Diplomacy & Crisis News

Le 19 avril prochain, les guérilleros qui ont participé à la révolution cubaine quitteront définitivement le gouvernement et la gestion du pays passera aux mains d'hommes politiques qui n'appartiennent pas à la famille Castro. Une révolution dans la révolution ? Probablement pas. / Cuba, Caraïbes, (...) / Cuba, Caraïbes, Amérique latine, Socialisme, Communisme, Élections - 2018/03

La fée penchée sur l'aube de l'année 2018 a-t-elle fumé sa baguette magique ? Le 13 janvier, « The Economist », l'organe officiel du libre-échange, s'inquiétait du sort du « prolétariat numérique » ; deux semaines plus tard, « Le Point » consacrait un dossier à l'urgence de « reprendre le contrôle » sur nos (...) / France, Internet, Technologies de l'information, Entreprise, Capitalisme, Informatique, Technologie - 2018/03

The hidden power struggle sustaining Russia’s brutal militia.

Joe Biden, as featured on the White House’s website, has recognized that tackling the climate crisis also represents a unique opportunity; a place “where conscience and convenience cross paths, where dealing with this existential [environmental] threat to the planet and increasing our economic growth and prosperity are one and the same.” We are wholly in agreement.

That said, Mr. President? While doing the right thing, it is just as important to do the thing right… in energy policy, as in all things.

As it happens, there are ways to achieve both and more. Doing so requires pursuing an energy policy founded in pragmatism, rather than misguided beliefs or notions. To that end, we are announcing Washington DC’s newest think tank, Washington Power & Light: an institution not affiliated with, nor funded by, any industry or sector, that is dedicated to encouraging such an approach.

Pragmatism is the most powerful known way of achieving across-the-board progress. We urge the Congressional “Problem Solvers Caucus”—headed by Chairmen Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ)—to add energy policy, now curiously absent, to its platform.

Deferring, per the logic behind Pascal’s Wager, to the president’s commitment to treating greenhouse gas emissions as an existential threat and fully sharing his enthusiasm for economic growth and equitable prosperity, how might we get the best of both worlds? Let’s not settle for trafficking in tradeoffs that result in the half-baked achievement of both important policy objectives!

As it happens, the federal government’s own U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), “the statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy,” publishes an annual report entitled Annual Energy Outlook (AEO). The agency and its findings are disclaimed as “independent of approval by any other officer of employee of the U.S. government,” and whose views “do not represent those of [the Department of Energy] or any other federal agencies.”

Yet the EIA is considered by many an authoritative source. Its Administrator’s Foreword, in the latest AEO, stipulates with refreshing candor that:

The U.S. energy system is rapidly changing. … Ideally, we would model these dynamics to produce precise numerical forecasts that demonstrate how energy prices, technology deployment, and emissions will shift over time. Unfortunately, such precise forecasts are not possible. The 30-year decision landscape we model is too complex and uncertain. Thus, our objective must be to identify robust insights rather than precise numbers—think ranges and trends, not predictions and point estimates. … Among the uncertainties we must confront, the timing, structure, and targets associated with yet-to-be-developed policy are the most uncertain. We only consider current laws and regulations across all modeled cases in this AEO. For some readers, this approach may be unsatisfying because policy rarely remains static for long periods. But this AEO should be considered part of an iterative policymaking process rather than apart from it; it gives decision-makers an opportunity to peer into a future without new policy. If the projected outcomes are undesirable from their viewpoint, they can effect change.

The agency provides a data-driven analysis, refreshingly free of what we call “hopium”—defined by YourDictionary.com as “irrational or unwarranted optimism.” Its analysis presents, in dry expository form, conclusions that fossil fuels will still dominate as our energy source both in 2030 and 2050, with renewables approximately doubling yet still dramatically below rival power sources.

Curiously, nuclear energy, among the most environmentally- (per a growing chorus of environmentalists) and prosperity- (per the consensus of economists) friendly is projected to decline. So much for the aspirational hopium-fueled goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.

Different energy sources are optimal based on geographical and other factors. Let’s be cognizant that, in the spirit of Bob Marley’s “One Love”, all humanity (and other living things) shares one atmosphere. And while we consider renewed reliance on nuclear power to be a constructive, likely imperative, contribution to cutting CO2 emissions while contributing to prosperity and security, we do not consider nuclear energy a panacea.

In  addition to environmental benefits, economic benefits, and energy security benefits, consider that America’s main rival, China, is permitting two huge coal-fired electricity plant per week, “six times as large as that in all of the rest of the world combined.” Geopolitics and worldly economics factor into the policy calculus.

The New York Times, notwithstanding its predominantly center-left worldview, represents the epitome of journalism. Its idealism is often tempered by pragmatism.

It is therefore notable when it provides column inches to the proposition that nuclear waste is misunderstood—fears of radiation from nuclear power plants wildly overblown—by the founder of the progressive Campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal. This promptly is followed by a pretty darn glowing review of maverick filmmaker Oliver Stone’s new documentary, Nuclear Now, advocating nuclear energy as the decisive remedy both for climate change and for “climate doomerism.”

Meanwhile, The National Interest recently provided, over the course of two weeks, opinion pieces unflinchingly making the case for nuclear energy as the answer to global and environmental economics woes and another as to why nuclear power is the only realistic way of scaling up supply to meet future energy demand.

Bottom line? We applaud energy policies that honor President Biden’s stated goals: the imperative for both a clean environment and equitable prosperity. To those two objectives we would add energy security, unquestionably another value held by the president and most Americans, both in the general public and makers of policy.

Progress certainly will entail making laws, regulations, and overall energy policy based on data and analysis, rather than faith-based utopian “hopium” or narrative-driven dystopian hysteria or despair. But how? Simply follow the clear implications of the analysis provided annually by the Energy Information Agency to nurture the growing transpartisan consensus that energy policies fostering both equitable prosperity and environmental integrity are complementary, not antagonistic, values.

Energy policy based on proven, field-tested, engineering to bring about win-win solutions will bring federal policy back into better alignment with the mission statement placed right to the fore of the Constitution: to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Chairmen Fitzpatrick and Gottheimer? President Biden?

You’ve got the solution to a problem right in the palm of your hands. We encourage you and your colleagues to take a good look!

Jeff Garzik is an internationally respected futurist, entrepreneur, and software engineer, co-founder and CEO of Bloq. He is well recognized for his work on the original dev team of Bitcoin and for his extensive work with the Linux Foundation.

Ralph Benko worked in or with three White Houses, two executive branch agencies, and several Congresses, co-founded and chairs the 201,000-follower Capitalist League, is a multi-award-winning author and columnist.

The authors are the co-founders of Washington Power & Light, a new DC policy institute dedicated to pragmatic energy policy. Washington Power & Light, not affiliated with, nor funded by, any industry or sector, is dedicated to encouraging an energy policy based on pragmatism.

Image: Shutterstock.

At a scaled-down and muted World War II Victory Day Parade, Vladimir Putin again compared the war in Ukraine to the epic struggle of the USSR against Nazism. The ideological justification of Putin’s invasion—the “denazification of Ukraine”—is linked to the reanimated veneration of Stalin. Resurrecting the Soviet dictator, however, is much more than a wartime propaganda tool: it serves to legitimize the strategic culture of Putin’s Russia. If Stalin’s legacy becomes morally acceptable and legitimate, then Putin’s revisionist foreign policy goals—and all the means to accomplish them—will become similarly virtuous. To achieve lasting peace in Europe, the West must understand the present-day implications of Putin’s historic revisionism.

In February of this year, a new larger-than-life Stalin bust was unveiled in Volgograd to honor one of the deadliest battles of the Second World War: the battle of Stalingrad. A watershed moment of what Russia calls the “Great Patriotic War,” the Nazi expansion into the Soviet Union was halted at Stalingrad. The battle marked the turning of the tide, as the Red Army began to march victoriously all the way to Berlin. In the weeks preceding the unveiling of the new bust, officials floated the idea of changing the city’s name back to its Soviet-era name: Stalingrad.

However, the reanimated cult of Stalin is a more serious project than putting up a bunch of busts to boost wartime morale. The rehabilitation of the man of steel had already been going full steam when Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022. In December 1999, when Putin was named acting president following Boris Yeltsin’s resignation, he pledged to reestablish order domestically and restore the strength of Russia abroad. The new president turned to the image of Stalin to build on Russian nostalgia for the lost gilded age of the Soviet empire. Barely a year in office, Putin replaced the Russian national anthem in 2000 with the National Anthem of the Soviet Union—a hymn personally selected by Stalin in 1943. The updated lyrics were written by the same Sergey Mikhalkov who penned the original version—mentioning Stalin—during the Great Patriotic War.

The rehabilitation of Stalin gradually gained momentum over the following years. In 2007, Putin called Stalin an “effective manager” and stated in Oliver Stone’s documentary, The Putin Interviews, that Stalin was “excessively demonized.” One of the last independent TV channels, Rain, was shut off in 2014 after it polled its viewers on whether Stalin should have surrendered Leningrad rather than killing more than a million citizens—including Putin’s brother—in the Nazi siege. The Kremlin has also been covering up Stalin’s genocidal act, the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933, known as the Holodomor—going as far as getting rid of a monument dedicated to the victims in Russian-occupied Mariupol. To nurture the legacy of Stalin, Putin must erase the ostentatious inhumanity of the most murderous communist dictator in Russian history.

In 2020, Putin delivered an online history lesson for high school students and pre-university cadets where he praised the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which the Third Reich and the Soviet Union carved up Eastern Europe between them. In an essay published the same year in this very publication, Putin claimed that in September 1939 the Red Army only marched into Poland because “there was no alternative.” According to him, Stalin decided to carve up its neighbor to protect millions from “anti-Semites and radical nationalists.” Soviet-style “protection” included the massacre of around 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia prisoners of war in Katyn in 1940—a fact that Putin conveniently ignores. What is more, recently released FSB documents attribute this war crime to the Third Reich. Never mind the fact that the Russian Duma condemned Stalin for the massacre back in 2010. In his essay, Putin also paints the occupation and subsequent annexation of the Baltic countries during the fall of 1940 as “implemented on a contractual basis, with the consent of the elected authorities.” These rigged elections served the same goal as the phony referendums in Russian-occupied Eastern Ukraine organized last year: to discipline the population and teach them how to behave under Soviet/Russian rule.

Make no mistake: the Russian population is more than susceptible to Putin’s Stalin worship. According to Levada, a polling agency, 56 percent of polled Russians in May 2021 agreed that Stalin was a “great leader.” Astonishingly, in Russia, Putin is sometimes even reproached for not being “Stalin enough.” Already in 2016, a bizarre, Stalin-mask selfie app became wildly popular on Russian Instagram. Just before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this was written into Russian law: “any public attempt to equate the aims and actions of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany during World War II, as well as to deny the decisive role of the Soviet people in the victory over fascism” is a criminal offense. It seems that Putin successfully seized on the unifying and catalyzing potential of the Soviet victory in World War II and the trauma of the dissolution of the USSR to vindicate Stalinism.

Like all people, Russians have the right to honor their leaders and write their own history. But the intensifying rehabilitation of Stalin only serves to legitimize Putin’s authoritarian regime and to support his revisionist foreign policy aspirations. When U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met in Yalta in February 1945 to decide on the post-war order in Europe, Stalin promised to allow free elections in Poland. He lied. Yalta didn’t stop Stalin from pursuing his imperial goals in Eastern Europe. In the same vein, the 1993 Budapest Memorandum didn’t stop Putin from invading Ukraine.

Putin is not Stalin, but Stalin’s heritage is omnipresent and deeply embedded in the Russian psyche. To understand Putin’s strategic culture, it must be perceived through a “Stalin lens.” The United States and its Western allies must look at history as a guide if they want to devise sustainable peace in the region.

Mónika Palotai is a Visiting Research Fellow at Hudson Institute specializing in the European Union, International Law, and Energy Security

Kristóf György Veres is a Senior Researcher at the Migration Research Institute (within the Mathias Corvinus Collegium) in Budapest.

Image: Shutterstock.

On May 27, Henry Kissinger will celebrate his one-hundredth birthday and a long life of exceptional consequence in the two highly competitive worlds of diplomacy and ideas.

Fleeing Nazi Germany, Kissinger arrived in the United States in 1938 as a bookish teenager with no immediate prospects. Thirty years later, he commanded U.S. foreign policy, first as national security advisor, then as the emblematic secretary of state to two presidents, Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford. He shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

In his four years as secretary of state, he helped end America’s most controversial war, split China from Russia (the hegemonic power that propelled China’s leader to power), and redrew the boundaries of several nation-states. His books, real doorstoppers crammed with careful research and close argument, continue to climb bestseller lists and compel the attention of leaders and thinkers across the world. Decades after leaving office, he continues to be consulted by chief executives, presidential candidates, and network-television bookers.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, chaired by another great man, a patriot and one of the most enlightened men in the American establishment, John Hamre, organized a reception in honor of Kissinger to celebrate his extraordinary accomplishments. Hamre began by reviewing history and Kissinger’s mark on it.

First, there was the Vietnam War. As the deadly presidential approached, Vietnam had settled into deadly stalemate. The year began with North’s massive Tet Offensive, which the United States desperately beat back. By September, the Viet Cong ceased to exist as a separate fighting force, but that meant no victory for the United States. The North Vietnamese Army was becoming an increasingly lethal force with its growing divisions of Soviet tanks, aircraft, and increasingly effective anti-aircraft missiles.  As long as the USSR and China backed the North, the United States could never defeat it.

The stalemate was evident, and it divided America. Protests, both anti- and pro-war (the pro-soldier “hard hat revolt” in Central Park was one the largest protests in the 1960s), divided America. On television, Americans saw burning wreckage in Saigon and burning draft cards in Seattle. The public was tiring of the war.

It was Kissinger who led the peace talks. Yes, South Vietnam collapsed in 1975. But, two years earlier, the U.S. military was able to make a secure and, above all, dignified withdrawal.

It is to Kissinger that we owe the famous policy of détente with the Soviet Union. For the first time, the United States and the USSR agreed to significantly slow the nuclear arms race. As a result, several regional conflicts de-escalated. Nuclear war was avoided, and lives were spared in Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and among the Pacific islands—every place where communist guerillas fought with the local successor states to colonial powers.

To strengthen America’s position in Asia, the Nixon administration made a diplomatic rapprochement with mainland China, from which the United States had been estranged since 1949, when the Communists had won control. To seal the new relationship, Nixon took a spectacular trip to China in February 1972.

After October 6, 1973, Israeli officials telephoned Kissinger to say that they were fighting off an invasion. Egyptian forces were attacking in the Sinai while the Syrian army was in Israel’s north. The so-called fourth Arab-Israel War had begun. Nixon dispatched Kissinger to negotiate with Israel, Egypt, and Syria—Kissinger’s famous “shuttle diplomacy.”

At the end, there was a new and, this time, lasting peace. These served a few important American interests: it stopped the cycle of invasions, halted the embargo by Arab oil-exporting states, and set the stage for a historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt (the Camp David Accords of the Carter years). Kissinger may be the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to secure more peace after winning the prize than before.

These successes make him a diplomat of historic stature. The intensity and scope of these diplomatic initiatives, and their success—in the sense that they all resulted in agreements—have no parallel in American history, and perhaps no parallel in the history of Israel. With his prodigies of diplomacy, Kissinger left his mark on the twentieth century.

While Kissinger admits that prophets have “the most passionate vision,” he said he prefers statesmen to them because they recognize on-the-ground realities and can see value in incremental gains.

Sadly, the current political climate does not encourage the emergence of leaders like Kissinger. His book devoted to “leadership” exemplified the importance of building consensus on the major issues. It is not by tweeting or posting on Facebook that a political leader can develop a vision that gives him the status of a statesman. Instead, as Kissinger writes, leaders are made by the cautious study of history.

All democracies suffer from the same ailment: An intellectually impoverished political class that is more obsessed with polls and social networks than a vision for their societies.

But this is a problem that even short-term thinkers should consider: How can America continue to lead the world without leaders who can combine high theory and grounded pragmatism, as Kissinger does?

Ahmed Charai is the Publisher of Jerusalem Strategic Tribune. He is on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.

Image: Mark Reinstein / Shutterstock.com

L'association Générations futures a dévoilé le 20 février un rapport sur la présence de pesticides dans les produits agricoles : 73 % des fruits analysés pendant cinq ans et 41 % des légumes étaient contaminés. De quoi renforcer encore l'intérêt pour l'agriculture biologique. Mais que disent les études (...) / France, Agriculture, Agroalimentaire, Alimentation, Économie, Environnement, Santé - 2018/03

Non-Mexican migrants will be at greater risk of removal under Washington’s new policies.

The advent of ChatGPT, No-code AI, and voice cloning software only further demonstrates that digital technologies have advanced more rapidly than any innovation in mankind’s history, reaching around 50 percent of the developing world’s population in less than two decades and transforming societies. But though the United States is, as of 2021, the most digitally competitive country in the world, many often forget that not all of its citizens benefit from these advances. There exists the digital divide—the gap between those who have access to modern information technology and services, and those who don’t.

Many Americans are unaware that this is not just a problem for developing nations. A study by the Pew Research Center finds that 7 percent of Americans, approximately 23 million people, do not use the Internet, and 23 percent do not have access to a broadband connection at home. That includes nearly three in ten people—27 percent—who live in rural locations, as well as 2 percent of those living in cities. Additional data shows that 40 percent of schools lack broadband, as do 60 percent of healthcare facilities outside metropolitan areas.

But the impact of the digital divide goes beyond schools. A national assessment of the quality of infrastructure, inclusivity, institutions, and digital proficiency found significant gaps based on race, ethnicity, and income. In terms of economic impact, a Deloitte study projected that a 10 percent increase in broadband access in 2014 would have resulted in more than 875,000 additional jobs in the United States and $186 billion more in economic output in 2019.

This is extremely concerning, especially given that, in modern times, digital technology is considered the single most important driver of innovation, growth, and job creation.

The digital divide is a significant challenge, but solutions exist: funding and implementing digital inclusion policies, programs, and tools can help. Some of these include affordable, robust broadband Internet service; digital literacy training; quality technical support; and reading material designed to enable and encourage self-sufficiency, participation, and collaboration.

The U.S. government understands the importance of this problem and is moving to address it. In March 2022, the Biden administration launched a $45 billion initiative to bring high-speed Internet to everyone in America, although some assert that $240 billion will be needed to bridge the digital infrastructure gap. Congress has since appropriated more than $100 billion, including $65 billion via the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), to help states bring high-speed Internet access to every American household, much of which is allocated directly to state governments to implement it as part of BIL and the American Rescue Plan Act.

Creating and staffing new departments and planning how to deploy funds will be essential. Multiple stakeholders—including governments, the health insurance industry, Internet providers, and municipal bondholders—need to agree on precise plans and spending. The execution stage will also be lengthy, as the physical build-out of necessary infrastructure will take time.

Infrastructure needs aside, the affordability of digital services also plays a large role in the state of America’s digital divide. Europe, however, provides some salutary lessons from which the United States could learn. Because European standards mandate open access infrastructure—meaning that there are physical infrastructural that different service providers can all make common use of—multiple companies are spared having to invest in building physical infrastructure, enabling them to compete for customers in terms of a service level. As a result, European companies offer lower prices to attract customers, which benefits consumers.

The future that consumers are demanding is even more digital than today, even more connected, more global, and more intelligent. To achieve that future, with its growing demand for connection and data consumption, we need to invest more in digital infrastructure—whether that is a network, the Internet, data centers, storage, computers, transmission, systems, or applications. Of equal importance, we should make closing the digital divide for all Americans a priority of public policy. This task is one braced by inclusion and equity and aligned with our nation’s goal to compete and thrive in a digitally globalized world.

Jerry Haar is a professor of international business and executive director for the Americas in Florida International University’s College of Business. He is also a global fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since dollars are policy in U.S. national security, it is not surprising that, given the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the increasingly aggressive Chinese behavior toward Taiwan, and the escalating federal deficit, the Fiscal Year 2024 (FY2024) defense budget proposed by the Biden administration has provoked comments from all parts of the political spectrum. To put these comments in perspective, it is important to analyze at least ten major questions that, as we previously noted, President Joe Biden had to answer in formulating his proposed defense budget.

First, in deciding on the size of his FY2024 defense budget increase, would Biden use the $813 billion he originally proposed for FY2023 as a base? Or would Biden use the $860 billion, which was approved in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY2023?

For FY2024, Biden used the latter—the congressionally approved FY2023 level of $858 billion—as a base and proposed a total budget for FY2024 of $886 billion, an increase of 3.2 percent. Had he used his $813 billion as a base, his budget proposal would have amounted to $47 billion less. Even if Congress does not add to his FY2024 proposal, which appears unlikely, this would mean that, since the Biden administration came into office, the defense budget will have grown by $146 billion, or 20 percent. This is exclusive of the military assistance to Ukraine, which now amounts to over $50 billion, and nearly all of the weapons going to Taiwan. Moreover, it does not include the $100 billion the federal government spends each year amortizing the military retirement system and the approximately $325 billion the Veterans Administration will spend in FY2024. As the Pentagon comptroller noted, the United States is inevitably moving toward a trillion-dollar defense budget.

Second, after deciding on the base, which rate of inflation would the Biden administration use to determine whether to maintain the current spending level in real terms, as he did last year, or potentially provide a real increase, as Congress did previously? The yearly inflation rate in January 2022 was 6 percent, the second highest in forty years. Even with no real growth, a 6 percent increase above the amount Biden requested for FY2023 means an FY2024 budget request of about $870 billion. Using the NDAA level as a base would have resulted in a budget request of approximately $900 billion.

For FY2024, Biden assumed an inflation rate of 6 percent. Using an inflation rate of 6 percent and the Congressionally approved budget for FY2023 as a base would have meant a proposed budget of $912 billion for FY2024. Therefore, in real terms, the FY2024 Defense budget is $26 billion below the FY2023 level.

Third, in addition to deciding on which base and which rate of inflation to use in determining the top line, Biden had to take into account at least three different perspectives from members of Congress. First, that of the members of the House Republican Freedom Caucus, the Democratic Progressive Caucus, and sixty-two religious groups, who want to return the FY2024 defense topline to the FY2022 level of $775 billion. While many see this as an extreme measure, it is important to keep in mind that this figure would be $35 billion, or 5 percent, above the Trump administration’s last budget. It is also more than twice as much as China and Russia combined are spending on defense, and about the same amount Biden himself had projected in his first year in office. While many would argue that the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China’s aggression toward Taiwan have significantly changed the international environment, it is important to remember, as noted above, that U.S. support for Ukraine is funded separately from the regular defense budget and that Taiwan is paying for almost all of the weapons.

A second group consists of those members who rely on the unfunded priorities list. These priorities, which by law must be submitted directly to Congress by the services and the combatant commanders, outline those programs that the Secretary of Defense eliminated from their original budget request. For FY2023, this list contained $21 billion in unfunded priorities, most of which were added to Biden’s FY2023 proposal. For FY2024, the list amounts to “only” $17.1 billion. However, this amount does not include the list from the Cyber Command, the National Guard Bureau, the Strategic Command, and the Missile Defense Agency.

A third group is composed of the defense hawks, who, given the Chinese military build-up want to increase defense spending from its current level of 3 percent of GDP to as much as 5 percent.

Fourth, would the Biden administration finally release its budget in a timely manner? During Biden’s first two years in office, the administration released its budget more than a month later than the normal practice. Such tardiness makes it much more difficult for Congress to pass the budget before the start of the fiscal year. This is particularly difficult for the Department of Defense, since, until a budget for the new fiscal year is passed, the Pentagon can only spend at the previous year’s level and not start any new programs, leading to a significant amount of waste and mismanagement.

Biden released his budget proposal on March 13, which is a month after the due date and makes it likely that Congress will only pass a continuing resolution for at least the first part of the new fiscal year, making it more difficult for the military to spend these funds efficiently and effectively.

Fifth, in addition to deciding on the base and the inflation rate, the president had to decide on the rate to increase military pay. The current basis for raising active-duty pay is the Employment Cost Index (ECI,) which as of September 30, 2022, was 5.2 percent compared to 4.6 percent a year before. This would be the highest raise in thirty years. For retired pay, the average cost of living increased by 8.7 percent from July to September 2022. No administration is bound by law to implement these levels, but most administrations do since they have a large impact on recruiting and retention. Since pay and benefits already consume one-quarter of the total defense budget, how much Biden raised them will have a significant impact on how much is left for investment in current nuclear and conventional procurement and research programs.

Biden proposed a raise that used the September 2022 ECI as the basis and proposed 5.2 percent pay raise for uniformed military and civil servants and 8.7 percent for military retirees. However, some critics, who support a larger raise, have pointed out that, since FY2021, military pay has increased by only 10.7 percent, while inflation has totaled 16 percent, and military housing allowances have dropped from 100 percent of rent and utility costs to 95 percent. These policies have contributed to the crisis in recruiting and retaining a sufficient number of qualified women and men in the active and reserve forces.

Sixth, after deciding on the base, would Biden increase the budget by just enough to keep pace with inflation, or would he accept a real increase of 3 to 5 percent, which some in Congress, including many in his own party, said is necessary to keep up with the growing threats from Russia and China? Increasing the budget by such in real terms, with an inflation rate of 6 percent and using the FY2023 NDAA as a base, would have resulted in an FY2024 defense budget request of about $922 billion—$110 billion more than Biden requested just a year ago, and $136 billion above what he proposed for FY2024.

Seventh, would Biden make any changes in the strategic and tactical nuclear weapons programs now that he has completed his Nuclear Posture Review? In his first two budgets, Biden ignored his own campaign pledges and the Democratic Party 2020 platform, which called for reducing overreliance and excessive dependence on nuclear weapons. Instead, in his first budget, Biden actually embraced the proposal he inherited to rebuild and modernize all three legs of the strategic nuclear triad—at a cost of $1.7 trillion—and provided funding for three new tactical nuclear weapons, including the low-yield nuclear cruise missile. Last year, Biden did try to cancel the low-yield warhead but was overridden by Congress.

The Democratic platform characterized the Trump administration’s nuclear proposal, as unnecessary, wasteful, and indefensible. Moreover, while running for president, Biden himself pledged to dismantle America’s commitment to increasing the role of nuclear weapons. Many of Biden’s supporters had hoped that his pledges would lead to his cutting back or even eliminating the land-based component of the strategic nuclear triad, which will cost $264 billion to maintain and modernize. Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review did not make such a recommendation.

The most likely cuts they suggested would be canceling one or more of the three tactical nuclear weapons programs: a new nuclear-armed cruise missile now in the research phase, a Cold War-era thermonuclear bomb, and a new low-yield warhead that the Trump administration wanted to deploy on attack submarines.

In FY2024, the Biden administration is once again including funding for all three legs of the strategic nuclear triad and two new tactical weapons, but not including any funding for the low-yield nuclear weapon, the SLCM-N.

Eighth, would Biden continue his “divest to invest” strategy for our naval forces, and what will be his goal for the ultimate size and composition of the fleet? In his FY2022 request, Biden proposed decommissioning fifteen ships, including seven cruisers and four littoral combat ships, and building only eight—four fewer than were funded in FY2021. Congress not only authorized an additional four ships that year but limited the ability of the Navy to decommission ships. In his FY2023 budget request, Biden proposed $27.9 billion for the purchase of eight new ships and retiring fifteen. But Congress again added $5 billion for six new ships and prohibited the de-commissioning of twelve of the fifteen.

In light of these changes over the last two years, the Biden administration had to decide whether to increase its goal for expanding the Navy from its present level of 296 ships to 321 by 2030. And if it did, will the administration take the money from the other services or increase the total budget topline?

In the $256 billion FY2024 budget proposed by the Navy, the largest of the five services, it has been allowed to once again repeat its divest-to-invest strategy. It proposes spending $32.8 billion to buy nine new ships, one more than it proposed last year, but two less than Congress approved last year. Moreover, it is once again proposing to retire eleven ships, eight of which have not reached the end of their intended service life, including three land-classed dock-loading ships that it proposed to retire last year but were saved by Congress. Because of its rising costs, which have grown by about 25 percent, Biden proposed in FY2024 to decrease the amphibious fleet below thirty-one, despite a Congressional mandate and an agreement with the Marine Corps on that number. This provoked outrage among the Marines and their supporters on the Hill.

Even in the unlikely event that Congress approves the Navy’s FY2024 request as is, it will mean that over the last five years, the Navy’s procurement budget will have grown by 54 percent and its operations and maintenance budget by 22 percent. However, it is much more likely that Congress will prevent the Navy from retiring many of these ships and will add funds to procure new amphibious ships.

Ninth, would Biden continue to try to slow down the production of the tri-service F-35 aircraft until it fixes its myriad problems? For FY2023, Biden requested sixty-one of these aircraft, down from eighty-fix the previous year, but Congress added eight more to bring the total to sixty-nine.

In the FY2024 proposal, Biden requested eighty-three F-35s—forty-eight for the Air Force and another thirty-five for the Navy and Marine Corps. This is not only fourteen more than Congress approved last year, but twenty-one more than Biden requested a year ago. The administration did this in spite of the fact that the F-35 has not yet fixed most of its problems, including whether it can use a revolutionary but costly new engine that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has tried to kill. Moreover, the Air Force did not request any additional F-35s in its unfunded priorities list.

Tenth, the administration had to decide on the number of active duty personnel, it wishes to recruit and maintain. Because of the difficult recruiting environment, it reduced its active force for all the services except the Navy. This resulted in a decline of the force from 1.34 million to 1.308 million FY2023. Adding in the Reserves, the total force for FY2023 was 2,087,334.

In its FY2024 budget proposal, the Pentagon is asking for a Total Force of 2,074,000. This is 13,354 fewer than was authorized in FY2023, but 12,335 more than are currently serving, which, given the current recruiting environment, will be difficult to achieve.

No matter how much the nation spends on defense, it cannot buy perfect security. How Congress and Biden handle these issues will not only have a significant impact on our security and economy but it will also tell us a great deal about our values. As Biden himself said prior to becoming president, “Don't tell me about what you value. Show me your budget and I will tell you what your values are.”

Lawrence Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former Assistant Secretary of Defense.

Image: Shutterstock.

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It might be the case that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine depends greatly on the fate of Crimea towards the end of the conflict. Russia occupied the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014 when the larger conflict began between the two nations. While little was done at the time by Western allies to stop Russia from annexing Crimea in 2014, the historical roots of Crimea has long been established in that part of the world for both sides of the conflict.

In the last few generations, the region of Crimea has gained increased importance as the main base of the Soviet and Russian Black Sea fleet, with the city of Sevastopol remaining as fleet command for the Russian Navy even after Ukraine gained its independence in 1991. This peculiar arrangement of having Russia’s Navy based in another country’s territory is strategically significant in the Black Sea region, linked by historical ties to soldiers from both nations.

During the Second World War, Sevastopol held out against heavy German bombardment for an extended period of time. The heroic stand against the Germans by the Soviets was one of the key battles during the Second World War, and showed the resolve of both the Russian, Ukrainian and other Soviet people’s against the invading Germans. The ability to stand to the last solider at Sevastopol is remembered as a defining moment in Soviet, and now current history, and is likely the reason why the port city still remained the home of the fleet after 1991.

During the Soviet era, the region of Crimea was re-designated as part of the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic for various reasons despite its past as the location of important battles in history. The claims Russia made in 2014 over Crimea however did not come from an agreed upon transition, nor did it meet some coordinated approach considering the importance of Sevastopol to Russian and Ukrainian strategic interests. The importance of Crimea for Ukraine as a catalyst for the conflict comes from the fact that there is more of a balance of backgrounds living in the region, unlike in some parts of Eastern Ukraine, so they are fighting to free Crimea with a good amount of local support. The catalyst for Russia besides the fleet is that it has openly focused on Crimean resources being limited as one of the reasons for occupying other parts of Ukrainian territory, and this narrative drove many Russians to support the war. Crimea therefore is one of the main points of conflict and pride between Russia and Ukraine, and the loss or gain of the territory would be considered a demonstrative victory in the current conflict.

The ability for Ukraine to retake Crimea depends a great deal on the continued support it would get from the West for the rest of the year and past 2024. One of the major hurdles to Ukraine is the level of support their offensive receives from NATO and other allies in achieving long term strategic goals. With the politics of support for the war slowly gaining push back in the West, and equipment slowly becoming harder to acquire or simply out of stock, Ukraine must measure its response to Russia by taking key strategic locations without overburdening its forces and amount of equipment. If Ukraine can push Russia back to the 2014 regions, it could likely put up a defensive posture in the medium term and hope to retake the Eastern regions and Crimea at some point in the future. It would be hard to guess the level of Western support Ukraine would receive if planning to push Russia out of the regions occupied in 2014, but removing Russian forces out of the regions captured in 2022 would be a positive outcome.

The loss of Crimea for Russia would demonstrate that decisions made by their leadership gave up more than they had to lose in invading Ukraine, in territory, lives, and pride. The end result may topple the current Government in Russia, as Russia was and still is seen by many as several times more powerful than Ukraine in resources, technology and manpower. The after-effect of a loss for Russia may have consequences on unity in the country, but more likely it will change how the periphery responds to Russia as a hegemon in the Caucasus region and between Russia’s ties with China and the Middle East. The Caucuses would likely abandon Russian ties fairly quickly, as seen with some nations currently. China would certainly take territorial and energy advantages from Russia in the East, or may simply tie Russia’s export economy further my linking their natural resource wealth to China’s manufacturing needs. Russian allies in the Middle East would have to find other powerful allies, or have to face the consequences of poor decisions in dealing with larger powers like the US, China, Europe and India while targeting their energy supplies or bilateral relations. For this reason, Russia may escalate the conflict with its rocket forces if they may lose Crimea and Sevastopol. The fall of Sevastopol has many dimensions and levels of consequences for Russia, especially for the final narrative of the current war.

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