Diplomacy & Crisis News

There is a problem with deterrence; it’s not working. Not that we are about to descend into nuclear armageddon. But aside from nuclear wars, the United States’ deterrence paradigm does not seem to be deterring much recently. Our adversaries—principally Russia and China—do not seem cowed, either by the risk of failure to achieve their objectives or by the fear of retaliation. Both have been seizing the initiative with aggressive behavior ranging from information warfare, through the full range of gray zone tactics, all the way to the illegal military invasion and occupation of a sovereign neighboring state. Either the theory of deterrence is wrong, or the West is doing deterrence wrong.

The litany of Russian aggression in recent years includes the massive 2007 cyber-attack against NATO ally Estonia, the 2008 Russian seizure of the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia (15 percent of Georgia’s territory), the 2014 occupation and illegal annexation of Crimea, and the 2015 intervention in Syria. Russia’s actions in Crimea sent shockwaves through the West, yet Russia’s main objectives, attained through well-planned cross-domain operations, were achieved at little real cost. In February 2022, confident in his impunity despite threats and warnings from Western powers, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched a full-fledged aggressive war against Ukraine. At the time of this writing, the war still rages in that beleaguered country as the death toll approaches half million.

Meanwhile, China—dubbed our so-called pacing threat—has been relentlessly and unapologetically stealing Western intellectual property for years at next to no cost in what was described by former National Security Agency director Keith Alexander as “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.” China has militarized the South China Sea, weaponized atolls in disputed waters, and bullied, threatened, and coerced neighbors and extra-regional countries that have dared to defy its strategic demands. The brutal repression of the Uyghurs and the brazen abrogation of the Hong Kong agreement and guarantees were met with loud protests from the West as well as limited economic sanctions, but nothing sufficient to deter China’s aggression.

Real deterrence depends on our will and our capability to inflict unacceptable costs on an adversary. If our adversaries believe that our intervention will prevent them from achieving their objectives, or that they will suffer unacceptable retaliation and consequences, they will be deterred. But deterrence requires credibility, and that is where the West in general, and the United States in particular, come up short. Who can forget President Barack Obama’s red line warning to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in August 2012 against the use of chemical weapons? Clearly, Russia and China haven’t. President Joe Biden took the military option for defending Ukraine off the table and has refused Ukraine permission to use U.S. weapons for retaliatory strikes on Russian territory. Our failure to demonstrate both the will and the capability to retaliate that undergird deterrence undermines deterrence.

Our fear of escalating the conflict in Ukraine has created an atmosphere of self-deterrence. We fear that any retaliatory action will exacerbate the situation and unleash an escalatory upward spiral, perhaps approaching or even crossing the nuclear threshold. While understandable, this mindset acts powerfully to restrain any credible demonstration of our capability and will. Meanwhile, our adversaries continue their persistent, multi-domain campaign against U.S. and Western security interests capitalizing, as they see it, on our paralysis. As the devastation of Ukraine drags on as China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jung-un, and the Ayatollahs of Iran watch carefully and study. Indeed, Ukrainian cities are now routinely attacked by Iranian drones, sold to and deployed by the Russians. And soon, if not already, Ukrainian cities and troops will be bombarded by North Korean artillery shells traded to the Russians for food, by Kim. Neither of these odious regimes are deterred from actively, perhaps even enthusiastically, participating in the destruction of Ukraine and the murder of its people.

The lack of credibility has emboldened our adversaries who will inevitably push against and probe our environment of self-restraint, seeking to measure and understand where America’s will to act matches the need to defend its vital interests. For the moment, our adversaries believe our will to act is not aligned with our interests. As such, the persistent probing continues across a wide frontage and across multiple domains, especially in the cyber domain. Using an old metaphor, our enemies are pushing in the pin—globally—and carefully measuring when, where, and how they will strike an American nerve, and then how the United States will react. Understanding and anticipating the U.S. reaction will form the basis for their challenges against the U.S. and our allies. The lower the American threshold for either symmetrical or asymmetrical reaction to these now nearly constant probes, the greater the credibility of our deterrent. Conversely, the higher the threshold of American reaction, the more emboldened our adversaries become and the more risk we must absorb.

The Russian war in Ukraine exemplifies this situation clearly. Our fear of escalation has kept the West from taking the steps necessary to end the war. Putin has shown us he will not be deterred by economic sanctions. By now we should have learned that economic sanctions—regardless of how good they may make us feel, or even despite the harm they may cause to our adversaries—do not deter a determined foe. Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, as well as Russia and China, have been resistant to, and in some cases completely undeterred by, economic sanctions. If Putin is willing to sacrifice 200,000 soldiers, he is unlikely to be deterred by lower gas and oil revenues. By contrast, consider how effectively Putin has used the specter of nuclear escalation to deter an effective counter-offensive in Ukraine by nuclear saber-rattling. The debates about providing Ukraine with tanks; long-range, precision-guided missiles, F-16s, and other weapons, have been heavily influenced, and sadly, lengthened, by a strong sense of self-deterrence.

Western fixation on preventing escalation is compounded by an anachronistic interpretation of the laws of armed conflict which require any retaliatory operation to be proportional to the provocation, militarily necessary, and limited to military targets. These principles make sense in the context of conventional warfare, but contemporary conflict has metastasized far beyond the conventional sphere and now includes never-ending sub-threshold attacks, probes, and all the ambiguity of the so-called gray zone. These aggressions frequently defy rapid and unequivocal attribution and are often perpetrated by non-military agents.

It is noteworthy that the Western binary notion of war and peace is not shared by our principal adversaries. Both Russia and China perceive international relations as a constant and permanent struggle to create “positional” advantage to achieve strategic objectives that are in direct conflict with our values and interests. Given the persistent multidimensional threats we face, to which specific act of aggression would or should we respond? How can we determine if the act was perpetrated by a military or a non-military agent? Was it government-sanctioned, or just government-tolerated? This ambiguity converts the principles of military necessity, distinction, and proportionality into competitive handcuffs.

These observations beg the question: can there be any comprehensive theory of deterrence in the twenty-first century with so many incongruities and discontinuities? What does deterrence look like when dealing with a nuclear-armed opponent? What deters Al Qaeda, ISIS, or transnational criminal networks? What about cyber deterrence, and the real likelihood that we’ll soon encounter AI-powered, lethal autonomous systems? What deters attacks on our orbital constellation and our undersea fiber optic cabling by any entity capable of disrupting or disabling them? Witness the confusion over the damage to Nordstream II. Is there a single, master, comprehensive deterrent narrative that can simultaneously and concurrently work for us across all these domains and against all these state and non-state actors?

What is clear is that the base truism of deterrence theory remains the same: for deterrence to work in any domain our adversaries must believe we have both the will and the capability to prevent them from achieving their objectives or risking unacceptable pain. The re-building of Western defense forces over the past decade has been dramatic, but regrettably has also been frequently mitigated by strategic paralysis and equivocation. Declaring we have the will or declaring red lines will not suffice, and have already shown themselves to be inadequate. Words must be matched by deeds and actions. For Russia or China to believe in our deterrent we must break the cycle of reacting to their provocations and be prepared to be resolute in our intention to inflict some real pain in retaliation. This entails risk, but without taking some risk there will be no change in our adversaries’ behavior, and the persistent probes for our weak spots and the attacks on our vulnerabilities will be never-ending. Every strategic act entails some risk but so does no action. And no action, we know, is no deterrent at all.

General John R. Allen (USMC ret.) is a former President of the Brookings Institution, Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, and Commander of ISAF.

Michael Miklaucic is a Senior Fellow at National Defense University and the Editor-in-Chief of PRISM.

The views presented are those of the authors and are not statements of policy or official views of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, or National Defense University.

Image: Shutterstock.

Five years ago today in Nicaragua, citizens protested against Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo for their efforts to weaken protections for seniors. It quickly evolved into a broader call for greater freedoms and respect for human rights in the country. The Ortega-Murillo regime responded with utter brutality and violence, leading to a period of bloody turmoil. According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, at least 355 people were killed between April 2018 to July 2019.

Half a decade later—shamefully—the situation remains grim.

How did we get here? Let’s start with Ortega’s war against the Catholic Church. Even though Nicaragua is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reaffirms that religious freedom is a universal human right for all, Ortega sees religious freedom and communities of faith as threats to his authoritarian rule.

In the last year alone, Ortega has shuttered Catholic radio stations, expelled the nuns from Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, expelled the Religious Sisters of the Cross, expelled the Vatican’s papal nuncio, severed diplomatic relations with the Vatican, detained Father Enrique Martínez Gamboa, sentenced Bishop Rolando Álvarez to twenty-six years in prison for being a traitor, requested Father Uriel Antonio Vallejos to be put on Interpol’s Red Notice list, arrested at least 11 priests, and banned public Easter processions.  

In its 2022 report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom states that the Ortega regime has “gone after Catholic-affiliated organizations, shutting down charities and expelling their workers, stripping universities of funding and legal status, shutting down news media, and eliminating non-governmental organizations.”

In December 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken designated Nicaragua as a Country of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

However, it’s not just the Catholic Church being targeted. All Nicaraguans are living under a tyrannical regime that is constantly violating their human rights and denying basic freedoms.

According to the Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua at the UN Human Rights Council, crimes include “murder, imprisonment, torture, deportation, rape, and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity…intentionally orchestrated by the highest echelons of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, against part of the population of Nicaragua, for political reasons, constituting prima facie, the crime against humanity of persecution [emphasis added].”

Ortega recently deported 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners from the country. While their freedom is a positive development for them and their families—they endured beatings, torture, and other human rights violations—it comes at the detriment of Nicaragua and its people. The main opposition to the Ortega-Murillo regime has been expelled.

All of these abuses are causing Nicaraguans to flee in record numbers. U.S. border officials reported 163,876 encounters with Nicaraguans in fiscal year 2022, adding to the migration crisis facing the United States from our hemisphere.

On the national security front, Ortega has allowed Nicaragua to be a staging ground for Russian military activity. Just this week Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will visit Nicaragua as well as Brazil, Venezuela, and Cuba. Nicaragua has hosted a lot of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s military hardware, including T-72 tanks and even Russia’s Tu-160 Blackjack bombers. Russia has also installed a global positioning satellite system in Nicaragua, which many believe is a front to surveil the United States.

In 2020, former U.S. Southern Command admiral Craig Faller warned that “beyond Venezuela, the sanctuary of cozy relationships with authoritarian governments in Cuba and Nicaragua provide Russia with footholds close to our homeland, giving Putin strategic options.”

Those strategic options are now growing. In June 2022, Ortega went a step further and had his National Congress—which he controls—pass legislation authorizing the presence of Russian troops, warships, planes, and other military equipment in the country, bringing it all close to the U.S. homeland.

The current SOUTHCOM commander, General Laura Richardson, testified before Congress last month stating that, “Russia continued its military engagements with both Venezuela and Nicaragua … Russia uses disinformation to further its malign influence, sow instability and undermine democracy in the region, activities that promote Russian geopolitical goals and undermine U.S. national security interests.”

The question now is how the United States and the rest of the international community should respond. 

First, because Ortega prevented the newly-Senate-confirmed U.S. ambassador to Nicaragua to enter the country, the United States should reciprocate and expel the Nicaraguan ambassador to the United States immediately.

Second, Congress has passed, in a bipartisan manner, legislation that stipulated that the United States must use its voice, vote, and influence to block loans to Nicaragua unless the loans promote democracy at each international financial institution. This must be fully enforced.

Recently, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) sent letters to Central American leaders urging that they exercise their influence at the Central American Bank for Economic Integration to stop funding the Ortega regime. This is a good step forward, but the United States should go further. If the bank does not stop loaning money to this murderous regime, they are indirectly aiding and abetting a human rights abuser, and the United States should sanction the bank’s leadership.

While admonishing the Central American Bank is welcomed, the United States must also hold other international financial institutions accountable where it has leverage. According to former Western Hemisphere Subcommittee chairman Congressman Albio Sires (D-NJ), the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank have loaned at least $1.2 billion to the Ortega regime since 2018. This is appalling.

Third, the United States must prohibit imports from Nicaragua to the United States, exports from the United States to Nicaragua, and prohibit new U.S. investments into the Nicaraguan economy in accordance with authorities that the Biden administration extended by modifying Executive Order 13851 in October 2022. These authorities should be executed and utilized immediately against sectors that Ortega, his family, or his private sector collaborators control.

Whether it’s responding to Russian activity close to our homeland or attacks against the Nicaraguan people, including the church, Nicaragua must be prioritized within U.S. foreign policy. Nicaraguans today live under an illegitimate tyrannical regime that uses violence, fear, intimidation, unjust incarcerations, and state-sponsored killings to maintain its iron grip on the country.

Five years ago, many Nicaraguans sacrificed their lives for freedom. We must reaffirm our commitment to democracy for those who were massacred, and for all Nicaraguans still living under this brutal dictatorship.

Eddy Acevedo was recently deemed a “traitor” to Nicaragua by Daniel Ortega and was previously sanctioned by the Russian Federation. He is the chief of staff and senior adviser to Ambassador Mark Green, the president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He was formerly the National Security Adviser at the U.S. Agency for International Development and senior foreign policy advisor for former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL.). This opinion is solely that of the author and does not represent the views of the Wilson Center.

Image: Shutterstock.

On April 5th, U.S. Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, welcomed Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. Ms. Tsai’s visit with Mr. McCarthy, who is second in line to the presidency, is the highest-ever profile meeting between Taiwanese and U.S. lawmakers on American soil. Accompanied by a bipartisan congressional delegation, Mr. McCarthy reaffirmed American support for Taiwanese sovereignty while demonstrating Congress would not be deterred by Beijing’s threats. In the weeks leading up to the event, Chinese officials repeatedly warned the Speaker, even emailing the attending U.S. lawmakers the morning of April 5th, labeling it a “blatant provocation.” Immediately after the meeting, several spokespersons for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) vocalized their disapproval, calling it a violation of China’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and “the basic norms of international relations.” Ms. Tsai’s recent rendezvous echoes Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year, which elicited a ferocious Chinese response in the form of 11-day military exercises, missile launches, and a simulated island blockade. However, China’s reaction exhibited more restraint this time, with military displays lasting only three days and no blockade. Why is this?

Of course, the PRC considers Taiwan part of its territory and vows to reincorporate the island under President Xi Jinping’s National Rejuvenation scheme. The One China Policy, adopted by the U.N. and the U.S., recognizes Beijing as the sole authority over all Chinese territory, including Taiwan. Acknowledging Taiwanese sovereignty and violating the One China Principle is the foremost redline governing any country’s relations with the PRC. In the last week, China operated an aircraft carrier off Taiwan’s east coast, imposed several symbolic sanctions, violated Taiwanese airspace, and deployed several other intimidation tactics. However, experts note how the PRC departed from the overwhelming shows of force utilized after Pelosi’s visit, notably the absence of missile launches.

With Ms. Tsai due to step down in 2024, Xi knows an overreaction could hurt the opposition’s chances in the subsequent elections. Ms. Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the bulwark against reunification, championing independence and a Taiwanese identity distinct from mainland China. Xi’s bellicosity after Pelosi’s visit and his brutal crackdown on Hong Kong’s protestors only heightened support for the DPP. Currently, the PRC plans to reunite with Taiwan peacefully, and Xi views the Kuomintang Party (KMT) as his best chance. As the main opposition to the DPP, the KMT favors closer ties with China, and some members support reunification altogether. While the next election will be pivotal to Taiwan’s future, greater geopolitical forces are at play.

At the dawn of a new era of great power competition, Xi wants to portray himself as a responsible international statesman who will mediate disputes and broker peace accords with no underlying motivations. On the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion, Xi released his 12-point peace plan as a roadmap to a potential ceasefire. For good reasons, the U.S. and its allies dismissed the proposal, which fails to condemn Putin’s invasion and reiterates Russian narratives of NATO provocations and Western aggression. Indeed, a thorough analysis of the ambiguous 12 points shows that the plan is little more than political theater. Nonetheless, the quick dismissal by the West encourages the false narrative that it has no interest in peace while depicting Xi as a neutral arbiter in global conflicts.

China demonstrated its growing presence in early March when Saudi Arabia and Iran announced they would reestablish diplomatic relations after talks facilitated in Beijing. In 2016, Saudi Arabia severed ties with Iran after protestors stormed its Tehran embassy in response to the execution of a prominent Shia cleric. The PRC state media released photos depicting Iranian and Saudi officials shaking hands with China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs in the background. The news reverberated in Washington, which views Saudi Arabia as a strategic partner and counterweight to Iranian regional influence. However, American relations with Saudi Arabia deteriorated recently after President Biden pledged to make the kingdom a pariah over the crown prince’s connection to the gruesome murder of a Washington Post columnist. While the accord could be a win for regional stability, the significance of Chinese mediation with America’s faltering presence is indisputable. Though the U.S. still wields regional influence, China appears keen on filling the diplomatic void and acting where the U.S. cannot.

As Beijing’s diplomatic clout and global profile steadily increase, so have tensions with the U.S. in what looks to be the start of a new Cold War. It’s no secret the Biden administration seeks to build an international coalition countering Chinese influence, choking off access to certain technologies and pushing businesses to relocate supply chains elsewhere. While Biden’s assessments are strategically correct, Xi attempts to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its allies. Last week French President Emmanuel Macron concluded a three-day visit to China where the two leaders lauded a “global strategic partnership.” The message was this: France has no plans to decouple its economy from China, and Macron sees Xi as instrumental to ending the war in Ukraine. The phrase “multipolar world” frequented discussions, alluding to a new international order where America no longer stands alone at the top. Most concerningly, Macron warned Europe against entering disputes that are not their own, referencing Taiwan.

With Sino-American relations at rock bottom, all eyes look to Taiwan as a future flashpoint, but conflict is not unavoidable. What is inevitable is the diplomatic competition already afoot. The PRC appears to be winning, but do not count America out just yet. While Washington’s military prowess is unrivaled, the U.S. must do better diplomatically. For one, Biden should stop alienating half the globe by framing each dispute as a struggle between democracy and autocracy. Standing with Taiwan and Ukraine is a moral imperative not because they are democracies but because sovereignty is the foundation of international stability and a nation’s existence. A country need not be a democracy to support sovereignty, and the democracy-autocracy rhetoric fails to resonate with much of the developing world.

On the contrary, it’s often interpreted as Western liberal arrogance and condescension. A well-functioning Democracy is indisputably the most just and desired form of governance, but the previous decades show the U.S. cannot force the regime on other nations. America lost recent opportunities by shunning nondemocratic partners like Saudi Arabia. As time progresses, the world will see the PRC for what it is: a state intent on reshaping the world order in its image. But for now, America must convince countries everywhere, democracies and dictatorships alike, that the world order it crafted after WWII has no better alternatives.

Peter Baker, White House correspondent for the New York Times, published an analytic piece the other day that should be disturbing food for thought, especially for professional diplomats but also for everyone else. While marking, along with President Joe Biden, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement on Northern Ireland, Baker observed that “such diplomatic breakthroughs have become a thing of the past.” In recent years, nations—and especially the United States—have appeared more likely to break treaties and international agreements than to sign new ones. Baker concludes that although it would go too far to talk about the death of diplomacy, “certainly there is a dearth of diplomacy for now.”

Baker uses formal agreements as a measure of diplomatic accomplishment, a gauge that may overstate the problem. The output of productive diplomacy goes well beyond such agreements to include communication and informal understandings that help to stabilize volatile situations, as well as the persuasion of foreign governments to act more in line with the interests of the country the diplomat represents. Nonetheless, Baker is on to something, and it is appropriate to consider what most accounts for the dearth.

The same three levels of analysis that political scientist Kenneth Waltz once used in a classic work about the causes of war can also be used to address a decline of diplomacy. One of those levels, the international system, figures prominently in Baker’s article, with references to “the revival of great power competition on the scale of the Cold War,” and what currently appears to be little appetite in Moscow or Beijing for compromise with the West. But recalling how the original Cold War featured highly significant international agreements, especially on arms control, most explanations at this level for a decline in diplomacy are not persuasive. There is at least as much need for peacefully negotiated agreements with one’s competitors and enemies as there is for agreements with one’s friends and allies.

As for any reluctance in Moscow or Beijing to compromise, if one could strip away the internal forces affecting policies in those two capitals and look solely at the geopolitical circumstances facing Russia and China today, there is little or no reason for those two regimes to turn away from diplomacy. The relevant needs to be served by diplomacy include, for Russia, a rescuing of its great power status in the face of economic and military decline, and for China, a full exploitation of its rising strength to secure a major role in the international system.

A second level of analysis—national political systems—provides more cogent explanations for the current dearth of diplomacy. The rise of anti-globalist populism provides much of the story here, and Baker correctly mentions the ascendance of that brand of populism during the administration of President Donald Trump as a big factor as far as the United States is concerned. In the current hyper-partisan U.S. political environment, Republicans attuned to their populist party base adhere to an anti-globalism that often takes the form of opposition to any agreement with an adversary that involves compromises, as all such agreements do. For Democratic presidents, the certain prospect of being assailed by the other party for making such compromises means the path of least political risk is to forgo major new international agreements.

Many significant international agreements, including the Good Friday Agreement on Northern Ireland as well as the arms control treaties from the Cold War, are the product of months and often years of work. Such timelines include not only the negotiations that lead to the final agreement but also much earlier diplomacy that conveys shared interests, explores the boundaries of the bargaining space, and otherwise prepares the ground for signing on to a new agreement. U.S. politics that revolve around a four-year election cycle impede the sustained effort necessary for diplomatic success.

The peculiar American practice of tearing apart the upper echelons of the federal government with each change of administration has always been a problem in this regard—with domestic as well as foreign policy—but the effects have become more severe amid the intensified partisanship of the last three decades. Not only have cross-party senior appointments become much rarer than they once were, but also there is often reflexive rejection by one party of any initiative coming from leaders of the other party.

The third level of analysis—the individual leader—offers additional explanation for the absence of diplomatic agreements in situations where such agreement seems badly needed. The tragedy of the war in Ukraine, with no ceasefire agreement in sight, has much to do with the personal ambitions and now the personal political predicament of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has staked his regime on achieving not compromise but rather victory in Ukraine. In China, the consolidation of power in one man’s hands to a greater degree than at any time since the death of Mao Zedong has meant that Chinese foreign policy, including bully-like “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, is primarily the policy of that one man, Xi Jinping.

Trump’s proclivities are a major part of why in recent years the United States has torn up or reneged on more major international agreements than it has negotiated or signed. The line between this level of analysis and the previous one is somewhat blurry insofar as much of the Republican Party remains in thrall to Trump. But Trump put a more personalized stamp on U.S. foreign relations by posing as an ace negotiator without—as demonstrated perhaps most clearly by his handling of relations with North Korea—getting substantive results commensurate with the pose.

Powers other than the United States have the potential for rising out of the diplomatic dearth and are already demonstrating their ability to do so. This is true of China with its recent brokering of rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, of Russia with its facilitation of restored relations between Saudi Arabia and Syria, and both Russia and China regarding the expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and potential expansion of the BRICS group. By comparison, U.S. diplomacy in recent years has not appeared as productive, apart from Finland joining NATO and other Western actions in response to the Russian war in Ukraine.

The dead hand of Trump continues to weigh heavily on U.S. diplomacy. In several important areas where U.S. leadership in the more distant past had led to fruitful international agreements, the Biden administration, apparently out of an abundance of domestic political caution, has not undone the Trump administration’s damaging retreat from diplomacy. It has not reversed most of Trump’s moves that made an Israeli-Palestinian peace an ever more remote possibility, such as the relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. It missed an early opportunity to reverse through executive order Trump’s reneging on the multilateral agreement that had closed all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon (a subject on which the Trump administration intentionally tied the political hands of its successor with the way it constructed a “sanctions wall” against Iran). And it has not undone Trump’s move away from the promotion of trade through international agreements.

Whether the United States can follow other major powers in ending the dearth of diplomacy will depend heavily on the direction of domestic U.S. politics. And it will depend on getting the American electorate to understand how the compromises that are inevitable in international agreements represent not just concessions to foreign states but also sometimes an essential part of advancing U.S. interests.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was 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: photojourBE / Shutterstock.com

The People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s exercise surrounding Taiwan this past week, conducted in response to a visit by U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, is only the latest development in an extended competition over Taiwan. The formation of the Select Committee on Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, and the CHIPS Act have brought to the fore a bipartisan appetite for supporting Taiwan and being tough on the PRC. Last year, the Taiwan Policy Act, reviewed by the Senate, would have provided unprecedented recognition by naming the island a “major non-NATO ally.” It is increasingly important to evaluate and discuss whether, after over forty years of intentionally ambiguous policy, an overt defense commitment—“strategic clarity”—would really make Taiwan safer.

Arguably, strategic clarity opens the door to unnecessary conflict because of two faulty assumptions. First is that, in the current status quo, Taiwan is at a high risk of being invaded. Second, that a explicit defense commitment to Taiwan will deter the PRC. The omitted possibility for fait-accompli missions targeting defenses beyond the main island of Taiwan demonstrates why strategic clarity has a high risk of destabilizing the fragile cross-strait status quo, and setting a dangerous trajectory for Sino-American relations into the future.

“Strategic Clarity” Will Not Be Clarifying

Central to understanding how strategic clarity would be detrimental to Taiwan’s interests is understanding the particular circumstances of Matsu and Kinmen islands, which lie just off the coast of the Chinese mainland but are governed by Taiwan. Their geographical location makes them a preliminary target in a PRC campaign to occupy Taiwan, and a critical factor in creating a cross-straits defense policy.

At the beginning of the Cold War, the United States found itself in a position similar to the present, with chances to clarify its security guarantees to Taiwan. The resulting 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty bound the United States to defend the main island and the Penghu (Pescadores) islands but did not clarify a position on Taiwan’s other smaller islands. When the PRC responded by attacking these, Taiwanese leadership asked for public guarantees on Kinmen and Matsu. Recognizing the calculus and context for defending these islands could easily change in the future, the United States denied these requests. Instead, private assurance was given that the United States would support the defense of Kinmen and Matsu. Three years later, the PRC’s campaign progressed with an amphibious invasion of Kinmen and Matsu, which America responded to by presenting a conventional façade, heavily reliant on the threat of nuclear escalation.

In short, while the main island stayed safe, China was undeterred by the treaty from attacking other Taiwanese holdings and bringing the world close to nuclear war, illustrating issues with clarifying the Taiwan issue. The PRC’s machinations for these islands remain and their capabilities have since substantially grown.

Since agreeing to the three joint communiqués with the PRC and the enactment of the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States has not taken a “clear” official position on the sovereignty of Taiwan, nor explicitly defined a policy to defend Taiwan. Switching to strategic clarity now, like in the 1950s, requires making an impossible choice over whether to include the Kinmen and Matsu islands or not. If defense commitments are clarified, but Kinmen and Matsu are not explicitly mentioned, then clarity is not achieved—this would bolster the PRC’s perception that the islands are fair game, yet an attack on the islands would still appear as a U.S. commitment failure if it did not intervene. On the other hand, including the islands in a defense commitment is even more dangerous. The Kinmen and Matsu islands remained under Taiwan in the 1950s only by the lack of PRC military capabilities—nuclear threats and deployment of the 7th fleet to the Taiwan Strait functioned as a checkmate which the PRC had no means of contesting. The balance of military power has since shifted dramatically.

Nuclear threats will not have the same effect against the PRC as then, especially with the latter having secured second-strike capabilities. The PRC has also ramped up production of both commercial dual-use means of transport and amphibious assault ships. Taiwan, meanwhile, has substantially reduced its forces on the islands. In a twenty-first-century crisis, conventional defense of the islands is impractical and increasingly unpopular. Kinmen and Matsu are now deep within the PRC’s anti-access/area denial (A2AD) umbrella. In fact, the islands are so close that numerous drones, heavy artillery, and other short-range systems not usually evaluated as A2AD capabilities can cover the islands. In order to succeed, military operations under this umbrella require stealth, division of forces, missile defense, significant suppression of opposing fires and intelligence, and raw numbers. A lack of any of these elevates the need for others. An operation to defend Kinmen or Matsu would possess none.

Overall then, while an invasion of Taiwan would certainly be a costly endeavor for the PRC, there is no doubt even an opposed occupation of the Kinmen and Matsu islands could be achieved in short order.

Strategic Clarity Takes Peaceful Reunification off the Table

Despite the PRC’s recent sound and fury, peaceful reunification still plays a large and explicit role in PRC strategy according to President Xi Jinping. Strategically, the PRC’s current pursuit of peaceful reunification is sound. If there is a way diplomacy, propaganda, and/or coercion could still allow the PRC to peacefully unify with Taiwan, Xi would prefer to exhaust all other options in that direction before taking actions that irreversibly escalate the dispute which may lead to conflict with the United States.

To achieve peaceful unification, Kinmen and Matsu play a uniquely important role. The islands’ ties to the PRC, both economically and culturally, make them unusually close to the mainland. The PRC would rather these particularly pro-unification parts of Taiwan be leveraged as advocates for peaceful reunification, rather than crushing them by force. Invading the islands would not only deracinate the PRC connection into the Taiwanese political context, but it would also irreparably alienate the remaining Taiwanese by proving fears of CCP malintent correct. The CCP would be locked out of a peaceful strategy. Unification would remain an albatross around Xi’s neck, with the only solution being a risky full-scale invasion.

The prospects of peaceful reunification are thus predicated on the possibility that U.S. interest in Taiwan may falter, and that the PRC will be able to successfully convince Taiwan through isolation and dependency that unification is in its best interest. Partially because of this, U.S. deterrence policy has historically been tailored to deter a Taiwanese declaration of independence as much as a PRC invasion. Formal guarantees cement U.S. support, devastating the case for peaceful reunification and emboldening separatist factions in Taiwan. This would provide the PRC with its crisis justifying an invasion as per its Anti-Secession Law. The PRC’s pursuit of peaceful reunification would cease, precluding the continuation of the status quo détente.

The PRC is currently deterred from invading Kinmen and Matsu for good reason: aggression would undermine the effort and wealth the PRC has sunk toward curating an air of responsible leadership. This runs counter to a growing realization the PRC needs friends, even apologizing for interference abroad. Without a substantial shock to the system, the PRC does not have a good reason to face the serious and long-term costs of invading Kinmen or Matsu now: it would lose the possibility of peacefully reunifying, and face global condemnation even if it succeeded.

The PRC May Respond to Strategic Clarity by Invading Kinmen or Matsu

In this light, strategic clarity is dangerous because it necessitates an escalatory PRC response. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership closely follows any U.S. government move perceived as supporting Taiwanese independence and responds appropriately, with the magnitude and hostility of the response calibrated by how threatened the PRC leadership feels. One might believe it is likely PRC responses will remain in the form of signals short of war. However, the PRC has issued continual warnings that the status of Taiwan is a red line. Beyond a certain point, provocative actions taken by the United States would trigger a military response.

Worth noting is that the PRC uses crises to permanently alter the regional status quo in its favor; from expanding control in the South China Sea, to continuous patrolling of vessels in the waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands. These actions seek to wear down and delegitimize the original threatening presence. Since the visit of a congressional delegation last August led by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—seen by the PRC as threatening the One China policy—the PRC has taken action to intentionally weaken Taiwan’s sovereignty, commencing unprecedented military exercises around the island and continually crossing the Taiwan Strait median line with aircraft. A true change in U.S. commitment to Taiwanese sovereignty would force the PRC to take action to delegitimize that commitment. An assault on Kinmen or Matsu would be an extreme response to an extreme threat, but nonetheless consistent with PRC strategy and historical responses.

Bombastic foreign policy rhetoric obfuscates that the CCP’s greatest worries have always been internal threats. Among these, reunification is characterized as an internal issue and remains extremely salient in the mainland. In the face of slipping economic growth and unpopular zero-covid measures, the CCP was willing to emphasize Taiwan as a priority at the 20th Party Congress, positioning the issue as a goal on which leaders will be judged. A policy challenging CCP leadership would further polarize the issue, empowering hawkish voices within the Party.

There Will Be No Unprovoked Invasion of Taiwan Any Time Soon

Proponents of strategic clarity present a narrative where any day Xi Jinping may surprise the world with a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, or engage in such as a domestic diversion. It is because of this potentiality, they argue, that strategic clarity is necessary.

This position is untenable. While there are building internal frustrations, and Xi may wish he could easily invade Taiwan, the current diplomatic environment and strategy of the CCP undercuts any justification that Xi is gambling the continued existence of his government on an unprovoked and costly invasion.

Invading Taiwan would perhaps be the most difficult military operation ever. Sea conditions in the Taiwan Strait limit the window of large-scale invasion to only two small windows in April and October, and preparations for such would be transparent in the months leading up. Routes would be predictable and could be mined or ambushed by aircraft and submarines. The island itself is also highly defensible. Suitable landing areas are few and narrow, denying a massive amphibious landing necessary to leverage the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) overwhelming numbers. Beaches are prone to becoming jammed with ships entering, exiting, and sinking. PLA’s massive arsenal of missiles would be severely limited by targets to attack. Moreover, Taiwan has significantly increased purchases of difficult-to-detect anti-armor, anti-tank, and anti-ship missiles since 2017. The island’s mountainous and foliage-covered geography ensures that many positions would remain undetected and intact to repel incoming forces. This is to say nothing of the capabilities of the United States, Japan, and Australia, which have all indicated involvement in the event the PRC attempts an invasion, bringing the possibility of success far lower. And even if a limited or full invasion were successful, the PRC would face disastrous economic and diplomatic costs.

In short, Taiwan faces a low risk of being invaded. Only 10 percent of experts in a recent survey believed that an amphibious assault with the goal of taking Taipei was likely in the next ten years. This starkly contrasts with 64 percent of those polled believed that the PRC would respond “negatively and significantly, provoking a crisis” if the United States ended strategic ambiguity. Over 70 percent agreed that the PRC believes the United States is willing to bear at least substantial costs in a conflict over Taiwan. Current U.S. policy is already explicit: the Taiwan Relations Act contains language almost as strong as in U.S. defense treaties, and in the Three Communiques—from which the One China Policy is based—the United States exclusively ties Taiwan and peaceful settlement. In a separate poll, a majority of experts expressed that they do not approve of strategic clarity on Taiwan.

America’s position is already clear enough toward the audience that matters the most: the PRC. Why kill a policy which continues to work?

The United States Should Support Taiwan… Just Not through Strategic Clarity

Strategic clarity is a rhetorical rather than a substantive change in U.S. policy—one which ultimately does not make Taiwan safer and may be dangerous enough to trigger a crisis by pushing the PRC to invade either Kinmen, Matsu, or both. The inability of the United States to respond to a Kinmen or Matsu fait accompli—the very public idea of Taiwanese territory being captured by the PRC—would severely weaken not just Taiwan’s position, but also the perception that America can support its alliance commitments across the world.

Instead of high-profile diplomatic gestures, the United States can make Taiwan safer under current strategic ambiguity without risking conflict from highly provocative actions.

First, the United States should focus on providing Taiwan with defensive assets at a rate that keeps the PLA uncertain about its capability to invade Taiwan. These assets should be capable of reaching operational capacity in the next few years, not be easily targeted by PLA missiles, and should not be tied to airstrips or ports which will be PLA priority targets. This requires clearing existing backlogs, as well as signing deals on new smart naval mine-laying craft, smart artillery, and redundant, robust intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance capabilities across the whole range of battlespaces. Dispersing assets that mitigate missile effectiveness and Chinese intelligence gathering such as more anti-air defenses as well as shore-based anti-ship and anti-submarine warfare tools are also key parts of making Taiwan’s defense equation add up. The United States can build up credibility that it will come to Taiwan’s defense by posturing more forces capable of responding quickly and affecting conflict from outside the missile range of the Chinese mainland.

Second, there is no military solution that denies an invasion of Kinmen or Matsu. However, this has been the case for years. The islands remain Taiwanese because of astute diplomacy in maintaining the cross-strait status quo. The United States should pursue a diplomatic goal of motivating allies—particularly non-regional allies who may not otherwise willingly damage relations with the PRC—on board with sanctions against non-peaceful attempts to change the status quo. Sanctions can change the calculus of a potential invasion in a way the U.S. military power cannot.

The Taiwan Strait will remain a geopolitical flashpoint, and the United States will play a deciding factor in its direction. Sober diplomacy, smart military investment, and leadership of allies can maximize the security of Taiwan.

Ike Barrash is an independent consultant working with think tanks on Indo-Pacific security and technology. He has an MA in political science from Iowa State University and has been an intern at the Department of State, CSIS’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, and the Stimson Center’s Defense Strategy & Planning project.

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While the long-term results of the People’s Republic of China’s diplomatic outreach into both the Middle East and Ukraine remain unknown, it is apparent that the foreign policy establishment in Washington DC was taken aback by the speed at which Beijing’s reputation is rising. They shouldn’t be. The long-running Saudi-Iranian rivalry has been partially fueled by the United States, meaning that Washington could never serve as a reliable mediator for all parties. China’s distance and relatively non-partisan-seeming approach to the region, however, enables more parties to be willing to at least discuss putting aside one of the more dangerous rivalries of the twenty-first century. Elsewhere, India plays an agile game of diplomacy, neither endorsing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nor rejecting its long-standing and beneficial security relationship with Moscow that dates back to independence. Brazil, increasingly, tows no one’s line at the UN and is quick to question narratives from the great powers. France asserts that European core interests and North American core interests are rapidly diverging.

Commentary on the return of the multipolar world has rightfully arisen. The industrial and economic share of American power on the global stage has narrowed considerably since its heydays in the Cold War and even at the start of the twenty-first century. Regardless of what anyone thinks about it, the multipolar world is already here. And rather than being regarded as some great shock or oddity, a multipolar world is in fact the normal condition of the international system. What we are seeing now is the world emerging out from under an outlier period and into something more typical with the majority of history. It is apparent by the actions of countries like China, India, and Brazil that most of the world knows this and is working towards adapting to such a future.

But the United States and many of its dependent allies are not. The rhetoric from places such as Washington and London is one of appealing to the logic of a “New Cold War”, where an “Axis of Authoritarianism” is rising between China and Russia that seeks to wage an ideological battle against “The Free World” in a bid for total global supremacy. With the possible exception of a reactive and increasingly culture war-obsessed Russia, however, few outside of the North Atlantic world take this rhetoric seriously. They have already moved on to focus on their regional self-interest. This begs the question: how can so much of the foreign policy class in the Beltway continue sacrificing the outcome of results for more tired declarations of loyalty to an ideology of global conflict over universal values? What is it that holds Anglo-American elites in thrall to a way of viewing the world which was questionable even in the Cold War, but is surely beyond unhelpful now?

Last year, the scholar Dr. Emily Finley released an important and comprehensive book that charts the history of this worldview. In The Ideology of Democratism, Finley charts how the world view of Rousseau, built upon by later additions coming from Thomas Jefferson, Woodrow Wilson, John Rawls, Leo Strauss, and up through the Bush Era neoconservatives, injected a universalist faith in liberal democracy as the guiding principle of not just specific societies and local circumstances (the preference of Washington, Hamilton, and the early Federalists in U.S. history), but of the entire world. Democratic systems are no longer outgrowths of particular historical and geographic circumstances but are taken to be the inevitable destiny of all of mankind. For a democracy to be threatened anywhere is to be threatened everywhere. Thus, democracy becomes a kind of civic religion known as “Democratism.”

One of the paradoxes of Democratism, as described by Finley, is that the democratist claims to speak “for the people” while also being highly dismissive of local concerns or popular opinion should these contradict the missionary mentality of expansion of democracy abroad or deviate from the plans of democracy experts. The “national will” is not something left up to individual elections but is rather a long-term project that can only be entrusted to the technocrats of democratic governance. In other words, only the democratists themselves can govern policy because only the mission of democratization is a legitimate purpose for a government whose goals transcend day-to-day concerns about security and infrastructure. Finley contends that this is now the default ideology of the governing and media classes in the North Atlantic, and especially in the foreign policy establishment of Washington. In a world where the U.S. expects Europe to hold solidarity with it on Taiwan (or Japan to not breaks ranks sanctioning Russia over Ukraine), it becomes apparent that, whether cynically or genuinely used, democratism is the rhetoric if not the purpose of present-day global over-extension.

While not the entirety of the reason why the Beltway struggles to shed its imperial hubris and adapt to the new multipolar world, (much of that is simply complacency) understanding democratism’s hold over the governing elite is vital for explaining the unique hostility found in so much of foreign policy commentary towards a soberer and more realistic appraisal of the world. From the bafflement expressed at countries failing to rally behind support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, to the clueless exhortations for a “values-based” diplomacy that prioritizes a nation’s domestic politics over its strategic opportunities, democratists will not concede that perhaps their worldview is unsuited for the proper practice of diplomacy under conditions of multipolarity. Particularly in a world where non-liberal powers have a variety of localized interests and abilities to assert themselves to greater degrees than were previously possible.

Perhaps the most damaging manifestation of the democratist worldview is the assignment of a type of karma point system to how nations are ranked. “Good” countries have policies that reflect Anglo-American norms and thus are worthy of some sovereignty, while “bad” countries can have their sovereignty violated on a economic or humanitarian pretext for failing to play their assigned role in the view of North Atlantic policymakers. The backlash this inevitably causes is taken as further proof that this contest for political power is a Manichean struggle of good versus evil which is existential, rather than a clash of interests that could be solved by diplomacy. Such tendencies serve only to drive nonaligned powers further away from partnership with countries enthralled by the democratist worldview.

Geopolitics is the contest for resources and power among territorial units jealous of their security and suspicious of their rivals. The rising and more assertive middle powers cannot coast on the received wisdom of ahistorical ideological projects, they must develop and survive. Having no comforting mythological narrative to blind them, they embrace the world as it is, rather than as they wish it to be. It is this that gives them a key advantage over a self-indoctrinated global power whose commitment to democratist and exceptionalist rhetoric prevents it from adapting to the very real world in which its power is embedded. Nations that understand this dynamic will outperform expectations and those that do not will comparatively underperform. You can have effective situational crisis management, or you can wage a global jihad for abstract universal values. You cannot have both.

Christopher Mott (@chrisdmott) is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy and the author of the book The Formless Empire: A Short History of Diplomacy and Warfare in Central Asia.

Image: Shutterstock.

In the realm of foreign policy discourse, few memes have been more prevalent or misleading than the oft-cited comparison of Russia’s economy to that of Italy’s. The phrase, first coined by Senator Lindsey Graham in 2014, has been wielded like a blunt instrument by Western policymakers and commentators, the implication being that Russia’s economy is feeble and inconsequential when contrasted with the collective might of the West. This soundbite, depressingly, has informed and shaped our approach to Russia, and it is high time we abandon it.

For if Russia’s economy were as small and unimpressive as the statistics suggest, how could it withstand the sanctions imposed upon it? Why has President Joe Biden’s declaration that “the Russian economy will be cut in half” failed to materialize? Did not French finance minister Bruno Le Maire tell a French radio station that the West’s goal was to “cause the collapse of the Russian economy” and bring Moscow to heel? How does a nation with an economy purportedly the size of Italy manage to exert such global influence, to the point where U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently stated that Western sanctions are themselves putting U.S. dollar hegemony at risk?

On paper, Sen. Graham’s observation seems accurate; both Russia and Italy are close to each other in terms of nominal gross domestic product, or GDP, which has been the preferred method of measuring a country’s economic size and power since World War II. The figure is produced by determining the total cost of all goods and services either produced or sold in a country within a given time frame. According to World Bank data, in 2013, Russia’s nominal GDP was around $2.29 trillion while Italy’s was around $2.14 trillion. As recently as 2021, Russia’s nominal GDP was around $1.78 trillion while Italy’s stood at $2.11 trillion.

Yet error in this comparison lies in the reliance on measuring nominal GDP itself, as it fails to account for exchange rates and purchasing power parity (PPP), which accounts for the standard of living and productivity (and from there, per capita welfare and, importantly, resource use). Renowned French economist Jacques Sapir has pointed out the inadequacy of this metric, arguing that Russia’s GDP, when measured in PPP ($3.74 trillion in 2013, $4.81 trillion in 2021), is closer to Germany’s ($3.63 trillion in 2013, $4.85 trillion in 2021) than Italy’s ($2.19 trillion in 2013, $2.74 trillion in 2021). This is a crucial distinction, and it is both puzzling and troubling that so many continue to parrot the Russia-Italy comparison.

But even the PPP figures do not fully capture the significance of Russia’s economic power. Sapir further expanded his analysis in an essay for American Affairs, a policy journal, and noted that the PPP measurement “may not yet reflect the real importance of the Russian [economy] when strategic, geopolitical issues are at stake.”

Sapir notes that, over the past fifty years, Western economies have become increasingly dominated by service sectors, which, while contributing to GDP calculations, lose their importance during times of conflict. In such situations, it is the production of physical goods that matters, and by this measure, Russia’s economy is not only stronger than Germany’s but also more than twice as robust as France’s. Furthermore, Russia’s dominant position in the global energy and commodities trade—as it is a key producer of oil, gas, platinum, cobalt, gold, nickel, phosphates, iron, wheat, barley, buckwheat, oats, and more—provides it with substantial leverage over markets and economies, making it less susceptible to sanctions and less easily cowed by Western pressure. This reality has not been lost on many nations in the Global South, who have been reticent to support Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression.

Though Senator Graham made a significant mistake in deploying the Russia/Italy economic comparison, he can perhaps be forgiven on the grounds that he is a politician. The same, however, cannot be said for a number of economists and foreign policy experts who have repeated the line over the years up to and including the present.

Yet the persistence of the Russia-Italy myth among these professionals is perhaps not surprising given the allure of the service sectors in the West. The spectacular growth of these capital-intensive sectors, along with their nominal wealth and productivity, has led many in Washington and various Western capitals to not just embrace them, but also to politically, culturally, and ideologically prefer them. We Americans take particular pride, for example, in the success of our tech giants as drivers of innovation, growth, and national prestige. The Internet, and the various applications that flourished on smartphones, are considered by many to be inherently democratizing, effectively serving as a conduit for American values and an enabler of U.S. national interests.

This love for service sectors results in a tendency to view the labor-intensive industries of the past—energy, agriculture, resource extraction, manufacturing—as antiquated relics. But this skewed perspective has left us unprepared for a world in which tangible goods are once again of vital importance, as evidenced by our struggles in the face of the war in Ukraine. The conflict has “exposed a worrisome lack of production capacity in the United States.” In Europe, the United Kingdom has noted that “it will take 10 years to replace weapon stocks gifted to Ukraine and rebuild British weapon numbers to an acceptable level.” The EU, for its part, now cut off from cheap Russian energy, faces the terrifying possible prospect of rapid deindustrialization.

It is high time that we admit how much we severely underestimate the relative size and power of rival economies, including and especially Russia’s. It would also behoove policymakers to reevaluate their current policy approach to economic statecraft—sanctions are not a one-size-fits-all solution, particularly when dealing with a nation that wields significant economic power.

But above all, let us resolve to never again utter the words “Russia has an economy the size of Italy.”

Carlos Roa is the Executive Editor of The National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

A Chinese moon base sounds like the punchline of a bad conspiracy theory. But Yang Mengfei—a member of the China Aerospace and Technology Corporation (CASC)—sees it as an ambitious goal within reach of the People’s Republic of China. Despite this posturing, China is lightyears away from a moon base.

Late last month, Mengfei called on China to seize the opportunity to build critical space infrastructure on the moon that would lay the groundwork for the economy of the future. Yet the latest announcement about a Chinese-Russian lunar base is just another piece of propaganda; U.S. policymakers should not have serious concerns about a Chinese lunar base.

Certainly, China’s advancements in space exploration in the twenty-first century are not to be ignored. China’s Chang’e 4 lunar explorer became the first space probe to land on the far side of the moon in 2013. Furthermore, in recent years China has conducted high-resolution imaging of the Earth’s surface and constructed the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS), which provides China with economic and security data that informs its industrial development. The Chinese government has also proposed its own Lunar Research Station (LRS) in partnership with Russia to counter the United State’s Artemis Program, which seeks to return U.S. astronauts to the moon.

Mengfei and the Chinese Communist Party obviously want to tout these accomplishments to increase China’s prestige on the international stage. However, China’s space technology is still lightyears behind the United States in terms of reusability and cost efficiency. China’s main rocket used for heavy payloads, the Long March 9, is having to be completely redesigned in order to make it a reusable rocket on par with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and other privately-owned reusable rockets in the United States. This redesign could delay the Long March 9’s utilization for a decade or more. Previous launch failures, like that of the Long March 5 in 2018, have also delayed Chinese space missions by a number of years. China’s ability to calibrate its own rockets will take time, but it is in the diplomatic sphere that the CCP’s moon base ambitions may face their biggest challenge.

The war in Ukraine has exposed Russia’s space programs to the budgetary chopping block, making any potential assistance from Russia to China’s space program negligible at best. Currently, these cuts stand at $557 million, with funding for scientific research and development cut completely. This comes on the heels of Russia announcing it would quit the International Space Station in 2024, thereby sacrificing a key source of revenue and forsaking the massive amount of leverage it possessed over the United States and other Western space programs. Russia previously used the Baikonur Cosmodrome to launch other nations’ satellites and payloads into space in exchange for payments by the United States and several other Western nations but has refused to do so over the war in Ukraine, depriving the government of millions more in revenue. Those countries are now turning to the United States or the private sector to launch their products into orbit. Russia has spurned countries that have sanctioned the Kremlin in favor of countries on friendlier terms with Moscow, but this has also resulted in a substantial loss of revenue that has severely hampered the Kremlin’s space program.

China’s decision to partner with a diplomatically isolated ally that now lacks any major cutting-edge space technology or financial investment in spacefaring can only hobble China’s own ambitions. While both China and Russia recognize the massive potential for moon resources, like minerals and solar power generation, Russia can only tepidly support Chinese alternatives to U.S.-led space policy. This renders China and Russia’s LRS partnership a mere theoretical alternative to the U.S. Artemis Accords being presented to other nations. What’s more, partnerships with other countries have failed due to U.S. export laws that prohibit the transfer of sensitive technologies. With already-limited funding, Russia’s ability to dodge U.S. sanctions will be restricted, meaning its contributions to China’s moon base ambitions will be minimal at best.

China’s successful strides to join the ranks of space-faring nations is something that the Communist Party rightly touts in the diplomatic sphere. Yet the notion that China is serious about putting together an Earth-Moon system that will generate billions of dollars and solidify Chinese control of the Moon is pure fantasy. While Yang Mengfei’s recent success as chief designer and chief commander of China’s 2020 Chang’e-5 lunar sampling mission allows him to promote China’s breakneck pace in matching U.S. capabilities in space, mega-projects such as the Chinese moon settlements exist only in Beijing’s imagination.

Roy Mathews is an Innovation Fellow at Young Voices. He is a graduate of Bates College and a former Fulbright Fellow. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and the Boston Herald.

Image: Marcos Silva/Shutterstock.

Bilateral cooperation remains the coin of the Western world. But cooperation cannot be achieved by berating countries to fall into line. Nations seeking to grow and prosper must find ways to work together. U.S.-Hungarian relations, for example, are no exception.

Surely America wants a Europe that is free, prosperous, and at peace. As a global power with global interests and responsibilities, the United States needs friends at its back.

And surely every European nation would like to be unshackled from the threat of being terrorized and squeezed between competing great powers and empires.

That said, a European superstate is not the answer. While there is undeniable value in the European Union, it is an institution with limits and not immune from political influence where some try to dominate and dictate to others.

Nations participate in the EU primarily because they recognize that it can advance their national interests. But, in the end, each member state bears the real risks and responsibilities of delivering peace, prosperity, and freedom to its own people.

The transatlantic community is another grouping of like-minded countries bound by common interests and geography, reflecting the history, tradition, religions, and culture of Western civilization. It, too, has the capacity to serve the mission of governments to serve their people.

Within Europe and among the transatlantic community, bilateral relations are as important as ever. Indeed, strong honest relations between members—built on trust and confidence—as well as mutual interests and understanding of differences, will strengthen institutions like NATO and the European Union. That, in turn, empowers these organizations to deliver better outcomes for their members.

Obstacles to Bilateral Cooperation

But all is not well in transatlantic relations. Today there are pathologies that, if left untreated, will make it harder to meet the challenges of the modern world through joint action.

Mirror-Imaging Politics. The old truism “politics stops at the water’s edge,” no longer holds true. Domestic political battles are widely reported throughout the world, often through the filter of reporters’ political biases. Audiences reflexively absorb partisan content from foreign pundits, politicians, and media, just as they do domestic news. Too often, people assume that the political Right and Left in other countries are pretty much the same as in theirs. It is not. In Europe, for instance, center-right governments and political parties have a wide diversity of views on domestic and foreign issues. Yet, the impulse to pigeonhole can lead to labeling Giorgia Meloni’s election in Italy a victory for right-wing extremism, when the reality is it is anything but.

Political Infighting. Political fights will exist. That is foundational to a community of free nations. We disagree on things. That is why we have elections. But democracy is for the people and by the people: We should let them decide. And, even if they do not vote the way we wish, we must work together with the elected governments as friends and allies should do.

Ossifying Orthodoxies. One way to stifle political competition is to declare the debate settled. Yet many issues that are fundamental to the freedoms and prosperity of our citizens—climate, energy, family, education, migration, gender, and economic freedom to name a few—remain unsettled.  We can’t build a strong base for common action by declaring a willing partner who challenges political orthodoxies to be a radical extremist and a danger to democracy.

Threats to Free Markets. No orthodoxy must be challenged more than that our economies should be wholly centrally managed by transnational bureaucrats. Doing business should mean doing business. Investors will have to make profits, but they also provide jobs and tax revenues for the host country. We should acknowledge that and not shy away from admitting it. Healthy market competition between countries that respect free market competition creates space for win-win situations.

Uneven Development Initiatives. There are problems the EU has been habitually and consistently unable or unwilling to solve. Topping the list is developing North-South infrastructure in Central Europe. The Three Seas Initiative can be a great solution, addressing needs that have gone unanswered for thirty-plus years, but the entire leadership of the transatlantic community needs to get behind the initiative.

Energy Insecurity. The community needs to get more serious about energy security. That means establishing stable and alternative supply sources (including gas, oil, and nuclear) and routes to deliver fuels and electricity. There must be more cooperation—and a commitment to proceed on a businesslike basis not tainted by favoritism or politics—to develop real plans to open up new markets, where profits can be made, and new enterprises established, with partners like the Abraham Accord countries and the nations of the Middle Corridor (Caucuses and Central Asia).    

The West has failed to overcome these obstacles to cooperation by wasting its energy beating what are often portrayed as recalcitrant allies into submission.

Solutions, Not Slander

When you can’t beat down an obstacle, it is time to try something else: building bridges through better bilateral cooperation. How do we know cooperation can work in these troubled times? We see evidence of it every day.

Many governments in Europe have proven extremely stable despite high energy prices, inflation, migration issues, and the uncertainty of the war over Ukraine. Why? In part because they have made taking care of their citizens their top priority and then worked with other countries to make it happen. One example is the quick action to build the gas corridor from Azerbaijan. Another is the NATO consensus to let Finland join the alliance. How can we build on these examples?

Honest assessments on empirical data. When different countries tackle challenges differently, the outcomes can be measured, debated, and compared, yielding lessons that can inform public policies. Rather than impose orthodoxies, let’s encourage objective, collaborative research on family policy, education, monetary policy (like the Eurozone), and energy and the environment.

Building free and open spaces. We spend too much time arguing over who are and aren’t our competitors and enemies, and too little time working to build partnerships and create new opportunities that will allow nations to work together and make their own choices rather than just have to submit to one sphere of influence or other.

New Forms and Platforms of Dialogue. Decades after the end of the Cold War, the discourse and debate within NATO and the EU is dominated by the same platforms and players as they were decades ago. They are not diverse. They do not make more space for debate on the “orthodoxies.” They include many of the same people who always say and advocate for the same things. We need new instruments of connectivity. Not just more forums that parrot views, but real exchange. Civil society in the West needs to get back in the game. It should become the font of innovation and creativity, not the twenty-first-century version of the Spanish Inquisition.

Defense Cooperation. Nations often most berated by the EU are also among those most committed to NATO, deterrence, and building up their own self-defense capabilities. Defense cooperation, industrial partnerships, and joint efforts focused on advancing collective security in the transatlantic community are a pathway for greater collaborative efforts.

James Jay Carafano is a Heritage Foundation Vice President, responsible for the think tank’s research on matters of national security and foreign relations.

Marton Ugrosdy is the Head of the Office of the Prime Minister’s Political Director in Hungary and former Director of the Institute for Foreign Affairs and Trade in Budapest.

Image: Shutterstock.

Despite Vladimir Putin’s move to “suspend” Russia’s participation in the New START treaty and the recent decision by the United States to stop sharing nuclear stockpile data, Washington should not abandon all hope of this treaty or future arms control/risk mitigation endeavors.

It is possible Russia and the United States can come to terms on another extension or update of this treaty, although unlikely given the current state of relations. However, America should continue to adhere to the tenets of the treaty even after its likely expiration. This would show continued U.S. resolve and commitment to arms control not only to Russia but the entire global community.

Some will argue the demise of New START will spark another arms race, and that the United States will have no choice but to keep pace with Russia should the latter decide to deploy more nuclear warheads above the treaty limit. Yet this line of thinking causes more problems than it solves. The New START limits of 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads, along with the warheads currently in storage, is enough for the United States to maintain a capable and credible force that can counter any adversary. There is no reason to discard treaty limits to pursue greater numbers of deployed nuclear weapons unless absolutely necessary. A recent State Department annual report on arms control concluded that despite Russia’s suspension and noncompliance with New START, there is no “strategic imbalance”, at least for now, with regard to nuclear capabilities between Russia and the United States

It’s important to note that Moscow’s use of the word “suspension” of the treaty does not mean “cancellation.” While Moscow has eschewed all data exchanges and on-site verification, the Russian Foreign Ministry has publicly stated they will continue to abide by the treaty limits as well as the Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement. Separate from New START, this 1988 Agreement requires U.S. and Russian notification of impending unarmed test launches of any Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) and Sea Launch Ballistic Missile (SLBM). The agreement stipulates the notification must occur at least twenty-four hours prior to the launch and provide the planned date, launch location, and planned impact area of the relevant unarmed reentry vehicle(s). This prudent agreement provides transparency to the ICBM and SLBM test launch process and reduces the risk of misinterpretation. As someone who participated in numerous ICBM test launches as a member of an ICBM test launch squadron, this is a welcome relief.

Additionally, if the treaty does expire, a lapse in arms control is not without precedent. During the transition to New START from the original START treaty there was a gap of well over a year from expiration to ratification. During this time, there was no interim treaty in place and both countries successfully navigated through that process. This fact, plus recent statements from Moscow, at least provide a glimmer of hope.

In concert with pursuing future arms control and risk mitigation, the United States should continue the current path toward modernizing the nuclear force to include deployment of the Sentinel ICBM, the Columbia class nuclear submarine, and the B-21 bomber. It would seem paradoxical to relate upgrading our nuclear force with arms control. However, history suggests that past U.S. nuclear modernization efforts provided negotiators with leverage and options that actually helped negotiators find common ground during treaty deliberations. Moreover, America still requires a capable nuclear force to provide security for the homeland and allies while bringing the United States closer to nuclear modernization “parity” with Russia, if indeed their nuclear force is nearly 90 percent modernized.

To be clear, modernization does not mean an increase in deployed warheads over the New START limit nor is that needed. Modernization means increased reliability and capability; not more.

If New START can’t be saved, it is essential to retain agreements such as the Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement and any other type of communication that could facilitate crisis management with Russia. The road ahead for nuclear arms control will look much different and likely not just between Russia and the United States. China will certainly figure into the equation due to its rapid nuclear force buildup. Reducing the risk of a nuclear conflict should be a primary concern not only to Washington and Moscow, but also Beijing. Current tensions notwithstanding, the United States and Russia have well-established communication, protocols, and data sharing which provide confidence and transparency (at least it did, and still can) that is vital to avoid stumbling into a nuclear conflict. Despite the fact there is no similar relationship with China, leveraging protocols such as those in New START and the Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement could provide an opportunity, at the very least, to begin a dialogue with Beijing toward the goal of strategic stability. Moreover, future agreements between all three, while difficult, should not be considered an impossibility.

While any type of formal nuclear arms treaty or risk reduction agreement between Russia and/or China will be incredibly difficult to achieve, efforts toward strategic stability must endure. The rules and the players of the game may be changing, but the goal remains, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Dana Struckman is a retired Air Force Colonel and a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College. He was a missile launch officer on active duty and commanded an intercontinental ballistic missile squadron at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

The views expressed here are solely those of the author and not of the Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the United States government.

Image: U.S. Department of Defense.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made clear that there are gaps in the U.S. defense industrial base, which will prove costly in Ukraine and other geopolitical hotspots if not addressed. The most important one is undoubtedly Taiwan, the democratically self-ruled island that Beijing asserts as its own, which is reliant on U.S. military aid to keep a credible defense. But Taiwan isn’t getting the help it needs, and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission identified “diversion of existing stocks of weapons and munitions” to Ukraine as a key reason for delays and backlogs in delivery of promised defense articles to Taiwan. The Biden administration must invoke the Defense Production Act (DPA) to ensure Taiwan has the capabilities to defend itself.

Invoking the DPA is the best and only immediate solution to surging production capacity. Under the act, the president is authorized to “allocate materials, services, and facilities” for national defense and emergency preparedness purposes and instruct private companies to prioritize contracts from the federal government. The DPA has been increasingly used for defense and non-defense purposes alike:, former President Donald Trump instructed 3M to produce N95 respirator masks, and General Motors to produce ventilators during the Covid-19 pandemic, and President Joe Biden ordered defense contractors to boost production of Virginia-class attack submarines in 2021.

Although some lawmakers have recently criticized the Biden administration’s use of the DPA, such scrutiny has primarily focused on non-defense purposes such as solar panels and biofuels. Nevertheless, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, such as Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CN., and Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-WI, have already called for invoking the DPA for Stingers and Javelins. “The cupboard is empty, or it will be very, very shortly unless the president invokes the Defense Production Act to provide that demand signal on an expedited basis,” Blumenthal said in an April 2022 hearing.

Taiwan has been unable to receive billions of dollars in military equipment to defend itself amid China’s increasingly coercive activities in the Taiwan Strait. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States is obligated to provide Taiwan with the necessary equipment for self-defense. But more than $19 billion of weapons and equipment has not been delivered to Taiwan. This includes a 2019 $8 billion purchase of sixty-six F-16 fighter jets and a 2015 agreement to supply more than 200 Stingers and Javelin shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles to Taiwan. Without adequate weapons to defend itself, Taiwan will be unable to create the strategic environment that would deter Beijing from pursuing “reunification”—an objective that Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has promised to fulfill in his lifetime.

Amid the United States’ struggles with its defense industrial base, China continues to pursue an ambitious military modernization program consistent with Xi’s desire to transform the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a “world-class” military by 2050. Such modernization includes a large-scale reorganization of the PLA that “encourages synergy between and within military, defense industrial and academic communities.” China’s state-owned and state-controlled enterprises allow for state-led industrial policies that can divert all resources into the military. No more than 4 percent of China’s military equipment was modern in the 1990s. At present, most of its equipment is. As Oriana Skylar Mastro and Derek Scissors point out in Foreign Affairs, China will have more than 450 naval ships within ten years—a number the United States will not reach until 2045.

Dwindling stockpiles of arms and armaments are making it increasingly more difficult to give Taiwan the weapons it needs. Take, for example, artillery, a crucial and decisive tool on the battlefield. The Russian military describes artillery as “The God of War,” and used it to puncture German defenses during World War II. Similarly, the United States outfired the Chinese three-to-one during the Korean War’s Chinese spring offensive, facilitating a successful defense. And at present, Ukraine is doing the same thing with HIMARS and 155mm howitzers against the Russians, demonstrating a fierce and formidable resistance. Of course, artillery shells are an essential tool in the war theater. But a U.S. defense official characterized the stockpile of 155mm shells as “uncomfortably low” due to the United States giving more than 1 million artillery rounds to Ukraine.

A low stockpile of artillery shells is incredibly concerning because, in an invasion scenario, Taiwan’s military would certainly need artillery to stop an amphibious assault. It would take four to five years to rebuild the 155mm ammunition stockpile at the current non-surge production rates. And it’s not just artillery shells. Since the start of the war, Ukraine has received one-third of the United States’ Javelin missiles and one-quarter of its Stinger missiles to repel the Russian invasion. The dwindling U.S. arsenal, according to Mark Cancian, senior advisor at the Center for International and Strategic Studies, is likely reaching a point where defense strategists are beginning to question whether war plans can be executed. At the very least, depleted stockpiles exacerbate already prolonged delays in weapons deliveries to U.S. allies and partners.

To replenish stockpiles and, in turn, ensure that Taiwan is armed to the teeth to deter forceful unification, the United States needs first to address production capacity and the delivery of defense systems and platforms to Taiwan. To do so, the current administration must invoke the Defense Production Act.

By all means the act is crucial to bolstering depleted stockpiles, but it does not address underlying issues of decreased, in some cases closed, production lines. To illustrate, the United States currently buys roughly 1,000 Javelins a year. Even if the United States decided to build as many Javelins as possible—6,480 a year—it would take thirty-two months before delivery, and anywhere from three to four years to replenish the number of Javelins already sent to Ukraine. Moreover, the Department of Defense has not purchased Stingers for more than eighteen years and closed its production lines in 2020. Greg Hayes, Raytheon’s chief executive, pointed out in April 2022 that there is “a very limited stock of material for Stinger production.” In other words, even if defense contractors were compelled by the federal government to prioritize producing weapons such as Javelins and Stingers, they may still be unable to boost production capacity.

Nonetheless, preparing for war costs much less than fighting a war. That is why addressing our dwindling U.S. stockpiles is essential. Task and Purpose’s Jeff Schogol said it best: “it’s time for the military to stock up on things that go boom.” The thought of a weak defense industrial base and depleted stockpiles should haunt policymakers. At the very worst, it could lead adversaries to conclude that the U.S. military is not as strong as it portrays itself to be. Hal Brands of the American Enterprise Institute warned that unless U.S. stockpiles are replenished, the United States might as well “get ready for ‘missile famine’ if there is a great-power war.” U.S. allies and partners are signaling they are ready to take on looming threats; they will need a defense-industrial base that they can rely on.

Pieter van Wingerden is a fellow at the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies at Claremont McKenna College.

Image: DVIDS.

The United States and Europe have a vested interest in ensuring a free and fair electoral outcome in Turkey. On May 14, 2023, Turkish citizens will vote to decide if President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has run the country for twenty years, will continue to do so for another five. Under present circumstances, if free and fair elections were held, it is a safe bet that Erdogan would lose decisively against Kemal Kilicdaroglu. (Several recent polls show Kilicdaroglu with a significant lead.) It is far from certain, however, that the elections will be free or fair.

The viability of a democratic Turkey is in the United States’ interest. Regional adversaries such as Russia and Iran would be further emboldened if Turkey continues to drift from the West. Rebuilding Turkey’s democratic governance and institutions will ultimately be up to the people and the country’s future leaders. Unfettered free and fair elections, however, will ultimately help them reach that goal. 

Turkey is already drifting away from NATO’s orbit and moving ever closer to Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Erdogan also threatens the stability and security of the eastern Mediterranean by recklessly pursuing broad claims to undersea gas exploration and antagonizing NATO allies. He threatens Syria’s stability by threatening to launch new military incursions against the Syrian Kurds. If Turkey is to once again become a trusted and integral part of the Western alliance system, a democratic change must occur that will oversee Erdogan’s departure.

Between 1950 and 2015, Turkey held relatively free and fair elections (although incumbent governments always enjoyed an advantage in the mass media given their dependence on government subventions), helping to represent citizens’ choices at the ballot box and electing its leaders. This is important not least because Turkey is a major NATO ally but also because it is arguably the only Muslim democracy in the region. Indeed, Turkey’s neighbors have found it difficult to match Turkey’s democratic credentials.

In his twenty years of ruling Turkey, Erdogan has unfortunately overseen the country’s dramatic transition into authoritarian rule. This has been carefully documented in the Department of State’s annual reports on human rights and Freedom House’s assessments of democracy. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found that Turkey’s elections since 2017 have witnessed interference from the governing party. Since the coup attempt of July 2016, Freedom House identified Turkey as a country that is no longer “free.”

Unfortunately, Turkish voters lack important resources to choose their next president. Turks lack unfiltered information about all political parties and candidates. They don’t have a media environment free of government interference. And they desperately need bureaucratic institutions that can ensure the sanctity of citizens’ choices. Just recently, Turkey’s media watchdog refused to extend the license of the German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle—signaling that independent foreign media may be kept from reporting on the elections.

Meanwhile, Erdogan has been using the power of his incumbency to purchase the affection of voters by increasing the minimum wage and pensions and offering cheap credit to businesses—all short-term measures designed to win the election but destabilizing to the health of the overall economy. Such measures were already underway prior to the devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey in early February 2023 but now continue under the guise of relief and reconstruction.

In short, the outcome of Turkey’s presidential elections is heavily tilted in Erdogan’s favor. This is the case because Erdogan himself is in a race for political survival. Staying in power is not a simple matter of wielding power for Erdogan; it is existential. If he is no longer the president, it is likely he will have to answer for his numerous abuses of power in a court of law.

A unique opportunity exists for the United States to stand behind the Turkish people in their time of need. Washington must make a strong call to champion the cause of democratic elections in Turkey. The United States can continue to offer Turkey its support by promoting the cause of free and fair elections.

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.

Eric Edelman is a senior advisor at FDD. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Image: Shutterstock.

Bolivia’s economy is running aground, squeezed by higher global interest rates and policy missteps. Its foreign exchange reserves, which stood at $15.4 billion in 2014, are now estimated to be under $400 million (not counting $2.6 billion in gold reserves)—able to provide less than two weeks of import coverage. The country’s overvalued exchange rate is showing signs of strain. Bank runs are ongoing as people try to get their dollars ahead of what increasingly looks like a collapse. While the Andean country’s slide into a major balance of payments crisis is by itself bad news, it also has wider geopolitical implications, affecting the global energy transition and filtering into the new Cold War between China and the United States.

Bolivia’s Energy and Money Problems

The country’s economic plight originates in its longstanding heavily statist economic model, largely implemented following Evo Morales’ election to the presidency in 2006. While the model allowed the country to reduce poverty, improve per capita income, and kept inflation down, other problems mounted. The current government is under pressure from ongoing expansionary policies—primary subsidies for agriculture, industry, and fuel, which were all strained by the coronavirus pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian War. Additionally, oil and gas production is declining; revenues from the energy sector have long financed state largesse.

Once called the “beating heart” of South American natural gas production, Bolivia had no major discoveries for many years and production has fallen since 2015. According to energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, based on current trends Bolivian gas production is expected to decline from 1.4 billion cubic feet per day in 2022 to almost nothing by 2030.

The nation’s natural gas sector has numerous problems. The Morales government nationalized the industry in 2006 but then failed to reinvest in exploration. Meanwhile, Bolivia’s foreign investment record is poor; other countries offer better terms for exploration and production and lower political risk. Bolivia’s energy standing is further complicated by changes in its key customers, Argentina and Brazil, which have developed their own energy resources. To avoid a painful adjustment (which means reducing subsidies), the government over the past decade has routinely tapped its foreign exchange reserves to cover any gaps in spending. Falling gas revenues are now a major headache for President Luis Arce’s government.

A Lack of Potential Solutions

Bolivia’s options are limited. Further tapping foreign exchange reserves will be difficult, given that the vast majority of what is left is in gold. Selling gold on international markets could take time—as the government requires Congressional approval to do so—and would at most serve only as a temporary measure. Moreover, it would further sap confidence in the country’s financial situation.

Alternatively, the central bank could tap the foreign exchange reserves held by the country’s commercial banks, as it did in 2018. But such action would only deepen the public’s nervousness over the country’s financial institutions. Government policies are already under intense scrutiny, including demands that the government provide an explanation as to why $918 million of retirement funds were invested in Bolivian sovereign bonds, which have suffered a severe devaluation.

Turning to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and/or the Inter-American Development Bank would be politically difficult. Any such assistance would surely entail conditionality measures: cutting subsidies (to improve the country’s fiscal position), changing the central bank’s monetary regime (to help boost exports and reduce the central bank’s exposure to currency swaps), introducing policies that promote a more welcoming environment for foreign investment (to help natural gas exploration and develop the nascent lithium industry), and pension reforms. Considering the populist-leaning nature of the Arce government, these measures would be painful, especially with elections in 2025. Furthermore, Bolivia, with its single B credit ratings, would be a hard sell to international bond investors—a situation not helped by rising international interest rates, which have caused some ructions in global bond markets and banks.

Complicating the situation even further Arce’s MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) government wants to keep the country’s subsidies and overvalued foreign exchange rate in place because of Bolivia’s own personal history with inflation. There is a deep concern that the reduction or removal of subsidies on fuel would result in higher inflation, which Bolivia has suffered through before in the 1980s. At that time, inflation peaked at an astounding 23,464 percent in 1985. Any gains that have been made in the country’s standard of living could be washed away with another such bout of high inflation, and would certainly open the door to social turmoil.

Then there is the country’s internal political dynamics, which only further frustrate the policymaking environment. There are tensions inside MAS between supporters of former President Evo Morales (2006–2019), who is thought to seek reelection, and the incumbent Arce. There is also animosity between the Arce administration and the country’s strongest economic region, Santa Cruz province. This more conservative province has often clashed with both the leftist Morales and then Arce governments on economic policy. Tensions escalated in December 2022, when the province’s conservative governor (and a leader of the opposition), Luis Fernando Camacho, was arrested for his alleged role in the 2019 turmoil that led to the forced removal of then-President Morales.

The Lithium Issue

Bolivia’s troubles begin to take on an international dimension when one adds the country’s lithium to the equation. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Bolivia has the largest amount of lithium resources in the world at 21 million tons. Achieving the Biden administration’s ambitious plans to make half of all cars sold in the United States electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030 means lithium batteries for each—something that is beyond the small amount extracted in the United States itself. America currently imports most of its lithium from the Lithium Triangle countries of Argentina (51 percent of lithium imports) and Chile (40 percent). Bolivia is the third country in the triangle.

Yet at the same time, China has made important inroads into Bolivia. While the United States has lacked an ambassador to the country since 2008 and relations have generally been poor over the past few years (partly due to the Morales administration’s anti-U.S. stance), China has developed a formidable diplomatic representation. Chinese diplomats are an integral part of Beijing’s economic statecraft, which is geared toward securing access to critical metals like lithium. Bolivia joined the Bridge and Road Initiative in 2018 and China has lent it $3.2 billion, mainly for infrastructure construction. It was no surprise that in January of this year Bolivia selected a Chinese consortium led by CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, to mine lithium and help the Andean country develop a battery plant. The deal came with an announcement that the Chinese consortium would invest over $1 billion in the project’s first phase, boosting infrastructure, roads, and conditions needed to create plants to produce lithium cathodes and batteries.

Questions for Washington

Bolivia’s economic troubles raise some important geopolitical questions. Is China willing to provide bridge financing or stretch out its repayments? Does the United States have an interest in helping Bolivia by facilitating a path through the IMF, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank? China has demonstrated a reluctance to help troubled debtors find an easy exit ramp by adding new capital resources, though it did eventually help Ecuador with a debt restructuring. But it has had a difficult path with two countries Pakistan ($24.7 billion of external debt to China) and Venezuela ($60 billion). Does Bolivia have the option to play the China card? Most likely China will probably seek to sidestep another troubled debtor situation, but China does want Bolivia’s lithium.

In any case, Bolivia is certainly facing a major economic crisis. It is time for the Bolivian government to overhaul its economic model and move toward policies that are less reliant on the state, which is running out of money in the face of declining natural gas production. In neighboring Argentina, a more liberal investment regime helped increase the country’s lithium exports by 234 percent in 2022, pushing up the country’s total mining exports (a fifth of which were lithium) to $3.86 billion. Argentina expects to see mining revenues of around $6 billion in 2023, pushed along by a rush of foreign company investment from the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

As more countries shift to EVs and use batteries to store more power in national electricity grids, Bolivia risks restricting foreign investment flows and developing a dependency on one market, China. Bolivia should consider a more open foreign investment policy. However, that may be attained only after an economic crisis, which might have been averted. It has been said that no crisis should go to waste, maybe that is the lesson to be learned in La Paz and something that is going to be closely watched in Beijing and Washington.

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: Hyotographics/Shutterstock.

The military signaling by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in August 2022, following the visit to Taiwan by U.S. speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, set a benchmark by which to assess the latest Taiwan Strait crisis touched off by the meeting between Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen and new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Some observers interpreted Beijing’s reaction to the Tsai-McCarthy meeting as “dialed down” or “nothing compared with the belligerent reaction to Pelosi’s visit.”

This might support a hopeful conclusion that the deterioration of U.S.-China relations is bottoming out. Washington and Taipei reportedly coordinated to lower the profile of the Tsai-McCarthy meeting. McCarthy altered his original plan to travel to Taiwan as Pelosi had done. Instead, he and Tsai had an “unofficial” meeting in California, far from Washington, DC, as part of what has become a routine transit, one of twenty-nine by Republic of China (ROC) presidents (seven by Tsai).

A strongly negative reaction from Beijing was inevitable. Nevertheless, if it was clear that Xi Jinping’s government intentionally limited its response as a signal that it was reciprocating efforts by the U.S.-Taiwan side to be less provocative, this might be the beginning of a virtuous cycle that could gradually reduce cross-strait tensions.

Alas, this interpretation of China’s behavior in the aftermath of the Tsai-McCarthy meeting is probably unjustified.

Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan on Aug. 2, 2022, was one of a series of U.S. gestures of support for the Taipei government that began during the Trump administration and continued into Joe Biden’s presidency. Even before Pelosi’s visit, official PRC commentators were criticizing what they called a U.S. “salami slicing” campaign to gradually move Taiwan toward permanent independence from China. Although Pelosi’s visit was not unprecedented, since a different speaker of the U.S. House had traveled to Taiwan twenty-five years earlier, the PRC government had characterized Pelosi’s planned visit as an unusually egregious political offense—a “gross violation of the one-China principle” that would “deal a severe blow to Sino-US ties.” Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned that “China will surely make a firm response.” The Chinese Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times warned that PRC military forces might intercept Pelosi’s aircraft en route to Taiwan.

Pelosi didn’t get shot down, but Beijing’s reaction was unprecedented in two ways. First, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out its largest military exercises ever near Taiwan. Live-fire drills took place in six areas that surrounded Taiwan and that were particularly close to major shipping and air-travel routes. The exercises included an aircraft carrier and a nuclear-powered submarine.

Second, while the PRC had employed practice missile launches in attempts to intimidate Taiwan during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1995-1996, the post-Pelosi retaliation of August 2022 was the first time that Chinese missiles overflew the island of Taiwan and landed in the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

China’s behavior in the April 2023 Taiwan Strait Crisis might have been slightly less bellicose, but even that proposition is debatable. The most positive possible spin is to emphasize the lack of PLA missile launches, which were the most spectacular feature of the August 2022 demonstration. 

But like the post-Pelosi retaliation, the post-McCarthy retaliation involved partial rehearsals of specific aspects of the likely PLA cross-strait war plan, even if this time there was less of a role for missile tests.

A PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said the exercises were “a stern warning to the provocative activities of ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist forces and their collusion with external forces.” The latter phrase was an obvious reference to the United States and Japan. The positioning of some of the exercises suggested Beijing wanted to demonstrate its ability to block an intervention from the north or east.

Chinese forces carried out multiple live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait. The PRC aircraft carrier Shandong sailed through the Bashi Channel (between Taiwan and the Philippines) into the seas to the east of Taiwan and, for the first time, launched J-15 fighter jets into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone,.

Near-record numbers of PLA aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, long understood by both sides as a provocation. The aircraft menacing Taiwan included H-6K bombers “with live ammunition” supported by fighter, early warning, and electronic jamming aircraft.

For the first time, PRC media described the military exercises as practice strikes against important targets on Taiwan’s territory. Commentators mentioned that the drills were training for specific wartime missions, including “electronic suppression of the radar and anti-missile bases on the island.”

While the August 2022 exercises implied a threat to impose a wartime blockade, the April 2023 version made the threat explicit. The Chinese government announced that the Fujian Maritime Safety Administration would carry out “inspections” of commercial vessels in the Taiwan Strait for three days. Although there were no reports of PRC vessels attempting to forcibly board Taiwanese vessels, Beijing seemingly moved closer to implementing an actual blockade.

Of course, China’s reaction to the McCarthy-Tsai meeting could have been stronger and more violent. But even if something did indeed moderate the PRC’s behavior, the most likely cause of that moderation was not anything the United States did. 

On the same day that Tsai met with McCarthy, French president Emmanuel Macron, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, and former ROC president Ma Ying-jeou were in China. Beijing is courting Western European elites, trying to weaken their strategic partnership with Washington and deepen their economic engagement with China. An excessively belligerent PRC demonstration toward Taiwan so soon after the departure of von der Leyen and Macron would have played poorly in Europe. The meeting with Macron went especially well for Xi. Macron distanced France from Taiwan’s predicament and from the United States. It was not in Xi’s interest to squander his gains by making Macron look even more like a stooge.

Similarly, Ma’s visit helped promote the Chinese Communist Party’s agenda. “People on both sides of the Strait belong to the same Chinese nation,” he proclaimed. Taiwan’s next presidential election is in January 2024. Beijing desperately hopes for a victory by Ma’s Kuomintang party, which shares the PRC view that Taiwan is part of China. The PRC wants to use the prospect of war to frighten Taiwan’s voters away from supporting Tsai’s independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, but not so overdo it as to repulse potential Kuomintang voters.

The United States moderated, but China did not reciprocate. The PRC government does not see the Tsai-McCarthy meeting in California as an act of goodwill toward China, but rather as another American provocation requiring another Chinese demonstration of determination to fight to prevent Taiwan’s independence. McCarthy’s meeting with Tsai, and similar pro-Taipei gestures by Washington, are not cowing China into backing down. As occurred in August 2022, China has permanently increased its level of military activity near Taiwan this month even after the conclusion of the main show of force, an unwelcome adjustment of the status quo. U.S.-China relations have deteriorated further, and Taiwan is less secure.

U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken complained that “Beijing should not use the transits [by Tsai] as an excuse to take any actions, to ratchet up tensions, to further push at changing the status quo.” If Beijing needed an “excuse” to gain valuable warfighting practice, better to have not provided it.

Denny Roy is a Senior Fellow at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

Image: Shutterstock.

France has long been celebrated as America’s oldest ally, going back to 1778 when the French monarchy recognized the independence of the United States. It provided military and economic assistance during the American American Revolutionary War which was crucial to the American victory. Symbolizing this long and supposedly strong Franco-American friendship was the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who fought in the war. He commanded American troops in several battles, including in the siege of Yorktown, and is considered an American national hero who was granted honorary citizenship by Congress in 2002.

Yet both as a colony and an independent nation, America would end up fighting five wars with France, including the French and Indian War. France itself attempted to conquer Mexico in the 1860s, motivating Washington to intervene to prevent such from happening.

In a way, and contrary to the myths perpetrated by Lafayette’s American admirers, the main motivation for the French assistance during the Revolutionary had nothing to do with common ideals—France was, after all, then ruled by a reactionary monarchy—and more by French interest in recouping some of its losses in the French and Indian War.

Indeed, it was French national interests, rather than President Woodrow Wilson’s desire to “make the world safe for democracy” that drove Paris to draw the United States into the Great War. It ended with French prime minister Georges Clemenceau encouraging the imposition of Germany’s humiliating surrender agreement, which helped sow the seeds of the next world war.

As the historian Michael Neiberg suggests, America’s post-World War I European strategy was based on faith in the French military. Its strength was supposed to prevent Germany from dominating the continent, reflecting the assumption in Washington that France would serve as a “protective barrier for the United States from the conflicts in the Old World.”

Instead, France’s abrupt military armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940, leaving its British ally isolated, forced the United States to re-establish the balance of power in Europe after being drawn once again into another war there.

It was not a secret that the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which continued to work with the Vichy government despite its pro-Nazi tendencies, had very little trust in French resistance figure Charles de Gaulle. The Americans rightly suspected that de Gaulle would attempt to rebuild the decaying French Empire and challenge American global interests after the war. In fact, during much of the Cold War, French interests collided with those of America which, de Gaulle believed, was intent on forming a European condominium with the Soviets while marginalizing France and the Western Europeans.

After the 1956 Suez Crisis, during which the Americans forced the French and their then-British allies to withdraw their military troops from Egypt and the return of General de Gaulle to power, tensions between Paris and Washington grew. French foreign policy, aka Gaullism, led to the decision to remove all French armed forces from the integrated military command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1966.

But Gaullism, as a coherent foreign policy, proved to be nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the old general. He fantasized about drawing the Soviets into a European confederation and of Europe serving as an intermediary between Washington and Moscow. He rejected Britain, which he regarded as America’s lackey, as a member of the European community and tried to win Arab support by distancing the French from Israel.

But the Americans didn’t need French help in managing their relationship with the Soviets, while the 1973 Middle Eastern oil embargo demonstrated Paris’ continuing dependency on America’s military presence in France’s strategic backyard. That reality was the product of France’s post-Gaullism foreign policy: asserting its “independence” from the United States while recognizing that its national security interests required sustaining the alliance with Washington.

Hence the need to count on the massive U.S. military machine that made the difference in Desert Storm as well as in the military campaigns against Serbia during the wars in the Balkans. The French could have their croissant while biting into the American hamburger.

One major example of this French approach has been its post-Cold War strategy in the Levant and North Africa, where France needed to secure core geostrategic and geoeconomic interests. That included French access to the energy resources in the region, the threat of terrorism, the challenge of a nuclearized Iran—whose would-be weapons of mass destruction would pose a direct threat to southern Europe. And all this is without mentioning the need to deal with the flow of Muslim immigrants from that part of the world.

The French economy, unlike the American one, is dependent on oil imports from the Middle East, and what happens in that region directly affects its interests and those of its southern European neighbors in the same way that developments in Mexico and Central America affect U.S. interests.

Yet the French government, with the exception of the occasional attention to Lebanon and its former colonies in the Maghreb, has refrained from embracing a strategy that would employ French military and economic power and that of the European Union (EU) to advance its interests in the region.

Instead, it has expressed criticism of U.S. policy in the region, including its policy towards Israel, and by opposing President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. These steps helped the French win diplomatic brownie points with Middle Eastern players while continuing to depend on the United States to secure the oil resources in the Persian Gulf and to contain potential aggressors.

This Machiavellian French approach of relying on U.S. military power was underscored in 2011 when the Obama administration agreed to back a French-British plan to oust Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi without any guarantee that the Europeans would send troops to establish order in Libya after regime change. The result has been chaos across Libya. In that case, the notion that France, Italy, and the other southern European governments should have taken the lead in dealing with the upheaval in Libya made sense. It explained why President Barack Obama was initially reluctant to get the U.S. military involved in Libya. Instead, Obama decided that Washington would take the lead role in launching military action in Libya while hoping that France and other governments would end up “taking over” leadership of the operation.

They didn’t. Obama ended up playing directly into the hands of then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who succeeded in drawing the United States into a military campaign aimed at protecting French and European interests.

Current French president Emmanuel Macron, who likes to compare himself to the legendary de Gaulle, entered office stressing French efforts to win “strategic independence” for the EU and enable the Europeans to compete with the Americans on the global stage; he has insisted that Paris and Brussels shouldn’t follow the more assertive U.S. position towards these two powers.

But the Russian invasion of Ukraine disrupted those grand designs. Macron tried, but failed, to reverse President Vladimir Putin’s decision to go to war and to reach a deal between Moscow and the United States.

If anything, the war only highlighted the European dependency on American military and economic power in containing aggression and maintaining stability in Europe. That has strengthened America’s leadership role in NATO. And with the United States replacing Russia as Europe’s largest natural gas supplier, the French and the Europeans have found it difficult to challenge the Biden administration’s decision to provide subsidies to electric vehicles and other kinds of U.S.-based manufacturing.

Likewise, another example of the way the changing geostrategic and geoeconomic balance has weakened France’s hand has been the American decision to pursue a technological cooperation agreement with Britain and Australia—a move that wrecked a French submarine contract with the Australians. Paris complained and recalled its ambassador from Washington, but there wasn’t much that the French could actually do to reverse that decision.

Yet Macron continues to pursue his Gaullist dreams. He insists that France and the EU need to distance themselves from the Americans in their dealings with the Chinese, telling reporters recently that “the paradox would be that overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers;” he believes that contrary to the U.S. position, it isn’t in Europe’s interest to “accelerate” a crisis with Taiwan, that it need embrace neither “the US agenda” nor “a Chinese overreaction.”

But instead of working together with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, to project European unity and “balancing power” vis-à-vis Beijing, Macron’s recent visit to China, where he was joined by a contingency of French business executives, only underscored that his policies are driven mainly by French interests. As they should be, and were under the original Gaullism, with its similar pretensions to remake France into a great power like it was during the age of Lafayette. But France wasn’t such under de Gaulle, and it isn’t today.

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

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In the early morning of Monday, March 27, 2023, former Israeli minister of diaspora affairs Nachman Shai was interviewed on the country’s public Hebrew-language news channel. The interview was part of live coverage of events unfolding since the country’s minister of defense had been fired the night before. The latter decision, by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spurred an upsurge in the street protests and public upheaval that had taken hold of the country since the government had proposed a judicial reform package about three months earlier.

Shai, who is just a little older than the State of Israel itself and has therefore consciously lived through most of its history, claimed that he had never experienced anything similar to what was going on. Indeed, not only had tens of thousands spontaneously taken to the streets and blocked a main artery in Tel Aviv for several hours, the country’s largest trade union Histadrut was about to announce a national strike, with academia, healthcare services, air traffic, and the diplomatic corps joining the movement to different extents. All this was just the culmination of a massive protest movement that had taken root after a far-right government had been sworn in following four years of inconclusive elections and political instability.

The immediate steam was let off on Monday night, after Netanyahu temporarily shelved the contentious bills and when clashes between demonstrating supporters and opponents ended without major injuries. Still, the temporary truce does not mean that the country is on an easy track to deal with the questions it faces. First of all, the composition of the current government is not one that seems conducive to compromise, either internally or with the opposition, as the judicial reform saga has made clear. Also, while Netanyahu is known for the tricks he usually has up his sleeve, his coalition partners’ ideologies and motivations for joining the government may well require particular skills if the coalition is to hold. More fundamentally, however, both the government and the opposition, and Israeli society in its entirety, still need to come to grips with some basic questions that have accompanied the country since it was founded almost seventy-five years ago.

First, the relations between the very diverse groups within Israeli society, as well as their rights and duties, have not been the object of a fundamental legislative process as in many other countries with a “Western” tradition. Although the Israeli Declaration of Independence of May 15, 1948, stipulated that a constitution would be adopted no later than October 1 of the same year, such a foundational document never saw the light. As a result, many fundamental institutional changes—which elsewhere would require specific procedures or special majorities—can be carried out by a simple parliamentary vote. And such changes are increasingly being proposed and discussed because of demographic and societal developments that reshuffle the ways in which the different components of society interact. Indeed, several internal divisions exist within Israel’s Jewish population, of which the distinctions between Ashkenazi and Sephardic/Mizrachi, and between secular and religious are the most obvious. During the country’s first decades of existence, its institutions (government, judiciary, media, academia, etc.) were mainly shaped by Ashkenazi, secular left-wingers. The Sephardic and Mizrachi communities, however, started claiming more visibility and influence, especially since Menachem Begin’s electoral victory in 1977, while the (strictly) religious population has grown slowly yet steadily. These evolutions have raised fundamental issues about the place of tradition and religion in public life: does “religious conscience” trump anti-discrimination rules? Is gender segregation in civic spaces allowed? What is the role of strictly religious Torah scholars, who often do not work and usually do not serve in the army? Despite the blurring of old distinctions after decades of interaction as well as the arrival of Ethiopian and former Soviet Jews, questions like these revive the feeling of a real or perceived overlap between intra-Jewish faultlines, in which the left-wing, Ashkenazi, and secular oppose the right-wing, Sephardic/Mizrachi, and religious. Importantly, all these oppositions seem to have gained prominence in the Israeli debate of late, especially during Netanyahu’s time in power. In such a context, it was not surprising to recently hear several of the judicial reform’s proponents fume against the “elites,” in a reference to the circles that were in power following the state’s foundation. As long as this kind of history is part of the national (sub)consciousness, mutual understanding and conciliation tend to be fragile, certainly in the context of deeply divisive legislative proposals. 

Another issue intrinsically linked to Israel’s founding is the standing of its Arab citizens, who make up about a fifth of its population. While they enjoy full civil and political rights like all other Israelis, relations between them and Jewish Israelis can take many different forms in practice, from collegiality and close friendships to mistrust and—in rare cases—outright violence. Arab Israelis, internally probably as diverse as their Jewish counterparts, collectively face a number of serious issues, such as internal violence and limited political representation. These matters are of an intricate nature and neither the Arab-Israeli communities themselves nor the Jewish-majority institutions can be held entirely accountable for them. 

A second important observation is that large numbers of Arab Israelis take advantage of the opportunities the state offers to all citizens, yet many do not feel represented by the same state, a situation that probably originates in a shared responsibility as well. Tellingly, the waves of blue-and-white flags at the recent mass protests engulfed very few Arab citizens. Last week on Monday, while the Hebrew-language public broadcaster covered developments in a more than twenty-four-hour livestream, nothing similar was available at its Arabic-language counterpart. However, much more is needed—in education, media, and political debate—to bridge the gaps between Jewish and Arab experiences as well as narratives. While language, religion, and traditions are clearly distinct, a minimal extent of shared belonging and mutual awareness is necessary to prevent that divergences in interests or viewpoints escalate into violence, as painfully recalled by the May 2021 Jewish-Arab riots.

Violence has also been a regrettable characteristic of Israeli-Palestinian relations during most of Israel’s existence. While political negotiations between both parties have often been impossible, controversial, or difficult, the legal status of the territories in question—the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and (except in most Israeli views) East Jerusalem—remains unclear. Whereas Israelis regularly consider “Judea and Samaria” as a “part” of Israel (without specifying what that entails), the area in question was never annexed and Israel finds itself in a situation in which its borders are neither fixed nor internationally recognized. For the Palestinians, this state of affairs has produced, because of Israeli rule and control, huge consequences, that many Jewish Israelis are—willingly or not—unaware of. Still, for military, legal, and budgetary reasons, the Palestinian question also continues to influence life and politics within the Green Line. Therefore, beyond the obvious fact that improved Israeli-Palestinian relations are likely to lead to more security and better lives for all involved, progress regarding the Palestinian issue is also crucial for appeasement within Israeli society.

Nearly seventy-five years after the country’s founding, it seems that Israel is in dire need of true dialogue between the population groups within and outside its official borders. Such a dialogue, however, is not straightforward when schools, media, and religious institutions are operated in siloed ways, as is often the case in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Also, realities in the Middle East reinforce a political and societal culture that invests more in immediate reaction and stopgap measures than in in-depth debate and long-term planning. Nevertheless, the latter may be the only way to get to grips with some of the country’s fundamental choices. Interestingly, following the uproar last week on Monday, both a government and an opposition Knesset member claimed that the people are superior to specific points of contention. Moshe Solomon from the National Religious Party did so in a television interview from the Knesset, while opposition leader Yair Lapid used similar language in his address at a rally in Jerusalem. Following the latest developments, however, it remains to be seen whether people are indeed drawing lessons and whether citizens and their leaders are capable of opening up breaches in the ideological walls that have been separating them.

Dr. Alexander Loengarov is a Senior Affiliated Fellow at the Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven, Belgium), as well as a former official of the European Economic and Social Committee of the European Union.

His writings reflect solely his own views, and not those of the European Economic and Social Committee or the European Union, which cannot be held responsible for any use made of it.

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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine relies on old tanks but new tactics—engaging in a hybrid war of bullets, propaganda, cyberattacks, nuclear bluster, and economic bullying. This last tactic is broad and indiscriminate, aimed at Ukraine and the democratic, rules-based order. Russia has unleashed comprehensive economic warfare, using its energy sector, currency reserves, and infiltration of Western financial systems to sow division within Europe and build deeper economic alliances with China and Iran. Comprehensive and long-lasting financial isolation must be enforced to show the world that the global financial order will no longer tolerate Russia’s military expansionism and economic disruption.

The United States has responded to Russia’s unjust war on Ukraine, unleashing its own economic weaponry of sanctions and export controls, targeting leaders and oligarchs who push the conflict forward and feed the Kremlin’s war machine. The United States and Europe have unified to cut some Russian banks off from the SWIFT messaging system, freeze Russia’s overseas currency reserves, cap the price of Russian oil, and deny access to the Western financial system. The Western private sector, too, has fled Russia in substantial numbers, divesting assets and writing off billions of dollars in losses. Ukrainian teachers- and accountants-turned-soldiers are holding the frontline for their homeland while the entire democratic and rules-based economic order fights a parallel war against illicit money and malign oligarchs.

Russia is not simply seeking to shift its borders but has, for years, been sowing chaos, disinformation, and interference in democracies around the world, including election interference in the U.S. propaganda campaigns in Latin America, ransomware attacks on multinational companies, exporting corruption and infiltrating multinational organizations, propping up dictators in Iran and Syria, and funding mercenaries and terrorists around the world.

As the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) lays out in its new report, Ruble Rumble: Offensive and Defensive Measures to Defeat Russia in the Economic Domain, the United States and its allies must bolster Russia’s economic isolation and step up their financial pressure campaign if they expect to effectively undermine the military war machine and economic coercion of an autocratic and bellicose Russia. Sanctions must be designed and enhanced to impose true consequences on Moscow for its reckless and destructive choices. There is an offensive element of our economic battle with Moscow. Still, there must also be an equally strong defensive approach—protecting our election integrity against interference, redoubling our protections against hackers and cyber-attacks, cutting Russia off from the global financial system, and weeding out dirty Russian money from our real estate, our hedge funds, and our supply chains.

For China, which is watching and plotting its next move along the Taiwan Strait, a permanent financial ostracization of Putin’s Russia should make the CCP think twice about using missiles and battleships to bring Taiwan under Beijing’s authority.

A weakened Russia also stymies Beijing’s attempts to create a political and economic order parallel to and in defiance of democratic capitalism. If Russia and China work together, China can afford to increasingly turn its back on engagement with the West, controlling our supply chains but more resilient against any attempts at economic isolation.

To properly counter Russia’s expanded economic war, sanctions, and other economic consequences against Russia should be aggressively expanded. As recommended in the FDD report, the United States should increase secondary sanctions, eliminate sanctions exemptions (and omissions) in the banking sector, address weaknesses in the oil price cap, and hobble the Russian energy sector, including winding down U.S. dependence on Russian state-owned Rosatom. In addition, the United States and its allies should take steps to cut out the Russian alternative to SWIFT and similar economic workarounds. The West should reach out to neutral economies, like India, Turkey, Brazil, and the United Arab Emirates—making a case for the benefits of joining the democratic fold against Russia... and the consequences of continuing to do business with Putin or joining an anti-Western alliance with China. Finally, the United States must levy real and substantial punishments for sanctions evasion—with particular attention to third countries such as China as well as so-called “enablers” that move tainted Russian money through the Western financial system.

While Russia has engaged in an economic war against the West for more than a decade, its actions have been facilitated by weaknesses and loopholes we have built into the financial and legal system. It is time for robust defensive economic measures, taking a firm and aggressive stand against malign finance and illicit actors that have infiltrated Western economies—undermining democracy, fueling corruption, funding terrorism, and finding new ways to evade U.S. and allied sanctions regimes. This will require a fight for financial transparency, the effective implementation of beneficial ownership rules, due diligence requirements for professional enablers, limitations on foreign influence on democracies, a battle against misinformation, and expanded resources for enforcement authorities at the U.S. Treasury, State, and Commerce Departments.

Putin and China seek to build a new rogue gallery of autocrats and oligarchs who can undermine democracy and transparent capitalism around the globe. For democracy and capitalism to flourish, we must unleash the full arsenal of economic weaponry to isolate Russia from the world, hobble its expansionist tendencies, and remind others that the Western financial system is closed to those who seek to destabilize and undermine the liberal, rules-based order.

Elaine Dezenski is the Senior Director and Head of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Peter Doran is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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In February 2023, the chairman of the House Select Committee on China, Rep. Mike Gallager, secretly visited Taiwan, highlighting the importance of policymakers visiting countries and observing first-hand the defensive preparations being made. By interacting with the Taiwanese government and military officials, Gallagher learned that consistent delays in U.S. weapons delivery to Taiwan have been frustrating the island’s leaders and negatively impacting their confidence in acquiring external defensive aid. This information is crucial for U.S. policymakers who are seeking to make informed decisions about their support for Taiwan. Moreover, while there is a perception in the United States that a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan would play out similarly to Ukraine, stimulating defense preparation in countries where potential threats exist, analysts suggest that there is no need to panic.

In any situation, there is often a disparity between what political messaging claims and reality. Not only is the power disparity between China and Taiwan far greater than that between Russia and Ukraine, but survey results of the recent Taiwan National Security Survey, conducted by Duke University in mid-December 2022 with national representation in Taiwan, show that in an open-ended response setting, only 13.3 percent of respondents answered that they would join the army. Another 15.1 percent responded that they would resist China in some way. In the case of Taiwan’s geopolitical situation, if less than a third of Taiwanese may be as willing to fight a war of annihilation as the Ukrainians, the United States cannot afford to be ignorant of this reality.

Within the halls of American politics, a perception has developed that the Taiwanese people are not only eager to resist China but are capable of doing so after receiving the weapons through arms sales. This sentiment has been reinforced by Taiwan’s current governing party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). The DPP touts programs, such as extending military service for conscripts, as evidence that the Taiwanese are determined to defend themselves. However, without a dedicated training plan in place and given China’s numerical superiority, it is unlikely such hollow gestures will meaningfully affect Taiwan’s overall combat potential. And even if it did, Taiwan would likely still decisively lose any protracted war without direct American assistance. Chest pounding with potential support from allies is an effective election tactic for any governing party but has little bearing on a nation’s actual ability to fight. While the oppositional Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) has been portrayed as soft on China and said to be subordinating itself to China’s interests, the ruling DPP tends to reinforce this perception by sharing Washington’s tough stance on China—both to satisfy U.S. policymakers and benefit electorally. This is an aspect of the situation American lawmakers must understand. If Taiwan continues down this path, the island nation could provoke an avoidable conflict that the United States could find itself drawn into.

The primary reason Taiwan should adopt a more conciliatory stance is due to the changes inside China itself. In the past, any leader’s actions that would threaten China’s position in the world would often see them ousted by the Politburo Standing Committee. However, China’s current president, Xi Jinping, has consolidated near absolute power within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Suppose Taiwan’s independence was perceived as inevitable by China. In that case, a war may break out regardless of whether it benefits China, as Xi cannot afford to lose Taiwan, much like Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has been to the detriment of Russia. This is why provoking the CCP, as the pro-Taiwan independence camp has done for the purposes of political expediency, is such an existential threat to Taiwan’s survival. While it is true that China could manufacture a crisis to justify hostilities, it is essential that, in the eyes of the world, Taiwan is doing everything to avoid confrontation. If Taiwan is seen inviting the CCP’s wrath, it will give China control over the war narrative. Such an outcome could reduce international support for Taiwan and handicap any effort to make China accountable for its actions

For these reasons, among others, it is clear that neither major political party in Taiwan is working toward the island’s political subjugation; instead, there is a disagreement about how best to maintain Taiwan’s democratic way of living. And seeing as no one can successfully defend the island in the case of war, the most prudent solution is to ensure war does not arrive by sufficiently deterring Chinese aggression. As most of what the United States understands about the conflict across the Taiwan Strait comes from political messaging, believing that all is well is tempting. However, in this critical moment, it is a necessity that we place reality over political bravado and allow the ships of state to be steered by empirical facts rather than the misplaced confidence of ill-designing men.

Dr. Dennis L.C. Weng is an associate professor of political science at Sam Houston State University, where he teaches comparative politics and international relations with a focus on East Asia. Weng also serves as the Founding Chief Executive Officer of Asia Pacific Peace Vision Institute, a new think tank on Asia Pacific Peace Studies.

Jared Jeter is a Research Associate at Sam Houston State University.

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The 2023 Summit for Democracy, initiated by the United States and co-hosted by Zambia, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Costa Rica, concluded on March 30, after affirming that “free, fair, and transparent elections” are “the foundation of democratic governance.” A week before, the People’s Republic of China held its own Second International Forum on Democracy. It took up such anodyne topics as “Democracy and Sustainable Development,” “Democracy and Innovation,” “Democracy and Global Governance,” “Democracy and the Diversity of Human Civilization” and “Democracy and the Path to Modernization.”

China’s Forum on Democracy was not about ensuring political freedom and self-government, but rather detaching the idea of democracy from its essence before an audience in the grip of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At its philosophical core, the project is being mirrored by developments in Western democracies.

Manipulation of the concept of democracy by the CCP began before its takeover in 1949; the revolution would succeed with a promise of democracy, then abandon it when power had been achieved. During his long struggle to assume control of China, Mao Zedong proposed the “New Democracy” concept to establish “a democratic republic under the joint dictatorship of all anti-imperialist and anti-feudal forces led by the proletariat.” Mao believed the Chinese Revolution should be done in “two steps“: the first step was to defeat imperialism and feudalism, and establish a new, democratic society through a democratic revolution; the second step was to continue the socialist revolution based on this foundation, and gradually transition China into a socialist society.

Mao scrapped “New Democracy” in the early 1950s, but subsequent Chinese leaders unveiled other democratic concepts to promote their programs. Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zeming advocated for “socialist democracy,” claiming that “without democracy, there can be no socialism, and without socialism, there can be no modernization. The purpose of political system reform is to eliminate disadvantages and develop a socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics.”

In 2019, Xi Jinping proposed “whole-process people’s democracy,” which is “socialism with Chinese characteristics” guided by the CCP, emphasizing “people’s participation,” “elections,” “democratic consultation,” and other terms lifted from liberal democracies. The CCP published a White Paper about China’s “democracy” in December 2021.

Objectively, free, fair, and transparent elections do not exist in China. China is a one-party state. Voters can only elect deputies at the township, district, and county levels, and under the strict control of the CCP. 

According to Article 2 of the Chinese Election Law, “The election of deputies to the National People’s Congress and local people’s congresses at all levels adheres to the leadership of the Communist Party of China…”

Appropriating the idea of democracy is consistent with the CCP’s habit of intellectual property theft, which has, along with forced labor, helped drive its rapid economic growth. Theft of basic science and technology breakthroughs has allowed China to profit from the export of complex products without investing in basic or applied research. The U.S. FBI said Chinese economic espionage has resulted in one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history. 

Many people around the world, repulsed by China’s genocidal policies toward Muslim citizens, repression of dissent and freedom of religion, and chilling promises of a “New World Order” that is run by powerful states that are unconstrained by common human rights standards, boycott Chinese products. 

While democracy had been appropriated by his predecessors and used as bate, Xi’s approach has been even more sinister; Xi’s democracy knock-off is more than the cynical appropriation of an attractive ideal to obscure the way it is subverted. In fact, history’s most brutal totalitarian regimes, including those in East Germany and North Korea, in addition to China, have called themselves democracies. But in doing so, as Theodore Dalrymple observed, they have sought “not to persuade or convince, not to inform but to humiliate,” forcing “assent to obvious lies.” Propaganda serves the process of moral domination. CCP leaders are showing the world that they have more power than the truth; that they can do what they want with the vocabulary of freedom. They are showing that they can call totalitarianism democracy, and by wearing it as a badge, demonstrate their power over reality, and over the minds and souls of their subjects and clients. 

In this regard, their methods are consistent with the intellectual aggression of ideological, post-modern wordsmiths in the West, whose manipulation of language and suppression of opposing views reveal what is also basically an ideology of power. What is happening in schools, businesses, and even in the military begins to resemble Maoist “Thought Reform,” a cultural revolution brainwashing technique aimed at detaching people from their social bonds, traditions and beliefs. Accompanying inverted, Orwellian slogans like “diversity” is institutionalized, soft-totalitarian coercion. Political correctness and the cancel culture are strategies in a movement from within against the central value system of Western civilization, one based on the universality of reason and nature. While China’s Democracy Forum appears as a crude, resentful and childish imitation of an American initiative, we would be wise not to sneer, but rather to apply its inner lessons to ourselves. 

Aaron Rhodes is Senior Fellow in the Common Sense Society and President of the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe. He is the author of The Debasement of Human Rights (Encounter Books, 2018).

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