Foreign Policy Blogs

 

Please join the Foreign Policy Association in welcoming Mr. Carl Gershman, who was President of the National Endowment for Democracy from its foundation in 1984 until 2021. Mr. Gershman will be delivering the annual John B. Hurford Memorial Lecture titled, “Reflections on NED’s Past and Democracy’s Future”.  If you are interested, please register for the event here. 

In August, U.S. President Joe Biden announced his administration’s plan to host the “Summit for Democracy” with the first one set to take place from December 9th through 10th of this year, and the second to take place the same time in 2022. The summit will focus on challenges and opportunities facing democracies and will provide a platform for leaders to make both individual and collective commitments to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad. With democracy around the world under threat, we are pleased to welcome Carl Gershman, who has championed democracy as the first president of the National Endowment for Democracy. Mr. Gershman will share his story on the founding of the NED and his work for nearly three decades as its president, as well as the important role the NED serves in protecting and fostering democracy around the world. 

BEIJING, CHINA – OCTOBER 25: Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at the podium during the unveiling of the Communist Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People on October 25, 2017 in Beijing, China. China’s ruling Communist Party today revealed the new Politburo Standing Committee after its 19th congress. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Before getting into any of this, I feel that it is important to say that my intention here is to calm tensions between the United States and China, not to heighten them. I believe that the probability of direct military conflict between the United States and China over the next few decades is relatively slim – over the next few paragraphs I will explain why.

Yes, Chinese President Xi Jinping has begun speaking in a more aggressive, perhaps even Maoist tone. Some say that the attention being paid to Taiwan’s current vulnerability is exacerbated by America’s blunder in Afghanistan. Still, despite these potentially troubling indicators, a closer look highlights a string of mounting domestic problems that China must overcome before seriously looking outward. Xi’s famed Belt and Road initiative has resulted in mixed results at best, and the Evergrande real estate crisis highlights the ways in which China remains a developing economy- especially when partnered with the slowing of economic growth in China over the last number of years. Not yet mentioned are the Covid-19 pandemic,  the horrific treatment of China’s Uyghur population, or the broad repression of China’s social and civil sphere.

Under domestic circumstances like these, it is no surprise that an authoritarian leader will use fiery rhetoric to inspire the domestic base. As Americans are well aware, even stable democratic nations are prone to this type of behavior. A careful observer should recognize the difference between outward facing rhetoric that is meant for domestic consumption and serious international messaging that can be understood as strategic signaling.

Certainly, China will look to establish itself as a diplomatically-influential regional power in Asia. However, even these more modest efforts will run into the challenge presented by the rise of a democratic India and strong American alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other nations in Asia. These partnerships short-circuit the idea that China might achieve a military victory without real consequence. With this context in mind, in order to establish itself as a well respected and influential power in the region, China will likely work to pursue diplomatic and economic options, both within Asia and around the world.

Over the last few years, polling shows that Americans have become increasingly skeptical of China- over 85% of Americans view China as an enemy as opposed to a partner. This, in part, is due to the common belief that the United States and China are on an inevitable collision course given China’s rapid rise to power. This idea is known as the Thucydides Trap– coined when Greek historian Thucydides wrote that, “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This idea is strengthened by the important historical fact that twelve of the last sixteen cases in which global leadership has changed hands, armed conflict has occurred as a result. Notably, the Cold War is not one of those instances that resulted in direct conflict.

To get to the point, we need to consider what China’s prospective rise to global hegemony would actually entail.

First, China’s rise to power would mean that China is able to escape the notoriously sticky middle-income trap. Without getting too much into the weeds, the middle-income trap is the theory that “wages in a country rise to the point that growth potential in export-driven low-skill manufacturing is exhausted before it attains the innovative capability needed to boost productivity and compete with developed countries in higher value-chain industries. Thus, there are few avenues for further growth — and wages stagnate.” Unless China can transition its economy in a way that promotes the growth of a true middle class, the Chinese state might struggle to find the tax revenue to fund its global ambitions.

This obstacle is challenging enough to overcome in its own right – people were asking this same question of China ten and twenty years ago- but avoiding the middle-income trap while inching toward active competition with an entrenched global superpower is unlikely at best. To the extent that the Chinese government is fully dedicated towards supporting economic growth, it might be difficult to seriously expand China’s military capacity- and to the extent that China is focused on expanding its military capacity, the nation would be forced to ignore pressing economic realities domestically.

Second, China would need to overcome the United States as the chief diplomatic partner for many of the other significant powers in Asia. The United States is, however, actively, if somewhat controversially, working to strengthen military and diplomatic ties with Australia. Additionally, despite the occasional bit of turbulence, America maintains close ties with Japan and South Korea. Beyond that still, the United States has long maintained good trade andmilitary relations with India, and the two democratic nations appear much more likely to work collaboratively than competitively.

If we are willing to grant that military action against one of these close American partners is off the table, then China’s remaining route towards increased regional influence is through shrewd diplomacy and increased economic ties. If China is able to win the confidence of its neighbors, so be it. Doing so will likely require increased democratization and economic openness. If China succeeds in this way, it highlights a victory for the values that the United States works to endorse. Still, the United States could work to complicate these efforts by preemptively working to further enhance its relationship with existing American partners in Asia.

And third, China’s rise would mean overcoming the legacy of social and civic repression that has long been associated with communism. If economic growth in China stagnates, the long-standing unspoken agreement between the Chinese people and their government falls apart, perhaps resulting in serious domestic disturbances. On the other hand, if China is able to overcome the middle income trap and establish a vibrant and educated middle class, those increasingly worldly and educated individuals will become less tolerant of social and civil illiberalism.

Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman challenged readers to “find any example of a country that has achieved a large degree of political and civil freedom that has not also used private markets and capitalism as the major way of organizing its economy.” More modern research supports Friedman’s suggestion that nations that employ free markets tend to have more liberal political and civil spheres than nations that do not. In this way, China appears trapped between its aspirations to become a larger voice in the international community and its present unwillingness to liberalize the civil and political sector of Chinese life.

Put more directly- either China will need to adopt policies that are more in line with traditional Liberal values, and follow the proven pathway towards increased prosperity and full acceptance in the international community, or China will need to buck the trend and prove that communism and social illiberalism are capable of out-competing an entrenched global power with a generally free market and society. To the extent that a similar set of efforts failed in the post-WWII years, the spread of the internet and crowdsourced communication makes the burden of enforcing  social repression even more costly.

From the perspective of a believer in free markets and democracy, real fear over China’s rise is filled with numerous contradictions. Either communism and social illiberalism are capable of providing a serious challenge to Liberal nations with market economies or they are not. It is my view that free markets and free people will win out. If China achieves global hegemony by adhering to Liberal principles, so be it.

George Kennan made a similar point years ago while writing the Long Telegram. The United States and its network of allies already has China reasonably well contained in Asia, and given the diplomatic authority that comes with being a leading democratic nation, the United States has already worked to insure that in order for China to rise to the status of peer power, China would need to prioritize its diplomatic efforts and open its economy. These two things would likely need to coincide with increased social and civil liberalism. In this way, China’s rise might ultimately be dependent on its ability to sustain economic growth while gradually adopting a more liberal and democratic state. Without development of this nature, China’s economic growth might stall, and civic unrest may follow in the pattern of the USSR in the 80’s and 90’s.

 

–

Peter Scaturro is the Director of Studies at the Foreign Policy Association

 

The are a number of increasing stories about how this Holiday season will be met with shortages of the things that make this time of year precious for many. Crucial things for the holidays such as festive foods and even children’s toys are predicted to be in short supply, brought on by many competing factors no one truly expected. In the UK, shelves and fuel supplies are already in short supply due to visa restrictions yet to mature in the post Brexit era, clashing with the tail end of Covid policies that limited the proper flow of goods and fuel.

The United States is also starting to experience many backlogs as well, with ports and shipping containers being queued longer than normal while waiting to unload their often prompt and measured deliveries. While already a matter of discussion in the UK for a few weeks, Americans are now starting to view the end of the year with some fears of a ruined Christmas. With the product driven Holiday season being driven by commercial backlogs at the time of year when retailers make a good portion of their yearly profit, the post Covid retail industry needs this season to return to profit after two years of shut downs.

Part of the problem for auto sellers as well as many other technological products is the shortage of semi-conductors needed for their production. Production of many items are now done overseas, and a strategic push to increase production cannot be done by one Government alone, nor is possible to coordinate many of these companies without their expressed consent to focus their efforts in improving one national economy. While the push by the US, UK and EU Governments enabled companies like Moderna, Pfizer and AstraZeneca to produce vaccines in record time when needed, it was done inside many countries who coordinated these efforts and had local production located outside their windows.

With much of the semi-conductor market being dominated by producers in Taiwan, the recent military escalation with China may exacerbate these shortages even further. It is unclear why this strategic move by China is being done at a time when consumers in the US and EU depend also on Chinese goods for their markets. The negative affect it may have could finally focus public attention on China’s aggressive policies against Western interests while also limiting China’s own manufacturing sales of high end goods via chip shortages, and lower end goods via shipping delays.

Driving up the costs of everything, when the costs are already high, affects people personally. When you see the price of everything going up rapidly, as you likely do wherever you are in the world right now, you eventually start to ask questions and begin to notice who is pressuring you personally. With Covid still scarring many people’s lives after two unforgettable awful years of this disease, the only focus many have is to get out of a life of shortages and depression. While the messaging on who to focus on has become in a way its own industry, many now see politics as personal to limitations in their own lives.

One can imagine that the outgoing German chancellor is unhappy with her legacy in Eastern Europe. In Berlin as well as in Brussels, Angela Merkel leaves considerable headaches about the future of the post-Soviet space.[1] Above all, many East Europeans in Warsaw, Kyiv or Tallinn are likely to be more or less unsatisfied with Merkel’s heritage. In 2005, Germany’s first female chancellor took office at a time when the political situation in Eastern Europe was relatively relaxed and Moscow was still on good terms with the West. Russia was a G8 member, involved in a special council with NATO, and engaged in negotiations for an expanded cooperation treaty with the EU.

Since 2014, much German commentary has insinuated that nationalist Ukrainians, with American support, have destroyed this former harmony. Discussions of Eastern European geopolitics in recent years have been often debates about Ukrainian internal affairs as well as Western errors regarding the recalcitrant country. In fact, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in the Donets Basin were merely continuations of older Moscow policy patterns in the post-Soviet space, however. The Kremlin’s neo-imperial ambitions that have become manifestly evident in 2014 were earlier observable in its policies regarding, among other countries, Moldova and Georgia.

 

A paradoxical legacy

In late 2021, Europe’s most important and experienced politician by far will leave her government post at a time when not only most Russian partnerships with Western organizations and states have ended, been damaged, or frozen. Today, Moscow is – as it was before the February Revolution of 1917 or before the late Soviet democratization of 1987 – once again in a fundamental normative conflict with the West. The Kremlin’s new aggressiveness vis-a-vis liberal democratic states has been expressing itself by, among other things, Russian subversion of Western political processes, such as Moscow’s interventions in the presidential elections of the United States in 2016 and – less successfully – of France in 2017.

In particular, old and new confrontations between Russia and its post-Soviet neighbors – most notably territorial disputes with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova – continue to simmer until today. Moscow is also highly present in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, while the EU, involved in the South Caucasus with a special Eastern Partnership program, has since the second Karabakh War of 2020 played only an observer role. The signs in Russian-Ukrainian relations are once again pointing to a storm. In the worst case, an open inter-state war could break out between Europe’s two largest territorial states. To what extent can Merkel be blamed for the manifest failure of Germany’s and the EU’s Russia and Eastern Europe policies over the past decade and a half?

The paradox of the outgoing chancellor’s apparent failure is that her biography before she took office and her commitment to Eastern policy since 2005 suggested rather good things to come. Merkel was more prepared than any other leading German politician for the challenges facing the Federal Republic and the EU after the end of the Cold War in Eastern Europe. Having grown up in the former GDR, the future chancellor had lived in the Soviet Union as a visiting student and learned Russian. In 1989-1990, she participated in the Velvet Revolution in East Germany. Merkel understood better than most other Western politicians the upheavals in the post-Soviet space of the last twenty years, such as the Georgian Rose Revolution of 2003 or the two Ukrainian uprisings of 2004 and 2013-2014.

As a convinced European and Atlanticist, as well as balancing force within the EU, Merkel has earned a high reputation among Germany’s Western partners. For these and other reasons, the chancellor was able to take an unchallenged leadership role in shaping Western relations with Russia after 2014. Since then, she has been particularly deeply involved in with the lowering of political tensions in Eastern Europe and, above all, with the Russian-Ukrainian war. Despite these and other favorable omens, the Federal Republic’s and EU’s policy toward Russia today stands before shattered remains.

To be sure, the Merkel period also saw a number of achievements in post-communist Southeastern Europe, such as the accession of some Balkan countries to the EU and NATO. The three particularly large EU association agreements concluded in 2014 with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine can also be considered successes. However, much of this progress can only be attributed to limited extent to the German government in general and Merkel’s activities in particular. At best, the chancellor can be credited with the fact that her high level of commitment to eastern policy and her enormous diplomatic engagement in trying to resolve the Russian-Ukrainian conflict since 2014 have prevented worse.

 

The measure of German responsibility

Are the many good preconditions, intentions, and activities of the German chancellor from 2005 to 2021 sufficient to absolve Germany from all responsibility for the serious domestic and foreign policy aberrations in the post-Soviet space during the past decade and a half? Was the Federal Republic, in the face of major geopolitical shifts outside Berlin’s competence, condemned to a secondary and mediator role, form the outset, that Merkel then filled as best she could? Were the Germans willy-nilly doomed to be spectators of fateful international macro-trends in Eastern Europe that Berlin could have neither hoped to prevent nor been able to steer?

Such flight from liability contradicts the high political influence, international prestige, and economic weight of the Federal Republic in Europe. In addition, the EU – and within the Union, Germany – continues to play a key role in Russia’s foreign trade and thus in the composition of her state revenues, economic subsidies, political rents, and bribery circuits. These and other internal and transnational Russian cash flows are fed primarily by profits from huge exports of Siberian energy to Europe.

For these and other reasons, Germany is a rather large elephant in the East European china shop. It would be inappropriate for Berlin to merely point the finger at other actors in Washington, Kyiv or Brussels to explain why so much has gone wrong in the post-Soviet space over the past decade and a half. A German middle finger to the East is also inapt in view of the World War Two history of, for instance, Ukraine. So why did Merkel’s combination of large experience, considerable wisdom and notable efforts with Germany’s political, cultural and economic power not produce better results in post-Soviet Eastern Europe?

In Germany’s mishandling of Moscow, three Berlin policy decisions stand out that set German-Russian relations and Ostpolitik on a wrong path early before or early on in Merkel’s 16-year chancellorship. These are a German invitation to Putin to speak in the Bundestag in 2001, the start of the infamous Nord Stream projects in 2005, and the unfortunate treatment of Georgia in 2008. The strange tragedy of Merkel’s Ostpolitik was that the highly intelligent and committed chancellor showed herself incapable of departing from the wrong track in Germany’s Russia policy that Berlin had already taken before she took office. It is symptomatic that none of the early German mistakes vis-à-vis Moscow was directly related to Ukrainian affairs, yet that the conflict surrounding Ukraine since 2014 has been marking the fiasco of Germany’s Ostpolitik in the new century.

 

A fateful Bundestag appearance

Berlin made a momentous blunder long before Merkel came to power and early on in the succession of Putin’s reigns of, so far, two premierships and four presidencies. In September 2001, the Federal Republic’s government invited Russia’s newly minted second president, Vladimir Putin, to address the assembled Bundestag. No other Russian head of government or state has ever received such an honor. This was true for Mikhail Gorbachev as indirectly elected USSR President of 1990-1991 as well as for Boris Yeltsin as the first Russian head of state elected by the people ruling from 1991 to 1999 and for Dmitry Medvedev who was Putin’s liberal stooge in the presidential office in 2008-2012. In light of their world views, these three presidents would have all been more worthy speakers to the German parliament than Putin. At least Gorbachev spoke, as a private citizen, in the Bundestag in 1999 – long after his departure from politics. 

Taken on its own, Putin’s relatively pro-Western 2001 Bundestag speech, delivered in German language, was largely uncontroversial to be sure. But the circumstances surrounding his effective performance in Germany’s national parliament were dubious. The Bundestag reacted with ovations to the courtship of a Russian politician who, as a KGB officer in Dresden, had only a few years earlier been part of Moscow’s occupation machinery in Eastern Germany. Even more worrisome was that Putin had gotten an invitation to speak and was celebrated in Berlin at a time when Russian forces stood illegally in another country.

Unwanted Russian troops were stationed in the Transnistrian region of Moldova during Putin’s 2001 visit to Berlin.[2] They had been there ever since the disappearance of the USSR in 1991, and until today remain illegally in Moldova. In 1994, Moscow had agreed to withdraw its military from Transnistria in a bilateral treaty with Chişinău after it had, in 1992, unlawfully intervened in an internal Moldovan conflict. At a November 1999 OSCE summit, at a moment when Putin was as prime-minister already de facto ruling Russia, Moscow committed itself once more, in the multilateral so-called “Istanbul Document,” to withdraw its remaining troops from Transnistria.

This had not happened, however, by the time Putin gave his speech to the Bundestag in 2001. Nor was there any indication that Moscow would any time soon fulfill its bi- and multilateral obligations vis-à-vis the non-aligned Moldovan state. Merkel attempted to reach a solution to the Transnistrian problem with then-President Medvedev in 2010-2011 as part of the so-called Meseberg Process. However, Merkel’s considerable efforts were unsuccessful. That was because Putin – and not the relatively pro-Western Medvedev – continued to hold the reins of power in Moscow, as Russia’s prime-minister during 2008-2012.

Another questionable aspect of the invitation to the Bundestag was that it happened after Putin had, in September 1999, broken off the Second Chechen War with thousands of civilian casualties. Moscow started this war against the backdrop of some strange terrorist attacks in central Russia after Putin had taken over the chairmanship of the Russian government in August 1999. Apparently, these apartment bombings that were used to justify Putin’s escalation in the North Caucasus had been orchestrated by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). As detailed in books by John B. Dunlop, Yuri Felshtinsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Vladimir Pribylovsky, and David Satter, the FSB as the KGB’s main successor organization, headed by Putin until then, had blown up several Russian residential houses.[3]

The cold-blooded mass murder of over three hundred Russian civilians was intended to provide Putin, who had just advanced from the position of FSB Director to that of Prime-Minister, with a pretext for a punitive action against separatist Chechens. Above all, the new head of government and future president was to be given a propaganda template for his incipient accumulation of power in Moscow. Notwithstanding such and other disturbing developments from 1999 onward, the Russian head of state was publicly celebrated two years later in the German parliament by most of the deputies present.

The considerable domestic and foreign policy regressions under Putin, already visible by September 2001, were not a topic of his visit to Germany, to be sure. This omission constituted exactly the problem of Putin’s appearance in the Bundestag and his talks in Berlin at the time. The invitation of the German parliament as well as the reaction of the MPs to Putin’s speech sent a fatal signal to Moscow: Ongoing violations of international and human rights are of secondary importance when it comes to the relationship between the two largest nations of Europe. The chemistry between Moscow and Berlin is more important than the principles laid down in such documents as the 1975 Helsinki Final Act or 1990 Charter of Paris. At least that is how many Russian politicians and diplomats have seemingly understood Berlin’s loud silence on Transnistria and Chechnya in 2001. East-West trade, good personal relations, and fair-weather rhetoric take precedence over Western values, the international order, and European security.

Against this backdrop, a bit of so-called Russland verstehen (Russia understanding) would be appropriate. In light of the applause for Putin in the Bundestag in 2001, one can understand that Moscow was surprised in 2014 when Berlin suddenly displayed a certain firmness regarding Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Why could to Crimea and the Donbas not the same principles be applied as to Transnistria, Abkhazia or South Ossetia (on which more below)? The latter territories were, after all, of much lesser interest to Moscow than the former.

How exactly is the Kremlin supposed to understand the German political class when comparing its reaction to the relatively similar Moldovan and Ukrainian situations of 2001 and 2014, respectively? The Bundestag applauded a Russian president when Moscow troops stood illegally in Transnistria and after they had killed thousands of civilians in Chechnya. Yet, for more than seven years now, Berlin has been supporting EU sanctions in response to Moscow’s activities in Crimea and the Donets Basin. These regions are more obviously part of the “Russian World” than Transnistria which is far away from Russia. “Where is the much-vaunted German stringency and logic?” some in the Kremlin may have asked themselves.

 

Berlin’s destructive pipeline policy from 2005 onwards

A second fateful decision by Berlin that predetermined the eastern policy of Merkel’s chancellorship was made in 2005, around the time she took office. In the final weeks before the end of Gerhard Schröder’s term as Federal Chancellor as well as in the months that followed, the first Nord Stream project was initiated. Schröder’s subsequent employment by Gazprom (and later Rosneft) and the, since then, massive propaganda of Europe’s allegedly dire need for Russian undersea pipelines set the course for Merkel’s future Ostpolitik. These developments created legal, informal, and discursive frameworks at the beginning of Merkel’s reign that had a lasting impact on her approach to Russia. The serious repercussions of these early decisions continue to shape the German foreign economic and policy debate as well as Berlin’s relationship with Moscow as well as Warsaw, Kyiv or Vilnius until today.

The underwater projects initiated by the outgoing Chancellor Schröder in 2005 and subsequently promoted in his function as chairman of the supervisory boards of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 were resolutely implemented despite their energy redundancy. In the apologetic narratives, the projects are presented partly as purely commercial, partly as clever geo-economic, and partly even as smart security policy initiatives. Such stories have broad appeal, even though the ridiculous overcapacity for transferring Siberian natural gas to Europe and serious geopolitical consequences of the new pipelines are now readily apparent.

Reducing Moscow’s crippling dependence on the Ukrainian gas pipeline system by commissioning the first two Nord Stream strings in 2011-2012 was from the outset more than a new Russian foreign trade strategy. As misleading as the thesis of an alleged need for the Nord Stream projects for European energy security was and is, as real was and is the need for the Kremlin to reduce Ukraine’s role as a transit country for Siberian and Central Asian gas flowing into the EU. Only the partial achievement of this goal with the full start of operation of the first Nord Stream pipeline in October 2012 made it possible to continue in Ukraine the Russian policy revanche for the collapse of the USSR, which had been previously implemented in Moldova and Georgia, now also in Ukraine.

Gazprom’s alternative, available from late 2012, of bypassing Ukraine for much of its export to the EU was not a sufficient condition, but a necessary one, for the subsequent increase in Russian aggressiveness toward Ukraine. The Kremlin’s new intransigence manifested itself even before the Euromaidan revolution began. Over the course of the last peace year of 2013, there were a number of belligerent signals and actions by Moscow vis-a-vis Kyiv.

For example, in August 2013, the Kremlin imposed a complete and mutually losing blockade of all trade between Ukraine and Russia that lasted several days. Moscow’s escalating rhetoric and sanctions policy led to rising tensions in Russian-Ukrainian relations before the Kyiv protests began in late 2013. This occurred even though Ukraine was still under an explicitly pro-Russian leadership with then-President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov (an ethnic Russian), and their imminent loss of power was not yet in sight. The pro-Russian president was removed from office not by the Maidan revolutionaries, as is often collocated, but after the street fighting had ended, by the Ukrainian parliament on February 22, 2014, which until then had been loyal to Yanukovych, on February 22, 2014.

In response to Yanukovych’s ouster, Moscow shifted its Ukraine policy to the strategy it had pursued years earlier vis-à-vis Moldova and Georgia. Following years of rhetorical, political, and economic attacks on Kyiv, Moscow began a partly military, partly paramilitary intervention and occupation of Ukraine in February 2014 on Crimea and in March 2014 in the Donets Basin, as it had done earlier in Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.

It is surprising that to this day many Western interpreters of Putin fail to recognize the regularity in the Kremlin’s behavior. Despite the older examples of Moldova and Georgia, some commentators known as experts on Eastern Europe, insist on an alleged exceptionality of the Ukraine case as well as key role of wrong EU policies for the escalation in Eastern Europe in 2014. Long before Russia’s attack on its Western-oriented brother state, the republics of Moldova and Georgia did not need to be parts of Eastern Slavic culture or involved in association negotiations with Brussels for a receipt of military punishment by the Kremlin. The two post-Soviet republics had lost control of larger portions of their state territories in the 1990s than Ukraine did in 2014. Chişinău and Tbilisi met their sad fate earlier than Ukraine in 2014, allegedly incited by radical nationalism and Western stupidity.

What is also perplexing about the Berlin debate on the dramatic deterioration in Russian-Western relations since 2014 is that the obvious historical parallels to the results of the New Ostpolitik of the 1970s remain in the background. In 1970, Bonn concluded the largest West German-Soviet financial deal to that date with the Kremlin in the form of the Röhrenkredit-1. Nine years after this agreement to build new gas pipelines, Moscow invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. The Soviet intervention ended the relative détente of the 1970s and ushered in a period of tension in international relations 1980-1985.

The first Nord Stream agreement in 2005 launched Europe’s largest infrastructure project to date at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Nine years after the German-Russian agreement, Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2014. To be sure, as in the 1970s, today also other developments around the world are disrupting the West’s relationship with the Kremlin. But Moscow’s military intervention in a neighboring country was a major factor in the rise of its tensions with the West in both 1979 and 2014.

One could spin this story into a forecast for the near future of Eastern Europe: In 2015, the Nord Stream 2 deal was concluded. If we add nine years – following the formula of 1970+9 and 2005+9 – to this figure, we arrive at 2024, a year in which not only the currently valid Russian-Ukrainian gas agreement will expire. The regular presidential elections of both Russia and Ukraine are scheduled for 2024. Notorious Russian TV propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov might comment such quirks with his famous conspiracy formula “Sovpadenie? Ne dumaiu!” (“A coincidence? I don’t think so!”).

There is more to such parallels than providing an opportunity for ironic oracles. Moscow’s interventions in Afghanistan in 1979 and in Ukraine in 2014 illustrate the limited effectiveness of Germany’s allegedly new Ostpolitik. The eventual repercussions of large-scale energy projects contradict the pacifist claims of the interdependence theory usually invoked to justify lucrative business ventures with authoritarian states. Not peace, but wars of expansion and escalation of tension followed the 1970 and 2005 starts of Berlin’s mammoth energy projects with Moscow in 1979 and 2014.

The well-known German formula of “Annäherung durch Verflechtung” (“rapprochement through entanglement”) has taken on a meaning that goes beyond a mere metaphor, in recent years. Germany and the Russian sphere of control have since moved closer together not only economically and politically, but also geographically. The almost fateful correctness of Berlin’s popular interdependence formula is confirmed by the fact that not only economically intertwined countries are moving closer together. As practice shows, the reverse conclusion of this law of international relations is also true. Those new gas volumes which since 2011 – via the Baltic Sea – have brought Germans and Russians ever closer together, are correspondingly lacking for the maintenance of Russian-Ukrainian proximity.

As both interdependence theory and the entanglement formula predict, not only does the development of economic ties lead to more peaceful relationships between the countries involved. A parallel reduction of economic ties with third countries may mean less peace for them. As a result of Germany’s increasingly deep energy interdependence with Russia since 2005, the transit states for Siberian gas flows that were simultaneously disentangled suffered a reciprocal alienation from Moscow. In particular, Ukraine’s economic untying from the Russian Federation after completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline in late 2012 led to an increase of tensions between the two countries during 2013. Ultimately, this escalation led to Moscow’s occupation of first southern and then eastern Ukrainian state territory in 2014.

The relative gain in national security from the Nord Stream projects is small for Germany as a NATO state that is located far away from Russia. In contrast, the equivalent reduction of Russia’s dependence on its former colony and neighbor state Ukraine proved be fatal for the integrity of the latter. The all-European loss of stability as a result of Moscow’s Crimea annexation and Donbas intervention in spring 2014 far exceeds the marginal security gains for the EU from the completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline.

While Merkel bears little responsibility for the ill-fated Bundestag invitation to Putin in 2001, she is partly to blame for the Nord Stream projects and their consequences. Merkel may have been no longer able to prevent the completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline in 2012, if she ever to wanted to do that. But the start of construction of Nord Stream-2 in 2015 is a puzzle and creates an impression of cognitive dissonance in Berlin: Had the Kremlin not made its intentions sufficiently clear with regard to Ukraine in 2014?

 

The double error regarding Georgia in 2008

In 2008, Berlin made two further mistakes that – in contrast to the two Nord Stream projects – have been hardly discussed in Germany, with regard to Georgia. The German signals sent to Moscow at that time were to have far-reaching consequences for Russia’s Ukraine policy, as had been the case with the Bundestag’s invitation to Putin in 2001 and the signing of the Nord Stream contract in 2005. Germany’s double snub of Tbilisi within a year added to the impression already created in Moscow that Berlin tacitly respects Russian hegemony in most of the post-Soviet space.

When Georgia and Ukraine jointly applied for NATO membership in early 2008, they were in different starting positions. In Georgia, more than two-thirds of the population at the time supported the country’s entry into the North Atlantic alliance. At the same time, in Ukraine, nearly two-thirds still opposed NATO membership – a Ukrainian attitude that turned into its opposite only after the Russian attack in 2014.

Also, unlike Ukraine at the time, Georgia had not been a fully sovereign state for some time in 2008 and had sustained troubled relations with Russia. In the regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali – also known as “South Ossetia” – Moscow had already installed separatist satellite regimes in the 1990s that control approximately 20 percent of Georgian state territory. (The Ukrainian territories that came under official or de facto Russian control in 2014 are larger in area than the corresponding Georgian parts of the country; however, they account for only about 7 percent of Ukrainian state territory in total.)

Last but not least, preparations for NATO membership in Georgia were already advanced in early 2008. They had begun the usual process of reforming a country before joining the alliance. At that time, Kyiv had also already fixed the goal of NATO membership in law, to be sure. In 2003, Ukraine’s Law on the Fundamentals of National Security – adopted under pro-Russian President Leonid Kuchma and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych – stipulated not only accession to the EU but also to the Atlantic Alliance as a state goal. However, the corresponding transformation of the Ukrainian army and legislation by the time of the NATO Summit in April 2008 lagged even further behind the results of the impressive Georgian reform successes.

Against this background, the Bucharest NATO summit marked another unfortunate milestone in Western policies towards the post-Soviet area which was largely due to Berlin’s influence in the alliance and was, above all, Merkel’s doing. During the controversial internal Western deliberations on the alliance’s reaction to the two membership applications in the Romanian capital, Berlin could have proposed a differentiated treatment of Georgia’s membership application as well as that of Ukraine as a compromise. Instead, Germany insisted on a de facto rejection not only of Kyiv’s membership application but also of Tbilisi’s.

Georgia’s advanced preparation for NATO membership could have been rewarded in 2008 with the start of a so-called Membership Action Plan. This would have brought the country directly under the influence of the West and swiftly into the alliance. In the Georgian accession agreement, the non-government-controlled regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali could have been exempted from the Washington Treaty’s mutual assistance Article 5, as is the case for special territories of old NATO member states, such as the United States (Guam, Hawaii), the United Kingdom (Falklands) or France (Reunion). Also, a military reconquest by Tbilisi of the de facto Russian-controlled parts of Georgia could have been ruled out.

Instead, the NATO member states agreed on a contradictory compromise formula for the final declaration of the 2008 Bucharest summit. The alliance did explicitly state that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members.” However, there was no indication of when or how the officially announced entry of the two post-Soviet states into the alliance would actually occur. It remained unclear on what conditions the accession processes of Georgia as well as Ukraine would depend and whether they would proceed in a package or separately. The middle ground the alliance found in 2008 was ultimately worse than an outright and official rejection of Georgia’s and Ukraine’s applications would have been. The membership pledges distracted Kyiv and Tbilisi from pursuing other security-enhancing strategies and created a sense of urgency in Moscow.

The Kremlin intensified both its Georgia and Ukraine policies in response to the Bucharest NATO summit. While Moscow still had sufficient levers of domestic political influence in Ukraine at the time, Georgian domestic politics was already happening largely autonomous. Therefore, in early summer 2008, Putin thawed the frozen conflict in the Tskhinvali region thereby provoking a hasty response from then President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili and the Russian-Georgian Five-Day War. The Russian invasion of Georgia was ended by the so-called Sarkozy Plan. In the EU-brokered cease-fire agreement, Russia committed in mid-August 2008 to withdraw its regular troops that it had stationed in the Tskhinvali and Abkhaz regions during previous week.

However, in the following weeks, months and eventually years, the Kremlin repeated regarding Georgia its older, above-described pattern of behavior toward Moldova. As in the case of the bilateral and multilateral documents signed by Russia regarding Transnistria in the 1990s, Moscow did not implement the Sarkozy Plan of 2008. In violation of the treaty, Russia left its troops on Georgian territory.

Moreover, the Kremlin transformed the two Georgian separatist regions into the pseudo-states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Unlike the so-called “Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic” (and later the “Lugansk” and “Donetsk People’s Republics”), Russia even recognized its two satellite regimes on Georgian territory as independent countries; the two quasi-states were also recognized by Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru, Syria and Vanuatu. With Moscow’s official confirmation of the statehood of the Russian artificial entities in northern Georgia, the Kremlin went beyond its previous neighborhood policy and entered new territory in its foreign policy and interpretation of international law.

Had a NATO Membership Action Plan begun with Georgia in April 2008 and the country been admitted to the alliance by August 2008, both Moscow and Tbilisi would have behaved differently in the summer of that year. The Kremlin’s risk calculation regarding a NATO accession candidate or member state would have been different. It is likely that the Kremlin’s approach to Georgia would have instead aligned with its patterns of behavior toward the Baltic republics. The Georgian leadership, in turn, would also have been in a different behavioral mode during an ongoing accession process with NATO or after obtaining membership in the alliance; such a context would have limited Tbilisi’s reaction radius regarding Russian provocations.

Instead, NATO – largely at the instigation of Berlin – sent a risky signal to the Kremlin in April 2008. According to the German implicit message, even elementary security interests of Russia’s neighbors who are pro-Western but not integrated with the West are secondary to the Kremlin’s preferences. With its Georgia policy in 2008, Merkel’s government reaffirmed an impression that Berlin had already left on Moscow in 2001 under Schröder with its neglect of Moldovan security interests. For Putin & Co., this – it can be assumed – established a pattern of reassuring continuity in Germany’s eastern policy behavior under different governments.

Worse, Moscow’s manifest violation of the Sarkozy plan and military dismemberment of Georgia into three states officially recognized by Russia remained inconsequential for the Kremlin. Brussels ended the already minimal European sanctions imposed to punish Russia for its war in the North Caucasus. The EU continued its negotiations of a new cooperation treaty with Russia, which had been interrupted in August 2008.

Germany went even further. At the 8th St. Petersburg Dialogue conference from September 30 to October 3, 2008 – i.e. only a few weeks after the Russian-Georgian war and shortly after Moscow’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – a “Joint Declaration of the Petersburg Dialogue on Shaping the Partnership for Modernization” was signed by the Chairman of the German Steering Committee of this bilateral organization, Lothar de Maizière, and by the Deputy Chairwoman, Liudmila Verbitskaia, the Rector of St. Petersburg University, i.e. Putin’s alma mater. In 2010, the initially German project of a so-called Modernization Partnership with Russia was elevated to the European level and adopted by both the EU and subsequently many member states.

Curiously, after Russia’s invasion, bombing and dismemberment of Georgia, relations between Berlin and Brussels, on the one hand, and Moscow, on the other, did not cool down but warmed up. Of course, the German and other Western European advances toward the Kremlin did not contain any explicitly affirmative signals regarding Russia’s violations of international law and human rights in Moldova, Chechnya or Georgia. On the contrary, both Berlin’s and the EU’s so-called Strategic and Modernization Partnerships with Moscow officially aimed to bring Russia closer to Europe in normative terms by means of hoped-for positive political after-effects of an economic rapprochement.

However, Berlin’s noble intentions and strategic calculations were misguided, as we now know. From the outset, they could not compensate for the high costs of Germany’s rapprochement and interdependence strategy vis-à-vis Russia. The tacit neglect of elementary interests of small successor states of the USSR, such as the Republics of Moldova and Georgia, and implicit acquiescence to the Kremlin’s increasing undermining of principles of international law in the post-Soviet space could not have ended well. German and European forbearance toward Russia’s behavior on the Dniester and in the North as well as South Caucasus have borne no fruit in either domestic or foreign policy terms. While Berlin apparently thought to promote a pro-Western change of direction in Moscow with its undiminished willingness to cooperate, the opposite has been the result.

 

Ukraine as an aftermath

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014 appear to many observers as unprecedented aberrations in the course of East European geopolitics after the end of the Cold War. In fact, these developments were mere continuations of older trends. In some respects, they were logical outcomes of earlier domestic political dynamics within Russia, their repercussion for Moscow’s foreign affairs, and inappropriate Western responses to them. With Merkel’s assumption of the chancellorship in 2005, Germany had, what seemed at the time, an ideal occupant in its highest office of government to respond adequately to the new challenges in Eastern Europe after Putin had come to power in 1999.

As it gradually became clear, however, the new chancellor was unwilling or unable to abandon the wrong track Germany had taken in its Russia policy under Gerhard Schröder. Merkel’s diplomatic engagement in Eastern Europe did increase and was particularly notable in 2014-2015. It may be thanks to Merkel that Putin did not push deeper into Ukrainian territory at that time. However, the need for a paradigm shift in Germany’s Russia policy, which became obvious in 2014, failed to materialize – a sad fact that became manifest with the start of the Nord Stream 2 project in 2015.

That Merkel, despite her high level of competence and obvious disappointment with Putin, was unable or unwilling to make the long overdue shift in German Ostpolitik away from Schröder’s approach toward the Kremlin is depressing. Instead, Berlin’s mode of behavior toward Russia’s authoritarian regime remained and remains characterized by fateful decisions of a man who is a political friend of Putin and has been an official employee of the Russian state since 2005. Perhaps, the Eastern European and Caucasian blood toll will have to further rise in order for Berlin to turn away from this position.

[1] A variety of conflicting comments on Germany’s Ostpolitik during Merkel’s first three terms as Federal Chancellor, on which I focus here, have been published over the years. See, among many other contributions, the following statements: Rahr, Alexander: Germany and Russia. A Special Relationship, in: Washington Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2, 2007, pp. 137-145; Chivvis, Christopher, Rid, Thomas: The Roots of Germany’s Russia Policy, in: Survival, vol. 51, no. 2, 2009, pp. 105-122; Szabo, Stephen: Can Berlin and Washington Agree on Russia? In: Washington Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 4, 2009, pp. 23-41; Stelzenmuller, Constanze: Germany’s Russia Question, in: Foreign Affairs, vol. 88, no. 1, 2009, pp. 89-100; Timmins, Graham: German-Russian Bilateral Relations and EU Policy on Russia. Between Normalization and the “Multilateral Reflex,” in: Journal of Contemporary European Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 189-199; Heinemann-Grüder, Andreas: Wandel statt Anbiederung. Deutsche Russlandpolitik auf dem Prüfstand, in: Osteuropa, vol. 63, no. 7, 2013, pp. 179-223; Mischke, Jakob, Umland, Andreas: Germany’s New Ostpolitik. An Old Foreign Policy Doctrine Gets a Makeover, in: Foreign Affairs, April 9, 2014, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/western-europe/2014-04-09/germanys-new-Ostpolitik; Frosberg, Tuomas: From Ostpolitik to “Frostpolitik”? Merkel, Putin and German Foreign Policy toward Russia, in: International Affairs, vol. 92, no. 1, 2016, pp. 21-42.

[2] In fact, there was, in 2001, a second similar case on the territory of Georgia were the legality of a Russian military base in Abkhazia was also questionable. See Vladimir Socor, “Russia’s Retention of Gudauta Base – An Unfulfilled CFE Treaty Commitment,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 3 (99), 22 May 2006, jamestown.org/program/russias-retention-of-gudauta-base-an-unfulfilled-cfe-treaty-commitment/.

[3] Yuri Felshtinsky and Alexander Litvinenko, Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2007); Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky, The Corporation: Russia and the KGB in the Age of President Putin (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2007); John B. Dunlop, The Moscow Bombings of September 1999: Examinations of Russian Terrorist Attacks at the Onset of Vladimir Putin’s Rule (Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag, 2014); David Satter, The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).

 

An edited, somewhat different version was first published by the Center for Liberal Modernity in Berlin

Foreign policy education has been said to be lacking in the modern curriculum. While not as fascinating as it was during the Cold War era, and perhaps dragged out to the point of frustration during regional wars since 1991, error is policy approaches have created serious consequences.

Recently the United States was able to have a prisoner swap with China for a Chinese national who was detained in Canada in exchange for two Canadian nationals kept in poor and confined conditions in a Chinese jail. While the US stands out as doing a great job in this case, Canada was completely dependent on US support for its citizens. Canada made no headway in ensuring the security of its citizens after years of throwing carrots to China. The amount of friendly gestures Canada gave to China while detaining its citizens bordered on the absurd at times. This went from giving them much of the national emergency stockpile of PPE at the beginning of Covid, to inviting Chinese PLA soldiers to train in Canada, trying to reward China with a vaccine development deal while knowing of concentration camps being operated in China, and ignoring a vote by the sitting Parliament on the condemnation of the Uyugur Genocide once it was forced into the legislature by opposition members and human rights groups. While there are still other Canadian nationals in Chinese prisons, some awaiting the death penalty, the narrative has turned to an internal rights focus, one that the Prime Minister ignored, deciding to take a vacation instead.

The United States’ shining light helping two nationals from Canada is only temporary, as they formed a security coalition in Asia leaving out allies like Canada and France, destroying a French Australian submarine purchase deal worth billions. France had some of the biggest casualties fighting alongside the Americans in Afghanistan since the early 2000s and is often the tip of the spear in fighting terrorist groups in Africa. This comes on the tail end of the US repeating the history of their hasty withdrawal from Saigon, now taking place in 2021 in Afghanistan, a historical event that shadowed US foreign policy until the 1990s GPS infused war in Iraq. The loss of Kabul will not get its own soundtrack or award winning movies made about it, as the Afghan withdrawal has mostly disappeared from the public narrative. There are still supporters of Western nations and their allies trapped there, there are reports of human rights atrocities taking place as you read this post.

This week a major challenge has struck relations between China and Taiwan, with China’s Air Command and Navy pushing into Taiwan’s air defense perimeter. While no shots have been fired, it looks as if China is trying to measure the capabilities and responses of Taiwan and its US allies in support of the island. With so many foreign policy errors in such a short period of time, the lack of focused coordination by the US and unwise rifts with its allies has shown the US to be weak on the world stage in regards to threats to its interests. The United States is the only country that can stand up to larger powers. When the US eventually returns to their position in the world, it will be a much more complicated and dangerous place.

CREDIT: EDUARDO MUNOZ/POOL PHOTO VIA AP

U.S. President Joseph Biden’s debut speech at the seventy-sixth session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) adamantly declared to the world that U.S. leadership is “back at the table in international forums.” Ushering the world into “a new era of relentless diplomacy,” President Biden firmly confirmed to the world that such leadership will seek neither a “new cold war” nor “world divided into rigid blocks” yet “oppose attempts by stronger countries to dominate weaker ones.” At this “inflection point” of leadership, the U.S. will continue to actively engage in both multilateral and minilateral institutions to defend democratic values and visions that are not only stamped into the nation’s DNA but also enshrined in the UN charter. Today, such values and visions, which have ensured “more than seven decades of relative peace and growing global prosperity,” face complex authoritarian challenges that “cannot be solved or even addressed through the force of arms.” Thus, the U.S. is determined to build a better future for the world by creating new multilateral security mechanisms to address urgent issues in global health and climate action.

With respect to global COVID response, in addition to re-engaging with World Trade Organization (WTO) and the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility (COVAX ) in continuing donations of lifesaving vaccines around the world, the U.S. proposes to exert multilateral efforts to establish a Global Health Threats Council, a global-level disease control tower overseeing concerted multilateral response toward future pandemic outbreaks. As for global climate action, the U.S. aims to be a leader in global public climate financing. Last April, in pursuant to the February declaration to rejoin the Paris agreement, the U.S. announced a new ambitious carbon emission reduction target (a new National Determined Contributions (NDCs)  of 50–52% below 2005 levels by 2030) at the multilateral convention of the Leaders’ Summit on Climate. Since then, the U.S. has showed its intention to work closely with the private sector, G7 members and Congress to attain the goal of mobilizing $100 billion to put forward to the Build Back Better World agenda. The basic idea behind the agenda is to raise sustainable, transparent environmental and labor standards in low-income and middle-income countries’ infrastructure projects for the future and for the human rights of these countries’ citizens and workers. Such standards would allow the countries to better cope with the exacerbating climate crisis and to stay democratically resilient in “the new era of new technologies and possibilities that have the potential to release and reshape every aspect of human existence.” This November’s the twenty sixth UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26 ) in Glasgow, U.K. was highlighted in the speech as the next critical step in global climate action, of which President Biden expects every nation to bring their highest aspirations to attain the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming by 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Throughout the speech, President Biden prioritized revitalized diplomatic relationships with regional allies and partners over force of arms in facilitating the above multilateral engagement agendas. Starting with NATO , the U.S. will not only remain committed to Article 5 of the “sacred” alliance but work closely with the alliance in devising a new strategic concept to better respond to evolving threats. It was also emphasized that the U.S. will bolster diplomatic re-engagement with the European Union (EU) in tackling today’s imminent global challenges, as well as with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)  and the African Union and the Organization of American States, to improve the health and economic situations of the people living in these regions. What was most striking about the alliance revitalization agenda briefed in the speech was the elevation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or simply Quad) with India, Australia, and Japan. Quad, as the geostrategical foundation of the U.S.’ pivot into the Indo-Pacific, has been long perceived by many pundits simply as part of the Pacific nations’ China containment strategy. However, the expanded range of the partnership’s cooperative agendas beyond maritime security, as it was both mentioned in President Biden’s speech and discussed during last week’s first Quad meeting, demonstrates its augmented role in global and regional governance.

Credit: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

First Quad Summit Reached Consensus for Open and Free Indo-Pacific

The Quad between the U.S., India, Australia and Japan had its kick-off summit at the White House on September 24 during the UNGA. The joint statement issued after the summit indicated that the four founding member states are committed to “promoting the free, open, rules-based order, rooted in international law and undaunted by coercion, to bolster security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.” In doing so, the member states are determined to “stand for the rule of law, freedom of navigation and overflight, peaceful resolution of disputes, democratic values, and territorial integrity of states” and to “work together and with a range of partners,” especially ASEAN and the EU. Throughout the summit, the member states discussed cooperative initiatives on a wide range of issues, from pressing global challenges like the global COVID response and climate change to emerging regional governance opportunities in new technology supply/value chain management, cybersecurity, space, etc. Quad members’ long-term endeavors to commit themselves to the partnership’s values were met with strong affirmation, especially in cooperative, shared-values-based management of supply/value chains for vaccine production, semiconductors and their essential components, and new technologies, such as clean-energy, clean-hydrogen, and green (decarbonized) shipping. Overall, the Quad summit was successful not only in aligning the member states’ long-term endeavors to contain China but also in strengthening U.S.-India relations and further revitalizing the partnership’s engagement with ASEAN and the EU.

Despite this success, the Quad faces future hurdles when it comes to U.S.-India relations and the partnership’s further extension. As U.S.-India relations increasingly become the crucial geostrategic key to resolving global and regional governance issues according to the auspice of U.S. interests, concerns are emerging over how the U.S. could placate India’s economic desire to nourish domestic industries in the context of India’s Act East policy while constraining India’s security ties with Russia. In addition to these bilateral relations, the ongoing controversy over the minilateral institution’s further extension is another hurdle. Some argue against further extension of the Quad on the grounds that it might complicate agenda-setting processes and reduce member states’ political flexibility, resorting to the Quad’s networked engagement with new separate coalitions as a more effective alternative to its extension. In contrast, others call for further pluralization of the Quad into “the Quad Plus” to strengthen regional security and governance cooperation between the Quad and non-Quad nations based on the premise that the very act of strengthening regional cooperation itself incentivizes Quad countries to cooperate.

Mq-9 Reaper Drone – the weapon that was used to carry out the tragic attack

On August 29th, just two days before the Biden administration’s deadline to complete America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, an unnamed official from the newly established “Over-the-Horizon Strike Cell” authorized a strike from an MQ-9 Reaper drone that killed ten Afghan civilians, including seven children. 

This is a tragedy. Individual Americans, myself included, should be ashamed that our government carried out this sort of indiscriminate violence. The military officials who authorized the strike should be held accountable both publicly and privately. 

As opposed to responding with the sort of transparency that one might expect from a nation that aspires to be a beacon of liberal democracy and good governance for the world, American military officials and their representatives to the media continued to perpetuate lies and misinformation about the strike’s consequences for weeks before conceding that the attack that they authorized resulted in the murder of children and aid workers. Not only are these sorts of misinformation campaigns corrosive to the trust that individual Americans have in their government, but these murders and lies destroy American credibility around the world. 

Despite this series of lies and indiscriminate violence, General Milley, who not long ago referred to the strike as “righteous”, would now like to recognize that his actions were a “mistake” and offer his “sincere apology” to the surviving family of the children killed  in the operation he authorized. Other officials in the United States military have offered similar apologies for the role that they played in this murder of children and aid workers. 

At this point, it is important to note that since the launch of the war in Afghanistan some 900 civilians have been killed by American drone strikes, and some 45,000 Afghan civilians have been killed as a consequence of other elements of America’s military operation in their country. This is hardly America’s first apology for the killing of civilians in the Middle East. Well over 350,000 civilians have been killed as a consequence of the generalized violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen over the last twenty years and four presidential administrations. 

Despite this horrific loss of life, in the days following the attack much has been written questioning America’s capacity to continue to strike military targets in Afghanistan without boots on the ground. This is the wrong question- instead, we should be asking if America’s plan to sustain military efforts in Afghanistan are precise enough to avoid murdering civilians and children. 

In order to address the threat of terrorisim over the long term, it is important that we understand what motivates terrorisim. Here, we can look at a two pronged study conducted by James Payne, who has taught at Yale, John Hopkins, and other well respected institutions. 

First, Panye goes through the journals and public statements of Osama Bin Laden, a man whose ideology undeniably shaped modern terrorisim, in order to develop a better understanding of what incentivises Al-Qaeda and other similar groups. Over 70% of these statements were classified as “Criticism of American aggression, oppression, and exploitation of Muslim lands and peoples”. On the other hand, only 1% of bin Laden’s recorded remarks are “criticisms of American society and culture”, an even smaller portion advocates “Spreading Islam to the West”. 

On the basis of these findings, Payne argues that the approach of “taking the fight to the terrorists” that the United States has employed since 2001 is, “… a mistake.  (As) The size of terrorist ranks are not fixed. Their numbers are a function of the perception of American intrusion.” The murder of children and aid workers, then, serves as “ideal” recruting material for groups like ISIS-K that would work to further destabilize Afghanistan and work against other American interests.

The fact that these attacks were carried out by unmanned aircraft while the United States was in the process of a nominal withdrawal from Afghanistan likely contributes to the notion that the United States is unwilling to apply proper restraint to its actions and will continue its pattern of recklessly striking out against targets, military and otherwise, in Afghanistan and beyond.

In order for the United States to eliminate the threat of terrorisim, much less help the people living in terror afflicted nations, American military strikes simply cannot continue to kill civilians- this recklessness is exactly the sort of behavior that creates terrorosim. 

If the United States wants to be given the benefit of the doubt by non-aligned people in the region, we need to prove that we are the “good guys”. When the “good guys” fight wars, they typically don’t kill kids- America’s military has failed in that, and as a consequence local populations are faced with a difficult question when evaluating America’s actions in the region. To quote Anissa Ahmadi, the wife and mother of some of those killed by the drone strike, “America used us to defend itself, and now they’ve destroyed Afghanistan, whoever dropped this bomb on our family, may God punish you.” 

Here, we are made to grapple with the sad reality that even the best possible intentions do not guarantee good outcomes. 

There is little reason to doubt the power and reach of America’s military might.  The question is not, “ is the US military the most capable in the world?”, the question is, “are our leaders capable of using that military might without inspiring future generations of anti-American terrorism?”.  It clearly remains to be seen whether or not American political and military officials are capable of wielding that power responsibly.   A drone strike that kills innocent civilians would suggest our military tools are, unfortunately, far superior to our ability to decide when and where to use those tools constructively. 

With great power comes great responsibility.   The recent drone strike in Afghanistan did not live up to that responsibility.

—

Peter Scaturro is the Director of Studies at the Foreign Policy Association

The conclusion of Nord Stream 2’s construction through the Baltic Sea poses a range of geo-economic and security challenges – and not only to Eastern Europe.

Whether the Biden Administration’s surprising approval of Nord Stream 2 this summer means that the pipeline will soon start operation remains an open question. The US Congress seems to be about to introduce new sanctions against the company operating the pipeline. However, the imminent completion and remaining certification process by European authorities will increase pressure for the pipeline to start operation.

Whether Nord Stream 2 will go online or not, its emergence raises questions about the EU’s future relationship with Kyiv, as well as Ukraine’s role both as a transit and storage country for natural gas and as a potential alternative energy exporter. Russia sees the completion of the controversial pipeline not only as a commercial and technological achievement, but as a major geopolitical victory for Moscow.

If it starts operation, Nord Stream 2 will remove the remaining leverage that Ukraine had as a major transit country for the export of Siberian and Central Asian gas to the EU. This is not mere conjecture: Russia’s onetime economic dependency on Ukraine was reduced with the start of the first leg of the original Nord Stream pipeline’s operation in 2011. After Angela Merkel opened the second string of Nord Stream in October 2012, Russian-Ukrainian relations deteriorated rapidly.

With its annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine in 2014, Russia began to treat Ukraine in the same way as it had been treating Moldova and Georgia for many years before.

These two countries had already been dismembered by the Kremlin, because Chisinau and Tbilisi never held any significant economic leverage over Moscow. The activation of Gazprom’s TurkStream pipeline via the Black Sea in early 2020, and the completion of Nord Stream 2 via the Baltic Sea in September 2021, conclude Russia’s energy-industrial disentanglement from Ukraine. It gives Putin a free hand to continue his aggression against Russia’s presumed “brother nation”.

Ukraine is an important partner for the West. Compared to most other post-Soviet republics, it has become a beacon of relatively free and pluralistic democracy. While not yet a fully liberal and consolidated state, and continuing to grapple with issues in the rule of law, Ukraine is far more open, pro-Western and democratic than authoritarian Russia and Belarus.

It is often forgotten that Ukraine emerged in 1991 as a new state with the world’s third largest atomic arsenal, comprising more nuclear weapons than France, the UK and China then held combined. In 1994, the Ukrainian leadership handed over all of its warheads and joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a fully non-nuclear weapons state.

Twenty years later Russia, a founder and guarantor of the non-proliferation regime as well as an official nuclear weapons state attacked Ukraine. In 2014, Moscow undermined the entire logic of the international system to prevent the spread of arms of mass destruction. Ever since, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has been creating international security risks that have global implications.

Against this background, strengthening Ukraine’s security, and the Ukrainian energy sector in particular, is a political responsibility and should be high on the agenda of the West. There are a number of ways in which the EU and US can come to Ukraine’s aid while also boosting long-term European energy security. Brussels – and not only the US Congress – should exploit all possible legal instruments to either prevent or limit the geo-economic impact of Nord Stream 2 and its use within Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine.

One of the opportunities for the West to help Ukraine is to take full advantage of the country’s significant renewable energy potential, in particular with regard to blue and green hydrogen, as well as offshore wind capacities. This has already been recognised in the EU’s Green New Deal, and the US-German Green Fund for Ukraine. It is a trend that will – and should – continue, in order to both protect Ukraine’s importance as geopolitical player in Eastern Europe, and to match the expected further rapid growth of green energy demand in Europe.

The Ukrainian state gas company Naftogaz has gone through major reforms in recent years. It has successfully navigated a turn-around from a famously corrupt drain on public finances to a poster-child of corporate governance. However significant foreign investment will be needed to ensure an adaptation and modernisation of Ukraine’s already significant capacities. A further updating, expanding, and converting of the existing gas transportation and storage infrastructure in Ukraine is an urgent priority. New facilities for the production of green and blue hydrogen as well as renewable energy will need to be planned and constructed.

In order to achieve rapid progress in these areas, both governmental and corporate investors need to step in, providing the necessary funding, expertise, and institutional backing. This investment will not only secure significant financial and environmental returns, but would also counter-balance the negative impact of a possible start of operation of Nord Stream 2 in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood and beyond.

Australian Dassault Mirage IIIs, the result of one of the first major defence projects between Australia and France.

The United States and France have always had a symbiotic relationship, as much as people today would not acknowledge it or recognise it. The French Navy supported the Americans in their revolution against the British in the founding of the United States, and continued to be a model of progressive government in the formation of the American Republic and Presidential system of Government. These two nations formed much of the modern systems of democracy and fought shoulder to shoulder during the First World War paying homage to Lafayette and their shared past. Americans fought to re-entrench French democracy during the Second World War and while France set themselves apart from NATO in the following decades, France, the US and NATO allies worked together to promote democratic values worldwide.

The recent spat that lead to France recalling their ambassador to the United States requires a great deal of context to explain fractures between France and the US. French industry, namely its aircraft industry, was decimated during the Second World War, so much so that the post war period was defined by re-establishing France’s technological prowess and national pride along with competing internationally. France’s largest aircraft manufacturer at the time, Dassault(named after its founder’s Partisan code name during the war), first gained its international reputation by beating out the UK and US competitors selling Mirage III fighter jets to Australia. Australia’s connection with the French defence industry allowed France to expand that sector greatly over the years, and likely lead a culture and relationship that created the submarine deal set a few years back, promising to injecting $66 billion into France’s economy.

The US and France however were always in intense competition in heavy industries. The success of Dassault and relationships with other European countries lead to the creation of Airbus, an airline manufacturer that has been in heavy competition with Boeing over the last 30 years. The intensity of competition between those two mega-corporations dragged in their respective governments over the years, along with thousands of lawyers and dozens of legal conflicts regarding competition, unfair trade practices and contract disputes.

A fracture in policy was also in play since the 1960s when France decided to leave NATO, produce its own defense industry and challenge US hegemony on the world stage. The 1956 Suez Canal crisis put the UK and France at odd with the US in the post-colonial era, and the following years lead France to focus on policy challenging what was seen as American colonial expansion. Since the Syrian War post-2015, France was also pushing for a more assertive stance against the Assad regime, while the US often was more passive and confused in their approach. The recent high pressure evacuation from Afghanistan, where hundreds of French soldiers lost their lives, also created fissures between the US and its allies, soon to be met with the new submarine deal and AUKUS defense pack with Australia, the UK and US a few short weeks later.

France has been a strong defence ally of the United States, UK and Australia, and with the loss of the $66 billion submarine deal to dump conventionally fuelled French submarines for nuclear powered American submarines, French employment in that industry will be harmed greatly. The bitterness of the Boeing-Airbus disputes over contracts and jobs may be shadowing this move by the Biden Administration. While bad faith disputes between governments regarding Airbus and Boeing were more common, Australia is also likely reacting to foul relations it has had with China directly and hopes to become a more active participant in limiting the power of China’s ever expanding navy. While China has had a strong response to arming Australia with nuclear powered submarines, those submarines will not carry nuclear weapons and is a logical response to China’s Navy, that has doubled in size and have produced Aircraft carriers since 2015. Under the spirit of Lafayette, the US and France should come to terms over their dispute regarding Australia and its new defence pact and integrate France economically and strategically into the fold in the region. France has been the strongest US ally against international terrorism and had dedicated the lives of its soldiers more than any other nation in the world along with the United States. The new AUKUS may displace much of the focus on the Five Eyes relationship, and while France is not a part of it, they also are not acting like one of the Five Eyes that have been shut. France have not been making questionable security decisions lately like Canada has done over the last few years. France and the United States are democratic cousins in the best possible manner, and this tradition should be honoured.

What is this country? “2004 Election Map” by The Lawleys licensed under CC BY 2.0

U.S. foreign policy thinkers say that foreign policy starts at home.  So what drives U.S. policy today?

Domestic division is a major theme throughout U.S. history.  But in the 21st Century, politics has evolved from two-party competition to intransigent bipolar confrontation.  A zero-sum trench war inexorably sucks in resources and emotional energy.  As one business analysis puts it, “Republicans focus their energies on pleasing far-right voters and Democrats on addressing … the far left.”  On a given legislative act, one side will “spen(d) every second trying to repeal it and the other side (will spend) every second trying to defend it at all costs.”  The polarizing dynamic goes beyond politics to permeate American culture.  If this is home, what country does foreign policy represent?

Public discourse speaks of “left” or “right” as though they define America’s political spectrum.  There are “far” or “moderate” versions of each, and “independents” fall somewhere between the two, but all sit on the same line, leaning toward one pole or the other – but along that line.  It may help to see those poles are not the only possible ones, and need not define American politics.  

Journalist George Packer, in a recent Atlantic article extracted from his new book, sees the nation fragmented into “four Americas” – Free, Smart, Real and Equal – carrying four contentious mindsets.  The four align with Walter Russell Mead’s Jeffersonian, Hamiltonian, Jacksonian and Wilsonian schools of U.S. foreign policy thought.  Hamiltonian, Smart America drives the institutions and industries that have generated much of the nation’s wealth and power.  It speaks in economic and scientific rationality.  The Jacksonian, Real America fights for its own, seeing the world as a dog-eat-dog place where not winning is losing.  Free America sees our national order as freedom’s font, a view captured in Jefferson’s image of an Empire of Liberty.  The Wilsonian school seeks to realize ideals and right wrongs much as Packer sees Equal America driven to expose and eradicate inequality – he suggests calling it Unequal America.

The four schools/Americas do not account for every American impulse.  The issue of racism is only addressed directly in Unequal, Wilsonian America.  Older drives have faded or morphed, e.g. for territorial expansion or religious utopias.  A ‘state’s rights’ view supporting slavery was rejected and defeated.  New social patterns and new technologies may generate entirely new schools.  But the Packer/Mead framework raises an overlooked point. 

The different drives are pursued without restraint, often in self-righteous conviction.  Any voice for any American drive will invoke the unalienable rights and government by consent of the governed.  Each will bend these tenets of the Declaration of Independence to its own interpretations.  Packer wouldn’t want to live in an America that is exclusively any of the four, and the divisions among them worry him.  Mead notes how steering the U.S. “raft of state” is made cumbersome and frustrating by the four schools’ crosswinds and eddies.  But all rest on a common base.  Mead’s raft doesn’t sink, none of Packer’s ‘Americas’ would ever cede the name. 

Americans carry several drives, not just two.  The Packer/Mead framework shows them as interpretations of the same creed rather than fundamentally different identities.  And an overview reminds that while these four schools/Americas have deep roots, other have gone away and new ones can arise.  The four drives reflect cultural, historical nuances, not the stuff of desperate political conduct.

Will America reaffirm commonality over political interpretations?  In one arena, we really need to.  In foreign policy a nation acts as a unit.  However any competing schools or Americas may drive politics, foreign policy is carried out by “America” as a single entity.  If foreign policy starts at home, can the people and institutions who shape that policy do better than the politicians?  Will they carry the buoyancy of the raft, even as they are buffeted by foreign crosswinds and whiplashed by domestic politics? 

The question is not which of today’s two sides (or four or more, or current or new) will prevail, nor even whether a balance can be struck among them, but whether the shared touchstone shows through.  Can factionalized Americans exhibit the common page under their doctrines? 

In an age of mind-bending new developments, soul rending disruptions, and unlimited possibilities, any principles come under scrutiny and question.  Factions may well exploit the uncertainty to cement their base’s allegiance, so that division becomes all the harder to heal.  America’s creed offers a common, psychic bedrock, rigorous in concept and morally appealing.  American national conduct also needs to validate that basis of national legitimacy.

Alignment of conduct to principle always requires an art.  In an art of American policy everyone does share the same starting premises.  In foreign policy, one institution needs this art in order to function.  That is the permanent body of official U.S. representatives, the U.S. diplomatic service.  If they cannot display a consistent spirit across different administrations, they cannot really say what nation they represent.  For credibility in their job, U.S. diplomats need language that belies today’s bipolar partisan rhetoric.  Packer and Mead offer an image that might diffuse the standoff, to liberate the diverse Americas to see each other as fellow Americans rather than “us” or “them.”  U.S. diplomats who are fluent in the Declaration’s creed will see the image.  If they operate by this ethos, they can give Americans, ourselves, a picture of our founding creed in operation.  America will then project its core nature, as vessel of hope and catalyst for opportunity, to the world. 

The legacy of the Cuban Revolution that marks the daily life of Cubans to this day has taken a blow as Cuban citizens fight for their freedoms. The past narratives, posters, painting and songs of the fight against the Capitalists was always a draw for those outside of Cuba to defend and actively support the Cuban Revolution. Many a time during my own work in Western countries that excelled with virtues of freedom and democracy were colleagues who not only wore Che proudly as their work clothing, but encouraged visiting Cuba to take advantage of the advantages Cubans did not have in their daily lives. At one point a colleague who was an expert on Cuba had to be put on undetermined sabbatical as she had a long diner with Fidel Castro himself. While it was an impressive tale, it did not reflect well on an organisation that often had discussions with Cuban exiles living in the US at the time. Their rebels were seen as the heroes for most of the latter half of the 20th Century, but that might have changed recently.

Power to the people can only really come from grassroots movements that gain a certain level of strength, often based on valid grievances towards an established system. While Latin America has spent the last one hundred years flowing between Capitalism and Socialism, the trend often was linked to cults of personalities, namely since the 2000s Chavismo and faith in the Castros. The connections movements had to these personalities often propelled some awful and abusive policies towards those citizens that did not agree with their leadership. Whether their flag was red or blue did not always determine more rights to average citizens, in many cases, it turned them into refugees. With many of these refugees now living for a few generations in places like the United States, and more recently in Colombia, an aversion to anything that looks like support for similar movements creates a healthy aversion to similar outcomes.

When listening to discussions outside of Cuba, on Cuba, you will notice that it often is shaded by local politics and best/worst case scenarios. Often an accelerated narrative is created where Cuban protesters are compared to those that protest in fairly healthy democracies. While many of these claims can be seen as valid, they must accord with the reality of the situations at hand. Romanticizing a movement in places where rights are sacrosanct is not the same as analyzing a situation where Romanticizing the narrative eliminates the ability for protesters to seek their basic essentials in life.

In more extreme examples, the Romanticism of a situation is used to justify horrific acts by governments over their own people. Havana seems to have a soldier with a rifle in every intersection in calm times, and if we are honest towards ourselves, it is not the same as most cities where we reside. The almost wholly ignored plight of the Yazidis, especially women and children does not benefit from a romanticized narrative, so they are almost wholly ignored despite suffering the worst atrocities since the Second World War and brutal acts by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The silence by many democratic countries over the Uighurs being systematically eliminated is heard from young footballers before Prime Ministers, even though they make daily pronouncements against Genocide in the past that they barely recognise in the present. It is simply the worst thing you can do as a political leader in a democratic country.

When a narrative is used to violate human rights, it is no longer a narrative, but a tool of violence and oppression. It seems like Cubans are sending us all a message: Romanticizing dictatorships will put you on the wrong side of history. We should listen.

The Constitution

Even following America’s hasty and disorganized withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States remains involved in prominent military conflicts in Libya and Syria (and, frankly, Afghanistan) – not to mention many smaller combat operations in other nations around the world. In these conflict zones, the United States conducts armed drone strikes, and occasionally participates in standard manned operations. While some might be hesitant to formally designate these conflicts as “wars”, these sorts of military operations undeniably cost the United States both lives and treasure. Each of these ongoing conflicts is authorized either through the notoriously vague 2001 AUMF or has no formal authorization at all. 

The Constitution grants the legislature the power to declare war and authorize military conflicts- Article I, Section 8, Clause 11: The Congress shall have Power . . . To declare War. However, over the last eighty years, the legislature has adopted a strategy of passing legislation that authorizes spending on military objectives like counter-terrorisim or regional security as opposed to direct declarations of war as prescribed in the Constitution. As a consequence, despite being at war for nearly half of the time between the 1940’s and the present day, the United States legislature has not voted to authorize a war since 1941at the start of American involvement in World War II.

Despite being a broadly known and well established problem (the legislature did not vote to authorize the War in Korea or the War in Vietnam), the wounds that come from the legislative branch’s unwillingness to take responsibility of foreign policy decision making are still being inflicted today. President Obama famously begged Congress for authorization in Syria.  S.J. Res. 21, the legislation proposed in order to consider the military authorization, was never brought up for a vote. Even without the legislature’s approval President Obama went on to authorize a conflict that is still resulting in American casualties today. 

The legislature shunned the wisdom of its collective 535 members in favor of one single person’s judgment- in my opinion, this sort of decision making process is akin to begging for mistakes to be made. It forces us to ask if our representatives are taking their responsibilities in foreign affairs seriously. 

With this context in mind, it is important to think about the oversight being conducted by the legislative branch in foreign affairs. According to research conducted by Linda Fowler, a professor of political science at Dartmouth, the legislative branch is conducting oversight hearings at a historically low rate. More than that, when oversight hearings do take place, Fowler’s research suggests that hearings have become increasingly about performative rhetoric as opposed to serious consideration or problem solving.

To amplify this problem further, research suggests that as the public becomes increasingly aware of the costs and outcomes of the conflicts their countries are involved in, they become less supportive of continuing those conflicts. Without the signaling from the legislature that today’s conflicts deserve serious attention, the media does not provide consistent coverage of ongoing conflicts, and the citizenry at large remain uninformed about truly pressing issues. As a consequence, conflicts with questionable authorizations can quickly become quagmires. 

Given the fact that the 2001 AUMF was voted on in, well, 2001, and wars being waged without congressional authorization are obviously a major cause for concern – Americans of all political persuasions should be frightened by this. More than that, the legislative branch should live up to its responsibility to conduct consistent oversight. This becomes even more important given the contradictions between the legislation that is currently being used to authorize many ongoing conflicts and America’s new posture in Afghanistan with the Taliban returning to control of the country. 

The bulk of the conflict in Afghanistan might be coming to an end, but we need to keep a careful eye on the future -as well as today’s continuing conflicts- in order to avoid this sort of mess down the line.

 

—

Peter Scaturro is the Director of Studies at the Foreign Policy Association

 

On June 10, 2021, the president of France Emmanuel Macron announced the end of operation Barkhane in the Sahel region. It will be finished by the first quarter of 2022 in order to reconfigure French military engagement in Africa.

More details appeared after a virtual video summit with the leaders of the G5 Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania and Niger). In particular, France would start closing three military bases in northern Mali by year-end. Still there would be 2,500-3,000 of French soldiers, but within the so-called Takuba European task force. France, Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy and Sweden are now involved in Takuba force. 

For many years France was the main external security (and political) power in the Sahel region. Africa (as well as the Sahel) is within the eyeshot of many international actors. Among them is Russia, famous for its involvement in non-stable, problematic countries. In light of the latest decisions of France one question topped. Will those new security conditions transform in a chance for Russia to strengthen its role in the Sahel?

Operation Barkhane: why now?

Active military involvement of France in the Sahel began in 2013 after Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaeda took control of the desert north of Mali. Firstly France announced Operation Serval, which was transformed into Barkhane a year later. It covers Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger with the involvement of 5,000 French personnel.

After all these years war against terrorism in the Sahel turned into something similar to Afghanistan for France. But its military presence has not only an altruistic goal of supporting African states. So, among main French interests in the Sahel are:

1. Natural resources. For example, uranium in Niger, which is important for French energy sphere, especially for stage-managed Orano company, oil in Mali, where one more French company Total operates.
2. Political image. In international politics this region was always seen as a France backyard, where France as an ex-colonial power defined the rules.
3. Political “benefits” of African countries. They have a significant amount of voices within international organizations. Only in the UN General Assembly African states have 25% of voices. 

Earlier this year Emmanuel Macron warned that France would end its military presence if there was one more coup in Mali. Exactly, this happened at the end of May, 2021. But a second coup in Mali definitely isn’t the main reason for withdrawing the troops. 

First of all, operation Barkhane has caused significant fatigue among both the African and French people. Sahel’s people have organized demonstrations  with the demands of withdrawal troops several times. Concerning the French, only 49% of respondents support military presence in the Sahel. Death toll (56 soldiers since 2013) and its costs (costs $708 million a year) contribute to the problem.

At last, troop’s withdrawal is the chance for France to change its policy towards Africa and find other partners, not only in the West part of the continent. Also this is the way to deal with domestic French critics who blamed Paris for replacing sovereign nations in Africa. Especially in the context of future elections, planned for 2022 in France. 

Chance for an old Russian dream

Russia has already been intensifying its relations and involvement in the Sahel, especially in Mali by coup-d’etat with Russian fingertips. Moreover, there public opinion is more positive towards Russia than France. And expesially Asian country the Sahel region sees as future ally in war against terrorism. 

Russia chose Mali as a springboard in the Sahel not accidentally. This is a big country with so-called grey areas at the periphery, poorly controlled by the government. The Kremlin promises “assistance”: peace, military and political support. At the same time, Russian main interests in Africa are:  resources, political adherence at international level, new markets for weapons, new clients for state-owned mining companies. The Kremlin interpretes involvement in Africa as a way to strengthen its image as a world strong power and implements its old desire – to become a new Soviet Union. 

Moreover, African Sahel has a direct connection to the international role of Russia. There are many grey areas, related to illegal migration and narcotraffic. All these are sensitive issues for the EU. Gaining control over these areas gives Russia a significant advantage and possibility to use this “trump” in negotiation with the EU.

As always, Russia chooses weak countries to extend its influence, using old worked out instruments. They include: supply with weapons and mercenaries (well-known Wagner Group), supporting opposition groups, maintaining coup d’etats, using controlled media resources and network of NGOs. All this Russia has successfully tried in Africa many times: in Central Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar.

It’s worth considering that the Sahel is a complex region with a lot of problems – extreme poverty, clash of religions and cultures, the struggle for resources, the institutional weakness and political fragility. All this together creates an ideal environment for terrorists, a fertile ground for their slogans, to which the poor local population responds. And this is one of the reasons why terrorism is so ingrained in the region.

The Sahel is now a frontier against spreading terrorism. The regional countries themselves will not cope with this threat – they do need external support. And ending of Barkhane operation makes perfect conditions for Russia to spread its influence.

 

The conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh appears today as frozen again. Yet it remains fundamentally unsolved. Arguably, the conflict is currently as much a time-bomb as it had been before the 2020 war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. From the point of view of general post-Soviet geopolitics and generic international relations as well as law, two principal issues appear as paramount for the search for a solution of the conflict.

First, the absent or incomplete international reception of the Armenian narrative about Nagorno-Karabakh has little to do with Armenia, Karabakh, the Caucasus and post-Soviet situation. The problem of the Armenian apology for its territorial claim is not a lack of historical or/and demographic justification. Instead, its partly solid grounding in some (though not other) periods of Karabakh’s past is paradoxically the very reason why it will find only limited understanding outside Armenia.

Armenian commentators’ picking of certain historical facts in favor Karabakh’s independence or inclusion into Armenia is a strategy that can be applied by other nationalists in entirely different regions around the world. There are a number of territories across the globe which are, like Karabakh, in view of their history or/and demography politically “misplaced,” according to those or that nationalists. An international acceptance of the Armenian justification for breaking up Azerbaijan or for even enlarging Armenia could thus open a pandora box. There is little prospect for the Armenian quest of a “liberation” of Nagorno-Karabakh ever becoming broadly accepted, therefore. Instead, the Armenian government, people and diaspora need to find – together with, rather in opposition to, Azerbaijan – a solution to this dilemma via direct negotiations with their supposed enemy.

Second, on the Azerbaijani side, there may today be a time of pride and celebration regarding Karabakh. Yet, the current geopolitical constellation around the Southern Caucasus could change. The main regional actors – Russia, Turkey and Iran – all have authoritarian governments prone to abrupt leadership or even regime transitions. As a result, there may, in the future, be also radical changes in the foreign policy preferences of Moscow, Ankara and Teheran, in store.

For instance, a more fundamentalist future Russian president could take a different approach vis-à-vis the Christian-Orthodox aspect of Karabakh’s history than Vladimir Putin. Or a more pro-European or introverted future Turkish president could soften Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan. The entire region is geopolitically undetermined, organizationally underdeveloped, and potentially unstable.

In the same way in which Baku was in 2020 able to exploit a peculiar geopolitical constellation for a successful military campaign, Yerevan may, in the future, be tempted to accomplish yet another territorial revision, if it believes that the situation in Ankara, Moscow and Teheran has changed to its advantage. Therefore, Azerbaijan should not repeat Armenia’s mistake of merely focusing and relying on powerful outside actors. The solution of the conflict lies in direct negotiations between Baku and Yerevan rather than in mere propping up of domestic mobilization, military capacities, and geopolitical alliances. Ideally, Armenia and Azerbaijan should become more deeply embedded in old and new multilateral international and regional organizations that would include both countries and provide more effective platforms for conflict solutions than currently such organizations as the Council of Europe or Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe do.

https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/op-ed/andreas-umland-why-direct-negotiations-between-baku-and-yerevan-are-the-only-way-to-go.html

 

By Stanislav Aseyev and Andreas Umland

One of the most brutal places of incarceration in the occupied territories of Eastern Ukraine – the so-called “Donetsk” and “Lugansk Peoples Republics” known by their Russian acronyms DNR/LNR – is the secret Izoliatsiia (Isolation) prison in the city of Donets’k. Since 2018, Izoliatsiia has become widely known in mass media and especially notorious for its cruelty. Among others, Stanislav Aseyev, who was held in the prison for 28 months, has published widely on Izoliatsiia.

According to Aseyev’s first-hand observations in Izoliatsiia, more than a hundred civilians went through the de facto concentration camp, in 2018-2019. Most of the captives in the Izoliatsiia prison experienced torture by electric shocks, beating, psychological torture, mock executions as well as rape. Many were forced to do hard physical labor.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [OHCHR] Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine 16 November 2019 to 15 February 2020 (pp. 38-42) collected extensive witness testimonies on, among others, the Izoliatsiia torture prison:

“One detainee told OHCHR that his cellmates told him they had been ordered by the ‘Izoliatsiia’ guards ‘to make him talk’, and therefore forced him to march in place all night long in the cell, saying ‘If you do not do it, they will hurt all of us’. Detainees told OHCHR that in ‘Izoliatsiia’, ‘press cells’ were set up, where detainees were intimidated or beaten by cellmates to make them confess. One detainee was threatened that he would be forced to perform oral sex on other detainees in a ‘press cell’ if he did not confess. […] In addition to the beatings during interrogations, ‘Izoliatsiia’ detainees told OHCHR that personnel and other detainees cooperating with the ‘administration’ would beat them to coerce them to confess or to punish them for their alleged pro-Ukraine views or for allegedly disobeying the rules or orders. One detainee was regularly beaten for a year while in ‘Izoliatsiia’ as punishment for his pro-Ukraine views. Guards stepped on his toes and used a baton to hit him on his heels and legs causing him severe pain. Another detainee said he was beaten daily to make him confess and needed help to stand or use the toilet. […] In ‘Izoliatsiia’, a separate room with a table and relevant equipment was used to administer electric shocks. For example, one detainee was tied to the table, hand cuffed and hooded. Perpetrators attached one electrode to his genitalia and inserted a metal tube with a second electrode into his anus. He was subjected to painful electric shocks for several minutes, during which he lost consciousness several times. When he screamed, they put a cloth into his mouth. Another detainee told OHCHR that he was put on the table, hooded and with his arms and legs tied. Perpetrators attached electric wires to his feet and poured water on them. Some detainees held in ‘Izoliatsiia’ could not prevent themselves from urinating and defecating during electrocution. […A]nother detainee told OHCHR that […h]is genitalia was also repeatedly hit with a metal rod. As a result of this torture and sexual violence, the skin on his genitalia turned black and peeled off over several weeks. After refusing to confess to espionage, one detainee was put in a cell where one of the cellmates took off his pants and attempted to force the victim to engage in oral sex. Another detainee said that he witnessed the head of the ‘Izoliatsiia’ detention facility come to the cell and order detainees to engage in oral sex. One detainee told OHCHR that while in ‘Izoliatsiia’, he heard guards scream at female detainees on their way to the shower: ‘Go shave your [vaginas]. You are about to go upstairs to work it off.’ […] Several detainees reported that in ‘Izoliatsiia’, a health professional was present during their interrogations and torture. The man revived those who lost consciousness, and guided the perpetrators about how to torture to inflict maximum pain without causing death. He also examined detainees before the torture and asked about their medical conditions; measured their blood pressure or pulse; and gave injections. He told one detainee during torture: ‘We can kill you anytime we want.’”

Oddly, not only pro-Ukrainian and accidental civilians, but also numerous former so-called “insurgents” (opolchentsy) – i.e. previous DNR/LNR volunteer fighters or mercenaries from both Ukraine and Russia – have been held in Izoliatsiia and other detention facilities. During his more than two years at Izoliatsiia, Aseyev personally met and talked to:

1. 1. Yurii Tchaikovskii – a Colonel of the DNR’s so-called “5th Brigade,”
   2. Andrei Bogomaz – a Major General of the DNR’s so-called “Ministry of Emergency Situations,”
   3. Vitalii Ivanienko – a Lieutenant Colonel of the DNR’s so-called “Vitiaz’ Battalion,”
   4. Andrei Ibragimov – a Russian citizen and Major of the LNR’s so-called “4th Brigade,”
   5. Evgenii Tverdovskii – a Russian citizen and Lieutenant of the Russian Federation’s navy,
   6. Sergei Stavnichnii – a Lieutenant Colonel of the LNR’s so-called “4th LNR,”
   7. Aleksei Sidorov – a Captain of the DNR’s so-called “Legion Battalion,”
   8. Aleksandr Trudnenko – a Russian citizen and Senior Lieutenant of the DNR’s so-called “Vitiaz’ Battalion,”
   9. Denis Kustov – a Russian citizen and member of the DNR’s Radio-Electronic Intelligence Battalion,
   10. Aleksandr Shestakov – a Russian citizen accused of drug trafficking.

There were additional pro-Russian Ukrainian or Russian inmates during Aseyev’s term held in Izoliatsiia. These fighters not only sat in the same cells as those Ukrainians accused and sentenced because of their real or alleged pro-Ukrainian activities. The pro-Russian prisoners at Izoliatsiia went through similarly brutal torture often designed to extract preformulated confessions on, for instance, spying for Kyiv. The brutal persecution of “one’s own people” is a practice reminiscent of the Stalinist purges of the Bolshevik party and Soviet regime of the 1930s.

Stanislav Aseyev is an Expert on the Donbas with the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and author of, among other books, “A ‘Light Path’: The History of a Concentration Camp” (L’viv: Old Lion Press, 2020).

Andreas Umland is a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies, and editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” published by ibidem Press in Stuttgart.

https://khpg.org/en/1608809257 

A larger report on prisoners in the occupied Donbas has been published in April 2021 by the Swedish Institute of International Affairs here: https://www.ui.se/butiken/uis-publikationer/ui-report/2021/prisoners-as-political-commodities-in-the-occupied-areas-of-the-donbas/.

 

Pictured– Mohammad Hassan Akhund, the Taliban’s new Prime Minister

 

In early September, the Taliban began to fill cabinet positions for the new, “provisional government” that will attempt to stabilize Afghanistan following America’s military occupation and disorderly withdrawal from the nation. While it is true that the makeup of this cabinet is expected to evolve over time, the initial round of appointments includes some very unsavory individuals. 

The government will be led by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was a prominent political official while the Taliban governed Afghanistan from 1996-2001- given his close ties to the prior Taliban government, he is viewed as a sign of continuity with the pre-2001 Taliban by many in the international community. Sirajuddin Haqqani, the new acting interior minister, is the head of a militant group associated with the Taliban known as the Haqqani and is considered a wanted terrorist by the FBI.

These are not the early returns that most of us were hoping for, and the results fall well short of international expectations. Both the American State Department and the European Union have expressed dissatisfaction with the absence of women and non-Taliban members from governing positions, and the lack of ethnic diversity of a government that will oversee a very diverse nation. Afghan women have taken to the street to protest their lack of representation in government, and were allegedly beaten as a result.

These sorts of actions will not bring the Taliban closer to earning recognition from the United States or its global partners, nor will it ingratiate the Taliban with other global powers like China and Russia. The American State Department has said that the United States is in “no rush” to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, and it seems that the international community generally holds to that line.

At this time it is important to step back, and ask ourselves the following question- as the Taliban is not, at this moment, working to earn legitimacy from the international community, then strategically, what is the Taliban hoping to achieve during its first few days in power?

From my perspective, there are two possible scenarios. 

First, there is the possibility that the Taliban is truly irredeemable, and that this new era of Taliban rule in Afghanistan will be just as brutal as the first. This perspective allows for an easy explanation of events so far – the Taliban has not disavowed its violent associations or appointed women to governing positions “yet” because it never had the intention of doing so. From this point of view, America was foolish to negotiate with the Taliban at all, and if the Taliban cannot be trusted under any condition, a military withdrawal from Afghanistan might prove to be a mistake. 

The second possibility is that the Taliban is delaying pursuing legitimacy with the international community in favor of shoring up its domestic flank. From this perspective, the Taliban is caught fighting to earn legitimacy on two opposite fronts: first at home, and second in the international community. Taking this perspective forces a somewhat more nuanced explanation of the Taliban’s early antagonism – the Taliban cannot offer the United States an ideal cabinet, nor can they appear to have their ideology tainted by their newfound relationship with the United States because doing so would leave them vulnerable to militants and terrorist groups that are even more extreme than the Taliban. Terrorist groups and militant organizations often compete with each other in order to earn legitimacy and support from individual fighters, which explains the turbulence that we have been seeing over the last few days. From this point of view, the Taliban’s initial signaling is not a threat to American interests, but an inevitable part of the process through which the Taliban can address its most pressing security needs before (potentially) working to compromise with the international community. Like it or not, a stable, internally secure Afghanistan will, likely, only come about if the Taliban is able to earn legitimacy both domestically and internationally. Without that stability, the prospects for sustained protection of human rights in Afghanistan are fleeting.

Now, here comes the tricky part. Rand conducted a study reviewing how terrorist conflicts end, and unless the United States is willing to return to war in Afghanistan, history suggests that the most likely path forward for the Taliban is political integration. In fact, the most common way that terrorist groups have been dissolved since 1968 is through integration with the political process. With any luck, the Taliban will drop its military ambitions and adopt a fully political approach – albeit one that would not mirror those that exist in the United States and Europe. More likely than not, full political integration of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and then of Afghanistan in the international community, entails the United States and its partners around the world gradually working toward recognizing the legitimacy of the Taliban government. 

Of course, this is not to say that the United States should be in a rush to legitimize the Taliban, but diplomatic recognition should be dangled as a carrot for (relatively) good behavior. Consequently, there is a UN resolution pressing the Taliban to allow for free movement of people out of Afghanistan, and the State Department’s desire to see women serving in Afghanistan’s government is echoed by other members of the international community. These sorts of measures are effective only to the extent that the United States is willing to use its diplomatic tools. Not only is maintaining cordial relations important to the long term prospect of peace, but productive interactions with the Taliban are important in order for the United States to continue to extract the Americans and friendly Afghans who remain in Afghanistan.

Ultimately, a full scale refusal to recognize the Taliban government over the long term equates to trying to walk through a porcelain shop with narrow shelves with one hand tied behind your back. Should the Taliban compromise on the issues most important the the United States and the international community (namely- the proper treatment of women and girls, the free movement of people into and out of Afghanistan, and the humane treatment of foreign aid workers), we would be foolish to turn away the Taliban’s attempt at compromise. Allowing for the best, while preparing for the worst, means that formal diplomatic recognition needs to be put on the table as a bargaining chip that the Taliban can earn through good behavior.

Sometimes there are no easy answers to complicated problems – an outright refusal to recognize the Taliban under any circumstances puts an unnecessary chill on relations and paves the way back to a military conflict in Afghanistan. 

 

–

Peter Scaturro is the Director of Studies at the Foreign Policy Association

 

Ever since the African Union (AU) granted Israel an ‘observer status’, the organization has found itself entangled in a pitiful  web of political maneuvering and controversy. Only two months earlier, this same organization has joined rest of the world in condemning Israel for violating the international law with its reckless bombardment of Gaza, targeting civilians, and violent attacks inside the Al-Aqsa holy mosque.  

This latest decision is perhaps the worst and most dangerous in the organization’s history since it puts its political and ethical values into question. 

In July 2016, then Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, visited four influential African countries—Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia—to showcase or dangle a security and trade carrot and take his country’s relentless lobbying effort to gain AU oberver status since it lost such status with the Organization of African Unity in 2002.

As a country with the longest bilateral relationship with Israel and the one that was in desperate need to get air defense missiles to protect the GERD from potential attacks, Ethiopia was set to lead that quartet. And the quartet finally delivered and secured—at least for now—a priceless moral disinformation that Israel was hustling for a long time:

‘If the African Union does not consider the Jewish state a colonialist apartheid regime, who else might have the moral right to do so?’  

Headlines Matter

As international media interest in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the West Bank, the espionage gate turned the spotlight back on it.   

The AU decision came at a time when Israel’s rogue attitude and relentless engagement on criminalities that endanger all others except Israel are at the center stage of international political and security debate.

Though the Israeli intelligence has a dreadful record of violating international law in terms of espionage, abducting people from foreign countries, and carrying out assassinations, the following revelation confirms that it has been franchising and enabling ruthless dictators and other rogue actors to commit same crimes with ease:  

According to an investigation conducted by an international consortium of media and human rights groups, Pegasus is a “Military-grade spyware…for tracking terrorists and criminals”.  So far, those governments that the Israeli firm supplied used the software “in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” Moreover, a leaked list containing more than 50,000 phone numbers that Pegasus owners have sought or spied on includes heads of states such as France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

Pegasus is a malicious spook-ware used by the Israeli intelligence to silence critics and to corrupt or blackmail world leaders and other influencers. Furthermore, Israel sold that dangerous software to many tyrants around the world such as Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and UAE’s Mohammed bin Zayed to hack cellphones of human rights activists, opposition leaders, journalists and others.

Collusion To Sustain Apartheid  

Wittingly or unwittingly, enticed with trade and technology or blackmailed through dirty intelligence gathered by Israel’s spook-ware , the African Union took an action that is tantamount to being in collusion with Israel to bulwark that apartheid regime against a groundswell of international calls for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions).

The founders of Ben & Jerry are Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. They are “proud Jews” who were ultimately fed up with Israel’s ever-expanding land theft in the occupied territories, the apartheid system, and the systematic ethnic-cleansing against the Palestinian people. They also reject the notion that scrutinizing or condemning Israel’s oppressive policies is anti-Semitic.

Though they avoided openly supporting the international BDS movement, the values they expressed in their New York Times OpEd clearly endorses it. “We believe business is among the most powerful entities in society. We believe that companies have a responsibility to use their power and influence to advance the wider common good,” they opined. This is likely to encourage other international corporations to follow their conscience or try to get on “the right side of history”.

Israel is well aware of the detrimental effect that the international BDS movement had on South Africa’s apartheid system and that is why its leadership went berserk in seeking vengeance against Ben & Jerry. 

No Moral Equivalence

Though some media groups portrayed this issue as an attempt to balance the scale since Palestine was granted such status in 2013, the truth of the matter is this: Inclusion of Palestine as an observer was more of a symbolic expression of solidarity with their cause against a colonial power that was bent on committing systematic ethnic-cleansing against the indigenous people of the land. 

Contrary to the decision to include Palestine, inclusion of Israel was done without any consultations with all member states or any opportunities to debate. And as Algeria’s Foreign Minister said “this decision has neither the vocation nor the capacity to legitimize the practices and behaviors of the said new observer which are totally incompatible with the values, principles, and objectives enshrined in the ‘Constitutive Act of the African Union.”

Inclusion of Israel would not only give it a freehand on spying and browbeating African leaders, torpedo any symbolic or substantive support to the Palestinian liberation cause; it will poison the continental spirit of unity and anti-colonialism.

Mutiny of Conscience

 In a strongly worded protest letter, the South African government described this divisive decision as an “unjust and unwarranted” that was taken “unilaterally without consultations with (AU) members”. The timing of the decision was even more offensive, or as underlined in the statement “…more shocking (as it came) in a year in which the oppressed people of Palestine were hounded by destructive bombardments and continued illegal settlements of the land”.

Lead by Algeria, 14 AU member states that include some with significant political clout such as South Africa, Nigeria, Botswana, and Tunisia have formed what could be called ‘coalition of the unwilling’ to pressure the AU to revoke Israel’s status. The AU must take heed or risk abolishing its continental unity when it was needed the most. Sadly, the list only included two Arab member states out of ten. Prominently missing in action were countries that historically opposed Israel’s role such as Egypt, Somalia, and Libya. This may indicate that Israel would soon get a full membership of the Arab League.

Shortly after the list became public, a second-tier group that includes countries such as Egypt, Libya, and Djibouti has issued a joint statement questioning the decision based on technicality- the AU Chairman made a unilateral decision. Still shamefully missing are countries such as mine- Somalia. Here is the painful irony: there was a time when the Somali passport had a prominent warning against traveling to the two apartheid regimes (South Africa and Israel).      

Granting the last apartheid regime in the world the privilege of an observer at the African Union is a betrayal to the anti-colonialism and anti-racism principles that the organization was founded on, and indeed an insult to the legacy of Africa’s most principled son- Nelson Mandela whose pro Palestine stance was unwavering under all pressures.

 

 

With Andrian Prokip 

First published in:

Since 1991, energy delivery and gas supplies have been an important factor in post-Soviet Ukraine’s relations with both Russia and the European Union (EU). Russia was and still is partially dependent on the Ukrainian gas transportation system (GTS) and has not been able to take full control of its energy relations with the EU. Since the 2004 Orange Revolution, geopolitical considerations rather than economic needs have motivated Moscow to build new pipelines specifically designed to bypass Ukraine, and thereby to get a freer hand in its dealings with its westernizing “brother nation.”

The completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline from Russia through the Baltic Sea to Germany in late 2012 lowered the role of the Ukrainian GTS for Russian energy exports to the EU. It provided a necessary pre-condition for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and covert intervention in Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The forthcoming possible launch of the Nord Stream II pipeline would erase any remaining Russian dependency on Ukraine as a transit country and could be a prelude to new military escalation between Moscow and Kyiv.

For many years, the Ukrainian transit corridor was crucial to Europe’s gas supply. The routes that pass through Ukraine to Russia and the EU have always been more than sufficient to deliver as much gas volume as has been necessary for Europe. The EU’s and Russia’s reliance on the Ukrainian GTS has provoked international geoeconomic interest in Ukraine since its emergence as an independent state in 1991.

Today, the eventual completion of the Nord Stream 2 via the Baltic Sea looks increasingly likely. If this pipeline were to start operating, the Ukrainian GTS would become largely unnecessary. A loss of most or even all Russian-EU transit could call the future of the entire Ukrainian gas infrastructure into question.  Without the income from levies on the transit of Russian and Central Asian gas flowing through Ukraine to the EU, Ukraine may find that its gas transportation system is no longer economical.

If the Ukrainian GTS went out of business, this would have far-reaching implications for the EU’s energy supply, Ukraine’s relations with Russia, and larger European security issues. Many in Ukraine fear that the elimination of Russia and the EU’s dependence on Ukrainian gas transit will allow the Kremlin to provoke further instability in Ukraine.  The Kremlin would feel more comfortable to intensifying its hybrid war with Ukraine once Russia is no longer dependent on Ukrainian gas transportation. This could escalate into a full-scale as well as open (and not merely covert, proxy, and paramilitary) interstate war against its Slavic neighbor.

At the same time, it is increasingly obvious that the role of Russian and Central Asian pipeline gas in the EU’s energy market will gradually decline. Alternative energy sources are becoming more widely used. Remaining gas demand will increasingly be met via diversified supply mechanisms, including Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) tankers. These factors will decrease the EU’s dependency on both the gas supply from Russia  and the Ukrainian GTS. Recently, the adoption of the European Green Deal and a resulting acceleration of decarbonization have made this outcome more likely

However, Europe’s decarbonization plans may also be opening a new window of opportunity for Ukraine. In the best case scenario, an increasing demand for a variety of low carbon gases–such as biogas, biomethane, and hydrogen–could result in more energy collaboration between the EU and Ukraine. New joint projects for the generation and transportation of low carbon gas could become part and parcel of Ukraine’s future integration into European energy markets.

Ukraine has the potential to produce per year 7.5 to 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of biogas and biomethane, which is approximately 25 to 30 percent of its own yearly natural gas consumption. As the production costs of such gas are relatively high, demand for this energy source may currently be low in Ukraine. Yet, it could be attractive for European customers today. The prices of these energy sources may be more acceptable in, and the nature of these gases will be more relevant, to the EU than they are currently for Ukrainian customers. Technically, these types of gas can be delivered through existing pipelines without much modernization, following a few legislative amendments that are expected to pass soon.

While exporting biogas is a short-term option, a promising long-term prospect is the generation and export of Ukrainian hydrogen. The European Hydrogen Strategy, as part of last year’s European Green Deal, stipulates that “the Eastern Neighborhood, in particular Ukraine, and the Southern Neighborhood countries should be priority partners.” The Strategy calls for the installation, within the EU by 2030, of 40 gigawatts (GW) of electrolyzers – specialized installations generating hydrogen – that, in their turn, need to use renewable or other low-carbon energy for their operation. (Such provisions are necessary to guarantee that, in the end, the exploitation of new energy sources is indeed contributing to environmental protection.) More electrolyzers producing another 40 GW are envisaged for the EU’s neighbor countries from which the EU could then import this green energy. It is planned that electrolyzers producing 10 GW out of the planned new 40 GW capacity will be located in Ukraine.

Despite the positive outlook for the development of Ukrainian hydrogen production for Europe, this plan is facing some challenges in Ukraine. First, the Ukrainian natural gas pipelines are so far not suitable to transport hydrogen. They would need modernization to be used for such a novel export function.

Some Ukrainian gas transportation companies are, in cooperation with various technical universities and other academic institutions, already investigating the possibility of transmitting hydrogen through the existing distribution grids. These Ukrainian investigations may be also of interest to other countries with similar gas transportation systems, especially those in post-communist Eastern Europe. However, significant investment in new hydrogen production and transit infrastructure will be needed soon in order to create and take advantage of  a modernized energy transportation network.

Moreover, the general organization of Ukraine’s entire gas system needs to be rethought and redesigned. The current volumes of gas consumption and transit are much lower than the previously installed capacities allow – a misbalance that raises the generic fix-costs and final price of the transportation and distribution services. For instance, overall gas transit in Ukraine amounted to 141 bcm during the year 1998, but was at only 55.8 bcm by 2020, meaning that much of the GTS remains unused. Based on existing contracts, the amount of gas transit may decrease further to 40 bcm annually by 2024. There is a similarly radical change in Ukraine’s own gas consumption. While Ukraine’s gas consumption had been 118 bcm during its first year of independence of 1991, this number declined to 50.4 bcm in 2013, and went further down to 31 bcm in 2020. However, it’s important to note that the latter number does not include gas consumption in the non-government-controlled parts of the Donets Basin and in occupied Crimea.

A second major challenge for Kyiv will be determining how to raise enough domestic and foreign investments to take full advantage of Ukraine’s high green gas generation and transportation potential. Above all, funding is needed to redesign and reconstruct the existing natural gas grids and prepare for the transmission of hydrogen. The  production of hydrogen  requires the construction of new facilities to produce it, preferably by using renewable energy sources to run the electrolyzing process.

A third challenge of Ukraine’s entry into EU’s emerging green gas market will be Kyiv’s energy relations and competition with Moscow. Presumably, the Kremlin will not wait for the EU’s demand for fossil fuels to decrease and for income from current Russian energy exports to the EU to shrink. Russia will also try to become a green gas and hydrogen exporter to the EU. There is a risk that Russia will draw on its experience conducting trade and (mis)information wars to limit Ukraine’s ability to supply hydrogen to Europe through defamation, subversion and intervention. This threat will become especially pertinent if the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is indeed launched, and the EU becomes entirely independent from the Ukrainian GTS. Russia cannot be expected to engage in fair competition with Ukraine and could even employ para- or regular military means – as it, in some ways, partly already does – to improve its position in the European energy market.

Still, trying to meet these three challenges could contribute to Ukraine’s energy transition and its emergence as a new green economy. Independent from geopolitical developments, the prevailing ecological, industrial, and technological trends are already dictating such a transformation. In particular, Ukraine’s energy transition could help to compensate for the already predictable losses that Ukraine will incur from the decreasing importance of traditional natural gas transit. Helping Ukraine to adapt its GTS and production facilities to the demands of the European Green Deal is an opportunity for the EU to support Ukraine in the face of the Nord Stream 2. Kyiv will need outside support to redesign its gas transportation and distribution systems and to modernize existing gas production facilities and build new ones. Finally, Ukraine will need new transit and export agreements on supplying green gas to the EU, and possibly to other countries in non-EU Europe, North America, or elsewhere.

Strategic investment into Ukraine’s energy industry, including its low-carbon gas generation and transportation system would not only have narrowly geoeconomic, but also wider geopolitical implications. Assistance to Ukraine would help Kyiv contain the Kremlin’s ongoing attempts to unleash further socioeconomic instability in Ukraine. Moreover, Washington and London would be supporting the sovereignty and independence of a country that once possessed the world’s third largest arsenal of atomic weapons. Thereby, the two Western signatory states of the famous 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the United States and United Kingdom, would indirectly strengthen the world-wide nuclear non-proliferation regime.

A similar story goes for two other countries that, in the 1990s, had inherited as well as given up Soviet atomic weapons, and also received Budapest Memoranda. Belarus and Kazakhstan too have been subject to Russian – so far only verbal – irredentist claims. Support for Belarus and Kazakhstan’s sovereignties would, like in the case of strengthening Ukraine’s resilience, be beneficial to the functioning of the worldwide non-proliferation regime. Such an approach further applies to two additional official nuclear-weapons states, France and China, that also provided Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan with their own governmental security assurances in December 1994. Any support that Paris and Beijing provide to former nuclear-weapons states that gave up all of their atomic war heads voluntarily would be a sign of support for the geopolitical logic behind the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, one of humanity’s most important agreements.

However, the main issue is here the future relationship between the EU and Kyiv. By supporting Ukraine’s energy transition, Brussels could strengthen a country in which an entire revolution, the Euromaidan uprising of 2013-2014, was conducted under European flags. While the three-month Euromaidan protests were not exclusively about Ukraine’s geopolitical orientation, they began in November 2013 to secure Kyiv’s signing of an Association Agreement with the EU. Ukraine’s Western integration, in turn, was the pretext of Russia’s military aggression in Southern and Eastern Ukraine in 2014. The Kremlin has since been conducting its hybrid war against Ukraine as a form of punishment for Kyiv’s decision to adopt EU norms and values.

Finally, Germany could support Ukraine’s energy system to partially atone itself for the damage that it has done to the geopolitics of Eastern Europe with its two Nord Stream pipeline projects. Arguably, the full opening of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in October 2012 was a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for Russia’s military attack on Ukraine, one-and-a-half years later. Until 2012, Ukraine had, through its control over a large part of Gazprom’s pipeline connections to the EU, considerable economic leverage vis-à-vis Russia which will be further reduced should Nord Stream 2 also go online. The United States, United Kingdom and Germany would do themselves and the world a service by taking advantage of Ukraine’s considerable potential to become a major low-carbon gas supplier for Europe and beyond.

Andrian Prokip is an Energy Analyst at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Senior Associate at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC.

Andreas Umland is Research Fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, and Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv.

https://hir.harvard.edu/ukraines-low-carbon-gas-potential-and-the-eu/

 

 

 

May 12, 2018 marked NORAD’s 60th anniversary.

Pursuant to last February’s Biden–Trudeau virtual summit, defense heads from the US and Canada reaffirmed on August 14th that NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) modernization is an integral part of North American homeland defense. In coping against the growly complex security threats posed by strategic competitors’ technologically advanced weapons, such as hypersonic glide vehicles, the two neighboring nations put forward stronger “coordinated investments” in upgrading the early warning and surveillance capabilities of the North Warning System (NWS). In particular, the upgrade plan prioritizes the installation of next-generation over-the-horizon radar and an all-domain multi-layered sensor network for enhanced “situational awareness.” These priorities will essentially be accompanied by the installation of efficient data-processing tools and a resilient communication network system, paving the path for “modernized joint command and control systems.” The two neighboring nations’ commitment to NORAD modernization promises a brighter future of “maintaining North America as a secure base for active engagement around the world,” especially in the upcoming era of constructively inevitable great power competition.

Bolstering U.S.–Canada security cooperation through NORAD modernization was one of the cornerstone agendas discussed in the Roadmap for a Renewed U.S.–Canada Partnership, which was the fruitful product of the Biden–Trudeau virtual bilateral summit last February. What lies at the crux of the revitalization of the 63-year-old defense pact in a timely manner is the operational concepts of SHIELD (Strategic Homeland Integrated Ecosystem for Layered Defense). The strategic initiative focuses on cultivating a new generation defense ‘ecosystem’ of continental defense in areas of ‘domain awareness,’ ‘Joint All-Domain Command and Control(JADC2),’ and ‘defeat mechanism.’ Domain awareness proposes to integrate data from both existing NSW/maritime sensors and new sensors into a central repository of a multi-layered sensor network, instead of letting each sensor type gather data in a single platform. The multi-layered aspect of the system allows the augmentation of its detection and surveillance capabilities by adding layers of a globally operating sensor network, such as a space-based radar sensor network. Through ‘JADC2,’ integrated data are then processed with boosted global interconnection and interoperability among all military domain (Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, Space Force and Cyber Command) in the form of a cloud-connected platform, providing real-time cloud-based/AI-powered data analytics critical to key decision-makers’ optimal decision-making capability, or ‘decision superiority.’ Finally, the defeat mechanism takes a cost-effective approach to prevent the unnecessary field allocation of global forces by focusing on key areas of North American continental defense. Simply put, hardening the SHIELD means strengthening detection, deterrence, and defeat capabilities by equipping key decision-makers with cutting-edge threat/risk assessment capacities through a globally interconnected/interoperable all domain ‘single pane of glass.’ In this way, key decision makers can strategically think of situationally feasible deterrence/de-escalation/defeat options ahead of their adversaries. SHIELD aligns with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s recent call for the Department of Defense’s renewed concept of deterrence, ‘Integrated Deterrence,’ which aims to enhance the security readiness and resiliency of the Alliance in coping against systematic security challenges posed by strategic competitors. The basic logic of integrated deterrence is to elevate cold-war era ‘deterrence by denial’ to a new level by “denying adversaries the ability to threaten the global connectivity on which we all rely on.”

NORAD Modernization Means a Vast Array of New Opportunities for Canada

Despite its costly price tag, if met with the right, and futuristic, PPP (Public Private Partnership) solutions, NORAD modernization can provide Canada with a vast array of new opportunities. It will not only nourish related defense technologies, notably quantum computing, machine learning, data analytics, and AI, in which Canada is already one of the global leaders. But its side-benefits will also politico-economically leverage Canada’s global engagement practices, especially in the Arctic. Indeed, it was mentioned in the defense head joint agreement that NORAD modernization includes “investments to upgrade and modernize the infrastructure required to support robust NORAD operations, including in our Arctic and northern regions.” When it come to the Arctic in the upcoming era of great power competition, Canada needs stronger North American Arctic leadership to facilitate incrementally sustainable development of the Arctic (which meets the indigenous populations’ and locals’ politico-economic demands). Under the current political climate, it could probably start from rare earth mineral development and accrued Artic fleets to secure the supply chain routes.

On 30 May 2021, Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Carpenter, on the pages of The National Interest, published an article under the title “Ukraine’s Accelerating Slide into Authoritarianism.” In his outspoken statement, the author painted a dark picture of Ukrainian politics allegedly beset by deeply anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist tendencies. These putative features, Carpenter argued, makes this post-Soviet state unfit for US support. Why the Cato Institute’s fellow – who seems to have neither much interest for, nor ever published any research on, Ukraine – came out with a categorical judgement on this country remains a mystery.

Carpenter’s assessment of Ukraine’s recent history and call for an end to Washington’s backing for Kyiv triggered reactions within the US and outside. The first came from Moscow although Russia was only mentioned en passant in Carpenter’s text. One day after the text had appeared in the United States, the influential Russian state-owned online resource inoSMI (Foreign Mass Media) published a Russian translation of Carpenter’s article, on 31 May 2021. The inoSMI editor introduced Carpenter’s article: “U.S. officials love to portray Ukraine as ‘a courageous democracy that reflects the threat of aggression from an authoritarian Russia’. But the idealized picture created by Washington has never really matched the darker reality, and the gap between the two, with Ukraine sliding increasingly toward authoritarianism, has now become a real chasm, the article notes.”

During June 2021, an interactive debate regarding Carpenter’s attack on Ukraine developed. On the pages of the The National Interest, a response to Carpenter’s initial article was published by Doug Klain of the Atlantic Council. Somewhat later, I published a second rebuttal to Carpenter with the Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert. In Ukraine, this text was translated into Russian as well as Ukrainian and republished by the Kyiv website Gazeta.ua. Further responses to Carpenter appeared on the Kyiv resource Khvylia (Wave) in Russian language, and on Berlin’s Center for Liberal Modernity website Ukraine verstehen (Understanding Ukraine) in German language. On 28 June 2021, Carpenter responded to Klain’s and my critique of his initial text with a second article titled “Why Ukraine Is a Dangerous and Unworthy Ally,” again published in the web version of The National Interest, and subsequently reposted on the Cato Institute’s website.

While none of the responses to Carpenter was re-published in Russia, his rebuttal to them was again, within one day, translated by the Kremlin-controlled inoSMI (Foreign Mass Media) website. Carpenter’s new article was reposted in Russian, on 29 June 2021, and introduced by an inoSMI editor: “In May [2021], an author of The National Interest took the liberty of criticizing the Zelensky regime for its authoritarian tendencies. In response, the German ‘Ukrainianist’ Andreas Umland and similar ‘Maidanists’ [a term referring to Kyiv’s Independence Square] criticized Carpenter so much that he decided to get even with them in this article. One cannot remain silent: accusations of ‘Russian disinformation’ are reminiscent of McCarthyism. The defenders of the Kyiv regime have a powerful lobbying organization behind them, the Atlantic Council.”

Also on 29 June 2021, a number of Russian-language outlets published sympathetic reviews of Carpenter’s article, for instance, the major daily Izvestiia (Messages) as well as popular internet resources Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru. Among other Kremlin-controlled outlets, the website of the Crimean TV channel Pervyi sevastopol’skii (“Sevastopol’s First”) not only briefly reviewed Carpenter’s June article. It had already earlier introduced his May 2021 initial attack on Ukraine, in The National Interest. Among other Russian-language video resources, the Youtube channels “Oleg Kalugin” and “Kognitive Dissonanz” published Russian audio reviews of Carpenter under the titles “On Ukraine’s Lobbyists in the US” (29 June 2021), and “Senior Research Fellow of the Cato Institute […] Ted Carpenter on Ukraine…” (1 July 2021). Carpenter’s two TNI articles on Ukraine were introduced by numerous Russian outlets including Yandex.ru, RIA.ru, MK.ru, Sputniknews.ru, Regnum.ru, News.ru, Tsargrad.TV, KP.ru, PolitRos.com, Life.ru, Argumenti.ru, Actualcomment.ru, RUnews24.ru, PolitExpert.net, Versia.ru, Ridus.ru, 360TV.ru, Riasev.com, Inforeactor.ru, Glas.ru, Riafan.ru, Newinform.com, SMI2.ru, Iarex.ru, TopCor.ru, InfoRuss.info, Profinews.ru, Rusevik.ru, Alternatio.org, News2.ru, News22.ru, and others.

In English, the debate around Ukraine was, on 28 June 2021, reviewed by Jon Lerner of the Hudson Institute, in The National Interest. The English versions of the Russian websites TopWar.ru and Oreanda.ru, published brief reviews of Carpenter’s arguments under the titles “Strategically, Ukraine is a ‘trap’ for the United States” and “American Political Scientist Called Ukraine a Dangerous and Unworthy Ally.” Oreanda.ru remarked that, in Ukraine, “a coup in 2014 was carried out with the help of ultra-nationalist and neo-Nazi groups. Carpenter noted that these organizations with their ‘ugly values,’ continue to influence Kiev’s [sic] politics. Supporters of an alliance with Ukraine try not to notice these facts, the article says. The author of the material noted the deplorable situation with human rights and freedoms in this country.”

The Ukrainian news agencies UAzmi.org and UAinfo.org quoted, on 1 July 2021, an ironic comment by the prominent Odesa blogger Oleksandr Kovalenko who had written on 30 June 2021 about Carpenter’s writings for The National Interest: “Interestingly, he used as arguments what we have regularly heard from Russian propagandists since 2014, namely that neo-Nazism is rampant in Ukraine, rights and freedoms of citizens are trampled in Ukraine, there is no freedom of speech in Ukraine, wild monkeys and crocodiles are in Ukraine… In fact, a full set of Kremlin fakes about Ukraine is heard from the mouth of an American expert on the pages of a respected and influential publication in the midst of the international exercise SeaBreeze-2021.” Ukraine’s leading English-language newspaper Kyiv Post, on 2 July 2021, declared Carpenter – with reference to his articles in The National Interest – Ukraine’s “Foe of the Week.”

The varying responses in Russia, the US, Ukraine and elsewhere indicate the problem with Carpenter’s arguments. What raises eyebrows about his statements on Ukraine is less their critical tone. Rather, it is surprising that Carpenter chose to remark certain sensitive political topics that have been also popular in Russia’s state-controlled mass media during the last seven years, if not before. There are good reasons to criticize, for instance, Ukraine’s dysfunctional presidentialism, underdeveloped party-system, or incomplete cooperation with the International Criminal Court (a topic dealt with on the pages of The National Interest). Yet, these are neither prominent themes in Russian propaganda nor are they issues that Carpenter raises. The Kremlin rarely speaks about such problems as they often also apply to Russia. Carpenter, one suspects, does not mention these and similar topics because he does not read Ukrainian. Judging from the contents of his two articles, he may not have even read much of the freely available English-language scholarly literature on post-Euromaidan Ukraine.  

Rather, the Cato Institute’s researcher makes far-reaching claims about an alleged prevalence of ultra-nationalism and putative slide to authoritarianism in today Ukraine – claims also pushed daily in Russian state media and by pro-Kremlin public figures for many years. No wonder that Kremlin-guided newspapers, TV channels and websites have eagerly quoted and reviewed Carpenter’s two articles in The National Interest. Here comes a senior American commentator working at a leading Washington think-tank, publishing in one of the most influential US political magazines, and repeating exactly those talking points that the Kremlin has been spreading to justify its thinly veiled hybrid war against Ukraine for seven years now. This not enough, Carpenter uses the Kremlin’s favorite narratives to unapologetically call for an end of US support for Ukraine. What more could Moscow hope for?

Carpenter’s insistence on the large role of ultra-nationalism in Ukraine is absurd. Unlike various other European parliaments elected via a proportional representation system, the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council) does not have a far-right faction any more since late 2014. It had such a faction only for two years from 2012 to 2014. In 2019, Ukraine’s far right – for the first time in its history and unlike many other nationalists around the world – went with a united list into parliamentary elections. Despite such rare harmony, the list of the right-wing Freedom Party which also included representatives of the other two major ultra-nationalist groups, the Right Sector and National Corps, received 2.15% – a result roughly equal to, or even below of, what many single far right parties in European countries receive in national elections. In the 2019 presidential elections, the candidate of the united far right gained 1.62%. Whoever has followed European elections during the last years may note that radical nationalists, in a number of NATO member countries including some older democracies, have received larger or significantly larger support than the Ukrainian united far right.

During its entire post-Soviet history, Ukraine has indeed – as Carpenter indicates – been exceptional in terms of support for ultra-nationalism. However, it has been distinct not for the political strength, but for the electoral weakness of the far right, as the tabled results of various far right presidential candidates and parties, since the introduction of proportional representation in 1998, show. The only period during which the far right was able to gain notable nation-wide support was during the notorious presidency of Viktor Yanukovych in 2010-2014. Yanukovych both triggered nationalist mobilization with his pro-Russian policies and promoted Ukraine’s extreme right, as a convenient sparring partner during elections.  

Vote shares of major Ukrainian far-right parties in presidential elections and the proportional-representation parts of parliamentary elections, 1998–2019 (in percent)

Party or alliance Bloc “Natsionalnyy front” [National Front] (KUN, UKRP & URP) / URP / KUN UNA / Pravyi sektor [Right Sector] Bloc “Menshe sliv” [Fewer Words] (VPO-DSU & SNPU) / VOS National election   1998 (parliamentary) 2.71 (NF) 0.39 (UNA) 0.16 (MS) 1999 (presidential)       2002 (parliamentary)   0.04 (UNA)   2004 (presidential) 0.02 (Kozak, OUN) 0.17 (Korchyns’kyy)   2006 (parliamentary)   0.06 (UNA) 0.36 (VOS) 2007 (parliamentary)     0.76 (VOS) 2010 (presidential)     1.43 (Tiahnybok) 2012 (parliamentary)   0.08 (UNA-UNSO) 10.44 (VOS) 2014 (presidential)   0.70 (Iarosh)* 1.16 (Tiahnybok) 2014 (parliamentary) 0.05 (KUN) 1.81 (PS) 4.71 (VOS) 2019 (presidential)     1.62 (Koshulyns’kyy) 2019 (parliamentary)     2.15 (VOS)**

* In the 2014 presidential election, Dmytro Iarosh formally ran as an independent candidate but was publicly known as the leader of Pravyy sector (PS).

** The 2019 Svoboda list was a unified bloc of most of the relevant Ukrainian far-right political parties, but was officially registered only as a VOS list.

Abbreviations: KUN: Konhres ukrains‘kykh natsionalistiv (Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists); UKRP: Ukrains‘ka konservatyvna respublikans‘ka partiia (Ukrainian Conservative Republican Party); URP: Ukrains‘ka respublikans‘ka partiia (Ukrainian Republican Party); VPO-DSU: Vseukrainske politychne ob‘‘ednannia “Derzhavna samostiynist’ Ukrainy” (All-Ukrainian Political Union “State Independence of Ukraine”); SNPU: Sotsial-natsionalna partiia Ukrainy (Social-National Party of Ukraine); OUN: Orhanizatsiia ukrainskykh natsionalistiv (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists); UNA: Ukrains’ka natsionalna asambleia (Ukrainian National Assembly); UNSO: Ukrains’ka narodna samooborona (Ukrainian National Self-Defense); VOS: Vseukrains’ke ob’’ednannia “Svoboda” (All-Ukrainian Union Svoboda).

There was in 2014, to be sure, something close to panic among many anti-fascists around the world concerning Ukraine’s far right. The Ukrainian ultra-nationalists had still their faction in parliament, been highly visible during the Euromaidan revolution, and entered the first post-Euromaidan government for several months with four ministers. Above all, the Russian propaganda machine and its various Western branches were, on a daily basis, hammering into worldwide public opinion the idea that former President Yanukovych had been thrown out of power by a fascist coup in Kyiv (while, in fact, Yanukovych left Kyiv after violence had already ended, and was officially deposed by the same parliament that had earlier supported him). To be sure, few non-Russian observers bought the Kremlin’s horror story in full. Yet, a widespread approach among Western politicians and commentators has since been that there can be no smoke without fire, and, if Russia is so concerned, the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists must be a relevant problem.

The few academic experts who had researched Ukraine’s far right before it became a popular theme, and studied it from a cross-cultural perspective warned, however, already in 2014 that the media hype around this topic was misplaced. The Russian historian Viacheslav Likhachev (Zmina Human Rights Center, Kyiv), Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov (Center for Democratic Integrity, Vienna) and American sociologist Alina Polyakova (Center for European Policy Analysis, Washington, DC) had researched pre-Euromaidan and non-Ukrainian permutations of the far right before 2014. From their historical and comparative points of view, they and others warned early on that alarmism is inapt and spoke out against an emerging mainstream Western opinion that ultra-nationalism is a major issue in Ukraine.

Some of these researchers explicitly predicted in 2014 that the prospects of Ukraine’s far right are limited. And, indeed, it has since turned out to be again only a tertiary national political force, as it had been before its only notable electoral success (10.44%) of 2012. Today, the overall domestic political impact of Ukrainian right-wing extremists is lower than in many far richer and securer countries of Europe. Even the highly publicized participation of many radical nationalists in Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s hybrid war since 2014 has not had much effect on their electoral fortunes. In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky with his openly Jewish family background won, against a powerful incumbent, in Ukraine’s presidential elections with a result of 73%.

This leads to the second main point in Carpenter’s two unfortunate portrayals of Ukraine – allegedly authoritarian tendencies disqualifying Ukraine to receive US support. Here again, Carpenter’s argument is bizarre. Ukraine has indeed been exceptional, within the post-Soviet context, yet in the opposite sense in which it has been presented in The National Interest.

Already early in its post-Soviet history, Ukraine passed, after its emergence as an independent state in 1991, one of the crucial tests that political scientists use to determine the democratic potential of a nation: Is an electorate able to kick out a country’s top official and most powerful politician via popular vote? In 1994, the Ukrainians deposed their incumbent regent in a presidential election. As a result Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) was replaced by its second head of state, Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005).

The much older and richer Federal Republic of Germany, founded in 1949, passed this particular democracy test only four years after Ukraine. In 1998, the Germans, for the first time in history, deposed a sitting Federal Chancellor, the CDU’s Helmut Kohl (1982-1998), via parliamentary elections that were won by the SPD. The Social Democrat’s then leader (and today employee of the Russian state) Gerhard Schroeder became the new head of government until 2005 when he too was deposed via popular vote. (There had, to be sure, in 1969 been the replacement of then incumbent Federal Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger by the SPD’s Willi Brandt. Yet, this was the result of a change of Germany’s governing coalition and not of that year’s parliamentary elections that had been won by Kiesinger’s CDU/CSU.)

In the 2010 and 2019 national elections again, Ukrainian voters kicked out their sitting heads of state with embarrassing results for the two moderately nationalist incumbents. The then respectively highest office holders, the outgoing Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Petro Poroshenko, manifestly wanted second terms in Ukraine’s highest political office. Yet, the one-term presidents were spectacularly beaten by opposition candidates, and duly stepped down after their crushing defeats.

Over the last thirty years, Ukraine has conducted dozens of highly competitive rounds of presidential, parliamentary, and local elections most of which fulfilled basic democratic standards. This experience is in sharp contrast to almost all other post-Soviet states that had been part of the USSR when it was founded in 1922. What is special about Ukraine, as a successor country of the original Soviet Union, is the opposite of what Carpenter asserts: It is not the relative authoritarianism, but the relative democratism of Ukraine that is remarkable, and that makes this state more worth of all-Western (and not only US) support than other founding republics of the USSR.

Carpenter’s confusion about these issues becomes especially visible in his second TNI article and rebuttal to Klain and me of June 28, 2021. He compares various post-Soviet states and comes to a strange conclusion: “Umland stresses that other countries emerging from the former Soviet Union are noticeably more autocratic than Ukraine, noting that [in a recent Freedom House democracy ranking in which Ukraine had received 60 out of 100 points] Russia received a rating of twenty points and Belarus received eleven points [out of 100 possible ‘Global Freedom Scores’]. He could have added that Kazakhstan was in the same dismal category with twenty-three points. But no one expects the United States to defend such countries militarily or praise them as vibrant democracies. Umland, Klain, and other fans of Kiev [sic] expect Washington to do both.” However, that is exactly the point: If Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan had achieved the same Global Freedom Scores as Ukraine, in the quoted Freedom House table, they should be treated like Ukraine. If they were – in Freedom House’s parlance – “partially free” and not “unfree,” the three countries would be worth Western support – including assistance by the US (which, by the way, received 83 points in this ranking).

What is, however, most surprising in Carpenter’s two The National Interest articles is not what he writes about, but the preeminent security issue he is entirely silent about – the narrowly understood national interest of the US in Ukraine’s fate as a former atomic power and today non-nuclear weapons state. As indicated in my first rebuttal to the Cato Institute fellow in June 2021, the US played a major role in the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine in the early 1990s. Together with Moscow, Washington pressured Kyiv then to give up not only a major part of the huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that Ukraine had inherited from the USSR when achieving independence in 1991. Russia and United States made sure that Ukraine would be deprived of all of its strategic and tactical nuclear war heads and ammunition. Today, Moscow’s and Washington’s concerted efforts from a quarter of a century ago look like direct preparations of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and start of a covert war in Eastern Ukraine in 2014.

The only relevant political concession that Washington made back in the Nineties to Kyiv was that it agreed to supplement Ukraine’s accession to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear-weapons state with the – now infamous – 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances signed by Ukraine, Russia, the United States and United Kingdom. The latter country also underwrote this fateful document although Great Britain had not taken part in the trilateral negotiations about Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament with the US and Russia. London supported this deal, however, with its official signature because the UK had, in 1968, been one of the – together with US and USSR – three founding countries of the world-wide non-proliferation regime and has since been a depositary state of the NPT. At a CSCE summit at Budapest in December 1994, Washington, Moscow and London assured Kyiv, in connection with its signing of the NPT, of their respect of Ukrainian sovereignty, integrity and borders.

With its attack on Ukraine since 2014 and especially with its overt annexation of Crimea (as well as also with some earlier and other actions), Moscow has been now for several years undermining the logic of the non-proliferation regime. It is not any longer clear that countries which refrain from possessing, building or acquiring nuclear weapons would be secure and especially be protected from countries that do hold atomic arms. Russia’s officially allowed possession of nuclear weapons, moreover, not only gave it a key military advantage vis-à-vis Ukraine. It was also the major reason why the West – unlike in Yugoslavia, Iraq or Libya – has not militarily intervened in the Russian-Ukrainian war.

A widely discussed June 2021 incident with a British war ship near the port of Sevastopol in the Black Sea had thus a more than symbolic meaning. The UK’s destroyer “HMS Defender” passed, on a trip from Odesa to Batumi, by Crimea without making a detour to avoid Black Sea waters claimed by Russia. This behavior of Great Britain was a peculiar form of validation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and 1968 NPT. Having received Kyiv’s permission to pass Ukrainian waters, the “Defender” defended not only general international law by taking the shortest path from the shores of Southern mainland Ukraine to its destination at Georgia’s Black Sea coast. The British vessel also upheld the logic of the non-proliferation regime built on the premise that the borders of non-nuclear weapons states are as respected as those of the official nuclear-weapons states under the NPT.

With his explicit demand to end US support for Ukraine, Carpenter calls not only for a betrayal of a beacon of democracy in the post-Soviet space. He also proposes to sweep under the carpet the normative and psychological foundations of humanity’s non-proliferation regime. If – after Russia as the legal successor of the USSR – a second founding country of the 1968 NPT would signal to the world that Ukraine’s territorial integrity and political sovereignty are of secondary importance, this could have far-reaching consequences for the international order. This is especially so as Kyiv once possessed an atomic arsenal that was significantly larger than those of Great Britain, France, and China taken together.

The Kremlin’s manifest violation of the logic of the non-proliferation regime since 2014 can be seen as a temporary and singular aberration of one guarantor of the NPT from a key international norm. An, as Carpenter proposes, US withdrawal from support of the Ukrainian state would, however, create a pattern in the behavior of the non-proliferation regime’s founders. It could signal to political leaders around the world that international law in general and the NPT in particular provide no protection for non-nuclear weapons states. Reliable national security can only be achieved through the production or acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. As the ultimate instruments of deterrence, nuclear war heads may, moreover, come in handily, if a government decides – like the Kremlin did in 2014 – to annex to its state a neighboring territory, and wants to scare away third parties from getting involved.

That Carpenter does not even mention these issues in his two articles in The National Interest is – even more than other aspects of his argument – odd. In so far as Carpenter presents himself, in his articles, as concerned about core national interests of the US, one would think that preventing nuclear proliferation is on his agenda. Yet, Carpenter did not even take an interest in this topic after it was explicitly mentioned in the first rebuttals to his initial May 2021 article.

In fact, the discussion about the grave repercussions of Moscow’s violation of the 1994 Budapest nuclear deal and the resulting implications for US foreign policy has been ongoing for more than seven years now. The debate has been taking place not the least on the websites of various DC institutions – from the Wilson Center for International Scholars to the oldest US journal of its kind, World Affairs (founded in 1837). One would have thought that the Cato Institute’s fellow had taken notice of, and addressed in his deliberations, the gist of the numerous US publications on this topic.

Andreas Umland is Research Fellow at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, Associate Professor of Political Science at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and General Editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society”  as well as Collector of the book series “Ukrainian Voices” both published by ibidem Press in Stuttgart.

Should the US Support Ukraine? A Debate in Washington, DC, and Elsewhere