Trump's 'Liberation Day' Tariffs: Fair trade or global trade war?

FA· Taiwan’s Status Quo Election Why the Result Won’t Have Much Effect on Cross-Strait Relations—or U.S.-Chinese Tensions By David Sacks January 10, 2024 Hou Yu-ih supporters attending a campaign event in Keelung, Taiwan, January 2024 Ann Wang / Reuters Putin’s Unsustainable Spending Spree How the War in Ukraine Will Overheat the Russian Economy Alexandra Prokopenko China’s Game in Gaza How Beijing Is Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South Mark Leonard The War in Ukraine Is Not a Stalemate Last Year’s Counteroffensive Failed—but the West Can Prevent a Russian Victory This Year Jack Watling The Ukraine-Taiwan Tradeoff U.S. Support for Ukraine Diverts Weapons From Taiwan but Demonstrates Resolve to China Michael Poznansky Why Gaza Matters Since Antiquity, the Territory Has Shaped the Quest for Power in the Middle East Jean-Pierre Filiu Why Philanthropists Should Become Heretics Donors Must Challenge, Not Comfort, the Existing Order By Mark Malloch-Brown January 15, 2024 Kacper Pempel / Reuters Philanthropy and power have always been closely intertwined. Wealthy men in ancient Athens paid for public goods and services, such as naval defenses, under the so-called liturgical system, in which the richest citizens financed some functions of the state. In many Islamic societies, propertied Muslims have ceded parts of their fortunes to charitable waqf entities that have funded services such as soup kitchens and hospitals. In early-modern Europe, the Medicis and other potentates created what were the microfinance schemes of their time, lending small sums of money to poor citizens. Those philanthropists faced an abiding tradeoff between embracing an existing order and seeking to challenge it. As the above examples suggest, they most commonly have opted for the former choice, working within prevailing structures while trying to mitigate their shortcomings. There have, however, been exceptional moments when philanthropists contributed to systemic change: merchants helped the theologian Martin Luther spread his ideas in the early Reformation, for example, and prosperous nineteenth-century British radicals, such as the economist Thomas Attwood, championed the expansion of the democratic franchise. The outcome of this tradeoff almost always influences the political order more broadly, and with it, international relations. From the liturgical system’s role in the rise of Athens to the part played by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others in trying to fund a more equitable global distribution of vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, the strategies pursued by philanthropists have shaped wider events. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. That matters all the more in a world as chaotic as today’s. As the 2024 World Economic Forum gathers in Davos, it does so against the backdrop of dauntingly complex and interlocking crises. This tumultuous global moment is also an inflection point for philanthropy. Wealthy donors can sometimes achieve what other entities cannot; they have greater freedom than most states and businesses to experiment and pursue unorthodox solutions to common problems. But in a time of such intense rupture and flux, philanthropy must adopt a more disruptive role, moving out from under the tumbling pillars and walls of the old order and helping lay the foundations of a new, better one. FROM GILDED AGE TYCOONS TO TECH MOGULS The philanthropic tradition of the current era begins with Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and other Gilded Age titans of industry of the late nineteenth century. As Carnegie wrote in his 1889 book, The Gospel of Wealth, the purpose of such giving was not “to feed our egos, but to feed the hungry and help people to help themselves.” These endeavors, however, were fundamentally paternalistic: rich men giving back to the societies in which they had accumulated their fortunes and grandly decreeing how their grants should be used. Over subsequent decades, this credo would face challenges, including from New Deal–era progressives wary of rich men ascribing to charity what was properly the realm of the state and of McCarthyite conservatives targeting philanthropic foundations as part of anticommunist fearmongering. But the paternalistic approach—recycling the income earned within a certain civic order back into that same order—would continue well into the second half of the twentieth century. Take the Ford Foundation, founded in 1936 by Henry Ford’s son, Edsel. In 1950, it appointed as its president Paul Hoffman, fresh from his role as administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe, a core pillar of U.S. foreign policy in the immediate postwar era. He later adopted the same title, administrator, as the inaugural head of the United Nations Development Program, a position that I would later hold myself. One of Hoffmann’s successors at Ford was McGeorge Bundy, who led the foundation from 1966 to 1979 after five years as U.S. national security adviser in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, a post in which he was one of the leading architects of the escalation in Vietnam. Under Bundy’s presidency, the foundation supported Johnson’s agenda by backing civil rights causes and even offered grants to the staff of the presidential candidate Robert Kennedy after Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. Look, too, at the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation roles in the agricultural “Green Revolution” in South Asia, a development program closely tied to the Cold War imperatives of the United States (the “green” in its name an explicit contrast with “red,” as in communist). They were as much loyal partners of a U.S. policy agenda abroad as they were allies of power at home. In a time of rupture and flux, philanthropy must adopt a disruptive role. In retrospect, the likes of Hoffman and Bundy resemble secular bishops, legitimized by their social standing, the fortunes behind the philanthropies they ran, and their various trips through the revolving door between the political world of Washington and the foundation world of New York. The foundation leaderships ranked at the pinnacle of social and professional life; I still recall when one foundation president confided to me some 20 years ago that he had resisted nomination as a U.S. cabinet secretary to keep his name in the ring for the job he now held. The crises of the 1970s—the oil shock, the Watergate scandal, and the bloody denouement of the Vietnam War—would take their toll on philanthropies along with other liberal institutions. But these organizations flourished again in the immediate post–Cold War era. This was the time when George Soros, whose philanthropy the Open Society Foundations I today run, started to scale up his giving: opening the Central European University in 1991, funding myriad organizations in post-apartheid South Africa, and giving its first grants to groups in Israel and the Palestinian territories, along with much other work elsewhere. In their 2008 book, Philanthrocapitalism, the journalists Matthew Bishop and Michael Green document what might be considered the ceremonial high point of that new golden age of Western philanthropy. They describe how, at a grand event in June 2006 at the New York Public Library, the celebrated investor Warren Buffett signed a series of letters pledging swaths of his fortune to foundations run by his children and to the Gates Foundation. As if that alone did not crystallize the kinship between the titans of the new Gilded Age and those of the original one, Buffett had much earlier encouraged Gates on his philanthropic path by giving him a copy of Carnegie’s The Gospel of Wealth. The 2006 gathering at the library, however, now looks like the end of an era. The global financial crisis that began the following year brought a rapid decline in public trust in all kinds of political, social, and cultural institutions. In this new environment, philanthropies have found themselves subject to unparalleled degrees of suspicion and doubt—as well as outright conspiracy theories, such as those that have targeted the Gates Foundation and Open Society Foundations. Partly in reaction to this trend, philanthropies have begun to cast aside the old paternalistic way of working and more frequently let their grantees decide what to do with their money. This “trust-based” philanthropy is epitomized by givers such as MacKenzie Scott, the former wife of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who provide funds without strings attached on the grounds that practitioners know best where such resources can have the greatest impact. It puts the grantees first and reduces the active involvement of the philanthropist—a humbler profile for a more skeptical era. The Open Society Foundations have always embraced what Soros calls “political philanthropy”—an orientation that is keenly alert to the realities of power and people’s agency—and have therefore been able to play a pioneering role by giving large sums to change-making institutions. In September, for example, we committed $109 million to a new foundation to champion the rights of Roma people in Europe—an organization led by people from the Roma community. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, we made a $220 million investment in emerging organizations and leaders who are building power in Black communities across the United States. IN SEARCH OF THE NEW Clearly, this trust-based giving is a better match for the moment than the old top-down paternalism. Yet the sector needs to go further still. The global dashboard is flashing red. Halfway through the implementation period of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, only 15 percent are on track, 48 percent are moderately or severely off track, and the remaining 37 percent are stagnating or in regression. Around 60 percent of low-income countries are in or at high risk of debt distress. In 2022, the number of annual deaths in state-based conflicts surpassed 200,000 for the first time since 1986. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that the number of people currently displaced by force surpassed a record 114 million in September, up from 108 million at the start of the year alone. Closely related to all this, of course, is the alarming reality that 2023 was the hottest year on record, a reminder of the urgency of addressing the climate crisis. The prevailing paradigms of power and government are failing. Both the New Deal order that arose after World War II and the neoliberal order that succeeded it in the 1970s and 1980s had their intellectual roots in a narrow cluster of think tanks within a few blocks of one another in Washington and London. The successor paradigm will probably comprise neither a return to the heavy-handed state intervention of the former nor to the market fundamentalism of the latter, but rather new syntheses of society, markets, and government that may today be hard to imagine, especially from major Western power centers. It will emerge from an array of social institutions, universities, street movements, and field experiments around the world, often in the global South. The challenge before philanthropies is to identify and support those needles in haystacks. Doing so will require a strong sense of the different directions the world might take. Program officers working in the philanthropic sector must seek out the leaders, campaigners, and thinkers pioneering that change, then help them get on with it on their own terms. HERETICS, NOT PRIESTS There is a legitimate role for philanthropy in troubled times, but one that has to reflect them. No longer is it enough for established figures to use foundations and other philanthropies to prop up an existing order. The world of Hoffman or Bundy no longer exists, let alone that of Carnegie and Rockefeller. Today, the sector will find legitimacy only in its ability to help confront the manifold crises in ways others cannot. In his 2018 book Just Giving, the political scientist Rob Reich brought a skeptical eye to the question of whether foundations have any valid purpose in liberal democracies but concluded that they can indeed be beneficial by fulfilling roles that only they can take on, through their distinctive constitutions. Reich identified two in particular: pluralism (foundations can challenge orthodoxies by pursuing idiosyncratic goals without clear electoral or market rationales) and discovery (foundations can serve as the “risk capital” for democratic societies, experimenting and investing for the long term). Precisely because entities in the philanthropic sector do not answer to voters or shareholders, they can be both radically urgent and radically patient: moving faster than other actors in response to a crisis or opportunity but also possessing far greater staying power, thus the ability to back projects whose success is judged in decades rather than months. This approach demands that those who were once secular priests—the leaders of the philanthropic sector—abandon their cassocks and accept the mantle of the heretic. Only by challenging the system and agitating on its fringes can they realize their full potential in today’s crisis-bound world. MARK MALLOCH-BROWN is President of the Open Society Foundations. How to Revitalize the World Bank, the IMF, and the Development Finance System The Urgent Need to Update Institutions Built for a Different Era Mia Amor Mottley and Rajiv J. Shah A mother and daughter at a Head Start program in Boston, MA, March 2013. Old Money, New Order American Philanthropies and the Defense of Liberal Democracy Darren Walker America Can’t Surpass China’s Power in Asia But It Can Still Prevent Chinese Hegemony By Kelly A. Grieco and Jennifer Kavanagh January 16, 2024 A joint U.S.–South Korean military exercise, Pohang, South Korea, March 2023 Kim Hong-Ji / Reuters By the end of U.S. President Barack Obama’s second term, the United States faced a clear choice regarding its future role in Asia. As China grew more powerful—and assertive in its territorial claims—Washington could double down on costly efforts to try to maintain U.S. military primacy in the region. Or it could acknowledge that China will inevitably play a growing military role there and use its finite resources to balance Chinese power, seeking to prevent Chinese regional hegemony without sustaining its own. Obama’s successors, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, both opted for the first approach. They have focused on achieving “overmatch” against China, as Mark Milley, then the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it in early 2023—retaining military preeminence as an overarching goal of U.S. Indo-Pacific policy. Biden’s strategy for achieving this goal has differed from that of his predecessors. Recognizing that the price of maintaining U.S. military dominance in the region was fast becoming politically and practically unsustainable, the Biden team sought to build a coalition of allies and partners to defray some of the costs. In the last three years, for example, the administration successfully gained access to additional military bases in the Philippines, established new trilateral intelligence-sharing mechanisms with South Korea and Japan, and forged the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United Kingdom to provide the Australian navy nuclear-powered submarines. But despite some successes, Biden’s overall progress toward building the needed coalition has been slow. The United States still lacks military access to critical parts of Asia, a strong U.S.-led security architecture, and enough well-armed allies and partners to sustain U.S. preeminence. Worse, there is no clear way to address these weaknesses. Asia’s maritime geography reduces the threat that countries in the region perceive China poses, fundamentally undermining Biden’s coalition-building project. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. The Biden administration’s limited gains reflect an underlying reality that many in Washington would rather not face: U.S. military supremacy in Asia cannot be sustained over the long term. Rather than maintain an ill-fated pursuit of primacy, the United States should adopt a strategy that prioritizes balancing, not exceeding, Chinese power. Washington needs to focus more narrowly on safeguarding access to strategic locations—for example, the industrial centers of Japan and India—and key waterways. Washington must also try to shift some of its security burdens by helping allies and partners strengthen their self-defense capabilities. Finally, Washington needs to learn to better navigate the region’s many multilateral institutions to advance U.S. interests and influence instead of organizing engagement solely around U.S.-centered partnerships. Critics of balancing may argue that such an approach would embolden China and stoke fears of abandonment among U.S. allies. But they are wrong: if Washington does not change its approach, it risks finding itself overstretched, lacking the military posture to credibly back its extensive commitments and deter China. A balancing approach would be more sustainable and less risky because it works with the region’s unique geography, not against it. POWER STRUGGLE To achieve its vision of regional primacy through coalition building, the Biden administration has invested heavily in strengthening the United States’ relationships with countries across Asia. The United States has elevated its relationship with Vietnam to a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” for instance, and inked new defense cooperation and co-production agreements with India. But Biden’s coalition-building efforts still fall far short of what would be required to prop up U.S. military dominance. From the beginning, Biden’s administration made it clear that a coalition would have to accomplish three things: diversify the United States’ access to bases, airfields, and ports across the region so that the U.S. military can rapidly project power in the event of a crisis; create a network of alliances and partnerships that reinforces U.S. interests and values; and boost allied and partner countries’ own military capabilities. A primary challenge the United States faces in the Indo-Pacific is China’s large arsenal of missiles. U.S. forces concentrated at large bases in Guam, Japan, and South Korea are particularly vulnerable to Chinese strikes, and the Pentagon hopes to distribute personnel and assets more widely to numerous small bases and outposts across the region to improve their chances of survival. U.S. efforts to establish this distributed posture have yielded some achievements. The Biden team secured expanded permissions for U.S. forces to use additional bases in Australia and the Philippines, as well as Papua New Guinea, pending the approval of the latter country’s parliament. But these expanded permissions do not provide much in the way of additional crisis or wartime access. The Philippines and Papua New Guinea have both signaled that they will not permit the United States to use bases on their territories to stockpile weapons or conduct offensive military operations in a war against China, especially over Taiwan. This additional access does not address Washington’s most critical needs or expand U.S. access to the most strategically important countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. As a result, in the event of a contingency—and with South Korea also likely to restrict U.S. military access—the United States would still have to rely on vulnerable runways in Japan and Guam or operate long-range bombers from Australia. Biden has sought to bolster U.S. regional dominance by shifting its military strategy from a traditional “hub-and-spoke” approach—in which the United States is the center of military operations—to a ”latticework” model that links allies and partners more comprehensively. The Pentagon has increasingly emphasized trilateral military exercises, including joint air and naval drills with Australia and Japan and coast guard training with Japan and the Philippines. But here, too, Biden’s administration has met with frustrations. Few countries in the region are willing to fully commit to a U.S.-led security architecture that requires them to choose between the United States and China. The United States insists that it does not seek to build a regional security bloc, but many in the region, including U.S. allies, have resisted what they view as Washington’s attempts to do just that. FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS Biden’s coalition-building project also still lacks the institutional mechanisms it would need to effectively synchronize actions between its allies and partners during a contingency. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—a security forum comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—is supposed to deepen maritime cooperation, among other initiatives. But it does not afford participating countries the common intelligence picture they would need to coordinate in a crisis, because information-sharing arrangements remain bilateral. Similarly, Washington counts on Tokyo to provide direct military support during a regional war, but no combined U.S.-Japanese command exists to effectively coordinate the two countries’ operations. The United States’ efforts to build up its allies’ military capabilities have a mixed record. In the last few years, some countries in Asia have begun to spend more on defense. But they remain a long way from being able to share the region’s current defense burden with the United States, much less the higher demands a conflict would impose. The United States would need its Asian allies and partners to spend many times more than what they currently do to achieve anything close to true burden sharing. The United States continues to carry the bulk of the defense burden in the Indo-Pacific. Consider Japan and Australia: both countries have announced plans to increase defense spending. Japan intends to raise its defense spending 65 percent over the next five years to better defend itself against China, a project that includes the purchase of 400 U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. Australia also means to increase its defense spending from about two percent of GDP to 2.3 percent over the next ten years and is prioritizing funding for power projection; it plans to buy U.S.-produced long-range strike missiles and nuclear-powered submarines. But there is less to these plans than meets the eye. Japan lacks the intelligence and targeting capabilities needed to use Tomahawk missiles effectively, either for self-defense or to contribute to U.S. operations. Even once it acquires these capabilities, it is unclear whether the modest number of missiles it is buying will contribute meaningfully to regional deterrence. And the aging of Japan’s population has driven a shortage of personnel trained to operate its ships and aircraft. Australia’s military is facing a similar lack of trained military personnel, as well as of civilian experts it will need to operate and maintain the submarines it buys. Few other Asian militaries currently contribute much in the way of capabilities that would enable greater burden sharing with the United States. Some in Washington have high expectations for South Korea, but Seoul has not made the investments in hard infrastructure, air defense, and transport that would allow it to contribute to regional operations. Similarly, despite U.S. pressure, Taiwan has taken only tentative steps toward adding the defensive capabilities it would need to withstand a Chinese attack, such as mobile air defense, sea mines, and cheap drones, among others. In the end, the United States continues to carry the bulk of the defense burden in the Indo-Pacific. IF YOU CAN'T BEAT THEM, BALANCE THEM The Biden administration’s limited progress should raise questions about whether the United States can or should even try to sustain primacy in Asia. Some U.S. leaders hope that as China’s military threat grows, the coalition required to defend U.S. preeminence will eventually emerge, organically sustaining the United States’ dominance indefinitely. This optimism is unwarranted. The region’s maritime geography conspires against Biden’s coalition-building aspirations—and, ultimately, its goal to maintain regional primacy. The vast Pacific and Indian Oceans create powerful defensive barriers that encourage free-riding and complacency among geographically dispersed states. China’s regional neighbors are certainly wary of Beijing’s aggression. But countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia tend not to see Beijing as an existential threat. And the maritime nature of the Indo-Pacific theater itself undermines the credibility of U.S. deterrence. The air and naval forces most relevant to the region are highly mobile—easy to deploy and easy to withdraw. This mobility makes potential allies fear abandonment and reduces the benefits—like U.S. investments in land bases—that they can anticipate from joining a U.S.-led coalition. Many Asian states already harbor understandable skepticism about the durability of U.S. guarantees to the region, given how halfhearted some of Washington’s efforts to “pivot” to Asia have been—and given how extensive the United States’ military commitments are in Europe and the Middle East. The United States can, however, choose a different approach—and it should. A smarter, more sustainable U.S. strategy would focus on balancing China’s power, not overmatching it. A balancing strategy would still require the United States to build a friendly coalition in Asia, but it would be a different kind of coalition. In a balancing approach, the sheer quantity of U.S. allies and partners and available access locations become less important. More important is the quality and strategic value of the United States’ coalition members and access points. The United States should focus foremost on keeping the region’s major centers of industrial power—most notably India, Japan, and South Korea—out of Beijing’s grip by helping them develop their self-defense capabilities and better supporting their attempts to reduce their economic dependence on China. Washington must also commit more energy to safeguarding the region’s key waterways, specifically the Strait of Malacca and parts of the East China and South China Seas, enlisting the help of India, Japan, the Philippines, and Singapore. While the United States should maintain its regional treaty commitments and continue to invest in strategically important partners, countries with fewer implications for the balance of power should receive less U.S. attention. The United States need not exceed every move China makes in the Pacific Islands or in continental Southeast Asia. MENTAL BALANCE A balancing approach would prioritize shifting much of the United States’ defense burden to allies and partners, requiring that they assume primary responsibility for their security and putting the U.S. military in a supporting role. Washington should encourage all of its allies in the region, but especially Japan and the Philippines, to become harder to conquer by investing heavily in asymmetric and self-defense capabilities. U.S. leaders must more urgently push Taiwan, too, to quickly adopt a similar self-defense posture. For many Asian countries, meeting the challenge of modernizing their defense will not be easy after decades of underinvestment and given personnel shortages. But Washington can do far more than it currently does to induce them to armor up. It can attach conditions to the extensive U.S. military assistance and arms deals it offers, pushing allies and partners away from buying expensive prestige items like fighter jets and toward acquiring large amounts of relatively cheap and mobile military assets such as uncrewed ships, aerial drones, naval mines, antiship missiles, and air defenses. Washington can also use incentives like co-production arrangements and technology sharing to encourage its allies to invest in their own defense industries. Most of all, Washington will need to make clear to allies and partners that U.S. involvement has limits. Balancing is the only fiscally sustainable way to protect U.S. interests in Asia for decades to come. Emphasizing the benefits that defense investments offer to a country’s economy as well as its security can help the United States avoid damaging vital relationships. Washington can also more consciously rely on the barrier afforded by the region’s oceans by deploying fewer forward-based forces to the Asian theater. Instead, the United States should bolster its ability to rapidly deploy reinforcements by pre-positioning more equipment and ammunition (including what the navy calls “afloat forward staging bases”), improving the air and missile defenses at its existing bases, and modernizing its logistics infrastructure to coordinate a surging flow of troops. The United States has an opportunity to let the region’s geography serve as its first line of defense, helping its allies and partners help themselves while freeing up military capacity for other regional security concerns. Balancing would also put valuable pressure on Washington itself. The United States needs to learn how to better navigate the Indo-Pacific’s flexible regional alignments rather than exclusively relying on the U.S.-led alliances and partnerships such as AUKUS. Washington must work to integrate itself more fully into political, economic, and security networks that already exist, engaging more actively with ASEAN and its many subgroups. The United States should also seek new opportunities to support other regional minilateral organizations. For all their shortcomings, these groups have become foreign policy focal points for countries in Southeast Asia, and the United States will need to be able to operate within and alongside them to achieve its interests in the region. One of the biggest barriers to the adoption of a balancing approach is Washington’s mindset. The idea that military dominance must be pursued in Asia is deeply ingrained in U.S. foreign and defense policy. This presumption risks becoming even more entrenched as leaders in both political parties fear slipping behind Beijing. But a balancing approach constitutes neither appeasement nor defeatism. It is perhaps the only fiscally sustainable way to protect U.S. interests in the region for decades to come. KELLY A. GRIECO is a Senior Fellow in the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center, a Nonresident Fellow with the Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare, and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. JENNIFER KAVANAGH is a Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. A Paradigm Shift in America’s Asia Policy Washington Must Get More Countries Off the Sidelines in Its Contest With China John Lee The Big One Preparing for a Long War With China Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr. The Greater Goal in Gaza For Lasting Peace, Israel Must End Its Occupation of Palestinian Land By Marwan Muasher January 15, 2024 Palestinians inspecting a house after an Israeli strike, southern Gaza Strip, January 2024 Palestinians inspecting a house after an Israeli strike, southern Gaza Strip, January 2024 Ibraheem Abu Mustafa / Reuters Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/greater-goal-gaza Get Citation Request Reprint Permissions Download Article As Israel’s war in Gaza enters its fourth month, an intensifying debate has unfolded about who should rule the territory when the fighting stops. Some have suggested an Arab force, a notion already rejected by Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states. Others have proposed a reconstructed Palestinian Authority, ignoring the fact that less than ten percent of Palestinians would support such an outcome, according to a recent Palestinian poll. Yet a third idea is to put Gaza under international control, an approach that has already been rejected by Israel, which does not want to set such a precedent. But there is a larger reason these envisioned solutions are doomed to fail: they all treat Gaza in isolation, as if it can be addressed without regard to the broader issue of Palestinian statehood and self-determination. In this way of thinking, once Hamas is made to disappear and once the question of who rules Gaza is answered, there can be a return to the status quo ante. Both assumptions are fundamentally flawed, and any policy based on them will lead to disaster. To be truly durable, a solution for the future of Gaza must be framed within a larger endgame for all Palestinians under Israeli control. It must finally address the root cause of unending violence: the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. Years of failed negotiations have also made clear what such a plan will require in order to succeed: unlike so many of its predecessors, it must be credible and time-bound, and the endgame itself must be well defined at the outset. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. Establishing such a comprehensive process will require extraordinary effort. But the alternative is far worse. The current war has already led to the killing of huge numbers of civilians, the destruction of Gaza, the undermining of Israel’s security and international support, the creation of another 1.5 million Palestinian refugees, and the looming threat of a further mass transfer of Palestinians out of their ancestral lands. Any attempt to resolve the day-after problem by reverting to the old paradigms will simply invite these catastrophes to be repeated again. THE MISSING ENDGAME To understand the true scope of the day-after problem, it is first necessary to recognize that the current conflict did not begin with Hamas’s attack on October 7. Nor is it limited to Gaza alone. Although the Palestinian question begins with the 1948 war, in which an estimated 750,000 were dispossessed of their homes, the best starting point for today’s crisis is the 1967 war. That conflict led to Israel’s occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem and produced an estimated 300,000 new Palestinian refugees. It also marked the beginning of decades of efforts to end the occupation and establish a viable Palestinian future. The first such attempt was UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed in November 1967. Although the resolution referred to “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” it did not envisage a separate Palestinian state. Instead, Gaza was supposed to revert to Egyptian control and the West Bank to Jordanian control. Nor did the resolution define a time frame for ending the occupation, calling only for a political process that was open and not binding. Indirect negotiations among the Jordanian, Egyptian, and Israeli sides were held through a UN mediator, without any results. Two and a half decades later, the Madrid conference—launched by U.S. President George H. W. Bush in 1991 after the first Gulf War—finally brought the Palestinians directly to the negotiating table. Once again, however, the process left the endgame unclear beyond referring to Resolution 242, which was interpreted by Israel in a drastically different way than by the international community. (Although the resolution called for Israel to withdraw from occupied territories, Israel interpreted this to mean not withdrawal from all such territories but only to so-called safe borders it never specified.) Even after the Palestinians started negotiating separately with Israel once the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin came to power in June 1992, the process never defined a separate Palestinian state as the objective of negotiations. Negotiations were often open-ended or failed to specify the objective. Then came the Oslo accords in 1993, perhaps the most well known of all of these peace efforts. In this case, not only did the two sides mutually recognize each other and establish a Palestinian interim authority in Gaza and parts of the West Bank, they also set up a five-year negotiations process toward a durable peace. But although the process was supposed to result in a lasting solution to the conflict, the parties failed to specify what that solution is: in other words, the endgame was not clear at the outset. Moreover, the Oslo accords did not freeze settlement activity, meaning that the two sides were negotiating over the future of the occupied territories even as one of them—the Israelis—was continuing to change these territories’ geography and demographics. Indeed, Rabin, in his last speech to the Knesset in September 1995, where the parliament ratified the second part of the Oslo accords, declared that Israel’s objective was a Palestinian “entity which is less than a state.” In fact, the conflict’s main players did not agree on a two-state model until 2000, near the end of U.S. President Bill Clinton’s tenure. At the time, Clinton presented the two sides with an overall framework based on a Palestinian state, largely defined by the 1967 borders, that would be established alongside the state of Israel, with special arrangements for Jerusalem, refugees, and security. When last-minute negotiations over these parameters failed and the second intifada broke out, both parties became convinced that they had no partners for peace at the other end of the table. Successive efforts since then, including the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, the Middle East Road Map of 2002–3, the 2007 Annapolis conference, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy in 2013—the last official effort by the U.S. to help negotiate a settlement—have all failed. Although there are many reasons why each of these rounds of negotiations ran aground, there were larger shortcomings that were common to most of them: they were almost always either open-ended or did not specify the endgame at the outset. They also lacked a credible monitoring mechanism to make sure the parties were meeting their stepwise obligations on the road to a permanent settlement. Moreover, on numerous occasions, negotiations broke down over what the endgame should be rather than on the steps needed to reach that goal. FROM FAILURE TO CATASTROPHE For Palestinians, the consequences of these failures have been devastating. Israel has been able to continue settlement activity, illegal under international law, in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem (and, until 2005, in Gaza), absorbing Palestinian land and rendering the establishment of a viable Palestinian state increasingly difficult. Since the signing of the Oslo accords, the Israeli settler population has grown from about 250,000 to more than 750,000, almost a quarter of the population in the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem, while the relentless expansion of settlements has steadily broken up contiguous Palestinian territory. Amid these failed negotiations, Gaza suffered a particularly harsh fate. In 2005, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, ending Israel’s direct military presence. But the Israeli government built a security barrier around the territory to isolate it, and Israel continued to control who went in and out of the strip. Israel also prevented its Palestinian inhabitants from having an airport or a seaport, effectively cutting off Gaza from the world. As a result, Israel’s occupation effectively continued, with brutal consequences. After Hamas gained full control of the strip following a split with the Palestinian Authority in 2007, living conditions further deteriorated to the point where the per capita income of Gazans has been reduced to a fraction of that of Palestinians in the West Bank. Then, when the Obama administration ended, the United States gave up on negotiations between the two sides entirely. First under President Donald Trump and then under President Joe Biden, Washington replaced peacemaking efforts with the Abraham Accords, a series of bilateral treaties among several Arab states and Israel that are not based on the “land for peace” formula derived from Resolution 242. The Palestinians had no involvement at all. The Biden administration, in particular, assumed that if it encouraged regional cooperation, peace between Israelis and Palestinians could wait for better times. In turn, the Israeli government used the accords to argue that it was no longer necessary to reach a settlement with the Palestinians, since they could forge separate agreements with Arab states in the region. This is the context in which the October 7 attacks took place. Targeting civilians is abhorrent in any scenario, regardless of which side is the perpetrator. But it is impossible to ignore the reality that Gaza had become a giant, walled-off prison over the last ten years, with millions of inmates who no longer had any reason to think that the occupation would end. PREREQUISITES FOR PEACE The Biden administration has recognized that there will need to be a political process after the war in Gaza ends. Guided by the October 1973 war, which ultimately led to peace between Egypt and Israel, and the first Gulf War of 1991, which led to the Madrid conference, the Biden administration has started to discuss plans for the day after for Gaza. But if that thinking is limited to who rules Gaza after Hamas, or if Washington commits to an open-ended process that simply repeats the mistakes of earlier ones, the prospects for success are practically nonexistent. Overwhelmingly, Palestinians today feel that they were taken for a ride, engaging in peaceful efforts to end the occupation while Israel was creating facts on the ground that make a two-state solution impossible. Thus, any political process for Gaza has to be credible, time-bound, and with a clearly defined endgame—before any negotiations start. Otherwise, it will simply be a waste of time. As of now, it is crucial to acknowledge that the elements necessary for a serious U.S.-led process are absent. The United States is entering an election year in which the chances for launching a peace process that requires applying pressure on all sides—particularly Israel—are remote. The current right-wing Israeli government has also repeatedly and publicly declared that it has no intention of ending the occupation or helping establish a Palestinian state. And although it is true that a majority of Israelis hold the current government responsible for the security lapses on October 7—and polls indicate that the opposition would handily win new elections if they were held tomorrow—the public divide in Israel today is no longer between pro-peace and anti-peace camps, as it was decades ago. Instead, it is merely between pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps, with both sides holding a hard-line, almost identical stance against a Palestinian state. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has lost much of its credibility and legitimacy. It has not held elections since 2006, and its approval rating was very low, even before October 7. In a poll conducted during the brief cease-fire in Gaza in late November, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 88 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza want Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to resign. Only seven percent want the PA under Abbas to rule Gaza after the war. No side can claim to represent the Palestinians in any political process without elections, but the PA, Israel, and the United States will almost certainly oppose such elections in the near term, given that Hamas might get a plurality of votes, as the poll suggests. While the same poll indicates that figures like Marwan Barghouti enjoy wide support among both Fatah and Hamas publics, it is doubtful that Israel would agree to his release, precisely because the current government is not interested in a political deal. The reconstruction of Gaza must be a step toward a final settlement. But despite these difficulties, it is worth setting down the specific elements that a credible process would require so that Washington can avoid the pitfalls of past negotiations. First, the United States should present a political plan that would lay out a clearly defined objective of ending the occupation within a specified time frame, say three to five years. Precise borders on the basis of the 1967 lines with minor and reciprocal land swaps to accommodate the settlements along the border would be subject to negotiations. The United Nations would issue a resolution recognizing a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 border, with details to be worked out through negotiations. New settlement construction would be completely frozen. Then, to carry out this plan, negotiations would be focused on the steps needed to reach the objective rather than on what the endgame looks like. Many of the necessary possible steps are already in view. Referendums on the plan should be held in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza to establish and ensure popular support: voters would go to the polls based on the plan’s clearly defined political horizon, which might break the impression on both sides that a two-state solution is no longer possible. In this framing, the issue of who rules Gaza would become a step on the road to ending the occupation rather than an endgame in itself: in questions of governance, Gaza and the West should be treated as one. Once such a process is underway, both sides will have an incentive to reconsider solutions that were rejected in the past because of the absence of an overall political framework or a concrete timeline. For example, the reconstruction of Gaza could become a step along the road to a final settlement, with parties such as Gulf states, the European Union, and the World Bank ready to take part in ways they are not today. (The case of Syria offers a useful lesson here: although the civil war has been effectively over for nearly five years, little reconstruction has taken place in the absence of a comprehensive plan for the future of the country.) An international fund could be set up to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank stay on their land to alleviate fears among Palestinians that they will be mass transferred outside of their historic territory. The Arab Peace Initiative, which offered collective peace treaties and collective security guarantees for Israel by all Arab states, could then be revived, giving Arab states a political, security, and economic role in the Palestinian territories and a strong incentive for Israelis to embrace the plan. Although this outline may seem ambitious, it is grounded in realism: its purpose is to show what a serious political process will entail and to make clear that the failed processes of the past cannot simply be resurrected. It is worth noting that this plan leaves aside the still more difficult issue of what to do with the existing settlements. Even if the political will exists on both sides to end the occupation and adopt a two-state solution, coming up with an ingenious solution to the settlement question will still be a daunting task. If the international community decides this overall plan is too unrealistic to achieve, they should weigh the costs of the alternatives. FROM BAD TO WORSE If, at the end of the war in Gaza, a serious political process proves impossible to put into play, three alternative scenarios could unfold. First, the parties could revert to waiting for a quieter, better time—much as the United States did for years leading up to the October 7 attacks. This strategy, if returned to now, would certainly fail. It assumes that a two-state solution is ultimately the preferred outcome for all parties and that it is simply a matter of having the right political forces in power to make it happen. But in Israel, support in the Knesset for a peace agreement to share the land has dropped from a majority of members 30 years ago to no more than 15 members today. Moreover, the logic of waiting assumes that there is a static status quo, which is clearly not the case given Israel’s continued expansion of settlements. If the number of settlers today already makes it extremely difficult to separate the two communities into two states, the situation could become irreversibly worse in a few years, once the settler population exceeds one million. A second alternative, in the absence of a serious political process, could be even worse: a mass transfer of Palestinians out of their historic land either through force or by making Palestinian life in the occupied territories untenable or unbearable. The reason that such a drastic outcome needs to be taken seriously is the demographic reality Israel now faces: the number of Palestinian Arabs in areas under Israel’s control is now 7.4 million—greater than the 7.2 million Israeli Jews inside Israel and the occupied territories. Given that Israel at present does not want to end the occupation and accept a two-state solution, and given that it does not want to become a minority ruling over a majority in what many human rights organizations describe as apartheid, then its preferred option will be to transfer huge numbers of Palestinians out of territories under Israeli control: from Gaza into Egypt and from the West Bank into Jordan. Already, the Israeli government has made clear that it is thinking along these lines. Large parts of Gaza have been rendered practically uninhabitable, and several Israeli cabinet ministers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, have directly or indirectly promoted the idea of moving Palestinians to other countries. Several Israeli and international commentators have also portrayed the Egyptian and Jordanian decisions to close their borders to Palestinians as an inhumane act, perhaps to pressure both states into letting Palestinians flee. But it is clear that the Israeli government would then bar them from coming back. If Palestinians lose hope for a Palestinian state, the conflict could become more violent. But any attempt at mass transfer will not be easy to implement. Jordan and Egypt have already drawn international attention to this scenario, to the point where the United States and other countries have publicly come out in strong opposition. Palestinians themselves also appear uninterested in leaving, having learned from 1948, when 750,000 were forced to leave their land and were never permitted to return. That leaves a third and most likely alternative: continued Israeli occupation, but now under even more unsustainable conditions. Palestinians have a birth rate higher than that of Jewish Israelis, and as they increasingly lose hope for the prospect of a Palestinian state, their demands for equal rights with Israelis will grow louder and more insistent. The conflict could then become more violent. According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll, 63 percent of Palestinians today say they would support armed resistance to end the occupation. In fact, such resistance had already started in the West Bank in the months before October 7, with young, leaderless youth taking up arms and shooting at Israelis. Moreover, if it chooses to continue the occupation, Israel’s challenge won’t just be internal. The country is also confronting an emerging younger generation in the United States and many other Western countries that has shown it is far more supportive of Palestinians and the issue of equal rights than its predecessors. As this generation rises to positions of power, the world will become increasingly critical of the Israeli occupation, and the focus will shift from defining an illusory peace settlement to tackling the problem of deep injustice in indefinitely occupied lands. It is also likely to make Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage. This is where a continuation of the status quo will likely end. The international community is certainly partly to blame for all the violence that is unfolding today. By abandoning any serious attempt to address the underlying causes of conflict in recent years, Western leaders, as well as governments in the region, have helped create the untenable situation that now exists. It is possible that another process will be initiated along the lines of many earlier ones. If that happens, it, too, will fail, and violence will continue to define the world of the Israelis and the Palestinians. Either the United States and its international partners must make a historic decision to end the conflict now and move both sides swiftly toward a viable two-state solution or the world will have to contend with an even darker future. For soon, it will no longer be a question of occupation but the more difficult issue of outright apartheid. The choice cannot be clearer. MARWAN MUASHER is Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was Foreign Minister of Jordan from 2002 to 2004 and Deputy Prime Minister from 2004 to 2005. China’s Game in Gaza How Beijing Is Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South Mark Leonard Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others in Amman, Jordan, October 2023 Can the Palestinian Authority Govern Gaza? How to Revitalize the PA for Postwar Rule Daniel Byman The Right Way to Regulate AI Focus on Its Possibilities, Not Its Perils By Alondra Nelson January 12, 2024 Tech leaders attending an AI conference in San Francisco, June 2023 Carlos Barria / Reuters Artificial intelligence “is unlike anything Congress has dealt with before,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer said in June 2023. The pace at which AI developers are producing new systems—and those systems’ potential to transform human life—means that the U.S. government should start “from scratch,” he declared, when considering how to regulate and govern AI. Legislators, however, have defied his wishes. Following OpenAI’s late 2022 unveiling of ChatGPT, proposals for how to encourage safe AI development have proliferated faster than new chatbots are being rushed to market. In March 2023, Democratic legislators proposed moratoriums on some uses of AI in surveillance. The next month, a group of bipartisan lawmakers floated a bill to prohibit autonomous AI systems from deploying nuclear weapons. In June, Schumer debuted his own AI agenda, and then in September, a bipartisan group of senators reintroduced a bill for AI governance promoting oversight, transparency, and data privacy. The race to regulate is partly a response to the platitude that government may simply be too sluggish, too brittle, and too outmoded to keep up with fleet-footed new technologies. Industry leaders frequently complain that government is too slow to respond productively to developments in Silicon Valley, using this line of argument to justify objections to putting guardrails around new technologies. Responding to this critique, some government proposals encourage expeditious AI development. But other bills try to rein in AI and protect against dangerous use cases and incursions into citizens’ privacy and freedoms: the Algorithmic Accountability Act that House Democrats proposed in September 2023, for instance, mandates risk assessments before technologies are deployed. Some proposals even seek to accelerate and put the brakes on AI development at the same time. This commendable but chaotic policy entrepreneurship risks scattering government’s focus and threatens to lead to a situation in which there is no clear governance of AI in the United States at all. It doesn’t have to be this way. A tendency to slip behind the curve of technological innovation is not an inherent weakness of government. In fact, trying to outpace government regulation is the tech industry’s deliberate strategy to circumvent oversight. Government has an irreplaceable role to play as a stabilizing force in AI development. Government does not have to be a drag on innovation: it can enable it, strategically stewarding science and technology investments to not only prevent harm but also enhance people’s lives. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. From its first days, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has worked toward a more integrated technology policy agenda that addresses AI’s widening uses, considering competition, privacy, and bias as well as how to safeguard democracy, expand economic opportunity, and mitigate an array of risks. But AI technology is changing rapidly, and much more must be done to quickly clarify the central goal of AI governance so that policymaking is not only reactive. AI governance should reject choice architectures that cast the future as a rigid binary—between a vision of paradise or dystopia or between a false dilemma of pursuing efficiency or ensuring equity. Safety and innovation in AI are not mutually exclusive. Because new and emerging AI technologies are so dynamic and used for so many purposes, however, they may elude conventional policy approaches. The United States does not need so many new AI policies. It needs a new kind of policymaking. FALSE ANALOGY To regulate AI, many policy advisers in the United States and beyond have first sought an analogy. Are AI systems more like a particle accelerator complex, a novel drug therapy, or nuclear power research? The hope is that identifying a parallel, even a loose one, can point to the existing governance strategy that should apply to AI, guiding current and future policy initiatives. The economist Samuel Hammond, for instance, took inspiration from the massive twentieth-century U.S. effort to build and assess risks related to nuclear weapons. He has proposed a Manhattan Project for AI safety, a federal research project focused on the most cataclysmic risks potentially posed by artificial intelligence. The nonprofit AI Now Institute, meanwhile, has begun to examine the viability of a regulatory agency based on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: an FDA-like regulator of AI would prioritize public safety by focusing on prerelease scrutiny and approval of AI systems as the U.S. government does with pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and the country’s food supply. Multilateral analogies have also been suggested. The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence has advocated modeling AI governance on the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the intergovernmental body that oversees fundamental scientific research in particle physics. In May 2023, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, and Ilya Sutskever—then co-leaders at OpenAI—recommended that an AI governance framework be modeled on the International Atomic Energy Agency; in this model, the United Nations would establish an international bureaucracy to develop safety standards and an inspection regime for the most advanced AI systems. To regulate AI, many policy advisers in the United States and beyond have first sought an analogy. The absence of an internationally coordinated research infrastructure poses a significant challenge for AI governance. Yet even conventional multilateral paradigms predicated on nation-state membership are unlikely to produce an effective way to govern competitive, for-profit industry efforts. AI companies are already offering products to a global and diverse customer base, including public and private enterprises and everyday consumers. And none of these analogies, including the U.S. domestic ones, reflect the fact that the data that enable AI systems’ development have already become a global economic and political force. Further, all these potential models end up neglecting some critical domains on which AI will likely have a transformative impact, including health care, education, agriculture, labor, and finance. The problem with reaching for a twentieth-century analogy is that AI simply does not resemble a twentieth-century innovation. Unlike the telephone, computing hardware, microelectronics, or many pharmaceutical products—technologies and products that evolved over years or decades—many AI systems are dynamic and constantly change; unlike the outputs of particle physics research, they can be rapidly deployed for both legitimate consumer use and illicit applications nearly as soon as they are developed. Off-the-shelf, existing governance models will likely be inadequate to the challenge of governing AI. And reflexive gestures toward the past may foreclose opportunities to devise inventive policy approaches that do not merely react to present challenges but anticipate future ones. DROP AN ANCHOR Instead of reaching to twentieth-century regulatory frameworks for guidance, policymakers must start with a different first step: asking themselves why they wish to govern AI at all. Drawing back from the task of governing AI is not an option. The past decade’s belated, disjointed, and ultimately woefully insufficient efforts to govern social media’s use of algorithmic systems are a sobering example of the consequences of passively hoping that social benefits will trickle down as an emergent property of technological development. Political leaders cannot again buy the myth—peddled by self-interested tech leaders and investors—that supporting innovation requires suspending government’s regulatory duties. Some of the most significant challenges the world faces in the twenty-first century have arisen from the failure to properly regulate automated systems. These systems collect our data and surveil our lives. The indiscriminate use of so-called predictive algorithms and decision-making tools in health care, criminal justice, and access to housing causes unfair treatment and exacerbates existing inequities. Deepfakes on social media platforms stoke social disorder by amplifying misinformation. Technologies that went undergoverned are now hastening democratic decline, intensifying insecurity, and eroding people’s trust in institutions worldwide. But when tackling AI governance, it is crucial for leaders to consider not only what specific threats they fear from AI but what type of society they want to build. The public debate over AI has already shown how frenzied speculation about catastrophic risks can overpower people’s ability to imagine AI’s potential benefits. Policymakers must start with a different first step: asking themselves why they wish to govern AI at all. Biden’s overall approach to policymaking, however, illustrates how viewing policy as an opportunity to enrich society—not just as a way to react to immediate problems—brings needed focus to government interventions. Key to this approach has been an overarching perspective that sees science, research, and innovation as offering both a value proposition and a values proposition to the American public. The administration’s signal early policy achievements leveraged targeted public funding, infrastructure investment, and technological innovation to strengthen economic opportunities and ensure American well-being. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, for instance, was not designed to merely curb inflation: by encouraging the production and use of advanced batteries, solar power, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and other new building technologies, it also sought to help address the climate crisis and advance environmental justice. The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act promoted the revival of U.S. innovation by backing the development of a new ecosystem of semiconductor researchers and manufacturers, incorporating new opportunities for neglected U.S. regions and communities. Government investments in science and technology, in other words, have the potential to address economic inequality. Like building a stock portfolio, it will take time for some of these investments to yield their full benefits. But this lodestar liberalism—anchored in values—has allowed the administration to forge bipartisan support in an otherwise fractious political milieu. FLEXIBLE BENEFITS The Biden administration has begun to make moves to apply the same approach to AI. In October 2022, the White House released its Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, which was distilled from engagement with representatives of various sectors of American society, including industry, academia, and civil society. The blueprint advanced five propositions: AI systems should be safe and effective. The public should know that their data will remain private. The public should not be subjected to the use of biased algorithms. Consumers should receive notice when an AI system is in use and have the opportunity to consent to using it. And citizens should be able to loop in a human being when AI is used to make a consequential decision about their lives. The document identified specific practices to encode public benefits into policy instruments, including the auditing, assessment, “red teaming,” and monitoring of AI systems on an ongoing basis. The blueprint was important in part because it emphasized the idea that AI governance need not start entirely from scratch. It can emerge from the same fundamental vision of the public good that the country’s founders articulated centuries ago. There is no society whose members will always share the same vision of a good future, but democratic societies are built on a basic agreement about the core values citizens cherish: in the case of the United States, these include privacy, freedom, equality, and the rule of law. These long-standing values can—and must—still guide AI governance. When it comes to technology, policymakers too often believe that their approaches are constrained by a product’s novelty and must be subject to the views of expert creators. Lawmakers can become trapped in a false sense that specific new technologies always need specific new laws. Their instinct becomes to devise new governance paradigms for each new tech development. Lawmakers can become trapped in a false sense that specific new technologies always need specific new laws. This instinct is wrong. Throughout history, the United States has reinterpreted and expanded citizens’ rights and liberties, but the understanding that such entitlements and freedoms exist has been enduring. If policymakers return to first principles such as those invoked in the AI Bill of Rights when governing AI, they may also recognize that many AI applications are already subject to existing regulatory oversight. Anchoring AI governance to a vision of the public good could diminish regulatory confusion and competition, stemming the flow of the sometimes contradictory bills lawmakers are currently producing. If it did, that would free both lawmakers and regulatory agencies to think more creatively in the areas in which policy innovation is truly needed. AI does pose unprecedented challenges demanding policy innovation. Already, the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has embarked on a different kind of policymaking when it comes to AI. With a constitutional mandate to “fix the standard of weights and measures,” NIST determines the proper standards to measure such things as length and mass, temperature and time, light and electricity. In 2021, Congress directed NIST to develop voluntary frameworks, guidelines, and best practices to steer the development and deployment of trustworthy AI systems, including ways to test for bias in AI training data and use cases. Following consultations with industry leaders, scientists, and the public, in January 2023, NIST released its first AI Risk Management Framework 1.0. The “1.0” was meaningful. Versioning—think of Windows 2.0, 3.0, and so on—has long been commonplace in the world of software development to patch bugs, refine operations, and add improved features. It is much less common in the world of policymaking. But NIST’s use of policy versioning will permit an agile approach to the development of standards for AI. NIST also accompanied its framework with a “playbook,” a practical guide to the document that will be updated every six months with new resources and case studies. This kind of innovation could be applied to other agencies. A more agile way of reviewing standards and policies should become a more regular part of the government’s work. THE OLD BECOMES NEW The AI Bill of Rights and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework became the foundations of Biden’s sweeping October 2023 Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. Running at 111 pages, it mobilizes the executive branch to use existing guidelines, authorities, and laws, innovatively applied, to govern AI. This sweeping mandate gives many key actors homework: industry leaders must provide insight into the inner workings of their most powerful systems and watermark their products to help support information integrity. The order directed the U.S. Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance on the federal government’s own use of AI, recognizing that the government possesses extraordinary power to shape markets and industry behavior by setting rules for the procurement of AI systems and demanding transparency from AI creators. But more must be done. AI governance needs an international component. In 2023, the European Union advanced significant new laws on AI governance, and the United Kingdom is moving to address AI regulation with what it calls a “light touch.” The African Union has a regional AI strategy, and Singapore has just released its second national AI strategy in four years. There is a risk that the world at large will suffer from the same glut of competing proposals that bedevils AI governance in the United States. But there are existing multilateral mechanisms that can be used to help clarify international governance efforts: with the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN members states have already agreed to shared core values that should also guide AI regulation. Democratic leaders must understand that disrupting and outpacing the regulatory process is part of the tech industry’s business model. Anchoring their policymaking process on fundamental democratic principles would give lawmakers and regulators a consistent benchmark against which to consider the impact of AI systems and focus attention on societal benefits, not just the hype cycle of a new product. If policymakers can congregate around a positive vision for governing AI, they will likely find that many components of regulating the technology can be done by agencies and bodies that already exist. But if countries do decide they need new agencies—such as the AI Safety Institutes now being established in the United States and the United Kingdom—they should be imagined as democratic institutions that prioritize accountability to citizens and incorporate public consultation. Properly constructed, such agencies could be a part of a broader governance infrastructure that not only detects how AI can infringe on rights and livelihoods but also scouts out how AI can proactively enhance them—by making dangerous jobs less perilous, health care more effective, elections more reliable, education more accessible, and energy use more sustainable. Although AI systems are powerful, they remain tools made by humans, and their uses are not preordained. Their effects are not inevitable. AI governance need not be a drag on innovation. Ask bankers if unregulated lending by a competitor is good for them. Simply put, the ballast provided by proactive governance offers stability but also provides a controlled range of motion. First, however, policymakers must acknowledge that governing AI effectively will be an exercise in returning to first principles, not just a technical and regulatory task. ALONDRA NELSON is Harold F. Linder Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. From 2021 to 2023, she served as Acting Director and Principal Deputy Director for Science and Society at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and as Deputy Assistant to the President. The Coming AI Economic Revolution Can Artificial Intelligence Reverse the Productivity Slowdown? James Manyika and Michael Spence AI Is Already at War How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform the Military Michèle A. Flournoy Victory Is Ukraine’s Only True Path to Peace And EU and NATO Membership Are the Only Way to Achieve Enduring Security By Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Andriy Yermak January 11, 2024 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, December 2023 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, December 2023 Alina Smutko / Reuters Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/victory-ukraines-only-true-path-peace Request Reprint Permissions Download Article For Ukraine, December 14 was a tale of two cities. In Brussels, the European Union’s leaders took the historic decision to open talks with Ukraine about joining the organization. For millions of Ukrainians, it was a moment of hope for a brighter future after enduring years of war and hardship. The message was clear: Ukraine belongs at the heart of Europe. This vision of Ukraine’s future could not have been more different than the one being described by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on the same day. Responding to pre-screened questions from journalists and handpicked citizens, Putin insisted during a televised press conference that Russia’s political and military aims had not changed since the beginning of the war. Russia has no interest in peace, he made clear, only the subjugation of Ukraine. Putin’s stage-managed affair broadcast the reality of modern-day Russia: a regime built not on democratic legitimacy but on lies and militaristic nationalism, and a government that relies on external conflict to deflect attention from internal failings. As Putin pushes for a long war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is working for a sustainable peace. Because the consequences of Russia’s invasion have been global—from spiking energy costs to food shortages—Ukrainian officials have been working with counterparts from more than 80 countries to deliver on Ukraine’s “peace formula,” a 10-point plan first proposed by Zelensky in November 2022. On January 14, national security advisers for the leaders of these countries will gather for the fourth time in Davos, Switzerland, to continue elaborating a framework for a lasting and comprehensive peace. We believe that all civilized countries of the world shall support this endeavor. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. As long as Putin is in charge, Russia will always threaten not just Ukraine but also the security of all of Europe. It is therefore vital for the democratic world to ensure that a free and independent Ukraine prevails. To do so, it should put in place the security architecture needed to deter a militaristic and imperialistic Russia. If Putin sees the West making strong commitments to Ukraine—through military assistance, accession to the EU, and membership in NATO—he will finally understand that he cannot outlast Kyiv. Only then is there a possibility of a sustainable peace. STEP ONE: WIN THE WAR To achieve a lasting peace, Ukraine needs to defeat Russia on the battlefield and restore its territorial integrity, within its internationally recognized borders. For two years, Ukrainian armed forces have heroically resisted Russia’s barbaric invasion. Making good use of Western-supplied weapons, they have managed to reclaim more than 50 percent of the land captured by Russia since February 2022. Meanwhile, the supply of modern air defense systems has dented the effectiveness of Russia’s brutal waves of drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. Ukraine will be forever grateful for the support the democratic world has shown during the country’s darkest hours. Despite these successes, Russia will not end its war of aggression anytime soon. Its generals will continue to show complete disregard for the lives of their own forces, sending tens of thousands to die in a war of Putin’s choice. Russian and North Korean missiles and Iranian-made drones will continue to target Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure. If military support for Ukraine falters, the consequences will be dire for Europe and the rest of the world. If Putin is allowed to achieve any of his goals in Ukraine, he will not stop there. Russia will threaten more of its neighbors, from Moldova to the Baltic states, and destabilize the globe. Other regional and global powers will take note of his success and use similar tactics to achieve their aims. A Ukrainian defeat would mark the start of the unraveling of the international system. Self-doubt in the West will lead to self-defeating decisions. History shows that appeasing dictators does not lead to peace; it only breeds future conflict. That is why it is essential for Ukraine’s allies to step up their support in 2024 and show that “as long as it takes” also means “as much as it takes.” As Putin pushes for a long war, Zelensky is working for a sustainable peace. That philosophy was behind the Kyiv Security Compact we co-authored in 2022. That plan set out key principles for a series of long-term security guarantees that Ukraine needs from its allies to both win the war and prevent future Russian aggression. The compact formed the basis for the joint declaration of support for Ukraine that G-7 countries adopted on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Lithuania last July. As of today, 32 countries have signed on to this joint declaration and are holding consultations on bilateral agreements with Ukraine. These bilateral agreements will ensure that Ukrainian forces have the weapons they need to defeat Russia on the battlefield. Commitments to protect Ukraine over the long term refute Putin’s narrative that Western support for Ukraine is weakening. Relying on its economic and demographic advantages, Russia is hoping to defeat Ukraine through a war of attrition. Therefore, Ukrainian victory relies on better utilizing the economic and industrial might of the democratic world, which dwarfs that of Russia and its allies. European countries, in particular, need to prepare their defense industries so they can effectively help Ukraine win this war. To do this, they should offer multiyear contracts for weapons, as well as guarantees, to give defense companies the certainty they need to ramp up production. Ukraine also needs its allies’ support in developing its defense industry. Together, the West can vastly outproduce Russia. It just needs to show the political will, so Putin understands that his war is unwinnable and that Russian forces will be driven outside of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. MEMBER OF THE CLUB In addition to securing the long-term supply of weapons and munitions to Ukraine, it is crucial for Europe and the United States to start putting structures in place to ensure that Russia can never threaten Europe’s security again. Moving Ukraine along its path to EU membership is essential because it provides the political and financial framework for Ukraine to recover and rebuild. A prosperous Ukraine that is part of the EU can act as a bulwark against an autocratic and aggressive Russia. Ideologically, a successful and vibrant democracy in Ukraine is also a strong rebuke of Putin’s autocratic rule. Membership will bring an added layer of security to Ukraine as well, through the mutual defense clause included in the treaties that govern the EU. This clause states that “if a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power.” The threat of EU member states’ responding directly to future Russian aggression against Ukraine would be a powerful deterrent. Long-term security guarantees and EU membership would go a long way toward protecting Ukraine, but neither can replace Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which requires members to consider an armed attack against one of them as an attack against all. Bringing Ukraine into NATO remains the best way to bring lasting peace and security in Europe. At the December 14 press conference, Putin stated that Russia launched its invasion—or so called “special operation”—because Ukraine was set to join NATO. But the inverse is true: Russia could only invade Ukraine because it was not covered by NATO’s Article 5. A volunteer attending basic training in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, January 2024 Viacheslav Ratynskyi / Reuters If at the end of the war, Ukraine is left in the gray zone between Russia and NATO, it will be a recipe for further instability and Russian aggression. This is a reality that both Finland and Sweden quickly recognized. After the February 2022 invasion, both countries saw that in the face of an imperialist Russia, neutrality was no longer an option and that only NATO membership could guarantee their sovereignty. The same goes for Ukraine. At NATO’s July 2023 summit, members announced that an invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance would be issued only once unspecified “conditions are met.” Ukraine had hoped for something more concrete than that. If Putin believes that Ukraine will be allowed to join NATO only when the fighting ends, it gives him an incentive to continue the war indefinitely. If Ukraine is invited to join the alliance beforehand, however, it could force him to stop. Although the summit in Vilnius did not present Ukraine with a clear path toward NATO membership, there were positive developments. Members agreed to let Kyiv skip the “membership action plan” part of the traditional accession process, whereby countries submit annual reports about their progress on various security-related metrics. This exemption, which was also granted to Finland and Sweden, should accelerate Ukraine’s eventual accession. In Vilnius, the newly created Ukraine-NATO Council also held its first meeting, and it is already working on bringing Ukraine’s armed forces into alignment with NATO standards. Still, at this year’s NATO summit in Washington, D.C., in July, the alliance’s leaders would bring the world closer to peace by wholeheartedly embracing Ukrainian membership. The time has come to issue an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO. That does not mean that Ukraine would become a member overnight, but it would send an unequivocal message to Putin that his war is already lost. ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN is Founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation and Rasmussen Global. He was Secretary-General of NATO from 2009 to 2014 and Prime Minister of Denmark from 2001 to 2009. ANDRIY YERMAK is Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. There Is a Path to Victory in Ukraine The Delusions and Dangers of Defeatist Voices in the West Dmytro Kuleba A Ukrainian soldier near Bakhmut, Ukraine, December 2023 The War in Ukraine Is Not a Stalemate Last Year’s Counteroffensive Failed—but the West Can Prevent a Russian Victory This Year Jack Watling GET THE MAGAZINE Save up to 55% on Foreign Affairs! FOREIGN AFFAIRS Victory Is Ukraine’s Only True Path to Peace And EU and NATO Membership Are the Only Way to Achieve Enduring Security By Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Andriy Yermak January 11, 2024 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, December 2023 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Ukraine, December 2023 Alina Smutko / Reuters Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/victory-ukraines-only-true-path-peace Request Reprint Permissions Download Article For Ukraine, December 14 was a tale of two cities. In Brussels, the European Union’s leaders took the historic decision to open talks with Ukraine about joining the organization. For millions of Ukrainians, it was a moment of hope for a brighter future after enduring years of war and hardship. The message was clear: Ukraine belongs at the heart of Europe. This vision of Ukraine’s future could not have been more different than the one being described by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on the same day. Responding to pre-screened questions from journalists and handpicked citizens, Putin insisted during a televised press conference that Russia’s political and military aims had not changed since the beginning of the war. Russia has no interest in peace, he made clear, only the subjugation of Ukraine. Putin’s stage-managed affair broadcast the reality of modern-day Russia: a regime built not on democratic legitimacy but on lies and militaristic nationalism, and a government that relies on external conflict to deflect attention from internal failings. As Putin pushes for a long war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is working for a sustainable peace. Because the consequences of Russia’s invasion have been global—from spiking energy costs to food shortages—Ukrainian officials have been working with counterparts from more than 80 countries to deliver on Ukraine’s “peace formula,” a 10-point plan first proposed by Zelensky in November 2022. On January 14, national security advisers for the leaders of these countries will gather for the fourth time in Davos, Switzerland, to continue elaborating a framework for a lasting and comprehensive peace. We believe that all civilized countries of the world shall support this endeavor. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. As long as Putin is in charge, Russia will always threaten not just Ukraine but also the security of all of Europe. It is therefore vital for the democratic world to ensure that a free and independent Ukraine prevails. To do so, it should put in place the security architecture needed to deter a militaristic and imperialistic Russia. If Putin sees the West making strong commitments to Ukraine—through military assistance, accession to the EU, and membership in NATO—he will finally understand that he cannot outlast Kyiv. Only then is there a possibility of a sustainable peace. STEP ONE: WIN THE WAR To achieve a lasting peace, Ukraine needs to defeat Russia on the battlefield and restore its territorial integrity, within its internationally recognized borders. For two years, Ukrainian armed forces have heroically resisted Russia’s barbaric invasion. Making good use of Western-supplied weapons, they have managed to reclaim more than 50 percent of the land captured by Russia since February 2022. Meanwhile, the supply of modern air defense systems has dented the effectiveness of Russia’s brutal waves of drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. Ukraine will be forever grateful for the support the democratic world has shown during the country’s darkest hours. Despite these successes, Russia will not end its war of aggression anytime soon. Its generals will continue to show complete disregard for the lives of their own forces, sending tens of thousands to die in a war of Putin’s choice. Russian and North Korean missiles and Iranian-made drones will continue to target Ukrainian civilians and critical infrastructure. If military support for Ukraine falters, the consequences will be dire for Europe and the rest of the world. If Putin is allowed to achieve any of his goals in Ukraine, he will not stop there. Russia will threaten more of its neighbors, from Moldova to the Baltic states, and destabilize the globe. Other regional and global powers will take note of his success and use similar tactics to achieve their aims. A Ukrainian defeat would mark the start of the unraveling of the international system. Self-doubt in the West will lead to self-defeating decisions. History shows that appeasing dictators does not lead to peace; it only breeds future conflict. That is why it is essential for Ukraine’s allies to step up their support in 2024 and show that “as long as it takes” also means “as much as it takes.” As Putin pushes for a long war, Zelensky is working for a sustainable peace. That philosophy was behind the Kyiv Security Compact we co-authored in 2022. That plan set out key principles for a series of long-term security guarantees that Ukraine needs from its allies to both win the war and prevent future Russian aggression. The compact formed the basis for the joint declaration of support for Ukraine that G-7 countries adopted on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Lithuania last July. As of today, 32 countries have signed on to this joint declaration and are holding consultations on bilateral agreements with Ukraine. These bilateral agreements will ensure that Ukrainian forces have the weapons they need to defeat Russia on the battlefield. Commitments to protect Ukraine over the long term refute Putin’s narrative that Western support for Ukraine is weakening. Relying on its economic and demographic advantages, Russia is hoping to defeat Ukraine through a war of attrition. Therefore, Ukrainian victory relies on better utilizing the economic and industrial might of the democratic world, which dwarfs that of Russia and its allies. European countries, in particular, need to prepare their defense industries so they can effectively help Ukraine win this war. To do this, they should offer multiyear contracts for weapons, as well as guarantees, to give defense companies the certainty they need to ramp up production. Ukraine also needs its allies’ support in developing its defense industry. Together, the West can vastly outproduce Russia. It just needs to show the political will, so Putin understands that his war is unwinnable and that Russian forces will be driven outside of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders. MEMBER OF THE CLUB In addition to securing the long-term supply of weapons and munitions to Ukraine, it is crucial for Europe and the United States to start putting structures in place to ensure that Russia can never threaten Europe’s security again. Moving Ukraine along its path to EU membership is essential because it provides the political and financial framework for Ukraine to recover and rebuild. A prosperous Ukraine that is part of the EU can act as a bulwark against an autocratic and aggressive Russia. Ideologically, a successful and vibrant democracy in Ukraine is also a strong rebuke of Putin’s autocratic rule. Membership will bring an added layer of security to Ukraine as well, through the mutual defense clause included in the treaties that govern the EU. This clause states that “if a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power.” The threat of EU member states’ responding directly to future Russian aggression against Ukraine would be a powerful deterrent. Long-term security guarantees and EU membership would go a long way toward protecting Ukraine, but neither can replace Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty, which requires members to consider an armed attack against one of them as an attack against all. Bringing Ukraine into NATO remains the best way to bring lasting peace and security in Europe. At the December 14 press conference, Putin stated that Russia launched its invasion—or so called “special operation”—because Ukraine was set to join NATO. But the inverse is true: Russia could only invade Ukraine because it was not covered by NATO’s Article 5. A volunteer attending basic training in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, January 2024 Viacheslav Ratynskyi / Reuters If at the end of the war, Ukraine is left in the gray zone between Russia and NATO, it will be a recipe for further instability and Russian aggression. This is a reality that both Finland and Sweden quickly recognized. After the February 2022 invasion, both countries saw that in the face of an imperialist Russia, neutrality was no longer an option and that only NATO membership could guarantee their sovereignty. The same goes for Ukraine. At NATO’s July 2023 summit, members announced that an invitation for Ukraine to join the alliance would be issued only once unspecified “conditions are met.” Ukraine had hoped for something more concrete than that. If Putin believes that Ukraine will be allowed to join NATO only when the fighting ends, it gives him an incentive to continue the war indefinitely. If Ukraine is invited to join the alliance beforehand, however, it could force him to stop. Although the summit in Vilnius did not present Ukraine with a clear path toward NATO membership, there were positive developments. Members agreed to let Kyiv skip the “membership action plan” part of the traditional accession process, whereby countries submit annual reports about their progress on various security-related metrics. This exemption, which was also granted to Finland and Sweden, should accelerate Ukraine’s eventual accession. In Vilnius, the newly created Ukraine-NATO Council also held its first meeting, and it is already working on bringing Ukraine’s armed forces into alignment with NATO standards. Still, at this year’s NATO summit in Washington, D.C., in July, the alliance’s leaders would bring the world closer to peace by wholeheartedly embracing Ukrainian membership. The time has come to issue an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO. That does not mean that Ukraine would become a member overnight, but it would send an unequivocal message to Putin that his war is already lost. You are reading a free article. Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access. Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading Six issues a year in print, online, and audio editions ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN is Founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation and Rasmussen Global. He was Secretary-General of NATO from 2009 to 2014 and Prime Minister of Denmark from 2001 to 2009. ANDRIY YERMAK is Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine. MORE BY ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN MORE BY ANDRIY YERMAK More: United States Ukraine Russian Federation Geopolitics Foreign Policy Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict Terrorism & Counterterrorism U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration Volodymyr Zelensky Vladimir Putin War in Ukraine Most-Read Articles Don’t Bomb the Houthis Careful Diplomacy Can Stop the Attacks in the Red Sea Alexandra Stark Victory Is Ukraine’s Only True Path to Peace And EU and NATO Membership Are the Only Way to Achieve Enduring Security Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Andriy Yermak How Ukraine Can Win Through Defense A New Strategy Can Protect Kyiv and Stop Moscow From Winning Emma Ashford and Kelly A. Grieco Putin’s Unsustainable Spending Spree How the War in Ukraine Will Overheat the Russian Economy Alexandra Prokopenko Recommended Articles Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, right, listening to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, September 2023 There Is a Path to Victory in Ukraine The Delusions and Dangers of Defeatist Voices in the West Dmytro Kuleba A Ukrainian soldier near Bakhmut, Ukraine, December 2023 The War in Ukraine Is Not a Stalemate Last Year’s Counteroffensive Failed—but the West Can Prevent a Russian Victory This Year Jack Watling Don’t Bomb the Houthis Careful Diplomacy Can Stop the Attacks in the Red Sea By Alexandra Stark January 11, 2024 Houthi forces marching at a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, December 2023 Houthi forces marching at a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, December 2023 Khaled Abdullah / Reuters Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/yemen/dont-bomb-houthis Get Citation Request Reprint Permissions Download Article The conflict between the United States and the Houthis in the Red Sea is steadily escalating. On December 31, Houthi small boats attempted to attack a commercial vessel; after U.S. naval helicopters responded to the attack, the Houthis—a rebel group that controls territory inhabited by 80 percent of Yemen’s population—fired on them. U.S. forces returned fire, sinking three Houthi boats and killing ten crew members. Then on January 9, the Houthis launched one of their largest attacks in the Red Sea to date including 18 drones, two antiship cruise missiles, and one antiship ballistic missile, which were intercepted by U.S. and British forces. This engagement represented just the latest in a series of attacks in the Red Sea. Since mid-November, the Houthis have launched more than 20 attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, a strategically critical strait that is transited by 15 percent of global trade. Characterizing their attacks as a response to the Israel-Hamas war, they have also fired missiles and drones toward southern Israel. The Red Sea attacks have forced some shipping companies to temporarily suspend sailing through the Suez Canal, routing instead around the Horn of Africa, a change that adds about ten days to their journey. The attacks have not yet led to a significant disruption in global trade, but over the long term, the rising shipping costs they provoke are likely to increase oil prices and the cost of consumer goods worldwide. In response, the United States has mobilized international partners, launching in mid-December a multinational initiative aimed at protecting commercial vessels in the Red Sea. And on January 3, these partners issued a joint statement that U.S. officials indicated should serve as a final warning to the Houthis before Washington took more drastic action. U.S. officials are now considering military attacks on Houthi targets. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. Because the Houthi attacks could have serious consequences for global commerce, the United States is under substantial pressure to respond militarily. But instead of retaliatory strikes, the U.S. should favor a diplomatic approach. The Houthis may be recent entrants into international newspaper headlines, but they have been challenging the United States and its Gulf partners for two decades. And the use of force against the Houthis in the past, whether by former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime or by a Saudi-led effort to reinstate the government the Houthis overturned in the mid-2010s, has merely allowed the group to refine its military capabilities and portray itself as a heroic resistance movement, bolstering its legitimacy at home. Indeed, the group needed a boost: it faced growing domestic resistance before October 7. Now, however, its response to Israel’s operations in Gaza appears to have won support in Yemen and across the region. Retaliatory strikes would also increase the likelihood that the Israel-Hamas war will expand across the region and that the civil war in Yemen will resume. Over the past year and a half, a UN-negotiated truce kept serious conflict in Yemen at bay, but direct U.S. strikes on Houthi targets could reignite internal warfare. The United States has few good options to respond to Houthi attacks. But a diplomatic push for a sustainable peace in the war in Yemen while continuing efforts to deter Houthi attacks alongside international partners is the least bad of them. BLAST RESISTANCE The Houthi movement began in the 1990s, when a group then calling itself Ansar Allah (“Supporters of God”) began to resist Saudi proselytizing of Wahabism and to assert Zaidi identity and religious practice across Yemen. Zaidism is a variant of Shiism local to northern Yemen and parts of southern Saudi Arabia. There are important doctrinal differences between mainstream Shiism and Zaidi Islam: mainstream Shiites recognize 12 imams, for instance, while Zaidis recognize only five. But as the movement came to oppose the corruption endemic in Saleh’s regime—and his partnership with the United States in the global “war on terror”—it gained Yemeni supporters beyond the Zaidi community. Media accounts sometimes portray Yemen’s long-running civil conflict as sectarian strife between Sunnis and Shiites. In fact, throughout the early years of the twenty-first century, notes Marieke Brandt, an anthropologist who has studied the Houthis extensively, the Ansar Allah movement expanded to become “a catalyst with the potential to unite all those [in northern Yemen] . . . who felt economically neglected, politically ostracized and religiously marginalized.” In response to the movement’s rising prominence, beginning in 2004, Saleh’s government launched six brutal rounds of fighting—killing the group’s charismatic leader, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi. But these military efforts failed to root out the movement. Instead, Ansar Allah gained new adherents and enshrined its founders’ family members as its leaders. Years of airstrikes against the Houthis only aggravated the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. When the Arab Spring came to Yemen in 2011, Saleh was eventually forced to step down, yielding to his vice president, Abd-Rabu Mansur Hadi. But the country’s democratic consolidation faltered when the National Dialogue Conference, a 2013–14 process meant to negotiate a transition to democracy, fell apart. Recognizing a power vacuum, the Houthis took over Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014 and then attempted to extend their influence south, seizing control of most of the country. The Houthis’ 2014 rise provoked alarm in neighboring countries, most notably Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Around this time, the Houthis also began to receive support from Iran and their proxy Hezbollah—adversaries to the Saudis and Emiratis. In 2015, a coalition led by those two countries—and supported by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France—intervened militarily, launching airstrikes to support other military organizations that nominally backed Hadi’s government. But instead of restoring peace, the airstrikes helped aggravate a war that resulted in what the United Nations has called the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Between 2015 and 2022, airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition—backed by U.S. intelligence-sharing, aerial refueling, and aircraft maintenance—killed an estimated 9,000 Yemeni civilians. Four-and-a-half million Yemenis are displaced, and more than 21 million, or two-thirds of Yemen’s population, remain in need of humanitarian assistance and protection. GROWTH OPPORTUNITY As the Houthis solidified their control over much of northern Yemen, they began to seek more visibility on the regional stage. Their slickly produced, Beirut-based media channel, Al Masirah, produces content in both Arabic and English to share their perspective with a broader audience. Houthi traditional poems, set to music and video and widely shared on social media, declare Houthi opposition to Israel and the United States. To understand the Houthis’ goals, it is worth taking seriously what they themselves say they want. Since about 2003, the Houthis’ sarkha—their motto, usually printed in green and red—echoes the slogan of revolutionary Iran and proclaims Houthi values and aims in no uncertain terms: “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.” In their public statements, Houthi leaders have repeatedly framed their current attacks as a response to Israeli operations in Gaza. Their intent, they say, is to pressure Israel to de-escalate its war against Hamas. But this rhetorical posturing has also allowed the Houthis to build legitimacy in Yemen and across the Middle East, diverting attention from their failures at home, where their popularity has eroded in recent years. They have been unable to deliver economic growth to the poorest country in the Middle East and North Africa. The Houthis are also brutally repressive, torturing and executing journalists, arresting and detaining peaceful protesters, and restricting the rights of women and girls. Many Yemenis increasingly see the Houthis as driven by a desire to establish a totalitarian religious state that protects Zaidi elites’ power. The Houthis have used their attacks in the Red Sea and on Israel to demonstrate their importance to Iran. In September 2023, protests against the Houthis for failing to pay public-sector salaries were followed by arrests, but the Houthi leadership recognized it had a problem. In September 2023, they announced they were preparing a “radical change” to their government to address corruption and economic problems—before the Israel-Hamas war gave them a new opportunity to gain legitimacy. A Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll conducted in late November and early December of 2023 found that residents of Gaza and the West Bank ranked Yemen’s response to the Israel-Hamas war as the most satisfying among regional actors. The Houthis have trumpeted Yemeni pro-Palestine demonstrations as evidence of their support for the Palestinian people. Regionally, the Houthis have used their attacks in the Red Sea and on Israel to demonstrate their importance to Iran’s “axis of resistance,” the network of state and nonstate actors that Iran has leveraged to spread its influence across the region and encircle its opponents, including Israel and Saudi Arabia. The partnership between Iran and the Houthis deepened substantially over the course of Yemen’s civil war. Iran values the Houthis because they allow Tehran to act more widely while maintaining plausible deniability. The Houthis, for instance, claimed responsibility for a September 2019 drone attack on Saudi oil facilities, but the attack is widely believed to have been carried out by Iran. Until the April 2022 truce in Yemen, the Houthis were also launching an escalating series of strikes facilitated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force on territory within Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Quds Force has helped the Houthis build stockpiles of sophisticated weapons, including unmanned aerial vehicles and missiles. Since approximately 2016, Iran has helped the Houthis learn to assemble their own weapons using parts from abroad, outrunning the international community’s efforts to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Yemen. The fact that the Houthis are now able to launch missiles directed at Israel and commercial vessels—while, thus far, avoiding significant retaliation—is undoubtedly further demonstrating the group’s strategic value to Iran. Tehran has offered support to the Houthi attacks, sharing intelligence to assist attacks in the Red Sea and moving its own warship into those waters. STRIKE OUT International actors must respond to the Houthis’ attacks, both to preserve the Red Sea shipping route and to prevent further regional escalation. But the United States is confronted by an array of bad and worse options for how to do so. Some politicians and analysts have argued that the best way to counter Houthi aggression is with military escalation designed to “restore deterrence.” This perspective sees the United States’ eventual decision, in 2021, to push for peace negotiations in Yemen as a failed policy of appeasement. But proponents of airstrikes against the Houthis cannot articulate what should happen afterward. It is hard to see how airstrikes would deter Houthi attacks now when they have failed to do so over the past decade. Airstrikes against Houthi targets might marginally erode the Houthis’ ability to launch missiles and drones, but it will be much harder to effectively target and eradicate the Houthis’ small, cheap manned and unmanned boats. Likewise, designating the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization, as the Trump administration did briefly in 2020, would likely have little effect. Their leaders have long been under U.S. sanctions, and they would no doubt simply use the designation as further proof that they can get a rise out of powerful adversaries. But the FTO designation would certainly make the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen more difficult. An approach that combines diplomacy with deterrence is the least bad way for the United States to deal with this intractable problem in the near term. There is little international appetite for a military response. Even Saudi Arabia, which led the 2015 military intervention against the Houthis, is now cautioning the United States to act with restraint. To deal with the Houthi threat, the United States must push for an end to the war between Israel and Hamas. Washington cannot count on public support from its Gulf partners. Although some of the commercial ships the Houthis have targeted have no apparent links to Israel, the fact that they have repeatedly called their attacks an effort to support Palestinians limits the degree to which Arab states can respond to Houthi aggression, even if they were inclined to get involved. Public opinion in Saudi Arabia, for instance, has turned even further against establishing diplomatic ties with Israel. Gulf states have little incentive to risk the wrath of their publics. Aside from Bahrain, the Arab states have been reluctant to publicly associate themselves with the multinational operation that the Pentagon announced in mid-December. Still, that operation is a useful first step to demonstrate international opposition to Houthi aggression and to intercept and deter attacks. The United States must also continue to support the UN’s efforts to negotiate a sustainable peace in Yemen. The 2022 truce agreement has held, more or less, and the parties are close to a deal that would make the cease-fire permanent and launch talks about the long-term future of Yemen’s governance. To deal with the threat posed by the Houthis, ultimately the United States must push for an end to the war between Israel and Hamas—as well as to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general. Like it or not, the Houthis have linked their aggression to Israel’s operations in Gaza and have won domestic and regional support for doing so. Finding a sustainable, long-term approach to both conflicts will be critical to de-escalating tensions across the region and getting the Houthis to call off their attacks on commercial vessels. Such attacks would have limited utility in the absence of these conflicts. These measures cannot fully address the threat that the Houthis pose to U.S. interests and to stability in the region more broadly. But they remain the best among bad options—and the United States has only bad options because of its failed approaches to Yemen over the past 20 years. Washington must not repeat its mistakes. Decades of experience have shown, by now, that military efforts to dislodge the Houthis are unlikely to be effective. Instead, they may merely further devastate the lives of the already struggling people of Yemen. Can China Swing Taiwan’s Elections? Beijing Is Deploying Proxies and Misinformation—and Taipei Is Fighting Back By Kenton Thibaut January 12, 2024 Taiwanese presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih at a rally in New Taipei City, January 2024 Ann Wang / Reuters Taiwan has long been the central target of China’s influence and information operations. As part of its quest to compel the island to unify with the mainland, Beijing has now spent decades trying to swing Taiwanese voters away from candidates skeptical of the mainland and toward ones more friendly. Three days before the 2000 presidential vote, for example, Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji hinted that the island risked a Chinese invasion if it elected Chen Shui-bian, who had a history of pushing for Taiwan to declare independence. In 2008, when the moderate Ma Ying-Jeou was favored to win the election, China shifted away from overt threats and toward economic inducements, negotiating directly with Taiwanese fruit farmers (traditionally opponents of Ma’s party) to reduce Chinese tariffs. In 2015, when the less pro-Beijing Tsai Ing-wen was ahead in the polls, China hit her party’s website with phishing attacks and malicious code. And during the 2018 municipal elections, China used hundreds of content farms to churn out digital disinformation designed to hurt candidates Beijing saw as less friendly. As Taiwan gears up for its January presidential contest, it has again been subjected to a deluge of online and offline influence efforts from Beijing, which hopes to kick Tsai and her incumbent Democratic People’s Party (DPP) from power and replace them with the more pro-Beijing Kuomintang (KMT). China is placing a special emphasis on using local proxies in Taiwan—including pro-mainland Taiwanese media companies, paid influencers, and co-opted political elites—to amplify partisan narratives that stoke division in Taiwanese society and erode faith in the island’s political system. Compared with troll factories and crude spam, local proxies make it harder for Taiwanese voters and officials to separate Chinese influence from genuine domestic debate. But although Chinese efforts to influence the election are sophisticated—and although they have challenged the Taiwanese people’s faith in their democracy—the island has responded with its own wave of innovation. Taiwan has a network of civil society groups, such as DoubleThink Lab, that are pioneering new ways to combat foreign meddling. The government, too, has advanced anti-disinformation initiatives, and it is working hard to root out Chinese proxies. And Taiwanese voters are highly attuned to Beijing’s operations. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. The government, in other words, is resilient. So are its people. They can withstand China’s assault on democracy—provided they stay aware. BLOWING SMOKE From the moment Taiwan became a democracy, China has tried to influence the island’s elections. But ever since then-DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen handily won the 2016 presidential contest, Beijing has accelerated its endeavors. The DPP has its roots in the Taiwanese independence movement, and so Beijing has reacted to its newfound dominance with a combination of alarm and furor. Since the Tsai era began, China has spent at least tens of millions of dollars on influence campaigns designed to bolster non-DPP candidates in Taiwan’s elections. But despite this persistence, the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts have never proven particularly effective. The KMT’s candidates won locally in 2018 and 2022, but analyses of those elections indicate that domestic concerns—including changes to Taiwan’s pensions policy and displeasure with the DPP’s economic reforms—were responsible for influencing voter choices rather than Chinese meddling. When foreign policy was on the line, as it was during Tsai’s 2020 reelection bid, China’s efforts went nowhere. Despite an aggressive Chinese media campaign and an onslaught of attacks from CCP-backed social media accounts, Tsai overwhelmingly won reelection. There are many reasons for Taiwan’s resilience. One is the network of nonprofits, which help flag misleading content and spam. Another is civil society’s general success at raising public awareness about China’s tactics. During the 2022 elections, for example, China launched a heavy-handed disinformation campaign to spread rumors that the DPP was complicit in a deal to sell Taiwan’s leading semiconductor firm, TSMC, to the United States. The campaign led to widespread public rebuke, with scholars issuing a joint letter condemning China’s information operations. Prominent news outlets, including Taiwan’s Business Today, published articles that warned about disinformation and misinformation. China has spent at least tens of millions of dollars on influence campaigns. For the 2024 contest, the Chinese Communist Party has continued to spread misinformation. It is, in particular, using local proxies to spread partisan narratives that play on fears of rising cross-strait tensions. This anxiety is authentic to Taiwan: the KMT’s presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, has depicted the vote as a choice between “war and peace,” stating that the DPP’s moves to deepen ties with the United States and promote independence will lead to conflict. But to help amplify this message, the CCP has turned to Taiwanese businesses to suggest a DPP vote could lead to war. The Want-Want Group, for example, a Taiwan-based media company that receives subsidies from the Chinese government, has posted multiple videos praising the KMT and playing up the prospects of war. One proclaims, in its title, that the “DPP is ‘on the road’ to corruption, to war, and to danger.” Another accused the DPP of “quietly preparing for war” and spread a rumor that the DPP vice presidential candidate met with U.S. political operatives to discuss a Chinese-Taiwanese conflict. Arguing that DPP politicians are too close with U.S. ones is a pastime of the CCP and its local supporters. A Taiwanese newspaper, for example, falsely reported that the United States asked Taiwan to develop biological weapons. According to the Taipai Times and Taiwanese government officials, this article was likely sourced from Chinese propaganda. Beijing has, of course, had proxies in Taiwan for years. According to Puma Shen, a professor at National Taipei University and the former chair at DoubleThink, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has paid for local Taiwanese officials and leaders to take luxurious trips to the mainland since at least 2019 as part of an effort to shift public opinion. In past election cycles, Taiwanese businesses with operations in China have taken money from sources linked to the Chinese Communist Party and then donated it to pro-China candidates. Such laundering helps China avoid easily being named and shamed, and when Beijing launders its ideas through proxies, China’s messaging is more likely to spread. In a February post to Facebook, for example, a former KMT politician and pro-Beijing influencer spread the false claim that the United States had a plan for the “destruction of Taiwan,” citing Russian state media. The claim was both picked up by Taiwanese media and amplified by Chinese government sources. Proxies could also help China overcome Taiwan’s defenses. In 2018, 2020, and 2022, for example, social media companies such as Meta grew adept at identifying and quickly taking down posts from suspected content farms, limiting the reach of China’s campaigns. But proxies make it trickier for social media firms to separate authentic posts from propaganda. It can make it tricky for Taiwan’s people, too. IMMUNE RESPONSE Will China’s tactics swing the election? Beijing does not need to persuade many voters for its efforts to succeed. The 2020 contest may have been a blowout, but based on voting numbers from that election, Beijing would have needed to sway only around ten percent of voters to turn the KMT’s loss into a win. If the polls are correct, today’s election will be much closer. And even if Chinese meddling does not swing the contest, it can still shape Taiwan’s politics. Sustained efforts to infiltrate Taiwan’s information environment can undermine the public’s faith in their electoral process; according to a report from the Taiwan Institute for Governance and Communication Research, for example, almost two-thirds of voters in Taiwan say that the prevalence of election disinformation has negatively affected their trust in government institutions. It is a deeply concerning statistic. But that fact does not mean Taiwanese democracy is in jeopardy. Taiwan’s electoral systems remain open and strong, in part because the Taiwanese public has been sensitive to perceived Chinese interference. In fact, Beijing’s attempts to coerce voters may actually strengthen the island’s democracy by spurring its civil society to keep responding. In 2018, when China was ramping up its online information operations against Taiwan, two civil society organizations established the Taiwan Fact Center to enhance media literacy and curb the effects of disinformation. Other digital innovations—like fact-checker apps for popular social media platforms in Taiwan—have sprouted up to combat China’s assaults on Taiwan’s information space. Even if Chinese meddling does not swing the presidential election, it can still shape Taiwan’s politics. Combating Chinese proxies can be more challenging. But Taiwan’s responses to Beijing’s meddling are getting better. Taiwanese civil society groups devoted to combating international disinformation have become leaders in their field, including by developing new AI tools. These tools can quickly scan and flag posts on social media platforms for misleading content—including content that Chinese proxies took out of context or used with incomplete information. The groups’ media literacy and social resilience programs are also focused on keeping up with the CCP’s tactics. One nonprofit organization launched in June 2022, Kuma Academy, runs training programs designed to educate the public on China’s evolving tactics to influence Taiwan’s political, social, and information space. Its classes are immensely popular, with thousands of people on the waitlist for Kuma’s monthly basic training courses. The work of these groups is complemented by Taipei’s efforts. The island’s inaugural digital minister, Audrey Tang, has leveraged technology to improve democratic participation and keep Taiwan’s media open and accurate. In the lead-up to the election, for example, the ministry has worked with civil society organizations to leverage AI tools such as ChatGPT to create bots that flag, categorize, and debunk potentially misleading content online in almost real time. To tackle disinformation efforts more directly, Taiwan’s government set up a task force in 2023 that brings together different departments—including the Digital Affairs Ministry, the Ministry of Education, the Central Election Commission, and the Ministry of Justice—to monitor the Internet and media for signs of information manipulation surrounding the election. Finally, Taiwan has passed laws to crack down on suspected instances of election meddling. In 2019, for instance, it enacted the Anti-Infiltration Act, which prohibits foreign entities from making political donations and bars the use of illegally procured funds for political aims. The government is now using this law to shut down Beijing’s attempts to leverage local proxies. Taipei, for example, has launched a sweeping investigation into a 2023 money-laundering scheme in which the CCP both paid and coerced Taiwanese businesses with interests in China to fund pro-Beijing candidates. None of these efforts have stopped China from trying to influence Taiwan’s upcoming election, nor will they stop Beijing in the future. Unless it gives up on trying to take control of the island, the CCP will always work to distort Taiwanese politics. But the island has devoted considerable time and resources to bolstering its resilience, developing a response as adaptive as Beijing’s efforts. Yes, China is coming for Taiwan’s election—but Taiwan is ready for it. KENTON THIBAUT is Senior Resident Fellow for China at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. Taiwan’s Status Quo Election Why the Result Won’t Have Much Effect on Cross-Strait Relations—or U.S.-Chinese Tensions By David Sacks January 10, 2024 Hou Yu-ih supporters attending a campaign event in Keelung, Taiwan, January 2024 Ann Wang / Reuters On January 13, Taiwan’s citizens will elect their next president. The candidates are framing the race in increasingly existential terms: for William Lai of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the choice facing voters is between democracy and autocracy. For Hou Yu-ih of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT), the outcome will determine whether there will be war or peace in the Taiwan Strait. The third-party candidate, Ko Wen-je of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), has warned that only he can prevent war with China. Beijing has endorsed the KMT’s framing, and one official has ominously expressed the hope that Taiwan’s voters will “make the right choice between ‘peace and war.’” Lai currently leads in the polls and is favored to win the race. Hou has, however, narrowed what was once a yawning gap and could pull off an upset. Despite their attacks on one another, the candidates are in fact broadly aligned on their foreign policy priorities. They largely agree on the need to invest more in defense, strengthen relations with the United States and Japan, and maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait by eschewing either de jure independence or unification with China. The candidates all seek to secure Taiwan’s de facto independence but disagree on the best way to do so. Hou and Ko place more weight on restarting dialogue with Beijing, which China cut off following President Tsai Ing-wen’s inauguration in 2016, whereas Lai prioritizes stronger ties with Taiwan’s partners. This broad alignment is less surprising than it seems. An important consensus has emerged in Taiwan on national security issues since Chinese President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Taiwanese, regardless of their political affiliation, do not want Taiwan to become the next Hong Kong or Taipei to become the next Kyiv. To that end, they largely agree that the best way to protect their island is to invest in defense and to strengthen ties with the United States and other democracies. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. From the perspective of the Chinese Communist Party, however, Taiwan’s very existence as one of Asia’s strongest democracies, and by some measures the region’s freest society, is a threat. Taiwan’s success reveals—despite the CCP’s claims to the contrary—that democracy and a majority ethnically Chinese society are not incompatible. Moreover, as China and Taiwan’s political systems continue to diverge, there is little support on the island for unification. Taiwan is increasingly anchored to the West, and its population broadly favors strengthening relations with Japan, Europe, and the United States. To be sure, political debates in Taiwan remain fierce. Only three years ago, lawmakers hurled pig intestines at their colleagues to protest Tsai’s decision to open Taiwan’s market to U.S. pork. But Taiwanese voters’ choice of one candidate or another is very unlikely to alter Taiwan’s basic approach to foreign policy. The real threat to Taiwan, instead, lies in what Xi does after the polls close—and in the outcome of another vote, the November presidential election in the United States. PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH During Ma Ying-jeou’s presidency, which lasted from 2008 to 2016, Taiwan’s ability to deter a Chinese attack atrophied. Ma allowed defense budgets to stagnate, cut mandatory military service from one year to four months, and drastically reduced the size of Taiwan’s armed forces. Taipei continued to buy arms from the United States, but these purchases were made more for the political signal that they sent, of continued U.S. support for Taiwan, than for their contribution to the island’s combat readiness. As cross-strait exchanges grew, Taipei became complacent, believing that so long as the two sides were talking Beijing would not attack, so investing in defense was unnecessary and wasteful. Two events, though, recently galvanized Taipei to take its defense more seriously. In 2020, Beijing passed a national security law for Hong Kong, which it has used to severely curtail civil liberties and political rights. The United Kingdom declared that this was in breach of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Beijing pledged that Hong Kong would enjoy “a high degree of autonomy” after its return to China. Watching how Beijing ignored that promise and violated the “one country, two systems” framework, which it also proposes for Taiwan, left Taiwanese citizens with no illusions about what life would look like following unification. Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated authoritarian leaders’ willingness to resort to force to pursue their territorial ambitions, as well as the ability of a smaller military to thwart them. Tsai has taken bold steps to reverse her predecessor’s policies. She nearly doubled the defense budget, extended the length of mandatory military service to one year, and began an overhaul of Taiwan’s reserve force, which is intended to supplement the military during a conflict. Tsai also invested billions of dollars in Taiwan’s defense industry, developing an indigenous submarine and, taking lessons from the war in Ukraine, prioritizing the development and production of drones and missiles. SAFETY FIRST All three candidates have similar backgrounds, having entered politics after successful careers outside of elected office. Hou was Taiwan’s chief of police, and Lai and Ko are renowned doctors. There is a further similarity: all candidates largely lack foreign policy experience. Hou and Ko’s national security positions were mostly unknown prior to the race, and Lai was relatively uninvolved in managing foreign policy and cross-strait issues until he became the DPP’s nominee. Despite their shared lack of experience, the candidates agree on the need to improve Taiwan’s defenses and are united in their support for most of Tsai’s defense policies. Lai has described the bolstering of Taiwan’s defenses as “the bedrock of our national security.” Hou, in a Foreign Affairs essay, introduced a framework of the “Three Ds”: deterrence, dialogue, and de-escalation. He concluded that “Taiwan’s most important priority should be to strengthen its national defense and deter the use of force by mainland China.” Ko’s party platform similarly asserts that “national defense is the cornerstone that upholds cross-strait and international relations.” The candidates also broadly agree on how to best increase Taiwan’s defense capabilities. All three have emphasized the importance of pursuing an asymmetric approach that prioritizes the development and purchase of a large quantity of smaller systems and platforms, such as missiles, mines, and drones. Hou and Ko have both proposed increasing the defense budget to three percent of GDP, and Lai has stated that he would also oversee further increases to defense spending. Lai is in favor of one year of compulsory military service, whereas Ko has not challenged Tsai’s decision to extend conscription. He has even argued that one year may be insufficient for training specialized personnel. Hou’s position has been less consistent: although he initially called for undoing Tsai’s policy, he quickly reversed course. Notwithstanding that incident, Hou has put forward a robust defense policy platform. He has called for establishing a common operating picture across Taiwan’s military services that would better enable them to coordinate their operations. He has also proposed creating a cabinet-level All-Out Defense Mobilization Council, which would integrate planning across government with the goal of better enabling Taiwan’s civilian population to help defend the island. This consensus on defense will be critical as the Chinese military threat continues to grow. Taiwan’s top national security priority should be ensuring that Xi does not have confidence that his military can achieve its objectives without paying such an unacceptable cost in blood and treasure that China’s continued modernization would be put at risk. Taiwan cannot prevent a war solely through dialogue with Beijing and it cannot bet its future on Xi’s goodwill. All three candidates know this, and they understand that Taiwan, accordingly, needs to do much more to deter aggression. HANDS ACROSS THE WATER The candidates also agree that Taiwan must deepen its ties to the United States, Japan, and other democracies. Under Tsai, the United States and Taiwan have drawn closer. In 2022, Washington and Taipei launched an ambitious bilateral trade initiative and subsequently reached agreement on the first phase, which Taiwan touts as the first trade deal that the Biden administration has negotiated. Security cooperation has deepened, with Washington reportedly increasing the number of troops deployed to Taiwan to train its military and expanding the training of Taiwanese soldiers in the United States. Taipei’s ties to European democracies have also strengthened during Tsai’s presidency. Taiwan has opened a representative office in Lithuania and a growing number of European officials have visited Taipei. In 2023, the Czech Republic’s president-elect even spoke with Taiwan’s president, becoming the first European head of state to do so. Taiwan and Japan have also become closer. This trend may prove critical for Taiwan because, if a military conflict with China were to erupt, Japanese contributions to allied operations could prove decisive. Tokyo has already helped Taipei absorb the blow of China’s economic sanctions and supplied Taiwan with millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Japan has also become a full partner in the Global Cooperation and Training Framework, which the United States and Taiwan established in 2015 as a platform to leverage Taiwan’s expertise to address international challenges. Lai has commented that “Taiwan and Japan are like a family.” To that end, he has vowed to pursue security cooperation with Tokyo if elected, and argued that Taipei should seek to join the Japan-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the region’s premier trade pact. Hou shares this desire for closer ties with Japan and, symbolically, made it the first country he visited after securing the KMT nomination. He, too, has stated that he would attempt to join the CPTPP, which would help Taiwan diversify its economy away from China. Ko also visited Japan as a presidential candidate, and his party’s platform calls for establishing a “robust trilateral security dialogue platform involving the United States, Japan, and Taiwan.” None of the three candidates have proposed a meaningful break from Tsai’s foreign policy. All have stated that the United States is Taiwan’s closest and most important partner and vowed to deepen relations with Washington. In practice, this will translate to ever greater security cooperation and closer economic ties. Hou has even proposed conducting joint military exercises with the United States and pursuing interoperability, which would better enable U.S. and Taiwanese soldiers to fight together and support one another during a conflict. Both are steps that Beijing has long opposed. Lai and Hou have pledged to work with Washington to pursue secure and resilient supply chains by supporting the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade and called for Taiwan to join the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. KEEPING BEIJING AT BAY The candidates differ most on the question of how Taiwan should approach China. In particular, they disagree about the relative importance of communication with Beijing and the extent to which Taiwan should pursue greater economic, cultural, and other ties with China. All three candidates want to maintain the status quo, but they differ over the best way of doing so. This disagreement has led Hou to claim that Lai will pursue independence, triggering a war with China in the process, and Lai to counter that Hou will sacrifice Taiwan’s democracy and sovereignty to China. Neither charge is warranted. Lai has explicitly stated that he would continue Tsai’s approach to cross-strait relations, repeating her position that “Taiwan is already a sovereign, independent country” and that it is therefore unnecessary to declare independence. It is unlikely that Lai would provoke China by pursuing de jure independence, as he understands that doing so would likely prompt a forceful Chinese response and undermine Taiwan’s international support. Nevertheless, if elected, Beijing would be highly unlikely to pursue dialogue with Lai. There would, instead, be another four years without official communication between Taipei and Beijing, which raises the risk of miscalculation. At first glance, Hou’s position on cross-strait issues seems like a throwback to the Ma era. He has endorsed the 1992 Consensus, which the KMT defines as an agreement between Taipei and Beijing that there is one China, with each side holding a different interpretation as to which government is its rightful representative. (For the KMT, it is the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic of China.) China, by contrast, interprets the 1992 Consensus as meaning that there is only one China, that Taiwan is a part of it, and that the People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government of China. Despite this disagreement on the meaning of the 1992 Consensus, it has nevertheless provided the political foundation for over two dozen agreements negotiated between Taiwan and China during Ma’s presidency. Hou has, however, attached important conditions to his cross-strait platform, including a rejection of “one country, two systems” and an insistence that any dialogue with Beijing would have to be consistent with Taiwan’s constitution. He has also pledged that “Taiwan’s future will be determined only by its own people” and acknowledged that “the majority of people in Taiwan want to maintain this status quo,” signaling that unification is not in the cards. Hou could, however, be constrained by the KMT’s deep-blue wing, which seeks closer ties to China, and to which Hou’s running mate and the candidate leading the party’s slate of legislators belong. Ko, for his part, has said that Taiwan has no choice but to maintain the cross-strait status quo and that “there’s no point in even talking about unification or independence right now because you can’t achieve either.” Although Ko has not flatly rejected the 1992 Consensus, he has commented that “if the 1992 Consensus is a prerequisite, it is not going to lead us very far” and has suggested changing the name of the term. This comment shows just how unpopular the 1992 Consensus has become in Taiwan, and simultaneously suggests an openness to establishing a new framework that Beijing could live with. It is unclear, however, whether Ko could introduce a formula that Beijing would deem acceptable. Unification has never been popular among Taiwanese voters and has become decidedly less so over time. Although a desire for independence has grown over the past three decades, most voters would prefer to maintain the status quo indefinitely. As seen from China’s perspective, the prospect of voluntary unification has all but disappeared, and no presidential candidate can hope to win on a platform favoring unification. Regardless of who wins the presidential election, Taiwan is all but certain to reject political negotiations with Beijing over the next four years. CURSING THE TIDE Other factors at play in this election will worry Beijing. In particular, the passage of time and the divergent political trajectories of Taiwan and China have led to a consolidation of a unique Taiwanese identity. Over 60 percent of the population now identifies exclusively as Taiwanese, with 30 percent identifying as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and only 2.5 percent as Chinese. Reflecting these trends, for the first time ever, all of the presidential candidates are native Taiwanese, meaning that their families came to the island prior to the Chinese Civil War. Beijing always favors the KMT candidate and this race is no exception, with China branding Lai a “destroyer of peace.” A Hou victory could be presented within China as evidence that unification is not moving out of reach, and China could then use the next four years to try to shape cross-strait dynamics in its favor. But even a Hou triumph would not reflect a turn toward favoring unification among the Taiwanese electorate: instead, it would more likely be a consequence of the electorate’s fatigue after eight years of DPP rule, a desire for change, and disappointment with how the government has handled domestic issues. This election cannot change the basic fact that, if unification were a company, it would have lost its market and would be on the brink of insolvency. Taiwan is dedicated to continuing to embed itself in the West, a process that is inimical to China’s interests. Ironically, a Hou victory could have the effect of signaling to Beijing that even the KMT cannot deliver the outcome that it seeks. The very fact that Taiwan is holding its eighth presidential election, an event that is now taken for granted as democracy has become a core component of its national identity, will be viewed in China as a risk to the CCP’s political narrative. The question, then, is whether Xi decides that he can live with Taiwan’s trajectory or concludes that the trend lines are not moving in Beijing’s favor and that he should act to compel unification sooner rather than later. Entirely apart from Taiwan’s election, there are worrying signals that his thinking is moving in the latter direction. Xi has stated that the Taiwan issue cannot be passed on to future generations and that achieving unification is the essence of the country’s rejuvenation. He has called unification a “historical inevitability,” and as Xi faces growing economic headwinds, he may seek to make unification a major part of his political legacy. The outcome of Taiwan’s election may do little to change Xi’s calculus. Indeed, it may not even be the most important election of the year for the island’s security. Rather, that could be the U.S. presidential election in November. A victory for former U.S. President Donald Trump, who has criticized Taiwan for stealing the United States’ semiconductor industry and reportedly asked what benefit could be derived from defending Taiwan, could prompt Xi to conclude that he would not have to factor in U.S. intervention, which would dramatically alter his calculus. Such a development could well upend cross-strait stability. DAVID SACKS is a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Taiwan and the True Sources of Deterrence Why America Must Reassure, Not Just Threaten, China Bonnie S. Glaser, Jessica Chen Weiss, and Thomas J. Christensen The Taiwan Long Game Why the Best Solution Is No Solution Jude Blanchette and Ryan Hass 台灣選舉現狀 為什麼結果不會對兩岸關係或美中緊張產生太大影響 大衛薩克斯 2024 年 1 月 10 日 侯裕義的支持者參加 2024 年 1 月在台灣基隆舉行的競選活動 安王/路透社 1月13日，台灣民眾將選出下一任總統。候選人們越來越以存在主義的角度來描述這場競選：對於執政的民進黨（DPP）的黎威廉來說，選民面臨的選擇是民主還是獨裁。對反對黨國民黨侯裕義來說，結果將決定台海是戰爭還是和平。第三黨候選人、台灣人民黨（TPP）的柯文哲警告說，只有他才能阻止與中國的戰爭。北京支持國民黨的框架，一位官員不祥地表示希望台灣選民「在『和平與戰爭』之間做出正確的選擇」。 黎智英目前在民調中領先，並有望贏得選舉。然而，侯已經縮小了一度巨大的差距，並可能會爆出冷門。儘管兩位候選人互相攻擊，但事實上他們在外交政策優先事項上大致一致。他們基本上一致認為需要加強國防投資，加強與美國和日本的關係，並透過避免法理獨立或與中國統一來維持台灣海峽的現狀。候選人都尋求確保台灣事實上的獨立，但對於實現這一目標的最佳方式存在分歧。侯和柯更重視重啟與北京的對話，中國在蔡英文總統 2016 年就職後中斷了對話，而賴則優先考慮加強與台灣合作夥伴的關係。 這種廣泛的一致性並不像看起來那麼令人驚訝。自從中國國家主席習近平鎮壓香港民主、俄羅斯總統普丁入侵烏克蘭以來，台灣在國家安全問題上形成了重要共識。台灣人，無論其政治立場為何，都不希望台灣成為下一個香港或台北，成為下一個基輔。為此，他們基本上同意保護島嶼的最佳方式是投資國防並加強與美國和其他民主國家的關係。 。 然而，從中國共產黨的角度來看，台灣作為亞洲最強大的民主國家之一，並且從某些方面來看是該地區最自由的社會，這本身就是一種威脅。台灣的成功顯示——儘管中共聲稱相反——民主和華人佔多數的社會並非不相容。此外，由於中國和台灣的政治制度持續存在分歧，島上對統一的支持很少。台灣日益依賴西方，其民眾普遍贊成加強與日本、歐洲和美國的關係。 平心而論，台灣的政治爭論依然激烈。僅僅三年前，立法者向同事投擲豬腸，抗議蔡英文向美國豬肉開放台灣市場的決定。但台灣選民對一位候選人的選擇不太可能改變台灣外交政策的基本方針。相反，對台灣的真正威脅在於習近平在投票結束後所做的事情，以及另一次投票的結果，即 11 月的美國總統選舉。 和平源於力量 在馬英九2008年至2016年的總統任期內，台灣阻止中國攻擊的能力已削弱。馬英九允許國防預算停滯，將義務兵役期從一年減少到四個月，並大幅削減台灣武裝部隊的規模。台北繼續從美國購買武器，但這些購買更多是為了發出美國繼續支持台灣的政治訊號， 而不是為了為台灣的戰備狀態做出貢獻。隨著兩岸交流的增多，台北變得沾沾自喜，認為只要兩岸談北京就不會進攻，因此投資國防是不必要且浪費的。 不過，最近發生的兩件事促使台北更加認真地對待其防禦。2020年，北京通過了香港國家安全法，並利用該法嚴重限制公民自由和政治權利。英國宣稱此舉違反了1984年《中英聯合聲明》，其中北京承諾香港回歸中國後將享有「高度自治」。看著北京如何無視這項承諾並違反它也為台灣提出的「一個國家，兩種制度」框架，台灣公民對統一後的生活不再抱有任何幻想。同時，俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭表明獨裁領導人願意訴諸武力來實現其領土野心，以及以較小規模的軍隊挫敗他們的能力。 蔡英文已採取大膽措施扭轉前任的政策。她將國防預算增加了近一倍，將義務兵役期延長至一年，並開始對台灣預備役部隊進行全面改革，旨在在衝突期間補充軍隊。蔡英文也向台灣國防工業投資了數十億美元，開發本土潛艇，並吸取烏克蘭戰爭的教訓，優先開發和生產無人機和飛彈。 安全第一 這三位候選人都有相似的背景，都是在民選辦公室之外取得成功的職業生涯後進入政壇的。侯是台灣警察局長，賴和柯是著名醫生。還有一個相似之處：所有候選人在很大程度上缺乏外交政策經驗。侯和柯的國家安全立場在競選前大多不為人所知，而賴在成為民進黨提名人之前相對不參與外交政策和兩岸問題的管理。 儘管共同缺乏經驗，兩位候選人都一致認為需要改善台灣的防禦，並一致支持蔡英文的大部分國防政策。黎智英將加強台灣的防禦描述為「我們國家安全的基石」。侯在一篇外交文章中介紹了「三個D」的框架：威懾、對話和降級。他的結論是，“台灣最重要的優先事項應該是加強國防，遏制中國大陸使用武力。” 柯氏的黨綱同樣主張「國防是支撐兩岸及國際關係的基石」。 候選人也就如何最好地增強台灣的防禦能力達成了廣泛共識。三人都強調了採取不對稱方法的重要性，該方法優先考慮開發和購買大量小型系統和平台，例如飛彈、地雷和無人機。侯和柯都提議將國防預算增加到GDP的3%，而賴清德表示他也將監督國防開支的進一步增加。黎智英贊成義務兵役一年，而柯沒有質疑蔡英文延長徵兵期的決定。他甚至認為，一年的時間可能不足以培養專業人才。侯的立場不太一致：儘管他最初呼籲廢除蔡英文的政策，但很快就改變了立場。儘管發生了這起事件，侯先生仍提出了一個強而有力的國防政策平台。他呼籲在台灣各軍種之間建立一個共同的作戰圖景，以便更好地協調行動。他也提議成立內閣級全面國防動員委員會，整合政府各部門的規劃，以便更好地幫助台灣平民保衛台灣。 隨著中國軍事威脅的持續成長，這項國防共識至關重要。台灣國家安全的首要任務應該是確保習近平不相信他的軍隊能夠在不付出令人無法接受的鮮血和財富代價的情況下實現其目標，從而使中國的持續現代化面臨風險。台灣不能只與北京對話來阻止戰爭，也不能將自己的未來押在習近平的善意上。三位候選人都知道這一點，他們也明白台灣需要採取更多措施來阻止侵略。 雙手劃過水面 候選人也同意台灣必須加深與美國、日本和其他民主國家的聯繫。在蔡英文的領導下，美國和台灣的關係更加緊密。2022年，華盛頓和台北發起了一項雄心勃勃的雙邊貿易倡議，隨後就第一階段達成了協議，台灣稱這是拜登政府談判達成的第一個貿易協議。安全合作不斷深化，據報華盛頓增加了部署到台灣訓練軍隊的部隊數量，並擴大了台灣士兵在美國的訓練。在蔡英文擔任總統期間，台北與歐洲民主國家的聯繫也得到加強。台灣在立陶宛設立了代表處，越來越多的歐洲官員訪問了台北。2023年，捷克候任總統甚至與台灣總統通話，成為第一位這樣做的歐洲國家元首。 台灣和日本也變得更加親密。這一趨勢對台灣來說可能至關重要，因為如果與中國爆發軍事衝突，日本對盟軍行動的貢獻可能是決定性的。東京已經幫助台北承受中國經濟制裁的打擊，並向台灣提供了數百萬劑新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 疫苗。日本也成為美國和台灣於 2015 年建立的全球合作與培訓框架的正式合作夥伴，該框架是利用台灣的專業知識來應對國際挑戰的平台。 賴表示「台灣和日本就像一家人」。為此，他發誓如果當選，將尋求與東京的安全合作，並認為台北應尋求加入日本主導的全面進步跨太平洋夥伴關係協定（CPTPP），這是該地區首要的貿易協定。侯先生也渴望與日本建立更密切的關係，並象徵性地將日本作為他獲得國民黨提名後訪問的第一個國家。他也表示，他將嘗試加入 CPTPP，這將有助於台灣實現經濟多元化，擺脫中國大陸的束縛。柯還以總統候選人的身份訪問了日本，其政黨綱領呼籲建立「涉及美國、日本和台灣的強大三邊安全對話平台」。 三位候選人都沒有提出與蔡英文的外交政策進行有意義的突破。所有人都表示美國是台灣最親密、最重要的夥伴，並誓言深化與華盛頓的關係。實際上，這將轉化為更廣泛的安全合作和更緊密的經濟聯繫。侯甚至提議與美國進行聯合軍事演習並追求互通性，這將更好地使美國和台灣士兵在發生衝突時能夠並肩作戰、相互支持。這兩項舉措都是北京長期以來反對的。賴和侯承諾與華盛頓合作，透過支持美台21世紀貿易倡議來追求安全和有彈性的供應鏈，並呼籲台灣加入美國主導的印太經濟框架。 阻止北京 候選人在台灣應如何對待中國的問題上分歧最大。特別是，他們對於與北京溝通的相對重要性以及台灣應在多大程度上與中國大陸加強經濟、文化和其他聯繫存在分歧。三位候選人都希望維持現狀，但他們對於實現這一目標的最佳方式存在分歧。這種分歧導致侯聲稱賴智將追求獨立，並在此過程中引發與中國的戰爭，而賴則反駁說侯將犧牲台灣的民主和主權給中國。 這兩項指控都是沒有根據的。賴清德明確表示將延續蔡英文處理兩岸關係的方針，重申“台灣已經是一個主權獨立國家”，因此沒有必要宣布獨立。黎智英不太可能透過追求法理獨立來激怒中國，因為他明白這樣做可能會引發中國的強烈回應，並削弱台灣的國際支持。然而，如果當選，北京極不可能與賴智進行對話。相反，台北和北京之間將再有四年沒有官方溝通，增加了誤判的風險。 乍一看，侯在兩岸問題上的立場似乎倒退到了馬時代。他贊同1992年的共識，國民黨定義為台北和北京之間關於一個中國的協議，雙方對哪一個政府是其合法代表持有不同的解釋。（對國民黨來說，它是中華民國，而不是中華人民共和國。）相比之下，中國將 1992 年共識解釋為只有一個中國，台灣是中國的一部分，中華人民共和國是中國的一部分。中華民國是中國唯一合法的政府。儘管對 1992 年共識的含義存在分歧，但它仍然為馬英九擔任總統期間台灣和中國大陸談判的兩打協議提供了政治基礎。然而，侯先生在他的兩岸平台上附加了重要條件，包括拒絕“一個國家，兩個制度”，並堅持與北京的任何對話都必須符合台灣憲法。他還承諾“台灣的未來將僅由台灣人民決定”，並承認“大多數台灣人民希望維持現狀”，這表明統一不可能實現。然而，侯可能會受到國民黨深藍派的限制，該派尋求與中國建立更密切的聯繫，而侯的競選搭檔和領導該黨立委名單的候選人也屬於該派。 柯潔則表示，台灣別無選擇，只能維持兩岸現狀，“現在談統一或獨立都沒意義，因為兩者都無法實現。” 儘管柯沒有斷然拒絕1992年共識，但他評論說，“如果1992年共識是先決條件，它不會引導我們走得太遠”，並建議更改該術語的名稱。這篇評論顯示 1992 年共識在台灣變得多麼不受歡迎，同時也顯示對建立北京可以接受的新框架持開放態度。然而，目前還不清楚柯是否可以引入北京認為可以接受的方案。 統一從來都不受台灣選民的歡迎，而且隨著時間的推移，這種趨勢明顯變得不那麼受歡迎。儘管過去三十年來獨立的願望不斷增強，但大多數選民更願意無限期地維持現狀。從中國的角度來看，自願統一的前景幾乎消失了，任何總統候選人都無法希望在支持統一的平台上獲勝。無論誰贏得總統選舉，台灣幾乎肯定會拒絕在未來四年內與北京進行政治談判。 詛咒潮流 這次選舉中的其他因素將令北京方面感到擔憂。特別是，隨著時間的推移和台灣與中國大陸不同的政治軌跡，台灣的獨特身份得到了鞏固。現在，超過 60% 的人口只認為自己是台灣人，其中 30% 的人既是台灣人又是中國人，只有 2.5% 是中國人。反映這些趨勢的是，有史以來第一次，所有總統候選人都是台灣本土人，這意味著他們的家人在中國內戰之前來到台灣。 北京一直偏向國民黨候選人，這次競選也不例外，中國將賴清德稱為「和平破壞者」。侯的勝利可以在中國國內證明統一並非遙不可及，然後中國可以利用未來四年來嘗試塑造有利於自己的兩岸動態。但即使侯的勝利也不會反映出台灣選民轉向支持統一：相反，這更有可能是選民在民進黨八年統治後感到疲勞、渴望變革以及對政府的做法感到失望的結果。處理國內問題。這次選舉無法改變一個基本事實：如果統一是一家公司，它就會失去市場，並處於破產邊緣。台灣致力於繼續融入西方，這個過程不利於中國的利益。諷刺的是，侯的勝利可能會向北京發出信號，表明即使是國民黨也無法實現其所尋求的結果。台灣正在舉行第八次總統選舉，這一事件現在被認為是理所當然的，因為民主已成為其國家認同的核心組成部分，這一事實將在中國被視為對中共政治敘事的風險。 那麼問題是，習近平是否決定接受台灣的發展軌跡，還是得出結論認為，趨勢線並未朝著有利於北京的方向發展，他應該盡快採取行動，迫使台灣統一。完全除了台灣選舉之外，還有一些令人擔憂的信號表明他的想法正朝著後一個方向發展。習近平指出，台灣問題不能留給後代，而實現統一是國家復興的本質。他稱統一是“歷史的必然”，隨著習近平面臨日益增長的經濟逆風，他可能會尋求將統一作為其政治遺產的重要組成部分。 台灣選舉的結果可能不會改變習近平的算計。事實上，這甚至可能不是今年對該島安全最重要的選舉。相反，這可能是 11 月的美國總統大選。美國前總統川普批評台灣竊取了美國的半導體產業，並據報道詢問保衛台灣能帶來什麼好處，他的勝利可能會促使習近平得出結論，認為他不必考慮美國的干預，會極大地改變他的計算。這樣的事態發展很可能會破壞兩岸的穩定。 How Ukraine Can Win Through Defense A New Strategy Can Protect Kyiv and Stop Moscow From Winning By Emma Ashford and Kelly A. Grieco January 10, 2024 A Ukrainian soldier in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, December 2023 A Ukrainian soldier in the Kharkiv region of Ukraine, December 2023 Viacheslav Ratynskyi / Reuters Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/how-ukraine-can-win-through-defense Request Reprint Permissions On December 12, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Washington to make an in-person request for military and economic aid for Ukraine, but he left empty-handed. For over a month, Republicans on Capitol Hill have been blocking an emergency spending bill that would provide about $60 billion in new funding for Ukraine. They will only approve the money, they have vowed, if Democrats make major concessions on immigration policy. Until then, funding for Ukraine remains in the balance. Zelensky’s disappointing visit highlights the larger problems facing Ukraine. Its much-anticipated counteroffensive last year failed to retake territory lost to Russia, public support for Kyiv across the West is declining, and the conflict is at a stalemate. At the same time, the dilemma for Western policymakers appears stark. They can continue to pour resources into the war in search of an increasingly improbable version of victory: retaking every inch of Ukrainian territory. Or they can cut funding, put Kyiv on the defensive, and risk a Ukrainian loss. This striking dichotomy is no doubt the reason that the Biden administration publicly insists there will be no change in strategy if Congress doesn’t approve funding. But there is in fact another option, one that is being largely overlooked in Washington: victory through defense. Much of the aid to Ukraine over the last two years has focused on offensive capabilities—advanced Western tanks, mine-clearing equipment, and long-range missiles—in a bid to push Russia back. But victory for Kyiv and its Western partners does not necessarily require gaining back specific chunks of territory. It simply requires that Russian President Vladimir Putin be denied his goal of subjugating Ukraine. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. If Ukraine can defend the territory it controls in coming months by using capabilities such as anti-tank mines and concrete fortifications, it can deny Russia a path to complete victory and perhaps even open the door for negotiations. Putin evidently believes that time is on his side; a strong, sustainable Ukrainian defense would prove him wrong. THEORIES OF VICTORY The current predicament facing Western policymakers is the result of maximalist thinking. On one side of the debate are those who argue that Ukraine cannot be victorious until it retakes every square ­­­­­­­­­­inch of its territory, including the seven percent of its land that Russia has held since 2014. This could be called the “victory through rollback” argument. As Ben Hodges, the former commander of U.S. Army Europe, put it: “Victory for Ukraine means total restoration of all their sovereign territory,” including Crimea. On the other side are those who argue that the United States has spent too much already and that Ukraine should sue for peace now, in a traditional “peace, not victory” approach. “There are appropriate ways in which the U.S. can support the Ukrainian people, but unlimited arms supplies in support of an endless war is not one of them,” 19 Senate and House Republicans wrote in a letter to the White House last year, adding, “Our national interests, and those of the Ukrainian people, are best served by incentivizing the negotiations that are urgently needed to bring this conflict to a resolution.” Neither of these options is good. There are genuine constraints on what the West can provide Ukraine to enable it to retake territory. Public opinion in the United States and Europe is turning against significant additional funding, and stockpiles of Western ammunition are running low. Ukraine made few concrete gains on the ground last year even with massive amounts of Western support and advanced weaponry. None of the equipment that Ukraine is now asking for, including a longer-range version of the Army Tactical Mission System (ATACAMS) or F-16 fighte­­­­r jets, is likely to change that reality in the coming year. That said, it is not an ideal time to seek peace negotiations, either. Despite the apparent stalemate on the battlefield, it is unlikely Putin would agree to a cease-fire until after the 2024 U.S. presidential election, which he surely hopes will deliver him a Trump presidency and thus a better deal. He is also undoubtedly aware of the grim math of land warfare: Russia has a larger military-age population to draw from than Ukraine and a stronger industrial base. On paper, time is on his side. Policymakers in the West know they need a new strategy: the White House is increasingly pushing Ukraine to pivot to a defensive strategy in 2024, and Zelensky and his military commanders have slowly come to accept the need for this shift, announcing in November an expansion of defensive fortifications. Yet U.S. policymakers also need a new theory of victory. A pivot to defense is the right idea, but both Washington and Kyiv are pursuing it for the wrong reasons. On both sides of the Atlantic, defense is viewed largely as a stopgap measure to buy time to build capacity for future offensive operations. As Jack Watling wrote in Foreign Affairs recently, the West “faces a crucial choice right now: support Ukraine so that its leaders can defend their territory and prepare for a 2025 offensive or cede an irrecoverable advantage to Russia.” Similar views seem to hold in Kyiv, where defense seems to be viewed as a necessary evil that needs to be done while the military focuses on building up its reserve forces and continuing its deep-strike campaign against Russian logistics. General Valery Zaluzhny, commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, argued recently that “new, innovative approaches” could still turn the tide of the war. In both cases, the plan would see Ukraine rebuild its forces this year and resume counterattacks no later than in the spring of 2025. Policymakers in the West know they need a new strategy. So far, however, these theories of victory have failed the battlefield test. Neither Kyiv’s maneuver warfare campaign, in which Ukrainian forces attempted to break through Russian lines and quickly recapture territory, nor its attempts to undermine Russian popular support for the war through drone attacks on Moscow have succeeded. Putin is nowhere closer to conceding defeat because he still believes his army has a viable path to victory. He thinks he can outlast Western support for Kyiv and eventually defeat Ukraine through sheer attrition. Even after two years of war, Putin’s exact objectives are unclear. The initial assault in February 2022 clearly aimed to decapitate and subjugate the Ukrainian state. When that failed, the Kremlin indicated that it sought the full conquest of four Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhiya. At a strategic level, however, Putin’s political objectives are relatively clear: weaken Kyiv, seize as much territory as possible, and prevent Ukraine from further integration with Europe. Defense, then, can itself be a path to victory if Ukraine and its Western backers can succeed in convincing Putin that there is no way for him to achieve these strategic objectives. Under this approach, Ukraine would build strong fortifications and defensive capabilities to demonstrate that the country can sustain a long war of attrition and prevent further Russian advances, even with reduced Western support. Over time, a consistent, sustainable Ukrainian defense could eventually convince the Kremlin that continued fighting is futile, opening the prospect of peace. ON THE DEFENSIVE If there is one clear lesson to draw from this war, it is that today’s battlefield favors defense. Modern weapons, especially drones, advanced artillery, and long-range antitank missiles, make it much easier to hold territory than to capture it. Mobile ground-based air defenses are hard to detect and destroy, giving defenders an advantage over modern air forces. A shift to defense in Ukraine would capitalize on these advantages and would require three specific elements to be successful. First, Ukraine would need to construct a system of defensive lines consisting of deep trenches, prepared firing positions, ditches, antitank mines, and the concrete antitank pyramid barriers known as “dragon’s teeth”—a system not unlike the so-called Surovikin Line of fortifications that Russian forces so successfully defended last year. Ukrainian troops already have the right mantra: “If you want to live, dig.” Yet Ukraine’s defenses to date have consisted mainly of shallow trenches rather than fixed fortifications, as it has waged a mobile defense, launching hit-and-run attacks on Russian forces and supply lines. Defenses must also be thick and layered, progressively sapping Russia’s military power should its forces dare cross them. The first line should be densely mined with antitank munitions and concrete barriers, behind which Ukrainian troops in bunkers and trenches would lay in wait with murderous firepower. The second defensive line, an insurance against a breakthrough, would offer more of the same, exacting a heavy price on any Russian attackers. These defensive works would offer Ukrainian troops significantly more protection and allow them to better withstand Russian offensive action than the mobile defense it has fought until now. This could be surprisingly cheap to achieve. For example, Russia built its dragon’s teeth for about $130 for each pyramid, laying around 1,000 concrete pyramids in four rows to fortify just under a mile of front. At that cost, Ukraine could fortify the entirety of the Donbas front lines (about 260 miles) for about $54 million. Anti-tank mines are cheap too, at a cost of less than $10,000 each, and the U.S. military has many of them, including over 178,000 M21 mines slated to soon be replaced by new models. Though mines carry the potential for civilian harm even after a conflict is over, in this case, the benefits outweigh the risks. The United States should contribute not only the mines, but should also work together with its allies to plan for risk mitigation and future de-mining operations. A newly dug trench near the Belarus border in Ukraine, December 2023 Gleb Garanich / Reuters Second, Ukraine should prioritize keeping the skies contested, ensuring that neither side enjoys air superiority. Although Ukrainian commanders insist that even small numbers of Western fighter jets such as the F-16 would be enough to gain air superiority over the battlefield, that seems highly unlikely. Russian radar would spot these planes well before Ukrainian pilots came within weapons range to destroy Russian air defenses, especially the country’s S-400 missile systems. As Ukraine has already shown in this war, however, it can succeed on defense so long as its ground-based air defenses remain a credible threat to Russian warplanes. Today, Western antiair missile stockpiles are running low, raising the risk that Kyiv will no longer be able to hold back the Russian air force. To avoid this prospect, Ukraine may need to make the unenviable choice to be more selective in employing its air defense capabilities. This may mean that its forces cannot attempt to intercept every Russian missile or drone fired into Ukraine, which would increase the potential for civilian casualties. Yet if Kyiv continues to try to shield its population rather than its air defenses, the country risks losing the air war. The West may be hard pressed to meet Ukraine’s current air-defense needs, but this is one area in which creative thinking can help: the launch of the FrankenSAM project, which aims to marry advanced Western missiles with Ukraine’s Soviet-era launchers and radar, offers one path toward addressing this critical shortage. Third, Ukraine must expand its domestic weapons production, reducing its reliance on Western arms supplies. During the Cold War, Ukraine was a major arms manufacturer, and Kyiv’s efforts to ramp up defense manufacturing since the start of the war show promise. The number of Ukrainian companies producing drones, for example, has increased from seven to 80 in the last year. Other countries will be wary of sharing sensitive military technology, but much of what Ukraine needs for defense—artillery, drones, and antitank weapons—are cheaper, less sensitive, and relatively easy to produce. A more self-reliant Ukraine would signal to Moscow that even if Western support for Ukraine diminishes, Russian troops will face stiff military resistance. A shift to defense is valuable not only because it could show the Kremlin that further territorial conquest is out of reach but also because it would help Ukraine address its two biggest problems: a shortage of soldiers and flagging Western support. A network of strong defenses would allow Kyiv to husband its resources, reducing the number of personnel and amount of artillery required to defend its frontlines. With a serious conscription crisis brewing in Ukraine, any strategy that requires fewer troops is a clear winner. Going on the defense is also cheaper for Kyiv’s Western backers. A defensive strategy alleviates the need to arm Ukraine with expensive and scarce Western systems meant to give it a qualitative offensive edge, such as advanced fighter jets or tanks. Instead, the West could reorient aid around lower-cost munitions, construction supplies, and air defense systems while working to ramp up Ukraine’s defense industrial base. THE MESSAGE To shore up flagging Western support, however, it will not be enough to simply pivot to defense on the battlefield. If Western leaders continue to emphasize Ukraine’s winning back its territory yet struggle to pass massive new aid packages, Russia can maintain hope that Western funding will falter and the Kremlin’s prospects will improve. Therefore, a new battlefield strategy must be accompanied by a corresponding political strategy from the White House, beginning with messaging. The Biden administration should make clear that it is not seeking to support Kyiv with future offensive operations, but rather focused on providing Ukraine with defensive capabilities. The message from the White House should be simple: Ukraine stands a better chance of holding onto its existing territory and sustaining the fight with a defensive playbook. To make this strategy credible in Moscow, the White House would also need to engage in signaling. Rather than continuing the high-stakes push on Capitol Hill for a mammoth Ukraine aid bill, the White House should seek a smaller, compromise budget to fund less expensive defensive systems for Ukraine and help the country build its own defense industrial base. Money is perhaps the most obvious outward indicator of strategy. By dialing down its funding request, the White House can signal it has adopted achievable strategic goals: a cheaper war is a far more sustainable war. The White House can also broadcast its intentions by applying pressure on Kyiv. Indeed, a central obstacle to this new strategy will likely be opposition in Ukraine itself. Ukrainian leaders may oppose a shift to defense, as it could lead to the war’s ending along current lines of control, similar to what happened at the end of the Korean War. Although that conflict never officially ended, the fortification and stabilization of the 38th parallel eventually produced a durable armistice that allowed South Korea to flourish. A defensive strategy in Ukraine might ultimately produce a similar outcome—and the White House should make clear that it would consider this a victory. Indeed, if there is one thing that would qualify as a loss for Putin in the long term, it would be a flourishing, independent Ukraine that is economically integrated with Europe. A cheaper war is a far more sustainable war. Finally, the Biden administration will need to build Western consensus around this new approach. This strategy should be appealing to European countries that are suffering their own shortfalls in public support for the war, including Germany. But it will be a much harder sell in Eastern Europe, where victory through rollback is popular. A common fear in Poland and the Baltic states is that any failure to reclaim all of Ukraine’s territory will send a message to the Kremlin that future aggression may be rewarded. To address these concerns, the Biden administration should lean not just on the idea that a defensive strategy is cheaper but also on the argument that it could be effective in preventing further Russian gains in Ukraine, making conquest elsewhere in Europe less attractive to Moscow. Such a stance can also help reassure allies: a defensive strategy is significantly more resilient to shifts within the Western coalition, future-proofing Ukraine’s defense against volatile U.S. politics. If Congress falters in providing funding for Ukraine in 2024—or if Donald Trump is re-elected president—European states are far better positioned to provide defensive supplies than offensive weapons. Even basic construction materials—concrete, for example—are useful in creating fortifications; the German concrete industry has been hit hard by higher energy prices. Both German companies and Ukrainian forces would benefit from German government spending on material for fortifications. Ultimately, a defensive strategy will not solve all of Ukraine’s problems. No matter what approach the country takes, it will almost certainly face another brutal winter of Russian drone and missile attacks on its energy infrastructure. And, of course, a defensive strategy requires Kyiv to abandon its maximalist goals of retaking all the territory it has lost to Russia. That means leaving the Ukrainians living in the occupied territories under Russian rule, a costly and wrenching choice even when the prospects for retaking this territory are so slim. But if executed well, a defensive political and military strategy may well be able to persuade Putin that he has no prospects for further conquest in Ukraine, creating an off-ramp for negotiations. And even if this new strategy does not end the war, it will avoid the most catastrophic outcomes, will sustain Ukraine’s fighting capacity, and just might produce a stable equilibrium that allows a largely intact Ukraine to develop economically and integrate with Europe. For Western policymakers feeling stuck between domestic constraints and the prospects of a Ukrainian loss, that should count as a win. EMMA ASHFORD is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University. She is the author of Oil, the State, and War: The Foreign Policies of Petrostates. KELLY A. GRIECO is a Senior Fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonresident Fellow with the Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare, and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. The War in Ukraine Is Not a Stalemate Last Year’s Counteroffensive Failed—but the West Can Prevent a Russian Victory This Year Jack Watling Russian President Vladimir Putin shaking hands with French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Moscow, March 2017 Russia’s War on Woke Putin Is Trying to Unite the Far Right and Undermine the West Mikhail Zygar Can Republicans Find Consensus on Foreign Policy? The GOP Must Reconcile Its New Populism and Old Internationalism By Gerald F. Seib January 9, 2024 Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaking at a campaign rally in Reno, Nevada, December 2023 Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaking at a campaign rally in Reno, Nevada, December 2023 Carlos Barria / Reuters Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/can-republicans-find-consensus-foreign-policy Request Reprint Permissions Download Article The current wars between Russia and Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas have sharpened some startling new global realities. China and Russia’s friendship has deepened. The profiles of Iran and North Korea as regional troublemakers and weapons exporters are rising. The world’s great powers are competing for influence in the global South. And in the United States, a long-simmering conflict between nationalism and internationalism within the Republican Party has reached a boil. This is the most consequential moment for Republican foreign policy since 1952, when Dwight Eisenhower defeated his isolationist challengers to secure the party’s presidential nomination. Eisenhower would make an active U.S. role in global affairs a central tenet of Republicanism. In later years, a consensus formed around President Ronald Reagan’s muscular internationalism, advocacy of free trade, and belief in the virtues of immigration. But for much of the last decade, those principles have been giving way to an “America first” populism that is critical of globalization and inclined to pull back from the world. Former President Donald Trump, again a leading presidential candidate, has driven skepticism of international engagement into the heart of the party. These ideas will not simply melt away should Trump lose this year’s election, but they also do not yet represent a new consensus. As Republican politicians spar over foreign policy in the coming months, the key question is whether they can blend elements of Reagan-era internationalism and Trump-era “America first” impulses into a coherent strategy and view of the world. The clash between these two strands of foreign policy thinking is playing out most clearly in Congress, where aid to Ukraine has become a topic of fierce debate. Although Republican leaders in the Senate continue to support military assistance in principle, in December they conditioned additional funds for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan on concessions from Democrats on immigration policy, effectively stalling passage of a new aid package. Many of their counterparts in the House, meanwhile, oppose further funding for Ukraine. In September, 104 House Republicans voted to strip military aid for Ukraine from a spending bill. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. But the Republican foreign policy drift is not limited to Ukraine, and it is not happening only in Congress. In an August interview on Fox Business News, Trump proposed a ten percent tariff on “everybody” who exports products to the United States—and a steeper one on countries that impose higher tariffs themselves. That position is a decisive move away from Republican orthodoxy under Reagan, who once declared that “[U.S.] trade policy rests firmly on the foundation of free and open markets.” Other Republican hopefuls are following Trump’s lead. One of Trump’s challengers for the Republican presidential nomination, Vivek Ramaswamy, has thrust himself into the vanguard of a new, less interventionist Republican foreign policy and has adopted elements of Trump’s “America first” approach. Ramaswamy has insisted that the United States defend Taiwan only as long as American industries are dependent on the island’s semiconductor industry. Like many other Republicans, he has questioned the logic of Washington’s support for Kyiv and decried “the useful idiots who preach a no-win war in Ukraine.” Still, many of the Republican Party’s leading foreign policy thinkers—its national security establishment—believe that an amalgam of the party’s current, conflicting impulses is both necessary and possible. In conversations I have had with members of this group, including past national security advisers and former secretaries of state and defense, most argued that common ground exists and that rank-and-file Republicans are less inclined to neo-isolationism than some of their leaders’ public statements suggest. Former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, told me that support for the policies of “appeasement” and “even isolationism” are rising within the party, but he insisted that such views, loud as they may be, “are not in the majority.” Stephen Hadley, who served as national security adviser under President George W. Bush, contended that Republicans’ competing ideas “can be squared, and there can be a dialogue between the wings” of the party. Similarly, Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, argued that although there is “strong tension” between the Reagan and Trump approaches, “to the extent that there’s a synthesis to be had, Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy, taking into account changed circumstances and changed times, is what most Republicans would follow and subscribe to.” Achieving this synthesis requires consensus on a set of core issues. The formula that emerged from my conversations includes a more hardheaded view of China and a steady commitment to helping Taiwan defend itself, a strategy and a defense budget designed to meet the new Chinese-Russian axis, free-trade arrangements that exclude Beijing, a clear recognition of the economic benefits of legal immigration, and requests for greater burden sharing by U.S. allies. For this new Republican foreign policy consensus to be politically viable, the party must make a persuasive case that the United States needs to maintain an active role in the world. Republicans must consistently explain to voters the economic and security benefits that Americans reap from engagement—a rhetorical shift whose execution will require leadership and courage within the party. THE AGE OF INTERNATIONALISM Tensions among Republicans over U.S. international commitments are hardly new. In 1941, when President Franklin Roosevelt pushed the Lend-Lease Act through Congress to provide military supplies to the United Kingdom during World War II, a majority of Republican lawmakers opposed the move. Republicans rallied around Roosevelt and his successor, President Harry Truman, after the United States entered the war, but the party’s isolationist wing began to reassert itself once the hostilities were over. When the Senate voted on the United States’ entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949, Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, a party elder and a long-standing skeptic of foreign entanglements, voted against ratification along with ten other Republican senators. Skeptics of international engagement remained a powerful force in the party and might have become dominant were it not for one man: Eisenhower. By the 1952 presidential campaign, Eisenhower was, by dint of his success as the supreme Allied commander in World War II, both an avowed internationalist and a hot political property. He succumbed to pressure to enter the race—and chose to run as a Republican. In the book Eisenhower 1956, the historian David Nichols asserts that “a major reason Ike had decided to run for president was to defeat the isolationist wing of the Republican Party.” The Republican primary became a struggle between Eisenhower and Taft, the leader of the isolationist forces. When Eisenhower prevailed, the Republican Party platform at the nominating convention unapologetically declared the United States’ intent to be an engaged global leader. It pledged support for the United Nations and free trade, vowed to roll back the Soviet Union, and promised that the United States would “become again the dynamic, moral and spiritual force which was the despair of despots and the hope of the oppressed.” Similar thinking guided the Republican mainstream for more than six decades. The party’s subsequent leaders included President Richard Nixon, the ultimate internationalist and the engineer of the United States’ opening to China, and Reagan, whose anticommunist impulses translated into vigorous engagement with allies and action against perceived Soviet proxies around the globe. Moreover, Reagan held and often articulated a view of the United States as a model of freedom and democracy—a “shining city upon a hill”—that should both spread its gospel and welcome immigrants who could enrich the American experience. International engagement served important Republican constituencies, too. Establishing relations with China was hugely beneficial to the party’s business wing, which gained both a giant export market and a source of components and manufactured goods. Economic globalization also opened markets, including China’s, for American farmers in the Republican-dominated states of the Midwest. Voters who held strong anticommunist feelings saw the party’s aggressive stance toward the Soviet Union—and support for anticommunists across Central America and Africa—as both a moral imperative and a strategic necessity. THE RISE OF “AMERICA FIRST” By the 1990s, however, support for internationalism began to erode. When the communist and Soviet threats dissipated, so did the glue that held Republicans together on national security matters. China’s entry into the World Trade Organization—which leaders of both parties backed—caused the U.S. manufacturing base to shrink and American manufacturing jobs to disappear. In his presidential campaigns of 1992 and 1996, the longtime Republican political adviser and commentator Patrick Buchanan questioned the virtues of engagement and advanced his own version of “America first” trade and immigration barriers. Still, the desire for a muscular U.S. presence in the world remained. In an example of the prevailing ideas of the time, then Nebraska Senator (and later Defense Secretary) Chuck Hagel wrote an essay in Foreign Affairs in 2004 outlining the pillars of a Republican foreign policy. His list included supporting alliances, expanding free trade, backing the diplomatic corps, promoting democratic reform in the Middle East, deepening relations with China, and strengthening energy security. With the exception of energy security, Republicans have shifted away from all those tenets in the years since. In particular, fatigue over long and unsatisfying wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—both initiated by a Republican president—turned nation building and democracy promotion from principled aspirations to dubious propositions. Thus was a door opened for Trump. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo,” he declared in 2016, on accepting the Republican presidential nomination. Trump openly questioned the value of the United States’ alliances, even suggesting that Washington would not honor its treaty commitment to defend its NATO partners if they were attacked. At a NATO summit in Brussels in 2018, he nearly withdrew the United States from the alliance but was dissuaded at the last minute by his chief of staff, John Kelly. Trump sought to build a physical wall along the United States’ southern border and a virtual wall around its economy, introducing tariffs and trade restrictions that targeted friends and foes alike. Trump and his party’s lingering skepticism of foreign engagement is obvious. In a video released last year, Trump said that, if reelected, he would “clean house of all of the war-mongers” in the Pentagon and State Department. A notable exception to this general attitude, however, is the Republican Party’s strong support for Israel in its fight against Hamas, driven in part by the deep bond that many in the party’s large evangelical Christian wing feel toward the Jewish state. Even as they declined to pass military aid for Ukraine in late 2023, House Republicans overwhelmingly approved aid for Israel—although, in a break with tradition, they insisted on budget cuts elsewhere to fund the assistance. Trump, after initially criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following Hamas’s October 7 attack and calling the leaders of Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported militant group based in Lebanon, “very smart,” soon changed his tune. “I will defend our friend and ally the state of Israel like nobody has ever defended,” Trump told Jewish donors in late October. A NEW PLAYBOOK It is not clear to what extent Republican lawmakers shape their foreign policy positions in direct response to Trump. Populist impulses might fade if he were no longer dominating the party, but they could also now be baked into Republican thinking. There is no way to know for sure as long as Trump remains in the picture. Even so, the party’s most experienced leaders believe it is possible to temper populist attitudes and prevent a more substantial drift toward isolationism. The first task is to convince Republican voters—and by extension all Americans—that international engagement is not merely an altruistic idea but a strategy with tangible benefits. “We need to adopt the Reagan philosophy that says the world depends on America, and that’s a good thing,” Mike Pompeo told me. Pompeo, who served as secretary of state under Trump, argued that the U.S. dollar dominates global finance as “a direct result of American leadership” and is by itself “sufficient justification for America to lead.” Moreover, he asserted, to sell an active role in the world to the public, political leaders must articulate clear goals for U.S. policies—the kinds of objectives that “can be communicated to the American people in a way that, whether they’re sitting in Arizona, Alabama, or Vermont, they can say, ‘I get that.’” A new foreign policy consensus must also grapple with the consequences of the emerging Chinese-Russian axis. “We’re in a new era of foreign policy,” said John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser. “The post–Cold War era is over, and I think it ended with Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow [in 2023].” That trip helped crystallize an emerging, if still loose, alignment among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia, all operating in opposition to the United States. In this changed global equation, U.S. alliances become more important, not less. But getting allies to contribute more to the collective defense of the West and of democratic systems—and advertising to voters the extent of allies’ actual contributions—is also essential to retaining public support for overseas missions and to refuting isolationist arguments. Updating the Republican formula also means recognizing the biggest change of the last two decades: China is not what Reagan-era Republicans hoped it would become. Former Secretary of State James Baker, who served under Reagan and his successor, President George H. W. Bush, was blunt about the effects of incorporating China into the world economy, including its membership in the World Trade Organization. “We thought it would ameliorate their behavior,” Baker told me. “And we were totally wrong.” A new approach need not eschew engagement with Beijing in all areas, but it does have to be hard-nosed in challenging Chinese aggression. “We need to stand up to them and stop letting them take advantage of us,” Baker argued. “And remember that peace through strength is the way to get there. That means minding your defense budget.” “America first” populism is critical of globalization and inclined to pull back from the world. The new wariness of China calls for a renewed commitment to Taiwan. There is already broad support for continuing to help Taiwan build its own defenses. Beyond such aid, there is some disagreement on how best to avoid conflict. Baker advised that Republicans stick with “strategic ambiguity” regarding Taiwan. That strategy, which has guided U.S. policy for years, entails avoiding a flat declaration of how the United States would respond if China were to attack Taiwan. An open security guarantee, the theory goes, could embolden Taiwan to be more provocative, and declining to protect Taiwan could encourage a Chinese takeover. Cotton, meanwhile, argued that Washington should end the ambiguity and make clear to Beijing that the United States would not stand by if China were to take military action: “I think, as usual, the simplest way to deter conflict is to be absolutely clear about our commitment should conflict occur.” On economics, reaching a new consensus should not require abandoning the free-trade principles that have long been a hallmark of Republican foreign policy. But those principles do need refreshing. Primarily, Republican policymakers should seek to work around China by crafting bilateral or regional trade agreements with partners also wary of Chinese economic coercion. Cotton pointed out that even Reagan was not the free-trade absolutist that many remember him to be. “Reagan slapped a bunch of tariffs and quotas on things like automobiles, motorcycles, electronics, and steel to protect American jobs and to protect production and vital American industries,” Cotton noted. Only after Reagan’s term did Republican trade policies turn more toward economic libertarianism—which means there is space to revive certain protective policies without rejecting free trade entirely. Immigration poses a particular challenge for Republican internationalists. Long before Trump, the sunny Reagan-era view of the economic benefits that immigrants bring to the United States was becoming difficult to sustain as the number of undocumented immigrants in the country more than doubled in the 1990s. But even as views of immigration have hardened, there is precedent for Republican leaders offering solutions. Under both Reagan and George W. Bush, Republicans proposed comprehensive reforms to secure the United States’ southern border and discourage employers from hiring undocumented immigrants while also updating and even expanding legal avenues for immigrants to enter the American workforce. But the border security element of the Reagan-era policy was never really implemented, and Bush was unable to get his party behind his administration’s plan. Today, with immigration policy snared in crisis, renewing efforts to overhaul the system is the best—and perhaps the only—way forward. A politically feasible reform effort would likely need to include a combination of tough border security and a more sensible system of legal immigration that addresses workplace needs. THE CHALLENGES AHEAD The real crucible for internationalist Republicans may be the debate over sustaining aid to Ukraine. Some Republicans made their opposition to additional funding clear when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Congress in September. Kansas Senator Roger Marshall released a statement saying he would not support sending “another cent” to help Ukraine fight off Russia’s invasion—and he skipped the meeting with Zelensky, remarking, “My priority is securing our American homeland, not sitting through another charade.” Republican leaders must contend with war fatigue among their voters, too. A Wall Street Journal poll in August found that 65 percent of self-identified Republicans agreed with the idea that the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine. Just 12 percent of Democrats thought the same. “There are a lot narratives out in social media and cable that average Americans are listening to that feed this notion that [supporting Ukraine] is a waste of money, that it risks war with Russia, and I don’t think the Republican leadership does a very good job of countering those narratives,” asserted Robert Gates, who was deputy national security adviser under President George H. W. Bush and later served as head of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon. But Gates also sees a sufficient reservoir of support for Kyiv within Republican ranks. Although “the ones who are the most radical get the most attention,” he said, “there still are a lot of House Republicans who believe in American international leadership” on Ukraine. Making the case to Republican voters is possible. The conservative commentator Marc Thiessen has laid out perhaps the most comprehensive “America first” argument for supporting Ukraine, writing in The Washington Post that helping Ukraine will, among other things, deter China from aggressive action, deter the United States’ enemies from threatening the West, and restore the Reagan Doctrine of fighting foreign aggressors not by deploying the U.S. military but by assisting like-minded forces far from American shores. Republican leaders must contend with war fatigue among their voters. But even if persuasive arguments blending the Republican Party’s nationalism and internationalism can be made, it is not clear who can act as their public champion. Many of the party elders who normally would constitute the GOP national security establishment walked away or were pushed away during Trump’s presidency, and they remain on the peripheries as the 2024 presidential campaign begins. And it is not just senior figures who are in a diminished position. “The Trump era created a gap in experience for a younger generation of Republican policymakers who were unwilling to work in his administration,” said Robert Zoellick, a former deputy secretary of state and U.S. trade representative. Many foreign policy specialists with an internationalist bent fall into this category, and many missed the usual tour inside the government that would have burnished their credentials and set them up for higher-ranking positions today. That leaves Republican congressional leaders and the crop of presidential candidates. So far, the primary campaign has done more to sow confusion than to create clarity about where the party is headed on foreign policy. Trump has questioned U.S. support for Ukraine, and Ramaswamy has echoed Trump’s nationalist views. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, long considered Trump’s main rival in the field, has straddled the nationalist and internationalist positions on Ukraine and trade. Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, meanwhile, have made forceful cases for international engagement more or less in the Reagan mold. There is no assurance that Republicans will coalesce around a new approach—and the outcome of the debate depends heavily on who emerges as the party’s leader in 2024. If Trump is reelected president, the party may be in for what the analyst Walter Russell Mead has called a “Trumpier” second term in foreign policy, with less fealty to traditional alliances and international organizations and diminished concern for climate issues. But if Haley were to win the Republican primary, for example, a far different path for the party would open up. A loss to President Joe Biden could also lead to a broad reexamination of Trump’s “America first” impulses. Then comes the challenge of putting the pieces together. As a starting point for a new Republican internationalism that includes engaging with allies and standing up to despots abroad, Bolton suggested starting with the most basic of Reagan’s tenets. “I think we know what the formula is,” Bolton said. “It’s peace through strength.” GERALD F. SEIB is former Executive Washington Editor and “Capital Journal” columnist at The Wall Street Journal. He is currently a Senior Mentor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. How Israel Could Lose America Netanyahu Risks Letting the War in Gaza Jeopardize an Essential Alliance Shalom Lipner The Self-Doubting Superpower America Shouldn’t Give Up on the World It Made Fareed Zakaria Pakistan Finds a New Scapegoat How Islamabad’s Expulsions of Afghans Could Backfire—and Help the Taliban By Aqil Shah January 9, 2024 Children at a camp for Afghan refugees in Nowshera, Pakistan, November 2023 Children at a camp for Afghan refugees in Nowshera, Pakistan, November 2023 Fayaz Aziz / Reuters Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/pakistan/pakistan-finds-new-scapegoat Get Citation Request Reprint Permissions Download Article The Pakistani state is notoriously lackadaisical in its habits of governance, but it has acted with surprising vigor in recent months. In October, the country’s military-backed caretaker government announced that all “illegal foreigners”—a thinly disguised reference to millions of Afghan refugees who reside in Pakistan—were to leave the country by November 1 or face arrest and expulsion. In theory, not every Afghan refugee will be affected, at least for now: one million Afghans have renewable permits that allow them to stay in the country, while an estimated 800,000 hold so-called Afghan Citizen Cards that grant them the temporary right to stay but not the full protections due to refugees under international law. Yet an estimated 1.7 million Afghans lack the documentation needed even for temporary residence. This group, which includes over half a million people who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban recaptured power in August 2021, is now in the cross hairs of Pakistani authorities. Since the passing of the November deadline, local authorities and police have initiated an unprecedented countrywide crackdown. They have harassed, illegally detained, and abused Afghans, including those with legal documents and proof of registration, and they have seized and destroyed property. This relentless campaign has forced thousands of Afghan refugees to go underground. Hounded and fearing for their safety, an estimated 450,000 Afghans have already returned to Afghanistan and the uncertain fates that await them in the country they wanted to escape. This clampdown has very little to do with illegal migration or the strains of hosting a large body of refugees. Instead, it reflects a growing dispute between Islamabad and the regime in Kabul. Since 2021, Pakistan has endured a surge of attacks by the Tehrik-e-Taliban, also known as the Pakistani Taliban or the TTP. This Islamist militant group, distinct from but connected to the Afghan Taliban, has for over 15 years been striking Pakistani targets, using safe havens inside Afghanistan, especially since 2021. Pakistan has tried in vain to get the Afghan Taliban, its erstwhile allies, to rein in the TTP. But the Taliban have not fully cooperated, wanting Pakistan to negotiate with the TTP and heed the group’s demands. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. In truth, the terrorism threat Pakistan faces is one of its own making—a result of its ill-considered decision to support the Afghan Taliban even as its own forces were embroiled in battles with the Taliban’s Pakistani variant. Frustrated, Islamabad is now evicting Afghans to deepen the humanitarian crisis across the border and put pressure on Kabul. But this policy may rebound on the Pakistani government, succeeding only in causing further chaos—all while turning human beings into a political football to be flung across the border. COLD WELCOME Many Afghans fled to Pakistan (and Iran) when the Soviets invaded their country in 1979. Many others sought refuge in the country when the Taliban first came to power in the 1990s. The most recent wave came after the Taliban returned to power in 2021. Although Afghan refugees were welcomed in Pakistan initially, public attitudes toward them have soured over time, particularly in urban centers such as Karachi, the country’s largest metropolis, where their concentration evokes unfounded economic anxiety and fears of cultural replacement. Tense bilateral relations, the widespread belief that Afghans should be eternally grateful for Pakistan’s generosity, and stereotypes that cast refugees as uncivilized criminals, “terrorists,” “smugglers,” and “drug traffickers” spark suspicion, hostility, and discrimination toward them in everyday life. Many of the Afghans who were evicted from Pakistan at the end of 2023 had never been to Afghanistan; they were born and raised in the country that gave their families shelter from the chaos across the border. Pakistani officials have defended the expulsions as the routine application of Pakistan’s laws without specifying which of the country’s statutes requires the sudden deportation of over a million refugees and migrants. Senior cabinet members have justified the measures with unsubstantiated allegations that Afghans are involved in terrorism inside Pakistan. To be sure, since the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul in 2021, the country has seen a dramatic surge in terror attacks by the TTP. Official Pakistani estimates claim a 60 percent rise in such attacks since August 2021, resulting in over 2,200 casualties. But little evidence links those attacks to the refugee communities within the country. Instead, and unfortunately for them, Afghan refugees are caught between two sparring governments. Pakistan has accused the Taliban regime in Afghanistan of sheltering the TTP, an accusation which the Taliban strongly, albeit implausibly, deny. Vexed by Kabul’s inaction, and unable to stanch the TTP’s attacks, Pakistan has found both a pawn and a scapegoat for its own failures in the supposedly illegal Afghans residing within its borders. It is, therefore, deporting them. “After noncooperation by the Afghan interim government, Pakistan has decided to take matters into its own hands, and Pakistan’s recent actions are neither unexpected nor surprising,” said Anwar ul-Haq Kakar, Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, in reference to the eviction of refugees in November. Days later, Pakistan’s special representative to Afghanistan, Asif Durrani, took it further by issuing an ultimatum to Kabul in an interview: “Choose Pakistan or the TTP.” The Pakistani state has deep-rooted suspicions of ethnic groups living in the areas adjacent to Afghanistan, especially the Pashtuns. Split into two by a colonial-era border known as the Durand Line, Pashtuns are a sizable minority in Pakistan (more than 18 percent of the total population) but form a majority in Afghanistan and have ruled the country for most of its history. After Pakistan won independence in 1947, Afghanistan refused to recognize the border and opposed Pakistan’s entry to the United Nations. This border contestation, mixed with Islamabad’s fears of Kabul backing Pashtun nationalist causes within Pakistan, has long undermined the trust between the two countries. Ironically, even the Afghan Taliban—a group that has historically had strong ties with Pakistan’s military establishment—do not recognize the border. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the loosely administered districts on the Pakistani side of the boundary became a safe haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda. The porous border areas remain a flash point over two decades later. BITTER HARVEST When the Taliban swept into Kabul in 2021, Pakistani civilian and military leaders celebrated the return to power of their longtime ally. A Taliban government represented a victory for Pakistan’s policy of establishing “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, denying its rival India a foothold in the country. But the jubilation in Islamabad was short-lived. The Taliban triumph in Afghanistan inspired and revitalized the TTP, a militant group that was founded with the promise of overthrowing the supposedly “infidel” state of Pakistan. Formed in 2007, the group launched a sustained terror campaign in 2009 that left thousands of civilians and security personnel dead. Five years later, an atrocious attack on an army-run school in Peshawar killed over 130 people, mostly children. Outraged, the Pakistani public backed the military’s retaliatory offensive against the TTP, a campaign that succeeded in dismantling its base of operations in Pakistan and driving many of the group’s leaders into Afghanistan. But in 2021, the victorious Afghan Taliban released thousands of TTP fighters, including senior commanders, who had been imprisoned by the former Afghan government. The TTP has since regrouped and now boasts a cadre of 7,000 to 10,000 seasoned fighters. The terrorism threat Pakistan faces is one of its own making. Under the leadership of Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, the organization now generally refrains from indiscriminately targeting civilians to avoid a wider backlash. It has also forsaken its grandiose aim of overthrowing the Pakistani state and is focused instead on carving out an Islamic emirate along the border with Afghanistan. One of the TTP’s main demands is that Pakistan restore the special autonomous status afforded this area until its absorption into the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018, a move that would allow the group to establish a local version of sharia rule. The group’s resurgence confounded Pakistani military and intelligence officials who had long dismissed the TTP as a proxy of hostile neighbors (mainly Afghanistan and India) and discounted its links to the Afghan Taliban. Although these two groups have separate command and organizational structures, they are bound by Deobandi ideology, shared jihadi aspirations, and history. TTP fighters aided the Afghan Taliban’s insurgency against the forces of the U.S.-led coalition and the former Afghan government. With these ties in mind, the Afghan Taliban have not yielded to sustained pressure from Pakistani authorities, including airstrikes on suspected TTP hideouts in Afghanistan’s Khost and Kunar Provinces in April 2022 that killed 40 civilians and prompted a strong rebuke from Kabul. For their part, Pakistani officials claim that they have shared actionable intelligence with Kabul regarding the TTP’s bases and hideouts inside Afghanistan and expect the Taliban regime to move against the militants. Although Pakistan has reason to be angry with its Afghan Taliban allies, the country’s terror problem is the direct result of its military’s decision to differentiate between the “good” Afghan Taliban and the “bad” Pakistani Taliban, overlooking their inextricable connections. The policy aimed to secure strategic depth in Pakistan’s western neighbor, but it has demonstrably failed. The TTP ’s access to safe havens in Afghanistan ties the military’s hands, as does Pakistan’s acute economic crisis, the lack of the same public backing that helped legitimize the 2014 offensive against the TTP, and the absence of American political and financial support that Pakistan enjoyed in the years following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. LITTLE LEVERAGE The confrontation between Afghanistan and Pakistan—and the resulting deportations—will have serious repercussions. The influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees will only exacerbate an already dire humanitarian situation. The Afghan economy is reeling under U.S. sanctions and a severe multiyear drought. The health system and other essential services have collapsed, and more than half of all Afghans live below the poverty line amid acute levels of food insecurity. Many deportees could also suffer gross rights violations by the Taliban regime, including arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture. Afghan women and girls face a particularly dire future since the Taliban have banned female education beyond secondary school. This manufactured crisis has no doubt irked the Afghan Taliban. The group cannot afford to completely alienate Pakistan, which provides the landlocked country’s primary transit route, serves as its largest export market, and has acted as its principal diplomatic emissary to the world. Presumably under Pakistani pressure, the Taliban hosted several rounds of talks between the Pakistani government and the TTP in Kabul during 2021 and 2022, which led to a temporary cease-fire but were ultimately inconclusive. The Taliban regime has also relocated some TTP fighters away from the Pakistani border and arrested those who were involved in an attack on a Pakistani border post in September. But the Afghan Taliban are no longer an insurgent group dependent on Pakistani safe havens and Islamabad’s goodwill. To reduce Islamabad’s economic influence, Taliban leaders are courting Iran for trade and investment opportunities, including access to the more cost-efficient Iranian port of Chabahar. They have greater leverage now over their former partners, and so they can pivot between appeasement and indignation—even when faced with punishment. Kabul insists that it is not to blame for the TTP’s violence and has accused Islamabad of trying to deflect attention from Pakistan’s incompetent handling of its own internal security problems. Acting Taliban Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid warned that “Pakistan should weigh the consequences of everything it does and sow as much as it can reap.” Pakistan seems unlikely to reverse its expulsion policy unless the Taliban regime can credibly address its demands, mainly by denying sanctuary to the TTP. But the Afghan Taliban are in no rush to alienate their comrades-in-arms to placate Islamabad. Pakistan callously embroiled Afghan refugees in a diplomatic dispute without any regard to their suffering or safety. The policy may yet have the unintended consequence of drawing the two Taliban allies closer and, even worse, incentivize the Afghan Taliban to actively encourage TTP violence. Pakistan can choke Afghanistan’s transit trade and strike across the border. But such acts will only fuel tensions and most likely fail to convince the Taliban to fully abandon the TTP. There seems to be no resolution in sight to a crisis that has uprooted so many refugees yet again. AQIL SHAH is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is the author of The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan. Pakistan’s Military Still Runs the Show Why Imran Khan’s Revolt Sputtered Aqil Shah At Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, November 2023 The Virtues of Restraint Why the Use of Force Is Rarely a Sufficient Response to Terrorism Shivshankar Menon China’s Game in Gaza How Beijing Is Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South By Mark Leonard January 8, 2024 Palestinians inspecting the site of an Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, December 2023 Sami Abu Tabak / Reuters Over the past year, as Western diplomats shuttled frantically from one end of the world to the other in their struggle to contain an ever-growing succession of wars, crises, and other calamities—from Ukraine to Darfur to Nagorno-Karabakh to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—China leaned in to the disorder. Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip have presented Beijing with yet another crisis to exploit. While the United States discredits itself with the countries of the global South through its seemingly unqualified support for Israel, Beijing has carefully calibrated its response to China’s Game in Gaza How Beijing Is Exploiting Israel’s War to Win Over the Global South By Mark Leonard January 8, 2024 Palestinians inspecting the site of an Israeli strike in Rafah, Gaza Strip, December 2023 Sami Abu Tabak / Reuters Over the past year, as Western diplomats shuttled frantically from one end of the world to the other in their struggle to contain an ever-growing succession of wars, crises, and other calamities—from Ukraine to Darfur to Nagorno-Karabakh to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—China leaned in to the disorder. Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip have presented Beijing with yet another crisis to exploit. While the United States discredits itself with the countries of the global South through its seemingly unqualified support for Israel, Beijing has carefully calibrated its response to Putin’s Unsustainable Spending Spree How the War in Ukraine Will Overheat the Russian Economy By Alexandra Prokopenko January 8, 2024 Russian President Vladimir Putin at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, June 2023 Murad Bagandov / Reuters After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, its economy seemed certain to suffer as a coalition of Ukraine’s allies, led by the United States, imposed an unprecedented program of sanctions. Many figures, including U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and EU Sanctions Envoy David O’Sullivan, predicted that these would force Russian President Vladimir Putin to choose between the war and a struggling economy. But Russia’s economy has defied these predictions. Thanks to record state spending, the Russian economy will grow faster than the global economy in 2023. Whereas the latter is forecast by the IMF to grow by three percent, The Ukraine-Taiwan Tradeoff U.S. Support for Ukraine Diverts Weapons From Taiwan but Demonstrates Resolve to China By Michael Poznansky January 5, 2024 A Ukrainian soldier covering his ear amid artillery fire in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, December 2023 Inna Varenytsia / Reuters One of the chief justifications for sending military aid to Ukraine turns on deterrence. Proponents of Western support contend that it is essential for showcasing resolve. The United States and its allies, the argument runs, need to demonstrate to the world, and especially to Chinese President Xi Jinping, that they are willing to put muscle and resources behind efforts to combat unchecked aggression. But a growing chorus of voices argue that continued support to Ukraine is detracting from the real threat—namely, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. All this assistance, they claim, is depleting valuable resources needed to deter an