Diplomacy & Crisis News

Such a facility could enable Beijing to monitor emails, phone calls, satellite transmissions, and shipping traffic along the southeastern United States.

Sixty years ago, in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy gave probably the greatest speech on nuclear arms ever given by an American President. Speaking only months after the crisis, Kennedy could have lashed out at the Soviet Union’s reckless behavior in putting missiles in Cuba. Or he could have taken a triumphal tone, highlighting his success in forcing the Soviets to pull the missiles out (with the public then in the dark on his secret promise to pull similar U.S. missiles out of Turkey).

Instead, in a June 10 commencement address at American University, Kennedy made the case that the horrors of a potential nuclear holocaust made it urgent to find a path to peace and that doing so required both sides of the Cold War to change. He announced that the United States would unilaterally stop testing its nuclear weapons until a treaty banning such tests could be reached. “Some say that it is useless to speak of peace,” Kennedy noted, “until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it.”

World response was immediate. The NATO allies hailed the speech. The Manchester Guardian ranked it “among the great state papers of American history.” The Soviets turned off their giant radio jammers so that Soviet citizens could hear the speech on Voice of America, and they printed the full text in both Pravda and Izvestia. (The Soviets had some warning: Kennedy’s team had consulted with them informally before he gave his speech.)

Although the Soviets made no formal announcement of a testing halt, they, too, paused nuclear testing. Less than ten days after Kennedy’s speech, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to the creation of a “hotline” between the two governments. In a month and a half, the Limited Test Ban Treaty had been completed, putting an end to the constant explosions that were spewing radiation across the world, contaminating even mothers’ milk. Kennedy called the treaty “a victory for mankind,” and said that even if the journey to peace was a thousand miles, “let history record that we, in this land, at this time, took the first step.” Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev hailed the treaty in similar terms.

In the months that followed, the two sides each announced unilateral cutbacks in the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons; reductions in their military spending; and modest pullbacks of troops from the front lines in Central Europe. None of these initiatives were negotiated in detail ahead of time, or verified, though there were informal consultations on each one before they were announced. Khrushchev called it “a policy of reciprocal example in the matter of reducing the armaments race.”

At the UN, the sides also managed to reach an agreement on the Outer Space Treaty, banning nuclear weapons in orbit. The atmosphere of heated Cold War confrontation changed markedly, paving the way for the start of negotiations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and then strategic arms talks.

Kennedy’s initiative—sometimes called “the Kennedy Experiment”—drew on the ideas of psychologist Charles E. Osgood, who had published a paper on a strategy he called “Graduated Reciprocation in Tension-Reduction,” or GRIT. The concept was that with two sides in a high state of tension, one side could unilaterally take a tension-reducing step—large enough to be noticed, but small enough not to endanger its security—and challenge the other side to take a step of its own. Osgood argued that the challenge should not be a specific demand, because, in such a state of high tension, the other side would likely see a specific demand as asking too much. Osgood proposed that the first step be accompanied by an unambiguous statement of a new, peaceful policy—exactly what Kennedy did in his American University address.

Osgood went further and argued that even if the other side did not reciprocate—perhaps not fully accepting that its adversary was genuinely trying to reduce the temperature—the side trying to reduce tension should continue with additional small steps, to make the changed approach impossible to deny. It is that idea of continuing even without any positive response that most justifies the GRIT acronym. If the other side did reciprocate, then the initiating side could take a somewhat larger step and see if that was also reciprocated. Osgood hoped to “run the arms race in reverse.”

Osgood suggested that if the opponent makes a warlike move, there should be a “measured response”: enough to show the opponent that the new strategy did not indicate weakness, but not so much as to close the door to further progress.

Decades after Kennedy’s initiative, this approach worked again. In 1991, as the Soviet Union hurtled toward collapse, President George H.W. Bush announced a dramatic set of unilateral initiatives, pulling back U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from around the world (except for a small force that remained in Europe) and destroying most of them; eliminating nuclear weapons from surface ships; and taking strategic bombers off alert. The Soviet Union, and then Russia, reciprocated with similarly sweeping (though not identical) reductions. These “Presidential Nuclear Initiatives” resulted in the fastest nuclear arms reductions that have ever taken place.

Today, tensions between Washington and Moscow are higher than they have been since Kennedy spoke, after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and repeated nuclear threats. Hostility between the United States and China is growing—and North Korea’s dictator keeps up a relentless pace of missile testing and reckless nuclear rhetoric. These tensions between nuclear-armed states matter: the more hostile two states are, the more likely it is that a crisis will occur, that the crisis will escalate to conflict, and that conflict will escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. Hence, in each of these cases, it is time for new action to bring down the temperature.

President Joe Biden has taken a few small initial steps. The Biden team announced that the United States would unilaterally pledge not to conduct direct-ascent antisatellite (ASAT) weapon tests that would create showers of space debris, endangering other satellites. And they put forward a set of political commitments on “responsible” military use of artificial intelligence—including a commitment that the decision to use nuclear weapons would always be made by a human, not a machine. Scores of other countries have signed on to the ASAT initiative—though not, so far, Russia or China.

Unfortunately, Biden faces obstacles to doing more that President Kennedy did not. In particular, Kennedy spoke when the Cuban Missile Crisis was over: the Soviets had withdrawn their missiles. Today, Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, with new violations of the laws of war almost every day.

Nevertheless, the need for reducing tensions is urgent, and there is more Biden could do. He could announce that a portion of U.S. nuclear missiles would be taken off alert: surely not all of them need to be ready for immediate launch. He could commit that the United States would never use nuclear weapons first unless the very survival of our country or one of our treaty allies was at stake. He could commit that the United States would never deploy its missiles where they could reach Moscow or Beijing in just a few minutes. He could offer to let Chinese or Russian experts monitor U.S. weapons-maintenance experiments to confirm American compliance with the nuclear test ban. He could commit that all U.S. nuclear enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activities would be available for international inspection to confirm they were not being used to make new material for nuclear weapons.

None of those steps would endanger U.S. security. If reciprocated, each of them would improve security significantly. They might be a first step toward new arms restraints that could take the place of New START—the last remaining treaty limiting U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear force numbers—when it expires in early 2026.

The world today is very different from the world of six decades ago. But the need to manage hostility among nuclear-armed states is no less. Biden should draw on Kennedy’s example and pursue new steps to reduce nuclear dangers.

Matthew Bunn is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Co-Principal Investigator for the Project on Managing the Atom at the Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Image: Courtesy of the JFK Library.

Earlier this year, on March 19, the Montenegrin electorate went to the polls to elect a new president. The people delivered a seismic political upset by finally dislodging long-time President Milo Đukanović from the seat of power he held for thirty-three years. During that time, by constantly switching between the offices of prime minister and president, he built a system where he effectively became the state itself.

But that system was riddled with corruption and the influence of organized crime to such an extent that criminality had become all but legitimized. The tiny NATO member state has served as a backdoor into Europe for smugglers and money launderers for the past three decades. Western security and intelligence agencies spend billions of dollars countering the drugs and dirty cash that flow into Europe through the Adriatic statelet. A corrupt political class enables this by helping criminals avoid prosecution in exchange for bribes and other favors. So when Đukanović finally fell in March, Montenegro was presented with a historic opportunity for change.

But deposing “Milo” is only the first step in a long reform process. The system he created will outlast him unless the new government aggressively uproots it. This means the upcoming parliamentary elections on June 11 will serve as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to overhaul the country’s political system. For this reason, the eyes of the world—and specifically the U.S.—should be fixed upon events in Montenegro.

Out with the Old Guard, In with the New

Đukanović’s replacement as president is the fresh-faced, thirty-six-year-old reformer Jakov Milatović. He previously served as the minister for economic development in the short-lived government of Zdravko Krivokapić between 2020 and 2022. Standing on a moderate, economy-focused platform, Milatović is a technocratic centrist who hopes to lead his country into the European Union. But, to achieve this, he must first tackle the corruption and organized crime that have embedded themselves within the Montenegrin state and act as the main barrier to EU membership. Following the upcoming vote, the country’s new prime minister and parliamentary makeup will greatly affect Milatović’s ability to pursue his agenda.

Although Đukanović’s career is likely over forever, political forces with ties to organized crime have not simply disappeared. Indeed, they are ready and waiting to fill the void left by Milo and perpetuate the crooked status quo. The former mayor of Budva, Milo Božović, though recently arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking and other crimes, is one example of a politician who could maintain the Đukanović nexus. While Božović is not running in June, he was considered a rising star before his arrest in April. Milojko “Mickey” Spajić, Milatović’s one-time ally, could be another such example.

Spajić is the co-founder of Evropa Sad (Europe Now): the party he and Milatović are members of. The pair served together in the 2020–22 government before jointly establishing their own party a year ago. Spajić currently serves as party president and was originally the party’s intended candidate for national president against Đukanović in March. But his candidacy was rejected by the State Electoral Commission after it found he lied about possessing Serbian citizenship.

As in many countries, Montenegro’s constitution bars dual citizens from running for elected office due to concerns about split loyalties. Serbian citizenship is also particularly problematic due to the historical influence of Montenegro’s larger neighbor over the country’s affairs. Both nations were part of socialist Yugoslavia and remained together after that federation fell apart. In a referendum held in 2006, Montenegro voted for independence. However, around a third of Montenegro’s population identifies as ethnically Serb. The Serbian Orthodox Church is a significant property owner in the country and continues to hold considerable sway in national politics.

This history means Spajić’s Serbian citizenship badly damaged his image. But his botched attempts to cover it up only poured further fuel on the fire. First, Spajić sidestepped questions regarding his dual citizenship. But then he backtracked and claimed he obtained a Serbian passport to travel to Japan without a visa. Later, it emerged that Spajić owned significant real estate in Serbia registered in the name of his Serbian partner. This, combined with his unedifying flip-flopping, made his candidacy unviable, forcing Milatović to step in and take his place as their party’s standard bearer.

Scandals and Cryptocurrencies

Milatović’s historic victory in March may have stolen the limelight, but that doesn’t mean Spajić has left the stage entirely. He is still a household name, and, more importantly, his ambitions remain undimmed: Spajić is angling for the premiership after the parliamentary election, in which Evropa Sad may emerge as the largest party.

The president ultimately appoints the prime minister and, as the president of Milatović’s party, Spajić can make a convincing argument that he is the “natural” choice for prime minister. But the Montenegrin constitution does not specify that the president and the premier must come from the same party nor that the largest party in parliament is entitled to the premiership.

Although there will be a degree of behind-the-scenes pressure for Milatović to appoint Spajić as premier, this is not inevitable. A rift has formed between the two following the citizenship scandal because Spajić is embittered that Milatović got to lead the party into victory over Milo. But there are also serious concerns about Spajić’s character.

There have been well-publicized reports in the Montenegrin press on Spajiić’s links to the Russian crypto-tycoon Vitalik Buterin, who founded the cryptocurrency platform Ethereum. This has drawn significant public attention since Ethereum is the second-most prominent cryptocurrency after Bitcoin. Then, on Tuesday, Spajić was also forced to deny his alleged links to the crypto fraudster, Do Kwon. Kwon claimed in a letter sent to the outgoing prime minister, Dritan Abazović, that he enjoyed close ties with Spajić and even helped finance his party’s recent local election and presidential campaigns.

A U.S. federal grand jury has charged Do Kwon with securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to defraud investors for his role in Terra/Luna, one of the most infamous crypto Ponzi schemes ever. The links between crypto, money laundering, and organized crime are well known, and it is also well known that Spajić holds a particular interest in digital currencies. According to news reports published last year, Spajić had invited a group of global crypto experts to visit Montenegro, believing they could contribute to developing the country’s economy by attracting investments and creating new, high-paying jobs.

Spajić’s political opponents fear that, should he become prime minister, the tech-savvy thirty-five-year-old could use crypto to help entrench criminality in the country even further.  The vast patronage networks and clientelism built during the Milo years haven’t been dismantled, which means that anybody with enough political influence and desire could simply step in and fill the shoes that Đukanović left behind. If this were to happen, change in Montenegro would be merely cosmetic, with new faces replacing the old ones in a system where the ethos remains largely the same.

The Future is Decided on Election Day

It is impossible to know which path Spajić would take if he became premier. Still, there is increasingly substantial circumstantial evidence to believe that the direction could be the wrong one. This places the new president in a peculiar situation where he might hope that votes drift towards other reform-minded parties with an appetite for change. A heterogenous parliament would allow alternative candidates to emerge and arrange the deck in such a way that would create the cover for Milatović to choose a less prominent figure from a smaller party as his prime minister and pinning the blame for sidelining Spajić on coalition-building parliamentary arithmetic to avoid a political confrontation.

This could be good for the country because it would place someone who appears to be a genuine reformer in a position of power. But it would also benefit the president by marginalizing a political rival with serious question marks hanging over his character. Several alternatives might be a better choice for this position: the aforementioned former prime minister, Dritan Abazović, is one. During his time in office, he made serious attempts to tackle organized crime like cigarette trafficking. Similarly, his election running mate, Aleksa Bečić—a long-standing political opponent of the Đukanović regime—is another. A more outsider option is Vladimir Leposavic, the leader of Pravda za sve (Justice for All.)

A U.S.-educated lawyer who served in the Ministry of Justice and Human and Minority Rights and also in the 2020–22 cabinet, Leposavic has a reputation for decency and honesty. Like Milatović, he is a new, technocratic face and a clean break from the Đukanović years.

Because the fact is that Đukanović’s defeat was a beginning, not an end. And that, by removing him, Montenegro simply gained an opportunity to change course. But this is the moment when that opportunity is at its most fragile, and the battle for change could be over before it even gets a chance to begin if results go the wrong way on June 11.

Aleks Eror is a freelance journalist whose works have been published by Politico, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, and other publications.

On May 17, Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro received a delegation group led by Lin Mingxiang, vice minister of the International Department of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, and discussed ways to further strengthen the strategic partnership between the two countries.

Weeks before this happened, after Maduro met with Chinese ambassador Li Baorong, Bloomberg’s Patricia Laya and Fabiola Zerpa suggested that the two were “re-establishing connections after years of cooling ties, with government contacts resuming.”

While the authors are correct to note that the public nature of these meetings is partly a reaction to intensifying U.S.-China rivalry, calling it a “rapprochement” is far from true.

China’s collaboration with the Maduro regime has been persistent, even when not displayed on TV screens. This is not just because of China’s need for oil; it also has to do with minerals, a sector where Venezuela is quietly expanding—with Beijing’s backing.

According to Freedom House’s Gerardo Berthin in a video conference two years ago, “In this moment, Venezuela is the country in the western hemisphere with the most Chinese investment.” More strikingly, Berthin suggested that according to estimates put forward by civil society organizations, close to $68 billion in loans has been given to Venezuela by China since 2007, plus around 490 agreements have been signed in “diverse areas of investment.” Berthin added that of these known agreements, 65 percent of them contained deal terms that are not publicly known, while another 22 percent contained only partial information.

Considering the evident involvement of the Asian giant in the South American country, the vast natural resources in Venezuelan lands, and the nature of the Maduro regime, it certainly isn’t unfair to posit that China is making moves to secure some of Venezuela’s mineral wealth.

Venezuelan journalists and academics have echoed this belief by claiming that Chinese companies are behind massive investments in Venezuela’s Arco Minero—an area that, according to Venezuela’s former Minister for Ecological Mining Development Roberto Mirabal, has a potential mineral value of $2 trillion.

Moreover, my recent and personal experience confirms that something suspicious is happening. After spending a few weeks in Caracas, I traveled to the world’s tallest uninterrupted waterfall, the Angel Falls, located in the Venezuelan Amazon. Before my plane even touched the ground, one could already see the contrast between the tall trees at the shore of the Caroní River and the nearby artificial mountains of sand. Although initially confused by the phenomenon, from a conversation with a gifted raconteur and private pilot, I learned that those mountains and the radioactive green colors of the nearby waters were a result of the use of mercury in the gold extraction process.

Following this first conversation, I met F.C., who took me to breathtaking falls in a five-hour motorized curiara (the Pemón version of a canoe) ride via the blood-red waters of the Carrao River. Like the pilot, F.C., a proud member of the Pemón tribe, conversed with me about how mining is destroying the place he calls home and who he believes is behind it.

“Young men in Canaima have two options today: mining or tourism,” he explained. “I choose tourism because I love our nature, and I have seen how areas full of green have lost their color.” Still, he understands that mining, even with all of its dangers and abuses, seems like a more reliable source of income to some, as tourism comes in waves, unlike the demand for minerals. He added, “I’ve lost friends, I’ve lost cousins, I’ve lost neighbors who have left to the mines and have never come back. Why? Well, because they encounter nothing but death there.”

Aside from sharing very personal stories, he talked about the changing faces of commerce and tourism in the region, saying that more Chinese and Russian “tourists” started to come to Canaima in the last decades.

Similarly, the pilot claimed that it is not just illegal mining that is plaguing the Venezuelan Amazon. In fact, he suggested that the government and its international partners are behind it. He recounted a time in which he detoured while flying over Canaima. He explained that it was “one of the scariest moments of [his] life,” as his radio was intercepted by a foul-mouthed and aggressive man, demanding that he left the area immediately. “There is prohibited airspace near Canaima that exists to hide mining activity,” he explained, assuring me that “the generals are behind this.”

“Most do not understand how much is being invested in mining in Canaima and in the entire country,” the pilot added.

Although not many talk about mining in Venezuela, as the country is synonymous with oil, it is well known that the country possesses ample mineral wealth, and wishes to exploit it. In 2018, for instance, Venezuela inaugurated its first coltan concentration plant, which also became the largest one in Latin America. Additionally, in June 2019, Maduro announced a national mining plan based on partnerships with national and international companies dedicated to the exploration and exploitation of thirteen minerals. The exact companies the government has partnered up with are not publicly known.

Furthermore, according to Maduro, with the 2019 plan, “gold would reach the international legal certification of 2,236 tons, (about €94 billion), making the country the fifth largest reserve in the world and aspiring to first place.” Likewise, with other minerals like bauxite, the Venezuelan leader added that the country has 321,350,000 thousand tons in certified reserves. In terms of nickel, Maduro claimed that Venezuela has 28,027,980 certified tons, making it the country with the largest reserves in the world.

These details undoubtedly capture the attention of the CCP. It is for this reason that they have been making massive investments in the mining sector throughout the region, as critical minerals are essential in the technological and clean energy worlds, which China hopes to dominate.

Chinese involvement in Venezuela is no different from its broader regional involvement, and the lack of publicly available information should not make us think otherwise. Even more so, it is essential to consider the strings China pulls behind the curtain if we are to properly measure its strength. By presenting Venezuela just as a chaotic nation battling illegal mining, many journalists and academics avoid exploring the various government-led efforts, and others avoid questioning why the state would acquiesce when facing illegality in this sector. Still, the more one looks into it, the more one realizes that the question of legality is not relevant in a country where the rule of law is all but a distant memory.

A more concrete and constructive project is to better assess who benefits from Venezuelan mining, how they benefit, and how these developments affect U.S. national security interests. As Westwin Elements’ Gregory Wischer observes, in our so-called backyard, “the U.S. government has largely been absent, ceding the playing field—or in this case, mineral deposits—to China.” This reality presents a more immediate threat to the United States than ecological catastrophe or foreign corruption. As such, it is time for us to shift the conversation in this direction. China understands it well— to lead the world, you must control its resources. It is a simple equation, have we forgotten it?

Juan P. Villasmil “J.P. Ballard” is a commentator and analyst who often writes about American culture, foreign policy, and political philosophy. He has been featured in The American Spectator, The National Interest, The Wall Street Journal, International Policy Digest, Fox News, Telemundo, MSNBC, and others.

Image: Courtesy of Airpano.

The dam blast rekindled a concept with Vietnam War roots but no place in international law—yet.

Unlike last fall, Ukraine has to crack hardened Russian lines before doing any open-field running.

Test yourself on the week of June 3: Saudi Arabia announces oil cuts, Mexico holds an important state election, and a Ukrainian dam breaks.

D'où vient cette fascination pour l'invention d'une île ? Depuis des années, et à travers de nombreux livres (Les Insulaires, L'Adjacent, L'Inclinaison, chez Denoël), l'écrivain britannique Christopher Priest, par exemple et entre autres, explore L'Archipel du rêve, un agglomérat d'îles très diverses (...) / République tchèque, Fiction, Littérature, Langue, Environnement, Mer - 2018/04

North Korean weapons inevitably impact U.S. credibility.

A new protest movement in the Balkan country is squeezing Aleksandar Vucic domestically—all while tensions in Kosovo flare and put Serbia in the international spotlight.

Lors d'une réunion de la société du Mont-Pèlerin, berceau du néolibéralisme, le 28 novembre 1989, un ancien ministre des finances travailliste néozélandais donnait sa recette : Le gouvernement doit avoir le courage de mettre en œuvre ses décisions, de s'attaquer aux questions douloureuses d'emblée, (...) / Politique, Démocratie, Stratégie, Libéralisme, Néolibéralisme - 2018/04

The race for a seat on the U.N. Security Council turned into a proxy fight between Russia and the world.

AMLO’s party is riding high—but hasn’t yet picked a nominee for next year’s election.

The former secretary of state is a genius—just not at what you might think.

It’s not just Putin who has re-embraced nuclear threats. The U.S. and China are also cracking open the door.

A risky new strategy to keep Tehran from going nuclear.

The country will struggle to reckon with its crimes in Ukraine.

Netanyahu moves to “civilianize” the occupation.

The British prime minister wants to convince Washington to let his country lead on global AI policy.

With cities wreathed in smoke, conspiracy theories grow.