The National Interest

Russia and China recently wrapped up a series of joint air and naval exercises dubbed “Northern/Interaction-2023.” Chinese state media hailed the exercises as a “substantive manifestation of the China-Russia strategic partnership.” The drills took place off the coast of Japan, spooking one of America’s most crucial allies in Asia.

Then, in what one analyst called a “highly provocative” move and a “historical first,” a joint Russian and Chinese naval flotilla approached the coast of Alaska. Biden administration officials downplayed the news, emphasizing that the patrol took place in international waters. But a Republican senator from Alaska cited the naval patrol as evidence of “a new era of authoritarian aggression.”

Some fear these developments signal an emerging power bloc in Asia bent on contesting American influence. Yet leading officials and commentators often fail to understand how the United States itself helped create the conditions for increasing Russo-Chinese alignment. Military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing is not simply an inevitable convergence of like-minded authoritarian states, as the popular narrative suggests. It is also a direct response to American muscle-flexing in the region.

In the past year, the United States has needled China in several ways. Washington sent a nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea in a show of force, bolstered its partnership with India, and deepened strategic coordination with other Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (“Quad”) members. Washington also held landmark military exercises with Japan and cut a deal to station more troops in the Philippines.

Undoubtedly, U.S. policymakers view these moves simply as proportionate responses to China’s escalating territorial claims and hostile rhetoric against Taiwan. But one side’s deterrence is another side’s provocation. When Washington rallies its partners for displays of military force and integrates Pacific states further into its network of military alliances, Beijing is apt to perceive threats to its regional interests. International relations theory predicts that states often choose to bandwagon with others when they feel the need to balance against the hostile intentions of rival powers. For better or for worse, when the United States bolsters its defense posture in Asia, China will naturally see a balancing coalition partner in Russia.

Since the end of the Cold War, the China-Russia relationship has ranged from bitter competition to cautious collaboration. But in recent years, Washington’s assertive posture in Asia has driven Beijing to pursue increased military cooperation with Moscow. A similar trend is apparent in the Arctic. Russia traditionally views China’s strategic Arctic aspirations with suspicion, but a U.S.-led boycott of the Arctic Council has spurred Russia to increase cooperation with China in the region. The two countries used America’s absence at the Arctic Council meeting to further cement security ties.

To be sure, the relationship between Russia and China remains hugely unequal. Despite touting a “no-limits partnership” between the nations, Beijing has in fact made the limits of its cooperation quite clear. Its state oil firm Sinopec has abandoned talks on investment in Russian oil projects. Apart from purchasing Russian commodities at discounted prices, China has largely adhered to international sanctions on Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. Beijing continues to preach neutrality in the Ukraine war rather than explicitly supporting Russia’s position and has spurned Russian requests for weapons, instead proposing a peace plan containing provisions that would be hard for Moscow to swallow.

China’s approach to the war in Ukraine is indicative of its rationale for strengthening defense ties with Russia. Vladimir Putin has framed the invasion as an existential battle against NATO and the entire U.S.-led security architecture. China’s reluctance to fully throw its global weight behind Moscow in the conflict—in arms, finance, and diplomatic support—is telling.

Rather than joining a wide-ranging authoritarian crusade against the liberal international order, China’s partnership with Moscow is narrowly focused on regions where it perceives critical security interests. For all the hype around the purported emergence of a new axis of authoritarian powers bound together by ideology, the deepening Russia-China relationship smacks of standard realpolitik. As the United States flexes its muscles across Asia to protect its economic, security, and global governance interests, China will inevitably do the same. Shunned by the West, Moscow is a logical partner in augmenting Beijing’s military might.

There are still opportunities to drive a wedge between Russia and China, just as when Richard Nixon exploited the Sino-Soviet split to establish relations with Mao during the Cold War. China must carefully weigh the military advantages of Russian partnership against its still-important economic ties to the United States. After Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing in June, the Bank of China announced limits on Russian clients’ transactions involving banks in several Western countries, in what could be interpreted as a conciliatory gesture towards Washington.

The United States has been quick to use its military prowess and diplomatic clout to expand its power in China’s backyard. It has hesitated, however, to creatively exploit the long-fraught relationship between Moscow and Beijing. If Washington elects to mount a myopic contest for influence in Asia but forgoes creative diplomatic engagement with China, it won’t just miss an opportunity to split China from Russia once again. It will instead create incentives for these two great powers to join forces, fueling the outcome it fears most.

Mark Hannah is a senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation and host of its None Of The Above podcast.

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The Biden administration has approved the transfer of Dutch and Danish F-16 fighter aircraft to Ukraine. Although Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky labeled this a “breakthrough agreement,” U.S. officials also privately stated that F-16s will provide “little help” to Ukraine in its counteroffensive. Until now, Ukraine’s counteroffensive has had little success, as Ukrainian forces could not break through the Russian defenses set up within Ukraine. Reportedly, Ukrainian troops suffered heavy casualties and lost almost a quarter of the weapons in their arsenal. Ukraine cited failure in the offensive due to a lack of modern fighter jets and stated that their old Soviet-era warplanes were outdated and inferior to Russian jets. The lack of air support for the troops on the ground seemingly undermined Ukraine’s counteroffensive. The Ukrainian Air Force failed to achieve air superiority or even air parity. However, from the looks of it, the sale of F-16 fighters will have limited effect on the counteroffensive by the time Ukraine is ready to fly the warplanes.

First, it is estimated that it will take six months to train the pilots to be combat-ready to operate the F-16. This does not include technical staff training to maintain the aircraft. While multiple states are collaborating in training the Ukrainian Air Force, the exact timeframe for completion of technical training remains uncertain. This procedure may be extended and intensive. Furthermore, by the time the Ukrainian Air Force is ready to deploy, it will be too late to have any measurable effect in the counteroffensive. It is also noteworthy that the F-16 training is facing delays, which will further affect the combat readiness of the Ukrainian pilots.

Second, the F-16s provided to Ukraine are old airframes, albeit with upgraded weapon systems. The fighter jets are estimated to be an average of forty years old and require frequent maintenance. The Ukrainian Air Force will spend significant time repairing the aircraft to keep them flightworthy. Proper logistical support and supply routes will be necessary to keep the jets in the air.

Third, to achieve air superiority, having superior equipment is not enough. A pilot needs thousands of hours of flight time to master their aircraft. According to retired Air Commodore Andrew Curtis of the RAF, “Training even experienced pilots on a new aircraft is measured in months, not weeks.” Curtis added that the same principle applies to Ukrainian pilots. Comparing this with Russia’s air force, which utilizes domestically developed fighter jets and possesses an in-depth understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their aircraft, it is apparent that such a scenario may not result in any significantly noticeable advantages for the Ukrainian forces. In addition, Ukrainian pilots are extensively trained with Russian technology and aircraft. Most of them are accustomed to operating Sukhoi and Mikoyan fighter jets. Expecting them to use F-16s in combat effectively is an impractical hope.

Even if Ukraine receives the much-awaited F-16s, their bases would be prime targets for the Russian military. Unless the Ukrainian Air Force achieves complete air superiority—an unlikely prospect—F-16s would be vulnerable to attack, even in their hangars. Similarly, Ukraine uses makeshift runways for its Soviet-era fighters to deceive the Russians. F-16s, however, need smooth, conventional runways to taxi and land. In all likelihood, the Russians will attempt to destroy these runways, perhaps before they are ready for action. Defending the jets and their supporting infrastructure would necessitate anti-air batteries near their bases to protect them from Russian attacks. This could make F-16s white elephants for the Ukrainian Air Force if the resources needed for protection and maintenance exceed their usefulness for destroying enemy forces.

Considering all the factors above and the slow process of acquiring these fighter jets, this agreement will not be as much of a “breakthrough” for the counteroffensive. The Russian leadership is also aware of this and may accelerate its military operation to respond to the newly acquired fighters. Although Russia has yet to achieve air supremacy, the Russian air war plans may adapt after Ukraine receives and employs the F-16s.

It is unlikely that F-16s will be a game-changer for the counteroffensive. A few dozen jets themselves, under the current conditions of the war, cannot make an effective breakthrough. This reality is compounded by the fact the enemy retains a well-equipped air force and anti-air missiles. With or without the jets, Ukraine’s counteroffensive will remain slow on the ground and in the skies.

Shamil Abdullah Saleh is a Research Assistant at the Strategic Vision Institute.

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In light of the latest subdued economic figures for the first half of the year, China has been swift to implement measures to achieve its annual growth target of 5 percent. The government has placed a  distinct focus on empowering the private sector and amplifying consumer spending.

In a concentrated effort spanning just two months, China introduced a plethora of policy reforms. The Central Political Bureau launched a comprehensive thirty-one-point plan dedicated to fortifying the private sector, vowing to enhance the business climate. The Ministry of Commerce, in tandem with thirteen other departments, championed augmented consumption in households, and the Ministry of Finance provided tax concessions for enterprises and individual entrepreneurs.

However, the effectiveness of these policies in genuinely reviving the economy and restoring confidence remains undetermined. While the People’s Bank of China has assertively cut interest rates, some of the government’s proposed policies seem superficial on paper, bordering on bureaucratic platitudes. 

Also, it is noteworthy that the government’s present measures seem somewhat narrow in scope and lacking in depth. For instance, tax incentives and start-up initiatives focus predominantly on minuscule-profit enterprises with limited financial thresholds. This overlooks the significance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—entities that form the bedrock of China’s economy. These SMEs, accounting for a whopping 99.8 percent of all companies and nearly 80 percent of employment, haven’t been given adequate attention by current policies.

Historically, China has recognized and leveraged the power of expansive economic initiatives. The 2008 stimulus program is a case in point, where China infused the economy with four trillion yuan to counteract the global financial crisis and the aftermath of natural disasters.

Given current economic uncertainties, there is speculation on whether China might resort to a similar, grand-scale stimulus. However, the escalating debt levels of local governments pose a significant barrier. Predictions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimate China's debt-to-GDP ratio will reach 55.1 percent by 2023. Additional data from the Rhodium Group indicates that this number could approach a concerning 100 percent when factoring in explicit and implicit liabilities from hospitals and schools.

Simultaneously, the country’s real estate sector is showing signs of strain. Prominent property developers such as Evergrande and Country Garden face financial challenges, affecting other industries and heightening systematic risks.

Recent defaults by key financial entities further underscore this instability. Zhongrong Trust, China’s premier private asset management entity overseeing approximately 230 billion yuan for 150,000 affluent clients, recently declared a default.

China now stands at a crossroads, faced with a vexing conundrum: a slowing economy demands aggressive expansionary measures to reinvigorate the market, but such actions might inexorably inflate the debt. This fleeting surge could be precariously bubble-like, potentially heralding a “lost decade” for China.

Moreover, China's current strategy seems inconsistent. While the government desires to foster a conducive business environment, actions like the “apprehend spies” campaign and office raids have precipitated a foreign investor retreat.

Several key businesses and financial institutions face challenges operating in China, further eroding international confidence. The Beijing branch of Mintz Group, previously subjected to an unexpected raid, incurred a $1.5 million fine, the rationale for which remains nebulous. Morgan Stanley’s Shanghai office was picked for on-site inspections, possibly due to its downgrading of China’s stock market.

Unlike other nations, China’s economic policies hinge predominantly on the governing philosophy of the Communist Party’s paramount leader. In Xi Jinping’s latest article published by the party journal, Qiushi, he emphasizes the importance of modernization with Chinese characteristics. By highlighting perceived problems in Western modernization paradigms, he posits that China is charting its distinct path.

In 1992, China’s economic reform architect Deng Xiaoping embarked on a momentous journey to the southern reform pioneer, the Guangdong Province. This “Southern Tour” was a watershed event, reaffirming China’s commitment to economic reforms. It decisively quelled doubts regarding China’s alignment with the Western market economy and laid the foundation for China’s developmental course in the ensuing decades.

Now, more than ever, China needs a similar visionary leadership. A decisive and coherent strategy, supported by unwavering political commitment, is vital to steer the nation towards sustainable growth.

Xiangxue Zheng is a researcher focusing on China and East Asia. He holds an M.A. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is based in Washington, DC.

Image: Shutterstock. 

In boisterous democracies, there are heated debates over intangible and seemingly arbitrary issues such as names, titles, and identities. These arguments have a penchant for revisiting history. In the United States, discussions about gun rights, abortion, and race stem from different understandings of the nation’s past and, often, its very foundation.

The Indian government’s use of “Bharat” instead of “India” in the invitations for last week’s G20 meeting has unleashed such a discussion within the country and raised more questions about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s objectives abroad. The name Bharat was applied to the lands of modern India for over three thousand years. Ancient Sanskrit religious texts and epics, like the Vedas and the Mahabharata, reference the name. On the other hand, “India” was derived from the fifth-century BC Greek reckoning of the Persian corruption of the Sanskrit placename “Sindhu,” designating the Indus River.      

First, the timing is noteworthy.  India is using the G20 to position itself as the leader and voice of the Global South. Over the last few years, the Modi administration has consistently championed the voices of the developing world, referred to as the Global South. Not only was his government among the first to deliver vaccines at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has also used every opportunity on the world stage to discuss reforms in the multilateral system that would make it more equitable for nations in the Global South. Modi has also advocated for including the African Union in the G20. Consequently, leaders such as the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, James Marape, have hailed him as the leader of the Global South for offering a third way in the tense climate under Cold War 2.0.

India’s goodwill in the Global South on various global platforms is not only a result of their delivery of public goods or recent advocacy efforts. There is also the underlying solidarity extending from a shared history as victims of imperialism. This renaming of the nation in an invitation sent out to global delegates is a product of that solidarity. It is increasingly seen as a decolonizing effort, at least by the supporters of the ruling government. Though, the partisan support is likely out of domestic concerns.

Interestingly, on the domestic front, the Modi administration hopes to convert nationalist fervor into votes for the 2024 parliamentary elections. Furthermore, the leader of the Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Mohan Bhagwat’s comments on Bharat prior to the news of the invitation have understandably raised concerns among the opposition parties in India on the domestic impacts of this supposed decolonizing initiative.

The fears over the ideological motivations behind the change are not unfounded. The RSS has previously called for an “Akand Bharat,” or “undivided” India. This conception of India encompasses almost all modern-day “South Asia” (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet, and Myanmar) and highlights the vast territories the RSS considers lost to various invasions in the last thousand years. This is at odds with the vision of the Indian National Congress (INC) and other state political parties committed to the borders agreed to post-1947 and have in the name of federalism.    

The idea of changing names is more than a partisan initiative, however. Across the nation, names of cities, towns, and even streets have been changed to their pre-colonization ones or new ones in the vernacular. For example, Bombay was renamed Mumbai, Madras became Chennai, Calcutta became Kolkata, Cochin became Kochi, and more recently, Allahabad became Prayagraj.

The partisan divide in India concerns the larger question: Who colonized India? The BJP and opposition parties agree that the British Empire colonized India, and the former’s dissolution in 1947 warrants a shedding of imperial vestiges from Indian institutions.

However, they disagree on the Islamic Mughal Empire’s role in shaping India, its cultural fabric, and institutions. From the blood-stained partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 to 2023, the question lingers on. Hence, despite “India, that is Bharat” appearing as the first words in Article 1 of the Indian Constitution, renaming the nation, even on a state invitation, has led to this clamor.

Much like the American debates about the founding of the United States (1619 vs. 1776), there is the Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s understanding of India (a wounded civilization coming to terms with its identity after centuries of Muslim and British rule) and prominent historian Romila Thapar’s inclusive, secular nationalist understanding of India. Naipaul’s thesis that the civilization’s scars predate the British Empire does not sit well with India’s liberal and left-wing thought leaders like Thapar and Arundhati Roy, who claim that the Mughals integrated within Indian society, unlike the British. Therefore, they did not truly preside over a colonial or imperial project.    

Bharat by itself is commonly used in various contexts and has not been marred in controversy as it has recently. For example, it was used by freedom fighters and poets during the British Raj—even by those from southern India—the area now more critical of the use of Bharat. Several Indian government-run conglomerates and universities have long used Bharat or even Hindustan in their names. More so, even the venue for the G20 event is called the “Bharat Mandapam,” which translates to “Indian Hall.”

The name change is also a part of the Modi government’s yearning to assert India on the world stage. While it has a precarious way of going about it—dallying between different camps—one week at the BRICS summit and another at the Quad leaders’ summit—it is indeed cashing in on the benefits from both camps. In a meeting that brings both camps together, it has rightly used the opportunity to rename itself.

There are domestic and diplomatic reasons for the India-Bharat change, and it stands as the latest flashpoint in the debates over Indian (or Bharatian) identity. As an election year approaches, one can expect the vagaries of Lutyens Square (New Delhi’s knot of government buildings named after the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens) to make headlines. Those headlines, however, do not often materialize to earth-shattering reforms, particularly in an election year. Is Bharat here to stay? I’d suggest asking again in June 2024 for a definite answer.          

Akhil Ramesh is a Senior Resident Fellow at the Pacific Forum.

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Much is at stake now that the United States and Vietnam have embarked on a new diplomatic framework. For nearly a decade, Washington has worked to strengthen ties with Hanoi. Amid increased tensions between the United States and China, President Joe Biden traveled to Vietnam on September 10, upgrading bilateral relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. While much of the focus of U.S.-Vietnamese discussions has centered around defense ties—critical aspects of their economic cooperation have been overlooked. The current partnership fails to strengthen essential elements of Vietnam’s energy sector, primarily its ability to secure long-term LNG contracts amidst global price volatility that will be vital to supporting its industrial manufacturing base. As the Biden administration makes arrangements to launch a new strategic partnership, bridging the gap between Vietnam’s economic development and energy needs is central to building a resilient economic alliance between Washington and Hanoi.

For Vietnam to be a reliable strategic partner—continued economic growth is paramount. In order to sustain its current economic growth rate, primarily through its manufacturing sector that hosts companies like Samsung and Foxconn, access to steady, reliable, and affordable energy is essential. Vietnam is one of Asia’s most promising industrial and manufacturing powerhouses, but ongoing political and economic circumstances in its energy sector threaten to derail progress. Vietnam has significantly invested in LNG as a low-carbon baseload fuel to transition away from coal and meet net-zero targets. As early as 2012, it built two LNG import terminals—Hai Linh and Thi Vai. However, political uncertainty and supply chain delays led the Vietnamese government to postpone opening both projects and dramatically slowed future LNG infrastructure development.

One of Vietnam’s main challenges is its inability to secure long-term LNG contracts, which exposes it to global price fluctuations and forces it to purchase gas on the spot market. Vietnam is a price-sensitive buyer, meaning wild swings in global gas prices can quickly force it out of the market. When the Thi Vai broke ground in 2019, the Platts JKM LNG price benchmark price hovered around $5 per MMB. At the height of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in winter 2022, prices skyrocketed to $70.50 per MMB—a price that would have seemed unthinkable years earlier.

Without stability in Vietnam’s energy sector, Washington and Hanoi’s economic partnership will weaken. For better or worse, gas is essential to Vietnam’s long-term economic growth. If Vietnam fails to adequately incorporate LNG into its economy, its dependence on coal will grow, leading to failed climate targets and increased power shortages. Expensive gas infrastructure could also risk underutilization, jeopardizing future investments and hindering the development of other green technologies. 

The Biden administration has already taken steps to promote economic resiliency in Vietnam’s energy sector through the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). JETP will finance nearly $15.5 billion in capital to accelerate Vietnam’s energy transition, primarily contributing to the expansion of renewable energy. Despite Vietnam’s promise as a clean energy leader, it will take time to integrate widespread distributive energy into its power and industrial processes, making LNG critical to providing a baseload fuel to support economic growth. 

For these reasons, long-term LNG contracts are an essential building block to an elevated U.S.-Vietnamese strategic partnership. Vietnam has already built expensive gas infrastructure, and contracts will mitigate many of the financial risks brought on by spot market buying. Contracts also ensure a steady energy supply to Vietnam’s growing population while supporting the backbone of industrialization. 

As the Biden administration implements a new strategic partnership, the White House should press to fortify Vietnam’s energy sector by advocating for long-term LNG contracts. Although the U.S. government cannot control commercially independent markets to ship LNG to Asia, Washington still has avenues to assist. JETP could provide a preexisting framework for the White House to allocate capital to subsidize the high costs of buying LNG on spot markets. It could also direct investment toward LNG storage facilities to buy gas at low prices and save supply for when prices inevitably spike. 

Despite the high global demand for American gas, current constraints on exporting capacity create a bottleneck between suppliers and international consumers. The White House can also use this new strategic partnership to leverage its convening power to bridge the gap between American LNG suppliers and Vietnamese buyers. Last week’s talks present a compelling argument for accelerating permitting reform in the United States to ease restrictions and create an avenue for deeper partnership and trade. 

Vietnam’s energy sector is at a critical inflection point. A new partnership between the United States and Vietnam presents an opportunity for greater economic and strategic cooperation. Still, Washington must work three-dimensionally to bridge the gap between Vietnam’s economic development and energy needs. As the Biden White House moves forward with an elevated relationship with Hanoi, addressing the realities of Vietnam’s energy landscape—especially its fledgling LNG sector will ultimately make it a more resilient partner and bulwark against aggressors in the Indo-Pacific region. 

Kathryn Neville is an independent contractor who has demonstrated her leadership on global energy transition topics through published works in the Diplomat and U.S.-China Focus. She recently graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with an M.A. in Economics and International Relations.

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While some hard-right politicians in Washington are trying to make political hay with accusations of corruption lobbed at Ukraine, two major recent political events suggest that Kyiv is becoming more responsive to the Biden administration’s entreaties to fight corruption.

The first is that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replaced his hard-working Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov with Rustem Umerov, a State Property Fund boss, corruption fighter, and Crimean Tatar by ethnic origin. Beyond being a subtle way of once again signaling that Crimea is a part of Ukraine, this is an effort to neutralize the miasma of corruption that enveloped the government of Ukraine since before the war.

The second shoe dropped when the Ukrainian Security Service arrested Igor Kolomoisky, a one-time business partner and mentor of Zelenskyy’s, for alleged money laundering. Kolomoisky is a U.S.-sanctioned oligarch who allegedly defrauded his Privat Bank depositors to the tune of $6 billion.

These moves may be signals that Zelenskyy means business when it comes to fighting corruption, and perhaps a pre-2024 presidential election show-and-tell. But it also has a vital importance to U.S.-Ukrainian relations and the prosecution of Ukraine’s war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The former is of notable importance, given that some noted conservative commentators Tucker Carlson, and various Republicans on Capitol Hill, are trying to use Ukraine’s endemic corruption to justify cutting military aid to Kyiv.

Losing the Peace

Since World War Two, America has consistently won military campaigns but lost the peace. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan showcase reconstruction bungling and failures in nation-building. A lack of vision, American cultural tone-deafness, local graft and corruption, and failure to either delegate power or centrally administer it, collectively resulted in failed reconstruction policies that ultimately harmed America’s national interests.

These tragedies are as repetitive as they are predictable. If “war is an extension of politics by other means,” as Clausewitz posited, then reconstruction politics is war by peaceful means. Yet, too often, war and reconstruction are seen as discrete enterprises. In South Vietnam, the regime of Ngô Đình Diệm was allowed to fall, despite Diệm’s effective although heavy-handed anti-corruption activity, because many in the U.S. establishment forgot that the battle against corruption was synonymous with the wider war.

The U.S. government ignored Vietnam's lessons at its own peril. When the United States invaded Iraq with a poorly defined political horizon and reconstruction plan, the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld and his successors were unprepared to administer the country after it naively disbanded Iraq’s ruthless Baathist military and bureaucracy. In this case, and many others, the failure to develop economic policy resulted in the intensification of Islamist terrorism.

A Chance to Win the Peace

If we don’t want to repeat these mistakes in Ukraine, the United States, EU members, and the Zelenskyy administration need to begin planning for reconstruction now—for both capacity building for military victory and for peacetime reconstruction.

However, purely humanitarian ventures often rapidly exhaust donors’ political will. Ukraine’s reconstruction is in America’s national interest and should be a win-win for Ukraine, Europe, and the United States. Investment in Ukraine should be profitable during the post-war reconstruction. Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe, rich in energy resources and raw materials, including rare earth elements, well endowed with human capital, and with a population eager to join the American-led democratic order. Ukraine’s reentry into the world economy would be a great economic asset for the U.S. business in the form of trade and investment.

From the U.S. side, by far, the biggest problem is graft, often stemming from the opaque system of bidding for contracts. The United States spent 141 billion dollars in Afghanistan, just shy of the $150 billion total (adjusted for inflation) that was given to sixteen European countries to rebuild after World War II under the Marshal Plan. $220 billion was spent in Iraq, only for Iraq to become an Iranian sidekick and target of China’s “going out” investment bonanza.

The largely unaddressed problem endangering future Ukrainian reconstruction is the abuse of sanctions tools. Western powers do not trust Ukraine’s sanctions, as the evidence for violations is secret and is not presented when sanctions reciprocity is requested. More cooperation between the Ukrainian authorities and Western sanctions enforcers is necessary, including transparency of evidence subject to review in Ukrainian and international courts.

“Since [February 24, 2022], more than 5,715 individuals and 3,153 legal entities have been added to the Ukrainian sanctions list, many of whom were sanctioned for facilitation of circumvention of the existing sanctions and other restrictive measures on doing business in Russia”, writes Hanna Shtepa, the head of the International Commercial & Trade (ICT) practice in the Kyiv office of Baker McKenzie. “More than 2,300 criminal cases were reported to be commenced in Ukraine regarding collaboration alone.”

Ukraine has introduced a wide array of sanctions against companies doing business with Russia. Sanctions are a necessary tool to cut the flow of military or dual-use technology to the Russian military-industrial complex and reduce revenue, but in the opaque Ukrainian political and business environment, this tool has morphed into an overused, abused, and politicized weapon that in some cases has nothing to do with Russia according to claims of affected Ukrainian entrepreneurs. Lack of transparency and absence of due legal process have led to suggestions that the Ukrainian sanctions regime is not free of corruption and vested interests.

There is an array of tools that can be employed that will help. Blockchain technology could track public money. Donors should maintain publicly available centralized databases of aid projects, running transparent, open bidding processes. However, all of these are band-aids without political buy-in from the U.S. establishment. What the United States needs is another Truman Committee.

The Truman Committee of the World War II-era was a special congressional committee designed to combat war profiteering, ensure fair rates for government contracts, and plan for postwar reconstruction. The committee created the political will that turned contract oversight from a dull administrative task into a bipartisan crusade, creating elite and popular support for sound reconstruction policy.

While U.S. reconstruction failings are best defined by disinterested or inept leadership, Ukrainian failures are better understood as agent problems. Political elites are energized to act but not always able to enact their vision. However, Ukraine is at least taking important steps to remedy this situation as the Reznikov replacement and Kolomoisky arrest suggest.

Zelenskyy also has proposed capital punishment for corruption by equating it with treason, identifying it as just as dangerous to the Ukrainian war effort as Russian bombs. Ukraine already has a High Anti-Corruption Court, and an equivalent of the Truman Committee reporting to the Ukrainian Rada, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention. However, despite these efforts, Ukraine has a long way to go.

Ukraine needs to tighten its wartime anti-corruption act, including making sanctions transparent and compatible with the West. President Zelenskyy is right: corruption in any form is just as damaging as Russian violence. But the proof of the pudding is eating: can Ukraine bring corruption under control so that its war effort becomes unstoppable and its victory realizable?

Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and is Managing Director of the Energy, Growth, and Security Program at the International Tax and Investment Center. He is the author of Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis.

Wesley Alexander Hill is the Lead Analyst and International Program Manager for the Energy, Growth, and Security Program at the International Tax and Investment Center. He researches geopolitical and geo-economic issues involving China, Eurasia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Image: Shutterstock.

Senator Barry Goldwater, the father of the modern conservative movement, declared later in life that debating the pros and cons of a welfare state was a useless activity—that instead, conservatives should focus on what kind of welfare state America should have. Much of the same can be said today surrounding the issue of industrial policy.

One of the few areas of bipartisan agreement today is the need for a strong and comprehensive industrial policy. As defined by the International Monetary Fund, “industrial policy” refers to government efforts to shape the economy by targeting specific industries, firms, or economic activities. Contrary to common belief, industrial policy is not new to the United States. From Alexander Hamilton’s advocacy of a strong industrial system to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and beyond, industrial policy, be it via NASA, DARPA, and tax policy, has been ever-present. 

Contributing to the prominence of industrial policy during the last decade are the pandemic (with scarcity of personal protection equipment), the growing economic and security threats from China, and populism strongly advocated by both political parties. Most recently, industrial policy has taken center stage via the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips and Science Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

Five key drivers of industrial policy merit attention since they will shape not just the parameters and content of that policy but also impact America’s global competitiveness for the foreseeable future. These are:

Prioritization of sectors. No government has the time, attention, resources or expertise to promote a range of sectors and industries. Additionally, picking winners and losers can lead to market distortions and inefficient allocation of resources. But given the choice of government support for companies or industries, the latter is a far better bet. Just witness the case of energy company Solyndra during the Obama administration. That firm and three other subsidized companies went bust at a cost of $780 million. As concluded in a study by the Peterson Institute, U.S. industrial policy has worked best when applied to whole sectors to subsidize research and development. Shining examples of smart industrial policy would be Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, Operation Warp Speed under the Trump administration, and North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park. Protection for steel, textiles, apparel, and solar panels merely raises costs and prices for consumers and abets retaliation by our trading partners.

R&D. A nation’s ability to develop, expand and sustain its industrial prowess is contingent upon its research and development infrastructure. The United States spends nearly $700 million in R&D, 30 percent of world total, with most performed by the private sector. Yet, despite ranking second after Switzerland in the Global Innovation Index, U.S performance on other indicators is declining. For example, federal support for R&D declined from 31 percent in 2010 to 21 percent in 2019. Support of graduate student and number of students studying STEM majors are declining.

Especially disturbing is a recent report revealing that in seven of nine leading sectors, U.S. firms’ size-adjusted R&D spending had either declined or remained stagnant while Chinese spending rose.

Workforce. The availability, quality, and productivity of the workforce—at all occupational levels—are vital to successful industrial policies. In terms of productivity, the United States ranking has fallen from fifth in 2015 to twelve in 2022. In all career fields, the average worker is productive for 60 percent or less each day. Looking at high school standardized test performance globally, the Organization for Economic Coopearation and Development reports that when comparing achievement scores in reading, math, and science, U.S. fifteen-year-olds rank twenty-fourth, thirty-sixth, and twenty-eighth respectively. Given this sorry state of workforce readiness, the only remedy is job training. The federal government’s Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act lets businesses hire and train skilled workers and get reimbursed for their efforts. Companies, unions, non-profit organizations, and high schools and colleges also offer a range of training programs.

Place-based innovation. Many communities across the nation are left out of the high-tech economy. As the Council on Competitiveness notes, this risks creating a bifurcated country with stark disparities between high-tech centers and rural or rust-belt communities where closed factories and a loss of tax revenue and jobs have created a dire situation, especially for those for whom emigration is not an option, Congress has authorized $80 billion for this Biden initiative which would provide competitive grants for local projects that match resources with need, opportunity, and capacity. It is unclear, however, whether poor, underserved, rural areas have the human resource base for upskilling and the ability to attract investment to foster and sustain place-based economic opportunities and revive economically depressed communities.

Trade policy. Trade is both a shaper and byproduct of industrial policy—shaper, in its catalytic role in the erection of tariff and non-tariff barriers and byproduct, in the resulting effects on employment, wages, and prices. Punitive measures such as tariffs on Canadian lumber, steel, and aluminum harm consumers far more than foreign exporters. And after all, more Americans purchase kitchenware, cars, and refrigerators than work in steel plants. The Trump protectionist industrial policies cost $80 billion, including 166,000 jobs according to the Tax Foundation. If re-elected, Trump plans to impose a 10 percent tariff on all foreign goods. Efforts to further open foreign markets to U.S. producers should be a centerpiece of American industrial policy, not erecting additional barriers to foreign imports. In this regard, the Biden administration’s neglect of traditional trade deals is most disheartening.

Inarguably, industrial policy is here to stay; one cannot put toothpaste back into the tube. Those on the Right must realize that industrial policy is not Soviet-style central planning, and those on the Left need to understand that in most cases, market-based incentives and solutions are the most effective course of action.

Fortunately, the U.S. industrial base is strong. The United States leads in fields such as bioscience, quantum computing, robotics, and other advanced industries. As for manufacturing, spending on the construction of new manufacturing facilities hit $196 billion, a sixty-year high. But as former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers asserted, “the doctrine of manufacturing-centered economic nationalism” is not the way to go, particularly when manufacturing accounts for a mere 8.3 percent of total employment.

Nor are market-distorting trade barriers such as “Buy American” provisions and subsidies for battery production and electric vehicles. Such subsidies discriminate against our allies such as South Korea and the European Union who will likely counter with their own subsidies. Making matters worse are Biden administration requirements that companies that apply for subsidies for semiconductor manufacturing must provide childcare for their workers. As Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation points out in the winter issue of Wilson Quarterly, America must restore and retain technological leadership. Cramming social policy down the throats of the producers impedes the path toward that goal.

With China nipping at its heels economically, the United States must maintain (and regain) a competitive advantage. Carrots for industry, not sticks for competitors are the wisest course of action. America must institute not only robust industrial policies but smart ones, as well. 

Jerry Haar is a business professor at Florida International University and a fellow of both the Woodrow Wilson Center and Council on Competitiveness. He is the co-author with Ricardo Ernst of Globalization Competitiveness and Governability.

Image: Shutterstock.

Jonathan D.T. Ward, The Decisive Decade: American Grand Strategy for Triumph Over China (New York City: Diversion Books). 304 pp., $28.99.

Earlier this month, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo followed in the footsteps of fellow cabinet officials who are executing President Joe Biden’s puzzling policy toward China. Before her, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and special envoy John Kerry traveled to Beijing to “build a floor” beneath worsening relations. According to Raimondo, she sought to improve commercial ties while addressing technology-related tensions.

The Secretary’s counterpart, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, agreed on the need for a stable economic relationship with the United States. In an environment of duplicity, in which the White House has openly accused China of undermining America’s economic future, many are asking whether exchanges like these merely plumb new depths of diplomatic inadequacy.

At best, this dissonance implies an absence of a coherent strategy. At worst, it indicates a raincheck from reality. Recurring high-level summits have served as a convenient excuse to avoid steps that might offend or provoke America’s chief rival. Even when the last meeting produced little, now is never the time for aggressive actions because they might prevent reproachment in the future. Proponents of President Biden’s approach are always eager to turn over a new leaf. Their caution has begun to sound like hopeful procrastination because it fails to accept present circumstances. In this time of uncertainty, with so many dissonant voices contributing to the debate on U.S.-China relations, credible, incisive views are hard to come by.

Jonathan D. T. Ward fits the bill. A reader unfamiliar with his influence need look no further than the opening pages of his second book, out this year, titled The Decisive Decade. The foreward demonstrates the long professional road he took to intervene in contentious arguments on U.S.-China relations. His book proposes a sweeping vision for the future of American foreign policy. Its core chapters should be required reading—even for his most fervent detractors.

H.R. McMaster introduces Ward’s text with a dramatic salutation “To Citizens and Business Leaders across the Free World.” The latter is an audience that has too long sought to discredit the quarrels unfolding in Washington over how to deal with Beijing’s increasingly assertive foreign policy. Early on in President Donald Trump’s tenure, the Lt. General served as his National Security Advisor. That administration produced a landmark National Security Strategy that prioritized confronting China.

Building on that inflection point in American thinking, Ward offers provocative positions about how to respond to China’s campaign of economic warfare. Now, McMaster argues, the stakes of failing to heed Ward’s advice are even higher. Since overtaking the United States as the preferred destination for foreign direct investment, one could imagine, McMaster suggests, “[Chinese Communist Party, or CCP] leaders evoking the quotation erroneously attributed to Vladimir Lenin: ‘the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.’” McMaster adds, “except it is worse; the Free World is financing the CCP’s purchase of the rope.”

Ward has set his sights on how to reverse these dynamics. Achieving that goal has led him to his current project. Rather than diagnosing the syndrome of chauvinism and imperialism at work within the Chinese state, he has put forward a framework for America’s strategy to deal with worsening circumstances. The ambitious scale of Ward’s reading of what ails U.S. foreign policy sets his book apart. His analysis remains instructive.

Step by step, he leads readers through the domains of economics, diplomacy, the military, and ideas. The “decisive decade” referred to in his title is the present one—according to Ward, the 2020s will determine whether the United States retains its primacy in international affairs. Rather than rising to meet these circumstances, America’s approach to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has langured. It has been defined by the kind of hesitancy that creates policies governed by old habits, that err toward half a loaf.

Despite decades of competition with the Soviet Union, it appears that the lessons learned from that era have either faded from memory or been deliberately disregarded. Ward suggests that the latter is true, driven by the short-term economic benefits America reaps from its partnership with China. He observes that despite the PRC’s intellectual property theft, threats of confiscation, and espionage, many businesses established manufacturing centers within its borders. After years of overlooking the obvious, these activities have jeopardized America’s “indomitable share of global economic might.”

In response to this looming risk, the author calls for a “two-pronged strategy of economic containment toward China alongside the revitalization and evolution of American industrial and technological power.” The first part of that approach merits special attention for its scope. According to Ward, the continued advancement of China's economy is contingent upon its engagement with the United States and its allies. Western powers and their partners possess the means to control the growth of China’s private sector. “Containment” involves preventing its government from accessing the necessary resources and inputs to pursue its goal of global economic dominance.

Crucially, this strategy entails limiting the expansion and development of China’s critical industries and essential technologies while gradually reducing its integration with major global markets and regions. Economic containment also encompasses the restriction or withdrawal of China’s access to vital resources such as technology, capital, and markets, which enable its ascent. “By simply not helping China any further, we change the course of its economic rise,” Ward argues. He adds that, “at that point, the troubles of China such as debt and demographic decline begin to take hold.” Despite his elaborate set of prescriptions, that’s Ward’s hard-nosed bottom line. Like many policies that make a great deal of sense, it requires consistency over multiple presidential administrations and alignment on objectives. It is those attributes that justify his use of the word “containment”—which George Kennan wielded to persuade the U.S. government to come to grips with the Soviet Union’s vision of victory.

Critics of this approach typically volunteer a parade of horribles that would surely befall America’s economy. If the government disturbed prior investments, interrupted ongoing deal-making, or intervened in the normal flow of capital, they argue, countless opportunities—and jobs, jobs, jobs!—would be lost. Were companies forced to relocate, they may never recover from the hit they would suffer. Ward’s research does a great deal to unmask myths about the exposure of America’s economy to the repercussions of what he calls “bifurcation.” No one denies the transition to something like economic containment would be painful. No one denies that executives face conflicts of loyalties between their fiduciary duties and the demands of national security (heightened by the CCP’s creative manipulation of incentives). These realities should not prevent a robust debate about what the costs would actually be of dramatic shifts that must now be contemplated. Ward cuts through the hyperbole put forward by parties whose interests remain embedded in the status quo.

Furthermore, The Decisive Decade aims not to prescribe fine-grained steps for specific government officials to take. Instead, like his last book, the author seeks to place into sharp relief the perils of not getting the broad strokes right within the next few years. He provides a rigorous demonstration that it would be better to accomplish key defensive steps now, amid calmer waters, than in the throws of some future period of crisis. Panic will exacerbate the downsides of measures adopted in haste.

A more profound and more trenchant critique of Ward’s position is that it rehashes an old, failed model of economic statecraft. Demanding that Wall Street follow orders and foot the bill to achieve national security objectives failed when President William Howard Taft tried it over a century ago. Why should it succeed now? In its earlier iteration, the U.S. government tried to counter Russian and Japanese influence on the Chinese mainland by pushing American banking and commercial interests to establish a foothold there. Instead of sidelining the imperial regimes of Russia and Japan, it was J. P. Morgan who ended up retreating. In contrast, the policy that has worked in the past, according to these skeptics, involves embracing free trade. Ever-deepening economic relations with China’s neighbors, premised on a laissez-faire agenda of liberalization, have the best chance of success, they argue.

The shortcomings of Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” certainly offer cogent historical lessons, but so do the last twenty-odd years. The CCP ruthlessly took advantage of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. It has actively sought to undermine that very system—to buy off and crowd out its constituents. At every turn, Beijing has acted to deprive the system of trade built by the United States of its legitimacy. It promises to follow norms that it later flagrantly violates.

Ward emphasizes that those tactics are part of a larger design. He is also cognizant of Henry Kissinger’s famous formulation: “No foreign policy—no matter how ingenious—has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.” To say that international trade has lost its domestic appeal would be a profound understatement. The demise of the Trans-Pacific Partnership suggests that similar grand bargains aimed at long-term, strategic gains are not on the horizon.

Last month, a Reuters/Ipsos survey revealed bipartisan majorities among Americans in favor of increased tariffs on Chinese products. Sixty-six percent of those consulted expressed a greater inclination to support a candidate in the upcoming 2024 presidential election if that candidate commits to imposing additional restrictions on free trade. Notably, prominent figures within the GOP, vying for the party’s presidential nomination, such as former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, have all called for the termination of permanent normal trade relations with China.

In the meantime, The Decisive Decade makes current U.S. policies toward the PRC look like gimmickry. In the wake of the Biden administration’s “small-yard, high-fence” approach, authorities responsible for export controls are falling short in their efforts to prevent crucial, dual-use technologies from being transported, whether directly or indirectly, to adversaries. A recent Congressional Research Service report brought to light that the Bureau of Industry and Security within the Department of Commerce approved a staggering 97.9 percent of the items listed on the Commerce Control List to be exported to China without requiring a license.

That statistic is not an outlier. Congress reported that, in 2020, the same bureau denied a mere 2.2 percent of exports of software and technology to China. Shockingly, the House Foreign Affairs Committee exposed that in 2022, that bureau also gave the green light to over $23 billion worth of licenses that permitted technology exports to blacklisted Chinese entities. During the same timeframe, export control authorities rejected only 8 percent of such licenses for blacklisted entities. Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, two of the PRC’s national champions, collectively obtained export licenses totaling over $100 billion in value.

Observers of Secretary Raimondo’s visit might wonder where all of this is headed. Historical analogies of the kind Ward proffers provide little comfort. “Often in an interwar period,” he notes, “the success of global commerce leads to delusions of stability between states.” He chides that “business leaders were then, as now, carried away by wishful thoughts of commerce as a means to pacify dangerous nation-states.” Gimmicks purveyed by President Biden’s administration might be another symptom of that recurring penchant for bien pensant policies. The Decisive Decade points the way to avert disaster.

George E. Bogden is an Olin Fellow at Columbia Law School and a Senior Visiting Researcher at Bard College.

Image: Shutterstock.

As Russia wages its unjustified war against Ukraine, Moscow has disproportionately sent its ethnic minorities to the fight, including Buryats, Tuvans, Chechens, Dagestanis, and various Central Asians. While all Russian citizens have been fair game for Russian military mobilization, Moscow has gone further by incentivizing and, in some cases, forcing Central Asian migrants to serve in the war in Ukraine to receive Russian citizenship. In response, Central Asian countries, which have tried to remain neutral throughout the Russo-Ukrainian War, are taking measures to reduce the number of their citizens being thrown into the fray.

Russia’s recruitment efforts of foreign migrants stem from its worsening demographic issues. Russia has struggled with demographic issues for over thirty years, but the war in Ukraine has exacerbated the problem, as women outnumber men by over ten million. The Russian military has sustained more casualties in the Russo-Ukrainian War than in a decade of war in Afghanistan in the 1980s or two campaigns in Chechnya in the 1990s. Additionally, in 2022, around 155 thousand Russians received temporary residency permits in Europe, Turkey, and former Soviet republics.

To compensate for these losses, Central Asians are prime targets for the Russian war machine. Russia hosts around nine million Central Asian migrants hoping to earn higher salaries than their home country. However, Central Asians are often exploited by employers and experience low standards of living, unsafe and exhausting working conditions, and poor health services. On top of this, Central Asian migrants have been subjected to arbitrary detention by Russian authorities. Central Asians are among the 50,000 prisoners in Russia who have volunteered or faced coercion to fight in Ukraine as part of the Wagner Group.

Moscow maintains significant political pressure on Central Asia. Given that Central Asian countries primarily rely on Russia for security, it is difficult for these countries to be forthright in their rejection of Central Asians being pressured to take part in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Despite this, the governments of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan have warned strongly about legal repercussions for citizens participating in foreign wars.

In May 2023, a thirty-one-year-old Kyrgyz man was sentenced to ten years in a court in Bishkek after being found guilty of joining Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's eastern region of Luhansk. Another Kyrgyz citizen who operated as part of the private mercenary Wagner Group was also detained in August 2023. As Bishkek cracks down on citizens serving in the war in Ukraine, twelve Kyrgyz have been confirmed to have died in Ukraine, while around twenty have been reported missing.

In Kazakhstan, after a Kazakh student said on social media that he had gone to Ukraine to join the Wagner Group, Kazakh foreign ministry spokesperson Aybek Smadiyarov clarified that “there is nothing romantic about it.” “We would like to warn that all citizens who intend or think about going and joining those ranks would face between five and nine years in prison in Kazakhstan, where it is a criminal offense,” he added.

The embassy of Uzbekistan in Russia, in a statement issued on August 10, 2022, declared that any form of participation in military activities on the territory of foreign countries is considered to be mercenary activity and will be punished by up to ten years in prison. This announcement immediately followed a Uzbek migrant leader’s proposition in Perm, Russia, to create a “volunteer battalion” to join the “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Despite Russia being the primary destination for Central Asian labor migrants, Russia’s recruitment of Central Asians to fuel its war in Ukraine may prompt Central Asian countries to find alternative areas where migrant workers can find employment. This would be a significant blow to Russia as Moscow has grown to rely on these workers in various industries.

During economic talks, Uzbekistan and the United Kingdom have discussed collaboration on labor migration. Additionally, Kyrgyzstan and South Korea have signed an agreement guaranteeing additional employment opportunities for citizens of Kyrgyzstan in South Korea. While language barriers may produce difficulties for Central Asian migrants, the popularity of the Russian language in several Central Asian countries like Kazakhstan is declining. Countries offering Central Asian states alternative labor destinations should provide comprehensive language training to ensure the success of these workers.

Moscow is engaging in risky activity by singling out vulnerable Central Asian migrants to support its war efforts in Ukraine. The longer the war in Ukraine drags on, the more strained relations between several Central Asian countries and Russia will likely become.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

Last Friday, new reports of fresh fighting between Palestinian rival factions resumed leaving twenty wounded in Lebanon’s Ein El Hilweh refugee camp. Immediately afterward, there was a precarious ceasefire that many hoped would permanently end the violence. However, so far, it has continued.

Residents of the camp and those living on its periphery were forced to flee for their own safety. This new wave of clashes between the Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas and Islamist organizations under the umbrella of “Muslim Youth” have caused fear that the unrest could spill out into the city of Saida itself. The Lebanese army is manning checkpoints outside of the camp, but it’s not permitted to enter as part of an agreement with Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA).

The PA is supposed to oversee all security matters in the camp. However, as the situation has become more dangerous, whether the PA is up to the task of returning calm for the 54,000 registered Palestinians who call the camp home has come into question.

The Ein El Hilweh camp was originally founded in 1948 when Palestinians fled for their safety after the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel. Since then, Palestinians in Lebanon have been stateless and denied the freedom to travel anywhere they like or engage in specific economic activities. This renewed round of clashes is raising fears of additional, open-ended intra-Palestinian violence.

Because the fighting remains intense and there are no signs of it slowing down, it’s difficult to assess how many lives have been lost so far. The number ranges between four to thirteen dead, with dozens injured. A number of Lebanese soldiers have also been injured by explosions falling across their positions near the camp.  

In a statement, the Lebanese Army declared that “5 soldiers were wounded when 3 shells fired from inside Ain El Hilweh landed near their positions at the entrance of the Palestinian refugee camp—one of the Palestinian refugee camp—one of the soldiers is in critical condition.”

As of now, there is no action being taken by the Lebanese army to enter the camp and engage in hostilities. Nevertheless, if the violence spirals further out of control and more Lebanese soldiers or civilians are killed, will it force the army to intervene?

Adding another layer of complexity, Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip and the largest rival to Abbas’s Fatah, is believed to be supporting the “Muslim Youth” forces in Ein El Hilweh. The press office of Hamas in Lebanon has categorically denied all claims that it is supporting any groups in the camp.

"We reject these empty and fake claims that contradict our policies and beliefs, and we consider them a new-fangled attempt to distort the image of Hamas Movement and the Palestinian resistance," said Hamas.

Hamas continued to say that it has cooperated with all appropriate Lebanese security forces and the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon to aid a return to stability and peace. Unfortunately, the people of Ein El Hilweh are experiencing anything but tranquility and order.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

China’s Chengdu Aircraft Corporation has now produced between 200 and 250 J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighters.

Given that most of these airframes rolled off the line in the past year or two, this shows a significant increase in production capacity since the J-20 took its maiden flight in 2011. 

What Is the J-20?

The J-20 is only the fourth fifth-generation fighter ever designed. It is the first highly advanced aircraft developed entirely in China, making it a landmark achievement for that country’s aerospace and defense industry. Built to counter American F-22s and F-35s, the Mighty Dragon has all the hallmarks of a fifth-gen aircraft, from stealth technologies and supermaneuverability to supercruise and advanced electronics and avionics. 

Development began on the J-20 as far back as the 1990s, and in 2008 Chengdu was awarded the final contract to design the fighter for the People’s Liberation Army. Major upgrades came in 2021, when the Russian-designed AL-31FM2 was replaced with the homegrown WS10 engine. That served further proof of the burgeoning might of Chinese aerospace, as the WS10 is remarkably more capable than the Russian import, allowing the J-20 to enter a supercruise regime while unlocking the supermaneuverability granted by thrust vectoring.

Production Increase

Beginning last fall, more production lines have come on for the WS10 and the J-20. Chinese leadership sought to counter the growing number of F-35s in the region. Currently, U.S. allies Japan, South Korea, and Singapore all field the Lightning II, not to mention the U.S. F-35s and F-22s stationed in Japan. 

China has been able to significantly increase how many completed units are delivered by using so-called pulsating production lines. This method involves moving every unit in production simultaneously, rather than allowing them to stack at work stations that may take more time. The method is not new — German aircraft manufacturer Junkers used it as early as 1926 — but the sophistication of modern fighter aircraft makes it more challenging. 

China Vs. The West

Some experts have pointed out that there are now more operational J-20s than F-22s. This conveniently ignores that F-22 production was halted after only four years due to the lack of a near-peer competitor — only 30% of the initial planned order was produced. Had the J-20 existed at the time of F-22 production, it seems likely the U.S. would have fulfilled the Air Force’s plan for 750 of the airframes. 

Furthermore, while many comparisons are made between the J-20 and the F-35A — the U.S. Air Force variant — it is important to remember that the naval services also operate the F-35 in the B and C variant. Added together, the U.S. has more than 500 operational F-35s, more than twice the number of J-20s. 

When it comes to F-35 production, Lockheed Martin has planned to deliver 156 airframes per year. Although they missed their target this year, instead hitting only 100-120, when combined with those F-35s already operational, this still creates a nearly insurmountable gap in active fifth-generation fighters, especially when considering the allied nations now beginning to produce the Lightning II. 

China’s increased production is impressive—many experts did not expect Chengdu to deliver 100 J-20s until at least 2027. However, the Chinese aerospace industry is still lagging behind the West when it comes to delivering highly advanced fighter aircraft. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel.

China’s meteoric rise in the short space of thirty years to become the second-largest economy in the world and a global power has been by far the biggest story of the twenty-first century. It has also unfortunately been accompanied by a great deal of worry by a fearful West, which together with the global mainstream media, has painted an ugly picture of the country’s remarkable pace of development.

One of the most visible manifestations of this progress is Huawei, a Chinese company and now the world’s largest maker of telecoms gear. Yet the company’s growth has been accompanied by fear and mistrust from the West—particularly from the United States, which regards the firm as a potential threat to U.S. national security.

A great part of Huawei’s supposed infamy can be boiled down to two things. The first is that the company is actually very well-run and extremely innovative—a fact that Westerners, convinced of their own technical superiority and the relationship between technological innovation and a particular set of political/cultural values, find unnerving. The second is the view that because it is a Chinese tech firm, and its founder was in the military as well as a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), it must be controlled by the Chinese government. This latter view demonstrates how little is understood of modern China, especially the relationship between China’s commercial ecosystem and the state.

This lack of knowledge relating to Huawei’s origins, methodology, and relationship with the Chinese stake makes it a recurring target. It would behoove Washington to know more about the company and how it came to be first.

Huawei’s Origins

For those unaware of the struggles within China after the creation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it is worth remembering that even in the 1970s and 1980s there were parts of China where famine was not unusual. One such region was Jiangsu province, where people were forced to forage in the forest for berries, nuts, and anything edible they could get hold of to survive. Bear in mind that this was also a time during which neighboring Hong Kong (and Singapore, too) saw fast food like McDonald’s and KFC become ubiquitous. This period of persistent poverty and suffering in China was a result of ongoing internal struggles and ill-considered policies that failed to support the country.

One man who grew up during this period was Ren Zhengfei. His family was so poor that he would forgo some of his meager rations so that his siblings could eat, and would instead mix his meals with rice bran to sustain himself. He used to go into the forest to pick anything edible for the family to survive.

An early life of struggle motivated him as a young man to embark on a most remarkable journey. Ren joined the Chinese military after studying architecture and engineering. He eventually left the army with bigger entrepreneurial plans, driven by a desire to contribute to society. He taught himself the workings of computers and other nascent digital technologies. After several failed forays into business, and in a last roll of the dice in 1987 at age 43, he formed Huawei, meaning “committed to China and making a difference,” with the intention of selling program-controlled switches.

The company is now, in many ways, one of the most recognized brands in the world—partly due to its innovations and market capitalization, and partly for being caught in the geopolitical struggle between the West and China.

Ren’s story of deprivation and desperation stands in stark contrast to that of many of the founders of today’s tech giants. It should also provide a clue into the resilience of the company, the sense of positivity that it is imbued with, and how it plans to withstand current external pressures. The launch of a new smartphone, demonstrating that Huawei has managed to overcome U.S. sanctions and can innovate by itself, has drawn rapt attention. Similarly, although it did not make the global headlines, the company also recently announced the introduction of its own Enterprise Resource Planning software, which ends its reliance on Oracle’s software. Many more innovations are expected, proving the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention.

What makes Huawei so innovative? Understanding this requires looking at three aspects of the company and how it is run, which provide insights for observers.

Huawei’s Governance and Ownership System

It is often wrongly assumed that Huawei operates as a commercial extension of the CCP, and is run similarly, where the founder Ren Zhengfei holds absolute authority, closely overseeing a very top-down, hierarchical system.

The reality appears rather differently. The privately-held company is 100 percent, employee-owned with  Ren holding 0.7 percent of the company’s shares. This governance structure is unique to Huawei and draws from extensive studies of best practices from across the world, customized to suit its needs.

The company operates under a collective leadership model with numerous checks and balances, where shareholder representatives and those sitting in decisionmaking bodies are democratically elected. The shareholders’ meeting, the company’s premier decisionmaking forum, decides on the company’s major matters such as capital increases, profit distribution, and election of the members of the board of directors and supervisory board. Employees are represented by the Trade Union Committee, and the Representatives’ Commission is the employee vehicle through which the Union fulfills shareholder responsibilities and exercises shareholder rights. The shareholding employees with voting rights elect the Commission on a one-vote-per-share basis, after which the Commission elects the company’s board of directors and supervisory board on a one-vote-per-person basis. These events are transparent and even live-streamed to all employees.

As the founder of Huawei, Ren’s influence and authority comes from the respect he has gained for his achievements—a particularly Chinese approach towards organizational harmony and order, rooted in a culture of respect for elders and leaders.  While Ren carries veto rights on board decisions, it is a matter of record that he has exercised this right only a few times and typically on technology and business direction, as is common in most privately held firms anywhere in the world. He is depicted internally as one who prefers to share his vision and ideas through company-wide addresses that serve as guidance on directionmaking.

The main motivation for setting up such a governance structure is to ensure the company's longevity and to enable it to achieve sustainable growth. Being a privately held company has allowed Huawei to design structures and set targets for the long-term,  able to focus on its core vision and mission—inclusive of customers and employees.

While recent sanctions have impacted Huawei’s smartphone business and short-term profits (there was a 69 percent year-on-year decline in net profit in 2022), Huawei has continued to make strategic investments and devoted even more capital to research and development (R&D). In 2022, they invested 25 percent of their revenue in R&D, equivalent to 161.5 billion yuan, more than any company in the world outside America in absolute terms, and more than the tech giants as a percentage of revenue. For comparison, Amazon, the world’s biggest spender on R&D, and Alphabet invested around 14 percent of their revenue on R&D in the same year.

Despite not being able to launch high-end 5G phones globally, the smartphone business units have not laid off any staff. This is also a cultural difference that is often misunderstood and unappreciated, where the employee is seen as being part of the family. This is such that, when hard times arrive, everyone bears with it and goes into “survival” mode. The launch of the new Mate 60, Mate 60 Pro, Mate 60 Pro+, and Mate X5 which is a new version of its foldable phones, is a testament to the wisdom of this strategy.

Huawei’s governance structure is what allows it to reinvest in the company, its facilities, R&D, and its employees, even during times of business downturn and external pressures.

A Culture of Learning from the World and Global Openness

Huawei’s emphasis on hard work, based on the Confucious tradition of collective resilience, has enabled it to attract talent who firmly believe they can overcome obstacles and create solutions that best achieve the company’s official goal of “Staying customer-centric and creating value for customers.” Employees are not driven only by the financial rewards on offer, but also by a sense of purpose and the need to be engaged in finding solutions to problems. The company’s appeal has enabled it to attract the best talent China has to offer.

In coming up with the company’s current corporate governance model, what is noteworthy is that Huawei’s leadership spent time studying the governance models of successful, long-lasting companies from around the world, including Japanese family-owned companies and corporations from France, Germany, and the United States. They actively considered the merits and weaknesses of different models, learning from lessons of success and failure, taking these ideas and customizing them for Huawei.

The design of Huawei’s supervisory board is a good example. It drew inspiration from German corporate governance structures and the governance principles developed by Fredmund Malik. However, Huawei’s structure is different from German companies in that the representatives of shareholders sit at the top. In addition, the supervisory board does not only supervise the board of directors but plays an active role in developing the leadership pipeline at different levels of the company and setting regulations for how the company operates.

The participation of employees is also unique. All members of the supervisory board and board of directors are Huawei employees. It is also a requirement that shareholder representatives nominated to the board have contributed to the company and demonstrated the requisite leadership skills.

A similar mindset of learning from different models was applied to succession planning and the establishment of its rotating co-chair system five years ago. Huawei places an emphasis on developing leaders within the company. To achieve the system it wanted, it studied different leadership structures from established companies with similar approaches, including family-founded companies.

By retaining top talent, the company believes it can overcome the limitations of any one individual and provide checks and balances. Huawei presently has three rotating co-chairs. When co-chairs are off duty, they visit other countries, meet employees, learn about the business, and, importantly, have space and time to think, which is given a lot of emphasis.

Huawei’s open worldview and its appreciation for other cultures are most dramatically reflected in its R&D campus in the city of Dongguan, nicknamed the “European city,” where 30,000 staff work in twelve different “villages” modeled after nine different European countries. Manicured gardens surround life-size replicas of the most famous cities and architecture in Europe, including the Palace of Versailles, Heidelberg Castle, Amsterdam, and Verona. Dotted across the villages are numerous restaurants and cafes, a reflection of Ren’s advocacy of coffee culture. There is also an electric train service so that no one needs to drive within the campus. The concept for the campus was conceived as part of a design competition and was selected for its uniqueness, setting it apart from the usual tech company or Chinese-inspired designs.

The organization and its employees clearly continue to have an appreciation for promoting global culture exchanges and learning from non-Chinese models of success. Prominent observers have taken notice of this.

A Commitment to Social Obligations and Making a Difference

Many might be surprised to learn that Huawei considers sustainability to be an integral part of its business priorities. It has four sustainability strategies, all of which are aligned with its vision and mission: Digital Inclusion, Security and Trustworthiness, Environmental Protection, and Healthy and Harmonious Ecosystem. Each of these strategies is integrated with the company’s business and product development. For example, Huawei’s products and solutions are increasingly designed to help the business and their clients reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions.

While the company does release annual sustainability reports, these do not adhere to the typical Western ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) or CSR (corporate social responsibility) reporting. Similarly, the company does not place too much of an emphasis on philanthropy and has not set up a foundation or philanthropic arm. Instead, it invests in developing cost-effective and sustainable solutions using its technology and working with local and multilateral partners to achieve its objectives in countries where the needs are most critical. 

Consider TECH4ALL, the company’s long-term digital inclusion initiative, dedicated to producing innovative technologies and solutions that enable an inclusive and sustainable world. They have applied AI and cloud to learn the sound of endangered animals, rainforests, and wetlands, to remotely monitor and prevent illegal hunting and logging. This application has been used in many countries in Latin America and Europe and has the potential to be deployed in other fields.

Another example is RuralStar. As part of its commitment to rural development and bridging the digital divide to boost development in remote areas, Huawei invested in innovating simpler and smaller technology for data transmission. The RuralStar solution allows a base station to be constructed on a simple pole instead of a dedicated tower, with low-power features that can be powered using six solar panels. RuralStar is widely recognized as one of the greenest and most cost-effective solutions available for remote and rural communities. Notably, the business decision to service rural areas comes at an estimated 30 percent reduction in profit margins compared with the traditional focus on high-density urban areas only. Globally, this technology services small villages of several thousand residents at a 70 percent cost reduction compared to traditional solutions. Following its first pilot in Ghana in 2017, over sixty countries have implemented RuralStar and over 50 million people in rural areas have benefited. As an example of how such projects are funded, in 2020 in Ghana, the Ministry of Communications and the Ghana Investment for Electronic Communications signed a financing agreement with Export-Import Bank of China for Huawei to deploy more than 2,000 RuralStar sites for Ghana to provide voice and data services for over 3.4 million people.

Within its goal to drive digitalization, Huawei has also been consistently investing in green transformation. Beyond a significant increase in the use of renewable energy within their own operations (a 42.3 percent increase from 2020), an increased energy efficiency of their products is also an important metric in their innovation process. A company reports a 1.9 times increase in energy efficiency in their main products since 2019, which in turn helps their customers and industry partners reduce their carbon footprint.

More broadly, Huawei’s digital power technology is being deployed and used in many solar farms globally. The idea is to manage watts with bits to help better produce clean energy and cut emissions. By the end of 2021, Huawei Digital Power had helped customers generate 482.9 billion kWh of green power and save about 14.2 billion kWh of electricity. These efforts have resulted in a reduction of nearly 230 million tons in CO2 emissions, equivalent to planting 320 million trees.

The ability to choose to meet its social commitments and to take concrete steps towards realizing its corporate vision beyond the mission statements is relatively unique to Huawei. At a time when companies are striving to meet ESG goals and overcome the fundamental tension between short-term priorities and investments for sustainable growth, Huawei works to overcome such challenges by seeing its products and services as key enablers of sustainable development. It is committed to developing information and communications technologies for reducing carbon emissions, promoting renewable energy, and contributing to the circular economy.  Huawei strives to promote energy conservation and emission reduction in its own operations and to use more renewable energy. This is possible to achieve due to internal consensus across the leadership team to make strategic choices aligned with their sustainability agenda, the desire to invest in long-term ambitions, and the capacity to innovate new products that allow them to achieve their sustainability goals.

A Company That Isn’t Going Away

Huawei’s success on the global stage, based upon excellence in delivering new innovations, demonstrates that China has much to teach the rest of the world. Yet this success came about via a strategy of openness and a willingness to learn from others. The company’s critics, scrambling to respond to recent developments, ought to take note.

Chandran Nair is the founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT). He is the author of Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World.

Image: Shutterstock.

For more than a year and a half, heavy sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have unquestionably hit Russia’s defense sector.

Without the materials and monetary means to expand and maintain its military arsenal, Russian forces have lost scores of weapons in its “special military operation” and have been unable to fully restock them. 

From main battle tanks (MBTs) to airframes, Moscow’s pre-invasion fleets of inventory have been slashed in half in some cases. The Kremlin is hoping that its ongoing Army 2023 exhibition will lure potential foreign customers to invest in its military equipment and partner with the rogue state amidst the large international boycott it faces. 

According to Russian news outlets, more than 1,500 domestic defense enterprises and 85 foreign companies are using this year’s exhibition to showcase new products. The Chief of the Defense Ministry’s Main Innovative Development Department has revealed Russia’s T-14 Armata tank is an impressive product that foreign customers should look out for.

In fact, Osadchuk indicated that the new armored vehicle would demonstrate its capabilities at some point during the exhibition. 

In July, the few Armata tanks that were sent to aid Russia’s frontline efforts in Ukraine were allegedly withdrawn from the conflict altogether. Russian state-run news outlet TASS first reported that the MBTs were taken out of the war following their brief stint in combat operations.

The Armata made its debut appearance in Kyiv this spring when videos depicting a T-14 firing upon Ukrainian positions circulated in May. The introduction of this “cutting-edge” MBT was highly anticipated, especially considering the dismal performance of Moscow’s other tanks throughout the war.

Since February 2022, experts estimate that Russia has lost half of its tank fleet. In fact, Moscow is so short on armored vehicles that it even turned to its antiquated storage piles of Soviet-era MBTs, including the World War II relic T-54.

The Kremlin often boasts that its new Armata platform is the best of the best and can outperform any near peers. However, obviously, the T-14 Aramata tank has not performed as well as expected since it only lasted two months on the battlefield before being withdrawn altogether.

The Armata was publicly introduced in 2015 when it was showcased during Moscow’s annual Victory Day Parade. By 2020, Russia’s Ministry of Defense announced that the T-14 had been combat-tested in Syria However, following the launch of Russia’s Ukraine invasion in February 2022, the country’s Armata production line ceased. 

Perhaps the greatest difference between the T-14 platform and previous Russian MBTs is its unmanned turret. In the Armata, all crew members are positioned in a protected and separated compartment where their survivability is much higher.

As detailed by Military Watch Magazine, “The tank’s frontal base armour protection of over 900mm, paired with Malachit explosive reactive armour and the AFGHANIT active protection system, provides an extreme degree of survivability.

The T-14’s sensors and armaments are also highly prized and major improvements over those of older vehicles, with its Vacuum-1 APFSDS projectiles having an extreme penetrative capability considered sufficient to frontally penetrate any of the vehicles currently in the Ukrainian theatre.”

Maya Carlin, a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin. 

Policymakers often assume the United States can deter China from invading Taiwan or win if deterrence fails. But that is no longer a safe assumption. Indeed, it is very possible that the United States will be unable to deter China for the remainder of this decade. Worse still, there is a real chance the People’s Liberation Army will be able to defeat U.S. forces in a fight over Taiwan. 

We are in this situation because Washington has consistently failed to prioritize investing in our ability to deter China. But now we have no other choice: If we wish to avoid war with China, or prevail if it comes, then we must urgently focus on strengthening deterrence in the Indo-Pacific by surging investments in the region, even if it means doing less elsewhere. This may not be the choice Washington wants to make, but we have spent decades deferring these investments—and now the bill is due. 

America’s Deterrent Has Weakened—But Few Realize How Bad It Is

The Trump and Biden administrations rightly identified China as the greatest threat to American interests. The Chinese Communist Party seeks hegemony in the Indo-Pacific. If it succeeds, it will have control over the world’s largest market zone, with dire implications for Americans’ security, freedom, and prosperity. To deny Beijing’s ambitions, however, we must be able to prevent it from using military force to dominate its neighbors. Most urgently, this requires strengthening deterrence against a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which the Department of Defense (DoD) has designated as its “pacing scenario.” 

It is no secret that America’s ability to deter China has eroded, but the severity of that erosion is not widely understood. Fortunately, this is starting to change. In 2019, the United States Studies Centre reported, “America’s military primacy in the Indo-Pacific is over and its capacity to maintain a favourable balance of power is increasingly uncertain.” Last year, The Heritage Foundation’s Index of U.S. Military Strength concluded, “[T]he U.S. military is at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.” The RAND Corporation found similarly this year: “[I]t has become increasingly clear that the U.S. defense strategy and posture have become insolvent.”

Things are especially dire in the Pacific. The Trump and Biden administrations both embraced a strategy of denial to deter China. This strategy rests on our ability to prevent China from successfully invading Taiwan, especially by quickly disabling or destroying hundreds of Chinese ships in the invasion fleet. Yet it is not clear the United States can do this. As RAND found, “Neither today’s force nor forces currently programmed by the [DoD] appear to have the capabilities needed to” defeat an adversary like China that can “seize the initiative and move quickly to secure their principal objectives.” Instead, our existing approach “leave[s] open the possibility of a rapid victory by China.” To make matters worse, Commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) Admiral John Aquilino testified this year that trends in the Indo-Pacific are going “in the wrong direction.”

Despite years of warning about U.S. force posture, for instance, U.S. forces remain concentrated at a relatively small number of major operating bases in Northeast Asia. This posture incentivizes China to strike preemptively before U.S. forces disperse. It also makes it easier for China to find and engage U.S. forces during a campaign. While the Biden administration has secured or improved access in Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and other nations, it is unclear when many of these locations will be ready for contingency operations. Nor is it clear whether hosts will restrict U.S. activities in their territories. Washington can sidestep some restrictions by doing more in U.S. territories, but construction in Guam and Tinian has long suffered from self-imposed regulations, supply chain issues, and funding delays. 

Meanwhile, hardening, redundancy, deception, concealment, and rapid recovery are long-acknowledged complements to dispersal, but they, too, remain works in progress in the Indo-Pacific.And while DoD plans to improve missile defenses on Guam, it is unclear if they will be effective against all threats, including hypersonic weapons and saturation raids. It is also unclear how DoD will protect Guam from attacks by Chinese special operations forces. As America trudges along, however, China is forging ahead with its own hardening and dispersal initiatives. As Thomas Shugart wrote, “What is clear is that at-scale survivability improvements can be done…within the region. They’re just not being done by us.”

U.S. forces are losing ground in other areas, too. In the air domain, for instance, China’s air forces will enjoy a significant numerical advantage near Taiwan. At the same time, China’s increasingly capable threat sensors and post-processing capabilities, airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, stealth fighters, and long-range air-to-air missiles might even allow Chinese air forces to see and shoot U.S. aircraft first effectively. U.S. forces might respond by taking advantage of better pilots, innovative concepts like “pulsed airpower,” or allied contributions like Australia’s E-7 Wedgetails, but they will still be limited by the aging U.S. AEW&C fleet, insufficiently long-range air-to-air missiles, and munitions shortfalls, especially at standoff ranges. 

America’s navy is also in trouble. China’s navy is the largest in the world and rapidly growing, with highly capable surface combatants and large fleets of paramilitary and civilian vessels available for amphibious operations, counter-targeting, and targeting. At the same time, China’s dense network of sensors and strike assets will make it harder for U.S. aircraft carriers and other ships to operate near Taiwan, limiting their ability to help blunt a Chinese fait accompli. U.S. submarine forces are still better than their Chinese counterparts. Still, they may be unable to fully capitalize on their qualitative advantage due to potential torpedo shortfalls and constraints on the number of attack submarines in the Indo-Pacific, especially in the initial period of war. Other munitions shortfalls and the ongoing retirement of guided-missile cruisers, guided-missile submarines, and attack submarines will further limit the Navy’s ability to deliver sustained firepower against Chinese targets. And things will get worse before they get better, with the Navy expected to shrink in the near term and recent testimony suggesting it may still struggle to resource a Taiwan fight in subsequent years. 

Things do not get easier outside of the air and naval domains. Space is widely recognized as a vital warfighting domain. However, according to public testimony, U.S. military space architecture is not resilient enough for a wartime environment and probably will not be until at least 2026. U.S. forces reportedly face a similar deficit in electronic warfare. According to Representative Don Bacon (R-NE), the United States has not fielded the “combat capability output that we need.” China also reportedly fields the world’s largest cohort of state-sponsored hackers, and recently publicized hacks by Chinese operators suggest the United States may not be able to count on an advantage in cyberspace either. Notably, any deficits in electronic or cyberwarfare will affect—potentially severely—U.S. forces’ ability to project power in the air, sea, and other domains as well. And none of this accounts for the logistics difficulties U.S. forces would face in a region defined by long distances and austere conditions, which would need to be overcome by sealift and air refueling fleets already facing readiness issues. 

All the while, the nuclear shadow is darkening. China is investing heavily in its nuclear forces, including theater nuclear forces that can be used for operational effect. This will exacerbate the operational difficulties facing U.S. forces. For example, a Chinese nuclear attack on Guam could significantly impact U.S. forces’ ability to execute conventional operations in the Western Pacific. China’s expanding nuclear arsenal will also limit America’s ability to use nuclear coercion to offset a conventional military disadvantage, should U.S. leaders wish to do so. 

“Everything Needs to Go Faster”

The challenges facing U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific are severe, but they should not be seen as insurmountable. The United States may no longer enjoy superiority over China in most warfighting domains, but this kind of superiority is not strictly necessary. As Elbridge Colby has argued, our goal in a Taiwan contingency is essentially defensive, so we do not need to dominate the Chinese. We need only be able to prevent them from conquering Taiwan.

However, the United States is not moving fast enough to achieve even this limited objective. This is largely due to a lack of prioritization: The United States simply has not invested adequately in deterring China. This year, for instance, the Biden administration’s defense budget left U.S. Indo-Pacific Command with $3.5 billion in unfunded priorities, while U.S. European Command had a mere $160 million in unfunded priorities. Nor has the administration shown any serious urgency in requesting or taking advantage of congressionally authorized funding for Taiwan military aid. Some in Congress, at least, have demonstrated leadership in authorizing military aid for Taiwan, but appropriators have been reluctant to fund it fully. This is despite the United States committing $113 billion in assistance to Ukraine since February 2022 and the Biden administration having just requested another $24 billion. 

This is not the behavior of a nation on the brink of war—and potential defeat—against a nuclear-armed rival in the world’s most important region. As Admiral Aquilino put it: “Everything needs to go faster.” 

Moving faster in the Indo-Pacific will require more forces, more funds, and more political capital. For instance, the United States can shift submarines, ships, aircraft, and certain ground units to the Indo-Pacific to strengthen our deterrent posture and rapid response capability. Additional resources would also help to accelerate the dispersal and hardening of operating locations; increase weapons production and stockpiling; accelerate the adoption and development of new capabilities that could make a difference in this decade; preserve relevant capacity by delaying submarine, ship, and aircraft retirements; intensify intelligence-gathering on Chinese forces, including any critical and targetable logistics vulnerabilities; and fully fund efforts to arm Taiwan with the weapons it requires to defend itself.

But substantial and sustained defense spending increases appear unlikely for the foreseeable future. Addressing the threat from China will, therefore, necessitate reallocating resources from other parts of the defense budget. This is the essence of prioritization, and it will require the United States to do less and rely on allies and partners more in other theaters. No doubt, this is a difficult choice. But Washington has spent years avoiding hard decisions. As a result, we face a real risk of war and even defeat in this decade. That is a risk we should not accept, but the only way to avoid it—or at least reduce it as much as possible—is to finally do what we should have been doing all along: prioritize deterring China.

Alexander Velez-Green is Senior Advisor to the Vice President for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation. He previously served as National Security Advisor to Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

The air-raid application went off on our phones around 2 am. During the previous ten days that we spent in Kyiv, we learned to trust the nigh-impregnable air defenses of the Ukrainian capital. Odesa, however, was a different matter. We arrived in the port city two days after the Russians renewed their brutal bombing campaign following their withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative. We couldn’t immediately shed the feeling of the relative safety of Kyiv: we muted the warning—voiced by Mark Hamill—on our phones and went back to sleep.

The explosion ten minutes later, followed by a bright white flash, occurred so close to our hotel that the windows of our rooms reverberated from the shockwave. Jumping out of bed and grabbing our electronics, wallets, and passports, we quickly followed the arrows pointing us to the shelter. Our guide from Kyiv, Andy, the previous day pointed out to us that the only Ukrainian-language signs in the hotel were the ones guiding the residents to the shelter—everything else was (still) in Russian. The irony was not lost on us.

Our hotel didn’t have a “real” shelter—we took cover in the non-functioning spa in the basement. A blonde woman in her twenties was already lying on a couch in a bathrobe, resting her head on a bunch of pillows that she must have taken from her room. She was sleeping. “Did she come when the sirens went off, or was she already there not wanting to get up in the middle of the evening,” we wondered.

As the onslaught of rockets and drones went on, people continued to slowly trickle in. A middle-aged woman with a toddler. Older men wearing work fatigues. There was no panic, only calm, quiet resignation. Some of them didn’t really look like guests from the hotel. A few dozed off in sitting position, others were tiredly scrolling on their phones. The whole scene, all these quiet, tired people sitting together in a dimly lit room in the small hours reminded us of the waiting room of a rural railway station before dawn. After half an hour the spa was full of “commuters.”

We started checking the Twitter and Telegram channels covering the bombings. “Explosions reported in Odesa RIGHT NOW!” As we gradually learned during our previous stays in war-torn Ukraine, the decision of whether to go to a shelter or not once the sirens started shrieking was a complex one. The most important factor, as in real estate, is location, location, location.

Roughly a year ago, during our first trip to Ukraine the rule of thumb was the following: avoid the city centers, they are prime targets. Instead, stay in the suburbs. However, the massive influx of NATO air-defense systems during the fall and winter of 2022 flipped that equation. Ukraine positioned these new assets to protect major urban centers while suburbs and the agglomeration of big cities are less protected. Moreover, Ukrainian air defenses can sometimes only intercept Russian missiles and drones above the suburbs, resulting in burning metal pieces raining down on the area. During our stay in Kyiv, Andy showed us the recent minor damage to the windows of his apartment complex in Sofiivska Borschahivka—just outside the city limits of Kyiv.

Another loud explosion, this one sounded really close. Generally speaking, urban centers were safer, but the Russians had been throwing everything they had at Odesa since the grain deal went defunct. In Kyiv, Maksym Skrypchenko, president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center, told us that the massive concentration of Western air defenses around the capital is a source of some resentment elsewhere in Ukraine, where air defense capabilities are more limited. He jokingly added that the Verkhovna Rada was the safest place in Kyiv not just because of the air defenses, but also owing to its close proximity to the Chinese embassy. The Russians would never dare target the Rada with their missiles that tend to miss. By chance, our hotel in Odesa was right next to the local Confucius Institute—we should be safe, right? Well, the next morning we learned that the Chinese Consulate in the port city was also lightly damaged that evening.

More than an hour passed since the beginning of the assault. Andy was already sleeping on a reclining chair next to us. We were still riding our adrenaline wave. According to the Twitter channel “Ukraine Front Lines” the Russians were launching volley after volley of missiles and kamikaze drones at Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Chornomorks—the Ukrainian port cities that were previously covered by the grain deal. Social media is an essential tool in assessing the severity of any air raid. The sirens go off even when a pair of Russian bombers are spotted over the Black Sea. However, no one would take cover in a shelter because of two lousy Tu-22M cruising dozens of miles off the coast. This evening, however, it was a sustained major attack—the third day in a row.

Coming Back to Odesa

A lot has changed in Odesa since our previous visit in January 2023. Arriving by car, we were surprised to see that the military checkpoints set up on the roads leading to the city had been significantly scaled back, the soldiers were only doing random checks instead of thoroughly examining every vehicle. We’d seen the same in Kyiv: most of the patrolling soldiers were gone from downtown, while the tank traps and sandbags on the square in front of our hotel had been replaced by workers planting flowers, bushes, and saplings in the summer heat. The roads were also being repaired in the capital. Plugging potholes and planting geranium has been a source of contention between the major of Kyiv, Vitalij Klicsko, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—the latter calling these works a waste of money during the war. The partial road closures made the insane traffic jams in the busy capital even worse: we arrived late at almost every meeting we had.

The return to normalcy was even more marked in Odesa though. The wider area around the opera house felt like a fortified military installation in January complete with patrolling soldiers preventing anyone from taking pictures. Even an innocent selfie with the façade of the opera was strictly verboten during that winter of darkness. Even then, the flame of culture never fizzled out: stumbling on wet cobblestones, with only the built-in flashlights of our phones guiding us, completely disoriented from the deafening roar of the portable generators on the streets we were among the people who made their way to the opera in January to attend a performance of the Barber of Sevilla.

Winter was over now: the electrical grid was fully functional. The generators, like the military installations, were gone, and we could finally take the vaunted picture of the opera house. The Potemkin stairs, immortalized by Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 movie, were still off limits though. However, even this closure projected a sense of normalcy: there were no concrete blocks stacked atop each other as giant Legos, no tank traps, sandbags, or barbed wire. Just a regular five-foot-tall aluminum fence, some tape, and a few small signs.

We expected to find Odesa in a similar shape to the Eastern industrial metropolis of Dnipro—calm, fully “functional,” but at the same time eerily empty. The Pearl of the Black Sea, however, was bustling with life. Families with small children playing in the city garden, merchants selling cotton candy, balloons, and beverages. University-age students drank and sang in packed bars and on the street while queues in front of restaurants offered live music. Nothing indicated that Vladimir Putin renewed his carnage of the port city two days before. If anything, it only boosted the sales of the “Putin Huylo” beer—the drink named after a popular Ukrainian insult comes in a bottle featuring a cartoon of the Russian president in an obscene position. The waiters in Odesa just kept recommending it to us.

One thing was obviously missing from the city though: the statue of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia (1762–1796) was removed in December, 2022 only to be replaced by a Ukrainian flag.

After the launch of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, popular attitudes toward Russian cultural heritage, as well as towards the Russian language itself went through a seismic shift. According to a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll conducted in December 2022, 58 percent of the participants thought that the Russian language was not important at all for citizens of Ukraine. In 2017, three years after the annexation of Crimea, and the beginning of the war in Donbas, only 9 percent of polled Ukrainians thought so. The same survey found that 80 percent of the polled population would like to see Ukrainian as the main language in all spheres of communication. This is despite the fact that only 57 percent claimed to use only or mainly Ukrainian in their everyday life, with 24 percent using both languages equally and 15 percent relying predominantly on Russian.

Such change in attitudes doesn’t come without conflict, and it doesn’t proceed at a uniform pace in a diverse country like Ukraine. Derussification has been steaming ahead in Kyiv since the start of the full-scale invasion: while the Ukrainian capital was already scrapping Pushkin and Tolstoy from its map, the mayor of Odesa opposed the removal of the monument to the Empress of Imperial Russian as late as August 2022.

Not everyone is fine-tuned to the everyday implications of the new reality brought about by Putin’s brutal invasion, especially in Odesa, a predominantly Russian-speaking metropolis on the eve of the war. Only three hours before the sirens heralded in another evening of terror, we stumbled into a group of people in their early twenties singing along with a guitar, in Russian.

Our guide, Andy—himself a singer—immediately went ballistic. “They are singing a song from Polina Gagarina! She appeared at a pro-Putin rally to support the invasion wearing the letter Z!” Indeed, after the highly controversial event held in Moscow in March 2022, Gagarina was banned from Estonia and Latvia. The silver medalist of the 2015 Eurovision competition is now also sanctioned by Canada for “peddling Russian disinformation and propaganda.” Andy darted to the organizers, but they were dismissive, “It’s just a pop-song that people like. People are singing along.”

Enter the ongoing process of derussification. Since June 2022, there has been a ban in Ukraine on playing music by post-1991 Russian citizens on any media. The police were swiftly called. By the time they showed up, however, the singing shifted to patriotic Ukrainian songs. The officers calmly explained to us, that the law in question does not apply to a bunch of youngsters singing Russian pop songs on the streets. Unlike in Kyiv, where there has been a “temporary” ban on singing in Russian on the streets. It is highly questionable, however, if the enforcement of this symbolic act by the city council would stand in a court of law. The police officers wrapped up our conversation by adding that they will have a little chat with the performers about what is appropriate to sing between two Russian missile barrages, and what might be not.

The Next Day

The Telegram and Twitter channels went silent around 3:30 am. However, that didn’t mean that the air raid was officially over; it just signaled that the Russians stopped launching missiles and drones. We waited a good fifteen minutes, just to be on the safe side, and then we joined a couple of people smoking outside of the hotel. The eerie quiet was sporadically punctuated by the wailing of rushing ambulances in the distance. We’d just finished our third cigarette when the sirens finally sounded the monotone, high-pitched “all clear.” We went back to the spa/shelter to grab our belongings. The blonde woman in the bathrobe was already gone. We woke Andy up and finally went back to our rooms.

A mere four hours later at breakfast nothing was out of the ordinary. A perfectly dressed, smiling staff was serving us our beloved sirnykys—the heavenly Ukrainian cottage cheese cakes. Odesa was the same bustling metropolis that day: Arcadia beach already felt like one big party at 3 pm, with loud music coming from every bar and restaurant. Crowds of people danced along on the boardwalk sipping their cocktails. Bathing in the Black Sea though was still a no-no until mid-August because of the naval mines bobbing around under the crashing waves. Instead, for 100 hryvnias (approximately $2.7) anyone could throw darts at the picture of Putin in the hope of winning a bottle of whiskey. On Arcadia beach, the shriek of the air-raid sirens around 7 PM was almost drowned out by the dance music blasting from the clubs. Anyway, this time it was just a pair of Russian planes spotted by the Ukrainian Air Defenses. The party went on unabated—up until the start of the military curfew at midnight, when people wished each other “a quiet night.”

We couldn’t shake the feeling that the dancing on Arcadia beach in the hot July sunset and the evenings spent in shelters came hand-in-hand. Far from being some grotesque Danse Macabre, what we witnessed on the boardwalk felt more like a celebration of life, the life that the war cannot take away from Ukrainians. A safety valve to vent the stress, an intense flash of normalcy to keep the spirits up during those clear summer nights when rockets are falling from the sky instead of shooting stars. Finally, a snub at the aggressor: extensive damage to critical infrastructure causing power and heat outages couldn’t beat the population into submission during the winter, and evenings spent in shelters without sleep during the summer won’t do it either. Maybe desperately clinging on to these shards of a normal life is what propels the country to continue its struggle.

All in all, for millions of Ukrainians another ordinary day came to a close, and they soldiered on.

Monika Palotai is a research fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute and a former Visiting Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Kristof Gyorgy Veres is a senior research fellow at the Danube Institute and a non-resident expert at the Warsaw Institute.

Image: Shutterstock.

The recent Camp David Summit marked a significant milestone, emphasizing the United States’ commitment to fortifying its Indo-Pacific partnerships in both economic and security realms. A standout accomplishment of the summit was the formalization of trilateral collaboration, anchored in the Camp David Principles. These guidelines reinforced the shared strategy of these nations amid a dynamic geopolitical landscape. Beyond outlining overarching principles, the summit paved the way for regular ministerial consultations and extensive cooperation spanning issues from defense to trade. The gathering also builds upon the thaw in South Korea-Japan relations, which have notably advanced since the inauguration of South Korea’s conservative president, Yoon Suk-yeol.

South Korea’s Media Echoes to the Summit

The summit received widespread praise from the American media, which heralded it as the dawn of a “new era of cooperation.” Central to this narrative was the proactive role of President Yoon. His endeavors to mend historical rifts with Japan, particularly by addressing the issue of Japan’s wartime forced labor, were deemed crucial. Many in the media lauded President Yoon’s conciliatory approach, a key driver behind the summit’s success.

Yet, responses within South Korea’s media were more nuanced. Conservative publications like Chosun Ilbo and Joongang underscored the landmark nature of the event, lauding South Korea’s pivotal role in the trilateral alliance and its promise for the nation’s future aspirations. Positive commentary in American media often buoyed these perspectives, particularly highlighting President Yoon’s leadership.

On the other hand, progressive newspapers such as The Hankyoreh and Kyunghyang Shinmun voiced more restrained views. Their commentary focused on potential compromises made by Seoul, especially in its negotiations with Tokyo. They underscored concerns about the neglect of critical issues, like the Fukushima Nuclear Plant’s water discharge decision.

Tensions Rise Over Fukushima Water Release

Japan’s decision to discharge water from the Fukushima plant into the Pacific Ocean triggered heated criticism in South Korean media. Among progressive South Koreans and advocates of the Democratic Party (DP), there is a perception that President Yoon’s diplomatic strategy has occasionally sidelined environmental and historical concerns. Recent polls, including those conducted by Hankuk Ilbo and Yomiuri Shinbun, revealed a staggering 83.8 percent of South Korean participants voicing opposition to the water discharge. Remarkably, this sentiment cuts across political lines. A subsequent survey by Hankuk Gallup echoed these results, underlining broad skepticism spanning the political landscape in South Korea.

Seizing on this widespread unease, the opposition party unleashed pointed critiques against Japan’s decision and Seoul’s implicit endorsement, branding it a grievous insult to humanity. They caution that this episode will taint Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and President Yoon’s legacies. The opposition’s sustained efforts to censure President Yoon and the People’s Power Party (PPP) over their foreign policy are not a recent phenomenon. They have persistently criticized the South Korean administration’s choice to negotiate with Japan on the wartime forced labor issue, a decision the current government views as integral to reinforcing the ROK-U.S.-Japan trilateral partnership.

South Koreans Worried About Japan’s Sincerity

The water release issue underscores South Korea’s reservations about Japan’s commitment to reconciliation. Although a recent poll indicates South Korean sentiment towards Japan is at its most favorable since 1995, the South Korean media remains wary. They spotlight the incongruence between Japan’s vocal expressions of collaboration with South Korea and the actual deeds of its parliamentarians. The visit by prominent politicians, including former Japanese ministers, to the Yasukuni Shrine—a symbol of Japanese colonialism from the Korean perspective—on August 15th intensified public skepticism about Japan’s genuine intent to heal historical rifts and strengthen ties with South Korea.

The recurring actions that ruffle the sensibilities of South Koreans, paired with calculated political rhetoric, resonate especially with those disenchanted by the current administration. A Gallup study revealed that of the 45 percent of respondents critical of President Yoon, foreign policy emerges as a significant point of contention. Within this group, 17 percent took issue with the administration’s perceived tepid response to the Fukushima water discharge, 13 percent aired grievances with diplomatic policies, 10 percent criticized Yoon’s perceived intransigence, and 5 percent spotlighted specific disputes with Japan.

Following the water release, criticisms of Yoon’s foreign policy could intensify, with opponents highlighting Seoul’s purported failure to protect vital national interests. As the 2024 legislative election looms just five months away, the opposition is poised to leverage these Japan-centric concerns more aggressively. They aim to bolster the prevailing sentiment among South Korean citizens against supporting candidates from the ruling party, counterbalancing the government that, in their view, already aligns with the majority opinion.

Japan’s Next Moves Are Crucial

While the unpopularity of Yoon’s decisions may not be the primary factor influencing his actions, internal party discord, exacerbated by potential electoral losses, could pragmatically affect Yoon’s future maneuvers. Yoon’s immediate momentum rises from the robust backing from his core party loyalists. However, if the ruling People’s Power Party faces defeat in the upcoming elections, the opposition may consolidate its already dominant position in the National Assembly.

Given this backdrop, it becomes crucial for Tokyo to exhibit gestures of genuine reciprocity. This includes a sincere acknowledgment of the water release concerns and a pledge to cooperate closely with Seoul to ensure maritime environmental safety. While the fruits of security and economic cooperation will take time to manifest, the immediate repercussions of decisions like the Fukushima water discharge may influence electoral contests.

A policy that lacks popular endorsement is inherently unstable and vulnerable to changes in government. The risks posed by unpopularity threaten the long-term viability of the ROK-Japan rapprochement. This principle is pertinent to South Korea’s domestic arena and extends to the fluctuating landscape of American politics. If South Korea and Japan falter in cementing their collaborative efforts, a change in U.S. leadership less invested in trilateral cooperation might derail progress. Thus, a resilient South Korea-Japan partnership, buoyed by committed leadership and popular support, becomes pivotal to navigate and withstand the vicissitudes of regional politics.

Jinwan Park is a political science student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, having previously studied for two years at Keio University in Japan. His past experiences include roles at the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. Consulate in Busan, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Image: Shutterstock. 

In June 2023, after four months of meticulous planning, the Ukrainian Army launched its much-anticipated counteroffensive, concentrating its efforts on Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia. This confrontation with the Russian Army bore one significant difference from the initial skirmishes of the Russo-Ukrainian War: the Russians were prepared. In contrast to February 2022, when the Kremlin embarked on an overly ambitious and hastily executed invasion that quickly transformed into a colossal military debacle, the Russian military had devised a strategic and feasible plan to counter Ukraine’s offensive moves. Realizing that hopes for an outright victory had vanished, Moscow began anticipating a Ukrainian counteroffensive. By November 2022, it had constructed an extensive defensive line running through its captured territory in southern and eastern Ukraine. According to British intelligence, this defensive corridor includes layers of trenches, razor wire, earthen berms, dragon teeth, and truncated pyramids. The combined area of Russia’s anti-personnel and anti-tank minefields is roughly equivalent to the entire state of Florida.

In light of these circumstances, one must consider the strategic agenda behind Russia’s decision to invest so many resources into one of the most extensive defensive fortifications in the world. As with most defensive lines, its primary objective is simply to impede the advance of Ukrainian forces and maintain control over the territories it currently occupies. However, considering the sheer size of the fortifications and the ongoing 600-mile-long frontline engagement with Ukraine’s counteroffensive, it becomes evident that sustaining control over all occupied territories may prove challenging, given Moscow’s limited resources and the existing strain on its military forces. For this reason, Russia likely chose a defensive strategy to give its troops time and room to breathe and prioritize more limited objectives in the coming year.

As Ukraine initiates its counteroffensive across the southern and eastern theaters of the war, Russia’s top priority is defending its positions in the strategically located Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The advance of Ukrainian forces in this region directly threatens Russia’s land bridge connecting Donetsk to Crimea. Preserving the integrity of this land bridge is Russia’s utmost priority, as its absence would divide Russian troops into two separate blocs. To supply ammunition and reinforcements to the Kherson-Crimea front, Moscow would have to rely on either shipments, airlifts, or convoys across the Kerch Bridge—all three of which have proved highly vulnerable to Ukrainian firepower. In April 2022, Ukraine demonstrated its offensive capability against the Russian Black Sea Fleet by deploying its subsonic R-360 Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles, which led to the sinking of the Russian Navy’s Moskva flagship. This event highlighted Moscow’s vulnerability, especially considering that the Moskva’s primary role was to provide aerial defense protection for Russian vessels. Additionally, the flagship had maintained a safe distance of fifty nautical miles from the Ukrainian coast. Given the 170-mile operational range of Ukraine’s Neptune missiles and Kyiv’s recent deployment of “sea drones” against the bridge connecting the Russian mainland and Crimea, it becomes evident that without a direct land route between Donetsk and Crimea, supplying troops in the Kherson-Crimea region would become highly challenging.

The other major objective of Russia’s defense is likely to prevent Ukrainian forces from crossing the Dnieper River, particularly at its narrow delta, where it enters the Black Sea. The pace and depth of the Dnieper can serve as a “natural moat,” granting the Russian Army advantages for defense purposes. Preserving this natural barrier is of utmost importance. If Ukrainian forces advance across the river and into Kherson Oblast, they will diminish the “buffer zone” between Crimea and Ukraine, leaving the Crimean Peninsula open to artillery bombardment or land invasion. Following the recent incremental progress of Ukrainian forces toward the southern bank of Kherson, the strategic importance of this region has grown. Any further advances in this direction could grant Ukraine the tactical advantage in establishing a stable front along the southern bank of the Dnieper. Consequently, reclaiming this territory, or at the very least minimizing its breadth, may become a paramount objective for the Russian military.

Russia’s objective of maintaining a territorial shield between its occupied territory and Ukraine also extends to Donetsk and Luhansk, which the Kremlin officially annexed in 2022. Securing control over these regions holds immense psychological importance for the Kremlin. Over nearly a decade, Russia has employed extensive internal propaganda efforts to present these territories as integral parts of the “Russkiy Mir” (Russian World). Therefore, any Ukrainian inroads toward Novorossiya (New Russia) would not only raise doubts among many Russians regarding their leadership’s wisdom in invading Ukraine but also question the competence of their military commanders. Losing territories captured through “grey zone” tactics in 2014 would severely damage the morale of Russian soldiers and civilians. For this reason, preventing Ukraine from advancing into the regions occupied since 2014 serves as both a political and military objective for the Kremlin. In this context, Russia needs to protect the towns that are logistical gateways to Donetsk and Luhansk, such as Pisky and Bakhmut.

While Russia may have specific priorities in its defense against the Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian high command is still aware of the importance of maintaining a relatively aligned defense line. In fact, Russia has constructed the most extensive defensive fortifications in Europe since World War II—precisely because they understand that without “strategic depth” in Ukraine, a breakthrough by Ukrainian forces could result in a rout of their forces, similar to the one that took place in northern Ukraine in the fall of 2022.

Finally, aside from direct military results, Russia has one hidden objective: to buy time. Russia aims to hold back Ukrainian troops to provide its defense industry with the necessary time to rebuild its offensive capabilities after they were significantly degraded by poor decision-making in the early days of the war.

Historically, Russia has frequently overcome its major adversaries by luring them into successive defense belts. This tactic exhausts the enemy’s equipment and manpower, allowing Russia to regroup and bolster its military. This strategy proved effective during confrontations like the Great Northern War (1700–1721) against Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon’s invasion in 1812, and Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa in 1941. In each scenario, Russia’s defensive maneuvers smoothed the transition to an offensive posture.

Given this historical backdrop, it is plausible that Russia’s aim in the present conflict is to exhaust Ukraine’s military capacities and provide the necessary reprieve for its own military. Recent reports indicate that Moscow has brokered an agreement with Iran to produce 6,000 Shahed drones inside Russia, underscoring the Kremlin’s intent to maintain robust offensive capabilities. Furthermore, stopping a significant Ukrainian counteroffensive in its tracks could deliver a severe blow to the morale of the Ukrainian populace. Already grappling with the daily onslaught of missile and drone strikes, economic strain, and forced displacements, such a setback might catalyze Ukrainian public sentiment in favor of a political settlement. It may do the same for Western sentiments as well. If Ukraine fails to make progress in the counteroffensive, public support for costly military aid transfers to Kyiv may drop and provide ammunition for restraint-oriented politicians. Such arguments may lead to a re-evaluation of Western support and even a push from some NATO nations for a peace deal on terms favorable to Moscow.

Simply put, Russia is exhausting its military resources beyond its long-term capacity to demonstrate that a decisive Ukrainian victory is impractical.  As Russia’s military capabilities strain under the weight of protracted engagement, the notion that such exhaustive efforts can ultimately yield a viable outcome for its campaign becomes increasingly untenable—but by holding out long enough and by inflicting disproportionate casualties on the Ukrainians as their counteroffensive continues, the Kremlin hopes to achieve its aims before this happens. It is up to Ukraine and NATO to determine if these efforts will bear fruit.

Arman Mahmoudian is a lecturer of Russian Studies and International Affairs and a researcher at the University of South Florida’s Global and National Security Institute.

Image: Shutterstock. 

At a juncture where sustainable peace seemed achievable, Armenian prime minister Nikol Pashinyan’s recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan—arriving finally two years after the end of the Second Karabakh War, with the mediation of Brussels and Washington—appeared to be a positive development. Regrettably, this promising trajectory now faces the risk of unraveling, jeopardizing all progress made after the recent escalation around Lachin Road and claims about humanitarian conditions.

On April 23 of this year, Azerbaijan strategically positioned a checkpoint in Lachin, a pivotal juncture along the internationally recognized border between Azerbaijan and Armenia. This checkpoint held significant importance as it served as the sole road connecting the Armenian-populated territory in Karabakh to the Republic of Armenia. Initially, the road functioned without major disruptions. However, tensions escalated following an attack on its checkpoint on June 15, prompting Azerbaijan to impose limitations on its operations. Azerbaijan also contended that this road had been exploited for illicit activities such as smuggling mines, weapons, and individuals affiliated with the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) into the region.

On July 26, a convoy of nineteen trucks carrying humanitarian aid was dispatched by the Armenian government, but Azerbaijan barred its entry into the region. This provided Armenia with a pretext to instrumentalize humanitarian issues to bring the matter before the UN Security Council for discussion on August 16. It was not coincidental that certain speakers during the Security Council discussion recommended refraining from employing humanitarian concerns as political leverage. Ahead of the UN Security Council session, significant resources were channeled into a global media campaign, involving politicians, celebrities, and even controversial figures like Luis Moreno Ocampo. The intention behind this was to shape a pro-Armenian sentiment within the international audience and to impose psychological and moral pressure on Azerbaijan, the global community, and the members of the UN Security Council.

Matters have only escalated since. On August 29, the Azerbaijan Red Crescent Society, affiliated with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, dispatched two trucks loaded with flour to aid Armenian residents in Karabakh through the Aghdam Road. This effort was aimed at breaking the ongoing deadlock and addressing concerns of manipulation surrounding the delivery of aid. However, the trucks encountered concrete roadblocks erected by individuals associated with radical groups who staunchly advocate for the sole use of the Lachin Road and vehemently oppose any alternative routes to the region. A few days later, the spokesperson for Charles Michel, president of the European Council, emphasized the importance of a step-by-step approach, which would involve a carefully sequenced operation for the full utilization of the Ağdam and Lachin routes.

Peace Is Achievable Solely via Sincere Negotiations

Rather than engaging in direct and honest dialogue with Azerbaijan without any mediators—as also endorsed and urged by the United States to address any concerns, including humanitarian matters—Armenia is putting significant effort into exploiting humanitarian issues for its global propaganda purposes. Conversely, following the conclusion of the Second Karabakh War, Armenian propaganda has focused on attempting tirelessly to portray Azerbaijan through an “Israelization” lens and positioning Armenia as a victim in a manner reminiscent of the Palestinian situation.

The intent behind this approach is unmistakably clear, evident not just to those in Baku but also conspicuously acknowledged in Yerevan: to establish the notion within the international community that Karabakhi Armenians cannot viably coexist under Azerbaijan’s jurisdiction. This narrative is constructed to morally validate the concept of remedial secession or separatism for Karabakhi Armenians.

As previously articulated within this platform, for Azerbaijan the dark reality of occupation hides behind the glitzy façade of remedial secession or self-determination and efforts to link the claim to liberal values, like in Crimea, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Donbas, and Luhansk. Additionally, the discussions and promotional efforts aimed at advancing a remedial secession agenda are perceived by Azerbaijan as an endeavor to divert the attention of the international community from the twenty-seven-year-long occupation of Azerbaijani territories, the plights of up to one million internally displaced persons, their inability to return to the liberated lands because of widely planted landmines, and the complete destruction of urban centers and rural communities like Aghdam. Indeed, acknowledging these responsibilities and addressing the complexities arising from this prolonged situation holds the utmost significance in ensuring enduring peace for the times ahead. Disregarding or deflecting focus away from the twenty-seven-year-long occupation could cast a shadow over the prospects of future peace, potentially leading to a less hopeful outlook.

Following their defeat in the 2020 conflict, Armenia lacks the military capability to directly challenge Azerbaijan and assert its claims over Karabakh. Moreover, Armenia's demands are not substantiated by international law. In light of these constraints, Armenia’s primary recourse remains the pursuit of “moral justification” on the global stage to substantiate its claim over Karabakh.

At the same time, prominent Armenian analysts, including figures like Richard Kirakosyan, advocate for a strategic approach acknowledging Armenia's military inferiority to Azerbaijan. They propose delaying the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan to allocate time for rebuilding and modernizing Armenia's military capabilities.

Significantly, the program outlined by Pashinyan’s government for the former Nagorno-Karabakh Oblast, endorsed by Armenia’s National Assembly following the 2021 elections, contains a provision obligating Pashinyan’s administration to secure the Karabakhi Armenians’ right to remedial secession. The recent acknowledgment of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan by Pashinyan’s government is not contradictory to this obligation; instead, it aligns with the commitment made in 2021 to pursue remedial secession. This alignment is evident in the range of actions and policies pursued by the Pashinyan government, including its recent international initiatives related to Lachin.

As a result, the statement made by the U.S ambassador to Armenia, Kristina Kvien, at the beginning of June, asserting the potential for Karabakhi Armenians to coexist securely under Azerbaijani governance, faced considerable backlash—even in the wake of the recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. This criticism prompted the ambassador to walk back her comments the following day, stating that the United States “does not presuppose the outcome of negotiations on the future of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

Enough is Enough

Beneath the surface of this intricate political struggle lies the enduring plight of ordinary people from both sides of the conflict. Amidst the Russian military presence and the remnants of Armenia’s armed forces, individual stories such as that of Izaura Balasanyan emerge, encapsulating the persistent suffering endured. Her story also sheds light on the intricate complexities that impede the path to normalcy and reconciliation for two populations separated by a protracted three-decade-long conflict.

In September 2021, faced with mounting needs and an avaricious landlord, Izaura made a fateful decision driven by desperation: escaping the confines of the Armenian-controlled territory. Her goal was to reach the comparatively promising Azerbaijani-controlled territories. However, her journey was abruptly halted when Russian peacekeepers apprehended her and handed her back into the custody of local Armenian security services.

Since then, the fate of this unfortunate woman has remained cloaked in uncertainty, her story fading into obscurity. Remarkably, her plight has failed to attract the attention of any international institution, leaving her ordeal unexamined and her voice unheard. This stark reality underscores the challenges faced by countless individuals akin to Izaura, trapped in the labyrinthine nexus of radical nationalism and a three-decade-long conflict.

The tale of Izaura serves as a clear example of those opposing the reintegration of these two communities and those acting as a barrier between them. In 2022, with the mediation of the United States in Washington, Armenia and Azerbaijan reached an agreement to commence dialogue for the reintegration between Baku and the Karabakhi Armenians. Interestingly, immediately following this accord, Moscow sent a Russian billionaire, Ruben Vardanyan, who lacks native ties to Karabakh, to the region to undermine the reintegration dialogue. He subsequently expelled all proponents of dialogue from the local de-facto administration. Despite his resignation, both he and Russia continue to uphold the trajectory that was established to impede all reintegration efforts.

Nevertheless, accountability extends beyond Russia and the radicals it supports. It encompasses politicians, experts, and journalists who, regrettably, remain detached from the anguish experienced by individuals like Izaura. Their disengagement underscores the urgency of comprehending the broader context enveloping these narratives.

Blame Games

Paradoxically, while politicians silence the cries of desperate individuals like Izaura, who were taken hostage and who are marginalized, they concurrently appeal to the global stage about the existence of humanitarian crises. In a contrasting stance, local leaders such as Human Rights Defender Gegham Stepanyan and others advocate for a balanced approach. Stepanyan advises restraint in sharing social media posts containing videos of uplifting occasions like weddings and other events that radiate inspiration and prosperity. Conversely, he advocates for refraining from disseminating videos depicting lavish lifestyles—a narrative that clashes with the established official stance.

Consequently, the ongoing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has now found its way into the realm of conflicting narratives within the sphere of social media. On these platforms, Armenians are diligently amplifying efforts to underscore the allegedly pressing humanitarian situation on the ground. In a contrasting display, Azerbaijani social media users are sharing recently published videos featuring Armenian counterparts participating in weddings, extravagant restaurant celebrations, and gatherings within Karabakh that radiate joy and prosperity. This clash of narratives reached its peak during a session of the UN Security Council. The Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs presented images of purportedly distressed children, prompting the Azerbaijani ambassador to counter with joyful and abundant photographs depicting life in Karabakh.

The clash of narratives occasionally crosses boundaries, prompting Karabakhi Armenian activist Artur Osipyan to advocate for a more balanced stance when making claims about hunger. Osipyan points out the potential negative consequences of stretching the truth excessively, as falsehoods can erode their credibility. However, it's worth noting that Osipyan later clarified his statement, indicating that his initial words had been misunderstood and taken out of context.

Karabakh Is Not an Island with One Port

Nonetheless, the intention behind the aforementioned words is not to disregard the potential consequences of the ongoing deadlock on the ground. Rather, the aim is to propose a viable exit or solution to the international community, with the intention of assisting both sides involved.

Tensions run high in both Azerbaijan and Armenia. Oftentimes, choices and declarations are shaped with a keen focus on their respective domestic audiences. With the pivotal elections in Yerevan in September,  Prime Minister Pashinyan is facing allegations of lacking firmness and not pursuing all possible avenues. Alarmingly, some voices are even shamelessly advocating for cynicism, going as far as suggesting the use of children and women as shields.

For Armenia and the local separatists, their foremost concern revolves around unhindered access via the Lachin road. Conversely, Azerbaijan asserts its rightful ownership of both Lachin and Karabakh—a status further acknowledged by Armenia’s prime minister. Consequently, Baku maintains that it holds the right to determine the routes and roads through which essential goods and supplies should be transported to the region. Despite Baku’s offer to extend aid and provisions through the Azerbaijani town of Aghdam, certain radical factions among the Karabakhi Armenians turned down this proposal. There are also notable figures who were dismissed from their positions, and they advocate for Karabakhi Armenians to engage immediately in sincere dialogue without the involvement of any mediators.

As Hikmet Hajiyev, the assistant to the president of Azerbaijan, recently emphasized, Armenia’s strong rejection of using the Aghdam Road while simultaneously insisting solely on retaining the Lachin Road is interpreted in Azerbaijan as an indication that Armenia’s intentions lean more towards pursuing the separatism of Karabakhi Armenians rather than their reintegration to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani officials draw parallels between the perspectives of U.S. officials on analogous instances involving separatist elements in Ukraine and Russia, juxtaposing these with the situation involving Karabakh separatists and Armenia. Notably, during a 2014 United Nations Security Council gathering, then-U.S. ambassador Samantha Power unequivocally stated that Russia had no legitimate basis for delivering assistance to Ukrainian separatists. Curiously, in the context of Karabakh, Ambassador Power advocates for Azerbaijan to unblock the Lachin Road for the delivery of aid to separatists. This divergent stance displayed by certain Western officials has been perceived by both the Azerbaijani government and its populace as a form of double standard, one that ultimately exacerbates the existing deadlock.

In fact, the way out from the artificial deadlock entails a decisive choice between prioritizing the reopening of the Lachin Road or emphasizing humanitarian considerations and exigencies.

Should the latter carry greater weight, then a straightforward solution emerges, rendering the ongoing crisis artificially prolonged. It is important to note that the Armenian populated territory in Karabakh is not an island, nor can it be solely reliant on the Lachin Road. The International Committee of the Red Cross, USAID, and other international humanitarian organizations possess the capability officially to address Azerbaijan to explore alternative routes, such as Aghdam, for the delivery of essential supplies to Karabakh, should the Lachin route remain an insurmountable obstacle.

Fuad Chiragov is Deputy Director of the Center for Studies of the South Caucasus (CSSC).

Image: Shutterstock.

PAK DA Looks Doomed - Russian aircraft designer Tupolev, now part of the United Aircraft Corporation - a powerhouse conglomerate that includes the likes of Sukhoi and Mikoyan-Gurevich - is well known for its large aircraft designs.

In the 1930’s, it held the record for the largest aircraft, the ANT-20 Maxim Gorky. Since then, the company has built on its pedigree with the Tu-95 strategic bomber, introduced in 1956 and still in service today; the Tu-154, one of the most ubiquitous short haul passenger jets in Russia and the former Eastern Bloc; and the Tu-144, the first ever supersonic commercial airliner.

Currently, Tupolev is working on their next project, the PAK DA, Russia’s first stealth bomber.

The Russian Air Force has had a stealth bomber in the works for quite some time.

Initial requirements were formulated in the 1990s and by the first decade of the 2000’s, Tupolev had begun work on the design.

While for most combat aircraft, faster is better and aerospace engineers have worked to achieve that goal, in the case of the PAK DA, Tupolev has actually gone the other way and intends to produce a subsonic bomber incapable of flying faster than Mach 1.0.

Instead, the design focuses on stealth capabilities, seeking to produce a result similar to the U.S. Air Force’s B-2 Spirit bomber which relies on low observability rather than speed to survive.

Stealth technology is not the only way the PAK DA appears to mimic the B-2. The Spirit is a highly recognizable aircraft due to its shape - it has often been called a flying wing. Essentially this means it does not have the typical parts of an aircraft, a fuselage, wings, and an empennage or tail assembly with various stabilization and flight control surfaces. Instead, the aircraft relies on a sophisticated flight control computer to maintain stability while aloft.

The lack of a tail assembly plays into the stealth aspect as well, greatly decreasing radar cross section.

Many details of the PAK DA remain unknown, however, its type of payload has been confirmed as conventional, nuclear, and even hypersonic weapons. Being able to launch such high speed ordnance is yet another reason which precludes the need for high speed flight.

Rather, being able to stealthily loiter outside an enemy’s air defenses while hypersonic missiles penetrate to the target will be the name of the game.

One of the challenges of stealth aircraft is weapons storage. Typically, combat aircraft store missiles, bombs, and rockets, on pylons or “racks” attached to the wings and fuselage. This both generates drag and reduces stealth profile making them easy to see.

To combat this, stealth aircraft are designed to store their weapons internally, which can make increasing the payload difficult. This doesn’t seem to be an issue for the PAK DA however, which is rumored to have a payload of 30T, more than the 20T limit of the B-2.

Currently, it appears that Tupolev has built at least one full scale mockup of the PAK DA and perhaps several smaller models for wind tunnel testing. Prototypes are expected to begin rolling out over the next several years and the first flight is projected for 2025.

While Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Maturov has said “there is no talk of using foreign parts in a project of this type,” it remains to be seen whether Western Sanctions due to the ongoing war in Ukraine will have an impact on the development of the new bomber.

"Clearly, Russia wants the PAK DA. However, I have no idea how they could afford it. Further, I would also add they don't have the microchips needed to make this work or technology due to sanctions related to the Ukraine war. For now, the PAK DA, I would argue, is just a dream," explained a former aviation expert who is retired from a major U.S. defense contractor. 

Maya Carlin is an analyst with the Center for Security Policy and a former Anna Sobol Levy Fellow at IDC Herzliya in Israel. She has by-lines in many publications, including The National Interest, Jerusalem Post, and Times of Israel. You can follow her on Twitter: @MayaCarlin.

NOTE: This piece has been updated to include expert commentary. 

During my recent stay in Germany’s picturesque town of Heidelberg, I got into a rather heated conversation with a number of African, Indian, and Chinese postgraduate researchers from the town’s medieval university on the BRICS group and whether or not they can spawn a new movement akin to the Non-Aligned Movement of the last century.

Their argument that the last two decades have been extraordinarily good for developing countries and their mostly poor citizens, does make some sense. Indeed, Harvard University’s celebrated economist Dani Rodrik likewise noted that the economies of developing countries have expanded at unprecedented rates, resulting both in a large reduction in extreme poverty and a significant expansion of the middle class.

Such superlative performance was and still is—so argued my interlocutors from the developing world—primarily driven by China and India—countries that, along with Russia, Brazil, and South Africa, make up the BRICS group.

There is no doubt that the BRICS group has become increasingly formalized and institutionalized over the past decade, hosting regular summits and establishing collective bodies. But can they pose a challenge to the G7?

The recent 15th BRICS Summit held in Johannesburg saw six new countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, being invited to join the bloc in a move alluding to China’s and Russia’s ever-strengthening ties at a time when tensions with the West are reaching boiling point. Even long-time US allies such as the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, along with Argentina and Ethiopia are also set to enter BRICS from Jan. 1, 2024.

Despite Russia being heavily sanctioned by the West, it was surprising to see BRICS pull off a side event of sorts in Moscow—dubbed the Cloud City International Innovation Forum—where representatives of some thirty countries talked about their vision of cities in the future and how technology could be incorporated with modern city designs. Among the speakers were Nobel Prize winners, Professor of Economics Mohamed Yunus (2006) and the UN Secretary General's Advisor Rae Kwon Chung (2007), as well as Serbian film director Emir Kusturica, a longtime acquaintance of President Vladimir Putin. The forum was attended by major urban practitioners from all corners of the world including Erol Ozguner, director of information technology of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, Khaled El-Attar, deputy minister of communications and IT of Egypt, Abdulrahman Ibrahim, Medina city’s development authority, and Daouda Gueye, vice mayor of Dakar for technology, who discussed how modern technologies could help improve the quality of life and find effective solutions and ensure technological sovereignty. As someone born in Yugoslavia, the event harkens back to the days of the Bandung Conference, when Josip Broz Tito, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Sukarno laid the groundwork for the Non-Aligned Movement.

Both Moscow and Beijing are keen to breathe new life into the BRICS bloc to show the world that there are alternatives to the patchwork U.S.-led alliance and institutions that have dominated global affairs for decades. Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the BRICS countries have only distanced themselves further from the West. Neither India, Brazil, South Africa, nor China are taking part in sanctions against Russia. Trade between India and Russia, and Brazil’s dependence on Russian fertilizer, have reached near historic levels.

Oliver Stuenkel notes that all BRICS members see the emergence of multipolarity as both inevitable and generally desirable—and identify the bloc as a means to play a more active role in shaping the post-Western global order. Member states share a deep-seated skepticism of the U.S.-led unipolarity and believe that the BRICS nations increase their strategic autonomy and bargaining power when they become independent of the West, the United States in particular. And over the past decade, India and China have enabled each other’s rise as emerging technology powerhouses. Chinese tech giants have invested billions of dollars into India’s biggest startups, while its smartphone makers dominate the country’s market and Indians have flocked to Chinese apps like TikTok.

So should the BRICS alliance be perceived as a counter to the West or more a forum for increased sovereign and autonomous thought? That depends on what one’s country’s ideological orientation is. Some, such as Iran and Argentina, are jumping on the bandwagon because they sense an economic opportunity. To others, BRICS serves as an attempt, if inchoate, to create an alternative to the existing world order.

The potential for synergies between the BRICS countries is enormous. In their current form, the BRICS make up around 31.5 percent of world GDP when adjusted on a purchasing power parity basis. Taken together, the expanded BRICS countries currently produce around 26 percent of global oil output and 50 percent of iron ore production used to make steel. They produce around 40 percent of global corn production and 46 percent of global wheat production. More importantly, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are home to 3.2 billion people, 42 percent of the world's population. In effect, these countries hold 42 percent of one of the most valuable resources on the planet: personal data.

China’s GDP is more than double that of the other four BRICS combined: almost $18 trillion compared with Brazil ($1.6 trillion), Russia ($1.8 trillion), India ($3.2 trillion), and South Africa ($400 billion). Joseph W. Sullivan wrote in Foreign Policy how in 2022 the BRICS ran a trade surplus of $387 billion—mostly thanks to China—and that all the talk of those countries coining their own currency may not be too far-fetched after all. The BRICS would also be poised to achieve a level of self-sufficiency in international trade that has eluded other currency unions as they are not united by shared territorial borders and hence are more likely to produce a wider range of goods than any existing monetary union. Finally, half of the BRICS countries’ population is already online, contributing significantly to domestic and international economic activity. These countries are working to welcome digital innovation and massively investing in their digital capabilities, crafting new data protection frameworks and increasingly requiring tech companies to store data about a person in that person’s home country. China has the most ambitious approach, making major investments in 5G networks, artificial intelligence, and high-tech manufacturing in a bid to be an even larger global technology power than it already is.

Russia and China have increasingly presented themselves to developing nations as economic and military alternatives to the West—that will neither attach demands on democracy nor human rights to diplomatic relations. Both Russia and China are upping the ante in recruiting these developing countries that are non-aligned and neutral.

Although they might find Russia an increasingly awkward partner, most Asian nations pragmatically choose to maintain their relationships for a combination of economic, military, and diplomatic reasons. The combination of China’s manufacturing might and India’s software and service prowess provides across-the-board capabilities. David Moschella and Robert D. Atkinson recently noted that parallels between America’s dependency on China for manufacturing and its dependency on India for IT services are striking.

In that context, Russia sees the relevance of the BRICS Innovation Forum as a means of strengthening relationships with friends and allies in an era of major geopolitical tectonic shifts. While many in the West hoped that Russia’s invasion would rally nations in the developing world behind the rules-based order, many in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East have largely rejected Western framings of the conflict as a battle between might and right.

For them, non-alignment in the form of BRICS is much more comfortable than being pigeonholed as part of a Western position—or, indeed, an Eastern position.

Harun Karčić is a journalist and political analyst covering the Balkans and Turkey. Over the past decade, he has authored numerous articles on Islam and foreign influence in the region, including Saudi, Iranian, Turkish, and more recently Chinese and Russian. He also regularly reports on Muslim minorities in Europe and rising right-wing nationalism. He tweets @HarunKarcic.

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