Diplomacy & Crisis News

The United States’ lasting prosperity and global muscle can be credited in part to its hard and soft power, but they also owe to another strong force: intelligent power. Intelligent power is the ability of a country to influence other players to follow or emulate its political system, social structure, development pathway, and lifestyle through its morality, culture, and values. It refers to the natural projection of moral appeal, cultural inclusiveness, and values.

Intelligent power is endogenous, resilient, and magnetic. A country with strong intelligent power sets an example worldwide, one that is the object of study of other countries, inspiring imitation in the political, economic, social, and judicial sectors. The unique intelligent power of China during the Song dynasty, Italy during the Renaissance, and the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution served as a model to inspire the development efforts of other countries.

With high levels of political morality based on the rule of law, inclusive multiculturalism, and broadly accepted values, countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia, and Singapore appeal to people pursuing their dreams around the world. At the same time, these people bring their own special wisdom, knowledge, and cultures, which are used to further enhance the intelligent power of these countries.

In contemporary international relations, hard power—which relies on military intervention, coercive diplomacy, and economic sanctions—is becoming less useful as the global system changes. Soft power stresses the ability of a country to persuade others to do what it wants without force or coercion, but it is not easily wielded to achieve specific outcomes. By contrast, intelligent power is a fundamentally progressive force of human civilization grounded in its common morality, inclusive culture, and universal values. A country with intelligent power has a worldwide network of alliances that helps to strengthen both its hard and soft power.

Due to its strong intelligent power, the United States has long been considered one of the most attractive places on the planet, its voice and proposals are heard and followed by most countries, and its political system and values are followed by many other governments. A country with only hard power, like Russia, cannot earn the respect of others nor gain power through discourse in the international community.

No one denies that China is endowed with huge intelligent power. Its unique culture has assimilated civilized achievements from the East and the West; its traditional morality of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and fidelity is the cornerstone of China’s social order; and its common values of the “golden mean” are commonly accepted by the people of Asia.

In his efforts to consolidate the legitimacy of his regime, Chinese president Xi Jinping has been peddling Marxism packaged with Chinese culture and values to the world. As of 2018, 530 Confucius Institutes and more than 1,100 Confucius Classrooms were set up in 149 countries to promote and teach Chinese culture, language, and art. However, more and more critics argue that they are, in the words of Ethan Epstein, "an important part of China's overseas propaganda set-up”

To show “the spirit of struggle” that Xi has urged officials to implement, Chinese diplomats have embraced an aggressive “wolf warrior” ethos, discarding the professionalism, rationality, and courtesy that Chinese culture upholds. Chinese state media has embarked on advertising campaigns to bolster its Marxist ideology on Western platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

At home, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has launched a sweeping Mao-style ideological campaign. Xi called for China to build cultural confidence and oppose the transmission of Western cultures in China, blurring the distinction between ideology and culture. Moreover, Chinese authorities have intensified their crackdown on religious groups.

In the age of globalization, universal values are needed more than ever before to manage differences among countries without resorting to violence. Since Xi took office, the CCP has begun to distort or undermine universal values, portraying universal values as a force that threatens the CCP’s rule. Recently, the CCP urged China never to follow the path of Western constitutionalism, separation of powers, or judicial independence.

Xi’s ideological push has severely harmed China’s intelligent power. Many Confucius Institutes are banned in Western countries, while many countries and human rights groups have accused Beijing of serious human rights violations. “Wolf Warrior diplomacy” has frequently undermined Beijing’s reputation and interests. Indeed, Xi’s stigmatization of universal values has caused most modern, civilized countries to reject China as a world leader.

The CCP’s propaganda campaign to disseminate Marxism under the guise of promoting China’s culture and values cannot succeed. Because of this, China is unlikely to develop intelligent power in the near future.

Chris Lee is a Chinese economist and political strategist. He has published more than 60 papers. His latest piece in The National Interest is China Faces a Looming Economic Disaster.

Image: Salma Bashir Motiwala / Shutterstock.com.

When Abiy Ahmed assumed office as Ethiopia’s prime minister, he inherited a country grappling with long-standing internal tensions, including an imminent civil war in the Tigray region. Abiy’s initial approach of cracking down on the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the dominant party in Ethiopian politics over the past thirty years, culminated in a brutal and protracted conflict with far-reaching consequences for the country’s political and economic infrastructure. Through the support of neighboring strongman and autocrat Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki as well as Turkey, China, and the United Arab Emirates, Abiy eventually emerged victorious, but not without significant costs. As Ethiopia continues to grapple with enduring tensions and internal conflicts, and as Abiy attempts to establish a lasting legacy as a peacemaker, the role of regional actors, including Afwerki, is emerging as a critical factor in the country’s stability.

In April 2018, when Abiy became Ethiopia’s prime minister, he faced the challenge of managing a country on the brink of a civil war. His predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned under duress, paving the way for Abiy to make history as Ethiopia’s first Oromo prime minister. As an ethnic Oromo married to an Amhara wife, Abiy was enthusiastically received by the wider Oromo community, showing their contentment with Ethiopia’s political trajectory by showing up in large numbers on the streets. In 2019, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending a twenty-year conflict with neighboring Eritrea.

However, Abiy’s ascension to power coincided with deep-seated tensions between the Ethiopian government and TPLF. When he began cracking down on Tigrayan officials holding powerful positions in Ethiopia’s government, he faced multiple assassination attempts as a result. Escalating tensions eventually led to elections in September 2020, a controversial display of TLPF autonomy from the central government in Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian government deemed the move illegal, and in November of the same year, the TPLF attacked the Northern Command of the Ethiopian military, sparking the Tigray war.

Initially, the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) overran the TPLF and ousted the rebels from the Tigrayan region capital, Mekelle. However, the TPLF, resorting to classic guerrilla tactics, engaged in a game of cat and mouse with the ENDF. The ENDF’s frustration with the recalcitrance of the Tigray people, a tight-knit, highly politically conscious society, led to the full wrath of its power being brought onto the civilians in Tigray. Cases of rape, torture and extrajudicial killings were widely documented by international human rights organizations.

In June 2021, the TPLF retook Mekelle, and in November of the same year, it declared that it would push toward Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. During that period, the TPLF's brutal retribution for the ENDF's occupation of Mekelle extended to new areas in the Amhara and Afar regions, where it unleashed large-scale atrocities against civilians with almost equal measure. Abiy temporarily handed over his duties as Ethiopia’s prime minister to his deputy and led the army himself. With Turkish and Chinese drones and Eritrean troops on the ground, the ENDF launched a blitzkrieg against the TPLF, taking back the territories that the TPLF had occupied in the previous three months in just three days. 

This time, Abiy demonstrated a capacity for learning from past missteps. Specifically, during the 2020 incident where the ENDF overpowered the TPLF, the Ethiopian government was reluctant to acknowledge any potential for third-party mediation and failed to capitalize on the favorable momentum to establish a peace agreement. However, during subsequent events, the Ethiopian government signaled a willingness to consider the African Union’s peace agreement that was spearheaded by Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president of Nigeria, as a mediator. The African Union acted quickly, organizing a peace conference in Pretoria, South Africa, in November 2022, almost two years after the commencement of hostilities, and invited representatives from both the TPLF and the Ethiopian government. Subsequent rounds of negotiations emerged as a result of the peace conference, ultimately contributing to a de-escalation of tensions and culminating in the TPLF surrendering its heavy weaponry in January 2023.

This recent chapter in Ethiopia’s historical narrative marks a crucial and transformative moment, characterized by a departure from the country’s violent past. Ethiopia has struggled with intermittent civil conflicts that have seldom been resolved through peaceful means. The reign of Emperor Haile Selassie during the 1930s was tumultuous, culminating in his alleged assassination by the orders of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who staged a military coup in 1975 to overthrow the monarch. In the 1990s, Mengistu himself was forced to flee the country after being ousted from power by a rebel faction led by the TPLF. Furthermore, the unexpected death of Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia’s prime minister since the 1990s, in 2012 left a leadership vacuum, and concerns over a peaceful transition of power emerged. Hailemariam Desalegn, who succeeded Zenawi, resigned under the weight of TPLF’s reluctance to relinquish its hold on power, thus passing the baton to Abiy Ahmed. Abiy’s approach to peace in Ethiopian politics is distinctive in that it effectively reconciled opposing factions, a feat that was previously unaccomplished in the country’s history. 

Nonetheless, despite the success of Abiy’s innovative approach to peace in Ethiopian politics, it remains uncertain whether his efforts have earned the approval of his Eritrean ally, Afwerki. Afwerki’s deep-seated personal animosity towards the TPLF dates back to the 1998 war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Furthermore, the recent loss of power by Somalia’s president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, to Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in May 2022, has weakened Afwerki’s position in East Africa. Farmajo had cultivated a special relationship with Afwerki, an arrangement that was not welcomed by Djibouti, a neighboring country with linguistic, ethnic, and religious ties to Somalia, and whose part of its land has been occupied by Eritrea since 2008. The changing political dynamics in the region, with the departure of Farmajo and the emergence of a new alliance between Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya under the banner of the “Somalia’s Frontline State Summit” in Mogadishu in February 2023, may marginalize the tripartite alliance between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, formed during Farmajo’s time in office, thus further isolating Afwerki. Such developments may lead Afwerki to work against Ethiopia’s peace process, thereby undermining the potential for sustainable peace in the region.

Despite Abiy’s apparent consolidation of power in Ethiopia, there remain deep-rooted tensions that continue to simmer in several parts of the country, creating a potential opportunity for Afwerki to exploit and undermine Abiy’s efforts toward stability. In Oromia, for instance, the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) continues to mount attacks on the ENDF, occasionally gaining control of territories. Similarly, there are unresolved disputes between the Afar and Somali ethnic groups, which have escalated since the outbreak of the Tigray conflict. Armed Afar groups, equipped with ENDF weaponry, have seized Somali towns they regard as historically belonging to Afar, leading to the massacre of civilians, particularly women, and children. Moreover, the Amhara militia group known as FANO, which has played a significant role in the conflict against the TPLF, is not in a completely stable relationship with Abiy. Additionally, the recent tensions between Ethiopia’s Orthodox Church and members of the Oromo ethnic group may open new fronts of religious tension in the country. These simmering tensions offer Afwerki a window of opportunity to interfere in Ethiopia’s internal affairs and maintain control over Abiy, exploiting any perceived lapses in his leadership.

The recent successful negotiations that culminated in the TPLF surrendering its heavy weaponry and de-escalating the Tigray conflict are significant steps toward Ethiopia's journey to stability. The African Union’s mediation efforts, combined with the Ethiopian government’s willingness to consider third-party intervention, proved to be a winning combination. The strategy employed in this situation could serve as a model for resolving other brewing conflicts in Ethiopia, such as those involving OLA, FANO, the tensions between the Afar and Somali ethnic groups, and the issues concerning the country’s religious groups. By establishing a similar framework of transparency and rectitude in these situations, Ethiopia can create guardrails for peace and deter further attempts to undermine its trajectory toward stability. The African Union and the Ethiopian government must work together to ensure that the lessons learned from the Tigray conflict are applied to other conflicts in the country, to ensure that Ethiopia continues to move forward on a path of peace and stability.

Ethiopia’s quest for stability has undergone significant transformations under Abiy’s leadership. The Nobel laureate’s unorthodox path from a peacemaker to a war leader has brought into question the sustainability of his leadership and opened the door for Afwerki to exploit Ethiopia’s underlying tensions. Furthermore, Abiy’s pragmatic approach to emerging regional alliances has significant implications for Ethiopia and the region at large, which could define his rule for years to come. 

Mahad D. Darar is an academic based in Colorado, USA. Mr. Darar has a graduate degree in International Relations and Conflict Resolution. His research focuses on the Middle East and East African region. Follow him on Twitter at @organizermahad.

Image: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com

The recent election in Nigeria was supposed to be about change. For months, millions of youth who had long been apathetic to politics enthusiastically flocked, both in social media and in person, to the banner of third-party candidate Peter Obi, who also garnered wide and positive coverage from international media outlets. After more than a decade of careening from one crisis to another under incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari and his predecessor Goodluck Jonathan, the conventional wisdom was that the most populous country and largest economy in Africa was ready to put its economic malaise and chronic insecurity behind it.

Then, after some foreseeable delays and even more embarrassing snafus with its information technology systems, the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) delivered the results: the seventy-year-old former governor of Lagos, Bola Tinubu—the longtime kingmaker of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) who actually campaigned with the Yoruba-language slogan Emi l’okan (“It’s my turn”)—won the presidency with approximately 37 percent of the vote, beating both Atiku Abubakar of the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who received 29 percent of the vote, and Obi of the Labour Party (LP), who got 25 percent.

And yet, a closer examination of what transpired shows that, despite the dejection—to say nothing of anger—on the part of many of those wishing for more immediate change, a shift is indeed underway in Nigeria, one that its neighbors on the African continent, as well as its global partners, would do well to be attentive to.

What Happened?

Quite simply, as Phillip van Niekerk noted in one of the most cogent analyses to appear immediately after the results were announced, “the opposition parties committed a strategic blunder by splitting their forces.” A former vice president, the seventy-six-year-old Abubakar is a perennial aspirant for Nigeria’s top job; this was his sixth presidential campaign. In the previous race in 2019, Abubakar, with Obi as his vice-presidential running mate, won seventeen of the country’s thirty-five states plus the Federal Capital Territory. Had the duo not broken up, it is very likely they might have won this year’s contest in a landslide.

Despite the social media-fueled devotion of his youthful following—self-styled “Obidients”—the sixty-one-year-old Obi was handicapped by the limits of the vehicle he adopted for his presidential ambitions: the practically irrelevant LP which, in the current National Assembly, has just one member in the 109-seat Senate and eight in the 360-seat House of Representatives. Had Obi, by some extraordinary feat, managed to win the presidency, he would have struggled mightily to get anything through a legislature dominated by the APC-PDP duopoly since, while the party did better (winning six Senate seats and thirty-six House seats at the time of writing), it still is far from being a major legislative force. However, that scenario was never likely given the mundane realities of political dynamics in the Nigerian federal system: effective national campaigns are built upon having organization (and candidates) at the level of the states and the country’s 774 local government areas (governors in twenty-eight states and state legislators in all thirty-six states and the federal district were to have been chosen in a March 11 vote—now postponed until March 18—that has received very little outside attention; another three states hold gubernatorial votes later this year). The LP did not even field candidates in all the down-ballot races across the country. The hitherto marginal party’s organizational woes were compounded by a money-laundering conviction by a federal high court and the subsequent resignation of the head of its presidential campaign committee, Doyin Okupe, just two months before the vote. This was followed by a subsequent defection of other influential members of the committee, especially a bloc from northeastern states who feuded with Obi’s inner circle.

While there is not denying the energy that the Obidients injected into the campaign, this predominantly urban demographic may represent Nigeria’s aspirations but is itself not representative of a nation where half of the population is still classified as rural. This bias was readily apparent in skewed polling, conducted for the most part via mobile phones or online, that showed Obi with more support than ultimately manifested on the day of the election. Also telling was the story of one self-professed Obidient, profiled by Ruth Maclean, West Africa bureau chief of the New York Times. This particular Obidient who waxed eloquent about her candidate, retweeted his posts, blocked supporters of his rivals, and hectored her friends to register to vote, only to never collect her own Permanent Voter Card (PVC) because, upon encountering long lines, decided that she did not “really like stress.”

The Obidients may have been siloed from many other Nigerians in the same manner that is often inaccurately ascribed to New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael (“I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won. I don’t know anybody who voted for him”), but both INEC and the international community contributed to the narrative, however unwittingly. The electoral commission did itself no favors in the leadup to the vote by overhyping the untested Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) it introduced to authenticate the new biometric PVCs issued to electors as well as failing to collate and publish results in a timely manner. Some of the machines only arrived in Nigeria just days before the vote. Not surprisingly, they did not perform as promised. The problem, however, is that in the climate of mistrust and suspicion then prevalent, INEC was not given any benefit of the doubt when polls were delayed in opening or results failed to upload for whatever reason. As the preliminary assessment of the joint National Democratic Institute-International Republican Institute election observation mission led by former Malawian President Joyce Banda put it succinctly: “Challenges with the electronic transfer of results and their upload to a public portal in a timely manner, undermined citizen confidence at a crucial moment of the process. Moreover, inadequate communication and lack of transparency by [INEC] about their cause and extent created confusion and eroded voters’ trust in the process.”

Van Niekerk pointed out that while INEC may have been inept, charges of systemic fraud favoring the incumbent APC would require an almost dogmatic faith in an elaborate conspiracy: “If the APC were clever enough to pull off a vote-switching operation, they surprisingly denied themselves victory in Katsina, Lagos, Osun, Edo, much of the Northwest and Kano, and rewarded Obi with more than 90 percent of the vote in the Southeast.”

Almost without exception, the international media coverage leading up to the vote was focused on Obi’s candidacy and the Obidients’ rallying around it, inadvertently feeding what proved to be a myopic worldview. The Economist—and it was hardly the only publication to fall into the trap—even published a feature article with a headline describing Obi as “the surprise front-runner in Nigeria’s presidential race.” Zainab Usman, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Africa Program who is originally from Nigeria, has lamented that “Twitter became so toxic to many level-headed analysts who just chose to go silent online. Therefore, the prevailing narratives here are incredibly misaligned with on-the-ground realities…But bullying those who don’t align with preferred narratives will make the echo chamber more hollow, loud [and] detached from reality.”

What Next?

Both the PDP and the LP have denounced the results proclaimed by INEC and, in fact, demanded a rerun of the polls even before the official announcement of those results. The LP has filed a legal challenge and the PDP is expected to follow. Abubakar filed suit to contest his losses in the 2007 and 2019 elections, but his appeals were rejected by Nigeria’s Supreme Court in both cases. Obi is likewise no stranger to the process, albeit with slightly better success than his former running mate: in 2003, he contested the results of the race for the governorship of southeastern Anambra State, which was declared for the candidate of the then-ruling PDP; in 2006, after an epic legal battle, the courts ruled in his favor and he was sworn in. Such a reversal, however, has never occurred in a national race.

In the meantime, Tinubu is expected to take over the presidency on May 29. With several races still to be called, the APC will retain a slightly diminished, but still solid, majority in the Nigerian Senate and will likely have a slim majority in the House of Representatives. Significantly, the new National Assembly is considerably different in terms of parties represented and individual members than the outgoing legislature. At least eight parties will be seated in the new body. While the PDP remains the leading opposition party, Nigeria’s first-past-the-post electoral system has meant that many of the gains by the LP and smaller parties came at its expense: so far, it has lost at least fifteen Senate seats. And while the yearning for change was not enough to totally overturn the Nigerian political system, it created sufficient churn that Senate President Ahmed Lawan will be the only one of the 469 legislators who has served since the restoration of civilian rule in 1999 (in comparison, currently ten of America’s 100 senators and thirty-seven of its 435 representatives have been in Congress since before 2000).

Alas, the number of women among parliamentarians will likely diminish. Of the six women in the outgoing Senate, three lost their reelection bids amidst the anti-incumbent mood, while three others—including the new First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, who represents Central Lagos—did not seek another term. From the results so far, only two women have won seats in the upper chamber.

At an even more basic level, the entire national political establishment faces a challenge of legitimacy in that barely 25 million voters, out of more than 93 million registered, cast ballots in the February 25 poll for the presidency and other federal-level offices. Whether the result of apathy, cynicism, or disenfranchisement, intentional or not, that level of participation is one of the lowest among democratic countries. Among all African countries since the end of the Cold War, according to the International IDEA elections database, only Algeria’s 2021 parliamentary election (23 percent voter turnout) and Tunisia’s December 2022-January 2023 parliamentary election (11 percent turnout) have had lower levels of participation than the recent Nigerian federal vote. Post-election media reports of disenchanted young first-time voters destroying their voter cards and vowing “to never engage again with the democratic process” hardly augur well for the future of Nigeria’s democracy if such tantrums become widespread.

The March 18 gubernatorial and state legislative assembly elections will also give INEC an opportunity to redeem itself if it can get its technology to work properly and better manage its communications. There are indications that the commission may have learned at least some lessons: the need to back up data stored on the BVAS machines due to the legal challenges from the federal elections and the complications of resetting over 176,000 devices for the state-level elections were cited in the communiqué announcing the postponement.

Back to the Future

Addressing the nation the day after he was declared the president-elect by INEC, Tinubu sounded a conciliatory note, saluting his opponents and declaring that “Political competition must now give way to political conciliation and inclusive governance.” He acknowledged that “many people are uncertain, angry, and hurt,” and called for healing and calm. The septuagenarian made a special appeal to Nigeria’s youth: “I hear you loud and clear. I understand your pains, your yearnings for good governance, a functional economy, and a safe nation that protects you and your future. I am aware that for many of you Nigeria has become a place of abiding challenges limiting your ability to see a bright future for yourselves.”

To turn those eloquent words into reality, Tinubu will need to draw upon some of the same playbooks that made his 1999–2007 tenure as governor of Lagos the success that he rightly highlighted during his campaign. According to UN Habitat, Lagos and its environs constitute the densest urban agglomeration on the African continent and come in just behind South America’s densest city, Medellin, for fourth place globally. Yet Tinubu not only managed to govern the sprawl, but it emerged as one of Africa’s key engines of economic growth during the period.

With about 10 percent of Nigeria’s total population, the state generates roughly 20 percent of the country’s GDP. Thanks to reforms put in place by Tinubu while governor, Lagos enjoys the highest internally generated revenue of any Nigerian state in absolute terms as well as in percentage of the state budget, making its government less dependent than other states on federal grants derived from oil revenues. Thus, although the loss of his hometown in the presidential election must sting, the ubiquity of Obidients there and the relative prosperity of many of them are testaments of a sort to the favorable entrepreneurial climate presided over by Tinubu and his successors—all of whom have been younger protégés he groomed after either recruiting them locally or convincing them to return from abroad.

One of the strangest twists during the recent campaign period was the decision in November 2022 by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to launch new naira banknotes and initially giving Nigerians only six weeks (subsequently extended by an additional ten days) to exchange their old notes for the newly issued bills. The resulting chaos—exacerbated by a shortage of the new notes and limits imposed on cash withdrawals from bank accounts—led to even well-off Nigerians being unable to pay for everyday expenses. Some prominent Tinubu allies even openly speculated that the exercise was some sort of payback from CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele, whose attempt to enter the APC presidential primary—notwithstanding the statutory nonpartisan nature of his position—was foiled. Since the election, the Nigerian Supreme Court has ruled that the government’s currency rollout unconstitutional, and ordered the old naira bills to be deemed valid through the end of year. This, however, means that completing the swap will be one of the first tasks for the incoming administration—and one the impact of which will affect every Nigerian.

Beyond the botched introduction of new banknotes—notionally not an unreasonable path to curb counterfeiting and other crimes—a number of macroeconomic reforms need to be undertaken. Tinubu has pledged to end the fuel subsidy that costs Nigeria some $15 billion annually—money he says he wants to have “more productively used in joint investments with the private sector to create jobs in infrastructure, health care, education and agriculture,” outlining plans for focused investments in industrialization, technological innovation, improved infrastructure, and agricultural development. None of this will be politically easy—vested interests, ranging from criminal organizations smuggling fuel to ordinary Nigerians, that are against changing the fuel subsidy have stymied every Nigerian president before him—but without drastic action, the stagnation will continue.

Restoring security will also need to be a top priority. Outgoing President Buhari, a one-time military ruler, lavished over twelve trillion naira ($26.5 billion) on the armed forces during his two terms, privileging the fight against Boko Haram and other jihadists groups in northeastern Nigeria. While the fight against the jihadists continues—just this past week, Islamist militants killed at least two dozen people in an attack on a fishing village in Borno State—insecurity continues to spread to other corners of the country, including banditry and criminal gangs in the northwest, separatists in the oil-rich southeast, herder-farmer conflicts in the Middle Belt (many evincing worrisome indications of increasing religious animosities), and growing violence in cities. The relatively conservative tally kept by the Council on Foreign Relations Nigeria Security Tracker puts the number of Nigerians killed last year in violence motivated by political, economic, or social grievance—including state actors as well as terrorist groups and sectarian—at an appalling 4,066. Unless the Tinubu administration can bring the violence under control and reform the security sector, the private investments it seeks for its ambitious economic agenda are unlikely to materialize.

Finally, Tinubu won in an election that also laid bare many of the fissures in Nigerian society, including ethnic and religious divides. The decision to defy the convention of balancing national tickets regionally and religiously by pairing up northerners with southerners, Muslims with Christians (the vice president-elect, Kashim Shettima, former governor of northeastern Borno State, is also, like Tinubu, a Muslim), may have been a smart political move to galvanize the APC’s northern base. But its downside is that the incoming administration will have to be especially attuned to the sensitivities of the plurality of the Nigerian population that does not share the religious commitments of the new president and vice president. Not only domestically, but in Nigeria’s foreign relations, especially with the United States and the United Kingdom, where the concerns of the country’s Christian communities—echoed by the large and well-positioned diaspora—resonate politically.

Why It Matters

While hydraulic fracturing and the resulting “Shale Revolution” mean that Nigerian oil and gas do not have the importance for the United States it once had—in fact, America hardly imports any Nigerian hydrocarbons—what happens in Nigeria still matters a great deal, perhaps even more so, from a geopolitical and geoeconomic perspective.

For the European Union, trying to wean itself from Russian gas in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, it is hard to overstate the importance of Nigeria, already the source of about 14 percent of EU imports of gas. The 4,000-kilometer Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline being built from Nigeria through Niger to the Mediterranean in Algeria will more than double that flow with an additional 30 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Nigeria. In the longer term, another pipeline, following the coast some 6,000 kilometers from Nigeria to Morocco, would send even more gas to the EU. In addition, today’s 216 million Nigerians will increase to 375 million by 2050, making the country the third most populous in the world after India and China. Its position will be unassailable as the clear economic and demographic regional heavyweight on an African continent that is increasingly significant in global strategic calculations.

Nigeria’s new president-elect won not only because of a divided opposition, but because the governing party and its core supporters agreed that, on account of his record for delivering politically in Lagos and nationally, it was “his turn.” However, the campaign and the vote tallies made clear that many Nigerians are more concerned that it finally be their turn. Much more than his personal political fortunes will be riding on how deftly Bola Tinubu balances both sets of expectations.

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

Image: Tolu Owoeye/Shutterstock.

An embassy event celebrates the seizure of ancient swords from a would-be Russian smuggler.

With the big sub deal in hand, it’s no longer Miller time.

Comment M. Anthony Blair peut-il préconiser des libéralisations tous azimuts des services publics ? L'exemple, parfois tragique, de la privatisation du rail britannique ne lui suffit apparemment pas... Dans The Navigators, la dernière œuvre cinématographique de Ken Loach, la réalité l'emporte sur la (...) / Royaume-Uni, Libéralisme, Service public, Transports - 2002/04

Washington urgently needs a 21st-century communication strategy.

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.