Diplomacy & Crisis News

The Biden administration has been making efforts to expand the Abraham Accords by brokering an agreement on the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudis have set out their goals, which alongside their desire for progress on the Israel-Palestinian issue include several major “asks” from the United States: a security guarantee, easier access to U.S. arms purchases, and U.S.-Saudi cooperation on the development of a nuclear power industry.

What are the prospects for success? Should the United States be willing to offer Saudi Arabia some form of security guarantee or “major non-NATO ally” status? Can the United States and Saudi Arabia find a formula to overcome disagreements on nuclear safeguards? How does this impact the recent moves toward a Saudi-Iranian détente? These are only a few of the relevant questions. The Center for the National Interest hosted a virtual discussion of these issues with two leading experts on July 27, 2023.

Jonathan Lord is Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Prior to joining CNAS, Lord served as a professional staff member for the House Armed Services Committee and had previously served as the Iraq country director in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and as a political military analyst in the Department of Defense.

Firas Maksad is a Senior Fellow and Director of Strategic Outreach at the Middle East Institute (MEI). He is a recognized expert on the politics of Lebanon and Syria, the geopolitics of the Arab Gulf, and the broader dynamics of the Middle East region. He is also an adjunct professor at George Washington University.

Greg Priddy, Senior Fellow for the Middle East at the Center, moderated the discussion.

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Taking advantage of disputes between adversaries is an attractive idea and the United States has had success at this in the past. The most spectacular example was how Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were able to take advantage of the growing Sino-Soviet dispute to improve U.S. relations both with China and the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. But there have been other examples as well. 

In his 2021 book, The Power to Divide: Wedge Strategies in Great Power Competition, Timothy W. Crawford described how in 1940-41 the United States and the United Kingdom succeeded at dissuading Spanish leader Francisco Franco from allowing German forces into Spain and attempting to seize Gibraltar from Britain by providing food assistance to his civil war-ravaged country. In the late 1940s, the United States was able to take advantage of the growing dispute between two communist leaders—the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin and Yugoslavia’s Josip Tito—to help communist Yugoslavia exit the Soviet bloc and be neutral throughout the rest of the Cold War. In the early 1970s, Nixon and Kissinger were able to leverage Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat’s disillusionment with the Soviet Union to facilitate Egypt’s move from being a Soviet ally to an American one. In the mid-1980s, the previously hostile U.S.-Iraqi relationship underwent a dramatic improvement for a few years on the basis of common antipathy toward Iran. A second rapprochement between Washington and Moscow occurred in the late 1980s/early 1990s on the basis of what appeared to be not just a convergence of foreign policy interests but political values as well. In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration embarked on the normalization of U.S. relations with America’s erstwhile adversary, Vietnam, which has developed into a stronger relationship ever since partly on the basis of their common concern about China. In the mid-2000s, the George W. Bush administration and Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi turned the previously hostile U.S.-Libyan relationship into a cooperative one partly on the basis of their common concern about jihadist forces which both governments regarded as a threat.

Some of these rapprochements lasted for many years or are still in effect while others were far briefer. More recent U.S. efforts at improving relations with adversaries, however, have either failed to make significant progress or have been reversed by subsequent administrations. The George W. Bush administration’s success in improving ties with Libya ended abruptly when the Obama administration worked with several other governments to bring about its downfall in 2011. The Obama administration’s efforts to improve ties with both Cuba and Iran were reversed by the Trump administration. The Trump administration’s attempts to improve relations with Russia, North Korea, and even (oddly enough) Iran also failed. The Biden administration’s efforts to improve ties with Iran enough to restore the Iranian nuclear accord have so far been unsuccessful, though its efforts to improve ties with Venezuela have been somewhat more so.

This is unfortunate for American foreign policy. The United States now has many adversaries, including formidable states such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and various jihadist groups. There are also a number of minor adversaries which cooperate with Russia, China, and/or Iran: Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and others still. In the current war between Russia and Ukraine, Iran and North Korea are both supplying arms to Russia while China is supplying Russia with vital economic support.

It would be beneficial for the United States if it could drive wedges among its various adversaries. And there are numerous disagreements and tensions among them that might provide Washington with opportunities for doing so. At present, though, the United States does not seem able—or even willing—to do this. Why? There are several possible explanations.

One identified by Crawford in The Power to Divide is opposition from existing allies to a state offering concessions to an adversary to induce it to alter its behavior. The cases examined by Crawford, though, all occurred either during World War I or just prior to or during World War II. In these cases, the allies in question were all peers or near peers of the state seeking to drive a wedge between adversaries by offering concessions to one of them. Even if the allies were all (more or less) on board, though, such efforts did not necessarily succeed. But opposition from an ally to an effort to woo an adversary made such an effort more difficult to mount due to unwillingness to risk souring relations with or even losing an existing ally in an uncertain attempt to either gain a new one or just to disrupt alliances between one’s adversaries.  Opposition from an existing ally also tended to make a state’s efforts to woo an adversary less credible to that adversary. 

Since the United States has not had peer or even near-peer allies but only smaller allies since the Cold War up through the present, Washington would appear to be in a very different position than that which the allied nations faced during World War I or World War II. Despite this, however, American allies that are by no means equal to the U.S. in military and economic strength have had an outsize influence on undermining recent American efforts to improve relations with adversaries and reducing their ties to more powerful ones. Israel and Saudi Arabia in particular expressed vociferous opposition to the Obama administration’s efforts in conjunction with the UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China to reach a nuclear accord with Iran. Although such an accord was achieved in 2015 despite their opposition, both cheered President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement in 2018 and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has opposed the Biden administration’s efforts at reviving it. A great power whose policies are so subject to influence from its smaller allies will clearly have difficulty in wooing adversaries whom those allies regard as implacable threats—even though improved ties between the United States and an adversary might better serve to reduce the threat from it to America’s existing allies.

Still, small allies can only succeed in disrupting American efforts to take advantage of disputes between adversaries if there is something about the American foreign policymaking process as well as American domestic politics that allows them to do so. And this points to a second explanation, also identified by Crawford, for why the United States cannot successfully pursue wedge strategies: American domestic politics. Improving relations with adversary states is often highly unpopular in the United States. Political forces opposing this are often stronger than political forces supporting it. Allied governments fearing a U.S. rapprochement with an adversary can work with diaspora communities in the United States to oppose it. Diaspora communities from the adversary Washington seeks rapprochement with often oppose it too, especially if they were dispossessed by the regime in power there. Republicans have criticized the Biden administration just for considering lifting some sanctions against Iran and Venezuela in an attempt to change their behavior. (By contrast, Republican efforts to pursue such rapprochements are usually not opposed by Democrats and have had better success in overcoming objections from fellow Republicans.) But as in previous cases (including the Nixon administration’s rapprochements with the Soviet Union and China, the Clinton administration’s normalization with Vietnam, the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy with Iran, and even the Trump administration’s efforts to improve ties with North Korea) have shown, Washington has been able in the past to overcome allied and domestic opposition to the pursuit (even if unsuccessful, as in the case of Trump and North Korea) of rapprochements with adversary regimes not undergoing fundamental internal change. Some might argue, though, that heightened political tensions inside the United States in recent years make the pursuit of pursuit or even rational discussion of a host of policy issues more difficult now.

There is, however, a third possible explanation for why the United States is less able now to take advantage of disputes between adversaries than it was in the past: several of America's adversaries have become much more successful themselves at exploiting differences not only between the United States and its other adversaries, but also between the United States and its traditional allies. China’s enormous trade relations with so many of America’s traditional allies have given many of them an incentive to resist isolating Beijing in ways that the Trump and Biden administrations have sought. Many non-Western governments—including all of America’s traditional allies in the Middle East—have largely refused to join America and the West either in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or supporting Ukraine militarily. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates not only have maintained good relations with Russia after the start of its war in Ukraine but have recently been pursuing their own rapprochements with Iran.

All of these factors may play a role in explaining why it has seemingly become more difficult for the United States to take advantage of disputes among its adversaries. But while they may be obstacles, they are not insurmountable ones. 

Objections of smaller allies might be overcome if Washington did a better job of explaining what advantages they may receive from the United States improving ties with common adversaries as well as the continuing or even worsening problems that could result if such a policy does not succeed. A firmer U.S. position which warns of the dangers of interfering in U.S. domestic politics as well as points out the inconsistencies between their objecting to American efforts to improve relations with adversaries when they themselves have sought to do so with different or even the same ones would also be in order.

The United States must also do a better job of explaining to the American public why improving ties with adversaries can be useful while not exaggerating what the benefits of doing so are. Washington needs to explain how improving ties with one U.S. adversary which has grown wary of another can be beneficial to the United States while not doing so can mean that alliances among adversaries might persist despite serious differences between them. Above all, Washington must convey to the American public that it pursues rapprochements with adversaries not out of altruism or naïve expectations (as the opponents of such rapprochements loudly claim), but in pursuit of realpolitik interests.

Finally, the success of America’s adversaries in taking advantage of differences between Washington and several of its traditional allies shows that American diplomacy needs to focus not just on taking advantage of differences between America’s long-established adversaries, but also on blunting growing rapprochements between its adversaries and traditional U.S. allies. Indeed, it is because America’s adversaries have been as successful as they have in exploiting differences between the United States and some of its allies that it is now especially important for the United States to increase its own efforts at exploiting differences both between its adversaries and between its adversaries and Washington’s traditional allies. The U.S. inability to do this successfully—whether as a result of allied obstruction, domestic political opposition, or any other reason—will only serve to enhance its adversaries’ ability to do so.

Mark N. Katz is a professor of government and politics at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has contributed numerous articles to The National Interest.

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The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan almost two years ago, in August 2021. Contrary to what some may have hoped, resistance to the Taliban regime remains sporadic at best, and the strongest opposition group is now likely the terrorists of the Islamic State. The Taliban have proven their ability to maintain stable governance over Afghanistan. Since there is no clear alternative to Taliban rule and no will in the United States for another military intervention, working with the new regime to further American interests appears to be the least-worst option.

The Taliban Can Help Against Rivals

Engaging with Kabul could improve America’s position against its rivals, primarily China. A U.S.-sympathetic Afghanistan will encourage China to bolster its defenses in the areas bordering Afghanistan. This additional military burden would be relatively light for Beijing, but it is a low-hanging fruit and an inexpensive win for Washington. Every People’s Liberation Army soldier guarding the Afghan border is a soldier unavailable for a military invasion of Taiwan. Conversely, if Washington lets Beijing’s influence dominate Afghanistan, it will help China secure its western borders. A China-aligned Afghanistan will allow Chinese planners to focus on projecting power outward instead of border security.  

Cooperating with the Taliban will also harm China in a more indirect way. Pakistan is a close partner of Beijing, and the two have hostile relations with India. But in recent years, New Delhi has become a key U.S. partner for containing China in the Indo-Pacific region. Meanwhile, U.S.-Pakistan relations worsened significantly since the 2010s. Hence, by pressuring India, Pakistan is a hindrance for Washington. The more Islamabad is free to focus its energy against New Delhi, the less New Delhi can focus on pushing back Beijing.   

Although Pakistan has armed and funded the Afghan Taliban since its creation in 1994, the two have had a falling out since the takeover of Kabul. Border disputes along the Durand Line poison the bilateral relationship, leading to deadly skirmishes. Furthermore, Islamabad resents the new regime’s lack of help in fighting the Pakistani Taliban.

This brewing conflict opens a historic opportunity for the United States. If Washington can help build a strong and stable Afghanistan, Pakistan will have to maintain significant forces to defend its western border. Islamabad will have fewer capabilities to challenge India in its east. That would be a win for the United States, as the Indians would have more forces available to counterbalance China.

As seen through recent deadly border clashes, Iran-Taliban relations are similarly contentious. The Taliban follows a fundamentalist, Sunni interpretation of Islam, while Iran is predominantly Shia. During the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan from 1996–2001, Tehran opposed the treatment of the Shia minority and supported the Northern Alliance, an opposition group to the Taliban. The Iranians also probably fear that Kabul will partner with the Gulf powers, thus threatening their rear. 

Engaging Afghanistan can help Washington further its objectives regarding Iran, both for negotiation and containment purposes. If the United States wants to reach an agreement with Iran to freeze its nuclear and missile programs and scale down its regional ambitions, a friendly Afghanistan would become a bargaining chip and additional leverage to pressure Tehran. Iran’s domestic political and economic situation is already difficult, and it is increasingly wary of its northern neighbors. Turkey now occupies parts of northern Iraq and Syria, and the Iranians have a growing antagonism with Azerbaijan; they do not want a strong, hostile Afghanistan rising on their eastern border. Hence, if entente with Iran appears impossible, Kabul would become a valuable partner to counterbalance Iranian power throughout the Middle East. 

Now that the United States has withdrawn from Central Asia, Kabul has little to fear from Washington. The Taliban fully understand that American planners are overwhelmingly focused on great power competitors like China and Russia and have no bandwidth left to attack their regime. Meanwhile, Kabul has to contend in its immediate neighborhood with hostile Iran and Pakistan, a rising China, and a lurking Russia. Distant America is thus a partner of choice for this weak state surrounded by actual or potential threats.

Fighting Trafficking and Terrorism

Other benefits would come from working with the Taliban: it is the most straightforward and efficient way to fight terrorism in Afghanistan. The Taliban themselves never participated in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. They are now the only sizable force present on the ground and have proven their ability to contain terrorism. Since they seized power, Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their consorts have been unable to reestablish sanctuaries.

For instance, in July 2020, before the fall of the Ghani government, the United Nations reported that Al Qaeda had between 400 and 600 fighters in the country. In June 2023, the UN assessed that Al Qaeda had fewer than 400 fighters and 60 senior officials in Afghanistan, and the U.S. intelligence community believes this figure to be overinflated. Contrary to what some feared, no resurgence of Al Qaeda occurred under the Taliban regime.

Indeed, some discreet cooperation against terrorism between Kabul and Washington is already ongoing. A journalist  reported for Foreign Policy that “U.S. and Afghan security and diplomatic sources say the United States relies on intelligence provided by the Taliban.” While the Taliban are capable of holding their own against terrorist groups, other, far more worrying nests of terrorism exist in the failed states throughout the Middle East and Africa.

The Taliban government can also help fight disruptive drug trafficking. The West has long worried about Afghanistan’s role as a leading producer of opioids, fueling the use of illicit drugs. In 2022, Kabul banned the cultivation of poppy from which opium is extracted. The ban was highly effective, and production collapsed. Other opium-producing countries may ultimately replace the loss, but it is still a step in the right direction. Since the ban will likely destabilize the already troubled Afghan economy, establishing normal economic relations with Kabul will encourage the Taliban to remain on track.

What Should the United States Do?

Concerns about engaging with the Taliban regime are understandable, given its history of violence and repressive rule. Critics may argue that America should not legitimize or endorse the regime. However, one must distinguish engagement from endorsement. By engaging with the Taliban government, the United States can gain economic and diplomatic leverage to hold them accountable in case of mischief and push for meaningful reforms. Over the long run, engaging Kabul may even urge respect for human rights and foster a more inclusive Afghan society. Isolation and sanctions only marginalize pro-Western voices and embolden extremist elements. On the other hand, engagement would allow the United States to make gains regionally and globally at little cost.

Washington should prioritize three courses of action. First, it must help stabilize the Afghan economy to strengthen the country over the long run. A costless policy is to give Afghanistan back its billions of dollars of financial assets held in the United States and elsewhere. Ending the sanctions is also crucial, as they did little to shake the Taliban’s rule and only harmed the Afghan people.

Second, even small-scale military assistance would significantly bolster Afghanistan. The Taliban’s military maintains large quantities of U.S.-provided weaponry, sometimes even using them in skirmishes against Iran. As time passes and wear and tear do their work, Kabul will find it harder to keep this equipment operational. Washington should thus allow U.S. defense companies to sustain American weaponry there and furnish new ones if necessary. Furthermore, encouraging the Afghans to use U.S. equipment will create a path dependency for the Taliban, offer additional leverage, and keep them away from Chinese and Russian defense industries. 

Third, establishing normal diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime would further U.S. interests. Exchanging embassies would promote trade and investment in Afghanistan and persuade likeminded international partners to do the same. It would also facilitate cooperation to fight terrorism and crime. 

Only through engagement can the United States contribute to a more prosperous and secure Afghanistan while safeguarding its interests.

Dylan Motin is a Ph.D. candidate majoring in political science at Kangwon National University. He was previously a Marcellus Policy Fellow at the John Quincy Adams Society and a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies. His research focuses on balance-of-power theory, great power competition, and Asian affairs.

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Les tensions avec le Kremlin couvaient depuis des mois, mais la rébellion du groupe Wagner a tout de même surpris. D'ordinaire, les mercenaires obéissent à leur donneur d'ordre, dont ils accomplissent les basses besognes. L'Afrique en sait quelque chose, qui a vu passer nombre de ces « affreux », (...) / Armée, Russie, Afrique, Sécurité, Matières premières - 2023/08

What Ukraine revealed about military power.

Last December, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled Japan’s National Security Statement (NSS), pledging to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP by 2027, turning Japan into the third-largest military spender in the world. While many commentators see this as a reactive move toward Chinese aggression and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the NSS indicates Japan is deliberately and proactively creating a new vision for the Indo-Pacific: “As a major global actor, Japan will join together with its ally, like-minded countries and others to achieve a new balance in international relations, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.”

To pursue this goal, Japan implemented a new diplomatic posture by moving toward ending trade disputes and normalizing defense ties with South Korea. Additionally, Japan’s NSS calls for strengthened cooperation with the United States: “Japan, while ensuring the bilateral coordination at its strategic levels, will work in coordination with the United States to strengthen the Japan-U.S. Alliance in all areas, including diplomacy, defense, and economy.”

Japan’s NSS, in short, highlights that the country aims to become an increasingly active player in Asia and that increased cooperation with the United States is key to maintaining prosperity for both countries.

Tokyo’s willingness to increase spending and cooperation in defense should be seen as a great boon to America’s defense strategy. According to a recent wargame by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, every single optimistic scenario alteration regarding Japan results in a “major change” toward a successful defense of Taiwan, whereas the worst-case scenario of Japan remaining neutral leads to a decisive Chinese victory. This resulted in the paper recommending U.S. leaders to “[prioritize] deeping military and diplomatic ties with Japan.” In particular, operational coordination between the United States and Japanese military was seen as especially important by “participants who had experience with the Japanese military.” However, increased strategic cooperation between the United States and Japan should not be limited solely to the military sphere; Japan can play a vital role in achieving a broad array of America’s strategic objectives.

Under the Biden administration, an American counter to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed to the G7 but has struggled to get off the ground. One of the issues contributing to this failure is, according to one analyst, “little understanding of the policy strategy or delivery mechanisms.” In essence, the American response suffers not only from a lack of funding, but also from an incoherent organizational structure and vision for actually delivering on promised projects.

Meanwhile, Japan already has a system for offering development funds and furthering its foreign policy goals in the form of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which disburses funds on behalf of their Official Development Assistance, a subdivision of their Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In fact, this system was established back in 1974, arguably making it an inspiration for China’s BRI. Aside from funding development projects, the agency sends personnel abroad and trains personnel in developing countries, amounting to 197,000 experts sent abroad and 649,000 accepted trainees since 1954. Considering current political realities in the United States and a lack of appetite in Europe to create “grand new projects” due to the war in Ukraine, it is prudent to coordinate with Japan’s already well-established system rather than create a new system from scratch. 

Another pillar of America’s strategy is rebuilding its industrial base, as demonstrated by the passage of industrial policy-oriented legislation such as the CHIPS Act and the Build America, Buy America Act. A key part of this task is improving the quality and quantity of personnel in the industrial sector. Currently, there is a talent shortage in the manufacturing sector which will expand to 2 million unfilled openings by 2030 if current trends persist. The Buy American Act is already struggling to find domestic suppliers for many critical goods, particularly in the construction industry. According to industry officials, no domestic manufacturers exist for dock cranes, trucks, boat lifts, and similar equipment. Furthermore, the recently built Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) chip fab in Arizona has “...yielded very little benefit for TSMC or Taiwan” due to steep construction costs (ten times higher than in Taiwan) and a shortage of qualified personnel.

Japan, meanwhile, has a strong manufacturing base in those sectors, but lacks design talent and ranks dead last in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for the average annual entry rate of new enterprises. Considering that America’s venture capital ecosystem remains the largest in the world and accounts for 43 percent of chip design talent demand, it would be in the best interest of both nations to pursue personnel exchanges and corporate cooperation.

This is already occurring in some key industries: Japan’s Rapidus, a company formed to put Japan back on the leading edge of the semiconductor industry, has partnered with U.S. tech giant IBM to manufacture the latter’s 2nm chip design. However, the focus shouldn’t only be specialization (i.e., America providing chip design while Japan builds them): both nations should instead look to improve on each other’s weaknesses. For example, President Joe Biden could pass an amendment to the Buy America Act that allows for a temporary exemption for equipment the United States cannot currently produce in exchange for Japanese companies either sending some of their engineers to America (to teach current firms the best practices for producing the equipment) or opening joint ventures in America (for producing the equipment).

The latter has been done before, albeit under far less amicable terms. Following Toyota’s rapid expansion into the American car market in the 1980s, Congress implemented a voluntary export restraint with the Japanese government, limiting automobile exports to the United States to 22 percent of the U.S. market. This action, alongside the looming threat of import tariffs on Japan, encouraged Toyota to create a joint venture with U.S. automotive manufacturing giant General Motors (GM) to produce cars in America, leading to the formation of New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. The goal was for Toyota to learn how to run a factory in America while General Motors would learn how to implement the Toyota Production System successfully to increase the quality of its cars. This venture proved incredibly beneficial to both companies: Toyota is now the second-largest carmaker in America, operating fifteen factories across the United States and employing around 176,000 Americans, while GM’s procurement and production system is “world-class and every bit as efficient as the Japanese automaker’s system” according to the White House Automotive Task Force. If such a productive outcome could come from a mix of desperation on GM’s part and coercion on Toyota’s part, then even greater heights could be achieved today with America and Japan having clearly aligned interests.

Additionally, on a cultural level, American analysts more seriously cooperating with their Japanese counterparts concerning Beijing will result in a more effective China strategy. Due to their shared and turbulent history, many Japanese diplomats were ahead of the curve when it came to many of the issues that resulted from China’s ascension as a great power. Early last year, Sasae Kenichiro, a former Japanese ambassador to America, wrote in an article by The Economist stating that: “We warned the US: this is not a small compartmentalized issue between Japan and China, but a sign of a growing power in the region” Unfortunately at the time, these warnings fell on deaf ears. As one China specialist at Tokyo University lamented in the same article: “Fifteen years ago, if I talked to [Western colleagues] about the negative aspects of China, I was treated as a right-wing, China-hating, Japanese scholar.”

This needs to change. Ideally, the United States should have nearly as many personnel dedicated to understanding and working with Japan as there are for China. The America-Japan alliance is the cornerstone of the current geopolitical order in the Pacific, and it is time for both nations to work toward strengthening bilateral ties to maintain that status.

Siddhartha Kazi is an undergraduate student studying Industrial Engineering at Texas A&M University.

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More than forty years ago, I wrote a book titled Negotiating Peace that analyzed the diplomatic and military dynamics of bringing a war to an end. It drew material from the endings of wars through nearly two centuries, as well as a closer examination of a few major cases that had extended periods of simultaneous combat and negotiations. It also drew on theoretical work, chiefly by economists, about bargaining. Parts of the book got rather technical—it included differential equations—but it also had a more digestible prescriptive side. An appendix titled “Lessons for the Statesman at War” included forty-four pieces of advice for how best to employ diplomatic and military instruments to achieve a peace that will maximize the interests of one’s own nation.

Much of this advice is at least potentially applicable to the current war in Ukraine—from the standpoint not only of decisionmakers in Kyiv and Moscow but also of policymakers in Washington, in terms of what they should expect or hope to promote. The actual applicability of some of my apothegms will depend on events yet to unfold, but the following outlines a few of the major lessons.

The ending of the war in Ukraine will almost certainly entail some form of bargaining between Ukraine and Russia, and will leave a situation that represents a compromise between the interests of the two nations. It is rare in interstate conflicts for one belligerent to eradicate the other so that it has no need for any bargaining or compromise. It is not so rare in intrastate warfare, in which an insurgency might eliminate and replace an incumbent regime or the regime might crush the insurgency solely through military means (such as Sri Lanka’s final eradication of the Tamil Tiger insurgency in 2009).

But the eradication of a nation-state is a different matter and a less feasible outcome. Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein managed to do that temporarily when he used armed force to swallow Kuwait in 1990, but a U.S.-led intervention reversed that outcome the following year. The objective of Russian president Vladimir Putin in launching the current war in February 2022 may have been to eliminate Ukraine as an independent country, either through formal incorporation into Russia or by installing a puppet regime in Kyiv. It now is clear that Russian military force is insufficient to achieve any such outcome. And obviously, Ukraine cannot eliminate the Russian state.

Even a war that is said to end in a surrender does not involve totally imposing the will of one side on the other and involves a negotiated compromise. No surrender is unconditional if the side surrendering still has some ability to fight. The surrender of Japan in 1945 was a deal in which Japan agreed to stop fighting and thus spared the Allies what would have been an extremely costly military conquest of the main islands of Japan. 

Another possible ending of an interstate war is for one or both belligerents simply to withdraw from the battle (as occurred with the border war between China and India in 1962), leaving a frozen conflict with or without occupation of the disputed territory. Such an outcome is possible in Ukraine, but an explicit war-ending agreement has multiple advantages for all concerned. It provides a framework that facilitates prisoner exchanges, peacekeeping protocols, and other useful measures. It provides a degree of certainty that reduces the risk of misinterpretations of the other side’s actions leading to renewed warfare. 

In any event, bargaining, possibly tacit, is still taking place even without a formal written agreement. The withdrawal from battle leaves a state of affairs that affects the interests of each belligerent in both positive and negative ways, and which each side must compare with the “no agreement” situation of continued warfare to decide whether to accept the bargain that this state of affairs represents.

An implication of the foregoing is that to speak of the termination of the war in Ukraine in terms of “winning” or “losing” the war is not helpful in understanding likely scenarios for termination and in preparing for those scenarios.

The end of the war is likely to be preceded by a period of bargaining—perhaps in formal negotiations—accompanied by continued combat, rather than a military outcome being fully established before work begins on constructing a political outcome. Traditionally there tended to be a temporal separation between military operations and peace diplomacy—such as with the end of World War I, when the guns were silenced by an armistice at Compiègne in November 1918 and a peace treaty was negotiated at Versailles the following year. But that sequence was mainly a legacy of the limitations of pre-modern communications, when day-to-day coordination of military operations and diplomacy was difficult (except for someone like Napoleon Bonaparte, who combined military field command and ultimate political authority in his own person). That difficulty no longer exists, and belligerents have an incentive to continue using their military instrument in ways that they hope will add heft to their diplomacy.

Regardless, silencing the guns—and ending the suffering of Ukrainians from a continued war, and with it the threat of escalation into a wider war—ought to be considered the most important component of terminating this war. Moreover, even an agreement that is labeled as merely an armistice and not a full resolution of political issues may be the only peace agreement that a conflict ever gets. That has been true, for seventy years and counting, of the armistice agreement that ended the Korean War. This is one of the reasons that the Korean War—which was one of the major cases I studied in researching the book—has been mentioned by some other observers as a model for terminating the war in Ukraine.

Belligerents will become willing to negotiate a peace agreement when they both have demonstrated, to themselves and to the enemy, the limits of what they are able and willing to do militarily, and there is little or no prospect for either side to change the situation on the battlefield appreciably with one more offensive effort. Another analyst, I. William Zartman, has called such a situation a “hurting stalemate.”

A war that has not reached a stalemate and is going either too badly or too well for a belligerent is likely to lead that belligerent to resist peace negotiations for the time being, for different reasons. Too badly, and the impulse is to keep fighting to shore up the situation on the battlefield, in the hope of looking and being stronger in whatever negotiations eventually take place. Too well, and the tendency is to expand one’s war objectives and to hope to accomplish them without the need for negotiation and compromise. The first year of the Korean War illustrated each of these tendencies, as the front line moved up and down the peninsula with the initial North Korean invasion, the U.S.-led intervention under the United Nations flag, the later Chinese intervention, and another UN push that finally brought the line to what became a stalemate near the 38th parallel.

An implication of this pattern for the war in Ukraine is that it is a mistake to talk about hoped-for breakthroughs by the Ukrainian counteroffensive, with Russian forces thrown backward, as being a precursor, and maybe even a necessary precursor, for peace negotiations. Given Putin’s stake in the conflict, his reaction might be just like the U.S. reaction to the two major communist offensives that threw friendly forces backward in Korea: to see this as making it all the more necessary to assume increased military costs and risks to improve the battlefield map before sitting down to talk peace.

One other lesson, regarding the substance of any possible peace agreement, is already worth mentioning. Notwithstanding the value of a written peace agreement in lending precision and certainty to the postwar situation, sometimes some uncertainty can have value in helping the parties come to any agreement at all. This was true regarding the uncertain future of the South Vietnamese government in the years following the peace agreement between the United States and North Vietnam in 1973. Although the concept of a “decent interval” involved a domestic political motive for President Richard Nixon, leaving the fate of the Saigon regime somewhat to chance was a way to reconcile the United States’ refusal to explicitly abandon that regime with Hanoi’s objective to rule all of Vietnam.

In Ukraine, the bargaining gap that must be bridged is between Ukraine’s disinclination to formally cede any of its territory and Putin’s need to show some gain from his costly military misadventure. Some political issues probably will have to be in effect punted, with their eventual outcome uncertain, if any peace agreement is to be reached, despite the future risk of misunderstandings and festering grievances. Mechanisms such as referenda that leave some future outcomes to chance may be part of a formula for ending this war.  

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

Image: paparazzza / Shutterstock.com

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More than a century and a half after the end of the American Civil War, historians still debate the reasons for the Northern defeat of the South. President Abraham Lincoln’s effective leadership? General Ulysses Grant’s winning military strategies? The failure of the Confederacy of the eleven states of the South to win support from Britain and France?

But there is a general consensus among researchers that in many ways, the Union’s victory in the war was preordained that the agrarian economy of the South was no match for the industrial capacity of the North that helped it to manufacture its arms and build its transportation infrastructure.

On another level, the conflict between the South and the North amounted to a struggle between the past and the future, between a world built on an agricultural economy based on the exploitation of slave labor and a rising universe of manufacturing industries and commercial centers; between those who fancied themselves as the romantic knights of Walter Scott’s novels and an emerging urban population whose values reflected those of the Enlightenment.

From that perspective, the kind of civilizational clash is evident in the current evolving cold civil war in Israel. Although it may be seen as a struggle over judicial reform, it is really one between the future—the demonstrators who represent Israel’s Westernized economic and cultural elites—and the forces of the past—the ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students and ultra-right West Bank settlers.

Israeli pundits have proposed that the conflict is between two opposing forces: “Judea,” the Jewish settlers who seek to annex the occupied Palestinian territories and establish in Israel an apartheid system joined by ultra-Orthodox theocrats whose sons don’t serve in the military and don’t study basic math; and “Israel,” the high-tech entrepreneurs of the celebrated start-up nation, retired air force pilots, and other members of the nation’s productive economic sector.

It's a struggle whose outcome would determine Israel’s future. Will Israel remain a progressive liberal democracy and an advanced industrial and high-tech economy? Or will it be transformed into a backward theocracy with a third-world economy, a binational state, and eventually a Middle Eastern community like Lebanon with never-ending fights between ethnic groups, religious sects, and tribal factions?

Not unlike the leaders of the southern Confederacy during the American Civil War, those who lead “Judea” live in a fantasy in which they would be able to rule forever on another nation, in which the United States needs Israel more than Israel needs the United States, and if the world refuses to abide their dictates they would lead a fight to the end a la Masada, this time with nuclear weapons added to the mix.

But more likely than not, the war between Judea and Israel would not end in an apocalyptic nightmare. Instead, with the situation deteriorating, Israel’s best and brightest young would emigrate from a collapsing Jewish state to Silicon Valley, to Wall Street, to London and Berlin.

After all, why should they risk their lives to defend young healthy men who refuse to serve in the military and help subsidize the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parasitic economy and the West Bank settlements that threaten the long-term chances for peace? Why should they live in a country where women and LGBTQ people are discriminated against and Arabs are treated as second-class citizens?

Policymakers and lawmakers in Washington need to take into consideration these dramatically changing political realities in Israel and recognize that the country’s pragmatic political and military elite may soon be swept away and replaced by politicians whose values and interests don’t align with those of the United States.

To put it differently, if there was a time when Americans were worried that irrational ayatollahs in Tehran would have access to nuclear weapons, they should now find themselves worrying about what would happen if a Masada-obsessed Jewish fanatic would have control over Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Unless that is, the lessons of the American Civil War are applied and Israel defeats Judea.

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

Image: Noa Ratinsky / Shutterstock.com

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In a turbulent year for both Israel and Lebanon, one would assume the two countries would work to avoid additional crises at all costs. Rather, Tel Aviv and Beirut are opting to escalate their long-running border dispute, raising concerns regarding a major conflict like the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War. Yet, while neither side can realistically afford renewed fighting of such a magnitude, this round likely represents an attempted show of strength on the part of actors in both countries—one that centralizes so-called “deterrence through resilience” on the border while managing and minimizing potentially escalatory actions. Additionally, political elites in both countries likely see the value of the crisis in distracting their populaces from other pressing issues.

Current events are symptoms of long-running border disputes in the area where Lebanon, Syria, and Israel meet. This includes the city of Ghajar and the rural areas of Shebaa Farms and the Kfar Chouba Hills—all areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War and originally part of Syria’s Golan Heights. Israel currently occupies Golan despite UN condemnation following its annexation in 1981. This worsened Tel Aviv’s border conflict with Beirut while further complicating a pre-existing dispute between Syria and Lebanon. Damascus and Beirut have long disagreed over the Golan borders demarcated during the former French Mandate and Ottoman eras.

As a result, the two countries have sparred over relatively minuscule bits of territory for decades, often with only the slightest movements along the “Blue Line”—the established border following the Israeli withdrawal and controlled by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). UNIFIL was established in 1978 to oversee an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Following the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, the UN amended UNIFIL’s mandate to monitor the cessation of hostilities and act as a neutral arbiter to keep the peace. Roughly 9,300 UN peacekeepers are deployed to the disputed area.

Yet UNIFIL struggles to contain aggression on either side of the border, as reflected by the last two months of aggressive actions by Israel and Hezbollah. The current crisis revolves around Hezbollah’s establishment of an “outpost” in the form of two tents in the Chebaa Farms and Kfar Chouba Hills area and claims it shot down an Israeli drone in June. Hezbollah and other Lebanese officials claim the move was in response to Israel’s construction of a border fence around the Lebanese side of Ghajar, a city spanning both Lebanon and the Golan split in half upon the Blue Line’s creation in 2000. The northern part of the city was re-occupied by Israel in 2006. Tel Aviv refuses to vacate the city and effectively prevents entry from the Lebanese side, violating the terms of the split.

A series of tit-for-tat incidents occurred before and after Israel asked UNIFIL to request the tents’ removal, which Beirut conditioned upon Tel Aviv’s pullout from Ghajar. This includes an incident between an Israeli bulldozer and soldiers of each country on July 5, Israeli shelling near Kfar Chouba in response to a missile fired near Ghajar into its territory on July 6, and an explosion near the Lebanese city of Bustan that wounded three Hezbollah members supposedly attempting to cross into Israel and sabotage the border fence on July 12—the seventeenth anniversary of the beginning of the 2006 war. Israel claims it used stun grenades, while Hezbollah accused Tel Aviv of excessive force. A similar construction incident occurred on July 20 that led Israeli forces to launch smoke grenades at Lebanese citizens attempting to build a road near the border.

This series of events is unique from other issues that regularly occur in these areas, not limited to Hezbollah-backed protests along the border or militant attempts to enter Israel. Typically, such problems are connected to violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), given Hezbollah’s strong support for the Palestinian resistance. Similarly, Israel violates the border with its occupation of the Golan and military flights over Lebanon to bomb Iranian targets in Syria, let alone aggressive actions that cross the border—often against the border protests in Lebanese territory.

For Lebanon, and particularly Hezbollah, this round is at least partially connected to recent violence in the West Bank—namely, the brutal Israeli raid on Jenin on July 4 that killed twelve Palestinians and destroyed vast stretches of property. However, the Israeli fence around northern Ghajar also plays a role, given the long-running nature of disputes in this area and the northern Golan more broadly. Beirut feels strongly about its right to these areas—making this situation more than just a Hezbollah issue.

Of potentially equal importance to Lebanon’s political elites is the unifying nature of the situation and its ability to distract the public, as some Hezbollah affiliates have indirectly hinted. Indeed, a renewed border crisis offers a useful distraction for Lebanon’s political class, who wish to draw public attention away from the economic and political nightmare of the last few years. While hardly enough to resolve widespread frustrations, Lebanon’s powers that be likely view a manageable crisis as helpful at a time when their popularity is waning. One need only look at their rampant scapegoating of Syrian refugees to understand how Lebanon’s elites view and utilize a good distraction.

For Israel, any border dispute threatens deterrence against attacks from Iran-backed militants. Tel Aviv is home to a hawkish approach to national security that often rejects compromise—at least publicly—with such groups. Hezbollah is no exception, given it poses the greatest threat to Israel on its border. While the Israeli government likely views this situation as manageable as well, it will not show weakness in the face of one of its core rivals. Hezbollah will likely follow suit.

The fortunate reality is that neither actor desires a major escalation on their disputed border. Israel is struggling with domestic unrest stemming from a deeply polarizing judicial reform effort under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an increasingly difficult security situation in the West Bank that it appears to be ill-prepared to address without a full-scale military operation—one that will cause a full-blown war with Palestinian militants and further harm its international image. On the other hand, Hezbollah does not appear willing to take on Israel, as evidenced by its reaction to the Hamas rocket launch from southern Lebanon in early April. It should be noted that Tel Aviv also opted to avoid escalation at that time, assessing Hezbollah was not interested in a broader war.

For these reasons, while this round of border insecurity is notable and exceptional, neither major actor appears willing to escalate their actions beyond a point of no control. The time is not ripe for a repeat of 2006—a reality that hopefully sustains itself to prevent such bloodshed.

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

Image: Shutterstock.

While President Joe Biden termed the idea of Saudi-Israel normalization “a long way off” in a CNN interview in early July, his administration is seriously discussing with the Saudis the set of U.S.-provided incentives which they want as sweeteners for a potential deal. The primary requests from Riyadh are formal security guarantees from the United States, a U.S.-Saudi partnership to develop civilian nuclear energy, and the ability to access arms sales without Congressional review, as press reports in March indicated. While Israel obviously would like to see normalization with one of the most important Arab states, the influential Saudi commentator Ali Shihabi has laid out a “sales pitch” to Washington in a recent article for the Hoover Institution, arguing that the United States also would see profound benefits from such a deal. Shihabi holds out the prospect for what is essentially a reset of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, restoring diminished U.S. influence. In return for a “formal structure or agreement” which would “be perceived by adversaries as obligating the United States to come to the defense of the [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] (in one form or another) if the latter is threatened,” Washington could “could expect a much closer and more influential relationship with Saudi Arabia, with all that such an alliance would entail.”

It is difficult to envision U.S. security guarantees taking the form of a Senate-ratified treaty, but there has been plenty of support in the U.S. Congress for the goal of promoting regional security integration between the United States, Israel, and Arab partner militaries, particularly on the development of joint regional air and missile defenses. While Shihabi does not explicitly make the argument that it would diminish Chinese influence in the kingdom in relative terms, that effect is clearly implied.

From a U.S. standpoint, though, Shihabi’s argument rings hollow. Offering security guarantees (even if less than a treaty) is a major concession that could tie our hands in a future crisis, and there are many reasons to doubt that it offers much incremental benefit to the United States. First, Saudi policymakers’ increasing shift to the East, and to China, is structural and economically driven. China is now by far the Saudis’ larger trading partner. While oil is still fungible, the United States’ need for imports from the Persian Gulf region has largely evaporated due to the increase in supply from domestic producers and other countries in the Western Hemisphere. It is, therefore, very difficult to see U.S. relative influence in the bilateral relationship going back to where it was during the “unipolar moment” of the 1990s, even if the Saudi side were no longer frustrated about what it considers a U.S. failure to use force against Iran after the September 2019 attacks against critical oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais, as well as broader a perceived U.S. retreat from its regional security role. Second, the tradeoff articulated by Shihabi would involve very specific U.S. commitments on security in return for the relatively abstract and unenforceable notion of restored bilateral relations and relative influence. 

The Abqaiq and Khurais attacks are often cited by Saudi observers as proof that the United States has abandoned its security role in the region, but while they demonstrated Iran’s new capabilities in a jarring manner, the attacks were calibrated to avoid a catastrophic oil market disruption—not to cause one. It is true that the facilities at Abqaiq in particular are uniquely important to Saudi export flows, and arguably a more important vulnerability than the Strait of Hormuz. However, the facility runs at well below its maximum capacity, and it was designed so that oil volumes can be routed around individual components of the facility which might be damaged in an attack. By targeting only a limited number of components at Abqaiq, Iran created a large outage—5.7 million barrels per day according to Saudi Aramco—but one which allowed for the kingdom’s full production level to be restored by the end of September 2019, about two weeks after the attack. This also was apparent to analysts, including me, looking at the commercial satellite photos available the day after the attack, limiting the impact on oil prices. It also was certainly clear to U.S. officials, and the intentionally limited impact on oil flows is likely a large part of the reason why President Donald Trump chose not to take military action against Iran as a result. Iran had shown that it could cause a catastrophic volume loss by hitting roughly triple the number of aim points at Abqaiq with accurate suicide drones, but it chose not to do so. 

The Abqaiq episode has not demonstrated to Iran that the United States has abandoned its interest in protecting the free flow of oil from the region or would be unwilling to take military action if Iran caused damage at a higher threshold. If Saudi Arabia had a U.S. security guarantee, that probably would have prevented a demonstration attack like this, but if it had not the United States could have been locked into taking military action over something below the threshold of major damage to U.S. interests. Trying to decide exactly how the threshold for such a guarantee should be defined would be difficult in a region known for the widespread use of gray-zone provocations, but an unambiguous guarantee with a low threshold could easily entangle the United States in an escalating conflict over a relatively minor trigger. Abqaiq is a perfect example of how U.S. and Saudi views about these thresholds can differ.

In addition, the use of support for proxies and gray-zone provocations by both Saudi Arabia and Iran raises the issue of potential “moral hazards” stemming from a security guarantee. Would Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman feel emboldened in his regional actions? The converse of that seems to have arguably been operative in the years since Abqaiq, in which a sense of vulnerability produced a dialogue with Iran and the recent agreement to normalize relations and mutually curtail actions that had caused friction between Iran and Saudi Arabia, including support for proxies. The fact that China stepped in to midwife the agreement toward the end of the process made it a bit uncomfortable for the United States, but it still promotes the U.S. interest in regional stability.

The Saudis and Emiratis’ frequent complaints in the years since Biden took office that the United States is “withdrawing” from the Middle East are belied by the facts. The United States still maintains a robust naval presence in the Persian Gulf and has substantial land-based air assets in the region, along with pre-positioned equipment for ground forces. This is clearly a major reduction from the levels seen in the post-9/11 era. However, it compares to the levels seen in the 1990s following the first Gulf War of 1991 and is well above levels of in-theater CENTCOM assets that prevailed in the 1980s. The United States is not withdrawing from regional security but rather returning to a more normal level. What is different, though, is the challenge the United States faces from a rising China outside the region, which is an argument for not allowing commitments in the Middle East to tie up more U.S. military resources.

Even without a security guarantee, there is plenty the United States can and should do to help Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf Arab states secure themselves against the primary threat they face, which is Iran’s growing arsenal of precision-guided munitions (PGMs)—suicide drones and much more accurate ballistic missiles—which has sometimes been shared with proxies such as the Houthis in Yemen. Israel is a technology leader in this field, and the United States should facilitate cooperation to the extent possible. An integrated regional network would be ideal, but there are plenty of political obstacles unrelated to a U.S. security guarantee, especially the current state of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as distrust among Gulf Arab states, including between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Regardless of any U.S. guarantees, it is difficult to envision sufficient trust between these states to do the sort of extensive integration of sensitive data and information technology systems, which is seen between the United States and Canada in NORAD or members of NATO in Europe. Even if not fully integrated or publicly acknowledged, though, such cooperation should be encouraged.

The U.S.-China rivalry is driving the Saudi’s strategy of emphasizing their options and trying to use that to extract concessions from the United States. But while the United States cannot hope to pry Saudi Arabia away from China due to their economic interests, there is little indication that the Saudis genuinely have the option of junking the U.S. security relationship. China has long sought to be a supplier of military systems the West would not sell to the kingdom, going back all the way to China’s sale of medium-range ballistic missiles to Riyadh in the mid-1980s, but it has shown no interest in providing fourth- or fifth-generation fighter aircraft to regional powers—where U.S. and British systems currently provide the Saudis with overwhelming air superiority in any conflict with Iran. The financial cost of converting its forces to different equipment also would be prohibitive during a period when the kingdom is focused on diversifying its economy away from dependence on oil, not to mention the chronological gap in capabilities during the transition if the United States were ever to withdraw support for its weapons systems. China also is clearly not interested in abandoning its extensive relationship with Iran.

In sum, it simply does not make sense for the United States to make huge concessions to Saudi Arabia in the form of a formal security guarantee in response to concerns about China or the desire for Saudi-Israeli normalization. The United States should continue to play a leading role in regional security, but on its own terms, not theirs.

Greg Priddy is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

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