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

FA The Axis of Upheaval How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine Audio available for this article Spy and Tell The Promise and Peril of Disclosing Intelligence for Strategic Advantage David V. Gioe and Michael J. Morell This article is paywall-free British Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer speaking in Bristol, United Kingdom, January 2024 Don’t Bet on a British Revival How the Labour Party Might Win the Election—but Still Lose the Economy Matthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth This article is paywall-free War Unbound Gaza, Ukraine, and the Breakdown of International Law Oona A. 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The Limits of Cooperation Between Israel and the Arab States Dalia Dassa Kaye and Sanam Vakil The Axis of Upheaval How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine Israel’s Forever War The Long History of Managing—Rather Than Solving—the Conflict Tom Segev The Coming Arab Backlash Middle Eastern Regimes—and America—Ignore Public Anger at Their Peril Marc Lynch The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin Audio available for this article This article is paywall-free Iranian demonstrators reacting to the attack on Israel, Tehran, April 2024 How America Can Prevent War Between Iran and Israel Threaten Tehran, Pressure Netanyahu Suzanne Maloney China’s Alternative Order And What America Should Learn From It Elizabeth Economy Leaders of small island states at the White House in Washington, D.C., September 2022 All Powers Great and Small Why Bigger Isn’t Always Better in Geopolitics Shivshankar Menon Audio available for this article A protest in support of Palestinians near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, March 2024 The Coming Arab Backlash Middle Eastern Regimes—and America—Ignore Public Anger at Their Peril Marc Lynch This article is paywall-free French and Ukrainian soldiers training in France, November 2023 Europe—but Not NATO—Should Send Troops to Ukraine To Halt Russia’s Advance, Kyiv Needs More Boots on the Ground Alex Crowther, Jahara Matisek, and Phillips P. 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A Brazen Campaign Against Iranian Targets Could Backfire Dalia Dassa Kaye China Is Still Rising Don’t Underestimate the World’s Second-Biggest Economy Nicholas R. Lardy China Is Still Rising Don’t Underestimate the World’s Second-Biggest Economy By Nicholas R. Lardy April 2, 2024 A worker checking his mobile phone at a construction site in Beijing, January 2024 For over two decades, China’s phenomenal economic performance impressed and alarmed much of the world, including the United States, its top trading partner. But since 2019, China’s sluggish growth has led many observers to conclude that China has already peaked as an economic power. President Joe Biden said as much in his State of the Union address in March: “For years, I’ve heard many of my Republican and Democratic friends say that China is on the rise and America is falling behind. They’ve got it backwards.” Those who doubt that China’s rise will continue point to Don’t Abandon Iraq The Case for a Continued U.S. Military Presence By Mina Al-Oraibi April 12, 2024 Iraqi soldiers at a military parade in Baghdad, January 2024 Most Iraqi prime ministers serving in the past two decades have at some point asked the U.S. military to leave their country. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari made the first public call for a U.S. withdrawal in 2005, followed by Nouri al-Maliki in 2008, Adel Abdul-Mahdi in 2020, and Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, the current incumbent, in December 2023. For much of this period, these requests have originated with the Iranian-backed Islamist militia groups operating in Iraq, which have pushed the country’s political leaders to demand a drawdown of U.S. forces. Bilateral negotiations over the past 15 years or so have dramatically reduced China’s Alternative Order And What America Should Learn From It By Elizabeth Economy May/June 2024 Published on April 23, 2024 By now, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambition to remake the world is undeniable. He wants to dissolve Washington’s network of alliances and purge what he dismisses as “Western” values from international bodies. He wants to knock the U.S. dollar off its pedestal and eliminate Washington’s chokehold over critical technology. In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology. China will no longer have to fight for leadership. Its centrality will be guaranteed. To hear Xi REVIEW ESSAY All Powers Great and Small Why Bigger Isn’t Always Better in Geopolitics By Shivshankar Menon May/June 2024 Published on April 23, 2024 The borders that carve the world into today’s states may seem indelible, but expand the time frame, and the lines become much more fluid. It is hard to find an international boundary today that has not shifted in the last two centuries. States are born and disappear; great powers swell, shrink, and vanish. In 1910, roughly 80 percent of the planet belonged to just a handful of European empires—and much of the rest lay in the possession of the Ottoman and Qing dynasties. But world wars and decolonization saw the rise of many new and often quite small nation-states. The Superstates: Empires of the Twenty-First Century By Alasdair Roberts Polity, 2023, 244 pp. Why the Military Can’t Trust AI Large Language Models Can Make Bad Decisions—and Could Trigger Nuclear War By Max Lamparth and Jacquelyn Schneider April 29, 2024 Demonstrating an AI-enabled surveillance system in London, September 2023 Demonstrating an AI-enabled surveillance system in London, September 2023 John Keeble / Getty Images In 2022, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT, a chatbot that uses large language models to mimic human conversations and to answer users’ questions. The chatbot’s extraordinary abilities sparked a debate about how LLMs might be used to perform other tasks—including fighting a war. Although for some, including the Global Legal Action Network, LLMs and other generative AI technologies hold the promise of more discriminate and therefore ethical uses of force, others, such as advisers from the International Committee of the Red Cross, have warned that these technologies could remove human decision-making from the most vital questions of life and death. The U.S. Department of Defense is now seriously investigating what LLMs can do for the military. In the spring of 2022, the DOD established the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office to explore how artificial intelligence can help the armed forces. In November 2023, the Defense Department released its strategy for adopting AI technologies. It optimistically reported that “the latest advancements in data, analytics, and AI technologies enable leaders to make better decisions faster, from the boardroom to the battlefield.” Accordingly, AI-enabled technologies are now being used. U.S. troops, for example, have had AI-enabled systems select Houthi targets in the Middle East. Both the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force are experimenting with LLMs, using them for war games, military planning, and basic administrative tasks. Palantir, a company that develops information technology for the DOD, has created a product that uses LLMs to manage military operations. Meanwhile, the DOD has formed a new task force to explore the use of generative AI, including LLMs, within the U.S. military. But despite the enthusiasm for AI and LLMs within the Pentagon, its leadership is worried about the risk that the technologies pose. Hackathons sponsored by the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office have identified biases and hallucinations in LLM applications, and recently, the U.S. Navy published guidance limiting the use of LLMs, citing security vulnerabilities and the inadvertent release of sensitive information. Our research shows that such concerns are justified. LLMs can be useful, but their actions are also difficult to predict, and they can make dangerous, escalatory calls. The military must therefore place limits on these technologies when they are used to make high-stakes decisions, particularly in combat situations. LLMs have plenty of uses within the DOD, but it is dangerous to outsource high-stakes choices to machines. TRAINING TROUBLES LLMs are AI systems trained on large collections of data that generate text, one word at a time, based on what has been written before. They are created in a two-step process. The first is pretraining, when the LLM is taught from scratch to abstract and reproduce underlying patterns found in an enormous data set. To do so, it has to learn a vast amount about subjects including grammar, factual associations, sentiment analysis, and language translation. LLMs develop most of their skills during pretraining—but success depends on the quality, size, and variety of the data they consume. So much text is needed that it is practically impossible for an LLM to be taught solely on vetted high-quality data. This means accepting lower quality data, too. For the armed forces, an LLM cannot be trained on military data alone; it still needs more generic forms of information, including recipes, romance novels, and the day-to-day digital exchanges that populate the Internet. But pretraining is not enough to build a useful chatbot—or a defense command-and-control assistant. This is because, during this first stage, the LLM adopts many different writing styles and personalities, not all of which are appropriate for its task. After pretraining, the LLM may also lack necessary specific knowledge, such as the jargon required to answer questions about military plans. That is why LLMs then need fine-tuning on smaller, more specific data sets. This second step improves the LLM’s ability to interface with a user by learning how to be a conversational partner and assistant. There are different approaches for fine-tuning, but it is often done by incorporating information from online support forums, as well as human feedback, to ensure LLM outputs are more aligned with human preferences and behavior. LLMs can be useful, but their actions are also difficult to predict. This process needs to balance the original LLM’s pretraining with more nuanced human considerations, including whether the responses are helpful or harmful. Striking this balance is tricky. For example, a chatbot that always complies with user requests—such as advising on how to build a bomb—is not harmless, but if it refuses most user queries, then it is not helpful. Designers must find a way to compress abstracts, including behavioral norms and ethics, into metrics for fine-tuning. To do this, researchers start with a data set annotated by humans who compare LLM-generated examples directly and choose which is preferable. Another language model, the preference model, is separately trained on human ratings of LLM-generated examples to assign any given text an absolute score on its use for humans. The preference model is then used to enable the fine-tuning of the original LLM. This approach has its limitations. What is preferable depends on whom you ask, and how well the model deals with conflicting preferences. There is, moreover, little control over which underlying rules are learned by the LLM during fine-tuning. This is because neither the LLM nor the preference model for fine-tuning directly “learns” a subject. Rather, they can be trained only by being shown examples of desired behavior in action, with humans hoping that the underlying rules are sufficiently internalized. But there is no guarantee that this will happen. Techniques do exist, however, to mitigate some of these problems. For example, to try to overcome limitations from small, expensive human-labeled data sets, preference data sets can be expanded using an LLM to generate AI-labeled preference data. Newer approaches even use a constitution of rules drawn up by LLM designers for appropriate behaviors—such as responses to racism—to potentially give the model’s trainers some control over which rules get abstracted into the preference metric used for fine-tuning. Pretraining and fine-tuning can create capable LLMs, but the process still falls short of creating direct substitutes for human decision-making. This is because an LLM, no matter how well tuned or trained, can favor only certain behaviors. It can neither abstract nor reason like a human. Humans interact in environments, learn concepts, and communicate them using language. LLMs, however, can only mimic language and reasoning by abstracting correlations and concepts from data. LLMs may often correctly mimic human communication, but without the ability to internalize, and given the enormous size of the model, there is no guarantee that their choices will be safe or ethical. It is, therefore, not possible to reliably predict what an LLM will do when making high-stakes decisions. A RISKY PLAYER LLMs could perform military tasks that require processing vast amounts of data in very short timelines, which means that militaries may wish to use them to augment decision-making or to streamline bureaucratic functions. LLMs, for example, hold great promise for military planning, command, and intelligence. They could automate much of scenario planning, war gaming, budgeting, and training. They could also be used to synthesize intelligence, enhance threat forecasting, and generate targeting recommendations. During war or a crisis, LLMs could use existing guidance to come up with orders, even when there is limited or minimal communication between units and their commanders. Perhaps most important for the day-to-day operations of militaries, LLMs may be able to automate otherwise arduous military tasks including travel, logistics, and performance evaluations. But even for these tasks, the success of LLMs cannot be guaranteed. Their behavior, especially in rare and unpredictable examples, can be erratic. And because no two LLMs are exactly alike in their training or fine-tuning, they are uniquely influenced by user inputs. Consider, for example, a series of war games we held in which we analyzed how human experts and LLMs played to understand how their decisions differ. The humans did not play against the LLMs. Rather, they played separately in the same roles. The game placed players in the midst of a U.S.-China maritime crisis as a U.S. government task force made decisions about how to use emerging technologies in the face of escalation. Players were given the same background documents and game rules, as well as identical PowerPoint decks, word-based player guides, maps, and details of capabilities. They then deliberated in groups of four to six to generate recommendations. On average, both the human and the LLM teams made similar choices about big-picture strategy and rules of engagement. But, as we changed the information the LLM received, or swapped between which LLM we used, we saw significant deviations from human behavior. For example, one LLM we tested tried to avoid friendly casualties or collisions by opening fire on enemy combatants and turning a cold war hot, reasoning that using preemptive violence was more likely to prevent a bad outcome to the crisis. Furthermore, whereas the human players’ differences in experience and knowledge affected their play, LLMs were largely unaffected by inputs about experience or demographics. The problem was not that an LLM made worse or better decisions than humans or that it was more likely to “win” the war game. It was, rather, that the LLM came to its decisions in a way that did not convey the complexity of human decision-making. LLM-generated dialogue between players had little disagreement and consisted of short statements of fact. It was a far cry from the in-depth arguments so often a part of human war gaming. In a different research project, we studied how LLMs behaved within simulated war games, specifically focusing on whether they chose to escalate. The study, which compared LLMs from leading Silicon Valley companies such as Anthropic, Meta, and OpenAI, asked each LLM to play the role of a country, with researchers varying the country’s goals. We found that the LLMs behaved differently based on their version, the data on which they were trained, and the choices that their designers made during fine-tuning about their preferences. Despite these differences, we found that all these LLMs chose escalation and exhibited a preference toward arms races, conflict, and even the use of nuclear weapons. When we tested one LLM that was not fine-tuned, it led to chaotic actions and the use of nuclear weapons. The LLM’s stated reasoning: “A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture. We have it! Let’s use it.” DANGEROUS MISUNDERSTANDINGS Despite militaries’ desire to use LLMs and other AI-enabled decision-making tools, there are real limitations and dangers. Above all, those militaries that rely on these technologies to make decisions need a better understanding of how the LLM works and the importance of differences in LLM design and execution. This requires significant user training and an ability to evaluate the underlying logics and data that make an LLM work. The result should be that a military user is just as familiar with an LLM as the user is with the radar, tank, or missile that it enables. This level of training and expertise will be easier to accomplish in peacetime and with advanced militaries, meaning it is the wartime use by militaries already strapped for labor, technology, and weapons where these systems may create the most risk. Militaries must realize that, fundamentally, an LLM’s behavior can never be completely guaranteed, especially when making rare and difficult choices about escalation and war. This fact does not mean the military cannot use LLMs in any way. For example, LLMs could be used to streamline internal processes, such as writing briefing summaries and reports. LLMs can also be used alongside human processes, including war gaming or targeting assessments, as ways to explore alternative scenarios and courses of action—stopping short of delegating decision-making for violence. Finally, dialogue and demonstration, even between adversaries, can help decrease the chance of these technologies leading to dangerous escalation. There have already been encouraging signs that the U.S. military is taking this seriously. In 2023, the DOD released its directive on Autonomy in Weapon Systems. It requires AI systems to be tested and evaluated to ensure that they function as anticipated and adhere to the Pentagon’s AI Ethical Principles and its Responsible AI Strategy. This was an important first step in the safe development and implementation of these technologies. Next, more research is required to understand when and how LLMs can lead to unnecessary harm. And, perhaps more important for the military, the policy is useful only if buyers, fighters, and planners know enough about how an LLM is made to apply its underlying principles. For that to happen, militaries will need to train and fine-tune not just their LLMs but also their staff and their leaders. MAX LAMPARTH is a fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Safety and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Stanford Center for AI Safety. JACQUELYN SCHNEIDER is a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. MORE BY MAX LAMPARTH MORE BY JACQUELYN SCHNEIDER More: United States Foreign Policy Science & Technology Security Strategy & Conflict Most-Read Articles War Unbound Gaza, Ukraine, and the Breakdown of International Law Oona A. 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Hathaway May/June 2024 Published on April 23, 2024 Brian Stauffer Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s response to it have been a disaster for civilians. In its October 7 massacre, Hamas sought out unarmed Israeli civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, killing close to 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages. Israel’s subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza has, as of March 2024, killed more than 30,000 people, an estimated two-thirds of whom were women and children. The Israeli offensive has also displaced some two million people (more than 85 percent of the population of Gaza), left more than a million people at risk of starvation, and damaged or destroyed some 150,000 civilian buildings. Today, there is no functional hospital left in northern Gaza. Hamas, Israel maintains, uses civilian structures as shields, operating in them or in tunnels beneath them—perhaps precisely because such buildings have been considered off-limits for military operations under international law. International humanitarian law, also known as the law of war or the law of armed conflict, is supposed to spare civilians from the worst calamities of conflict. The aim of this body of law has always been clear: civilians not involved in the fighting deserve to be protected from harm and to enjoy unimpeded access to humanitarian aid. But in the Israel-Hamas war, the law has failed. Hamas continues to hold hostages and has used schools, hospitals, and other civilian buildings to shield its infrastructure, while Israel has waged an all-out war in densely populated areas and slowed the flow of desperately needed aid to a trickle. The result has been utter devastation for civilians in Gaza. The conflict in Gaza is an extreme example of the breakdown of the law of war, but it is not an isolated one. It is the latest in a long series of wars in the years since 9/11, from the U.S.-led “war on terror” to the Syrian civil war to Russia’s war in Ukraine, that have chipped away at protections for civilians. From this grim record, it might be tempting to conclude that the humanitarian protections that governments worked so hard to enshrine in law after World War II hold little meaning today. Yet even a hobbled system of international humanitarian law has made conflict more humane. Indeed, for all the frequent transgressions, the existence of these legal protections has provided continuous pressure on belligerents to limit civilian casualties, provide safe zones for noncombatants, and allow for humanitarian access—knowing they will face international consequences when they do not. After the horrors of World War II, the United States and its allies established the Geneva Conventions, the four treaties of 1949 that lay out elaborate rules governing the conduct of war. At a moment when the laws of war are once again being severely tested, the United States—which, especially in the years after 9/11, helped weaken them—should act now to renew and strengthen them. LICENSE TO KILL The law of war offers a tradeoff. Soldiers of a sovereign nation can be lawfully killed in armed conflict. In exchange, they are granted immunity that allows them to commit acts that in any other context would likely be considered crimes—not only to kill but also to trespass, break and enter, steal, assault, maim, kidnap, destroy property, and commit arson. This immunity applies whether their cause is just or unjust. There are limits—which, for most of history, were modest. Hugo Grotius, the early-seventeenth-century Dutch diplomat who has been called “the father of international law,” wrote that soldiers should be prohibited from using poison, killing by deception (for example, after feigning surrender), and rape. In Grotius’s framework, these three offenses made up the only exceptions to a soldier’s license to kill. Enslavement, torture, pillaging, and the execution of prisoners were all allowed; so was the intentional killing of unarmed civilians, including women and children. Although few treaties governed the conduct of war at the time, countries in western Europe widely accepted these rules as customary international law. Protecting civilians in war is much harder when one of the belligerents is a nonstate actor. According to Grotius, soldiers were not allowed to massacre civilians whenever they liked. They were legally permitted to take the steps necessary to enforce the rights on which the enemy had infringed—and nothing more. If killing women and children did not advance the war effort, there was no justification for doing so. Yet even if the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians was technically illegal under international law at the time, those who committed it could not be held accountable; such deeds, Grotius observed, could be “made with impunity.” The lack of legal remedy for attacks on civilians began to be addressed only in the middle of the eighteenth century, when countries gradually adopted the principle of distinction, which requires soldiers to distinguish between combatants and civilians. The rules governing war continued to evolve over the course of the nineteenth century. The first Geneva Convention, signed in 1864, prohibited attacks on hospitals, medical personnel, and their patients. The 1868 St. Petersburg Declaration banned the use of fragmenting, explosive, or incendiary small-arms munitions. The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, ratified by most world powers at the time, prohibited attacking towns and buildings that were not defended by military forces. They also banned pillaging, executing prisoners of war, and compelling civilians to swear allegiance to a foreign power. But countries that were engaged in war struggled to figure out how to enforce these rules. Their solution was generally reprisal: if an adversary violated the laws of war in a military operation, a country would respond with a violation of its own. Often, the reprisals would be meted out on prisoners of war, who were near at hand and could easily be killed. But civilians were not insulated from attacks. When Spanish guerrillas attacked a French column in Spain’s Sil Valley in 1808, during the Napoleonic Wars, the French commanding officer, General Louis-Henri Loison, ordered his soldiers to torch the countryside. THE POSTWAR RECKONING During World War II, more than 30 million civilians were killed. In the aftermath of such catastrophic violence, it was clear that new and stronger rules were needed to regulate war. In 1949, a series of international conferences convened by the International Committee of the Red Cross established the four Geneva Conventions in an effort to prevent the most brutal violence of war. Although Grotius offered just three prohibitions to guide states in war, the Geneva Conventions and, later, its three Additional Protocols filled hundreds of pages with specific rules for almost any scenario. The new rules governed the treatment of wounded and sick military personnel in the field and at sea, prisoners of war, and civilians. Unlike the early laws of war, the Geneva Conventions prohibited not just senseless violence but also some forms of violence that advanced war aims. To adhere to the conventions, parties to a conflict must distinguish between civilians and combatants and between civilian places and military ones. Above all, they may never intentionally target civilians or “civilian objects,” such as schools, private homes, construction equipment, businesses, places of worship, and hospitals that do not directly contribute to military action. And civilians must never be the target of reprisals. The principle of proportionality, codified in 1977 in Additional Protocol I, acknowledges that sometimes armies will harm civilians and civilian objects when pursuing military objectives. But the rule requires that the damage not be “excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” The principle of precaution, moreover, requires that armies must take constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects, even if doing so might slow down military operations. Near al Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, April 2024 Dawoud Abu Alkas / Reuters The Geneva Conventions, their protocols, and the customary international law that has grown around them take an important step beyond the rules that came before. They aim to protect civilians from harm even when that harm might serve a strategic purpose. Thus, an attack on a military target that would help a belligerent’s war effort is prohibited if it would hurt too many civilians. In many ways, the Geneva Conventions have been remarkably successful. All four conventions have been ratified by all UN member states. Most countries have adopted military manuals that translate the conventions into concrete rules meant to guide the conduct of their armies. Many have enforced these rules against their own soldiers. Yet these elaborate and ambitious rules were shaped by wars that were very different from most conflicts today. Since the end of World War II, wars between states have sharply declined, but conflicts involving nonstate armed groups have risen. The Geneva Conventions say little about the latter. Only one article, Common Article 3, specifically applies to wars with nonstate groups. Protecting civilians in war, it turns out, is much harder when one of the belligerents is a nonstate actor. Combatants belonging to nonstate groups generally don’t wear uniforms. Although their members may assemble, train in camps, and be organized under a hierarchical leadership, they tend to operate in places where civilians are also present. As a result, it can be extremely difficult to tell them apart from ordinary civilians. SELF-DEFENSE CLASSES The 9/11 attacks and the U.S. response to them inaugurated a new era of war that has pushed international humanitarian law to a breaking point. Before 2001, legitimate self-defense under international law was generally understood to apply only when one country was defending an attack from another. Until then, few countries had cited nonstate actors as their primary reason for using force in self-defense. (Israel was a notable exception; its adversaries included irregular forces located in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.) After 9/11, self-defense claims changed. The United States justified its invasion of Afghanistan by arguing that it was responding to, as the Bush administration informed the UN Security Council, the “ongoing threat to the United States and its nationals posed by the Al-Qaeda organization.” Within a year, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, and the United Kingdom had also filed claims of self-defense against al Qaeda. And it was not long before countries began making claims against other nonstate groups. In 2002, for example, Rwanda cited a right of self-defense against the Interahamwe, a militia group. And in 2003, Côte d’Ivoire cited the same right against “rebel forces.” To confront groups such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), the United States and its allies came to rely on what they dubbed the “unwilling or unable doctrine”—the theory that action against a nonstate threat is justified as long as the country in which the nonstate actor is found is unwilling or unable to suppress the threat. In most cases, the United States sought the consent of governments to target nonstate actors in their territories. Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and, while the Taliban was out of power, Afghanistan all agreed to U.S. intervention. When states would not consent—for example, Syria—the United States used the unable or unwilling theory, explicitly endorsed by fewer than a dozen countries, to justify using military force. In Gaza, there are few objects or structures that Israel does not consider dual use. As Washington went to war with nonstate actors, it struggled with how to distinguish the civilians it was allowed to kill according to the Geneva Conventions—those “who take a direct part in hostilities”—from those it was not. If a civilian who was not a member of ISIS performed a task for the group—say, placing an improvised explosive device on a road—and then returned to work as an ordinary laborer, could that person still be targeted? In 2009, the International Committee of the Red Cross issued guidance to governments on how to protect civilians when fighting nonstate actors. The ICRC document reiterated the rule that civilians must be protected against direct attack “unless and for such time as they take direct part in hostilities.” It set out the principle that civilians who do not take a direct part in hostilities must be distinguished not only from armed forces but also from those who participate in hostilities “on an individual, sporadic or unorganized basis only.” The devil was very much in the details. The ICRC concluded that direct participation in hostilities “refers to specific acts carried out by individuals as part of the conduct of hostilities between parties to an armed conflict.” A person integrated into an organized armed group has a “continuous combat function” and can be targeted throughout the war. Hence, ISIS fighters are considered legitimate military targets as long as the conflict with ISIS continues. But ISIS members who provide noncombat support, including recruiters, trainers, and financiers, are not. A civilian who places an improvised explosive device for ISIS is directly participating in the war when positioning the weapon and while in transit for the task. But once this task is finished, so is the direct participation in the war, and the person can no longer be targeted. Many countries rejected the ICRC’s guidance, including the United States and the United Kingdom, which came up with their own rules for their counterterrorism campaigns in the Middle East. BLURRED LINES? To address the changing reality of urban combat, the United States and other countries adopted new policies that once more put civilians in the cross hairs. At the center of this shift was the concept of so-called dual-use objects. According to international humanitarian law, all sites are either military or civilian; there is nothing in between. Objects normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as places of worship, houses, or schools, are presumed to be civilian. But they can lose their civilian status if they are used for a military purpose. The clear-cut division between civilian and military often fails to match the reality on the ground. There are many sites and structures that serve important civilian purposes but, by virtue of having some military use, may be considered military objectives—for example, trains, bridges, power stations, and communications infrastructure. Even an apartment building, if part of it serves for weapons storage, can be considered dual use. More controversially, the United States now considers sectors of the adversary’s economy that may help sustain a war as legitimate targets. In the course of its operations against ISIS, for example, the United States struck oil wells, refineries, and tanker trucks. States generally agree that industries directly related to the military or defense may be targeted, such as those producing arms or supplying fuel to military vehicles. But they diverge on whether a belligerent may target an industry that contributes only indirectly to military activities, by providing financial support, for example. The Department of Defense Law of War Manual maintains that a given industry’s or sector’s “effective contribution to the war-fighting or war-sustaining capability of an opposing force is sufficient.” This means that banks, businesses, and, indeed, any source of economic activity that contributes to an adversary’s ability to sustain itself could be fair game. And because members of nonstate groups often rely on the same sources as ordinary civilians for food, fuel, and money, these areas of the economy that are essential to civilian life are regularly in the direct line of fire. As a result, the dual-use concept has increasingly made a wide variety of civilian activities subject to potential military action. An enterprise that is mostly used for civilian purposes, such as an oil refinery or even a bakery, can become a target in war if it contributes in some way to the war effort. It is still the case that harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure must be proportional to the potential military advantage attained. But the United States and Israel take the position that any site that can plausibly qualify as dual use is a legitimate military objective. Damage to such a target, then, is not part of the proportionality calculus. If noncombatant civilians are expected to be harmed, that must be weighed before taking the strike, but the long-term loss of vital civilian services, such as those provided by a water treatment plant, an electric grid, a bank, or a hospital, does not. Portraits of men killed in Bucha, Ukraine, February 2023 Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters The military logic behind Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza is, in part, a result of these incremental changes, which both the United States and Israel have contributed to for decades. Hamas is both a nonstate actor and the de facto governing authority in Gaza. Determining who is a Hamas fighter and who is not, particularly from the air, is difficult. Even on the ground, Israeli forces have often failed to distinguish between civilians and combatants, as in December 2023, when Israeli troops shot three Israeli hostages as they waved a white flag. And even when Israeli forces have made every possible effort to distinguish between combatants and civilians, targeting the one without killing the other has proved nearly impossible. Given Gaza’s extraordinary population density, almost any military target is in, near, above, or below buildings in which large numbers of civilians live or work. In Gaza, there are few objects or structures that Israel does not consider dual use. Israel has worsened Gaza’s humanitarian crisis by holding at the border items such as oxygen cylinders and tent poles. Meanwhile, it treats hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, and even places of worship as legitimate military targets if Hamas has used them for military purposes. Israel maintains that Hamas knows the law of war and has sought to protect its military infrastructure by hiding its activities in tunnels under civilian structures, such as hospitals, that the law protects from attack. Israel emphasized this point in its defense before the International Court of Justice against South Africa’s claims that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel’s decision to treat locations traditionally protected from attack as legitimate targets has meant devastation for civilians in Gaza. Hospitals and schools where those displaced by the war sought refuge have been targeted in large-scale attacks, killing thousands. The problem has been compounded by Israel’s expansive interpretation of proportionality. As Eylon Levy, an Israeli government spokesperson, told the BBC, proportionality in Israel’s view means that the collateral damage of a given strike must be proportionate to the expected military advantage. “And the expected military advantage here,” he explained, “is to destroy the terror organization that perpetrated the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.” Israel has turned a principle that was meant to shield civilians into a tool to justify violence. Its approach to assessing proportionality—not strike by strike but in light of the entire war aim—is not how militaries are supposed to carry out their assessments. Rather, according to international law as codified in Additional Protocol I, the principle of proportionality prohibits a given attack where the expected harm to civilian people and places is “excessive” compared with the “direct military advantage” that the attack is supposed to achieve. By weighing any single instance of harm to civilians against a perceived existential threat, Israel can justify virtually any strike as meeting the requirements of proportionality; the purported benefits always outweigh any costs. Unsurprisingly, this approach has led to a war with few restraints. CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE Although civilians have been killed at extraordinary rates in the war in Gaza, they have also suffered extensively in other recent conflicts. During the Syrian civil war, the Syrian government repeatedly gassed its own people, wiping out entire neighborhoods in an effort to suppress the opposition. In 2018, a UN report found that Syrian forces, supported by the Russian military, had attacked hospitals, schools, and markets. Saudi Arabia, too, has been accused of violating legal protections for civilians in its operations against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. In 2015, Saudi Arabia led a coalition of states in a campaign to defeat the Houthis, who had launched cross-border attacks against it and seized the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. A team of UN investigators found that coalition airstrikes—which the United States supported with midair refueling, intelligence, and arms sales—had hit residential areas, markets, funerals, weddings, detention facilities, civilian boats, and medical facilities, killing more than 6,000 civilians and wounding over 10,000. The strikes on essential infrastructure, including water treatment plants, created a cholera epidemic that killed thousands, most of them children. Ukraine has also been the site of barbaric attacks against civilians. Russian forces carried out summary executions, disappearances, and torture in Bucha and beyond. They indiscriminately bombed Mariupol, damaging 77 percent of the city’s medical facilities in the process. Throughout the war, Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid have left millions of civilians without electricity, water, or heat. Meanwhile, technological innovations threaten to further erode the line between civilians and combatants. In Ukraine, for example, the same app that Ukrainians use to file taxes can also be used to track Russian troops. Using an “e-Enemy” feature, Ukrainians can submit reports, photos, and videos of Russian troop movements. Yet this makes those same civilians vulnerable to attack, since any civilian who uses the app to alert Ukrainian forces of Russian military activity might be regarded as “directly participating in hostilities” and therefore considered a legitimate target. Ukrainian data servers store both military and civilian information, likely rendering computer networks and the information stored in them dual-use objects. Ukraine created an “IT army” of more than 400,000 volunteers who work with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry to launch cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure. These Ukrainians may not realize that by volunteering their services, they have, according to international law, become combatants in an armed conflict. CAUSE FOR CONSTRAINT One pessimistic takeaway from the wars in Gaza and Ukraine may be that the hard-won lessons of World War II have been forgotten and efforts to use law to protect civilians from war are pointless. But as brutal as the current conflicts are, they would likely be even more horrific without these rules. A careful reading of the current era would show that rather than altogether abandoning the protections of civilians enshrined in the Geneva Conventions, belligerents in recent wars have been making those protections less effective by severely restricting what counts as civilian. And the United States has played a key part in this shift. Since 9/11, Washington has used its power to weaken constraints on the use of force, aggressively interpret the right to self-defense, and allow for more expansive targeting of dual-use sites and structures. These positions have created greater flexibility for the U.S. military, but they have also placed more civilians in harm’s way. Following the United States’ lead, other countries, including France, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, have likewise loosened constraints on their own militaries. To reverse this trend and strengthen the law of armed conflict, Washington must decide that embracing constraints and pressing others to do the same is essential to the fundamental principles of human dignity that the United States, at its best, has championed. To its credit, the Biden administration has already taken some modest steps in this direction. In 2022, the Defense Department announced a detailed plan for how the U.S. military would better protect civilians, and this February, the Biden administration said that it would require foreign governments to promise that any U.S. weapons they received would not be used to violate international law. But much more remains to be done. At the International Court of Justice, The Hague, Netherlands, January 2024 Piroschka van de Wouw / Reuters For starters, the United States should expand collaboration and cooperation with the International Criminal Court, the most effective international mechanism for enforcing international humanitarian law. Indeed, members of the U.S. Congress have cheered the ICC’s exercise of jurisdiction over Russia for crimes committed during the war in Ukraine and passed a law allowing the United States to share evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with its prosecutor. Yet in 2020, the Trump administration sanctioned ICC judges and lawyers in retaliation for having investigated whether U.S. soldiers committed war crimes in Afghanistan. To the rest of the world, the hypocrisy is glaring and instructive. One way for the United States to improve its relationship with the court would be to repeal the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, a 2002 law, known colloquially as “the Hague Invasion Act,” that allows the president to order military action to protect Americans from ICC prosecution. It also prohibits government agencies from assisting the court unless specifically permitted, as with the Ukraine investigation. The United States should also reconsider some of the expansive legal positions it adopted after 9/11. It should, for example, endorse more stringent limits on when dual-use objects can be targeted. It should revise the treatment of the principles of proportionality and feasible precautions in the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual to better reflect international humanitarian law. And it should fully implement its new plan to mitigate civilian harm during U.S. military operations. The United States should also restrict its military assistance to those countries that comply with international humanitarian law—not just when providing arms but also when offering financial support, intelligence, and training. The United States has counterterrorism programs in some 80 countries on six continents. If Washington conditioned its support on greater adherence to the law—and withdrew it from countries that didn’t comply—the effect would be powerful and immediate. And Israel should not be exempt from those standards; the United States should insist that the country make clear the concrete steps it intends to take to ensure that its conduct of the war in Gaza comports with international law. Since 9/11, Washington has used its power to weaken constraints on the use of force. These changes should be made not only as a matter of policy but also as a matter of law. When the executive branch offers legal explanations for U.S. behavior, it almost always does so to justify taking military action, often in ways that push existing legal boundaries. By contrast, when it endorses restraints that better protect civilians in war, it has generally emphasized that it is doing so only as a matter of policy—not because it is required but as a choice. This means the restraints can be easily discarded when they become inconvenient. The legal rationales for acting, meanwhile, stand as precedents to justify the United States’ future military operations—and those of other countries around the world. If the law of war is to survive today’s existential challenges, the United States and its allies need to treat it not as an optional constraint to be adjusted or shrugged off as needed but as an unmoving pillar of the global legal order. True, there will be wartime actors who break the law, and civilians will continue to suffer as a result. But before the United States can hold these offenders to account, it must show that it is prepared to hold its own forces—and those of its allies—to the same standards. OONA A. HATHAWAY is Gerard C. and Bernice Latrobe Smith Professor of International Law at Yale Law School and a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. MORE BY OONA A. HATHAWAY More: Ukraine Russian Federation Israel Palestinian Territories International Institutions Law Security Defense & Military War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine Israel-Hamas War Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Hamas Houthis World War II Most-Read Articles War Unbound Gaza, Ukraine, and the Breakdown of International Law Oona A. 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Hathaway Ukrainian soldiers monitoring the sky near Bakhmut, March 2024 The Tyranny of Expectations Winning the Battle but Losing the War, From Ukraine to Israel Dominic Tierney Don’t Bet on a British Revival How the Labour Party Might Win the Election—but Still Lose the Economy By Matthias Matthijs and Mark Blyth April 30, 2024 British Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer speaking in Bristol, United Kingdom, January 2024 The United Kingdom is likely to hold a general election in the fall, and the outlook appears dire for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party. In December 2019, the Conservatives were reelected with an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons on the strength of campaign promises to “get Brexit done” and “level up” those parts of the country that had not broadly shared in the benefits of economic growth and investment. But the illegal Downing Street parties during COVID-19 lockdowns, former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s fiscal meltdowns, and the creeping costs of Brexit have demolished what had seemed an unassailable lead. Since he became prime minister in October 2022, Sunak’s Tories have trailed the Labour Party in opinion polls by an average of 20 points. When the election comes, the Labour opposition leader, Keir Starmer, is expected to cruise to an easy victory. Tory fatigue is widespread, which is perhaps unsurprising after 14 years of often chaotic Conservative rule in which five prime ministers—David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Truss, and Sunak—have served in quick succession. In Scotland, Labour’s prospects have been enhanced by the Scottish Nationalist Party’s fall from grace, caused in large part by its mishandling of transgender and free speech issues. Meanwhile, in England, the Conservatives are bleeding votes on their right flank to the Reform Party, the successor to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. All three factors have put the wind in Labour’s sails. But what will ultimately put Labour in power is the dismal condition of the British economy. Voters reasonably blame the Tories, who have been in power for the last decade and a half, for this economic decline. Labour has yet to offer a credible economic plan, however. Unless Starmer is willing to commit to a more radical economic agenda, a Labour victory at the next election will just mean more trouble for the country—and could spell ruin for the party. THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE IS ILL AGAIN Britain’s economic picture is bleak. As the Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf recently observed, the United Kingdom’s real per capita GDP at the end of 2023 was 28 percent below what it would have been if the average growth trend between 1955 and 2008 had been maintained. Over 14 years of Conservative governance, the country has been a growth laggard, consistently performing in the bottom third of economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Ironically, one of the main factors behind the growth that the United Kingdom has experienced since 2019 is a high level of immigration. The country saw an increase in net migration from 184,000 in 2019 to 745,000 in 2022, about twice the number of people who arrived in France and Italy. Although many perceive Johnson and Sunak as hostile to immigrants, the reality is that immigration from countries outside the EU has increased substantially since Brexit. One driver has been a rise in international students who are charged much higher tuition fees and thereby make up for the shortfall in universities’ public funding. Another has been the hiring of non-EU skilled health and care workers to address a chronic labor shortage in the country’s National Health Service (NHS) after many eastern and southern Europeans went back home. The chief factor underlying the United Kingdom’s economic malaise is a complete collapse in productivity growth, caused by a dearth of both public and private investment. The collapse in public investment since 2010 was driven, first, by the 2008 global financial crisis, which was a shock to a British growth model that remains highly dependent on financial and related services, and second, by biting austerity measures. Under Cameron and May, the government slashed public spending as a percentage of GDP from 46 percent in 2010 to 39 percent in 2019. Because certain areas of spending were protected, principally pensions and the NHS, the cuts fell heavily on local government services, infrastructure, the justice system, education, and transportation. The result has been a sharp decline in local consumption, and growth that is highly regionalized. Private investment has lagged because of the corporate sector’s reluctance to invest in an economy with such limited growth prospects, as well as the overall makeup of the British economy, with large numbers of smaller firms concentrated in services. This lack of private investment was compounded by the economic uncertainty that came with the Brexit referendum and its aftermath, as international investors began to think twice about investing in a country that was about to leave the European single market. This economic situation poses a challenge for Labour. The party last won a general election in 2005—although its landslide victory in 1997, which ended 18 years of Conservative rule, is the kind of win that the party appears on track to replicate. In 1997, however, the leader of the Labour opposition, Tony Blair, and the shadow chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, inherited a strong economy with low levels of public debt and a benign international system. But that will not be Starmer’s inheritance. Instead, the fiscal challenge that Labour will face is daunting, with the world economy fractured and its outlook marred by geopolitical conflict. The task is clear: to reverse the downward trend in public investment and work with EU officials in Brussels to forge a long-term economic and strategic partnership that can spur private investment. Brexit may still be the official policy of both parties, but starved of growth, the United Kingdom needs better access to the EU’s single market. Although Starmer and his shadow chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, are unlikely to make things worse, their current plans are much too timid to make a real difference, given the scale of the problems the country is facing. HEADS BELOW THE PARAPET In a major speech to a London business audience in March, Reeves set out Labour’s future economic policy, focusing on her idea of “securonomics”—a kind of homeopathic Bidenomics without the fiscal largess and the continent-wide scale. Reeves’s basic ambition is to make work more secure and more remunerative for ordinary Britons. Given the collapse in wage growth in the United Kingdom over the past 15 years—according to Torsten Bell, the economist who heads the Resolution Foundation think tank, British workers would be some $13,000 a year better off “if real pay growth had continued to follow its pre-recession trend”—this is a laudable goal. Although regulation might be able to do something about employment insecurity, getting wages up means getting productivity up, and that means a large rise in investment. It is not clear where Reeves thinks that investment will come from. In her speech, Reeves promised to maintain a stable macroeconomic framework featuring budget-balancing fiscal rules for day-to-day expenditures that will reduce the ratio of debt to GDP. This is very much in line with Sunak’s policies. Reeves also pledged to preserve the current corporate tax rate of 25 percent, which is low by international standards. She further declared that she would tackle the country’s chronic underinvestment through a close partnership with the private sector and argued for thorough reforms of the public sector. Labour will take on the overly rigid planning system governing the United Kingdom’s land use and public infrastructure, Reeves said, and work to decentralize the government. Although some of this is new and different from what the Conservatives have been offering, particularly in terms of planning and decentralization, some of it is very similar. It is therefore unclear whether a Labour victory will lead to an increase in investment. For if new investment must come from domestic saving or international borrowing, the United Kingdom is constrained on both sides. Saving implies yet more austerity, and borrowing suggests yet more indebtedness. Prioritizing stability may sound good, but in a depressed economy it only means further stagnation. The country’s experience with letting the private sector run infrastructure has largely been a failure, as seen in the billions spent by the government on bailouts of water utilities after their privatization and on buybacks and dividends by the firms themselves. The idea of selling off more bits of the state to boost investment simply lacks credibility. Reforms in the planning process can help, for example, by addressing the country’s acute housing shortage, but the government will still need to invest in building up the actual housing stock. There is a practical reason for Labour’s timidity. Starmer and Reeves have no doubt made the decision to allow the Conservatives to tear themselves to pieces as they resist the temptation to make bold promises that the country’s right-wing tabloid press could attack them for. They may also have made a decision to say as little as possible to maximize their room for maneuver when in office on the logic that if they do not rule out a policy, they can do it later. Although that may make strategic sense on one level, it hollows out any notion of democracy as being more than a cynical game. Regardless of strategic intent, if a Labour government ends up offering nothing more than Tory austerity with a human face, the party cannot expect to serve more than one term in office. If Labour is not seen as trying to make a real difference in the lives of ordinary Britons after a brutal decade and a half, it will rightly be turned out for being all strategy and no substance. The cost may be another long period on the opposition benches and internecine infighting over this lost opportunity. IDEAS OF INTEREST Although the United Kingdom’s economic situation is grim, there is much more that Labour can promise to do. First, it could massively increase its fiscal space by telling the country’s central bank, the Bank of England, to stop paying interest on the commercial bank reserves that it holds to influence short-term interest rates. With the United Kingdom’s high interest rates, banks prefer to hold on to money and not invest in the real economy. As a consequence, they are expected to make around $286 billion in interest by 2033 by simply parking reserves at the central bank. If one of the government’s major policy goals is to increase investment, this money could be better spent. Labour recently decided to shelve green investment plans that would cost around $35 billion a year, judging that they were too expensive. Yet that figure is far less than what the Bank of England is handing out as free money to the banks for simply showing up. This is nothing less than a fiscal embarrassment. Ending this practice would instantly reduce long-term debt projections and smooth the path for new investment at lower rates. The Bank of England’s routine monetary policy operations should not hurt national investment. Across the English Channel, the European Central Bank stopped paying interest on minimum reserves held by commercial banks at the beginning of September 2023. Its new rate is zero percent. Second, Labour should pursue growth in productivity by encouraging greater labor mobility and the development of job skills. One way to do this is to invest in housing. The United Kingdom effectively stopped building affordable housing at scale in the 1980s, and it now needs to build 4.3 million homes to keep up with population growth and overall demand. This shortfall has created an affordability crisis centered on London, where almost one-third of GDP is generated, further impeding growth. Labour should therefore commit not only to building housing but also to owning the housing stock. By creating assets that produce income and holding them on the state’s balance sheet, income will be generated over time that reduces overall debt as assets and liabilities are matched. Alternatively, Labour can leverage this future revenue to invest in training the skilled high-wage workers the country needs to build housing and decarbonize the economy, such as plumbers, electricians, and heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning engineers. Third, Labour should change the way the state’s accounting treats such long-term investments, by taking them out of current spending and matching assets and liabilities by building assets. This is not accounting chicanery; it is good business practice in the private sector. Such assets could be held in an independent Citizens’ Wealth Fund that takes advantage of countercyclical dynamics in the cost of capital to make investments when bond prices rise and yields fall. Rather than playing it safe, there is much that Labour can do to break out of its self-imposed fiscal straitjacket. Politicians are put in charge to rule, not to enforce fiscal rules that hurt investment in the real economy. BRUSSELS À LA CARTE Labour must also recalibrate its relationship with the European Union. Although Starmer is worried about being accused of betraying Brexit—as was shown once again in his recent rejection of the EU’s “youth mobility scheme,” which would enable young Britons to work in other countries and vice versa—he must change course and begin to repair ties with Brussels. It makes no sense to perpetuate the Tories’ hostile relationship with the EU, the United Kingdom’s most important trading partner, while the United States and China are turning mercantilist and Russia is waging war on Europe’s borders. Although Labour has decided to stick to its Brexit redlines for now—which rule out pursuing open borders for EU citizens or seeking membership in the single market or customs union—the party can afford to be bolder. Starmer can start by seeking small agreements to help facilitate trade, make it easier for British companies to provide services in the EU, and enhance mobility for workers with critical skills. If the United Kingdom is going to turn around its economy, it will need the size and scale of the EU’s single market. The challenge will be getting the EU to sign on to such agreements. But perhaps this will be less difficult than many imagine. As the war in Ukraine rages on, Brussels is finally getting serious about providing for its own security and defense. To do so in a credible manner, it will need London’s help. Not only does the United Kingdom have nuclear weapons and a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, it is also the only European military power other than France with a global reach and footprint—though it is much diminished from its heyday. The EU and its institutions have no military capacity of their own but can play a useful role in coordinating procurement and organizing an industrial defense strategy that would better pool resources and coordinate national weapons production. The United Kingdom will need to offer the EU something that goes well beyond a series of small agreements to make its exit less painful. There is an opportunity for a political grand bargain here. The United Kingdom could agree to play a leading role in developing and coordinating Europe’s security, and the EU could offer the United Kingdom a relationship close to single-market membership that reduces nontariff barriers to trade to the bare minimum and makes doing business much easier than it is now, while stopping short of complete freedom of movement. Although purists in Brussels may protest that such a bargain amounts to letting the United Kingdom cherry-pick which EU benefits it receives, a long-standing complaint, it is worth pointing out that the situation in Europe has fundamentally changed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. From the perspective of eastern Europe and the Baltic countries especially, the EU needs the United Kingdom’s military heft if it wants to make significant and timely progress toward a more stable and secure continent. NO TIME TO BE NERVOUS Despite its commanding lead in the polls, Labour has been fearful that proactive spending plans would undermine its ability to commit to balanced budgets and worried about being seen to betray the Brexit vote. Either it has been browbeaten or gaslighted by the Tories into a pro-austerity default mode, or it genuinely sees an electoral danger in promoting pro-investment policies. Although such a prudent stance might make electoral sense in an overheating economy, that is not the world the United Kingdom currently inhabits. According to the polling organization Ipsos, 40 percent of the British electorate thinks that Labour has the best policies for working people, compared with 15 percent who believe the Conservatives do. Fourteen years of austerity have already broken Britain. Doing more damage in the name of fiscal rectitude will derail Labour’s positive agenda and, with it, possibly the party itself. The British economy is in dire straits, and voters expect Labour to fix it. Continuing the Tory medicine, with a spoonful of sugar, will only spur voters to turn their backs on Labour in the next election. On the issue of Brexit, 56 percent of British citizens now think it was wrong to leave the EU, while 33 percent think it was right. Forging closer ties with the bloc is long overdue. Meanwhile, the EU must realize that Labour’s success is in its own economic and security interests. A grand bargain gaining London’s defense clout in return for granting more generous access to its single market could inaugurate a strategic partnership in which both sides are better off and more secure. MATTHIAS MATTHIJS is Dean Acheson Associate Professor of International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Senior Fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of Ideas and Economic Crises in Britain From Attlee to Blair (1945–2005). MARK BLYTH is William R. Rhodes ’57 Professor of International Economics at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University and a co-author of Angrynomics. MORE BY MATTHIAS MATTHIJS MORE BY MARK BLYTH More: United Kingdom Campaigns & Elections Economics International Institutions European Union Politics & Society Political Development Most-Read Articles War Unbound Gaza, Ukraine, and the Breakdown of International Law Oona A. 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Morell May/June 2024 Published on April 23, 2023 Rob Dobi On October 25, 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, confronted his Soviet counterpart, Valerian Zorin, in the chamber of the Security Council. Live on television, Stevenson grilled Zorin about whether the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear-capable missiles to Cuba. “Yes or no?” Stevenson demanded. As Zorin waffled, Stevenson went in for the kill: “I am prepared to wait for an answer until hell freezes over if that’s your decision. And I’m also prepared to present the evidence in this room.” Stevenson then revealed poster-sized photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane, images that showed Soviet missile bases in Cuba and directly contradicted Moscow’s denials. Stevenson’s revelations marked a turning point in the crisis, providing undeniable evidentiary support to the Kennedy administration’s allegations, shifting global opinion, and pressuring the Soviets to de-escalate by isolating them diplomatically. It was the first time the U.S. government had declassified top-secret intelligence to publicly refute another country’s claims. Nearly 60 years later, Moscow looked poised to flex its muscle again, this time by amassing nearly 175,000 troops on the Russian border with Ukraine. Echoing the Kennedy administration’s approach, the Biden administration responded by publicly disclosing intelligence, both to warn allies (and Ukraine) of the coming invasion and to preemptively rebut Russian President Vladimir Putin’s planned pretexts for it. In early December 2021, administration officials started sharing the intelligence community’s growing concern with the media, holding a briefing that was accompanied by satellite imagery showing Russian forces staging on Ukraine’s borders. In mid-January 2022, John Kirby, then the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters that Russia was preparing a “false-flag operation” in eastern Ukraine, hoping to fabricate a massacre to justify an invasion. Later that month, U.S. officials revealed that the Russian military had moved blood supplies to the border of Ukraine, suggesting that war was imminent. And on February 18, President Joe Biden said he was “convinced” that Russia’s invasion would begin in the “coming days”—as it did. The Biden administration’s disclosures didn’t persuade Putin to shelve his war plans, but they did fortify Western resolve after the invasion. Advance warning of Russia’s plans enabled many U.S. allies, particularly NATO members, to quickly offer military aid packages to Ukraine and harmonize their economic sanctions against Russia. The revelations about the contrived provocations that Putin was scheming helped turn public opinion in the West against Russia by denying him a pretext for the invasion. Inside the Biden administration, the disclosure strategy was seen as a resounding success. In the six decades after the Kennedy administration’s novel move at the UN, successive White Houses adopted the tactic from time to time. But their disclosures were “one and done” affairs. What is new now is that the Biden team has disclosed information multiple times on a single issue over an extended period. What’s more, because the Ukraine-related revelations seemed to work so well, the administration is now applying the tool to other issues, most notably China. It has even come up with terms for the practice, with officials speaking of “strategic downgrades” and “strategic declassification.” What used to be a break-glass option is now routine. But as strategic downgrades become more common, policymakers and intelligence practitioners need to develop guardrails to protect against their pitfalls. Without proper precautions, a disclosure might compromise the source of the declassified information or, if the revelation turns out to be wrong, harm the intelligence community’s reputation and undermine the goal the disclosure was meant to achieve. The biggest risk, however, is that using intelligence as a policy tool increases the chances that it will also be used as a political weapon. Were that to happen, the intelligence community could lose its most precious asset: its reputation for objectivity. A NOT-SO-SECRET HISTORY Although high-level officials have long leaked classified intelligence to the media, strategic disclosures are something different. They aim to use intelligence to further a specific administration goal rather than advance a particular bureaucratic player’s individual interest. Accordingly, disclosures are known in advance by a group of senior officials, including those with declassification authority, and are usually coordinated with relevant stakeholders, including the agency that collected the intelligence. They can enter the public domain directly—for example, through an on-the-record press conference, a televised speech or interview, or an intelligence product posted on a government website. Or they can take a more circuitous route, such as through a background briefing to journalists, who can use the information but agree not to name the official providing it. Strategic downgrades may or may not go through a formal declassification process, but unlike unauthorized leaks, they are legal, because officials with declassification authority have been involved in the decision-making. Since the Cuban missile crisis, administrations have resorted to strategic declassification for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, the goal is to preemptively justify a policy. That was the purpose of the memorable, but ultimately incorrect, speech that Secretary of State Colin Powell gave to the UN Security Council in February 2003. Flanked by George Tenet, the director of the CIA, Powell played a tape of an intercepted conversation between Iraqi military officers conspiring to mislead weapons inspectors, showed satellite imagery of alleged weapons sites, and displayed drawings of supposed biological weapons labs. President Barack Obama made a similar move in 2013, after the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad fired rockets filled with sarin gas at a Damascus suburb and killed more than a thousand civilians. As the White House contemplated airstrikes, it released a summary of the intelligence community’s “high-confidence assessment” that the Syrian government had carried out the attack. In the end, the administration decided not to respond militarily, but had it done so, the declassified intelligence would have been foundational to the case for action by contradicting Syria’s repeated denials of responsibility. At other times, disclosures are made to retroactively justify a policy. Such was the case in 1983, when Soviet pilots shot down a South Korean commercial airliner that had strayed into Soviet airspace. U.S. President Ronald Reagan declassified signals intelligence to show Soviet culpability and justify his confrontational posture toward Moscow. At the Security Council, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick, played a tape of Soviet pilots’ intercepted radio conversations with their commander as they homed in on the plane. Three years later, the administration repeated the strategy with Libya. After ordering airstrikes against the regime of Muammar al-Qaddafi for having orchestrated a terrorist attack that killed U.S. troops at a discotheque in West Berlin, Reagan, in a speech from the Oval Office, summarized diplomatic cables intercepted by the National Security Agency that proved Libyan responsibility for the attack. Stevenson presenting U-2 photographs at the UN Security Council, New York City, October 1962 Bettmann / Getty Sometimes, policymakers disclose intelligence to undermine or pressure their adversaries. In 1984, the Reagan administration released declassified sketches based on classified satellite photography showing that the Soviets were constructing a radar station in Siberia, an outpost the administration claimed violated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The goal was to strengthen the United States’ position in arms control talks and demonstrate that the U.S. government was closely monitoring Soviet military developments. (Years later, the Soviets dismantled the facility.) More recently, in 2009, Obama held a press conference with his British and French counterparts and announced that the Iranians had built a covert uranium enrichment site. As an administration official explained to reporters in an accompanying background briefing, the conclusion was based on “very sensitive intelligence information.” The disclosure worked: it generated international pressure on the Iranians, compelling them to bring the site under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. At other times, the U.S. government has used official disclosures to deal with unauthorized ones. In 2007, the George W. Bush administration worried that an intelligence estimate about Iran’s nuclear program would leak. The estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program four years earlier, and the White House feared that the revelation of that specific conclusion would undermine its argument that Iran still posed a threat. So it released an unclassified version of the paper’s key judgments to make clear that the country was continuing to work on both uranium enrichment and dual-use weapons technologies. The Obama administration resorted to the same strategy in 2013. When the National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked highly classified documents about the U.S. government’s global surveillance programs, the administration responded with its own disclosures. It released an overview of the programs to counter media stories that characterized them as being more pervasive and less subject to legal scrutiny than they actually were. The NSA’s director, Keith Alexander, even made an unprecedented appearance on 60 Minutes to share several previously classified pieces of information (such as the fact that the NSA was targeting the communications of fewer than 60 “U.S. persons” worldwide). Other disclosures are motivated by an administration’s desire to protect its reputation. In 2004, a member of the 9/11 Commission questioned National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about a seemingly damning item that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief on August 6, 2001: “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.” Just two days later, the Bush administration released the top-secret memo with minimal redactions to show that the document contained no specific warning of, or any actionable information about, a near-term attack. Likewise, in 2016, when the Obama administration wanted to counter criticism about civilian casualties caused by U.S. drone strikes, it released the intelligence community’s own count, which was much lower than the number calculated by critics. Finally, U.S. policymakers have at times released intelligence to pressure Congress. In December 2023, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was set to expire. The provision allows the U.S. government to access the communications of foreigners outside the United States who have been targeted for intelligence purposes and whose communications pass through the United States. To encourage Congress to reauthorize Section 702, the administration declassified information showing its value. Officials revealed that the provision had proved crucial to tracking fentanyl smuggling across the Mexican border and identifying the hacker behind the 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline. The administration even disclosed that in 2022, 59 percent of the pieces in Biden’s President’s Daily Briefs contained information collected under the authorities of Section 702. But the disclosures don’t appear to have worked: although the program was temporarily reauthorized, as of this writing, in March, permanent reauthorization remains stalled in Congress. WEAPON OF CHOICE The Biden administration’s disclosures about Russia’s war in Ukraine did not stop when the shooting started. In fact, they only gained pace. A month after the invasion, Biden revealed that Russia was considering using chemical and biological weapons in the conflict. By the end of 2023, with domestic enthusiasm for continued support for Ukraine flagging and Congress at an impasse over aid, it yet again resorted to strategic declassification. To demonstrate Ukraine’s success in the war and the effectiveness of U.S. military aid, it released the U.S. intelligence community’s estimate that Russia had suffered an astonishing 315,000 casualties since the invasion. The Biden administration is now using strategic downgrades against China, too. In August 2022, on the eve of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, Kirby, by then a National Security Council spokesperson, shared details from a declassified assessment of actions Beijing could take to register its displeasure, such as launching missiles into the Taiwan Strait. The goal: to preemptively remove the sting from any Chinese provocations. In February 2023, after a Chinese high-altitude balloon floated across U.S. airspace, the administration declassified details about it, in part to justify to the public its intense focus on competition with China and in part to signal to Beijing the U.S. intelligence community’s impressive technical capabilities. The Pentagon released a close-up photo of the balloon taken by a U-2 pilot, and officials explained to reporters that the U.S. government could track the object and had determined that it was loitering above sensitive military sites. Snowden speaking to a conference from Moscow, September 2015 Andrew Kelly / Reuters Later that month, the administration sought to warn Beijing that it was monitoring possible Chinese support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. CIA Director William Burns, undoubtedly with the approval of other senior officials, revealed in a televised interview that Beijing was considering offering Moscow lethal aid, adding, “We don’t see evidence of actual shipments of lethal equipment.” Burns clearly wanted to brush back the Chinese before they crossed a line they couldn’t uncross. In the first few months of the war in Gaza, the Biden administration used intelligence disclosures to give Israel breathing space from mounting pressure about the destructiveness of its military campaign. Shortly after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, countered accusations that an Israeli bomb had struck a hospital in Gaza City, announcing that “overhead imagery, intercepts, and open-source information” suggested that the real culprit was an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza. In November, the White House again came to Israel’s defense, with Kirby sharing a declassified intelligence assessment saying that Hamas was using hospitals as command-and-control nodes, weapons depots, and hideaways for Israeli hostages. Strategic disclosures are set to become a durable feature of the U.S. foreign policy landscape. The Biden administration’s strategic downgrades have created an expectation on the part of the public, the media, and allies that there will be more to come, and it is unlikely that Biden or any of his successors will abandon the tool. The genie is out of the bottle. THE COSTS OF CANDOR But is any of this a good idea? Most policymakers seem to think so. For one thing, they have argued, disclosures have delivered results. Writing in these pages earlier this year, Burns argued that the Ukraine disclosures put Putin “in the uncomfortable and unaccustomed position of being on the back foot” and “bolstered both Ukraine and the coalition supporting it.” And it is reasonable to conclude that administration officials give at least partial credit to Burns’s disclosure about Beijing’s consideration of lethal aid to Russia for convincing Chinese leader Xi Jinping to not cross the line. The second argument made by proponents of disclosures is that any transparency on the part of the secret state is good. Although Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s 2023 National Intelligence Strategy says nothing about strategic downgrades—a missed opportunity—it does endorse increased openness. Haines has elaborated on the idea, saying, “With the increasing importance of national security in our everyday lives, the more we can help to inform the public debate around such issues, the better.” This push for transparency is driven in part by the deluge of publicly available open-source intelligence, which invites doubts about the value of the intelligence community in a world where Bellingcat and other investigative groups seem to know as much as governments. (By the same token, however, open-source intelligence frees agencies to say more about what they know while jeopardizing less.) The push is also motivated by the public’s growing desire for government accountability in the wake of the intelligence failures behind the U.S. invasion of Iraq, revelations about the NSA’s industrial-scale information-collection capabilities, and Trump’s claims that the intelligence community and the rest of the “deep state” undermined his presidency. Disclosures, the argument runs, can rebuild public trust in the U.S. intelligence community, in part by demonstrating its value. The most common criticism of disclosures is that they jeopardize intelligence sources and methods. If officials in a targeted regime know what the U.S. government knows about them, they can sometimes work backward to discover the source of that information—whether it be a tapped phone line, a cyber-exploit, or a member of the inner circle. They might shut down that channel, feed disinformation into it, or, in the case of human intelligence, arrest or harm the source. Some disclosures have undoubtedly led to a subsequent loss of intelligence. The Kennedy administration’s sharing of U-2 photographs of Cuba accomplished its intended statecraft goal but also revealed to the world for the first time just how sophisticated U.S. aerial surveillance was. Afterward, U.S. adversaries learned to better camouflage sensitive sites and improved their high-altitude air defense systems. Authorized disclosures could result in more unauthorized ones. But the intelligence community is acutely aware of these risks and works to mitigate them. Administrations have tended to declassify broad analytic judgments that carry little risk to sources and methods, leaving out the sensitive intelligence nuggets that could allow the source to be identified. The intelligence community, for its part, is not shy about standing firm and refusing a policy request for a particular disclosure when the risks are just too high. One of us, Morell, was involved in declassifying information for Powell’s presentation to the UN Security Council; concerned about sources and methods, the CIA denied some of Powell’s (and the White House’s) requests for declassification. Less well understood are the subtler risks to sources and methods. One is that human sources will get skittish about divulging information, no matter what their handlers promise in terms of security or reward. Many CIA case officers—including one of us, Gioe—have had the experience of listening to their assets express grave concern about the growing volume of intelligence that has gone public, whether through an illegal mass leak or an authorized disclosure, and ask if the information they provide might go public, too. Some assets have even walked away in the aftermath of prominent leaks or disclosures. And it is impossible to calculate how many would-be assets have changed their mind as a result of them. Another risk to sources and methods is that authorized disclosures could result in more unauthorized ones by raising questions about just how appropriate it was to classify something in the first place. It can be perfectly reasonable to conclude that the national security benefits of a given disclosure outweigh the risks. Still, the nuances of such judgment calls could be glossed over by leakers, who may see coordinated and authorized disclosures as justification or cover for their own reckless revelations. Snowden, for instance, complained in his autobiography, “It is rare for even a day to go by in which some ‘unnamed’ or ‘anonymous’ senior government official does not leak, by way of a hint or tip to a journalist, some classified item that advances their own agenda or the efforts of their agency or party.” In other words, if government officials can release intelligence when it suits them, why can’t anyone else? A separate risk is that some of the information released turns out to be wrong, damaging the reputation of the intelligence community. Although intelligence agencies were right about Russia’s intention to invade Ukraine—even getting the timing right—such high accuracy is not the norm. (Indeed, they were wrong to predict that the Ukrainians wouldn’t last long in battle, a judgment that the White House almost certainly never wished would go public but ended up leaking anyway.) Despite an annual budget of around $100 billion, the U.S. intelligence community does not have a crystal ball and cannot supply evidence fit for a courtroom. For one thing, intelligence on almost any issue is by nature imperfect and fragmentary; adversaries go to great lengths to protect the information the United States is after and, in some cases, are actively deceiving Washington. For another thing, intelligence is dynamic. During the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, for instance, the intelligence community was continually revising its assessments of the Afghan government’s ability to resist the Taliban. Critics claimed that the chaotic exit was partly the result of intelligence agencies’ failure to predict the Taliban’s swift victory. That may be true, but the situation was changing by the hour, and it is inherently hard to predict if or when an unstable system will collapse. Intelligence failures happen for any number of reasons, legitimate and otherwise, but when they do occur, the reputation of the intelligence community gets dented. In a world of routine strategic downgrades, it should expect some dents. Burns in the U.S. Capitol, September 2023 Jonathan Ernst / Reuters The greatest risk with disclosures is the politicization of intelligence. In its most benign form, politicization takes the form of releasing accurate but incomplete information. Since the point of disclosures is to advance an administration’s policy, it is only natural that officials will select the intelligence that does so and keep classified any intelligence to the contrary. (When the Biden administration released an estimate of Russian casualties in Ukraine, it notably remained mum on the Ukrainians’ own high losses.) This preference is acceptable when trying to influence a foreign adversary, but not when the audience is the American people. Informing citizens is a laudable, apolitical act; trying to shape their views by cherry-picking intelligence is not. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, Tenet fielded competing requests from members of Congress to declassify only those portions of intelligence assessments that buttressed a particular argument. One camp, for example, wanted to release a judgment that Saddam was unlikely to initiate a terrorist attack against the United States, whereas another wanted to release one that Saddam was likely to use weapons of mass destruction if he felt cornered. Tenet did the right thing by declassifying both judgments. In the more egregious form of politicization, policymakers actively misrepresent the intelligence they disclose or stake a position beyond what it can support. This has happened too frequently to dismiss it as a minimal risk. In 1964, for example, President Lyndon Johnson used a confrontation between U.S. and North Vietnamese naval forces in the Gulf of Tonkin to push Congress to grant him more power in prosecuting the Vietnam War. Although there had been just one incident, in a speech to the American people, Johnson claimed that there were two—deliberately going well beyond what ambiguous intelligence reports had suggested. In the Bush administration, several senior officials, intent on making a stronger case for invading Iraq, publicly stated that Saddam’s regime had an ongoing relationship with al Qaeda—the exact opposite of what the CIA had concluded. Amid these cautionary tales, one historical example offers a model for disclosure: the Bush administration’s 2008 revelations about a Syrian nuclear reactor, apparently built with North Korean help, that an Israeli airstrike had leveled a year before. The disclosure was intended to strengthen efforts to persuade the North Koreans to provide a full accounting of their nuclear weapons activity and efforts to end Iran’s uranium enrichment activities. In a declassified briefing to reporters, CIA Director Michael Hayden outlined the intelligence surrounding the discovery, making it clear what the intelligence community knew and didn’t know, as well as how confident it was about its judgments. He said that analysts had “high confidence” that the building destroyed by Israel was indeed a nuclear reactor, “medium confidence” that North Koreans had assisted in building it, and only “low confidence” that it was part of a Syrian nuclear weapons program. The last caveat was the kind that policymakers typically want to strip out, but Hayden wisely put it in. His specificity in connecting each judgment to a corresponding confidence level made it harder for anyone to politicize the information. USE WITH CAUTION The risks from strategic downgrades are real and, given their accelerating use, growing. The decision to disclose intelligence is a policy call, and in making it, officials have to strike a delicate balance, supporting a given policy goal while protecting sources and methods and maintaining analytical integrity. As Jon Finer, Biden’s deputy national security adviser, has observed, strategic downgrades “must be wielded carefully within strict parameters and oversight.” So what should those guardrails be? First, any disclosure should pose little threat to intelligence sources or methods—a finding that must reflect the consensus of the intelligence community. The decision to disclose should be made by the director of national intelligence and only after a full consideration of the risks to sources and methods. Disclosures that do reveal sources are usually a judgment call, but a tie shouldn’t go to the policy runner. One rule of thumb is to release analytical judgments but not the underlying raw intelligence on which they are based. This is what the Obama administration did with the intelligence community’s report about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. This approach represents a sort of halfway house for disclosure, but of course it will not satisfy those skeptics who understandably wish to see the underlying evidence before believing the intelligence community’s conclusions. Nevertheless, for many, even all the information would not be enough, and in any case, the imperative must be to protect sources and methods. Second, judgments released publicly should have a high likelihood of being correct. If they turn out to be wrong, the intelligence community’s reputation will suffer and the effectiveness of future disclosures will be undermined, since there would be a historical basis to doubt them. One remedy would be to release only high-confidence judgments. In 2023, Burns signaled that he had done just that when he said he was “confident” that Chinese leaders were considering providing Russia with lethal aid, a word choice that suggested analysts believed there was a high likelihood their judgment was correct. Another option would be to follow Hayden’s example and disclose intelligence of various levels of confidence but make clear which conclusions enjoy which level. Disclosures have a mixed record and are probably less successful than officials believe. Third, in a world of disinformation and spin, the release of intelligence must represent the truth or, more precisely, what the intelligence community assesses to be true. Although it may be tempting to embed disinformation in a disclosure, that line should never be crossed. Nor should officials attempt to spin the intelligence in any way to create a misleading impression. And crucial caveats should always be included, since withholding them creates the illusion of certainty. Fourth, a disclosure should have to pass a common-sense test: that there be a reasonable chance it will have the intended effect. Disclosures have a mixed record and are probably less successful than officials believe. One requirement for success is that a strategic downgrade be connected to an overarching strategy involving the rest of the U.S. government; if it isn’t, its chances of working are markedly reduced. The Biden administration’s disclosures about the impending invasion of Ukraine, for instance, had some positive effect, but they could not compensate for years of poor policies, such as the failure to impose tough sanctions or give Kyiv enough military aid after Putin seized Crimea. Although bureaucratic rules are rarely the best solution to real-world problems, there is one that would help here. The director of national intelligence should issue an intelligence community directive (the intelligence community’s equivalent of an executive order) stipulating that a disclosure can be made only after she has signed a memorandum that addresses all the guardrails. This requirement would not only instill discipline but also create a record of important decisions. The office of the director of national intelligence could then develop an internal dataset—trackable over time and available to her successors—to assess the short- and long-term effects of disclosures. BRAVE NEW WORLD The conundrum of strategic downgrades is but one of many challenges facing the U.S. intelligence community. The list is long: how to recruit spies in a world of ubiquitous technical surveillance, how to collect signals intelligence in a world of decentralized telecommunications and computing, how to sift through mountains of data in a world of open-source information, and how to hire and retain the best and the brightest in a world of declining trust in government. And all these difficulties are set against the backdrop of great-power competition, with China, Russia, and other authoritarian countries working every day to threaten the United States’ democracy, prosperity, and security. Officials outside intelligence agencies, for their part, generally do not approach disclosures with the same caution as the people serving inside them. Policymakers’ natural confidence and enviable optimism about the efficacy of their own actions may invite them to focus on the upsides of disclosures while ignoring or rationalizing away the dangers. Their desire to maximize the policy utility of secret intelligence may lead them to resist efforts to add new restraints to the disclosure process. Given all these pressures, it would be tempting for policymakers and intelligence practitioners alike to throw up their hands and decide to manage strategic declassification in an ad hoc way. But that would be a mistake. The point of no return has been passed, and intelligence is being released faster than norms can be created. If the process for disclosures is not handled with utmost care, the United States could diminish the unparalleled advantage in statecraft and national security it derives from a crucial pillar of American power: the U.S. intelligence community. DAVID V. GIOE is a British Academy Global Professor of Intelligence and International Security at King’s College London and a former CIA analyst and operations officer. MICHAEL J. MORELL is Senior Counselor at Beacon Global Strategies and a former Acting Director and Deputy Director of the CIA. MORE BY DAVID V. GIOE MORE BY MICHAEL J. MORELL More: United States Politics & Society Civil & Military Relations Security Intelligence U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration U.S. Politics Cuban Missile Crisis War in Ukraine Vladimir Putin Most-Read Articles War Unbound Gaza, Ukraine, and the Breakdown of International Law Oona A. Hathaway Why the Military Can’t Trust AI Large Language Models Can Make Bad Decisions—and Could Trigger Nuclear War Max Lamparth and Jacquelyn Schneider China’s Alternative Order And What America Should Learn From It Elizabeth Economy The Axis of Upheaval How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine Recommended Articles William Burns testifying in the U.S. Senate, February 2021 Spycraft and Statecraft Transforming the CIA for an Age of Competition William J. Burns Open Secrets Ukraine and the Next Intelligence Revolution Amy Zegart China’s Alternative Order And What America Should Learn From It By Elizabeth Economy May/June 2024 Published on April 23, 2024 Tyler Comrie By now, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambition to remake the world is undeniable. He wants to dissolve Washington’s network of alliances and purge what he dismisses as “Western” values from international bodies. He wants to knock the U.S. dollar off its pedestal and eliminate Washington’s chokehold over critical technology. In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology. China will no longer have to fight for leadership. Its centrality will be guaranteed. To hear Xi tell it, this world is within reach. At the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs last December, he boasted that Beijing was (in the words of a government press release) a “confident, self-reliant, open and inclusive major country,” one that had created the world’s “largest platform for international cooperation” and led the way in “reforming the international system.” He asserted that his conception for the global order—a “community with a shared future for mankind”—had evolved from a “Chinese initiative” to an “international consensus,” to be realized through the implementation of four Chinese programs: the Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative. Outside China, such brash, self-congratulatory proclamations are generally disregarded or dismissed—including by American officials, who have tended to discount the appeal of Beijing’s strategy. It is easy to see why: a large number of China’s plans appear to be failing or backfiring. Many of China’s neighbors are drawing closer to Washington, and its economy is faltering. The country’s confrontational “Wolf Warrior” style of diplomacy may have pleased Xi, but it won China few friends overseas. And polls indicate that Beijing is broadly unpopular worldwide: A 2023 Pew Research Center study, for example, surveyed attitudes toward China and the United States in 24 countries on six continents. It found that only 28 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of Beijing, and just 23 percent said China contributes to global peace. Nearly 60 percent of respondents, by contrast, had a positive view of the United States, and 61 percent said Washington contributes to peace and stability. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. But Xi’s vision is far more formidable than it seems. China’s proposals would give power to the many countries that have been frustrated and sidelined by the present order, but it would still afford the states Washington currently favors with valuable international roles. Beijing’s initiatives are backed by a comprehensive, well-resourced, and disciplined operational strategy—one that features outreach to governments and people in seemingly every country. These techniques have gained Beijing newfound support, particularly in some multilateral organizations and from nondemocracies. China is succeeding in making itself an agent of welcome change while portraying the United States as the defender of a status quo that few particularly like. Rather than dismissing Beijing’s playbook, U.S. policymakers should learn from it. To win what will be a long-term competition, the United States must seize the mantle of change that China has claimed. Washington needs to articulate and push forward its own vision for a transformed international system and the U.S. role within that system—one that is inclusive of countries at different economic levels and with different political systems. Like China, the United States needs to invest deeply in the technological, military, and diplomatic foundations that enable both security at home and leadership abroad. Yet as the country commits to that competition, U.S. policymakers must understand that near-term stabilization of the bilateral relationship advances rather than hinders ultimate U.S. objectives. They should build on last year’s summit between President Joe Biden and Xi, curtailing inflammatory anti-Chinese rhetoric and creating a more functional diplomatic relationship. That way, the United States can focus on the more important task: winning the long-term game. I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW Beijing’s playbook begins with a well-defined vision of a transformed world order. The Chinese government wants a system built not just on multipolarity but also on absolute sovereignty; security rooted in international consensus and the UN Charter; state-determined human rights based on each country’s circumstances; development as the “master key” to all solutions; the end of U.S. dollar dominance; and a pledge to leave no country and no one behind. This vision, in Beijing’s telling, stands in stark contrast to the system the United States supports. In a 2023 report, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed Washington was “clinging to the Cold War mentality” and “piecing together small blocs through its alliance system” to “create division in the region, stoke confrontation and undermine peace.” The United States, the report continued, interferes “in the internal affairs of other countries,” uses the dollar’s status as the international reserve currency to coerce “other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy,” and seeks to “deter other countries’ scientific, technological and economic development.” Finally, the ministry argued, the United States advances “cultural hegemony.” The “real weapons in U.S. cultural expansion,” it declared, were the “production lines of Mattel Company and Coca-Cola.” Beijing claims that its vision, by contrast, advances the interests of the majority of the world’s people. China is center stage, but every country, including the United States, has a role to play. At the 2024 Munich Security Conference in February, for example, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China and the United States are responsible for global strategic stability. China and Russia, meanwhile, represent the exploration of a new model for major-country relations. China and the European Union are the world’s two major markets and civilizations and should resist establishing blocs based on ideology. And China, as what Wang called the “largest developing country,” promotes solidarity and cooperation with the global South to increase its representation in global affairs. China’s vision is designed to be compelling for nearly all countries. Those that are not democracies will have their choices validated. Those that are democracies but not major powers will gain a greater voice in the international system and a bigger share of the benefits of globalization. Even the major democratic powers can reflect on whether the current system is adequate for meeting today’s challenges or whether China has something better to offer. Observers in the United States and elsewhere may roll their eyes at the grandiose phrasing, but they do so at their peril: dissatisfaction with the current international order has created a global audience more amenable to China’s proposals than might have existed not long ago. FOUR PILLARS For over two decades, China has referred to a “new security concept” that embraces norms such as common security, system diversity, and multipolarity. But in recent years, China believes it has acquired the capability to advance its vision. To that end, during his first decade in power, Xi released three distinct global programs: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, the Global Development Initiative (GDI) in 2021, and the Global Security Initiative (GSI) in 2022. Each contributes in some way to furthering both the transformation of the international system and China’s centrality within it. The BRI was initially a platform for Beijing to address the hard infrastructure needs of emerging and middle-income economies while making use of the Chinese construction industry’s overcapacity. It has since expanded to become an engine of Beijing’s geostrategy: embedding China’s digital, health, and clean technology ecosystems globally; promoting its development model; expanding the reach of its military and police forces; and advancing the use of its currency. The GDI focuses on global development more broadly, and it places China squarely in the driver’s seat. Often working with the UN, it supports small-scale projects that address poverty alleviation, digital connectivity, climate change, and health and food security. It advances Beijing’s preference for economic development as a foundation for human rights. One government document on the program, for instance, accuses other countries of the “marginalization of development issues by emphasizing human rights and democracy.” China is succeeding in making itself an agent of welcome change. Beijing has positioned the GSI as a system for, as several Chinese scholars have put it, providing “Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions” to promote “world peace and tranquility.” In Xi’s words, the GSI advocates that countries “reject the Cold War mentality, oppose unilateralism, and say no to group politics and bloc confrontation.” The better course, according to Xi, entails building a “balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture” that resolves differences between countries through dialogue and consultation and that upholds noninterference in others’ internal affairs. Behind the rhetoric, the GSI is designed to end U.S. alliance systems, establish security as a precondition for development, and promote absolute sovereignty and indivisible security—or the notion that one state’s safety should not come at the expense of others’. China and Russia have used this notion to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suggesting that Moscow’s attack was needed to stop an expanding NATO from threatening Russia. But Xi’s strategy has taken flight only in the past year, with the release of the Global Civilization Initiative in May 2023. The GCI advances the idea that countries with different civilizations and levels of development will have different political and economic models. It asserts that states determine rights and that no one country or model has a mandate to control the discourse of human rights. As former Foreign Minister Qin Gang put it: “There is no one-size-fits-all model in the protection of human rights.” Thus, Greece, with its philosophical and cultural traditions and level of development, may have a different conception and practice of human rights than China does. Both are equally valid. Chinese leaders are working hard to get countries and international institutions to buy into their world vision. Their strategy is multilevel: striking deals with individual countries, integrating their initiatives or components of them into multilateral organizations, and embedding their proposals into global governance institutions. The BRI is the model for this approach. Around 150 countries have become members of the program, which openly advocates for the values that frame China’s vision—such as the primacy of development, sovereignty, state-directed political rights, and common security. This bilateral dealmaking has been accompanied by Chinese officials’ efforts to link the BRI to other regional development efforts, such as the Master Plan on Connectivity 2025 created by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Xi at a summit in San Francisco, November 2023 Kevin Lamarque / Reuters China has also successfully embedded the BRI in more than two dozen UN agencies and programs. It has worked particularly diligently to align the BRI and the UN’s high-profile 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, which has been headed by a Chinese official for over a decade, produced a report on the BRI’s support for the agenda. The report was partially funded by the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund, which, in turn, was initially established by a $200 million Chinese pledge. Such support undoubtedly contributes to the enthusiasm many senior UN officials, including the secretary-general, have shown for the BRI. Progress on the GDI, GSI, and GCI has understandably been more nascent. Thus far, only a handful of leaders from countries such as Serbia, South Africa, South Sudan, and Venezuela have offered rhetorical support for the GCI’s notion that the diversity of civilizations and development paths should be respected—and by extension, for China’s vision for an order that does not give primacy to the values of liberal democracies. The GDI has gained more international support than the GCI. After Xi announced the project before the UN General Assembly, China developed a “Group of Friends of the GDI” that now boasts more than 70 countries. The GDI has advanced 50 projects and pledged 100,000 training opportunities for officials and experts from other countries to travel to China and study its systems. These training opportunities are designed to promote China’s advanced technologies, its management experiences, and its development model. China has also succeeded in formally linking the GDI to the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and held GDI-related seminars with the UN Office for South-South Cooperation. Beijing, in other words, is weaving the program into the fabric of the international governmental system. The GSI has achieved even greater rhetorical buy-in. According to China’s Foreign Ministry, more than 100 countries, regional organizations, and international organizations have supported the GSI, and Chinese officials have encouraged the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), ASEAN, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to adopt the concept. At the SCO’s September 2022 meeting, China advanced the GSI and received support from all the members except India and Tajikistan. MASS APPEAL China, in contrast with the United States, invests heavily in the diplomatic resources necessary to market its initiatives. It has more embassies and representative offices around the globe than any other country, and Chinese diplomats frequently speak at conferences and publish a stream of articles about China’s various initiatives in local news outlets. This diplomatic apparatus is supported by equally sprawling Chinese media networks. China’s international news network, CGTN, has twice as many overseas bureaus as CNN, and Xinhua, the official Chinese news service, has over 180 bureaus globally. Although Chinese media are often perceived in the West as little more than crude propaganda tools, they can advance a positive image of China and its leadership. In a study published in 2024, a team of international scholars surveyed more than 6,000 respondents in 19 countries to see whether China or the United States was more effective at selling its political and economic model and its role as a global leader. At baseline, participants overwhelmingly preferred the United States—83 percent of the interviewees preferred the U.S. political model, 70 percent preferred the U.S. economic model, and 78 percent preferred U.S. leadership. But when they were exposed to Chinese media messaging—whether only to China’s or to Chinese and U.S. government messaging in a head-to-head competition—participants preferred the Chinese models to those of the United States. Beijing also draws heavily on the strength of state-owned companies and the country’s private sector to promote its objectives. China’s technology firms, for instance, not only provide digital connectivity to a variety of countries; they also enable states to emulate elements of Beijing’s political model. According to Freedom House, representatives from 36 countries have participated in Chinese government training sessions on how to control media and information on the Internet. In Zambia, adopting a “China way” for Internet governance—as a former government minister described it—resulted in the imprisonment of several Zambians for criticizing the president online. German Council on Foreign Relations experts revealed that Huawei middleboxes blocked websites in 17 countries. The more states adopt Chinese norms and technologies that suppress political and civil liberties, the more Beijing can undermine the current international system’s embrace of universal human rights. The United States must seize the mantle of change that China has claimed. In addition, Xi has enhanced the role of China’s security apparatus as a diplomatic tool. China’s People’s Liberation Army is conducting exercises with a growing number of countries and offering training to militaries throughout the developing world. Last year, for example, China brought more than 100 senior military officials from almost 50 African countries and the African Union to Beijing for the third China-Africa Peace and Security Forum. China and the African participants agreed to hold more joint military exercises, and they embraced the BRI and the GSI, alongside the African Union’s Agenda 2063 development plan, as a way to pursue economic development, promote peace, and ensure stability on the continent. Together, these arrangements help create the collaborative security system China wants: one that’s based on Beijing. China has boosted its strategy by being both patient and opportunistic. Beijing provides massive resources for its initiatives, reassuring other countries of its long-term support and enabling Chinese officials to act quickly when opportunities arise. For example, Beijing first announced a version of the Health Silk Road in 2015, but it garnered little attention. In 2020, however, China used the COVID-19 pandemic to breathe new life into the project. Xi delivered a major address before the World Health Assembly promoting China as a hub for medical resources. Beijing paired Chinese provinces with different countries and had the former send personal protective equipment and medical professionals to the latter. China also used the pandemic to push Chinese digital health technologies and traditional Chinese medicine—a priority for Xi—as ways to treat the virus. More recently, China has used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting Western sanctions to push de-dollarizing the global economy. China’s trade with Russia is now mostly settled in renminbi, and Beijing is working through the BRI and multilateral organizations, such as the BRICS (which 34 countries have expressed interest in joining), to advance de-dollarization. As Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said during a 2023 visit to China, “Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar. Why can’t we do trade based on our own currencies?” THE PAYOFF Beijing has clearly made progress in gaining rhetorical buy-in from other countries, as well as from UN organizations and officials. But in terms of effecting actual change on the ground, garnering support from other countries’ citizens, and influencing the reform of international institutions, China’s record is more mixed. The GDI, for its part, is well on its way. A two-year progress report produced by the Xinhua News Agency’s think tank indicated that 20 percent of the GDI’s initial 50 cooperation programs had been completed, and an additional 200 had been proposed. Some projects are highly local and long term, but others will have a greater immediate impact, such as a wind power project in Kazakhstan that will meet the energy needs of more than one million households. Despite the relative nascence of the GSI, Wang, China’s foreign minister, quickly claimed that the Beijing-brokered 2023 rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia was an example of the GSI’s principle of promoting dialogue. China has had less success, however, using GSI principles in its attempts to resolve the war in Ukraine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, some countries have expressed concern that the GSI is a kind of military alliance. Despite being an early beneficiary of GDI projects, for example, Nepal has resisted multiple Chinese entreaties to join the GSI because it does not want to be part of any security alliance. The BRI has transformed the geostrategic and economic landscape throughout much of Africa, Southeast Asia, and, increasingly, Latin America. Huawei, for example, provides 70 percent of all the components in Africa’s 4G telecommunications infrastructure. In addition, China’s 2023 BRI investments have increased from 2022. There are signs, however, that the BRI’s influence may be plateauing. Italy, the biggest economy in the initiative (aside from China itself), withdrew in December, and only 23 leaders attended the 2023 Belt and Road Forum, compared with 37 in 2019. China’s financing for the BRI has fallen sharply since its peak in 2016, and many BRI recipient countries are struggling to repay Beijing’s loans. A screen broadcasting an air force drill, Beijing, August 2023 Tingshu Wang / Reuters Public opinion polls paint a similarly mixed picture. The Pew poll indicated that middle-income economies, particularly in Africa and Latin America, are more likely to have positive views of China and its contributions to stability than higher-income economies in Asia and Europe. But even in these regions, popular views of China are far from uniformly positive. A 2023 survey of 1,308 elites in ASEAN states, for instance, reveals that although China is considered the most influential economic and security actor in the region, majorities in every country, except Brunei, express concern over China’s rising influence. Pluralities or majorities in seven of ten countries do not believe that the GSI will benefit their region. And when asked whether they would align with China or with the United States if forced to choose, majorities in seven of ten ASEAN countries selected the United States. Afrobarometer’s 2019 and 2020 surveys suggest China has a more positive reputation in Africa: 63 percent of Africans polled in 34 countries believe China is a positive external influence. But only 22 percent believe China is the best model for future development, and approval of China’s model declined from the 2014 and 2015 surveys. A 2021 survey of 336 opinion leaders from 23 countries in Latin America was similarly telling. Although 78 percent of respondents believe China’s overall influence in the region is high, only 35 percent have a good or very good opinion of China. (Respondents have similar opinions about the United States.) There was support for engagement with China on trade and foreign direct investment but minimal support for engagement on multilateral cooperation, international security, and human rights. Finally, support for China and Chinese-backed initiatives in the United Nations is mixed. For example, a detailed study of China’s Digital Silk Road investment in Africa found that although eight African DSR members supported China’s New IP proposal for increasing state control over the Internet, more African DSR members did not write in support of it. And the February 2023 vote to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—in which 141 countries voted in favor, seven voted against, and 32, including China and all other members of the SCO except Russia, abstained—suggests widespread rejection of the GSI’s principle of indivisible security. Nonetheless, China won the support of 25 of the 31 emerging and middle-income countries (not including itself) in the UN Human Rights Council in a successful bid to prevent debate on Beijing’s treatment of its Uyghur minority population. It was only the second time in the council’s history that a debate has been blocked. FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE Support for China’s efforts may appear shallow among many segments of the international community. But China’s leaders express great confidence in their transformative vision, and there is significant momentum behind the basic principles and policies proposed in the GDI, GSI, and GCI among members of BRICS and the SCO, as well as among nondemocracies and African countries. China’s wins within bigger organizations—such as the UN—may seem minor, but they are accumulating, giving Beijing substantial authority inside major institutions that many emerging and middle-income economies value. And Beijing has a formidable operational strategy for achieving its desired transformation, along with the capability to coordinate policy at multiple levels of government over a long period. Part of why Beijing’s efforts are catching on is that the present, U.S.-led system is unpopular in much of the world. It does not have a good record of meeting global challenges such as pandemics, climate change, debt crises, or food shortages—all of which disproportionately affect the planet’s most vulnerable people. Many countries believe that the United Nations and its institutions, including the Security Council, do not adequately reflect the world’s distribution of power. The international system has also not proved capable of resolving long-standing conflicts or preventing new ones. And the United States is increasingly viewed as operating outside the very institutions and norms it helped create: deploying widespread sanctions without Security Council approval, helping weaken international bodies such as the World Trade Organization, and, during the Trump administration, withdrawing from global agreements. Finally, Washington’s periodic framing of the world system as one divided between autocracies and democracies alienates many countries, including some democratic ones. Even if its vision is not fully realized, unless the world has a credible alternative, China can take advantage of this dissatisfaction to make significant progress in materially degrading the current international system. The uphill battle the United States has waged to persuade countries to avoid Huawei telecommunications equipment is an important lesson in addressing a problem before it arises. It would be far more difficult to overturn a global order that has devalued universal human rights in favor of state-determined rights, significantly de-dollarized the financial system, widely embedded state-controlled technology systems, and deconstructed U.S.-led military alliances. The U.S.-led international system is unpopular in much of the world. The United States should therefore move aggressively to position itself as a force for system change. It should take a page from China’s playbook and be opportunistic—seeking strategic advantage as China’s economy is faltering and its political system is under stress. It should acknowledge that, as Xi has repeatedly said, there are changes in the world “the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years” but make clear that these shifts do not signal the decline of the United States. Instead, they are in line with Washington’s own dynamic vision for the future. The vision should begin by advancing an economic and technological revolution that will transform the world’s digital, energy, agricultural, and health landscapes in ways that are inclusive and contribute to shared global prosperity. This will require new norms and institutions that integrate emerging and middle-income economies into resilient and diversified global supply chains, innovation networks, clean manufacturing ecosystems, and information and data governance regimes. Washington should promote a global conversation on its vision of technologically advanced change rooted in high standards, the rule of law, transparency, official accountability, and sustainability—norms of shared good governance that are not ideologically laden. Such a discussion would likely be widely popular, just as China’s focus on the imperative of development holds broad appeal. Washington has put in place some of the building blocks of this vision through the U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment. Largely left out of the equation, however, are precisely the states most open to China’s vision of transformation—most members of the BRICS, the SCO, and nondemocratic emerging and middle-income economies. Together with these countries, Washington should explore regional arrangements akin to those it has established with its Asian and European partners. More countries should be brought into the networks Washington is establishing to build stronger supply chains, such as those created by the CHIPS and Science Act. And countries such as Cambodia and Laos, left out of relevant existing arrangements such as the Indo-Pacific framework, should be given a path to membership. This would expand the United States’ development footprint, allowing it to provide a development trajectory that is different from Beijing’s BRI and GDI and—unlike China’s initiatives—offers participating countries an opportunity to help develop the rules of the road. Members of the Chinese military, Beijing, March 2024 Florence Lo / Reuters Artificial intelligence presents a unique opportunity for the United States to signal a new, more inclusive approach. As its full applications become appreciated, AI will require new international norms and potentially new institutions to harness its positive effects and limit its negative ones. The United States, which is the world’s leading AI innovator, should engage up front with countries other than its traditional allies and partners to develop regulations. Joint U.S.-EU efforts regarding skills training for the next generation of AI jobs, for example, should be expanded to include the global majority. The United States can also support engagement between its robust private sector and civil society organizations and their counterparts in other countries—a multistakeholder approach that China, with its “head of state” style of diplomacy, typically eschews. This effort will require Washington to draw more effectively on the U.S. private sector and civil society—much as China has worked its state-owned enterprises and private sector into the BRI and GDI—by fostering vibrant, state-initiated but business-and-civil-society-driven international partnerships. In most of the world, including Africa and Latin America, the United States is a larger and more desired source of foreign direct investment and assistance than China. And Washington has left untapped a significant alignment of interests between its strategic goals and the economic objectives of the private sector, such as creating political and economic environments abroad that enable U.S. companies to flourish. Because American companies and foundations are private actors, however, the benefits of their investments do not redound to the U.S. government. Institutionalizing public-private partnerships can better link U.S. objectives with the strength of the American private sector and help ensure that initiatives are not cast aside during political transitions in Washington. The work of private foundations in the United States—which invest billions of dollars in emerging economies and middle-income countries—should similarly be amplified by American officials and lifted up through partnerships with Washington. More inclusive global governance also requires that Washington consider potential tradeoffs as other countries’ economies and militaries grow relative to those of the United States. In the near term, for example, a clearer delineation of the limits of U.S. sanctions policy could help slow the momentum behind Beijing’s de-dollarization effort. But Washington should use this time to assess the viability of the dollar’s dominance over the longer term and consider what steps, if any, U.S. officials should take to try to preserve it. Washington’s vision may also need to incorporate reforms to the current alliance system. The hard realities of China’s growing military prowess and its economic support for Russia during the latter’s war against Ukraine make clear that Washington and its allies must think anew about the security structures necessary to manage a world in which Beijing and its like-minded partners operate as soft, and potentially hard, military allies. China is right: the international system does need reform. As with China, the United States needs to spend more on the foundations of its competitiveness and national security to succeed over the long term. Although defensive policies are often necessary, they grant only short-term protections. This means Washington must staff up to match Beijing’s foreign policy apparatus. Around 30 U.S. embassies and missions have no sitting U.S. ambassador; each of these slots must be filled. The United States has taken the first steps to enhance its economic competitiveness with programs such as the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, but it needs sustained investment in research and development and advanced manufacturing. It also needs to adopt immigration policies that attract and retain top talent from around the world. And Washington needs to recommit to investing in the foundations of its long-term military capabilities and modernization. Without bipartisan support for the basic building blocks of American competitiveness and global leadership, Beijing will continue to make headway in changing the global order. Finally, to avoid unnecessary friction, the United States should continue to stabilize the U.S.-Chinese relationship by defining new areas for cooperation, expanding civil society engagement, tamping down needless hostile rhetoric, strategically managing its Taiwan policy, and developing a clear message on the economic tools it uses to protect U.S. economic and national security. This will enable the United States to maintain relations with those in China who are concerned about their country’s current trajectory, as well as give Washington room to focus on building up its economic and military capabilities while moving forward with its own global vision. China is right: the international system does need reform. But the foundations for that reform are best found in the openness, transparency, rule of law, and official accountability that are the hallmarks of the world’s market democracies. The global innovation and creativity necessary to solve the world’s challenges thrive best in open societies. Transparency, the rule of law, and official accountability are the foundation of healthy, sustained global economic growth. And the current system of alliances, although insufficient to ensure global peace and security, has helped prevent war from breaking out among the world’s great powers for more than 70 years. China has not yet managed to convince a majority of the planet’s people that its intentions and capabilities are the ones needed to shape the twenty-first century. But it is up to the United States and its allies and partners to create an affirmative and compelling alternative. ELIZABETH ECONOMY is a Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. From 2021 to 2023, she was Senior Adviser for China at the U.S. Department of Commerce. She is the author of The World According to China. 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Medeiros Illustration by Joan Wong; photo by Mike Blake / Reuters The China Trap U.S. Foreign Policy and the Perilous Logic of Zero-Sum Competition Jessica Chen Weiss The Coming Arab Backlash Middle Eastern Regimes—and America—Ignore Public Anger at Their Peril By Marc Lynch April 22, 2024 A protest in support of Palestinians near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, March 2024 Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the Middle East has been rocked by mass protests. Egyptians have demonstrated in solidarity with Palestinians at great personal risk, and Iraqis, Moroccans, Tunisians, and Yemenis have taken to the streets in vast numbers. Meanwhile, Jordanians have broken long-standing redlines by marching on the Israeli embassy, and Saudi Arabia has refused to resume normalization talks with Israel, in part because of its people’s deep fury over Israel’s operations in the Gaza Strip. For Washington, the view is that none of this mobilization really matters. Arab leaders, after all, are among the world’s most experienced practitioners of realpolitik, and they have a record of ignoring their people’s preferences. The protests, although large, have been manageable. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other leaders have long encouraged protests about the treatment of Palestinians, which allow their people to blow off steam and direct their anger toward a foreign enemy instead of against domestic corruption and incompetence. In time, or so the argument goes, the fighting in Gaza will end, the angry protesters will go home, and their leaders will carry on pursuing self-interests, an activity at which they excel. U.S. foreign policymakers also have a long history of disregarding public opinion in the Middle East—the so-called Arab street. After all, if autocratic Arab leaders are calling the shots, then it is not necessary to put stock in what angry activists shout or in what ordinary citizens tell pollsters or the media. Since there are no democracies in the Middle East, care need not be given to what anyone outside the palaces thinks. And for all its talk of democracy and human rights, Washington has always been more comfortable dealing with pragmatic autocrats than with publics it regards as irrational, extremist mobs. It rarely pauses to consider how this might contribute to its dismal record of policy failures. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. The United States’ willingness to dismiss popular concerns is strengthened by the memory of 2003, when Arab public opinion was wildly against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but most of the region’s leaders cooperated with the invasion and none took steps to oppose it. Despite decades of frequent mass protests against Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan and Egypt have maintained peace treaties with Israel, and Egypt has even actively participated in the siege of Gaza. Indeed, U.S. complacency has actually increased as anticipated eruptions of popular anger—for example, over moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or bombing Yemen—failed to materialize. Washington’s conviction was briefly shaken by the Arab uprisings of 2011, but it returned in full force as autocracies reasserted control in the following years. That seems to be what the United States and most policy analysts expect this time around, too. When the bombing is finally over, the crowds will return to their homes and find other things to be mad about, and regional politics can go back to normal. But these assumptions reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how public opinion matters in the Middle East, as well as a deep misreading of what has truly changed since the 2011 uprisings. NO IDLE CHATTER The term “Arab street” is used by policymakers to reduce regional public opinion to the rantings of an irrational, hostile, and emotional mob that might be appeased or repressed but is without coherent policy preferences or ideas. The expression has deep roots in British and French colonial rule and was adopted by the United States as it entered the Cold War and came to believe that education and capitalism are capable of transforming the Middle East into the image of the West. These ideas underpinned Washington’s policy of cooperating with Arab dictators who could control their people. That suited Arab leaders, who could deflect Western pressure on issues such as Israel or democratization by pointing to the threat of popular uprisings and Islamic boogeymen waiting in the wings to take their place. Before 2011, the high point of the Arab street concept occurred during the so-called Arab cold war of the 1950s, when populist pan-Arab leaders enjoyed great success in mobilizing the masses against conservative Western allies in the name of Arab unity and support for Palestinians. The sight of thousands of angry protesters responding to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s radio addresses by rampaging through the streets in countries including Jordan impressed itself on Western policymakers. Washington, in particular, concluded that the Arab street was dangerous, creating openings for the Soviets. These peoples, then, were not to be reasoned with but to be controlled by force. Long after the Cold War ended, this perception has endured, although it rests on a basic misunderstanding of Arab politics and continues to drive U.S. Middle East policy, as well as many policy analyses of the region. It has always been easier to dismiss Arab support for the Palestinian territories as rooted in atavistic anti-Semitism—or to wave away public fury at U.S. policies as cynically drummed up by politicians—than to take seriously the reasons for Arabs’ anger and to find ways to address their concerns. This idea of the Arab street changed somewhat in the 1990s and the subsequent decade. Satellite television, especially Al Jazeera, crystallized in these decades and shaped a pan-Arab public opinion. The rise of systematic, scientific public opinion polling in the 1990s provided considerable nuance about national variances, attitudes changing in response to events, and sophisticated assessments of political conditions. The emergence of social media allowed a wide variety of Arab voices to break the media’s control and shatter stereotypes through their unmediated analysis and interactive engagement. After 9/11, Washington put great effort into a war of ideas, designed to combat extremist and Islamist ideas across the region, an approach that, however misguided, did require significant investment in survey research and careful attention to Arab media and emerging social media. But then the uprisings in 2011 shattered general complacency about the stability of the region’s autocrats, showing that the people’s voices needed to be heard and taken into account. THE AUTOCRATS SHAKE BUT SURVIVE The memory of the 2011 uprisings still hangs over every calculation of regime stability in today’s Middle East. The results of those revolutionary events carried mixed lessons. The rapid spread of regime-threatening protests from Tunisia across virtually the entire region showed that the supposed stability of Arab autocracies was mostly a myth. For a brief moment, it stopped making sense for Washington to ignore the subtleties of Arab public opinion or to defer to the assurances of jaded Arab rulers. The uprisings were manifestly not simply the eruption of a mindless Arab street. Rather, the young revolutionaries who captured the spirit of the era articulated thoughtful, incisive critiques of the autocrats they challenged, and even the Islamists in their midst spoke the language of freedom and democracy. Western governments initially raced to engage with these impressive young leaders and tried to support their efforts to bring about democratic transitions and more open political systems. But such lessons were quickly forgotten as Arab regimes regained control through military coups, political engineering, and wide-ranging repression. Autocrats throughout the region helped other autocrats restore their power, and the West simply stood by. The United States, for example, did not act as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states supported Bahrain’s vicious repression of its protests in 2011 and poured financial and political support into the 2013 Egyptian military coup. The autocratic restoration that followed brought a level of repression that went far beyond that which had existed before 2011, with regimes across the region crushing and silencing civil society, fearing any resurgence of opposition. Digital surveillance aided these repressive measures, giving regimes unprecedentedly nuanced understandings of their citizens’ views and the potential for opposition movements to appear. The autocratic restoration quickly resulted in the return of an older model of Western foreign policy based on cooperating with autocratic elites and ignoring the views of Arab publics. Nowhere could this be seen more clearly than in U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From 1991 until recently, Washington had shepherded a peace process in part because U.S. leaders believed that delivering a just solution for Palestinians was essential to legitimize U.S. primacy. President Donald Trump’s administration, however, simply ignored Palestinian and Arab public opinion as it brokered the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The accords also included Sudan, as well as Morocco, after Washington agreed to recognize its sovereignty over Western Sahara. Autocrats in the region helped other autocrats restore power, and the West stood by. U.S. President Joe Biden, despite promising campaign rhetoric, instead wholeheartedly embraced Trump’s approach to the Middle East, pushing for Arab-Israeli normalization and ignoring democracy and human rights. After his inauguration in 2021, Biden abandoned his promises to put human rights first and make Saudi Arabia a pariah for its murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and its war on Yemen. Instead, he scrambled with unseemly desperation to finish Trump’s policies of normalizing relations with Israel without resolving the Palestinian issue and fending off Chinese gains in the region by securing an agreement with Saudi Arabia. It is not an accident that the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7 coincided with the Biden administration’s full-court press for a Saudi normalization deal in the midst of unprecedented provocations by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There were many signs of Arab discontent with normalization and countless warnings of an imminent explosion in Gaza, but Washington ignored them as just another instance of misguided deference to an Arab street that it believed its autocratic allies could control. It was wrong. That is because public opinion matters in the Middle East. Politics matter, even under autocracies, and in the Middle East, political forces move seamlessly between the domestic and the regional. Successful leaders must learn to master both dimensions of the game. Part of ensuring their survival is knowing how to respond to protests, and the response depends on the issue at hand. Western diplomats listen to Arab rulers who would not sacrifice even minor interests for the greater good if they could get away with it. Of course, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would do a deal with Israel if he thought it would serve his government’s interests and he could absorb public anger without too much risk. But that is a big if. Prince Mohammed and other Arab leaders care about what might get them overthrown. For the most part, they care about one thing more than anything else: staying in power. That means not only preventing obviously regime-threatening mass protests but also being attentive to potential sources of discontent and responding as necessary to head them off. With almost every Arab country outside the Gulf suffering extreme economic problems, and accordingly exercising maximum repression, regimes have to be even more careful in responding to issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arab leaders are, meanwhile, also focused on the regional political game and fiercely compete to position themselves as the most effective defenders of their shared identities and interests. That is why they often dress up even the most nakedly cynical and self-interested moves as serving the interests of Palestinians or defending Arab honor. The recent actions of the United Arab Emirates, such as when it tried to justify the Abraham Accords by claiming to have prevented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned annexation of the West Bank, are a case in point. Arab leaders care about what gives them an advantage or threatens them in the intensely competitive game of regional politics—whether that is against other Arab contenders for influence or against other powers, including Turkey and Iran. The regional dimension of competition has become even more intense over the last decade, as the Arab uprisings highlighted how political developments throughout the region may risk the survival of any domestic regime. Most notably, Qatar competed hard with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over political transitions and civil wars in Syria, Tunisia, and elsewhere, seeking to shape public opinion but also responding to it. THE BUILDING BACKLASH Today, it is glaringly obvious that it was wrong for the United States to assume that it could ignore Arab public opinion about the treatment of Palestinians. Arabs have not, in fact, lost interest in the issue. And Arab regimes have not, in fact, established a death grip on public mobilization. Almost every regime now finds its publics extraordinarily mobilized by what they consider to be Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza and a new program of displacement and occupation. The resulting level of mobilization and public outrage exceeds the 2003 fury over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and it is clearly influencing the behavior of the region’s regimes. Indeed, the degree and power of popular mobilization can be seen not only in the media and the crowds in the streets but also in the uncharacteristic criticism of Israel and the United States being voiced by regimes that need to get this right in order to survive. Even Egypt, a close U.S. partner, has threatened to freeze the Camp David Accords if Israel invades Rafah or expels Gazans into the Sinai. The Arab media, which had been badly fragmented and politically polarized during the previous decade’s intraregional political wars, has largely reunited in defense of Gaza. Al Jazeera is back, reliving its glory days through round-the-clock coverage of the horrors there, even as its journalists have been killed in action by Israeli forces. Social media is back, too—not the corpse of Twitter or the woefully censored Facebook and Instagram, so much as newer apps such as TikTok, WhatsApp, and Telegram. The images and videos emerging from Gaza overwhelm the spin offered by Israel and the United States and easily bypass soft-pedaled coverage by Western news outlets. People see the devastation. Every day they confront scenes of unbelievable tragedy. And they know victims directly. They do not need the media to understand WhatsApp messages from terrified Gazans or to view the horrifying videos widely circulating on Telegram. Arab activists and intellectuals have been developing powerful arguments about the nature of Israel’s domination of the Palestinian territories and these are entering the Western discourse in new ways. The case South Africa brought to the International Court of Justice, alleging an Israeli genocide in Gaza, introduced many of those arguments into circulation across the global South and within international organizations. It did so by referencing not only the statements of Israeli leaders but also conceptual frameworks about occupation and settler colonialism developed by Arab and Palestinian intellectuals. The war of ideas that the United States sought to wage in the Muslim world after 9/11, claiming to bring freedom and democracy to a backward region, has reversed course, with the United States on the defensive because of its hypocrisy in demanding condemnation of Russia’s war on Ukraine while supporting Israel’s war on Gaza. A REGION ADRIFT This is all happening in an era characterized, even before the Israel-Hamas war, by the declining primacy of the United States and the rising autonomy of regional powers. Leading Arab states have increasingly sought to demonstrate their independence from the United States, building strategic relations with China and Russia and pursuing their own agendas in regional affairs. The willingness of Arab regimes to defy U.S. preferences was a hallmark of the previous decade, as Gulf states ignored American policies toward democratic transition in Egypt, flooded weapons into Syria despite Washington’s caution, and lobbied against the nuclear agreement with Iran. This willingness to flout the United States’ wishes has become even more apparent following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The past two years have seen most Middle Eastern regimes refusing to vote with Washington against Russia, and Saudi Arabia declining to follow the United States’ lead on oil pricing. Washington’s unblinkered support for Israel in its devastation of Gaza, however, has brought long-standing hostility toward U.S. policy to a head, and triggered a crisis of legitimacy that threatens the entire edifice of historic U.S. primacy in the region. It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Arabs blame the United States for this war. They can see that only U.S. weapons sales and United Nations vetoes allow Israel to continue its war. They are aware that the United States defends Israel for actions that are the same as those the United States condemned Russia and Syria for. The extent of this popular anger can be seen in the disengagement of a large number of young workers in nongovernmental organizations and activists from U.S.-backed projects and networks built up over decades of public diplomacy, a development cited by Annelle Sheline in her principled resignation from her post as a foreign affairs officer at the State Department in March. The White House is still acting as if none of this really matters. Arab regimes will survive, anger will fade or be redirected to other issues, and, in a few months, Washington can get back to the important business of Israeli-Saudi normalization. That is how things have traditionally worked. But this time may well be different. The Gaza fiasco, at a moment of shifting global power and changing calculations by regional leaders, shows how little Washington has learned from its long record of policy failures. The nature and degree of popular anger, the decline of U.S. primacy and the collapse of its legitimacy, and Arab regimes’ prioritization of their domestic survival, as well as regional competition, suggests that the new regional order will be much more attentive to public opinion than the old. If Washington continues to ignore public opinion, it will doom its planning for after the war ends in Gaza. MARC LYNCH is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. MORE BY MARC LYNCH More: Israel Palestinian Territories Foreign Policy Politics & Society Public Opinion Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration U.S.-Israeli Relations Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel-Hamas War Most-Read Articles China’s Alternative Order And What America Should Learn From It Elizabeth Economy Is an Anti-Iran Alliance Emerging in the Middle East? The Limits of Cooperation Between Israel and the Arab States Dalia Dassa Kaye and Sanam Vakil The Axis of Upheaval How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine Israel’s Forever War The Long History of Managing—Rather Than Solving—the Conflict Tom Segev Recommended Articles At the National Army Day parade in Tehran, April 2024 Iran and Israel’s War Comes Out of the Shadows Why Tehran’s Hard-Liners Chose to Escalate Afshon Ostovar Iranian demonstrators reacting to the attack on Israel, Tehran, April 2024 How America Can Prevent War Between Iran and Israel Threaten Tehran, Pressure Netanyahu Suzanne Maloney REVIEW ESSAY Tyrants of Industry Can the Right Tame Capitalism? By Sheri Berman May/June 2024 Published on April 23, 2024 To win a second term, former U.S. President Donald Trump will need to continue to attract the working-class voters who helped give him his first victory in 2016 and almost handed him a second in 2020. People from this category constitute a majority of eligible voters across the nation and make up an even higher percentage of the electorate in the crucial swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The drift of less educated and less affluent Americans away from the Democratic Party did not begin with Trump. Indeed, Trump’s success with these groups is best understood as the culmination of a long process that commentators have described as the “class inversion of American politics,” with most professionals now supporting Democrats and more working-class people backing Republicans. Trump’s ability to take advantage of this trend has often been attributed to his exploitation of social and cultural grievances, but voters also viewed him as less economically conservative and more sympathetic to working-class interests than previous Republican leaders. As in other areas, Trump’s policies did not exactly bear out the rhetoric. Although he shifted Republican positions on some economic issues—notably trade—he did not pursue economic policies that disproportionately benefited working-class Americans. Given the political importance of these voters, it is not surprising that some on the right have called for a further shift away from the GOP’s traditionally conservative economic platform. Perhaps the most interesting and unexpected of these calls comes from the writer and pundit Sohrab Ahmari in Tyranny, Inc. His book is neither a policy brief for Trump nor a partisan attack on the Biden administration. Instead, it takes aim at contemporary capitalism and what Ahmari sees as the failures of both parties to rein in a private sector whose power has become a threat not only to the country’s economic well-being but to Americans’ freedom and liberty, as well. By getting readers to recognize this threat, Ahmari aims to build support for a new relationship between government and capitalism that would enable the former to control the pernicious economic and political consequences of the latter. CORPORATE TAKEOVER In many ways, Ahmari may seem a surprising figure to be making a case against contemporary U.S. capitalism. He began his career as an editor and commentator for conservative publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and The New York Post. In the 2010s, he converted to Catholicism and evolved into a right-wing culture warrior, expressing sympathy for Donald Trump and Hungary’s autocratic leader Viktor Orban and penning jeremiads against identity politics. In 2019, he gained notoriety for his attack on David French, at the time a National Review writer and fellow conservative Christian who had argued that the culture wars could be fought civilly. Christians, Ahmari responded, needed to understand that they were involved in a real war and should fight accordingly, leaving unclear what that meant. Ahmari’s evolution took another turn in 2022, when he co-founded the magazine Compact with two other heterodox thinkers, one a fellow religious conservative, the other a dissident Marxist. Reflecting the diverse backgrounds of its founders, Compact describes its mission as promoting “a strong social-democratic state that defends community—local and national, familial and religious—against a libertine left and a libertarian right.” Now, in Tyranny, Inc., Ahmari has moved even further from his earlier work, setting aside cultural concerns and redirecting his anger toward American capitalism and its corrosive effects on democracy. Although many books have criticized the economic harms of contemporary capitalism—rising inequality, financial insecurity, and so on—Tyranny, Inc. also highlights capitalism’s destructive political consequences. The current version of American capitalism, he argues, has generated vast inequalities in power that have allowed companies to coerce their workers, undermined choice and freedom, and turned politics into a game in which “one side lacks the power to play while the other side is structurally set up to win.” Uber drivers striking in New York City, January 2023 Andrew Kelly / Reuters Take employment and workplace law. Rather than merely providing clear expectations about the terms and conditions of employment, many employment contracts now give employers sweeping control over workers, even beyond the workplace. Corporations may surveil employees’ web browsing and email and punish them for taking bathroom breaks deemed too long. They can even compel workers to listen to political speech. Ahmari cites news reports showing that, in 2019, workers at a Royal Dutch Shell plant in Pennsylvania were told that they would not receive overtime pay if they refused to attend a speech by Trump. Employers can also prevent employees from speaking out about abusive workplace conditions, even enforcing gag orders on former employees who file wrongful termination lawsuits. Alternatively, companies may require employees to use special arbitration courts to resolve disputes. This is an onerous process that can be prohibitively expensive for the employee, and its rules and procedures have been designed by the company for its own benefit, in contrast to the legal system in a democracy, in which all citizens are theoretically equal before the law. In one U.S. worker’s contract, Ahmari writes, Uber Eats required that “any dispute be resolved using individual, private mediation” and that arbitration proceedings would be held at the International Chamber of Commerce in Amsterdam. “In practice,” Ahmari writes, it meant that a worker “would have had to pay an up-front fee of $14,500 just to begin the process”—obviously daunting costs for an Uber driver earning approximately $2,000 a month. Perhaps corporations’ greatest damage to democracy has been their long campaign to undermine labor unions. By enabling workers to confront employers collectively rather than individually, unions help workers bargain more effectively over wages, benefits, and workplace conditions, as well as pursue labor’s shared interests in the political arena. As Ahmari notes, one of the major achievements of the New Deal in the 1930s was the National Labor Relations Act, which gave workers the right to organize and soon led to a federal minimum wage, guaranteed overtime pay, and other regulations and policies that contributed to diminishing inequality and rising living standards after the Great Depression. By the 1950s, more than 30 percent of the U.S. labor force was unionized. But union membership had shrunk to just 10 percent by 2022, largely thanks to a concerted anti-union strategy by much of the corporate sector, aided and abetted by a conservative, pro-business legal movement and the Republican Party. Tyranny, Inc. describes the myriad tools U.S. companies use to discredit unions and prevent workers from building or joining them, including by firing employees they consider troublesome, threatening to shut down workplaces if workers vote for unions, and spying on employees’ efforts to organize. These labor-busting tactics may be deployed despite the progressive political leanings of the owners. Ahmari tells the story of a podcast that REI, the outdoor-gear chain, prepared for its workers. The podcast began with the company’s chief diversity officer declaring, “I use she/ her pronouns and am speaking to you today from the traditional lands of the Ohlone people,” before moving on to her main purpose of warning workers not to join a union. American capitalism has undermined choice and freedom. Contemporary American capitalism has not only diminished the power of some groups while enhancing that of others, making a mockery of the political equality that is the foundation of any real democracy. It has also led to a rollback of a broad array of government regulations and services, which has reduced the quality of life of many citizens and contributed to a fraying of the country’s social fabric. For example, emergency services such as firefighting and ambulances have long been considered public goods. Now, as Ahmari observes, they are being outsourced, especially in underserved rural areas, to profit-seeking private companies, with the result that residents often pay exorbitant prices for deficient services. Since citizens often cannot choose between public and private emergency services, they risk incurring thousands of dollars of debt with a call to 911—presenting a wrenching dilemma, particularly for the poor. How are Americans, Ahmari wonders, supposed to see themselves as part of a common national community if membership in that community means less and less? Ahmari argues that such abuses persist and have even increased partly because of another consequence of unrestrained capitalism—the emergence of “news deserts” in many parts of the country, principally in regions with poorer, less educated people where public accountability is especially needed. This phenomenon is not simply the outcome of vanishing advertising revenue and the rise of the Internet. As Ahmari observes, it has also been caused by cost-cutting Wall Street investors, who have gobbled up local newspapers and television stations with little interest in the longterm survival of local news. Nor do these investors seem to care that without these outlets, local abuses of power are much more likely to go unreported on and therefore unpunished. Ahmari repeatedly stresses that these effects are not inevitable. Rather, they are the product of political choices made over many decades. For example, both parties have embraced neoliberal economic ideas and policies that have undercut the power of working Americans, enhanced the power of wealthy corporate elites, and weakened the ability of government to counter this tilt. Different political choices, accordingly, could reverse these problems. As Ahmari sees it, the goal must be to move away from a vision of capitalism in which markets have continually expanded at the expense of government oversight. Instead, he argues, the United States should aim to create a new economic order, in which a strong “social democratic” state keeps “markets in their proper place.” But what would that look like in practice? CHRISTIANS INTO DEMOCRATS Although less familiar in the United States, the term “social democracy” has long been a part of the political lexicon elsewhere, especially in Europe, where parties bearing this name have been important political actors. More generally, social democracy refers to a distinct understanding of the relationship between capitalism and government, one that is based on the “primacy of politics”—that is, the idea that political power could and should be used to control the downsides of capitalism. In contrast to their communist and Marxist counterparts, social democrats have historically accepted that capitalism was the best engine of economic growth and innovation. But unlike classical liberals, social democrats also feared the downsides of an unfettered market economy. In Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, this led them to build strong social safety nets, empower unions, and regulate the operation of markets in other ways. But social democrats also differed from the type of reformists and progressive liberals that have typically dominated the Democratic Party in the United States, except during the New Deal era, in which a more social democratic understanding of the economy emerged. Progressive U.S. liberals acknowledge that capitalism can produce such negative effects as economic inequality and insecurity, and that government needs policies to ameliorate them. But in general, these reformers have not been much concerned with addressing capitalism’s destructive political consequences, as well. Social democrats, on the other hand, explicitly assert that all economics is political—that the rules governing the economy shape political as well as economic outcomes, most notably the relative power of various socioeconomic groups. In recent decades in the United States, however, it is not the left but neoliberal conservatives who have grasped that reshaping the economic rules inevitably means reshaping power relationships in society. They have, as Ahmari puts it, engaged in “a generational effort” to weaken the political power of workers and obscure the reality that “private actors can imperil freedom just as much as overweening governments.” Yet social democracy involves more than a state capable of constraining capitalism’s negative economic and political consequences. In addition to the primacy of politics, social democrats have traditionally shown a strong commitment to liberal democracy. A graduation ceremony at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, May 2019 Jonathan Drake / Reuters Social democrats viewed the democratic state both as the best tool for constraining capitalism and as the only political system consistent with the liberal values they held. The most important of those values is the ability of individuals to make their own life choices, free from political, social, or economic coercion. Such a commitment to individual freedom, liberty, and the pluralism that follows from it conflicts, however, with Ahmari’s previous positions. In the past, he has railed against those who prize “autonomy above all” and aim “to secure for the individual will the widest possible berth to define what is true and good and beautiful, against the authority of tradition.” It is the task of government, Ahmari has argued, to protect and promote the “common good” rather than maximizing private autonomy or liberty. If one assumes that Ahmari remains committed to some version of his earlier positions, then social democracy is the wrong solution for him. What other political traditions, then, might be compatible with his calls for a new economic order? Perhaps the most obvious is right-wing populism. In populist efforts to remake the economy, Europe may be ahead of the United States. Many European rightwing populist parties abandoned neoliberal and conservative economic policies a couple of decades ago, instead attacking globalization and free trade, advocating for a strong national state, promising to protect social welfare policies, and more generally claiming to champion the “left-behinds.” This reorientation has helped France’s National Rally, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Sweden Democrats, and other European rightwing populist parties become the largest or close to the largest working-class parties in their countries. These parties have not, however, paired their leftward economic shift with a commitment to political liberalism. And how committed they are to democracy remains unclear. This is certainly true of the Trumpist version of the Republican Party, which has made clear its disdain not merely for pluralism and individual rights but also for democracy itself. In his culture-warrior days, Ahmari certainly expressed something resembling rightwing populist views. But if his rejection of tyranny is principled, then embracing the Trumpist GOP, even if it shifts away from an embrace of neoliberal, free-market capitalism, is not an option since it would simply create a different form of tyranny. European Christian democrats have accepted multiparty democracy. There is, however, another political tradition consistent with the kind of constraints on capitalism Ahmari advocates: post-1945 Christian democracy. Unlike right-wing populism, Christian democracy coheres with at least some of the traditional or religious values Ahmari championed earlier in his career while also maintaining a strong commitment to democratic institutions. Like social democracy, Christian democracy has not played an important role in the United States, but it has deep roots in Europe. Christian democracy began in the late nineteenth century, when Catholic parties sprang up to protect the role of the church and religion in modernizing societies. They tended to be wary of capitalism, which they saw as threatening traditional values. Until World War II, many of these parties were also skeptical about liberal democracy since elections and majority rule might produce policies that would weaken the role of the church and religion in society. After World War II, however, the attitude of European Catholic parties changed. Having experienced the horrors produced by actual tyrannies, Catholic parties such as Germany’s Christian Democratic Union and Italy’s Christian Democrats committed themselves to democracy, even though this would entail making compromises and accepting the legitimacy of political actors with opposing views on the role of church and religion in society. Postwar Christian democratic parties also embraced welfare states and other restrictions on markets: in addition to being concerned about capitalism’s corrosive effect on traditional values, they now recognized the democratic benefits of market restraints. By providing many European countries with something they lacked before the war—namely, mass parties on the right that fully accepted multiparty democracy—the modern Christian democratic movement contributed immensely to Europe’s postwar stability. In the contemporary United States, Christian movements on the right have until now been closer to the pre–World War II European Catholic parties than their postwar offshoots. Thus, echoes of the earlier position can be found in the Christian Nationalism and Catholic integralism movements, which are profoundly illiberal and prioritize the protection and promotion of Christian values above all else. To establish the more salutary approach of Europe’s Christian democrats, Ahmari would need to persuade religious conservatives that a better way to protect their interests is to work through, rather than against, the country’s democratic institutions. AMERICA’S PARTY PROBLEM Tyranny, Inc. is a powerful and convincing account of the dangers that capitalism poses to the country’s political foundations. But saving American democracy requires more than taking on the private sector; it also requires addressing the threat posed by political parties not fully committed to democratic principles. Ahmari is correct to point out that the left’s turning away from earlier efforts to rein in corporate America and protect workers has contributed to the rise of neoliberal capitalism and hence to the dismal state of American democracy today. Nonetheless, the primary responsibility for the unhealthy state of the U.S. economy and democracy lies with the Republican Party. Not only have successive Republican administrations fought more consistently to deregulate markets, undermine the power of workers, and eviscerate a protective, regulatory state; they have also, especially since Trump, supported unprecedented attacks on democratic norms and institutions. Ahmari is unlikely to persuade many voters on the right to become social democrats, but he may be able to convince at least some of them that their economic and political future does not lie in a right-populist or Christian nationalist or integralist direction—with all the illiberalism and further evisceration of democracy those tendencies entail. And if he can direct them instead toward the profile that made Christian democratic parties so successful in Europe during the postwar decades—a defense of Christian values, a recognition that unconstrained capitalism is dangerous, and a principled commitment to democracy—he will be doing the American people a great service. Without such a reorientation of Trump’s GOP, however, Ahmari’s call for more government may simply exchange one form of tyranny for another. SHERI BERMAN is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University, and the author of Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day. MORE BY SHERI BERMAN More: United States Campaigns & Elections Economics Politics & Society Political Development Public Opinion Trump Administration U.S. Politics Capitalism U.S. Elections In This Review Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It By Sohrab Ahmari Forum Books, 2023, 288 pp. Recommended Articles At a Trump rally in Mesa, Arizona, October 2022 The Antiliberal Revolution Reading the Philosophers of the New Right Charles King Lighthizer and Trump imposing duties at the White House, Washington, D.C., January 2018 Washington’s New Trade Consensus And What It Gets Wrong Gordon H. Hanson The Axis of Upheaval How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order By Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine May/June 2024 Published on April 23, 2024 Composite image of the leaders of China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia Illustration by Matt Needle; Photo Source: Reuters In the early morning of January 2, Russian forces launched a massive missile attack on the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv that killed at least five civilians, injured more than 100, and damaged infrastructure. The incident was notable not just for the harm it caused but also because it showed that Russia was not alone in its fight. The Russian attack that day was carried out with weapons fitted with technology from China, missiles from North Korea, and drones from Iran. Over the past two years, all three countries have become critical enablers of Moscow’s war machine in Ukraine. Since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, Moscow has deployed more than 3,700 Iranian-designed drones. Russia now produces at least 330 on its own each month and is collaborating with Iran on plans to build a new drone factory inside Russia that will boost these numbers. North Korea has sent Russia ballistic missiles and more than 2.5 million rounds of ammunition, just as Ukrainian stockpiles have dwindled. China, for its part, has become Russia’s most important lifeline. Beijing has ramped up its purchase of Russian oil and gas, putting billions of dollars into Moscow’s coffers. Just as significantly, China provides vast amounts of warfighting technology, from semiconductors and electronic devices to radar- and communications-jamming equipment and jet-fighter parts. Customs records show that despite Western trade sanctions, Russia’s imports of computer chips and chip components have been steadily rising toward prewar levels. More than half of these goods come from China. The support from China, Iran, and North Korea has strengthened Russia’s position on the battlefield, undermined Western attempts to isolate Moscow, and harmed Ukraine. This collaboration, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. Cooperation among the four countries was expanding before 2022, but the war has accelerated their deepening economic, military, political, and technological ties. The four powers increasingly identify common interests, match up their rhetoric, and coordinate their military and diplomatic activities. Their convergence is creating a new axis of upheaval—a development that is fundamentally altering the geopolitical landscape. The group is not an exclusive bloc and certainly not an alliance. It is, instead, a collection of dissatisfied states converging on a shared purpose of overturning the principles, rules, and institutions that underlie the prevailing international system. When these four countries cooperate, their actions have far greater effect than the sum of their individual efforts. Working together, they enhance one another’s military capabilities; dilute the efficacy of U.S. foreign policy tools, including sanctions; and hinder the ability of Washington and its partners to enforce global rules. Their collective aim is to create an alternative to the current order, which they consider to be dominated by the United States. Too many Western observers have been quick to dismiss the implications of coordination among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. The four countries have their differences, to be sure, and a history of distrust and contemporary fissures may limit how close their relationships will grow. Yet their shared aim of weakening the United States and its leadership role provides a strong adhesive. In places across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, the ambitions of axis members have already proved to be destabilizing. Managing the disruptive effects of their further coordination and preventing the axis from upsetting the global system must now be central objectives of U.S. foreign policy. THE ANTI-WESTERN CLUB Collaboration among axis members is not new. China and Russia have been strengthening their partnership since the end of the Cold War—a trend that accelerated rapidly after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. China’s share of Russian external trade doubled from ten to 20 percent between 2013 and 2021, and between 2018 and 2022 Russia supplied a combined total of 83 percent of China’s arms imports. Russian technology has helped the Chinese military enhance its air defense, antiship, and submarine capabilities, making China a more formidable force in a potential naval conflict. Beijing and Moscow have also expressed a shared vision. In early 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping signed a joint manifesto pledging a “no limits” partnership between their two countries and calling for “international relations of a new type”—in other words, a multipolar system that is no longer dominated by the United States. Iran has strengthened its ties with other axis members as well. Iran and Russia worked together to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power after the onset of civil war in 2011. Joining Russia’s efforts, which include major energy agreements with Iran to shield Tehran from the effects of U.S. sanctions, China has purchased large quantities of Iranian oil since 2020. North Korea, for its part, has counted China as its primary ally and trade partner for decades, and North Korea and Russia have maintained warm, if not particularly substantive, ties. Iran has purchased North Korean missiles since the 1980s, and more recently, North Korea is thought to have supplied weapons to Iranian proxy groups, including Hezbollah and possibly Hamas. Pyongyang and Tehran have also bonded over a shared aversion to Washington: as a senior North Korean official, Kim Yong Nam, declared during a ten-day trip to Iran in 2017, the two countries “have a common enemy.” But the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 hastened the convergence among these four countries in ways that transcend their historical ties. Moscow has been among Tehran’s top suppliers of weapons over the past two decades and is now its largest source of foreign investment; Russian exports to Iran rose by 27 percent in the first ten months of 2022. Over the past two years, according to the White House, Russia has been sharing more intelligence with and providing more weapons to Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, and Moscow has defended those proxies in debates at the UN Security Council. Last year, Russia displaced Saudi Arabia as China’s largest source of crude oil and trade between the two countries topped $240 billion, a record high. Moscow has also released millions of dollars in North Korean assets that previously sat frozen in Russian banks in compliance with Security Council sanctions. China, Iran, and Russia have held joint naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman three years in a row, most recently in March 2024. Russia has also proposed trilateral naval drills with China and North Korea. The West has been too quick to dismiss the coordination among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. The growing cooperation among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia is fueled by their shared opposition to the Western-dominated global order, an antagonism rooted in their belief that that system does not accord them the status or freedom of action they deserve. Each country claims a sphere of influence: China’s “core interests,” which extend to Taiwan and the South China Sea; Iran’s “axis of resistance,” the set of proxy groups that give Tehran leverage in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere; North Korea’s claim to the entire Korean Peninsula; and Russia’s “near abroad,” which for the Kremlin includes, at a minimum, the countries that composed its historic empire. All four countries see the United States as the primary obstacle to establishing these spheres of influence, and they want Washington’s presence in their respective regions reduced. All reject the principle of universal values and interpret the West’s championing of its brand of democracy as an attempt to undermine their legitimacy and foment domestic instability. They insist that individual states have the right to define democracy for themselves. In the end, although they may make temporary accommodations with the United States, they do not believe that the West will accept their rise (or return) to power on the world stage. They oppose external meddling in their internal affairs, the expansion of U.S. alliances, the stationing of American nuclear weapons abroad, and the use of coercive sanctions. Any positive vision for the future, however, is more elusive. Yet history shows that a positive agenda may not be necessary for a group of discontented powers to cause disruption. The 1940 Tripartite Pact uniting Germany, Italy, and Japan—the original “Axis”—pledged to “establish and maintain a new order of things” in which each country would claim “its own proper place.” They did not succeed, but World War II certainly brought global upheaval. The axis of China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia does not need a coherent plan for an alternative international order to upset the existing system. The countries’ shared opposition to the present order’s core tenets and their determination to bring about change form a powerful basis for collaborative action. Fissures do exist among members of the axis. China and Russia vie for influence in Central Asia, for instance, while Iran and Russia compete for oil markets in China, India, and elsewhere in Asia. The four countries have complicated histories with each other, too. The Soviet Union invaded Iran in 1941; Russia and China settled their long-standing border dispute only in 2004 and had both previously supported efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear programs and to isolate North Korea. Today, China may look askance at North Korea’s deepening relationship with Russia, worrying that an emboldened Kim Jong Un will aggravate tensions in Northeast Asia and draw in a larger U.S. military presence, which China does not want. Yet their differences are insufficient to dissolve the bonds forged by their common resistance to a Western-dominated world. CATALYST IN THE KREMLIN Moscow has been the main instigator of this axis. The invasion of Ukraine marked a point of no return in Putin’s long-standing crusade against the West. Putin has grown more committed to destroying not only Ukraine but also the global order. And he has doubled down on relationships with like-minded countries to accomplish his aims. Cut off from Western trade, investment, and technology since the start of the war, Moscow has had little choice but to rely on its partners to sustain its hostilities. The ammunition, drones, microchips, and other forms of aid that axis members have sent have been of great help to Russia. But the more the Kremlin relies on these countries, the more it must give away in return. Beijing, Pyongyang, and Tehran are taking advantage of their leverage over Moscow to expand their military capabilities and economic options. Even before the Russian invasion, Moscow’s military assistance to Beijing was eroding the United States’ military advantage over China. Russia has provided ever more sophisticated weapons to China, and the two countries’ joint military exercises have grown in scope and frequency. Russian officers who have fought in Syria and in Ukraine’s Donbas region have shared valuable lessons with Chinese personnel, helping the People’s Liberation Army make up for its lack of operational experience—a notable weakness relative to more seasoned U.S. forces. China’s military modernization has reduced the urgency of deepening defense cooperation with Russia, but the two countries are likely to proceed with technology transfers and joint weapons development and production. In February, for instance, Russian officials confirmed that they were working with Chinese counterparts on military applications of artificial intelligence. Moscow retains an edge over Beijing in other key areas, including submarine technology, remote sensing satellites, and aircraft engines. If China can pressure a more dependent Russia to provide additional advanced technologies, the transfer could further undermine the United States’ advantages. A Chinese warship approaching an Iranian port in the Gulf of Oman, December 2019 West Asia News Agency / Reuters A similar dynamic is playing out in Russia’s relations with Iran and North Korea. Moscow and Tehran have forged what the Biden administration has called an “unprecedented defense partnership” that upgrades Iranian military capabilities. Russia has provided Iran with advanced aircraft, air defense, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and cyber-capabilities that would help Tehran resist a potential U.S. or Israeli military operation. And in return for North Korea’s ammunition and other military support to Russia, Pyongyang is reportedly seeking advanced space, missile, and submarine technology from Moscow. If Russia were to comply with those requests, North Korea would be able to improve the accuracy and survivability of its nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles and use Russian nuclear propulsion technology to expand the range and capability of its submarines. Already, Russia’s testing of North Korean weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine has supplied Pyongyang with information it can use to refine its missile program, and Russian assistance may have helped North Korea launch a military spy satellite in November after two previous failures last year. Strong relations among the four axis countries have emboldened leaders in Pyongyang and Tehran. Kim, who now enjoys strong backing from both China and Russia, abandoned North Korea’s decades-old policy of peaceful unification with South Korea and stepped up its threats against Seoul, indulged in nuclear blackmail and missile tests, and expressed a lack of any interest in talks with the United States. And although there does not appear to be a direct connection between their deepening partnership and Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, growing support from Russia likely made Iran more willing to activate its regional proxies in the aftermath. The coordinated diplomacy and pressure from Russia and the West that brought Iran into the 2015 nuclear deal are now a distant memory. Today, Moscow and Beijing are helping Tehran resist Western coercion, making it easier for Iran to enrich uranium and reject Washington’s efforts to negotiate a new nuclear agreement. AMERICA UNDERMINED Collaboration among the axis members also reduces the potency of tools that Washington and its partners often use to confront them. In the most glaring example, since the start of the war in Ukraine, China has supplied Russia with semiconductors and other essential technologies that Russia previously imported from the West, undercutting the efficacy of Western export controls. All four countries are also working to reduce their dependence on the U.S. dollar. The share of Russia’s imports invoiced in Chinese renminbi jumped from three percent in 2021 to 20 percent in 2022. And in December 2023, Iran and Russia finalized an agreement to conduct bilateral trade in their local currencies. By moving their economic transactions out of reach of U.S. enforcement measures, axis members undermine the efficacy of Western sanctions, as well as anticorruption and anti-money-laundering efforts. Taking advantage of their shared borders and littoral zones, China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia can build trade and transportation networks safe from U.S. interdiction. Iran, for example, ships drones and other weapons to Russia across the Caspian Sea, where the United States has little power to stop transfers. If the United States were engaged in conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, Beijing could seek support from Moscow. Russia might increase its overland exports of oil and gas to its southern neighbor, reducing China’s dependence on maritime energy imports that U.S. forces could block during a conflict. Russia’s defense industrial base, now in overdrive to supply weapons for Russian troops in Ukraine, could later pivot to sustain a Chinese war effort. Such cooperation would increase the odds of China’s prevailing over the American military and help advance Russia’s goal of diminishing the United States’ geopolitical influence. The axis is also hindering Washington’s ability to rally international coalitions that can stand against its members’ destabilizing actions. China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, made it far easier for countries across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East to do the same. And Beijing and Moscow have impeded Western efforts to isolate Iran. Last year, they elevated Iran from observer to member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a predominantly Asian regional body, and then orchestrated an invitation for Iran to join the BRICS—a group that China and Russia view as a counterweight to the West. Iran’s regional meddling and nuclear pursuits have made other countries wary of dealing with its government, but its participation in international forums enhances the regime’s legitimacy and presents it with opportunities to expand trade with fellow member states. Parallel efforts by axis members in the information domain further weaken international support for U.S. positions. China, Iran, and North Korea either defended or avoided explicitly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and they all parroted the Kremlin in accusing NATO of inciting the war. Their response to Hamas’s attacks on Israel last October followed a similar pattern. Iran used the state media and social media accounts to express support for Hamas, vilify Israel, and denounce the United States for enabling Israel’s military response, while the Russian and, to a lesser extent, Chinese media sharply criticized the United States’ enduring support for Israel. They used the war in Gaza to portray Washington as a destabilizing, domineering force in the world—a narrative that is particularly resonant in parts of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Even if axis members do not overtly coordinate their messages, they push the same themes, and the repetition makes them appear more credible and persuasive. AN ALTERNATIVE ORDER? Global orders magnify the strength of the powerful states that lead them. The United States, for instance, has invested in the liberal international order it helped create because this order reflects American preferences and extends U.S. influence. As long as an order remains sufficiently beneficial to most members, a core group of states will defend it. Dissenting countries, meanwhile, are bound by a collective action problem. If they were to defect en masse, they could succeed in creating an alternative order more to their liking. But without a core cluster of powerful states around which they can coalesce, the advantage remains with the existing order. For decades, threats to the U.S.-led order were limited to a handful of rogue states with little power to upend it. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the restructuring of interstate relations it prompted have lifted the constraint on collective action. The axis of upheaval represents a new center of gravity, a group that other countries dissatisfied with the existing order can turn to. The axis is ushering in an international system characterized by two orders that are becoming increasingly organized and competitive. Historically, competing orders have invited conflict, especially at the geographical seams between them. Wars arise from specific conditions, such as a territorial dispute, the need to protect national interests or the interests of an ally, or a threat to the survival of a regime. But the likelihood that any of those conditions will lead to war increases in the presence of dueling orders. Some political science researchers have found that periods in which a single order prevailed—the balance-of-power system maintained by the Concert of Europe for much of the nineteenth century, for example, or the U.S.-dominated post–Cold War era—were less prone to conflicts than those characterized by more than one order, such as the multipolar period between the two world wars and the bipolar system of the Cold War. Xi and Putin in Moscow, March 2023 Sputnik / Pavel Byrkin / Kremlin / Reuters The world has gotten a preview of the instability this new era of competing orders will bring, with potential aggressors empowered by the axis’s normalization of alternative rules and less afraid of being isolated if they act out. Already, Hamas’s attack on Israel threatens to engulf the wider Middle East in war. Last October, Azerbaijan forcibly took control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region inhabited by ethnic Armenians. Tensions flared between Serbia and Kosovo in 2023, too, and Venezuela threatened to seize territory in neighboring Guyana in December. Although internal conditions precipitated the coups in Myanmar and across Africa’s Sahel region since 2020, the rising incidence of such revolts is connected to the new international arrangement. For many years, it seemed that coups were becoming less common, in large part because plotters faced significant costs for violating norms. Now, however, the calculations have changed. Overthrowing a government may still shatter relations with the West, but the new regimes can find support in Beijing and Moscow. Further development of the axis would bring even greater tumult. So far, most collaboration among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia has been bilateral. Trilateral and quadrilateral action could expand their capacity for disruption. Countries such as Belarus, Cuba, Eritrea, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—all of which chafe against the U.S.-led, Western-dominated system—could also begin working more closely with the axis. If the group grows in size and tightens its coordination, the United States and its allies will have a more difficult time defending the recognized order. TAKING ON THE REVISIONISTS For now, U.S. national security strategy ranks China as a higher priority than Iran, North Korea, or even Russia. That assessment is strategically sound when considering the threat that individual countries pose to the United States, but it does not fully account for the cooperation among them. U.S. policy will need to address the destabilizing effects of revisionist countries’ acting in concert, and it should try to disrupt their coordinated efforts to subvert important international rules and institutions. Washington, furthermore, should undercut the axis’s appeal by sharpening the attractions of the existing order. If the United States is to counter an increasingly coordinated axis, it cannot treat each threat as an isolated phenomenon. Washington should not ignore Russian aggression in Europe, for example, in order to focus on rising Chinese power in Asia. It is already clear that Russia’s success in Ukraine benefits a revisionist China by showing that it is possible, if costly, to thwart a united Western effort. Even as Washington rightly sees China as its top priority, addressing the challenge from Beijing will require competing with other members of the axis in other parts of the world. To be effective, the United States will need to devote additional resources to national security, engage in more vigorous diplomacy, develop new and stronger partnerships, and take a more activist role in the world than it has of late. Driving wedges between members of the axis, on the other hand, will not work. Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some strategists suggested that the United States align itself with Russia to balance China. After the war began, a few held out hope that the United States could join China in an anti-Russian coalition. But unlike President Richard Nixon’s opening to China in the 1970s, which took advantage of a Sino-Soviet split to draw Beijing further away from Moscow, there is no equivalent ideological or geopolitical rivalry for Washington to exploit today. The price of trying would likely involve U.S. recognition of a Russian or Chinese sphere of influence in Europe and Asia—regions central to U.S. interests and ones that Washington should not allow a hostile foreign power to dominate. Breaking Iran or North Korea off from the rest of the axis would be even more difficult, given their governments’ revisionist, even revolutionary aims. Ultimately, the axis is a problem the United States must manage, not one it can solve with grand strategic gestures. Historically, competing orders have invited conflict. Neither the West nor the axis will become wholly distinct political, military, and economic blocs. Each coalition will compete for influence all over the world, trying to draw vital countries closer to its side. Six “global swing states” will be particularly important: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and Turkey are all middle powers with enough collective geopolitical weight for their policy preferences to sway the future direction of the international order. These six countries—and others, too—can be expected to pursue economic, diplomatic, military, and technological ties with members of both orders. U.S. policymakers should make it a priority to deny advantages to the axis in these countries, encouraging their governments to choose policies that favor the prevailing order. In practice, that means using trade incentives, military engagement, foreign aid, and diplomacy to prevent swing states from hosting axis members’ military bases, giving axis members access to their technology infrastructure or military equipment, or helping them circumvent Western sanctions. Although competition with the axis may be inevitable, the United States must try to avoid direct conflict with any of its members. To that end, Washington should reaffirm its security commitments to bolster deterrence in the western Pacific, in the Middle East, on the Korean Peninsula, and on NATO’s eastern flank. The United States and its allies should also prepare for opportunistic aggression. If a Chinese invasion of Taiwan prompts U.S. military intervention, for instance, Russia may be tempted to move against another European country, and Iran or North Korea could escalate threats in their regions. Even if the axis members do not coordinate their aggression directly, concurrent conflicts could overwhelm the West. Washington will therefore need to press allies to invest in capabilities that the United States could not provide if it were already engaged in another military theater. Confronting the axis will be expensive. A new strategy will require the United States to bolster its spending on defense, foreign aid, diplomacy, and strategic communications. Washington must direct aid to the frontlines of conflict between the axis and the West—including assistance to Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine, all of which face encroachment by axis members. Revisionists are emboldened by the sense that political divisions at home or exhaustion with international engagement will keep the United States on the sidelines of this competition; a comprehensive, well-resourced U.S. strategy with bipartisan support would help counter that impression. The alternative—a reduction in the U.S. global presence—would leave the fate of crucial regions in the hands not of friendly local powers but of axis members seeking to impose their revisionist and illiberal preferences. THE FOUR-POWER THREAT There is a tendency to downplay the significance of growing cooperation among China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia. By turning to Beijing, this argument goes, Moscow merely signals its acceptance of the role of junior partner. Obtaining drones from Iran and munitions from North Korea demonstrates the desperation of a Russian war machine that incorrectly assumed that conquering Ukraine would be easy. China’s embrace of Russia shows only that Beijing could not achieve the positive relationship it originally sought with Europe and other Western powers. North Korea remains the world’s most isolated country, and Iran’s disruptive activities have backfired, strengthening regional cooperation among Israel, the United States, and Gulf countries. Such analysis ignores the severity of the threat. Four powers, growing in strength and coordination, are united in their opposition to the prevailing world order and its U.S. leadership. Their combined economic and military capacity, together with their determination to change the way the world has worked since the end of the Cold War, make for a dangerous mix. This is a group bent on upheaval, and the United States and its partners must treat the axis as the generational challenge it is. They must reinforce the foundations of the international order and push back against those who act most vigorously to undermine it. It is likely impossible to arrest the emergence of this new axis, but keeping it from upending the current system is an achievable goal. The West has everything it needs to triumph in this contest. Its combined economy is far larger, its militaries are significantly more powerful, its geography is more advantageous, its values are more attractive, and its democratic system is more stable. The United States and its partners should be confident in their own strengths, even as they appreciate the scale of effort necessary to compete with this budding anti-Western coalition. The new axis has already changed the picture of geopolitics—but Washington and its partners can still prevent the world of upheaval the axis hopes to usher in. ANDREA KENDALL-TAYLOR is Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. From 2015 to 2018, she was Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. RICHARD FONTAINE is CEO of the Center for a New American Security. He has worked at the U.S. Department of State, on the National Security Council, and as a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Senator John McCain. MORE BY ANDREA KENDALL-TAYLOR MORE BY RICHARD FONTAINE More: China North Korea Russian Federation Iran Geopolitics International Institutions Security U.S. Foreign Policy World Order War in Ukraine Xi Jinping Vladimir Putin Most-Read Articles China’s Alternative Order And What America Should Learn From It Elizabeth Economy Is an Anti-Iran Alliance Emerging in the Middle East? 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The Limits of Cooperation Between Israel and the Arab States By Dalia Dassa Kaye and Sanam Vakil April 26, 2024 A banner depicting Iranian missiles, Tehran, April 2024 When Iran directed over 300 missiles and drones at Israel on April 13, Jordan helped fend off the attack. Initial media reports suggested that several other Arab states assisted in Israel’s defense, efforts they later denied. Nonetheless, a chorus of Israeli leaders, as well as some observers in Washington, interpreted these acts as a sign of a major shift. These Arab states, the argument went, would side with Israel if its conflict with Iran continued to escalate. Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, the Israel Defense Forces’ chief of staff, declared that Iran’s attack had “created new opportunities for cooperation in the Middle East.” The Institute for National Security Studies, a leading Israeli think tank, declared that “the regional and international coalition that participated in intercepting launches from Iran toward Israel demonstrates the potential of establishing a regional alliance against Iran.” After Israel responded to the Iranian attack with a relatively limited strike on a military facility in Iran, the Washington Post columnist David Ignatius opined that Israel was “behaving like the leader of a regional coalition against Iran.” With its muted response, he wrote, “it appeared to be weighing the interests of its allies in this coalition—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan—which all provided quiet help in last weekend’s shoot-down.” In Ignatius’s view, this represented a potential “paradigm shift for Israel,” one that would give the Middle East a “new shape.” These assessments, however, are overenthusiastic and fail to grasp the complexity of the region’s challenges. To be sure, Israel’s future strategy against Iran may take regional considerations into greater account, given the unprecedented nature of April’s military exchanges. But the realities in the region that inhibit Arab-Israeli cooperation have not significantly changed. Even before Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, the Arab states that signed the 2020 Abraham Accords, embracing normalization with Israel, were growing frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s support for expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank and his tolerance for his far-right ministers’ attempts to undermine the status quo in Jerusalem. A string of deadly attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in West Bank towns in the spring of 2023 further inflamed regional tensions. After Israel launched its military operations in Gaza in October, prompting waves of protests across the Middle East, Arab leaders became even more hesitant to openly back Israel, aware that open cooperation could hurt their domestic legitimacy. Nothing about the Arab response to this round of Iranian-Israeli confrontation suggests that these positions have shifted. The group of states that many Israelis reductively refer to as a “Sunni alliance” are, in fact, still seeking to balance their relationships with Iran and Israel, protect their economies and security, and, above all, avert a wider regional conflict. They are also likely to continue to prioritize ending the catastrophic war in Gaza over confronting Iran. Yet with tensions rising between Iran and Israel, the Arab states’ enthusiasm to fast-track Israel’s regional integration is more contingent than ever on Israel’s willingness to accept Palestinian statehood. BALANCE SCHEME Ahead of Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) shared intelligence about the impending attack with the United States. The U.S. Central Command then used this information to coordinate its response with Israel and other partners. Jordan allowed U.S. and British military planes into its airspace to head off incoming Iranian drones and missiles and directly intercepted Iranian attacks. Early media reports, particularly in the United States and Israel, stressed that a broad regional effort had thwarted Tehran’s assault. But it soon became clear that the Arab role in repelling Iran’s attack had been limited. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE explicitly denied making any direct military contribution to Israel’s defense. Jordanian officials defended their participation as necessary to protect their own interests. Jordan’s “security and sovereignty” ranked “above all considerations,” Jordanian King Abdullah II declared, emphasizing that his country had not acted to help Israel. The efforts that Arab states did make to counter Iran were almost certainly driven by a desire to maintain their relationships with the United States, not to align themselves more closely with Israel. Since Israel launched its operation in Gaza, Arab leaders have been surprised that U.S. President Joe Biden has not had more success restraining Israel’s conduct there. But they are still seeking to deepen their cooperation with Washington; they see no alternative source for the kind of security the United States supplies. Arab states have decided that rapprochement is the best way to temper the risks Iran poses. In recent months, Gulf Arab states, as well as Egypt and Jordan, have continued to encourage Washington to help manage the Middle East’s security dynamics, contain Iran’s disruptive activities, and prevent a broader regional war. Ending the war in Gaza remains an urgent regional priority, and Arab states are working toward a peace plan with the Biden administration. Saudi leaders still believe that a bilateral defense treaty with the United States must be part of any future normalization deal with Israel. And the UAE has continued to attempt to negotiate its own defense agreement with the Biden administration. At the same time, however, Gulf states are now engaging more closely with Tehran. They are well aware that their proximity to Iran puts them at risk. In 2019, after U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal that the United States and other major powers had agreed to with Iran, Tehran spread instability throughout the Persian Gulf, attacking ships near UAE ports and, for the first time, launching precision strikes against Saudi oil facilities. After the signing of the Abraham Accords, Tehran also explicitly warned Bahrain and the UAE that an Israeli military presence in the Persian Gulf would constitute a redline for Iran. Well before Hamas's October 7 attack, Arab states had generally decided that the best way to temper the risk from an increasingly aggressive Iran was to seek rapprochement, not retribution. The UAE and Saudi Arabia restored their diplomatic ties with Iran in 2021 and 2023, respectively. Since October 7, those countries, along with Bahrain and Oman, have relayed messages and warnings between Iran and Israel and proposed off-ramps to manage tensions. Two days after Iran’s April 13 attack, the Egyptian foreign minister got on the phone with his Iranian and Israeli counterparts to try to contain the escalating conflict. FUTURE INTERESTS In the coming months, Arab states are likely to try to sustain this balancing act, calling for restraint on all sides and distancing themselves from further Israeli offensive actions. Should escalation between Iran and Israel continue, they will likely be even more reluctant to support Israeli operations. The domestic costs to them for overtly supporting Israel are likely to rise as time goes on, especially if Israeli forces move into Rafah, the city in southern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have taken refuge and where Israel claims that Hamas maintains a stronghold. Many Arab states share Israel’s concerns about Iran’s regional activities, particularly its support for nonstate militias. But the Gulf Arab states, in particular, have clearly calculated that opening direct diplomatic dialogues, exerting pressure with economic incentives, and conducting backchannel diplomacy with Tehran are the safest ways to protect their interests and prevent the spillover of conflict. No matter how much the Iranian-Israeli conflict escalates, the Arab states are not likely to draw back from these forms of engagement. Their efforts to normalize relations with Iran have only accelerated since the Gaza war began, whereas attempts to normalize their relations with Israel have stalled. In an effort to motivate Israel to think beyond the Gaza war, Saudi Arabia has continued to dangle the prospect of normalization on the condition that Israel commit to participating in a political process aimed at establishing Palestinian statehood. Israel, however, has ignored these Saudi entreaties, perhaps out of overconfidence that, after the war in Gaza concludes, the normalization process could just pick up where it left off. Further Arab-Israeli normalization is unlikely to happen in this climate. Arab states will continue to cooperate with Washington on missile defense, but this cooperation does not require significant direct coordination with Israel. Nor will it approach the level of a formal defense alliance any time soon. That would require a better alignment of Arab states’ defense systems, as well as far more trust, both of which are lacking in the Middle East and will take time to build. Should escalation between Iran and Israel continue, Arab states will be even more reluctant to support Israel. Arab states, especially those in the Gulf, will welcome Israel’s efforts to degrade the capabilities of Iran’s proxies. But they will very likely oppose any direct attacks on Iran that could destabilize the region’s already fragile economic outlook or result in an Iranian counterstrike in the Gulf. Even though Arab states maintain an interest in sustaining close defense ties with Washington, they do not want to join a bloc explicitly working against Iran and its global supporters, such as Russia. They prefer to balance multiple regional and global relationships, not to burn bridges. Despite these limitations, however, the Arab states can play a crucial role in preventing further escalation between Iran and Israel. Strengthening lines of communication between the two countries—and establishing hotlines for crisis management—is more critical than ever. Precisely because a number of Arab states have nurtured ties with both Iran and Israel, they can leverage these relationships to encourage restraint and help pass messages between the two sides, working to prevent conflict or mitigate the damage if conflict starts to spiral. In the long run, to stabilize the region, Middle Eastern countries must establish their own platform for regular dialogue that would be open to both Iranian and Israeli participation. The latest attacks bringing Iran and Israel to the brink of war only underscore how urgent the need for such dialogue has become. But the world must temper its expectations for closer cooperation between the Arab states and Israel. The strictly technical cooperation that Arab states and Israel have recently enjoyed on areas of common concern, such as energy and climate change, will likely continue. High-profile regional gatherings, however, that openly advertise the Arab states’ political engagement with Israel are not in the cards unless Israel ends its war on Gaza. Until then, Arab states’ efforts to maintain their economic ties to Israel will also remain limited. A more realistic near-term strategy will prioritize supporting their ability to mediate—and prevent—future conflicts between Iran and Israel. DALIA DASSA KAYE is a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and a Fulbright Schuman Visiting Scholar at Lund University. SANAM VAKIL is Director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. MORE BY DALIA DASSA KAYE MORE BY SANAM VAKIL More: Middle East Israel Jordan Persian Gulf Iran Geopolitics Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel-Hamas War Most-Read Articles China’s Alternative Order And What America Should Learn From It Elizabeth Economy Is an Anti-Iran Alliance Emerging in the Middle East? The Limits of Cooperation Between Israel and the Arab States Dalia Dassa Kaye and Sanam Vakil The Axis of Upheaval How America’s Adversaries Are Uniting to Overturn the Global Order Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine Israel’s Forever War The Long History of Managing—Rather Than Solving—the Conflict Tom Segev Recommended Articles At the National Army Day parade in Tehran, April 2024 Iran and Israel’s War Comes Out of the Shadows Why Tehran’s Hard-Liners Chose to Escalate Afshon Ostovar Lebanese watching an address by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Beirut, April 2024 Israel’s Next Front? Iran, Hezbollah, and the Coming War in Lebanon Maha Yahya Israel’s Forever War The Long History of Managing—Rather Than Solving—the Conflict By Tom Segev May/June 2024 Published on April 23, 2024 A Syrian tank from the Six-Day War in the Golan Heights, February 2019 A Syrian tank from the Six-Day War in the Golan Heights, February 2019 Ronen Zvulun / 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/israel/israels-forever-war-gaza-tom-segev Get Citation Request Reprint Permissions Play Download Article To Israelis, October 7, 2023, is the worst day in their country’s 75-year history. Never before have so many of them been massacred and taken hostage on a single day. Thousands of heavily armed Hamas fighters managed to break through the Gaza Strip’s fortified border and into Israel, rampaging unimpeded for hours, destroying several villages, and committing gruesome acts of brutality before Israeli forces could regain control. Israelis have compared the attack to the Holocaust; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described Hamas as “the new Nazis.” In response, the Israel Defense Forces have pursued an open-ended military campaign in Gaza driven by rage and the desire for revenge. Netanyahu promises that the IDF will fight Hamas until it achieves “total victory,” although even his own military has been hard put to define what this means. He has offered no clear idea of what should happen when the fighting stops, other than to assert that Israel must maintain security control of all of Gaza and the West Bank. For Palestinians, the Gaza war is the worst event they have experienced in 75 years. Never have so many of them been killed and uprooted since the nakba, the catastrophe that befell them during Israel’s war of independence in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to give up their homes and became refugees. Like the Israelis, they also point to terrible acts of violence: by late March, Israel’s military campaign had taken the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians, among them thousands of children, and rendered well over a million homeless. As the Palestinians see it, the Israeli offensive is part of a larger plan to incorporate all Palestinian lands into the Jewish state and get them to abandon Gaza entirely—an idea that has in fact been raised by some members of Netanyahu’s government. The Palestinians also hold on to the illusion of return, the principle that they will one day be able to reclaim their historic homes in Israel itself—a kind of Palestinian Zionism that, like Israel’s maximalist aspirations, can never come true. Ever since the first Zionists began to conceive of a Jewish homeland in Palestine in the late nineteenth century, Jewish leaders and their Arab counterparts have understood that an all-encompassing settlement between them was likely impossible. As early as 1919, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s future first prime minister, recognized that there could be no peace in Palestine. Both the Jews and the Arabs, he observed, were claiming the land for themselves, and both were doing so as nations. “There is no solution to this question,” he repeatedly declared. “There is an abyss between us, and nothing can fill that abyss.” The inevitable conflict, he concluded, could at best be managed—limited or contained, perhaps, but not resolved. In the months since the October 7 attacks, critics of Netanyahu, noting his efforts to bolster Hamas and his push for Arab normalization deals that sideline the Palestinian issue, have accused him of trying to manage the conflict rather than end it. But that complaint misreads history. Netanyahu’s cardinal blunder was not his attempt to parry the issues that divide Jews and Arabs. It was that he did so more incompetently—and with more disastrous consequences—than anyone else over the past century. Indeed, conflict management is the only real option that either side, and their international interlocutors, has ever had. From its beginnings, the conflict has always been perpetuated by religion and mythology—violent fundamentalism and messianic prejudices, fantasies and symbols, and deep-rooted anxieties—rather than by concrete interests and calculated strategies. The irrational nature of the conflict has been the main reason why it could never be resolved. Only by confronting this enduring reality can world leaders begin to approach a crisis that demands not more empty talk of solutions for the future but urgent action to better cope with the present. THIS LAND IS MY LAND Not far from the grave of Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, on the mountain in Jerusalem that bears his name, is a national memorial to generations of Jewish victims of terrorism. The monument reflects an Israeli tendency to try to prove that Jews were persecuted by Arabs in Palestine long before the first Zionists set foot there. The earliest victim mentioned is a Jew from Lithuania who was killed by an Arab in 1851 after a financial dispute, and the eviction of some Arabs, related to the rebuilding of a synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. The memorial also mentions several Jewish victims of Arab robberies and 13 Jews who were killed in British bombing raids on Palestine during World War I. Palestinian historiography and commemorative culture rely on a similarly tendentious use of history. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, fewer than 7,000 Jews were living in Palestine, making up about 2.5 percent of the population of what was then an Ottoman province. Some of their communities had been there for many centuries. As more Arabs and Jews migrated there, the territory’s population grew, and with it the relative proportion of Jews. Most Arabs came from neighboring countries in search of employment. Most of the Jews came for religious reasons and as refugees from pogroms in Eastern Europe, and they tended to settle in the Old City of Jerusalem. These immigrants had no intention of establishing Jewish statehood in Palestine. In fact, most Jews at the time did not believe in the Zionist ideology, and many of them even opposed secular Zionism on religious grounds. By the end of the nineteenth century, there were about half a million Arabs in Palestine, whereas the number of Jews, although it had increased steadily, was around 50,000, or about one-tenth of the population. Nonetheless, Herzl’s international activities, including a visit in 1898 to Jerusalem, where he was received by the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, began to worry leaders of the Palestinian Arabs. The following year, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, the mayor of Jerusalem, expressed his concerns about the Zionists in a remarkable letter written to the chief rabbi of France. “Who could contest the rights of the Jews in Palestine?” Khalidi began in polite, even sympathetic, French prose. “My God, historically it is your country!” But that history was now deep in the past, he continued. “Palestine is an integral part of the Ottoman Empire, and more gravely, it is inhabited by others,” Khalidi wrote. The world was big enough, with plenty of uninhabited land for Jewish independence, he concluded. “For God’s sake—let Palestine be left alone!” Herzl, who received the letter from the French chief rabbi, assured Khalidi in his reply that the Zionists would develop the land for the benefit of all inhabitants, including the Arabs. Previously, however, he had written that the Zionist project might require the resettlement of poor Palestinians to neighboring countries. For Ben-Gurion, a Jewish majority was more important than gaining territory. Around the time of Herzl’s death, in 1904, young Zionists, mostly socialists from Eastern Europe, began to come to Palestine. One was David Gruen, who later changed his name to David Ben-Gurion. Born in Poland, he arrived in 1906 at the age of 20 and joined a Jewish workers’ group in the Galilee. His first political activity was the promotion of “Hebrew labor”—an attempt to require Jewish employers to hire Jews rather than Arabs. At the time, the Zionists’ acquisition of land also led to the dispossession of some Arab agricultural workers, some of whom reacted violently. In the spring of 1909, Ben-Gurion’s settlement was attacked, and two of his fellow members were killed, one of them apparently in front of Ben-Gurion. The future prime minister of Israel concluded that the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs had irreconcilable differences; there was no escaping the conflict. Ben-Gurion’s attitude toward the Arabs was further shaped by two other experiences. During World War I, he was expelled from Palestine by the Ottoman authorities. On one of his last days in Jerusalem, he ran into a young Arab with whom he had studied in Istanbul. When Ben-Gurion reported that he was about to be expelled, his acquaintance replied that as his dear friend, he was deeply sorry for him, but as an Arab nationalist, he was very happy. “That was the first time in my life that I heard an honest answer from an Arab intellectual,” Ben-Gurion said. “His words burned themselves into my heart, very, very deeply.” Years later, Ben-Gurion had a conversation with Musa Alami, a prominent Arab Palestinian and politician. Ben-Gurion promised as usual that the Zionists would develop Palestine for all its inhabitants. According to Ben-Gurion, Alami replied that he would rather leave the land poor and desolate for another century, if need be, until the Arabs could develop it themselves. Ben-Gurion often dismissed the “easy solutions” that he attributed to some of his colleagues, such as the notion that Jews could be encouraged to learn Arabic or even that Jews and Arabs could live together in one state. They were refusing to acknowledge the facts. Ben-Gurion’s own concept of the Jewish future in Palestine was based simply on acquiring as much land as possible, if not necessarily the entire territory, and populating it with as many Jews and as few Arabs as possible. His views about the conflict remained unchanged to the end of his life and continuously informed his efforts to manage it. SWITZERLAND IN JUDEA In 1917, the Zionist movement achieved one of its most important successes when British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declared the United Kingdom to be in favor of establishing a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. The Balfour Declaration, as it became known, was part of a strategic British plan to take the Holy Land from Ottoman dominion. In reality, like almost everything to do with that land, Balfour’s policy was driven more by sentimental religious ideas than by rational statecraft. A staunch Christian Zionist, Balfour was committed to the idea that the people of God should return to their homeland after a 2,000-year exile so that they could fulfill their biblical destiny. He aspired to go down in history as the man who made this messianic transformation possible. As was often the case with Western officials at the time, Balfour’s apparent reverence for the Jews simultaneously drew on deep anti-Semitic prejudice. Like others of his era, he attributed almost unlimited power and influence to “the Jew,” including an ability to determine history and even convince the United States to enter World War I. (It was hoped that the Balfour Declaration would sway American Jews to push the United States to join the Allied powers in the war.) By the end of 1917, the United Kingdom had conquered Palestine, thus beginning nearly 30 years of British rule. During this period, the Zionist movement laid the political, economic, cultural, and military foundations for the future state of Israel. Tensions with the Arabs increased over the years as hundreds of thousands of new Jewish immigrants, mainly from Europe, continued to arrive. In the 1920s, these immigrants were motivated not by support for Zionism but by the severe new immigration restrictions imposed by the United States. In the 1930s, more than 50,000 Jewish refugees arrived in Palestine from Nazi Germany, although in less desperate circumstances most of them would have preferred to stay in their country. Large-scale immigration of Jews sparked more waves of Arab violence against Jews and against the British authorities, who were seen as supporting Zionist aims. This came to a head in the Arab revolt of 1936–39, in which Palestinians rose up against the British colonial administration through a general strike, an armed insurrection, and attacks on railways and Jewish settlements. Amid this turmoil, the British began to regard Palestine as a nuisance. To get rid of the problem, they appointed the so-called Peel Commission, which recommended dividing the land into Jewish and Arab states—the very first “two-state” solution. 1. British Mandate Palestine in 1933. 2. The UN’s 1947 two-state partition plan, with Jerusalem and surrounding areas under international trusteeship. 3. Israeli-held territory after the 1967 war, including Sinai, which was eventually returned to Egypt in 1982. British Government / United Nations / University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries Although the Jewish state it envisioned was small, amounting to just 17 percent of British Mandate Palestine, Ben-Gurion supported the plan. Notably, Arab inhabitants of the area designated for the Jewish state were to be transferred to the Arab state, a provision that he described in his diary as a “forced transfer,” drawing a thick line under the words. Most of his colleagues, however, wanted much more land for the Jewish state, setting off a contentious debate between the center-left Zionist leadership and right-wing “Revisionists” who cultivated a dream of a Greater Israel on both banks of the Jordan River. Although they stood to gain control of about 75 percent of the land, the Arabs rejected the idea of a Jewish state in principle, and the British withdrew the plan. Here, again, was the “abyss” between Jews and Arabs that Ben-Gurion had identified years earlier and that would become even deeper after the Holocaust and the war of 1948. In January 1942, a few weeks before Nazi leaders met at the infamous Wannsee Conference to discuss the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” Foreign Affairs published an article by the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. At the time, no one outside Germany knew about the Nazis’ planned extermination camps, but their treatment of Jews in occupied Western Europe and during Germany’s ruthless assault on the Soviet Union had already made clear that the Nazis were threatening the existence of the entire Jewish people. Only total victory over the Third Reich could halt the extermination of the Jews, and although Weizmann expressed a hope that a better world could be built after the war, his article was an urgent appeal for a Jewish homeland. Palestine, he wrote, was the only place where Jews, particularly Jewish refugees, could survive. From a Zionist perspective, Weizmann’s proposal contained elements of compromise: more than 20 years earlier, at the Versailles peace conference after World War I, he had presented a map of the Land of Israel with biblical borders that extended to the east bank of the Jordan River—territory much larger than the country would ever attain. In his article, by contrast, Weizmann did not specify borders but proposed unlimited Jewish immigration to a democratic country that would offer equal rights to all its inhabitants, including Arabs. Although he wrote that the Arabs must be “clearly told that the Jews will be encouraged to settle in Palestine, and will control their own immigration,” he asserted that Arabs would not be discriminated against and would “enjoy full autonomy in their own internal affairs.” He also did not rule out the possibility that the new Jewish state could join “in federation” with neighboring Arab states. But like Ben-Gurion, he also foresaw the need to contain the Palestinian Arabs: should they wish, he wrote, “every facility will be given to them to transfer to one of the many and vast Arab countries.” Attempting to convince his readers that the Jews were worthy of help, Weizmann somewhat pathetically promised that “the Jew” no longer fit the anti-Semitic stereotypes that were prevalent in the West before the start of the Zionist project. “When the Jew is reunited with the soil of Palestine,” he wrote, “energies are released” that if “given an outlet, can create values which may be of service even to richer and more fortunate countries.” Weizmann compared the hoped-for Zionist state to Switzerland, “another small country, also poor in natural resources,” that had nevertheless become “one of the most orderly and stable of European democracies.” Seven years later, he was elected the first president of Israel. In the meantime, the Nazis had murdered six million Jews. UNREALIZED GAINS In November 1947, the UN General Assembly recommended the partition of Palestine, this time in a division that would give each side broadly equitable areas of land, with the Old City of Jerusalem under international control. The Arabs rejected the plan, in accordance with their traditional objection to Jewish statehood in Palestine. The Zionists accepted partition, although Ben-Gurion expected war and hoped that it would end with territory that was empty of Arabs. Soon afterward, Arab militias began a series of attacks on the Jewish population, and Zionist groups retaliated with actions against Arab communities. In May 1948, Ben-Gurion declared Israel’s independence. It was a dangerous gamble. Regular Arab armies and volunteers from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Transjordan were about to invade the new country, and top commanders of the Jewish armed forces warned that the odds of defeating them were even at best. U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall demanded an immediate cease-fire; Ben-Gurion feared that the Zionists were not ready for war. Before the UN partition plan was announced, he had tried in vain to persuade the British to stay in Palestine for five to ten more years, which could have given the Jews more time to increase immigration and strengthen their forces. But faced with the historic opportunity to declare a Jewish state, Ben-Gurion chose to obey a Zionist imperative that he said had guided him since the age of three. He later explained that the Israelis won not because they were better at fighting but because the Arabs were even worse. In keeping with his abiding view that establishing a Jewish majority was more important than gaining territory, he led the army to push out or expel most of the Arabs—some 750,000—who fled to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, which Ben-Gurion left unoccupied, as well as to neighboring Arab countries. A direct line could be traced from the Zionists’ campaign in the 1920s to replace Arab workers with Jews to the far larger effort in 1948 to remove Arabs from the land of the new Jewish state. Israel lost close to 6,000 soldiers in that war, nearly one percent of the new country’s Jewish population at the time. Israeli troops firing at an Arab village in the Galilee region, 1948 Stringer / Reuters When the war ended in early 1949, green pencils were used to draw armistice boundaries between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the famous “Green Line.” Gaza became an Egyptian protectorate, and the West Bank was annexed by Jordan. Israel now controlled more territory than it had been allocated in the UN partition plan. It was also almost free of Arabs; the ones who remained were subjected to a rather arbitrary and often corrupt military rule. Most Israelis at the time saw this as an acceptable situation—a rational way of managing the conflict. The Arabs in turn considered Israel’s existence a humiliation that had to be remedied. In Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, authorities did not allow Palestinian refugees to be integrated into their new countries of residence, forcing them instead to live in temporary camps, where they were encouraged to nurture the idea of return. In the first two decades after independence, Israel made remarkable achievements. But it failed to reach the Zionist goal of providing the entire Jewish people with a safe national homeland. Most of the world’s Jews, including many survivors of the Holocaust, still preferred to remain in other countries; those in the Soviet Union and other communist countries were forbidden to emigrate by the authorities in those places. After the 1948 war, most Middle Eastern Jews, many of whose families had been in the region for thousands of years, no longer felt safe in Muslim countries and chose—or were forced—to leave. Most settled in Israel, at first often as destitute refugees. By the mid-1960s, immigrants who had arrived since independence made up around 60 percent of the Israeli population. Most had not yet mastered the Hebrew language, and they often disagreed on basic values and even on how to define a Jew. Ben-Gurion continued to manage the conflict, but many Israelis, particularly newcomers, felt that Israel’s existence was still in danger. Only a few close confidants knew about Ben-Gurion’s nuclear project. Border wars frequently broke out; the IDF prepared contingency plans for the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. During the Suez crisis of 1956, Israeli forces invaded Egypt, occupying Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula, but withdrew a few months later. In a cabinet meeting, Ben-Gurion said that if he believed in miracles, he would ask for Gaza to be swallowed up by the sea. After Ben-Gurion resigned in 1963, Israelis were left with a weak and hesitant leadership and a deep economic crisis. More and more of them began to lose confidence in Israel’s future. In 1966, the number of Jews emigrating from the country exceeded the number entering it. A popular joke referred to a sign supposedly hanging at the exit gate of the international airport that read: “Would the last person to leave the country please turn off the lights?” LAND FOR WAR By the mid-1960s, a new generation of Palestinian refugees had grown up on the legacy of the nakba and the dream of return. They founded the Palestine Liberation Organization, a movement that declared a war to free Palestinians and establish an Arab state encompassing their entire historical land, and began carrying out attacks on military and civilian targets in Israel. Some Palestinian militants infiltrated Israel from Syria and Jordan. Israel responded with military reprisals, and in May 1967, Egyptian officials openly threatened to “annihilate” Israel. As tensions rose, many Israelis doubted that their country could survive, and the weariest ones relived their Holocaust experiences. Playgrounds around the country were hastily prepared to serve as burial grounds for the tens of thousands of the expected dead. Israel’s decision to attack Egypt in June 1967 was not only a preemptive strike but also an act of nightmarish panic. But the surprise attack, launching what would come to be called the Six-Day War, resulted in a dramatic victory for the IDF. Within hours, the Egyptian air force had been destroyed on the ground, and Israelis’ existential dread was replaced by an almost uncontrolled triumphalism. Led by Revisionist opposition leader Menachem Begin, who had joined Israel’s emergency cabinet on the eve of the war and would later become prime minister, as well as some other cabinet ministers, prominent Israeli politicians demanded the “liberation” of what they called Greater Israel—the biblical land that included the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem. Such an ambition reflected national and religious feelings, but strategically it was contested. A few months before the war, senior officials from the IDF, the prime minister’s office, and the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, had met to discuss the possibility that King Hussein of Jordan would be overthrown by Palestinians living in the West Bank. At the time, the Israeli leadership concluded that the king was working to eradicate Palestinian nationalism in Jordan and the West Bank and that it would be advisable, indeed almost vital, for Israel to stay out of it. After the June victory, however, none of the cabinet ministers questioned why it would be in Israel’s interest to occupy land that was populated by millions of Palestinians. Having just experienced a kind of national resurrection, they were determined to acquire as much land as possible. The impulse came from the heart, not from the head. No one questioned why it was in Israel’s interest to occupy the West Bank. Ben-Gurion had opposed the attack on Egypt because he feared defeat, including the destruction of Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona. After the war, he said that if he had to choose between a smaller state of Israel with peace or the newly expanded boundaries without peace, he would choose the first option. But even he could not contain his emotions when Israeli forces entered the Arab-controlled areas of Jerusalem at the beginning of the war. Shortly afterward, he demanded that the wall of the Old City immediately be torn down to ensure that Jerusalem remained “united” forever. Taking Arab Jerusalem was a fatal decision, for neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians were likely to agree to any compromise there. There were efforts to manage this flash point, but these arrangements often broke down, and the eternal city has since remained the emotional core of insoluble conflict. The Israeli conquest of the West Bank sparked similar messianic passions, and within months, Israelis began to settle there. Only a few realized that in the long run, occupying the Palestinian territories would put Israel’s Jewish majority and its shaky democracy in jeopardy. Just as there was no rational justification for the existential hysteria that had preceded the Six-Day War, there was no rational basis for the unbridled expansionism that took hold after it. Despite Israel’s victory, the 1967 war simply reinforced the underlying tensions that had long driven the Arab-Israeli conflict. Arab countries reaffirmed their refusal to recognize the existence of Israel; the Palestinians’ longing for their lost homeland intensified. Every few years, another war broke out. And each side did what it could to manage a situation that had no ready answers. Egypt was able to make peace with Israel in 1979 mostly because Israel was not required to give up any part of Palestine; under a similar logic, Jordan was able to follow suit in 1994. In reaching these agreements, both Arab countries abandoned the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank, perpetuating the people’s identity as the orphans of the Middle East. CONTAINMENT OR CATASTROPHE Like Ben-Gurion and other Israeli leaders, Netanyahu does not believe the conflict can be solved. But he has proved even less adept than his predecessors at managing it. In an attempt to divide and rule the Palestinians and prevent them from attaining independence, he accepted and then encouraged the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Later, he developed the illusion that peace with some Gulf Arab states in the 2020 Abraham Accords would weaken the Palestinian cause. Implicit in these moves was the idea that it would be possible to control Hamas by bribing its leaders: Israel thus allowed Qatar to deliver Hamas millions of dollars in cash packed in suitcases. The Israeli government also issued work permits for residents of Gaza on the premise that this economic arrangement would restrain Hamas. This kind of bribery reflects a long tradition of Israeli condescension toward the Arabs—a fundamental contempt for them and their national feelings. In reality, Hamas used much of the money to acquire thousands of rockets, some of them obtained from Iran, that were frequently fired at Israeli cities. In reaction, Israel imposed a blockade on the territory that made Gazans even poorer. Hamas organized a fighting force and constructed a web of tunnels that some experts have described as the most extensive underground fortress in the history of modern warfare. Most important, Netanyahu’s approach disregarded Hamas’s ideological and emotional commitments, some of which outweigh even life itself, as was illustrated by the organization’s barbarity last October and in the months since. Israel has responded to this indescribable catastrophe with the vengeful devastation of Gaza and its people, a military campaign that, after more than five months, has singularly failed in its primary goal of “total victory” over Hamas. The history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is rife with futile peace plans. These have varied from a single binational state—a concept that was first proposed by Jewish intellectuals in the 1920s, and again in the 1940s—to transforming the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan into a Palestinian state, an idea that has repeatedly resurfaced since the 1967 war. Seemingly reasonable two-state solutions have also been conceived over the years that might allow Israelis and Palestinians to control their own destinies, in some cases with some form of international oversight of the contested holy sites in Jerusalem. For decades, successive U.S. administrations have sponsored such initiatives, but rarely have they gotten beyond the concept stage, regardless of how favorable they might seem to one side or the other. Consider the “deal of the century,” a two-state solution briefly proposed by the Trump administration in 2020. It would have left Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem largely intact and given Israel complete security control over both. Yet Jewish settlers themselves did not support it because it gave parts of the West Bank, as well as the outskirts of East Jerusalem, to the Palestinians. That “deal” was merely another iteration of an enduring fantasy. There is little reason to believe that the Biden administration’s efforts to lay down a post-Gaza peace plan will be any more successful. Israeli soldiers next to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters, Gaza City, February 2024 Dylan Martinez / Reuters Historically, Israelis and Palestinians have occasionally shown a readiness to make at least some compromises. And in the early 1990s, it seemed that peace had won after all: the Oslo accords brought leaders of the two sides to the White House lawn in 1993 and subsequently earned them the Nobel Peace Prize. But even then, the results were evanescent. The following year, an Israeli fanatic massacred 29 Palestinians in a mosque in Hebron in the West Bank, setting off new waves of terrorist attacks by Palestinians. Shortly thereafter, another Israeli extremist assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin—just as, after the 1979 peace accord with Israel, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had been assassinated by an Egyptian fanatic. Acts of terrorism and the rise of extremist forces on each side led to the end of the Oslo peace process, but in hindsight, the plan had never had much chance of success. The common flaw in these international peace initiatives is a failure to contend with the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to embrace a lasting solution. Outside powers, including the United States, have never acted forcefully enough to stop the systematic violation of human rights in the Palestinian territories. But the primary reason the conflict endures is neither Israeli oppression of the Palestinians nor Palestinian terrorism, but rather the irrevocable commitment of both peoples to undivided land. These absolute positions have increasingly become the essence of collective identities on each side, and any compromise is likely to be denounced by significant Israeli and Palestinian constituencies as a national and religious betrayal. Evidently, existential conflicts shaped around competing visions of nationhood cannot be ended by grand solutions that neither side will support—least of all, during the most devastating war that Israelis and Palestinians have experienced in three-quarters of a century. But such a conflict can be managed in more or less reasonable ways. If a century of failure has made clear that the two sides are unlikely to be reconciled in the foreseeable future, the war in Gaza has exposed the terrifying cataclysm that poor handling of the conflict can bring about. When the fighting is over, imaginative, resourceful, and compassionate management of the conflict between the two sides will be more crucial than ever. Rather than devoting energy and political capital to deeply unpopular—and unsustainable—peace plans, the United States and other leading powers must do more to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis can find a safer and more tolerable existence in a world without peace. Countless failures in the search for a solution to the conflict have given rise to a hypothesis that only a catastrophe of biblical proportions could persuade either side to rethink their delusional national creeds. The unfolding events in Israel and Gaza may suggest that both sides have not yet suffered enough. But perhaps this hypothesis is not rooted in reality, either. TOM SEGEV is an Israeli historian and the author of A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion. MORE BY TOM SEGEV More: Israel Palestinian Territories Diplomacy Geopolitics Politics & Society Civil & Military Relations Ideology Security Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel-Hamas War Hamas Benjamin Netanyahu Most-Read Articles China’s Alternative Order And What America Should Learn From It Elizabeth Economy Is an Anti-Iran Alliance Emerging in the Middle East? 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Signed into law on April 16, the legislation comes at a time when Ukraine faces a series of growing challenges in its defense against Russia, from shortages of Ukraine’s soldiers and ammunition to wavering Western support. In this view, the new law could make it easier for the government to replenish its forces as it prepares for a major Russian offensive this summer. For Ukrainians, however, the law also represents something else. Subject to more than 4,200 amendments, the law required months of contentious debate in the Ukrainian parliament. Indeed, some of its original provisions—such as planning for how and when the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have been serving since the war began should be discharged—were ultimately left out for a separate bill. But it also has become a symbol of Ukraine’s imperfect yet still flourishing democracy. More significantly, it has helped define the pivot point at which the country now stands: having weathered the initial emergency of war, Ukraine now needs to restructure its institutions and its society as it adapts to a potentially much longer conflict. Back in the spring and summer of 2022, in the months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukrainians’ response to the attack was almost spontaneous. Huge numbers of men enlisted, and despite brutal fighting and constant bombardment, they were able to defeat Russia’s attempt to take Kyiv and even to reclaim significant territory captured by the Russians. With arms and supplies flooding into Ukraine from the United States and the West and immediate fighting to be done, there was not much time to think about building the country’s own defense industries or managing the wartime economy. Today, the Ukrainians continue to maintain a tough frontline against the Russians and are as determined as ever to defend their country. But as the war becomes protracted, the country also faces major structural demands. The armed forces must be prepared to fight for months or years to come. The government has to keep the civilian economy afloat, even as it sends more of its able-bodied population into battle. And as the leadership in Kyiv awaits a long-delayed aid package from the U.S. Congress, it must learn to do more with less. In practice, that means creating a system in which much of the adult male population of the country—before the war, there were some 10.5 million men between the ages of 18 and 59—serves in the army. It means building, almost from scratch, a defense production capability that allows Ukraine to lessen its dependence on allies. And it means further reorganizing the national economy to ensure there is enough money to pay for the runaway costs of war. To meet these daunting tasks, the Ukrainian government has spent months pushing the mobilization bill through parliament. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also taken a series of interim steps to help close the gap in the armed forces, even as members of his administration try to put the economy on a more strategic war footing. But each of these moves requires balancing complex and sometimes contradictory decisions with the need to maintain the country’s social cohesion. Often, there are no perfect solutions. THE VETERANS’ DILEMMA After more than two years of war, Ukraine’s need for soldiers is acute. But it is not just a question of adding more people to the existing forces or making up for the fallen and wounded. In actual numbers, officials have made varying estimates of the country’s needs: in December 2023, army commanders demanded 500,000 new soldiers; more recently, the new commander in chief, General Oleksandr Syrsky, suggested that 150,000 recruits per year might be sufficient, although many regard that figure as too low. Equally pressing, however, may be the issue of maintaining troop quality. For many of the country’s military leaders, a top priority is providing a fair deal for those who have been risking their lives for two years already, even as millions of other Ukrainians have preserved a relatively normal way of life away from the battlefield. Thus, as new troops are mobilized, the army is under pressure to release some of its most experienced service personnel. But it is no secret that the vast combat experience that these veterans have cannot be matched by even the best-trained recruits, creating a dilemma for the army. Some of these challenges date to well before the current war. In the years leading up to Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine, whose territory had been the major defensive line between the Soviets and the West during the Cold War, had abolished the draft, and its standing army had shrunk to tiny levels. As the 2014 invasion was unfolding, Ukraine’s acting defense minister, with only slight exaggeration, claimed that the country had only 5,000 soldiers fit for combat. Moscow’s aggression became a wake-up call for Ukraine’s military and ushered in major reforms. The harder the state pushes, the more chance that Ukrainians will rebel. By 2022, the armed forces had grown to 300,000, many of whom were volunteers. Today, that figure has ballooned to more than one million people, out of a total population of about 40 million. A large majority began their service at the start of the war: following Russia’s February 2022 invasion, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians enlisted, and a draft of serving-age men began. (The call-up has continued to the present: on an almost weekly basis, most Ukrainians witness someone they know going into service.) The huge influx was crucial to Ukraine’s defense, but it also meant that the army began the war with very little experience or internal cohesion. Its soldiers are predominantly civilians who come from widely disparate social and economic backgrounds and have varying political views and levels of education. There is no such thing as a typical Ukrainian soldier anymore. Under existing law, there is no formal time limit for military service. Soldiers are supposed to be discharged when martial law ends—which means the end of the war and could be years away. As one officer told me, “Even the most determined [soldier] will consider this to be an eternal contract.” To address the problem, the original draft mobilization bill, when it was introduced in January, proposed to mandate demobilization after 36 months of active duty. But that provision was dropped because of pressure from military leaders, who feared they would lose their most experienced troops. Coming after two years of intense warfare, the challenge of building a just system for military enlistment has turned into a focal point for larger debates about Ukraine’s democratic foundations and the future of the war. Although the mobilization bill was in itself broadly supported, critics argued that some of its provisions violated the Ukrainian constitution, which cannot be changed under martial law and was written in times when a major land war on Ukrainian soil seemed almost unthinkable. For instance, the constitution guarantees the right of free movement and the right of education: if you were studying at a university or for a Ph.D., you could avoid the draft, whereas now, if you are of serving age, you may be conscripted. The new enlistment system also requires Ukrainians of serving age to provide personal data, which may violate existing privacy laws. Ukraine’s political classes are also sensitive to the country’s implicit social contract: the harder the state pushes and the stricter the rules that are enforced, the more chance there is that the Ukrainians will rebel and disobey. Like the Americans, the Ukrainians have a deep-seated suspicion of government intrusion in their lives. Thus, the government must find ways to encourage people to serve instead of forcing them to do so. YOUNGER AND STRONGER? This winter, while the mobilization law was held up in parliament, Zelensky began to issue a series of partial measures to alleviate the growing pressure for more troops. In February, he allowed foreigners to join the National Guard—mainly as a way to allow people who live in Ukraine with residence permits but not citizenship to serve in the armed forces. In early April, the president also signed into law a bill lowering the military mobilization age by two years, from 27 to 25, a step that opens the way to recruiting the country’s population of younger adult males. Many Ukrainians have long felt that keeping the country’s youth away from the horrors of battle was a wise policy. In Ukraine, mandatory military service starts at age 18 for those who are not studying for a university degree, but thus far, regular conscripts who are under 27 could not be ordered to the battlefield. Those younger men who are fighting in the war have done so of their own volition. (The new mobilization law replaces conscription with what is now called basic military training.) One result of these policies is that the average age of Ukrainian soldiers today is over 40; men can be mobilized up to age 60. This means that the army rank and file tend to be more mature, and many fighters have families to return to and know what’s at stake. A few of the more experienced soldiers in one squadron I spoke to emphasized that they do not want young men to fight because “the youngest are the least careful, and take too many risks.” Ukrainian soldiers firing a multiple launch rocket system, Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 2024 Sofiia Gatilova / Reuters After 26 months of war, however, the military understands that soldiers in their 20s are fitter and recover faster, allowing them to bounce back from injuries and return to the front. For instance, a young person who has experienced a concussion from an explosion may be able to recover from temporary hearing loss, whereas someone over 40 faces a higher risk of permanent deafness. In any event, the public seems to understand the military’s shifting needs. Zelensky’s decision to lower the draft age by two years—a move that has been anticipated for more than a year—has caused little popular reaction. He has also signed a bill requiring all Ukrainian men to register with a new “draftee e-account.” The account provides various online services to avoid paper bureaucracy, but it cannot be used for calling people for the draft. Although these steps—and the new mobilization law—won’t produce an immediate wave of fresh soldiers, they will make millions more Ukrainians visible to the military bureaucracy. Currently, although nearly 20 million Ukrainians use the mobile app DIYA—an identity system that makes official documents, such as passports and university diplomas, available online—the military’s draft registries are maintained on paper and are connected to the places where people are registered to work or their official place of residence. And since millions of Ukrainian men are internally displaced and not officially employed, they may not be in these records. Meanwhile, the government has sought better ways to deal with people who evade the draft. In 2023, Ukrainian courts prosecuted 1,274 people for evading military service; 60 cases resulted in prison sentences. There is also growing controversy about the abuse of draft exemptions, which are available to fathers who have to care for three or more children, single fathers, men who have to care for disabled relatives, or men who suffer from any one of a long list of health conditions. State institutions and companies also have the right to keep a set number of professionals with unique skills, such as doctors and nuclear scientists—a pool that could amount to as many as 500,000 people nationwide—out of the draft. Since the war began, prosecutors have opened thousands of investigations involving alleged bribes to military commissioners or forged documents; in August 2023, Zelensky replaced all the country’s regional military commissioners. THE FEAR FACTOR Still, in absolute terms, available manpower—and womanpower—is not the primary problem Ukraine is facing. According to one analysis released in March, there are as many as five million additional Ukrainian men who are potentially able to serve. Of these, 700,000 are between the ages of 18 to 25 and are currently deemed too young to serve. The study also found that if women who do not have children were mobilized, as many as three million women could be recruited, some of whom could be used in an auxiliary capacity or as support staff. Today, 45,000 women are serving in Ukrainian law enforcement, and around 5,500 are in combat roles as snipers, artillery specialists, or assault forces. But Ukrainian society remains conservative, and the idea of a general enlistment of women is not popular; Zelensky has said he opposes it. In any case, such far-reaching moves would require extensive debate, including what a total militarization of society lasting for years to come would mean for the population and for the economy. Recently, the Public Interest Journalism Lab, for which I work, together with the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research, conducted a focus group study with both current military members and potential recruits to ask in-depth questions about the draft. Our research is still being analyzed, but the initial findings have indicated that for many Ukrainians, fear of the unknown is a significant factor in shaping negative views of the draft reform. Many are afraid they will find themselves in Bakhmut or Avdiivka just a few days after enlistment. Almost everyone knows someone who has been killed in the war. Respondents are also concerned about the inefficient use of draftees’ skills: they wonder, for instance, if an engineer with three degrees and who is not physically fit may be sent to train as a paratrooper, whereas skilled drivers or professional fighters might be sent to join the marine troops rather than the tank brigades or sniper units. Such concerns could be mitigated by more transparent discussions from military commanders about their most acute troop needs, as well as a more nimble system for assessing skills and assigning tasks. Many Ukrainians also express concerns that the army is given insufficient material support, that soldiers are given little time to rest and recover, that the country’s “selective” approach to mobilization may not be fair, and that there is too little support for wounded soldiers and the families of the dead. In many cases, respondents complained about the lack of clear rules for payments in case of injury or death, even though such rules exist. The Ukrainian government, for instance, has decreed that it will provide families of soldiers who are killed in battle with 15 million Ukrainian hryvnia (about $377,000) compensation, an extraordinarily large sum. Yet the survey demonstrates that much of the population is not aware of it. The government has attempted a few media and outreach campaigns aimed at providing basic information about military service, but they clearly have been inadequate. Overwhelmingly pervasive, however, is the fear of injury or death, given that Ukrainians face an almost constant barrage of news about fresh casualties, and almost everybody knows someone who has been killed in the war. DEFIANT NORMALITY Closely linked to the mobilization dilemma is the question of how to maintain civilian life. The war is already estimated to have caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to Ukraine’s economic output. Entire industrial regions and large corporations have been destroyed. Ports that played a key role in international shipping and exports are blocked. Millions of professionals have left the country, and multiple economic sectors have simply disappeared during the war. Sustaining the military itself has also come at a high cost. Ukraine’s battlefield successes are often now taken for granted, but they have been crucial to sustaining efforts by the government to maintain a working society. The liberation of the capital and Ukrainian regions in the north, east, and south, holding the frontline for almost two years, and the crucial role of Western-supplied air defenses such as the Patriot missile system have helped allow millions of civilians to continue with fairly normal lives in large parts of the country. Notably, none of the funds provided to Ukraine by foreign partners such as the United States or the European Union are designated for paying Ukrainian soldiers or supporting arms production in Ukraine. Instead, international economic aid covers social payments, such as pensions, civil service salaries, and health care. As a result, almost all national revenues must now be used to maintain the armed forces. And that means that adding tens of thousands of new troops could put a further strain on the country’s coffers. Families of Ukrainian soldiers demanding demobilization measures, Kyiv, April 2024 Sofiia Gatilova / Reuters For now, the Ukrainian economy has continued to reinvent itself. New types of businesses appear and are even growing, little by little. One such sector is logistics, both inside and outside the country, as many industries have been relocated and require new supply chains. Another growth area relates to reconstruction and rebuilding in areas formerly under Russian occupation. Online services have also expanded across the country to serve the displaced population with e-banking, online education, and other needs. And other sectors, cut off from global markets, have reoriented their production domestically: instead of producing clothes for global retailers, for example, some companies are producing uniforms for the military. The government has also introduced initiatives to maintain whole industries with fewer people. Take agriculture, the sector that represents a considerable chunk of Ukraine’s economy. Some of the country’s largest fields are located close to the frontline and, in many cases, are now covered in land mines and can’t be planted. Moreover, the drivers of tractors and combines are major assets for the army, because they can drive tanks without much training, so many men in the agricultural sector have been drafted. In their absence, however, companies are developing unmanned farm vehicles that can be operated remotely. There are similarities to the way that businesses survived the COVID-19 pandemic: it will never be as good as it was in normal times, but many industries can somehow manage to operate. Keeping workers inside the country was and remains critical for maintaining jobs. Another challenge for the government is how to pay for large numbers of enlistees who are not yet fighting but no longer work and pay taxes. The government has negotiated with the military to keep some workers out of the draft in order to keep critical areas of the economy going. Thus, the economy is being gradually transformed through thousands of such small steps. WHERE ARE THE PATRIOTS? For months, Ukraine has had a critical shortage of ammunition. Consider the retreat from Avdiivka in February, which has become a focal point for international analysts concerned about the shifting momentum in the war. In fact, Ukrainian forces were forced to pull back after four months of battle mainly because they ran out of bullets, not because they were losing the fight. Even the country’s most experienced battalions cannot overcome this shortfall. Observing the inability of Ukraine’s Western partners to resupply weapons in a timely fashion, many feared the collapse of the frontline this spring. Those fears were alleviated somewhat by recent deliveries of ammunition, in particular from the Czech Republic and Germany, which have at least partially stabilized the situation. But they have also underscored how crucial this one element is to the overall war effort. Today, military officials must confront the dilemma of whether it makes sense to send waves of new soldiers to a frontline where many current soldiers already lack ammunition. The most common explanation for Ukraine’s ammunition crisis is a global supply problem: Ukraine’s allies themselves, the logic goes, have not been able to produce munitions rapidly enough to keep up with demand. But arms experts disagree about how many weapons and ammunition supplies are still sitting in the warehouses of democratic allies. A lot depends on distribution. As with vaccine competition during the pandemic, countries may be hoarding supplies at a moment when global instability makes armed conflict more likely. Loading ammunition into a magazine, near Kyiv, April 2024 Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters South Korea, for example, is often mentioned as a state that produces enough ammunition to sell to other partners, yet it tends to keep a large surplus for domestic contingencies. By contrast, a few eastern European states, in particular in the Baltic region, have given almost everything they have to Ukraine, arguing that Russia wouldn’t attack a NATO state and that the Ukrainians are holding the frontline for the entire Western world. At the World Economic Forum in January, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis stated that what is currently given to Ukraine is just a small part of what is necessary to defend a country of a similar size. Landsbergis noted that Poland has responded to the Ukraine crisis by ordering from the United States some 1,000 Abrams tanks, 500 long-range guided HIMARS missile systems, and 40 Patriot missile systems. “Poland is roughly the same size and has the same population as Ukraine,” Landsbergis said, “and Poland has NATO’s Article 5.” Ukraine, he implied, would need much more than that. Ukraine is currently believed to possess some Abrams tanks, a few dozen HIMARS systems, and fewer than ten Patriot systems. Recently, Zelensky announced that 25 Patriot systems would be enough to defend the whole of the country. But Russian attacks are intensifying. On March 22, Moscow launched its deadliest attack on the Ukrainian energy system, and in Kharkiv, Odessa, and Zaporizhzhia, it has started to use so-called double strikes, well documented in Russia’s campaign in Syria: after a strike on a target, Russian forces will follow up with a second strike in the same area to deliberately target rescue workers and doctors coming to save the victims. On April 17, Russia also attacked the city center of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine with three missiles, killing at least 18 civilians, injuring 78 more, including four children, and damaging more than 500 apartments in 28 high-rise buildings. The strike has raised new alarms about the expected summer offensive; many observers point out that the attack could have been neutralized if Ukraine had received more air defense systems from its Western partners. HOME REMEDIES For the foreseeable future, Kyiv will continue to depend on its allies for more sophisticated weapons such as HIMARS and Patriot systems. To confront Russia’s air dominance, it is also resting its hopes on the long-awaited delivery of F-16 fighter jets this summer. According to an analysis of Ukraine’s military budget through 2030 by Janes, a defense intelligence firm, Ukraine’s military procurement jumped to a projected 20-year high of nearly $10 billion in 2023, compared with a prewar figure of about $1 billion a year. But the Ukrainian leadership recognizes that it is equally important to bolster the country’s own defense industry. By now, Ukraine has started to produce Bohdana artillery cannons, which are able to shoot NATO-caliber rounds, but it will need to do more. Zelensky is often criticized by the opposition for failing to prepare the economy for the full invasion and instead naively trying to find a peaceful solution to the conflict with Russia. He has responded that scaring the population by moving to a total war footing would have caused an outflow of investors and workers, the departure of businesses and taxpayers, and, in the end, a lack of funds in the state budget with which to wage a defense. In some ways, today’s dilemma is similar: the government must figure out how to spend more on defense while still preserving some level of normality, so that the country’s best minds do not leave and businesses can function. Although ideas about nationalizing businesses, forcing private companies to produce weapons, and using citizens to make shells have come up during public debates, they are hard to put into practice without compromising Ukraine’s democratic foundations. For Ukraine’s defense industries, the problem is not lack of capability, but lack of funds. Nevertheless, the government is making some changes. Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister, has observed that Ukrainian industry could learn to produce various types of shells and drones and currently has $20 billion worth of production capacity. At the moment, however, the state budget can come up with no more than $6 billion for procurement. According to Kamyshin, the problem is no longer lack of capabilities but lack of funds. But there may be ways around this problem as well. Today, many of Ukraine’s partners prefer to rely on weapons produced by their domestic markets. This is the case with the United States and Canada, just as European countries often rely on European producers. Over the last few years, some private Ukrainian companies have switched to weapons production and also managed to produce cheaper models than their Western counterparts. For instance, a Canadian Sky Ranger R70 drone costs $90,000, whereas a similar Ukrainian model costs from $10,000 to $25,000. Now, Kamyshin has proposed to Western allies that they should purchase Ukrainian-produced weapons for Ukrainian forces, which, in addition to serving urgent frontline needs, would bring an infusion of cash to develop Ukraine’s defense sector. In fact, on April 18, Denmark became the first Western country to do so, reaching a deal with Kyiv to buy $28.5 million worth of Ukrainian-produced weapons and military equipment for Ukrainian forces. CONSTANT GAME CHANGING Observing the evolving war in Ukraine, arms experts have noted that successful defense production depends less on the capacity to produce any one particular technology than on the continual ability to modernize. Consider the case of drones: during the first year of the invasion, the Russians were hardly using any drones; now, they have made drones a central part of their arsenal. Moscow is not only importing large quantities of drones from Iran and North Korea but has also organized its own production of models that it previously bought from Tehran. For Ukraine, the takeaway is that relentless innovation is necessary, because the adversary is constantly learning and adapting. Many Western defense companies, far from the battlefield, are not equipped to respond nimbly to the latest needs with new prototypes. But for the Ukrainian military and for Ukraine’s engineers and IT specialists, continual adaptation has become the only viable way to proceed. For example, Ukraine has been testing a variety of unmanned technologies—basically robots—that can be used for mining bridges, evacuating the wounded, and delivering weapons. Various IT solutions are in continuous development for communications and intelligence. Sometimes it is not just about the battlefield. As one Ukrainian soldier noted, she now uses ChatGPT for writing military reports, which saves her hours she used to spend on bureaucratic chores. Ukrainians are cautious about using the term “asymmetric warfare” in their war with Russia. Former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk explains that the term can lead foreign partners to see Ukraine’s fight as a form of guerrilla warfare rather than as a full-fledged military campaign. That assumption caused problems in the run-up to the Russian invasion and during the initial months afterward, when the United Kingdom and the United States limited their supply of equipment to Ukraine to portable antitank weapons. These can be helpful in urban warfare, but they are hardly sufficient for the kind of conventional warfare Ukrainian forces are contending with, involving very long frontlines and thousands of square miles of land. Still, Ukraine has continued to reap tactical benefits by using approaches that surprise the enemy. A Ukrainian soldier during combat, Chernihiv region, Ukraine, March 2024 Gleb Garanich / Reuters Zagorodnyuk insists the current war of attrition is also bad for Russia. The Ukrainian secret service claimed that one of its recent attacks was aimed at a factory in Tatarstan, where the Russians were producing drones using Iranian technology. Ukraine’s military goal in this war is not just to retake the territories and save people from the brutal Russian occupation. Kyiv has to destroy Moscow’s capabilities to grab new territories and prevent it from carrying out future missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. During the past year, the armed forces of Ukraine demonstrated they are able to do this in the Black Sea—and almost without naval support, relying mainly on sea drones produced in Ukraine. As a result of Ukrainian pressure, the Russian navy has moved away from Crimea, closer to Russian naval bases. This has significantly decreased Russian missile capabilities. The farther the Russian flagships are from Ukrainian shores, the less they can shoot and the less precise their attacks are. This also unblocked the passageway for Ukraine to resume agricultural exports, which bring money to the state budget. Ukraine has also destroyed some Russian planes, including the Ilyushin Il-20PP, which Russia claimed to be capable of jamming modern AWACS aircraft and Patriots air defense systems while blocking analogous jamming measures. Nonetheless, the Russian army has also demonstrated that quantity still can override quality. Even without good reconnaissance, an abundance of drones can be used effectively. That’s not an approach that Ukraine can afford, but Ukrainians can benefit from their growing knowledge of how to deal with weapons and plan military tactics. THE SPARTAN FUTURE Although Ukraine may have to militarize the economy to survive, that doesn’t mean that it will have to militarize society, as well. There is nothing more normal than aspiring to a world without wars, and after Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, that is what the country mostly did. Its leaders assumed that fewer soldiers were needed and that less could be spent on defense. Then, in 2022, Ukrainians learned the hard way that you can be dragged into a fight without asking for one. Today, no one is arguing that the country’s defenses shouldn’t be further strengthened. While I was embedded in an elite paratrooper squadron near the Russian border, I asked the squadron members how they see their futures after the war and how the military sees the future of the country. All were in agreement: they missed their wives and kids and dreamed of laying down their arms. “Most of the people here would love to get rid of the guns as long as we’re home, we definitely won’t miss them,” said one. Yet they quickly added that this would be possible only when they knew their families were safe and wouldn’t be attacked again. In the case of Maksym, the soldier I talked to, he said his whole village was waiting for him to come back home, as soon as the Russians leave Ukrainian soil. “We do not need any piece of Russian land, because then instead of being liberators, we would become occupiers,” he said. “If that happened, what would it all be for?” Even if a cease-fire agreement is someday reached and the war ends, Ukrainians know that they will always have Russia and Belarus on their borders. That means a permanent threat, and the country will have an ongoing demand for weapons to defend itself. Most European states developed their military infrastructure during the Cold War, when defense spending was high. Ukraine, a very big country, must do so amid a hot war on its own soil, when it has few resources and desperate needs. Under such circumstances, reshaping the social and economic system—and preserving the country’s democratic institutions—cannot depend on one leader or even the armed forces; it requires the involvement of the entire country. And there are no definite right answers. NATALIYA GUMENYUK, a Ukrainian journalist, is CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab and Co-Founder of the Reckoning Project. MORE BY NATALIYA GUMENYUK More: Ukraine Russian Federation Geopolitics Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky Most-Read Articles The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko Are Human Rights Universal? Thomas M. Franck Brave New Ukraine How the World’s Most Besieged Democracy Is Adjusting to Permanent War Nataliya Gumenyuk Recommended Articles Russian and Ukrainian negotiators meeting via videoconference in March 2022 The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin The Coming Arab Backlash Middle Eastern Regimes—and America—Ignore Public Anger at Their Peril By Marc Lynch April 22, 2024 A protest in support of Palestinians near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, March 2024 Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the Middle East has been rocked by mass protests. Egyptians have demonstrated in solidarity with Palestinians at great personal risk, and Iraqis, Moroccans, Tunisians, and Yemenis have taken to the streets in vast numbers. Meanwhile, Jordanians have broken long-standing redlines by marching on the Israeli embassy, and Saudi Arabia has refused to resume normalization talks with Israel, in part because of its people’s deep fury over Israel’s operations in the Gaza Strip. For Washington, the view is that none of this mobilization really matters. Arab leaders, after all, are among the world’s most experienced practitioners of realpolitik, and they have a record of ignoring their people’s preferences. The protests, although large, have been manageable. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other leaders have long encouraged protests about the treatment of Palestinians, which allow their people to blow off steam and direct their anger toward a foreign enemy instead of against domestic corruption and incompetence. In time, or so the argument goes, the fighting in Gaza will end, the angry protesters will go home, and their leaders will carry on pursuing self-interests, an activity at which they excel. U.S. foreign policymakers also have a long history of disregarding public opinion in the Middle East—the so-called Arab street. After all, if autocratic Arab leaders are calling the shots, then it is not necessary to put stock in what angry activists shout or in what ordinary citizens tell pollsters or the media. Since there are no democracies in the Middle East, care need not be given to what anyone outside the palaces thinks. And for all its talk of democracy and human rights, Washington has always been more comfortable dealing with pragmatic autocrats than with publics it regards as irrational, extremist mobs. It rarely pauses to consider how this might contribute to its dismal record of policy failures. The United States’ willingness to dismiss popular concerns is strengthened by the memory of 2003, when Arab public opinion was wildly against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but most of the region’s leaders cooperated with the invasion and none took steps to oppose it. Despite decades of frequent mass protests against Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan and Egypt have maintained peace treaties with Israel, and Egypt has even actively participated in the siege of Gaza. Indeed, U.S. complacency has actually increased as anticipated eruptions of popular anger—for example, over moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or bombing Yemen—failed to materialize. Washington’s conviction was briefly shaken by the Arab uprisings of 2011, but it returned in full force as autocracies reasserted control in the following years. That seems to be what the United States and most policy analysts expect this time around, too. When the bombing is finally over, the crowds will return to their homes and find other things to be mad about, and regional politics can go back to normal. But these assumptions reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how public opinion matters in the Middle East, as well as a deep misreading of what has truly changed since the 2011 uprisings. NO IDLE CHATTER The term “Arab street” is used by policymakers to reduce regional public opinion to the rantings of an irrational, hostile, and emotional mob that might be appeased or repressed but is without coherent policy preferences or ideas. The expression has deep roots in British and French colonial rule and was adopted by the United States as it entered the Cold War and came to believe that education and capitalism are capable of transforming the Middle East into the image of the West. These ideas underpinned Washington’s policy of cooperating with Arab dictators who could control their people. That suited Arab leaders, who could deflect Western pressure on issues such as Israel or democratization by pointing to the threat of popular uprisings and Islamic boogeymen waiting in the wings to take their place. Before 2011, the high point of the Arab street concept occurred during the so-called Arab cold war of the 1950s, when populist pan-Arab leaders enjoyed great success in mobilizing the masses against conservative Western allies in the name of Arab unity and support for Palestinians. The sight of thousands of angry protesters responding to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s radio addresses by rampaging through the streets in countries including Jordan impressed itself on Western policymakers. Washington, in particular, concluded that the Arab street was dangerous, creating openings for the Soviets. These peoples, then, were not to be reasoned with but to be controlled by force. Long after the Cold War ended, this perception has endured, although it rests on a basic misunderstanding of Arab politics and continues to drive U.S. Middle East policy, as well as many policy analyses of the region. It has always been easier to dismiss Arab support for the Palestinian territories as rooted in atavistic anti-Semitism—or to wave away public fury at U.S. policies as cynically drummed up by politicians—than to take seriously the reasons for Arabs’ anger and to find ways to address their concerns. This idea of the Arab street changed somewhat in the 1990s and the subsequent decade. Satellite television, especially Al Jazeera, crystallized in these decades and shaped a pan-Arab public opinion. The rise of systematic, scientific public opinion polling in the 1990s provided considerable nuance about national variances, attitudes changing in response to events, and sophisticated assessments of political conditions. The emergence of social media allowed a wide variety of Arab voices to break the media’s control and shatter stereotypes through their unmediated analysis and interactive engagement. After 9/11, Washington put great effort into a war of ideas, designed to combat extremist and Islamist ideas across the region, an approach that, however misguided, did require significant investment in survey research and careful attention to Arab media and emerging social media. But then the uprisings in 2011 shattered general complacency about the stability of the region’s autocrats, showing that the people’s voices needed to be heard and taken into account. THE AUTOCRATS SHAKE BUT SURVIVE The memory of the 2011 uprisings still hangs over every calculation of regime stability in today’s Middle East. The results of those revolutionary events carried mixed lessons. The rapid spread of regime-threatening protests from Tunisia across virtually the entire region showed that the supposed stability of Arab autocracies was mostly a myth. For a brief moment, it stopped making sense for Washington to ignore the subtleties of Arab public opinion or to defer to the assurances of jaded Arab rulers. The uprisings were manifestly not simply the eruption of a mindless Arab street. Rather, the young revolutionaries who captured the spirit of the era articulated thoughtful, incisive critiques of the autocrats they challenged, and even the Islamists in their midst spoke the language of freedom and democracy. Western governments initially raced to engage with these impressive young leaders and tried to support their efforts to bring about democratic transitions and more open political systems. But such lessons were quickly forgotten as Arab regimes regained control through military coups, political engineering, and wide-ranging repression. Autocrats throughout the region helped other autocrats restore their power, and the West simply stood by. The United States, for example, did not act as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states supported Bahrain’s vicious repression of its protests in 2011 and poured financial and political support into the 2013 Egyptian military coup. The autocratic restoration that followed brought a level of repression that went far beyond that which had existed before 2011, with regimes across the region crushing and silencing civil society, fearing any resurgence of opposition. Digital surveillance aided these repressive measures, giving regimes unprecedentedly nuanced understandings of their citizens’ views and the potential for opposition movements to appear. The autocratic restoration quickly resulted in the return of an older model of Western foreign policy based on cooperating with autocratic elites and ignoring the views of Arab publics. Nowhere could this be seen more clearly than in U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From 1991 until recently, Washington had shepherded a peace process in part because U.S. leaders believed that delivering a just solution for Palestinians was essential to legitimize U.S. primacy. President Donald Trump’s administration, however, simply ignored Palestinian and Arab public opinion as it brokered the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The accords also included Sudan, as well as Morocco, after Washington agreed to recognize its sovereignty over Western Sahara. Autocrats in the region helped other autocrats restore power, and the West stood by. U.S. President Joe Biden, despite promising campaign rhetoric, instead wholeheartedly embraced Trump’s approach to the Middle East, pushing for Arab-Israeli normalization and ignoring democracy and human rights. After his inauguration in 2021, Biden abandoned his promises to put human rights first and make Saudi Arabia a pariah for its murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and its war on Yemen. Instead, he scrambled with unseemly desperation to finish Trump’s policies of normalizing relations with Israel without resolving the Palestinian issue and fending off Chinese gains in the region by securing an agreement with Saudi Arabia. It is not an accident that the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7 coincided with the Biden administration’s full-court press for a Saudi normalization deal in the midst of unprecedented provocations by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There were many signs of Arab discontent with normalization and countless warnings of an imminent explosion in Gaza, but Washington ignored them as just another instance of misguided deference to an Arab street that it believed its autocratic allies could control. It was wrong. That is because public opinion matters in the Middle East. Politics matter, even under autocracies, and in the Middle East, political forces move seamlessly between the domestic and the regional. Successful leaders must learn to master both dimensions of the game. Part of ensuring their survival is knowing how to respond to protests, and the response depends on the issue at hand. Western diplomats listen to Arab rulers who would not sacrifice even minor interests for the greater good if they could get away with it. Of course, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would do a deal with Israel if he thought it would serve his government’s interests and he could absorb public anger without too much risk. But that is a big if. Prince Mohammed and other Arab leaders care about what might get them overthrown. For the most part, they care about one thing more than anything else: staying in power. That means not only preventing obviously regime-threatening mass protests but also being attentive to potential sources of discontent and responding as necessary to head them off. With almost every Arab country outside the Gulf suffering extreme economic problems, and accordingly exercising maximum repression, regimes have to be even more careful in responding to issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arab leaders are, meanwhile, also focused on the regional political game and fiercely compete to position themselves as the most effective defenders of their shared identities and interests. That is why they often dress up even the most nakedly cynical and self-interested moves as serving the interests of Palestinians or defending Arab honor. The recent actions of the United Arab Emirates, such as when it tried to justify the Abraham Accords by claiming to have prevented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned annexation of the West Bank, are a case in point. Arab leaders care about what gives them an advantage or threatens them in the intensely competitive game of regional politics—whether that is against other Arab contenders for influence or against other powers, including Turkey and Iran. The regional dimension of competition has become even more intense over the last decade, as the Arab uprisings highlighted how political developments throughout the region may risk the survival of any domestic regime. Most notably, Qatar competed hard with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over political transitions and civil wars in Syria, Tunisia, and elsewhere, seeking to shape public opinion but also responding to it. THE BUILDING BACKLASH Today, it is glaringly obvious that it was wrong for the United States to assume that it could ignore Arab public opinion about the treatment of Palestinians. Arabs have not, in fact, lost interest in the issue. And Arab regimes have not, in fact, established a death grip on public mobilization. Almost every regime now finds its publics extraordinarily mobilized by what they consider to be Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza and a new program of displacement and occupation. The resulting level of mobilization and public outrage exceeds the 2003 fury over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and it is clearly influencing the behavior of the region’s regimes. Indeed, the degree and power of popular mobilization can be seen not only in the media and the crowds in the streets but also in the uncharacteristic criticism of Israel and the United States being voiced by regimes that need to get this right in order to survive. Even Egypt, a close U.S. partner, has threatened to freeze the Camp David Accords if Israel invades Rafah or expels Gazans into the Sinai. The Arab media, which had been badly fragmented and politically polarized during the previous decade’s intraregional political wars, has largely reunited in defense of Gaza. Al Jazeera is back, reliving its glory days through round-the-clock coverage of the horrors there, even as its journalists have been killed in action by Israeli forces. Social media is back, too—not the corpse of Twitter or the woefully censored Facebook and Instagram, so much as newer apps such as TikTok, WhatsApp, and Telegram. The images and videos emerging from Gaza overwhelm the spin offered by Israel and the United States and easily bypass soft-pedaled coverage by Western news outlets. People see the devastation. Every day they confront scenes of unbelievable tragedy. And they know victims directly. They do not need the media to understand WhatsApp messages from terrified Gazans or to view the horrifying videos widely circulating on Telegram. Arab activists and intellectuals have been developing powerful arguments about the nature of Israel’s domination of the Palestinian territories and these are entering the Western discourse in new ways. The case South Africa brought to the International Court of Justice, alleging an Israeli genocide in Gaza, introduced many of those arguments into circulation across the global South and within international organizations. It did so by referencing not only the statements of Israeli leaders but also conceptual frameworks about occupation and settler colonialism developed by Arab and Palestinian intellectuals. The war of ideas that the United States sought to wage in the Muslim world after 9/11, claiming to bring freedom and democracy to a backward region, has reversed course, with the United States on the defensive because of its hypocrisy in demanding condemnation of Russia’s war on Ukraine while supporting Israel’s war on Gaza. A REGION ADRIFT This is all happening in an era characterized, even before the Israel-Hamas war, by the declining primacy of the United States and the rising autonomy of regional powers. Leading Arab states have increasingly sought to demonstrate their independence from the United States, building strategic relations with China and Russia and pursuing their own agendas in regional affairs. The willingness of Arab regimes to defy U.S. preferences was a hallmark of the previous decade, as Gulf states ignored American policies toward democratic transition in Egypt, flooded weapons into Syria despite Washington’s caution, and lobbied against the nuclear agreement with Iran. This willingness to flout the United States’ wishes has become even more apparent following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The past two years have seen most Middle Eastern regimes refusing to vote with Washington against Russia, and Saudi Arabia declining to follow the United States’ lead on oil pricing. Washington’s unblinkered support for Israel in its devastation of Gaza, however, has brought long-standing hostility toward U.S. policy to a head, and triggered a crisis of legitimacy that threatens the entire edifice of historic U.S. primacy in the region. It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Arabs blame the United States for this war. They can see that only U.S. weapons sales and United Nations vetoes allow Israel to continue its war. They are aware that the United States defends Israel for actions that are the same as those the United States condemned Russia and Syria for. The extent of this popular anger can be seen in the disengagement of a large number of young workers in nongovernmental organizations and activists from U.S.-backed projects and networks built up over decades of public diplomacy, a development cited by Annelle Sheline in her principled resignation from her post as a foreign affairs officer at the State Department in March. The White House is still acting as if none of this really matters. Arab regimes will survive, anger will fade or be redirected to other issues, and, in a few months, Washington can get back to the important business of Israeli-Saudi normalization. That is how things have traditionally worked. But this time may well be different. The Gaza fiasco, at a moment of shifting global power and changing calculations by regional leaders, shows how little Washington has learned from its long record of policy failures. The nature and degree of popular anger, the decline of U.S. primacy and the collapse of its legitimacy, and Arab regimes’ prioritization of their domestic survival, as well as regional competition, suggests that the new regional order will be much more attentive to public opinion than the old. If Washington continues to ignore public opinion, it will doom its planning for after the war ends in Gaza. MARC LYNCH is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. MORE BY MARC LYNCH More: Israel Palestinian Territories Foreign Policy Politics & Society Public Opinion Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration U.S.-Israeli Relations Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel-Hamas War Most-Read Articles The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko Are Human Rights Universal? Thomas M. 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But on February 26, French President Emmanuel Macron said the deployment of European forces to Ukraine could not be “ruled out.” Since then, other European officials have joined the chorus; the Finnish defense minister and Polish foreign minister have both suggested that their countries’ forces could end up in Ukraine. These comments, combined with existing support for such measures in the Baltic states, show that there is a growing bloc of countries open to direct European intervention in the war. These explosive comments are driven by shifting conflict dynamics. The debate in the U.S. Congress over sending military aid to Ukraine has been a debacle. A new aid package is finally on track for approval, but the months of dithering in Washington have dismayed Europeans and given Moscow hope that Western resolve to support Kyiv is cracking. Russian forces—bolstered by equipment from China, Iran, and North Korea—have taken advantage of the gap in U.S. military support for Ukraine by stepping up their attacks on civilians and nonmilitary infrastructure. In early April, knowing that Ukraine was running short of antiaircraft ammunition, Russia launched a missile attack that destroyed the largest power plant in the Kyiv region. Earlier, in March, Russian forces targeted a hydroelectric dam in Dnipro and other electrical facilities around Kherson, undermining Ukrainian industry and making the country’s economy more dependent on the European electrical grid. Further damage to critical infrastructure, nuclear power plants, and agricultural land will dramatically raise the costs of reconstruction, for which Ukraine’s partners in the West will likely have to foot much of the bill. As Russian forces speed up their advance, the possibility that they could break through Ukrainian defenses along the eastern front and challenge Ukrainian control of Kharkiv or even Kyiv presents Europe with a security threat it cannot ignore. A Russian victory in Ukraine would vindicate President Vladimir Putin’s revisionist ambitions and belief in the inherent weakness of the West. It would enable the Kremlin to keep Russia on a war footing—an all-of-society approach to conquest that European countries would be unable to match. There is no reason to expect Putin to stop with Ukraine. He has called the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the twentieth century, lamenting that “tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory.” The Baltic states are in danger, as is Poland: last year, the former Russian prime minister and Putin loyalist Dmitri Medvedev described the Baltics as “our” (meaning Russian) provinces​ and Poland as “temporarily occupied” (meaning by NATO). By threatening to send troops, European countries are trying to disrupt this worrying trajectory. To truly change the outcome in Ukraine, however, European countries must do more than simply talk about deployments. If the United States continues to delay aid, and especially if it elects Donald Trump (who has pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, presumably by allowing Putin to keep his ill-gotten gains) as president in November, Europe will be Ukraine’s only defender. European leaders cannot afford to let American political dysfunction dictate European security. They must seriously contemplate deploying troops to Ukraine to provide logistical support and training, to protect Ukraine’s borders and critical infrastructure, or even to defend Ukrainian cities. They must make it clear to Russia that Europe is willing to protect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. Accepting the dire reality of the situation in Ukraine and addressing it now is better than leaving a door open for Russia to accelerate its imperial advance. CHANGE THE CONVERSATION The idea of European troops deploying to Ukraine has elicited predictable objections. The Kremlin was outraged by Macron and others’ recent statements warning of war—possibly a nuclear one—with all of Europe. Washington and Berlin also responded angrily. Both Germany and the United States have strictly limited the aid they gave Ukraine throughout the war, agonizing that Russia might make good on its threats of escalation, and they sharply criticized the more hawkish European states for what they see as unnecessary provocation. Such opposition does not lessen the benefits that European forces would provide in Ukraine, and the fact that Berlin, Moscow, and Washington all reacted so strongly shows why it is so important to have this discussion. European leaders have demonstrated that it is possible to break out of a one-sided escalation debate that, until how, has worked to Russia’s advantage. In the previous pattern, Moscow has threatened escalation, and Berlin and Washington have responded with words and actions aimed at de-escalation—a dynamic that deters both Germany and the United States from sending the more advanced missile systems that Ukraine desperately needs. Now, Europe is making the threats, and Russia is looking deeply uncomfortable. Too many politicians and pundits in the United States and Europe echo Putin’s own talking points by warning that any kind of external intervention in Ukraine would lead to World War III. In reality, sending European troops would be a normal response to a conflict of this kind. Russia’s invasion disrupted the regional balance of power, and Europe has a vital interest in seeing the imbalance corrected. The obvious way to do this is to provide a lifeline to a Ukrainian military that could once again be left high and dry by the United States, and the best lifeline would be European soldiers. Unless the politics in the United States change, Ukraine will need alternate sources of assistance to keep its fight going—and Europe is the natural backer. SEND IN THE TROOPS European forces could undertake either noncombat or combat operations to relieve some of the pressure on Ukraine. A strictly noncombat mission would be easiest to sell in most European capitals. European forces could relieve the Ukrainians performing logistics functions, such as maintaining and repairing combat vehicles. By staying west of the Dnieper River—a natural barrier protecting much of Ukraine from Russian advances—European forces would demonstrate that they are not there to kill Russian soldiers, preempting the inevitable Russian accusation of European aggression. Some Ukrainian vehicles are already being sent to Germany, Poland, and Romania for substantial repairs, but conducting this task closer to the front would speed up the process, reduce the time equipment is out of combat, and free up more Ukrainian forces for combat duties. French, Polish, and other European military advisers could also provide lethal and nonlethal training within Ukraine to further professionalize the country’s military. If additional mobilization expands the Ukrainian military in the coming year—which seems likely—increased capacity to train new recruits inside Ukraine will be particularly useful. Of course, European forces could do more than repair and train. The most limited form of European combat missions could still remain west of the Dnieper River and be defensive in nature. One such mission could involve strengthening Ukraine’s air defense capabilities in this region by deploying personnel, providing equipment, or even taking over command and control of the Ukrainian air defense system. The risks of escalation would be minimal, as European forces would have little chance of killing the Russian military pilots who launch munitions into Ukraine from Belarusian and Russian airspace. But they would help shoot down cruise missiles and drones. In doing so, European-led air defense batteries would free up more Ukrainian troops to protect forces near the frontlines while also frustrating Russian attempts to destroy critical infrastructure and terrify the Ukrainian population into surrender. European forces could perform other defensive and humanitarian tasks, too, such as demining and defusing unexploded Russian ordinance. Taking over such work from Ukrainian personnel would help protect civilians and support Ukraine’s economic recovery, as farmers are now struggling to plant and harvest crops in fields full of mines and other unexploded munitions. Sending European troops would be a normal response to a conflict of this kind. Another combat role—which, like an air defense mission, would likely not engage Russian forces—would involve patrolling parts of the Ukrainian border where Russian troops are not deployed, such as the Black Sea coast and the borders with Belarus and Transnistria (a breakaway region in Moldova occupied by Russian forces). Guarding these flanks would free up more than 20,000 Ukrainian troops (and the weapons and ammunition they carry) to fight on the frontlines. It would also reduce the likelihood of a new front opening along these borders, as Russia would almost certainly seek to avoid broadening the war by attacking other European militaries. European forces could also help secure Ukraine’s three remaining Black Sea ports, which are vital to both the Ukrainian economy and global food security, relieving additional Ukrainian soldiers. Any kind of European operation in Ukraine would carry emotional weight as well. The presence of European troops would raise the morale of the Ukrainian people and reassure them that their country’s future is in Europe. Finally, Europe needs to consider a direct combat mission that helps protect Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper. In addition to reducing the burden of the Ukrainian military in these regions, the presence of European troops would make it unlikely that Russian forces would advance across the river, protecting much of Ukraine from conquest. One potential Russian target is Odessa, Ukraine’s main port where most of the country’s exports are shipped. If Russian troops were to approach the city, European forces in the vicinity would have the right to defend themselves by firing on the advancing soldiers. They could help thwart a Russian offensive that, given Odessa’s strategic position, could strangle the Ukrainian economy and position Russian forces for a potential invasion of Moldova. Moscow would try to spin any lethal response to a Russian attack as European aggression, but Russia would be responsible for any escalation. PUTIN ON THE BACK FOOT The risk that deploying European soldiers to Ukraine in any capacity will escalate the conflict is overblown. Russia has precious little room to scale up its conventional attacks, short of deploying biological or chemical weapons. It has already lost more than 90 percent of its prewar army, with hundreds of thousands of casualties, tens of thousands of combat vehicles destroyed, and the vast majority of its most advanced weapons systems expended in attacks on Ukraine. Sanctions have made Russian weapons production more difficult and costly, and the deployment of troops to Ukraine has left Russia with barely enough forces to guard the rest of its long border, let alone mount a significant operation against other European states. In January 2022, the Russian army was widely considered second only to the U.S. Army; today, it may not even be the most powerful army in Ukraine. But if European leaders were to let Russia win in Ukraine, Putin’s takeaway would be that making nuclear threats could allow him to conquer more countries without provoking a European military response. The real question is whether Russia would actually use nuclear weapons if European forces enter Ukraine. Arguably, this is already a moot point, given that special operations forces from Western countries are currently operating inside Ukraine. Moscow regularly employs aggressive rhetoric toward NATO members, but so far it has been all bark and no bite, avoiding contact with NATO forces and focusing instead on neighboring countries outside the alliance, such as Georgia and Ukraine, that it can safely kick around. Putin threatened to attack Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states back in 2014, and over the next several years he threatened to invade Finland and Sweden for joining NATO, Norway for hosting additional U.S. troops, Poland and Romania for housing ballistic missile defense facilities, and “any European countries” that allowed U.S. missiles to be deployed on their soil. In the past decade and a half, the Kremlin has threatened or run war games that simulate the use of nuclear weapons against Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the Baltic states, the European Union as a whole, and, of course, NATO and the United States. At some point, European leaders must ignore Putin’s saber-rattling, which is merely propaganda premised on the baseless notion that NATO wants to attack or invade Russia. The arrival of European forces in Ukraine would change Putin’s calculations. Ultimately, Russia cannot afford to fight multiple European countries at once, much less start a nuclear war. Tellingly, the countries that are most likely to be targeted in a nuclear attack—those that border Russia, particularly Poland and the Baltic states—are the least concerned about that prospect but rightly fear the aggression of a reconstituted conventional Russian military, buoyed by success in Ukraine. Europe is far richer, is more technologically advanced, and has a much larger population than Russia. Moscow knows it cannot win by provoking the whole continent, and it seeks to avoid the U.S. military intervention that would very likely follow if Russian forces were to invade a NATO country and trigger Article 5 of the alliance’s charter. Instead, Russia is basing its hopes for victory almost entirely on Europe treating Ukraine as separate from the rest of the continent. So far, its hopes have come to pass. European leaders have tolerated attacks on Ukraine that would have triggered a united European response had they happened in any NATO or EU member state. This attitude has allowed Russia to escalate its war in Ukraine, safe in the knowledge that the rest of Europe will keep its distance. The arrival of European forces in Ukraine would change that calculation. Moscow would have to face the possibility that European escalation could make the war unwinnable for Russia. Moreover, a European-led response would subvert Russian propaganda that NATO countries’ intervention in Ukraine is merely an American ploy to undermine Russia. The narrative that NATO is the aggressor in this war is popular in many parts of the world, and countering it could help Europe further isolate Moscow both diplomatically and economically. And because European forces would be acting outside the NATO framework and NATO territory, any casualties would not trigger an Article 5 response and draw in the United States. Russia’s opponent would not be NATO but a coalition of European countries seeking to balance against naked Russian imperialism. Ukraine is doing the best it can, but it needs help—help that European countries are able and increasingly willing to provide. Rather than force Russian escalation, a European troop presence would be more likely to prevent the conflict from spreading and prevent further damage to Ukraine’s economy and infrastructure. European leaders do not need to follow the dictates of an increasingly unreliable United States about how the battle in Ukraine should be waged; they can and should decide for themselves how best to ensure the continent’s freedom and security. Europe must do what it takes to safeguard its own future, and that starts with making sure Ukraine wins this war. CORRECTION APPENDED (APRIL 22, 2024) An earlier version of this article incorrectly claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had declared that all former Soviet republics should be returned to Russia. ALEX CROWTHER is a Senior Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a retired U.S. Army Colonel. JAHARA MATISEK is a Military Professor at the U.S. Naval War College, Research Fellow at the European Resilience Initiative Center, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force. The views expressed here are his own. PHILLIPS P. O’BRIEN is Head of the School of International Relations and Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews. MORE BY ALEX CROWTHER MORE BY JAHARA MATISEK MORE BY PHILLIPS P. O’BRIEN More: Ukraine Russian Federation Europe Geopolitics Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine Most-Read Articles The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko Are Human Rights Universal? Thomas M. 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Over 44 days, more than 500 million people—or 65 percent of the country’s nearly one billion eligible voters—are expected to participate. The exercise will be spectacular, with ballots printed in over a dozen languages and distributed from islands to remote mountain communities. But the result is not really in doubt. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party are expected to return to power for a third term. The BJP’s margin is likely to be sizable. Modi’s approval ratings are high, and the party leads Ethiopia Back on the Brink How Abiy’s Reckless Ambition—and Emirati Meddling—Are Fueling Chaos in the Horn By Alex de Waal and Mulugeta Gebrehiwot Berhe April 8, 2024 A Tigrayan family uprooted by the recent civil war, eastern Tigray, Ethiopia, June 2023 Arguably the worst armed conflict of the twenty-first century so far is not the one unfolding in Gaza or in Ukraine, but rather the catastrophic civil war in Ethiopia that ended 18 months ago. Also known as the Tigray war, the Ethiopian conflict took the lives of more than 500,000 soldiers and as many as 360,000 civilians, making it one of the deadliest conflicts since the end of the Cold War. Its combatants also perpetrated widespread atrocities and sexual violence, destroyed large swaths of the Tigray region in the north, and did enormous damage to an economy that, for the previous three decades, The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next By Stephen Kotkin May/June 2024 Published on April 18, 2024 Yiran Jia Vladimir Putin happened to turn 71 last October 7, the day Hamas assaulted Israel. The Russian president took the rampage as a birthday present; it shifted the context around his aggression in Ukraine. Perhaps to show his appreciation, he had his Foreign Ministry invite high-ranking Hamas representatives to Moscow in late October, highlighting an alignment of interests. Several weeks later, Putin announced his intention to stand for a fifth term in a choiceless election in March 2024 and later held his annual press conference, offering a phalanx of pliant journalists the privilege of hearing him smugly crow about Western fatigue over the war in Ukraine. “Almost along the entire frontline, our armed forces, let’s put it modestly, are improving their position,” Putin boasted in the live broadcast. On February 16, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service announced the sudden death of the opposition activist Alexei Navalny, aged 47, in a penal colony above the Arctic Circle, from which he had continued to reach his millions of followers with instructions on how to protest Putin’s plebiscite. A month later, the most one could say was that the Kremlin had at least waited until after the voting was staged to announce Putin’s victory. Putin styles himself as a new tsar. But a real tsar would not have to worry about a looming succession crisis and what it might do to his grip on power in the present. Putin does; that is partly why he must simulate elections. He is now set in his office until 2030, when he will be in his 78th year. Male life expectancy in Russia does not even reach 67 years; those who live to 60 can expect to survive to around 80. Russia’s confirmed centenarians are few. Putin might one day join their ranks. But even Stalin died. Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, turned out to be that rare would-be tsar who named a successor and smoothed his path to power. In 1999, Yeltsin, facing chronic health challenges and fearing that he and his “family” of corrupt cronies might face prison after he stepped down, chose Putin to preserve his liberty and legacy. “Take care of Russia,” Yeltsin offered as a parting instruction. In 2007, aged 76, he died a free man. But the protector has refrained from emulating his patron’s example. In 2008, Putin briefly stepped aside from the presidency, in recognition of the same two-consecutive-term limit that Yeltsin faced. Putin appointed a political nonentity in his place, shifted himself to the position of prime minister, and came right back for a third presidential term in 2012 and then a fourth. Finally, he induced his counterfeit legislature to alter the constitution to effectively remove any term limits. Stalin, too, had stubbornly clung to power, even as his infirmities worsened. He refused to countenance the emergence of a successor; eventually, he suffered a massive, final stroke and fell into a puddle of his own urine. Putin is not Stalin. The Georgian despot built a superpower while dispatching tens of millions to their deaths in famines, forced labor camps, execution cellars, and a mismanaged defensive war. Putin, by contrast, has jerry-rigged a rogue power while sending hundreds of thousands to their deaths in a war of choice. The juxtaposition is nevertheless instructive. Stalin’s system proved unable to survive without him, despite having an institutionalized ruling party. And yet, amid the breakdown that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union but lasted well beyond 1991, Putin consolidated a new autocracy. This fusion of fragility and path dependence derives from many factors that are not easily rewired: geography, a national-imperial identity, an ingrained strategic culture. (The nineteenth-century Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin remarked of his country that everything changes dramatically every five to ten years but nothing changes in 200 years.) Still, whenever and however Putin might go, his personalistic autocracy and, more broadly, Russia already face questions about the future. Putin’s regime styles itself an icebreaker, smashing to bits the U.S.-led international order on behalf of humanity. Washington and its allies and partners have allowed themselves to be surprised by him time and again—in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and central Africa. This has provoked fears about the next nasty surprise. But what about the long term? How, in the light of inescapable leadership mortality and larger structural factors, might Russia evolve, or not, over the next decade and possibly beyond? Readers seeking odds on Russia’s trajectory should consult the betting markets. What Western officials and other decision-makers need to do, instead, is to consider a set of scenarios: to extrapolate from current trends in a way that can facilitate contingency planning. Scenarios are about attempting to not be surprised. Needless to note, the world constantly surprises, and something impossible to foresee could occur: the proverbial black swan. Humility is in order. Still, five possible futures for Russia are currently imaginable, and the United States and its allies should bear them in mind. Over the course of multiple presidential administrations, Washington has learned the hard way that it lacks the levers to transform places such as Russia and, for that matter, China: countries that originated as empires on the Eurasian landmass and celebrate themselves as ancient civilizations that long predate the founding of the United States, let alone the formation of the West. They are not characters out of the playwright George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, ripe for conversion from street urchins to refined ladies: that is, from authoritarian, imperialist regimes to responsible stakeholders in the U.S.-dominated international system. Efforts to remake their “personalities” invariably result in mutual recriminations and disillusionment. Leaders such as Putin and China’s Xi Jinping did not capriciously reverse a hopeful process; in no small measure, they resulted from it. So Washington and its partners must not exaggerate their ability to shape Russia’s trajectory. Instead, they should prepare for whatever unfolds. RUSSIA AS FRANCE France is a country with deep-seated bureaucratic and monarchical traditions—and also a fraught revolutionary tradition. Revolutionaries abolished the monarchy only to see it return in the guise of both a king and an emperor and then disappear again, as republics came and went. France built and lost a vast empire of colonial possessions. For centuries, France’s rulers, none more than Napoleon, threatened the country’s neighbors. Today, these traditions live on in many ways. As the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville shrewdly observed in his 1856 work The Old Regime and the Revolution, the revolutionaries’ efforts to break definitively with the past ended up unwittingly reinforcing statist structures. Despite the consolidation of a republican system, France’s monarchical inheritance endures symbolically in palaces in Versailles and elsewhere, in ubiquitous statues of Bourbon dynasty rulers, and in an inordinately centralized form of rule with immense power and wealth concentrated in Paris. Even shorn of its formal empire, France remains a fiercely proud country, one that many of its citizens and admirers view as a civilization with a lingering sense of a special mission in the world and in Europe, as well as a language spoken far beyond its borders (60 percent of daily French speakers are citizens of elsewhere). But crucially, today’s France enjoys the rule of law and no longer threatens its neighbors. Russia, too, possesses a statist and monarchical tradition that will endure regardless of the nature of any future political system and a fraught revolutionary tradition that has also ceased to be an ongoing venture yet lives on in institutions and memories as a source of inspiration and warning. To be sure, the autocratic Romanovs were even less constrained than the absolutist Bourbons. Russia’s revolution was considerably more brutal and destructive than even the French one. Russia’s lost empire was contiguous, not overseas, and lasted far longer—indeed, for most of the existence of the modern Russian state. In Russia, Moscow’s domination of the rest of the country exceeds even that of Paris in France. Russia’s geographical expanse dwarfs France’s, enmeshing the country in Europe but also the Caucasus, Central Asia, and East Asia. Very few countries have much in common with Russia. But France has more than perhaps any other. A man wearing a shirt depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Saint Petersburg, May 2022 Anton Vaganov / Reuters Contemporary France is a great country, although not without its detractors. Some decry what they deem its excessive statism, the high taxes necessary to underwrite uneven services, as well as a broad socialistic ethos. Others find fault with what they perceive as France’s great-power pretensions and cultural chauvinism. Still others lament France’s difficulty in assimilating immigrants. But it is possible to be disappointed in these or other aspects of the country and still recognize that it provides the closest thing to a realistic model for a prosperous, peaceful Russia. If Russia were to become like France—a democracy with a rule-of-law system that luxuriated in its absolutist and revolutionary past but no longer threatened its neighbors—that would constitute a high-order achievement. France tramped a tortuous path to become what it is today. Recall Robespierre’s revolutionary terror, Napoleon’s catastrophic expansionism, Napoleon III’s self-coup (from elected president to emperor), the seizure of power by the Paris Commune, the country’s rapid defeat in World War II, the Vichy collaborationist regime that followed, the colonial Algerian war, and the extraconstitutional acts of President Charles de Gaulle after he came out of retirement in 1958. One might be seduced by the notion that Russia needs its own de Gaulle to help consolidate a liberal order from above, even though no such deus ex machina looms on Russia’s immediate horizon. But only hagiographers believe that one man created today’s France. Notwithstanding the country’s moments of instability, over generations, France developed the impartial, professional institutions—a judiciary, a civil service, a free and open public sphere—of a democratic, republican nation. The problem was not mainly that Yeltsin was no de Gaulle. The problem was that Russia was much further from a stable, Western-style constitutional order in 1991 than France had been three decades earlier. RUSSIA RETRENCHED Some Russians might welcome a transformation into a country that resembles France, but others would find that outcome anathema. What the world now sees as Putinism first surfaced in the Russian-language periodicals and volunteer societies of the 1970s: an authoritarian, resentful, mystical nationalism grounded in anti-Westernism, espousing nominally traditional values, and borrowing incoherently from Slavophilism, Eurasianism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. One could imagine an authoritarian nationalist leader who embraces those views and who, like Putin, is unshakable in the belief that the United States is hell-bent on Russia’s destruction but who is also profoundly troubled by Russia’s cloudy long-term future—and willing to blame Putin for it. That is, someone who appeals to Putin’s base but makes the case that the war against Ukraine is damaging Russia. Demography is a special sore point for Russia’s blood-and-soil nationalists, not to mention the military brass and many ordinary people. Since 1992, despite considerable immigration, Russia’s population has shrunk. Its working-age population peaked in 2006 at around 90 million and stands at less than 80 million today, a calamitous trend. Spending on the war in Ukraine has boosted Russia’s defense industrial base, but the limits of the country’s diminished labor force are becoming ever more evident even in that high-priority sector, which has around five million fewer qualified workers than it needs. The proportion of workers who are in the most productive age group—20 to 39—will further decline over the next decade. Nothing, not even kidnapping children from Ukraine, for which the International Criminal Court indicted Putin, will reverse the loss of Russians, which the war’s exorbitant casualties are compounding. Productivity gains that might offset these demographic trends are nowhere in sight. Russia ranks nearly last in the world in the scale and speed of automation in production: its robotization is just a microscopic fraction of the world average. Even before the widened war in Ukraine began to eat into the state budget, Russia placed surprisingly low in global rankings of education spending. In the past two years, Putin has willingly forfeited much of the country’s economic future when he induced or forced thousands of young tech workers to flee conscription and repression. True, these are people that rabid nationalists claim not to miss, but deep down many know that a great power needs them. Washington has learned the hard way that it lacks the levers to transform Russia. Given its sprawling Eurasian geography and long-standing ties to many parts of the world, as well as the alchemy of opportunism, Russia is still able to import many indispensable components for its economy despite Western sanctions. Notwithstanding this resourcefulness and despite the public’s habituation to the war, Russian elites know the damning statistics. They are aware that as a commodity-exporting country, Russia’s long-term development depends on technology transfers from advanced countries; Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made it harder to use the West as a source, and his symbolic embrace of Hamas’s nihilism gratuitously strained Russia’s relations with Israel, a major supplier of high-tech goods and services. At a more basic level, Russia’s elites are physically cut off from the developed world: hideaways in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), however agreeable, cannot replace European villas and boarding schools. Although a Russian authoritarian regime has once again proved resilient in war, Putin’s grave lack of domestic investment and diversification, his furtherance of demographic distress, and his role in the country’s descent into technological backwardness could yet compel hardcore nationalists—among them many elites—to admit that Russia is on a self-defeating trajectory. Many have privately concluded that Putin conflates the survival of his aging personal regime with the storied country’s survival as a great power. Historically, at least, such realizations have precipitated a change of course, a turn from foreign overextension to domestic revitalization. Last summer, when the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death squad marched on Moscow, it did not elicit bandwagoning by military officers, which is one reason Prigozhin called it off. But neither did it galvanize the regime’s supporters to defend Putin in real time. The episode furnished an unwitting referendum on the regime, revealing a certain hollowness inside the repressive strength. Retrenchment could result from hastening Putin’s exit, or it could follow his natural demise. It could also be forced on him without his removal by meaningful political threats to his rule. However it happened, it would involve mostly tactical moves spurred by a recognition that Russia lacks the means to oppose the West without end, pays an exorbitant price for trying, and risks permanently losing vital European ties in exchange for a humiliating dependence on China. RUSSIA AS VASSAL Defiantly pro-Putin Russian elites boast that they have developed an option that is better than the West. The Chinese-Russian bond has surprised many analysts aware of Beijing and Moscow’s prickly relations in the past, including the infamous Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, which culminated in a short border war. Although that conflict was formally settled with a border demarcation, Russia remains the sole country that controls territory seized from the Qing empire in what the Chinese vilify as unfair treaties. That has not stopped China and Russia from bolstering ties, including by conducting large-scale joint military exercises, which have grown in frequency and geographic scope in the past 20 years. The two countries are fully aligned on Russia’s grievances regarding NATO expansion and Western meddling in Ukraine, where Chinese support for Russia continues to be crucial. Chinese-Russian rapprochement predates the rise of Putin and Xi. In the 1980s, it was Deng Xiaoping who performed a turn away from Moscow more momentous than the one Mao Zedong had carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. Deng gained access to the American domestic market for Chinese producers, the same trick that enabled the transformation of Japan and then South Korea and Taiwan. Deng’s divorce from the communist Soviet Union for a de facto economic marriage with American and European capitalists ushered in an era of astonishing prosperity that birthed a Chinese middle class. But China and Russia remained intertwined. Deng’s handpicked successor, Jiang Zemin, who had trained at a Soviet factory, brought Russia back as a mistress without breaking the U.S.-Chinese marital bond. Jiang placed orders that helped resuscitate Russia’s forlorn military-industrial complex and modernize China’s own weapons production and military. In 1996, Jiang and Yeltsin proclaimed a “strategic partnership.” Despite modest bilateral trade, China’s domestic economic boom indirectly helped bring civilian Soviet-era production back from the dead by lifting global demand and therefore prices for the industrial inputs the Soviet Union had produced in low quality but high quantity, from steel to fertilizer. Just as the United States had helped forge a Chinese middle class, so, too, did China play a part in conjuring into being Russia’s middle class and Putin’s economic boom. Nevertheless, societal and cultural relations between the two peoples remain shallow. Russians are culturally European, and few speak Chinese (compared with English). Although some elderly Chinese speak Russian, a legacy of Moscow’s erstwhile centrality in the communist world, that number is not large, and the days when Chinese students attended Russian universities in great numbers are a distant memory. Russians are apprehensive of China’s power, and many Chinese who hold weakness in contempt ridicule Russia online. Stalwarts of the Chinese Communist Party remain unforgiving of Moscow’s destruction of communism across Eurasia and eastern Europe. And yet the profundity of the personal relationship between Putin and Xi has compensated for these otherwise brittle foundations. The two men have fallen into a bromance, meeting an astonishing 42 times while in power, publicly lauding each other as “my best friend” (Xi on Putin) and “dear friend” (Putin on Xi). The two kindred souls’ authoritarian solidarity is undergirded by an abiding anti-Westernism, especially anti-Americanism. As China, the former junior partner, became the senior partner, the two autocratic neighbors upgraded relations, announcing a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in 2013. Officially, trade between Russia and China surpassed $230 billion in 2023; adjusting for inflation, it had hovered around $16 billion three decades earlier and stood at just $78 billion as recently as the mid-2010s. The 2023 figure, moreover, does not include tens of billions more in bilateral trade that is disguised using third parties, such as Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and the UAE. China still buys military aircraft engines from Russia. But otherwise, the dependence goes in the other direction. Western sanctions accelerated the loss of Russia’s domestic vehicle industry to China. Moscow is now holding a substantial pile of renminbi reserves, which can be used only for Chinese goods. But despite innumerable meetings over decades, there is still no final agreement on a major new natural gas pipeline that would originate in Siberia and make its way to China through Mongolia. The Chinese leadership has keenly avoided becoming dependent on Russia for energy or anything else. On the contrary, China is already the global leader in solar and wind power and is working to displace Russia as the top global player in nuclear energy. Besides raw materials and political thuggery, the only things Russia exports are talented people. Russian elites, even as they vehemently denounce an imaginary U.S. determination to subjugate or dismember their country, have by and large not raised their voices against Putin’s subordination of Russia to China. And lately, Russian commentators have taken to retelling the tale of Alexander Nevsky, who in the thirteenth century reigned as prince of Novgorod, one of the states folded into Muscovy, the precursor to imperial Russia. When faced with a two-front challenge, Nevsky chose to fight the crusaders of the west, defeating the Teutons in the Battle of the Ice, and to accommodate the invading Mongols of the east, traveling across central Asia to the capital of the Mongol Golden Horde to be recognized as grand prince of Russia. In this telling, the Western Christians were determined to undermine Russia’s Eastern Christian identity, whereas the Mongols merely wanted Russia to pay tribute. The implication is that today’s accommodation of China does not require Russia to relinquish its identity, whereas a failure to confront the West would. This is bunkum. It took Russians centuries to free themselves from what their school textbooks uniformly called the Mongol yoke, but Russia has survived relations with the West for centuries without itself ever becoming Western. Being non-Western, however, does not necessarily mean being anti-Western—unless, of course, one is struggling to protect an illiberal regime in a liberal world order. Russia existed within its post-Soviet borders for two decades before Putin decided the situation was intolerable. Now, having burned bridges with the West and blamed it for the arson, he has little recourse other than to rely on China’s good graces. The great and growing imbalance in the relationship has induced analysts to speak of Russia as China’s vassal. But only China decides whether a country becomes its vassal, whereby Beijing dictates Russian policy and even personnel, and assumes the burden of responsibility. It has no binding treaty obligations with Russia. Putin possesses only the 70-year-old Xi’s word—and Xi, too, is mortal. Nonetheless, the two leaders continue to denounce the United States’ bid for hegemony and cooperate closely. A shared commitment to render the world order safe for their respective dictatorships and dominate their regions is driving a de facto vassalage that neither fancies. RUSSIA AS NORTH KOREA In deepening Russia’s dependence on China, Putin or his successor could draw paradoxical inspiration from the experience of North Korea, which in turn could give Xi or his successor pause. During Beijing’s intervention to rescue Pyongyang in the Korean War, Mao, employing a proverb, stated that if the lips (North Korea) are gone, the teeth (China) will be cold. This metaphor implies both an act of buffering and a condition of interdependence. Over the years, some Chinese commentators have doubted the value of propping up North Korea, particularly after the latter’s defiant nuclear test in 2006. Faced with UN sanctions, which China joined, North Korea’s leadership pressed forward aggressively with its programs for nuclear weapons and missiles, which can reach not just Seoul and Tokyo but also Beijing and Shanghai. Still, China’s leadership eventually reaffirmed its backing of Pyongyang, in 2018. Given North Korea’s extreme dependence on China for food, fuel, and much else, Beijing would seem to have its leader, Kim Jong Un, in a vice grip. Yet Pyongyang loyalists sometimes warn that the teeth can bite the lips. As ruling circles in Beijing have discovered time and again, Kim does not always defer to his patrons. In 2017, he had his half brother, Kim Jong Nam, who was under China’s protection abroad, murdered. Kim can get away with defiance because he knows that no matter how much he might incense Beijing, China does not want the regime in Pyongyang to fall. If the North Korean state imploded, the peninsula would be reunited under the aegis of South Korea, a U.S. treaty ally. That would amount to China, at long last, losing the Korean War, which for more than 70 years has remained suspended by an armistice. A loss of the Korean buffer could complicate Beijing’s options and internal timelines regarding its hoped-for absorption of Taiwan, since China would face a more hostile external environment close by. Historically, instability on the Korean Peninsula has tended to spill over into China, and an influx of refugees could destabilize China’s northeast and potentially much more. So Beijing appears to be stuck in a form of reverse dependence with Pyongyang. Xi would not want to find himself in a similar position with Moscow. Russian service members march in a military parade, Moscow, May 2023 Maxim Shemetov / Reuters Russia and North Korea could scarcely be more different. The former is more than 142 times as large as the latter in territory. North Korea possesses the kind of dynasty that Russia does not, even though each Kim family successor gets rubber-stamped as leader by a party congress. North Korea is also a formal treaty ally of China, Beijing’s only such ally in the world, the two having signed a mutual defense pact in 1961. (Some Chinese commentary has suggested China is no longer obliged to come to North Korea’s defense in the event of an attack because of Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons, but the pact has not been repealed.) North Korea faces a rival Korean state in the form of South Korea, making it more akin to East Germany (which of course is long gone) than to Russia. Despite these and other differences, Russia could become something of a gigantic North Korea: domestically repressive, internationally isolated and transgressive, armed with nuclear weapons, and abjectly dependent on China but still able to buck Beijing. It remains unclear how much Putin divulged in Beijing, in February 2022, about his plans for Ukraine when he elicited a joint declaration of a Chinese-Russian “partnership of no limits” that soon made it appear as if Xi endorsed the Russian aggression. Not long after China released a peace plan for Ukraine, Xi traveled to Moscow for a summit, at one point appearing with Putin on an ornate Kremlin staircase that, in 1939, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister under the Nazis, had descended with Stalin and his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, while cementing the Hitler-Stalin pact. And yet a Kremlin spokesperson spurned the possibility of peace, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government accepted China’s vague document as worthy of discussion. (China’s low-level peace mission to Kyiv fell flat.) Later, after Chinese diplomats bragged to all the world and especially to Europe that Xi had extracted a Russian pledge to not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Putin’s regime announced it was deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. (China went on to criticize the deployments.) It is not likely that any of these episodes were intended as explicit slights. But they made observers wonder about Russia’s evolution toward a North Korean scenario, for even if unintended, they revealed the potential for Moscow to embarrass Beijing without suffering consequences. Since the Prigozhin mutiny, Xi has stressed what he calls “the fundamental interest of the two countries and their peoples,” implying that the special relationship would outlast the Kremlin’s current leadership. In truth, an authoritarian China could hardly afford to lose Russia if that meant ending up with a pro-American Russia on its northern border, a scenario parallel to, yet drastically more threatening than, a pro-American, reunited Korean Peninsula. At a minimum, access to Russian oil and gas, China’s partial hedge against a sea blockade, would be at risk. But even if China were gaining little materially from Russia, preventing Russia from turning to the West would remain a topmost national security priority. An American-leaning Russia would enable enhanced Western surveillance of China (the same way, in reverse, that U.S. President Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with Mao enabled Western surveillance on the Soviet Union from Xinjiang). Worse, China would suddenly need to redeploy substantial assets from elsewhere to defend its expansive northern border. And so China must be prepared to absorb Pyongyang-like behavior from Moscow, too. RUSSIA IN CHAOS Putin’s regime wields the threat of chaos and the unknown to ward off internal challenges and change. But while keenly sowing chaos abroad, from eastern Europe to central Africa and the Middle East, Russia itself could fall victim to it. The Putin regime has looked more or less stable even under the extreme pressures of large-scale war, and predictions of collapse under far-reaching Western sanctions have not been borne out. But Russian states overseen from St. Petersburg and Moscow, respectively, both disintegrated in the past 100-odd years, both times unexpectedly yet completely. There are many plausible hypothetical causes for a breakdown in the near future: a domestic mutiny that spirals out of control, one or more natural catastrophes beyond the authorities’ capacity to manage, an accident or intentional sabotage of nuclear facilities, or the accidental or nonaccidental death of a leader. Countries such as Russia with corroded institutions and legitimacy deficits can be susceptible to cascades in a sudden stress test. Chaos could well be the price for a failure to retrench. Even amid anarchy, however, Russia would not dissolve like the Soviet Union. As the KGB’s final chief analyst lamented, the Soviet federation resembled a chocolate bar: its collective pieces (the 15 union republics) were demarcated as if with creases and thus were ready to be broken off. By contrast, the Russian Federation mostly comprises territorial units not based on ethnicity and without quasi-state status. Its constituents that are national in designation mostly do not have titular majorities and are often deeply interior, such as Tatarstan, Bashkorto­stan, Mari El, and Yakutia. Still, the federation could partly disintegrate in volatile border regions such as the North Caucasus. Kaliningrad—a small Russian province geographically disconnected from the rest of the federation and sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, more than 400 miles from Russia proper—could be vulnerable. Were chaos to engulf Moscow, China could move to retake the expansive lands of the Amur basin that the Romanovs expropriated from the Qing. Japan might forcibly enact its claims to the Northern Territories, which the Russians call the southern Kurils, and Sakhalin Island, both of which Japan once ruled, and possibly part of the Russian Far Eastern mainland, which Japan occupied during the Russian civil war. The Finns might seek to reclaim the chunk of Karelia they once ruled. Such actions could spark a general unraveling or backfire by provoking a Russian mass mobilization. Amid chaos, even without major territorial loss, criminal syndicates and cybercriminals could operate with yet more impunity. Nuclear and biological weapons, as well as the scientists who develop them, could scatter—the nightmare that might have accompanied the Soviet collapse but was essentially avoided, partly because many Soviet scientists believed a better Russia might emerge. If there were to be a next time, it’s impossible to predict how Russians might weigh their hopes against their anger. Chaos need not mean a doomsday scenario. But it could. Armageddon might have only been postponed, instead of averted. CONTINENTAL CUL-DE-SAC A Russian future missing here is the one prevalent among the Putin regime’s mouthpieces as well as its extreme-right critics: Moscow as a pole in its version of a multipolar world, bossing around Eurasia and operating as a key arbiter of world affairs. “We need to find ourselves and understand who we are,” the Kremlin loyalist Sergei Karaganov mused last year. “We are a great Eurasian power, Northern Eurasia, a liberator of peoples, a guarantor of peace, and the military-political core of the World Majority. This is our manifest destiny.” The so-called global South—or as Karaganov rendered it, “the World Majority”—does not exist as a coherent entity, let alone one with Russia as its core. The project of Russia as a self-reliant supercontinent, bestride Europe and Asia, has already failed. The Soviet Union forcibly held not just an inner empire on the Baltic and Black Seas but also an outer empire of satellites, ultimately to no avail. Russia’s world is effectively shrinking despite its occupation of nearly 20 percent of Ukraine. Territorially, it is now farther from the heart of Europe (Kaliningrad excepted) than at any time since the conquests of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. More than three centuries after appearing on the Pacific, moreover, Russia has never succeeded at becoming an Asian power. That was true even when World War II presented it with opportunities to avenge itself against Japan for the defeat Russia suffered at its hands in 1905, to reestablish the tsar’s position in Chinese Manchuria, and to extend its grasp to part of the Korean Peninsula. Russia will never be culturally at home in Asia, and its already minuscule population east of Lake Baikal has contracted since the Soviet collapse. Russia’s influence in its immediate neighborhood has been diminishing, too. The bulk of non-Russians in the former Soviet borderlands want less and less to do with their former overlord and certainly do not want to be reabsorbed by it. Armenians are embittered, Kazakhs are wary, and Belarusians are trapped and unhappy about it. Eurasianism and Slavophilism are mostly dead letters: the overwhelming majority of the world’s non-Russian Slavs joined or are clamoring to join the European Union and NATO. Without Russia menacing its European neighbors, NATO’s reason for being becomes uncertain. But that means Russia could break NATO only by developing into a durable rule-of-law state, precisely what Putin resists with all his being. Separating Russia from China would be a tall order. There is no basis for Russia to serve as a global focal point, drawing countries toward it. Its economic model offers little inspiration. It can ill afford to serve as a major donor of aid. It is less able to sell weapons—it needs them itself and is even trying to buy back systems it has sold—and has been reduced in some cases to bartering with other pariah states. It has lost its strong position as a provider of satellites. It belongs to a pariah club with Iran and North Korea, exuberantly exchanging weapons, flouting international law, and promising much further trouble. It’s not difficult to imagine each betraying the other at the next better opportunity, however, provided they do not unravel first; the West is more resilient than the “partnerships” of the anti-West. Even many former Soviet partners that refused to condemn Russia over Ukraine, including India and South Africa, do not view Moscow as a developmental partner but as scaffolding for boosting their own sovereignty. Russia’s foreign policy delivers at best tactical gains, not strategic ones: no enhanced human capital, no assured access to leading-edge technology, no inward investment and new infrastructure, no improved governance, and no willing mutually obliged treaty allies, which are the keys to building and sustaining modern power. Besides raw materials and political thuggery, the only things Russia exports are talented people. Russia has never sustained itself as a great power unless it had close ties to Europe. And for Putin or a successor, it would be a long way back. He undid more than two centuries of Swedish neutrality and three-quarters of a century of Finlandization (whereby Helsinki deferred to Moscow on major foreign policy considerations), prompting both countries to join NATO. Much depends on the evolving disposition of Germany: imagine the fate of Europe, and indeed the world order, if post–World War II Germany had evolved to resemble today’s Russia rather than undergone its remarkable transformation. Germany played the role of bridge to Russia, securing peaceful unification on its terms and lucrative business partnerships. But as things stand, Moscow can no longer cut deals with Berlin to revive its European ties without fundamentally altering its own political behavior, and maybe its political system. Even if Russia did change systemically, moreover, Poland and the Baltic states now stand resolutely in the way of Russian reconciliation with Europe as permanent members of the Western alliance and the EU. Russia’s future forks: one path is a risky drift into a deeper Chinese embrace, the other an against-the-odds return to Europe. Having its cake and eating it, too—enduring as a great power with recaptured economic dynamism, avoiding sweeping concessions to the West or lasting subservience to China, dominating Eurasia, and instituting a world order safe for authoritarianism and predation—would require reversals beyond Russia’s ability to engineer. IS THERE A BETTER WAY? Russia’s basic grand strategy appears simple: vastly overinvest in the military, roguish capabilities, and the secret police, and try to subvert the West. No matter how dire its strategic position gets, and it is often dire, Russia can muddle through, as long as the West weakens, too. Beyond Western disintegration, some Russians quietly fantasize about a war between the United States and China. West and East would maul each other, and Russia would greatly improve its relative standing without breaking a sweat. The upshot would seem to be self-evident: Washington and its allies must stay strong together, and Beijing must be deterred without provoking a war. The conventional options, however, have severe limits. One is accommodation, which Russian rulers occasionally need but rarely pursue—and, when they do, they make it difficult for the West to sustain. The other is confrontation, which Russian regimes require but cannot afford, and the opportunity costs of which are too high for the West. The path to a better option begins with a candid acknowledgment of failures, but not in accordance with received wisdom. Calls to recognize Russia’s “legitimate” interests are frequently heard in critiques of U.S. policy, but the great-power stability purchased by indulging coercive spheres of influence always proves ephemeral, even as the agonies of sacrificed smaller countries and the ignominy of compromising U.S. values always linger. Consider that in the aftermath of Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s maneuvering, China and Russia are closer than ever. Arms control is effectively dead. Détente died before many people even knew what the word connoted, but the damage in Indochina, Latin America, South Asia, and elsewhere remains palpable even now. Kissinger might have argued that these disappointing results were the fault of others for failing to adhere to his practice of shrewd balancing in international affairs. But any equilibrium that depends on the dexterity of a single person is not, in fact, an equilibrium. Many advocates for and past practitioners of engagement assert that the multidecade U.S. policy of engaging China was smarter than it looked, that American policymakers were always skeptical that economic growth would lead China toward an open political system but believed it was worth trying anyway. Some also claim they hedged against the risk of failure. Such retrospective image burnishing is belied by the glaring insecurity of global supply chains (as revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic) and the pitiful state of the U.S. defense industrial base (as revealed by the war against Ukraine). In the case of Russia, Washington did hedge, expanding NATO to include almost all of eastern Europe and the Baltic states. But that had less to do with an unsentimental assessment of Russia’s possible trajectory than with the shame of Yalta, when Washington proved powerless to deliver on its promises of free and fair elections after World War II, and the post-1989 pleas of the potential new entrants for admission. Critics of NATO expansion, for their part, blame it for Russia’s revanchism, as if a repressive authoritarian regime that invades its neighbors in the name of its security is something unexpected in Russian history and wouldn’t have happened anyway had the alliance not expanded—leaving even more countries vulnerable. Russia can muddle through, as long as the West weakens, too. Peace comes through strength, combined with skillful diplomacy. The United States must maintain concerted pressure on Russia while also offering incentives for Moscow to retrench. That means creating leverage through next-generation military tools but also pursuing negotiations in close cooperation with U.S. allies and partners and aided by so-called Track II exchanges among influential but nongovernmental figures. Meanwhile, Washington should prepare for and assiduously promote the possibility of a Russian nationalist recalibration. In the event that Russia does not become France any time soon, the rise of a Russian nationalist who acknowledges the long-term price of extreme anti-Westernism remains the likeliest path to a Russia that finds a stable place in the international order. In the near term, a step in that direction could be ending the fighting in Ukraine on terms favorable to Kyiv: namely, an armistice without legal recognition of annexations and without treaty infringement on Ukraine’s right to join NATO, the EU, or any other international body that would have it as a member. Putin might well achieve his war aims before a Russian nationalist officer or official gets the chance to accept such terms, but the high costs to Russia would persist, as the conflict could shift from attritional warfare into a Ukrainian insurgency. As strange as it might sound, to create the right incentives for retrenchment, Washington and its partners need a pro-Russian policy: that is, instead of pushing Russians further into Putin’s arms, confirming his assertions about an implacably anti-Russian collective West, Western policymakers and civil society organizations should welcome and reward—with visas, job opportunities, investment opportunities, cultural exchanges—those Russians who want to deconflate Putin and Russia but not necessarily embrace Jeffersonian ideals. It would be a mistake to wait for and reward only a pro-Western Russian government. The West should also prepare for a Russia that inflicts even greater spoliation on a global scale—but not drive it to do so. Some analysts have been urging U.S. President Joe Biden (or a future president) to pull off a reverse Nixon-Kissinger: to launch a diplomatic outreach to Moscow against Beijing. Of course, China and the Soviet Union had already split well before that previous American gambit. Separating Russia from China today would be a tall order. Even if successful, it would necessitate looking the other way as Moscow coercively reimposed a sphere of influence on former Soviet possessions, including Ukraine. The tightness of the Chinese-Russian relationship, meanwhile, has been mutually discrediting, and it has bound Washington’s allies in Asia and Europe much more closely to the United States. Rather than a reverse, Washington could find itself in an updated Nixon-Kissinger moment: asking China to help restrain Russia. OPPORTUNITY ABROAD, OPPORTUNITY AT HOME The supreme irony of American grand strategy for the past 70 years is that it worked, fostering an integrated world of impressive and shared prosperity, and yet is now being abandoned. The United States was open for business to its adversaries, without reciprocation. Today, however, so-called industrial policy and protectionism are partially closing the country not just to rivals but also to U.S. allies, partners, friends, and potential friends. American policy has come to resemble China’s—right when the latter has hit a wall. To be sure, technology export controls have a place in the policy toolkit, whether for China or Russia. But it’s not clear what the United States is offering in a positive sense. A strategic trade policy—reflected by initiatives such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which Washington crafted but then abandoned—might be a nonstarter in the current domestic political climate. A nimble administration, however, could repackage such an approach as an ambitious quest to secure global supply chains. World order requires legitimacy, an example worth emulating, a system open to strivers. The United States was once synonymous with economic opportunity for its allies and partners but also for others who aspired to attain the prosperity and peace that the open U.S.-led economic order promised—and, for the most part, delivered by reducing inequality on a world historic scale, raising billions of people out of poverty globally, and fostering robust middle classes. But over time, the United States ceded that role, allowing China to become synonymous with economic opportunity (as the leading trade partner of most countries) and manufacturing prowess (as a hub of technical know-how, logistics mastery, and skilled workers). To recapture lost ground and to restart the engine of social mobility at home, the United States, which has a mere 1.5 million mathematics teachers and must import knowledge of that subject from East Asia and South Asia, needs to launch a program to produce one million new teachers of math within a decade. It makes little sense to admit students to college if, lacking the universal language of science, engineering, computers, and economics, they are limited to majoring in themselves and their grievances. The turret of a destroyed Russian tank near Robotyne, Ukraine, February 2024 Stringer / Reuters The government and philanthropists should redirect significant higher education funding to community colleges that meet or exceed performance metrics. States should launch an ambitious rollout of vocational schools and training, whether reintroducing them in existing high schools or opening new self-standing ones in partnership with employers at the ground level. Beyond human capital, the United States needs to spark a housing construction boom by drastically reducing environmental regulations and to eliminate subsidies for builders, letting the market work. The country also needs to institute national service for young people, perhaps with an intergenerational component, to rekindle broad civic consciousness and a sense of everyone being in this together. Investing in people and housing and rediscovering a civic spirit on the scale that characterized the astonishing mobilizations of the Cold War around science and national projects would not alone guarantee equal opportunity at home. But such policies would be a vital start, a return to the tried-and-true formula that built U.S. national power in conjunction with American international leadership. The United States could once again be synonymous with opportunity abroad and at home, acquire more friends, and grow ever more capable of meeting whatever future Russia emerges. The American example and economic practice bent the trajectory of Russia before, and it could do so again, with fewer illusions this time. STEPHEN KOTKIN is Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of the forthcoming book Stalin: Totalitarian Superpower, 1941–1990s, the last in his three-volume biography. MORE BY STEPHEN KOTKIN More: Russian Federation Foreign Policy Politics & Society Civil & Military Relations Civil Society Political Development Security War & Military Strategy U.S. Foreign Policy Vladimir Putin Authoritarianism Most-Read Articles The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko The Case for Progressive Realism Why Britain Must Chart a New Global Course David Lammy How Israel Can Win in Gaza—and Deter Iran The Key to Both Goals Is Going After Hamas in Rafah Elliott Abrams No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher Recommended Articles Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Kremlin, Moscow, March 2023 What Drives Putin and Xi (Part One) A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin and Orville Schell Podcast The Cold War Never Ended Ukraine, the China Challenge, and the Revival of the West Stephen Kotkin The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next By Stephen Kotkin May/June 2024 Published on April 18, 2024 Vladimir Putin happened to turn 71 last October 7, the day Hamas assaulted Israel. The Russian president took the rampage as a birthday present; it shifted the context around his aggression in Ukraine. Perhaps to show his appreciation, he had his Foreign Ministry invite high-ranking Hamas representatives to Moscow in late October, highlighting an alignment of interests. Several weeks later, Putin announced his intention to stand for a fifth term in a choiceless election in March 2024 and later held his annual press conference, offering a phalanx of pliant journalists the privilege of hearing him smugly crow about Western fatigue over the war in Ukraine. “Almost along the entire frontline, our armed forces, let’s put it modestly, are improving their position,” Putin boasted in the live broadcast. On February 16, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service announced the sudden death of the opposition activist Alexei Navalny, aged 47, in a penal colony above the Arctic Circle, from which he had continued to reach his millions of followers with instructions on how to protest Putin’s plebiscite. A month later, the most one could say was that the Kremlin had at least waited until after the voting was staged to announce Putin’s victory. Putin styles himself as a new tsar. But a real tsar would not have to worry about a looming succession crisis and what it might do to his grip on power in the present. Putin does; that is partly why he must simulate elections. He is now set in his office until 2030, when he will be in his 78th year. Male life expectancy in Russia does not even reach 67 years; those who live to 60 can expect to survive to around 80. Russia’s confirmed centenarians are few. Putin might one day join their ranks. But even Stalin died. Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, turned out to be that rare would-be tsar who named a successor and smoothed his path to power. In 1999, Yeltsin, facing chronic health challenges and fearing that he and his “family” of corrupt cronies might face prison after he stepped down, chose Putin to preserve his liberty and legacy. “Take care of Russia,” Yeltsin offered as a parting instruction. In 2007, aged 76, he died a free man. But the protector has refrained from emulating his patron’s example. In 2008, Putin briefly stepped aside from the presidency, in recognition of the same two-consecutive-term limit that Yeltsin faced. Putin appointed a political nonentity in his place, shifted himself to the position of prime minister, and came right back for a third presidential term in 2012 and then a fourth. Finally, he induced his counterfeit legislature to alter the constitution to effectively remove any term limits. Stalin, too, had stubbornly clung to power, even as his infirmities worsened. He refused to countenance the emergence of a successor; eventually, he suffered a massive, final stroke and fell into a puddle of his own urine. Putin is not Stalin. The Georgian despot built a superpower while dispatching tens of millions to their deaths in famines, forced labor camps, execution cellars, and a mismanaged defensive war. Putin, by contrast, has jerry-rigged a rogue power while sending hundreds of thousands to their deaths in a war of choice. The juxtaposition is nevertheless instructive. Stalin’s system proved unable to survive without him, despite having an institutionalized ruling party. And yet, amid the breakdown that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union but lasted well beyond 1991, Putin consolidated a new autocracy. This fusion of fragility and path dependence derives from many factors that are not easily rewired: geography, a national-imperial identity, an ingrained strategic culture. (The nineteenth-century Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin remarked of his country that everything changes dramatically every five to ten years but nothing changes in 200 years.) Still, whenever and however Putin might go, his personalistic autocracy and, more broadly, Russia already face questions about the future. Putin’s regime styles itself an icebreaker, smashing to bits the U.S.-led international order on behalf of humanity. Washington and its allies and partners have allowed themselves to be surprised by him time and again—in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and central Africa. This has provoked fears about the next nasty surprise. But what about the long term? How, in the light of inescapable leadership mortality and larger structural factors, might Russia evolve, or not, over the next decade and possibly beyond? Readers seeking odds on Russia’s trajectory should consult the betting markets. What Western officials and other decision-makers need to do, instead, is to consider a set of scenarios: to extrapolate from current trends in a way that can facilitate contingency planning. Scenarios are about attempting to not be surprised. Needless to note, the world constantly surprises, and something impossible to foresee could occur: the proverbial black swan. Humility is in order. Still, five possible futures for Russia are currently imaginable, and the United States and its allies should bear them in mind. Over the course of multiple presidential administrations, Washington has learned the hard way that it lacks the levers to transform places such as Russia and, for that matter, China: countries that originated as empires on the Eurasian landmass and celebrate themselves as ancient civilizations that long predate the founding of the United States, let alone the formation of the West. They are not characters out of the playwright George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, ripe for conversion from street urchins to refined ladies: that is, from authoritarian, imperialist regimes to responsible stakeholders in the U.S.-dominated international system. Efforts to remake their “personalities” invariably result in mutual recriminations and disillusionment. Leaders such as Putin and China’s Xi Jinping did not capriciously reverse a hopeful process; in no small measure, they resulted from it. So Washington and its partners must not exaggerate their ability to shape Russia’s trajectory. Instead, they should prepare for whatever unfolds. RUSSIA AS FRANCE France is a country with deep-seated bureaucratic and monarchical traditions—and also a fraught revolutionary tradition. Revolutionaries abolished the monarchy only to see it return in the guise of both a king and an emperor and then disappear again, as republics came and went. France built and lost a vast empire of colonial possessions. For centuries, France’s rulers, none more than Napoleon, threatened the country’s neighbors. Today, these traditions live on in many ways. As the French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville shrewdly observed in his 1856 work The Old Regime and the Revolution, the revolutionaries’ efforts to break definitively with the past ended up unwittingly reinforcing statist structures. Despite the consolidation of a republican system, France’s monarchical inheritance endures symbolically in palaces in Versailles and elsewhere, in ubiquitous statues of Bourbon dynasty rulers, and in an inordinately centralized form of rule with immense power and wealth concentrated in Paris. Even shorn of its formal empire, France remains a fiercely proud country, one that many of its citizens and admirers view as a civilization with a lingering sense of a special mission in the world and in Europe, as well as a language spoken far beyond its borders (60 percent of daily French speakers are citizens of elsewhere). But crucially, today’s France enjoys the rule of law and no longer threatens its neighbors. Russia, too, possesses a statist and monarchical tradition that will endure regardless of the nature of any future political system and a fraught revolutionary tradition that has also ceased to be an ongoing venture yet lives on in institutions and memories as a source of inspiration and warning. To be sure, the autocratic Romanovs were even less constrained than the absolutist Bourbons. Russia’s revolution was considerably more brutal and destructive than even the French one. Russia’s lost empire was contiguous, not overseas, and lasted far longer—indeed, for most of the existence of the modern Russian state. In Russia, Moscow’s domination of the rest of the country exceeds even that of Paris in France. Russia’s geographical expanse dwarfs France’s, enmeshing the country in Europe but also the Caucasus, Central Asia, and East Asia. Very few countries have much in common with Russia. But France has more than perhaps any other. A man wearing a shirt depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin, Saint Petersburg, May 2022 Anton Vaganov / Reuters Contemporary France is a great country, although not without its detractors. Some decry what they deem its excessive statism, the high taxes necessary to underwrite uneven services, as well as a broad socialistic ethos. Others find fault with what they perceive as France’s great-power pretensions and cultural chauvinism. Still others lament France’s difficulty in assimilating immigrants. But it is possible to be disappointed in these or other aspects of the country and still recognize that it provides the closest thing to a realistic model for a prosperous, peaceful Russia. If Russia were to become like France—a democracy with a rule-of-law system that luxuriated in its absolutist and revolutionary past but no longer threatened its neighbors—that would constitute a high-order achievement. France tramped a tortuous path to become what it is today. Recall Robespierre’s revolutionary terror, Napoleon’s catastrophic expansionism, Napoleon III’s self-coup (from elected president to emperor), the seizure of power by the Paris Commune, the country’s rapid defeat in World War II, the Vichy collaborationist regime that followed, the colonial Algerian war, and the extraconstitutional acts of President Charles de Gaulle after he came out of retirement in 1958. One might be seduced by the notion that Russia needs its own de Gaulle to help consolidate a liberal order from above, even though no such deus ex machina looms on Russia’s immediate horizon. But only hagiographers believe that one man created today’s France. Notwithstanding the country’s moments of instability, over generations, France developed the impartial, professional institutions—a judiciary, a civil service, a free and open public sphere—of a democratic, republican nation. The problem was not mainly that Yeltsin was no de Gaulle. The problem was that Russia was much further from a stable, Western-style constitutional order in 1991 than France had been three decades earlier. RUSSIA RETRENCHED Some Russians might welcome a transformation into a country that resembles France, but others would find that outcome anathema. What the world now sees as Putinism first surfaced in the Russian-language periodicals and volunteer societies of the 1970s: an authoritarian, resentful, mystical nationalism grounded in anti-Westernism, espousing nominally traditional values, and borrowing incoherently from Slavophilism, Eurasianism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. One could imagine an authoritarian nationalist leader who embraces those views and who, like Putin, is unshakable in the belief that the United States is hell-bent on Russia’s destruction but who is also profoundly troubled by Russia’s cloudy long-term future—and willing to blame Putin for it. That is, someone who appeals to Putin’s base but makes the case that the war against Ukraine is damaging Russia. Demography is a special sore point for Russia’s blood-and-soil nationalists, not to mention the military brass and many ordinary people. Since 1992, despite considerable immigration, Russia’s population has shrunk. Its working-age population peaked in 2006 at around 90 million and stands at less than 80 million today, a calamitous trend. Spending on the war in Ukraine has boosted Russia’s defense industrial base, but the limits of the country’s diminished labor force are becoming ever more evident even in that high-priority sector, which has around five million fewer qualified workers than it needs. The proportion of workers who are in the most productive age group—20 to 39—will further decline over the next decade. Nothing, not even kidnapping children from Ukraine, for which the International Criminal Court indicted Putin, will reverse the loss of Russians, which the war’s exorbitant casualties are compounding. Productivity gains that might offset these demographic trends are nowhere in sight. Russia ranks nearly last in the world in the scale and speed of automation in production: its robotization is just a microscopic fraction of the world average. Even before the widened war in Ukraine began to eat into the state budget, Russia placed surprisingly low in global rankings of education spending. In the past two years, Putin has willingly forfeited much of the country’s economic future when he induced or forced thousands of young tech workers to flee conscription and repression. True, these are people that rabid nationalists claim not to miss, but deep down many know that a great power needs them. Washington has learned the hard way that it lacks the levers to transform Russia. Given its sprawling Eurasian geography and long-standing ties to many parts of the world, as well as the alchemy of opportunism, Russia is still able to import many indispensable components for its economy despite Western sanctions. Notwithstanding this resourcefulness and despite the public’s habituation to the war, Russian elites know the damning statistics. They are aware that as a commodity-exporting country, Russia’s long-term development depends on technology transfers from advanced countries; Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made it harder to use the West as a source, and his symbolic embrace of Hamas’s nihilism gratuitously strained Russia’s relations with Israel, a major supplier of high-tech goods and services. At a more basic level, Russia’s elites are physically cut off from the developed world: hideaways in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), however agreeable, cannot replace European villas and boarding schools. Although a Russian authoritarian regime has once again proved resilient in war, Putin’s grave lack of domestic investment and diversification, his furtherance of demographic distress, and his role in the country’s descent into technological backwardness could yet compel hardcore nationalists—among them many elites—to admit that Russia is on a self-defeating trajectory. Many have privately concluded that Putin conflates the survival of his aging personal regime with the storied country’s survival as a great power. Historically, at least, such realizations have precipitated a change of course, a turn from foreign overextension to domestic revitalization. Last summer, when the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death squad marched on Moscow, it did not elicit bandwagoning by military officers, which is one reason Prigozhin called it off. But neither did it galvanize the regime’s supporters to defend Putin in real time. The episode furnished an unwitting referendum on the regime, revealing a certain hollowness inside the repressive strength. Retrenchment could result from hastening Putin’s exit, or it could follow his natural demise. It could also be forced on him without his removal by meaningful political threats to his rule. However it happened, it would involve mostly tactical moves spurred by a recognition that Russia lacks the means to oppose the West without end, pays an exorbitant price for trying, and risks permanently losing vital European ties in exchange for a humiliating dependence on China. RUSSIA AS VASSAL Defiantly pro-Putin Russian elites boast that they have developed an option that is better than the West. The Chinese-Russian bond has surprised many analysts aware of Beijing and Moscow’s prickly relations in the past, including the infamous Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, which culminated in a short border war. Although that conflict was formally settled with a border demarcation, Russia remains the sole country that controls territory seized from the Qing empire in what the Chinese vilify as unfair treaties. That has not stopped China and Russia from bolstering ties, including by conducting large-scale joint military exercises, which have grown in frequency and geographic scope in the past 20 years. The two countries are fully aligned on Russia’s grievances regarding NATO expansion and Western meddling in Ukraine, where Chinese support for Russia continues to be crucial. Chinese-Russian rapprochement predates the rise of Putin and Xi. In the 1980s, it was Deng Xiaoping who performed a turn away from Moscow more momentous than the one Mao Zedong had carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. Deng gained access to the American domestic market for Chinese producers, the same trick that enabled the transformation of Japan and then South Korea and Taiwan. Deng’s divorce from the communist Soviet Union for a de facto economic marriage with American and European capitalists ushered in an era of astonishing prosperity that birthed a Chinese middle class. But China and Russia remained intertwined. Deng’s handpicked successor, Jiang Zemin, who had trained at a Soviet factory, brought Russia back as a mistress without breaking the U.S.-Chinese marital bond. Jiang placed orders that helped resuscitate Russia’s forlorn military-industrial complex and modernize China’s own weapons production and military. In 1996, Jiang and Yeltsin proclaimed a “strategic partnership.” Despite modest bilateral trade, China’s domestic economic boom indirectly helped bring civilian Soviet-era production back from the dead by lifting global demand and therefore prices for the industrial inputs the Soviet Union had produced in low quality but high quantity, from steel to fertilizer. Just as the United States had helped forge a Chinese middle class, so, too, did China play a part in conjuring into being Russia’s middle class and Putin’s economic boom. Nevertheless, societal and cultural relations between the two peoples remain shallow. Russians are culturally European, and few speak Chinese (compared with English). Although some elderly Chinese speak Russian, a legacy of Moscow’s erstwhile centrality in the communist world, that number is not large, and the days when Chinese students attended Russian universities in great numbers are a distant memory. Russians are apprehensive of China’s power, and many Chinese who hold weakness in contempt ridicule Russia online. Stalwarts of the Chinese Communist Party remain unforgiving of Moscow’s destruction of communism across Eurasia and eastern Europe. And yet the profundity of the personal relationship between Putin and Xi has compensated for these otherwise brittle foundations. The two men have fallen into a bromance, meeting an astonishing 42 times while in power, publicly lauding each other as “my best friend” (Xi on Putin) and “dear friend” (Putin on Xi). The two kindred souls’ authoritarian solidarity is undergirded by an abiding anti-Westernism, especially anti-Americanism. As China, the former junior partner, became the senior partner, the two autocratic neighbors upgraded relations, announcing a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in 2013. Officially, trade between Russia and China surpassed $230 billion in 2023; adjusting for inflation, it had hovered around $16 billion three decades earlier and stood at just $78 billion as recently as the mid-2010s. The 2023 figure, moreover, does not include tens of billions more in bilateral trade that is disguised using third parties, such as Kyrgyzstan, Turkey, and the UAE. China still buys military aircraft engines from Russia. But otherwise, the dependence goes in the other direction. Western sanctions accelerated the loss of Russia’s domestic vehicle industry to China. Moscow is now holding a substantial pile of renminbi reserves, which can be used only for Chinese goods. But despite innumerable meetings over decades, there is still no final agreement on a major new natural gas pipeline that would originate in Siberia and make its way to China through Mongolia. The Chinese leadership has keenly avoided becoming dependent on Russia for energy or anything else. On the contrary, China is already the global leader in solar and wind power and is working to displace Russia as the top global player in nuclear energy. Besides raw materials and political thuggery, the only things Russia exports are talented people. Russian elites, even as they vehemently denounce an imaginary U.S. determination to subjugate or dismember their country, have by and large not raised their voices against Putin’s subordination of Russia to China. And lately, Russian commentators have taken to retelling the tale of Alexander Nevsky, who in the thirteenth century reigned as prince of Novgorod, one of the states folded into Muscovy, the precursor to imperial Russia. When faced with a two-front challenge, Nevsky chose to fight the crusaders of the west, defeating the Teutons in the Battle of the Ice, and to accommodate the invading Mongols of the east, traveling across central Asia to the capital of the Mongol Golden Horde to be recognized as grand prince of Russia. In this telling, the Western Christians were determined to undermine Russia’s Eastern Christian identity, whereas the Mongols merely wanted Russia to pay tribute. The implication is that today’s accommodation of China does not require Russia to relinquish its identity, whereas a failure to confront the West would. This is bunkum. It took Russians centuries to free themselves from what their school textbooks uniformly called the Mongol yoke, but Russia has survived relations with the West for centuries without itself ever becoming Western. Being non-Western, however, does not necessarily mean being anti-Western—unless, of course, one is struggling to protect an illiberal regime in a liberal world order. Russia existed within its post-Soviet borders for two decades before Putin decided the situation was intolerable. Now, having burned bridges with the West and blamed it for the arson, he has little recourse other than to rely on China’s good graces. The great and growing imbalance in the relationship has induced analysts to speak of Russia as China’s vassal. But only China decides whether a country becomes its vassal, whereby Beijing dictates Russian policy and even personnel, and assumes the burden of responsibility. It has no binding treaty obligations with Russia. Putin possesses only the 70-year-old Xi’s word—and Xi, too, is mortal. Nonetheless, the two leaders continue to denounce the United States’ bid for hegemony and cooperate closely. A shared commitment to render the world order safe for their respective dictatorships and dominate their regions is driving a de facto vassalage that neither fancies. RUSSIA AS NORTH KOREA In deepening Russia’s dependence on China, Putin or his successor could draw paradoxical inspiration from the experience of North Korea, which in turn could give Xi or his successor pause. During Beijing’s intervention to rescue Pyongyang in the Korean War, Mao, employing a proverb, stated that if the lips (North Korea) are gone, the teeth (China) will be cold. This metaphor implies both an act of buffering and a condition of interdependence. Over the years, some Chinese commentators have doubted the value of propping up North Korea, particularly after the latter’s defiant nuclear test in 2006. Faced with UN sanctions, which China joined, North Korea’s leadership pressed forward aggressively with its programs for nuclear weapons and missiles, which can reach not just Seoul and Tokyo but also Beijing and Shanghai. Still, China’s leadership eventually reaffirmed its backing of Pyongyang, in 2018. Given North Korea’s extreme dependence on China for food, fuel, and much else, Beijing would seem to have its leader, Kim Jong Un, in a vice grip. Yet Pyongyang loyalists sometimes warn that the teeth can bite the lips. As ruling circles in Beijing have discovered time and again, Kim does not always defer to his patrons. In 2017, he had his half brother, Kim Jong Nam, who was under China’s protection abroad, murdered. Kim can get away with defiance because he knows that no matter how much he might incense Beijing, China does not want the regime in Pyongyang to fall. If the North Korean state imploded, the peninsula would be reunited under the aegis of South Korea, a U.S. treaty ally. That would amount to China, at long last, losing the Korean War, which for more than 70 years has remained suspended by an armistice. A loss of the Korean buffer could complicate Beijing’s options and internal timelines regarding its hoped-for absorption of Taiwan, since China would face a more hostile external environment close by. Historically, instability on the Korean Peninsula has tended to spill over into China, and an influx of refugees could destabilize China’s northeast and potentially much more. So Beijing appears to be stuck in a form of reverse dependence with Pyongyang. Xi would not want to find himself in a similar position with Moscow. Russian service members march in a military parade, Moscow, May 2023 Maxim Shemetov / Reuters Russia and North Korea could scarcely be more different. The former is more than 142 times as large as the latter in territory. North Korea possesses the kind of dynasty that Russia does not, even though each Kim family successor gets rubber-stamped as leader by a party congress. North Korea is also a formal treaty ally of China, Beijing’s only such ally in the world, the two having signed a mutual defense pact in 1961. (Some Chinese commentary has suggested China is no longer obliged to come to North Korea’s defense in the event of an attack because of Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons, but the pact has not been repealed.) North Korea faces a rival Korean state in the form of South Korea, making it more akin to East Germany (which of course is long gone) than to Russia. Despite these and other differences, Russia could become something of a gigantic North Korea: domestically repressive, internationally isolated and transgressive, armed with nuclear weapons, and abjectly dependent on China but still able to buck Beijing. It remains unclear how much Putin divulged in Beijing, in February 2022, about his plans for Ukraine when he elicited a joint declaration of a Chinese-Russian “partnership of no limits” that soon made it appear as if Xi endorsed the Russian aggression. Not long after China released a peace plan for Ukraine, Xi traveled to Moscow for a summit, at one point appearing with Putin on an ornate Kremlin staircase that, in 1939, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister under the Nazis, had descended with Stalin and his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, while cementing the Hitler-Stalin pact. And yet a Kremlin spokesperson spurned the possibility of peace, even though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government accepted China’s vague document as worthy of discussion. (China’s low-level peace mission to Kyiv fell flat.) Later, after Chinese diplomats bragged to all the world and especially to Europe that Xi had extracted a Russian pledge to not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Putin’s regime announced it was deploying tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. (China went on to criticize the deployments.) It is not likely that any of these episodes were intended as explicit slights. But they made observers wonder about Russia’s evolution toward a North Korean scenario, for even if unintended, they revealed the potential for Moscow to embarrass Beijing without suffering consequences. Since the Prigozhin mutiny, Xi has stressed what he calls “the fundamental interest of the two countries and their peoples,” implying that the special relationship would outlast the Kremlin’s current leadership. In truth, an authoritarian China could hardly afford to lose Russia if that meant ending up with a pro-American Russia on its northern border, a scenario parallel to, yet drastically more threatening than, a pro-American, reunited Korean Peninsula. At a minimum, access to Russian oil and gas, China’s partial hedge against a sea blockade, would be at risk. But even if China were gaining little materially from Russia, preventing Russia from turning to the West would remain a topmost national security priority. An American-leaning Russia would enable enhanced Western surveillance of China (the same way, in reverse, that U.S. President Richard Nixon’s rapprochement with Mao enabled Western surveillance on the Soviet Union from Xinjiang). Worse, China would suddenly need to redeploy substantial assets from elsewhere to defend its expansive northern border. And so China must be prepared to absorb Pyongyang-like behavior from Moscow, too. RUSSIA IN CHAOS Putin’s regime wields the threat of chaos and the unknown to ward off internal challenges and change. But while keenly sowing chaos abroad, from eastern Europe to central Africa and the Middle East, Russia itself could fall victim to it. The Putin regime has looked more or less stable even under the extreme pressures of large-scale war, and predictions of collapse under far-reaching Western sanctions have not been borne out. But Russian states overseen from St. Petersburg and Moscow, respectively, both disintegrated in the past 100-odd years, both times unexpectedly yet completely. There are many plausible hypothetical causes for a breakdown in the near future: a domestic mutiny that spirals out of control, one or more natural catastrophes beyond the authorities’ capacity to manage, an accident or intentional sabotage of nuclear facilities, or the accidental or nonaccidental death of a leader. Countries such as Russia with corroded institutions and legitimacy deficits can be susceptible to cascades in a sudden stress test. Chaos could well be the price for a failure to retrench. Even amid anarchy, however, Russia would not dissolve like the Soviet Union. As the KGB’s final chief analyst lamented, the Soviet federation resembled a chocolate bar: its collective pieces (the 15 union republics) were demarcated as if with creases and thus were ready to be broken off. By contrast, the Russian Federation mostly comprises territorial units not based on ethnicity and without quasi-state status. Its constituents that are national in designation mostly do not have titular majorities and are often deeply interior, such as Tatarstan, Bashkorto­stan, Mari El, and Yakutia. Still, the federation could partly disintegrate in volatile border regions such as the North Caucasus. Kaliningrad—a small Russian province geographically disconnected from the rest of the federation and sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, more than 400 miles from Russia proper—could be vulnerable. Were chaos to engulf Moscow, China could move to retake the expansive lands of the Amur basin that the Romanovs expropriated from the Qing. Japan might forcibly enact its claims to the Northern Territories, which the Russians call the southern Kurils, and Sakhalin Island, both of which Japan once ruled, and possibly part of the Russian Far Eastern mainland, which Japan occupied during the Russian civil war. The Finns might seek to reclaim the chunk of Karelia they once ruled. Such actions could spark a general unraveling or backfire by provoking a Russian mass mobilization. Amid chaos, even without major territorial loss, criminal syndicates and cybercriminals could operate with yet more impunity. Nuclear and biological weapons, as well as the scientists who develop them, could scatter—the nightmare that might have accompanied the Soviet collapse but was essentially avoided, partly because many Soviet scientists believed a better Russia might emerge. If there were to be a next time, it’s impossible to predict how Russians might weigh their hopes against their anger. Chaos need not mean a doomsday scenario. But it could. Armageddon might have only been postponed, instead of averted. CONTINENTAL CUL-DE-SAC A Russian future missing here is the one prevalent among the Putin regime’s mouthpieces as well as its extreme-right critics: Moscow as a pole in its version of a multipolar world, bossing around Eurasia and operating as a key arbiter of world affairs. “We need to find ourselves and understand who we are,” the Kremlin loyalist Sergei Karaganov mused last year. “We are a great Eurasian power, Northern Eurasia, a liberator of peoples, a guarantor of peace, and the military-political core of the World Majority. This is our manifest destiny.” The so-called global South—or as Karaganov rendered it, “the World Majority”—does not exist as a coherent entity, let alone one with Russia as its core. The project of Russia as a self-reliant supercontinent, bestride Europe and Asia, has already failed. The Soviet Union forcibly held not just an inner empire on the Baltic and Black Seas but also an outer empire of satellites, ultimately to no avail. Russia’s world is effectively shrinking despite its occupation of nearly 20 percent of Ukraine. Territorially, it is now farther from the heart of Europe (Kaliningrad excepted) than at any time since the conquests of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. More than three centuries after appearing on the Pacific, moreover, Russia has never succeeded at becoming an Asian power. That was true even when World War II presented it with opportunities to avenge itself against Japan for the defeat Russia suffered at its hands in 1905, to reestablish the tsar’s position in Chinese Manchuria, and to extend its grasp to part of the Korean Peninsula. Russia will never be culturally at home in Asia, and its already minuscule population east of Lake Baikal has contracted since the Soviet collapse. Russia’s influence in its immediate neighborhood has been diminishing, too. The bulk of non-Russians in the former Soviet borderlands want less and less to do with their former overlord and certainly do not want to be reabsorbed by it. Armenians are embittered, Kazakhs are wary, and Belarusians are trapped and unhappy about it. Eurasianism and Slavophilism are mostly dead letters: the overwhelming majority of the world’s non-Russian Slavs joined or are clamoring to join the European Union and NATO. Without Russia menacing its European neighbors, NATO’s reason for being becomes uncertain. But that means Russia could break NATO only by developing into a durable rule-of-law state, precisely what Putin resists with all his being. Separating Russia from China would be a tall order. There is no basis for Russia to serve as a global focal point, drawing countries toward it. Its economic model offers little inspiration. It can ill afford to serve as a major donor of aid. It is less able to sell weapons—it needs them itself and is even trying to buy back systems it has sold—and has been reduced in some cases to bartering with other pariah states. It has lost its strong position as a provider of satellites. It belongs to a pariah club with Iran and North Korea, exuberantly exchanging weapons, flouting international law, and promising much further trouble. It’s not difficult to imagine each betraying the other at the next better opportunity, however, provided they do not unravel first; the West is more resilient than the “partnerships” of the anti-West. Even many former Soviet partners that refused to condemn Russia over Ukraine, including India and South Africa, do not view Moscow as a developmental partner but as scaffolding for boosting their own sovereignty. Russia’s foreign policy delivers at best tactical gains, not strategic ones: no enhanced human capital, no assured access to leading-edge technology, no inward investment and new infrastructure, no improved governance, and no willing mutually obliged treaty allies, which are the keys to building and sustaining modern power. Besides raw materials and political thuggery, the only things Russia exports are talented people. Russia has never sustained itself as a great power unless it had close ties to Europe. And for Putin or a successor, it would be a long way back. He undid more than two centuries of Swedish neutrality and three-quarters of a century of Finlandization (whereby Helsinki deferred to Moscow on major foreign policy considerations), prompting both countries to join NATO. Much depends on the evolving disposition of Germany: imagine the fate of Europe, and indeed the world order, if post–World War II Germany had evolved to resemble today’s Russia rather than undergone its remarkable transformation. Germany played the role of bridge to Russia, securing peaceful unification on its terms and lucrative business partnerships. But as things stand, Moscow can no longer cut deals with Berlin to revive its European ties without fundamentally altering its own political behavior, and maybe its political system. Even if Russia did change systemically, moreover, Poland and the Baltic states now stand resolutely in the way of Russian reconciliation with Europe as permanent members of the Western alliance and the EU. Russia’s future forks: one path is a risky drift into a deeper Chinese embrace, the other an against-the-odds return to Europe. Having its cake and eating it, too—enduring as a great power with recaptured economic dynamism, avoiding sweeping concessions to the West or lasting subservience to China, dominating Eurasia, and instituting a world order safe for authoritarianism and predation—would require reversals beyond Russia’s ability to engineer. IS THERE A BETTER WAY? Russia’s basic grand strategy appears simple: vastly overinvest in the military, roguish capabilities, and the secret police, and try to subvert the West. No matter how dire its strategic position gets, and it is often dire, Russia can muddle through, as long as the West weakens, too. Beyond Western disintegration, some Russians quietly fantasize about a war between the United States and China. West and East would maul each other, and Russia would greatly improve its relative standing without breaking a sweat. The upshot would seem to be self-evident: Washington and its allies must stay strong together, and Beijing must be deterred without provoking a war. The conventional options, however, have severe limits. One is accommodation, which Russian rulers occasionally need but rarely pursue—and, when they do, they make it difficult for the West to sustain. The other is confrontation, which Russian regimes require but cannot afford, and the opportunity costs of which are too high for the West. The path to a better option begins with a candid acknowledgment of failures, but not in accordance with received wisdom. Calls to recognize Russia’s “legitimate” interests are frequently heard in critiques of U.S. policy, but the great-power stability purchased by indulging coercive spheres of influence always proves ephemeral, even as the agonies of sacrificed smaller countries and the ignominy of compromising U.S. values always linger. Consider that in the aftermath of Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s maneuvering, China and Russia are closer than ever. Arms control is effectively dead. Détente died before many people even knew what the word connoted, but the damage in Indochina, Latin America, South Asia, and elsewhere remains palpable even now. Kissinger might have argued that these disappointing results were the fault of others for failing to adhere to his practice of shrewd balancing in international affairs. But any equilibrium that depends on the dexterity of a single person is not, in fact, an equilibrium. Many advocates for and past practitioners of engagement assert that the multidecade U.S. policy of engaging China was smarter than it looked, that American policymakers were always skeptical that economic growth would lead China toward an open political system but believed it was worth trying anyway. Some also claim they hedged against the risk of failure. Such retrospective image burnishing is belied by the glaring insecurity of global supply chains (as revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic) and the pitiful state of the U.S. defense industrial base (as revealed by the war against Ukraine). In the case of Russia, Washington did hedge, expanding NATO to include almost all of eastern Europe and the Baltic states. But that had less to do with an unsentimental assessment of Russia’s possible trajectory than with the shame of Yalta, when Washington proved powerless to deliver on its promises of free and fair elections after World War II, and the post-1989 pleas of the potential new entrants for admission. Critics of NATO expansion, for their part, blame it for Russia’s revanchism, as if a repressive authoritarian regime that invades its neighbors in the name of its security is something unexpected in Russian history and wouldn’t have happened anyway had the alliance not expanded—leaving even more countries vulnerable. Russia can muddle through, as long as the West weakens, too. Peace comes through strength, combined with skillful diplomacy. The United States must maintain concerted pressure on Russia while also offering incentives for Moscow to retrench. That means creating leverage through next-generation military tools but also pursuing negotiations in close cooperation with U.S. allies and partners and aided by so-called Track II exchanges among influential but nongovernmental figures. Meanwhile, Washington should prepare for and assiduously promote the possibility of a Russian nationalist recalibration. In the event that Russia does not become France any time soon, the rise of a Russian nationalist who acknowledges the long-term price of extreme anti-Westernism remains the likeliest path to a Russia that finds a stable place in the international order. In the near term, a step in that direction could be ending the fighting in Ukraine on terms favorable to Kyiv: namely, an armistice without legal recognition of annexations and without treaty infringement on Ukraine’s right to join NATO, the EU, or any other international body that would have it as a member. Putin might well achieve his war aims before a Russian nationalist officer or official gets the chance to accept such terms, but the high costs to Russia would persist, as the conflict could shift from attritional warfare into a Ukrainian insurgency. As strange as it might sound, to create the right incentives for retrenchment, Washington and its partners need a pro-Russian policy: that is, instead of pushing Russians further into Putin’s arms, confirming his assertions about an implacably anti-Russian collective West, Western policymakers and civil society organizations should welcome and reward—with visas, job opportunities, investment opportunities, cultural exchanges—those Russians who want to deconflate Putin and Russia but not necessarily embrace Jeffersonian ideals. It would be a mistake to wait for and reward only a pro-Western Russian government. The West should also prepare for a Russia that inflicts even greater spoliation on a global scale—but not drive it to do so. Some analysts have been urging U.S. President Joe Biden (or a future president) to pull off a reverse Nixon-Kissinger: to launch a diplomatic outreach to Moscow against Beijing. Of course, China and the Soviet Union had already split well before that previous American gambit. Separating Russia from China today would be a tall order. Even if successful, it would necessitate looking the other way as Moscow coercively reimposed a sphere of influence on former Soviet possessions, including Ukraine. The tightness of the Chinese-Russian relationship, meanwhile, has been mutually discrediting, and it has bound Washington’s allies in Asia and Europe much more closely to the United States. Rather than a reverse, Washington could find itself in an updated Nixon-Kissinger moment: asking China to help restrain Russia. OPPORTUNITY ABROAD, OPPORTUNITY AT HOME The supreme irony of American grand strategy for the past 70 years is that it worked, fostering an integrated world of impressive and shared prosperity, and yet is now being abandoned. The United States was open for business to its adversaries, without reciprocation. Today, however, so-called industrial policy and protectionism are partially closing the country not just to rivals but also to U.S. allies, partners, friends, and potential friends. American policy has come to resemble China’s—right when the latter has hit a wall. To be sure, technology export controls have a place in the policy toolkit, whether for China or Russia. But it’s not clear what the United States is offering in a positive sense. A strategic trade policy—reflected by initiatives such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which Washington crafted but then abandoned—might be a nonstarter in the current domestic political climate. A nimble administration, however, could repackage such an approach as an ambitious quest to secure global supply chains. World order requires legitimacy, an example worth emulating, a system open to strivers. The United States was once synonymous with economic opportunity for its allies and partners but also for others who aspired to attain the prosperity and peace that the open U.S.-led economic order promised—and, for the most part, delivered by reducing inequality on a world historic scale, raising billions of people out of poverty globally, and fostering robust middle classes. But over time, the United States ceded that role, allowing China to become synonymous with economic opportunity (as the leading trade partner of most countries) and manufacturing prowess (as a hub of technical know-how, logistics mastery, and skilled workers). To recapture lost ground and to restart the engine of social mobility at home, the United States, which has a mere 1.5 million mathematics teachers and must import knowledge of that subject from East Asia and South Asia, needs to launch a program to produce one million new teachers of math within a decade. It makes little sense to admit students to college if, lacking the universal language of science, engineering, computers, and economics, they are limited to majoring in themselves and their grievances. The turret of a destroyed Russian tank near Robotyne, Ukraine, February 2024 Stringer / Reuters The government and philanthropists should redirect significant higher education funding to community colleges that meet or exceed performance metrics. States should launch an ambitious rollout of vocational schools and training, whether reintroducing them in existing high schools or opening new self-standing ones in partnership with employers at the ground level. Beyond human capital, the United States needs to spark a housing construction boom by drastically reducing environmental regulations and to eliminate subsidies for builders, letting the market work. The country also needs to institute national service for young people, perhaps with an intergenerational component, to rekindle broad civic consciousness and a sense of everyone being in this together. Investing in people and housing and rediscovering a civic spirit on the scale that characterized the astonishing mobilizations of the Cold War around science and national projects would not alone guarantee equal opportunity at home. But such policies would be a vital start, a return to the tried-and-true formula that built U.S. national power in conjunction with American international leadership. The United States could once again be synonymous with opportunity abroad and at home, acquire more friends, and grow ever more capable of meeting whatever future Russia emerges. The American example and economic practice bent the trajectory of Russia before, and it could do so again, with fewer illusions this time. STEPHEN KOTKIN is Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He is the author of the forthcoming book Stalin: Totalitarian Superpower, 1941–1990s, the last in his three-volume biography. MORE BY STEPHEN KOTKIN More: Russian Federation Foreign Policy Politics & Society Civil & Military Relations Civil Society Political Development Security War & Military Strategy U.S. Foreign Policy Vladimir Putin Authoritarianism Most-Read Articles The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko Are Human Rights Universal? Thomas M. 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Israelis, meanwhile, can revel in the extraordinary operational success of the country’s sophisticated air defense systems, reinforced by an impressive array of wingmen from the American, British, French, and Jordanian militaries, who helped ensure that Iran did not hit a single Israeli target. Washington is certainly hoping that there will now be a lull in the Iranian-Israeli conflict. Six months of grueling war and dire humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip have strained U.S. domestic politics and decision-makers’ bandwidth, and so Washington has little appetite to address another crisis. That is why, in the wake of the failed strikes, U.S. President Joe Biden urged the Israelis to “take the win” and “slow things down and think through” any reprisal that might precipitate a wider war in the Middle East. Unfortunately, Biden’s prudence is not shared by his counterparts in Jerusalem and Tehran. Especially after the October 7 Hamas massacres, Iran’s unprecedented strike on Israeli territory has transformed the confrontation from one taking place mainly in the shadows to an imminent existential peril. As a result, any initial restraint could prove fleeting. A wider conflict would have a cascade of devastating implications for the region and the world. It would exacerbate violence and displacement across the region, torpedo progress toward Arab-Israeli normalization, generate significant economic disruptions with far-reaching effects. Staving off such a disaster will require that Washington use its unmatched diplomatic and military resources in ways that it has hesitated to deploy so far. It must both push for a pause to the fighting in Gaza—which would deprive Iran of reasons to keep attacking Israel—and seriously threaten Tehran to deter it from further retaliation. Washington may not be happy about taking these measures, but it has no choice. Only the Biden administration, beleaguered as it may be, can head off a catastrophic escalation. IN THE SHADOWS Iran has engaged in armed confrontation with Israel for more than 40 years. But it has done so indirectly and covertly. As I laid out in a recent Foreign Affairs essay (“Iran’s Order of Chaos”), Tehran has invested in and relied on proxy militia groups, which expand the regime’s influence while still insulating its leaders from risk. Iran, for example, collaborated with Hezbollah in 1992 to carry out a bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 22 people, but Iranian forces did not take part in the attack itself. In recent years, Tehran has funded, trained, and sent advanced weaponry (and knowledge about how to produce it) to a panoply of terrorist organizations that have killed Israelis at home and around the world, including Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias Iraq and Syria militias, as well as Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Yet until last week, its own troops never struck Israel or Israelis. Over time, the violence became a two-way street, with Israel mounting increasingly inventive efforts to preempt and retaliate against aggression from Iran and its proxies. Analysts, officials, and news organizations believe that Israel is responsible for the assassinations of at least six Iranian nuclear scientists (building on its long history of covertly killing terrorists). This includes the architect of Iran’s nuclear program, who was killed in an extraordinary 2020 operation involving a remote-controlled weapon. Israel has also conducted acts of sabotage and cyberattacks to slow Iran’s nuclear advancement. It even absconded with the official archives of Iran’s nuclear program. But Israel has never acknowledged its part in any of these measures. The country has been more open about its long-term military campaign to degrade and disrupt Iranian capabilities in Syria, including its airstrikes on Iranian weapons shipments and military positions. Yet Israel has never overtly attacked Iranian territory, either. The bloodshed, in other words, had a clearly defined limit. Both states observed an unstated injunction against any frontal assault on their respective home turfs, which would threaten to turn their simmering conflict into an all-out war that could engulf the broader region. Such a war would precipitate even greater dangers: for Israel, an Iranian nuclear weapon, for Tehran, U.S. military intervention. Multiple Israeli leaders have mulled taking military action against Iran’s steadily expanding nuclear infrastructure, as they did with Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, but they ultimately deferred in favor of other tools. Meanwhile, Tehran’s experience during its devastating eight-year war with Iraq conditioned a hard-won realism about the prospects of easy victory in a battle against an adversary with superior power. As a result, the regime’s wily strategists understood that their advantage lay in using asymmetric capabilities, including their proxies. WISHFUL THINKING To some observers, Iran’s attack is just a blip in this long-running pattern. In this interpretation, the strikes may have been merely symbolic or signaling. Tehran’s heavy-handed efforts to preview its plans for neighboring governments were intended to ensure that its slow-moving drones would be neutralized en route and that the overall impact of the strike would be negligible. After all, early analysis showed that only five of the 120 ballistic missiles fired from Iran actually crossed into Israeli territory, and that none of the 170 drones or 30 cruise missiles did. Iranian officials also issued a statement declaring an end to the clash before it was even over. This rationalization is reasonable in the wake of Iran’s dramatic failure, but it does not hold up to scrutiny. Having held back for more than four decades, Tehran must have appreciated the implications of its decision to defy one of the few taboos in the enduring conflict with Israel. It also understood the copious alternatives available to them to even the score, including attacking via proxy forces. An intentionally ineffectual Iranian attack would also hardly serve as a compelling deterrent. The failure to hit a single target might persuade Tehran’s adversaries that the regime is a paper tiger. Instead, the scale, scope, and complexity of the strikes were so considerable—larger than Russia’s biggest aerial assaults on Ukraine—that they seem to have had a greater aim: overwhelming Israel’s vaunted aerial defense systems. On that basis, Iranian leaders had to anticipate at least some Israeli casualties. From experience, they would understand that this would precipitate reprisal attacks. And yet they went forward nonetheless, in defiance of specific admonitions from Biden. Iran’s readiness to escalate betrays a shift that has taken place gradually over the past decade, as Iran’s original generation of revolutionary leaders has given way to a narrower and more hard-line faction. The pragmatic self-interest that drove historic compromises by previous Iranian leaders, evident in former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s push to end the war with Iraq in 1988 and former President Hassan Rouhani’s determination to achieve a nuclear truce, has dissipated. Instead, foreign policy decisions are increasingly in the hands of battle-hardened veterans of Iran’s regional adventures. The result is a new assertiveness, even recklessness, underpinned by an affinity with China and Russia that has displaced any interest in rehabilitating its relationships with the West. As a result, the regime may be inclined to attack Israel again in an effort to compensate for the embarrassing result of its most recent performance. PRIMED TO FIGHT Iran is not alone in being pushed toward escalation. Tehran’s attack ups the ante for an Israeli leadership that is already primed for action, as a result of past precedent and Israeli security doctrine. The country’s small size, its unique place as the homeland for the Jewish people, and the weight of historical memory have inspired a commitment to military self-reliance as well as a determination to ensure no adversary can act on threats to Israel’s existence. The government is also under substantial pressure to respond given its failure to foresee or mount an effective initial defense against Hamas’s shock attack. The country is still reeling from the terror and trauma of October 7, as well as the continued hostage crisis, and so few of its citizens are in the mood to hold back. There are, of course, contradictory precedents, such as the 1991 missile attacks by Saddam Hussein—which Israel ultimately left unanswered. There are also countervailing pressures. The Iranian attacks have reinvigorated strong public solidarity with Israel in Europe. They pushed Israel’s regional partners, which have deplored the humanitarian crisis created by Israel’s Gaza campaign, to participate in its defense. If Israel responded, it might lose this goodwill. A show of restraint, by contrast, could bear fruit. It might help Israel build a robust strategic coalition and restore some momentum to its pre–October 7 plans to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia. Perhaps that is why Benny Gantz, a centrist politician who is a member of the country’s war cabinet, has demurred on the question of whether Israel should retaliate and advocated for using this opportunity to strike new deals with Arab states. But the country’s all-out war in Gaza leaves no doubt about its leadership’s determination to eliminate its adversaries at almost any price. Casualties or not, the specter of future Iranian drone and missile barrages will harden Israel’s desire to degrade or eliminate the threat posed by Iran, its proxies, and its nuclear program. Those attacks may not come immediately or in the following weeks and months. But the baseline of Iranian-Israeli antagonism will remain elevated, the threshold for escalation lower, and the odds of miscalculation harrowingly high. AMERICA’S CONUNDRUM This new normal is especially unwelcome for the Biden administration. Since taking office, the president has tried hard to extricate the United States from the Middle East’s conflicts. He has worked to complete Washington’s long-attempted pivot to Asia, and he has focused heavily on helping Ukraine defend itself from Russia’s invasion. He rushed to Israel’s defense after October 7, but the White House has pushed hard for an end to the war in Gaza over the last several months. Biden certainly does not want to have to contend with even more turmoil in the region, especially in the midst of a fraught U.S. election, in which the politics of Middle East policy have featured in dramatic ways. But even for an administration prepared to ruthlessly prioritize American national security interests, a spiraling Iranian-Israeli conflict creates too many severe human, strategic, and economic risks to ignore. Like it or not, Washington is going to have to embrace the thankless task of stabilizing the Middle East through energetic diplomacy and by projecting power. Biden can start by amplifying his warning to Tehran and making clear that future attempts to attack Israel will be met with U.S. reprisals. He should make clear that Washington will respond to attacks on its partners and build on the success of foiling Iran’s strikes to deepen regional security integration. In addition, Biden should invest the copious political capital he has accumulated with Israel since October 7 to meaningfully shift the country’s approach to the war in Gaza away from indifference, or worse, toward the lives and futures of Palestinian civilians. Instead, Israeli leaders must develop a strategy that is designed not just to eradicate Hamas but to ensure good governance and security in the aftermath. It is time for Israel and the United States to recognize that the humanitarian crisis and governance vacuum in the enclave undermines Israel’s legitimate effort to remove Hamas from power and that the crisis provides an opening for Tehran. A full-force effort by Biden to pause the war could well succeed. When Biden has used U.S. leverage with Israel, as he did recently after an Israeli strike killed aid workers, he has achieved real progress. If the president redoubled his efforts, it could enable an infusion of food and other desperately needed relief to Palestinians and create space to hold talks aimed at stabilizing tensions with Hezbollah along Israel’s northern border. Doing so will begin to limit Iran’s room for maneuver. Biden should also press Israel to calibrate any retaliation to avoid precipitating further Iranian escalation. Israel can then again work toward deepening its security cooperation with its neighbors—which, as April 14 showed, is critical to the state’s safety. None of these steps will conclusively eliminate the threat posed by the Iranian regime to its neighbors, including Israel, and to the world. Ultimately, the fate of that regime remains in the hands of the Iranian people. But Washington can help deter Tehran and address the instability that gives the Islamic Republic such dangerous opportunities. Even a cold-blooded cost-benefit analysis justifies an investment, once again, of American blood, treasure, and leadership attention. Like Beijing and Moscow (and often in concert with them), Tehran is seeking to reshape the regional order to its advantage. Only the United States can lead an effort to ensure that it does not prevail. SUZANNE MALONEY is Vice President of the Brookings Institution and Director of its Foreign Policy program. MORE BY SUZANNE MALONEY More: Israel Iran Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict U.S. Foreign Policy Most-Read Articles The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko The Case for Progressive Realism Why Britain Must Chart a New Global Course David Lammy How Israel Can Win in Gaza—and Deter Iran The Key to Both Goals Is Going After Hamas in Rafah Elliott Abrams No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher Recommended Articles An anti-Israeli protest in Tehran, April 2024 Iran’s Order of Chaos How the Islamic Republic Is Remaking the Middle East Suzanne Maloney An Israeli antimissile system operating after Iran launched drones and missiles, seen from Ashkelon, Israel, April 2024 The Middle East Could Still Explode Iran and Israel May Not Be Finished Ali Vaez A missile model on display following Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel, Tehran, April 2024 Majid Asgaripour / West Asia News Agency / Reuters PODCAST Can Israel and Iran Step Back From the Brink? A Conversation With Ali Vaez and Suzanne Maloney April 18, 2024 On April 13, Iran did something it had never done before: it launched a direct attack on Israel from Iranian territory. As historic and spectacular as the attack was, Israel, the United States, and others managed to intercept a huge percentage of the drones and missiles fired, and the damage inflicted by Iranian strikes was minor. Still, the world is waiting tensely to see how Israel will respond—and whether the Middle East can avoid full-scale war. To understand the attack and its consequences, Foreign Affairs Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan spoke with Suzanne Maloney, vice president and director of the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy program, and Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group. We discuss where this conflict could go next—and how to bring the two sides back from the brink of war. Sources: “Iran’s Order of Chaos” by Suzanne Maloney “The Middle East Could Still Explode” by Ali Vaez “Why the War in Gaza Makes a Nuclear Iran More Likely” by Ali Vaez If you have feedback, email us at podcast@foreignaffairs.com. The Foreign Affairs Interview is produced by Kate Brannen, Julia Fleming-Dresser, and Molly McAnany; original music by Robin Hilton. Special thanks to Grace Finlayson, Nora Revenaugh, Caitlin Joseph, Asher Ross, Gabrielle Sierra, and Markus Zakaria. Stay up to date on new podcast episodes with The Foreign Affairs Interview newsletter. Delivered every other Thursday. Sign up here. Iran and Israel’s War Comes Out of the Shadows Why Tehran’s Hard-Liners Chose to Escalate By Afshon Ostovar April 19, 2024 At the National Army Day parade in Tehran, April 2024 At the National Army Day parade in Tehran, April 2024 Majid Asgaripour / West Asia News Agency / Reuters Last night, Israel struck a military airbase near the city of Isfahan in Iran. Iranian officials also claimed to have shot down small drones near the northern city of Tabriz. Despite these strikes constituting a direct and overt attack on Iranian territory, the Israeli assault appears limited so far. Although Iranian leaders have promised retribution to “the tiniest act of aggression” on their soil, their response, for the time being, seems muted. The news of the bombings and their small scale sparked initial assessments that both sides might be seeking to climb down from their spiraling conflict. Still, the latest episodes in this cycle of bomb-and-response represent a new, more troubling phase in the ongoing clash in the Middle East. Last week, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the preeminent branch of Iran’s armed forces and a pillar of its ruling regime—launched a mix of over 300 low-flying flying drones, cruise missiles, and high-altitude ballistic missiles in an attempt to overwhelm Israel’s defenses and cause severe damage to military targets in the country. The attack showcased Iran’s growing might and its willingness to strike at its adversaries. It was also a testament to the dominance of policy hawks within Iran’s security establishment. That faction, which both controls the upper echelons of the IRGC and prevails among young, up-and-coming officers, has had an outsize imprint on Iran’s foreign policy for decades and has become especially influential since the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the IRGC’s external operations wing, in 2020, by the United States. Its adherents reject pragmatism in dealings with the West, remain deeply committed to the Islamic Revolution’s founding ideological principles, and are particularly invested in using Iran’s military power and proxy network to advance their long-term objectives of destroying Israel as a Jewish state and ending U.S. influence in the Middle East. The strikes marked the first time that Iran had directly attacked Israeli territory. And yet many outside observers saw in Iran’s attack a degree of prudence. The salvo, they claimed, was an act of restraint, one meant primarily to signal resolve rather than cause damage. After all, Tehran had telegraphed its intentions, alerting its neighbors days earlier that it would respond to Israel through military force. Because 99 percent of its weapons failed to hit their targets—they were mostly intercepted by Israel and its Western partners, and a sizable proportion (perhaps up to half) of the 110 ballistic missiles that Iran fired at Israel did not properly launch or failed en route—some outside observers concluded that Iran’s attack had never been intended to do any damage at all. In this view, Iran’s actions were meant primarily to deter Israel from broadening the current conflagration. Tehran was showcasing both its strength and its self-control. But such thinking underplays a more consequential dimension of Iran’s response: that it responded overtly at all and at such immense scale. Iranian decision-makers could have chosen to keep waging their conflict with Israel through existing means and practices, such as through covert action or proxies, or through a more discreet missile attack. A limited attack would still have signaled Iran’s resolve while not straining the IRGC’s capabilities and—as has become the case—exposing its limitations. Iran went the other way, launching an unprecedented attack and employing nearly every type of weapon it possesses that could conceivably reach Israel. Such an action did not exhibit calculated restraint. On the contrary, the operation revealed the ascendance of the IRGC’s hawks in Tehran and the depth of their desire to take Israel head-on. THE SHADOW WAR Iran’s barrage was ostensibly retaliatory. It followed an Israeli strike in Damascus two weeks earlier that killed 16 people, including eight IRGC officers, in a building associated with Iran’s consulate. Tehran considered the Israeli attack a brazen act of escalation, but in truth Israel has struck at IRGC positions in Syria hundreds of times before. That campaign, which Israel has waged since 2013, has sought to discourage the IRGC from cementing its military presence in the country and to disrupt the supply of weapons to Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli militant groups in the Levant. Syria has therefore long been a frontline in the undeclared war between Iran and Israel—a conflict that began with the radicalization of Iranian foreign policy following the 1979 revolution and gained momentum as Iran’s influence spread across the region in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the tumult sparked by the Arab Spring nearly a decade later. The Iranian-Israeli conflict has played out mostly in the shadows of the Middle East’s larger wars. Iran’s principal mode of waging this fight has been to supply advanced weaponry—especially missiles and drones—to militant groups hostile to Israel in the Gaza Strip and in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Iran has further sought to provide lighter arms, such as automatic rifles and grenades, to militants in the West Bank. Tehran wants to destabilize Israel by ensnaring it in persistent conflict and surrounding it with enemies that it cannot easily defeat through military action. The IRGC’s support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas has been a cornerstone of that larger strategy. That support helped hone Hamas’s military capabilities, providing it with the technology and know-how to produce an extensive arsenal of rockets and missiles and to deploy that weaponry tactically and strategically. Hamas’s murderous insurrection on October 7 was in many ways the fruit of the IRGC’s covert campaign. The war that followed has highlighted the nearly insurmountable challenge that Israel faces. A brutal Israeli offensive has failed to snuff out Hamas, while the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians has earned Israel global condemnation. To counter Iran’s regional game plan, Israel has tried to impose costs on the regime both abroad and at home. The focal point of that campaign has been covert Israeli activity in Iran. Attacks, presumably conducted by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, have included bombings inside Iran’s most guarded nuclear and military facilities and assassinations of high-ranking officials, officers, and scientists. Perhaps the most audacious of those operations was the murder of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the IRGC’s top nuclear official, who was killed in 2020 by a remote-controlled machine gun as he returned to Tehran from holiday. Israel’s ability to conduct such precise and devastating operations has repeatedly exposed the fragility of Iran’s internal security. Each attack was more humiliating than the next, especially since Iran seemed unable to prevent them and was incapable of responding to Israel in kind. The Iranian attack did not exhibit calculated restraint, but rather a desire to take Israel head on. Although Iran strove to punish Israel through tit-for-tat attacks of its own, such as through attempts to assassinate prominent Israelis abroad and by attacking Israeli shipping, it relented from lashing out against Israel directly. That was partly out of concern that doing so could prompt a wider war with Israel and the United States. Many in the IRGC would welcome such a fight, but the prevailing consensus within the regime has long been that even though it might survive such a conflict, it could not win one. More pragmatic elements within the regime also sought to downplay the significance of the Israeli attacks within Iran. Although the successes of Israel’s shadow war were embarrassing for Iran, Israel’s operations were limited, did not meaningfully hurt Iran’s strategic programs, and could not fundamentally challenge Iran’s regional behavior. Guided by the cautiousness of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who has emphasized the long game and considers Iran’s victory over its enemies to be inevitable, these relative pragmatists viewed the status quo as favoring Iran more than Israel. Before October 7, Iran’s regional campaign was progressing well: its regional clients were ascendant, the United States’ grip on the Middle East was slipping, and Israel’s political divisions were steadily pushing the country toward crisis. Iran’s conflict with Israel remained loosely within mutually constructed parameters and was manageable. As long as Iran was willing to suffer the costs of the game, it would continue to hold the advantage over its opponents. The October 7 attacks and the war in Gaza strengthened Iran’s hand. Israel had suffered an unprecedented and humiliating defeat, its much-lauded defenses proving weaker than anybody imagined. Its subsequent bloody campaign in Gaza has revived support for the Palestinian cause both in the region and around the world. Sympathy for Israel has dissipated, particularly in the West, where denunciation of Israel’s war and its treatment of the Palestinians is becoming more voluble. Iranian officials were not in any rush to help end the war in Gaza, either by providing greater military aid to the Palestinians or by confronting Israel directly. The war, in fact, suited Iran’s agenda. Even though it endangered Hamas, Israel’s war was steadily harming the country’s image, exposing the hypocrisy of its Western backers, and resurrecting the Palestinian issue as a popular cause. Moreover, Iran did not need to intervene, because it could instead enlist its proxies to conduct mostly symbolic attacks on its behalf. To that end, Hezbollah has been routinely shelling northern Israel, and the Houthis in Yemen have launched numerous unsuccessful missile and drone strikes against Israel. Neither has dented Israel’s war effort, even if the Houthis repeated attacks off the coast of Yemen have succeeded in disrupting global shipping. Israel’s April attack against the IRGC in Damascus forced Iranian officials to make a more difficult choice. Because the attack was perceived to have hit an Iranian consulate building, Iran’s leaders considered it to be escalatory. The regime had a decision to make: either refrain from overt retaliation and continue to benefit from the present situation or respond to Israel with force and walk into a potential trap. Restraint would allow Iran to earn sympathy from Israel’s critics, to keep the spotlight on the atrocities in Gaza, and to watch Israel’s government sink deeper into a quagmire. Retaliating openly and with force would help Iran restore a more favorable status quo by discouraging Israel from again straying from the tacit parameters the two parties had established through the shadow war. Both routes carried risks. Restraint might encourage Israel to up the ante, forcing Iran’s hand at a later date. Retaliation would also be risky. An overt Iranian attack could heal the rift between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Joe Biden. Iranian military action could also distract the world from Israeli conduct in Gaza, deflect blame from Israel, and trigger a wider conflict. A war between Israel and Iran could also easily draw in the United States, and if that were to happen, Iran’s chances of success would severely diminish. NO TOUCHBACKS The regime’s move to retaliate overtly, and with an immense show of force, has signaled that decision-makers are no longer convinced by the logic of restraint. Policy hawks in the IRGC have advocated for a muscular response to Israel for a long time, and finally they convinced Khamenei to greenlight significant military action. The notion that Iran intentionally launched a weak attack does not stand up to scrutiny. Iran hoped to land an impressive blow against Israel. It gains nothing by revealing its own weaknesses while underlining Israel’s strengths. If Iran had wanted to simply send a message, it could have done so with far fewer munitions and at far less cost. As with all of its recent acts of military aggression, such as those that followed the killing of Soleimani, Iran combined the boldness of overt action with diplomacy aimed at forestalling or limiting retribution; it wants to have its cake and eat it, too. Knowing that the United States seeks to avoid being drawn back into a Middle Eastern war, and that Israel cannot easily conduct a war against Iran on its own, Tehran sought to provide both its rivals an off-ramp. By telegraphing its intentions, directing its strikes at only select military targets instead of population centers, and announcing afterward that those attacks would conclude its retaliatory actions, Iran hoped to stave off an Israeli military retort. But Israel may not want to give Iran the last word. Soon after Iran’s attack, Israel announced that it would respond through some sort of military action of its own. The first, and perhaps only, volley of that immediate retaliation appeared to come in a predawn operation on April 19 targeting an Iranian military base near Isfahan. The small-scale assault, involving a limited number of missiles or drones, succeeded in penetrating Iran’s air defenses but also seemed to message a desire for an end to the escalatory cycle. Even so, Tehran will have to decide whether it will follow through on its threat to retaliate with even greater force should Israel strike Iranian territory. In the aftermath of the attack, however, Iranian state-affiliated media personalities took to social media and dismissed the action as insignificant, with some suggesting that it had not involved serious weapons at all, but rather micro-quadcopters—nothing to get alarmed about. Israel’s minimal retaliation might succeed in staving off another exchange of overt hostilities, at least for a time. But what is missing here is any option that would in a definitive way end the conflict between the two countries. That is because this conflict is a war of choice, one largely imposed on Israel—and the region—by Iran. There are only two certain off-ramps: Israel could concede to Iran and end the project of the Jewish state or Iran could reverse its policies toward Israel. Solving the Palestinian issue, such as through a two-state solution, could also undermine Iran’s campaign and gradually encourage it to shift course. None of those things are likely to happen any time soon, which suggests that the conflict will persist. As long as Iran continues to press in its strategy of encircling Israel, and funneling advanced weapons to militant proxies that threaten Israeli population centers, Israel will be compelled to pursue its countervailing campaign against Iran. The longer that dynamic continues, the more likely open warfare between the two countries becomes. Such a war could not be fought by Iran and Israel in isolation. It would invariably draw in the United States, Iran’s regional proxies, and perhaps even neighboring states. It would range across a large swath of the region and, because of the many actors involved, would probably not be short. In truth, whether in a week, a year, or another decade, an open war between Iran and Israel in some form is all but inevitable. Indeed, the region may already be on the precipice, awaiting the plunge. AFSHON OSTOVAR is an Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the author of the forthcoming Wars of Ambition: The United States, Iran, and the Struggle for the Middle East. 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In the days that followed, the Russians attempted to encircle Kyiv. These were the first days and weeks of an invasion that could well have resulted in Ukraine’s defeat and subjugation by Russia. In retrospect, it seems almost miraculous that it did not. What happened on the battlefield is relatively well understood. What is less understood is the simultaneous intense diplomacy involving Moscow, Kyiv, and a host of other actors, which could have resulted in a settlement just weeks after the war began. By the end of March 2022, a series of in-person meetings in Belarus and Turkey and virtual engagements over video conference had produced the so-called Istanbul Communiqué, which described a framework for a settlement. Ukrainian and Russian negotiators then began working on the text of a treaty, making substantial progress toward an agreement. But in May, the talks broke off. The war raged on and has since cost tens of thousands of lives on both sides. What happened? How close were the parties to ending the war? And why did they never finalize a deal? To shed light on this often overlooked but critical episode in the war, we have examined draft agreements exchanged between the two sides, some details of which have not been reported previously. We have also conducted interviews with several participants in the talks as well as with officials serving at the time in key Western governments, to whom we have granted anonymity in order to discuss sensitive matters. And we have reviewed numerous contemporaneous and more recent interviews with and statements by Ukrainian and Russian officials who were serving at the time of the talks. Most of these are available on YouTube but are not in English and thus not widely known in the West. Finally, we scrutinized the timeline of events from the start of the invasion through the end of May, when talks broke down. When we put all these pieces together, what we found is surprising—and could have significant implications for future diplomatic efforts to end the war. In the midst of Moscow’s unprecedented aggression, the Russians and the Ukrainians almost finalized an agreement. Some observers and officials (including, most prominently, Russian President Vladimir Putin) have claimed that there was a deal on the table that would have ended the war but that the Ukrainians walked away from it because of a combination of pressure from their Western patrons and Kyiv’s own hubristic assumptions about Russian military weakness. Others have dismissed the significance of the talks entirely, claiming that the parties were merely going through the motions and buying time for battlefield realignments or that the draft agreements were unserious. Although those interpretations contain kernels of truth, they obscure more than they illuminate. There was no single smoking gun; this story defies simple explanations. Further, such monocausal accounts elide completely a fact that, in retrospect, seems extraordinary: in the midst of Moscow’s unprecedented aggression, the Russians and the Ukrainians almost finalized an agreement that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU. A final agreement proved elusive, however, for a number of reasons. Kyiv’s Western partners were reluctant to be drawn into a negotiation with Russia, particularly one that would have created new commitments for them to ensure Ukraine’s security. The public mood in Ukraine hardened with the discovery of Russian atrocities at Irpin and Bucha. And with the failure of Russia’s encirclement of Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky became more confident that, with sufficient Western support, he could win the war on the battlefield. Finally, although the parties’ attempt to resolve long-standing disputes over the security architecture offered the prospect of a lasting resolution to the war and enduring regional stability, they aimed too high, too soon. They tried to deliver an overarching settlement even as a basic cease-fire proved out of reach. Today, when the prospects for negotiations appear dim and relations between the parties are nearly nonexistent, the history of the spring 2022 talks might seem like a distraction with little insight directly applicable to present circumstances. But Putin and Zelensky surprised everyone with their mutual willingness to consider far-reaching concessions to end the war. They might well surprise everyone again in the future. ASSURANCE OR GUARANTEE? What did the Russians want to accomplish by invading Ukraine? On February 24, 2022, Putin gave a speech in which he justified the invasion by mentioning the vague goal of “denazification” of the country. The most reasonable interpretation of “denazification” was that Putin sought to topple the government in Kyiv, possibly killing or capturing Zelensky in the process. Yet days after the invasion began, Moscow began probing to find grounds for a compromise. A war Putin expected to be a cakewalk was already proving anything but, and this early openness to talking suggests he appears to have already abandoned the idea of outright regime change. Zelensky, as he had before the war, voiced an immediate interest in a personal meeting with Putin. Though he refused to talk directly with Zelensky, Putin did appoint a negotiating team. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko played the part of mediator. The talks began on February 28 at one of Lukashenko’s spacious countryside residences near the village of Liaskavichy, about 30 miles from the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. The Ukrainian delegation was headed by Davyd Arakhamia, the parliamentary leader of Zelensky’s political party, and included Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, and other senior officials. The Russian delegation was led by Vladimir Medinsky, a senior adviser to the Russian president who had earlier served as culture minister. It also included deputy ministers of defense and foreign affairs, among others. At the first meeting, the Russians presented a set of harsh conditions, effectively demanding Ukraine’s capitulation. This was a nonstarter. But as Moscow’s position on the battlefield continued to deteriorate, its positions at the negotiating table became less demanding. So on March 3 and March 7, the parties held a second and third round of talks, this time in Kamyanyuki, Belarus, just across the border from Poland. The Ukrainian delegation presented demands of their own: an immediate cease-fire and the establishment of humanitarian corridors that would allow civilians to safely leave the war zone. It was during the third round of talks that the Russians and the Ukrainians appear to have examined drafts for the first time. According to Medinsky, these were Russian drafts, which Medinsky’s delegation brought from Moscow and which probably reflected Moscow’s insistence on Ukraine’s neutral status. At this point, in-person meetings broke up for nearly three weeks, although the delegations continued to meet via Zoom. In those exchanges, the Ukrainians began to focus on the issue that would become central to their vision of the endgame for the war: security guarantees that would oblige other states to come to Ukraine’s defense if Russia attacked again in the future. It is not entirely clear when Kyiv first raised this issue in conversations with the Russians or Western countries. But on March 10, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, then in Antalya, Turkey, for a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, spoke of a “systematic, sustainable solution” for Ukraine, adding that the Ukrainians were “ready to discuss” guarantees it hoped to receive from NATO member states and Russia. Podolyak and Ukrainian Ambassador to Turkey Vasyl Bodnar after a meeting with the Russians, Istanbul, March 2022 Kemal Aslan / Reuters What Kuleba seemed to have in mind was a multilateral security guarantee, an arrangement whereby competing powers commit to the security of a third state, usually on the condition that it will remain unaligned with any of the guarantors. Such agreements had mostly fallen out of favor after the Cold War. Whereas alliances such as NATO intend to maintain collective defense against a common enemy, multilateral security guarantees are designed to prevent conflict among the guarantors over the alignment of the guaranteed state, and by extension to ensure that state’s security. Ukraine had a bitter experience with a less ironclad version of this sort of agreement: a multilateral security assurance, as opposed to a guarantee. In 1994, it signed on to the so-called Budapest Memorandum, joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a nonnuclear weapons state and agreeing to give up what was then the world’s third-largest arsenal. In return, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States promised that they would not attack Ukraine. Yet contrary to a widespread misconception, in the event of aggression against Ukraine, the agreement required the signatories only to call a UN Security Council meeting, not to come to the country’s defense. Russia’s full-scale invasion—and the cold reality that Ukraine was fighting an existential war on its own—drove Kyiv to find a way to both end the aggression and ensure it never happened again. On March 14, just as the two delegations were meeting via Zoom, Zelensky posted a message on his Telegram channel calling for “normal, effective security guarantees” that would not be “like the Budapest ones.” In an interview with Ukrainian journalists two days later, his adviser Podolyak explained that what Kyiv sought were “absolute security guarantees” that would require that “the signatories . . . do not stand aside in the event of an attack on Ukraine, as is the case now. Instead, they [would] take an active part in defending Ukraine in a conflict.” Ukraine’s demand not to be left to fend for itself again is completely understandable. Kyiv wanted (and still wants) to have a more reliable mechanism than Russia’s goodwill for its future security. But getting a guarantee would be difficult. Naftali Bennett was the Israeli prime minister at the time the talks were happening and was actively mediating between the two sides. In an interview with journalist Hanoch Daum posted online in February 2023, he recalled that he attempted to dissuade Zelensky from getting stuck on the question of security guarantees. “There is this joke about a guy trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a passerby,” Bennett explained. “I said: ‘America will give you guarantees? It will commit that in several years if Russia violates something, it will send soldiers? After leaving Afghanistan and all that?’ I said: ‘Volodymyr, it won’t happen.’” To put a finer point on it: if the United States and its allies were unwilling to provide Ukraine such guarantees (for example, in the form of NATO membership) before the war, why would they do so after Russia had so vividly demonstrated its willingness to attack Ukraine? The Ukrainian negotiators developed an answer to this question, but in the end, it didn’t persuade their risk-averse Western colleagues. Kyiv’s position was that, as the emerging guarantees concept implied, Russia would be a guarantor, too, which would mean Moscow essentially agreed that the other guarantors would be obliged to intervene if it attacked again. In other words, if Moscow accepted that any future aggression against Ukraine would mean a war between Russia and the United States, it would be no more inclined to attack Ukraine again than it would be to attack a NATO ally. A BREAKTHROUGH Throughout March, heavy fighting continued on all fronts. The Russians attempted to take Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy but failed spectacularly, although all three cities sustained heavy damage. By mid-March, the Russian army’s thrust toward Kyiv had stalled, and it was taking heavy casualties. The two delegations kept up talks over videoconference but returned to meeting in person on March 29, this time in Istanbul, Turkey. There, they appeared to have achieved a breakthrough. After the meeting, the sides announced they had agreed to a joint communiqué. The terms were broadly described during the two sides’ press statements in Istanbul. But we have obtained a copy of the full text of the draft communiqué, titled “Key Provisions of the Treaty on Ukraine’s Security Guarantees.” According to participants we interviewed, the Ukrainians had largely drafted the communiqué and the Russians provisionally accepted the idea of using it as the framework for a treaty. The treaty envisioned in the communiqué would proclaim Ukraine as a permanently neutral, nonnuclear state. Ukraine would renounce any intention to join military alliances or allow foreign military bases or troops on its soil. The communiqué listed as possible guarantors the permanent members of the UN Security Council (including Russia) along with Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, and Turkey. The communiqué also said that if Ukraine came under attack and requested assistance, all guarantor states would be obliged, following consultations with Ukraine and among themselves, to provide assistance to Ukraine to restore its security. Remarkably, these obligations were spelled out with much greater precision than NATO’s Article 5: imposing a no-fly zone, supplying weapons, or directly intervening with the guarantor state’s own military force. The Istanbul Communiqué called for the two sides to seek to peacefully resolve their dispute over Crimea during the next 15 years. Although Ukraine would be permanently neutral under the proposed framework, Kyiv’s path to EU membership would be left open, and the guarantor states (including Russia) would explicitly “confirm their intention to facilitate Ukraine’s membership in the European Union.” This was nothing short of extraordinary: in 2013, Putin had put intense pressure on Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to back out of a mere association agreement with the EU. Now, Russia was agreeing to “facilitate” Ukraine’s full accession to the EU. Although Ukraine’s interest in obtaining these security guarantees is clear, it is not obvious why Russia would agree to any of this. Just weeks earlier, Putin had attempted to seize Ukraine’s capital, oust its government, and impose a puppet regime. It seems far-fetched that he suddenly decided to accept that Ukraine—which was now more hostile to Russia than ever, thanks to Putin’s own actions—would become a member of the EU and have its independence and security guaranteed by the United States (among others). And yet the communiqué suggests that was precisely what Putin was willing to accept. We can only conjecture as to why. Putin’s blitzkrieg had failed; that was clear by early March. Perhaps he was now willing to cut his losses if he got his longest-standing demand: that Ukraine renounce its NATO aspirations and never host NATO forces on its territory. If he could not control the entire country, at least he could ensure his most basic security interests, stem the hemorrhaging of Russia’s economy, and restore the country’s international reputation. The communiqué also includes another provision that is stunning, in retrospect: it calls for the two sides to seek to peacefully resolve their dispute over Crimea during the next ten to 15 years. Since Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014, Moscow has never agreed to discuss its status, claiming that it was a region of Russia no different than any other. By offering to negotiate over its status, the Kremlin had tacitly admitted that was not the case. FIGHTING AND TALKING In remarks he made on March 29, immediately after the conclusion of the talks, Medinsky, the head of the Russian delegation, sounded decidedly upbeat, explaining that the discussions of the treaty on Ukraine’s neutrality were entering the practical phase and that—allowing for all the complexities presented by the treaty’s having many potential guarantors—it was possible that Putin and Zelensky would sign it at a summit in the foreseeable future. The next day, he told reporters, “Yesterday, the Ukrainian side, for the first time fixed in a written form its readiness to carry out a series of most important conditions for the building of future normal and good-neighborly relations with Russia.” He continued, “They handed to us the principles of a potential future settlement, fixed in writing.” Meanwhile, Russia had abandoned its efforts to take Kyiv and was pulling back its forces from the entire northern front. Alexander Fomin, Russia’s deputy minister of defense, had announced the decision in Istanbul on March 29, calling it an effort “to build mutual trust.” In fact, the withdrawal was a forced retreat. The Russians had overestimated their capabilities and underestimated the Ukrainian resistance and were now spinning their failure as a gracious diplomatic measure to facilitate peace talks. Even after reports from Bucha made headlines in April 2022, the two sides continued to work around the clock on a treaty. The withdrawal had far-reaching consequences. It stiffened Zelensky’s resolve, removing an immediate threat to his government, and demonstrated that Putin’s vaunted military machine could be pushed back, if not defeated, on the battlefield. It also enabled large-scale Western military assistance to Ukraine by freeing up the lines of communication leading to Kyiv. Finally, the retreat set the stage for the gruesome discovery of atrocities that Russian forces had committed in the Kyiv suburbs of Bucha and Irpin, where they had raped, mutilated, and murdered civilians. Reports from Bucha began to make headlines in early April. On April 4, Zelensky visited the town. The next day, he spoke to the UN Security Council via video and accused Russia of perpetrating war crimes in Bucha, comparing Russian forces to the Islamic State terrorist group (also known as ISIS). Zelensky called for the UN Security Council to expel Russia, a permanent member. Remarkably, however, the two sides continued to work around the clock on a treaty that Putin and Zelensky were supposed to sign during a summit to be held in the not-too-distant future. The sides were actively exchanging drafts with each other and, it appears, beginning to share them with other parties. (In his February 2023 interview, Bennett reported seeing 17 or 18 working drafts of the agreement; Lukashenko also reported seeing at least one.) We have closely scrutinized two of these drafts, one that is dated April 12 and another dated April 15, which participants in the talks told us was the last one exchanged between the parties. They are broadly similar but contain important differences—and both show that the communiqué had not resolved some key issues. Excerpt of a draft Russian-Ukrainian treaty dated April 15, 2022 First, whereas the communiqué and the April 12 draft made clear that guarantor states would decide independently whether to come to Kyiv’s aid in the event of an attack on Ukraine, in the April 15 draft, the Russians attempted to subvert this crucial article by insisting that such action would occur only “on the basis of a decision agreed to by all guarantor states”—giving the likely invader, Russia, a veto. According to a notation on the text, the Ukrainians rejected that amendment, insisting on the original formula, under which all the guarantors had an individual obligation to act and would not have to reach consensus before doing so. Excerpt of a draft Russian-Ukrainian treaty dated April 15, 2022. Red text in italics represents Russian positions not accepted by the Ukrainian side; red text in bold represents Ukrainian positions not accepted by the Russian side. Second, the drafts contain several articles that were added to the treaty at Russia’s insistence but were not part of the communiqué and related to matters that Ukraine refused to discuss. These require Ukraine to ban “fascism, Nazism, neo-Nazism, and aggressive nationalism”—and, to that end, to repeal six Ukrainian laws (fully or in part) that dealt, broadly, with contentious aspects of Soviet-era history, in particular the role of Ukrainian nationalists during World War II. It is easy to see why Ukraine would resist letting Russia determine its policies on historical memory, particularly in the context of a treaty on security guarantees. And the Russians knew these provisions would make it more difficult for the Ukrainians to accept the rest of the treaty. They might, therefore, be seen as poison pills. It is also possible, however, that the provisions were intended to allow Putin to save face. For example, by forcing Ukraine to repeal statutes that condemned the Soviet past and cast the Ukrainian nationalists who fought the Red Army during World War II as freedom fighters, the Kremlin could argue that it had achieved its stated goal of “denazification,” even though the original meaning of that phrase may well have been the replacement of Zelensky’s government. In the end, it remains unclear whether these provisions would have been a deal-breaker. The lead Ukrainian negotiator, Arakhamia, later downplayed their importance. As he put it in a November 2023 interview on a Ukrainian television news program, Russia had “hoped until the last moment that they [could] squeeze us to sign such an agreement, that we [would] adopt neutrality. This was the biggest thing for them. They were ready to finish the war if we, like Finland [during the Cold War], adopted neutrality and undertook not to join NATO.” The talks had deliberately skirted the question of borders and territory. The size and the structure of the Ukrainian military was also the subject of intense negotiation. As of April 15, the two sides remained quite far apart on the matter. The Ukrainians wanted a peacetime army of 250,000 people; the Russians insisted on a maximum of 85,000, considerably smaller than the standing army Ukraine had before the invasion in 2022. The Ukrainians wanted 800 tanks; the Russians would allow only 342. The difference between the range of missiles was even starker: 280 kilometers, or about 174 miles, (the Ukrainian position), and a mere 40 kilometers, or about 25 miles, (the Russian position). The talks had deliberately skirted the question of borders and territory. Evidently, the idea was for Putin and Zelensky to decide on those issues at the planned summit. It is easy to imagine that Putin would have insisted on holding all the territory that his forces had already occupied. The question is whether Zelensky could have been convinced to agree to this land grab. Despite these substantial disagreements, the April 15 draft suggests that the treaty would be signed within two weeks. Granted, that date might have shifted, but it shows that the two teams planned to move fast. “We were very close in mid-April 2022 to finalizing the war with a peace settlement,” one of the Ukrainian negotiators, Oleksandr Chalyi, recounted at a public appearance in December 2023. “[A] week after Putin started his aggression, he concluded he had made a huge mistake and tried to do everything possible to conclude an agreement with Ukraine.” WHAT HAPPENED? So why did the talks break off? Putin has claimed that Western powers intervened and spiked the deal because they were more interested in weakening Russia than in ending the war. He alleged that Boris Johnson, who was then the British prime minister, had delivered the message to the Ukrainians, on behalf of “the Anglo-Saxon world,” that they must “fight Russia until victory is achieved and Russia suffers a strategic defeat.” The Western response to these negotiations, while a far cry from Putin’s caricature, was certainly lukewarm. Washington and its allies were deeply skeptical about the prospects for the diplomatic track emerging from Istanbul; after all, the communiqué sidestepped the question of territory and borders, and the parties remained far apart on other crucial issues. It did not seem to them like a negotiation that was going to succeed. Moreover, a former U.S. official who worked on Ukraine policy at the time told us that the Ukrainians did not consult with Washington until after the communiqué had been issued, even though the treaty it described would have created new legal commitments for the United States—including an obligation to go to war with Russia if it invaded Ukraine again. That stipulation alone would have made the treaty a nonstarter for Washington. So instead of embracing the Istanbul communiqué and the subsequent diplomatic process, the West ramped up military aid to Kyiv and increased the pressure on Russia, including through an ever-tightening sanctions regime. The United Kingdom took the lead. Already on March 30, Johnson seemed disinclined toward diplomacy, stating that instead “we should continue to intensify sanctions with a rolling program until every single one of [Putin’s] troops is out of Ukraine.” On April 9, Johnson turned up in Kyiv —the first foreign leader to visit after the Russian withdrawal from the capital. He reportedly told Zelensky that he thought that “any deal with Putin was going to be pretty sordid.” Any deal, he recalled saying, “would be some victory for him: if you give him anything, he’ll just keep it, bank it, and then prepare for his next assault.” In the 2023 interview, Arakhamia ruffled some feathers by seeming to hold Johnson responsible for the outcome. “When we returned from Istanbul,” he said, “Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we won’t sign anything at all with [the Russians]—and let’s just keep fighting.” Since then, Putin has repeatedly used Arakhamia’s remarks to blame the West for the collapse of the talks and demonstrate Ukraine’s subordination to its supporters. Notwithstanding Putin’s manipulative spin, Arakhamia was pointing to a real problem: the communiqué described a multilateral framework that would require Western willingness to engage diplomatically with Russia and consider a genuine security guarantee for Ukraine. Neither was a priority for the United States and its allies at the time. Putin and Zelensky were willing to consider extraordinary compromises to end the war. In their public remarks, the Americans were never quite so dismissive of diplomacy as Johnson had been. But they did not appear to consider it central to their response to Russia’s invasion. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv two weeks after Johnson, mostly to coordinate greater military support. As Blinken put it at a press conference afterward, “The strategy that we’ve put in place—massive support for Ukraine, massive pressure against Russia, solidarity with more than 30 countries engaged in these efforts—is having real results.” Still, the claim that the West forced Ukraine to back out of the talks with Russia is baseless. It suggests that Kyiv had no say in the matter. True, the West’s offers of support must have strengthened Zelensky’s resolve, and the lack of Western enthusiasm does seem to have dampened his interest in diplomacy. Ultimately, however, in his discussions with Western leaders, Zelensky did not prioritize the pursuit of diplomacy with Russia to end the war. Neither the United States nor its allies perceived a strong demand from him for them to engage on the diplomatic track. At the time, given the outpouring of public sympathy in the West, such a push could well have affected Western policy. Zelensky was also unquestionably outraged by the Russian atrocities at Bucha and Irpin, and he probably understood that what he began to refer to as Russia’s “genocide” in Ukraine would make diplomacy with Moscow even more politically fraught. Still, the behind-the-scenes work on the draft treaty continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia’s war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv’s decision-making. The Ukrainians’ newfound confidence that they could win the war also clearly played a role. The Russian retreat from Kyiv and other major cities in the northeast and the prospect of more weapons from the West (with roads into Kyiv now under Ukrainian control) changed the military balance. Optimism about possible gains on the battlefield often reduces a belligerent’s interest in making compromises at the negotiating table. Indeed, by late April, Ukraine had hardened its position, demanding a Russian withdrawal from the Donbas as a precondition to any treaty. As Oleksii Danilov, the chair of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, put it on May 2: “A treaty with Russia is impossible—only capitulation can be accepted.” Russian and Ukrainian negotiators meeting in Istanbul, March 2022 Ukrainian Presidential Press Service / Reuters And then there is the Russian side of the story, which is difficult to assess. Was the whole negotiation a well-orchestrated charade, or was Moscow seriously interested in a settlement? Did Putin get cold feet when he understood that the West would not sign on to the accords or that the Ukrainian position had hardened? Even if Russia and Ukraine had overcome their disagreements, the framework they negotiated in Istanbul would have required buy-in from the United States and its allies. And those Western powers would have needed to take a political risk by engaging in negotiations with Russia and Ukraine and to put their credibility on the line by guaranteeing Ukraine’s security. At the time, and in the intervening two years, the willingness either to undertake high-stakes diplomacy or to truly commit to come to Ukraine’s defense in the future has been notably absent in Washington and European capitals. A final reason the talks failed is that the negotiators put the cart of a postwar security order before the horse of ending the war. The two sides skipped over essential matters of conflict management and mitigation (the creation of humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire, troop withdrawals) and instead tried to craft something like a long-term peace treaty that would resolve security disputes that had been the source of geopolitical tensions for decades. It was an admirably ambitious effort—but it proved too ambitious. To be fair, Russia, Ukraine, and the West had tried it the other way around—and also failed miserably. The Minsk agreements signed in 2014 and 2015 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas covered minutiae such as the date and time of the cessation of hostilities and which weapons system should be withdrawn by what distance. Both sides’ core security concerns were addressed indirectly, if at all. This history suggests that future talks should move forward on parallel tracks, with the practicalities of ending the war being addressed on one track while broader issues are covered in another. Europe—but Not NATO—Should Send Troops to Ukraine To Halt Russia’s Advance, Kyiv Needs More Boots on the Ground By Alex Crowther, Jahara Matisek, and Phillips P. O’Brien April 22, 2024 French and Ukrainian soldiers training in France, November 2023 Ataboo has been broken in Europe. Only a few months ago, it would have been inconceivable for European leaders to propose sending European troops to Ukraine. But on February 26, French President Emmanuel Macron said the deployment of European forces to Ukraine could not be “ruled out.” Since then, other European officials have joined the chorus; the Finnish defense minister and Polish foreign minister have both suggested that their countries’ forces could end up in Ukraine. These comments, combined with existing support for such measures in the Baltic states, show that there is a growing bloc of countries open to direct European intervention in the war. These explosive comments are driven by shifting conflict dynamics. The debate in the U.S. Congress over sending military aid to Ukraine has been a debacle. A new aid package is finally on track for approval, but the months of dithering in Washington have dismayed Europeans and given Moscow hope that Western resolve to support Kyiv is cracking. Russian forces—bolstered by equipment from China, Iran, and North Korea—have taken advantage of the gap in U.S. military support for Ukraine by stepping up their attacks on civilians and nonmilitary infrastructure. In early April, knowing that Ukraine was running short of antiaircraft ammunition, Russia launched a missile attack that destroyed the largest power plant in the Kyiv region. Earlier, in March, Russian forces targeted a hydroelectric dam in Dnipro and other electrical facilities around Kherson, undermining Ukrainian industry and making the country’s economy more dependent on the European electrical grid. Further damage to critical infrastructure, nuclear power plants, and agricultural land will dramatically raise the costs of reconstruction, for which Ukraine’s partners in the West will likely have to foot much of the bill. As Russian forces speed up their advance, the possibility that they could break through Ukrainian defenses along the eastern front and challenge Ukrainian control of Kharkiv or even Kyiv presents Europe with a security threat it cannot ignore. A Russian victory in Ukraine would vindicate President Vladimir Putin’s revisionist ambitions and belief in the inherent weakness of the West. It would enable the Kremlin to keep Russia on a war footing—an all-of-society approach to conquest that European countries would be unable to match. There is no reason to expect Putin to stop with Ukraine; he has already declared that all former Soviet republics should be returned to Russia. The Baltic states could be next, and Finland and Poland—which were both principalities in the pre-Soviet Russian Empire—could follow. By threatening to send troops, European countries are trying to disrupt this worrying trajectory. To truly change the outcome in Ukraine, however, European countries must do more than simply talk about deployments. If the United States continues to delay aid, and especially if it elects Donald Trump (who has pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours, presumably by allowing Putin to keep his ill-gotten gains) as president in November, Europe will be Ukraine’s only defender. European leaders cannot afford to let American political dysfunction dictate European security. They must seriously contemplate deploying troops to Ukraine to provide logistical support and training, to protect Ukraine’s borders and critical infrastructure, or even to defend Ukrainian cities. They must make it clear to Russia that Europe is willing to protect Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. Accepting the dire reality of the situation in Ukraine and addressing it now is better than leaving a door open for Russia to accelerate its imperial advance. CHANGE THE CONVERSATION The idea of European troops deploying to Ukraine has elicited predictable objections. The Kremlin was outraged by Macron and others’ recent statements warning of war—possibly a nuclear one—with all of Europe. Washington and Berlin also responded angrily. Both Germany and the United States have strictly limited the aid they gave Ukraine throughout the war, agonizing that Russia might make good on its threats of escalation, and they sharply criticized the more hawkish European states for what they see as unnecessary provocation. Such opposition does not lessen the benefits that European forces would provide in Ukraine, and the fact that Berlin, Moscow, and Washington all reacted so strongly shows why it is so important to have this discussion. European leaders have demonstrated that it is possible to break out of a one-sided escalation debate that, until how, has worked to Russia’s advantage. In the previous pattern, Moscow has threatened escalation, and Berlin and Washington have responded with words and actions aimed at de-escalation—a dynamic that deters both Germany and the United States from sending the more advanced missile systems that Ukraine desperately needs. Now, Europe is making the threats, and Russia is looking deeply uncomfortable. Too many politicians and pundits in the United States and Europe echo Putin’s own talking points by warning that any kind of external intervention in Ukraine would lead to World War III. In reality, sending European troops would be a normal response to a conflict of this kind. Russia’s invasion disrupted the regional balance of power, and Europe has a vital interest in seeing the imbalance corrected. The obvious way to do this is to provide a lifeline to a Ukrainian military that could once again be left high and dry by the United States, and the best lifeline would be European soldiers. Unless the politics in the United States change, Ukraine will need alternate sources of assistance to keep its fight going—and Europe is the natural backer. SEND IN THE TROOPS European forces could undertake either noncombat or combat operations to relieve some of the pressure on Ukraine. A strictly noncombat mission would be easiest to sell in most European capitals. European forces could relieve the Ukrainians performing logistics functions, such as maintaining and repairing combat vehicles. By staying west of the Dnieper River—a natural barrier protecting much of Ukraine from Russian advances—European forces would demonstrate that they are not there to kill Russian soldiers, preempting the inevitable Russian accusation of European aggression. Some Ukrainian vehicles are already being sent to Germany, Poland, and Romania for substantial repairs, but conducting this task closer to the front would speed up the process, reduce the time equipment is out of combat, and free up more Ukrainian forces for combat duties. French, Polish, and other European military advisers could also provide lethal and nonlethal training within Ukraine to further professionalize the country’s military. If additional mobilization expands the Ukrainian military in the coming year—which seems likely—increased capacity to train new recruits inside Ukraine will be particularly useful. Of course, European forces could do more than repair and train. The most limited form of European combat missions could still remain west of the Dnieper River and be defensive in nature. One such mission could involve strengthening Ukraine’s air defense capabilities in this region by deploying personnel, providing equipment, or even taking over command and control of the Ukrainian air defense system. The risks of escalation would be minimal, as European forces would have little chance of killing the Russian military pilots who launch munitions into Ukraine from Belarusian and Russian airspace. But they would help shoot down cruise missiles and drones. In doing so, European-led air defense batteries would free up more Ukrainian troops to protect forces near the frontlines while also frustrating Russian attempts to destroy critical infrastructure and terrify the Ukrainian population into surrender. European forces could perform other defensive and humanitarian tasks, too, such as demining and defusing unexploded Russian ordinance. Taking over such work from Ukrainian personnel would help protect civilians and support Ukraine’s economic recovery, as farmers are now struggling to plant and harvest crops in fields full of mines and other unexploded munitions. Sending European troops would be a normal response to a conflict of this kind. Another combat role—which, like an air defense mission, would likely not engage Russian forces—would involve patrolling parts of the Ukrainian border where Russian troops are not deployed, such as the Black Sea coast and the borders with Belarus and Transnistria (a breakaway region in Moldova occupied by Russian forces). Guarding these flanks would free up more than 20,000 Ukrainian troops (and the weapons and ammunition they carry) to fight on the frontlines. It would also reduce the likelihood of a new front opening along these borders, as Russia would almost certainly seek to avoid broadening the war by attacking other European militaries. European forces could also help secure Ukraine’s three remaining Black Sea ports, which are vital to both the Ukrainian economy and global food security, relieving additional Ukrainian soldiers. Any kind of European operation in Ukraine would carry emotional weight as well. The presence of European troops would raise the morale of the Ukrainian people and reassure them that their country’s future is in Europe. Finally, Europe needs to consider a direct combat mission that helps protect Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper. In addition to reducing the burden of the Ukrainian military in these regions, the presence of European troops would make it unlikely that Russian forces would advance across the river, protecting much of Ukraine from conquest. One potential Russian target is Odessa, Ukraine’s main port where most of the country’s exports are shipped. If Russian troops were to approach the city, European forces in the vicinity would have the right to defend themselves by firing on the advancing soldiers. They could help thwart a Russian offensive that, given Odessa’s strategic position, could strangle the Ukrainian economy and position Russian forces for a potential invasion of Moldova. Moscow would try to spin any lethal response to a Russian attack as European aggression, but Russia would be responsible for any escalation. PUTIN ON THE BACK FOOT The risk that deploying European soldiers to Ukraine in any capacity will escalate the conflict is overblown. Russia has precious little room to scale up its conventional attacks, short of deploying biological or chemical weapons. It has already lost more than 90 percent of its prewar army, with hundreds of thousands of casualties, tens of thousands of combat vehicles destroyed, and the vast majority of its most advanced weapons systems expended in attacks on Ukraine. Sanctions have made Russian weapons production more difficult and costly, and the deployment of troops to Ukraine has left Russia with barely enough forces to guard the rest of its long border, let alone mount a significant operation against other European states. In January 2022, the Russian army was widely considered second only to the U.S. Army; today, it may not even be the most powerful army in Ukraine. But if European leaders were to let Russia win in Ukraine, Putin’s takeaway would be that making nuclear threats could allow him to conquer more countries without provoking a European military response. The real question is whether Russia would actually use nuclear weapons if European forces enter Ukraine. Arguably, this is already a moot point, given that special operations forces from Western countries are currently operating inside Ukraine. Moscow regularly employs aggressive rhetoric toward NATO members, but so far it has been all bark and no bite, avoiding contact with NATO forces and focusing instead on neighboring countries outside the alliance, such as Georgia and Ukraine, that it can safely kick around. Putin threatened to attack Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states back in 2014, and over the next several years he threatened to invade Finland and Sweden for joining NATO, Norway for hosting additional U.S. troops, Poland and Romania for housing ballistic missile defense facilities, and “any European countries” that allowed U.S. missiles to be deployed on their soil. In the past decade and a half, the Kremlin has threatened or run war games that simulate the use of nuclear weapons against Denmark, Poland, Sweden, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, the Baltic states, the European Union as a whole, and, of course, NATO and the United States. At some point, European leaders must ignore Putin’s saber-rattling, which is merely propaganda premised on the baseless notion that NATO wants to attack or invade Russia. The arrival of European forces in Ukraine would change Putin’s calculations. Ultimately, Russia cannot afford to fight multiple European countries at once, much less start a nuclear war. Tellingly, the countries that are most likely to be targeted in a nuclear attack—those that border Russia, particularly Poland and the Baltic states—are the least concerned about that prospect but rightly fear the aggression of a reconstituted conventional Russian military, buoyed by success in Ukraine. Europe is far richer, is more technologically advanced, and has a much larger population than Russia. Moscow knows it cannot win by provoking the whole continent, and it seeks to avoid the U.S. military intervention that would very likely follow if Russian forces were to invade a NATO country and trigger Article 5 of the alliance’s charter. Instead, Russia is basing its hopes for victory almost entirely on Europe treating Ukraine as separate from the rest of the continent. So far, its hopes have come to pass. European leaders have tolerated attacks on Ukraine that would have triggered a united European response had they happened in any NATO or EU member state. This attitude has allowed Russia to escalate its war in Ukraine, safe in the knowledge that the rest of Europe will keep its distance. The arrival of European forces in Ukraine would change that calculation. Moscow would have to face the possibility that European escalation could make the war unwinnable for Russia. Moreover, a European-led response would subvert Russian propaganda that NATO countries’ intervention in Ukraine is merely an American ploy to undermine Russia. The narrative that NATO is the aggressor in this war is popular in many parts of the world, and countering it could help Europe further isolate Moscow both diplomatically and economically. And because European forces would be acting outside the NATO framework and NATO territory, any casualties would not trigger an Article 5 response and draw in the United States. Russia’s opponent would not be NATO but a coalition of European countries seeking to balance against naked Russian imperialism. Ukraine is doing the best it can, but it needs help—help that European countries are able and increasingly willing to provide. Rather than force Russian escalation, a European troop presence would be more likely to prevent the conflict from spreading and prevent further damage to Ukraine’s economy and infrastructure. European leaders do not need to follow the dictates of an increasingly unreliable United States about how the battle in Ukraine should be waged; they can and should decide for themselves how best to ensure the continent’s freedom and security. Europe must do what it takes to safeguard its own future, and that starts with making sure Ukraine wins this war. ALEX CROWTHER is a Senior Fellow with the Transatlantic Defense and Security Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis and a retired U.S. Army Colonel. JAHARA MATISEK is a Military Professor at the U.S. Naval War College, Research Fellow at the European Resilience Initiative Center, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force. The views expressed here are his own. PHILLIPS P. O’BRIEN is Head of the School of International Relations and Professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St. Andrews. MORE BY ALEX CROWTHER MORE BY JAHARA MATISEK MORE BY PHILLIPS P. 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Signed into law on April 16, the legislation comes at a time when Ukraine faces a series of growing challenges in its defense against Russia, from shortages of Ukraine’s soldiers and ammunition to wavering Western support. In this view, the new law could make it easier for the government to replenish its forces as it prepares for a major Russian offensive this summer. For Ukrainians, however, the law also represents something else. Subject to more than 4,200 amendments, the law required months of contentious debate in the Ukrainian parliament. Indeed, some of its original provisions—such as planning for how and when the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who have been serving since the war began should be discharged—were ultimately left out for a separate bill. But it also has become a symbol of Ukraine’s imperfect yet still flourishing democracy. More significantly, it has helped define the pivot point at which the country now stands: having weathered the initial emergency of war, Ukraine now needs to restructure its institutions and its society as it adapts to a potentially much longer conflict. Back in the spring and summer of 2022, in the months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukrainians’ response to the attack was almost spontaneous. Huge numbers of men enlisted, and despite brutal fighting and constant bombardment, they were able to defeat Russia’s attempt to take Kyiv and even to reclaim significant territory captured by the Russians. With arms and supplies flooding into Ukraine from the United States and the West and immediate fighting to be done, there was not much time to think about building the country’s own defense industries or managing the wartime economy. Today, the Ukrainians continue to maintain a tough frontline against the Russians and are as determined as ever to defend their country. But as the war becomes protracted, the country also faces major structural demands. The armed forces must be prepared to fight for months or years to come. The government has to keep the civilian economy afloat, even as it sends more of its able-bodied population into battle. And as the leadership in Kyiv awaits a long-delayed aid package from the U.S. Congress, it must learn to do more with less. In practice, that means creating a system in which much of the adult male population of the country—before the war, there were some 10.5 million men between the ages of 18 and 59—serves in the army. It means building, almost from scratch, a defense production capability that allows Ukraine to lessen its dependence on allies. And it means further reorganizing the national economy to ensure there is enough money to pay for the runaway costs of war. To meet these daunting tasks, the Ukrainian government has spent months pushing the mobilization bill through parliament. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also taken a series of interim steps to help close the gap in the armed forces, even as members of his administration try to put the economy on a more strategic war footing. But each of these moves requires balancing complex and sometimes contradictory decisions with the need to maintain the country’s social cohesion. Often, there are no perfect solutions. THE VETERANS’ DILEMMA After more than two years of war, Ukraine’s need for soldiers is acute. But it is not just a question of adding more people to the existing forces or making up for the fallen and wounded. In actual numbers, officials have made varying estimates of the country’s needs: in December 2023, army commanders demanded 500,000 new soldiers; more recently, the new commander in chief, General Oleksandr Syrsky, suggested that 150,000 recruits per year might be sufficient, although many regard that figure as too low. Equally pressing, however, may be the issue of maintaining troop quality. For many of the country’s military leaders, a top priority is providing a fair deal for those who have been risking their lives for two years already, even as millions of other Ukrainians have preserved a relatively normal way of life away from the battlefield. Thus, as new troops are mobilized, the army is under pressure to release some of its most experienced service personnel. But it is no secret that the vast combat experience that these veterans have cannot be matched by even the best-trained recruits, creating a dilemma for the army. Some of these challenges date to well before the current war. In the years leading up to Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine, whose territory had been the major defensive line between the Soviets and the West during the Cold War, had abolished the draft, and its standing army had shrunk to tiny levels. As the 2014 invasion was unfolding, Ukraine’s acting defense minister, with only slight exaggeration, claimed that the country had only 5,000 soldiers fit for combat. Moscow’s aggression became a wake-up call for Ukraine’s military and ushered in major reforms. The harder the state pushes, the more chance that Ukrainians will rebel. By 2022, the armed forces had grown to 300,000, many of whom were volunteers. Today, that figure has ballooned to more than one million people, out of a total population of about 40 million. A large majority began their service at the start of the war: following Russia’s February 2022 invasion, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians enlisted, and a draft of serving-age men began. (The call-up has continued to the present: on an almost weekly basis, most Ukrainians witness someone they know going into service.) The huge influx was crucial to Ukraine’s defense, but it also meant that the army began the war with very little experience or internal cohesion. Its soldiers are predominantly civilians who come from widely disparate social and economic backgrounds and have varying political views and levels of education. There is no such thing as a typical Ukrainian soldier anymore. Under existing law, there is no formal time limit for military service. Soldiers are supposed to be discharged when martial law ends—which means the end of the war and could be years away. As one officer told me, “Even the most determined [soldier] will consider this to be an eternal contract.” To address the problem, the original draft mobilization bill, when it was introduced in January, proposed to mandate demobilization after 36 months of active duty. But that provision was dropped because of pressure from military leaders, who feared they would lose their most experienced troops. Coming after two years of intense warfare, the challenge of building a just system for military enlistment has turned into a focal point for larger debates about Ukraine’s democratic foundations and the future of the war. Although the mobilization bill was in itself broadly supported, critics argued that some of its provisions violated the Ukrainian constitution, which cannot be changed under martial law and was written in times when a major land war on Ukrainian soil seemed almost unthinkable. For instance, the constitution guarantees the right of free movement and the right of education: if you were studying at a university or for a Ph.D., you could avoid the draft, whereas now, if you are of serving age, you may be conscripted. The new enlistment system also requires Ukrainians of serving age to provide personal data, which may violate existing privacy laws. Ukraine’s political classes are also sensitive to the country’s implicit social contract: the harder the state pushes and the stricter the rules that are enforced, the more chance there is that the Ukrainians will rebel and disobey. Like the Americans, the Ukrainians have a deep-seated suspicion of government intrusion in their lives. Thus, the government must find ways to encourage people to serve instead of forcing them to do so. YOUNGER AND STRONGER? This winter, while the mobilization law was held up in parliament, Zelensky began to issue a series of partial measures to alleviate the growing pressure for more troops. In February, he allowed foreigners to join the National Guard—mainly as a way to allow people who live in Ukraine with residence permits but not citizenship to serve in the armed forces. In early April, the president also signed into law a bill lowering the military mobilization age by two years, from 27 to 25, a step that opens the way to recruiting the country’s population of younger adult males. Many Ukrainians have long felt that keeping the country’s youth away from the horrors of battle was a wise policy. In Ukraine, mandatory military service starts at age 18 for those who are not studying for a university degree, but thus far, regular conscripts who are under 27 could not be ordered to the battlefield. Those younger men who are fighting in the war have done so of their own volition. (The new mobilization law replaces conscription with what is now called basic military training.) One result of these policies is that the average age of Ukrainian soldiers today is over 40; men can be mobilized up to age 60. This means that the army rank and file tend to be more mature, and many fighters have families to return to and know what’s at stake. A few of the more experienced soldiers in one squadron I spoke to emphasized that they do not want young men to fight because “the youngest are the least careful, and take too many risks.” Ukrainian soldiers firing a multiple launch rocket system, Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 2024 Sofiia Gatilova / Reuters After 26 months of war, however, the military understands that soldiers in their 20s are fitter and recover faster, allowing them to bounce back from injuries and return to the front. For instance, a young person who has experienced a concussion from an explosion may be able to recover from temporary hearing loss, whereas someone over 40 faces a higher risk of permanent deafness. In any event, the public seems to understand the military’s shifting needs. Zelensky’s decision to lower the draft age by two years—a move that has been anticipated for more than a year—has caused little popular reaction. He has also signed a bill requiring all Ukrainian men to register with a new “draftee e-account.” The account provides various online services to avoid paper bureaucracy, but it cannot be used for calling people for the draft. Although these steps—and the new mobilization law—won’t produce an immediate wave of fresh soldiers, they will make millions more Ukrainians visible to the military bureaucracy. Currently, although nearly 20 million Ukrainians use the mobile app DIYA—an identity system that makes official documents, such as passports and university diplomas, available online—the military’s draft registries are maintained on paper and are connected to the places where people are registered to work or their official place of residence. And since millions of Ukrainian men are internally displaced and not officially employed, they may not be in these records. Meanwhile, the government has sought better ways to deal with people who evade the draft. In 2023, Ukrainian courts prosecuted 1,274 people for evading military service; 60 cases resulted in prison sentences. There is also growing controversy about the abuse of draft exemptions, which are available to fathers who have to care for three or more children, single fathers, men who have to care for disabled relatives, or men who suffer from any one of a long list of health conditions. State institutions and companies also have the right to keep a set number of professionals with unique skills, such as doctors and nuclear scientists—a pool that could amount to as many as 500,000 people nationwide—out of the draft. Since the war began, prosecutors have opened thousands of investigations involving alleged bribes to military commissioners or forged documents; in August 2023, Zelensky replaced all the country’s regional military commissioners. THE FEAR FACTOR Still, in absolute terms, available manpower—and womanpower—is not the primary problem Ukraine is facing. According to one analysis released in March, there are as many as five million additional Ukrainian men who are potentially able to serve. Of these, 700,000 are between the ages of 18 to 25 and are currently deemed too young to serve. The study also found that if women who do not have children were mobilized, as many as three million women could be recruited, some of whom could be used in an auxiliary capacity or as support staff. Today, 45,000 women are serving in Ukrainian law enforcement, and around 5,500 are in combat roles as snipers, artillery specialists, or assault forces. But Ukrainian society remains conservative, and the idea of a general enlistment of women is not popular; Zelensky has said he opposes it. In any case, such far-reaching moves would require extensive debate, including what a total militarization of society lasting for years to come would mean for the population and for the economy. Recently, the Public Interest Journalism Lab, for which I work, together with the Kharkiv Institute for Social Research, conducted a focus group study with both current military members and potential recruits to ask in-depth questions about the draft. Our research is still being analyzed, but the initial findings have indicated that for many Ukrainians, fear of the unknown is a significant factor in shaping negative views of the draft reform. Many are afraid they will find themselves in Bakhmut or Avdiivka just a few days after enlistment. Almost everyone knows someone who has been killed in the war. Respondents are also concerned about the inefficient use of draftees’ skills: they wonder, for instance, if an engineer with three degrees and who is not physically fit may be sent to train as a paratrooper, whereas skilled drivers or professional fighters might be sent to join the marine troops rather than the tank brigades or sniper units. Such concerns could be mitigated by more transparent discussions from military commanders about their most acute troop needs, as well as a more nimble system for assessing skills and assigning tasks. Many Ukrainians also express concerns that the army is given insufficient material support, that soldiers are given little time to rest and recover, that the country’s “selective” approach to mobilization may not be fair, and that there is too little support for wounded soldiers and the families of the dead. In many cases, respondents complained about the lack of clear rules for payments in case of injury or death, even though such rules exist. The Ukrainian government, for instance, has decreed that it will provide families of soldiers who are killed in battle with 15 million Ukrainian hryvnia (about $377,000) compensation, an extraordinarily large sum. Yet the survey demonstrates that much of the population is not aware of it. The government has attempted a few media and outreach campaigns aimed at providing basic information about military service, but they clearly have been inadequate. Overwhelmingly pervasive, however, is the fear of injury or death, given that Ukrainians face an almost constant barrage of news about fresh casualties, and almost everybody knows someone who has been killed in the war. DEFIANT NORMALITY Closely linked to the mobilization dilemma is the question of how to maintain civilian life. The war is already estimated to have caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to Ukraine’s economic output. Entire industrial regions and large corporations have been destroyed. Ports that played a key role in international shipping and exports are blocked. Millions of professionals have left the country, and multiple economic sectors have simply disappeared during the war. Sustaining the military itself has also come at a high cost. Ukraine’s battlefield successes are often now taken for granted, but they have been crucial to sustaining efforts by the government to maintain a working society. The liberation of the capital and Ukrainian regions in the north, east, and south, holding the frontline for almost two years, and the crucial role of Western-supplied air defenses such as the Patriot missile system have helped allow millions of civilians to continue with fairly normal lives in large parts of the country. Notably, none of the funds provided to Ukraine by foreign partners such as the United States or the European Union are designated for paying Ukrainian soldiers or supporting arms production in Ukraine. Instead, international economic aid covers social payments, such as pensions, civil service salaries, and health care. As a result, almost all national revenues must now be used to maintain the armed forces. And that means that adding tens of thousands of new troops could put a further strain on the country’s coffers. Families of Ukrainian soldiers demanding demobilization measures, Kyiv, April 2024 Sofiia Gatilova / Reuters For now, the Ukrainian economy has continued to reinvent itself. New types of businesses appear and are even growing, little by little. One such sector is logistics, both inside and outside the country, as many industries have been relocated and require new supply chains. Another growth area relates to reconstruction and rebuilding in areas formerly under Russian occupation. Online services have also expanded across the country to serve the displaced population with e-banking, online education, and other needs. And other sectors, cut off from global markets, have reoriented their production domestically: instead of producing clothes for global retailers, for example, some companies are producing uniforms for the military. The government has also introduced initiatives to maintain whole industries with fewer people. Take agriculture, the sector that represents a considerable chunk of Ukraine’s economy. Some of the country’s largest fields are located close to the frontline and, in many cases, are now covered in land mines and can’t be planted. Moreover, the drivers of tractors and combines are major assets for the army, because they can drive tanks without much training, so many men in the agricultural sector have been drafted. In their absence, however, companies are developing unmanned farm vehicles that can be operated remotely. There are similarities to the way that businesses survived the COVID-19 pandemic: it will never be as good as it was in normal times, but many industries can somehow manage to operate. Keeping workers inside the country was and remains critical for maintaining jobs. Another challenge for the government is how to pay for large numbers of enlistees who are not yet fighting but no longer work and pay taxes. The government has negotiated with the military to keep some workers out of the draft in order to keep critical areas of the economy going. Thus, the economy is being gradually transformed through thousands of such small steps. WHERE ARE THE PATRIOTS? For months, Ukraine has had a critical shortage of ammunition. Consider the retreat from Avdiivka in February, which has become a focal point for international analysts concerned about the shifting momentum in the war. In fact, Ukrainian forces were forced to pull back after four months of battle mainly because they ran out of bullets, not because they were losing the fight. Even the country’s most experienced battalions cannot overcome this shortfall. Observing the inability of Ukraine’s Western partners to resupply weapons in a timely fashion, many feared the collapse of the frontline this spring. Those fears were alleviated somewhat by recent deliveries of ammunition, in particular from the Czech Republic and Germany, which have at least partially stabilized the situation. But they have also underscored how crucial this one element is to the overall war effort. Today, military officials must confront the dilemma of whether it makes sense to send waves of new soldiers to a frontline where many current soldiers already lack ammunition. The most common explanation for Ukraine’s ammunition crisis is a global supply problem: Ukraine’s allies themselves, the logic goes, have not been able to produce munitions rapidly enough to keep up with demand. But arms experts disagree about how many weapons and ammunition supplies are still sitting in the warehouses of democratic allies. A lot depends on distribution. As with vaccine competition during the pandemic, countries may be hoarding supplies at a moment when global instability makes armed conflict more likely. Loading ammunition into a magazine, near Kyiv, April 2024 Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters South Korea, for example, is often mentioned as a state that produces enough ammunition to sell to other partners, yet it tends to keep a large surplus for domestic contingencies. By contrast, a few eastern European states, in particular in the Baltic region, have given almost everything they have to Ukraine, arguing that Russia wouldn’t attack a NATO state and that the Ukrainians are holding the frontline for the entire Western world. At the World Economic Forum in January, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis stated that what is currently given to Ukraine is just a small part of what is necessary to defend a country of a similar size. Landsbergis noted that Poland has responded to the Ukraine crisis by ordering from the United States some 1,000 Abrams tanks, 500 long-range guided HIMARS missile systems, and 40 Patriot missile systems. “Poland is roughly the same size and has the same population as Ukraine,” Landsbergis said, “and Poland has NATO’s Article 5.” Ukraine, he implied, would need much more than that. Ukraine is currently believed to possess some Abrams tanks, a few dozen HIMARS systems, and fewer than ten Patriot systems. Recently, Zelensky announced that 25 Patriot systems would be enough to defend the whole of the country. But Russian attacks are intensifying. On March 22, Moscow launched its deadliest attack on the Ukrainian energy system, and in Kharkiv, Odessa, and Zaporizhzhia, it has started to use so-called double strikes, well documented in Russia’s campaign in Syria: after a strike on a target, Russian forces will follow up with a second strike in the same area to deliberately target rescue workers and doctors coming to save the victims. On April 17, Russia also attacked the city center of Chernihiv in northern Ukraine with three missiles, killing at least 18 civilians, injuring 78 more, including four children, and damaging more than 500 apartments in 28 high-rise buildings. The strike has raised new alarms about the expected summer offensive; many observers point out that the attack could have been neutralized if Ukraine had received more air defense systems from its Western partners. HOME REMEDIES For the foreseeable future, Kyiv will continue to depend on its allies for more sophisticated weapons such as HIMARS and Patriot systems. To confront Russia’s air dominance, it is also resting its hopes on the long-awaited delivery of F-16 fighter jets this summer. According to an analysis of Ukraine’s military budget through 2030 by Janes, a defense intelligence firm, Ukraine’s military procurement jumped to a projected 20-year high of nearly $10 billion in 2023, compared with a prewar figure of about $1 billion a year. But the Ukrainian leadership recognizes that it is equally important to bolster the country’s own defense industry. By now, Ukraine has started to produce Bohdana artillery cannons, which are able to shoot NATO-caliber rounds, but it will need to do more. Zelensky is often criticized by the opposition for failing to prepare the economy for the full invasion and instead naively trying to find a peaceful solution to the conflict with Russia. He has responded that scaring the population by moving to a total war footing would have caused an outflow of investors and workers, the departure of businesses and taxpayers, and, in the end, a lack of funds in the state budget with which to wage a defense. In some ways, today’s dilemma is similar: the government must figure out how to spend more on defense while still preserving some level of normality, so that the country’s best minds do not leave and businesses can function. Although ideas about nationalizing businesses, forcing private companies to produce weapons, and using citizens to make shells have come up during public debates, they are hard to put into practice without compromising Ukraine’s democratic foundations. For Ukraine’s defense industries, the problem is not lack of capability, but lack of funds. Nevertheless, the government is making some changes. Oleksandr Kamyshin, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister, has observed that Ukrainian industry could learn to produce various types of shells and drones and currently has $20 billion worth of production capacity. At the moment, however, the state budget can come up with no more than $6 billion for procurement. According to Kamyshin, the problem is no longer lack of capabilities but lack of funds. But there may be ways around this problem as well. Today, many of Ukraine’s partners prefer to rely on weapons produced by their domestic markets. This is the case with the United States and Canada, just as European countries often rely on European producers. Over the last few years, some private Ukrainian companies have switched to weapons production and also managed to produce cheaper models than their Western counterparts. For instance, a Canadian Sky Ranger R70 drone costs $90,000, whereas a similar Ukrainian model costs from $10,000 to $25,000. Now, Kamyshin has proposed to Western allies that they should purchase Ukrainian-produced weapons for Ukrainian forces, which, in addition to serving urgent frontline needs, would bring an infusion of cash to develop Ukraine’s defense sector. In fact, on April 18, Denmark became the first Western country to do so, reaching a deal with Kyiv to buy $28.5 million worth of Ukrainian-produced weapons and military equipment for Ukrainian forces. CONSTANT GAME CHANGING Observing the evolving war in Ukraine, arms experts have noted that successful defense production depends less on the capacity to produce any one particular technology than on the continual ability to modernize. Consider the case of drones: during the first year of the invasion, the Russians were hardly using any drones; now, they have made drones a central part of their arsenal. Moscow is not only importing large quantities of drones from Iran and North Korea but has also organized its own production of models that it previously bought from Tehran. For Ukraine, the takeaway is that relentless innovation is necessary, because the adversary is constantly learning and adapting. Many Western defense companies, far from the battlefield, are not equipped to respond nimbly to the latest needs with new prototypes. But for the Ukrainian military and for Ukraine’s engineers and IT specialists, continual adaptation has become the only viable way to proceed. For example, Ukraine has been testing a variety of unmanned technologies—basically robots—that can be used for mining bridges, evacuating the wounded, and delivering weapons. Various IT solutions are in continuous development for communications and intelligence. Sometimes it is not just about the battlefield. As one Ukrainian soldier noted, she now uses ChatGPT for writing military reports, which saves her hours she used to spend on bureaucratic chores. Ukrainians are cautious about using the term “asymmetric warfare” in their war with Russia. Former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk explains that the term can lead foreign partners to see Ukraine’s fight as a form of guerrilla warfare rather than as a full-fledged military campaign. That assumption caused problems in the run-up to the Russian invasion and during the initial months afterward, when the United Kingdom and the United States limited their supply of equipment to Ukraine to portable antitank weapons. These can be helpful in urban warfare, but they are hardly sufficient for the kind of conventional warfare Ukrainian forces are contending with, involving very long frontlines and thousands of square miles of land. Still, Ukraine has continued to reap tactical benefits by using approaches that surprise the enemy. A Ukrainian soldier during combat, Chernihiv region, Ukraine, March 2024 Gleb Garanich / Reuters Zagorodnyuk insists the current war of attrition is also bad for Russia. The Ukrainian secret service claimed that one of its recent attacks was aimed at a factory in Tatarstan, where the Russians were producing drones using Iranian technology. Ukraine’s military goal in this war is not just to retake the territories and save people from the brutal Russian occupation. Kyiv has to destroy Moscow’s capabilities to grab new territories and prevent it from carrying out future missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. During the past year, the armed forces of Ukraine demonstrated they are able to do this in the Black Sea—and almost without naval support, relying mainly on sea drones produced in Ukraine. As a result of Ukrainian pressure, the Russian navy has moved away from Crimea, closer to Russian naval bases. This has significantly decreased Russian missile capabilities. The farther the Russian flagships are from Ukrainian shores, the less they can shoot and the less precise their attacks are. This also unblocked the passageway for Ukraine to resume agricultural exports, which bring money to the state budget. Ukraine has also destroyed some Russian planes, including the Ilyushin Il-20PP, which Russia claimed to be capable of jamming modern AWACS aircraft and Patriots air defense systems while blocking analogous jamming measures. Nonetheless, the Russian army has also demonstrated that quantity still can override quality. Even without good reconnaissance, an abundance of drones can be used effectively. That’s not an approach that Ukraine can afford, but Ukrainians can benefit from their growing knowledge of how to deal with weapons and plan military tactics. THE SPARTAN FUTURE Although Ukraine may have to militarize the economy to survive, that doesn’t mean that it will have to militarize society, as well. There is nothing more normal than aspiring to a world without wars, and after Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, that is what the country mostly did. Its leaders assumed that fewer soldiers were needed and that less could be spent on defense. Then, in 2022, Ukrainians learned the hard way that you can be dragged into a fight without asking for one. Today, no one is arguing that the country’s defenses shouldn’t be further strengthened. While I was embedded in an elite paratrooper squadron near the Russian border, I asked the squadron members how they see their futures after the war and how the military sees the future of the country. All were in agreement: they missed their wives and kids and dreamed of laying down their arms. “Most of the people here would love to get rid of the guns as long as we’re home, we definitely won’t miss them,” said one. Yet they quickly added that this would be possible only when they knew their families were safe and wouldn’t be attacked again. In the case of Maksym, the soldier I talked to, he said his whole village was waiting for him to come back home, as soon as the Russians leave Ukrainian soil. “We do not need any piece of Russian land, because then instead of being liberators, we would become occupiers,” he said. “If that happened, what would it all be for?” Even if a cease-fire agreement is someday reached and the war ends, Ukrainians know that they will always have Russia and Belarus on their borders. That means a permanent threat, and the country will have an ongoing demand for weapons to defend itself. Most European states developed their military infrastructure during the Cold War, when defense spending was high. Ukraine, a very big country, must do so amid a hot war on its own soil, when it has few resources and desperate needs. Under such circumstances, reshaping the social and economic system—and preserving the country’s democratic institutions—cannot depend on one leader or even the armed forces; it requires the involvement of the entire country. And there are no definite right answers. NATALIYA GUMENYUK, a Ukrainian journalist, is CEO of the Public Interest Journalism Lab and Co-Founder of the Reckoning Project. MORE BY NATALIYA GUMENYUK More: Ukraine Russian Federation Geopolitics Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky Most-Read Articles The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko Are Human Rights Universal? Thomas M. Franck Brave New Ukraine How the World’s Most Besieged Democracy Is Adjusting to Permanent War Nataliya Gumenyuk Recommended Articles Russian and Ukrainian negotiators meeting via videoconference in March 2022 The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin The Coming Arab Backlash Middle Eastern Regimes—and America—Ignore Public Anger at Their Peril By Marc Lynch April 22, 2024 A protest in support of Palestinians near the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, March 2024 Since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, the Middle East has been rocked by mass protests. Egyptians have demonstrated in solidarity with Palestinians at great personal risk, and Iraqis, Moroccans, Tunisians, and Yemenis have taken to the streets in vast numbers. Meanwhile, Jordanians have broken long-standing redlines by marching on the Israeli embassy, and Saudi Arabia has refused to resume normalization talks with Israel, in part because of its people’s deep fury over Israel’s operations in the Gaza Strip. For Washington, the view is that none of this mobilization really matters. Arab leaders, after all, are among the world’s most experienced practitioners of realpolitik, and they have a record of ignoring their people’s preferences. The protests, although large, have been manageable. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and other leaders have long encouraged protests about the treatment of Palestinians, which allow their people to blow off steam and direct their anger toward a foreign enemy instead of against domestic corruption and incompetence. In time, or so the argument goes, the fighting in Gaza will end, the angry protesters will go home, and their leaders will carry on pursuing self-interests, an activity at which they excel. U.S. foreign policymakers also have a long history of disregarding public opinion in the Middle East—the so-called Arab street. After all, if autocratic Arab leaders are calling the shots, then it is not necessary to put stock in what angry activists shout or in what ordinary citizens tell pollsters or the media. Since there are no democracies in the Middle East, care need not be given to what anyone outside the palaces thinks. And for all its talk of democracy and human rights, Washington has always been more comfortable dealing with pragmatic autocrats than with publics it regards as irrational, extremist mobs. It rarely pauses to consider how this might contribute to its dismal record of policy failures. The United States’ willingness to dismiss popular concerns is strengthened by the memory of 2003, when Arab public opinion was wildly against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but most of the region’s leaders cooperated with the invasion and none took steps to oppose it. Despite decades of frequent mass protests against Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan and Egypt have maintained peace treaties with Israel, and Egypt has even actively participated in the siege of Gaza. Indeed, U.S. complacency has actually increased as anticipated eruptions of popular anger—for example, over moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem or bombing Yemen—failed to materialize. Washington’s conviction was briefly shaken by the Arab uprisings of 2011, but it returned in full force as autocracies reasserted control in the following years. That seems to be what the United States and most policy analysts expect this time around, too. When the bombing is finally over, the crowds will return to their homes and find other things to be mad about, and regional politics can go back to normal. But these assumptions reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of how public opinion matters in the Middle East, as well as a deep misreading of what has truly changed since the 2011 uprisings. NO IDLE CHATTER The term “Arab street” is used by policymakers to reduce regional public opinion to the rantings of an irrational, hostile, and emotional mob that might be appeased or repressed but is without coherent policy preferences or ideas. The expression has deep roots in British and French colonial rule and was adopted by the United States as it entered the Cold War and came to believe that education and capitalism are capable of transforming the Middle East into the image of the West. These ideas underpinned Washington’s policy of cooperating with Arab dictators who could control their people. That suited Arab leaders, who could deflect Western pressure on issues such as Israel or democratization by pointing to the threat of popular uprisings and Islamic boogeymen waiting in the wings to take their place. Before 2011, the high point of the Arab street concept occurred during the so-called Arab cold war of the 1950s, when populist pan-Arab leaders enjoyed great success in mobilizing the masses against conservative Western allies in the name of Arab unity and support for Palestinians. The sight of thousands of angry protesters responding to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s radio addresses by rampaging through the streets in countries including Jordan impressed itself on Western policymakers. Washington, in particular, concluded that the Arab street was dangerous, creating openings for the Soviets. These peoples, then, were not to be reasoned with but to be controlled by force. Long after the Cold War ended, this perception has endured, although it rests on a basic misunderstanding of Arab politics and continues to drive U.S. Middle East policy, as well as many policy analyses of the region. It has always been easier to dismiss Arab support for the Palestinian territories as rooted in atavistic anti-Semitism—or to wave away public fury at U.S. policies as cynically drummed up by politicians—than to take seriously the reasons for Arabs’ anger and to find ways to address their concerns. This idea of the Arab street changed somewhat in the 1990s and the subsequent decade. Satellite television, especially Al Jazeera, crystallized in these decades and shaped a pan-Arab public opinion. The rise of systematic, scientific public opinion polling in the 1990s provided considerable nuance about national variances, attitudes changing in response to events, and sophisticated assessments of political conditions. The emergence of social media allowed a wide variety of Arab voices to break the media’s control and shatter stereotypes through their unmediated analysis and interactive engagement. After 9/11, Washington put great effort into a war of ideas, designed to combat extremist and Islamist ideas across the region, an approach that, however misguided, did require significant investment in survey research and careful attention to Arab media and emerging social media. But then the uprisings in 2011 shattered general complacency about the stability of the region’s autocrats, showing that the people’s voices needed to be heard and taken into account. THE AUTOCRATS SHAKE BUT SURVIVE The memory of the 2011 uprisings still hangs over every calculation of regime stability in today’s Middle East. The results of those revolutionary events carried mixed lessons. The rapid spread of regime-threatening protests from Tunisia across virtually the entire region showed that the supposed stability of Arab autocracies was mostly a myth. For a brief moment, it stopped making sense for Washington to ignore the subtleties of Arab public opinion or to defer to the assurances of jaded Arab rulers. The uprisings were manifestly not simply the eruption of a mindless Arab street. Rather, the young revolutionaries who captured the spirit of the era articulated thoughtful, incisive critiques of the autocrats they challenged, and even the Islamists in their midst spoke the language of freedom and democracy. Western governments initially raced to engage with these impressive young leaders and tried to support their efforts to bring about democratic transitions and more open political systems. But such lessons were quickly forgotten as Arab regimes regained control through military coups, political engineering, and wide-ranging repression. Autocrats throughout the region helped other autocrats restore their power, and the West simply stood by. The United States, for example, did not act as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf states supported Bahrain’s vicious repression of its protests in 2011 and poured financial and political support into the 2013 Egyptian military coup. The autocratic restoration that followed brought a level of repression that went far beyond that which had existed before 2011, with regimes across the region crushing and silencing civil society, fearing any resurgence of opposition. Digital surveillance aided these repressive measures, giving regimes unprecedentedly nuanced understandings of their citizens’ views and the potential for opposition movements to appear. The autocratic restoration quickly resulted in the return of an older model of Western foreign policy based on cooperating with autocratic elites and ignoring the views of Arab publics. Nowhere could this be seen more clearly than in U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From 1991 until recently, Washington had shepherded a peace process in part because U.S. leaders believed that delivering a just solution for Palestinians was essential to legitimize U.S. primacy. President Donald Trump’s administration, however, simply ignored Palestinian and Arab public opinion as it brokered the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, without resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The accords also included Sudan, as well as Morocco, after Washington agreed to recognize its sovereignty over Western Sahara. Autocrats in the region helped other autocrats restore power, and the West stood by. U.S. President Joe Biden, despite promising campaign rhetoric, instead wholeheartedly embraced Trump’s approach to the Middle East, pushing for Arab-Israeli normalization and ignoring democracy and human rights. After his inauguration in 2021, Biden abandoned his promises to put human rights first and make Saudi Arabia a pariah for its murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and its war on Yemen. Instead, he scrambled with unseemly desperation to finish Trump’s policies of normalizing relations with Israel without resolving the Palestinian issue and fending off Chinese gains in the region by securing an agreement with Saudi Arabia. It is not an accident that the Hamas assault on Israel on October 7 coincided with the Biden administration’s full-court press for a Saudi normalization deal in the midst of unprecedented provocations by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. There were many signs of Arab discontent with normalization and countless warnings of an imminent explosion in Gaza, but Washington ignored them as just another instance of misguided deference to an Arab street that it believed its autocratic allies could control. It was wrong. That is because public opinion matters in the Middle East. Politics matter, even under autocracies, and in the Middle East, political forces move seamlessly between the domestic and the regional. Successful leaders must learn to master both dimensions of the game. Part of ensuring their survival is knowing how to respond to protests, and the response depends on the issue at hand. Western diplomats listen to Arab rulers who would not sacrifice even minor interests for the greater good if they could get away with it. Of course, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would do a deal with Israel if he thought it would serve his government’s interests and he could absorb public anger without too much risk. But that is a big if. Prince Mohammed and other Arab leaders care about what might get them overthrown. For the most part, they care about one thing more than anything else: staying in power. That means not only preventing obviously regime-threatening mass protests but also being attentive to potential sources of discontent and responding as necessary to head them off. With almost every Arab country outside the Gulf suffering extreme economic problems, and accordingly exercising maximum repression, regimes have to be even more careful in responding to issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Arab leaders are, meanwhile, also focused on the regional political game and fiercely compete to position themselves as the most effective defenders of their shared identities and interests. That is why they often dress up even the most nakedly cynical and self-interested moves as serving the interests of Palestinians or defending Arab honor. The recent actions of the United Arab Emirates, such as when it tried to justify the Abraham Accords by claiming to have prevented Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned annexation of the West Bank, are a case in point. Arab leaders care about what gives them an advantage or threatens them in the intensely competitive game of regional politics—whether that is against other Arab contenders for influence or against other powers, including Turkey and Iran. The regional dimension of competition has become even more intense over the last decade, as the Arab uprisings highlighted how political developments throughout the region may risk the survival of any domestic regime. Most notably, Qatar competed hard with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over political transitions and civil wars in Syria, Tunisia, and elsewhere, seeking to shape public opinion but also responding to it. THE BUILDING BACKLASH Today, it is glaringly obvious that it was wrong for the United States to assume that it could ignore Arab public opinion about the treatment of Palestinians. Arabs have not, in fact, lost interest in the issue. And Arab regimes have not, in fact, established a death grip on public mobilization. Almost every regime now finds its publics extraordinarily mobilized by what they consider to be Israel’s genocidal campaign against Gaza and a new program of displacement and occupation. The resulting level of mobilization and public outrage exceeds the 2003 fury over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and it is clearly influencing the behavior of the region’s regimes. Indeed, the degree and power of popular mobilization can be seen not only in the media and the crowds in the streets but also in the uncharacteristic criticism of Israel and the United States being voiced by regimes that need to get this right in order to survive. Even Egypt, a close U.S. partner, has threatened to freeze the Camp David Accords if Israel invades Rafah or expels Gazans into the Sinai. The Arab media, which had been badly fragmented and politically polarized during the previous decade’s intraregional political wars, has largely reunited in defense of Gaza. Al Jazeera is back, reliving its glory days through round-the-clock coverage of the horrors there, even as its journalists have been killed in action by Israeli forces. Social media is back, too—not the corpse of Twitter or the woefully censored Facebook and Instagram, so much as newer apps such as TikTok, WhatsApp, and Telegram. The images and videos emerging from Gaza overwhelm the spin offered by Israel and the United States and easily bypass soft-pedaled coverage by Western news outlets. People see the devastation. Every day they confront scenes of unbelievable tragedy. And they know victims directly. They do not need the media to understand WhatsApp messages from terrified Gazans or to view the horrifying videos widely circulating on Telegram. Arab activists and intellectuals have been developing powerful arguments about the nature of Israel’s domination of the Palestinian territories and these are entering the Western discourse in new ways. The case South Africa brought to the International Court of Justice, alleging an Israeli genocide in Gaza, introduced many of those arguments into circulation across the global South and within international organizations. It did so by referencing not only the statements of Israeli leaders but also conceptual frameworks about occupation and settler colonialism developed by Arab and Palestinian intellectuals. The war of ideas that the United States sought to wage in the Muslim world after 9/11, claiming to bring freedom and democracy to a backward region, has reversed course, with the United States on the defensive because of its hypocrisy in demanding condemnation of Russia’s war on Ukraine while supporting Israel’s war on Gaza. A REGION ADRIFT This is all happening in an era characterized, even before the Israel-Hamas war, by the declining primacy of the United States and the rising autonomy of regional powers. Leading Arab states have increasingly sought to demonstrate their independence from the United States, building strategic relations with China and Russia and pursuing their own agendas in regional affairs. The willingness of Arab regimes to defy U.S. preferences was a hallmark of the previous decade, as Gulf states ignored American policies toward democratic transition in Egypt, flooded weapons into Syria despite Washington’s caution, and lobbied against the nuclear agreement with Iran. This willingness to flout the United States’ wishes has become even more apparent following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The past two years have seen most Middle Eastern regimes refusing to vote with Washington against Russia, and Saudi Arabia declining to follow the United States’ lead on oil pricing. Washington’s unblinkered support for Israel in its devastation of Gaza, however, has brought long-standing hostility toward U.S. policy to a head, and triggered a crisis of legitimacy that threatens the entire edifice of historic U.S. primacy in the region. It is difficult to exaggerate the extent to which Arabs blame the United States for this war. They can see that only U.S. weapons sales and United Nations vetoes allow Israel to continue its war. They are aware that the United States defends Israel for actions that are the same as those the United States condemned Russia and Syria for. The extent of this popular anger can be seen in the disengagement of a large number of young workers in nongovernmental organizations and activists from U.S.-backed projects and networks built up over decades of public diplomacy, a development cited by Annelle Sheline in her principled resignation from her post as a foreign affairs officer at the State Department in March. The White House is still acting as if none of this really matters. Arab regimes will survive, anger will fade or be redirected to other issues, and, in a few months, Washington can get back to the important business of Israeli-Saudi normalization. That is how things have traditionally worked. But this time may well be different. The Gaza fiasco, at a moment of shifting global power and changing calculations by regional leaders, shows how little Washington has learned from its long record of policy failures. The nature and degree of popular anger, the decline of U.S. primacy and the collapse of its legitimacy, and Arab regimes’ prioritization of their domestic survival, as well as regional competition, suggests that the new regional order will be much more attentive to public opinion than the old. If Washington continues to ignore public opinion, it will doom its planning for after the war ends in Gaza. MARC LYNCH is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. MORE BY MARC LYNCH More: Israel Palestinian Territories Foreign Policy Politics & Society Public Opinion Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration U.S.-Israeli Relations Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel-Hamas War Most-Read Articles The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko Are Human Rights Universal? Thomas M. Franck Brave New Ukraine How the World’s Most Besieged Democracy Is Adjusting to Permanent War Nataliya Gumenyuk Recommended Articles At the National Army Day parade in Tehran, April 2024 Iran and Israel’s War Comes Out of the Shadows Why Tehran’s Hard-Liners Chose to Escalate Afshon Ostovar Iranian demonstrators reacting to the attack on Israel, Tehran, April 2024 How America Can Prevent War Between Iran and Israel Threaten Tehran, Pressure Netanyahu KEEP IT IN MIND On April 11, 2024, Lukashenko, the early middleman of the Russian-Ukrainian peace talks, called for a return to the draft treaty from spring 2022. “It’s a reasonable position,” he said in a conversation with Putin in the Kremlin. “It was an acceptable position for Ukraine, too. They agreed to this position.” Putin chimed in. “They agreed, of course,” he said. In reality, however, the Russians and the Ukrainians never arrived at a final compromise text. But they went further in that direction than has been previously understood, reaching an overarching framework for a possible agreement. After the past two years of carnage, all this may be so much water under the bridge. But it is a reminder that Putin and Zelensky were willing to consider extraordinary compromises to end the war. So if and when Kyiv and Moscow return to the negotiating table, they’ll find it littered with ideas that could yet prove useful in building a durable peace. SAMUEL CHARAP is Distinguished Chair in Russia and Eurasia Policy and a Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. SERGEY RADCHENKO is Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Europe. MORE BY SAMUEL CHARAP MORE BY SERGEY RADCHENKO More: Ukraine Russian Federation Diplomacy Geopolitics Security Defense & Military War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine Vladimir Putin Volodymyr Zelensky Most-Read Articles The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko The Case for Progressive Realism Why Britain Must Chart a New Global Course David Lammy How Israel Can Win in Gaza—and Deter Iran The Key to Both Goals Is Going After Hamas in Rafah Elliott Abrams No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher Recommended Articles Ukrainian soldiers preparing rockets in Donetsk region, Ukraine, March 2024 The Obstacles to Diplomacy in Ukraine Russia’s Extreme Demands—and Ukraine’s Desire to Survive—Make Negotiations Unlikely Branislav L. Slantchev and Hein Goemans Ukrainian flags fly over Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, February 2024 How to Pave the Way for Diplomacy to End the War in Ukraine No Negotiations Yet—but It’s Time to Talk About Talking Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro The Case for Progressive Realism Why Britain Must Chart a New Global Course By David Lammy May/June 2024 Published on April 17, 2024 Shonagh Rae This year, voters in the United Kingdom will head to the polls as Keir Starmer’s Labour Party seeks to win power from the Conservative Party for the first time since 1997. It is difficult to overstate how much the world has changed in the intervening years. When former Prime Minister Tony Blair entered Downing Street 27 years ago, the British economy was larger than India’s and China’s combined. The United Kingdom still administered a major Asian city, Hong Kong, as a colony. The increase in global temperatures from the long-term average was less than half what it is today. And American dominance was so striking that some people saw the spread of the liberal democratic model as inevitable. Today, the global order is messy and multipolar. China has become a superpower, with an economy more than five times as large as the United Kingdom’s. But there has also been a shift in power to a wider variety of states since I was first a minister almost 19 years ago. As a result, geopolitics takes place on a much more crowded board. Countries described in these pages by CIA Director William Burns as the “hedging middle” are striking bargains and setting their own agendas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Much of the news is grim: wars are increasing in scale and intensity. Democracies are on the back foot. Climate breakdown is no longer a future worry; it is already here. But the task of saving the planet has begun in earnest as states both compete and cooperate in an energy transition on which humanity’s future depends. Yet rather than seeing this world clearly and rising to the challenge, the Conservative Party has, over 14 years, turned the British government inward. Successive Conservative governments sank deeply into nostalgia and denial about the United Kingdom’s place in the world. The government, for example, crashed out of the European Union without a clear plan for what to do next. It treated with contempt the country’s global reputation for upholding the rule of law, threatening to imperil the Good Friday Agreement (which brought peace to Northern Ireland) and leave the European Convention on Human Rights. When China, the United States, and the EU built competing green industrial policies to claim the industries of the future, the British government failed to follow suit. Instead, it squandered the United Kingdom’s climate leadership by tearing up net-zero carbon emissions commitments, throwing business plans into disarray. Conservative officials proved especially callous in their approach to the global South. Over the last decade, they have undermined the United Kingdom’s standing as a development superpower with a mismanaged merger of government departments that devalued expertise and forced cuts to crucial programs. And instead of fighting for the hearts and minds of the new global middle class, they addressed this group in often offensive tones, such as when then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson publicly recited a colonialist poem by Rudyard Kipling during a 2017 visit to Myanmar. And the government compromised one of the United Kingdom’s greatest strengths—its soft power—by attacking institutions such as universities, courts, and the BBC. Fixing this damage will not be easy. The British economy is stuck in a quagmire of low growth. The British Army has fewer soldiers than at any point since the Napoleonic era. Many public services are on their knees. But if the Labour Party wins in the coming election, it can deliver a decade of national renewal along with a clear-eyed approach to international relations: progressive realism. Progressive realism advocates using realist means to pursue progressive ends. For the British government, that requires tough-minded honesty about the United Kingdom, the balance of power, and the state of the world. But instead of using the logic of realism solely to accumulate power, progressive realism uses it in service of just goals—for example, countering climate change, defending democracy, and advancing the world’s economic development. It is the pursuit of ideals without delusions about what is achievable. IN THE INTEREST OF JUSTICE The path to a progressive realist foreign policy runs through two of the United Kingdom’s great foreign secretaries. The first was Ernest Bevin. Born into crippling rural poverty and orphaned as a young child, he rose to become foreign secretary in 1945 after a career as a union leader and a Labour politician. A few weeks after taking office, Bevin was catapulted into negotiations on the new world order with U.S. President Harry Truman and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Bevin was committed to realism, a politics based on respect for facts. This dedication proved pivotal to European security. He stiffened wavering American resolve during the 1948–49 Soviet blockade of Berlin by spelling out the stakes for U.S. officials, pushed for a West German state as an anchor for the West, and persuaded British Prime Minister Clement Atlee that the United Kingdom should acquire nuclear weapons. His crowning achievement was convincing a skeptical Truman administration to commit to a NATO alliance that explicitly declared that an attack on any member was an attack on all members—the treaty’s totemic Article 5. Thanks to Bevin’s work, the alliance has held firm. April of this year marked the 75th anniversary of NATO’s creation. But Bevin, like many great politicians, was a product of his time. He too breezily justified the wrongs of colonialism through claims that such measures were taken in the national interest. He also did not live in a world where the West had to cooperate with its rivals on climate change and artificial intelligence. Today, realism alone will not be enough to safeguard the planet. Conservative officials proved especially callous in their approach to the global South. To do that, democracies must also tap into the tradition of another great modern British foreign secretary: Robin Cook. When he came into power in 1997, Cook laid out a vision for a foreign policy with “an ethical dimension,” even as he recognized that the United Kingdom’s security must always come first. Through the force of his convictions, he made climate change a core focus of the Foreign Office for the first time in history, brought human rights into the diplomatic mainstream, championed a global ban on landmines, and marshaled the British government’s allies to fight against war crimes in Kosovo. With Blair, he helped the United Kingdom become a superpower when it came to international development by committing the country to meeting the UN’s 0.7 percent aid target. There was realism in Cook, too; he opposed the Iraq war, with warnings that now stand as prescient. Yet Cook’s vision of adding more ethics to foreign policy at times snagged on the limits of idealism, particularly when it came to hard choices about arms exports. But these limits do not mean idealism has no place in foreign policy. Just because someone is progressive does not mean that person cannot be a realist. Governments, likewise, do not have to choose between values and interests. And the United Kingdom shouldn’t. In the spirit of Bevin, it must be realistic about the state of the world and the country’s role in it. Yet like Cook, the country should adopt a progressive belief in its capacity to champion multilateral causes, build institutions, defend democracy, stand up for the rule of law, combat poverty, and fight climate change. COMING TO TERMS A progressive realism worth its name begins by being honest about assumptions the West made in the past that turned out to be wrong. The broad consensus that economic globalization would inevitably breed liberal democratic values proved false. Instead, democracies have become more economically dependent on authoritarian states, with the share of world trade between democracies declining from 74 percent in 1998 to 47 percent in 2022. China provides a particularly stark case in point. The country was admitted into the World Trade Organization in 2001 under the hope that political reforms would follow economic ones. But the state became more repressive as the economy opened up. The rise of China—which now has the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity—has ended the era of U.S. hegemony. The world is shaped by competition between Beijing and Washington. Beijing challenges the U.S.-led order in nearly every domain, from developing the technologies and green supply chains of the future to sourcing and processing critical raw materials. But the competition is especially fierce when it comes to security. The Chinese navy has the greatest number of warships in the world. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China’s shipbuilding capacity is approximately 230 times as large as that of the United States. Beijing’s growing military power has, in turn, helped Russia’s challenge in Europe. To compete with China, the United States will inevitably have to pay more attention to the Indo-Pacific. This shift will come even though Europe is worryingly dependent on U.S. support to stop Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Cook visiting British peacekeepers in Devet Jugovića, Kosovo, April 2001 Reuters China is not the world’s only rising power. A broadening group of states—including Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—have claimed seats at the table. They and others have the power to shape their regional environments, and they ignore the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States ever more frequently. In the twentieth century, some of these states aligned with rival superpower-led blocs. But today, to maximize their autonomy, they strike deals with all the great powers. Their noted indifference to many U.S. pleas is partly the result of the chaotic Western military interventions during the first decades of this century. The failures of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya undermined the idea that liberal interventionism was, as Blair remarked in 1999, “a more subtle blend of mutual self-interest and moral purpose.” Instead, it came to be seen as a recipe for disorder. A British government that adheres to progressive realism will not repeat these errors. That said, the last decade has made it clear that inaction has high costs, too. The fact that the United States did not police its redline against the use of chemical weapons in Syria not only entrenched Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s monstrous regime; it also emboldened Russian President Vladimir Putin. He concluded that the West no longer had the stomach to defend the rules-based order and, by annexing Crimea, applied the logic of what David Miliband, another former Labour foreign secretary, has called “the age of impunity.” When the West responded to that provocation with only light sanctions, Putin came to believe he could fundamentally upend the world order in 2022. The West is finally taking Moscow’s threats seriously. European states increasingly recognize Russia as a long-term, generational threat that requires a long-term, generational response. This will demand the stamina and determination of Bevin. But the West has yet to win back support from many key countries. As Fiona Hill, a former senior director of the U.S. National Security Council, said in 2023, the war has become a proxy for a rebellion of “the rest” against the West. In UN General Assembly votes over the past two years, countries that collectively represent approximately two-thirds of the world’s population have either abstained or voted against motions to censure Putin. Many of those countries have rebuffed Western attempts to persuade them, accusing the West of having double standards and noting that its interest in their needs has been erratic at best. Given the West’s hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines and its inadequate action to mitigate climate-related loss and damage, they have a point. NEAR AND FAR Addressing the worsening global security situation facing the United Kingdom is the central task and first responsibility of British foreign policy. That policy will always be founded on the country’s relations with the United States and Europe. These two powers are the rocks on which the United Kingdom builds its security, but the government’s ties with both must evolve. Americans increasingly need convincing that Europeans do enough to protect their own continent’s security. And as the United States becomes more focused on Asia, it will have less bandwidth for action elsewhere. The United Kingdom is ready for difficult conversations about burden sharing, as long as they are part of a serious process that reinforces collective security. To handle these changes, it is ever more important that the United Kingdom develop closer foreign and security cooperation with the EU. Both parties must be honest about the gravity of this moment. From Ukraine to Gaza and the Sahel, there is an arc of conflict and instability inside and near Europe’s borders that affects the United Kingdom and the continent’s interests equally. Yet the European Union and the British government have no formal means of cooperation. To address that problem, the United Kingdom must seek a new geopolitical partnership with the EU. The centerpiece of this relationship should be a security pact that drives closer coordination across a wide variety of military, economic, climate, health, cyber, and energy security issues—and that complements both parties’ unshakable commitment to NATO, which will remain the foremost vehicle for European security. The United Kingdom should also double down on its close relationships with France, Germany, Ireland, and Poland. It should, for example, pursue a British-German defense agreement to go along with the similar Lancaster House treaties it signed with France in 2010. Above all else, the United Kingdom must continue supporting Ukraine. The future of European security depends on the outcome of the war there, and the British government must leave the Kremlin with no doubt that it will support Kyiv for as long as it takes to achieve victory. Once Ukraine has prevailed, the United Kingdom should play a leading role in securing Ukraine’s place in NATO. Realism without a sense of progress can become cynical and tactical. European security will be the Labour Party’s foreign policy priority. But the British government cannot focus exclusively on the continent. Realism also means recognizing that the Indo-Pacific will be fundamental to global prosperity and security in the decades ahead, so the United Kingdom must strengthen its engagement with that region, as well. The country made a good start by helping establish AUKUS, a nuclear submarine and technology pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Yet the British government should treat the cooperation of AUKUS as a floor, not a ceiling. It must also build up other regional relationships, including by deepening its security partnerships with Japan and South Korea. India, with which the United Kingdom is intimately connected through countless family ties, is set to be the world’s third-largest economy by 2030. But the British government has still failed to deliver a long-promised trade deal with New Delhi. Then there is China. The United Kingdom’s approach to the country has oscillated wildly over the past 14 years. Former Prime Minister David Cameron sought to create what he called a “golden era” of engagement with Beijing in 2015, which swung to overt hostility when Liz Truss became prime minister in September 2022. British policy has shifted again under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who made Cameron his foreign secretary in late 2023, into confused ambiguity. The United Kingdom must instead adopt a more consistent strategy, one that simultaneously challenges, competes against, and cooperates with China as appropriate. Such an approach would recognize that Beijing poses a systemic challenge for British interests and that the Chinese Communist Party poses real security threats. But it would also recognize China’s importance to the British economy. It would accept that no grouping of states can address the global threats of the climate crisis, pandemics, and artificial intelligence unless it cooperates with Beijing. There is a crucial difference between “de-risking” and decoupling, and it is in everyone’s interest that China’s relationship with the West endure and evolve. As the British Shadow Foreign Secretary, I have traveled extensively across North Africa and the Middle East, including to Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. All will be vital partners for the United Kingdom in this decade, not least as the country seeks to reconstruct Gaza and—as soon as possible—realize a two-state solution. From the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, the Labour Party has stuck to progressive principles, urgently calling for international law to be respected in full by all parties. The United Kingdom cannot end this terrible conflict. But it does have the capacity to surge aid to support rebuilding, and a key goal for the Labour Party is to work with international partners to recognize Palestine as a state, as a contribution to securing a negotiated two-state solution. British troops loading humanitarian aid onto a plane in Jordan, April 2024 British Ministry of Defense / Reuters Progressive realism acknowledges that, at times in the twentieth century, Western powers undermined the sovereignty of weaker states, especially in the global South. But in the twenty-first century, a Labour government would see its mission as supporting states’ sovereignty against forces such as Russian neoimperialism, climate change, and corruption. This is why progressive realism seeks the same thing for Ukraine, Israel, and Palestine: for each to be a sovereign, secure, and internationally recognized state, at peace with its neighbors. Furthermore, in today’s world, Western governments must partner with the global South. There is a potential convening role here for a revitalized Commonwealth. Our government would, in particular, work to tackle the climate crisis, perhaps the most profound and universal source of disorder. The world’s response so far—spending nearly $2 trillion on the green transition last year alone—has at times been its brightest point of hope. But leading powers have still not done nearly enough to prevent disaster, and the scramble for critical raw materials, now at the heart of every great power’s foreign policy, will not help poorer countries pay for the transition. Progressive realism demands a more cooperative approach. Realists recognize that if fairness is not part of a global climate bargain, it will fail. Progressive realism also means recognizing that climate change is not the only threat to the planet. Technological change also contributes to the new world disorder by fueling inequality and populism. Movements that attack liberal values are rising on the back of social media websites that profit from algorithms built to amplify extreme positions. The emergence of artificial intelligence offers enormous potential for growth and innovation, but AI is already making it easier for bad actors to suppress freedom, disseminate misinformation, and undermine democratic processes. To minimize these risks, progressive realists must establish global guardrails for technology with the widest possible coalition of countries—before it is too late. Finally, progressive realism means anticipating how the dynamics between continents are about to change. By 2050, more than one in four people on the planet will live in Africa. The continent can and will generate vast growth. Yet Cook would be dismayed to see the poverty that endures there, despite his generation’s efforts. The next Labour government must therefore produce a new Africa strategy that does more than merely offer aid. The United Kingdom must once again become a leader in development, but to do so, it has to adopt a model that emphasizes trading with other countries to build long-term win-win partnerships—rather than following an outdated model of patronage. FASTER GROWTH, SLOWER WARMING To realize its ambitions, the next British government will have to revitalize its economy. It is shocking that the United Kingdom, historically a trading nation, now has the lowest levels of investment of any state in the G-7. A successful economy is the bedrock of our domestic prosperity and global influence, which is why Starmer has pledged that the country will generate the highest sustained growth in the G-7 if he is elected prime minister. The Foreign Office can help meet this target by revitalizing economic diplomacy. To that end, if I become foreign secretary, I will make it a priority for every British ambassador in every relevant market to promote investment into the state. I will also convene a new business advisory council to ensure that the needs of companies inform our diplomatic thinking. To deliver prosperity at home, the United Kingdom must reestablish itself as a trusted and reliable partner—particularly with allies. That is why Labour will seek to improve the country’s trade and investment relationship with Europe, as well as with India and the United States. Brexit is settled; a Labour government would not seek to rejoin the EU, the Single Market, or the Customs Union. Yet there are plenty of pragmatic steps we can take to rebuild trust and cooperation and reduce barriers to trade. A Labour government would also invest in the green transition. Countries around the world are competing intensely to attract private capital for clean technology, a competition that has been sharpened by the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s Green Deal. The United Kingdom should not be afraid to enter this race. A Labour government would, for example, create a new national wealth fund that invests in hydrogen, renewable energy, green steel, and other climate-friendly industries that provide a long-term return for taxpayers. Our key principle would be to use public investment to unlock further private investment. But our approach to climate change would not simply be focused on domestic development. Climate diplomacy is at the center of progressive realism, and a Labour government would make advancing the fight against greenhouse gases central to our agenda. We would, for example, focus on reducing the emissions of our partners by seeking to establish a clean power alliance—in effect, a reverse OPEC—of states committed to leading the way on decarbonizing power systems. Our government would also help reform international financial institutions to provide far greater support for climate adaptation. To become a green power, however, the United Kingdom needs to upgrade its reputation and its tools. The country should stop issuing new licenses to explore oil and gas in the North Sea. It must also decarbonize its electricity system by 2030. Achieving the last goal will require a massive rollout of renewables. Labour’s program involves tripling solar power, quadrupling offshore wind power, doubling onshore wind power, and expanding nuclear, hydrogen, and tidal power. That means the United Kingdom must forge new overseas investment and regulatory partnerships. Because the resources needed to decarbonize economies stretch across borders, no country can go green without international cooperation. A Labour government would help foster such collaboration by creating a new network of climate and energy diplomats. They would help our government channel one of Cook’s strongly held beliefs: that foreign policy must deliver better outcomes for all. GREATER BRITAIN Given the disorder, conflicts, and crises in the world, it is easy to despair. Wars are proliferating, and tensions between great powers are escalating. Climate change has subjected every continent to deadly extreme weather and provoked droughts and famines. The United Kingdom, however, can navigate the demands of this new era. It has the world’s sixth-largest economy. It is home to cutting-edge technology, services, leading universities, innovative legal sectors, and vibrant cultural industries. It has the potential for unparalleled partnerships and alliances. The country can thrive and restore its reputation as a net contributor to global security and development if it renews its alliances and recovers its self-confidence. It can once again choose to rise to today’s generational challenges and navigate a new path, drawing from the best of its past. To do so, the United Kingdom must draw from what is truly its historical best. If the government’s response to the world’s issues is rooted in the Conservative Party’s nostalgia and denial, it will fail to deliver the multilateral agreements required to solve global problems. If progressives forget that diplomacy means working with those who do not always share democratic values, it will hurt British interests. If the government cannot sketch out a bold progressive vision, it will have forgotten its purpose. And if the state cannot guarantee national and regional security, it will have failed at its most essential task. Progressive policy without realism is empty idealism. Realism without a sense of progress can become cynical and tactical. But when progressives act realistically and practically, they change the world. The United Kingdom urgently needs a foreign policy that brings together the best of Bevin and Cook. It needs progressive realism to kickstart an era of renewal, with a sharper and more hopeful vision for the country’s role in the world. DAVID LAMMY is the British Labour Party’s Shadow Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Affairs. He is the author of Tribes: How Our Need to Belong Can Make or Break Society. MORE BY DAVID LAMMY More: United Kingdom Campaigns & Elections Climate Change Foreign Policy Politics & Society Ideology Security Artificial Intelligence Most-Read Articles The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko The Case for Progressive Realism Why Britain Must Chart a New Global Course David Lammy How Israel Can Win in Gaza—and Deter Iran The Key to Both Goals Is Going After Hamas in Rafah Elliott Abrams No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher Recommended Articles Disunited Kingdom Will Nationalism Break Britain? Fintan O’Toole All Democracy Is Global Why America Can’t Shrink From the Fight for Freedom Larry Diamond How Israel Can Win in Gaza—and Deter Iran The Key to Both Goals Is Going After Hamas in Rafah By Elliott Abrams April 17, 2024 Palestinians stand near the site of an Israeli strike on a house, Rafah, April 2024 In the wake of Iran’s attack on Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles last weekend, Israel must decide how to calibrate its response. The spectrum of possible actions is wide and includes strikes on Iranian interests outside Iran and targets inside its borders. Israeli leaders faced a similar decision after the Hamas attacks of October 7. Back then, the question was whether they should respond to the Hamas attack primarily by sending troops to Gaza with the goal of ending Hamas’s domination of that territory and its ability to threaten Israel militarily, or also (or instead) pursue Israel’s more powerful and dangerous adversary to the north, the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah—even though it was not directly involved in the October 7 attacks. Israel chose the first option, a decision that has shaped the conflict to this point. The question for the Israeli leadership now is which steps against Iran would demonstrate resilience and maintain credibility without escalating the conflict into a full-scale war. One part of Israel’s response must be to stay the course in the Gaza Strip, despite tremendous pressure from the United States and others to retreat into what would amount to a strategic surrender. In practice, that means proceeding with plans for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to enter the southern Gaza city of Rafah, eliminate the Hamas brigades and leaders based there, and deepen planning for a “day after” in Gaza and a long-term resolution to the conflict with the Palestinians that is predicated on reality rather than on American fantasies about a “two-state solution” that represents no solution at all. WHY RAFAH MATTERS The argument for taking on Hezbollah after October 7 was that the Hamas attack had proved that Israel needed to defang its enemies rather than imagine it was deterring them or had achieved a permanent modus vivendi with them. Military leaders, including Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, reportedly favored that option. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister and IDF chief of staff Benny Gantz overruled Gallant, and the war cabinet decided that the immediate target must be Hamas and not Hezbollah. An Israeli attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon would have brought immense destruction to both countries, and the pressures on the IDF to curtail its operations there would likely have been greater than those it has faced regarding Gaza. In 2006, Hezbollah attacked Israel, and the George W. Bush administration, in which I was serving at the time, gave the Israelis strong support—but only for a couple of weeks, after which Washington pressured Israel to end the war by extending assurances that have never been met and never seemed likely to be. The terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which was passed in August 2006, included an end to arms transfers by any state to Hezbollah and total Lebanese army control of Lebanon’s south. Neither stipulation has ever been enforced—a testament to the dangers of relying on a paper peace rather than conditions on the ground. Israel learned the lesson. That is why it is resisting international pressure, especially from Washington, for a cease-fire that would leave Hamas in control of parts of Gaza, with its high command intact and able (with Iranian help that would surely be forthcoming) to regenerate a fighting force that could once again threaten Israel. Netanyahu has pledged to continue the attack on Hamas. Israel is pursuing a temporary cease-fire that would free some Israeli hostages in Gaza and Hamas prisoners in Israeli jails, but Netanyahu is intent on returning to the fight against Hamas after that. Israel believes that the Hamas military leadership and its remaining four battalions of organized troops are in or near Rafah and that the full defeat of Hamas requires attacking them there, even if the fighting and civilian casualties arouse harsh American and international criticism. Despite that risk, Israelis across the ideological spectrum agree that Hamas must be crushed because they see the fight against the group as an existential conflict. Hamas can’t destroy Israel by itself, but all of Israel’s enemies are watching to see whether Israel can fully recover from the October 7 attack. If they conclude that it cannot, the Jewish state will find itself in mortal peril. Israelis saw the astonishingly brutal Hamas attack, reminiscent of anti-Semitic pogroms and the Holocaust in its treatment of Jewish men, women, and children, as a test of who will prove to be more resilient, the Jews or their murderers. Israel gained Arab partners in the region through demonstrations of strength, not acts of restraint. It has watched Iran work with proxies to build what Israeli officials call “a ring of fire” around Israel: the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and militants in Iraq and Syria. At the same time, Israel has seen a substantial increase in the volume of weapons being smuggled into the West Bank. All of Israel’s enemies are watching to see whether Israel can fully recover from the October 7 attack. Israelis are weary of being lectured about how war cannot destroy an idea—including by governments that joined together to crush the Islamic State terrorist group, also known as ISIS. That group also represented an idea, but without territory to govern and from which to launch attacks and build its empire safely, its power has nearly evaporated. ISIS isn’t gone, as its recent attack in Moscow showed, but the level of threat it represents is much lower. The same would apply to Hamas: as part of the Muslim Brotherhood movement and as a group determined to use the murder of Jewish Israelis as a political tool, it will no doubt survive and commit occasional acts of terrorism. But its ability to wound Israel as it did on October 7 depended on controlling space in which it could build its finances, train its forces, and organize attacks. If Israel’s war in Gaza succeeds, Hamas will never again have all of that. That is why an assault on Rafah will eventually be necessary. If Hamas battalions and leaders based there survive, Israel will lose the war. And that is an outcome the United States should fear. After the chaotic 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and amid the slowing of American military aid to Ukraine, Washington cannot afford to further undermine any of its alliances—or raise doubt in the minds of U.S. adversaries in China, Iran, and Russia (and U.S. allies in Asia and Europe) about the strength of American commitments and the efficacy of U.S. support. The extensive and effective assistance that the United States provided to Israel in defeating Iran’s recent aerial attack does not change this fact because that assistance was purely defensive. If it is followed by American demands that Israel allow Hamas to survive in Gaza and that it not respond to the Iranian assault, the Israelis will understand that the U.S. policy objective is simply to avoid or quickly end any conflict. That won’t be reassuring to countries facing Chinese, Iranian, or Russian aggression. It is also worth noting that publicly applied American pressure on Israel over Rafah is reducing the chances for a hostages-for-prisoners deal. Every time high officials in the United States government (including in Congress) and other Western governments demand an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and discourage an Israeli assault on Rafah, they raise the price that Hamas believes it can demand for the hostages. The group’s only true incentive for agreeing to release them is its hope to delay an Israeli attack on Rafah or avoid one altogether. For Hamas, survival is victory. And if there is no Israeli attack on Rafah, Hamas will survive. EVERYONE’S A CRITIC Israel must destroy the Hamas military threat from Gaza and, to the extent possible, minimize collateral damage to Palestinian civilians. Whether it has done the latter is a fair question, but critics are not asking it fairly. “The extent possible” should suggest comparisons with other recent wars and especially other recent instances of urban combat. Instead, as usual, critics are holding Israel to standards that they impose on no other country. For example, the ratio of civilian-to-military casualties in Gaza seems better than what the United States achieved during the Iraq war. The notion that Israeli attacks deliberately target civilians, even aid workers, is belied by the fact that the IDF is a citizens’ army. With hundreds of thousands of civilian reservists serving in the army, it is simply not credible that orders to attack civilians and aid workers would be followed and would remain secret if they existed. The truth is that Hamas wants civilian casualties because it correctly judges that such suffering will quickly lead to pressure on Israel to stop fighting. Hamas’s astonishingly large and sophisticated tunnel system in Gaza was not built to save a single civilian life but only to help protect the group’s leaders and fighters and to aid its offensive capabilities. American, European, or other leaders who ignore all of this are turning “to the extent possible” into an impossible bar that would make defeating Hamas impossible. This is not to say that Israel has done everything it can to protect and feed civilians in Gaza. The United States and many other countries have criticized Israeli conduct in this regard, and the Israelis have admitted some mistakes and have recently begun to facilitate more food going into Gaza. But it is worth noting that many of the countries denouncing Israel have themselves done precious little thus far on behalf of Palestinian civilians. For example, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) built a refugee camp for some 80,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. Why not in Gaza? The same goes for the European Union, which could build tent cities for temporary refuge. Such activities cannot be undertaken in combat zones, but they can be planned and pledged now, and donors could already be working with Israel to identify locations in Gaza where combat has already ended or will end soon. Even taking all the obstacles into account, it is telling that neither the EU nor the UAE—nor other putative supporters of the Palestinians, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia—has even floated these possibilities. Likewise, Egypt has provided safe haven to handfuls of Gazans instead of the tens of thousands it could absorb temporarily. And what about the United States? Its airdrops of aid appear to be little more than gestures of goodwill. The Biden administration’s plan to build a temporary port off the Gazan coast for ships ferrying food from Cyprus could be a useful contribution, but there has been little discussion of who will distribute that food once it arrives on land. THE DAY AFTER American critics have also complained about Israel’s lack of focus on “the day after” in Gaza. It’s debatable whether the U.S. failure to carry out postwar planning before invading Iraq in 2003 gives Washington more or less credibility on that issue. Equally debatable is whether Israel should be expected and relied on to develop and implement postwar plans or should give way to efforts by the United States and other potential donors. But it does seem reasonable to expect that some kind of plan would be in place by now. Earlier this year, I participated in a study group organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and a network of foreign policy experts called the Vandenberg Coalition, which called for countries committed to a peaceful, demilitarized, deradicalized Gaza—including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the United States—to establish an international trust to reconstruct Gaza and provide relief. The trust would marshal funds going to Gaza; coordinate with Gazans in the diaspora and in Gaza to restore essential services and begin reconstruction; work with Israel on security, border control, and other matters; and cooperate with international organizations and nongovernmental organizations committed to the same goals. There’s no easy answer to the question of who should provide security in a post-Hamas Gaza. It would most likely come from a combination of vetted non-Hamas police personnel in Gaza; new forces that the United States would train at its existing training center for Palestinian security forces, in Jordan; personnel from Arab countries that would be establishing refugee camps, tent cities, or other new residential areas in Gaza and might be willing to protect what they’re building; and private security companies that would protect food convoys, warehouses, residential areas, and other important locations. It would also be possible to give local civic and business groups or prominent Gazan clans some security responsibilities, if they have or can create the capacity to keep the peace locally. Before the war, when Hamas was in charge of Gaza, there was a civilian structure there performing many normal governmental activities such as providing electricity and water and carrying out nonpolitical police work, such as traffic control. The international trust would aim to rebuild that structure but without Hamas on top. The top two or three layers of officials in every ministry must go, but it is likely that underneath those layers are competent professionals without any deep allegiance to Hamas. The Palestinian Authority (PA), on the other hand, cannot govern Gaza, given its own weaknesses, ineffectiveness, inefficiency, corruption, and vast unpopularity among Palestinians. The international trust itself would probably have to function in many ways as the government of Gaza for years. Whoever governs Gaza, deradicalization will be critical to future peace. Schools run by Hamas, the PA, and the UN aid agency UNRWA have idealized terrorism and taught hatred to a generation of Palestinians, as have religious leaders in mosques throughout Gaza. Several Arab countries—Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, for example—have led the way on deradicalization. International donors to postwar Gaza must insist on entirely new curricula in schools, the vetting of teachers, and preventing mosques from being used to preach violence, terror, and hatred. THE JORDANIAN OPTION Relief and reconstruction in Gaza will not settle the long-term problems that drive the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The conventional solution, of course, is the so-called two-state solution. But that is the wrong answer. First, polls make it clear that both Israelis and Palestinians are highly unenthusiastic about and wary of the idea. Gallup polls conducted since late last year found that 65 percent of Israeli respondents opposed the two-state solution and only 25 percent supported it. The gap is even larger among Palestinians; in polls that Gallup conducted last summer, before the October 7 attacks, 72 percent of Palestinian respondents opposed the two-state solution and only 24 percent supported it. Second, the PA lacks the ability to lead a Palestinian state that would be free and democratic, have a decent and effective government, and build a prosperous economy. In other words, a Palestinian state would end the Israeli occupation of parts of Palestinian territory but do little else for Palestinians—and they know it. Finally, Palestinian nationalism still seems to be more about destroying the Jewish state than about building a Palestinian one. That is why Palestinian leaders have said no to every partition effort and peace proposal. Moreover, at least until Iran has a government that seeks peace in the region rather than Israel’s destruction, a sovereign and independent Palestine would represent yet another route through which Iran would seek to attack Israel. The region has seen this movie before with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, and the only thing that has prevented the same disaster in the West Bank has been the constant intervention of Israeli forces. (Palestinian security forces have often worked with the Israelis against Hamas, which is the rival of the West Bank’s ruling Fatah party. But those forces are simply not strong enough to defeat Hamas alone, even if they wished to do so). Today’s Israeli police and military presence in the West Bank would be impossible in a newly sovereign Palestine, and Israeli interventions there to prevent Iranian or Hamas activities could be seen as acts of war that would violate Palestine’s internationally recognized borders. Polls make it clear that both Israelis and Palestinians are highly unenthusiastic about a two-state solution. That leaves only one genuinely viable long-term arrangement that would allow Israel to safeguard its security and let Palestinians enjoy normal lives free from Israeli rule: confederation. The separation of Israelis and Palestinians into two entities was the right idea when the British first proposed it in the 1930s, when the UN called for it in the 1940s, and when the United States began to seek it in the 1970s. And it remains right. The question is the nature of the Palestinian entity. The most sensible idea would be to create a Palestinian government that would join a confederation with an existing state, one that already has a stable and effective security force, maintains law and order, and fights terrorism; a currency and a central bank; and a secure international airport and other aspects of sovereignty. There is one clear candidate: Jordan, which borders the West Bank and whose population is overwhelmingly Muslim, Arabic-speaking, and already half Palestinian. The model to think of is Iraqi Kurdistan: an entity within a state, with a good deal of authority over local affairs. The Reagan administration envisioned something like that in the peace plan it put forward in 1982, which called for “self-government by the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza in association with Jordan.” If the goal is normal lives for Palestinians and security for Israelis, a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation is preferable to the impossible dream of a well-governed, peaceful, democratic Palestine that poses no threat to any of its neighbors. The scale and brutality of the October 7 Hamas attack shook Israel and raised questions about its military competence and ability to defend itself against implacable enemies. That attack has now been followed by last weekend’s mammoth Iranian aerial assault, in which the Islamic Republic deployed hundreds of drones and rockets against Israel. Israelis understand that their country’s long-term survival depends on reasserting deterrence by striking back: displaying resilience, determination, and military prowess. A decision about Iran lies before them, but the decision on Gaza was made last fall and looks even more correct today than it did at the time. Israel must end Hamas’s rule in Gaza and eliminate the group’s ability to attack Israel, both to protect the country and to put its other enemies on notice that killing Israelis will elicit a crushing response. Iran has sought to turn its “axis of resistance” into a ring of fire around Israel. Israel is rightly determined to put that fire out. ELLIOTT ABRAMS is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served in senior National Security Council and State Department positions in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations and as Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela in the Trump administration. 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Hamas fighters massacred hundreds of innocent people, deliberately killed children and the elderly, and raped and mutilated women. They abducted hundreds of civilians—including women, infants, and octogenarians—and held them captive in dismal conditions, subject to abuse and starvation. Their actions contravened any sense of law and humanitarian principles. The slaughterers, still spattered with blood, made gleeful boasts about their atrocities that were broadcast in horrific videos and quoted in news articles. In response, Israel has waged a just war of self-defense. But Israelis are not the only ones suffering. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza, many of them civilians, including thousands of women and children. The war is especially cruel because the fighting is taking place in congested population centers and because the enemy has turned schools, mosques, and hospitals—places where civilians seek shelter—into military command centers, communications hubs, and weapons factories and caches. Hamas, which governs Gaza, has turned the people it is obligated to protect into human shields. While Hamas’s leaders and fighters hide in Gaza’s hundreds of miles of underground tunnels, civilians are defenseless in the line of fire. Understandably, Palestinians see the conflict differently than Israelis. Most tolerate or may even support Hamas because, in their eyes, it is waging a war of liberation against Israeli occupation, even if they reject the group’s radical Islamist agenda or recognize the inherent depravity of its sacrifice of civilians. Hamas, despite its methods, is gaining support not just among Palestinians but also in Arab-majority countries and Muslim-majority countries outside the Middle East. The rest of the world is watching, too. As time passes and the number of Palestinians killed continues to rise, Hamas’s atrocities on October 7 are fading from public consciousness, and Israel’s have weakened its own case to possess the moral high ground. The recent strike that mistakenly killed seven workers from the relief organization World Central Kitchen who were trying to provide food to the Gazan population has further diminished Israel’s international standing. The global narrative has definitively shifted in favor of Israel’s enemies. Israel needs to win back the narrative if it is to win the wider war. Making a convincing case is not about choosing different words—it requires Israel to change its approach. The country’s leaders have failed to outline political objectives for the war, and at this point, continued fighting will not bring the Israeli and Palestinian peoples closer to long-term peace. Israel must now launch a diplomatic track that revives the ultimate goal of a two-state solution, and it needs new leadership to do so. Only by demonstrating its commitment to a negotiated settlement can Israel reclaim the support it needs from partners in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, which has been undercut by the past six months of war in Gaza. FINDING A WINNING NARRATIVE International perceptions of Israel’s war with Hamas are especially important in an era when information is relayed directly from the battlefield to online media consumers, in real time and without filtration. Unlike battlegrounds in previous conflicts, the combat zone today is measured not by the range of weaponry but by the reach of an Internet signal. For many viewers at home, the war has become something of a television miniseries. People around the world reach conclusions about the justice of a particular military operation not on the basis of a legal debate but through the prism of their particular media consumption. The public decides who is right and who is not and which side is good and which is bad, and it puts pressure on its government to craft policy accordingly. The cumulative effect of global opinion is critical to Israel’s prospects for victory. If Israel’s partners deny it military, economic, or diplomatic support at a pivotal moment, it might lose the war despite battlefield successes. Israel has had global opinion on its side before. International support for Israel was strong during the 1990s after the signing of the Oslo accords, which were intended to lead to a Palestinian state—even though Israel was waging an uncompromising battle against Palestinian terrorism at the same time. The international community considered this fight legitimate, however, because Israel was genuinely engaging in a parallel diplomatic track aimed at bringing about peace for both peoples. I was serving as the director of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, during this period. Our collaboration with Palestinian security organizations led to a dramatic decrease in Hamas terrorism, but my Palestinian partners also made it clear that their continued cooperation depended on political progress toward the end of occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Israel must launch a diplomatic track that revives the goal of a two-state solution. Yet what the world now sees is an Israel whose government denies the existence of a Palestinian people and strives to establish a “Greater Israel” by building more settlements in the West Bank—and potentially in Gaza, as well—and moving toward annexation of parts or all of the Palestinian territories. Seen through this lens, Israel’s war in Gaza looks less like a just war conducted in self-defense and more like an act of expansionist aggression. No one should be naive about Hamas. It is a murderous organization that must not be allowed to remain in charge of Gaza. In every position I held in the Israeli security establishment, I treated Hamas as a ruthless terrorist group that Israel must fight. I opposed any attempt to negotiate with Hamas because such outreach boosted the group’s power and weakened that of the Palestinian Authority, which had recognized the Israeli people’s right to have a country. Israel cannot win this war merely by disarming Hamas and eliminating its leadership. Even if Israel prevails on the battlefield, Hamas’s ideology will not disappear. The group will be truly defeated only when it loses the support of the Palestinian people. For that to happen, they must have reason to believe in a diplomatic process that will bring about the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. WORDS INTO ACTION At this point, there are only two things Israel can do to change the story: choose new leaders and return to the goal of a two-state solution as part of a diplomatic end to this war. To regain global support, Israel—a country founded after the Holocaust to safeguard the survival of the Jewish people—must accept the resolutions of the international community and work to create a reality of two states for two peoples. Pursuing that path would demonstrate that Israel’s war in Gaza is an act of legitimate self-defense and would show the world that the target of the war is not the Palestinian people but Hamas, a jihadi terrorist organization that seeks to destroy Israel and drive Jews out of the Holy Land. Seeking a two-state reality is not just a means to win back international support. It is also vital to achieve a political victory over Hamas and to ensure Israel’s long-term security. In a November 1997 interview with Filastin al-Muslima, a monthly magazine published by Hamas, the group’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was asked about the prospects for war against Israel. He claimed that the only thing that would prevent Hamas’s eventual victory—defined as the establishment of a Greater Palestine stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, governed under a sharia-based constitution—would be a scenario in which Israel accepted a Palestinian state alongside its own. Were the two-state solution to become reality, Yassin said, Palestinian society would not support Hamas’s preferred path. And without popular backing among Palestinians, Hamas would not exist as a political and military entity. Yassin was right. A two-state solution would not be a defeat for Israel but a victory—and would be the only way to truly weaken Hamas. Pursuing that outcome would represent neither a capitulation to terrorism nor a submission to American diktats. Rather, it is the best way to realize the Zionist dream of an enduring state of Israel that is Jewish and democratic. A WAR WITHOUT AN END In his 1990 book, War and Strategy, the retired Israeli general turned scholar Yehoshafat Harkabi made a crucial distinction between the thinking of military leaders and that of statesmen. “In military thinking, the enemy is a collection of targets that need to be attacked; in diplomatic thinking, the enemy is a human and political entity that also needs to be won over and satisfied,” he wrote. “In military thinking, we are indifferent to the adversary’s agonies and therefore seek to increase them; in diplomatic thinking, we must be mindful of his pain as well.” In this war, Israel has no statesmen and no diplomatic thinking. At the beginning of the war, Israel’s cabinet decided to ignore “the day after” in Gaza because merely having a discussion of the “political goal” of the operation would undermine the stability of the governing coalition. The cabinet’s members are hemmed in by their own political considerations, and they are taking the country down a dangerous road. This failure of leadership has left Israel without a concept of victory beyond military accomplishments. War has become an end in itself, rather than a means to achieve a better political reality. Israeli history demonstrates that wars without political objectives drag on for years and conclude only after inflicting great trauma. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which around 2,650 Israelis were killed, the Israeli government recognized that it could not guarantee security through military means alone, and it changed its defense doctrine accordingly. Israel accepted Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s peaceful overture in 1977 and began withdrawing its forces from the Sinai Peninsula in 1979. The Egyptian-Israeli peace deal signed in 1979 provides Israel with real security on what had historically been its most dangerous front. Despite that successful record, however, Israel seems to have forgotten the lesson that political agreements provide the best route to security. War has become an end in itself, rather than a means to achieve a better political reality. Today Israel is sinking in quicksand in Gaza. The disaster on February 29, in which more than 100 Palestinian civilians were killed and hundreds more injured as they surrounded trucks of humanitarian aid guarded by soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces, together with the killing of the seven World Central Kitchen workers and the lack of declared political objectives, have almost totally erased the legitimacy of a war that most of the world considered unavoidable when Israel was attacked in October. If Israel does not now announce attainable political goals and activate a diplomatic channel to achieve them, the war will march the country to the precipice. Israel must acknowledge that its past mistakes enabled Hamas’s October 7 attack, which most Palestinians now see as a victory. These mistakes include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy of bolstering Hamas, which involved encouraging Qatar to send the group millions of dollars while undercutting the Palestinian Authority, Hamas’s rival in the West Bank. To turn Hamas’s victory into defeat, Israel must use this moment to embark on a diplomatic track. Israel can no longer reach any meaningful objectives through the continuation or intensification of its military operation in Gaza. Pressing forward in an attempt to kill Hamas’s remaining leaders will not bring Israel a wider political victory, even if that narrow goal is achieved—it will only boost Hamas’s power on the Palestinian street. VICTORY THROUGH DIPLOMACY The Palestinian issue is now widely understood to be the linchpin of any potential regional accord. And the Biden administration has insisted that only an accord that leads to a two-state reality will enable the creation of a moderate Middle Eastern bloc that can serve as a counterweight to Iran and its proxies both in Gaza and across Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Israel’s immediate priority must be to bring home all the hostages still held in Gaza. Doing so would not be a military victory but a victory for morality and communal responsibility, a repayment of the debt owed to those who were forsaken by the Israeli government and the entire defense establishment. Like any debt, there is a price attached. The country will be forced to free terrorists held in Israeli prisons, including people with the blood of Israeli civilians on their hands. But Israel must agree to as long a cease-fire as necessary to secure the hostages’ release. Then, in the longer term, Israel must choose between two courses of action. The first is to continue the occupation and creeping annexation of the West Bank. That path spells ongoing war, international isolation, and the loss of Israel’s Jewish and democratic character. The second is to pursue a diplomatic accord that will lead to an agreement with the Palestinian people within a regional framework. The United States and Europe would oversee such an agreement, and it would include normalization with Saudi Arabia and aim to build a broader coalition with moderate Sunni countries, such as Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states. Israel must agree to as long a cease-fire as necessary to secure the hostages’ release. Israel can be secure only if we choose the second option and participate in international “day after” discussions. The goal should be a regional accord that is based on UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which established the “land for peace” framework for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and on the Arab Peace Initiative, first raised two decades ago by Saudi Arabia, which provides a blueprint for member states of the Arab League to establish normal relations with Israel. All these plans call for a Palestinian state alongside Israel, with strong security guarantees. In spite of all the challenges Israel faces, there is cause for optimism, especially stemming from the strength of Israeli civil society. For ten months before October 7, hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens flooded the streets, defending Israel’s justice system from the government’s attempt to take it over. They proved that they are the guardians of Israeli democracy. Yet this struggle for democracy ignored the occupation and the existence of the Palestinians as a people. On October 7, Israelis were reminded that there is no way to separate the occupation from democracy—or from security. Walls alone, no matter how high or deep, cannot protect Israel. If Hamas or groups like it think they have nothing to lose, they will choose the “Samson option,” risking all to find ways to get past any barrier Israel can erect. More and more Israelis are now returning to the streets in anger over their government’s inability to protect its citizens and to define achievable goals for the war. They are calling for the release of the hostages still held in Gaza and new elections to replace the Israeli government. Only a coalition that excludes right-wing extremists can chart a course toward lasting peace. With a bold new leadership that recognizes the failure of policies advanced by the hard right, and with the support of the Israeli public and the country’s friends around the world, Israel may finally be able to climb out of its grief and agony and reach for a sustainable political settlement. Since October 7, the motto “Together We Will Win” has rallied the Israeli public in the fight against the perpetrators of that day’s attacks. But Israelis must remember that any military victory will turn into defeat if it undermines the core values of a Jewish and democratic Israel. AMI AYALON is a former Commander of the Israeli navy, former Director of the Israeli Security Agency, and the author of Friendly Fire: How Israel Became Its Own Worst Enemy and Its Hope for the Future. 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A Brazen Campaign Against Iranian Targets Could Backfire Dalia Dassa Kaye U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, October 2023 How Biden Can Get Tough on Netanyahu The Pressure Points That Give America Leverage Over Israel Jonah Blank Iran’s Order of Chaos How the Islamic Republic Is Remaking the Middle East By Suzanne Maloney May/June 2024 Published on April 8, 2024 An anti-Israeli protest in Tehran, April 2024 The Israel-Hamas war—and the possibility that it may explode into a wider conflagration—has upended the determined efforts of three U.S. presidents to pivot American resources and focus away from the Middle East. Immediately after Hamas’s October 7 attack, U.S. President Joe Biden moved quickly to support Israel, a critical American ally, and deter the expansion of hostilities. But as of this writing, the conflict has become a hellish impasse. The security imperatives driving the war command wide support among the Israeli public, yet months of intense Israeli operations have failed to eliminate Hamas, killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, and precipitated a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. And as the crisis expands, so, too, have the United States’ engagements in the Middle East. In the months after October 7, Washington delivered aid shipments to besieged Gazans, launched military operations to protect maritime transit, worked to contain the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, strove to degrade the capabilities of other disruptive militias from Iraq to Yemen, and pursued ambitious diplomatic initiatives to foster the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Reengaging with the Middle East presents risks for Biden, especially as he campaigns for reelection against his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose critiques of the human and economic costs of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resonated with voters and boosted his 2016 presidential campaign. In a Quinnipiac poll conducted three weeks after Hamas’s attack, an overwhelming 84 percent of Americans expressed concern that the United States could be drawn into direct military involvement in the Middle East conflict, and only one in five respondents to a February 2024 Pew survey agreed that the United States should make a “major” diplomatic push to end the Israel-Hamas war. But the risks posed by timidity are even greater. One regional actor particularly benefits from Washington’s hesitation or disengagement: the Islamic Republic of Iran. In fact, the quagmire in the Middle East presents an opportunity for a breakthrough in a four-decade strategy by Tehran to debilitate one of its foremost regional adversaries, Israel—and to humiliate the United States and drastically diminish its influence in the region. Iran’s Islamic regime aimed to inspire copycat religious uprisings after its own 1979 revolution, and to many observers, it may appear to have failed. Indeed, the conventional wisdom in Washington and elsewhere has often held that Iran has become contained, even isolated. But this was never true. Instead, Tehran developed a calculated strategy to empower proxy militias and to influence operations in its neighborhood while maintaining plausible deniability—a scheme whose canniness was vindicated by the devastating scope of Hamas’s assault and subsequent attacks by Iranian-affiliated militias in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. The post–October 7 strategic landscape in the Middle East is one that was largely created by Iran and that plays to its strengths. Tehran sees opportunity in chaos. Iranian leaders are exploiting and escalating the war in Gaza to elevate their regime’s stature, weaken and delegitimize Israel, undermine U.S. interests, and further shape the regional order in their favor. The truth is that the Islamic Republic is now in a better position than ever to dominate the Middle East, including by attaining the ability to disrupt shipping at multiple critical chokepoints. Left unchecked, the dramatic expansion of Iran’s influence would have a catastrophic impact on Israel, the wider region, and the global economy. To disrupt this amplification of Iranian power, Biden urgently needs to articulate and then implement a clear strategy to protect Palestinian civilians from bearing the brunt of Israel’s military operations, counter Iran’s corrosive war-by-proxy strategy, and blunt the capabilities of Tehran’s accomplices. Achieving these goals will require a tricky set of moves by Washington, and Americans are weary of the military, economic, and human toll of their country’s commitments in the Middle East. But no world power other than the United States has the military and diplomatic capacity to frustrate Iran’s most destructive ambitions by managing the spiraling conflict between Israel and Hamas and containing its most devastating long-term consequences. CHAOS THEORY Since Hamas’s 2007 takeover of Gaza, Iran has served as the group’s primary patron. Tehran proffered money, materiel, and other support that made the October 7 attack possible, including military technologies, intelligence, and as much as $300 million per year in financial assistance. It provided drones and rockets as well as infrastructure and training to help Hamas build its own weapons—weapons Hamas used to continue striking Israel for several months after the initial attack. After October 7, Iranian-backed militias also quickly ramped up hostile activities targeting Israeli and U.S. forces in the region. These assaults have caused well over a hundred casualties among U.S. service members. The Houthis, the Iranian-backed armed group ruling much of Yemen’s population—have attacked ships sailing in the Red Sea, causing transit through the Suez Canal to fall by 50 percent in the first two months of 2024. According to Congressional testimony in March by General Michael Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, the escalation in strikes by Iran’s allies and subsequent U.S. military responses have emboldened terrorist organizations not aligned with Tehran, prompting an uptick in attacks by groups such as the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Iran also made explicit moves to raise its diplomatic profile in the wake of October 7. Days after Hamas’s attack, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi spoke directly by phone for the first time with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and in November, he participated in a regional summit in Riyadh. Other Iranian officials, such as Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, have ricocheted around the region and beyond, seeking to position their country as a trusted mediator even as the regime maintains its support for Hamas. None of these developments are merely the result of Iran’s glimpsing new openings in turmoil and making opportunistic, impulsive moves. They are the product of a time-tested playbook. From the inception of the Islamic Republic, Iran’s leadership has harbored expansive ambitions. Since 1979, the country has viewed chaos and volatility, whether at home or nearby, as an opportunity to advance its interests and influence. Even Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran worked to the fledgling theocracy’s advantage by rallying internal support for the new order in Tehran, providing the occasion to build a strong domestic defense industry, and enabling the regime to survive its infancy. Tehran has used successive conflagrations in its neighborhood to strengthen its position. Historically, some of the most valuable openings have come as a result of missteps by Washington and its partners in the region, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. That conflict, which brought 150,000 U.S. troops to Iran’s doorstep, quickly broke in Tehran’s favor. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the Iranian leadership’s most existential threat, was deposed, and his regime was replaced by a weak state led by disaffected Shiites with existing ties to Tehran. Iran made the most of other moments of regional chaos in the years that followed. Beginning in 2013, the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) worked with its primary surrogate, Hezbollah, to mobilize brigades of Afghan and Pakistani Shiites into a larger transnational Shiite militia to defend Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime in Syria. Tehran eventually built an effective partnership with Russia during the Syrian civil war, which expanded into a broader strategic cooperation after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. A key component of Iran’s strategy in its neighborhood has been the cultivation of an “axis of resistance,” a loose network of regional militias with discrete organizational structures, overlapping interests, and ties to Iran’s security and religious establishments. The Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, maintained that exporting the revolution was necessary for its survival, arguing that if the theocracy remained “in an enclosed environment” it would “definitely face defeat.” Determined to spark a wider wave of Islamist-led upheavals against secular monarchies and republics in the Middle East, Khomeini and his acolytes developed an infrastructure dedicated to toppling the status quo across the Muslim world. During the Islamic Republic’s initial two decades in power, its leaders worked with proxy groups in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere to help incite a 1981 coup attempt in Bahrain, the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Kuwait, a 1985 assassination attempt against Kuwait’s emir, incendiary anti-Saudi and anti-American rallies during the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia, and other subversive actions against its neighbors. Since 1979, Iran has viewed chaos as an opportunity. The revolutionary wave Khomeini hoped for never materialized. Although Iranian leaders’ expectations for a wide-scale revolt against the existing regional order were disappointed, they would find their aspirations validated by the emergence of sympathetic militant groups that sought the revolutionary state’s patronage. And the Islamic Republic’s early investments yielded a valuable asset that has served as a model for its later efforts: Hezbollah. After Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Iran’s fledgling IRGC began training and coordinating Hezbollah, an incipient Shiite armed group. Iran’s assistance immediately made Hezbollah more potent: the group mounted a series of devastating suicide bombings of French and U.S. government facilities in 1983 and 1984 in Lebanon, as well as kidnappings, hijackings, and violence further afield, such as the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina in 1994 and the suicide bombing of a bus in Bulgaria that killed five Israeli tourists in 2012. Through its political wing, Hezbollah insinuated itself deep into the Lebanese government, installing members in the parliament and the cabinet. This political role did not temper the group’s reliance on violence: several Hezbollah members were convicted in the 2005 assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri. Despite Israeli and U.S. efforts to eliminate the militia, it maintains tens of thousands of active fighters, and with Tehran’s help, has amassed an arsenal of some 150,000 mostly short- and medium-range rockets and missiles, as well as drones and antitank, antiaircraft, and antiship artillery. Tehran continues to provide Hezbollah with $700 million to $1 billion per year in support, and the group remains the paramount social, political, and military actor in Lebanon. Hezbollah has proved extraordinarily useful to Iran. Its head, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, is one of the few regional power players who openly pay homage to Iran’s supreme leader as their organizations’ spiritual guide, although Hezbollah no longer espouses its early objective of establishing an Islamic state in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s role in driving Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, completed in 2000, earned the group brief regional acclaim and enduring domestic legitimacy, and its global reach continues to amplify Tehran’s leverage. Since the early 1990s, it has played a vital role in funneling funds, training, and arms from Iran to a variety of other groups, including but hardly limited to Hamas. THE LONG GAME With its cultivation of Hezbollah as a template, Iran then invested an enormous amount of effort and resources in cultivating militant groups across the Middle East. The support it has given to Palestinian militant groups, especially Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, paid tremendous dividends over subsequent decades, as did its aid to Shiite opponents of Saddam in Iraq. These relationships provided the springboard for Iranian influence at key turning points for regional stability. In the 1990s, PIJ terrorist attacks disrupted the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and nudged Israeli politics rightward. After the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Tehran’s patronage of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and the Dawa Party, both significant Shiite factions, positioned Iran as the most influential player in Iraq’s contentious postwar polity. The Syrian civil war elevated Hezbollah’s status to the jewel in the crown of the Iranian proxy network. Working closely with the IRGC, Hezbollah trained and coordinated the wider network of Iranian-backed Shiite militias that flooded into Syria from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen. Iran has proved remarkably flexible and pragmatic in developing this network, enabling it to align itself with partners and surrogates on multiple continents. Sometimes, Tehran uses umbrella groups and joint operation rooms to coordinate diverse factions, and at other times intentionally fragments existing groups to maintain its influence over them. Iran’s money and materiel have long been a central dimension of its relationships with individual militias. Increasingly, however, Tehran not only transfers finished weaponry but also the means for its proxy groups to manufacture and modify weapons independently. Iran’s national security establishment sees investing in asymmetric warfare as an economical means of gaining leverage against more powerful adversaries, especially the United States. Iran’s influence over militias has been boosted by the elimination of most of its radical competitors in the Middle East. After deep-pocketed dictators such as Saddam and Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi were removed from power, the Islamic Republic became one of the few regional players possessing the interest and the resources to back armed militias. In many respects, the relationship between Iran and its proxies reflects shared preferences for autonomy and self-interest. The evolutionary nature of Iranian investments in its clients has worked to its advantage, enabling the security establishment to sustain partnerships of enduring value that can withstand disruptions. For example, even as Hamas distanced itself from Iran for several years after the eruption of the Syrian civil war, Iran continued to provide the group with residual funding, and in time the relationship rebounded. ARC OF TRIUMPH In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Tehran sought to more fully establish itself as a power broker in a region in turmoil. Israel waged a determined campaign to blunt Iranian influence by “mowing the lawn,” or routinely striking Iranian positions in Syria to disrupt the Islamic Republic’s attempt to develop a land bridge to supply Hezbollah and its wider network of surrogates. This campaign scored a number of tactical successes, yet it does not seem to have had a meaningful deterrent impact on Iran and its proxies. The United States, meanwhile, was seeking to deepen its relationship with alternative power centers and foster new alignments to counter Tehran. From President Bill Clinton’s “dual containment” (which sought to isolate both Iran and Iraq while advancing Arab-Israeli peacemaking) to President George W. Bush’s “forward strategy for freedom” (which focused on advancing democratization in the Middle East and beyond), Washington has repeatedly invested in schemes intended to excise Iranian-backed violent extremism from the Middle East, to little effect. In a November 2023 speech, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, reflected on these efforts, sneering that Washington had “failed completely in trying to create a ‘New Middle East.’” He went on: “Yes, the region’s geopolitical map is undergoing a fundamental transformation, but not to the benefit of the United States. It is to the benefit of the resistance front. Yes, West Asia’s geopolitical map has changed—but it has changed in favor of the resistance.” Since October 7, Iran’s leaders have exulted in Israelis’ terror and grief and exploited the immense suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza to further elevate their status as power brokers. The war has provided an opening for the Islamic Republic to resume a formal role in pan-Muslim and cross-regional consultations. As they often do, Iranian leaders have coupled active diplomacy with a show of force intended to test America’s resolve. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Secretary-General Ziyad al-Nakhalah, Tehran, March 2024 Majid Asgaripour / West Asia News Agency / Reuters Attacks by Iran’s surrogate militias pose a devilishly complex challenge for Washington and the world. From October 2023 through mid-February 2024, attacks by Iranian-backed proxies resulted in at least 186 casualties among U.S. troops serving in the Middle East. These included 130 traumatic brain injuries, the loss of three army reservists in Jordan, and the deaths of two navy SEALs on a mission to interdict illicit Iranian weapons off the coast of Somalia. Before October 7, the Biden administration had invested considerable time, energy, and political capital in a plan to help normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such a deal would have represented a huge breakthrough for both governments and the wider region by opening up new economic opportunities and, over time, helping marginalize the influence of malign actors, including Tehran and its proxies. Biden’s effort to achieve an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal was the most recent component of a long American campaign to strengthen cooperation between self-described moderate regional actors. The normalization talks built on the success of the 2020 Abraham Accords, which paved the way for the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates and opened unprecedented opportunities for bilateral trade, military cooperation, and people-to-people engagement. The opening with Riyadh would have boosted this trend, putting Iran on the back foot even as it strove to secure its own rapprochement with Riyadh. The case for establishing full diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia remains compelling. But the Israel-Hamas war added staggering complexities to what was already going to be a historically ambitious undertaking. For many Israelis in and outside of government, Hamas’s horrific attack only reinforced the conviction that Palestinian sovereignty presents an unacceptable security threat. Israel’s subsequent operations in Gaza, however, triggered new Saudi demands for a meaningful effort to redress Palestinian suffering. And the U.S. contribution to the proposed rapprochement—security commitments to Saudi Arabia and investments in the kingdom’s civil nuclear infrastructure—requires buy-in from American lawmakers that has become harder to secure amid concerns that an escalation of the Israel-Hamas war could draw U.S. forces directly into another Middle East conflict. The combination of rhetoric, diplomacy, and terrorism that Iran has deftly employed since October 7 advances some of its most long-standing ideological and strategic priorities. Like Hamas, Iran’s leadership clamors for Israel’s destruction and for the triumph of the Islamic world over what it sees as a West in decline. Its views are not opportunistic or transient; anti-Americanism and antipathy toward Israel are ingrained in the Islamic Republic’s bedrock. But the monumental scale of destruction in Gaza has breathed new life into Tehran’s anti-Western and anti-Israeli invective. This rhetoric now holds fresh appeal for regional audiences who were otherwise unsympathetic toward a Shiite theocracy and gives Iran a convenient opportunity to shame its Sunni Arab rivals. Tehran sees regional assertiveness as a chance to align itself yet more closely with Russia and China, too. Those countries’ interests are, for the most part, served by keeping Washington mired in a crisis in the Middle East that damages its reputation and bleeds its military capacity. Notably, China, Iran, and Russia launched a small joint naval drill, the fourth of its kind in the past five years, in the Gulf of Oman in early March. FIGHT RISK From Tehran’s perspective, the Israel-Hamas war is only accelerating a shift in the power balance away from U.S. hegemony and toward a new regional order that benefits the Islamic Republic. Ten days after Hamas’s attack on Israel, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, warned that a ground invasion of Gaza could “open the gates of hell”—that is, trigger an overwhelming response directed not just at Israel but also at American interests and assets in the region. Still, for Iran’s pugnacious revolutionaries, regime survival trumps every other priority, so their approach from October to March was guided by careful targeting. After the Biden administration dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean in October, Iran and its allies took pains to avoid a precipitous escalation. Hezbollah deftly calibrated its attacks on Israel’s north, seemingly to avoid drawing Israel into a hotter fight that could erode Hezbollah’s ability to deter an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear program. Biden’s rapid deployment of U.S. military assets to the region, together with his diplomatic overtures in Lebanon and other key regional actors, helped avert the wider war that Hamas may have hoped to precipitate. A series of U.S. strikes on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen degraded those groups’ capabilities and signaled to Tehran’s partners that they will pay a price for continued aggression against Americans. Yet the risk of American miscalculations and overconfidence will creep up over time. Iran’s militias have a long record of tenacity and adaptability, and the weapons at their disposal are relatively plentiful and inexpensive, especially compared with the costs of the American strikes to eliminate them. Over the decades, Iran and its proxies have developed keen instincts for calibrating risk. Now, having gauged the waning American interest in the Middle East, Iranian leaders see an advantage to be gained by gambling. With their attacks, they seek to provoke the United States to make mistakes that give Tehran and its allies an advantage—mistakes similar to the ones Washington made two decades ago, when it invaded Iraq, or in 2018, when Trump withdrew from President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. A miscalculation by any of the actors involved, including Iran itself, could ignite a much wider and more intense conflict across the Middle East, causing profound damage to regional stability and the global economy. Iran is now in a better position than ever to dominate the Middle East. To counter Iran’s ambitions, the Biden administration must work with Israel and regional allies to further erode Hamas’s ability to launch another shock attack against Israeli civilians while ensuring that humanitarian assistance reaches desperate Palestinian civilians and outlining a path to a postwar future that ensures peace and stability for both Israelis and Palestinians. As of late March 2024, Washington was continuing to press for an agreement that would require Hezbollah to pull its elite forces back from Lebanon’s border with Israel, facilitating the return of thousands of Israeli civilians whose homes have come under bombardment by Hezbollah rockets since October 7. Achieving such an agreement is critical to prevent a wider conflict, and Washington must press hard for it, leveraging the obvious interests of all parties involved to forestall escalation. In 2022, the United States had success in negotiating a maritime border deal between Israel and Lebanon to permit gas exploration, which suggests there are other opportunities for pragmatic compromise. The Biden administration has already begun to take a more forceful role in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Tragically, these efforts may prove to be too little and too late to forestall famine. A famine in Gaza would constitute both a strategic and a moral failure for the United States as well as for Israel, and Biden must not repeat the errors that have allowed the specter of such a cataclysm to grip the region. Any truly successful effort to put a stop to the threat from Hamas—which, in turn, would curb Iran’s ability to inflict violence on Israel—will require mitigating the devastating fallout for Palestinian civilians. Working with nongovernmental organizations and partner governments, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development must rush assistance to Palestinian civilian authorities independent of Hamas and other Iranian-backed militias—including aid to ensure they have the resources to undertake a reconstruction effort in Gaza when the armed conflict stops. After the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, Iran’s rapid delivery of aid enabled Hezbollah to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and outmaneuver the Lebanese government by providing instantaneous compensation and rebuilding programs. The United States must not allow Tehran or its proxies a similar opening after the war in Gaza ends. Compounding the challenge for Washington is the reality that Iran has accelerated the development of its nuclear program since Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. It is vital for American officials to cultivate a sense of realism. The grand strategic play to align Saudi Arabia and Israel may yet come to pass. Normalizing Israeli-Saudi relations is an appealing way to undergird peace and stability in the region and to counter Iran’s malign influence in the long term, but accomplishing it requires complicated political scaffolding that has yet to be fully designed, much less erected. Achieving that normalization requires more effective short- and medium-term game plans to provide governance and security in Gaza, open the way for leadership transitions in both the Palestinian territories and in Israel, and contain the pressures that a variety of actors, especially Iran, are exerting to expand conflict in the Middle East. These must be Washington’s priorities over the next year. In a sense, Iran now has the default advantage over the United States because it does not actually have to achieve anything material in the near term. Chaos itself will constitute a victory. By contrast, the bar for U.S. success is high. Like it or not, however, the United States remains an indispensable player in the region despite its dubious record over the past several decades. Standing by its allies—and safeguarding access to oil that remains vital to the world economy—with a delicate balance of support and restraint requires commitment. Several U.S. presidents hoped to downsize America’s role in the Middle East on the cheap—in Biden’s case, to focus on China’s challenge and Russia’s growing threat. But Hamas and Iran have drawn the United States back in. SUZANNE MALONEY is Vice President of the Brookings Institution and Director of its Foreign Policy program. MORE BY SUZANNE MALONEY More: Middle East Iran Geopolitics Politics & Society Security U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration Israel-Hamas War Hamas Hezbollah Most-Read Articles The End of Secular India Modi’s Quest to Entrench Hindu Nationalism Hartosh Singh Bal Iran’s Order of Chaos How the Islamic Republic Is Remaking the Middle East Suzanne Maloney The Only Way for Israel to Truly Defeat Hamas Why the Zionist Dream Depends on a Two-State Solution Ami Ayalon No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher Recommended Articles A mural depicting the former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the current Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, March 2024 A Détente Option for Iran America Needs a Simpler Policy—but Not Rapprochement Jon B. Alterman Houthi forces marching at a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, December 2023 Don’t Bomb the Houthis Careful Diplomacy Can Stop the Attacks in the Red Sea Alexandra Stark No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed By Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher May/June 2024 Published on April 10, 2024 Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden meeting in Woodside, California, November 2023 Amid a presidency beset by failures of deterrence—in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and the Middle East—the Biden administration’s China policy has stood out as a relative bright spot. The administration has strengthened U.S. alliances in Asia, restricted Chinese access to critical U.S. technologies, and endorsed the bipartisan mood for competition. Yet the administration is squandering these early gains by falling into a familiar trap: prioritizing a short-term thaw with China’s leaders at the expense of a long-term victory over their malevolent strategy. The Biden team’s policy of “managing competition” with Beijing risks emphasizing processes over outcomes, bilateral stability at the expense of global security, and diplomatic initiatives that aim for cooperation but generate only complacency. The United States shouldn’t manage the competition with China; it should win it. Beijing is pursuing a raft of global initiatives designed to disintegrate the West and usher in an antidemocratic order. It is underwriting expansionist dictatorships in Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela. It has more than doubled its nuclear arsenal since 2020 and is building up its conventional forces faster than any country has since World War II. These actions show that China isn’t aiming for a stalemate. Neither should America. What would winning look like? China’s communist rulers would give up trying to prevail in a hot or cold conflict with the United States and its friends. And the Chinese people—from ruling elites to everyday citizens—would find inspiration to explore new models of development and governance that don’t rely on repression at home and compulsive hostility abroad. In addition to having greater clarity about its end goal, the United States needs to accept that achieving it will require greater friction in U.S.-Chinese relations. Washington will need to adopt rhetoric and policies that may feel uncomfortably confrontational but in fact are necessary to reestablish boundaries that Beijing and its acolytes are violating. That means imposing costs on Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his policy of fostering global chaos. It means speaking with candor about the ways China is hurting U.S. interests. It means rapidly increasing U.S. defense capabilities to achieve unmistakable qualitative advantages over Beijing. It means severing China’s access to Western technology and frustrating Xi’s efforts to convert his country’s wealth into military power. And it means pursuing intensive diplomacy with Beijing only from a position of American strength, as perceived by both Washington and Beijing. No country should relish waging another cold war. Yet a cold war is already being waged against the United States by China’s leaders. Rather than denying the existence of this struggle, Washington should own it and win it. Lukewarm statements that pretend as if there is no cold war perversely court a hot war; they signal complacency to the American people and conciliation to Chinese leaders. Like the original Cold War, the new cold war will not be won through half measures or timid rhetoric. Victory requires openly admitting that a totalitarian regime that commits genocide, fuels conflict, and threatens war will never be a reliable partner. Like the discredited détente policies that Washington adopted in the 1970s to deal with the Soviet Union, the current approach will yield little cooperation from Chinese leaders while fortifying their conviction that they can destabilize the world with impunity. BIDEN’S NEW BASELINE The administration’s China policy initially showed promise. President Joe Biden maintained the tariffs that President Donald Trump had imposed on Chinese exports in response to the rampant theft of U.S. intellectual property. He renewed, with some adjustments, the executive orders Trump had issued to restrict investment in certain companies affiliated with the Chinese military and to block the import of Chinese technologies deemed a national security threat. In a particularly important step, in October 2022, Biden significantly expanded the Trump administration’s controls on the export of high-end semiconductors and the equipment used to make them, slowing Beijing’s plans to dominate the manufacturing of advanced microchips. Across Asia, Biden’s diplomats pulled longtime allies and newer partners closer together. They organized the first summits of the Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, bringing together the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, and convened high-profile trilateral summits with the leaders of Japan and South Korea. Biden also unveiled AUKUS, a defense pact among Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. As it turned out, however, aggression would come from the opposite direction, in Europe. Less than three weeks before invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin had signed a “no limits” security pact with Xi in Beijing. In a prudent step after the invasion, Biden drew a redline by warning Xi in a video call that the U.S. government would impose sweeping sanctions if China provided “material support” to Moscow. Xi nonetheless found plenty of ways to support the Russian war machine, sending semiconductors, unarmed drones, gunpowder, and other wares. China also supplied Moscow with badly needed money in exchange for major shipments of Russian oil. Chinese officials, according to the U.S. State Department, even spent more money on pro-Russian propaganda worldwide than Russia itself was spending. Beijing was also coordinating more closely with Iran and North Korea, even as those regimes sent weapons to help Moscow wage war in Europe. Yet Washington was pursuing siloed policies—simultaneously resisting Russia, appeasing Iran, containing North Korea, and pursuing a mix of rivalry and engagement with China—that added up to something manifestly incoherent. Indeed, the situation that Xi had forecast at the start of the Biden administration was becoming a reality: “The most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, ‘chaos,’ and this trend appears likely to continue,” Xi told a seminar of high-level Communist Party officials in January 2021. Xi made clear that this was a useful development for China. “The times and trends are on our side,” he said, adding, “Overall, the opportunities outweigh the challenges.” By March 2023, Xi had revealed that he saw himself not just as a beneficiary of worldwide turmoil but also as one of its architects. “Right now, there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years,” he said to Putin on camera while wrapping up a visit to the Kremlin. “And we are the ones driving these changes together.” If ever the time was ripe to call out Beijing for fomenting chaos and to start systematically imposing costs on the country in response, it was early 2023. Biden, inexplicably, was doing the opposite. On February 1, residents of Montana spotted a massive, white sphere drifting eastward. The administration was already tracking the Chinese spy balloon but had been planning to let it pass overhead without notifying the public. Under political pressure, Biden ordered the balloon shot down once it reached the Atlantic Ocean, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a scheduled trip to Beijing to protest the intrusion. Press reports suggested the administration had kept quiet about the balloon in order to gather intelligence about it. But a troubling pattern of downplaying affronts by Beijing would persist in other contexts. Lukewarm statements that pretend as if there is no cold war perversely court a hot war. In June 2023, leaks to the press revealed that Beijing, in a remarkable echo of the Cold War, was planning to build a joint military training base in Cuba and had already developed a signals intelligence facility there targeting the United States. After a National Security Council spokesperson called reports about the spy facility inaccurate, a White House official speaking anonymously to the press minimized them by suggesting that Chinese spying from Cuba was “not a new development.” The administration also greeted with a shrug new evidence suggesting that COVID-19 may have initially spread after it accidentally leaked from a Chinese laboratory. If the virus, which has led to the deaths of an estimated 27 million people worldwide, turns out to have been artificially enhanced before it escaped, the revelation would mark a turning point in human history on par with the advent of nuclear weapons—a situation that already cries out for U.S. leadership to govern dangerous biological research worldwide. In the spring of 2023, as Beijing’s actions grew bolder, Biden initiated what the White House termed an “all hands on deck” diplomatic campaign—not to impose costs on Beijing but to flatter it by dispatching five cabinet-level U.S. officials to China from May to August. Blinken’s June meeting with Xi symbolized the dynamic. Whereas Xi had sat amiably alongside the billionaire Bill Gates just days earlier, the U.S. secretary of state was seated off to the side as Xi held forth from the head of a table at the Great Hall of the People. For the first time in years, Xi appeared to have successfully positioned the United States as supplicant in the bilateral relationship. What did the United States get in return for all this diplomacy? In the Biden administration’s tally, the benefits included a promise by Beijing to resume military-to-military talks (which Beijing had unilaterally suspended), a new dialogue on the responsible use of artificial intelligence (technology that Beijing is already weaponizing against the American people by spreading fake images and other propaganda on social media), and tentative cooperation to stem the flood of precursor chemicals fueling the fentanyl crisis in the United States (chemicals that are supplied mainly by Chinese companies). Any doubts that Xi saw the American posture as one of weakness were dispelled after Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel. Beijing exploited the attack by serving up endless anti-Israeli and anti-American propaganda through TikTok, whose algorithms are subject to control by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinese diplomats, like Russian ones, met with Hamas’s leaders and provided diplomatic cover for the terrorist group, vetoing UN Security Council resolutions that would have condemned Hamas. And there is little sign Beijing has done anything, despite Washington’s requests, to help rein in attacks carried out by the Houthis on commercial vessels and U.S. warships in the Red Sea—attacks conducted by the Yemeni rebel group using Iranian missiles, including ones with technology pioneered by China. (Chinese ships, unsurprisingly, are usually granted free passage through the kill zone.) Whether Xi is acting opportunistically or according to a grand design—or, almost certainly, both—it is clear he sees advantage in stoking crises that he hopes will exhaust the United States and its allies. In a sobering Oval Office address in mid-October, Biden seemed to grasp the severity of the situation. “We’re facing an inflection point in history—one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come,” he said. Yet bizarrely—indeed, provocatively—he made no mention of China, the chief sponsor of the aggressors he did call out in the speech: Iran, North Korea, and Russia. Through omission, Biden gave Beijing a pass. THAT ’70S SHOW The current moment bears an uncanny resemblance to the 1970s. The Soviet Union was undermining U.S. interests across the world, offering no warning of its ally Egypt’s 1973 surprise attack on Israel; aiding communists in Angola, Portugal, and Vietnam; and rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal and investing heavily in its conventional military. These were the bitter fruits of détente—a set of policies pioneered by President Richard Nixon and his top foreign policy adviser, Henry Kissinger, who stayed on and continued the approach under President Gerald Ford. By using pressure and inducement, as well as downplaying ideological differences, the United States tried to lure the Russians into a stable equilibrium of global power. Under détente, Washington slashed defense spending and soft-pedaled Moscow’s human rights affronts. The working assumption was that the Soviet Union’s appetite for destabilizing actions abroad would somehow be self-limiting. But the Russians had their own ideas about the utility of détente. As the historian John Lewis Gaddis observed, the Soviets “might have viewed détente as their own instrument for inducing complacency in the West while they finished assembling the ultimate means of applying pressure—their emergence as a full-scale military rival of the United States.” Nixon and Kissinger thought détente would secure Soviet help in managing crises around the world and, as Gaddis put it, “enmesh the U.S.S.R. in a network of economic relationships that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the Russians to take actions in the future detrimental to Western interests.” But the policy failed to achieve its goals. President Jimmy Carter came into office in 1977 intending to keep détente in place, but the policy didn’t work for him either. His attempt to “de-link” Soviet actions that hurt U.S. interests from Soviet cooperation on arms control ultimately yielded setbacks in both categories. The Soviets became more aggressive globally, and a wary U.S. Congress, having lost faith in Moscow’s sincerity, declined to ratify SALT II, the arms control treaty that Carter’s team had painstakingly negotiated. Meanwhile, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s national security adviser, had grown increasingly skeptical of détente. Brzezinski felt that a turning point had come in 1978, after the Soviets sponsored thousands of Cuban soldiers to wage violent revolution in the Horn of Africa, supporting Ethiopia in its war with Somalia. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the following year was “the final nail in the coffin” for arms control talks, Brzezinski wrote in his journal—and for the broader policy of détente. By the time President Ronald Reagan entered the White House, in 1981, Nixon and Kissinger’s invention was on its last legs. “Détente’s been a one-way street that the Soviet Union has used to pursue its aims,” Reagan stated flatly in his first press conference as president, effectively burying the concept. Reagan sought to win, not merely manage, the Cold War. In a sharp departure from his immediate predecessors, he spoke candidly about the nature of the Soviet threat, recognizing that autocrats often bully democracies into silence by depicting honesty as a form of aggression. In 1987, when Reagan was preparing to give a speech within sight of the Berlin Wall, some of his aides begged him to remove a phrase they found gratuitously provocative. Wisely, he overruled them and delivered the most iconic line of his presidency: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” THE SMOKELESS WAR Washington must adopt a similar attitude today and try harder to disseminate truthful information within China itself and to make it possible for Chinese citizens to communicate securely with one another. Tearing down—or at least blowing holes in—the “Great Firewall” of China must become as central to Washington’s approach today as removing the Berlin Wall was for Reagan’s. Beijing is waging a bitter information war against the United States—which is losing, despite its natural advantages. Xi and his inner circle see themselves as fighting an existential ideological campaign against the West, as Xi’s words from an official publication in 2014 make clear: The battle for “mind control” happens on a smokeless battlefield. It happens inside the domain of ideology. Whoever controls this battlefield can win hearts. They will have the initiative throughout the competition and combat. . . . When it comes to combat in the ideology domain, we don’t have any room for compromise or retreat. We must achieve total victory. For Xi, the Internet is the “main battlefield” of this smokeless war. In 2020, the scholar Yuan Peng, writing before he resurfaced under a new name as a vice minister of China’s premier spy agency, also recognized the power of controlling speech online: “In the Internet era . . . what is truth and what is a lie is already unimportant; what’s important is who controls discourse power.” Xi has poured billions of dollars into building and harnessing what he calls “external discourse mechanisms,” and other Chinese leaders have specifically highlighted short-video platforms such as TikTok as the “megaphones” of discourse power. They aren’t afraid to use those megaphones. According to a February 2024 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, TikTok accounts run by Chinese propaganda outfits “reportedly targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022.” As the CCP seeks to set the terms of global discourse, what it wants more than anything from the United States and the rest of the West is silence—silence about China’s human rights abuses, silence about its aggression toward Taiwan, and silence about the West’s own deeply held beliefs, which contrast irreconcilably with the party’s. It is no surprise, then, that so much of the CCP’s strategy on the smokeless battlefield is about drowning out speech it doesn’t like—both inside and outside China. It is American silence—not candor—that is truly provocative, for it signals to the CCP that China is advancing and the United States is retreating. REARM, REDUCE, RECRUIT What U.S. officials need first is clarity about the contest with China. They have to recognize that rising tensions are inevitable in the short run if the United States is to deter war and win the contest in the long run. Once they have faced these facts, they need to put in place a better policy: one that rearms the U.S. military, reduces China’s economic leverage, and recruits a broader coalition to confront China. Xi is preparing his country for a war over Taiwan. On its current trajectory, the United States risks failing to deter that war, one that could kill tens of thousands of U.S. service members, inflict trillions of dollars in economic damage, and bring about the end of the global order as we know it. The only path to avoid this future is for Washington to immediately build and surge enough hard power to deny Xi a successful invasion of Taiwan. Yet the Biden administration’s latest budget request sheds badly needed combat power, proposing the retirement of ten ships and 250 aircraft and a drop in the production goal for Virginia-class submarines from two per year to just one. It replenishes only half the $1 billion that Congress authorized for the president to furnish military aid to Taiwan. And in its 2023 supplemental request, the White House asked for just over $5 billion in weapons and industrial base spending earmarked for the Indo-Pacific—barely five percent of the entire supplemental request. Looking at the budget trend line, one would think it was 1994, not 2024. The Biden administration should immediately change course, reversing what are, in inflation-adjusted terms, cuts to defense spending. Instead of spending about three percent of GDP on defense, Washington should spend four or even five percent, a level that would still be at the low end of Cold War spending. For near-term deterrence in the Taiwan Strait, it should spend an additional $20 billion per year for the next five years, the rough amount needed to surge and disperse sufficient combat power in Asia. Ideally, this money would be held in a dedicated “deterrence fund” overseen by the secretary of defense, who would award resources to projects that best align with the defense of Taiwan. The deterrence fund should headline a generational effort directed by the president to restore U.S. primacy in Asia. The priority should be to maximize existing production lines and build new production capacity for critical munitions for Asia, such as antiship and antiaircraft missiles that can destroy enemy targets at great distances. The Pentagon should also draw on the deterrence fund to adapt existing military systems or even civilian technology such as commercially available drones that could be useful for defending Taiwan. Complementing its Replicator Initiative, which tasks the services to field thousands of low-cost drones to turn the Taiwan Strait into what some have called “a boiling moat,” the Pentagon should quickly embrace other creative solutions. It could, for example, disperse missile launchers concealed in commercial container boxes or field the Powered Joint Direct Attack Munition, a low-cost kit that turns standard 500-pound bombs into precision-guided cruise missiles. What China wants more than anything from the United States and the rest of the West is silence. For U.S. forces to actually deter China, they need to be able to move within striking range. Given the maritime geography of the Indo-Pacific and the threat that China’s vast missile arsenal poses to U.S. bases, the State Department will need to expand hosting and access agreements with allies and partners to extend the U.S. military’s footprint in the region. The Pentagon, meanwhile, will need to harden U.S. military installations across the region and pre-position critical supplies such as fuel, ammunition, and equipment throughout the Pacific. But the United States could keep the Chinese military contained and still lose the new cold war if China held the West hostage economically. Beijing is bent on weaponizing its stranglehold over global supply chains and its dominance of critical emerging technologies. To reduce Chinese leverage and ensure that the United States, not China, develops the key technologies of the future, Washington needs to reset the terms of the bilateral economic relationship. It should start by repealing China’s permanent normal trade relations status, which provides China access to U.S. markets on generous terms, and moving China to a new tariff column that features gradually increasing rates on products critical to U.S. national security and economic competitiveness. The revenue raised from increased tariffs could be spent on offsetting the costs that U.S. exporters will incur as a result of China’s inevitable retaliatory measures and on bolstering U.S. supply chains for strategically important products. Washington must also halt the flow of American money and technology to Chinese companies that support Beijing’s military buildup and high-tech surveillance system. The Biden administration’s August 2023 executive order restricting a subset of outbound investment to China was an important step in the right direction, but it doesn’t go far enough. Washington must expand investment restrictions to include critical and emerging technologies such as hypersonics, space systems, and new biotechnologies. It must also put an end to U.S. financial firms’ disturbing practice of offering publicly traded financial products, such as exchange-traded funds and mutual funds, that invest in Chinese companies that are on U.S. government blacklists. Using the current export controls on advanced semiconductors as a model, the Department of Commerce should reduce the flow of critical technology to China by introducing similar export bans on other key areas of U.S. innovation, such as quantum computing and biotechnology. The Chinese spy balloon falling into the ocean near Surfside Beach, South Carolina, February 2023 Randall Hill / Reuters As China doubles down on economic self-reliance and phases out imports of industrial goods from the West, the United States needs to recruit a coalition of friendly partners to deepen mutual trade. Washington should strike a bilateral trade agreement with the United Kingdom. It should upgrade its bilateral trade agreement with Japan and establish a new one with Taiwan, agreements that could be joined by other eligible economies in the region. It should forge an Indo-Pacific digital trade agreement that would facilitate the free flow of data between like-minded economies, using as a baseline the high standards set by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. To overhaul its dilapidated defense industrial base, the United States should turbocharge innovation in the defense industry by recruiting talented workers from allied countries. Every year, the U.S. government authorizes roughly 10,000 visas through the EB-5 program, which allows immigrants to obtain a green card if they invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in American businesses. The program is rife with fraud and has deviated far from its intended purpose as a job-creation program, becoming mostly a method for millionaires from China and other places to become permanent residents. These visas should be repurposed as work authorizations for citizens of partner countries who hold advanced degrees in fields critical to defense. The U.S. government also needs to recruit the next generation of cold warriors to apply their talents to the contest with China. It should start by reversing the crisis in military recruitment—not by lowering standards, promising easy pay, or infusing the force with diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology but by unapologetically touting the virtues of an elite, colorblind, all-volunteer force and challenging young Americans to step up. The intelligence community also needs to recruit experts in emerging technology, finance, and open-source research and make it easier to temporarily leave the private sector for a stint in government. National security agencies need to cultivate deep expertise in Asia and in the history and ideology of the CCP. The curricula of the service academies and war colleges, as well as ongoing professional military education, should reflect this shift. Finally, U.S. officials need to recruit everyday Americans to contribute to the fight. For all the differences between the Soviet Union yesterday and China today, U.S. policymakers’ squeamishness about the term “cold war” causes them to overlook the way it can mobilize society. A cold war offers a relatable framework that Americans can use to guide their own decisions—such as a company’s choice whether to set up a sensitive research and development center in China or an individual’s choice whether to download TikTok. Too often, however, elected officials on the left and the right give the impression that the competition with China is so narrow in scope that Americans can take such steps without worry. The contest with Beijing, they would have people believe, shouldn’t much concern ordinary citizens but will be handled through surgically precise White House policies and congressional legislation. CHINA AS A NORMAL COUNTRY It is a peculiar feature of U.S. foreign policy today that the elephant in the room—the end state Washington desires in its competition with Beijing—is such a taboo subject that administrations come and go without ever articulating a clear goal for how the competition ends. The Biden administration offers up managing competition as a goal, but that is not a goal; it is a method, and a counterproductive one at that. Washington is allowing the aim of its China policy to become process: meetings that should be instruments through which the United States advances its interests become core objectives in and of themselves. Washington should not fear the end state desired by a growing number of Chinese: a China that is able to chart its own course free from communist dictatorship. Xi’s draconian rule has persuaded even many CCP members that the system that produced China’s recent precipitous decline in prosperity, status, and individual happiness is one that deserves reexamination. The system that produced an all-encompassing surveillance state, forced-labor colonies, and the genocide of minority groups inside its borders is one that likewise desecrates Chinese philosophy and religion—the fountainheads from which a better model will eventually spring. Generations of American leaders understood that it would have been unacceptable for the Cold War to end through war or U.S. capitulation. If the 1970s taught Washington anything, it is that trying to achieve a stable and durable balance of power—a détente—with a powerful and ambitious Leninist dictatorship is also doomed to backfire on the United States. The best strategy, which found its ultimate synthesis in the Reagan years, was to convince the Soviets that they were on a path to lose, which in turn fueled doubts about their whole system. Washington is allowing the aim of its China policy to become process. The U.S. victory wasn’t Reagan’s alone, of course. It was built on strategies forged by presidents of both parties and manifested in documents such as NSC-68, the 1950 Truman administration policy paper that argued that the United States’ “policy and actions must be such as to foster a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system.” One can draw a straight line from that document to National Security Decision Directive 75, the 1983 Reagan administration order that called for “internal pressure on the USSR to weaken the sources of Soviet imperialism.” In some ways, it was the détente years, not the Reagan years, that were an aberration in Cold War strategy. Ironically, Reagan would end up pursuing a more fulsome and productive engagement with the Soviets than perhaps any of his predecessors—but only after he had strengthened Washington’s economic, military, and moral standing relative to Moscow and only after the Soviet Union produced a leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, with whom Reagan could make real progress. Reagan understood that sequencing was everything. He also knew that the confrontational first phase wouldn’t be easy or comfortable. His first directive on national security strategy, in May 1982, predicted, “The decade of the eighties will likely pose the greatest challenge to our survival and well-being since World War II.” It was a tense and unsettling period, to be sure, during which Reagan called out the Soviet Union as “the focus of evil in the modern world” and deliberately sought to weaken its economy and contest its destabilizing activities around the world. Yet it paid off. Xi, who has vilified Gorbachev and fashioned his own leadership style after that of Joseph Stalin, has proved time and again that he is not a leader with whom Americans can solve problems. He is an agent of chaos. Washington should seek to weaken the sources of CCP imperialism and hold out for a Chinese leader who behaves less like an unrelenting foe. This does not mean forcible regime change, subversion, or war. But it does mean seeking truth from facts, as Chinese leaders are fond of saying, and understanding that the CCP has no desire to coexist indefinitely with great powers that promote liberal values and thus represent a fundamental threat to its rule. The current mass exodus of Chinese people from their homeland is evidence they want to live in nations that respect human rights, honor the rule of law, and offer a wide choice of opportunities. As Taiwan’s example makes plain, China could be such a place, too. The road to get there might be long. But for the United States’ own security, as well as the rights and aspirations of all those in China, it is the only workable destination. MATT POTTINGER served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser from 2019 to 2021 and as Senior Director for Asia on the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. He is a co-author and editor of the forthcoming book The Boiling Moat: Urgent Steps to Defend Taiwan. MIKE GALLAGHER served as U.S. Representative from Wisconsin from 2017 to 2024 and chaired the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. MORE BY MATT POTTINGER MORE BY MIKE GALLAGHER More: United States China Economics Politics & Society Security Defense & Military U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration Reagan Administration U.S.-Chinese Relations Xi Jinping Most-Read Articles The End of Secular India Modi’s Quest to Entrench Hindu Nationalism Hartosh Singh Bal Iran’s Order of Chaos How the Islamic Republic Is Remaking the Middle East Suzanne Maloney The Only Way for Israel to Truly Defeat Hamas Why the Zionist Dream Depends on a Two-State Solution Ami Ayalon No Substitute for Victory America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher Recommended Articles A worker checking his mobile phone at a construction site in Beijing, January 2024 China Is Still Rising Don’t Underestimate the World’s Second-Biggest Economy Nicholas R. Lardy At the National People’s Congress in Beijing, March 2024 China’s Economic Collision Course As Growth Slows, Beijing’s Moves Are Drawing a Global Backlash Daniel H. Rosen and Logan Wright The Trouble With “the Global South” What the West Gets Wrong About the Rest By Comfort Ero April 1, 2024 South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Johannesburg, August 2023 Not so long ago, policymakers in Washington and other Western capitals gave little apparent thought to the possibility that the rest of the world might hold opinions distinct from their own. There were some exceptions: governments that the West deemed “good partners”—in other words, those willing to advance U.S. and Western security or economic interests—continued to benefit from Western support even if they did not govern themselves in accordance with Western values. But after the Cold War ended, most Western policymakers seemed to expect that developing countries would, over time, embrace the Western approach to democracy and globalization. Few Western leaders seemed to worry that non-Western states might bridle at their norms or perceive the international distribution of power as an unjust remnant of the colonial past. Leaders who voiced such views, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, were dismissed as eccentrics, their ideas behind the times. Today, by contrast, many Western policy discussions treat it as an established fact that a global South exists with its own distinct outlook. The phrase has become a nearly unavoidable shorthand—my colleagues and I use it ourselves at the International Crisis Group, the organization I lead. And, indeed, non-Western leaders including Narendra Modi of India and Mia Mottley of Barbados have begun to articulate the priorities of a collective—if still rather amorphous—global South on issues such as climate financing and the role of international institutions. Disappointed by many developing countries’ refusal to take serious steps to penalize Russia for its aggression in Ukraine, U.S. and European officials have started to pay new lip service to concerns of this group of states. Although this acknowledgment of the rest of the world’s interests is a welcome development, it is connected to a particular understanding of the global South, which, as a term, is conceptually unwieldy. There is no hard-and-fast definition of the global South, but it is typically used to refer to the bulk of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It lumps together powerful members of the G-20, such as Brazil and Indonesia, with the world’s least developed countries, including Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste. These countries do share some common historical experiences and future objectives, such as changing the balance of power in the international system. In conversations with politicians and officials from countries considered to be members of the global South, I have encountered a range of views on how coherent a unit it is. Some accept the term—but others do not. For these countries can also have dramatically diverging interests, values, and perspectives. Policymakers in the West risk losing sight of the diversity the term encompasses. When they regard the global South as a more or less cohesive coalition, they can end up simplifying or ignoring countries’ individual concerns. Western officials who want to cultivate better ties with their non-Western counterparts may become tempted to focus on winning over a few supposedly leading global South states, such as Brazil and India. Their assumption is clear: bolster ties with Brasilia or New Delhi and the rest will follow. The Biden administration and its allies invested so heavily in making last year’s G-20 summit in India a success at least in part for this reason. A policy that focuses too heavily on a narrow cadre of non-Western states is insufficient. It can obscure the tensions among developing countries and the unique pressures—such as debt, climate change, demographic forces, and internal violence—that are shaping politics in many of them. In doing so, such a policy may also veil opportunities for building better ties with small and middle-sized states by addressing their individual interests. The term “global South” may offer a compelling but misleading simplicity (as can its counterpart, “the West”). Treating countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a geopolitical bloc, however, will not help solve the problems they face, nor will it bring the United States and its partners the influence they seek. WHO SPEAKS FOR THE GLOBAL SOUTH? It is true that the countries of the global South, as defined here, have some common causes as well as incentives to coordinate. Most of these states fought against colonialism (and, in some cases, U.S. interventions) and cooperated in the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77, coalitions that brought developing countries together during the Cold War. Both live on as formal blocs at the United Nations. In many multilateral settings today, non-Western states often opt to negotiate as a team rather than parley with the U.S. and its allies alone. This coordination enhances the affinity among countries frustrated with an international order that too often works against their interests. Recent global events have made schisms between these countries and the West more pronounced. When many non-Western governments refused to take sides after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, some Western leaders acknowledged the need to address allegations of a double standard—specifically, the perception that they only took principled stands when a European nation was attacked. Only with the support of a large bloc of states that are usually considered part of the global South, after all, could the UN General Assembly deliver a strong show of solidarity with Ukraine. But Western governments did not seek to apply this lesson beyond the Russia-Ukraine war. If the war in Gaza posed the next test of whether Western leaders truly grasped the importance of facing accusations of hypocrisy, those leaders appear to have failed. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, officials and citizens believe that the United States and some of its allies in Europe have greenlighted Israel’s wholesale destruction of Gaza. The perception of double standards is stronger than ever. Similarities in outlook, however, do not mean the countries generally assumed to belong to the global South act as one. Non-Western leaders are no different than their Western counterparts in their desire to pursue their states’ own interests, and not all of them see their countries as members of a broad-based group. Take, for example, their recent actions at the United Nations. In debates in the General Assembly over development policy, a small caucus of hard-line G-77 members, led by Cuba and Pakistan, insists on an aggressive approach to negotiating reforms to the international financial system with the United States and the European Union, and the group denounces the West for failing to live up to past aid pledges. Russia, in coordination with this caucus, used discussions of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2023 as a platform to criticize the global economic impact of U.S. sanctions. Yet in private, many other G-77 members expressed discomfort with this sharp-elbowed diplomacy, arguing that it undercut efforts to find common ground with Washington and Brussels to reduce their debt burdens. Similarities in outlook do not mean the members of the putative global South act as one. Splits within the putative global South extend beyond economic issues. Some Latin American countries led by liberal governments, for example, would like to promote progressive agendas on gender issues and LGBTQ rights at the UN, but they run into opposition from more conservative G-77 members, including many Muslim-majority states. Brazil and India have long pursued permanent seats on the Security Council, but regional rivals such as Argentina and Pakistan aim to stymie them. And although non-Western diplomats often have practical reasons to stick together, those representing larger powers put their national positions ahead of group solidarity when it suits them. While many purport to speak for the global South—at the UN or otherwise—no single country can claim the mantle. Over the last year, Brazil, China, and India have tussled to present themselves as the group’s most effective leaders. All three countries are founding members of the BRICS, whose core members also include Russia and South Africa. During India’s 2023 G-20 presidency, Modi promised to represent “our fellow travelers from the global South” and helped the African Union gain a permanent seat. China, meanwhile, concentrated on expanding the BRICS, leading a successful push to extend invitations to Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates to join. (Argentina declined its invitation.) Brazil plans to use its role as president of the G-20 this year and host of the COP30 climate summit in 2025 to advance what President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula) has presented as a vision of a “multipolar, fair, and inclusive order” in which countries of the global South would have greater influence than they do today. Yet even as these powers vie to lead developing countries, some of their recent foreign policy choices suggest they prioritize other relationships. China has been quietly strengthening its ties with Russia since the two powers declared a “no-limits partnership” in 2022. India has increased its trade with Russia and has drawn closer to the United States and U.S. allies in its role as part of the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue), a maritime security forum that also includes Australia and Japan. The Modi government broke with a majority of the members of the Non-Aligned Movement at the UN in October, too, when it refused to sign on to a General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. Although New Delhi supported a subsequent resolution in December, the October vote testified to India’s deepening ties with Israel in recent years. For Brazil, China, and India, claiming leadership of the global South offers clear advantages. Lula, meanwhile, has taken a more strident stance than other non-Western leaders on the Israel-Hamas war, comparing Israel’s offensive in Gaza to the Holocaust—comments that got the Brazilian president declared persona non grata in Israel in February. But Brazil has also sought favor with the world’s great powers, deftly navigating the frictions among China, Russia, and the United States in order to bolster ties with all three. For Brazil, China, and India in particular, claiming leadership of the global South offers clear advantages, including opportunities to expand their global diplomatic heft and firm up economic relationships. Despite their rhetorical support for the countries in this group, however, hard-headed realpolitik frequently takes precedence. Other aspirants to lead the global South seem even less equipped to claim the position. South Africa, for one, seems to take seriously the idea that it could represent this group; South African officials have been especially keen to play a peacemaking role in Ukraine. President Cyril Ramaphosa led a delegation of African leaders to Moscow and Kyiv last summer—but he made no progress toward ending the war. South Africa has arguably had more influence by bringing a case against Israel under the Genocide Convention before the International Court of Justice, a move that has shaped international debates about the war in Gaza. But a South Africa that still struggles to project itself as a leader on its own continent—where other powers such as Kenya and Nigeria prefer to chart their own paths—will not find it any easier to rally a globe-spanning coalition. No other candidates for the leadership position are likely to emerge. The small but influential Gulf Arab countries, for instance, caucus at the UN with developing nations in the Non-Aligned Movement and the G-77, and they have used these ties to garner support for the Palestinian cause during the Israel-Hamas war. But Arab officials tend to present their interests as separate from those of the global South, given their countries’ economic growth and relative political stability. Russia has also tried to win the backing of non-Western countries, and it uses anticolonial rhetoric to justify its confrontation with Europe and the United States. But many officials in these states see Moscow as too erratic and bellicose to trust in full, and Kenya in particular has criticized Russia for waging an imperialist war in Ukraine. FIX THE REAL PROBLEMS Ultimately, there is little value in striving to identify who, if anyone, can lead the global South. When officials in poorer countries look at the cast of contenders, they often question whether they have anything in common with those major and middle powers. As one African politician recently told me, smaller, poorer countries worry about being pushed into the role of the “South of the global South”: in need of outside support and facing condescension not only from former colonial rulers but also from non-Western states that are better off. The parlor game of global South leadership also pulls focus from the real challenges facing small and medium-sized states. Just as Western pundits have started to speculate about what new kinds of power developing countries can exert as a bloc, the fortunes of many individual non-Western states have taken a turn for the worse. Almost two-thirds of the world’s least developed countries now face serious debt distress. Some of the poorest—including several in West Africa—are experiencing political instability and deteriorating security conditions, which will only compound their economic woes. Regional bodies that were set up to mediate political problems, such as the African Union and Organization of American States, have lost credibility amid squabbles among their members. Helping vulnerable countries, particularly those that face conflict and humanitarian catastrophe, navigate the mutually reinforcing shocks of violence, inflation, food insecurity, climate change, and the lingering effects of the pandemic is more pressing than determining which power’s cues they follow in international diplomacy. The spike in chatter about the global South has at least done the service of highlighting mounting problems. Even the states that aim to lead Africa, Asia, and Latin America face serious internal fractures, such as the high level of criminal activity in Brazil and South Africa or the recent upsurge of ethnic conflict in northeastern India. Ethiopia’s stature may have risen with its invitation to join the BRICS, but the country is recovering from a bloody civil war and contending with multiple insurgencies. The governments of many major non-Western powers are attempting to take a greater role on the global stage while facing persistent or increasing instability at home. Although the same can be said for several advanced economies in the West, in neither case is this a recipe for consistent leadership and problem-solving. The recent spike in chatter about the global South has at least done the service of highlighting mounting problems faced by countries beyond the West—problems that will require a global effort to address. To head off future instability, the United States and its allies must work to ease the international debt crisis and help vulnerable states resolve internal conflicts and governance issues. Progress will require multilateral negotiations to reform the global financial architecture—during which developing countries will likely continue to work as a bloc—and increased attention to each country or region’s specific economic and political circumstances. With Chinese initiatives such as the South-South Cooperation Fund and the BRICS New Development Bank presenting alternatives to Western public finance, genuine efforts from Washington and its partners to address these countries’ concerns will be particularly important. But the terminology problem remains. Although many Western policymakers think they know better than to treat the non-Western world as an unvariegated whole, they should use the phrase “global South” with particular care. Specific dynamics within and among the countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America will shape their political futures more than their identity as a group. The West must see these states as they are, not fall for the fallacy that they operate geopolitically as a single entity. COMFORT ERO is President and CEO of the International Crisis Group. MORE BY COMFORT ERO More: World Diplomacy Geopolitics Foreign Policy International Institutions U.S. Foreign Policy Global South Most-Read Articles The Trouble With “the Global South” What the West Gets Wrong About the Rest Comfort Ero Stuck in Gaza Six Months After October 7, Israel Still Lacks a Viable Strategy Daniel Byman A Hindu Nationalist Foreign Policy Under Modi, India Is Becoming More Assertive Rohan Mukherjee Israel Unleashed? A Brazen Campaign Against Iranian Targets Could Backfire Dalia Dassa Kaye Recommended Articles Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden in New Delhi, September 2023. How to Thwart China’s Bid to Lead the Global South America Should See India as a Bridge to the Rest of the World Happymon Jacob U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in New York City, September 2023 Why Multilateralism Still Matters The Right Way to Win Over the Global South Leslie Vinjamuri Stuck in Gaza Six Months After October 7, Israel Still Lacks a Viable Strategy By Daniel Byman April 5, 2024 Israeli soldiers in Gaza, February 2024 Six months after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, Israel seems stuck. Its war in Gaza has inflicted grievous blows on Hamas, and the group is unlikely to be able to carry out another comparable attack for some time, if ever. The price for this success is high, however, both in terms of Palestinian lives and Israel’s reputation. Israel remains far from its goal of destroying Hamas, and it seems trapped in a military campaign that is likely to make only incremental progress at huge cost. After October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swore to “destroy Hamas” by killing its leaders, Macron the Hawk Why Europe Should Follow France’s Lead on Ukraine By Célia Belin April 5, 2024 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron signing a bilateral security agreement, Paris, February 2024 Speaking in Prague in early March, Emmanuel Macron warned Europeans that now was not the time to be “cowardly.” This comment came just a week after a conference on Ukraine in Paris, during which the French president told a reporter that the prospect of sending Western troops to Ukraine should not be “excluded.” Europeans, he said, will “do everything that we must so that Russia does not win.” The remarks proved controversial and irritated several allies. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pushed back, distancing himself from Macron’s pronouncements. Leaders in Greece, Spain, Sweden, and the United States also clarified that A Hindu Nationalist Foreign Policy Under Modi, India Is Becoming More Assertive By Rohan Mukherjee April 4, 2024 Supporters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Meerut, India, March 2024 On March 15, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah traveled to the state of Gujarat to launch his reelection campaign. Speaking to a crowd of Bharatiya Janata Party workers, Shah—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s close associate—argued that the BJP was both advancing the fortunes of everyday Indians and raising India’s reputation around the world. Only the BJP, he said, could enable “a small-time party worker” such as himself and “a tea-seller from a poor family” such as Modi to become the most powerful men in the country. Only Modi, he continued, could have made India safe and prosperous, Macron the Hawk Why Europe Should Follow France’s Lead on Ukraine By Célia Belin April 5, 2024 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron signing a bilateral security agreement, Paris, February 2024 Speaking in Prague in early March, Emmanuel Macron warned Europeans that now was not the time to be “cowardly.” This comment came just a week after a conference on Ukraine in Paris, during which the French president told a reporter that the prospect of sending Western troops to Ukraine should not be “excluded.” Europeans, he said, will “do everything that we must so that Russia does not win.” The remarks proved controversial and irritated several allies. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pushed back, distancing himself from Macron’s pronouncements. Leaders in Greece, Spain, Sweden, and the United States also clarified that Who Still Believes in a Two-State Solution? A Conversation With Martin Indyk April 5, 2024 Israel Unleashed? A Brazen Campaign Against Iranian Targets Could Backfire By Dalia Dassa Kaye April 4, 2024 The site of an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian embassy building in Damascus, April 2024 On April 1, Israel launched its latest attack on Iran in the two countries’ ongoing shadow war, with an airstrike that flattened a section of Iran’s embassy complex in Damascus and reportedly killed at least 12 people. Among the dead was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who headed Iran’s military operations in Syria and Lebanon, where he worked for decades and became a close interlocutor with Hezbollah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The strike also killed Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, Zahedi’s deputy, and at least five other officers in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Israel crossed a new line with the strike on Iran’s diplomatic compound, which Iran and many other governments see as tantamount to striking Iranian territory itself. The decision to target high-level officials at that location may reflect the Israeli government’s belief that now is its moment to act against Iranian military targets, wherever they may be, with relative impunity. From Israel’s perspective, Iran is constrained enough that it will be unlikely to respond in ways that could lead to an uncontrollable outbreak of regional war. That is, Israel may view the Gaza war as expanding rather than constraining its room to maneuver against Iran and its allies. If that is the case, it’s possible that the Israelis are underestimating the unpredictability of the current regional climate. The attack may prove to be a miscalculation that leads to dangerous outcomes, not just for Israel but also for the entire region. OUT OF THE SHADOWS Israel’s campaign against Iranian-linked targets in Syria did not start after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, even if Israel’s strikes appear to have intensified since the war in Gaza started. Israel has been engaged in what Israeli security experts have dubbed a “campaign between the wars” in Syria for over a decade, part of a sustained effort to degrade Iranian-linked militia groups. The scale and nature of Israeli attacks have shifted over the years from a focus on striking Iranian weapons transfers and munition sites to a more targeted campaign to kill key operational and intelligence leaders in Iran’s network, including increasingly senior Iranian military personnel. Indeed, the latest strike follows a pattern of Israeli attacks on high-value Iranian targets in Syria and beyond in recent months. Iran accused Israel of killing a top IRGC commander in an airstrike in Damascus in December, and the following month an Israeli airstrike there killed an Iranian intelligence head and several other IRGC members. In February, Israeli air attacks in Damascus again targeted senior members of the IRGC as well as Hezbollah, which has also faced an uptick in Israeli strikes. Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel has killed senior Hezbollah commanders in Lebanon and at least 150 Hezbollah fighters in response to multiple Hezbollah drone and antitank missile attacks on northern Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant acknowledged in February that Israel had “stepped up” attacks on Hezbollah with heavier bombs and targets deeper into Lebanese territory. Israeli forces also killed the deputy head of Hamas, Saleh al-Arouri, in a drone strike in Beirut in early January, marking a clear escalation; previous Israeli strikes were largely contained to the border area between Israel and Lebanon. On March 29, Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of Syrian soldiers and Hezbollah militants near Aleppo. Although Israel has been striking Iranian targets in Syria for years, its attacks since October 7 are taking place at a time when the entire region is on edge. The Iranian-backed, Yemeni-based Houthi militant group remains undeterred from attacking international shipping through the Red Sea. Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq have targeted U.S. forces. Meanwhile, continued clashes between the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah have displaced tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border. To be sure, it is not yet an all-out regional war, but military escalation continues on all fronts, and any lulls in violence are likely to be temporary as long as the bloodshed and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza continue. In this dangerous environment, there is an increasing risk that Israeli strikes on Iranian targets will lead to blowback. A PAPER TIGER? After Hamas’s unprecedented attacks on October 7, Israel could have scaled back its wider regional campaign against Iran as it focused on the imminent threats emanating from Gaza, particularly given that Hezbollah did not appear eager to join Hamas’s fight. Israel could have adjusted its regional campaign in light of the increased regional volatility, especially in view of the strong U.S. desire to contain the war and avoid a direct confrontation with Iran, a preference shared by Israel’s Arab neighbors. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his emergency war cabinet appear to be choosing a different route. Six months into the war, Israel is doubling down on its regional campaign. This is the logical extension of what Naftali Bennett, then Israel’s education minister, dubbed “the octopus doctrine” in 2018. Israel believes it needs to confront Iran directly and not just go after the proxy forces that serve as its enemy’s tentacles throughout the region. Following this strategy, Israel must hold Iran accountable for the actions of its regional militias, even if Iran has varying degrees of control over the different groups in its decentralized network. There is strong support from the Israeli public and across the Israeli political spectrum for this approach. Some observers believe that Israel is trying to provoke Iran into war. But the opposite logic may be playing out. Israel may be making the bet that Iran is more restrained and boxed in now because it is wary of retaliatory actions that could spark a direct Israeli attack. Israel sees Iran as being in a vulnerable political and economic position, even as many analysts believe that Iran has been bolstered by the Gaza war and its increased military alignment with Russia. Policymakers and analysts have debated Iran’s ability to respond to attacks ever since the United States killed General Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, in 2020. A common narrative within Israel is that Soleimani’s assassination revealed that Iran is a paper tiger: after promising to avenge Soleimani, the Iranians ultimately did very little. The competing interpretation is that the Soleimani killing in fact fostered increased militancy and threats against both Israel and the United States. The expanded capacities of Iranian-backed militant groups in recent years suggests that Soleimani’s killing did not fundamentally deter or diminish the ability of Iranian-backed actors to cause considerable damage across the region. Israel crossed a new line with the strike on Iran’s diplomatic compound. But Israel is not wrong in its observation that after the onslaught of Israeli attacks in Syria and Lebanon over the past six months, Iran and Hezbollah have done little to retaliate. The Israelis may view this moment, when they still have the full backing of Washington and already believe the world is against them, as an opportunity to further weaken Iran and its regional allies. Israel may feel confident that it can push boundaries without provoking Hezbollah or Iran into a direct war. In other words, the Israelis may not be escalating their military strikes to provoke Iran to directly enter the war; they might be escalating because they think the Iranians are likely to stay out. A similar logic may be guiding Israeli calculations regarding Washington. Israel may believe it can keep pushing the limits on military escalation because it expects the United States to stay out of its way or may even tacitly support Israeli actions against groups that also threaten U.S. interests. The Biden administration’s track record of supporting Israeli military actions since October 7 would seem to bolster such assumptions. Despite the unease the Biden administration has expressed about the Israeli campaign in Gaza, U.S. military and political support for Israel remains unchanged. FLIRTING WITH DISASTER By assuming that it faces few constraints as it tries to weaken Iran and its proxies, Israel is taking a significant risk. Iran may feel the need to respond at some point against Israel directly, and it appears to be facing increasing pressure at home to do so. Reports of foiled Iranian plots to attack Israeli diplomatic facilities and civilians abroad suggest that Iran’s failure to retaliate directly against Israeli interests isn’t for lack of trying. Iraqi militia forces are already starting to attack Israel, launching a drone attack on an Israeli naval base in Eilat the night before Israel’s latest strike in Damascus. The Houthis in Yemen have aimed missiles at southern Israel as well. Israel might see such risks as manageable. But an increased sense of impunity is not just a risk for Israel; it’s a dangerous posture that could directly endanger American interests and lives. After previous Israeli attacks on Iranian targets in Syria before the Gaza war, Iran chose to retaliate against U.S. troops through its militia forces in Iraq and Syria. Starting in 2021, Iranian-backed groups launched more than 80 attacks on U.S. forces, until an informal de-escalation deal was reached between Iran and the United States in mid-2023. After the war in Gaza began, attacks on American forces resumed, and with more intensity. In January, an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq carried out a drone attack that killed three U.S. military personnel in Jordan. In response, the United States launched a series of retaliatory strikes against Iranian-backed groups in Iraq and Syria. Since the American attack, there has been a lull in violence against U.S. troops in the region. Now with the Israeli strike in Damascus, this pause may be in jeopardy. Within hours of the Israeli strike, U.S. troops stationed in Syria shot down an attack drone flying nearby. The Gaza war seems to be reinforcing already strong Israeli incentives for more, not less, military escalation with Iran. Israeli leaders have been working under the assumption—both before and after Gaza—that the conflict with Iran can remain contained as Israel accomplishes its goals of degrading the Iranian axis while improving ties with Arab states similarly wary of Iran. Those assumptions were flawed even before October 7. But in the midst of a sustained assault on Gaza and the killing of Palestinian civilians at a previously unimaginable scale, Israel is playing with fire. The risk is that, at some point, Israel will pay a higher price for its attacks than it anticipated. And in that scenario, it is likely that the United States will pay as well. DALIA DASSA KAYE is a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and a Fulbright Schuman Visiting Scholar at Lund University. 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