Diplomacy & Crisis News

Political backing for Lebanon’s central bank governor, Riad Salameh, appears to have started to wane, according to a report by Reuters citing political sources speaking on the condition of anonymity. Salameh himself has announced in an interview with Asharq News in February, and repeatedly afterwards, that he will not be seeking a new term in office once it expires in next month. However, there are unconfirmed reports that Salameh has already submitted his resignation in March to caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati. This reportedly is pending approval of the government, which is said to be a complex process due to the need to maintain a sectarian balance of power.

Meanwhile, investigations into Salameh’s alleged financial crimes in Lebanon and Europe are apparently gathering pace. Salameh is facing numerous accusations of alleged crimes, including embezzlement of public funds, corruption, illicit enrichment, and money laundering. European investigators returned to Lebanon in late April to continue questioning witnesses and individuals charged in Lebanon in connection with these allegations.

These developments are occurring against the backdrop of political paralysis, as the stalemate in electing a president for Lebanon persists. Yet at the same time, there is an urgent need to restore confidence in Lebanon’s financial and banking institutions as the country faces an unprecedented economic and financial catastrophe. The crisis—which combines a dire set of economic and financial factors, including hard foreign debt default, triple-digit inflation, severe currency devaluations, insolvent banks, an alarming GDP contraction, and an increasing shortage of basic goods—has been described by the World Bank as one of the worst in modern history. At this critical juncture, the selection of a central bank governor is almost as important as electing a president.

The Origins of Lebanon’s Economic Crisis

The causes of Lebanon’s financial collapse are rooted in the chronic mismanagement of public finances, leading to massive debt accrued by successive governments since the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990. Critics point to Salameh, who pursued an aggressive monetary policy of lending to the Lebanese state since his appointment as governor of the central bank in 1993—had he not done so, previous Lebanese governments would not have been able to fund their spending and accrue such an enormous sovereign debt.

Salameh established and maintained a stable exchange rate climate in Lebanon, which was favorable for foreign direct investment, driven initially by Lebanon’s post-war reconstruction agenda then promoted by the late Lebanese prime minister and ultra-wealthy entrepreneur, Rafik Hariri. Salameh tied the Lebanese pound to the U.S. dollar, effectively dollarizing the currency and successfully pegged it at a fixed rate of 1,507 pounds per dollar since 1997.

This currency peg brought monetary and economic stability to Lebanon until a few years before the crisis. However, most economists agree that it depended on a crucial economic fundamental: steady foreign currency/dollar inflows to Lebanon, which would constantly boost the central bank’s foreign currency reserves. This was necessary to support the country’s exchange rate, keep the Lebanese pound stable against the U.S. dollar, meet debt obligations, and attract international investors. Fortunately, Lebanon's large diaspora, especially wealthy Lebanese, provided the dominant source of foreign currency through remittances. Other sources included tourism spending, foreign aid, and transactions with Gulf Arab states that bolstered central bank reserves.

In 2019, mass protests erupted as the country’s fiscal crisis deepened and Lebanese banks faced a significant share of deposit withdrawals, leading to a crash in confidence in the banking sector. In response, banks imposed capital restrictions, drastically limiting withdrawals of hard currency. The entire fixed exchange rate system collapsed. Remittances from the Lebanese diaspora—which had been declining significantly prior to the protests, particularly since 2014 when Lebanese in Gulf states reduced money transfers due to rapidly declining oil prices, job, and wage cuts, and more severely from 2016 onward—kept plummeting. There were also geopolitical causes for the acceleration of the financial crisis in Lebanon, such as the civil war that erupted in Syria in 2011, which affected foreign investment confidence in neighboring Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia withdrawing economic support for Lebanon in response to Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s growing influence in the country.

“Financial Engineering”

However, many argue that another fundamental feature that precipitated the crisis and defined Salameh’s bold and widely criticized monetary policy was the so-called “financial engineering” that took place. This scheme involved the complicit circulation of U.S. dollars between the state, the central bank, and Lebanese banks using high-interest rates, income, and profits as economic incentives. This, in reality, was part of a larger effort to continue funding successive governments’ controversial public spending. The entire endeavor worked for so long because it was structurally compatible with the policy of the currency peg, as it concurrently required constant flows of foreign currency/dollars to Lebanon, mainly deposits at Lebanese banks (which, as previously mentioned, largely originated from diaspora remittances).

In simple terms, banks received foreign currency deposits primarily from the Lebanese diaspora’s remittances and tourism, which they placed at the central bank in the form of certificates of deposits to earn generous interest income supported by a favorable (though substantially overvalued) fixed exchange rate of 1,507 pounds to the dollar. In turn, the central bank used the deposits to support government spending, pay for imports, and pay back the interest on accrued public debt but also on foreign currency deposits to the banks. Earning handsome interest income was a great incentive for both customers placing their savings at Lebanese banks and for banks themselves by lending to the state through primarily the central bank or directly. There are numerous important and complex financial details omitted here, but much of the interlinkage can be explained in this simple way.

Most observers agree that the political and economic elite, who managed and controlled the state’s resources, the central bank helmed by Salameh (or, allegedly, Salameh and other associates who are also the subject of investigations into embezzlement and illicit enrichment), and particularly the Lebanese banks )which hold more than 50 percent of Lebanon’s public debt) were the main beneficiaries of this financial engineering scheme. However, as a consequence, the scheme further enriched and inflated the assets of an already oversized and dominant banking sector in Lebanon on the back of the accrued state’s sovereign debt. By consistently pursuing and promoting this financial scheme, Salameh arguably prioritized safeguarding the attractiveness of local banks at the expense of the domestic economy and GDP growth.

It’s also worth noting that, while Lebanese bank customers and retail investors took some advantage of the interest income stemming from their deposits, Salameh’s financial engineering schemes mostly benefited the banks shareholders and wealthy depositors. Moreover, a research paper commissioned in 2016 by the Economic Research Forum on bank ownership mapping in Lebanon additionally highlights an underlying vicious cycle: close to 43 percent of Lebanon’s commercial banking sector assets are associated with the country’s political elites. As an unconventional Lebanese banker puts it, Lebanon’s financial assets have been controlled far beyond what is characterized as the political elites but by a Lebanese deep state.

As remittances plummeted, and foreign currency reserves fell to a strained level in 2016, Salameh reportedly doubled down on the central bank’s financial engineering operations to keep the dollars flowing in. He did this by exponentially raising the income that can be earned from interest on dollar deposits by commercial banks, far above market interest rates. At the same time, he increased Eurobond borrowings but most drastically pursued more aggressive lending to the state through regularly buying government bonds.

Salameh’s financial engineering, which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) politely described as “unconventional”  at the time, has more appropriately been likened to a ponzi scheme by the World Bank in a report published in 2022. The report noted that fiscal policy practices were consistently mismanaged by the government and central bank to serve an entrenched political and economic elite at the expense of the citizenry, including incurring massive public debt to maintain confidence in the financial system, an overvalued currency to sustain deposit inflows, macro-financial imbalances “binding” fiscal, monetary, and financial balance sheets, and the ruling elite’s exploitation of state resources for private gains.

Despite being blamed by some for Lebanon’s current distress, Salameh has insisted that the Lebanese financial crisis is not a consequence of monetary policy but of political impasse. He has complained of a political campaign seeking to undermine his record, mainly waged by the camp of former Lebanese president Michel Aoun and his son-in-law, the controversial politician Gibran Bassil. Salameh has attributed the crisis to a series of factors and contingencies, including the 2019 protests leading to the temporary closure of banks, the 2020 government default on paying its dues on Eurobonds, the coronavirus pandemic, the infamous Beirut port explosion, and the ongoing political crisis over the presidency. He has also claimed that it was the government that compelled the central bank to finance its public expenditures through laws.

Many have wondered how Salameh could still be running the central bank and not be held accountable in view of the mounting investigations into his alleged financial crimes. To answer this, many analysts and commentators point to Salameh’s support from top politicians and the country’s economic elite, and further ascribe the matter to the country’s sectarian patronage and clientelist system. Yet at the same time, this ignores the country’s broader economic and financial context. The uncomfortably truth is that while Salameh contrastively dollarized the Lebanese currency in his three-decade tenure as the governor of the central bank, he ultimately did little to break with the country’s history of an uncontested and minimally regulated laissez-faire banking system in Lebanon.

Will the IMF Rescue Lebanon?

At this moment, the path out of the financial crisis itself depends in great part on the implementation of an IMF economic reform program, following a preliminary agreement reached between the IMF and the Lebanese government in April 2022. As part of the agreement, on the condition that reform measures are fulfilled, the IMF will provide a $3 billion bailout to Lebanon aimed at restoring the country’s economic and financial sustainability. The IMF reform plan primarily requires the implementation of several painstaking reforms, including the restructuring of the country's commercial banks, the abolishing of central bank financing, a capital controls law, amending the banking secrecy law to conform with international standards of fighting financial crimes, and the unification of the multiple exchange rates for the Lebanese pound, which resulted from the collapse of the stable exchange rate following the crisis. However, according to an IMF statement following a team’s mission to Lebanon in March, limited progress has been made in fulfilling comprehensive economic reforms. The statement noted the lack of action by Lebanese authorities to enact key changes, as well as the persistence of a set of financial practices harmful to the Lebanese economy.

Above all, the IMF’s proposal calls for financial sector losses to be distributed between the government, the banks, and large depositors in a manner that protects small depositors while keeping recourse to state assets to a minimum. Not surprisingly, this proposal has been largely opposed by Lebanese banks, contributing to stalling reforms.

For now, it seems, Lebanon continues to be stuck and must wait for deliverance, both political and economic/financial. Salameh’s fate may end up being a bellwether for the country’s situation: will be held for account for his numerous alleged crimes, signaling that change is at hand, or will he somehow manage to get away with all that he has done?

Rany Ballout is a New York-based political risk and due diligence analyst with extensive experience in the Middle East. He holds a master’s degree in International Studies from the University of Montreal in Canada and a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Afghanistan’s key economic sectors have long been bedeviled by the lack of security, widespread corruption, and weak law enforcement. Following the takeover of the Taliban in August 2021, national funds were frozen, sanctions were imposed, and development aid was halted by the international community. Nonetheless, the Taliban have found ways to sustain the country’s fragile economy, thanks to Afghanistan’s ample mineral resource deposits.

Estimated to be worth about a trillion dollars, the Taliban have already started converting these assets into hard revenue. Coal, for example, is already being extracted and exported—the earnings from such help sustain the new regime, particularly in light of the economic shortfall left by the country’s abrupt political crisis. To ensure a swift cash flow, in the second quarter of 2022, the Taliban’s finance ministry raised export duties on coal from 20 percent to 30 percent, coupled with the rise in coal rates from $90 to $200 per ton. By mid-2022, approximately $40 million was collected in customs duties on coal from the exports to neighboring Pakistan.

In an exclusive interview on a state-owned TV in 2022, Shahabuddin Dilawar, the acting minister of mines and petroleum, explained that Afghanistan has millions of tons of coal reserves in different provinces and that around 130–144 million Afs are generated every week as domestic revenue. For the cash-strapped Taliban, coal mining thus presents an essential economic lifeline. However, given the chronic dearth of capital and labor in other sectors of the Afghan economy—such as manufacturing, education, agriculture, and the public sectors—over-reliance on natural resources, particularly coal mining, could lead Afghanistan to suffer from the infamous Dutch Disease.

Afghanistan’s Economic Disparity

The Taliban’s newfound dependence on mining revenue bodes ill for Afghanistan, which is already suffering from a high unemployment rate—in the first weeks of the Taliban’s takeover alone, a total of more than 500,000 people lost their jobs.

Because of the country’s poor economic situation, workers are seeking jobs in cash-rich industries like coal mining. However, this has led to a severe understaffing problem in other essential sectors, such as agriculture and social services. Additionally, as the mining industry consumes a significant portion of capital, there may also be a lack of capital in these other sectors, leading to an overall imbalance in the economy.

Further complicating the situation is the ugly reality that only those with political clout can find work. This is because workers are frequently designated based on individual preferences, connections, and ideological compatibility with the Taliban. As a result, further national poverty and inequality seem likely, which could lead to an increase in child labor, as even the low wages earned by children working in fields like mining are deemed necessary by starving households.

None of this has dissuaded either domestic or international investors, however. Many parties are keen to invest in the country’s mining industry. For instance, Chinese and Iranian companies have shown interest, and may soon make huge investments in Afghan coal mining.

Kabul is thus left in an ugly situation: the Afghan economy is imbalanced in favor of mining, while other sectors go understaffed and underfunded. Yet reform is hard to achieve, due to the country’s delicate and volatile politics.

Fighting over the Mines and Power

Because of its sheer importance, the Taliban’s leaders have exerted monopolistic control over the mining sector. As reports note, the Afghan mining industry is now beholden to a few top Taliban leaders, and relying solely on income from mining likely exacerbates political fractures among these leaders. The resulting covert power struggles have unfortunately led to mismanagement and exploitation. In early 2023, for example, the Taliban’s Ministry of Public Works announced that it plans to offer coal mining extraction contracts to local (road) construction companies in exchange for the restoration of the Kabul-Kandahar highway.

Given that Afghanistan is already susceptible to economic and political threats—whether it be from disaffected local forces, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province, and/or the National Resistance Force—any disagreements over the equal distribution of coal mines and their revenues could not only lead to Dutch Disease but also to further instability.

Nonetheless, in the current context of Afghanistan’s volatile political and economic landscapes, the newfound reliance on natural resources is necessary for the country’s short-term economic survival, as was the case in some other countries such as Indonesia and Nigeria. In the long run, however, the Taliban regime needs to advance new policies, such as promoting economic diversification and the inclusion of Afghan private enterprises. This could make the use of natural resources more efficient by ensuring proper capital allocation and job creation in different sectors. In this way, the Taliban can avert a number of local threats and even pacify some anti-Taliban factions for national security.

Given that the country’s coal mines are among the Taliban’s few major sources of domestic revenue, these require tactical and careful management. Otherwise, the implications could be devastating. Conflicts over coal mines, for example, have already been reported between the Taliban and locals in Sar-e-Pol province. Such disputes over the control of the mines will further encourage locals to engage in the illicit trade of natural resources—a major problem for the Taliban given their dependence on the mines and coal.

The Need for Change

Given current circumstances, the Taliban sees the use of natural resources as a boost for their economy and survival. However, if they only invest in natural resources without creating other kinds of jobs, they risk instability and causing Dutch Disease, which could have disastrous consequences for their regime. To avoid this, they should inclusively encourage domestic startups to participate in the mining industry to create jobs. Rather than relying solely on exporting coal, the Taliban could use it as a raw material for other industries within Afghanistan, such as iron manufacturing, and/or use the surplus earnings from coal exports for capital allocation in other sectors. Another option would be to exchange coal exports for things that Afghanistan needs, such as agricultural equipment and technological services.

One thing is for sure, however: if the Taliban does not change its approach, the long-term consequences will be a natural resource curse, increased unemployment, and internal political turmoil.

Hamayun Khan is an independent researcher pursuing an MSc in International Business at George Washington University. He holds an MBA in Finance from IKG Punjab Technical University, India. Hamayun has published articles on Afghanistan with several think tanks, and news outlets including The Diplomat, Migration Policy Institute, Eurasia Review, South Asia Monitor, and South Asia Journal.

Nasrat Sayed is a researcher and commentator on Afghanistan. He has published articles on Afghanistan for several think tanks and news outlets, including the Migration Policy Institute, The Diplomat, International Growth Center, The Interpreter, South Asia Monitor, and TOLOnews.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors.

Image: Shutterstock.

As we’ve learned from recent leaks of top secret documents on Discord, the United States is engaged in a direct conflict with Russia. It’s neither akin to covert Russian intervention in Vietnam, nor even the major U.S. role in the Soviet-Afghan War. We already knew American dollars were buying American weapons to kill Russian troops, aided by American intelligence and targeting.

What it now appears—assuming the leaks are genuine—is that American boots are on the ground, too. The media has misrepresented the state of the conflict, covering it as a traditional proxy war, but the reality is patently unsustainable.

For most Americans, foreign policy is not a top priority, especially when almost every aspect of American life has gotten harder in the past few years. Inflation is still issue number one, and its issue number two as well. But something unsettling has occurred amidst that inattention and the free hand we’ve given to Washington’s foreign policy establishment: Europe now faces its first massive land war in seventy years, and our leaders seem content to let it drag on indefinitely, underestimating the risk that a prolonged and direct conflict with a major world power could metastasize into a global catastrophe.

When I ran for Congress last year, I heard very directly from the citizenry of western Pennsylvania a deep concern that we had slipped back into a different era, one in which cataclysmic outcomes were again possible. Voters understood that without America coming to Ukraine’s aid, Russian president Vladimir Putin would conclude that he can take what he wants. But concerns about support for Ukraine were just as nuanced: are we acting in America’s interest, or expending our energy on a conflict that is not our fight? Especially given the crises we face here at home—the economy, the border, and many more. Whose sovereignty matters most?

There remains a gap, dangerous and growing, between the commitments American elites have made and what the average American will support. That gap is our largest strategic weakness, one unaddressed by virtually everyone in the political sphere. With no prospects for a clear victory by either side in Ukraine, and these new revelations that show how our foreign policy is prolonging this attritional war, America must turn its efforts to peacemaking.

We can start by speaking plainly: our own intel suggests that Ukraine’s spring offensive is unlikely to change the tide. The diplomat ideologues and civilian think tankers who brought us to this moment have no plan for a decisive battlefield victory, nor even a sufficient advantage to convince Russia to sue for peace. This is an underappreciated risk: intervention so heavy and so direct near guarantees escalation or dangerous spillover. We are running out of time before this officially becomes a greater, messier international conflict. America cannot rely on Ukrainian or Russian leadership. We must determine the sufficient price for peace and then, quite frankly, as the senior party and chief financial partner to the conflict, impose those terms on all parties.

First, we need to stop dealing in the arbitrary posture that every new development in this conflict is the final front in stopping Putin’s territorial ambitions. Putin began his imperial project in Georgia in 2008 and continued it with little pushback in Crimea in 2014. Over the course of that time, he assumed de facto sovereignty over approximately 2.5 million people, and that can’t be ignored. But resisting Putin’s expansionism must be viewed strategically, not just tactically. The risk we take by hurling American lives and equipment into this conflict until the Ukrainians have what we judge is a sufficient advantage is that this regional conflict boils over into a global one.

Washington’s foreign policy establishment argues for no compromise, no negotiation with Putin. It believes we can work the subtle line between sapping Russian capabilities and preventing escalation. For example, it advocates for limiting Ukrainian strikes in Russia. But by prolonging the conflict and increasing Ukrainians’ and Russian desperation, we guarantee it won’t stay contained. The incentives and impact of an attritional war won’t align so cleanly.

Who will end this war if not us? Russians and Ukrainians just celebrated Orthodox Easter, and for the second year in a row, Pope Francis called for a two-week Easter truce. But there was no truce and there will be no truce. The two countries are engaged in more than a war: they are engaged in a crusade. But even crusades require resources, allies, and hope of victory. The longer we provide these to Ukraine carte blanche, the longer each side will remain convinced it needs to wait for more favorable terms before pursuing peace.

Every week there is more news and opinion about one side or the other’s battlefield advantage. These breathless reports aren’t changing the broader picture. The longer this war drags on, the likelier that leaders in Russia and Ukraine will see strikes outside the immediate battlefield or other destabilizing, asymmetric actions—as desirable and reasonable. And in the fuzzy logic of wars of attrition, they will be.

Right now, the United States foreign policy establishment is not merely supporting an ally. We are prolonging an unsustainable war and risking global security. The free people of Ukraine deserve support, but unless we are committed to running two Defense Departments—American and Ukrainian—then we need to find a solution, and soon. As the Discord leaks showed, we’re committing resources and manpower to prolong a conflict that is only uncovering additional layers of mobilization and escalation, while decimating the lives of the average Ukrainian, as hearty and committed as many are. Instead of being accomplices to this destructive deadlock, we should provide the means of ending it: forcing the parties to negotiate a structured peace, not just for their interests, but for ours.

Jason Killmeyer is a political commentator and national security expert who focuses on defense policy and emerging technologies.

Image: Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com

Argentina is set to go to the polls on October 23 to elect a new government. The election—amidst a deep economic crisis, which includes high inflation (over 100 percent), a complicated exchange rate system, a drought in prime agricultural regions, falling international foreign currency reserves, large fiscal deficits, and a messy debt situation—will be momentous. There is even some talk that the Fernández government may not last until election day. Yet despite a pervading sense of pessimism over the economy, one sector has shined: lithium. The flaky white metal is widely seen as an export that can help grow the country out of its troubles.

But there is a sharp debate about how to play the lithium card: should it be exported as a raw material (in the form of lithium carbonate), with a welcome role for foreign companies, or should there be a value-added process that extends to the creation of a local battery industry guided by the state and restrictive to the foreign sector? The discussion over how to approach this issue is likely to intensify as the election draws closer, with foreign mining companies and governments watching closely.

Lithium as Key to the World’s Energy Future

Lithium’s importance stems from its central use in the making of batteries. As the world moves away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, the need for batteries increases as they are essential to power electric vehicles (EVs) and help augment storage for wind and solar power. In the United States, the great energy transition has received a massive amount of government support, most noticeable in the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The European Union, meanwhile, is taking measures to secure diverse, affordable, and sustainable supplies of critical raw materials, including lithium.

While the United States and the EU are major users of lithium, China is the largest consumer of the metal due to its use in its booming electronics and EV industries as well as being the world’s leading battery maker. Some of its largest mining/energy companies are already engaged in Argentina. Other countries are also scrambling to find secure sources of lithium, including Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the UK. According to the U.S. Geological Service, global consumption of lithium in 2022 was estimated to be 134,000 tons, a 41 percent increase from 95,000 tons in 2021. Expectations are that demand for lithium is only going to grow in the decade ahead.

In this rapidly changing energy landscape, Argentina has the good fortune to be part of the “lithium triangle” that also encompasses Bolivia and Chile. It is estimated that 60 percent of the world’s identified lithium reserves are in this region, with Chile being the second largest producer and Argentina in fourth place. Although Bolivia holds the world’s largest reserves (21 million tons) and is seeking to develop its lithium mining, political problems and a longstanding disinclination vis-à-vis foreign investment have translated into only meager output. In contrast to Bolivia, Argentina has maintained a more open investment climate for lithium mining, which is paying off. In 2022, Argentina’s mining exports hit a historic high of $3.86 billion, driven by robust lithium income. Indeed, lithium exports surged 234 percent from a year earlier, accounting for a fifth of all Argentine mining shipments. Most of the country’s lithium is produced in three northern provinces, Catamarca, Jujuy, and Salta, which have dealt with the wave of foreign companies and are indicating that they would like a larger slice of the profits, possibly through a tax increase.

Argentina’s Lithium Choices

Lithium’s attractiveness as an export has gained considerable attention from Argentina’s political class. The question they face is how to extract as much value as possible to benefit the country. The dirigiste or statist model is to nationalize lithium and/or have the state play a major role in its development. This argument is grounded in the view that the global push to renewables provides an opportunity for Argentina to advance its industrialization and technological development while avoiding the risk of reprimarization of the economy. According to Veronica Robert, the Undersecretary for Strategy for Development of the Secretariat of Strategic Affairs in the Peronista Fernández administration: “The development of a manufacturing and technological sector associated with the production of cathode materials (which are derived from lithium) such as battery cells could position our country in a privileged place within the production of electric and hybrid vehicles, in the same way that it could complement our capacity to generate electricity.”

With the dirigiste model, foreign companies are either not welcome or limited to public-private arrangements. According to Marcos Actis, Dean of Engineering at Universidad Nacional de La Plata, “Handing over the lithium mines to foreign private companies was the worst thing that could have been done.” His reasoning stems from the fact that Argentina exports a primary ingredient for batteries but must import by-products and batteries from China for the local industrial development of renewables. His preference is to require foreign companies to install local battery plants, which is being pursued by Indonesia with its nickel mining and in Bolivia.

Actis also believes that Argentina’s state-owned energy company, YPF, should play a more significant role in the lithium sector. While YPF is mainly driven by oil and gas production, it has also created YPF Tec, a technology company that is seeking to launch a lithium battery factory supplied lithium by U.S. mining company Livent (which is mining in Argentina). The plant is the first in Latin America that will produce lithium battery cells, which will be used in stationary batteries for energy storage.

The argument for a more statist role in the lithium sector received a boost from neighboring Chile, whose left-of-center president, Gabriel Boric, announced in April that he will increase the state’s role in his country’s lithium industry to strengthen the economy and protect biodiversity. Under the proposed plan, which must pass the Chilean Congress, the government will negotiate with the two licensed lithium mining companies present in the country—SQM (Chilean and partially Chinese-owned) and Albemarle (American)—for new contracts that increase the state’s share of ownership and profits. Moreover, the state-owned copper mining company, Codelco, will oversee the process as well as help to create a new state-owned lithium company. The reception to this plan was mixed, with much of the global media and investors calling the Chilean government’s action a nationalization, though there was no outright seizure of foreign company ownership.

While the dirigiste model appeals to Argentina’s populist wing, there is a more market-based option. According to Santiago J. Dondo, former Undersecretary of Mining Policy, who served during the more market-oriented administration of President Mauricio Macri (2015–2019), “In Bolivia, Evo Morales convinced everyone that they will not take our lithium if it is not in a Bolivian electric car. The result: Bolivia does not produce lithium commercially despite having the largest salt flat in the world.”

Dondo also noted that, despite discussions over an expanded state role in Chile, that country’s tax regime and mechanisms to boost local battery production have led to a cooling in foreign investment into the sector. The move to nationalize the Chilean lithium industry is likely to further chill foreign investment to Argentina’s benefit.

Dondo prefers what he calls the Australian model, which is based on market-friendly principles, openness to foreign investment, and investment in technology to lower the costs of producing lithium. Consider that while neighboring Bolivia sits on the world’s largest identified reserves, the country has struggled to launch its lithium business since Evo Morales came into office in 2006 and insisted on a very restricted foreign company role and the development of a local battery industry, all run or guided by the state. In sharp contrast, Australia is the world’s largest producer. Dondo and others worry that the adoption of the Bolivian model would take away from Argentina’s attractiveness as a place to mine lithium.

An additional risk in turning away foreign investment is that lithium mining companies and their badly needed technology can go elsewhere. Brazil is developing its own lithium sector, and African lithium-rich countries, such as Zimbabwe and Namibia, are moving to develop processing and refining industries to capture a portion of the global demand for battery material. The more difficult the investment process, the more foreign companies will look for easier points of entry.

The Geopolitics of Argentine Lithium

Argentina’s lithium debate also puts it in the geopolitical crosshairs. In 2022, China made up 43 percent of all lithium exports, followed by Japan at 29 percent, South Korea at 14 percent, and the United States at 10 percent. For the United States, Argentina accounted for 51 percent of its lithium imports in 2023, followed by Chile and China. Consequently, what happens in Argentina matters to the rest of the world. This was clearly reflected by the German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s January visit to Argentina and the current state of intense negotiations between Buenos Aires and Washington to forge some type of trade agreement to allow lithium imports under the IRA, which precludes imports except for countries that have a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States. Argentina currently lacks a FTA.

China has also heavily invested in Argentina, complete with suggestions that the South American country join the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) club and a recent agreement for trade between the two nations to be conducted in yuan. China is Argentina’s second-largest trade partner after Brazil and has lent Argentina $17 billion for a wide range of infrastructure projects, many of which have been troubled by local labor and environmental issues. China also reportedly has some type of bases (supposedly linked to its space program) in the country, and Chinese companies are actively engaged in the lithium sector. Although Argentina represents a challenging environment for Chinese companies, it maintains an important geoeconomic importance, especially in terms of its natural resources. What is going on in Argentina, including the debate over the lithium production regime, is of considerable interest to Beijing.

Although Argentina’s economic crisis dominates its electoral politics, the lithium sector is enjoying considerable success, in part due to the successful handling of the business by the three major provincial governments where it is produced. Whoever wins the 2023 elections will have a say in whether the federal state plays a larger role or if Argentina will maintain an investment regime that is open to foreign investment. Argentina has a window of opportunity to make good in the lithium sector, but it needs to maintain a pragmatic approach to achieve the greatest value it can for the country and keep foreign investment positively engaged.

Dr. Scott B. MacDonald is the Chief Economist for Smith’s Research & Gradings, a Fellow with the Caribbean Policy Consortium, and a Research fellow with Global Americans. Prior to those positions, he worked for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Credit Suisse, Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, KWR International, and Mitsubishi Corporation. His most recent book is The New Cold War, China and the Caribbean (Palgrave Macmillan 2022).

Image: Ksenia Ragozina/Shutterstock.

Only civilian leaders can forge a path to peace.

New Delhi won’t side with Washington against Beijing.

The United States operates some of the most advanced and capable tactical aircraft ever to take to the skies, but what does it cost to train the pilot? More than you might think.

Back in 2019, the U.S. Air Force worked with the RAND Corporation to conduct an analysis of what the branch spends on bonuses and incentive pay aimed at retaining existing pilots, versus the cost of recruiting and training new pilots to replace them. According to the 73-page report, this comparison was of particular import at the time (and today) because the commercial-airline industry has been aggressively pursuing qualified pilots to replace its own aging workforce, encouraging highly-trained Air Force pilots to get out of the military and take on cushier jobs ferrying passengers between New York and LA.

Related: How long does it take to become an Air Force fighter pilot?

New pilots versus old, in terms of dollars and cents

There are a number of variables to take into consideration when trying to determine the right pilot force structure. High levels of retention mean high levels of expertise, but it also means higher personnel costs across the board as aviators continue to progress in their careers toward higher pay grades. An all-senior pilot force also creates problems as those senior pilots begin to reach retirement age. Conversely, an all-junior (or recruited) pilot force offers lower costs in terms of payroll and bonuses, but comes with the high initial cost of recruitment and training.

Obviously, the right structure is a mix of the two, with a number of senior aviators sticking around being the pay structure, bonuses, and incentives make it worthwhile as compared to commercial or civilian endeavors, and a number of aspiring aviators coming in each year to train for their military careers. This offers a mixture of experience, skill sets, and costs that allows the pilot corps to be sustainable over the long haul, but in order to manage this balance, the Air Force must have a thorough understanding of what such a mixture will cost for the purposes of budget allocation.

Of course, the first step in making this determination is assessing exactly how much it costs to train a person off the street to fly a hundred million dollars worth of state secrets into enemy airspace and live to tell the tale.

Related: How fighter pilots plan combat missions

Pilot training costs vary widely

In order to assess the cost of training a pilot, RAND had to consider a number of things outside the direct expenses incurred by the student (housing, payroll, etc), like the cost per flight hour for aircraft leveraged and the support costs incurred by maintaining these training fleets. Costs from each stage of training, from flight screening all the way through assignment to formal training units, were included.

The analysis found that the cost of training pilots varied greatly based on the platform. For instance, it costs about ten times more to train a pilot to fly America’s premiere air superiority fighter, the F-22 Raptor, than it costs to train a pilot to fly a C-17 cargo plane. This, of course, makes a great deal of sense seeing as aircraft like the F-22 costs far more per hour to operate than more utilitarian platforms like the C-17.

Related: What is Air Force fighter pilot training like?

Here’s how much the U.S. Air Force spends training its pilots:

The chart below shows the Air Force cost of training one pilot on each platform, according to the RAND Corporation analysis from 2018, as well as today’s updated figures when adjusted for 2023’s inflation, using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator.

Aircraft 2018 Dollars 2023 Dollars A-10 $5,961,000.00 $7,194,795.47 B-1 $7,338,000.00 $8,856,804.09 B-2 $9,891,000.00 $11,938,218.76 B-52 $9,688,000.00 $11,693,202.24 C-130J $2,474,000.00 $2,986,063.41 C-17 $1,097,000.00 $1,324,054.80 C-5 $1,397,000.00 $1,686,148.18 F-15C $9,200,000.00 $11,104,197.01 F-15E $5,580,000.00 $6,734,936.88 F-16 $5,618,000.00 $6,780,802.04 F-22 $10,897,000.00 $13,152,440.00 F-35A (basic) $10,167,000.00 $12,271,340.00 F-35A (transition) $9,467,000.00 $11,426,460.12 KC-135 $1,196,000.00 $1,443,545.61 RC-135 $5,447,000.00 $6,574,408.82

Figures obtained from “The Relative Cost-Effectiveness of Retaining Versus Accessing Air Force Pilots” by the Rand Corporation

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran who specializes in foreign policy and defense technology analysis. He holds a master’s degree in Communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

This article first appeared at Sandboxx News.

Image: Shutterstock.

In recent weeks Israel has been facing its most severe internal political and judicial crisis in recent times. At the center of it stands a controversial judicial reform aiming to weaken the power of the supreme court in the national decisionmaking process.

The country’s supreme court is regarded by many Israelis as a beacon of liberal human rights. Yet others see it as an undemocratic institution with too much power. The judicial reform put forward by the government included plans to curtail the power of the judiciary in several ways, including:

1. Merely requiring a simple majority in the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) to overrule court decisions;
2. Increasing the government representation on the committee which appoints the supreme court judges;
3. Canceling the legal requirements that ministers have to obey the advice of legal advisers, guided by the attorney general.

The reaction to the proposed reform has been unprecedented in Israeli history: massive protests took place across the country, with as many as 200,000 people flooding the streets in Tel Aviv and over 500,000 countrywide; a countrywide strike was called out by Israel’s Histadrut trade union; and as many as 750 reservists of the Israeli Defense Forces stopped answering their call-ups for training. Reserve and military officers from Israel’s Military Intelligence Special Operations Division warned in an open letter the “legislation in question will destroy everything we have served and fought for. We will not let that happen.” On the evening of Monday, March 27, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the temporary freeze of the legislation. Laying aside the internal political implications, we expect the long-term strategic-political consequences for the U.S.-Israel relationship, as well as for the United States’ future standing in the Middle East, to be paramount.

The relationship with America has historically been an important one, as the United States has been decisive in ensuring the security and safety of Israel in the Middle East and in the rest of the world. However, the relationship has become strained over the last months and has led the Biden administration to change its rhetoric towards Israel. Statements released by the administration have been increasingly admonitory and interfering with Israeli internal politics. This is highly unusual, as the United States does normally not openly do so towards allies, and, historically, U.S. administrations have adopted this policy towards Israel. This change occurred as a result of several factors, including pressure from the Jewish-American community, which has been very supportive of the opposition to Netanyahu’s government, and radical progressive figures within the Democratic Party and the Congress that are exerting strong pressure on the administration to take a clear stand against the proposed judicial reform.

During a call between President Joe Biden and Netanyahu, Biden “underscored his belief that democratic values have always been, and must remain, a hallmark of the U.S.-Israel relationship, that democratic societies are strengthened by genuine checks and balances, and that fundamental changes should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support.” After meeting  Netanyahu on January 30, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that “the relationship between our countries, what we come back to time and again is that it is rooted both in shared interests and in shared values. That includes our support for core democratic principles and institutions.”

This strong attitude towards Israel has not gone unnoticed and has been widely criticized, including by right-wing Knesset member and Minister of National Missions Orit Strock, who tweeted in Hebrew: “Dear Mr. Blinken, I understand that you decided to give our prime minister a lesson in democracy. Well, democracy is first of all the duty of a country to determine its course according to the votes of its citizens, each of which is given equal weight, without foreign involvement.”

Since the (temporary) freezing of the judicial reform, the tension between Washington and Jerusalem has further increased. On 28 March, Biden announced that Netanyahu will not receive an invitation to the White House “in the near term,” and told reporters that “like many strong supporters of Israel, I’m very concerned. I’m concerned that they get this straight. They cannot continue down this road. I’ve sort of made that clear.” Even for the United States, which recently described the Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich as “offensive, concerning and dangerous,” such comments are unprecedented. Additionally, they coincide with a time of fragile internal and external security in the country, as the religious holidays of Passover, Ramadan, and Easter coincided this year.

Netanyahu himself has strongly rebuked the Biden administration, emphasizing that “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.” Yet Israel now finds itself in an insecure position where it stands to lose political and public support from Washington, and is slowly moving towards diminished economic, political, and security support from its oldest and most powerful ally. This is especially threatening in light of Iran’s rise as a nuclear power, as inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency found uranium particles enriched to 83.7 percent in Iran’s nuclear facilities. Moreover, the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah have recently expanded their infrastructure, and Israel suffered increased aggression during Passover, with thirty-four rockets fired at Israeli territory from Lebanon—the worst bombardment since the 2006 Lebanon war.

The harsh American involvement in Israel’s internal affairs has been met with bold condemnation from within countries. Instead of weakening the Israeli government and Netanyahu, the Biden administration’s statements invigorated his supporters within both the public and the government coalition. Even center and left-wing political figures expressed their dislike of the U.S. policy towards Israel.

Moving forward, this is expected to have decisive consequences regarding America’s standing in the Middle East in general and the U.S.-Israeli relationship in particular. The image of the United States as a power determined to stand in support of its allies while respecting their internal political processes and refraining from interference in their internal affairs has suffered a strong blow. Pro-American allies in the Arab world—like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Jordan, and Lebanon—will have to take into consideration that the United States might wish in the future to interfere in their own internal affairs, in particular with regard to their willingness to adopt democratic procedures and to go along with issues of human rights and the treatment of minorities. These will make them think twice regarding U.S. pledges of support in case of real and concrete threats to their security from radical powers—in particular, Iran.

The United States’ conduct in the recent internal turmoil will have two major implications in Israel.

First, and most importantly, it exposed the limited power of the United States vis-a-vis Israel. Washington has come to realize that Israel’s dependence on the United States does not deter it from making it clear that it will not tolerate an exceeding American interference in its internal affairs. Moreover, at this stage, it has become clear that U.S. interference in support of the opposition to Netanyahu’s government has no real effect on its policy. More than ever, the Israeli government seems determined to implement the judicial reform.

Second, the statements against Netanyahu will certainly weaken the United States’ image as an “honest broker” in a peace process leading toward a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This faux pas has cost the United States authority in the Middle East, and will make it more challenging for Washington to move ahead on an American peace initiative in the region. This comes alongside a general insecurity about U.S. global leadership in light of Washington’s failed efforts to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine, the Trump-led era, and the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

All in all, the judicial reform and the protests have caused an unprecedented situation, the long-term consequences of which are not yet clear. We can only expect that the precedent of military insubordination will lead to a bandwagon effect, especially regarding missions in the occupied territories. The White House is expected to soften its stance over the coming days and weeks, but Israel still finds itself vulnerable and in tension with its most powerful ally. Nevertheless, Israel has set clear boundaries for the Biden administration, demonstrating that foreign interference with Israeli internal affairs will not be accepted in the future. It is yet unclear how this will play out in the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict, but the changed U.S.-Israel relationship will make the arduous peace process even more complicated in the future.

Even so, the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security has not wavered. U.S. National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby announced during a press conference on March 22 that “[…] the President, in his discussion with Prime Minister Netanyahu, made clear that our support for Israel’s security will remain ironclad. Nothing is going to change about that. President Biden has, through his entire public life, been one of Israel’s strongest supporters and friends, and that will not change.”

Professor Zaki Shalom is a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Professor Emeritus at Ben-Gurion University. He has published extensively on various facets of Israel’s defense policy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the role of the superpowers in the Middle East, and Israel’s struggle against Islamic terror.

Sophia Schmidt is a research intern at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, Israel. She holds a B.A. from the University of Oxford.

Image: Shutterstock.

Military adventures in far-off regions require a reliable forward outpost, friends in the neighborhood, and, most importantly, the fuel to get there. Since the Gulf War began in 1990, the United States has looked to Saudi Arabia to fill these requirements. In exchange for their hospitality, camaraderie, and oil at a reasonable price, the Saudis received American protection and weapons—adynamic colloquially called “oil for security.” The relationship between a strictly democratic state and an unapologetically authoritarian kingdom went steady for nearly two and a half decades. On paper, the partnership was an exceptional triumph of realpolitik in a period of idealistic geopolitics.

However, as America wraps up its interventions in the region, it no longer requires a forward outpost. Nor does it need a military ally in the region with whom to exchange intelligence. The only things keeping the partnership alive are Saudi Arabia’s vast oil deposits and leadership in OPEC. Yet Saudi oil policy has run contrary to U.S. interests. OPEC’s production quotas have kept oil prices worldwide high, twisting the knife in a struggling American economy. Additionally, the Saudi military intervention in Yemen using American weapons and intelligence has kept the region unstable and damaged America’s international reputation. Current U.S. policies have utterly failed to address these imbalances. It’s time for an ultimatum: Riyadh must provide the oil or lose the security.

The Middle East is a region lacking a structure for stability. It has neither a clear military and/or political hierarchy nor an effective economic union between its disparate states. The closest thing it has to an economic union is OPEC, whose mandate only coordinates oil production and as such only counts oil producers amongst its member states. And while the borders in the Middle East are artificially drawn, for the most part, the religious and ethnic rivalries are very real. This state of affairs leaves a constant power vacuum that no individual state can fill, while also making negotiation on a personal and political level extremely difficult.

Among the states in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is in the most unique position. The reach of its borders and the factors within them create peculiar geopolitical realities that serve as both boons and disadvantages.

Saudi Arabia lies upon one of the largest oil deposits in the world, earning it the envy of all countries—developing or otherwise. Oil is such a dominant industry in the country that any instability in its global price generally directly corresponds with instability in the Saudi economy. If tomorrow oil became worthless, or even just halved in price, Saudi Arabia’s economy would almost certainly collapse. To prevent this scenario from taking place, Saudi Arabia has aggressively maintained its position in OPEC, fighting to manipulate the global oil market and keep its economy flourishing, often at the expense of the rest of the world.

Also within its borders are the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, the most important sites in Islam. Simply controlling these cities grants Saudi rulers a place high in the leadership of Islam. At the same time, their presence puts pressure on (or perhaps gives an excuse for) the state to adhere more strictly to the rules of the Quran, creating an extremely conservative, rigid society. It is because of this that foreigners are often unwelcome in the country, and relations with non-Muslim nations can often be driven by the sentiment of Muslims rather than the state apparatus itself.

While its leaders see regional hegemony as an obvious next step in Saudi power, the existence of Iran complicates this endeavor. The two states are roughly comparable in power and influence in the area, and have been locked in a struggle for dominance since the removal of Baathist Iraq as a relevant competitor in the early 2000s. The states’ adherence to rival branches of Islam only makes the competition more bitter. Iran has served as the champion of Shia Islam, backing numerous Shia militant groups throughout the Middle East such as Hezbollah and the Houthis. While Saudi Arabia’s arid climate and long borders make it an unattractive target for conventional warfare, they leave it dangerously open to infiltration by smaller militant groups.

To further its own influence and minimize the risk these groups pose to its stability and national defense, Saudi Arabia has committed itself to counter-militancy. This policy has manifested most clearly in the ongoing Saudi-led intervention in Yemen, the country in which the Houthi movement is based. With the help of U.S. training, weapons sales, and intelligence, coalition forces have led an intensive bombing and ground campaign with the aim of ousting the Houthis and restoring the former Yemeni government. The conflict has created one of the largest humanitarian crises in history. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, millions are displaced, and millions more are starving. The intervention has no clear end date, and beyond being a massive humanitarian catastrophe serves as a blight on American international reputation by virtue of its second-hand involvement.

While Saudi policy was more palatable during America’s own intervention in the Middle East, upon taking a step back it is clearly antithetical to American interests in almost every way. The United States needs cheap oil, or else its economy grinds to a halt: Saudi Arabia is directly involved in keeping oil expensive. The United States needs the Middle East to be stable so that it is not dragged into another conflict: the Saudi-Iranian rivalry endangers that stability. The United States needs to recover its international reputation after its disastrous Middle East wars: cooperation with Saudi intervention in Yemen makes that considerably more difficult.

Current U.S. policy does little to address these glaring relationship deficiencies. There has been a malaise in American Middle Eastern diplomacy since the Afghanistan pullout. Yet America’s leverage is considerable. Saudi Arabia needs American weapons for its national defense, and it needs American expertise to maintain these weapons. Despite the recent cooling of some tensions, there is no strong evidence that the country’s rivalry with Iran is a thing of the past. Additionally, Saudi Arabia is no longer vital to America’s interests. Completely severing the relationship now would have almost no effect in comparison to severing it ten years ago. Even in the economic area, there are possible alternatives to Saudi oil that could be explored such as Venezuela, Nigeria, the UAE, Brazil, or even America itself. The United Stat should utilize its leverage, and demand that Saudi Arabia hold up its side of the oil-for-security bargain or else look elsewhere for defense.

Gerard A. Neumann is a student at Columbia University.

This essay was a runner-up in the 2023 John Quincy Adams Society Student Foreign Policy Essay Contest.

With its sights set squarely on countering Chinese threats in the Pacific and Russian aggression in Europe, the U.S. now has at least five secretive new warplanes in development. These programs range from next-generation air superiority fighters that will fly amid a constellation of AI-driven support drones to dual-cycle scramjet-powered hypersonic strike drones very similar to the long-awaited SR-72 concept.

With new multi-static anti-stealth radar arrays and more advanced integrated air defense systems continuing to come online, the U.S. Air Force has stated that it believes even the mighty F-22 Raptor will no longer be survivable enough in near-peer contested airspace as soon as 2030. The Raptor is widely considered to be the stealthiest fighter ever to take to the skies, so the broader context one can glean from concerns about its survivability is clear: the U.S. needs a slew of new offensive and defensive warplanes it can rely on to dominate the skies over its opponents. These warplanes will also have to defend our own airspace against a sea of new stealth fighters and bombers being hurriedly developed by Russia and China.

In order to meet the combined threat of new air defenses and increasingly potent enemy warplanes, the U.S. now has two different but deeply connected stealth-bomber programs at some stage of development, alongside two similarly connected stealth-fighter programs. But perhaps the most secretive of all of these new programs is an Air Force Research Laboratory effort to field fully-functioning dual-cycle scramjet engine systems for a low-observable hypersonic drone designed to fly three different types of combat missions.

Related: What kind of fighter could the latest military tech really build?

1) NGAD: The US Air Force’s next air superiority fighter will come with its own drone wingmen

The F-22 Raptor is widely seen as the most capable air-superiority fighter on the planet, but with fewer than 150 combat-ready airframes left in service, America’s apex predator of the skies is an endangered species. That’s where the U.S. Air Force’s NGAD program comes in.

Unlike other efforts to field new warplanes, NGAD isn’t aiming to develop a single jet, but rather a whole family of systems that can be spread across multiple airframes, including a bevy of support drones that will fly alongside the crewed fighter. This new family of systems will specialize in air combat with the stated aim of dominating enemy airspace. However, like all modern tactical aircraft, it will have multi-role capabilities that will allow for air-to-ground engagements as well.

NGAD is expected to lean further into current aviation trends of cockpit automation and data fusion, taking many of the more monotonous or complex flight control functions out of the pilots’ hands to allow them to focus on the fight, especially while directing support drones to engage air or surface targets on the fighter’s behalf. While not confirmed, it’s expected that the NGAD fighter will leverage now-in-development adaptive cycle engines for increased thrust, improved fuel economy, and a dramatic jump in thermal management (and as a byproduct of that, more energy production for advanced systems like directed energy weapons).

In 2020, it was announced that a full-sized technology demonstrator for the NGAD program had not only already been flown, but had even broken multiple records. While it’s important to note that a technology demonstrator is not the same thing as a flying prototype and may not even look like the new air dominance warplanes the U.S. will eventually field, it sounds as though the NGAD program is progressing at full speed.

The expected sticker price for America’s new NGAD fighters will likely begin at around $200 million per airframe. Its support drone costs are expected to range wildly from attritable low-cost platforms like the Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie, at around $1.3 million apiece, to fully-functioning unmanned stealth fighters at a per-unit cost of around $100 million which is greater than the F-35A’s per-unit cost. That may sound pretty steep, but it’s worth noting that America’s F-22 Raptor, which saw price increases due to the abrupt cancellation of the line, ended up ringing in at around $337 million per jet (when rolling development costs into production) in 2011 dollars. That’s a whopping $442 million today. The Air Force has stated that it does not intend to purchase NGAD fighters as 1:1 replacements for the F-22, so the total number of fighters this program will deliver remains uncertain.

Related: America’s NGAD fighter might actually be nothing like you think

2) B-21 Raider: The US Air Force’s next stealth bomber will sneak past radars that can even spot stealth fighters

Despite its sleek, futuristic aesthetic, Northrop Grumman’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber has now been in service for more than a quarter-century. Now, as China and Russia continue developing their own B-2 competitors, the firm is looking to expand America’s lead in this field with the B-21 Raider that is currently in development.

The B-21 will draw heavily from the B-2’s successful flying-wing design that Northrop has long specialized in, yet will be a fair bit smaller, carrying an anticipated 30,000-pound payload into the fight, rather than the B-2’s impressive 60,000. Despite the shrinkage, the B-21 will still be rated to carry just about every nuclear and conventional munition we’ve come to expect out of America’s bomber fleets, while leveraging stealth technology said to be at least “two generations ahead” of the famously sneaky B-2.

Unlike stealth fighters, which are detectable (though not targettable) using low-frequency radar bands, the flying-wing design leveraged by both the B-2 and B-21 is said to be extremely stealthy against all radar frequencies. This makes these long-range bombers perfectly suited for strike operations in a heavily contested airspace in the initial days of conflict. If a war were to break out with China, for instance, it would almost certainly begin with U.S. stealth bomber fleets engaging anti-ship defenses on Chinese shores to allow aircraft carriers to close in.

Today, there are at least six B-21 Raider airframes in some stage of production, and unlike most clean-sheet builds for new warplanes in U.S. history, the Raider is expected to conduct its first test flights with all its mission systems already installed and operational. If all goes well, that will dramatically reduce the time between first flight and initial operating capability. The U.S. Air Force capped the per-unit price for its new stealth bomber at $550 million per airframe in 2010, which when adjusted for inflation, puts the Raider’s anticipated cost at around $729.25 million each. That figure might make your eye twitch, but the U.S. is said to have spent as much as $2 billion each on its original stealth bomber when rolling R&D costs into procurement.

Related: How the B-21 Raider could shift power in the Pacific 

3) F/A-XX: The US Navy’s new stealth fighter will share systems with NGAD while delivering a huge jump in range

After decades of trying to force every fighter the U.S. has ever developed into carrier duty culminating in the acquisition nightmare that has been the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the U.S. Navy’s next stealth fighter is being developed specifically to thrive on America’s flattops.

Being developed under the name F/A-XX, the “F/A” prefix indicates that this new aircraft will be expected to not only deliver multi-role capabilities like all modern fighters but will also be expected to excel at both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat operations. The U.S. Navy and Air Force have both indicated that the stealth fighter to emerge from the F/A-XX effort will share some common systems with the NGAD program, which will allow this new fighter to be fielded more rapidly. That will also mean the Navy’s next jet will benefit from the same modular software and hardware architecture intended to allow for frequent low-cost updates to these aircraft as technology matures around them.

Aside from the requisite boost in stealth and data fusion capabilities the U.S. prioritizes in new fighter programs, the Navy’s F/A-XX will also need to deliver a huge increase in fuel range over the Super Hornets and F-35Cs currently operating at sea. China’s area-denial bubble, or the area of the Pacific that falls within reach of China’s advanced hypersonic anti-ship missiles like the DF-ZF, now extends more than 1,000 miles from Chinese shores, while Navy jets like the F/A-18E and F-35C have a combat radius of only around 650 miles. That means American carriers cannot sail close enough to China to fly combat sorties without placing the carriers themselves at risk of being sunk.

The F/A-XX is expected to address this capability gap by leveraging both larger fuel stores and the aforementioned more-efficient adaptive cycle engines likely destined for the NGAD, while also benefitting from mid-air refueling provided by carrier-based MQ-29 drones. The Navy has not yet released cost estimates for this fighter, but it will likely ring in at a comparable price to the NGAD.

Related: Carrier Woes: The Navy’s fighters can’t reach China

4) Wingman Bomber: The US Air Force’s B-21 Raider will fly with an extremely advanced drone stealth bomber

During a keynote speech delivered at the Air Force Association’s 2022 Warfare Symposium earlier this year, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall revealed that the United States is exploring the idea of an uncrewed stealth bomber platform that could fly missions ahead of the optionally-crewed B-21 Raider to expand upon America’s deep penetration strike capabilities in hotly contested airspace. This new bomber platform would be expected to have a “comparable range” to that of the new globe-spanning bomber, with payload capabilities to be determined in large part by price point… which is currently estimated to land somewhere near the incredible figure of $300 million or more per drone.

An unclassified Request for Information the Air Force has released to industry partners calls for this new drone stealth bomber to have at least a 4,000-pound payload capacity and a combat radius of 1,500 miles. Yet, as Aviation Week’s Steve Trimble has pointed out, it seems likely this aircraft will need to be able to match the B-21’s range in order to serve its purpose as a means of support on long-duration missions.

A substantially cheaper drone stealth bomber that can fly ahead of the B-21 Raider could offer a huge strategic value. Raider crews could use these uncrewed bombers to target anti-ship weapons that are too well defended to risk engaging crewed aircraft, or they could engage air defense systems to allow for a safer route to the objective. Of course, at half the cost of a B-21, we’re still talking about a drone stealth bomber that costs as much as three or more F-35s. Nevertheless, the F-35 very likely couldn’t reach these targets, to begin with, whereas these new drone stealth bombers will be able to.

With the B-21 expected to replace both the B-2 Spirit and the B-1B Lancer, it makes sense for the U.S. to consider fielding less-expensive drone stealth bombers as a supplement to its next-generation bomber fleets. This program is still in the early stages of development, with Air Force officials currently assessing which of the B-21’s systems should be migrated to the stealth drone and which can’t be due to cost limitations.

5) Mayhem: The highly secretive US Air Force effort to field a hypersonic stealth drone could finally bring the SR-72 to fruition

Hidden within the long list of hypersonic weapon programs drawing funds from Pentagon coffers, the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Mayhem Program appears to be developing a dual-cycle scramjet propulsion system for more than just missiles. The effort was originally tasked with fielding larger scramjet systems capable of propelling larger payloads further distances than unspecific “existing systems.”

Although Mayhem is regularly referred to as a missile program, a closer look at the branch’s issued Requests for Information (ROIs) suggests Mayhem is more likely aimed at fielding an uncrewed, reusable hypersonic drone platform capable of conducting two different specified mission sets: strike operations and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR, missions.

As Joseph Trevithick over at The War Zone noted late last year, Mayhem’s formal name recently changed from “Expendable Hypersonic Multi-Mission Air-Breathing Demonstrator” to “Hypersonic Multi-mission ISR and Strike,” and the effort has also been referenced as a “Multi-Mission Cruiser.” This strongly suggests that we’re not talking about a missile you fire at a target and forget about. The removal of the word “expendable” in conjunction with the “multi-mission” moniker both suggest Mayhem aims to field a reusable, autonomous platform that leverages what will likely be the world’s first dual-mode or turbine-based combined cycle (TBCC) hypersonic propulsion systems.

In other words, Mayhem aims to field a turbine-based scramjet system that can function at all airspeeds from subsonic to supersonic and then hypersonic. Today’s ramjet and scramjet systems don’t function reliably until they’re moving at extremely high speeds, which are currently achieved using rockets that fire before the propulsion systems come online.

This concept is tantalizingly similar to the longstanding discussion about Lockheed Martin’s planned successor to the Mach 3.5-capable SR-71 Blackbird, known as the SR-72. All the way back in 2018, Lockheed Vice President Jack O’Banion seemed to indicate that an SR-72 demonstrator may have already flown, and he stated clearly that a full-sized propulsion system had already been built and tested. “The aircraft is also agile at hypersonic speeds,” O’Banion told a crowd at the 2018 SciTech Forum, “with reliable engine starts.”

A hypersonic strike and ISR platform would have far-reaching strategic ramifications: from the ability to deliver less-expensive non-hypersonic ordnance to targets at speeds above Mach 5 to rapid intelligence gathering even in places where satellite coverage is compromised. While the world worries about who is fielding new hypersonic missiles, it seems the Air Force is secretly planning to win the hypersonic aircraft race before the rest of the world even knows it’s begun.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in August 2022.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran who specializes in foreign policy and defense technology analysis. He holds a master’s degree in Communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

This article was first published by Sandboxx News.

Image: Mike Mareen / Shutterstock.com

The U.S. Treasury Department recently sanctioned a multi-jurisdiction procurement ring supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran’s drone and military programs. Concurrent with Iran’s continued proliferation of drones to Russia for use in Ukraine, both the Biden administration and Congress have sought to stem the flow of American components found in downed Iranian unmanned aerial systems.

Yet while preventing transfers of such Western equipment to Iran is both necessary and understandable, Asia has long served as a critical hub for military and missile technology to the Islamic Republic. An increase in the pace and scope of penalties targeting Tehran’s networks and fronts in Asia will be essential to disrupting Iran’s drone program.

The latest U.S. penalties center around an Iranian electronics firm known by an English transliteration of its acronym, PASNA. First sanctioned in 2018 for seeking technology with military applications from China and for reportedly providing material support to the sanctioned Iran’s Electronics Components Industries—a subsidiary of the sanctioned Iran Electronics Industries, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Iran’s sanctioned Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL)—PASNA continued its activities after exposure in 2018 through fronts, aliases, and affiliates, both in Iran and Malaysia.

Beyond exposing these fronts, the Treasury Department also sanctioned the managing director of PASNA, Mehdi Khoshghadam, as well as four suppliers of electronic goods and microelectromechanical systems to PASNA operating in both Hong Kong and the People’s Republic of China. These penalties build on recent efforts by the Treasury Department to disrupt other Iranian drone technology procurement rings in Asia. Last month, the department targeted five firms operating in China and Hong Kong that sold aerospace components and light-aircraft engines to Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industries, which is a subsidiary of the Iran Aviation Industries Organization, itself another MODAFL subsidiary.

Iran’s ability to erect, sustain, and even recreate front companies across jurisdictions despite Washington’s increased willingness to crack down on drone procurement, production, and proliferation networks should come as a surprise to no one. Oil shippers and shadowy fronts across Asia have long helped the Islamic Republic generate illicit revenues through the sale or storage of crude oil and petrochemicals, including at the height of U.S. sanctions.

For Tehran, which has a robust domestic defense industrial base, continued illicit procurement of drone components is a sign of the growing importance these low-flying unmanned aerial systems play in bolstering the revolutionary regime’s status and security.

Iran’s transfer of drones to Russia marked a historic first in Tehran’s relationship with Moscow, and one that the Islamic Republic is reportedly already cashing in on. Over the past three decades, it was Iran who served as a junior partner to Russia, purchasing Russian weapons like surface-to-air missile systems, fighter jets, and even diesel-electric submarines. Now it is Iranian weapons that are helping preserve Russian long-range strike platforms like cruise and ballistic missiles and helping sustain Russia in its war against Ukraine.

Regionally, variants of Iranian drones have become a regular feature of low-intensity conflict in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen where they bolster the capabilities of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” and strike U.S. persons, interests, and partners. On the home front, while drones were once seen as the purview of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, these weapons are being increasingly diffused through Iran’s Armed Forces and branches of Iran’s Artesh, or national military.

Additionally, over the past few years, Iran has taken to directly launching drones from its own territory, striking at adversaries while operating beneath their threshold for the overt use of force. Of particular importance here have been loitering munitions or suicide drones. Such weapons have been launched by Iran in a combined arms operation with land-attack cruise missiles against Saudi Arabian oil facilities in 2019, as well as against moving targets like an Israeli-owned oil tanker in 2021.

All of this is to suggest that sporadic or graduated sanctions against Iranian procurement or proliferation networks will not handicap Iran’s drone program overnight nor will it deter future drone use by Iran. For example, there is no reason why Washington waited half a decade to sanction the head of an entity that was already subject to sanctions and still engaging in sanctionable activity, as was the case with PASNA and its managing director.

Conversely, sustained pressure against managers, boards, companies, and networks alike—especially when levied in large tranches rather than meted out over time—does stand a chance at both exposing and impeding the supply chains that feed Iran’s drone program. This is especially the case when focused on jurisdictions across Asia where illicit Iranian activity continues. Washington must therefore allocate more time, resources, and political capital to keep pace with this threat.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow focusing on Iranian political and security issues at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to its Iran Program, Center on Military and Political Power (CMPP), and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP).

Image: Shutterstock.

When discussing the various inconvenient friendships of convenience in which the United States is entangled, Pakistan is a country that comes to mind almost immediately. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1947, the South Asian nation has had a difficult time maintaining pace with other economic juggernauts in the neighborhood—namely, China and India. Though Pakistan’s stagnating agrarian-based economy deserves its fair share of the blame for the country’s current state, the directionless and at times counterintuitive national-defense policies adopted by the ruling elite have also played their part in this downward spiral.

In its seventy-five years of existence, Pakistan has fought four wars with its archrival India, gone through a civil war that saw the liberation of its eastern wing (now known as Bangladesh), and has been facing waves of terrorism for the past two decades. As a result of such constant geopolitical turmoil, the country’s democratic institutions have continued to erode over time, paving the way for military dictators to rule the country for over half of its lifespan. Even in times when elected civilian governments have existed, the all-powerful military establishment has continued to exert its dominance over defense and foreign policy.

And to the detriment of both Pakistani and American long-term interests, the military establishment has consistently maintained its policies of appeasing and sponsoring terrorist groups. Outfits like al-Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, have been known to have institutional support from the Pakistani military through its premier intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Among the multitude of reasons why the Pakistani military establishment has chosen this calamitous approach is an eternal quest for “strategic depth.” Pakistan is sandwiched between India in the east and Afghanistan and Iran in the west. Given the intense and bloodied rivalry with India, a country four times as big in land mass and almost seven times as big in population, the Pakistani military establishment determined that the best approach would be to install a puppet government in Afghanistan.

In the view of the country’s top military brass, this would give Pakistan the strategic depth the nation needed to offset India’s growing military and geopolitical stature. To achieve this decade-long goal, the military establishment, through the ISI, has been arming, training, and logistically supporting certain terrorist groups deemed to be both capable of establishing their rule in Afghanistan and loyal to Pakistani interests.

For the United States, Pakistan’s cozy relationship with armed militant groups was a trump card in the Cold War, when these very groups were used to take down the mighty Soviet military as it invaded Afghanistan starting in 1979. Washington provided extensive financial support to the Mujahideen through a CIA-run covert program, Operation Cyclone. Using these funds, ISI operatives ran training camps for thousands of Mujahideen fighters. The effort paid off when the Soviets fully withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. The Soviet Union could never recover from this geostrategic low and ended up being dissolved in 1991.

Fast forward a few more years and the extremists, ever loyal to their ISI handlers, won control of Afghanistan, giving Pakistan the much-coveted comfort of ‘strategic depth’, and giving the United States a victory in the Cold War. Win-win situation, right? The thousands of Americans and the millions of Afghanis affected by the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath would say otherwise. You see, Operation Cyclone was all about creating a lethal guerrilla force, capable of defeating the mighty Soviets. This task was accomplished successfully, but as we learned in the era of former President George W. Bush, “Mission Accomplished” can often mean something different than its literal meaning.

Eventually, the monster that the U.S.-Pakistani partnership of convenience created would come back to haunt both countries. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Washington pressed the Pakistani military establishment to completely dissociate itself from any and all radical Islamist terror groups, an ultimatum that some Pakistani policymakers found hard to swallow. In subsequent years, Pakistan continued to covertly nurture these terrorist groups, using them against India and the Western-backed government in Afghanistan.

As Pakistan continued to adhere to its strategy of double-facedness, the United States kept bestowing its former ally with political and financial accolades. Pakistan was even given arguably the most prestigious friendship bracelet that America issue—being designated a major non-NATO ally (MNNA). Currently, only nineteen countries have been declared MNNAs, with the most controversial and questionable being Pakistan. Additionally, in the last two decades, Pakistan was provided with billions of dollars of American taxpayer money in military aid to earn its support in the post-9/11 War in Afghanistan.

Yet the policy of backstabbing continued. In fact, when asked about who is most responsible for the 2021 Fall of Kabul into Taliban hands, any seasoned and impartial member of the United States Intelligence Community will point toward Pakistan and the ISI in a heartbeat. In the last few years, American leaders and policymakers have become increasingly wary of Pakistan’s deceitful practices. This has pushed Pakistan more towards China’s sphere of influence, with the latter signing on to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor in 2015, a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project seen as the centerpiece of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The United States has two options in its partnership with Pakistan. The first option is to conduct exhaustive lobbying efforts through international organizations to woo Pakistan’s military leadership. Specifically, the United States can use its influence over the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to secure bailout packages for Pakistan’s cash-strapped economy. In exchange, Pakistan can be made to grant certain assurances that it will use its intelligence capabilities to monitor potential threats to the United States and its allies from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

The alternative is to accept Pakistan’s status as China’s “all-weather friend” and focus on boosting ties with a country that sees both Pakistan and China as adversaries: India. Obviously, this approach would mean abandoning a geopolitically important country and leaving it in the hands of an increasingly powerful rival. If you accept domino theory, this may not seem like the finest strategy, but it sure is an option. Now, it is up to the decisionmakers in Washington to make the call as soon as possible. As onlookers, we can only hope that they make the right one.

Zoraiz Zafar is a student at Colorado College.

This essay was a runner-up in the 2023 John Quincy Adams Society Student Foreign Policy Essay Contest.

Image: Shutterstock.

In a speech shortly after he took power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev declared “It’s obvious, comrades, that we all need to change. All of us.” The line foreshadowed perestroika—Gorbachev’s effort to reform the USSR’s deteriorating political and economic system. It was, as he later described to the United Nations, an endeavor by which the USSR was “restructuring itself in accordance with new tasks and fundamental changes in society as a whole.” Yet, despite Gorbachev’s optimism, perestroika failed; the Soviet system simply did not have the capacity to pull off such massive change without collapsing.

With this in mind, it is worth noting the significance of U.S. national security advisor Jake Sullivan’s recent speech on “Renewing American Economic Leadership” at the Brookings Institution. His remarks mark a profound shift in American strategic and economic thinking; a confession that much of what the United States has been doing and saying for decades has been wrong, and a recognition that painful and urgent reform is necessary.

As Gorbachev learned, recognizing the need for change and successfully enacting such change are two wildly different things. Is the Biden administration on the path to learning the same painful lesson?

The Failure of the “Old” Washington Consensus

Sullivan’s speech does not just reflect his individual views—the whole event was billed in the days leading up to it as an “outline” of “the Biden administration’s international economic doctrine.” It also builds upon views that Sullivan and others in the administration have been developing for quite a while.

In brief, the speech was a strong repudiation of the United States’ strong free-market economic policies for the past forty-odd years. Sullivan challenged the idea that markets always allocate capital effectively and in socially optimal ways, that “in the name of oversimplified market efficiency, entire supply chains of strategic goods—along with the industries and jobs that made them—moved overseas. And the postulate that deep trade liberalization would help America export goods, not jobs and capacity, was a promise made but not kept.” He also acknowledged the mistake of favoring the financial sector over the “real economy” (involving material goods): “our industrial capacity—which is crucial to any country’s ability to continue to innovate—took a real hit.”

Sullivan noted that much of international economic policy, predicated on the notion that economic integration could result in countries adopting essentially Western political values, turned out to be dead wrong. “Economic integration didn’t stop China from expanding its military ambitions in the region, or stop Russia from invading its democratic neighbors,” he admitted. The China shock in particular was not adequately anticipated or addressed.

On top of these issues, Sullivan went on, are two new challenges: the climate crisis and economic inequality, the latter of which is partially a consequence of previous economic thinking. These two issues have fundamentally changed the economic landscape and require a new approach to economics. Trickle-down economics, labor union squashing, tax cuts, deregulation, and corporate concentration—all the product of strong free-market thinking—have made things worse. The combined result of all of these factors have endangered democratic stability in both America and other countries. As such, Sullivan argues, there is a need for a new approach to economics that takes into account these new realities, including a return of industrial policy.

All of this sounds awfully familiar to Donald Trump’s denunciations over the “rape” of America and calls to “make things” again, but with much more moderated language. In fact, the more intellectual cohort of the so-called New Right has been advocating for such changes over the past few years, from the hitherto heterodox economic think tank American Compass to the industrial policy-focused journal American Affairs. I myself have argued along these lines, noting America’s long and storied history of utilizing industrial policy to pursue national development.

That the Biden administration—and thus, implicitly, Washington policy officialdom—is now reading from the same music sheet is a welcome development. President Joe Biden’s agenda, per Sullivan, is centered around the capacity to build, produce, and innovate. The first step towards such is investing at home through a modern American industrial strategy. Sullivan argues, though some would contest this, that although industrial policy as a word went away, the practice did not. He cites the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as an example.

Overall, Sullivan’s speech highlights a growing recognition that a new approach to economics is needed, especially in light of changing domestic and international economic conditions and realities.

The Coming Failure of the “New” Washington Consensus

Sullivan’s remarks are certainly welcome, but admitting that there is a problem is merely the first step to addressing it. The Biden administration faces three major obstacles that will frustrate, if not completely demolish, its efforts at reform.

First, the popular name for this new economic policy—the “New Washington Consensus,” a clear reference to the old, free-market-oriented Washington Consensus—suggests a failure to fully let go of the current paradigm. It is a symptom of a broader problem in Western policy circles, which is an inability to articulate and justify a forward-looking vision for society without leaning on past glories—see no further than the recurrent attempts to cast economic development programs as “a Marshall Plan for [insert country/region here],” the “Green New Deal,” the “Longer Telegram” for addressing the challenge posed by China, and so on. One gets the feeling that Western policymaking is intellectually exhausted and out of ideas. At the very least, there is a failure of imagination at play here, which is concerning when broad and serious reform is at stake.

Second, the speech is dishonest about what the Biden administration—and U.S. policymakers more broadly—says its intentions are for its relationship vis-à-vis China. Sullivan stressed the United States is “competing with China on multiple dimensions, but we are not looking for confrontation or conflict. We’re looking to manage competition responsibly and seeking to work together with China where we can.” Sullivan’s position—and, implicitly, the administration’s—is, as Todd N. Tucker summarized, “We are not trying to constrain China's growth. Their development and that of others is good for the world and stability.”

This rings hollow. Since the current administration took office, it has implemented significant export controls on semiconductors and blacklisted numerous Chinese companies via the Department of Commerce, whose secretary, Gina Raimondo, has stated that the United States must work with European states to “slow down China’s rate of innovation.”

An observer might point out that the intention here is to pursue “a healthy economic competition,” per Sullivan’s description, in contrast to China’s current approach of liberally pilfering U.S. intellectual property and systemically breaking and abusing the current trade system. That is true. But putting aside that industrial espionage and intellectual theft are, realistically, the rules of the game in geoeconomic competition—something the United States is intimately familiar with—Foreign Policy columnist Adam Tooze made a key observation a few days ago while analyzing Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s own speech on competing with China. Tooze, summarizing Yellen’s nominal stated position (and, implicitly, the Biden administration’s position), noted that “a strong and self-confident America has no reason to stand in the way of China’s economic and technological modernization except in every area that America’s national security establishment, the most gigantic in the world, defines as being of essential national interest. For this to be anything other than hypocrisy, you have to imagine that we live in a goldilocks world in which the technology, industrial capacity, and trade that are relevant to national security are incidental to economic and technological modernization more broadly speaking.”

Washington, it seems, wants to have it both ways: it recognizes it must engage in the painful (but necessary!) reform, which would realistically require a limited drawdown of the American-led unipolar world order, while also somehow maintaining that order, refusing to give an inch to the prospect of multipolarity. The feasibility of this is an open question.

Third, and most importantly, while Sullivan’s speech recognizes the urgent need to address America’s multiple economic problems and challenges, it is yet unclear whether such change can be realistically achieved at this point in the country’s current political and socio-economic context. Having written ardently in favor of this sort of change, I am now skeptical given the broader structural economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and Washington’s reactions to these events. Our position is simply far weaker than it used to be, and domestic political unity has eroded over the past three years.

As Swedish writer Malcom Kyeyune has noted, “the single most dangerous period for a political system is when it has ignored a looming crisis for years and decades, and then finally, backs snugly perched against a wall that cannot be moved, tries to apply wide-reaching reforms.” It is here that political revolutions are most liable to occur; consider the French Revolution, the fall of the Qing dynasty, or the collapse of the Soviet Union. Even the current cause célèbre of defenders of the American-led order, the war in Ukraine, has its origins in a similar situation; the Maidan Revolution occurred in large part because the politically bankrupt Yanukovych regime tried and failed to save the country’s economy, described in 2014 by the Washington Post as “a legacy of 23 years of incompetent economic management.”

It's good that policymakers are finally admitting our problems are real. But, as Gorbachev could attest, fixing these problems requires buy-in from multiple levels of society, which may not be so disposed toward change.

Consider Wall Street. Can U.S. banks, the originators of credit and the economy’s most essential actors, truly accept that the Trente Glorieuses of American finance have ended? The current low-interest rate environment has already led these institutions to increase spending on lobbying in DC by 20 percent. Will venture capitalists, private equity firms, and investors—those who have gotten fantastically wealthy in the pro-speculation environment of the past few decades—welcome a world where options are limited? A world where investing in tech app companies that deliver 5-10x returns in two years is no longer an option, and instead money must be directed towards long-term (ten to twenty years), low-return (relative to tech), risk-loaded projects like factories, refineries, and the like? Common sense says such change would be fought every step of the way.

What about the military-industrial sector? Will the major prime contractors, who have gotten rich off of the current financial paradigm while failing to deliver productivity, be open to painful adjustments? Will the U.S. Army be receptive to arguments that their budget must be cut to empower the Navy? Will various congressmen really vote in favor of closing down unnecessary bases, factories, and other job-producing facilities in their own home districts? Will hundreds of former senior-level military officials, including influential and media-savvy types, embrace a fiscally necessary end to their lucrative consulting gigs?

Perhaps most concerningly, what of nonprofits and the broader media space? Much of the sector’s recent growth was due to surplus capital and a low-interest rate environment—billionaires being able to fund NGOs and media empires because there was plenty of money. Think Jeff Bezos’ famous acquisition of the Washington Post, private equity companies’ buying of newspapers, or even cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s $200 million“strategic investment” in Forbes. Now that the (low-interest rate) party is over, the preference for the service sector is ending, and economic adjustments must be made, much of the money that allowed these socially important but economically “unproductive” enterprises will vanish. In the past week alone, Buzzfeed News shut down, Vice Media closed its flagship program and is looking to sell itself, Insider cut 10 percent of its staff, and Disney will be laying off 7,000 employees in its news division—including Nate Silver, the founder of the opinion poll analytics website FiveThirtyEight (a favorite of the Washington DC class). Will this throng of employees, and others like them, who are typically college-educated and politically savvy, not fight back like mad to prevent “change” that is taking their jobs, even if said jobs are fiscally unsustainable in a new economic environment? This notion alone should cause Democrats and many Republicans to take pause and worry.

Has Time Run Out?

At this point in time, implementing a U.S. industrial strategy will not be easy, if at all feasible. While still wealthy and powerful, the United States faces internal political division, multiple external challengers, and, perhaps most worryingly, strongly entrenched internal interests that would take a firm line against any sort of radical but needed change in the country’s national and international economic doctrine. Without a clear plan of attack, the Biden administration’s agenda—to say nothing of any potential successor administration's efforts after the 2024 election—could well founder.

Policymakers and experts must address this reality and come to grips with its implications. Otherwise, the country risks waking up one day, like the French monarchy, to tiles being thrown from the roofs by enraged citizens—an eerie prelude of what could follow.

Carlos Roa is the Executive Editor of The National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

Despite high expectations following the Velvet Revolution of 2018 that overthrew the regime of ex-President Serzh Sargsyan, the democratic landscape of Armenia has remained bleak in recent years. The current government of the country is steadily backsliding towards non-democratic governance, and perhaps even authoritarianism.

Of special concern has been the persecution of political activists and journalists, as reflected in the annual reports of a number of NGOs specialized in evaluating the functioning of democratic institutions. Reports about Armenia’s democratic environment also include human rights violations, the persecution of political activists and members of LGBTQ+ community, as well as instances of domestic violence.

For instance, Freedom House, in its most recent annual report, downgraded its assessment of political rights and civil liberties in Armenia. The report revealed that large-scale measures were being taken against political dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists by the country’s authorities.

Moreover, in its report last May, Google’s Threat Analysis Group revealed the unlawful use by “government-backed actors” of spyware called Predator, created by the North Macedonian company Cytrox. The software had been used to target journalists, dissidents, and human rights activists in the country, with local media outlets reporting that the electronic devices of several Armenian opposition politicians have been hacked. Yet Predator is not the only spyware being used; an Armenian opposition leader Artur Vanetsyan once claimed that the Pegasus spyware had been installed on his phones in 2021. Despite the claim and the following scandal, the use of Pegasus against Armenian journalists and opposition figures has apparently not been discontinued. According to a study conducted by social media specialists in Armenia in November 2022, Pegasus may still monitor the key opposition and media personalities.

Political Arrests

The worrying developments do not stop with such spying. It is apparent that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has also begun persecuting members of the previous government he overthrew. For instance, two former defense ministers have been arrested on what have been described as politically-motivated charges. Former Defence Minister Seyran Ohanyan, who served from 2008 to 2016, was arrested in 2020 on charges of embezzling over $2 million in state funds. The same charge was also brought against another former defense minister, David Tonoyan, who was detained in 2021.

The ex-minister Tonoyan, two other generals, and an arms dealer were arrested by the National Security Service (NSS) in September 2021 as part of a criminal investigation into the supplying of an allegedly outdated missile to Armenia’s armed forces. However, experts believe the arrest of Tonoyan had a political motivation—he was simply made a scapegoat for Armenia’s defeat in the six-week war with neighboring Azerbaijan in 2020. Having served as the defense minister between 2018 and 2020, Tonoyan resigned a week after his country’s capitulation in the war over Karabakh but obviously could not escape the persecution. It’s worth noting that Tonoyan, contrary to what one would assume, defended Pashinyan’s signing of the trilateral statement of November 2020 that ended the war. “Despite the fact that the Armenian Armed Forces, the entire system of the Ministry of Defense and the government did their best to be successful, calling the agreement reached to end the Karabakh war a ‘betrayal’ or ‘defeat’ is an insult,” he said in response to criticism voiced following Armenia’s signing of the deal.

The political persecution does not stop there; members of the country’s political opposition have been targeted, namely Dashnaktsutyun (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) party members. Artavazd Margaryan, head of Dashnaktsutyun faction in the Council of Elders (the municipality council) of Artashat, was detained for seventy-two hours along with the party’s activist Gerasim Vardanyan in January this year. The arrest was mocked by Margaryan’s lawyer, who posted on social media: “The detention is obviously illegal; it is devoid of any logic. You won’t believe it, but Margaryan had such charges only because he has a phone.”

Some arrests may end up in a tragedy, as was in the case of Armen Grigorian. A notable opposition personality, Grigorian fainted in court and later passed away in the summer 2022. He was put in pre-trial custody for two months, despite committing no crimes and despite lawyer and family concerns about his health. As each day went by, his immune system got worse.

Rapid Political Change

What is perhaps most surprising is how fast Armenia’s trajectory from budding democracy towards increasing illiberalism occurred. After the ruling government won the snap elections in the summer of 2021, things began to shift quickly. The government resumed its interrupted task of finding “the enemies of the people”—a process evocative of Stalin-era purges—with increased speed after receiving what Prime Minister Pashinyan calls a “steel mandate” from his people following the 2020 war. The representatives of the Armenian diaspora communities living in various countries around the world were one of the initial targets in this fight. For instance, the authorities in Yerevan refused to let Mourad Papazian, the chairman of an Armenian diaspora organization in France, enter the country in July 2022. Papazian, who has never committed a crime, was solely prohibited from entering Armenia due to his alleged involvement in anti-Pashinyan protests in Paris in 2021.

Pashinyan’s blacklist does not stop with Papazian. At Zvartnots airport on August 1, Armenian security personnel approached two Dutch-Armenians, Massis Abrahamian and Suneh Abrahamian, and informed them that they had been designated persona non grata in Armenia. Similar to Papazian, these two diaspora activists were prohibited from entering the country because they spoke out against Armenia’s current government.

Also notable is how quickly religious freedoms have also been declining in the country. In 2020, the NSS launched an investigation into Sashik Sultanyan, the chairperson of the Yezidi Center for Human Rights, after the latter publicly stated that Armenia’s Yazidi community was facing discrimination. Despite the criticism by international human rights NGOs, Sultanyan’s trial was in progress as of late 2022. If convicted, the activist will face six years in prison on the charge of being a part of an “anti-state” conspiracy.

Likewise worth mentioning is the deteriorating condition of media freedom as well. According to the Resource Center on Media Freedom in Europe, media freedom remains restricted in Armenia, “among threats of violence, strong political inferences, and expensive defamation lawsuits.” An Armenian-based NGO, the Committee to Protect Freedom of Expression, has recorded fifteen cases of journalists experiencing physical violence between January and September 2022. Moreover, most print and broadcast outlets are affiliated with political or larger commercial interests.

Despite earlier promises during and after the 2018 Velvet Revolution that brought Nikol Pashinyan and his team to power, and even the 2021 snap elections during which the war-torn society gave another chance to the incumbent government after the devastating defeat in the conflict against Azerbaijan, the political climate in Armenia has been changing, unfortunately in the negative direction. As one Armenian expert expresses, the country`s leader “has turned hatred into a principle of governance and lies into a form of governing.”

Aleksandar Srbinovski is a journalist with over fifteen years of experience working in print and online media. He has worked for Nova Makedonija, Newsweek, Europa, Blic, Politika, ABC News, Vecher, TV Sitel, and Skok. He holds a BA in journalism from the Saints Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje and has pursued continued training with the University of Oklahoma.

Image: Shutterstock.

This week Israel is celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of its independence. On any travel website, a fair assessment of Israel’s achievements during its first seven and a half decades would earn it a rank between “outstanding” and “exceptional.” Indeed, if asked, I would give it a rank that does not exist on travel websites: a miracle. And yet, during the past four months, this miracle has experienced nothing short of a Perfect Storm.

What are the components of the miracle and what are the makings of this Perfect Storm?

The Miracle of Israel…

First and foremost, Israel is an economic miracle. By 2021 its GDP has already reached $488 billion—a 1,860 percent increase since 1980. The economies of France and Germany grew during the same forty-one years by 246 percent and by 361 percent, respectively. By 2021, Israel’s per capita GDP already reached $52,15—a 720 percent increase since 1980—and is now higher than that of both Germany and France.

Another dimension of the economic miracle is the appreciation Israel received as the “Start-up Nation.” In 2021, Israelis registered almost twice as many patents per one million people than France: 1,851 versus 1,011. Israeli companies also have an impressive presence in the U.S. stock exchanges: currently, some 107 Israeli companies with a market value of $165 billion are listed in the U.S. market.

Yet the Start-up Nation could not have come about without an infrastructure of research and education in science and technology, creating a society immersed in a culture of technology. Israel’s success in these realms accounts for the very high grade it received in the UN Human Development Index (HDI), which includes factors like university degrees per capita. In 2021, Israel was ranked 22nd in this index, with a score of 0.919. By contrast, France was given an HDI score of 0.903 that year, placing it at 28th, six notches below Israel.

Within this context, one of Israel’s most successful sectors is its highly advanced military-industrial complex. The latest on this front is a multi-billion deal to sell advanced anti-missile Arrow 3 systems to Germany and a deal being finalized to export the David Sling system to Finland. Currently, the largest customer of Israeli arms, importing multi-billion dollars’ worth of weapons and ammunition, is India.

Adding to these economic miracles is that, in recent years, Israel has been the finding of huge natural gas reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean. These reserves will allow the country to become for the first time energy independent and provides the context for an important dimension of Israel’s integration in the region: its membership in the new Eastern Mediterranean Energy Cooperation group that includes Egypt, Jordan, Greece, Cyprus, and the Palestinian Authority.

The recent widening of the network of Arab states that have signed and begun implementing peace and normalization agreements with Israel is yet another dimension of Israel’s success. By this writing, Israel’s peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan have survived many challenges over forty-four years and twenty-nine years, respectively. Then, in 2002, the same Arab League that in 1948 decided to prevent Israel’s creation by invading Palestine, and that expelled Egypt because of President Anwar Sadat’s peace offensive, now adopted the Arab Peace Initiative (API) that offered Israel to be integrated into the region under some conditions.

And in October 2020, four additional Arab countries dropped the conditions stipulated in the API and signed peace and normalization agreements with Israel, commonly known as the Abraham Accords: Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan.

Moreover, in October 2022, a U.S.-brokered Israel-Lebanon agreement on their economic boundaries was signed, allowing the reciprocal exploitation of natural gas fields in the Eastern Med. Most remarkable: the agreement was clearly green-lighted by Hezbollah, a movement that continues to be formally dedicated to Israel’s destruction and is heavily supported and armed by Iran.

An equally miraculous component of the new regional environment were the new forms of defense cooperation agreements reached between Israel and its neighbors: with Jordan, in the fight with ISIS, especially in southern Syria; with Egypt, in the fight against ISIS-related and Al-Qaida-related terrorists in the Sinai; and with Abu Dhabi, in the installation of a state-of-the-art anti-rocket and anti-cruise missile systems. Similarly, relations between the Israeli and the Bahraini armed forces and between the Israeli and Moroccan armed forces have become increasingly intimate.

Not less miraculous has been the rapid development of Israel’s now exploding cultural scene. The wave of Russian Jewish immigration to Israel in the early 1990s added at least three more symphony orchestras to the Jewish state, and in the last two decades, the country experienced an explosion in the Israeli film and video world. Culture, as an important dimension of the quality of life, may also affect life expectancy. By 2021, Israel’s has reached 83.3 years, compared to 76.4 years in the United States.

The final dimension of the miracle is that, at least until this writing, Israel continues to be a thriving democracy. Indeed, this is possibly the biggest miracle of all, since none of Israel’s founding fathers, with the sole exception of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann, came from any country that had previously experienced democratic government.

…Challenged by the Perfect Storm

Yet now, this truly amazing miracle finds itself at the epicenter of a Perfect Storm. For some 16 weeks, Israel has been experiencing mass protests the likes of which it has never seen. On each of the past Saturday nights, a quarter of a million Israeli—the equivalent of 8.5 million Americans—have taken to the streets. These protestors include many members of the Israeli elite: physicians, lawyers, retired judges, and leaders of Israel’s financial community and of its industrial sector. Many among them are either the leaders or the soldiers of the Start-up Nation.

Many thousands among the Israelis protesting are also IDF reservists—veterans of its various arms and special forces as well as of the Mossad and Shabak. What brings so many of them to leave the comfort of their homes and head to the nearest town square? This time the challenge against which they are mobilized appears not to be threats to their country’s physical existence but rather to the organizing principles of its creation: the core of a Jewish-democratic state.

What comprises the six dimensions of the challenge, together making it a Perfect Storm?

The first and arguably the most important of these is the attempt of Israel’s new government to redistribute power between the country’s executive and legislative branches and its judiciary. How was this to be achieved? Largely in three ways.

First, by changing the process of appointing Israel’s judges primarily by changing the composition of the committee that nominates Israel’s supreme court judges, providing politicians a far greater day in this critically important process.

Second, by significantly weakening the Supreme Court’s power to veto a law passed by the Knesset in the event that it views such a law as contradicting one or more of Israel’s Basic Laws. How was this weakening to be achieved? By amending a basic law to include an “over-ride” clause that would allow the Knesset to overcome Supreme Court vetoes of legislation that was adopted by the Knesset.

Third and finally is the suggested legislation to significantly limit the judges’ liberty to rule what government officials’ conduct could be regarded as “reasonable.” One recent example was whether the court could rule that an individual’s appointment as Minister in the government should be rejected as unreasonable in the event that this individual was twice indicted and convicted on corruption charges.

In addition to these three key components, the legal dimension of the Perfect Storm includes a tsunami of legislative proposals that would legalize corruption. One example is a bill that would allow elected officials to receive gifts from individuals or firms to fund their personal legal and medical expenses.

The second dimension of the Perfect Storm is an attempt to violate one of the basic principles stipulated as early as 1948 by Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion; namely, “the unity of command.” This principle stipulated that the state must possess a monopoly of force—that is, one civilian government that commands one army and one police force. So critically important was this principle to Ben Gurion and so truly was he convinced that the alternative was complete anarchy and chaos, that in the embryonic state’s very early days, when it had very few weapons with which to defend itself, he gave the order to sink the Altalena—a ship carrying arms and ammunition to “the Irgun” that, in his view, comprised a militia that still resisted merging into the defense forces of the newly created state.

Now, seventy-five years later, the new Israeli government coalition agreement gives two right-wing extremist leaders, the dual finance and defense minister, Bezalel Smotrich, and minister of national security, Itamar Ben Gvir, roles and responsibilities over powerful administrative bodies and law enforcement agencies—primarily the border patrol and the Coordinator of Government Operations in the [occupied] Territories. These bodies, which for decades have been under the sole command of the minister of defense and the Israel Defense Force chief of staff, were now to be placed under the partial control of these extremist leaders. The proposed change could prove catastrophic by allowing these individuals to inflame Palestinian-Israeli relations and by implementing policies that encourage violence.

The third, related dimension of the Perfect Storm is the recent further deterioration of Israeli-Palestinian relations, not only accelerating a likely slide to a Third Palestinian Intifada, but also threatening the sustainability of the aforementioned Abraham Accords. This slide is not entirely new—it has been brewing for some years, through the tenure of different Israeli governments. Moreover, the slide’s causes are located as much on the Palestinian side as on the Israeli side, with the diminishing credibility of the Palestinian Authority, its president, and its security services.

Yet the views of some members of the new Israeli government also undermine all efforts to protect and defend the occupied Palestinian population from the violence exercised by extremist Jewish settlers, as happened some six weeks ago in Huwara—an Arab town in the West Bank, where settlers went on a rampage in response to the murder there of two Israelis by a Palestinian terrorist.

The fourth dimension fueling the Perfect Storm could be called “burden sharing.” At its core is a new draft law that would exempt Haredi (ultra-orthodox) students from military service. This is a problem that has grown exponentially during the past decades. In 1992, a manageable 4 percent of eighteen-year-old males received such exemptions. By 2022, this number has reached 16.4 percent. One can only guess how many additional ultra-orthodox Jewish students will be exempted from military service if the proposed new draft law will be enacted. And who will be expected to continue serving in the IDF? Of course: the hundreds of thousands of largely secular Israelis who are now in the streets protesting.

The fifth dimension of the Perfect Storm is the threat to Israel’s most important alliance: that with the United States and with America’s Jewish community. From Israel’s early days, this alliance was based on the values that America and Israel share as two liberal democracies, two nations of immigrants, and, more recently, as two countries that are challenged by Islamic terrorism. Yet the proposed changes in Israel’s political system and other developments comprising the Perfect Storm threaten the “common values” basis of the very close ties between the United States and Israel. Clear warnings to that effect have already been issued by President Joe Biden; by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken; by Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Bob Menendez, and by many leaders of the American Jewish community. Additionally, to date, President Biden has put on hold any invitation to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.

The sixth and final dimension of the Perfect Storm is the ever-developing Iranian nuclear threat—a threat that recently reached another milestone with Iran apparently enriching uranium up to 84 percent. Indeed, in testimony given to the U.S. Congress by General Mark Milley, chairman of Joint Chiefs, he assessed Iran as only two weeks away from producing enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb and only a few months away from producing nuclear weapons.

Yet this multi-dimensional Perfect Storm also produced some remarkably positive news: the Israeli liberal democratic center and center-left that went to sleep—if not into depression following the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the September 2000 launching of the Second Palestinian Intifada—has finally woken up. And it has woken up big time. It has finally realized that it cannot permit the committed, active, mobilized right wing to dominate the country and to set its agenda, and that they must now be called up for reserve service in the struggle over what kind of a state they want Israel to be. For Israel’s political Right, this is a classical case of “overreach”: in attempting to go too far and to achieve too much in the service of an agenda far too extreme, the Israeli Right awakened the country’s center and center-left, and the latter are showing no signs of going back to sleep.

Thus, the Perfect Storm seems to have opened a new chapter in Israel’s social history.

Shai Feldman is the Raymond Frankel Chair of Israeli Politics and Society at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. From 2005–2019 he was the Center’s founding director. During 2019–2022 Feldman served as president of Sapir Academic College in Israel, located less than two miles from the Gaza Strip.

The author would like to thank his colleague, Professor Nader Habibi, Henry J. Leir Professor of the Economics of the Middle East at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies, for his generous help in researching the economic data relevant to this article.

Image: Shutterstock.

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Denys Kryvenko is the first person I met just a few days before the April 2023 opening of the Superhumans Center in Lviv, Ukraine. Denys is a twenty-four-year-old Ukrainian war hero from a small village who lost both legs and an arm fighting in Bakhmut. Before the war, he was, like many other twenty-four-year-olds, just playing sports, lifting weights, and chasing girls.

Then the war came. His thoughts turned to his country and to protecting his family. Now Denys is a triple amputee who is being photographed. Nick, the photographer, captured Denys’s aspirations for the future during a photo shoot with a pensive pose.

Denys wants to become a contact psychologist at the Superhumans Center, which is a special position. Military veterans typically don’t like to open up and talk. Since Denys is a veteran himself, it will be easier in group and individual sessions to encourage others to talk about their experience and the heavy fighting they have seen in the Donbas. Denys is motivated to give back and to help others who have been through the same wartime experiences. He will help them heal.

Two days later, on April 14, Superhumans launched its medical center outfitted with a prosthetics lab, elaborate rehabilitation rooms including a swimming pool, and PTSD treatment rooms in an afternoon ceremony that celebrated Denys and a dozen patients. At the ceremony, Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, Ukrainian minister of health Viktor Liashko, French minister of solidarity and health François Braun, Superhumans co-founder Andrey Stavnitser, CEO Olga Rudnieva, and American philanthropist Howard G. Buffett all spoke, but the focus remained on Denys and the other patients include soldiers and civilians, men and women, young and old.

“We are honored to be a part of this extraordinary effort to bring world-class care to Ukrainians who have suffered life-altering injuries from this war. They are truly superhumans,” said Buffett, Chairman and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation. “Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is a war on civilians, and many men, women, and children will lose their lives, or their limbs, even long after the war ends due to the pervasive presence of landmines. This Center is a step towards giving Ukrainians a chance to rebuild their lives and their country. We must also do everything possible to end this war and the daily devastation it creates for all Ukrainians.”

Buffett is right. As a result of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is now the most heavily mined country in the world. Reports of civilians being injured or killed by mines have become an almost daily occurrence. Overall, the war has also taken a devastating toll on the civilian population. No one knows the exact figure because it remains classified, but more than 12,000 Ukrainians are believed to currently need prosthetics. This would be a challenge for the world’s wealthiest states. For Ukraine, it is simply beyond the country’s resources.

This is where Superhumans steps in. Through a $16.3 million gift from the Howard Buffett Foundation and others, the Center is taking on some of the more complex cases involving multiple limbs or complex injuries that the state cannot handle or afford. Superhumans provides all services to civilians and soldiers free of charge. The price tag for providing Denys with three prosthetic limbs plus rehabilitation is more than $100,000.

Then there’s the incalculable and ever-present physical and mental anguish. The World Health Organization warns that one in four Ukrainians are currently at risk of a severe mental disorder as a result of the war. Huge numbers of Ukrainians will require professional support for many years to come.

There is another hidden wound from this monstrous war, elusive yet common. Something so fundamental that Ukraine and the world cannot rebuild without it. Millions face a loss of faith in the future. It is vital to rebuild the human spirit by restoring belief in a meaningful life filled with skills and purpose.

“Superhumans is not just the name of a project. I think it is a new social contract encapsulated in a single word. It is a philosophy representing not only of a clinic but a entire country. Superheroes instead of victims. Superpowers instead of disabilities. We want to build not just a clinic, but a super-country for Ukrainians. Because all of them are superhumans,” said First Lady Olena Zelenska.

Zelenska’s words encapsulate the new Center’s vision of a Ukraine where limb difference is only part of a person’s story, but by no means the whole story. Denys doesn’t feel limited. Neither does the very first Superhumans patient, Vitalii Ivashchuk, who is already climbing the tallest mountain in Ukraine with his bionic arm and driving at fast speeds. “My hand is completely restored, and I’m only getting started,” Ivashchuk said.

Michele Anenberg Poma is a team member at the Superhumans Center. She tweets @MAnenbergPoma.

Image: Superhumans.

There are intense and often heated differences between Turkey watchers over the outcome of the presidential elections that are just around the corner on May 14. Individuals have really dug into their respective camps with little room left in the middle: folks are convinced that Recep Tayyip Erdogan will definitely win or lose by a large margin. Both sides cite relatively compelling narratives for their position based on a myriad of explanatory factors: their experience as journalists or scholars, or, based on references to polls, the country’s economic situation.

The truth is, at this point in the calendar, it’s a guessing game. For my part, I am on record predicting that Erdogan has a greater chance of holding onto power for a third five-year term than opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu has of winning. I have attempted to explain my rationale in other opinion pieces and interviews. At this point, however, it is worth pondering, should my prediction come to pass, who or what factors will account for Erdogan staying in office?

To begin, there is the most obvious element: Turkish voters themselves. In the event that Erdogan scores a legitimate victory, much of that could be attributed to voter demands. The majority of Turks going to the polls on May 14 will not prioritize the rule of law, democracy, and other governance issues as their top priority. If they did, we would not see Erdogan polling in the 40 percent margins. Instead, voters are primarily motivated by their desire to hedge: “in voting, who do I believe will take care of my economic interests?” To address this motivation, Erdogan has turned on the monetary taps in the last few weeks: bonuses for retirees, free natural gas to households, and increases to the minimum wage. Kilicdaroglu’s problem here is that he is not in a position to convince voters that he can deliver better on pocketbook issues than Erdogan—the latter is already in a position to demonstrate such and thus tempt voters. He controls the purse strings of state resources, which are already being utilized to buy citizens’ votes.

By contrast, French and Israeli citizens have recently taken to the streets, protesting about governance issues they feel threaten the very viability of their democratic futures. In France, largely over the non-deliberative way in which the age of retirement was raised, voters are demanding government accountability. In Israel, in defiance of the government’s attempt to curtail judicial independence, citizens have engaged in mass protests. In both cases, voters are motivated by democratic governance issues. If a significant number of Turks attempted to replicate these two examples, the Erdogan government would likely use brute force to suppress such challenges, as displayed during the Gezi Park protests of 2013.

Linked to voter demands is the main opposition, the “Nation Alliance”—the six opposition parties who took the decision to nominate Kemal Kilicdaroglu as their candidate. Unfortunately, one can observe that, from the outset, this opposition bloc never prioritized the rule of law and democratic governance issues beyond rhetoric. Instead, it has been focused on the division of political spoils. The process of deciding who the alliance’s presidential candidate would be, for example, turned into a dysfunctional squabble and nearly broke apart the alliance. Given that the alliance’s main campaign promise is to transition Turkey back to a parliamentary system of governance (that would deprioritize the powers and position of the presidency), one wonders why alliance leaders fought so hard on who the presidential candidate would be. If the objective was to defeat Erdogan and re-establish the rule of law and democratic governance in Turkey, numbers suggest that nominating Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu would have been the best choice. Kilicdaroglu’s insistence on being the nominee instead lays bare the limits of the opposition’s democratic priorities. The intense rivalry to become the presidential nominee has been mirrored in the debates over determining the list of parliamentary candidates. Until the April 12 deadline (when all parties have to submit their parliamentary candidate lists), intense horse-trading over which party in the alliance would allot how many safe seats was the focus of attention. This basically signaled to voters the one thing they are already relatively accustomed to: politicians and political parties are only interested in securing their positions in government.

Throw into the mixture that there are two independent candidates, which divides the opposition vote, and the chances of defeating Erdogan in the first round of voting. More importantly, however, the candidacies of Muharrem Ince—who dismally ran against Erdogan in 2018 and failed—and Sinan Ogan are widely perceived as opportunistic, spurred on by Erdogan to tarnish and divide the opposition camp.

In the final analysis, supposing an Erdogan victory, voters will be grievously let down by opposition political elites who did their very best to not defeat Erdogan. In the event that Kilicdaroglu loses, much of the blame will be attributed to his lackluster candidacy.

Of course, none of these explanatory factors considers the possibility of chicanery and foul play that may come to determine who ultimately wins the presidency. There is a decent chance that undemocratic means may be utilized by Erdogan and/or state institutions to ensure a third term for the country’s longest-serving leader. In many ways this is already apparent: the Supreme Election Council has already accepted Erdogan’s unconstitutional candidacy to run for president. Additionally, there is little by way of press freedoms and access to media coverage that is not already exclusively pro-Erdogan.

A third term for Erdogan will likely curtail what remains of Turkey’s faltering democracy. Erdogan will likely use this opportunity to crack down on what little remains of critical voices within the country’s media and public space, while at the same time trying to turn a new page with the country’s allies in the West. By whatever means Erdogan is able to secure victory, both Washington and Europe will likely choose to remain silent and find new ways to work with him, based on their respective interests. If his re-election is perceived to be illegitimate, don’t expect the West to call this out. A new Erdogan term will likely result in old ways of finding paths to accommodate him.

Sinan Ciddi is a nonresident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Military and Political Power. Follow Sinan on Twitter @SinanCiddi.

Image: Shutterstock.

Space transportation company SpaceX provided this month what was a spectacle in two senses. One was the physical show of launching the most powerful rocket ever built. The other was how the whole affair, which ended with an explosion just four minutes into what was programmed to be an orbital mission, was described as a success, with congratulations from government officials and cheering by the company’s employees.

This way of defining success and failure reflects SpaceX’s engineering strategy, which involves launching a series of test vehicles with the expectation that each vehicle probably will have something wrong but will provide a learning experience to guide modifications on later versions. The upper stage of the Starship rocket, which never separated from its booster during this month’s launch, had already compiled a record of successive fiery crashes during earlier test flights.

This strategy is much different from the one that the government’s space agency, NASA, has had to follow. A failure of a NASA mission is regarded as a failure, period, and is not praised as a stepping-stone to some future hoped-for success. Because of that, the engineering that goes into a NASA mission is a more meticulous and time-consuming process aimed at achieving success in the fullest sense of the word every time a rocket is launched.

When NASA ignited its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket last November—making it at the time the most powerful rocket ever launched—it was only after numerous delays, which have been typical of NASA missions, as engineers checked every possible point of failure with the intention of making everything go right the first time. That first use of the SLS, in what NASA designated as Mission One of the Artemis program, was a success in the full sense, sending a spacecraft looping around the moon on a twenty-five-day mission.

This difference in the methodology of these two space programs is indicative of an expectation of perfection that often gets applied to government but not to the private sector. Some of the government agencies concerned are, like NASA, doing something as difficult as rocket science. Some routinely must address problems in which there are big information gaps—such as the intelligence agencies, that get looked to most on the very problems on which the information gaps are the biggest. Despite the inherent challenges involved—including the determination of adversaries to keep secrets and the unpredictability of many future events—when the intelligence community is unable to fill one of those gaps correctly on a matter that for some reason gets heightened public attention, this gets described as an “intelligence failure” amid calls for the problem to be “fixed.”

Understanding of such inherent challenges often is not extended to governmental missions but routinely is to all manner of activities in the private sector. In baseball, batters do not know what pitch the pitcher will deliver, and even the best batters in the major leagues fail to get a hit two-thirds of the time. But they do not get condemned for each out as a “batting failure.”

The chief reason for the differential treatment is that government programs are subject to politics, and politics involves incentives to find fault and demand accountability, regardless of the inherent challenges of a mission and the impossibility of achieving perfection. Those incentives are part of the process of one-upping political opponents and of politicians making names for themselves. The epitome of the process is the public congressional hearing in which committee members highlight in front of television cameras the less-than-perfect performances of governmental departments and demand changes. Daniel Dumbacher, a former NASA official who heads the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said of SpaceX’s explode-and-learn method, “Government programs are not allowed to operate that way because … we have all the stakeholders being able to watch over and tell you no.”

The intense partisanship of current American politics intensifies this process. The motivation is strong to highlight any failings that can be associated with the other party, even if it is only some problem that falls in the area of responsibility of an executive branch agency, and that branch happens to be headed by a president of the other party.

Politics may underlie differential treatment between NASA and SpaceX regarding launch-related measures on the ground. At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the launch pads used for the largest rockets have flame trenches and water deluge systems that mitigate the effects of a blast-off. In SpaceX’s move-fast-and-break-things approach, no such infrastructure was constructed at its facility in Texas. The huge Starship rocket took off from a platform atop one corner of an ordinary-looking concrete slab.

As a result, effects on the ground were substantial, extending well beyond the SpaceX facility itself. The launch blasted a crater into the slab and threw debris more than a half mile away, onto a public beach, adjoining wetlands, and the ocean. A road to the beach remained closed until chunks of concrete and rebar could be cleared away. An enormous cloud of dirt and dust coated houses and cars in the town of Port Isabel, miles to the north. Some local activists have expressed concerns but there has not been a critical response from officialdom. Had this been a NASA operation—with a Democrat as head of the executive branch in Washington and Republicans in control in Texas—it is likely the official response would have been different.

Zero failures may sound like a beneficially aspirational, even if not practically achievable, standard to apply to government programs, but the application has costs. One is that it may simply not be the best approach for tackling large problems and achieving major goals. SpaceX’s own experience is suggestive. Although the company had numerous early failures as it was developing smaller rockets, such experimentation eventually led to the Falcon 9, which is now a profitable and reliable workhorse rocket for orbital missions. Imposing a less flexible standard on government programs may help to make self-fulfilling any argument that such programs are inherently less effective than risk-taking counterpart efforts in the private sector.

Another potential cost is that fixation on a failure and insistence on fixing it may introduce new problems in the fix. This is true, as I have described at length elsewhere, of much of the intelligence “reform” enacted after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which has been established in popular discussion as a landmark “intelligence failure.”

The inordinate focus on a happening that the public and political class can easily and immediately brand as a failure may obscure larger issues at stake that by their nature are not so easily branded. A leader’s effort to avoid the easily identified type of failure may lead to policies that inflict greater costs on the nation than the failure would.

A leading example is the war in Afghanistan. The messy end in August 2021 to the U.S. involvement in the war has been repeatedly and vigorously labeled as a failure, especially by political opponents of President Joe Biden, who ordered that final withdrawal. But the withdrawal was a necessary pulling of the plug on a two-decade military expedition that had become a feckless effort at nationbuilding and entailed far more costs than anything incurred during the few days of denouement. The very swiftness of the collapse of the Ashraf Ghani regime and its security forces demonstrated the fecklessness and how even the best-planned withdrawal would have looked ugly. Three previous U.S. administrations (including the Trump administration, which negotiated a withdrawal agreement but did not execute it) shied away from pulling the plug and risking exposure to denunciations of “failure,” and in so doing kept the war going indefinitely.

Another sort of failure that those earlier administrations wanted to avoid—bearing in mind the general awareness of the history of the 9/11 attack—was an anti-U.S. terrorist attack that had some connection, however tenuous, to Afghanistan, which would be blamed on any president who had earlier withdrawn U.S. troops from that country. The anxiety about avoiding that type of failure obscured the reality that the Afghan Taliban, who took over the country in August 2021, constitute an insular movement that does not do international terrorism and is an enemy of the Islamic State, or ISIS, which is the group with a presence in Afghanistan that would be most likely to perpetrate such terrorism. A reminder of this reality came this week with word that a Taliban operation killed a leader of the local ISIS element who had planned a bombing at the Kabul airport that killed thirteen U.S. service members during the August 2021 withdrawal.

That news did not interrupt the political game of pouncing on a single “failure” to the exclusion of broader realities. The Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul of Texas, grudgingly acknowledged the desirability of the ISIS leader’s demise but said that “this doesn’t diminish the Biden administration’s culpability for the failures that led to the attack” at the airport.

The subject of terrorism in the post-9/11 era has been especially prone to a zero-failures mindset that has spawned avoidable costs that exceed the potential harm of the feared terrorism itself. Those costs have included not only the material and human costs of foreign wars such as the one in Afghanistan but also encroachments on personal liberty and the moral stain of resorting to torture.

Public policy, foreign and domestic, should never be thought of as a duty to reduce the probability of even a highly feared contingency to zero, regardless of the costs of trying to do so. Public policy is necessarily a matter of weighing non-zero risks and costs of various contingencies and objectives, with the pursuit of some objectives being unavoidably in conflict with the pursuit of other objectives. This means that even the most carefully constructed policy will see some failures. 

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: Shutterstock.