleansing could imperil it.

U.S. assistance in developing tech infrastructure could help achieve Washington’s strategic and diplomatic goals by countering Russia and China.

Brazil trails many of its neighbors in trying to tackle gender parity. Advocates are pushing Lula to change that.

The barrage included Moscow’s powerful hypersonic missiles.

Regimes are rewarding economic insiders and ignoring outsiders at their peril.

A Ukrainian victory may be the country’s only chance at long-term salvation.

How the Iraq War taught me about the limits of American power.

Why a military intervention would only entrench the island’s problems.

The announcement that Saudi Arabia and Iran have restored diplomatic ties after seven years of tensions could result in significant changes in the Middle East. It not only stands to reset one of the region’s most violent rivalries but also exemplifies how China has become an influential player in regional affairs. Indeed, the joint statement issued from Beijing on March 10 committed both countries to respect each other’s sovereignty and to not interfere in each other’s internal affairs, to reopen their embassies in Tehran and Riyadh within two months, to revive a bilateral security pact, and to resume trade, investment, and cultural exchanges.

Occurring during a time of heightened fears of open conflict between Israel and a soon-to-be nuclear Iran, and after years of militant competition between Tehran and Riyadh across the region, this nascent rapprochement is undoubtedly positive. Yet the reactions in the United States and Israel suggest that the outcome—and perceptions of it—are more complicated. To its credit, the Biden administration welcomed the détente and stated that Riyadh had kept Washington informed of the talks’ progress. Yet the fact that it was Beijing that brought the Saudis and Iranians together—merely three months after Chinese president Xi Jinping was lavishly received in Riyadh in sharp contrast to U.S. president Joe Biden’s frosty reception six months earlier—has evidently smarted Washington.

Still, fears of American decline are overblown. China cannot (and is, in fact, not interested in) replacing the United States in the Middle East. The United States remains the region’s apex security provider, not only in terms of selling the most weapons to the region but also in terms of its on-the-ground military presence. But while Washington has squandered its time and resources toppling governments in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan and sanctioning Syria and Iran to ruin, China has forged ahead by investing in infrastructure and relationships. The Middle East is large enough for both China and the United States, and rather than panicking about every Chinese action, Washington would be better served by actually trying to compete with Beijing beyond the military sphere.

Moreover, despite Beijing’s growing importance to the Middle East, it is not China, but the United States, that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are asking to defend them. In this light, Israel’s anxiety that a Saudi-Iranian rapprochement will work against its interests is misplaced. Far from being “a fatal blow to the effort to build a regional coalition against Iran,” as former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennet tweeted, a reduction in regional tensions is good for Israel. Having the Saudis (and Chinese) press Iran on taking actions that enhance regional peace and stability can only help Israel, as Iranian intransigence will result in its international isolation. Moreover, this reconciliation—regardless of how meaningful it ultimately will be—has not duped Riyadh into believing that its many years of problems with Iran are behind it.

A decade ago, the late Saudi king Abdullah urged the United States to “cut off the head of the [Iranian] snake,” and that was before Iran had developed the sophisticated nuclear weapons capabilities that it has today. And it was only in September 2019 that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps plotted and then executed a targeted drone attack on Saudi oil facilities that halved the kingdom’s oil production. In 2022, ballistic missiles and drones launched by the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen were raining down on Saudi and Emirati cities with increasing regularity.

Just yesterday, one day before Saudi Arabia and Iran decided to allegedly bury the hatchet, Riyadh offered to normalize its relations with Israel in exchange for the United States guaranteeing Saudi security and aiding the Saudi nuclear program. One cannot help but ask why the U.S. military should commit to defending Saudi Arabia in exchange for something the Saudis are already doing and have a strong national interest in continuing. Yet it is also evident that “American weakness” is not what is pushing the Saudis to reduce tensions with Iran. The Saudis live in a dangerous region—occasionally made more dangerous by their own hands—and they will continue to diversify their relationships and seek security where they can.

In fact, even a U.S. security guarantee would not pull the Saudis decisively back into the U.S. camp, solve all the problems afflicting the Saudi-U.S. relationship, or end Riyadh’s efforts to reach a new security architecture with Iran. Instead, it will only codify the United States’ responsibility to defend Saudi Arabia, tying America’s soldiers to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s high tolerance for risk, and additionally comprise the United States by further involving it in the kingdom’s human rights abuses at home and abroad. It would also further stack the deck against Iran by formally throwing the weight of one of the world’s two superpowers behind Tehran’s foremost Islamic rival, thereby increasing the impetus for the Iranians to develop nuclear arms. If the United States is truly interested in supporting stability and competing with China in the Middle East, it needs to carefully extract itself from the region’s morass, not dive deeper in.

Adam Lammon is a former executive editor at The National Interest and an analyst of Middle Eastern affairs based in Washington, DC. The opinions expressed in this article are his own. Follow him on Twitter @AdamLammon

Image: Claudio Divizia/Shutterstock.

During the Cold War and well into the twenty-first century, some governments, military analysts, academics, and even novelists anticipated a third world war that could involve a global nuclear holocaust growing out of a crisis between Russians and Americans. A failure of deterrence between the two sides, however unlikely, could have unleashed unprecedented destruction that would have put at risk the entirety of human civilization. As one writer put it, the survivors would envy the dead—an outcome that never happened because President Ronald Reagan, building on the policies of presidents from Harry Truman to Jimmy Carter, seized the moment to work with the Soviet Union, a policy embraced by his successors, including President Joe Biden. But, as he has pointed out, the Russian response to the U.S.-led Western support of Ukraine has increased the risk of a broader conflict.

Russia’s conflict against the people of Ukraine, now in its second year, is a war about political legitimacy and human rights. It is being fought across the globe by civilian and military “warriors” armed with ideas, economic strategies, and kinetic weapons. It is a conflict in which the very existence of liberal democracy and the international rules-based order is at stake. Who prevails in this war will determine whether international law, consensual government, and human decency will thrive and succeed in a region that is now free but was once part of the former Soviet Union.

This slow-rolling version of a new global conflict, as opposed to a nearly instant global apocalypse, is already in progress in Eastern Europe. Russia’s war against Ukraine is not only a series of tactical military engagements—Vladimir Putin is also fighting a war against the very foundations of the existing European system of states that once invited him to join, and the heritage of Western civilization. His concept of “Eurasianism” would replace a European order built on political democracy and market economics with one imposed by a Russian autocracy based on a twenty-first-century version of the former Russian empire. Unlike China, which has built financial institutions that could integrate into the Western economy, the Russian leader never developed the tools to allow for a broader economic integration with the rest of Europe. Instead, he isolated the Russian economy in a financial structure that he controls but is stagnant. This is both a power struggle and a war over values. Putin sees the democratic West as not only holding Russia back from rebuilding its former greatness, but also offering to the world a decadent set of political and moral guidelines and guardrails.

Unfortunately, Putin is not alone in his willingness to put aside the values of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment in favor of authoritarianism, imperialism, and autocracy. China, which the Biden administration and the Pentagon define as a pacing threat, is also attempting to expand its global influence and military power in order to reduce American influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Their recent surge of surveillance gathering balloons and other hostile intelligence collection activity is part and parcel of its current national security strategy. While Russia has placed its kinetic hitting power at the front end of its war against the West, China has preferred to develop strategic dependencies on Beijing via the Belt and Road Initaitive to the control of global infrastructure. As China’s military power increases, alongside the growing influence of its economic globalization, some of its leaders seek to position it once again to a position of global primacy akin to the Middle Kingdom—an outlook that the United States needs to keep in mind as we try to engage with them on global challenges, like climate change and food security.

In addition to China, Russia’s war against Ukraine is also supported by Iran and North Korea. They share a common dislike for the United States and its European and Asian allies, based not only on strategic calculation, but also on values antithetical to democratic pluralism. Their leaders identify themselves with unabashed ambitions for autocratic rule and military expansion, and are equally dismissive of human rights and accountability for abuses of power. Like all autocracies and authoritarian regimes, when challenged by dissident forces within their own societies, they place blame for their failures on foreign influence. In addition, Iran and North Korea support terrorism and subversion of other regimes and, in the latter case, issue repeatedly bellicose nuclear threats against neighboring states and others. But China’s reliance on a coalition that includes Iran and North Korea greatly threatens China’s current partnership with countries like Israel.

However, the current war over ideas does not only depend on the behavior of foreign state or non-state actors, relative to the interests of the United States and other Western democracies. The war of ideas is also being waged within Western democracies themselves. Proponents of anti-democratic ideas are finding willing audiences in the United States and elsewhere because of the ubiquitous means of global communication made available by modern technology. Some “apps” even offer seductive political content and messaging that can divide people against one another based on ideology, nationality, ethnicity, or other characteristics. A flood of divisive philosophical sewerage spills over from the basements of hatemongers into the higher reaches of foreign offices. The ability to create nearly instantaneous mobs of rage over misdescribed or otherwise sensationalized versions of events can create civil strife that places political order in imminent jeopardy. Terrorists no longer are limited to blowing up buildings. With modern technology, they can blow up national consensus on the most precious values that separate barbarians and autocrats from legitimate democratic leaders.

In sum: Vladimir Putin’s war against Western civilization, under the banner of reborn Eurasianism, is, in theory and in practice, a rearward march into a worse world. The current struggle is being fought within and across the boundaries of states, including the clash between the best ideas about civil society and the worst distortions of history’s lessons. It is important to remember that bad ideas can destroy just like smart bombs, which is why the Biden administration must keep its contacts with Russia open and its nuclear modernization program going.

Lawrence Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Stephen Cimbala is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State, Brandywine.

Image: Shutterstock.

The forthcoming 2022 National Military Strategy’s (NMS) organizing principle is “strategic discipline.” Its “Theory of Success is to exercise Strategic Discipline to continuously calibrate Joint Force weight of effort between campaigning and rapidly building warfighting advantage to deter now and reduce future risk.” The inherent challenge with implementing this NMS is that strategic discipline requires senior military leaders to make hard choices and accept risk. They must go against the intrinsic incentive to prioritize their “watch” versus that of their successors. Strategic discipline contradicts leaders’ natural inclination and requires a truly strategic perspective that gives the future force a vote. This type of prioritization is an attribute that pundits claim is often lacking in national strategy documents. The 2022 NMS recognizes the Joint Force can't do everything well and won't try. Instead, it outlines clear, classified guidance for high thresholds of areas when and where the Joint Force will not assume risk; everywhere else it will. 

While leading the Joint Staff’s development of the 2022 NMS and attempting to ensure it drives future budget choices, I found it helpful to figuratively “run to the sound of the guns.” Young Army leaders in combat arms branches are taught this enables them to direct troops and assets to influence the battle from the critical place. Positioning themselves where they can observe key developments and direct fire and maneuver against enemy forces enables tactical leaders to make important decisions to prioritize how, when, and where to best overcome enemy advances and accomplish the mission. During the drafting of the NMS, we had to practice this same technique at the strategic level. We ran into friction points regarding differing perspectives on critical threat-related matters and uncertainty regarding the impact of the ongoing war in Ukraine. To resolve those conflicts, “tunning to the sound of the guns”—instead of shying away from the differences, always holding to our original position, or embracing least common denominator consensus positions—proved more effective. 

As anyone who has led similar efforts will attest, the development of important national military documents tends to pit strong-willed combatant commanders, service chiefs, policy leaders, and their staffs against each other. Adjudicating between their arguments can be a knife fight because the ultimate language either makes or breaks each organization’s future resource fight. Thus, informed by where they “sit,” leaders and staff members want important documents to prioritize certain threats and missions. Others recognize that they are the economy of force effort but attempt to have their command’s tasks added on as barnacles to various sections. It’s the military’s version of congressional “pork barrel” spending. It primarily benefits the “local interests” of one command by translating into more resources down the road while deluding the finances, manpower, and time available for the most important missions.

Time for Strategic Discipline

To avoid such diffusion of Joint Force resources, and despite the desire to be inclusive, we recognized that the NMS couldn’t be a consensus document, or it would be worthless. It had to make difficult choices and prioritize key missions over others. It does so, in the chairman’s words, by “biasing the future over the present.” General Mark Milley’s guidance is that the Joint Force will do that by emphasizing “strategic discipline” in calibrating between strategic ways of “Building Warfighting Advantage and Campaigning,” generally rebalancing toward the former versus the latter. 

The Joint Force has campaigned against near-term threats from violent extremist organizations for the past two decades. It has recognized for more than a decade the urgent need to modernize and prioritize preparation for a great-power war, part of what is meant by building warfighting advantage. The time has come for the pendulum to swing toward building warfighting advantage (a service-centric responsibility) while not neglecting the current campaigning necessary to deter adversaries as well as assure allies and partners (a combatant command mission). 

As then-director of the Joint Staff J-5, Vice Admiral Lisa Franchetti pointed out to the NMS development team, despite the decade-long recognition of a need to rebalance toward the Pacific and China that the Joint Force has struggled to prioritize accordingly. There is limited evidence of “strategic discipline” over that period. Nor has there been much in the way of building a warfighting advantage against great powers. Yet we realized the continuing and dire need for it. Thus, “strategic discipline” became the 2022 NMS’ organizing principle and central idea. I leveraged Franchetti’s insights with the NMS Council of Colonels working group, indicating that the military did not want to find itself in the same predicament in another ten years.

Running to the Sound of the Guns

As my team developed the 2022 National Military Strategy (NMS), we “ran to the sound of the guns” in a figurative and unconventional manner—and the strategy is better off for it. We obviously were not locked in mortal combat with the enemy as we outlined the NMS’ sections or penned its words. For us, running to the sound of the guns meant embracing the tension of different viewpoints on important issues. We came to realize that running to—instead of away—from such tension was where the figurative “money” was to be made.

Running away from the friction would have been easier. By running away, we could have tried to ignore the friction, include all the input we received, or allowed the NMS to be a consensus document. But seeking out the friction, asking “why” it existed, and what was behind each side’s recommendations was figuratively “running to the sound of the guns” in a way that made the NMS better. The friction points, where the “sound of the guns” was loudest, are where the decisive points were. It was in trying to decipher differing views that we could usually find a more creative, accurate, or just plain better solution. 

By so doing we positioned ourselves—like tactical leaders who’ve moved to the “sound of the guns” and can best influence the battle—to leverage the strongest assets we had for the greatest gain. On the battlefield, the most critical assets can be those that are the most lethal, like cannons, tanks, attack aviation, close air support, and armed drones. Other times, it may be the intelligence asset which provides the enemy’s location. Still other times it’s the logistics supply chain that provides much need ammunition, fuel, food, water, or other supplies. On other occasions, engineers that open a way through the obstacles may be most important. Our strongest assets were superb and contrasting input from the services, combatant commands, and Joint Staff. 

I didn’t always view the input of those outside the core writing team as our strongest assets. After a couple of times working through contrary opinions that caused us to rethink whether we had it right, it dawned on me: such mental gymnastics was often the key to success. We needed contrasting input to such tough questions as: Which country posed the greatest threat and in what ways? What other threats were worth mentioning? How could various threats be mentioned without diluting the Joint Force’s effort? How focused could the NMS be without causing the Joint Force to be surprised by a future threat? What was the Joint Force most likely to face from various threats? (The answers to these questions are classified, so I don’t address them here.)

Wrestling with difficult questions, and the dissenting opinions and contradictory input to answer those questions, was only one form of friction. Being ready for chairman touchpoints was another, completely different type. The team made sure we always had products ready to show our progress and several key questions ready should we be called to the chairman’s office on fifteen minutes’ notice. That was our effort to plan ahead for success and avoid the internal friction that comes from a lack of preparation. It ensured we were able to ask and receive the guidance we most needed at each point to continue developing the NMS within the chairman’s intent. 

Before these meetings, we dealt with what some would have deemed as the “too little guidance” friction point by leveraging Milley’s existing public record of speeches and posture testimony instead of wringing our hands. We then read between the lines and connected the strategic dots to move forward until we received confirmation of our direction or guidance steering us along a different azimuth. The chairman’s repeated public emphasis on the importance of modernization, not just of technology-centric platforms but also of novel concepts, is one area in this category. As Milley often champions, it is the side that best anticipates the character of future war and integrates new concepts with emerging capabilities and leader-directed training that enters the next war with an advantage. It doesn’t stop there. Strategy is iterative. The side that adapts most rapidly during wars retains or regains the advantage. We took this and developed three of our ten Joint Force tasks based on this guidance. Though Milley never told us to do that directly, he had indirectly. Guidance from our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings subsequently enabled proper prioritization when gathering input from the services (including the Coast Guard and the National Guard Bureau), the combatant commands, the Joint Staff Directorates, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), and the State Department.

Developing the NMS while the Office of the Secretary of Defense was still writing the National Defense Strategy (NDS) presented its own friction-like challenges. How could we work with our “higher headquarters” in parallel, without lagging far behind? We had conducted an NMS speaker series for almost a year (fall 2020 to summer 2021) prior to our official kick-off in August 2021. We had guidance that at times seemed to contradict what we saw developing in the NDS. We handled these friction points by having a representative on the NDS team; a robust, prior, ongoing, and trusted set of relationships between our staff and the team from the Office of the Secretary of Defense; periodic sharing of drafts; attending each other’s working groups, Operational Deputies, Tanks, and Deputy Management Action Group (DMAG) meetings; and by deferring to NDS language in some cases. In other cases, as with other friction points, we arbitrated between arguments by returning to the organizing principle of strategic discipline and the chairman’s guidance. 

Trying to finalize the NMS during the ongoing war in Ukraine presented a final friction point as well as important questions that the team needed to address. Would the commander-in-chief send the U.S. military to intervene with boots on the ground? Even if not, how much had the war changed the security environment as defined in the NMS? Had defense priorities changed in order of relative importance? Did major lethal aid contributions from the United States demonstrate or contradict strategic discipline? We handled this friction point by asking the hard questions of the strategy, even if it would require major changes. We also showed Milley how we had updated the draft NMS based on the war in Ukraine and prioritized or aligned it with the then Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the NDS, and his own guidance.

Concluding Outcomes

The National Military Strategy anticipates a great power conflict while pursuing ways to deter it. It attempts to remedy past failures to improve future readiness. It points us toward an approach that prioritizes warfighting preparedness and provides a risk management framework across both time and space. By prioritizing a single organizing principle, we avoided a least common denominator strategy. In other words, we avoided seeking a comfortable consensus in favor of strategic coherence. And by iterating with stakeholders throughout, we learned that contradictory input not only makes strategy development difficult, but it also provides opportunities “to run to the sound of the guns” and refine those ideas, ultimately producing a better strategy.

Colonel Bryan Groves is the Commanders’ Initiatives Group (CIG) Chief at U.S. Army Forces Command. Previously, during the development of the 2022 NMS, Bryan was the Strategy Development Division Chief on the Joint Staff (J-5). His team was responsible for stewarding its development, with primary input from the Services and Combatant Commands, on behalf of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley.

Image: DVIDS.

With the war in Ukraine in its second year, it is easy to pass over the fact that in other parts of the former Soviet Union conflict, both hot and cold, has been ongoing since the early 1990s, mostly at Russia’s instigation. By exploiting a string of unrecognized states and provinces Moscow has maintained influence in its so-called “near abroad” for a generation after its empire’s collapse.

But, like Ernest Hemmingway’s quote on bankruptcy, the end has been coming first gradually, then suddenly. Russia’s geopolitical insolvency, actual but almost inconspicuous for a generation, is now emphatically laid bare everywhere, and Ukraine has been the catalyst.

The ouster late last month of Russian oligarch Ruben Vardanyan as state minister of the contested territory of Karabakh in the South Caucasus is the latest, startling demonstration of Russia’s departure from the scene. Parachuted to the region in November to stabilize the Kremlin’s crumbling control over the Armenian separatist-run enclave within Azerbaijan, the removal of Vardanyan will likely presage a peace agreement that has eluded the region for decades, precisely because it has been against Russian interests to advance one.

Just how fast Moscow’s great power shrinkage has accelerated in a region such as the Caucasus is stark. Merely two years ago Russia seemingly bestrode the place, single-handedly negotiating a ceasefire agreement in 2020 between ex-Soviet states Azerbaijan and Armenia following their vicious forty-four-day war. A U.S. attempt to end the conflict had fizzled; European Union efforts seemed supine. It was in Moscow with Vladimir Putin present that the leaders of both combatant countries signed the deal. In a shock to international observers, they even consented to Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh. This represented the first Russian boots on Azerbaijani soil since Soviet times.

Despite a five-year remit, Russia’s new military presence smelled permanent; but in the last twelve months that near-certainty has vanished. Armenian-Azerbaijan border skirmishes with the worse casualties since 2020 were not halted by Russian peacekeepers but rather by American pressure. The European Union has done the heavy lifting on peace talks, with negotiators reaching further and faster than ever before on interminable issues, from border demarcation to the exchange of landmine maps for prisoners. Most important of all, the EU has made headway in facilitating the first-ever direct talks between Azerbaijan and the Armenian separatists, paving the way to a potential agreement hinged around an enhanced minority status within a sovereign Azerbaijan.

With Russia becoming a bystander, Vardanyan was exported from Moscow to shake the tree. Installed as Karabakh “state minister” over the heads of the Armenian government, the traditional guiding hand of separatist politics, Vardanyan spoke openly of fighting Azerbaijan, waged a public war of words with the Armenian prime minister, and raised the stakes by opening gold mines in the territory and exporting their contents. Some of his supporters in the Karabakh “parliament” even called for the enclave to become a territory of the Russian Federation. The intention so clearly was to fan flames that only the Kremlin would then be able to extinguish.

At any other point over the last thirty years, the imposition on the Karabakh political scene of this Armenian-born businessman—who made billions in Russia, where he had lived since 1985—might have stuck. But at no other point in those thirty years would it have been necessary for Russia to place one of their own into this position to maintain influence. Evaporating fear of Moscow’s power, so clearly wanting in Ukraine, made it necessary for an intervention while at the same time removing its effectiveness.

Vardanyan’s fall is proof of the region’s liberation from Moscow’s oversight. The oligarch’s role triggered previously unthinkable criticism of Russia from both Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders at last month’s Munich Security Conference. “Ask him, ‘Who sent you to Karabakh and why? Why did you cause a split within the Karabakh authorities [with the Armenian government]?’ Of course, the Russians sent him. Who else could send him?” said Gagik Melkonian, a senior advisor to Armenia’s prime minister Nikol Pashinyan. The day before, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said at the Conference: “We are ready to start practical communications with Karabakh’s Armenian community…But we can only move forward with it when Ruben Vardanyan, a Russian citizen, organized crime oligarch, and a person who laundered money in Europe, leaves your territory.”

Now, Vardanyan is out, and peace talks will resume. The chances of Russia’s peacekeepers lasting beyond the remainder of their five-year mandate look vanishingly slim. Armenians are considering the previously unspeakable, even of cutting off Russian energy supplies and connecting with those of their petrostate former archenemy Azerbaijan. Azerbaijanis are speaking of reconciliation with those who they allege committed war crimes against them a generation ago.

None of this would surely be happening had Moscow been able to sustain its regional deep freeze. But it could not. Now, with Russia’s last stand in the Caucasus over, a roadblock to peace is removed. The signs of the thaw are everywhere.

Mat Whatley is a British army veteran. He is also the former head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Donetsk, Ukraine, the EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia, and an OSCE spokesman in former Yugoslavia.

Image: Pavel Byrkin/Shutterstock.

The internal administration debate comes ahead of Blinken’s plans to visit Africa.

The tragedy is just the latest to strike the community, underscoring Dhaka’s challenge in hosting so many refugees.

Experts worry the alliance is a “goat rodeo” in the making.

How the United Kingdom hopes to mend fences with Europe.

If Russia is victorious in Ukraine, the Black Sea will again be a Russian lake, with its littoral states at Moscow’s mercy. All of democratic Europe’s efforts to replace Gazprom supplies with Azerbaijani gas and other suppliers in the region will have come to naught.

But if Russia falls short of outright victory in Ukraine?

Enter Hungary, Europe’s new gas station. For the last year, Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán has been bolstering Hungarian credentials around the Black and Caspian Seas, appearing in forums as diverse as the Organisation of Turkic States and the Eurasian Development Bank. Orbán is working overtime to establish Hungary as a key conduit for expanded gas resources coming from southern Europe. In late October 2022, Georgia and Hungary signed a strategic cooperative agreement. In January 2023, Hungary and Azerbaijan came together for their own strategic partnership. Most recently, the foreign ministers from Budapest and Tashkent reached their own accord. Serbia remains game to transit Russian energy to Hungary; a cross-border interconnection is in the works. Further southeast, Hungarian politicos were in Sofia meeting pro-Moscow officials in President Ruman Radev’s caretaker government last August.

To Hungary’s southwest, its massive MOL Group has been transporting increasing amounts of liquified natural gas from Croatia’s regasification terminal on Krk Island. An interconnector between Hungary and Slovenia is planned, as is the introduction of bidirectional capacity between Austria and Hungary. Doubling down, gas operators in Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Hungary penned an MOU for a bidirectional gas corridor. All roads lead to Budapest.

Taken together, Orbán is riding Europe’s collective shift away from Russian energy to make Hungary a key gas transit hub. As Hungary’s prime minister, it’s his prerogative to bolster Hungary’s economy with transit revenue, low energy prices, and a diversified supplier portfolio. But while he works to increase gas supplies from southern Europe, Orbán is locking Hungary into a long-term, energy-based client relationship with Moscow.

A case in point: the Paks II nuclear powerplant today generates nearly 50 percent of Hungarian consumers’ energy needs. This plant is exclusively serviced by Russian energy giant ROSATOM. As such, in January 2023, Orbán firmly declared that Hungary will veto any proposed EU sanctions on Russia’s nuclear energy industry. Another case: Hungary plans to eliminate its Russian gas dependence—by 2050.

The energy comes with strings. Or rather, it comes with iron chains. Budapest hosts twice the number of Moscow’s diplomatic corps than are in Bratislava, Prague, and Warsaw combined. Orbán not only adamantly refuses to send arms to the Ukrainian military, but has worked overtime to hold up EU aid packages to Kyiv.

All indicators suggest that Orbán intends to keep Russian energy sources on tap for decades to come—in exchange for seemingly selling the Kremlin a base for European mischief and a permanent veto in Brussels.

Despite all these developments, Brussels appears unalarmed. Indeed, there are elites throughout EU Member States who callously wish the war would “just go away.” And on the other side of the Atlantic, Putin’s proxy is the European darling among Trumpian Republicans. Their disconnect between the Russo-Ukrainian War, Hungary’s open support for Russia, and U.S. energy security is puzzling, especially given the interconnectivity of global energy markets. CPAC adherents and fans of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson identify with Orbán’s social conservatism, align with his anti-immigration stance, and grin approvingly at his “stick-it-to-the-EU” rhetoric. Are passing culture wars worth the price of the collective security of the United States and our allies?

Viktor Orbán is Vladimir Putin’s man in Brussels and beyond, despite the threats to NATO. As he links up with fellow authoritarian-trending travelers along these gas routes, Orbán’s multiple acts of Russian allegiance should ring alarm bells in Western capitals. Is anyone listening?

Richard Kraemer is the president of the US-Europe Alliance and a senior non-resident fellow at the European Values Center for Security Policy in Prague, Czech Republic.

Let the challenges begin. The recent decision by Mexican legislators to cut the budget and staff of the thirty-three-year-old National Electoral Institute (INE) has sparked widespread protests and garnered front-page coverage worldwide. “Plan B,” which was recently approved by the Mexican Senate, includes provisions that could undermine the independence of the INE and limit its ability to carry out its work effectively. This decision is a concerning development for Mexico’s democracy, which has long relied on the agency to promote transparency, accountability, and free and fair elections. After President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s decision to publish the electoral reform in the official gazette on March 1, the electoral reform entered into force on March 3, 2023.

Specifically, the law would give the Mexican government greater control over the INE’s budget and staffing decisions, undermining the agency’s independence. The law would also establish new social media and online campaigning regulations that some critics have argued could limit freedom of speech and the ability of opposition parties to reach voters and participate in the electoral process.

During the 2018 elections, the INE implemented several measures to promote transparency and accountability in the electoral process. For example, the agency developed a new system for tallying votes that allowed results to be reported in real-time. It also implemented new campaign financing regulations that limited the amount of money that candidates could spend on their campaigns. Additionally, the INE conducted a comprehensive voter education campaign to increase voter turnout and ensure that voters were informed about the issues and candidates in the election. 

But this progress could be at stake for the next presidential election cycle, which officially starts on September 2 of this year, and coincides with the United States’ own election cycle. Importantly, the Mexican constitution states that there can be no changes to the Mexican electoral law in the 90 days leading up to the date when the electoral season officially kicks off. Therefore, any attempts by the opposition and civil society to push back against the reform must happen in the next six months. The Mexican Supreme Court is poised to continue playing an important role in promoting the integrity and independence of the electoral process in Mexico and in ensuring that the agency can carry out its work effectively, especially as the window for challenges to the reform is purposefully short. 

It is critical for the international community—especially the United States—to continue supporting and assisting the INE and civil society organizations on the ground. One important way to do so is through financial and technical assistance—via non-profits that support free and fair elections worldwide, like the International Foundation for Electoral Systems—by working with local partners. The United States, via USAID or the Department of State, can als assist with funding for election monitoring and technical assistance to help the INE carry out its work effectively. And the U.S. Congress can earmark appropriations that tick these boxes. 

Ultimately, promoting free and fair elections in Mexico will require a sustained commitment from all stakeholders to protect the independence of the agency and other sister institutions and to ensure that the electoral process is transparent and accountable. The recent developments surrounding the electoral reform bill highlight the urgent need for continued vigilance and action to protect democracy in Mexico, especially given our shared border. By assisting, whether financial or technical, promoting the development of a robust and independent civil society, and supporting the work of the Mexican Supreme Court, we can help ensure that Mexico’s democracy remains strong and vibrant. The recent protests and front-page stories about the INE’s budget cuts and staff reductions highlight the urgency of this issue, which is now official in all but the two Mexican states with upcoming local elections, and why it matters not just to Mexico but to the entire world.

Maria Fernanda Bozmoski is deputy director for programs at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. @MariaBozmoski

Image: Shutterstock.