We at the Atlantic Council are overjoyed and relieved that Evan has been released after 491 days of wrongful imprisonment in Russia. This is a great day for Evan, his family, and his colleagues at the Wall Street Journal, who worked tirelessly to secure his release. However, it doesn’t diminish our need to speak out against Russia’s crimes not only against Evan but against free speech more broadly.

As Almar Latour, Wall Street Journal publisher and Dow Jones CEO, said at the Atlantic Council’s Distinguished Leadership Awards in May 2023, “Evan’s arrest is a symbolic reminder of the fight that we find ourselves in today. It’s autocrats versus the power of the pen—disinformation versus reliable information as the bedrock of free society.”

Latour’s point was underscored by those released with Evan: two other Americans wrongfully detained—journalist Alsu Kurmasheva and former US Marine Paul Whelan—as well as Russian political dissident and Pulitzer Prize winner Vladimir Kara-Murza, among others. In exchange, a contemptible lot, including a convicted murderer and several hackers and spies, was welcomed back to Russia by President Vladimir Putin.

Watch Latour’s full speech below:

Evan’s resilience and steadfastness are testament to the courage of journalists worldwide who take risks every day in service to freer societies. In partnership with Adrienne Arsht, the Atlantic Council has been proud to champion Evan’s cause through our “Reporters at Risk” series, which highlights those dangers and underscores the importance of supporting their critical work.

The Atlantic Council remains committed to press freedom and defending the safety of reporters at risk like Evan. As a twenty-five-year veteran of the Wall Street Journal, I welcome him home as a colleague. On behalf of the Atlantic Council, we commit ourselves to defending the freedoms he and reporters like him around the world represent.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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The Opening Ceremony tomorrow evening will abandon the usual constraints of a stadium for a parade of athletes down the River Seine, with boats carrying national delegations. With eighty giant screens set up around the city, and with cameras capturing the action on every vessel, the largest in-person audience ever will cheer 10,500 athletes as they make their winding, six-kilometer way to the Place du Trocadéro, with the Eiffel Tower directly facing it, for the Olympic protocol and torch lighting.

The Paris Olympics thus will serve as a refreshing, democratic (small d) antidote to several recent authoritarian-hosted Games. It will be a celebration of the individual and the freedom-drenched collective, in the country of the 1789 French Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment’s notions of “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.”

By comparison, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics unfolded just before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and just after Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin entered their bloody, “no limits” partnership. The 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics were tarnished by revelations of Russia’s state-sponsored doping program and set the stage for Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics before them signaled Xi’s rise as China’s most powerful and autocratic leader since Mao Zedong, and Putin’s Russia invaded neighboring Georgia during the Games.

The Olympics never take place in a political vacuum, and this year’s context is chilling: wars in Europe and the Middle East and growing tensions in Asia, all of which contribute to the biggest threats to global order since the 1930s.

“The world is really longing for something unifying among all these tensions and confrontations,” International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach noted in a recent must-read Washington Post feature. Bach added that the Paris Olympics could be that something. Speaking last November at the United Nations, the IOC president worried that the world was in a “dangerous downward spiral . . . Political, social, and economic divisions are gaining more ground.”

The Washington Post’s Les Carpenter writes, “Many in the Olympic world are hoping these Games will do what Los Angeles did 40 years ago” at the 1984 Summer Games.

Those Olympics followed the US-led boycott, joined by more than sixty countries, of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games to protest the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. The Los Angeles Games also set the stage for one of the most dramatic expansions of democracy in history.

They transpired toward the end of US President Ronald Reagan’s first term and five short years before the Berlin Wall’s fall, which was followed by the Soviet Union’s collapse. They were a demonstration of a vibrant US democracy, full of confidence and determined to shape its times.

The games also marked a new, successful business model for the Olympic movement. They were run by a young travel executive named Peter Ueberroth, who introduced rich television deals and corporate sponsorships that produced more than two hundred million dollars in profit. The Soviets and many of their allies boycotted, and US athletes won four times more gold medals than anyone else.

It’s hard to say what legacy the Paris Games might have, though their context feels less promising than Reagan’s “morning in America.” From tomorrow through August 11, the Paris Olympics will coexist with the continued reverberations from French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for snap parliamentary elections, which resulted on July 7 in victory for the New Popular Front, a broad alliance of left-wing parties, and an unexpected defeat for the far right, with a prime minister yet to be chosen.

In the United States, a particularly divisive and decisive election will follow in November, amid an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden’s withdrawal as a candidate.

There have been worse contexts for Olympics.

In 1936, Adolf Hitler used the Berlin Games to rally fascism ahead of World War II; five Games have been cancelled due to wars; Munich’s 1972 Olympics were blighted by a terrorist attack that killed Israeli athletes. Putin has launched invasions of northern Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine during the period of “Olympic truce,” when for the week ahead of the Games and the week after world leaders agree not to attack other countries.

Here’s the 2024 backdrop: The years that followed the Los Angeles Games saw more countries than ever become democratic—a formidable wave of democracy that lasted more than two decades. This stopped around 2006, and democracy has been in relative decline since then, according to Freedom House, the V-Dem Institute, and the Atlantic Council’s own Freedom and Prosperity Indexes.

When the final medal is awarded and the last athlete departs, the Paris Olympics will likely have reflected more than shaped our geopolitical scrum. They won’t signal autocratic rise, as did those in Beijing and Moscow before them, but it’s probably too much to expect that, like Los Angeles, they will be followed by a positive wave of democratic change.

The good news is that the next five Olympic Games, including both winter and summer, are in Milan-Cortina, Los Angeles, the French Alps, Brisbane, and Salt Lake City. Each will be held in a country that democratically elects its government, and each can be a milestone to measure if democracies are on a winning trajectory.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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That legacy, however, depends importantly on something he can no longer control: Ukraine’s ability over time to prevail against Russia’s criminal war.

That includes the inextricably linked question of whether the US president has contributed decisively to the United States’ ability, alongside its allies, to counter an emerging “axis of resistance” consisting of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Those countries are determined to prevent Ukraine’s success. More to the point, they seem to view Russia’s subjugation of Ukraine as a crucial step in remaking the global system of rules and institutions that the United States and its partners forged after World War II.

Biden, who on Sunday announced his decision to abandon his presidential campaign, will likely be remembered by historians for defining the enormous stakes of the era we’re entering. He called it an “inflection point,” which I’ve been doing in this space since 2018, having previously been introduced to the term through the US intelligence community.

“We’re facing an inflection point in history—one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come,” Biden declared this past October, in only his second speech to the nation from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

Significantly, in that speech he connected the dots between Russia’s war in Ukraine and Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, which was only possible with the support of Iran. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common,” he said. “They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy—completely annihilate it.”

Historians may praise Biden for defining the historic stakes in such unmistakable terms. However, the coming months and years will determine whether he fell short in delivering the remedies by too cautiously supporting Ukraine due to his fears of Russian nuclear escalation.

The result was self-deterrence, where the United States provided Kyiv the weaponry it most urgently requested too slowly and in insufficient numbers. The Biden administration also worsened the situation by restricting Kyiv’s freedom to use US weapons, particularly longer-range fires, against military targets in Russia, from which deadly attacks on Ukrainians were being launched. When the US Congress held up aid for Ukraine last year and into this one, it made Ukraine’s challenges far more dangerous.

Many Republican leaders agree that Biden was mistaken in holding back crucial support and permissions for Ukraine, but they weren’t the ones nominated for president or vice president at the Republican National Convention last week. For the moment, the gathering in Milwaukee indicated the party’s desire to do less for Ukraine.

Many Republicans have wanted to meld former President Donald Trump’s populism with former President Ronald Reagan’s larger global purpose, which contributed to the United States’ Cold War victory against the Soviet Union without a shot being fired. That seems to be the furthest thing from the intentions of the Trump-Vance ticket, though Trump has been known to change direction on a dime, as he did to free up congressional funding for Ukraine.

John Bolton, who was Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019, wrote in the Telegraph that both Trump and his running mate JD Vance “are disinterested, or openly disdainful, of assisting Kyiv’s defense against Russia’s unprovoked aggression. For Vance, the US lacks both the military assets and the defense-industrial base to be a global power, meaning it must concentrate its resources to defend against China.”

My own view is that the best way to “defend against China” would be to counter Beijing’s unflinching and even increasing support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. At their seventy-fifth anniversary summit in Washington, NATO leaders called China a “decisive enabler” of that war by providing the wherewithal without which Moscow could not continue to wage it.

If the Republican Party truly believes Democratic leaders have provided inadequate defense budgets to address emerging challenges, “Trump should work to correct these deficiencies, not treat them as excuses for further reductions, thereby abandoning even more international positions of strength,” writes Bolton.

Instead, in a recent interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Trump signaled that he may not be willing to defend Taiwan, likely the first place to fall next if Ukraine falters. “Taiwan doesn’t give us anything,” Trump said, noting that the island is 9,500 miles away from the United States and less than a hundred miles from China. “Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company.”

Where the Trump administration better understood the dynamics of this emerging autocratic axis was in its “maximum pressure” approach to Iran. The Biden administration, by contrast, at first hoped to resume nuclear talks with Iran and work over time to manage its threats to the region. Tehran then demonstrated its determination to disrupt the Middle East and threaten Israel, not with nuclear weaponry but through its proxies, including Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah.

Where the Trump administration fell short, and where the Trump campaign seems to be doing so again, is in its underestimation of the advantages provided to the United States through alliances and common cause at a moment of such significant and historic challenge.

At the NATO Summit in Washington, I had the chance to speak with officials from across the Alliance, as well as those from Indo-Pacific partner states Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. I found that there is consensus about one matter: They miss the certainty of the Cold War years, from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall, when US foreign policy remained relatively consistent through Republican and Democratic administrations. During that period, US leaders were resolute in the belief that they faced a long-term struggle against Soviet communism and its confederates.  

Without US agreement in diagnosing the emerging autocratic challenge, which Biden has done well, and without US prescriptions for an allied and global response to address it, which he has done less well, the officials I spoke with expect a period of testing by US adversaries and hedging by US allies.

Biden defined the emerging geopolitical contest confronting the United States. He still has six months to give Ukraine the best chance of victory, including by removing restrictions on Ukrainian forces striking military targets in Russia. The outcome of the war and the larger contest, however, will increasingly be determined by forces that he can’t control, both within his own party and among Republicans, and among allies and adversaries around the world.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Biden’s legacy depends most of all on Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Yet the Third Plenum of the Twentieth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party this past week in Beijing was perhaps more consequential, as a doubling down of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s determination to put party and state control ahead of economic growth and consumers.

In that spirit, the meeting’s communiqué deployed the Chinese word for persist, jianchi, seventeen times. As the Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Feng and Chun Han Wong wrote, it was “an echo of state-media messaging that casts resistance to Xi’s vision as proof that his changes are necessary.”

For the uninitiated, the Third Plenum often is the most significant moment in China’s five-year political cycle.

Back in 1978, the party embraced then-leader Deng Xiaoping’s insight that “initiative cannot be aroused without economic means,” which led to reforms that set the stage for decades of economic growth. In 2013, the Third Plenum loosened the country’s one-child policy and embraced the market’s role in the Chinese economy—though the market-friendly promises were not really implemented.

The last time a Third Plenum was held, in 2018, it was accompanied by a constitutional change abolishing term limits and ensuring Xi’s continued autocratic rule. This was accompanied by a deepening of tensions with the West, including the European Union’s labeling of China as a “systemic rival” the following year.

China delayed this year’s Third Plenum, which was due to be held last autumn, without explanation, which raised speculation that the leaders of the world’s second largest economy didn’t yet have their ducks in a row.

“As China grapples with a property crisis, high youth unemployment, tumbling business and consumer confidence, and an ocean of local government debt, one might expect the government to put everything it has into plans to pull the country out of the economic doldrums,” wrote the Atlantic Council’s Jeremy Mark recently.

This week’s proceedings focused a lot on concepts of “reform” and “modernization,” but not of the kind that Chinese or foreign investors would embrace. Rather, China will focus even more on building industries needed for its confrontation with the United States, particularly in high-tech, and it will reinforce the party’s hold. A decade ago, the Chinese economy was growing well above 7 percent per year. Now, however, the Chinese government has set 5 percent as a growth target for 2024, and even that will be a significant stretch.

And here’s where the Third Plenum outcome differs wildly from the Republican convention’s stated ambitions to shake up Washington. As the Wall Street Journal reporters wrote, the plan Chinese leaders put forward after this week’s meetings “suggests a future that looks more or less like the present.”

Just like several of its predecessors, the Third Plenum will be consequential, but this time in its resistance to change, despite signs that the party is doubling down on an economic approach that investors and markets see as unsustainable. As is often the case in an autocracy, in which dear leader must come across as infallible, the plenum didn’t offer any plan B if the markets are right.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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Over a decade of remarkable leadership, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has navigated an unruly Alliance of flawed democracies through some of their greatest historical challenges, including Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. In my on-stage interview with him at the NATO Public Forum, which the Atlantic Council co-hosted, Stoltenberg addressed doubts over whether NATO will continue to forge common cause, as he prepares to step down on October 1.  

“The reality is that despite all these differences, which are part of NATO, we have proven extremely resilient and strong,” he said. “Because when we face the reality, all these different governments and politicians and parliamentarians, they realize that we are safer and stronger together . . . That’s the reason why this Alliance prevails again and again.”

These new concerns over the direction of the United States were made all the more urgent by the Alliance’s recognition that NATO now faces a new axis of authoritarians—with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea in the lead—that are working more closely together on defense-industrial issues than any such grouping before them, including Germany, Italy, and Japan in the 1930s and the Soviet Union and China in the 1950s.

The NATO Summit was expected to focus on Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine, and so it did, in ways that were both encouraging and disappointing. What was encouraging was that the Alliance did well in providing Ukraine additional military and financial support and even a devoted Alliance command, based in Wiesbaden, Germany. It fell far short by dodging two issues crucial to Ukraine’s immediate and long-term security.

First, and for reasons increasingly difficult to defend—especially in a week when Putin greeted the NATO Summit by striking a Kyiv children’s hospital in a deadly missile barrage—the Biden administration stubbornly refuses to let Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy use US missiles to hit military targets in Russian territory that are killing his people. Second, Biden also continues to stand in the way of any language promising a more certain and time-defined path to NATO membership for Ukraine, even though membership is what will provide Ukraine lasting security.

The less anticipated development of this past week—and the one with the most historic importance—was the summit’s remarkable consensus that the world has fundamentally changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. NATO now acknowledges the need to better address an axis of autocrats bent on revising the global order: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

As Stoltenberg wrote in Foreign Affairs ahead of the summit, foreshadowing its decisions, “Putin shows no intention of ending this war any time soon, and he is increasingly aligned with other authoritarian powers, including China, that wish to see the United States fail, Europe fracture, and NATO falter. This shows that in today’s world, security is not a regional matter but a global one. Europe’s security affects Asia, and Asia’s security affects Europe.”

That’s powerful stuff—and a significant rethink of the threats facing this transatlantic Alliance.

The bottom line, though not quite stated that way, was: Our autocratic adversaries have joined in common cause globally against us, and thus we must do more ourselves to address this gathering threat. The alternative is to live in denial until the threats advance past the point of being able to address them.

No more having it both ways

One of the more concise NATO Summit declarations I’ve read, which is worth reading to gain an overall feeling of the landscape, lambasted the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a “decisive enabler” of Putin’s war. Beyond that, it focused on significantly deepening relations with the so-called Indo-Pacific Four (IP4): Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, all of which were represented for the third consecutive NATO Summit.

Thirty-two allies met with their Indo-Pacific partners in encouraging harmony about the challenges China poses. The declaration’s tough, unprecedented language on the PRC is worth reading in full, but note the unusual clarity in its call to action, coming from a multilateral Alliance in which language negotiations can be stultifying: “We call on the PRC . . . to cease all political and military support to Russia’s war effort. This includes the transfer of dual-use materials, such as weapons components, equipment, and raw materials that serve as inputs for Russia’s defence sector.”

In my interview with Stoltenberg, he said that although Iran and North Korea were growing more important to Russia’s war effort, “China is the main enabler.” The PRC, he said, is “delivering the tools—the dual-use equipment, the microelectronics, everything Russia needs to build the missiles, the bombs, the aircraft, and all the other systems they use against Ukraine.”

The declaration said: “The PRC cannot enable the largest war in Europe in recent history without this negatively impacting its interests and reputation.” In his swan song summit as NATO leader, Stoltenberg told me that China “cannot have it both ways,” meaning it cannot maintain “a kind of normal relationship with NATO allies” while fueling the North Atlantic’s “biggest security challenge” since World War II.

It’s fair criticism that for all the growing recognition of China’s crucial enabling role in Russia’s war, around which there is now a welcome NATO consensus, there isn’t any agreement on what to do about it.

The sad truth, one worth saying out loud several times to recognize the gravity of the situation, is that for the moment the PRC is having it both ways. It is threatening Europe and profiting from Europe at the same time.

The world has changed much more dramatically in terms of autocratic common cause since February 2022 than Western leaders and voters have digested.

Still, this past week is a good beginning.

“I think it’s important that we recognize the reality [of China’s role], and that’s the first step toward any action,” Stoltenberg told me. “Let’s see how far we’re willing to go as allies.”

Ukraine is the new West Berlin

Stoltenberg stressed that despite the presence in Washington this week of the IP4, “there will not be a global NATO. NATO will be for North America and Europe.” But, he added, the North Atlantic region faces global threats, from terrorism to cyber to space. “And, of course, the threats and challenges that China poses to our security [are] a global challenge.”

Perhaps Stoltenberg is right that there won’t be a global NATO, but this week marked the significant beginning of a NATO that understands that its global responsibilities and threats are inescapable. That realization might have started with international terrorism after 9/11, but the increasingly close China-Russia strategic relationship is now at the core of it.

Speaking to the NATO Public Forum, Senator James E. Risch, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, guided the Alliance to a newly published report from the committee’s Republican staff, “Next Steps to Defend the Transatlantic Alliance from Chinese Aggression.”

It lays out a powerful list of recommendations for the transatlantic community, including increased national and local collaboration on countering malign influence and interference from China, as well as improving institutional knowledge about everything from the workings of the Chinese Communist Party to the operational capacity of the People’s Liberation Army.

In the spirit of NATO’s growing Indo-Pacific focus, the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig and Jeffrey Cimmino recently published a “Memo to NATO heads of state and government” on the importance of engaging with the region.

“Some analysts argue that the United States should disengage from Europe and pivot to the Indo-Pacific, while European countries take on greater responsibility in Europe,” they write. This is the “wrong answer,” Kroenig and Cimmino explain. “Instead, Washington should continue to lead in both theaters. European countries should take on greater responsibilities for defending Europe, but they should also assist Washington to counter China and address threats emanating from the Indo-Pacific.”

With all that as context, this week’s NATO Summit perhaps should have done even more to ensure that Ukraine prevails and Russia fails. But allies did at least more clearly recognize that Putin’s criminal war on Ukraine isn’t just a national or even primarily a European security matter. Ukraine is the front line of a global struggle, a role that West Berlin played during the Cold War and a fact that China and Russia long ago acknowledged in their “no limits” partnership on the eve of the 2022 invasion.

Now comes the hard part

This past week, the contours unfolded for what might be NATO’s greatest struggle yet, after seventy-five years of existence.

Republican Congressman Mike Turner, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told me on the sidelines of the summit this week that the burden allies share isn’t only a question of defense spending but also whether they still have the political will to defend democracy and freedom.

Having this week recognized the challenge as global and focused on Russia and China, having more closely embraced Indo-Pacific partners, now comes the hard part for the world’s most enduring and successful Alliance.

What does NATO do next?

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post This might be NATO’s greatest struggle yet—and it’s global appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Another screen shows a NATO leader, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, paying homage to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, following his visit with Putin in Moscow. The next screen shows the leader of the world’s most populous democracy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, making his first visit to Moscow since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022. Yet another screen shows US President Joe Biden looking lost in his presidential debate, raising new concerns about what his health means for NATO’s future.

No one can convince me it was a coincidence that Putin chose Monday, the eve of the NATO Summit, to launch one of his largest recent barrages of missiles on Ukraine. The leaders of Hungary and India both knew the significance of the timing of their visits—one by the Alliance’s most rogue member and the other by a major power keen to underscore its autonomy of action.

It’s appropriate that today’s opening day for the NATO Summit will be marked by a Ukrainian day of mourning for the at least forty-one individuals who died and the more than 170 who were injured in Monday’s attack, not to mention the wrecked hospital infrastructure that would have saved countless other lives. It seems that Putin hasn’t read Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified by the United Nations after World War II, which prohibits attacks on civilian hospitals.

Ukrainians’ shock and anger at the strike on the children’s hospital in Kyiv could give way to dismay as they watch NATO stand by in Washington. The United States has not yet fully freed up the Ukrainians to use the longer-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) that could hit the Russian sites from which deadly missiles are fired. NATO allies once again will likely put off a decision about when exactly Ukraine will join the Alliance, which is the only outcome that will provide the country the long-term security its neighbors in the Baltics, Poland, Romania, and Hungary enjoy.

Orbán’s rogue relations with Russia and China come as he takes over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, something Xi acknowledged as an opportunity, just days after the European Union kicked off new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Orbán stopped in Moscow before he flew on to Beijing.

During his visit to Moscow, Modi called Russia an “all-weather friend” and a “trusted ally.” Putin reciprocated the sentiment by welcoming his “dear friend” to his official residence.

Underpinning the Russia-India partnership is energy. India is the third-biggest crude oil importer in the world, and Russia is its single largest source of seaborne oil, accounting for around 40 percent of imports in recent months, up from just 2 percent in 2021.

Modi would have known that choosing to make the trip during the NATO anniversary summit would rub some US officials the wrong way. However, he, like Orbán, knew there will be little price to pay from Western partners after the trip.

NATO began its mission seventy-five years ago amid an inflection point in history, a story former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson chronicled in his memoir Present at the Creation. Putin and Xi would very much like to be present at the conclusion of NATO and the US-led international order. But they will only be successful if allies don’t respond and if partners go out of their way to back these revisionist autocrats.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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The SCO’s ten member countries, led by China and Russia, reached twenty-five agreements on enhancing cooperation in energy, security, trade, finance, and information security, including the adoption of something expansively called the “Initiative on World Unity for Just Peace, Harmony, and Development.”

Western leaders often roll their eyes at the lofty language and empty agreements of the SCO, which was invented in 2001. However, it would be a mistake to ignore the intention behind the SCO’s ambition to be a counterweight to NATO and a piece of Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s larger goals to supplant the existing global order of rules and institutions with something more to their own liking.

It’s no accident that the SCO meeting came a week ahead of the Alliance summit, but perhaps a coincidence that it was on the Fourth of July.

“SCO members should consolidate unity and jointly oppose external interference,” Xi said, warning against the West’s “Cold War mentality,” according to Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency.

In his address to the SCO, Putin called for “a new architecture of cooperation, indivisible security, and development in Eurasia, designed to replace the outdated Eurocentric and Euro-Atlantic models, which gave unilateral advantages only to certain states.”

Putin didn’t need to mention the United States, as the SCO’s members all knew which country he meant. The organization has expanded beyond its original five members—China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan—to include India, Iran, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan. Last week, Belarus joined as the tenth member, and there are another sixteen partners and observers.

Confronting a confluence of threats

Even if one sets the SCO meeting entirely to the side, NATO leaders this week confront three simultaneous but underestimated threats, none of them explicitly on their agenda.

These threats are: (1) considerably increased coordination, particularly in the defense-industrial realm, among adversarial autocracies; (2) continued and growing weaknesses among democracies (underscored in the Atlantic Council’s newest edition of its Freedom and Prosperity Indexes); and (3) insufficient recognition among NATO’s thirty-two members of the gravity of the historic moment, reflected in their still-inadequate backing for Ukraine.

“Like a lightning strike illuminating a dim landscape,” wrote Jonathan Rauch in the Atlantic last week, “the twin invasions of Israel and Ukraine have brought a sudden recognition: What appeared to be, until now, disparate and disorganized challenges to the United States and its allies is actually something broader, more integrated, more aggressive, and more dangerous.”

China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea—working with others—haven’t formed “a NATO-like formal structure,” but instead what Rauch calls an “Axis of Resistance.” This axis, he explains, “relies on loose coordination and opportunistic cooperation among its member states and its network of militias, proxies, and syndicates.” Unable to match the United States and NATO directly, “it instead seeks to exhaust and demoralize the U.S. and its allies by harrying them relentlessly, much as hyenas harry and exhaust a lion.”

Meanwhile, writes Patrick Quirk, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council: “The security of the United States, democratic partners and allies, and humanity’s future depends significantly on the state of democracy worldwide. Yet, over the past seventeen years, if we look at indices like those published by the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center, authoritarianism has risen globally, while democracy shows alarming decline in regions of importance to the United States.”  

Quirk, in a significant new report for the Atlantic Council, examines the challenges and offers solutions. They range from supercharging efforts to counter China’s malign influence to shoring up key democratic institutions in strategically important countries. He concludes with a compelling set of recommendations for the US Congress and whomever is elected US president in November—recommendations as difficult to execute as they are necessary.

Building the “bridge”

The most immediate issue for NATO this week is how best to deal with defending Ukraine and offering it a path to Alliance membership. These are decisions that will underscore whether NATO allies recognize the historic context and significance of the Ukraine challenge.

The Atlantic Council, in partnership with the Estonian foreign ministry, conducted a series of major tabletop exercises this spring to examine future Russia-Ukraine conflict scenarios and their implications for Western security.

“The results of the exercises were unequivocal,” write the Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig and Estonian Ambassador to the United States Kristjan Prikk. “Europe is more stable and secure with Ukraine in NATO. Russia did not choose to escalate when Ukraine was offered NATO membership, and in all scenarios, Russia was much more cautious in its interactions with Ukraine once it was a member of NATO.”

The Alliance this week is expected to offer Ukraine a “bridge to membership,” but it will stop far short of a membership assurance. According to reports ahead of the summit, the bridge will be constructed out of increased coordination of military assistance, a pledge of long-term support, more investment in Ukraine’s defense industry, and bilateral security agreements—all measures intended to strengthen Ukraine.

Kroenig and Prikk say the lesson coming out of our exercises is clear: “[For] the sake of a better future for the entire Alliance, the bridge must be short, it must be made of steel, and it should end with a firm invitation for Ukraine to join NATO.”

That invitation is unlikely to be this week’s outcome, but a proper understanding of the historic moment requires nothing less.

Atlantic Council at the NATO Summit in Washington

Live commentary, authoritative analysis, and high-level events covering NATO’s Washington summit, courtesy of our experts.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post The NATO Summit faces three simultaneous threats appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This week, three of the Western world’s most significant leaders are suffering from self-inflicted wounds that are likely to have long-term political and economic consequences.

They are US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, and outgoing British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and this is no small story as their countries are all nuclear powers that represent the world’s first-, sixth-, and seventh-largest economies.

What I mean by self-inflicted is that Macron took a gamble on staging snap parliamentary elections, whose second and final round is on Sunday, in hopes of getting a fresh mandate after his party’s humiliating drubbing in European Parliament elections. He’ll pay a price with, at best, a hung parliament. At worst, he will enter into what the French call “cohabitation” with a far-right prime minister.

Sunak had until the end of the year to call elections in the United Kingdom, but picked July 4. He and his party have now been ousted, ending fourteen years of Conservative rule that has brought Brexit, historically low productivity gains, and growth levels below the European Union (EU) average.

Some Biden allies have been saying quietly since this time last year that he could best cement his legacy by stepping aside and letting a younger candidate take on former President Donald Trump. Instead, Biden has gambled on being able to arrest his own aging process—and then convince voters he has done so—a far more difficult prospect following last week’s debate.

It’s telling that these stories are coming together in a single week, with Western democracies all in anti-incumbent moods, often despite their own economic interests, which is especially the case in France.

Macron’s decision to hold these elections three years earlier than was necessary was based on the convoluted logic that voters would come to their senses and give him a fresh mandate rather than face the prospect of extreme-right rule.

Instead, the far-right National Rally is likely to produce the largest percentage of the vote in the second round of parliamentary voting on Sunday, closely followed by the newly united, left-wing New Popular Front, which includes everyone from center-left socialists to La France Insoumise, led by a former Trotskyite.

This week, more than two hundred candidates dropped out of the second round of French elections as Macron’s camp and the left are coordinating to stop National Rally from winning an absolute majority and thus the right to put in place a prime minister for three years of uncomfortable cohabitation with Macron, whose term doesn’t end until 2027. The most likely outcome on Sunday is a hung parliament, but one with a great deal of far-left and far-right leverage.

That puts at risk seven years of economic progress under Macron, during which France has cut business and wealth taxes, reformed employment and pensions to encourage hiring, and thus created two million new jobs and six million new businesses.

“The market could see both the extreme right and the extreme left promising to reverse cost-saving measures taken by the incumbent government (such as pension reform) without offsetting these with new sources of income,” write Sophia Busch and Charles Lichfield at the Atlantic Council.

This comes at a time when France’s finances are already fragile, with an annual budget deficit above 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and public debt worth some 110 percent of GDP. In June, the European Commission named France as one of seven EU members states in violation of its new fiscal rules. The Paris Olympics starting later this month, with the sparkling new venues and train lines, might be less a celebration than a denouement.

The British Labour Party’s sweeping victory, which left the Conservative Party with its lowest number of seats in Parliament in nearly 200 years, is less an endorsement of Keir Starmer’s leadership than it is a condemnation of fourteen years of Conservative rule. The Economist, hardly a fan of the British left’s proclivity for state intervention, endorsed Labour because “it has the greatest chance of tackling the biggest problem that Britain faces: a chronic and debilitating lack of economic growth.”

Starmer’s biggest success has been to quickly change course from predecessor Jeremy Corbyn’s leftist dogma to make the party electable. However, if he can’t address the country’s stagnant productivity, find new growth through investments and trade, and steer away from his party’s statist instincts, he won’t succeed.

The stakes are highest in the United States for November’s elections, as capital markets continue to shrug off the country’s dysfunctional domestic politics and growing geopolitical risks with yet another record high NASDAQ result this week.

Biden must decide within the next month whether to say in the race, and he’ll have to mull over the choice while his presidential duties carry on. Next week, the seventy-fifth NATO Summit kicks off. He will host heads of state and government from the Alliance’s thirty-one other members in Washington, DC, amid wars in Europe and the Middle East and tensions in Asia. The stakes have seldom been higher.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post What do Biden, Macron, and Sunak have in common? They brought it on themselves.  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The differences are clear enough between at-risk Taiwan and at-war Ukraine. There’s also a world of contrast between the understated Lai, the physician-turned-politician in his Western business suit, and Zelenskyy, the entertainer-turned-leader in his trademark military green fatigues.

Beyond that, however, the similarities between the dangers confronting the two leaders are striking. Both stand on the front lines of the most defining geopolitical showdowns in our fast-unfolding contest over what principles, rules, and countries will define the global future.

Though not yet in a kinetic war, Lai, like Zelenskyy, is managing an escalating conflict against a zealous autocrat—one with a much larger country and military force—who threatens his country’s freedom and democracy in the name of national destiny. And Lai, also like Zelenskyy, recognizes that his survival depends on international military, political, and economic support, and in particular the support of the United States.

And while Kyiv is some five thousand miles away from Taipei as the drone flies, that far-away war has altered Taiwanese risk perceptions.

Rising conflict in the gray zone

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in 2022 shook the Taiwanese into a greater and more urgent realization of their own vulnerability. They have digested Ukraine’s lesson that a much smaller country and military can resist forced annexation with sufficient bravery, preparation, and will. The Taiwanese ask themselves, “Are we made of the same stuff?”

Russian aggression has underscored another lesson for Taiwan’s leaders: Ukraine could not have survived into this third year since Putin’s full-scale invasion without significant, costly, and sustained support from international partners.

It is more challenging for Taiwan to win that level of support than it is for Ukraine, given Taiwan’s contested political status and China’s relentless international campaign against it.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) hasn’t ruled out force to bring about unification, while Taiwan insists on continuing the status quo, which is de facto, if undeclared, independence. Under pressure from Beijing, only eleven out of 193 countries in the United Nations, along with the Holy See, provide Taiwan formal diplomatic recognition, while 182 recognize Ukraine.

Still, Taiwan’s leaders are heartened by the democratic world’s growing recognition of their shared plight with Ukraine in the face of an increasingly close confederation of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Taiwan already is consulting more closely on security issues with European, Asian, and North American countries than it was previously, but Taiwanese officials wonder whether that will be sufficient.

“The strength of the authoritarian camp is even greater than it was during the Cold War and World War II,” a Taiwanese official told our visiting Atlantic Council delegation, which included former Latvian President Egils Levits and former Czech Foreign Minister Tomáš Petříček.

“The greatest challenge is that the democratic camp hasn’t come together sufficiently,” the official said. “Not all democracies are willing to give up their economic interests to face the authoritarian threat together.”

Taiwanese officials see the intensity of China’s efforts to annex Taiwan as both increasing and changing, with much of it falling under what the Taiwanese refer to as “gray-zone coercion.”

That includes a variety of methods to alter the cross-strait status quo, including military threats, disinformation, economic coercion, and the obstruction of Taiwan’s participation in international organizations and forums. Taiwanese officials also speak of twenty years of Chinese efforts to infiltrate Taiwanese society, media, and political parties, which has even included working with organized crime.

“Taiwan is making the best possible preparations for the worst possible scenarios,” the official told us.

Most insidiously, the PRC has argued falsely that through United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, which allowed Communist China to join the United Nations in 1971, the international community accepted that Taiwan is part of China and thus lacks the right to participate in international organizations.

Taiwanese officials have rejected not only that interpretation but also Beijing’s claim that Taipei agreed to its view of “one China” when forming the “1992 consensus” at a semiofficial meeting in Hong Kong that year. The “consensus” term was artificially coined nearly a decade after the meeting. There was no actual consensus, even according to Taiwan’s president in 1992, between Beijing and Taipei about the status of Taiwan with respect to the PRC.

In his powerful inaugural address on May 20, Lai put Taiwan in its global context. “Today, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and conflict between Israel and Hamas continue to shake the whole world,” he said. “And China’s military actions and gray-zone coercion are considered the greatest strategic challenges to global peace and stability.”

Avoiding silent strangulation

One significant takeaway from a week of meetings with Taiwanese government leaders, military planners, economic policymakers, and business executives is that they worry less about a sudden Chinese military invasion, which they are working hard to deter, than about slow strangulation, against which they lack international support and their own answers.

Joseph Wu, the secretary-general of the National Security Council, held up maps as visual aids to illustrate the military choke hold that the PRC is trying to demonstrate to the Taiwanese and their international supporters. The maps show the persistent daily activity of Chinese ships and planes encircling Taiwan.

“The purpose is not to initiate a military attack on Taiwan anytime soon,” Wu explained. “That is not imminent or inevitable. What they wish to do is force us into submission. They want to crush the enemy without a fight, to strangle us, though we cannot rule out the possibility of war.”

“The purpose is to wear out our resources, so that we are less prepared for an invasion,” he added.

In a compelling new essay in Foreign Affairs, Isaac Kardon and Jennifer Kavanagh write that Taiwan’s major military investments “in recent years—including fighter aircraft, tanks, and an indigenously produced submarine—are not well aligned with the insidious nature of the gray-zone threat.”

They suggest, among other measures, greater efforts to harden communications infrastructure and accelerate foreign direct investment to build economic links that are more resilient against Chinese disruption.

The authors maintain that if the United States and its allies don’t determine better ways to challenge Beijing’s “gray-zone campaign,” then they could find Taiwan’s autonomy and the United States’ credibility “both greatly diminished,” even without war.

Much has been made of the so-called “Davidson window,” named for US Admiral Philip Davidson, who testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2021 that China was accelerating its timeline to unify with Taiwan by amphibious invasion by 2027, the hundredth anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army. Since then, that notion of an accelerated timeline has driven US strategy and interactions with Taipei.

But Kardon and Kavanagh argue that the United States must “break its fixation on the prospect of an invasion and become more alert to the dangers posed by a slow strangulation of Taiwan.”

“If Washington cannot alter its single-minded outlook,” the authors warn, “it could end up as a bystander as Taiwan slips under creeping Chinese control in a silent fait accompli.”

Just as Russia’s methods to win in Ukraine are different than those China is employing against Taiwan, so must the United States and its allies adjust their own response for what’s likely to be an extended contest with as many nonmilitary as military challenges.

As the Taiwanese official put it, “China is not just Taiwan’s problem. It is the whole world’s problem.”

Note: The Atlantic Council delegation’s visit to Taiwan was supported by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO).

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Dispatch from Taiwan: Countering the Beijing strangler appeared first on Atlantic Council.

It isn’t so much the contents of the new Putin-Kim agreement, which depending on who you listen to is either a mutual defense “alliance” (the North Korean leader’s characterization) or something far less. Putin said Russia “does not exclude” military-technical cooperation and that the agreement provides for “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties.”

It isn’t even the ride-through-the-town-together bromance atmospherics of a relationship that not so long ago was frosty over Pyongyang’s nuclear breakout. Putin’s arrival gift to Kim was a Russian limousine because he knew the forty-year-old fellow autocrat likes a snazzy ride. Kim’s gift to Putin was a North Korean portrait of the Russian leader himself, Kim’s assessment of how best to endear himself to Putin.

In fact, the most terrifying point is that Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 should have left the leader isolated and weaker due to Russia’s heavy military losses and the storm of sanctions that followed. It has instead resulted in the closest defense-industrial confederation of autocrats—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—perhaps ever.

For details on the whole picture, read today’s front page Wall Street Journal story, based on sourcing from US defense and intelligence officials, on how “Russia’s military cooperation with Iran, North Korea, and China has expanded into the sharing of sensitive technologies that could threaten the [United States] and its allies long after the Ukraine war ends.”

For a narrower but no less revealing view of the consequences of North Korea’s burgeoning relationship with Russia, I turned to the Atlantic Council’s own Markus Garlauskas, the director of our Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative.

He previously served in the US government for two decades, including as the national intelligence officer for North Korea. It was a job in which, among other things, he provided direct analytical support to then President Donald Trump for his meetings with Kim in Singapore and Hanoi. Garlauskas knows his stuff.

What worries him isn’t just the military wherewithal that North Korea is providing Russia, which has concerned US intelligence officials so much that that they recently chose to expose sensitive details of what they have unearthed. According to the latest figures released by the US State Department this week, North Korea’s support to Russia in recent months has included more than 11,000 containers of munitions, which range from run-of-the-mill artillery to dozens of ballistic missiles.

Beyond the capabilities North Korea has given Putin to kill more Ukrainians and sustain his illegal war, Putin’s embrace of Pyongyang is “making North Korea a far more challenging problem,” says Garlauskas.

Putin’s support for Kim, he says, is allowing North Korea to more effectively evade United Nations resolutions and sanctions on its weapons capabilities, providing Pyongyang greater access to dual-use technology and badly needed access to hard currency.

Russian support is emboldening Kim, through the robust embrace of a United Nations Security Council member, to be more aggressive against South Korea and the United States. In effect, Putin is protecting the back of one of the world’s premier rogue actors from the consequences of his nuclear saber-rattling and missile launches.

Beyond that, Russia’s use of North Korean ballistic missiles against Ukraine is providing Kim a live-fire opportunity to refine his weapons’ capabilities and improve his tactics and techniques against US-designed missile defenses. The world usually notices and responds when North Korea fires off one of its ballistic missiles, but now the weapons are being lost in the fog of the Ukraine war.

What brings me and Garlauskas to Taiwan is a high-level Atlantic Council delegation, one that includes former Latvian President Egils Levits, former Czech Foreign Minister Tomáš Petříček, former US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Scott Berrier, and Matthew Kroenig, who runs our Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

A future missive will report on Taiwan and Ukraine’s role as the front-line states that this fast-evolving confederation of autocracies has in its sights. Putin’s Pyongyang gambit is all a part of this effort, and its relevance and significance are easy to see from our delegation’s view, one thousand miles to the south.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post The troubling significance of Putin’s Pyongyang deal appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“He wants nothing more than to rain on our parade,” one senior US official recently told me. Some administration officials are considering potential scenarios and possible responses, though giving Ukraine full focus is difficult with the Middle East war and so much else in play.

There is a broad range of possibilities. Putin might, for example, launch an even fiercer and wider summer military offensive in Ukraine than the one currently underway. He may unleash new weaponry, perhaps even a space-based weapon. At the same time, he may advance a more determined (but still disingenuous) peace proposal or ceasefire effort designed mainly to appeal to global opinion, even as NATO members are providing Ukraine more military heft.

Given Putin’s past behavior around major global events, a summer surprise would seem, well, not so surprising. Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 was timed to coincide with the Beijing Summer Olympics; its invasion of Ukraine in 2014 took place during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia; and its second invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 followed a meeting between Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics that year.

Beyond Putin’s fondness for the global spotlight at such moments, there are other reasons to be concerned that this could be a summer of maximum danger for Ukraine, and thus also for the NATO Alliance just days before the Republican and Democratic political conventions in the United States.

Putin appears determined, even though his position is not enviable. Over the space of several weeks, the US Congress finally approved its big aid package and several countries agreed that Ukraine could use their weapons to target military sites in Russia. France, meanwhile, is quickly developing an initiative to deploy soldiers as trainers in Ukraine. But there is no evidence that any of this has persuaded Putin to reconsider his aggressive plans for Ukraine. Instead, he seems to have decided that he should redouble his offensive this summer, before more US war materiel arrives. Ukraine’s air defenses will remain vulnerable for many weeks to come.

There has been no slowdown in Russia’s ongoing offensive around Kharkiv—even as there has been almost no forward movement for weeks—and Putin’s relentless attacks on Ukraine’s power sources and infrastructure continue to do substantial damage. The Kremlin still has substantial reserves that can be sent into the Kharkiv offensive, to expand the thus far unsuccessful campaign in the Donbas to take Chasiv Yar, or to start a new offensive in the north toward Sumy.

Besides these reserves, there are other factors that encourage Putin. Kyiv continues to face a manpower shortage due principally to a culture that believes young men should not be drafted before reaching their late twenties. The Zelenskyy administration and the Rada recently took a step to solve this problem by lowering the draft age by two years to twenty-five, but this politically difficult decision does not solve the problem of overused frontline troops.

Putin also takes comfort from his reelection in March and his two-day meeting with Xi in Beijing last month. At the same time, he must see the crisis in Gaza and the US election campaign as welcome distractions for US leadership. That’s why a senior US official told me that Putin feels a measure of confidence.

At age seventy-one, Putin has cemented his grip on Russian power, with official results showing that he took 87 percent of the vote in March, an outcome he is using to further justify his war on Ukraine. His new six-year term, should he complete it, would enable him to surpass Joseph Stalin as Russia’s longest-serving leader in two centuries. The subtext: The world will have to deal with an emboldened Russia for the foreseeable future.

Putin’s meeting with Xi in May underscored the Chinese leader’s determination to double down on his support of his Russian counterpart. Xi is doing so despite growing US and European criticism and increased leaks regarding the specifics of how China is enabling and empowering Russia’s continued war.

Speaking about the Ukraine war, Putin thanked Xi for “those initiatives it was putting forward to regulate this problem.” Said Putin, “This partnership is without a doubt exemplary for how the relationship between neighboring states should be.”

“The China-Russia relationship today is hard-earned, and the two sides need to cherish and nurture it,” said Xi.

US President Joe Biden’s recent measures to loosen the restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US weaponry to hit targets inside of Russia would have raised more concerns in Russia had it not been for the limited nature of the lifted restrictions, applying only to areas in Russia from which the eastern city of Kharkiv is being hit.

During his speech commemorating the eightieth anniversary of D-Day last week, Biden drew a direct connection between the fight against fascism in World War II and the Ukraine war. He said the United States would “not walk away” from the conflict. “Because if we do,” he explained, “Ukraine will be subjugated, and it will not end there. Ukraine’s neighbors will be threatened. All of Europe will be threatened.”

Yet Russia’s experience is that Biden’s rhetoric is tougher than his readiness to provide US arms in a manner that would increase Ukraine’s chance of not just survival but victory.

Putin can also be reassured by Biden’s continued reluctance to support Ukraine’s membership in NATO, articulated again in a recent interview with the US president in TIME magazine. Biden’s comments opposing, in his words, the “NATOization of Ukraine” were a preemptive move by the US president before the upcoming NATO Summit. Alliance members will likely provide “a bridge” to NATO for Ukraine but not a time-determined path toward full membership and, with it, the security guarantee that has proven its worth for allies that border Russia.

The same Biden administration officials who worry about a summer surprise are hoping that Ukrainian forces can hold their defensive lines against the Russians in 2024 and then launch a new military offensive in 2025 with replenished supplies of munitions and soldiers. Then Ukraine might regain enough territory to improve its negotiating position.

The best way to answer—even better, to preempt—any potential Putin summer surprise would be through a surprise of NATO’s own at its summit, one that demonstrates a level of unity and purposefulness that would force Putin to rethink his Ukraine ambitions. One such surprise could be a more sharply defined and delineated Ukrainian path to Alliance membership, making clear to Putin that he can’t block that outcome through continued war. Another would be to lift all restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US and other allied weapons, removing once and for all any safe haven for Russian aggressors.

It’s time for Ukraine’s friends, at this moment of maximum danger, to steal the initiative from Putin through policies and practices that shake his confidence and restore Ukrainian momentum.

Wishful thinking remains an inadequate strategy to defeat Putin.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post A Putin summer surprise for NATO? Worries are growing. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

To refresh memories: Cameron promised voters in January 2013 that if they brought Conservatives back to power, then he would give them a referendum on the United Kingdom’s European Union membership. He lost the referendum for a host of reasons, not least of them because he failed to convince his own party faithful and underestimated the Leave campaign’s ability to mobilize supporters.

Cameron was willing to take a high-stakes, long-term political gamble, one that would shape the very nature of his country and the European Union, to achieve what he had concluded was a short-term political necessity. Macron is doing the same today.

The French president appears to be betting on one of two outcomes:

1. For Macron, the best outcome would be if snap election voters reverse their votes of last Sunday, which gave Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally 31.37 percent of the vote, more than twice the share that voted for Macron’s party (14.6 percent). This is also the least likely outcome. Macron’s own supporters consider a victory in either the first round, on June 30, or the second round, on July 7, doubtful. Macron is unpopular, France’s unemployment rate is high, immigration concerns have mobilized many citizens to support opposition parties, and there is growing estrangement between voters and France’s political leadership.
2. The more likely outcome is that throughout the rest of his presidential term, which runs until 2027, Macron will have to govern with a National Rally prime minister in what the French call “co-habitation.” Though National Rally is unlikely to win an absolute majority of the 577-seat National Assembly, it quite likely could emerge as the strongest party. Le Pen, who has her eye on succeeding Macron as president in 2027, would put forward as prime minister her protégé, the twenty-eight-year-old Jordan Bardella. Bardella, the popular son of an Italian immigrant, led the European Parliament campaign and has rallied the anti-immigrant vote with the slogan, “France is disappearing.”
   

Writes Roger Cohen in a must-read analysis in the New York Times, “France would then be confronted with the consecration through high political office of the extreme right, an idea held unthinkable ever since the Vichy government ruled France in collaboration with the Nazis between 1940 and 1944.”

Why is Macron willing to throw the dice on France’s future in this manner, shocking the country, its stock market, the French media, and his own party just six weeks before Paris hosts the Olympic Games? Cohen quoted Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo as being “stunned” by the “unsettling” decision. 

Macron is gambling that National Rally will perform so badly in office over the next three years that voters will reject any notion of Marine Le Pen as president in 2027. French voters could then put to rest the notion that the far right can run France. (Macron himself is term limited and will be unable to run.)

Macron could have responded in many ways to Sunday’s humiliation in European elections. His options ranged from toughening immigration policies to shaking up his government.

He’s taken perhaps the riskiest course available. “The rise of nationalists, of demagogues, is a danger for our nation,” Macron said on Sunday. “And also for Europe, for France’s position in Europe and in the world.” He portrayed himself as a leader rising to the demands of his times, rather than being history’s victim.

Time will determine whether Macron’s response this week is visionary or reckless. If the Cameron experience has any lesson, it is that the gambler has limited control of the outcome.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Macron rolls the dice on France’s future appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Now, however, the United States and its allies must turn to the clear and present dangers posed by an even more potent and more coordinated group of “new axis” powers that has emerged. It isn’t enough that leaders of Allied nations now supporting Ukraine were there on the beaches in remembrance, standing alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Symbolically absent were Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, now at the heart of this new, fast-evolving, adversarial axis.

It’s time to recognize collectively, as the historian and diplomat Philip Zelikow writes in a new, must-read essay in Texas National Security Review, that the United States and its allies confront “a purposeful set of powerful adversaries” in China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. They have increased their common cause after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 in a manner that Zelikow reckons poses “a serious possibility of worldwide warfare.” 

He puts that likelihood “only in the 20-30 percent range. But that assessment is not reassuring.”

This column focuses on “inflection points,” and Zelikow puts our current one in compelling, historical context.

“This is the third time the United States has been confronted with such a situation,” Zelikow writes in a piece first brought to my attention, given its significance, by Atlantic Council board member Kostas Pantazopoulos.

“The first was between 1937 and 1941 and was resolved by American entry into World War II,” writes Zelikow. “The second was between 1948 and 1962, implicating the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Thankfully, world war was avoided and in November 1962 the Soviet Union relaxed its stance in the central confrontation in Europe,” but not before the Cuban Missile Crisis brought us to the brink.

How the current period lands will depend on how deftly the United States navigates with its partners the unfolding areas of tension—wars in Europe and the Middle East and tensions around China. However, it will also rest on how this adversarial axis interprets the events around it—and the opportunities those events provide—to displace US global leadership and remake the global order.

“In the past, these changes occurred for reasons that outsiders often did not understand or expect,” Zelikow writes. “Enemy leaders changed course, sometimes sharply, as they saw successes or reverses in other parts of the world. This suggests that the outcome of the war in Ukraine might strongly affect the wider course of world history.”

That last sentence is worth lingering upon. We ignore it at our collective peril.

What’s perhaps least well understood—and most concerning—is that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are already acting more collaboratively than Germany, Italy, and Japan ever did in the run-up to World War II.

“The old Axis was slow to come together tightly,” writes Zelikow. “By contrast, today in 2024, key countries in the anti-American partnership have been working quite closely together in defense-industrial cooperation—extending across Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. They have now been cooperating for a longer time, and in more ways, than was the case among any of the future Axis countries of the 1930s.”

There’s cause for medium- and long-term optimism about history’s trajectory, given the fundamental political, economic, societal, and technological strengths of the United States and its global partners. Zelikow sees the period of maximum danger as being in the next one to three years, as members of the new axis—correctly or incorrectly—may perceive a moment of historic opportunity in the West’s lack of military preparedness and political will.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post On D-Day, beware the ‘new axis’ appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Raisi’s death, at age sixty-three, “is rather unlikely to alter Iran’s strategic direction in either domestic or foreign policy,” argues the Atlantic Council’s Jonathan Panikoff, noting that “ultimate power” rests with Iran’s supreme leader. What his passing does inevitably influence is Iranian succession, with the odds now shifting from Raisi to favor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s fifty-five-year-old son, the Shia cleric Mojtaba Khamenei.

Of greater short-term importance, though lost in much of the international media coverage in recent days, is the new threat to Netanyahu’s political survival from opposition figure and retired general Benny Gantz.

In a televised statement on Saturday, Gantz said that he would leave Netanyahu’s coalition by June 8 if the prime minister doesn’t agree to a six-point plan that includes a template for Gaza’s post-war governance.

The departure of Gantz’s National Unity party, which polls predict would become the biggest group in the Knesset following new elections, wouldn’t necessarily topple Netanyahu’s government. However, it is another significant sign that Netanyahu’s inability to lay out a strategic plan for Gaza’s future and Israel’s security has not only caused greater strains with the United States, as I argued in this space last week, but is also further eroding his tenuous hold on power in Israel.

Never was that more evident than last week, when Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant gave voice to those mounting doubts on behalf of the country’s national security establishment.

“I call on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” he said, “to make a decision and declare that Israel will not establish civilian control over the Gaza Strip, that Israel will not establish military governance in the Gaza Strip, and that a governing alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip will be advanced immediately.”

Yet even as domestic pressure mounts on Netanyahu to change course, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, inadvertently prompted even the prime minister’s critics to circle the wagons on Monday by seeking arrest warrants for him and Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders, on accusations of war crimes.

US President Joe Biden—who called Khan’s application for arrest warrants “outrageous”—has taken sharp criticism for having backed Netanyahu too unconditionally. But it’s clear that his increasingly open questioning of the Israeli leader’s course, including threatening to withhold additional arms shipments, has opened space for the likes of Gantz and Gallant.

It’s in that context that White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met Monday with Gallant, War Cabinet members Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot, opposition leader Yair Lapid, and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. A day earlier, he had met with Palestinian leaders, and before that he met top Saudi leaders in Riyadh.

Importantly, Sullivan, in his meeting on Sunday with Netanyahu, urged the Israeli leader to connect his war efforts to a “political strategy that can ensure the lasting defeat of Hamas, the release of all hostages, and a better future for Gaza.”

It shouldn’t be necessary to add: Netanyahu’s political survival increasingly rests on his ability to think and act more strategically about the connected futures of Gaza, Israel, and the wider Middle East.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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So, it was a poignant moment at the PEN America Literary Gala, which I attended Thursday evening in New York, when Almar Latour, Dow Jones CEO and Wall Street Journal publisher, spoke about how the long-sought release of his reporter Evan Gershkovich from Russia’s dreaded Lefortovo Prison matters “on a macro level.”

“The grim reality is that there are Evans everywhere,” said Latour, who is also an Atlantic Council board member. “Journalists around the world face increasing resistance and hostility for just trying to do their jobs.”

More than a hundred journalists and photojournalists were killed in the past year, mostly in Gaza and Ukraine, and more than three hundred others were imprisoned for their work by one autocratic regime or another. Through our “Reporters at Risk” events, the Atlantic Council has worked to raise these issues for policymakers and the public. So too has Latour, who listed the names of many of the journalists behind bars, and he included Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong media tycoon and pro-democracy advocate charged with endangering Chinese national security with his weapon of truth. One of the evening’s awardees sits in a Vietnamese prison for her critiques of state repression, the writer Pham Doan Trang.

It would have been easy in an evening that honored the music legend Paul Simon—who played his “American Tune” on acoustic guitar just a few feet away from me—to lose the singular and symbolic importance of one reporter’s imprisonment. 

With talk show host Seth Meyers as MC, with Malcolm Gladwell and other authors as presenters and speakers, and with PEN America at the center of controversies over whether Israeli and Palestinian free speech are created equal, one might, for a moment, forget Evan.

Amid the noise and glitter and controversy, however, there was a bigger story to be told. I scribbled down on my napkin Latour’s closing quote: “Russia may be an ocean and a continent away, but the distance between authoritarianism and a free society is measured by the strength of a free press.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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One of the first German words they taught me was “fleissig,” which means diligent, industrious, assiduous, and hard-working—all wrapped up into one word.

They would be shocked to learn that Germany today has the shortest average working hours of any advanced economy in the world, per Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development statistics for 2022. The average number of hours worked by Germans has fallen by 30 percent in the last half century, and it is a full 25 percent below US levels.

That has become a serious enough drag on the German economy that the country’s government is cobbling together tax breaks on overtime hours, reports the Financial Times, and an overhaul on jobless benefits to shift incentives toward those that favor hard work. This “growth plan” could be unveiled as soon as next month.

The context is a concerning one: Germany was once the growth engine of Europe, but it’s currently the world’s weakest major economy, with negative growth last year of 0.2 percent and only 0.2 percent positive growth in the first quarter of this year. Germany is Europe’s biggest economy, accounting for a quarter of the European Union’s eighteen-trillion-dollar gross domestic product (GDP). So, how Germany goes, so goes Europe.

“Germany is struggling,” Kevin Fletcher, Harri Kemp, and Galen Sher, all economists in the International Monetary Fund’s Europe Department, wrote in late March. “It was the only G7 economy to shrink last year and is set to be the group’s slowest growing economy again this year, according to our latest projections.”

They call for ambitious reforms to take on what they consider German economic challenges that don’t get enough attention: aging, labor and skills shortages, underinvestment, and too much red tape. Less important, they argue, are areas getting more attention: higher energy prices and concerns about deindustrialization, which the economists call “overstated.”

Christian Lindner, the country’s finance minister, has stressed reforms aimed at restoring longer working hours as a crucial part of the picture. “In Italy, France, and elsewhere, there is significantly more work done than here,” the Financial Times quoted Lindner as saying at recent IMF-World Bank meetings in Washington.

My parents might well question whether state incentives will solve the problem. We may soon find out, as the federal government is engineering policies aimed at increasing economic dynamism.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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They are about prevention in that the sweeping tariff increases across a range of strategic industries include a whopping 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles (EVs), although these vehicles account for only 1 percent of the US market.

“Fundamentally,” says Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center, “Biden administration officials are trying to avoid repeating the mistakes of past decades, when the United States and its allies did not do enough to counter China’s unfair trade practices until it was too late and Chinese products flooded markets and cost jobs. So this is about the future and not about now.”

The tariffs are also about Biden administration resignation that China isn’t going to converge with the market-driven trade model or adopt fairer trade practices in the foreseeable future.

Biden not only kept all the Trump administration’s tariffs on China, after long months of studying them, but now has added to them as well. That’s intended to counter both direct and indirect harm to US supply chains generated by Beijing’s manufacturing overcapacity.

China has a long history of overproducing and then dumping those products on foreign markets. What is new, however, is that this is now hitting sectors considered critical for US national security. Watch next for US coordination even with countries, such as Brazil, that are generally skeptical of Washington. They have grown concerned about Chinese overcapacity as well.  

The new tariffs impact EVs, lithium-ion batteries, semiconductors, solar panels, medical products, aluminum and steel, and more. US officials expect China to respond, but they reckon it will do so in a manner that might only accelerate what the Biden administration hopes to achieve: the de-risking and friendshoring of US supply chains.

“The trillion-dollar question,” says Lipsky, is whether Europe and Japan match or mirror US policies at their Group of Seven (G7) summit this June in Italy. If they don’t, expect Chinese EVs and other products to flood their markets—with Beijing concluding that its problem is primarily with Washington.

Most unfortunate is that both political parties in the United States continue to balk at new trade negotiations and agreements, while China continues to strike trade deals all around the world. That leaves Washington with plenty of sticks but few carrots.

“We’re fighting this battle with one hand tied behind our back,” says David Shullman, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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Two individuals familiar with the administration’s thinking recently spoke to me on condition of anonymity and summed up the situation. US President Joe Biden, the first individual explained, believes that the Israeli leader is “confusing tactics with strategy in a manner that is neither sustainable nor supportable.”

“What’s the end game?” asked the second individual. “What’s the pathway to stability?” Netanyahu has, the individual said, failed to answer these questions in a way that persuades the Biden administration, which has prompted the US president to send a stronger and unmistakable message.

That, in the end, resulted in the most serious US-Israeli dispute in a generation: Biden’s decision to pause a shipment of 3,500 bombs to Israel and his vow to block other offensive arms if Israeli forces mount a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah.

The administration’s criticism is that Netanyahu, at the expense of strategy, is focusing entirely on tactics. Those tactics include freeing hostages, which he’s done with only partial success, and killing Hamas fighters and leaders, which Netanyahu has done in a manner that has increased international opposition and taken unnecessary casualties, while leaving Hamas’s top leadership intact.

Biden’s rift with the Israeli leader is particularly dramatic, as it was the US president who flew to Israel in a courageous and dramatic demonstration of support after Hamas’s terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023. “I come to Israel with a single message,” he said then. “You are not alone.”

Though tensions over Israel’s looming attack on Rafah began in February, Biden administration officials’ frustrations dramatically grew when Netanyahu failed to adjust course after the April 13 defense of his country from more than three hundred Iranian missiles and drones.

The combined defensive operation involved the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Jordan, and it significantly included quiet help from Saudi Arabia. This historic demonstration that Arab nations, working alongside the United States, would help defend Israel from Iranian attack underscored the potential to “re-engineer the architecture of the region,” a US official told me.

US officials believe Israel-Saudi normalization, combined with closer security cooperation with other Arab countries that have signed the Abraham Accords, would give Israel a more reliable and sustainable pathway to stability than even the most successful Rafah operation against Hamas could provide.

To underscore their view regarding the futility of a full-scale Rafah operation, US officials speak of how they see Hamas fighters re-appearing in areas of Gaza that Israeli forces had cleared militarily, such as Khan Younis, where Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed to be the architect of the October 7 attack, is rumored to be hiding.

US officials see the makings of a strategy that would have the following elements: Israel seals the Egyptian border with Gaza. It then painstakingly hunts down Hamas’s leaders without large-scale operations that result in unnecessary casualties. Next, an international force, or possibly an Arab-only force, provides security in Gaza, while Israel works with others to bring about a Palestinian leadership structure that squeezes Hamas out. All parties then agree on a pathway to a Palestinian state, and efforts accelerate toward Saudi normalization and a re-engineered regional security architecture.

None of this would be easy to achieve.

All of it demands Netanyahu shift from his focus on short-term tactics to a more promising, long-game strategy. Until he does, expect more tensions with Biden.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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That’s the view of Jörn Fleck, who runs the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, reckoning that both sides have some soul-searching to do before they’ll be able to restore trust and better manage their growing list of disputes.

Europe’s increased concerns about China’s malign influence on politics and business across the continent form the backdrop for the six-day trip, even as many countries are just as eager to safeguard and expand trade and investment.

Several recent arrests and charges of espionage have given Europeans a glimpse into China’s shadowy activities. Last week alone, six individuals in three separate cases, four in Germany and two in the United Kingdom, were charged with spying on behalf of China.

Last month, European Union (EU) competition regulators raided the Polish and Dutch offices of Chinese security company Nuctech, which is a leader in providing European airport security scanning devices. (US authorities blacklisted Nuctech in 2020.)

That is part of a growing European Commission crackdown on companies believed to be receiving unfair Chinese state subsidies. European officials, like their US counterparts, are increasingly concerned about China exporting its excess capacity. EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook this week that the EU investigation of Chinese subsidies for electric vehicles is “advancing,” and he hinted that new tariffs could come before summer.

On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Germany, with its own stagnating growth as context, is considering rolling back plans to increase government scrutiny of Chinese investments through a foreign investment-screening law.

That brings us to the “moment of truth.”

For the European Union, it’s whether its members can remain united in addressing Beijing’s malign actions, while at the same time not unnecessarily losing economic opportunity. On that score, it’s a good sign that French President Emmanuel Macron has invited European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to join him in Paris, where he will do a solo and a joint meeting with Xi.

But across Europe and in Washington the French president’s messaging will also be watched closely for any talk of a European “third way,” which would undermine European and transatlantic unity.

For China, the moment of truth is whether Xi recognizes that it’s his country’s own actions that have Europe on edge toward Beijing. The Chinese leader could address that through reducing his support for Russia’s war effort, addressing manufacturing overcapacity, reining in industrial and political spying, and ending efforts to divide and conquer the continent.

In that respect, how Xi has chosen his European stops is concerning, with France being followed by Serbia and Hungary, two countries that have been coziest with China. Hungary, which just marked twenty years as an EU member, has been opposed to Brussels’ tougher approach to China and has willingly played into Beijing’s divide-and-conquer tactics.

With Xi unlikely to mend his ways in Europe, it will take all the unity Europe can muster to convince him otherwise.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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The emergence of India as a rising, global power is one of the most significant events of our times, one too easily overlooked with all the attention on China’s expanded influence, the United States’ struggle to sustain its world role, and wars in Europe and the Middle East that have kept attention elsewhere. 

Yet as Indians continue to go to the polls this month in the largest democratic election ever (some 970 million registered voters in a country of 1.4 billion), it’s worth reflecting not only on who will win. It seems a foregone conclusion that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will gain a third five-year term. More important is understanding what difference Modi’s India will make on the global stage as its economy and ambitions grow.

Will it be the India that has expanded its economic relationship, and particularly its oil purchases, with autocratic Russia, having significantly increased its trade with the country since the Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022? Or will it be the India that is deepening relations and security links with the United States through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (known as the Quad) and myriad other agreements?

The answer is that it intends to be both, or vishwa mitra.  

A senior Gulf official tells me that India already punches above its weight on the world stage, where it is increasingly present in almost all corners. This is in part because India doesn’t stir up the antibodies that both Chinese and US presence can (except, of course, with Pakistan and China). The strength of the US-India relationship depends in no small part on how Washington will balance its strategic ambitions with India’s determination to remain an independent actor.

With that as context, read the Economist’s cover story this week, kicking off a special report on the country by asking, “How strong is India’s economy?” The more compelling question is: What specific goals and ambitions will India bring with its de facto leadership of the Global South and its role as the world’s most populous democracy?

What we know is that India is the world’s fifth-largest economy and is on track to be number three by 2027. Its growth rate of around 7 percent per year remains the fastest among large countries. India’s stock market is already the fourth largest in the world, and its business confidence is higher than at any time since 2010.

“Rising wealth means more geopolitical heft,” writes the Economist, mentioning that India deployed ten warships to the Middle East after Houthi attacks disrupted traffic through the Suez Canal. Being the friend of everyone, sustaining vishwa mitra, is going to be more difficult as India’s global influence grows.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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Let’s start with Saturday’s vote in the US House of Representatives, passing a sweeping ninety-five-billion-dollar package to aid allies and partners—most importantly, in my view, Ukraine. The vote demonstrated continued US leadership at a moment when the world is facing the greatest threats to global order since the 1930s.

Most crucial was House Speaker Mike Johnson’s gamble, with his right flank threatening to oust him, in bringing the package to the floor with Democratic support. The Senate will consider the measures early this week, and President Joe Biden is expected to sign the bill, but it’s Johnson’s shift that has been the most striking.

“The speaker’s torturous path to embracing Ukraine aid is the result of many factors,” write the Washington Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell and Marianna Sotomayor in a fascinating Sunday report on “The evolution of Mike Johnson on Ukraine.” It included, they explain, “high-level intelligence briefings as a House leader, his faith, the counsel of three committee chairs named Mike, and a realization that the GOP would never unite on Ukraine.”

One might breeze past faith on that list, but that would be a mistake. Johnson’s awareness of Russia’s widespread persecution of Protestants in occupied Ukraine must have had a powerful influence. Ukrainian evangelical pastor Pavlo Unguryan met with the speaker recently, and as word of Russia’s actions spread, some American evangelicals called on the House to act.

The reporters go on to quote an emotional Johnson, responding last week to a question from the Washington Post at a press conference: “Look, history judges us for what we do. This is a critical time right now, critical time on the world stage. I could make a selfish decision and do something that’s different, but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing.”

Johnson did do the right thing, and to do so he had to rely on unanimous Democratic backing against opposition from just over half (112, precisely) of his Republican colleagues. History will thank him. Some of his short-sighted colleagues will not. One way or the other, he has avoided what I warned last week could be “geopolitical malpractice.”

Now it’s time for the United States to take the lead alongside allies in ensuring Ukraine’s territorial integrity, democracy, and security, up to and including a concrete path to NATO membership.

On the Middle East, it’s worth going back to my Inflection Points column on November 18 of last year, less than six weeks after Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel. I wrote: “There’s an immediate need for moderate, modernizing Arab countries and Israel to quietly begin laying the groundwork for a NATO-like collective security organization and a European Union-like economic body. These institutions would unlock the region’s potential by countering its relentless cycles of violence.”

On that score, the region came a step closer last week, as you’ll gather from reading the brilliant analysis and reporting by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius under the headline, “The unspoken story of why Israel didn’t clobber Iran.”

Writes Ignatius, “In its measured response, [Israel] appeared to be weighing the interest of its allies in this coalition—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan—which all provided quiet help in last weekend’s shoot-down. It’s playing the long game, in other words.”

Here the United States has been crucial, using the leverage that only it has to push for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, an aim that Hamas intentionally targeted with its October 7 attack. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Biden administration is now making a fresh push toward a deal, under which the Israelis would accept a new commitment to Palestinian statehood in exchange for Saudi normalization.

What would Saudi Arabia get? A more robust defense and security relationship with the United States, assistance in acquiring civil nuclear power, and new momentum toward a Palestinian state, which are, again, matters only Washington can provide. The package is “in the final stages of negotiating,” according to the Wall Street Journal reporters.

This course of action recognizes that the best way to defeat Iran over time is to solidify the cooperation of the countries its extremism and proxies threaten, much as the Soviet Union was contained by a coalition of like-minded countries that provided better outcomes for their people.

One week of good news doesn’t add up to a strategic shift, either in Europe or the Middle East. Yet the past week provides the opportunity for a momentum shift in both theaters that the United States and its partners should seize.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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There are two problems with that proposition: First, Churchill scholars can’t show evidence that the legendary British statesman and orator ever said that, though there’s proof that he felt it often enough. Second, it’s by no means clear that House Speaker Mike Johnson can rally his unruly ranks to do the right thing—with the extreme right threatening to oust him and Democratic votes required for success.

Even if Johnson does succeed, the Biden administration still needs to release the weapons Ukrainians most urgently need to turn the tide, with permission to use them deep into Russia. It’s right to praise the Biden administration for its consistent support of Ukraine since 2022, even while questioning its reluctance to provide Kyiv with the full range of weapons that it needs faster and in sufficient quantity.

“Will America Let Ukraine Collapse?” the lead Wall Street Journal editorial asked in Thursday’s paper. It was accompanied by President Joe Biden’s op-ed appealing for congressional support for “urgent national-security legislation” supporting Ukraine and Israel, and providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza.

The latest news update is that a faction of House Republicans, led by Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kentucky’s Rep. Thomas Massie, is threatening to oust Johnson over the vote. This group, says the Wall Street Journal editorial, believes it can then “return without consequence to pounding Joe Biden about the crisis at the southern border. They are wrong, and the sad irony is that such delusions about the world are usually reserved for the progressive left.”

Determining the “outlines”

For that errant minority to understand how deeply US interests are linked to Ukraine’s ability to resist Moscow, it’s worth reading the Washington Post’s front-page scoop Thursday on a secret 2023 Russian Foreign Ministry document.

Provided to the paper by a European intelligence service, it codifies efforts by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government to leverage the Ukraine war to “forge a global order free from what it sees as American dominance,” writes reporter Catherine Belton.

The document is a secret addendum, dated April 11, 2023, which was later added to the blander, published official document of March 31, entitled “The Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation.” The addendum says the outcome of Russia’s war in Ukraine will “to a great degree determine the outlines of the future world order.”

The documents are all the confirmation the United States and its allies should need to show that Russia is actively working to disrupt domestic politics in the United States and other countries that support Ukraine. At the same time, Russia is working to shift the global balance of power through closer relations with China, Iran, North Korea, and other like-minded nations.

With the stakes this undeniably high, any dithering in support for Ukraine is geopolitical malpractice.

“Can we hold our ground?”

The situation couldn’t be more urgent, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine entering its third summer. Putin plans to press his growing advantage with a major offensive to achieve as much gain as possible while the United States is distracted by its upcoming elections. He’s calculating that a re-elected President Donald Trump will be less willing to continue military and financial support for Ukraine.

Ukraine’s top military commander, General Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a statement last weekend that the Ukrainian army’s positions on the eastern front have “worsened significantly in recent days.” Russian forces are pushing hard to take advantage of Ukraine’s shortages of ammunition, air defenses, and well-trained troops.

Speaking in Kyiv to visiting PBS NewsHour anchor Amna Nawaz this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy laid down the stakes for this weekend’s congressional vote. “I can tell you, frankly, without this support, we will have no chance of winning,” he said.

He explained that Ukraine’s ratio of artillery shells to that of Russia is one-to-ten. “Can we hold our ground?” Zelenskyy asked Nawaz. “No . . . they will be pushing us back every day.”

He drew an uncomfortable contrast between military support for Ukraine and for Israel, both non-NATO countries, following the remarkable allied success in defending Israel from last weekend’s Iranian barrage.

“Israel, by itself, wouldn’t be able to protect against such a numerous, powerful strike,” he said, later adding, “Israel is not a NATO country. The NATO allies, including NATO countries, have been defending Israel. They showed the Iranian forces that Israel was not alone.” His point: NATO countries should also be able to more actively defend Ukraine as well.

Anne Applebaum, writing in the Atlantic, explains differently why European and US forces scramble to defend Israel but not Ukraine. Russia’s threat of using nuclear weapons “has made the US and Europe reluctant to enter the skies over Ukraine.” Israel is also a nuclear power, but that cuts differently, as “the US, Europe, and even some Arab states are eager to make sure Israel is never provoked enough to use” a nuclear weapon against Iran.

More to the point, she writes, while Republican legislators and politicians have been impervious to Iranian propaganda, they have been more sympathetic to Russia, up to and including their presidential candidate, often repeating Moscow’s talking points.

Coming back to Churchill, one quote that is accurate came from a letter he wrote to his brother about the United States: “This is a very great country my dear Jack. Not pretty or romantic but great and utilitarian. There seems to be no such thing as reverence or tradition. Everything is eminently practical, and things are judged from a matter of fact standpoint.”

The facts demand that the US House act this weekend to approve some sixty billion dollars of military and other support for Ukraine. The facts also demand that the Biden administration, without whom Kyiv would not have been able to defend itself so effectively thus far, release many of the restrictions on the sort of weapons provided and their use.

Putin has made clear, through the secret memorandum reported in the Washington Post, and beyond, that he understands the stakes in Ukraine. He has no chance of victory if the United States and its European allies, which have economies and defense budgets multiple times the size of Russia’s, act in common cause, understanding the historic moment.

As Biden wrote in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal: “Mr. Putin has tried relentlessly to break the will of the Ukrainian people. He has failed. Now he’s trying to break the will of the West. We cannot let him succeed. There are moments in history that call for leadership and courage. This is one of them.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

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The challenge for the Biden administration and its allies is that they can’t cherry-pick. The issues are interrelated. Lack of determination in defending Ukraine will inevitably signal to China that Taiwan is fair game. At the same time, the bilateral challenge that’s likely to define our times is the US-China one.

With that as context, read an important recent speech by one of the world’s leading China experts, Kevin Rudd, formerly Australia’s prime minister and currently its ambassador to Washington. Delivered last week at the US Naval Academy, it was his first extended lecture as ambassador, and it is a must read.

He argues that, notwithstanding the stabilization of the US-China relationship since last November’s summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in San Francisco, nothing has changed in terms of Chinese strategic intentions toward Taiwan.

“Specifically on Taiwan,” says Rudd, “it has been made plain through Xi’s statements that national reunification must be achieved by the time China’s national rejuvenation is to be complete, namely 2049, the centenary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.”

That might seem a long way off in our short-attention-span culture, but “if a relatively low-cost opportunity arose,” says Rudd, “Xi could be minded to seek to secure Taiwan’s return within his own political tenure.”

For the record, Xi, who is now seventy years old, had himself named to a precedent-breaking third five-year term as party general secretary in October 2022, which by my calculations means he might well want to swallow Taiwan whole before the end of 2027.

Rudd concludes that Chinese leaders are calculated risk-takers over Taiwan, and not reckless risk-takers. It follows that Xi will only back off his historic intentions toward Taiwan during his current term if he concludes, in Rudd’s words, that “it is still too risky to embark upon unilateral military action against Taiwan.”

No wonder Rudd refers to the period ahead as “the decade of living dangerously.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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“You got a win,” US President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend, as reported by Axios from a White House source. “Take the win.”

Translate that into a strong US suggestion, straight from the Oval Office, that Israel demonstrate restraint in its response and refrain from attacking Iranian territory to avoid further escalation. To drive his point home, Biden also told the Israeli prime minister that US forces wouldn’t participate in any reprisal attack.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant provided his answer to Biden on Sunday, when he told US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that his country cannot allow ballistic missiles to be launched against its territory without a response. So, the question now is what Israel’s response will be.

The Atlantic Council’s Matthew Kroenig suggests that the United States and Israel should together strike Iran’s nuclear fuel-cycle facilities. This would, he said to me, “exact a steep price on Iran and restore deterrence in the region. Indeed, this may be the world’s last best chance to keep Tehran from the bomb.”

Reading the White House tea leaves, that seems highly unlikely. That said, Kroenig’s arguments in favor of a more decisive response are compelling. It goes entirely against the rules of deterrence if Iran doesn’t see the costs of hitting Israel as far outweighing the benefits.

The White House has operated with a similar de-escalation narrative in withholding from Ukraine certain capabilities since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Even now, it refuses to send certain longer-range strike capabilities, such as three-hundred-kilometer ATACMs (a long-range guided missile). It not only denies Ukraine the right to use US-supplied weapons against targets in Russia, but also urges Ukraine not to hit any targets in Russia—even with its own weapons—including military installations from which the Kremlin is attacking civilians in Ukraine.

That underscores a larger issue at stake that applies to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, to Chinese leader Xi Jinping as he considers next steps regarding Taiwan, and to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. These rulers are acting in increasing common cause to undermine the global leadership of the United States alongside its partners and allies.

The Atlantic Council’s Will Wechsler, who runs our Middle East Programs, explains the danger of Iran creating “a new normal” in the region.

“The precedent is that Iran can attack Israel directly, that it can do so from Iranian soil, and that it can target civilians inside Israel,” Wechsler writes. That follows a well-practiced Iranian playbook of “experimenting with a new set of malign actions,” and then putting those actions into practice if the pushback against them proves insufficient.

Reluctance to respond over the years to Tehran’s malign behavior has left Iran as “the only country in the world that routinely gives precision weapons to nonstate proxies and instructs them to target civilians across borders.”

Wechsler proposes a menu of forceful options to respond against this weekend’s attack other than an immediate retaliatory strike on Iranian territory. One option, for example, is for the United States to declare a new doctrine: Any attack by an Iranian partner or proxy on Americans will be treated as if it were an attack by Iran itself.

Whatever response one prefers, it’s time to discard the myth that the de-escalation impulse actually results in a safer world. The October 7 attacks by Hamas disproved that, following years of enabling Iran; as did Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, following his successful invasion of Georgia in 2008 and his occupation and annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The world will only grow safer when it isn’t the Iranians and Russians who set the rules for their regions. It won’t be de-escalation that will save lives after Iran’s unprecedented weekend attack, but a more determined and unmistakable deterrence.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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As IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said at the Atlantic Council yesterday, inflation is going down and global growth is increasing, driven by the United States and many emerging market economies. Also helping are increases in household consumption and business investment—and the easing of supply chain problems.

“We have avoided a global recession and a period of stagflation—as some had predicted,” said Georgieva. “But there are still plenty of things to worry about.”

The problem: Geopolitical risk is rising in a way that’s hard to measure, difficult to manage, and almost impossible to predict.

“Geopolitical tensions increase the risks of fragmentation of the world economy,” she said. “And, as we learned over the past few years, we operate in a world in which we must expect the unexpected.”

For example, this decade has already had a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and a Hamas terrorist attack in 2023, followed by a still-ongoing Gaza war. 

From the moderator’s seat, I asked Georgieva whether she thought this level of geopolitical volatility was the new normal. “I think we have to buckle up for more to come,” she said, “because it is a more diverse world, and it is a world in which we have seen divergence, not just in economic fortunes, but also divergence in objectives.”

So how does the IMF manage that divergence?

Georgieva replied: It does so through the quality of its analysis, through the confidence that emerges from its financial strength, and through its staff’s ability to “quickly shift gears toward what the most important priority is.”

Oh, yes, the IMF also runs “think of the unthinkable” analyses, Georgieva said. The goal of which, she explained, was to “come up with the hypothesis of something that looks, you know, absurd and impossible, and what are we going to do if the impossible becomes a reality.”

Don’t miss the entirety of Georgieva’s compelling speech and discussion, rich with graphics and charts. She shared her insights on issues ranging from how artificial intelligence could reshape economies to why China’s current economic policy course is unsustainable.

China’s leadership is aware of that unsustainability, she noted. How Beijing changes course next is of global consequence, she explained, given that the country is contributing one third of global growth this year. “China making good choices would be good for everybody.”

It starts with tackling manufacturing overcapacity, which Georgieva pointed to as a significant issue. Expect to hear much more about that in the days ahead, as Chinese exports have become a key off-the-agenda topic for the ministers to debate next week.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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The Israeli attack—killing Mohammad Reza Zahedi, reportedly the IRGC Quds Force commander for Syria and Lebanon—was either strikingly bold or recklessly provocative, depending on your perspective. The Biden administration has insisted it had no advance knowledge of the airstrike.

US officials said they had gathered intelligence indicating that Iran would launch a retaliatory attack, although the timing and target remain unknown; reports said that the attack would likely unfold sometime before the end of Ramadan, which Iranians are celebrating today. For its part, Israel has put its forces on high alert and could strike back again at Iran, depending on Tehran’s next move.

It’s tempting to contribute to the breathless speculation, which I’ll do only by reminding readers that Tehran is unlikely to respond in any manner that would trigger a direct Israeli or US attack on its soil. Iran has been the biggest beneficiary of the war thus far, so why would it take unnecessary risk?

Most mystifying about all the reporting following Hamas’ horrifying October 7 terrorist attack on Israel and the six months of bloody war in Gaza that has followed is how little focus has been placed on Iran’s complicity, gains, and thinking.   

“The post-October 7 strategic landscape in the Middle East is one that was largely created by Iran and that plays to its strengths,” writes Brookings’ Suzanne Maloney in a must-read Foreign Affairs essay. “Tehran sees opportunity in chaos. Iranian leaders are exploiting and escalating the war in Gaza to elevate their regime’s stature, weaken and delegitimize Israel, undermine US interests, and further shape the regional order in their favor. The truth is that the Islamic Republic is now in a better position than ever to dominate the Middle East.”     

Given that, it’s worth remembering that the most effective way to address Iran’s regional ambitions, which require little more than continued violence and chaos, is to return as quickly as possible to the path of normalization between Israel and modernizing Arab states—in particular Saudi Arabia. 

As the Atlantic Council’s Jonathan Panikoff writes, “Resolving the conflict would enhance Israel’s security against its true existential threat, Iran, by enabling Israel to normalize relations with almost all of its Arab neighbors, not just a few.”

Perhaps here is the real point: If left unchecked, the perils of despotic regimes like Iran and Russia grow. Failure to act only encourages their common cause, from the Middle East to Ukraine. In the Middle East, China, Russia, and Iran recently held live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Oman. In Ukraine, Chinese and Iranian support for the Russian war effort is expanding.

There’s no wishing away this gathering danger, which only gains momentum from neglect.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, outlined for me the concerning scale of Beijing’s growing support for Moscow’s war effort. “China is dangerous,” the official said, and the administration is determined to show allies evidence of Beijing’s growing role in Russia’s threats to Europeans’ security.

The official said “90 percent of the reason” Russia has been able to sustain the war effort and reconstitute its economy, despite sanctions, is due to a “massive effort” by China that ranges from geospatial assistance for Russian targeting to dual-use optics and propellants used in everything from tanks to missiles.

China-Russia trade soared to $240 billion last year from $108 billion in 2020. Research from my colleagues at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center shows that China now exports more to Russia than the European Union did before the COVID-19 pandemic. With both consumer goods (which make up nearly half of the goods exports) and industrial supplies, China is helping keep Russia’s economy afloat.

This alarm bell has been ringing at the highest levels of the US government over the past week: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent the message to European allies in Brussels, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned officials in Beijing, and President Joe Biden raised the issue directly with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a conversation last Tuesday.

European Union and NATO foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, said Blinken delivered the message in striking, explicit terms. According to the Financial Times, they saw it as a significant shift, not dissimilar to the sharing of intelligence ahead of Russia’s 2022 invasion.

For her part, Yellen said in China this weekend: “We’ve been clear with China that we see Russia as gaining support from goods that Chinese firms are supplying to Russia . . . They understand how serious an issue that is to us.”

To drive her point home, the US Treasury followed Yellen’s Friday and Saturday discussions by warning of “significant consequences” if Chinese companies provided “material support for Russia’s war against Ukraine,” an unusually sharp message.

Administration officials hope that forcefully and publicly pushing back on China, in concert with allies, will cause Beijing to think twice about continuing to aid Moscow, prompt allies to apply new pressures, and buy time for more Western arms to arrive to Ukraine. The Biden administration is growing increasingly concerned that delayed US support for Ukraine—combined with increased support for Russia from China, Iran, and North Korea—could result in a Russian offensive this summer that endangers major cities, perhaps even Kyiv.  

Administration officials believe that Russia remains vulnerable if Kyiv gets the military and economic support it needs, but that the coming months will be increasingly perilous without that support.

The worst period could come just as NATO leaders convene in Washington in July for their seventy-fifth anniversary summit, just days ahead of the Republican and Democratic party conventions. Not much time remains to ensure that Russia, with the growing support of China, does not spoil the Alliance’s celebration.    

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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All of them had experienced the horrors of World War II, and a great many of them also personally knew the ravages of World War I. So they understood the urgency of their moment.

That deficit of memory is the greatest peril of 2024. It is one that has resulted in allied dithering and insufficient measures to counter Russian despot Vladimir Putin and his like-minded partners in China, Iran, North Korea, and elsewhere.     

One cannot change the historical experience of today’s NATO leaders and their electorates. Even President Joe Biden, now age eighty-one, was only two years old when Germany surrendered in May 1945 and Japan followed in September.  The best one can do today is ask them to listen to President Harry S. Truman’s address on the occasion of the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4, 1949, then hope they heed its warnings.

They can read it here, listen to it here in full, or watch an excerpt here.

“Twice in recent years, nations have felt the sickening blow of unprovoked aggression,” Truman said. “Our peoples, to whom our governments are responsible, demand that these things shall not happen again. We are determined that they shall not happen again.”

That founding treaty was signed by just twelve nations then, but it continues to be the north star document for NATO’s thirty-two members now, with Finland and Sweden the latest to join.

“This treaty is a simple document,” Truman said, likening it to a homeowners’ agreement to protect the neighborhood. Its signatories agreed to “maintain friendly relations and economic cooperation with one another, to consult together whenever the territory or independence of any of them is threatened, and to come to the aid of any one of them who may be attacked.”

Continued Truman, “It is a simple document, but if it had existed in 1914 and in 1939, supported by the nations who are represented here today, I believe it would have prevented the acts of aggression which led to two world wars.”

Apply that logic now. With the world facing the greatest threat to global order since the 1930s, the Alliance must do everything in its power to defend Ukraine and, as soon as the seventy-fifth anniversary NATO Summit in Washington this July, provide Ukraine an accelerated path to Alliance membership.

History has taught that the risks of inaction are greater than those of action. We have learned that appeased dictators grow more dangerous.

It was fitting that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken participated this week as an eight-foot bronze statue of Truman was unveiled in Brussels at the residence of the US ambassador to NATO.

Back in 1949, Truman said this, “We do not believe that there are blind tides of history which sweep men one way or another. In our own time, we have seen brave men overcome obstacles that seemed insurmountable and forces that seemed overwhelming. Men with courage and vision can still determine their own destiny.”

The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Biden and his allies can best mark this NATO anniversary by summoning memory, sustaining the Alliance, and countering today’s despots.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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Among them, you’ll find the courageous, the indomitable, and the committed.     

Count Alexei Navalny, the lawyer and opposition leader who died in prison a little more than a month ago at age forty-seven, in the first category. The Ukrainian people, now into their third year of a criminal full-scale war, represent indomitable resistance to murderous, territorial expansion.

Never forget, however, the armies of the committed, individuals whose lives and work run up against autocratic whim, individuals who collectively form the civil society that fuels democracy and threatens despots.

The Wall Street Journal honored one such individual, thirty-two-year-old Evan Gershkovich, in dramatic fashion today. It is the first anniversary of Russia’s imprisonment of Gershkovich, an accredited reporter who stands falsely accused of espionage. His value to Russian President Vladimir Putin is as a hostage for eventual trade—and as a deterrent to Western media, many of which have pulled their reporters from Russia or severely limited their work.

The five-column, page-one, all-caps headline read “ONE YEAR STOLEN: HIS STORY SHOULD BE HERE.” Beneath it, down most of the page and across five full columns, is only white space, a monument to the buoyant spirit of Gershkovich and, of course, so many others. As another story that anchored the bottom of the page reports, “Authoritarians Threaten Journalists Around Globe.”

“His Story Should Be Here”

Today’s front page of The Wall Street Journal.

One year stolen. We will not rest until Evan Gershkovich is free.#IStandWithEvan pic.twitter.com/SVsezqwzS7

— WSJ Communications (@WSJPR) March 29, 2024

Today’s edition makes for an inspiration and a collector’s item for all those who love freedom. Perhaps more important, don’t miss the investigative page-one story from yesterday’s edition. It reported on Oval Office talks between US President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz aimed at freeing Evan as part of a prisoner swap that would have included Navalny in exchange for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hit man serving a life sentence in Germany.

One week after that meeting, word of which reached the Kremlin through an intermediary, Navalny died of what only the most cynical would call natural causes.

“It happens,” Putin remarked to reporters the night after Russia’s presidential election. “There is nothing you can do about it. It’s life.”

I spent a quarter of a century working for the Wall Street Journal, much of it reporting from the front lines of freedom, including Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Beijing, Kabul, Beirut, Baghdad, and Panama City. Everything I learned tells me this: Forgetting Evan would be as short-sighted as abandoning Ukraine.

The forces of good won the Cold War because of a consistent US and allied effort. That’s precisely what’s lacking now, in the face of a gathering threat. The United States and its partners have the tools to build upon the Cold War’s victory, but it’s not yet clear they have the will.

One can only hope the Wall Street Journal can fill that white space soon with more uplifting stories about the courageous, the indomitable, and the committed. The future depends on it.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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What’s surprising is that the same House Republican minority that has blocked Ukraine funding for more than five months hasn’t made this connection. What might help this group is a close reading of the recently released “Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community”—and Peggy Noonan’s latest Wall Street Journal column.

News reports have focused public attention on the new intelligence report primarily because of its assessment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “viability as a leader” as being “in jeopardy.” Even more important, however, are the links it draws between regional conflicts in Europe and the Middle East and our unfolding, generational contest with China to shape the future.

“During the next year,” the assessment explains, “the United States faces an increasingly fragile global order strained by accelerating strategic competition among major powers, more intense and unpredictable transnational challenges, and multiple regional conflicts with far-reaching implications.”

Regarding Beijing, the assessment underscores China’s growing efforts online, resembling the long-standing Moscow playbook, “to exploit perceived US societal divisions . . . for influence operations.” That includes experimentation with artificial intelligence. TikTok accounts run by a Chinese government propaganda arm “reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the US midterm election cycle in 2022,” it notes, something the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab was the first to show through an open-source investigation.

In a valuable new report, the Atlantic Council’s own analysts stopped short of calling for a breakup or ban of TikTok as a means of addressing the platform’s threats to US national security. “TikTok: Hate the Game, Not the Player” argues that an exclusive focus on the Chinese app overlooks “broader security vulnerabilities in the US information ecosystem.”

Peggy Noonan makes a compelling case for why the United States should nevertheless target TikTok. “It uses algorithms to suck up information about America’s 170 million users, giving it the potential to create dossiers,” she writes. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray, Noonan adds, has warned that China “has the ability to control software on millions of devices in the US.”

That brings me to Ukraine.

It’s difficult to gather hard evidence to illustrate how the Chinese government is deploying the TikTok weapon, yet the existing and potential dangers were sufficient to prompt a bipartisan House vote against it of 352-65, unifying members of Congress such as Democrat Nancy Pelosi and Republican Elise Stefanik, who are more often poles apart.

By comparison, the evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s murderous intentions is incontestable. Russian forces are advancing, and US dithering is costing Ukrainian lives. It’s also encouraging an increasingly close autocratic partnership built on the shared belief that now is the moment to test US and Western staying power and resolve.

“Russia’s strengthening ties with China, Iran, and North Korea to bolster its defense production and economy are a major challenge for the West and its partners,” says the new report by the US intelligence community. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that Putin will visit Chinese leader Xi Jinping in May, building upon what he has called their “no limits” partnership.

Weeks ago, a large Senate majority voted in favor of an aid package that would bring $60 billion in aid to Ukraine alongside support for Israel and Taiwan. A similar House majority would support that, but thus far a small Republican minority in the lower chamber has blocked a vote. This needs to be fixed quickly either by Speaker Mike Johnson permitting a floor vote, or through a discharge petition signed by a bipartisan majority.

With the stakes of such a historic nature, the United States and its allies should address both Russia’s military threats, with Chinese support, and Chinese influence operations, with Russian inspiration.

It’s not one or the other—but both. And now.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Break up TikTok, arm Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław “Radek” Sikorski, speaking yesterday at the Atlantic Council, appealed to US House Speaker Mike Johnson to “let democracy take its course” and bring to a vote the Senate’s bill that would bring more than sixty billion dollars in crucially needed military and financial aid to Ukraine.

“I’d like him to know that the whole world is watching what he would do,” said Sikorski. “And if this supplemental were not to pass and Ukraine were to suffer reversals on the battlefield, it will be his responsibility.”

Sikorski spoke with a clarity that cut through the sometimes mushy rhetoric of Washington that fails to connect the despotic dots that some US lawmakers ignore at our peril. Having grown up in a Poland under Soviet communist rule, Sikorski sees the battle as one against a new array of autocrats.

“The murderous invasion of Ukraine is aided and abetted by a crime family of dictators from Iran [and] North Korea,” Sikorski said, “but also lauded by, among others, those ruling Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, in turn, helps his fellow despots fuel chaos in the Middle East, Asia, and here on [the US] southern border. He welcomes Hamas in Moscow, and his propaganda supports those terrorists.”

He continued: “China helps Russia economically, and in turn benefits from cheap oil and gas that Putin is selling to fund his war machine. They all desire to destroy the stability of America and to create victory where it is not deserved.”

Read every word of his powerful speech, as it not only lays out the historic stakes; it also delivers the solution and explains why providing Ukraine financing now is a tremendous bargain for a US defense budget that has seldom spent so effectively.

Sikorski reported that the United States has contributed roughly five percent of its annual defense budget to security assistance for Ukraine, “and with that money, Ukraine has already managed to destroy Putin’s combat capacity by 50 percent—without any American troops firing a single shot. A truly stunning return on investment.”

According to Sikorski, most of that investment is spent in the United States: “Up to 90 percent goes directly to [creating] American jobs on American soil,” he cited, explaining that newly made equipment in the United States replaces stockpiles of older US weaponry being sent to Ukraine.

Most important is the vision Sikorski lays out for “the path to security in the twenty-first century,” where the combined scale of investment in security across the Atlantic “dwarfs” what Putin and other dictators can summon. He concedes Europe had been slow to spend sufficiently, but that it has turned a corner—and has responded to US criticism.

The bottom line from Sikorski:

“Whether we want it or not, Putin’s decision to start the biggest war in Europe since the defeat of Nazi Germany has already changed the course of history. It is up to us to decide if we want to shape that course ourselves, or let it be shaped by others—in Moscow, Tehran, or Beijing.”

Last weekend, Sikorski spoke on CNN with Fareed Zakaria on how, during his childhood in a small village in Poland, he learned from Voice of America about the benefits of freedom and the oppression of what he called his Soviet colony of Poland. Now, this Voice of Poland is reminding Americans of their global purpose and of why “helping Ukraine by defeating Putin is the right thing to do in the broadest sense of the word.”

“It is morally sound, strategically wise, militarily justified, and economically beneficial,” he said. “Now is the moment to act. Let’s get this done.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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It was then that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, meeting with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and their French Republican and Italian fascist counterparts, signed off on the Third Reich’s annexation of the Western part of Czechoslovakia (which the Germans called Sudetenland), naively hoping that would allow them to avoid a larger European war.

With the two-year mark of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine coming up this week—and with his ongoing war and occupation of sovereign Ukrainian territory—it’s worth reflecting on the dynamics behind the 1938 Munich Agreement and Chamberlain’s subsequent “Peace for Our Time” speech, as they may hold lessons for US lawmakers in the House of Representatives who continue to balk at approving urgently needed support for Ukraine after four months of dithering in Congress.

Hitler had threatened to unleash a European war unless the leaders of Britain, France, and Italy agreed to German annexation of the Sudetenland, a border region with an ethnic German majority. “My good friends,” Chamberlain said in a statement in front of 10 Downing Street, “for the second time in our history, a British prime minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is a peace for our time . . . Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”

Echoes of history

There are plenty of differences between then and now, but one shouldn’t overlook the striking similarities.

First, Hitler had annexed German-speaking Austria in March 1938, and he was determined to swallow up the German-speaking Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia next. Today, Putin has already occupied and annexed portions of Ukraine with sizable numbers of Russian speakers—areas that he considers to be his property: Crimea, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Donetsk. 

Hitler wrote at length about his warped historic, genetic, and anti-Semitic notions in Mein Kampf, providing a copy of his national best-seller to every young marrying couple in Third Reich Germany. By comparison, Putin most recently shared his own twisted justifications for denying Ukrainian statehood, dating back to the ninth century, with American media personality Tucker Carlson—not such a bizarre vehicle if one considers Carlson’s influence on a Republican minority in the House that is currently standing in the way of approving additional aid for Ukraine.

And just as in 1938, when the focus of debate was on the future of Czechoslovakia and when commentaries praised the country’s bravery and resilience, so too now is the focus on Ukraine. Back then, the more appropriate focus should have been on the dictator responsible for the threat and on how to stop him. Today, the more appropriate focus is no different.

One more similarity between 1938 and today is the gradual alignment of authoritarian powers. Shortly after Chamberlain’s infamous Munich Agreement, a fascist-nationalist German-Italian-Japanese axis of nations emerged. Today, European and US leaders alike have observed an increasingly close alignment among Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean authoritarian leaders.

A morose Munich

The Munich Security Conference this week, which marked the convening’s sixtieth anniversary, is as good a measure of the transatlantic zeitgeist as any.

Yet four news events that unfolded outside of Munich soured the mood: Former US President Donald Trump’s campaign trail statement that he would let Russians “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies not paying enough for defense; the death in prison of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny; the biggest Russian battlefield victory in months in the Ukrainian city of Avdiivka; and leaked reports of Moscow’s plans to develop a nuclear space weapon, which the Atlantic Council’s John Cookson suggested could be a “Sputnuke” moment.  

On Trump’s statement, a range of Republican supporters of Trump in Munich were at pains to explain why their presidential candidate should be taken seriously but not literally, as US military support for Ukraine, Poland, and NATO increased during his administration. Their argument that Trump simply wants Europeans to carry more of their own defense still left allies worried that they are in for a long period of US unpredictability.

Regarding Navalny, his wife Yulia (who was in Munich to speak on his behalf) provided a courageous first response to reports of his death, accusing Putin of killing him and vowing that the Russian dictator would pay for it. Some long-time Munich conference participants, who heard Putin’s initial declaration of war on the West there in 2007, speculated that he might well have timed Navalny’s death with the Munich gathering to send an unmistakable message of the West’s powerlessness to stop such outrages.

“It sounds like Putin might have done it for our benefit,” said Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski. “I’m not prone to conspiracy theory, but I understand conspiracy practice.”

It is impossible not to link Russian advances in Ukraine with the long delay in US congressional support for new weapons deliveries, as the outgunned and outmanned Ukrainians struggle to hold the line against Russian forces commanded by Putin, who is willing to suffer outsized casualties. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that in the battle for Avdiivka, Russia’s losses were seven times those of Ukraine.

If “Ukraine is left alone, Russia will destroy us,” Zelenskyy told the Munich conference. “If we don’t act now, Putin will succeed in turning the next few years into a catastrophe—not only for Ukraine but for others as well.”

On “Sputnuke,” the consensus in Munich was a resigned European shrug as Russia marches on, develops asymmetric advanced weaponry that could take down European communications in space, and shifts to a war footing that Europe’s democracies will never match.

Writing for the Washington Post, David Ignatius pointed out Russia’s motivation for developing such weaponry: “Ironically, it’s the Ukraine conflict—and the role of space systems in helping Kyiv survive the initial Russian onslaught in 2022—that likely triggered Russia to rush development of its new space tactics.”

Four causes for concern

The concerns and fears at Munich this year, which far overwhelmed rare voices of optimism, broke down into four mutually reinforcing categories.  

The first fear was about Russia’s resilience and Putin’s increasing confidence, which contributed to a growing conviction that Russia will remain a problem for the West for some years to come.

The second concern stemmed from the possibility that Ukraine might lose the war, with a growing danger that it could be overwhelmed by Russian military mass, and from an assessment of the repercussions of that scenario most immediately for other former Soviet bloc states, from Poland to the Baltics, but also globally, from the United States to the Middle East and Asia.

The third concern, one that pervaded almost every conversation at the conference this weekend, was about the potential for a reduced US commitment not only to Ukraine but also to the nearly eighty-year-old transatlantic bond, particularly should Trump be elected in November.

The fourth fear, closely connected to the third, was that Europe still lacks the military industrial capacity and the political will to defend itself, let alone defend Ukraine. Though Europe is ramping up its defense industrial production and increasing its spending, it would take years for European countries to replace US capacity, if they ever could.

The past three Munich Security Conferences have all focused on Ukraine, and each year the conventional wisdom has missed the mark. One can only hope that is true again.

In 2022, there were growing concerns that Putin would invade Ukraine, which did happen, but there was also a consensus that Ukraine would be overrun within days by such a military offensive. In 2023, the mood was more positive, with many voices believing that Ukraine’s remarkable performance in the previous year could lead to a stunning counteroffensive that would help Kyiv regain territory occupied by Russia.  

The collective view is that 2024 will be a moment of truth in Ukraine. Without US congressional approval for additional support soon, the thinking goes, the odds are that Russia will continue to make gains and that some could be dramatic by the time of the seventy-fifth NATO Summit in July in Washington, DC—just ahead of US elections.

It is worth remembering the calls of “shame” from the House of Commons galleries, as Chamberlain defended his Munich arrangements in 1938. “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” he answered back. “Let those who have hang their heads.”

Not too late—yet

It’s worth reading what Chamberlain said after returning from Munich as a warning to all who are tempted to sell Ukraine short, underestimate Putin and other emerging despots, and retreat into the most dangerous of all responses: naive complacency.

“The path which leads to appeasement is long and bristles with obstacles,” said Chamberlain. “The question of Czechoslovakia is the latest and perhaps the most dangerous. Now that we have got past it, I feel it may be possible to make further progress along the road to sanity.”

There is an oft-repeated quote that says “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” 

It’s not too late for the US House of Representatives to change course, to bring a vote on a Senate bill providing Ukraine aid to the floor, and to provide Ukraine the support it urgently needs to do the free world’s bidding against Putin. Should this fail, Europe would need to greatly accelerate its ramp-up of defense production and its support for Ukraine.

The lesson of Munich, then and now, is that the cost of countering a despot will only grow the longer democracies wait to do so. As Sikorski said in Munich, “I have more doubts about us than the Ukrainians.” If the United States fails to step up to the moment this year, he said, “it could affect the national-security calculations of every country on Earth. We are at a dramatic moment, one of terrible foreboding.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Why Russia Killed Navalny

Anne Applebaum | THE ATLANTIC

In this powerful reflection on Alexei Navalny’s life, Anne Applebaum argues that the specific details of his death “don’t matter,” whether he was murdered or died from months of ill health, because “the Russian state killed him,” she writes. “Putin killed him—because of his political success, because of his ability to reach people with the truth, and because of his talent for breaking through the fog of propaganda that now blinds his countrymen, and some of ours as well.”

Despite Navalny’s death, Applebaum remains optimistic. “Even behind bars Navalny was a real threat to Putin because he was living proof that courage is possible, that truth exists, that Russia could be a different kind of country,” she writes. “For a dictator who survives thanks to lies and violence, that kind of challenge was intolerable. Now Putin will be forced to fight against Navalny’s memory, and that is a battle he will never win.” Read more →

#2 Opinion: Is This a Sputnik Moment?

Kari A. Bingen and Heather W. Williams | NEW YORK TIMES

In this compelling analysis, Kari Bingen and Heather Williams evaluate the parallels between Thursday’s announcement of a new Russian antisatellite capability, suspected of being a space-based nuclear weapon, and the 1957 launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik.

“If it is what the White House suggests, we may now find ourselves facing this generation’s Sputnik moment,” they write. “In 1957, when the former Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite and shocked Americans, the Eisenhower administration had known about the Soviets’ satellite capabilities for almost two years. Now that we know what Russia is planning, the United States cannot afford to be slow to act.” Read more →

#3 ‘The war has become the background of life’—Andrey Kurkov on Ukraine two years on

Andrey Kurkov | FINANCIAL TIMES

Writing in the Financial Times, Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov presents a striking portrait of Ukrainian life as Russia’s war continues.  

“Ukrainians may be responding to journalists less optimistically than they did a year ago, but there is no pessimism either,” Kurkov writes. “The time has come for realism—an understanding that this war will last for a long time, that we must learn to live with it. The effort to keep on ‘keeping on’ that has been a form of resistance for civilians since the all-out invasion now requires a little more energy. For those Ukrainians who are not at the front, the war has become the background of life, and the daily air raid alerts are noted alongside the weather forecast.”

Kurkov’s piece also serves as a warning that if Western support does not come through, life in Ukraine may stop altogether. Read more →

#4 The Arsenal of Autocracy

Jonathan Corrado and Markus Garlauskas | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Read every word of this smart analysis by the Korea Society’s Jonathan Corrado and the Atlantic Council’s Markus Garlauskas on why North Korea continues to be a massive threat to the United States and global security, especially in moments of global upheaval.

“As wars rage in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, Pyongyang has seized its opportunity to spread death and destruction through arms sales,” Corrado and Garlauskas write. “Although the Kim regime has been systematically isolated from the international community, regularly denies that it is supplying weapons overseas, and is prohibited by UN Security Council resolutions from buying or selling various arms, it has nonetheless become a de facto arsenal for the United States’ adversaries.”

To stop this trade, they argue, “the United States must mobilize a coalition to increase international awareness of the scale of the problem, and strengthen detection, oversight, and sanctions compliance. If these steps are not taken, then North Korea will be able to finance further weapons testing and development, gain access to dangerous new technologies, launder its ill-gotten profits, and spread mayhem and destruction.” Read more →

#5 Remarks by President Biden on the Reported Death of Aleksey Navalny

Joe Biden | THE WHITE HOUSE

Speaking shortly after reports of Alexei Navalny’s death, US President Joe Biden linked the brutality Navalny faced to Russia’s continued assault on Ukraine and the United States’ continuing failure to provide urgently needed military and financial support. 

“What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin’s brutality,” Biden said. “No one should be fooled—not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world. Putin does not only target [the] citizens of other countries, as we’ve seen what’s going on in Ukraine right now, he also inflicts terrible crimes on his own people.”

Biden addressed US responsibility to continue Navalny’s fight: “This tragedy reminds us of the stakes of this moment. We have to provide the funding so Ukraine can keep defending itself against Putin’s vicious onslaughts and war crimes.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

The post Dispatch from Munich: The lessons of appeasement for US lawmakers withholding support for Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

To lose there—or even to settle for stalemate—would have influence on all other theaters. If Russia’s Vladimir Putin prevails, then China, Iran, North Korea, and others would accelerate their efforts to shift regional and global orders to their benefit. The failure of the countries supporting Ukraine, despite having a combined gross domestic product that is twenty-five times that of Russia, would deliver a generational wallop.

In that context, today’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by the Atlantic Council’s Stephen Hadley (a former US national security advisor) and Matthew Kroenig is a must-read for its diagnosis but most of all for its prescribed treatment.

“The war in Ukraine has reached a critical point,” they write. “The goal remains for it to emerge as an independent, prosperous country within internationally recognized borders and able to defend itself. That will require accelerating the delivery of advanced weapons and technology and pursuing a new military and diplomatic strategy to defend Ukrainian territory, increase Ukraine’s defense production, enhance its air defenses, and step up attacks against Russia’s supply lines and vulnerable military position in Crimea.”

They continue: “If the Biden administration embraces this approach, it could address congressional reluctance to provide more aid to Ukraine absent a clear strategy.”

One can only hope.

History will record that the Biden administration, fearing Putin’s potential nuclear escalation, adopted a policy of self-deterrence in 2022 and 2023, withholding the quality and quantity of weaponry that might have decisively shifted Putin’s war in Ukraine’s favor before his troops could dig in. Now, a rogue group of myopic House Republicans has blocked weapons deliveries at a time when Kyiv most needs them. (Here, all praise for the European Union in approving its own $54 billion Ukraine funding package last Thursday, overcoming its own rogue element, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.)

The Hadley-Kroenig remedy is a smart one, as Russia’s war nears its second anniversary later this month. It deserves close reading by the Biden administration and members of Congress. The real success, however, can only come if US leaders across ideological lines remind Americans of history’s enduring lesson: dithering before despots can only produce disaster.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post The Ukraine imperative for global security appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“Tell me how this ends,” Ignatius asked, borrowing the question that General David Petraeus posed at the outset of the Iraq War.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani had just arrived in Washington from Paris, where he had spent the weekend with US Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns and his Israeli and Egyptian counterparts.

He told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, who was conducting the interview alongside Ignatius, that she was “well-informed” in saying that the parties had hammered out a framework through which the remaining hundred hostages would be released—women and children first—in exchange for a phased pause in the fighting. This would continue in phases, with aid flowing into Gaza as well.

What’s far from clear is whether Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, apparently deep underground somewhere in Gaza, will accept the plan. Hamas previously demanded a permanent and immediate ceasefire for any of the hostages to be released.

Al-Thani sounded hopeful, saying Hamas had moved on from that absolutist demand and that he was relaying the proposal to them, hoping “to get them to a place where they engage positively and constructively in the process, because we think that in today’s world… that’s the only game in town now.”

It was a rare moment to hear the determined but soft-spoken Al-Thani on the record. He is known for his leadership in conflict mediation, including the release of more than a hundred hostages held by Hamas, a US-Iran prisoner exchange, the release of ten American hostages in Venezuela, and the freeing of Ukrainian children from Russia. (You can watch the full interview here or read the transcript here.)

Among those with the most at stake in Al-Thani’s success are the hostage families, a few of which joined our audience after being represented in a meeting earlier in the day with the prime minister. Their sons, among as many as six Americans being held hostage, include Edan Alexander, a twenty-year-old recent high school graduate from New Jersey; Omer Neutra, a twenty-two-year-old sports team captain from Long Island, New York; and Itay Chen, a nineteen-year-old former professional basketball player, whose family is also from New York.

As for Ignatius’s question of how this all ends, including how the Middle East might look in five years, Al-Thani conceded that there is a path that could lead to an even bigger war, but the opposite could also be true. The success of his mediation will be a leading indicator of what is possible.

“Just picture this,” he said. “If we can put an end [to] this conflict that’s been lasting for decades, the entire face of the region will change.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post The Qatari prime minister on what this weekend’s hostage negotiations say about the future of the Middle East appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What I’ve tried to do in this column is find the best ways to understand the perils and (where possible) provide the best ideas for solutions. If you’re in search of more works of diagnosis—especially ones with rich historical perspective—read every word of Hal Brands’s “The Next Global War,” hot off the press at Foreign Affairs.

He usefully looks back on the runup to World War II, long before US involvement in that conflict, which saw the “aggregation of three regional crises: Japan’s rampage in China and the Asia-Pacific; Italy’s bid for empire in Africa and the Mediterranean; and Germany’s push for hegemony in Europe and beyond.”

Fast forward to today.

We also face three perilous regional challenges and autocratic powers who are growing dangerously close to each other, also unified mostly by their determination to blow up the status quo. China wants to replace the United States as the leading global power and push it out of the western Pacific; meanwhile, Russia wants to retake territory and influence lost with Soviet collapse, most immediately in Ukraine. In the Middle East, Iran and its proxies (among them Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah) are bent on the annihilation of Israel and are struggling for regional dominance against Gulf monarchies and the United States. This struggle was on display most recently when an Iran-backed militant group launched a drone attack on a US base in Jordan this weekend, killing three US troops and injuring dozens.

“Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran,” writes Brands, “are the new ‘have not’ powers, struggling against the ‘haves’: Washington and its allies.”

Also in an echo of the present, the fascist countries that eventually teamed up as the Axis powers during World War II at first “had little in common except illiberal governance and a desire to shatter the status quo.” In 1937, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt called what was unfolding, long before Washington joined the war, an “epidemic of world lawlessness.”

Brands is a sophisticated thinker, and he draws nuanced comparisons—instead of leaping to conclusions. “But thinking through the nightmare scenario is still worthwhile,” he writes, “since the world could be as little as one mishandled crisis away from pervasive Eurasian conflict—and because the United States is so unprepared for this eventuality.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post The United States is unprepared for this nightmare scenario appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“Some foreign governments are increasingly factoring into their relationship with the United States what may come to be known as the ‘Trump put’—delaying choices in the expectation they will be able to negotiate better deals with Washington a year from now because Trump will effectively establish a floor on how bad things can get for them,” writes Allison in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs.

At the top of this list of foreign officials strategically watching the upcoming US election is Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is calculating that his chances in the Ukraine war (which Trump has promised to end “in one day”) could improve dramatically. That expectation drives Putin to play for stalemate this year while wagering on European and American fatigue in addition to Trump’s election, which might set the Russian leader up for victory thereafter.

“Others, by contrast,” writes Allison, “are beginning to search for what might be called a ‘Trump hedge’—analyzing the ways in which his return will likely leave them with worse options and preparing accordingly.”

Count in this camp Ukraine and its European NATO supporters. There’s a healthy side to this, as European countries are looking for better ways to defend Ukraine and themselves.

The downside? Trump’s campaign website calls for “fundamentally reevaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission,” so existing NATO members and new ones—Finland and soon Sweden—may find alliance security guarantees less secure.

Look around the world, and you’ll find dozens of examples of the Trump hedge and put—from climate-related issues to trade matters, where the former president describes himself as “the Tariff Man,” promising to impose a ten percent duty on all imports.

“This year promises to be a year of danger as countries around the world watch US politics with a combination of disbelief, fascination, horror, and hope,” writes Allison.

What he doesn’t write is that perhaps never in the past have the United States’ allies and adversaries begun to hedge and put this far ahead of our elections. The consistency of US foreign policy across the Cold War years is becoming a thing of the past.

What one national leader in Davos told me he misses most regarding relations with the United States is the degree of predictability needed to make his country’s own policies. “It’s not good or bad,” he said, “it’s just the reality that is our starting point.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post How the prospect of a second Trump presidency is already shaping geopolitics appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Georgieva reminded a select group of global political, business, and civil society leaders of Keynes’ words from a 1930 essay, written against the backdrop of the Great Depression, the rise of communism and fascism, and national and international despair (the meeting was off-record, but Georgieva approved this to be shared publicly):

“I predict that both of the two opposed errors of pessimism which now make so much noise in the world will be proved wrong over time: the pessimism of the revolutionaries who think that things are so bad that nothing can save us but violent change, and the pessimism of the reactionaries who consider the balance of our economic and social life so precarious that we must risk no experiments.” 

For argument’s sake, let’s consider as today’s “revolutionary pessimists” Russian President Vladimir Putin, his enablers in Beijing, and his authoritarian brethren in North Korea and Iran—plus Tehran’s Mideast proxies Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah. Pursuing violent change is their calling card.

Standing opposite them are countries Keynes might classify as the risk-averse “pessimistic reactionaries”: the United States, Europe, and other global forces for good. Fearing Russian escalation, they haven’t been sufficiently bold in providing Ukraine the scale or nature of military support it needs to win. In the Mideast and beyond, they have thus failed to develop concepts or marshal coalitions equal to what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called “the greatest risk to global order” since World War II.

A new era dawning

My own case for geopolitical optimism, drawn from my week in Davos, starts with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s statement here that “we’re in the early years of a new era,” and that the United States and its global partners have all the tools to shape it, if only they can summon common cause and political will.

At such times of shifting geopolitical tectonic plates, levels of volatility are typically matched by the potential to leverage unfolding crises and challenges to steer history. Our times are no exception. It’s leadership that makes the difference—and it will be so again.

On that score, it’s worth reflecting on the first years of a new era that became known as the Cold War, from the end of World War II in 1945 to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was relative US consistency of action alongside allies, and prudent but bold action, that allowed the United States and United Kingdom to break the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948, to keep West Berlin free despite the Berlin Wall’s construction in 1961, and finally to avoid nuclear war over Cuba in 1962.

In those same years, Washington alongside its partners built the transatlantic, European, and global institutions that would bring the world decades of expanding democracy and prosperity, as well as nearly eighty years without major-power conflict. 

Sullivan defined our now-unfolding, post-Cold War era as one that is “marked by a simple thing to say but a very complex reality, which is strategic competition in an age of interdependence.” It’s not as catchy as “the Cold War,” and it’s far more complex, but it will be no less decisive.

“We’re at the start of something new,” said Sullivan. “We have the capacity to shape what it looks like. . . We have the tools to do it. The question is, are we prepared to put those to work? That is a question of political will within our countries and then across our countries. And those who are working to summon that political will need to band together to produce a common, coherent response to the great challenges that we face in 2024.”

Those 2024 geopolitical challenges are to head off the political threats to US and European military and economic support for Ukraine; to rapidly return the Mideast from war to “regionalizing” security efforts and expanding normalization with Israel; and to further stabilize relations with China so as to allow a fierce competition for the global future, but one that is free of violent conflict.

In Davos, another geopolitical uncertainty dominated a great many conversations, given the crucial nature of US leadership, and that was how elections this November will contribute to the United States’ appetite and capability to galvanize common cause—as it did after World War II but failed to do after World War I (with disastrous consequences).

Momentum for Ukraine

On geopolitics, the danger in 2024 is that American, European, and Ukrainian fatigue—combined with unexpected Russian resilience in the face of economic sanctions and some 350,000 casualties—would dramatically reduce military and economic support for Kyiv. That, in turn, would favor Putin and all the global bad actors he represents, who would be encouraged by the failure of Western resolve.

For me, one of the great surprises of Davos week was a positive shift in pro-Kyiv momentum. Both US and European politicians assured Ukrainians that their legislatures in the coming days would overcome minority opposition—from Hungary’s Viktor Orbán in Europe and a Republican minority in the US House—to funding packages for Ukraine that together would exceed $100 billion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy probably got the biggest ovation here, having substituted a black outfit for his usual olive fatigues. Applause meters don’t win wars, but he had his audience when he said of Putin, “Regimes like his exist as long as they wage wars. And we—we all in the free world—exist as long as we can defend ourselves.”

Without naming countries, he urged those who had held back certain weapons systems because they feared Putin’s response to see now that the greater risk is in failing to give Ukraine what it needs to prevail. “Because of ‘don’t escalate,’” he said, “time was lost. The lives of many of our most experienced warriors, who fought since 2014, were lost. Some opportunities were lost.”

All over town, US, European, and Ukrainian officials pushed back on the narrative that Ukraine wasn’t making progress and Putin was gaining. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stressed that Ukraine had retaken half of the territory Russia had gained, that it had opened the Black Sea and pushed back the Russian navy, and that Russia was weaker economically, diplomatically, and militarily (having lost half of its conventional capability as of last summer). While Putin wanted to divide NATO, he instead had unified it and enlarged it to Finland and soon Sweden. Ukraine in December began its European Union (EU) membership talks.

There is also growing political support from both sides of the Atlantic for providing Russia’s $300 billion of frozen assets to Ukraine. Given that the combined gross domestic products and defense budgets of Ukraine’s supporters are many times larger than Russia’s, with the right political will, it would not be difficult over time to prevail over Moscow.

Hidden Mideast opportunities

The source of my contrarian Mideast optimism—even amid this week’s US strikes on the Houthis and a Pakistani-Iranian exchange of military blows—comes from the lack of any good alternative. One American business leader, with a long history in the Middle East, told me he thought Israel and its neighbors had a shot at a comprehensive peace deal and regional security arrangement that could endure for a century.    

Israelis will come to recognize that even if they can eradicate Hamas, they won’t ever be secure without a regional security agreement and expanded normalization with their Arab neighbors, building upon the Abraham Accords. And that won’t be possible without a path-certain to a Palestinian state.

“You now have something you didn’t have before,” Blinken told the New York Times’ Tom Friedman on stage here, “and that is Arab countries and Muslim countries even beyond the region that are prepared to have a relationship with Israel in terms of its integration, its normalization, its security, that they were never prepared to have before. . . to make the necessary commitments and guarantees, so that Israel is not only integrated but it can feel secure.”

Despite the growing regional uproar against Israel’s Gaza war, which has resulted in more than twenty thousand Palestinian deaths, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan told the World Economic Forum that his country remains committed to normalization with clear terms and commitment to a Palestinian state. 

Stabilizing relations with China

On China-US relations, the pessimists fear the recently stabilized relationship will inevitably veer off the rails, given the fundamental differences between Washington and Beijing. The goal here must be to give the short-term gains of the past year, culminating in the Joe Biden-Xi Jinping meeting in San Francisco, a more lasting nature that will allow the fundamental strengths of the United States and its partners to win out over time.

Here Blinken underscored the greater US “position of strength” through its domestic investments (such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act), the reenergizing of partnerships and alliances (the Quad and South Korean-Japanese-US relations), and a greater convergence with other countries—particularly in Europe—in recognizing the perils posed by China.

The Trump question

On the issue of the US election, the Davos consensus (drawn from my own conversations and several requests to raise hands during meetings to indicate opinion) was that former President Donald Trump would win and that would be a bad thing for the historic moment. It was only toward week’s end that Europeans’ fear about being left alone to deal with Putin turned toward a more reasonable faith in American democracy and in their own need to rise to the historic challenge.        

“We should refrain from treating elections, whether in Europe or in the US, as a source of insecurity and instability, as a problem,” Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg said, according to Politico. “Elections are the very heart of our democratic system.”

Said EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, who served three terms as Latvian prime minister, “We need to ramp up our own capabilities. We need to clearly be at a much higher level of preparedness as regards military capabilities but also as regards economic security and economic resilience.”

Returning to Keynes, what gives me concern is that his essay came at the front end of a decade that ended catastrophically: with World War II and the Holocaust. It was only after seeing those horrors that the United States and its partners rose to create the institutions and invent the rules-based order that produced so much peace and prosperity for decades thereafter.

For the case for optimism to succeed, those faced with the weightiest decisions must recognize the long-term consequences of inaction. The failure to take greater risks in arming Ukraine or to replace failed Mideast approaches with more innovative solutions would be the riskiest course of all.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Global Risks Report 2024
World Economic Forum

For an understanding of what the world faces in 2024 and beyond, look no further than the World Economic Forum’s meticulously researched “Global Risks Report.”

This year’s report found that “the majority of respondents [to a WEF survey] (54%) anticipate some instability and a moderate risk of global catastrophes, while another 30% expect even more turbulent conditions. The outlook is markedly more negative over the 10-year time horizon, with nearly two-thirds of respondents expecting a stormy or turbulent outlook.”

The report also identified the biggest risk for the next two years to be “misinformation and disinformation,” but over the next ten years, climate-related crises will become the dominant risks. Read more →

#2 A ‘multipolar’ world defies the ‘rules-based’ order
Gideon Rachman | FINANCIAL TIMES

Part of the Financial Times’ must-read collection on “The World 2024,” Gideon Rachman’s insightful analysis examines the rhetoric of global power distribution.

“In the battle for global influence, all sides have their jargon,” Rachman claims. “The US and allies talk of the ‘rules-based international order’ (RBIO). Russia and China prefer a ‘multipolar’ world. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s astute foreign minister, recently split the difference by talking about the need for a ‘multilateral rules-based international order.’”

Rachman writes, “In different ways, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza—as well as the tensions in the South China Sea and the battle for opinion in the Global South—all involve this rhetorical struggle to shape the world order and the power realities that underpin it.” Read more →

#3 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report
Edelman Trust Institute

This year’s Trust Barometer reveals a fascinating trend as trust in non-governmental organizations, business, government, and media hovers at 56 percent globally—but with a big divide between the developed and developing worlds. In developing countries, 63 percent of citizens trust those institutions, while that figure stands at 49 percent in developed countries. In the past year, trust among US citizens has dropped from 48 percent to 46 percent.

As the world heads into a year in which half the population votes, this report highlights concerning trends of declining faith in governments and institutions among liberal democracies. (Note: Edelman CEO Richard Edelman serves on the Atlantic Council board of directors.) Read more →

#4 The Quiet Transformation of Occupied Ukraine
David Lewis | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

In this urgent piece, David Lewis calls attention not to Ukraine’s frontline, but to its occupied territory.

“This administrative occupation is less well known than the violence and human rights abuses that accompany it,” Lewis writes. “But Russia’s war in Ukraine extends well beyond its ruthless missile and drone strikes, its legions of soldiers, and its bellicose rhetoric. In occupied Ukraine, bureaucrats have been effective at enforcing the compliance of locals. Even as some people resist, authorities impose Russian education, cultural indoctrination, and economic and legal systems to rope these lands ever more tightly to Russia. The longer Russia occupies these territories, the harder it will be for Ukraine to get them back.”

As the West continues to “squabble” over aid to Ukraine, this piece is a reminder that Russia is ardently continuing its war. Read more →

#5 Geopolitical risks overshadow economic optimism in Davos
Sam Fleming | FINANCIAL TIMES

To understand the anxiety that pervaded this year’s World Economic Forum, read Sam Fleming’s smart reporting, which uncovers its origins, among them the US presidential election in November, continuing conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the overall shift in priority towards national security and resilience rather than economic efficiency.

“The economic backdrop to this week’s Davos meetings was far more promising than many anticipated a year ago,” Fleming writes. “But if the tone of discussions at the World Economic Forum is anything to go by, nobody is ready to celebrate.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Jan 18, 2024

Experts react: What’s really going on with Pakistan and Iran exchanging attacks?

By Atlantic Council experts

Pakistan just conducted airstrikes in southeastern Iran, two days after Iran used missiles and drones to strike western Pakistan. Atlantic Council experts explain what’s going on.

Conflict Iran

New Atlanticist Jan 18, 2024

What Bangladesh’s widely boycotted election reveals about its future 

By Ali Riaz

The election results were a foregone conclusion, as there were no opposition parties contesting. But the results reveal a deeper entrenchment of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s party.

Civil Society Elections

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Jan 17, 2024

Global Foresight 2024

In this year’s Global Foresight edition, our experts identify the top risks and opportunities for 2024. Our foresight team spots “snow leopards” that could have major unexpected impacts in 2024 and beyond. And we share findings from our survey of global strategists and foresight practitioners on how human affairs could unfold over the next decade.

The post Davos Dispatch: The case for optimism amid global upheaval appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On the flight to Davos, my thoughts turned to Taiwan’s elections, which took place on January 13. As these elections approached, many wrote about Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s growing threats to Taiwan’s vibrant, free-market democracy. But I had been struck by how these elections have exposed Xi’s greater concern: authoritarian failure at home.

If Chinese Communist Party leadership was working, Xi would have had a more benign view of Taiwan’s elections, shrugging his shoulders at the race rather than his government calling it “a choice between war and peace.”

What goes unsaid is that China faces some of the lowest growth and highest youth unemployment since Xi took over as paramount leader in 2012. At the same time, Xi is purging the People’s Liberation Army, ostensibly over corruption but always about control. Just as China’s economy is sputtering, Taiwan—through semiconductor manufacturing and beyond—is now a global economic power player.

Xi has made the purpose of his leadership that of national revival, which was at the core of his New Year’s speech. The harder that looks to achieve at home, the more tempting it may become to force Taiwan, with its population of about 24 million people, into China’s embrace, with its population of 1.4 billion.

Despite the risks, Xi may lose patience with the failed conviction that China’s economic miracle over time would be the irresistible force for Taiwan’s unification. The Wall Street Journal’s Lingling Wei, in a compelling slideshow previewing the election, argues that Beijing’s rising pressure on Taiwan “indicates its strong desire to change the status quo—even as polls on the island say that the status quo is exactly what people there desire.”

Beijing has made no secret of its opposition to the election’s winner, the physician Lai Ching-te, also known as William Lai. He’s the current vice president, representing the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), but his smart approach is that Taiwan’s de facto independence requires no further declaration. A son of a coalminer, who died when he was little, he has a master’s degree in public health from Harvard and a passion for the disadvantaged.

But regardless of who is Taiwan’s president, writes Lingling Wei, “the uneasy coexistence between China and Taiwan for more than seven decades is likely to get more unstable in the months and years to come.”

That’s because the danger to Xi isn’t Taiwan but himself. Taiwan’s free vote that took place this weekend is an uncomfortable reminder that Xi will never enjoy democratic legitimacy. His legacy thus rests on delivering greater prosperity (increasingly difficult) or on whether he achieves—or fosters a perception that he achieved—a forced unification (heaven forbid).

Xi’s destructive policies at home—choking the private sector and silencing free speech—and his evisceration of Hong Kong’s autonomy have taught the Taiwanese that any form of unification would end their democratic freedoms.

One thing is certain as I approach the World Economic Forum in Davos. Taiwan’s status will remain the primary flashpoint in US-China relations, and one of the greatest global risks, for the foreseeable future.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter: @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Xi’s biggest problem isn’t Taiwan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

That’s the somber mood music, detailed in the World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report, that faces global movers and shakers heading for next week’s World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, arguably the world’s most important annual gathering of political, business, and civil-society leaders.

I’ll be there slogging through the snow with them, hoping to hear their smartest plans to navigate the higher borrowing costs and geopolitical tensions that are dragging down growth.

When growth slows, political volatility tends to follow. That comes at a time when the world is already facing wars in Europe and the Middle East—and increasing tensions in East Asia—without a lasting solution in sight.

The WEF was born to galvanize common cause to improve the state of the world, but its own Global Risks Report 2024 is a stark look at what the world is up against, concluding that “weakened economies and societies may only require the smallest shock to edge past the tipping point.”

WEF’s survey shows that for the next two years, “the majority of respondents (54 [percent]) anticipate some instability and moderate risk of global catastrophes, while another 30 [percent] expect even more turbulent conditions.” Over a ten-year timeframe, it is looking even gloomier, with two-thirds of respondents expecting a “stormy or turbulent outlook.”

Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, compares the current global economy to an unstable Jenga tower, with missing pieces representing major economic disruptions that could range from shipping disruptions in the Red Sea to trade disputes with China.

“If you look from above, the tower seems tall and sturdy. That’s indeed what’s forecasted for [the] year—modest but consistent global growth,” Lipsky writes. “But if you pan the camera down and look at the sides of the Jenga tower, you see all the missing pieces. Each one is hollowing out the structure and you never know just how much instability the tower can take before it topples over.”

My only solace is that the Davos conventional wisdom often proves wrong. A hedge fund manager friend of mine says he goes to Davos each year so as to bet against this conventional wisdom.

It would be more prudent to follow the World Bank’s advice, which is to accelerate per capita investment growth and then sustain it for six or more years, reducing poverty and increasing productivity. The World Bank concedes that’s hard work, but developing economies have done it before, and the alternative is more wasted opportunity.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Davos and ‘the decade of wasted opportunity’ appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Never in recent memory have so many significant events unfolded simultaneously: wars in Europe and the Middle East, simmering US-China tensions, accelerating technological competition (not just over artificial intelligence), and a jam-packed global electoral calendar with a particularly divisive and decisive US presidential election in November.

Capturing the generational stakes in 2024 requires going beyond the annual exercise of listing and assessing top risks in the year ahead. Instead, senior officials in the Biden administration, who I spoke with in the final days of 2023, are connecting the dots among the challenges, knowing they will have to manage them all to navigate the year successfully.

Administration officials, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, break down the issues into roughly five categories. What makes managing the coming year so complex is that none of these issues can be easily separated from the other—and none can be neglected without paying a heavy price. Here’s my understanding of how administration officials are thinking about these challenges.

Read the below, and you might share my view that the historic moment calls for even more ambitious thinking and action. Without that, either adversaries or chaos could define the future. Listening to senior administration officials who are grappling with this unruly world, however, provides more insight into how they perceive limits to their actions.

1. Russia and Ukraine

In the view of these officials, Ukraine needs to regain battlefield momentum in the third year of Russia’s full-scale war against it by better sustaining and focusing its military resources on the south, the Black Sea, and Crimea. Officials I spoke with believe that Ukraine is unlikely to win its war in 2024, so in the meantime it must avoid losing while making some real gains. Above all, it must transform the Moscow-held Crimean Peninsula from a Russian strategic asset into a vulnerability. To help achieve that, Kyiv should expand its recent gains in the Black Sea and make one concerted military effort in the south, while holding and defending its north and east. This level of success requires continued and sustained US and European financial and military support, without which Ukraine’s options will become purely defensive.

2. China and East Asia

According to Biden administration officials, the United States must try to further stabilize its relationship with China, following gains made over the past year, while continuing to build stronger ties with all US regional partners. One senior official referred to the effort as “holding serve.” To do so, the United States at the same time will need to navigate a series of dangers, with North Korea testing an intercontinental ballistic missile in the week ahead of Christmas, with next week’s Taiwan elections potentially stirring a Chinese reaction, and with the always-present possibility of a “nonlinear” event in the South China Sea (such as the sinking of a ship or testing of disputed boundaries) and the potential blowback.

3. Israel, Gaza, and the wider Middle East

At a minimum, Washington must avoid an escalation of the Israel-Hamas conflict that would more deeply draw in the United States or Iran—and that itself won’t be easy, as shown by the tensions in the Red Sea this week, which included the US Navy sinking the vessels of Iran-backed Houthi rebels and Tehran deploying a warship to the area. But beyond that minimum, Biden administration officials want to return Israel and Saudi Arabia to the normalization path that was abandoned after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks. To achieve this outcome, Israel would need to accept a formula for a future Palestinian state that would defuse the current crisis. For Israel to accept that, it would have to realize that its long-term sustainability as a state depends as much on reaching lasting peace and normalization with its moderate Arab neighbors as it does on eradicating Hamas. One Biden administration official sees 2024 as “a ticking clock to run this normalization play.” The closer a US election comes, the less flexible Israeli leadership under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might become, especially if the Israeli side anticipates a victory by Donald Trump.

4. The technology race

The Biden administration is confident that the United States can win the artificial-intelligence race (given dramatic advances in 2023) in a manner that protects US jobs and values, while working with global partners to establish common regulatory standards for the technology. Where Biden administration officials remain more worried, and thus will apply greater efforts in 2024, is in addressing what they consider China’s lead in clean technologies, ranging from electric vehicles to solar energy to advanced batteries—and control of the critical minerals to keep it all going. US officials believe that the country has made progress in addressing this gap through the Inflation Reduction Act and other measures, but that the United States remains far from closing it.

5. Electoral challenges

There is hardly a conversation Biden administration officials have with their international partners that doesn’t include some sort of handicapping of the 2024 US elections and the impact they will have on a full range of global issues. Adversaries such as Russian President Vladimir Putin will try to wait out 2024 in the hope that US support for Ukraine will continue to flag. Many European countries worry about a Trump victory, given his skepticism about NATO and criticisms of European partners more generally. Most countries’ diplomats will find themselves jockeying to meet with whoever might be most influential in a Republican administration while maintaining the closest ties possible to the Biden crowd.

I’ve been one of those who have argued that the administration isn’t acting boldly enough or with sufficient vision, given the historic stakes of these challenges, or quickly enough, given that Joe Biden could be a one-term president. These officials argue that, in contrast to the period after World War II and even the Cold War, several factors that previously allowed the United States to dictate events are no longer present.

At the end of World War II, for example, the United States had half the world’s gross domestic product, its two major adversaries were in ruins (as was much of Europe), the Global South wasn’t the political force it is now, and global industrialization favored the United States.

“Give me that hand to play with, and I can make some money at the poker table,” one senior US official told me.

With the hand the United States has now, the official argued, it’s possible to manage 2024 successfully and to shape positively what Biden frequently calls a historic inflection point. “To make it work,” the official said, “we have to fight like hell for every inch. We can still win with some cunning, some luck, and some elbow grease.”

The challenges range from accessing reliable sources of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to keeping Red Sea shipping lanes open, and from leveraging World Bank lending to support the Global South to working with Congress to avoid Ukrainian defeat.

The bottom line: 2024 could be one of the most consequential years—for the United States, its allies, their interests, and global rules and institutions—since the end of World War II. It’s possible to prevail, but only with a recognition of the importance of this year, new and more innovative forms of coordination with partners and allies, heightened focus on execution and outcomes, and a single-minded effort that rises to the generational stakes.

I can’t escape thinking, however, that the United States still needs more of the post-World War II ambition that shaped the decades the followed, even while recognizing that world’s increasing complexities require an entirely new set of skills, approaches, and consistency of purpose.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 ‘I want to live’: Russians defect to Ukraine by calling army hotline
Christopher Miller | FINANCIAL TIMES

For a fascinating look at a successful Ukrainian information campaign, read this Financial Times feature on the “I want to live” hotline used by Ukraine to corral Russian defectors.

Christopher Miller reports that since Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR) set up the call system in September 2022, some 220 Russian soldiers have given themselves up through the hotline, with more than one thousand cases pending.

“Both Ukraine and Russia have employed information campaigns, or what [Vitaliy Matvienko, spokesperson for GUR’s department for prisoners of war,] called ‘psyops,’ meaning psychological operations,” wrote Miller. “They target the other side with leaflets dropped from the air, mass text messages, radio and television ads, and even shouting from trench to trench.”

Commenting on the high number of defections, Matvienko says, “The Russian army is essentially a Soviet army. As you know, in the Soviet army, the price of a soldier’s life was zero.” Read more →

#2 Opinion: Can the spread of war be stopped?
David Ignatius | THE WASHINGTON POST

Going into a year already laden with conflict, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius calls for a different approach to preventing war.

“At the dawn of 2024, we should recognize that violence is ravaging our planet and the mechanisms to prevent it are failing badly,” Ignatius writes. United Nations “peacekeeping resolutions are routinely vetoed by combatants or their protectors; ‘deterrence’ doesn’t deter Russia, Hamas, or the Houthis. The ‘rules-based order’ that President Biden proclaims has become a slogan rather than a fact.”

To fix this, Ignatius writes, “We need new rules at the United Nations to stop wars and a new framework for crisis management with allies and adversaries.” Read more →

#3 Elections to Watch in 2024
Allison Meakem | FOREIGN POLICY

Allison Meakem of Foreign Policy calls 2024 the biggest global election year in history. Read her guide to gain a better understanding of what is on the ballot.

This coming year “will see a global battle between democracy and autocracy play out literally, at the polls,” Meakem writes. “And not just in the United States, which will hold its first presidential election since a deadly right-wing insurrection sought to block Biden from taking office three years ago: Seven of the world’s ten most populous countries are expected to vote on national leadership this year.” Read more →

#4 The ‘CEO’ of Hamas Who Found the Money to Attack Israel
Rory Jones, Benoit Faucon, Ian Talley, and Abeer Ayyoub | WALL STREET JOURNAL

This compelling investigation uncovers the life of Zaher Jabarin, the fifty-five-year-old militant who oversees the financial empire that funds Hamas’s operations against Israel.

“Jabarin has built relationships with people close to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that Israeli security officials say helped Hamas procure weapons and funding,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “Jabarin has helped maintain Hamas’s relationship in Lebanon with Iranian proxy Hezbollah, working with money changers there, according to US officials who have tracked the financial flows.”

Most importantly, though, Jabarin manages Hamas’s financial relationship with its main benefactor, Iran, and “handles how Tehran gets cash to the Gaza Strip.”

Uzi Shaya, a former Israeli security official, told the WSJ, “Jabarin is the CEO of Hamas.” Read more →

#5 The Pentagon Is Trying to Rebuild the Arsenal of Democracy
Jack Detsch | FOREIGN POLICY

Ahead of US involvement in World War II and in the face of heightening German and Japanese aggression, former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in one of his famous fireside chats, “We must have more ships, more guns, more plans—more of everything. We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”

Now, Foreign Policy’s Jack Detsch asks if the United States can once again successfully mobilize for a world war.

In this must-read investigation, Foreign Policy comes to an alarming conclusion: “The United States can only prod and pray—the Pentagon’s own soon-to-be-released industrial strategy indicates that defense companies wouldn’t be able to respond fast enough for the US military to fight a modern war.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

UkraineAlert Jan 2, 2024

Ukraine needs urgent air defense aid as Putin launches bombing campaign

By Peter Dickinson

As Russia launches a long-awaited new bombing campaign against Ukrainian cities, fears are mounting that deadlock over continued US and EU military aid may soon leave Ukraine facing critical air defense shortages, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Technologies

MENASource Jan 4, 2024

Here’s how Hezbollah will likely respond to Israel’s assassination of Saleh Al-Arouri

By David Daoud

What Hezbollah has not been seeking is opening a full-scale war with Israel. However, Hezbollah has other indirect options that it may activate.

Israel Lebanon

New Atlanticist Jan 5, 2024

Overstretched and undersupplied: Can the US afford its global security blanket?

By Kathryn Levantovscaia

The hollowing out of the broader US manufacturing base has made defense companies dependent on supply chains originating in, of all places, China.

Defense Industry Defense Policy

The post Inside the Biden administration’s thinking for 2024 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

That might sound hyperbolic. What’s undeniable is that the world will see more significant elections, embracing more democratic countries in the world, than I can ever remember. It’s also happening at a time when democracies have been on the defensive and autocracies (China, Russia, and Iran, to name three) have been acting more boldly.

Some two billion people will vote in 2024; that’s about half the world’s adult population, representing more than 60 percent of global gross domestic product, by Bank of America calculations. The FT reports that seventy countries will be holding elections, including eight of the world’s ten most populous countries.

That might sound like reason for celebration, underscoring the enduring attraction of democracy. Instead, it is more a time of peril, when democracies need to find ways to counteract a recession in democratic rights and freedoms that has been under way globally since 2006, according to Freedom House. This also comes at a time when innovative technologies like artificial intelligence can provide even more effective tools for surveillance and control.

Writes the FT’s Alec Russell in a compelling read on what lies ahead: “These elections take place against a backdrop of spreading illiberalism around the world, the weakening of independent institutions in a number of big democracies, and a creeping disillusionment among younger people about the very point of elections.”

There is no easy fix. The challenges democracies face are as diverse as the countries themselves. However, a good start would be to address the partisanship, hypocrisy, and ineffectiveness that turn off voters and erode institutional effectiveness.

Amid all the world’s voting in 2024, it will be the perceived health of US democracy that will be most decisive for the global democratic order. This year the world will ask, is the United States offering a model to emulate or to avoid?

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Democracy’s decisive year—globally appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Xi’s tone was that of a leader who won’t ever have the satisfaction of democratic legitimacy, but who both craves and is increasingly uncertain about public support, given increases in youth unemployment, slow growth, and military purges that raise questions about party unity. He acknowledged that the country has “gone through the test of winds and rains” in recent years—bringing to mind China’s mounting economic difficulties and its severe COVID-19 restrictions—before launching into a laundry list of accomplishments.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that China’s BYD supplanted Tesla in the past quarter as the world’s biggest electric car maker. Xi could now add that to his speech’s inventory of shiny objects: The C919 jumbo passenger airliner entered service, Shenzhou spaceships continued their missions, the Fendouzhe submersible reached the deepest ocean trench, Chinese-made mobile phones were “instant market [successes],” and lithium batteries and photovoltaic products have become a “testimony to China’s manufacturing prowess.”

“Products designed and made in China, especially trendy brands, are highly popular with consumers,” he boasted.

Xi’s speech was bathed in patriotism and nostalgia about China’s “great civilization,” noting that next year would mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. “The mighty Yellow River and Yangtze River never fail to inspire us,” he said, and new discoveries from archeological sites “tell us much about the dawn of Chinese civilization… And all this is the source from which our confidence and strength are derived.”

The Western press understandably focused on Xi’s brief comments about his slowing economy and his references to unification with Taiwan, both coming late in the short speech, which was only twelve minutes.

On the economy, he conceded, “Some enterprises had a tough time. Some people had difficulty finding jobs and meeting basic needs.” Could that tee up some economic liberalization in 2024? Probably not, if it’s at the price of party control.

On Taiwan, he said, after praising Hong Kong and Macao integration (and ahead of Taiwan’s elections next week): “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

What Xi didn’t talk about were his relentless purges, now reaching further into China’s military establishment, which have the increasing feel of Mao’s “continuous revolution.” Xi has now punished an estimated five million people, and counting, for abuses large and small.

It’s worth reading Xi’s speech in full to understand China as a country with a baffling mix of weaknesses and strengths, run by an autocratic leader who is looking at 2024 with more than a little concern.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Xi Jinping’s real New Year’s message appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Hamas’s terrorist strike on October 7 wouldn’t have happened without Iran’s years of funding and military support to the group. The Houthis’ attacks on global shipping—threatening a waterway through which a third of the world’s containers pass—require Iranian support and weaponry. Hezbollah, which is also heavily backed by Iran, has launched more than a thousand rockets on Israel’s north since October 7. And it is Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq that are attacking US bases.

So far, Hamas’s attacks and the war in Gaza that has followed haven’t resulted in a wider Middle East conflict. The concern now is that the US Navy attack on three Houthi vessels last weekend (killing ten) and the subsequent arrival of an Iranian destroyer in the Red Sea increase the risk of an expanded war.

What should worry Americans, as I argued yesterday on CNBC, is the rising cost of Iran’s unchecked regional and global misbehavior. Virtually unnoticed amid the Gaza war is that Iran has tripled production of nearly weapons-grade uranium. International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi said his inspectors had confirmed in December increased production of highly enriched uranium at both of Iran’s main nuclear facilities.

That means Iran is perilously close to a nuclear weapons capability. The Wall Street Journal reports experts as saying Iran already has sufficient stock of highly enriched uranium (which could be converted into weapons grade in less than two weeks) for three weapons. This is unfolding in an Iran that has been growing far closer to China and, through its arms deliveries, has been playing a crucial role in Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett compares today’s Iran to the Cold War’s Soviet Union. “The Soviet Union collapsed from internal rot coupled with external pressure applied by the US,” he writes, arguing that the same would weaken Tehran.

Iran is supplying the rot. What’s remains lacking is external pressure commensurate to the threat.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post An ugly truth in the Middle East appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Yes, that would be Washington.

His spirits were high and his mood buoyant when I met with him and a small group of others for a background chat Monday evening at the Ukrainian embassy ahead of his meetings Tuesday with US President Joe Biden, Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, and key Senate Republicans.

He talked about the tragedy that would result, both for his military operations and his country’s morale, if the United States did not sustain its support. He talked in detail about what weaponry was lacking, the need to further isolate Russia internationally, Ukraine’s geopolitical benefit for NATO, his country’s underestimated successes in the Black Sea, and why a frozen conflict only serves Moscow.

Biden held out hope that Zelenskyy could deploy his charm and star power to get Republican holdouts to support a supplemental spending bill that includes a long-delayed and urgently needed $50 billion in US security aid for Ukraine. Instead, for the moment, Zelenskyy has gotten stuck in the trenches of Republican demands to include border-security measures as part of the spending package.

Idealists argue that linking these two issues is cynical and underestimates the global and generational consequences of a Ukrainian defeat.

As Max Boot has written, “It’s like saying to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941: We won’t support aid to Britain as it battles the Nazis unless Democrats repeal the Social Security Act or rewrite the labor laws.”

That was then, however, and this is now.

Those Republicans blocking aid to Ukraine might be geopolitically short-sighted, but the Biden administration’s actions also have fallen short of the historic moment.

Fearful of provoking military escalation by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the administration has often provided Ukraine the weapons and defense systems it needed months after they would have been most useful, and not with the ranges or in the quantities required.

All sides will find compromise faster if they first agree that this fight isn’t only about Ukraine, but also about the global future as well as US interests.

As US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Monday, “I do not think it’s hyperbole to say that basically the security of Europe is at stake, and therefore the risk of American men and women having to go deal with another massive war in Europe, as we have before, if we don’t work with Ukraine to stop Russia in Ukraine.”

What’s unfolding is the most dangerous moment in Europe since the end of World War II colliding with one of the most dysfunctional and divisive moments for US domestic politics in recent memory.

Strike a deal in Congress now, even if it involves border security, or we all will pay later. Should no deal emerge, history will remember Zelenskyy’s visit for all the wrong reasons.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Zelenskyy visits the front line that could decide his country’s war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Dubai was established in the eighteenth century as a fishing village, where a good living could be made from trade and pearl diving. By the time the COP28 climate conference kicked off here, it had become one of the world’s richest cities, with the world’s tallest building and more five-star hotels than any city except London, the result of oil revenue, tourism, real estate, and sovereign investment.

Dubai was host to climate action over the past week, gathering almost one hundred thousand people from nearly two hundred countries. The public and private sectors drew closer than ever before to a consensus that addressing the perils of a warming planet was both a matter of urgency and business opportunity.

That does not fix the problem, but there is no solution without vast amounts of private-sector financing and investments in climate solutions from renewables to nuclear energy, and from decarbonization to green tech.

Many climate activists opposed opening the doors to industry, particularly those producing fossil fuels, but the result has been a flurry of unprecedented agreements that, if executed and sustained, have the potential for tens of billions of new dollars to address the climate crisis.

For example, there is the $700 million in loss and damage support for the Global South. There is also the $30 billion  “Alterra” fund, launched by the United Arab Emirates—and with private-sector giants Blackrock, Brookfield, and TPG—whose aim is to generate $250 billion of capital by 2030 for climate investments in the Global South.

Some fifty oil and gas companies, including Saudi Aramco and twenty-nine national oil companies, agreed to reduce their emissions to zero by 2050 and to reduce methane emissions to zero by 2030. At other points of the convening, countries joined together in agreeing to triple renewables, also by 2030, and to triple emissions-free nuclear energy by 2050. Achieving both goals will require the participation of the private sector.

Negotiators are squabbling over the text of the final COP28 agreement. Politico reports that a draft it has seen has expanded to twenty-seven pages and includes five different options on how to manage disputes over “phasing down” or “phasing out” fossil fuels. The battle could get ugly before the conference closes on Tuesday.

Whatever the outcome, veterans of the UN climate process believe this year’s sharply increased level of private-sector engagement could be the game changer to address challenges beyond the capacity of governments alone. Says Jorge Gastelumendi, a veteran of sixteen COPs who runs the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center: “After twenty-eight COPs, we have finally seen the private sector arrive in the climate space with full force and commitment. Without them, we will not be able to solve the climate crisis.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post The private sector’s role in the climate crisis appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“This conflict should be a doubling down on reminding us that if we don’t go towards regional integration, peace, and security, this is the alternative,” Hochstein told me during an interview at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum, held in Dubai alongside the United Nations’ COP28 climate conference. For that reason, he said, the Biden administration is still working not only on Saudi-Israel ties but also on broader regional integration.

On November 18, I called for just that, writing, “There is an immediate need for moderate, modernizing Arab countries and Israel to quietly begin laying the groundwork for a NATO-like collective security organization and European Union-like economic body. These institutions would unlock the region’s potential by countering its relentless cycles of violence.”

That proposition prompted a few emails from readers arguing how those hopes are deeply unrealistic now, when they couldn’t even be achieved before the October 7 attacks.

Hochstein’s response: “The United States has always wanted to see, throughout multiple generations and administrations, a normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.” He added, “I think that not every road is a straight road, and sometimes we have to go in different directions first. But the goal is still the same. And we remain as committed to that goal of regional integration. And it’s not just about Saudi Arabia and Israel. It has to be much broader than that.”

It’s time to connect the dots globally. Before it’s too late, we must build and defend the architecture of the future, whether in Europe (with Ukraine) or in the Middle East. The alternative is to stand by while the forces of the past tear it down.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post The crooked road to a better Middle East appeared first on Atlantic Council.

People from all corners of the world packed the room, and it was standing room only at our COP28 Resilience Hub, where she held court as the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) ambassador for heat, health, and gender.

“Extreme heat has to be viewed as one of the most dangerous results of the changing climate,” she said, recounting a trip to India, where she saw the harm done to livelihoods, particularly those of women working outdoors as farmers, street vendors, waste collectors, and salt pan and construction workers. “This is not just a health issue,” Clinton warned. “It’s an economic issue, a social issue, [and] a political issue.”

Working with Clinton and with Reema Nanavaty, director of the nearly three-million-member Self-Employed Women’s Association, the Atlantic Council has been implementing a parametric insurance program as a part of Arsht-Rock’s Extreme Heat Protection Initiative. This program protects women working in India’s informal sector from having to make an impossible choice: pausing their work during heat waves (to protect their health) or continuing to work and earn money, while putting their wellbeing at risk.

What has been winning the headlines here so far at this twenty-eighth United Nations Climate Change Conference has been the announcement on the first day of a landmark, $400-milllion loss and damage fund, a mechanism that provides financial assistance to the countries most affected by, but often least responsible for, the climate crisis. There has also been media attention on the hydrocarbon companies that have come to this conference in greater numbers than ever before—many with concrete commitments and plans to reduce emissions.

With over seventy thousand delegates and observers at COP28, actions that aim to improve lives—such as insurance programs to support workers in the informal economy, many of them women—deserve notice. For these workers especially, “their lives and livelihoods are at stake,” said Eleni Myrivili, the global chief heat officer for United Nations-Habitat and Arsht-Rock.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points Today newsletter, a column of quick-hit insights on a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post A big idea to address the biggest killer of the climate crisis appeared first on Atlantic Council.

There is an immediate need for moderate, modernizing Arab countries and Israel to quietly begin laying the groundwork for a NATO-like collective security organization and a European Union (EU)-like economic body. These institutions would unlock the region’s potential by countering its relentless cycles of violence.

Amid the horrors of Hamas’s terrorist attack of October 7 and Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, such notions may sound like a naïve fantasy. However, some senior officials in the Middle East are already thinking in these terms, arguing to me that such an approach would be the most effective way to counter Iran’s proxy warfare and ideological extremism, without which the Hamas attacks don’t happen.

These officials, who requested anonymity to speak most candidly, point to Europe as their example. The continent had been wracked by centuries of inter-state and religious violence culminating in two catastrophic world wars. The EU and NATO have succeeded in bringing a period of unprecedented peace to the region. The only major European wars since their creation have occurred in countries outside these institutions—Ukraine, Georgia, and Yugoslavia.

Given the Middle East’s historical and geographic peculiarities, whatever its countries conjure up would evolve differently. Where the European lesson applies is that it’s best to begin with a small core of committed countries, and then expand from there. NATO was born in 1949 with just a dozen countries, including the United States and Canada from outside of Europe, and it now includes thirty-one members. The European Coal and Steel Community was founded in 1952 with six countries, serving as the precursor to the EU’s now twenty-seven members.

As was the case in Europe, moderate Arab states and Israel should begin with collective security, including the United States, Canada, and perhaps also India and select and willing European countries. One senior Arab official told me that the Abraham Accords countries plus Egypt and Jordan—all countries that have normalized relations with Israel with the support of the United States—would be the most obvious candidates in the first stage.

“I would be one of the first people that would endorse a Middle East NATO,” said Jordan’s King Abdullah II in a 2022 interview with CNBC. Jordan already works closely with NATO and has fought “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Alliance forces for decades, the king noted. While the current conflict makes such views sound remote, the danger of escalation makes the concept all the more urgently necessary.

One can only hope that it won’t take the expansion of the current conflict into a world war-like level of death and destruction, as it did in Europe, to galvanize common cause behind such an initiative. First and foremost, another senior Arab leader tells me, it will require Israel to recognize that it is “playing into Iran’s hands” through the nature of its Gaza invasion. “We all need to play the long game,” he said.

Israel has no choice but to conduct the war against Hamas and seek to destroy its ability to govern Gaza and conduct another 10/7 attack. That said, even if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is able to “eradicate” Hamas’s military threat, that won’t address the source of regional instability: Iran, its extremist ideology, and its support for proxies—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen.

Without a lasting solution with the Palestinians, including the potential establishment of a Palestinian state, either Hamas will regenerate, or a similarly disruptive group will emerge. What’s needed isn’t just a smarter day-after approach toward and with responsible Palestinians, however, but also a day-after approach for the region.

Iran’s despotic rulers, with their goal of destroying Israel and defeating the United States and its like-minded partners, thrive in the chaos and violence that Hamas’s terrorist attacks and their aftermath have produced. It is in that atmosphere that Iranian rulers can best control their population and continue to build upon their greatly expanded influence across the Middle East, which over time has been born out of conflicts in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Syria, and between Palestinians and Israel.

The best way to counter this Iran-induced instability would be if the moderate Arab states of the Gulf and the region, building upon the Abraham Accords, deepen their security cooperation while simultaneously expanding their security, technological, economic, and investment cooperation to produce more stability, prosperity, and hope for their own people.

The outcome of increased regional cooperation over the next decade, the second Arab official says, would echo what happened in Europe. Iran’s rulers would confront the growing dissatisfaction of citizens paying attention to the progress of neighboring countries, much as the citizens of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries were while confronting NATO and the EU during the Cold War.

To win this struggle, eradicating Hamas is necessary but insufficient, when the real need is to defeat Iran, which neither Israel, moderate Arab states, nor the United States is prepared to do militarily. When one looks at all the alternatives for countering Iran and building a modern, sustainable, prosperous Middle East, the option of constructing common security and economic architecture is the most attractive of them.

What that would require is a recognition by the parties involved that Iran has achieved its current standing in the region through their complacency and unwillingness to counter its revolutionary leadership at each stage of its expanded influence. Arab officials privately praise the Trump administration’s strike on one of the most heinous of Iran’s revolutionary masterminds, Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani, in 2020. If the strike had been followed by a more resolute US approach to Tehran, then it would have shown Iran the limits to its efforts at stoking regional mayhem, even as Tehran works to develop nuclear weapons.

The notion of a closer regional security system, working with the United States, isn’t an entirely new one. Efforts include Arab League members’ interventions in Yemen, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and the Middle East Strategic Alliance of 2017. Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991, was the most successful instance of security collaboration and involved thirty-five states, among them seven Arab countries. There have also been efforts at greater economic integration through the GCC. Though it went largely unnoticed in the aftermath of October 7, the GCC recently announced a unified tourist visa that would allow travelers easy movement between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Yet all these measures and institutions have lacked sufficient ambition to bring about permanent change in the region that also embraced Israel. As difficult as it will be to create sufficient trust between Israel and Arab states, particularly now, previous efforts have also stumbled on distrust among Arab states. The process of building these new institutions and gaining agreement to their aims could help address this trust deficit in a more permanent, institutional, and treaty-bound manner.

Saudi officials still hope to find their way back to a normalization process with Israel, involving security guarantees from the United States, which had been far advanced before October 7. Such a step would be far more meaningful and lasting if it was embedded in a larger regional effort at security and economic integration.

For now, the ball is in Israel’s court to manage its war with Hamas in a manner that does not close the door to these possibilities. As soon as possible, Israeli leaders need to get back to working with the Arab states with whom they had so greatly improved relations. Only in this way can Israel turn the horrors of Hamas’s terrorist attacks into a more lasting peace that even a complete defeat of Hamas cannot deliver.

If Israel and moderate Arab states can ultimately leverage this crisis for generational good, they could put their region on a more positive and sustainable glide path. If the region fails to seize this opportunity, expect the ideological extremism and violence to spread, perhaps endangering the moderate Arab states themselves.

Though this may not seem the right time for this long-term thinking, it’s worth remembering that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic Charter in August 1941, with World War II raging.

With the stakes this high and the dangers this extreme in the Middle East today, the vision needs to be commensurate to the historic moment.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 America Is a Heartbeat Away From a War It Could Lose
A. Wess Mitchell | FOREIGN POLICY

Wess Mitchell’s provocative look at the growing dangers of world war is required reading for anyone interested in assessing the greatest threats to global order since the 1930s.

“The worst-case scenario is an escalating war in at least three far-flung theaters,” explains Mitchell, “fought by a thinly stretched U.S. military alongside ill-equipped allies that are mostly unable to defend themselves against large industrial powers with the resolve, resources, and ruthlessness to sustain a long conflict.”

Writes Mitchell, a former US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs: “Waging this fight would require a scale of national unity, resource mobilization, and willingness to sacrifice that Americans and their allies have not seen in generations.” Read more →

#2 The West Must Defeat Russia
Anne Applebaum | THE ATLANTIC

Anne Applebaum begins on an optimistic note: “They planned to take Kyiv in three days, the rest of Ukraine in six weeks. More than 21 months later, Russian forces have withdrawn from half the territory they occupied in February of last year.”

Yet Applebaum worries that those gains could now be lost.

“If we abandon what we have achieved so far and we give up support for Ukraine, the result could still be the military or political conquest of Ukraine,” Applebaum writes. “The conquest of Ukraine could still empower Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and the rest of [Vladimir] Putin’s allies. It could still encourage China to invade Taiwan. It could still lead to a new kind of Europe, one in which Poland, the Baltic states, and even Germany are under constant physical threat, with all of the attendant consequences for trade and prosperity.”

With stakes this high, it’s disturbing that US legislators would hesitate even for a moment to provide the support necessary to bring Ukrainian victory. Read more →

#3 In Talks With Biden, Xi Seeks to Assure and Assert at the Same Time
Vivian Wang and David Pierson | THE NEW YORK TIMES

This brilliantly reported piece captures the duality of Xi’s visit to the United States.

“Mr. Xi wants to convince Washington, and the world, that he is willing to engage with the United States, in part to lure back foreign investment to bolster China’s ailing economy,” write Wang and Pierson in the New York Times. “But he also wants to demonstrate to the Chinese people that he strongly defended Beijing’s interests, and burnished its image as a world power on a par with the United States, not a secondary one making concessions.” Read more →

#4 Putin the Ideologue
Maria Snegovaya, Michael Kimmage, and Jade McGlynn | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

This fascinating Foreign Affairs piece is worth reading for anyone hoping to make sense of Putin’s staying power in Russia. Snegovaya, Kimmage, and McGlynn argue that it all comes down to ideology.

“The Kremlin has succeeded in crafting a worldview that explains why Russians must endure war-related challenges and allows them to make sense of their circumstances. This ideology has become an enduring feature of Putin’s regime,” they write.

The authors emphasize that the Kremlin’s latest push to codify state ideology is only its most recent endeavor to standardize how Russians conceptualize their reality: “Moscow has overhauled the country’s education system as part of that same ideological effort, standardizing modern history textbooks to fit the official propagandist line, requiring that every Russian school have a counselor to facilitate the civic and patriotic upbringing of students, instructing all schools to hold a flag-raising ceremony every week, and other such measures. These steps constitute a widespread effort to inculcate a top-down ideology, anchored by a vision of Russia as a distinct civilization.” Read more →

#5 Only the U.S. Can Restore World Order
Nadia Schadlow | WALL STREET JOURNAL

Nadia Schadlow’s recent Wall Street Journal piece is a must-read for this week and perhaps for years to come.

“Chaos is spreading throughout the world as a direct consequence of America’s failure to deter Russia, Iran and China,” writes Schadlow, a former US deputy national security adviser for strategy. “The balance of power in key regions is faltering, leading to instability and global disorder. Like it or not, the U.S. is the only force that can restore equilibrium.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Nov 15, 2023

Experts react: What did Biden and Xi’s ‘candid’ meeting accomplish?

By Atlantic Council experts

Atlantic Council experts break down the US and Chinese leaders’ four-hour summit and what’s coming next.

China Economy & Business

UkraineAlert Nov 13, 2023

Ukraine braces for another winter of Russian attacks on power grid

By Aura Sabadus

While the Ukrainian authorities have had over half a year to prepare for a new wave of Russian air strikes, the country’s civilian energy infrastructure remains vulnerable, writes Aura Sabadus.

Conflict Drones

MENASource Nov 17, 2023

Iraq’s parliamentary speaker was removed. What’s next for the country?

By Abbas Kadhim

The current crisis dates back to May 2022, when Mohamed al-Halbousi removed one of his bloc’s members from parliament.

Elections Iraq

The post The best antidote to surging Mideast violence and Iranian extremism? Regional versions of NATO and the EU. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

It has the potential to be the most significant of his presidency, and it was choreographed to be seen as such. It was only the second time he has chosen to speak from behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, and he did it with the backdrop of wars in Ukraine and Israel and simmering tensions around Taiwan.

Beyond that, the eighty-year-old commander in chief, who had been in Israel just a day earlier, looked sharp and spoke with the vigor of a man who understands the historic moment and his role in it. He connected the dots between Russia’s criminal war in Ukraine and Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, assisted by Iran.

“We’re facing an inflection point in history,” he said, “one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.”

He was also clear about what connects the two, seemingly disparate conflicts. “Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common,” he said. “They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy—completely annihilate it.”

Importantly, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was sending much the same message earlier the same evening, speaking in Washington at the Hudson Institute. She argued that Russia and Hamas, supported by Iran, want to “wipe from the map” both Ukraine and Israel, and that free countries could not allow that.

“Our democracies are under sustained and systemic attack by those who abhor freedom because it threatens their rule,” said von der Leyen. “For more than six hundred days, our friends in Ukraine have been fighting and dying for their freedom against Russian aggression. And now Israel has suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history, and the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. These two crises, however different, call on Europe and America to take a stand—and to stand together.”

As if scripted by a grand dramatist, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin were meeting in China as Biden traveled to Israel, doubling down on their common cause to rewrite the rules of the global order.

Xi leveraged a gathering of representatives from nearly 150 developing countries, the Belt and Road Forum, to put forward China’s vision as an alternative to US leadership. “What we stand against are unilateral sanctions, economic coercion and decoupling and supply chain disruption,” he said, in advancing what he called a “fairer, multipolar world.”

Xi feted Putin as his guest of honor, meeting with him for three hours on Wednesday and making sure to be photographed frequently by his side. The two leaders neither condemned Hamas nor mourned Israeli losses.

Putin also connected the wars in Ukraine and Israel, saying that he had discussed both “in detail” with Xi. “All these external factors are common threats,” Putin said, “and they strengthen Russian-Chinese relations.”

At the same time that Putin was in Beijing, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was in North Korea, hailing the “qualitatively new, strategic level of relations.” That builds on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s recent visit to see Putin at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, followed by the delivery of more than a thousand containers of military equipment and arms to support Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Add Iran to the mix, and you have a toxic brew of autocrats. As Biden told Americans this week, “Iran is supporting Russia in Ukraine, and it’s supporting Hamas and other terrorist groups in the region. And we’ll continue to hold them accountable.”

Now that Biden has identified this inflection point and its actors, it’s worth reflecting on what the term means—and what it demands from the United States and its global partners.

What inflection points have in common is that they are plastic moments in history where individuals and groups of leaders can have outsize influence in shaping the future, for good or ill.

I consider Biden’s inflection point to be the fourth since the early twentieth century. The previous ones set the stage for the periods after both world wars (1918-1945 and 1945-1990), the period after the Cold War (1990-2022), and now the period beginning with Russia’s war in Ukraine.

As was the case previously, expect this defining “moment” in history to open up an era that could stretch for three decades or more, perhaps until 2050.

It’s clear that the period after World War I was marked by failures, including the badly constructed Versailles Treaty ending the war and the ill-fated League of Nations that was meant to bring the world together to prevent future wars. What the world ended up with instead was the rise of fascism, the emergence of Hitler’s Third Reich, and then the Holocaust and World War II, leaving more than seventy million dead.

The period after World War II was a success, in no small part due to what leaders then had learned from their mistakes. The United States replaced its misguided isolationism with purposeful internationalism. Washington worked with European partners and others to construct what we now know as the international liberal order of rules and institutions, including the United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, NATO, and the European Coal and Steel Community.

The third inflection point ushered in the post-Cold War period, which proved not to be the “end of history,” a term that Francis Fukuyama coined. He argued that Western liberal democracy’s ascendency after Soviet collapse marked “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

What’s true is that NATO and the European Union both expanded democracy’s realm, joined by previously Soviet bloc countries that embraced pluralism and free markets. What the West didn’t anticipate was the staying power of autocratic China and its ruling Communist Party, despite globalization and economic growth, and the emergence of a revanchist Russia.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, NATO countries rallied around Washington with their Article 5 commitment to common defense. However, the long wars that followed in Afghanistan and Iraq failed to seize upon that galvanizing opportunity.

I launched this column and newsletter in 2018 under the title of Inflection Points, sensing that we were at one of those defining moments in history when US leadership alongside partners and allies would be decisive. My introduction to that term was as early as 2012, when the National Intelligence Council employed it in “Global Trends 2030.”

That report offered up four potential worlds, including one where the risk of interstate conflict increases and the United States retrenches and another, at the other extreme, involving “a newly rebalanced and fused world in which social, economic, technological and political progress is widespread.” The two other scenarios were a “Gini-Out-of-the-Bottle” world—one in which inequalities within states and between states dominate, and another, nonstate world in which nonstate actors, from multilateral corporations to terrorists, flourish both for good and bad.

“None of these outcomes is inevitable,” wrote Mathew Burrows, the author of the report. “The future world order will be shaped by human agency as much as unfolding trends and unanticipated events.”

Biden will find that identifying this period as an inflection point is easier than shaping the future. But his speech this past week is a good start, including its focus on our divisions at home. “We can’t let petty, partisan, angry politics get in the way of our responsibilities as a great nation,” the president declared. The other point that Biden made, true across all four inflection points, is that the costs of action are far less than those of inaction. “History has taught us that when terrorists don’t pay a price for their terror, when dictators don’t pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos and death and more destruction. They keep going, and the cost and the threats to America and to the world keep rising.”

In short, pay now or pay more later.

Perhaps Biden should have added: History’s sobering lesson about inflection points is that working together with partners and allies through constructive engagement can change the world for the better, as shown through the peaceful end of the Cold War. However, the costs of getting it wrong also escalate, where the price of miscalculation and isolationism in the 1930s resulted in world war.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Remarks by President Biden on the Unites States’ Response to Hamas’s Terrorist Attacks Against Israel and Russia’s Ongoing Brutal War Against Ukraine
THE WHITE HOUSE

Read Biden’s speech to see how he connected the dots between the crises in Israel and Ukraine. Harkening back to the internationalist rhetoric of presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan, Biden makes the case for American unity and leadership as the global order reaches an inflection point.

“American leadership is what holds the world together. American alliances are what keep us, America, safe. American values are what make us a partner that other nations want to work with. To put all that at risk if we walk away from Ukraine, if we turn our backs on Israel, it’s just not worth it,” Biden said. “That’s why, tomorrow, I’m going to send to Congress an urgent budget request to fund America’s national security needs, to support our critical partners, including Israel and Ukraine.”

As his speech came to an end, Biden issued a plea for unity: “Tonight, there are innocent people all over the world who hope because of us, who believe in a better life because of us, who are desperate not be forgotten by us, and who are waiting for us. But time is of the essence. I know we have our divisions at home. We have to get past them. We can’t let petty, partisan, angry politics get in the way of our responsibilities as a great nation.” Read more →

#2 A World Without American Deterrence
Walter Russell Mead | WALL STREET JOURNAL  

In this important piece, Walter Russell Mead makes the case against “strategic passivity,” arguing that declining US “power to deter” encourages actors to challenge American power across the world.

“Mr. Biden has yet to grapple with the painful truth that America’s core problem in the Middle East is the march of an unappeasable Iran toward regional power regardless of moral or human cost,” Mead writes. “That is not the only thing Mr. Biden and his team don’t seem to have grasped. The Middle East firestorm is merely one hot spot in a world spinning out of control.”

Pointing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Iran’s support for Hamas, and China’s increasing aggression in the South China Sea, Mead comes to the powerful conclusion that “if President Biden’s response to Hamas and its patron Iran fails to restore respect for American power, wisdom and will, our enemies everywhere will draw conclusions and take steps that we and our allies won’t like.” Read more →

#3 The Week When Biden Hugged Bibi
Susan B. Glasser | THE NEW YORKER

In the New Yorker, Susan Glasser dissects Biden’s busy week—from his wartime visit to Israel to his primetime address on Thursday night. She accurately characterized Biden’s speech as “a lecture from a family patriarch to a fractious brood that didn’t necessarily want to hear it: Grow up. The world is counting on us.”

“For years, Biden has warned about the current geopolitical moment as a brewing conflict between the democracies of the world and rising autocracies, such as Russia and China, calling this an ‘inflection point’ in apocalyptic language that suggests a new global conflict like the two World Wars of the twentieth century,” Glasser writes. “In the past, it might have been possible to dismiss some of that as hyperbole from a politician who grew up in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. But events of the past year and a half—and especially during this trying past couple of weeks—have reinforced the urgency of Biden’s most consistent foreign-policy message.” Read more →

#4 Yes, the U.S. Can Afford to Help Its Allies
David Frum | THE ATLANTIC

After Biden’s budget request for Ukraine and Israel, David Frum preemptively addresses sticker shock and the coming debate about “whether the United States is doing too much.” Read this thoughtful piece to understand exactly what it takes to support allies and why the United States can’t afford not to.

“Thanks to its remarkable rebound from the coronavirus pandemic, the American economy will this year produce $27 trillion in goods and services,” Frum writes. “In the fiscal year that ended on September 30, the U.S. spent about $850 billion of that $27 trillion on national defense. That rounds out at a little more than 3 percent of GDP. That’s only about half of the burden of defense spending that the U.S. shouldered during the final decade of the Cold War.”

Frum argues that costs must be measured against benefits: “The money to Ukraine is buying a powerful reinforcement of peace in Europe and across the world. The money to Israel will buy a similar deterrent to rogue aggression in the Middle East.” Read more →

#5 America’s Middle East Imperative: Contain Iran
Reuel Marc Gerecht and Ray Takeyh | WALL STREET JOURNAL

This deep dive into Iran’s involvement in Hamas’s attack on Israel is a must-read for anyone hoping to understand the rising tensions throughout the Middle East and the role of the United States.

“The fact is that both Iran and Hamas wanted to abort a regional alignment that threatened to integrate Israel more into the Middle East,” Gerecht and Takeyh write. “American and Israeli diplomacy operated on the hubristic assumption that Iran didn’t have veto rights on this process. And regardless of Israeli-Saudi-U.S. diplomatic initiatives, the clerical regime and Hamas take pleasure in watching Israelis die.”

Gerecht and Takeyh argue that while “the shadow of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan hang uneasily over Washington,” the events of this week “ought to make it unmistakably clear that the U.S. cannot leave the Middle East and pivot to more promising pastures. The region has a way of dragging reluctant powers back into its morass.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Oct 19, 2023

Experts react to Biden’s ‘inflection point’ address on Ukraine and Israel

By Atlantic Council experts

Biden tied together the conflicts in Israel and Ukraine as part of a larger struggle for democracy and freedom. Here’s what Atlantic Council experts had to say about the Oval Office address.

Conflict Europe & Eurasia

IranSource Oct 19, 2023

Israel misread Iran’s way of war. A proper understanding could help predict Hezbollah’s next moves.

By David Daoud

Iran—through Hezbollah—has spent almost two decades and considerable effort and funds building the Gaza Strip into the Axis of Resistance’s Southern Front against Israel.

Iran Israel

New Atlanticist Oct 18, 2023

Experts react: Will Venezuela now hold freer elections and get sanctions relief?

By Atlantic Council experts

On October 17, Venezuela’s government and members of the opposition signed a deal to work toward making next year’s presidential elections more free and fair. Sanctions relief could be next.

Democratic Transitions Economy & Business

The post Biden’s inflection point and history’s sobering lessons appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Hamas’s horrifying attack on Israel on October 7, resulting in Biden’s powerful and unambiguous statement of support for Israel this week, would appear to have put Ukraine on the back burner for the moment, replaced by a war that might appear more urgent.

But viewing these wars as entirely distinct from each other would be a mistake.

When Biden does get around to making his speech on Ukraine, he should expand his message and tell Americans, and at the same time our partners around the world, that together we face the greatest threat to global order since the 1930s.

What the wars in Ukraine and Israel have in common is that they are both the result of state-sponsored terrorism. In Ukraine’s case, Russia is acting brazenly and directly. In the case of Israel, Iran is acting through Hamas and others. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Tuesday that although there is no direct evidence that Iran was involved in the planning or execution of the attack, it was “complicit.” Indeed, the alarming scale and competence of Hamas’s attacks couldn’t have happened without Iran’s funding, weaponry, training, and intelligence. And without its deepening partnership with Russia and China, Iran would be a far less potent actor.

Beyond that, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared a “no limits partnership” before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Then in March of this year, they spoke together in Moscow of their intention to replace the fraying global system of rules and institutions, established by the United States and its partners after World War II, with something more to their own liking.

Xi told Putin at the time, “Right now there are changes of the likes of which we haven’t seen for a hundred years. And we are the ones driving these changes together.”

“The strategic and political point is that the return of war against Israel isn’t an isolated event,” wrote the Wall Street Journal in a lead editorial on Monday, under the provocative headline “Wake Up, Washington.” “It’s the latest installment in the unraveling of global order as American political will and military primacy are called into question.”

Anne Applebaum wrote this week in the Atlantic, “The Russian invasion of Ukraine and Hamas surprise attack on Israeli citizens are both blatant rejections of [the] rules-based order, and they herald something new. Both aggressors have developed a sophisticated, militarized, modern form of terrorism, and they do not feel apologetic or embarrassed about this at all.”

With the global stakes in mind, a chorus of Democratic and Republican members of Congress had been calling for months for Biden to deliver a major address to Americans, ideally from the Oval Office, on why it is crucial to continue supporting Ukraine.

Administration officials have now said Biden’s speech on Ukraine might have to wait at least until after House Republicans elect their new speaker. Some argue that a Ukraine speech should wait even longer, not wanting it to be lost amid new concerns regarding Israel, where US commitment has longer and deeper historic roots.

Biden shouldn’t wait to deliver his Ukraine speech, and he should broaden it to connect the dots to Israel, making clear that in both cases international crimes are being committed by two countries that need to be held to account. He also needs to warn that China, which is supporting both Russia and Iran, may choose to exploit this moment of perceived US weakness in the Pacific, with a specific danger to Taiwan.

It also would be a good time to underscore the national security dangers posed by our toxic political divisions in Washington. A small minority of Republicans in Congress was almost able to shut down the government. A minority again—just eight Republicans voting with Democrats—ousted the speaker. A similar minority could threaten continued support for Ukraine, although majorities in both the House and the Senate and among the American people continue to back Ukraine.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, writing in Foreign Affairs, provided the disturbing global context for this domestic dysfunction, which on current trajectory will grow only worse in our 2024 election year.

“The United States now confronts graver threats to its security that it has in decades, perhaps ever,” he writes. “Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same time—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—whose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own.”

Gates worries “that at the very moment that events demand strong and coherent response from the United States, the country cannot provide one.”

There’s perhaps a silver lining in this tragic week. As Winston Churchill worked with the United States to create the United Nations after World War II, he famously said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

The reality of war in Israel, with the terrifying images of Hamas’s atrocities, may make it more difficult for an extreme minority to block government spending packages, when it’s clear so many lives are at stake. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX) has floated the idea of a package that would include aid for Israel, assistance for Ukraine, “maybe Taiwan funding and finally border security funding. To me that would be a good package.”

Sullivan has said the president will make request to Congress regarding Israel and would renew its request for Ukraine, though he didn’t link them.

Whatever Congress does, it’s time for US leaders to look at the threat to global order more comprehensively. Until last weekend, Israel’s domestic politics was even more toxically divided than that of the United States. It took the Hamas attack to pull Israelis together, at least temporarily.

One hopes the United States won’t require that sort of wake-up call before it recognizes the threats to Ukraine and Israel are related and that they require a coherent, coordinated, and sustained response.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Jake Sullivan’s Trial by Combat
Susan B. Glasser | THE NEW YORKER

Susan Glasser’s New Yorker opus is the smartest profile I’ve read anywhere on National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and his role on Ukraine and elsewhere.

“As a child of the eighties and ‘Rocky’ and ‘Red Dawn,’ I believe in freedom fighters and I believe in righteous causes, and I believe the Ukrainians have one,” Sullivan told Glasser. “There are very few conflicts that I have seen—maybe none—in the post-Cold War era . . . where there’s such a clear good guy and bad guy. And we’re on the side of the good guy, and we have to do a lot for that person.”

Glasser writes that the task of leading the White House through the “treacherous politics” of the war in Ukraine has fallen to Sullivan, who, when he was appointed at the age of forty-four, was “the youngest national-security adviser since McGeorge Bundy held the job, during the Vietnam War.” Read more →

#2 There Are No Rules
Anne Applebaum | THE ATLANTIC  

Anne Applebaum also draws the crucial connection between Russia’s war on Ukraine and Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel: Both actions completely disregard the “rules-based world order,” whose origins and purpose she describes in rich detail.

“Both aggressors have deployed a sophisticated, militarized, modern form of terrorism, and they do not feel apologetic or embarrassed about this at all,” Applebaum writes. “Terrorists, by definition, are not fighting conventional wars and do not obey the laws of war. Instead, they deliberately create fear and chaos among civilian populations.” Read more →

#3 The Dysfunctional Superpower
Robert Gates | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

The recent ousting of Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his leadership role in the House of Representatives was only the latest act in the circus of US domestic politics. Former US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates argues that the bigger problem is that the United States’ internal divisions and the ensuing dysfunction have become a national security threat.

“The United States finds itself in a uniquely treacherous position: facing aggressive adversaries with a propensity to miscalculate yet incapable of mustering the unity and strength necessary to dissuade them,” Gates writes. “Successfully deterring leaders such as Xi and Putin depends on the certainty of commitments and constancy of response. Yet instead, dysfunction has made American power erratic and unreliable, practically inviting risk-prone autocrats to place dangerous bets—with potentially catastrophic effects.” Read more →

#4 Wake Up, Washington
The Editorial Board | WALL STREET JOURNAL

Following Hamas’s assault on Israel, the Wall Street Journal published a powerful lead editorial, arguing that Washington is in need of an alarm clock.

“The invasion, planned with an assist from Iran, ought to wake up both parties in Washington,” the Editorial Board writes. “The world is awash in threats that will inevitably wash up on our shore if America doesn’t get its act together.”

“The growing global disorder is a result in part of American retreat, not least Mr. Biden’s departure from Afghanistan that told the world’s rogues the United States was preoccupied with its internal divisions. But too many Republicans are also falling for the siren song of isolationism and floating a defense cut in the name of fiscal restraint. The Hamas invasion should blow up dreams the United States can ‘focus on China’ and write off other parts of the world.” Read more →

#5 Israel Has Never Needed to Be Smarter Than in This Moment
Thomas L. Friedman | NEW YORK TIMES

Tom Friedman draws on his rich, Pulitzer Prize-winning experience in the Middle East to provide some advice.

Friedman outlines how the United States can best help Israel: “First, I hope the president is asking Israel to ask itself this question as it considers what to do next in Gaza: What do my worst enemies want me to do—and how can I do just the opposite?”

“I hope Biden is telling Netanyahu that America will do everything it can to help democratic Israel defend itself from the theocratic fascists of Hamas—and their soul brothers of Hezbollah in Lebanon, should they enter the fight,” Friedman writes. Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Oct 10, 2023

What will Hezbollah do next? Here’s how the Hamas-Israel conflict could engulf the region.

By Nicholas Blanford

Neither Israel nor Hezbollah appears to want an escalation, but the risks are high for a disastrous miscalculation. 

Conflict Crisis Management

New Atlanticist Oct 10, 2023

Live expertise: Get the latest insight on the Israel-Hamas war

By Atlantic Council experts

Atlantic Council experts are analyzing the rapidly unfolding events in the Middle East as they happen. Find the latest here.

Conflict Extremism

Report Oct 4, 2023

Running out of road: China Pathfinder 2023 annual scorecard

By Atlantic Council GeoEconomics Center and Rhodium Group

The China Pathfinder project examines whether China’s economy is converging or diverging with the world’s leading open market economies.

China Digital Policy

The post Israel, Ukraine, and how Biden should connect the dots appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Both may be true.

Opinions also vary on whether an economically weaker and geopolitically challenged China should be feared or embraced. On one hand, China’s slowdown reduces its resources and constrains its global ambitions. On the other hand, an insecure China might be more prone to lash out, particularly when it comes to Taiwan, using nationalist fervor to distract its 1.4 billion people from slowing growth and rising unemployment.

Both these arguments could also be true.

Here’s what to remember as the seventy-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) opens this week in New York. The world is in the beginning of a new global era, one in which the United States has begun a strategic contraction, and China has greatly increased its influence in most parts of the world. At the same time, middle powers are rising—India chief and most significant among them—with their own aspirations, while telling Washington they don’t want to pick sides.

The international order of rules and institutions has never been a neat one, but the global scrum is growing a lot messier with a host of regional and ad hoc groups ranging from BRICS and the QUAD to the Group of Seven and Group of Twenty (G20)—and countless others. No one quite knows what will emerge from this scrum, or which blocs and countries will gain influence. It won’t be a time of nonalignment, but more one of muddled multi-alignment.

In this new era, the question is how the United States should best manage its relations with China, which has decided that Washington is out to strangle its access to technology, contest its leadership in its own region, and undermine its rise.

In crafting its strategy, the United States should begin with a geopolitical serenity prayer, seeking the wisdom to distinguish between what it can and cannot change. By focusing sharply on what it can control, it may also have considerable influence on what it can’t determine—that is, China’s trajectory.

The United States should give urgent and ongoing attention to four broad categories: winning in Ukraine; reinvigorating alliances and reassuring allies; harnessing technological change for good; and, perhaps most difficult of all, addressing its own domestic, democratic weaknesses.

It’s important not to ignore the ever-shifting Chinese context. China’s economic slowdown has stunned investors, even as its military buildup and weapons advances worry strategists. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is shaking up his leadership, with a defense minister gone missing weeks ago, a little more than a month after Xi removed his foreign minister and the army’s top two generals.

Don’t let all that distract you. Here are the areas that will produce the best outcomes.

Ukraine

The stakes are as high for the United States in Ukraine as they were in West Berlin during the Cold War. The two situations are different in many respects, including the fact that US soldiers aren’t in Ukraine though their presence in Berlin was an ever-present deterrent to Moscow.

The situations are similar in that the security and freedom of West Berliners was crucial to the positive Cold War outcome: an expansion of democratic rule and open markets, the enlargement of the European Union and NATO, and (for a while, at least) economic globalization and expanding prosperity.

The security and freedom of Ukrainians will have no less an impact on the period ahead. It’s understandable that US President Joe Biden would want to avoid the downstream dangers of being drawn into the war in Ukraine or doing anything that would prompt Russia to use tactical nuclear weapons. At the same time, Biden needs to focus more on the historical advantages of Ukraine prevailing, which far outweigh such dangers.

Nothing could serve his legacy more. Success in Ukraine may have the added benefit of deterring China from aggression in Taiwan.

Alliances and allies

The United States’ strengths include a solid set of global allies and a NATO alliance that China can’t match. This is, however, a time to both modernize those alliances and reassure their members of US purpose.

Biden’s recent meeting at Camp David, bringing together South Korean and Japanese leaders, was a crucial breakthrough for the trilateral partnership—one which can be built upon. NATO’s seventy-fifth-anniversary summit in Washington next July provides a significant moment to prepare the Alliance for the future, by inviting Ukraine to join, deepening global partnerships, and advancing technological cooperation and capabilities.

In the game of alliances, China has only harmed itself by disengaging from the G20 and will continue that harm by failing to attend UNGA this week.

Harnessing technology

Imagine for a moment how different the world would be today if the Third Reich produced J. Robert Oppenheimer and got to the Manhattan Project first. What if the Soviet Union had invented the internet, produced Silicon Valley, or developed the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which put the United States at the forefront of military technologies?

The race for the commanding heights of new technologies—artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and bioengineering, to name a few—will perhaps be even more significant in shaping the new era. There’s an accompanying need to work cooperatively and globally to establish the rules and set the standards to harness technological change for good.

Domestic affairs

Nothing hobbles China more than its one-party rule and its increasingly autocratic leadership. Xi won’t be able to produce the growth his country requires without loosening state control of his economy. However, he fears that relaxing that control could be the Communist Party’s undoing.

Just as China’s future depends on how it manages its autocracy, the United States’ future requires attention to the threats to its democracy.

These threats are not new, as Karl Rove powerfully wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal. “It’s bad today, but it’s been worse before, and it will be better ahead. Change is coming. We don’t know precisely when, but it’s coming. The better angels of our nature as Americans will emerge and win out.”

One hopes he is right, but only Americans themselves can ensure that.

The United States’ friends are scratching their heads over how the United States, with its vast human resources, could be facing a 2024 election of historic consequence between an aging, 80-year-old Biden and a four-times-indicted, 77-year-old former President Donald Trump.

In a week when Americans needed inspiration, Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) provided it through his announcement that he wouldn’t run for re-election at age 77. At the same time, he suggested Biden and Trump follow his lead. He’s not betting they will listen.

The United States can watch the pendulum swing on China without concern if it acts with greater purpose and consistency in supporting Ukraine, shoring up its alliances, advancing its critical technologies, and fixing its democracy.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Xi’s Tight Control Hampers Stronger Response to China’s Slowdown
Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie | WALL STREET JOURNAL

Read this smart analysis to understand how Xi’s authoritarianism hampers China from fixing its economy.

“Officials in charge of day-to-day economic affairs have been holding increasingly urgent meetings in recent months to discuss ways to address the deteriorating outlook, people familiar with the matter said,” Wei and Yifan Xie wrote. “Yet despite advice from leading Chinese economists to take bolder action, the people said, senior Chinese officials have been unable to roll out major stimulus or make significant policy changes because they don’t have sufficient authority to do so, with economic decision-making increasingly controlled by Xi himself.”

Minxin Pei, a scholar and writer on China, told the Wall Street Journal reporters: “Xi’s centralization of power has caused a crisis of confidence in China’s economy not seen since 1978,” after Mao Zedong’s death. Read more →

#2 Deterrence in Taiwan Is Failing
Hal Brands | FOREIGN POLICY  

Hal Brands argues in Foreign Policy that a clash between China and the United States over Taiwan would be “the war everyone saw coming.”

“Biden knows the threat is rising—he recently called China a ‘ticking time bomb’—which is why he has repeatedly said Washington won’t stand aside if Beijing strikes,” Brands writes “But make no mistake: A great-power war over Taiwan would be cataclysmic. It would feature combat more vicious than anything the United States has experienced in generations. It would fragment the global economy and pose real risks of nuclear escalation. So the crucial question is whether Washington can deter a conflict it hopes never to fight.”

“The United States and its friends are making real, even historic progress,” writes Brands, before concluding, “alas, they are still struggling to get ahead of the threat.” Read more →

#3 The China Model Is Dead
Michael Schuman | THE ATLANTIC

“The vaunted China model—the mix of liberalization and state control that generated the country’s hypersonic growth—has entered its death throes,” Michael Schuman, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, writes in his latest essay.

“Economists and even Chinese policymakers have warned for years that the China model was fundamentally flawed and would inevitably break down. But Xi was too consumed with shoring up his own power to undertake the necessary reforms to fix it. Now the problems run so deep, and the repairs would be so costly, that the time for a turnaround may have passed.”

Despite this grim prognosis, Schuman warns against mistaking China’s downturn for an economic win for the United States. “China may turn out to be a less formidable competitor than once imagined and offer a less attractive model of development for the rest of the world,” he writes. “But economic failure could also heighten Xi’s determination to overcome American dominance—if not by becoming richer, then through other, possibly more destabilizing means.” Read more →

#4 President Biden should not run again in 2024
David Ignatius | THE WASHINGTON POST 

This Ignatius column had the White House stirring this week.

As the 2024 election approaches, Ignatius lays out the strongest argument yet against Biden’s candidacy, one that even a growing number of the president’s friends are reportedly making in private. “Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement,” writes Ignatius, “which was stopping Trump.”

“Biden has never been good at saying no,” writes Ignatius. “He should have resisted the choice of Harris, who was a colleague of his beloved son Beau when they were both state attorneys general. He should have blocked then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, which has done considerable damage to the island’s security. He should have stopped his son Hunter from joining the board of a Ukrainian gas company and representing companies in China—and he certainly should have resisted Hunter’s attempts to impress clients by getting Dad on the phone.”

Now, Ignatius argues, “Biden has another chance to say no—to himself, this time—by withdrawing from the 2024 race. It might not be in character for Biden, but it would be a wise choice for the country.” Read more →

#5 As India Rises, the G20 Reveals a Shifting World Order
Walter Russell Mead | WALL STREET JOURNAL 

Last week’s G20 summit in New Delhi was no historical landmark. However, Mead argues in the Wall Street Journal, “it reflected three important continuing shifts.” 

“The first and, from an American standpoint, the most beneficial of these developments is the emergence of India as one of the world’s leading powers and as an increasingly close partner of the US,” Mead writes. “The G20 summit was a personal diplomatic triumph for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With both the Chinese and Russian leaders absent, Modi dominated center stage at a world gathering just weeks after India joined the elite club of countries that have landed probes on the moon.” 

The second trend that Mead points out is not as positive for the United States. “China, Russia and some of their partners are stepping up their opposition to the American-led world order that has dominated global politics since World War II.” The third trend, Europe’s waning global influence, is similarly disruptive to a US-dominated world order. Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Sep 13, 2023

Twenty questions (and expert answers) about Iran one year after Mahsa Amini’s death

By Atlantic Council

A year after the twenty-two-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman died following her arrest by authorities, Iran has changed—and is still changing—in important ways.

Civil Society Human Rights

New Atlanticist Sep 13, 2023

Bahrain’s new strategic pact with the US is just the beginning for the Gulf

By Adam Ereli

The newly signed security and economic pact between the United States and Bahrain will have far-reaching consequences for the Gulf and beyond.

Economy & Business Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist Sep 13, 2023

What the Putin-Kim authoritarian get-together means for Russia’s war and North Korea’s capabilities

By Atlantic Council experts

Experts react to Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un meeting at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia.

China Conflict

The post On China, grant the US the wisdom to distinguish between what it can and cannot change appeared first on Atlantic Council.

But that wasn’t the case this week. The NATO Summit in Lithuania will be remembered both for the public fireworks over Ukraine’s aspirations for Alliance membership and outcomes that included a breakthrough on Swedish membership, the most detailed and robust defense plans since the Cold War, and unprecedented Group of Seven (G7) defense commitments to Kyiv.

Let’s start with the fireworks, unusual in a consensus-driven Alliance that values decorum and discretion, and end with the historic outcomes.

Tensions began simmering long before the summit among Biden administration officials and other NATO allies—with Ukraine lobbing arguments from the outside—over just how far to go in committing the Alliance to a time-linked invitation and roadmap for Ukraine’s membership.

For the Biden administration, it was a matter of geopolitical prudence to oppose any fixed timeline for an invitation for fear it would draw NATO, and hence the United States, into a direct conflict with Russia. With one eye on the 2024 US presidential election and the other on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear capabilities, why take the risk, particularly as full Ukrainian membership wasn’t likely to come before the war ended anyway?

For Ukraine’s more impatient supporters—particularly, but not exclusively, those geographically closer to the Russian threat—it was a matter of strategic imperative and moral obligation to draft language that provided more clarity on the pathway and potential timing of a NATO membership invitation than Washington considered acceptable. Several of those supporters had previously been occupied and repressed by Moscow, so they understand the value of NATO security guarantees.

Even if membership itself wouldn’t come for some time, they wanted to demonstrate maximum common cause for a people who miraculously and at enormous human cost are countering Russia’s war and revanchist ambitions.

The behind-the-scenes simmer boiled over when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, apparently having read a draft of the summit communiqué about to be released, threw a Twitter bomb into the negotiating room.

What he objected to was text at the end of paragraph eleven, which read: “We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when allies agree and conditions are met.”

Zelenskyy shot back before the draft could be released:

“It’s unprecedented and absurd when time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine’s membership. While at the same time vague wording about ‘conditions’ is added even for inviting Ukraine. It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance. This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror. Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit.”

Before long, word spread in Vilnius that at least one ally had “broken silence,” which in NATO-speak means that during an agreed period after the communiqué has been finalized and before it is publicly released, any ally may come back with an objection and reopen negotiations.

Though it’s unclear what transpired next, officials involved in the negotiations described scenes during the summit in which US President Joe Biden and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stood over the document and hand-drafted changes. In the end, the US stance on Ukrainian membership proved immovable, even resisting attempts by at least one other ally to at the very least state that it was NATO’s intention to explore ways to invite Ukraine to join the Alliance as soon as the seventy-fifth-anniversary summit in Washington next July.

Given all that, there was more than a little buzz when Biden, in his fiery speech in Vilnius—in which he hailed the “unbroken” Ukrainian people—neglected to mention or encourage their NATO  membership aspirations. 

Even after NATO made the communiqué public, tensions still simmered.

At the NATO Public Forum, (a side event for the summit that the Atlantic Council co-hosted), Daria Kaleniuk, a Ukrainian anti-corruption activist, provocatively asked Sullivan how to explain to her young son, who is sleeping in their corridor due to air raids, that Biden isn’t ready to accept Ukraine into NATO. She suggested it might be “because he is afraid of Russia, afraid of Russia losing, afraid Ukraine winning,” or even suggested, “because there are back-channel negotiations with Russia” that ostensibly had Ukraine’s NATO hopes as a bargaining chip.

Sullivan was warm but firm to his questioner, acknowledging that the world stands in “awe” at the way Ukrainians have made sacrifices with “hell raining down from the skies” around them. At the same time, he scolded Kaleniuk for making “insinuations” that were “unfounded and unjustified” and asked that those insinuations “get checked at the door, so that we can talk to one another in goodwill and good faith.”

Beyond that, Sullivan added, “I think the American people do deserve a degree of gratitude” from both the US government and the rest of the world “for their willingness to step up” to provide such plentiful military assistance to Ukraine.

With tensions high, British Defense Minister Ben Wallace hit a similar theme, “providing a slight word of caution” that Ukraine should express more appreciation to its supporters.

When asked by reporters for his response to Wallace, Zelenskyy replied, “he can write to me about how he wants to be thanked.”

Were it not for the fireworks, the world’s focus would have been more singularly on the summit’s results.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dropped his objections to Sweden’s membership, opening the way for it to join the Alliance. That leaves Putin facing a bigger and more unified NATO, strengthening defense in the Baltic states and the High North.

Real progress also came through a pledge by G7 countries (all in NATO except Japan), although it is not binding, to provide Ukraine “enduring” support—which each country will determine individually—including more defense equipment, increased intelligence sharing, and expanded training, dramatically reducing the likelihood of eroding resolve.

There was plenty more in the NATO Summit communiqué on defense plans, strengthened commitments to defense investment, and deeper global partnerships, particularly with leaders on hand from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea; there was also robust language on China and warnings not to provide lethal support to its Russian friends for their Ukraine war.   

By summit’s end, and by the convening of the renamed and reconstituted NATO-Ukraine Council, tempers had calmed some and diplomacy had intervened on the Ukraine issue, though some bad blood will likely linger.

Zelenskyy went home not with a NATO invitation but with family photo-like pictures alongside NATO leaders, as mentioned in my Inflection Points column last week, and a dramatically different tone than his earlier missive, as shown in a video he tweeted from his train ride home to Kyiv:

“We are returning home with a good result for our country and, very importantly, for our warriors… For the first time since independence, we have formed a security foundation for Ukraine on its way to NATO. These are concrete security guarantees that are confirmed by the top seven democracies in the world. Never before have we had such a security foundation, and this is the level of the G7… Very importantly, during these two days of the [NATO] Summit, we have put to rest any doubts and ambiguities about whether Ukraine will be in NATO. It will! For the first time, not only do all the allies agree on this, but a significant majority in the alliance is vigorously pushing for it.”

At a closing session for the NATO Public Forum, I asked Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis how history would remember the Vilnius summit.

“Strategically, we won,” he said. “We committed ourselves to Ukrainian membership in NATO.” Unlike the 2008 commitment at the Bucharest NATO Summit that had no follow up, Landsbergis said the Alliance and Ukraine this time won’t waste another day, because of the urgency that Putin’s war had placed on everyone.

The Vilnius summit “was not the last stop,” he said. “We have to see it as a bridge. And the next stop is Washington. So, we have a full year. Lots to do…. Washington can actually be even more historic than Vilnius.”

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 NATO’s promises to Ukraine mark real progress
ECONOMIST

The Economist reports that although NATO allies could have done more at this week’s summit in Vilnius, they dealt a number of blows to Putin that went far beyond Ukraine.

“Putin’s first defeat was over a different expansion of NATO,” the Economist writes. “Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said he is dropping his objections to Sweden’s membership, enabling it to follow its Nordic neighbor, Finland, into the alliance. That will strengthen the Baltic states and the High North, and tie up more of Putin’s resources should he attempt mischief against NATO anywhere along its frontier.”

Further, with increased military assistance from G7 countries, it will become harder for Putin to maintain his resolve. “The G7 members promise that this will be an ‘enduring’ commitment, and that each country will, individually, craft its own security guarantees for Ukraine that will give it a ‘sustainable force capable of defending Ukraine now and deterring Russian aggression in the future.’… This matters because it helps disabuse Putin and his elites of the belief that Western resolve will crumble if only Russia clings on.”

Although delaying Ukraine’s NATO membership process until after the war will likely give Russia incentive to prolong the war, the Economist argues, the additional military assistance should prevent that from happening. “That is where the summit made real progress.” Read more →

#2 The ‘Israel Model’ Won’t Work for Ukraine
Eliot A. Cohen | ATLANTIC

In this important Atlantic piece, Eliot Cohen argues that the “Israel model”—in which the West would arm Ukraine to the teeth to guarantee its ability to defeat any credible military threat—is a poor policy choice based on flawed reasoning.

Cohen writes that the main difference between 1973 Israel and 2023 Ukraine is that Israel had a military edge over its neighbors, which Ukraine currently lacks over Russia. “Israel staged bombing raids against targets deep in Syria and Egypt, including their capitals, from the 1960s forward, and unlike the Ukrainian drones flying to Moscow, these were not mere symbolic strikes. The Six Day War, in 1967, was an overwhelming Israeli victory, which involved the annihilation of its neighbors’ air forces and the advance of Israeli armor and infantry across the de facto 1949 border. The 1973 war similarly ended with Israeli forces within artillery range of Damascus and on the verge of destroying half the Egyptian force that had crossed the Suez Canal.”

Most provocatively, Cohen writes about the difference between an Israel with a nuclear arsenal and a Ukraine that gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 in a deal under which Moscow promised to safeguard its sovereignty and security. “Unless, of course,” Cohen warns in his conclusion, “[Biden] prefers to be the father of the Ukrainian atom bomb.” Read more →

#3 Russia’s Nuclear Option Hangs Over Ukraine and NATO
Robbie Gramer | FOREIGN POLICY

To gain an understanding of how fears of nuclear conflict played into this week’s decision, read Robbie Gramer in Foreign Policy.

“The nuclear question is an existential one for the alliance,” he writes, “one that’s driven Washington’s calculations on what military aid to send to Ukraine and when, and it has also influenced the debate on when and how to allow Ukraine to join the military alliance as a full-fledged member.”

According to Gramer, US and allied officials are divided over the validity of Russian threats. “Some US and other NATO defense officials believe there could be an increased risk of Russia launching a limited nuclear strike with a low-yield tactical nuclear weapon to stave off a major battlefield defeat if its forces look to be on the verge of a rout, or if Ukraine appears poised to capture Crimea and large swaths of occupied territory in southern and eastern Ukraine. Others say that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling won’t go further than that, and bowing to such threats will only embolden Russia to use such ‘nuclear blackmail’ in the future.”

“At the same time, Ukrainian and Western officials also fear that Russia could mount an attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to attempt to trigger a major radiological event, irrespective of whether it launches a nuclear strike—though it’s unclear how successful those efforts would be.” Read more →

#4 Biden Pledges Long-Term Backing for Ukraine, but a U.S. Election Looms
Zolan Kanno-Youngs | NEW YORK TIMES

For insight into the role of US domestic politics on the NATO summit and Biden’s decision making, look no further than Zolan Kanno-Youngs’s reporting in the New York Times.

“Despite Biden’s repeated promises of staying by Ukraine’s side in its war against Russia, questions about the shelf life of support among American people and lawmakers hung over the summit of Western allies,” Kanno-Youngs writes. “Even as the US president was giving a long-term commitment, a group of far-right Republican lawmakers in Washington was pushing legislation that would scale back aid to Ukraine, exposing fractures in the Republican Party and raising doubts about its commitment should it capture the White House next year.”

According to Kanno-Youngs, to sway domestic public opinion to favor providing aid to Ukraine, Biden has framed the war as an existential battle between democracy and autocracy. In Vilnius, Biden was determined to address the doubts about continued US support for Ukraine. “We will not waver,” Biden said. “I mean that. Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken.” Read more →

#5 Should Ukraine Negotiate with Russia?
Dmytro Natalukha; Alina Polyakova and Daniel Fried; Angela Stent; Samuel Charap | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

In dialogue with Samuel Charap, who previously urged the use of diplomacy as a tool to end the war with Ukraine, Dmytro Natalukha, Alina Polyakova and Daniel Fried (an Atlantic Council distinguished fellow), and Angela Stent argue that negotiations with Russia are bound to fail. Read this multifaceted analysis to understand the pros and cons of negotiation with Russia.

Natalukha claimed that the only way to secure Ukraine’s future is to remove Putin from power. “If the goal is to prevent Russia from threatening democracies around the world, allowing it to reach an armistice with Ukraine won’t do much good,” he writes. “Ukraine and its allies must aim to make Russia less anti-Western. Regardless of what happens at the negotiating table, therefore, Putin cannot remain in power.”

Polyakova and Fried believe that although negotiation will most likely happen, the battlefield is Ukraine’s best position from which to win the war: “A military stalemate is indeed possible. And at some point, negotiations with Russia will be needed to end this war. But Ukraine should start negotiating only when it is in the strongest possible position; it should not be rushed into talks when Russia shows no interest in any settlement terms other than Ukraine’s surrender. Starting negotiations now would mean accepting Putin’s maximalist terms. If Russia suffers further setbacks on the battlefield, however, talks could proceed from a better starting place.”

Polyakova and Fried continue, “The most important point, which Ukraine’s allies agree on, is that Ukraine must define the right moment for negotiations. That may or may not be when all of Ukraine’s territory is liberated. The key is for Ukraine to maintain flexibility in its decisions about its territory and the path toward a just peace.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Jul 11, 2023

Experts react: What NATO’s Vilnius summit means for Ukraine and the Alliance’s future

By Atlantic Council experts

Atlantic Council experts decode the summit’s implications for Ukraine’s membership, NATO’s approach to China, and more.

Belarus Central Europe

UkraineAlert Jul 11, 2023

NATO summit leaves Ukrainians frustrated

By Peter Dickinson

The 2023 NATO summit failed to deliver on hopes for a clear commitment on future Ukrainian membership, leaving many in Ukraine deeply frustrated by the apparent lack of urgency among the country’s allies, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Corruption

New Atlanticist Jul 10, 2023

Experts react: Erdogan just agreed to support Sweden’s NATO bid. What does that mean for Turkey, Sweden, and the Alliance?

By Atlantic Council experts

Atlantic Council experts weigh in on what’s behind this dramatic and consequential turnabout from Erdoğan and what to expect next.

Europe & Eurasia European Union

The post Dispatch from Vilnius: Inside a NATO Summit of high drama on Ukraine—and historic opportunity appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“The summit has only one essential outcome,” Doug Lute, a former US ambassador to NATO and member of the Atlantic Council’s board of directors, told me.  “Whatever the agreements on supporting Ukraine, this year it is essential that Zelenskyy be in the photo, capturing vividly that NATO has his back and reminding the world that Russia has no such support.”  

Beyond that, if the Ukrainian leader is photographed standing among the thirty-one NATO heads of state, Zelenskyy more than likely got enough of what he needed to make the trip to Lithuania. When I met with him recently in Kyiv, as part of an Atlantic Council delegation, he said anything short of security guarantees and a clear roadmap to NATO membership for Ukraine would be seen as a betrayal of Ukrainians’ sacrifice.

If Zelenskyy doesn’t come to Vilnius, allied leaders will have missed a crucial opportunity to signal to Ukrainians and the world their unflinching commitment to defeating Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s criminal war and revanchist designs in Europe—at a crucible moment in the five-hundred-day-old war.

Zelenskyy was in Turkey on Saturday as part of a pre-summit European tour, shoring up support from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is still withholding his support for Sweden’s membership in NATO. Regarding Kyiv, however, Erdoğan said: “There is no doubt that Ukraine deserves NATO membership.”

Though much still could change before the summit opens on Tuesday, Central European alliance members say that the Biden administration has led the recalcitrance to a stronger, time-linked roadmap to NATO membership for Ukraine.

One Central European senior official, who asked that his name and that of his country not be named, compared the tone coming from the White House to that of Jacques Chirac in 2003, when the French president lectured Central Europeans who were supporting the United States on Iraq that they had “missed a good opportunity to shut up.”

What’s on the table for Ukraine thus far in Vilnius is, among other measures, the renaming of a NATO consultative group to give it more weight, security assurances similar to those the United States has with Israel, and the removal of the bureaucracy of a membership action plan (MAP)—though US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Friday that Ukraine “needs to take additional reforms,” hinting that it will still face a MAP-like process. Zelenskyy told us in Kyiv that such moves would be insufficient given his country’s service to democracies everywhere.

To be sure, the Biden administration deserves high praise for its handling of Russia’s war thus far, starting with its early leaking of intelligence predicting the invasion so that Ukraine and Europe were forewarned (not to mention China). Without concerted US military and financial support, Ukraine likely would have failed.

 At the same time, if Ukrainians had received the weaponry and equipment they wanted faster and in greater quantities, thousands of Ukrainians would still be alive and the battlefield gains would have been greater.    

Softening the potential blow of a disappointing summit outcome for Ukraine, the Biden administration cleared the way this week to provide Ukrainians with the cluster munitions they have long sought, prompting Zelenskyy to praise Biden’s “decisive steps.”

A form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosives that release smaller submunitions, cluster munitions have been widely used by Russia but are outlawed by many allies, though not by the United States. With Ukraine running low on 155 mm artillery shells, which are in low supply globally, cluster munitions are the fastest, most plentiful way to flush out dug-in Russian positions that are blocking the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Biden administration’s green light for cluster munitions has followed a pattern: The White House at first blocks the provision of certain weapons, from High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and Abrams tanks to Patriot air defenses, only to agree to their provision months later. The administration’s go-slow approach to Ukraine’s NATO membership aspirations reflects that caution, born of a desire to defend Ukraine without provoking greater Russian escalation, including tactical nuclear weapons use.

All NATO summits have to balance the longer-term needs of the Alliance with immediate demands. However, officials from non-US NATO member countries who I spoke to last week said there are several reasons why Ukraine’s immediate needs should take on greater priority:

1. Mercenary leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s short-lived rebellion in June underscored both the fissures in Russia’s leadership and the low morale and discipline of its military. It’s thus an ideal time to double down on support for Ukraine, recognizing that only significant ground gains can force useful negotiations.
2. Despite the economic and military cost of supporting Ukraine, the costs will grow exponentially if Putin prevails, and the threats go beyond Ukraine. One Biden administration official told me that the geopolitical importance of Ukraine to Washington is far greater than either Afghanistan or Iraq ever was, yet Ukraine can stop Russia at far lower cost and without risking American or other allied soldiers.
3. To argue that NATO membership for Ukraine can only come after the war ends and Russia leaves Ukrainian territory only provides Moscow an incentive to continue the war. Holding back due to concern about Russian nukes rewards Putin’s nuclear blackmail—and will encourage other unsavory leaders to acquire nukes as well.
4. Much is said about why Ukraine needs NATO, but not enough is said about why the Alliance needs Ukraine, now one of the strongest and most battle-hardened militaries in the world. The lesson of NATO in Central and Eastern Europe is that it brings stability to its neighbors and more peaceful and secure relations with Russia. The countries that Russia invaded—Georgia and Ukraine—were gray zones outside any military alliance. “Gray zones are green lights” for Putin, argues former US ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker.
5. Putin thus far has been wrong to count on Ukrainian failure and Western fatigue, but the dangers will grow in 2024 when the United States and much of Europe face elections. Bold decisions that can be made in 2023 will be much more difficult to achieve next year. Ukraine’s biggest threat might be the election year of 2024, and not just in the United States.

“We don’t any longer have the luxury of time,” one senior European official told me. “We certainly don’t have the luxury of getting it wrong. The stakes are too large—they are generational and go far beyond NATO’s borders.”   

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 The war in Ukraine shows how technology is changing the battlefield
ECONOMIST

The Economist breaks down the lessons of the Ukraine war and what they mean for the future of warfare. Read the whole report to gain a deep and nuanced understanding of the implications for future military planning.

“[T]he paradox of the war,” the Economist writes, “is that mass and technology are intimately bound together. Even the artillery war shows this. Weeks before the invasion, America sent Ukraine Excalibur shells. Inside each was a small, rugged chip that could receive GPS signals from America’s constellation of navigation satellites. Whereas Russia often relied on barrages over a wide area, Ukrainian gunners could be more precise.”

This, the Economist argues, portends a shift towards the defensive, analogous to the late nineteenth century. “Precision warfare can counter some advantages of mass: Ukraine was outnumbered 12 to one north of Kyiv. It can also complement mass. Software-based targeting saves around 15-30% in shells, according to sources familiar with the data. But what precision cannot do, says Michael Kofman of the Centre for Naval Analyses (CNA), a think-tank, is substitute for mass.” Read more →

#2 Ukraine wants and expects an invitation to join NATO. Allies are not sure.
David L Stern, Emily Rauhala, and Isabelle Khurshudyan | WASHINGTON POST

For an understanding of what Ukraine seeks at the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, what might happen, and what the Ukrainians are worried about, read this excellent piece of reporting from David Stern, Emily Rauhala, and Isabelle Khurshudyan in the Washington Post.

“With or without membership,” they write, “Ukrainian officials are looking for security commitments by Western nations ‘without delay and as soon as possible,’ which would potentially encourage Moscow to withdraw its forces. Many analysts say Russian President Vladimir Putin is counting on Ukraine’s Western supporters to grow exhausted and halt the expensive flow of weapons and economic aid they have been sending to Kyiv. Such security guarantees could also serve to deter Russia from any major acts of aggression in the future. ‘I am sure that if the regime in the Kremlin does not change in the coming years, even after our victory, there will be — in their heads — a desire for revenge,’ [Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii] Reznikov said.” Read more →

#3 Putin’s Real Security Crisis
Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

For another angle on the implications of Prigozhin’s failed coup, read this smart analysis of the failure of the Russian security services during the coup and Putin’s apparent non-response to that failure.

“Then, as Wagner forces made their move,” Soldatov and Borogan write, “both the FSB and Russia’s National Guard, the main body assigned to maintain internal security and suppress unrest in Russia, failed as rapid response forces. The National Guard made every effort to avoid a direct confrontation with Wagner; for its part, the FSB—which also has several elite special forces groups—did not appear to take any action at all. Instead, the most powerful security agency in the country issued a press release calling on Wagner’s rank and file to stay out of the uprising and to go arrest Prigozhin—on their own.”

And yet, they note, no one has yet been punished.

“This lack of repercussions for the security services is particularly startling in view of the FSB’s performance in the crisis. When Prigozhin captured the headquarters of the Southern Military District—where he spoke to [Deputy Minister of Defense Yunus-Bek] Yevkurov and [First Deputy Head of the GRU Vladimir] Alekseyev—it looked almost like a hostage taking of several of Russia’s top military commanders. Yet according to sources in the FSB, in response to the arrival of Wagner forces, the FSB agents in Rostov-on-Don simply barricaded themselves in their local headquarters… While a column of Wagner mercenaries marched toward Moscow, taking down helicopters and shooting into the houses of civilians on the way, these brave generals failed to show up—not at the scene or in front of the public at all.” Read more →

#4 Multilateral Man Is More Powerful Than Putin Realized
Anne Applebaum | THE ATLANTIC

In this must-read profile of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Anne Applebaum makes a powerful case for why Stoltenberg’s brand of quiet multilateral leadership will ensure Ukraine’s long-term integration into Europe from behind the scenes.

“[A]lthough historians will argue about whether NATO countries could have done more to deter Russia, they did much more to help Ukraine than Putin expected once the war began. Putin not only underestimated Ukraine; he also underestimated Multilateral Men—the officials who, like Jens Stoltenberg and his counterparts at the European Union, helped the White House put together the military, political, and diplomatic response. Putin believed his own propaganda, the same propaganda used by the transatlantic far right: Democracies are weak, autocrats are strong, and people who use polite, diplomatic language won’t defend themselves. This turned out to be wrong. “‘Democracies have proven much more resilient, much stronger than our adversaries believe,’ Stoltenberg said. And autocracies are more fragile: ‘As we’ve just seen, authoritarian systems can just, suddenly, break down.’” Read more →

#5 Evan Gershkovich, Detained for 100 Days
WALL STREET JOURNAL

As a former Wall Street Journal reporter and longtime advocate for press freedom, I remain determined to do what’s possible to end the Russian imprisonment of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich, which is now at one hundred days and counting. I urge Inflection Points readers to follow the WSJ’s guide on what you can do to support Evan and his family.

Writes Emma Tucker, the WSJ’s editor-in-chief, “In the days since Evan was arrested we have been inspired by the support that you, our readers, have provided. It has helped us to keep Evan’s plight at the top of the news agenda. As we reflect on this difficult milestone, we encourage you to continue sharing Evan’s reporting and the latest updates on his situation. Journalism is not a crime, and we will not rest until Evan is released.”

Amen. Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Jul 5, 2023

Here’s the ‘concrete’ path for Ukraine to join NATO

By Franklin D. Kramer, Hans Binnendijk, Christopher Skaluba

The upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius should establish a High Level Group to design a roadmap for Ukraine’s fast-track membership.

Conflict Crisis Management

New Atlanticist Jul 6, 2023

Ukraine needs NATO membership, not an ‘Israel model’

By Ian Brzezinski

Granting NATO membership to Ukraine is critical to ensuring it wins the war against Russia quickly and decisively.

Israel NATO

New Atlanticist Jul 6, 2023

Four scenarios for Russia’s future after the Wagner Group mutiny

By Jeffrey Cimmino

What will be the long-term aftermath of Russia’s Wagner mutiny? Here are four possible paths for Russia’s future the West should consider.

Belarus Crisis Management

The post Dispatch from Vilnius: Will Zelenskyy show at the summit? It depends on whether Biden listens to frontline NATO allies. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Each of them—more than twenty feet long and weighing in at more than four tons—served as a further reminder that the time was over for providing half measures in supporting Ukraine. After fifteen months of withstanding and pushing back against Moscow’s aggression—acting in the interests of free people everywhere—Ukraine deserves support: faster and larger deliveries of ammunition, more plentiful supplies of Patriot and other air defenses, longer-range missiles to hit targets within Russia (that are killing Ukrainians) and, as rapidly as possible, F-16s and other fourth-generation fighter jets to reduce Moscow’s deadly air superiority.

Most of all, Ukraine deserves NATO membership. Given the generational consequences of Ukrainians’ struggles, NATO should provide much clearer and more robust security guarantees to Ukraine at the Alliance’s Vilnius summit in July. Most urgently, NATO should provide a concrete path to membership, including the timing and avenues for a fast-track accession decision by the Alliance’s seventy-fifth-anniversary summit in Washington next April. To put that off until after Russia’s war ends or until Russia withdraws from Ukrainian territory only encourages Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

Mercifully on that Thursday morning, US-provided Patriot air defense systems took out all of the incoming Iskanders, but the fragments still killed three Ukrainians (including a woman and her nine-year-old child) and injured eleven others, adding to the victims from Russia’s murderous war. Dozens more would have been killed this week, the deadliest week in Kyiv in months, had the United States and other allied systems not been put in place in April, after long months of discussions.

After Ukrainian reports that Patriot missiles shot down a Russian hypersonic weapon for the first time on May 4 and six more in a single night two weeks later, Zelenskyy reflected with one of his top advisers on how many hundreds more Ukrainian lives might have been saved had the deliveries come faster. He also pondered how many more Ukrainians might die on the front lines in the coming summer offensive because the F-16s won’t be providing air cover for months to come, telling the Wall Street Journal that the lack of protection means “a large number of soldiers will die.”

However, in our meeting with Zelenskyy this week, where we presented him with the Atlantic Council Global Citizen Award, he adopted his more familiar public posture of looking forward and doing what he can to maintain domestic and international unity.

“I’m not looking at the past, but rather to the future,” he said. “We have to achieve comparable airpower to Russia in the sky.” He spoke about the historic cost not just to Ukraine, but also to Europe, the United States, and the world, should his country come up short. “We can’t be losers,” he said.

And that brought him to NATO’s upcoming Vilnius summit.

His advisers have briefed him on the options allies are said to be discussing regarding Ukraine, ranging from a security relationship akin to that between the United States and Israel, of robust weapons deliveries and intelligence exchanges, to the renaming and repurposing of a body at which NATO meets regularly with Ukraine in order to give it more heft.

Zelenskyy noted that Ukraine lacks the deterrent power of Israel’s nuclear capabilities, which it gave up along with Kazakhstan and Belarus after signing the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in 1994, when Russia provided assurances that it wouldn’t use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine or the others.

Given the urgency of their war with Russia, most Ukrainians would see a more robust consultative body within NATO as window dressing if it didn’t come with membership certainties. More NATO members are coming to realize that as well, with French President Emmanuel Macron telling the GLOBSEC conference in Slovakia this week that Ukraine deserved to be included “in an architecture of security.”

As Zelenskyy said to our delegation, “if Ukraine will not be given some hope at Vilnius, it will be demoralizing for our soldiers. It will be seen as a big message to our soldiers and people.”

If NATO doesn’t come forward with “more ambitious ideas” at its summit, Zelenskyy indicated to us, it might not be appropriate for him to accept the Alliance’s invitation to attend. “I don’t want to betray our people,” he said, sensing Ukrainians would feel underappreciated for the irreplaceable role they are playing on Europe’s front lines against Russian aggression.

“We need the world not to be afraid of Russia,” he said. His unstated message was clear: The world’s fears about Russia’s potential escalation of its war in Ukraine, up to and including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, have prevented more robust support at earlier stages—but that was the opposite of what would better deter Putin.

A short week’s stay in Ukraine underscores two inescapable realities as the country braces for its long-anticipated summer counteroffensive, which is expected to begin in the coming days.

The first reality is that without the remarkable level of US and partner support thus far, it would have been impossible for Ukrainians to have held the line against Russian adversaries, who are more numerous, are well-armed, and maintain still far superior airpower.

The second reality, however, is that the cautiousness and relative slowness in those deliveries of support have prevented the Ukrainians from making more rapid gains, made it harder to prevent civilian casualties, and made it harder for Ukraine to retake enough territory to force Russia to the negotiating table, prolonging the war.

As certainly as West Berlin’s survival was a pre-condition for Cold War victory, and as certainly as Poland’s Solidarity movement and democratic change laid the ground for Soviet collapse, so it is now Ukraine’s fate as a free and democratic nation—integrated into the European Union and NATO—that will be at the center of the context for Europe’s future.

Our Kyiv interlocutors (Ukrainian military strategists) see three potential scenarios for their coming summer counteroffensive.

The first, and most desired but least likely outcome, would be a complete Russian military collapse and retreat. The second, and more likely outcome, would be for Ukraine to achieve sufficient battlefield and territorial gains in the nearly twenty percent of Ukraine that remains in Russian hands to force a Putin reassessment and better negotiating terms. The third, and the most feared outcome, would be a Ukrainian failure in the summer offensive that would demoralize Ukrainians and dishearten their international backers.

The stakes for Ukraine in the coming months are enormous. Yet the stakes for the United States and Ukraine’s other friends may be even greater over time. In recognizing that, it will be easier to make the tough decisions regarding weapons and NATO membership that are so urgently required.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Fake Signals and American Insurance: How a Dark Fleet Moves Russian Oil
Christiaan Triebert, Blacki Migliozzi, Alexander Cardia, Muyi Xiao, and David Botti  | NEW YORK TIMES

In this powerful report, New York Times reporters track several cargo ships moving oil between Russia and China in violation of US sanctions and explain the technology and methodology these cargo ships use.

“The vessels,” they report, “are part of a so-called dark fleet, a loose term used to describe a hodgepodge array of ships that obscure their locations or identities to avoid oversight from governments and business partners.”

Moreover, as the Times points out, such tactics are not isolated to Russia. “[The dark fleet’s ships] have typically been involved in moving oil from Venezuela or Iran—two countries that have also been hit by international sanctions,” the authors write. “The latest surge of dark fleet ships began after Russia invaded Ukraine and the West tried to limit Moscow’s oil revenue with sanctions.” Read more →

#2 Bakhmut and the spirit of Verdun
ECONOMIST

The Economist compares the Russian assault on Bakhmut with the German assault on Verdun over one hundred years ago during World War I, and considers how Ukraine’s heroic defense has ground down the Russians and upheld the Ukrainian spirit of heroic defiance.

“Above all,” the Economist writes, “each place has acquired a symbolic importance that outweighs its original strategic value. At Verdun, the French were caught ill-prepared. Under Philippe Pétain’s command, they built resistance around the rotation of forces, limiting soldiers’ time at the front and supplying the effort by road from Bar-le-Duc. ‘They shall not pass’ became the Verdun battle cry, a defiant call to hold the town, just as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Bakhmut ‘our fortress.’”

“‘What Bakhmut shares with Verdun is the notion of prestige,’ says Nicolas Czubak, a historian at the Verdun Memorial. The war was not won or lost at Verdun; but the French turned it into an emblem of strength that made retreat unthinkable.” Read more →

#3 How the US is deepening military alliances in China’s backyard
Demetri Sevastopulo and Kathrin Hille | FINANCIAL TIMES

To understand the Biden administration’s increased efforts to counter China using alliances, read this Financial Times report on the steps the United States has taken to build up a Pacific security architecture and what remains to be done.

The FT notes that “the US is not only focused on its biggest allies. It has also been forced to step up cooperation with smaller Pacific Island nations after Beijing shocked Washington last year by signing a security pact with the Solomon Islands. In response, the US last week signed a security pact with Papua New Guinea and extended so-called Compact of Free Association agreements with Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia—deals that will give the US military exclusive access to facilities for two decades.”

“Arguably the biggest challenge for the US, however,” the FT reports, “is to get its allies to the point where they are conducting joint operational exercises based on actual joint war plans. This particularly applies to Japan and Australia, the nations most likely to fight alongside the US in a war in the region.” Read more →

#4 The Illusion of China’s AI Prowess
Helen Toner, Jenny Xiao, and Jeffery Ding | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

As this smart Foreign Affairs analysis explains, one of the great ironies of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s much touted authoritarian model is that the censorship it necessitates also hobbles China’s development of artificial intelligence (AI), by drastically limiting what Chinese scientists can include in the large language models, or LLMs, that underlie AI chatbot technology.

“Over the past three years,” Toner, Xiao, and Ding write, “Chinese labs have rapidly followed in the footsteps of US and British companies, building AI systems similar to OpenAI’s GPT-3 (the forerunner to ChatGPT), Google’s PaLM, and DeepMind’s Chinchilla. But in many cases, the hype surrounding Chinese models has masked a lack of real substance. Chinese AI researchers we have spoken with believe that Chinese LLMs are at least two or three years behind their state-of-the-art counterparts in the United States—perhaps even more. Worse, AI advances in China rely a great deal on reproducing and tweaking research published abroad, a dependence that could make it hard for Chinese companies to assume a leading role in the field. If the pace of innovation slackened elsewhere, China’s efforts to build LLMs—like a slower cyclist coasting in the leaders’ slipstream—would likely decelerate.” Read more →

#5 To Protect Europe, Let Ukraine Join NATO—Right Now
Andriy Zagorodnyuk | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

In this must-read essay, former Ukrainian defense minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk (an Atlantic Council distinguished fellow) makes a strong case for immediate Ukrainian membership of NATO.

“It is time, then, to let Ukraine join—not sooner or later, but now,” Zagorodnyuk writes. “By entering the Alliance, the country will secure its future as part of the West, and it can be sure the United States and Europe will continue to help it fight against Moscow. Europe, too, will reap security benefits by allowing Ukraine to join the Alliance. It is now apparent that the continent is not ready to defend itself and that its politicians have largely overestimated its security. Indeed, Europe will never be secure from Russia until it can militarily stop Moscow’s attacks. And no state is more qualified to do so than Ukraine.”

“Ukraine should join NATO right away,” Zagorodnyuk adds. “But unfortunately, it will almost certainly have to wait. It takes a unanimous vote to add a country to the Alliance, and there are still far too many governments that remain opposed to the country’s ascension. But in Vilnius, NATO should at least move beyond vague promises about Ukraine’s future and get down to the specifics of helping Kyiv join the organization. It is time for Western states to stand firm against bullies and stop giving Russia (or any other outside state) a voice in the security architecture of an organization that considers it an adversary. Instead, now is the time for NATO to start strengthening itself, and bringing in Ukraine is essential to accomplishing this task. No state, after all, knows more about how to fight back against the Kremlin. In fact, no country has more current experience fighting large-scale wars anywhere. Ukraine’s only peer is Russia itself.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Jun 2, 2023

Five questions (and expert answers) about the recent clashes in Kosovo

By Atlantic Council experts

Protests this week in Kosovo when local officials took office resulted in injuries to NATO peacekeeping troops—and in fears of a further escalation of violence. Atlantic Council experts answer the critical questions.

Conflict Crisis Management

Fast Thinking May 28, 2023

What the world should expect from Erdogan now

By Atlantic Council

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan triumphed in his re-election bid on Sunday. Our experts break down what to expect next on the war in Ukraine, NATO enlargement, Syria, and more.

Conflict Elections

New Atlanticist Jun 1, 2023

China stands to gain from a weakened Russia. The West should prepare now.

By Andrew A. Michta

A protracted war of attrition in Ukraine serves Beijing’s interests in that it will lead to the long-term weakening of Russia, thereby fundamentally shifting the Sino-Russian power balance in China’s favor.

China Politics & Diplomacy

The post Dispatch from Kyiv: Ukraine deserves NATO membership and even more robust weapons appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On the positive side, Biden’s common cause with fellow leaders of the world’s democracies has produced new progress in supporting Ukraine’s military ahead of a crucial spring offensive (including the United States training of F-16 pilots and eventual provision of advanced fighter jets), additional steps sanctioning Russia for its criminal war, and its first statement by the G7 ever aimed at Chinese economic coercion.

In a powerful message of support to the world, the G7 in Japan hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alongside invited guests from the Global South—including seating him beside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—who has been the most prominent leader of a major democracy who has failed to side with Ukraine’s struggle.

Seldom since the birth of the G7 ahead of the oil crisis of 1973 has the group been this unified and effective. The meeting also underscored the staying power of the G7, based on a commitment to pluralism and representative government, that as of 2020 accounted for half of the world’s net wealth ($200 trillion).

That said, it represents only 10 percent of the world’s population, comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus the European Union (EU) as a “non-enumerated member.” (The EU has full membership rights, though it cannot chair meetings and is not counted as the eighth member.)

On the downside, US partners around the world regard the US domestic political dysfunctions that the debt-ceiling negotiations have highlighted as new evidence that Washington cannot be relied upon to provide the financial or political stability they all crave. How, they ask, can a country whose own domestic fabric is so frayed be relied upon to prevent the unraveling of the global system of institutions, values, and rules that these same democracies forged after World War II?

Nothing would pose a greater danger to the world economy than a US sovereign default. Most global investors and US allies are wagering that Washington’s warring parties will solve the debt ceiling impasse before the June 1 deadline, but that will not alter their longer-term worries about US leadership. Recent US bank failures, the unsettling political violence of January 6, 2021, and the growing prospect of a Donald Trump electoral rerun in 2024 has US partners hoping for the best but worried about the worst.

You can forgive Americans for not being all that concerned that Biden, in order to head off the debt-ceiling disaster, called off his stop in Papua New Guinea—an island nation of 14.8 million citizens around 6,600 miles southwest of the continental United States, which few Americans have heard of and even fewer will ever visit.

Yet Biden’s canceled stop underscores a larger issue of the United States losing traction globally by leaving a vacuum for Chinese and Russian economic and political influence—in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. Previous American presidents have canceled foreign visits to address domestic crises—US presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama among them—but self-inflicted wounds are more damaging at this time of expanding Chinese sway and ambition.

It would have been the first-ever visit of a sitting US president to Papua New Guinea, a visit that prompted Port Moresby to declare a national holiday to mark Biden’s visit. Washington’s political dysfunction undermined months of assiduous diplomacy and planning and has set back US efforts to counter Chinese military, diplomatic, and economic investments in these strategically placed island nations.

Over the short term, there is no issue of greater significance to the future of the rules-based global system than providing Ukraine the military wherewithal to prevail against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Over the longer term, however, the US ability to shape the global future alongside its partners and allies will be decided primarily by non-military competition globally and America’s ability to address its weaknesses at home.

Beyond the need to address political polarization, another urgent challenge the United States faces is maintaining its global technological leadership. Though Washington has done much to support that effort with the promise of its recent CHIPS and Science Act, it still has done far too little to attract the world’s best and brightest talent.

“The United States is still the world’s most attractive country for immigrants,” writes former Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt in Foreign Affairs, noting that more than half of US companies valued at more than one billion dollars were founded or co-founded by immigrants. “But if Washington wants to stay ahead … it must act to remove the needless complexities to make its immigrant system more transparent and create new pathways for the brightest minds to come to the United States.”

This week’s Economist also argues that Biden’s global “doctrine,” outlined recently by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the Brookings Institution, is “too timid and pessimistic.”

Sullivan spoke expansively about the need for a new consensus, driven by Biden’s pursuit of a modern industrial and innovation strategy, at home and with partners around the world. He laid out the reasons why charges that this approach was “America alone, or American and the West to the exclusion of others, is just flat wrong.”

The Economist pushes back: “Mr. Biden has backed Ukraine and revived NATO and alliances in Asia. Yet America’s unpredictable economic nationalism and unwillingness to offer access to its markets undermines its influence. Europe fears a subsidy race and worries escalating tensions with China will cause it severe damage.”

What the Economist calls for is a mixture of greater consistency and self-confidence that characterized US policies in the 1940s and early 1950s when America built the world order that Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Putin have now quite explicitly said they want to replace with something more conducive to their interests.

“Such a revived global order would be the best defence against an autocratic one led by China,” the Economist argues. “Unfortunately the Biden doctrine fails to rebut the narrative of American decline and so has not resolved the tension between the country’s toxic politics and its role as the linchpin of a liberal order. Unless America looks out at the world with self-confidence, it will struggle to lead it.”

Because if the United States struggles to lead, Putin’s war in Ukraine will be just the beginning of a lost era.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 A conversation with Henry Kissinger
ECONOMIST

Read every word of this wide-ranging Economist interview with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who at nearly a hundred years old remains one of the preeminent strategic thinkers of our times or any time. (He is also the Atlantic Council’s longest serving board member.) In this two-day conversation, he is as much oracle as strategist.

“We are on the path to great power confrontation,” Kissinger says. “And what makes it more worrisome to me is that both sides have convinced themselves that the other represents a strategic danger. And it is a strategic danger in a world in which the decisions of each can determine the likelihood of conflict.”

“How does the threat compare to previous episodes,” asks the Economist.

“Let me answer, in terms of the evolution of my thinking,” responds Kissinger. “The nature of sovereignty begins with the definition of interests of states. And it is also inherent that sovereign interests will not always coincide, and that nations will need to explain their interests to each other. So if either of those elements come into being where those interests are close enough to permit a negotiation of differences, it becomes a mediating influence. Where sovereign nations use force to prevent outcomes, military conflict may occur.”

Throughout his discussion of weighty topics, Kissinger nonetheless maintains his classic self-deprecating humor. “I won’t be around to see it either way,” he tells the Economist on the outcome of the US-China relationship, speaking “with a characteristic twinkle.” Read more →

#2 To compete with China on tech, America needs to fix its immigration system
Eric Schmidt | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

In this compelling essay, former Google chief executive officer Eric Schmidt argues for the importance of reforming the US immigration system if the United States wants to effectively compete with China.

“In fact,” writes Schmidt, “the US government already has a successful history of using such a strategy in the decades around World War II. In the 1930s and 1940s, the United States succeeded in attracting a whole generation of talent, including such luminaries as Albert Einstein and Enrico Fermi. The two left Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, respectively, before coming to the United States, where their research, along with that of other émigré scientists, was instrumental to the Manhattan Project. Today, Washington needs to do more to attract leading scientists from nonaligned or even hostile countries, even if doing so requires more extensive security screening.”

Schmidt argues, for example, that the United States has not done enough to attract Russian or Chinese scientists and innovators.

“Since 2000, Chinese STEM Ph.D.’s have created startups valued at over $100 billion. If Washington wants innovators to start their businesses in the United States, rather than in China, it must be more welcoming to Chinese talent. Although much has been made in Washington of the security risks posed by a few foreign researchers who have been accused of intellectual property theft, far greater harm will be done to the country over the long term by keeping out entrepreneurial Chinese scientists.”  Read more →

#3 The vanishing acts of Vladimir Putin
Joshua Yaffa | NEW YORKER

For an authoritarian leader who has plunged his country into a major, catastrophic war, Putin has been curiously absent from public view. The New Yorker’s Joshua Yaffa examines this curious angle on the Russian leader’s behavior.

“One of the seeming paradoxes of the Putin system,” Yaffa writes, “is the degree to which its figurehead is at once a unitary micromanager and an absent, aloof, and often indecisive leader. During the past decade, I have heard stories of Putin signing off on the appointments of mid-level executives to Gazprom, the state energy company; yet I also watched how he effectively withdrew during the pandemic, leaving covid-response measures to ministers and governors. The war in Ukraine, now in its fifteenth month, is perhaps the most dramatic example of Putin’s tendency to both hoard authority and shirk the responsibility that comes with it. The decision to invade was Putin’s own, the result of his pent-up grievances toward the West, conspiratorial fantasies about Ukraine, and misplaced confidence in his own Army. Few in the Russian élite, to say nothing of the public at large, wanted a war or even knew one was coming. But, as the war has unfolded, Putin has offered few signals or explanations for how the conflict is going—and to what end.” Read more →

#4 Mysterious killing of Chinese miners puts new pressure on Beijing
Nicole Hong and Elian Peltier | NEW YORK TIMES

This brilliantly reported New York Times piece highlights the security challenges China faces as it attempts to expand its economic footprint, and hints at a troubled relationship with Russia’s Wagner Group, which is suspected of being responsible for the murder of a group of Chinese miners in the Central African Republic.

“The attacks” Nicole Hong and Elian Peltier report, “have exposed the widening disconnect between China’s economic ambitions and its security apparatus abroad, which relies on a patchwork of local military, mercenaries and private firms to guard Chinese workers …”

And while the Wagner Group has denied responsibility for the Chinese deaths, “researchers and Western diplomats say the killings of the miners did not fit the profile of how rebel groups have targeted Chinese nationals in the past. The groups have typically kidnapped Chinese workers to extract ransom from their employers, with such execution-style assassinations being highly unusual.” Read more →

#5 In Vienna, the US-China relationship shows signs of hope
David Ignatius | WASHINGTON POST

The recent meeting in Vienna between US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi marks the most promising moment of the Biden administration for the world’s most significant and most perilous bilateral relationship. This David Ignatius column in the Washington Post captures the new promise.

Writes Ignatius, “Talking about resets in foreign policy is always risky, and that’s especially true with Washington and Beijing. These two superpowers might be ‘destined for war,’ as Harvard professor Graham Allison warned in a book with that title. What they’ve lacked, in their increasingly combative relationship, has been common ground. But some shared space seems to have emerged during the long, detailed discussions between Sullivan and Wang.”

One meeting cannot change history, not even one as long and involved as this one, but it can help counter a dangerous trajectory. Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist May 20, 2023

Experts react: A ‘game changer’ G7 summit in Japan

By Atlantic Council experts

As leaders of the Group of Seven countries gather in Hiroshima, Atlantic Council experts share their insights on what is coming out of the summit about Russia, China, the global economy, and more.

Economic Sanctions Economy & Business

New Atlanticist May 20, 2023

Don’t call it a Quint, but South Korea does have a future with the Quad 

By Thomas Cynkin

There is space for South Korea to participate in aspects of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and other minilateral structures aimed at maintaining international order and security in the Pacific.

Australia India

New Atlanticist May 16, 2023

Not so fast: The case for a new SWIFT

By Josh Lipsky, Ananya Kumar

Imagine a network that combines both messaging and settlement to become a one-stop shop for international payments. It’s time for the US and its allies and partners to make that idea a reality.

Digital Currencies Economy & Business

The post G7 triumphs and the debt ceiling quagmire provide a glimpse into competing futures for US global leadership appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Fourteen months into Russia’s full-scale invasion, that’s a question that hovers not just over Ukraine but also over the emerging era of global competition.  

As significant as political, military, and economic support has been for Ukraine thus far, it is insufficient to ensure the failure of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war and land grab. If US President Joe Biden’s argument is right that the future of the global system is being tested in Ukraine—and I believe it is—then the response isn’t commensurate with those stakes.    

Three logical flaws still prevent the West from rising to the historic challenge of Ukraine. 

The first logical flaw is that the West must deter itself so as not to provoke a more escalatory response from Putin, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. The truth, experience shows, is that only the clear demonstration of determination deters despots.

The second is that the United States needs to reduce its commitments in Europe to address the greater global challenge of China. The truth is that those contests are inseparable, as underscored by Putin’s recent meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Moscow.

The third is that it was the prospect of NATO enlargement that incited Putin to attack Ukraine. The truth is that it was the failure to extend that sort of security guarantee—a guarantee that has kept other former Soviet bloc states and most of Europe secure—that provoked Putin.    

A year after Putin invaded and then annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, Henry Kissinger, the Atlantic Council’s longest-serving board member, spoke at the Council’s 2015 Global Citizen Awards about how the United States and its European partners had to change course to confront emerging global challenges. 

“The Atlantic relationship that was initially developed primarily on military and strategic lines now really has to be extended into a conceptual question,” the former US secretary of state said. “What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to prevent? And what sacrifices are we willing to make? Because great things cannot be achieved without some sacrifice of the present for the needs of the future.”

Ever since then, and particularly since Putin escalated his invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Kissinger’s challenge has haunted me: Is the West willing to make the necessary sacrifices in the present for the needs of the future? In my estimation, the answer to that question is “not yet,” despite remarkable support for Ukraine and a big burst of transatlantic unity, including Finland’s new NATO membership, with Sweden’s accession to the Alliance hopefully not far behind.   

US President Joe Biden himself has said that with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, “the principles that had been the cornerstone of peace, prosperity, and stability on this planet for more than seventy-five years were at risk of being shattered.” If those are the generational stakes, it follows that the sacrifices will be insufficient until Ukrainian security, sovereignty, freedom, and independence are assured.

Through his audacious trip to Kyiv on February 20, Biden has tied his presidential legacy as clearly to Ukraine’s future as US President Ronald Reagan bound his legacy to Berlin’s future with his “Tear Down This Wall” speech in 1987. Yet without delivering on Ukraine, that legacy will be lost.

The historic stakes grew all the more apparent during Xi’s March visit to Moscow, where he and Putin made clear their ambition to remake the liberal international order that has prevailed since the end of World War II. As Xi told Putin before departing, “together, we should push forward these changes that have not happened for one hundred years.”

Muddled thinking and an insufficient sense of urgency could provide Xi and Putin with the outcome they desire, in Ukraine first and then beyond.

What both of them know is that their prospects improve with every additional month of war in Ukraine, which will only wear down and fatigue Ukraine and its supporters—and serve Russian and Chinese interests.    

“One of the reasons this war is still ongoing,” writes Andrew A. Michta for the Atlantic Council, “is the West’s extreme caution… The West has given Ukraine enough to survive, but not enough to win. This strategy, though it seems reasonable today, will likely require the world to pay a much higher price in blood and treasure in the coming years.”

Michta argues, for example, that if Ukraine’s partners had provided the country more wherewithal during Kyiv’s military offensive last summer—in the form of the precision long-range fires, main battle tanks, and aircraft it sought—“its forces would have stood a good chance of achieving a strategic decision on the battlefield and perhaps ultimately winning the peace.”    

Then there’s the misguided notion that the United States should pivot away from Europe and toward China.

If the United States hopes to deter China from attacking Taiwan, the place to start is in Ukraine by visibly ramping up defense production and increasing military support to Kyiv as well as expanding sanctions against Russia and tightening their enforcement. If the United States and its allies help Ukraine turn back Putin, it could give Xi second thoughts regarding Taiwan.

Then there’s the muddled thinking that concerns NATO’s role in securing Europe. Those former Soviet bloc countries that became NATO members remain secure and at peace, while it has been the gray areas like Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova that have invited Russian aggression.

Even Kissinger, who was long against any enlargement of NATO, has come to accept that such a course will be necessary to ensure European stability. As he said in Davos this year at the World Economic Forum, “the idea of a neutral Ukraine under these conditions is no longer meaningful. I believe Ukrainian membership in NATO would be a[n] appropriate outcome.”

NATO’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July would be a good time for Western leaders to take the first concrete steps in that direction. 

In a recent memo to NATO leaders, the Atlantic Council’s Ian Brzezinski and Alexander Vershbow—a former Pentagon official and former US ambassador to NATO, respectively—lay out an approach that’s both urgent and achievable.

They propose a “new NATO-Ukraine Deterrence and Defense Partnership… aimed at building up Ukraine’s long-term capacity to defend itself.” They also recommend Ukraine should be invited now to attend meetings of the North Atlantic Council, NATO’s governing body.

Both proposals would open a path, after the war, for Ukraine’s accession to NATO, following Finland and Sweden. Bolder measures must follow at NATO’s seventy-fifth-anniversary summit in Washington, DC, in 2024.

That is the right path to secure the global future, but for NATO leaders, it will require sacrifice in the present.

That would be a good habit to establish for the challenging years ahead.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Evan Gershkovich: The Latest Updates on the WSJ Reporter Detained in Russia

WALL STREET JOURNAL

Among Putin’s brutal oppressive tactics has been his “hostage diplomacy.” For me—a former journalist who spent twenty-five years at the Wall Street Journal—Putin’s arbitrary detention of WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich strikes particularly close to home. I urge my readers to familiarize themselves with these horrible events and follow the WSJ‘s guide on how to help. Also, read about his letter to his parents demonstrating his humor (he writes that his mother’s cooking prepared him for prison meals!) and resilience. Read more →

#2 Why America Still Needs Europe

Michael J. Mazarr / FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Michael Mazarr highlights the flaws present in trying to focus on China while ignoring Russia in US defense strategy.

“On a conceptual level,” Mazarr writes, “this idea is bold and thought-provoking. In theory, by empowering allies to take the lead in Europe and liberating US resources for use in Asia, Washington can significantly bolster its Indo-Pacific posture. But a closer look at the dynamics in play shows how self-defeating such a shift would be in practice. Instead of strengthening Washington’s hand in Asia, the result could be to badly weaken the United States in its growing competition with China.”

Continues Mazaar, “the growing partnership between Russia and China means that Europe and the Indo-Pacific are now inextricably linked. However much the United States may wish to prioritize one region over the other, backing off from Europe will empower Russia, China’s primary partner and ally, even as it feeds Beijing’s narratives about US decline and the triumph of autocracy.” Read more →

#3 The Pentagon documents leak will embolden Putin as he tries to outlast Ukraine

Trudy Rubin | THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

In the aftermath of the disastrous classified-document leaks, Trudy Rubin argues how US pessimism about Ukraine’s chances endangers Ukraine.

“Moscow may or may not have been aware of Ukraine’s weakened air defenses,” Rubin notes, “But the release of this downbeat Pentagon analysis hurts Ukrainian morale at a critical moment. It will surely encourage Vladimir Putin in his belief that he can outlast the Ukrainian military. And it fuels critics who insist—with stunning ignorance of Putin’s behavior—that now is the time for negotiations. Worst of all, these documents tell Putin that the Pentagon is dubious about prospects for Ukrainian success—for totally wrongheaded reasons—and is still unready to make that success possible. They reveal more about the weakness of the Pentagon’s strategic thinking than Ukraine’s.” Read more →

#4 Why Chatbot AI Is a Problem for China

Michael Schuman / THE ATLANTIC

The Atlantic Council’s Michael Schuman, one of the most insightful China watchers writing today, exposes how China’s vast censorship machine may well hobble its efforts to create viable artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, setting it back in technological competition.

“The Chinese Communist Party,” Schuman explains, “keeps itself in power through censorship, and under its domineering leader, Xi Jinping, that effort has intensified in a quest for greater ideological conformity. Chatbots are especially tricky to censor. What they blurt out can be unpredictable, and when it comes to micromanaging what the Chinese public knows, reads, and shares, the authorities don’t like surprises.”

“Yet,” he adds, “this political imperative collides with the country’s urgent and essential need for innovation, especially in areas such as AI and chatbots. Without continuing technological advances, China’s economic miracle could stall and undercut Xi’s aim of overtaking the United States as the world’s premier superpower. Xi is as intent on his campaign for technological progress as he is on his drive for stricter social control. The development of AI is a crucial pillar of that program, and ChatGPT has exposed how China’s tech sector still lags behind that of its chief geopolitical rival, the US.” Read more →

#5 Crooks’ Mistaken Bet on Encrypted Phones

Ed Caesar / THE NEW YORKER

This week’s must-read is Ed Caesar’s astonishing look at how cracking encrypted phone networks exposed the colossal international scale and nature of organized crime. From yachts in the South Pacific to weddings in Dubai to the backroom of a Montenegrin auto shop, Caesar tells the story of how phone communications revealed the truly transnational nature of organized crime.

“In October,” writes Caesar, “the two most senior Europol officers working on serious and organized crime met with me at the agency’s headquarters, a forbidding office building in a quiet neighborhood of The Hague. Jean-Philippe Lecouffe, a Frenchman, and Jari Liukku, a Finn, have more than seventy years’ worth of policing experience between them. Neither could remember another breakthrough in which they had learned so much so quickly. For one thing, Liukku said, the phone busts had apprised them of important figures in organized crime who had been ‘completely unknown’ to them and who must have felt ‘untouchable.’ Now these men—it was almost always men—were active targets.”

Continues Caesar, “Lecouffe told me that, before the encrypted-phone stings, police forces were ‘a bit in the dark’ about how organized crime functioned from day to day, even if the occasional successful investigation provided faint illumination on a group or an activity. Suddenly, it was if somebody had switched on thousands of klieg lights, and ‘we could not only take a picture but a movie.’” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

Issue Brief Apr 19, 2023

Holding the Islamic Republic of Iran accountable for atrocity crimes

By Celeste Kmiotek, Alana Mitias, Nushin Sarkarati

Under the principle of universal jurisdiction, certain domestic justice systems allow prosecutions in national courts for crimes committed abroad, regardless of the victim’s or perpetrator’s nationality. This manual outlines the universal jurisdiction process in selected European states for those pursuing prosecutions of crimes committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Human Rights International Norms

Issue Brief Apr 18, 2023

NATO deterrence and defense: Military priorities for the Vilnius Summit

By Franklin D. Kramer

Ahead of the NATO Summit in Vilnius, this issue brief sets forth six priority actions that NATO should undertake to enhance its deterrent and defense posture.

Defense Technologies Europe & Eurasia

New Atlanticist Apr 19, 2023

These reforms can help stop digital bank runs

By Hung Tran

Policymakers should start by reforming the liquidity coverage ratio requirement and the deposit insurance scheme.

Economy & Business Fiscal and Structural Reform

The post Three logical flaws stand in the way of a sufficient response to the Ukraine challenge appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“Russia has only two allies,” he said, “its army and its navy.” 

Now that Putin’s military has failed to achieve its war goals in Ukraine, demonstrating a surprising lack of discipline and capability, a more formidable ally stepped up this week who Putin hopes can help him turn his fortunes around: Chinese leader Xi Jinping.  

In exchange, Putin is willing to offer China discounted energy deliveries, unique access to Russian markets abandoned by Western companies, military technologies ranging from ballistic missiles to nuclear submarines, and subjugation to China’s emerging ambitions for global leadership.

History will record Xi’s three days of meetings this past week with Putin in Moscow as the last pretense of neutrality in Putin’s war on Ukraine. It might seem to some that Xi is doubling down on last year’s bad bet of a “no limits” partnership with Putin, but Xi’s generational gamble is based on two fundamental convictions, which have grown as his relations with Washington have worsened.

First, Xi has come to agree with US President Joe Biden that the battle for Ukraine’s future has become a proxy war over what set of forces and principles will shape the global future. Will it be those of the United States and its allies, which have shaped the global order of rules and institutions since 1945, or will it be those of China and its autocratic partners: Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and, to a lesser extent, other countries of the Global South that have distanced themselves from the war.

Second, with Putin’s economy reeling and his military flailing, Xi understands that he is Russia’s last best hope to shape the Ukraine war or Ukraine peace in Putin’s favor. Like Putin, Xi is wagering that the West’s staying power will begin to flag as the costs accumulate and the 2024 US elections approach.

In short, the stakes are so historically high for Xi, and his potential to tip the scales is so real, that Xi must have determined that the larger gamble would be in neutrality, knowing that Putin’s defeat would have global implications, including regarding his own ambitions to absorb Taiwan.

Xi’s global ambition

Another illustrative way to look at this past week is that Putin’s desperation met Xi’s opportunism. Putin’s furious search for survival plays into Xi’s long-term play for global influence, while bringing down the United States a few notches at the same time.

Xi this week could not have been more explicit in the global ambitions behind his shameless decision to forge ahead with Putin, coming just a few days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader on war crimes charges.

“Now there are changes that haven’t happened in a hundred years,” Xi said. “When we are together, we drive these changes.”

Those who have dismissed Putin’s war in Ukraine war as a “territorial struggle,” as did Florida Governor Ron DeSantis before walking it back, should read the Chinese statement ending the three days of Xi-Putin bromance. The two countries’ leaders, it said, “shared the view that this relationship has gone far beyond the bilateral scope and acquired critical importance for the global landscape and the future of humanity.” Putin’s response on the Kremlin website: “We are working in solidarity on the formation of a more just and democratic multipolar world order, which should be based on the central role of the UN, its Security Council, international law, the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.”

That’s barefaced hypocrisy, as Xi this week abandoned any pretext that he plans to hold Putin to the UN Charter, although that is the first item in his twelve-point peace plan for the Ukraine war, issued at the one-year mark of the full-scale invasion on February 24.

It calls for: “Respecting the sovereignty of all countries. Universally recognized international law, including the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, must be strictly observed. The sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all countries must be effectively upheld.”

A shifting world order

This week’s Xi-Putin meetings need to be seen in the context of the world order’s other shifting tectonic plates, most importantly in the Middle East. It’s a story of Washington leaving geopolitical vacuums that China is growing more adept at filling, from the Middle East and Africa to Latin America and South Asia. 

Earlier this month, Xi brought Iranian and Saudi representatives to Beijing, where they brokered a normalization agreement. It has the potential, wrote Maria Fantappie and Vali Nasr in Foreign Affairs, “to transform the Middle East by realigning its major powers, replacing the current Arab-Israeli divide with a complex web of relations, and weaving the region into China’s global ambitions.” It was for Beijing, the authors conclude, “a great leap forward in its rivalry with Washington.”

Late this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Saudi Arabia and Syria are nearing an agreement to restore diplomatic ties after talks mediated by Russia. China was quick to praise the rapprochement and plans to reopen embassies.

These are just pieces in a larger Chinese puzzle. 

In past months, Xi has rolled out a Global Development Initiative, a Global Security Initiative, and, most recently, a Global Civilization Initiative. What they all share is a world view that offers to embrace all countries, irrespective of their political systems and ideologies, contrasting China’s approach to what Beijing calls US efforts to divide the world between democracies and autocracies.

It’s easy to point out China’s continued demographic and economic weaknesses—along with the innate fragility the comes with an over-concentration of power. The hypocrisy of its claim that it stands internationally for the protection of national sovereignty and independence crashes on the Ukrainian shoals.

Xi’s visit this week to Moscow, however, should mark an inflection point in US seriousness about the urgency and inescapability of the strategic competition to shape the global future. There are short-term demands in Ukraine, most urgently to more quickly and plentifully send the weapons required to win the war. There’s a long-term need to build more creative coalitions to shape the global future, discarding simplistic divisions between democracies and autocracies that lump together the world’s worst despots like North Korea and Iran with moderate and  modernizing nations that share a stake in a functioning global order. 

The tsars aligned in Moscow this week to show Washington and its allies that strategic competition isn’t just a theory anymore—it’s an urgent reality.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Here’s the real lesson from the showy Xi-Putin meeting

David Ignatius | WASHINGTON POST

In this smart column, David Ignatius warns about the longer-term implications of Putin and Xi’s friendship and the danger it poses to the international order.

“By playing the peacemaker,” Ignatius writes, “Xi can position himself better to take other, harsher rescue measures if Ukraine rejects a cease-fire. He could offer ammunition for Russia, arguing he’s only leveling the playing field. He could try to mobilize nations of the Global South, such as India, South Africa and Brazil, to pressure Ukraine to end the fighting. Xi wants to keep the high ground, invoking the sanctity of the United Nations charter even as he affirms his support for the Russian leader who shattered that charter’s norms. It’s a shameless approach, but smart diplomacy.”

“If you were looking for another reason why it’s important that Ukraine succeeds against Russia,” Ignatius adds, “consider the photos from Moscow. ‘The President of Eurasia’—I fear that’s the invisible caption of the pictures of Xi that we’re seeing amid the Kremlin’s golden doors and red carpets. The idea that a vast swath of the world is dominated by a China that stands so resolutely against freedom and democracy is chilling. If this alliance succeeds, we will live in a darker world.” Read more →

#2 What does Xi Jinping want from Vladimir Putin?

ECONOMIST 

If you want to understand the complexities of the Russia-China relationship, read this Economist analysis.

“Rather than downgrade the relationship,” the Economist writes, “Mr Xi appears to be strengthening it, while exploiting Russia’s miscalculations in Ukraine to tilt the balance of power in his favour. It is easy to see why. Mr Xi has won access to discounted energy supplies. And he has almost certainly extracted an assurance that Mr Putin will back him diplomatically in a war over Taiwan. He has also gained leverage to seek high-end Russian military technology, such as surface-to-air missile systems and nuclear reactors designed to power submarines—and to press Mr Putin to withhold or delay supplies of similar items to other Russian customers that have territorial disputes with China, such as India and Vietnam. Russia could also help upgrade China’s nuclear arsenal, or work on a joint missile-warning system.” Read more →

#3 A New Order in the Middle East?

Maria Fantappie and Vali Nasr | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

David Ignatius offers a characteristically smart analysis of Biden, Putin, and Zelenskyy for the one-year mark of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“War reveals the essential traits of human character that shape events,” Ignatius writes. “Who could have imagined that a Ukrainian comic actor named Volodymyr [Zelenskyy] would prove to be the first truly heroic leader of the 21st century. Who would have bet that Putin, the canny and cynical ex-KGB officer, would grossly misread both intelligence and history and ransom his country to what amounted to a fairy tale about the ‘oneness’ of Russia and Ukraine.”

“In the end,” Ignatius concludes, “war is a test of wills. Putin was convinced that his cold-eyed, brutal resolve would outlast everyone else’s. But a year on, Putin’s staying power begins to look questionable, while [Zelenskyy] and Biden have never looked stronger.” Read more →

#4 Iran’s finance minister highlights surge in investment from Russia

Andrew England and Najmeh Bosorgmehr / FINANCIAL TIMES

Perhaps one of the most dramatic and least documented changes of the past couple of years has been Russia’s deepening relations with Iran—alongside China’s simultaneously deepening ties.

“Russia has become the largest foreign investor in Iran over the past year,” write the Financial Times reporters, “reflecting how two nations subject to heavy sanctions have stepped up cooperation since the invasion of Ukraine.”

This Financial Times piece takes a deep look at Russia’s $2.76 billion in investments in the past year in industrial mining and transport sector projects. Beyond that, it looks at how these two significant countries and economies have found common cause in their work against US sanctions. Read more →

#5 China Is Starting to Act Like a Global Power

Jonathan Cheng / WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Cheng writes from Beijing that Xi’s willingness to get more involved in Putin’s war and in Saudi-Iran relations are part of a common plot.

“China now sees itself as a global power—and it is starting to act like one,” he writes.

Writes Cheng, “Rather than an authoritarian country, as President Biden would have it, Mr. Xi wants nations, particularly in the Global South, to regard China as a voice of reason, an economic model and a benign power that can stand up to a U.S.-led Western order that it sees as hectoring and bullying.”

On the other hand, as the Wall Street Journal’s Ann M. Simmons and Austin Ramzy report in an important analysis, Xi clearly has some limits on his no-limits friendship with Russia.

For example, they explain, “The Russian and Chinese leaders signed 10 documents on economic cooperation stretching until 2030. Trade between the two countries rose to $189 billion last year. Mr. Putin said before the visit he believes it will exceed $200 billion as early as this year. Russian officials said the two sides were moving forward with plans to build a second pipeline to carry Siberian natural gas to China. Chinese officials didn’t refer to the pipeline on Tuesday. In order to sustain the energy revenues it needs to fund the war effort, Russia needs a second pipeline that would boost sales of gas to China, since its main customers in Europe have stopped buying Russian gas.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Mar 22, 2023

Xi and Putin just wrapped up talks in Moscow: What does it mean for the war in Ukraine and China’s global standing?

By Atlantic Council experts

The Chinese leader left Russia on Wednesday after three days of talks with the Russian president. Atlantic Council experts share their insights on the state of the so-called no-limits partnership.

China Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist Mar 23, 2023

Maybe Putin should be worried: Most leaders facing international justice don’t get away free

By Thomas S. Warrick

Nearly all of the heads of state and military leaders wanted by international justice in recent decades have been brought before a court or faced ‘rough justice.’

Conflict Europe & Eurasia

New Atlanticist Mar 20, 2023

Central bankers must keep financial stability in mind as they fight inflation

By Hung Tran

It is difficult for central banks to balance controlling inflation with preserving financial stability amid a banking crisis, but that is no excuse not to try.

Economy & Business Europe & Eurasia

The post ‘When we are together, we drive these changes.’ What Xi and Putin’s deepening alliance means for the world order. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Fried, a former ambassador to Poland, is right to rank Biden’s visit to Kyiv and his speech he gave the day after in Warsaw—the most powerful speech of his political lifetime—right up there with those two other great moments of presidential leadership in the defense of freedom.

In one respect, however, Fried is selling Biden short. The physical risk to Biden on his ten-hour train ride to Kyiv and his stroll around the active war zone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was far greater than it was during either Kennedy or Reagan’s visits to heavily fortified West Berlin.

In another respect, it is too soon to measure the historic magnitude of Biden’s Ukraine sojourn. That will depend on whether the United States and other Ukraine supporters can “surge”—increasing and accelerating their military, economic, and political support.

Kennedy’s speech, coming less than two years after the Berlin Wall’s construction, won its historic place only because the United States and its French and British allies were able to defend West Berlin’s freedom, although it was an isolated island surrounded by East Germany and far more numerous Warsaw Pact troops.

Reagan’s speech gained its lasting power because, in the end, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and his East German allies did tear down that wall, marking the Cold War’s peaceful end.

Since then, NATO and the European Union have embraced former states of the Warsaw Pact and former parts of the Soviet Union as newly democratic partners— perhaps the fastest and largest expansion of democracy and free market prosperity in history. If Russian President Vladimir Putin is defeated, authoritarianism rebuked, and Ukraine rebuilt into a prosperous democracy, it could spark another such expansion. But if Putin has his way in Ukraine, it will only encourage more authoritarian excess and risk an unstable world that looks like the 1930s, when the unchecked rise of fascism and authoritarianism led to World War II.

In short, Putin’s war in Ukraine is a battle over what set of countries and what principles will shape the global future.

During my visit to the Munich Security Conference this month, I was encouraged that a consensus was finally emerging that ensuring Ukraine’s freedom will have no less an impact on the future shape of Europe than did the Berlin Wall’s collapse and German unification.

“It is better to stop him now, before more is demanded of the United States and NATO as a whole,” wrote former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates (both honorary directors on the Atlantic Council’s Board of Directors) recently in the Washington Post. “We have a determined partner in Ukraine that is willing to bear the consequences of war so that we do not have to do so ourselves in the future.”

With historically high stakes, the United States and its allies still haven’t gone far enough in recognizing two significant facts.

First, it isn’t enough to save Ukraine: One must also strategically defeat Putin. It’s crucial that he and those who support him are forced to abandon Putin’s ambition to reconstitute a greater Russian empire through conquest. Putin won’t give up that goal as long as he remains in power and his military isn’t defeated.

“Vladimir Putin remains fully committed to bringing all of Ukraine back under Russian control or—failing that—destroying it as a viable country,” wrote Rice and Gates. “Both of us have dealt with Putin on a number of occasions, and we are convinced he believes time is on his side: that he can wear down the Ukrainians and that US and European unity and support for Ukraine will eventually erode and fracture.”

Second, although the consensus at the Munich Security Conference has shifted toward a deeper understanding of the historic consequences, the United States and Ukraine’s allies are far from the “war footing” that’s required to ensure Putin’s defeat.

The Biden administration deserves enormous praise for galvanizing allies and sustaining military and economic support for Ukraine over the past year. NATO hasn’t been this unified in common cause for more than three decades, with Finland and Sweden poised to join and strengthen the Alliance further.

Even with all that, however, the support doesn’t match the stakes.

A major new Russian offensive appears to be unfolding, with a renewed effort to capture Kyiv with an offensive from Belarus as one likely scenario. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned China not to provide Russia military support, underscoring a growing fear that the prospect of a Putin failure could bring Beijing more into the fray.

Putin last year began to mobilize an additional three hundred thousand men for the Russian army, has recruited another twenty thousand volunteers, and has let the Russian paramilitary organization Wagner recruit convicts for the fight, while pressing Belarus to join the battle as well.

This isn’t a time for half-hearted measures. Yet as the economic historian Adam Tooze pointed out in the Financial Times, the US spending on Ukraine is, proportionally speaking, fifteen times lower than US Lend-Lease aid to Britain in World War II. Now, as then, the United States and its allies must recognize the existential stakes of the conflict and step up accordingly.

Ukraine’s supporters must accelerate and increase the delivery of modern Western armor and combat aircraft; long-range artillery and missiles; large stocks of weapons-capable drones; and a layered air defense system capable against ballistic and cruise missiles, manned aircraft, and drones.

Most urgently, the United States and other suppliers must relax restrictions on the use of the equipment they provide. It is immoral not to allow Ukrainians to use these systems to strike the Russian military forces that are killing them, and their families, wherever the Russian troops are located.

It took guts and determination for Biden to visit Kyiv this week. It now will take a heightened level of resolve and allied common cause to ensure the visit marks the turning point required to hand Putin a lasting defeat. Only that can open the way for a better future, for Ukrainians and Russians alike. 

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Remarks by President Biden Ahead of the One-Year Anniversary of Russia’s Brutal and Unprovoked Invasion of Ukraine

This week’s must read is Biden’s speech in Warsaw, perhaps the most powerful of his political career.

“As we gather tonight, the world, in my view, is at an—at an inflection point,” Biden said. “The decisions we make over the next five years or so are going to determine and shape our lives for decades to come. That’s true for Americans. It’s true for the people of the world.

“And while decisions are ours to make now, the principles and the stakes are eternal. A choice between chaos and stability. Between building and destroying. Between hope and fear. Between democracy that lifts up the human spirit and the brutal hand of the dictator who crushes it. Between nothing less than limitation and possibilities, the kind of possibilities that come when people who live not in captivity but in freedom. Freedom.” Read more →

#2 Biden’s Kyiv Visit Was Months in the Making
Sabrina Siddiqui | WALL STREET JOURNAL

In this compelling narrative, Sabrina Siddiqui, one of the two journalists on the Biden trip, recounts a secret evening flight, a tense nighttime train journey, and the triumphant meeting that capped it.

“Biden first flew to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where the presidential aircraft remained with its shades down for the duration of its time on the ground. After dark, Air Force One flew to Poland’s AF1 Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport. From there, the entourage boarded trains destined for Kyiv. Much of the last leg, a 10-hour train ride, occurred in the dark so there was little visible beyond streetlights and the shadows of buildings in the distance.”

At one point in Kyiv, Siddiqui writes, “air raid sirens blared across the city as… Biden and Zelensky walked outside St. Michael’s Cathedral, a complex of sky-blue and golden buildings that in 2013 became a symbol of Ukrainian resistance against Russia’s ambitions across the region. Neither man reacted to the sirens, although they served as a reminder that the leaders were meeting in an active war zone and in a city that has been the target of Russian rockets.” Read more →

#3 What a year of war has revealed of three leaders
David Ignatius | WASHINGTON POST

David Ignatius offers a characteristically smart analysis of Biden, Putin, and Zelenskyy for the one-year mark of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“War reveals the essential traits of human character that shape events,” Ignatius writes. “Who could have imagined that a Ukrainian comic actor named Volodymyr [Zelenskyy] would prove to be the first truly heroic leader of the 21st century. Who would have bet that Putin, the canny and cynical ex-KGB officer, would grossly misread both intelligence and history and ransom his country to what amounted to a fairy tale about the ‘oneness’ of Russia and Ukraine.”

“In the end,” Ignatius concludes, “war is a test of wills. Putin was convinced that his cold-eyed, brutal resolve would outlast everyone else’s. But a year on, Putin’s staying power begins to look questionable, while [Zelenskyy] and Biden have never looked stronger.” Read more →“

#4 How Putin blundered into Ukraine—then doubled down
Max Seddon, Christopher Miller, and Felicia Schwartz | FINANCIAL TIMES

Opening with a story of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov learning that Putin had ordered the invasion of Ukraine after the fact, this astonishing in-depth piece of reporting from the FT provides a portrait of Putin’s hubris, isolation, and utter inability to admit his mistakes as he doubles down on his brutal invasion of Ukraine.

The FT reports that later on the day of the invasion, a group of oligarchs waited in the Kremlin for a meeting, when “one of the oligarchs spied Lavrov exiting another meeting and pressed him for an explanation about why Putin had decided to invade.”

“Lavrov had no answer: the officials he was there to see in the Kremlin had known less about it than he did. Stunned, the oligarch asked Lavrov how Putin could have planned such an enormous invasion in such a tiny circle—so much so that most of the senior officials at the Kremlin, Russia’s economic cabinet, and its business elite had not believed it was even possible. ‘He has three advisers,’ Lavrov replied, according to the oligarch. ‘Ivan the Terrible. Peter the Great. And Catherine the Great.’”

The report should be read in its entirety for a fascinating window into Putin’s wartime Russia and his doubling down on the invasion. Read more →

#5 Ukraine Is the West’s War Now
Yaroslav Trofimov | WALL STREET JOURNAL

In this powerful piece, Yaroslav Trofimov examines how support for Ukraine has increased dramatically in the face of Russian brutality and incompetence—and as the stakes of the conflict have grown more apparent.

“It’s not just the fate of Europe that is being decided on the battlefields of Ukraine where Russia has regained momentum after a mobilization last fall and is launching renewed offensives,” Trofimov writes. “In Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere, the West’s geopolitical adversaries are calculating whether the [United States] and its allies have the stamina and cohesion to defend the rules-based international order that has benefited the West for decades. In particular, the future of Taiwan and the South China Sea is closely linked to the West’s record in Ukraine.”

Trofimov quotes NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s warning at the Munich Security Conference: “Beijing is watching closely, to see the price Russia pays, or the reward it receives, for its aggression. What is happening in Europe today can happen in Asia tomorrow. If Putin wins in Ukraine, the message to him and other authoritarian leaders will be that they can use force to get what they want. This will make the world more dangerous and us more vulnerable.”

In short, the future of the global order is at stake. Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

Report Feb 22, 2023

Narrative warfare

By Nika Aleksejeva, Andy Carvin

In the weeks and months leading up to Russia invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin media employed false and misleading narratives to justify military action against Ukraine, mask the Kremlin’s operational planning, and deny any responsibility for the coming war. Dive into a full accounting of the road to war.

Disinformation Russia

Report Feb 22, 2023

Undermining Ukraine

By Roman Osadchuk, Andy Carvin

From the very start of the war, the Kremlin emphasized demoralizing Ukrainian audiences and destroying their will to fight. Building on daily monitoring of the Kremlin media ecosystem, this report analyzes Russia’s attempts to undermine Ukraine by targeting local, regional, and global audiences since February 2022.

Disinformation Russia

New Atlanticist Feb 22, 2023

Russia policy after the war: A new strategy of containment

By Alexander Vershbow

To prevent further damage to the rules-based international order, the United States and its allies will need a strategy of containment to deter Russia militarily and decouple Russia from the international community, until Moscow has earned the right to be considered a partner once more.

Arms Control Defense Policy

New Atlanticist Feb 23, 2023

Sanctions alone won’t defeat Russia in Ukraine. But they’re having a bigger impact than it might seem.

By Brian O’Toole, Daniel Fried

The Russian economy has begun to look like a leaky ship. All hands are on deck bailing it out, but at some point, they won’t be able to keep up.

Economic Sanctions Oil and Gas

The post The value of Biden’s visit to Ukraine depends on the speed and scale of what follows appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Say the word slowly, employing your best German accent, with a hard “P” at the front, a soft “r” at the end, and pronouncing the “z” as a confident “ts” in the middle.

Panzer.

Then try out the following compound words: Kampfpanzer (main battle tank) and Panzerschlacht (armored operations). For further effect, don’t leave out Blitzkrieg (lightning war), Germany’s use of surprise, speed, and armored superiority to overwhelm enemy forces and overrun Europe during World War II.

To understand the significance of Germany’s decision this week to provide fourteen Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, it’s worth understanding how much more history-laced and emotion-laden the word Panzer is for German speakers than is the word tank for the English-speaking world.

It captures at the same time all the pride Germans feel in their capacity for advanced engineering alongside the horrors in how that capacity was deployed to advance a murderous dictator’s revanchist and expansionist ambitions, at the cost of millions of lives. The memory of it all elicited a national consensus: “never again.”

This week’s media reports on the Leopard decision instead focused on perceived dithering by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, not wanting to be out in front of his US allies, until US President Joe Biden agreed to deliver Ukraine thirty-one M1 Abrams tanks. (The German decision will also unlock the delivery of a total of around eighty Leopard 2 tanks from various European arsenals.)

However, as important as the tanks will be to Ukrainians’ hopes for retaking their territory this year, and fending off an anticipated Russian offensive, what’s more significant are the two stories that lurk behind their delivery.

The first story is about an unfolding German Zeitenwende, or historic turning point, as Scholz has called it, that would redefine the German and European role in a dramatically changing world of renewed authoritarian challenges.

The second is a growing recognition among Ukraine’s allies and friends that Kyiv requires an immediate surge of military and other support, as I argued last week in this space. While Russian President Vladimir Putin’s capacity to escalate the war, particularly his nuclear arsenal, remains a great concern, US and European officials alike increasingly realize that if they don’t provide Ukraine the wherewithal to stop Putin, then at some point they might need to put their own soldiers in harm’s way to do so.

How these two stories play out will do much to determine whether Putin’s criminal war against Ukraine, launched on February 24 last year, will result in a stronger Europe and a safer and freer world, or produce just the opposite.

Scholz first began to lay out this change in German thinking in his Zeitenwende speech to the Bundestag on February 27, 2022, just three days after Putin’s invasion. He has been building upon that since, particularly in an insufficiently noticed must-read essay in Foreign Affairs.

Until recently, the prevailing argument was that history imposed upon Germany a unique degree of political modesty and military restraint. What the Russian invasion unlocked was the embrace of a healthier, more activist approach to redefine the “never again” mantra as one that requires Germany to stand against any authoritarian aggressor who wishes to dictate European or global affairs through military force.

“My country’s history gives it a special responsibility to fight the forces of fascism, authoritarianism, and imperialism,” Scholz wrote. “At the same time, our experience of being split in half during an ideological and geopolitical contest gives us a particular appreciation of the risks of a new cold war.”

Among other measures in Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech, he announced that his government would spend 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense and use a one-hundred-billion-euro fund to better equip German armed forces, even changing the country’s constitution to do so. In his Foreign Affairs piece, Scholz called it “the starkest change in German security policy since the establishment of the Bundeswehr [German armed forces] in 1955.”

What Scholz also did in the Foreign Affairs piece is put Germany’s response to the Ukraine war in a larger context as a global “ Zeitenwende: an epochal tectonic shift,” building upon Biden’s oft deployed phrase of “an inflection point.”

Wrote Scholz, “When Putin gave the order to attack, he shattered a European and international peace architecture that had taken decades to build. Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has defied even the most basic principles of international law… Acting as an imperial power, Russia now seeks to redraw borders by force and to divide the world, once again, into blocs and spheres of influence.”

If Scholz and Biden are correct regarding a historic turning point, and all evidence indicates that they are, then Ukraine’s friends and allies must do even more now to ensure its survival as a free and independent country—and ultimately its embrace, as former US Secretary of State (and Atlantic Council board member) Henry Kissinger argued this month, into NATO and other European institutions.

For the moment, nothing is more important to achieving that goal than providing Ukraine the modern weapons it needs—and fast—to save its people’s lives, head-off a planned Russian offensive, and retake lost Ukrainian territory.

Like dictators before him, Putin is obsessed. Until Ukraine demonstrates to Putin that he can’t achieve his objectives by force, he will not give up in his efforts to conquer and absorb Ukraine. And if he can’t conquer the country, he’s shown he is willing to destroy it.

Ukraine and its friends are in a race against the clock as Putin claims to have mobilized three hundred thousand additional soldiers for the Russian army, including twenty thousand volunteers. Russia’s Wagner Group has put thousands of convicts into the fight, and Russia is pressuring Belarus to provide more assistance as well.

The time is now to give Ukraine the list of military equipment it urgently needs: Western armor and combat aircraft, up to and including the F-16; longer-range artillery and missiles, with a green light to hit the targets inside Russia from which Russia is killing Ukrainians; and large stocks of capable drones and air-defense systems that can stop everything from ballistic and cruise missiles to manned aircraft and drones.

With that, Ukraine can stop Putin. That is the most effective way to ensure that this Zeitenwende turns in the right direction.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 Transatlantic ‘growing pains’: how Olaf Scholz made Joe Biden shift on tanks for Ukraine
James Poiliti, Courtney Weaver, Laura Pitel, and Guy Chazan | FINANCIAL TIMES

For an understanding of the behind-the-scenes negotiations and diplomatic exchanges that led to the United States and Germany agreeing to send tanks to Ukraine, read this fascinating FT report on how the deal came about.

“The breakthrough,” the FT reports, “involved tense negotiations, policy U-turns and leaps of faith in both Berlin and Washington that tested the strength of US-German relations as a fundamental pillar of the western alliance. They also underlined how, for all its talk of taking on a leadership role in the world, Europe is still deeply dependent on America as a guarantor of its security.”

On the German side, the FT notes, “Officials in Berlin said the frustration expressed by some allies was unfair. Germany is, after all, one of the largest suppliers of military assistance to Ukraine after the US. There is also a particular sensitivity in Germany about tanks, which they say the country’s allies have failed to understand. ‘If tanks with German crosses appear on the battlefield, Putin can say — look, it’s what I’ve said all along, NATO is intervening in this war,’ said one official. ‘It’s an RT [Russia Today] narrative that has a lot of resonance in Latin America and Africa and we need to be aware of that.’” Read more →

#2 Can Germany Be a Great Military Power Again?
James Angelos | NEW YORK TIMES

In this brilliantly reported narrative, James Angelos offers a deep dive into the problems and hopes of the German Bundeswehr in a Europe where Putin has torn up the post-Cold War order.

“’My generation, I always say,” Anne Katrin Meister, a German reservist, told Angelos, “is a bit like a generation without war… Of course, there were conflicts, like in Kosovo, but we were still relatively young, and we grew up in such a safe, ideal world. But this is now changing… you can only be a pacifist if you have this safe, ideal world. And we don’t have such a world.”

Writes Angelos, “It was the Russian threat that led to the resurrection of the German military during the Cold War; it’s once again the Russian threat that may lead to its revitalization. Meister and her fellow trainees see joining the reserves as their democratic duty, and the officer running the training program in Nienburg told me that interest in the reserves rose sharply in the days following Russia’s invasion. But many Germans don’t share that enthusiasm, and the war has not led to a boom in recruitment for the Bundeswehr as a whole. Still, there are signs that a historic shift — a growing acceptance of the need to wield military power — is taking root in Germany.” Read more →

#3 Putin’s Miscalculation
Fred Kaplan | NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

Fred Kaplan’s review of Mark Galeotti’s new book on the modern Russian military is worth reading as an examination of why the Russian military has performed so poorly in Ukraine.

“Has the Ukrainian army turned out to be much better than imagined, or has the Russian army turned out to be a lot worse, or both?” Kaplan writes. “In Putin’s Wars, Mark Galeotti, a British scholar and journalist highly regarded by experts on Russian military matters, attributes the unexpected battlefield outcome to Russian weaknesses as well as Ukrainian strengths (greatly abetted by NATO weapons and American intelligence resources), but he lays out a persuasive, detailed case that Russia’s deficiencies are more severe and more deeply rooted than many Western officials and pundits had detected.

“Galeotti notes that Moscow overloads its army with weapons but allots too little money and attention to the mundane stuff of logistics—spare parts, food, water, and the trucks to transport them—thus leaving supply lines vulnerable and making offensive operations unsustainable. Junior officers receive rote training, so they’re unprepared to take the initiative—a deliberate policy to keep them from rebelling against senior officers, though as a consequence, campaigns can plunge into chaos if they don’t go as planned. Combine all this with widespread hazing of enlisted men, ramshackle barracks, poor nutrition, and low pay, and it should have been foreseeable that while today’s Russian soldiers might be roused to defend the motherland, they’re lackluster at invading other countries.” Read more →

#4 China and the new globalization
Franklin D. Kramer | ATLANTIC COUNCIL

Don’t miss this in-depth, thought-provoking new report by Frank Kramer, an Atlantic Council distinguished fellow, board member, and former senior Pentagon official.

He starts with the premise that the “fundamental challenge” going forward in globalization is to establish an effective strategy to manage relations with China, a massive trading partner that is at the same time a significant security threat. His recommendations recognize the need for “selective decoupling” alongside the development of strategic supply chains outside China “to resolve problems of dependencies.”

I particularly like his idea regarding the expansion of the Group of Seven (G7) nations to a G10, including Australia, Norway, South Korea, and the European Union—including a multinational staff focused on China. Kramer’s bottom line in this smart report: “The unitary globalized economy no longer exists. Driven in significant part by security considerations, a new and more diverse globalization is both required and being built.” Read more →

#5 China’s New Anti-Uyghur Campaign
James Millward | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Amid the horrors of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it can be easy to forget that China continues to conduct a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide against its Uyghur minority. As James Millward points out in this Foreign Affairs piece, the West must pay closer attention and keep pressure on China to end this.

“For now,” Millward writes, “it may seem as if Xi [Jinping] is getting away with his brutal actions in Xinjiang. But the saga in the province is not yet over. U.S. and European sanctions could impinge more on China’s economy as time goes on, provided that governments vigorously enforce them. These economic costs would come on top of the severe reputational costs that Beijing has incurred for its behavior, including worsened relations with Europe, as well as with the United States. It is unclear if these penalties will ultimately matter to Xi, who now wields nearly unconstrained political power and is willing to subject his country to economic and social pain in pursuit of his aims. But Xi is capable of correcting course when his policies become disastrously costly. If the world keeps up the economic and rhetorical pressure, it can convince China to end its efforts to repress and assimilate the non-Han peoples of Xinjiang.”  Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Jan 27, 2023

What Turkey really wants from Sweden

By Rich Outzen

Turkey likely will still approve Sweden’s bid for NATO membership, but not until summer and only after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gets more cooperation against the PKK.

Europe & Eurasia NATO

Report Jan 24, 2023

Authoritarian kleptocrats are thriving on the West’s failures. Can they be stopped?

By Francis Shin, Ben Judah

A new, more dangerous form of kleptocracy has arisen since the end of the Cold War, and the transatlantic community—hobbled by outdated, cliched images of what kleptocracy looks like, and by siloed, reactive regulatory and enforcement systems—isn’t equipped to handle it. A Transatlantic Anti-Corruption Council could coordinate anti-corruption reforms.

Corruption Economic Sanctions

New Atlanticist Jan 27, 2023

What will it take to deter Iran from targeting opponents inside the US?

By Atlantic Council experts

The US Department of Justice unsealed charges Friday in an alleged assassination plot directed by Iran against a US journalist. Our experts unpack the ongoing threat.

Human Rights Iran

The post Found in translation: the deeper meaning of the German ‘Panzer’ for Ukraine and Europe appeared first on Atlantic Council.

And Ukraine’s allies must send them fast!

Speaking to the Davos crowd virtually in a conversation with Harvard Professor Graham Allison, who was once his student, former US Secretary of State (and Atlantic Council board member) Henry Kissinger reversed his years-long opposition to Ukraine joining NATO, embracing membership as an “appropriate outcome” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, which has left no room for Ukraine’s neutrality.

“My feeling is we are at a crucial moment in the conflict when the momentum could shift in favor of Russia if we don’t act decisively and quickly,” former US Senator Rob Portman told me after a public session at the Palantir Pavilion. “A surge is needed.”

Portman detailed what that should include: more effective weapons and training, longer-range missiles, more Patriot missile systems and air defense—including coordination with Poland and Slovakia to use their Patriots along Ukraine’s borders to provide an umbrella for Western Ukraine—Abrams tanks, and F-16s. Another part of the surge, he says, should include sanctions and export controls in coordination with the European Union.  

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual Davos meeting, which ended on Friday, was the extent and nature of its focus on Ukraine. Even more notable was the growing number of voices recognizing the danger of Putin’s war to the global system of rules and institutions, and thus embracing greater support for Ukraine.

To be sure, there wasn’t any consensus about that. Senior officials representing governments of what has become known as the “Global South” complained about all the emphasis on military means, reminding Americans in particular of their miscues in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others said they regard addressing climate change and economic inequality as higher global priorities.

It’s not surprising that this year’s Davos theme was “cooperation in a fragmented world.” The world remains divided around a vast number of issues, and while roughly forty countries have joined sanctions against Putin and Russia over the Ukraine war, around 140 have not. That said, the recognition has grown even among fence-sitters that evidence of Putin’s war crimes is accumulating and that his imposition of the rule-of-the-jungle in Ukraine, if not addressed, endangers the rule-of-law worldwide.

That brings me back to Portman’s concept of a Ukraine surge, replacing the habit of incremental increases in support that have preceded it. That approach makes sense for a number of reasons.

It recognizes that more effective and longer-range weaponry is all that will allow Ukraine to protect its population and eliminate the “sanctuary” provided to the Russian bases from which it is being targeted. The surge approach also recognizes that the current policy of incremental change could face the growing dangers of Western funding fatigue.

Most of all, it acknowledges that a longer war of attrition favors Moscow. Though Putin’s military lacks the quality of Ukraine’s defense technology, intelligence, and morale, it may be able to offset that over time with the quantity of soldiers and weapons it can throw at the war. Moscow’s current mobilization will soon bring tens of thousands of new soldiers to the front lines.

The most compelling argument against a surge has been that it would provoke a response from Putin, up to and including the use of tactical nuclear weapons. US President Joe Biden, whose military and political support for Ukraine has been significant and consistent, has nevertheless spoken of his desire to avoid World War III when explaining why he hasn’t done even more.

However, as Eric Schlosser argues in the Atlantic this week, “the greatest nuclear threat we face is a Russian victory in Ukraine.”

Schlosser complains that concerns about Russia’s nuclear weapons have deterred the United States and its allies from providing Ukraine with the wherewithal that could change the course of the war. “If nuclear threats or the actual use of nuclear weapons leads to the defeat of Ukraine,” he writes, “Russia may use them to coerce other states. Tactics once considered immoral and unthinkable might become commonplace.”

It was a remarkable fact that Henry Kissinger, at age ninety-nine, was the geopolitical voice most quoted on Davos’s snowy streets this week.

He warned against the “destruction of Russia as a state,” which he feared would “open up the vast area of its eleven time zones to internal conflict and to outside intervention at the time when there are fifteen thousand and more nuclear weapons on its territory.”

At the same time, he praised the United States, its allies, and Ukraine for demonstrating “that a conventional attack from Russia on Europe will find united resistance and that Russia probably does not have the capacity to overcome it by conventional means.”

Second, he said NATO’s plan to expand to Finland and Sweden had achieved a significant strategic objective. Beyond that, Kissinger argued that the United States should, “if necessary, intensify its military support” for Ukraine until a settlement can be reached.

Kissinger revisited his long-standing hope of providing Russia “an opportunity to rejoin an international system,” but he introduced a new wrinkle in his thinking. His suggestion was that Russia’s unhappy war experience may cause it to “reevaluate its historic position” of military overreliance, distance from Europe, and fears of domination by Europe.

I’m tempted to read this between Kissinger’s lines: Putin’s defeat would also be the best outcome for Russians who want to escape counterproductive, historical patterns and join the community of civilized nations.

“I am happy that Kissinger changed his mind” about Ukraine’s NATO membership, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his own WEF session.

As for Kissinger’s desire to ensure Russia’s international place, Zelenskyy countered, “I think Russia has earned a place among terrorists… They have to open their eyes if they want to see the future of their Russian civilization. They have to recognize their own mistakes… They will have to respect our territorial integrity.”

To achieve that outcome, let the surge begin.       

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 The Greatest Nuclear Threat We Face Is a Russian Victory
Eric Schlosser | ATLANTIC

In this powerful piece, Eric Schlosser makes clear the stakes in Ukraine. If Putin is victorious, it will teach him, and the world, the dangerous lesson that nuclear blackmail works.

The arguments Russian propaganda makes, Schlosser writes, “are based on lies. They are being spread to justify Russia’s unprecedented use of nuclear blackmail to seize territory from a neighboring state.”

Schlosser continues, “concerns about a possible nuclear exchange have thus far deterred the United States and NATO from providing Ukraine with the tanks, aircraft, and long-range missiles that might change the course of the war. If nuclear threats or the actual use of nuclear weapons leads to the defeat of Ukraine, Russia may use them to coerce other states. Tactics once considered immoral and unthinkable might become commonplace. Nuclear weapons would no longer be regarded solely as a deterrent of last resort; the nine countries that possess them would gain even greater influence; countries that lack them would seek to obtain them; and the global risk of devastating wars would increase exponentially.” Read more →

#2 The Sanctions on Russia Are Working
Vladimir Milov | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

For those who argue that sanctions on Russia have failed, former Russian Deputy Energy Minister Vladimir Milov shows how Putin relies on massaged data and projections to conceal the truth.

“Russian figures showing manageable levels of inflation are also misleading,” Milov writes. “Even the Russian central bank currently reports that observed inflation—that is, how the public views the increase in prices, as reported in surveys—to be 16 percent, or over four percentage points higher than the official statistic, which is a little less than 12 percent.”

“According to a poll released by the private Russian research company Romir in October 2022,” Milov continues, “68 percent of Russians had noticed a reduction in the supply of goods offered in stores over the past three months. According to the Russian Public Opinion Research Center, 35 percent of Russians were forced to cut their spending on food in 2022. The Public Opinion Foundation, a Russian polling organization, reported in December 2022 that only 23 percent of Russians considered their personal financial situation to be ‘good.’” Read more →

#3 Oil price cap and falling cost of crude worry Kremlin
Anastasia Stognei | FINANCIAL TIMES

For further evidence of the toll Western sanctions are taking on Russia, read this excellent FT report.

“With oil prices falling and the costs of the war widening Russia’s deficit last year to 2.3 percent of gross domestic product,” Anastasia Stognei reports, “Putin and his officials see financial risks ahead. ‘You need to look at this discount so that it does not create any budget problems. Discuss it and deliver your proposals,’ he told officials last week after Alexander Novak, deputy prime minister, admitted the crude discounts were ‘the main risk.’”

All the more reason to keep the pressure on. Read more →

#4 The America trap: Why our enemies often underestimate us
Rober Kagan | WASHINTON POST

In this brilliant essay adapted from his new book, Robert Kagan explains how the United States’ reluctance to involve itself in foreign conflicts lulled Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan into a false sense of security.

“Hitler fell into a trap unwittingly laid by American policymakers, Congress and the public,” he writes. “In the critical years of his rise to power, the consolidation of his rule, Hitler feared and expected the democracies would come after him during what he called that ‘perilous interval.’”

“When they did not, and he was allowed to pass undisturbed through his time of greatest vulnerability, he grew overconfident. As early as 1935, Hitler and his lieutenants were already ‘absolutely drunk with power,’ convinced that ‘the whole world’ was afraid of them and would not move against them ‘no matter what’ they did. He was emboldened to reoccupy the Rhineland in 1936 and then to move on to fulfill his ambitions in central Europe. When Roosevelt took office, it was already too late to knock Hitler off his course merely with strong words or even sanctions. By the time Roosevelt actually began trying to convince Americans that they would have to become involved in the general international crisis, both Hitler and the Japanese were so far down the road that they could not be deterred by anything short of a genuine threat of war, and perhaps not even by that.”

Read this piece. Check out the book: The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of the World Order, 1900-1941. Read more →

#5 A Conversation with Henry Kissinger: Historical Perspectives on War
Henry Kissinger and Graham Allison | WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

Henry Kissinger, who at age ninety-nine is still the world’s premier strategic thinker, spoke to his former student Graham Allison in a Davos conversation, which is worth listening to in its entirety.

“Before this war,” Kissinger said, “I was opposed to membership of Ukraine in NATO because I feared that it would start exactly the process that we have seen now. Now that this process has reached its level, the idea of a neutral Ukraine under these conditions is no longer meaningful. And at the end of the process that I described, it ought to be guaranteed by NATO in whatever forms NATO can develop. But I believe Ukrainian membership in NATO would be an appropriate outcome.”

Amen. Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Jan 20, 2023

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in 2023 

Atlantic Council foresight experts spot the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

Brazil China

New Atlanticist Jan 18, 2023

As Brazil investigates Bolsonaro’s role in anti-democratic riots, should the US kick him out?

By Gissou Nia, Thomas S. Warrick

While the Biden administration needs to demonstrate moral leadership, acting too hastily could fuel the flames of Brazil’s polarized politics and damage democracy in the long term.

Brazil Elections

New Atlanticist Jan 20, 2023

Like it or not, Europe can only tackle its big challenges with Franco-German consensus

By Marie Jourdain, Jörn Fleck

The January 22 France-Germany summit, amid bumpy relations between the two powers, comes at a pivotal time for Europe and the transatlantic alliance.

Defense Policy Energy & Environment

The post Davos Dispatch: Why now is the time for a ‘Ukraine surge’: military, intelligence, economic and other support to defeat Putin appeared first on Atlantic Council.

If the world gets lucky, this could be the year fossil fuel producers and climate activists bury their hatchets and join hands to reduce emissions and ensure our planet’s future.

If that sounds hopelessly utopian, take that up with the leaders of this resource-rich, renewables-generating Middle Eastern monarchy. The United Arab Emirates is determined to inject specificity, urgency, and pragmatism into a process that often has lacked all three: the twenty-eighth convening of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, from November 30 to December 12.

To kick off 2023, the oil and gas and climate communities gathered this weekend for the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum, launching the annual Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. After decades of mutual mistrust, there is a growing recognition that they can’t live without each other.

Thank Russian President Vladimir Putin’s criminal war in Ukraine, and his ongoing weaponization of energy, for injecting a new dose of hard-headed reality into climate conversations. It’s seldom been so clear that energy security and cleaner energy are indivisible. The guiding principle is “the energy sustainability trilemma,” defined as the need to balance energy reliability, affordability, and sustainability.

What’s contributing to this new pragmatism is a recognition by much of the climate community that the energy transition to renewables can’t be achieved without fossil fuels, so they must be made cleaner. They have come to accept that natural gas, in particular liquified natural gas (LNG), with half the emissions footprint of coal, provides a powerful bridging fuel.

Once derided by green activists, nuclear power is also winning over new fans—particularly when it comes to the small, modular plants where there are fewer concerns over safety and weapons proliferation.

For their part, almost all major oil and gas producers, who once viewed climate activists with disdain, now embrace the reality of climate science and are investing billions of dollars in renewables and efforts to make their fossil fuels cleaner.

“Every serious hydrocarbon producer knows the future, in a world of declining use of fossil fuels, is to be low cost, low risk, and low carbon,” said David Goldwyn, the former State Department special envoy for energy. “The only way to ensure we do this is to have industry at the table.”

Nowhere is this shift among climate activists more evident than in Germany, where Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, the Green Party leader, is serving as the pragmatist-in-chief.

Habeck, who serves as federal minister for economic affairs and climate action, has been the driving force behind extending the life of the country’s three nuclear plants through April and in launching Germany’s first LNG import terminal in December, with as many as five more to follow.

“I am ultimately responsible for the security of the German energy system,” Habeck told Financial Times reporter Guy Chazan in a sweeping profile of the German politician. “So, the buck stops with me. … I became minister to make tough decisions, not to be Germany’s most popular politician.”

Some climate activists were aghast this Thursday when the UAE named Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), as president of this year’s COP28.

“This appointment goes beyond putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” said Teresa Anderson of ActionAid, a development charity. “Like last year’s summit, we’re increasingly seeing fossil fuel interests taking control of the process and shaping it to meet their own needs.”

What that overlooks is that Al Jaber’s rich background in both renewables and fossil fuels makes him an ideal choice at a time when efforts to address climate change have been far too slow, lacking the inclusivity to produce more transformative results.

Full disclosure: Al Jaber’s companies ADNOC and the clean-energy innovator Masdar (where he was founding CEO in 2005 and is now chairman) are sponsors of the annual Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi, a fact that has given me a close-up look at his years-long commitment to reducing emissions and promoting renewables.

Al Jaber also represents a country that despite its resource riches has become a major nuclear power producer, was the first Middle East country to join the Paris Climate Agreement, and was the first Middle East country to set out a roadmap to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Over the past fifteen years, the UAE has invested forty billion dollars in renewable energy and clean tech globally. In November it signed a partnership with the United States to invest an additional one hundred billion dollars in clean energy. Some 70 percent of the UAE economy is generated outside the oil and gas sector, making it an exception among major producing countries in its diversification.

Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, has explained his country’s approach this way: “There will be a time, fifty years from now, when we load the last barrel of oil aboard the ship. The question is… are we going to feel sad? If our investment today is right, I think—dear brothers and sisters—we will celebrate that moment.”

Al Jaber, speaking to the Global Energy Forum, captured his ambition to drive faster and more transformative results at COP28.

“We are way off track,” said Al Jaber.

“The world is playing catch-up when it comes to the key Paris goal of holding global temperatures down to 1.5 degrees,” he said. “And the hard reality is that in order to achieve this goal, global emissions must fall 43 percent by 2030. To add to that challenge, we must decrease emissions at a time of continued economic uncertainty, heightened geopolitical tensions, and increasing pressure on energy.”

He called for “transformational progress… through game-changing partnerships, solutions, and outcomes.” He said the world must triple renewable energy generation from eight terawatt hours to twenty-three and more than double low-carbon hydrogen production to 180 million tons for industrial sectors, which have the hardest carbon footprint to abate.

“We will work with the energy industry on accelerating the decarbonization, reducing methane, and expanding hydrogen,” said Al Jaber. “Let’s keep our focus on holding back emissions, not progress.”

If that sounds utopian, let’s have more of it.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 A new world energy order is taking shape
Rana Foroohar | FINANCIAL TIMES

In this smart piece, the FT’s Rana Foroohar warns of a China-led energy order and how that could shift the global balance of power.

“What does that mean in practice?” Foroohar asks. “For starters, a lot more oil trade will be done in renminbi. [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] announced that, over the next three to five years, China would not only dramatically increase imports from [Gulf] countries, but work towards all-dimensional energy co-operation.”

“This could potentially involve joint exploration and production in places such as the South China Sea, as well as investments in refineries, chemicals, and plastics. Beijing’s hope is that all of it will be paid for in renminbi, on the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange, as early as 2025.” 

This is something any serious thinker on energy should bear in mind. Read more →

#2 Ships going dark: Russia’s grain smuggling in the Black Sea
ECONOMIST

In this thought-provoking narrative, the Economist highlights the growing economic potential of the North Sea, particularly as a producer of wind power.

While the Economist acknowledges significant hurdles, from the vagaries of weather to the threat of cheaper competition in Southern Europe, it also writes that if “these problems can be overcome, the new North Sea economy’s impact on the continent will be momentous.

“As Europe’s economic epicentre moves north, so will its political one, predicts Frank Peter of Agora Energiewende, a German think-tank. Coastal Bremen, one of Germany’s poorest states, could gain clout at the expense of rich but landlocked Bavaria. At the European level, France and Germany, whose industrial might underpinned the European Coal and Steel Community, the EU’s forebear, may lose some influence to a new bloc led by Denmark, the Netherlands and, outside the EU, Britain and Norway.”  Read more →

#3 Time is not on Ukraine’s side
Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates | WASHINGTON POST

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, two of the most perceptive international strategists out there, deliver a compelling argument for how President Joe Biden’s administration should do more for Ukraine now.

The only way to avoid Russian domination of Ukraine, they write, “is for the United States and its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability — sufficient to deter a renewed Russian offensive and to enable Ukraine to push back Russian forces in the east and south. Congress has provided enough money to pay for such reinforcement; what is needed now are decisions by the United States and its allies to provide the Ukrainians the additional military equipment they need — above all, mobile armor.”

“Because there are serious logistical challenges associated with sending American Abrams heavy tanks, Germany and other allies should fill this need,” they write. “NATO members also should provide the Ukrainians with longer-range missiles, advanced drones, significant ammunition stocks (including artillery shells), more reconnaissance and surveillance capability, and other equipment. These capabilities are needed in weeks, not months.”

One hopes Biden is reading. Read more →

#4 Robert Habeck was Germany’s most popular politician. Then he took office
Guy Chazan | FINANCIAL TIMEs

Don’t miss Guy Chazan’s brilliant, sweeping profile of German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who oversees his country’s energy and economic policies, and his struggle as a Green politician to diversify resources away from Russia.

“As the energy crisis continued, traits that distinguished Habeck from other politicians came to the fore,” Chazan writes, reporting on Habeck’s willingness to make tough decisions. “On the day of the invasion last February, amid rounds of emergency meetings, he found time to visit Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin. ‘That was the most important meeting I had since the war began,’ Melnyk told Der Spiegel, ‘because he offered real human sympathy.’ Habeck also spoke openly about the uncertainties the government faced.”

Read this for a profile of the type of leader who, understanding the importance of compromise and pragmatism, will be vital in making the energy transition a success. Read more →

#5 American Democracy is Still In Danger
Erin Baggot Carter, Brett L. Carter, and Larry Diamond | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

This week’s must-read is a clarion call on the importance of US democracy and the dangers it faces, from Erin Baggot Carter, Brett L. Carter, and Larry Diamond.

“The health of American democracy,” they write, “is both a domestic and a national security concern. China and Russia—the United States’ principal authoritarian adversaries—have been using (and exacerbating) America’s democratic divisions and travails to gain advantage in the competition for global leadership. To regain the advantage, the United States must both repair its own democracy and reinvigorate its voice for democracy in the global arena. Democracy must go on the offensive.”

To do this, they argue, “Washington must rejoin the battle for global soft power, in a manner that reflects American values. It must transmit the truth, and in ways that engage and persuade global audiences. The goal must be not only to counter disinformation persuasively with the truth but to promote democratic values, ideas, and movements. In order to counter disinformation and report the truth that autocracies suppress, multiple credible streams of information are needed. Furthermore, they must be independent; while the US government may provide material support, these outlets must operate free of editorial control. That way, they will be seen to be independent because they are.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

Global Energy Forum Jan 14, 2023

COP28 president-designate: With the world ‘way off track’ on Paris goals, ‘transformational progress’ is needed

By Daniel Malloy

In his first remarks since being named the incoming president of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber spoke on Saturday morning at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Fast Thinking Jan 9, 2023

How Brazil can respond to its democracy stress test

By Atlantic Council

Now that authorities have cleared the protests and launched an investigation into security failures, our experts break down what’s to come.

Brazil Democratic Transitions

New Atlanticist Jan 13, 2023

Russian War Report: Russian hacker wanted by the FBI reportedly wins Wagner hackathon prize 

By Digital Forensic Research Lab

In December 2022, Wagner Group organized a hackathon that was won by a man wanted by the FBI for his connection to computer malware.

Conflict Cybersecurity

The post Dispatch from Abu Dhabi: How to reduce carbon emissions without blocking progress appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Given that, the United States and its global partners should double down in 2023 to shape the contest unfolding between democrats and despots that will define the post-Cold War order. US President Joe Biden has consistently focused on this competition as a historic “inflection point.” His third year in office provides him his best opportunity yet to score lasting gains in that contest.

At the beginning of this year, autocracy seemed to be on the march. Putin and Xi in early February 2022, just ahead of the Beijing Olympics, entered a “no limits” strategic partnership. That was followed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

But since then, in all three cases—Russia, China, and Iran—autocratic leaders’ errors of commission have deepened their countries’ underlying weaknesses while breeding new difficulties that defy easy solutions. 

That’s most dramatically the case with Putin, whose reckless, unprovoked, and illegal war in Ukraine has resulted in 6,490 civilian deaths, per the United Nations’s most recent estimate, and has prompted more than a million Russians to flee his country. International observers point to proof of crimes against humanity.

Beyond that, Putin has set back the Russian economy—some experts believe by as much as a decade—and sanctions are only beginning to bite. He’ll never regain his international reputation, and his military has revealed itself—despite many years of investments—as poorly trained, badly disciplined, and lacking morale.

Xi’s mistakes are less bloody in nature thus far. The excesses of his zero-COVID policy set off large-scale, spontaneous protests that amounted to the most serious challenge of his decade in leadership. Just last month, the Twentieth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party anointed Xi with a third term as China’s leader, but the protests that followed shortly thereafter shattered that aura of invincibility and apparent public support. 

“Xi is in a crisis of his own making, with no quick or painless route out,” wrote the Economist this week. “New COVID cases are near record levels. The disease has spread to more than 85 percent of China’s cities. Clamp down even harder to bring it back under control, and the economic costs will rise yet higher, further fueling public anger. Allow it to spread and hundreds of thousands of people will die… China’s leaders appear to be searching for a middle ground, but it is not clear there is any.” 

Beyond COVID-19, what is in danger is the unwritten social contract between the Chinese Communist Party of just 96 million members and the total Chinese population of 1.4 billion. Namely, the Chinese people accept restricted freedoms and fealty to the party so long as the party provides economic rewards and social security. A series of policy mistakes has slowed Chinese growth to just 3 percent in 2022, yet Xi continues to prioritize party control over economic freedoms. 

Though the global stakes of Iran’s protests are less obvious, the Mideast and world would be far better off with a more moderate and pluralistic Iran that focuses on its public needs, retreats from its regional adventurism, and steps back from the nuclear brink. Here, too, the regime’s problems have been self-created, the protests being a result of excessive regime brutality and endemic corruption. 

So, what should be done in 2023 to transform these authoritarian setbacks into a more sustainable advance of the “free world” (helping to reverse a sixteen-year global decline of democracy, as measured by Freedom House’s 2022 report)?

First and most immediately, the United States and its partners should deepen and expand their military and financial support for Ukraine. The Biden administration’s top officials understand this is the defining battle of our post-Cold War era. Without US military and financial support, and without US rallying of allies, all of Kyiv’s remarkable courage and resilience might not be enough.

That said, Biden’s caution and his often-stated fears of setting off World War III have limited the sorts and amounts of armaments Ukraine receives—and the speed at which they reach the battlefield. Faster delivery of more and better air defense could have saved Ukrainian lives. 

It’s remains difficult to understand continued limits put on Ukraine’s ability to strike the targets from which they are being hit as Putin murderously pummels more civilian targets and infrastructure. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has rightly accused Putin of weaponizing winter in the hope of freezing Ukraine’s citizens into submission. Perhaps the greater danger is that of Western fatigue in supporting Ukraine and growing external pressure on Kyiv to negotiate, when only further battlefield gains will prompt Putin to withdraw his troops and provide concessions that would allow a secure, sovereign, and democratic Ukraine to emerge.

Even as Russia requires action now, managing the Chinese challenge requires a more patient course, one that will be made easier should Putin be strategically defeated in Ukraine. Biden was right to meet with Xi in Bali, on the margins of the Group of Twenty meeting, to build a floor which can keep the world’s most crucial bilateral relationship from sinking.

Where the United States should step up its efforts in 2023 is in coalescing allies in Europe and Asia around a sustainable, consensus-driven approach to China that recognizes Beijing’s underlying weaknesses and deters its efforts to absorb Taiwan and remake the global order.

There are three potential outcomes at this “inflection point”: a reinvigoration and reinvention of our existing international liberal order, the emergence of a Chinese-led illiberal order, or the breakdown of world order altogether on the model of Putin’s “rule of the jungle.”

As 2022 ends, the failures and costs of those alternative models are clearer than ever.

Therefore, what’s crucial in the year ahead is for democracies to unify in common cause to shape the global future alongside moderate, modern non-democracies that seek a more secure, prosperous, and just world.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 China’s failing COVID strategy leaves Xi with no good options
ECONOMIST

To understand Xi’s dilemma, read this smart Economist essay breaking down the consequences China will face if it abandons Xi’s “zero-COVID” policy—and the consequences it will face if it doesn’t.

One jarring image of Xi’s determination to go all-in on “zero-COVID” is an empty vaccine factory. “The stifling of debate,” the Economist writes, “has had baleful consequences. China has not approved the use of foreign vaccines, including the most effective ones, the mRNA jabs made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.”

What experience shows is “the protection accorded by Chinese shots appears to wane significantly after six months. Worse, the authorities have focused on testing and building quarantine sites this year, while failing to administer third (or even fourth) doses to all, even though these would require no new infrastructure or political messaging.”  Read More →

#2 Enough about democracy’s weaknesses. Let’s talk about its strengths.
Fareed Zakaria | WASHINGTON POST

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, one of the premier strategic thinkers out there, has written a compelling defense of democracy’s virtues in the face of authoritarianism’s setbacks.

“It is astonishing to remember that when America’s Founding Fathers were constructing their experiment in government,” Zakaria writes, “they were virtually alone in a world of monarchies. These politicians were drawing on the writings of Enlightenment intellectuals such as Montesquieu and John Locke, studying historical examples from ancient Greece and Rome, and embracing key elements of English governance and common law. But they were mostly making it up in their heads. They had failures; their first effort, the Articles of Confederation, collapsed. In the end, however, they concocted something stunning: a system that protected individual rights, allowed for regular changes in leadership, prevented religious hegemony, and created a structure flexible enough to adapt to massive changes.”  Read More →

#3 Kevin Rudd on Jiang Zemin, steward of China’s rise

Kevin Rudd | INTERPRETER

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, one of the keenest observers of China anywhere, has delivered a brilliant obituary on former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin that provides insight into China’s reformist past and puts in perspective its unfortunate return to Marxism-Leninism under Xi.

His narrative recalls his own experience of Jiang, then mayor of Shanghai, singing O Sole Mio at the Sydney Opera House in 1987. It then tracks how this larger-than-life individual navigated the shoals of Communist Party politics to usher in China’s era of rapid economic growth and private sector expansion. 

“Jiang’s death this week at 96,” writes Rudd in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter, “marks the final, flickering embers of that now-distant reformist age—and the unambiguous beginning of the brave, new world of Xi Jinping.” Read More →

#4 The Russian Billionaire Selling Putin’s War to the Public
Betsy McKay, Thomas Grove, and Rob Barry | WALL STREET JOURNAL

This WSJ investigation is a powerfully reported exposé of Yuri Kovalchuk, also known as “Putin’s banker,” an oligarch and media baron, who has used his banking and media empires to promote Putin’s murderous war in Ukraine.

“A physicist by training,” three WSJ reporters write, “Kovalchuk is motivated more by patriotic ideology than by the trappings of wealth, say people who know him. He doesn’t hold a formal position in the Russian government. Yet he has deep influence over Kremlin policy and personnel, and helps supply dachas and yachts for Putin’s use, and lucrative jobs and stockholdings to the president’s family and friends, according to people familiar with the deals, financial documents and anticorruption groups.”

“Kovalchuk,” the WSJ adds, “controls the US-sanctioned Russian Bank Rossiya. The bank, in turn, built a network of offshore companies that have benefited Putin and his associates, and invests in projects important to the state, according to interviews with former US officials and Kremlin analysts as well as public documents and information revealed in the Panama Papers, a trove of leaked documents detailing offshore financial holdings.” Read More →

#5 Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials
Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet, and Yeganeh Torbati  | WASHINGTON POST

This week’s must-read is chilling. In a remarkable narrative, the Washington Post pieces together a large-scale Iranian campaign of kidnapping, intimidation, and assassination against critics and opponents, which has escalated in recent years.

One heartbreaking case is that of the Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was lured to Iraq where he was arrested and turned over to Iranian authorities. “The IRGC,” the Post writes, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “publicly boasted of its own deception, portraying Zam’s capture as a triumph for the Iranian security services, which had outfoxed their Western adversaries. Zam was tried and sentenced to death for ‘corruption on Earth.’ He was hanged on Dec. 12, 2020, at the age of 42.”

“Another chilling example is of a failed Iranian plot to kidnap Masih Alinejad, an American citizen. “The plan to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn is illustrative of a global effort to intimidate exiled Iranians by showing they aren’t safe anywhere outside Iran,” the Washington Post authors write. “Last year, the Justice Department indicted four alleged Iranian intelligence officials and agents in the plot, saying they targeted Alinejad because she was ‘mobilizing public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regime’s laws and practices.

“The operatives allegedly hired private investigators to photograph and take video recordings of Alinejad and her family and researched how they might use speedboats to secret her out of New York and eventually on to Venezuela, ‘a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran,’ the Justice Department said in a statement.” Read More →

Atlantic Council top reads

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Nov 30, 2022

Preparing for victory: A long-haul strategy to help Ukraine win the war against Russia—and secure the peace

By Stephen J. Hadley, William Taylor, John E. Herbst, Matthew Kroenig, Melinda Haring, and Jeffrey Cimmino

Ukraine’s counteroffensives, backed by expanded and accelerated US and allied support, continue to push Russian forces out of Ukrainian territory, although at a reduced rate. These hard-won successes, however, bring with them possible challenges that also must be addressed. 

Europe & Eurasia Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist Dec 2, 2022

What to expect from the new Russian oil price cap

By Reed Blakemore, Charles Lichfield, Brian O’Toole

As the EU comes to an agreement on a $60 price cap, here’s how it will work—and what impacts the world will see on the global and Russian economy.

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

TURKEYSource Dec 1, 2022

The risks and rewards of Erdogan’s next military operation

By Rich Outzen

The November 13 bombing in Istanbul, blamed on the PKK, is spurring a planned Turkish offensive against PKK affiliates in Northern Syria, fulfilling a long term goal to better secure the country’s southern border.

Conflict Iraq

The post Autocratic setbacks offer Biden his ‘inflection point’ for democracies appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What’s encouraging is that there is growing consensus among global leaders regarding the gathering dangers and their historic stakes, comparable to those of the 1930s ahead of World War II. What’s most disappointing is that common action is falling far short of this generational challenge.

For example, the International Monetary Fund-World Bank meetings in Washington underscored a rising consensus that escalating global inflation and a likely oncoming recession will grow worse if untreated, including rising dangers of asset price collapses, loan defaults, and Lehman Brothers-like creditor failures.

The US Federal Reserve and other central banks are taking dramatic steps to fight inflation, and policymakers were working behind the scenes this week to prevent fiscal crises like the United Kingdom’s from spreading. But they left Washington without a clear plan to tackle the worst-case scenario.

“We’ve got the most complex, disparate, and cross-cutting set of challenges that I think I can remember in the forty years I’ve been following this stuff,” former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told the Institute of International Finance this week. “And in all honesty, I think the fire department is still in the station.”

The Biden administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), also released this week, intelligently underscored the escalating dangers of the global geopolitical contest with Russia and China at a time of domestic political divisions. However, it also fell short on the remedies and resources required to address that contest.

As if on cue, Russian President Vladimir Putin this week escalated his attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets, empowered by Kyiv’s continued lack of sufficient air-defense systems and inability to counterstrike the source of the attacks within Russia. And today marks the opening of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s Communist Party Congress, which is expected to hand him a third five-year term of increasingly authoritarian rule.

Taken together, Putin and Xi are underscoring the ideological contest that defines our times. Both countries are driven by autocratic nationalism, but China’s is of an increasingly Marxist-Leninist nature.

“Under Xi, ideology drives policy more often than the other way around,” writes Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister and one of the keenest observers of modern China. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Rudd says Xi has “stoked nationalism by pursing an increasingly assertive foreign policy, turbocharged by a Marxist-inspired belief that history is irreversibly on China’s side and that a world anchored in Chinese power would produce a more just international order.”

The West’s own wounds

Also in this remarkable week, there were new reminders of Western democracies’ self-inflicted wounds.

The US House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 assault on the Capitol voted to subpoena former President Donald Trump following a sweeping summation of its case that Trump was at the center of an effort to overturn the 2020 elections that began before election day.

With midterm elections only three weeks off, US allies worry that the United States’ stubborn internal divisions make its current and future behavior on the world stage unpredictable at a time when greater consistency is so urgently required.

And in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Liz Truss, hoping to halt the collapse of her political authority after only a month in office, fired Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng and scrubbed her tax-cutting package. Whether that settles financial markets or the rebellion within her own party remains to be seen.  

It’s weeks like this one, when so many plot strands of the global future wind together, that have prompted writers and historians to quote Vladimir Lenin, who is reported to have said: “In some decades, nothing happens; in some weeks decades happen.”

Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations adds an addendum: “there are also decades when centuries happen.” Haass believes we are in such a moment, which he calls “The Dangerous Decade.” He writes: “The frightening gap between global challenges and the world’s responses, the increased prospects for major-power wars in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and the growing potential for Iran to cause instability in the Middle East have come together to produce the most dangerous moment since World War II.”

A question of leadership

The question is which leaders will define the years ahead? Will they be Putin, Xi, and their ilk, who lack both democratic constraints and legitimacy, or the likes of US President Joe Biden and Truss, who are so hamstrung by messy politics? Or could the example of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy inspire similar courage in others?

It’s fair to observe that we lack leaders of the caliber of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt or UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who shaped the 1930s through World War II. However, what’s too often forgotten is that they also managed to galvanize their people against autocratic challenges while working through democratic means.

In releasing his NSS, Biden put it plainly: “Autocrats are working overtime to undermine democracy and export a model of governance marked by repression at home and coercion abroad.”

Mercifully, however, the NSS departed from the administration’s earlier predilection to group all non-democracies together. Though it doesn’t say it this way, there’s a greater recognition that Singapore isn’t North Korea, that the United Arab Emirates isn’t Iran, and that Saudi Arabia isn’t Putin’s Russia.

The NSS put it this way: “Our goal is clear—we want a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order.” To achieve that, according to the NSS, requires “three lines of effort. We will: 1) invest in the underlying sources and tools of American power and influence; 2) build the strongest possible coalition of nations to enhance our collective influence… and 3) modernize and strengthen our military so it is equipped for the era of strategic competition with major powers…” 

What it fails to say is that all bets are off if the civilized world doesn’t first defeat the bear at the door. Ukraine must succeed in pushing back Putin, and Putin must fail in his delusional and imperial ambitions.

All else that is imagined in the NSS could fail if the civilized world doesn’t provide sufficient arms, sanctions, and political will to succeed at this. One place to start: Western nations can change their laws so that the three hundred billion dollars in Russian assets currently frozen in the international financial system could be repurposed to help Ukraine rebuild. What’s been achieved thus far is impressive, but it remains insufficient when measured against the historic stakes.

If the civilized world falls short, this could be its final act.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 United States National Security Strategy
THE WHITE HOUSE

This is big.

The US National Security Strategy released this week, while not without its flaws, brilliantly and tersely captures our global challenges and what to do about them.

Atlantic Council experts weigh in and grade the NSS here. Writes Matt Kroenig, acting director of our Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security: “Overall, this is a fine strategy. Several of the key themes are similar to those that have appeared in Atlantic Council Strategy Papers over the past several years. The NSS recognizes the preeminence of the China challenge, the superiority of democracies in great-power rivalry, and the need to stitch together US alliances in Europe and Asia and to create new frameworks to address twenty-first century challenges.

“On the negative side, there is a potential gap between ambition and resources. The strategy prioritizes amorphous global challenges over concrete security threats; it is too optimistic about cooperation with China; and the section on strengthening the United States for strategic competition includes too many divisive domestic political issues.” Read more →

#2 World Economic Outlook, Report October 2022: Countering the Cost-of-Living Crisis
INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND

The language in the IMF’s twice annual outlook is blunt: “Risks to the outlook remain unusually large and to the downside. Monetary policy could miscalculate the right stands to reduce inflation. Policy paths in the largest economies could continue to diverge, leading to further US dollar appreciation and cross-border tensions. More energy and food price shocks might cause inflation to persist for longer…”

That language reflects the mood in Washington this week among global economic and financial leaders. Their off-record comments to me reflect a growing consensus on the rising global financial and economic dangers and a lack of common cause regarding their solutions.

Hold onto your seats. Read more →

#3 How Ukrainians define their enemy: ‘It’s not Putin, it’s Russia’
David Ignatius | THE WASHINGTON POST

Readers of this column already know David Ignatius is both a friend and, in my view, the finest foreign affairs columnist of our times. He’s at his best when he’s traveling on the front lines of historic challenges, as he did when delivering this week’s column from Kyiv.

“I kept asking Ukrainians a question that vexes me: Is your war against President Vladimir Putin—or against Russia itself? Nearly every time, I got the same unyielding answer. The enemy is a Russia that must be defeated and transformed.” Read every word of this one to learn why Ukrainians believe Russia needs to go through the same process of change that Germany did after World War II. They may know best. Read more →

#4 The World According to Xi Jinping
Kevin Rudd | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

It’s hard for Americans to believe that their major global competitor and adversary might be motivated by an ideology as arcane and outdated to them as Marxism-Leninism.

However, if we are to prevail in this competition, every US official and legislator ought to read this piece reflecting on the ideological drivers behind Chinese President Xi Jinping as he opens his party congress today, which is likely to anoint him for a third five-year term.

“Within the Chinese system,” writes Rudd, “Marxism-Leninism still serves as the ideological headwaters of a world view that places China on the right side of history and portrays the United States as struggling in the throes of inevitable capitalist decline, consumed by its own internal political contradictions and destined to fall by the wayside. That, in Xi’s view, will be the real end of history” Read more →

#5 The world divided: The world China wants
THE ECONOMIST

The Economist is at its best when it takes on a giant issue defining our times and then throws the weight and intellectual heft of its team to tackle it. That’s the case with this special report focusing on what it is China wants, how it intends to get it, and why China may succeed. It makes for unsettling reading.

What China wants “is more subtle than Russia’s brazen defiance, yet more disruptive,” writes the magazine. “Under Xi Jinping… China is working to reshape the world order from within. When its efforts meet resistance, it pushes for vaguer rules whose enforcement becomes a question of political bargaining. All too often, it seeks to revive old, discredited ways of running the world that put states first, at the expense of individual freedoms.”

The Economist reminds us that seventy years ago, at the United Nations’ founding meetings, Soviet-bloc delegates “sought an order that deferred to states and promoted collective rather than individual rights, opposing everything from free speech to the concept of seeking political asylum…”

In the late 1940s, the free world outvoted communist countries. China now “seeks to reopen these old arguments about how to balance sovereignty with individual freedoms. This time, the liberal order is on the defensive.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Oct 11, 2022

Your expert guide to China’s 20th Party Congress

By Atlantic Council experts

The once-in-five-years event is slated not only to further cement Xi Jinping’s rule but also to have impact on a number of policy areas, from China’s economy to its relationship with the Global South.

China Climate Change & Climate Action

UkraineAlert Oct 11, 2022

Six things you (yes, you!) can do now to help Ukraine

By Melinda Haring

With the winter season fast approaching and Vladimir Putin launching a campaign against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, it is more important than ever to maintain support for Ukraine. Melinda Haring has some ideas.

Civil Society Conflict

New Atlanticist Oct 12, 2022

Experts react: The hits and misses in Biden’s new National Security Strategy

By Atlantic Council experts

We put the call out to our experts from across the Atlantic Council: Does this document deliver? What does it get right and what’s missing?

Middle East National Security

The post Wanted: Global leadership to meet this historic moment appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The world is entering the moment of maximum danger—and at the same time of maximum opportunity—in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, now in its seventh month.

It is the moment of maximum danger because Putin is so dramatically failing in the pursuit of his delusional obsession, which prompted him to launch a major invasion of Ukraine on February 24, that he could rebuild some modern notion of the Russian empire with Kyiv as its centerpiece and as his legacy.

As Ukrainian courage and resilience transform his hubris into humiliation, the danger is rising that he could turn to weapons of mass destruction, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons, to coerce Ukraine and confound its allies at a time when Putin’s influence is eroding and he is running out of options. This peril was plainly evident on Wednesday when, in announcing a partial mobilization of Russian forces to buttress his flagging war in Ukraine, Putin once again threatened to use nuclear weapons. “Russia will use all the instruments at its disposal to counter a threat against its territorial integrity—this is not a bluff,” the Russian president declared.

This presents a moment of maximum opportunity for world leaders at the gathering this week of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), the first since Putin launched his war. It’s a chance for US President Joe Biden, alongside his European and Asian allies, to openly discuss the dangers Putin’s war poses to any country that cares about national sovereignty, to condemn Putin’s indisputable war atrocities, and to sway those remaining fence-sitters around the world who have neither condemned Putin nor backed sanctions against him.

It’s disheartening that the UN, instead of focusing on how best to stop Russia’s despot now and before winter wages, has been wrestling with the technicality of whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should be allowed to speak via video link to this most significant gathering of world leaders. The good news is that UN General Assembly members voted 101 to 7, with 19 abstentions that included China, to provide the Ukrainians their stage.

Russia, a member of the UN Security Council, had been doing everything in its power to block the speech. That’s no surprise, for when Zelenskyy spoke virtually to the Security Council in April, he told the group that it should act for peace immediately or “dissolve” itself.

“We are dealing with a state that turns the right of veto in the UN Security Council into a right to kill,” he warned. Zelenskyy could not have been more prophetic, saying that if the UN failed to stop Putin, then for countries going forward, it wouldn’t be international law that would define the future but rather the law of the jungle.

There has been some speculation that the chance that Putin will use tactical nukes against Ukraine—or order some other escalatory action involving chemical or biological agents—has grown in rough proportion to the Russian despot’s increasing military setbacks on the ground.

Scenes from Ukraine last week of Russian soldiers—who cast aside their rifles, fled the battlefield on bicycles, and ditched their uniforms to disguise themselves as locals—were all part of a mosaic of failure.

The spectacular implosion of Putin’s military in the south and east of Ukraine, where Ukrainian troops have retaken at least 2,320 square miles of territory, has given new life to talk that Putin may have no way out of a losing war except through a self-defeating Hail Mary: nuclear weapons.

For a leader whose claim to leadership has all along focused on his personal masculinity and political invulnerability, this growing perception of his military’s ineptness and his own weakness endangers his continued rule.

That, in turn, seems to be prompting a rethink among both the handful of his allies and a larger group of countries—India chief among them—as Putin learned at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last week in Samarkand. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his concern about the war by telling Putin publicly that “today’s era is not an era of war, and I have spoken to you on the phone about this.”

Putin’s meeting last week in Samarkand with Chinese President Xi Jinping also gave Putin no relief. Indeed, Putin perhaps began to see the limits of what the two men had called their “no limits” relationship in a statement just before the Beijing Olympics and before Putin launched his war. “We understand your questions and concern” about the war, Putin told Xi last week.

Personal survival remains the highest priority for autocrats. For Putin, that must be top of mind now. What’s less clear is what would ensure it. One possibility is resorting to weapons of mass destruction and particularly tactical nuclear weapons.

While the risk to Putin would be huge, the world must be ready for this contingency. The best way to do that would be to pre-empt him, deter him, and be proactive rather than reactive because the world knows his plot.

“I fear [Putin’s Russia] will strike back now in really unpredictable ways, and ways that may even involve weapons of mass destruction,” Rose Gottemoeller, a former deputy secretary general of NATO, told the BBC last week.

What concerns her is something that has been growing in importance in Kremlin strategy: tactical nuclear weapons that weigh a few kilotons or less—some with only one-fiftieth of the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. Such weapons aren’t designed to reach Washington or Berlin but rather to coerce or, as Gottemoeller puts it, “to get the Ukrainians, in their terror, to capitulate.”

In an Atlantic Council “Memo to the President” last week, Matthew Kroenig tries to answer the question of “how to deter Russian nuclear use in Ukraine–and respond if deterrence fails.”

“Such nuclear use,” writes Kroenig, “could advance the Kremlin’s military aims, undermine US interests globally, and set off a humanitarian catastrophe unseen since 1945. To deter such a potential disaster, the United States should issue public, deliberately vague threats of serious consequences for any Russian use of nuclear weapons and be prepared to follow through with conventional military strikes on Russian forces if deterrence fails.” 

It is also essential that the United States convey this message privately at senior levels and accompany it with the movement of relevant conventional forces into the area in a way that underscores the United States’ seriousness.

As world leaders gather at UNGA, one hopes they use the chance they have to fully listen to Zelenskyy.

Ukraine’s ability to survive as an independent, sovereign, and democratic state has wide-reaching implications for the international community that the UN represents.

There are terrible dangers in the weeks ahead. However, Putin’s battlefield failures and the increasing erosion of his international standing provide an opportunity to do the right thing: accelerate and step up all efforts to ensure Putin’s defeat and Ukraine’s defense. 

If not now, when?

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 The World Putin Wants
Fiona Hill and Angela Stent | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

In this week’s must-read, Angela Stent and Fiona Hill, two of the smartest Russia-watchers anywhere, offer up a compelling analysis of Putin’s warped worldview, his strategy, and the sacrifices he’s willing to make in Ukraine.

“The real pinch from Western export controls will be felt in 2023,” they write, “when Russia will lack the semiconductors and spare parts for its manufacturing sector, and its industrial plants will be forced to close. The country’s oil industry will especially struggle as it loses out on technology and software from the international oil industry.” Yet Putin, they warn, is confident that he can outlast the West and is willing to put up with immense damage to the Russian economy if need be.

And why have countries in the world not joined US support for Ukraine?

“Since 2014,” write Stent and Hill, “Putin has assiduously courted ‘the rest’—the developing world—even as Russia’s ties with the West have frayed. In 2015, for example, Russia sent its military to the Middle East to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country’s civil war. Since then, Russia has cultivated ties with leaders on all sides of that region’s disputes, becoming one of the only major powers able to talk to all parties. Russia has strong ties with Iran, but also with Iran’s enemies: particularly Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states. In Africa, Russian paramilitary groups provide support to a number of leaders. And in Latin America, Russian influence has increased as more left-wing governments have come to power. There and elsewhere, Russia is still seen as a champion of the oppressed against the stereotype of US imperialism. Many people in the global South view Russia as the heir to the Soviet Union, which supported their post-colonial national liberation movements, not a modern variant of imperial Russia.” Read more →

#2 Fortress China: Xi Jinping’s plan for economic independence
James Kynge, Sun Yu, and Leo Lewis | FINANCIAL TIMES

To understand Xi’s economic goals, read this FT report, which examines China’s determination to achieve greater self-sufficiency from the rest of the world.

The underlying objective, the FT reports, “is to build a ‘fortress China’—re-engineering the world’s second-largest economy so it can run on internal energies and, if the need arises, withstand a military conflict. While many in the US want to ‘decouple’ their economy from China, Beijing wants to become less dependent on the West—and especially on its technology. The strategy has several constituent parts and—if successful—will take several years to realize… In technology, the aim is to spur domestic innovation and localize strategic aspects of the supply chain. In energy, the objective is to boost the deployment of renewables and reduce reliance on seaborne oil and gas. In food, the path to greater self-reliance includes revitalizing the local seed industry. In finance, the imperative is to counter the potential weaponization of the US dollar.” Read more →

#3 The Wrong Way to View the Xi-Putin Meeting
Evan A. Feigenbaum | CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

“China is a self-interested power,” Feigenbaum writes. “It has every reason to be selfish about its own interests, not to run interference as a proxy for Moscow’s interests. China is the stronger power than Russia. And its interests are more global—and more multifaceted. Beijing’s goal is surely to preserve its entente with Russia at the strategic level, to counterbalance American power and growing economic pressure on China from the West. But it wants to do this without having to back Moscow at the tactical level, since it also benefits from preserving global market access, avoiding Western sanctions, and building relations with countries, like those in Central Asia, that are terrified of Russia.”

“This is a balance that Xi would struggle to strike if he appears to back Putin or the Russian war in Ukraine wholesale,” Feigenbaum adds.

For Xi, who has grand ambitions for a Chinese-led world, tipping too far one way or the other is not worth the risk. Read more →

#4 What Russia’s Failure in Ukraine Means for Putin and the World
Yaroslav Trofimov | WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov has produced some of the best reporting on the war in Ukraine. It’s no surprise he would deliver the most compelling reflection, which is on the cover of the Journal’s Weekend Review section, on Putin’s current troubles and their meaning.

“Moscow’s recent military defeats, inflicted by a country that it never considered a serious adversary, have challenged Russia’s basic assumptions about itself and its role in the world,” Trofimov writes.

More importantly, Russia’s failures are also shifting international thinking. “The losses are prompting Russia’s partners, allies, and arms customers to reassess their relationships, with many voicing private shock about Moscow’s bungling even as they hold back from public criticism,” writes Trofimov.

And in this characteristically excellent piece, also from Trofimov, he examines how Russia has shifted tactics to increase its assaults on civilian infrastructure.

“Changing its strategy after stinging military defeats,” Trofimov writes, “Russia this week began a campaign of cruise-missile strikes on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. Wednesday’s initial attack on a dam in Kryviy Rih followed a strike on Monday that disabled the main power station in the country’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, knocking out electricity in much of eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities have contained the damage, restoring services in a matter of hours. Still, a sustained Russian effort to destroy Ukrainian power stations, dams, bridges, and pipelines could over time severely degrade the country’s ability to function, especially as winter sets in.” Read more →

#5 The Queen Met 13 Sitting US Presidents, Who Basked in Her Global Prestige
Peter Baker | NEW YORK TIMES

In honor of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, read Peter Baker’s New York Times reflection on her relationship with the thirteen different US presidents she met and the important role she played in the special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

“The queen’s myriad encounters with presidents over the last seven decades… provided a regular tableau of the enduring British-American relationship,” Baker writes, “a symbol of the powerful bond between the onetime colonial power and the breakaway nation on the other side of the ocean. While Americans cast off the rule of the monarchy, many still revered it, and there was always something grand when a president met the queen.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Oct 11, 2022

Your expert guide to China’s 20th Party Congress

By Atlantic Council experts

The once-in-five-years event is slated not only to further cement Xi Jinping’s rule but also to have impact on a number of policy areas, from China’s economy to its relationship with the Global South.

China Climate Change & Climate Action

UkraineAlert Oct 11, 2022

Six things you (yes, you!) can do now to help Ukraine

By Melinda Haring

With the winter season fast approaching and Vladimir Putin launching a campaign against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, it is more important than ever to maintain support for Ukraine. Melinda Haring has some ideas.

Civil Society Conflict

New Atlanticist Oct 12, 2022

Experts react: The hits and misses in Biden’s new National Security Strategy

By Atlantic Council experts

We put the call out to our experts from across the Atlantic Council: Does this document deliver? What does it get right and what’s missing?

Middle East National Security

The post As Putin escalates his war against Ukraine, the world faces a moment of maximum danger—and maximum opportunity appeared first on Atlantic Council.

It’s the story of a despot’s ruthless attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine, versus the historic, but nonetheless insufficient, rallying of democratic states to save the country.

At midday on Monday, in the central Ukrainian industrial city of Kremenchuk, sitting serenely astride the Dnipro River, about a thousand men, women, and children wandered the Amstor shopping mall, trying to enjoy some normalcy amidst a brutal war. 

Some 185 miles away and a few thousand feet overhead, Russian bombers flying over Russia’s Kursk region, likely Tupolev Tu-22M3s, released at least two Kh-22 medium-range, two-thousand-pound nuclear-capable cruise missiles, developed in the 1960s to destroy aircraft carriers. An air raid siren wailed, and Ukrainians, well-practiced in the fifth month of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, scrambled for safety. 

Around the same time at Schloss Elmau in Germany’s Bavarian Alps, the Group of Seven (G7) leaders, representing the world’s largest democracies, huddled around conference tables in an effort to add to their far-reaching sanctions on Putin and Russia. They debated options to choke the finances that fuel Putin’s war, including putting a price cap on oil sales to Russia that could reduce the one billion dollars the world pays Russia every day for energy.

As they struggled to make progress, one of the missiles screamed down on the shopping mall. A CCTV video captured a bucolic day, with wispy clouds adorning the otherwise blue sky, and then the massive fireball of the blast and the curling up of a gigantic black smoke plume. Shattered glass and debris flew past the camera.

A day later, as Ukrainian officials tallied the death toll—at least twenty dead and fifty-nine wounded in a war where Putin’s military has already killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians—world leaders gathered for the NATO summit that had brought me to Madrid. They were abuzz about the timing of Putin’s shopping mall strike, knowing that it was aimed as much at them as Ukraine.

“Talk as much as you want,” Putin seemed to be saying to them. “Sign whatever documents you like. I’ll outlast you and your spoiled societies with my war of attrition, restoring imperial Russia and sealing my place in history even as your decadent West continues its decay.” 

Putin could be confident that despite historic agreements in Madrid this week, and even though arms deliveries from the United States and its partners are increasing in numbers and quality, no one was yet willing to provide the heavier, longer-range, precision weaponry that could have prevented the shopping mall strike and so many others, and might allow an urgently needed counteroffensive.

Even so, NATO reached a level of unity unseen in more than thirty years.  

At the end of a marathon, hours-long negotiating session involving NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, the sides reached an agreement that cleared the way for Finland and Sweden to join NATO and end, in Sweden’s case, two centuries of neutrality.

The following day NATO leaders would sign off on a new Strategic Concept, highlighting Russia as their most present danger but including China for the first time as a matter of common concern. The leaders of Australia, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand attended a NATO summit for the first time as partners and guests.hat the Alliance understood it faced a global and interrelated challenge.

NATO’s China language signaled that the Alliance understood it faced a global and interrelated challenge. Considering that thirty countries needed to sign off on the text, many of them still with China as their number one trading partner, it’s a powerful read.

“The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values,” it said. Later it continued, “The PRC seeks to control key technological and industrial sectors, critical infrastructure, and strategic minerals and supply chains. It uses its economic leverage to create strategic dependencies and enhance its influence. It strives to subvert the rules-based international order, including in the space, cyber and maritime domains.”

There was a lot of celebratory talk among allies about their increased unity and deepened purpose, including US President Joe Biden’s declaration that NATO was sending an “unmistakable message” to Putin. 

The closer you live to Russia as an EU citizen, the more you argue, as I did in this space on June 5, that Putin doesn’t need the diplomatic off-ramp that Macron is offering but rather the dead-end that can only be brought by tougher sanctions and a more effective Ukrainian counter-offensive backed by longer-range weapons. 

Among other agreements, NATO acted to shore up its eastern and southern flanks, and the US Army will send a corps headquarters to Poland and more troops to the Baltics and Romania. NATO pledged to increase its high-readiness forces from forty thousand to three hundred thousand, even as Sweden and Finland brought it significant new military weight.

Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares heralded the summit as potentially as significant as Yalta (heaven help us) or the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

At a NATO Public Forum that the Atlantic Council co-hosted on the margins of the summit, I asked French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna how she would rank the historic moment. “History will tell,” she said.

No one should miss Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s message to G7 leaders this week that they must provide him the means for a counteroffensive to push back Russian troops before winter sets in and Ukraine’s allies lose interest in the face of growing economic headwinds. 

“Russia is waging two wars right now,” writes Greg Ip in the Wall Street Journal. “A hot war with Ukraine whose costs are measured in death and destruction, and a cold war with the West whose costs are measured in economic hardship and inflation.” 

Putin might fold over time in the face of a more determined West and better-armed Ukraine, writes Ip, but he’s wagering that he can “inflict a high enough short-term cost on Western consumers that political support for Ukraine will crumble.”

I leave Madrid encouraged by an increased consensus among European and Asian democracies that a Ukrainian defeat would be disastrous for Europe and the world order as other despots calculate their own opportunities.

Yet I also come away discouraged that for all this week’s progress, the military support and sanctions still aren’t equal to the historic stakes.

In this contest between a determined despot and rallying democracies, the forces for good had an excellent week. If they don’t build upon it, and fast, it won’t be enough.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com. Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points will return in September after a summer pause. Special editions might appear, as warranted by events.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 How Far Do Putin’s Imperial Ambitions Go?
NATO

This is big. For anyone with even a passing interest in transatlantic security and foreign policy, this year’s NATO Strategic Concept is a must-read. Understanding the interrelated challenge to the international order, all thirty allies signed on to this document, which identifies not only Russia, but also China, as potential threats. 

“Authoritarian actors,” the document writes, “challenge our interests, values and democratic way of life. They are investing in sophisticated conventional, nuclear and missile capabilities, with little transparency or regard for international norms and commitments. Strategic competitors test our resilience and seek to exploit the openness, interconnectedness and digitalisation of our nations. They interfere in our democratic processes and institutions and target the security of our citizens through hybrid tactics, both directly and through proxies. They conduct malicious activities in cyberspace and space, promote disinformation campaigns, instrumentalise migration, manipulate energy supplies and employ economic coercion. These actors are also at the forefront of a deliberate effort to undermine multilateral norms and institutions and promote authoritarian models of governance.” Read more →

#2 Ships going dark: Russia’s grain smuggling in the Black Sea
Chris Cook, Polina Ivanova, and Laura Pitel | FINANCIAL TIMES

Among the many war crimes Putin is alleged to have committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the large-scale theft of Ukrainian grain. This brilliantly reported Financial Times investigation sheds light on how that grain is smuggled. 

While the Financial Times cautions that “There is no evidence that the grain being shipped out of Crimea on the Fedor or other ships analysed by the FT has been stolen from parts of Ukraine now occupied by Russia,” the newspaper reports that “…there is a pattern of activity that indicates a rise in smuggling from Crimea. Although there is little historical data about volumes of exports through the port, Ukrainian activists who monitor the port say they have seen a rise in grain traffic at Sevastopol in May and into June compared with previous years.”  Read more →

#3 We Are Now In a Global Cold War
Michael Hirsch | FOREIGN POLICY

One of the clearest signs of the new geopolitical fault lines was the inclusion of the United States’ Asian and Pacific allies—including Japan, South Korea, and Australia—at this year’s NATO summit. As Michael Hirsh writes, this is a sign of an incipient new cold war which encompasses China and Russia as adversaries.

“But plainly,” Hirsh writes, “the major Western powers now believe that—from Mariupol, Ukraine, on the Black Sea to Taipei, Taiwan, on the Taiwan Strait and possibly all the way to Honiara, Solomon Islands, in the South Pacific—a new sort of iron curtain is descending around the world. In front of that line on the European continent lie the newly invigorated Western European and NATO countries as well as the former Soviet bloc states that have since joined NATO or want to, including the Baltic countries and now Ukraine. Read more →

#4 Gas Prices Test American Appetite For New Cold War with Russia
Greg Ip | WALL STREET JOURNAL

This smart column from the Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip nails how Russia is using an energy weapon in its cold war with the West, and how Biden must course correct on energy.

“Russian President Vladimir Putin knows that in this cold war, time is not on his side,” Ip writes. “Even with China in his corner, the U.S. and its allies have an overwhelming advantage in wealth, knowledge, technology and finance. Mr. Putin’s only path to victory is to inflict a high enough short-term cost on Western consumers that political support for Ukraine will crumble.”

Therefore, Ip concludes, “the challenge for Mr. Biden and other Western leaders is to navigate the next six months while Mr. Putin exploits the leverage he now has.” Read more →

#5 Last Best Hope
Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

In this week’s must-read, Ivo Daalder and James M. Lindsay make a powerful argument that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has provided the United States and its allies a rare second chance to rebuild the international order and correct their previous mistakes.

“Even as the West works to manage these differences,” they write, “it should turn its newfound unity into a broader effort to save the rules-based order. The first step should be to create a new group, the G-12, that would bring together the United States and its leading allies in Asia, Europe, and North America. Every member of this group has a vital interest in preserving the order, and none of them can do it on their own. But formalized cooperation alone will not be enough. The United States and its allies will need to take the second step of learning from the mistakes they had made over the last three decades.”

“The silver lining in the horror of the aggression against Ukraine,” they add, “is that it gives the United States and its Western allies a chance to do what they failed to accomplish after the end of the Cold War: reinvigorate international institutions and deepen cooperation on transnational threats. But this moment will not last forever. The West needs to resist the temptation to regard the aggression against Ukraine as an aberration rather than a trend. To that end, the United States should join with the 11 other prospective members of the G-12 to revitalize the rules-based order. Western democracies cannot afford to squander this second chance to get things right.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Oct 11, 2022

Your expert guide to China’s 20th Party Congress

By Atlantic Council experts

The once-in-five-years event is slated not only to further cement Xi Jinping’s rule but also to have impact on a number of policy areas, from China’s economy to its relationship with the Global South.

China Climate Change & Climate Action

UkraineAlert Oct 11, 2022

Six things you (yes, you!) can do now to help Ukraine

By Melinda Haring

With the winter season fast approaching and Vladimir Putin launching a campaign against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, it is more important than ever to maintain support for Ukraine. Melinda Haring has some ideas.

Civil Society Conflict

New Atlanticist Oct 12, 2022

Experts react: The hits and misses in Biden’s new National Security Strategy

By Atlantic Council experts

We put the call out to our experts from across the Atlantic Council: Does this document deliver? What does it get right and what’s missing?

Middle East National Security

The post Special dispatch from Madrid: At NATO’s historic summit, good scores points on evil, but it’s not enough to stop Putin’s Ukraine war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The coming weeks will show whether that work of building a more resolute European Union for a future of new geopolitical challenges will continue—or, instead, if the rewiring will short-circuit before the job is done in the face of rising economic headwinds and Putin’s grinding war of attrition.

Thus far, the European Union (EU) has remained unified with the United States and others behind an unprecedented set of sanctions on Russia. Further, it has begun to strengthen its hard power through increased defense spending, and it has moved swiftly to reduce its shameful energy dependence on Moscow. Most recently the Group of Seven (G7) appears poised to announce an import ban on Russian gold.

In ways Putin never envisioned when he hatched his war, the EU has committed itself to ensuring Ukraine’s future as a democratic, independent, and European country through billions of euros of economic support, unprecedented arms deliveries, and now an offer of membership candidacy to Ukraine and Moldova.

As NATO prepares to open its summit in Madrid this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov voiced Moscow’s growing concern about EU unity of purpose alongside the alliance. He said the EU and NATO were building a coalition to engage in a war with Moscow that he compared to “Hitler during World War II.” As laughable as Lavrov sounds to reasonable ears—this era’s tyrannical dictator sits in Moscow and not Berlin—it underscores Putin’s worries about Western common cause and his warped view of history.

Yet as impressive as the EU rewiring project has been thus far, it’s likely to short-circuit in the months ahead unless the political conviction grows even stronger around this historic moment. That will demand faster implementation of new defense and energy policies—and greater support for Ukraine.

As Putin gains ground in Ukraine, with new strikes on Kyiv today almost certainly timed to coincide with the G7 meeting in Germany, it will take all the political will European leaders can muster. They will face greater public pressures to end the war with benchmark gas prices climbing an additional 15 percent in the last week amidst the double shocks of Russian cuts and a fire at Freeport LNG in Texas, with inflation reaching 8.1 percent in the euro area in May, and with economic recession dangers rising rapidly, given the threat of Russian gas cutoffs this winter.  

On another front, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde summoned her colleagues to an emergency session last week in Frankfurt that was designed to generate solidarity around steps to preempt any danger of a new Eurozone debt crisis reaching Italy from the dual shocks of rising inflation and slowing growth. 

Putin is counting on the usual fatigue and political divisions that set in among Western democracies when they must weigh growing domestic concerns against international dangers. He’s seen enough to encourage him, including newly re-elected Emmanuel Macron’s failure to win a majority in the National Assembly, the first time in thirty years that’s been denied the French president.

And for all the impressive arms shipments and economic support the Biden administration has delivered Ukraine, the weaponry firing range of some fifty miles remains insufficient to stop the Russian carpet-bombing, for fear of expanding the war. 

Beyond that, Putin knows US midterm elections are likely to weaken Biden further amid domestic disputes over the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade abortion protections and the country’s continuing disputes over gun laws. Even as Putin’s war grows uglier, Americans are seeing less of it on their TV screens. 

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is also looking weaker than in his first days in office, as he hosts the G7 leaders in the Bavarian Alps this weekend. 

Scholtz faced such a storm of criticism that he’s been dragging his feet on heavy weapons deliveries to Ukraine that his Defense Ministry was compelled to publish a full list of completed and planned deliveries, including seven self-propelled Panzerhaubitze 2000 howitzers that at long last have arrived in Ukraine.

It’s worth remembering that Europe’s greatest moments of forward progress typically come at times of crisis, as has been the case again following Putin’s war in Ukraine. It’s at such times that member states better manage their divisions and work more effectively around the EU’s mind-bending bureaucracy. 

The problem is that the current European divide that looks hardest to fix is a fundamental disagreement over how important a Ukrainian victory is and what it would take to bring it about. 

The closer you live to Russia as an EU citizen, the more you argue, as I did in this space on June 5, that Putin doesn’t need the diplomatic off-ramp that Macron is offering but rather the dead-end that can only be brought by tougher sanctions and a more effective Ukrainian counter-offensive backed by longer-range weapons. 

Russia’s closest neighbors know that a bad peace in which Ukraine gives up new territory will only provide a respite before Putin resumes his imperial efforts to take all of Ukraine and ultimately other former Soviet areas. 

In Western Europe, the desire is greater for a peace that would end the war now, even if the outcome leaves Putin in power and, as Macron has said, avoids humiliating him.

“Despite the celebratory rhetoric in Brussels about the European Union’s surprisingly robust response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine…” writes Eoin Drea this week in Foreign Policy, “the war has not united the bloc in any unprecedented or transformative way. In fact, it’s having exactly the opposite effect: Beneath the soaring vista of Ukraine as a catalyst for a more muscular and geopolitically effective EU like deep divisions, shifting allegiances, and a much more complex reality.” 

Counterbalancing that gloom, Macron, Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis visited Kyiv on June 16 to hammer home their support for Ukrainian security and European ambitions. 

Shortly after they returned, the European Parliament voted with 529 votes to 45 against and 14 abstentions to adopt a resolution calling on the heads of state or government to grant EU candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova, which they have now done. 

That symbolism must now be complemented by even greater substance. The rewiring of the EU has only just begun to strengthen its defenses, diversify its energy sources, tighten its transatlantic links, and ensure Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign, free European state.

To stay the course, European leaders and citizens must understand what they are doing isn’t just for Ukraine but even more for themselves. The lessons from two devastating World Wars and a Cold War are that staying unified is a prerequisite for victory and that appeasing despots is always self-defeating.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 How Far Do Putin’s Imperial Ambitions Go?
Yaroslav Trofimov | WALL STREET JOURNAL

In this chilling analysis, Yaroslav Trofimov lays out in frightening detail just how far Putin’s imperial ambitions might take him.

Trofimov opens with a bizarre and telling scene, in which Putin, long before his Ukraine invasion, makes a spectacle out of contradicting a nine-year-old on the question of where Russia’s borders end. 

“’At the Bering Strait with the United States,’ the nine-year-old boy ventured hesitantly.  Putin, who chairs the board of the Russian Geographic Society, contradicted the boy to triumphant applause ‘The borders of Russia,’ he pronounced, ‘never end.'”

“Earlier this month,” writes Trofimov, “Putin said that he views Ukraine as just the first step, with many other territories potential targets.” Just this month in St. Petersburg, while honoring the 350th anniversary of Peter the Great, he said that when Peter conquered Sweden “he was merely returning what is ours, and strengthening it.” Read more →

#2 What If Russia Uses Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine?
Eric Schlosser | THE ATLANTIC

As Putin’s war in Ukraine bogs down into a battle of attrition, the danger that Vladimir Putin will deploy battlefield nuclear weapons persists. In this richly reported piece, Eric Schlosser interviews nuclear weapons exports to explore what could happen—and how the United States could respond. 

“The risk of nuclear war,” Schlosser warns, “is greater today than at any other time since the Cuban missile crisis. And the decisions that would have to be made after a Russian nuclear strike on Ukraine are unprecedented. In 1945, when the United States destroyed two Japanese cities with atomic bombs, it was the world’s sole nuclear power. Nine countries now possess nuclear weapons, others may soon obtain them, and the potential for things going terribly wrong has vastly increased.” Read more →

#3 What Makes a Power Great
Michael J. Mazarr | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

In this smart, in-depth analysis, Michael Mazarr draws from a RAND corporation study on what makes great powers—and how they can fall.

Over the course of fifteen months, Mazarr led a RAND Corporation study for the US Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment, supported by analysis from outside historians. The study isolated a number of national characteristics that throughout history have underpinned national competitive success—”including a strong national ambition, a culture of learning and adaptation, and significant diversity and pluralism.”

“These domestic strengths are the building blocks of international power. But,” Mazarr warns, “to enable a country to succeed, they must reinforce and support one another. And they must not fall out of balance. Too much national ambition, for instance, can lead to overreach, imperiling the country that overcommits itself. But countries with too little ambition, diversity, or willingness to learn and adapt risk starting a negative cycle that can spiral into national decline.” 

Read this study to learn why it is that the United States, if it is to prevail in the years ahead in contests with China and Russia, “will have to do more than just outspend its rivals on defense or advanced military technologies. It will have to nurture the qualities that make great powers dynamic, innovative, and adaptive. Read more →

#4 After a Pivotal Period in Ukraine, US Officials Predict the War’s Path
Helene Cooper, Eric Schmitt, Julian E. Barnes| NEW YORK TIMES

Based on analyses by a number of US defense officials, including Atlantic Council military fellows, this New York Times article provides a useful examination of how the US defense establishment expects the war in Ukraine to unfold.

Now that four to six weeks have passed since Russia shifted its main focus to eastern Ukraine, Cooper, Schmitt, and Barnes write, “officials say the picture is increasingly clear: Russia is likely to end up with more territory, they said, but neither side will gain full control of the region as a depleted Russian military faces an opponent armed with increasingly sophisticated weapons.”

In this situation, they add, “other analysts predict a back and forth that could stretch for months or even years. ‘This is likely to keep going, with each side trading territory on the margins,’ [director of Russian studies at CNA Michael] Kofman said. ‘It’s going to be a dynamic situation. There are unlikely to be significant collapses or major surrenders.’”Read more →

#5 A Ukrainian Refugee’s Fight To Save The Family She Left Behind
Ed Caesar | NEW YORKER

This week’s must-read is Ed Caesar’s riveting, heartbreaking New Yorker piece about a Ukrainian family separated by the war and navigating life as refugees from Putin’s war.

Follow Inna Blahonravina and her daughters Sasha and Oliviia as they depart Ukraine in midst of Russian air-raids on Kiev, leaving Inna’s husband Maksym behind. It is a chronicle of resilience and separation, fear, and hope, and it shows a portion of the vast human cost of Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

“Once,” Caesar writes, “Oliviia looked over Inna’s shoulder as she read on her phone about an attack on Kyiv. The report was accompanied by an image of a building on fire, with rescuers at the scene. Oliviia asked who the people in the photograph were—whether they were Russian or Ukrainian, and if one of them was Vladimir Putin. Then she said, ‘Mommy, I’m so glad we’re not killed.’ Every day, the kids had video calls with their father. Maksym tried to keep the conversations lighthearted, but even banal topics could be laced with sadness. 

“‘Do you miss the cats?’” he’d ask.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

New Atlanticist Oct 11, 2022

Your expert guide to China’s 20th Party Congress

By Atlantic Council experts

The once-in-five-years event is slated not only to further cement Xi Jinping’s rule but also to have impact on a number of policy areas, from China’s economy to its relationship with the Global South.

China Climate Change & Climate Action

UkraineAlert Oct 11, 2022

Six things you (yes, you!) can do now to help Ukraine

By Melinda Haring

With the winter season fast approaching and Vladimir Putin launching a campaign against Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, it is more important than ever to maintain support for Ukraine. Melinda Haring has some ideas.

Civil Society Conflict

New Atlanticist Oct 12, 2022

Experts react: The hits and misses in Biden’s new National Security Strategy

By Atlantic Council experts

We put the call out to our experts from across the Atlantic Council: Does this document deliver? What does it get right and what’s missing?

Middle East National Security

The post Europe’s ‘rewiring’ is crucial in the face of grinding inflation and Putin’s war appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Xi’s economy is dangerously slowing, financing for his Belt and Road Initiative has tanked, his zero-Covid policy is flailing, and his continued support of Russian President Vladimir Putin hangs like a cloud over his claim of being the world’s premier national-sovereignty champion as Russia’s war on Ukraine grinds on.

Few China watchers believe Xi’s hold on power faces any serious challenge, but that’s hard to rule out entirely given how many recent mistakes he’s made. So, Xi’s taking no chances ahead of one of his party’s most important gatherings, a meeting designed to assure his continued rule and his place in history.

European business leaders understood that as the context for their recent meetings with Wu Hongbo, the special representative of the Chinese government for European affairs and former UN undersecretary general. His message was a similar one at every stop: Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Germany, and Italy.

“The Chinese want to change the tone of the story, to control the damage,” said one European business leader who asked to remain anonymous due to his Chinese business interests. “They understand they have gone too far.”

The businessman described Wu, with his fluent and fluid English, as one of the smoothest, most open, and intellectually nimble Chinese officials he’s met. At every stop, Wu conceded China had “made mistakes,” from its handling of Covid-19, to its “wolf warrior” diplomacy, to its economic mismanagement.

His trip came as concerns in China have grown about “losing Europe” in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The public mood has shifted sufficiently to have Finland and Sweden knocking on NATO’s door, and the European Union this week embracing the prospect of Ukraine’s membership candidacy. Wu’s visit was also something of a mop-up operation following a failed visit by Chinese official Huo Yuzhen to eight central and east European countries. In Poland, he was refused a meeting with government officials.

Germans and their political leaders—Europe’s most significant target for Chinese diplomats and business—are raising new questions about everything from investment guarantees for German business in China to specific projects like VW’s factory in Xinjiang province, home of human rights abuses against the primarily Muslim Uyghur population.

Though Wu addressed Putin’s war in Ukraine only indirectly, his message was designed to reassure Europeans that they are preferred partners, as opposed to the United States. His bottom line: China will always be China, a country of growing significance and economic opportunities for Europe.

Yet lost ground in Europe is just one of many gathering problems Xi faces ahead of his party congress, which will determine the country’s economic, foreign policy and domestic agenda for years to come. 

At the same time, China and Xi continue to have a strong reputation and influence in much of the rest of the world. Even with Belt and Road financing slowing, China remains ascendant in the Global South, where the United States has been less focused or, in places, isn’t present at all.

Also, the party congress is likely to provide Xi a third term and even more internal party power, a move that follows a 2018 decision to scrap term limits. China watchers will be waiting to see whether Xi can continue to put his allies in key party positions, but thus far there aren’t any signs he won’t be able to do so.

However the Congress turns out, there is still growing talk among China experts about whether we are entering a period of “Peak Xi” or even “Peak China.” There’s growing evidence that he and the country he represents (and his approach has been to make the two inseparable) have reached the height of their influence and reputation, at least in Europe and as a steadily growing economic juggernaut.

Nothing will determine the outcome more than how Xi manages China’s economy, which is the foundation for the country’s far-reaching global influence as well as the Communist party’s domestic legitimacy.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, one of the keenest China watchers anywhere, sees China’s economic prospects weakening due to a chain of factors. They include at least ten Chinese property developer defaults and Xi’s crackdown on China’s technology sector, which has cost it $2 trillion in market capitalization of its ten biggest tech companies over the past year.

Moreover, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has sent energy and commodity prices soaring and has snarled supply chains, “terrible news for the world’s largest manufacturer, exporter and energy-consuming economy,” Rudd wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal. Add to this Xi’s insistence on China’s Zero Covid strategy, which led to mass lockdowns.

Rudd concludes that this combination of factors is enough to make Xi miss his 5.5 percent growth target and perhaps even grow more slowly this year than the United States. “For Mr. Xi, failing to reach the target would be politically disastrous,” writes Rudd.

Xi’s damage control on the economic front has included fiscal and monetary stimulus and infrastructure spending to grow domestic demand. A recent meeting of the Politburo also suggested some coming relief from the regulatory crackdown on China’s tech sector.

Yet none of that will be enough to reverse Xi’s cardinal sin, and that was his dramatic pivot to stronger state and party controls.

Writing in Foreign Affairs, the Atlantic Council’s Daniel H. Rosen, who is a founding partner of Rhodium Group, argues, “China cannot have both today’s statism and yesterday’s strong growth rates. It will have to choose.”

Adds Craig Singleton this week in Foreign Policy, “China’s fizzling economic miracle may soon undercut the (Communist party’s) ability to wage a sustained struggle for geostrategic dominance.”

There’s not much time left for damage control before Xi opens his party Congress in the Great Hall of the People. He’s likely to get the outcome he wants sealed long before the Congress, but that won’t solve the larger problem. It has been his leadership and decision-making that have generated China’s challenges, and he’ll have to correct course if he is to restore economic growth at home, revive his international momentum and avoid “Peak Xi.”  

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 What Returning to China Taught Me About China
Michael Schuman | THE ATLANTIC

Long-time readers of Inflection Points know I’m a big fan of the Michael Schuman’s reporting on China. 

This time Schuman, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, serves up a personal account of the arbitrary and bizarre world Xi’s zero-COVID policy has created in China, full of long, solitary confinements and mountains of paperwork. Schuman writes that he was separated from his wife after the Chinese government denied his visa and he left Beijing for Hong Kong in 2020. What followed was a 662-day odyssey before he saw his wife again.

“This zero-COVID policy is not an aberration,” Schuman writes. “It is representative of China’s political and social system. Authoritarian rule, by its very nature, must be arbitrary. Anything else would require the state to be held accountable for its failings and actions, and that would be intolerable here. The knock on the door must be able to come at any moment—and too often does—for something written, said, read, or done that the state doesn’t like. The consequence, by design, is a society that lives in a constant atmosphere of trepidation and helplessness.” Read more →

#2 The U.S. overestimated Russia’s military might. Is it underestimating China’s?
Nahal Toosi and Lara Seligman | POLITICO

Nahal Toosi and Lara Seligman powerfully highlight the difficulty of gleaning accurate intelligence about China’s military ability and aims–and why that matters.

“Growing U.S. worries,” they write, “that China will sooner rather than later attack Taiwan as part of a broader effort to eclipse American power in the Pacific make the topic of Beijing’s military prowess more salient than ever, said lawmakers and eight current and former officials interviewed for this story. The concerns about a lack of U.S. understanding of China’s military are compounded by the fact that the People’s Liberation Army has not fought in a war in more than 40 years.”

The authors add, “Beyond military capability, American officials have limited insight into the inner workings of China’s communist leadership, how security-related decisions are made, and what moves could trigger what responses.”

Read this for an excellent analysis of what the United States doesn’t (but should) know. Read more →

#3 Has China Lost Europe?
Ian Johnson | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

One notable casualty of Xi’s friendship with Putin has been China’s initiatives in central and eastern Europe. As my former Wall Street Journal colleague Ian Johnson writes, China has long courted central and eastern European countries, only to watch those gains vanish in the face of China’s undelivered promises and China’s de facto support of Putin’s war in Ukraine.

“China’s failures in central and eastern Europe,” Johnson writes, “highlight the country’s increasingly ideological approach to foreign affairs under Xi Jinping. Most of these failures were self-inflicted. China has long been suspicious of Western alliances, such as NATO, but its decision to openly endorse the Russian position went a step further, essentially telling countries in the 16+1 to abandon one of their key foreign-policy priorities. People in the Chinese foreign policy establishment must have recognized how badly this would play in the region, but they were apparently unable to sway the Chinese leadership. Instead, Xi’s desire to strike a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has strong personal relations, won out. This behavior is part of an overall of China’s foreign-policy experts in favor of ideologues closer to Xi.” Read more →

#4 China’s Lessons From Russia’s War
Kevin Rudd | PROJECT SYNDICATE

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, one of the smartest China watchers writing tFormer Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd offers this must-read analysis of Xi’s calculation’s regarding a potential invasion of Taiwan.

Far from being deterred by Russia’s failures, Rudd argues, “the Chinese will watch what happens in Ukraine with an eye toward avoiding Putin’s mistakes, and with a deep confidence that China can and will do better. Of course, the danger for Xi is that such confidence could ultimately prove as delusional as Putin’s belief that he would conquer Ukraine in a matter of days.”

Therefore, Rudd concludes, it is imperative that the United States, Taiwan, and their allies build up “effective levels of deterrence, so that when Xi’s preferred timetable reaches its moment of decision, the PLA will have no choice but to advise him that the military risks are still too great to launch an invasion.” 

If Ukraine offers lessons, it’s that it is better to prevent war through unmistakable deterrence than risk conflict through wishful thinking. Read more →

#5 Ukraine could be an inflection point for the West
Andrew A. Michta | POLITICO EUROPE

Andrew Michta, one of the top experts on NATO and transatlantic security, offers this important warning about the need to continue giving Ukraine as much aid as possible, and the dangers of a negotiated peace.

“Let’s first consider the consequences of Ukraine’s defeat,” Michta writes. “At this stage, any ceasefire would allow Putin to hold on to conquered territory, and the remaining Ukrainian rump state — bereft of its industrial basin in the east and with Russia’s continued Black Sea blockade — would be unable to sustain itself economically. More importantly, in a few years, Putin would regroup, rebuild his military and be able to launch another round of conquest to seize all of Ukraine — especially if the ceasefire deal included lifting sanctions on Western imports critical to his weapons production.”

If, on the other hand, Russia is driven out and Ukraine is restored, “With its vast array of natural resources and as one of the richest agricultural lands on earth, a rebuilt Ukraine — restored not as a post-Soviet state but as a thriving democratic polity and closely integrated into Europe’s economy — would fundamentally change the power dynamics both in Europe and globally.”

Michta sums things up: “Let’s have the courage to help Ukraine win.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

Trackers and Data Visualizations Jun 16, 2022

Visualizing the NATO Strategic Concept: Five ways to look at the Alliance’s future

By Atlantic Council experts

We asked our experts: With so much happening in the global arena, what topics will be featured in NATO’s Strategic Concept – and how should the Alliance think about addressing them?

Climate Change & Climate Action Cybersecurity

New Atlanticist Jun 18, 2022

Why I expected more from the UN human-rights chief

By Rayhan Asat

Michelle Bachelet was supposed to fight for imprisoned Uyghurs like my brother. But she failed.

China Human Rights

Econographics Jun 17, 2022

Where do the “fence-sitters” sit on trade with Russia?

By Josh Lipsky, Sophia Busch

At least in terms of trade, seemingly neutral countries aren’t enabling Russia as much as their public positions might suggest.

China Economic Sanctions

The post President Xi’s damage control focuses on Europe and the Chinese economy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

So, Let’s first stipulate that you agree with that end goal, as has everyone from US President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

To embrace anything less would be immoral, set a historical precedent with catastrophic costs, and unravel what remains of our fraying international order of rules and institutions.

Biden laid out the argument clearly in his New York Times op-ed this week. His words should be read closely by all members of his administration and NATO allies who are still acting too tentatively in providing Ukraine the weaponry, and the freedom of action in using it, to ensure Ukraine’s victory. 

“Standing by Ukraine in its hour of need is not just the right thing to do,” wrote Biden. “It is in our vital national interests to ensure a peaceful and stable Europe and to make clear that might does not make right. If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions, it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate countries… And it could mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere, with catastrophic consequences the world over.”

Why write all this now, as Putin’s war in Ukraine passes its hundredth day? Put most simply, it’s because Putin is showing grinding gains after shifting tactics in response to Ukraine’s unexpected victories and resilience, and Russian troops’ heavy losses and abysmal performance in the war’s early stages.

Putin’s brutal new approach is to pulverize Ukrainian population centers in eastern and southern Ukraine with stand-off weapons—thus emptying them of their people through death or flight, with less risk to his own troops, replicating the brutal tactics he deployed in Syria. Once these cities and towns are drained of their humanity, his troops can then “liberate” the rubble, seize the territory, and position Russia for the most advantageous peace deal possible, or a further offensive.

At the same time, Putin has been striking at Ukraine economically by blockading its grain exports and either destroying or stealing its available supplies. Though Putin continues to choke on tough sanctions against him, he is willing to risk starvation elsewhere while wagering that he can outlast Western support for Kyiv through upcoming election cycles and other democratic distractions such as the recent US school shootings and Supreme Court battles.

“We need to discard Cold War mentality and seek peaceful coexistence and win-win outcomes,” he said, just a matter of days before he signed a joint statement with Putin agreeing to a relationship “without limits.” That, in turn, was a little more than a month before Putin launched his war.

There is a way, however, to counter Putin’s new tactics. It will require the newly united West and its Asian partners to grow even more determined, creative, and proactive through a combined military, economic and public relations offensive that would again put Putin on his back foot.

The aim should not be to ensure a stalemate, which has allowed Putin to take 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, nor pressure Ukraine into a self-defeating peace agreement, but rather give Ukraine the means to retake territory through a counteroffensive—perhaps most importantly to retake Kherson, which would ensure access to Odesa and to the Black Sea now and in any eventual peace agreement. 

Most important is for Ukraine’s potentially fatigued supporters, and even for those countries still sitting on the fence, not to lose sight of the barbarity of Putin’s atrocities and thus the moral responsibility to oppose them.

“It’s extremely important that we don’t forget the brutality,” Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary general, told the Atlantic’s Tom McTague in the most emotional of terms. “Of course, it is emotional. This is about people being killed; it’s about atrocities; it’s about children, women being raped, children being killed.”

With that in mind, it’s flat wrong for the United States or any arms supplier to limit Ukrainian fire to hitting only Russian targets on Ukrainian soil. In his otherwise excellent op-ed, Biden wrote, “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflect pain on Russia.”

Think about that for a moment. If someone is killing your family members by shooting across a fence from your neighbor’s yard, what good is a weapon that can only shoot as far as your side of the fence? If you don’t take out the shooter, the killing continues. It’s this kind of weakness that makes Putin so confident he can win through attrition.

At the same time, the collective West, working closely with Turkey, needs to open Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, particularly at Odessa, to address a Putin-generated global food crisis and enable Ukraine to ship the twenty-eight million tons of grain it has in storage.

For justification, one can call upon the Montreux Convention of 1936 that regulates traffic through the Black Sea and guarantees “complete freedom” of passage for civilian vessels.

Said David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, “Failure to open those ports in Odesa region will be a declaration of war on global food security.”

Historians point to the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939-1940 to demonstrate that a smaller but more determined country with less military strength can outlast Moscow and retain its sovereignty. 

What’s true is that Moscow then, despite overwhelming strength in tanks and aircraft, suffered severe losses and made few gains initially following its November 1939 invasion, three months after the outbreak of World War II.  

Finland held off Soviet forces for more than two months, inflecting substantial losses before the Soviet Union adopted different tactics and overcame Finnish defenses in February. Finland reached a peace deal in March 1940 that ceded 9 percent of its territory to the Soviet Union. Though Moscow’s reputation suffered, and it was removed from the League of Nations, it came away with more territory than it had initially demanded.

On the negative side, Putin is every bit as determined now as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was then, and shares Stalin’s utter indifference to casualties and human suffering.

On the positive side, Ukraine is receiving dramatically more outside support than Finland did at the time.

Yet without even more Western resolve, Putin can still win, and Ukraine can still lose. 

Ukraine and the West need to show Putin a dead end and not an off-ramp.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 ‘It’s Extremely Important That We Don’t Forget The Brutality’
Tom McTague | THE ATLANTIC

This week’s must-read is Tom McTague’s powerful interview with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, one that underscores that NATO’s efforts to help Ukraine are as much about character as military strength.

“Although he wouldn’t say it quite so openly,” writes McTague, “he clearly believes that Ukraine is fighting not only for itself but for the civilized world, for the basic values of life and liberty, land and sovereignty. It is crucial, therefore, that the West continues to be outraged by Russia’s behavior, to not lose sight of Moscow’s barbarity as the war drags on.”

Said Stoltenberg, “This is about people being killed; it’s about atrocities; it’s about children, women being raped, children being killed.” Read more →

#2 President Biden: What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine
Joseph R. Biden Jr. | NEW YORK TIMES

To get a better understanding of the US strategy on Ukraine, and the Biden administration’s rationale, read this op-ed by President Biden laying out US aims.

“America’s goal is straightforward,” Biden writes. “We want to see a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine with the means to deter and defend itself against further aggression.”

Biden adds, “Standing by Ukraine in its hour of need is not just the right thing to do. It is in our vital national interests to ensure a peaceful and stable Europe and to make it clear that might does not make right. If Russia does not pay a heavy price for its actions, it will send a message to other would-be aggressors that they too can seize territory and subjugate other countries. It will put the survival of other peaceful democracies at risk. And it could mark the end of the rules-based international order and open the door to aggression elsewhere, with catastrophic consequences the world over.” Read more →

#3 China’s spies are not always as good as advertised
THE ECONOMIST

Despite the fearsome reputation of Xi Jinping’s intelligence services, as The Economist points out, China’s spies are much better at harassing dissidents and technology theft than stealing government secrets and uncovering information.

Take the Russian invasion of Ukraine, for example. “Whatever Vladimir Putin told Xi Jinping when the two presidents met in Beijing on February 4th,” The Economist writes, “China did not seem prepared for Russia’s invasion three weeks later. One giveaway was its failure to make plans to evacuate its citizens in Ukraine. China’s embassy first advised them to stay at home or fix a Chinese flag ‘on an obvious place on your car’… Two days later the embassy retracted its advice, warning citizens: ‘Don’t show your identity or display identifying symbols.'”

Writes the Economist: “Mr Xi appears to be making enormously consequential decisions based on dodgy intelligence. It is unclear whether the root cause is the information itself, the analysis applied or how it is communicated to China’s leaders. In any case, the outcome could be deadly miscalculation.” Read more →

#4 The Long Arm of Authoritarianism
Nana Gorokhovskaia and Isabel Linzer | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Drawing on a Freedom House report, Yana Gorokhovskaia and Isabel Linzer provide chilling evidence of the way authoritarian regimes are increasingly cooperating to suppress dissent and punish dissidents.

 “We find that safe spaces for dissent are rapidly shrinking around the world,” they write. “Based on a data set of 735 documented incidents of explicit transnational repression that occurred between 2014 and 2021, we show that authoritarian governments are increasingly working together to help locate, threaten, detain, and expel their critics. Moreover, thanks to the restrictive asylum policies of many democracies that could otherwise serve as havens for dissidents, there are fewer safe places available for those seeking shelter from persecution. If democracies want to shore up liberal values and human rights worldwide, they could start by welcoming those who are risking their lives to stand up to authoritarian regimes.”

Read this for a clarion call on the importance of protecting dissidents—a vital part of promoting democracy around the world, and pushing back against authoritarianism.
Read more →

#5 36 Experts Agree: Stay the Couse in Ukraine
John Herbst, Steven Pifer, and David Kramer | THE HILL