The National Interest

Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently finished his first tour of Central Asia. His visit began in Astana, Kazakhstan, where he met with the C5+1 Foreign Ministers during a C5 Ministerial Meeting and ended in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on March 1. In Uzbekistan, in response to a self-imposed question regarding Russia’s disregard for other countries’ sovereignty, Blinken stated, “That’s exactly why we remain committed to standing for the sovereignty, the territorial integrity, the independence not only of Ukraine, but for countries across Central Asia and, indeed, around the world.”

Although Blinken’s visit may be characterized as a refresh in relations between the United States and Central Asian countries, his rhetoric of pledging support for Central Asia’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence is beating a dead horse.

Blinken’s rhetoric aligns with a 2020 report released by the State Department, United States Strategy for Central Asia 2019-2025: Advancing Sovereignty and Economic Prosperity. The report stressed “border security” and “stabilizing Afghanistan” as crucial policy issues. Additionally, the recently released National Security Strategy (NSS) frames Russia and China as presenting “different challenges” in Central Asia. The document asserts Russia “poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system.” Meanwhile, Central Asia perceives itself to be in an anxiety-inducing situation facing challenges on two fronts with the potential of spillover of terrorism from Afghanistan and Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Militarism has long characterized U.S. involvement in Central Asia, as the United States established military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan during the war in Afghanistan. However, it is not the United States’ responsibility to preserve the sovereignty of all foreign nations. On top of this, Central Asia is not facing the threat of subjugation to a regional hegemon as Russia, China, and to a lesser extent, the EU have stakes in the region. Instead, the United States should prioritize commercial engagement with Central Asia partners and avoid establishing security commitments.

Russia’s influence in Central Asia has waned recently following its invasion of Ukraine; for instance, Moscow has withdrawn troops from the region to serve as reinforcements on the Ukrainian frontlines. On the diplomatic front, Central Asian leaders have protested Russia’s aggression by not voicing support for Vladimir Putin’s invasion, providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine, not allowing its citizens to participate in the war, and accepting Russians fleeing Putin’s mobilization efforts. However, the United States must avoid viewing this as an opportunity to fill the security void left by Russia. Military engagement like the Steppe Eagle exercises in Kazakhstan should be discontinued, given that the United States faces no credible threats in Central Asia and they expose U.S. troops to potential unnecessary blowback.

Additionally, given the war in Ukraine, it is difficult to conceive of a successful Russian assault on the Central Asian countries. Russia is primarily concerned with stability in Central Asia rather than conquering the region by brute force. A Russian invasion would absolutely undermine security in an area that Putin has long viewed as “Russia’s most stable region.”

Instead, the United States should focus on commercial partnerships with the Central Asian countries without expecting political favors that would agitate Russia or China. Central Asian countries clearly do not want to be vassals of Russia or China but do not want to sever ties with these great powers completely. As Kazakh Deputy Foreign Minister Roman Vassilenko explicitly stated, Kazakhstan would not “allow its territory to be used to circumvent sanctions” and would bear that in mind “when it comes to assessing any potential new initiatives.”

Amid sanctions on Russia, Central Asia has shown itself to be open to doing business with new partners, such as the United States. Energy and rare-earth minerals are abundant commodities in Central Asia that the United States needs to maintain a high standard of living. The minerals found in Central Asia, such as neodymium and lanthanum, are used to produce technology such as loudspeakers, hard drives, wind turbines, and television screens. Therefore, the United States should focus on securing these resources while maintaining open and transparent commercial relationships with Central Asian countries and other great powers like Russia and China. In addition, the United States can enable Central Asian countries to adopt more environmentally friendly extraction methods of energy and rare-earth minerals to reduce contributions to climate change. Russia and China would also benefit from these improved methods.

Openness and transparency will also be necessary for future diplomatic actions in Central Asia as well. The United States can lead an initiative for inclusive diplomatic forums and meetings via the C5+1, along with similar groups like “Japan plus Central Asia” and European Union partners. Transparency and openness with the Russia and China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization will be critical to incorporating China and Russia into future discussions and negotiations. Red lines and expectations should be established and abided by to address sources of friction between the great powers.

The United States must focus on concrete, narrow interests in Central Asia that are realistically attainable. Central Asian countries, now more than ever, are looking to expand their commercial partner base amid the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. Peaceful cooperation should be the U.S. strategy, not unnecessary entanglement.

Alex Little is an MS graduate of Georgia Tech and specializes in Russian and Central Asian affairs.

Most people assume military innovation and transformation are two sides of the same coin, and in many respects they are. Many also believe military innovation and transformation are good, never bothering to “look under the hood” and ask the hard questions about the integration, testing, and validation needed to assure a positive outcome and bring about genuine improvement in operational capability

Two recent articles address the virtues and pitfalls of redesigning a military force, albeit from different perspectives. These articles deserve a closer look given ongoing innovations and transformations across the military services. The poster child for both revolutions is the United States Marine Corps, which is well down the road of redesigning and restructuring itself for what it perceives, correctly or not, are the challenges of the twenty-first century. Pursuing the unwise strategy of “divest to invest,” the Marines have shed approximately 50 percent of the combined arms capabilities needed to fight and win today to acquire new weapons and technology for specific future threats. These new capabilities are at least six to eight years away from being fielded in sufficient quantities to be operationally relevant. The Marine Corps is foolishly gambling that potential enemies will ignore the window of opportunity these misguided actions present them. 

The first article, “Dangerous Changes: When Military Innovation Harms Combat Effectiveness,” is authored by Kendrick Kuo. One of Kuo’s most important cautions is “The notion that innovative and better military performance go hand in hand is thus intuitive. It is also wrong.” True innovation is the result of a well-developed and tested operating concept that can be vetted through a robust combat development process to determine integrated requirements necessary to effectively implement the concept. The enablers include doctrine, force structure and organizations, training and education, equipment, and facilities and support. A good example of failed innovation is the flawed Pentomic Army Divisions developed between 1957 and 1963 to counter the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Conversely, an example where innovation succeeded was the Army’s Air-Land Battle concept that was developed to counter the Warsaw Pact’s plan to overrun NATO defenses in Europe in the 1980s and was later validated during Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait and Iraq. 

A valuable second observation by Kuo is 

“harmful innovation is more likely to occur when military services … make desperate gambles on new capabilities to meet over ambitious goals while cannibalizing older capabilities. The military services treat innovations as a silver bullet and endorses destroying traditional capabilities before innovation advances can justify their beliefs about the new one’s effectiveness.” 

“Harmful innovation” is exemplified by Marine Corps Force Design 2030. The Corps has mortgaged its current and future capabilities as a global force-in-readiness and combined arms team valued by combatant commanders for the allure of long-range precision weapons and associated technology that are experimental and may not perform as expected.

A final reflection by Kuo is during combat, “…the military service is likely to discover that it has overspecialized in the new capability to its own detriment. To improve performance, the service may try to downgrade the centrality of the new capability and restore traditional capabilities that remain surprisingly relevant and necessary.” This conclusion highlights the unacceptable risks associated with “divest to invest.” In the case of the Marine Corps, traditional capabilities for global response have been lost today because the equipment, personnel, and logistics required have been drastically reduced or totally discarded.

The second article, “Transforming the Marine Corps for an Uncertain Future” by General Charles Wilhelm, USMC (Ret), compares and contrasts two different approaches for transforming the Marine Corps. One approach resulted in a more relevant and capable service with a global focus. The other approach will result in a less relevant and less capable service with a narrow geographical focus.

The first transformation began in the late 1980s. The Marine Corps commandant began to refocus the service on its traditional core competency as the “first to fight” with a new emphasis on the doctrine of maneuver warfare and the intellectual development of Marines. In Wilhelm’s words, “Marines would outfight and outthink their adversaries.” The Marine Corps was better configured to support the combatant commanders, as specified in the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. Marines were made more capable of supporting and participating in joint and special operations.

The next two commandants built on and solidified these principles and established a systems-based approach to identify and develop future capabilities: the Marine Corps Combat Development Process. The process allowed Marines to remain ready, relevant, and capable of responding to constantly shifting threats and national security priorities. Concepts led the way to the identification, prioritization, and integration of doctrine, force structure, equipment, training and education, and facilities and support. Current capabilities were maintained until new capabilities were developed, tested, and fielded.

The second transformation begun in 2020 rejected the systems-based approach in favor of one based on intuition and hope. The range and depth of capabilities needed to fight and win today are being eliminated or significantly degraded to acquire future, experimental capabilities, creating a window of opportunity for our adversaries. Marine forces are being optimized for one task, against one enemy, in one specific location. According to Wilhelm, the Marine Corps is being transformed into a “less tactically and operationally capable and less strategically relevant force than the one that emerged from the previous transformation.” 

Both articles raise concerns about military innovation and transformation that should alarm the new Congress. Congressional oversight is needed, to include hearings where witnesses for and against ongoing transformations are asked hard, thoughtful questions about whether the services, especially the Marine Corps, are transforming in a manner that supports current and future U.S. national security objectives. The Congress cannot assume every prospective military innovation and transformation is necessarily good for the national defense simply because it offers seductive budgetary solutions and illusions of future “silver bullet” technologies. To paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan, our elected representatives can trust but they must verify.

Brigadier General Jerry McAbee (USMC, Ret) is a career artillery officer who served thirty-six years on active duty.

Brigadier General Mike Hayes (USMC, Ret.) is a career artillery officer who served thirty-three years on active duty.

Image: DVIDS.

The 118th Congress is working at a fever pitch to find ways to economically punish China.

With headline-grabbing titles like Fair Trade with China Enforcement Act, Ending China’s Developing Nation Status Act, and Neutralizing Unfair Chinese Export Subsidies Act of 2023, a flurry of bills in both the House and Senate seek to impose costs on China for its coercive economic and national security policies. Many of these bills are a step in the right direction. Others are simply political theatre. While bashing China is undoubtedly in vogue, the costs and benefits of these bills need serious scrutiny. Good intentions can backfire; these bills might hurt the US more than China.

Take, for example, the China Oil Export Prohibition Act of 2023. Penned by Senator Marco Rubio, the bill calls for banning US exports of oil products to China. It follows on the heels of the Protecting America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China Act, which forbids the drawdown of US strategic oil reserves for sale to China. The latter will do little to hurt China, which accounts for just 7.5 of the 296 million barrels of Strategic Petroleum Reserve Washington put up for sale. In any case, that window has closed. Rubio’s bill, which one study says has a 20 percent chance of passing, lacks support from Democrats, yet could pick up steam in the wake of China’s balloon incident.

What’s important about Rubio’s bill is that it excludes natural gas and liquified natural gas (LNG). But this might change for several reasons, not all of which are about Beijing. For example, a ban on LNG exports to China could complement the Democrats’ push to move away natural gas.

Still, banning LNG exports to China would be a mistake. It would amount to the expropriation of US assets dedicated to fulfilling contracts with China, and force Beijing closer to Moscow.

In 2021, China imported more LNG than any other country. That year saw U.S. LNG exports to China reach an all-time-high of 400,000 million cubic feet. By 2022, this figure had plunged to 100,000 cubic feet, in part due to political uncertainty about the prospect of future sales. This puts American jobs on the line. It also positions Russia, as China’s third-largest supplier of natural gas, to pick up the slack.

In an essay titled “How Congress Can Protect Americans from Communist China’s Bid for Domination,” Rubio explains that “[f]irst and foremost, we need to prevent markets from enriching Beijing-controlled firms.” To this end, he’s sponsored no fewer than eight bills taking aim at China, covering everything from corporate corruption to “fair trade” and investment in companies on the US government’s blacklists. No one can excuse Rubio of “being soft” on China.

That said, Rubio’s China Oil Export Prohibition Act of 2023 would do far more harm than good for the United States if LNG were to be included in a subsequent draft, or in a related bill.

In his remarks on the twenty-year anniversary of China joining the World Trade Organization, Rubio said that U.S. approval “was rooted in a flawed assumption” that put “economic integration” over “our national security.” This view is also held by the Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA), which asked the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence to “examine the national and economic security implications of China’s actions to contract for significant volume of US LNG for periods of up to 20 years.” But this national security argument doesn’t hold water.

That’s because, as the IECA further notes, China is “also locking up large volumes of LNG from Russia, Australia and Qatar.” That’s the point: if the United States were to ban LNG exports to China, Russia would make up the difference, solidifying an alliance that is a growing threat to U.S. national security.

The implication of Rubio’s bill is that an export ban, like “our national security,” can’t be viewed in a vacuum. The global economy is replete with trade partners. A ban on U.S. LNG exports would only imperil good American jobs and investments, and deepen China’s alliance with Russia.

Marc L. Busch is the Karl F. Landegger Professor of International Business Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and a Global Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition. Follow him on Twitter @marclbusch.

Image: Shutterstock.

Earlier this month, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to restore diplomatic ties after seven years and signed a China-brokered agreement in what is being termed a breakthrough deal for the region. How does this impact and alter America’s geopolitical stature in the region? What are the first and second-tier consequences of weakening the U.S. presence and position in the Gulf in favor of Washington’s main geopolitical rival?

While some see the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement as a striking diplomatic success for China, others claim it is nothing more than Beijing attempting to insert itself into a strategic region and play peacemaker. After all, the failure of China’s “Going Out” campaign, aimed at increasing foreign investments and infrastructure development abroad, caused multi-billion-dollar losses. Beijing’s Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, where officials exhibited aggressive and insulting behavior, backfired. However, the newly-reached détente between the Middle East’s leading Sunni and Shia rivals improves China’s ability to leverage energy ties in the region, while great power rivalry in the Gulf may heighten tensions there. 

The United States has found it difficult to help its allies neutralize the Iranian nuclear program and multipronged Iranian extremist and imperialist stratagems, which include supporting the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Simultaneously, the United States allowed its relationship with long-time ally Saudi Arabia to go from bad to worse. All the while, China was expanding its influence in the Middle East. Thus, a power realignment in the energy-rich region was unfolding while America slept. It’s time to wake up.

The latest Saudi-Iranian development did not come out of nowhere. China has developed robust political and economic relationships with the Middle East through increasing trade and investment in the region. By maintaining a steady cash flow, Beijing has transformed economic partnerships into political ones. As the British used to say: “soldiers followed traders.”

There are several strategic vehicles the Chinese use: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was expanded to several Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran and Turkey, as “dialogue partners.” This calculated growth did not come overnight; it demonstrates the deliberate pace of Beijing’s growing influence. 

Chinese president Xi Jinping’s flagship venture, the Belt and Road initiative (BRI) is aimed at gaining access to natural resources in the Middle East and beyond. Recent contracts under the BRI include three ports, two in Israel and one in the United Arab Emirates; thousands of miles of railroads and highways; twelve 5G contracts; a drone factory; and even an expansion project on the Suez Canal valued at $8.5 billion, with China investing close to $5 billion in the canal’s economic zone. The cumulative Chinese investment in the Gulf is $137.27 billion, while it reached $213.9 billion in the broader Middle East between 2005 and 2021.

China is also the biggest customer for both Saudi Arabian and Iranian oil, which explains Beijing’s interest in moving forward with a settlement between the two and their place among the top beneficiaries of the BRI. The Chinese have agreed to a $400 billion investment over the next twenty-five years in Iran’s banking, telecommunications, ports, railways, healthcare, and information technology sectors in exchange for a heavily discounted supply of Iranian oil. 

Even leaders who might be amicable to the West won’t push back on China’s creeping influence in regional matters given the economic benefits their countries can gain through ties with Beijing. The United States needs to come to grips with the depth of China’s financial reach and strategize to counter Beijing’s clear political intent.

The United States is also heavily invested in the Middle East, not just for economic interests, but for regional security—which directly affects its own national security. These investments are too important to jeopardize by ignoring China’s calculated attempts at undermining America’s role.

The next logical step for the United States is to push for Iran’s full compliance with the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, giving up all its highly enriched uranium, and allowing International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors full access to its nuclear facilities. The United States should also enhance its military cooperation with the Gulf states as the Iranian threat will not wane.

The influence of oil and gas trade on the region’s politics is too big to ignore. Energy markets are significant to geopolitical relationships—even if some U.S. stakeholders prefer a foreign policy independent of the hydrocarbon economy. Finally, it is also important to engage with the Gulf nations in their efforts to diversify their economies, where the United States has much to offer in high technologies, internet technologies, health, education, and other industries.

As Xi visits Moscow pretending to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, checking China’s influence in strategic areas of the world, including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, is becoming vital for U.S. national security. Competition with China in science, technology, business, diplomacy, and global security has become the defining theme of the twenty-first century. The Iranian-Saudi deal brokered by China is a test of Washington’s power and skill. It is a challenge the United States cannot afford to fail.

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is Director of the Energy, Growth, and Security Program at the International Tax and Investment Center and a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is the founder of International Market Analysis Inc www.IMAStrategy.com

Image: Salma Bashir Motiwala / Shutterstock.com

On March 14, Lebanese banks renewed a nationwide strike in response to ongoing investigations and recent rulings regarding their policies and practices since the start of the country’s brutal economic collapse in 2019. The bank strike, spearheaded by the Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL), which represents Lebanese commercial banks, has all but frozen transactions for the average Lebanese citizen in the name of fighting so-called judicial overreach. But even the most casual observer of the eastern Mediterranean country’s political discourse can quickly understand what truly underpins the strike: a zero-sum demand from Lebanon’s political and economic elite for the right to rob the country blind.

The bank strike first began on February 7 as a result of Judge Ghada Aoun’s years-long investigation into money laundering and corrupt practices in the Lebanese banking sector. The investigation is particularly focused on commercial banks, although Aoun is also investigating the Banque Du Liban (Central Bank of Lebanon) and its long-running governor, Riad Salameh. Aoun charged Salameh with illicit enrichment on February 21 following a long-running investigation into his efforts to transfer public funds into his brother’s bank accounts in Switzerland and other European countries.

Lebanese banks wasted little time responding to the investigation, especially after Aoun charged two senior bankers from Bank Audi and Audi Group with money laundering for refusing to lift banking secrecy terms connected to the accounts of senior bank officials. ABL also took issue with another early-February ruling by the Court of Cassation against Fransabank regarding a lawsuit from two Lebanese citizens, Ayad al-Gharabaoui Ibrahim and Hanane Maroun al-Hajj Ibrahim, who demanded access to their bank deposits. The suit was ultimately decided in the plaintiffs’ favor, leading the ABL to strike as early as March 2022, when the first of many decisions against the bank were made regarding the same case.

The Fransabank ruling is substantial as it orders the banks to pay the plaintiffs in cash following their account closings. The bank originally preferred to pay by check to avoid losses in bank holdings given the disparity between the Lebanese lira and U.S. dollar. Such a ruling is crucial, as it sets a precedent protecting small depositors from harmful bank practices—arguably the major economic sticking point for Lebanese citizens since 2019.

While the ABL originally announced an indefinite strike, political intervention led it temporarily suspend the nationwide strike for a week, beginning on February 24. “Based on the Prime Minister's wish, the banks' sensitivity to difficult economic conditions, and the need to secure banking services to all citizens at the end of the month, [the ABL] have decided to suspend the strike temporarily for a week,” the bank noted in an official statement.

Indeed, the Lebanese political system was again swooping in to save the banking system. Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced on February 23 that he would ask the security forces and Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi to not act on Aoun’s orders, citing “an overstepping of authority.” Mawlawi complied with this order. Further, Lebanon’s top prosecutor, Ghassan Oweidat, ordered Aoun to “temporarily suspend [her] investigative procedures until decisions are taken on the issue raised.” Aoun described the actions as “a total breakdown of justice” and “an unprecedented interference in the work of the judiciary.” Amid Aoun’s continued efforts, the banks renewed the strike on March 14 and again on March 21-22, announcing an end at the start of Ramadan.

Unfortunately, as evidenced by the ABL’s ongoing intransigence this month, Aoun’s statements define how Lebanon has landed in such a precarious economic and political situation. Since the 2019 October Revolution, the Lebanese people have continuously protested what they rightly describe as open corruption, but to no avail. Rather than reform the system collapsing around them, Lebanese elites in banking and political circles have consolidated their wealth, security, and power within a Ponzi scheme resembling a glass house of cards set to collapse. The World Bank’s assessment of the country’s economic state described this in the starkest of terms in a 2021 report, highlighting the situation as one of the worst economic meltdowns in modern history. The ABL’s actions, as well as that of the prime minister, are a continuation of the direct lines of corruption long evident in Lebanon and undergirding this meltdown.

A natural response to such a scenario is reform, which Lebanese citizens, world leaders, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have aggressively called for in recent years. Central to this debate are the capital controls and banking secrecy laws that would, if drafted along the IMF’s standards, fight back against shady banking practices and protect individual depositors as opposed to wealthy, connected elites. Unsurprisingly, the ABL rejects the IMF’s recommendations and that of the Lebanese people’s basic right to access their bank accounts, as well as basic international transparency standards. This is not an objective position on the part of Lebanon’s banking sector—it is an intentional ploy to avoid accountability for robbing Lebanese citizens of their savings while attempting to wait out the crisis until international support arrives (as has occurred in the past).

However, international support does not appear to be on the horizon this time around. World leaders are fed up with Lebanon’s ruling class for its refusal to change and reform. Rather than read the tea leaves, Lebanese elites will opt to not allow investigations to challenge the status quo. The Beirut Blast investigation is a case in point given the political interventions surrounding it, presenting a scenario in which it is difficult to see other investigations succeeding, especially without stronger international pressure. In this light, keep an eye on scapegoats (i.e., Salameh) who could be sacrificed to the people in exchange for window-dressing reforms.

Alexander Langlois is a foreign policy analyst focused on the Middle East and North Africa. He holds an M.A. in International Affairs from American University’s School of International Service. Follow him at @langloisajl.

Image: Shutterstock.

Mexico’s presidential elections are more than a year away, but the jostling has already begun. The president is already limited to one six-year term, and the left-wing governing party, MORENA, has already narrowed it to two viable candidates: Mexico City’s Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard. Officially, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador—or AMLO, as he’s popularly known—states that MORENA supporters will choose the candidate by a poll. Still, some observers expect the president to use el dedazo to select his successor unofficially. Regardless of the primary’s results, the presidential candidate will be elected in July 2024. Yet with MORENA likely keeping the presidency and possibly Congress, some wonder whether Mexico is returning to an era of one-party democracy. While there are some indications that MORENA can lead Mexico without meaningful opposition for decades, there are several questions about whether the party can successfully be in power without AMLO as its head.

Mexico’s Democratic Moment

Mexico has had a long-experienced history of authoritarian rule, whether openly so or not. In the twentieth century, this took the form of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), which was founded to preserve the power structure that emerged after the turmoil in the 1910s. While the country was officially a democracy, PRI’s monopolistic control of Mexico’s political institutions remained strong until the late 1980s, thanks to the party’s repression of dissidents, co-option of interest groups, and electoral fraud. Their grasp of the country fell only due to economic turmoil starting in the 1970s and a split between the party’s left-wing base and its neoliberal elite. Mexico’s democratic moment was short-lived, as the rise of competitive elections spawned political violence that plagues the country today.

Furthermore, the administrations of Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), the conservative party, proved to be no less capable of promoting social equity or clamping down on corruption than their PRI predecessors. With the failure of the PAN to live up to this moment, many Mexicans became disillusioned about democracy, turning to AMLO and his left-wing, anti-establishment MORENA party. In 2018, MORENA won a historic victory, as AMLO was the first candidate in thirty years to win with an absolute majority, cementing both his presidency and his party’s dominance.

Can MORENA be the new PRI?

On the surface, MORENA appears capable of re-establishing Mexico as a one-party democracy for two main reasons.

First, the opposition remains fractured and discredited after decades of misrule from both the PAN and the PRI. While both parties cooperated under the alliance Va Por Mexico and had some success in the 2021 midterm elections, their coalition wasn’t enough to prevent MORENA from winning four gubernatorial elections last year. Moreover, the coalition could split the vote if the parties ran separate candidates for the presidency. But another reason is that MORENA seems to have captured most political institutions, solidifying its control over the government. This can be seen partly by the party using the military and national guard to provide security and social services. Additionally, a recent election law passed by the party in the Mexican Congress cut the national electoral institute budget and election oversight. Most Mexicans do not approve of these reforms, and the country was awash in protests to prevent the law from being passed to no avail. Without a strong bastion of political or bureaucratic opposition, MORENA is at the cusp of having a monopoly of political power for decades.

Second, as powerful as MORENA is today, whether the party can sustain its power permanently remains an open question. It has failed to deliver a new era of peace, prosperity, and order to Mexico, despite the lofty promises made in its foundation. AMLO’s proclaimed “Fourth Transformation” has been a series of contradictory policies that haven’t delivered the robust economic growth seen from 1950–1980, or become mired in bureaucratic boondoggles, such as the Maya Train or energy reform. Some of his changes will indeed take longer to bear fruit, such as the recent nationalization of Mexico’s lithium reserves, though MORENA’s legitimacy will corrode if they cannot provide faster economic growth.

MORENA without AMLO?

For now, MORENA’s failures haven’t dampened its popularity, thanks to the charisma and popularity of AMLO. Yet his enduring popularity masks an issue of whether the party can succeed without him at its head. Political parties that depend on an individual for power have difficulty surviving without their charismatic leader, such as UKIP’s Nigel Farage in the UK. The only way parties can survive is through a measure of institutionalization, which develops talent through the party and provides a measure of political cohesion. The PRI was adept at this, as there was massive coordination and organization in the party from the federal government to the municipalities. So far, AMLO hasn’t created much of an organization within MORENA, as he made the party into his electoral campaigning with almost no consideration for the party after his departure. With AMLO’s successors experiencing ongoing criminal issues or lacking charisma, MORENA’s standing power will likely not last long after its leader’s departure.

If MORENA wishes to sustain itself in power, it must develop a campaigning and political organization separate from AMLO’s personality to survive. Unfortunately for the party, AMLO has demonstrated remarkably little interest in supporting a political movement that he is not leading. This bodes poorly for AMLO’s successor, as that candidate will struggle to develop his (or her) own independent administration. In other words, AMLO will not really leave the presidency—he will instead allow his successor to wear the sash while he remains in the background. This bodes poorly for Mexico—historically, such arrangements do not last long, providing further political instability in a country already awash in poverty and violence.

Heberto Limas-Villers is a management consultant living in Washington, DC. He was previously a graduate fellow at the National Defense Industrial Association focusing on naval policy and the defense industrial base.

On Thursday, a drone attack on a U.S. base in northeastern Syria served as the latest reminder that the United States remains at war in Syria and U.S. personnel are at risk. The drone attack, which U.S. intelligence swiftly concluded was of “Iranian origin,” killed one U.S. contractor and wounded six others, including five U.S. service members. In response, President Joe Biden ordered the U.S. military to carry out precision airstrikes against facilities belonging to groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, killing eight fighters. The tit-for-tat escalation continued into Friday morning, when “lots of rockets” were fired at a different U.S. base in Syria, this time in the southeast of the country, though no casualties were reported.

This is not the first time that U.S. personnel have been targeted in Syria—and it is unlikely to be the last. American soldiers have no shortage of enemies in the country and have faced regular attacks since they arrived more than seven years ago. What began as a U.S. regime change effort against the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has since morphed into an open-ended confrontation—where the official mission of suppressing the Islamic State has obscured U.S. efforts to counter Russia and Iran. These ambiguous objectives have ensured that the United States is no closer to leaving Syria than it was when it first put boots on the ground.

Americans in Syria are confronting real dangers. According to the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s Iran Projectile Tracker, Iran-backed militias have targeted U.S. service members with at least seventy-two munitions since 2017 (not including this week’s attacks), with more than 90 percent of those occurring in the last two years. Notably, this data does not include attacks by the Syrian government or Russia-backed forces, including the infamous Wagner Group, which launched a daring, massive assault on about forty American commandos in 2018 that left 200 to 300 of the attackers dead. Nor does it account for the Russian military’s harassment of Americans in Syria. Just last week, the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Russian Air Force has increasingly been flying over the positions of U.S. troops in a “provocative” manner. This behavior has also occurred on the ground: Russian troops have rammed U.S. convoys and, as an inspector general report to Congress recently found, “increased their violations” of agreed-upon deconfliction arrangements.

The Biden administration has vowed to continue defending the 900 U.S. service members in Syria for as long as they remain in the country—an apparently indefinite timeframe. Despite Biden moving to end or drawdown the United States’ other “endless wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, this policy has not been extended to Syria. Rather, Washington is ostensibly committed to fighting ISIS and pressuring the Assad regime, which continues to be squeezed by a robust, U.S.-directed sanctions regime.

Yet Washington is certainly aware that Damascus is not as isolated as it once was. Regional rapprochement with Syria is already in full swing; not only have the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman opened their doors to the Syrian government, but even Turkey and Saudi Arabia, once Assad’s fiercest enemies, are looking to reconcile.

Coming on the heels of a Chinese-brokered agreement that codified Saudi Arabia’s détente with Iran, the emerging Saudi-Syrian peace deal stands to further shift Middle Eastern geopolitics. If successful, Moscow’s assistance in restoring Riyadh and Damascus’ diplomatic ties after a decade of war will be a remarkable victory for another U.S. adversary—as well as for the entire region. In this regard, it will further impress upon regional elites that they have options beyond America to advance their political and security objectives.

Indeed, it is China and Russia—America’s so-called “great power competitors”—whose regional policies are now helping to stabilize the Middle East and support U.S. interests. China portrays itself as a friend to all and an enemy to none, allowing Beijing to position itself as an honest intermediary that can address the region’s problems in ways Washington cannot. Russia, too, is seen as a dependable partner—one that has stood by its Syrian ally through thick and thin—and an interlocutor that has proven its sensitivity to the needs of capitals as different as Damascus, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, and Tehran.

In contrast, the U.S. record is more troubled. It was the United States that invaded Iraq twenty years ago this week, unleashing chaos and violence across the region. It was also Washington that unilaterally blew up the international nuclear agreement with Iran—after the Obama administration had dragged its regional allies kicking and screaming to support the accord—setting Tehran on a glide path toward a nuclear weapons capability and increasing tensions in the Persian Gulf. The United States subsequently declined to defend Saudi Arabia and its Arab partners from Iran’s escalation in 2019 (ironically prompting Riyadh to later reconcile with Tehran), to say nothing of the fact that Washington has vacillated between pulling out of and leaning into the region across the last three presidential administrations.

Yet despite these doubts about U.S. reliability, and Washington’s concerns about perceived challenges from Russia and China, the United States must check its knee-jerk tendency to interpret all Russian and Chinese actions as coming at its expense. The Middle East is big enough for the United States, Russia, and China, especially since Beijing has a significant stake in regional stability so it can continue importing the region’s energy resources. The U.S. role in the region, as the UAE and Saudi Arabia continue to make clear, is not going away, but it is changing. Washington, therefore, needs to recognize that it should not and cannot try to do it all in the Middle East. Instead, it must reassess where its efforts can make the most positive difference, and where its most vital national interests truly lie.

Adam Lammon is a former executive editor at The National Interest and an analyst of Middle Eastern affairs based in Washington, DC. The opinions expressed in this article are his own. Follow him on Twitter @AdamLammon.

Image: DVIDS.

This month marks twenty years since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The bloodshed that followed cost Iraq and America dearly. Yet there was a winner in the chaos: Iraq’s neighbor and rival Iran. The invasion removed Iraq as a check on Iran; Tehran no longer had to fear the nation that invaded it in 1980. Ever since, U.S. strategy in the Middle East has had to deal with the consequences of a more powerful Tehran. “U.S. forces,” said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in Baghdad on March 7, “are ready to remain in Iraq.” Blocking Iran there and elsewhere has become a U.S. job that will never end. 

The invasion and the subsequent dismantling of the Iraqi state prompted lawlessness and the emergence of a new order rooted in violence, sectarianism, and corruption. A weak Iraq left the door open for Iranian influence. Tehran built militias and political movements within Iraq’s Shia majority and used these groups to target U.S. interests. The groups demanded a veto in Iraqi politics, using force when they didn’t get their way. 

The militias contributed to a sectarianization of politics and society that saw Baghdad segregate itself and religious minorities flee. Former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s own efforts to make the Iraqi military loyal to him alone contributed to its collapse against the Islamic State in 2014. An army that had received a decade of U.S. training and equipment abandoned Iraq’s second-largest city under pressure from a small band of lowlifes. 

ISIS’s rise (itself an aftershock of the Iraq invasion, which spawned ISIS predecessor Al Qaeda in Iraq) strengthened Iran’s hand further. As the Iraqi army failed, militias answered the call. Many of these militias were backed by Tehran. Efforts to integrate the militias into Iraq’s armed forces only bandaged the problem. These militias remain outside the state’s control, and have routinely shot rockets at the U.S. embassy and U.S. bases. In 2019, they stormed the Green Zone when the United States hit back. Counterbalancing these militias’ influence has become a major justification for the continued presence of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq. Countering the militias is a mission that will never end. 

The militias also smuggle arms into Syria and Lebanon. These weapons have triggered an Israeli interdiction campaign that has been a headache for U.S. efforts in the region. The weapons flow contributes to the Israeli military’s warnings that its next war with Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah will require a fast, aggressive air campaign that could have huge costs in Lebanon. U.S.-made bombs plunging into Beirut apartment blocks, even if aimed at Hezbollah bunkers below, will hurt America’s image in the region. And blocking the Iranian supply lines into the area has become a justification for keeping U.S. troops in Syria. Blocking roads our invasion opened is another mission that will never end.

The problems stretch beyond Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. The Gulf states fear an Iran unchecked by Iraq and seek a security guarantor. America is their best choice. The Iraq War and the Global War on Terrorism drew a huge U.S. troop presence to their shores; fear of Iran, plus big Gulf investments in the U.S. policy and defense advisory sectors, have helped keep them there. Crises with Iran have seen deployments of scarce U.S. assets like Patriot missile batteries.

At bottom, the invasion reflected a shift in U.S. Middle East strategy away from seeking balance and towards seeking transformation. We thought a free Iraq would inspire a wave of democratization in the region. This did not happen. Worse, we now do the balancing ourselves, rather than relying on our enemies’ self-interest to do the balancing for us. And Washington’s policy sphere is reluctant to return to letting the region balance itself. Balancing Iran is another mission that will never end.

Last but not least are Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. Their current state—high levels of enrichment, multiple enrichment facilities, and a diverse array of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles—is inseparable from the Iraq War. Without Iraq to fear, Iran has more power to aim at the United States. Top U.S. worries like nuclear weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles are not good tools for Iran to counter a strong Iraqi state on its border. Conventional military power, backed by short-range ballistic missiles, would be far better suited for that task. Building these Iraq-focused capabilities would draw resources away from Iranian efforts to develop tools for fighting America and Israel. 

To be sure, some Iranian advances in short-range ballistic missiles aimed at Iraq would have also increased the Iranian threat to U.S. bases in the region. But those risks are not at the same scale as the Iranian nuclear and missile threat we face today. With Iran enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade purity, fears are growing that Israel may strike Tehran’s nuclear sites, a move that could spark a major war.

Of course, we cannot know what the Middle East would look like today if the United States had not gone into Iraq. Yet it’s hard to envision a pathway that would have seen a similar rise in Iranian power. Invading Iraq brought many evils, but our long confrontation with Iran—one that may yet yield war—is one of the most enduring. 

John Allen Gay is executive director of the John Quincy Adams Society and coauthor of War With Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences.

Image: Shutterstock.

This week, Chinese president Xi Jinping met with Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Sino-Russo relations. During their meeting, Xi stated that Russia’s development had “significantly improved” while Putin claimed that China “made a colossal leap forward.”

The visit came just days after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin for committing war crimes in Ukraine. China is not a state party of the Rome Statute, a treaty recognizing the ICC. Thus, Xi’s visit suggests that China feels no need to hold the Russians accountable for their ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Many members of the international community are also skeptical of China’s neutrality in the war, given Xi’s close relationship with Putin.

But there are additional concerns about the Sino-Russo relationship. As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, reports have shown that the Russians are running low on ammunition, weapons, and military hardware. This was apparent during Russia’s recent missile strike on Ukraine, where the Russian military reportedly used older and outdated equipment. International sanctions have also limited Russia’s ability to operate in the global market. As a result, Russia has resorted to buying aid from Iran and North Korea. To date, Russia has purchased missiles and drones from the Iranians while North Korea has provided artillery shells and rockets to Russia.

Now, the international community believes that China “is considering sending lethal aid to Russia,” something that may have already occurred. According to a recent POLITICO report, China has sent assault rifles, drone shipments, and body armor to Russia. This would pose a direct threat to the world.

Why is this the case?

First, purchasing materiel from these countries will allow Russia to replenish its stockpiles, thereby allowing Moscow to continue its war in Ukraine. To date, the Russian Federation has shown no signs of ending the war. Instead, Russia has sought methods to continue its attempts to take over Ukraine. Prolonging the war would only result in greater hardships in Ukraine as well as across the globe. One quarter of Ukraine’s total population is displaced, thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, and numerous Ukrainian cities have been destroyed. Ukraine has already endured enough hardships. Thus, the international community should continue to pressure Russia to force an end to its war.

Second, a prolonged Russian war in Ukraine will increase global gas and food prices. The availability of crude oil has diminished, and there has become a “stark imbalance between supply and demand.” Moreover, Russia and Ukraine are major food producers for several countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Ukraine’s agricultural sector and environment have been severely damaged by the war, and this has made it more challenging to export food from Ukraine to different parts of the world. As a result, global food prices have increased, and the inability to export food easily to other regions has resulted in a global food crisis. Should Russia’s war continue, the lack of food exports could escalate to a global famine in these regions.

Finally, a prolonged Russian war could result in a global recession. According to the World Bank, the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to a rise in “prices of commodities … and [it] contribut[ed] further to global supply disruptions.” Numerous countries are still recovering from the socioeconomic effects of the coronavirus pandemic. If a recession were to occur, this would undermine recovery efforts in many parts of the world, leading to “higher levels of unemployment, contracted measures of income, and stagnation in economic growth.”

In other words, the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine span far outside the realms of Eastern Europe, and the impacts of the war could escalate. As a result, the international community should do everything it can to stop the war. The international community must continue to implement stiff penalties on Russia, limiting Moscow’s ability to interact with the world on an international scale and hindering its ability to finance its war.

The West has also warned China not to give Russia lethal aid, stating that economic sanctions could be imposed on China, the world’s largest exporter. If China supplies lethal aid to Russia, then the international community could limit trade with China, with negative impacts for the Chinese economy. This could make China think twice about becoming additionally involved in Russia’s war.

Overall, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been devastating. But the effects of a prolonged war will be far direr. It is time for the international community to put an end to its war.

Mark Temnycky is an accredited freelance journalist covering Eastern Europe and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He can be found on Twitter @MTemnycky.

Image: Fasttailwind / Shutterstock.com.

The recent invasion of Ukraine by Russia has brought to light the significance of the Black Sea region for maintaining a balance of power in Europe. However, failure to comprehend the political dynamics in the region's coastal states gives Moscow an opportunity to exert influence on the broader European project. This fact will be demonstrated in several weeks when Bulgarian citizens go to the polls to elect a new government on April 2.

The country’s president, Rumen Radev, broke with EU expectations on March 21 when he stated that Sofia would refuse to supply Kyiv with arms until after its upcoming elections, allowing citizens “to decide on behalf of Bulgaria whether they will be part of the efforts to restore peace or prolong the war”—the obvious implication being that Western arms shipments to Ukraine are standing in the way of negotiating a peace settlement to the conflict.

This is a reiteration of Radev’s statements that world leaders were needlessly prolonging the war, and that Bulgaria would also veto any proposed European sanctions on Russian nuclear fuel. Barely a week later, multiple Bulgarian politicians were sanctioned by the Global Magnitsky program, the British government, and the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, due to corruption charges related to their involvement with Russia.

These developments coincide with the economic impact of the new tranche of Russian sanctions imposed on February 5. Additional price caps on refined fuel products such as diesel and gas oil joined December’s initial $60 cap on seaborne shipments of Russian crude. The effect has been to chip away at Moscow’s record-high account surplus of $227.4 billion in 2022. This past January posted a surplus of only $8 billion, a 58.2 percent drop from January of the previous year. With revenues decreasing and domestic expenditures continuing to creep up as the war effort intensifies, Russia’s federal budget deficit has subsequently ballooned to 1.8 trillion rubles ($24.2 billion). That is already 60 percent of the total year plan for 2023, according to the Russian Ministry of Finance.

Moscow may need to begin selling off even greater amounts of foreign currency reserves, particularly the Chinese yuan. It will also continue to expand its trade with alternative export destinations. Some sources such as the International Energy Agency are doubtful of Moscow’s ability to find other countries to accept its crude, although others predict that Russia will regain its position as the world’s top oil exporter relatively quickly.

China and India have significantly increased their imports of Russian oil. On top of this, only a relatively small percentage of countries have followed the West’s lead in imposing sanctions. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, Moscow has actually increased its support among countries of the world. The number who lean towards Russia has increased from twenty-nine to thirty-five over the past year, while those actively condemning it have decreased from 131 to 122. 63.8 percent of the global population now lives in a country that is classified as either neutral, “Russia-leaning,” or “supportive of Russia.”

Still, those countries in active condemnation of Moscow compose 60.1 percent of global GDP. Moscow’s prospects for increasing revenue flows may lie increasingly away from the West, but there is yet another energy trading partner that makes up a significant portion of its exports—and this one, right inside of the European Union.

In 2022, Bulgaria processed over 7 million tons of Russian crude at its Lukoil refinery in the Black Sea coastal city of Burgas. It has now edged out Turkey as the third largest importer of Moscow’s oil behind China and India. Unlike other export destinations in Europe, the Lukoil refinery was able to continue importing seaborne shipments of Russian crude—the only destination in the EU granted such a privilege—after Sofia secured an exemption from the European Commission in June 2022.

However, even this capability was further qualified by the February 5 sanctions. Now, refined petroleum products can no longer be exported to any other destination besides Ukraine. Lawmakers in Sofia, aware of this fact, subsequently issued a decree in January that the refinery can be put under the operational control of the Bulgarian government for up to one year in case of “threats to national security or to the supply of critical resources.” According to Reuters, such a precaution is “aimed at protecting critical infrastructure and ensuring fuel supplies for the Balkan country.”

The intention is to insulate Bulgaria from the potential predatory economic behavior of Russia and its utilization of energy exports as a geopolitical tool to exert pressure on the EU. In April of last year, gas supplies to Bulgaria were entirely halted due to Sofia’s refusal to pay in rubles. Bulgaria’s move is not unprecedented, as Germany also took over control of multiple Russian-owned oil refineries located on its territory as an energy security precaution. The exemption granted to Bulgaria by the EU Commission is meant to act as a ballast to counter the relatively pro-Moscow tilt of the southeastern European country, which shares important historical ties with Russia in addition to its being almost entirely reliant on its energy exports.

Moscow has previously picked at this scab. The demand for payment in rubles and the subsequent halt in gas supplies mentioned above were meant to place pressure on the government of pro-European Bulgarian prime minister Kiril Petkov. The Kremlin’s strategic move was successful, contributing to the dissolution of the Petkov government and its reformist coalition in August of 2022. Snap elections the following October resulted in multiple Eurosceptic parties gaining seats in the Bulgarian parliament. This included Russia-friendly parties of not only the right, such as the “Revival” party and “Bulgaria Rise,” but also leftwing Eurosceptic parties such as the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

New general elections are set to be held on April 2. In early February, a poll by the Sofia-based Exacta Research Group predicted that the center-right party “GERB” is likely to come out on top. GERB is relatively pro-EU, but if the polls are accurate it will need to secure alliances with the Eurosceptic parties in order to form a governing coalition. Radev (the president) is already criticized by the international press for his pro-Moscow sympathies, and has previously called those in the Bulgarian parliament pushing for arms shipments to Ukraine “war-mongers.” He is vocally opposed to further arms shipments to Ukraine. A future halt in energy supplies to Bulgaria would almost certainly have the effect of strengthening the position of Eurosceptic parties.

Ultimately, Bulgaria is a microcosm of broader European views regarding the conflict and its impact. It is impossible to know how much longer the Russo-Ukraine War will last, or what its final outcome will be. But the longer it is prolonged, and the greater the escalation, the more likely it is that previously brushed-over fissures in the European project may begin to deepen.

Dominick Sansone is a PhD 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: Shutterstock.

In an ongoing diplomatic dance involving Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Biden administration appears to have lost awareness of where U.S. interests do and do not lie. The administration has made clear that it would love to see those two countries expand their ties, preferably to include full diplomatic relations, and evidently is partly shaping its policy toward Saudi Arabia with that objective in mind. But Israel and Saudi Arabia already cooperate extensively, including on sensitive security matters. Whatever practical benefits might derive from such cooperation are already to be had. The significance of any upgrading to normal diplomatic relations would mostly be symbolic—leading to the question of exactly what such upgrading would symbolize.

The sole reason that most Arab countries have not established full diplomatic relations with Israel already is the persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestinian territory and its denial of self-determination and political rights to the Palestinians. It remains the official position of the Arab League that normal relations between Arab states and Israel will follow a just resolution of that conflict. Although some states have departed from that consensus, Saudi Arabia has not. This issue evidently is one aspect of Saudi policy on which the aging King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has continued to assert his authority and not defer entirely to his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Thus, what an establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, absent fundamental change in Israeli policy, would symbolize is the ability of Israel to enjoy normal relations with neighboring states despite continuing its occupation and never resolving the Palestinian conflict. The sole beneficiary of such symbolism is the right-wing government of Israel. It is a “have-cake-and-eat-it” (or have-diplomatic-relations-and-the-West-Bank) gift that successive Israeli governments have long craved.

Nobody else would benefit. Obviously, the Palestinians would not. Other Arab countries would not, not counting any side payments they receive for bestowing such a gift. The cause of peace and stability in the Middle East would not either.

And certainly, the United States would not benefit. By reducing further any Israeli incentive to resolve the festering conflict with the Palestinians, such a development would be contrary to U.S. interests by prolonging a region-wide source of tension and resentment in which the United States habitually gets associated with Israeli misdeeds.

Any establishment of Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations would follow the so-called “Abraham Accords,” in which Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE upgraded their relations with Israel. Heavily promoted by the Trump administration as “peace agreements,” this upgrading was nothing of the sort. Like Saudi Arabia, these Arab countries were not at war with Israel and already maintained extensive security and other cooperation with it.

Events since that upgrading provide reminders that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with all the pains and instabilities associated with it, is not going away no matter how many diplomatic agreements are reached with Arab states. Israeli-Palestinian violence has surged. Last year was the deadliest for Israelis since 2015 and the deadliest for Palestinians—146 of whom Israeli forces killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—since the United Nations started keeping records of such violence in 2005.

But Israeli hardliners, perhaps encouraged by the cake-and-eat-it nature of the “Abraham Accords,” still seem to think that the conflict can somehow be sidelined or forgotten. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose responsibilities also include administration of the West Bank, said the other day that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people.” (One might ask Smotrich—who also recently commented that Israel should “wipe out” the West Bank town of Huwara—who, if there is no such thing as Palestinian people, is living in the town to be wiped out.)

The earlier upgrading of relationships between Israel with the UAE and Bahrain not only has sustained and exacerbated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but also sustained tensions and sharpened lines of conflict in the Persian Gulf. Israel sees such relations with Gulf Arab countries as an anti-Iran military alliance. That framework, and accompanying Israeli saber-rattling, serve the Israeli government’s objective of perpetuating hostility toward, and tension with, Iran. Permanent tension with Iran in turn serves the Israeli purposes of blaming Iran for everything untoward in the Middle East, weakening a potential rival for regional influence, impeding any rapprochement between the United States and Iran, and diverting international attention from Israel’s own behavior.

All this is contrary to U.S. interests. The United States has an interest in lessening, not perpetuating or increasing, tensions in the Persian Gulf region. Heightened tensions in that area risk disruption of global energy markets, risk dragging the United States into armed conflict, and impede diplomacy needed to curb or control potentially destructive behavior by regional states, including Iran.

The Trump administration’s strong push for Arab states to upgrade relations with Israel entailed damaging side payments. With the UAE, this included a sale of F-35 combat aircraft—a move that encourages an accelerated arms race in the Persian Gulf. With Morocco, the side payment was the abandonment of U.S. neutrality on the Western Sahara dispute, a move that intensified tensions between Morocco and Algeria and complicated international efforts to resolve the dispute.

Now with Saudi Arabia, such a script threatens to be replayed. U.S. officials are reportedly in negotiation with Riyadh about upgrading relations with Israel, with the Saudis making demands that constitute their price for agreeing to such a move. Meeting those reported demands would be contrary to U.S. interests and the interests of regional stability and security.

The Saudis want fewer restrictions on their use of U.S.-made weapons, which would be a license for the kind of destabilizing Saudi behavior that has been demonstrated most vividly by the highly destructive Saudi air war in Yemen. They want added security guarantees from the United States, which would threaten to draw the United States into complicity with such behavior, as has already been to a large extent the case with the war in Yemen. And the Saudis want help in building a nuclear program, which would heighten concerns about nuclear proliferation in the region in a way that—unlike Iran’s program on the other side of the Gulf—would have direct U.S. involvement.

Even if what Saudi Arabia was offering in return was in U.S. interests, what is shaping up would probably be a bad bargain. The fact that what the Saudis would do is only something that a different foreign regime wants, not something that would advance US interests, means there is no reason even to consider the bargain.

In general, the more that the states of the Middle East talk with each other through normal diplomatic channels, the more likely the region will be peaceful and stable. But it does not enhance stability to disguise as “peace” agreements what really are conflict-perpetuating anti-Iran and anti-Palestinian arrangements. For the United States to promote such divisiveness perpetuates the self-crippling Manichaeism that inhibits the United States from being a true peace-maker.

That aspect of U.S. policy—which has characterized several U.S. administrations—has precluded the United States from playing the kind of constructive peacemaking role that China recently did in mediating the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Given the poisonous nature in recent years of the Saudi-Iranian relationship, which has constituted the main line of conflict in the Persian Gulf and has involved armed conflict both in proxy form as in Yemen and more directly, what the Chinese accomplished was a genuine tension-reducing move toward peace. The Biden administration, to its credit, welcomed the agreement, albeit cautiously.

So why is the administration pursuing an unconstructive bargain that would involve buying off the Saudis so they will cater to Israeli wishes? Partly it may be acting out of a once-valid but now obsolete perception that any expansion of relations between Israel and other Middle Eastern states really would constitute a move toward peace. Partly it may be an effort to match what the Trump administration claimed to have accomplished with the “Abraham Accords.” Mostly it probably reflects the American political habit of equating support for Israeli government objectives with being “pro-Israel,” and equating that with a necessary ingredient for electoral success.

Even at the level of crude politics, what is going on with Israel and Saudi Arabia ought to give the White House, including the president’s political advisers, pause. Not only do both those countries show a proclivity for poking a finger in the U.S. eye despite all the favors the United States has bestowed on them. They also have done the same thing to Joe Biden personally, with snubs and efforts to embarrass him.

Such behavior reflects the unapologetic interference in American politics by both Israel and Saudi Arabia in a pro-Republican and especially pro-Trump direction. The administration’s current attempt to buy an upgrading of relations between those two countries is not only bad policy; it also is strange politics.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was 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.

Image: Shutterstock.

The ongoing war in Ukraine, China’s recent brokering of a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and rising tensions in the Pacific all point to an irrefutable truth: we are witnessing the formation of a system of alliances seeking to alter the distribution of both soft and hard power by challenging the current world order.

Currently, illiberal and partially liberalized states can be split into two categories. The first category covers states that resist liberal democratization as a means of retaining sovereign power over their own governments. These states fear or suspect that liberal democratization is accompanied by an erosion of local values in favor of contemporary, Western ones, or that the advent of Western liberal non-government organizations, under the guise of helping build “civil society,” will act as instruments of foreign influence. Yet these states take a defensive posture, while the second category of states is those that are actively trying to challenge the Western-led liberal world order, with Iran, Russia, and China as leading examples. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the most direct and open challenge to the United States and the rules-based international liberal order that Washington supports.

To survive these autocracies’ bid for increased multipolarity and weakened American resolve, the Western-led coalition in Ukraine must achieve a military and political victory against Russia’s aggression.

This past Monday, China’s President Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow for a three-day visit and spoke extensively with Russian president Vladimir Putin. In this meeting, Beijing affirmed that it shared “similar goals” with Moscow and openly supported Putin’s reelection despite a recent call for his arrest by the International Criminal Court. In the leadup to Xi’s visit, China concluded an impressive joint military exercise with Iran and Russia off the Gulf of Oman and successfully brokered a normalization agreement that saw the restoration of diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

As part of its commitment to alter the current distribution of power in the international system and the subsequent world order that accompanies it, the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis is determined to see Russia achieve some form of territorial victory in Ukraine. China has supported Moscow’s endeavor by increasing trade with Russia by nearly 30 percent and selling Russia a massive number of semiconductors, mostly through shell companies in the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong. Tehran’s efforts to support Moscow’s war can be seen in the massive number of Iranian drones used to strike civilian and military infrastructure in Ukraine, as well as growing security commitments that may signal the development of a full-fledged defense partnership between both states.

Containing the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis requires a general understanding by Washington the international hegemony America has enjoyed for the past few decades is no longer guaranteed and faces the risk of collapse. It requires a renewed commitment to preserving a liberal world order that is continually threatened by revanchist states motivated by the pursuit of relative gains. It requires a renewed commitment to geostrategic partners and friends around the world that may have felt sidelined over the last decade by American attempts to disproportionally rely on soft power capabilities while allowing adversaries to accrue the necessary hard power, both military and economic, to challenge its hegemony.

To achieve this, the United States will need to reconsider its grand strategy. This includes strengthening ties with U.S. partners in the Pacific while re-examining the levels of tolerable U.S.-China economic interdependence, dismissing the fantasy that Iran’s nuclear program can be reversed or contained through diplomacy, and, most notably, increasing the amount of military aid being supplied to Ukraine as well as demanding European counterparts contribute as well.

The latter can be achieved in the short term. To do so, the Biden administration and its European counterparts must increase the number of Javelin systems, howitzers, ammunition, air-defense systems, armored vehicles, and aircraft being sent to Ukraine. Russia will only sue for peace when there is an irrefutable understanding in the Kremlin that it cannot acquire new territory, or even perhaps even continue holding the territory taken, in Ukraine.

A Western victory in Ukraine would not keep U.S. adversaries at bay forever. It would, however, give America and Europe an opportunity to invest in the much-necessary conventional hard power to continue deterring their adversaries in other theaters, mainly the Middle East and the Pacific. This will require many hard conversations in Washington and European capitals, but these will be necessary for the sake of preserving the rules-based international liberal order.

Yoni Michanie is a third-year international relations doctoral candidate at Northeastern University. He tweets at @YoniMichanie.

On Friday afternoon, February 21, 1947, the British Ambassador to Washington, Lord Inverchapel, showed up at the State Department and informed then Under-Secretary of State Dean Acheson that his government could no longer continue providing financial and military aid to Greece and Italy. “The British are abdicating from the Middle East,” Secretary of State George Marshall informed President Harry Truman.

Indeed, with defense accounting for 40 percent of the British budget in 1947 and the Americans pressing London to repay the huge loans it owned them, Britain had to readjust to the new geopolitical realities by later ending its prized mandate in Palestine in 1948, less than a year after giving up the “crown jewel” of India.

Anyone following international developments in 1947 perceived the British and the Americans to be two close allies. Yet while diplomats and pundits continued to refer to Great Britain as a “great power,” it would take years before the United States would be known as a “superpower.”

The dismantling of the British Empire, like any major transformation of the international balance of power, wasn’t a linear process involving a manageable and steady decline in its military and economic power. Things tend to be more orderly and clear when it comes to changes in national politics, where decisions seem to be a product of intelligent design. In U.S. politics, for example, a population decline in a state (measured via census) can result in a state losing seats in the House of Representatives, while another state that gains more residents could win more seats in the House. Such domestic political changes are orderly and neat.

The process of international change has a haphazard muddling-through quality, more akin to an evolutionary process. Hence Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had led his nation into an impressive military victory in World War II, confident that the defeat of Nazi Germany would help save the British Empire, failed to recognize that the enormous military and economic costs of the war had actually created the conditions for the liquidation of the empire.

The British people and elites weren’t aware that “Rule, Britannia!” was already history when Lord Inverchapel showed up at the State Department in February 1947—and not even then, after the proverbial fat lady had sung, did the British Empire “end.”

Indeed, while the sun was setting on the British Empire, members of its political elite continued to live under the illusion that their nation remained a paramount global power. If you traveled in a time machine to London in 1949 and attended a debate in the British Parliament or browsed through the pages of the London Times, you would come across numerous references to the British Empire as a great power. And if you encountered diplomats in Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service and bankers in the city of London in 1953, you wouldn’t be surprised if they continued to behave as though the world was still their domain to rule.

The transition from Rule Britannia to Pax Americana was lengthy. It was only after the humiliating abandonment of the Anglo-French invasion of Suez in 1956—the so-called Suez Moment, when the Brits were seeking to recover their hegemonic status in Egypt and the Middle East—that proved to be the turning point in Britain’s retreat from empire. It ensured that London would never again attempt global military action without first securing the acquiescence of Washington.

To borrow the concept of “delayed recognition”—the gap between the time when changes in the economic system occur and the ability of consumers and businesses to feel their impact—a similar recognition gap exists between the time changes in the global balance of power take place and the point where we figure out that yesterday’s great power has a more modest status today.

Much of the discussion about the end of America’s post-Cold War “unipolar moment” and the transition to an expected multipolar system tends to miss the point that that process is ongoing, with no clear start and anticipated end. There is an unspoken expectation of a defining event, a moment when the US would supposedly become just one of many global powers, E Pluribus Unum; when it would face its Suez Moment. Maybe it won’t.

After all, many members of Washington’s foreign policy establishment, very much like London’s elites in 1953, believe that their nation has remained a paramount superpower that can continue to dictate foreign policy outcomes. Meanwhile, anti-interventionist critics on the political left and right insist that American global power is in the process of decline, and that Washington needs to adjust to the new global realities before it’s too late.

From that perspective, America’s success in mobilizing its Western allies while re-energizing NATO as part of a successful effort to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and its efforts to build a security partnership to contain China in the Pacific—the fact that the United States had the will and the power to do that—may have come as a surprise to many observers, including possibly to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

After all, the Russian leader, like China’s rulers, assumed that the U.S. military fiascos in the Greater Middle East, the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing Great Recession, and the growing political polarization at home, had transformed the United States into a has-been great power. Russia would now regain its status as a global superpower, while China would replace the United States as the dominant global power.

At the same time, neoconservative and liberal internationalist thinkers—whose plans to remake Iraq into a liberal democracy and establish dominant U.S. power in the Middle East, and who ended up with a costly geostrategic disaster—are now trying to convince us and themselves that they were right all along, that the catastrophes Iraq and Afghanistan stemmed from the failure to effectively use America's great power.

Interestingly enough, there was a time following the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, and later on during the 1973 oil embargo, and during the 1980s with the rising geoeconomic power of Japan and Germany, when observers predicted that U.S. hegemony was over, and that it might have to prepare for the coming war with Japan.

But then came the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, followed by the birth of Silicon Valley and growing Americana economic prosperity. Add to this the military victory in the first Gulf War, along with successful military interventions else, and a sense of American supremacy settled in. It seemed to many that the American unipolar moment, not to mention the End of History, had arrived.

One could make the argument that misusing of American military power in the Greater Middle East, reflecting the sense of hubris and American exceptionalism, and the fantasies concocted by the neoconservatives, brought about the ensuing decline in American global power—and that a more responsible American statecraft would have allowed Washington to maintain its position as first among equals, primus inter pares, in the international system.

But, in fact, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did set some constraints on the ability to use American military power. Indeed, an Iraq Syndrome—which reflected the public’s backlash against the costly military fought in the name of promoting democracy—made it unlikely that any Democratic or Republican administrations would set out to do regime change in Tehran anytime soon. Thanks to the war in Iraq, Iran has emerged as a major regional power with plans to acquire nuclear military power.

And with America losing its once-dominant position in the Middle East, it had no choice but to accept the Russian return to the region, including the turning of Syria into a Russian military protectorate. Likewise, Washington was forced to search for a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear military challenge posed by Iran.

In that context, Washington should welcome the possibility of growing Chinese involvement in the Middle East, as demonstrated in its recent success in mediating an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Indeed, why not allow China—and, for that matter, encourage the Europeans—to play a more activist role in bringing stability to the region?

While no one can predict at this stage the outcome of the war in Ukraine, the consensus in Washington remains in opposition to the deployment of U.S. military troops there; and, in fact, to going to war with Russia. Any eventual agreement to end the military conflict will have to take those constraints into account.

At the same time, the growing U.S. military role in the Pacific will require the Europeans to play a more active role in protecting their security interests in their continent as well as in its periphery, in the Middle East and North Africa.

All these developments could be seen as part of a gradual evolution of a multipolar system and of a U.S. adjustment to reality, without having to face a Suez Moment. Then again, maybe such a moment will have to be faced if the rising tensions with China lead to a Sino-American military confrontation over Taiwan. Or perhaps the relationship between the two global superpowers will evolve into a duopoly, with Washington and Beijing establishing spheres of influence around the world.

But again, what matters is that these changes in the global balance of power don’t develop in a linear fashion and tend to run contrary to earlier predictions. Many strategic thinkers forecasted at the end of the nineteenth century, in particular following the Boer Wars, that the British Empire was on its last legs, only to have the World Wars change those expectations. Yet, in the end, the fat lady did sing, and Pax Britannica came to an end.

Dr. Leon Hadar, a contributing editor at The National Interest, has taught international relations at American University and was a research fellow with the Cato Institute. A former UN correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, he currently covers Washington for the Business Times of Singapore and is a columnist/blogger with Israel’s Haaretz.

Image: Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock.

Several political parties and notable voices in Lebanon are demanding an international investigation into the 2020 Beirut explosion. One of the most vocal is the Lebanese Forces (LF), the country’s largest political party, which held a press conference on March 9 at the Citea Apart Hotel in the Beirut suburb of Achrafieh. The conference, called “United Nations for Beirut,” began with a moment of silence for the 220 victims who died in the blast and a standing ovation for the Lebanese national anthem. Dr. Richard Kouyoumijian, a former minister, endorsed Australia’s call at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on March 7 for the Lebanese authorities to conduct an independent and swift investigation into the truth about the port explosion. It is well-established that the blast resulted from the unsafe storage of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate. However, the question of how it got there and why it was left so vulnerable remains unresolved.

Before LF officials gave their statements, a video of the Beirut blast and its aftermath was shown. The footage, showcasing a devastated port and a damaged city, with people paralyzed from the horror they experienced, had an emotional effect. Kouyoumjian, who is also the head of the LF’s Foreign Relations Service, spoke to the audience about the UNHRC’s position and the bleak and challenging situation in pursuing the port case.

According to the LF and the Strong Republic bloc, of which the LF is a member of, the statement from the Human Rights Council is a crucial step in their ongoing efforts to uncover the truth and bring justice to those affected by the Beirut blast. “We knew from the first moment that the domestic investigation would not reach happy conclusions,” said Kouyoumjian. In addition, he criticized Hezbollah’s attempts to hinder legal proceedings aimed at uncovering the truth about the blast, even if it means going outside the law. He reminded the audience of Wafiq Safa, an official of the Coordination and Liaison Unit in Hezbollah, who went to the Palace of Justice to send threatening messages to the judge Tariq Bitar, head of Beirut’s criminal court and the lead of the investigation into the port explosion.

Furthermore, Kouyoumjian accused Hezbollah of being behind “security events, such as the Tayouneh-Ain al-Rummaneh incident, leading to a rift between the families of the victims themselves in an effort to disrupt the investigation.” Another such incident was when Bitar, called on Ali Hassan Khalil and Ghazi Zeaiter, both members of parliament (MPs) from the Amal Movement, a political party, to answer questions in 2021. Not only did the two MPs refuse to appear in court, but afterwards Bitar began receiving threats from both Amal and its ally, Hezbollah, along for calls for his removal on the grounds that he was “partisan.”

Former deputy prime minister Ghassan Hasbani spoke after Kouyoumjian about the Lebanese judiciary's ability to carry out its duties.

“Shortly after the Beirut port explosion, and with our confidence in the Lebanese judiciary in general, due to the continued presence of a number of judges who abide by the law and principles, we were the first to call for an international investigation committee to support the Lebanese judiciary for fear of any interference to obstruct or stop the investigation. And that is what happened. We supported the families of the victims and those affected by this, believing that the destruction, death, and physical and moral damage inflicted on Beirut, specifically the areas of the port, Medawar, Rmeil, Saifi, and Ashrafieh, cannot pass without revealing the truth.” Ghassan, in other words, demanded accountability and compensation for damages, regardless of whether the perpetrators were guilty, negligent, or accomplices.

During the event, I had the opportunity to speak with Hasbani and asked about the consequences of efforts to stonewall the investigation. He responded by stating that accused politicians who fail to fulfill their legal and moral responsibilities are committing a human rights violation, just like the blast itself.

According to Hasbani, repeated procedural claims made by the accused to challenge the actions taken by the judge presiding over the investigation and refusal to comply with judicial requests are forms of obstruction of justice. Additionally, when the political establishment, represented by the executive branch, fails to appoint high court judges to fill council vacancies and prevent the council from passing judgment on these claims, it is a political action that serves to derail the investigation and obstruct justice.

Hasbani also commented about the little attention and importance the international community is giving to the investigation. “An explosion of such a scale with international links to the transportation of explosive material should have received more international attention. At least to prevent such a situation arising again to prevent more illicit activities.”

Depressingly, Hasbani indicated that, because of the politicization of Lebanon’s judiciary, it would be close to impossible to expect an honest outcome. “A purely domestic investigation can only succeed if the judiciary system is left to work independently without interference from the political system of involvement and has the de facto power on the ground.”

Lebanese citizens are also not convinced of the integrity of Lebanese courts. William Noun, an activist demanding the truth and accountability for the loss of his brother, Joe Noun, who was a firefighter on call during the blast, attended the conference and shared his perspective afterwards. “We have been struggling to find the truth of the Beirut port explosion for thirty-one months, today. The Lebanese court system is being interfered by politicians.” Noun was arrested in January by State Security for alleged threats against the Justice Palace if it didn’t follow its legal obligations. He was eventually released.

He did not make accusations on who specifically should be held accountable for the blast. Noun’s only request is for a judicial finding to proceed freely to find answers. “We aren’t responsible for nominating who is behind the port blast. This is the role of the courts, locally and or internationally.” He stated all efforts to discover the truth are welcomed. “We support anyone who believes and works to find the path to the truth. Regardless, if they were the Lebanese Forces or another party.”

The 2020 Beirut blast will not only be remembered as an event in history but also as a painful, living memory for those who lost loved ones. While houses can be rebuilt, emotions healed, and time can pass, a person who has been killed can never return. The best way to honor them is to uncover the truth without any hesitation or apology. This can only be achieved by conducting an honest and transparent investigation that is free from the influence of Lebanon's divisive and regrettable politics.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

With tensions heating up between America and Russia over the war in Ukraine, the stakes could hardly be higher. Proponents of the war argue that Ukraine can prevail, and that Russia will be forced to concede defeat. A chorus of skeptics, largely but not solely based in the GOP, argues that America runs the risk of direct nuclear confrontation with Russia.

On March 22, the Center for the National Interest invited two leading foreign affairs analysts to debate this issue.

—Michael Kimmage is a Professor of History and Department Chair at the Catholic University of America. He is also a Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. From 2014 to 2017, he served on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he held the Russia/Ukraine portfolio. His latest book, The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy, was published by Basic Books in 2020.

—George Beebe is Director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute. He spent more than two decades in government as an intelligence analyst, diplomat, and policy advisor, including as director of the CIA’s Russia analysis and as a staff advisor on Russia matters to Vice President Cheney. His book, The Russia Trap: How Our Shadow War with Russia Could Spiral into Nuclear Catastrophe (2019), warned how the United States and Russia could stumble into a dangerous military confrontation.

Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest, moderated the discussion.

The president of the United States says climate change is the greatest threat faced by our country and the world. It’s a greater threat than nuclear war, he insists. To counter this asserted threat, his administration calls for significant investment in sustainable clean energy while rapidly cutting back on our usage of fossil fuels.

Ironically, the proposed solution of eliminating necessary fossil fuels to mitigate climate change actually reduces our ability to protect our homeland and project peace through strength worldwide. Further, it profoundly weakens America by creating an imminent crisis for the two main pillars of a nation’s power: our economy and our military.

Let’s start with the latter. Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of American military power and serve numerous purposes. Every iota of military equipment needs fossil fuels to be manufactured and run: from fossil fuel-derived petrochemicals to make thousands of plastic components for infinite uses; to mining and processing minerals into thousands of steel and aluminum alloys for trucks, tanks, guns, aircraft, and artillery; to copper and non-ferrous metals for wires and shell casings; to processing minerals and chemicals into gunpowder and other explosives; to creating and powering the semiconductor chips for increasingly energy-hungry electronic equipment that is part and parcel of all modern weaponry; to producing and shipping food for members of our Armed Services all over the world.

Yet despite this reality, the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats are spending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on deficit-increasing, investment-directing, market-skewing solar, wind, battery-storage, biofuel, and other green energy schemes. Given the overwhelming dependence of our military on fossil fuels, this diversion of investment will wreak havoc on America’s readiness and defense industrial base.

Moreover, where does the lion’s share of raw materials for wind turbines, solar panels, batteries—and the high-tech equipment to produce these items—come from? The answer is China, along with China-invested African mines that are notorious for using child labor, having horrendous working conditions, and holding virtually no concern for the environment.

America has bounteous oil, gas, and coal at home. It lacks the critical materials that go into wind, solar, batteries, and weapons only because we have made most mining areas off-limits and the administration has denied almost every proposed mining project.

While the push for renewables may be popular in politics, it is problematic in practice. Reliance on our adversaries is detrimental to our national security.

America will be forced to import vital materials from insecure, adversarial nations, making us dangerously and unnecessarily dependent on foreign sources. China has the technologies, (often stolen from the West) and the materials for dominating “renewables”—solar, wind, and battery industries. Add Russia as China’s oil and gas station plus raw materials supplier, and China makes a dramatic leap in both military and economic capabilities. Sino-Russian collaboration could well become globally dominant over a fossil fuel-disarming America and West.

Furthermore, Russia, acting alone, is able to invade a large, sovereign European nation—even though Russia’s economy is nominally smaller than Italy’s when measured using GDP—a mere 3 percent of the United States plus Europe. How is that possible? Because Russia has, produces, uses, and sells oil, gas, and coal, giving it energy dominance now and into the future. Russia’s war on Ukraine is being paid for by its fossil fuel revenues, while energy-weakened Europe reopens 27 coal plants to make up for the lost natural gas from Russia, still bans fracking, and prays for more warm winters.

Common sense dictates that America reverse its anti-fossil fuel, climate-obsessed policies, and pursue a future that is “all-of-the-above” energy that insures economic, technological, and national security reality. Anything less betrays, not only our men and women defenders in our Armed Forces, but all of us.

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. He was a National Academy of Sciences Fellow in the USSR, speaks fluent Russian, and was a Ranking Member of the Congressional Helsinki Commission and founding Co-Chair of the Baltic States-Ukraine Caucus. Don is a Trustee of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and Museum and Co-chairs its Capital Campaign.

Image: Shutterstock.

In a notable and unexpected political achievement, China has brokered a deal between bitter foes Saudi Arabia and Iran. The rival states agreed to reestablish formal diplomatic relations, restore bilateral flows of trade and investment, and breathe new life into a lapsed security cooperation agreement. The pact, or, more to the point, China’s role in bringing it about, has led to some handwringing in Washington and elsewhere (the New York Times described the agreement as “representing a geopolitical challenge for the United States and a victory for China”).

Such responses are not surprising. The United States, after all, likes to think of the Persian Gulf as its turf. It maintains a very large military presence throughout the region, tends to fight wars there, and for decades has been the ultimate guarantor that Gulf oil will not be impeded from reaching world markets. Those long-invested in these and attendant commitments do have reason to calculate that American political influence is on the wane in the Middle East, and, perhaps alarmingly, that China’s is on the rise.

It is important not to allow the fanfare to run ahead of the facts. However welcome (or, to some eyes, unwelcome) this one agreement may be, the region remains rife with intricately enmeshed political conflicts and rivalries. What the People’s Republic of China wants to achieve, and what it has the capacity to achieve—plausibly little more than contributing to stability in a region that has been the site of violent and bitter political contestation, with the bonus of reducing the Americans to spectators of their diplomatic accomplishments—remains to be seen.

Likely not by coincidence, Saudi Arabia has apparently now communicated its price for normalizing relations with Israel: more explicit security guarantees for the kingdom from the United States, the right to purchase more advanced weapons, and support for its development of an, ahem, “civilian” nuclear program. (Notably absent are concerns for the de-facto Israeli absorption of most of the West Bank, or the fate of the millions of Palestinians living there.) This would be an exceedingly high price for the Americans to pay, which is why the timing of these proposals cannot but convey the suggestion that, with potential alternatives to American patronage perhaps visible on the horizon, the United States is in little position to drive a hard bargain with its Saudi friends.

The good news is, none of this is bad news. In fact, it presents a golden opportunity for the United States to engage in a long-overdue reassessment of its military and political commitments in the region. And by reassess, I mean withdraw.

Such a reassessment rests on good realist reasoning. Realism has gotten a bum rap recently, as some loud, prominent, self-proclaimed realists bask in the infamy of making outrageous claims (arguments, ironically, often at odds with their own theories). But realism comes in many stripes, and many of its incarnations are intellectually robust and analytically insightful, and it remains an approach that can serve as a valuable guide to understanding world politics and informing foreign policy. And although realists can and will disagree on much—the paradigm reflects a common analytical disposition, not a shared playbook—one would be hard-pressed to find a realist who would argue that deep military and political engagement in the Gulf can today be defined as in the American national interest.

This was not always the case. In the 1970s and 1980s, when Gulf oil ran the world and the advanced industrial economies were dependent on it, it was reasonable that the United States would want to ensure that no single hostile power would come to dominate the region, and, more narrowly, to prevent the closure of the Strait of Hormuz—commitments made explicit by the Carter and Reagan administrations.

Fast forward forty years, however, and this posture can only be described as vestigial and anachronistic. Regarding the Gulf, the United States is now in the position summarized by Bob Dylan: “I used to care/but things have changed.” World energy markets have been transformed. The United States is now the world’s third-largest oil exporter and second-largest exporter of natural gas. Gulf oil now flows largely to China (which is why the People’s Republic has an interest in regional stability). Moreover, given the challenge of global climate change, it makes little sense for the Americans to be subsidizing the world price of oil by providing the security guarantees that ensure its flow.

It is also very hard to make the case that active U.S. engagement in the region has been a smashing success—although it has smashed much, from its support of the overthrow of democracy in Iran in 1953 to its catastrophic war against Iraq a half-century later. If the United States indeed has any remaining interests in the Gulf, history suggests perhaps it would be better served by just getting out of the way.

But what are those interests? America’s most intimate partner, Saudi Arabia, is an amalgam of personalist authoritarianism and radical theocracy—not obvious foundations for a shared vision of political goals. (And in assessing the American interest in the Middle East more generally, it is worth noting that should Israel choose to join a club of illiberal theocracies, it will become increasingly difficult to define exactly what ties bind that long-standing special relationship.)

Perhaps most significantly, faced with daunting domestic political problems and confronted with shifts in the global balance of power, the United States, mighty but not inexhaustible, must better align its capabilities with its interests. With regard to defending the American national interest, some parts of the world—in particular Europe and East Asia—are much more important than others.

In sum, rather than bemoaning the prospect of China’s increasing influence in the region, the United States should, in an orderly fashion, disentangle from its commitments, withdraw its forces, and reallocate them in the service of more important and pressing priorities. Because although the United States has no high-priority national security interest in the Persian Gulf, it does have other vital interests in the world, well-articulated by the logic of realism—in particular the contributions of classical realists like George F. Kennan and Arnold Wolfers, inflected with a hint of Carl von Clausewitz. The greatest contribution that latter figure—counterintuitively for some who would reduce the insights of this combat-hardened Prussian general to the aphorism “war is politics”—was his insistence on the primacy of politics, and that always and everywhere actors must be able to articulate plainly their political goals, especially when contemplating the use of force and in forging grand strategy.

On the evolving world stage, regarding the American national interest, two primary and pressing political goals stand out. It remains vital for the United States that its allies and affiliates in Europe remain secure, democratic, and well-disposed toward each other. This is an example of what Arnold Wolfers called “milieu goals”—which are especially important for countries like the United States that do not face present and immediate military threats at the border.

As Wolfers insightfully described, milieu goals relate to foreign policy measures taken to influence world politics in ways that make the international environment conducive to the thriving of national values, and one in which political allies feel secure and content in their shared affinities. For a great power, this, more than anything, is the stuffing of foreign policy in practice.

Pulling out of the Persian Gulf, then, is not the first step in a broader disengagement from world politics. Despite an increasingly audible chorus calling for the United States to withdraw from the NATO alliance, such a move would prove disastrous. The question is not, as some proponents of “restraint” emphasize, whether the alliance has accomplished the mission for which it was originally designed. The only measure that matters is whether the political benefits of continued American participation in NATO outweigh its costs. And for all the protestation about the “costs” of the alliance to the United States, and (more understandable) grumblings about whether some members ought to be making greater contributions to the collective defense, it is unlikely that the United States, which if anything seems inclined to increase its already very high levels of military spending, would save some—indeed save any—money by pulling out of NATO. But the political costs (and geopolitical dangers invited) could be extremely high, as active American engagement in Europe has had, as Wolfers would anticipate, numerous salutary effects. It has bolstered the fortunes of like-minded, friendly countries in one of the world’s geopolitical and economic epicenters, and has made war there—wars that would be exceedingly ruinous to the American interest—much less likely. From a grand strategic perspective, rather than a costly albatross, NATO has been a bargain, the best we have ever had.

Another major strategic priority is East Asia. Following the classical logic best associated with Kennan, it is a vital national interest of the United States that no single power comes to politically dominate this enormous and dynamic region. That fraught-with-peril prospect is not inconceivable, as China’s increasing might makes clear.

The implications of this for policy are commonly mischaracterized. Many in Washington appear spoiling for a fight, or at least a militarized confrontation, with China. This disposition is unnecessary, imprudent, and unwise. Following Kennan, although the stakes in East Asia are enormous, both the challenge and the requisite response are political in nature. Military capabilities matter, but not in the service of trying to win a regional arms race, or to assert (increasingly unachievable) local predominance, but rather as a component of a broader political strategy. Sustained and deep U.S. engagement with traditional allies and like-minded actors will buttress their confidence and wherewithal to do what they would like to do—resist China’s political pressure. Should the Americans withdraw, in contrast, many will make the dispiriting calculation that they have no choice but to politically bandwagon with China, and accede to its political domination. From a U.S. perspective, that would result in a much more dangerous world, and one in which its political influence would be considerably diminished.

In sum, from the perspective of the American national interest, Europe and East Asia matter; the Persian Gulf does not. (At best it is a distant also-ran in a changing world where the United States must be more attentive to matching its resources with its priorities.) We have also proven serially incapable of steering our foreign policy in the Gulf without getting mired in a swamp.

Energy-hungry China has more at stake in the region than the United States. There is even a world in which, unlike the United States, it is well positioned to play the role of honest broker regarding local disputes. In addition, as a practical matter, the prospect of China asserting a position as the dominant external player in the region is years if not decades away. But if China wants to try and sit in the geopolitical driver’s seat in the Gulf—or even if it doesn’t—we’d be fools not to flip the keys to that lemon on the counter, write off our security deposit, walk away, and count ourselves lucky.

Jonathan Kirshner is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Boston College. His most recent book is An Unwritten Future: Realism and Uncertainty in World Politics (Princeton University Press, 2022) 

Image: DVIDS.

As the eyes of the world are focused on the Russian war in Ukraine, the United States has launched a silent war over international organizations to compete with China. The first battle over the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has just begun.

With bipartisan support, the U.S. Congress passed a $1.7 trillion federal spending bill in December 2022. It includes a waiver that opens the door for the Biden White House to rejoin UNESCO. The “waiver authority” makes it crystal clear that the goal of reentry into the Paris-based UN agency is “to counter Chinese influence or to promote other national interests of the United States.”

Under President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda, Washington disregarded active participation in international organizations—including the United Nations and many of its agencies. Under President Joe Biden, “America is back” and it seeks to repair its “tarnished image” and regain leadership in international organizations.

Timing is of the Essence

The Trump White House withdrew from UNESCO in December 2018 on the basis that there was a need for fundamental reforms in the organization. Trump also accused UNESCO of continuing anti-Israel bias.

This is not completely incorrect; however, one may generally assume it as the reason. In fact, the United States stopped paying membership dues back in 2011 when UNESCO admitted Palestine as a full member. According to legislation passed by Congress in 1990, the Bill Clinton administration prevented it from funding any part of the UN system that grants Palestine the same standing as UN member states. After it stopped paying dues—22 percent of the UNESCO annual budget—the United States lost its voting rights.

China quickly filled this vacuum. Beijing has become the largest contributor to UNESCO’s regular budget, signed a wide range of China-UN bilateral agreements, and appointed a Chinese national as the deputy director general of UNESCO. Beijing has also managed to establish fifty-six World Heritage Sites, making China the second largest host after Italy.

The UN agency is treated by Beijing as a “strategic partner” to support the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, promote the Belt and Road Initiative, and strengthen “multilateralism.” This partnership has indeed increased China’s global prestige as the leader in fulfilling UNESCO’s mission of supporting education, science, and culture.

In the absence of the United States, policymakers in Washington have finally realized that Beijing’s relatively low-cost, but high-impact investment in UNESCO has quietly and successfully been courting the hearts and minds of the global citizenry. 

History Repeats Itself?

This is not the first time America has pulled out of UNESCO. The first time the United States withdrew from the agency was under President Ronald Reagan in December 1984. Reagan viewed the agency as “mismanaged, corrupt, and used to advance Soviet interests.”

Nearly two decades later in October 2003, the United States returned to UNESCO under President George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11. Bush argued that America is back as a symbol of its “commitment to human dignity” and that “this organization has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights, tolerance, and learning.” Nevertheless, some claimed that it coincided with the eve of the Iraq invasion to gain the support and goodwill of the international community for Washington and its “Global War on Terror.”

With Biden, history seems to be repeating itself. The congressional waiver passed in December 2022 allows the United States to return to UNESCO with the payment of $616 million past dues since 2011. With this, Washington is setting the stage to respond to China’s growing but silent influence in international organizations. Consequently, this would also position it to respond to Russia’s destructive war against the Ukrainian people and their heritage.

Ukraine and Russia

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russian forces have either damaged or destroyed nearly 250 historic sites, as verified by UNESCO. These include 106 religious places, eighteen museums, eighty-six buildings of artistic value, nineteen monuments, and twelve libraries—all of which are covered by the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.

In the absence of the U.S. leadership at UNESCO, Russia continues to destroy the “cultural identity” of Ukraine and its people with impunity. Ukraine is home to seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites that must be protected and preserved. If not, Russia may be successful in erasing the historical identity of the Ukrainian people and replacing it with President Vladimir Putin’s personal narrative of Russia’s cultural superiority and centuries-long hegemony over Ukraine.

Through its global platform, UNESCO has supported 15,000 school psychologists to improve the mental health of Ukrainian students. UNESCO has also facilitated more than 50,000 Ukrainian teachers to receive Chromebooks to ensure the continuity of learning amid the war. In cooperation with other organizations and UN agencies, UNESCO mobilized the cash transfer of emergency grants to 160 media journalists so they could continue their work in war zones.

As the United States leads the way for a potential war crimes case against Russia at the International Criminal Court in the Hague—even though the United States itself does not recognize the jurisdiction of that legal body—Washington’s leadership at UNESCO is vital. It is not only to support the endeavors of UNESCO but also to use the UN assessments of Ukraine’s damaged and destroyed cultural sites as evidence of war crimes and other atrocities committed by Putin and his Russian forces.

Lessons for Taiwan

China’s alliance with a revanchist Russia—the two countries signed a strategic “no-limit” pact with China in February 2022, shortly before the invasion of Ukraine began—and Beijing’s implicit support for Moscow have drawn greater focus on China’s own hostility towards Taiwan. As China tries to isolate the so-called “renegade province” of Taiwan in international organizations, the Biden administration is now explicitly committed to supporting Taiwan in global diplomacy.

The case of Palestine in the United Nations provides some lessons for Taiwan, despite the fact that the United States opposed Palestine’s accession to UNESCO.

The Palestine authorities carried out a diplomatic campaign—known as “Palestine 194”—to gain international recognition of the State of Palestine and to obtain membership in the UN as its 194th member. The campaign ended with a success in UNESCO—when Palestine became a full member in 2011—and a partial success at the UN General Assembly, which adopted a resolution granting Palestine the status of non-member “observer state” in 2012.

Under Beijing’s pressure, Taiwan (the Republic of China, or ROC) has been excluded from the UN and its specialized agencies—such as UNESCO—for more than fifty years. However, the ROC Ministry of Culture has identified a list of potential UNESCO sites, which demonstrates that democratic Taiwan wishes to rejoin UNESCO.

Nevertheless, by blocking Taiwan’s participation in UNESCO and other agencies of the United Nations, Beijing has denied Taiwan’s 23 million people real representation in the UN community.

China’s Battle over Minds

Barring Taiwan from any form of participation in international organizations—be it full membership or observer status—has been part of China’s grand strategy to exercise “non-military coercion.” Beijing’s highly calculated scheme is to take control over international organizations and, consequently, modify the international governance system from the inside.

The Beijing strategy includes placing Chinese nationals in senior ranks across UN programs and funds, its principal organs, and other UN-affiliated international organizations. The success of Beijing’s strategy is also illustrated by the placement of over 1,300 Chinese nationals among the regular staff of the United Nations as of 2019.

Beijing has not only been accused of exercising power in placing Chinese nationals in international organizations but also of promoting non-Chinese who are supportive of the Beijing agenda. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, many world leaders have come to believe that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) director-general—an Ethiopian national—has been an outspoken advocate for the Chinese government’s coronavirus response. The WHO director-general essentially ignored the controversies regarding China’s efforts to manage the spread of the virus and its lack of data transparency.

The growing influence of China in international organizations has long-term consequences. Beijing’s silent support for Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine proves that Beijing’s views on the rule of law and international order are very different from those held by the United States, the European Union, and other like-minded democratic nations.

If China Dominates the World

A long list of China’s human rights violations in recent years suggests that if China dictates the world order through international organizations, the global community will pay less attention to human rights and democratic values. Without the United States in UNESCO, China has had a free hand to promote its own vision of governance for a “new era” of “global ascendancy.” Beijing’s circulation of the belief of the moral decay and technological decline of the West is evidence of China’s power of its wolf warrior diplomacy.

In his speech at the Paris headquarters in March 2014, President Xi Jinping invoked the preamble to the UNESCO Charter to highlight that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” While advocating Xi’s “Xiplomacy” agenda on peace and development, China’s information warfare and wolf warrior diplomacy are designed to reorient the global mindset against democratic values and American leadership.

In this ongoing battle over the hearts and minds of global citizenry, Biden’s “America is back, diplomacy is back” policy must lead the United States to rejoin UNESCO. It would immediately and more effectively facilitate the global efforts to defend Ukraine’s heritage from the continued Russian destruction as the Department of State launched the $7 million “Ukraine Cultural Heritage Response Initiative” in February 2023.

At UNESCO, the United States could also be a champion of Taiwan. Washington could promote Taiwan’s technological and scientific advancement that drives the “semiconductor industry” for greater global benefits. Furthermore, the United States could endorse the island’s natural and human endowments by supporting Taiwan’s participation in UNESCO and its educational, scientific, and cultural endeavors.

After all, the tradition of investing in “hearts and minds” is as old as the American Experiment itself, in parallel with the visions of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Franklin and Jefferson are the founding champions of public educational establishments like the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, the innovators of American political and scientific explorations, and the entrepreneurs of the cultural and social infusions that enriched the thriving republic. All things considered, UNESCO’s reentry will help the United States to restore its pioneering spirits and reestablish its power and influence in international organizations to counterbalance China and keep the world safe for democracy.

Dr. Patrick Mendis is a distinguished visiting professor of transatlantic relations at the University of Warsaw in Poland. He previously served as an American diplomat and a military professor in both Democratic and Republican administrations, and most recently a commissioner to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO at the Department of State.

Dr. Antonina Luszczykiewicz is the founding director of the Taiwan Lab Research Center at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. She is currently a Fulbright senior scholar at Indiana University-Bloomington in the United States.

Both authors served as Taiwan fellows of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China. The views expressed in this analysis neither represent the official positions of the current or past institutional affiliations nor the respective governments.

Image: Bumble Dee/Shutterstock.

We do not know when and how the war in Ukraine will end. But all wars do end eventually.

The conflicts underlying this current war, however, will not end. They are global, permanent, and will cut across any kind of war in the first decades of the twenty-first century.

The first of these is the determination of the West to defend its domination of the world—economically, militarily, and culturally. The second, more difficult to define, is a clash between two opposing value systems. Sometimes this is popularly depicted as “democracy versus autocracy,” but this perspective is imprecise and superficial. This is more about abandoning or keeping family values, as we have known them for several thousands of years. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say the second conflict is about whether one accepts or rejects the aggressive strand of liberalism—what some call “wokeism”—in their national culture.

These two conflicts clash for historical reasons in Ukraine, which serves as the canary in the coal mine, drawing our attention to what will define the global power game for a very long time.

The West’s Decline as an Opening for China

Since the beginning of the era of industrialization, the West has ruled the world. Over the last thirty-seven years, however, this has changed.

Consider the following raw economic figures. In 1985, the United States accounted for 34 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). The EU for 21.4 percent. Together, this adds up to 55.4 percent, meaning that, only slightly less than forty years ago, the West produced more than half of global GDP. As of last year (2022), however, the United States accounts for 21.9 percent while the EU account for 16.9 percent. Together, this adds up to 38.8 percent—a significant decline of 16.6 percent.

Likewise, there have been notable developments in the realm of military and security. In 1985, the Soviet Union maintained a military arsenal not fully comparable with the United States but formidable enough to lock the world into a two-power military system. Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States has been by far the strongest military power, but the rising capabilities of China and middle-sized countries around the globe erode U.S. supremacy.

Culturally, the shift may be even more important. In the years after 1991, the United States was a cultural hyperpower. Entertainment, communications, social networks, and leisure activities governing the everyday life of people all over the world went through a U.S. hopper represented by colossal companies. Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon are only the most recent of these. It is disputed how close these companies are to the U.S. government and its agenda, but what cannot be disputed is that they wielded enormous influence over the thinking and preferences of billions of people. This position is now being challenged—not exclusively, but primarily, by Chinese companies that have thrown down the gauntlet. The United States, however, is attempting to take action to fend off this challenge. TikTok, for example, is a Chinese-owned video-sharing application with more than one billion users by the end of 2022.

The West Fights Back

The West is aware of its own relative decline, and consequently, is attempting to shore its position. Consider TikTok once more: concerns over security risks—that information gathered by the application is passed on to the Chinese government—have led to its banning in India, the United States (on federal government devices), and the European Commission (same policy as the United States). But though these efforts are based on a security rationale, they are also being pushed to protect economic and technological power and influence.

Similarly, on the economic/technological front, the United States has imposed sanctions on selling advanced semiconductors to China in an attempt to stymie advances in high-tech development, especially with regard to artificial intelligence. Likewise, the door is closing for selected Chinese investments in Western countries. Barriers blocking foreign direct investment coming from Chinese companies, especially with regard to technology, are quickly rising up. The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in August 2022, amounts to a return to American industrial policy in an effort to compete with China economically.

Internationally, the West insists on priority to resources, control over global communication, and defining the global ruled-based system—as was the case for the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, plus a large number of UN special agencies instrumental in setting global standards and norms. In this system, the rest of the world could claim influence corresponding to their growing stature. There has long been a sense that the West defended this system as long as it benefitted the West. But now, when a number of non-Western countries enter into a higher economic bracket, the ardor to do so vanishes. Negotiations over climate change reflect that.

War over Values

Over recent decades, the West has moved towards a fundamental change in its value system. Established values—primarily, but not entirely, anchored in Christianity—are being softened or changed to adopt a different value-based system. This is seen by the constant advocacy of the LGBT issue, ushering in a family structure that is historically unheard of and, in some cases, was unlawful a hundred or even fifty years ago.

The rest of the world is not following suit. The majority of countries outside the Western sphere adhere to the “old” values. This, however, is increasingly leading to contention between the West and the rest. The problem is not that we have two value systems, but that the West takes the view that this “new” value system should also be adopted by the rest of the world—a kind of cultural “end of history” position. The ultimate value system has been found, by the West.

The rest of the world disagrees. They acknowledge the right of the West to shape its own value system at home, but not to be at the receiving end of what in some cases is labeled “cultural imperialism”—being lectured about and told to adopt specific values.

Inside Western societies, there is opposition—and, in some cases, strong opposition—to the new values. In the United States, the support for Donald Trump and like-minded republican politicians may partly be due to resentment towards the “woke” culture. During the French presidential election in early 2022, the runner-up, Marine le Pen, highlighted “le Wokeism” as a potential threat to French culture. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in office since October 2022, has exulted traditional family values and said: “no to the LGBT lobby.”

Bearing this in mind, the war in Ukraine should not surprising. In reality, it is not a traditional war, nor about the security of nations, nor a war between two societal systems as would have been the case before 1991 with the United States versus the Soviet Union. It is a war triggered off by different value systems confronting each other.

Russia, or at least a major part of it, is geographically European but on cultural matters on the side of the rest of the world. Its economic structure does not concur with that of the West. Its population has never lived in a democracy. The population is not susceptible to the “woke” movement. The Russian Orthodox Church strongly rejects Western values, preaching the virtue of a Russian vocation and Russian culture anchored in what is close to the exact opposite of “woke.” The Russian people regard themselves as special, not like-minded to Europe. Russia and the Russians, while a major actor in European history, did not play a major role in shaping its value system. The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and industrialization, as the West experienced these, never came to Russia. It has its own culture, for sure, but not thoroughly embedded in the European tapestry.

Ukraine is different. Or rather, a large part of the people living there, are different. They subscribe to Western values. A large part of the country can trace its roots back to European countries and empires, like the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which controlled much of Eastern Central Europe from 1569 to 1795, and later the Habsburg Empire until 1918. Interestingly, the main opposition inside Ukraine and sympathy for Russia and Russian values are found in the eastern part of the country, where neither of these two political and cultural phenomena stroke roots.

This value-based conflict will be with us for a very long time. In the fullness of time, it may break up nation-states and generate some kind of global conflict among peoples instead of among states. There is a precedent to this: the Thirty Years War, fought in Europe between 1618 and 1648 between Catholics and Protestants.

The nation-state itself was a product of the Thirty Years War. It is entirely possible that the very concept itself will be asphyxiated by another war of values. How can nation-states continue to be the defining framework of international politics and unite people who are deeply divided over fundamental values?

The omens are not good. A value-based conflict tends to be uncompromising, as values cannot be divided. Compromises cannot be found. Fanaticism gains ground. “We” are right and “they” are wrong.

Joergen Oerstroem Moeller is a former state-secretary for the Royal Danish Foreign Ministry and the author of Asia’s Transformation: From Economic Globalization to Regionalization, ISEAS, Singapore 2019 and The Veil of Circumstance: Technology, Values, Dehumanization and the Future of Economics and Politics, ISEAS, Singapore, 2016.

Image: Jacob Lund/Shutterstock.

On March 10, news broke that Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations in a deal brokered by Beijing. The deal has already sparked a mixture of celebration and consternation. After seven years of a diplomatic freeze, the thaw in relations could help bring stability to a region that has suffered from a decades-long cold war between the two countries. On the other hand, it highlights China’s increasing rise as a powerbroker, causing some to lambast the Biden administration as weak and disengaged. Moreover, the deal may squander efforts to formalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, a priority for American policymakers in the region. But the truth is that diplomatic restoration between the Saudis and Iranians is unlikely to reset the strategic map of the Middle East. American officials should welcome any attempt to ease tensions, but it should also move forward with its efforts to expand the Abraham Accords.

First, it is worth noting that Saudi Arabia and Iran have experimented with détente in the past. In the 1990s, the two countries tried to heal their wounds with various diplomatic exchanges and gestures after heightened tensions during the 1980s. Instead of Beijing, it was Washington doing the prodding. At the time, Iran was severely weakened after a brutal war of attrition with Iraq. Saudi Arabia, too, was hoping to shore up the image of Islamic unity at home, still reeling from the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque complex in Mecca. Both were also happy to contain Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait. In 1991, the countries resumed diplomatic relations. Seven years later, in 1998, Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani visited Riyadh for ten days to much fanfare.

But the détente did not last long. Partly due to Iran’s continuing development of its nuclear program, and partly due to the heightened sectarian violence in Iraq, the countries reverted to their previous postures. Iranians again denounced the Saudi kingdom as apostates. The Saudis returned the favor by encouraging Wahhabi preachers to condemn the Shia as rafidha. We see similar conditions today. There is no reason to believe that Iran will cease its progress toward nuclear armament just as there is no reason to believe that Saudi Arabia will sit back as a quiet observer. Diplomatic engagement and dialogue may ease tensions, but the two countries are locked into strategic opposition so long as Iran remains committed to becoming a nuclear power. 

If this is the case, the renewal of diplomatic ties does not indicate a serious change in the regional strategic map, but rather a momentary pause. Both countries have reason to capitalize on such a pause in hostilities. Iran has been desperate to escape diplomatic isolation since it became clear a year ago that the nuclear talks with the United States would not progress. Domestically it has some tending to do. For the past seven months, Tehran has dealt with countrywide protests which recently have been reinvigorated. What is more, the country faces a worsening economic crisis and a currency meltdown. Saudi Arabia, for its part, is still aiming to diversify its economy with Vision 2030. Betting on large-scale international tourism, the country’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), may be realizing that peace bought by pragmatic engagement is more conducive to foreign investment than adventures in Yemen. 

These incentives to engagement, however, do not change the layout of the Middle East chess board. Iran remains a revisionist power that has capitalized on regional chaos. It maintains well-armed, extremist factions in Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria with strong influence in Iraq. So long as Iran’s leaders hold fast to Ruhollah Khomeini’s mission to spread the revolution, they will work to extend their vision of Islamic government and, in turn, challenge conservative powers like Saudi Arabia. But there is no evidence that Iranian leaders have tossed Khomeinism. In fact, their stubborn response to the recent bout of protests suggests a firm resolve.

If Saudi Arabia and Iran are still in the throes of a power competition born out of ideological cleavage, then the recent news of normalization changes little. The United States, then, should not change its previous course: build a regional bloc of conservatively-minded powers to contain Iran and foster peace in the region. This bloc is already at work on a subterranean level, but its consolidation requires normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, i.e., formal expansion of the Abraham Accords.

Despite fears of the contrary, dreams of a fully matured Abraham Accords are alive and well. In late February, Oman announced that it would allow all passenger flights access to its airspace, including Israeli planes. What is more, just hours before the deal between Riyadh and Tehran was announced, details were released of what it would take to normalize ties with Israel. The timing of this latter announcement is everything. Riyadh knows it cannot trust Tehran. It knows that Israel wants nothing more than to normalize ties. And it knows how to get American attention. The Saudis are not making lasting peace with Iran. They are goading the United States, trying to increase their leverage in ongoing talks about Israel. That the Saudis are even publicly considering progress with Israel is particularly revealing considering the ongoing violence in the West Bank. 

The Saudi price tag for normalizing ties with Israel is steep. The Saudis demand a Palestinian state, further American security assistance, and American aid in developing a civilian nuclear program. But, like negotiating with a used car salesman, one never pays the sticker price. The Saudis are prudent enough to know that Israel will not go for a two-state solution, but they may well require that Israel work to calm tensions in the West Bank and corral the extremist voices in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Similarly, the Saudis may be less eager to go nuclear if they have assurances that the United States will help prevent Iranian nuclear armament and stop any fantasy of reviving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In a similar vein, selling offensive arms to Saudi Arabia will not aggravate the civil war in Yemen as some fear—MBS is tired of this conflict and knows that prospects for a decisive victory are gone. Selling offensive arms to a security ally should not be controversial. 

In short, diplomacy between Saudi Arabia and Iran is neither inimical to U.S. interests nor is it a herald of a new era of Middle East peace. U.S. policymakers should welcome any effort to ease tensions between the countries. It should also continue to strengthen an alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Abraham Accords, not the Beijing talks, will bring a more lasting peace to the Middle East. 

Max J. Prowant is a Philos Project Research Fellow with In Defense of Christians. He is also a Ph.D. Candidate in Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

Image: Shutterstock.