Diplomacy & Crisis News

Following the inauguration of Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brasília, Iran announced that it would send two of its warships to the South American country. The Russian state news agency, Sputnik, which has some other local proxies as its sounding board, recapitulated the announcement just two days before the ships were scheduled arrival of the ships to arrive—as published in the Brazilian government’s official journal. However, the ships never arrived.

What made Iran change its plans? Or rather, what were Iran’s plans?

Officially, Iran says that its ships, Dena—a Mowj-class frigate—and Makran—a former crude oil tanker converted into a helicopter carrier, now the largest ship in the Iranian navy—are on their way to the Panama Canal. The crossing of the Pacific Ocean would be the focal point for its plans to “go around the world.”

So far, it is not known what prompted the Iranians to change their plans and possibly their route. A seemingly isolated event may reveal part of the answer. On January 16, seven days before the Iranian ships arrived in the Port of Rio de Janeiro, the U.S. Air Force dispatched a WC-135R Constant Phoenix aircraft to South America. The operational purpose of the WC-135 is, notably, to identify atmospheric signs of nuclear activity—in other words, to be a “nuke sniffer.”

Dispatching such a plane on an unprecedented mission to collect a baseline reading of normal atmospheric conditions in South America raises eyebrows. The aircraft departed from Puerto Rico and collected atmospheric data off the coasts of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and part of Brazil. It also traversed an area from the north up the Rio de Janeiro region, where the Iranian warships were due to be. The U.S. military did not intend for the mission to be secret: the plane’s transponder data was available to the public via flight monitoring platforms.

A second flight was carried out days later. The plane retraced its route around South America in the opposite direction, collecting data over the Caribbean, the northern coast of Venezuela, and over the waters of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. On this route, it flew over the Panama Canal, the presumed strategic destination of the Iranian flotilla.

This radiation survey over South America may have been a warning to Iran, creating problems for Tehran. Establishing baseline measurements of the region’s natural radiation levels would have become a hindrance if Iran had plans to use South America for nuclear testing. If the Iranian ships had been carrying radioactive material or weapons for offshore testing, possibly off of Venezuela, then the United States could identify anomalies in the atmosphere from its survey prior to the ships’ arrival in Brazil.

When it comes to Iran, everything is not what it seems. In 2005 and 2020, stories that Iran was producing missiles in Venezuela consumed the attention of researchers and governments looking for evidence that the two regimes were acting in concert to violate sanctions. While the West’s attention was diverted, Iran and Venezuela deepened their relationship through clandestine networks that possibly served to support the former’s nuclear program and transport materials, people, and financial and technological resources between the two regimes.

In 2020, Iran sent tankers to Caracas in defiance of sanctions and cast doubt about what the ships were actually carrying besides its declared fuel cargo. President Nicolás Maduro has never missed an opportunity to exacerbate tensions—for instance, he once publicly stated that he viewed the acquisition of Iranian-made long-range missiles as a “good idea.”

Iran’s efforts at concealment led many analysts to suspect, for example, that a network of tunnels had been dug under Venezuelan military installations in Maracay, in north-central Venezuela, to conceal missiles. Today, it would not be absurd to think that such facilities could be used for nuclear tests in partnership with Iran.

It is hard to say why Iran’s naval mission to South America has been “delayed”—or even interrupted. Maybe the mission was just another empty provocation. Maybe it was a smokescreen for clandestine activity, such as transporting nuclear material. If the first scenario is correct, Iran may have achieved what it wanted by causing tensions and forcing the United States to spend time, money, and attention on purely a propaganda operation. But if Iran had plans to deliver nuclear material to the region, then they might have found themselves cornered and were forced to reconsider their strategy. The “disappearance” and delay (or unannounced suspension) of its official port call in Brazil may certainly not have been a gamble in vain.

Leonardo Coutinho is an author and a senior fellow at the Center for a Secure Free Society.

Image: Shutterstock.

In a previous article, I suggested “the DeSantis doctrine” has three components. First, win elections and govern effectively. Second, push back against the woke-industrial complex. Now I lay out the third component: the DeSantis doctrine in U.S. foreign policy.

Internationally, there is typically little call for state governors to develop an elaborate foreign policy stance. However, Florida has an unusually big footprint overseas as well as in the United States, and Governor Ron DeSantis has spoken out on several important international matters. He also has a record of statements and actions on national security issues going back to his years in Congress.

During his time as a U.S. House Representative, from 2013 to 2018, DeSantis was critical of the Obama administration’s foolish attempts to accommodate Communist Cuba. In Congress, DeSantis supported aggressive measures relating to the targeting and detention of suspected Salafi-jihadist terrorists. He criticized Pentagon waste but supported a strong U.S. military with all the budgetary implications. He called for U.S. aid to Israel. He was furthermore an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama’s nuclear arms control giveaways to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Once Donald Trump was elected president, DeSantis applauded that administration’s withdrawal from the ill-fated Iran deal. The Floridian also rallied to Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against North Korea. In other words, all mainstream Republican positions during those years.

As governor of Florida since 2019, DeSantis has continued to call attention to the depredations of left-wing dictatorships in Latin America, including those of Cuba and Venezuela. He has signed legislation designating one day of the year to honor the victims of Communist regimes while insisting that schoolchildren learn the truth about it. For those of us with ancestors who managed to escape the Soviet Union, it’s gratifying to see this departure from the usual left-liberal reticence in condemning Marxist atrocities. And of course, many Floridians know from firsthand experience how rotten Communism really is.

Speaking of Marxist-Leninist dictatorships: in relation to the People’s Republic of China, DeSantis has said and done things indicating he understands the scale of the challenge. As he pointed out in his September speech to the National Conservatism conference in Miami, free trade with China demonstrably failed to soften one-party rule. It enriched that regime while leaving it more threatening than ever before. DeSantis appears to grasp that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence is a transnational threat, not simply a conventional military one. Last year, he signed into law measures requiring companies that do over $100,000 in business with Florida to disclose any ties to China. He banned the CCP-affiliated Confucius Institute from state colleges and universities. And he has called on the Florida state legislature to block Chinese companies from buying up real estate in the Sunshine State. As he noted while visiting Bonita Springs last month:

If you look at the Chinese Communist Party, they’ve been very active throughout the Western Hemisphere in gobbling up land and investing in different things…and when you see how they’ve wielded their authority - especially with President Xi, who's taken a much more Marxist-Leninist turn since he’s been ruling China – that is not in the best interests of Florida to have the Chinese Communist Party owning farmland, owning land close to military bases.

Over at the New York Times, Bonnie Kristian recently worried that a President DeSantis might be insufficiently committed to accommodating anti-American dictatorships overseas. I must admit this fear does not keep me up at night. The editor of Modern Age, Dan McCarthy, strikes me as more persuasive when he points out that refusing to accommodate the mullahs of Iran does not necessarily equal support for some gigantic nation-building expedition to overthrow them. If we survey the DeSantis record carefully, we can see he does not quite fit preconceived notions of what a Republican must believe. For example, in 2013, as then-President Obama was ramping up plans for “unbelievably small” airstrikes against Syria, Congressman DeSantis questioned the utility of the administration’s half-baked plans. As he said at the time:

The Obama administration has not articulated a clear objective for using military force in Syria, much less a plan to achieve that objective. This is all the more problematic given the realities of a Syrian civil war in which Assad’s dictatorship (supported by Iran and Hezbollah) is fighting so-called rebels that are populated with Sunni Islamic supremacists and Al Qaeda fighters.

Not exactly the neoconservative position. And yet the governor clearly favors robust deterrence. A year ago, when Putin attacked Ukraine, DeSantis called out the Biden administration for failing to prevent the invasion. During the summer of 2021, DeSantis characterized Biden’s chaotic disengagement from Afghanistan as terribly weak and likely to invite further aggression. The governor was right about that. At the same time, he has confessed to certain doubts about prior U.S. strategies in Afghanistan. He once said: “After 9/11, we needed to go and rout the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But I think in hindsight, we should have come home after that. I think trying to do democracy and all that, I think has been very problematic.”

When it comes to the much-vaunted global institutions that liberal internationalists revere, DeSantis shows no special deference. “I look at these people at the World Economic Forum,” he says, “and I’m like, they just view us a bunch of peasants.” They certainly do. The World Trade Organization, he points out, paved the way for the stupendous rise of the People’s Republic of China. The World Health Organization mismanaged and wrongly acquiesced to that same regime over the Wuhan virus three years ago. The United Nations—an organization that boasts numerous tinpot dictators within its ranks—has even had the temerity to critique Florida state laws in criminal policing. DeSantis laughs that off as a badge of honor. As he says, summing up his whole approach as governor, “I am basically the protector of the state’s freedom and opportunity.” So, he pushes back against the woke-industrial complex whether its demands emanate from inside or outside the United States. If Davos doesn’t like it, tough luck.

All things considered, when DeSantis’s statements on foreign policy matters are taken as a whole, he comes across as neither a hyper-interventionist, nor a dove, nor a liberal. Instead, he comes across as someone who favors a strong U.S. military, together with a certain care and decision in using it. Multilateral institutions receive no automatic submission in his view. Nor do anti-American dictators who insist on diplomatic, economic, and strategic concessions from the United States. Taken together, this is an outlook sometimes described as Jacksonian. We could do a lot worse. In fact, we frequently have.

So, there you have the broad possible outlines of a DeSantis doctrine: the protector. First, win elections and govern effectively. Second, push back against the woke-industrial complex. Third, guard against America’s self-described enemies overseas.

Of course, there are those spanning the ideological spectrum who insist that no U.S. president can possibly do all three things at once.

And what I’d like to know is: why not?

Colin Dueck is a Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and a senior non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Hunter Crenian/Shutterstock.

Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia, if successful, is going to have an impact every bit as epochal as Iraq’s 1991 eviction from Kuwait or Argentina’s forced departure from the Falklands in 1982, to name just a few salutary lessons delivered to aggressive states. 

Over the years, crises big or small have periodically defined the international “system” for good or ill. Think also of Suez Crisis in 1956, or the 1938 capitulation to Adolf Hitler at Munich.

Does the current yearlong response by Ukraine’s allies, most of them grouped in NATO, have a similarly defining effect? To be sure, the Western response has delivered economic pain to Russia, and critically important intelligence and munitions to Ukraine. But do the results add up to a convincing display of deterrence and resolve? 

The Western coalition in Ukraine is seen as also deterring China from attacking neighboring countries, notably China’s “renegade province,” Taiwan. But is it doing that? The answer is mixed, not least because the spotlight we have put on our response in Ukraine has revealed crucial American and Western vulnerabilities. 

The weaknesses lie in the re-emergence of defense industrial warfare in the new international powerplays. The year-long war in Ukraine has spawned profligate artillery and rocketry duels, in numbers not seen since the last world war.

After a year’s fighting, keeping ammunition stocks and fighting vehicles sufficiently plentiful and routinely upgraded seems the challenge which will determine the course of the war and its outcome. For months, drone footage and satellite imagery have shown us leveled cities and pock-marked fields, recalling artillery and bomb-scarred moonscapes of the first and second world wars. 

In November, the U.S. Department of Defense calculated that Russia was firing 20,000 artillery shells a day. The numbers expended by the Ukrainians had meanwhile reached up to 7,000/day. With these rates of fire, stocks are becoming exhausted, on both sides. For Ukraine’s allies, there is also a draining effect. How can stockpiles be reliably replenished to keep the Ukrainians in the field?

The challenge must not be minimized. In December, the Royal United Services Institute said that Russia, in just two days of that month, had used more ammunition than that contained in the entire stock of the British military. And while the United States has much larger stockpiles of weapons and munitions, the Pentagon recently decided to boost six-fold the production of critically important 155-millimeter shells. Just ten days of fighting in January had outpaced current production. 

This explains the Pentagon’s searching high and low for stores of munitions. It has sought munitions from Israeli and South Korean stockpiles, straining to keep up with Ukrainian demand. The Pentagon’s chief acquisition officer, Bill Laplante, put it succinctly a few months ago: “[Ukraine] has focused us ... on what really matters, and what matters is production.”

In recent years, of course, production shortfalls and delivery impediments have afflicted our own and others’ economies. The past allure of “just-in-time” warehousing and other minimalist stocking practices have weakened our industrial resilience. Acquisition shortfalls typify the broader status quo, a state of industrial complacency going far beyond shortages of specific munitions or war-fighting gear.

America’s military-industrial base has become as vulnerable as the wider economy. The supply chain crisis now afflicts everything, from specific weapons systems to the basic materials for developing affordable clean energy technologies. The Ukraine War highlights our dependence on Chinese manufacturing, the beneficiary of outsourcing decisions frustrating immediate supply (and re-supply) needs. Whether for narrow defense manufacturing, or much broader consumer goods, industrial supply chains have become stubbornly vulnerable to disruption—be this from pandemics, civil unrest half a world away, or the machinations of geopolitical rivalry. 

The data reveals the weakness. Productive capacity in the United States for all essential goods and materials falls well short of minimally acceptable capacity. Laplante singles out the lagging supply of rare earth elements (REE), describing a China controlling 80 percent of global REE as decades ahead in developing the type of supply chains we need. 

Apart from rare earths, China controls most of the battery metals which underpin rapidly advancing electric vehicle (EV) production. Building American EV capacity, from the mine to the assembly line, has become a national must-do—lest we find the United States and other Western economies locked out of the new transportation paradigm. 

Apart from its fighting forces, America’s greatest role during World War II emerged as the “arsenal of democracy.” U.S. industry provided nearly two-thirds of all Allied military equipment during the war—specifically 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, 86,000 tanks, and two million army trucks. By the war’s end, the United States had become home to more than half of the world’s entire industrial production. 

Today, only one economy has the productive capacity to rival what the United States then achieved: China. The Chinese generate over thirty percent of total global manufacturing, producing, in particular, more than half of the world’s raw steel, three-fourths of all lithium-ion batteries, and four-fifths of all the world’s solar panels. China’s manufacturing dominance may not be, on its own, a “threat,” but our naked dependence on Chinese supply chains counts as a terrible vulnerability.

Thankfully, Congress and the Biden administration, have become alert to this problem. Beginning in the previous administration and continuing into today’s, we find ourselves once again in a world of great power competition. 

Facing this reality requires new investment in our entire industrial base, not in just especially favored defense industries. We need to see it holistically, as all of one piece, a regaining of the capacity underpinning our economic, energy, and national security. Beyond the present war, that is the best way to project deterrence.

James Clad is a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia-Pacific Security Affairs.

Image: United States Department of Defense.

Colonial exceptionalism and a victim mentality are integral to Russia’s self-image.

Russia is sending more bodies. Ukraine doesn’t have enough. And the tanks won’t arrive in time.

But Joe Biden shouldn’t play along.

Le philosophe et sociologue Bruno Latour élabore, dans deux récents essais, une réponse politique autant qu'épistémologique à la crise environnementale contemporaine. Abandonnant les outils de la sociologie des sciences pour ceux d'une métaphysique d'ordre très général, le propos se veut allègre et « (...) / Écologie, Idées, Intellectuels, Religion, Spiritualité, Environnement - 2017/12

The U.S. president’s State of the Union speech emphasized populism and protectionism, not global affairs. It must be election season already.

Les massacres de masse ont ensanglanté le monde, à toutes les époques et en tout lieu. Mais tous non pas la même postérité. La sélection n'est pas seulement historique, elle est aussi géographique, politique et culturelle. / Afrique, Asie centrale, Caraïbes, Palestine, Rwanda, Colonialisme, Génocide, (...) / Afrique, Asie centrale, Caraïbes, Palestine, Rwanda, Colonialisme, Génocide, Seconde guerre mondiale 1939-1945, Amérique du Nord, Esclavage - 2008/12

Passée en un demi-siècle de six à vingt-cinq membres, l'Union européenne rencontre des difficultés à exprimer la communauté de destin qui la légitimerait. Les auteurs du préambule de la future Constitution se disent « persuadés que les peuples de l'Europe, tout en restant fiers de leur identité et de leur (...) / Europe, Intégration régionale, Culture, Histoire, Identité culturelle - 2003/08

The government says the state of emergency will facilitate rescue work. In Syria, its unclear whether the government will help or hurt aid efforts.

A landmark class-action lawsuit in South Africa could set a precedent for holding multinational corporations responsible for environmental damages.

Netanyahu’s latest reforms come straight from the autocrat’s playbook.

Can Moscow learn from its failures in Ukraine?

Turkey may have just experienced the most devastating natural disaster in its history. Ten provinces in the country’s southeast were flattened by powerful earthquakes in a matter of hours, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. Temperatures are freezing and survivors are in danger of freezing to death before rescuers can dig them out of the rubble.

The disaster is still unfolding. There is now a massive homelessness problem. Even in cases where houses were not destroyed, many will be uninhabitable due to structural damage. The sheer level of urban destruction is so vast that, in addition to losing their homes, inhabitants of the region are likely to have lost their jobs too.

While natural disasters such as earthquakes are unpredictable, the Turkish government should and could have been better prepared to avoid this worst-case scenario. In the coming days, citizens and opposition politicians are going to demand answers to three uncomfortable questions.

The first relates to the availability of emergency funds, specifically intended for earthquake relief. Following a deadly earthquake in 1999, the state imposed a permanent tax on all Turkish homeowners to contribute to a fund, so that the country would be financially prepared for the next destructive earthquake. Estimates suggest that the state has collected close to $40 billion. Where are these funds? In 2020, reporters asked President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this very question. He replied with a non-answer, remarking “We spent the [funds] on what was necessary. I really do not have the time to explain what the money was spent on.” Since 2012, public disclosure of government spending has been censored, thereby making it virtually impossible to determine how these funds were spent.

The second question relates to building regulations. Following the 1999 quake, the state imposed more stringent building regulations, specifically designed to ensure that buildings are as resistant to earthquakes as much as possible. The destruction of entire city blocks in towns like Hatay, Antakya, and Iskenderun strongly indicates that buildings were not up to code. Who is responsible? The government will be tempted to vilify individual contractors and builders, but not the party officials that run municipalities and thus issue building and zoning permits. In other words, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Erdogan will do everything it can to escape the embarrassment and blame. It will be interesting to see how they pull that off in light of the public infrastructure that has also sustained severe damage. Scores of municipal buildings and hospitals have collapsed.

The last question focuses on the government’s emergency response, or lack thereof. Admittedly, the magnitude of the earthquakes was so vast that any prepared government would struggle to mount a meaningful response. Yet citizens in the affected areas are complaining about the total lack of emergency services, prompting some to ask, “where is the state?” In the initial forty-eight hours, the government hesitated to deploy the Turkish military, which has significant resources such as personnel and heavy lifting equipment. This hesitation may have resulted in the loss of thousands of lives Moreover, the country’s premier emergency response agency (AFAD) is under increasing public scrutiny. The organization is accused of mounting an unacceptably slow response to a major national disaster.

Right now, Erdogan’s primary concern appears to be political optics Two days after the disaster, Erdogan declared a state of emergency for two months in the affected areas. The timing is awkward, to put it mildly: the emergency will end one week before the intended date of Turkey’s national elections. Coincidentally, a state of emergency will allow the government to control the media—specifically, control over negative reporting that might lay the blame for subsequent rebuilding and humanitarian challenges on the government.

Erdogan likely understands that this earthquake may be his greatest political challenge yet. In a fiery public appearance, instead of acknowledging the level of public trauma the country was facing, Erdogan warned that he would target individuals “spreading lies” about the national disaster.

With so much devastation and so much at stake politically, Erdogan could try to pump the brakes on holding the elections slated for May 14. Many of the public buildings where citizens usually vote have been damaged. Even if they are intact, citizens will be primarily concerned with rebuilding their livelihoods. The government may thus try to exploit the situation and forestall what was slated to be a close election by citing citizens’ inability to participate in the voting process.

Such a strategy could backfire rather badly. The earthquake has gained international attention. Should the government fail to address the needs of the people and then attempt to cancel elections, this could be too much for the Turkish population to bear. And their frustrations will be obvious to the international community that is working overtime to raise funds for the beleaguered people of Turkey.

What well-wishers may not quite understand is that Erdogan and the AKP have been in power for twenty years. And while the political elite may not be responsible for a natural disaster, the aftershocks are as much political as they are seismic.

Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). He is also an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Command and Staff College-Marine Corps University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Image: Mustafa Kirazli/Shutterstock.com.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a Russian intelligence analyst. It is March 1, 2020. Your task is to determine why President Donald Trump authorized the Doha Agreement, a deal with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Suppose you know the following facts:

1. Donald Trump is known to watch the television show Tucker Carlson Tonight.

2. Tucker Carlson has said that Afghanistan “is never going to become a civilized country.”

3. Donald Trump often echoes Tucker Carlson’s rhetoric about caring for Americans first.

Ergo, you conclude that Tucker Carlson is the intellectual architect of the Doha Agreement. You report that Carlson is “Trump’s Brain,” the grand strategist, the hidden hand in plain view.

Does this sound plausible? Carlson is not a policymaker, nor does he provide policy-relevant advice. Moreover, Trump had long advocated for a U.S. withdrawal himself. To attribute so much influence to a television host seems like an absurd leap in logic. And yet—over the past year, many political commentators have alleged that Alexander Dugin, a far-right Russian television personality, was the intellectual architect of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. His supposed influence on Putin and Russian elites has become a recurring theme in Western media coverage.

In the first half of 2022 alone, Dugin was mentioned in Foreign Affairs and featured in both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Smaller publications, like the left-leaning Jacobin, the center-right Bulwark, and the Jewish Tablet all ran similar stories. Even the YouTube-famous intellectual Jordan Peterson later claimed that Putin “collaborates in his thinking with a genuine philosopher, Alexander Dugin.” The assassination of Dugin’s daughter in August, allegedly by Ukrainian security forces, has since raised his profile even further.

What many commentators get wrong, besides overrating Dugin’s prominence, is the complex relationship between intellectuals and politics. They mistakenly assume that: 1) Patronage means proximity, 2) ideology equates to strategy, and 3) using a thinker’s favorite jargon means embracing his specific ideas. In reality, intellectuals peddling big ideas are rarely in the driver’s seat of politics—especially in autocracies without freedom of expression. Dugin is no exception.

Fallacy #1: Patronage Means Proximity

Before we get ahead of ourselves—who is Alexander Dugin? According to an influential Foreign Affairs article, he is “Putin’s Brain,” a “professor at Russia’s top university, Moscow State University, and the head of the national sociological organization Center for Conservative Studies” from 2008–2014. True enough, though he was only an adjunct, not a full professor, and his research center was national only in name. He was also abruptly fired from Moscow State after students protested his call to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Ukrainians in the 2014 invasion of Donbas. Since then, he has worked as the editor of the pro-regime television channel, Tsargrad TV.

These posts strengthened Dugin’s reputation in the West as a philosopher and advisor to Putin. But a cursory look at his career reveals that he is just one of many pawns in Putin’s curated media ecosystem. The regime’s “political technologists” are known to impersonally employ thousands of media personalities like Dugin to shape public opinion. These personalities do not control their public profile, nor do their ideas necessarily even reflect official policy. The regime also sponsors extremists and pseudo-oppositionists to make itself look moderate in comparison.

Before his stint at Moscow State, Dugin had played some small television roles on Russia’s Channel One. Like everyone else, his profile waxed and waned depending on Putin’s needs. In the early 2000s, when Putin aligned with the United States in the Global War on Terror, ultra-nationalists like Dugin were given less airtime and pushed into the “opposition.” They were then somewhat rehabilitated after the Color Revolutions in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and Kyrgyzstan (2005) created a need for more nationalistic content. This was what increased Dugin’s notoriety. But there is no evidence that Dugin ever came in contact with Putin.

Indeed, Dugin has never claimed to have met Putin, nor has he spoken as though he has. In a rambling VKontakte post after his firing from Moscow State, Dugin wrote: “There are two identities to Putin - the patriotic, heroic (solar) and the one inclined toward liberalism and compromises of the West (lunar). Therefore it is impossible to rule out that the decision to dismiss me was taken by one half, obviously the lunar.” Such a man, who has played the role of an academic, opposition leader, talking head, and regime loyalist, seems much more like a court jester than an éminence grise. He too might profit from a window into Putin’s brain.

Fallacy #2: Ideology Equates to Strategy

Dugin’s current standing is often misinterpreted through his past intellectual achievements. In the 1990s, he found his first major patrons in Igor Rodionov (then head of the Russian General Staff Academy) and Leonid Ivashov (then head of defense cooperation with other post-Soviet states). Both generals supported the failed 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev to forestall the USSR’s dissolution. Rodionov invited Dugin to lecture at the General Staff Academy from 1992–95 to fill the post-Soviet ideological vacuum, while Ivashov secured funding for Dugin to turn his lectures into a best-selling monograph, The Foundations of Geopolitics (1997).

Commentators have characterized Foundations as a strategic blueprint for the Putin era. But I sincerely doubt, as one writer alleges in The Washington Post, that Putin has followed the book’s “counsel to the letter.” Dugin’s chief contention is that the Cold War was only one phase of an eternal and occult struggle between civilizations of “land,” i.e. Russia, and “sea,” i.e. the United States and its allies. Russia’s destiny, he argues, is to build a multipolar order by re-uniting post-Soviet “Eurasia.” The framing is unusual but offers no new strategic insights. Neither Putin nor the generals needed Dugin to convince them that the USSR’s dissolution was a disaster.

More importantly, the book contains little intelligible counsel. It is several hundred pages of intellectual history and philosophical exegesis. Here is a representative quote: “Geopolitics as it exists today is certainly a secular, ‘profane’ and secularised science. But perhaps, among all the other modern sciences, it has preserved in itself the greatest connection with tradition and with traditional sciences. René Guénon said that modern chemistry is the result of the desacralization of the traditional science of alchemy, and modern physics is the result of magic. Similarly, modern geopolitics [results from] sacred geography.” What is Putin to do with this?

Strategy is about connecting means to ends. It involves calculating risk, deciding on the most prudent sequence of actions, and adapting to a changing environment. Dugin is not interested in any of this. When he offers advice in Foundations, he often proposes extravagant ideas like partitioning northern China with Japan while supporting Chinese expansion into Southeast Asia “as geopolitical compensation.” He never reflects on whether Russia has the means—the military capability, state capacity, and economic resources—to achieve these maximalist ends.

To be fair, Dugin does make one seemingly prescient suggestion—he encourages “separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts” in the United States. Western observers have made much of this thought. Did Foundations influence Putin when he decided to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election? Likely not. Besides being an unoriginal idea (fomenting civil unrest was a well-known Soviet tactic), the quote is also vague and impossibly hard to find, appearing in a single throwaway line in a twenty-page section about “space in the West of Eurasia.” Other famous recommendations are presented in equal abstraction. They reflect the imagination of an ideologist—not a strategist.

Fallacy #3: Using a Thinker’s Favorite Jargon Means Embracing His Specific Ideas

Nonetheless, some observers suggest that the increasing references to “Eurasia” in Russian foreign policy initiatives point to the influence of Dugin’s overall vision. For instance, in May 2014, three months after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed a treaty forming the Eurasian Economic Union, a customs union meant to reduce trade barriers across post-Soviet states. The organization replaced the Eurasian Economic Community, an ineffectual predecessor founded in 2000 during the height of Dugin’s intellectual profile.

The attempt to establish a connection between Dugin’s ideas and Eurasian integration is highly dubious, to say the least. One useful window into the foreign policy debate in Russia at the turn of the millennium is Dmitri Trenin’s 2003 book, End of Eurasia. Although Trenin cites Dugin as an influential theorist of “Eurasia,” he also refers to a dozen other geopolitical thinkers working with the idea. Indeed, U.S. statesman Zbigniew Brzezinski had also outlined a strategic concept of “Eurasia” in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, which was translated into Russian in 1999.

There is a red herring during this period as Dugin does enter the halls of power in 1999—at least nominally—becoming an advisor to the Speaker of the Duma (the lower legislative house) and the chair of the geopolitical section of the Duma’s Advisory Council on National Security. But Russian foreign policy lies primarily in the hands of the executive. And though Boris Yeltsin was ineffectual, his deputy Yevgeny Primakov (foreign minister, 1996–98; prime minister, 1998–99) had been trying to restore Russian foreign policy to its old direction for several years.

In fact, Primakov had been expounding a Eurasian outlook as early as 1992. Speaking to the Moscow Institute of International Relations, he said: “Russia is both Europe and Asia, and this geopolitical location continues to play a tremendous role in the formulation of its foreign policy. Its [interests] include China, India, and Japan, and not just the United States or Europe. They also include the Middle East and the ‘Third World.’ Without such geopolitical scope, Russia cannot continue to be a great power and to play the positive role it has been destined to play.”

Given that Soviet security officials had conducted multi-theater planning from Afghanistan to Poland throughout the Cold War, the reemergence of a “Eurasian” outlook in Russian security circles should be rather unsurprising. When books allege that Dugin’s ideological “Eurasianism began to creep into mainstream discourse” because “a new set of foreign policy guidelines issued in 2000 described Russia’s most important strength as its ‘geopolitical position as the largest Eurasian state,’” one might ask when such ideas were not part of mainstream discourse.

An Old and Dangerous Temptation

Alexander Dugin does not exercise exceptional political influence in Putin’s Russia. A cursory analysis of his career, his writing, and the ideas around him reveals that he is just one career courtier among thousands. He is no Rasputin, no silver bullet, but one piece in a much larger puzzle. In this respect, the extensive coverage of Dugin offers a general lesson. It is tempting to look to intellectuals to make sense of opaque autocracies. Their crisp ideas seem to cut through the fog of palace intrigue and false opinion. But the insight they offer is almost always illusory.

This is an old and dangerous temptation. Eighty years ago, in trying to explain the Second World War, U.S. media outlets identified the Nazi-affiliated intellectual Karl Haushofer as the architect of Hitler’s grand strategy. Commentators pointed to his alleged academic postings, his musings on world domination, and apparent echoes of his ideas as proof of his influence. But Haushofer never made it into Hitler’s inner circle. The entire line of analysis was misplaced. We now know that Hitler changed his behavior depending on the strategic environment that the Allies created.

What we really need to know today—and hopefully Western intelligence agencies already do—is what Putin’s policy process looks like. How does he take counsel? What will make him think twice? It is important to get these answers right. Only then can one begin to determine what concrete actions might change Russian behavior. Simply identifying Russia as a philosophical enemy does not get us closer to a coherent strategic vision. To respond forcefully and effectively to Putin’s invasion, we must not conflate exercises in intellectual history for strategic analysis.

Alex Hu is a student at Yale University. He can be reached at alex.hu@yale.edu.

Image: Fars Media Corporation/Wikimedia Commons.

Oddsmakers in New York and Las Vegas give Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida a roughly one in four chance of being elected the next president of the United States. Those odds are as good as anybody’s right now. There is growing interest in what a DeSantis presidency might look like. But what are the governor’s public policy priorities? Is there a DeSantis doctrine? I’ll suggest there is, and it seems to have three main components:

1. Politically - govern effectively and win elections.

2. Domestically - preserve traditional freedoms and push back against the woke-industrial complex.

3. Internationally - guard against America’s self-described adversaries overseas.

Politically, the appeal of DeSantis is straightforward: he wins. Not only that, he does so by a large margin, while governing effectively. The governor won re-election in November by a landslide. He defeated his opponent Charlie Crist by almost 20 points. DeSantis won counties and constituencies that are not supposed to vote Republican. Miami-Dade county, typically a Democratic Party stronghold, cast its ballots for the governor. So did Hispanic voters throughout the state. DeSantis has shown he can win over swing constituents. A state once considered purple is now—Democrats worry—lost to them. For conservatives, it’s a promising indicator of what might be accomplished on the national level.

Of course, Republicans will first have to decide whether they want to win elections, govern effectively, and exercise political power on behalf of a conservative agenda. If the answer is no, then Florida’s governor may not be the guy.

Also worth noting is the DeSantis style of governance. By all accounts, he has an appetite for information, combined with skepticism toward the notion that the experts are always right. He pores over data and listens to a range of opinions, then decides for himself. It was exactly this approach that led him to reject the conventional wisdom during the early weeks and months of the pandemic shutdown, and correctly so. Of course, this was viewed as madness by liberal critics at the time. Nevertheless, he persisted, and was vindicated in the end.

DeSantis also revealed a similar administrative proficiency in his response to Hurricane Ian last year. Florida has over 22 million people, and it is an unusually big, diverse state possessing an economy larger than most countries. Governing it successfully is no small task. Proven executive skills from outside of the Beltway will be of interest to American voters in the coming year.

In terms of his domestic policy outlook, perhaps the most striking aspect of the governor’s approach is his willingness to directly take on what might be called the woke-industrial complex. Most conservatives understand that the ideology of left-wing identity politics now serves as a kind of substitute religion for powerful socioeconomic interests in this country. This was not true in Ronald Reagan’s time, but it is now. For that reason, while Reagan was an excellent president, his approach cannot simply be photocopied to face the challenges of today. DeSantis made this point explicitly in a fascinating address to the National Conservativism conference in Miami last September.

As the governor suggested in that address, a baseline conservative American commitment within the economic realm is to free enterprise, individual liberty, and material opportunity for ordinary citizens. Hard work should be rewarded, and self-destructive socialistic schemes avoided. Obviously, DeSantis has no objection to a market economy. As he put it, “I’m not a central planner.” Both his words and his actions as governor indicate his determination to create and safeguard a friendly environment for business entrepreneurship whether big or small. Florida has flourished as a result. It is a point of pride.

Where DeSantis departs from strict libertarians—and this is where you should watch his speech for yourself, rather than relying on hostile journalistic misrepresentations—is in calling out what he correctly identifies as the danger of woke capitalists, and then doing something about it.

As Vivek Ramaswamy argued persuasively in his book Woke, Inc., one of the most disturbing trends in American life during recent years has been the fusion of left-wing identity politics with large chunks of corporate power. Some prominent multinational business, industrial, and financial leaders in this country seem to feel the need to constantly signal their liberal virtue by picking sides in the Left’s never-ending culture war against the rest of us. Moreover, in certain cases, these leaders exercise what amounts to a monopoly, notably in high technology. This is where DeSantis comes in. As he said in his September address: “Corporatism is not free enterprise….They are trying to enforce an orthodoxy on this country.”

The truth is a good many American businessmen, bankers, and industrialists quietly despise this trend toward left-wing identity politics within their own ranks.

Governor DeSantis believes, and evidently is willing to act on the belief, that woke corporate power is a serious threat to traditional American liberties. For example, when a large multinational corporation acts in loose coordination on some controversial public matter alongside a network of social justice activists, Democratic Party politicians, liberal-leaning journalists, politically correct academics, and sympathetic bureaucrats borrowed inside the administrative state, this is not a strictly private matter. It is even less so when that same corporation simultaneously expects subsidies and tax breaks off the public teat. With that in mind, DeSantis has fought and won a series of dustups over a long list of issues including illegal immigration, criminal policing, judicial activism, K through 12 education, Florida’s university system, and gender ideology. The pattern has been the following:

1. The woke-industrial complex demands deference on some controversial issue at the state level inside Florida.

2. DeSantis informs himself on the matter, picks his fights carefully, takes a strong position, and refuses to defer.

3. As it turns out, the majority of Floridians agree with DeSantis. He wins.

4. Rinse and repeat.

Needless to say, this pattern drives woke establishmentarians up the wall. Who does DeSantis think he is! Doesn’t he understand that left-liberal elites get to play referee, even as they lead one team on the field in this country’s two-party system?

Still, the governor persists in standing up to the woke-industrial complex—and winning. His recent successful fight with the College Board over the teaching of African-American history is only the latest example. Should students learn African-American history? Yes, without any doubt. Taxpayer support for aggressively left-wing ideologies foisted on our students under the guise of said history? No.

This is a dramatic victory for a sane, welcome approach to higher education, as opposed to the fanatical nonsense we’ve seen from progressives over the past several years. DeSantis has now proposed that university DEI bureaucracies within the state of Florida should be defunded, allowing them to “wither on the vine.” This is how to do it. He is demonstrating that we need not accept some sort of left-wing Brezhnev doctrine inside the United States when it comes to rolling back woke insanity. Conservatives all around the country have noticed.

In the next installment of this series, I examine the DeSantis doctrine internationally.

Colin Dueck is a Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and a senior non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Hunter Crenian/Shutterstock.com.

Last year was a tumultuous one for the relationship between the United States and its key security partners in the Gulf. Each side was disappointed by the other, and the resulting disagreements spilled out into the public instead of being quietly resolved behind closed doors. Diplomatic differences have resonated politically in all capitals, further limiting the ability of each side to be seen as offering concessions to the other. It’s not difficult to imagine these long-enduring partnerships falling away completely in the coming years through neglect, if not intent. And yet, the circumstances may finally be right to achieve a longstanding objective—designing a system of integrated Gulf defenses that protects mutual national security interests on a sustainable basis. Leaders need to recognize this and take advantage of the opportunity.

During periods like these, it is important to recall the national security interests that have long bound the United States and the Gulf. Those fundamental interests have not changed, and the primary question before policymakers is whether chosen policies serve to secure those interests or undermine them.

The United States has a vital interest in ensuring that no regional adversary has both the capacity and the will to attack the U.S. homeland, Americans abroad, or the key security partners Washington relies on for local intelligence, placement, access, and diplomatic support to advance this and other core interests. This drives U.S. efforts to combat terrorism in the region and to deter adversaries from seeking weapons of mass destruction and otherwise employing destabilizing military capabilities. Today, the Iranian regime checks all the boxes: it’s the world’s most prominent state sponsor of terrorism, it’s pursuing an inherently threatening nuclear program, and—alone among all of the governments in the world—it routinely gives advanced precision weaponry to nonstate actors and directs them to target civilians across borders. The United States and its Gulf partners share a vital national security interest in combating these malign behaviors and have thus worked toward those ends ever since the 1979 revolution allowed the Iranian regime to seize power.

The United States also has a vital interest in the global price of oil, for reasons that span security considerations (oil’s centrality to the functioning of our military), economic considerations (the impact of oil prices on growth and inflation), geopolitical considerations (our partners elsewhere who depend on oil sourced from the Gulf) and political considerations (the impact of gas prices at home and abroad). Despite campaign trail rhetoric about American “energy independence,” once in office, U.S. presidents in both parties discover, to their frustration, that they must care deeply about oil prices, especially when they get too high or too low.

It is also a stubborn fact that the market price of this global commodity remains disproportionately driven by actions taken in the Gulf, especially by Saudi Arabia. This reality is unlikely to change materially for decades to come, even under the most optimistic energy transition scenarios. Given this, the United States long ago decided that protecting the free flow of oil from the Gulf to locations determined by market demand—a historically atypical anti-mercantilist approach—would best protect that core interest. Today, again, the primary threat to this interest is Tehran, which openly threatens—and, indeed, has used—military force against both energy production facilities and the vessels that carry oil out of the Gulf. And, once more, this U.S. policy has aligned with the vital interests of its partners in the region.

While these interests remain constant, both the threats to them and the means to protect them change over time. Thus, U.S. and Gulf policies also need to shift, both in response to and in anticipation of these evolving threats.

The most important change in the regional threat assessment is Iran’s homegrown development of highly capable precision weaponry that can be used to strike targets at a distance with pinpoint accuracy. This is what allowed Tehran to strike Saudi energy infrastructure in 2019 and allowed its proxy to kill innocents at the Abu Dhabi airport in 2022. The inherent value of these weapons was clearly demonstrated when Russia requested Iranian assistance in Ukraine, a remarkable break from Russia’s proud tradition of military self-reliance and a complete reversal of the situation in Syria in 2015, when Russian air power came to the aid of Iranian-backed ground forces. Moreover, these weapons’ precision serves to lower the threshold for their use in the Gulf, as we have already witnessed, thus raising the risk of unintended escalation.

Our partners in the Gulf are also building their own military capabilities. In the past, the United States was required to provide the near entirety of the military forces needed to protect the free flow of energy from the Gulf. Today, and even more so in the years ahead, our local partners will be increasingly capable of sharing this burden. Even more significantly, given the nature of these new weapons systems and the realities imposed by the region’s geography, U.S. partners in the Gulf have begun to appreciate the benefit—indeed the necessity—of launching a more cooperative approach toward defensive measures. For far too long, intra-Gulf rivalries prevented such an approach. But today, there is a growing recognition that each nation cannot unilaterally secure its own airspace and maritime interests. Moreover, the expansion of relations following the Abraham Accords and the transfer of the U.S. military area of responsibility for Israel from U.S. European Command to U.S. Central Command is driving new opportunities for security cooperation within the Gulf and beyond.

Given these dynamics, the door is finally open to build a multilateral, fully integrated air and missile defense system, and to achieve far greater multilateral cooperation within the established maritime security structures. U.S. military planners have long recognized the potential utility of such steps in protecting the above-mentioned national security interests, but the circumstances have not allowed them to proceed. Now they are.

Encouraging initial steps are already being taken at the most senior levels, but there is a very long way to go before the journey is anywhere close to complete. The U.S. Fifth Fleet launched Task Force 59 to integrate unmanned systems over a year ago, and secret talks reportedly took place last March among military leaders from Israel, the United States, and key Arab countries. Little is said publicly on the subject, but USCENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla has indicated that this subject is a priority, and Fifth Fleet commander Vice Adm. Brad Cooper has set a goal of having 100 unmanned surface vessels in the Gulf by this summer, only one-fifth of which will be from the United States. President Joe Biden privately raised the issue of integrated defenses during his trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia in July 2022, and reports have since been published about plans for a future Red Sands Integrated Experimentation Center and hopes for a proposed Middle East Air Defense Alliance. Moreover, the year ended with the Deterring Enemy Forces and Enabling National Defenses Act, driven by a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers, which will provide the necessary funding for such an endeavor.

Of course, none of this progress has been lost on Tehran, which has issued public threats of a “decisive response to the nearest and most accessible targets” should the Gulf agree to “a joint defense pact in the region by the U.S. with [the] participation and hidden management of Zionists.” Of course, such threats are exactly why the United States and its partners should build a system of fully integrated defenses in the Gulf. Getting there will require four fundamental policy decisions.

The first and most critical policy decision is for the United States to commit to a future in which it remains intimately bound to Gulf security. In previous decades, such commitments could be made privately or remain within the purview of military and security professionals. Today, however, the single most important factor in the region, driving decisions by partners and adversaries alike, is the widespread perception of America’s withdrawal from the Gulf. Therefore, the above-mentioned quiet diplomacy on integrated air, missile, and maritime security is now insufficient. A public case needs to be made for a new security relationship between the United States and its Gulf partners, and it must be designed to receive bipartisan support.

Of course, American domestic politics makes doing so a tall order in the wake of an unsatisfying war in Iraq, a failed war in Afghanistan, the enduring resonance of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the involvement of Middle East leaders in U.S. domestic politics, and the continuing public sniping and policy differences between the U.S. and Gulf leaders. Unless these dynamics are reversed, they threaten to eventually turn the region’s expectation of a U.S. withdrawal into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But reversing this perception is nevertheless needed to protect U.S. interests. This cannot be accomplished if American presidents threaten to turn our partners into “pariahs” or openly question whether the United States should protect the free flow of energy.

Leaders in the Gulf also have fundamental policy decisions to make. Thus, the second critical policy decision to be made is a mirror of the first: Gulf leaders must openly commit to a future in which the United States remains their primary—and, in certain aspects, their sole—security partner. This would require them to cease their oft-repeated threats to turn to China or Russia to fill perceived security voids. In some cases, this decision should be relatively straightforward—most obviously for Bahrain, the longtime host of U.S. Fifth Fleet headquarters. For others, it remains an open question as to whether such a decision will be taken—especially for Saudi Arabia under its still relatively new leadership. Regional leaders will also need to recognize that such a commitment carries with it the need to ensure that American support remains bipartisan for decades to come. This is undercut every time decisions are made that are widely perceived to be advancing the interests of one American political party over another.

Third, Gulf leaders must make the decision to fully cooperate. If this was an easy task, it would have been accomplished long ago. Of course, the leaders of any state would naturally seek to avoid circumstances, if at all possible, in which they must rely on others to ensure their security. It is far preferable to jealously preserve complete freedom of action rather than allow one’s security to be dependent on any neighbor’s goodwill. Only after unilateral efforts to ensure security have proven inadequate do states typically consider cooperative mechanisms. And states that are in the midst of the heady process of building their own militaries or are led by individuals inexperienced in warfare are most prone to overestimate their own abilities to accomplish missions unilaterally, as we have seen in Yemen.

Compounding these generalities are the specific mistrusts and rivalries that have long kept the Gulf divided. There are many reasons why the Middle East doesn’t possess anything close to Europe’s interlocking matrix of multilateral cooperative mechanisms, and those realities won’t be blithely wished away. Only a few years ago, a much smaller subset of countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council went through years of an ill-conceived and largely ineffectual “Gulf Rift” that saw the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia break ties with Qatar. Given this history, maximalist approaches to security cooperation are doomed to fail. Instead, integrative efforts should initially focus only on a small subset of countries—Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—and only on a narrowly defined set of missions: air and maritime defenses.

And finally, a fourth fundamental policy decision must be made jointly by the United States and its Gulf partners. Working toward integrated defensive capabilities can be slow, dry, technocratic work that typically advances only incrementally and on generational timelines. If this work is left only to well-intentioned security experts, the risk remains high that perceptions will fall behind progress and reasons will be found to delay necessary additional program phases. When militaries look to work together, the typical pattern is first to work through the myriad of matters relating to questions of deconfliction; only after that is successful do the counties begin work to build cooperation. And then, once cooperative mechanisms have been established, governments can begin to consider questions of military integration. And finally, only after selected military capabilities have been integrated are governments interested in exploring the most sensitive subjects of building joint systems that are inherently interdependent.

But this project should begin, not end, with a clarion call for interdependence. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the United States should declare up front that this is the goal. They will be intentionally designing a future together in which they’re each practically incapable of achieving comprehensive air and maritime security in the Gulf without the others. The military systems being established won’t work for any if they don’t work for all. In doing so, the Gulf states will “lock in” the United States as their security partner, which should remove any remaining concerns about the long-term sustainability of the American regional presence.

The Gulf governments have all found it useful to issue vision documents that clearly outline the intended objectives of their policies. In 2008, both Manama and Abu Dhabi published Economic Vision 2030 plans, and Riyadh issued Saudi Vision 2030 in 2016. These three countries, together with the United States, should together issue a joint “Vision 2040 for Integrated Gulf Security,” laying out an ambitious path ahead toward a fully interdependent system of air and missile defenses and far greater multilateral cooperation within the established maritime security structures. With such a joint vision guiding the way, there will be no more questions about America’s withdrawal and Gulf hedging, and U.S. and partner vital interests will be increasingly secure—on a much more sustainable basis.

Will Wechsler is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs, and the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combatting Terrorism.

Image: DVIDS.

Russia left the war-torn region with only a single border crossing—and it’s no longer open for aid.

An alarming blunder may convince the U.S. public to take Beijing’s threats seriously.