The National Interest

As the Chinese spy balloon hovered over Montana, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made the decision to postpone his scheduled visit to China. The stakes of that visit were already high, with the two sides expected to discuss the ongoing semiconductor chip embargo, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s visit to Taiwan, the war in Ukraine, and more. Now, neither side will have that opportunity. President Joe Biden promises that the balloon incident will not ultimately weaken U.S.-China relations, but there is little doubt that domestic pressure to get tougher on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has intensified.

By no stretch of the imagination does this look like what Xi Jinping would have wanted, especially at this juncture. Not long ago, the CCP had extended an olive branch to the United States and the West, hoping to improve relations in ways that would benefit Chinese trade with Europe and America and allow greater proximity to its greatest political rival. China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, had taken advantage of that emerging proximity, personally attending a Washington Wizards game and sending Chinese New Year greetings to the American audience before the game. Such efforts will now be put on hold following the balloon incident.

Given the negative fallout that was sure to come in the wake of flying a massive spy balloon in Western skies, why would the CCP have made such a move? One possible explanation is that this was part of China’s espionage routine, and that the CCP wanted to project a strong image ahead of Blinken’s visit. That explanation assumes, however, that China was unprepared for the strength of the American diplomatic response—something that seems unlikely from a country as sophisticated as China. What Xi Jinping needs right now is to de-escalate tensions with the United States, and serious provocations flown in American skies run counter to that goal. And if Xi truly wants to show his military might to Washington, a balloon is too light a weight.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the top Chinese leadership might not have even been aware of the balloon before it was informed by the U.S. State Department. How can it be that “U.S. officials are confident, however, that China directed the balloon” although “they don’t know if Beijing initially intended for the balloon to travel south over the U.S. heartland after it ventured over Alaska.”

If launching the balloon over the U.S. territory was not Xi Jinping’s idea, that leaves two distinct possibilities. One possibility is that certain Chinese bureaucrats were politically insensitive enough to release the balloon over the United States before Blinken’s visit without asking Beijing for permission. A second possibility is that this was done by internal opposition to Xi, with the intention of further straining U.S.-China relations and making an international mockery of Xi's leadership. The latter possibility is no less likely than the former.

In either case, who is the likeliest “candidate” that is out of step with Xi Jinping? Quite likely, it would be the Chinese military.

On February 4 the U.S. Department of Defense issued a statement refuting the Chinese claim that the balloon was a mere weather balloon. In the statement, a senior official stated that “This was a PRC surveillance balloon. This surveillance balloon purposefully traversed the United States and Canada. And we are confident it was seeking to monitor sensitive military sites. Its route over the United States, near many potential sensitive sites, contradicts the PRC government’s explanation that it was a weather balloon.”

This claim is bolstered by Chinese companies’ own claim that they produce such balloons for military use. For example, according to the website of China Zhuzhou Rubber Research & Design Institute Co Ltd., it is a government-owned military research institute with weapon production licenses. Its military supporting products were used in the “Shenzhou V” manned spacecraft, and have won the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) General Armament Department commendation. It is a designated research institution for the weather balloons of all military branches of the PLA.

Following the shooting down of the first balloon, the United States swiftly sanctioned six Chinese companies involved in the production of such balloons.

Chinese law also provides circumstantial evidence that this is a military balloon. According to Article 70 of the Civil Aviation Law of the People’s Republic of China, the state shall exercise unified management of the airspace. This means that private individuals are prohibited from launching any flying objects without government permission. Thus, a massive surveillance balloon sent into the stratosphere and left hovering over the United States for multiple days could not be the act of a civilian company—this act must have been sanctioned by someone in the military or government, with the former being a likelier suspect given its direct responsibility over securing airspace.

It is possible the balloon could have been part of a military research project, and such projects are generally not reported to Xi Jinping. Approval from a military intelligence organization, such as the PLA’s Intelligence Bureau of the Joint Staff Department, would suffice. But the usage of this balloon was far from a routine experiment, given its sensitive timing and the balloon’s lengthy stay in the United States. This has given rise to speculation that it was meant primarily for Americans to see, causing a surge of negative opinions regarding the CCP.

This is not the first time a blunder by the Chinese military, at a critical moment and in direct opposition to Xi Jinping’s wishes, has left him in an embarrassing diplomatic position. In September 2014, Xi Jinping visited India for the first time as general secretary of the CCP. This was a critical visit, involving twelve key agreements between the countries—including China’s commitment to invest $20 billion in India’s infrastructure over the next five years. But during the visit, border guards from both countries clashed along the India-China border. Indian media reported that, in the week prior, Chinese troops built a temporary road across the Line of Actual Control in the disputed border area of Ladaka and into Indian territory. India mobilized thousands of troops to the area to confront a significant number of Chinese soldiers. In a joint press conference after the talks, Modi called for a “clarification” of the Line of Actual Control on the border, putting Xi Jinping in an awkward position.

Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, faced a similar situation when he met U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on January 11, 2011. On the day of the meeting, China conducted a test flight of its newly developed J-20 fighter jet. Gates confronted Hu about the flight, asking if the move was directly related to his visit. Hu made clear that he had no prior awareness of the military maneuver, discovering the details only after he asked Chinese military personnel about it following his discussion with Gates.

Hu Jintao did not take control of the military during his tenure—it was essentially under the control of his predecessor and political rival, Jiang Zemin. This situation has continued into the Xi Jinping era: although Xi has made sweeping reforms to the military, promoting a large number of people he trusts to be senior generals (such as war zone commanders), the military is still not fully under his control. Chinese military sources have told me that many senior generals are estranged from the troops under their command.

By the time of the 20th National Congress, Xi Jinping had essentially crushed any opposition to him. At least on the surface, no one dares to oppose him. However, his tendency to place his own political allies in key positions has alienated large numbers of CCP cadres. But with his stronghold on control of the country, there is little they can do internally. In the minds of Xi’s opponents, the only one who can truly deal a heavy blow to Xi now is the United States.

Yet Xi and the CCP are now inextricably linked. Xi has tied the fate of the Communist Party to his own. And Xi’s—and thus, the CCP’s—fundamental view of the United States will not change. In light of this, the United States needs to remain acutely aware of a few things.

One is that the balloon incident, which has increased public pressure to get tougher on the CCP, has the potential to tighten the alliance between the Chinese Communist Party and Russia. Since the incident reinforces Xi’s understanding that the overall trend in U.S.-China relations is towards rivalry and confrontation, he may cling ever more tightly to his relationship with Russia, currently China’s only ally with international military and political strength.Without Russia, China would stand alone in its confrontation with the West. And, if China were to attack Taiwan by force in the future, it would need a steady rearguard. Whether they have a friend or a foe on the other side of the 1,000-kilometer Russian-Chinese border will determine whether China dares to fight with confidence in the front.

To maintain the surety of that rearguard, China has continued to support Russia in its aggression against Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that import and export data from Russian customs obtained by C4ADS, a nonprofit organization, demonstrate that Chinese state-owned defense companies have been shipping navigation equipment, jamming technology, and jet fighter parts to sanctioned Russian state-owned defense companies since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War. In addition, Russian imports of computer chips and chip components have now largely reached pre-war averages. Most of these shipments come from China.

The promise made to Vladimir Putin last year by Li Zhanshu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, that China would support Russia, was not false—and the overall pattern of the CCP’s confrontation with the West, with Russia as an ally, will not change. The Russo-Ukrainian War, if ending in a Ukrainian victory and Putin’s ouster or Russia’s fall to the West, would be a heavy blow to Xi and the CCP. In that case, Europe and the United States would no longer face a security threat from Russia, leaving them free to focus their collective energies on dealing with the CCP. That situation is unwelcome enough in the eyes of Xi, incentivizing him to possibly offer his services as a mediator between the West and Russia in negotiations for an early end to the war while keeping Putin in power. This move though should not be seen as evidence of solidarity with Western values and intentions—rather, it is a self-serving means to preserve their military and economic strength to battle the West, including preparing for a larger war in the Taiwan Strait.

Simone Gao is a journalist and host of Zooming In With Simone Gao, an online current-affairs program.

Image: Shutterstock.

Trade relations between China and the U.S. have strained markedly in the past few years, beginning with the trade war in 2018 under the Trump administration. Tariffs and other measures were intended to rectify the growing reality that China disproportionately benefits from the globalized trade system, thus challenging the United States as the world’s economic powerhouse. This economic success, coupled with China’s reluctance to assimilate into the U.S.-led order and adopt liberal institutions and values, has fueled growing geopolitical competition. Various popular theories, such as the notion that liberal reforms would inevitably arise in China through its integration with global markets, were incorrect. Rather, China has pursued an industrial policy and gained politico-economic strength by leveraging free-trade policies. The U.S. response has been to resurrect and bolster an industrial policy of its own to adapt to the new geopolitical environment that China has wrought.

Contrasting Approaches to Industrial Policy

In an article for Foreign Affairs, John M. Deutch and Ernest J. Moniz describe how a bipartisan shift in the United States towards industrial policy has come about as a result of the “Made in China 2025” report, released in 2015, which detailed Beijing’s plans to advance its domestic high-tech industry. While possessing a strong manufacturing industry for low-value goods, China’s high-tech industry is comparatively underdeveloped and has been (and remains to an extent) dominated by Western companies. Through state-funded R&D projects, China hopes to become a world leader in advanced sectors such as AI, green energy, and semiconductors. China’s plans to annually scale up its R&D spending may see it become the world’s largest spender on such, up from its current position as the twelfth largest spender globally, with R&D accounting for 2.55 percent of its GDP.

But why is R&D so important? The work of economist Mariana Mazzucato points out that many of the United States’ most important technological developments were accomplished through publicly-funded, state-backed support. Mazzucato writes that between 1971 and 2006, 88 percent of the most important innovations have been fully dependent on federal research support. Publicly funded research via agencies such as the Department of Defense, DARPA, and the National Science Foundation enabled the development of touchscreen technology, the Internet, SIRI, GPS, and even Google’s algorithm. Likewise, Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX have received billions in government support. The United States has a long history of state intervention with successful results, although publicly these days it praises free market capitalism and small government, downplaying the key role the state has played. The successes that U.S. state-backed R&D projects have enjoyed are what China hopes to replicate for itself.

However, if the United States has always been this state-driven hub of innovation, why is industrial policy now occupying the forefront again?

For starters, America still operates in a laissez-faire economy with a variety of powerful corporate actors, all of whom operate according to their own profit incentives. Mazzucato describes this phenomenon—the “socialization of risk and privatization of rewards”—as a pitfall of U.S. policy, wherein the state invests significantly in research while failing to reap any of the benefits that ought to accompany this, such as higher employment, increased tax revenues, and increased exports of goods and services. Instead, these rewards are privatized and commercialized by corporate venture capitalists. Such individuals and institutions are experts at tax avoidance and evasion, and will further seek to maximize their profits through outsourcing/offshoring manufacturing, and engaging in unproductive behavior such as stock buybacks. The deleterious effects of offshoring production to China have already been demonstrated through mass intellectual property theft, which has enabled China to avoid these costly investments in R&D and subsidize the domestic deployment of stolen technology.

What follows from this is the observation that the U.S. state is simply less centralized when compared to the Chinese state. While there is a high amount of government intervention in the United States, the accrual of significant profits to private conglomerates and individuals, together with the freedom with which they are allowed to operate, contrasts with China’s approach of ubiquitous Chinese Communist Party coordination and the persecution of capitalist elites with divergent interests. The CCP is the locus of power in China, while the United States has a more dispersed system of both private and public interests.

U.S. politics is the constant vying for power of these separate groups, and these interests often clash with one another: what is most financially profitable for a conglomerate may endanger the national security interest that the intelligence community is tasked with defending. What occurred during the preceding years was that there were low geopolitical and security risks associated with China, meaning that, as Steve Blank states, “private equity and venture capital were the de facto decision-makers of U.S. industrial policy.” This resulted in lucrative collaboration with China, which has subsequently led to a rise in national security risks. This heightened level of risk has injected a dose of realism into international relations once again, which means that security trumps economics.

Techno-Nationalism

This is what the emergent new industrial policy aims to achieve. Techno-nationalism, as it is known, “is a new strain of mercantilist thinking that links technological innovation and capabilities directly to a nation’s national security, economic prosperity, and social stability.” It calls for greater state intervention to “intervene and guard against opportunistic or hostile state and non-state actors” as a response to “the West’s increasingly short-sighted laissez-faire model and China’s state-centric capitalism.”

The United States is being forced to reevaluate its laissez-faire attitudes and adopt a like-minded attitude toward the state’s role in the market. This, however, is not so much a copying of China’s industrial policy as it is a bolstering of policies that the United States has always embraced.

While Washington has pioneered its own version of state-sponsored innovation of new technologies through DARPA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, it has not successfully safeguarded these technologies from being co-opted through intellectual property theft, nor has it developed a robust and necessary domestic manufacturing industry for implementing new technologies. When it comes to cheap consumer products—like the plastic toys and clothing produced in sweatshops—offshoring poses little security threat and IP theft hold little weight. Offshoring semiconductor chip production, on the other hand, poses an array of new problems. The emerging industrial policy of techno-nationalism therefore centers on the pivotal role of highly advanced technology and the national security threats posed to the country if this technology is mishandled.

In President Joe Biden’s recent State of the Union Address, he lamented the decline of the United States domestic manufacturing industry, declaring that America has “imported products and exported jobs.” He singles out the semiconductor industry in particular, stating that despite the that the United States invented chip technology, it now only produces 10 percent of the total global supply. Biden notes that supply chain disruptions have brought to the fore the disadvantages that overseas production entails. The president’s rhetoric notably echoes that of the 2016 Trump campaign, with this continuity demonstrating the necessity of such industrial policies. Biden’s comments also allude to the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides $52.7 billion in funding for domestic semiconductor manufacturing, workforce development, and R&D. The United States is also aiming to mobilize domestic competitors Nokia and Ericsson against Huawei. Moreover, just as China’s “Made in China 2025” policy document centers on developing advanced AI technology, so too does the U.S. aim to bolster its own while stifling China’s, leading to what may be described as a technological arms race.

This phenomenon is not limited to the United States, as we are also seeing Australia, a country that is very much embroiled in this emerging geopolitical rivalry, adopting a similar posture—evidenced by plans to develop an Australian DARPA, as well as an interest in cultivating its own semiconductor industry and rare earth mineral refineries.

What we may take away from this is that the era of free-reign globalization is gradually coming to a close. This new industrial policy is recentering this idea of “government putting a thumb on the scale, rather than just assuming that market outcomes are going to produce the maximum benefit.” The market is spurred by different incentives which have come to clash with those of national security and politics. Economists resented the trade tariffs first implemented under Donald Trump, yet they have remained in place following the end of his administration and expanded to even further restrictions and countermeasures. Wherever this leads, geopolitical necessities have cautioned many on the downsides of globalization and forced the state to once again pursue technologically-oriented industrial policies in order to correct course.

Jasper Hansen holds a Bachelor of Political Science from the Australian National University. His main interests include geopolitics, national security policy, and political theory.

Image: aslysun/Shutterstock.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes which have struck southeastern Turkey, a major cover-up operation has been set in motion to save President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s reputation. Construction, rather than production, has long been the hallmark of Erdogan’s rule. And like in Jericho, the walls have come tumbling down. With an economy in freefall and a general election scheduled to happen later this year, Erdogan’s fate may now be in the hands of the United States.

A Fragile Economy

As far back as March 2014, economic analyst Jesse Colombo warned in Forbes that Turkey’s bubble economy, predicated on a combination of foreign “hot money” inflows and ultra-low interest rates, was heading for a bust. A government-driven infrastructure boom led not only to new roads, bridges, high-speed trains, airports, hospitals, and schools, but also to residential buildings, skyscrapers, malls, and hotels.

The Turkish lira has only been kept from collapse by swap deals—with countries like Qatar, China, South Korea, and the Emirates—but also backdoor interventions. At the same time, Turkey’s burgeoning current account deficit has been reduced by unaccountable capital inflows registered as “net errors and omissions.”

The Walls Come Down...

Two days after the earthquakes, the Istanbul stock market was closed after the benchmark index went into freefall. It has now been reopened to make up for the losses. The government has also instructed private pension funds to increase their holdings of Turkish stocks from 10 to 30 percent to prop up the stock market.

On his visit to the earthquake-stricken zone, Erdogan was already on the defensive. While admitting to “shortcomings” in the government’s response, he preempted criticism by stating, “I cannot stomach people conducting negative campaigns for political interest.”

The pattern of collapsed buildings in the earthquake zone reveals an underlying instability. This is supported by evidence that, before the 2018 general elections, which elected Erdogan as president, almost 295,000 buildings in the affected provinces were exempted from adherence to construction regulations. In all, this construction amnesty was extended to 3.1 million buildings throughout the country.

Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, noted that the state has granted an amnesty to 317,000 buildings in the megacity, so there are now 90,000 buildings that are at risk of collapsing in the event of a major earthquake. This is likely, as Istanbul is in the North Anatolian Fault Zone as opposed to the East Anatolian Fault Zone, where the recent earthquakes have taken place. 

Earthquake damage is not inevitable, nor must it be as destructive. Four hospitals in the earthquake areas escaped damage because seismic isolation devices were used during construction. These devices, costing around $4,000 each, would have made a significant difference had they been installed in other buildings before the earthquakes.

Taking Responsibility

There are two leading questions that are being asked. First, what has happened to the earthquake taxes, officially estimated at 88 billion lira ($4.6 billion), collected since the last major earthquake in 1999, to prevent the present devastation? Erdogan has proved evasive on this issue. And second, who bears the responsibility for the failure to adhere to building codes?

Here, the buck stops with Erdogan, as a video has surfaced where the president boasts about the construction amnesty granted for buildings in the earthquake’s epicenter, Karahmanmaras. In an attempt to shift the blame, the Earthquake Crimes Investigations Bureaus have been established, which so far have resulted in legal action against 134 suspects, mainly contractors.

As for Erdogan, he has claimed that 98 percent of the buildings that collapsed were built before 1999—i.e., before the previous earthquake, and therefore, the responsibility of the previous government. However, data shows that at least half of the collapsed buildings were built after 2001. Additionally, a video shows that buildings close to the epicenter were built in 2004, two years after the AKP government came to power.

America to the Rescue?

As well as sending two Urban Search and Rescue Teams and a Disaster Assistance Response Team, the United States has also instructed an aircraft carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, to move toward Turkey in case there is a need for additional assistance. In nationalist circles, this has met with a negative response, which has been echoed by Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

On Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken plans to visit Turkey and will meet with his Turkish counterpart in Ankara. The issue of U.S. aid for the reconstruction of the earthquake zone could well arise, at which point, it will be a question of striking a balance between humanitarian aid and ensuring the survival of Erdogan’s regime.

Robert Ellis is an international advisor at the Research Institute for European and American Studies in Athens.

Image: Shutterstock.

The recent selection of Tsai Ming-yen as Taiwan’s new National Security Bureau (NSB) chief has surprised analysts in Taiwan. It represents the second consecutive surprising appointment for the island’s intelligence czar, both of which came under the tenure of Taiwan’s incumbent president, the independence-leaning Tsai Ing-wen. Like the previous appointment, Tsai Ming-yen’s ascension could reflect a shift in Taiwan’s approach to intelligence collection and sharing, which has responded to escalating and rapidly evolving threats to the island’s security.

Tsai Ming-yen’s accession came after the sudden resignation of former chief Chen Ming-tong. Chen’s appointment, as with Tsai’s, riled critics of the administration, given both were selected from outside Taiwan’s military and intelligence establishments. Perhaps shedding light on the reason for this, an official announcement stated that it was hoped Tsai would continue Chen’s efforts to “reform” the bureau.

Why Tsai?

But why was Tsai Ming-yen deemed the best candidate?

Firstly, while technically an outsider, Tsai was better qualified than Chen on the security/intelligence front. Tsai received his doctorate from King’s College’s Department of War. He was also a member of Taiwan’s National Defence Report advisory committee and an advisor for several Quadrennial Defence Reviews (2004-2016). Most importantly, he served for three years as Deputy Secretary of the National Security Council (NSC)—the inner circle responsible for directly advising the president on national security issues and whose members include the NSB’s director-general.

Secondly, Tsai, like his predecessor, is a well credentialled China expert. As with Chen, Tsai has been affiliated with the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), having served as an advisory committee member. He served a similar role in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s China Affairs Committee and has advised the Straits Exchange Foundation—a technical and operational arm of the MAC.

But perhaps Tsai’s most valued credential has been something different—his success in foreign affairs and diplomacy. Tsai was undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before his appointment in the NSB. Before then, he served as Taiwan’s representative to the European Union (2020-2022). His role in the latter was deemed highly successful, coinciding with the European Parliament passing legislation favorable to Taiwan, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu visiting European parliament members in Brussels, and Lithuania allowing Taiwan to set up a pseudo-consulate. Since then, the new president-elect of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, defied Beijing by talking on the phone with Taiwan’s president.

Diplomacy, Intelligence Sharing, and ‘Integrated Deterrence’

In welcoming his appointment, the administration’s spokesperson, Huang Chongyan, said Tsai would be tasked with handling “diplomacy,” in addition to “regional security… international strategy and security policy.” This broad purview—and in particular, the emphasis on diplomacy—may appear peculiar. But it reflects the shifting approach to security that is propelling the administration’s attempts to reform the bureau.

While serving as Taiwan’s European representative in early 2022, Tsai Ming-yen told the BBC that Taiwan was looking to implement the recently developed American concept of “integrated deterrence.” This involved, according to Tsai, coordinating with other democratic nations and exploiting political as well as traditional security tools. As highlighted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, integrated deterrence involves reinforcing partners’ strengths in areas including economics, technology, and diplomacy. Actualizing this in the intelligence sphere would require shifting beyond narrower, conventional purviews of national security, bringing Tsai’s broader experiences and insights into geopolitics into play. As a recent article by the Center for a New American Security noted, this will require a diplomatic effort to strengthen international coordination and facilitate “sharing sensitive information with allies and partners.”  

Tsai reportedly has experience sitting in on intelligence exchanges with American and Japanese representatives. But Taipei may have seen particular value in Tsai’s connections and reputation in Europe. While Europe has been a target of intensifying Taiwanese diplomatic efforts over several years, the continent’s response to the Russia-Ukraine War is contributing to the view that Europe—incorporating both Western and CEE (Central and Eastern Europe)--is becoming a “new pillar” for Taiwan’s security.

One reason this is so is because of the intelligence and propaganda value of the Russia-Ukraine War, which Taiwan analysts see as a valuable tool for helping deter or fight back a potential Chinese invasion.

Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began, Taiwan’s president directed the NSC—which includes the NSB’s director general—to form a “workgroup for responding to the situation in Ukraine.” On March 10, 2022, it presented a report titled “An analysis of the Russia-Ukraine War and the [security] situation in and around the Taiwan Strait.” In addition to further official updates, Taiwan has since seen an extraordinary number of symposiums, conferences, and publications focusing on the war and the parallels with its own security challenges.

Helping feed these events have been the fruits of diplomatic efforts to organize non-conventional pathways for information exchange. A surprising coup was the National Defence University’s “Nato Generals Class” in 2022, which hosted military officials from twelve countries, including Italy, Lithuania, Czech Republic, and was designed to encourage an exchange of views on the Russia-Ukraine War. This was also a key theme in the 2022 Taipei Security Dialogue, hosted by the INDRS in November, whose attendees included analysts from Germany, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Turkey. It was also recently revealed that a Taiwanese pilot attended a NATO training program aimed at providing “military and civilian officials with senior-leader education on NATO issues” and “networking opportunities.”

But much more was done with Ukraine itself. Taiwan’s administration embarked on a flurry of diplomatic activity/assistance after the invasion, including supplying Ukraine with Revolver 860 combat drones and other equipment, signing MOUs on energy assistance, providing humanitarian supplies, sending the digital minister to Ukraine to assess assistance needs, and having the foreign minister conduct videoconferences with Ukrainian mayors and even the primate of the Orthodox Church. New pathways for intelligence sharing were potentially opened when Ukraine’s parliament subsequently launched a bipartisan Taiwan Friendship Group, followed by a meeting between a Ukrainian parliamentarian and Taiwan’s president. Last year the INDRS hosted Yurii Poita, a visiting scholar from Ukraine’s Centre for Army Conversions and Disarmament Studies, who shared information on the organizational structure and efficacy of Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces. These developments are likely to be the tip of the iceberg.

But the Russia-Ukraine War has had a wider impact on Taiwan’s growing efforts to deepen its ties with Europe and emphasize Europe’s stake in Taiwan’s security challenges. The prominent Sinologist Linda Jakobson, in a recent event in Sydney, said anger in Europe is growing at Beijing’s refusal to condemn Russia’s actions. Resonating with Washington, Taiwanese officials have exploited this to publicly promote the notion of a “global democratic alliance” and a Russia-China axis, and have prosecuted the argument that an invasion of Taiwan will impact Europe. In line with this, in mid-2022, NATO, for the first time, identified China as a “security challenge,” and a recent NATO report on the Indo-Pacific mentioned Taiwan almost fifty times while noting that China’s “stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values.” More recently, former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen suggested that Taiwanese troops should join NATO exercises in Europe, adding that NATO should react “determinately if China were to attack Taiwan” through military intervention and “profound and comprehensive economic sanctions.”

On this front, Taiwan’s greatest gains have arguably been in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)—including the former Soviet Union states most directly threatened by Russian aggression. This region has traditionally been seen as a potential impediment to a coordinated NATO or EU response to Chinese aggression against Taiwan, such as participation in an American-led economic sanctions regime. A 2021 Carnegie report highlighted China’s attempts to exploit state fragility in that region to extend its influence at the expense of European unity and cohesion. Yet a 2022 report from the Centre for European Policy Analysis argued that some of those same states (in particular Lithuania and the Czech Republic) were already “ahead of the curve” in identifying and wanting to mitigate the threats China poses. Ties with Taiwan were at the front and center of the report’s explanation for this shift. China’s waning influence in the region, at times intertwined with disputes on CEE states' engagements with Taiwan, has seen the Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European (C-CEE) agreement shrink from seventeen to fourteen members. At the same time, some narratives from CEE intelligence analysts are converging with those of Taipei and Washington. The Foreign Intelligence Service of one former C-CEE nation, Estonia, released a report in 2021 warning that Beijing was cooperating with Russia, seeking to divide Europe from the United States, and threatening to facilitate a “dismantling of the world order that has allowed Estonia to regain its independence.” Reflecting a connection between Taiwan’s predicament and its own vulnerabilities, as well as the tenets of the integrated deterrence doctrine, a recently released Estonian report directly addressed Taiwan’s existential challenges and acknowledged that “the unity and resilience of the West and like-minded countries against China,” along with sanctions, access to Western markets and Western technology, might be needed to deter an invasion of Taiwan.

Taiwan’s Understated Value as an ‘Intelligence Sharing-Lite’ Partner

The growing purview of both the domains of intelligence and partners that Taiwan is reaching out to under the reforms of Chen and Tsai Ming-yen’s tenures speaks to the effectiveness of the new diplomacy-led approach. It also draws lessons from Taiwan’s frustrated attempts to strengthen intelligence sharing with its core partners, Japan and the United States, which continue to be mired by institutional resistance, legal/regulatory incompatibilities, and an unfortunate trust deficit due to historic issues of leaks, political conflicts, and concerted Chinese espionage campaigns targeting the NSB. The problems associated with committing to comprehensive agreements have been skirted around by an evolving “integrated-lite” approach that exploits diplomatic outreach and informal engagements, leverages executive discretion, acknowledges and explores the security value of intelligence in non-traditional domains, prefers ad hoc arrangements for micro-sharing intelligence on areas of mutual concern, and that retains state autonomy/discretion by keeping participation voluntary and on a case by case basis.

For like-minded nations that share Taiwan’s concerns about threats to regional or national security stemming from China, the potential benefits of Taiwan’s ongoing intelligence reforms cannot be understated. 

The potential benefits of intelligence sharing with Taiwan extend beyond assessing or deterring threats to peace across the Taiwan Strait. One particular area is cybersecurity. Taiwan has long been a testing and training ground for China’s offensive cyber efforts—many coming from the Fujian-based Strategic Support Force Unit 61716. As a result, Taiwan is not only a repository of enormous amounts of intelligence on Chinese cyber activities but has become a center of innovation on how these can be countered. In 2015, the NSB established a cutting-edge cyber security office. Since then, efforts have been made to strengthen coordination between this office and the Ministry of Digital Affairs’ Administration for Cyber Security, the National Security Council’s National Information Security Office, and the newly formed National Communications and Cyber Centre—Taiwan’s “iron triangle of cyber security.” These developments, directions to form new agencies by the Executive Yuan’s National Information and Communication Security Taskforce, the establishment of the Division of Cyber Security and Decision-Making Simulation in the INDSF, and the development of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command as a fourth branch of the military, reflect President Tsai’s commitment that “cybersecurity is national security.” Not only do Taiwan’s reforms provide lessons for other nations, but they could also position Taiwan to become a global leader on Chinese cyber threats and information warfare. On this front, it is worth noting that a 2022 Legislative Yuan report on Taiwan’s state cybersecurity development recommended strengthening international outreach and cooperation, as well as advancing “technological diplomacy” and international cooperation on talent development.

There are also wider benefits to be had. Taiwan has been the target of an extensive range of non-traditional threats to its security and sovereignty that manifest the full spectrum of pre-kinetic measures outlined in Beijing’s “Three Warfares” doctrine. Knowledge of these tactics brings into play the China expertise of Tsai Ming-yen, the China-focus of Taiwan’s intelligence community, and the island’s innate advantages in terms of its geographic, linguistic, and cultural proximity with the People’s Republic of China. While criticized for their scope and severity, Taiwan’s recently devised five national security laws, alongside specific legislation such as the Anti-Infiltration Act, reflect Taiwan’s comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted measures directed at the island by China, ranging from political interference, acquiring shares in media and other strategic assets, co-opting or infiltrating civic, industry and criminal groups, leveraging systemic/market power, up to the use of civilian intelligence gatherers and commercial surveillance drones. Given ongoing concerns in many countries about some of these issues, there is considerable value in tapping into Taiwan’s intelligence resources to understand, identify and forecast such non-conventional threats to national security.

Dr. Corey Lee Bell is a researcher at the University of Technology Sydney’s Australia-China Relations Institute. 

Image: glen photo/Shutterstock.com.

Ukraine, supported by Lithuania and Poland, recently doubled down on its campaign to sanction Russia’s nuclear sector in the same way as oil and gas, which have already been embargoed. With a high-profile lobbying campaign underway in Brussels to include nuclear in the next “sanctions package,” the tenth to date, Western officials are feeling pressure to choose sides.

Though the Biden administration has long been tempted to sanction Rosatom, a state-owned Russian nuclear energy corporation, along with Moscow’s other energy exporters, nuclear has been conspicuously absent from all sanctions lists. There is little agreement among the United States and its allies on the wisdom of the move and the risks associated with going nuclear in the sanctions war. Hungary and Bulgaria say that the consequences would be devastating and they would veto any proposed EU measure targeting Rosatom.

Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, when the Soviet army in Afghanistan was killing thousands daily, the United States and its allies visited sanctions on almost everything from gas pipelines and credit facilities to grain exports to the USSR, but civil nuclear cooperation was never affected. Westinghouse and Siemens continued to rub elbows with the Russians in Finland on the construction of the Loviisa nuclear power plant; France kept importing the bulk of its enriched uranium from Soviet Russia. Nuclear cooperation never stopped—and for good reason.

The imposition of sanctions in international politics must always be weighed against the implications of an adversary’s potential response. When it comes to the oil price cap plan, the downsides are few: The Kremlin has limited room to maneuver, and the expected countermeasure of a price floor for Russian oil is unlikely to change much for the global oil market.

But nuclear is a different kettle of fish altogether. The degree of interdependency is much higher, and so are the risks of interruptions in global supply chains. The consequences could extend well beyond the immediate economic impact and lead to catastrophic repercussions, including compromising nuclear safety. In addition, since Rosatom is a dominant global player accounting for about half of the world’s new nuclear build exports and about one-third of the nuclear fuel market, Moscow understands that its countersanctions would impose devastating impacts on the U.S. and European nuclear energy sector.

The Russian Federation still supplies 14 percent of  America’s enriched uranium consumption (down from 20 percent a decade ago, which translated into 10 percent of America’s electricity generation). Moreover, Russia has a de facto monopoly when it comes to providing the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that is critical for fueling 9 out of 10 advanced nuclear reactors currently under development in the United States and funded by the U.S. government. The American nuclear industry has secured bipartisan support and billions in public funds to cut uranium dependency on Russia, but it is likely to take years to have all the technology in place and enrichment facilities up and running. In Europe, Rosatom’s share is almost one-fourth in some countries, such as Belgium, which is dependent on Russia for as much as 40 percent of its uranium imports.

Exposure to Russia is even more significant when it comes to the nuclear fuel fabrication sector. Reactor fuel assemblies are sophisticated devices, full of proprietary technological features and an almost decade-long lead time in testing and licensing. While American and French vendors can, in theory, replace Russia in fuel fabrication for newer, Russian-designed VVER-1000 reactors, the French supplier will have to rely on its joint venture with Rosatom, a plant in Lingen, Germany, which is likely to be affected too should sanctions be imposed. Older Soviet-built VVER-440 reactors, which are commonplace throughout Eastern Europe and are scheduled to retire in the next 10 years, are entirely dependent on Russia’s fuel supply.

Should Rosatom cut nuclear fuel supplies for the VVER-440, it would, once the current stock of fuel was used up, bring power generation to a halt on all nuclear reactors in Slovakia and Hungary, half of the reactors in the Czech Republic, and 23 percent in Finland. Hungary and Slovakia would consequently face a drop in their electricity generation by about 25 percent, the Czech Republic by 15 percent, and Finland by 7 percent. Attempts to replace the Russian supplies with undertested alternatives could jeopardize the safety of the reactor core.

Worse still, beyond the nuclear fuel sector, only the Russians are currently supplying several vital isotopes to the world market, and it would take almost a decade to replace them. For instance, a deficit of Cobalt-60 (Co-60), which is used for radiation therapy as well as in medical sterilization, industrial x-ray welding seams, and food irradiation, would likely result in thousands of premature deaths across the world every year. Interruptions in the supply of Actinium-225 and Tungsten-188 would hamper the adoption of the most cutting-edge and efficient cancer treatment procedures, leaving tens of thousands of cancer patients untreated. The lack of Russian supplies of Californium-252 would cause further delays in the launching of the new French nuclear reactors designed to be used as initiators of chain reactions.

The Kremlin has so far refrained from using Russia’s leverage in the nuclear energy sector to respond to earlier Western energy sanctions, but direct sanctions on the nuclear front, even the most symbolic ones, could provoke President Vladimir Putin to fall back on his country’s civil “nuclear option.”

Unlike oil and gas, which are the main source of Russia’s tax receipts and, therefore, its main means of sustaining its military aggression in Ukraine, the drop in Rosatom’s export revenues from nuclear sanctions would be a paltry $1-3 billion, less than 0.5 percent of its energy exports. By contrast, the cost of a possible Russian uranium embargo and the severing of nuclear supplies in the United States and Europe could easily exceed $100 billion

The United States must recognize that the one-world model of civilian nuclear cooperation is coming to an end. America should adopt a comprehensive national program to ensure systemic self-sufficiency in the nuclear industry—from mining to fuel to isotopes—not just subsidies for the creation of our own uranium enrichment facilities, as is the case now, but in all areas over the next ten to twenty years.

Even if the Ukraine conflict were to be resolved by then, Russia’s unpredictability and hostility to the West, as well as peer competition with China, will persist or even exacerbate. As future conflicts unfold, the United States and Canada should address the vulnerabilities of themselves and their allies in the vital nuclear technology industry.

Prof. Ivan Sascha Sheehan is the associate dean of the College of Public Affairs and past executive director of the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Baltimore. Opinions expressed are his own. Follow him on Twitter @ProfSheehan.

Image: Shutterstock/Shag 7799.

While Russian president Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine nearly one year ago was undoubtedly motivated by his desire to leave a mark on history, the risk of a humiliating defeat has united Russian elites in support of the war, regardless of their ideological convictions. Russia’s hawks consider this war as part of a wider conflict against NATO and they fear that a military defeat would not only severely weaken Moscow’s influence around the world but could also risk destabilizing Russia. Although most members of the liberal bloc might not share these security concerns, they understand that in order to negotiate the removal of sanctions, Russia needs to be in a position of strength.

We’re often presented with the claim that if Putin were removed from power, either because of a coup or illness, the war in Ukraine would end. However, this represents a misunderstanding of the Russian power structure and ignores the key interests of the political factions that operate in Putin’s shadow. While there are two main ideological camps, the liberals and the hawks, there exist numerous clans vying for political influence and financial gains. Ties between members of the elite are formed through family relations, business interests, personal friendships, and shared rivalries.

We can divide the Russian elite into three categories based on their roles and responsibilities: siloviki, technocrats, and oligarchs. The siloviki represent law enforcement and security agencies. Although they tend to share similar world views and their collective influence has grown significantly under Putin’s rule, there is intense competition amongst them. The siloviki monitor, investigate, and prosecute members of rival clans while protecting their allies. Technocrats provide bureaucratic influence and can help secure state contracts and subsidies. In order for them to advance in their careers, they must be cleared by the security apparatus. Oligarchs ensure the financial interests of their allies by providing bribes or company shares. Many prominent oligarchs used to work in the security services, such as Igor Sechin, president of Rosneft, and Sergei Chemezov, CEO of defense conglomerate Rostec. 

Clans continuously engage in minor power struggles in an environment where surveillance and corruption are rampant. Putin exploits the competitive and ruthless nature of Russian politics to maintain a balance of power and prevent any faction from becoming too powerful. For example, in 2016, he created the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), headed by his former bodyguard, Viktor Zolotov, as a counterweight to the Ministry of Interior. They have overlapping roles, but the Rosgvardiya reports directly to Putin, granting him greater control over how protests and dissent are suppressed. Since the start of the invasion, there have been similar maneuvers to keep factions in check. In the recent military reshuffle, Colonel-General Aleksandr Lapin was appointed chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian General Staff, replaced General Sergei Surovikin as commander of the “special military operation.” This served to reassert the Ministry of Defence’s control over the war effort and curtail the growing influence of Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group, and Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader.

Members of Putin’s inner circle do not form a unified bloc but they have a shared interest in maintaining the status quo in order to safeguard their economic interests and political survival. The few members of the elite who spoke out against the war, such as Mikhail Fridman and Oleg Deripaska, have lost influence in Russia and are sanctioned by the West. Furthermore, the conditions for a coup to be successful are currently highly unfavorable. Rival factions, eager to prove their loyalty, monitor each other while also being monitored by the Federal Protective Service (FSO), a security agency tasked with protecting the Russian president. A coup would also trigger an intense power struggle between clans, which would lead to political instability that could weaken Russia’s war effort. Despite their petty rivalries, the siloviki view a military defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat and continue to support Putin. Even if Putin were removed, his successor would most likely be a technocrat with close ties to the siloviki, such as Sergei Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of staff, or Sergei Sobyanin, mayor of Moscow. While a change in leadership might facilitate peace negotiations, it will not fundamentally change how the Russian system operates, at least not in the short run, nor will it lead to a drastic change in strategy regarding Ukraine.

A military defeat would be a humiliation domestically and on the international stage. Russia would emerge as a regional player with diminished influence and the state would lose credibility given the high casualties and economic loss that it would incur. This could lead to increased protests and secessionist movements that would destabilize Russia, and perhaps even lead to territorial disintegration.

For Russia’s hawks, this conflict is part of a larger hybrid war against the U.S.-led West. Many of them started their careers in the KGB and view NATO expansion as a continuation of the Cold War and a direct threat to Russian security. They blame the United States for fueling anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine by supporting the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution and the 2013-2014 Maidan Uprising, which they consider to be a U.S.-backed coup. Although there was evidence of American interference, the U.S. role was greatly exaggerated in the minds of the siloviki, who remain paranoid of the prospect of a U.S.-instigated “color revolution” in Russia. Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, arguably the second most powerful figure in Russia, has stated that the war in Ukraine is a military confrontation against NATO and that the United States wants to weaken and destroy Russia. 

Even though members of the liberal bloc might privately oppose the war, they have limited influence on foreign policy or national security as their role is to manage the economy. Prominent figures include Elvira Nabiullina (chairwoman of the Bank of Russia), Anton Siluanov (minister of finance), Herman Gref (chairman and CEO of Sberbank), and Andrey Kostin (chairman of VTB). They have successfully minimized the impact of sanctions: the International Monetary Fund announced that the economy contracted by 2.2 percent (instead of 8.5 percent projected in April) and is projected to grow by 0.3 percent in 2023 and 2.1 percent in 2024. The Russian economy has been damaged by sanctions, but it is far from imminent collapse. Moreover, the liberal bloc understands that relations with the West have reached a point of no return, and certain sanctions will likely remain even after the war. There simply is no economic incentive for Russia to withdraw its troops without a peace settlement that would guarantee a path to sanctions relief.

Capitulation is not an option for either Ukraine or Russia, which means this war will likely continue for several years. Moscow is slowly gaining ground in Donetsk and is preparing a large-scale offensive with 200,000 fresh troops. Even if the offensive fails, Russia still has enough resources to maintain control over certain pockets, which would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO or the European Union. With neither side capable of securing a complete military victory, this war will either end in a frozen conflict or through a political settlement after a prolonged stalemate. 

Kelly Alkhouli is a political consultant and director of international relations at the Center of Political and Foreign Affairs (CPFA). Follow her on Twitter @KellyAlkhouli.

Image: ID1974 / Shutterstock.com.

Now more than ever, America needs its allies, and its allies need America. As hostile actors continue their aggressive, increasingly militarized behaviors, the Biden administration must find ways to stabilize and strengthen its relations with its key strategic partners around the world.

Nowhere in the world does this hold truer than the Indo-Pacific. President Joe Biden has made this region as a key focus in his foreign policy agenda, as shown by the administration’s recent high-level visits to Asia. To meet the rising security challenges posed by regimes including Russia and China, America’s emphasis on the Indo-Pacific is crucial to its safety, as well as its allies.

As a retired lieutenant general of the Republic of Korea Army (ROKA), I welcome the Biden administration’s proactive posture towards our region. Key U.S. allies in East Asia including South Korea have historically partnered with America to contain threats to the region, and maintaining a robust military alliance between our two countries is essential to achieve our mutual interests of peace in this part of the world.

For reasons of interoperability and to maintain the highest quality armed forces, the South Korean military uses U.S. arms to conduct its mission to maintain peace. These include Apache attack helicopters, F-15 and F-16 fighters, and the F-35 stealth fighter. The South Korean Air force operates forty F-35s and is planning to acquire twenty more to supplement its capabilities.   

U.S. secretary of defense Lloyd Austin recently visited Seoul and reassured the South Korean government that the United States will continue to deploy strategic assets including F-35 fighter jets as deterrence assets against North Korea. This was a much-needed move against an ever-growing nuclear threat from North Korea, and it reassured many Koreans as to the credibility of the U.S. commitment to the region. Having said that, conflicting news from the United States on the F-35 program and its future is concerning, to say the least.

The main concern is the ongoing dispute in Washington about the F135 engine that powers the F-35. There are those in the Pentagon and Congress who have called for an upgrade to the propulsion system—and rightfully so, given the F-35’s need for better thrust and vertical lift—but there are also voices calling for a completely new engine system called the Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP). Thus far, we have seen hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for the development of this new engine and this year is a pivotal year for the future of the F-35 program. 

The proposed creation of an entirely new engine, compared to upgrading the existing F135, would greatly burden South Korea and other allies who operate the F-35. Not only would the U.S. military have to build out an entirely new infrastructure and supply chain to produce and install these new engines, but it would affect the procurement of F-35s, with the current engine, by allies like South Korea. If this year’s Congress authorizes this overhaul and leads to Korean F-35s being retrofitted at extra cost, this will be a huge strain on both American and global supply chains and would most likely force the South Koreans to cancel its purchase of additional F-35s, leaving Seoul with fewer deterrence assets when crises arise. 

In more detail, the estimated cost of this replacement program is approximately $6 billion, whereas the upgrade to the existing F135 engine will save the program up to $40 billion. It is yet unclear as to how much of that $6 billion will fall on the shoulders of allies who have defense cost-sharing agreements with Washington, but this much is clear: South Korea cannot bear the burden coming from the increased defense costs for this program. 

South Korea and the United States are engaged in a delicate process of mending their bilateral alliance that was injured by President Donald Trump. In fact, the former administration strained the relationship by demanding that Seoul pay more for the U.S. military’s presence in the region. The last thing both governments need at this moment is another call for Seoul to take on higher defense costs as it would derail the sensitive process. 

The F-35 program is not just a matter of domestic politics in Washington. The national security interests of America’s most important allies also hinge on the viability of this program. Therefore, the Biden administration must settle this debate on the F135 engine by focusing on the impact of a replacement program or the benefits of updates to the existing components of the aircraft. It should also consider whether it would be viable to replace the engine in the later future—perhaps with the introduction of sixth-generation fighters. 

Allies like South Korea deserve timely and cost-effective deterrence measures from Washington, not politicized arrangements that are blind to the ever-changing threats from our common enemies. More importantly, it is in America’s best interests to avoid souring relations with its partners by force-feeding expensive and premature defense initiatives.

Before the global security environment takes a more dangerous turn, Washington would be wise to strengthen its alliances, instead of unsettling them with rushed political projects. 

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Chun In-bum currently serves in many advisory positions, including the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Korea Foundation, the Association of the United States Army, and the Stockholm-based Institute for Security & Development Policy. Chun served as the director of U.S. Affairs at the Korean Ministry of National Defense and all levels of command to include the ROK Special Warfare Command.

Image: DVIDS.

One year has passed since Russia crossed the border into Ukraine, and the Cold War, confined to the literature of the twentieth century, returned once again with the West bleeding Russia through a buffer state. The war has not been about preventing the cannibalization of Ukraine into Russia. Rather, the war is about maintaining U.S. dominance in the United States European Command (EUCOM).

The Wolfowitz Doctrine, named after then U.S. under-secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz, was leaked to The New York Times in 1992. The crux of the policy underscored American supremacy at all costs in a post-Soviet world and “stamping out rivals wherever they may emerge.” In addition, U.S. leadership would place defense agreements as the cornerstone of its policy and inadvertently monopolize the global arms trade through treaties. Furthermore, it would prevent allies from developing their defense systems and increase reliance on American-manufactured hardware. Finally, interoperability formed the basis for amalgamating competing factions within NATO.

If this all sounds familiar, as it should, then it is essential to understand when this doctrine formed, how it came about, and why it still shapes many individuals’ views of the West—including Russian president Vladimir Putin’s.

The Fall of the USSR and the Broken Promise

The United States’ victory against the Soviets laid the foundations for the Wolfowitz Doctrine. First, the expulsion of the Soviets from Afghanistan, due to Pakistan’s tactical use of guerrilla warfare, helped drained the Soviet economy and the USSR to its collapse in 1991. Secondly, the United States’ own victory over Saddam Hussein through a “tune-up” war in the same year, allowed Washington to showcase its supreme military might, regain some lost pride after the defeat in Vietnam, and rebuild the confidence of its allies.

In conjunction with this, the Wolfowitz Doctrine stipulated that the United States could silence and integrate two former major powers, Germany and Japan, “into a U.S-led system of collective security and the creation of a democratic zone of peace.” Russia, on the other hand, was dealt with differently—the country fell off the radar. It became insignificant as a geopolitical competitor in the eyes of the West, as its gestures of peaceful offerings were rebuffed and guarantees given to it regarding NATO’s expansion forfeited.

A record of the minutes, declassified and released by the National Security Archives, recounts the meeting between Mikhail Gorbachev and Secretary of State James A. Baker III in Moscow. Baker promised NATO would not expand under any circumstance. He further went on, and stated that “NATO is the mechanism for securing U.S. presence in Europe…We understand that only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries…. it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread; in an eastern direction… Germany's unification will not lead to NATO's military spreading to the East.”

In the same meeting, Gorbachev proposed to Baker that as the Soviet Union had dissolved, the need for NATO was no more, and a newly created Russia be allowed to join NATO. Baker dismissed this as a “dream.” However, when Boris Yeltsin came to power, he also proposed joining NATO, and took a step further by labeling membership to NATO as a “political aim for Russia.” In 1994, Russia signed the NATO Partnership for Peace program, which aimed to bridge the divide between the two entities and lead to a pathway to NATO membership.

As the United States realized its privileged position as an uncontested power, it went back on Baker’s word. After all, these “guarantees” were given to the Soviet Union—not to Russia. Taking advantage of this technicality, the United States pushed for former Warsaw Pact countries—such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary—to join NATO at the Washington Summit in 1999. Russia opposed the inclusion, but besides a symbolic murmur, Moscow could do nothing to prevent such an endeavor. The successor state of the mighty Soviet Union was not its equal, and thus not considered important enough to be involved in global decisionmaking. Yet, despite its reduced size and sphere of influence, Russia persisted in being considered a key player in international affairs.

Putin’s Ascent and the End of Patience

In 2000, three weeks before his ascension to the presidency, a young and bold Vladimir Putin was interviewed by the BBC’s David Frost. He clarified his intention: “Russia is a part of European culture, and I do not consider my own country in isolation from Europe. Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world. So it is hard for me to visualize NATO as an enemy.”

When the 9/11 attacks occurred, it provided Putin with an opportunity to prove that Russia was willing to engage with the West in its fight against terrorism, as it saw similar security-related issues in Chechnya. Russian intelligence cooperated with the initial U.S. phase of the invasion of Afghanistan by providing crucial logistical, topographical, and urban data entry points into Afghanistan, especially the areas in and around Kabul. Putin also influenced former Central Asian states to open supply routes into Afghanistan for George W. Bush’s War on Terror. There was never any reciprocation or appreciation for this gesture by the United States, as it overreached and established bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. America had established itself in Russia's backyard, and did so as a “favor” to help its security problems and prevent any form of galvanization of groups venturing out of Afghanistan.

Nevertheless, despite these amicable efforts and out-of-the-box thinking by Putin, NATO and the United States could not lose their Cold War mentality—the alliance pushed even more aggressively with its expansion. In 2004, seven countries—Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia—were granted NATO membership. The alliance had not only moved more than an “inch” from Germany, against what was promised by Baker, but was now standing firmly on Russia’s doorstep. George Kennan, the former American ambassador to the Soviet Union and the architect of containment, himself rejected the idea of expanding NATO and warned of its potential consequences. He professed that this “fatal error” could “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion.”

The tipping point came in 2007, when Putin had lost patience with the arrogance shown by his Western counterparts. At the Munich Security Conference, Putin declared that he thought “it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”

Consequences

America’s position of not granting Russia a dignified parity status only further inflamed Putin. He, along with much of Russia’s political elite, could only come to the conclusion that the United States had no intention of working with Russia in a responsible and respectful manner. Washington was doing nothing more, the Kremlin realized, than carrying out a plan determined in 1992 to impose its will upon the world and “stamping out rivals wherever they may emerge.”

This would be further confirmed in Putin’s mind by American actions in Ukraine, meddling in the country’s political affairs and chalking out a path for the country towards eventually joining NATO and the European Union. The back and forth between both sides led to the Euromaidan Revolution, essentially setting up an everlasting division in Ukrainian politics that only deepened by the year.

From Putin’s perspective, invading Ukraine in 2022 was the only option to signal to the Transatlantic alliance that Russia is now in an economic and geostrategic position to counter any further expansion–that Moscow remembers how the broken promises Baker made to Gorbachev, that the line has been drawn in the sand, and the Wolfowitz Doctrine shall advance no further.

Sameed Basha is a defense and political analyst with a master’s degree in international relations from Deakin University, Australia. He specializes in Asia-Pacific regional dynamics and conflict & security studies. He tweets at @SameedBasha.

Image: Shutterstock.

Space capabilities are a vital aspect of modern security and defense architecture, but their deployment presents increasing challenges. The use of satellites for intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, navigation, and communication has turned outer space into one of the most congested, contested, and consequential domains for military operations while simultaneously raising the likelihood of escalating tensions between space-faring nations.

In response to the rapid technological advancement and the proliferation of actors and interests in space, in 2019 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) promulgated space—along with air, land, maritime, and cyberspace—as its fifth domain of operations and warfare. The coverage of NATO’s relatively new space policy has been scarce, yet it offers an intriguing approach to the alliance’s evolving thinking on extraterrestrial security and collective defense while soberly assessing the alliance’s informational and technical gaps.

Many of NATO’s systems, such as the Ballistic Missile Defence program, the Airborne Warning and Control Systems, and the Ground Surveillance System, depend heavily on space-based assets which provide essential positioning and navigation information to allied states and enable precision strikes, combat, search and rescue mission support, missile launch attribution, environmental monitoring, surveillance, reconnaissance, and battlefield targeting data.

The alliance recognized that it must anticipate and identify threats, share intelligence, and coordinate policies and activities in the face of the growing militarization of outer space to minimize its vulnerabilities, maintain a competitive edge, and ensure optimal exploitation of its space assets vis-à-vis China and Russia. For this purpose, NATO’s defense ministers approved the creation of the Allied Air Command in Ramstein, Germany, in 2020 and NATO’s Space Centre of Excellence in Toulouse, France, in 2021. The multinational teams from Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States currently manning the effort are to work with the allies’ national space agencies and organizations and the NATO Command Structure to detect missile launches; provide operational support; and ensure effective command, control, and decisionmaking capabilities.

NATO’s space policy promises to remain in line with existing international law while executing its defense and deterrence commitments outlined in the North Atlantic Treaty. NATO’s foray into space, however, raises the question of the applicability of treaty obligations in case of attacks to, from, or within space. The continued weaponization of space is beginning to generate considerable geopolitical tensions. Kinetic counter-space weapons, non-kinetic lasers, microwave weapons, electronic jamming or spoofing of signals or data transmission systems, and deployment of direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons can significantly disrupt NATO operations and adversely affect civilian and commercial space architecture essential to the uninterrupted continuation of economic activity on Earth. In its June 2021 Brussels Summit Communiqué, the heads of state and government of the thirty NATO allies recognized that the impact of such attacks “could threaten national and Euro-Atlantic prosperity, security, and stability, and could be as harmful to modern societies as a conventional attack.” Yet they also emphasized that the decision to invoke Article V of NATO’s founding treaty would be taken on a case-by-case basis.

Whilst the communiqué itself is by design thin on conveying details about the legal regime which ought to apply to outer space attacks, it is nonetheless warranted to further inquire about the legal controversies which might arise from intentional and non-intentional acts of sabotage of discrete space assets. In case of an attack on a NATO member state’s vital satellite infrastructure, what ought to constitute a proportional response? Is it appropriate to extend the law of armed conflict to outer space conflicts? And finally, what are the international legal limits on the means and methods of waging war in space? To do due diligence on these and similar questions would require a considerable rethinking and expansion of the remit of existing institutional mechanisms for the adjudication of legal disputes between state and non-state actors and imposition of treaty commitments on states actively engaged in the space arms race. 

The alliance is mindful of the intensifying “scramble for space” among state and private actors and the potential for instability when military and civilian objectives intermingle or conflict. One of NATO’s key objectives is to enhance its space situational awareness and strategic communication capabilities. This includes monitoring the space environment and detecting, tracking, and identifying human-made objects in space. The alliance is working to improve its space surveillance capabilities by developing new technologies and resilient infrastructures that can enhance its ability to better monitor objects and events in space and enhance its orientation, response, and deterrence activities. To prevent a space arms race, the alliance must also assuage the fears of non-aligned members, whose perception of NATO’s investment in five core areas of its outer space strategy—namely (i) deterrence, defense, resilience; (ii) capability development and interoperability; (iii) training and exercises; (iv) science, technology, and innovation; and (v) industry partnerships—might be construed as having a dual-use application with offensive capabilities.

The proliferation of state and private actors and interests in space increases the risk of conflict in a rapidly evolving strategic frontier where jurisdictional claims and rights of ownership are explicitly prohibited by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The global community is threatened by inevitable regulatory fragmentation as distinct regimes attempt to define normative guardrails and vie for legal supremacy. 

NATO’s space policy is an essential first step in situating the alliance at the forefront of modern security and defense norm-setting and decisionmaking regarding the sustainable, secure, and stable use of outer space while mitigating the risks of conflict. By anticipating and mitigating critical security risks and working closely with its member states and international partners, the alliance can facilitate international consensus on a joint approach to the inevitable militarization of space and contribute to the creation of space standards that would benefit the security interests of all space-faring nations. 

Dr. Joanna Rozpedowski is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and an Adjunct Professor at George Mason University, Schar School of Policy and Government. Twitter @JKRozpedowski

Image: Shutterstock.

The Chinese surveillance balloon shot down by the U.S. Air Force on February 4 traveled over a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) base and one bomber base, collecting information about U.S. nuclear facilities. Some commentary states that the United States took countermeasures to prevent the transmission of data back to China, meaning that the violation of U.S. airspace and sovereignty was “not a major breach” of U.S. security. Yet others, including Senators Steve Daines and John Tester and Representative Matt Rosendale, believe the Chinese balloon incursion was a serious problem and need to be prevented in the future. 

What information China was able to gather with a balloon that it could not obtain through satellite surveillance is unclear, but other important questions need to be answered. What is the Chinese purpose in the strategic realm? What does this mean for China’s modernization and expansion of its nuclear arsenal?

The collection of weather information about a U.S. Minuteman III missile field would tell the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) how its warheads might fare in seeking to destroy U.S. missiles, a point made by a very detailed assessment in 1984. 

An additional study eleven years ago discovered the Chinese build of tunnel-based mobile railroad launchers for their land-based ICBMs. The range of the DF-31 ICBM is estimated at 7,000-11,000 kilometers, meaning it can hit anywhere in the United States, including Malmstrom, F.E. Warren, and Minot Air Force Bases. 400 American ICBM missiles are deployed at these three American missile bases, and China’s nuclear buildup is allowing Beijing to hold the entire U.S. ICBM force at risk.

Especially with China’s construction of 360 additional ICBM launchers or silos in western China, the CCP’s objective is becoming clearer. These silos can contain DF-41 ICBMs that carry up to ten warheads each, with a 12,000-kilometer range. Despite doubts to the contrary, China’s expanded fissile material production capabilities are now confirmed by U.S. intelligence assessments. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) can turn out nuclear warheads like sausages, building up to at least 1,500 warheads by 2030-35, according to recent U.S. intelligence reports. This “breathtaking” buildup, as described by the recently retired commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, is dramatically changing the security environment that the United States is operating in.

Indeed, on February 7, U.S. Strategic Command notified the U.S. Congress, as required by law, that China now has more ICBM launchers than the United States. This should concern Americans, especially given rising U.S.-China tensions over Taiwan and Beijing’s acknowledgement that its “no first use” policy does not apply to the island. Look no further than the statement from Chinese state media that threatened to use nuclear weapons against Japan, and “again demand their unconditional surrender” as occurred in World War II, if Tokyo decided to come to the defense of Taiwan. 

With no-first-use jettisoned, U.S. assessments of Chinese nuclear strategy might begin to include the idea that up to 360 DF-31 or DF-41 missiles in those 360 silos could very well unleash multiple thousands of warheads in a potential first strike against the United States. Such a threatened attack, in China’s mind, could ensure the United States stands down in the case of PRC aggression against Taiwan. 

The Chinese balloon entered U.S. airspace undeterred. If one is not concerned with multiple thousands of Chinese warheads holding at risk U.S. military capabilities and major American cities, one might contemplate Mike Pillsbury’s testimony before the U.S.-China Security Review Commission that warned China could use electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP) against the United States electrical grid with catastrophic results. And what is a very efficient and surreptitious method of bringing an EMP weapon over America’s heartland? As the late EMP expert Dr. Peter Pry explained numerous times, a key means of delivering such a weapon would be a balloon.

Peter Huessy is Senior Defense Fellow at the Hudson Institute and President of Geo-Strategic Analysis. These views are his own.

Image: Shutterstock.

Editor’s note: This article originally stated in the first paragraph that the Chinese balloon traveled over two U.S. ICBM bases instead of one. We regret the error.

In the weeks following his return to power in Brazil on January 1, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—best just known simply as Lula—has proven himself to be, as always, a canny politician who, despite his narrow victory over Jair Bolsonaro, has shown success both in forming a cabinet and obtaining a relatively friendly leadership in Congress. This initial period has been capped with a highly publicized meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington.

A Failed Seizure Gives Lula Space

In what direction will Lula take Brazil? At this early date, one must judge more from words than deeds. But there are signs that he will not be afraid to play political hardball. As politicians often do, he initially stressed that he wanted to unify the country after a raucous campaign in which Bolsonaro ran not only against him but against Brazil’s electoral system and courts, which he had insisted were conspiring to steal the election from him.

But in the aftermath of the January 8 attempt by a mob of Bolsonaro supporters to occupy the Congress, Presidential Palace, and Supreme Court, Lula has used tough rhetoric, insisting (with some justification) that this was a failed coup attempt. Most egregiously, top military officials had used troops to prevent police from arresting protestors who had camped in front of the Army headquarters, instead letting many of them simply slip away. As a result, Lula dismissed the commander in chief of the Army, replacing him with another general who had earlier cast cold water on Bolsonaro’s allegations of electoral fraud.

He also removed the large number of soldiers who had been serving on the presidential security detail, saying he had “lost trust” in them. At the same time, prosecutors are starting to deal with the over 1,000 individuals arrested during the events in Brasilia. And a previously pro-Bolsonaro senator has asserted that in the interim between Lula’s election and inauguration, the former president at least tacitly approved a proposed effort to cook up an excuse to arrest the Supreme Court judge in charge of elections and nullify the results of the vote.

All of this has left Lula in a stronger position at the start of his administration than he might otherwise be, with Bolsonaro seemingly unsure whether to return to Brazil, where he could face legal jeopardy. Although Brazil’s political right has a mass base and its own well-oiled social media network, for now it is on the defensive, giving Lula some extra breathing space.

Building a Cabinet 

In forming his cabinet Lula has reached out to representatives of a range of parties beyond his own base, the leftist Workers’ Party, to include figures not only from other parties which had been aligned with him in his campaign, but also from ones that had opposed him. He had earlier picked as his running mate Geraldo Alckmin, former governor of populous São Paulo state and presidential candidate for the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party. Clearly chosen as a gesture to voters concerned about the Workers’ Party’s leftist orientation and Lula’s own free spending record, especially in his second term, Alckmin played a leading role in the transition and subsequently was named as minister of development, industry and foreign trade, in addition to holding the vice presidency.

However, the crucial position of finance minister has gone to Fernando Haddad, former mayor São Paulo city and a Workers’ Party heavyweight, moving the center of gravity on economic policymaking back towards the left. The position of planning and budget minister went to Simone Tebet from the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement. 

The Foreign Ministry was entrusted to veteran diplomat Mauro Viera. (In Brazil this ministry is usually headed by a senior career foreign service officer.) His record includes serving as ambassador to the United States, which may help in keeping relations with Washington on track. However, the former foreign and defense minister, Celso Amorim, remains a close advisor to Lula. His third-world-oriented viewpoint is likely to significantly influence the Lula administration’s approach to international affairs. 

Lula’s defense minister, Jose Múcio, comes from a small party currently aligned with Lula and has served in Lula’s cabinet before. His position has gained added importance as Lula grapples with civil-military relations after the January 8 events. Otherwise, the cabinet does not seem to have many stars, although it is noteworthy that Marina Silva, an environmental activist turned environment minister in Lula’s previous administration, is returning to her position.

Reaching Out to Congress

Lula’s approach to cabinet-making with its aim of coalition building seems to have served him well in his relations with Congress, despite the strong performance of pro-Bolsonaro forces in both houses on Election Day. A member of the centrist Brazilian Social Democracy Party gained the presidency of the Senate, with support from Lula’s Workers’ Party. It also successfully backed a conservative (if highly transactional) opposition figure for re-election to the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies. 

During Bolsonaro’s presidency, Congress benefited from the practice of the “secret budget,” under which legislators got to determine individually where large amounts of public money was directed—a practice somewhat like the “earmarking” found in the U.S. Congress, but on a grander scale and more opaque. This in effect was the price Bolsonaro paid for gaining control over Congress (and beating back several impeachment attempts).

Lula campaigned against the secret budget, and a recent Supreme Court decision ruling it unconstitutional means he cannot be pressured to maintain it, which would have been politically difficult as his previous administration had been marked by a major scandal regarding the wholesale purchase of congressional votes. But finding other means to gain passage of legislation will be a challenge for Lula, given that in Brazil the path to good executive-legislature relations is seemingly paved with money.

Left Turn on Economics

With the personnel in place, Lula’s policies are beginning to emerge. On the economic side, his recent actions and statements have led some to believe that his moderate gestures during the campaign were a “bait and switch,” as he has ramped up his rhetoric against the rich who “don’t work.” Even before taking office, Lula attained congressional support to suspend a constitutional amendment passed in 2016 which had established an overall cap on spending increases at the rate of annual inflation for a twenty-year period. This will allow him to maintain trademark social programs. (Bolsonaro too had obtained a temporary suspension which allowed him to engage in a pre-election spending spree.)

Lula has publicly disparaged policies that privilege fiscal discipline over the needs of the poor. And he has also engaged in a vocal campaign against the independent central bank for keeping interest rates too high, calling them “an embarrassment,” and suggesting that the bank’s president will be replaced when his term expires. Finance Minister Haddad has echoed Lula, albeit in somewhat milder terms, urging the bank to be more “generous” in the interest of stimulating the economy while pledging to create a more realistic “fiscal anchor” than the spending cap.

Brazil’s huge state-owned Bank for National Economic and Social Development (BNDES) has also become an issue. In his previous administration, the bank, flush with the cash which had flooded into state coffers from the global commodity boom, had been an aggressive player on the international, and especially Latin American, stage, financing infrastructure projects undertaken by large Brazilian construction firms. This was an effort at supporting “national champions” as well as Brazil’s ambitions for global, and particularly regional, leadership.

During the presidential campaign, it had been suggested that BNDES, instead of venturing afield, would concentrate on supporting local enterprises, particularly small and medium-sized businesses. However, since taking office, Lula has asserted that BNDES would indeed be active in support of regional development and integration, and has named Aloizio Mercadante, a former Workers’ Party senator, as its head. This has raised eyebrows as Brazilian construction firms and politicians, including Lula himself, have been caught up in major foreign bribery scandals, though BNDES itself was never charged with misconduct.

Lula has criticized Bolsonaro’s partial privatization of the huge state power generator and transmitter Eletrobras as overly generous to investors (“almost banditry”), and said that this sale would be reviewed (though undoing it may be legally difficult). He has categorically ruled out the idea that Bolsonaro had floated of similarly privatizing state oil producer Petrobras.

Still, there are some who suggest that Lula’s bark may be worse than his bite regarding the economy. During his previous presidency, he showed fiscal restraint, at least during his first term, before money from the global commodity boom began to flow. It may be the case that he is setting up the wealthy and the central bank to take some of the blame when he is unable to make good on all his promises to low-income Brazilians.

Back to the Future on Foreign Policy

The themes of Lula’s previous administration are also reflected in his foreign policy. In his first international trip since taking office, he went to Buenos Aires for a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States—a body of Western Hemisphere states which, unlike the Washington DC-based Organization of American States, excludes the United States and Canada while including Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. While some Latin leaders, notably Chile’s Gabriel Boric and Uruguay’s Luis Lacalle, raised democracy issues, Lula, faithful to his longstanding approach, demurred, only urging in the case of Venezuela that these issues be resolved through “dialogue” while saying that Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro deserved “affection.”

Lula reiterated his commitment to Latin American integration, saying that Brazil would support Argentina in its current economic travails by providing financing for the Argentine purchase of Brazilian goods (presumably through BNDES). But despite his gestures toward regional unity, he has been willing to put Brazilian interests first. After initial hesitation, he supported the successful candidacy of orthodox Brazilian economist Ilan Goldfajn for the presidency of the Inter-American Development Bank, even though Goldfajn had been proposed by Bolsonaro. This chagrined Mexico, a traditional rival of Brazil’s for prominence in the hemisphere, which had promoted its own candidate.

He also used his visit to Argentina to deal with thorny issues regarding the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), where the draft text of a free trade agreement with the European Union had been earlier reached but which some EU members, notably France, had put on hold, citing Brazil’s poor environmental record under Bolsonaro. Lula, who seems genuinely committed to improving Brazil’s environmental performance, has urged progress on the agreement while suggesting that some further renegotiation may be in order. (Argentina, in weaker economic shape, is in no hurry to support an agreement with the EU, so its future remains in doubt.)

But there may be other motives behind Lula’s interest in reviving the agreement with the EU. Little Uruguay, which has an export-oriented economy based on its efficient agricultural sector, has chafed at Brazil’s sluggishness on trade expansion and has begun to negotiate its own free trade agreement with China, something to which Brazil and Argentina object to as inconsistent with Mercosur’s common external tariff. By showing new interest in the EU agreement and promising then to turn to China once it is completed, Lula may be hoping to persuade Uruguay to put its negotiations with China on the back burner for now, thus avoiding an internal Mercosur crisis.

Relations with the United States: The Feel Good Factor, for Now

Lula’s early meeting with Biden is a sign that he is viewed as a refreshing change from Bolsonaro, who had close ties with Donald Trump. And the parallels between the January 6, 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol and the events of January 8, 2023 in Brasilia unsurprisingly were highlighted at the meeting. Likewise, Lula is definitely striking a tone on environmental issues that the Biden administration can appreciate.

But beyond these areas, the prospects for a shared agenda start to thin out quickly. Although the United States has shown some signs of wanting to modulate its confrontation with Venezuela, Lula’s bland assertions of the need for dialogue, which seem to put Venezuela’s embattled opposition on the same level as the Maduro regime, which uses all the elements of state power to throttle it, will ring hollow to many.

And on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is a real gap between Washington and Brasilia. Lula maintains the view while Russia’s invasion was unacceptable, its causes are “unclear.” (In fairness, Bolsonaro, despite his professed pro-Americanism, took a similarly equivocal stance. He made pro-Russian statements immediately after the invasion, and while his government voted for the United Nations resolutions favoring Ukraine, it did not support the economic sanctions the United States and Europe imposed.)

Lula has offered Brazil as a mediator between Russia and Ukraine in a “club for peace,” together with China and other large states, just as during his previous administration he had suggested that Brazil undertake a similar role regarding efforts to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions. He is likely to get the same polite cold shoulder in this case as before.

We can expect Lula to keep Brazil on a democratic track, no small thing given the authoritarian adventurism of his predecessor. On his economic policies, the jury is still out as to whether he will turn the spending tap on to the point where inflation, devaluation, and a major loss of investor confidence become a real problem. And on foreign policy, Brazil may be occasionally helpful to the United States, but Lula’s fundamental orientation likely means that there will not be much common ground once the initial period of good feeling between the two governments passes.

Richard M. Sanders is a Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Formerly a member of the Senior Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State, he served as Director of the Office of Brazilian and Southern Cone Affairs from 2013 to 2016.

Image: Marcus Mendes/Shutterstock.

Fear is mightier than the sword, and few things stoke fear like a dirty bomb. So, it should have come as no surprise when Russia accused Ukraine of building a radiological dispersal device (RDD), possibly setting the stage for a false-flag attack. By manipulating widespread fear of radioactivity, such a device is a potent weapon of terror, and Russia has transformed it into an instrument of “war by other means.” To manage this, relevant chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) doctrine must also shift to emphasize public information and crisis recovery.

The Dirty Deed

It is no secret that Russia’s military strategy includes targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, aiming to ensure this winter is taxing on the Ukrainian population. While such an effort is nothing new in warfare, the prevalence of nuclear power in Ukraine makes it unique—and dangerous. Heavy fighting has occurred near one of the country’s four operating nuclear power plants, with a missile reportedly landing close to another. This has raised the alarm among the international community; the effects of a nuclear meltdown could reach well beyond Ukraine’s borders, as was the case during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Consequently, Russia has been forced to become creative in targeting nuclear facilities.

In late October 2022, Russia claimed Ukraine was building a dirty bomb. A tweet by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs named Ukraine’s nuclear power plants and research reactors as the sources of the necessary radionuclides, stating Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239—the fissile isotopes of nuclear power—were the most likely ingredients. Although they make lousy ingredients for a dirty bomb when compared to Cobalt-60 and Strontium-90, which were also mentioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the fear was palpable on both sides. Ukraine and the West immediately counterclaimed that Russia was the true perpetrator, accusing them of contemplating a false-flag event that risked nuclear escalation. Meanwhile, Russian state media played up the potential consequences, and the surrounding countries braced for a radiological incident. Although it is inconclusive from open-source intelligence if Russia truly intended to stage a false-flag attack, the threatened employment of an RDD to incite fear and achieve strategic military objectives was dastardly creative.

A Frightfully Effective Weapon

Unlike a nuclear weapon, an RDD does not unleash the power of nuclear fusion or fission. Rather, it simply disperses radioactive material via a conventional explosive, thereby adding the complexity of contamination to an otherwise common problem. A potential attacker does not have to overcome the proliferation challenges of obtaining special nuclear material, much less mastering nuclear physics, to build such a device. Theoretically, all they need are radioactive sources and a bomb.

Rather than mass destruction, a dirty bomb primarily deals in fear. As the explosion spreads its contaminants, the once-concentrated radioactive material is dispersed over a comparatively wide space. This lowers the radioactivity within a given area, thereby lowering the dose rate for the exposed. Consequently, the resulting contamination is generally more of a long-term health risk than an immediate problem, with a few exceptions, such as particulates suspended in air. However, it is likely that an uneducated public would mischaracterize the risk, as just mentioning radioactivity can incite panic. This radiophobia persists across societies, making the dirty bomb a potent instrument of terror.

(Radiological) War by Other Means

Because it lacks the power and complexity of a nuclear weapon, conventional wisdom says a dirty bomb is a poor man’s weapon of mass destruction. Strategic powers like Russia, so the story goes, are only interested in high-yield nuclear devices, which are important for deterring their enemies. Even terrorists would prefer to possess an improvised nuclear device (IND), as the destructive power is many orders of magnitude higher. Such a scenario is the plot of Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears, in which terrorists detonate an IND to attempt to draw the United States and Russia into a nuclear war.

However, such dogma fails to account for the geopolitical and military shifts that have pushed warfighting into the liminal space. As revisionist powers like Russia have questioned their ability to defeat the West in a conventional fight, they have watched Western armies struggle with counterinsurgency operations in the Global War on Terror. Noting the successes of nonstate actors in this conflict, they have adapted irregular strategies into their military doctrine, including the weaponization of fear. This phenomenon is described by David Kilcullen in The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West, who argues, “The snakes have learned to fight like dragons, and the dragons now fight like snakes.” Therefore, as warfare has evolved into its fourth generation, it was only a matter of time before the threatened use of a dirty bomb was done in a strategic manner.

Of course, when it comes to radiological nightmares, Ukraine has history. Northern Ukraine was the site of the Chernobyl disaster, which resulted in approximately 30-50 prompt deaths (depending upon the source), hundreds of thousands of relocations, and lasting widespread contamination. This event has even been cited as a factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it left an indelible mark on the population’s memory. So, when it comes to radioactivity, the fear in Ukraine is visceral.

Managing the Mess

The evolution of the radiological dispersal device into a strategic weapon requires CBRN professionals around the world to reconceptualize this threat, particularly in terms of crisis management. While traditionally categorized as a weapon of mass destruction, a dirty bomb is really a weapon of fear. As such, the potential impacts are overwhelmingly psychological, economic, and political, as opposed to destructive, making them ideal for irregular warfare. Institutional knowledge should be amended to reflect this, particularly in the realms of public information and incident recovery.

On the matter of public information, strong messaging and education should be a priority, both left and right of boom. CBRN responders and security officials should develop robust messaging plans to combat radiophobia, which can paralyze a society. This requires intimate working relationships with public information experts, which should be fostered well ahead of an incident to ensure effective crisis communication. As information warfare grows in prevalence, this action will become increasingly important for all facets of CBRN consequence management.

As for recovery, it should be given significant attention as soon as possible during an RDD incident, as it will be vital to limiting the long-term social and economic effects. Out of fear, the public will be wary of any attempted cleanup, and they will demand it be complete. However, as those in the industry understand, completeness is generally a relative and elusive goal, and it can be very expensive. Therefore, in conjunction with public communication, recovery should be an early consideration.

Conclusion

Fear is a weapon that can be employed strategically. Noting this, revisionist powers like Russia have adopted irregular strategies to fight the West. Since a radiological dispersal device plays upon mass radiophobia, it is ideal for this purpose. As such, it is not shocking that Russia claimed Ukraine was developing one, potentially in furtherance of their own false-flag event. To address this evolution of the dirty bomb into a weapon of “war by other means,” the CBRN community must prioritize public information and disaster recovery.

Robert T. Wagner is a Senior Weapons of Mass Destruction Subject Matter Expert at Octant Associates, where he supports the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. He holds a Master of Arts Degree in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School and is a Nationally Registered Paramedic.

Image: A 3D rendering of a Russian nuclear warhead. Shutterstock.

In the wake of the formation of the new Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan has publicly voiced concerns and warnings. King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein of Jordan visited the White House on February 2, days after the United States voiced concerns of its own during Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Jerusalem.

Netanyahu’s government took office after a few years in which Jordan-Israel relations were improving. Israel’s Bennett-Lapid government acknowledged the strategic importance of Jordan, managed to restore trust and good working relations with the king, and expanded the scope of cooperation between both countries.

This was in stark contrast to the previous lack of communication between Abdullah and Netanyahu, which led the king to declare in 2019 that Jordan’s relations with Israel were at an all-time low. Jordan’s lack of trust in Netanyahu derived from several negative experiences, ranging from the 1997 Israeli attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan (during Netanyahu’s first term) to Netanyahu’s 2017 public embrace of the Israeli security guard involved in a shooting incident at the Israeli embassy in Amman.

Jordan’s concern about the Netanyahu government is not only about the prime minister. It is also about the far-right composition of the government, and the fact that it includes key members who believe that "Jordan is Palestine” and seek to change the status quo in Jerusalem through provocative actions.

Jordan is also worried by the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian escalation, as it is the country that is impacted the most—for better or for worse—by developments in these relations. Just as the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 paved the way for Jordan to sign a peace treaty with Israel the following year, tensions between Israel and the Palestinians repeatedly stir public demonstrations and opposition in Jordan and are considered by the regime as a threat to stability.

For Jordan, the Palestinian issue is not merely a diplomatic one—it is also a significant security issue. Throughout the years, this has led to multiple efforts by Jordan to push Israeli-Palestinian relations in a better direction. It was King Hussein who assisted U.S. mediation attempts between Netanyahu and Arafat in 1998 at the Wye Plantation summit, and it was King Abdullah who mobilized international opposition to Netanyahu’s annexation plan in 2020 and led efforts in 2022 to prevent escalation in Jerusalem during the month of Ramadan.

Jordan is also part—together with Egypt, France, and Germany—of the Munich Group, a non-formal grouping that was formed in early 2020 to keep the idea of a two-state solution alive in response to then-President Donald Trump’s plan.

With Netanyahu back in office, and despite its deep concerns and past grievances with him, Jordan chose to engage. King Abdullah congratulated Netanyahu upon his election victory and hosted him in Amman in January (Netanyahu’s first visit abroad since taking office). On the practical level, Jordan has kept bilateral relations with Israel on track, including the implementation of the water and electricity deal that the two countries jointly signed with the United Arab Emirates. Even the tense incident that took place in January near the al-Aqsa Mosque between the Jordanian ambassador and an Israeli security guard did not change this trend.

Cooperation with Israel serves the central economic and security needs of Jordan, and it seeks to preserve this, as long as Israeli-Palestinian relations do not deteriorate to a level that leads Jordan to downgrade ties with Israel. It was in this context—preventing Israeli-Palestinian deterioration—that King Abdullah visited the White House in early February, his third visit of President Joe Biden’s presidency.

The visit took place amid a rise in violent incidents between Israelis and Palestinians. It reflected the important role that the U.S. administration attributes to Jordan in advancing regional stability and indicated an American interest in cooperation. The Abdullah-Biden meeting was also an opportunity for the United States to reiterate its commitment to maintaining the status quo in Jerusalem—an issue it should also press the Israeli government on—and Jordan’s custodianship of the Islamic holy places in the city.

The United States, the single-largest provider of aid to Jordan, also emphasized following the White House meeting that both countries are committed to advancing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In that regard, the visit will become even more important if it leads to concrete steps that advance stability, peace, and regional cooperation.

The United States and Jordan should prepare for the sensitive overlap between Ramadan and Passover this coming April by coordinating their efforts, dividing the labor, and utilizing their leverage over Israel and the Palestinian Authority, respectively, to lower the risk of escalation.

They should also work to create a new alliance of international actors that care about the Israeli-Palestinian issue and are committed to taking action to prevent escalation and advance peacemaking. The Middle East Quartet—composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union (EU), and the United Nations (UN)—has not been effective for years. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it does not even convene anymore. A new international mechanism is needed, even if informally at first.

Jordan can bring on board the other Munich Group members, while the United States can invite the EU and the UN, its allies in the Quartet. Switzerland and Norway, whose special envoys to the region recently visited Jerusalem, can also be incorporated, alongside Turkey, given its recent rapprochement with Israel and good relations with the Palestinians. Putting in place such a mechanism will require in-depth policy planning regarding its goals, composition, and conduct to ensure it will be more successful than previous initiatives.

On the regional level, the United States should stop trying to convince Jordan to join the Negev Forum, a regional grouping composed of the United States, Israel, and a number of Arab states. Instead, it should respect Jordan’s decision to stay out until there is progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track. In the meantime, Washington should make sure that the interests of Jordan and the Palestinians are considered during the upcoming Negev Summit in Morocco. Additionally, Washington should link Jordan and the Palestinians as much as possible to regional projects enabled by the Abraham Accords.

The United States can also encourage Jordan and Saudi Arabia to work together on updating the Arab Peace Initiative, bringing it in line with recent regional developments and making it a more effective incentive for peace. Conditions seem ripe for this. Amman played a key role in the drafting of the initiative over twenty years ago, and it may want to do so again. The Saudis repeatedly emphasize their commitment to the initiative, notably convening a multilateral gathering aimed at updating the initiative on the sidelines of the 2022 UN General Assembly.

Finally, the United States can help Israel and Jordan put in place a crisis-management mechanism that will enable the two neighbors to deal with the consequences of any Israeli-Palestinian escalation and prevent the collapse of bilateral ties. Such a model will also be needed between Israel and Turkey, and the United States can help it happen.

For these efforts to begin, and for the administration to be able to effectively follow up on last week’s meeting, the Senate must quickly confirm Yael Lempart, Biden’s recently-announced appointee, as ambassador to Jordan.

Dr. Nimrod Goren is the Senior Fellow for Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute, President of the Mitvim Institute, and Co-Founder of Diplomeds.

Image: Flickr/White House.

Before the supply chain woes suffered from COVID-19, now-National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and now-high-level White House official Jennifer M. Harris argued that the United States needed to implement an industrial policy to be more economically resilient for the coming global challenges in the twenty-first century. In addition, bipartisan calls in 2020 to strengthen the U.S. supply chain made it clear that national industrial policy legislation would be inevitably introduced. Immediately after taking office, the Biden administration signed an executive order aimed at improving the resilience of U.S. supply chains. The White House also hosted a global summit attended by leaders from fourteen countries and the European Union to discuss semiconductor supply chain vulnerabilities. During the summit, the Biden administration urged European countries to work with the United States in developing resilient semiconductor supply chains that minimize dependencies on non-Western actors. Most notably, the Biden administration signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, providing $52 billion in federal subsidies to encourage domestic semiconductor manufacturing.

But though the Biden administration has recognized and made necessary changes to strengthen U.S. supply chains, there remain three pressing issues: the mapping of supply chains to determine existing vulnerabilities, persistent labor shortages, and the need for improved human capital. As long as the three problems persist, U.S. supply chains cannot be secure from geopolitical changes. 

If the United States wants to secure its supply chains, it must map its supply chains for manufacturing to determine existing vulnerabilities. Mapping these is difficult, involving numerous inputs, suppliers, and so forth. For context, a Japanese semiconductor firm took over a year to develop its supply chain. The Biden administration and multiple pieces of legislation have designated the need to identify such vulnerabilities. This is promising, but recent proposals have created more questions than answers. For instance, by their nature, corporations are always incentivized to focus on business efficiency rather than redundancy. How will the government hold companies accountable that they are properly identifying their supply chain networks? Additionally, globalization incentivizes multinational companies to source their resources and goods from various markets and locations with varying levels of transparency. Even if companies wanted to attain an accurate understanding of their supply chain, they might need help. Finally, the time needed to map these vulnerabilities meticulously is a problem with no proposed solution. 

Labor shortages of essential workers mean that supply chain bottlenecks will persist. These can have compounding effects—a labor shortage in the U.S. trucker market, for instance, has aggravated some supply chain issues. The trucker industry has a staggering 94 percent turnover rate, resulting in shortages continuing to plague supply chains because goods cannot be delivered in time and will often be stuck waiting on cargo docks. The Biden administration urged ports to stay open all day in southern California to decrease congestion. This did not improve the situation, as more truckers sought to enter the ports to transport cargo. Without taking steps to alleviate this issue, such as by raising wages and improving working conditions, instability in the trucking market will continue to have cascading impacts on the U.S. economy. Large and flashy investments into semiconductor manufacturing and other industries will be futile if consumers cannot receive the goods because there is a lack of truck drivers. 

While the U.S. government has provided substantial funding to domestic semiconductor manufacturing, it needs an influx of capable human capital to reach its full potential. Morris Chang, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), has stressed that the United States currently lacks a big enough talent pool capable of manufacturing semiconductors domestically. Moreover, America needs to do so with a labor pool that is talented and demands higher wages than its East Asian competitors. Even when Washington provides additional subsidies, it cannot speed up the time and energy required to train the number of workers needed to manufacture semiconductors instantaneously.

The Biden administration has correctly identified the critical role semiconductors play in U.S. national security. No one should doubt the sincerity and progress in addressing this vulnerability in the last few years. However, there is still much more work to be done. The U.S. government must tackle all three of these issues with urgency to unleash the capabilities of U.S. domestic semiconductor manufacturing.    

Richard Li is an undergraduate student at Cornell University. He can be contacted at rll246@cornell.edu.

Image: BiksuTong/Shutterstock.

The liftoff of Artemis 1 last November launched a new era in space, as the United States prepares to send humans beyond low-Earth orbit and back to the Moon for the first time in half a century. The Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule finally made their debut after $23 billion and eleven years of development.

Back on Earth, another element that will define this new era in human exploration of the cosmos has also begun taking shape. The Artemis Accords are a set of shared, non-binding principles that aim to govern “responsible, peaceful, and sustainable” exploration of space, taking the form of bilateral agreements between the United States and twenty-two signatory countries. This new international space club saw nine nations sign on last year.

As we finally enter the Artemis Era, the Accords must play a more prominent role in U.S. space geopolitics and public diplomacy.

Artemis and its Predecessors

The Artemis Accords, launched by NASA in mid-2020, aim to enhance international cooperation around the return to the Moon and establish the prevailing norms and guardrails for space exploration and governance in the lunar system and beyond. The principles center around peaceful, cooperative, responsible, and transparent use of space, as well as pledges to address space debris, share data, and preserve historic places or objects like landing sites or defunct spacecraft. Many of these are common-sense and broadly acceptable principles. Another section permits the establishment of “safety zones,” which require notification and coordination procedures around the sites of activity in space to avoid conflict.

The Accords build on decades-old multilateral agreements called the “five United Nations treaties on outer space” and their celestial protocols. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) is the foundational document for international space law, establishing outer space as the “province of all mankind.” On the Moon and “other celestial bodies,” states commit to not claiming territory and to peaceful activity. States also agree to refrain from placing nuclear weapons in space. 

Subsequent treaties expanded on these issues. The Registration Convention, for example, requires states to inform the UN of objects launched into space and their orbits. The Liability Convention states that anything launched within the territory of a state is the liability of that state, no matter who is doing the launching. For instance, if your company’s smallsat hitches a ride on a Falcon 9 rocket and later ends up colliding with a French communications satellite, the United States is the responsible party. The Moon Agreement expands the “province of all mankind” principle to the Moon and its resources, requiring “equitable sharing by all State Parties.” Unsurprisingly, the United States, China, and Russia have not agreed to restrict commercial exploration and use of the Moon; Saudi Arabia’s recent withdrawal is more proof this view is fading.

This is also why there is the more geopolitically contentious line concerning “Space Resources” in the Artemis Accords, which states that “the signatories affirm that the extraction of space resources does not inherently constitute national appropriation.” A chief OST principle established that no nation can lay claim to a celestial body in space—in other words, no space conquistadors. Taking resources from that body is another question. Could a nation take Moon rocks as souvenirs, or mine substantial amounts of helium-3? The United States had already attempted to answer this question: the 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act formally legalized U.S. space mining. The Artemis Accords are an effort to establish de facto international agreement that space resource extraction is consistent with the OST’s provisions on sovereign claims.

The signatories of Artemis are geographically and culturally diverse. All have alliances or close relationships with the United States, and include NATO allies and important partners in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and Latin America. Two African nations, Nigeria and Rwanda, signed at the end of last year.

Great Power Competition Goes to Space

China and Russia have rejected the premise of the Accords. Russia has slammed them as “too U.S.-centric,” and China state media claimed the Accords are redundant, given the existence of the OST, and are a U.S. effort to stunt Chinese space ambitions. 

Instead, China is forging ahead with the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a base on the Moon’s south pole, by the middle of the next decade. Unveiled in 2021, the ILRS will be a phased program with “reconnaissance” and “construction” stages through 2035 and crewed landings beginning in 2036, though China could achieve a crewed landing by 2030. China has opened the program to others, likely intending the ILRS as an alternative to the Artemis Program. This would be in line with its efforts to disrupt the liberal, U.S.-led global order and to develop its own.

China and Russia could silently abide by the Accords without signing or violating them, or create a set of alternative principles around ILRS that attracts signatories and emerges to compete with Artemis, similar to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (which excludes the United States). There’s been no sign of this yet, but the UAE (an Artemis signatory) inked a Moon exploration partnership memorandum of understanding with China in September of last year. An Artemis head start doesn’t necessarily mean the Accords will prevail.

So as U.S.-China tensions reach the cosmos, defining a framework for space exploration in the twenty-first century will be crucial. China claims that its activities in space are for peaceful purposes, but U.S. intelligence has warned about China’s planned militarization and weaponization of space. Among our most vulnerable assets are satellites. China famously tested an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon in 2007 and has continued to build an ASAT weapons program that could threaten our critical satellites.

It is also not difficult to imagine a militarized ILRS base. A report last August predicted China would overtake the United States “as the dominant global space power economically, diplomatically and militarily by 2045, if not earlier,” and that America “may likely lose space superiority to China within the next decade.”

The Accords are also vital for economic reasons. There are potentially trillions of dollars of resources on celestial bodies, such as helium-3, iron, nickel, and gold, and nations that develop the capacity for space mining will want a slice of that pie. The Accords thread the needle between permitting resource extraction—by any nation—and reiterating that celestial bodies are not subject to sovereignty. The lack of internationally accepted rules of the road for space, or a situation with competing principles, will inhibit peaceful exploration of space, increase the likelihood that the domain becomes militarized, and reduce opportunities for commercial growth: if the playing field is unstable or unclear, companies won’t invest—and space is risky enough already.

Growing the Club: Prioritize Germany and India

Germany and France were not part of the initial signatory list, skeptical of the text and the coalition. France was apparently under the impression that the OST banned space mining. Many nations in Europe understandably want to maintain leverage and their own capacity to shape global policy independent of the United States. Europe has diverged from Washington on the regulation of Big Tech with the General Data Protection Regulation, for example. France and Germany also want to boost the role of the European Space Agency.

But it is in the broader European interest to join U.S.-led initiatives in a multipolar world, and the best bet to guarantee its own interests are represented in space. Infighting over defense spending had strained NATO to the point of “brain death.” But once a major threat to European security emerged from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the alliance quickly came back together with a robust response. Members of the alliance share overarching values, and European-American disputes are relative by nature. There shouldn’t need to be a cataclysmic event with China in space to galvanize U.S. allies. 

France ultimately signed last June after being convinced by U.S. officials that the Accords were the beginning of a discussion on space resources, not a finite end. Getting Germany onboard would send another important signal that key U.S. allies are united on Accords principles, and should be a priority.

India’s accession remains elusive. India-U.S. ties are warming, and the nation has no qualms about joining new U.S.-led groups and dialogues such as the Quad and the I2U2 Group. But the country’s thinking likely remains tied to its broader geopolitical positioning. India’s historical relationship with the Soviet Union and now Russia complicates Artemis talks. Much like India’s cautious approach to Ukraine, India may choose to play it safe for now with a wait-and-see approach on competing frameworks and groupings. India may simply not sign any set of multilateral principles in space that it sees favoring one international bloc over another.

India has a robust space program with big ambitions, not to mention immense geopolitical significance for U.S. national security in the Indo-Pacific, and it is likely the biggest outstanding prize for the Accords. If India continues to seem reluctant, then the Accords should allow for some sort of partnership or secondary signatory category, at least at first. It is critical that the U.S. builds on a broad array of signatories beyond its traditional allies, and such an option might attract additional signatories.

Signing the Accords acts as a signaling device to other nations and builds consensus around principles that align with our values and interests. Every country makes a difference and can contribute in its own way. There’s a lot at stake for nations participating in the Artemis Program, whether it be future hardware or angling for astronaut slots. More signatories enlarge the pool of U.S. partners for missions to the Moon and beyond. 

Moving Forward with the Artemis Accords

NASA and U.S. policymakers should be utilizing the Accords more than they currently are. A recent NASA Office of the Inspector General report found that, despite high interest in Artemis, NASA “lacks an overarching strategy to coordinate Artemis contributions” from other countries. The agency can start with the Accords.

We should enlist current national signatories to help recruit others to enlarge the group. President Joe Biden has not yet taken advantage of the opportunity brought by Artemis 1 to outline the program’s success and gather further public support for its future. To that end, he could give a major address outlining U.S. plans for human space exploration and include a call for countries to sign the Accords. 

Second, the Accords should be part of a broader public communications and diplomacy campaign. NASA should be heavily promoting the Accords, both principles and signatories, on their media channels—securing captive audiences of millions is incredibly difficult to do, and we should be taking advantage of these rare events that draw massive public interest and excitement.

Finally, the Accords should be used as an intergovernmental forum to enhance dialogue and cooperation between signatory nations, which so far has not occurred. Thankfully, the United States just hosted the first gathering of Accords nations in Paris along with France and Brazil at the International Astronautical Congress in September 2022. However, this should just be the beginning of a transformation of the Accords from a list of national signatures to an operational and influential entity with regularly scheduled meetings and fora.

Space norms developed now have the potential to build a prevailing international framework that could last decades if not centuries, as principles aimed at the Moon could remain in place when we one day develop capabilities to reach Europa and Enceladus, orbiting Jupiter. As other actors with different values build their own competing programs, the stakes are high. The Accords will help build a new framework for international dialogue and cooperation that can increase economic opportunity for countries via space resources, inspire new generations of explorers, and increase intercultural exchange between peoples.

With twenty-three countries, the Artemis Accords are off to a great start, but expanding to other signatories and solidifying the principles as norms, more heavily promoting their existence and purpose, and reducing the chance of an alternative set of prevailing principles should be top priorities for U.S. space policy.

Alex Dubin is an Endless Frontier Fellow at the Lincoln Network focusing on space policy.

Image: SpaceX/Flickr.

On February 6, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook the southern cities of Turkey. Thousands of buildings, vital highways, and airports collapsed. According to the latest figures, more than 30,000 Turkish citizens were killed, while millions of people are directly impacted.

Although Turkey is highly prone to earthquakes, Erdogan’s government is facing severe criticism because of the insufficiency of the government’s response. Centralized bureaucracy has hampered the mobility of many NGOs and volunteer associations, indirectly increasing losses.

The earthquake could not come at a worse time. The Turkish economy is already in a bad shape, and the current disaster further complicates the economic and political situation in the country. We cannot know at this time the expected costs of reconstruction efforts, but the Izmit Earthquake (1999), which was less destructive, cost approximately $17 billion, or approximately 1 percent of the GDP at that time.

When Turkish voters head to the polls in June—presuming elections are not postponed due to the earthquake—for the first national elections since 2018, they will be tasked with affirming or correcting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s sweeping economic policies over the last ten years.

Turkey’s economy is an anomaly, even against the backdrop of global economic turmoil. Since the country lifted its COVID-19 lockdowns in June 2020, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has instituted sweeping economic reforms to stimulate growth at all costs.

This has led to strong economic indicators, including 11 percent economic growth in 2021, growth for nine quarters during a global recession, surpassing many G-20 and OECD countries, and an expected 5 percent growth last year, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Over that time, Turkey has also proven that economic growth does not necessarily lead to prosperity. Millions of Turkish citizens have been hurt by these policies, leading to a severely weakened Lira and runaway inflation, an impoverished middle class, and a steep decline in consumer confidence. These circumstances have bankrupted many small businesses and led to Turkish bonds reaching “junk” status among foreign investors.

Just two years ago, $1 was equal to approximately seven Turkish Liras. Today, with a strengthening dollar and a weakening Lira, that conversion rate is approaching 1:19, adversely affecting purchasing power.

Turkey’s economic “rising tide” has left the vast majority of the population underwater. These people will now decide if the current policies stick, or if a new path forward is needed.

Despite the recent economic hurdles, Turkey still possesses the potential to become a regional and global economic force. With a population of 84 million people and a strong manufacturing industry, Turkey is a global leader in consumer products, transportation equipment, electronics, and agricultural products.

To realize its full potential, Erdogan’s administration—or his successor’s—must embrace a broader definition of economic success.

Cooling Off the Overheated Economy

As of October 2022, Turkey’s runaway inflation reached 85.5 percent year-over-year, which ranked seventh-highest among any nation in the world, alongside low-income, underdeveloped countries like Zimbabwe, Lebanon, and Venezuela, and sanctioned economies such as Iran.

Though it fell to 64 percent in December, Turkey’s inflation rate is still nearly ten times that of leading Western economies.

Increasing interest rates is a commonly used tactic by central banks to cool down hot economies. However, Erdogan holds the unorthodox economic belief that high-interest rates generate high inflation, pushing for lower interest rates to keep economic activity high in exchange for popular support. To maintain his control over monetary policy, he has replaced the governor of the Turkish Central Bank four times over the last seven years.

Last fall, Erdogan called on the central bank to take interest rates into the single digits to close out 2022. This fourth-straight rate cut pushed Turkey into what Bloomberg described as “extreme outlier status” at a time when most central banks have been hawkish on interest.

In addition to driving inflation, Erdogan’s interventionist monetary policies jeopardize the independence of the Turkish Central Bank and lead to a dramatic decrease in confidence from domestic consumers and foreign investors.

Combine this with widespread industry strikes and civil unrest, a gutting of the country’s middle class, and a 55 percent raise in the minimum wage—which is expected to fuel inflation further and crush small businesses—and Turkey is nearing a hyperinflation spiral, despite its economic growth.

Turkey’s CDS premiums, the putative indicators of country risk, exceeded 900 in July 2022, the highest since 2003. This means the country is at high risk of default.

The Election Effect on an Interventionist Economy

Turkey has a strong democratic tradition, yet in recent years, there have been concerns raised regarding the transparency and accountability of the country's democratic institutions.

Turkey’s 2023 election is thus considered a watershed moment by many, a choice between institutionalizing competitive authoritarian rule or moving back to democratization.

Erdogan has signaled that he intends to stay the course on high growth at the expense of taming inflation. Poor management of the economy is the principal source of widespread dissatisfaction with Erdogan and the AKP. 

Stagflation can be tolerated by an electorate if other political issues outweigh the economy. In recent elections, voters have valued the AKP’s approach to national security and fighting terrorism over economic weakening. Prior to the recent earthquake, the weakness of the Turkish economy was the most important issue among likely voters. But now it seems that the earthquake will remain the main topic in the political agenda during the next year with irrefutable economic consequences.

Nevertheless, Erdogan cannot be underestimated, thanks to his firm control over the state.

The current presidential system—a shift from the parliamentary system before it—was endorsed in a national referendum in 2017. Since his re-election in 2018, Erdogan has consolidated power over all institutions, including the judiciary, removing democratic checks and balances.

According to many international watchdogs, Erdogan has embraced the telltale signs of authoritarianism, including nepotism, clientelism, and a lack of governmental accountability. Whoever has spoken out against Erdogan internally has been replaced by a loyal yes-man.

A win for the AKP in May, which seems probable, will serve as a ruling mandate for these policies, despite their unsustainable track. This will likely lead to increased interventionism and state management as the situation spins out of control. 

Drawing insights from Erdogan’s actions and rhetoric, Turkey could see a deterioration of economic ties with the European Union and the International Monetary fund, leading to decreased Western foreign direct investment (FDI) and borrowing capacity.

However, Erdogan has shown a pragmatic approach to replacing the influence of Western economic support, including by strengthening ties with erstwhile regional rivals Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It’s Not Too Late for a Turkish Turnaround

On the other side of the ballot, the opposition alliance has assembled some of the world’s top economic minds to provide an alternate vision for economic success. These include world-renowned economists like Daron Acemoglu, Wharton professor Bilge Yilmaz, and former AKP economic minister and ex-Erdogan ally Ali Babacan.

If these technocrats can reach a consensus, they could swing the election and help restore the trust of foreign investors and international donors.

It will be challenging for a new government to prioritize Turkey’s long-term economic health with short-term, necessary pain. There is no path forward without institutional revision that attains broad domestic and international support. 

Returning to conventional economic policies also means unraveling some of the artificial economic growth over the last few years.

Turkey’s economy would also benefit from a return to its democratization process. A more transparent and accountable government would create a more predictable and stable business environment, thereby encouraging entrepreneurship, investment, and growth in the country.

Embracing Stakeholder Capitalism to Defeat Income Inequality

In Turkey’s new economy, everyone needs to have a seat at the table—a model commonly referred to as stakeholder capitalism. Everyone, including investors, business owners, workers, customers, and the general public, should experience long-term economic gain from growth.

Poor policy-making and governance have led to the current paradigm, taking much of the economy down with it. However, certain sectors are showing resilience against economic headwinds.

Turkish tech startups Getir, Peak Games, and Insider each recently attracted investments from prominent venture capital firms. Technology-driven development is more important for Turkey’s future, providing major employment and wage growth.

If the winner of the next election embraces logical economic governance, Turkey can become a more predictable place for FDI and investment of all kinds. If existing policies change, startups will have greater access to capital, which they can leverage to grow in Turkey. If current trends stay the same, however, then these startups will leave and take the opportunity for economic prosperity with them. It’s really that simple.

The current government bears an enormous responsibility for the recent economic losses, including from the earthquake. After all, earthquake taxes are collected in Turkey and designated for disaster relief. However, in recent years, much of those funds have been redirected to infrastructure projects, such as highways and airports.

Likewise, it would be tough for any government to coordinate relief efforts after such a large disaster like the one that has befallen Turkey. However, the current government took a number of unwise and incorrect steps, including banning social media.

Dealing with the reconstruction just three months before an upcoming election will not be easy for the current government, since there is an already ongoing and entrenched economic crisis. The adverse effects of the earthquake will aggravate the poor state of the economy and impact the tide of the election.

Turkey needs a fresh start. That’s why the next election is the key to unlocking Turkey's vast economic potential and creating a bright, equitable future for its citizens. A robust economy in combination with a stable democratic system would make Turkey a pillar of stability in an uncertain region.

Cenk Sidar is the co-founder and CEO of Enquire AI, a business intelligence software company based in Washington, DC. He is also an expert on the Turkish economy and foreign policy. He previously ran as a candidate for Member of Parliament for the Republican People's Party (CHP) in Turkey's 2015 parliamentary elections.

Image: Thomas Koch/Shutterstock.com.

Delivered just three days after a U.S. fighter jet shot down a high-altitude reconnaissance balloon from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address sounded incredibly benign toward Beijing. To be sure, the president repeated the consistent themes of “competing with China” and “autocracies have grown weaker, not stronger.” Even at one point, he shouted out “name me a world leader who would change places with Xi Jinping, name me one!” But, he also reaffirmed that he wanted “no conflict,” and stated that “I am committed to work with China where it can advance American interests and benefit the world.” The president neither explicitly mentioned the balloon nor the U.S. military response. Instead, Biden ambiguously said, “[M]ake no mistake: as we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.” On a separate occasion, Biden told reporters that taking down the PRC spy vessel would not “weaken” U.S.-Chinese relations. “We’ve made it clear to China what we’re going to do. They understand our position. We’re not going to back off. We did the right thing. And there’s not a question of weakening or strengthening; it’s just the reality.”

Is this an about-face on U.S. China policy? Hardly. Biden has not retreated from the key U.S.-Chinese battleground—securing cutting-edge technology and semiconductor supply chains. Building on the CHIPS Act passed last August to promote U.S.-based semiconductor production, free from Chinese interference, Biden asserted, “We're going to make sure the supply chain for America begins in America … I will make no apologies that we are investing to make America strong. Investing in American innovation, in industries that will define the future, and that China’s government is intent on dominating.” 

The downplaying of the PRC balloon flap seems to be a measured approach as Xi’s China is revealing signs of growing domestic instability and policy irrationality. As David Sanger observed in the New York Times, The Biden administration is debating which China will be harder to handle: “a confident, rising power or the one that, in recent months, seems to be stumbling, unable to manage the Covid-19 virus, and increasingly stressed as it tries to restore the spectacular economic growth that was the key to its power.” Apparently, an opaque authoritarian regime, marked by the lack of transparency and free policy deliberations, is always prone to reckless and nationalistic overseas undertakings. As Xi transforms the Chinese political system from the post-Mao collective leadership into a personalist or strongman regime, the echo-chamber effect may generate even more audacious, though aimless, foreign policy ventures that could easily escalate tensions into greater confrontations. 

Beijing’s motivation to fly a spy balloon to the United States, in such a presumptuous manner and on the eve of a crucial high-level official meeting aimed to steady U.S.-PRC relations, requires serious investigation. The Biden administration reproached the Chinese government for grossly violating America’s national sovereignty, prompting a last-minute cancellation of a trip to Beijing on February 3 by Secretary of State Antony Blinken—the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since 2018. Blinken’s trip was meant to follow up on Biden’s meeting with Xi at the G-20 last November as part of an effort to put a floor under the increasingly contentious relations between the United States and PRC. Did Xi intentionally approve the mission to test U.S. resolve despite the potential risks of being discovered and derailing Blinken’s trip? Or was it internal mismanagement and a deficiency of coordination and communication between the civilian and military bureaucracies? The notion is that the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. Biden officials believed that “both the senior leadership of the People’s Liberation Army and Chinese Communist Party, including Xi, were also unaware of the balloon mission over the United States, and that China is still trying to figure out how this happened.” Alternatively, if Xi was apprised of the balloon launch and approved its mission, he might have underestimated the strong domestic reactions within U.S. politics.

The intransigent attitude and poor handling by the Chinese government in its aftermath suggested the capriciousness of an autocrat that has grown drunk on his concentrated power, propaganda, and self-fulfilling narratives. It may be prudent for Biden to refrain from overly hyping up tensions with Beijing and avoid pushing a beleaguered Xi to the corner until more information and facts are received and assessed. However, Washington must be more vigilantly prepared to step up its guard in countering not only an aggressive PRC but, worse, an erratic one.

Dean P. Chen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

Image: Midary / Shutterstock.com

U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spent two days visiting Israel and the West Bank. After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Blinken said that normalization is “not a substitute for progress between Israelis and Palestinians.” In other words: Washington wants to tether Israel’s warming relations with the wider Arab world to the progress of negotiations with the Palestinians that have gone nowhere for the last fifteen years.

By linking these two efforts, Blinken is likely guaranteeing the failure of both.

The historic Abraham Accords agreements were signed with fanfare in 2020 on the south lawn of the White House, ushering in a new era of peace and cooperation between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Sudan and Morocco soon followed suit. A regional tectonic shift, the agreements opened the doors to new embassies, direct flights, a free trade agreement, and an influx of Israeli tourists—in particular to the UAE. The accords also seemed to signal a thawing of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which last year agreed to allow Israeli aircraft to use Saudi airspace.

When the Abraham Accords were announced, the Palestinian leadership expressed outrage, further complicating their already strained relations with the UAE. Palestinian rejectionism is nothing new—the Palestinian Authority (PA) wants to be the gatekeeper for Israeli access to the Arab world, blocking normalization unless it’s on Ramallah’s terms.

But waiting for the PA means waiting forever. Palestinians see the PA as both corrupt and incapable of preserving law and order. It has no mandate to make the difficult compromises necessary for peace with Israel. Israelis know they have no credible partner with whom to negotiate peace, so no prime minister has the mandate to make painful concessions. The parties of the “peace camp,” once a powerful force, barely garnered enough votes last year to sit in the Israeli Knesset.

Four Israeli prime ministers from different political parties offered compromises in the name of peace over the years, but Palestinian leaders rejected them all. Rather than laying the groundwork for peace, the PA’s education system is rife with incitement to violence: Palestinian schoolbooks have erased Israel from the map, and the PA continues rewarding terrorists and their families with handsome salaries for killing and maiming Jews.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas—who is now entering the eighteenth year of his four-year term—is eighty-seven years old and deeply unpopular. More than three-quarters of West Bank Palestinians want him to resign. But the PA’s troubles don’t end there. The West Bank is facing the deadliest increase in violence since the Second Intifada (2000–2005), with more Israelis killed in the West Bank in almost a decade and more Palestinian fatalities since 2007.

Against this backdrop, it makes no sense for Blinken to create a linkage between advancing regional normalization and the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Instead, the United States should be working furiously to decouple the two.

The normalization track has particular value for Washington because it is building a robust regional alliance to serve as a bulwark against Iran.

President Joe Biden has reiterated time and again that he will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. However, a recent analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security estimates that Iran is dangerously close to breakout capacity. A nuclear Iran threatens not only threatens Israel but also U.S. allies and assets in the Gulf and beyond. If Iran becomes a nuclear power, it will set off a nuclear arms race in the region and super-charge the many proxy militias that Iran has funded around the Middle East.

As Iran barrels towards nuclear capabilities, and with America’s attention and resources drawn to pressing global threats like the war in Ukraine and the threat from China, Blinken should focus on rallying a coalition to share the work of deterring and containing Iran. In that coalition, Israel is the only country that has credible options for the use of force to prevent a nuclear Iran.

By placing an unnecessary emphasis on Israel’s domestic issues and the elusive dream of Palestinian statehood, Blinken underscored an apparent fissure between the U.S. and its strongest and most capable Middle Eastern ally. But there is still time for the Biden administration to reevaluate its strategy and set its priorities straight: national security and regional stability before the national cause of a hapless Palestinian Authority.

Enia Krivine is the senior director of the Israel Program and the FDD National Security Network at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Enia on Twitter at @EKrivine.

Jonathan Conricus is an advisor to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on the Middle East, terrorism, media, and information warfare. Follow Jonathan on Twitter at @jconricus.

Image: Shutterstock.

For decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been honing its abilities in cyberspace, attacking any targets with strategic value to the regime, while increasingly integrating cyber as part of the nation’s broader intelligence and warfighting toolkit. Yet, despite the CCP’s widespread and relentless use of damaging and disruptive cyberattacks, little attention has been paid to the way China’s cyber strategy has been directly shaped and influenced by Xi Jinping since he came to power in November 2012. Indeed, over the last several years, as the CCP has become less about the collective and more about Xi, so too have the country’s cyberattacks. For Xi, cyberspace has become a reflection of his personal preferences, priorities, and insecurities, and a key domain he can and does routinely exploit to suppress his critics, disseminate his narratives, fulfill his visions, and maintain his cult of personality. For China, cyberspace is no longer just a means of leapfrogging its rivals and ascending the global power ladder—it has also become a key tool in the preservation of Xi Jinping.

Xi’s Digital Fortress

Most autocrats are deeply insecure and self-absorbed individuals, fixated on their own power and security. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Xi has emboldened and empowered China’s already extensive security system to become the most pervasive and illiberal surveillance state in the world—primarily as a means to safeguard himself as the most powerful leader in the country’s history. As many observers have noted, since taking charge of the country in 2012, and despite consistently pontificating about things like “common prosperity,” the fact he wants China to become a “fully developed, rich, and powerful” nation, or his vision for a “community of Chinese nationhood,” it has become increasingly clear Xi is most concerned about something else—himself. Unlike his predecessor Hu Jintao—China’s leader during the country’s initial foray into any sort of noteworthy cyber conflict—Xi’s visions of homogeneous national growth, identity, and unity revolve entirely around him and his divinity as China’s anointed savior. For Xi, a key piece of the enormous digital fortress he continues to shield himself with is cyberspace—a domain he uses unlike any other leader in world history to inflict harm on people or organizations who threaten him, or who question his vision and his “right to rule.”

While Chinese leaders and elites before Xi viewed cyberspace as a tool for advancing their political and ideological goals, China’s cyber strategy under Xi now unquestionably reflects his insecurities as well as his ambitions to consolidate power, protect his own image, and control the Chinese people inside and outside the mainland in ways his predecessors could not have imagined. To achieve these objectives and maintain what China expert Michael Schuman recently described as “the relentless promotion of his personality cult,” Xi has broadened the country’s cyber strategy far beyond espionage as a means of national growth and influence to now account for the protection and promotion of his greatness. Through three key steps—taking over control of China’s military, including its cyber units; bolstering the world’s most advanced domestic internet censorship system; and using cyberspace to attack and harass critics and dissidents abroad—Xi has completely reshaped the country’s cyber posture as a means of protecting himself, assuaging any insecurities and paranoia, and ensuring all facets of Chinese life at home and abroad reflect his personal beliefs. Xi Jinping wants to rebuild China in his image, and he is using cyberspace to do it.

The PLA’s New Commander-in-Chief 

Since his earliest days as general secretary of the CCP and chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping has made it clear China’s military must be modernized. Tapping into visions of the country’s “century of humiliation” Xi has framed a strengthened People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as being crucial to restoring China’s greatness—greatness the country can only attain through his vision. In his own words, Xi has opined, “a nation’s backwardness in military affairs has a profound influence on a nation’s security. I often peruse the annals of modern Chinese history and feel heartbroken at the tragic scenes of us being beaten because of our ineptitude.” For Xi, ensuring China is never beaten or embarrassed again is critical. However, ensuring he himself is never beaten, challenged, or embarrassed is equally, if not more important. Luckily, for Xi, the country’s cyber soldiers—soldiers he controls—help to ensure these things are unlikely to ever happen. As China expert Tai Ming Cheung has said, “no other Chinese Communist Party leader, not even Mao Zedong, has controlled the military to the same extent as Xi does today.”

From a cyber perspective, Xi has been talking about making China a “cyber power” for the better part of a decade, and since at least 2015 when he announced a new Strategic Support Force, the PLA branch responsible for space, cyber, and electronic warfare, cyber has been a pillar of the country’s military modernization. Typically, works analyzing this latest chapter in the modernization of China’s military suggest this historic change is rooted in things like state security, regime survival, social cohesion, and the changing nature of warfare. Of course, all of these issues have contributed to Xi’s desire for China to have a “world-class military” by the middle of the century. However, it is now hard to ignore the fact that as Xi has come to control the PLA, including elements of the Chinese military responsible for carrying out cyber operations (e.g., Unit 61398), many of these aforementioned factors are now anchored to Xi and his own security and survival—not the Party’s. To echo William Lam, a political analyst at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, “Xi is paranoid about maintaining his personal security and of course, his power and his status as leader for life.” 

Control at Home

In the physical world, Xi has taken a number of steps to position himself as the unquestioned and unchallenged unitary leader of China. From integrating “Xi Jinping Thought” into the country’s constitution and national educational curricula to positioning himself as leader for life, to harassing, intimidating, and imprisoning dissidents, Xi has sought to ensure he is fully in control of China’s 1.4 billion people. Likewise, Xi has also worked to increasingly control online information and disseminate his messages throughout the mainland. For example, in 2014 the CCP created a new government department—the Cyberspace Administration of China—to regulate the internet, which Xi ultimately controls. In addition, Xi has long pushed the concept of “internet sovereignty”—or the idea that China (and presumably other countries) should be free to control the internet within its borders as it sees fit. Xi has also relied heavily on the country’s “Great Firewall”—the CCP’s legislative and technological toolkit—to limit outside information into the country as a means of shaping public thought and discourse in his personage. Some have suggested Xi’s control of cyberspace has been so pronounced that he has radicalized a generation. Writing for Human Rights Watch, Yaqiu Wang notes, “Now young online Chinese, once conduits for new ideas that challenge the power structure, are increasingly part of Beijing’s defense operation.” 

Early into Xi’s takeover, the government also introduced historic laws authorizing prison terms of up to three years for individuals caught posting defamatory comments online, or for people the government considered responsible for inciting protests or unrest. Control of online information on Xi’s terms has been so important, the government reportedly hired over two-million people as “microblog monitors” in 2013 to track and report unauthorized online information. Other online legal and institutional mechanisms the CCP have applied since Xi came to power include requiring government licenses for all online news sources, including messaging apps, blogs, and internet forums; mandating companies censor prohibited online content and requiring website registrants use their real names; restricting VPN usage; and increasingly ensuring internet providers obey state rules. 

An illustrative example of China’s ability to censor online information critical of Xi came in October 2022, when authorities purged the country’s internet of any evidence of a recent (and minor) protest calling for Xi’s removal. Some internet users who shared photos or videos of the protest have allegedly been cut off from accessing certain social media apps—apps which in China, are essential to daily life. Put bluntly, Xi’s obsession with securitizing himself and his image is paramount, and China’s state activities and repressive online behavior reflect this. As Susan Shirk recently wrote “…Xi takes the paranoia that has been endemic to Chinese politics since Mao Zedong’s rule to an extreme.”

Xi’s Global Insecurities  

Ensuring that his messaging, aura, and image are preserved abroad is equally important for Xi—a priority that has been reflected in the country’s use of cyberspace for years. In fact, Xi considers both internal and external threats as intertwined mutually reinforcing vulnerabilities. For starters, to combat and quell foreign threats, Xi has an entire army of cyber propagandists at his disposal who work around the clock to shape and influence public opinion abroad on social media sites. Xi’s “Fifty Cent Army”—the country’s state-backed internet militia—also regularly carries out harassment campaigns against individuals who pose a threat to Xi, and targets Chinese-language media outlets around the globe with messages and narratives important to him and his regime. China also routinely uses cyber as a means of harassing and coercing people with connections to dissidents the regime wants to return to China. For example, in July 2020, a Chinese student studying in Australia who manages a Twitter account critical of the general secretary said she had received video calls from a Chinese police officer, who, standing next to her father, warned her “remember that you are a citizen of China.” Speaking to this issue in October 2020, then-United States Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers, alongside FBI Director Chris Wray, delivered remarks announcing charges against eight agents of the CCP carrying out these types of acts against individuals living in the United States. Describing operation “Fox Hunt”—the CCP’s global anti-corruption campaign—Demers said, “…some of the individuals [targeted through this international CCP operation] may well be wanted on traditional criminal charges and they may even be guilty of what they are charged with. But in many instances, the hunted are opponents of CCP Chairman Xi – political rivals, dissidents, and critics.”

There has also been a well-documented surge of online disinformation targeting Chinese communities abroad, in places ranging from the United States to Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan. Further, last year, the FBI also accused China of targeting Uyghurs based in the United States, through both physical and digital tactics. The FBI bulletin reads “Threatened consequences for non-compliance routinely include detainment of a U.S.-based person’s family or friends in China, seizure of China-based assets, sustained digital and in-person harassment, Chinese government attempts to force repatriation, computer hacking and digital attacks, and false representation online.” This nefarious online behavior that started under Xi, is a reflection of his paranoia and insecurities, as well as his desire to Sinicize China inside and out, while ensuring the world’s global Chinese population adheres to her personal vision for the country. 

The Xi Threat

While espionage is still China’s top priority in cyberspace and across the nation’s broader intelligence community (as illustrated by their recent spy-balloon fiasco) the country’s use of cyberspace under Xi has changed dramatically as he has progressively consolidated his power, and incrementally worked to shape Chinese society and thought in his image. In addition, China’s behavior in the digital domain now reflects the insecurities and paranoia of the most powerful leader in the country’s history. 

Going forward, more scholarly work is required to assess the degree China’s cyber strategy is shaped and influenced by Xi, and further, what that relationship might mean from a policy perspective. Perhaps if scholars and policymakers can develop a better understanding of what drives China’s behavior in cyberspace—as opposed to continuously focusing on how the country operates online—we will be better equipped to protect ourselves. In cyberspace, it might be time to start thinking about the “China threat” as the “Xi threat.” With Xi having secured another five-year term at the 2022 Communist Party congress, it is more important than ever that we develop a better understanding of the man who controls everything in China, and the extent to which his own beliefs and preferences shape the country’s strategy online and beyond.

Dr. Casey Babb is an International Fellow with the Glazer Israel-China Policy Center at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, England, and an instructor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, in Ottawa. His writing has appeared in Lawfare, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Jerusalem Post, and in scholarly peer-reviewed publications in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Casey is also a former advisor to two of Canada’s defense ministers, and a former Senior Analyst in Public Safety Canada’s National and Cyber Security Branch.

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On February 4, a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon and its payload fell into the ocean off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, after a U.S. Air Force F-22 fighter jet destroyed the balloon with an air-to-air missile. With it went the potential for near-term improvement in U.S.-China relations. The day before, Secretary of State Antony Blinken had postponed a planned visit to Beijing, explaining to China’s top diplomat that the appearance of the balloon had “undermined the purpose of the trip.” He added that he hoped to reschedule the visit “as soon as conditions allow,” but given how the balloon episode unfolded it is not at all clear when that might occur.

The balloon fueled what can only be deemed hysteria in Washington and across the country, driven in part by political pressure on the Biden administration to eliminate the threat from China by shooting it down. The Pentagon, however, assessed that falling debris from a shootdown posed a greater danger on the ground than the balloon posed in the air, partly because U.S. countermeasures had minimized its intelligence collection capability. So the balloon drifted from Montana to South Carolina, spreading alarm and outrage before meeting its fate.

It also generated ample speculation about why China would conduct such a hostile and “brazen violation of United States sovereignty,” as the U.S. House of Representatives characterized it in a unanimous condemnation of the balloon’s flight. One of the prevailing theories is that a “rogue” element in the Chinese military intended the balloon to subvert Blinken’s trip to Beijing, presumably to prevent Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who had agreed to meet with Blinken, from engaging in diplomacy that might compromise Chinese interests or security. It is much more likely that the balloon was a routine intelligence operation of which Xi was tactically unaware, and that the Chinese military operators who launched it were inattentive to if not ignorant of Blinken’s visit.

Yet the narrative about the balloon in the United States has largely presumed deliberate and hostile Chinese strategic intent. Congressman Mike Gallagher, chairman of the new House “Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party,” said in an interview that he does not believe the timing of the balloon flight on the eve of Blinken’s planned trip was a coincidence because it would be “well within the CCP’s playbook” to try to humiliate Washington. Beijing did not help its case by claiming that the balloon was a “civilian airship” for “mainly meteorological” research—a weather balloon—that was blown off course by force majeure. The Pentagon was quickly able to refute this by confirming that the balloon was an intelligence collection platform.

But many questions remain unanswered that are highly relevant to assessing Chinese intentions. Although the “airship” was obviously not a weather balloon, it remains unclear whether it was in fact blown off course and out of its operators’ control. It is difficult to understand how the Chinese could have calculated that the balloon would have drifted across the entire continental United States without detection or a response. However, in the wake of the shootdown details began to emerge that multiple such Chinese balloons had previously entered or skirted U.S. airspace over the past several years without a U.S. response. Knowledge of those precedents almost certainly led the Chinese to anticipate that even if this balloon was detected, it was unlikely to be shot down—regardless of whether it was on its intended course. Moreover, Beijing—in a highly unusual step—expressed “regrets” for this “unintended” and “unexpected situation.” In addition, Chinese officials now claim that the United States has flown similar balloons over China.

The goal here is not to adjudicate the facts of the balloon incident and its origins and uniqueness. Rather, the point is that understanding what actually happened and assessing its implications requires an empirical assessment of the facts and the available evidence on Chinese intentions. In this case, however, the relevant facts and evidence have emerged only piecemeal, while in the meantime conclusions were drawn and narratives took hold—based in part on some problematic assumptions. This rush to judgment and action was driven in part by political pressure and inflated threat perceptions in the United States, and by Beijing’s deception and secrecy—which have undermined the credibility of any Chinese explanation or countercharges. This all reflects the emerging adversarial pathology of U.S.-China relations, which is increasingly obstructing any efforts at mutual understanding, and contributing to what many observers have already described as a new cold war.

This volatile dynamic is certain to pose serious challenges for rescheduling Blinken’s trip to China. The balloon incident has increased the stakes and perhaps moved the goalposts for his visit, partly by reinforcing a confrontational American approach to Beijing and intensifying the partisan political attention in Washington to Blinken’s trip. At the same time, the balloon may have significantly reduced the potential for the visit to yield positive results, given its impact on Washington and Beijing’s perceptions of each other’s strategic intentions and posture.

Even before the balloon appeared, expectations for Blinken’s visit were low. The original plan was to use the trip to follow through on notional agreements reached by Biden and Xi at the G-20 summit in Indonesia last November, and to take the next steps forward in establishing principles and “guardrails” to guide the relationship. But there had been little progress in that direction since November, and it appeared likely that Blinken’s trip would produce little more than a standard exchange of grievances.

After the balloon appeared and enflamed anti-China sentiment, White House officials reportedly judged that the trip “wasn’t worth the potential domestic political costs of going, given that Blinken’s talks were not expected to yield much in the first place.” This raises the vital question of under what circumstances the Biden administration would accept the “potential domestic political costs” of a rescheduled trip, given the inevitable political pressure on Blinken to extract concessions from Beijing in the wake of the balloon incident, and the inevitable uncertainty about Beijing’s willingness to accommodate that expectation. With that backdrop, it is hard to see when and on what basis “conditions [will] allow” for Blinken to go ahead with the trip.

Complicating this equation, and the prospects for a productive visit, is the Biden administration’s apparent calculation that the balloon incident strengthens Washington’s hand. This is based on both the notion that Beijing is obliged to make amends for the balloon incursion, and that Xi had previously launched a “charm offensive”—which was likely to include a newly accommodative approach to Washington—because Chinese leaders decided that they need to repair China’s global image and reduce external pressure so they can focus on recent internal policy challenges. This was reflected by an unnamed U.S. official who observed that “China’s foreign policy is a constant search for leverage,” but its defensive reaction to the balloon episode suggests that it is “nearly out of options” in that regard.

Washington, engaged in its own constant search for leverage with Beijing, appears to calculate that it has gained some as a result of Beijing’s misstep with the balloon. This adds a new layer to Blinken’s original agenda for his trip. According to a former U.S. diplomat, the Biden administration’s plan was to focus on highlighting problematic Chinese behaviors and suggesting ways for Beijing to reduce bilateral tensions, rather than suggesting ways the two sides could “play nicely.” Presumably, Blinken will double down on this approach whenever his trip is rescheduled, now with the balloon as ammunition.

This strongly suggests that Washington is focused more on scoring points against Beijing than on pursuing the kind of reciprocal engagement that both sides claim to be seeking and which Xi rhetorically invoked in his meeting with Biden in Indonesia. Indeed, in his State of the Union speech last week, Biden said he had told Xi that “we seek competition, not conflict,” and mentioned the potential for cooperation only as an afterthought. This was echoed a few days later in Congressional testimony by senior State Department and Pentagon officials, who reiterated that the Biden administration’s focus in its interactions with Beijing is “competing vigorously” with China, “managing that competition,” and “maintaining open lines of communication.”

For its part, Beijing is almost certain to deflect if not reject Blinken’s planned approach. Chinese officials have repeatedly criticized Washington’s focus on competition over cooperation in the relationship, and specifically the notion that the United States can deal with China “from a position of strength.” Chinese leaders almost certainly judge that Washington overestimates its leverage in the relationship and underestimates Beijing’s. They probably also judge—and probably correctly—that Washington is misinterpreting the rationale for Beijing’s recent “charm offensive,” which is likely aimed more at scoring points against the United States internationally than at seeking favors from Washington. Accordingly, Beijing is likely to balk at any attempt by Blinken to parlay the balloon incident into greater U.S. leverage with China.

Beijing, of course, has itself to blame for the balloon debacle. The operation may not have been “brazen,” inasmuch as the Chinese apparently didn’t expect the balloon to generate attention, and they uncharacteristically apologized for its appearance. But if it wasn’t brazen, it was stupid, ill-timed, counterproductive, and nonetheless a violation of U.S. sovereignty. As such, it was an unanticipated gift to the Biden administration’s characterization of China as a difficult and challenging partner. Moreover, Beijing’s explanations have been neither complete nor credible, thus undermining its indignation at the U.S. shootdown and complaints that “some politicians and media in the US have hyped it up to attack and smear China.” In addition, the Chinese military spokesman’s statement that Beijing “reserves the right to take necessary measures to deal with similar situations”—by hinting at potential retaliation against U.S. intelligence operations—bodes ill for a relaxation of bilateral tensions in the security realm. This all suggests that Beijing itself may now be more focused on scoring points against Washington than on finding a path toward substantive engagement.

So where does this leave U.S.-China relations? Substantially worse off than they were before the appearance of the balloon, which is unlikely to be a blip from which the relationship quickly recovers. An incident that probably reflected little if any strategic thinking on Beijing’s part (beyond routine intelligence operations) escalated very quickly into a diplomatic crisis and ultimately military action because of exaggerated fears and domestic politics on the U.S. side; bureaucratic fecklessness, lack of transparency, and diplomatic deception on the Chinese side; and strategic distrust and failure to communicate on both sides. It will be difficult and will take time to repair the damage to the point where both Washington and Beijing are prepared to go forward with Blinken’s trip—especially because both sides will probably have elevated the requirements for it to be politically defensible and diplomatically productive. And both sides will probably continue to overestimate their leverage and thus their ability to set the terms of engagement.

This turn of events is especially disturbing because nothing is more urgent and vital to salvaging U.S.-China relations than dialogue aimed at mutual understanding and developing the principles for managing the relationship that Biden and Xi talked about in November. This would be best achieved through some attempt at strategic empathy on both sides, but the rapid escalation of the balloon incident raises serious questions about whether the two sides are still capable of understanding and acknowledging each other’s perspectives, and whether their domestic politics would allow room for that to happen. In the meantime, another crisis could escalate quickly, given the volatility of the environment. Washington and Beijing need to find a way to defuse that possibility.

Paul Heer is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).

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