The National Interest

The occasion did not get much attention, but December 31 marked the end of what came to be called the “war on terrorism” (or alternatively, the “war on terror,” the “global war on terrorism,” or the GWOT). To be more precise, that is the date that overseers of military decorations in the Department of Defense declared to be the final day of eligibility to receive the National Defense Service Medal, which is awarded to all service members on active duty during a time of war. The medal had previously been awarded during the wars in Korea and Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf war. Then there was a period of eligibility lasting more than two decades for the “war on terrorism,” from September 11, 2001, until last New Year’s Eve.

This administrative detail about medals is the closest thing we are likely to get to an official announcement about the end of this latest “war.” American political leaders would understandably be reluctant to declare an end to this endeavor, only to have their opponents replay their words after the next terrorist attack that takes American lives. But now is as good a time as any to reflect on the mistakes that were central to this “war.”

The very concept of a war on terrorism—that is, warfare against a tactic, which many different people have used for many different purposes through the centuries—is fundamentally flawed. As former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski observed, speaking of a war on terrorism is like calling World War II a war on blitzkrieg. The administration of George W. Bush was most responsible for putting the GWOT concept into heavy use, but countless commentators accepted and used the concept as if it made perfect sense.

One of the additional faults of the war metaphor is that it implied the counterterrorist effort had a definite beginning and end—as World War II for the United States could be said to have begun with the attack on Pearl Harbor and ended on VJ Day. But just as terrorism has been used for centuries and lacks an identifiable beginning and ending, counterterrorism has no clear starting and stopping points. Many Americans regard September 11, 2001, as a starting point, but the United States was very much engaged in counterterrorism, with good reason, well before that. (During much of the 1990s I worked in the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA, as chief of analysis and then as deputy chief of the center.)

Although the administrators of military decorations had to come up with some ending date for a “war” that had gone on for two decades, neither terrorism nor the need for counterterrorism has ended. But some of the policies adopted in waging the GWOT implicitly assumed that there would be an end—a counterterrorist equivalent to VJ Day. Some of those policies concerned the detention of captured combatants. In a real war, such issues generally get resolved when the war ends, as prisoners of war are paroled or repatriated. But with the GWOT, thirty-four prisoners remain at Guantanamo, with no indication that this detention facility that is a stain on America’s international reputation will close in the foreseeable future.

Another fault of the war metaphor is to overemphasize the use of military force. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, there were even silly pseudo-syllogisms that said the country faced a grave security problem, that to treat the problem seriously we must declare war, and if it’s war then that means we fight it with military force. Military force is only one of several policy tools that can be used in counterterrorism. Like the other tools, it has distinctive advantages but also its own limitations and disadvantages. The chief limitation is that terrorism often does not present good military targets, especially when preparations for a terrorist attack are made in the very country that will be the target of attack. The chief disadvantage is that the spilling of blood from the use of military force can enrage people enough to resort to using terrorism themselves, or to support and sympathize with those who do. This counterproductive aspect of use of the military in the name of counterterrorism can arise even from merely deploying armed forces in a foreign land.

The most damaging and costly use of armed force associated with the GWOT was the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Critical to the Bush administration’s ability to muster support for this major act of aggression—against a country that had nothing to do with 9/11—was the notion that the invasion was nonetheless part of a “war on terrorism.”

Wars in the American tradition are seen not only as having a definite end but also as ending in victory—again, just like World War II. With counterterrorism, living in this tradition leads to a kind of mission creep that seeks a victorious ending that is never likely to come. The prime case in point is Afghanistan, where the military intervention aimed at Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts was a justifiable response to 9/11 but morphed into a twenty-year nation-building effort that was bound to fail.

The GWOT’s damage to legal systems and constraints has been substantial, and the war metaphor is largely to blame. In a real war, some normal legal procedures and standards are curtailed or circumvented with the general understanding that a national emergency sometimes requires emergency procedures that will end when the emergency ends. But again, counterterrorism does not end.

The very choice of Guantanamo as the location for a detention facility represented a departure from the rule of law, given that the choice was an attempt to put the facility beyond the reach of U.S., Cuban, or any other law. A military tribunal system that was installed there, in foolish disregard of the substantial and successful record of regular civilian courts in handling terrorism cases—especially in the Southern District of New York, the jurisdiction in which the World Trade Center was attacked—reprised an emergency system that had been used during World War II to prosecute German saboteurs captured in the United States. Whatever was right or wrong about that usage, it was over and done with when World War II ended. Today, the military tribunals at Guantanamo trundle on in a seemingly endless mess of delays and procedural quandaries. Justice still has not been administered to the 9/11 suspects, twenty-one years after their actions.

Perhaps because, as Brzezinski observed, wars do not really get fought against tactics rather than a named enemy, thinking about the GWOT came to postulate a named enemy. That enemy, following naturally from 9/11, was sometimes defined as Al Qaeda and sometimes more generally as foreign radical Islamists. The narrower definition led to widespread misunderstanding about how Islamist terrorism supposedly was the work of a single, centrally controlled group, which it never really was. Even the broader definition was not broad enough to reflect how terrorism, including terrorism that strikes U.S. interests, is by no means solely the work of radical Islamists.

United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres recently warned that the “biggest threat of terrorism” today comes from right-wing and white supremacist groups in the West. Other expert observers have reached a similar conclusion about terrorist threats within the United States. Perceptions of terrorism that developed within a conceptual framework built around a “war” supposedly starting with 9/11 have ill-prepared the American public to understand the terrorist threats the country faces today.

Notions associated with the GWOT continue to impair strategic thinking about national security in other ways as well. One is a tendency to disconnect terrorism from other forms of political violence that can be at least as destructive as terrorism properly defined and can raise some of the same strategic and moral questions. Related to that is a frequent failure to relate terrorism and other forms of political violence to the political context in which they occur. The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and subsequent party politics related to that event, have blurred boundaries between violent extremism and what passes for a political mainstream in much of present-day America. The GWOT framework is not built to understand that blurring or to appreciate the danger it represents.

Finally, the tendency to think of a GWOT as defining an era that ran from the end of the first post-Cold War decade to a current era of great-power competition impedes grand strategy by encouraging the notion that policymakers think, and should think, about only one type of security problem at a time. Great power competition was a big part of the strategic reality that the United States faced during the period of the GWOT, and terrorist threats continue to be part of the reality that the country faces today. Policymakers always have had to walk and chew gum at the same time, and they still do.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

Following the “long wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is in the midst of attempting a major re-orientation toward the Indo-Pacific region. Concurrently, rising neo-isolationism on both ends of the political spectrum and perennial resource allocation decisions between domestic and security programs are generating questions about America’s role in the world and how to achieve strategic ends given limited strategic means. Not surprisingly, domestic politics, COVID, and economic issues have consumed attention spans and resulted in much self-absorption.

Meanwhile, the nation’s adversaries present as having no such self-questioning. To the contrary, they are clearly on the march: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s increasingly assertive moves throughout the Indo-Pacific region and beyond, North Korea’s continued development and provocative testing of missiles, Iran’s linkages with and support of both Russia and China, and a host of transnational entities ramping up violence and chaos. In short, multiple state and non-state actors are moving into real and perceived vacuums caused by diminishing American presence.

One essential characteristic of American culture is an unquestioned faith that anything can be improved through the application of more and better technology. This is certainly true of the American way of war, which is highly technocentric, even to the point that capability development now seems to be driving the formulation of strategy rather than the other way around. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Indo-Pacific.

All of this brings us to the issue of how the U.S. military in general, and its sea services in particular, are redesigning themselves to contend with Chinese ambitions in the midst of multipolar global turmoil. It is not an encouraging picture. Old strategic paradigms like “containment” are being dressed in new vocabularies and labeled as “modernization.” The self-deceiving trap of “mirror-imaging” dominates deterrence assessments. Various technologies are being hawked as panaceas for reduced American capabilities. 

Current U.S. Marine Corps leadership has so seized on the idea of technologically enabled containment and has divested so much warfighting capability toward that end that it is no longer capable of leading a credible “from the sea” counteroffensive. The essence of its containment concept is emplacing small antiship missile detachments throughout the First Island Chain. Numerous articles have identified significant basing and supportability issues with this concept. Rather than re-visit those valid tactical matters, we want to draw attention to the inherent strategic fallacy undergirding U.S. notions of containment with respect to China.

The United States can take some pride in the conception and implementation of “containment” against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But, it risks great hubris if it continues to fail to understand China’s conception of containment—a conception deeply embedded in Chinese culture and much more nuanced and subtle than current Western thinking. 

In their desire to explain China’s more sophisticated strategy, some analysts have turned to a Chinese game, weiqi, better known in the West as Go. Weiqi is believed to have been invented over 2,500 years ago. The very word weiqi (pronounced way-kee) means “encirclement board game” or “board game of surrounding.” As such a name implies, skilled players of weiqi develop a deep understanding of both encircling and counters to encircling. Moreover, unlike more Western forms of direct confrontation, weiqi players seek firstly to build strong structures throughout the board and then from multiple positions of strength weaken and suppress enemy structures. The better players shun contact, preferring to parry threats with counter-threats. From the perspective of weiqi, the PRC homeland is but one structure of many being built around the globe.

A recent Atlantic Council-University of Denver study entitled China-US Competition: Measuring Global Influence uses the Formal Bilateral Influence Capacity (FBIC) index to organize data so as to help strategists better understand influence trends over time. Axios extracts three global views (1980, 2000, and 2020) from the study to enable quick tabbing among time frames. These graphics not only highlight increasing Chinese influence and decreasing U.S. influence, but thet also do so in a way that enables us to see the parallels with a sophisticated weiqi strategy: China’s actions over forty years to build influence structures in multiple areas around the globe.

 Applying a weiqi model to PRC global initiatives, we can make several observations:

1. While current U.S. attention on Taiwan, China, and the First Island Chain indicates that the United States is focused on a direct approach to containment, the graphics indicate that China is taking a more indirect approach by developing multiple influence structures globally.

2. While U.S. political leaders talk of a “whole of government” approach to international security but struggle to put one into action, the PRC is already acting, taking advantage of lapses in U.S. presence and capabilities.

3. While the graphics help us understand geospatial aspects of Chinese influence structures, we need to be mindful of weiqi applications in other domains, e.g., cyber, critical materials, information, space, chip industry, and so on.

From these observations, we can derive several implications with respect to strategy and force design:

1. The U.S. military’s divestment of current capabilities to invest in unproven future capabilities in essence removes players from the global board and creates vacuums that China and other adversaries are exploiting. It is precisely the wrong business model at the wrong time.

2. China’s 40-year development of overseas influence structures and capabilities aims to outmaneuver any containment strategy based on the First Island Chain. Strategically, Marine Corps elements planning to occupy portions of the First Island Chain are mostly irrelevant even before they deploy. In weiqi terms, they are attempting to occupy what is already a forbidden point—a point surrounded by opposition stones and having no liberties—a rather compelling way of describing the support conundrum of the Marine emplacement of isolated antiship missile detachments!

3. China’s numerous, capable, and growing influence structures overseas will continue to proliferate absent immediate, decisive, and coordinated action by those seeking to forestall Chinese hegemony. Specifically, that intent on preserving some semblance of a more open and free global order must act to increase U.S. presence.

4. The challenges of securing basing rights in the face of Chinese influence structures indicate that multiple naval task forces of varying sizes operating from the seas are essential to countering both Chinese and other adversary attempts to “re-colonize” lesser developed nations.

5. The number, type, and global dispersion of Chinese influence structures mandate a similarly broad-based Western strategy. Within that strategy, the implication for the U.S. naval services is an increased number of naval task force packages capable of multidimensional combined arms operations across the spectrum of conflict—putting more general-purpose, fully capable players on the global game board. 

Pulling these points together, we can see that both domestic and Long War distractions have created influence vacuums that China and others have exploited. Divesting general-purpose, sea-based forces has removed potent and relevant players from the board at precisely the wrong time. Worse, developing a specialized, unsupported force for a specific area in an attempt at direct containment is precisely the wrong strategy for the wrong adversary. National strategists need to pull back from a direct, technocentric concept and develop a more sophisticated global strategy that appreciates multi-domain, multipolar influence structures. Civilian leaders need to reverse the current process by which myopic, military force design drives strategy. Rather, the nation needs to restore a coherent process of safeguarding national security by which national strategy drives force design.

Brigadier General Keith T. Holcomb, USMC (Ret.), is a former USMC Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. His last assignment was as Director of the Training and Education Division, U.S. Marine Corps Combat Development Command.

Image: Z​erbor/Shutterstock.

When Churchill made his famous “Iron Curtain” address, it seemed apposite to the zeitgeist of the time. Alas, now, the curtain swaying across Central Europe—from the Baltic to the Bosphorus Straits, and from Bialystok to the Black Sea—is not one of iron. The Cold War antithesis, that Free Market vs. Communism bivalent thinking which had symbolized everything from the dawn of Christianity onward, became solidified into the concepts of good and evil. That type of thinking, with Liberalism being the successor to Christianity, has continued, although there are several shades of grey now between good and evil. No more the clarified pure air of indians and cowboys, or the honest sun setting on the philanthropic British Empire. No, the twentieth century threw up what the Czech philosopher, Jan Patocka called the polemos of night, a century of war and horror—a reckoning of third-world nations, of revolutions, of metaphysical solutions. After the Enlightenment reaction to Christian thinking and the sanctification of reason, there sat in opposing camps the sciences and the spirit. The legacy of the French Revolution appeared to show the epic struggle of Church vs. State.

Now, in the post-Liberal epoch, the bivalent labels are still used to categorize the good and the bad. The new curtain falling across Europe is a virtual one. It can be moved, reassembled, realigned. Essentially it is a curtain of appearances, a simulacrum of reality. For, behind the “arras” of Enlightenment morality, of “just wars,” lurks Polonius and the spirit of realism. The specter of communism has gone, yet there still stands guard the Janus-faced China, wearing a mask of capital, beyond the wall. Therefore, it tells us something different about the weltanschauung of the present. It is the end of ideology, not the end of history. Realism in politics is back. It comes in three forms; a big Russian bear, a Chinese Silk Road, and a realization that wars of liberal universalism are over.

Realism is an important weather vane, shifting like the frosts of the Eurasian steppe. The new president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, arrived in time for a kind of “Prague Spring,” and very conveniently, in the midst of a volte-face of sorts by the good coalition. Whilst it is a welcome bolstering for the Western alliance forces against Russia, the weather cock of realism has started crowing. The Czechs are rooted in the earthly, ruby soil realism of Bohemia, of the “Good Soldier Svejk” of Jaroslav Hasek. In this, Hasek mocks the pointless crusades of war; it sees through the surreal nightmare of a war and loyalty to an empire the Czechs have no allegiance to. This is realism; it’s opposed to the “blood and soil” of the Third Reich or the Alexander Dugin-type romanticism of the Russian soul. Not for the Czech spirit the existential wonder of war of Ernst Junger. Yet, unlike the liberal credo of the West, it also is not enshrined in the moral language of universalism or the correctness of liberal values. It isn’t therefore bivalent, it is ambivalent. The Czechs sit uncomfortably in this buffer zone of Europe. At once a culture of resigned despair at the alacrity of its neighbors. Hence Pavel strides both of these camps although, as a former NATO commander, he knows the value of realpolitik. It was Bismarck who anecdotally said, “he who is master of Bohemia, is master of Europe.”

The liberal method of transposing its values to foreign policy has hit the buffers, despite Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Sisyphusian demands. You can judge the winds of change in foreign policy by the sudden proliferation of “think tanks” piping up and stating the obvious. There are tanks and think tanks, and, despite the commitment of the Leopards , it may be the think tanks gaining the upper hand. The RAND Corporation posits in its paper Avoiding a Long War: US Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia – Ukraine Conflict that the mantra of Kiev, to push the Russians out of the Ukraine, particularly Crimea, is unrealistic. There is a recognition that a likely Russian counter-offensive this spring will push back any Ukrainian gains. The report sees a kind of “sliding scale”; whilst Ukraine’s territory gains may appease the media of the West, it comes at a greater infliction of Russian infrastructure attacks. A Ukrainian campaign to take Crimea, besides increased loss of life and the fact that Crimeans are aligned with Russia, makes such a move a bridge too far, according to the report. But most tellingly, it also does not align with the United States’ other “global priorities,” and the fact that “duration is the most important” factor for the United States. Biden seems to be lagging behind; he was quoted in The New York Times (January 18) to be all for striking Crimea, a day before his CIA chief, William Burns was hinting to Zelenskyy in Kiev that unlimited aid was old school, despite the new tranche of $45 billion sent forth in December. Putin is manipulating these tendencies, and with China is playing the long-term economic game of Xiangqi—the ancient Chinese board game—the object of which is to surround your opponent by attrition, rather than a knockout blow, like chess. The idea of unlimited support, implanted in the minds of Kiev by portfolio-less politicians like Boris Johnson, also augers badly for future peace talks.

The Washington Post signals a “post-war military balance that will help Kiev deter any repetition of Russia’s brutal invasion.” Hence the Article 5-like support is waning and the tactic will be the allocation of weapons rather than fighter jets or NATO entering the equation. It would seem the United States is angling for the sense of the April 2022 proposal in Istanbul; military backing by the West but a foregoing of NATO membership by Kiev. Boredom and Time are ephemeral things. Schopenhauer, the arch-melancholic who made Sartre look like a stand-up comedian, opined that “Life swings like a pendulum back and forward between pain and boredom.” Where the pendulum freezes will determine whether the short-termism of the West, the drain on cash and weapons, will inflict too much pain on the Faustian liberal West. The Russian spirit, accustomed to hardship, to the vast endless plains of Dostoyevsky’s soul, are used to playing a long game.

Despite the advent of Pavel in the Czech Republic, the new school of realism is drawing the curtain. The president of Croatia, Zoran Milanovic, has said he is opposed to “sending any lethal arms as it prolongs the war” describing the war as “deeply immoral” due to a continuation of the war. A Just War must be tempered by realism and suffering. Continued support raises other issues such as the fate of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in the Donbass. Two-thirds of the ethnic populations of Donetsk and Lugansk have left to Russia or Ukraine respectively. Ukraine would be looking at a re-plantation of the Donbass; the history of Northern Ireland being a sobering lesson for the future. The Western alliance is not de facto uniform; Croatia, Austria, Hungary, and Italy are noticeable “culture” states opposed to the pastorate like civilizing missions of the Western powers. Yet the Western alliance is predicated on a liberal worldview that incorporates a globalist economic perspective. This is the petrol in the think tank, the resource-driven contradiction which conflicts with a moral hegemony. The battle between tanks and think tanks continues. The virtual curtain flutters through Bohemia. Meanwhile Zelenskyy ushers in a campaign against corruption, no doubt aware of Machiavelli’s maxim: “War makes thieves and peace hangs them.”

Brian Patrick Bolger studied at the LSE. He has taught political philosophy and applied linguistics in Universities across Europe. His articles have appeared in the United States, the UK, Italy, Canada, and Germany in magazines such as The National Interest, GeoPolitical Monitor, Voegelin View, The Montreal Review, The European Conservative, The Hungarian Conservative, The Salisbury Review, The Village, New English Review, The Burkean, The Daily Globe, American Thinker, The Internationalist, Philosophy News. His book, Coronavirus and the Strange Death of Truth, is now available in the UK and the United States. His new book, Nowhere Fast: The Decline of Liberal Democracy, will be published soon by Ethics International Press. He lives near Prague, Czech Republic.

Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is grabbing all the attention. But we need to look South, too. Neither the European Union nor NATO will be the strategic leaders in the Greater Mediterranean. Washington and Rome will have to play that role.

A stable, prosperous, peaceful Europe would be a boon to the entire transatlantic community. A free and open Greater Mediterranean is key to that goal. 

One reason is energy security. The Greater Mediterranean includes North Africa, Southern Europe, the Balkans, the Black Sea, and the entrance into the Middle Corridor through the Caucasus to Central Asia. As Europe diversifies energy sources, countries will draw increasingly from North Africa, the Caucuses, and Central Asia, as well as the Middle East and the United States. A lot of those resources will flow to energy hubs in Southern Europe, and those nodes need to be protected.

Another reason is supply chains. Redundant, resilient supply chains that reduce dependencies on Russia and China and open new sources of natural resources will, in the long run, reduce risks and costs to the West. They will also spur additional commercial activity. These new supply chains, too, will pass through Southern Europe.

Stability is another issue—one threatened by illegal immigration. The population of Africa is blowing out. Uncontrolled, unregulated mass migration North would be completely destabilizing. Southern Europe needs to be a bridge and a partner for the Global South, not a gateway for chaos. 

Finally, the Greater Mediterranean will be an active arena in the great power competition—whether the West wants it or not. To counterbalance its difficulties in Ukraine, Moscow is trying to strengthen its influence in Africa, thus putting pressure on NATO’s southern flank. A close partnership between Washington and Rome in the Mediterranean basin could effectively counter this strategy, promoting the stabilization of North Africa. Meanwhile, China is always looking to fill voids. Right now, for instance, they are making a full-court press in Tunisia. 

Why should Rome and Washington step in? They have common interests in addressing these problems. And, let’s face it, NATO’s top priority is going to be the eastern flank. The EU has no common foreign policy looking south, and little capacity to do much more than throwing ineffective foreign aid in all directions. Meanwhile, German leadership is moribund, and France’s has been demonstrably inept. 

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is ready to pick up the slack. The main objective of her foreign policy is to relaunch Italy’s role in NATO and in the Mediterranean basin. She understands the strategic importance of the southern flank in countering China’s inroads and Russia’s persistent influence in North Africa and the Sahel region. In January, Meloni made two trips to North Africa, focusing on increasing energy supplies and tackling the problem of illegal immigration. Rome is trying to reduce the import of Russian gas and forestall Moscow’s potential weaponization of African migration flows. 

As such, when it comes to the Mediterranean basin, Italian foreign policy is gradually aligning itself with Washington. For instance, Meloni went to Tripoli, Libya, a few weeks after the director of the CIA met with Libyan prime minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh and Gen. Khalifa Haftar. During her recent visit, the Italian prime minister declared her support for the political stabilization of the North African country, a position expressed, just a few days later, also by the U.S. Secretary of State during a meeting in Cairo with the Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. 

While focusing its attention on the Mediterranean basin and on the Middle East, Italy’s conservative government is, at the same time, relaunching transatlantic relations and confirming its support for Kiev: after all, the challenges that both the eastern and southern flanks of NATO are facing are closely interconnected.

What the United States brings to the table is presence. For instance, the United States has been granted additional access to military facilities in Greece and Romania, allowing Washington to deploy reconnaissance aircraft, missile defenses, and other security enablers that make its southern European allies far more effective. This is a much smaller and more cost-effective footprint than what the United States deployed during the Cold War to deter the Soviet Union. 

Additionally, the United States can bring in foreign direct investment, mostly from the private sector, that can speed “friend-shoring.” This will help the region decrease its dependence on China and Russia while helping grow economies in Europe. Finally, the United States can bring diplomatic heft, sorting through the myriad of thorny relationship challenges in the region. 

Of course, the EU and NATO will always have a role to play in southern Europe. But a bilateral effort from Washington and Rome can be the catalyst for greater stability and prosperity throughout the Greater Mediterranean. 

Stefano Graziosi is an essayist and a political analyst who writes for the Italian newspaper La Verità and the weekly magazine Panorama.

A Heritage Foundation vice president, James Jay Carafano directs the think tank’s research on matters of national security and foreign relations.

Image: Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock.

The American commentariat and public were abuzz over the transit of a Chinese government surveillance balloon across the United States, with social media tracking its path (and reverse-engineering it), debating whether to shoot it down, both overplaying and underplaying the story, and asking if it matters at all. There has since been verification that there are multiple Chinese balloons in the Western Hemisphere, including one located in South America.

As far as we know, the spy balloon crossed into U.S. airspace in the Aleutian Islands and passed over Alaska and Canada before reaching the continental United States, where it loitered over important military and government installations. Media reports have claimed it “poses no safety threat to civilians,” a statement that the Biden administration trotted out to avoid shooting down the balloon while it was over land. The Department of Defense stated that “this balloon has limited additive value from an intelligence collection perspective,” contributing to the choice not to down the vessel until it reached the Atlantic. Other officials stated that this was not an isolated incident, but was “different” because the balloon remained over American airspace for far longer than usual. Besides the novel admission of previous incidents, this shows an escalation on the part of the Chinese regime. At the same time, Beijing averred that the military balloon is a civilian one and only accidentally entered American airspace—a contention that the U.S. military forcefully rebutted.

Eventually, the balloon was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina, but only after completing its journey across the continent. The only response, besides a belated shoot-down, that the Biden administration has thus proffered is canceling Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s planned trip to Beijing. The wording used by Blinken in addressing this provocative infiltration of American sovereign airspace was weak, labeling the deliberate sending of a surveillance balloon as merely “an irresponsible act.” The confusion and lack of response to this clear act of aggression have made the U.S. government look slow, unprepared, and timid. The cancellation of a meeting is doing the absolute minimum when this act—a deliberate test of our resolve—demands a stronger response.

As the Pentagon mentioned, this was not an isolated incident. America’s authoritarian foes have been steadily increasing their malign actions and military presence in the Western Hemisphere over the past few months.

In addition to sending these surveillance balloons across the American heartland, Beijing has courted countries across Latin America. One such target is Nicaragua, led by the brutal authoritarian Ortega regime, which sits at a strategically-critical part of Central America. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used its economic largesse to flip Nicaragua from recognizing Taiwan to recognizing the People’s Republic of China, promising sweetheart deals for Ortega cronies, dual-use infrastructure projects, and military engagement. The deal may end up revitalizing the defunct Nicaragua Canal project, meant to be a Chinese-built waterway linking the Atlantic and Pacific, and competing directly with the Panama Canal. China has also wooed nations in South America, notably Argentina. Near the end of 2022, it was revealed that China was planning to establish a naval base at Ushuaia in the far south of the country near the Straits of Magellan and the critical Drake Passage. A military facility in Tierra del Fuego would allow the CCP to intercept communications across the region, monitor maritime transit in the South Atlantic, and enhance its ability to project power in the Western Hemisphere.

These actions are of a piece, both being concerned with establishing a permanent presence in the Western Hemisphere and monitoring important maritime traffic. Control of international waterways has been a paramount geostrategic concern for millennia, and China has already made it known that it subscribes to this idea—the militarization of the South China Sea is a prime example. The Belt and Road infrastructure program also falls into this category, as Beijing is investing in ports, canals, railways, and other potential dual-use projects. The military dimension of these relations is key, as China seeks to establish itself as a global power player. After building a naval base in Djibouti at the heavily-trafficked confluence of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a facility at Ushuaia would expand this presence into another strategically-important region.

Iran has been engaging in aggressive incursions into the Western Hemisphere as well. The theocratic regime in Tehran works closely with nations like Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua to evade sanctions and launder money. The regime’s terrorist catspaw, Hezbollah, is also very active in Latin America, using it as a source of funds and support. Hezbollah gains intelligence on Western soft targets, profits from the illicit trade in drugs, and plans attacks, all within what many would consider America’s backyard. More provocatively, Iran has stated that it is sending two warships to the Western Hemisphere to visit its allies in the region and transit the Panama Canal. The Iranian Navy has been steadily growing its international operations, but this intrusion into the Western Hemisphere is novel and disturbing.

Russia, a perennial player in Latin America going back to the Soviet era, has also ramped up its interest in the Western Hemisphere since (re)invading Ukraine last February. Russia has expanded its ties with the anti-American regimes of the region throughout President Vladimir Putin’s tenure, and it has put those relationships to work over the past year. Russia, like its allies Iran and Venezuela, is evading international sanctions via the use of falsely-flagged vessels to ship its oil to another foe of American power, China. Russia has also called on its diplomatic ties with Latin America at the United Nations. In UN Resolution ES-11/4—a condemnation of the illegal Russian annexations of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine—Russia’s Latin American friends either voted against the resolution (Nicaragua), abstained (Bolivia, Cuba, Honduras), or simply didn’t show up (Venezuela, El Salvador). The resolution was resoundingly passed, but the varying degrees of dissent from Latin American states were noticeable and worrying.

All of these bold actions by authoritarian, anti-American adversaries are meant not only to test their reach into our hemisphere so as to destabilize American hegemony and counter our interests, but also to test our response and resolve. How the United States responds to local provocations could be very informative as to how it may respond to more global provocations. As such, Washington’s response is vital for countering this influence and signaling U.S. resolve to do so wherever and whenever it interferes with our interests. There are plenty of concrete actions that can be taken beyond the immediacy of the shootdown and the cancellation of Blinken’s trip. America should interdict any further incursions of its territory, whether balloon-based or otherwise, to send a deterrent signal to U.S. adversaries. We should increase military patrols of the key waterways in our hemisphere, police falsely-flagged vessels, and work to productively engage with our neighbors on security and economic issues. In the case of more permanent issues like the Chinese base at Ushuaia, America should seek to respond in kind, potentially with a basing agreement with Britain at the Falkland Islands.

Still, since none of these actions by American rivals have crossed the threshold into direct aggression (yet), the signaling response should be even more powerful to deter escalation that passes beyond that line. The era of great power conflict has returned, with non-state actors taking a backseat to the danger of grander, more kinetic warfare. We have seen this change manifest over the past few years, but it has struck with a vengeance in the case of Ukraine. American policymakers need to embrace this new reality of broad-based geopolitical competition if they seek to extend American hegemony into the future. The answer to this global—and regional—challenge lies in our past, when great power rivalry was the watchword of international affairs. It is time for a revitalization of the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary.

200 years ago, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars and during the Latin American revolutions, President James Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams promulgated the idea that would come to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. In his seventh annual address to Congress, Monroe declared that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” This message, which also decried the puppet monarchs of European states, was a sea change in how America conducted its foreign policy, asserting a strong stance against foreign interlopers in the Western Hemisphere. For the most part, the doctrine was successful, despite America being far weaker than the European states it sought to constrain.

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt added to the legacy of the Monroe Doctrine and brought it into a new century. In what became known as the Roosevelt Corollary, the president posited that:

Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

This “international police power” was intended to reinforce the Monroe Doctrine and ensure that the Western Hemisphere was secure for American interests. To Roosevelt, “a great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil,” a mission statement that has influenced American foreign policy ever since. The key passage of the Roosevelt Corollary reads:

We would interfere with them only in the last resort, and then only if it became evident that their inability or unwillingness to do justice at home and abroad had violated the rights of the United States or had invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations. It is a mere truism to say that every nation, whether in America or anywhere else, which desires to maintain its freedom, its independence, must ultimately realize that the right of such independence cannot be separated from the responsibility of making good use of it.

118 years later, Roosevelt’s statement and the principle it defends still retain their importance.

In 2023, in a new era of great power competition, a renewal of the Monroe Doctrine and its Roosevelt Corollary is long overdue. America must live up to the words and promises of these great statesmen and ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains free from the influence of foreign autocrats. Our region’s nations are unique in their democratic birth and republican spirit; we need to retain that legacy if we wish to bring that spirit forward into the twenty-first century. American leaders should say, point blank, that the Western Hemisphere is not safe for totalitarian foreign powers that wish to destroy or undermine the historic freedom of our region. We cannot countenance the rising presence of authoritarian foes in our own backyard.

Competing against Russia, China, and Iran is extremely important, as is containing their revanchist imperial aims. We cannot present a credible deterrent in Eastern Europe, the Pacific, or the Middle East if we allow our rivals to do whatever they please in our own neck of the woods. If anything, a poor response here makes our longer-range deterrent seem far less credible. And that would be a disaster for the whole world, not just the Western Hemisphere. That security through deterrence starts closer to home; it is beyond time we recognized that reality and acted on it.

Mike Coté is a writer and historian focusing on Great Power rivalry and geopolitics. He blogs at rationalpolicy.com, hosts the Rational Policy podcast, and can be found on Twitter @ratlpolicy.

Image: Flickr/U.S. Navy.

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its second year, there is endless speculation not only on how it could end but also on how it should end. What is clear is that the Ukraine conflict could go on indefinitely. The problem for the West is that time is probably on the side of the Russians. Moscow will be able to continue exerting pressure on Ukraine not only by threatening its critical infrastructure but also by interfering with its grain shipments and other exports. Russia can also threaten greater ecological damage should it, for example, allow the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia to leak radiation.

Adding to the urgency is the fact that strains on NATO defense industries, increasing domestic war-weariness, or higher priorities such as deterring China could force Ukraine’s partners to reduce, if not end, their support. Should that happen, the contest will become one of endurance, which is a contest Russia could win.

So it is time to talk specifics about what a just settlement might look like. Determining those specifics requires answering three questions: 1) should Ukraine revise its military objectives to make settlement more likely; 2) at what point are the United States and NATO permitted to reduce or end assistance even if there is not a just settlement; 3) at what point are the United States and NATO permitted to escalate to bring a more rapid—and just—end to the conflict.

The proper goal of a just war is a better state of peace, which requires at a minimum the vindication of the rights of the aggressed party. To vindicate an aggressed party’s rights, also at a minimum, the aggressor must publicly end hostilities, exchange prisoners of war, apologize, demilitarize at least to the point it cannot renew hostilities, and be held accountable for war crimes. Without meeting these minimum conditions, grievances will fester and aggressors will buy time to rebuild military capability and renew hostilities. However, if one accepts that Ukraine, even with foreign assistance, will not realize its goal of restoring its full sovereignty, then even this minimal standard may not be realistic.

Moreover, even if Ukraine’s goals are realistic, it must also consider the cost of attaining them. As Ukraine liberates more territory, Russian president Vladimir Putin will become increasingly desperate. Even if he does not use nuclear weapons, the Russian military will very likely continue its indiscriminate attacks against civilians and critical civilian infrastructure to force Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to negotiate. Moreover, given the expected resistance by Russian and separatist forces, the occupied areas will also experience significant destruction with any Ukrainian military operation to liberate them.

These points do not suggest that Ukraine should offer to negotiate terms now. Ending the war on any terms favorable to Russia would likely incentivize future aggression and set the stage for a renewal of hostilities when the Russians believe they have sufficiently recovered. If nothing else, Russia will be in a position to continue provoking Ukraine and the West, leading to further instability.

What these points do suggest, however, is that Ukraine should first consider under what conditions continued fighting will become either ineffective or disproportionate. Second, they should consider what conditions they can offer that Russia will accept while establishing a better, if not optimal, state of peace. This may sound like appeasement, but it does not have to be.

Thus, the answer to the first question posed at the outset—should Ukraine revise its military objectives—is provisionally “no.” But getting to a solution that the Russians can accept requires putting Moscow in a position where accepting a settlement and ceasing hostilities is preferable for them to continue fighting. Getting to that point will likely require greater Ukrainian military success before any diplomatic initiative has a chance of success.

To make the Russians better off if they stop fighting, the United States and NATO should consider addressing their security concerns, especially regarding NATO expansion. In the past, NATO has refused to offer such guarantees on the principle of respecting state sovereignty. However, given the costs of fighting and the urgency to resolve the conflict, compromising on this principle seems reasonable and low. For example, such an agreement does not prevent the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with security guarantees should hostilities renew. NATO leaders should also continue efforts to admit Finland and Sweden as a cost for initiating hostilities in the first place and make it clear to the Russians that the alliance will continue to expand, and will admit Ukraine, should Russia not cease hostilities and negotiate a settlement.

The answer to the second question (i.e, at what point can the United States and NATO reduce or end their assistance even without a just settlement) is that the United States and NATO should continue to assist Ukraine until Russia is ready to negotiate a minimally just settlement. Even if the fighting does stop, Ukraine will need to continue to improve its military capabilities to deter Russia from trying again. The difficulty with this response, of course, is that it ignores certain political and economic realities. The first is that support to Ukraine has strained U.S. and NATO defense industries, which must significantly increase the production of critical materials not just to keep Ukraine in the fight but also to allow the West to maintain its deterrent threat against other adversaries like China. The second is that domestic politics in each of these countries could result in an abrupt end to assistance. In the United States, for example, there is a movement in Congress to end assistance and use these funds to improve the U.S. economy. Should the economy worsen, this argument will seem more compelling.

The morally obvious response here is for Western political leaders to remain resolute. Should the United States and NATO abruptly reduce assistance to the point where Ukraine cannot sustain the fight, the blame for the resulting injustice will partially lie with them. To avoid reaching the point where assistance to Ukraine is no longer politically viable, the United States and NATO should consider how much assistance they would provide to avoid a Ukrainian defeat and provide that now rather than providing it piecemeal in reaction to Russian successes. While the United States and Germany have recently announced their intention to provide modern battle tanks and better air defense systems, this assistance comes a year after the war started and its effects will take some time as Ukrainian crews will have to be trained on the new equipment.

While it may have made some ethical sense to limit assistance to Ukraine in the beginning to avoid escalation, that is no longer the case. If time is on the Russian side, providing assistance in reaction to Russian successes is a recipe for failure. This point does not entail giving the Ukrainians a blank check or undermining the necessity to manage escalation. However, it does suggest that it makes sense to provide now all the assistance one would eventually provide later should the tide turn more in the Russian favor.

This point naturally segues into the third question regarding escalation by the United States and NATO to bring a more rapid end to the conflict. Doing so, of course, increases the chances of direct conflict between Russia and NATO forces. Moreover, unilateral escalation by the United States and NATO will play into Putin’s narrative of NATO as a security threat, which will strengthen his hand domestically and make it more difficult to isolate him internationally.

Having said that, as Russia escalates, as it has done with attacks on civilians, the United States and NATO should find ways to increase costs to Russia as well as assistance to Ukraine to mediate the effects of that escalation. Doing so will underscore Western resolve while undermining the Russian narrative and its ability to build international support.

In considering what one should do, one first must establish what will happen if one does nothing. At current levels of assistance and Ukrainian military capability, the conflict will likely freeze. Such a freeze favors the Russians, who will continue threatening Ukraine while it consolidates its gains in the east, making their annexation a fait accompli. On the other hand, giving Russia a way out does not necessarily entail abandoning the vindication of Ukraine’s right or the demands of a better state of peace. It just means finding other ways to impose them. Thus, the ethics of conflict termination, as described here, suggest the following path to a just termination of the conflict.

First, Ukraine should continue to fight, and the United States and NATO should continue to provide assistance as long as the former’s military goals are feasible and the means to achieve them are proportionate.

Second, as long as Russia fails to return occupied Ukrainian territory, the United States and NATO should continue to impose sanctions and other costs to incentivize meaningful participation in negotiations.

Third, to ensure Russia is not able to exploit any pause a frozen conflict allows, the United States and NATO should continue military cooperation with Ukraine to improve its ability to defend itself in the future. The United States and NATO should also consider offering Zelenskyy the security guarantees he has asked for to further deter future Russian aggression.

Fourth, the United States and NATO should address Russia’s security concerns, while not recognizing Russia’s illegitimate claims to Ukrainian territory.

Fifth, the United States and NATO should not lift sanctions until Russia compensates Ukraine for the destruction it has caused and holds the soldiers who have committed war crimes, as well as their leaders, accountable. While there may be some room to negotiate whether this accountability occurs in domestic or international courts, any outcome that diminishes or ignores these crimes should be sufficient justification for continued sanctions and isolation.

Sixth, should Russian domestic conditions change, and it agrees to a minimally just settlement, the United States should consider a more rehabilitative approach and not just lift sanctions, but also assist Russia to improve its economic conditions and restore its relations with the international community.

Pursuing these measures is not likely to persuade Putin to negotiate. However, given the realities of this war, these measures vindicate the rights of Ukrainians even if the military capacity does not exist to fully restore them. Moreover, they provide an alternative to fighting that leaves Russia in a position where its ability to continue to provoke its neighbors is significantly diminished. Whether over the mid to long term, these conditions lead to a Russian government collapse or increased Russian resilience is difficult to say. But either way, they should make Ukraine more secure while placing the United States and NATO in a better position to address either Russian collapse or continued provocation and aggression.

Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff is the Research Professor for the Military Profession and Ethics at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College. He is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy. The views represented here are his own and do not necessarily reflect that of the United States Government.

Image: kibri_ho / Shutterstock.com

On February 17, political leaders, journalists, academics, and defense officials from around the world will converge at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Germany for the annual Munich Security Conference (MSC). A year after the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende” speech, the MSC will center its program around Germany’s epochal turn toward taking its strategic reality seriously, and emergence as a reliable security actor in a world where conflict exists. Unfortunately for Germany, the United States, and their mutual security partners, Germany has not moved on from business as usual, even as war rages two borders away. This reflects the continued perception that Russia does not pose a direct military threat to Germany, based on the flawed assumption that Germany’s Eastern European neighbors and the United States would contain a Russian attack on NATO member states from physically reaching Germany itself. 

Wishful thinking such as this, in continuity with the prewar policies of previous governments, is increasingly divorced from the fact that the United States will direct fewer military resources to Europe over time as strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) places greater demands on its finite capacity. Combined with Russia’s continued commitment to what it views as a long-term military confrontation with NATO, Germany’s failure to truly embrace the Zeitenwende has major ramifications for European and German security. Both the United States and Germans who understand the challenge at hand must clearly communicate both the direct military threat Russia poses to Germany itself, and the consequences for Germany’s immediate national security if it fails to adequately resource its military.

Misread History

During the Cold War, when the Soviet military directly threatened the Bundesrepublik across the inner-German border, Germany maintained the second most powerful military in NATO, after the United States. Despite Germany’s partition, the fresh memory of World War II’s horrors, and the potential for German soldiers to once again fight Russians, who had suffered so much to defeat Nazism, West Germany mustered the resources necessary to contribute its share to NATO’s collective defense in line with its economic power and size. This made sense for West Germany itself, which recognized that a war fought deep in its territory would be devastating, and thus sought to stop the Soviets at the inner-German border. The Soviet threat’s immediacy was enough for the West German government to overcome popular apathy towards national defense and build an army capable of defending NATO’s eastern flank in partnership with its allies to the west.

With the Cold War’s end, and NATO enlargement through the 2000s, NATO’s vulnerable eastern flank now lies 1,000 km east of Berlin in the Baltic states. Germany is surrounded by friendly neighbors, with a “neglected” military that struggles to meet Germany’s existing collective defense commitments. In addition, despite near-constant warnings from its Eastern European allies, a generation of German leaders continued to deepen its economic relationship with Russia, built a dependency on Russian energy supplies, and blocked both Ukraine and Georgia from joining NATO in 2008. 

Such behavior primarily reflects a combination of the false sense of security Germany’s peaceful post-Cold War neighborhood provided it, and the reality that ultimately other countries, including Ukraine, bore the risks stemming from political and economic engagement with Russia while Germany reaped the benefits. Germany consistently prioritized its own national interests, even when they conflicted with those of its European Union partners and NATO allies. For example, Germany shaped the euro in a way that supported its export-centric economy at the expense of its less-developed European partners, precipitating the eurozone crisis before imposing bruising austerity measures on the indebted countries. It also unilaterally opened its borders during the 2015 migrant crisis, encouraging further migration over the objections of other European countries and without any consensus within the European Union. When Germany saw an opportunity to advance its national interests, the country was willing to pursue them, even at the expense of its neighbors, though this is not unique behavior in the anarchic Westphalian international system.

Contemporary Struggles

Since February, however, it has been impossible to credibly argue that Russia does not pose a direct military threat to Germany, the rest of Europe, and NATO. Still, most Germans remain unconvinced. Recent polling from the Körber Foundation finds that 68 percent of Germans do not wish to see Germany play a military leadership role in Europe, and only 22 percent see Russia as a major military threat to Germany’s security. Germany is content to do just enough to barely stay in its allies’ good graces but does this out of a desire to be a good multilateral partner rather than actual concern for its national security. 

To Germany’s credit, as of late November, it is the second-largest source of military aid to Ukraine, following the United States. The problem is that the country’s allies have had to consistently cajole it along to each new step of military support, with Germany reluctantly following. In addition, Germany remains on track to miss the NATO 2 percent of GDP defense spending target through at least 2024 and has struggled to translate its €100 billion special military investment package into contracts and acquired capabilities. One can imagine what the counterfactual Western response to Russia’s invasion may have looked like in the absence of American leadership, and it likely would have resulted in Ukraine’s defeat, as MSC chairman Ambassador Christoph Heusgen recently suggested.  

However, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, 66 percent of Americans see Russia as a major military threat to the United States, demonstrating that political will and effective securitization can overcome geographical remoteness. This comes as the German government attempts to preserve a “relationship with Russia and with Putin for the future,” and limit German material support for Ukraine to avoid “breaking a special relationship,” per German parliamentarian Norbert Röttgen. Too many Germans still see the Russo-Ukrainian War as something happening “over there,” hence the prevalence of discussions centered on nuclear escalation as one of the few ways it could actually become Germany’s conflict. 

While there are prominent voices in Germany that do argue for greater military support for Ukraine and adequate resourcing of the Bundeswehr, discussion of German security policy is often quickly diluted by significant, but peripheral, issues. This distracts from the crisis of Germany’s national defense capacity while it faces a direct military threat from Russia. If the Zeitenwende is about everything, including action on climate change, a values-based foreign policy, and other factors separate from the balance of military power in eastern Europe, then the Zeitenwende quickly becomes nothing. As General Christopher Cavoli, NATO supreme allied commander Europe, recently said, “the great irreducible feature of warfare is hard power,” and “kinetic effects are what produce results on the battlefield.” Germany’s military leadership in Europe requires it to adequately resource the hard power capabilities needed from a nation with its size and economic strength. There are many pressing foreign policy issues facing the country, but fixing the weakness of European, and especially German, military capabilities relative to Russia should be the foremost priority at this critical juncture.

Deteriorating Security Environment

Though Russia failed to achieve its overall strategic goals at this point in the Russo-Ukrainian War, its performance indicates that it still poses a major threat to NATO’s most vulnerable members. Flawed assumptions about Ukrainian military resistance led Russia to attempt an invasion resembling the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, when it should have resembled the 2003 invasion of Iraq, using a military with a force structure more suited for mobilizing to liberate Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf War. The likelihood of Russia making this same mistake leading up to a war with NATO is much smaller, and even with major failures, Russia still seized and controls significant portions of Ukrainian territory nearly a year after the invasion.

Exacerbating this challenge, the United States’ contribution to NATO’s conventional force presence in Europe is likely to shrink in the coming years. The Center for Strategic & International Studies’ recent wargames on a Chinese invasion of Taiwan demonstrate the significant challenge the U.S. military faces in deterring such a conflict. While the report shows that the United States, Taiwan, and Japan can repel the invasion, this effort would require the U.S. military’s near full devotion, including strategic enablers that European militaries often lack and the bulk of U.S. tactical airpower. This two-front challenge will force the United States to choose between prioritizing deterring the PRC, its self-described pacing threat, and resourcing European defense, with significant ramifications for Germany.

In light of this challenge, with a near-certain reduction of the U.S. military presence in Europe over the coming years and a Russian military that remains poised to target vulnerable NATO members such as the Baltic states, Germany faces an increasingly precarious security environment. The assumption that other allies will bear Germany’s share of the military defense burden ignores the clear trend towards a less favorable European NATO-Russia conventional force balance. Other countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom, recognize that their own national security rests on deterring and, if necessary, defeating aggression at their geographically distant allies’ borders. 

Germany’s reluctance to embrace such thinking, and the costs that come with resourcing the policies it demands, ignores the direct security threat Russia poses. A NATO-Russia war would spread westward across Europe’s strategic depth, just as Russian cruise missiles have rained down on western Ukraine while ground combat rages in the east. The country and its government are more than capable of breaking from “business as usual” when the political will is there, as German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck’s hard work to replace its energy supply while divesting from Russian oil, natural gas, and coal demonstrates. Unfortunately, the same sense of urgency has not been there for the Bundeswehr, resulting in the underwhelming Zeitenwende.

A Productive Way Forward

To address this urgent issue, American policymakers and interlocuters need to make it abundantly clear to their German counterparts that an enduring U.S. military presence in Europe will not come at the cost of a military defeat in the Indo-Pacific. The United States doesn’t need to performatively criticize Germany—as doing so would be counterproductive—but Americans need to have frank, realistic, and open conversations with Germans about America’s military commitments in the current strategic environment. This discourse should emphasize the immediate dangers that a gap in NATO’s capacity to defend its frontiers poses for Germany itself, and the steps Germany can take right now to adequately resource its contribution to this capacity. 

Old arguments that the German defense ministry and Bundeswehr would just waste increased funding, making institutional reform more important than spending increases, ignore the fact that all countries accept degrees of waste in their security apparatus. They continue to accept this because the existential costs of failure are far greater than those of inefficiency. If Germany was able to maintain Western Europe’s most powerful military just twenty years after World War II, then neither a supposed pacifist legacy nor disquiet over conflict with Russians is a meaningful justification for continued failure to meet its alliance defense commitments. Germans need to recognize the reality of a potential war with Russia, and how it would unfold in Germany itself even if most of the fighting was confined to the most vulnerable eastern NATO member states. Given the trajectories of Russia’s military power and the American military presence in Europe over the coming years, Germany can’t afford to lose any more time making the Zeitenwende happen, or the country itself will risk the consequences of inaction.

George Pavlakis is a U.S. Army officer currently earning an M.Sc. in Politics & Technology at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, where he focuses on European security and emerging military technologies. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. 

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

Image: Shutterstock.

In today’s fraught international environment, technological innovations such as artificial intelligence, automation, robotics, quantum technology, and space technology generally provide exceptional advantages to states and shape global power competition. China, which has attracted attention with its investments and policies in these areas, has started to emerge as a significant opponent of the United States.

China aims to take advantage of the political, economic, military, and commercial opportunities offered by innovative technologies to become the world leader in technology. China’s strategy, in which all Chinese state mechanisms act together, intends to increase support for state-owned enterprises, prioritize research and development activities, ensure high-tech industrialization, and boost innovation programs. But what does this approach, which has recently worried Western countries, mean?

China’s technological pragmatism

In early 2006, China’s cabinet declared that it sees innovative technology as a strategic choice within the National Medium and Long-Term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (2006-2020). In this context, China, which focuses on reinforcing its capabilities in areas such as unmanned aerial vehicles and space, has started to popularize using digital technologies and automation in line with its five-year development plans. Under the 973 Program, which started in 2009 under the coordination of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China has increased its support for many scientific programs, including quantum technology, space and satellite technologies, cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, automation systems, and robotics.

China, which codified its technology goals in 2015 when it announced its “Made in China 2025” and Internet Plus plans, has particularly focused on investments in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and big data. Technological development also provides large-scale economic opportunities to China, though challenges remain in developing high-tech industry and increasing market share. Against an actor with big technology companies like the United States, Chinese policymakers are trying to increase China’s capacity and to become an actor that can compete in the global market with companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Huawei, and Xiaomi.

Another purpose of China’s investments in innovative technology is to integrate these capabilities and other dual-use technologies into the military area. China under President Xi Jinping began reforming the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 2015 as a part of its civil-military integration policy, and has since improved the PLA Strategic Support Forces’ capabilities in areas, including space, cyber war, and electronic warfare. Thus, while modernizing its army, China also is aiming to implement a new military doctrine based on competition in space and future wars.

In line with this doctrine and the goal of restructuring the armed forces, state-owned companies, private technology companies, universities, and research centers are in partnership with the Chinese military. At this point, quantum technology, cyber capabilities, space programs, automation, robots, and artificial intelligence stand out as the basic components of China’s civil-military integration strategy. China, which established the Integrated Military and Civil Development Central Commission in 2017 to coordinate civil-military integration policies, has given this commission broad powers to determine and supply needs.

China, which sent a quantum satellite into space in 2016 to raise its military capabilities, has sought opportunities to improve its intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities and gain an advantage over global rivals. Similarly, China’s 360 Enterprise Security Group, the country’s first civil-military cyber security innovation center, has started to create cyber defense systems for military needs.

Global competition in the shadow of innovative technology

For Washington, China’s rising technological capacity has become one of the main issues in bilateral relations with Beijing. Given American decisionmakers’ desire to maintain Washington’s global leadership in economic, military, and technological spaces, Beijing’s civil-military integration and development of dual-use technologies have become crucial challenges for the United States. Therefore, as early as the 2010s, Washington under the Obama administration adopted a strategy to limit China’s rapid economic rise. After President Donald Trump was elected, he adopted a more aggressive policy involving economic and technological sanctions. The sanctions-based policy has inflicted significant losses on Chinese companies such as Huawei. Washington’s policy of combating China continues under President Joe Biden, although the methods are different.

Despite this, it can be said that Washington’s China policy is not clear yet. However, four crucial parameters can be discerned: maintaining its technological, economic, and military leadership; limiting China’s influence in the technology market by deepening cooperation with its allies; producing alternative technologies; and building a techno-political structure against its rivals.

For instance, NATO’s close focus on China’s technological rise is a significant indicator of the West’s concern. Western companies have been encouraged to limit cooperation with China and, in some cases, restrictions have been legislated. Efforts have also been made to limit Beijing’s acquisition of Western companies.

However, the conditions and areas of competition in today’s world are not solely based on the security paradigm. The current global order’s institutions and actors closely interact with China. In other words, in today’s competitive environment, there is no bipolar structure. Many actors, including the United States and its allies, must interact with China in diverse fields. This situation complicates the scope and future of the anti-China campaign.

Moreover, technological competition is not only limited to physical or geopolitical spaces. The competitive environment reaches beyond states, institutions, companies, and other actors to include information and data-based areas. This competition in the digital space is not an area where states, governments, or other actors—even hegemonic ones—can exercise direct dominance. This situation heightens the importance of discussions about the future of today’s competitive environment.

Mesut Özcan is a Ph.D. student at Sakarya University Middle East Institute studying how innovative technologies will shape security and international competition.

Image: Shutterstock.

Vladislav Surkov, an ex-aide to Vladimir Putin, claims that, under Putin, Russia entered a new historical era—“the long state of Putin,” in which it returned to “its natural and only possible state of a great expanding and land-gathering community of people.” Per Surkov, Russia will exist in this capacity for hundreds of years.

Surkov states that Russia is back to its old imperial self. There is even a new clause in the Russian constitution allowing the inclusion of new territories into the Russian Federation. Numerous public figures, including Putin, claim that gathering lands for Russia is a historically just endeavor. Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian politician who has served in several key positions in the Russian government, even claims that Russia has a right to take back any lands where Russians have shed their blood and sweat. 

Yet Surkov’s prediction regarding the longevity of the “state of Putin” is unlikely to come true. Indeed, under Putin, Russia has entered a new historical era: both the most frightening and the most fragile in its history. It is the most alarming because of the unprecedented nature of the new nationalism of Russia’s political leadership. It is the weakest because of the weakness of Russia’s institutions of power, armed forces, and national unity.

This newly promoted nationalism is belligerent and retrogressive. For the first time in Russian history, the ruling elite praises nearly all of Russia’s past, all its powerful leaders, and all its wars. Moreover, a seemingly unthinkable merge of Czarism and Communism has taken place. The best symbol of this merge is the order of the “Hero of Labor,” a civilian award introduced by Joseph Stalin in 1938 as the “Hero of Socialist Labor.” In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the first Russian president Boris Yeltsin eliminated the order. Yet Putin restored it in 2013 under a slightly different name, “The Hero of Labor.”

In the Soviet Union, the order was in the form of the five-point golden star embossed with the hammer and sickle: the symbols of communist ideology and working-class solidarity. Putin’s new “Hero” order is also in the form of the golden star, yet now it is embossed with the double-headed eagle: the symbol of the Russian Empire. The two initially warring ideologies stand reconciled under the banner of Russian expansionism.

The Russian government now portrays all wars Russia has fought over centuries as both necessary and just. The Russian constitution legalizes this in a new amendment: “The Russian Federation honors the memory of defenders of the Fatherland and safeguards the defense of historical truth. Diminishing the significance of the heroism of the people in defending the Fatherland is not allowed.” Following this logic, Putin now justifies the “Winter War”—an act of brutal aggression by Stalin’s Soviet Union against Finland in 1939–1940. Even in the Soviet Union, especially in the post-Stalin era, this war was not portrayed as necessary or just. 

Most frighteningly, Russia’s new nationalism borrows directly from German Nazism. One of the slogans, posted on billboards throughout Russia and on the occupied territories of Ukraine, reads “One People. One History. One Country.” This a direct reference to the Russian-Ukrainian War, which is almost identical to the Nazi slogan “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer” (One People, One County, One Leader). The latter was used during the Nazi-led referendum on the annexation of Austria on April 10, 1938.

Similarly, Russia’s ruling elites, with the personal involvement of Putin, lionize the legacy of Ivan Ilyin, a Russian anti-communist philosopher who was expelled from the Soviet Union shortly after the Communist Revolution and who expressed sympathy for fascism. In 1933, Ilyin wrote that Hitler did Europe a huge favor by rescuing it from Bolshevism, declaring “While Mussolini leads Europe and Hitler leads Germany, European culture gets a break.” After World War II, when the crimes of the Nazi regime became widely known, Ilyin still justified fascism, calling it a complex phenomenon within which “one finds elements of health and illness.” In October 2005, the remains of Ilyin were brought back to Russia and reburied in Moscow under the personal patronage of Putin. Putin even cites Ilyin in his speeches.

Primordialism, or the desire to have one long continuous history, is another facet of Russia’s new nationalism. The Russian elites want to be heirs of all its purported predecessors: Kyivan Rus, the Mongols, the Byzantine Empire, and, most unbelievably, the Aryans. Viacheslav Nikonov, one’s of Russian most prominent political and media personages, who happens to be a grandson of Stalin’s foreign minister Viacheslav Molotov, called Russians the Aryans in a statement posted at some point on the website of the Russian parliament.

Primordialism leads to the idea of a civilization-state: the belief that Russia is a unique civilization with its own political, social, and cultural norms. Per Putin, “it is precisely the state-civilization model that has shaped” Russia’s state polity. This model is discriminatory both in practice and by the letter of the law. The Russian constitution now labels the Russians a “state-forming people.” Whether being a Russian is determined by one’s physical appearance, culture, language, or religion is not discussed. Neither is it clear who decides whether a person is Russian.

This horrid nationalism notwithstanding, Russia today is fragile as never before. Putin and his cronies are aware of this. Therefore, they introduce draconian amendments and laws banning any kind of dissent and, “God forbid,” separatism.

Several key factors explain why the current political regime is unlikely to survive after Putin. 

First, Putin now rules as a petty and capricious tyrant, resulting in unwise decisions. It was his sole choice to launch a full-scale war against Ukraine in February of 2022. Even Russia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, was reportedly unaware of Putin’s plans. And just two days before the war, Putin publicly chastised Russia’s otherwise hawkish spymaster Sergei Naryshkin for appearing indecisive on invading Ukraine. This is exceptional even in Russian history. The Russian Czars and Soviet Leaders consulted their inner circle on key issues. For example, the decision to send Soviet troops to Afghanistan in December of 1979 resulted from long and collegial discussions at the Politburo, the highest Soviet governing authority. 

Second, there are frictions between the three elements of the Russian invasion—the regular military, the Wagner Group, and the various Chechen battalions. The Wagner Group is a mercenary army and criminal organization owned by Putin’s notorious pal Evgeny Prigozhin. It is known for its brutal war tactics, including recruiting convicts from prisons and executing those who refuse to fight on the battlefield. The Chechen battalions are semi-autonomous, as they are allegiant to the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, and Chechnya itself rather than to Putin or Russia. Prigozhin and Kadyrov have publicly criticized Russia’s military command, claiming that it has been their forces that have realized Russia’s recent territorial grabs.

Third, Putin wages this war with a colonial-style army. Russians from affluent families dodge the draft and flee Russia en masse, forcing the Russian military and the Wagner Group to recruit from ethnic minorities—Lezgins, Avars, Buryats, Tatars, Chuvash, etc. However, since Russia has historically oppressed its national minorities, it is implausible to imagine that they have a genuine allegiance to the Russian state. If the situation permits, they may cease fighting or even turn against Russia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the great Russian writer and humanist Leo Tolstoy called Russia “a combination” and predicted that it would eventually collapse. “The circumstance that all these nationalities are regarded as parts of Russia is an accidental and temporary one,” he wrote.

Lastly, and perhaps most disturbingly, Russian propaganda has never been so aggressive and simultaneously absurd. For example, TV presenter Olga Skabeeva has claimed that the entire West is now at war with Russia, just like allegedly during World War II. Surely, Skabeeva knows that the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain were allies after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June of 1941. Another TV presenter, Vladimir Soloviev, scorns German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, saying that a Nazi uniform would fit her the best. The political commentator Igor Korotchenko says that Russia should treat Germany’s Chancellor Scholtz as Adolf Hitler and repeatedly calls for nuclear strikes on the United States.

It is difficult to imagine that the Kremlin can keep Russia in this state of national psychosis for a prolonged period of time, especially after Putin goes. The United States, the European Union, and NATO are currently strategizing how to enable Ukraine to end Russian aggression. This is a noble cause. Yet it is also time to prepare for the potential collapse of Putin’s or post-Putin’s Russia. Given Russia’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, it may not be beneficial for everyone involved, including Ukraine. If Russia disintegrates along the borders of its national autonomous republics—Dagestan, Chechnya, Tatarstan, etc.—this could very well turn into a nuclear Armageddon. The United States, the European Union, and NATO need to have a long-term strategy to avoid this.

Peter Eltsov is professor of international security studies at the College of International Security Affairs at National Defense University and the author of the recent book, The Long Telegram 2: A Neo-Kennanite Approach to Russia.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U. S. government.

Image: Shutterstock.

Russia has always been and remains committed to strict compliance with its obligations in combating criminal proceeds. For twenty years as a member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), we have managed to develop one of the world’s most advanced anti-money laundering regimes. The FATF mutual evaluation proved that in 2019.

Additionally, over recent years, the Russian Financial Intelligence Unit has accumulated unique experiences that it has willingly shared with all interested countries. In order to boost the capacity of law enforcement agencies, a number of educational programs are being actively fulfilled for experts from Central Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

The past year turned out to be unprecedented in terms of the politicization of international institutions combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). Blindly following the directive to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in retaliation for our desire to put an end to multi-year flagrant injustice in Ukraine, there is a wish to settle scores with us on different dialogue platforms.

No exceptions are made, even for purely expert and technical bodies designed to promote international cooperation in combating various kinds of financial crimes—the FATF, the Egmont Group, and Interpol. It appears that authors of anti-Russian initiatives, in a bid to “expel” Russia from everywhere, have completely lost touch with reality and forgotten about the dangerous consequences of dismantling the global AML/CFT system.

Despite measures taken by the international community, the threat of terrorism does not subside. It is naive to believe that terrorists and their facilitators have abandoned their plans to carry out attacks against humanity. They skillfully adapt to current realities and adjust emerging technologies to suit their needs.

The issues of transnational crime and the increasing involvement of terrorist organizations with drug trafficking are acute. In this context, it is important to remember that the majority (86 percent) of global illicit opium production takes place in Afghanistan. The potential increase in drug flows from there could destabilize any region of the world.

For this reason, the Russian Federation is putting considerable energy within the FATF-style Eurasian Group on Combating Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism, featuring countries that border the former Islamic Republic.

Russian authorities traditionally make a significant contribution to the security of both regional and international financial systems. The statistics speak for themselves: at our request, the funds of about two thousand persons involved in terrorism were “frozen” in foreign countries. However, with the introduction of unilateral restrictions against Russia, the global financial security situation began to objectively worsen.

The attention of special governmental structures—initially called upon to fight crime with taxpayers' money—has been diverted to the search for Russian assets for their subsequent illegal blocking. As a consequence, serious cross-border offenses remain uninvestigated.

What can attempts to limit Russia’s role in the multilateral anti-money laundering efforts result in? The answer is obvious: at the very least, it results in a weakening of the global financial system security. Any restrictions on interaction and exchange of information related to terrorism, drugs, fraud, cybercrime, money laundering, and other serious offenses make it difficult to trace illegal assets. The pursuit of dangerous criminal groups risks practically stopping.

As a result, the benefit of such ill-conceived actions is obtained directly by criminals, including by those who committed economic offenses in the countries that “frozen” useful and mutually beneficial enforcement contacts with Russia. There is no doubt that they will certainly take advantage of the emerging vulnerabilities in their own vested interests.

States that refuse to cooperate with the Russian government agencies on special issues of combating crime are, in fact, “shooting themselves in the foot”—exposing their own citizens and their national security to unreasonable risks.

The credibility of the FATF, well-known for its professionalism and high-quality expertise, is also suffering. It is sad that statements regularly made during its meetings about the need of establishing international cooperation in combating the financing of terrorism without politicization and double standards are nothing more than empty rhetoric. Our former Western partners are clearly not rushing to put these declarations into practice.

It would seem that in the history of Russia’s relations with Western countries, including the United States, there are many examples of successful cooperation in countering terrorism and crime. Our joint efforts saved people's lives and brought criminals to justice. Facilitated strengthening of mutual financial security. Why destroy what has been built over the years?

Yury Chikhanchin is the Director of the Federal Financial Monitoring Service of the Russian Federation.

Image: mojahata/Shutterstock.

An increasing media galore is witnessing the discussion of the role of Wagner Group, a Russian quasi-private military company (PMC), in the Ukrainian conflict.

The Wagner Groups’smercenaries are popping up all over Ukraine, allegedly committing blatant war crimes and providing the necessary combat skill lacking among young, untrained Russian conscripts. While the focus is on Ukraine, the actual value of Wagner is in Africa. Russian paramilitary groups and mercenaries are increasing their footprint in Africa, from Mali to the Central African Republic. While the Russian army is bogged down in a war of attrition with Ukraine, the Wagner Group is a placeholder for Moscow’s geopolitical interests in natural resource-rich African countries. Several reasons are related to the increasing footprint of the Wagner Group in the continent, starting with Russia’s long history of involvement in Africa and the support of strong ties with several African countries. Since Putin’s rise to power, Russia has increased its economic and military presence in Africa.

The Wagner Group is an efficient tool to further Russian objectives on the continent without attracting the same level of scrutiny as regular Russian military units. Besides offering plausible deniability, Wagner is a source of income for oligarchs tied to Putin. For example, in Africa, Wagner’s training services and supply of Russian military hardware are a source of hard currency and precious metals that help the Kremlin to mitigate international sanctions.

To b clear, the Wagner Group more often refers to the Kremlin’s commitment to using paramilitary groups and mercenaries as the sharp end of the stick of its foreign policy from the Middle East to Africa. The Kremlin’s strategy is straightforward: mercenaries provide plausible deniability and achieve precise strategic objectives with limited resources. Russia’s proxy warfare doctrine has changed since Soviet times. Today, it cannot count on former Soviet satellite states to provide the proxy forces required to conduct expeditionary warfare, such as the Cubans in Angola. The use of mercenaries is related to efficiency and the fact that Moscow’s options are limited. Tor Bukkvall, a specialist on Russia’s military strategy, defines the Wagner Group as Moscow’s “power projection on the cheap.”

The Syrian conflict demonstrated how agile and well-trained combat units motivated by money can be a gamechanger. Small units fighting against untrained armed militia and guerrilla forces enabled Moscow to establish influence at a low cost and maintain public deniability in case of failure or blatant human rights violations. Having proved its value in support of the Assad regime and in Libya—where it orchestrated Khalifa Haftar’s successful defense of the oil crescent after he was routed in Tripoli—the Wagner Group expanded its franchise to Africa.

In the continent, however, the Wagner Group is not used only to further the Kremlin’s geopolitical aims but to line the pockets of the Russian elite by establishing a presence in resource-rich countries, where they ally with militias in return for payments in cash or mining concessions. In this regard, Russian PMCs are helping the country work around crippling sanctions.

Moscow’s paramilitary groups are increasing their footprint in Africa. In Sudan, the Wagner Group provided security and logistical support to save former president Omar al-Bashir in exchange for diamond mining concessions. The group supported the Central African Republic government’s struggle against rebel groups. While in Mozambique, the Wagner Group could not provide decisive support to government forces fighting insurgency in the northern part of the country.

Today, Russia relies on distinct armed groups to do its bidding: regular military, mercenaries, special forces operators in disguise, and paramilitaries. Depending on Moscow's needs, a single Russian operator could play each of these roles.

The host government requested the Wagner group’s presence in several African states, while Moscow denies any government involvement. As soon as the boots are on the ground, the Russian disinformation campaign is then ramped up a notch on social media and even with movies supporting Moscow’s presence in Russian and local languages. The propaganda message is straightforward: Russian quasi-PMCs are the last bastions against Islamic terrorists supported by Western mercenaries. Two recent movies distributed in Russia and Africa, Granite and Tourist, which were filmed in the Central African Republic and paid for by a Russian company owned by Wagners’ founder are a case in point.

The case of Mali, where the government officially asked the Wagner Group to support its struggle against terrorist groups, represents this trend. Even Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed reports that Mali contracted the group to fight extremism in the Sahel, asserting that it is a business agreement between a state and a private company without Moscow’s involvement.

Is it not by chance that shortly after an increased Russian presence in Mali, the government of neighboring Burkina Faso was ousted in a January 2022 military coup—the fifth in a year in West and Central Africa, a region known as the continent’s “coup belt.”

Mali is just a tiny piece of a broader geopolitical puzzle Russia is acquiring in the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. The Syrian playbook, previously tested by the Kremlin during the support of the Assad regime, works like a charm in Africa: moving into a region of interest with a small number of boots on the ground and in a cost-efficient manner while all the attention is centered on Ukraine.

Therefore, the presence of Wagner and similar groups is an early warning indicator that Russia is going to try and alter the political and regional status quo in the short term, months and not years, with any indirect means ranging from deception, active propaganda, and violent actions including political decapitation and supporting military’s coup.

Dr. Alessandro Arduino is an associate at Lau China Institute, King’s College London. His most recent book is China’s Private Army: Protecting the New Silk Road (Palgrave, 2018).

Image: fotoandy/Shutterstock.com.

Since becoming independent in 1991, Georgia has been striving for closer ties with the West and membership in organizations such as the European Union. However, in recent times, particularly in the past eighteen months, the ruling coalition led by oligarch and former prime minister Bidzina Ivanishvili and his Georgian Dream party has made decisions that seem to push Georgia away from the West and toward Russia’s sphere of influence. The government continues to claim support for integration with the EU and NATO, but it has opted for a policy of non-confrontation with Moscow. This significant change in direction has sparked controversy and debate within the nation.

The Georgian government’s policies have put it at odds with the Georgian population, which prefers closer ties with the West. A 2022 survey by the Center for Insights in Survey Research found that 89 percent of Georgians consider Russia a “political threat,” while 79 percent of Georgians want their country to have a “pro-Western” foreign policy. Likewise, 85 percent of Georgians also “fully” (70 percent) or “somewhat” (15 percent) support their country joining the EU, while 70 percent want their country to join NATO. As Georgia navigates its delicate position between Russia and the European Union, Georgian Dream’s actions are understandable. After all, who could forget Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, an act of aggression that former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev later admitted was motivated by a desire to prevent NATO’s expansion into former Soviet territories.

Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the relationship between Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, has significantly deteriorated despite their traditional solidarity. Georgian authorities formally condemned Russia’s “unacceptable“ invasion of Ukraine and provided humanitarian assistance and diplomatic support through organizations such as the United Nations. However, the Georgian government’s refusal to impose sanctions on Russia sparked widespread discontent among the population, as demonstrated by the anti-government protests calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili.

According to a survey conducted by Caucasus Research Resource Centers last spring, 66 percent of Georgians believe that their government should take a stand against Moscow and implement some form of action. In addition, a majority of respondents, 61 percent, stated that the government should show greater support for Ukraine. These views contrast the ruling party’s stance, which has refused to impose any sanctions on Russia.

Much like Ukraine, Georgia has been dealing with its own territorial issues with Russia. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and declared the independence of the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. For over ten years, Russia has been constructing fences along the line of separation between South Ossetia, which is almost completely surrounded by Georgian-controlled territory, and Georgia, in an effort to turn this line into a fully recognized border between the two countries. This process, known as “borderization,” has been a dire problem for Georgia, as it challenges the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Georgia’s strategic neutrality in the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia may be a calculated move to avoid angering Moscow and potentially facing consequences such as economic sanctions and the further “borderization” in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Kornely Kakachia, the head of the Georgian Institute of Politics, suggests that Tbilisi is adopting a cautious “wait and see“ approach in dealing with the volatile and unpredictable nature of Russia’s actions.

And despite claims from members of Georgian Dream, it is clear that Ivanishvili still wields significant power in Georgian politics. With a history of business in Russia and close connections to the Kremlin, Ivanishvili has maintained a tight grip on Georgia’s leading institutions for the past decade. Interestingly, there have been no criticisms of Ivanishvili from Moscow, possibly due to his promise to improve relations between the two countries when his Georgian Dream party came to power in 2012. Ivanishvili’s influence and connections continue to shape the political landscape in Georgia.

Since its inception in 2012, Georgia’s ruling party has faced criticism for its handling of democracy, human and minority rights, media freedoms, and the fight against corruption and political polarization. In 2019, thousands of people took to the streets in protest after a Russian lawmaker was allowed to sit in the parliamentary speaker’s chair during a meeting, an event known as “Gavrilov night“ and viewed as a national indignity given Russia’s ongoing occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

But the protests go beyond this single incident. They also stem from discontent with Georgian Dream’s overall performance, including a struggling economy, perceptions of rigged elections, restrictions on freedom of the press, and selective justice. The European Parliament even passed a resolution calling for the EU to impose sanctions on Ivanishvili, Georgian Dream’s founder, for his “destructive role” in Georgia’s politics and economy, including risks posed to free media and journalists’ safety.

The Georgian government’s deviation from Western-backed democratic reforms has jeopardized the country’s relations with the EU and United States. In September 2021, Georgian Dream declined the EU’s macro-financial assistance package, which included requirements for judicial reforms recommended by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission. Instead, the government sought funding from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which did not have such conditionality. In June 2022, the European Council further decided to postpone Georgia’s potential EU membership until it implemented reforms and met twelve specific conditions reforms.

As Georgia edges closer to Russia, tensions may escalate if the Georgian people seek to replace their country’s pro-Russian leaders. Russia and President Vladimir Putin have a history of advocating for regime change in Georgia and Ukraine. For example, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov demanded the removal of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in 2008, much like when Putin himself called on the Ukrainian military to overthrow their government in 2022 as a precondition for peace negotiations. It’s possible that Moscow could become more aggressive in the face of any attempts by Georgia to loosen its ties with Russia.

The 2013 Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine was sparked by President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to abandon the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia. However, the underlying factors that fueled the revolution went much deeper and included widespread corruption, economic hardships, undemocratic politics, media censorship, and police brutality that left the Ukrainian people feeling silenced and oppressed. In the face of these challenges, Ukrainians took to the streets to demand change and fight for a better future.

As Georgia struggles with corruption, undemocratic elections, economic challenges, and media censorship, the government’s attempts to move closer to Russia and distance itself from the West have faced strong resistance from the majority of citizens. Ivanishvili’s leadership and actions are reminiscent of those of Yanukovych in Ukraine, which sparked the Euromaidan Revolution. As discontent and frustration among Georgians reach a boiling point, it seems that the country may be headed for a Maidan-style revolution of its own, similar to what Ukraine experienced before it.

David Kirichenko is a freelance journalist covering Eastern Europe and an editor at Euromaidan Press. He tweets @DVKirichenko.

Image: Shutterstock.

Aydar Rashidovich Aganin is one of Russia’s best Arabists. He has served in Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, and the United States. From 2007 to 2011, he ran Russia Today’s Arabic edition, which is today one of the most influential news outlets in the entire Arab world. He was one of Vladimir Putin’s close advisors on the Middle East in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Policy Planning Department. As of last month, he is the Russian ambassador to Libya.

Putin’s man in Tripoli is there for good reason. At a time when Russia needs all hands on deck as it wages its war in Ukraine, the decision to dispatch one of Russia’s best and brightest regional experts to Libya—a country that the West evidently considers to be a backwater—is telling. While Western diplomats continue to chatter kalam fadi, or empty talk, about “elections” or a “constitutional settlement” or other vague promises, Russia has an opportunity. Aganin’s appointment is a sign that Russia plans to take it, and the West had better watch out.

As the world watches the war in Ukraine, Russia is probing the rest of the world for weak spots. While it is true that Russia is somewhat drawing down its presence in Syria, it has not lost its influence in the Middle East. The influence of Russia over OPEC was made clear just one year ago, when Saudi Arabia refused to increase oil production to support the rest of the global economy. Russia’s influence in Syria has sufficed to stop Israel from helping Ukraine with even defensive systems. Russia’s influence over Iran destroyed the resurrection of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in March. And in Libya, too many Libyan politicians owe their lives and careers to Russian weapons and Russian mercenaries for Moscow to be excluded—not that there is any incentive. Now is the perfect time to call in those debts, and Putin knows it.

Today, Libya occasionally appears in Western news. Nine times out of ten, Libyan oil flows need to be disrupted for the West to recall its existence. When NATO intervened in Libya, it baked half a regime change cake but did not succeed in finishing the job. The batter has long turned sour. The myth of Arab dictators—that, in their absence, only chaos can reign—got a new lease on life when Libya’s brief experiment with democracy failed in the absence of support from a non-committal NATO, which was scarred from the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan and clueless about how to handle a country it had long ignored. After a half-hearted attempt at creating a democracy, Libya had a second civil war. The West could not decide on what approach to take. Following another failed attempt to impose a new dictator, Khalifa Haftar, on Libya, the West pushed pause. It has tried to preserve that status quo ever since. But Russia has no interest in calm.

Putin’s only way out of his Ukrainian Vietnam is to force the West into stopping Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy from trying to achieve a total victory. To do that, he can use the West’s greatest advantage against it: democracy. Just as Russian bombs fall on Ukrainian houses, Russia sought to freeze Europeans in their homes this winter and will try to squeeze their pockets throughout 2023, at the gas pump, at the electricity meter, and wherever else they can. In addition to that, Russia has a Trojan Horse in NATO. Turkey’s half-hearted support for Ukraine has helped Russia prolong its bloody campaign while the West’s economic blockade on Russia has created economic opportunities for the Erdoğan government. Furthermore, Turkey’s reluctance to accept Sweden into NATO has been an obvious favor to Putin. Libya is another low-hanging fruit to do this. Without a government, without a constitution, without rule of law, and full of hired-gun militias, Libya can quickly become a headache. While Libya’s warlords are content with their bribes today, a skilled diplomat, with no competition from his Western counterparts, could change that very quickly.

For a political operative looking to make Europe’s life a little more miserable, Libya is a land of opportunity. In Aganin, Putin has sent a skilled pair of hands to pluck ripe fruit. Aganin can easily ask any militia to blockade or sabotage an oil pump, taking hundreds of thousands of barrels away from the West. He could have gas pipelines sabotaged. He could use his obvious flair for the Arabic language and deep familiarity with Arab culture, which his Western counterparts also lack, to charm Libya’s tribes into thinking that they would be better served by Russia. He could work with any number of thugs to try and force migrants from across the Middle East and Africa to Europe en masse. In a more extreme case, he could work with one of Libya’s many political strongmen to try and force the country back into civil war. It also works in Russia’s favor in the rest of Africa, giving Russia an outlet of influence in the Sahel as well as even more leverage over Egypt.

How can the West respond? The truth is, it cannot. To do so would require putting serious thought into how to end Libya’s decade of political misery and sending skilled diplomats of its own who can engage with tribal leaders and build a Libyan consensus. To do so would require a willingness to use just part of its vast economic and political power to threaten Libya’s strongmen. The very least the West could do is threaten no more shopping trips to London, no more holidays in the South of France, no more pizza in Rome unless you can provide a decent life for your own people. But they have not done this for a decade. Why would they start now? When the oil stops flowing again, and it will, they should not blame Aganin. They can blame only themselves.

Burak Bilgehan Özpek is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Ankara. Özpek is also one of the founders of Daktilo1984 Movement in Turkey.

Image: Shutterstock.

Since the start of the war in Ukraine, foreign policy pundits have resurrected political jargon that suggests that Western efforts to protect the liberal international order are being challenged by nation-states that belong to the so-called “Global South.”

Even a conservative realist scholar like Walter Russel Mead has been prone to refer to the South, a term coined by neo-Marxist political economists during the 1980s, when he recently wrote that the skepticism expressed by Brazil’s President Lula Da Silva regarding NATO’s policies in Ukraine reflect “decades of wariness in the Global South about the Wilsonian agenda.” Further, Mead noted the continued existence of the perception that Wilsonian or multilateral institutions formed after World War II are “instruments of Western domination that should be feared and resisted.”

To recall, according to the intellectual jargon that was trendy before the end of the Cold War and the ensuing era of globalization, the terms “North” and “South” were used as a way to compare the industrialized and developed nations associated with the mostly white nations of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia to the poor, “underdeveloped,” or “less developed” and mostly non-white countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, later to be known as the Third World.

Neo-Marxist scholars came up with the grand theory of “dependency” that stipulated that the global capitalist system encouraged the flow of resources from the “periphery” of poor states in the South to the “core” of wealthy nations in the North, enriching the latter at the expense of the former. In order to correct this injustice, they said, there needed to be a major transfer of wealth from the North to the South that would then develop by rejecting Western forms of capitalism and embracing centralized economic systems.

Even liberal-internationalist American policymakers bought into this political-economic model, arguing very much like Mead does today that the opposition to American Cold War policies by the likes of Venezuela, Nigeria, or Nepal is rooted in their common belief that the white industrialized nations have failed to help them deal with their social-economic challenges.

From that perspective, the Soviet Union was seen at that time—like Russia and China today—as exploiting the misery of the South. So, in order to strengthen its geostrategic position and win the hearts and minds of the Southerners, the North had to slow down its drive to spread capitalism and free markets and trade worldwide. Instead, it helped create a New International Economic Order that would channel economic resources to what were then authoritarian regimes in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

Needless to say, much of the above proved to be, in retrospect, like much of Marxist thinking, no more than provocative but useless intellectual exercises, with the international economic order shifting in the direction of free markets and liberalized trade. That helped bring countries like India and China out of poverty and turned the so-called “Asian Tigers” (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) into economic success stories, with the former poverty-stricken city-state of Singapore enjoying a higher rate of Gross National Income per capita today than the former imperial power that ruled it, Great Britain.

The North not only helped the South integrate into the global economy and take the road toward industrialization and prosperity, but the North, led by the United States, also ended up winning the Cold War against the Soviet Bloc. Of course, this was not due to it being white—after all, so were the Russians and Eastern Europeans—but because its military strength depended on its economic power. Contrary to some ensuing myths, the role that America’s allies in the South played in that victory was marginal. If anything, arming countries in the Third World and subsidizing their corrupt leaders proved to be a burden and not an asset in the competition with the former Soviet Bloc.

The United States and its allies became popular after the collapse of the Berlin Wall not because of the amount of economic assistance they provided to Third World countries but because they were victorious and their model of economic development helped turn, say, South Korea into a regional and international winner as opposed to North Korea that remained behind as a loser.

But Mead gets one point right: Contrary to fairy tales disseminated by Western propagandists, America and its allies were driven not by altruistic notions of spreading democracy but by self-interest that in many instances was fused with Realpolitik cynicism. The West was committed to ensuring that the Soviet Union and its allies didn’t dominate the Eurasian continent and pose a direct threat to Western interests in maintaining a free association of nations states, including free navigation and trade.

This explains why the United States and its NATO allies are now backing Ukraine. It’s not part of a narrative in which democracies are standing up to authoritarian regimes, but a strategy aimed at containing an aggressor that has challenged the status quo and balance of power in Europe. That poses a direct and immediate threat to the interests of the United States, Germany, France, Poland, and the other members of the NATO alliance as well as some of its leading partners in East Asia, such as Japan and South Korea, which rely on the United States to contain the influence of China, another potential challenger to the regional status quo.

However, Russia’s aggression doesn’t pose an immediate and direct threat to the long list of nation-states that have very little in common in terms of their economic and social development, culture, race, and overall direction of foreign policy.

After all, what binds together Brazil and other American partners in Latin America, technologically-advanced and pro-America Israel, wealthy Saudi Arabia, post-apartheid South Africa, and the mighty regional power and great civilization of India? Each of these states made a cost-benefit calculation which led them to conclude that the costs of joining the United States and its allies in a global military-economic campaign against Russia outweighed the benefits they could derive from such a policy.

Mead is wrong to think that the problem, to quote United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres, is that the West has failed to grasp just how alienated the South has become from the Western world system, supposedly reflecting the “gravest levels of geopolitical divisions and mistrust in generations.”

The challenge facing the United States and its allies is mostly geostrategic. Its interest lies in ending the war in Ukraine without allowing Russia to defeat its partner, Ukraine. There needs to be a debate on how the United States could and should achieve that goal. But if it does, expect most nations of the “South” to applaud. As before, interests rule the day.

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

Image: Amit.pansuriya / Shutterstock.com

The earthquake that recently rocked Turkey and Syria measured 7.8 on the Richter scale but was off the charts on the scale of human misery, particularly in Syria. America, as a beacon of Western liberal values, must act now.

While the government in Damascus allows aid to enter the region through only one border crossing, it has been resistant to opening up aid into northern areas, where whole neighborhoods have toppled over, burying alive fathers, mothers, children, and infants. Those who have not been crushed alive are choking on dust in small air pockets that soon become due to poisonous carbon dioxide—the pollution expelled from the victim’s own lungs.

Then came the snowstorm, dropping temperatures to dangerous levels.

Neighbors clawed at the rubble with their bare hands, struggling to save the buried survivors as bitterly cold winds stung their hands and frustrated their sacrificial, saving acts.

Turkey, a NATO ally, has received promises of tens of millions in humanitarian aid. As for Syria, which suffered in the same earthquake, few are lining up to help. Syria’s allies, Russia and China, both with shrinking economies, have each made promises but have little capacity to bring immediate aid by air.

The Assad family regime, which rules Syria with an iron fist, is of course, despicable. Its brutal actions in that nation’s tragic civil are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the dispersal of millions of refugees. Syria is not a U.S. ally, and it is politically impossible for Washington to make a pact with Assad.

Meanwhile, other regions, said to be held by the “Syrian opposition” are, in reality, held by pro-Al Qaeda jihadist factions.

Still, what is politics to a starving infant that just lost her mother in the horrifying instant when the earth moved? What is politics to the stricken old man, watching his loved ones emerge from the mound of earthen blocks, dead—knowing that he will have to find some way to pay to bury them again?

President Joe Biden cannot claim to be a defender of universal liberal values and look away from these helpless children, their faces blackened by the dust of their former homes and their eyes clouded by tears as they hunt for relief from the immense suffering. And now comes the snow and the aftershocks.

It is outrageous for the people of one nation to be rescued by Western aid yet the people of a neighboring nation, who suffered the same calamity, are ignored.

Four million individuals in opposition-held northwest Syria live in appalling conditions with limited access to health care, food, or warm places to sleep. Something must be done.

The U.S.-led international community must immediately mobilize men, money, and materiel to support rescue and humanitarian efforts in northern Syria. The United States must also put pressure on the Assad government to allow humanitarian aid to flow freely to all areas affected by the earthquake, without political restrictions.

In order to regain the confidence of the Arab world, the United States has to prove by actions that the United States says what it means and means what it says. 

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

Image: Voice of America/Wikimedia Commons.

Following the inauguration of Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brasília, Iran announced that it would send two of its warships to the South American country. The Russian state news agency, Sputnik, which has some other local proxies as its sounding board, recapitulated the announcement just two days before the ships were scheduled arrival of the ships to arrive—as published in the Brazilian government’s official journal. However, the ships never arrived.

What made Iran change its plans? Or rather, what were Iran’s plans?

Officially, Iran says that its ships, Dena—a Mowj-class frigate—and Makran—a former crude oil tanker converted into a helicopter carrier, now the largest ship in the Iranian navy—are on their way to the Panama Canal. The crossing of the Pacific Ocean would be the focal point for its plans to “go around the world.”

So far, it is not known what prompted the Iranians to change their plans and possibly their route. A seemingly isolated event may reveal part of the answer. On January 16, seven days before the Iranian ships arrived in the Port of Rio de Janeiro, the U.S. Air Force dispatched a WC-135R Constant Phoenix aircraft to South America. The operational purpose of the WC-135 is, notably, to identify atmospheric signs of nuclear activity—in other words, to be a “nuke sniffer.”

Dispatching such a plane on an unprecedented mission to collect a baseline reading of normal atmospheric conditions in South America raises eyebrows. The aircraft departed from Puerto Rico and collected atmospheric data off the coasts of Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana, and part of Brazil. It also traversed an area from the north up the Rio de Janeiro region, where the Iranian warships were due to be. The U.S. military did not intend for the mission to be secret: the plane’s transponder data was available to the public via flight monitoring platforms.

A second flight was carried out days later. The plane retraced its route around South America in the opposite direction, collecting data over the Caribbean, the northern coast of Venezuela, and over the waters of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. On this route, it flew over the Panama Canal, the presumed strategic destination of the Iranian flotilla.

This radiation survey over South America may have been a warning to Iran, creating problems for Tehran. Establishing baseline measurements of the region’s natural radiation levels would have become a hindrance if Iran had plans to use South America for nuclear testing. If the Iranian ships had been carrying radioactive material or weapons for offshore testing, possibly off of Venezuela, then the United States could identify anomalies in the atmosphere from its survey prior to the ships’ arrival in Brazil.

When it comes to Iran, everything is not what it seems. In 2005 and 2020, stories that Iran was producing missiles in Venezuela consumed the attention of researchers and governments looking for evidence that the two regimes were acting in concert to violate sanctions. While the West’s attention was diverted, Iran and Venezuela deepened their relationship through clandestine networks that possibly served to support the former’s nuclear program and transport materials, people, and financial and technological resources between the two regimes.

In 2020, Iran sent tankers to Caracas in defiance of sanctions and cast doubt about what the ships were actually carrying besides its declared fuel cargo. President Nicolás Maduro has never missed an opportunity to exacerbate tensions—for instance, he once publicly stated that he viewed the acquisition of Iranian-made long-range missiles as a “good idea.”

Iran’s efforts at concealment led many analysts to suspect, for example, that a network of tunnels had been dug under Venezuelan military installations in Maracay, in north-central Venezuela, to conceal missiles. Today, it would not be absurd to think that such facilities could be used for nuclear tests in partnership with Iran.

It is hard to say why Iran’s naval mission to South America has been “delayed”—or even interrupted. Maybe the mission was just another empty provocation. Maybe it was a smokescreen for clandestine activity, such as transporting nuclear material. If the first scenario is correct, Iran may have achieved what it wanted by causing tensions and forcing the United States to spend time, money, and attention on purely a propaganda operation. But if Iran had plans to deliver nuclear material to the region, then they might have found themselves cornered and were forced to reconsider their strategy. The “disappearance” and delay (or unannounced suspension) of its official port call in Brazil may certainly not have been a gamble in vain.

Leonardo Coutinho is an author and a senior fellow at the Center for a Secure Free Society.

Image: Shutterstock.

In a previous article, I suggested “the DeSantis doctrine” has three components. First, win elections and govern effectively. Second, push back against the woke-industrial complex. Now I lay out the third component: the DeSantis doctrine in U.S. foreign policy.

Internationally, there is typically little call for state governors to develop an elaborate foreign policy stance. However, Florida has an unusually big footprint overseas as well as in the United States, and Governor Ron DeSantis has spoken out on several important international matters. He also has a record of statements and actions on national security issues going back to his years in Congress.

During his time as a U.S. House Representative, from 2013 to 2018, DeSantis was critical of the Obama administration’s foolish attempts to accommodate Communist Cuba. In Congress, DeSantis supported aggressive measures relating to the targeting and detention of suspected Salafi-jihadist terrorists. He criticized Pentagon waste but supported a strong U.S. military with all the budgetary implications. He called for U.S. aid to Israel. He was furthermore an outspoken critic of President Barack Obama’s nuclear arms control giveaways to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Once Donald Trump was elected president, DeSantis applauded that administration’s withdrawal from the ill-fated Iran deal. The Floridian also rallied to Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against North Korea. In other words, all mainstream Republican positions during those years.

As governor of Florida since 2019, DeSantis has continued to call attention to the depredations of left-wing dictatorships in Latin America, including those of Cuba and Venezuela. He has signed legislation designating one day of the year to honor the victims of Communist regimes while insisting that schoolchildren learn the truth about it. For those of us with ancestors who managed to escape the Soviet Union, it’s gratifying to see this departure from the usual left-liberal reticence in condemning Marxist atrocities. And of course, many Floridians know from firsthand experience how rotten Communism really is.

Speaking of Marxist-Leninist dictatorships: in relation to the People’s Republic of China, DeSantis has said and done things indicating he understands the scale of the challenge. As he pointed out in his September speech to the National Conservatism conference in Miami, free trade with China demonstrably failed to soften one-party rule. It enriched that regime while leaving it more threatening than ever before. DeSantis appears to grasp that Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence is a transnational threat, not simply a conventional military one. Last year, he signed into law measures requiring companies that do over $100,000 in business with Florida to disclose any ties to China. He banned the CCP-affiliated Confucius Institute from state colleges and universities. And he has called on the Florida state legislature to block Chinese companies from buying up real estate in the Sunshine State. As he noted while visiting Bonita Springs last month:

If you look at the Chinese Communist Party, they’ve been very active throughout the Western Hemisphere in gobbling up land and investing in different things…and when you see how they’ve wielded their authority - especially with President Xi, who's taken a much more Marxist-Leninist turn since he’s been ruling China – that is not in the best interests of Florida to have the Chinese Communist Party owning farmland, owning land close to military bases.

Over at the New York Times, Bonnie Kristian recently worried that a President DeSantis might be insufficiently committed to accommodating anti-American dictatorships overseas. I must admit this fear does not keep me up at night. The editor of Modern Age, Dan McCarthy, strikes me as more persuasive when he points out that refusing to accommodate the mullahs of Iran does not necessarily equal support for some gigantic nation-building expedition to overthrow them. If we survey the DeSantis record carefully, we can see he does not quite fit preconceived notions of what a Republican must believe. For example, in 2013, as then-President Obama was ramping up plans for “unbelievably small” airstrikes against Syria, Congressman DeSantis questioned the utility of the administration’s half-baked plans. As he said at the time:

The Obama administration has not articulated a clear objective for using military force in Syria, much less a plan to achieve that objective. This is all the more problematic given the realities of a Syrian civil war in which Assad’s dictatorship (supported by Iran and Hezbollah) is fighting so-called rebels that are populated with Sunni Islamic supremacists and Al Qaeda fighters.

Not exactly the neoconservative position. And yet the governor clearly favors robust deterrence. A year ago, when Putin attacked Ukraine, DeSantis called out the Biden administration for failing to prevent the invasion. During the summer of 2021, DeSantis characterized Biden’s chaotic disengagement from Afghanistan as terribly weak and likely to invite further aggression. The governor was right about that. At the same time, he has confessed to certain doubts about prior U.S. strategies in Afghanistan. He once said: “After 9/11, we needed to go and rout the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But I think in hindsight, we should have come home after that. I think trying to do democracy and all that, I think has been very problematic.”

When it comes to the much-vaunted global institutions that liberal internationalists revere, DeSantis shows no special deference. “I look at these people at the World Economic Forum,” he says, “and I’m like, they just view us a bunch of peasants.” They certainly do. The World Trade Organization, he points out, paved the way for the stupendous rise of the People’s Republic of China. The World Health Organization mismanaged and wrongly acquiesced to that same regime over the Wuhan virus three years ago. The United Nations—an organization that boasts numerous tinpot dictators within its ranks—has even had the temerity to critique Florida state laws in criminal policing. DeSantis laughs that off as a badge of honor. As he says, summing up his whole approach as governor, “I am basically the protector of the state’s freedom and opportunity.” So, he pushes back against the woke-industrial complex whether its demands emanate from inside or outside the United States. If Davos doesn’t like it, tough luck.

All things considered, when DeSantis’s statements on foreign policy matters are taken as a whole, he comes across as neither a hyper-interventionist, nor a dove, nor a liberal. Instead, he comes across as someone who favors a strong U.S. military, together with a certain care and decision in using it. Multilateral institutions receive no automatic submission in his view. Nor do anti-American dictators who insist on diplomatic, economic, and strategic concessions from the United States. Taken together, this is an outlook sometimes described as Jacksonian. We could do a lot worse. In fact, we frequently have.

So, there you have the broad possible outlines of a DeSantis doctrine: the protector. First, win elections and govern effectively. Second, push back against the woke-industrial complex. Third, guard against America’s self-described enemies overseas.

Of course, there are those spanning the ideological spectrum who insist that no U.S. president can possibly do all three things at once.

And what I’d like to know is: why not?

Colin Dueck is a Professor in the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, and a senior non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Image: Hunter Crenian/Shutterstock.

Ukraine’s defensive war against Russia, if successful, is going to have an impact every bit as epochal as Iraq’s 1991 eviction from Kuwait or Argentina’s forced departure from the Falklands in 1982, to name just a few salutary lessons delivered to aggressive states. 

Over the years, crises big or small have periodically defined the international “system” for good or ill. Think also of Suez Crisis in 1956, or the 1938 capitulation to Adolf Hitler at Munich.

Does the current yearlong response by Ukraine’s allies, most of them grouped in NATO, have a similarly defining effect? To be sure, the Western response has delivered economic pain to Russia, and critically important intelligence and munitions to Ukraine. But do the results add up to a convincing display of deterrence and resolve? 

The Western coalition in Ukraine is seen as also deterring China from attacking neighboring countries, notably China’s “renegade province,” Taiwan. But is it doing that? The answer is mixed, not least because the spotlight we have put on our response in Ukraine has revealed crucial American and Western vulnerabilities. 

The weaknesses lie in the re-emergence of defense industrial warfare in the new international powerplays. The year-long war in Ukraine has spawned profligate artillery and rocketry duels, in numbers not seen since the last world war.

After a year’s fighting, keeping ammunition stocks and fighting vehicles sufficiently plentiful and routinely upgraded seems the challenge which will determine the course of the war and its outcome. For months, drone footage and satellite imagery have shown us leveled cities and pock-marked fields, recalling artillery and bomb-scarred moonscapes of the first and second world wars. 

In November, the U.S. Department of Defense calculated that Russia was firing 20,000 artillery shells a day. The numbers expended by the Ukrainians had meanwhile reached up to 7,000/day. With these rates of fire, stocks are becoming exhausted, on both sides. For Ukraine’s allies, there is also a draining effect. How can stockpiles be reliably replenished to keep the Ukrainians in the field?

The challenge must not be minimized. In December, the Royal United Services Institute said that Russia, in just two days of that month, had used more ammunition than that contained in the entire stock of the British military. And while the United States has much larger stockpiles of weapons and munitions, the Pentagon recently decided to boost six-fold the production of critically important 155-millimeter shells. Just ten days of fighting in January had outpaced current production. 

This explains the Pentagon’s searching high and low for stores of munitions. It has sought munitions from Israeli and South Korean stockpiles, straining to keep up with Ukrainian demand. The Pentagon’s chief acquisition officer, Bill Laplante, put it succinctly a few months ago: “[Ukraine] has focused us ... on what really matters, and what matters is production.”

In recent years, of course, production shortfalls and delivery impediments have afflicted our own and others’ economies. The past allure of “just-in-time” warehousing and other minimalist stocking practices have weakened our industrial resilience. Acquisition shortfalls typify the broader status quo, a state of industrial complacency going far beyond shortages of specific munitions or war-fighting gear.

America’s military-industrial base has become as vulnerable as the wider economy. The supply chain crisis now afflicts everything, from specific weapons systems to the basic materials for developing affordable clean energy technologies. The Ukraine War highlights our dependence on Chinese manufacturing, the beneficiary of outsourcing decisions frustrating immediate supply (and re-supply) needs. Whether for narrow defense manufacturing, or much broader consumer goods, industrial supply chains have become stubbornly vulnerable to disruption—be this from pandemics, civil unrest half a world away, or the machinations of geopolitical rivalry. 

The data reveals the weakness. Productive capacity in the United States for all essential goods and materials falls well short of minimally acceptable capacity. Laplante singles out the lagging supply of rare earth elements (REE), describing a China controlling 80 percent of global REE as decades ahead in developing the type of supply chains we need. 

Apart from rare earths, China controls most of the battery metals which underpin rapidly advancing electric vehicle (EV) production. Building American EV capacity, from the mine to the assembly line, has become a national must-do—lest we find the United States and other Western economies locked out of the new transportation paradigm. 

Apart from its fighting forces, America’s greatest role during World War II emerged as the “arsenal of democracy.” U.S. industry provided nearly two-thirds of all Allied military equipment during the war—specifically 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, 86,000 tanks, and two million army trucks. By the war’s end, the United States had become home to more than half of the world’s entire industrial production. 

Today, only one economy has the productive capacity to rival what the United States then achieved: China. The Chinese generate over thirty percent of total global manufacturing, producing, in particular, more than half of the world’s raw steel, three-fourths of all lithium-ion batteries, and four-fifths of all the world’s solar panels. China’s manufacturing dominance may not be, on its own, a “threat,” but our naked dependence on Chinese supply chains counts as a terrible vulnerability.

Thankfully, Congress and the Biden administration, have become alert to this problem. Beginning in the previous administration and continuing into today’s, we find ourselves once again in a world of great power competition. 

Facing this reality requires new investment in our entire industrial base, not in just especially favored defense industries. We need to see it holistically, as all of one piece, a regaining of the capacity underpinning our economic, energy, and national security. Beyond the present war, that is the best way to project deterrence.

James Clad is a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia-Pacific Security Affairs.

Image: United States Department of Defense.

Turkey may have just experienced the most devastating natural disaster in its history. Ten provinces in the country’s southeast were flattened by powerful earthquakes in a matter of hours, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. Temperatures are freezing and survivors are in danger of freezing to death before rescuers can dig them out of the rubble.

The disaster is still unfolding. There is now a massive homelessness problem. Even in cases where houses were not destroyed, many will be uninhabitable due to structural damage. The sheer level of urban destruction is so vast that, in addition to losing their homes, inhabitants of the region are likely to have lost their jobs too.

While natural disasters such as earthquakes are unpredictable, the Turkish government should and could have been better prepared to avoid this worst-case scenario. In the coming days, citizens and opposition politicians are going to demand answers to three uncomfortable questions.

The first relates to the availability of emergency funds, specifically intended for earthquake relief. Following a deadly earthquake in 1999, the state imposed a permanent tax on all Turkish homeowners to contribute to a fund, so that the country would be financially prepared for the next destructive earthquake. Estimates suggest that the state has collected close to $40 billion. Where are these funds? In 2020, reporters asked President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this very question. He replied with a non-answer, remarking “We spent the [funds] on what was necessary. I really do not have the time to explain what the money was spent on.” Since 2012, public disclosure of government spending has been censored, thereby making it virtually impossible to determine how these funds were spent.

The second question relates to building regulations. Following the 1999 quake, the state imposed more stringent building regulations, specifically designed to ensure that buildings are as resistant to earthquakes as much as possible. The destruction of entire city blocks in towns like Hatay, Antakya, and Iskenderun strongly indicates that buildings were not up to code. Who is responsible? The government will be tempted to vilify individual contractors and builders, but not the party officials that run municipalities and thus issue building and zoning permits. In other words, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Erdogan will do everything it can to escape the embarrassment and blame. It will be interesting to see how they pull that off in light of the public infrastructure that has also sustained severe damage. Scores of municipal buildings and hospitals have collapsed.

The last question focuses on the government’s emergency response, or lack thereof. Admittedly, the magnitude of the earthquakes was so vast that any prepared government would struggle to mount a meaningful response. Yet citizens in the affected areas are complaining about the total lack of emergency services, prompting some to ask, “where is the state?” In the initial forty-eight hours, the government hesitated to deploy the Turkish military, which has significant resources such as personnel and heavy lifting equipment. This hesitation may have resulted in the loss of thousands of lives Moreover, the country’s premier emergency response agency (AFAD) is under increasing public scrutiny. The organization is accused of mounting an unacceptably slow response to a major national disaster.

Right now, Erdogan’s primary concern appears to be political optics Two days after the disaster, Erdogan declared a state of emergency for two months in the affected areas. The timing is awkward, to put it mildly: the emergency will end one week before the intended date of Turkey’s national elections. Coincidentally, a state of emergency will allow the government to control the media—specifically, control over negative reporting that might lay the blame for subsequent rebuilding and humanitarian challenges on the government.

Erdogan likely understands that this earthquake may be his greatest political challenge yet. In a fiery public appearance, instead of acknowledging the level of public trauma the country was facing, Erdogan warned that he would target individuals “spreading lies” about the national disaster.

With so much devastation and so much at stake politically, Erdogan could try to pump the brakes on holding the elections slated for May 14. Many of the public buildings where citizens usually vote have been damaged. Even if they are intact, citizens will be primarily concerned with rebuilding their livelihoods. The government may thus try to exploit the situation and forestall what was slated to be a close election by citing citizens’ inability to participate in the voting process.

Such a strategy could backfire rather badly. The earthquake has gained international attention. Should the government fail to address the needs of the people and then attempt to cancel elections, this could be too much for the Turkish population to bear. And their frustrations will be obvious to the international community that is working overtime to raise funds for the beleaguered people of Turkey.

What well-wishers may not quite understand is that Erdogan and the AKP have been in power for twenty years. And while the political elite may not be responsible for a natural disaster, the aftershocks are as much political as they are seismic.

Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP). He is also an Associate Professor of Security Studies at the Command and Staff College-Marine Corps University and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Image: Mustafa Kirazli/Shutterstock.com.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a Russian intelligence analyst. It is March 1, 2020. Your task is to determine why President Donald Trump authorized the Doha Agreement, a deal with the Taliban to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Suppose you know the following facts:

1. Donald Trump is known to watch the television show Tucker Carlson Tonight.

2. Tucker Carlson has said that Afghanistan “is never going to become a civilized country.”

3. Donald Trump often echoes Tucker Carlson’s rhetoric about caring for Americans first.

Ergo, you conclude that Tucker Carlson is the intellectual architect of the Doha Agreement. You report that Carlson is “Trump’s Brain,” the grand strategist, the hidden hand in plain view.

Does this sound plausible? Carlson is not a policymaker, nor does he provide policy-relevant advice. Moreover, Trump had long advocated for a U.S. withdrawal himself. To attribute so much influence to a television host seems like an absurd leap in logic. And yet—over the past year, many political commentators have alleged that Alexander Dugin, a far-right Russian television personality, was the intellectual architect of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. His supposed influence on Putin and Russian elites has become a recurring theme in Western media coverage.

In the first half of 2022 alone, Dugin was mentioned in Foreign Affairs and featured in both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Smaller publications, like the left-leaning Jacobin, the center-right Bulwark, and the Jewish Tablet all ran similar stories. Even the YouTube-famous intellectual Jordan Peterson later claimed that Putin “collaborates in his thinking with a genuine philosopher, Alexander Dugin.” The assassination of Dugin’s daughter in August, allegedly by Ukrainian security forces, has since raised his profile even further.

What many commentators get wrong, besides overrating Dugin’s prominence, is the complex relationship between intellectuals and politics. They mistakenly assume that: 1) Patronage means proximity, 2) ideology equates to strategy, and 3) using a thinker’s favorite jargon means embracing his specific ideas. In reality, intellectuals peddling big ideas are rarely in the driver’s seat of politics—especially in autocracies without freedom of expression. Dugin is no exception.

Fallacy #1: Patronage Means Proximity

Before we get ahead of ourselves—who is Alexander Dugin? According to an influential Foreign Affairs article, he is “Putin’s Brain,” a “professor at Russia’s top university, Moscow State University, and the head of the national sociological organization Center for Conservative Studies” from 2008–2014. True enough, though he was only an adjunct, not a full professor, and his research center was national only in name. He was also abruptly fired from Moscow State after students protested his call to “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Ukrainians in the 2014 invasion of Donbas. Since then, he has worked as the editor of the pro-regime television channel, Tsargrad TV.

These posts strengthened Dugin’s reputation in the West as a philosopher and advisor to Putin. But a cursory look at his career reveals that he is just one of many pawns in Putin’s curated media ecosystem. The regime’s “political technologists” are known to impersonally employ thousands of media personalities like Dugin to shape public opinion. These personalities do not control their public profile, nor do their ideas necessarily even reflect official policy. The regime also sponsors extremists and pseudo-oppositionists to make itself look moderate in comparison.

Before his stint at Moscow State, Dugin had played some small television roles on Russia’s Channel One. Like everyone else, his profile waxed and waned depending on Putin’s needs. In the early 2000s, when Putin aligned with the United States in the Global War on Terror, ultra-nationalists like Dugin were given less airtime and pushed into the “opposition.” They were then somewhat rehabilitated after the Color Revolutions in Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004), and Kyrgyzstan (2005) created a need for more nationalistic content. This was what increased Dugin’s notoriety. But there is no evidence that Dugin ever came in contact with Putin.

Indeed, Dugin has never claimed to have met Putin, nor has he spoken as though he has. In a rambling VKontakte post after his firing from Moscow State, Dugin wrote: “There are two identities to Putin - the patriotic, heroic (solar) and the one inclined toward liberalism and compromises of the West (lunar). Therefore it is impossible to rule out that the decision to dismiss me was taken by one half, obviously the lunar.” Such a man, who has played the role of an academic, opposition leader, talking head, and regime loyalist, seems much more like a court jester than an éminence grise. He too might profit from a window into Putin’s brain.

Fallacy #2: Ideology Equates to Strategy

Dugin’s current standing is often misinterpreted through his past intellectual achievements. In the 1990s, he found his first major patrons in Igor Rodionov (then head of the Russian General Staff Academy) and Leonid Ivashov (then head of defense cooperation with other post-Soviet states). Both generals supported the failed 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev to forestall the USSR’s dissolution. Rodionov invited Dugin to lecture at the General Staff Academy from 1992–95 to fill the post-Soviet ideological vacuum, while Ivashov secured funding for Dugin to turn his lectures into a best-selling monograph, The Foundations of Geopolitics (1997).

Commentators have characterized Foundations as a strategic blueprint for the Putin era. But I sincerely doubt, as one writer alleges in The Washington Post, that Putin has followed the book’s “counsel to the letter.” Dugin’s chief contention is that the Cold War was only one phase of an eternal and occult struggle between civilizations of “land,” i.e. Russia, and “sea,” i.e. the United States and its allies. Russia’s destiny, he argues, is to build a multipolar order by re-uniting post-Soviet “Eurasia.” The framing is unusual but offers no new strategic insights. Neither Putin nor the generals needed Dugin to convince them that the USSR’s dissolution was a disaster.

More importantly, the book contains little intelligible counsel. It is several hundred pages of intellectual history and philosophical exegesis. Here is a representative quote: “Geopolitics as it exists today is certainly a secular, ‘profane’ and secularised science. But perhaps, among all the other modern sciences, it has preserved in itself the greatest connection with tradition and with traditional sciences. René Guénon said that modern chemistry is the result of the desacralization of the traditional science of alchemy, and modern physics is the result of magic. Similarly, modern geopolitics [results from] sacred geography.” What is Putin to do with this?

Strategy is about connecting means to ends. It involves calculating risk, deciding on the most prudent sequence of actions, and adapting to a changing environment. Dugin is not interested in any of this. When he offers advice in Foundations, he often proposes extravagant ideas like partitioning northern China with Japan while supporting Chinese expansion into Southeast Asia “as geopolitical compensation.” He never reflects on whether Russia has the means—the military capability, state capacity, and economic resources—to achieve these maximalist ends.

To be fair, Dugin does make one seemingly prescient suggestion—he encourages “separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts” in the United States. Western observers have made much of this thought. Did Foundations influence Putin when he decided to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election? Likely not. Besides being an unoriginal idea (fomenting civil unrest was a well-known Soviet tactic), the quote is also vague and impossibly hard to find, appearing in a single throwaway line in a twenty-page section about “space in the West of Eurasia.” Other famous recommendations are presented in equal abstraction. They reflect the imagination of an ideologist—not a strategist.

Fallacy #3: Using a Thinker’s Favorite Jargon Means Embracing His Specific Ideas

Nonetheless, some observers suggest that the increasing references to “Eurasia” in Russian foreign policy initiatives point to the influence of Dugin’s overall vision. For instance, in May 2014, three months after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed a treaty forming the Eurasian Economic Union, a customs union meant to reduce trade barriers across post-Soviet states. The organization replaced the Eurasian Economic Community, an ineffectual predecessor founded in 2000 during the height of Dugin’s intellectual profile.

The attempt to establish a connection between Dugin’s ideas and Eurasian integration is highly dubious, to say the least. One useful window into the foreign policy debate in Russia at the turn of the millennium is Dmitri Trenin’s 2003 book, End of Eurasia. Although Trenin cites Dugin as an influential theorist of “Eurasia,” he also refers to a dozen other geopolitical thinkers working with the idea. Indeed, U.S. statesman Zbigniew Brzezinski had also outlined a strategic concept of “Eurasia” in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, which was translated into Russian in 1999.

There is a red herring during this period as Dugin does enter the halls of power in 1999—at least nominally—becoming an advisor to the Speaker of the Duma (the lower legislative house) and the chair of the geopolitical section of the Duma’s Advisory Council on National Security. But Russian foreign policy lies primarily in the hands of the executive. And though Boris Yeltsin was ineffectual, his deputy Yevgeny Primakov (foreign minister, 1996–98; prime minister, 1998–99) had been trying to restore Russian foreign policy to its old direction for several years.

In fact, Primakov had been expounding a Eurasian outlook as early as 1992. Speaking to the Moscow Institute of International Relations, he said: “Russia is both Europe and Asia, and this geopolitical location continues to play a tremendous role in the formulation of its foreign policy. Its [interests] include China, India, and Japan, and not just the United States or Europe. They also include the Middle East and the ‘Third World.’ Without such geopolitical scope, Russia cannot continue to be a great power and to play the positive role it has been destined to play.”

Given that Soviet security officials had conducted multi-theater planning from Afghanistan to Poland throughout the Cold War, the reemergence of a “Eurasian” outlook in Russian security circles should be rather unsurprising. When books allege that Dugin’s ideological “Eurasianism began to creep into mainstream discourse” because “a new set of foreign policy guidelines issued in 2000 described Russia’s most important strength as its ‘geopolitical position as the largest Eurasian state,’” one might ask when such ideas were not part of mainstream discourse.

An Old and Dangerous Temptation

Alexander Dugin does not exercise exceptional political influence in Putin’s Russia. A cursory analysis of his career, his writing, and the ideas around him reveals that he is just one career courtier among thousands. He is no Rasputin, no silver bullet, but one piece in a much larger puzzle. In this respect, the extensive coverage of Dugin offers a general lesson. It is tempting to look to intellectuals to make sense of opaque autocracies. Their crisp ideas seem to cut through the fog of palace intrigue and false opinion. But the insight they offer is almost always illusory.

This is an old and dangerous temptation. Eighty years ago, in trying to explain the Second World War, U.S. media outlets identified the Nazi-affiliated intellectual Karl Haushofer as the architect of Hitler’s grand strategy. Commentators pointed to his alleged academic postings, his musings on world domination, and apparent echoes of his ideas as proof of his influence. But Haushofer never made it into Hitler’s inner circle. The entire line of analysis was misplaced. We now know that Hitler changed his behavior depending on the strategic environment that the Allies created.

What we really need to know today—and hopefully Western intelligence agencies already do—is what Putin’s policy process looks like. How does he take counsel? What will make him think twice? It is important to get these answers right. Only then can one begin to determine what concrete actions might change Russian behavior. Simply identifying Russia as a philosophical enemy does not get us closer to a coherent strategic vision. To respond forcefully and effectively to Putin’s invasion, we must not conflate exercises in intellectual history for strategic analysis.

Alex Hu is a student at Yale University. He can be reached at alex.hu@yale.edu.

Image: Fars Media Corporation/Wikimedia Commons.