The National Interest

Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called Israel a “racist state,” touching off a controversy about America’s views toward the world’s only Jewish state.

The House on Tuesday passed a resolution pledging unfailing support for Israel, condemning antisemitism and declaring that the country is neither racist nor an apartheid state, in an implicit rebuke of Democrats who criticized the nation ahead of an address by its president to a joint session of Congress.

Americans have supported Israel since the minute of its re-birth in 1948, when President Harry Truman recognized the country. Large majorities of Americans have told pollsters that they supported Israel for more than seventy years—one of the most durable results in American polling. What’s more, America is home to more Jews than any other nation on Earth, including Israel itself. Until recently, support for Israel was nearly unanimous in both political parties.

Israel’s demography is far more complex than critics like Rep. Jayapal imagined. One of out every five Israelis was either born in Morocco or the parents of Moroccans. Another fifth hail from elsewhere in North Africa or East Africa, such as the Ethiopian Jews, many of whom were airlifted out to Israel in the 1980s. Then there are the Israelis from the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. Then there are Jews who hail from the former Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and other eastern lands. And, of course, there are European descendants of the Nazi horror. And all of that only counts the Jews.

Israel also has many Christian and Muslim citizens who fully participate in public life. Indeed, more than a baker’s dozen of Muslims sit in Israel’s Knesset, the country’s parliament. Non-Jews enjoy full constitutional rights in Israel, something that cannot be said of non-Muslims in many nearby states.

Comparing Israel to Apartheid South Africa, a now well-worn cliché, ignores the reality that is visible to anyone who stands on an Israeli sidewalk.

That this controversy erupted during the Israeli president’s visit to Washington DC, who told the press in the Oval Office that he had brought a message of greetings and gratitude from “the whole country of Israel, from all sides of the political spectrum,” only added fuel to the fire.

It is true that the differences exist, and they are publicly aired by the Biden administration, but the American public’s support for Israel has never wavered.

The U.S.-Israel relationship is not simply the convenient overlap of shared interests in fighting terror and promoting democracy. It is far deeper. American non-Jews support Israel in larger numbers than American Jews, according to numerous polls. Christian evangelicals, who make up nearly one-third of the U.S. population, support Israel in numbers approaching unanimity. More than half of the U.S. Catholics tell pollsters that they support Israel.

Why do so many U.S. Christians support Israel? One reason is a Bible-focused religion makes Israel a familiar place, at least in the mental maps of many believers. It does not seem far away or even all that foreign; they have grown up reading and hearing about ancient Israel and seemingly have no trouble translating that into an affection for modern-day Israel.

Another reason is a parallel history. Like America, Israel was settled by farmers and homesteaders . Yet they persevered and built a modern country that waters fruit trees in its deserts and invents software companies in its cities. It is a nation that doesn’t like war, but fights vigorously when attacked and invariably wins. It doesn’t revolt against unpopular rulers; it patiently votes them out.

Perhaps the biggest reason for warm feelings is that both countries have similar institutions and shared values: elected government, social tolerance, dynamic capitalism, the supremacy of law, a reverence for the past, and a passion for innovation.

But Israel is not America in one important respect: it has real extremes that could tear the tiny country apart. In the 1960s, Palestinian politics took a feverish turn, and extreme regimes, like Iran, have funded violent factions for decades including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In response, an extreme Zionism emerged. While it does not carry out terror attacks, it advocates for extreme policies that would result in many Arabs being deported from the land where they were born.

Tragically, but inevitably, these two extremes feed off each other, threatening to ignite a scorched-earth civil war of undiluted barbarism.

Here the parallel with America ends. Even America’s newest immigrants only want to join American society, not end its existence. Partisans of both sides cite the U.S. Constitution as their friend and fear that the other side will tear it up. Americans, of all political stripes, seek only readjustments, not revolutions.

The strength of American constitutional institutions has made it the most powerful and influential country in the world. Since its institutions work, Americans know that America will remain America, no matter who is elected to Congress or to the presidency. They may say something different on social media or at political rallies, but no American really believes, deep down, that their elected representatives would dynamite the national institutions.

Israel’s future has been in doubt since its beginning. Its neighbors have taken many decades to acknowledge its legitimacy. Terror groups send rockets and set bombs. Even a sizable plurality of its Arab citizens say that it shouldn’t exist. This is a social challenge far beyond anything that any other industrial democracy must endure. And yet those who call for Israel’s end are not jailed, beaten, or driven from their jobs. Their remarks are shrugged off; their democratic rights are respected.

Israeli openness had also created a dynamic economy. In Tel Aviv, citizens continue to experiment, test, and invent-both software systems and new social ideas.

America and Israel should not doubt the strength of their democracies. The aftermath of dramatic campaigns in both countries shows that a system of government that lets the people rule has the energy to survive and thrive.

At pivotal moments in its history, Israelis have delved into the writings of Zionism’s founders and found a way forward. Today, the words of David Ben-Gurion still ring true: “We don’t have the approach of the German Social Democrats. . . of the British Labor Party. . . [or] Soviet communism. We have paved our own way.”

While the danger of Iran and its proxies are still there, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s greatest challenge is to rely on this exceptional friendship between the two countries to strengthen the Abraham Accords, which brought peace between four Arab lands and Israel in 2020.

Today, a new hope has emerged, to open a new chapter in Palestinian history, The young Palestinians really want peace, prosperity, and dignity.

Rather than faulting Netanyahu’s controversial judicial reform, the Biden administration would be wise to build on the Abraham Accords. The American public would remember those efforts during an election year and enjoy vast, bipartisan support. Peace is always worth a chance.

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.

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The establishment of the U.S. Space Force marked a significant milestone in America’s commitment to maintaining its dominance in space. As the guardians of the final frontier, it is imperative that the Space Force maintain the highest standards when it comes to the launch of mission-critical satellites. However, the Senate Armed Services Committee’s recent proposed changes to the launch services procurement process in the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) risk undermining the Space Force’s ability to deploy our most crucial space-based defense assets.

The third phase of the Space Force’s National Security Space Launch Program, which covers launch contracts awarded in 2025, includes a two-lane approach. “Lane 1” allows for multiple vendors and diversity of launch technologies. “Lane 2” will select two medium and heavy-lift rockets vendors that will deploy critical satellites into orbit. The importance of these payloads to the national defense requires reliable launch vehicles and companies with proven processes and capabilities. This dual-lane approach affords ample opportunities for entrants in the launch services to develop and demonstrate new technologies with low-risk missions while ensuring that the nation can respond to threats quickly and reliably.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, apparently bowing to pressure from Blue Origin, proposed on June 23 the creation of a “Lane 2A”. This would allow new entrants in the heavy-lift domain to enter the field several years into the procurement process in the name of increased competition. This misguided change to the process introduces unnecessary uncertainties that can compromise the success of our most vital missions.

Blue Origin has experienced multiple delays in developing the New Glenn rocket and its engines. The engines and the New Glenn are over three years behind schedule, and neither has been flight tested. Indeed, Blue Origin’s launch experience is limited only to its New Shepard suborbital flights, which have been on hiatus since a rocket nozzle failure caused an in-flight abort in September 2022.

Other entrants into the space launch business are experimenting with materials and manufacturing innovations that may—or may not—pave the way for cheaper access to space. Some have proven successful, but only after a rigorous testing process and many flights. Relativity Space lost its first 3D-printed launch vehicle in March this year. Virgin Orbit went bankrupt after the failures of its air-launched two-stage vehicle. Even SpaceX lost several payloads due to failures in the past decade while developing and certifying its Falcon 9.

The recent tragedy of the deep sea “Titan” reminds us of the importance of rigorous testing and gaining experience with new technology over the long term before entrusting it to important missions. While failures can be tolerated with lower-risk flights like those envisioned by Lane 1 of the Space Launch Program, the stakes are too high to jeopardize a Lane 2 mission using unproven technology.

Lane 2 satellite launches are not only costly endeavors but also carry significant national security implications. A failed launch can result in the loss of critical assets or disruption of communication systems. The financial implications of such failures are staggering, as taxpayer dollars are wasted on unsuccessful missions. By prioritizing reliability over competitive experimentation, the Space Force can avoid unnecessary costs associated with failures and allocate resources more efficiently.

Finally, the Space Force operates within a complex ecosystem that involves coordination with multiple government agencies, private contractors, and international partners. The utilization of established vendors ensures a cohesive and accountable framework for collaboration. These vendors have well-defined processes, reliable supply chains, and established relationships with key stakeholders, fostering seamless integration of efforts. Using unproven vendors and new technologies may introduce compatibility issues, potentially jeopardizing the cooperative relationships critical to mission success.

While embracing innovation and exploring new technologies is vital for advancing space exploration, Congress must prioritize reliability and mission success for America’s defense satellite launches. Using established vendors with proven track records, robust testing procedures, and technological maturity is essential to minimize risks and maximize the probability of success. By exercising prudence in its current vendor selection process, the Space Force can uphold its commitment to national security, protect taxpayer investments, and ensure a future of robust space exploration and defense.

Jonathan H. Ward is a freelance writer on the U.S. space program and is the co-author of Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew.

Image: Shutterstock. 

Last year, with heavy earthmoving equipment behind him, President Joe Biden proclaimed, “The future of the chip industry is going to be made in America.” His aspirational rhetoric was equal parts political opportunism and wishful thinking, fueled by the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, which authorized $53 billion in incentives for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

Perhaps there was reason for optimism. The president delivered his speech as Intel Corp. broke ground in rural New Albany, Ohio for a $20 billion chip fabrication plant. The construction alone would create 7,000 jobs, while the new “fabs” would employ 3,000 workers, each earning an average of $135,000 per year. But that happy day was not the end of the story; it was just the beginning.

Ten months later, just before Independence Day, the Chinese Communist Party struck back against U.S. industrial policy by announcing new export controls on gallium and germanium, set to take effect on August 1. These minerals are critical components in a host of advanced technologies, including semiconductors. Moreover, China corners the market on them. Business insiders don’t hesitate to say that Beijing’s export controls “will have an immediate ripple effect on the semiconductor industry.”

So much for that speech on the construction lot. When President Biden bragged about America’s economic future, it seems he forgot our greatest economic vulnerability: our supply chains’ deep dependence on a regime that wants to weaken and ultimately overtake the United States. This is unsurprising because the president has a decades-long track record of being wrong about China. Unfortunately, his naiveté—or whatever you want to call not learning a lesson in half a century—is infectious.

In April, when National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan tried to acknowledge the threat of Communist China, he summed up the appropriate response as “protecting our foundational technologies with a small yard and a high fence.” That’s a fun turn of phrase, but small yards with high fences don’t offer much protection if you have to go outside the yard for everything you need to maintain it. That is exactly what’s happening now.

In the case of chips, the Biden team assumed government subsidies and export controls on advanced technology would vault U.S. industry to the top. CHIPS Act subsidies will almost certainly increase our production capacity. But through an insane loophole, companies can also invest in China to build so-called “legacy” chips. The Biden administration’s export controls are similarly weak, allowing companies like Nvidia and Intel to sell China advanced chips to build its artificial intelligence sector. Meanwhile, Beijing’s controls on gallium and germanium show the Chinese Communist Party still wields lots of leverage—and isn’t afraid to use it.

U.S. innovation is important, but innovation alone won’t make our economy less reliant on our adversaries. At this moment, China controls 63 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals and 85 percent of its mineral processing capacity. If Beijing cut us off, as it cut off Japan in 2010, we would be at China’s mercy. All our fancy factories and machines would be useless.

The same dynamic plagues the Biden administration’s “green transition” investments, especially those tied to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). President Biden touts this law as an industrial policy aimed at creating jobs and increasing our economic resilience. Yet there are inherent flaws with the legislation that prevent that from occurring. For instance, because the IRA simply seeks to expand solar power in the United States without addressing Beijing’s grip on global solar panel supply chains, it is actively strengthening that grip, sending obscene quantities of cash to Chinese companies—even ones that profit from Uyghur slave labor.

These missteps squander public trust. If we aren’t careful, they will destroy people’s faith in our ability to rebuild and reindustrialize our economy. That would be tragic because there’s a lot we can do to make America a manufacturing power again. And if we fail, the consequences for our national security will be dire. After all, gallium and germanium aren’t just essential to semiconductor manufacturing—they are also key components in weapon systems. Why would China’s communist overlords grant U.S. defense contractors access to these minerals in the event of a military standoff? They probably won’t. This should serve as a wake-up call to Washington and our defense contractors—some of which, like Raytheon, are naively hoping China will play nice.   

What’s more, export controls on a handful of critical minerals barely scratch the surface of China’s economic leverage. Imagine the havoc Beijing could wreak by depriving America of pharmaceutical ingredients or the $100 billion’s worth of electrical machinery we import every year. The United States will not be safe until we act to eliminate these vulnerabilities.

To do so effectively, the Biden administration must move beyond end product-focused projects and begin securing critical supply chains from start to finish. Undeniably, this will be more difficult than throwing money at companies compromised by China. Nevertheless, it is what the American people need and deserve if they are to remain free and prosperous throughout the twenty-first century.

Marco Rubio is the senior U.S. senator from Florida. He is also the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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Since the United States has designated space a warfighting domain, similar to traditional warfighting environments such as air, land, and sea, the interest in the extraterrestrial plane from the American political, military, and industrial world has significantly increased. In 2021, the Biden administration unveiled its Space Priorities Framework, which reaffirmed the nation’s space objectives, helping to align the U.S. government's strategies with the rapid advancements of the American commercial space industry and safeguarding national interests in an increasingly competitive space domain. From this point of view, growing Russian Chinese space capabilities pose military and geopolitical challenges. To cope with these challenges, American policymakers also need their allies to strengthen their capabilities in this domain, particularly if these capabilities have transatlantic relevance and support NATO activities. This is precisely the case with Italy, with whom space has been at the core of cooperation between the two allies over the past years.

The recent diplomatic missions to the United States of Guido Crosetto, Antonio Tajani, and Adolfo Urso—respectively, Italian ministers of defense, foreign affairs, and enterprises—have highlighted the growing relevance of the space industry for this partnership. More importantly, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s upcoming trip to Washington DC will devote significant attention to space issues.

From Draghi to Meloni: Continuity is the Keyword

From an industrial perspective, Italy stands out as one of the few nations whose businesses span the entire space value chain, including all upstream, midstream, and downstream operations across all major technological domains. The outgoing government of Mario Draghi released a “Digital Italy” white paper, presenting progress on this front while outlining the vision for the future.

According to this document, space represents a robust sector for Italy and an excellent opportunity for further development. The strategy for the years 2021–2026 commends the industry for “consolidating its presence in the so-called upstream sector: in launchers… satellites with multiple operational characteristics… crucial to enhance Earth observation capabilities, and… space modules functional to the exploration of space.”

On space policy, the continuity between the previous and the current government is striking, an important consideration for foreign governments and companies hoping to invest or collaborate. Italy is among the nine nations that earmark an annual budget of €1 billion ($1.04 billion) for their space sectors. Regarding investment relative to GDP, Italy ranks sixth globally, trailing just behind India and Germany. In an industry globally known for the presence of prominent actors, in Italy is peculiar the relevance for this sector of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

SMEs constitute an astonishing 80 percent of the national space industry and employ more than 7,000 people. Italy is also a notable contributor to the European Space Agency (ESA) ranking as the third-largest donor after Germany and France.

The Partnership with the United States

Space was at the center of Minister Urso’s agenda in DC. He met Chirag Parikh, the Executive Secretary of the National Space Council. The bilateral conversation underscored the intent to fortify the collaboration on space exploration. Urso emphasized that “global challenges are played out in space” while acknowledging the numerous collaborations with the United States.

These collaborations include participation in the International Space Station (ISS) and the Artemis program—Italy was among the first to sign to the latter, even expressing interest through a joint statement in September 2020—human spaceflight, lunar exploration, scientific missions, and numerous agreements with NASA and private corporations. Urso also unveiled that talks have commenced for a Technology Safeguards Agreement (TSA), expressing hope for a swift conclusion of these negotiations and aiming towards a reciprocal arrangement with the United States.

Interestingly, Minister Urso engaged with a delegation of representatives from leading U.S. space and aerospace corporations. The intent was to cultivate cooperation based on a B2B (business-to-business) approach, transcending government boundaries and extending to the industrial realm. The goal is stimulating interaction and collaboration between businesses, moving beyond mere institutional dialogue. This approach represents a strategic step towards a comprehensive bilateral partnership, underscoring the potential for cross-sector collaborations and a more agile approach to building partnerships in the space industry.

Anticipating the retirement of the ISS and the surge in the commercialization of low Earth orbit, the Italian Air Force has struck a deal with the Texas-based company Axiom, a key player in the construction of commercial space stations. In early March, the Italian Air Force signed an agreement to guarantee Italian Air Force (ItAF) training and an Air Force astronaut's mission participation from the ISS to Earth. This agreement builds upon the joint activities initiated between the two organizations in 2018, further cementing the Italian Air Force’s position in space exploration and commercialization.

Axiom Space is at the forefront of innovative space infrastructure, collaborating with NASA to construct the first commercial space station. In 2025, the first module manufactured by Axiom will link to the second node of the International Space Station (ISS), slated for retirement in 2031. This arrangement will expand the habitability and functionality of the ISS before these modules ultimately detach to form a completely independent residential and commercial entity in space.

This memorandum positions the Italian government and private sector to contribute substantially to the future space economy. It allows participation in building, utilizing, and marketing space infrastructures. The agreement allows for expansive collaboration, particularly the “definition of technological solutions and operational concepts for an Italian module that could subsequently be developed and integrated into the Axiom Space Station.”

The Geopolitics of Space

Developing this sector has several significant geopolitical implications for Italy. This sector is increasingly gaining transatlantic momentum: reflecting this growing interest, NATO recognized space as a major operational domain in 2019, while the 2022 Strategic Concept frequently references space issues. Italy is among those few NATO-allied nations possessing space capabilities, which it avails to the organization through sharing and pooling.

For other Transatlantic partners, the positioning of Italy as a trailblazer in space exploration is worth noting. However, the strategic value of Italy as a partner in the space sector to the United States, and more broadly NATO, transcends immediate bilateral cooperation and expertise sharing within the alliance, as it also has other dimensions.

For instance, Italy’s prowess in this domain could also prove instrumental in other geographies, such as the Mediterranean and Africa, where space-based capabilities can have a significant impact and represent a tool to contain the influence of other actors. For instance, Italy boasts substantial experience in Earth observation, which could equip Mediterranean and African partners with capabilities in diverse sectors, including agriculture, water scarcity management, extreme weather events, and natural disaster prediction.

Italy is introducing the “Iride” program, poised to become a crucial satellite program for low Earth orbit observation. This program will deliver eight core services: marine and coastal monitoring, air quality, land movement monitoring, land cover, hydro-meteorological climate, water resources monitoring, emergency management, and security. Crucially, Iride will generate analytical data to drive the development of commercial applications by startups, SMEs, and various industry sectors.

Cooperation on low Earth orbit observation could also be a key collaboration area with African partners. The Luigi Broglio Malindi Space Center positions Italy as an attractive partner for numerous countries on the continent. Established in 1966 and managed by the Italian Space Agency since 2004, the center is strategically located in Malindi on the Indian Ocean, near the Equator, which is crucial for achieving higher escape velocities for launch vehicles. Despite its potential, the site has only seen twenty-three launches, the latest in 1988.

Today, the center is a significant hub for receiving satellite and telemetry data, tracking launches, and other space objects. It forms an essential node in the cooperation network with other countries and space agencies such as NASA, ESA, France’s CNES, China’s CNSA, and others. During a state visit to Kenya in March of the current year, Italian president Sergio Mattarella toured the center and attempted to reinvigorate Italy’s partnerships with various African countries interested in advancing their space capabilities.

This element has obvious transatlantic implications: in recent years, China has tried to deepen cooperation with African countries in this domain, seeking to boost their space aspirations in a clear attempt to undermine U.S. supremacy in this field. As such, deepening ties with African countries could also be part of a responsible transatlantic burden-sharing approach, which has been a crucial topic of debate among NATO partners for a few years now.

The Case for Cooperation

The United States’ recognition of space as a warfighting domain, akin to traditional battlefields like air, land, and sea, has spurred considerable interest from the political, military, and industrial sectors to bolster capabilities to cope with potential challenges emanating from the space domain. Against this backdrop, the United States is also interested in bolstering space capabilities among its allies, focusing on those having transatlantic relevance and the potential to aid NATO activities.

The case of Italy served as a prime example of this, with space becoming a central pillar of cooperation between the two nations in recent years. Italy has shown a remarkable pledge to deepen its expertise and expand its presence in the space sector, establishing itself as a critical player in the global space community.

The recent ministerial visits underscored this commitment. The development of this industry has clear geopolitical implications, which can be relevant not only for Italy but also for the US. First and foremost, the emphasis is on strengthening Italy’s transatlantic synergies in this field, which is growing in significance due to the increasing recognition of space as a new crucial operational domain by NATO, but also represents a potential partner for many countries in Africa and the Mediterranean that need support on space activities.

On top of commercial and industrial considerations, the geopolitical logic of Italy’s development as a space actor is of particular relevance for the United States, as—if Rome continues to strengthen its space capabilities—it could provide robust help to Washington to cope with the risks and the challenges coming from this domain.

Dario Cristiani is a Senior Resident Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Opinions expressed are solely of the author and do not express the views or opinions of the German Marshall Fund.

Image: Shutterstock.

Chinese president Xi Jinping, speaking to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 19th Congress in October 2017, announced: “It is time for us to take center stage in the world.” Yet a funny thing happened on the way to China’s coronation as a superpower: the very policies Xi implemented to transform his country into a global juggernaut are precisely what is gradually driving China toward an economic implosion.

For certain, Xi had help. The coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown slowed domestic growth in China, much like it did for the rest of the world. And China is still the top trading partner for more than 120 countries—so it may seem premature to predict China’s economic decline. But the signs are there.

The Signs

First, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—a trillion-dollar infrastructure push that was supposed to cement China’s role throughout the Global South—has unleashed a flood of unbridled corruption, pointless airports, failing dams, deep debt dependency, and widespread backlash. Instead of building loyalty to Beijing among leaders around the world, Chinese corruption has led opposition candidates to rise to power in unexpected places like Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia—all while riding a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment. China is now far less popular around the world than it used to be.

Second, Xi has implemented a series of “national security” laws that make investment and business operations in China increasingly difficult. For example, Chinese “anti-espionage” laws make it illegal for international companies to collect even basic information about China or Chinese citizens. As a practical matter, this criminalizes basic corporate due diligence and know-your-customer safeguards—protocols whereby multinational companies look into their counterparties for risks of corruption, sanctions evasion, or human rights abuses. American laws, like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, mandate that companies conduct robust due diligence and that such information is directly shared with corporate leadership. Firms that learn about the use of bribes or modern slavery would need to either violate Chinese law, by reporting the information to their leadership, or violate American law by not engaging in customary due diligence. U.S. counterintelligence officials have issued fresh warnings to American businesses about the risks these laws pose to basic operations and safety for companies and executives operating in China.

Additionally, a recent spate of raids on Western companies and detentions of senior employees demonstrate that Beijing intends to act aggressively against legitimate businesses engaged in standard due diligence in the country—actions that are likely to have major chilling effects on multinational corporations in China. The incompatibility between Chinese laws and global business practices will be even more stark when the European Union passes the much-anticipated Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires multinationals to conduct comprehensive human rights, environmental, and labor rights due diligence throughout their value chains—a huge percentage of which currently pass through China. As time goes on, these jurisdictional conflicts will increasingly make it impossible for Western companies to operate or invest in China or to route their supply chains through China.

Beijing’s statute claiming the right to examine information and data collected by any Chinese business anywhere in the world is equally damaging. This law applies not only to state-owned entities but every mom-and-pop business operated by Chinese citizens in every single country —in effect turning the entire 10+ million Chinese population living abroad into a massive spying operation. The result of this law will make multinational companies and governments less likely to engage Chinese businesses outside of China, given that such businesses are legally required to pass all information from the transaction directly on to the Chinese Communist Party.

Third, taking for granted China’s role as the world’s largest exporter, Xi has disregarded the opinions of leaders in the countries that buy most of China’s goods. On human rights, on dismantling of Hong Kong’s democracy, on the Russian war, on fentanyl production, and on countless other topics, Western governments have pushed Beijing to rein in its controversial practices—overtures that China has roundly rejected as attempts at interference in its domestic affairs. This attitude ignores that these same countries are China’s main customers—and it is never a good idea to ignore your customers.

Now, new and proposed laws in the United States and Europe are forcing companies to disengage from countries, like China, that continue to brazenly employ forced labor. Furthermore, an increasingly confrontational Beijing has led many Western companies and governments to actively decouple from China or pursue a “China Plus One” strategy by keeping some operations in China while creating supply chain redundancies in alternative locations. China’s economy is still export-dependent, with more than 20 percent of its GDP coming from exports and 40 percent of those being sent to North America and Europe. Ironically, the pandemic has increased dependency on exports to offset slowing domestic growth, putting a damper on the CCP’s objective of transitioning to a consumption-based economy.

Given its substantial domestic economic headwinds and its collapsing real estate market, exporting the economy out of trouble is often a central element of Beijing’s economic recovery plans. But its political intransigence now threatens those exports and, in turn, large portions of its economy. 180 million Chinese workers are employed in jobs that depend upon exports and trade—more than the entire U.S. workforce. This becomes doubly risky for China as it seeks to pivot further away from low-cost manufacturing to producing more high-tech goods and components that are primarily aimed at high-income countries’ markets. Piled on top of that, the Biden administration’s highly anticipated Outbound Investment Executive Order will likely further limit China’s access to critical technology that Beijing will require for this transition.

Possible Paths

At the most basic economic level, China needs the United States—a fact that Xi clearly either hasn’t yet realized or refuses to admit. As a weakening export-driven economy, amid a bursting real estate bubble, with an aging population, the accelerating movement of Western companies and critical supply chains out of China is going to hit a tipping point where China loses economic power slowly and then all at once. This, combined with the Global South starting to push back on the BRI and Chinese meddling in the domestic politics of dependent nations will narrow the potential options left for China to take its time on “center stage.”

With the status quo of the last thirty years eroding, what pathways does China really have left?

Path 1: Appeasement

Given Xi’s policies to date, his temperament, and the domestic popularity of antagonizing the West, this path is almost certainly not on the table for the Chinese Communist Party. And yet, the best and easiest way for China to truly claim its place in the world as a superpower is to play nice with others. If Beijing were to reverse course on its national security laws; engage constructively and meaningfully on Uyghur rights, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; take steps to rein in corruption, money laundering, fentanyl production, and intellectual property theft; and reduce its surveillance state and pro-authoritarian support of global dictators and strongmen, then there is no doubt that the United States and Europe would readily and happily welcome China back into the economic fold. This path is the only way to truly salvage the Chinese economic miracle. China can claim this is all Western-values-based bullying, but the fact of the matter is that we are their customer and we are well within our rights to refuse to buy goods from countries that engage in slavery and actively seek to disrupt the global order.

Path 2: Division

Xi’s preferred path is to divide and conquer Western democracies—fundamentally driving a wedge between the interests of the United States and Europe in hopes of exploiting each. French president Emanuel Macron’s recent statements that France and Europe should take a path of “strategic autonomy” between China and the United States has bolstered Chinese hopes that a fractious and divided Europe can be easily driven apart from a partisan and divided America. And there is truth to the fact that democracies are loud and raucous in internal dissent and international disagreement—particularly in hyper-partisan times.

And yet, Xi’s miscalculation is to underestimate the motivations of a multinational private sector that shares a single, overarching, and unifying goal: to manage risk. While Western politicians banter about divergent approaches to a bellicose China, it is cautious and calculating boards of directors that increasingly are recognizing the costs of doing business in or with China. And while American laws undoubtedly contribute to the compliance-driven decisions of the modern company, it is the imminent EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive that will force private companies to seek alternatives to a regime that fails to embrace responsible corporate governance. Once that happens, China will be unable to attract higher levels of Western investment and economic engagement, irrespective of the number of statements by presidents and prime ministers to the contrary.

Path 3: Resistance

China has long advocated for a multipolar global order to challenge the United States. In reality, however, the United States is just a dominant player in a carefully negotiated international financial system and interwoven global economy. If China seeks to build an alternative to the global economy and order, it is well within its rights to do that. It is unlikely, however, that other major economies have anything to gain by signing on to that. Instead, China will find itself increasingly limited to a rogue’s gallery of autocrats leading weak economies. Russia, which every day inches closer to becoming a failed state, is currently China’s largest ally. And certainly, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba would love to continue to align with China—but all of those countries combined have a GDP less than that of the Netherlands. This axis of authoritarians is hardly the sort of economic behemoth to fundamentally challenge the global economic order.

Path 4: Regression

Finally, China could downshift its high-octane economy and return to its roots as a producer of low-cost goods for export to the economies that are still within its orbit—the emerging economies of the Global South. And while the citizens of Kenya and Ecuador may resent China’s role in building overly expensive or unusable infrastructure under opaque and corruption-laden conditions, they still may be willing to sign up for cheap Chinese-made consumer products.

All Eyes on Xi

Ultimately, much will turn on what Xi, himself, wants to become. Does he seek a Vladimir Putin-like role as the king of a crumbling kingdom, or as a savvy technocrat that pivoted his country away from disaster by reengaging with the West? As the recent reversal of China’s zero-coronavirus policy shows, it is not impossible for Xi to abruptly change course.

China, as a country of citizens, must also choose its path—does it want to be led by a short-sighted CCP into an axis of weak authoritarian states that are surely on the downslope of history or does it want to re-engage with the global order as an economic leader that constructively engages with the Western world?

If today, Beijing maintained the status quo with Taiwan, provided substantial rights to the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities, and removed onerous laws aimed at appropriate due diligence, Xi could re-inject China into the global order and be a peer to the United States for the next fifty years. If, instead, he digs in his heels and pushes disengagement with the West, Xi is very likely to become the leader most responsible for destroying his own standing on the global center stage.

Elaine Dezenski is senior director and head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The National Interest or its editors.

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Autocratic producers, largely Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Venezuela, and China, and democratic consumers, fossil fuel-dependent nations, largely the so-called Global South, are convening and uniting over oil, gas, coal, petrochemicals, natural gas-derived fertilizers, and mined raw materials. This trend is detrimental for both the global climate and the United States.

China straddles both worlds as the largest producer and consumer of coal in the world and the second-largest consumer of all fossil fuels after the United States. The United States is the largest producer of oil and gas for now, but while government policies tamp down investment in future domestic production, U.S. energy companies scour the world to increase production to serve global markets.

It’s the autocratic countries who produce the fossil fuels that benefit from American production decline. This is due to the fact that the major democratic countries of the Global South— including India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, etc.—who buy oil and gas products, need to feed their people, fuel their vehicles, and, in general, sustain, grow, and develop their economies at reasonable cost. 

Autocratic Russia, a giant energy producer, continues to sustain its economy and finance its war in Ukraine, playing defense and waiting for Western electorates to lose patience. Moscow counts on continued fossil fuel sales to consumer countries. Meanwhile, China is importing record amounts of oil and gas from Russia which makes China the largest financier of Russia’s war in Ukraine by far. China, courtesy of Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, is on the upswing in building new refineries, becoming a major petrochemical producer while U.S. energy policy to phase out fossil fuels has curtailed U.S. companies from making such investments.

Pursuing sweeping policies to address climate change, America and the West deride and downgrade the value of these lifeblood fossil fuel products for China (coal, oil, and gas), Russia (oil, gas, and coal), Saudi Arabia (oil and gas), and the relevant fossil fuel value of other producer nations. Western governments’ attitudes toward fossil fuels are derived from their fear of future climate change. Such attitudes create a deep and abiding conflict of interest over time between the West and both fossil fuel producers and consumers who see fossil fuel-dependent growth and development of their respective economies as paramount.

Herein lies the conundrum. If the United States and the West will not be major producers, where do consumers turn for their needed energy? Unfortunately, they turn to the producers who happen to be autocratic states—Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Venezuela— who respond to that need by increasing their oil and gas production to meet global demand while bolstering their economies and strengthening their governments in the process. Producers friendly to the West such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar are not the problem. Others are.

In a nutshell, the West’s cutbacks on fossil fuels are being replaced by fossil fuel production for consumers’ developing and expanding economies. And if producers make up for declining supply from America and the West to developing and growing consumers, which seems to be the case, the overall human contribution to climate change will remain essentially unchanged for now and actually grow into the future. 

Interesting to note that the United States is now importing environmentally-dirty crude oil from autocratic and adversary producer Venezuela, rather than expanding its own domestic production. Natural gas previously exported from Russia to Europe will soon be replaced by Exxon and Chevron from Algeria. 

Adding to the West’s dilemma regarding wind and solar energy alternatives, China dominates the world in the related technologies, manufacturing processes, and critical materials involved in the production of such “renewables” such as solar and wind energy. While U.S. politicians are ramping up talk about reducing dependence on China for critical items related to American economic and national security, a fossil fuels-denying West, ever more dependent on renewables like solar and wind, is subject to a new energy dependence on China.

It seems we are witnessing a geopolitical shift of historic proportions with fossil fuel-friendly China and the autocratic producers, the biggest winners, and fossil fuel-repressing democratic America and the West, the biggest losers. Plus, the democratic consumers are, more and more, beholden to the autocratic producers. You might think that energy supply and demand issues have something to do with some eighty nations staying neutral on the Ukraine war!

Russia and OPEC members have their single largest and ever-expanding market for their oil, gas, and raw material products in China, which in turn can increasingly manufacture whatever the producer nations need. China receives the fuels and raw materials to power and feed its vast energy-hungry, export-oriented industries and its immense agricultural economy. Other consumer nations will likewise purchase or trade for fossil fuel products from producers. The symbiosis between producers and consumers is clear.

And the West, including the United States, no matter how hard it tries, will continue to be dependent on fossil fuels from producers. The U.S. Energy Information Agency predicts that by 2050 the United States will still be 65 percent dependent on fossil fuels for its overall energy needs, as opposed to 79 percent today.

The Chinese manufacturing powerhouse and its rapidly advancing military will be enriched by an inevitable shift away from Western manufacturers who will see their costs and prices increase without reasonably priced fossil fuel-derived energy and derivative products. 

China’s 1.5 billion people, repressed, surveilled, and cajoled, are also disciplined, educated, and increasingly productive and wealthy. With the growing sophistication of its military, autocratic China is the biggest winner of all from the present Western strategy to abandon fossil fuels. And if the United States and the West continue along their present path of shifting away from fossil fuels, it is quite possible that autocratic producers will dominate the world, and China, soon to surpass the United States as their biggest consumer, will be the dominant player. 

Don Ritter holds a Science Doctorate from MIT and served fourteen years on the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce and Science and Technology Committees. After leaving Congress he created and led the National Environmental Policy Institute.

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The United States’ foreign policy toward the Middle East is a contradictory one. The United States maintains a system of strategic partnerships aimed at countering mutual threats and maintains a robust naval presence in the region that not only protects trade routes vital to the U.S. and global economy but routinely holds multi-partner exercises. At the same time, the United States seeks to pivot towards the Indo-Pacific. 

This has created a void that China seeks to fill by using its non-alliance policy with regional partners that are U.S. allies and foes alike. Initially, China fosters pragmatic economic ties with nations on a purely transactional basis to achieve security via development. This was epitomized by the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum’s Ambassador Li Chengwen, who in 2016 declared, “The root problems in the Middle East lie in development and the only solution is also development.” As these economic bonds deepen, China will seek to cement them with security ties that inevitably contradict U.S. interests. 

China’s attempts to displace the United States in the Middle East are likely to attract the latter’s long-term assets back into the region. In a testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command, asserted in March 2023 that the United States was “in a race to integrate with our partners before China can fully penetrate the region.” Thus, trade ties or the tech race cannot be treated in a siloed manner and distinct from broader security concerns due to the direct spill-over from technology to security. Noting the organic nature of China’s economic, political, and strategic concerns, Kurilla declared, “The People’s Republic of China has chosen to compete in the region. The PRC is aggressively expanding its diplomatic, informational, military and economic outreach across the region.” 

China perceives development and trade as synonymous. In turn, China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI) is committed to investing in both physical and digital infrastructure that includes connecting ports and facilities and adopting e-government platforms. By expanding Gulf digital sectors with advanced technologies, Huawei and Alibaba are actively contributing to the Gulf’s digital transformation that underpins the Digital Silk Road. The U.S. response has been to conduct a “clean network” campaign that dissuaded third countries from buying Huawei and ZTE 5G equipment. Furthermore, in July 2022, President Joe Biden signed a 5G and 6G memorandum of cooperation with Saudi Arabia. Yet, this is only a start, as China is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner and Riyadh is seeking to invest $50 billion into China.  The United States must explore the range of next-generation technologies to serve as a counterweight to China’s Digital Silk Road. This would prevent Chinese telecommunications and information technology from posing a security threat to U.S. forces and allies operating in the region.

In the absence of advanced U.S. technologies, China’s BRI is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 which is committed to developing trade and technical hubs, manufacturing and logistics facilities, artificial intelligence, digital industries, and smart-city infrastructure. Saudi Arabia is diversifying its economy to attract foreign investments and enable it to be a central node that connects continents. This positions the Saudi kingdom as the BRI’s crown jewel due to its critical location on a pathway that allows China to access Europe and Africa via Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Algeria. This serves as the foundation for China to seek to establish comprehensive strategic partnerships with the Middle East.

China’s involvement in the region has evolved from being purely economic to engaging on regional political and security issues. In December 2021, it was reported that China was assisting Saudi Arabia with its ballistic missile program and manufacturing its own armed drones. China sought to build a military base in Abu Dhabi as well, but the venture was abandoned due to U.S. pressure. The risk exists that as China continues to deepen its economic and strategic ties, it may be in the position to advance its security interests to the extent that U.S. allies are less likely to succumb to U.S. pressure. This is due to U.S. inconsistency in its application of pressure and being perceived as non-committal toward the region’s security. According to one Iranian official, China oversaw the formation of a regional naval coalition that includes Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others to reinforce maritime navigation and the security of shipping lanes, which directly confronts the mission of U.S. CENTCOM.

Yet China’s strategy of establishing economic ties as the foundation for security ties while maintaining a policy of non-alignment is unsustainable. It is not possible for China to advance its nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the UAE without raising the ire of the Iranian regime.

U.S. strategic partners across the region will continue to mirror the behavior of the United States. If the United States is perceived as strategically engaged in the region and willing to shore up the defenses of Gulf Cooperation Council states with advanced technologies to counter China’s Digital Silk Road, they are unlikely to hedge and orientate themselves toward Chinese naval and security coalitions. This is inextricably tied to the United States’ bid to prevent China from embedding itself in the region’s infrastructure and investing in advanced technologies such as clean energy that could be incorporated into Gulf economic diversification efforts. Just as China perceives economic and security ties as building blocks toward an overarching security architecture, the United States must follow suit.

Harley Lippman is a board member of the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Partnership for Peace Fund.

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Bookending Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent fence-mending trip to Beijing were two largely overlooked, but nonetheless ominous, developments which demonstrated unambiguously China’s dominance over global supply chains for critical minerals needed for the energy transition because of their use is essential in various applications—including electric vehicles (EVs), wind turbines, and solar panels. Unless the United States and its allies can escape the pincer, their ambitions for net-zero carbon emissions—to say nothing of those for other future technological innovations—may well be stillborn.

China’s Rare Earth Metals Monopoly

On July 3, citing national security interests, Chinese authorities announced export restrictions beginning next month on gallium and germanium, two metals that are key to high-speed computer chips and fiber optic cables as well as some sensitive military uses like night-vision and satellite imagery. China produces 80 percent of the world’s supply of gallium and 60 percent of that of germanium. Beyond the implications for chipmakers and other manufacturers, the move sparked concern about supply chains for rare earth elements (REEs)—the group of seventeen metals with strategic applications in defense, aerospace, energy, and transportation technologies—over which China has an even tighter grip, controlling more than 90 percent of global output. After the Independence Day holiday, even President Joseph Biden tweeted, “China has dominated the production of raw materials needed for critical products for too long.”

But what is even more telling is what has happened with REEs, prized for their strong magnetic properties allowing for energy efficiencies in EVs and other electric devices as well as military uses, including lasers, missile guidance systems, aircraft, and satellites. Instead of rising as watchers might have expected given the export curbs on the gallium and germanium, the price of praseodymium neodymium alloy, for example, subsequently sunk to its lowest level since 2020, down more than two-thirds since January of last year. While part of this is attributable to a slackening of demand—new wind power installations are down globally—a significant part of this appears to be intentional policy. As one analyst told Reuters, “If you’ve got 90 percent market share of magnet processing capacity, there’s a goldilocks price where you earn a return but you don’t encourage anyone else in the rest of the world to build capacity.”

This market dominance is the greater challenge to efforts to secure reliable access to critical minerals like REEs because it remains an economic barrier to entry, even if geological resources are located elsewhere. China’s own natural resources endowment allowed the country to cultivate the mining and processing of rare earths, but it was the Communist regime that dictated the late 2021 merger of three of its biggest state-owned REE mining firms—China Minmetals Rare Earth, Chinalco Rare Earth & Metals, and China Southern Rare Earth Group—to form the China Rare Earth Group. This consolidation permits the regime to control the global market more easily by facilitating synergies to lower overall production costs even further (the new juggernaut controls almost two-thirds of China’s heavy rare earths production), thus deterring any potential foreign competitors from even entering the business and eventually competing with it.

The strategic implications of this de facto monopoly are not hypothetical. In 2010, in response to the detention of the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that provocatively rammed two Japanese coast guard vessels off the Senkaku Islands, Beijing blocked export to Japan of REEs. As I noted in a study last year for the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, that embargo, while short-lived, underscored both the risks of dependence on China as a single supplier and China’s willingness to exploit its supply chain dominance for political leverage. Realizing the need to secure an alternative REE supply chain, the Japanese government teamed up with Japanese businesses to support rare earths mining at western Australia’s Mount Weld by Lynas, an Australian company that has subsequently become what is currently the only significant producer of separated rare earth materials outside of China. (Such is the Chinese comparative advantage in REE processing that the largest single rare earth mine in the world, the open pit at Mountain Pass, California, just southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, has been sending its raw ore to China for processing before the metal returns to the United States as finished magnets used in EVs and other applications.)

A Three-Prong Plan

To escape this veritable trap of dependency, the United States—and, of course, its allies, including the European Union, which is currently elaborating its own critical minerals strategy—should adopt a three-pronged approach:

First, an “all-of-the-above” mindset is required to deal with the supply side of the equation. Where it makes geological and economic sense, domestic production should not only be cheered on politically but actually enabled by a rational and timely permitting process. The Biden administration, for example, has used a variety of existing federal programs and legal authorities to support the establishment of a facility by MP Materials to separate the heavy REEs from its Mountain Pass mine and manufacture permanent magnets without first exporting them to China for ore processing and mineral refining.

Where domestic supply chains are impractical or insufficient, new partnerships have to be developed to secure access to vital resources, such as a “buyers’ club” like the nascent State Department-led Mineral Security Partnership, which includes Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Commission.

In other instances, the answer might be found in innovative approaches like the Lobito Corridor, championed by White House senior advisor Amos Hochstein, which aims to link Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia—three African countries with significant reserves of critical minerals and other strategic materiel—to global markets and catalyzing the African nations’ value chains with improved energy and other interconnections, supported by the G7’s flagship infrastructure initiative, the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII).

Moreover, as I have argued here previously, given that the single most significant challenge is that any one country or entity so dominates supply chains that it is able, at will, to block others’ access to critical minerals, diversification of supply is the overriding priority and key to de-risking, even if it might entail having to do business at times with countries or firms that might otherwise not be viewed as preferred, or even desirable, partners.

Second, the United States and other countries should continue to facilitate the growth of new ventures with the potential to compete and even supplant the current Chinese monopoly, whether by bringing new sources of raw materials online or developing technologies to bypass the midstream processing (refining, alloying), both presently dominated by a Chinese firm.

Notwithstanding the political and diplomatic controversies over the enactment and implementation of America’s Inflation Reduction Act, the legislation not only provided numerous tax credits and other incentives for companies to invest in critical minerals and EV supply chains, but bolstered existing programs like the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. Other existing agencies, like the Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) also have roles to play. While not all of these experiments will succeed, some will; a few might even prove transformative. (Full disclosure: I am a non-executive director of Rainbow Rare Earths which, with a modest indirect investment from the DFC via Ireland-based TechMet, has a pilot plant in South Africa to produce mixed rare earth sulfate from waste gypsum stacks that, in turn, at a second facility under construction in Florida, will be separated into rare earth oxides for eventual sale to permanent magnet manufacturers.)

Third, given that the sustainability of supply chains is dependent upon demand and the demonstrated power of the current Chinese monopoly over the global market for REEs, it is imperative that the United States and like-minded countries help level the playing field for emerging alternative suppliers via instruments like off-take agreements linked to national strategic reserves or incentives to private companies to enter into similar deals. Without this basic lifeline, it would be almost inconceivable for new entrants into the market to survive the cut-throat and uneven competition. The fate of the French firm Rhône-Poulenc, whose now closed La Rochelle factory at one time processed half of the purified REEs in the world, should be a sobering reminder of the raw power that Chinese state-owned enterprises can bring to bear in a yearslong price war to take down a rival.

Better Late than Never

For the moment, there is no denying that China has built a formidable position in the global quest for critical minerals in general and for very strategic rare earths in particular. But Beijing’s decision to lash out against U.S. curbs on advanced technology sales by both export restrictions of its own on select materials and a preemptive price war on others may have inadvertently alerted the world to the risks that its effective monopoly poses to vital supply chains. Late as it may be in the game, there is still an opportunity to shift the play.

Ambassador J. Peter Pham, a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Senior Advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy, is former U.S. Special Envoy for the Sahel and Great Lakes Regions of Africa.

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Two metallic elements, tucked deep within the periodic table, have emerged as key drivers of world politics. On July 3, China’s Ministry of Commerce and China Customs announced export controls on gallium and germanium products (including compounds), effective August 1. This action, aimed at “safeguarding national security and interests,” according to Chinese officials, has stirred global panic within various industries, governments, and media outlets.

Although these two rare metals only account for several hundred million dollars in global trade—a figure that pales in comparison with the chipmaking industry’s value of over $600 billion—they are critical strategic resources in the defense and high-tech sectors. Infrared optics, fiberoptic communications, solar cells, and compound semiconductors are useless without them. Any disruption in the supply of these metals would therefore unsettle downstream markets valued in the trillions of dollars.

Further exacerbating the anxiety is China’s dominance in the global supply of these metals. In 2022 alone, China manufactured 90 percent of gallium-related products and 68 percent of germanium-related products. Chinese authorities argue that export restrictions on products involving these metals are standard international practice and not targeted at any specific country.

Weaponizing Critical Minerals

China’s role in the technological competition with the United States bears similarities to an apprentice learning from its master by leveraging its dominance in critical technologies or resources. China appears to be employing a “chokepoint strategy”—weaponizing its stronghold over these critical rare metals.

China’s strategic use of these minerals conveys a compelling narrative. Despite the chokepoints it faces in its chipmaking supply chain—stemming from limited access to critical technologies, a gap it might close independently over the next five to eight years—the potential disruption in the supply of these essential metals could stymie the United States and its allies’ progress in defense-related and high-tech manufacturing.

Although the United States commands a leading role in upstream chip design, intellectual property, manufacturing technology, as well as downstream branding and marketing, its reliance on allies is critical in implementing a chokepoint strategy against China. Unilateral sanctions would push China to alternative suppliers, almost all allies of the US, triggering potential losses in the Chinese market for the United States and rendering its attempts to contain China ineffective. America’s regional partners are therefore crucial for impeding China’s access to advanced chipmaking technologies and mitigating threats to U.S. national security, albeit at a substantial cost to the United States and its allies.

At its core, the chokepoint strategy leverages monopoly. It allows those who control a critical technology, resource, or transport route to influence their adversaries without warfare. With a monopoly over the gallium and germanium supply chains, China can enforce export controls without incurring substantial economic backlash.

The Chinese government’s export restrictions on these rare metals are unlikely to inflict significant domestic economic damage. First, China’s economy consumes a substantial portion of these products. Second, the total export revenue from these metals—240 million yuan from gallium and 360 million yuan from germanium in 2022 (in total less than $100 million)—is insignificant compared to China’s semiconductor expenditure. Lastly, given these rare metal products’ unique and non-renewable nature, surplus production can be subsidized and stockpiled indefinitely, preventing significant economic losses for China.

On the flip side, the effects of China’s export controls are likely to vary across the countries in the U.S.-led chip alliances, which could challenge the dynamics of the alliances. Intermediate players in the value chain may bear the brunt. Japan, in particular, is at risk, given its high concentration of firms producing chemical compounds from these elements—largely imported in their primary form from China. As a global leader in advanced semiconductor materials and a significant consumer, Japan could face more significant long-term impacts from China’s export restrictions on these rare metals.

Short-Term Solutions and Long-Term Considerations

Refining technologies and facilities for processing gallium and germanium cannot be built overnight, particularly considering the environmental implications of their extraction and mining. As such, for the United States and its allies, constructing an independent supply chain for gallium and germanium processing could require a staggering investment of over $20 billion—considerably more significant than the total trade revenue of the products of these two elements—and potentially years, if not decades, of development. Even then, achieving cost advantages comparable to China’s might prove challenging.

One scenario could unfold as follows: China may decide to ease its export controls after significant investments in building infrastructure, such as electricity, and facilities for extracting and processing gallium and germanium. In such a scenario, and given China’s efforts to refine its technology and improve the processing efficiency of these metals, businesses may find it financially prudent to revert to sourcing from Chinese suppliers.

Although some might argue that firms from the United States and its allies would opt against reverting to sourcing gallium and germanium from China, even in the face of a more compelling value proposition, we must not discount the sway of economic realities. These factors often shape decision-making in international trade. While shared values can contribute to forming alliances, shared interests—often economic and security-related—primarily drive international cooperation. The relationship between international trade and geopolitics is complex, with economic factors, political alignments, and strategic considerations all playing pivotal roles.

Economic and Environmental Reality

Towards the end of the twentieth century, Western multinational corporations started manufacturing operations in China, attracted by its low-cost and abundant labor, land, and raw materials. With the advent of internet and communication technologies, the United States spearheaded an industrial revolution, transforming its economy into an “innovation economy”—a model that can be described as “Wall Street + Silicon Valley.” This shift involved channeling more resources into research and development, design, branding, and marketing while outsourcing lower-value-added manufacturing jobs to less developed nations, predominantly China. This shift also marked China’s entry into global production networks.

Although China has benefited significantly from this wave of globalization, these benefits have come at a considerable cost, particularly regarding environmental impact. Also, China’s restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the late 1990s resulted in millions of job losses, sparking social unrest and challenging the ruling party’s legitimacy. At the same time, China embarked on the most significant urbanization endeavor in human history. The Western trend of outsourcing production to China solved these urgent issues. During these industrial shifts, China assumed many lower-value-added tasks and many resource-intensive and environmentally damaging aspects of manufacturing. One area where China has assumed a significant role in the global production network is the extraction and refining of many vital minerals, including rare earth and rare metals. This integration into the global production network provided employment opportunities for displaced SOEs and migrant workers, bolstering China’s lower-tier supply chains and strengthening its manufacturing capabilities.

Over the past decades, China has refined its abilities in extracting and processing these rare metals, often on a massive scale. This progress was facilitated by industrial policies and subsidies and driven by a trial-and-error innovation process powered by intense internal competition among domestic firms. While China’s operations in gallium and germanium processing might sit at the lower end of the value chain, their advantages lie in the sheer scale of production, resulting in unrivaled cost benefits for products related to these metals.

Another critical advantage worth noting is China’s command over the natural reserves of these metals. China produces 80 percent of the world’s gallium reserves—the highest share globally—and 60 percent of the world’s germanium reserves.

Both gallium and germanium are classified as dispersed metals that occur in deficient concentrations in the Earth’s crust, rendering extraction highly uneconomical. For instance, gallium primarily exists as a secondary element in bauxite ore, with its production primarily being a by-product of aluminum refining. Likewise, germanium rarely forms independent ores and is typically found within minerals composed of other elements. In China, germanium primarily comes from by-products of germanium-rich coal. As the world’s largest producer and consumer of aluminum and coal, China can economically justify the production of gallium and germanium chemical compounds. In fact, the country’s leading gallium and germanium producers are industrial mineral corporations, such as Chinalco, the world’s largest aluminum producer, which also derives profits from selling other metal products.

Although the United States has extensive natural germanium reserves, the element is mainly found in zinc ores. Extracting heavy metals like lead and zinc can lead to substantial environmental damage. Plus, large-scale mining operations are not financially viable if there is no market for the derived lead and zinc products. Notably, as far back as 1984, the United States halted its own production of germanium for these reasons.

Globalization at a Crossroads

Recognizing the risks of overreliance on China for critical minerals, Western countries have adopted a “de-risking” strategy to reduce their dependence on China’s supply through a U.S.-led Minerals Security Partnership, which excludes China. However, challenging China’s dominance is proving daunting, not merely due to China’s stronghold on the supply of these elements but also the rising competition involving chokepoint strategies that threaten the very fabric of globalization.

China has established substantial advantages across thirty-six critical minerals, including rare earth elements and metals. These elements are essential for defense and pivotal for emerging technologies in next-generation semiconductors and clean energy transitions—two arenas where Washington and Beijing vie for supremacy. While China’s critics point to the unfairness of its industrial policy and fiscal subsidies, other nations are mimicking China’s strategy, engaging in policy competition and subsidies to bolster their advantages in critical minerals, prioritizing national security over economic efficiency.

The U.S.-China relationship is now characterized mainly by competition and confrontation, overshadowing the potential for cooperation and collaboration. While a direct conflict between a rising power and an established hegemon—Graham Allison’s “Thucydides Trap”—may be unlikely, a period of great power rivalry, especially in the tech domain, will persist and perhaps escalate. Fears of one’s adversary gaining the upper hand encourage the use of chokepoint strategies. The outcome of this great power tech war hinges on who holds more “chips,” the costs involved, and the impacted parties.

How the issues surrounding gallium and germanium are handled could very well dictate the future balance of technological power.

Dr. Marina Yue Zhang is an associate professor at the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Sydney. Marina’s research interests cover China’s innovation policy and practice, emerging technologies, and network effects in digital transformation. She is the author of three books, including Demystifying China’s Innovation Machine: Chaotic Order, co-authored with Mark Dodgson and David Gann (Oxford University Press, 2022).

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, President Obama’s first Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, famously said the quiet part out loud: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” More recently, self-appointed masters of the universe, such as World Economic Forum chairman Klaus Schwab used the COVID pandemic to justify a so-called “Great Reset” of capitalism “to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies.”

Also sensing a moment to capitalize on a crisis, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has proposed his own plan to enhance the power of the United Nations greatly and, not so coincidentally, the power of the secretary-general.

As Guterres argues, recent crises “have challenged our international institutions,” and the Summit of the Future, where he will present the details of his plan to world governments, is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to enhance cooperation on critical challenges and address gaps in global governance.”

Guterres unveiled the contours of his plan in a series of meetings and policy briefs, some still forthcoming. There are eleven such briefs underway, covering topics ranging from “Future Generations” to “Outer Space” to “Beyond Gross Domestic Product” to a “Global Digital Compact” to “Transforming Education” to “United Nations 2.0.”

This so-called “Pact of the Future” represents a stunning attempted power grab by the secretary-general. These proposals raise serious concerns and objections from the U.S. and other governments that value their sovereignty and that question the wisdom of granting more authority to international bureaucrats and establishing new supra-national rules and institutions that might dramatically impact the U.S. and its future interests.

Among the most concerning policy briefs is one that would grant Guterres authority to “convene and operate an Emergency Platform in the event of complex global crises,” whether that be another pandemic, an environmental crisis, disruptions in global flows of goods, people, or finance, or some other “black swan” event.

Under the proposal, Guterres would be granted “standing authority to convene and operationalize automatically an Emergency Platform” with minimal consultation from governments. Specifically, he would consult in advance the President of the General Assembly, the President of the Security Council, relevant national authorities, regional organizations, and other relevant UN agencies and other multilateral institutions “that have been mandated by Member States to respond to sector-specific crises.” There is no requirement to consult with all governments. In other words, the UN could take important decisions without input from the U.S.

The purpose of the Emergency Platform is to “overcome obstacles and bottlenecks to an effective response”—i.e., the reluctance of governments to heed the dictates of the UN Unsurprisingly, the proposal specifies that “Any response mechanism must ensure that participating actors make clear commitments [such as financial or technical resources or a significant policy shift] that directly and immediately support the global response to a complex shock... Participants would need to accept accountability for delivering on these commitments.”

Indeed, the structure—where Guterres would invite international organizations, experts, academics, and non-governmental organizations to participate alongside governments—seems designed to diminish the authority of national governments and pressure them into cooperation with their decrees.

Rest assured that Guterres and future UN secretaries-general will utilize this authority. If you take the UN's word, the migrant, climate, poverty, and debt crises demand urgent attention. Although the “Emergency Platform should initially be convened for a finite period to respond to a specific shock... the Secretary-General could extend the work of an Emergency Platform if required.” Emergency powers are hard to give up once grasped.

But the policy briefs also proffer ideas beyond this that should trouble Americans.

For instance, the policy brief on information integrity calls for developing a “United Nations Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms that would provide a blueprint for bolstering information integrity while vigorously upholding human rights.” Examples cited of information where integrity has faltered include misinformation and disinformation during the COVID pandemic, “climate denialist content,” and hate speech.

Of course, Americans have seen firsthand how efforts to repress “disinformation” and “misinformation” instead are misused to silence opposing opinions and repress inconvenient evidence, as seen with the Chinese lab leak theory on the origin of COVID. Moreover, countries like China and Russia are eager to censor content and will be delighted to use the UN to extend domestic repression internationally. It is hard to see any UN Code that would not run roughshod over the First Amendment.

Another policy brief suggests reshaping the international financial architecture to increase investment in “global public goods” like climate action, update the international tax architecture, and make the system more “inclusive, representative and, ultimately, more effective global economic governance.” Developing countries have long clamored for developed nations to provide more assistance, and liberals have long desired global taxes to finance their environmental efforts. This policy brief seems designed to facilitate those objectives.

These are still notional proposals by the secretary-general. The granular details have not been fleshed out. While the Pact will not possess legal force, it will create political pressures on future U.S. presidential administrations. The overarching goal is to aggregate power to the UN and the secretary-general and away from the Member States. If all goes according to plan, this effort will culminate with all the world’s governments endorsing the “Pact of the Future” in September 2024.

As reported by The Federalist, the Biden administration has expressed support for the effort, apparently content to subject the American people to the whims of the secretary-general. This is entirely misguided. The President should instead be defending their sovereignty from this naked power grab.

Brett D. Schaefer is the Heritage Foundation’s Jay Kingham Senior Research Fellow in International Regulatory Affairs.

Steven Groves is the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Fellow, concentrating on issues that threaten to undermine American sovereignty, self-governance, and independence.

Image: Shutterstock. 

This article expresses my understanding of the viewpoints regarding the U.S. deterrence strategy over potential Taiwan Strait conflicts, made by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the United States, Mark Milley, on June 30, 2023. By examining the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) principle of unification with Taiwan in the context of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and explaining why the continuation of implementing this historical mission is unstoppable in the new era, I attempt to argue that relying solely on deterrence to stop Xi Jinping’s ambition would be imprudent and could even jeopardize U.S. national security although the deterrence strategy influences China’s decision-making process. I hope that the three parties, the PRC, Taiwan, and the United States, will reevaluate their strategies and adopt the right approach to promote peaceful triangular relations.

When Milley gave a speech at a National Press Club event in Washington on June 30, 2023, he commented on Xi’s stance on Taiwan. According to Milley, there is no concrete evidence suggesting that Xi has made a firm decision on ordering a military unification with Taiwan by 2027, but the decisionmaking process is still underway. Milley suggested the United States and its allies build up deterrence to ensure that every single day Xi wakes up and says today is not that day, and that decision never comes.

It is understandable when Milley emphasizes the significance of a deterrence strategy in influencing China’s decision-making process based on the historical experience of U.S. foreign policy and implementation. However, it would be imprudent and could even jeopardize U.S. national security if the policymakers believe that the deterrence strategy alone could change Xi’s determination to fulfill China’s historical mission of reunification of Taiwan in the context of China and the vision of the CCP.

The reunification of Taiwan is not Xi’s personal idea, but a longstanding principle upheld by all top leaders of the CCP. The founding father of the PRC, Mao Zedong, made it clear that Taiwan is part of China and pointed out that “Taiwan is ours, and we will never compromise on this issue, which is an issue of internal affairs.” Mao declared that the Chinese people will not tolerate foreign aggression or interference in our internal affairs because China does not fear its enemies. According to him, enemies are like flies: “On this tiny globe, a few flies dash themselves against the wall.” Mao tried to take over Taiwan several times by force, but unfortunately, he failed due to various factors, such as the ripple effects of the Cold War, the failure experience during the Taiwan Strait crises during 1954 and 1958, the interruption of the Cultural Revolution, the changing attitudes of the Taiwanese people and the U.S. intervention.

Although Deng Xiaoping prioritized the development of the Chinese economy in the post-Mao era and set forth a low-profile strategy, he still felt urgent to fulfill unification so he developed a roadmap toward the reunification of Taiwan by proposing the framework of “one country, two systems.” Jiang Zemin insisted that One China is the fundamental principle of reunification which is an inevitable trend of Chinese history by proposing an eight-point proposition for China’s reunification of Taiwan. Hu Jintao confirmed that China will continue to adhere to the One-China principle and firmly opposed any form of Taiwan independence and any attempts to create “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan.” Meanwhile, he urged unification with Taiwan. Despite that the PRC firmly insisted on the reunification of Taiwan, it still adopted a more pragmatic and flexible approach to the Taiwan issue under before the Xi administration.

It is not surprising that Xi has been taking a tougher stance on Taiwan as China has become the world’s second-largest economy because foreign policy always reflects national comprehensive power. Xi has promised that China must be and will be reunified and asserted that the problem of Taiwan cannot be passed on from generation to generation. He also warned that China makes no promise to renounce the use of force and reserves the option of taking all necessary measures to achieve the reunification of China. Yet, Xi’s view on unification with Taiwan is essentially the same as all his predecessors. Since the inception of the PRC, all of the five top CCP leaders uphold the One-China Principle as they believe that Taiwan is an integral part of China; they firmly reject any form of Taiwan independence; they vow to safeguard national sovereignty including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan; they believe the reunification of Taiwan is an inevitable outcome and a historical trend; and they express a commitment to achieving reunification as an important aspect of maintaining national unity.

Each leader’s viewpoints have unavoidably been influenced by their respective historical contexts and the evolving circumstances of the global community, so their viewpoints toward Taiwan’s reunification have varied over time in their emphasis, approach, and specific policies. While all five top CCP leaders express the goal of reunification, Deng, Jiang, and Hu, placed a stronger emphasis on peaceful means of achieving reunification, highlighting the importance of maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. Mao and Xi, on the other hand, have a more assertive policy and practice, and they do not explicitly prioritize peaceful reunification. Each leader has pursued their own approach toward Taiwan’s reunification. Deng and Jiang advocated for the framework of “One Country, Two Systems,” which was implemented in Hong Kong and Macau, as a model for future reunification with Taiwan. Hu emphasized the importance of deepening exchanges and cooperation between the mainland and Taiwan, particularly in economic and cultural areas. Xi has emphasized the concept of the “China Dream“ as a broader framework for reunification. However, none of the five leaders explicitly renounced the option of unification by force.

Therefore, the unification task is the PRC’s consistent ideology and has become the untouchable foundation of the PRC’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The CCP won’t change its historical mission of unification with Taiwan. The CCP sees unification as a matter of national pride and a symbol of China’s unity, an opportunity for increased economic integration and development, and a means to preserve and strengthen the Chinese nation’s unity and cultural heritage. If the CCP gave up the principle, it would lose its ruling party’s legitimacy and authority of governance.

Undoubtedly, Xi’s tougher stance on Taiwan is not only driven by the CCP principle but also motivated by his personal ambition. He must have had a specific plan when he revised China’s constitution to make it possible for him to stay in power without term limits. Evidently, as Mao’s faithful disciple, he hopes to achieve what his predecessors failed to do—the unification with Taiwan and cement his place as a remarkable person in China’s history. The catchword “China dream” is the iconic mark of Xi’s worldview and reflects his ambition to make China a global power that can rival and surpass the United States. According to Xi, the China Dream is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation that requires the reunification of greater China.

China’s global expansion is the external aspect of the China Dream. Xi envisions that the goal of unification with Taiwan could inspire the Chinese people, leading toward the future under the sole leadership of the CCP. A unified China would bolster China’s international standing and fortify its geopolitical position in the Asia-Pacific region, specifically by overcoming the obstacles posed by the first island chain—an area within which Taiwan holds immense strategic significance. Unification would help China improve its access to the Pacific Ocean, heighten its control over this crucial maritime zone, advance its ability to extend its military influence beyond the first island chain, secure its influence over vital resources and trade routes, safeguard its economic interests, and minimize potential vulnerabilities within the first island chain. Ultimately, China will attain a balanced distribution of power with the United States in both the Eastern and Western spheres.

It is noteworthy that the determination of unification with Taiwan does not only represent the interests of the CCP but also represents the will of the Chinese people. First of all, the common will of unification is due not only to patriotic nationalism but also arises from traditional Chinese culture—the idea of great harmony between individuals, nature, and human society. Mencius said that harmonious human relations are more important than good opportunities granted by Heaven and favorable geographic position (天时不如地利，地利不如人和). From Mencius’s idea to Dong Zhongzhu’s theory of the “interaction of heaven and People” (天人感应) to Zhu Xi’s theory of “unity of heaven and man unity” (天人合一), and to Sun Yat-sen’s harmonious world, 大同世界, the idea of the union of heaven and individuals is one of the basic principles of Confucianism-based Chinese traditional culture—traditional Chinese concept of all-under-heaven. The objective of a harmonious China and a harmonious world (大同世界) has been pursued by Chinese philosophers and politicians from ancient to communist China. The Chinese people believe that unification with Taiwan is the implementation of traditional Chinese culture, so the majority of the Chinese people will not relinquish this mission under any circumstance. Xi’s blueprint for building a community of shared future for mankind (建立人类命运共同体) or China Dream (中国梦) is a continuation of the concept of all-under-heaven.

Second, public opinion in China supports the idea of unification. According to a study conducted by Adam Y. Liu and Xiaojun Li, although public opinions toward the unification with Taiwan are mixed, 55 percent of the respondents supported “launching a unification war to take back Taiwan entirely,” while 33 percent opposed it and 12 percent were unsure. According to another online survey in China published in ThinkChina and Taiwan Inside, 53.1 percent supported armed unification with Taiwan, while 39.19 percent opposed it among Chinese elites. This shows that the CCP’s principle of unification with Taiwan has a broad popular base.

Apparently, unification with Taiwan has been an established goal for the CCP and the Chinese people. If Xi gave up this objective, he would be seen as abandoning his core mission and betraying his own promise. In addition, he would likely face serious political consequences within the CCP and among the Chinese people, lose credibility and legitimacy as a leader who can defend China’s national interests and dignity against external pressures and challenges, and face criticism, opposition, or even a coup from within the party or the military. More seriously, he would also risk provoking social unrest or nationalist backlash from the public, who have been indoctrinated with patriotic education and propaganda for decades. Xi’s legitimacy has been largely based on the unification with Taiwan since the 20th National Congress of the CCP. Therefore, he cannot afford to give up his historical unification task voluntarily.

While U.S. deterrence strategy may cause the CCP to reconsider its actions and carefully evaluate its approach to unification, it won’t halt China’s progression in that direction.

The CCP may postpone the implementation of the unification mission under certain circumstances: Significant shifts in the regional or global landscape might prompt a reassessment of priorities. Substantial domestic opposition to the unification task or mounting international pressure could compel a leader to reconsider their top priority. The potential Chinese domestic political fallout may lead to backlash from factions or interest groups within China. A change in the CCP’s political ideology can also influence a leader’s position on the unification task. A significant shift in public attitudes toward the unification task has the potential to influence a leader’s decisionmaking process and could also create opportunities for alternative arrangements and potentially reduce the urgency of pursuing reunification through military force. Nevertheless, all these hypothetical conditions are highly unlikely to occur under any CCP administration.

Therefore, the CCP’s mission to take over Taiwan is inevitable sooner or later. While Xi has not ruled out the use of force, he has also expressed his preference for peaceful reunification based on the One-China principle and the 1992 Consensus. Is it possible for the PRC to reach the goal of peaceful unification with Taiwan based on the 1992 Consensus? Reality shows that since Taiwan transitioned to democracy in the 1980s, Taiwanese people’s minds are getting farther and farther away from the PRC.

In a poll conducted by Pew Research Center in 2020, the majority of Taiwanese hold a negative view of China, and about 66 percent of Taiwanese people identify solely as Taiwanese. The numbers of Taiwanese who hold a negative view of China continue to grow and about 90 percent of Taiwanese identify themselves as “Taiwanese” according to a survey in 2021. Although more than 90 percent of Taiwanese originally came from mainland China, they are now embracing an identity that is distinct from the PRC. The Taiwanese people’s desire for unification with China fell further to a near-record low in 2022, and only 1.3 percent of respondents wanted unification with China as soon as possible.

Taiwanese public opinions will drive the Taiwanese government to make tougher policies toward the PRC, but it could also drive nationalism in the mainland to run higher and create more difficulties for the PRC to fulfill a peaceful reunification. This suggests that the window of peaceful reunification is closing. Twenty years ago, in my book Remaking China’s Public Philosophy for the Twenty-first Century, I posited that reshaping China’s political institutions through the transformation of its public philosophy would be the most effective means to address the potential conflict in the Taiwan Straits. However, it has now become a distant possibility.

Thus, a critical question remains: is it more advantageous for China to achieve early reunification with Taiwan? Or is it more advantageous for China to achieve reunification with Taiwan later? With the intensification of competition between China and the United States and the gradual deterioration of China’s international situation, it is increasingly preferable for China to unify Taiwan earlier rather than later.

Under Xi’s regime, China has been promoting the process of military modernization at unprecedented speed and preparing for an armed occupation of Taiwan on a massive scale. China has upgraded its missile bases and deployed a new hypersonic missile along the mainland’s eastern coast, which could target Taiwan and U.S. bases in the region. China has been conducting large military exercises near Taiwan, simulating amphibious landings, air assaults, and missile attacks, as well as crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait, which had been a tacit boundary for decades. The United States has recognized that China’s military has reached or is approaching the ability to take over Taiwan.

Most recently, the People’s Liberation Army has expanded testing and evaluation of its weapons systems to simulate a total war waged on a global scale, especially with the United States. This is another example indicating that China is speedily preparing for the worst-case scenario—reunification with Taiwan by military force. On July 6, 2023, the same day that the U.S. secretary of treasury, Janet Yellen, arrived in Beijing, Xi inspected Eastern Theatre Command, the branch central to keeping up cross-strait pressure on Taiwan, saying that the PLA must deepen its planning on war and combat and improve its ability to win any war. This sent a signal to the United States that the reunification of Taiwan is China’s core interest. The PRC is approaching the verge of reunifying Taiwan by military force to fulfill the CCP’s historical mission of the reunification of Taiwan and Xi’s global ambitions.

For now, it is hard to precisely assess if China could win a war with Taiwan; yet, it is certain that U.S. deterrence strategy is based on the idea that the United States can prevent China from using military force against Taiwan by making the costs of such action outweigh the benefits, and by signaling the U.S. commitment and capability to defend its interests and allies in the region. It is also clear that U.S. deterrence strategy is built upon assumptions that underestimate China’s resolve and ambition to achieve its national goal of unification with Taiwan.

Even assuming that the United States did not overestimate its ability and willingness to intervene in a cross-strait conflict, the Taiwan Relations Act does not explicitly guarantee U.S. military intervention in the event of a Chinese takeover of Taiwan by force. Even if the United States ends up getting involved in a possible war across the Taiwan Strait, the initial defense will rely on Taiwan’s own military capabilities and the Taiwanese people’s determination to counter Chinese military actions. However, the Taiwanese government and its people are far from fully prepared to defend the island. According to a survey conducted by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation in 2022, about 51.5 percent of Taiwanese lack confidence in the country’s defense capacity and their government’s ability to deter possible Chinese military action. Taiwan’s politics are divided along pro-independence and pro-unification lines, making it difficult for the government to mobilize public support and allocate resources for island defense. Most Taiwanese prefer to maintain the current status quo to avoid provoking China or engaging in a military conflict over sovereignty. Instead of making a commitment to defend their territory, most Taiwanese people have a huge hope to rely on external support, particularly from the United States in the event of a war in the Taiwan Strait.

As a result, Taiwan’s military lags behind China’s military buildup and faces shortages in personnel and equipment, along with low availability rates and obsolescence of certain platforms, which adversely affect training and readiness. Under the current conscription system, all qualified male citizens of military age are only required to perform either 1 year of active-duty military service or receive 4 months of military training. Clearly, this system does not meet the needs of the Taiwanese defense. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen announced a plan to extend the compulsory conscription program but received backlash from younger Taiwanese. U.S. deterrence strategy without sufficient Taiwanese military capability and determination of Taiwanese people would lose its solid foundation.

Conclusion

After tracing the historical context and evolution of the CCP’s stance on Taiwan, exploring the consistent ideology and principles of the CCP, delving into Xi’s personal ambition and plan, and discussing the differences of people’s attitudes in Taiwan and the PRC toward the “unification,” it is apparent that peaceful reunification is increasingly unlikely. Considering Xi’s efforts to maintain his legitimacy for a possible life-long tenure, the reasons stated above, and the current domestic problems and international pressures facing China, it is likely that Beijing will act early against Taiwan. The secret meetings held between former senior U.S. national security officials and prominent Russians, allegedly aiming to lay “the groundwork for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine,” could even further encourage China to speed up the unification of Taiwan. The PRC will use force to ultimately solve the Taiwan issue if it does not have any other feasible options. It is wishful thinking if the United States believes it can only rely on a deterrence strategy to stop the process of the PRC’s unification with Taiwan. In fact, U.S. deterrence strategy lacks solid ground based on the reality of Taiwan’s preparation regardless of the actual preparation of the U.S. side. While developing a comprehensive strategy toward China, it is imperative to understand the CCP’s intentions and objectives in the Chinese way in the Chinese context.

Dr. Jinghao Zhou is an associate professor of Asian studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. His research focuses on Chinese ideology, politics, religion, and U.S.- China relations. He has published dozens of journal and news articles and six books. His latest book is Great Power Competition as the New Normal of China-U.S. Relations (2023).

Image: Shutterstock.

At the recent NATO summit in Vilnius, world leaders expressed concern over Russia’s nuclear posture and the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, given the ongoing conflict between Russia and Western-backed Ukraine. Yet the international community also ought to pay attention to equally-as-important developments in the Indian subcontinent. A recent speech by Pakistan’s Lt. General Khalid Kidwai has sent shockwaves across the region, potentially signaling that Islamabad may have just changed its own nuclear doctrine, and not for the better.

If implemented, these changes could be highly destabilizing not just for the region, but also for the rest of the world. Washington ought to take notice and consider this development will affect its Indo-Pacific strategy.

The Nuclear “Horizontal” and “Vertical”

Kidwai’s speech, delivered on the 25th anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests, matters for two major reasons.

The first reason is that it came from Kidwai himself. As the former head of the Strategic Plans Division—which administers all policies and strategies regarding Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs—and an adviser to the country’s National Command Authority, Kidwai is one of Pakistan’s most senior and decorated generals. He has been described as the mastermind behind Pakistan’s nuclear policy and deterrence doctrines, and “the architect” of the country’s nuclear energy program. He is, in effect, the foremost author and authority on Pakistan’s nuclear strategy.

The second reason is what Kidwai actually said in his speech. In reiterating Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence strategy, Kidwai described the country’s ongoing efforts to ensure “full spectrum deterrence” (FSD), supported by a nuclear triad of land, air, and sea-based capabilities. This, in short, is Pakistan’s policy of having sufficient capabilities to able to respond to a wide range of threats—presumably originating from India.

Yet Kidwai went further, describing two dimensions of FSD: “horizontal,” which comprises of a robust tri-services inventory of a variety of nuclear weapons, and “vertical,” which encapsulates adequate range coverage of its vectors from “zero meters to 2,750 kilometers,” encapsulating “destructive yields suited for strategic, operational, and tactical levels.” Such an elaborate arsenal, he argued, provides Pakistan with a “strategic shield”, blunting the extant conventional asymmetry with India.

In other words, Kidwai is seemingly suggesting that Pakistan could or ought to develop short-range, potentially even front-line, nuclear weapons. These could include anything from nuclear artillery to even nuclear land mines.

“Zero Meters”

On one level, this proposed shift in nuclear doctrine, brazen as it may sound, is not out of the ordinary. Pakistan’s current doctrinal thinking and capability development are a result of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, which it lost. The conflict casts a long shadow over the psyche of the Pakistan’s military, resulting in a mindset that perceives nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantor for the security of the country. Thus, the Pakistani military aims to undermine India’s military superiority through rapid nuclear weapons deployment and posturing of shallow thresholds.

Yet an obvious and significant problem arises when Pakistan doctrinally attempts to leverage nuclear weapons, especially its battlefield nuclear weapons, to support a policy of cross border terrorism.

Kidwai first explained the value of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) when the country’s very short-range ballistic missile, Nasr, was first tested in April 2011. He said that it would “pour cold water over Cold Start”—a reference to India’s own punitive response doctrine. Though it has since been dismissed by Indian military leaders, New Delhi has nevertheless developed a carefully curated punitive retaliation strategy against Pakistani-sponsored terror attacks. This, in effect, has shown up the inefficacy of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. After all, of what use are TNWs as a deterrent if India can conduct careful retaliation attacks, far below the nuclear threshold, against Pakistani-supported terrorist attacks?

Nonetheless, Pakistan’s attraction for TNWs, or tactical nuclear responses in general, continues as a preventive deterrence measure, despite the growing asymmetry in conventional military capabilities between the two countries. In fact, Kidwai has now coined a new term called “zero meters.” While he has not explained its meaning, it has been interpreted to mean nuclear artillery shells, atomic demolition munitions, or nuclear land mines. Indeed, such TNWs—including naval cruise missiles carried on conventional submarines/ships, or shorter-range missiles—have generally existed since NATO deployed these weapons in Europe to deter the Soviet Union. Aping their strategy, Pakistan’s military command seems to believe that it can adroitly sequence warfighting into three neat levels, and that its variety of warheads and ranges of delivery systems would counter each move by India.

Yet as British historian and master strategist Lawrence David Freedman pointed out in the context of the NATO strategy, such matters would never unfold neatly, and TNWs could pose several substantial challenges. All this has been corroborated time and again via many wargames and exercises.

Courting Madness

India, for its part, has never accepted a step-by-step nuclear escalation ladder and instead pursues a doctrine of massive retaliation against any nuclear use, irrespective of how the first user describes the weapon or undertakes its use. It is astounding that Pakistani strategists believe that anything they do will be exempted from this doctrine.

The folly of this new Pakistani strategy is also being called out by Pakistani analysts. In a hard-hitting piece in Pakistan’s weekly Friday Times, Ejaz Haider, a prominent Pakistani journalist and commentator on defense issues, recounts classic nuclear deterrence literature to question how Kidwai’s “illogic of instability to create the logic of strategic stability” could even work. Sitara Noor, a prominent Pakistani nuclear analyst, enquired in Foreign Policy magazine that if the “strategic objective” of zero-range weapons is to deter a “newly perceived gap” after the conduct of surgical strikes by India, then how could they be used to country’s advantage? Irrespective of the logic driving such a strategy, she rightly finds it problematic for reasons of operational execution and regional stability.

It is heartening that Pakistani nuclear analysts are holding up a mirror to their misperceived nuclear doctrinal thinking anchored in the idea of “graduated warfighting.” Given the many unknowns that arise once a nuclear weapon, whatever it may be called, is used, the neat schema of nuclear use at every level that Kidwai seems to suggest is unlikely to play out as intended. This is dangerous and wholly destabilizing thinking in the extreme that could result in miscalculation and escalation.

It is worth considering the potential consequences of a deterrence breakdown and the resulting responses. “What” happens after a breakdown?

Not only would such a move prove suicidal for the first user, but it also would wreak widespread havoc on the region and beyond. It is the unconstrained effects of nuclear weapons that set them apart from even the greatest of all conventional bombs, and loose talk about them has been as much a taboo as their use or threat of use. Pakistan’s irresponsibility with its nuclear strategy could prove problematic well beyond its prime adversary.

In fact, it is ironic that Kidwai invoked Youm-e-Takbir, the day of greatness, to glorify the willingness of the Pakistani populace to accept deprivation for the sake of its nuclear weapons program. Even as his country is going through a period of unprecedented political and economic turmoil, even by its own standard, Kidwai seems to be, like Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal response, exhorting his countrymen to not despair for their lack of naans, but rejoice at the existence of nukes.

Concerns to Remember

Pakistan’s continued strategy of sub-conventional provocations and nuclear brinkmanship, to say nothing of its broader societal turmoil, are a shared concern for both India and the United States. In fact, the heavy military hand in Pakistan’s decisionmaking apparatus not only warps the democratic process but also tends to lean towards “first resort,” as highlighted by Ejaz Haider.

There are at least four major concerns regarding Pakistan that could have regional and even global implications, and should be viewed seriously.

First is the highly unstable political-economic environment within the country, including the possibility of social unrest spiraling out of control.

Second is the deep fissures within the Pakistan Army, as seen in the emergence of rival cliques of senior officers, which has with ripple effects through junior ranks. The tendency of the Army to periodically “rescue” the country from incapable democratic government was supported by a united military leadership. That does not seem to be the case any longer, which only grows as a cause for concern as the number of warheads grow, with a wide range of newer type of smaller and even more dispersed “nukes” joining the arsenal.

Third, current public outrage, especially in the Pakistani “heartland,” is unusual even for the seemingly Teflon-coated Pakistan Army. Consider the attack on May 9 on the Corps Commander’s house in the highly-protected Lahore garrison—this seems much more like a targeted attack than spontaneous outrage leading to more than a symbolic breaching of the walls.

Fourth, there is the role and influence of China in the proposed “0 to 2,750 km” nuclear strategy and arsenal. It is entirely possible that low-yield nuclear weapons for Pakistan’s naval platforms, especially the Chinese Yuan class submarines, are being produced. Technically, the challenge of warheads that fit into 533mm (21 inch) torpedo tubes is not insurmountable, and Beijing may have already helped resolve this. The plans and intent for a naval leg of nuclear deterrence are not new. But potentially nuclear naval cruise missiles carried in conventional submarines/ships/patrol aircraft could be highly destabilizing, since India does not see them as merely “tactical” or “operational.”

Pakistan Alone

With the kind of nuclear strategy Pakistan seems to be following, it is choosing to stand on the edge of the nuclear cliff. The “zero range” pronouncement may be perceived in the Strategic Plans Division as a major doctrinal shift, but it changes little for India. It remains important for New Delhi to assiduously continue to improve the efficacy and the survivability of its own triad. With a stated Indian strategy of retaliation to cause unacceptable damage, the trigger could be called anything by the adversary. The response, unfortunately, would be far more than zero for that country, the environment, the region, and the world.

Pakistan needs to reflect deeply on this misperceived notion of deterrence. As Haider wrote, such decisions “cannot be left to a few in a closed club.” Meanwhile, the words of U.S. president Joe Biden resonate: “I think (Pakistan) is maybe one of the most dangerous nations in the world…with nuclear weapons without any cohesion.”

Formulations like full-spectrum deterrence, buoyed by new weaponry, may seem cohesive to Rawalpindi. But that is not the case in either New Delhi nor Washington. Policymakers from both ought to make this clear to Pakistan’s military leadership.

Dr. Manpreet Sethi is a Distinguished Fellow at Centre for Air Power Studies in New Delhi, India.

Radm Sudarshan Shrikhande is a former head of Indian naval intelligence and is an adjunct professor at India’s Naval War College. He is also editor-in-chief of The Naval Dispatch.

Brig. Arun Sahgal is a retired brigadier of the Indian Army and a senior fellow at the Delhi Policy Group. He is also the Founding Director of the Office of Net Assessment, Indian Integrated Defense Staff.

Image: Shutterstock.

In a somewhat surprising move, Turkey has decided to support the bid of Sweden to join NATO. Stockholm’s impending ascension will make it the 32nd country to join the transatlantic alliance.

Speaking on July 10, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg announced that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had dropped (or at least put aside) his previous reservations and “agreed to forward the accession protocol for Sweden to the Grand National Assembly as soon as possible, and work closely with the Assembly to ensure ratification.” This news was unexpected by many, especially considering the fact that only several hours earlier Erdoğan was demanding EU membership for Turkey as a precondition for its support of Sweden’s NATO ascension.

Stockholm’s initial bid to join the alliance was put forward in May 2022 as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, Ankara was hesitant to back the Scandinavian country’s application due to the latter’s perceived failure to crack down on members of the PKK (Kurdish Worker’s Party). Sweden has some of the most generous asylum laws in the EU and has accepted millions of refugees over the last several decades, including many Kurds. Ankara claims that some of these individuals have ties to the PKK and are subsequently operating out of Sweden to plot attacks and sow political chaos in Turkey. Erdoğan has also criticized Sweden’s refusal to resolutely condemn nationalist demonstrations that feature the burning of the Quran.

But the various obstructions were apparently cleared up after Stoltenberg met with both Erdoğan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson later in the day. There have not been any subsequent announcements regarding Turkey’s desire to join the EU. It instead appears that the other factor influencing Ankara’s decision to stall Sweden’s bid—the desire to secure a deal for F-16 jets from the United States in return for promises that they will not be used to threaten Greece—has played a larger role. The Biden administration had been working on a four-country deal that would clear the way for F-16 sales, so progress on that front could certainly have been used as leverage for getting Turkey to sign on to Sweden’s NATO membership.

The geopolitical haggling should come as no surprise and is simply a reaffirmation of the age-old maxim that something is never had for anything. More importantly, though, Sweden’s impending ascension is proof of the increased commitment to collective security that has swept across Europe in the wake of Russia’s invasion. Sweden brings with it a population of 10 million, a GDP of well over $500 billion, and has recently committed to increasing its defense spending to at least 2 percent (a benchmark that every NATO member is supposed to be meeting).

Unfortunately, this fact will have no impact on encouraging the United States to divest itself from Europe and support the creation of a more independent security framework for the latter. The collective GDP of Non-U.S. NATO currently stands at $20.1 trillion compared to Russia’s $1.6 trillion, and its population is 585 million (dwarfing Russia’s 146 million). Despite another economically developed member state signing onto the transatlantic alliance, Sweden’s additional inputs amount to a mere drop in NATO’s already massive resource pool. The logic of an independent Europe has existed since 1991, but the political will to reduce the United States’ wildly inflated defense role on the continent is as much lacking in Washington as it is in Berlin or Brussels.

The discussion over F-16 sales in this regard is more consequential than the simple process of back-and-forth compromise that is inevitably a part of every international deal. Rather, the weight of U.S. arms sales and the prospect of securing favorable terms on the part of Ankara is indicative of a major factor dictating U.S. security engagement with Europe in particular and the world more generally. U.S. military spending currently stands somewhere around $800 billion in comparison to non-U.S. NATO’s $300 billion. Still, of the portion of non-U.S. NATO spending and resources, Turkey is far and away the largest contributor. Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles back in 2019 was a major snub to Washington. It also resulted in sanctions being placed on Turkey.

The prospect of EU membership is undoubtedly a strong economic incentive for Turkey, but getting back in the good graces of the United States may have also played a role. It is not outlandish to imagine the United States telling Erdoğan to shelve the EU talk for the time being, accept some political posturing from Sweden, be content with general statements against Islamophobia, and subsequently receive a favorable deal for U.S. jets. Shortly after Turkey gave the okay to Sweden’s ascension, the Biden administration announced the completion of the F-16 deal, as well as U.S. support of Ankara’s military modernization efforts.

No one, including those in the halls of power, is trying to hide the role of U.S. defense sales in dictating broader transatlantic policy. Moral qualms aside, there is nothing inherently shady about Washington selling arms to exert geopolitical influence; however, it is important to acknowledge this dynamic if one wants to understand international developments in their entirety.

There can be no doubt regarding the reality of U.S. hegemonic control over the European security environment. That is not to discount Washington’s ideological ties to the continent, nor is it to approach the commitment to liberal democracy with cynicism—the borderline brinkmanship of U.S. and European support of Ukraine should dispel any doubts over whether or not the West is genuine in the belief of its principles. But the unfolding of events suggests that it is Washington that walks away the true winner, both economically as well as ideologically.

From the artic edges of Scandinavia through the continental heartland and onto the edges of Anatolia, there has been an outpouring of newfound commitments to defending the principle of national sovereignty. But while the invasion of Ukraine has certainly drawn the European continent closer together, it has also reinforced U.S. control over that increasingly solidified bloc. Whether or not this is of any real benefit to the United States’ citizenry—the only citizenry to which its government is constitutionally beholden—is, of course, another issue entirely.

Dominick Sansone is a Ph.D. student at the Hillsdale College Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship. Previously a Fulbright recipient to Bulgaria, his writing on politics in the Black Sea region has been published by The National Interest, the Euromaidan Press, The American Conservative, and RealClear Defense, among other publications. He also previously wrote as a contributing columnist focusing on Russia-China relations at The Epoch Times.

Image: NATO/Flickr.

The governments of the Middle East, particularly the Gulf states, seem more and more convinced that a dramatically diminished U.S. interest in the Middle East region is in the works, up to an abandonment, if not total abandonment, of them, resulting in an uncertainty of security commitments to them. After decades in which, in exchange for low cost and abundant supplies of oil, the U.S. security umbrella was informally guaranteed to the Gulf monarchies, those same princes, kings, and emirs are growingly doubting the reliability of the U.S. side of that understanding. None is more uneasy in this than Saudi Arabia, the most significant country in the region. Washington’s perceived failure to respond forcefully to Iran-armed-and-sponsored Houthi drone and missile strikes against Saudi Arabia in 2019 and against both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2022 was just the most tangible example undergirding Gulf concerns about U.S. resolution.

A number of factors feeds the perception of U.S. abandonment, from the direct public and private pronouncements of key Biden administration officials to the changing state of U.S. foreign policy discourse. Yet in merits particular attention in Riyadh is the U.S. treatment of Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (colloquially, MBS)—the country’s crown prince, prime minister, and the designated heir to the throne.

Martyring MBS

Never a very warm relationship, the U.S.-Saudi bond has always been one of mutual and calculated advantage while still remaining the bedrock and anchor of U.S. standing and policy in the Gulf. Despite a few structural tensions regarding differing religious views, forms of government, and relations to Israel, the two countries have been in close embrace based on their security-for-oil bargain.

That, however, arrangement is now at risk from the Saudi perspective and perhaps even in America’s view—not that it will no longer guarantee the security of its Gulf partners, but that the guarantee will be more calibrated in light of the Chinese political, economic, and military challenges in the Indo-Pacific and globally. Gulf capitals worry (or fear) that the United States is neither a dependable partner nor perhaps even an honest broker, and their apprehension is grounded in U.S. words and deeds. As a result, these countries are increasingly taking an even more tenuously transactional view of their previously bedrock relation with Washington.

That uneasy, somewhat transactional relation with the Saudis was rocked by the horrific murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents (apparently with the knowledge and probable direction of MBS) inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A Saudi citizen and occasional columnist for the Washington Post, Khashoggi had turned from a supporter of MBS to an ardent critic. That horrendous execution shocked Western capitals, particularly Washington, with the Post ensuring regular and protracted coverage.

In response, during the November 2019, Democratic Party primary debate in Atlanta, then-Presidential Candidate Joe Biden labeled MBS and even more broadly all Saudi Arabians “the pariahs that they are” and their government of having “very little social redeeming value,” adding that “under a Biden-Harris administration, we will reassess our relation with the Kingdom, end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.” This attack by the likely next U.S. president only martyred the Saudi royal at home: who was this impudent foreign infidel to assault our prince, country, and society?

Ethics entirely aside, the assassination was a foolhardy and ultimately counterproductive move. Whereas Khashoggi’s occasional columns were critical of the Saudi regime, especially MBS, and had imperceptible effects on the U.S.-Saudi relationship, his murder, fanned by Turkey’s president (for foreign policy reasons) and by Khashoggi’s fiancé Hatice Cengiz (for obvious personal reasons), had substantial and prolonged effect in the United States and abroad.

Unfortunately for Biden, oil prices spiked in 2021–2022. The United States could itself have produced more oil and eased the skyrocketing price, but only with environmental effects unacceptable to Biden’s Democratic Party allies. Biden was forced, hat in hand, to fly to Riyadh in July 2022 and in effect beg MBS to increase Saudi production, which the Prince very publicly did not do. In fact, he did the opposite, leading OPEC+ to a production cut of 2 million barrels a day in coordination with—salt in the wound—Russian President Vladimir Putin. Very embarrassingly, on arrival Biden was forced also to greet MBS—which normally would have meant an embrace but, given the pariah remark, caused Biden to attempt clumsily at best to settle for a “fist bump” which MBS graciously accepted and reciprocated but did not forget. The Price of Alienating Saudi Arabia This breach in the relationship stands at odds with both America’s and Saudi Arabia’s national interests. If continued, it will have adverse impacts on both, and will also provide China and perhaps other challengers like Iran with a rare opportunity to advance their interests at the both the United States’ and Saudi Arabia’s expense. However appalling the Khashoggi murder, it cannot be allowed to rupture a critical geopolitical relationship for both parties. Ironically, in many respects, MBS has taken Saudi Arabia down precisely the right road from both the Saudi and the U.S. perspectives. Under his Vision 2030, he has advanced tertiary education, defanged the religious police (the mutawa), and sought to “bring Saudi Arabia back to moderate Islam.” He has moved to diversify the bases of the Saudi economy away from sole dependence on oil and into technologically competitive goods and services, liberated women from harsh social, economic, and personal restrictions, provided them access to education and to the work force, and has all but broken the original deal with the desert tribes. He has run roughshod over other Saudi princes and families in doing this, but their fate is a domestic matter—it is not, or should not be, a core matter of U.S. national interest.

The potential for an accord between Saudi Arabia and China, however, should be. Just this last December, President Xi Jinping made an unusual trip to Saudi Arabia to meet and then sign agreements with King Salman and MBS—precisely to forge closer ties with the kingdom and then its Gulf neighbors, and to open another front against the United States and its interests. MBS gave him a conspicuously grand welcome and reception. Moreover, MBS has indicated that if Washington is not more willing to warrant Saudi fundamental national interests then he has other options. All of these are detrimental to U.S. interests, in particular closer relations with China, whose investments in the kingdom have mushroomed from almost nothing to around $12 billion over the past fifteen years and $5 billion this June alone.

Other developments paint a grim picture for U.S. interests. Along with Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia is now a Dialogue Partner in the China-founded and Beijing-based Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Thousands of Saudi and other Gulf state students are now studying in China rather than the United States. In May, Saudi Arabia joined Egypt and the UAE in warmly readmitting Syria into the Arab League, notwithstanding President Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter of Syria’s Sunni population.

The attempt by the United States to forge a nuclear deal with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s, primary adversary, and to do so on terms the Saudis clearly regard as injurious to their vital national security interests has opened yet another potential fissure. It is a potential fracture which the Chinese have happily exploited as they midwifed a resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, its heretofore sworn adversary. The United States can in part thank its public rebuke of MBS for that remarkable about-face and China’s new standing. The recently closer ties among the U.S.-aligned Gulf states after their rift with Qatar (and the consequent deterioration of the Gulf Cooperation Council comity) has increased even more the stakes inherent in the Saudi-U.S. relation as has the recent feint of MBS and his Omani allies toward his border nemeses the Houthi’s in Yemen.

Mending the Relationship

The estrangement in the Saudi-US relation needs to be repaired. While it does not rise to the same strategic level of importance as the relation with China, it is necessary nonetheless even if only because of the opportunity any fracture affords precisely to China.

But the relation is important in its own terms and not just economically or (given the U.S. bases) militarily. The U.S. has vital geopolitical interests in a stable, friendly Gulf. Iran is a threat to those interests. So is China should it find Gulf bases or even refueling arrangements and with them the opportunity both to project force and economic power into a region hitherto prohibited to it and to thrust yet another dagger into a soft spot for the United States. Although it may be too late for Biden, he can try his best.

Likewise, it is not yet too late for his successors or co-equal branches. The now Republican-majority House should make a better relationship a clear objective. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs ought to take a trip to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries full of sincere interest and earnest expressions of amity, with particular attention to MBS. It should clarify that the United States will indeed “reassess our relation with the Kingdom” but in a way opposite to the way then-candidates Biden and Kamala Harris had in mind. House Democratic members should join rather than abjure let alone repudiate such a gesture.

Arabia and its Gulf neighbors should be reassured that—notwithstanding U.S. legitimate concerns about China and the Indo-Pacific—the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, and MBS matter a lot, and the U.S. will act accordingly.

Gerald F. Hyman is a Senior Associate (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. He has published articles in several opinion outlets, including Foreign Policy, The National Interest, The Hill, and the Diplomat. Between 2002 and 2007, he was Director of USAID’s Office of Democracy & Governance.

Image: Shutterstock.

Following a court order, Lebanese journalist Dima Sadek has been sentenced to one year as a result of a lawsuit filed by Free Patriotic Movement (FPM) leader Gebran Bassil. Sadek, a well-known critic of the FPM and its ally Hezbollah, has faced endless attacks for her criticism of both parties including death threats.

The news is still early, and developments are still unfolding. This lawsuit was originally filed three years ago in 2020 at the height of Lebanon’s protest movement. At the time, Bassil was at the center of ridicule by angry demonstrators who were accusing him of corruption alongside other establishment figures.

Judge Rosine Hajili, a legal official at the Court of Appeal in Beirut, issued the decree to sentence Sadek to one year in prison and said she must pay a fine of 110 million Lebanese pounds (about $6,700). This led to a backlash in solidarity with Sadek and with contempt for FPM. There is a genuine concern that this move by the court only increases Lebanon’s climate of fear and makes people think twice before speaking out against establishment politicians. Sadek tweeted a video explaining the recent news and how it originated from her criticizing FPM members attacking two men from the city of Tripoli.

“In Feb. 2020, two young men from Tripoli were assaulted by the FPM,” Sadek said in her Twitter video. “One was attacked by [former member of parliament and FPM member] Ziad Aswad’s bodyguards, and the other, named Zakaria al-Masri ... was beaten up and forced to repeat ‘Aoun is your God and the God of Tripoli,’“ as he claimed in his written testimony, she said.

“Bassil is suing me in the case of Zakaria al-Masri,” she continued. “In both cases, I said that these were racist and Nazi acts.”

The National Interest reached out to Sadek for further comment. As of now, there has been no reply. Bassil’s office did return requests for an explanation on this matter. His lawyer, Majed Boueiz, elaborated on why they chose to pursue the lawsuit against the prominent journalist and said that it wasn’t her criticism that invoked legal action. Rather, it was her “defamation, libel, and slander that the journalist Dima Sadek made by trespassing and overstepping on the freedom of others.”

Boueiz said it was not the lawsuit that threatens freedom of expression or the values of democracy, but the actions of Sadek herself. “Pursuing this lawsuit isn’t against what Lebanon is known for, and does not contradict with our beliefs, principles, and laws. On the contrary, the act that the journalist Dima Sadek did is what contradicts with our principles, beliefs, and what Lebanon is known for.”

Yet, most see this as another political move by the FPM to shut down all kinds of descent by any means necessary.

Already, supporters of Sadek are showing their solidarity online by denouncing this move by the local judiciary. George Wardini, managing director of the PolyBlog social media platform, spoke about the sentence and the precedent it is setting for freedom of speech in Lebanon. “Three years ago, when this lawsuit was filed, the opposition and reform-minded people were actually on the offensive. We had taken the initiative and control over the narrative. Politicians feared us. They stayed at home and wouldn’t go to restaurants because they were being confronted by the public. Three years later, the fact that Gebran Bassil, who was the main recipient of our public rage and anger, was able to put a one-year prison sentence on Dima Sadek, who is hailed as one of our bravest figures, is a dangerous precedent.”

Indeed, if someone like Sadek, a recognized powerful media personality, can’t escape the legal ramifications of condemning politicians for poor behavior and actions, what chances do others have? Member of Parliament Najat Saliba spoke with TNI, highlighting the value freedom of conscience provides and condemning the actions taken against Sadek.

“Definitely, I am against what happened. I think the freedom of expression and press should be one of the most principles and guidance that we cherish and protect. Also, considering the party that is putting charges, and considering what Dima Sadek represents, I think they have gone too far.”

The probability of Sadek seeing a day in prison is low. She can legally appeal the court’s sentencing and avoid this debacle altogether. Nevertheless, this latest round by the Lebanese judiciary hurts the once proud free-thinking atmosphere that Lebanon was respected for—no matter how any political actor would like to spin it.

Adnan Nasser is an independent foreign policy analyst and journalist with a focus on Middle East affairs. Follow him on Twitter @Adnansoutlook29.

Image: Shutterstock.

After months of diplomatic delays, Sweden can now join NATO—a genuine triumph for the Biden administration.

This development has enormous geostrategic implications for the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

One is a direct reduction of Russia’s ability to project naval power. With Sweden as the last link in the chain, the entire northern coast of the Baltic Sea is now inside the NATO alliance. All of the Baltic’s southern coast, except for Russian-ruled Kaliningrad and a sliver of Russian territory near St. Petersburg, is already in NATO hands. For the first time, the Russian fleet must travel through a narrow sleeve of water, over 1,000 miles of NATO territorial waters, to reach the open ocean. It also means that Russia’s Arctic fleet will have to travel past the northern coasts of Finland and Norway—now all NATO allies. To reach the Mediterranean and the Suez, Russia’s Black Sea fleet must first thread through waters controlled by Turkey, another NATO ally. All three of Russia’s Western fleets can no longer move without allied surveillance and could, theoretically, be stopped.

Another implication concerns manpower and technology. Sweden offers a sophisticated military infrastructure, especially its attack aircraft and anti-submarine capabilities. Finland, which directly borders Russia for almost 1,000 miles, possesses extensive defenses and a well-trained army. Once Sweden and Finland’s considerable capabilities become interoperable with NATO, the alliance will be significantly more potent than it was on the day Russian tanks tried to seize Kiev in February 2022.

The Western powers are now more united with the Baltic nations than ever before. Even during World War II, Sweden professed neutrality, and Finland, for a time, allied with Nazi Germany against the USSR.

Undoubtedly, the implications are concerning to policymakers in Moscow.

And NATO is more focused than ever before. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg laid out a clear strategic direction for the organization: victory for Ukraine. “...if we don't ensure that Ukraine wins this war, unless we ensure that Ukraine wins as a sovereign and independent nation, there is no question of membership to discuss,” Stoltenberg said.

It is highly unusual for NATO officials to speak with such clarity, indicating unanimity between member-states.

Indeed, if President Joe Biden had not made it clear that Ukraine was not yet ready to join NATO, one wonders if the European allies might have voted to admit Ukraine now.

NATO leaders have long been cowed by the idea that admitting Ukraine into NATO would lead to a direct war with Russia. Europe would be wise to avoid an open, as opposed to a proxy war, with Russia. While European leaders are starting to realize that the Russian bear’s teeth and claws are not as sharp as they once feared, it would be a mistake to believe that the Russians can no longer wreak vast harm across Europe, even without resorting to nuclear weapons. Now is the time for realism about Russia, not over-confidence.

That said, Russia’s military weaknesses have been laid bare. Moscow has trouble supplying its soldiers in the field with ammunition, fuel, medicine, and spare parts—much of its military supply chains rely on railroad and convoy transport vulnerable to artillery bombardment and drone strikes. Manpower is another Russian weakness. Its troops are poorly trained conscripts or recently freed prisoners. They can man Russia’s extensive World War I-style trench defenses but usually lose men and materiel without gaining ground when they launch their comparatively rare counterattacks. The war in Ukraine is now more than 500 days old, and the Russians have suffered between 100,000 and 200,000 casualties, depending on whose estimates you believe.

By contrast, the U.S. lost 57,000 soldiers in more than 5,100 days of fighting in Vietnam. That’s a quarter of the losses in ten times the time period. Yet, the Vietnam War helped bring down two U.S. presidents. LBJ declined to run for reelection in 1968 on account of war-weariness, and Nixon’s failed “Vietnamization” project weakened the public support he would later need during the Watergate scandal. How can President Vladimir Putin survive an unpopular war when two U.S. presidents could not?

At the very least, the recent mutiny launched by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin suggests that Putin's regime is growing fragile. Still, Putin’s great unknown remains China.

Chinese president Xi Jinping shares the same convictions as Putin: to create a non-Western-centric, multipolar world order. But his relationship with Russia is a product of interests rather than deeply held values. The two countries share a 2,672-mile border, the exact location of which wasn't settled until the start of the twenty-first century following generations of negotiations. China needs Russia for water and military equipment; Russia needs China as a market for hydrocarbons and other raw materials. This is a shotgun wedding, not a romance.

Being isolated from the West is not attractive for China, given its hopes of achieving a robust economic rebound after years of zero-COVID policies. As China's relationship with the United States has hit new lows, Chinese leaders want to avoid alienating the European Union, which is also one of China’s largest trading partners. Consequently, Xi and Chinese diplomats have been careful not to accept the Kremlin's talking points fully.

All of this leaves Putin in a quagmire. He cannot exit Ukraine without losing prestige and possibly power itself. Meanwhile, a newly enlarged and unified NATO presents Russia with its most powerful foe since Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century at the same time the Russian economy and population are shrinking. Nor can he hold ground in Ukraine during the warmer months, as demonstrated by the modest gains of Ukraine’s counteroffensive. Putin, the purported grand chess player, cannot leave the game and cannot find a winning move. This week’s news of NATO enlargement continues to shrink his options.

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: Shutterstock.

The Biden administration’s effort to isolate climate negotiations from broader foreign policy goals has become untenable. Rather than reconciling the conflicting objectives of its top foreign policy decisionmakers—Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Special Climate Envoy John Kerry—the division of function has created a crisis of authority, leading to confused negotiations with China.

The divergent stances on China policy have been evident since the earliest days of the Biden administration. Secretary Blinken’s first international trip was to Japan and South Korea. During his trip to Tokyo, he highlighted the strength of America’s Pacific alliance and accused China of acting “coercively and aggressively” in the South China Sea. Kerry, by contrast, visited China just a month later to discuss green energy policy. The Chinese delegation took the opportunity to criticize Japan’s treatment of nuclear waste from the Fukushima power plant meltdown.

As relations sour between Beijing and DC, the role of climate envoy (tasked with cooperating with China on climate) and the position of secretary of state (responsible for upholding American interests abroad) continue to diverge. When US authorities discovered Chinese spy balloons drifting over the continental U.S. in early 2023,  Blinken canceled his first planned trip to Beijing. Canceling visits is an age-old practice in the diplomatic toolbox, serving as an effective yet non-escalatory form of retaliation. Yet within months of Blinken's announcement, Kerry accepted an invitation to visit China “in the near-term.”

In the past, DC policymakers have always disagreed on issues from free trade agreements to America's military engagements overseas. What makes the two diplomats’ conflicting China strategies unique is not the fundamental dispute over policy but the crisis of authority. Kerry spent four years as Secretary of State and boss to then-Deputy Secretary Blinken. Kerry can count on established rapport with foreign leaders and career officials in Foggy Bottom. The crisis of authority does not just come from overlapping responsibilities of the positions of climate envoy and secretary of state. It also comes from Kerry's history leading the organization and his relationship with Blinken.

As the first-ever climate envoy and a long-time friend to the president, Kerry is uniquely positioned to shape his own role. While his role is not explicitly concerned with foreign policy, former Secretary of State Kerry has chiefly focused his efforts abroad. His overseas focus can be partly attributed to his pre-existing knowledge and relationships in the foreign policy sphere and the stubbornness of domestic policymaking bodies (i.e., Congress).

Despite having offices and employees at the Department of State, the climate envoy is outside the department's chain of command, reporting only to President Biden. Kerry’s position is a unicorn in the history of American statecraft. He is a cabinet-level official on par with Blinken, even sharing access to military aircraft for diplomatic visits. Yet, he leads no agency and requires no confirmation from the Senate.

The only historical comparison is President Eisenhower’s appointment of Harold Stassen as “special assistant to the president for disarmament” to aid in reconstructing post-WWII Europe. Stassen’s ad hoc appointment antagonized incumbent Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. The following years were consumed by unnecessary bureaucratic competition that ultimately distracted American foreign policy. Order was only restored when Eisenhower effectively eliminated Stassen’s position.

While Kerry and Blinken appear to have a cordial relationship, the potential for conflict is even more troubling than the historical analog. Dulles was nearly 20 years senior to Stassen. Dulles had a more extensive network in DC and had a longer relationship with the President, which encouraged Stassen to act deferentially. The relationship between Kerry and Blinken is inverse. Here, the secretary of state is nearly 20 years junior to the special envoy. The secretary of state not only has less experience in DC—and formerly worked under the special envoy—he has fewer years leading his department.

Kerry's seniority does not mean he will have the president's support over Blinken if a serious dispute arises. However, it creates an ambiguous wrinkle in the foreign policy hierarchy. Will Chinese Climate Envoy Xie Zhenhua and senior Chinese foreign-policy official Wang Yi treat Kerry where they left off when Kerry was Secretary of State, or will they defer to Blinken? Will foreign negotiators be able to extract concessions from  Kerry that  Blinken would not have offered up and vice versa?

Though Kerry insists that he exclusively works on climate issues, climate concerns are inextricably linked to economic policy and security. Kerry’s position on the National Security Council questions the notion that his position is hermetically sealed from the rest of American foreign policy. The roles of climate envoy and secretary of state have become further blurred by Kerry’s speech at the Munich Security Conference and Blinken's appearances at COP 26 and COP 27.

While the US foreign policy establishment declares that Kerry only represents climate issues, Beijing disagrees, and they have repeatedly said so. In one meeting, Wang told Kerry that climate “cannot possibly be divorced” from geopolitical tensions. It comes as no surprise that Beijing is only willing to subsidize failed industrial reforms to lower China's carbon emissions in exchange for something from the US. Kerry seemed to acknowledge the challenges of persuading China to produce less carbon with few meaningful concessions, asserting “...[o]ur president has tried hard to separate climate from the other issues that are real that we obviously have with China, but we can’t get bogged down by that...” This comment directly contradicts statements by Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and even Kerry’s previous assertions that climate is a critical, stand-alone issue.

Foreign policy is messy. Overlapping issues like climate policy, industrial policy, trade policy, and security cannot be neatly separated from one another. Climate change's transnational nature makes it especially difficult for bilateral negotiations. The number of battleships or nuclear warheads a state possesses is easily verifiable. However, allocating greenhouse gas emissions (already an imperfect indicator of climate change) on a per-country basis is difficult. It becomes even more challenging to establish which country or people are responsible for what pollution considering that Europe and the US effectively outsource the production of consumer goods and resulting pollution to China.

Bilateral negotiations with competitor states are inherently zero-sum. China cannot be a competitor in one domain and an ally in another. Attempting to negotiate in a climate vacuum where no outside issues interfere is implausible. Expecting a former secretary of state to remove himself from statecraft altogether is impossible.

Now is not the time to win favor among domestic environmental constituents. The White House must restore a unified foreign policy front under the leadership of the office of the secretary of state. If the status quo continues, we risk paralyzing our diplomatic efforts with Beijing during one of the most pivotal times in Sino-American relations.

Daniel McVicar is a Research Director at the White House Writers Group. He is a regular contributor to Jamestown Foundation and has written for leading foreign policy outlets, including the Council on Foreign Relations.

Image: Courtesy of the U.S. Department of State.

Republican anger at Mexico, long-simmering over the continuous immigration and narcotics crises on the United States’ southern border, is now spilling over into bellicosity. Led by Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, some Republicans are advocating for military action against drug cartels on Mexican territory. Even the recent two-decade debacle of using the U.S. military to fight drugs coming from Afghanistan has not dissuaded these Republicans from what will likely be another futile martial approach.

DeSantis has proposed conducting unilateral raids into Mexican territory to disrupt fentanyl manufacturing, contributing to over 100,000 overdose deaths in 2022 alone. Supporting the offensive, a naval blockade of Mexican ports would intercept the producers’ raw materials imported from China. The first option resembles progressive president Woodrow Wilson’s failed attempt to capture Mexican outlaw Pancho Villa in 1916–1917, which ended in a humiliating U.S. military retreat from the territory of our southern neighbor. A naval blockade is risky since it's traditionally considered an act of war. Both Mexico and China, the latter a great power armed with nuclear weapons, would be incensed by this gambit. The international community would be in uproar over the violation of the freedom of navigation. Moreover, a blockade would significantly undercut Washington’s Asia policy. The U.S. Navy conducts regular missions in the South and East China Seas to deter Chinese forces from making good on their own grandiose territorial claims. A blockade of Veracruz or Tampico would make claims to uphold a “free and open Indo-Pacific” ring hollow.

As president, Donald Trump toyed with the idea of designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, which would then have opened the way for cross-border military action against them. His secretary of defense, Mark Esper, has since reported that he openly wondered why he could not launch missiles at drug-making facilities in Mexico. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and neither step was taken.

Presidential candidate Tim Scott voiced an even more ambitious and dangerous plan to deal with the cartels: “When I am president, the drug cartels using Chinese labs and Mexican factories to kill Americans will cease to exist. I will freeze their assets, I will build the wall, and I will allow the world’s greatest military to fight these terrorists.” Is he advocating for attacks on Chinese soil and property?

Although hot campaign rhetoric cools once a candidate wins the presidency and faces the demands of the office, the fact that the temperature is this high is counterproductive and perilous.

As the last twenty years have shown, military force authorization can be a slippery slope to unrestrained military adventurism. Instead of limiting operations to the capture or killing of the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, per Congress’ 2001 joint resolution, then-President George W. Bush interpreted the declaration loosely to authorize unilateral military action against any nation that was unwilling or unable to combat terrorism. This policy included the invasions and occupations of two countries, spurring more retaliatory violence worldwide.

Bush’s usurpation of Congress’s constitutional war-making power resembled the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, promulgated by Teddy Roosevelt, the first progressive president, in 1904. Prior to the Roosevelt administration, the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed that the United States would stay out of Europe’s conflicts but oppose European colonization or re-colonization in the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt amended the doctrine, proclaiming the right of U.S. intervention throughout the Americas if political instability or financial insolvency increased the chances of European intervention. This corollary emboldened other presidents to meddle in Latin America, including Wilson’s ill-starred foray into the Mexican Civil War.

The 2024 Republican candidates’ martial rhetoric on unilateral military action in Mexico echoes the failed policies of early twentieth-century progressives and the Bush administration after 9/11. Yet most Republican candidates have repudiated the Bush administration’s general interventionist foreign policy that led to the protracted quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A better policy would be to deal with drug use by cutting demand through changing culture and by remediation through medical treatment instead of aggressively and unsuccessfully trying to reduce supply using law enforcement or military action. Still, those solutions aren’t macho enough for a party whose base wants to blame Mexico for what is America’s drug addiction problem.

Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute and author of several books, including, No War For Oil: U.S. Dependency and the Middle East.

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Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro resembled former U.S. president Donald Trump in so many respects that he became known as the “Trump of the tropics.” Bolsonaro’s brand of right-wing populism certainly paralleled much of what Trump exhibited in terms of policies, ideology, and rhetoric. But the resemblance became especially marked in the way each man threatened his country’s system of democracy and respect for free elections.

Fearing defeat in his re-election bid last autumn, Bolsonaro—just like Trump—made unfounded accusations of widespread voting irregularities and suggested that if he did not win then it must be because the election was rigged. He even made some of the same assertions as some Trump supporters did about supposedly rigged voting machines. After his election loss, Bolsonaro, like Trump, refused to accept the outcome of the vote as legitimate.

Bolsonaro’s inculcation among his followers of his lie about a supposedly rigged election led to a violent riot and ransacking of government offices in Brasilia, two years and two days after Trump’s corresponding election lie led his supporters to attack and ransack the U.S. Capitol. Similarly to how Trump later would sometimes talk about the Capitol rioters as “loving,” “great,” and “peaceful” people, Bolsonaro described the Brasilia rioters as “little old women and little old men, with Brazilian flags on their back and Bibles under their arms.”

Like Trump, Bolsonaro did not attend his successor’s inauguration—which in Brazil’s case meant not participating in the traditional transfer of the presidential sash from the outgoing to the incoming president. Like Trump, Bolsonaro instead flew to Florida.

But there the stories diverge. Trump is still a major and active political factor in the United States and currently is the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. But Bolsonaro has just been barred by Brazil’s electoral court from running for any public office until at least 2030, because of his election lies. Specifically, the court determined that Bolsonaro had violated election laws when during last year’s campaign he held a televised meeting with foreign diplomats in which he made some of his baseless claims about the voting system being rigged against him.

The United States does not have any institution comparable to Brazil’s electoral court, with the power that the court has under Brazil’s constitution to sideline offender candidates. The U.S. Federal Election Commission has only a limited mandate to investigate violations of campaign finance law, and much of the time in recent years the commission has been crippled anyway by partisan division or lack of a quorum. The U.S. judicial system is geared more toward achieving justice between private parties than toward holding politicians accountable for offenses against democracy. The one determination in a U.S. court of law about the lies concerning supposedly rigged voting machines was in a case involving two private parties, with Fox News—the principal mass media purveyor of Trumpist election lies—paying a $787.5 million settlement to a manufacturer of voting machines.

None of this is to say that Brazilian judicial or political mechanisms can or should be installed in the United States. The establishment of a body comparable to Brazil’s electoral court would require an improbable constitutional change. Given how much the composition, and to a large extent the conduct, of the U.S. Supreme Court has become wrapped in partisanship, it is questionable whether even if such a constitutional provision existed, the resulting court would function the way the one in Brazil has. Moreover, giving a court such powers over politicians would lead to accusations that the court itself was undemocratic. Such accusations have been heard in Brazil, as they are heard today in Israel as a rationale for the Netanyahu government’s plan to curb the judiciary’s role in reviewing legislation.

Not just in Brazil, however, but in many Western democracies, a centralized role for courts and/or commissions to oversee elections in a fair and nonpartisan manner works rather well. For example, in the United Kingdom—the original source of much of American political culture—an electoral commission and independent boundary commissions that draw constituency lines perform those functions, not entirely without controversy but generally in a way that is widely accepted as democratic and unbiased.

An argument is sometimes made that a decentralized system of election administration, as prevails in the United States, is less vulnerable to serious corruption. But in practice, that decentralized system has seen parties that control state legislatures indulging in extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression laws. Such partisan manipulation is a major reason that in the Freedom House scorecard on political rights, the United States currently ranks behind 64 other countries—not only Western democracies such as the United Kingdom but many others worldwide, from Micronesia to Mongolia.

The Trump part of the story is not over, and more accountability regarding the attempt to overturn the 2020 election result may follow from special counsel Jack Smith’s ongoing investigation and a parallel inquiry by the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia. But even criminal convictions of Trump in these cases would not bar him from running for office.

The story in Brazil is not over, either, and not only because Bolsonaro is also subject to further criminal investigations. Much will depend on the direction set by other politicians on the Brazilian Right. Some of them are already moving on to leaders other than Bolsonaro, although there also is talk of Bolsonaro’s wife or one of his sons running for president.

For Brazil, or any other country, to be a healthy democracy requires major parties both left of center and right of center that respect democratic norms. A Brazilian voter who values democracy but disagrees with the economic or social policies of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—or who consider Lula, who served time in prison on corruption charges, unfit for office—needs someplace to turn.

The United States also, to be a healthy democracy, needs responsible, democracy-respecting parties on both the Left and the Right, something it does not now have. A democracy cannot survive if the task of maintaining democratic norms falls on only one side of the political spectrum, whether that is the Left or the Right.

The different turns taken by the stories of the Trump of the tropics and the Trump of Mar-a-Lago may reflect not only the different constitutional mechanisms in Brazil and the United States but also how the national histories of the two countries lead its citizens to think about democracy and threats to democracy. Especially during the Independence Day season—and probably even more so as the nation approaches its semiquincentennial—Americans have a tendency toward smugness about their polity, notwithstanding that mediocre score from Freedom House. “World’s oldest democracy” and all that. Many Americans tend to take for granted their nation’s democracy and political stability, and they should not.

Brazil has not been as historically blessed. As recently as 1985 it was under a military dictatorship. Perhaps this has made Brazilians more conscious of how fragile democracy can be and of threats to it. Too many citizens of the United States are insufficiently conscious of how immediate is the threat to their own democracy.

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

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In a timely warning about what could soon happen stateside, European Union (EU) regulators are shamelessly weaponizing antitrust in an attempt to dislodge Silicon Valley’s hold over European consumers. Aggressive regulation of technology companies, especially American ones operating in Europe, is nothing new for Brussels lawmakers. The EU has been waging its war against Silicon Valley for some time. It employs an extremely loose definition of “monopoly,” passing sweeping regulations which broadside the U.S. tech industry. Warm words about innovation and competition, which often accompany new European antitrust laws, have not helped its own efforts at such.

The main front in Brussels’ antitrust battle is a pair of bills with innocuous-sounding names: the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA). Together, they form a wide-ranging legislative package that aims to tackle past, present, and future problems with Internet use in one fell swoop. The time bombs in these two pieces of legislation are too numerous to name.

They propose, for example, preventing children from viewing adult content by mandating age verification for websites. That obviously won’t protect many young eyes; having grown up in the digital age, many kids are more adept than most adults at using VPNs and other tools to dodge digital obstacles. Standard age verification tools look like Stone Age technology compared to those children use to, among other things, play Fortnite on their school’s Wi-Fi network.

When the EU implements its blanket restrictions on content access, those tools will become even more accessible and sophisticated than they already are in Europe, leaving the law redundant. It could be disastrous for data privacy and security. Adult users will have to comply with ID checks. Criminals trading stolen personal information online is already common. Laws like this, which compel legitimate Internet users to hand over their details, will be a boon for online criminals profiting off it.

Through bills like the DMA and DSA, the EU insists on bombarding technology companies with gargantuan responsibilities, such as obliging online service providers to review user content pre-upload to tackle copyright violations, accompanied by the promise of relentless enforcement. The consequences for free speech and investment in Europe are likely to be dire. Europe’s share of global venture-capital investments fell dramatically in the 2010s, and data since then suggests the trend is continuing.

Most U.S. tech companies will have to modify their practices significantly to comply with these laws, such as by dramatically expanding their content moderation efforts, which seems sure to make their platforms much less convenient to use. They have a negligible impact on online safety, since it’s so easy to skirt the rules online. See no further than the creation of “PizzaGPT” after Italy banned ChatGPT.

Like most EU tech regulation, and indeed EU regulation in many other policy areas, the DMA and DSA reek of protectionism. When defending their aggressive approach to antitrust, European lawmakers speak of their desire to foster a new generation of European tech entrepreneurs and start-ups. But shutting out foreign innovators won’t help achieve that. Their measures hamstring innovation, increase costs for companies and consumers, and set Europe behind in the innovation race by curating an environment that is unduly hostile to American technology companies.

Even the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, brimming with competition between industry giants like Google, Microsoft, and insurgent new forces like OpenAI, is not enough to ward off the sledgehammer of EU regulation—in this case, the recent AI Act.

The EU boasts that it has created “the world’s first comprehensive AI law.” In practice, the Act clumsily categorizes some AI technologies as “high risk.” Creators of “high risk” products, which include any AI related to toys, cars, education, or any kind of biometric identification, will face a series of strenuous “conformity assessment procedures” and “horizontal mandatory requirements” before they can trade within the EU.

The Act also promises to “protect fundamental rights throughout the whole AI systems’ lifecycle” through further ongoing centralized monitoring of “high risk” technologies. Meanwhile, the Act classifies other technologies, such as real-time biometric identification, as “unacceptable risk” and bans them outright, cutting Europeans off from any innovative new products which use them. Rushing to be the first to regulate a fast-changing emerging technology when the landscape remains unclear is more of a curse than a boon for good policymaking.

Like many EU tech regulations, the AI Act is comprehensive—so much so that its sweeping pre-market requirements almost seem designed to make life difficult for technology companies wanting to do business in Europe. EU lawmaking often tars those companies with the same brush, seeing them all as part of a single monopolistic force rather than the competing forces they are.

Europe’s bad example ought to serve as a warning. The risk of the United States falling down a similar regulatory rabbit hole is real and urgent. Activist regulators in the Biden administration, such as the FTC’s Lina Khan, have made clear their admiration for the European approach. Only a concerted effort to speak up for basic freedoms and common sense in antitrust policy can halt the tide of overregulation in antitrust.

Jason Reed is a British policy writer based in London, UK, contributing to a wide range of outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. He works as Global Projects Manager at Young Voices, a U.S.-based non-profit organization. He tweets @JasonReed624.

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