Diplomacy & Crisis News

Throughout human history, technological progress has translated into military prowess. In most instances, the states that incorporate new technologies more quickly and effectively into their respective militaries have gained a significant advantage over their adversaries. The same is likely to be true for artificial intelligence (AI), with the United States and China currently locked in a competition for global AI superiority. This competition for AI and technological supremacy could very well dictate the future global landscape. 

Although China might disagree with the existence of such a technological competition, the United States firmly believes in it. This was evident in a speech by U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks on August 28, 2023. Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech was significant for several reasons, primarily because it gave valuable insight into the U.S. military’s strategic thinking about China, AI and autonomous systems, and technological innovation.

At the core of Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech was that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) aimed to have a “data-driven and AI-empowered military.” Although AI has gained mainstream popularity within the past few years, great powers have been looking into the military applications of AI for decades now. From 2014 onwards, when the United States announced its Third Offset Strategy, it has been building the foundation for incorporating AI into its military. The 2021 report by the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) was perhaps the most telling. The report stated that the DOD was far from “AI-ready” and urged it to heavily increase investment by 2025 and “integrate AI-enabled technologies into every facet of war-fighting.” This same line of thought informed Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech.

Deputy Secretary Hicks announced the “Replicator Initiative,” which she described as a new DOD initiative to develop quickly and field “swarms of low-cost air, land, or sea drones that could swarm an enemy.” She called it a “big bet” that could counter China’s most significant advantage—the ability to bring a mass of platforms and people to the battlefield. The DOD hoped to leverage “attritable, autonomous systems in all domains—which are less expensive, put fewer people in the line of fire, and can be changed, updated, or improved with substantially shorter lead times.” 

The initiative would focus on platforms that are “small, smart, cheap, and many.” The immediate objective of the Replicator Initiative is for the U.S. military to “field attritable autonomous systems at scale of multiple thousands, in multiple domains, within the next 18 to 24 months,” Hicks said. This statement deserves thorough analysis. 

Firstly, the scale of the autonomous systems is enormous and will apply to various domains. With the United States currently the technological hub of the world, the widespread use of autonomous systems by the U.S. military would likely force other states to adopt such systems to maintain strategic parity. Autonomous systems would likely proliferate to U.S. allies and strategic partners as well.

Secondly, and more importantly, is the stated timeline of the next 18 to 24 months. This is rather alarming, particularly given that issues surrounding AI ethics and regulation have gathered momentum recently. Although the United States claims to follow a “responsible and ethical” approach to AI in its Replicator Initiative, the specified timeline makes these claims hard to believe. However, it’s also important to note that the U.S. military has likely been working on this initiative for quite some time, so it would have specific rules to reduce the risks of incorporating AI in the military. How AI norms and regulations would affect a crisis, however, is a debate for another day.

Even if the United States had been planning such an initiative for years, it now feels confident enough to announce and implement it. Ukraine has acted as a testing ground for using drones and autonomous systems on the battlefield and has clearly demonstrated their power. Russia and Ukraine regularly deploy drones in military operations. The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) estimates that Ukraine has lost a staggering 10,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) monthly. These drones are helpful for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) purposes, as well as for direct targeting of the adversary’s military and civilian infrastructure.

Deputy Secretary Hicks also directly mentioned China as the sole target for the Replicator Initiative. She added: “We must ensure the PRC leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes, ‘today is not the day’—and not just today, but every day, between now and 2027, now and 2035, now and 2049, and beyond.” She also mentioned that “all-domain, attritable autonomous systems (ADA2) will help overcome the challenge of anti-access, area-denial systems (A2AD). Our ADA2 to thwart their A2AD.” This is a critical point. China’s A2AD strategy focuses on the South China Sea. The United States stating that it would use drones to counter China’s A2AD strategy indicates that it is willing, directly or indirectly, to intervene militarily in the region.

China, on the other hand, holds an entirely different understanding of AI than the United States does. Although China aims to become the global leader in AI by 2030, it has so far remained characteristically secretive about its military incorporation of AI. However, this has not stopped the United States from viewing China’s AI progress as a major challenge to its global leadership.

Ultimately, the future of warfare will be data-driven and AI-enabled, and, in many ways, it already is. However, we must better understand the potential dangers of integrating AI into autonomous military systems. Given the rapid pace of advancements in AI and the importance given to the military applications of AI by major states, the incorporation of AI into the militaries of major states is a matter of when not if. Deputy Secretary Hicks’ speech mentioned the impact of the Replicator Initiative on the speed and scale of the U.S. military. That will likely be the character of future warfare: it will be fought rapidly, and human combatants will operate alongside many autonomous systems. Although this might seem to be a more effective method of warfighting for some, the risk of escalation from autonomous systems might be too great.

Shayan Hassan Jamy is a research analyst in emerging technologies and global power competition. He tweets @shayanjamy.

Image: Shutterstock. 

The United States and its allies face a comprehensive, multidimensional challenge from Xi Jinping’s China. One axis of this unfriendly competition runs through the ballot boxes of the liberal democracies, where the evidence continues to mount that Beijing is seeking to undermine democratic systems throughout the Western alliance.

Take Canada: founding member of NATO, partner in securing North American air defense, and one of the United States’ most important commercial and political relationships. To the extent that Americans think about security vulnerabilities stemming from thoroughly benign Ottawa, it might be related to the air quality from last summer’s wildfires or a wincing memory of learning about the War of 1812, where Canadians disproved of Thomas Jefferson’s optimistic conjecture that conquering our northern neighbor would simply “be a mere matter of marching.”

Beijing appears to have conducted a comprehensive attack on Canada’s political institutions: allegedly meddling in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections with the intent of producing a chaotic Liberal minority government; allegedly targeting critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Parliament, such as the Tory shadow foreign affairs minister Michael Chong and the New Democracy Party’s Jenny Kwan; allegedly conducting efforts “to build a pliable cadre of politicians in the 2022 local Vancouver elections,” and, particularly shockingly, allegedly trying to recruit and run a candidate against Port Coquitlam, British Columbia’s anti-CCP mayor Brad West, that same year.

This unfolding scandal, the consequence of disquieting, anonymous leaks from the Canadian intelligence services, caught the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flat-footed. It took over half a year before the Trudeau ministry’s sluggish response finally yielded the necessary convening of a 9/11 Commission-esque public inquiry to, inter alia, “examine and assess interference by China, Russia and other foreign states or non-state actors, including any potential impacts, in order to confirm the integrity of, and any impacts on” Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections and “examine and assess the capacity of relevant federal departments, agencies, institutional structures and governance processes to permit the Government of Canada to detect, deter and counter any form of foreign interference directly or indirectly targeting Canada’s democratic processes.” Canada will now embark on a sorely needed public reckoning with the CCP’s electoral espionage, which will hopefully be able to provide conclusions and recommendations well in advance of the country’s next parliamentary elections.

Other U.S. allies have been publicly coming to terms with the threat of Beijing-backed interference. In August, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) took the unprecedented step of issuing a public report giving “the public … access to NZSIS’s consolidated analysis on New Zealand’s threat environment,” particularly singling out “the continued targeting of New Zealand’s diverse ethnic Chinese communities” via “activities carried out by groups and individuals linked to the intelligence arm of the People’s Republic of China.” In sum, Chinese political and election interference is likely to remain an ongoing concern for the foreseeable future.

At a minimum, this means that America and her democratic allies must “develop safety valves for swift and dispassionate reviews of election interference claims” to “speedily vet all interference claims and identify wrongdoers.” One can only hope that Canada’s public inquiry may ultimately show part of the way. (Nor, it must be noted, must other countries wait to learn from the Canadian experience via the public inquiry—Michael Chon testified in Washington about the Chinese party-state’s agenda of “transnational repression.”) But the development of these safety valves is only a first step, a means to an end of devising a real strategy to preclude China’s next move against a Western democratic election.

In his 2008 book Terror and Consent, Philip Bobbitt analogized the struggle against twenty-first-century globalized, networked asymmetric warfare using the concepts of supply and demand, noting that while “most analytic work on terrorism … focused on the demand side … the characteristics and the causes that motivate” terrorists, with the upshot that a strategy focused on driving that demand curve down necessitated a deterrence strategy with all the attendant “retaliatory requirements” of such an approach. Bobbitt argued that this focus ignored ways of reducing “the supply side of terrorism”—the field of risks and targets available to malign actors.

When it comes to handling covert election interference by China and other adversaries, however, the conversation often seems flipped, with a focus on how to control supply by hardening civil society against the effects of such chicanery. In Canada, one such proposal in particular, a foreign agents registry akin to the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, has been bruited about for several years. No doubt the public inquiry will burrow into “the supply side of election interference,” and make recommendations on the advisability of a registry and other “supply” issues.

But the public inquiry, and any other reviews carried out against the People’s Republic of China’s electoral espionage operations, ought to also address the question of reducing demand. One downside of a supply-side strategy against foreign interference is the risk of going too far. Going to American history, neither the Sedition Acts of 1798 or 1918, nor the domestic anti-communism crackdowns of the 1950s, are fondly remembered for good and sufficient reason. Liberal democracies function best when they maintain “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.”

To that end, the public inquiry ought to consider how to restore deterrence against further and future interference in Western elections, such as by signaling to China and other interfering states that efforts to co-opt political activists, launder funds into the Canadian political system, or engage in candidate recruiting is the functional equivalent of an attack on critical infrastructure. The integrity of an election, after all, may well have the same value as the integrity of a bridge or a communications system. If it takes that path, the inquiry ought to also deal with how red lines can be communicated to adversaries and what might be considered a proportionate response. After all, the Chinese do not have similarly situated popular elections that the Canadians (or anyone else, for that matter) can execute a retorsion against.

As a result, such a conversation will ultimately need to bring in all Western governments under the threat of potential Chinese election intervention. What Professor Bobbitt noted in the terrorism context likely also holds true in these circumstances as well: “with respect to global, networked agents … the effective deterrence policy of one target state simply diverts attacks to allied states.” And while public reporting suggests that China only considered, but ultimately declined, to substantially interfere in the 2020 American elections, we should not wait for that shoe to drop in future contests here at home.

Zac Morgan is an attorney specializing in First Amendment and campaign finance law. He previously worked for the Institute for Free Speech, and currently serves as counsel to Commissioner Allen Dickerson of the Federal Election Commission.

The views expressed in this article are his own and do not express an official view of the U.S. government.

Image: Shutterstock.

Longtemps, Singapour a fait figure de modèle de prospérité et de stabilité, inspirant la Chine. Mais la cité, qui a élu un nouveau président de la République — un poste en partie honorifique — le 1er septembre, connaît des ratés : migrants maltraités, hausse du coût de la vie... Le mécontentement populaire (...) / Singapour, Asie du Sud-Est, Chine, Autoritarisme, Société - 2023/09

On-the-ground help will bolster Kyiv without risking escalation.

The West Struggles to Understand Russia—But Can Still Help Ukraine Win.

Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, recently warned attendees at the Kiev Security Forum that “World War III is already underway.” He may be onto something.

The war between Russia and Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. In the first few weeks, it seemed as if the Russians would crush the Ukrainians in a blitzkrieg-style offensive. That prediction was wildly inaccurate. The Russian army was ill-prepared for the mission, and its equipment was far less effective than expected. To say that the morale of its soldiers was not high is an understatement.

By late Spring 2022, the Washington Blob was once again wildly off-base, with experts predicting that Russia would capitulate under the Western sanctions. Those expecting a calamity for the Russian economy learned nothing from Western sanctions on North Korea and Iran—two countries much smaller than Russia that have endured severe sanctions over many years. The sanctions undeniably damaged their economies but didn’t change the fundamental nature of the regimes.

Today, Russia and Ukraine appear locked in a “foxhole” war, similar to World War I, where both sides suffered massive casualties without significant territorial or strategic gains. It seems increasingly likely that this stalemate may last for years. There are several reasons to believe this could be the case.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine appears to have the military capability to defeat the other side. At the same time, neither Vladimir Putin nor Volodymyr Zelensky can quit. If Zelensky throws in the towel, his country will no longer be free, and he will likely fall from power. If Putin quits, he will demolish his image as Russia’s strongman and face challenges to his rule.

Some journalists have predicted that the war’s unpopularity, owing to the high casualty count, coupled with the heavy toll of the sanctions, could turn the Russian people against Putin. This, too, is wildly off-base. Russian history is replete with leaders who imposed enormous losses on the population without paying the price of regime collapse. Major strategic miscalculations by Joseph Stalin and his top brass led to humiliating military defeats to the invading Nazi army throughout Operation Barbarossa in 1941. The Soviets lost vast territory, and their casualties numbered in the millions even before the notoriously bloody Battle of Stalingrad commenced. As Russians still boast today, the hardship steeled the resolve of the Russian army and people, leading to a historic victory over the German invaders.

Of course, none of this means the world is marching toward a total war. But key scenarios still could precipitate a turn for the worst. For example, a collapse of the Russian frontlines (e.g., Ukrainian troops breaking through Zaporizhia, Kherson, and surrounding areas and establishing a significant bridgehead on the Crimea peninsula) could prompt Russia to deploy nuclear weapons (tactical or strategic) to restore the balance. Deputy Chairman of Russia’s National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly warned that Russia won’t hesitate to use such weapons if necessary. Similarly, a sudden Ukrainian collapse—leading to the fall of Kiev—may cause the United States and its NATO allies to introduce new, more destructive weapons or even deploy “boots on the ground” to restore the balance. In either scenario, the road to WWIII is not only a scenario for science fiction.

More broadly, a miscalculation by either party could have unintended consequences. For example, a Russian anti-aircraft battery downing a NATO jet fighter crossing from Polish airspace into Ukraine due to a navigational error could push NATO to invoke Article 5. Similarly, if Russian long-range missiles accidentally strike a target in one of Ukraine’s NATO neighbors, causing significant fatalities, Article 5 invocation, again, is not out of the question.

Should another nation-state join the war, it could spark a wider war. During the last eighteen months, thousands of foreign fighters have joined both sides. The situation is reminiscent of the international brigades that fought for the Nationalists and the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). But, as the stalemate persists on the front lines, we may see other nations step in. Belarus, where President Lukashenko has sided with the Russians from the start, is an obvious candidate. Another candidate is North Korea. Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un recently replenished Russian stores of weapons and ammunition from his own arsenals. Kim will likely shed no tears if North Korean troops die in Ukraine, gaining him a more significant role on the world stage.

On the other side of the ledger, it remains unlikely that Western countries like Britain, Germany, or France would dispatch troops to Ukraine. But given the deep historical enmity and suspicion that some Eastern European nations, like Poland, harbor toward Russia, who knows what could happen?

So far, China has attempted to convey a policy of neutrality, even as Beijing helps Moscow behind the scenes. China understands that its current economic crisis is partially related to deteriorating relations with the United States. However, conflict may not be a deterrent for Beijing. The Chinese leadership is actively weighing a war of conquest or forced integration of Taiwan. President Xi Jinping could, at some point, offer the Russians a deal whereby they would back his invasion of Taiwan in exchange for Chinese support against the United States and Europe. While some might dismiss this, it is instructive to remember that the People’s Liberation Army (the largest in the world) is about to enter the fifth and final year of its major modernization plan. If the war between Russia and Ukraine is still raging in 2025, such a scenario may be more realistic. 

Thankfully, there are also good news scenarios that could end the conflict and, therefore, the diminished likelihood of a global conflict. In a sense, Ukraine and Russia have proven their ability to maintain some sort of ceasefire by avoiding an all-out war after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014. Relative calm endured through 2022. It wasn’t a complete ceasefire, as regular skirmishes continued in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (where most of the population are ethnic Russians). Still, it was kept (more or less) under control. Thus, both sides might agree to a ceasefire if it means not accepting defeat.

One significant wildcard is former president Donald Trump. If Trump returns to the White House next year, he will likely uphold his promise and cut all aid to Ukraine. He could even apply pressure on his NATO allies to stop their support. In such a scenario, the Ukrainians may reluctantly agree to a ceasefire under disadvantageous conditions. 

While the chances for the war in Ukraine to evolve into a global conflict are not high, they are not nil either. Tensions are high, and European nations are increasing their defense spending. The fear of wider Russian aggression has many of these countries on edge. They understand that as the war drags on, as the casualties mount, and the sanctions pressure grows, the “wounded bear” can become even more dangerous and potentially more prone to miscalculation.

Brigadier General (res.) Jacob Nagel is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a visiting professor at the Technion. He previously served as Prime Minister Netanyahu’s national security advisor and the head of Israel National Security Council (acting).

Lt. Colonel (res.) Boaz Golany is a Professor at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, where he has served as a Dean, VP for External Relations & Resource Development, and Executive VP & Director General. His research interests cover diverse areas of applied operations research. He has also served as a board member and consultant to various companies and organizations.

Image: Shutterstock.

It is commonplace to observe that Beijing enjoys control over much of the globe’s rare earth and critical mineral extraction and processing industries. China built this dominance over two decades and is unwilling to give it up. On the other hand, America’s critical minerals supply chains feature extensive vulnerabilities that private enterprise cannot resolve independently. The U.S. government faces a daunting challenge in establishing resilient, competitive, and alternative critical mineral supply chains immune to disruptions and economic coercion.

The United States must cooperate with its allies on critical minerals for two reasons. First, its industries have expansive demands that cannot be met by increased domestic production alone. Second, it does not possess enough mines and accessible deposits of all the critical minerals industry needs.

The U.S. economy’s already extensive critical minerals demand will grow almost exponentially in the coming decades. Demand for lithium, a crucial input in electric vehicle (EV) batteries, is projected to increase by 4,000 percent in the coming decades. 

No single nation can meet the projected global demand for critical minerals on its own. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that fifty new lithium mines, sixty new nickel mines, and seventeen new cobalt mines will be required to meet global demand. These are only three of fifty minerals that the United States now classifies as “critical minerals.”

No nation has enough proven resources to meet this demand, but a few are key. The concentration of minerals is spread worldwide, including in China, Russia, the Congo, South America, and Australia. Many countries with large mineral reserves are strategic competitors or politically unstable.

China currently controls the critical minerals and rare earth marketplace. It is the global lead producer of twenty-nine commodities, including twenty-two metals and seven industrial minerals. It refines up to ninety percent of the world’s rare earth ore.

Where China does not possess a near monopoly, it can control the market through “monopsony”—a market condition featuring one overbearingly and singularly important customer. While it does not produce the most essential battery materials—lithium, cobalt, and graphite—it buys, refines, and exports them to incomparable degrees.

Beijing is using this market power in increasingly coercive ways. It has increased restrictions on its critical minerals exports nine times between 2009 and 2020, more than any other supplier. It has cut off Japanese supply for geopolitical reasons and threatened U.S. defense contractors’ supply chains.

Removing China entirely from global critical mineral supply chains is not economically feasible. But competition is needed. America’s critical minerals supply chains cannot depend on a single nation, especially an unreliable one.

With its unparalleled natural wealth in critical minerals, rare earths, and other vital commodities, Australia has emerged as the key ally to bolster the United States’ security and resilience in this vital domain.

However, Australia needs more capital and foreign investment to transform potential into viable supply chains. To date, Chinese state-owned investors have been more than happy to meet this need. 

As a global region, Oceania alone has outstripped Asia’s mineral production since 2000, and this growth has been driven almost exclusively by Australia. But China was also Australia’s largest buyer—fueling its growth with Australian raw materials. 

The Australian government has already acted to inhibit Chinese ownership of critical minerals mining projects, creating space for capital from the United States and like-minded nations.

Australia’s vastness and lack of funding have left significant natural reserves untapped. It has also left Australia, in mining terms, underexplored. Vast reserves might remain hidden in the Land Down Under. 

The United States is not alone in its demand for critical minerals. Global demand is increasing broadly across large economies, and there will be healthy competition from Japan, the EU, and India. The United States has already begun to deepen critical minerals cooperation with Australia, with President Joe Biden promising to designate Australia as a “domestic source” under the Defense Production Act (DPA), allowing Australia to benefit from the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act clean energy incentives.

A solid economic incentive exists for mutual investment between Australia and the United States in critical mineral mining, refining, and manufacturing. U.S.-Australia ties are also significant and deepening in other areas, principally in defense through the trilateral AUKUS agreement.

At the 2023 Darwin Dialogue, a one-point-five track dialogue with representatives from the US, Japan, and Australia, a clear message emerged for the way forward. Australian, Japanese, and American governments and industry leaders must work together to develop viable, competitive alternative critical mineral markets that offer products through supply chains secure from domestic policy disruptions and economic coercion.

Dr. John Coyne is Head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institutes Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre.

Henry Campbell is the Coordinator of the Australian Strategic Policy Institutes Northern Australia Strategic Policy Centre.

Image: Shutterstock. 

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau sparked a diplomatic crisis by accusing India’s government of complicity in the June 2023 murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canada-based Sikh leader, in suburban Vancouver. The Canadian government alludes publicly to supposed intelligence that it neither details nor releases. Trudeau’s publication of the matter comes against the backdrop of declining popularity and a frosty reception at the G20 Summit.

After Trudeau’s comments, both Canada and India expelled senior diplomats from the other’s embassies. Canada has reportedly sought U.S. support in the spat. The Biden administration denies rebuffing Canada, but appears wary of antagonizing India.

Frankly, Biden is right to avoid giving immediate support to Trudeau.

First, there is the problem of Nijjar himself. Canadians may say he simply was a plumber who was a political activist on the side. The reality is more complicated.

Nijjar lived in India for twenty years, during which he joined the Khalistan Tiger Force—a separatist group waging an insurgency in Punjab, an Indian state twice the size of Massachusetts with a population the size of Florida’s.

The Khalistan movement argues for a separate Sikh state, a goal the militants often seek to impose with violence since the majority of Sikhs reject such religious nationalism. In 1997, Nijjar reportedly fled to Canada using a fake passport under the name Ravi Sharma. Police at the Toronto airport arrested him, but he countered with an asylum claim based on alleged police harassment in India. The courts ultimately rejected his asylum claim, but then he sought citizenship based on a marriage to a Canadian woman. Immigration authorities initially rejected this, too, based on suspicion the marriage was fake. But on appeal, the Canadian government awarded him citizenship and a passport.

In 2015, Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency allegedly used Nijjar to help them establish a training camp for Khalistan militants near Mission, British Columbia. India accused Nijjar of involvement in a number of terror acts, including planning the 2007 bombing of a Ludhiana cinema, the 2009 murder of prominent Sikh politician Rulda Singh; a conspiracy to kill Hindu religious leader Kamaldeep Sharma in Jalandhar; involvement in a temple explosion in Patiala in 2010; and a number of assassinations.

In effect, Canada knowingly harbored a person suspected of having plenty of blood on his hands. India is right to be upset by Canada’s tolerance for Sikh extremism. Not only does the country harbor the Khalistan Tiger Force, but it also hosts the World Sikh Organization, Sikhs for Justice, and Babbar Khalsa International, all groups that Indian officials say promote violence and/or have links to foreign powers.

Canada, after all, would be right to be angry if a Quebecois fringe decided the proper way to pursue the goal of Quebec nationhood was to assassinate politicians and bomb cinemas. If such terrorists then based themselves in India, Canada’s rhetoric would be far different.

That might be hypothetical, but the inconsistencies in Trudeau’s approach to violence on his watch are real. Consider the death of Karima Baloch, a Pakistani human rights activist found murdered in Toronto. Canadian police took the lead on the case. Even after suggestions of Pakistani government complicity, Trudeau remained silent.

The Canadians also appear to blame India for what might simply be the manifestation of intra-Sikh violence on their own soil. Nijjar’s death could easily have been reprisal for an earlier killing. In July 2022, two gunmen murdered Ripudaman Singh Malik, a prominent Sikh once accused but then acquitted of the bombings of two Air India flights, in Vancouver.  Malik later became president of a large credit union, served as the chair of two schools, and managed the Satnam Religious Prachaar Society. Nijjar protested the group’s printing of Sri Guru Granth Sahib, a major Sikh holy book, without permission from other Sikh figures. Just days before Ripudaman’s murder, Nijjar led a group of Sikhs to storm one of his schools and seize its printing press. The simple reality is the situation is complex.

Could Indian agents have murdered Nijjar? Certainly, though it does not seem the likely scenario. After Saudi agents killed Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, Turkey provided evidence to back its claims. That Trudeau is unable to do so suggests he may very well have shot from the hip and politicized an investigation.

Trudeau is cynical. Sikh activists are influential in key swing districts for the forthcoming election. Trudeau might simply have wanted to change the domestic political conversation when he accused India, without recognizing that he would create a diplomatic incident. Fair enough. American politicians do the same thing. Donald Trump promised to make Mexico pay for the border wall he hoped to build. As Senator Barack Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden unleashed a fierce broadside against Afghanistani president Hamid Karzai as a proxy for criticism about George W. Bush’s foreign policy prowess. The U.S.-Israel feud grew after a senior Obama administration official called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an expletive. In each case, what essentially was rhetoric meant for the domestic audience snowballed into an international incident.

 Trudeau’s broadside against India is likely no different. The U.S.-India relationship is simply too important to sacrifice for the venality of a Canadian politician who increasingly shows himself to be shallow and unserious.

Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.

Alors que la Russie s'est retirée de l'accord sur les céréales ukrainiennes, menaçant de ce fait les expéditions par navire, Bruxelles tente de maintenir des corridors sécurisés, en évitant que certains États membres ne ferment leurs frontières aux exportations de Kiev. Au-delà du conflit en cours, cette (...) / Accord international, Céréales, Conflit russo-ukrainien 2022- - 2023/09

For Jim Hoge, editing was a form of public service.

Containment didn’t win the Cold War—and it won’t defeat China.

The world is in turmoil. Only thirty years after the fall of the USSR and the collapse of its proxy network in Eastern Europe, a land war is being fought in Europe between a democracy and a dictatorship. 

When the Cold War ended, we could have scarcely imagined that in just three decades we would be where we are now. We know now that the collapse of the USSR in 1991 did not bring about “the end of history” as prophesied. Instead, it bred complacency among the leaders of the Western democracies, great complacency which has sowed the seeds for the current global anti-democratic reckoning. 

Across much of the world, the ideas of a democratic liberal political order, of multilateral international collaboration, and of liberal free-market capitalism are now in retreat. Challenged not by a socialism as an alternative global, and universalist vision, but by an atavistic retreat to nativist, nationalist, and populist politics. This has been affecting both mature democracies and those states that made tentative steps toward a liberal political order in the aftermath of the Cold War. The result has been both a rise of authoritarian regimes, often through the degeneration of what were previously more functional democracies, and the decline of multinational coordination among countries now more likely to stress the primacy of the nation-state as the focus for the formulation of practical policies.

It is thus that in India, Narendra Modi is taking his country closer to Hindu chauvinism. In China, the Chinese Communist Party is ruling with an iron fist and perpetuating a high-technological genocide against the Uyghur religious and ethnic minority. In Europe and its surrounds, Turkey is sliding into autocracy under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Poland removes guardrails to keep its Law and Justice rulers in constitutional check, and Hungary under Viktor Orbán becomes a backchannel for other dictatorships as they shape the continent, before the backdrop of media consolidation, executive corruption, and the destruction of ordinary civil society.

The perplexing development with this anti-liberal backlash, however, is that nation-first chauvinist autocrats are now working together remarkably effectively in order to sidestep or undermine international liberal norms and institutions. In my book, Authoritarian Century, I call this key concept “Multilateral Autocratisation.” The emergent dictatorial systems are more alike than they are different, and they are remarkably good at working together for mutual advantage. Tyrannies of a feather flock together. 

But this development is no accident. This propensity among the autocrats and aspiring autocrats to cooperate with each other has not emerged purely organically. This has been a development that has been cultivated, coordinated, and even often sponsored (in direct cash terms) by powers that have decided that the post-Cold War liberal international order is a strategic threat to their own interests—above all by Vladimir Putin’s regime in Moscow, and the Communist regime in Beijing. 

Now, the two powers are distinct, both in their mode of operation and in the nature of the threat they pose. Moscow’s methods are mostly subversion and destruction—and the most they can produce is chaos. They are no less dangerous for it, but Putin does not have a positive vision of the world to offer anyone else. 

Beijing, on the other hand, does offer a path to an alternative, relatively well-ordered international settlement. It wishes to create a “multipolar world” in which the democracies of the Western alliance are overmatched by the world’s tyrannies. Beijing’s plans to reorientate the global economy along the Belt and Road Initiative are part of this process of building up the economies of the tyrannies and deepening their interconnection. 

Beijing also puts special effort into wresting control of already existing international institutions, which give it authority over global rules and norms, as it seeks to mold these to fit its immediate interests and its vision of the future. It was thus that the World Trade Organization was not able to curb China’s unfair trade practices, that the World Health Organization could not censor China over false COVID data, and thus how the United Nations Law of the Sea could not stop China from expanding in the South China Sea.

The problem with the future offered by China is what it implies for the well-being of billions of people later this century: Beijing supports every kind of political repression that aligns with its interests and has no qualms about carrying out a genocide of its own in its western province in Xinjiang, at the same time as it has utterly crushed the democratic culture of Hong Kong, and it is planning the annexation of the democratic country of Taiwan. As the pressures of climate change will continue to mount as we proceed through this century, Beijing will be responding purely in terms of political advantage, with no regard for human rights or international justice—and this will have life or death repercussions for untold millions of people around the world. 

But the fight over our future this century is not yet settled. Moscow has stumbled in its appalling invasion of Ukraine, and is already greatly diminished internationally. Putin himself may fall, if the circumstances align just right. And Xi has made a number of missteps both in domestic management and in international diplomacy which have set China’s rise back by at least a decade, giving liberal democrats around the world time to regroup. 

This then is the challenge that those of us who care about democracy and human rights have before us most acutely in the coming two decades, but really for the rest of this century: either we allow the international system to once again lapse into a state of complete anarchy, a state in which nations engage in a continuous “war of all against all” between empires and spheres of influence, with the notions of universal human rights and international law falling by the wayside; or we regroup and rebuild the postwar liberal international order which has enabled the most dramatic advancements in the human condition in our history as a species. As the threats of climate change and ecological collapse hang over us, the stakes could not be higher. 

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Director at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington DC and Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute U.S. Army War College.

Image:  LEE SNIDER PHOTO IMAGES / Shutterstock.com

 

The potential for another border clash between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is becoming more likely as the two countries engage in an arms race. Territorial and water resource disputes characterized previous border clashes in 2021 and 2022. A renewed Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border conflict would be dangerous as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies Turkey and the United States find themselves supporting countries on opposing sides.

Following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Washington’s approach to security in Central Asia has become more modest as temporary U.S. military bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have been closed. However, the United States is still involved in Central Asian security affairs as, since Tajikistan’s independence, Washington has provided Tajikistan with $330 million in security sector assistance. This sizable sum includes hundreds of vehicles, a comprehensive training center, and border management and customs control support. As a result, the United States has become one of Tajikistan’s top security donors despite Russia being Tajikistan’s most significant security and trading partner.

Meanwhile, pan-Turkic solidarity has prompted Ankara to support Kyrgyzstan in its conflict with Tajikistan by providing it with Bayraktar TB2, Aksungur, and Anka unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Turkey was the first country to recognize Bishkek’s independence and has since placed importance on maintaining stability and development in Kyrgyzstan. Additionally, Turkey can expand its influence among ethnically Turkic countries in Central Asia while Russia is tied up in its war in Ukraine.

With NATO allies supporting opposite sides of a conflict, tensions between Washington and Ankara will unnecessarily rise. Since the early 2000s, relations between the two countries have deteriorated, stemming from differences over the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Indirectly competing with Turkey by providing military support to Tajikistan will compromise a troubled but important diplomatic relationship for the United States.

The United States is not directly impacted by security matters in Central Asia, especially after withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. Despite the withdrawal, the United States has been on a mission to preserve the sovereignty of the Central Asian states by working on security cooperation-related issues via the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, and the United Nations. Instead, security matters in Central Asia should be handled by countries more directly affected by unrest in the region.

Russia and China have much larger stakes in Central Asia, with Russia as the most prominent security provider and China as a significant economic investor. Moscow primarily aims to minimize the spillover of “radical Islam,” which it perceives was exacerbated by the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Drug trading, human trafficking, illegal migration, and terrorism are Russia’s biggest security concerns in Central Asia. Russia’s security presence serves China as it protects its increasingly large investments in Central Asian transport and energy spheres.

With Russia’s security profile in Central Asia decreasing because of its focus on the war in Ukraine, China has become a more relevant security force in Central Asia. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have been responsive to the Chinese presence in the region, which includes military exercises, military equipment transfers, the construction of security infrastructure, and the deployment of private security companies. The United States risks unnecessarily raising tensions with Beijing by contributing to Tajikistan's security. 

U.S. support for Tajikistan’s defense capabilities is also awkward due to Tajikistan’s recent security cooperation efforts with Iran. Similar to Turkey and Kyrgyzstan, Iran and Tajikistan share ethnic and linguistic ties. In May 2022, Iran inaugurated its first drone production facility in Tajikistan, which will manufacture and export the multipurpose Ababil-2 drones. This year, Iran became a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Eurasian political, economic, international security, and defense organization established by China and Russia. As a result, Tehran and Dushanbe will likely engage in further security cooperation.

The United States has little control over how its military resources are used once they are handed over to a foreign government. While the United States does not intend to support Tajikistan in its conflict with Kyrgyzstan, much of its equipment, such as night-vision goggles, has been utilized in the Kyrgyz-Tajik hot zone. Instead of needlessly contributing to escalating tensions in Central Asia, the United States should work with Turkey to encourage diplomatic talks between Bishkek and Dushanbe. As mutual NATO members, the United States and Turkey have the opportunity to avoid a plummet in relations by putting to rest a minor conflict of little strategic importance to Washington. 

Lastly, the United States should work to reduce and ultimately eliminate programs to send military equipment to Central Asian countries, including Tajikistan. With significant Russian and Chinese security presence and military assets in Tajikistan, Dushanbe has the means to defend itself. The United States has no justified reason to do Russia and China’s job by providing for Tajikistan’s defense. 

The United States should leave security matters in Central Asia to regional great powers, namely Russia and China. While the United States has been involved militarily in Central Asia, now is the time to recharacterize its engagement in the region by further distancing itself from this militaristic past.

Alex Little is an MS graduate of Georgia Tech and specializes in Russian and Central Asian affairs.

Image: Shutterstock.

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