Diplomacy & Defense Think Tank News

Der Ansatz, der Russlands Nuklearstrategie kennzeichnet, wird im Westen oft als »escalate to deescalate« beschrieben. Demnach sei Moskau bereit, in einem Konflikt frühzeitig Nuklearwaffen einzusetzen, um diesen zu seinen Gunsten zu beenden. Die offizielle Doktrin des Kreml, Nuklearübungen des russischen Militärs und die Debat­ten unter politisch-militärischen Eliten deuteten bisher jedoch in eine andere Rich­tung. Mit dem Konzept der »strategischen Abschreckung« hat Russland vielmehr ein Abschreckungssystem entwickelt, in dem Atomwaffen weiterhin wichtig sind. Doch soll eine breite Palette an nicht-militärischen bis hin zu konventionellen Mitteln mehr Flexibilität unterhalb der nuklearen Schwelle schaffen, um Eskalation zu managen. Dies dürfte sich angesichts von Russlands Schwierigkeiten mit dem Einsatz konven­tio­neller Präzisionswaffen im Ukraine-Krieg und der militärischen Neuaufstellung der Nato jedoch verändern: Die Rolle nicht-strategischer Nuklearwaffen in Russlands Abschreckungspolitik wird wahrscheinlich wieder wachsen. Dies wird nicht nur die Krisenstabilität in Europa schwächen, sondern auch die nukleare Rüstungskontrolle künftig zusätzlich erschweren.

Millions of Turkish voters are geared up for the twin (parliamentary and presidential) elections that are scheduled to take place in June 2023 at the latest. After nearly 20 years in power, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule may seem unassailable to many observers of Turkish politics. However, owing to the economic downturn and rifts in his ruling party, this will be the first election in which Erdoğan is not the clear favourite. Six oppo­sition parties of different ideological origins have come together to pick a joint presidential candidate to stand against Erdoğan and to offer a common platform for restoring parliamentary democracy. Although the opposition alliance has reasonable chances of defeating Erdoğan’s ruling bloc, their victory would not guarantee a smooth process of transition to parliamentary democracy. If the opposition can defeat Erdoğan, the new government would need to undertake the arduous tasks of estab­lishing a meri­tocratic bureaucracy, restructuring Turkey’s diplomatic course and economic policy, and switching back to parliamentary rule. Due to the opposition alliance’s diverse com­position, accomplishing these goals may be as difficult as winning the elections.

Schriftliche Stellungnahme: „Beurteilung der Sicherheitslage und militärischen Lage“ am 22.09.2022

Putin ruft die Teil-Mobilmachung aus und droht gar mit Atomwaffen. Politisch ein riskanter Schritt. Welche Bedeutung hat er militärisch?

Ist Putins Drohung, Atomwaffen einzusetzen, ernst gemeint? Unter welchen Umständen könnte er sie wirklich einsetzen?

With their joint announcement about the desire to resume peace talks, Colombia’s new president and the country’s second-largest guerrilla group, the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional), have sent a clear political signal. The pacification of the ELN is to take place under the aegis of a “leftist” government and be accompanied by a com­prehensive and ambitious reform project. This is a renewed attempt to end the civil war following the conclusion of a peace agreement with the FARC rebels in 2016. How­ever, the agreement with the FARC can serve as a blueprint only to a limited extent, not just because of the different historical origins of the two guerrilla groups but also owing to the strongly decentralized internal structure of the ELN. The issues of a cease­fire and the release of prisoners – prerequisites for possible peace talks – remain unresolved. Lengthy negotiations lie ahead, and the involvement of Colombian civil society is essential as central questions about the country’s future must be clarified.

Since the start of the Russian war in Ukraine, media reporting has shown an unfortunate tendency to observe international politics from a “friend or foe” perspective. For the sake of simplicity, anything that defies this scheme is placed on one side or the other: Those who are not with us are against us – and vice versa. Interpreting the summit meeting of the SCO in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, as an attempt to establish a new anti-Western axis of evil also falls short. For the organisation’s members, the SCO’s most important function has always been to balance interests among its major members. This is more true than ever against the background of ongoing geopolitical confrontations.

Not a Eurasian counterpart to NATO

The SCO was founded in June 2001 as the successor organisation to the “Shanghai Five”, an alliance that had existed since 1996 and consisted of Russia, the People’s Republic of China, and their three Central Asian neighbours Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. With its transition to the SCO, Uzbekistan also joined. Subsequently, the organisation, which also included India and Pakistan in 2017, established itself as a supraregional security policy format, which observers have always seen as a kind of Sino-Russian counterpart to NATO.

Such ambitions may well have existed on the Russian side, but the interests and preferences of the members always stood in the way. From the very beginning, China played the leading role in the organisation. The People’s Republic was primarily concerned with clarifying a number of unresolved border issues with its three Central Asian neighbours under the umbrella of multilateralism, containing the danger of the “three evils: separatism, extremism, and terrorism”, as well as preventing Islamist movements from spreading into its own territory from Central Asia. The majority of the agreements between the SCO members have been de facto bilateral in nature.

Russia’s efforts to create an overarching security alliance and merge the SCO with the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – which includes Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – have not progressed far. This is partly because such a merger was not desired by the majority of member states. On the other hand, Russia and China have always held different views on the function and significance of the SCO, which they regarded primarily as a vehicle for achieving their own political and economic goals. Consequently, the SCO’s main function was primarily to balance Russia’s and China’s policies in Central Asia.

Multilateralism of the non-aligned

The Samarkand summit did little to change these realities. The objectives and preferences of the participating states are still too divergent. For Chinese President Xi Jinping, participation in the summit offered an opportunity to renew China’s claim of being a major player in Eurasia within the framework of the Silk Road Initiative (One Belt One Road). President Vladimir Putin, for his part, used the meeting to demonstrate that he is all but isolated, notwithstanding his war in Ukraine, which has been unanimously condemned in the West. The presence of other heads of state who have tense relations with the West led to a situation in which summit participants advocated critical views of Western policies and highlighted the importance of the SCO as an alternative model for governance in international relations.

But this approach by no means implies that the Samarkand summit is going to transform the SCO into an anti-Western alliance. Conjecture of this kind fails to take into account the interests of the majority of the organisation’s members. For the Central Asian states, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan in particular, a bloc formation directed against the West would be anything but desirable. For these states, whose political weight within the SCO has grown considerably since its founding, the value of the SCO lies precisely in its non-aligned status, as emphasised by host Uzbekistan in the run-up to the summit. Due to their historical experiences with the hegemonic aspirations of Russia and China, Central Asian members hold foreign policy independence as a value of the highest order. With Russia in particular, they are bound by a complex web of relationships and dependencies. They would rather loosen these ties than strengthen them, and the means of choice is a diversified foreign policy. Relations with Western states are particularly important in this regard.

Against this background, the expansion of the SCO to include countries such as Iran and, prospectively, Turkey as well as Arab states is an extremely attractive option for the Central Asians. However, they do not associate this with the prospect of a powerful alliance against the West, from which they would gain no advantage. Rather, the benefit of an expanded SCO for them lies in increasing the diversity within the organisation, thereby curbing claims to power by individual members and at the same time expanding their own room for manoeuvre.

Angesichts der Gaskrise und der russischen Invasion der Ukraine ist der Markthochlauf von Wasserstoff noch dringlicher geworden für die europäische und die deut­sche Energiepolitik. Die ehrgeizigen Ziele für grünen Wasserstoff stellen die Europäische Union (EU) und die junge Was­serstoffökonomie allerdings vor enorme Probleme. Abgesehen vom Strombedarf fehlen vor allem Produktionskapazitäten für Elektrolyseure. Die an­visierte Pro­duktionsskalierung von Elektrolyseuren ist kaum zu schaffen, außerdem steht sie im Konflikt zu Importbestrebungen und zementiert neue Ab­hängig­keiten von Lieferanten wich­tiger Rohstoffe und kritischer Komponenten. Wäh­rend eine Ent­koppelung von Russ­lands Rohstofflieferungen zumindest möglich ist, führt an China kein Weg vorbei, will die EU ihre Ziele erreichen. Nebst erleichter­ten Regularien, einem aktiven Rohstoffmanagement und neuen Partnerschaften sollte Europa auch die einseitige Beschränkung auf grünen Wasserstoff überdenken.

Figure 1: Results of the Multilateralism Index (Click for full graphic)

In the past several years, there has been a much-discussed rise in strain on multilateralism. However, there have been few efforts to quantifiably assess the state of the multilateral system. This Multilateralism Index (MI) report is the first known attempt to do so. It focuses on developments in the system over the past decade, providing a snapshot of its relative strength in 2020 compared to 2010. It seeks to answer questions including: What is the state of the multilateral system? What is working? What is not? And how has the multilateral system changed over time?

The MI examines five domains of multilateral coordination: Peace and Security, Human Rights, Environment, Public Health, and Trade. Each domain is evaluated across three dimensions: Participation, Performance, and Inclusivity. Analysis of sixty-five indicators across these domains and dimensions reveals several trends in multilateral cooperation over the past decade:

• Participation scores for Human Rights, Public Health, and Trade have improved, while the scores for Peace and Security and Environment have deteriorated.
• Performance scores have deteriorated in four out of five domains.
• Inclusivity scores have improved across all five domains.

These trends shed light on the nature of the crisis of multilateralism. Rather than decreased international cooperation and widespread exit from multilateral institutions, we are seeing a battle over the nature and purpose of the multilateral system—not decay, but transformation. The MI provides a basis for tracking this transformation and informing decision making on the future of multilateralism.

Ferdinand (genannt »Bongbong«) Marcos junior gewann am 9. Mai mit einem Erd­rutschsieg die Präsidentschaftswahlen der Philippinen und wurde am 30. Juni offiziell vereidigt. Während des Wahlkampfs war der Sohn des 1986 gestürzten philippinischen Diktators Ferdinand Marcos senior in außen- und sicherheitspolitischen Fra­gen äußerst vage geblieben. Einige Beobachter spekulierten zunächst über eine Fort­führung der unter Amtsvorgänger Rodrigo Duterte vollzogenen außenpolitischen Hinwendung zur Volksrepublik China. Mittlerweile zeigt sich jedoch bereits ein deutlich nuancierteres Bild der zu erwartenden Außenpolitik unter Marcos jr. Der neugewählte Präsident dürfte in stärkerem Maße als sein Vorgänger eine Balance im Verhältnis zu China und den USA suchen. Er tritt damit in die außenpolitischen Fuß­stapfen seines Vaters. Ein solcher Kurs könnte Deutschland und der EU neue Koope­rationsmöglichkeiten eröffnen – sofern die Zusammenarbeit den in erster Linie innen­politisch motivierten Zielsetzungen der neuen Marcos-Regierung entspricht.