Diplomacy & Crisis News

De sérieux indices de fraude électorale jettent le discrédit sur le scrutin présidentiel hondurien du 26 novembre. Le président sortant, Juan Orlando Hernández, a été réélu au détriment du centriste Salvador Nasralla, engagé dans la lutte contre la corruption. Avec la bénédiction des États-Unis, (...) / Amérique latine, Amérique centrale, Honduras, Élections, Autoritarisme, États-Unis, États-Unis (affaires extérieures), Coup d'État, Dictature, Mouvement de contestation, Répression - 2018/01

Un trois-mâts anglais entre dans la baie de Hangzhou après une traversée de sept mois — le recours au chiffre divin n'est pas anodin. Parti de Southampton en ce milieu du XVIIIe siècle, le Sirius abrite à son bord quatre horlogers de grand renom, dont Alister Cox, le meilleur constructeur d'automates (...) / Chine, Royaume-Uni, Culture, Histoire, Technologie, Fiction, Littérature - 2018/01

In 1908, a young member of the British Parliament named Winston Spencer Churchill was trekking through Uganda when a tsetse fly settled on his shoulder. Though he knew he was traveling through a region where the tsetse fly had already killed hundreds of thousands of people, Churchill had nonetheless tired of the protective veil he and the other members of his party had been obliged to wear, and so took it off to better enjoy the view of Murchison Falls on the Victoria Nile. As he recounted in My African Journey, the sight of the tsetse, with its distinctive, long proboscis and large wings folded peculiarly on top of each other, frightened him into redonning his veil. Then, as now, the tsetse fly carried sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease that attacks the patient’s nervous system until he or she becomes totally insensible and eventually impossible to wake up. The formidable young rising star of British politics found himself humbled by nature’s power and corrected course. Had he not, the British Empire might never have found the hero it needed in its hour of crisis thirty-two years later, and present-day readers might not have stumbled upon this colorful analogy for present-day American policy in East Africa.

Observers of the United States’ listless Africa policy might well conclude that American policymakers are suffering from sleeping sickness, which is characterized by a brief period of feverish activity before the patient grows lethargic and ever harder to rouse. In Africa, nations are broadly realigning away from the United States and toward Russia or China. This is especially true of sub-Saharan Africa, where cycles of increasingly frequent droughts and intense floods have exacerbated long-simmering tensions from ethnic conflict to Islamic insurgencies. Now, just a few weeks after President Joe Biden’s much-vaunted U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, Russia looks set to replace France as the guarantor of West African security, China is touting the transformative impact of its infrastructure projects, and the United States, despite all its money and military might, finds itself overshadowed by Pope Francis’s visit to East Africa in early February.

However, the worsening crisis in an oft-ignored African nation, the world’s youngest, has the potential to catapult the United States back into a position of influence in Africa. That country is an oil-rich and strife-ridden nation which briefly entered global news cycles as part of Pope Francis’s pilgrimage to it and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That country is South Sudan.

A Neglected Strategic Player

South Sudan, though somewhat obscure in comparison to its more notorious northern neighbor, enjoys an important geostrategic position: it bridges East and North Africa, and possesses vast reserves of oil, copper, and gold, in addition to fertile soil, a sizable stretch of the Nile River, and its immense hydroelectric potential. Yet currently, South Sudan sits at the bottom of every human development ranking—for the most part, due to protracted conflict between rival ethnic groups that receive funding from countries with an interest in the region’s resources.

Part of America’s strategy for containing China’s growth involves denying China access to Africa’s mineral wealth, so South Sudan should loom large on the Biden administration’s list of priorities in Africa. Furthermore, just as Burkina Faso is the linchpin of West African security because it separates the Islamic State in Africa from Boko Haram, South Sudan’s stability is necessary to prevent the Somali jihadist organization Al-Shabab from spreading into more of East Africa.

Yet the United States’ current approach leaves much to be desired. Consider, for example, the results of its de facto approach of handing off responsibility for addressing many of the country’s various ills to non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Though some humanitarian organizations and NGOs have a presence in South Sudan, their investment has proven ineffective. As the New Humanitarian reports, donors prefer to see their funds invested in short-term projects, such as random conferences and dialogues that do not involve any real power players. Additionally, the restrictions imposed upon NGOs on where they can go and whom they can invite to their events means that individuals that are actually involved in local conflicts, such as militants and tribal leaders, who often have divergent interests, are excluded from engaging in dialogue. Compounding this situation is the fact that, as reported earlier this month in the Guardian, local NGOs increasingly find their aid distribution programs hamstrung by an overabundance of short-term grants and a scarcity of long-term contracts. These long-term contracts, if they were available, would enable NGOs to plan more effective campaigns, or make the investments necessary to increase their impact, particularly in the most isolated and at-risk communities.

What America Can Do

The present situation represents a strong opportunity for the United States to both address the needs of the South Sudanese people and fortify America’s strategic position on the African continent. There are five ways this can be done.

First, the United States can provide military and security assistance that can act as a force multiplier for local initiatives already underway in South Sudan but otherwise almost certainly doomed due to lack of funding and poor management. Such assistance and expertise can help provide a stable context in which productive and peace-seeking dialogues, such as between armed youths and people from communities long hostile to each other, can occur.

Second, the United States can use its diplomatic strength to help facilitate negotiations between the South Sudanese government and its neighbors. For example, since 1963, South Sudan has been locked in a border dispute with Kenya over the Ilemi Triangle—a disputed region rich in petroleum and water. Despite peace initiatives managed by the African Union, the region often erupts in violent border skirmishes, much like South Sudan’s decades-long standoff with Sudan over the Abiyei oil fields.

Third, the United States can help fund the long-term contracts that local NGOs need to maximize aid delivery and programmatic effectiveness. Moreover, America can deploy homegrown programs and funding to incentivize cooperation between Sudanese elites and hold them accountable to any agreements they might reach. South Sudan is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as evinced by a report promulgated by The Sentry, an advocacy organization. 

Fourth, the United States can provide development assistance—which is essential to security, as robust economies provide options for youths who might otherwise join an insurgent group out of desperation. Here, Washington would do well to replicate the success of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) model, and provide expertise and training to local leaders before handing off the day-to-day administration of programs to them as part of a focus on leadership and community development.

Fifth, the United States should call upon a powerful, globally respected figure with unmatched moral authority for help. In this, they will find an ally in his holiness Pope Francis, who has set his sights on achieving peace in South Sudan. As reported in the New York Times, the two-day visit of Pope Francis in early February, as part of an ecumenical pilgrimage with the leaders of the Church of England and Church of Scotland, shone a light on the deep divisions and seemingly intractable problems facing the fledgling nation.

Roman Catholics constitute 52.4 percent of South Sudan’s population, while other Christian denominations make up roughly 8 percent. Cooperation with the Pope and other major figures in the Christian world would help to make up for the United States’ lack of moral authority in the region, which is still reeling from the abortive American intervention in Somalia of 1992–1993, its limited response to the 2004 genocide in Darfur, and other embroglios. Additionally, the Catholic Church has a strong presence on the ground in South Sudan, as do churches in the Anglican Communion and various ecumenical groups. Many in the religious community have undertaken heroic efforts to help communities recover from the violence, including a single nun, Sister Gracy, who managed to establish several schools and medical facilities with minimal international support. The United States could greatly assist South Sudan by helping identify and support such driven and talented individuals. The Catholic Church—with its distributed networks of churches, community centers, almshouses, and other initiatives—would prove indispensable to such deeply local work.

In short, the United States alone has the material resources to match the Pope’s spiritual authority; together, they could help impose order and begin to restore South Sudan by building basic infrastructure such as sewage systems, roads, and electric grids.

The President Following the Pope?

The ingredients for success in South Sudan are undoubtedly present if President Joe Biden decides to take on a larger role in East Africa. Military solutions to social problems have not yielded lasting peace in recent years, if the U.S. interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are any indication. Indeed, while its oldest ally, France, waged a heroic, decade-long counterterrorism operation in the continent, the United States fell back on its default position of militarizing the surrounding regions and wringing its hands when underequipped militants overpowered government forces and upgraded their equipment on Uncle Sam’s dime.

In his inaugural address, Biden opened with a commitment to demonstrate “renewal and resolve.” His unflagging support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression has demonstrated an appetite for justice and the steely will to stand by his commitments. If he steers the formidable might of the American foreign policy apparatus toward achieving peace in South Sudan, he might well find that Africa’s nations will welcome America’s moral leadership.

If President Biden follows Pope Francis into South Sudan and achieves even limited success, he might find other African nations eager to hear what he has planned next. If he allows this opportunity to slip, however, he might find himself unpleasantly surprised by the geopolitical equivalent of a tsetse fly on his shoulder.

Anthony J. Tokarz is a banker, political consultant, and amateur historian from northern New Jersey. Additionally, Anthony occasionally moonlights as a policy consultant for the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE), a Brussels-based NGO that advocates for the rights of families and children in the European Union and at the Council of Europe. The views expressed in his writing are his own.

Image: Tudoran Andrei/Shutterstock.

Not long ago, one of my students asked: “So, if my phone tells me the Russians have used nuclear weapons in Ukraine, should I do anything different here?” In other words: should I head for the hills?

My answer is “no.” The U.S. and Russian governments know full well that lobbing nuclear weapons at each other would be suicidal—each has enough powerful, survivable nuclear weapons to obliterate the other as a functioning society. No one is going to march down that road on purpose.

But it’s a nervous “no,” because the key lesson of the crises of the last several decades is that there is a fog of crisis, just as there is a fog of war, and things can happen that no leader originally intended. And in this case, thinking about how the United States might respond to Russian nuclear use makes clear just how rapidly things could get very dicey.

The danger that Russia might turn to nuclear weapons is real. So far, Russian president Vladimir Putin has found it in his interest to talk a big game about possibly using nuclear weapons—while instructing his government to deny that any of his nuclear threats ever happened—but not to actually do very much. Russia’s nuclear weapons have not been placed on high alert, and the short-range “tactical” nuclear weapons most likely to be used in Ukraine have not been moved from their central storage facilities. But Putin can’t afford to lose this war, having spent tens of thousands of Russian lives on it, and he now has few realistic options to win. Putin knows there would be huge costs and risks from crossing the nuclear threshold, but if the choice was between that and a humiliating defeat that might cause him to lose power, he might well reach for the nuclear button.

Using nuclear weapons would be unlikely to result in major gains on the battlefield. The Ukrainians haven’t been concentrating forces in ways that make them vulnerable to nuclear blasts, and most targets that could be destroyed with nuclear weapons could be destroyed with Russia’s conventional missiles and drones.

But Putin might believe that a nuclear attack could force the Ukrainians to capitulate. He might, for example, use a handful of nuclear weapons on the battlefield and then say: “Unless you agree to Russia’s terms, Kharkiv is next, and then Odessa, and then…” Putin has referred to the “precedent” the United States set in dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then demanding Japan surrender.

President Joe Biden’s national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, has publicly warned that if Russia were to use nuclear weapons, the response would be “catastrophic” for Russia, and has offered Russia more specifics in private. The difficulty is coming up with a response severe enough to match the outrage of the use of nuclear weapons but not so severe as to create massive escalation risks with a state ruled by a leader desperate enough to launch a nuclear strike despite the warnings.

As Sullivan’s blunt warning makes clear, the Biden administration is considering responses that include not just political condemnation and additional sanctions but also military action. Most U.S. analysts and officials are not talking about using nuclear weapons in response, but rather conventional strikes—perhaps not on the Russian homeland given the risks of nuclear retaliation that might entail, but on Russian forces in Ukraine and elsewhere.

For better or for worse, that would make the United States a direct belligerent in the war. That is exactly what Biden has been trying to avoid, fearing, as he puts it, that direct U.S.-Russian fighting would lead to “World War III.” Russia would almost certainly strike back in some way, in part to deter the United States from going any further. That, then, would call into play Article V of the NATO treaty, under which an attack on one is an attack on all. From there, things could get very ugly, very fast. There can be little confidence that every action by every military unit could be carefully controlled, and every intended signal understood.

As one example, if U.S. strikes really were “catastrophic” for Russia, Russian forces in Ukraine would be greatly weakened. Ukrainian forces would have a dramatic new opportunity to surge forward. Russia’s diminished forces might not be able to stop them, which might then lead Putin to reach for the nuclear button again.

The longer the war continues, the more people will die and the more the nuclear danger will rise. It is time to work with Ukraine to begin exploring a negotiated end to the conflict. That’s not likely to happen soon, though, as both sides are optimistic that they might end up in a stronger position after more fighting. To reduce the risk of catastrophic escalation, the Biden team needs to continue using tabletop exercises to game out different scenarios, going several steps in to consider all the dangers and implications. And the Biden administration must continue exploring how it could reassure a paranoid Putin, even in such an awful situation, that the United States will not escalate further if Russia does not and won’t take action to destroy Russia or oust Putin from power.

Any use of nuclear weapons would pose devastating dangers. The United States and its allies need to find ways to reduce the danger, and they need to think several steps ahead in considering how they would respond to Russian nuclear use and what they should say to Russia now to convince it not to consider going down the nuclear road. Biden should continue to do everything he can to make sure the seventy-seven-year-old nuclear taboo continues.

Matthew Bunn is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Principal Investigator for the Project on Managing the Atom at the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Image: Fasttailwind/Shutterstock.com.

When Beijing announced recently that China’s population shrank, media outlets rightly gave the news attention. The coverage widely speculated that a shrinking population might somehow threaten China’s ambition to become the world’s dominant economy. Though most of these stories lacked clarity on whys and wherefores, they were nonetheless on the mark. When demographic trends are considered in detail—those whys and wherefores—Chinese demographics rises to become the single biggest economic event in decades, one that will significantly retard the pace of China’s development. The once-dominant perception of China as an irresistible economic juggernaut will have to change.

The figures recently released by China’s official statistics agency are striking enough on the surface. They show a drop in the nation’s population by some 850,000 since the last census. Working from these figures, United Nations (UN) demographers foresee future population declines, from 1.4 billion people presently to 1.3 billion in 2050, to 800 million or so by the end of the century. India will surpass China as the world’s most populous nation in less than a decade. And there is little China can do to stop the trend. More significantly, there is also little that Beijing can do to mitigate the trend’s retarding effects on the nation’s economic prospects.

The crucial economic factor in this demographic picture is less the gross population trend and more the acute shortage of working-age people facing China. Thanks to Beijing’s decades-long imposition of a one-child policy on Chinese families—for the last forty-five years, until recently—the nation now faces an acute shortage of young workers to replace the huge generation that is now retiring. The numbers of those of working age—by convention, between fifteen and sixty-four years old—have in fact hardly grown at all since 2010. But the older population of retirement age has grown a whopping 53 percent, increasing from 9 percent of the total population in 2010 to 13 percent at last measure. There are, as a consequence, barely 3.5 percent of working-age people today available to support each retiree, down from about 6.5 percent in 2000 and 5.5 percent in 2010. And that figure is expected to fall below 2.3 percent by 2030 and even lower in the years following. 

To grasp the economic significance of this situation, consider the burden on three workers. They must support themselves, their personal dependents, and a third of everything each retiree needs. No three workers anywhere, at least on average, are productive enough to shoulder this need. The economic strain will be much greater than what the raw numbers imply because the large aging population will necessarily siphon off workers from everyday production—exports, machinery, consumer items—to the medical and other care services needed by the elderly. This increasingly acute shortage of working hands and minds will deprive China of the surplus output and wealth essential to make the investments that this, or any economy, needs to develop—especially the grand projects for which China has become famous and which have so contributed to the country’s former and impressive pace of growth. 

What is more damaging is that these demographics will have significant and adverse financial implications as well. The pension needs of these retirees will force considerable borrowing on local governments as well as Beijing. China already carries a more considerable debt burden than most countries, including even the United States. At last measure, all debt—public and private—amounted to the equivalent of about $52 trillion, verging on three times the size of the economy. To be sure, Washington carries a larger debt burden than Beijing does, but that is because Beijing offloads borrowing needs—to support infrastructure spending for instance—onto local governments. Pension demands will increase this burden further still, and unavoidably crowd out the growth-fostering projects that in the past have done so much for China’s development.

There is little Beijing can do to offset these ill effects. A few years ago, the authorities finally awakened to the potential economic damage of the one-child policy. They rescinded the law and allowed larger families. But even if Chinese people had immediately taken advantage of that more liberal environment, it would take fifteen to twenty years before the change could have an effect on the relative size of the country’s working-age population. As it is, the nation’s fertility rate has not risen in response to the new law. Nor is China likely to see a wave of talented immigrants to enlarge the ranks of the working aged. On the contrary, China regularly experiences more out- than in-migration.

The only other avenue open for relief lies in increasing worker productivity. To this end, Beijing has emphasized the development and adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. Indeed, China has become a world leader in these areas. No doubt in time these trends will substitute algorithms, computers, and machinery for labor and make the country’s relatively limited working population more productive than it is today. AI and robotics can also help by limiting the need for physical labor and thereby enabling Chinese to work at older ages than in the past. But these things can only go so far, not the least because their development requires heavy investment expenditures that China, with its working population already facing impossible demands, will have difficulty making. 

China’s pace of growth has already slowed markedly. Most sources estimate that the real economy expanded by only 2 percent last year. Covid lockdowns have rightly taken most of the blame for this radical shortfall from that economy’s historic pace of expansion. The economy’s reopening this year will likely produce a significant growth fillip. But behind such transitory gyrations, the ill effects of the country’s demographic reality will redouble. To be sure, China will maintain a significant economy even in the face of this reality, but neither its absolute size nor its pace of advance will come up to the once-popular outlook for Chinese economic dominance amid a powerful growth momentum.

Milton Ezrati is a contributing editor at The National Interest, an affiliate of the Center for the Study of Human Capital at the University at Buffalo (SUNY), and chief economist for Vested, the New York-based communications firm. His latest books are Thirty Tomorrows: The Next Three Decades of Globalization, Demographics, and How We Will Live and Bite-Sized Investing.

Image: Shutterstock.

À partir de Spectres de Marx (Galilée, 1993), où il s'engage dans une relecture de l'auteur du Capital, jusqu'à sa mort, en 2004, Jacques Derrida n'a pas quitté le champ du politique. Sa réflexion sur les thèmes de la démocratie, de la souveraineté « État-nationale », des pratiques pénales, du statut des (...) / Intellectuels, Idées, Idéologie, Marxisme, Politique - 2018/01

One year on, the war in Ukraine is going through a phase of equilibrium. Ukraine has carried out significant counter-offensives but has failed to recover all its territories, including the Donbas and Crimea, both occupied since 2014. Russia, in turn, unable to advance any further, is limiting itself to maintaining its positions and continuing with war crimes, shelling electrical infrastructure and water dams in recent months.

The end of the war may thus not be as near as it seemed last fall, which underscores the importance of the multiple, parallel arenas where this conflict is being fought. The first “systemic” European war since 1945, as such it is, will have far-reaching effects in both time and space. 

A year later, this war implies three things. First, a strategic vision—that is to say, a geopolitical design for the future of Europe and the international system as a whole. And second, a communications struggle—namely, winning the narrative battle while cultivating empathy. On this latter point, it is revealing that the engagement levels and volume of posts from Russian state-controlled media have declined since the invasion began a year ago. And third, soon, this war might also entail an international legal dispute.

Convenient for Russia, the current status quo is not an option for Ukraine. Invaded illegally and unprovoked, stripped of territories internationally recognized as its own, and with a decimated economy, Ukraine was forced to produce a shift in the current military balance decidedly in its favor. But although Putin’s attempt at occupying the country has failed, let alone the chimera of annexing it, the current stalemate nonetheless makes a free, democratic, and firmly aligned-with-the-West Ukraine impossible.

In this sense, it is auspicious that—finally—Germany has approved the shipment of the Leopard tanks and the United States of the Abrams while neutral Switzerland has agreed to supply ammunition. Western delays and indecision have usually been justified by Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons to respond to any escalation or direct NATO involvement in the conflict.

On the one hand, giving in to such threats is not conducive to the very peace and stability of the international system, and is contradictory to the new European reality. If Putin concludes that his nuclear threats are enough to emasculate Ukraine within an amputated geography and a fragmented sovereignty, that would only serve as an incentive for future invasions. It happened in Georgia in 2008, in Ukraine in 2014, and, outside of Europe, in Syria in 2015.

On the other hand, sustaining non-intervention ad infinitum is a flimsy argument, as the space for European neutrality has been significantly reduced. Indeed, with the accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO, due to Putin’s own fault, Russia’s border with NATO has effectively doubled. And precisely on the occasion of the application of these Nordic nations to NATO membership in May 2022, Putin threatened very serious reprisals that never occurred.

Europe and the world cannot live hostage to Russian imperial megalomania; the respective maps of NATO and the Union thus converge toward one. Perhaps Joe Biden’s trip to Kyiv signals the end of Western vacillations.

That is why this war represents a transcendental strategic challenge: rebuilding the international order and consolidating a united Europe in democracy and with a revitalized NATO. Ukraine’s victory is a necessary condition for resuming the post-Cold War project that was truncated in 1994. It was precisely by the Budapest Memorandum that Russia’s conditions were accepted: Kyiv handed over its nuclear arsenal and its applications to NATO and the European Union were shelved. That is when Ukraine was abandoned.

Ukraine today has won the battle of the narrative. Always wearing his olive-green attire, the charismatic Volodymyr Zelensky has become a symbol, rallying Europe behind his cause as rarely happened in history. But this is not enough, he himself repeats it in every meeting with the press and with foreign leaders. His prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, did the same while in Washington and New York at the end of January. Tanks are welcome, he said, but Ukraine’s victory needs more money, fighter jets, and Western support in the arena of international law.

The Legal Arena

Ukraine needs more weapons, but it also needs allies for its legal initiatives. Kostin traveled abroad to seek support for the creation of a “special tribunal” to try Russian leaders for the crime of aggression. Introduced during the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1945 by Aron Trainin, paradoxically a Soviet jurist, the crime of aggression is one of the four established international crimes, along with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

The Kostin’s office reports having documented 67,000 war crimes, including 155 cases of sexual violence. It also estimates that 15,000 children were kidnapped and deported to Russia; the forced transfer of the population is a crime against humanity. And he is working hard to document the crime of genocide—“the deliberate intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”

There is evidence of all three types of crimes, but the threshold of proof is very high, their documentation is laborious, and the identification of those responsible is not always crystal clear.

Proving the crime of aggression, however, is a simpler matter, since it defines responsibilities in terms of political decisions, thereby specifically charging political leaders. Thus, it is defined as “the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any way that is inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations.”

In other words, it is unequivocal: the crime of aggression occurs when another country is invaded without reason or prior provocation. The first special court for this purpose was that of Nuremberg in 1945. The one being proposed today is also inspired by the special courts of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Cambodia. That is why the Zelensky government has centered the discussion within international organizations, given the need to achieve a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly. It is the natural place for such, as a permanent member of the Security Council is itself violating the fundamental principles and provisions of the UN Charter.

Enter Latin America

The issue will also reach the American continent, where, unlike in Europe, it will be difficult to reach a consensus in favor of Ukraine’s position. This is for various reasons. There is a long history of “neutrality” in Latin America, almost always not out of principle but out of hypocrisy. The only country aligned with the Allies in World War II was Brazil. There was no shortage of countries that declared war on the Axis, but only after their capitulation.

Latin American duplicity is observed today in the position of several countries in relation to this conflict. Zelensky himself exposed the ethical and political miseries of the region. “Which side would Simon Bolivar be on in this war that Russia unleashed against Ukraine? Who would Jose de San Martin support? Who would Miguel Hidalgo sympathize with? I think they would not help someone who is just plundering a smaller country like a typical colonizer,” he told them in a video last October.

Timely indeed, as Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro always talks about “imperialism,” though its “American” imperialism. His problem though is that, in addition to thousands of Cuban intelligence officers, he has three Russian military bases on Venezuelan soil. Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega as well, who in his recent speech declared he is still at war with the Contras. But last June, the Nicaraguan National Assembly authorized the entry of Russian military equipment and personnel into the country at his request. And of course, the Russian military presence in Cuba, still present, dates back to the Soviet era and continues.

Then there are the inconsistent governments who display contradictory positions in international forums: Bolivia always abstains on this issue, while Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico vote erratically on the Russian invasion of Ukraine in both the UN and the Organization of America States. Maintaining the status quo, or an eventual victory for Russia, would serve to further empower Putin-allied dictators. Ukraine’s victory, in contrast, is also necessary for the survival of democracy and the enforcement of human rights in Latin America.

The Maduro regime is under investigation for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court; there are complaints against the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship for similar crimes—this last week for the forced transfer of “liberated” political prisoners—and the documentation in Cuban even points to “contemporary forms of slavery.” Having Putin face an international tribunal is bad news for all of them.

But there is more. Bringing Putin before an international tribunal and charging with the specific crime of aggression would be a direct message, a powerful and much-needed deterrent, for the expansionist ambitions of Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela has a claim on Guyana’s Esequiba region, a territory that represents no less than two-thirds of the country. The dispute has existed since the nineteenth century, but it has grown in intensity since 2015. The reason is simple: that year, gigantic oil reserves were discovered on the ocean floor off Esequiba’s coast, making Guyana one of the fastest-growing economies and projected to become the country with the highest oil income per capita in the world.

Guyana represents a fraction of the territory and the economic and military power of Venezuela. But in Venezuela, as in Russia, a despot in trouble, sanctioned and without international legitimacy is in power. It would not be the first time that a tyrant widely repudiated by his people and the international community embarks on a pseudo-nationalist military adventure—that is, through a crime of aggression—to regain strength. For all of the above, an international tribunal to try Russia's crime of aggression would also be great news for peace and security of the Americas.

Total War

This European war today is a global war. As Viet Thanh Nguyen well said, “All wars are fought twice, the first on the battlefield and the second in memory.” Like Nuremberg, this court is necessary in order not to forget, to also win the war of memory. For all these reasons, the Ukraine war must end with a victorious Ukraine.

Hector Schamis teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Latin American Studies. He has published books and articles on topics such as privatization and state reform, populism, authoritarianism, and democracy, as well as on U.S.-Latin American relations. Follow him at: @hectorschamis.

Image: Shutterstock.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine a year ago today, NATO was beset by division. As recently as 2019, French president Emanuele Macron warned that the transatlantic alliance was “becoming brain-dead.” Then-U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump’s 2016 interview with the New York Times about Washington not protecting NATO’s Baltic states from potential Russian aggression because they weren’t “paying their bills” unsettled America’s European allies. For many years, different NATO members blasted Germany and Italy for being too Russia-friendly, with some calling the former a “shaky alliance partner” and a “freeloader.” High levels of friction between Greece and Turkey only further exacerbated intra-NATO tensions.

One of Vladimir Putin’s many strategic blunders in the lead-up to the war was his underestimation of NATO’s capacity and will to unite behind President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government. Yet Putin wasn’t stupid for making this miscalculation—after Russia illegally annexed Crimea and seized much of Donbas in 2014, Germany and others in NATO were more interested in buying Russian gas than confronting Moscow over eastern Ukraine. Given this and the aforementioned intra-NATO divisions, the Kremlin arguably had good reason to assume that Berlin and other European capitals would resist Kyiv’s calls for significant military support and refrain from imposing stringent sanctions on Russia.

One year after Russia’s overt invasion, NATO unity against Moscow has, for the most part, remained rather tight. “NATO is united on a number of key issues,” says Paula Dobriansky, a former American diplomat and national security expert. “There is a fundamental consensus among NATO members about the gravity of the threat emanating from Moscow as well as the belief that if Ukraine does not decisively prevail, European and global security would be greatly impaired.”

Throughout the past year, countries in the Western alliance have provided Kyiv with military, economic, and humanitarian support to the tune of $80 billion, with the vast majority coming from the United States and UK. Although the arms deliveries to Ukraine have not been as much as some NATO countries—such as Poland and the Baltic states—would have liked, the alliance has met most of Kyiv’s demands. To Putin’s dismay, the European Union’s unprecedented sanctions packages on Russia, the “revolution” in Germany’s defense funding and energy policy, Italy’s “divorce” from Russia, Turkey’s drone deliveries to Kyiv, and other significant actions demonstrated NATO’s determination to reach its highest level of cohesion in the post-Cold War period.

Cracks in the Alliance

Yet NATO’s unity is not airtight. Hungary, for example, has been accused of obstructing the alliance’s unity to serve Budapest’s interests in maintaining positive bilateral relations with Moscow. In addition to ideational synergies between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Putin’s illiberal philosophies, Hungary is highly dependent on Russian gas and oil, which helps explain Budapest’s quest for foreign policy balance as a beneficiary of both EU subsidies and hydrocarbons from Russia. Nuclear energy, banking, and tourism are other domains that make Russia important to Hungary, which for years has been the most Putin-friendly EU member.

Turkey’s decision not to impose sanctions on Moscow while significantly increasing its bilateral trade with Russia further illustrates how not all members of NATO have been on the same page vis-à-vis the Ukraine War. Unconstrained by EU sanctions, Turkey’s imports of cheap Russian oil have tripled, while Ankara has de facto helped Russia bypass Western sanctions—for example, by importing semiconductors from Europe before re-exporting them to Russia. Wolfgang Pusztai, a security and policy analyst who is a senior advisor at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, noted to us that there are practical reasons for this behavior: “While it is certainly justified to criticize Turkey for this, one must also realize that Turkey is in a very difficult economic situation and has presidential elections upcoming this year.”

Then there is the debate over Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO, which has fueled significant tension between Ankara and various Western capitals. From the perspective of the United States and most European governments, these two Nordic countries joining NATO would greatly benefit the alliance. “Russia would be forced to deploy a very significant number of troops on its northern flank to protect the strategic important harbor of Murmansk and the Kola peninsula with their many navy bases from an eventual NATO attack in the case of a Russian aggression in Central Europe,” said Pusztai. “This additional burden means a significant risk for Russia and certainly lowers the appetite for a military aggression against NATO at all.”

More broadly, activists and protestors in the United States, UK, Italy, the Czech Republic, and other NATO countries, concerned about potential nuclear war and exhausted with war fatigue amid a period of global energy crises and inflation, have held demonstrations calling for a halt to arms shipments to Ukraine. Given that these countries are democracies, politicians who share these attitudes could come to power in the near future—a factor that Kyiv can’t ignore.

Ukraine’s Dependence on Western Support

With the Ukraine War entering its second year today, NATO’s member-states and their respective populations face disagreements over the extent to which they should take risks and make sacrifices to achieve a full liberation of Ukrainian land, including Crimea. While the survival of Zelensky’s government and the existence of Ukraine as an independent nation-state were on the line shortly after the February 2022 invasion, they are not today. The war, at the moment, is over a relatively small fraction of Ukrainian territory near the Russian border. As such, European countries generally regard the stakes involved in the Ukraine War as being lower when compared to a year ago.

Anatol Lieven, the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explained to us that the prospects for sustained NATO unity against Russia’s aggression will depend on four factors: “The state of the European economy; the risks of escalation to nuclear war; potential loss of faith in eventual Ukrainian victory; and if Russia itself offers a ceasefire. Any or all of these could increase pressure for a peace settlement.”

U.S. domestic politics may ultimately end up determining NATO unity. In the words of Andrew A. Michta, the dean of the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, “Should the United States cut Ukraine off, the country could not sustain its defense against Russia for long, regardless of what European NATO members and other supporters of Ukraine would do.” Given that a Republican might enter the Oval Office in January 2025 and decrease Washington’s support for Ukraine (or at least attach many more strings to it), Ukraine has much at stake in the 2024 U.S. election. “West European solidarity with the United States has been partly due to the fact that America has a Democratic administration,” explained Lieven. “If the Republicans—and especially of course Donald Trump—win in November 2024, this could lead to a weakening of the Transatlantic bond and more independent action by France and Germany.”

Germany and Italy will also test NATO’s impermeability. Berlin and Rome have shown a certain level of hesitancy in providing Ukraine with full-scale support. Germany recently delayed equipping Ukraine with Leopard 2 battle tanks, sending NATO allies—many of which were bound to Berlin’s consent to send their German-produced tanks to Kyiv—into a frenzy. The reason behind this delay rests in a decades-old dilemma that Berlin’s left-wing party, currently at the helm of the government, harbors, given its historic pacific stance. Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, on the other hand, is steadfast in sending weapons to Kyiv. But members of her coalition, such as Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini, challenge Meloni’s position daily. This, and the fact that less than 40 percent of Italians support supplying Ukraine with weapons, may very well force Meloni to backtrack her support.

Germany and Italy’s hesitant-at-times support may prove quite detrimental to NATO unity behind Ukraine if the conflict rages on as a war of attrition. How long officials in Berlin and Rome can keep voters at bay is a question that keeps many experts pondering, especially given Russia’s effectiveness in tapping into these divisions for its benefit. Moscow has a long and successful history of meddling in internal politics and interfering in the elections of countries it wishes to see under its sphere of influence. European capitals were reminded of this when U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken sent a cable to U.S. embassies warning its diplomats that the Kremlin was funneling money to sympathetic parties across Europe.

Closing Thoughts

Looking ahead, the prospects for NATO maintaining its overall unity against Russia as this conflict rages on are bright. Yet, fissures are within the transatlantic alliance are visible, and the thirty members are unlikely to resolve each disagreement or eliminate all their sources division vis-à-vis the Ukraine War. Determined to prevent Russia’s rogue invasion of an independent European country from benefitting Moscow, Western policymakers will be tasked with managing these divisions and preventing Russia from successfully exploiting them in manners that could harm NATO’s health and cohesion. A united NATO is vital for the future of Ukrainian sovereignty. As the war continues into its second year, the Biden administration will prioritize efforts aimed at preventing member-states from going astray and working with them to maintain robust support for Ukraine.

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics and an adjunct fellow at the American Security Project.

Alissa Pavia is the Associate Director for the North Africa Program within the Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council.

Image: Shutterstock.

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine stands as the biggest shakeup in the transatlantic community since the fall of the wall. It has completely changed our world, and we must adapt. 

Vladimir Putin is denuding his conventional military force. As a result, the future U.S. footprint in Europe should not be what it was in the past, nor does it need to be as robust as was once considered prudent. It is time to start talking about what the new face of the United States in Europe should look like. 

Lord Palmerston, a ruthless and cunning old sot, zealously defended his empire without an ounce of empathy, political correctness, or scruples. Still, it’s hard to argue with his dictum: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” This kind of righteous, hard thinking was lost in the post-Cold War world. Instead of ensuring that politics ends at the water’s edge, modern U.S. foreign policy looks increasingly like an extension of domestic policy squabbles. 

Indeed, Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, has said, “We’ve reached a point where foreign policy is domestic policy, and domestic policy is foreign policy.” That is nonsense. We need a third way that structures America’s actions and commitments to match our vital interests. This is nowhere more important than in America’s European footprint. 

America’s Global Footprint

America is a global power with global interests and responsibilities. That is just a fact. But it is also true that we can’t protect all those interests and responsibilities without partnering with like-minded allies who carry their fair share of risks as well as rewards. This is confirmed by the Index of U.S. Military Strength, an objective assessment that finds our forces to be, at best, marginally suited to safeguard America’s global vital interests. 

Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific are the three regions most critical to U.S. prosperity and security. If all the world were a ballet stage, we could pivot from one region to another with ease. But “pivot” is an apt metaphor, because it reminds us that it would be easy for global adversaries to knock us off balance by threatening critical areas where our presence is inadequate. The United States should have sufficient capabilities in each theater to protect American vital interests there. What each regional footprint looks like should evolve over time, commensurate with the threat and allied contributions. Being responsible in how we allocate assets is also an important part of our national security. As Rep. Chip Roy and former National Security Council staff expert Victoria Coates note, a responsible use of resources makes for a stronger military.

The United States needs the right military, right now. We need to learn the lessons of the still ongoing war in Ukraine to think ahead to where we go from here.

America’s Future Footprint 

The U.S. presence in Europe, along with material assistance from NATO allies, has enabled Ukraine to stiff-arm Russia in Ukraine. In the process, Putin has lost a mammoth amount of conventional military capability. He has also witnessed Europeans enhance their energy security by divesting from dependence on Russia.

Further, many Europeans have, with renewed vigor, committed to increasing their defense capabilities and equitably sharing defense burdens. Several NATO powers, like Poland, now not only exceed the 2 percent GDP defense spending target, but their percentage by GDP exceeds that of the United States. Some major European powers, notably Germany, continue to lag behind. But our staunchest allies are not only doing more for self-defense; they are more pro-U.S., pro-NATO, anti-Russia, and anti-China. These governments are also proving remarkably resilient, despite high inflation, energy concerns, and uncertainty over the war against Ukraine.

All these constructive outcomes occurred without U.S. “boots on the ground.” We did deploy some additional troops as trainers, for logistical support, and on some security assistance and training missions, but these are, by and large, temporary deployments—and, most importantly, there was no requirement for Americans to engage in combat.

This experience—paired with the fact, that 1) Russia’s conventional military threat to Europe has been greatly reduced, 2) it will take Russia years, at best, to rebuild this capability, and 3) Europeans are willing and, in fact, doing more to contribute to collective defense—suggests how the U.S. military footprint should evolve in the future.

Forces

Ground Forces. There ought to be only a limited need for U.S. combat forces in theater. The 173rd Airborne Brigade in Italy is primarily a rapid response for missions across Eurasia and the Greater Middle East. That makes sense. The United States should have some strategically placed rapid response forces. It’s like when you’re out of town and need money: it’s much better to be able to draw cash from a convenient ATM than to have to fly back to your hometown bank.

Washington ought to have two combat brigade equivalents in Europe for training and exercises with allies, as well as part of the forward-deployed deterrence in Central Europe. These can be rotational forces, but the presence, the footprint, should be persistent. In addition, a deployed corps headquarters that could provide the capacity to mobilize a larger conventional force, if needed, makes sense. 

Russia may indeed rebuild its conventional forces over time, but then again, our expectations for Europe’s conventional forces will evolve as well. In the future, Washington can adjust as needed, particularly if the United States retains total Active, Reserve, and National Guard land force capability sufficient to meet the needs of theater commanders. 

Air Forces. The Trump administration’s plan to rationalize and consolidate the U.S. footprint made sense. The Biden administration canceled that plan, but it deserves a relook. 

Naval Forces. The United States has an important role to play in the Mediterranean, much of it centering on assisting allies in capacity building. Yet our efforts in the region are not commensurate with America’s interests. This does not mean a lot more ships. (We do need more ships, but we need them in the Indo-Pacific. For that, we will need to build a bigger Navy.) In Europe, the United States can accomplish a great deal more by pursuing security cooperation and a diplomatic approach that takes advantage of burden-sharing and joint action.

Presence

It is not so much what and how much the U.S. military has in many strategic places, but that the United States has presence, access, and the capacity to expand or contract as necessary. Greenland and Iceland are key to safeguarding the transatlantic bridge. Great Britain and Germany are crucial logistical, training, and support nodes. Poland is vital for forward presence. Many countries—Italy, Romania, Greece, Turkey, and, potentially, Georgia—offer essential basing and access options in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Moreover, small U.S. contingents, such as KFOR in the Balkans, can make an outside contribution to regional stability.

Enablers

One of the lessons of Russia’s war on Ukraine is that nations that demonstrate a capacity and unshakable commitment to self-defense are much more likely to attract external support from allies in times of crisis. Thus, many European nations are seeking enablers that will enhance their capacity to protect their own populations. These include intelligence sharing, surveillance, and targeting, air and missile defense, training, and technical cooperation. 

An increasingly crucial enable will be extended nuclear deterrence. The Ukraine war reminds us how adverse nuclear-armed adversaries are to fight directly with each where there is a risk of escalation. As Russia’s conventional forces decline, its reliance on nuclear deterrence will increase. Further, China’s rapid expansion of its strategic forces is a major concern. The U.S. nuclear umbrella and missile defenses must be capable and robust. 

Partnerships 

America’s continued presence and engagement in Europe has empowered Europeans who are more pro-American and anti-Russian and anti-China, as well as governments that share concerns of many conservative Americans on domestic issues like life, education, family, religious liberty, and energy policies that are strengthening transatlantic bonds. Pivoting away from them would undermine the relationships, cooperation, and burden-sharing needed to make a smaller U.S. footprint in Europe both more durable and more effective. Strengthening partnerships ought to be a priority. 

NATO remains foundational to collective security. NATO enlargement adds partners that better allow for sharing the burden. Sweden and Finland are great examples. 

The United States can also enhance bilateral relations with countries that can deliver real benefits through burden sharing and partnership. Italy, Greece, Romania, and Poland are excellent examples. Italy, for instance, is the natural U.S. partner for leadership in the Greater Mediterranean region. 

In addition, the United States should support collective efforts to expand security and economic cooperation in Northern, Central, and Southern Europe and across the Black Sea into the Caucuses and Central Asia. 

Finally, the United States should continue to push reluctant allies, like Germany, to adapt our joint efforts to the realities of the new Europe. 

This rethinking has implications for other regions as well. For instance, if America can work with the Arab nations and Israel in building out the Abraham Accords, the United States can have a similar collective security footprint in the Middle East.

In all theaters, the U.S. needs the capacity and capability to protect its vital interests. But the global footprint we lay down ought to be designed to respond to what is going on in the world and shaped to deliver what we need to protect U.S. interests in the future. 

A Heritage Foundation vice president, James Jay Carafano directs the think tank’s research on matters of national security and foreign relations.

Image: Shutterstock.

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