Support for Ukraine

Just four months into Kishida’s term as prime minister, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Under Kishida’s leadership, Japan has shown a strong commitment to Ukrainian sovereignty. In an unprecedented shift away from its self-defense-only principle, Japan has provided almost twelve billion dollars of assistance to Ukraine since February 2022, including nonlethal military aid. The 2023 Group of Seven (G7) Summit, which was held in Kishida’s hometown of Hiroshima, will also leave a mark on his foreign policy legacy. At the summit, he drew on Japan’s unique experience as the only country to have suffered wartime atomic bombing to emphasize his staunch opposition to Russian threats to use nuclear weapons. (A point he also made during his acceptance speech at the 2023 Atlantic Council Global Citizen Awards.)

The global ramifications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led NATO to invite likeminded partners in the Indo-Pacific (Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) to three consecutive annual summits. Through this transatlantic-Pacific partnership, NATO succeeded in garnering widespread support for Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression. However, in the face of rising security challenges from China, the Indo-Pacific Four are determined to ensure this newfound partnership is a two-way street. As Kishida said in March 2023 of Russia’s full-scale invasion, “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow.”

Indo-Pacific security

In the South China Sea, Beijing has ramped up its dangerous and aggressive behavior, including unlawful maritime claims and the coercive use of military vessels against the Philippines, particularly around the Second Thomas Shoal. Demonstrating firm support for Manila’s right to freedom of navigation and access to supply lines within its own maritime domain, Kishida and US President Joe Biden convened a historic trilateral summit with President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., in April 2024.

On top of Chinese attempts to unilaterally alter the maritime status quo in the Indo-Pacific, North Korea continues to pose an imminent threat to Japan’s national security through advancements in its nuclear and missile arsenal. The willingness of Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol to put aside longstanding and emotionally charged historical disputes between their two countries indicates the direness of the Indo-Pacific security environment. During his August 14 press conference, Kishida pointed out that the sixtieth anniversary of Japan-South Korea normalization is next year, adding that “we must make the normalization even more certain.”

Together with the United States, Kishida and Yoon ushered in a new era of enhanced US-South Korea-Japan cooperation at the historic Camp David Summit in August 2023. To better address shared regional security and economic challenges, the three countries institutionalized regular high-level consultations and working level meetings.

Kishida has also made enormous strides to bolster Japan’s defenses against an increasingly belligerent China and provocative North Korea. In December 2022, he released three new strategic documents that reflect a record-breaking 16 percent increase in defense spending. Kishida has also shifted Japan away from its postwar pacifist stance, including by easing the ban on lethal weapons exports to enable the co-development of next-generation fighter jets with Italy and the United Kingdom and the possession of counterstrike capabilities that could hit enemy targets.

What’s next?

Although Kishida has shown considerable leadership amid global uncertainty, his foreign policy stances are at significant odds with domestic sentiments in Japan. Despite vowing to nearly double Japan’s defense budget by 2027, he has not made clear how the country’s heavily indebted government plans to pay for this. The approval rating for Kishida’s government has regularly been below 20 percent since last December, with respondents pointing to dissatisfaction with his handling of the struggling economy. On top of this, he has faced intense backlash due to the LDP’s unreported political funds and longstanding ties to the Unification Church, which came to light during his term.

During his August 14 press conference, Kishida said that he hoped an LDP “dream team” would emerge to move the country forward. If the LDP continues to dominate Japanese politics, then major foreign policy stances, including the country’s alliance with the United States, will likely remain unchanged. However, the LDP is now at a crossroads as it seeks to regain the public’s trust. And the roster of candidates seeking party leadership reflects this.

Broadly speaking, the candidates can be divided into two categories: legacy party favorites lacking public support, and more progressive candidates who lack the backing of party leadership.

The former category includes LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi, the party’s second-in-command, who also previously held the post of foreign minister from 2019-2021. In this role, he expressed interest in improving relations with Seoul for the sake of regional stability yet refused to put aside historical grievances to do so. Another candidate is Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi, who is a hardline nationalist under whom relations with South Korea would likely deteriorate significantly. These established candidates could previously rely on factional support for party elections but the dissolution of and mass exodus from dominant factions demonstrates an attempt by the LDP to reform and regain the public’s trust.

The latter category is made up of potential candidates like Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, who, like Takaichi, would be Japan’s first female prime minister. In the current administration, she has advocated for a more gender-inclusive security policy, toed a careful line between holding China accountable for aggressive behavior while seeking areas of common interest with Beijing, and made concerted efforts to normalize ties with Seoul. Another popular candidate who has made waves in the LDP for seeking reforms to modernize Japan is Digital Minister Taro Kono. Although it is unclear how he would respond to the current geopolitical climate, he took a more dovish approach as foreign minister. For instance, he has advocated for greater territorial integrity for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces within the US-Japan alliance and vowed not to make an official visit to Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese convicted war criminals are buried.

Kishida benefited greatly from the right combination of political will and geopolitical upheaval to secure the support necessary to shift Japan’s postwar foreign and defense policies. But with increasing domestic pressure to reduce government spending in a turbulent economic environment, it is uncertain whether Japan will be able to deliver on all the national and global security promises made under the Kishida administration.

Ultimately, if the next Japanese prime minister has any hope of continuing on this trajectory, then they must demonstrate a willingness to listen and address domestic concerns, while also effectively communicating the importance of upholding the rules-based international order to everyday Japanese citizens.  

Kyoko Imai is an assistant director with the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The post Kishida has transformed Japanese foreign policy. Will his successor continue on his path? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Public Event Thu, July 25, 2024 • 8:30 am ET

Shaping the global economy: From food security to digital transformation

Shaping the global economy conference will develop a blueprint for the G20 to address the range of challenges facing its member states from global economic governance and digital transformation to food security and hunger. 

Brazil China Digital Policy Energy Markets & Governance

“We’ve lost all the progress that we’ve made in the past fifteen years” on lowering global hunger levels, World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Cindy McCain warned on Thursday.

McCain spoke at an Atlantic Council event hosted on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty (G20) meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors in Rio de Janeiro. She pointed out that one in eleven people globally faced hunger last year.

On Wednesday, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that Brazil—which holds the G20 presidency—will later this year launch the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty to bring countries together in sharing knowledge and resources.

“We have the capability as a planet to feed everybody on the planet—we grow enough food,” McCain said, “but we don’t” due to funding and other coordination issues.

With those challenges, the Global Alliance is “a great opportunity for all of us . . . to get together, exchange ideas, brainstorm” and to “develop science and technology” tools to help, McCain said.

Below are more highlights from the conversation, moderated by Valentina Sader, deputy director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

Food security

• Food security is a “national security issue,” and “it should be labeled as one,” McCain argued, pointing out how access to food has shaped broader security crises in Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.
• Yet, food security “gets kicked down” the list of priorities every time “something else happens in the world,” McCain warned.
• She said that the WFP and United Nations agencies, because they provide critical aid, are “on the front lines” of crises and the “first in and last out.”
• The WFP previously got most of its grain from Ukraine. But it has had to diversify its sources in the wake of the agricultural disruptions caused by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. WFP is also working with other countries to help them mitigate the effects of the conflict on global food supplies.
• In the global hunger crisis, “women and children are taking the brunt,” McCain said. “You’ve never seen more of an example of it than in Gaza.”
• She added that equity and gender inclusion are important to factor into food security efforts because “a woman will feed her family,” and while doing so, “she will make sure everybody else eats” before she does.
• Moreover, with women making up around half of smallholder farmers, McCain argued that it is important to make sure that these women have the tools, expertise, seeds, and access to water that they need to farm effectively. “If a woman farms and can feed her family, she will wind up feeding the community,” McCain said.

Farm to negotiating table

• McCain noted that G20 countries include not only the world’s leading economies but also some of the planet’s largest agricultural producers. That, she said, empowers these countries to work together to address the full spectrum of food-security challenges, from poverty to improvements in agriculture.
• She added that the G20 is an optimal forum for raising the urgency around hunger because of how it brings together both governments and civil society organizations from countries that represent 85 percent of the world’s gross domestic product and over 60 percent of its population. “So the voice is huge,” she said, adding that “governments simply cannot do it all. We need everybody in on this.”
• She urged global stakeholders to “continue to elevate the conversation” about the urgency of food security—and advised countries “most affected” by food insecurity to keep conveying the plight they face. “The problem is [that] around the world, people don’t understand what’s going on” or believe that hunger and malnutrition are only problems in Africa rather than globally, she said. “It’s all about. . . making sure that people understand.”

Katherine Walla is the associate director of editorial at the Atlantic Council. 

Watch the full event

The post ‘We’re back to square one’ in fighting the hunger crisis, warns Cindy McCain appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On July 17th, Global China Hub Nonresident Fellow Leland Lazarus published an article on the potential national security concerns of the Chinese-build port in Chancay, Peru in China US Focus.

Fellow

Leland Lazarus

Nonresident Fellow

Global China Hub

Caribbean China

The post Leland Lazarus on the Chinese-built port in Chancay, Peru in China US Focus appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On July 24, IPSI nonresident senior fellow Peter Dean appeared in an interview with Sky News discussing the AUKUS submarine deal and its potential trajectory under a Trump presidency. This interview was regenerated through the Mercury, Townsville Bulletin, and Cairns Post. 

Fellow

Peter J. Dean

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Australia Conflict

The post Dean interviewed by Sky News on AUKUS appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On July 13, Thomas S. Warrick, director of the Future of DHS project in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, appeared on TRT World on the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. He discussed the role of the United States Secret Service, as well as the position of the shooter during the attack.

Fellow

Thomas S. Warrick

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative

Forward Defense Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

National Security Terrorism

The post Warrick on TRT World on assassination attempt on former US President Trump appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The exact number of dead and wounded as a result of Russia’s targeted missile strike on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in central Kyiv has not yet been confirmed. Nor is it possible to calculate the death and suffering that will result from lack of treatment due to the partial destruction of what is Ukraine’s biggest pediatric clinic.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, large numbers of distressed and in some cases injured children lined the pavement around the ruins of the wrecked hospital, many still attached to drips. Providing them with the specialized medical support they so urgently require will now be extremely difficult.

Doctors were also among the victims. Those killed in Monday’s missile strikes included thirty year old Svitlana Lukyanchuk, a nephrologist from Lviv. Svitlana was an orphan who overcame challenging personal circumstances to qualify as a doctor. She dedicated herself to saving children’s lives, but will never now experience the joy of motherhood herself.

Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital was one of three separate Ukrainian medical facilities to be struck by Russian missiles on July 8. One such attack could potentially be attributed to human error or explained as a tragic mistake. Three targeted attacks on the same day suggests a deliberate Russian strategy to destroy Ukraine’s healthcare infrastructure, just as the Kremlin has already targeted and destroyed much of Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. Moscow appears intent on making large parts of the country unlivable.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

It is no doubt hard for many outside observers to fully appreciate that such horrors are taking place in the heart of twenty-first century Europe. After all, just three years ago, it would also have been difficult for most Ukrainians to believe such things were possible. Sadly, that is no longer the case.

As a result of Russia’s February 2022 invasion, Ukrainians have been confronted by an astonishing array of war crimes that recall the worst excesses of bygone eras. Entire cities have been reduced to rubble. Hundreds of thousands have been killed, abducted, or subjected to forced deportation. Large numbers of vulnerable children have been sent to Russian indoctrination camps and robbed of their Ukrainian heritage. In regions of Ukraine under Kremlin control, all traces of Ukrainian identity have been ruthlessly erased.

The evidence of Russian war crimes is now so overwhelming that the International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin himself and many of his most senior officials. Nevertheless, the nightmare continues. A genocide is being live-streamed to the watching world, but Western leaders choose not to call it by its name for fear of being obliged to act.

Today’s Russia did not become a rogue regime overnight. On the contrary, the crimes we are now witnessing reflect unresolved historic issues that have been allowed to fester since the early days of Putin’s reign. Unlike all other European empires, post-Soviet Russia never rejected imperialism and was not forced to confront the crimes of the imperial era. This has allowed for a revival of Russia’s imperial identity and has helped fuel a sense of impunity that directly paved the way for the invasion of Ukraine.

Rather than address the growing threat posed by Putin’s Russia, the Western world has consistently sought to avoid confrontation. When a newly anointed Putin crushed Chechnya, Western leaders chose to look the other way. After he invaded Georgia, they scrambled to reset relations and return to business as usual.

Inevitably, this approach only emboldened the Kremlin. The West’s weak response to the 2014 seizure of Crimea led directly to Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine. When this, too, failed to produce a decisive reaction, the stage was set for today’s full-scale invasion.

Even now, Western policy remains defined by a reluctance to provoke Putin, with Western leaders hopelessly preoccupied by fears of escalation. This has left Ukraine unable to adequately defend itself, while encouraging Russia to escalate further. As a result, we are now closer to a major global war than at any time for a generation.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

It is delusional to think Russia can be stopped by appeasement, concessions, or compromise. Any ceasefire would merely provide the Kremlin with a pause to rearm before resuming the campaign to wipe Ukraine off the map entirely.

Nor are Putin’s imperial ambitions limited to Ukraine alone. He has repeatedly portrayed the invasion of Ukraine as part of a sacred mission to correct the historical injustice of the Soviet collapse and “return” historically Russian lands. If Putin achieves his goals in Ukraine, he will inevitably look to press home his advantage and “reclaim” other countries that were once part of the Russian Empire. The list of potential targets is long and includes Finland, Poland, the Baltic States, and Moldova. The only way to guarantee their security is by defeating Russia in Ukraine.

Western leaders now have a simple choice: They can provide Ukraine with the support necessary to defeat Russia, or they can prepare to face the Russians themselves in the near future. With every day of delay, the cost of stopping Putin grows. At the moment, it is the Ukrainians alone who are paying this terrible price. However, until Russia is beaten, nobody in the West can take their security for granted. Instead, the threat will only increase.

Ten years ago when the Russian invasion of Ukraine first began, a cautious Putin deployed Russian soldiers without identifying insignia in an attempt to mask his aggressive actions. A decade later, he is now bombing children’s hospitals in the center of a European capital city while his priests and propagandists preach holy war against the West. Clearly, he will not stop until he is stopped.

Vladimir Putin represents the greatest threat to European peace since Adolf Hitler. Today’s generation of Western leaders should recall the lessons of that earlier era before it is too late. They must reject the appeasement of the 1930s and embrace the mantra of “never again” that rose from the ashes of World War II. Until that happens, the Kremlin’s crimes will continue to escalate.

Serhiy Prytula is a Ukrainian volunteer fundraiser and founder of the Prytula Charity Foundation.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jun 4, 2024

Vladimir Putin just tacitly admitted Crimea is not really part of Russia

By Peter Dickinson

Russia claims to have annexed five Ukrainian provinces but refuses to extend security red lines to these regions. This highlights the pragmatic political realities behind Putin’s talk of historic conquests, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert May 30, 2024

If the West wants a sustainable peace it must commit to Ukrainian victory

By Hanna Hopko, Andrius Kubilius

Since 2022, Western policies of escalation management have failed to appease Putin and have only emboldened the Kremlin. If the West wants peace, it must help Ukraine win, write Hanna Hopko and Andrius Kubilius.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Jun 12, 2024

Ukraine is making the Russian occupation of Crimea untenable

By Olivia Yanchik

Ukraine’s growing air strike capabilities are decimating Russian air defenses in Crimea and making the occupation of the peninsula increasingly untenable, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post The Kremlin’s crimes will continue to escalate until Russia is defeated appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Bauerle Danzman cited in Nikkei Asia on CFIUS real estate rule appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the United States has been the single biggest provider of military aid to Ukraine. Without US hardware, ammunition, training, and intelligence, Ukraine would not have been able to defend itself in a high intensity conventional war for so long. In other words, the US has emerged over the past two and a half years as an indispensable partner for Ukraine, both in terms of the country’s current military operations and long-term security.

The new US-Ukraine security agreement contains no major surprises. Rather than breaking new ground, it aims to establish a more long-term commitment to existing forms of military cooperation including training and weapons supplies, while also setting the stage for deepening partnership in defense production. “A lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself now, and to deter future aggression,” President Biden commented.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Crucially, the US-Ukraine bilateral security pact is not a formal treaty or military alliance and does not oblige the US to defend Ukraine. Instead, the terms of the agreement commit the United States to engage in high-level consultations with Ukraine within twenty-four hours of any future attacks on the country. This cautious approach is in line with well documented concerns within the Biden administration over the possibility of a direct clash between the US and Russia.

Critics claim the terms of the security agreement are deliberately broad and open to interpretation, reflecting what they see as Washington’s reluctance to provide Ukraine with anything approaching binding security guarantees. The absence of any official ratification procedures also leaves the ten-year agreement vulnerable to potential future changes in US foreign policy if Donald Trump wins the 2024 presidential election in November.

The Biden White House is not the first US administration to face claims of adopting an excessively cautious approach toward Russian aggression in Ukraine. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine first began in 2014 with the seizure of Crimea, three successive US presidents have all been accused of failing to effectively deter the Kremlin.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

While welcomed by both sides, this latest security initiative is unlikely to convince Moscow of any fundamental change in the US stance or persuade Putin to end his invasion. It comes weeks after the end of a prolonged pause in US military aid to Ukraine caused by political deadlock in Congress over the passage of a sixty billion dollar support bill.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought to put an optimistic spin on the signing of the new security agreement, hailing it as “historic” and saying the pact would serve as a bridge toward his country’s future NATO membership. Others have been less generous, noting that the absence of specific military commitments underlines the limitations of Western support for Ukraine.

Ukraine remains heavily dependent on continued Western military aid and is clearly in no position to demand greater commitment from the country’s Western partners. However, many Ukrainians believe the US and other Western nations have a vital self-interest in maintaining their support for the country.

Amid mounting frustration at the failure to offer Kyiv any fully-fledged military alliances, advocates of stronger support for Ukraine argue that the West’s unprecedented material and political investment since the outbreak of hostilities in 2022 means a Ukrainian defeat would represent a massive blow to Western prestige. It would therefore make more sense for the US and other partners to back Ukraine now, rather than face the far higher costs that would follow a Russian victory.

In a best case scenario, this new security agreement could create the conditions to anchor Ukraine firmly within the Western world, and could serve as a gateway to eventual Ukrainian NATO membership. However, without the requisite political will in Washington, the pact could come to be seen as the successor to the infamous 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which saw Ukraine unilaterally surrendering the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances that were exposed as worthless by Russia’s subsequent invasion.

A realistic appraisal of the recently signed US-Ukraine security pact is particularly important as both countries look to strengthen their partnership amid the largest European invasion since World War II. If Kyiv and Washington wish to convince Moscow to abandon its hopes of outlasting the West, they will need to match the sentiments expressed in the security agreement with concrete steps that will set the stage for Ukrainian victory.

Mykola Bielieskov is a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at Ukrainian NGO “Come Back Alive.” The views expressed in this article are the author’s personal position and do not reflect the opinions or views of NISS or Come Back Alive.

Further reading

UkraineAlert May 30, 2024

If the West wants a sustainable peace it must commit to Ukrainian victory

By Hanna Hopko, Andrius Kubilius

Since 2022, Western policies of escalation management have failed to appease Putin and have only emboldened the Kremlin. If the West wants peace, it must help Ukraine win, write Hanna Hopko and Andrius Kubilius.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Jun 4, 2024

Vladimir Putin just tacitly admitted Crimea is not really part of Russia

By Peter Dickinson

Russia claims to have annexed five Ukrainian provinces but refuses to extend security red lines to these regions. This highlights the pragmatic political realities behind Putin’s talk of historic conquests, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Jun 12, 2024

Ukraine is making the Russian occupation of Crimea untenable

By Olivia Yanchik

Ukraine’s growing air strike capabilities are decimating Russian air defenses in Crimea and making the occupation of the peninsula increasingly untenable, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post US signals long-term support for Ukraine with new security pact appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On June 28, Markus Garlauskas was featured on a VOA television broadcast discussing the biennial RIMPAC exercise beginning this week, its goals, and how China might view this year’s exercise.

Staff

Markus Garlauskas

Director

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Crisis Management Indo-Pacific

The post Garlauskas featured on VOA on RIMPAC exercise appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The United States has long been one of the world’s leading innovators, allowing it to rapidly adopt emerging technology to strengthen US national defense. This has been especially true in the field of aviation. From the first powered flight at Kitty Hawk to twenty-first-century strategic competition, the United States has made the maintenance of air superiority a major priority.

Today, however, the People’s Republic of China has built a near-insurmountable lead in the development and use of small, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Benefiting from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) unfair trading practices, Chinese companies have come to dominate the global UAV market, which was valued at $31 billion in 2023.

Chinese dominance of the global UAV industry poses a number of national security challenges for the United States. On the battlefield, drones play a crucial role in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), and in conducting strikes. Chinese leadership in UAVs provides the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with potential battlefield advantages.

At home, these devices provide critical support to law-enforcement agencies and a variety of government departments, in everything from undertaking infrastructure inspections to fulfilling vital roles in scientific research. Chinese commercial drones operating in the United States and allied countries, therefore, provide the PLA with a potential source of intelligence about personal data and critical infrastructure that can be used to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in US and allied homelands.

Finally, Chinese UAVs raise human rights concerns, as Chinese drone companies surveil Chinese citizens and assist the CCP in its mistreatment of its Muslim Uyghur minority.

Washington has begun to wake up to the challenges presented by China’s dominance of the global UAV market. Federal agencies and some states have banned the use of Chinese drones. The federal government has enacted tariffs. Recognizing UAVs’ potential benefit to defense and deterrence, the Department of Defense created the Replicator initiative, a flagship effort to promote the development and fielding of autonomous systems. Congress has also introduced legislation with new measures to protect the US market from Chinese drones and to promote the production of US-made drones.

These are good initial steps, but, to date, they have been piecemeal in nature and lack an overarching strategic framework.

This issue brief proposes a comprehensive three-part “protect-promote-align” strategy for the United States and its allies to secure their national security interests in the global UAV market. It argues that the United States and its allies should introduce new restrictions on the use of Chinese drones in their markets. They should promote the development of alternative drone manufacturers in the United States and trusted allies. Finally, they should align their policies to advance a whole-of-free-world approach to the global drone competition.

If adopted, the strategy proposed here will go a long way toward ensuring that the United States and its allies can remain secure at home, deter their adversaries, and benefit from an emerging technology that is likely to play a critical role in twenty-first-century defense.

Deborah Lee James
Atlantic Council Board Director
Former Secretary of the Air Force

Executive summary

The United States has been the world’s innovation leader since the time of Thomas Edison, and this innovation edge has provided the United States and its allies with enormous economic, military, and geopolitical benefits. China, however, aims to usurp the US position as the world’s leader in the most important technologies of the twenty-first century, including artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, hypersonic missiles, and unmanned aerial systems (UAS), commonly known as drones. Using a variety of unfair trade practices, including massive intellectual-property theft, China has closed the gap, and even maintains the lead, in some of these critical technologies, including UAS.

While the United States has preserved its edge in large military drones, China dominates the market for smaller and commercially available drones with dual-use civilian and military applications. China controls 90 percent of the drone market in the United States and 80 percent globally.

China’s supremacy in the commercial UAS market creates a number of national security threats for the United States and its allies. First, Chinese drones operating in the United States and its democratic allies create an intelligence vulnerability, as these drones scoop up sensitive data that can be transferred back to Beijing for a variety of national security purposes, including aiding the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in targeting critical infrastructure for cyber and kinetic military attacks.

Second, China’s drone-manufacturing prowess provides a military edge. Russia’s war in Ukraine demonstrates that inexpensive commercial drones will be critical to intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike in twenty-first-century warfare.

Third, and related, the free world has a supply-chain vulnerability problem, as it is dependent on an autocratic adversary for access to UAS for both civilian and military purposes, creating dangerous dependencies that China could exploit in crisis or peacetime. States increasingly utilize “drone diplomacy” to gain influence abroad. The act of selling a drone can be used to “extract concessions, exert influence, counter rivals, and strengthen military ties.” China’s artificially low prices for UAS, achieved through state subsidies, crowd out the development of a homegrown domestic drone industry in the United States and among US allies.

Fourth, Chinese-built drones threaten democratic values and human rights, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other autocracies employ Chinese drones for surveilling their populations, including in the CCP’s genocide of the Uyghur minority.

To address these challenges, the United States and its allies need a new strategy to protect against the threats posed by Chinese drones, strengthen their position in the international UAS market, and assert global leadership in this key twenty-first-century technology. To help the United States and its allies win the new tech race, the Scowcroft Center previously published a three-part “promote, protect, and coordinate” strategy. This paper updates that framework, and applies it to the issue of dual-use drones.

First, the United States and its allies should protect their countries from the national security threat posed by Chinese-made drones by prohibiting their use in sensitive areas, such as by the government and in critical infrastructure.

Specific recommendations include the following.

• The US Congress should pass the Countering CCP Drones Act and the Drone Infrastructure Inspection Grant (DIIG) Act.
• The US Congress should pass legislation to make US state-level bans effective and actionable by offering federal-government support for their implementation, including through targeted grant programs accelerating the transition to secure and capable systems.
• The US State Department should, in light of increasing global restrictions on People’s Republic of China (PRC)-made drones, launch an initiative to educate allies and partners on the risks associated with those systems, and support secure and capable alternatives.
• The US State Department should encourage allies and partners to enact tariffs and sanctions on PRC-made UAS to counter China’s unfair trade practices.

Second, the United States and its allies should promote domestic drone manufacturing to provide a secure alternative to PRC-made drones.

Specific recommendations include the following.

• The US federal government should provide targeted grants to accelerate the transition to secure drones in the government and critical-infrastructure sectors, and should consider funding to expand domestic drone manufacturing.
• The US State Department should encourage allied governments to do the same, providing reasonable funding measures to accelerate the transition to secure US and allied solutions.
• The US Congress and the Department of Defense (DOD) should ensure that the Replicator initiative has the proper funding and support to achieve the ambitious goals laid out in the program.
• The US Departments of State and Defense should encourage key allies to adopt their own versions of the Replicator initiative to ensure the free world has UAS in mass necessary to deter and defeat aggression.
• The US Congress should pass legislation, using a public-private partnership framework, to stimulate investment in research and development of autonomous drones, and scale existing UAS-manufacturing capabilities in the United States.

Third, and finally, the United States should align with its allies and partners to forge a coherent free-world approach to the setting of policies, regulations, and norms regarding commercial UAS.

Specific recommendations include the following.

• The US State Department should elevate drones in technology and commercial diplomacy, starting by designating an individual to lead allied cooperation on drone policies, manufacturing, and supply-chain security.
• The United States and its allies should work with existing multilateral frameworks including the US-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC), Group of Seven (G7), Group of Twenty (G20), Quad, Department of Commerce, and World Trade Organization (WTO) to develop regulations and norms for the responsible use of drones and autonomous systems.
• The United States should leverage NATO and AUKUS Pillar II to improve defense coordination related to UAS.

Pursuing this strategy now will help the United States and its allies maintain their innovation edge and prevail in a new era of strategic competition against revisionist autocracies.

The threat posed by China’s dominance of the global unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry

In 2023, the global UAS market was worth more than $30 billion, a number projected to increase to more than $55 billion by 2030. The market is dominated by firms based in China, with DJI controlling 80 percent of the commercial market within the United States and as much as 70 percent of the global market, and Autel, another PRC manufacturer, controlling 7 percent globally. As of 2021, estimates put Autel’s US market share at 15 percent. In comparison, Skydio, perhaps the most prominent US-based company, had only a 3 percent share of the global market, the same as Parrot, a French-based entity.

Commercial drone brand market share by country of origin

In 2020, 90 percent of UAS operated by US public-safety agencies were manufactured by DJI, though this number has since fallen due to a series of state and local bans. In Florida, before a recent ban was enacted, more than 1,800 of 3,000 UAS registered by the government and police departments were manufactured by DJI and Autel. However, in some states, DJI and Autel still hold a disproportionate market share among public-sector entities. In New Jersey, more than 500 of the 550 UAS registered by the state and local police departments were made by DJI or Autel.

US allies continue to rely heavily on PRC-made drones. In the United Kingdom (UK), for example, 230 out of the 337 drones operated by police forces across the country are DJI products. In Australia, a report revealed that federal agencies owned several thousand DJI drones, although the Australian military had grounded its systems and other agencies had begun to move away from them as well.

The global-market dominance of DJI and Autel has been supported by two national CCP policies, Made in China 2025 and Military-Civil Fusion, which are supported in part by industrial and corporate theft of foreign technology. The PRC has never been a market economy. Instead, it relies on a noncompetitive system of trade, bolstered by subsidies and other unfair practices.

Made in China 2025 was announced in 2015 and seeks to boost China’s manufacturing competitiveness across a variety of industries. The plan focuses on ten different sectors, including the development of UAS. Across each sector, the PRC aims to increase China’s domestic manufacturing capacity to have 70 percent of the core components and materials produced in China by 2025. To achieve this goal, the PRC uses a variety of tactics, such as creating financial and tax incentives to convince foreign-based firms to shift manufacturing and research and development (R&D) operations to China, intellectual-property theft, predatory procurement policies, and financing state-owned enterprises in their acquisitions of overseas companies.

Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) is central to Xi Jinping’s plan to allow China to modernize its military by 2035 and ensure that the PLA becomes “world-class” by 2049. At its core, MCF is a strategy that aims to break down barriers between commercial R&D and military products, allowing the PLA to rapidly identify, adopt, scale up, and leverage commercial technologies that also have a military application, such as UAS. The MCF system also encourages linkages between the state and dozens of private companies that can contribute to military projects and help meet procurement needs, including companies that develop unmanned systems. To achieve the goals of MCF, the PRC uses both licit and illicit means, including exploiting global academic exchanges, investment in foreign companies, forced military transfer, and, in some cases, blatant theft.

As a result of these strategies, DJI and Autel can sell their UAS at below-market cost to the United States and allied countries, a process known as dumping. A 2017 investigation by the US Department of Homeland Security found that, in 2015, DJI slashed its prices by 70 percent, leading to a problem highlighted in 2019 by then Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord, who said, “We don’t have much of a UAS industrial base because DJI dumped so many low-price quadcopters on the market, and we then became dependent on them.” DJI has even clearer linkages to the CCP than just state support for illegal trade practices. A 2022 Washington Post investigation found four different CCP-owned or operated investment vehicles invested in DJI.

The US government recognizes the threat posed by PRC-made drones. In 2021, the Department of Defense released a statement indicating that DJI systems pose potential threats to national security. In 2022, the department identified DJI as a Chinese military company operating in the United States. Similarly, the Treasury Department added DJI to the Chinese Military-Industrial Complex (CMIC) companies list, which prevents US citizens from investing in or trading their stock, should DJI attempt to build a public company.

PRC-made UAS pose four direct national security concerns. The first concern relates to Chinese intelligence collection in the United States. In early 2024, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released an alert that stated, “The use of Chinese-manufactured UAS in critical infrastructure operations risks exposing sensitive information to PRC authorities, jeopardizing U.S. national security, economic security, and public health and safety.” These concerns represented by the joint CISA-FBI alert are compounded by China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which mandates that private companies work with the PRC’s intelligence services. Article 14 of the law states, “State intelligence work organs, when legally carrying forth intelligence work, may demand that concerned organs, organizations, or citizens provide needed support, assistance, and cooperation.” In practice, this may include Chinese drone companies sharing sensitive flight data, the personal information of users, geolocation data, images, and video collected in the United States with the CCP. The transfer of such information to the CCP would allow Beijing to identify and exploit US vulnerabilities and facilitate the sabotage, disruption, or destruction of US critical infrastructure in times of crisis or conflict. Indeed, in 2017, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined that DJI was likely providing information about critical US infrastructure sites to the PRC, which the PRC then used to target specific assets. At the strategic level, FBI Director Christopher Wray warns that the Chinese security services present a “broad and unrelenting threat” to US critical infrastructure and are prepared to “wreak havoc.” PRC-made UAS have also been located in restricted airspace, including over Washington, DC. This is despite DJI claiming to have geofencing restrictions, which, in theory, limit where its UAS can operate.

The second concern relates to military effectiveness. The war in Ukraine is a testbed for new military technologies, and small commercial UAS have been a game changer in the conflict. They allow troops on the ground to conduct more accurate, real-time intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) of adversary positions and troop movements, and to facilitate more effective fires. They have also proven to be an effective and economical strike option, as UAS can destroy much more expensive platforms by crashing into them or dropping inexpensive bombs. Indeed, Chinese drones are making Vladimir Putin’s war machine more lethal. As of March 2023, the PRC had sold more than $12 million in UAS and parts to Russia. The consistent supply of UAS has allowed Russia access to a cheap and plentiful way to carry out ISR and targeted attacks. DJI and Autel are the number one and two brands, respectively, that China exports to Russia. To maintain deterrence in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, the United States and its allies will need the ability to develop trusted drones, at scale, for military purposes and to counter adversaries’ drones. Recent news from China makes that reality more important. Last year, China enacted export controls on small commercial drones for the first time. Those controls threaten to choke Ukraine’s primary source of drones without affecting supplies to Russia. That development highlights the criticality of the United States and its allies developing alternative sources of supply.

A third concern relates to secure supply chains. In recent years, the United States and its allies have recognized they are economically vulnerable due to dependence on autocratic rivals—China and Russia—for critical supplies, including semiconductors, critical minerals, energy, and much else. As demonstrated by the recent Chinese efforts to strangle Ukraine’s source of supply, the PRC has the ability to restrict US and allied access to UAS, potentially limiting their access in wartime. Similarly, drone customers not subject to federal or state prohibitions on Chinese drones, such as commercial entities, remain vulnerable to the PRC’s ability to restrict their access to UAS for civil purposes in peacetime.

The fourth and final concern relates to human rights. China commits gross human rights violations, including genocide against its Uyghur minority population. Under the Uyghur Human Rights Act of 2020, Washington committed to sanctioning companies that participate in atrocities against the Uyghurs. The US Treasury Department stated, “SZ DJI has provided drones to the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, which are used to surveil Uyghurs in Xinjiang. The Xinjiang Public Security Bureau was previously designated in July 2020, pursuant to the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act for connection to human rights abuses in Xinjiang.” DJI has already been added to the Commerce Department’s entity list, which restricts the ability of US companies to sell technology and component parts to DJI. DJI’s complicity in the human rights violations against the Uyghurs is indicative of the CCP’s support of authoritarianism globally. China and its authoritarian partners increasingly use UAS to suppress democracy and human rights globally. Countering DJI and other PRC UAS companies is critical to limiting the reach of autocrats and supporting democracy globally.

Ongoing efforts to counter PRC-made drones

The United States and its allies have already undertaken some efforts to challenge the dominance of Chinese UAS. At the federal level, the Donald Trump administration banned the sale of US technology to DJI without a license. The Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Department of the Interior stopped using Chinese drones in 2018, 2019, and 2020, respectively. Congress codified the Pentagon’s ban in 2019. The 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) expanded those restrictions to prohibit DOD from buying UAS or components from Russia, Iran, and North Korea. This law was further expanded to ban defense contractors from using UAS and components manufactured in the PRC, Russia, Iran, and North Korea in execution of their DOD contracts starting in 2023. The American Security Drone Act, passed in the 2024 NDAA, bans federal government entities from buying and operating UAS from designated adversarial nations, including China, and prohibits the use of federal funds to purchase or operate these drones starting in December 2025.

At the state level, Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas, Tennessee, and Utah have restricted the use of PRC-made UAS by state agencies, local agencies, or both. Those restrictions generally mirror federal laws, protecting government agencies from insecure products connected to adversarial nations. This first phase of state action focused on government end-user restrictions, but a second phase—focused on providing grants to accelerate the transition away from insecure drones—is under way. In 2023 Florida enacted a $25-million grant program to help local agencies reduce their dependency on insecure drones. In 2024, legislators in several states proposed similar grant programs.

There are additional efforts under way in the US Congress. Representatives Elise Stefanik and Mike Gallagher introduced the Countering CCP Drones Act to amend the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019. Their bill would add DJI to the list of equipment banned from operating on US telecommunications infrastructure, potentially impacting DJI’s ability to place new products on the market. The bill would not affect existing DJI drones.

In an effort to better equip the United States with UAS for military purposes, the DOD recently announced the Replicator initiative, which aims to directly counter PRC dominance in the domain of attritable autonomous systems. Replicator was motivated, in part, by the recognition that the PRC has a scale advantage, which allows Beijing to rapidly manufacture and field weapons systems, including attritable autonomous systems. With Replicator, DOD aims to deploy thousands of autonomous systems. Open questions remain as to what systems will be selected for Replicator, how the initiative will be funded, and how many systems will be procured. To be decisive in a near-peer conflict, Replicator will likely need to purchase tens of thousands of various systems to be used across all domains. For example, the UK-based Royal United Services Institute estimates that Ukraine is losing ten thousand drones per month in its fight against Russia, providing insight into the scale of the total number of UAS. To complement Replicator and make all-domain attritable autonomous systems decisive in near-peer conflict, the DOD should consider stockpiling drones. The stockpiling of these systems would be a hedge against supply-chain interruptions in times of conflict, and would allow for the quick delivery of drones to theaters of conflict as these systems are rapidly expended on the battlefield.

US allies have also started to act. In 2022, Lithuania banned the purchase of technology from countries deemed “untrustworthy” for applications in defense and security, including PRC-made UAS. India has gone further, banning both Chinese-made drones and their component parts. Australia’s military services and border force have grounded DJI drones, and other agencies appear to be transitioning to secure systems. In Japan, the coast guard stopped using DJI drones in 2020 due to cybersecurity concerns.

While the above actions are a good start, the United States and its allies need a whole-of-free-world strategic framework to mitigate the threat posed by PRC-made drones.

A free-world strategy for securing UAV supply chains

The United States and its allies should adopt a comprehensive strategy to address the threat posed by Chinese-made drones. The goal should be to reduce or eliminate the national security threats that come from an overreliance on PRC-made drones, and to develop an alternative drone market in trusted countries. To achieve these goals, the United States and its allies should pursue a three-part “protect, promote, and align” strategy.

1. Protect the United States and its allies from the national security threat posed by PRC-made drones.

The first element of a strategy for securing UAV supply chains is to protect US and allied markets from PRC-made drones that threaten national security or that violate international trade laws and norms. This begins by pursuing a hard decoupling from Chinese-made drones in areas of sensitive national security concern. The regulation of UAS can be modeled after the “small yard, high fence” approach that the United States is taking to the regulation of other critical technologies, such as semiconductors.

In the United States, the American Security Drone Act is a good first step, but it is insufficient to fully address the problem. In addition, Congress should pass the Countering CCP Drones Act to prohibit Chinese drones from operating on Federal Communications Commission (FCC) infrastructure, just as the United States did for Chinese telecommunication companies Huawei and ZTE. As identified by CISA and the FBI, the continued operation of Chinese UAS on US infrastructure raises the risk that the PRC will gain access to sensitive information and could use that information to conduct espionage on vulnerabilities in US critical infrastructure and public-safety response footprint, and to stage potential cyberattacks. Volt Typhoon, a recently disclosed Chinese threat activity discovered penetrating US critical infrastructure to prepare for future attacks, illustrates the stark nature of the threat. Currently, the American Security Drone Act would only ban DJI, but this should be amended to include all PRC-made drones, including those made by Autel.

Reasonable restrictions on PRC-made drones should be extended to state and local governments. Currently, the diverse range of legislation at the state and local levels has created a piecemeal approach that is confusing and leaves loopholes. Furthermore, the ban on Chinese drones operating in the United States should include the US private sector operating in sensitive national security areas, such as inspecting critical-infrastructure sites.

Next, the State Department should work with US allies and partners and encourage them to pass similar legislation restricting Chinese drones in sensitive sectors and to cooperate on common drone policies going forward. US global defense readiness and ability to project power in key regions could be compromised if China is able to gather sensitive intelligence and targeting information through drones operating in key allied countries. The United States and its allies already discuss critical and emerging technology cooperation through various forums, such as the US-EU Trade and Technology Council. The State Department should elevate drone cooperation as a key agenda item for discussion and cooperation in these forums. Additionally, the State Department should designate an individual who has the mandate to lead diplomatic efforts on drone cooperation.

In addition, the United States and its allies should seek coordinated tariffs and other countervailing measures to offset China’s unfair trade practices and level the playing field. The United States should maintain, if not increase, its 25-percent tariff on Chinese-made drones. There will, of course, be a cost to these measures, but they can be partially offset by the recommendations in the following “promote” element of the strategy. Should the United States increase tariffs on Chinese-made drones, the corresponding increased tariff revenue could be used to fund various grant programs to help existing Chinese drone customers—such as law-enforcement agencies—transition to US or allied drones.

When considering tariffs, it is critical to counter tariff evasion. In March 2024, bipartisan members of Congress wrote to the Joe Biden administration raising serious concerns that Chinese drone makers are evading the 25-percent tariffs by transshipping drones through Malaysia. The letter said, “[A]fter exporting virtually zero drones to the United States and being home to no major domestic drone manufacturers prior to 2022, Malaysia’s drone exports to the United States jumped inexplicably to 242,000 units that year.” In “the first eleven months of 2023 the United States imported more than 565,000 drones from Malaysia.” It is critically important to tackle transshipment, and to apply equivalent tariffs to—or categorical bans on—companies and products found to be complicit.

As part of this strategy to secure drone supply chains, the United States must be wary of efforts by DJI and other Chinese drone companies to avoid US sanctions. The New York Times reported earlier this year, for example, about a Texas-based company that licenses its drone designs from DJI and sources much of its parts from China. Legislative initiatives by Congress and other efforts by federal regulators to curb dependence on Chinese drones need to eliminate loopholes that would enable Chinese companies to evade punitive measures by distributing their products through US-based companies.

In preparation for a possible crisis or conflict with China, Washington and its allies should also be prepared to enact wide-reaching sanctions against Chinese companies critical for China’s military and intelligence activities, including DJI and Autel.¹ Washington must also be prepared to sanction companies involved in the overall procurement process for UAS, something that the Treasury Department has done in targeting companies that support Iran’s UAV industry. A response to the PRC in a time of crisis would also include enacting retaliatory export restrictions of US technology to China. To best prepare for these potential impacts, the Sanctions Economic Analysis Unit, established within the Department of the Treasury, should undertake research to understand the possible “collateral damage of sanctions before they’re imposed, and after they’ve been put in place to see if they should be adjusted.” A quick and easy win in this space would be adding Autel to the Department of Defense’s 1260H list, the Commerce Department’s entity list, and the Treasury Department’s Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List, joining DJI. Additionally, the United States must work to develop robust and durable secure supply chains for all components of UAS, including through the development of a domestic industrial base.

To guide engagement with its allies, the United States should leverage the recently established Office of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology (S/TECH). The S/TECH should make secure supply chains for drones a priority, along with other measures such as coordinating restrictions and safeguards against Chinese drones. Additionally, the DOD should elevate UAS as a priority agenda item for all bilateral and multilateral technology engagements carried out by US diplomats with allies and partners.

Taken together, these steps will offer significant protection for the United States and its allies from the threat of Chinese-made UAS.

2. Promote the development of a robust drone-manufacturing capability in the United States and allied countries to provide a secure alternative to PRC-made drones.

The second major element of the strategy is to promote the development of a robust drone-manufacturing capability in the United States and allied countries. As outlined above, drones are critical for many purposes, and Chinese-made systems dominate all drone markets. As the United States and allied countries successfully de-risk from Chinese-made drones, they will need to replace this supply with drones produced by trusted sources.

Some of the steps identified in the “protect” element of the strategy will also stimulate domestic US and allied production. A selective ban on Chinese drones will naturally increase demand for drones produced elsewhere. Stiffer tariffs on Chinese-made drones will help to level the playing field and make non-PRC-made drones more competitive in the market.

To ensure these bans can be effectively enacted while being minimally disruptive, the federal government should provide funding incentives to facilitate the transition away from PRC-made UAS. As noted earlier, Florida’s ban on PRC-made UAS left local bodies, including fire departments and law-enforcement agencies, scrambling to find funding for alternatives. The provision of federal funds can help overcome the financial burden of buying alternatives to PRC UAS. The DIIG Act, for example, promises to provide funding for state and local agencies to purchase UAS for infrastructure inspections. Federal funding should be conditional, and only available to states that fully ban PRC-made UAS. For example, states that only ban DJI and not Autel, or that fail to ban the use of PRC-made UAS by contractors, would not be eligible for this funding.

The State Department should share these efforts, such as the DIIG Act, with allied countries and encourage the adoption of similar measures by allied governments. Its network of allies is the cornerstone of US national security. Therefore, the United States must encourage its allies to adopt similar policies that promote their own security as well.

In addition, the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative should be harnessed to stimulate a major leap forward in the development and deployment of US autonomous systems. In the short timeframe of 18–24 months, Replicator can help modernize the DOD’s warfighting capabilities and produce thousands of new drones. The US Congress and the DOD should prioritize significant, enduring funding for the Replicator initiative.

The efforts initially achieved through Replicator can be boosted by utilizing the Office of Strategic Capital (OSC). Established in 2022, OSC identifies critical technologies for the DOD and partners with private capital and other agencies to create investment vehicles. Given Replicator’s priority status for the department, the development of the autonomous UAS industry should be a prioritized area for OSC. However, OSC funding is designed to target small companies that would not be able to produce systems at scale in order to contribute to Replicator. Instead, OSC should consider boosting small, innovative companies that are in the UAS supply chain and help enable the critical domestic industrial base of advanced components for current and future UAS systems. By designating UAS as a priority area for OSC, the Department of Defense can help create a strong domestic manufacturing base for this technology.

There is potential for OSC funding to play an important role in strengthening the domestic UAS industry, with the White House requesting $144 million for the office in 2025. In addition to fully meeting the White House’s request for OSC funding, Congress should continue funding other accelerators and offices that strengthen the development of companies across the DOD’s fourteen critical technology areas.

In order to meet any potential funding gaps, the DOD should be prepared to provide additional funding for investment in small UAV systems outside of OSC, including by increasing related funding to the relevant task forces working inside of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Furthermore, Congress should authorize additional funding for the Defense Production Act that will allow the Department of Defense to further invest in the defense industrial base, including the development of asymmetric capabilities such as the small drones that have played a critical role in Ukraine’s battlefield success.

The US Departments of State and Defense can encourage key allies to adopt their own versions of the Replicator program to ensure the free world has UAS in mass that will be necessary to deter and defeat aggression in the twenty-first century. Additionally, the Department of Defense should consider the potential to invite other allies and partners into the Replicator program, or establish a multinational, allied Replicator initiative. In doing so, the department would scale the allied drone industry, create interoperability among combined allied forces, and strengthen allied deterrence against great-power adversaries.

DOD is already working to integrate UAS and autonomous systems more broadly into its operations. The US Navy’s Task Force 59 aims to better integrate emerging technologies into warfighting, and is currently focused on robotics and autonomous systems. Task Force 59 operates a variety of uncrewed vehicles, including submersible and surface-level ships, alongside UAS.

The Air Force operates Task Force 99.² Based in Qatar, it has developed a 3D-printed UAV, dubbed the “kestrel,” which can be produced for $2,500 and can carry a payload of up to three kilograms.

The efforts of Task Forces 59 and 99 are a solid start, but they have been challenged by institutional hurdles and a lack of funding. Similar concerns have been raised about the ability of the private sector to meet the government’s demand for Replicator. Any successful long-term strategy in this area will require close coordination between the private and public sectors. Replicator offers a good starting point, allowing the DOD to establish trust with the defense-technology industry, break free from the antiquated Cold War procurement process, and establish the new defense industrial base required for twenty-first-century security.

Beyond Replicator, Congress should pass legislation modeled on the CHIPS and Science Act to produce autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles. Recognizing a similar challenge related to domestic semiconductor manufacturing, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022. The act provides billions of dollars in incentives for the research, development, and manufacturing of semiconductors. It has already stimulated the construction of new semiconductor-fabrication facilities in the United States. Similarly, the United States should provide a variety of incentives, including tax credits and investments, for the research, development, and manufacturing of autonomous vehicles. Stimulating US manufacture of autonomous vehicles will make drones available for DOD procurement, while also allowing US-made UAS to be sold globally for commercial applications.

Creating an equivalent piece of legislation for the manufacturing of UAS would have one major difference compared to the CHIPS Act—the price would be significantly lower. A manufacturing facility for the production of semiconductor chips costs a minimum of $10 billion while taking at least five years to build. Compare that to the US drone manufacturer Skydio, which raised $230 million in additional funding in 2023, part of which paid for the construction of a new UAV-manufacturing facility within the United States that expanded its production capacity ten times. For a fraction of the $54-billion CHIPS Act, the United States can successfully develop and support a variety of domestic UAV-manufacturing operations.

US allies and partners have taken note of the CHIPS Act and passed their own legislation to advance in this space. For example, the European Union enacted the European Chips Act into law in September 2023. As the US encouraged allies to invest in CHIPS, it can encourage key allies to stimulate domestic drone manufacturing in their countries.

Coordinating these actions will require a whole-of-free-world approach, among the White House, the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, and US allies and partners. To achieve these ambitious goals, the president should consider designating an individual within the State Department’s S/TECH office. This individual would be responsible for coordinating this slate of policy proposals, similar to how the White House coordinator for CHIPS implementation operates. The special envoy should set a date for achieving the above benchmarks to ensure accountability.

Taken together, these actions can help create an industrial base in the United States and allied countries to provide a secure supply for UAS.

3. Align with allies and partners to forge a coherent free-world approach to the setting of policies, regulations, and norms regarding commercial UAS.

The third major element of the strategy is to forge a coherent free-world approach to the setting of policies, regulations, and norms regarding commercial UAS. Among the United States’ greatest strengths in its competition with China is its network of allies and partners. Combined, the United States and its allies possess nearly 60 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) and, when they work together, they retain a preponderance of power to shape global outcomes.

The G7, the G20, and the Quad are all multilateral groupings in which the United States has galvanized allies and partners alike to develop a series of secure supply chains for semiconductors. It should do the same with UAS.

The Scowcroft Center has previously argued that the United States and its allies should establish a new Democratic Technology Alliance to coordinate the free world’s approach on emerging technology, including UAS. Short of this, the United States and its allies should work through existing bilateral and multilateral channels.

The United States should continue to work with its allies to develop regulations and norms for the responsible use of new technology, including UAS, through bodies such as the US-EU TTC, NATO, G7, G20, and WTO. The United States would be well served to develop polices in coordination with its allies and partners through these forums. Doing so will help ensure a coordinated approach going forward. The United States should also raise concerns in these bodies about China’s unfair and illegal behavior. Though the WTO lacks teeth when coming after China, raising concerns about its behavior and trade disputes at the WTO can help build evidence of a pattern of unfair actions. The development of clear norms would help to demonstrate that the free world is not taking punitive measures against China or seeking to hold China down. Rather, it is taking prudent actions to protect itself from China’s unfair and threatening practices. If China were to reform its practices and its economic system, it could be welcomed back into US and allied markets.

Concurrently, the Department of Commerce and its International Trade Administration should play a central role in developing a trusted ecosystem—both in the United States and with its allies and partners—to secure critical components to strengthen domestic UAS manufacturing while promoting US-made drones around the world.

In addition, the United States should leverage the new trilateral defense pact, AUKUS. AUKUS Pillar II brings together Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States to improve defense coordination across critical-technology areas, including artificial intelligence and autonomy, innovation, and information sharing. The Pentagon should work with AUKUS partners to prioritize the development of advanced UAS.

Moreover, Washington should work with allies and partners to develop a secure supply chain for UAV components and manufacturing. DOD has already cleared two drones produced by Parrot, a French UAV manufacturer, as secure and reliable through its Blue UAS program. This will allow for the manufacturing of component parts through final assembly to take place in trusted countries.

NATO offers other opportunities for Washington to coordinate with allies on emerging technologies. The NATO Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) is a venue for Alliance members to coordinate on the development of emerging technologies, bringing together researchers, industry, and government. In 2023, DIANA announced the first three areas in which it aims to encourage the development of dual-use technologies. One of these domains, sensing and surveillance, is a logical avenue for the allied development of UAS. Indeed, DIANA has already accepted a Czech UAV manufacturer into the program. Here, the United States should utilize DIANA as a means to further cooperation on UAS and enable reciprocal development and manufacturing relationships across Europe, creating the basis of a dual-use drone industry.

In addition, the United States should work with its allies to secure the key UAS component supply chain, including batteries and battery cells. Part of the solution concerns mineral access. Amid a global transition to low-carbon energy sources, China’s strong position in the global lithium market and Russia’s robust nickel-mining capacity present challenges to US efforts to secure access to minerals needed for batteries. As several colleagues in the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center have argued, one option to address these challenges is supporting research, development, and capacity building for alternative battery chemistries. This includes leveraging public capital from US and allied governments and using tax incentives to encourage diversification of battery inputs. In 2021, the Department of Energy announced that innovations related to advanced batteries, which were developed via taxpayer dollars through Department of Energy (DOE) funding, would need to be “substantially” manufactured in the United States. In 2023, as a result of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, DOE announced $3.5 billion “to boost domestic production of advanced batteries and battery materials nationwide.” At the same time, the federal government, as well state and local governments, will need to muster the political will to allow domestic mining and refining of these minerals to ensure truly secure access to batteries. Once regulatory red tape is reduced, private capital necessary for the development of this domestic capability will enter the battery market. This sort of public-private engagement is an important part of shoring up the US battery supply chain and mitigating vulnerabilities vis-à-vis China.

Taken together, these steps will help to ensure a successful and coordinated free-world approach to UAS.

Conclusion

This paper recommended a protect-promote-align strategy to help the United States and its allies secure a trusted UAS industry to compete against China. China’s dominance of the dual-use UAS sector presents an unacceptable national security risk to the United States and its allies. Following this strategy will allow the United States and its allies to counter the unfair CCP practices that have led to China’s ill-begotten dominance of the global UAS market. A dedicated strategy, one that limits the use of PRC-made UAS, creates incentives for domestic UAS production, aligns the United States and its likeminded allies, and will allow the free world to retain its innovation edge over the CCP and better position itself for victory in a new era of strategic competition.

Matthew Kroenig is vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. In these roles, he manages the Scowcroft Center’s nonpartisan team of more than thirty resident staff and oversees the Council’s extensive network of nonresident fellows. His own research focuses on US national security strategy, strategic competition with China and Russia, and strategic deterrence and weapons nonproliferation.

Imran Bayoumi is an associate director with the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He supports the Center’s work on foresight and strategy development, focusing on emerging technologies, conflict, and climate security. In addition, Bayoumi contributes to the development of the Center’s annual “Global Foresight” publication.   

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Jun 27, 2023

Global Strategy 2023: Winning the tech race with China

By Peter Engelke, Emily Weinstein

The United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are engaged in a strategic competition surrounding the development of key technologies. Both countries seek to out-compete the other to achieve first-mover advantage in breakthrough technologies, and to be the best country in terms of the commercial scaling of emerging and existing technologies.

China Cybersecurity

Report Jun 13, 2022

Toward a Democratic Technology Alliance: An innovation edge that favors freedom

By Ash Jain, Matthew Kroenig

A Democratic Technology Alliance would facilitate the development of common rules and norms in the technology space, consistent with democratic values, and ensure that the free world prevails in the race for advanced technologies.

China Economy & Business

The Scowcroft Strategy Initiative works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to tackle security challenges.

learn more

The post A global strategy to secure UAS supply chains appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On June 23, IPSI nonresident senior fellow Peter Dean was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, where he shared what a second Trump administration could mean for allies. 

Fellow

Peter J. Dean

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Australia Conflict

The post Dean quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald on implications of a second Trump administration for allies appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack,” reads Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which was signed seventy-five years ago in Washington, DC. Even though Article 3 precedes Article 5, many allies have not taken it particularly seriously—at least not since the end of the Cold War.

That’s because national resilience is harder to quantify than military defense. With the latter, the armed forces, policymakers, and even the public can assess how large and effective efforts are. Armed forces have a specific number of active-duty service members, a specific number of reservists, and specific weaponry. But the “individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack” involves a plethora of skills and items that are much harder to identify, let alone measure. There are no rules governing who should participate in resilience, nor is there an official level at which a country (or organization) is considered resilient.

At the 2016 Warsaw summit, NATO leaders attempted to elevate resilience standards by adopting seven “baseline requirements.” These were: assured continuity of government and critical government services, resilient energy supplies, the ability to deal effectively with the uncontrolled movement of people, resilient food and water resources, the ability to deal with mass casualties, resilient civil communications systems, and resilient civil transportation systems. Creating that list was a worthy step, though some allies have treated the baselines more like ambitions than requirements.

Some allies, though, go far beyond the baseline requirements. Indeed, they make national resilience a matter not just of infrastructure and governmental capabilities: instead, they involve the population. Two of the foremost practitioners of societal resilience, Sweden and Finland, have joined the Alliance at just the right time, because they have invaluable knowledge to share.

In the case of Sweden, its society-wide involvement in national security dates back to World War II, when the country had to meet Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s total war by marshaling all the resources at its disposal: total defense. During the Cold War, Sweden turned these efforts into a system so well-managed that millions (in a country of some eight million at the end of the Cold War) were involved in various parts of national security: as soldiers, as reservists, as members of auxiliary defense organizations, as civilians in crucial professions (from daycare teachers to nuclear engineers), and as ordinary citizens knowing what to do in case of war, because the authorities had regularly kept them informed.

Finland, prevented by the Soviets from operating auxiliary defense organizations, focused instead on preparedness and what it called mental territorial defense: making the Finns steadfast in their support of the country. (Those interested can read more about it in The Defender’s Dilemma.) In recent years, Sweden has once again proven itself as an innovator when it comes to resilience, with initiatives such as the If Crisis or War Comes leaflet, which the Civil Contingencies Agency published six years ago. Especially now that the two friends and neighbors have finally made it into NATO, other allies can pick from their collection of resilience practices and adopt and adapt the ones they like without having to spend the considerable time it takes to create such practices from scratch. Indeed, this kind of learning is already picking up speed. These days Latvia, for example, has a Sweden-like booklet called How to Deal with a Crisis.

But the much-lauded Swedes and Finns, and their Nordic and Baltic friends, are not NATO’s only resilience leaders. The Czech Republic has, through its ministry of defense, launched gray-zone exercises for the private sector. Until the Czech initiative, national-security training for companies had barely been addressed by NATO’s member states, mostly because doing so would require setting up a new format and designing the exercises. Now that the Czech Republic has done so, others can save time and effort by building on the Czechs’ initiatives.

Other allies are also taking important steps. Latvia, for its part, has introduced a defense curriculum that teaches all its high schoolers resilience skills. Germany’s Technisches Hilfswerk (THW), too, is a model worth learning from: 99 percent of those working for this federal agency, whose members help in public emergencies such as storms, are volunteers. The THW doesn’t have a national security mandate, but its model can easily be adapted to national resilience. NATO member states would also do well to learn from close friends outside the Alliance. In the Indo-Pacific, Singapore has an annual total defense day, and Australia is developing an ambitious resilience strategy.

Not every practice is applicable to every NATO country, but what matters is that solutions exist. Learning from friends willing to share best practices is the easiest and most efficient way of learning.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the author of Goodbye, Globalization: The Return of a Divided World (Yale University Press: 2024).

NATO’s seventy-fifth anniversary is a milestone in a remarkable story of reinvention, adaptation, and unity. However, as the Alliance seeks to secure its future for the next seventy-five years, it faces the revanchism of old rivals, escalating strategic competition, and uncertainties over the future of the rules-based international order.

With partners and allies turning attention from celebrations to challenges, the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative invited contributors to engage with the most pressing concerns ahead of the historic Washington summit and chart a path for the Alliance’s future. This series will feature seven essays focused on concrete issues that NATO must address at the Washington summit and five essays that examine longer-term challenges the Alliance must confront to ensure transatlantic security.

The post National resilience is a crucial part of defense. Here are the countries doing it right. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Introduction
Data transfer politics come to America
Data transfer politics in Europe
Conclusions

Introduction

The geopolitics of transatlantic data transfers have been unvarying for the past decade. European governments criticize the US National Security Agency (NSA) for exploiting personal data moving from Europe to the United States for commercial reasons. The US government responds, through a series of arrangements with the European Union, by providing assurances that NSA collection is not disproportionate, and that Europeans have legal avenues if they believe their data has been illegally used. Although the arrangements have not proven legally stable, on the whole they have sufficed to keep data flowing via subsea cables under the Atlantic Ocean.

Now the locus of national security concerns about international data transfers has shifted from Brussels to Washington. The Biden administration and the US Congress, in a series of bold measures, are moving aggressively to interrupt certain cross-border data flows, notably to China and Russia.

The geopolitics of international data flows remain largely unchanged in Europe, however. European data protection authorities have been mostly noncommittal about the prospect of Russian state surveillance collecting Europeans’ personal data. Decisions on whether to transfer European data to Russia and China remain in the hands of individual companies.

Will Washington’s new focus on data transfers to authoritarian states have an impact in Europe? Will Europe continue to pay more attention to the surveillance activities of its liberal democratic allies, especially the United States? Is there a prospect of Europe and the United States aligning on the national security risks of transfers to authoritarian countries?

Data transfer politics come to America

The US government long considered the movement of personal data across borders as primarily a matter of facilitating international trade.¹ US national security authorities’ surveillance of foreigners’ personal data in the course of commercial transfers was regarded as an entirely separate matter.

For example, the 2001 EU-US Safe Harbor Framework,² the first transatlantic data transfer agreement, simply allowed the United States to assert the primacy of national security over data protection requirements, without further discussion. Similarly, the 2020 US-Mexico-Canada Free Trade Agreement³ and the US-Japan Digital Trade Agreement⁴ contain both free flow of data guarantees and traditional national security carve-outs from those obligations.

Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations of expansive US NSA surveillance in Europe put the Safe Harbor Framework’s national security derogation into the political spotlight. Privacy activist Max Schrems then challenged its legality under EU fundamental rights law, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled it unacceptable.⁵

The 2023 EU-US Data Privacy Framework⁶ (DPF) is the latest response to this jurisprudence. In it, the United States commits to hold national security electronic surveillance of EU-origin personal data to a more constrained standard, as the European Commission has noted.⁷ The United States’ defensive goal has been to reassure Europe that it conducts foreign surveillance in a fashion that can be reconciled with EU fundamental rights law.

Now, however, the US government has begun expressly integrating its own national security considerations into decisions on the foreign destinations to which US-origin personal data may flow. It is a major philosophical shift from the prior free data flows philosophy, in which national security limits played a theoretical and marginal role.

One notable development is a February 28, 2024, executive order, Preventing Access to Americans’ Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and United States Government-Related Data by Countries of Concern.⁸ The EO empowers the Department of Justice (DOJ), in consultation with other relevant departments, to identify countries “of concern” and to prohibit or otherwise regulate bulk data transfers to them, based on a belief that these countries could be collecting such data for purposes of spying on or extorting Americans. A week later DOJ issued a proposed rule describing the envisaged regulatory regime, and proposing China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela as the countries “of concern.”⁹

The White House, in issuing the bulk data EO, was at pains to insist that it was limited in scope and not inconsistent with the historic US commitment to the free flow of data, because it applies only to certain categories of data and certain countries.¹⁰ Nonetheless, as has been observed by scholars Peter Swire and Samm Sacks, the EO and proposed rule are, for the United States, part of “a new chapter in how it regulates data flows” in that they would create an elaborate new national security regulatory regime applying to legal commercial data activity.¹¹

Hard on the heels of the bulk data EO came congressional passage in April of the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, which the president signed into law.¹² It prohibits data brokers from selling or otherwise making available Americans’ sensitive information to four specified countries: China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. The new law has a significantly broader scope than the EO. It cuts off certain data transfers to any entity controlled by one of these adversary countries, apparently including corporate affiliates and subsidiaries. It extends to any sensitive data, not just data in bulk. It remains to be seen how the administration will address the overlaps between the new law and the EO.

Another part of the same omnibus legislation ordered the ban or forced sale of TikTok, the Chinese social media platform widely used in this country.¹³ Advocates of the law point to the government of China’s ability under its own national security law to demand that companies operating there turn over personal data, including, potentially, TikTok users’ data transferred from the United States. Critics have cast the measure as a targeted punishment of a particular company, done without public evidence being offered of national security damage. TikTok has challenged the law as a violation of the First Amendment.¹⁴

Finally, the data transfer restrictions in these measures are thematically similar to a January 29 proposed rule from the Commerce Department obliging cloud service providers to verify the identity of their customers, on whose behalf they transfer data.¹⁵ The rule would impose know your customer (KYC) requirements—similar to those that apply in the international banking context—for cloud sales to non-US customers, wherever located.

This extraordinary burst of legislative and executive action focused on the national security risks of certain types of data transfers from the United States to certain authoritarian states is indicative of how far and fast political attitudes have shifted in this country. But what of Europe, which faces similar national security data challenges from authoritarian states? Is it moving in a similar direction as the United States?

Data transfer politics in Europe

The EU, unlike the United States, has long had a systematic set of controls on personal data flows from EU territory abroad, articulated in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).¹⁶ The GDPR conditions transfers to a foreign jurisdiction on the “adequacy” of its data protection safeguards—or, as the CJEU has refined the concept, their “essential equivalence” to the GDPR regime.

The task of assessing foreign legal systems falls to the European Commission, the EU’s quasi-executive arm. Article 45 of the GDPR instructs it to consider, among other things, “the rule of law, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, relevant legislation . . . including concerning . . . the access of public authorities to personal data.”

For much of the past decade, the central drama in the European Commission’s adequacy process has been whether the United States meets this standard. As previously noted, the CJEU invalidated first the Safe Harbor Framework,¹⁷ in 2015, and then the Privacy Shield Framework,¹⁸ in 2020. The DPF is the third try by the US government and the European Commission to address the CJEU’s fundamental rights concerns. Last year, the European Commission issued yet another adequacy decision that found the DPF adequate.¹⁹ The EU understandably has focused its energies on the United States, since vast amounts of Europeans’ personal data travels to cloud service providers’ data centers in the United States and, as Snowden revealed, offered an inviting target for the NSA.

Separately, the European Commission has gradually expanded the range of other countries benefiting from adequacy findings, conferring this status on Japan,²⁰ Korea,²¹ and the United Kingdom.²² However, the 2019 adequacy decision for the UK continues to be criticized in Brussels. On April 22, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs (LIBE) of the European Parliament wrote to the UK House of Lords complaining about UK national security bulk data collection practices and the prospect of onward transfer of data from UK territory to jurisdictions not deemed adequate by the EU.²³ Next year, the European Commission will formally review the UK’s adequacy status.

This past January, the European Commission renewed the adequacy decisions for eleven jurisdictions which had long enjoyed them, including, notably, Israel.²⁴ On April 22, a coalition of civil society groups published an open letter to the European Commission questioning the renewal of Israel’s adequacy decision.²⁵ The letter expressed doubts about the rule of law in Israel itself, the specific activities of Israeli intelligence agencies in Gaza during the current hostilities there, and the surveillance powers exercised by those agencies more generally.

Also delicate is the continuing flow of personal data from the European Union to Russia and China. Although neither country has been—or is likely to be—accorded adequacy status, data nonetheless can continue to flow to their territories, as to other third countries, if accompanied by contractual data protection safeguards. The CJEU established in its Schrems jurisprudence that such standard contractual clauses (SCCs) must uphold the same fundamental rights standards as an adequacy decision. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) subsequently issued detailed guidance on the essential guarantees against national security surveillance that must be in place in order for personal data to be sent to a nonadequate jurisdiction.²⁶

In 2021, the EDPB received an outside expert report²⁷ on several foreign governments’ data access regimes. Its findings were clear. “Chinese law legitimises broad and unrestricted access to personal data by the government,” it concluded. Similarly, with respect to Russia, “The right to privacy is strongly limited when interests of national security are at stake.” The board did not take any further steps to follow up on the report, however.

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia was excluded from the Council of Europe and ceased to be a party to that body’s European Convention on Human Rights.²⁸ The European Data Protection Board issued a statement confirming that data transfers to Russia pursuant to standard contract clauses remained possible, but stressed that safeguards to guard against Russian law enforcement or national security access to data were vital.²⁹

Over two thousand multinational companies continue to do business in Russia, despite the Ukraine war, although a smaller number have shut down, according to a Kyiv academic research institute.³⁰ Data flows between Europe and Russia thus remain substantial, if less than previously. Companies engaged in commerce in Russia also are subject to requirements that data on Russian persons be localized in that country.³¹ Nonetheless, data flows from Europe to Russia are not subject to categorical exclusions, unlike the new US approach.

The sole reported case of a European data protection authority questioning data flows to Russia involves Yango, a taxi-booking mobile app developed by Yandex, a Russian internet search and information technology company. Yango’s European services are based in the Netherlands and are available in other countries including Finland and Norway. In August 2023, Finland’s data protection authority (DPA) issued an interim decision to suspend use of Yango in its territory because Russia had just adopted a decree giving its state security service (FSB) unrestricted access to commercial taxi databases.³²

The interim suspension decision was short-lived. A month later, the Finnish authority, acting in concert with Norwegian and Dutch counterparts, lifted it, on the basis of a clarification that the Russian decree in fact did not apply to use of the Yango app in Finland.³³ The Finnish authority further announced that the Dutch authority, in coordination with it and Norway, would issue a final decision in the matter. The Dutch investigation reportedly remains open, but it does not appear to be a high priority matter.

The day after lifting the Yango suspension, the Finnish data protection authority rushed out yet another press release advising that its decision “does not address the legality of data transfers to Russia,” or “mean that Yango data transfers to Russia would be in compliance with the GDPR or that Russia has an adequate level of data protection.”³⁴

One can interpret this final Finnish statement as at least indirectly acknowledging that continued commercial data transfers from an EU jurisdiction to Russia may raise rule of law questions bigger than a single decree allowing its primary security agency, known as the FSB, to access certain taxi databases. Otherwise, the Finnish decision could be criticized for ignoring the forest for the birch trees.

Equally striking is the limited extent of DPA attention to data transfers between EU countries and China. China maintains an extensive national security surveillance regime, and lately has implemented a series of legal measures that can limit outbound data transfers for national security reasons.³⁵ In 2023, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner³⁶ imposed a substantial fine on TikTok for violating the GDPR with respect to children’s privacy, following a decision by the EDPB.³⁷ This inquiry did not examine the question of whether Chinese government surveillance authorities had access to European users’ data, however.

Personal data actively flows between Europe and China in the commercial context, pursuant to SCCs. China reportedly may issue additional guidance to companies on how to respond to requests for data from foreign law enforcement authorities. To date there is no public evidence of European DPAs questioning companies about their safeguard measures for transfers to China.

Indeed, signs recently have emerged from China of greater openness to transfers abroad of data generated in the automotive sector, including from connected cars. Data from connected cars is a mix of nonpersonal and personal data. China recently approved Tesla’s data security safeguards, enabling the company’s previously localized data to leave the country.³⁸ In addition, the government of Germany is trying to ease the passage of data to and from China on behalf of German carmakers. On April 16, several German government ministers, part of a delegation visiting China led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, issued a joint political statement with Chinese counterparts promising “concrete progress on the topic of reciprocal data transfer—and this in respect of national and EU data law,” with data from connected cars and automated driving in mind.³⁹

Conclusions

The United States and the European Union are, in some respects, converging in their international data transfer laws and policies. In Washington, free data transfers are no longer sacrosanct. In Europe, they never have been. Viewed from Brussels, it appears that the United States is, finally, joining the EU by creating a formal international data transfers regime—albeit constructed in a piecemeal manner and focused on particular countries, rather than through a comprehensive and general data privacy law.

Yet the rationales for limiting data transfers vary considerably from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Washington now focuses on the national security dangers to US citizens and to the US government from certain categories of personal data moving to the territories of “foreign adversaries.” Brussels instead applies more abstract criteria relating to foreign governments’ commitment to the rule of law, human rights, and especially their access to personal data.

A second important difference is that the United States has effectively created a blacklist of countries to which certain categories of data should not flow, whereas the EU’s adequacy process serves as a means of “white listing” countries with comparable data protection frameworks to its own. Concretely, this structural difference means that the United States concentrates on prohibiting certain data transfers to China and Russia, while the EU institutionally has withheld judgment about transfers to those authoritarian jurisdictions. Critics of the EU’s adequacy practice instead have tended to concentrate on the perceived risks of data transfers to liberal democracies with active foreign surveillance establishments: Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The transatlantic—as well as global—geopolitics of data transfers are in flux. The sudden US shift to viewing certain transfers through a national security lens is unlikely to be strictly mirrored in Europe. In light of the emerging differences in approach, the United States and European governments should consider incorporating the topic of international data transfers into existing political-level conversations. Although data transfer topics have thus far not figured into the formal work of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC),⁴⁰ which has met six times since 2022 including most recently in April,⁴¹ there is no evident reason why that could not change. If the TTC resumes activity after the US elections, it could become a useful bilateral forum for candid discussion of perceived national security risks in data flows.

Utilizing a broader grouping, such as the data protection and privacy authorities of the Group of Seven (G7), which as a group has been increasingly active in the last few years,⁴² also could be considered. The deliberations of this G7 group already have touched generally on the matter of government access, and they could readily expand to how its democratic members assess risks from authoritarians in particular. Eventually, such discussions could be expanded beyond the G7 frame into broader multilateral fora. The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Declaration on Government Access⁴³ is a good building block.

The days when international data transfers were a topic safely left to privacy lawyers are long gone. It’s time for Washington and Brussels to acknowledge that the geopolitics of data flows has moved from the esoteric to the mainstream, and to grapple with the consequences.

Fellow

Kenneth Propp

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Europe Center

European Union Digital Policy

New Atlanticist Mar 26, 2024

In this year of elections, the US-EU Trade and Technology Council should get strategic

By Frances Burwell

On April 4-5, US and EU officials will meet in Leuven, Belgium, where they will need to chart a bolder way forward for the US-EU Trade and Technology Council.

Economy & Business Europe & Eurasia

Issue Brief Jun 20, 2023

More than adequate: New directions in international data transfer governance

By Kenneth Propp

What is the future for transatlantic and international data transfer mechanisms? Can existing efforts achieve greater policy coherence across the global ecosystem?

Digital Policy Economy & Business

Report Nov 2, 2022

Digital sovereignty in practice: The EU’s push to shape the new global economy

By Frances Burwell, Kenneth Propp

What does the European Union’s push for “digital sovereignty” mean in practice? Frances Burwell and Ken Propp provide an update to digital sovereignty and its transatlantic impacts.

Digital Policy Economy & Business

The Europe Center promotes leadership, strategies, and analysis to ensure a strong, ambitious, and forward-looking transatlantic relationship.

Learn more

The post Who’s a national security risk? The changing transatlantic geopolitics of data transfers appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Over the past decade, the number of Ukrainian military veterans has expanded dramatically. Prior to the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, approximately half a million Ukrainians had served in the military campaigns underway in the east of the country since 2014. Over the past two years, this figure has mushroomed. Ukraine’s Ministry of Veteran Affairs has estimated that up to five million Ukrainians may be eligible for veteran status by the end of the war.

In 2024, Ukraine allocated approximately $350 million to support veterans and their families through the Ukrainian Veterans Fund. Nevertheless, there has been considerable criticism over the use of this funding. In a survey of Ukrainian army veterans conducted earlier this year, many said they believed veterans were not having their post-service needs met and required better access to support.

Current Ukrainian legislation offers benefits to veterans such as housing provisions. A range of support is also available for those with disabilities incurred during wartime service and for family members of service personnel. However, critics say there is significant confusion over the availability of support, and complain of inconsistencies along with a frequent lack of funding. In practice, many veterans say they are unable to access the care they need.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The current healthcare struggles of Ukrainian veterans resonate with the US veteran community, which continues to face similar struggles with post-service mental health issues. Like their Ukrainian counterparts, large numbers of American veterans deal with PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

According to a recent survey, nearly one in four American veterans are diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder following military service. This statistic illustrates the widespread nature of mental health concerns among veterans everywhere, and gives an idea of the sheer scale of the challenge facing the Ukrainian authorities.

Ukraine may be able to learn from US experience in the provision of support for military personnel. US veterans can call upon a more structured support system under the Department of Veteran Affairs. However, this approach is not always effective, with veterans often encountering long wait times, bureaucratic hurdles, and a shortage of healthcare providers adequately trained in military cultural competence. This last point is crucial; research has highlighted that more than three-quarters of veterans find it extremely important to receive care from providers who they feel understand them and can treat them appropriately.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

The challenges Ukraine faces in providing the necessary support for the country’s veteran community echo the issues encountered in the United States and elsewhere. Ukraine currently struggles with underfunded and understaffed mental health services. These shortages mean that even when veterans take the appropriate steps to seek help, the necessary resources may not be available or might come too late.

Another issue is lack of financial support. While healthcare is a major concern for Ukrainian veterans, access to financial resources is also critical for general well-being. When surveyed earlier this year, more than half of veterans indicated that they struggled to remain financially secure.

A further significant barrier to effective mental health treatment in Ukraine is the lack of providers with a good understanding of military culture. Ukrainian veterans often comment that their experiences are misunderstood by the medical professionals who are treating them, leading to misdiagnosis and ineffective treatments.

The stigma associated with mental health issues in Ukraine is an additional issue, particularly due to the emphasis on “toughness” and “strength” within military communities. This can lead to veterans failing to acknowledge their struggles and refusing to seek the help they need and deserve.

Addressing these challenges requires a multifaceted approach that includes increased funding for mental health services, enhanced training in military culture for healthcare providers, and an active approach to challenging the narrative around mental health, especially in relation to Ukraine’s military and veteran communities. The task of addressing the stigma attached to mental health is something the wider community can participate in, as Ukrainians seek to create a more compassionate environment for the country’s defenders.

Claire Szewczyk is a digital content coordinator for Hill & Ponton. She formerly worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Further reading

UkraineAlert May 23, 2024

President Zelenskyy’s term is over but he’s still a legitimate wartime leader

By Elena Davlikanova

Kremlin attempts to question the legitimacy of Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy due to the end of his official term in office ignore the obvious impossibility of holding elections amid Europe’s biggest invasion since World War II, writes Elena Davlikanova.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert May 16, 2024

Anger and defiance in Kharkiv as advancing Russian troops draw closer

By Maria Avdeeva

The mood in Kharkiv is a mix of anger, anxiety, and defiance as Ukraine’s second city prepares to defend itself against a new Russian offensive, writes Maria Avdeeva.

Conflict Drones

UkraineAlert May 21, 2024

Ukraine’s Western allies should fear Russian victory not Russian defeat

By Peter Dickinson

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says his country’s allies fear the potential geopolitical consequences of Russian defeat, but Russian victory is a far more realistic and alarming prospect, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Industry

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Ukraine faces long-term mental health challenges among veteran community appeared first on Atlantic Council.

A thorough review reveals that some of the cost estimate increases seem understandable given expensive but worthwhile new requirements. These include replacing thousands of miles of communication cables, improving security, and rebuilding hundreds of silos. Understood in full context, Congress should insist on continuing this vital program—indeed, most Nunn-McCurdy-breaching programs are continued. At the same time, supporters in Congress and the Pentagon need a better argument regarding costs and value propositions. They need to make it clear, especially in the event that costs rise further still, that the value of program should be measured in decades, over its full lifetime, and not simply by its current price tag.

What is a Nunn-McCurdy Review?

Effectively fighting to retain Sentinel requires first understanding when a Nunn-McCurdy Review (NMR) becomes necessary. There are two kinds of cost that trip an NMR: either a sharp rise in the estimated program cost (research and development, construction costs, and procurement of each weapon) or a rise within single unit cost (that is, the cost of just one bomb, aircraft, or satellite). Both numbers are looked at on a per-unit basis to make it easier to weigh the cost of a particular capability separated from order quantity. Large acquisition programs take years to complete and so undergo checks at key milestones. A program’s cost estimate is updated with each milestone and so called its ‘current’ estimate, but the original can only be updated during an NMR. Finally, there are two types of review under the NMR based on the degree of cost overrun. The first is a “significant” breach, which entails a cost increase of either 15 percent above the current projection or 30 percent over the original, while a “critical” breach would be 25 percent or 50 percent respectively. A critical review is performed under the presumption of program cancellation—and such is the case for the Sentinel program now. Therefore, continuing the program will require a root-cause analysis, program restructuring, and the personal sign-off of the US secretary of defense. So, in total, there are eight ways to trigger an NMR, as indicated below.

The Nunn-McCurdy Act passed more than four decades ago to curtail large expenditures for significant defense projects, such as the Patriot missile defense system. From 1997 through 2015, there were ninety-four NMR breaches in total, with nearly half being major programs. Additionally, almost all of these large projects breached the rule twice before completing initial purchases.

Why is Sentinel so expensive?

It is no surprise that the Sentinel program—which will rebuild more than six hundred silos and other facilities, including creating hundreds of new cutting-edge modular missiles, all while consolidating and updating several complicated command-and-control systems—is expensive. For too many years, the Department of Defense waited to carry out missile, communications, silo, and other updates, and all those areas must now be updated all at once. This necessitates a much larger project with more variables, making it even harder to predict expenses.

With the Sentinel program, the Air Force is purchasing much more than just replacements of four-hundred operational Minuteman missiles. The program will also refurbish or rebuild more than six hundred facilities and purchase hundreds of maintenance and other support vehicles, as well as more than one hundred missiles for ongoing testing.

So what, then, explains the unanticipated costs? Pushing new technology too fast often leads to unexpected costs. But seventeen of Sentinel’s eighteen major subsystems are out of the danger zone of being considered “immature,” a period in which cost overruns often originate. Sentinel’s challenges have a blend of sources, including changed requirements, lingering aftereffects of economic realities driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, and most importantly, sheer scale.

The Air Force has never attempted an infrastructure build at this scale and the initial plan was overly optimistic. That initial rosy cost estimate was reconciled with the broader Pentagon’s cost estimate, which was around $95 billion. But the initial approved budget still supposed it could avoid rewiring and major rebuilds. This assumption might have held, but by early summer 2023, the scope of the requirements for the program was changed, in part, to deal with new threats. Though costly, the altered requirements improve Sentinel by leveling up to modern communications capabilities and by adding “security enhancement of both missile hardware and facilities.” A new fiber-based underground communications structure and sixty-two towers will add redundancy while requiring fewer people to operate, given the planned halving of launch control centers. The personnel savings may also impact security forces as well, with reduced on-site maintenance activity and lower false-alarm response rates. These design changes ensure US preeminence in nuclear weapon safety and security while suggesting relief options for recruitment challenges.

Another reason for the increase in the Sentinel program’s cost has been economy-wide increases in costs of construction above background inflation rates. Difficulties in finding and retaining engineers, including getting them timely security clearances, were also cited for increasing cost projections. Manufacturing and construction have been disproportionately impacted by supply-chain interruptions and labor scarcity. In 2019, when the most recent Sentinel cost estimates were being developed, no one was predicting the enduring economic impact of a pandemic.

But the simplest and biggest factor is the sheer size and scope of the project, and with that comes added uncertainty. This is why even post-NMR, the cost estimate has the potential to rise again.

Anyone who has renovated a house or even just watched a few HGTV episodes will know that, even if a building has “good bones,” surprises happen. The fine print on home renovation contracts accounts for the possibility that, after construction begins, new problems will be discovered. Half a century ago, Minuteman siloes in Montana were “rushed to completion,” with workers pouring concrete amid the Cuban missile crisis. These Cold War–era silos remain in some of the harshest environments that exist within the contiguous United States. Sentinel’s NMR should include comprehensive assessments of silo foundations to confirm that only the planned partial silo rebuilds is needed. Likewise, renovation can often be more costly than a new build, so there is merit in looking at so-called “green pasture” build options.

A better value proposition

Sentinel is a large and complex program, but it is worth more—and is a better value—than most realize. The Sentinel missile is slated for up to a sixty-year lifespan, now with a $131.5 billion projected cost for four hundred operational missiles. This amounts to an annualized cost of $2.2 billion for the fleet and facilities, or about $2.7 million per year per missile. For comparison, the F-35A has a flyaway cost of $82.5 million and a fifty-year planned lifespan, giving a per-unit-design-year cost of just under $1.6 million. Taking into account the discrepant availability rates for these two systems, the design year costs of putting each on alert twenty-four hours a day nears parity. This designed lifetime on-mission cost comparison is admittedly incomplete and inexact. But it offers a better way to compare costs across two headline military systems, both of which have faced an NMR.

An upside of Sentinel’s longevity by design is lowered maintenance. Over the past five years, Air Force Global Strike Command logged 2.5 million maintenance hours to keep Minuteman operational, a 30 percent increase from the previous five years. In March of this year, Lt. Col. Anthony Santino, the head of ICBM flight testing, said that he expects a further 25 percent increase over the rest of this decade. That much maintenance translates to needing at least sixty more full-time mechanics at a time when it’s getting harder to meet basic recruiting goals. Sentinel will allow personnel reductions and retain that savings for at least half a century. The nature of the nuclear mission does not lend itself to just-in-time production, or maintenance, to make up for weapons that fall offline during a crisis. Sentinel will invert the manpower needs curve while improving security, reliability, effectiveness, and upgradability of the ICBM force.

Seeing how the Sentinel program adds unique value to national defense requires thinking one step past the eight ways to trip an NMR. Using the annualized design-life cost metric is perhaps one way to show that Sentinel is no more expensive than other recent major military purchases. This framing helps show the sensibility in sustaining the cheapest means of securing strategic deterrence for future generations.

Lieutenant Colonel James McCue is a senior US Air Force SkillBridge fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security in the Forward Defense program.

Note: The Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security conducts work on nuclear and strategic forces that is sponsored by donors including Los Alamos National Laboratory, Northrop Grumman Corporation (which has the sole contract from the US Air Force to engineer and manufacture Sentinel ICBMs), the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the United States Department of Defense, the United States Department of Energy, the United States Department of State, as well as general support to the Scowcroft Center. This article did not involve any of these donors and reflects only the author’s views. The positions expressed do not reflect the official position of the United States Air Force or the Department of Defense.

The post Congress should save the Sentinel ICBM—its true value is more than simply its cost appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On May 20, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Marc Polymeropoulos spoke on a Cipher Brief podcast titled “Is Russia Attacking U.S. Government Employees Using High-Energy Weapons?” about Havana Syndrome.

Fellow

Marc Polymeropoulos

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Afghanistan Europe & Eurasia

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Polymeropoulos on a Cipher Brief podcast about Havana Syndrome appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On May 20, Forward Defense Nonresident Senior Fellow Samantha Vinograd spoke on CBS about the helicopter crash that killed Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister and the potential ramifications for global and regional security.

Fellow

Samantha Vinograd

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Arabic Defense Policy

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Vinograd for CBS News about the helicopter crash that killed the Iranian President and Foreign Minister appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Flagship Event Thu, May 16, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

2024 Distinguished Leadership Awards

This year’s Distinguished Leadership Awards celebrate leaders navigating the world through multifaceted crises.

Read more

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

JOHN F.W. ROGERS: I want to welcome everyone to the Atlantic Council Distinguished Leadership Awards. And it’s a pleasure to see all of you here tonight. And we gather to honor some of the world’s most impressive and influential leaders, and to highlight the Atlantic Council’s time-honored commitment to providing the intellectual, engaged global leadership necessary to meet the world’s most demanding challenges, and to ensure that self-determination, that freedom and prosperity can one day be an enduring reality across all nations.

We convene, however, at a decisive moment for the Atlantic Council and the world over. In an era of uncommon geopolitical uncertainty and unrest, as we navigate the social, economic, and political issues that define one of the most fragile, if not foreboding, moments of our time. It is vital that we are guided by people of insight, and experience, and resolve. Leaders who confront obstacles with the confidence and the steady hand that will help chart a course towards a more stable and secure world order. We are fortunate to have such individuals with us as we honor them tonight.

Moreso, the collective interest of peoples and of cultures and countries everywhere, with so much at stake, are fortunate to have our slate of honorees as their—at their posts, defending the principles of democracy and promoting a peaceful way of life [to] which all are entitled as a basic tenet of humanity—intrinsic and universal actually to all humankind. In no small way, the formidable trials we face in the world today are a reminder that the Atlantic Council raison d’être has never been more relevant or critically central to geopolitical harmony.

We must acknowledge that the work will be difficult, that the solutions are hard earned. But I say, with optimism and confidence, that we are prepared as we’ve ever been in our sixty-year history, with world-class thought leadership, tactical acumen, and operational expertise, to meet this moment with a single-minded resolve that is second to none. In doing so, working in tandem with our international partners, we are able to galvanize an influential network of global leaders and policy experts, whose own intellectual contribution and actionable strategies both complement and buttress the work of the Council. In solidarity we stand proven and ready to shape the global future together. That mission is greatly enriched by the distinguished leaders that we celebrate tonight.

An American president once observed, if your actions inspire others to dream, to learn more, to do more, and become more, you are a leader.

This year, the Atlantic Council recognizes that undeniable few who inspire us and the world to become more, to envision something better, to strive for something brighter, and safeguard those ideals that we hold dear. They represent the very best of our transatlantic partnership and serve as shining examples of the Atlantic Council’s highest aspirations.

And it’s now my privilege to add four exemplary leaders to the rolls of our past honorees who have distinguished themselves each in their own way and made an enduring if not indelible impact on the world.

Tonight we salute a high school physics teacher who became a mayor of his hometown, a leader of a national political party, and eventually reaching the highest rungs of his land, the president of Romania; an army brat who earned a degree in biology from Princeton, who speaks four languages, and who has forged a career from a combat infantryman to a supreme allied commander of Europe; a precocious student, one of the very first women ever to attend La Salle Academy, who would graduate valedictorian, become a Rhodes scholar, governor of her home state, and now the US secretary of Commerce; and an Academy Award winner, an action hero, and a reluctant Miss World contestant, an actress whose acclaimed roles include goodwill ambassador for the United Nations.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are our 2024 Distinguished Leader honorees, and I know I speak for all of us in this room when I say that we are in awe of their achievements, inspired by their character, and humbled in their presence.

Now please turn your attention to the screen, and we will begin the first of our videos honoring the president of Romania.

ANNOUNCER: To present the Distinguished International Leadership Award, please welcome Atlantic Council International Advisory Board chairman, Stephen J. Hadley.

STEPHEN J. HADLEY: Good evening. Thank you all for being here for this terrific evening program. We have a wonderful group of awardees, and I have the honor of introducing one of them to you now.

From his early days as a physics teacher in the small town of Sibiu, to serving as head of state of Romania, President Klaus Werner Iohannis has always had a vision for the future of his country. Over the course of his career, President Iohannis has led his country in bolstering judicial independence and strengthening the rule of law, increasing electoral participation, protecting the rights of minorities, and reforming Romania’s educational system. He has shown what nations of vision can achieve with a steadfast commitment to democracy, fairness, confidence, and rule of law.

Importantly, President Iohannis has always believed that there is no contradiction between a united Europe and a strong transatlantic alliance. Quite the contrary; they are mutually reinforcing.

As national security adviser to President George W. Bush, I was present in Romania’s capital city of Bucharest during the 2008 NATO Summit. I witnessed the failure of NATO to offer a membership action plan to Ukraine and Georgia, a failure that gave Russian President Vladimir Putin the belief that he could invade each of these countries without fear of a unified NATO response.

Now, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine at their doorstep, Romanians have an enormous stake in maintaining and reinforcing European and allied unity. President Iohannis has responded by bolstering Romania and NATO’s defense of the alliance’s eastern flank, strengthening the US-Romanian strategic partnership, advocating for continued NATO and EU enlargement, and forging strategic partnerships with Japan and South Korea. Under his leadership, Romania has provided critical support to Ukraine in its fight for freedom and has been the most important route for Ukrainian grain shipments to the Global South by sea, road, and rail. As we celebrate President Iohannis tonight, let us hope that his principled leadership inspires others to face this historic moment as he has, with courage, with dedication, and above all, with vision.

And now, please join me in welcoming President Iohannis to the stage.

KLAUS WERNER IOHANNIS: Thank you very much. Good evening.

I am honored to receive this award. I accept it as a recognition of Romania’s leadership over the past twenty years as a proud NATO member, and US partner and friend.

Starting in 2001, a few years before we joined NATO, and then throughout our two decades of membership, Romania and the Romanian people have made bold, brave, and determined decisions to strengthen the democratic fabric of our society, live up to our transatlantic security commitments, and turn our country into an anchor of strategic stability, prosperity, and progress in a still troubled part of Europe.

Romania has set an example in many areas in Central and Eastern Europe from defending the eastern flank of NATO to investing in democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. These Romanian efforts have consequences that go far beyond our national borders. They, in fact, have helped strengthen Europe and the transatlantic alliance and they deserve to be recognized.

So I would like to thank Fred Kempe and the Atlantic Council board of directors for making this choice to recognize and honor Romania for these efforts. I’m also grateful to the former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley for the introduction tonight and for the unparalleled work in helping to shape and implement President George W. Bush’s vision of a Europe whole and free where Romanians and the other Central and East European nations can embrace dignity, democracy, and prosperity. We should honor this tonight as well.

In 2011 Vice President Joe Biden was on this stage for the same award and at the time made a very powerful statement about America’s engagement in Central Europe. He said, I quote, “The time for Central Europe has come. You have shown yourselves ready for common challenges, willing to tackle them, and able to overcome them. That’s why in America we no longer think in terms of what we can do for Central Europe but, rather, in terms of what we can do together with Central Europe.”

And, indeed, our country stepped up to meet the responsibilities of being America’s eastward partners and allies. That is how the Bucharest Nine format occurred, an initiative spearheaded in 2015 by Romania and Poland that includes all eastern flank nations and provides a robust platform to coordinate our security resources within NATO.

This is how most of our countries on the eastern flank have started to make progress in raising defense budgets and upgrading our military infrastructure and equipment. That is how our countries have been empowered to act with unity and resolve and to put up a strong deterrent against the Russian expansionism while at the same time holding true to our core transatlantic democratic values.

There is no other more powerful proof of that than the way in which our countries on the eastern flank have responded to Russia’s unjustified aggression against Ukraine and to Ukraine’s vital needs to defend itself and to reject this horrible Russian attack.

As president of Romania I can tell you that Romania has truly been standing out in the first line through its efforts to help Ukraine. Over 7.5 million Ukrainians have crossed the border into Romania seeking refuge, safety, and safe passage. Almost forty thousand children are now studying in Romanian classrooms.

Millions of tons of humanitarian assistance have crossed into Ukraine through and from Romania. Romania also helped Ukraine maintain a vital economic lifeline, leveraging our unique maritime connections and facilitating the transit of almost forty million tons of grain, almost 70 percent of Ukrainian grain exports through the Romanian ports on the Danube River and the Black Sea. All these efforts continue for as long as it takes because we know that Romania plays a key role in helping Ukraine achieve victory and peace, succeed economically, and integrate into the European Union.

So my message to you tonight is, Romania took this call seriously. What can America do, together with Central Europe? We are working together to enhance our collective security, advanced freedom and economic progress, and make sure that democracy continues to deliver. It is our shared responsibility. And you can count on our ability to carry through because the United States has no better ally than Romania. I dedicate this award to all Romanians and to the partnership and friendship between Romania and the United States of America. Thank you very much.

ANNOUNCER: To present the Distinguished [International] Leadership Award, please welcome back John F.W. Rogers.

JOHN F.W. ROGERS: Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Atlantic Council it’s a great privilege to recognize the honorable Gina Raimondo with a Distinguished International Leadership Award. We do so for her pioneering spirit, and her extraordinary record of achievement, for selfless service to people and causes that rise above self-interest or parochial interests, and for unflinching determination to always do what’s right to find a way forward and to see her vision through. In short, we honor Gina not for what she has accomplished but what she has accomplished for and on behalf of others.

And she does so with grace, and with understanding, with empathy, and, yes, with a relentless tenacity and a sense of purpose that make her an undeniable force of nature. And I think it was her son who best described it to me: Never stand in between an Italian woman and her objective. It’s no hyperbole to say that Gina is set apart with a rare handful who come along each generation, the most gifted and self-driven among us, be that innate or shaped by one’s experiences, with a capacity to help the rest of us not only see what the future can be, but can lead us to it. Who can show us the way.

You have all heard the expression, it is the hope that kills you. Now, usually that’s applied to my favorite sports team. But when you are on Gina’s team, it is the lack of hope that is fatal. Because she views the world through the optimistic lens of opportunity rather than dwelling on how difficult things may be, she focuses on getting things done. It’s something that I’ve had the opportunity to witness firsthand, or more aptly put, the privilege to be able to learn from, as we’ve partnered to support programs for small businesses during her tenure as Rhode Island’s governor. In a state where small enterprises employ nearly 50 percent of the private workforce, Gina made it her personal mission to create jobs and opportunities, if not a better way of life, for her constituents. From my front row seat, both her efforts and outcomes were nothing shy of awe-inspiring. But I’ve come to learn that that’s just Gina.

You know, an English poet once wrote, originality is being different from oneself, not others, which has at its essence, a message about exploring more, growing more, becoming more than who we are at the outset of life’s journey. And from her earliest years, Gina demonstrated a markable aptitude for progressive achievement. Further still, it seemed to be a rare sort of success, boldly crossing any lines of expectation. She was always improvising, innovating, pushing boundaries, even her own, showing us that being different from oneself is perhaps the most authentic way to be true to oneself, when considering the outer limits of our potential.

As an adolescent riding the public bus to school, Gina proved destined to be a trailblazer. She was among the first girls allowed to attend her high school, not an insignificant display of courage and grit for those, and all of us here, who can remember the tribulations of teenage years. She would go on to graduate as the class valedictorian, ratifying her right to be there in spades, and paving the way for girls to follow. More than that, Gina showed them what was possible, a real-world application of the adage, if you can see it, you can be it.

Continuing on to Harvard where she would graduate, here again, as the top economic student in her class, Gina found new areas for growth, if not her fair share of sprains, and bumps, and bruises by joining the women’s rugby team which she has since credited as being the good training for her career on politics. Something that I’m sure all of us can certainly understand.

She would go on to become a Rhodes Scholar and earn her doctorate at Oxford, where her thesis on single motherhood and her experiences with housing and poverty clinics inspired her passion for advocacy, and eventually, a law degree from Yale. Years later, having spent time in the private sector working for a venture capital firm before deciding to start her own investment firm, Gina recounts that it wasn’t until the prospect of local public libraries closing—the same institution that taught her immigrant grandfather to read English—that she redirected her efforts toward public service, first becoming the treasurer of her state, and four years later, the first woman governor of the state of Rhode Island.

And from her perch today as commerce secretary, Gina continues to create the conditions for good-paying jobs, thriving entrepreneurship, and a competitive business landscape. In doing so, she is roundly recognized for being innovative, pragmatic, open-minded, and most of all, collaborative. And by the way, if you ever took a college course on legislative processes in the US, you have come across a book, The Dance of Legislation, and you only need to look at the dance of the CHIPS Act as the case study of how she gets things done. All the while, she has managed to fulfill what she would describe as her most important duties, as a spouse and a mother of two. And I’m very happy that her husband is here tonight, Andy Moffit, to see her.

Let me conclude with these remarks: I think all of you may remember Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”: “Two roads diverged into a yellow wood, and sorry [I could not travel both. And be one traveler, long I stood, and looked down [one] as [far] as I could.”

But in the end of this poem, it is all that one road is chosen. “Took [the] one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Now, whether that is a satire on decision making, or a commentary on destiny, in any event, in Gina’s case her road has been few would ever be able to take, even if they wanted to, as it requires an echelon of insight, tenacity, charisma, and character. As such, by fortitude or fate, Gina Raimondo’s road has indeed been the one less taken, and that has made all the difference. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Secretary Raimondo.

GINA RAIMONDO: Thank you, John. I certainly feel unworthy of this award, but I think I feel even more unworthy of that introduction. A better friend you will not find then John Rogers, a man of grace, integrity, and passion. Thank you. He also knows me extremely well, so I was a little nervous when I heard he was introducing me. So I appreciate the kindness.

A huge thank you and gratitude to the Atlantic Council for this award. And more important, thank you for your work which has endured for more than sixty years to promote transatlantic cooperation and the core values that have made our world a better place. I also have to congratulate my fellow awardees. Mr. President, congratulations. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your leadership. It’s quite humbling for me to share the stage with the honorees this evening.

I asked, why would I be chosen for this award? And I was told that it was in part because of the work I’ve done to advance US national security and the security of democracies around the world. Now, I have to be honest with you. When President Biden, or president-elect, asked me if I would serve as his commerce secretary, truth be told I wasn’t really sure what a commerce secretary did. Then you start learning about the job, and you realize you do everything from running the weather service to national fisheries, to space commerce, to export controls. So really, honestly, there’s not much you don’t do.

But it didn’t take me long to realize the absolutely vital role that the Commerce Department plays in ensuring our national security. And here’s why: Because our economic strength, our economic competitiveness is national security. And that is truer now than it has ever been, because in the twenty-first century, this technological age, the source of our strength isn’t just that we have the best, most advanced military in the world—although, of course, we do and we need to.

But the truth of the matter is that our ability to operate in the world, to lead the world, depends vitally on our economic strength. And as this institution knows well, the world is a safer place when America leads. And our ability to lead depends entirely on the strength of the US economy, its dynamism, and the speed at which we innovate. And so that’s why I’m so focused—persistent, as John would say, obsessed, as I have said—with helping US businesses to out-compete, and out-innovate, and to do that with our allies.

Because when I travel all around the globe, I often bring private sector leaders with me. And it’s America’s brands, America’s entrepreneurs, and our technical leadership that are the envy of the world. And it helps to make the US a partner of choice. But I’ll tell you, some of my most successful trips have included—have included trips where I’ve invited a top member of the US military to join me. I’ve done this several times, most recently to Costa Rica.

I had the great privilege to travel to Costa Rica with the [US Southern Command] Commander General Laura Richardson, first female four-star in the US Army. And why did we go together to Costa Rica? We went together to focus on diversifying and strengthening our semiconductor supply chains in the Western Hemisphere. This helps US companies to be more competitive, to diversify away from just one or two countries in Asia, and it enhances our national security. And as the president just said, it also allows us to show that democracy delivers. Democracy delivers jobs, investment, and opportunity.

And so whether we’re talking about enhancing supply chain resiliency with our investments in Latin America, working with our allies in Europe, expanding our commercial presence in the Indo-Pacific, it has never been truer that our national security and our economic competitiveness are interconnected and inexorably linked. If we want to secure resilient supply chains, if want a safe and prosperous future, and if we want to maintain US leadership, it all depends on the strength and dynamism of our economy and our private sector.

So tomorrow when I go back to work, or later this evening, it means we’re going to get back to work investing at home, investing in broadband, investing in manufacturing, investing in chips, investing in AI. It means we’re going to continue to work to deepen our commercial relationships with commercial partners and allies all across the world. And it means we’re going to work alongside our allies, many in this room, to fuel innovation, and to do it consistent with our shared values. And of course, we must always protect our most sensitive technology from falling into the wrong hands, those countries who don’t share our values.

So now I know what the Commerce Department secretary does. That’s what we’re focused on, the commerce secretary. And I will end by saying none of the work that I do, none of the work that the fifty thousand incredible employees that I have at the Commerce Department does would be possible without your support. With partners like the Atlantic Council, every person in this room—private sector, public sector, civil society—we have to stay committed now more than ever. So thank you to the Atlantic Council for your decades of dedication to supporting a strong international system, and thank you again for this great honor. Thank you.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome Atlantic Council President and CEO Frederick Kempe.

FREDERICK KEMPE: So, first of all, congratulations to President Iohannis and Secretary Raimondo. What a wonderful start of the evening.

We’re about to go into the dinner break, and then after that we’ll be honoring General Cavoli and Michelle Yeoh.

But first I wanted to say something about the flags that you see here along the wall. These flags are to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of NATO, history’s most successful and enduring alliance. The flags represent all thirty-two members of the alliance, with the recent addition of Finland and Sweden. So welcome, Finland and Sweden.

Right now, and in honor of the alliance and before the break, and also in recognition of General Cavoli’s award upcoming, we’re going to present you a delicious appetizer in the form of a musical tribute to honor this year’s seventy-fifth anniversary of NATO. Joining America’s Own, an incredible brass and wind ensemble, please welcome Jazz at Lincoln Center favorite, trumpeter and celebrated recording artist, Bria Skonberg.

[Dinner break]

FREDERICK KEMPE: Hello, everybody. If you could take your seats, we’re going to continue our awards.

Ladies and gentlemen—ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, tonight’s honorees, thank you so night—for all coming out tonight for this small birthday party for my wife, Pam. Now, I promised Pam that I would do nothing to embarrass her in front of this vast audience. As one of America’s leading deception detectors, she should have known I was lying. But happy birthday, Pam. Thanks for participating with us. By the way, it’s also the 140th birthday of Harry Truman, but I’m going to come back to that. Pam is much younger.

With apologies, Pam, and on a more serious note, as you all know by now, we are here to celebrate a birthday that’s somewhat more fundamental to the purpose of the Atlantic Council. NATO was born seventy-five years ago, just down the street from here at Mellon Auditorium on April 4, 1949. That is when the alliance founders signed the world’s most—the world’s most enduring, history’s most enduring and successful alliance into being.

As I wrote on that anniversary, President Truman and other founders had an advantage, a really significant advantage, that today’s leaders cannot replicate. All of them had experienced—all of them had experienced the horrors of World War II. All the founders of the Atlantic Council—Dean Acheson, Mary Pillsbury Lord, Henry Cabot Lodge, Lucius Clay, they had all experienced those horrors. And a great many of them also personally knew the ravages of World War I. They understood the urgency of the moment. I’m not sure we do.

That deficit of memory is our greatest peril in 2024, a time when we are facing the greatest threats to global order since the 1930s. It’s perhaps why we have, in my view, responded insufficiently to the challenges of our age, recognizing too slowly the dangers posed by Russian despot Vladimir Putin and like-minded autocrats. One cannot change the historical experience of today’s alliance leaders, nor can one change the historic experience of their electorates. Even President Biden, at age eighty-one, was only two years old when World War II ended.

The best we can do is listen to President Harry S. Truman’s words from the day of the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, and heed its warnings. And I quote: “Twice in recent years nations have felt the sickening blow of unprovoked aggression. 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,” end quote, Harry Truman.

He called the treaty, a simple document. He likened it to a homeowner’s agreement to protect the neighborhood. He said, if it had existed in 1914 or 1939, the community it brought together could have prevented the acts of aggression which led to two world wars. It is in Truman’s spirit that we come together this evening as a global neighborhood and, as I said, by coincidence, this would be his 140th birthday.

You are sitting among six hundred individuals from more than fifty countries to celebrate Distinguished Leadership and tonight’s honorees. You are senior officials, global business executives, military brass, leading journalists, civil society leaders, and more. President Iohannis, General Cavoli, Secretary Raimondo, and Michelle Yeoh, congratulations and thank you for inspiring us all with your example of principled leadership toward a better world.

President Iohannis, you don’t know this, but my relationship with your country dates back to the time of Ceaușescu, when I was working as a journalist for Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal. And anyone who’s experienced any of that can only wonder at the miracle of Romania’s free markets, free peoples, membership in the European Union, NATO. None of that was to be taken for granted. So congratulations to Romania for that.

I can tell you a lot about my time in Romania. Our relationship, the Atlantic Council’s relationship with Romania, dates back to the NATO summit of 2008, where we hosted a youth summit, supported by Dinu Patriciu, who became a member of the Atlantic Council, in partnership with the intelligence leader at that time of Romania, George Maior, who was an ambassador here, with speakers that included President George W. Bush.

I think Steve Hadley was right that the outcome of that summit was not great. But I think the Atlantic Council’s relationship with Romania started there, and that’s terrific.

It’s great to have in the audience Alex Serban, who has been one of our strongest supporters in Bucharest ever since. It’s wonderful to be working with your embassy here and Ambassador Muraru. We have our partner in the audience, Remus Pricopie. And Remus, it’s so wonderful to work with you and your university.

President Iohannis, for us this is not a one-off event. We understood the strategic importance of Romania early on. And we’ve just wondered at how you’ve built it, and we agree with you that there is no better American ally than Romania. There are a lot of good Romanian allies, so we’ll count them equal. But there is no better.

Our honoring of you this evening marks a high point in this long and strategic relationship.

General Cavoli, we’ll be turning to you soon for your award. I know you’re joined tonight by members of your family. Oh, my God, how proud you must be of General Cavoli. It’s nice to have your family here.

In the early 1960s, the Atlantic Council’s founders debated a core question: How should they define the scope of their organization’s mission? Mary Pillsbury Lord, the sole signatory of the Council’s certificate of incorporation in 1961, argued for a global approach to transatlantic concerns. And there were people who were against her. But she wanted an approach for the Atlantic Council that went far beyond the United States and Europe.

I wish she were here today to see the Atlantic Council in this room. She foresaw the challenges we would face together. The Atlantic Council’s mission is to shape the global future together with partners and allies, building from our transatlantic base, but working closely with our global partners.

We do this at a time when we confront wars in Europe and the Middle East, continued tensions regarding China, a contest for the commanding heights of technological change, and a breathtaking slate of elections around the world. More than 50 percent of humanity is voting in this year, including our own elections this November.

We act, at the Atlantic Council, in the conviction that with sufficient political will, we can not only navigate these difficulties, but emerge even stronger. We do that across sixteen dynamically collaborative programs and centers, both regional and functional in nature.

Just last year, we were involved in major convenings in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and, of course, the United States. We took leading roles at COP28 in Dubai and at the IMF-World Bank meetings in Marrakesh.

Mary Pillsbury Lord, I wish you were here.

Our functional centers tackle geopolitical and geoeconomic issues, energy and climate issues, security and technological issues, the connection between freedom and prosperity. Tonight I’m delighted to announce the creation of something new, something we’re calling Atlantic Council Global Technology Programs, which will help galvanize all the amazing technology-related work we’re doing across the organization, with a focus on harnessing technology for good.

Managed by Atlantic Council Vice President Graham Brookie, this will bring together our GeoTech Center, our Digital Forensic Research Lab, our Cyber Statecraft Initiative, and our Technology and Democracy Initiative. It’ll work closely with the Scowcroft Center, which remains the lead on defense-related and strategic-related technologies, and the Europe Center, which leads our work on transatlantic technological cooperation, trying to build a transatlantic digital marketplace, and the Global Energy Center, which focuses on clean energy technology.

Bolstered by programmatic innovations like this, the Atlantic Council will move this fall—and I hope you’ll all come there—into a new global headquarters at 1400 L, just two blocks from our current office. It’s a gorgeous space. It will be a transformative move for the Atlantic Council. You will be in great company with members of our board and international advisory board leadership, who have also contributed and named high-profile spaces in the building. And on that score, let me thank Adrienne Arsht, John Rogers, and Phillipe Amon for stepping up first. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about our new global headquarters to speak to me or anyone else at the Atlantic Council.

These two announcements, the creation of the Atlantic Council Global Technology Program and the opening of our new global headquarters, are just two examples of our continued story of growth and innovation, a story so many of you in this audience helped write. Thanks to you, the Atlantic Council has become a remarkable force multiplier, and for our transatlantic and global partners in our quest to navigate these difficult times, hugely difficult times, and shape a freer and more prosperous and secure future.

And in that spirit, we now want to thank many of you who are here this evening as co-chairs of tonight’s distinguished leadership awards dinner. I’d ask you to turn your attention to the screens as we salute those individuals who have made this possible tonight. And I join my finance chair in George Lund, in thanking you so much for this. Please hold your applause so that everyone can hear the names and companies who have co-chaired this evening.

ANNOUNCER: And now, please join us in saluting the co-chairs of the 2024 Atlantic Council Distinguished Leadership Awards. We thank all of tonight’s sponsors for their generous support for this evening’s program, and for the Atlantic Council’s ongoing work to shape the global future together.

Adrienne Arsht. Sarah Beshar. John F.W. Rogers. RTX, represented by Greg Hayes. Airbus, represented by C. Jeffrey Knittel. Alpha Ring International, represented by Peter Liu. Robert J. Abernethy. Bank of America, represented by Larry Di Rita. Blackstone Charitable Foundation, represented by Stephen A. Schwarzman. Ahmed Charai. Chevron Corporation, represented by Albert J. Williams. Edelman, represented by Richard Edelman. E-INFRA Group, represented by Teofil Muresan. FedEx Corporation, represented by Gina F. Adams. Georgetown Entertainment Group, represented by Franco Nuschese. Google, represented by Karan Bhatia. Kirkland & Ellis, represented by Ivan Schlager. John and Susan Klein. KNDS, represented by Marcel Grisnigt. Leviatan Group, represented by Cătălin Robert Podaru. George Lund. Mapa Group, represented by Mehmet Nazif Günal. William Marron. Alexander V. Mirtchev. MITRE, represented by Keoki Jackson. Ahmet M. Oren. Pernod Ricard USA, represented by Tara Engel. Charles O. Rossotti. SAIC, represented by John Bonsell. Serban and Musneci Associates, represented by Alex Serban. Squire Patton Boggs, represented by Edward J. Newberry. Steptoe, represented by Karl Hopkins. Thales, represented by Alan Pellegrini. UPS, represented by Laura Lane. Ambassador Clifford M. Sobel.

FREDERICK KEMPE: I want to ask all the co-chairs to rise. If all the co-chairs could rise, so we can applaud you. Thank you so much. We can’t do our work without you. Thanks so much for that.

And finally, I’d like to ask the following individuals to rise. Some of you will be rising for a second time. So, International Advisory Board members of the Atlantic Council and Atlantic Council staff and board members of the Atlantic Council, please rise. Please join me in applauding this remarkable community of action.

One last point before our next honoree. Don’t forget to take your gift bags tonight. Which include my dear friend David Ignatius’ new novel, hot off the press, Phantom Orbit, generously contributed by Adrienne Arsht, and Frank McCourt’s provocative new book about managing our new digital age, Our Biggest Fight.

With that, ladies and gentlemen, please turn your attention to the screens as we salute tonight’s next honoree.

ANNOUNCER: To present our next awardee, please welcome General John Abizaid.

GENERAL JOHN P. ABIZAID (RET.): Good evening, everybody. It’s great to see you. I have the great honor of introducing to you General Chris Cavoli. Now, Cavoli and I have known each other for a long time. That’s very difficult for him to imagine what I’m going to say. But it’s all right. Relax, Chris.

But before we do that, I really want all the veterans of the United States armed forces and our allied nations in NATO to stand up and be recognized. Thank you. It’s great to have veterans in the audience.

I first met Chris when he was a lieutenant of infantry when I assumed command of the Third Battalion 325th Airborne Battalion Combat Team in Vicenza, Italy. In a battalion packed with the most talented junior officers in our Army, most of whom were top West Point graduates, Chris distinguished himself as a skilled leader and superb trainer. A Princeton graduate, he was well known for his famous undergraduate thesis entitled The Effect of Earthworms on the Vertical Distribution of Slime Molds in the Soil. As you could imagine, this work held him in good stead with the sergeants of the US Army Ranger School.

However, Chris demonstrated his true genius by marrying Christina Dacey, a smart, dynamic leader in her own right. These two professionals not only built wonderful careers together, they also built an Army family that traveled the world and had two sons who exhibit the great talents of both their parents.

Chris’s career is filled with remarkable achievements: a master’s degree in Russian studies at Yale, a foreign area officer who speaks Italian, Russian, and French. He personifies our nation’s commitment to the Atlantic alliance.

Not only does he understand the complexities of our most dangerous adversary but he knows how to fight and win. As a general he reformed the doctrine and structure of the alliance to reflect the realities of modern warfare and he ably assists our Ukrainian friends in their difficult struggle against Russian aggression.

He, along with his partners, have forged a formidable alliance. While his accomplishments of a general officer are great, I also honor him for his combat leadership. I can remember visiting his infantry battalion in one of the most restive dangerous provinces of Afghanistan.

There he led tough, disciplined American soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division while at the same time building professional confidence and competence of his Afghan allies. Here was a fit, dedicated, charismatic young colonel serving in one of the most isolated, dangerous places on earth and it was clear he held the respect of all.

His leadership is marked by courage both on and off the battlefield, by professional competence second to none, and by a remarkable common sense often not seen. Many officers aspire to high command but too few understand that being a warfighter means forging a team that must be able to fight and win tomorrow.

It’s been remarkable to know Chris all these years. He was the best lieutenant I ever knew, the best lieutenant colonel I ever knew, and the best general I know. In Chris Cavoli, our nation has built a gifted soldier, statesman, and leader. Thank God for his leadership at this dangerous time in our history.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome this remarkable soldier.

GENERAL CHRISTOPHER G. CAVOLI: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests. Way too many to mention you all. What a gathering.

Thank you all. I’m very deeply humbled to stand before you tonight, mostly because I recognize that this honor is really not about me. It’s really about the defenders of thirty-two nations, the men, women, and families of the United States and our NATO allies who tirelessly stand guard to secure our freedoms, and I thank them for that in front of you tonight.

General Abizaid, thank you for the far too kind introduction. Thank you for reminding everybody why I became an infantry officer, because I was not a biologist. Thank you for your leadership and your inspiration since I met you when I was a young lieutenant. There is no one I have wanted to emulate more. I’m so lucky to have you and Kathy here tonight.

To the Atlantic Council, thank you for this award. Your dedication to transatlantic cooperation is exemplary and it contributes to the peace and prosperity that we have come to enjoy.

My fellow honorees, it’s a privilege to share the stage with you. Your accomplishments remind us that security requires a full commitment from across all elements of society from everyone. So thank you. We salute you.

Finally, to my family—my wife, my brothers Jim and Steve, my parents. I think they provide a fitting backdrop to this evening. You see, my dad was born and raised in Italy. He lived there without his own dad throughout the war, the Second World War. Afterwards, he came to America. He became an officer. He married my mom, who is from the exact same small town in the Dolomites of northern Italy. We’re working with a very shallow gene pool here. He served a career devoted to our country and to the transatlantic alliance.

My brothers and I grew up as Army brats, as you have heard: Kansas, Texas, so forth, but also Germany and Italy. And my own sons—not here tonight, unfortunately; out in California—grew up the same way, in an Army family living abroad, living the alliance—living the alliance—because our alliance is so much more than simply a promise of collective defense. It’s a promise of a wonderful future. It’s a promise of a future based on shared values of liberty, freedom, and democracy.

It’s the promise that twelve nations made to each other seventy-five years ago this year. Standing amid the ruination of the Second World War, twelve nations banded together and they declared never again. For seventy-five years, we have held that line: An attack on one would be an attack on all. And so there was not an attack on anyone. There has been peace. It hasn’t been easy. We’ve been tested. We’ve been tried. But we have always come through, always. And we have together produced a world that was at peace and growing and prosperous.

But today, dark clouds gather on the horizon. The specter of war once again hangs over the European continent and, indeed, the world. Russia’s ruthless, unprovoked, senseless war in Ukraine stands as yet another, as the latest test to our alliance and to the globe.

And so NATO does what it does: It rises again to its mission. We are reinvigorating our system of collective defense. We have developed and approved plans to defend every square inch of our alliance. Nations are racing to resource those plans. Nations have raised their defense spending dramatically in the past two years. Our exercise program demonstrates our readiness, and we are learning and modernizing at the speed of innovation that we see in the war in Ukraine. We are stronger today than ever.

It is fantastic, unexpected, and yet it’s not unexpected. It’s what we do. We have always banded together. For seventy-five years, we have spotted the key problems, organized against them, and then faced them down. And we are doing that again. NATO is now stronger, it’s more united, it’s more determined, it is bigger than I have ever seen.

These are truly historic times, ladies and gentlemen. History doesn’t always come easy, doesn’t always flow nicely, and this is one of those times. An adversary has threatened us, and we respond. But our response is historic.

It’s such a privilege for me to be part of that response. It’s such a privilege to be part of that response. And it’s a privilege to be here tonight receiving this award on behalf of the brave men and women of our alliance. God bless you all. Thank you very much.

ANNOUNCER: To present our final award this evening, please welcome the Oscar-nominated, Tony, Grammy, and Emmy Award-winning artist, Cynthia Erivo.

CYNTHIA ERIVO: Good evening, excellencies and distinguished guests. It is an honor to be here with you tonight. I would like to thank the Atlantic Council, John Rogers, and the extraordinary Adrienne Arsht, who is also extremely stylish, for giving me the pleasure of presenting the 2024 Distinguished Artistic Leadership Award to my dear friend, Michelle Yeoh.

As we come together in celebration and recognition of global champions, it is no doubt that Michelle embodies the dedication, grace, and empowerment deserving of such an award. Her decades-long career is stellar in depth and dazzling in variety. From her captivating performances in martial arts to her magnetic portrayals in epic drama, her charisma and star quality is undeniable. Michelle is simply a trailblazer, a pioneer who has shattered glass ceilings and defied stereotypes, paving the way for future generations of artists to follow in her footsteps, just like me. Her dedication to her craft, her commitment to excellence, and her unwavering passion for storytelling serve as an inspiration to us all. She’s the reason I want to do my own stunts. Truly.

But it’s more than just her artistic talent that we recognize tonight. Any friend of Michelle knows that beyond her remarkable gifts on screen, she is a woman of humanity and compassion which extends well beyond her work in front of a camera. Her longtime advocacy for gender equality, ending poverty, and environmental protection is a testimony of her moral obligation to help others and fight against global inequality. In 2016, Michelle was appointed as goodwill ambassador of the United Nations Development Programme, a title she has taken dutifully to promote the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. She continues to use her platform to promote and mobilize her humanitarian efforts in hopes of securing a brighter future for our entire planet.

She is a symbol of perseverance, empowerment, and an inspiration to us all. So tonight, in honoring her excellence, unwavering passion, and inspiring character, it is my absolute pleasure to present—now, wait a minute. I also have to say that this extraordinary woman is one of the most stylish people I have ever met in my life. She is also one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I have ever had the privilege of standing in front of a screen with. It is not easy to sing in front of a camera, and now we have discovered that she can. And I can’t wait for all of you to hear that.

But, it is my absolute pleasure to present the 2024 Distinguished Artistic Leadership Award to the one and only, ever graceful and always elegant, Michelle Yeoh.

MICHELLE YEOH: Oh, gosh. Thank you, Cynthia. I can’t wait for all of you to see Elphaba played amazingly by Cynthia in October—no, November, Thanksgiving, soaring to the skies, not just physically but with her voice, as well. You all are in for a real treat, and thank you for all those kind words! I’m going to have to make up for that. Lovely, thank you.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is a true pleasure and privilege to spend this evening in such amazing, great, and warm company. Thank you, Atlantic Council, for this prestigious honor. I don’t know what I did to deserve this.

Last week was surreal with the Medal of Freedom; this is—I think I’ve just gone to the heavens and I’m not coming back down for a while.

I would also like to congratulate my fellow honorees: Your Excellency, President Iohannis; Secretary Gina Raimondo; and Commander General Christopher Cavoli. I want to be a general like you. I am so humbled to share the stage with you tonight.

Over the past year, my life has been a whirlwind. It’s not an exaggeration to say that my life was everything everywhere all at once—changed in an instant when the Academy made me the first Asian to win an Oscar for best actress. It did take us ninety-seven years to get there, but at least we are there.

But tonight I would like to talk about another life-changing moment, one that shook my outlook on the world nine years ago. It was April 25, 2015, and I was in Nepal with my husband, Jean, visiting local organizations and doing advocacy for road safety.

Suddenly the ground beneath me began to shake, literally. I’ve never felt that type of instant gut-wrenching fear and panic as the earth trembled violently all around me. And you know I do some crazy stunts in some crazy action movies.

That moment, I dropped to the ground. I crawled to a door to escape the low-rise building we were in. A massive, deadly earthquake was ravaging the country. I was fortunate to survive that day unscathed, but the experience was truly harrowing. Its effects linger with me still.

As we made our way to the airport to be evacuated, I saw the ruins and destruction all around me. I couldn’t shake the thought of how unfair it was that I had a home to go to, unlike the thousands of families whose entire lives were suddenly reduced to rubble. This feeling stayed with me so much that I had to return to Nepal three weeks later to try and help with the relief efforts, and my family did try to stop me. But it was a calling that I felt that I needed to be there.

Disasters of such magnitude cause irreparable damage to the lives of those who already have so little, and for generations after. Many were homeless—were left homeless without means to rebuild or keep their families safe. What I witnessed in Nepal made me realize that crises like this expose deep, pre-existing inequalities. Those living in poverty, especially women and girls, bear the brunt of it. A world that is already unfair becomes even more unfair.

My experience in Nepal inspired me to leverage the platform I was given through my work in film and use it to help others. I wanted to shine a light on the inequalities around the world, particularly how disproportionately they impact women and girls. That’s one of the reasons why I became a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP.

I was—I am determined to use my voice to advocate for gender equality globally. The issue of gender equality is very personal to me. As an actor in Hollywood who is female, Asian, and now in my early sixties—oh, thirties. Did I say sixties? I know a thing or two about discrimination. I have spent my decades-long career fighting against stereotypes based on gender, race, and age.

As a society, we are far from where we need to be when it comes to gender equality. Much like the film industry, gender bias continues to hold women back. According to the Gender Social Norms Index released by UNDP, almost 90 percent of the world’s population is still biased against women. A staggering 2.4 billion working-age women live in countries that do not grant them the same rights as men. This inequity is ingrained in the fabric of our society at all levels, from our lives at home, to our economy, to our governments. Because of social norms, women around the world shoulder the bulk of unpaid care work, such as childcare, cooking, cleaning, which are viewed as female responsibilities. Caring for our families and households is an essential part of being human, and it’s the backbone of our economies. But the uneven distribution of it means that women miss out on opportunities for stable, paid employment, and are blocked from equal participation in economies that depend on their free labor.

Progress to ensure women’s full and equal economic participation is alarmingly slow. At the current pace, it will take three hundred years to achieve full gender equality. Sorry, but I’m really too impatient for that.

Here’s the thing. When women earn more, everyone wins. That’s because global wealth would potentially increase by 172 trillion [dollars] if women had the same lifetime earnings as men, according to the World Bank. But instead of benefiting women, many countries’ fiscal policies push them deeper into poverty. We are only hurting ourselves. To state the obvious, government policies have a direct impact on women’s lives. This is why UNDP launched a new campaign to advocate for building gender-equal economies, and is working with countries to transform their systems and policies to advance true gender equality in all aspects of life and society.

We have a long road ahead, achieving full gender parity, but it all begins with us here and now.

The film industry I’ve spent a lifetime working in is notorious for unequal pay for male and female actors. In many corners, gender-based discrimination runs rampant. Throughout my career, I have been typecast, stereotyped, put in boxes, and faced a lot of rejection. But I have fought against it all, with varying degrees of success. But time and time again, I refused to accept an unfair world. Today, I am living proof that change is possible.

So let’s not let anyone tell us that our goals are too ambitious, or that we will never achieve them. It’s never too late. After all, I won my first Golden Globe and Oscar at sixty. I know something about perseverance. And I know that we can fight for gender equality. But we have to do it together, and we have to go all in. And it can’t take three hundred years.

So thank you all for listening to me, and have a wonderful night. Thank you.

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome Atlantic Council Executive Vice Chair Adrienne Arsht.

ADRIENNE ARSHT: Congratulations again to Michelle Yeoh. I want to take a moment of personal privilege to mention someone who just spoke and who inspires me every day, Cynthia Erivo. And it’s not just her nails. Cynthia is one of the most talented and extraordinary individuals I know. Specifically, I’m thinking of her stirring portrayal of Harriet Tubman in the title role in the movie Harriet Tubman, and her Oscar-nominated song that she wrote for the movie, entitled, “Stand Up.”

I’m going to read you the lyrics, not sing them. It goes this way: “I’m gonna stand up, take my people with me. Together we are going to a brand-new home far across the river. Do you hear freedom calling?” It’s so very powerful. She too is a rock star. And, as was mentioned, she’ll play Elphaba in the upcoming film Wicked. Cynthia, you told me so many times that when you grow up you wanted to be me. Well, tonight I say I want to be you.

Again, congratulations to all our honorees this evening. And a huge thanks to all who presented and took part in this evening. I’d also like to thank America’s Own and the American Pops Orchestra, led by Luke Frazier. And now, speaking of music, to close out tonight’s program you’re in for a real treat. As we gather to celebrate individuals who understand the importance of democracy, and in honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of NATO, this song couldn’t be more appropriate. As I bring the performers on, she was recently featured in PBS’s Black Broadway, and he is currently gearing up to star in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Turandot. Please welcome Brittany Chanell Johnson and Soloman Howard.

The post Full transcript: The 2024 Distinguished Leadership Awards recognize skillful leaders navigating a world of crises appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On May 3, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Nicholas Eftimiades published an article titled “Tradecraft observations on the Reichenbach/Fischer espionage case” in intelNews, detailing the alleged Chinese agents’ export of sensitive military technology from Germany.

Fellow

Nicholas Eftimiades

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Intelligence

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Eftimiades published in intelNews on Chinese espionage appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ukraine’s new mobilization law is the latest step in ongoing efforts to reform the military recruitment process and meet the unprecedented challenges posed by Russia’s ongoing invasion. Although Ukrainian losses remain undisclosed, there is clearly a pressing need to replenish the ranks of the military, while also allowing current service personnel to be rotated out of front line positions or demobilized.

Ukrainian military officials initially stated that the goal of the new law was to mobilize an additional 500,000 people. This figure has since been reduced to an unspecified but significantly lower number. Prior to the full-scale invasion, around 250,000 people served in the Ukrainian military, but thanks in large part to a massive surge in volunteers following Russia’s invasion, this force swelled to around 880,000 troops. Together with the National Guard and other formations, there are now believed to be approximately one million Ukrainians in uniform.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Ukraine’s mobilization bill was subject to approximately 4500 amendments, underlining the complexity of the issue. The final version focused on regulating the process of identifying and registering potential conscripts, reviewing eligibility for mobilization, and revising penalties for evading service. Key points include the introduction of an online registry for recruits and the lowering of the age for draft eligibility from 27 to 25.

In line with the new regulations, men of military age will now be obliged to update their registration details within 60 days of the law entering into force, either at regional offices or via an online portal. They will be required to carry their military registration documents and present them upon request or when applying for a passport. Meanwhile, penalties for evading mobilization remain relatively mild. These include modest fines and the potential revocation of drivers licenses.

The new mobilization law does not extend to military-age females. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had earlier stated his opposition to obligatory military service for women. While they are not subject to conscription, many Ukrainian women do choose to enlist in the armed forces voluntarily, with approximately 60,000 currently serving in a variety of positions including front line roles.

To further boost the mobilization process, the Ukrainian army plans to open a network of 27 new recruitment centers in the coming months in major cities across the country. These centers will function as advisory and information hubs, providing guidance to those interested in joining the armed forces and allowing candidates to choose which unit they prefer to serve in. The first recruitment centers have already opened in Lviv and Zaporizhzhia. Initial reports are positive and indicate this modern approach to military service could help address some of the key concerns among potential recruits.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

Most of the criticism leveled at Ukraine’s new mobilization law has focused on the removal of earlier provisions regarding demobilization. Initial drafts envisaged the demobilization of military personnel after 36 months of service, and the rotation of those serving on the front lines for over six months. However, these clauses were taken out of the legislation at the last minute following appeals from Ukraine’s military leadership, who argued that they would weaken Ukraine by facilitating the withdrawal of the country’s most experienced military personnel without providing sufficient trained replacements. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is now working on a separate law to handle the demobilization issue.

While opinion remains divided over the fairness and effectiveness of Ukraine’s new mobilization law, few would argue that the country urgently needs to address manpower issues within the armed forces. Many analysts cite troop shortages as one of main challenges facing the Ukrainian military, along with insufficient weapons and ammunition deliveries from the country’s Western partners.

Russia does not currently appear to be encountering any such problems. In recent weeks, Ukrainian commanders have reported that their forces are now outnumbered by as many as ten to one at certain points along the front lines of the war. This overwhelming superiority in numbers is enabling Russia to advance on the battlefield despite suffering consistently high casualty rates.

With Russia’s initial blitzkrieg invasion now transformed into a war of attrition, the Kremlin aims to avoid a politically risky second wave of mobilization and maintain a steady stream of volunteers by offering a range of cash incentives for new recruits, including extremely high salaries and generous financial support for the families of servicemen. Recent reports indicate Russia is aiming to sign up hundreds of thousands of additional troops in the near future amid preparations for a major summer offensive.

Ukraine is now racing against the clock to strengthen its military before Russia’s summer offensive can get fully underway. The recent breakthrough in Washington DC regarding desperately needed US military aid will boost these efforts, as will the new mobilization law. However, with no end in sight to Russian aggression, Ukraine must also find long-term solutions to the country’s lack of new recruits and the thorny issue of demobilization.

Dr. Elena Davlikanova is a Democracy Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and an associate professor at Sumy State University in Ukraine. Kateryna Odarchenko is a partner at SIC Group Ukraine.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Apr 15, 2024

Organizing for victory

By Ben Hodges

In the escalating struggle against Putin’s Russia, Iran, and China, The West needs a return to the clarity of Churchill and Roosevelt, who communicated clear strategic priorities to the public, industry, and the military, writes Ben Hodges.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert Apr 25, 2024

New US aid package is not enough to prevent Russian victory in Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

This week’s US aid package for Ukraine provides the country with a vital lifeline in the fight against Russia but Western leaders must adopt a more long-term approach if they want to stop Putin, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Drones

UkraineAlert Apr 29, 2024

Bombs and disinformation: Russia’s campaign to depopulate Kharkiv

By Maria Avdeeva

Russia is deploying disinformation alongside bombs as it seeks to demoralize Kharkiv residents and depopulate Ukraine’s second city, writes Maria Avdeeva.

Civil Society Conflict

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Ukraine’s new mobilization law leaves demobilization issue unresolved appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On May 2, Forward Defense Nonresident Senior Fellow Samantha Vinograd appeared on CBS News commented on the public safety factors in President Biden’s comments about student protests for Palestine on university campuses.

Fellow

Samantha Vinograd

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Arabic Defense Policy

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Vinograd on CBS about President Biden’s comments on university campus protests for Palestine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In recent years, however, the global security environment has changed. Adversaries such as Russia and China are using a broad spectrum of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic tactics to challenge the US-led order and achieve their global aims. This return of strategic competition has drawn attention away from the surgical, direct-action operations so prominent during the height of the war on terror, and toward confronting the sophisticated strategies of near-peer adversaries.

So what does this mean for special operations forces?

USSOF will continue to have a central role in the era of renewed strategic competition—but only if there is a broader appreciation and application of USSOF’s capabilities, which extend far beyond just raids and precision strikes. Too often at present, however, USSOF’s distinct capabilities and expertise are overlooked or misunderstood among the broader national security community.

In the face of an evolving and increasingly complex global threat environment, USSOF represents a uniquely versatile component of the US Joint Force. It possesses an array of capabilities that, if fully leveraged, could significantly enhance US force posture. To do so, USSOF must shift its mindset and planning toward strategic competition. There must also be a concerted effort from the services and the Joint Force to integrate USSOF’s unique capabilities more effectively, and the broader defense community must take steps to make the most of the multifaceted value that USSOF brings to the table.

To begin with, USSOF must extend its reach into non-kinetic operations and expand its irregular warfare approach to address the advanced strategies of adversaries such as China and Russia. Some of these operations will require applying the operational tactics USSOF focused on since 9/11 to new challenges. For example, USSOF’s well-honed capabilities for navigating denied and niche environments, including underground operations—an important asset in past counterterrorism missions—are now vital for filling strategic gaps in unconventional warfare scenarios. The salience of this capability is evident, for example, if an adversary uses complex tunnel networks, and it represents just one aspect of USSOF’s highly specialized tactics, techniques, and procedures that can be transitioned to new strategic roles.

This transition will also require adapting USSOF’s strength in new ways. Some of this is already underway—for example, modernizations in naval capabilities are set to boost USSOF’s undersea warfare proficiency, which will help counter rivals such as China in contested spaces. USSOF should continue to prepare for the challenges posed by strategic competition by enhancing its cyber and space capabilities, investing in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence, and bolstering civil-affairs expertise for functioning in extreme and complex operating environments. Clear and decisive communication between the US assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict and the United States Special Operations Command is vital to define the strategic contributions of special operations within the Department of Defense.

Yet embracing these changes also presents challenges, particularly for USSOF to define and measure its own success. The often-preventive nature of USSOF’s missions, which are aimed at deterring adversaries and shaping their behavior, requires a nuanced approach to evaluating effectiveness. Establishing clear objectives and metrics for strategic competition will be essential, enabling USSOF to quantify its successes and adapt its strategies accordingly.

At the same time, USSOF must maintain its proficiency in essential ongoing tasks, such as combating violent extremist organizations, countering terrorism, and managing weapons of mass destruction. Doing so is necessary so that the United States avoids strategic distractions, such as a preventable terrorist attack.

As USSOF adapts its mindset and planning to meet the challenges posed by strategic competition, the Joint Force and the broader interagency must find ways to understand and maximize USSOF’s capabilities. To do so, decision makers across the Joint Force must properly recognize the full range of USSOF’s potential roles, particularly before conflict breaks out.

Unfortunately, some of these potential roles are under-resourced and underleveraged. For example, USSOF’s civil affairs and psychological operations capabilities, though currently underutilized, are essential for strategic competition. The sole brigade responsible for civil affairs is tasked with everything from economic analysis to liaising with civilian government agencies on the ground. With sufficient resources, it could expand its civil-military cooperation in volatile areas, support local governance, and respond to increasingly frequent natural disasters. Notably, United States Marine Forces Special Operations Command’s linguistic and cultural expertise, as demonstrated in long-term operations in the Philippines, highlights the value of investing more in these capacities, especially in strategic areas such as the Indo-Pacific.

Other roles for USSOF are better funded but are still underappreciated across the Department of Defense. USSOF works extensively in the information domain, pushing back against propaganda and disinformation from adversaries. According to General Richard Clarke, former commander of US Special Operations Command, commanders he visited on deployment spent about 60 percent of their time working in the information space. Such work will likely continue, since Russia and China show a growing interest in using information warfare to try to counter US strategic objectives worldwide. Despite this, unfilled billets in the Army’s Special Operations military information support operations were recently cut. This decision signals a troubling undervaluation of these vital capabilities.

If the potential capabilities that USSOF brings to strategic competition are better understood, then these capabilities are more likely to be supported, developed, and implemented in ways that will help shape the strategic environment effectively. Moreover, the capabilities will need to be integrated into a cohesive strategy across the Joint Force, coordinating USSOF’s presence within all seven geographic combatant commands and interagency partners. Doing so would allow USSOF’s capabilities to bridge the divides between different combatant command zones, which could improve the overall US strategic posture in competitive regions and facilitate improved intelligence sharing.

By enhancing USSOF’s capabilities and recognizing its value in strategic competition, the interagency and Department of Defense can ensure it effectively continues to protect US interests and contribute to global stability. Thus equipped, USSOF will remain adept at confronting modern conflict dynamics and asserting US international strategic priorities.

Alyxandra Marine is an assistant director with the Forward Defense program at the Atlantic Council. The recommendations from this piece are explained in further detailed in Stealth, speed, and adaptability: The role of special operations forces in strategic competition.

The post Great power competition is back. What does that mean for US special operations forces? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What does the US president need to know? Our “memo to the president” series has the answer with briefings on the world’s most pressing issues from our experts, drawing on their experience advising the highest levels of government.

Bottom line up front: The Post-Cold War is over. And a new geopolitical era is dawning that demands new vision, policies, and strategies to prevent major war and the failure of the rules-based international order. The urgent task before American leaders is to renew the foundations of US power, ensuring that the country’s power of example is matched by the example of its power. Peace, the preservation of democratic values, and the durability of the international system all depend on the United States successfully navigating this new era.

Background: The first step in US renewal is to face reality

The United States’ power of example—the “soft power” so ascendant during the post-Cold War period—was built upon a foundation of economic, military, and moral strength and success. To sustain it, Americans must confront several hard truths:

1. The United States is facing an emerging, increasingly more closely aligned group of authoritarian powers deeply opposed to the US-led, rules-based international order. Russia—aligned with China, and now alongside Iran and supported by North Korea—is at the center of an effort to shatter American preeminence, redistribute global power, and divide up the world into spheres of influence. These powers are increasingly working together. As Chinese President Xi Jinping declared in bidding farewell to Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023, together they are driving “changes” that “we haven’t seen for one hundred years.” Those changes refer to unwinding the global order. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s quest to take Taiwan are just two efforts among many by these actors that are aimed at reducing US influence and mitigating the laws, rules, and restrictions of the current international system. 
2. Potential US adversaries are increasingly prone to use force. Russia’s unprovoked, full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was a shock (though it should not have been). Now European countries are fearful that, if successful in Ukraine, Russia could move against Moldova, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Poland, or the Baltic states. China, though still cautious and calculating, has a major military buildup underway, is wielding that military to intimidate Taiwan, and has pointedly refused to rule out the use of force to seize Taiwan. Iran continues to seek the destruction of Israel and is escalating its (until the recent retaliatory attack against Israel, mostly indirect) use of force in its quest for regional hegemony. North Korea recently stated that it no longer seeks reunification with the South and instead considers the Republic of Korea (ROK) a “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.” Even Venezuela, under the tutelage and with the assistance of Russia, Iran, and China, has threatened to seize the territory of its neighbor, Guyana.   
3. Nuclear weapons matter again. Putin and his associates have repeatedly—and successfully— threatened the use of nuclear weapons to forestall critically needed US and Western assistance to Ukraine. Overt fear of confrontation with a nuclear power undercuts the credibility of US power worldwide. In seeking help from a potential adversary like China to prevent Russian use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the United States may have further undercut the credibility of its nuclear deterrent, especially its attempts to extend that deterrent to protect allies. Russia and China are both enlarging and modernizing their nuclear-weapons arsenals, including strategic nuclear weapons that can strike the United States. Russia has produced a new generation of more usable tactical nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, and Putin speaks as though Russia has achieved strategic nuclear superiority. North Korea now has nuclear weapons too, and soon Iran will as well. The United States still has its nuclear triad, but its modernization is overdue. Washington withdrew its artillery- and rocket-delivered tactical nuclear systems from Europe more than three decades ago and its nuclear warheads are outmoded, leaving the United States with no counterpart to Russia’s systems. These developments have essentially “decoupled” the United States’ strategic deterrent from its European allies and further weakened Washington’s ability to extend deterrence to its friends and allies.
4. The All-Volunteer Force and the defense industrial base that supports it are in trouble. The US Army and Navy are too small for the missions that the US government is tasking them with in this new era; excessive “op-tempo,” or pace of operations, is driving out service members and putting premature wear on systems. Both the Army and Navy have missed their recruiting objectives for several years. The result has been ships not fully manned, units training without their full complement of personnel, and deepening reliance on the National Guard and Reserves to make up shortfalls. Even as the nature of war rapidly changes, with drone swarms threatening ships at sea and greater battlefield transparency making maneuver difficult, large battlefield formations may still be required in future conflicts. The US defense industrial base is undergoing vigorous examination and modernization, but will it rejuvenate itself with the limited time and resources available, and be able to cope with rapid injections of new technology? Shortfalls of engineers, welders, and technicians, along with other challenges such as supply-chain issues and capital-equipment deficits, are worrisome. The Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine has demonstrated how weapons-intensive a war between major powers would be.
5. US economic sanctions are proving inadequate and sometimes even counterproductive. US sanctions to cut off technological and financial flows to Russia following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine have not proven effective in halting Russia’s use of force. Technology such as chips and machine tools that are vital for Russia’s military industry has leaked through a multilateral sanctions regime that has been difficult to enforce and subject to evasion. Russia is still exporting oil and some gas, and still earning hard currency through a network of smuggling, false manifests, and blending oil products to disguise their origin. But even without being fully effective, these sanctions have alienated many countries fence-sitting on the Ukraine conflict and incentivized further efforts to undercut the US-dominated global financial system. 
6. US efforts to woo and win over the Global South—largely through soft power—are faltering. The attractive powers of the United States’ democratic system have waned with the success of China’s authoritarian model, the emergence of authoritarians in countries such as Turkey and Egypt, and the obvious problems facing US governance at home. In Africa, US efforts to preach democracy and human rights are sometimes seen as a form of “cultural imperialism” and contrasted with China’s offers of aid and capital without interference in internal affairs. Russia and China are exploiting social media to rip apart young African democracies. In Haiti, Washington has thus far been ineffective in dealing with the country’s humanitarian crisis and the national security risk the crisis poses to the United States. In the Middle East, Iran has created an arc of militias and other forces opposed to the United States—and many actors seem to view the US government’s statements that it does not seek escalation with Tehran as reflecting US weakness. Throughout the Global South, many leaders assessing the United States’ wavering support for Ukraine appear to have decided that Russia is the stronger power.  
7. The US political system itself has become a major “theater of operations,” in which other countries attempt to manipulate and disrupt US democratic processes to serve their own purposes. Dark money and foreign influence operations exploiting social media and other vulnerabilities have placed US elections and the country’s very democratic system in jeopardy. The failure to resource and fully use the country’s existing organizations and legal authorities to identify and eliminate subversion of the US political system has weakened US strategic credibility, undercut the appeal of democracy as a system, and injected domestic politics into defense and security policies that should sustain bipartisan support. US political dysfunction and increasingly ugly partisanship, some inspired by foreign actors such as Putin, is making effective US policymaking increasingly difficult and further reducing US influence.

Recommendations for rebuilding US power

In this new era, the United States must reinforce its soft power by strengthening the “hard power” foundations of US leadership. The US economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic has been surprisingly robust and can be leveraged to fortify these foundations along the following lines of effort. Most fundamental will be the actions taken at home. If we Americans cannot govern ourselves, all the rest is to no avail.

• Enshrine the sanctity of the US political system as the country’s highest value: This means eliminating malign foreign influence on US elections and policymaking. The US government should strengthen its basic counterintelligence functions, protect its security services from the political machinations of recent years, and reinforce the professional civil service. The United States must prevent the openness and transparency of its democracy from being used against it by foreign powers—a vital but not easily accomplished task that will entail, among other measures, greater scrutiny of social media and polling data, as well as campaign-finance reform. If the United States is to exercise leadership in the world, politics must once again stop at the water’s edge.
• Strengthen the US nuclear deterrent and all the ancillary systems that give it credibility: During the Cold War, the United States “coupled” its strategic nuclear deterrent to European deterrence by deploying tactical nuclear weapons to Europe, subsequently withdrawing these land-based weapons from the region after the collapse of the Soviet Union. US leaders now must reexamine the need for such tactical and theater systems, as well as the modernization of the warheads they would deliver. Increased funding for surveillance, nuclear systems, space-based communications, missile and space defense, and survivability (including strengthening continuity-of-government programs and dramatically enhancing the resilience of the US electricity grid) would send important signals to rivals and potential adversaries. Investment must be buttressed by policy and rhetoric. The American public needs to be reminded of the positive role of nuclear weapons in US security, and assured that the US government is both maintaining its deterrent and taking appropriate measures to protect the American people should confrontation occur. This is important in strengthening US credibility. In policy terms, Taiwan should be considered a test case. How can the US nuclear deterrent dissuade China from attacking the island? Or is the United States more likely to be deterred from intervening at that crucial moment by China’s nuclear threats? The enhancement of the US nuclear deterrent should be a precondition for the pursuit of more strategic nuclear arms talks with Russia and China.
• Commit to support Ukraine as necessary to eject Russian forces from its territory: Russia’s aggression in Ukraine has become the litmus test for the rules-based international order. Defeating that aggression—not just halting the fighting in Ukraine—is therefore essential to maintaining the rule of international law and preventing wider conflict. The US government should announce this objective as a policy, and support that goal not only with weapons, munitions, intelligence, and training but also with a full information campaign that includes a broader approach to influencing international opinion. China is surely watching how the United States and other countries respond to this challenge. Washington should encourage allies and partners purchasing US weapons such as ATACMS and Patriot systems to defer acceptance and instead donate their systems to Ukraine as necessary to defeat Russian aggression there.
• Bolster deterrence of China: To this end, the US government should focus Navy shipbuilding on deterring China, practice troop, naval, and air surges to reinforce Taiwan, and enhance US strategic nuclear defense capabilities. It should also sustain the Quad and alliances in Northeast Asia, seek opportunities such as oil exploration in the South China Sea to push back economically on Chinese expansionism, and maintain the economic policies of robust infrastructure investment at home, “reshoring,” and withholding key technologies from China. Additionally, Washington must give higher priority to protecting the dollar as the primary medium of international trade and store of value. 
• Force Iran’s rulers to choose between their quest for regional hegemony and regime survival: The US government should change its informal policy toward Iran from “reluctance to escalate” to “end the Axis of Resistance,” including Tehran’s support for the Houthis in Yemen. It should not remit any type of funds to Iran. Washington’s efforts to engage Tehran diplomatically have been only partially successful; while these can be continued, the United States must immediately cease asking Russia for help with them. The US government should actively support groups promoting peaceful change in Iran. And it should privately warn Iran that unless the Axis of Resistance is dismantled and Iran’s terrorist and nuclear threats cease, the United States and its allies will use all necessary means to effect change in Iran. Washington should begin leveraging its diplomatic influence to delegitimize the government of Iran, working with allies to bar it from international organizations and fora while further restricting its access to international banking and markets. US military strikes inside Iran that endanger those assets that the regime values most, beginning with drone and missile production facilities, should not be excluded from consideration if Iran strikes at US forces or vessels.  
• Enhance deterrence against a nuclear-armed North Korea: The United States should increase its troop presence in and ship visits to South Korea, as well as US-ROK military exercises, while also deepening military industrial cooperation between the two countries. It should forward-station US nuclear-weapons systems and reinforce by policy and public announcement the “extended deterrence” provided to allies in the region by US strategic nuclear systems. Washington should also improve strategic systems for defending the US homeland, and develop and then deploy to the region the capabilities to assure the boost-phase destruction of North Korean missile launches. 
• Reinvigorate the United States’ All-Volunteer Force and defense industrial base: The US government must encourage greater support among the American people for public service and service in the US military by chartering a presidential commission to revitalize the force, simultaneously strengthening the Selective Service System in the event a military draft is necessary in the future. Washington should boost funding for the armed forces to 4 percent of US GDP in the near term, while also increasing force structure, fleet size, and air and space capabilities, including prioritizing unmanned systems and electronic warfare capabilities. The US military procurement system should also be overhauled to streamline acquisition and enable more rapid insertion of commercially developed systems and capabilities. The United States should also better plan for rapid mobilization of the US industrial and technological base. For two years, the Biden administration has explored ways to substantially increase defense production, but the steps taken have been tentative. This needs to change for the United States to have the material necessary to deter a war with either China or Russia and, if necessary, to fight one. Such an approach would also make it easier to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defeat Russia. Greatly ramping up US defense production would also encourage allies to do the same.
• Maintain the fragile US lead in cyber and space warfare: The United States shouldpreserve its advantage in the technologies that support these new domains, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing, and bolster its defenses against “non-kinetic” threats emanating from these domains. The US electricity grid must be secured in depth and properly backed up by reserve equipment, while the country’s financial, transportation, distribution, and manufacturing sectors need greater government protection from cyber threats.
• Augment US financial power: In addition to taking the measures enumerated above to more effectively deter China, the US government should build on the nascent efforts of the US International Development Finance Corporation to invest in developing economies and outcompete China in this regard. It should empower US firms to gain access to strategic minerals in Africa. And it should make US sanctions more effective by using its deep insights into financial transactions and increasingly powerful artificial-intelligence tools to discern and disrupt every element of the supply chains for nations under sanction, including commercial transactions with third parties that have undercut effective sanctions. The United States needs to apply secondary sanctions to countries that are enabling the Kremlin to avoid sanctions, and to ramp up US capacity to stop high-tech exports to Russia. The United States should also increase US hydrocarbon exports in order to use energy security as a key means of influence abroad. 

Can a democratic society such as the United States—subject to the frequent political churn that comes with regular elections, including another now underway in earnest—develop the long-term strategy, address the high risks, and assume the burdens of leadership that this new geopolitical era requires? The security of the United States and the rules-based international system depends on the answers. Hard truths demand hard choices. The United States can’t afford to shrink from them.  

General Wesley K. Clark is a retired four-star US Army general and former NATO supreme allied commander Europe from 1997-2000. He is a board director at the Atlantic Council, as well as the chairman and CEO of Wesley K. Clark and Associates, a strategic consulting firm.

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

Learn more

The post Memo to the president: The United States needs a new strategic approach fit for a new geopolitical era appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Charai in the National Interest: Iran Strikes Israel: What’s Next? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Webster quoted in the VOA Chinese analysis of the PRC’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On April 10, Forward Defense Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael Groen spoke at the 2024 US Cyber Command Legal Conference about implementing AI and balancing risk with defense innovation.

Fellow

Michael Groen

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Groen at 2024 US Cyber Command Legal Conference on AI risks and innovation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The mounting sense of frustration among Ukrainians is easy to understand. Encouraged by delays in military aid for Ukraine, Russia has intensified the bombing of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure over the past month, plunging entire cities into darkness and leaving millions without access to electricity, heating, water, or internet. Despite the looming prospect of a humanitarian catastrophe, the Western response has been notably lacking in urgency.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has begun striking back with drone attacks on Russian refineries, and has succeeded in disrupting more than ten percent of Russian refining capacity. Rather than supporting this seemingly effective campaign to weaken Putin’s war machine, The US has reportedly called on Kyiv to end its drone strikes due to concerns over global oil prices and possible retaliation. Viewed from Ukraine, these do not look like the actions of partners who are fully committed to Ukrainian victory.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Over the past two years, Ukrainians have grown accustomed to excessive Western caution and insufficient Western support. While the democratic world deserves considerable credit for delivering the weapons that have allowed Ukraine to survive, the military aid provided since February 2022 has been subject to frequent delays, and has consistently fallen far short of the quantities required to defeat a military superpower like Russia.

The West’s inadequate response to Russia’s invasion is primarily due to a crippling fear of escalation. Putin sees this indecisiveness and acts accordingly. He easily intimidates Western leaders with nuclear blackmail, while escalating his own attacks on Ukrainian cities and the country’s civilian infrastructure.

In March 2024 alone, Russia attacked Ukraine with 264 missiles and 515 drones, according to Ukrainian Air Force data. Some were intercepted by Ukrainian air defenses, but ammunition is rapidly running out. With no clear idea of when the next batches of interceptor missiles may arrive, Ukrainian troops must ration supplies, leaving millions vulnerable to the horrors of Russian bombardment.

The situation on the front lines of the war is equally critical. With half of promised weapons deliveries arriving late and vital US military aid held up in Congress for the past eight months, Ukrainian troops are running short of crucial ammunition and are currently in danger of being overwhelmed by Russian firepower. In late March, President Zelenskyy admitted that if US aid is not forthcoming, Ukraine will be forced to retreat. If that happens, he warned, Russia could break through Ukraine’s defensive lines and attempt to seize the country’s biggest cities.

Despite this deteriorating picture, there is currently a surreal sense of business as usual in much of the West. The political classes are increasingly preoccupied with upcoming elections and appear largely unaware of the geopolitical disaster unfolding on Europe’s eastern frontier. Many seem to think Ukrainian courage alone will be enough to hold Russia back until the invasion runs out of steam. This is wishful thinking. In reality, if Ukraine does not urgently receive increased support, there is a very real chance that Putin will win. And if Putin wins in Ukraine, he will go further.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

At present, the West appears content to wage of a slow war of attrition while drip-feeding Ukraine minimal supplies. This is a recipe for defeat. Russia enjoys huge advantages in terms of manpower and weapons, while the Kremlin has successfully shifted the entire Russian economy onto a war footing. Putin clearly believes he can outlast the West in Ukraine, and is confident time is on his side.

This does not mean a Ukrainian victory is unachievable, but Ukraine’s partners need to demonstrate far more resolve if they genuinely hope to secure Putin’s defeat. Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks on Russian refineries have exposed the vulnerability of Russia’s economically crucial energy industry, but the Western response has so far been predictably cautious. This needs to change. Ukraine cannot win a war against such a powerful enemy with one hand tied behind its back.

Likewise, Ukraine’s remarkable success in the Battle of the Black Sea debunks notions of Russian red lines and offers a road map toward victory over the Kremlin. Despite not having a conventional navy of its own, Ukraine has used drones and missile strikes to sink around a quarter of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This has forced Putin to quietly withdraw the bulk of his remaining warships from Crimea.

Similar success is possible on land if Ukraine’s Western partners give the country the tools it needs. Ukraine’s requirements are already well known; the Ukrainian military needs vast quantities of artillery shells and drones along with increased deliveries of armored vehicles, combat aircraft, air defense systems, electronic warfare technologies, and long-range missiles.

Without this military aid, Ukraine’s prospects look grim. Nor would the consequences of a Russian victory be confined to Ukraine alone. On the contrary, the shock waves would be felt around the world as Putin and his fellow autocrats sought to capitalize on Western weakness.

A triumphant Putin would almost certainly look to build on the considerable geopolitical momentum created by success in Ukraine. In practical terms, this would mean expanding his quest to reverse the verdict of 1991 and reclaim “historically Russian lands.” Putin’s revisionist agenda would place more than a dozen independent states that formerly belonged to the Russian Empire at risk of suffering the same fate as Ukraine. The most probable initial targets would include Moldova, Georgia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, but his ambitions would likely expand further.

The fall of Ukraine would leave NATO demoralized and discredited, creating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Russian dictator to achieve his ultimate goal and instigate the break-up of the alliance. NATO leaders have already demonstrated that they are afraid of escalation and inclined to back down when confronted by the Kremlin. In a post-Ukraine environment, Putin may look to exploit this lack of resolve by testing NATO’s own red lines while stopping short of full-scale hostilities. If the alliance failed to rise to this challenge, it would risk losing all credibility overnight. While NATO could technically survive such a crisis, the alliance would struggle to maintain any legitimacy without its cast-iron commitment to collective security.

Fellow authoritarian powers like China and Iran are also watching the West’s weakness in Ukraine and are drawing the obvious conclusions. This is already helping to fuel insecurity in the Middle East and increasing the threat to Taiwan. The global security architecture established over the past eighty years is clearly crumbling, and Ukraine is the front line in the fight to shape the future of international relations.

The West’s fear of escalation is Vladimir Putin’s secret weapon. It has deterred Western leaders from arming Ukraine, and has prolonged the war by preventing the Ukrainian army from building on its early battlefield successes. Unless the West can overcome this self-defeating fear, it may ultimately lead to Russian victory.

Russian success in Ukraine would almost certainly set the stage for a far bigger military confrontation between the Kremlin and the democratic world. Since February 2022, Putin has placed his entire country on a war footing and has positioned Russia as the leader of an anti-Western coalition of authoritarian states aiming to transform the world order. As the invasion of Ukraine has escalated, he has become increasingly open about his own imperial ambitions. It is dangerously delusional to suggest Putin will simply stop if he wins in Ukraine. Instead, Western leaders must decide whether they would rather arm Ukraine for victory today, or find themselves confronted with a resurgent and emboldened Russia tomorrow.

Oleksiy Goncharenko is a Ukrainian member of parliament with the European Solidarity party.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Apr 3, 2024

Ukraine’s allies divided over drone campaign targeting Russian refineries

By Giorgi Revishvili

Ukraine’s expanding campaign of drone strikes on Russian refineries has inflicted significant damage on Putin’s oil and gas industry while also revealing divisions among Ukraine’s allies, writes Giorgi Revishvili.

Conflict Drones

UkraineAlert Mar 28, 2024

Putin adds Islamist terror to the list of absurd excuses for Ukraine invasion

By Peter Dickinson

In addition to imaginary NATO threats and phantom fascists, Putin has now added Islamist terrorism to the expanding list of absurd excuses for the invasion of Ukraine, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Mar 31, 2024

Ukraine urgently needs air defenses as Russia decimates power grid

By Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti

A new Russian air offensive has destroyed much of Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure in a matter of days and threatens to spark a humanitarian catastrophe if Ukraine does not urgently receive enhanced air defenses, writes Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Western weakness in Ukraine could provoke a far bigger war with Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This opportunistic attempt to blame Ukraine is fueling widespread speculation that the attack will lead to an escalation in Russia’s ongoing invasion. Based on past experience throughout Vladimir Putin’s 24-year reign, many also anticipate that the Russian dictator will use the atrocity to launch a further domestic crackdown.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Putin first emerged on Russia’s political stage against a backdrop of terrorist attacks. When he was appointed Prime Minister in August 1999, Putin was largely unknown to the wider Russian public. Weeks later, the country was rocked by a series of apartment bombings in Moscow and southern Russia.

Putin’s hard-line response to these attacks saw him rise to national prominence. This paved the way for his presidential election win in early 2000, while also serving as justification for the Second Chechen War. Putin’s use of macho street slang was welcomed by many, including his famous pledge to flush terrorists “down the toilet.”

In October 2002, armed militants seized a theater in the center of Moscow and held almost one thousand audience members hostage. The ensuing standoff ended in tragedy when a botched intervention by Russian security forces led to the deaths of more than 100 hostages. This incident was to become another key turning point in the Putin era.

In the wake of the theater siege, Putin passed a series of anti-terrorism laws restricting civil liberties. He also significantly strengthened Kremlin control over the Russian media, making it far more difficult for journalists to report critically on the authorities. Crucially, Putin sought to frame the theater attack as an act of “international terrorism.” This played an important role in transforming international perceptions of Russia’s fight against Chechen separatism by equating it with the US-led “War on Terror.”

The largest terrorist attack of the Putin era came in September 2004, when militants stormed a school in Beslan during traditional ceremonies to mark the first day of the new academic year. This high-profile crisis ended in carnage and the deaths of more than 300 hostages. The Beslan massacre transformed the political landscape in Russia. In the wake of the tragedy, Putin moved to end the direct election of regional governors and return to a system of appointment by the Kremlin. This reversed what was widely regarded as one of the main democratic achievements of the Yeltsin era.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

Throughout the 2010s, Russia experienced sporadic suicide bombings across the country. In 2017, an attack on the St. Petersburg metro system led to new restrictions imposed on the popular Telegram messaging app, after an investigation concluded that the platform had been used by terrorists to coordinate their activities.

With today’s Russia already an increasingly authoritarian state, it is not clear what measures remain available to the Kremlin in response to the recent Moscow attack. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the last vestiges of an independent press and civil society have been largely extinguished, while draconian legislation has criminalized any criticism of the war.

Some fear that the Moscow attack may spark a backlash against Russia’s large community of labor migrants, many of whom are Muslims from Central Asia. Meanwhile, some officials are already calling for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Given the scale of the attack and the rhetoric currently coming out of the Kremlin, most expect the response to be severe.

The March 22 attack in Moscow has seriously damaged Putin’s carefully crafted public image as a strongman ruler who offers his subjects security in exchange for restrictions on their personal freedoms. In order to reestablish his credentials, Putin is likely to target his enemies in Ukraine and the West. In line with past practice, he will also look to tighten his grip inside Russia itself.

Olivia Yanchik is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Mar 21, 2024

Russian victory in Ukraine would leave Europe at Putin’s mercy

By Mykola Bielieskov

A Russian victory in Ukraine would reinvigorate Putin’s war machine and leave much of Europe at the mercy of the Kremlin, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Defense Industry

UkraineAlert Mar 21, 2024

Putin fires navy chief as Ukrainians cheer success in Battle of Black Sea

By Peter Dickinson

The chief of the Russian Navy has been dismissed by Vladimir Putin in the latest indication that Ukraine is winning the Battle of the Black Sea, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Mar 14, 2024

Peace is impossible until Ukraine is safe from future Russian aggression

By Mykola Bielieskov

With Russia openly committed to destroying the Ukrainian state and nation, a durable peace will only prove possible once Ukraine’s national security is guaranteed, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Disinformation

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Putin has repeatedly used terror attacks to tighten his grip on Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 24, Forward Defense Nonresident Senior Fellow Samantha Vinograd appeared on CBS “Face the Nation” with Margaret Brennan discussing the recent terrorist attack carried out by ISIS-K in Moscow and southern US border security. She also spoke about the criticality of supplying resources for vetting architecture, intelligence sharing, and enhancing information arrangements with international partners.

Fellow

Samantha Vinograd

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Arabic Defense Policy

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Vinograd on CBS “Face the Nation” about the recent ISIS terrorist attack in Moscow, US border security, and more appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Skeptics note that the failures of the past two years have exposed the limitations of the Russian military, and claim a triumphant Putin would be in no position to expand the war beyond the borders of Ukraine. This argument is comforting but short-sighted. It ignores the practical implications of a Russian victory, and underestimates the geopolitical importance of Ukraine for the security of Europe.

The re-emergence of an independent Ukraine in 1991 profoundly altered the European geopolitical landscape. For centuries prior to 1991, the Russian Empire and the USSR had exploited Ukraine’s geographical location, natural resources, and population to project power into the heart of Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians had served in the Red Army, while the Soviet war machine had relied heavily on Ukraine’s industrial base to produce everything from warships and tanks to intercontinental missiles.

The collapse of the Soviet Union temporarily reduced the imperial threat facing the countries of Central Europe. Neighbors such as Poland and Hungary understood the strategic importance of Ukrainian statehood perfectly well and were among the first to recognize Ukraine’s independence. This new geopolitical reality shielded countries across the region from potential Russian aggression and helped pave the way for their NATO accession.

Vladimir Putin was also well aware that Ukrainian independence was a major obstacle to the revival of Russia’s great power status. From the very beginning of his reign, he made the subjugation of Ukraine a foreign policy priority. At first, he attempted to achieve this goal via political means; when this failed, he resorted to the same military methods employed by generations of his Czarist and Soviet predecessors.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

The Russian army has suffered extremely heavy losses over the past two years in Ukraine, but this has not deterred Putin. On the contrary, with the future of Western military aid to Ukraine currently in doubt, the Russian dictator is growing visibly more confident of securing victory. If Putin is able to extinguish Ukrainian statehood, Russia’s military potential will be dramatically enhanced by the acquisition of Ukraine’s considerable resources.

Russia is already conscripting large numbers of men in occupied regions of Ukraine and using them as cannon fodder in brutal human wave offensives. If Ukraine falls, hundreds of thousands more would be forced to join the Russian military and deployed in similar fashion. As well as extra manpower, a conquered Ukraine would also provide Russia with vast natural resources, industrial strength, and agricultural wealth. Indeed, the occupation of Ukraine would allow Russia to dominate global agricultural markets.

The geographical implications of a Russian victory in Ukraine would be equally grave. Russia seized Crimea in 2014 then used the occupied Ukrainian peninsula as a springboard for the full-scale invasion of the country eight years later. As the Russian army continues to edge forward in eastern Ukraine, each advance brings Putin’s troops closer to the border with NATO.

Nobody is more conscious of the growing danger than Ukraine’s western neighbors. It is no surprise that Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states are among the biggest supporters of Ukraine and the most vocal when it comes to raising the alarm over the Russian threat. They know that if Ukraine is lost, they are next in line and will face a resurgent Russia emboldened by the success of the current invasion.

This is not to say that others are oblivious to the potentially disastrous consequences of a Russian victory in Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron has recently warned that European security is “at stake” in Ukraine, and has refused to rule out deploying Western troops to prevent Russia from overrunning the country.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

Influential voices in America have long recognized the geopolitical importance of Ukrainian independence. In the 1990s, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski highlighted the country’s crucial role in the geopolitics of the region. “It cannot be stressed strongly enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire,” he famously observed.

During the early decades of Ukrainian independence, successive US administrations appeared inclined to follow Brzezinski’s counsel. However, from the late 2000s onward, the focus of US foreign policy began to shift away from Ukraine and the wider Eastern European region toward Asia.

This coincided with the rise of a more assertive Russia. In 2008, Russian troops invaded Georgia. Six years later, the Kremlin occupied Crimea and sparked a war in eastern Ukraine. By 2022, an emboldened Putin felt strong enough to launch the biggest European invasion since World War II. This escalating Russian aggression should serve as a painful lesson for anyone tempted to take the continued existence of an independent Ukraine for granted.

Ukraine is currently facing the most challenging period since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Starved of supplies, Ukrainian troops find themselves forced to ration ammunition. In many cases, they are already unable to prevent Russia from edging forward. This is fuelling increasingly pessimistic forecasts as the spring campaigning season draws near.

The stakes could hardly be higher. If Russia’s invasion succeeds, the consequences will be felt far beyond the borders of Ukraine. The Russian military will be revitalized by the capture of Ukraine’s vast human and material resources, and will loom large on the eastern border of a NATO alliance demoralized and discredited by its failure to defend Ukrainian independence. At that point, many in the West may begin to ask why they didn’t arm Ukraine when they had the chance. By then, of course, it will be too late.

Mykola Bielieskov is a research fellow at the National Institute for Strategic Studies and a senior analyst at Ukrainian NGO “Come Back Alive.” The views expressed in this article are the author’s personal position and do not reflect the opinions or views of NISS or Come Back Alive.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Feb 20, 2024

Outgunned Ukraine bets on drones as Russian invasion enters third year

By Mykola Bielieskov

As Putin’s invasion passes the two-year mark, tech-savvy Ukraine is betting on drones as the best way to overcome Russia’s increasingly overwhelming advantage in traditional firepower, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Feb 12, 2024

Putin’s history lecture reveals his dreams of a new Russian Empire

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin turned his hotly anticipated interview with Tucker Carlson into a history lecture that laid bare the dangerous delusions and imperial ambitions driving the invasion of Ukraine, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert Feb 22, 2024

Ukrainian long-range drones target Putin’s war machine inside Russia

By Victoria Vdovychenko, Alexander Khara

Ukraine is hoping a new campaign of long-range drone strikes against Russia’s strategically vital oil and gas industry can help weaken Putin’s war machine, write Victoria Vdovychenko and Alexander Khara.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Russian victory in Ukraine would leave Europe at Putin’s mercy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 12, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Nicholas Eftimiades was interviewed on “NucleCast,” hosted by the ANWA Deterrence Center. He discussed China’s whole-of-society approach to espionage and the methods that Chinese actors use to implement this approach.

Fellow

Nicholas Eftimiades

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Intelligence

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Eftimiades on NucleCast by ANWA Deterrence Center appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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.

On March 18, Forward Defense Nonresident Senior Fellow Marc Polymeropoulos was cited about the negative effects that Trump’s politicization of intelligence would have on gathering and sharing information, particularly with American allies.

Fellow

Marc Polymeropoulos

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Afghanistan Europe & Eurasia

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Polymeropoulos cited on RawStory about concerns of Trump politicizing intelligence appeared first on Atlantic Council.

First, Ukraine is not Afghanistan. No US troops are fighting in Ukraine, whereas tens of thousands of US troops invaded Afghanistan to fight an insurgency in a mountainous, landlocked, and poor nation. In contrast, Ukraine borders and aspires to join NATO and the European Union. It has an educated population (with a nearly 100 percent adult literacy rate), and it is connected to the global economy as one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters. Though many Afghans ultimately supported the United States, that support never materialized into the national and political coherence that is already seen among Ukrainians fighting for their right to exist as a democratic nation. Ukraine is protecting its territory from a hostile invasion by Russia—an autocratic nation that supports and is supported by dictators in Syria, Iran, and North Korea.

Second, while the war has been in an apparent stalemate in recent months, all but the briefest of wars play out in phases. Often, one of the causes of a stalemate is that both sides have run low enough on fresh troops and equipment that they need to reequip and train personnel before they are capable of further large-scale operations. In this sense, the current period of “stalemate” in Ukraine should be seen not as the end-state, but as a finite period to focus on rearming, reequipping, and—importantly—reassessing one’s theory of victory. In this sense, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s replacement earlier this year of Valery Zaluzhny with Oleksandr Syrsky as the head of Ukraine’s armed forces looks less like an indication that Ukraine is flailing, and more like a prudent move to set the foundation for a new approach to victory.

The consequences of this war will echo well beyond Europe. Supporting a Ukrainian victory would reassert US global preeminence for around 5 percent of the annual US defense budget, and without the cost of American lives. Continued US global leadership would help shape international issues such as governance of space, artificial intelligence, terrorism, and global migration patterns in the United States’ favor. Russia would be militarily defeated by a reinvigorated American defense industrial base and China would likely reconsider the ability and willingness of the United States to exert its will around the globe, including in defense of Taiwan.

If, however, the United States fails to support Ukraine, expect the opposite. An emboldened Russia is likely to expand its current policy of sowing global discord. Already it has muscled into countries in Africa in hope of capturing raw materials, supported Iranian-backed terrorists in the Middle East that threaten global shipping, and conducted anti-US information and covert operations in Central and South America. Europe would chart a more independent foreign policy and seek to decrease its reliance on the US defense industry and military cooperation. Some may think this is a positive, but the US defense industrial base relies on both US military sales and on sales to allies in NATO and elsewhere. Furthermore, the United States’ ability to defend its global interests—the same interests that give Americans their extraordinary standard of living—would be diminished by nations unwilling to cooperate with an unreliable partner.

Which brings us back to Ukraine. Some argue that the United States must first secure its own borders before supporting Ukraine, but that falsely assumes that the two issues are mutually exclusive or linked. It is possible to both support Ukraine and secure US borders; one does not preclude the other. Others say that Europe should be paying to support Ukraine, which it already is. More than a dozen European nations are spending more than the United States as a share of their gross domestic product, and the European Union as an institution is outspending the United States in terms of total commitments. Finally, some argue that funding Ukraine diverts funds for US capabilities in the Indo-Pacific. This ignores two critical facts: First, most of the funding “for Ukraine” actually goes to support the US defense industrial base. Second, all of the United States’ plans for United States Indo-Pacific Command involve an assumption of some support from European allies. US leaders and policymakers need to ask themselves how realistic that assumption is if they do not support those allies today.

Supporting Ukraine isn’t charity. It is a way for the United States to reassert itself at a time when its influence is faltering. It is a golden opportunity to cement the support of US allies and partners—its greatest advantage over Russia and China. Support to Ukraine isn’t just a good deed, it’s also a good deal. From January 2022 to January 2024, the United States gave roughly $46 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. From 1941 to 1945, the United States sent the current equivalent of $831 billion to allies fighting fascist regimes in the Atlantic and Pacific and ultimately had to sacrifice 416,000 American men and women to the cause of freedom. Ukraine can still win without US troops.

In seventy-five years, the only time NATO has invoked its collective defense protocol was to defend the United States after 9/11. And NATO allies sent their troops thousands of miles away to fight an insurgency with the United States. Now, it is Europe that needs help from the United States. Russia has invaded a European nation in what NATO allies see as the greatest security threat to Europe since the Nazis. If the United States turns its back on Ukraine now, it would be abandoning its allies in their time of need. It would be kicking off an American losing streak that could last decades—if not longer.

General Tod D. Wolters (Ret.) is a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. In 2022, Wolters completed a distinguished forty-year active-duty career in the US Air Force as the supreme allied commander Europe (SACEUR) and commander US European command (EUCOM).

Ann Marie Dailey is a nonresident senior fellow at the Transatlantic Security Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and is currently serving as a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. The views, opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations contained herein are the author’s alone and not those of RAND or its research sponsors, clients, or grantors.

The post Help Ukraine win—or risk kicking off a US losing streak appeared first on Atlantic Council.

1. What kind of risks does TikTok pose to US national security?

Chinese company ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok poses two specific risks to US national security. One has to do with concerns that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could use its influence over the Chinese owners to use TikTok’s algorithm for propaganda purposes. Addressing this security concern is tricky due to legal protections for freedom of expression. The other risk, and the one addressed through the current House legislation, has to do with the ability of the CCP to use Chinese ownership of TikTok to access the massive amount of data that the app collects on its users. This could include data on everything from viewing tastes, to real-time location, to information stored on users’ phones outside of the app, including contact lists and keystrokes that can reveal, for example, passwords and bank activity.

—Sarah Bauerle Danzman is a resident senior fellow with the Economic Statecraft Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

This debate is not over free speech or access to social media: The question is fundamentally one of whether the United States can or should force a divestment of a social media company from a parent company (in this case ByteDance) if the company can be compelled to act under the direction of the CCP. We have to ask: Does the CCP have the intent or ability to compel data to serve its interests? There is an obvious answer here. We know that China has already collected massive amounts of sensitive data from Americans through efforts such as the Office of Personnel Management hack in 2015. Recent unclassified reports, including from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, show the skill and intent of China to use personal data for influence. And the CCP has the legal structure in place to compel companies such as ByteDance to comply and cooperate with CCP requests.

—Meg Reiss is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

2. Are those risks unique to TikTok?

TikTok is not an unproblematic platform, and there are real and significant user risks that could pose dangers to safety and security, especially for certain populations. However, focusing on TikTok ignores broader vulnerabilities in the US information ecosystem that put Americans at risk. An outright ban of TikTok as currently proposed—particularly absent clearer standards for all platforms—would not meaningfully address these broader risks and would in fact potentially undermine US interests in a much more profound way.

As our recent report outlines in detail, a ban is unlikely to achieve the intended effect of meaningfully curbing China’s ability to gather sensitive data on Americans or to conduct influence operations that harm US interests. It also may contribute to a global curbing of the free flow of data that is essential to US tech firms’ ability to innovate and maintain a competitive edge.

—Kenton Thibaut is a senior resident China fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Some have argued that TikTok, while on the aggressive end of the personal data collection spectrum, collects similar data to what other social media companies collect. However, the US government would counter with two points: First, TikTok has a history of skirting data privacy rules, such as those limiting data collection on children and those that prevent the collection of phone-specific identifiers called MAC numbers, and therefore the company cannot be trusted to handle sensitive personal data in accordance with the law. And second, unlike other popular apps, TikTok is ultimately beholden to Chinese regulations. This includes the 2017 Chinese National Intelligence Law that requires Chinese companies to hand over a broad range of information to the Chinese government if asked. Because China’s legal system is far more opaque than the United States’, it is unclear if the US government or its citizens would even know if the Chinese government ever asked for this data from TikTok. While TikTok’s management has denied supplying the Chinese government with such data, insider reports have uncovered Chinese employees gaining access to US user data. In other words, the US government has little reason to trust that ByteDance is keeping US user data safe from the CCP.

—Sarah Bauerle Danzman

3. What does the House bill actually do?

There are two important, related bills. The one that passed the House today is the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which forces divestment. It is not an outright ban, and it is intended to address the real risk of ByteDance—thus TikTok—falling under the jurisdiction of China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which compels Chinese companies to cooperate with the CCP’s requests. However, divestment doesn’t completely solve for the additional potential risks of the CCP using TikTok in a unique or systemic way for data collection, algorithmic tampering (e.g. what topics surface or don’t surface to users), or information operations (e.g. an influence campaign unique to TikTok as opposed to on other platforms as well). Second, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, which cleared a House committee last week, more directly addresses a broader risk of blocking the Chinese government’s access to the type of data that TikTok and many other social media platforms collect on the open market. The former without the latter is an incomplete approach to protecting Americans’ data from the CCP—and even the two combined falls short of a federal data privacy standard.

—Graham Brookie is vice president and senior director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab.

There is no question China seeks to influence the American public and harvests large amounts of data on American citizens. As our recent report illuminates however, the Chinese state’s path to these goals depends very little on TikTok.

Today’s actions in the House underscore the disjointed nature of the US approach to governing technology. Rather than focus on TikTok specifically, it would be both legally and geopolitically wiser to pass legislation that sets standards for everyone, and not just one company. That could mean setting standards for what actions or behavior by any social media company would be unacceptable (for example on the use of algorithms or collection and selling of data). Or Congress could focus on prohibiting companies that are owned by states proven to have conducted hostile actions toward US digital infrastructure to operate in the United States. That would certainly include TikTok (and many other companies). This bill takes a halfway approach, both tying itself explicitly to TikTok owner ByteDance and hinting that it could apply to “other social media companies.”

—Rose Jackson is the director of the Democracy and Tech Initiative at the Digital Forensic Research Lab.

The recently passed House bill, if it were to become law, would create a pathway to force the divestment of Chinese ownership in TikTok or ban the app from app stores and web hosting sites. Unlike previous attempts by the Trump administration to ban the app outright or force a divestment through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act would not just affect TikTok. Instead, the legislation would create a process through which the US government could designate social media apps that are considered to be under the control of foreign adversaries as national security threats. Once identified as threats, the companies would have 180 days to divest from the foreign ownership or be subject to a ban.

—Sarah Bauerle Danzman

4. What would be some of the global ripple effects of a TikTok ban?

The United States has always opposed efforts by authoritarian nations seeking to build “great firewalls” around themselves. This model of “cyber sovereignty” sees the open, interoperable, and free internet as a threat, which is why countries like China already have a well-funded strategy to leverage global governance platforms to drive the development of a less open and more authoritarian-friendly version. A TikTok ban would ironically benefit authoritarian governments as they seek to center state-level action (over multi-stakeholder processes) in internet governance. TikTok should not lead the United States to abandon its longstanding commitment to the values of a free, open, secure, and interoperable internet.

A ban could generate more problems than it would solve. What the United States should consider instead is passing federal privacy laws and transparency standards that apply to all companies. This would be the single most impactful way to address broader system vulnerabilities, protect US values and commitments, and address the unique risks related to TikTok’s Chinese ownership, while avoiding the potential significant downsides of a ban. 

—Kenton Thibaut

5. What do you make of TikTok’s response, particularly in pushing its users to flood Capitol Hill with calls?

Members of Congress were rightfully alarmed by TikTok’s use of its platform to send push notifications encouraging users to call their representatives. However, Uber and Lyft used this exact same tactic in California when trying to defeat legislation that would have required it to provide benefits to its drivers. If we try to solve “TikTok” and not the broader issue TikTok is illuminating, we will keep coming back to these same issues over and over again. 

—Rose Jackson

6. How is China viewing this debate?

The CCP has a tendency to throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall in an attempt to make its arguments, in this case that the divestment of TikTok from its Chinese parent company ByteDance is unnecessary. When the CCP has justified the internment of Uyghurs, it has thrown out everything from defending its repression based on terrorist beliefs across the population to claiming that it was just helping with social integration and developing work programs. The CCP has already made claims that the divestment would cause investors to lose faith in the US market and that it shows a fundamental weakness and abuse of national security. Expect many different versions of these arguments and more. But all the anticipated pushback will be focused on diverting the public argument away from the fundamental concern: The Chinese government can, under law, force a Chinese company to share information. 

—Meg Reiss

The post Will the US crack down on TikTok? Six questions (and expert answers) about the bill in Congress. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 11, Transatlantic Security Initiative senior fellow Elisabeth Braw was invited on The Dark State Podcast to discuss modern espionage tactics.

Fellow

Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

NATO Resilience & Society

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Learn more

The post Braw interviewed on The Dark State Podcast appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 6, Transatlantic Security Initiative senior fellow Elisabeth Braw was quoted by The Week on Russia’s efforts to smuggle migrants through the Finnish-Russian border.

Fellow

Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

NATO Resilience & Society

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Learn more

The post Braw featured in The Week on Russia’s “grey zone” tactics at the Finnish Border appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 20, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Nicholas Eftimiades was interviewed on Joint Special Operations University’s webinar, Think JSOU. He discussed China’s espionage methodology from his 2020 book, Chinese Espionage Operations and Tactics.

Fellow

Nicholas Eftimiades

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Intelligence

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Eftimiades on Think JSOU on the China’s espionage methodology appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post ACFP featuring Raimondo and Vestager cited in Bloomberg on US security concerns over Chinese EVs appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Warrick quoted in Brackety-Ack on efforts to impeach DHS Secretary appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 27, Transatlantic Security Initiative senior fellow Elisabeth Braw wrote an opinion piece in Politico discussing the changes in espionage tactics by authoritarian regimes.

Fellow

Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

NATO Resilience & Society

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Learn more

The post Braw featured in Politico on espionage in Europe appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 22, IPSI nonresident senior fellow Peter Dean was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald, describing the lack of an Australian defense budget increase as a “political own goal.”

Fellow

Peter J. Dean

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Australia Conflict

The post Dean quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald on Australian defense budget appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Lipner quoted in The Wall Street Journal on a potential entity to govern Palestinian society appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Panikoff quoted in Nameh News on Middle East escalation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

Clementine G. Starling: Russia can already detonate nuclear weapons in space from Earth

Robert M. Soofer: The US needs to modernize its nuclear and space forces

Mark J. Massa: Russia has been experimenting with “exotic” nuclear weapons

Thomas Warrick: Three possible reasons why Turner drew attention to this threat

Jacob Mezey: Russia’s nuclear recklessness in space might spur China and the US to work together

Russia can already detonate nuclear weapons in space from Earth

A nuclear-powered Russian satellite is potentially less alarming than a nuclear-armed satellite, since it would neither be norm-shattering nor give Russia the ability to degrade a large swath of all satellites on orbit in one fell swoop.

Because Russia can already detonate nuclear weapons in space from Earth, a new nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) likely would not give Moscow significant new military capability, even though it remains concerning. While a nuclear-armed ASAT would advance Russian counterspace capabilities, challenge US space strategy, undermine norms, and alarm allies, it does not appear to add a qualitatively different capability to the Russian arsenal.

—Clementine G. Starling is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program and a resident fellow within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Read more from Starling on this issue here.

The US needs to modernize its nuclear and space forces

This report, if true, should come as no surprise to the US government, which has been tracking Russian and Chinese anti-satellite capabilities for some years now, including ground- or space-based high-powered lasers. Presumably, armed with this awareness, the Department of Defense is taking appropriate measures to counter this threat. The key to successful nuclear deterrence is a survivable nuclear retaliatory force, including nuclear command and control—these are priorities for the US Department of Defense.

This situation is reminiscent of Russia’s development of transcontinental underwater nuclear torpedoes and nuclear-powered/nuclear-armed cruise missiles; these “novel” nuclear systems do not add appreciably to Russia’s existing capabilities to threaten the United States. Then why does Russian President Vladimir Putin field them? Perhaps it’s to shore up his domestic base or divert global attention from a failing state. Regardless, the US response must be to continue to modernize its nuclear—and space—forces to ensure that no combination of adversaries could ever contemplate a successful disarming first strike against the United States. It’s a good sign that Congress is concerned about these matters—it will have an opportunity to understand the US response as the congressional hearing season unfolds.

—Robert M. Soofer is a senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, where he leads its Nuclear Strategy Project. He was deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy from April 2017 to January 2021. 

Russia has been experimenting with “exotic” nuclear weapons

In recent years, Russia has announced the development of several new so-called “exotic” nuclear weapons—including a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile and submarine drone—which Western analysts have found challenging to understand. While there are plausible ways in which a nuclear-armed ASAT could be more effective than a nuclear detonation in space delivered by an intercontinental ballistic missile, such a development may be more similar in practical effect to the rest of this class of exotic nuclear weapons.

—Mark J. Massa is a deputy director in the Forward Defense practice of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. Read more from Massa on this issue here.

New Atlanticist

Feb 15, 2024

Russian nuclear anti-satellite weapons would require a firm US response, not hysteria

By Clementine G. Starling-Daniels, Mark J. Massa

If fielded, such weapons would directly challenge norms of responsible behavior in space and present a serious risk to all nations’ satellites.

Arms Control Russia

Three possible reasons why Turner drew attention to this threat

House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner’s request to declassify intelligence on a new Russian capability was striking because of Turner’s reputation for being serious about national security and the protection of intelligence sources and methods. I think that Turner was trying to win a trifecta—and he deserves the win.

First, national security Democrats and Republicans have been trying for months to get Congress to renew a crucial legal authority for foreign intelligence collection under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Jon Darby and I have described section 702  as “the most timely, impactful, and cost-effective authority to obtain foreign intelligence on terrorists, spies, weapons proliferators, cyber attackers, and nation-states that pose threats to the United States and our allies.” Reasonable reforms of the current law are entirely justified, but an unlikely alliance of progressive Democrats and pro-Donald Trump Republicans have tried to restrict the US intelligence community’s ability to use information collected under 702. A crucial vote scheduled for this week looked to go sideways, causing House leadership to pause the vote. Turner’s disclosure that this important new threat was revealed by intelligence collected under section 702’s authority should warn hesitant House members that the country’s security absolutely depends on renewing section 702.

The second potential motive for declassification has a good, if unorthodox, reason behind it. Normally, interested House members read and are briefed on threats by coming to the Intelligence Committee’s special rooms for reviewing highly classified intelligence—which, for security reasons, are a little out of the way of the routes most House members walk during their workday. Not all House members take this responsibility seriously enough. Declassifying this information will force all House members to confront the reality of this threat and may motivate them to go read the full, classified intelligence and vote accordingly.

The third reason—getting House members to realize that Russia is a threat to our national security and that they should support our allies and partners, including Ukraine—is an obvious reason, as well.

I think Turner is three for three. The Biden administration should support his request and declassify as much of the information as it can.

—Thomas S. Warrick is the director of the Future of DHS project at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice and a nonresident senior fellow and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

Russia’s nuclear recklessness in space might spur China and the US to work together

National security wonks in Washington are buzzing after reports that Russia is developing a nuclear system in space for anti-satellite purposes. It is currently unclear whether the system is armed with a nuclear warhead to directly destroy satellites or if it is instead powered by a nuclear reactor for electronic warfare purposes. However, if the system is nuclear-armed, it is worth understanding what the physical effects of such a nuclear explosion in space would be and how the world might respond. If Russia detonated such a weapon, it could damage the vast majority of commercial and military satellites in orbit. Upon detonation, high-energy x-rays would destroy the electronics of all satellites not obscured by the Earth, likely knocking out the Global Positioning System (GPS). In the following weeks, charged particles generated by the blast would be trapped by the Earth’s natural radiation belts and spread around the globe, damaging all satellites except those with a high degree of radiation shielding. When the United States detonated a nuclear weapon at high-altitude in the Starfish Prime test of 1962 a third of all satellites in orbit were eventually destroyed by this effect. In 1962, there were just 24 satellites in orbit. Today there are more than seven thousand.

Given the potential crippling outcome to the global economy and to militaries, this issue should be of utmost priority to the entire world. The United States should clarify whether the weapon is, in fact, nuclear-armed. If so, international pressure, especially from China, would be critical to preventing Russia from deploying the system in space. China operates the second-most satellites of any country and might find common ground with the United States in stopping this threat. If Russia deployed the weapon in space, deterring its use in a major crisis would be difficult since the United States could not threaten to respond in-kind. Therefore, the only alternative would be planning to shoot down the system before it detonated. 

While the United States does not officially possess or have plans to develop an anti-satellite capability, it has demonstrated the ability of an SM-3 missile to target satellites in low-Earth orbit. Such an event could spark an unlikely alliance, since China has tested anti-satellite capabilities and might be willing to cooperate given the threat to its ambitions in space. Regardless of whether this Russian system is indeed a nuclear weapon, this revelation could be good for US-China relations at a time when officials are attempting to jump-start arms control talks. Preserving peaceful access to space could help pave the way for broader discussions on strategic stability.

—Jacob Mezey is a program assistant in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He contributes to the program’s research on nuclear security, space security, defense innovation and modernization, and gray zone conflict.

The post Experts react: What to know about Russia’s apparent plans for a space-based nuclear weapon appeared first on Atlantic Council.

If passed, the bill would allow Ukrainians to hold more than one citizenship. This would have significant implications for Ukraine itself and for the large international Ukrainian diaspora. According to the Ukrainian World Congress, the Ukrainian diaspora currently numbers around 20 million people. Most would potentially be eligible for Ukrainian citizenship. Restrictions on dual citizenship have previously deterred many members of the diaspora from applying for Ukrainian passports.

Zelenskyy’s proposal has been welcomed by many within the Ukrainian diaspora. If adopted, it could help strengthen ties between Ukraine itself and the global Ukrainian community, while granting diaspora members an opportunity to have a greater say in Ukraine’s development. It would make it far easier to visit Ukraine and open a business, purchase property, or otherwise invest in the country, while also providing diaspora Ukrainians with the chance to vote in elections or even run for office themselves.

For existing Ukrainian citizens, acquiring a second passport would potentially open multiple doors in terms of travel, work, and study. Ukrainians have enjoyed visa-free access to the European Union’s Schengen Zone for limited time periods since 2017, and have also benefited from a range of measures to ease border restrictions since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Nevertheless, the prospect of holding an EU, US, or other Western passport would certainly appeal to many.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

While there is likely to be considerable public support for Zelenskyy’s dual citizenship proposal, any attempt at implementation in today’s wartime environment could prove highly problematic. Crucially, it remains far from clear what the initiative would mean for military service.

With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine now approaching the two-year mark, most analysts believe the conflict has evolved into a war of attrition. With its far larger population, economy, and industrial base, this places Russia at a considerable advantage. The Russian military has also demonstrated a striking disregard for heavy losses in Ukraine, repeatedly employing so-called “human wave” or “meat assault” tactics to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses by sheer weight of numbers.

Ukraine cannot afford to accept such high casualty rates. The country has a far smaller pool of military-age men to draw from, and has already experienced a major decline in population as a direct result of Russia’s invasion. Current martial law restrictions mean most Ukrainian males eligible for military service are not permitted to exit the country. However, if changes to the Ukrainian Constitution made it possible to apply for a second citizenship, opportunities may arise for Ukrainian citizens to use newly acquired passports in order to leave Ukraine and avoid conscription.

Meanwhile, a relaxation in Ukraine’s dual citizenship restrictions could also potentially result in members of the Ukrainian diaspora who took Ukrainian passports becoming eligible for military service. Any uncertainty over the status of new passport holders with regard to conscription would be likely to deter many from applying.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Thu, August 15, 2024 • 9:00 am ET

Ukraine’s advance in Kursk: What’s next and implications

Conflict Russia Security & Defense Ukraine

The issue of military service is currently high on the Ukrainian wartime agenda amid debate over how best to bolster the depleted ranks of the army. A recent proposal by Ukraine’s military chiefs to conscript up to 500,000 civilians has met with a mixed reaction in Kyiv, with Zelenskyy refusing to offer his public support and instead calling for further details before making a decision.

Differences of opinion over the correct approach toward mobilization are believed to have contributed to mounting tensions between Ukraine’s civilian and military leadership. This was widely cited as a contributing factor behind Zelenskyy’s February 8 decision to replace Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny. Any constitutional changes to introduce dual citizenship would further complicate an already challenging and politically sensitive situation.

President Zelenskyy’s proposal to enshrine the right to dual citizenship in the Ukrainian Constitution reflects growing awareness of the important role played by the global Ukrainian diaspora. If implemented, it would probably prove a popular measure that would significantly increase the number of Ukrainian passport holders and provide millions more people with a stake in the country’s future. However, there are a number of practical reasons why progress on this issue remains unlikely in the current wartime conditions.

Mark Temnycky is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. 

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 17, 2023

2024 preview: The West must decide if it wants Ukraine to win

By Richard D. Hooker, Jr.

If Western leaders fail to provide Ukraine with the weapons to defeat Putin in 2024, this will significantly increase the likelihood of a direct military confrontation between Russia and NATO, writes Richard D. Hooker Jr.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Jan 22, 2024

Ukraine’s Black Sea success exposes folly of West’s “don’t escalate” mantra

By Peter Dickinson

Ukraine’s remarkable success during 2023 in the Battle of the Black Sea can serve as a blueprint for victory over Putin’s Russia, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Jan 4, 2024

To defeat Putin in a long war, Ukraine must switch to active defense in 2024

By Mykola Bielieskov

By embracing a strategy of active defense in 2024, Kyiv can achieve the twin goals of preventing any major Russian advances and creating conditions that strongly favor Ukraine in what is increasingly a war of attrition, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Defense Policy

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post President Zelenskyy’s dual citizenship proposal presents wartime dilemmas appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 2, IPSI nonresident senior fellow Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi was quoted in an article by the Japan Times, discussing Japan’s efforts to build up its defense and deterrence against simultaneous threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. 

Fellow

Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Policy Indo-Pacific

The post Hinata-Yamaguchi quoted in the Japan Times on Japan’s defense upgrades appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 2, Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Scowcroft Center, appeared on BBC News to discuss how the United States should respond to the recent attack by Iran-affiliated forces that killed 3 US service members in Jordan.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig on BBC News on how the US should respond to Iran-backed attack appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 1, Andrew Michta, director and senior fellow in the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative, was published in City Journal and RealClearWorld on how the United States can revitalize itself. He argues that US leaders must consider how each of their decisions will help American citizens, bring to an end the ideological polarization dividing the country, and reevaluate foreign and national security policies.

Staff

Andrew A. Michta

Director and Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Central Europe Eastern Europe

The post Michta in City Journal and RealClearWorld on how the United States can achieve national renewal appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Table of contents

Foreword

After decades of seeking to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in international relations, the United States is now grappling with a global landscape marked by intense strategic competition and the growing salience of nuclear weapons—problems that will likely persist for years to come. Over the past year, Russia compounded its aggression in Ukraine with nuclear saber-rattling, modernizing and expanding its nuclear forces over the past decade. Furthermore, Russia’s possession of a substantial inventory of theater nuclear weapons continues to threaten regional deterrence. Meanwhile, in Asia, Beijing is pursuing an unprecedented surge in its nuclear capabilities. If current trends persist, China is projected to possess about 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035.¹ While China was once viewed as a secondary nuclear power, its substantial investment in its nuclear arsenal—including the launch of a third ballistic missile early-warning satellite in 2022 and advancements in land-based ballistic missiles, aircraft, submarines, and hypersonic missiles—positions China to become a near-equal nuclear power in the coming decade. These trends mark a historic shift. For the first time in its history, the United States must face two near-peer nuclear competitors simultaneously.

At the same time, Russia’s suspension of its compliance with the New START agreement in 2023 has significantly weakened the last strategic arms control framework established in the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. This move leaves scant provisions governing the future of nuclear capabilities among the United States and its adversaries. For over half a century, Washington and Moscow negotiated to establish treaties that imposed limits on their nuclear arsenals, aiming to manage their nuclear rivalry and mitigate the risk of nuclear conflict. This process served the national security interests of both sides by curbing weapons and activities that could jeopardize deterrence, safeguarding strategic stability, offering insights into nuclear capacities, and potentially steering military competition toward less perilous avenues. However, shifts in the global security landscape have altered this calculus. The Russian Federation, much like the Soviet Union before it, has insisted that future agreements factor in the nuclear capabilities of Britain and France. On the other hand, the United States now confronts a security environment featuring two nuclear-armed adversaries—Russia and China—whose forces will potentially pose significant threats to the United States and its allies.

This evolving security landscape may prompt the United States to reevaluate its assessments of its deterrence and arms control requirements. But how should the United States approach this problem?

The papers below address the intricate challenge of maintaining nuclear deterrence through force structure and arms control requirements. They offer insights into these complex issues, each informed by two workshops attended by both technical and policy experts in the spring and summer of 2023, all supported by Los Alamos National Laboratory. The first paper, authored by Greg Weaver, examines the future of force requirements in this two-peer nuclear environment, arguing that the United States must reexamine its force structure to effectively deter China and Russia simultaneously. Weaver outlines the deterrence requirements for deterring both large-scale nuclear and conventional aggression and limited nuclear attack in a two-peer environment, and concludes that the United States may require a larger arsenal of deployed nuclear warheads than the 1,550 allowed by the New START Treaty, along with additional delivery systems like a nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile, to effectively deter conflicts with both China and Russia simultaneously.

The second paper, authored by Amy Woolf, addresses the future of arms control by examining the future utility of stability dialogues and risk-reduction measures, instead of numerically binding treaties. Woolf finds that although stability discussions and measures for risk reduction could assist these three nations in lowering the likelihood of nuclear employment, they are unlikely to engage in negotiations for treaties or agreements that impose restrictions on the scale of their nuclear capabilities or provide insight into their plans. Together, this series will provide preliminary lessons and recommendations for the future of deterrence and arms control as the United States determines how to respond to this two-peer environment.

Whether or not one finds the specific proposals offered by each author compelling, it is clear that US and allied policy must be composed of both deterrence and arms control options. Since the 1970s, each major US nuclear modernization program has been accompanied by an arms control proposal, and each nuclear arms control treaty has been backed by tangible capabilities.

Part I: US deterrence requirements in the coming two-nuclear-peer threat environment

Introduction

A large-scale nuclear attack on the US homeland poses the only existential military threat to the United States. The nation relies on nuclear deterrence to prevent this threat. This makes nuclear deterrence the highest priority mission of the US military and the foundation of US national security strategy. If the nation fails at this mission, no other mission matters.²

US nuclear deterrence strategy and practice have arguably prevented nuclear war and contributed to preventing large-scale conventional war between nuclear-armed states as well. While correlation is not causation, the absence of nuclear or large-scale war between major powers since 1945 is difficult to explain without considering the role of nuclear deterrence in general, and US nuclear deterrence in particular.

However, the strategic circumstances in which US nuclear deterrence strategy and practice have operated are changing rapidly. Throughout the nuclear age, the United States designed its nuclear deterrence strategy, and shaped and sized its nuclear forces, to address the Russian nuclear threat, treating other nuclear adversaries (i.e., from China and North Korea) as “lesser included threats.” A US nuclear force structured and sized to address Russia had sufficient capability to address the lesser included threats as well, even after a nuclear war with Russia.

China, however, is deliberately and rapidly changing this equation, building up its nuclear forces on a scale and at a pace not seen since the US-Soviet arms race of the 1960s and 1970s. But, unlike during the Cold War, China is the only one racing in the US-China nuclear relationship. Declassified US intelligence assessments state that China’s nuclear stockpile will reach rough quantitative parity with currently planned US-deployed nuclear warheads by the mid-2030s (e.g., approximately 1,500 weapons by 2035), if China continues on its current trajectory.³ Should this assessment prove accurate, this means the United States will face two peer nuclear adversaries for the first time in the nuclear age in just over a decade.⁴

This paper examines how US deterrence requirements will be affected by this coming two-nuclear-peer threat environment. First, it lays out four key assumptions which undergird the analysis. Second, it examines the complex nature of the future two-peer threat. Third, it identifies the critical US deterrence objectives in that two-peer environment. Finally, it examines what will be required to achieve those objectives.

Key assumptions

This analysis makes four assumptions regarding the two-nucle­ar-peer deterrence problem:

1. In the two-nuclear-peer environment, deterrence will continue to be a function of decisively influencing an adversary leadership’s decision calculus by affecting its assessment of the benefits and costs of taking the action one seeks to deter, and of the benefits and costs of continued restraint from taking that action. The way deterrence works will not change.
2. Deterring aggression and escalation is based on affecting an adversary’s assessment of the likely outcome of such military actions. Thus, while other factors contribute to deterrence, the perceived ability to fight and win a conflict below the level of large-scale nuclear exchanges is critical to deterrence success. Warfighting capability matters.⁵
3. No major power can achieve a measure of nuclear superiority sufficient to win a large-scale nuclear war without sustaining existential-level damage against technically sophisticated and well-resourced major-power adversaries. In a conflict between nuclear-armed major powers, mutually assured destruction is a condition, not a strategy.
4. While North Korea’s nuclear forces will continue to grow, they will not expand sufficiently to prevent US strategy from treating North Korea as a lesser included case of the Russia-China nuclear threat.

China is rapidly becoming a nuclear peer

China’s rapid nuclear buildup is comprehensive, including both stra­tegic and theater-range forces and the addition of an array of new capabilities. China is fielding a triad of strategic nuclear delivery systems, adopting a launch under attack (LUA) posture for its inter­continental ballistic missile (ICBM) force, and has tested potentially destabilizing new intercontinental range systems (e.g., fractional or multiple orbital bombardment systems [FOBS/MOBS] that could threaten a potentially unwarned preemptive attack on the United States). For the first time, China is developing survivable theater nuclear forces capable of conducting low-yield precision strikes on US and allied/partner forces and infrastructure across East Asia.

Whether China is pursuing nuclear parity with or superiority over the United States is unclear. It also is unclear why Chinese leadership is doing so. China may have decided to change the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy by adopting an expanded theater nuclear war-fighting role and/or a counterforce role against US nuclear forces backed by national missile defenses. The force that China is building is not necessary to enable its traditional minimum deterrence/“no first use” strategy.⁶

Neither a change in Chinese nuclear strategy nor the larger and more diverse Chinese nuclear force to implement it were envisioned when the US nuclear modernization program was designed.⁷

China is also rapidly modernizing and expanding its conventional forces, which pose an increasing threat to US forces and allies/partners in Asia. By the 2030s, China’s conventional military buildup could flip the conventional military balance in Asia. This potential conventional imbalance could undermine deterrence of Chinese aggression by itself, but the impact would be exacerbated if China were contemplating either opportunistic aggression in the context of an already ongoing theater conflict between Russia and NATO, or collaborative Chinese-Russian aggression in both theaters.

Finally, China is rapidly fielding new nonnuclear strategic capabili­ties in space and cyberspace. These capabilities have the potential to deny or diminish US conventional forces’ ability to project power effectively, and possibly threaten US nuclear command and control.

The Russian threat post-Ukraine

Even following its costly invasion of Ukraine, Russia remains a nuclear peer of the United States, one which may engage in further conventional aggression and nuclear coercion or use in the future. Russia has the largest deployed nuclear force of any state today. This is likely to remain true through 2035. Russia continues to expand its theater nuclear forces, increasing its existing advantage over NATO.

Russian strategy and doctrine envision limited first use of theater nuclear weapons to coerce war termination on terms acceptable to Russia if losing a conventional war, and larger scale use of theater nuclear forces to defeat NATO conventional forces, if coercive nuclear use fails. Russian strategy relies on strategic nuclear forces to deter a large-scale US nuclear response against the Russian homeland while Russia escalates to limited nuclear war in theater. Thus, Russian strategy indicates the Russian leadership believes that limited nuclear use is unlikely to escalate out of control.⁸

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates both a propensity to take risk and to miscalculate while doing so, which makes Russian oppor­tunistic or collaborative aggression against NATO states on its pe­riphery a serious threat despite the dismal performance of Russian conventional forces in Ukraine. Those forces’ performance is likely to increase Russian reliance on nuclear weapons, increasing the probability of Russian limited nuclear first use early in a conflict with NATO. Reconstituted Russian conventional forces, while inferior to fully reinforced NATO forces, will continue to have a space/time advantage against NATO states on Russia’s periphery, potentially enabling them to occupy such states’ territory in a fait d’accompli before NATO forces can mobilize in their defense. The Russians might then threaten limited nuclear escalation to deter or defeat a NATO counteroffensive to restore the territorial status quo ante. Russia also continues to expand its space, cyber, and conventional deep precision strike capabilities to deny NATO forces critical enablers and to derive coercive leverage from threats to NATO critical infrastructure.

The unique nature of the two-nuclear-peer threat

If China’s nuclear buildup continues on its current trajectory, the United States will face two nuclear-peer adversaries for the first time in the mid-2030s. Russia and China will together pose an unprecedented threat to US defense strategy. The United States has yet to even substantively grapple with the implications of this two-nuclear-peer threat, much less effectively address it.

Facing China alone as a nuclear peer will alter the strategic land­scape in the Asia-Pacific region. But the Russian-Chinese “friendship without limits” will pose qualitatively new threats of opportunis­tic or cooperative two-theater aggression.

Neither the 2018 US National Defense Strategy (NDS) nor the 2022 NDS adequately address this threat. As noted in the 2018 Commis­sion on the National Defense Strategy’s assessment of the 2018 NDS:

The 2022 NDS also adopts a “one major war” sizing construct. And while both the 2022 NDS and the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review hint at reliance on US nuclear forces to deter opportunistic aggression by a second nuclear peer, neither document advocates for the US conventional and nuclear forces that will be required to do so when facing two nuclear peers in the mid-2030s.⁹

Failing to address this problem has the potential to undermine de­terrence, especially deterrence of opportunistic aggression in a second theater or collaborative Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia simultaneously. Failing to address these threats because some deem them improbable will have the perverse effect of making them more likely.¹⁰

In this broader strategic context, facing a second nuclear peer pos­es several unique challenges to US nuclear strategy, force posture, and force structure.

A Chinese nuclear peer creates new first-strike threats that the Unit­ed States must address to preserve sufficient assured second-strike capability to enable US deterrence strategy. The first new threat is a China-only preemptive counterforce strike on US nuclear forces. The much larger and more capable Chinese nuclear force of the mid-2030s will almost certainly include multiple warhead ICBMs with sufficient accuracy to destroy the US ICBM force, augmented by Chinese counter-space and cyber capabilities, potentially capable of denying the launch warning necessary to enable a US LUA option to preserve ICBM survivability. Chinese nuclear forces may also include FOBS/MOBS capable of conducting a strike on US national leadership and nuclear command and control and warning systems with little to no warning. Finally, China’s intense interest in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, and autonomous sys­tems research might lead to unexpected breakthroughs in antisubmarine warfare (ASW) that could pose a threat to US ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs).

A Chinese nuclear peer also creates the potential for a collaborative preemptive counterforce strike by China and Russia simultaneously. This scenario not only significantly increases the number of nuclear weapons the United States might face in a first strike on its nuclear forces, but also combines the most threatening features of future Russian and Chinese nuclear capabilities in all relevant domains. Given current capabilities, the potential increase in threat numbers alone is unlikely to increase the first-strike threat to US nuclear forces significantly, because both Russia and China will independently have sufficient forces to target everything that is currently targetable. But, should there be a breakthrough in ASW that allows small-area (but not precise) geolocation of SSBNs at sea, then barrage attacks requiring larger numbers of weapons could become a relevant threat to the most survivable portion of the US nuclear deterrent.

The growth in Chinese nuclear forces also significantly increases the number of nuclear counterforce targets for US forces to potentially hold at risk to either deter aggression and escalation and/or to achieve other US objectives if deterrence fails.¹¹

These collective challenges posed by the future two-peer threat environment have important impacts on US future deterrence and assurance requirements.

Determining US deterrence requirements for the two-nucle­ar-peer environment

To determine US deterrence requirements for the two-nuclear-peer environment one must identify whom we seek to deter from doing what under what conditions. The United States (and its allies and partners) must be able to achieve the following deterrence objectives against China and Russia:

• Deter large-scale conventional aggression.
• Deter limited nuclear escalation.
• Deter large-scale nuclear attack.

Regarding the circumstances in which those objectives must be achieved, the United States (and its allies and partners) must be able to do so in three basic scenarios:

• Deter either adversary alone.
• Deter opportunistic aggression by one adversary while already at war against the other.
• Deter simultaneous collaborative aggression by both adversaries.

US strategy for achieving these deterrence objectives must be tailored to decisively influence the unique decision calculus of Chinese leaders and of Russian leaders. This requires a strategy and supporting force structure and posture that can credibly defeat their respective “theories of victory” by denying them their objectives and imposing costs that far exceed what benefits they can achieve through aggression or escalation.

Deterring large-scale conventional aggression

Deterring conventional aggression by Russia or China individually is conceptually simple but operationally complex. The United States and its allies and partners must be perceived by Moscow or Beijing as willing and capable of fighting and winning a large-scale conventional conflict. This requires conventional military superiority applied in a way that defeats the adversary’s strategy.

But there is an additional element required to deter large-scale conventional aggression by a nuclear peer adversary: one must also convince such an adversary that it cannot escalate its way out of failed conventional aggression through nuclear means to force war termination on terms either favorable or acceptable to the adversary. Thus, the second deterrence objective of deterring limited nuclear escalation contributes directly to achieving the first deterrence objective as well.

But what about deterring opportunistic or collaborative large-scale conventional aggression? This is a much tougher challenge, requiring US, allied, and partner conventional superiority and the ability to deter limited nuclear escalation in both theaters.

Because the US forces required to achieve conventional superiority in Asia are somewhat different from those required to do so in Europe, there are potential adjustments to US and allied and partner conventional force structure and posture that could achieve superiority in both theaters.

The primary operational limitation on the ability of the United States to fight and win in both theaters simultaneously is logistics: the strategic airlift and sealift needed to get required forces where they need to be and then sustain them in combat, with sufficient stocks of advanced conventional munitions. There also are critical “low-density, high-demand” US military capabilities that would be in short supply in a two-theater conflict, including bombers; integrated air and missile defenses (IAMD); tanker aircraft; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities; and ASW capabilities.

Fixing this would require a shared understanding of the two-nuclear-peer threat among the United States and its allies and partners in Europe and Asia; significant increases in US, allied, and partner military spending; and an agreement on how to optimize the military capabilities of multiple nations in each theater.

The bottom line is that US allies and partners would have to agree to provide much more conventional capability more efficiently, without perceiving the US request to do so as signaling a reduced US commitment to their defense in either theater.

If the United States and its allies and partners cannot (or will not) maintain conventional superiority in a second theater conflict, deterring or defeating opportunistic or collaborative aggression will require reliance on nuclear weapons to counter adversary conventional superiority in the second theater. US nuclear forces do not currently play such a role, and the force the United States currently plans is not designed to play this role.

US ability to deter large-scale conventional aggression through increased reliance on nuclear weapons to compensate for conventional inferiority is greater against China than it is against Russia for several reasons.

First, during a possible amphibious invasion of Taiwan, China’s forces would be highly vulnerable to US limited nuclear use. And while China might well use nuclear weapons in response, China’s ability to seize Taiwan after sustaining a nuclear attack on its amphibious forces would be negated for years. Thus, Chinese nuclear counterescalation would not enable Beijing to achieve its original geopolitical objectives in the near term, while risking further nuclear escalation, including potentially uncontrolled escalation.¹²

Compensating for NATO conventional inferiority with nuclear weapons to deter Russian opportunistic or collaborative aggression is more problematic. Russia’s growing theater nuclear force advantage would be extremely difficult to overcome in a way that would make such a US strategy credible, especially given the fact that Russian conventional operations would not be uniquely vulnerable to nuclear attack. However, given the performance of Russian conventional forces in Ukraine, it is reasonable to believe that increased, optimized conventional force contributions by European NATO allies combined with more prepositioning of US heavy ground force equipment in Europe could maintain NATO conventional superiority even if a Russia-NATO conflict began after the United States was engaged in a war against China in Asia.

So what are the key deterrence requirements for this deterrence objective?

The best military option is for the United States and its allies and partners to maintain conventional superiority over China and Russia in both theaters simultaneously. This can be done. But it is unclear whether it will be done, given the political and financial costs of doing so. A strategy that requires such conventional superiority in both theaters that is not supported by forces credibly capable of enabling it risks deterrence failure. In that event, the United States and its allies and partners would incur the much higher costs of fighting (and potentially losing) a major power war, and risk escalation to large-scale nuclear war.

If the United States and its allies and partners do not achieve two-theater conventional superiority, then the United States should increase reliance on nuclear weapons to deter large-scale opportunistic or collaborative conventional aggression in Asia while working with its NATO allies to ensure NATO conventional superiority even in the face of a two-theater war. In either case, it will be essential that the United States bolsters its ability to deter limited nuclear escalation in both theaters to enhance deterrence of large-scale conventional aggression by China and/or Russia. If either Beijing or Moscow perceives a viable option to escalate its way out of failed conventional aggression, it will be more likely to risk such a conventional attack.

Deterring limited nuclear escalation

When facing a peer nuclear adversary with a secure second-strike capability that poses an existential threat to the United States, deterrence of limited nuclear escalation requires the perceived ability of the United States, allies, and partners to persevere in the face of adversary limited nuclear escalation without being politically coerced into accepting war termination on the adversary’s terms, and without being decisively militarily disadvantaged. That requires a set of US nuclear capabilities that are militarily relevant in such a conflict. Current Russian theater nuclear capabilities are designed to be just that. The ongoing evolution of Chinese theater nuclear capabilities indicates that Chinese planners may now understand this as well.

The core requirement for deterring limited nuclear escalation in a war with a nuclear peer is a flexible response strategy that credibly convinces the adversary’s leadership that limited nuclear escalation:

1. Does not provide effective insurance against miscalculating about US and allied capability, resolve, and cohesion in the face of conventional aggression (as Moscow clearly concluded vis-à-vis Ukraine).
2. Will not result in war termination on its terms.
3. Runs the risk of uncontrolled escalation because the United States and its allies are visibly prepared for what nuclear scholar Thomas Schelling called a “competition in risk-taking” to defend their vital interests.

An effective flexible response strategy must be enabled by US, allied, and partner nuclear and conventional forces that are capable of three key things:

1. Providing a robust range of credible response options that can restore deterrence by convincing adversary leadership it has miscalculated in a dire way, that further use of nuclear weapons will not achieve its objectives, and that it will incur costs that far exceed any benefits it can achieve.
2. Countering the military impact of adversary theater nuclear use.
3. Continuing to operate effectively to achieve US, allied, and partner objectives in a limited nuclear use environment.

To meet these requirements the United States needs a range of continuously forward-deployed, survivable theater nuclear forc­es that can reliably penetrate adversary defenses with a range of explosive yields, and on operationally relevant delivery timelines. Based on these attributes, currently planned US theater nuclear capabilities are not sufficient for the two-peer threat the United States faces. Completing the modernization of NATO’s dual-capable fighter aircraft capabilities is necessary but not sufficient to meet this requirement. NATO’s planned theater nuclear forces are too small, insufficiently survivable, and insufficiently militarily relevant. The United States currently plans no continuously forward-deployed theater nuclear capabilities in the Asia-Pacific theater whatsoever, despite the rapid growth of Chinese theater nuclear capabilities and indications that China is changing its nuclear strategy.

US strategic nuclear forces alone cannot fill this gap because they lack the flexibility and timeliness necessary to convince the Russian or Chinese leadership that the United States and its allies are credibly prepared to counter limited nuclear first use with militarily effective nuclear responses of their own. Bombers based in the continental United States cannot deliver nuclear weapons on operationally relevant timelines in many scenarios and are vulnerable to preemptive attack if deployed forward in the theater.

The United States should supplement dual-capable fighter modernization with at least one additional survivable, continuously forward-deployed, selectable-yield delivery system with a higher probability of penetrating advanced defenses and delivering nuclear weapons to targets in the European and Asia-Pacific theaters on operationally relevant timelines. There are several candidate systems that could meet this requirement, but a US nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) deployed on attack submarines would provide all these attributes in a highly effective manner.

Deterring large-scale nuclear attack

US strategy for deterring large-scale nuclear attack has always been to ensure that US nuclear forces can inflict unacceptable damage on any adversary under any circumstances.

Inflicting unacceptable damage against China and Russia simultaneously requires being able to destroy what both adversaries value most under any circumstances, including following a combined Chinese-Russian preemptive counterforce strike on US nuclear forces and their command and control. This begs two key questions:

• What do the Chinese and Russian leaderships value most?
• How many US nuclear weapons must survive a combined future Chinese-Russian counterforce attack to be able to credibly hold at risk what both adversaries most value?

During the Cold War, the United States assessed that the Soviet leadership most valued its ability to exercise control over the Soviet state, its war-supporting industry, and its military forces, including its strategic nuclear forces. Whether this remains the correct equation to deter a Chinese and/or Russian large-scale nuclear attack on the United States is largely a question for the intelligence community.

If the intelligence community assesses the United States must hold Chinese and Russian nuclear forces at substantial risk to deter a large-scale nuclear attack, then the United States must carefully evaluate the level and nature of US nuclear counterforce capability required to deter such an attack and modify its planned nuclear force structure accordingly. Given the scale of China’s nuclear force expansion, the currently planned US nuclear force will clearly be insufficient to address two-peer adversaries in this way.

However, two other issues regarding the need for US nuclear counterforce capabilities are questions of political-military strategy, not intelligence assessment. The first is whether holding a peer adversary’s nuclear forces at risk contributes significantly to deterring limited nuclear escalation by making the US will to engage in a competition in risk-taking more credible. The second is whether holding a peer adversary’s nuclear forces at risk is necessary to limit meaningfully the damage Russia and China can do to the United States and its allies if deterrence of large-scale nuclear attack fails.

Even if the United States determines it does not need to hold Chinese and Russian nuclear forces at substantial risk to deter a large-scale nuclear attack, the United States should still evaluate the level and nature of US nuclear counterforce capabilities required to achieve these other two political-military objectives and modify its planned nuclear force structure accordingly. Most analysts believe the most likely path to a large-scale nuclear war is limited nuclear escalation that results from large-scale conventional conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries. Thus, if such counterforce capability contributes to deterring limited nuclear escalation, and thus also contributes to deterring large-scale conventional aggression, it indirectly contributes to preventing large-scale nuclear attack, even if it is not necessary to deter such an attack directly.

Conclusion

The advent of the two-nuclear-peer threat means the United States must reevaluate the size and composition of the nuclear force it will need to credibly deter both China and Russia from initiating large-scale conventional aggression, escalating to limited nuclear use, and launching a large-scale nuclear attack.

China’s impending nuclear-peer status means that the United States can no longer treat the Chinese nuclear threat as a “lesser included case” of the Russian nuclear threat. It is a US national security im­perative that the full implications of the impending two-peer threat identified in this paper be seriously addressed in the near term.

Why is this an urgent imperative? Because if US strategy to address the two-peer threat requires a US nuclear force that is larger in size, different in composition, or both, decisions need to be made in the near term (one to three years) to supplement the planned US nuclear modernization program, or the nation will not have the required additional capabilities in time to address the threat. The current and planned capacity of the US nuclear weapons enterprise, under the purview of both the DOD and the Department of Energy, severely limits the nation’s ability to supplement the planned modernization program significantly in a timely way.

To reevaluate the size and composition of the nuclear force needed to address the coming two-peer threat, the full US national security community—including those who do and those who do not normally focus on nuclear weapons issues—needs to answer three key questions about the future role of nuclear weapons in US strategy and the conventional and nuclear forces required to implement that strategy:

• What is the strategic rationale for believing that the nuclear modernization program of record that was adopted in 2010, before Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, and before China’s ongoing and rapid nuclear force expansion, will be sufficient to address a 2030s security environment that poses the threat of conflict with two-peer nuclear adversaries simultaneously?
• Are the United States and its allies and partners likely to decide to bear the sustained political and financial costs necessary to build sufficient conventional forces to deter and defeat both Russia and China simultaneously?
• Why would a nuclear weapons design and production infrastructure designed to just barely be able to maintain the existing US nuclear force be sufficient to provide what the nation needs in a potentially unconstrained nuclear competition with two-peer nuclear adversaries who are technically sophisticated, well-resourced, and geostrategicaly aligned, if not allied?

Part II: Arms control opportunities in the emerging two-nuclear-peer environment

By Amy F. Woolf

This issue brief¹³ considers whether and how the emerging challenge of two near-equal nuclear-armed adversaries might affect the US nuclear posture. This changing security environment may alter US assessments of its nuclear requirements, affecting both the size and structure of the US nuclear arsenal. The presence of two near-equal nuclear adversaries might also raise new questions about whether arms control can help manage the nuclear competition with Russia and China to ease US concerns about emerging threats and mitigate the need for a more robust US nuclear force posture.

While this paper briefly addresses the prospects for arms control with Russia, the core of this inquiry is the question of whether the United States can engage China in an arms control process that restricts the scope of China’s nuclear modernization program, and, therefore, the magnitude of a potential US response. In its simple form, this question asks whether China might agree to limit the size and scope of its arsenal in exchange for limits on the numbers or capabilities of US nuclear weapons. This would seem to mirror the US-Soviet and US-Russian arms control experience where the nations signed several treaties that limited and, eventually, reduced their numbers of deployed nuclear warheads.

But the United States and Soviet Union developed their arms control relationship and crafted the tools they used to manage their nuclear competition over more than fifty years of negotiations. They only agreed to reduce their numbers of deployed nuclear weapons once their political and security relationship had changed in ways that reduced their nuclear requirements. Arms control treaties that codified reductions in their numbers of nuclear weapons were the result, not the cause, of that changing political relationship.

The United States and China almost certainly will not begin their arms control relationship in the same place that the United States and Russia reached after fifty years—with formal treaties that limited their numbers of deployed weapons. Nor can the United States expect China to accept limits on its nuclear capabilities as long as it believes it needs to expand those capabilities to meet its national security requirements. Therefore, this paper looks beyond the question of whether and how to impose numerical limits on Russian or Chinese nuclear forces and considers other forms of cooperation that might ease US concerns about emerging threats and, therefore, mitigate the need for a more robust US nuclear force posture.

Prospects for arms control with Russia

The United States and Russia are unlikely to reach an agreement on a formal treaty retaining current limits or imposing further reductions on their deployed nuclear forces before the New START agreement expires in 2026. Although the United States seems willing to move forward with negotiations, it is unclear whether that these discussions will resume before the conflict in Ukraine ends. In June 2023, Jake Sullivan, President Joseph R. Biden’s national security advisor, said that “rather than waiting to resolve all our bilateral differences, the United States is ready to engage Russia now to manage nuclear risks and develop a post-2026 arms control framework.”¹⁴ Russia, however, has rejected this approach. Sergey Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, has blamed Russia’s suspension of New START participation on “the totality of circumstances related to the destructive and hostile actions of the United States.” In response to Sullivan’s statement, he said that “there is simply no basis for a productive discussion here, but we are ready to patiently state our approaches and explain why the US course is destructive.”¹⁵

Differences in the US and Russian priorities for a treaty to replace New START would further complicate their ability to complete a new treaty before New START expires. The United States has suggested that the subsequent agreement “sustain limits . . . on the Russian systems covered under new START . . . limit the new kinds of nuclear systems Russia is developing; and . . . address all Russian nuclear weapons, including theater-range weapons.”¹⁶ Russia, in contrast, wants the arms control process to “cover the entire spectrum of offensive and defensive, nuclear and non-nuclear weapons with a strategic potential.” This list includes offensive nuclear and conventional strategic weapons, ballistic missile defenses, space-based capabilities that could strike targets on Earth, and the nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom and France.¹⁷ It would likely take more than the short time remaining before 2026 to resolve differences and conclude a treaty.

The United States and Russia might find common ground if they seek to establish broad goals for cooperation while identifying specific measures to help manage risks and uncertainties created by their nuclear postures. Some analysts have suggested that they could maintain predictability and transparency by pledging to maintain their forces at the levels mandated in New START and to resume exchanging data on the numbers and locations of their deployed strategic weapons. They could also bolster their communication channels, like those established to ensure deconfliction in and around Syria, to reduce the risk of misunderstandings and misperceptions that could lead to inadvertent escalation.

Informal steps designed to demonstrate restraint and avoid miscalculations would, however, be less comprehensive than those mandated by formal treaties and would almost certainly lapse if either side sought additional forces to meet its national security requirements. Nevertheless, voluntary efforts at cooperation, new negotiations to reinvigorate existing communications channels, and consultations to identify new risk reduction measures could help the two sides forestall worst-case assessments and resist arms race pressures until security conditions improved and formal negotiations resumed.

Prospects for arms control with China

US officials have raised concerns about China’s growing nuclear arsenal and the potential that a regional crisis could spark a conflict that might escalate to nuclear war. In response to these concerns, during their meeting in November 2021, President Biden invited China’s President Xi Jinping to participate in a strategic stability dialogue that would establish “common-sense guardrails to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict and to keep lines of communication open.”¹⁸ According to the Biden White House, these talks would focus, at first, “on avoiding accidental conflict, then on each nation’s nuclear strategy and the related instability that could come from attacks in cyberspace and outer space,” before eventually providing a venue for more formal arms control negotiations.¹⁹

China has embraced some forms of arms control, participating in multilateral negotiations and engaging in the P5 process—which brings together the five nuclear weapon states (NWS) recognized by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States)—to address nuclear security and nonproliferation issues. In this context, Beijing has advocated for the “five nuclear-weapon States . . . to further strengthen communication on strategic stability and conduct in-depth dialogue on reducing the role of nuclear weapons in their national security doctrines and on a broad range of issues, including missile defense, outer space, cyberspace, and artificial intelligence.”²⁰

China has, however, been reticent about joining strategic stability talks with the United States and has expressly rejected negotiations toward an agreement that would require transparency into or limits on its nuclear forces, citing the significant disparity between the numbers of US, Russian, and Chinese nuclear warheads. According to Ambassador Fu Cong, then-director-general of the Department of Arms Control at the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “the countries with the largest nuclear arsenals should further conduct significant and substantive reduction in their nuclear arsenals in a verifiable, irreversible and legally binding manner. This will create conditions for other nuclear-weapon States to join the nuclear disarmament process.”²¹ Fu, who is now Chinese ambassador to the European Union, also argued that transparency would undermine China’s strategic capability because China is “faced with a strategic competitor [with] 6000 nuclear warheads” who is also “developing missile defense, deploying all these missiles defense system around China, [and] talking about deploying the intermedi­ate-range missiles around China.”²²

The US government has estimated that China’s nuclear stockpile will grow to around 1,500 warheads by 2035.²³ Some see this as an opening for arms control because the number would be similar to the New START limit of 1,550 deployed warheads on US and Russian long-range delivery systems. But the New START agreement does not count all US and Russian weapons; their stockpiles contain around 3,700 and 4,000 warheads, respectively. Moreover, New START expires in 2026, after which the United States and Russia could expand their numbers of deployed strategic nuclear forces, leading to far more than 1,550 deployed warheads on each side by the time China’s stockpile reaches 1,500 warheads in the mid-2030s. Thus, whether one counts deployed warheads on strategic delivery vehicles or total stockpiles, China’s deployed forces in 2026 and its stockpile of warheads in 2035 could still fall below those of the United States and Russia.

Still, a strategic stability dialogue like the one mentioned in the statement following the Biden-Xi summit in 2021 might create a pathway for engagement if the United States remains interested and China agrees to participate. The key to progress, however, depends on the issues on the agenda and the incentives the United States provides to bring China to the table.²⁴ For example, China may be more willing to participate if the agenda extends beyond nuclear weapons and focuses on other capabilities, like ballistic missile defenses and conventional strategic strike systems, that China believes undermine its security. China might also be more willing to discuss the implications of its nuclear modernization program if the United States acknowledges that China’s nuclear deterrent poses a credible threat to the United States and places the two nations in a “mutually vulnerable” deterrence relationship. As a matter of policy, the United States has long refused to acknowledge this reality, in part because it could undermine allies’ confidence in the US extended nuclear deterrent. Still, the absence of an acknowledgment also serves to convince China that the United States is seeking “absolute security,” rather than mutual deterrence, with its nuclear weapons.

The two nations could also seek to identify and implement crisis management, communications, and risk reduction measures to address the risk that regional crises might escalate to nuclear war. For example, a missile launch notification agreement might reduce the risk that either nation misunderstands the purpose of a missile test flight, then responds with additional military action. Measures that restrain dangerous air operations or encounters at sea could also reduce the risk of inadvertent engagements and escalation during a crisis. China has been unwilling to engage in direct government-to-government discussions on these types of issues in the past, but, in the current security environment, this type of dialogue might serve as a starting point for a more fulsome arms control relationship.

Conclusion

The United States, Russia, and China are unlikely to accept restrictions on their numbers of deployed nuclear weapons as long as each continues to center nuclear weapons in its national security strategy, and all believe the threats in the current international security environment increase the salience of nuclear weapons. Moreover, they are unlikely to find an acceptable agenda for negotiations until each is willing to address the others’ concerns about threatening activities or capabilities. Even if they clear these two hurdles, they are unlikely to succeed in talks that focus on nuclear reductions if each believes that it needs to modernize and possibly expand the size of its nuclear stockpile to achieve its security objectives.

A process focused on transparency, communication, and risk reduction measures could provide a path forward, even if it did not lead to nuclear reductions. It would not, however, be without complications. While the United States believes that steps to reduce the risk of nuclear war have value, Russia and China might believe that the risk would be worth taking in the future if it would help coerce the United States to disengage from a conflict. Nuclear weapons make this type of risk-tolerant strategy all the more dangerous. Nevertheless, an agenda focusing on communications and risk reduction might reduce the pressure to increase the number of nuclear weapons.

Series conclusion

Nuclear weapons represent both the greatest threat to US national survival and a central tool in US defense and national security strategy. The potential for horrific destruction in even a limited nuclear attack has underlain the US doctrine of nuclear deterrence, for which the United States has sought to maintain a nuclear force posture sufficient to deny any potential adversary its objectives if it employed nuclear weapons and to ensure that the costs of a conflict that escalated to nuclear use would be unacceptably high for that adversary.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union recognized that either side’s efforts to expand its own capabilities could not only introduce new threats for the other, but also create instabilities that might add to the risk of nuclear use in a crisis or conflict. Thus, these states pursued discussions to better understand their planned nuclear force structures and to identify potential sources of instability in the nuclear balance. For the United States, this arms control process was part of its national security toolbox, as the negotiations produced agreements that restrained the size and scope of the Soviet and Russian nuclear force, offered transparency and predictability into potential future developments, and allowed the United States to plan its own nuclear programs without relying on worst-case assessments of Soviet and Russian plans.

In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the size and structure of the US nuclear force, the guidance and employment plans that would direct use of nuclear weapons, and the circumstances under which the United States would consider employing them evolved to reflect positive changes in the international security environment. But the last decade has seen concerns about nuclear weapons and great power rivalry return to the scene. The United States is now engaged in a security environment where it might face conflicts with two nuclear-armed nations at the same time. As Russia and China modernize and expand their nuclear forces, the United States must again consider how to alter the size and structure of its nuclear forces and whether cooperation through arms control can mitigate the need for a more robust US nuclear posture.

The two papers in this study offer answers to both sides of this problem. The first paper concludes that the United States will likely need a greater number of deployed nuclear warheads than the 1,550 permitted under the New START Treaty and additional, more flexible delivery systems—such as a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile—to ensure that it can simultaneously deter conflict with both China and Russia at the strategic and regional levels. The second paper concludes that, while stability dialogues and risk-reduction measures might help the three nations mitigate the risk of nuclear use, they are unlikely for the foreseeable future to negotiate treaties or agreements that limit the size of their nuclear forces or offer transparency into their future plans.

Because the United States, Russia, and China all see nuclear weapons as essential to their national security, they almost certainly will continue to expand their capabilities until the international security environment changes. Neither the United States and Russia, nor the United States and China, are likely to engage in bilateral arms control discussions until they believe they can strengthen their security by cooperating to manage nuclear risks. Moreover, these states are unlikely to find an acceptable agenda for negotiations until each is willing to address the others’ concerns about threatening activities or capabilities. Even if these states clear these two hurdles, negotiators are unlikely to find success in talks that focus on nuclear reductions if each believes that it needs to modernize and possibly expand the size of its nuclear stockpile to achieve its security objectives.

About the authors

Greg Weaver is the principal of Strategy to Plans LLC. Previously, he was deputy director for strategic stability in the Joint Chiefs of Staff Directorate for Strategic Plans and Policy (J5)

There, he was the principal policy and strategy adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on nuclear, space, cyber, missile defense, and arms control issues. Prior to joining the Joint Staff, he served as principal director for nuclear and missile defense policy in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.

Amy Woolf is a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense program of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Previously, she served as a specialist in nuclear weapons policy at the Congressional Research Service of the US Library of Congress for more than thirty years. In that role, she provided Congress with research support, background information, and expert analysis on issues related to nuclear forces and arms control. Before joining the Congressional Research Service, Woolf was a member of the research staff at the Institute for Defense Analyses. She also spent a year at the US Department of Defense, working on the 1994 Nuclear Posture Review. Woolf received a master in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a bachelor of arts in political science from Stanford University.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Alyxandra Marine and Mark J. Massa for their assistance in editing this piece and Marine for writing the introduction.

The Atlantic Council is grateful to Los Alamos National Laboratory for its support of this paper.

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Requirements for nuclear deterrence and arms control in a two-nuclear-peer environment appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 30, Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Scowcroft Center, and Jeffrey Cimmino, deputy director of operations and fellow in the Scowcroft Center, were quoted in The Morning Dispatch and AOL.com on a more forceful US response to Iran. Dr. Kroenig’s section of the recent experts react piece was also quoted.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

Former staff

Jeffrey Cimmino

Former Deputy Director, Operations and Fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The post Kroenig and Cimmino quoted in The Dispatch and AOL.com on a more forceful US response to Iran appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 30, Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Scowcroft Center, was quoted in VOA News on the aftermath of the deaths of three US soldiers serving in Jordan. He assessed that it is not an accident that the Iran-backed Iraqi militia suspected of carrying out the attack is ending its regional operations against U.S. forces. He was also quoted in the Jewish Press.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig quoted in VOA on the response to US service members killed by Iran-backed forces appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 29, Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Scowcroft Center, was quoted in The Telegraph on his section in an experts react piece on the news that three US service members had been killed in Jordan by Iran-backed militants.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig quoted in The Telegraph on actions the US could take against Iran appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 29, Matthew Kroenig, Vice President and Senior Director of the Scowcroft Center, was quoted in Daily Mail on his recent experts react section on the news that three US soldiers were killed by Iran-backed forces in Jordan.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig quoted in Daily Mail on recent attacks on US bases by Iran-affiliated militants appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 29, Matthew Kroenig, Vice President and Senior Director of the Scowcroft Center, was quoted by Iran International on the response the United States should impose on Iran after Iran-affiliated militants killed three US soldiers in Jordan. He was also quoted by NZ City on January 30.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig quoted in Iran International and NZ City on how the US can react to attacks by Iran-affiliated forces appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 29, Matthew Kroenig, Vice President and Senior Director of the Scowcroft Center, was quoted in ABC News on his section of the experts react on the US service members killed in Jordan by Iran-backed forces, where he argued that the United States needs to take greater action against Iran.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig quoted in ABC News on how the US should respond to Iran-backed attacks appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 31st, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Nicholas Eftimiades was quoted in iNews discussing Chinese espionage and the West’s inability to counter it.

Fellow

Nicholas Eftimiades

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Intelligence

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Eftimiades in iNews on Chinese espionage appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 25, Transatlantic Security Initiative senior fellow Elisabeth Braw was featured in Defense One in which she analyzed Norway’s model of selective military service and offered key opportunities for other nations to learn from the Norwegian model.

Fellow

Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

NATO Resilience & Society

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Learn more

The post Braw featured in Defense One on Norway’s model of national service within the armed forces appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 19, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Nicholas Eftimiades was quoted in SpyTalk discussing the failure of US intelligence to detect PLA military training happening inside the US by unwitting former Navy SEALS and Army Special Forces who operate as contractors.

Fellow

Nicholas Eftimiades

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Intelligence

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Eftimiades in SpyTalk on Chinese soldier training with US contractors appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 18, Forward Defense senior fellow Steve Grundman was quoted in Law360 providing an assessment of the Department of Defense’s National Defense Industrial Strategy. He emphasized a lack of specifics to address fragile supply chains, underlining the necessity for a well-defined blend of new funding and procedural approaches to realize these objectives.

Fellow

Steven Grundman

Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Industry Defense Policy

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Grundman quoted in Law360 on the National Defense Industrial Strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 16, IPSI nonresident senior fellow Brad Gericke spoke on an episode of NucleCast, a podcast produced by the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center. He discussed the situation leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the perspective of the intelligence community during this time. 

Fellow

Bradley T. Gericke

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Conflict

The post Gericke featured on episode of NucleCast podcast appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Tran authors op-ed in The Diplomat on tensions in the South China Sea appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 17, Forward Defense senior fellow Steve Grundman joined the Defense & Aerospace Report Daily Podcast to discuss the release of the Biden administration’s first-ever National Defense Industrial Strategy. He highlighted the strategy’s potential impact on future defense initiatives and the importance of leveraging tools like the Defense Production Act Title III, while also noting the strategy’s lack of concrete guidance for the commercial defense industrial base.

Fellow

Steven Grundman

Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Industry Defense Policy

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Grundman on DefAero podcast discussing defense industry appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Below, Atlantic Council experts share their views on what to know about the attacks and what to expect next.

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

C. Anthony Pfaff: IRGC attack against Erbil poses challenges and opportunities for the United States

Holly Dagres: The read from Iran

Thomas S. Warrick: The war in the shadows will continue

Masoud Mostajabi: The subtleties of Iranian actions across the region

IRGC attack against Erbil poses challenges and opportunities for the United States

This escalation poses a significant challenge—and possibly an opportunity—for the United States to undermine Iranian regional influence and bolster its relations with Iraq. While US facilities were not likely a target, these attacks will likely increase popular concerns that US-Iran tensions will drag them into a wider conflict. These concerns could energize the movement to remove the entire US presence from Iraq, which gathered new steam after the US strike that killed Harakat al-Nujaba leader Mushtaq al-Jawari, who had been organizing strikes against US forces in Iraq on behalf of Iran. This concern manifests in other ways that place strain on US-Iraq military relations. Recently, the chief of staff of the Iraqi Army walked on a likeness of an American flag during an observance of IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani’s death in Baghdad.

While some of these protests can be dismissed as political theater, the current dynamic has placed the United States in a bind, where its choices are to endure the attacks or risk being forced to withdraw. Neither, of course, are optimal. However, the Iranian strikes against putative Israeli targets in Kurdistan may present an opportunity. Whatever one believes about the merits of Tehran’s claims of an Israeli presence in Kurdistan, the missiles largely struck civilian areas, causing significant collateral damage. In doing so, the attacks exposed gaps in Baghdad’s ability to defend its sovereignty against external attack, making it even more vulnerable to Iranian pressure.

Thus, these challenges and opportunities suggest the following short-term measures that could improve US-Iraq relations and alter the current dysfunctional dynamic. To address pressure for the withdrawal of US forces, the United States could offer to increase support to Iraqi air defense forces to counter missile and drone attacks, which have increased since October 7, 2023. Doing so could diminish the effectiveness of Iran-backed attacks, mitigating the need for more active measures. Baghdad, for its part, should take this opportunity to increase pressure on the militias to cease destabilizing attacks. In the past, the Iraqi government has had little success reigning the militias in. However, with Iran now directly attacking Iraqi territory, these militias may have some incentive to distance themselves from Iran.

—Dr. C. Anthony Pfaff is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative, and the research professor for Strategy, the Military Profession, and Ethics at the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), US Army War College in Carlisle, PA. 

The read from Iran

#Pink_Jacket was scrawled in Persian on the ballistic missiles that hit Erbil. The hashtag was referring to a toddler donning a pink jacket who was among those killed in the attack in Kerman at a memorial service for Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani on January 3. Part of the civilian casualties by the IRGC missiles included the 11-month-old daughter of multimillionaire Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee, who also perished with two other members of his family. That irony wasn’t lost on Persian language social media, where many pointed out that to take revenge for a child’s death, the IRGC had killed a child in the process.

The next day, on January 16, two celebratory billboards appeared in the capital, Tehran. “Hard answer with God’s permission,” one read with an image of a missile and Hebrew text that said, “We’re going to take more revenge against the infidels.” A separate billboard also had a missile and appeared with the Hebrew text that stated, “Shelter?! Prepare your coffins…” and repeated the phrase in Persian.

From the statement issued by the IRGC to the personalized missiles and newly revealed billboards, the IRGC wants to emphasize that the goal of their attacks was “hard revenge” for the Kerman attack and the assassinations of members of the Resistance Axis. Earlier in the month, Tehran had vowed revenge, and now it had delivered.

Now the question is whether Dizayee was, in fact, a targeted assassination by ballistic missiles or whether he and his family were collateral casualties retroactively claimed by the IRGC to exaggerate the accuracy of its missiles.

—Holly Dagres is editor of the Atlantic Council’s IranSource and MENASource blogs, and a nonresident senior fellow with the Middle East Programs. She also curates The Iranist newsletter.

The war in the shadows will continue

Iranian actions against the United States and US allies almost always display a peculiar sense of symmetry. Iran does something that requires retaliation in the form of sanctions, a cyberattack, a tanker seizure, or something else. Iran then retaliates—not always identically, but in some similar way. At first, Iran’s January 15 missile strike into Erbil looked like a dramatic escalation. After the dust settled and the identities of those killed became known, the peculiar sense of symmetry became painfully apparent: the Iranian regime’s target this time was not the United States but a prominent Kurdish businessman, Peshraw Dizayee, alleged by Tehran to have ties with Israel.

Regardless of whether this is true or not, eyes turned toward Israel’s December 25, 2023 strike in Syria that killed IRGC General Mousavi. His role in arming groups responsible for killing Israelis made him a legitimate military target. It remains to be seen whether Iran’s peculiar sense of symmetry was at work in Erbil on January 15, but this fits the pattern.

Iran’s hypocrisy is apparent. The Iranian ambassador to Iraq, Mohammad Kazam al-Sadegh, is affiliated with the IRGC Quds Force, labeled in 2007 as a terrorist group by the United States and, eventually, by other countries. Sadegh knows his way to Kurdistan, having been photographed with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani on September 11, 2023. While the ambassador and the Iraqi Kurdistan president—both highly skilled at the diplomatic game—look engaged in a friendly discussion, the widescreen photo gives a better sense of the frosty atmospherics. As a prominent Iraqi Kurdish statesman once told me, Kurdistan’s problem is “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your neighbors.” Iran’s January 15 strike painfully illustrates both truths.

Tehran could have complained through diplomatic channels and asked Baghdad or Erbil to rein in anti-Iranian behavior on Iraqi soil. Baghdad or Erbil would then have been able to insist that Iran rein in anti-American behavior by Iran and its proxies on Iraqi soil. The fact that the Iranian regime continues to use Iraq as territory from which to carry out attacks means that Tehran has little justification to complain when others do the same to it. The war in the shadows will continue.

—Thomas S. Warrick is the director of the Future of DHS project at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense program and a nonresident senior fellow and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

The subtleties of Iranian actions across the region

Launching its most extensive operation to date, the IRGC has had a busy week, targeting Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan. According to Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the IRGC Aerospace Force commander, the operations aimed at a “Mossad espionage base in Erbil,” used for planning terrorism in the region, particularly against Iran, and “strongholds of Daesh in Syria.” Additionally, on Tuesday, Tasnim reported strikes on the “headquarters of Jaysh al-Dhulm (Jeysh al-Adl) terrorist group” in Pakistani Balochistan. 

These actions permit Tehran to claim achievements in response to for example the recent assassination of General Seyed Razi Mousavi, addressing ISIS-claimed attacks in Kerman and Rask – some Iranian officials attribute the former to Israel – and sending a message to Iraq’s Kurdish region, accused of harboring anti-Iran subversives.  

Moreover, by avoiding targeting Americans and US infrastructure, Tehran is able to showcase its missile and drone capabilities without escalating regional tensions. Adrienne Watson, the NSC spokesperson, confirmed that “no American personnel or facilities were targeted.” From Tehran’s perspective, these attacks serve as a signal of preparedness to both domestic and international audiences, indicating that Iran has the means and will to respond to threats against Iranians and the Iranian homeland, without substantially risking a broader regional conflict involving the United States. 

These actions won’t be the final ones from the Iranians, as it aligns with Tehran’s strategy to persist in striking perceived enemies. When questioned about the possibility of such attacks continuing, Hajizadeh explicitly stated, “the fight between good and evil never ends.” 

Nevertheless, the US and Western allies would be wise to take note of these subtleties, recognizing Iran’s need to project strength while also expressing a clear reluctance to escalate into a war with the West. Analysts advocating for a more forceful response to Iran should heed these considerations.

—Masoud Mostajabi is a deputy director at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.

The post Experts react: What to expect after Iranian attacks on Erbil appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 18, an article written by Andrew Michta, Director and Senior Fellow in the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative, was featured in RealClearWorld discussing how the United States requires a new national security strategy to better address both the war in Ukraine and larger “period of protracted systemic instability worldwide.”

Staff

Andrew A. Michta

Director and Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Central Europe Eastern Europe

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

Learn more

The post Michta in RealClearWorld on the necessity of a revised US national security strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 14, Andrew Michta, Director and Senior Fellow of the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative, was published by Politico on why Congress’s failure to pass the Ukraine aid package in December 2023 demonstrates that the United States should develop a new national security strategy. He argues that “the U.S. and its allies should have laid out a clear vision for victory” from the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine but notes that it is not too late to reverse the trend toward a frozen conflict.

Staff

Andrew A. Michta

Director and Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Central Europe Eastern Europe

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

Learn more

The post Michta in Politico discussing the need for a new US national security strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Zhao was one of two active duty US servicemembers indicted in August 2023 for providing sensitive US military information to China. The second, Jinchao Wei, was indicted for violating an espionage statute and multiple export violations in the Southern District of California. According to the indictment, he was granted US citizenship while the alleged illegal activities were taking place. (Wei is, of course, presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.)

These two cases are playing out as tensions remain high between the United States and China, even after the November 2023 meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In response to these court cases, there will be an understandable temptation for the United States to react by doing something to address Chinese espionage, and perhaps even pressure for systemic changes to the US counterintelligence approach. But big, sudden changes often create new and potentially greater vulnerabilities. Instead, policymakers should respond carefully and deliberately by seizing this moment to manage counterintelligence and security risks more effectively over the long term.

This can be done by decreasing the probability of future similar events from occurring, while avoiding creating new risks. Specifically, the response should consider focusing on prevention via training, enhanced information-sharing with allies and partners, and a shift to a more holistic risk-based personnel security approach for all US military members.

Intelligence collection doesn’t always mean stealing classified secrets

These two cases suggest that China’s intelligence services recognize that national security information does not have to be classified to provide them with value.  

Although both Zhao and Wei reportedly had secret-level security clearances, they were not assigned to particularly sensitive military occupational specialties, and there are no indications within the indictments that they passed classified information to Beijing’s intelligence services.

Wei was assigned to the USS Essex amphibious assault ship, which operates as a “Lightning carrier,” a platform for fifth generation F-35B Lightning strike aircraft. He allegedly used his phone to take photos that he provided to China’s intelligence services, while also providing information regarding potential vulnerabilities of the USS Wasp class of US Navy ship.

Zhao reportedly provided Chinese intelligence with information regarding the electrical system for a storage facility at a base in Okinawa housing a Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar system. This radar system is used for expeditionary warfare that supports Marines in a contested or potentially contested maritime area—the kind of warfare that would matter in a conflict in the Western Pacific.

Given China’s resources, these were low-cost operations relative to the information allegedly received and a high return on investment to enhance Beijing’s hard power. As compensation for their alleged activities, Wei reportedly received between $10,000 and $15,000, while Zhao received the equivalent of almost $15,000.  

Three new steps to bolster counterintelligence and security

While these cases shed light on national security risks for the United States and its allies and partners, they also present the opportunity to justify new options for Washington to respond. That response should not, for example, be to limit the opportunities for foreign nationals to serve honorably in the US military or take measures that could damage recruitment and retention. Rather, it should take careful, measured steps to reinforce the foundations of counterintelligence and security. There are three steps policymakers should take next:

1. Focus more on prevention relative to treatment

In the medical community, doctors think of solutions in terms of prevention and treatment. For national security, the United States must do both, but in this instance, prevention—via training—should be the focus.

Specifically, the Department of Defense should enhance its counterintelligence threat awareness and reporting training program. This can be done by increasing the frequency of the training, presenting the information in different ways, and requiring a signed acknowledgement of responsibility from the training recipient. Such prevention measures would require additional resources for the Department of Defense counterintelligence and security system, but it would be worth the cost since the enhanced training requirements would decrease risk and potential costs overall.

2. Mobilize allies and partners to work together on counterintelligence

While protecting the integrity of the criminal justice process, the United States should consider sharing as much information as possible with its allies and partners about the methods that China’s intelligence services use to conduct their operations, particularly US allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific, since they are likely being targeted using similar methods. 

Specifically, the US counterintelligence community should host periodic events with its allies and partners to exchange information regarding how Beijing’s intelligence services target military members. This will help educate their military personnel regarding the evolving threat, including the types of cover used to approach potential targets. In the case of Zhao, the Chinese intelligence officer reportedly portrayed himself to Zhao as a maritime economic researcher, who needed information in order to “inform investment decisions.”

3. Establish a more holistic approach to personnel security that better integrates counterintelligence

Finally, the Department of Defense should consider enhancing the current security clearance-based system with a more holistic, risk-based personnel security approach. This would include those US military members who do not require access to classified information.

How might this work? There are various policies and systems already in place for personnel security and information security, especially for individuals who hold top secret security clearances and those who work in sensitive compartmented information facilities (SCIFs). Those important safeguards for security clearance holders should remain, but there are currently disconnects between security considerations (Do the duties of a position require working with sensitive information?) and counterintelligence findings (What information might China or other countries want?). The goal, then, should be to more closely integrate security and counterintelligence. Such an approach would fuse counterintelligence information regarding the evolving capabilities and intentions of foreign intelligence services with information about the duties of the position.

The risks of national security information being provided to foreign intelligence services have always existed and can never be eliminated, so the objective should be to optimally manage those risks. This could best be accomplished by investing in training, increasing sharing with allies and partners, and shifting to a more holistic risk-based personnel security approach for all US military members. 

Given the long-term and dynamic challenges of US-China strategic competition, now is the time to adapt US counterintelligence and security policy to effectively meet those challenges posed by China’s intelligence collection efforts.

Andrew Brown is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative, where he specializes in defense and intelligence issues. He was previously a criminal investigator with the Department of Defense and was assigned to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense or ODNI.

The post The sentencing of a US Navy sailor is a window into Chinese espionage. Here’s how the US should respond. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In the aftermath of the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, the Caribbean republic has seen escalating gang violence that has threatened the political system and security. Between January and August of this year, 2,439 Haitians were killed, 951 were kidnapped, and 902 were injured. On October 3, the United Nations (UN) Security Council adopted resolution 2699, which approved a multinational mission, led by Kenya, to help the Haitian National Police defeat the onslaught of criminal gangs perpetrating violence and other crimes. Although the mission is UN-authorized, it is not an official UN peacekeeping mission. Kenya plans to lead the mission by sending over a thousand officers, a number that will be supplemented further by the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Antigua and Barbuda.

An intervention in a Caribbean state by an African country could perplex some given the vast physical distance between the regions and a lack of historic military and security support. However, the planned deployment aligns closely with Ruto’s foreign relations agenda.

Under Ruto’s presidency, Kenya has stepped up to play a more active role in regional and international politics and to secure for itself a leadership role in championing African interests. Kenya hosted the first Africa Climate Summit in September which concluded with the Nairobi Declaration, a document laying out a consensus among participating African countries about their climate priorities. Ruto also recently announced that Kenya will no longer require visas for visitors from all countries beginning January 2024 in an effort to boost tourism and international connectivity.  

A policing mission to Haiti could further raise Kenya’s profile as a champion of African interests. While there has been little collaboration between African countries and Haiti historically, many Haitians are a part of the African diaspora. Since Haiti’s 1804 revolution and independence, the country has experienced repeated bouts of instability further worsened by nearly two decades of occupation by the United States (from 1915 to 1934), and subsequent UN-approved intervention missions, including one led by Brazil that ran from 2004 to 2017. For Kenya to achieve its newly oriented foreign-policy goals through this intervention, it would have to avoid repeating the failures seen in past missions and steer clear of channeling US paternalism.

In October 2022, Acting Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry authorized a request for foreign intervention through a written appeal to international partners. However, observers including the National Haitian American Elected Officials Network and the Family Action Network Movement are highly skeptical of further intervention and are concerned that supporting the unelected Henry government could worsen the nation’s political crisis. Those organizations have called on the Biden administration to withdraw US support for the mission.

Critics in Kenya have been asking another question: Who asked Kenya, specifically, to intervene? Officially, Kenya volunteered to lead the security force on July 29 in a statement by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfred Mutua. According to Mutua, the commitment came after a request by the “Friends of Haiti Group of Nations.” However, some observers argue that Kenya is leading the intervention to be a good “friend” to the United States. In September, the United States pledged one hundred million dollars in support to the intervention; days later, the United States and Kenya signed a defense agreement that included resources and support for security deployments.

Putting theories and unknowns aside, it is clear that Kenya is taking a newly proactive approach to the crisis in Haiti. That new approach underscores Ruto’s atypical foreign policy strategy, which aims to distinguish Kenya from its African peers globally and add to Nairobi’s list of accomplishments as a pan-African leader. Success in achieving that strategy could pave the way for greater influence in regional and international politics, setting Kenya up to challenge South Africa and Nigeria, who have historically been regional hegemons. But success in Ruto’s foreign policy approach depends, in part, on the success of this mission to Haiti—one that will be hard to come by.

To be sure, Ruto’s plan has faced numerous domestic challenges. On November 16, Kenya’s high court extended an order blocking the mission’s deployment pending a final decision in January 2024. Despite the court order, the mission was approved by the Kenyan Parliament.

There have also been signs that public support is mixed, as some people have questioned Nairobi’s priorities, arguing that it should focus on protecting lives in Kenya first. Currently, insurgencies are underway along the Somalia border and cattle banditry and clashes between nomadic pastoralists have challenged communities in Northern Kenya.

Amnesty International has also condemned the deployment, not just because of a “troubling history of abuses” associated with past interventions in Haiti, but also because of extrajudicial killings and excessive force used by the Kenyan police. These concerns about human rights violations raise questions as to whether the Kenyan police will be able to succeed in Haiti where other missions have failed.

Regardless, the first batch of police officers have begun training for their planned mission in Haiti. In preparation for the deployment, the director general of the Haitian National Police, alongside a delegation from the Haitian government, visited Kenya last week. However, in early November, Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki asserted that police officers will not be deployed to Haiti “unless all resources”—perhaps including extra funding from the United Nations, recently requested by Kenya—“are mobilized and availed.”

Former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta oriented Nairobi’s foreign policy more closely towards China. Ruto, on the other hand, appears more interested in seeking out partnerships with the West—particularly the United States. This year alone, at least six high-level US officials have visited Kenya: First Lady Jill Biden, United States Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. Kenya and the Millennium Challenge Corporation also signed a sixty-million-dollar threshold program focused on urban mobility and growth in September.

At the same time, Ruto’s administration has also developed a new policy focused on pan-Africanism and, in its dealings beyond the continent, South-South cooperation. If Kenya were to achieve success in Haiti, which would require learning from the tough lessons of past interventions while incorporating the aspirations of Haitians, its global profile could benefit, and Nairobi could secure a status as a reliable ally to the United States both on the continent and beyond.

It remains to be seen whether Kenyan police will eventually be deployed to Haiti. If the deployment occurs, watch the mission closely: Success in helping Haiti secure its future, if attained properly and without repeating mistakes of the past, could see Kenya amplify its bid to claim a bigger seat on the world stage.

Sibi Nyaoga was a young global professional at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

The post What Kenya’s proposed mission to Haiti says about Nairobi’s foreign policy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

• Introduction
• Defining key security cooperation terminology
• The modern threat landscape: What it means for security cooperation
• Challenges to twenty-first century security cooperation
• The path ahead
• Conclusions and recommendations
• Acknowledgements
• About the author

Introduction

The United States should adapt its approach to security cooperation to ensure allies and partners are more highly capable, stable, and resilient in an era of great power competition. US security cooperation, which are military aid activities led or executed by the US Department of Defense, is immensely valuable if done right and can help the United States achieve its goal from the 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS) by building a strong coalition of allies to confront shared challenges.

The last decade has seen rapid and profound changes in geopolitical realities, technological developments, and US and allied concepts for both what national security objectives should be and how to achieve them. This has had broad implications for all facets of military operations and planning, and the security cooperation enterprise is no exception. While the US Department of Defense’s approach to security cooperation has been evolving and improving over the same period, lessons learned from recent conflicts—along with shifts in the geopolitical context—point to the need for a deeper re-conceptualization of generating high-end cooperative security.

This paper reframes elements of US security cooperation, particularly with the United States’ most capable allies and partners, and proposes small but realistic reforms that could improve the value and utility of US security cooperation activities. In many cases, those responsible for addressing these issues are already taking steps in this direction; still, it is critical to amplify, draw attention to, and reinforce the arguments in favor of these efforts. This paper draws upon discussions and workshops with experts from across the vast security cooperation enterprise, including participation from US and allied industry, academia, and government entities.

Back to top

Defining key security cooperation terminology

In simplistic terms, military aid is an extension of diplomatic efforts, and most of these efforts are led by the Department of State and categorized as security assistance. Military aid activities that are led or executed by the Department of Defense (DOD) are broadly categorized as security cooperation and can range from the provision of training and equipment, to embedded advisors, joint exercises, meetings between senior leaders, and even forms of humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HA/DR) undertaken by military units¹.

While conversations around security cooperation tend to narrowly focus on “train and equip” objectives, doing so ignores the vast array of other incredibly important security cooperation activities—such as key leader engagements (KLE), institutional capacity building through the Ministry of Defense Advisor (MODA) program, and professional development courses—which build the capacity and capability of less advanced US allies and partners in more indirect ways, and arguably have greater potential return on investment (ROI) than traditional, systems-oriented security cooperation activities. These activities are not just about the cost vs impact, however, as they are often critical enablers for all systems-based cooperation. No amount of military-to-military cooperation or interoperability can be effective if the foundation of institutional conditions is missing. For example, Ukraine’s success in absorbing and employing vast amounts of Western military aid is built upon institutional capacity-building investments made over the last decade. Nontraditional and nonmilitary approaches to security cooperation will only become more critical as the proliferation of new technologies expand the battlespace to include the space, cyber, Arctic, and information domains. Moreover, many of the most pressing security threats fall outside the military domain completely, such as the risks posed by economic instability, competition for influence and trust-worthy information and a changing climate.

Security cooperation activities are national geopolitical tools that are employed by the DOD on behalf of the US government to achieve national and defense objectives. Although it is called aid, it is not charity. These activities are meant to bolster US national security, and often in a cost-effective way. They are a means to achieving geopolitical and national security objectives. Even so, the sovereignty of US allies and partners is important and they must always have the final say in what and how they build and deploy their military capabilities, regardless of how they are sourced. What makes the US-led alliance network so powerful is that, unlike its competitors, the United States sees global security and prosperity—enabled by a rules based-order that protects nations small and large—as in its core interest.

Differentiating between the types of cooperative security partners and approaches

Security cooperation means and ends vary by nation and region. The diversity of partner nations means that US security cooperation objectives and activities with each country are similarly diverse to match the partner’s capacity, size, level of training, and funding. As the objectives differ, so, too, should the basis and metrics for evaluating the effectiveness and therefore the value of different security cooperation activity. For instance, military aid that is used as a package to achieve political concessions will look distinct from that used to assist nations in maintaining internal security, responding to natural disasters, or protecting themselves against a foreign aggressor. The objectives of each US security cooperation activity should be policy-led, and have a clear articulation of the objective, why it is being sought, and how success will be measured. Unfortunately, this has not historically been the case. In 2017, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) included reforms around security cooperation to improve DOD’s approach to this issue. Despite this, change is happening slowly and unevenly, and there is still a lack of understanding of the value and objectives of different types of security cooperation activities and how they apply to different categories of allies and partners.

This paper focuses in on two specific categories of US allies and partners as described in the short-lived Guidance for the Development of Allies and Partners (GDAP). First, “most capable” partners encompassing advanced militaries with some near-peer capabilities (e.g., the United Kingdom and Japan) and, second, “frontline” nations facing potential aggression and direct threat (e.g., Ukraine and Iraq). In both categories, the US aim is to build the military capacity and capability² of an allied or partner nation to fight alongside the United States in combined operations. In certain circumstances, this is done by supporting partner forces to undertake contingency operations on their own without US presence, being enabled by US forces, or utilizing US authorities and agreements (also known as the “by, with, and through” strategy)—thereby reducing the requirement for direct action by US forces themselves.

Back to top

The modern threat landscape: What it means for security cooperation

Like all facets of military operations, security cooperation should be strategy-driven and therefore threat-informed—the threat environment has changed, and so, too, must security cooperation. During the post-Cold War era, when there were few clear and present threats and Russia was the primary adversary, US security cooperation activities promoted presence, dependability, and engagement across the globe. Following the 9/11 attacks, US security cooperation activities shifted toward capacity-building to support counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations largely in the middle east, still with few limits as to where and with whom. Now, as the United States refocuses its efforts in an era of strategic competition with China and Russia, it must similarly reimagine and broaden its approach to security cooperation. All elements of US national power should be mobilized and coordinated to achieve stated objectives. While US practitioners recognize the need to evolve, the US defense enterprise is not changing quickly enough and at a scale large enough to meet the magnitude of the threats at hand. Particularly, the security cooperation enterprise must evolve to prioritize those partners who play a critical or central role in achieving specific objectives and recognize the impact of emerging and advanced technologies.

Prioritization of partnerships

Today’s strategic environment is characterized by pervasive contestation with near-peer competitors across multiple domains, and prioritization of efforts to tackle these challenges has become imperative. The United States and its allies and partners can no longer do a little bit of everything, everywhere and expect uncontested results. As highlighted in the 2022 National Defense Strategy (NDS), the United States will need to accept risk in some areas and strategically expend its limited resources where they will have the greatest effect. In doing so, the United States must be realistic about which allies and partners could (and would) undertake military actions alongside the United States in a high-end, conventional contingency. In the likely case that only a few partners are willing or capable of undertaking frontline roles in a high-end fight, the United States ought to rethink what capabilities they require to play an effective role—which, in many cases, will mean a larger quantity of second-tier or legacy capabilities such as F-16s or simpler 3rd party capabilities such as Leopard 2 tanks rather than a handful of the most advanced and cutting-edge systems like F-35s and Abrams tanks. DOD’s GDAP guidance provided a helpful starting point for letting the roles of allies and partners guide capability and capacity decisions in security cooperation. However, changes in the strategic landscape have altered the roles of allies and partners, which necessitated a reframing of the security cooperation focus with them. If the United States is realistic about the roles allies and partners play in each region and in relation to US national objectives, then US priorities and therefore its acceptance of risk in certain regions or nations, may change. This discussion is not receiving proper attention in Washington, DC or elsewhere, least of all in the public domain.

Emerging and advanced technologies

Advancements in military technology, and the subsequent changes in the way conflicts are being fought, have further implications for the roles of allies and partners and the capabilities and capacities the United States seeks to build through security cooperation. This is most evident from the war in Ukraine and the role security cooperation played in assisting Kyiv. Ukraine, a smaller and less technologically advanced military force, can—when sufficiently supplied, trained, and motivated—impose significant losses on Russia, a larger and more sophisticated force (supposedly the world’s third most advanced and capable), using a combination of legacy and ‘second tier’ equipment, supplemented with some key ‘tier 1’ capabilities and an array of cheaper alternatively sourced systems (such as the highly effective Turkish made Bayraktar TB2.) The value and force multiplier effect of even a handful of exquisite weapons systems, particularly the HIMARs rocket launchers, when combined with a larger quantity of older legacy systems, and when employed with appropriate operational concepts and planning, can have a dramatic impact. Additionally, Ukraine’s ability to absorb massive amounts advanced Western designed systems into a force not oriented to operate them demonstrates both how important those high-end systems remain and suggest the need for a rethinking of a military force’s real-world absorptive capacity under the right conditions. That said, the difficulty Ukraine has faced in achieving decisive gains during its counter offensive—even when equipped with high-end Western capabilities—demonstrate how challenging highend military maneuver is for offense now, and that recent technological developments have shifted the balance back towards a natural advantage in defense. For security cooperation purposes, this means a first principles reassessment is needed of each ally and partner—not only of the role the United States wants a partner to play, but also a rethinking of the tools and systems needed to achieve the necessary capability to fulfill it.

Back to top

Challenges to twenty-first century security cooperation

While the war in Ukraine, as well as other historical cases, have demonstrated the impact of security cooperation on a nation’s ability to fight, it has also highlighted key challenges facing the security cooperation enterprise.

First, the conflict in Ukraine has both exposed and exacerbated the NATO alliance’s insufficient industrial capacity for weapons and ammunition production to sustain a protracted high-end conflict. The United States and its allies have supplied incredible amounts of equipment and ammunition to Ukraine at the expense of drawing down their domestic stocks in some cases—which will likely take years to replace. Putting aside the impact this has on the United States’ readiness and ability to execute other military contingencies in the short term, it is unclear how well it could sustain itself in a more costly protracted conflict in which the United States were a direct combatant—let alone also supplying critical allies. As it stands, there are already promises of equipment and ammunition that are unfulfilled. Allies and partners cannot fight with weapons they do not have, and the United States cannot provide what it cannot produce. Moreover, the challenge for both sides in the conflict in finding personnel and equipment necessary to generate combat power raises questions about the sustainability of any nation in supporting a protracted high-end fight.

Second, expansive arsenals of weapons are of little utility if there is not political will to participate in the conflict. Take, for instance, the opening stages of international efforts to establish a no-fly zone over Libya during its 2011 civil war. European militaries not only struggled with insufficient stocks of advanced precision air munitions to undertake sustained airstrikes on their own, but also struggled to build a widespread coalition of willing partners. This was despite several European nations being strong proponents of the intervention. In reality, the United States employed much of the military capability—particularly at the outset and once ammunition supplies ran low—because partners either lacked key capabilities or the sufficient risk appetite to put the capabilities they did have in danger against what was then the second largest, if aged and limited, surface-to-missile network in Africa. While European nations have been steadfast supporters of Ukraine, and have now overtaken the US in absolute terms of aid provided. However, against a more advanced defense, with higher political stakes, and in more importantly where it occurs in regions distant from those nation’s immediate interests, it is difficult to predict how many allied and partner nations will commit significant forces in a high-end fight. This ought to inform the level of cooperative security resources allocated across allies and partners.

Third, while the United States and its allies and partners aspire to reach a level of interoperability with one another, balancing this with cost and capacity creates a challenging conundrum. Interoperability is often a defining characteristic of train and equip efforts, encompassing a spectrum of functions from interoperable communications systems to enable deconfliction of actions, through to crews of different nations serving together on other nations systems (at its most exquisite and aspirational), as has been suggested in the recent submarine-focused elements of the AUKUS agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The challenge is that US equipment is often too expensive for many partners to acquire in sufficient numbers, which leads them to look for cheaper alternatives from other—and sometimes adversarial—suppliers. As warfare becomes increasingly networked and data-driven (i.e., software- rather than hardware-driven), systems whether from the United States or another country, must be interoperable or unacceptable limitations and risks will rise under operational conditions.

Fourth, as with many DOD activities, there exists a disconnect between the strategic planning, force planning, and security cooperation communities. Effective planning and coordination with allies on capabilities and force development first requires cohesive planning within these three communities. However, cross-community collaboration is often limited due to distinct organizational cultures, methodologies, incentives, languages, priorities, and decision processes. In order to achieve strategy-driven and force-informed security cooperation activities, these groups must talk to one another in a uniform language to inform, coordinate, and mutually support key priorities.

Finally, with every space contested—across all elements of national power—risks are omnipresent, and the risk calculus of US allies for standing with the United States against an adversary become much more complex, nuanced, and with greater tradeoffs to consider. This is especially true when considering China and Russia, who are increasingly interconnected in the economies and energy grids of US allies and partners. In this environment, platitudes, well-intentioned sentiments, and policy statements must result in meaningful actions—such as improving the sharing of information and collaboration in technology development—that demonstrate the value and collaborative intentions of the DOD.

The challenges here are unlikely to reduce over time— systems will continue to become more sophisticated, and budgets will continue to be constrained. The United States must start by deciding what it wants and needs from its partners, and let that inform the way in which it designs its security cooperation systems and activities.

Back to top

The path ahead

A number of steps can be taken to advance and evolve US cooperative security approaches, but a shift in mindset—particularly, in how the United States views and values security cooperation— must lay the foundation to achieving long-term change. The ideas below could help foster or complement this cultural shift.

Information and technology sharing: Take a “collaboration-first” mentality with the closest and most capable allies

While US adversaries cannot easily replicate, short-cut, or catch up on the advantage offered by the United States’ robust network of alliance and partnerships, the United States can easily squander it. If the United States fails to evolve the depth and quality of its relationship with key partners; takes frontline partners for granted; or treats relationships as transactional; then the return on investment will be marginal and relationships may erode over time.

Therefore, to maximize the value of the network, DOD should take a “collaboration-first” mentality with its closest and most capable allies in information and technology sharing. For example, rather than a reflexive move to classify documents as Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals (NOFORN) out of an over-abundance of caution or lack of proper training which unnecessarily constrains information-sharing with likeminded nations, DOD personnel should seek to be as collaborative as possible. While reforms are underway across DOD to improve issues of over-classification, these efforts must be broadened to encompass the way classification is taught, the mentality of leadership and desk officers, and even adjustments in simple systems, such as changing the order of drop-down classification options in digital interfaces so that NOFORN is not the top (and laziest) choice. The United States can also learn from its friends: In some allied nations, classification of information as NOFORN-equivalent requires approval by director and above leadership. Of course, this does not mean all information should be shared—or that classifications should be abandoned—rather it means that unnecessary barriers to information sharing ought to be further examined, and the mindset changed from a simplistic ‘better to be safe than sorry’ to considering what might opportunities or benefits might be lost by not sharing, and a realistic assessment of the actual risk of sharing.

This mentality is as important—if not more so—in technology sharing as it is with information sharing: While information is often critical at a single point in time, technological advantage has a lasting impact and therefore faces even stricter access constraints. There also exists a longer history of intelligence-sharing arrangements, and so processes are more mature. The Five Eyes information sharing arrangement (between the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) was formally established after World War II while the National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB) arrangement (a roughly equivalent research and development (R&D) agreement) was only formalized in the 1990s. Today, partnerships like AUKUS offer the opportunity to trial technology sharing with the United States’ closes allies and potentially export this model to other likeminded nations, particularly looking at Pillar 2 which creates space for the collaborative development of critical technologies.

In the AUKUS context, efforts at reforming specific bottle necks and challenges are underway, such as the Keeping Our Allies Leading in Advancement (KOALA Act) and TORPEDO Act along with a variety of others exemptions. These developments are welcome and critical, but they are yet to be progressed, and approach the problem in a largely disjointed and piece-meal way that is insufficient to address all concerns, even for just these two key partners. In the medium term, the AUKUS framework ought to be viewed as a pathfinder, with lessons learned through this collaboration and key elements of the approach expanded to other allies who can be considered as “most capable”.

Moreover, while there is no doubt that changes and improvements in specific elements of the process is both welcome and valuable—for instance earlier releasability of updated capabilities could potentially halve the timeframes for building FMS cases. While eliminating transactional licenses or removing the need for recertification after approval for transfers would reduce the bureaucratic burden by reducing duplication without increasing risk, it is mostly piecemeal and disjointed—there is a broader shift in attitude and culture across multiple agencies that is needed to truly increase competitiveness. All US government agencies involved in the process should consider whether their organizational culture and staff training is sufficiently modernized for the new fight, but there are specific pain points for allies within the community. For instance, the allies consider the Defense Technology Security Agency (DTSA) to be monolithic and outdated in its approach to foreign nations, without sufficient consideration to the context of individual relationships. The teams within the Department of State that oversee the FMS processes are perceived to lack coordination with each other and could modernize their approaches by learning lessons from the Department of Commerce teams who oversee dual-use technologies. At the Pentagon, there are anecdotal stories of senior allied military officials being left at the entrance because of mix-ups with visitor registrations, and US staffers preparing talking points for meetings with them that were labelled NORFORN. Senior officials understand the importance of allies and have an intent to remedy these issues, but too often there is a disconnect between the staff working directly with allies, the senior leadership and the bureaucrats who manage the enabling processes. Remedying these issues would not only improve the process and eliminate outdated barriers, but also improve the perception and trust in the United States as an effective partner and ally.

US personnel must also understand the value of collaboration, rather than viewing security cooperation as a one-way street in which the benevolent superpower bestows gifts on its friends. Not only does this undermine the relationships and trust of US allies, but it also means the United States may miss opportunities to gain from new niche technologies home-grown by allies, unique operational insights from allies’ own geo-political context, opportunities for experimentation that a smaller and more agile force can undertake, or even foreign-born talent and expertise. Particularly, the DOD could boost the Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) program and drop requirements for a potential technology to be sponsored by a service. As part of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the FCT program seeks to find, assess, and test high readiness level technologies from foreign countries to see if they could be of use to US forces. These programs should be given the remit and resources to freely scout the best-in-class capabilities from across the network of alliances and find ways to adapt and adopt them into the US military.

Increase cooperation in mutual and shared planning and production

As the security environment evolves, allies and partners may shift their thinking about what capabilities to acquire from the United States, as well as the depth of integration. Interoperability has long been the pinnacle aspiration for allied operations, shaping force planning and systems procurement. However, although it remains desirable, many nations are now more wary of creating dependencies. This may result from decades of operating together in the Middle East; effects of more complex geopolitical realities; the very real considerations of cost, timelines, and supply chain capacity; a realization of the difficulty of attaining true interoperability; or simply from a shift in mindset. It may also reflect the growth and maturation of third-nation suppliers within the US partner ecosystem (such as South Korea and Taiwan). Regardless, if the United States and its partners are to find the right balance between quantity, quality, and interoperability of their forces, careful consideration is needed to identify which systems need to be US-sourced, which can be US-designed and foreign built, which can be foreign built to interoperable standards, which need to be the most exquisite in capability, and which legacy systems are sufficient with the right enhancements. All nations do this already, but the lessons from Ukraine’s success is absorbing massive amounts of military aid, along with a study of the realities of that conflict, warrants a careful and in-depth reassessment of the what, how, and why of such decisions.

Supply chain fragility and capacity issues may³ also be addressed through enhanced allied manufacturing capabilities. The United States should prioritize finding alternate means of fulfilling partner capability needs, either through bolstering co-production in third nations, increasing the options of cheaper and simpler versions of US systems, or creating pathways to integrate allied national capabilities into US operational systems (e.g., communications systems, Common Operating Picture, and other informational and targeting systems). This approach has been demonstrated through the F-35 program, but could be extended to many more systems and platforms. As systems shift from hardware-centric to software-centric, this process should become easier and increase opportunities for collaboration. That said, the shift to software-centric capability thinking needs to be deliberate and intentional, integrating the allies-first mentality and exploring creative ways to collaborate.

Elevate the strategic prioritization and invest first principles planning of security cooperation activities

Having the right capabilities is meaningless without the right strategies, concepts and plans to employ them effectively. However, current security cooperation activities are part of a lengthy and process-heavy planning system, making it difficult to elevate the strategic thinking of security cooperation. Currently, it is easier for US defense planners to retro-fit desired activities to broad strategic intents for a country or region than for them to begin the security cooperation process with hard analysis of the strategic intent and let that guide the development of the proposed activity. It takes years—even decades—to identify, acquire and stand up a sophisticated combat system such as a fighter jet or naval combatant. When strategic focus shifts from, for instance, irregular counterterrorism to near-peer conventional operations, it is easier to shift the justification for an airframe from ‘close air support’ to ‘air dominance’ with the shift in armaments than it is to begin the process over with a consideration of whether it is needed in the new context. To be sure, the platform may still be relevant, or the benefits of continuing with its acquisition justified in the new context. This paper does not advocate for flip-flopping on expensive projects every few years, but there are plenty of examples through history where those shifts have come too late, so a hard rethink and reevaluation is needed when these strategic shifts occur. Moreover, when thinking about military capability-building, the US government too often lets the technology or the platform drive the analysis—often at the behest of a partner who might prioritize prestige over operational need. Instead, the analysis should help planners in determining the best capabilities to fit a given nation’s needs.

Taking a strategic lens to planning requires specialist skills, knowledge, and experience, but the security cooperation workforce is under-resourced relative to this task. The workforce requires staff with a higher quantity of training and understanding at every level to enable more thorough planning activities, and leaders need to invest in workforce development in this sector commensurate with the strategic effects it can generate. The roles of security cooperation liaisons across the DOD and State Department are as critical as any other in the diplomatic and planning sectors, and US policymakers need to elevate and invest in them to reflect that criticality. As part of this shift, the United States must recognize the importance of personal relationships between US planners and allied counterparts and support them to achieve common goals. The Defense Security Cooperation University has recognized the need for a well-educated workforce and has already begun a process to reform its education and certification systems. Finally, all levels of the workforce require close coordination and examination: While US planners engage directly with and understand well ally and partner nations, there is often a disconnect between these action officers and the higher echelons of leadership and policy. Shared knowledge and relationships ought to be translated across the hierarchy.

The human element is often discarded as too hard to quantify or assess in debates around the value and effectiveness of security cooperation. While certainly difficult to quantify, to dismiss the value of human capital disregards the most valuable aspect of that cooperation. Therefore, in seeking to improve oversight, accountability, and effectiveness, the US government must necessarily evolve its concept of the ROI of these activities. The building of goodwill and personal affections generated through people-to-people contact, the spreading of organizational values and culture, and the opportunities created by building people-centered networks are invaluable; they are likely to be the most resilient and vital links in times of crisis and contingency.

Back to top

Conclusion and recommendations

Security cooperation can have strategic effects. In an era of increased geopolitical complexity, strategic competition, shifting tactical considerations driven by emerging technologies, and an increasing range of non-traditional security threats, closer integration and collaboration with US allies and partners is critical. Just as all elements of DOD activities must adapt to these changing conditions, security cooperation approaches must also evolve.

While the core of the US approach is sound, seemingly small shifts in mentality, culture, focus, and approach can have deep and meaningful impacts in the way the United States is perceived by allies and the ROI from these relationships—even if they are difficult to quantify or measure. Treating allies as peers and ensuring the United States’ actions towards them matches the rhetoric, trusting them with informational and technology sharing, and removing small but impactful hurdles can have a dramatic impact. The United States must reconsider and explore new ways to develop capabilities and provide the tools allies and partners need to ensure they have the capacity to meaningfully contribute to shared security goals, including alternate versions of US systems, co-production, and integrating third-party allied systems.

The United States can also learn lessons from recent conflicts to create new tools to enable partners to respond to unexpected regional security crisis and conflict. Finally, DOD leadership can enable the reform and elevation of security cooperation by realigning its place in planning and reporting hierarches, investing in the workforce that undertakes the planning and execution of the activities and ensuring strategic intent and guidance is infused at every level. While US competitors can not readily catch up to the United States’ longstanding and carefully curated advantage, enacting the following recommendations can prevent the erosion of that edge and maximize the ROI provided by alliances and partnerships:

• Recommendation 1: DOD should take a “lean-to-collaboration-first” mentality with its closest and most capable allies in information and technology sharing. In addition, the DOD must prioritize AUKUS Pillar 2 as a key strategic goal, and as it develops and evolves it must act as a pathfinder for wider reform on this topic.
• Recommendation 2: DOD should increase the pathways to adopt and adapt allied technological developments. For instance, DOD can do so by boosting the Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) program and dropping requirements for a potential technology to be sponsored by a service, giving them the remit and resources to freely scout the best-in-class capabilities from across the network of alliances, and find ways to adapt and adopt them into the US military.
• Recommendation 3: The United States must look for ways to reduce unnecessary and counterproductive burdens of ITAR, such as by eliminating transactional licenses for AUKUS members and removing the need for recertification after approval for transfer has already been agreed upon, and modernizing releasability processes to speed up FMS case development.
• Recommendation 4: The United States should explore alternate means of fulfilling partner capability needs, either through increased co-production in third nations, increasing the options of cheaper and simpler versions of US systems, or creating pathways to integrate allied national capabilities into US operational systems. Moreover, it should take a deliberate and intentional approach to exploring the opportunities available through a transition from hardware-centric systems to software-centric capability in order to integrate the allies-first mentality and explore creative ways to collaborate.
• Recommendation 5: The US government must ensure security cooperation policy- and strategic goal-setting is first and foremost ‘threat-informed’ with deep consideration of the partner’s current capability gaps, needs, and future intentions. Further, they should consult more deeply and closely ‘most capable’ allies to enable country plans to evolve existing concepts and intents into operationalized plans with clear roles and responsibilities that each partner can plan for.
• Recommendation 6: DOD leadership should invest in the security cooperation workforce in a way commensurate with the importance of allies and partners and the strategic effects that security cooperation can generate, expanding it in quantity and improving its quality by investing more in the training of those who undertake it. Moreover, approaches should be shifted to prioritize the importance of person-to-person relationships, while the insights gained by that workforce need better feedback channels to every level of planning to ensure insights are actioned effectively.

Back to top

Acknowledgements

Sponsored By

This report was generously sponsored by Lockheed Martin Corporation. The report is written and published in accordance with the Atlantic Council Policy on Intellectual Independence. The authors are solely responsible for its analysis and recommendations. The Atlantic Council and its donors do not determine, nor do they necessarily endorse or advocate for, any of this report’s conclusions.

About the author

Fellow

John T. Watts

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Conflict Crisis Management

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Evolving cooperative security approaches for tomorrow’s realities appeared first on Atlantic Council.

It has been a busy year in cybersecurity and in the land of policy. On March 2, 2023, the Biden administration released its long-awaited National Cybersecurity Strategy, laying out an ambitious plan to maintain the United States’ advantage in cyberspace and boost the security and resilience of critical technical systems across the economy and society. The document was followed by its Implementation Plan and the National Cyber Workforce and Education Strategy later that summer.

This year saw other noteworthy developments, including cybersecurity failures that resulted in major hacks of organizations ranging from T-Mobile and 23andMe to critical infrastructure in Guam and the Ukrainian military amidst its war with Russia.  There has been no shortage to discuss in 2023, so we brought together a group of Atlantic Council fellows to review the past year in cybersecurity, which organizations and initiatives made positive steps, and areas for improvement going forward. 

Editors of the editor note: The 5×5’s founder and inaugural editor, Simon Handler, is moving on to new adventures, but it bears a note of thanks to Simon for his wit and work ethic in taking this series from an idea through to forty-two issues over the last four years. The series continues, but meanwhile thank you, Simon, and good luck. 

#1 What organization, public or private, had the greatest impact on cybersecurity in 2023? 

Amélie Koran, nonresident senior fellow, Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), Atlantic Council: 

“Progress Software, the makers of the MOVEit file transfer service which has been the gift that has kept on giving this year when it comes to notable breaches this year. It has impacted private and public sector organizations and over sixty million individuals around the world, with more than 80 percent of the impacted organizations based in the United States. There was rarely a cybersecurity-adjacent news story in 2023 that did not have a component tied to this software.” 

John Speed Meyers, nonresident senior fellow, Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), Atlantic Council; principal research scientist, Chainguard: 

“Since there is not, to a first approximation, a scale on which cybersecurity has been or is measured, it is hard for me to say anything objective. That said, assuming the scale extends below zero, I would like to vote for C and C++ software developers.” 

Justin Sherman, nonresident senior fellow, Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), Atlantic Council; founder and chief executive officer, Global Cyber Strategies: 

“There are, in some ways, too many to pick from—both good and bad. On the positive side in 2023, the United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Centre continues to roll out voluntary, systemic internet security protections for British networks and organizations, most recently offering its free Domain Name System (DNS) security service to schools. Such decisions exemplify the concept of security at scale, identifying the points with great ‘leverage’ improve security, something with which US policy still struggles. On the side of undermining US cybersecurity, the Chinese government’s expanded efforts to require companies to disclose software vulnerabilities to the state increase a number of hacking risks to the United States and plenty of other countries.” 

Maggie Smith, nonresident senior fellow, Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), Atlantic Council; director, Cyber Project, Irregular Warfare Initiative: 

“I think everyone’s mind immediately goes to Microsoft and its ongoing efforts to assist Ukraine. But I think the company’s impact on cybersecurity goes beyond the all-consuming narrative around the role of the private sector before, during, and in the aftermath of conflict. In September, I read a great post by Cynthia Brumfield on the <Meta>curity Substack (I highly recommend subscribing to its ‘Best Infosec-Related Long Reads for the Week’) about the technical blunders made by Microsoft that gave Chinese actors access to US government emails. For me, it tied a bow around how I feel about how to approach cybersecurity: there is no silver bullet, and no one is ever truly secure. China’s hack highlighted how a company that is literally helping prevent catastrophic cyberattacks can simultaneously be the victim of one. This is a dichotomy inherent to the domain of cyberspace and the impact of seeing it so publicly with Microsoft was my 2023 cybersecurity ‘woah’ moment.” 

Bobbie Stempfley, nonresident senior fellow, Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), Atlantic Council; vice president and business unit security officer, Dell Technologies: 

“It is hard not to say that the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has had the greatest impact on cybersecurity, given how active it has been in this space. That being said, recognizing the National Institute for Standards and Technology and its publication of post-quantum encryption standards for three of its four selected algorithms and intention to evaluate the next wave of algorithms has great impact on national security.” 

#2 What was the most impactful cyber policy or initiative of 2023? 

Koran: “I would say that the US National Cybersecurity Strategy would count in this category because it was released, debated, and followed with an implementation plan. Getting any policy or directive out of the government and through the gauntlet of reviews, markup, critique, and public consumption is to be lauded. Is it perfect? No. Is it a good start? Yes. For it to succeed and the United States to continue to lead in these policy areas, policymakers need maintain, revise, and consider it a living document. For the implementation plan, leaders need to realize that these were lofty goals with aggressive timelines—many of which may be missed—but to keep trying.” 

Meyers: “Overlooking the aforementioned lack of a cybersecurity impact scale, I would nominate the Internet Security Research Group’s Prossimo project or, more parochially, the creation of Wolfi, a new security-first Linux distribution.” 

Sherman: “The 2023 US National Cybersecurity Strategy is particularly significant because of its strong, explicit bent toward regulation. It is the product of an important, positive, and long overdue decision to focus US cyber policy on where and why companies are not investing in cybersecurity, rather than continue to speak purely about public-private partnerships and ignore the failures of the market to address the risks to citizens, businesses, and the country. As a point of comparison for this shift, the 2023 cyber strategy mentions ‘regulation’ or some variant of it forty times—while the previous National Cyber Strategy, released in 2018, did not say ‘regulation’ once.” 

Smith: “For impact in 2023, the Department of Defense (DoD) Cyber Strategy is at the top of my list because it places a hard stop on DoD by clearly defining its jurisdictional limits. With the rise of ransomware and other forms of pervasive cybercrime, US Cyber Command has often worked to support other US entities to combat attacks. Many viewed DoD’s activity as blurring the line and stepping dangerously close to getting involved in domestic cybersecurity. The 2023 DoD Cyber Strategy clearly draws the line: The Department, in particular, lacks the authority to employ military forces to defend private companies against cyber-attacks. It may do so only if directed by the President, or (1) if the Secretary of Defense or other appropriate DoD official approves a request for defense support of civil authorities from the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Bureau of Investigation, or another appropriate lead Federal agency; (2) at the invitation of such a company; and (3) in coordination with the relevant local or Federal authority. Given this—and the limited circumstances in which military cyber forces would be asked to defend civilian critical infrastructure—the Department will not posture itself to defend every private sector network.” 

Stempfley: “The Delaware Court of Chancery ruling that expands the duty of care from ‘directors’ to ‘officers’ and takes an expansive view of what an officer is at a company.  The ruling in the McDonald’s Corporation Stockholder Derivative Litigation, while not getting the same attention as the SEC rule or the National Cyber Strategy, is creating impact by lining up top-to-bottom conversations about cyber risks in organizations. Additionally, it is likely to lead to more standardization and clarity around the role of the Chief Information Security Officer and other relevant officers.”

#3 What is the most important yet under-reported cyber incident of 2023?

Koran: “The T-Mobile data breaches. If we answer the question of ‘what day is it?’ and reply ‘another day for a T-Mobile breach,’ the company has not learned from its long history of breaches, nor has regulatory framework aided in curbing the regularity and impact of these breaches. While other telecommunications companies have not had as many regular lapses as T-Mobile has had, one wonders what makes them different than the others and if the issue can be remedied. Additionally, the company has decided to cut more jobs and the only thing keeping people away from sensitive areas of the company is a sign on the door of a data center with a strongly worded message of ‘please do not steal any more data.’” 

Meyers: “Using a loose definition of ‘incident,’ I would like to nominate the Cyber Safety Review Board’s decision to investigate the extortion activities of Lapsus$ prior to investigating the Russian intelligence agencies’ epic SolarWinds hack.” 

Sherman: “Among others—recognizing that I am cheating on this response by picking a few—a Chinese state-sponsored group called Volt Typhoon hacked US critical infrastructure systems, including in Guam, which speaks to the cyber-focused risks associated with any potential kinetic conflict with Beijing in the future; hackers exploited the log4j vulnerability to hack into devices and then sell the information to ‘proxyware’ services, which speaks to the intersection of major vulnerabilities and the cryptojacking, adware, and other similar markets; and Russia’s military intelligence agency built malware specifically targeting Android devices to spy on Ukrainian devices and, for a period, gained access to the Ukrainian military’s combat data exchange.” 

Smith: “Earlier this year genetic testing company 23andMe was hacked multiple times. For a long time, I have wondered about mail-order DNA kits and how they store, protect, and manage an individual’s data—consumer genetic testing data, for example, does not fall under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). As someone who has done genetic testing for a medical reason and felt the ripple effects of what it can reveal, the 23andMe hacks confirmed my fears that sensitive, personal genetic information gathered for commercial purposes may put marginalized groups at risk if stolen. Many genetic mutations, for example, fall in the ‘founder mutation’ category, meaning the mutation is observed with high frequency in a group that is or was geographically or culturally isolated, in which one or more of the ancestors was a carrier of the altered gene. Therefore, it is relatively easy to determine a person’s ethnicity if a founder mutation is present. 23andMe tests for many known founder mutations because they do tell people a lot about their personal history. With antisemitism at peak levels and the first 23andMe hack targeting those of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, I think the hacking of commercial genetic data deserves a lot more attention.” 

Stempfley: “Ransomware has gotten a great deal of coverage, from the Ransomware Task Force to its highlights in the Verizon Data Breach Report (VDBR) and the financial impact—so what is under-reported in ransomware? The now documented impact to public safety. Early in the year, published research explicitly tied ransomware at hospitals and health care delivery points to impact to patient care. This study showed that in 44 percent of the cases that were studied patient care was impeded leading to negative patient outcomes. This report was published in the Journal of American Medicine Association a mainstream medical journal, not in a security publication.” 

More from the Cyber Statecraft Initiative:

The 5×5—The cyber year in review (2022)

The 5×5—Hindsight 2021: Cybersecurity is hard

The 5×5—The 2010s: A cyber decade in review

#4 What cybersecurity issue went unaddressed in 2023 but deserves greater attention in 2024? 

Koran: “Not to flog the buzzwords, but better forward-leaning policies and regulations toward security in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) services deserve more attention. Putting these tools and services on the market well before their safety has been successfully worked out, vetted, and peer reviewed greatly increases risk to critical and non-critical infrastructure. While these tools may not be directly flipping switches at power plants and hospitals, the impact of their generated content on mis- and disinformation, at a time when the public is not critically thinking about their output, is dangerous. Even non-LLM or AI-based tools that are labelled as being backed or run by these technologies not only engender a false sense of safety and completeness but also fuel the hype train.” 

Meyers: “The ungodly amount of time that software professionals spend identifying, triaging, and remediating known software vulnerabilities. I thought computers were supposed to make our lives better.” 

Sherman: “Some of the most important protocols for internet traffic transmission globally, such as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), remain fundamentally insecure, and many companies and organizations still have not implemented the available cybersecurity improvements. Policymakers should also remember, amid excitement, fear, and craze about generative AI, to think about the cybersecurity of physical internet infrastructure that underpins GenAI—such as the cloud computing systems used to train and deploy models.” 

Smith: “In March, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a memorandum stressing the need for states to assess cybersecurity risk to drinking water systems and issued a new rule that added cybersecurity assessments to annual state-led Sanitary Survey Programs for public water systems. However, the EPA rescinded the rule after legal challenges. Attorneys general in Iowa, Arkansas, and Missouri, joined by the American Water Works Association and the National Rural Water Association, claimed that making the cybersecurity improvements were too costly for suppliers and those costs would pass to the consumers. Importantly, EPA Assistant Administrator Radhika Fox warned, ‘cyberattacks have the potential to contaminate drinking water, which threatens public health.’ I hope to see more action to protect our public water systems, as well as other systems critical to public health and welfare.” 

Stempfley: “The impact of Generative AI on entry-level positions in the cyber workforce [deserves greater attention]. The cyber workforce shortage has been widely reported, as has the challenge that many new entrants to the field have experienced, but we have not begun to talk about how the impacts from this technology will be disproportionately aligned to those least experienced in the field, potentially doing away with most entry level roles. If this happens, it will require us to think about the workforce in different ways.” 

#5 At year’s end, how do you assess the efficacy of the Biden administration’s 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy?

Koran: “In a short word, it has been ineffective—despite, as I note above, being the most impactful. Barring the momentum of the software bill of materials (SBOM) message train, the suggested movements by public and private sector organizations to align with the strategy have been resisted or questioned, even though many of the ideas and efforts proposed are laudable. There was not a lot of momentum for these groups to push some of these efforts, and it will take years, not weeks or months, to meet the strategy’s goals. The strategy is a way finder, but Congress—in disarray for quite some time—needs to act to power it. Until Congress passes legislation and appropriations that support government efforts, private sector organizations will have little reason to align unless the market demands change. Everything else has also been overshadowed by global events and politics, and momentum to achieve the goals set out by the strategy will be hard to come by.” 

Meyers: “To be determined. Perhaps it shifted the Overton window on software security and liability, though I suspect that general suspicion of large technology companies did that more than the issuing of any one strategy.” 

Sherman: “The Biden administration’s strategy, particularly with its emphasis on regulation, is an important and long-overdue shift in how the US government is messaging and advancing its cybersecurity policy. However, there is still much to be done, and it is not yet clear exactly how the administration intends to implement the emphasis on regulation in practice—the implementation guidance for the National Cybersecurity Strategy entirely omitted certain sections of the Strategy itself.” 

Smith: “I think it is too early to assess the efficacy of the strategy, but I do think that it is a step forward. As a wild example, the October 22 60 Minutes brought the Five Eyes (United States, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and Canada) intelligence chiefs together for an interview—something that has never happened before! Before the interview they released a rare joint statement to confront the ‘unprecedented threat’ China poses to the innovation world, and that from quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China is stealing secrets in various sectors. The best part about the interview, in my opinion, is that it is conducted in a sparse, dimly lit room with all the chiefs sitting around a non-descript round table, adding to the spook factor!” 

Stempfley: “The National Cybersecurity Strategy, its associated implementation plan, and workforce strategy have been important documents and have certainly set the national direction—this direction has served the administration well in domestic and international discussions. The strategy’s influence in the federal budget process and in those elements of industry that do not typically engage in public private partnerships have not been as substantive as hoped.”

Simon Handler is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative within the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab). He is also the editor-in-chief of The 5×5, a series on trends and themes in cyber policy. Follow him on Twitter @SimonPHandler.

The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, under the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), works at the nexus of geopolitics and cybersecurity to craft strategies to help shape the conduct of statecraft and to better inform and secure users of technology.

learn more

The post The 5×5—2023: The cybersecurity year in review appeared first on Atlantic Council.

STRATEGY PAPER LAUNCH

The United States faces an increasingly challenging international security environment with ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. Tensions are also rising across the Taiwan Strait. With Xi Jinping charging his military to give him the ability to invade Taiwan by 2027, US and allied defense strategists are rightly concerned about a military contingency in the Taiwan Strait. Yet, while an invasion poses the greatest threat to Taiwan’s sovereignty, a naval blockade might be the most viable option for China.

In this installment of the Atlantic Council Strategy Papers Series, 2022-2023 Senior US Navy Fellow Marek Jestrab articulates a vision to prevent and, if needed, defeat a maritime blockade of Taiwan by China. This strategy paper demonstrates that a maritime blockade is the most strategically viable action for the PRC, that Taiwan is uniquely vulnerable to a blockade, and that a blockade is both a present and enduring challenge. The author presents specific actions for Taiwan, the United States, and like-minded nations with the goal of deterring and, if deterrence fails, defeating a PRC blockade of Taiwan.  

The only predictable element of warfare is that it is inherently unpredictable; a near-singular focus on a Chinese invasion by force risks catching the Taiwanese, US, and likeminded militaries unprepared in the event of a non-kinetic naval blockade.

Stephen J. Hadley, 20th National Security Advisor

Executive summary

Blockade: The most strategically viable option for the PRC 

The People’s Republic of China’s intention to unify Taiwan with the mainland is clear. Leveraging decades of sustained military modernization, the PRC possesses the capability and regional overmatch of maritime capacity required to execute a blockade of Taiwan. The specific actions that the PRC could execute will be discussed as part of this paper, but the term “blockade” in the context of this strategy refers to the PRC using coercive actions to prevent merchant shipping from having freedom of navigation in the waters surrounding Taiwan, and sealing off Taiwan’s seaports to prevent merchant shipping from being able to enter or exit the island.

A blockade is the most likely and dangerous scenario, due to Taiwan’s reliance on maritime trade to sustain its economic prosperity. Moreover, a nonkinetic blockade is appealing to the PRC, as it is the lowest level of coercive action that could remain below the threshold of open hostilities and still achieve its national objectives. The PRC’s maritime threat would be a coercive act, designed to instill fear in the Taiwanese population and the merchant shipping industry.  

The PRC views the existence of Taiwan as a direct threat to its national sovereignty. Because of these perceived threats, the strategic plans of the PRC call for resolution of the “Taiwan question” before China is able to achieve its desired “national rejuvenation” by 2049. To accomplish this goal, the PRC refuses to renounce the use of force to compel unification of Taiwan with the mainland. 

Additionally, the Russia-Ukraine war has made clear that unprovoked invasions of neighboring countries are simple for the world population to understand, and for leaders to rally against. Unlike an invasion, a blockade does not present the same strategic-messaging flaws. Moreover, the PRC’s military strategy indicates an openness to blockades and other uses of “restraint warfare,” which the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines as seeking to avoid war first through military preparedness and powerful conventional and strategic forces that act in concert with political and diplomatic efforts to “subdue enemy’s forces without fighting.”¹

All these factors point to a maritime blockade of Taiwan as the PRC’s most strategically viable option. Therefore, what is required is a strategy specifically tailored to deterring and, if deterrence fails, defeating a PRC maritime blockade of Taiwan. The major elements of this strategy include Taiwan investing in capabilities that help demonstrate the resilience to resist, the United States maintaining the capability to sustain Taiwan in the face of a blockade, and like-minded nations providing enabling capabilities and additional maritime capacity.

The focus of this paper is on a nonkinetic blockade, but it is worth noting that there are multiple scenarios in which the PRC could utilize maritime advantages in its attempt to unify Taiwan with the mainland. A fundamental challenge of these actions is that the PRC can dynamically scale the operations based on evolving conditions.  

While there is no consensus on a perfect term to describe the possible coercive actions that the PRC could employ in the maritime domain, “blockade” is utilized in this paper as it is the best available and most wildly understood term.²

This paper puts forth a strategy to prevent and, if needed, defeat a PRC blockade of Taiwan. This is consistent with the US government’s existing One China Policy, with a legal basis grounded in the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, the US-PRC Joint Communiques of 1972, 1978, and 1982, and President Ronald Reagan’s Six Assurances to Taiwan of 1982.³

What is required is a strategy specifically tailored to deterring and, if deterrence fails, defeating a PRC maritime blockade of Taiwan.

Commander Marek Jestrab, Academic Year 2022-23 Senior US Navy Fellow

Taiwan’s unique vulnerability to blockade

The PRC today possesses the maritime force structure needed for regional overmatch in a blockade scenario. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commands the world’s largest navy, the world’s largest coast guard, and a massive government-subsidized maritime militia. From 2005 to 2022, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has added 135 ships to its inventory, while in the same period the US Navy added just two.⁴ 

Located only one hundred nautical miles from mainland China, Taiwan is uniquely vulnerable to a blockade. Taiwan’s dependence on maritime trade is evidenced by the imbalance of its gross domestic product (GDP) in relation to its port activity: Taiwan is the world’s twenty-first largest economy by GDP, yet requires the world’s sixth greatest number of port calls by container ships to sustain this level of economic activity. Taiwan’s largest vulnerability is its energy sector, as it relies on maritime trade to import nearly 98 percent of its energy. 

Actions to defeat the fear and coercion of a PRC Blockade  

Deterring the PRC from even attempting a blockade requires a strategy that communicates to the PRC that its attempted coercive act would fail and prove to be a grave miscalculation. To communicate this message, an international coalition is required that can demonstrate the capability, ability, and will to sustain Taiwan’s economy indefinitely if it were confronted with a blockade. Implementing this strategy would require that:

• Taiwan demonstrate the resilience to resist;
• The United States demonstrate the capability to respond; and
• Like-minded nations demonstrate enabling capabilities and maritime capacity. 

To read the full strategy paper, download the PDF.

Strategy Paper Editorial board

Executive editors

Frederick Kempe
Alexander V. Mirtchev

Editor-in-chief

Matthew Kroenig

Managing Editor

Andrew A. Michta

Editorial board members

James L. Jones
Odeh Aburdene
Paula Dobriansky
Stephen J. Hadley
Jane Holl Lute
Ginny Mulberger
Stephanie Murphy
Dan Poneman
Arnold Punaro

Lead author

Fellow

Marek Jestrab

2022-23 Senior US Navy Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Industry Indo-Pacific

This strategy paper contains the author’s personal views, and do not represent official positions of the US Navy or Department of Defense.  

The author would like to thank Matthew Kroenig, Clementine Starling, Markus Garlauskas, Joseph Webster, and Kitsch Liao for their review and feedback. The author would also like to thank Julia Siegel and Shreya Lad for their editing and administrative support.

With a Foreword by

Board director

Stephen J. Hadley

Chairman, International Advisory Board

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post A maritime blockade of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China: A strategy to defeat fear and coercion appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Houthi rebels are funded and trained by Iran. As non-state proxies of the Islamic Republic, the Houthis remain a pernicious threat to regional stability, security, and global commerce. Through their Houthi proxies, Iran has purposefully targeted civilians across borders to project their power in the Middle East against Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The pattern of threats from the Iran-backed Houthis has even forced sanctions from the United Nations Security Council in response to the systematic targeting of civilians.

This Week in the Mideast Newsletter delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insights and analysis on the Middle East and North Africa directly to your inbox. Subscribe now.

Ever since the 2021 lifting of FTO status, the world has witnessed the increased threats emanating from Yemen, which include recent repeated attacks on commercial ships with drones and missiles, the seizure of a cargo ship in November, and the launching of missiles toward Israel. On December 3, the US Navy disabled and shot down three Houthi drones during a persistent drone and missile attack on several commercial vessels in the Red Sea. In response to the latest attacks, US officials have emphasized consideration of “appropriate actions” and declared that “the entire world needs to step up together.” 

When the Houthis fired at US Navy ships in 2016, the US aptly responded with a barrage of Tomahawk missiles, destroying three Houthi-controlled radar sites. Today, however, as President Biden and his top cabinet members are assessing the conditions of increasing risks to Americans in the Middle East, they are also factoring in the regional sensitivities associated with the increasingly unstable United Nations-mediated truce among the warring parties in Yemen. Such assessments will include a posture review of the Houthis’ threat capability to American interests since 2021 and how to counter their associated risks.

There are perennial US measures to disrupt terrorist facilitation, such as the targeted sanctions announced on December 7, but they are not enough to address the Iran-sponsored threats emanating from Yemen. Yes, further US and international diplomatic pressure, targeted sanctions, and precision counterterrorism operations can be applied, but more needs to be done. The immediate actions the Biden administration can take now—absent a US military response—include the FTO re-designation of the Houthis. 

Such an FTO re-designation will keep Houthis firmly accountable for their transregional attacks on civilian populations, infrastructure, and commercial shipping. Further, with the FTO designation applied, the president can be publicly steadfast in clarifying that the US will not fail to protect its interests and that it will aggressively support its partners in the defense of their sovereign territory from the Houthis’ terrorist attacks. Short of FTO designation, the president can also re-designate the Houthis as an SDGT entity. This would at least allow the Treasury Department to freeze any US-held assets of the Houthis and their backers and restrict Houthi backers’ access to US financial institutions. Biden can also implore the international community to support collective naval efforts to keep the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden—open and navigable for commercial shipping.

The strong and decisive action of FTO designation is clearly not the only foreign policy tool available for the US to disrupt support to terrorist facilitation, but it is a timely one that can be immediately deployed concurrently to the considerations for other courses of action.

R. Clarke Cooper is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and is the founder and president of Guard Hill House, LLC. He previously served as assistant secretary for political-military affairs at the US Department of State.

The post Threats from Yemen are increasing. It’s time to redesignate the Houthis. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On December 6, Dr. Andrew Michta, director and senior fellow with the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative, was featured in a Verkkouutiset article. Michta contends that the abolishment of conscription into the United States armed forces has led American civilians to be disconnected from citizen soldiers. He advocates for a “new form of civic service focused on national defense.”

Staff

Andrew A. Michta

Director and Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Central Europe Eastern Europe

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

Learn more

The post Michta in Verkkouutiset discussing civic responsibility for defense appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Sales and Warrick testify for the House Homeland Security hearing on Iranian threats to national security appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Melcangi interviewed on ISPI Podcast on Egypt and Palestinian refugees appeared first on Atlantic Council.