Diplomacy & Crisis News

The escalating superpower competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has gone from a trade dispute to a rivalry over the future of world order, technology, and values. Despite both sides being open to dialogue, President Joe Biden has made it clear that the United States will continue to compete vigorously with the PRC, aligning efforts with allies and partners around the world, and creating coalitions with like-minded countries on tech, intelligence, and strategy to counter Beijing.

Many poor countries in the Global South do not want to be caught in the middle of this competition; they want to improve their livelihood and develop their economies. China offers an easy solution via its now infamous “debt trap diplomacy,” where it provides massive loans without pre-conditions on issues of democracy or human rights, unlike the United States. Such loans enable China to influence these countries.

To counteract this, the United States established several coalitions with its partners, such as the AUKUS and the Quad. Creating these coalitions did not go smoothly, and it would be even more challenging to do similar with countries in the Global South. Nevertheless, Washington needs to adjust its strategy to expand its coalitions further. Bangladesh, a natural partner in the Indo-Pacific region, could be an excellent starting point.

Why Bangladesh?

Bangladesh has made remarkable economic progress in recent years, embracing various liberal economic policies under the guidance and support of Western financial institutions such as the Asian Development Bank and the IMF. Bangladesh did take loans from China, but these only account for 8 percent of its foreign debt—unlike its neighbors Sri Lanka and Pakistan, which took on far more. Moreoever, Japan, a strategic U.S. partner, is the leading contributor of aid to Bangladesh.

Politically, Bangladesh has a special relationship with India. Despite efforts made by Sheikh Hasina’s government to normalize relations with Pakistan, Indian-Bangladeshi relations remain solid, which the United States can leverage to keep China at bay. As a Muslim-majority country, Bangladesh can project its principle of “friendship to all, malice to none” not only within the Indo-Pacific but also to the Middle East, creating a bridge between Asia and the Middle East.

Although Bangladesh aims to remain geopolitically neutral, it is very much involved in global politics—though not always by choice. Following the Rohingya crisis in neighboring Myanmar, Bangladesh opened its borders and gave shelter to around one million refugees, who are still living in camps dependent on international aid, almost six years after fleeing their homes. In addition, Bangladesh has participated in peacekeeping operations all over the world, being the leading contributor to peacekeeping officers with more than 7,000 personnel.

But can the United States really bring Bangladesh to engage more with its camp?

There are indicators that such may be possible. For instance, in the past, Washington’s close relations with Pakistan had a cooling effect on Bangladesh. However, with America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, its warming relations with India, and its increasing focus on countering China, the conditions are set for a better alignment between American interests and those of Bangladesh.

Moreover, in the last two months, Bangladesh has experienced firsthand what new the superpower competition looks like. In January, Bangladesh hosted two delegations from China, one led by Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang and another high-level delegation led by a senior Chinese official. This Chinese charm offensive was immediately answered by the United States: in January, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Donald Lu, visited Bangladesh, and in February, an official delegation led by Derek Chollet, held discussions with Hasina on the Rohingya and the Indo-Pacific, among other topics.

But if the United States wants to establish an advantage over China, then a game-changer move is needed. There is an open invitation for Biden to visit Bangladesh, made by Hasina at the last UN General Assembly. President Biden should accept the invitation. Such a visit could not only help provide assurances for protecting democracy and progress in Bangladesh, but could also help position Bangladesh as a valuable partner in the Indo-Pacific region.

Joseph Rozen, the Managing Director of Solaris Global Partners, is a leading expert in international relations, Asian affairs, and National Security. In his prior capacity, he was the director for Asia & Euro-Asia affairs in the Israeli National Security Council. Rozen was a driving force behind the Israeli Foreign Investments screening mechanism and the development of Israel’s bilateral relations with Asian powers.

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Tunisia is entering a difficult moment. Following the arrest in late January of a labor union official for organizing a strike by tollbooth operators, the government launched a relentless string of arrests against political opponents. The president accused the arrested individuals of “conspiring” against state security and/or labeled them as “terrorists” without in most cases presenting sufficient evidence for the charges.

This has given momentum to a protest movement organized by the trade union, known by its French acronym the UGTT (l’Union Générale des Travailleurs Tunisiens). On March 4, the UGTT reportedly mobilized the largest number of people in any protests against Tunisian president Kais Saied since he took office, with similarly large protests being organized by a coalition of political parties, the National Salvation Front.

There are four imaginable scenarios for how this crisis would be resolved.

First, Saied could voluntarily step down in the face of rising opposition. This scenario is highly unlikely at this stage. In other cases of authoritarian leaders resigning under popular pressure, such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt (2011) or Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria (2019), important stakeholders upon whose backing these dictators relied influenced their decisions. For instance, Mubarak was urged to resign by the military (and the United States); Bouteflika by the country’s powerful ruling clans. 

In contrast, and particularly since his consolidation of control over the country’s institutions began in July 2021, Saied has appeared increasingly isolated and uninfluencable. Assuming he acts consistently with his prior behavior, he will only continue to deflect blame, regardless of any voices trying to get in his ear or conditions on the street.

Second, and in line with Tunisian tradition, is that Saied could agree to a National Dialogue, as the UGTT is demanding. Most famously, in 2013, following two political assassinations and under deteriorating security and economic conditions, Tunisian civil society—led by the UGTT—organized a National Dialogue for divided political parties to overcome their differences in drafting a new constitution. Through this mechanism, the party in charge of the then-coalition government, the moderate Islamist Ennahdha party, agreed to hand over power to a caretaker government charged with leading the country to new elections.

Unfortunately, there are several reasons to doubt that a similar scenario could unfold today. The context in 2013 was unique: the country was still gripped by revolutionary fervor following the ousting of former president Ben Ali, and there was significant popular demand to stabilize security conditions—for which Ennahdha was largely being blamed. Additionally, the takeover by General Abdelfatah Sisi of the elected Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt that same summer weighed heavily on the minds of Ennahdha leadership, which did not want to suffer the same fate.

Moreover, there was a clear objective around which to organize the dialogue: the finalizing of a new constitution, whose drafting process was launched based on consensus forged through popular mobilization. It is unclear what kind of broadly-agreed roadmap a new dialogue could hash out under current conditions. Agreeing on a new or revised constitution, or holding new legislative elections, wouldn’t make sense given that these were the culmination of Saied’s own unilateral roadmap declared in December 2021, which lacked popular legitimacy despite the fact that Saied still appears to retain a somewhat significant support base. 

Third, a military takeover is possible. This would be a clear departure from tradition in Tunisia, whose first post-independence president, Habib Bourguiba, deliberately cultivated a small and apolitical military. In 2011, the military secured its place as a beloved institution when it reportedly refused to fire on protestors, causing Ben Ali to flee. Since then, the armed forces have continued to enjoy a favorable reputation while also playing a key role in re-establishing security following a rise in terrorist activity between 2011 and 2015.

Under Saied, the military has expanded its prestige as well as its role in politics. The president, who was elected as an outsider without a clear support base, has always needed it as an ally. In July 2021, when tanks and troops blocked MPs from entering the parliament building following Saied’s dissolution of the body, observers grew concerned that the military was abandoning its traditionally apolitical role. All this makes it extremely murky how the military would respond in a situation of heightened unrest.

In the eventuality of a military coup, it is also unclear how those taking charge would proceed. The armed forces would almost certainly want to hand over power to a new civilian government as quickly as possible, but finding a neutral, caretaker government would be difficult given the highly fractured landscape. Even in 2013, when an effective caretaker government under the leadership of technocrat Mehdi Jomaa was established, the selection process was fraught. In the event that the military steps in to prevent violence from spiraling out of control, it is unlikely to be prepared to play such a role. 

Fourth is a prolonged stalemate in which arrests and protests eventually die down and Saied remains in power. This is the most likely possibility, especially given that the outbreak of widespread violence, at least at this point, does not appear imminent. Unfortunately, under this scenario, given that Saied has failed to deliver any meaningful change and will be increasingly concerned with safeguarding his own power, socioeconomic and political conditions will continue to fester and decline.

Given these prospects, Washington must be ready to support Tunisia economically, especially if other lenders don’t come through. It should leverage this economic support to push the president to be more inclusive and widen the base of consensus. A National Dialogue that produces immediate results offers the most hope for calming the protests and allowing longer-term plans to be put in place.

Tunisia’s current crisis only represents the tip of the iceberg, as the entire North Africa/Sahel region slips rapidly into a state of profound instability. The United States should work with European partners to develop a wider regional plan of political reconciliation, human rights enforcement, economic cooperation, and socio-economic development.

Dr. Karim Mezran is the director of the North Africa Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

Sabina Henneberg is the Soref Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where she focuses on North Africa. Sabina was formerly a Senior Analyst at Libya-Analysis LLC.

Image: Shutterstock.

As the stalemate in electing a president for Lebanon drags on, tensions continue to simmer across the political spectrum, with clear indications of rising geopolitical concerns. These concerns have brought to the fore the rivalry and complex relationship between the Shiite militant Hezbollah and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). The LAF’s commander, Joseph Aoun, appears to be among the most prominent candidates now in the presidential race, if not the lead candidate. 

Several days ago, Lebanese journalist Hassan Olleik, known to be very close to Hezbollah, released a podcast episode in which he directed a very strong rebuking message and harsh words towards Aoun. Olleik criticized the LAF’s participation in the ongoing International Maritime Exercise led by the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, in which Israel is also a participant. This is highly emblematic of the rising tensions between Hezbollah and Aoun and the preeminence of security issues in Lebanese politics.

The strong criticism by Olleik could be a direct message from Hezbollah to Aoun. Olleik claimed that he sent a request to the LAF for comment on the matter, and the army replied that it is only participating in the event as an observer. Olleik believes this was a dubious answer aimed at fooling the Lebanese people. Ultimately, Olleik framed the LAF’s participation in the maritime exercise as a “very dangerous matter,” and further characterized it as an exclusive appeal by Aoun to U.S. demands and pressure that aim to achieve the normalization of relations between most of the Arab world and Israel.

More seriously, on security tensions, almost two weeks prior to Olleik’s podcast comments, Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah threatened the United States in a televised speech on February 14 commemorating the group’s fallen leaders. Nasrallah warned that Hezbollah will respond with the use of its weapons if the Americans seek to create chaos that will push Lebanon into collapse, including going to war with Israel and creating chaos in the entire region. In a prior speech, Nasrallah called for the election of a president in Lebanon “who does not submit to American threats.”

The presidential election crisis in Lebanon has multiple underlying issues, including political divisions, sectarianism, and economic collapse. However, security concerns remain the most pressing, given Lebanon’s complex domestic politics, which are entangled with regional and geopolitical struggles in a volatile Middle East. Most notably, these struggles involve Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah, on one side, and Saudi Arabia backed by traditional Western allies, including the United States, on the other side. Geopolitics continues to be of paramount importance in the Middle East, especially in light of the evolving global order, which has direct implications for the region.

As Nabeel Khoury writes at the Arab Center Washington DC, the upcoming Lebanese presidential election is primarily being played out against the backdrop of bloc politics. The March 8 Alliance, which is aligned with Syria and Iran, and the pro-Western March 14 Alliance, backed by Saudi Arabia, have been in opposition since the assassination of former prime minister of Lebanon Rafik Hariri in 2005, and the subsequent withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon. While these alliances are not as cohesive as they once were, the March 8 Alliance consists of the two leading parties, Hezbollah, and the Christian Free Patriotic Movement, while the March 14 Alliance comprises Sunni Muslim and Maronite Christian parties. Although a dozen independent MPs won seats in Lebanon’s parliament in the May 2022 parliamentary elections, they largely alternate between the two alliances on major issues.

Since the withdrawal of Syrian military forces from Lebanon, the United States has become the primary partner of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). According to the U.S. Department of State, the United States has provided over $3 billion in security assistance to the LAF since 2006, with the vast majority of the aid coming in the form of critical training and equipment. A factsheet issued by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs states that the U.S. security assistance to the LAF is “a key component of US Lebanon policy to strengthen Lebanon’s sovereignty, secure its borders, counter internal threats, and disrupt terrorist facilitation.” The factsheet emphasizes the importance of LAF sovereignty and states that the LAF is “the sole legitimate defender of Lebanon’s sovereignty,” particularly in relation to the presence of Hezbollah as a military threat.

The situation regarding security arrangements in post-civil war Lebanon is paradoxical, as a result of military dualism involving the cohabitation of the LAF and Hezbollah. Although all Lebanese militias that participated in the civil war were disarmed under the Ta’if Agreement that put an end to the Lebanese civil war, Hezbollah was successfully legitimized in the name of “national resistance” against Israeli occupation and later against any future Israeli aggression with the regional backing of Iran and Syria.

The relationship between the LAF and Hezbollah is complex and multifaceted, encompassing military, security, and political aspects. Although both sides have coordinated on security matters since the end of the civil war in 1990, there has been competition between the two military institutions in developing their military power and autonomy.

While there have been a few military incidents between the LAF and Hezbollah that have exhibited friction since the end of the civil war, most recently, the LAF’s handling of the 2019 October 17 protests that erupted throughout Lebanon’s streets against the country’s political establishment including against Hezbollah and its allies, and the army’s role in preventing the advance of Hezbollah- and Amal party-affiliated armed men in Christian Tayoune area in central Beirut during protests that took place in October 2021 and were organized by Hezbollah and Amal to demand the removal of judge Tarek Bitar from the investigation into the August 4, 2020 Beirut port explosion—during which several armed men were killed—have, according to many commentators, heightened tensions between the two rivals.

The likelihood of this rivalry persisting and escalating to undermine the existing military status quo in the future will depend on several factors, most notably the geopolitical competition between regional rival states and the great powers in the Middle East region. However, this is unlikely in the short term, given that sectarianism infiltrates the Lebanese army ranks, and any serious confrontation between Hezbollah and the LAF could lead to divisions within the LAF. Additionally, Hezbollah is reported to maintain a weapons arsenal that outweighs that of the LAF.

In addition, the LAF is currently facing critical financial challenges as part of Lebanon’s severe economic crisis that began in 2019. The World Bank has described Lebanon’s current economic crisis as one of the worst since the 1850s, with three-quarters of the population living in poverty. This has led to the deterioration of Lebanon’s key institutions, including the impoverishment of the Lebanese army and police forces, who are not even able to fund basic operations and fulfill key security functions.

Most recently, in January 2023, the US allocated $72 million to Lebanon to supplement the wages of the LAF and the Lebanese Internal Security Forces for a period of six months, amid the worsening economic situation with the drastic devaluation of the Lebanese pound that has diminished the value of officers’ and soldiers’ wages. According to the U.S. State Department, the United States provided $236 million in military grant assistance to the LAF in the fiscal year 2021.

While there has been previous momentum building in Washington to end U.S. assistance to the LAF, with some conservative House Republicans arguing that U.S. material assistance to the LAF could be diverted to Hezbollah, several politicians and commentators have advocated for continued U.S. support of the LAF. They argue that funding and bolstering the LAF will help build a strong military in Lebanon as an institutional counterweight to Hezbollah. Some have noted that long-term aid has turned the LAF into a competent military force with recently proven battle victories.

For instance, commentators, including Nicholas Blanford at the Atlantic Council, cited the LAF’s recent successes in conducting counterterrorism operations and respective wins against jihadist groups thanks to military aid from the United States. These include the battle of Arsal in August 2014 against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat an-Nusrah (JN), and the Qalamoun campaign from July to August 2017 against ISIL and JN’s successor, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

So far, despite Hezbollah's antagonistic stance against U.S. interests in Lebanon and the region, the group has not interfered with the United States’ support of the LAF, nor made any attempts to stall cooperation. Hezbollah is cognizant of the particular confessional structure of Lebanese society and the entrenched Shia constituency in the army. As a result, any serious confrontation with the LAF is seen as only a remote possibility. Lebanese realpolitik has dictated that no confrontation occurs on either side. The historical precedence of the Lebanese sectarian civil war, which lasted over fifteen years with its dreadful consequences of warring sectarian parties controlling their own areas, is a real lesson. Perhaps, Hezbollah is also aware of the very implausibility of establishing military rule in Lebanon, given its very sectarian nature, where sectarian parties and elites hold sway over society.

Broadly speaking, Hezbollah has consistently praised its security coordination with the LAF as part of the larger goal of defending Lebanon. Although Olleik criticized the LAF’s participation in a maritime exercise, he claimed that the decision was made unilaterally by Aoun, not the LAF. The LAF is a widely popular institution, inclusive of members of all Lebanese sects, that has emerged as an institution of national unity after the Lebanese civil war and subsequent mass defections of officers and soldiers to confessional militias. Lebanon has elected four presidents who were LAF commanders based on the ideals of patriotism and national unity associated with their organization. However, given the recent U.S.-sponsored Abraham Accords and growing normalization of relations with Israel in the region, as well as the collapse of negotiations to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, any new power-sharing arrangement including electing a pro-U.S. army commander as president that undermines Hezbollah’s interests or demand its disarmament is unlikely. Hezbollah perceives Aoun as a potential presidential candidate close to the United States who may compromise the current security balance and lead Lebanon on uncertain terms. According to several observers, unless Hezbollah receives guarantees that Aoun will not interfere in its affairs, it will not nominate or elect him.

Rany Ballout is a New York-based political risk and due diligence analyst with extensive experience in the Middle East. He holds a master's degree in International Studies from the University of Montreal in Canada and a bachelor's degree in Linguistics from Uppsala University in Sweden.

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Public and especially political attention to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic has not abated and recently increased. A House subcommittee held a hearing on the subject last week, and Republican senators have called on Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide raw materials that underlay the intelligence community’s assessments on the subject.

The community has had insufficient information to reach even a moderately firm judgment about how and where the virus first infected humans. A plurality of member agencies has leaned toward the hypothesis that the pandemic, like many other viral diseases, began with a natural transmission from animals to humans. A minority of agencies have leaned toward the alternative hypothesis involving a leak from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, China. Other agencies have remained thoroughly agnostic and declined to lean either way. No agencies have offered judgments on this question with high confidence, and all agencies agree that both hypotheses are plausible and that China’s lack of cooperation in sharing information has impeded efforts to resolve the question of Covid’s origin.

Recent reports of thinking within the Department of Energy and the FBI have encouraged those favoring the lab leak hypothesis. But the question remains open, among government agencies as well as outside experts.

Before anyone—in politics, the scientific community, or elsewhere—devotes much more time to dwelling on this question, it is advisable to consider how much difference resolving the question would or would not make. Despite the immense worldwide economic and other consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic, knowing exactly how the pandemic began makes less difference than the amount of attention devoted to this topic might suggest. It is hard to see how a definitive judgment on that question now would be of any help in further dealing with Covid-19 itself. Potentially there would be some beneficial lessons relevant to warding off or preparing for future pandemics—lessons on, say, how to get early warning of animal transmission or the importance of laboratory security. But this is unlikely to involve new knowledge, beyond what experts on infectious diseases could have told us before Covid-19.

The origin question potentially has implications regarding official Chinese behavior, but the most worrisome scenarios have already been ruled out, even by responsible proponents of the lab leak theory. It is implausible that Chinese leaders would have intentionally unleashed a disease that has wreaked tremendous damage on their own people and economy. Moreover, the scientific consensus about the nature of the Covid-19 virus is that it was not manmade, and not genetically engineered as a biological weapon or for other purposes. Thus, the remaining question about the Chinese is only whether they were sufficiently careful about security at a lab in Wuhan that was conducting research on viruses.

The origin of Covid-19 is very much a technical question, but American politicians have seized it and turned it into a political question. Most of the seizure is by Republicans, including such outspoken partisans as Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. This is partly tough-on-China posturing, although Democrats, as well as Republicans, are trying to sound tough on China, in ways that are unhelpful in constructing sound policy.

Another probable motivation for the politicization is to get at Anthony Fauci, whom many Republicans never have forgiven for talking sense that contradicted then-President Donald Trump’s nonsense about Covid, and who has said that the preponderance of evidence favors the natural transmission hypothesis although he is keeping an open mind about the origins of the pandemic. Still, other Republican motivations involve making life difficult for a Democratic administration under whom the noncommittal intelligence assessments have been prepared, as well as making life difficult for the intelligence community itself, part of the supposedly nefarious “deep state” about which Jordan, Trump, and others have fulminated and never have forgiven for speaking other embarrassing truths during Trump’s presidency.

The origin of Covid-19 is hardly the only technical question that has gotten politicized. It can happen with the narrowest and most mundane question. The issue before a House committee in a hearing fifteen years ago was whether baseball star Roger Clemens had used performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens denied that he had. His former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, said that he had injected Clemens with steroids. Facing contradictory testimonies, the factual question before the committee was whether one man had stuck a needle into another man’s buttocks—a seemingly nonpolitical question. But the patterns of belief among committee members followed party lines. Democrats sided with McNamee, the little guy, while Republicans favored Clemens, the wealthy professional athlete. A further probable influence on Republican thinking was that the main report on steroid use in professional baseball—a report that fingered Clemens, among others—had been prepared by a Democrat, former Senator George Mitchell.

An example far more consequential for national policy was the issue of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as part of the George W. Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq in 2003. Much of the WMD question was highly technical, involving matters such as the tolerance levels of aluminum tubes and whether they were suitable for use in centrifuges for enriching uranium. But politicians determined to launch the war—and to use the WMD issue not as a technical question to be carefully explored but instead as one more talking point in their campaign to sell the war—took over the issue. Vice President Richard Cheney declared, in a speech delivered before the intelligence community had even begun work on an estimate on the subject that Congress had requested—that “there is no doubt” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

When technical questions get politicized, three harms follow.

First, the policy significance, if any, of the answer to the technical question gets badly distorted. The public as well as politicians come to believe that important policy choices hinge on that answer, even when they should not. The enormous attention devoted to the WMD question at the time of the Iraq War obscured how, even if false beliefs about Saddam Hussein’s unconventional weapons had turned out to be true, the war still would have been a huge blunder. All the mess that followed the invasion—including the insurgencies, the economic dislocation, the birthing of terrorist groups, the regional destabilization, and the American casualties—still would have ensued. And if U.S. forces had faced such unconventional weapons when they invaded, the costs and casualties would have been even higher.

Similarly, U.S. policy toward China should involve careful consideration of many important political, economic, and military matters that are far more significant than security measures at a single Chinese laboratory. There might be good reasons to be tough on China these days, but sloppiness at a lab is not one of them, regardless of how consequential possible past sloppiness might have turned out to be in the case of Covid.

Second, because politicians and the public are simply not qualified to assess many technical questions, for politicians to inject themselves into such assessments will inevitably produce many wrong answers. The public will be fed misperceptions, including ones that are less easily dismissed than Trump’s suggestions about ingesting bleach as a remedy for Covid.

Texas Republican Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, recently stated that the Biden administration should conclude “what common sense told us at the start—the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China.” It is incomprehensible how the question about Covid’s origins—which is far outside the experience of ordinary Americans and which has tested even the expertise of highly trained virologists and epidemiologists—can be viewed as a matter of “common sense.”

Third, politicization of such issues can corrupt, subtly and even at an unconscious level, the judgments of the experts themselves, especially those in government bureaucracies who ultimately are answerable to political leaders. When the available evidence is fragmentary and uncertain, it does not take much of such back-of-the-mind considerations to influence judgments. The strong preference by leaders of the George W. Bush administration for the analysis of Iraq to come out in a way that would aid the pro-war campaign probably affected the analysis of Iraqi weapons programs in this way. There is no comparable policy imperative in the current administration regarding either China or Covid, and so it is not clear in what direction any political influence would operate on the question of Covid’s origins. But any such influence reduces the chance of getting the correct answer to the technical question at hand.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a Contributing Editor for this publication.

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The Russian invasion of Ukraine initially seemed to galvanize the United States’ NATO allies and encourage them to take a more energetic role in Europe’s defense. But some analysts have recently noted that the war actually seems to have had the contrary effect of increasing Europe’s dependence on Washington. This should not be a surprise to anyone, since Europe’s dependence will inevitably increase in proportion to the United States’ own commitment to the continent’s security.

While French president Emmanuel Macron has championed strategic autonomy in recent years, and German chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a historic “Zeitenwende” in defense policy in response to the Russian invasion, both countries have proceeded cautiously over the course of the war. Germany only grudgingly sent Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine following parallel moves by the United States and the UK, while Macron has insisted that a post-war resolution must include a recognition of Russian security concerns.

This has increasingly frustrated Eastern European allies like Poland and the Baltic States, whose hard line on Russia has put them at odds with what they perceive as their Western counterparts’ ambivalence, making them all the more eager to maintain the U.S. presence in Europe.

But the more restrained attitude of France and Germany towards Russia is not based on spinelessness or frugality. Instead, due to geography, relative power, and history, Western and Eastern Europeans have profoundly different threat perceptions of Russia.

This would normally suggest that the two halves of Europe do not in fact make natural treaty allies. Historically, Eastern Europe suffered the misfortune of being a buffer zone between Western Europe and Russia—a role to which Eastern Europeans, all too understandably, do not want to return.

This fundamental asymmetry was introduced into the alliance by enlarging NATO to include Eastern European states from the 1990s onwards—a faultline papered over by the continuing leadership of the United States, but which reduces any incentive for Western Europeans to “step up” the way Washington (officially) wants them to.

The reflexive argument among many Western commentators is to blame France and Germany for not backing Ukraine more aggressively, reducing their credibility in the eyes of Eastern Europe, and compelling the latter to lean even more heavily on Washington to allay their security fears. According to these arguments, Western Europe should instead put itself on a serious war footing and help lead the charge against Russia.

But there are a couple of reasons to view such assertions skeptically. In the first place, the Russian military’s performance makes France and Germany’s response seem relatively proportionate. Russia has been struggling for months to conquer the small regional city of Bakhmut; it is not marching on Warsaw anytime soon. Moreover, while Eastern Europeans would probably like nothing more than for Russian fields to be sowed with salt, France and Germany recognize that Russia will likely always be a power in the region, and that peaceful coexistence requires some sort of reasonable mutual accommodation.

Secondly, the United States shouldn’t expect the over-the-top measures it relies on to prop up the credibility of extended deterrence to be mimicked by Europe should the latter transition towards strategic autonomy and deterring Russia directly. Nor should the Eastern Europeans.

Finally, and more to the point, one would think when listening to American officials and analysts who lament Europe’s security dependence that these folks want the United States out of Europe as quickly as possible. And yet the opposite is the case; most of these same voices are deeply dedicated to America remaining permanently committed to NATO.

According to conventional arguments for greater “burden-sharing” among the allies, the best way for the United States to encourage its capable allies to do more for their own defense is to redouble our own efforts on their behalf and fall over ourselves to insist upon our commitments to them. The causal logic here has never been explained, but it seems self-evidently contradictory: if we do more, we incentivize our allies to do less.

The alternative view is that the best way to encourage the rich and capable countries of Western Europe to assume greater responsibility in a European alliance is to slowly, but steadily and openly, reduce our own contribution to the continent’s security. This would not be greater “burden-sharing,” but rather “burden-shifting.”

If European security is truly the goal, we should expect capable states like France and Germany to act like any other state without a guarantor: to develop the independent capabilities they deem necessary for their own threat environment, and to manage their own alliances. Poland and the Baltic states prefer an American guarantee, but they’ll likely still be able to sleep well at night with a guarantee from their more powerful and nuclear-armed Western neighbors.

If we’re being frank, however, the contradiction at the heart of calls for more “burden-sharing” is probably recognized by those devoted to the permanence of the transatlantic alliance, and this incoherence is precisely its utility. Virtually no one in the American foreign policy establishment actually wants to give up the United States’ seat at the head of the table in NATO, which places Europe within America’s sphere of influence. And for some time, therefore, NATO’s existence, to quote the historian Richard Sakwa, will continue to be “justified by the need to manage the security threats provoked by its [own] enlargement.

Christopher McCallion is a Non-Resident Fellow at Defense Priorities.

Image: Shutterstock.

To a few onlookers’ surprise, last month’s G20 summit in India ended without an agreement on Ukraine. India’s tough non-alignment policy sees it continuing to walk a thin line when it comes to the NATO-Russia hostilities over the latter’s invasion of its neighbor last year. However, India’s G20 presidency presents NATO and the United States in particular with an opportunity to strengthen its ties with New Delhi.

While the G20 presidency might sound like yet another fluffy bureaucratic accolade to outsiders, it is a position with some significant bite. It is the largest multilateral platform in operation, with its member states representing more than 85 percent of world GDP and two-thirds of the human population. While its ability to influence security decisionmaking is lackluster, as the Ukraine debate exemplifies, it has long held a key role in managing talks over future international economic growth.

India is the world's seventh-largest economy, and unlike China, it is forecast to continue to expand into the near future. India is fast overtaking China in terms of population and will likely become the world’s third-largest economy and the “pharmacy of the world” before the end of the decade. 

Moreover, its ascendancy to the G20 presidency at the start of 2023 has come at a crucial time for the country and the world as it continues to reel from the financial impact of the coronavirus response, itself a knock-on effect of Beijing’s malfeasance.

Insiders have suggested that India will attempt to forge an expert group to tackle World Bank reforms in order to provide climate aid to developing economies. While the details of such plans are unconfirmed, they may be a promising step toward countering the exploitative debt diplomacy of China’s sprawling Belt and Road Initiative. India has already gone some way toward positioning itself as a voice for the Global South, while China continues to block solutions to the debt crisis crippling the developing world.

India is also keen to launch a Sustainable Development Goals stimulus package to provide low and middle-income governments with a fresh injection of investment support alongside offering debt relief and restructuring. New Delhi’s plans to use its G20 presidency to promote renewable energy and action on climate is also promising.

The G20 includes several Asian countries, and India’s presidency will of course provide a platform for regional cooperation and collaboration with U.S.-aligned states such as Japan and South Korea. But while there is constant establishment fanfare over established alliances in East Asia, the reality is that the opportunity of such states pales in comparison to what India can offer going forward. It is time the United States looked toward better building new bridges than simply preserving old ones.

With its recently hiked annual military budget of approximately $72.6 billion dollars and battle-hardened armed forces, India is the only serious contender to China in South and Southeast Asia. Border standoffs in Doklam (2017) and Galwan (2020) are just two recent cases in which China has sought to push its luck as regards India’s sovereignty, but has been forced to back down.

As former Trump administration defense official Elbridge Colby notes, India is the “rock of the anti-hegemonic coalition in S Asia,” and consequently the United States should be doing what it can to strengthen it.

India is the world’s largest democracy, and although its strain of nationalism may be at odds with many Western sensibilities, the foundations for a mutually beneficial relationship are far more plentiful than with China, the state the West has tiptoed into trade reliance on for decades. If Washington is keen on a secure future at home and in Asia, it must treat India’s G20 presidency as a wake-up call.

Georgia Leatherdale-Gilholy is a journalist based in the United Kingdom. She tweets at @llggeorgia.

Image: Shutterstock.

As soon as the South Korean government announced a tentative deal to solve its dispute with Japan over World War II-era forced labor, American officials and foreign policy experts celebrated a new step forward for cooperation between U.S. allies. But not so fast. 

President Joe Biden's quick response to the announcement suggests the United States is trying to lock this agreement in place, showing how Washington views South Korean and Japanese cooperation as critical for its agenda in Northeast Asia. Biden called it a “groundbreaking new chapter of cooperation and partnership between two of the United States’ closest allies” and said he “look[s] forward to continuing to strengthen and enhance the trilateral ties between the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the United States.”

Victor Cha, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on MSNBC that it will help get Seol and Tokyo to cooperate on “everything from their support of Ukraine, defense in the Taiwan Straits, to, of course, North Korea’s unending ballistic missile tests.”

But it may be too early to say if this deal will stand and if South Koreans will accept it. Past attempts to resolve historical debates between South Korea and Japan have floundered. The proposal by the unpopular administration of President Yoon Suk-youl is already facing criticism. The progressive Hankyoreh paper criticized the deal in an editorial, saying it undermined the South Korean Constitution and Supreme Court, which ruled that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Steel should compensate victims of forced labor. The paper raised concerns about the awkward timing, with the announcement coming just a week after the March 1 holiday commemorating South Korean resistance to the Japanese occupation. Opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-Myung has called for the proposal to be withdrawn.

Activist groups and civic organizations compared Yoon’s proposal with the Park Geun-hye administration’s 2015 deal, which was meant to address the controversy over Japan’s use of sex slaves during the war but only resulted in protests outside of Japanese consulates and further poisoned the two countries’ relations.

"Why is the victim country trying so hard to exempt the perpetrator nation from responsibility,” said Lee Na-young, head of the Korean Council.

This gets to the crux of the criticism of the proposal. The foundation compensating the victims would be funded almost entirely—if not wholly—by South Korean entities. The two Japanese companies implicated in the Supreme Court case have stood firm, with the backing of the Japanese government, against paying. Two of the few surviving victims said they did not wish to receive Korean money and demanded Japan acknowledge their suffering.

As of this writing, surveys have yet to be released on the plan's popularity. Many South Koreans have expressed support; they are tired of having their country’s foreign policy constrained by a tragic history that cannot be undone. 

Seok Dong-Hyeon, a lawyer and the secretary general of the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, wrote on Facebook that the “exhausting controversy and damage” caused by a single ruling by a few judges acting by themselves was “too great.” The Choson Ilbo’s editorial stated the need to cooperate to address the North Korean threat and Chinese hegemony and pointed out that previous Korean Democratic Party presidents like Kim Dae-Jung had welcomed a “new era” of relations with Japan.

Positive relations between South Korea and Japan cannot be maintained in the long run if it is a politicized issue; a new South Korean president in 2027 or 2032 may demand Japan apologize for its history.

Lawyers representing the victims of forced labor say they will persist in bringing lawsuits and attempting to collect compensation from the companies, including through attempts to liquidate Mitsubishi’s and Nippon Steel’s assets in Japan. The Yoon administration could not easily force an independent judiciary to block such a case just because of an agreement it made at the executive level, which will not be ratified in South Korea’s opposition-controlled legislature. If a court does rule against Japan again, then what?

It is clear that this proposal is being championed by Yoon and the United States to further the foreign policy goals of the China hawks within the American and South Korean administrations. But it does not address the needs of the victims who took the case to pursue justice. While it would be impossible to compel a foreign country or its leadership to apologize with sincerity, there are some things Japan could do to make the deal easier for the Korean public to swallow.

At a minimum, Mitsubishi and Nippon Steel should partially fund the settlement. Mitsubishi agreed to compensate over 3,000 Chinese victims of forced labor in 2016. They are still in the process of completing payments to some of the victims even as they refuse to compensate the much smaller group of Korean plaintiffs. Although it is likely some South Koreans would still not be satisfied, at least it would be easier for Yoon to make the case that his administration had extracted some kind of concessions from Japan.

As it is, it seems like South Korea gave in to most of the Japanese demands. South Koreans are getting no compensation as a result of the forced labor case, although Japan and South Korea are both going to be jointly funding a scholarship program for youths. The Japan Business Federation (Keidanren) will pay for part of it. Still, the money isn’t coming from the implicated corporations (except in so much as they are dues-paying members of the Keidanren) and isn’t going to the victims. South Korea will be reinstated to Japan’s trade whitelist, but that is just a return to the status quo.

Japan got South Korea to give up on almost everything with only a token scholarship program, the kind of thing two amicable nations might create in ordinary times just as a show of goodwill.

Yoon views the Korea-Japan-U.S. relationship as critical for their mutual foreign policy interests. He must calculate that there is more for Korea to gain from harmonizing relations than from trying to extract more in negotiations. But why doesn’t Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida feel the same? Why doesn’t he give in to some of Korea’s demands for the sake of the trilateral relationship?

There can be a debate about which side is most to blame for things deteriorating—and a convincing case can be made that South Korea’s unforgiving attitude may be the primary cause—but there needs to be mutual trust. In order for there to be healthy relations, two countries need to both make contributions and compromises.

Mitchell Blatt is the Founder of the US-Korea Policy Project and a frequent contributor to The National Interest.

Image: Flickr/White House.

Installée en plein cœur de la Silicon Valley, l'université de la Singularité s'est donné pour vocation d'enseigner aux entrepreneurs la maîtrise des technologies « exponentielles » — intelligence artificielle (IA), neurosciences, nanotechnologies, génie génétique. Be exponential est le slogan du site... (...) / Biotechnologie, Technologie, Science, Fiction, Culture, Littérature - 2018/01

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