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

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O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff July/August 2024 Published on June 18, 2024 Zoë van Dijk Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/green-peace-climate-change-geopolitics Request Reprint Permissions Play Download Article The clean energy transition has reached adolescence. Its future direction is not yet set, and in the meantime, its internal paradoxes make for a volatile mix. Political leaders fret that ambitious steps to address climate change will aggravate geopolitical problems in a world already troubled by wars and humanitarian crises. Governments worried about energy security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have advocated for strategies that embrace both fossil fuels and clean alternatives, lest dependence on imported oil give way to reliance on imported lithium. Rising inflation and economic slowdowns, too, are exacerbating concerns that the energy transition will lead to job losses and price hikes. The warnings are coming in quick succession. In March, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink championed “energy pragmatism” in his most recent annual letter, and a few weeks later, a JPMorgan Chase report called for a “reality check” about the transition away from fossil fuels. In April, Haitham al-Ghais, the secretary-general of OPEC, wrote that the energy transition would require “realistic policies” that acknowledge rising demand for oil and gas. The challenges facing the clean energy transition are real, but the impulse to pull back is misguided. Now is the time for more ambition, not less. As carbon emissions continue to rise, mitigating the dire threat of climate change requires much faster decarbonization than is currently underway. But this is not the only reason to hasten the transition. Poorly implemented half measures are part of the problem; they are worsening the same geopolitical tensions and economic fragmentation that make political leaders wary of stronger climate action. Well-designed and far-reaching policies, however, could help overcome this hurdle. An accelerated transition to clean energy can reinvigorate economies, curb protectionist forces, and calm great-power tensions, ameliorating the very anxieties that today are driving calls to slow down. Forward-thinking leaders should embrace the transition away from carbon-intensive energy as a means to resolve pressing global problems rather than as just an end in itself. Focusing only on the target of net-zero emissions by midcentury, as stipulated in the Paris Agreement of 2015, would be aiming too low. The energy system is deeply entwined with geopolitics, and the effort to overhaul it is a chance to address more than just climate change. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. In accepting this challenge, policymakers can take inspiration from the Marshall Plan. After World War II, the United States not only rebuilt a war-ravaged Europe but through this initiative integrated the continent economically, promoted fiscal and monetary stability, countered Soviet influence, and even advanced U.S. business interests. Now, a similarly ambitious effort to propel the global energy transition can also reduce inequalities, diversify and strengthen supply chains, create export markets for U.S. firms, and lessen dependence on China. To fail to combine climate goals with geopolitical ones would be to miss a historic opportunity. Replacing the sources of the fuel used to power the entire global economy while also ramping up energy supplies to ensure that billions of people can lead more prosperous lives is already among the most monumental endeavors that humanity has ever undertaken. To make the most of this epochal change, policymakers must prioritize measures that will break the negative cycle between current climate action and geopolitical fragmentation—and in doing so, realize a future that is both cleaner and more harmonious. STUCK IN A LOOP The past decade has already been transformational. The pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, dramatic advances in technology, and the war in Gaza have changed the course of international politics. Many of the institutions that buttressed the global order for the past 80 years have weakened, the norms and values underpinning them are under assault, and globalizing trends have stalled or reversed. The movement toward economic fragmentation, political polarization, authoritarianism, and conflict signals further trouble in the years ahead. As we have written in these pages before, many of these trends are complicating the already difficult task of moving from a carbon-intensive energy system to one of net-zero emissions. Competition between great powers, a defining feature of the emerging global order, now risks slowing the transition. China is a critical trading partner of the United States and the world’s main producer of clean energy, yet Washington now sees Beijing primarily as a military danger, a technological threat, and an economic rival. As relations between China and the West deteriorate, Chinese companies offering cheap clean energy products, from electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries to the metals and minerals that compose them, increasingly face market restrictions abroad. The United States already limits imports of Chinese solar panels, and in May, the Biden administration announced its intention to raise tariffs on several other Chinese clean energy products. The tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, for example, would quadruple under this plan. The European Commission is also considering higher tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. As more and more trade restrictions on critical metals and minerals are introduced, the measures will raise the costs and slow the pace of the energy transition. The disorderly and uneven energy transition is creating friction between the developed and developing worlds, as well. Many countries will need to dramatically increase their energy use in order to deliver prosperity to their citizens. In an interview with the BBC in March, Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali gave voice to developing countries’ frustration with the way the clean energy transition is unfolding. As he railed against the hypocrisy of rich governments that “lecture us on climate change,” Ali articulated the widespread perception that the countries that caused the problem are now failing to adequately help those bearing its costs. Such resentments are rising to the surface as conflict and economic hardship drain the resources and political will necessary to sustain climate-friendly policies. Focusing only on net-zero emissions would be aiming too low. Badly designed clean energy policies also impose unnecessarily high costs on consumers and put energy reliability at risk. In the United States, for example, regional and federal grid operators and regulators are warning that the electrical system is not prepared for the combined strain of increased use of intermittent power sources, specifically solar and wind; shuttered fossil fuel and nuclear plants; and rising electricity demand from electric cars, data centers, and artificial intelligence. Around the world, high energy costs are feeding populist forces that bring right-wing and often climate-skeptical parties to power. These parties’ appeals to economic nationalism further erode popular support for climate action. In Europe, polls indicate that right-wing parties, which often oppose stronger climate policies, are gaining support. Across the Atlantic, only 38 percent of Americans said in a 2023 survey that they would be willing to pay $1 per month to address climate change—a 14 percentage point decline since 2021. As economic anxiety rises, the political will to support climate action wavers, and minimizing the costs of the clean energy transition becomes even more important. Efforts to address urgent transnational issues, including climate change, will also be more complicated than in previous decades. Middle powers such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia may not yet have vast influence on their own, but when they act together, they can shape global events. These countries and the coalitions they create are more pragmatic, nimble, and powerful than the Non-Aligned Movement was during the Cold War. They are intent on keeping their diplomatic options open, resisting the pull of both the U.S. and Chinese orbits. In an international landscape where alignments are fluid, trust in multilateral institutions is weak, and resources are widely dispersed, securing the cooperation of a broad swath of countries to address climate change becomes more challenging. BREAKING THE CYCLE Geopolitical strife is not going away, but the future need not be as volatile and fragmented as current trends would suggest. Great-power competition will persist, but the risk of conflict could be diminished. And competition need not become an obstacle to progress. Great powers that compete economically and politically could maintain educational, scientific, and even some commercial links, enabling collaboration to provide global goods and tackle global challenges. Genuine multilateralism that gives more countries a seat at the table can help the world develop more sustainable and equitable solutions to shared problems. Hyperglobalization may be over, but economic integration is still possible, and the triumph of populism is far from assured. And making energy more accessible and more affordable in developing and emerging markets could reduce tensions between rich and poor countries. To create that better future, policymakers must break the pernicious feedback loop that now binds geopolitical conflict and fragmentation with the uneven transition to clean energy. A downward spiral is neither inevitable nor irreversible, as long as political leaders seize the opportunity before them. An overhaul of the global energy system, if designed properly, could forge a path to global stability. The concept behind the proposed Green New Deal in the United States is instructive, even if the plan itself lacked key details that made its implementation impractical. The proponents of the policy emphasized that the enormity of the challenge to decarbonize the American economy presented tremendous opportunities for “co-benefits”—that the imperative to reach net zero could be a means to address other domestic ills. Advocates argued that if the United States is going to make a herculean effort to transform its energy, housing, industrial, and transportation sectors, then it should do so in ways that would distribute economic benefits more equitably, diffuse harms more evenly, ensure consistent energy supplies for all, and improve the energy security of the country as a whole. In short, the energy transition would lead to both a net-zero economy and a more just society in the United States. Scaling this thinking to the international level is not difficult. Strategies to decarbonize the global energy system can and should be crafted with geopolitics in mind, bringing in not just officials responsible for climate change and energy but also those who deal with economics, development, diplomacy, and national security. Broadening the pursuit of net zero in this way would build a coalition for climate action that is politically durable. As they move beyond treating the emissions target as solely a climate issue, governments would pursue the energy transition in tandem with efforts to curb great-power rivalry, global poverty, protectionism, and conflict. BRIDGING THE GAP Diminishing the divide between rich and poor countries is one of the main ways the pursuit of a clean energy economy could foster geopolitical stability. After decades of progress toward global equality, the trend has reversed in the past few years, compounding resentments in the developing world about the rollout of the energy transition. Assistance from the developed world has been slow in coming. Rich countries collectively committed $100 billion in climate financing in 2009, but 13 years passed before they delivered on the promise in 2022. In 2023, governments pledged only $800 million to a new global fund and other arrangements to help low-income countries cope with the effects of climate change. Low-income countries did not cause the climate crisis, and they will be forced to endure its worst effects. What’s more, these countries use only a fraction of the energy wealthy countries take for granted. Their energy needs are rising, however, and the refusal of institutions such as the European Investment Bank to finance fossil fuel projects—even those involving natural gas, which is less carbon-intensive than coal or oil—smacks of hypocrisy to much of the developing world. These countries have watched in disbelief as Europe has advanced plans for at least 17 new liquefied natural gas import terminals of its own since Russia started cutting pipeline supplies in 2021. Yet the energy transition also presents an enormous opportunity for lower-income countries. Clean energy will be a multitrillion-dollar industry, and rather than being left behind or remaining dependent on Western climate finance, developing countries could claim central roles in this new global economy. Consider the scale of the capital flows that will accompany the transition. Building renewable and other clean energy projects, improving energy efficiency, and upgrading infrastructure all require funds. According to estimates from the International Energy Agency and the International Monetary Fund, emerging and developing economies (excluding China) will collectively need investment worth $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion each year by 2030—a dramatic increase from current levels, which totaled just $270 billion in 2023—if the world is to get on track for net-zero emissions by 2050. Even partial progress toward the target figures would represent a level of investment that could transform lower-income economies. Solar panels in Khavda, India, April 2024 Solar panels in Khavda, India, April 2024 Amit Dave / Reuters Most of that capital will come not from public sources but from private ones, including multinational companies, infrastructure firms, and institutional investment funds. But wealthy governments and multilateral institutions can encourage larger private capital outlays by mitigating risks for investors. They can assuage the concerns of companies that might, for instance, hesitate to invest in dollars or euros in a country where fluctuations in the local currency could prevent them from earning a return on that investment. Domestic programs such as the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which fills financing gaps for clean energy technologies that are moving toward commercial viability, and private funds such as Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which was established by Bill Gates and other wealthy investors to back high-risk clean energy enterprises, can serve as models for similar efforts around the world. With more resources from Congress and more flexible budgetary rules, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation can more aggressively use the tools at its disposal to invest in the next generation of clean energy technologies in emerging economies. And by investing in local currencies, it can help countries with higher risk profiles obtain additional funding from other countries, multilateral development banks, and the private sector. The World Bank can also adopt reforms that would make more financing available for clean energy and climate adaptation. Governments and international bodies must not let clean energy investments cause further tensions between the developed and developing worlds. Multinational corporations and major mining companies are already making investments to extract and process minerals and metals needed for clean energy products in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia. There is a risk that such investment could re-create the problems that historically accompanied the transfer of oil and other commodities from lower-income countries to wealthier ones: the extraction delivered only modest economic benefits to local communities, while large government revenues encouraged corruption, lowered currency values, and weakened governance institutions, resulting in slow overall growth. But this phenomenon, the resource curse, is not inevitable. Governments can prevent negative outcomes by shielding currencies from appreciation and investing in other sectors of the economy. Together with multilateral institutions, they can ensure that investments help local communities by enforcing regulations that require investor compliance with environmental and social standards. Policies that support clean energy investments in lower-income countries can be designed to boost local manufacturing and economic growth, as well as improve energy access and energy security. Foreign investment that supports a transition away from fossil fuels should also include funds for job training and other forms of social assistance. Local communities should participate in the planning and implementation of new clean energy and infrastructure development projects in order to maximize economic and social benefits and mitigate secondary harms. An inclusive approach could avoid problems such as those the Just Energy Transition Partnership encountered in South Africa, for example. The program, which is funded primarily by developed countries to facilitate South Africa’s shift from coal to cleaner energy sources, faced a domestic backlash over its failure to offset job losses in the coal industry, which has a high rate of Black employment, with other economic opportunities. The energy system is deeply entwined with geopolitics. There is no question that low-income countries will struggle to reconcile economic and climate imperatives. Many of them have large coal endowments, and for others, coal remains vital to their energy security and economic growth. But some developing regions have comparative advantages that will also attract investment in clean energy production. North Africa, for instance, has access to cheap solar power, with which it can make green hydrogen. This fuel can then be used to produce low-carbon steel, among other things, but it is difficult and costly to transport. Rather than import North African hydrogen to European steel factories, therefore, firms may eventually relocate steel plants to that low-income region. Large deposits of natural hydrogen have also been found in countries such as Albania and Mali, which can reap economic benefits if they develop this resource. Still other countries may be suitable sites for technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Because this technology will have the same effect on global climate change no matter where it is deployed, concentrating the infrastructure in lower-income countries such as Kenya, which has cheap electricity and natural caverns that can be used for storage, can both reduce the overall costs of carbon removal and boost the host countries’ economies. At least in theory, developing countries could collect the remaining economic benefits of oil and gas production. As consumers reduce their use of oil and gas, the question becomes which countries should cease production first. If market forces were left to determine this outcome, Saudi Arabia and Qatar would likely be the last producers standing because of their low production costs. High-cost producers, such as Algeria and Canada, would be forced to shut their taps. The International Energy Agency has explored a more equitable approach that would allow lower-income countries that have contributed only minimally to global carbon emissions, such as Mozambique and Nigeria, to continue extracting fossil fuels after rich countries cease production. There is little incentive, admittedly, for large low-cost producers to go along with such a plan. Prioritizing economic development in lower-income countries may seem to conflict with the push for industrial policy and job creation in the developed world. Yet the enormous scale of the energy transition makes it possible to pursue two goals at once. Low-carbon industries and the supply chains that support them require such large investment that their growth can benefit poorer countries across the world, as well as companies in richer countries that export technologies and services. A CENTRIPETAL FORCE A thoughtful pursuit of net zero can also slow economic fragmentation and make the global trading system more resilient. Right now, the energy transition is exacerbating trade tensions as governments turn to industrial policy and border fees as tools for climate action. Many political leaders recognize the urgency of fighting climate change, but they also face imperatives to create jobs, make supply chains more resilient, and reduce dependence on China. Some of the resulting policies have further imperiled global support for free trade. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), for instance, privileges American industry in ways that have angered European countries, South Korea, and other U.S. partners, and proposals for a carbon tariff could steer the United States toward stricter protectionism.The European Union’s programs to subsidize clean energy and the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, meanwhile, could further fracture the global market for clean energy technologies by putting external suppliers at a disadvantage. The use of subsidies and tariffs in support of the energy transition is increasing the ire of developing countries. Many of their leaders bemoan that the clean energy tax credits made available in the IRA will lure investment away from their shores and back to the wealthier United States. They object to import duties on carbon-intensive products that harm countries that don’t have the resources or technical capacity to decarbonize their manufacturing sector. Governments in many emerging and developing markets, which cannot subsidize clean energy on the same scale as the United States, resort to protecting themselves with export restrictions—as Indonesia has done with its nickel exports—or with tariffs of their own. As protective measures are put in place around the world, they raise the cost and slow the pace of the clean energy transition. According to a study cited by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the current fragmentation of international trade could make the average prices of solar panel components in 2030 at least 20 to 30 percent higher than they would be in a world of more integrated supply chains. European import duties on Chinese electric vehicles, which are expected to be in the range of 15 to 30 percent, will also raise the cost to consumers and, at least in the near term, potentially lead to fewer such vehicles on the road. Wind turbines near Duran, New Mexico, March 2023 Wind turbines near Duran, New Mexico, March 2023 Bing Guan / Reuters The tightening of U.S. restrictions on Chinese exports continues. In an April speech, White House climate adviser John Podesta emphasized the Biden administration’s preference for trade policies that deny a competitive advantage to countries whose companies produce low-cost carbon-intensive goods—a nod to China. Washington is right to avoid excessive dependence on Chinese exports and to leverage the United States’ comparatively low-emissions manufacturing sector. But raising trade barriers is not without cost, and it is unrealistic for U.S. policymakers to believe they can decarbonize by 2050 if clean energy supply chains rely only on the domestic market and a few friendly countries. If policymakers recognize this reality and commit to rapidly expanding clean energy supply chains, however, they can prevent further splintering of the global economy. The United States and other countries seeking to “friend shore” manufacturing should widen their circles of friends: building high-quality, reliable supply chains at the necessary scale will require many new trade agreements and economic partnerships beyond Washington’s typical allies. Only a small number of adversaries—such as those the U.S. government designates “foreign entities of concern,” a list that includes China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia—should be excluded. The United States will have to strengthen its economic ties across Africa, the Persian Gulf, Latin America, and Southeast Asia if it is to have any prospect of meeting its clean energy goals, especially with steep limits on Chinese imports in place. At a time of flagging support for free trade, the demands of the energy transition can provide its proponents a boost. It would not be economically or politically sustainable for Chinese firms to displace American manufacturing jobs in key sectors, manipulate prices in clean energy technology and commodity markets, or claim the majority of U.S. clean energy subsidies. Embracing trade with a larger pool of partners would be a way to avoid those risks and thus make the transition more durable. The energy transition presents an enormous opportunity for lower-income countries. Similarly, although carbon border adjustment tariffs for now seem to encourage protectionism, a more thoughtfully constructed system could instead be an antidote to fragmentation. If the United States were to pair duties on carbon-intensive imports with a domestic carbon tax—as Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, has proposed—it could create incentives for other nations to follow suit. The EU has already adopted such a combination of import tariffs and a domestic tax to level the playing field between imported goods (which may not be subject to a carbon price where they are manufactured) and European ones; in response, Australia and Canada are considering similar border measures, and the United Kingdom has announced a tariff that will be implemented by 2027. The key now is for all these systems to be compatible; the EU’s early, unilateral design has elicited criticism of protectionism. If countries develop their policies in tandem, however, the establishment of multiple carbon border mechanisms could create a kind of “climate club” that encourages its members to enact ambitious climate measures without worrying about carbon leakage, whereby emissions-intensive activities shift from countries with strong climate policies to those with weak ones. WTO reform could further align the pursuit of net zero with an effort to combat protectionism. Developed and developing countries can work together to improve WTO rules regarding subsidies, product standards, and process and production methods with the aim of promoting trade in clean energy technologies, preventing exporters from profiting from cheap emissions-intensive manufacturing, and giving national governments greater latitude to pursue green industrial policies that still comply with international trade law. CALMING RIVALRIES Right now, the energy transition is sharpening great-power competition by creating new avenues for countries to compete. China’s dominant position in the production of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles, as well as in the refining and processing of critical minerals, has raised economic and security concerns in the United States and Europe, prompting them to restrict Chinese access to their markets. And even before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, poorly coordinated energy and climate policies contributed to an energy crisis in Europe, handing Moscow an easy opportunity to put pressure on European countries by sharply restricting its gas exports. The wave of great-power competition is not all bad for the energy transition. In fact, interstate rivalry has motivated notable climate action in recent years. The IRA—the largest climate legislation ever passed in the United States—would have been inconceivable in the absence of U.S.-Chinese competition. American lawmakers came to appreciate that if they relied entirely on market forces to advance climate innovation, not only would their climate goals remain unmet, but China would amass geopolitical and technological benefits from its aggressive clean energy industrial policy. As long as the United States is worried about Chinese dominance of global clean energy markets and the influence that dominance brings, Washington will have an incentive to make faster progress toward its climate goals.This national security imperative to quickly scale up clean energy supply chains—both within the United States and across partner countries—broadens the potential base of bipartisan support for climate-friendly policies. Building global markets for American clean energy technologies would bolster U.S. credibility among an expanding pool of allies, strengthening the United States’ position relative to China. Investing in adaptation measures in developing countries at high risk of climate disruption and disaster can also enhance American soft power. Even if competition yields certain benefits, there is reason to defuse tensions between the United States and China. A rivalry between two countries that together account for 43 percent of global GDP and nearly half of global military spending poses grave dangers for the world. But the transition to clean energy can reduce great-power friction by providing avenues and imperatives for engagement. Washington and Beijing have already benefited from coordination on environmental protection, nuclear safety, and other issues under the 1979 U.S.-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. They should make sure that the ill will between them does not derail the current negotiations for its renewal and extension. Collaboration on conservation in the Arctic and climate assistance for poor countries could also help stabilize the broader U.S.-Chinese relationship. Washington and Beijing have demonstrated that bilateral climate diplomacy remains possible: they agreed last year to reduce methane emissions and increase renewable electricity generation capacity, paving the way for a similar multilateral agreement a few weeks later at COP28, the UN’s annual forum on climate change. Homes threatened by rising waters on the island of Gardi Sugdub, Panama, June 2024 Homes threatened by rising waters on the island of Gardi Sugdub, Panama, June 2024 Presidencia de Panama / Reuters Another forum for great-power exchange is the Arctic Council, in which Americans, Europeans, and Russians both in and out of government have managed to maintain relationships even when Russia’s relationship with the West is at its most frigid. The body’s scientific collaboration and joint contingency planning are valuable in their own right, as is keeping open channels of communication that can help de-escalate a future crisis. Sustained scientific engagement between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, after all, incubated relationships that facilitated broader cooperation on nuclear disarmament, technology transfers, and political integration with Soviet successor states when the Soviet empire collapsed. The energy transition will also make it necessary for Western leaders to engage China and Russia, even if they are not otherwise inclined to do so. U.S. policymakers in particular must recognize that cutting China out is not a feasible way to achieve energy security. Diversification is surely necessary, but clean energy supply chains can’t be scaled up with sufficient speed if China is removed from the equation altogether. Setting up new mining and manufacturing projects takes time, and permitting constraints and environmental considerations will cause delays, especially in the United States. Transportation and equipment limitations will further slow the growth of supply chains. Even with intensive government efforts to ramp up clean energy manufacturing and mining outside China, Beijing will dominate this sector for at least the next decade. A less single-minded focus on finding alternatives to Chinese clean energy products and technologies can create an opening to advance other strategies for boosting energy security and resilience, which in turn may assuage some of the fears about dependence on China. The risk of relying too heavily on one supplier can be mitigated, for example, by developing stockpiles of clean energy components, similar to what the United States did when it created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve after the shock of the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Government regulation and multilateral coordination can also improve data transparency with respect to commodity supply, demand, and inventories, which would help market forces more effectively address supply disruptions. Interconnected energy markets can more easily accommodate disruptions, too, as Europe’s experience over the past few years has shown; the integration of the continent’s gas pipeline network made it possible for supplies to move more seamlessly between countries and replace Russian natural gas. Efforts to increase energy efficiency and lower consumption can also build resilience to shocks. Improvements to battery chemistry and recycling, for example, could significantly reduce the projected growth in critical minerals demand. A TIME FOR AMBITION With the world staggering under the weight of geopolitical challenges, it may seem an odd time to argue for greater ambition in the clean energy transition. Yet that is exactly what the moment calls for. The threat of climate change demands a rewiring of global energy networks on a massive scale, and it would be shortsighted not to recognize the opportunity in such an endeavor. Imagining a clean energy transition that helps reverse today’s troubling geopolitical trends is not merely an academic exercise, nor is it a fanciful one. It is a generational undertaking that should bring together broad constituencies, from environmentalists to national security hawks. It should inspire people across the world not only to avert disaster but also to realize a positive vision of the future. It should challenge policymakers to rise above partisan debates and short-term considerations. Arresting the downward spiral of environmental crisis and geopolitical strain serves the interests of everyone. Uniting behind a well-conceived and well-executed clean energy transition can bring about not only a more sustainable global economy but also a more peaceful and prosperous world. You are reading a free article. Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access. Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading Six issues a year in print and online, plus audio articles MEGHAN L. O’SULLIVAN is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. During the George W. Bush administration, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan. JASON BORDOFF is Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy and Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. During the Obama administration, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the staff of the National Security Council. MORE BY MEGHAN L. 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O’Sullivan Why They Don’t Fight The Surprising Endurance of the Democratic Peace By Michael Doyle July/August 2024 Published on June 18, 2024 Ben Jones 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/world/why-they-dont-fight-doyle Get Citation Request Reprint Permissions Play Download Article Few hypotheses in international relations are more influential than democratic peace theory—the idea that democracies do not go to war with one another. The idea, the political scientist Jack Levy wrote, “comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.” It has motivated U.S. foreign policy for nearly a century. In the early 1900s, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson embraced democracy promotion as a means to peace. During the Cold War, successive administrations spoke of the standoff with the Soviet bloc using grand ideological terminology. No distillation was grander than President Ronald Reagan’s address before the British Parliament in 1982, in which he claimed that the West exercised “consistent restraint and peaceful intentions” and then proceeded (seemingly without irony) to call for a “campaign for democracy” and a “crusade for freedom” around the world. Democratic peace theory became especially influential once the Cold War ended, leaving the United States truly ascendant. In his 1994 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton claimed that “the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere.” His administration then surged aid to nascent post-Soviet democracies. Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, was equally vocal about the need to advance liberalism in order to promote peace, telling the 2004 Republican National Convention, “As freedom advances, heart by heart, and nation by nation, America will be more secure and the world more peaceful.” As president, Bush even used democratic peace theory as one of the justifications for invading Iraq. In a speech on the war in November 2003, he declared, “The advance of freedom leads to peace.” The idea that democracy breeds peace, however, is at best half true. The United States has repeatedly attacked other countries. Europe’s major democracies also have a long history of intervening in other regions, such as the Sahel. And rather than marking the permanent triumph of liberal democracy, the post–Cold War period is now defined by growing divisions and conflict. As is now plain, the spread of liberalism does not by itself curtail fighting. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. Yet the proliferation of wars carried out by democracies does not disprove democratic peace theory wholesale. Liberal states may not act peaceably toward everyone, but they act peaceably toward one another. There are no clear-cut cases of one democracy going to war against another, nor do any seem forthcoming. In fact, the global divisions emerging today confirm democratic peace theory: once again, the line runs between liberal states and authoritarian ones, with the United States and its mostly democratic allies on one side and autocracies, most notably China and Russia, on the other. The world, then, could be peaceful if all states became liberal democracies. But until that happens, the world will likely remain mired in a dangerous ideological standoff. GREAT MINDS Democratic peace theory has a long history. In 1776, the American revolutionary Thomas Paine argued that liberal states do not fight one another, writing that “the Republics of Europe are all (and we may say always) in peace.” When Paine’s country gained independence and then drafted its constitution, the document implicitly referred to the idea that democracies should be conflict-averse. It placed the authority to declare war in the legislature—the branch with members directly elected by the public—in part to prevent the country from entering unpopular conflicts. Democratic peace theory had early proponents across the Atlantic, as well. Its most influential initial champion was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. In 1795, Kant published Perpetual Peace, an essay that took the form of a hypothetical peace treaty and that established the concept’s theoretical foundations. Representative republics, Kant explained, did not fight one another for a mix of institutional, ideological, and economic reasons. Kant’s writings called for states to adopt a representative republican form of government with an elected legislative body and a separation of powers among the executive, judiciary, and legislative branches—all guaranteed by constitutional law. Kant’s republic was far from a modern democracy; only male property holders could vote and become what he called “active citizens.” Nonetheless, he argued that elected representation would inspire caution and that the separation of powers would produce careful deliberation. Although these forces would not guarantee peace, he admitted, they would select for rational and popular conflicts. If “the consent of the citizens is required to decide whether or not war is to be declared,” Kant wrote, “it is very natural that they will have great hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise.” For doing so, he continued, would mean calling down on themselves all the miseries of war, such as doing the fighting themselves, supplying the costs of the war from their own resources, painfully making good the ensuing devastation, and, as the crowning evil, having to take upon themselves a burden of debt which will embitter peace itself and which can never be paid off on account of the constant threat of new wars. But under a constitution in which the subject is not a citizen, and which is therefore not republican, it is the simplest thing in the world to go to war. For the head of state is not a fellow citizen, but the owner of the state, and a war will not force him to make the slightest sacrifice so far as his banquets, hunts, pleasure palaces and court festivals are concerned. He can thus decide on war, without any significant reason, as a kind of amusement, and unconcernedly leave it to the diplomatic corps (who are always ready for such purposes) to justify the war for the sake of propriety. Kant also called for republics to make commitments to peace and universal hospitality. The former idea entailed a commitment to peaceful relations and collective self-defense, rather like NATO’s. The latter meant treating all international visitors without hostility, offering asylum to people whose lives were at risk, and allowing visitors to share their ideas and propose commercial exchanges. This combination, Kant said, would build security, create mutual respect, and generate economic ties that lead to tranquility. And thus, republic by emerging republic, the combination would create peace. Democratic peace theory had early proponents on both sides of the Atlantic. Kant did not argue that his ideas would stop tension and conflict between republics and autocracies. In fact, he argued that representative republics might become suspicious of states not ruled by their citizens. But he did believe that liberal values such as human rights and respect for property would curb a country’s desire for glory, fear of conquest, and need to plunder—three forces that drive states to war. He therefore thought that liberal republics would be respectful and restrained when addressing one another, even as they remained suspicious and fearful of nonrepublics. Views similar to Kant’s on liberty, republics, commerce, and peace spread throughout nineteenth-century Europe and beyond. French Foreign Minister Francois Guizot, a conservative liberal who served from 1840 to 1848, spoke enthusiastically about mutual freedom as a foundation for an entente with the United Kingdom. British Prime Minister William Gladstone, who led his country for much of the latter half of the 1800s, was a proponent. And when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it helped tilt liberal opinion in Europe toward the Union and away from the Confederacy. It was not, however, until World War I that the full democratic peace proposition became central to foreign policy. Wilson’s war message in April 1917—in which he declared that the battle between autocracies and democracies would establish “the principles of peace and justice”—was the clarion call. The clash between democracy and autocracy continued to shape policy as the decades went on. The behavior of the United States during the Cold War, for example, was often motivated by a belief that spreading liberal values would yield peace. As Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared in his 1953 Senate confirmation hearing, “We shall never have a secure peace or a happy world so long as Soviet communism dominates one-third of all the peoples that there are.” President John F. Kennedy echoed that theme in his 1963 speech in West Berlin, declaring that “when all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe.” But that same month, in a powerful address at American University, Kennedy warned of the complementary dangers of ideological confrontation with the Soviet Union. “Let us not be blind to our differences—but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved,” he said. “If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.” TIME AFTER TIME As liberalism endured and spread, intellectuals began empirically testing whether democratic peace theory actually held true. In 1939, the American journalist Clarence Streit published a qualitative historical analysis to see whether liberal democracies tended to maintain peace among themselves. Discerning that the answer was yes, he proposed that the decade’s leading democracies form a federal union, which would help protect them from fascist powers. In 1972, Dean Babst, building on Quincy Wright’s magisterial A Study of War from 30 years earlier, carried out a statistical analysis that also suggested a correlation between democracy and peace. In 1976, Melvin Small and J. David Singer confirmed this finding but demonstrated that democratic peace was limited to relations between democracies. Republics, they showed, were still prone to fight autocratic regimes. In the decades since, international relations scholars have continued to study the democratic peace paradigm. They have shown that the relationship between democracy and peace is statistically significant even when controlling for proximity, wealth, and trade. They have determined that the theory holds even when states attempt to constrain each other. Academics have advanced a wide variety of explanations for why the concept is so sturdy. Some have argued that part of the reason lies in the disproportionate influence that international institutions have with liberal countries. Research shows that democracies tend to delegate a lot of policymaking to complex multilateral bodies, such as the European Union and the World Trade Organization, in part because their leaders can use these groups to entrench policies before cycling out of office. Other scholars have argued that liberal norms favoring peace, human rights, and respect for fellow democracies hold sway over policymakers and publics. And still others have pointed to the benefits of trade and economic interdependence associated with relations among capitalist democracies. States that frequently trade, after all, will lose wealth if they fight one another. Waiting to vote in Imphal, India, April 2024 Waiting to vote in Imphal, India, April 2024 Stringer / Reuters Still, democratic peace theory has attracted plenty of critics. Henry Farber and Joanne Gowa have pointed out that there are other forces at work in stopping wars between democracies. During the Cold War, for example, NATO’s need to protect itself from the Soviet bloc ensured that Western Europe cooperated—although the region’s post–Cold War peace suggests more than collaborative containment is at work. Other scholars have pointed out that none of the factors used to explain democratic peace theory can stop war on its own. States that are deeply involved in international institutions, after all, do launch invasions. Peaceful norms and ideas work only if democracies heed them in the policymaking process, yet they are often ignored. The shared decision-making powers of republics should encourage deliberation, but the division of powers and rotation of elites can also lead democracies to send mixed signals, putting other states on edge. And economic benefits can be achieved through plunder, not just through trade. Powerful democratic states can have rational incentives to exploit wealthy, weak democracies, especially if the latter are endowed with natural resources or strategic assets such as shipping lanes. Rational material interest is not enough to explain why xenophobic democracies have not tried to conquer democracies of other ethnic groups. But put all the explanatory factors together, and democratic peace theory coheres. When governments are constrained by international institutions, when political elites or the electorate are committed to norms of liberty, when the public’s views are reflected through representative institutions, and when democracies trade and invest in one another, conflicts among republics are peacefully resolved. RUN IT BACK U.S. President Donald Trump subjected democratic peace theory to an intense test. He picked fights with European allies while praising Russian President Vladimir Putin and other dictators. Trump also cajoled and threatened liberal allies in other parts of the world, including East Asia. For a time, the United States seemed just as hostile toward fellow democracies as it was toward autocracies. But under President Joe Biden, democratic peace is back in vogue. Like many of his predecessors, Biden has made promoting freedom a hallmark of his foreign policy. He has routinely described global politics as a contest between democracies and autocracies, featuring the United States and its allies in one corner and China and Russia in the other. Speaking at the UN in 2021, Biden pledged not to enter a “new cold war,” but he also announced that the world is at “an inflection point” and drew a sharp line between authoritarian and democratic regimes. “The future will belong to those who embrace human dignity, not trample it,” Biden said. The president clearly aims to mobilize democracies, especially liberal industrial democracies, against dictatorships. His broad ideological framing emphasizes the threats posed by Russia to Europe’s democracies and by China to East Asia’s, including Taiwan. He has invoked ideology when promoting the importance of NATO in Europe and the Quad (the U.S. partnership with Australia, India, and Japan) in Asia and invested new resources in both bodies. Whether Biden wants it or not, the world may succumb to a new cold war. Much like the last one, it will be categorized by a clash between different systems of government. States are already taking sides, lining up according to regime type. Democratic Finland and Sweden, neutral during the first Cold War, have joined NATO. Ireland has moved closer to the alliance. China and Russia have recruited Iran and North Korea to their team, fellow autocracies that are providing arms for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia has, in turn, used its UN Security Council seat to make it harder for the world to monitor North Korea’s nuclear program. China is buying up Iranian oil. Under President Joe Biden, democratic peace is back in vogue. This cold war—should the world indeed succumb to it—will be different from the first one. It pits democracies against autocracies, not capitalists against communists. Its geopolitics put a rising power (China) against an old hegemon (the United States), and an aggressive militarist (Putin) against an overstretched alliance (NATO). Every party sees itself on the defensive. The United States and its allies want a “world safe for democracy” in which national security is affordable, elections are secure, markets are free, and human rights remain an ideal. China, Russia, and their allies want a world safe for autocracy, where governments are free to skip elections and neglect human rights, where markets and information are subject to state direction, and where no one outside the government questions state policy. Both sides are threatened because those two visions are incompatible. The divisions, of course, are not always so neat. As happened during the first Cold War, a number of developing countries, including some democracies, are seeking nonalignment. And as it did during the U.S.-Soviet standoff, Washington has autocratic partners, such as the Arab Gulf countries. But even within these relationships, ideology appears to be having an effect. The largest of the states in the neutral bloc, India, is partnering more closely with the United States as the two countries compete with Beijing, and both have repeatedly praised the other for being a democracy (even if India’s democracy is showing signs of distress). The United States and its liberal allies, meanwhile, are making authoritarian partners uneasy. Biden, for example, referred to Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” during his campaign, even though the United States has relied on Saudi oil production to help keep oil prices down. The world’s great powers can still prevent these democratic-autocratic tensions from hardening into a full-blown cold war. Through effective diplomacy, they might be able to construct a kind of cold peace, or a détente in which countries shun subversive transformation in favor of mutual survival and global prosperity. Pursuing such a world may, indeed, be an obligation for democracies. As Kant insisted and Kennedy pleaded, in a responsible representative government, leaders must strive to protect free republics but also avoid unnecessary conflict. Yet a true cold peace would require settling the war over Ukraine, creating a new understanding with Beijing and Taipei about the status of Taiwan, and striking arms control agreements—tasks that are nearly impossible. Instead, the world’s democratic powers appear to be girding themselves for a long twilight struggle with authoritarian regimes. This struggle may be scary, but it should not come as a surprise. It is, in fact, exactly what democratic peace theory predicts. Liberal states are being cooperative and peaceable toward fellow members of the club, working through institutions such as NATO and the Quad. But with respect to autocracies, they remain ready for war. MICHAEL DOYLE is Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Political Science at Columbia University. He is the author of Cold Peace: Avoiding the New Cold War. MORE BY MICHAEL DOYLE More: World Diplomacy Geopolitics Foreign Policy International Institutions Politics & Society Ideology Security Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy Democracy Cold War Most-Read Articles Hamas Is Winning Why Israel’s Failing Strategy Makes Its Enemy Stronger Robert A. Pape A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy Ben Rhodes The Return of Peace Through Strength Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy Robert C. O’Brien People Over Robots The Global Economy Needs Immigration Before Automation Lant Pritchett Recommended Articles The Trade Truce? When Economic Interdependence Does—and Doesn’t—Promote Peace Stephen G. Brooks The Power of Principles What Norms Are Still Good For Tanisha M. Fazal The Credibility Trap Is Reputation Worth Fighting For? By Keren Yarhi-Milo July/August 2024 Published on June 18, 2024 Ben Jones Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/credibility-trap-reputation-yarhi-milo Get Citation Request Reprint Permissions Play Download Article Does a reputation for weakness invite aggression? Many analysts have suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine in 2022 after inferring that the United States and the rest of NATO lacked resolve. The West had imposed only weak sanctions on the Kremlin in response to its 2014 annexation of Crimea and its 2018 poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom. Then came the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, a chaotic evacuation that seemed to demonstrate Washington’s lack of commitment. On the day Russia invaded, U.S. President Joe Biden declared that Putin launched his attack to “test the resolve of the West.” Now, many believe that the United States must incur significant costs—sending billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine and risking nuclear escalation—in part to prove to Putin that it is resolute. But the audience Washington is performing for goes well beyond Putin. Across the world, it can seem as if American credibility is constantly being questioned, with the United States’ adversaries challenging U.S. hegemony, and its allies worrying whether Washington will come to their aid. The potential for another Trump presidency and a more isolationist approach to foreign policy only adds to these allies’ concerns. In the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly scorned Washington’s requests for restraint in his assault on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after its terror attack on his country last year, while Iran’s proxies are brazenly attacking U.S. targets. In the global South, the United States is struggling to convince countries to take its side in the emerging struggle between democracies and autocracies. “Nobody seems to be afraid of us,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates lamented in a February interview with Foreign Affairs. Many analysts suggest that these developments are the United States’ fault—that it has lost its once unquestioned reputation for strength and resolve. Regaining that reputation depends on the extent to which the United States is willing to support friends such as Israel and Ukraine. The rest of the world is watching closely, and if Washington goes soft, the argument runs, adversaries will feel emboldened and allies abandoned. China, for instance, might infer that it can invade Taiwan without serious consequences. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. Leaders have long obsessed over credibility, the perceived likelihood that a nation will follow through on its word, especially a threat to use military force. Washington has even gone to war—in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq—to protect its credibility. Behind this consensus that credibility is important, however, lies a great deal of uncertainty about how it is established, how much it drives relations between states, and how it can be maintained or regained without instigating escalation or unwanted wars. Over the past decade, a new wave of research has produced fresh insights into credibility, particularly about what creates a reputation for resolve. The latest thinking shows that all else being equal, maintaining a reputation for resolve is important to deter adversaries and reassure allies. But it also suggests that leaders have far less influence over their country’s credibility than they might wish. Credibility is in the eye of the beholder, after all. It depends on the complex psychological calculations of one’s adversaries. Reputations are beliefs about beliefs, which makes them almost impossible to control. The implication for the United States should give policymakers pause: its efforts to rebuild credibility are costly, easily misread, and can even backfire. FACE OFF The word “credibility” entered the international relations lexicon after the 1938 Munich agreement between fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, referring to what the leaders who appeased Hitler lacked. Resolve—a state’s willingness to stand firm in a crisis—is only one component of credibility; material capabilities and perceived interests are also essential. But maintaining a reputation for resolve became much more central to American statecraft with the advent of the Cold War. Considering the United States’ new commitments at that time to defend distant allies, the global struggle between competing power blocs, and the existential risk of nuclear conflict, theorists such as Thomas Schelling contended that credibility was one of the key factors in deterring and prevailing against the Soviet Union. “Face is one of the few things worth fighting over,” he wrote in 1966. Schelling, whose pioneering work shaped the rationalist thinking of many Cold War–era U.S. presidents, emphasized that a state’s response to any given crisis would prove relevant in future crises, even very different kinds of crises, because adversaries would presume that the state would behave similarly. This hypothesis suggested that deterrence depended on sending clear messages to adversaries and sticking to prior commitments. And it helped motivate the United States’ containment policies during the Cold War, leading to a focus on peripheral regions such as Indochina. Although the United States had few direct interests in Vietnam, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson felt that the United States’ reputation for resolve was being tested, and so they were steadily drawn into a war to defend South Vietnam from the communist north. After the Cold War, a second wave of scholars questioned whether a state’s reputation for resolve mattered at all. Because most international relations dilemmas incorporate new considerations and unique sets of stakes, Daryl Press has argued that, when predicting a state’s future actions, analyzing its “current calculus” of interests and capabilities is far more useful than scrutinizing its past behavior. Jonathan Mercer has argued that reputations for resolve are hard to build. Moreover, they are subjective: leaders are more likely to believe their adversaries are resolute and their allies are weak-willed. This post–Cold War school of thought contended that because states judge other states’ reputations subjectively and reputation does not appear to predict current behavior, reputation may not be worth fighting for. This view became more influential among U.S. policymakers over the course of the United States’ long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as some began to question whether Washington was mainly staying the course for reputation’s sake—and if it was really gaining anything by the effort to sustain its reputation for resolve. President Barack Obama defended his decision not to attack Syria after Bashar al-Assad’s regime used chemical weapons in 2013, crossing a redline he himself had set, by saying in 2016, “Dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone is just about the worst reason to use force.” THE SCIENCE OF RESOLVE Over the last decade, a new generation of scholars has employed fresh statistical methods, textual analyses of newly declassified government records, and survey-based experiments to bring an even more nuanced examination to how reputation shapes international relations, charting a middle path between those who think credibility is the be-all and end-all in foreign affairs and those who think it does not matter. All else being equal, it is becoming clearer that if a state has a reputation for resolve, that does change its adversaries’ behavior. For example, Alex Weisiger and I found in a 2015 study that countries that had backed down in a crisis were more than twice as likely to face challenges the following year than countries that had stood firm. Yet signaling resolve can be harder than it seems. Repeated demonstrations of resolve can become rote over time and lose their force—or even be counterproductive. The United States prosecuted the Vietnam War in part to show its resolve to contain communism. But by making subsequent presidents wary of entangling Washington in far-flung conflicts, the war may have dampened that resolve and made future interventions much less likely—an aversion that came to be known as “Vietnam syndrome.” Van Jackson’s research has also demonstrated that because a state’s commitments are multifaceted, an effort to prove one form of determination may weaken a reputation for other kinds. For instance, North Korea’s frequent threats over the course of its crises with the United States helped it establish a reputation for resolve. But when it failed to follow through, the same threats gave it a reputation for inconsistency and dishonesty. In seeking to show toughness, North Korea proved its fickleness. Signaling resolve can be harder than it seems. The greatest paradox the new wave of research identified, however, is that a state’s reputation is not in its own hands. Reputations depend on who is assessing them. My own research has found that leaders display selective attention, giving information that stands out to them—such as their personal impressions of their counterparts—greater weight than other indicators that may be equally or more relevant. In a similar 2022 study, Don Casler also found that policymakers adjudicate credibility differently depending on their experiences and roles. Intelligence and military officials, for instance, tend to focus on a state’s current capabilities, whereas diplomats focus more on the consistency (or lack thereof) of its leaders’ behavior. Beliefs matter, too. The recent scholarship on credibility suggests that one actor’s assessment of another is profoundly shaped by irrational forces such as confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and ideological predisposition. For instance, a 2018 study by Joshua Kertzer, Jonathan Renshon, and I found that hawkish policymakers perceive public threats as less credible than their dovish counterparts do and are more inclined to view actions such as military mobilizations as credible signals of resolve. A similar study by Kertzer, Brian Rathbun, and Nina Srinivasan Rathbun found that hawks are more likely than doves to view their adversaries’ promises to comply with agreements as lacking credibility, suggesting that existing beliefs color assessments. As former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said of the Iranians as Trump prepared to withdraw from Obama’s nuclear deal, “We know they’re cheating. . . . We’re just not seeing it.” Or consider the United States’ pullout from Afghanistan in 2021. Those who cared about the overall reputation of the United States might have concluded that the withdrawal and its chaotic execution showed adversaries that the country lacks resolve. But those more concerned about the consistency of its promises and its actions—maintaining what is known as a strong “signaling reputation”—would say the withdrawal revealed high credibility. Biden, after all, followed through on a campaign promise to pull U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, signaling that he keeps his word. Adding to the complexity, observers do not judge resolve based only on what a leader does; they also judge it based on what they think the leader thinks about what he does. In 1969, after North Korea shot down a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, killing 31 Americans, the United States chose not to retaliate. U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers attempted to frame this nonresponse as a sign of American strength: “The weak can be rash. The powerful must be more restrained.” If observers thought Rogers truly meant what he said, then the decision not to retaliate could have bolstered the United States’ reputation for resolve. But if observers believed Rogers was trying to dress up weakness with powerful rhetoric, or that the United States had chosen not to retaliate purely to send a signal about its reputation, they may have discounted the statement entirely. This is what the scholar Robert Jervis called “the reputation paradox.” Ultimately, how people calculate someone’s intentions reflects their own biases. SIGNAL OR NOISE? Debates about credibility, or more specifically reputations for resolve, are now playing a major role in the latest outbreak of violence in the Middle East. One reading of that conflict suggests that the decline of American credibility in the region—thanks to the bungled Iraq war, the failure to follow through on the redline with Syria, and the rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan—directly contributed to a credibility deficit that may have emboldened Iran and its proxies, including Hamas. A converse theory suggests that Iran and its proxies rated U.S. credibility highly and hoped that if they attacked a U.S. ally, Washington would be forced to respond and get dragged into a costly war. These narratives may have elements of truth. But they assume qualities about the United States’ adversaries that are almost impossible to know, such as which dots Iranian or Hamas leaders connected to form their assessments of U.S. resolve. After Israel scored a decisive win in its 2006 war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, acknowledged that had he known Israel would respond with so much force, he would never have kidnapped the two Israeli soldiers whose capture triggered the war. It is unlikely the leaders of Hamas or Iran will make a similar declaration—and if they did, it might not accurately reflect whether the United States’ credibility deficit factored into their calculus. Even if these leaders plainly and publicly declared how their perception of U.S. resolve influenced their decision-making, such statements may be merely performative. Policymakers must apply great caution when concluding, first, that they understand how adversaries perceive their country and, second, that this perception clearly motivated a certain action. In fact, Hamas’s October 7 attack may have had nothing to do with Washington’s reputation. It could simply be explained by the failure of Israeli deterrence attributable to local factors such as the prospect of an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal and turmoil in Israel’s domestic politics. Likewise, Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine may have had everything to do with his psychology—his megalomania, his aspiration to restore Russia’s lost grandeur. By blaming so much global disorder on a U.S. credibility gap, analysts can easily overstate Washington’s ability to shape world events. The American credibility deficit is also frequently invoked to account for China’s growing belligerence. A common argument is that a U.S. failure to support Ukraine will signal to Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the United States’ commitment to supporting smaller allies is fundamentally softening, thus making China’s invasion of Taiwan more likely. But only Xi fully knows how much the war in Ukraine factors into his calculations. Actions don’t always speak for themselves, as Jervis has noted. REPUTATIONAL RISKS It is essential for U.S. leaders to avoid being trapped by their anxieties about credibility. In the end, it matters little how the United States assesses its own reputation for resolve. What matters far more is how observers—its adversaries and allies—judge it, which is hard for the United States to control. The current obsession with fixing the United States’ credibility deficit may not only be fruitless; it also carries substantial risk. If Americans come to the consensus that a credibility crisis is to blame for the world’s disorder, they are likely to conclude that their opponents will be more willing to challenge U.S. interests, which invites more hawkish U.S. policy and costlier signaling. This signaling, in turn, could provoke unnecessary crises, arms races, and even wars. Of course, Washington must make its threats as credible as possible, reassure its allies, and demonstrate that contested areas—such as Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine—are of vital concern. But states and leaders have a wider menu of options to build credibility than some policymakers recognize: public methods, private methods, and a combination of the two. Sending military aid or moving aircraft carriers can signal resolve. So can taking steps to avoid undermining American credibility, such as not publicly broadcasting the United States’ intent to “pivot” away from a region or publicly delineating redlines it will be unwilling to enforce. In general, those who suggest the United States faces a credibility deficit tend to put far too much emphasis on the country’s past actions. The past matters, but what matters more is the credibility of the signals Washington is sending right now. It is essential for U.S. leaders to avoid becoming trapped by their anxieties about credibility. U.S. policymakers also sometimes excessively globalize credibility by presuming that every country around the world perceives the United States’ actions in the same way and takes a single message from U.S. foreign policy, even policies the United States has applied in a completely different region. In truth, the vantage points from which other countries form their perceptions of the United States vary widely, depending on those countries’ local situations and their leaders’ psychologies. Policymakers must carefully analyze the psychologies of the United States’ diverse adversaries—otherwise, even costly signaling may not have the desired effect. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to signaling resolve or maintaining deterrence. Adversaries may not even pay the most attention to what the United States does overseas. They may more closely follow its domestic politics. More than any action the United States did or did not undertake abroad, it may well have been American political polarization that most encouraged Putin to test Washington’s resolve to defend Kyiv. Recent research suggests that when presidents show resolve in domestic crises, they can build their reputations internationally. Soviet leaders’ opinion of President Ronald Reagan’s resolve was bolstered by a domestic act—his firing of air traffic controllers for going on strike in 1981. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs that he was impressed by Kennedy’s resolve to seek a negotiated settlement to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. But what impressed him was not how the president behaved toward Moscow but his willingness to overrule the advice of his own military leaders to avert a catastrophe. A reputation for resolve is one of the hardest things for leaders or states to control. Any assessment of U.S. adversaries that does not carefully examine their psychology—the different ways they come to conclusions about the United States—is doomed to be inadequate. And ultimately, to regain credibility abroad, the United States may first need to tackle an even more complicated task: restoring unity at home. You are reading a free article. Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access. Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading Six issues a year in print and online, plus audio articles KEREN YARHI-MILO is Dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Relations. She is the author of Who Fights for Reputation. MORE BY KEREN YARHI-MILO More: United States Diplomacy Geopolitics Foreign Policy Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy War in Ukraine Israel-Hamas War Cold War Most-Read Articles Hamas Is Winning Why Israel’s Failing Strategy Makes Its Enemy Stronger Robert A. Pape A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy Ben Rhodes The Return of Peace Through Strength Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy Robert C. O’Brien People Over Robots The Global Economy Needs Immigration Before Automation Lant Pritchett Recommended Articles Fear Factor How to Know When You’re in a Security Dilemma Charles L. Glaser The Most Dangerous Game Do Power Transitions Always Lead to War? Manjari Chatterjee Miller A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy By Ben Rhodes July/August 2024 Published on June 18, 2024 Álvaro Bernis Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/biden-foreign-policy-world-rhodes Request Reprint Permissions Play Download Article “America is back.” In the early days of his presidency, Joe Biden repeated those words as a starting point for his foreign policy. The phrase offered a bumper-sticker slogan to pivot away from Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership. It also suggested that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again. Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times. An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored to a world that has moved on from American primacy and the eccentricities of American politics—is necessary to minimize enormous risks and pursue new opportunities. To be sure, Biden’s initial pledge was a balm to many after Trump’s presidency ended in the dual catastrophes of COVID-19 and the January 6 insurrection. Yet two challenges largely beyond the Biden administration’s control shadowed the message of superpower restoration. First was the specter of Trump’s return. Allies watched nervously as the former president maintained his grip on the Republican Party and Washington remained mired in dysfunction. Autocratic adversaries, most notably Russian President Vladimir Putin, bet on Washington’s lack of staying power. New multilateral agreements akin to the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris agreement on climate change, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership were impossible, given the vertiginous swings in U.S. foreign policy. Second, the old rules-based international order doesn’t really exist anymore. Sure, the laws, structures, and summits remain in place. But core institutions such as the UN Security Council and the World Trade Organization are tied in knots by disagreements among their members. Russia is committed to disrupting U.S.-fortified norms. China is committed to building its own alternative order. On trade and industrial policy, even Washington is moving away from core tenets of post–Cold War globalization. Regional powers such as Brazil, India, Turkey, and the Gulf states pick and choose which partner to plug into depending on the issue. Even the high-water mark for multilateral action in the Biden years—support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia—remains a largely Western initiative. As the old order unravels, these overlapping blocs are competing over what will replace it. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. A Biden victory in this fall’s election would offer reassurance that the particular risk of another Trump presidency has passed, but that will not vanquish the forces of disorder. To date, Washington has failed to do the necessary audit of the ways its post–Cold War foreign policy discredited U.S. leadership. The “war on terror” emboldened autocrats, misallocated resources, fueled a global migration crisis, and contributed to an arc of instability from South Asia through North Africa. The free-market prescriptions of the so-called Washington consensus ended in a financial crisis that opened the door to populists railing against out-of-touch elites. The overuse of sanctions led to increased workarounds and global fatigue with Washington’s weaponization of the dollar’s dominance. Over the last two decades, American lectures on democracy have increasingly been tuned out. Indeed, after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, American rhetoric about the rules-based international order has been seen around the world on a split screen of hypocrisy, as Washington has supplied the Israeli government with weapons used to bombard Palestinian civilians with impunity. The war has created a policy challenge for an administration that criticizes Russia for the same indiscriminate tactics that Israel has used in Gaza, a political challenge for a Democratic Party with core constituencies who don’t understand why the president has supported a far-right government that ignores the United States’ advice, and a moral crisis for a country whose foreign policy purports to be driven by universal values. Put simply: Gaza should shock Washington out of the muscle memory that guides too many of its actions. If Biden does win a second term, he should use it to build on those of his policies that have accounted for shifting global realities, while pivoting away from the political considerations, maximalism, and Western-centric view that have caused his administration to make some of the same mistakes as its predecessors. The stakes are high. Whoever is president in the coming years will have to avoid global war, respond to the escalating climate crisis, and grapple with the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Meeting the moment requires abandoning a mindset of American primacy and recognizing that the world will be a turbulent place for years to come. Above all, it requires building a bridge to the future—not the past. THE TRUMP THREAT One of Biden’s mantras is “Don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.” As the presidential campaign heats up, it is worth heeding this advice. But to properly outline the dangers of a second Trump term, it is necessary to take Trump’s arguments seriously, despite the unserious form they often take. Much of what Trump says resonates broadly. Americans are tired of wars; indeed, his takeover of the Republican Party would have been impossible without the Iraq war, which discredited the GOP establishment. Americans also no longer trust their elites. Although Trump’s rhetoric about a “deep state” moves quickly into baseless conspiracy theory, it strikes a chord with voters who wonder why so many of the politicians who promised victories in Afghanistan and Iraq were never held to account. And although Trump’s willingness to cut off assistance to Ukraine is abhorrent to many, there is a potent populism to it. How long will the United States spend tens of billions of dollars helping a country whose stated aim—the recapture of all Ukrainian territory—seems unachievable? Trump has also harnessed a populist backlash to globalization from both the right and the left. Particularly since the 2008 financial crisis, large swaths of the public in democracies have simmered with discontent over widening inequality, deindustrialization, and a perceived loss of control and lack of meaning. It is no wonder that the exemplars of post–Cold War globalization—free trade agreements, the U.S.-Chinese relationship, and the instruments of international economic cooperation itself—have become ripe targets for Trump. When Trump’s more punitive approaches to rivals, such as his trade war with China, didn’t precipitate all the calamities that some had predicted, his taboo-breaking approach appeared to be validated. The United States, it turned out, did have leverage. But offering a potent critique of problems should not be confused with having the right solutions to them. To begin with, Trump’s own presidency seeded much of the chaos that Biden has faced. Time and again, Trump pursued politically motivated shortcuts that made things worse. To end the war in Afghanistan, he cut a deal with the Taliban over the heads of the Afghan people, setting a timeline for withdrawal that was shorter than the one Biden eventually adopted. Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal despite Iranian compliance, unshackling the country’s nuclear program, escalating a proxy war across the Middle East, and sowing doubt across the world about whether the United States keeps its word. By moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the annexation of the Golan Heights, and pursuing the Abraham Accords, he cut the Palestinians out of Arab-Israeli normalization and emboldened Israel’s far right, lighting a fuse that detonated in the current war. Although Trump’s tougher line with China demonstrated the United States’ leverage, it was episodic and uncoordinated with allies. As a result, Beijing was able to cast itself as a more predictable partner to much of the world, while the supply chain disruptions caused by trade disputes and decoupling created new inefficiencies—and drove up costs—in the global economy. Trump’s lurch from confronting to embracing Kim Jong Un enabled the North Korean leader to advance his nuclear and missile programs under reduced pressure. Closer to home, Trump’s recognition of an alternative Venezuelan government under the opposition leader Juan Guaidó managed to strengthen the incumbent Nicolás Maduro’s hold on power. The “maximum pressure” policy toward Venezuela and Cuba, which sought to promote regime change through crippling sanctions and diplomatic isolation, fueled humanitarian crises that have sent hundreds of thousands of people to the United States’ southern border. Biden in Washington, D.C., May 2024 Biden in Washington, D.C., May 2024 Evelyn Hockstein / Reuters A second Trump term would start amid a more volatile global environment than his first, and there would be fewer guardrails constraining a president who would be in command of his party, surrounded by loyalists, and freed from ever having to face voters again. Although there are many risks, three stand out. First, Trump’s blend of strongman nationalism and isolationism could create a permission structure for aggression. A withdrawal of U.S. support for Ukraine—and, perhaps, for NATO itself—would embolden Putin to push deeper into the country. Were Washington to abandon its European allies and promote right-wing nationalism, it could exacerbate political fissures within Europe, emboldening Russian-aligned nationalists in such places as Hungary and Serbia who have echoed Putin in seeking to reunite ethnic populations in neighboring states. Despite U.S.-Chinese tensions, East Asia has avoided the outright conflict of Europe and the Middle East. But consider the opportunity that a Trump victory would present to North Korea. Fortified by increased Russian technological assistance, Kim could ratchet up military provocations on the Korean Peninsula, believing that he has a friend in the White House. Meanwhile, according to U.S. assessments, China’s military will be ready for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027. If Chinese leader Xi Jinping truly wishes to forcibly bring Taiwan under Beijing’s sovereignty, the twilight of a Trump presidency—by which point the United States would likely be alienated from its traditional allies—could present an opening. Second, if given the chance, Trump has made it clear that he would almost certainly roll back American democracy, a move that would reverberate globally. If his first election represented a one-off disruption to the democratic world, his second would more definitively validate an international trend toward ethnonationalism and authoritarian populism. Momentum could swing further in the direction of far-right parties in Europe, performative populists in the Americas, and nepotistic and transactional corruption in Asia and Africa. Consider for a moment the aging roster of strongmen who will likely still be leading other powers—not just Xi and Putin but also Narendra Modi in India, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Ali Khamenei in Iran, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. To say the least, this cast of characters is unlikely to promote respect for democratic norms within borders or conciliation beyond them. This leads to the third danger. In the coming years, leaders will increasingly be confronted with global problems that can be managed or solved only through cooperation. As the climate crisis worsens, a Trump presidency would make a coordinated international response much harder and validate the backlash against environmental policies that has been building within advanced economies. At the same time, artificial intelligence is poised to take off, creating both valuable opportunities and enormous risks. At a moment when the United States should be turning to diplomacy to avoid wars, establish new norms, and promote greater international cooperation, the country would be led by an “America first” strongman. A TIME TO HEAL In any administration, national security policy is a peculiar mix of long-standing commitments, old political interests, new presidential initiatives, and improvised responses to sudden crises. Navigating the rough currents of the world, the Biden administration has often seemed to embody the contradictions of this dynamic, with one foot in the past, yearning nostalgically for American primacy, and one foot in the future, adjusting to the emerging world as it is. Through its affirmative agenda, the administration has reacted well to changing realities. Biden linked domestic and foreign policy through his legislative agenda. The CHIPS Act made substantial investments in science and innovation, including the domestic manufacturing of semiconductors. The act worked in parallel with ramped-up export and investment controls on China’s high-tech sector, which have buttressed the United States’ lead in the development of new technologies such as AI and quantum computing. Although this story is more complicated to tell than one about a tariff-based trade war, Biden’s policy is in fact more coherent: revitalize U.S. innovation and advanced manufacturing, disentangle critical supply chains from China, and maintain a lead for U.S. companies in developing new and potentially transformative technologies. Gaza should shock Washington out of the muscle memory that guides too many of its actions. Biden’s most significant piece of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, made enormous investments in clean energy technology. These investments will allow the United States to raise its ambition in meeting climate goals by pushing domestic industry and global markets to shift away from fossil fuels faster. Although this breakthrough enhanced U.S. credibility on climate change, it also created new challenges, as even allies have complained that Washington resorted to subsidies instead of pursuing coordinated cross-border approaches to reduce emissions. In this respect, however, the Biden administration was dealing with the world as it is. Congress cannot pass complex reforms such as putting a price on carbon; what it can do is pass large spending bills that invest in the United States. Despite tensions over U.S. industrial policy, the Biden administration has effectively reinvested in alliances that frayed under Trump. That effort has tacitly acknowledged that the world now features competing blocs, which makes it harder for the United States to pursue major initiatives by working through large international institutions or with other members of the great-power club. Instead, Washington has prioritized groupings of like-minded countries that are, to use a catch phrase, “fit for purpose.” Collaboration with the United Kingdom and Australia on nuclear submarine technology. New infrastructure and AI initiatives through the G-7. Structured efforts to create more consultation among U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific. This approach involves a dizzying number of parts; one can lose track of the number of regional consultative groups that now exist. But in the context of an unraveled international order, it makes sense to thread together cooperation where possible, while trying to turn new habits of cooperation into enduring arrangements. Most notably, Biden’s reinvestment in European alliances paid off when Washington was able to swiftly mobilize support for Ukraine in 2022. This task was made easier by the administration’s innovative release of intelligence on Russia’s intentions to invade, an overdue reform of the way that Washington manages information. Although the war has reached a tenuous stalemate, the effort to fortify transatlantic institutions continues to advance. NATO has grown in size, relevance, and resourcing. European Union institutions have taken a more proactive role in foreign policy, most notably in coordinating support for Ukraine and accelerating its candidacy for EU membership. For all the understandable consternation about Washington’s struggle to pass a recent aid bill for Ukraine, Europe’s focus on its own institutions and capabilities was long overdue. SLOW TO CHANGE Yet there are three important ways in which the Biden administration has yet to recalibrate its approach to the world of post-American primacy. The first has to do with American politics. On several issues that engender controversy in Congress, the administration has constrained or distorted its options by preemptively deferring to outdated hard-liners. Even as Trump has demonstrated how the left-right axis has been scrambled on foreign policy, Biden at times feels trapped in the national security politics of the immediate post-9/11 era. Yet what once allowed a politician to appear tough to appease hawks in Washington was rarely good policy; now, it is no longer necessarily good politics. In Latin America, the Biden administration was slow to pivot away from Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaigns on Venezuela and Cuba. Biden maintained, for example, the avalanche of sanctions that Trump imposed on Cuba, including the cynical return of that country to the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism just before leaving office, in January 2021. The result has been an acute humanitarian crisis in which U.S. sanctions exacerbated shortages of basic staples such as food and fuel, contributing to widespread suffering and migration. In the Middle East, the administration failed to move swiftly to reenter the politically contested Iran nuclear deal, opting instead to pursue what Biden called a “longer and stronger” agreement, even though Trump was the one who violated the deal’s terms. Instead, the administration embraced Trump’s Abraham Accords as central to its Middle East policy while reverting to confrontation with Iran. This effectively embraced Netanyahu’s preferred course: a shift away from pursuing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and toward an open-ended proxy war with Tehran. Anyone who has worked at the nexus of U.S. politics and national security knows that avoiding friction with anti-Cuban and pro-Israeli hard-liners in Congress can feel like the path of least resistance. But that logic has turned into a trap. After October 7, Biden decided to pursue a strategy of fully embracing Netanyahu—insisting (for a time) that any criticism would be issued in private and that U.S. military assistance would not be conditioned on the actions of the Israeli government. This engendered immediate goodwill in Israel, but it preemptively eliminated U.S. leverage. It also overlooked the far-right nature of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, which offered warning signs about the indiscriminate way in which it planned to prosecute its military campaign, as Israeli officials cut off food and water flowing into Gaza within days of Hamas’s attack. In the months that followed, the administration has been trying to catch up to a deteriorating situation, evolving from a strategy of embracing Netanyahu, to one of issuing rhetorical demands that were largely ignored, to one of partial restrictions on offensive military assistance. Ironically, by being mindful of the political risks of breaking with Netanyahu, Biden invited greater political risks from within the Democratic coalition and around the world. The temptation to succumb to Washington’s outdated instincts has contributed to a second liability: the pursuit of maximalist objectives. The administration has shown some prudence in this area. Even as competition ramped up with China, Biden has worked over the last year to rebuild lines of communication with Beijing and has largely avoided provocative pronouncements on Taiwan. And even as he committed the United States to helping Ukraine defend itself, Biden set the objective of avoiding a direct war between the United States and Russia (although his rhetoric did drift into endorsing regime change in Moscow). The bigger challenge has at times come from outside the administration, as some supporters of Ukraine indulged in a premature triumphalism that raised impossible expectations for last year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive. Paradoxically, this impulse ended up hurting Ukraine: when the campaign inevitably came up short, it made the broader U.S. policy toward Ukraine look like a failure. Sustaining support for Ukraine will require greater transparency about what is achievable in the near term and an openness to negotiations in the medium term. Biden and U.S. officials meeting with a Chinese delegation in Woodside, California, November 2023 Biden and U.S. officials meeting with a Chinese delegation in Woodside, California, November 2023 Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Gaza also showcases the danger of maximalist aims. Israel’s stated objective of destroying Hamas has never been achievable. Since Hamas would never announce its own surrender, pursuing this goal would require a perpetual Israeli occupation of Gaza or the mass displacement of its people. That outcome may be what some Israeli officials really want, as evidenced by right-wing ministers’ own statements. It is certainly what many people around the world, horrified by the campaign in Gaza, believe the Israeli government really wants. These critics wonder why Washington would support such a campaign, even as its own rhetoric opposes it. Instead of seeking to moderate Israel’s unsustainable course, Washington needs to use its leverage to press for negotiated agreements, Palestinian state building, and a conception of Israeli security that is not beholden to expansionism or permanent occupation. Indeed, too many prescriptions sound good in Washington but fail to account for simple realities. Even with the United States’ military advantage, China will develop advanced technologies and maintain its claim over Taiwan. Even with sustained U.S. support, Ukraine will have to live next to a large, nationalist, nuclear-armed Russia. Even with its military dominance, Israel cannot eliminate the Palestinian demand for self-determination. If Washington allows foreign policy to be driven by zero-sum maximalist demands, it risks a choice between open-ended conflict and embarrassment. This leads to the third way in which Washington must change its approach. Too often, the United States has appeared unable or unwilling to see itself through the eyes of most of the world’s population, particularly people in the global South who feel that the international order is not designed for their benefit. The Biden administration has made laudable efforts to change this perception—for instance, delivering COVID-19 vaccines across the developing world, mediating conflicts from Ethiopia to Sudan, and sending food aid to places hit hard by shortages exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Yet the overuse of sanctions, along with the prioritization of Ukraine and other U.S. geopolitical interests, misreads the room. To build better ties with developing countries, Washington needs to consistently prioritize the issues they care about: investment, technology, and clean energy. Once again, Gaza interacts with this challenge. To be blunt: for much of the world, it appears that Washington doesn’t value the lives of Palestinian children as much as it values the lives of Israelis or Ukrainians. Unconditional military aid to Israel, questioning the Palestinian death toll, vetoing cease-fire resolutions at the UN Security Council, and criticizing investigations into alleged Israeli war crimes may all feel like autopilot in Washington—but that’s precisely the problem. Much of the world now hears U.S. rhetoric about human rights and the rule of law as cynical rather than aspirational, particularly when it fails to wrestle with double standards. Total consistency is unattainable in foreign policy. But by listening and responding to more diverse voices from around the world, Washington could begin to build a reservoir of goodwill. A FAREWELL TO PRIMACY In its more affirmative agenda, the Biden administration is repositioning the United States for a changing world by focusing on the resilience of its own democracy and economy while rebooting alliances in Europe and Asia. To extend that regeneration into something more global and lasting, it should abandon the pursuit of primacy while embracing an agenda that can resonate with more of the world’s governments and people. As was the case in the Cold War, the most important foreign policy achievement will simply be avoiding World War III. Washington must recognize that all three fault lines of global conflict today—Russia-Ukraine, Iran-Israel, and China-Taiwan—run across territories just beyond the reach of U.S. treaty obligations. In other words, these are not areas where the American people have been prepared to go to war directly. With little public support and no legal obligation to do that, Washington should not count on bluffing or military buildups alone to resolve these issues; instead, it will have to focus relentlessly on diplomacy, buttressed by reassurance to frontline partners that there are alternative pathways to achieving security. Avoiding friction with anti-Cuban and pro-Israeli hard-liners in Congress can feel like the path of least resistance. In Ukraine, the United States and Europe should focus on protecting and investing in the territory controlled by the Ukrainian government—drawing Ukraine into European institutions, sustaining its economy, and fortifying it for lengthy negotiations with Moscow so that time works in Kyiv’s favor. In the Middle East, Washington should join with Arab and European partners to work directly with Palestinians on the development of new leadership and toward the recognition of a Palestinian state, while supporting Israel’s security. Regional de-escalation with Iran should, as it did during the Obama administration, begin with negotiated restrictions on its nuclear program. In Taiwan, the United States should try to preserve the status quo by investing in Taiwanese military capabilities while avoiding saber rattling, by structuring engagement with Beijing to avoid miscalculation, and by mobilizing international support for a negotiated, peaceful resolution to Taiwan’s status. Hawks will inevitably attack diplomacy on each of these issues with tired charges of appeasement, but consider the alternative of seeking the total defeat of Russia, regime change in Iran, and Taiwanese independence. Can Washington, or the world, risk a drift into global conflagration? Moreover, the reality is that sanctions and military aid alone will not stop war from spreading or somehow cause the governments of Russia, Iran, and China to collapse. Better outcomes, including within those countries, will be more attainable if Washington takes a longer view. Ultimately, the health of the United States’ own political model and society is a more powerful force for change than purely punitive measures. Indeed, one lesson that is lost on today’s hawks is that the civil rights movement did far more to win the Cold War than the war in Vietnam did. None of this will be easy, and success is not preordained, since unreliable adversaries also have agency. But given the stakes, it is worth exploring how a world of competing superpower blocs could be knitted into coexistence and negotiation on issues that cannot be dealt with in isolation. For instance, AI presents one area in which nascent dialogue between Washington and Beijing should evolve into the pursuit of shared international norms. Laudable U.S. efforts to pursue collaborative research on AI safety with like-minded countries will inevitably have to expand to further include China in higher-level and more consequential talks. These efforts should seek agreement on the mitigation of extreme harms, from the use of AI in developing nuclear and biological weapons to the arrival of artificial general intelligence, an advanced form of AI that risks surpassing human capacities and controls. At the same time, as AI moves out into the world, the United States can use its leadership to work with countries that are eager to harness the technology for positive ends, particularly in the developing world. The United States could offer incentives for countries to cooperate with Washington on both AI safety and affirmative uses of new technologies. Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 2022 Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, July 2022 Mandel Ngan / Reuters A similar dynamic is required on clean energy. If there is a second Biden administration, most of its efforts to combat climate change will likely shift from domestic action to international cooperation, particularly if there is divided government in Washington. As the United States works to secure supply chains for critical minerals used for clean energy, it will need to avoid constantly working at cross-purposes with Beijing. At the same time, it has an opportunity—through “de-risking” supply chains, forging public-private partnerships, and starting multilateral initiatives—to invest more in parts of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia that have not always been an attractive destination for American capital. In a sense, the Inflation Reduction Act has to be globalized. Finally, the United States should focus its support for democracy on the health of existing open societies and offering lifelines to besieged civil society groups around the world. As someone who has made the case for putting support for democracy at the center of U.S. foreign policy, I must acknowledge that the calcification of the democratic recession in much of the world requires Washington to recalibrate. Instead of framing the battle between democracy and autocracy as a confrontation with a handful of geopolitical adversaries, policymakers in democracies must recognize that it is first and foremost a clash of values that must be won within their own societies. From that self-corrective vantage point, the United States should methodically invest in the building blocks of democratic ecosystems: anticorruption and accountability initiatives, independent journalism, civil society, digital literacy campaigns, and counter-disinformation efforts. The willingness to share sensitive information, on display in the run-up to war in Ukraine, should be applied to other cases where human rights can be defended through transparency. Outside government, democratic movements and political parties across the world should become more invested in one another’s success, mirroring what the far right has done over the last decade by sharing best practices, holding regular meetings, and forming transnational coalitions. Ultimately, the most important thing that America can do in the world is detoxify its own democracy, which is the main reason a Trump victory would be so dangerous. In the United States, as elsewhere, people are craving a renewed sense of belonging, meaning, and solidarity. These are not concepts that usually find their way into foreign policy discussions, but if officials do not take that longing seriously, they risk fueling the brand of nationalism that leads to autocracy and conflict. The simple and repeated affirmation that all human life matters equally, and that people everywhere are entitled to live with dignity, should be America’s basic proposition to the world—a story it must commit to in word and deed. You are reading a free article. Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access. Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading Six issues a year in print and online, plus audio articles BEN RHODES is a co-host of the podcast Pod Save the World and the author of After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made. From 2009 to 2017, he served as U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting in the Obama administration. 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O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff July/August 2024 Published on June 18, 2024 Zoë van Dijk Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/green-peace-climate-change-geopolitics Request Reprint Permissions Play Download Article The clean energy transition has reached adolescence. Its future direction is not yet set, and in the meantime, its internal paradoxes make for a volatile mix. Political leaders fret that ambitious steps to address climate change will aggravate geopolitical problems in a world already troubled by wars and humanitarian crises. Governments worried about energy security after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have advocated for strategies that embrace both fossil fuels and clean alternatives, lest dependence on imported oil give way to reliance on imported lithium. Rising inflation and economic slowdowns, too, are exacerbating concerns that the energy transition will lead to job losses and price hikes. The warnings are coming in quick succession. In March, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink championed “energy pragmatism” in his most recent annual letter, and a few weeks later, a JPMorgan Chase report called for a “reality check” about the transition away from fossil fuels. In April, Haitham al-Ghais, the secretary-general of OPEC, wrote that the energy transition would require “realistic policies” that acknowledge rising demand for oil and gas. The challenges facing the clean energy transition are real, but the impulse to pull back is misguided. Now is the time for more ambition, not less. As carbon emissions continue to rise, mitigating the dire threat of climate change requires much faster decarbonization than is currently underway. But this is not the only reason to hasten the transition. Poorly implemented half measures are part of the problem; they are worsening the same geopolitical tensions and economic fragmentation that make political leaders wary of stronger climate action. Well-designed and far-reaching policies, however, could help overcome this hurdle. An accelerated transition to clean energy can reinvigorate economies, curb protectionist forces, and calm great-power tensions, ameliorating the very anxieties that today are driving calls to slow down. Forward-thinking leaders should embrace the transition away from carbon-intensive energy as a means to resolve pressing global problems rather than as just an end in itself. Focusing only on the target of net-zero emissions by midcentury, as stipulated in the Paris Agreement of 2015, would be aiming too low. The energy system is deeply entwined with geopolitics, and the effort to overhaul it is a chance to address more than just climate change. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. In accepting this challenge, policymakers can take inspiration from the Marshall Plan. After World War II, the United States not only rebuilt a war-ravaged Europe but through this initiative integrated the continent economically, promoted fiscal and monetary stability, countered Soviet influence, and even advanced U.S. business interests. Now, a similarly ambitious effort to propel the global energy transition can also reduce inequalities, diversify and strengthen supply chains, create export markets for U.S. firms, and lessen dependence on China. To fail to combine climate goals with geopolitical ones would be to miss a historic opportunity. Replacing the sources of the fuel used to power the entire global economy while also ramping up energy supplies to ensure that billions of people can lead more prosperous lives is already among the most monumental endeavors that humanity has ever undertaken. To make the most of this epochal change, policymakers must prioritize measures that will break the negative cycle between current climate action and geopolitical fragmentation—and in doing so, realize a future that is both cleaner and more harmonious. STUCK IN A LOOP The past decade has already been transformational. The pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, dramatic advances in technology, and the war in Gaza have changed the course of international politics. Many of the institutions that buttressed the global order for the past 80 years have weakened, the norms and values underpinning them are under assault, and globalizing trends have stalled or reversed. The movement toward economic fragmentation, political polarization, authoritarianism, and conflict signals further trouble in the years ahead. As we have written in these pages before, many of these trends are complicating the already difficult task of moving from a carbon-intensive energy system to one of net-zero emissions. Competition between great powers, a defining feature of the emerging global order, now risks slowing the transition. China is a critical trading partner of the United States and the world’s main producer of clean energy, yet Washington now sees Beijing primarily as a military danger, a technological threat, and an economic rival. As relations between China and the West deteriorate, Chinese companies offering cheap clean energy products, from electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries to the metals and minerals that compose them, increasingly face market restrictions abroad. The United States already limits imports of Chinese solar panels, and in May, the Biden administration announced its intention to raise tariffs on several other Chinese clean energy products. The tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, for example, would quadruple under this plan. The European Commission is also considering higher tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. As more and more trade restrictions on critical metals and minerals are introduced, the measures will raise the costs and slow the pace of the energy transition. The disorderly and uneven energy transition is creating friction between the developed and developing worlds, as well. Many countries will need to dramatically increase their energy use in order to deliver prosperity to their citizens. In an interview with the BBC in March, Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali gave voice to developing countries’ frustration with the way the clean energy transition is unfolding. As he railed against the hypocrisy of rich governments that “lecture us on climate change,” Ali articulated the widespread perception that the countries that caused the problem are now failing to adequately help those bearing its costs. Such resentments are rising to the surface as conflict and economic hardship drain the resources and political will necessary to sustain climate-friendly policies. Focusing only on net-zero emissions would be aiming too low. Badly designed clean energy policies also impose unnecessarily high costs on consumers and put energy reliability at risk. In the United States, for example, regional and federal grid operators and regulators are warning that the electrical system is not prepared for the combined strain of increased use of intermittent power sources, specifically solar and wind; shuttered fossil fuel and nuclear plants; and rising electricity demand from electric cars, data centers, and artificial intelligence. Around the world, high energy costs are feeding populist forces that bring right-wing and often climate-skeptical parties to power. These parties’ appeals to economic nationalism further erode popular support for climate action. In Europe, polls indicate that right-wing parties, which often oppose stronger climate policies, are gaining support. Across the Atlantic, only 38 percent of Americans said in a 2023 survey that they would be willing to pay $1 per month to address climate change—a 14 percentage point decline since 2021. As economic anxiety rises, the political will to support climate action wavers, and minimizing the costs of the clean energy transition becomes even more important. Efforts to address urgent transnational issues, including climate change, will also be more complicated than in previous decades. Middle powers such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia may not yet have vast influence on their own, but when they act together, they can shape global events. These countries and the coalitions they create are more pragmatic, nimble, and powerful than the Non-Aligned Movement was during the Cold War. They are intent on keeping their diplomatic options open, resisting the pull of both the U.S. and Chinese orbits. In an international landscape where alignments are fluid, trust in multilateral institutions is weak, and resources are widely dispersed, securing the cooperation of a broad swath of countries to address climate change becomes more challenging. BREAKING THE CYCLE Geopolitical strife is not going away, but the future need not be as volatile and fragmented as current trends would suggest. Great-power competition will persist, but the risk of conflict could be diminished. And competition need not become an obstacle to progress. Great powers that compete economically and politically could maintain educational, scientific, and even some commercial links, enabling collaboration to provide global goods and tackle global challenges. Genuine multilateralism that gives more countries a seat at the table can help the world develop more sustainable and equitable solutions to shared problems. Hyperglobalization may be over, but economic integration is still possible, and the triumph of populism is far from assured. And making energy more accessible and more affordable in developing and emerging markets could reduce tensions between rich and poor countries. To create that better future, policymakers must break the pernicious feedback loop that now binds geopolitical conflict and fragmentation with the uneven transition to clean energy. A downward spiral is neither inevitable nor irreversible, as long as political leaders seize the opportunity before them. An overhaul of the global energy system, if designed properly, could forge a path to global stability. The concept behind the proposed Green New Deal in the United States is instructive, even if the plan itself lacked key details that made its implementation impractical. The proponents of the policy emphasized that the enormity of the challenge to decarbonize the American economy presented tremendous opportunities for “co-benefits”—that the imperative to reach net zero could be a means to address other domestic ills. Advocates argued that if the United States is going to make a herculean effort to transform its energy, housing, industrial, and transportation sectors, then it should do so in ways that would distribute economic benefits more equitably, diffuse harms more evenly, ensure consistent energy supplies for all, and improve the energy security of the country as a whole. In short, the energy transition would lead to both a net-zero economy and a more just society in the United States. Scaling this thinking to the international level is not difficult. Strategies to decarbonize the global energy system can and should be crafted with geopolitics in mind, bringing in not just officials responsible for climate change and energy but also those who deal with economics, development, diplomacy, and national security. Broadening the pursuit of net zero in this way would build a coalition for climate action that is politically durable. As they move beyond treating the emissions target as solely a climate issue, governments would pursue the energy transition in tandem with efforts to curb great-power rivalry, global poverty, protectionism, and conflict. BRIDGING THE GAP Diminishing the divide between rich and poor countries is one of the main ways the pursuit of a clean energy economy could foster geopolitical stability. After decades of progress toward global equality, the trend has reversed in the past few years, compounding resentments in the developing world about the rollout of the energy transition. Assistance from the developed world has been slow in coming. Rich countries collectively committed $100 billion in climate financing in 2009, but 13 years passed before they delivered on the promise in 2022. In 2023, governments pledged only $800 million to a new global fund and other arrangements to help low-income countries cope with the effects of climate change. Low-income countries did not cause the climate crisis, and they will be forced to endure its worst effects. What’s more, these countries use only a fraction of the energy wealthy countries take for granted. Their energy needs are rising, however, and the refusal of institutions such as the European Investment Bank to finance fossil fuel projects—even those involving natural gas, which is less carbon-intensive than coal or oil—smacks of hypocrisy to much of the developing world. These countries have watched in disbelief as Europe has advanced plans for at least 17 new liquefied natural gas import terminals of its own since Russia started cutting pipeline supplies in 2021. Yet the energy transition also presents an enormous opportunity for lower-income countries. Clean energy will be a multitrillion-dollar industry, and rather than being left behind or remaining dependent on Western climate finance, developing countries could claim central roles in this new global economy. Consider the scale of the capital flows that will accompany the transition. Building renewable and other clean energy projects, improving energy efficiency, and upgrading infrastructure all require funds. According to estimates from the International Energy Agency and the International Monetary Fund, emerging and developing economies (excluding China) will collectively need investment worth $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion each year by 2030—a dramatic increase from current levels, which totaled just $270 billion in 2023—if the world is to get on track for net-zero emissions by 2050. Even partial progress toward the target figures would represent a level of investment that could transform lower-income economies. Solar panels in Khavda, India, April 2024 Solar panels in Khavda, India, April 2024 Amit Dave / Reuters Most of that capital will come not from public sources but from private ones, including multinational companies, infrastructure firms, and institutional investment funds. But wealthy governments and multilateral institutions can encourage larger private capital outlays by mitigating risks for investors. They can assuage the concerns of companies that might, for instance, hesitate to invest in dollars or euros in a country where fluctuations in the local currency could prevent them from earning a return on that investment. Domestic programs such as the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, which fills financing gaps for clean energy technologies that are moving toward commercial viability, and private funds such as Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which was established by Bill Gates and other wealthy investors to back high-risk clean energy enterprises, can serve as models for similar efforts around the world. With more resources from Congress and more flexible budgetary rules, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation can more aggressively use the tools at its disposal to invest in the next generation of clean energy technologies in emerging economies. And by investing in local currencies, it can help countries with higher risk profiles obtain additional funding from other countries, multilateral development banks, and the private sector. The World Bank can also adopt reforms that would make more financing available for clean energy and climate adaptation. Governments and international bodies must not let clean energy investments cause further tensions between the developed and developing worlds. Multinational corporations and major mining companies are already making investments to extract and process minerals and metals needed for clean energy products in places such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia. There is a risk that such investment could re-create the problems that historically accompanied the transfer of oil and other commodities from lower-income countries to wealthier ones: the extraction delivered only modest economic benefits to local communities, while large government revenues encouraged corruption, lowered currency values, and weakened governance institutions, resulting in slow overall growth. But this phenomenon, the resource curse, is not inevitable. Governments can prevent negative outcomes by shielding currencies from appreciation and investing in other sectors of the economy. Together with multilateral institutions, they can ensure that investments help local communities by enforcing regulations that require investor compliance with environmental and social standards. Policies that support clean energy investments in lower-income countries can be designed to boost local manufacturing and economic growth, as well as improve energy access and energy security. Foreign investment that supports a transition away from fossil fuels should also include funds for job training and other forms of social assistance. Local communities should participate in the planning and implementation of new clean energy and infrastructure development projects in order to maximize economic and social benefits and mitigate secondary harms. An inclusive approach could avoid problems such as those the Just Energy Transition Partnership encountered in South Africa, for example. The program, which is funded primarily by developed countries to facilitate South Africa’s shift from coal to cleaner energy sources, faced a domestic backlash over its failure to offset job losses in the coal industry, which has a high rate of Black employment, with other economic opportunities. The energy system is deeply entwined with geopolitics. There is no question that low-income countries will struggle to reconcile economic and climate imperatives. Many of them have large coal endowments, and for others, coal remains vital to their energy security and economic growth. But some developing regions have comparative advantages that will also attract investment in clean energy production. North Africa, for instance, has access to cheap solar power, with which it can make green hydrogen. This fuel can then be used to produce low-carbon steel, among other things, but it is difficult and costly to transport. Rather than import North African hydrogen to European steel factories, therefore, firms may eventually relocate steel plants to that low-income region. Large deposits of natural hydrogen have also been found in countries such as Albania and Mali, which can reap economic benefits if they develop this resource. Still other countries may be suitable sites for technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Because this technology will have the same effect on global climate change no matter where it is deployed, concentrating the infrastructure in lower-income countries such as Kenya, which has cheap electricity and natural caverns that can be used for storage, can both reduce the overall costs of carbon removal and boost the host countries’ economies. At least in theory, developing countries could collect the remaining economic benefits of oil and gas production. As consumers reduce their use of oil and gas, the question becomes which countries should cease production first. If market forces were left to determine this outcome, Saudi Arabia and Qatar would likely be the last producers standing because of their low production costs. High-cost producers, such as Algeria and Canada, would be forced to shut their taps. The International Energy Agency has explored a more equitable approach that would allow lower-income countries that have contributed only minimally to global carbon emissions, such as Mozambique and Nigeria, to continue extracting fossil fuels after rich countries cease production. There is little incentive, admittedly, for large low-cost producers to go along with such a plan. Prioritizing economic development in lower-income countries may seem to conflict with the push for industrial policy and job creation in the developed world. Yet the enormous scale of the energy transition makes it possible to pursue two goals at once. Low-carbon industries and the supply chains that support them require such large investment that their growth can benefit poorer countries across the world, as well as companies in richer countries that export technologies and services. A CENTRIPETAL FORCE A thoughtful pursuit of net zero can also slow economic fragmentation and make the global trading system more resilient. Right now, the energy transition is exacerbating trade tensions as governments turn to industrial policy and border fees as tools for climate action. Many political leaders recognize the urgency of fighting climate change, but they also face imperatives to create jobs, make supply chains more resilient, and reduce dependence on China. Some of the resulting policies have further imperiled global support for free trade. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), for instance, privileges American industry in ways that have angered European countries, South Korea, and other U.S. partners, and proposals for a carbon tariff could steer the United States toward stricter protectionism.The European Union’s programs to subsidize clean energy and the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, meanwhile, could further fracture the global market for clean energy technologies by putting external suppliers at a disadvantage. The use of subsidies and tariffs in support of the energy transition is increasing the ire of developing countries. Many of their leaders bemoan that the clean energy tax credits made available in the IRA will lure investment away from their shores and back to the wealthier United States. They object to import duties on carbon-intensive products that harm countries that don’t have the resources or technical capacity to decarbonize their manufacturing sector. Governments in many emerging and developing markets, which cannot subsidize clean energy on the same scale as the United States, resort to protecting themselves with export restrictions—as Indonesia has done with its nickel exports—or with tariffs of their own. As protective measures are put in place around the world, they raise the cost and slow the pace of the clean energy transition. According to a study cited by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the current fragmentation of international trade could make the average prices of solar panel components in 2030 at least 20 to 30 percent higher than they would be in a world of more integrated supply chains. European import duties on Chinese electric vehicles, which are expected to be in the range of 15 to 30 percent, will also raise the cost to consumers and, at least in the near term, potentially lead to fewer such vehicles on the road. Wind turbines near Duran, New Mexico, March 2023 Wind turbines near Duran, New Mexico, March 2023 Bing Guan / Reuters The tightening of U.S. restrictions on Chinese exports continues. In an April speech, White House climate adviser John Podesta emphasized the Biden administration’s preference for trade policies that deny a competitive advantage to countries whose companies produce low-cost carbon-intensive goods—a nod to China. Washington is right to avoid excessive dependence on Chinese exports and to leverage the United States’ comparatively low-emissions manufacturing sector. But raising trade barriers is not without cost, and it is unrealistic for U.S. policymakers to believe they can decarbonize by 2050 if clean energy supply chains rely only on the domestic market and a few friendly countries. If policymakers recognize this reality and commit to rapidly expanding clean energy supply chains, however, they can prevent further splintering of the global economy. The United States and other countries seeking to “friend shore” manufacturing should widen their circles of friends: building high-quality, reliable supply chains at the necessary scale will require many new trade agreements and economic partnerships beyond Washington’s typical allies. Only a small number of adversaries—such as those the U.S. government designates “foreign entities of concern,” a list that includes China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia—should be excluded. The United States will have to strengthen its economic ties across Africa, the Persian Gulf, Latin America, and Southeast Asia if it is to have any prospect of meeting its clean energy goals, especially with steep limits on Chinese imports in place. At a time of flagging support for free trade, the demands of the energy transition can provide its proponents a boost. It would not be economically or politically sustainable for Chinese firms to displace American manufacturing jobs in key sectors, manipulate prices in clean energy technology and commodity markets, or claim the majority of U.S. clean energy subsidies. Embracing trade with a larger pool of partners would be a way to avoid those risks and thus make the transition more durable. The energy transition presents an enormous opportunity for lower-income countries. Similarly, although carbon border adjustment tariffs for now seem to encourage protectionism, a more thoughtfully constructed system could instead be an antidote to fragmentation. If the United States were to pair duties on carbon-intensive imports with a domestic carbon tax—as Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, has proposed—it could create incentives for other nations to follow suit. The EU has already adopted such a combination of import tariffs and a domestic tax to level the playing field between imported goods (which may not be subject to a carbon price where they are manufactured) and European ones; in response, Australia and Canada are considering similar border measures, and the United Kingdom has announced a tariff that will be implemented by 2027. The key now is for all these systems to be compatible; the EU’s early, unilateral design has elicited criticism of protectionism. If countries develop their policies in tandem, however, the establishment of multiple carbon border mechanisms could create a kind of “climate club” that encourages its members to enact ambitious climate measures without worrying about carbon leakage, whereby emissions-intensive activities shift from countries with strong climate policies to those with weak ones. WTO reform could further align the pursuit of net zero with an effort to combat protectionism. Developed and developing countries can work together to improve WTO rules regarding subsidies, product standards, and process and production methods with the aim of promoting trade in clean energy technologies, preventing exporters from profiting from cheap emissions-intensive manufacturing, and giving national governments greater latitude to pursue green industrial policies that still comply with international trade law. CALMING RIVALRIES Right now, the energy transition is sharpening great-power competition by creating new avenues for countries to compete. China’s dominant position in the production of solar panels, batteries, and electric vehicles, as well as in the refining and processing of critical minerals, has raised economic and security concerns in the United States and Europe, prompting them to restrict Chinese access to their markets. And even before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, poorly coordinated energy and climate policies contributed to an energy crisis in Europe, handing Moscow an easy opportunity to put pressure on European countries by sharply restricting its gas exports. The wave of great-power competition is not all bad for the energy transition. In fact, interstate rivalry has motivated notable climate action in recent years. The IRA—the largest climate legislation ever passed in the United States—would have been inconceivable in the absence of U.S.-Chinese competition. American lawmakers came to appreciate that if they relied entirely on market forces to advance climate innovation, not only would their climate goals remain unmet, but China would amass geopolitical and technological benefits from its aggressive clean energy industrial policy. As long as the United States is worried about Chinese dominance of global clean energy markets and the influence that dominance brings, Washington will have an incentive to make faster progress toward its climate goals.This national security imperative to quickly scale up clean energy supply chains—both within the United States and across partner countries—broadens the potential base of bipartisan support for climate-friendly policies. Building global markets for American clean energy technologies would bolster U.S. credibility among an expanding pool of allies, strengthening the United States’ position relative to China. Investing in adaptation measures in developing countries at high risk of climate disruption and disaster can also enhance American soft power. Even if competition yields certain benefits, there is reason to defuse tensions between the United States and China. A rivalry between two countries that together account for 43 percent of global GDP and nearly half of global military spending poses grave dangers for the world. But the transition to clean energy can reduce great-power friction by providing avenues and imperatives for engagement. Washington and Beijing have already benefited from coordination on environmental protection, nuclear safety, and other issues under the 1979 U.S.-China Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. They should make sure that the ill will between them does not derail the current negotiations for its renewal and extension. Collaboration on conservation in the Arctic and climate assistance for poor countries could also help stabilize the broader U.S.-Chinese relationship. Washington and Beijing have demonstrated that bilateral climate diplomacy remains possible: they agreed last year to reduce methane emissions and increase renewable electricity generation capacity, paving the way for a similar multilateral agreement a few weeks later at COP28, the UN’s annual forum on climate change. Homes threatened by rising waters on the island of Gardi Sugdub, Panama, June 2024 Homes threatened by rising waters on the island of Gardi Sugdub, Panama, June 2024 Presidencia de Panama / Reuters Another forum for great-power exchange is the Arctic Council, in which Americans, Europeans, and Russians both in and out of government have managed to maintain relationships even when Russia’s relationship with the West is at its most frigid. The body’s scientific collaboration and joint contingency planning are valuable in their own right, as is keeping open channels of communication that can help de-escalate a future crisis. Sustained scientific engagement between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, after all, incubated relationships that facilitated broader cooperation on nuclear disarmament, technology transfers, and political integration with Soviet successor states when the Soviet empire collapsed. The energy transition will also make it necessary for Western leaders to engage China and Russia, even if they are not otherwise inclined to do so. U.S. policymakers in particular must recognize that cutting China out is not a feasible way to achieve energy security. Diversification is surely necessary, but clean energy supply chains can’t be scaled up with sufficient speed if China is removed from the equation altogether. Setting up new mining and manufacturing projects takes time, and permitting constraints and environmental considerations will cause delays, especially in the United States. Transportation and equipment limitations will further slow the growth of supply chains. Even with intensive government efforts to ramp up clean energy manufacturing and mining outside China, Beijing will dominate this sector for at least the next decade. A less single-minded focus on finding alternatives to Chinese clean energy products and technologies can create an opening to advance other strategies for boosting energy security and resilience, which in turn may assuage some of the fears about dependence on China. The risk of relying too heavily on one supplier can be mitigated, for example, by developing stockpiles of clean energy components, similar to what the United States did when it created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve after the shock of the 1973 Arab oil embargo. Government regulation and multilateral coordination can also improve data transparency with respect to commodity supply, demand, and inventories, which would help market forces more effectively address supply disruptions. Interconnected energy markets can more easily accommodate disruptions, too, as Europe’s experience over the past few years has shown; the integration of the continent’s gas pipeline network made it possible for supplies to move more seamlessly between countries and replace Russian natural gas. Efforts to increase energy efficiency and lower consumption can also build resilience to shocks. Improvements to battery chemistry and recycling, for example, could significantly reduce the projected growth in critical minerals demand. A TIME FOR AMBITION With the world staggering under the weight of geopolitical challenges, it may seem an odd time to argue for greater ambition in the clean energy transition. Yet that is exactly what the moment calls for. The threat of climate change demands a rewiring of global energy networks on a massive scale, and it would be shortsighted not to recognize the opportunity in such an endeavor. Imagining a clean energy transition that helps reverse today’s troubling geopolitical trends is not merely an academic exercise, nor is it a fanciful one. It is a generational undertaking that should bring together broad constituencies, from environmentalists to national security hawks. It should inspire people across the world not only to avert disaster but also to realize a positive vision of the future. It should challenge policymakers to rise above partisan debates and short-term considerations. Arresting the downward spiral of environmental crisis and geopolitical strain serves the interests of everyone. Uniting behind a well-conceived and well-executed clean energy transition can bring about not only a more sustainable global economy but also a more peaceful and prosperous world. You are reading a free article. Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access. Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading Six issues a year in print and online, plus audio articles MEGHAN L. O’SULLIVAN is Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. During the George W. Bush administration, she served as Special Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan. JASON BORDOFF is Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy and Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. During the Obama administration, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the staff of the National Security Council. MORE BY MEGHAN L. O’SULLIVAN MORE BY JASON BORDOFF More: United States World Geopolitics Economics Environment Climate Change Energy Politics & Society Most-Read Articles Hamas Is Winning Why Israel’s Failing Strategy Makes Its Enemy Stronger Robert A. Pape A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy Ben Rhodes The Return of Peace Through Strength Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy Robert C. O’Brien People Over Robots The Global Economy Needs Immigration Before Automation Lant Pritchett Recommended Articles Climate Policy Is Working Double Down on What’s Succeeding Instead of Despairing Over What’s Not Kelly Sims Gallagher Mining for coltan in North Kivu, Congo, September 2013 Green Upheaval The New Geopolitics of Energy Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan Why Would Anyone Want to Run the World? The Warnings in Cold War History By John Lewis Gaddis July/August 2024 Published on June 7, 2024 Netflix viewers got an introduction, this spring, to a famous physics experiment: the three-body problem. A magnetized pendulum suspended above two fixed magnets will swing between them predictably. A third magnet, however, randomizes the motion, not because the laws of physics have been repealed, but because the forces involved are too intricate to measure. The only way to “model” them is to relate their history. That’s what Netflix did in dramatizing the Chinese writer Liu Cixin’s science-fiction classic, The Three-Body Problem: a planet light years from earth falls within the gravitational attraction of three suns. It’s no spoiler to say that the results, for earth, are not auspicious. Sergey Radchenko, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, comes from the East Asian island of Sakhalin, a good place from which to detect geopolitical gravitations. His first book bore the appropriate title Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy, 1962–1967. His second, Unwanted Visionaries: The Soviet Failure in Asia at the End of the Cold War, extended his analysis through the 1980s. Now, with To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power, Radchenko seeks to refocus recent scholarship, which has sought to “decenter” the history of that conflict, back on the superpowers for which it was originally known. Previous accounts of the Soviet Union’s Cold War emphasized bipolarities: Marxist-Leninist ideology versus Russian nationalism in the “orthodox-revisionist” debates among historians half a century ago; then the revolution-versus-imperialism paradigm advanced by the expatriate scholars Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov in the 1990s. “Decenterists” have since added a third polarity, contrasting the relative stability of the superpowers’ “long peace” with persistent violence among their surrogates elsewhere. Cold War history has therefore become, in this sense, its own three-body problem. How can we begin pulling it back together and, if possible, extract lessons for the future? Theory, Radchenko acknowledges, won’t help: it privileges parsimony as a path to predictability but too often confirms what’s obvious while oversimplifying what’s not. That leaves, as an alternative, narration. But narration requires archives for validation, and access to archives seems unlikely in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, a regime not known for transparency. History, however, is full of surprises. One is what Radchenko describes as a “deluge” of Cold War–era documents, released over the past decade, from Soviet government and Communist Party archives, as well as from the personal papers of Kremlin leaders. Radchenko doesn’t try to explain why this has happened; he’s content instead to make the most of the opportunity it presents to “know” Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, and their associates at a “very personal level.” It’s like being a “psychological counselor,” he writes, “in a session with a client who tells the same stories over and over again to reveal the underlying passions and fears.” HOME AND AWAY So what, from that vantage point, can one learn? Radchenko’s most significant finding is how great the gap was between the ideology on which the Soviet Union was founded, on the one hand, and the topography on which it sought to impose its authority, on the other. “What the Soviets saw as their ‘legitimate’ interests,” he writes, “were often not seen as particularly ‘legitimate’ by anybody else, leading to a kind of ontological insecurity on the Soviet part that was compensated for by hubris and aggression.” Take, for example, Joseph Stalin’s simultaneous commitment to world revolution and to securing the state he ran. The Soviet Union, he believed, deserved a place of honor in international affairs as the first nation to have aligned itself with the class struggle, the previously hidden driver of modern history. Its security, however, required brutalities: agricultural collectivization, indiscriminate purges, exorbitant wartime sacrifices. The difficulty here, Radchenko points out, is that unilateral imposition secures neither honor nor safety: respect, if genuine, can arise only by consent. That left Stalin seeking to enhance the Soviet Union’s external reputation without compromising its internal safety while maintaining, in both domains, its and his own legitimacy. In short, a three-body problem. Radchenko defines legitimacy as satisfaction with things as they are, and there are various ways of obtaining it. Marlon Brando, in The Godfather, spoke softly but left a horse head, when needed, on selected bedsheets: offers followed that recipients couldn’t refuse. Stalin was capable of such efficiencies, but only within realms he fully controlled. Beyond these, his preference was to convene bosses like mafia dons dividing up territories—hence his expectation at the World War II conferences in Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam that his U.S. and British counterparts would acknowledge Soviet authority over half of Europe. But Stalin saw this, Radchenko argues, as only a temporary arrangement. The Anglo-Americans, being predatory capitalists, would soon go to war with one another, Stalin believed, leaving Europeans not yet within the Soviet sphere to voluntarily choose communist parties to lead them, in close correspondence with Moscow’s wishes. When that didn’t happen—when Moscow’s legitimacy beyond Stalin’s authority failed to take root—he had only improvisation to fall back on: indecisiveness in responding to the Marshall Plan, a Czechoslovak coup that alarmed more than intimidated those who witnessed it, an unsuccessful blockade of Berlin from which he had to back down, and a botched campaign to displace Tito’s communist regime in Yugoslavia, the only one in Europe with homegrown legitimacy. That’s how the Soviet leader earned an honor he wouldn’t have wanted: he, more than anyone else, deserves recognition for having founded NATO in 1949. Legitimacy was the wild card, the disrupter, the third sun in the Stalinist Cold War firmament. CALLING THEIR BLUFF Stalin, a Europeanist, had no plans, Radchenko emphasizes, for “turning the world red.” Nikita Khrushchev was more ambitious. “National liberation” movements in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East would, he thought, look to the Soviet Union for leadership, if it could free itself from Stalinist repression while achieving more rapid economic development than capitalism had so far accomplished. Meanwhile, Mao Zedong’s establishment of a “people’s republic” in China more than compensated for communism’s setbacks in central and western Europe. Khrushchev wasn’t content, however, with these favorable portents. He wanted to speed things up, and that made him personally, in pursuit of his particular vision of legitimacy, his own wild card. Khrushchev began the process with his 1956 “secret speech” denouncing Stalin to the 20th Party Congress. Because he’d failed to prepare anyone for it, the address became a “wound-up spring”—Radchenko’s apt characterization—which, when released, caused consternation at home; revolts in Poland and Hungary; disillusionment among French, Italian, and even Scandinavian communists; and deep distrust within the mind of Mao, who had only begun, with Stalin safely dead, to regard him as a role model. International communism did indeed go global, but in such a manner as to immediately fragment itself. Harol Bustos The successful Sputnik satellite launch of 1957 might have reversed these losses had Khrushchev not tried to make it a panacea. If the Soviet Union could send satellites into orbit, he reasoned, then why not refrigerators into kitchens? Why shouldn’t a socialist planned economy outproduce capitalist rivals in all respects? Few goods of any kind appeared in communist households, however, a disappointment especially evident in East Germany, within which the postwar settlement had left the conspicuous capitalist enclave of West Berlin. Khrushchev tried resolving the situation with rockets: he would terminate Western rights in the city and enforce the restriction with threats of nuclear war. American spy planes and satellite photography, however, revealed that the Soviet military had not produced missiles “like sausages” as Khrushchev had unwisely bragged. With his bluff called, Khrushchev allowed the East Germans the humiliation of a wall around West Berlin, then authorized the atmospheric test of an unusably gigantic thermonuclear bomb, and finally quietly—but not quietly enough—dispatched missiles armed with nuclear warheads to Fidel Castro’s Cuba, the only communist outpost in the Western Hemisphere, all in an effort to regain global respect by threatening global annihilation. Fed up with such risk-taking, Khrushchev’s Kremlin colleagues deposed him in October 1964, leaving Leonid Brezhnev to gradually consolidate the power he would hold longer than any Soviet leader apart from Stalin himself. LEGITIMACY AND ITS DISCONTENTS Brezhnev was stolid, soothing, and, until his health began to fail in the mid-1970s, reassuringly steady. That has faded him for most historians, who prefer writing about more colorful characters, but hints of revisionism have begun to appear: Zubok’s 2007 book, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War From Stalin to Gorbachev, gives Brezhnev almost the status of U.S. President Richard Nixon, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and West German Chancellor Willy Brandt as an architect of détente. How, though, could such an implied acceptance of international stability coexist with the expectation, which Brezhnev never repudiated, that “proletarians” in all countries would eventually rise up? Through sharing legitimacies, Radchenko suggests, the most important of which was that the superpowers both feared a nuclear apocalypse. The Cold War didn’t end history, but it did remove whatever benefits might have remained in fighting another world war. Despite an overwhelming U.S. advantage in nuclear weapons at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, neither side was willing to risk using them against the other. Brezhnev’s role, through the rest of the 1960s, was to replace Khrushchev’s bluffs with actual capabilities, thereby creating a balance in strategic weaponry that made possible the arms limitation agreements of the 1970s. Quests for legitimacy, in this instance, converged compatibly. A second convergence had to do with the demarcation of boundaries: Cold War competition would continue in some areas, but not in others. Brezhnev made it clear that the Soviet Union would still support “wars of national liberation” in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, while the Americans, less explicitly, committed themselves to waging what might be called “wars of containment” in those same regions. Meanwhile, the status quo that divided Europe would remain in place. A third priority, for Brezhnev, was personal diplomacy. Khrushchev relished the recognition that came with his 1959 visit to the United States, but neither he nor Stalin tried to build long-term relationships with American or other Western leaders. Brezhnev, however, pursued Nixon almost as relentlessly as a stalker does a star, even as the president escalated military operations in Vietnam in 1972 and then sank into the Watergate swamps of 1973–74. Images of the two relaxing at Nixon’s San Clemente residence, admiring the Pacific while in shirtsleeves with feet propped up and drinks within reach, were a high point for Brezhnev, if not for the international proletarian revolution. Shadows on a poster of Joseph Stalin in Volgograd, Russia, May 2011 Shadows on a poster of Joseph Stalin in Volgograd, Russia, May 2011 Sergey Karpov / Reuters And yet legitimacies, Radchenko shows, could be a double-edged sword. Demarcations didn’t always diminish temptations, as when Nixon and Kissinger forced the Soviets out of the Middle East after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, or when Brezhnev took advantage, two years later, of the Americans’ defeat in Vietnam to expand Soviet activities in eastern and southern Africa. Third parties could upset equilibriums by switching sides, as the Chinese spectacularly did when they welcomed Nixon to Beijing in 1972, or by shaming superpower patrons for insufficient militancy, a proficiency the Cubans deployed against the Soviets in Africa in the years that followed. Leadership, too, posed legitimacy problems. Presidential campaigns became permanent in the United States after Watergate, leaving little time and too much visibility for reflections, rectifications, and reassessments. Meanwhile, the absence of criticism and hence accountability in the Soviet Union required keeping Brezhnev in power until the day he died, a process hardly conducive to agility or adaptivity. These difficulties opened the way for Ronald Reagan, in his 1980 presidential campaign and during his first years in office, to question the legitimacy of the Cold War itself: if the purpose of détente had been not to end that conflict but to institutionalize it, was that the best that the competitors could do? That brings Radchenko to the last Soviet leader, who so suspended himself between legitimacies that the end of his career coincided with the end of his country. Mikhail Gorbachev set out to reform his regime in such a way as to convince Europeans to welcome its membership among them, Americans to regard it as a partner in securing world order, and the world itself to acknowledge his own personal preeminence as, in Radchenko’s words, “strategist-in-chief for change.” The first whiffs of perestroika, however, set off a “dash for the West” among former Soviet satellites, which saw far more clearly than Gorbachev that fulfilling his mission would mean their liberation. That withholding of legitimacy in his own neighborhood denied Gorbachev the much wider legitimacy he had hoped to obtain. Witnessing this, the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union saw no reason themselves to remain within it, as ultimately, under Boris Yeltsin, did the Russian republic itself. Having delegitimized himself on all fronts, Gorbachev wound up, Radchenko somewhat rudely reminds us, making a Pizza Hut commercial in 1997. To be fair, he was the only Nobel Peace Prize winner to do so. DISTANT MIRRORS So is To Run the World, as Radchenko acknowledges in his introduction, “dangerously thin on theory”? For anyone in search of clockwork predictability, the answer is surely yes. But if one seeks patterns—the recognition of similarities across time, space, and scale—then this book has the potential to significantly revise not only how historians think about the Soviet Union but also the much longer sweep of Russian history that has now unexpectedly produced, in Putin, a new tsar. For what Putin appears to want is a new legitimacy based on much older ones: not the ideological rigidities of Marxism-Leninism, but the murkier and more malleable legacies of tsarist imperialism, Russian nationalism, and an almost medieval religious orthodoxy. Where the Soviet Union fits within this frame—a post-Soviet history that echoes pre-Soviet history—remains to be determined, but by emphasizing legitimacy, Radchenko has pointed the way. “The sources of Soviet ambitions,” he concludes, “are not specifically Soviet but both precede and postdate the Soviet Union.” Putin’s ambitions aren’t likely to be much different. Radchenko’s book challenges, as well, the study of grand strategy. That field has long loved binaries: ends versus means, aspirations versus capabilities, planning versus improvisation, hopes versus fears, even foxes versus hedgehogs. The unofficial motto of the Yale Grand Strategy program has long been F. Scott Fitzgerald’s claim that the sign of a first-rate intelligence is “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” But what if it’s three? The Cold War didn’t end history, but it did remove whatever benefits might have remained in fighting another world war. What Radchenko shows is that the demands of revolution, security, and legitimacy were equally compelling for Soviet leaders during the Cold War. The first two they could balance with roughly predictable results, but not the third. For it lay beyond their remit: the “strong” were not always able to do what they wanted, to paraphrase Thucydides, and the “weak” found many ways to resist instruction, thereby retaining the right to decide things for themselves. Should we conclude from this, then, that autocracies find retaining legitimacy more difficult than do democracies? It would be reassuring to think so, were it not for the particular questions lodged, like malevolent matryoshka dolls, within this larger one. How was it that ancient Athens, arguably the world’s first democracy, turned out to be its last for the next two millennia? Why did the American founders see themselves as establishing not a democracy but a republican empire? Didn’t the Americans, during the century named for them, also have, like the Soviet Union, an ideology they sought to export? How many recipients of instructions given then respect them now? And finally, do political processes within the United States reliably produce agile, adaptive leadership? Good books, whatever their subject, provide mirrors in which we see ourselves, often with disconcerting results. To Run the World more than meets that standard. It’s not just a major reconsideration of Cold War history but also an admonition to any country—or to any ruler of a country—foolish enough to try turning its title into an agenda for action. John Lewis Gaddis is Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University and the author of On Grand Strategy, The Cold War: A New History, and Strategies of Containment. MORE BY JOHN LEWIS GADDIS In This Review To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power By Sergey Radchenko Cambridge University Press, 2024, 768 pp. Recommended Articles The Five Futures of Russia And How America Can Prepare for Whatever Comes Next Stephen Kotkin Ukrainian military cadets at a swearing-in ceremony in Kyiv, September 2023 The Next Global War How Today’s Regional Conflicts Resemble the Ones That Produced World War II Hal Brands A Three-Theater Defense Strategy How America Can Prepare for War in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East By Thomas G. Mahnken June 5, 2024 U.S. soldiers participating in a joint exercise with South Korean soldiers, Yeoncheon, South Korea, March 2024 Jeon Heon-Kyun / Reuters Under Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, U.S. defense strategy has been premised on the optimistic notion that the United States will never need to fight more than one war at a time. During the Obama administration, in the face of fiscal austerity, the Defense Department abandoned its long-standing policy of being prepared to fight and win two major wars to focus on acquiring the means to fight and win just one. That move accelerated the trend toward a smaller U.S. military. It also narrowed the options available to U.S. policymakers, given that committing the United States to war in one place would preclude military action elsewhere. This switch was misguided then, but it is especially out of step today. The United States is currently involved in two wars—Ukraine’s in Europe and Israel’s in the Middle East—while facing the prospect of a third over Taiwan or South Korea in East Asia. All three theaters are vital to U.S. interests, and they are all intertwined. Past efforts to deprioritize Europe and disengage from the Middle East have weakened U.S. security. The U.S. military drawdown in the Middle East, for instance, has created a vacuum that Tehran has filled eagerly. A failure to respond to aggression in one theater can be interpreted as a sign of American weakness. Allies across the world, for example, lost faith in Washington after the Obama administration failed to enforce its “redline” against chemical weapons use by Syria. And the United States’ adversaries are cooperating with one another: Iran sells oil to China, China sends money to North Korea, and North Korea sends weapons to Russia. The United States and its partners face an authoritarian axis that spans the Eurasian landmass. Washington is fortunate to have capable allies and friends in East Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Collectively, they have the power to help it constrain the authoritarian axis. But to succeed, they must do a better job of working together. Washington and its allies need to be what military planners call interoperable: capable of quickly sending resources across an established system to whichever ally needs them most. The West, in particular, must create and share more munitions, weapons, and military bases. The United States also needs to formulate better military strategies for fighting alongside its partners. Otherwise, it risks being overwhelmed by its increasingly capable and intertwined enemies. PUTTING FRIENDS FIRST The first effort the United States and its allies must step up is defense production. The West has long been home to the most capable and sophisticated armaments in the world. But right now, it simply does not manufacture enough materiel. Consider munitions. The wars in both Gaza and Ukraine have shown that modern conflict is munitions-intensive and protracted. The Ukrainian army fires thousands of artillery shells per day, at times outstripping the production capability of its suppliers. Israel has gone through thousands of tank rounds and fired many precision-guided munitions in its war with Hamas since October 7. Collectively, the U.S.-supported Ukrainian and Israeli war efforts amount to an expenditure rate that Western munitions companies are struggling to meet. As a result, the United States and its allies have had to make difficult choices about which munitions they can send to friends and which they need to keep for themselves. In major wars, no country, not even the world’s strongest, can go it alone. As the alliance’s central member and main security provider, the United States must be able to meet the needs of both its own and its allies’ armed forces. To do so, the U.S. government should provide defense companies with the kind of steady demand needed to boost production. Congress took an important step in this direction last year, when it authorized the Pentagon to buy multiple years’ worth of munitions, providing manufacturers with long-term contracts. But by failing to pass a budget promptly, Congress undercut this laudable attempt to create a steady demand for munitions. Congress should mandate that the Defense Department set minimum munitions stockpile levels and create a mechanism to restock automatically once munitions are sold or expended to balance supply and demand. To better position both itself and its allies, however, Washington must do more than simply make lots of munitions. It must also get better at creating a seamless distribution process. Domestic and foreign orders of American arms are fulfilled through the same assembly lines, but procedurally, foreign military sales are segregated from U.S. ones, with the former controlled by the State Department and the latter by the Defense Department. This division can make it hard to adjust supply to meet demand. Bureaucracy makes the foreign military sales process slow and cumbersome. And even when such sales are approved, allies are generally sent to the back of the line, where they can wait years to obtain weapons that they have already paid for and that may be essential to deterring imminent attacks. To solve this problem, the United States must streamline and speed up the process for foreign clients. It should allow the Defense Department to include foreign sales as part of the demand signal it sends to industry and cut back on rules that keep allies waiting behind U.S. contracts. Fulfilling foreign munitions sales before meeting the needs of the U.S. armed forces may seem harmful to American interests, even when those countries made their purchases first. There are certainly moments when Washington’s needs should take precedence. But allowing defense firms to ship to Taiwan or Poland before Fort Bragg when necessary can enhance U.S. security—especially when the United States is not itself fighting major wars. The effort to supply Ukraine, for example, is a truly multinational affair, featuring the United States and its allies in NATO and throughout Europe and Asia. By checking Russian aggression, these countries promote Washington’s security as well as their own. U.S. allies have also expanded their own munitions industries to help Ukraine fight Moscow, which ultimately lessens the demands on the United States. Washington can encourage these countries to keep expanding production by making sure they know that when they do need U.S. wares, their orders won’t be treated as second class. WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS The United States has plenty of weapons it can sell to its friends. It is a global leader in advanced combat aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, space capabilities, and software, and it should develop many of these capabilities with an intent to export them. For example, the U.S. Air Force’s state-of-the-art B-21 Raider stealth bomber could be useful to U.S. allies such as Australia, who need the ability to strike over long distances, but a reluctance to export advanced technology stands in the way of providing close partners with the best available equipment. U.S. policy should ensure that American political leaders have the option to supply such advanced systems to close allies. Fortunately, Washington has valuable experience with sharing its military technology. Besides the United States, seven nations—Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom—are partners in the F-35 combat aircraft program, and an additional nine have agreed to purchase the aircraft. These aircraft are supported by a truly global logistics and maintenance infrastructure. The AUKUS agreement offers another example; it provides a path for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines and for the United Kingdom to bolster its underwater capabilities. AUKUS has also helped Washington by exposing the limits of its shipbuilding industry. The deal has made it clear that American manufacturers are not large enough or capable enough to modernize the U.S. submarine fleet as well as build submarines for Australia, prompting Australia to invest $3 billion in expanding the United States’ submarine industrial base. The result will serve both U.S. and Australian interests. Allies can help the U.S. defense base in other ways, as well. The United States is a global leader in some defense manufacturing areas, but many of its allies have comparative advantages in others. Although the U.S. shipbuilding industry has shrunk, Japan and South Korea have impressive shipyards that Washington can tap. Israel produces excellent air and missile defense systems such as the Iron Dome, and Norway fields excellent antiship missiles. Washington should do more to encourage these allies to share their own top-tier technologies. Expanding such cooperation will not be easy. The defense industry—and the jobs and funding that go with it—are the stuff of domestic politics, both in Washington and in allied capitals. That is why, even in areas in which Congress has sought to promote collaboration, defense officials have run into bureaucratic obstacles. Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are considered part of what American law calls the U.S. National Technology and Industrial Base, which consists of the people and organizations engaged in national security and dual-use research, development, and production. But domestic sourcing requirements and standard operating procedures nonetheless stand in the way of deep collaboration among these friends. There are strong political incentives to keep such barriers in place, such as concerns over domestic jobs, but U.S. officials would be wise to stand up to such pressure and eliminate them. It is tempting to force companies to buy everything at home, but Americans will ultimately be more secure and prosperous if their country has access to more and better defense products, regardless of their provenance. MOVING AS ONE The United States possesses an unparalleled network of global military bases, one that has allowed it to project power for over a century. Some of these bases are on U.S. territory, from Guam in the Western Pacific to Maine on the East Coast of the United States. Others are on allied territory, designed to reassure U.S. friends and deter U.S. enemies. But all these bases have become more vulnerable, as adversaries have acquired the ability to strike with precision over great distances (as Iran and Russia have both done over the last six months). To be fully interoperable, the United States and its partners will therefore need to be better at protecting their bases and moving assets around. In recent years, the U.S. Air Force has developed what it calls “agile combat employment” as a way of operating against a capable adversary. This strategy entails operating combat aircraft from dispersed bases so they can’t be easily targeted. Similarly, the U.S. Navy has begun learning how to strike targets from dispersed ships, aircraft, and submarines. But the effectiveness of these concepts, and ultimately U.S. power, rests on forward bases and logistical support, including on allied territory. Washington and its partners must therefore find more places to station their troops and store their weapons. In the Western Pacific, Japan offers some promising locations for dispersed operations. The country has many ports, airfields, and support facilities that are tied into the Japanese road and rail network. But existing arrangements restrict Japan’s military to a small fraction of these facilities, and U.S. forces are restricted to an even smaller portion. The United States should encourage the Japanese government to expand both militaries’ access to militarily useful airfields and ports rather than largely restricting it to designated U.S. bases. History shows that Americans perform best when they fight side by side with allies. In the meantime, the United States may be able to rotate more troops through northern Australia. Australia is far enough away from China to be safe from most Chinese air and missile threats but still close enough to conduct and support operations in a future conflict in the Western Pacific. And there is precedent: during World War II, the landscape of northern Australia was dotted with airfields from which American and Australian pilots fought against Japan. The remnants of many of these facilities still exist, ready to be resurrected. Australia and the United States simply need to renovate and expand them. The United States and its allies must also get better at defending their facilities against ever more capable missiles. They must move beyond the traditional approach to air and missile defense, which depends on using small numbers of expensive interceptors, to one that features directed-energy weapons (such as lasers or electromagnetic-pulse weapons), large numbers of low-cost interceptors, and sensors that can provide the information necessary to defeat large, complex attacks, such as the one that Iran launched against Israel in April. Australia, Japan, and the United States have made progress by calling for the development of a networked air and missile defense architecture to defend each other. Now, they must follow through. Expanded basing will further contribute to interoperability. By training and operating more closely with one another in peacetime, U.S. and allied forces will develop habits of cooperation that will serve them well in wartime. Allies may be able to strike deals, for example, that will allow them to quickly surge forces and resources to bases across theaters, as needed, to deter threats or respond to aggression. SHARING IS CARING The United States and its partners need to cooperate more closely on munitions, military basing, and the defense industry more broadly. But interoperability means more than exchanging physical resources. The West will also need to do a better job of coming up with shared concepts and strategies. Washington must have frank conversations with its allies to help clarify assumptions about objectives, strategy, roles, and missions and yield a better understanding of how best to work collectively. Take, for instance, the development of new ways of war. During the Cold War, the army and air force developed strategies for how to defeat a Soviet attack on NATO in Central Europe, some of which remain in use. Today, the U.S. military is developing a series of new, internal operational concepts tailored to modern warfare. But Washington should open this process to close allies, both to learn from them and to ensure that they are best positioned to operate with the United States in times of conflict. For example, the United States and key allies such as Australia, Japan, and the Philippines must figure out how to work together to meet the threat of Chinese aggression against Taiwan. The United States, of course, cannot share everything—physical or ideational—with its partners. Some weapons should never be shared. But history shows that Americans perform best when they fight side by side with allies. They are most likely to win wars on multiple fronts when they work with multiple partners. As Washington faces growing dangers in three regions, it must learn how to better cooperate and share with its many friends. In major wars, no country, not even the world’s strongest, can go it alone. THOMAS G. MAHNKEN is President and CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments and a Senior Research Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. MORE BY THOMAS G. MAHNKEN 三戰區防禦戰略 美國如何為亞洲、歐洲和中東的戰爭做準備 托馬斯·G·曼肯 2024 年 6 月 5 日 2024 年 3 月，韓國漣川，美國士兵參加與韓國士兵的聯合演習 全憲/路透社 在巴拉克·歐巴馬、唐納德·川普和喬·拜登總統的領導下，美國國防戰略的前提是樂觀的觀念，即美國永遠不需要一次打一場以上的戰爭。在歐巴馬政府時期，面對財政緊縮，國防部放棄了長期以來準備打贏兩場重大戰爭的政策，轉而專注於取得打贏一場戰爭的手段。這項舉措加速了美國軍隊規模縮小的趨勢。鑑於美國在一個地方發動戰爭將排除在其他地方採取軍事行動，這也縮小了美國決策者的選擇範圍。 這種轉變在當時是錯誤的，但在今天尤其不合時宜。美國目前捲入兩場戰爭——歐洲的烏克蘭戰爭和中東的以色列戰爭——同時也面臨在東亞因台灣或韓國而爆發第三場戰爭的可能性。這三個戰區對美國利益都至關重要，而且相互交織。過去降低歐洲優先地位和退出中東的努力削弱了美國的安全。例如，美國在中東的軍事撤軍造成了一個真空，德黑蘭急於填補這一真空。在一個戰區未能對侵略做出反應可以被解讀為美國軟弱的表現。例如，在歐巴馬政府未能執行針對敘利亞使用化學武器的「紅線」後，世界各地的盟友對華盛頓失去了信心。美國的對手正在相互合作：伊朗向中國出售石油，中國向北韓提供資金，北韓向俄羅斯提供武器。美國及其夥伴面臨橫跨歐亞大陸的獨裁軸心。 華盛頓很幸運在東亞、歐洲和中東擁有有能力的盟友和朋友。總的來說，他們有能力幫助它限制獨裁軸心。但要取得成功，他們必須更好地合作。華盛頓及其盟友需要成為軍事規劃者所說的可互通的：能夠透過既定係統快速將資源發送到最需要的盟友。尤其是西方，必須製造和分享更多的彈藥、武器和軍事基地。美國還需要製定更好的軍事戰略，與夥伴並肩作戰。否則，它就有可能被實力日益強大且交織在一起的敵人壓垮。 把朋友放在第一位 美國及其盟國必須加強的首要努力是國防生產。西方長期以來一直擁有世界上最強大和最先進的武器。但目前，它根本無法製造足夠的物資。 考慮彈藥。加薩和烏克蘭的戰爭表明，現代衝突是彈藥密集且曠日持久的。烏克蘭軍隊每天發射數千枚砲彈，有時超出其供應商的生產能力。自10月7日以來，以色列在與哈馬斯的戰爭中已經進行了數千次坦克射擊，並發射了許多精確導引彈藥。軍火公司難以滿足的支出率。結果，美國及其盟國必須做出艱難的選擇，決定哪些彈藥可以送給朋友，哪些需要自己保留。 在重大戰爭中，沒有一個國家能夠單打獨鬥，即使是世界上最強大的國家也不能。 作為聯盟的核心成員和主要安全提供者，美國必須能夠滿足自身及其盟國武裝部隊的需求。為此，美國政府應該為國防公司提供提高產量所需的穩定需求。去年，國會朝這個方向邁出了重要一步，授權五角大廈購買多年所需的彈藥，為製造商提供長期合約。但由於未能及時通過預算，國會削弱了這項值得稱讚的創造穩定彈藥需求的嘗試。國會應要求國防部設定最低彈藥庫存水平，並建立一種機制，在彈藥出售或消耗後自動補充庫存，以平衡供需。 然而，為了更好地定位自己及其盟友，華盛頓必須做的不僅僅是製造大量彈藥。它還必須更好地創建無縫的分銷流程。美國武器的國內和國外訂單都是透過相同的裝配線完成的，但在程序上，國外軍售與美國軍售是分開的，前者由國務院控制，後者由國防部控制。這種劃分可能會使調整供應以滿足需求變得困難。官僚主義使得對外軍售過程緩慢而繁瑣。即使此類銷售獲得批准，盟友通常也會被派往後線，在那裡他們可以等待數年才能獲得他們已經付款的武器，這對於阻止迫在眉睫的襲擊可能至關重要。為了解決這個問題，美國必須簡化並加快外國客戶的流程。它應該允許國防部將對外銷售納入其向工業界發出的需求訊號的一部分，並減少讓盟友等待美國合約的規定。 在滿足美國武裝部隊的需求之前完成外國軍火銷售 似乎可能損害美國的利益，即使這些國家首先進行了採購。當然，有些時候華盛頓的需求應該要優先考慮。但在必要時允許國防公司在布拉格堡之前向台灣或波蘭運送貨物可以增強美國的安全——特別是當美國本身沒有進行重大戰爭時。例如，向烏克蘭供貨的努力是一項真正的跨國事務，涉及美國及其北約盟國以及整個歐洲和亞洲。透過制止俄羅斯的侵略，這些國家促進了華盛頓及其自身的安全。美國的盟友也擴大了自己的軍火工業，以幫助烏克蘭對抗莫斯科，這最終減少了對美國的要求。華盛頓可以鼓勵這些國家繼續擴大生產，確保它們知道當它們確實需要美國商品時，它們的訂單不會被視為二等品。 我的就是你的 美國有大量武器可以賣給朋友。它是先進戰鬥機、核動力潛艇、太空能力和軟體領域的全球領導者，它應該開發其中許多能力並打算出口它們。例如，美國空軍最先進的 B-21 Raider 隱形轟炸機可能對澳洲等需要遠距離打擊能力的美國盟友有用，但美國不願出口先進技術為密切的合作夥伴提供最好的可用設備的方式。美國政策應確保美國政治領袖可以選擇向親密盟友提供此類先進系統。 幸運的是，華盛頓在分享軍事技術方面擁有寶貴的經驗。除美國外，澳洲、加拿大、丹麥、義大利、荷蘭、挪威和英國等七個國家也是 F-35 戰鬥機計畫的合作夥伴，另有九個國家已同意購買該飛機。這些飛機得到真正的全球物流和維護基礎設施的支援。 AUKUS 協定提供了另一個例子；它為澳洲獲得核動力潛艇和英國增強其水下能力提供了一條途徑。 AUKUS 也透過暴露其造船業的限制來幫助華盛頓。該交易清楚地表明，美國製造商的規模和能力不足以實現美國潛艇艦隊的現代化以及為澳大利亞建造潛艇，促使澳大利亞投資30億美元來擴大美國的潛艇工業基礎。結果將符合美國和澳洲的利益。 盟友也可以透過其他方式幫助美國國防基地。美國在某些國防製造領域處於全球領先地位，但其許多盟國在其他領域也具有比較優勢。儘管美國造船業已經萎縮，但日本和韓國擁有令人印象深刻的造船廠可供華盛頓利用。以色列生產出色的防空和飛彈防禦系統，例如“鐵穹”，挪威則擁有出色的反艦飛彈。華盛頓應該採取更多措施鼓勵這些盟友分享自己的頂級技術。 擴大這種合作並不容易。國防工業——以及隨之而來的就業和資金——是華盛頓和盟國首都國內政治的重要內容。這就是為什麼即使在國會尋求促進合作的領域，國防官員也會遇到官僚障礙。澳洲、加拿大和英國被視為美國法律所稱的美國國家技術和工業基地的一部分，該基地由從事國家安全和軍民兩用研究、開發和生產的人員和組織組成。但國內採購要求和標準作業流程仍然阻礙了這些朋友之間的深度合作。保留此類障礙有強大的政治動機，例如對國內就業的擔憂，但美國官員明智的做法是頂住這種壓力並消除它們。迫使公司在國內購買所有東西是很誘人的，但如果美國能夠獲得更多更好的國防產品，無論其來源如何，美國人最終將更加安全和繁榮。 一體行動 美國擁有無與倫比的全球軍事基地網絡，這個網絡使其能夠在一個多世紀以來投射力量。其中一些基地位於美國境內，從西太平洋的關島到美國東岸的緬因州。其他的則位於盟國領土上，旨在安撫美國朋友並威懾美國敵人。但所有這些基地都變得更加脆弱，因為對手已經具備了遠距離精確打擊的能力（正如伊朗和俄羅斯在過去六個月中所做的那樣）。因此，為了實現充分的互通性，美國及其合作夥伴需要更好地保護其基地和轉移資產。 近年來，美國空軍開發了所謂的“敏捷作戰運用”，作為對抗強大對手的一種方式。這項戰略需要從分散的基地操作戰鬥機，這樣它們就不會輕易成為攻擊目標。同樣，美國海軍也開始學習如何從分散的船、飛機和潛艇上攻擊目標。但這些概念的有效性以及最終美國的實力取決於前沿基地和後勤支持，包括盟國領土上的支持。因此，華盛頓及其合作夥伴必須尋找更多的地方駐軍和儲存武器。 在西太平洋，日本為分散行動提供了一些有前景的地點。該國擁有許多與日本公路和鐵路網絡相連的港口、機場和支援設施。但現有安排將日本軍隊限制在這些設施的一小部分內，而美軍則限制在較小的部分內。美國應鼓勵日本政府擴大兩國軍隊進入具有軍事用途的機場和港口的範圍，而不是主要限制其進入指定的美國基地。 歷史表明，美國人在與盟友並肩作戰時表現最佳。 同時，美國或許可以透過澳洲北部輪調更多部隊。澳洲距離中國足夠遠，可以免受大多數中國空中和飛彈威脅，但仍然足夠近，可以在未來西太平洋衝突中進行和支援行動。這是有先例的：二戰期間，澳洲北部的土地上佈滿了機場，美國和澳洲飛行員曾在這些機場與日本作戰。其中許多設施的遺跡仍然存在，等待著復興。澳洲和美國只需要對其進行翻新和擴建。 美國及其盟國也必須更好地保護其設施免受能力更強的飛彈的攻擊。他們必須超越依賴使用少量昂貴攔截器的傳統防空和飛彈防禦方法，轉而採用定向能武器（例如雷射或電磁脈衝武器）、大量低成本攔截器、感測器可以提供擊敗大規模複雜攻擊所需的信息，例如伊朗四月對以色列發動的攻擊。澳洲、日本和美國呼籲發展網路防空和飛彈防禦架構以相互防禦，從而取得了進展。現在，他們必須堅持到底。 擴展的基礎將進一步促進互通性。透過在和平時期更密切地相互訓練和行動，美國和盟軍將養成合作習慣，這對他們在戰時有好處。例如，盟友可能能夠達成協議，使他們能夠根據需要迅速向戰區各地的基地增派部隊和資源，以威懾威脅或應對侵略。 分享就是關愛 美國及其合作夥伴需要在彈藥、軍事基地和更廣泛的國防工業進行更密切的合作。但互通性不僅僅意味著交換物理資源。西方也需要更好地提出共同的概念和策略。華盛頓必須與其盟友進行坦誠對話，以幫助澄清有關目標、戰略、角色和使命的假設，並更好地了解如何最好地進行集體合作。 以新戰爭方式的發展為例。冷戰期間，陸軍和空軍制定瞭如何挫敗蘇聯對中歐北約進攻的戰略，其中一些戰略至今仍在使用。如今，美國軍方正在製定一系列針對現代戰爭的新的內部作戰概念。但華盛頓應該向親密盟友開放這一進程，既向他們學習，也確保他們在衝突時期處於與美國合作的最佳位置。例如，美國和澳洲、日本和菲律賓等主要盟友必須弄清楚如何共同努力，以應對中國侵略台灣的威脅。 當然，美國無法與其合作夥伴分享一切，無論是物質上的還是思想上的。有些武器永遠不應該共享。但歷史表明，美國人在與盟友並肩作戰時表現最佳。當他們與多個合作夥伴合作時，他們最有可能贏得多條戰線的戰爭。隨著華盛頓在三個地區面臨越來越大的危險，它必須學會如何更好地與許多朋友合作和分享。在重大戰爭中，沒有一個國家能夠單打獨鬥，即使是世界上最強大的國家也不能。 托馬斯·G·馬肯 (THOMAS G. MAHNKEN) 是戰略與預算評估中心的總裁兼首席執行官，也是約翰·霍普金斯大學高級國際研究學院的高級研究教授。 托馬斯·G·馬恩肯的更多作品 更多的： 美國 外交 地緣 政治 對外援助 外交政策 安全 防禦與軍事 戰略與衝突 戰爭與軍事戰略 美國外交政策 烏克蘭戰爭 以色列 -哈馬斯戰爭 以色列-巴勒斯坦衝突 最常閱讀的文章 哈馬斯如何結束 讓團體打敗自己的策略 奧黛麗·庫爾思·克羅寧 去全球化的危險神話 對全球經濟的誤解正在推動糟糕的政策 去全球化的危險神話 對全球經濟的誤解正在推動糟糕的政策 布拉德·塞瑟 2024 年 6 月 4 日 2024 年 5 月，一艘貨櫃船離開巴西桑托斯港 人們正在形成一種共識，即世界正在分裂——不僅在地緣政治上，而且在經濟上也是如此。 2020 年，經濟學家道格拉斯·歐文 (Douglas Irwin) 寫道，“COVID-19 大流行正在推動世界經濟從全球經濟一體化中倒退。”在此之後的幾年裡，如何管理這種所謂的去全球化一直是世界經濟論壇會議的一致主題。五月，《經濟學人》封面描繪了一幅世界地圖，其中的世界實際上分裂為相互競爭的經濟集團。相關報告認為去全球化是長期必然的結果，並認為隨著投資人重新定價資產和 布拉德·塞瑟 普丁在南高加索的隱藏遊戲 阿塞拜疆的崛起、喬治亞的漂移以及俄羅斯尋求通往伊朗和中東的門戶 托馬斯·德瓦爾 印度與中國的危險邊境對峙 莫迪的強硬立場可能會招致而不是阻止中國的侵略 普拉文·東西 推薦文章 烏克蘭軍校學員於 2023 年 9 月在基輔舉行的宣誓儀式上 下一場全球戰爭 當今的區域衝突與引發第二次世界大戰的衝突有何相似之處 哈爾布蘭茲 2023 年 5 月，蘇丹喀土穆持有子彈 蘇丹與新衝突時代 地區強權政治如何助長致命戰爭 康福特·埃羅和理查德·阿特伍德 More: United States Diplomacy Geopolitics Foreign Aid Foreign Policy Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy U.S. Foreign Policy War in Ukraine Israel-Hamas War Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Most-Read 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向觀眾介紹了一個著名的物理實驗：三體問題。懸掛在兩個固定磁鐵上方的磁化擺將如預期在它們之間擺動。然而，第三塊磁鐵使運動隨機化，並不是因為物理定律被廢除，而是因為所涉及的力太複雜而無法測量。 「建模」它們的唯一方法就是關聯它們的歷史。這就是Netflix在改編華人作家劉慈欣的科幻經典《三體》時所做的：一顆距離地球數光年的行星落入三個太陽的引力。毫不劇透地說，對地球來說，結果並不吉利。 約翰霍普金斯大學歷史學家謝爾蓋·拉琴科(Sergey Radchenko)來自東亞薩哈林島，那裡是探測地緣政治引力的好地方。他的第一本書的標題是《天上的兩個太陽：中蘇爭奪霸權，1962-1967》。他的第二本書《不受歡迎的空想家：冷戰結束時蘇聯在亞洲的失敗》將他的分析延伸到了 20 世紀 80 年代。現在，拉琴科在《主宰世界：克里姆林宮冷戰時期爭奪全球權力》一書中，試圖重新關注最近的學術研究，這些學術研究試圖「去中心化」那場衝突的歷史，回到最初為人所知的超級大國。 先前對蘇聯冷戰的描述強調了兩極：半個世紀前歷史學家之間「正統修正主義」辯論中的馬克思列寧主義意識形態與俄羅斯民族主義；接著是1990年代外籍學者弗拉季斯拉夫·祖博克和康斯坦丁·普列沙科夫提出的革命與帝國主義典範。此後，「非中心主義者」又增加了第三個極性，將超級大國「長期和平」的相對穩定性與其其他地方的代理人之間持續的暴力進行對比。因此，從這個意義上說，冷戰歷史已經成為它自己的三體問題。我們如何開始將其​​重新整合起來，並在可能的情況下為未來學習？ 拉琴科承認，理論無濟於事：它認為簡約是通往可預測性的途徑，但往往會證實顯而易見的事情，同時過度簡化不明顯的事情。作為替代方案，剩下的就是敘述。但敘述需要檔案來驗證，而在弗拉基米爾·普丁(Vladimir Putin)領導下的俄羅斯（一個不以透明度聞名的政權），查閱檔案似乎不太可能。 然而，歷史總是充滿驚喜。其中之一是拉琴科所說的「大量」冷戰時期的文件，這些文件是在過去十年中從蘇聯政府和共產黨檔案以及克里姆林宮領導人的個人文件中釋放出來的。拉琴科並沒有試圖解釋為什麼會發生這種情況；相反，他滿足於充分利用它提供的機會在「非常個人的層面上」了解史達林、赫魯雪夫、勃列日涅夫、戈巴契夫以及他們的同夥。他寫道，這就像成為一名“心理諮商師”，“在與客戶的會談中，一遍又一遍地講述相同的故事，以揭示潛在的熱情和恐懼。” 主客場 那麼，從這個有利的角度來看，我們可以學到什麼呢？拉琴科最重要的發現是，蘇聯賴以建立的意識形態與蘇聯試圖強加權威的地形之間存在著巨大的差距。他寫道：「蘇聯人所認為的'合法'利益，往往並不被其他任何人視為特別'合法'，這導致了蘇聯方面的一種本體論上的不安全感，這種不安全感透過傲慢和侵略性得到了補償。 以約瑟夫·史達林為例，他同時致力於世界革命和確保他所管理的國家的安全。他認為，蘇聯作為第一個與階級鬥爭結盟的國家，理應在國際事務中享有榮譽，階級鬥爭是現代歷史以前隱藏的動力。然而，它的安全需要殘酷的手段：農業集體化、不分青紅皂白的清洗、戰時的巨大犧牲。拉琴科指出，這裡的困難在於，單方面強加既不能保證榮譽，也不能保證安全：尊重，如果是真正的，只有在同意的情況下才能產生。這使得史達林尋求在不損害其內部安全的情況下提高蘇聯的外部聲譽，同時在兩個領域中維持蘇聯和他自己的合法性。簡而言之，就是三體問題。 拉琴科將合法性定義為對事物現狀的滿意，而獲得合法性的方法有很多。《教父》中的馬龍·白蘭度說話輕聲細語，但在需要時會在選定的床單上留下一個馬頭：接受者無法拒絕的提議隨之而來。史達林有能力做到如此高效，但僅限於他完全控制的領域。除此之外，他更喜歡召集像黑手黨老大這樣的老大來瓜分領土——因此，他在德黑蘭、雅爾塔和波茨坦舉行的二戰會議上期望美國和英國同行會承認蘇聯在半個歐洲的權威。但拉琴科認為，史達林認為這只是一個臨時安排。史達林認為，作為掠奪性資本家的英美人很快就會互相開戰，從而使尚未進入蘇聯勢力範圍的歐洲人自願選擇共產黨來領導他們，這與莫斯科的願望密切相關。 當這種情況沒有發生時——當莫斯科超越斯大林權威的合法性未能紮根時——他只能依靠即興發揮：在回應馬歇爾計劃時猶豫不決，這是一場捷克斯洛伐克的政變，它不僅讓目睹者感到震驚，而且讓目睹者感到恐懼，這是一場不成功的政變。運動，南斯拉夫是歐洲唯一具有本土合法性的政權。這位蘇聯領導人就是這樣贏得了他本來不想要的榮譽：他比任何人都更應該因1949 年創立北約而受到認可。太陽。 揭穿他們的虛張聲勢 拉琴科強調，身為歐洲主義者，史達林並沒有「把世界變成紅色」的計畫。尼基塔·赫魯雪夫更有野心。他認為，如果蘇聯能夠擺脫史達林主義的鎮壓，同時實現比資本主義迄今所取得的更快的經濟發展，非洲、亞洲和中東的「民族解放」運動就會向蘇聯尋求領導。同時，毛澤東在中國建立「人民共和國」足以彌補共產主義在中歐和西歐的挫折。然而，赫魯雪夫並不滿足於這些有利的預兆。他想要加快速度，這使得他個人在追求他獨特的合法性願景時，擁有了自己的外卡。 赫魯雪夫以 1956 年在黨的第二十次代表大會上譴責史達林的「秘密演講」開始了這一進程。由於他未能讓任何人為此做好準備，演講變成了“上緊的彈簧”（拉琴科的恰當描述），當它發佈時，引起了國內的恐慌；波蘭和匈牙利的起義；法國、義大利甚至斯堪的納維亞共產主義者的幻想破滅；史達林安全過世後，毛澤東才開始把他視為榜樣。國際共產主義確實走向了全球，但其方式卻立即使其自身分裂。 哈羅爾·布斯托斯 如果赫魯雪夫沒有試圖將其變成靈丹妙藥，那麼 1957 年人造衛星的成功發射可能會扭轉這些損失。他推斷，如果蘇聯可以將衛星送入軌道，那麼為什麼不能將冰箱送進廚房呢？為什麼社會主義計劃經濟不能在各方面都勝過資本主義競爭對手呢？ 然而，共產主義家庭中幾乎沒有出現任何種類的商品，這一點在東德尤其明顯，因為戰後的定居點已經離開了西柏林引人注目的資本主義飛地。赫魯雪夫試圖用火箭解決這個問題：他將終止西方在該城市的權利，並以核戰威脅來實施限制。然而，美國偵察機和衛星攝影顯示，蘇聯軍方並沒有像赫魯雪夫不明智地吹噓的那樣，生產「像香腸一樣」的飛彈。 赫魯雪夫虛張聲勢，讓東德人在西柏林周圍築起隔離牆，受到羞辱，然後授權對一枚無法使用的巨大熱核炸彈進行大氣層試驗，最後悄悄地——但還不夠悄悄地——向菲德爾·卡斯楚領導的古巴發射了裝有核彈頭的飛彈。赫魯雪夫的克里姆林宮同僚厭倦了這種冒險行為，於1964 年10 月廢黜了赫魯雪夫，讓勃列日涅夫逐步鞏固權力，他的權力比除斯大林本人之外的任何一位蘇聯領導人都長。 合法性及其不滿之處 在勃列日涅夫性格冷淡、冷靜，在 1920 世紀 70 年代中期他的健康狀況開始惡化之前，他一直表現得令人安心。對於大多數喜歡描寫更豐富多彩的人物的歷史學家來說，這讓他黯然失色，但修正主義的暗示已經開始出現：祖博克 2007 年的書《失敗的帝國：冷戰中的蘇聯從史達林到戈巴契夫》幾乎給了勃列日涅夫同樣的地位。師。然而，這種對國際穩定的隱含接受如何能與勃列日涅夫從未否認的所有國家的「無產階級」最終崛起的期望共存呢？ 拉琴科認為，透過共享合法性，最重要的是兩個超級大國都擔心核災。冷戰並沒有結束歷史，但它確實消除了打另一場世界大戰可能留下的任何好處。儘管古巴飛彈危機時美國在核武方面擁有壓倒性優勢，但雙方都不願意冒險使用核武來對付對方。在 1960 年代的剩餘時間裡，勃列日涅夫的角色是用實際能力取代赫魯雪夫的虛張聲勢，從而在戰略武器方面建立平衡，從而使 1970 年代的軍備限制協議成為可能。在這種情況下，對合法性的追求是一致的。 第二個趨同與邊界劃分有關：冷戰競爭將在某些領域繼續，但在其他領域則不會。勃列日涅夫明確表示，蘇聯仍將支持非洲、亞洲和拉丁美洲的“民族解放戰爭”，而美國則不太明確地承諾在這些地區發動所謂的“遏制戰爭” 。同時，分裂歐洲的現狀將繼續存在。 對勃列日涅夫來說，第三個優先事項是個人外交。赫魯雪夫很享受 1959 年訪問美國所獲得的認可，但他和史達林都沒有試圖與美國或其他西方領導人建立長期關係。然而，勃列日涅夫幾乎像跟蹤者追捕明星一樣無情地追捕尼克森，儘管尼克森總統於 1972 年升級了在越南的軍事行動，然後陷入了 1973-74 年的水門事件沼澤。兩人在尼克森的聖克萊門特官邸放鬆身心，穿著襯衫，雙腳支起，飲料觸手可及，這對勃列日涅夫來說是一個高潮，即使不是國際無產階級革命。 2011 年 5 月，俄羅斯伏爾加格勒約瑟夫史達林海報上的陰影 2011 年 5 月，俄羅斯伏爾加格勒約瑟夫史達林海報上的陰影 謝爾蓋·卡爾波夫/路透社 然而，拉琴科表明，合法性可能是一把雙面刃。劃界並不總是能減少誘惑，就像1973 年贖罪日戰爭後尼克森和基辛格迫使蘇聯撤出中東，或者兩年後勃列日涅夫利用美國在越南的失敗擴大蘇聯在中東的活動時。第三方可能會透過倒戈來打破平衡，就像中國在1972 年歡迎尼克森訪問北京時​​所做的那樣，或者羞辱超級大國的支持者缺乏戰鬥性，而古巴人在隨後的幾年裡在非洲針對蘇聯人使用了這種技巧。 領導力也帶來了合法性問題。水門事件後，美國的總統競選活動變成永久性的，留給反思、糾正和重新評估的時間很少，但可見度卻很高。同時，由於蘇聯缺乏批評和問責制，勃列日涅夫必須繼續掌權直至他去世，而這個過程幾乎不利於敏捷性或適應性。這些困難為羅納德·雷根(Ronald Reagan) 在1980 年總統競選和執政的頭幾年中質疑冷戰本身的合法性開闢了道路：如果緩和的目的不是結束這場衝突而是將其製度化，那麼競爭對手能做到的最佳成績是什麼？ 這讓拉琴科想到了最後一位蘇聯領導人，他在合法性之間徘徊，以至於他的職業生涯的結束與國家的滅亡同時發生。米哈伊爾·戈巴契夫著手改革他的政權，以說服歐洲人歡迎其加入其中，說服美國人將其視為確保世界秩序的伙伴，並說服世界本身承認他個人的卓越地位，用拉琴科的話說，“變革的總戰略家。” 然而，改革的第一道曙光在前蘇聯衛星國中掀起了一股「奔向西方」的浪潮，這些衛星國比戈巴契夫更清楚地意識到，完成自己的使命就意味著它們的解放。戈巴契夫在自己鄰裡的合法性被剝奪，剝奪了他原本希望獲得的更廣泛的合法性。目睹了這一點，蘇聯的非俄羅斯共和國認為自己沒有理由留在其中，就像最終在鮑里斯·葉爾欽領導下的俄羅斯共和國本身一樣。拉琴科有點粗魯地提醒我們，戈巴契夫在各方面都失去了合法性，他在1997 年製作了必勝客廣告。者。 遙遠的鏡子 那麼，正如拉琴科在引言中所承認的那樣，《統治世界》 是否「理論薄弱到危險」？對於任何尋求發條可預測性的人來說，答案肯定是肯定的。但是，如果人們尋求模式——對時間、空間和規模上的相似性的認識——那麼這本書不僅有可能顯著改變歷史學家對蘇聯的看法，而且也有可能改變對俄羅斯歷史的更長期的審視，而俄羅斯歷史現在出乎意料地產生了，在普京，一位新沙皇。 因為普丁似乎想要的是一種基於更古老的合法性的新合法性：不是馬克思列寧主義的意識形態僵化，而是沙皇帝國主義、俄羅斯民族主義和近乎中世紀的宗教正統觀念的更加陰暗和更具可塑性的遺產。蘇聯在這個框架中的位置——後蘇聯歷史與前蘇聯歷史相呼應——仍有待確定，但透過強調合法性，拉琴科已經指明了方向。 “蘇聯野心的根源，”他總結道，“並不是蘇聯特有的，而是在蘇聯之前和之後出現的。”普丁的野心不太可能有太大不同。 拉琴科的書也對大戰略的研究提出了挑戰。這個領域長期以來一直喜歡二元對立：目的與手段、願望與能力、計畫與即興創作、希望與恐懼，甚至狐狸與刺蝟。耶魯大戰略計劃的非官方座右銘長期以來一直是弗·斯科特·菲茨杰拉德(F. Scott Fitzgerald) 的主張，即一流智力的標誌是「能夠同時在頭腦中持有兩種相反的想法，並且仍然保留運作的能力」 」。但如果是三個呢？ 冷戰並沒有結束歷史，但它確實消除了打另一場世界大戰可能留下的任何好處。 拉琴科表明， 冷戰期間，革命、安全和合法性的要求對蘇聯領導人來說同樣引人注目。他們可以在前兩個方面與大致可預測的結果取得平衡，但第三個則不行。因為這超出了他們的職權範圍：用修昔底德的話來說，「強者」並不總是能夠做他們想做的事，而「弱者」則找到了許多方法來抵制指示，從而保留了自己決定事情的權利。 那麼，我們是否應該由此得出結論，獨裁國家比民主國家更難維持合法性？如果不是因為這個更大的問題中提出了一些特定的問題，例如惡意的俄羅斯娃娃，這樣想會讓人感到安心。古雅典，可以說是世界上第一個民主國家，為何卻成為接下來兩千年的最後民主國家？為什麼美國開國元勳認為自己要建立的不是民主國家而是共和帝國？在以他們命名的世紀中，美國人不也像蘇聯一樣擁有他們試圖輸出的意識形態嗎？現在有多少接受指示的人尊重他們？最後，美國國內的政治過程能否可靠地產生敏捷、適應性強的領導？ 好書，無論其主題是什麼，都為我們提供了鏡子，讓我們看到自己，但往往會帶來令人不安的結果。《運行世界》遠遠超出了這個標準。這不僅是對冷戰歷史的重大反思，也是對任何愚蠢到試圖將其標題變成行動議程的國家或任何國家統治者的警告。 約翰·劉易斯·加迪斯 (John Lewis Gaddis) 是耶魯大學軍事和海軍史羅伯特·A·洛維特教授，也是《論大戰略》、《冷戰：新歷史》和《遏制戰略》一書的作者。 約翰·劉易斯·加迪斯的更多作品 在這篇評論中 統治世界：克里姆林宮在冷戰時期爭奪全球權力 統治世界：克里姆林宮在冷戰時期爭奪全球權力 謝爾蓋·拉琴科 劍橋大學出版社，2024 年，768 頁。 推薦文章 俄羅斯的五個未來 美國如何為接下來發生的一切做好準備 史蒂芬·科特金 烏克蘭軍校學員於 2023 年 9 月在基輔舉行的宣誓儀式上 下一場全球戰爭 當今的區域衝突與引發第二次世界大戰的衝突有何相似之處 哈爾布蘭茲 Hamas Has Reinvented Underground Warfare The Group’s Gaza Tunnels Will Inspire Others By Daphné Richemond-Barak June 6, 2024 An Israeli soldier securing a tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip, November 2023 When Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, it dragged Israel into one of the worst underground wars ever. By now, it is abundantly clear that the scale of Hamas’s subterranean complex is unprecedented and that the use of tunnels has contributed to casualties among civilians and soldiers. More consequentially, by sustaining underground operations over months, Hamas has delayed an Israeli victory, causing unimaginable diplomatic and political costs along the way. In terms of tunnel warfare, the only war that compares is World War I, in which countless British and German soldiers died trying to expose, mine, and dig tunnels. No other use of tunnels in warfare comes close—neither the entrenchment of Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan that enabled him to evade U.S. forces and plan attacks undetected; nor that of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali, where tunnels were used in launching attacks from nearly impregnable underground hideouts; nor that of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), which used tunnels to conduct attacks on U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq and Syria. Hamas’s use of tunnels is so advanced that it more closely resembles how states use underground structures to protect command-and-control centers than what is typical for nonstate actors. Hamas’s buildup of below-ground capabilities has shaken Israel’s assessment of subterranean threats. Israel never imagined becoming embroiled in an underground war of such proportions. If anything, Israel had been focused on eliminating the Hamas tunnels that cross into Israeli territory. The war in the Gaza Strip will likely spur the development of new doctrine and new methods to deal with this unique type of war. Hamas’s tunnel system has no doubt caught the attention of other militaries and nonstate actors, all of which are noting how effective they have been for Hamas’s survival in Gaza. Now that Hamas has overcome most of the hurdles inherent in underground warfare—communication, navigation, low oxygen levels, and claustrophobia, among others—there is every reason to believe that the tactic will continue to spread. Hamas’s innovative use of the underground has redefined the strategic value of the surface, altered military encounters, and transformed the use of human shields. OUT OF REACH Surviving underground for long periods is no small feat, as the hundreds of Ukrainian fighters who lived in the tunnels beneath the Azovstal steel plant during a Russian onslaught on Mariupol in 2022 could report. Those forces quickly ran out of food and drinking water. They lacked the most basic sanitary and medical arrangements, not to mention Internet connection and the ability to maintain communication with the outside world. In Gaza, none of this has been an issue for Hamas. The people living and fighting in the Azovstal tunnels could not survive for more than two months underground, but Hamas has maintained a subterranean military presence for almost eight months. Hamas owes this record-breaking performance to a long maze of underground passageways spanning Gaza that includes fully outfitted kitchens, furnished command rooms, sophisticated data centers, tiled bathrooms, fenced detention cells, and designated work areas. Hamas seems unfettered by geological constraints, engineering and planning difficulties, or the fear of survivability. The group has had plenty of time to sharpen its skills, experiment, and improve; decades of digging at the Egyptian border, inside Gaza, and into Israeli territory certainly helped. A tunnel exposed near the border crossing between Gaza and Israel, known as the Erez crossing, was almost ten feet wide and 164 feet deep. It was dug using civilian boring equipment, a first for Hamas. Even the best digging skills, however, do not prepare fighters for prolonged stays underground. The conditions are harsh, oxygen is scarce, and communication with the outside world is limited. Hamas has shown that years of training and careful planning can help overcome these hurdles. Hamas’s tunnels include sleeping quarters, meeting rooms, and other underground structures, equipped with ventilation, electricity, toilets and washrooms, plumbing, and primitive yet effective communication networks. As the infrastructure improved, the downsides of living in and operating from the underground diminished. Massive stocks of fuel, food, and water inside the tunnels made it possible to live and conduct military operations underground. Extensive underground weapons-production facilities ensured that weapons supply and distribution would continue uninterrupted. Israel underestimated the strategic ramifications of tunnel warfare. Tunnel users everywhere are known to exit tunnels to restock, breathe fresh air, and communicate with the outside world, but Hamas leadership has barely been seen above ground. In April, reports surfaced that Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, had visited his forces above ground, but only briefly. It is not clear how often Hamas fighters have exited the tunnels to resupply or recuperate. What is clear, however, is that Hamas has been able to direct military operations without interruption. Though it has suffered blows—particularly when Israeli strikes interrupt its communication systems—it has generally been able to ensure the continuation of the chain of command from its underground military base. Hamas’s use of underground structures is more akin to how states, rather than nonstate actors, have traditionally used the underground. States rely on underground structures to house permanent and hard-to-reach bunkers capable of serving as command-and-control centers in times of crisis. These deeply buried facilities can host leaders, sustain weapons-production infrastructure, and ensure the continuation of the chain of command in an emergency. Canada, China, Iran, Israel, Russia, and the United States are known to possess these types of deeply buried facilities. They are larger, better equipped, more reinforced, and deeper than tunnels. Iran’s nuclear facilities are dug more than 300 feet into the ground (whereas most tunnels do not reach beyond 200 feet) and, as a result, are beyond the reach of even the most powerful weapons. By contrast, terrorist groups have used tunnels mainly to shield themselves from surveillance technology and operate undetected. These rudimentary tunnels are used to hide and carry out surprise attacks. But in Gaza, many of the tunnels exposed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) resemble underground structures found in Iran and North Korea in terms of their size, depth, and method of construction. Their cemented arched ceiling has become a signature trait, with cement also used to build larger tunnel shafts. Compared with Hamas’s earlier tunnels, those dug in Egypt and Gaza in the late 1990s and even up to the 2010s, the engineering has significantly improved. Tunnels are now less prone to collapse, well lit, and much more livable. Hamas has also increased its reliance on tunnels as part of its strategy, namely how it uses tunnels. It sees tunnel warfare as a long-term, strategic investment designed to ensure the survivability of its chain of command in war, not merely a tactic to counter Israel’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities. Militaries cannot fight tactical tunnels as they fight strategic subterranean threats. Bunker-buster bombs, for example, will not be sufficient to destroy such deeper and robust structures. A shift toward a more strategic use of tunnels reflects a focus on survivability rather than underground combat. WAIT-A-MOLE The tunnels have shaped the operations in Gaza in countless ways—compromising the likelihood of a swift Israeli victory, slowing down the pace of operations, making the rescue of hostages more difficult, placing civilians in harm’s way, and complicating the military and political environments for Israel. But one aspect is often overlooked, and it bears consequences for future wars: Hamas’s subterranean strategy has diminished the importance of the surface. The Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai has aptly described this new type of fighting as “a war carried out on two different levels.” In the initial stages of the war, the IDF sought to gain control of the surface to expose and eventually enter Hamas’s tunnels. But as its operation progressed, attention shifted to the passageways to and from the subsurface. The surface became just a conduit to reach underground tunnels and structures and ceased to be the focus of the fighting. Enemy encounters and ground maneuvers changed as a result. Underground warfare is known to render the enemy invisible and out of reach. It is aptly and commonly described as a whack-a-mole game, in which the enemy pops out of the ground in an endless hide-and-seek competition. In Gaza, however, the enemy disappeared almost entirely, swallowed into its immense subterranean complex. Whack-a-mole became wait-a-mole. And since even waiting did not produce results, the Israeli military has had to use all sorts of subterfuges to extract Hamas fighters from underground. This is not to say that Hamas fighters never emerge. They have fired deadly antitank missiles at Israeli troops and carried out other types of ambushes. But the way Hamas is operating shows that its use of tunnels has redefined not just the subterranean environment but also the value of and the nature of land combat. Encounters with the other side are less frequent, and like the tunnels themselves, they are difficult to detect. For example, booby traps near tunnel shafts indicate the presence of the enemy, but there is no enemy in sight, and when tunnels are finally penetrated, the enemy has moved to a different part of the tunnel network. The discovery of empty tunnels below the Al-Shifa hospital illustrates this vividly. In this environment, encounters do not occur naturally: they must be orchestrated. If subterranean warfare has displaced land warfare in Gaza, it could happen elsewhere. Militaries must consider how to deal with the dwindling role of the surface when the enemy shifts from a tactical to a strategic use of the underground. The surface will continue to be relevant in war—at a minimum—in allowing access and control over underground structures and as the eventual location of most encounters. But these developments suggest that subterranean warfare might be best framed as a separate domain of war rather than as a mere subset of land warfare. THE LIMITS OF TECHNOLOGY Fighting in Gaza has also shown that advances in antitunnel technology have failed to deter groups such as Hamas from resorting to tunnel warfare. Israel arguably possesses the world’s most advanced antitunnel technology. Advanced detection and neutralization techniques were deployed to counter the threat of Hezbollah’s tunnels into Israel in 2018. Israel also trained special units in tunnel warfare, built subterranean training facilities, developed subterranean sensors to protect its borders, and mastered the difficult task of mapping tunnels by using drones. Between Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Israel’s last war in Gaza, and Hamas’s October 7 attack, the IDF significantly improved its capabilities in subterranean warfare, with a focus on training, equipment, and detection. But Israel’s superior technology and advanced training did not discourage Hamas from investing significant time and human resources into building tunnels. At the same time, advances in technology led Israel to believe that it had quashed Hamas’s underground pursuits, even though the opposite was true. To put it in simple terms: as the technology improved, the digging intensified. Israel underestimated the strategic ramifications of tunnel warfare—a low-tech threat—when used on a grand scale and overestimated the ability of technology to counter it. It focused on the tactical aspects and on the cross-border tunnels, leaving Hamas free to develop subterranean capabilities of unprecedented proportions. Making sense of this paradox is a key lesson from this war. Technology and military superiority cannot on their own stop the tunnel trend. Technology has failed both to deter subterranean threats and to counter them. Hamas is keenly aware that even the most sophisticated technology available will not be sufficient to counter such underground capabilities and therefore has deep confidence in the tactic. Hamas knew that its extensive tunnel network in Gaza would slow Israel’s response, diminish Israel’s competitive advantage, protect Hamas’s top leaders in Gaza, and inflict heavy civilian casualties. Low-tech warfare has paid off in Gaza, and it is a success that will boost tunnel warfare everywhere. HUMAN SHIELDS 2.0 Hamas’s use of Israelis and foreign civilians as human shields is a significant and concerning innovation of the ongoing Gaza war. As is well known, Hamas took hundreds of hostages as part of its massive October 7 attack on Israel, many of whom are still being held in Gaza. These people are commonly referred to as hostages, but the reality is more complex than the word “hostage” suggests. Hamas has innovated, first, by bringing innocent civilians inside the tunnels as human shields and, second, by using civilians from Israel and other countries, rather than Palestinian civilians, as human shields. In contemporary warfare, human shielding refers to the act of placing civilians—typically one’s own civilians—in and around military targets with the aim of immunizing such targets from attack. The tactic, which is prohibited under international law, has sadly flourished in the context of urban warfare. Many terrorist groups, including Hamas in general and in the context of underground warfare in particular, have found it beneficial to hide behind their civilian population: Western militaries call off strikes when the harm expected to be caused to civilians becomes excessive to the military advantage anticipated from the strike. Placing civilians inside tunnels has had the intended effect of complicating rescue efforts, constraining military operations, and immunizing key military assets of Hamas. This use of hostages is a return to a classic yet prohibited tactic of war of using prisoners of war for force protection. During the American Civil War, both sides used prisoners as human shields, and the Germans used British prisoners of war as human shields during World War II. The civilians taken captive and held incommunicado by Hamas are both hostages and human shields. This innovation in hostage-taking has enabled Hamas to maximize political and military aims far beyond its declared objective of obtaining the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. The taking of hostages has torn Israeli society apart and has led to the Israeli government conditioning victory on unattainable and irreconcilable objectives. It has given Hamas power at the negotiating table and caused Israel’s allies to request concessions in return for the release of the hostages. It has also facilitated Hamas’s ruthless psychological war. Militaries must take note of these innovative uses of the underground, which can bring states to the brink of operational and political paralysis, so that they can anticipate how underground tactics might be used in future wars by their adversaries. DAPHNÉ RICHEMOND-BARAK is an Assistant Professor at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at Reichman University in Israel and is affiliated with the Modern War Institute and the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare at West Point. MORE BY DAPHNÉ RICHEMOND-BARAK More: Israel Palestinian Territories Geopolitics Security Defense & Military Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy Hamas Gaza Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel-Hamas War Most-Read Articles How Hamas Ends A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself Audrey Kurth Cronin Why Would Anyone Want to Run the World? The Warnings in Cold War History John Lewis Gaddis The Dangerous Myth of Deglobalization Misperceptions of the Global Economy Are Driving Bad Policies Brad Setser A Three-Theater Defense Strategy How America Can Prepare for War in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East Thomas G. Mahnken Recommended Articles How Hamas Ends A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself Audrey Kurth Cronin An anti-Israeli billboard in Tehran, October 2023 The Shallow Roots of Iran’s War With Israel Beneath Tehran’s Extremism, a Lost History of Deep Iranian-Jewish Ties Ali M. Ansari Putin’s Hidden Game in the South Caucasus Azerbaijan’s Rise, Georgia’s Drift, and Russia’s Quest for a Gateway to Iran and the Middle East By Thomas de Waal June 3, 2024 Russian forces at the ceremonial closing of a Russian military base, Khojaly, Azerbaijan, May 2024 On April 17, a column of Russian tanks and trucks passed through a series of dusty Azerbaijani towns as they drove away from Nagorno-Karabakh, the highland territory at the heart of the South Caucasus that Azerbaijan and Armenia had fought over for more than three decades. Since 2020, Russian peacekeepers had maintained a presence there. Now, the Russian flag that flew over the region’s military base was being hauled down. Although it caught many by surprise, the Russian departure further consolidated a power shift that began in late September 2023, when Azerbaijan seized the territory and, almost overnight, forced the mass exodus of some 100,000 Karabakh Armenians—while Russian forces stood by. Azerbaijan, an authoritarian country that shares a border with Russia on the Caspian Sea, has emerged as a power player, with significant oil and gas resources, a strong military, and lucrative ties to both Russia and the West. Meanwhile, the region’s other two countries, Armenia and Georgia, have been experiencing tectonic shifts of their own. In the months since Azerbaijan’s takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, a traditional ally of Russia, has swung ever more firmly toward the West. The ruling party in Georgia is breaking with three decades of close relations with Europe and the United States and seems intent on emulating its authoritarian neighbors. In May, the Georgian parliament passed a controversial law to crack down on “foreign influence” over nongovernmental organizations—a law that derives inspiration from Russian legislation and sends Moscow a signal that it has a dependable partner on its southern border. Obscured in this reordering of the South Caucasus are the complex motives of Russia itself. The region—known to Russians as the Transcaucasus—has held fluctuating strategic significance over the centuries. The imperial touch was not as heavy there as in other parts of the Russian Empire or Soviet Union. Following the end of the Soviet Union, Moscow tried to keep its leverage through manipulation of the local ethnoterritorial conflicts there, maintaining as many troops on the ground as it could. But the war in Ukraine and the Western sanctions regime has changed that calculus. By deciding to remove troops from Azerbaijan, the Kremlin is acknowledging that economic security in the South Caucasus—for now at least—is more important than the hard variety. Russia badly needs business partners and sanctions-busting trade routes in the south. And at a time when it is increasingly squeezed by the West, it also sees the region as offering a coveted new land axis to Iran. BAKU’S BIG PLAY At first blush, the unilateral Russian withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh this spring was puzzling. For much of the past three decades, Azerbaijanis and Armenians have fought over the territory, which is situated within Azerbaijan but has had a majority ethnic Armenian population. In 2020, Azerbaijan reversed territorial losses it had suffered in the 1990s and would have captured Nagorno-Karabakh, as well, were it not for Russia’s last-minute introduction of a peacekeeping force, mandated to protect the local Armenian population. Those peacekeepers stood by, however, as Azerbaijan marched into Karabakh last September. Still, they had a mandate to stay on until 2025. As well as projecting Russian power in the region, they could also have facilitated the return of some Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh. Of course, for Russia, the 2,000 men and 400 armored vehicles that were transferred out of the territory provide welcome reinforcements for its war in Ukraine. But that was not the whole story. By deciding to leave the region, Russia handed Azerbaijan a triumph, allowing its military to take unfettered control of the long-contested territory. For most Armenians, it was a fresh confirmation of Russia’s abandonment. Almost immediately, observers speculated that some kind of deal had been struck between Russia and Azerbaijan. As the largest and wealthiest of the three South Caucasus countries, Azerbaijan has profited most from Russia’s shift. It is a player in East-West energy politics, providing oil and gas that is carried by two pipelines through Georgia and its close ally Turkey to European and international markets. Sharing a border with Iran, it also serves as a north-south gateway between Moscow and the Middle East. It helps that the Azerbaijani regime—in contrast to Armenia’s democratic government—is built in the same autocratic mold as Russia’s. Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s longtime strongman president, has even deeper roots in the Soviet nomenklatura than does Russian President Vladimir Putin: his father was Heydar Aliyev, a veteran Soviet power broker who was also his predecessor as the leader of postindependence Azerbaijan, running the country from 1993 to 2003. The younger Aliyev and Putin also know how to do business together, in a relationship built more around personal connection and leadership style than on institutional ties. Relations were not always so good. In tsarist and Soviet times, Moscow took a more overtly colonial approach toward the Muslim population of Azerbaijan, giving Russian endings to surnames and imposing the Cyrillic script on the Azeri language. Azerbaijanis still resent the bloody crackdown in 1990, when, during the last days of the Soviet Union Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sent troops into Baku to suppress the Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, killing dozens of civilians. During much of the long-running Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Moscow gave more support to the Armenians. After the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, however, Russia began a new strategic tilt toward Azerbaijan. The withdrawal of peacekeepers this spring looks like the key component of a full Baku-Moscow entente. Just five days after the Russian peacekeepers left, Aliyev traveled to Moscow, where he discussed enhanced north-south connections between the two countries. After the talks, Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said that Azerbaijan was upgrading its railway infrastructure to more than double its cargo capacity—and allow for much more trade with Russia. For Moscow, this is all part of a race with the West to create new trade routes to compensate for the economic rupture caused by the war in Ukraine. Since the war started, Western governments and companies have been trying to upgrade the so-called Middle Corridor, the route that carries cargo from western China and Central Asia to Europe via the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus—thereby bypassing Russia. For its part, Russia has been trying to expand its own connections to the Middle East and India via both Georgia and Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan, thanks to its favorable geographical position and nonaligned status, has been able to play both sides. It is a central country in the Middle Corridor. It is increasing gas exports to the EU, after a deal with the European Commission in 2022. But it is also ideally positioned to trade with Russian energy exporters, too. In a report released in March, the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies suggested that Azerbaijan, working with its close ally Turkey, could help create a hub for Russian gas to reach foreign markets without sanction. And because of Azerbaijan’s growing status as the regional power broker, it also could enable Russia to realize its aims of building stronger connections to Iran. TRAINS TO TEHRAN A key part of Russia’s shifting ambitions in the South Caucasus is to rebuild overland transport routes to Iran. The most attractive route is the one that Azerbaijan calls the Zangezur Corridor, a projected road and rail link through southern Armenia that would connect Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave that borders both Iran and Turkey. By reopening the 27-mile route, Moscow would have a direct rail connection to Tehran, which has become an important arms supplier to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine. In fact, this north-south axis would effectively revive what was known as the Persian Corridor during World War II—a road-and-rail route running north from Iran through Azerbaijan to Russia that supplied no less than half the lend-lease aid that the United States provided the Soviet Union during the conflict. By a strange twist of fate, this same axis is now vital to Moscow in its current struggle against the United States and the West. A long-closed route through Armenia would connect Russia with Iran. Back in November 2020, the Russians thought they had a deal to get this route open when Putin, Aliyev, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a trilateral agreement that formally halted that year’s conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and introduced the Russian peacekeeping force. The pact included a provision calling for the unblocking of all economic and transport links in the region, and it specifically mentioned the route to Nakhichevan across Armenia. Moreover, it also stated that control over this route would be in the hands of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or the FSB. Since then, the corridor has remained closed because Armenia and Azerbaijan could not agree on the terms of its operation. Yet Russia’s insistence that its security forces should be in control has remained constant. On his return from Moscow in April, Aliyev also alluded to this, telling an international audience that the 2020 agreement (whose other provisions are all now redundant) “must be respected.” Opening the corridor, then, may be the essence of the new deal between Azerbaijan and Russia: in return for Russia pulling its forces out of Karabakh—a step that handed the Azerbaijani leadership a major domestic victory—Azerbaijan may acquiesce to Russian security control over the planned route across southern Armenia. If such a plan is carried out, it would amount to a coordinated Azerbaijani-Russian takeover of Armenia’s southern border—a nightmare for both Armenia and the West. The Armenians would lose control of a strategically vital border region. The United States and its Western allies would see Russia take a big step forward toward establishing a coveted overland road and rail link with Iran. Moreover, Armenia on its own lacks the capacity to prevent Russia and Azerbaijan from acting. ARMENIAN ALIENATION No former Russian ally has seen such a dramatic breakdown in its relations with Moscow as Armenia. The two countries have a long historical alliance built on their shared Christian religion. Russia was the traditional protector of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and Armenians who lived in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union tended to enjoy more upward social mobility than other non-Slavs: some of them reached the highest echelons of the Soviet elite. But all that has changed over the past few years. Russian relations with Armenia began to cool off in 2018, when Armenia’s Velvet Revolution brought Pashinyan, a populist democrat, to power. That transition was barely tolerated in Moscow, which feared another “color revolution” bringing an unfriendly government to power on its border. After the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, Moscow continued to support the Armenians, but relations were increasingly strained. For Yerevan, Azerbaijan’s seizure of the territory last fall, with Russian acquiescence, became the last straw. As the Kremlin failed to honor its security commitments to Armenia, Pashinyan began to move his country decisively toward the West. Last fall, he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pushed Armenia to formally join the International Criminal Court, meaning that Putin, who has an ICC arrest warrant on his head, could theoretically be arrested if he sets foot in Armenia. And in February, Pashinyan also suspended Armenia’s participation in the Russian-led military alliance, the Collective Treaty Security Organization. Some European politicians have now mooted the idea of eventual EU membership for Armenia. With Nagorno-Karabakh removed from the equation, Pashinyan is also pressing harder to reduce his country’s dependence on Russia. Armenia has asked Russia to remove the Russian border guards who have been stationed in Armenia’s Zvartnots airport since the 1990s by August 1. Other Russian border guards who are stationed on Armenia’s borders with Iran and Turkey will stay for now, but the deployment in 2023 of an EU civil monitoring mission in southern Armenia shows where the Armenian government’s strategic preferences lie. Ethnic Armenians fleeing to Armenia following Azerbaijan's seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh, September 2023 Ethnic Armenians fleeing to Armenia following Azerbaijan's seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh, September 2023 David Ghahramanyan / Reuters Armenia’s pivot to the West, however, comes at an extremely unfavorable moment. Flush with victory and benefiting from strong ties with both Russia and Turkey, Azerbaijan shows no signs of letting up its pressure on Armenia. Meanwhile, the other big regional powers around Armenia—Iran, Russia, and Turkey—are aware that the West is overextended. Despite their many differences, they have a common agenda, shared with Azerbaijan, to cut down the West’s strategic profile in the region and elevate their own. In April, for example, top U.S. and European officials in Brussels announced an economic aid package for Armenia. In response, Iran, Russia, and Turkey each issued almost identical statements deploring the West’s dangerous pursuit of “geopolitical confrontation,” by which they meant Western intervention in Armenia. The new confrontation over Armenia is not just a matter of posturing. Pashinyan’s government has evidently concluded that its future lies with the West. Although this shift makes sense in the longer term, it carries many shorter-term risks. Armenia is overwhelmingly dependent on Russian energy and Russian trade: Moscow supplies 85 percent of its gas, 90 percent of its wheat, and all the fuel for its lone nuclear power plant, which provides one-third of Armenia’s electricity. And Armenia’s own economy is still heavily oriented toward the Russian market. These ties give Moscow enormous economic leverage; it could seek to bend the country to its will by sharply raising energy prices or curtailing Armenian trade. Meanwhile, Armenian officials and experts fear even more direct military threats to the country’s sovereignty. One is that Azerbaijan, in coordination with Russia, has the military capacity to seize control of the Zangezur Corridor by force, if it chooses to, in a few hours. Another is that rogue domestic forces in Armenia, with foreign backing, could try to overthrow the Pashinyan government by violence or organized street protests in an effort to destabilize the country and allow a more pro-Russian government to take power. These threats come in parallel to diplomacy. Azerbaijan continues to pursue bilateral talks with Armenia to reach a peace agreement to normalize relations between the two countries. Whether the two historic adversaries can avoid sliding back into war depends largely on the extent to which Western powers, despite their commitments in Ukraine, are prepared to invest political and financial resources to underwrite such a settlement. GEORGIAN AMBIGUITY As if the threat of a dangerously weakened Armenia and a new Russian-Iranian land corridor were not enough, the West also faces a growing challenge from Armenia’s neighbor Georgia. As Armenia tries to move West, the government of Georgia, a country that has enjoyed huge support from Europe and the United States since the end of the Cold War, is seemingly doing the opposite. Post-Soviet Russia has a long history of meddling in post-Soviet Georgia, and most Georgians retain a deep antipathy to Moscow. In 2008, Georgia cut off diplomatic relations after Russian forces crossed the border and recognized the two breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. A 2023 poll found that only 11 percent of Georgian respondents wanted to abandon European integration in favor of closer relations with Russia. Nonetheless, the ruling Georgian Dream party—founded and funded by Georgia’s richest businessman, Bidzina Ivanishvili, and in power since 2012—is burning bridges with its Western partners. The most conspicuous feature of this shift, although not the only one, is the controversial “foreign influence” law, which seeks to limit and potentially criminalize the activities of any nongovernmental organization that receives more than 20 percent of its funding from abroad—meaning nearly all of them. The move sparked mass protests, especially from young people, who call it “the Russian law” because it mimics Moscow’s own 2012 “foreign agents” law and seems similarly designed to stifle civil society and remove checks on the arbitrary exercise of power. The law is also a slap in the face for the European Union, coming just months after Brussels formally offered Georgia candidate status and a path toward accession to the union. Most Georgians retain a deep antipathy to Moscow. Georgian Dream’s first priority seems to be domestic: to consolidate its own power and eliminate opposition. The party is tightly focused on trying to win—by whatever means possible—an unprecedented fourth term in office in Georgia’s October parliamentary elections. Still, the sharp anti-Western turn sends friendly messages to Russia. Another refrain of the ruling party is that it will not allow Georgia to become a “second front” in the war in Ukraine. Just as the Azerbaijani leadership does, the men who run Georgia understand Moscow. Ivanishvili, who as Georgian Dream’s kingmaker is the country’s effective ruler, made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and learned to win in the ruthless business environment of that era; a coterie of people around him have made plenty of money from Russia since the Ukraine war began. Moreover, Georgia has opened its doors to Russian business and banking assets, and direct flights between the two countries have resumed. The Georgian elite seems prepared to pay the cost: one insider, former Prosecutor General Otar Partskhaladze, is now under U.S sanctions. If the Georgian opposition manages to overcome its historic divisions and win this fall—no easy task—Georgia’s pro-European trajectory will resume. But much could happen before then. Perpetual crisis in Tbilisi now seems assured for the remainder of this year, if not beyond. Neither side will back down easily. The government has lost all credit with its Western partners, yet to call on Russia for assistance would be extremely dangerous. The uncertainty adds another wild card to any larger calculations about the strategic direction of the South Caucasus. LOSING CONTROL Putin recognizes the value of the South Caucasus to Russia, but since 2022, he has had little time for it. Moscow has no discernable institutional policy toward the region as a whole—or for other regions beyond Ukraine. The war has accentuated the habit of highly personalized decision-making by a leader in the Kremlin who seems uninterested in consultation or detailed analysis. This has left the region’s three countries with strikingly different approaches. Azerbaijan’s Aliyev, with his two-decade relationship with the Russian president, seems most comfortable with Putin’s way of doing business. He can also derive confidence from the strong personal and institutional support he gets from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the case of Georgia, with which Russia has no diplomatic relations, there are no face-to-face meetings or structured talks. (If Georgia’s de facto leader, Ivanishvili, ever met Putin, it would have been in the 1990s long before either man was a big political player.) Once again, everything is highly informal and conducted by middlemen. Here, too, business stands at the heart of a mutually beneficial relationship. Paradoxically, the one country in the region that has long-standing formal and institutional links to Russia—Armenia—is also keenest to break off the relationship. Speculation has mounted about what Russia may be planning for Abkhazia. All these variables make Russian behavior in the region, as elsewhere, highly unpredictable. Since Azerbaijan’s capture of Nagorno-Karabakh, speculation has mounted as to what could happen in Abkhazia, the breakaway territory bordering Russia in the northwest corner of Georgia that has been a zone of conflict since the 1990s. Could Russia move to annex it fully, thus securing a new naval base on the Black Sea? Or—as some recent rumors have suggested—could a deal similar to the one with Azerbaijan be in the offing, whereby Moscow allows Georgia to march into Abkhazia unopposed in return for Georgia renouncing its Euro-Atlantic ambitions? Either of these is theoretically possible—though it is also quite likely that Putin prefers the status quo and will continue to focus on Ukraine. At the same time, the most obvious benefit the South Caucasus countries have derived from the post-2022 situation—a stronger economic relationship with Russia—is unstable. Close trading ties to Russia give Moscow dangerous leverage, especially in the case of Armenia and Georgia, which have fewer resources and other places to turn for support. And if Western secondary sanctions on businesses that trade with Russia are tightened, that would put a squeeze on South Caucasian intermediaries. Not everything is going Putin’s way. Russia’s military withdrawal from Azerbaijan is a sign of weakness. So, too, arguably, is Armenia’s pivot to the West and the Georgian public’s mass resistance to what the opposition labels the “Russian law.” But if Russia looks weaker in the region, the West does not look stronger. There are significant pro-European social dynamics at work, but they face strong competition from political and economic forces that are pulling the South Caucasus in very different directions. Last month, the Georgian government awarded the tender to develop a new deep-water port on the Black Sea at Anaklia to a controversial Chinese company. That project used to be managed by a U.S.-led consortium. In other words, Europe and the United States are competing for influence not just with Russia but also with other powers, as well. Nothing can be taken for granted in a region that is as volatile as it has ever been. THOMAS DE WAAL is a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and the author of The End of the Near Abroad. MORE BY THOMAS DE WAAL More: Azerbaijan Georgia Russia Middle East Iran Diplomacy Geopolitics Foreign Policy Security Strategy & Conflict Vladimir Putin Authoritarianism 普丁在南高加索的隱藏遊戲 阿塞拜疆的崛起、喬治亞的漂移以及俄羅斯尋求通往伊朗和中東的門戶 托馬斯·德瓦爾 2024 年 6 月 3 日 2024 年 5 月，俄羅斯軍隊參加阿塞拜疆霍賈利俄羅斯軍事基地的關閉儀式 4月17日，一隊俄羅斯坦克和卡車駛離納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫，穿過一連串塵土飛揚的阿塞拜疆城鎮。爭奪這片土地已經爭奪了三十多年。自2020年以來，俄羅斯維和人員一直在那裡駐紮。現在，飄揚在該地區軍事基地上空的俄羅斯國旗被拉了下來。 儘管令許多人感到驚訝，但俄羅斯的離開進一步鞏固了自2023 年9 月下旬開始的權力轉移，當時阿塞拜疆佔領了該領土，幾乎在一夜之間迫使約10 萬卡拉巴赫亞美尼亞人大規模逃亡，而俄羅斯軍隊則袖手旁觀。阿塞拜疆是一個與俄羅斯在里海接壤的獨裁國家，已成為一個大國，擁有豐富的石油和天然氣資源、強大的軍事力量以及與俄羅斯和西方的利潤豐厚的關係。 同時，該地區的另外兩個國家，亞美尼亞和喬治亞，也正在經歷自身的結構性轉變。自從亞塞拜然接管納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫以來的幾個月裡，俄羅斯的傳統盟友亞美尼亞更加堅定地轉向西方。喬治亞執政黨正與歐洲和美國三十年來的密切關係決裂，似乎有意效法其威權鄰國。 5月，格魯吉亞議會通過了一項有爭議的法律，旨在打擊對非政府組織的「外國影響」。南部邊境擁有一個可靠的合作夥伴。 在南高加索的這次重新排序中，俄羅斯本身的複雜動機被掩蓋了。這個被俄羅斯人稱為外高加索地區的地區幾個世紀以來一直具有不斷變化的戰略意義。那裡的帝國氣息並不像俄羅斯帝國或蘇聯其他地區那麼濃厚。蘇聯解體後，莫斯科試圖透過操縱當地的民族領土衝突來保持其影響力，並在當地保留盡可能多的軍隊。 但烏克蘭戰爭和西方制裁制度改變了這種局面。透過決定從阿塞拜疆撤軍，克里姆林宮承認南高加索地區的經濟安全（至少目前如此）比硬安全更為重要。俄羅斯急需南方的商業夥伴和違反制裁的貿易路線。在它日益受到西方擠壓之際，它也認為該地區為伊朗提供了令人垂涎的新陸地軸心。 巴庫的大戲 乍一看，俄羅斯今年春天單方面從納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫撤軍令人費解。在過去三十年的大部分時間裡，阿塞拜疆人和亞美尼亞人一直在爭奪這片領土，該領土位於阿塞拜疆境內，但亞美尼亞人口占多數。 2020年，阿塞拜疆扭轉了1990年代遭受的領土損失，如果不是俄羅斯在最後一刻派出一支負責保護當地亞美尼亞民眾的維和部隊，阿塞拜疆也將佔領納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫。然而，去年九月阿塞拜疆進軍卡拉巴赫時，這些維和人員袖手旁觀。不過，他們的任務期限是到 2025 年。 除了在該地區投射俄羅斯力量外，他們還可以幫助一些亞美尼亞人返回納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫。 當然，對俄羅斯來說，從境內調出的2,000名官兵和400輛裝甲車為其在烏克蘭的戰爭提供了可喜的增援。但這還不是故事的全部。透過決定離開該地區，俄羅斯為阿塞拜疆帶來了勝利，使其軍隊能夠不受約束地控制這片長期有爭議的領土。對大多數亞美尼亞人來說，這是俄羅斯放棄的新確認。觀察家幾乎立刻就猜測俄羅斯和阿塞拜疆之間已經達成了某種協議。 作為南高加索三個國家中最大、最富有的國家，阿塞拜疆從俄羅斯的轉變中獲益最多。它是東西方能源政治的參與者，透過兩條管道透過格魯吉亞及其親密盟友土耳其向歐洲和國際市場提供石油和天然氣。它與伊朗接壤，也是莫斯科和中東之間的南北門戶。與亞美尼亞的民主政府相反，阿塞拜疆政權是按照與俄羅斯政權相同的獨裁模式建立的，這一點是有幫助的。阿塞拜疆長期的強人總統伊爾哈姆·阿利耶夫比俄羅斯總統弗拉基米爾·普丁在蘇聯權貴階層中的根基更深：他的父親是蓋達爾·阿利耶夫，一位資深的蘇聯權力掮客，也是他的前任，阿塞拜疆獨立後的領導人，從1993年至2003年。機構關係上。 關係並不總是那麼好。在沙皇和蘇聯時期，莫斯科對阿塞拜疆的穆斯林人口採取了更公開的殖民態度，給姓氏添加俄語詞尾，並將西里爾字母強加給阿塞拜疆語言。亞塞拜然人至今仍對1990年的血腥鎮壓感到不滿，當時蘇聯領導人米哈伊爾·戈巴契夫派軍隊進入巴庫鎮壓阿塞拜疆人民陣線黨，造成數十名平民死亡。在納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫長期衝突的大部分時間裡，莫斯科都向亞美尼亞人提供了更多支持。 然而，2020年納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫戰爭後，俄羅斯開始向阿塞拜疆進行新的戰略傾斜。今年春天撤出維和人員似乎是巴庫-莫斯科全面協議的關鍵組成部分。俄羅斯維和人員離開後僅五天，阿利耶夫前往莫斯科，討論加强两國之間的南北聯繫。會談結束後，俄羅斯交通部長維塔利·薩維利耶夫表示，阿塞拜疆正在升級其鐵路基礎設施，使其貨運能力增加一倍以上，並允許與俄羅斯進行更多的貿易。 對莫斯科來說，這都是與西方競賽的一部分，旨在開闢新的貿易路線，以彌補烏克蘭戰爭造成的經濟破裂。自戰爭爆發以來，西方政府和公司一直試圖升級所謂的中間走廊，這條路線將貨物從中國西部和中亞經里海和南高加索運送到歐洲，繞過俄羅斯。就俄羅斯而言，它一直試圖透過格魯吉亞和亞塞拜然擴大與中東和印度的聯繫。 阿塞拜疆憑藉其有利的地理位置和不結盟地位，一直能夠兩面出擊。它是中部走廊的中心國家。在 2022 年與歐盟委員會達成協議後，它正在增加對歐盟的天然氣出口。牛津能源研究所在三月發布的報告中表示，阿塞拜疆與其親密盟友土耳其合作，可以協助建立俄羅斯天然氣在不受制裁的情況下進入外國市場的樞紐。由於阿塞拜疆作為地區權力掮客的地位日益增強，它也可以使俄羅斯實現與伊朗建立更牢固聯繫的目標。 到 德黑蘭 的火車 俄羅斯在南高加索地區野心轉變的關鍵部分是重建通往伊朗的陸路運輸路線。最有吸引力的路線是阿塞拜疆稱之為贊格祖爾走廊的路線，這是一條預計穿過亞美尼亞南部的公路和鐵路線，將阿塞拜疆連接到與伊朗和土耳其接壤的阿塞拜疆飛地納希切萬。透過重新開放這條27英里的路線，莫斯科將與德黑蘭建立直接鐵路連接，德黑蘭已成為在烏克蘭作戰的俄羅斯軍隊的重要武器供應商。 事實上，這條南北軸線將有效地復興二戰期間所謂的波斯走廊——一條從伊朗向北經阿塞拜疆到達俄羅斯的公路和鐵路路線，提供的貸款不低於當年貸款租賃援助的一半。期間向蘇聯提供了援助。由於命運的奇怪轉折，這個軸心現在對於莫斯科當前與美國和西方的鬥爭至關重要。 一條穿越亞美尼亞的長期封閉路線將連接俄羅斯和伊朗。 早在2020 年11 月，普丁、阿利耶夫和亞美尼亞總理尼科爾·帕希尼揚簽署了一項三邊協議，正式停止了當年納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫的衝突，並引入了俄羅斯維和部隊，俄羅斯人認為他們已經達成協議，可以開放這條路線。該協議包括一項要求暢通該地區所有經濟和運輸聯繫的條款，並特別提到穿越亞美尼亞通往納希切萬的路線。此外，它還表示，這條路線的控制權將掌握在俄羅斯聯邦安全局（FSB）手中。 此後，由於亞美尼亞和阿塞拜疆無法就其營運條款達成一致，該走廊一直處於關閉狀態。然而俄羅斯仍然堅持其安全部隊應掌控局勢。阿利耶夫在四月從莫斯科返回時也提到了這一點，他告訴國際觀眾，2020 年協議（其其他條款現在全部都是多餘的）「必須得到尊重」。那麼，開放走廊可能是阿塞拜疆和俄羅斯之間新協議的本質：作為俄羅斯從卡拉巴赫撤軍的回報——這一步驟讓阿塞拜疆領導層取得了重大的國內勝利——阿塞拜疆可能會默許俄羅斯對卡拉巴赫的安全控制。 如果這項計畫得以實施，這將意味著阿塞拜疆和俄羅斯協調一致接管亞美尼亞南部邊境——這對亞美尼亞和西方來說都是一場噩夢。亞美尼亞人將失去對具有重要戰略意義的邊境地區的控制。美國及其西方盟友將看到俄羅斯在與伊朗建立令人垂涎的陸路和鐵路連接方面向前邁出一大步。此外，亞美尼亞本身缺乏阻止俄羅斯和阿塞拜疆採取行動的能力。 亞美尼亞的疏遠 沒有哪一個俄羅斯前盟友像亞美尼亞一樣與莫斯科的關係出現如此嚴重的破裂。兩國在共同的基督教信仰基礎上建立了長期的歷史聯盟。俄羅斯是奧斯曼帝國亞美尼亞人的傳統保護者，生活在俄羅斯帝國和蘇聯的亞美尼亞人往往比其他非斯拉夫人享有更高的社會流動性：其中一些進入了蘇聯精英的最高梯隊。 但過去幾年一切都改變了。 2018年，亞美尼亞的天鵝絨革命讓民粹民主人士帕希尼揚上台，俄羅斯與亞美尼亞的關係開始降溫。莫斯科幾乎無法容忍這種轉變，他們擔心另一場「顏色革命」會讓一個不友善的政府在其邊境上台。 2020年納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫戰爭後，莫斯科繼續支持亞美尼亞人，但關係日益緊張。對埃里溫來說，阿塞拜疆去年秋天在俄羅斯的默許下佔領了該領土，成為壓垮埃里溫的最後一根稻草。 由於克里姆林宮未能履行對亞美尼亞的安全承諾，帕希尼揚開始果斷地將亞美尼亞推向西方。去年秋天，他會見了烏克蘭總統澤倫斯基，並推動亞美尼亞正式加入國際刑事法院，這意味著持有國際刑事法院逮捕令的普丁如果踏足亞美尼亞，理論上可能會被逮捕。今年二月，帕希尼揚也暫停了亞美尼亞對俄羅斯領導的軍事聯盟集體條約安全組織的參與。一些歐洲政治家現在提出了亞美尼亞最終加入歐盟的想法。 隨著納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫被排除在外，帕希尼揚也更加努力減少國家對俄羅斯的依賴。亞美尼亞已要求俄羅斯在8月1日之前撤走自1990年代以來一直駐紮在亞美尼亞茲瓦爾特諾茨機場的俄羅斯邊防部隊。 2023年部署歐盟在亞美尼亞南部的民事監測任務顯示了亞美尼亞政府的戰略偏好。 2023 年 9 月，阿塞拜疆佔領納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫後，亞美尼亞族人逃往亞美尼亞 2023 年 9 月，阿塞拜疆佔領納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫後，亞美尼亞族人逃往亞美尼亞 大衛加赫拉馬尼揚/路透社 然而，亞美尼亞轉向西方的時機極為不利。阿塞拜疆因勝利而興奮，並受益於與俄羅斯和土耳其的牢固關係，沒有表現出放鬆對亞美尼亞施壓的跡象。同時，亞美尼亞週邊的其他地區大國——伊朗、俄羅斯和土耳其——也意識到西方的擴張過度。儘管存在許多分歧，但它們與阿塞拜疆有著共同的議程，即削弱西方在該地區的戰略地位並提升自己的戰略地位。例如，四月份，美國和歐洲高級官員在布魯塞爾宣布了對亞美尼亞的經濟援助計畫。作為回應，伊朗、俄羅斯和土耳其各自發表了幾乎相同的聲明，譴責西方危險地追求“地緣政治對抗”，即西方對亞美尼亞的干預。 亞美尼亞問題上的新對抗不僅僅是姿態問題。帕希尼揚政府顯然已經得出結論：其未來掌握在西方手中。儘管這種轉變從長遠來看是有意義的，但它也帶來了許多短期風險。亞美尼亞極度依賴俄羅斯能源和俄羅斯貿易：莫斯科供應其 85% 的天然氣、90% 的小麥以及其唯一核電廠的所有燃料，該核電廠為亞美尼亞提供三分之一的電力。而亞美尼亞自身的經濟仍主要面向俄羅斯市場。這些聯繫賦予莫斯科巨大的經濟影響力。它可以透過大幅提高能源價格或限制亞美尼亞貿易來迫使該國屈服。 同時，亞美尼亞官員和專家擔心該國主權會受到更直接的軍事威脅。一是阿塞拜疆與俄羅斯協調，擁有軍事能力，如果願意的話，可以在幾個小時內透過武力奪取贊格祖爾走廊的控制權。另一個原因是，亞美尼亞國內流氓勢力在外國支持下，可能會試圖透過暴力或有組織的街頭抗議來推翻帕希尼揚政府，以破壞國家穩定，讓更親俄的政府上台。 這些威脅與外交同時出現。阿塞拜疆繼續尋求與亞美尼亞進行雙邊會談，以達成和平協議，實現兩國關係正常化。這兩個歷史對手是否能夠避免重新陷入戰爭，很大程度上取決於西方大國儘管在烏克蘭做出了承諾，但準備在多大程度上投入政治和財政資源來支持這樣的解決方案。 喬治亞的模糊性 似乎危險削弱的亞美尼亞和新的俄羅斯-伊朗陸地走廊的威脅還不夠，西方還面臨來自亞美尼亞鄰國喬治亞的日益嚴峻的挑戰。當亞美尼亞試圖向西轉移時，自冷戰結束以來一直得到歐洲和美國巨大支持的格魯吉亞政府似乎反其道而行。 後蘇聯時期的俄羅斯干預後蘇聯時期的格魯吉亞有著悠久的歷史，大多數格魯吉亞人對莫斯科仍然懷有深深的反感。 2008年，俄羅斯軍隊越過邊界並承認阿布哈茲和南奧塞梯這兩個分裂領土獨立後，喬治亞就斷絕了外交關係。 2023 年的一項民調發現，只有 11% 的喬治亞受訪者希望放棄歐洲一體化，轉而與俄羅斯建立更密切的關係。 儘管如此，由格魯吉亞最富有的商人比齊納·伊万尼什維利 (Bidzina Ivanishvili) 創建和資助並自 2012 年執政的格魯吉亞夢想黨 (Georgian Dream party) 正在與西方合作夥伴斷絕關係。這項轉變最顯著的特徵（儘管不是唯一的）是有爭議的「外國影響力」法，該法旨在限制任何非政府組織的活動，並可能將其定為刑事犯罪，這些非政府組織的資金超過20% 來自海外——這意味著幾乎他們全部。此舉引發了大規模抗議，尤其是年輕人的抗議，他們稱其為“俄羅斯法律”，因為它模仿了莫斯科2012年的“外國代理人”法，而且似乎同樣旨在壓制公民社會並取消對任意行使權力的製衡。這項法律也是對歐盟的一記耳光，幾個月前，布魯塞爾正式向喬治亞州提供候選國地位和加入歐盟的途徑。 大多數格魯吉亞人對莫斯科仍然懷有深深的反感。 喬治亞之夢的首要任務似乎是國內：鞏固自己的權力並消除反對派。該黨正全力以赴，竭盡全力在格魯吉亞十月議會選舉中贏得史無前例的第四個任期。儘管如此，這種強烈的反西方態度還是向俄羅斯發出了友好的信息。執政黨的另一個克制是，它不會允許喬治亞成為烏克蘭戰爭的「第二戰線」。 正如阿塞拜疆領導人所做的那樣，格魯吉亞的執政者了解莫斯科。伊凡尼什維利是喬治亞夢想的擁護者，也是國家的實際統治者，他於1990年代在俄羅斯發跡，並學會了在那個時代殘酷的商業環境中取勝；自從烏克蘭戰爭爆發以來，他周圍的一小群人從俄羅斯賺了很多錢。此外，喬治亞已向俄羅斯商業和銀行資產敞開大門，兩國之間的直航也已恢復。喬治亞精英似乎準備付出代價：一位內部人士、前總檢察長奧塔爾·帕茨哈拉澤目前正受到美國的製裁。 如果格魯吉亞反對派能夠克服其歷史性分歧並在今年秋天獲勝（這不是一件容易的事），那麼格魯吉亞將恢復親歐軌道。但在那之前可能會發生很多事情。現在，第比利斯的持久危機似乎在今年剩餘時間（甚至更長）都將不可避免。雙方都不會輕易退縮。政府已經失去了西方夥伴的所有信任，但呼籲俄羅斯提供援助將是極其危險的。這種不確定性為有關南高加索戰略方向的任何更大的計算增添了另一個不確定因素。 失控 普丁意識到南高加索地區對俄羅斯的價值，但自2022年以來，他幾乎沒有時間這麼做。莫斯科對整個地區或烏克蘭以外的其他地區沒有明顯的製度政策。這場戰爭加劇了克里姆林宮領導人高度個人化決策的習慣，他似乎對協商或詳細分析不感興趣。 這使得該地區的三個國家採取了截然不同的做法。阿塞拜疆的阿利耶夫與俄羅斯總統有著長達二十年的關係，他似乎對普丁的商業方式最為滿意。他也可以從土耳其總統雷傑普·塔伊普·艾爾多安的個人和機構的強大支持中獲得信心。就與俄羅斯沒有外交關係的喬治亞而言，沒有面對面的會議或有組織的會談。 （如果格魯吉亞事實上的領導人伊万尼什維利曾經見過普京，那是在20 世紀90 年代，兩人都還沒有成為重要的政治人物。） 再一次，一切都是高度非正式的，並由中間人進行。在這裡，商業也是互利關係的核心。矛盾的是，該地區與俄羅斯有著長期正式和製度聯繫的國家——亞美尼亞——也最渴望斷絕這種關係。 關於俄羅斯可能對阿布哈茲採取什麼計劃的猜測越來越多。 所有這些變數使得俄羅斯在該地區的行為與其他地方一樣非常難以預測。自從阿塞拜疆佔領納戈爾諾-卡拉巴赫以來，人們對阿布哈茲可能發生的情況的猜測不斷增加。地區。俄羅斯能否完全吞併它，從而確保在黑海建立一個新的海軍基地？或者，正如最近的一些傳言所暗示的那樣，是否即將達成一項類似於與阿塞拜疆達成的協議，莫斯科允許格魯吉亞不受反對地進軍阿布哈茲，以換取格魯吉亞放棄其歐洲大西洋野心？這兩種情況在理論上都是可能的——儘管普丁也很可能更喜歡維持現狀，並將繼續關注烏克蘭。 與此同時，南高加索國家從 2022 年後情勢中獲得的最明顯的好處——與俄羅斯加強經濟關係——是不穩定的。與俄羅斯的密切貿易關係為莫斯科帶來了危險的影響力，特別是對於亞美尼亞和喬治亞來說，這兩個國家的資源和其他地方可以尋求支持。如果西方加強對與俄羅斯進行貿易的企業的二級制裁，這將給南高加索中間商帶來壓力。 並非一切都朝著普丁的方向發展。俄羅斯從阿塞拜疆撤軍是軟弱的表現。可以說，亞美尼亞轉向西方以及格魯吉亞公眾對反對派所稱的「俄羅斯法律」的大規模抵制也是如此。但如果俄羅斯在該地區看起來更弱，那麼西方看起來並不更強大。存在著重要的親歐洲社會動力，但它們面臨著來自政治和經濟力量的激烈競爭，這些力量正在將南高加索拉向截然不同的方向。 上個月，喬治亞政府將開發黑海阿納克利亞新深水港的招標授予有爭議的中國公司。該項目曾經由美國領導的財團管理。換句話說，歐洲和美國不僅在與俄羅斯爭奪影響力，也在與其他大國爭奪影響力。在一個如此動盪的地區，沒有什麼是理所當然的。 托馬斯‧德瓦爾 (THOMAS DE WAAL) 是卡內基歐洲中心的高級研究員，也是《近鄰海外的終結》一書的作者。 更多托馬斯·德瓦爾的作品 更多的： 亞塞 拜然喬治亞 俄羅斯 中東 伊朗 外交 地緣 政治 外交政策 安全 戰略與衝突 普丁威 權主義 最常閱讀的文章 哈馬斯如何結束 讓團體打敗自己的策略 奧黛麗·庫爾思·克羅寧 去全球化的危險神話 對全球經濟的誤解正在推動糟糕的政策 布拉德·塞瑟 普丁在南高加索的隱藏遊戲 阿塞拜疆的崛起、喬治亞的漂移以及俄羅斯尋求通往伊朗和中東的門戶 托馬斯·德瓦爾 印度與中國的危險邊境對峙 莫迪的強硬立場可能會招致而不是阻止中國的侵略 普拉文·東西 推薦文章 2023 年 3 月，喬治亞第比利斯的抗議者 俄羅斯在格魯吉亞獲勝 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讓團體打敗自己的策略 作者：奧黛麗‧庫爾思‧克羅寧 2024 年 7 月/8 月 發表於2024 年 6 月 3 日 馬特羅塔 加薩戰爭已經陷入令人麻木的暴力、流血和死亡模式。每個人都在失敗——除了哈馬斯。當以色列去年秋天入侵該領土時，其宣稱的軍事目標是摧毀該恐怖組織，使其永遠不會再犯下10月7日襲擊中那樣的野蠻行為。儘管戰爭消滅了哈馬斯的隊伍，但它也大大增加了巴勒斯坦人、整個中東甚至全球對該組織的支持。儘管以色列在襲擊後採取軍事行動是完全正當的，但其採取的方式對其自身的全球地位造成了巨大損害，並給以色列與其最重要夥伴美國的關係帶來了巨大壓力。 儘管10月7日被扣為人質的以色列人在哈馬斯、巴勒斯坦伊斯蘭聖戰組織和其他巴勒斯坦組織的羈押下痛苦不堪或死亡，但以色列壓倒性的、缺乏針對性的軍事反應已造成數以萬計的巴勒斯坦平民死亡，其中主要是婦女和兒童。透過限制人道主義援助進入加沙，以色列在該地區部分地區造成了近乎飢荒的狀況。去年年底，南非在其他數十個國家的最終支持下，向國際法院提起訴訟，指控以色列在加薩實施種族滅絕。今年5月，拜登政府停止了部分美國向以色列運送武器，顯示對以色列計劃入侵加薩南部城市拉法的不滿，該市已有超過100萬平民在此避難。 以色列在加薩的戰爭是一場戰略災難。 更糟的是，儘管以色列聲稱殺死了數千名哈馬斯武裝分子，但幾乎沒有證據表明該組織威脅以色列的能力受到重大損害。在某些方面，以色列的反應甚至幫助了哈馬斯。巴勒斯坦政策與調查研究中心2024 年3 月的一項民調顯示，加薩人對哈馬斯的支持率超過50%，自2023 年12 月以來上升了14 個百分點。 （包括兒童和老人）遭到屠殺。作為一個出於象徵性和政治目的而故意以暴力手段針對平民的非國家行為體，哈馬斯符合被視為恐怖組織的所有標準。該組織由自私的暴力極端分子組成，他們將武裝鬥爭置於有效治理和巴勒斯坦人的福祉之上。毫無疑問，消滅哈馬斯對巴勒斯坦人、以色列、中東和美國都有好處。 但以色列政府對10 月 7 日襲擊的高度致命反應以及對巴勒斯坦平民的死亡和痛苦似乎漠不關心，這正中哈馬斯的下懷。在該組織最想接觸的受眾中，包括加薩和西岸的巴勒斯坦人、整個地區的阿拉伯人口以及西方的年輕人，10 月7 日的令人髮指的行徑已經從人們的視野中消失，取而代之的是在支持巴勒斯坦權力機構的圖像。 簡而言之，儘管以色列在加薩的戰爭取得了一些戰術上的勝利，但它卻是一場戰略災難。以色列要擊敗哈馬斯，就需要一項更好的策略，該策略需要更深入地了解恐怖組織的終結方式。幸運的是，歷史就這個問題提供了充足的證據。經過數十年的研究，我收集了 100 年前 457 個恐怖活動和組織的資料集，並確定了消滅恐怖組織的六種主要方式。這些途徑並不互相排斥：通常，不只一種動力在發揮作用，多種因素在消滅恐怖組織的過程中發揮作用。但以色列應該特別密切關註一條路線：不是透過軍事失敗而是透過戰略失敗而結束的團體。自10月7日以來，以色列一直試圖鎮壓或鎮壓哈馬斯，但收效甚微。更明智的策略是想辦法削弱該組織的支持並加速其崩潰。 受壓迫者的回歸 最不常見的終止途徑是成功；少數團體因實現其目標而不復存在。一個熟悉的例子是南非非洲人國民大會的軍事部門“umkhonto weSizwe”，該組織在結束種族隔離運動初期就對平民進行了襲擊。另一個是伊爾貢（Irgun），這是一個猶太激進組織，他們利用恐怖主義將英國人趕出巴勒斯坦，迫使許多阿拉伯社區逃離，並幫助為以色列的建立奠定基礎。 但恐怖組織實現其核心目標的情況極為罕見：在過去的一個世紀裡，只有大約百分之五的人做到了。哈馬斯不太可能加入該名單。以色列在軍事和經濟各個方面都比哈馬斯強大得多，並且得到了美國的支持。哈馬斯要成功實現「從河流到海洋徹底解放巴勒斯坦」的目標，唯一的方法就是以色列破壞自身的團結和完整，從而毀滅自己。 消滅恐怖組織的第二種方式是轉變為其他組織：犯罪網絡或叛亂組織。犯罪和恐怖主義重疊，因此這種特殊的轉變更像是沿著一個譜系移動，而不是隨著一個團體不再試圖催化政治變革而轉而利用現狀獲取金錢利益而演變成某種新事物。當一個團體動員了足夠的人口，可以挑戰國家對領土和資源的控制時，就會轉向叛亂。不幸的是，如果以色列維持目前的戰略，加薩——或許還有西岸，甚至以色列本土——可能會出現這種結果。 消滅恐怖組織的第三種方式是透過國家成功的軍事鎮壓。這就是以色列目前針對哈馬斯的行動希望帶來的結局。鎮壓可以成功，儘管代價巨大。以俄羅斯第二次打擊車臣分離主義分子的行動為例，這場行動始於1999年，持續了近十年。準確的數字很難獲得，因為俄羅斯當局阻止記者報道這場衝突（甚至針對一些試圖報道的記者），但大多數獨立消息來源估計，至少有 25,000 名平民被殺，數十萬人流離失所。流血事件規模巨大，破壞規模宏大，但俄羅斯確實消滅了主要的分離主義團體，減少了該地區的人口，並為親俄政府鋪平了道路。 2024 年 5 月，以色列裝甲運兵車在以色列與加薩邊界附近行動 2024 年 5 月，以色列裝甲運兵車在以色列與加薩邊界附近行動 Ronen Zvulun / 路透社 同樣，2008年9月，斯里蘭卡政府著手消滅泰米爾伊拉姆猛虎解放組織，將其困在該島國東北部地區的一小片土地上。據聯合國稱，此次行動導致數萬名平民死亡。但它也消除了猛虎組織的領導層，有效地結束了該組織以及在斯里蘭卡肆虐了近三十年的更廣泛的內戰。 然而，總體而言，軍事鎮壓作為一種反恐形式的記錄不佳。維持這種模式很困難，成本也很高，而且只有當恐怖組織的成員能夠與普通民眾分開時，這種模式才能發揮最佳效果，而這種情況在大多數地方都很難創造。鎮壓運動侵蝕公民自由並給國家結構帶來壓力。焦土策略改變了社會的特徵，並提出了政府到底在捍衛什麼的問題。 以 20 世紀 60 年代初期的烏拉圭為例。當時，該國擁有健全的政黨制度、受過教育的城市人口以及既定的自由民主傳統。但當馬列主義組織圖帕馬羅斯進行了一系列暗殺、銀行搶劫和綁架後，政府出動了武裝部隊。到 1972 年，軍方消滅了該組織。儘管襲擊已經結束，軍隊隨後發動了政變，暫停了憲法，解散了議會，並建立了軍事獨裁政權，統治該國直到1985 年。事件（具體數量未知）。然而，軍政府造成數千人死亡、殘疾或流離失所。圖帕馬羅斯家族消失了，但普通烏拉圭人仍然是暴力的受害者，只是現在才落入國家手中，因為軍政府摧毀了該國的民主。 在解釋他們在加薩的鎮壓方式時，以色列領導人認為哈馬斯與伊斯蘭國（也稱為伊斯蘭國）類似，可以用類似的方式擊敗。確實，到 2017 年，美國領導的聯軍重新佔領了 ISIS 2014 年在伊拉克和敘利亞奪取的領土，減少了該組織在這些地區的存在。然而伊斯蘭國尚未結束。相反，它已經分裂成九個被稱為「省份」的組織，這些組織遍布世界各地，仍在策劃有時甚至成功地實施血腥襲擊。今年 3 月，ISIS-K——該組織的“呼羅珊省”，總部設在阿富汗——襲擊了莫斯科附近的音樂廳，造成 140 多人死亡。此外，與顯然是跨國運動的伊斯蘭國不同，哈馬斯是一個純粹的巴勒斯坦組織，專注於贏得對有爭議領土的控制權。軍事力量可以削弱哈馬斯對加薩的控制，但如果沒有政治解決潛在的領土爭端，該組織很快就會以某種形式重新出現，並繼續針對以色列軍隊和平民。 純粹的軍事反恐很少奏效。 有些人可能會說，真正的問題不是以色列依賴了錯誤的戰略，而是它沒有正確的目標。根據這種觀點，問題的核心是伊朗，而不是哈馬斯，因為德黑蘭的神權政權支持、武裝和資助這個恐怖組織。但任何政府如果對恐怖組織的國家支持者發動攻擊，都有可能讓自己陷入更大的混亂。今年四月，以色列和伊朗進行了一系列史無前例的針鋒相對的攻擊，這些攻擊可能升級為全面戰爭。但兩國最終都從懸崖邊退了一步，目前以色列仍然正確地專注於直接與哈馬斯打交道。 最終，以色列迄今在加薩缺乏成功也就不足為奇了：純粹的軍事反恐很少奏效，對民主國家來說尤其難以實現。一方面，它需要將媒體報導壓製到當今全球數位媒體格局中難以實現的程度（儘管保護記者委員會報告稱，自戰爭開始以來，已有 100 多名記者和媒體工作者在加薩被殺）。此外，與其他依靠軍事鎮壓打擊恐怖分子的政府（其中許多是獨裁政府）相比，以色列在某種程度上更多地受到自己的法律和政策的限制，並且因為它嚴重依賴一個批評者——美國－過度使用武力，反對犯下戰爭罪，並至少假定其軍事援助以合法行為為條件。 砍掉他們的頭 消滅恐怖組織的第四種方式是斬首：逮捕或殺害領導人。法國激進左翼組織「直接行動」在20 世紀80 年代開展了一系列暗殺和爆炸活動，但在1987 年其主要領導人被捕後停止了行動。 ·古茲曼(Abimael Guzmán)光輝道路民兵被捕；暴力事件立即減少，武裝分子接受了政府的特赦，該組織在接下來的十年中分裂成了規模小得多的毒品犯罪團夥。日本恐怖末日邪教奧姆真理教在其領導人麻原翔子於 1995 年被捕後更名並最終放棄暴力。 以斬首告終的團體往往規模較小，等級森嚴，具有個人崇拜的特點，而且通常缺乏可行的繼任計劃。平均而言，他們的經營時間還不到十年。老舊的、高度網絡化的群體可以重組並生存。 因此，哈馬斯並不是斬首策略的好候選者。這是一個高度網路化的組織，已有近 40 年的歷史。如果殺死哈馬斯領導人就能終結該組織，那麼這件事早就發生了——以色列人當然已經嘗試過了。 1996年，以色列安全部隊在哈馬斯高級官員、該組織首席炸彈製造者葉海亞·阿亞什(Yahya Ayyash)使用的手機內引爆了爆炸裝置；他當場就死了。幾年後，第二次起義爆發，暗殺行動愈演愈烈，2004年，以色列殺害了哈馬斯創始人艾哈邁德·亞辛。 學者穆罕默德·哈菲茲(Mohammed Hafez) 和約瑟夫·哈特菲爾德(Joseph Hatfield) 2006 年的一項研究調查了此類暗殺前後哈馬斯暴力的發生率，得出的結論是，其影響可以忽略不計。隨後的研究也得出了類似的結論。定點清除幾乎沒有影響該組織的能力或意圖。然而10月7日之後，以色列政府再次採取這項策略。襲擊發生幾週後，總理本傑明·內塔尼亞胡告訴記者，以色列將「暗殺哈馬斯的所有領導人，無論他們身在何處」。以色列內部情報機構辛貝特(Shin Bet)負責人羅南·巴爾(Ronen Bar)告訴以色列議會成員，以色列將在「加薩、約旦河西岸、黎巴嫩、土耳其、卡達以及世界各地」殺死哈馬斯領導人。據報道，自去年 10 月以來，以色列已殺害了 100 多名哈馬斯領導人，其中包括該組織軍事部門的一些高級指揮官。 但這些暗殺行動雖然削弱了哈馬斯在加薩的軍事實力，但並沒有影響該組織的長期能力；幾十年來，它表現出了更換關鍵領導人的能力。這種方法除了帶來很少的戰術利益外，還造成了戰略成本。當殺死領導人可以阻止迫在眉睫的攻擊時，這是正當的自衛。但與具體行動沒有公開聯繫的無休無止的定點清除導致許多觀察家認為，一個國家的行為在道德上等同於恐怖組織本身的行為。目標清單越多，情況越是如此：例如，考慮以色列四月份對加薩的空襲，導致卡達哈馬斯政治領導人伊斯梅爾·哈尼亞的三個兒子和四個孫子喪生，這讓他能夠將自己描繪成不一個恐怖份子的策劃者，但卻是個悲傷的父親和祖父。 談話療法 以色列可能會嘗試與他們就長期政治解決方案進行談判，而不是試圖殺死哈馬斯領導人。當然，這個想法對大多數以色列人來說是令人厭惡的。熟悉以色列和巴勒斯坦之間談判失敗的悠久歷史的人——更不用說雙方目前都感到深深的憤怒——不會愚蠢地建議現在進行和平談判。 但談判確實是結束恐怖主義的第五種方式。以北愛爾蘭為例，1998 年的《耶穌受難日協議》結束了愛爾蘭臨時共和軍長達數十年的恐怖主義活動。 2016年，哥倫比亞革命武裝力量與政府簽訂了一項複雜協議，同意解除武裝並作為正常政黨運作。與哈馬斯一樣，這些組織也熱衷於屠殺平民。對於官員來說，與他們交談很困難，而對於公眾來說，接受前成員重返社會也很困難，尤其是該組織的受害者及其家人。但流血事件停止了，最終各州的放棄相對較少。 對於恐怖組織來說，談判是有風險的，因為出現在談判桌上會洩漏有用的情報，並削弱「除了暴力之外別無選擇」的說法。只有大約 18% 的恐怖組織進行過談判，而且談判通常會拖延，而暴力仍在繼續，只是程度較低。存在時間較長的團體更有可能進行談判；恐怖組織的平均壽命為8至10年，但進行談判的組織往往存在20至25年。 2024 年 5 月，加沙，巴勒斯坦人在以色列空襲中被毀的房屋中行走 2024 年 5 月，加沙，巴勒斯坦人在以色列空襲中被毀的房屋中行走 穆罕默德·塞勒姆/路透社 當然，必須有一些切實可行的談判內容，與恐怖組織最成功的談判涉及領土衝突，而不是宗教或意識形態衝突。但即使沒有達成協議，認真的談判也可能導致恐怖組織內部產生分歧，使尋求政治解決方案的人和仍執著於戰鬥的人分裂。 （另一方面，談判有時被證明是徒勞的：在採取行動消滅猛虎組織之前，斯里蘭卡政府在挪威斡旋下與該組織進行了五年多的談判。） 對哈馬斯來說，談判似乎不太可能結束。一方面，該組織長期以來一直蔑視與以色列的談判。在1990年代，當它認為和平進程取得進展時，它就會進行破壞性攻擊。如今，哈馬斯比以往任何時候都更致力於追求所謂的一國解決方案的變體，其中包括消滅另一方，一些以色列極端分子也是如此。 儘管如此，哈馬斯和以色列過去通常透過卡達等中間人進行談判，包括去年 11 月達成短暫停留以及交換人質和囚犯的談判。美國、埃及、約旦和沙烏地阿拉伯等外部參與者最終可能會找到一種方法，推動以色列和巴勒斯坦進入旨在建立兩國解決方案的新外交進程。可以想像哈馬斯，或至少是該組織的某個派系或殘餘勢力，以某種方式參與其中。這樣的談判將是漫長的、令人擔憂的，並且會受到雙方極端分子的阻礙。但僅僅宣布一個進程就會產生有益的效果。事實上，它甚至可能為哈馬斯恐怖主義最有可能結束的方式創造條件：自我毀滅。 他們自己最大的敵人 大多數恐怖組織都以第六種方式結束：因為他們失敗了，要不是崩潰，就是失去支持。內爆的團體有時會在世代交替期間消亡（從 1960 年代到 1980 年代美國極左派的地下氣象組織），分裂成派系（耶穌受難日協議後愛爾蘭共和軍的殘餘），因行動分歧而崩潰（魁北克解放陣線（Front de Libération du Québec），加拿大分離主義組織，1970年代初），或因意識形態差異而分裂（2001年共產主義日本紅軍）。 團體也會因為失去民眾的支持而失敗。有時，這是因為政府為成員提供了更好的選擇，例如特赦或就業機會。但到目前為止，恐怖組織失敗的最重要原因是他們的誤判，特別是他們犯下的目標錯誤激起了重要選民的反感。 1998 年 8 月，皇家愛爾蘭共和軍對北愛爾蘭的一個小集鎮奧馬進行了轟炸，造成 29 人死亡，其中包括一些兒童。對這次襲擊的普遍厭惡團結了社會不同階層，並鞏固了對《耶穌受難日協議》的支持。 2004年，車臣分離主義者也犯了類似的錯誤，他們佔領了俄羅斯別斯蘭的一所學校，導致300多人死亡，其中包括近200名兒童，並導致車臣境內和全國各地對分離主義事業的支援幾乎完全崩潰。隔年，伊拉克基地組織（ISIS 的前身）的自殺式炸彈襲擊者襲擊了約旦安曼的三家酒店，造成約 60 人死亡。隨後的民調顯示，事件發生後，65% 的約旦人對蓋達組織的看法從正面轉為負面。 （從歷史上看，蓋達組織至少有三分之一的受害者是穆斯林，這是該組織未能成為奧薩馬·本·拉登希望的民眾運動的主要原因。） 哈馬斯擁有一個可能失敗的組織的所有要素。也許最重要的是它並不受歡迎。 2007年該組織控制加薩後不久，巴勒斯坦人對哈馬斯的支持開始惡化。根據皮尤研究中心的民調，2007年，巴勒斯坦領土上有62%的人對哈馬斯持好感。巴勒斯坦政治學家和民調專家哈利勒·希卡基發現，對哈馬斯的支持通常在與以色列的對抗期間激增，但當組織未能帶來積極變革時就會消失。 然而，以色列過度使用軍事力量加強了哈馬斯的控制，並幫助該組織宣傳10 月7 日發生的事情。犯下了戰爭罪行。普通加薩人對哈馬斯以他們的名義所做的事情可能會感到反感，但他們對以色列對他們的親人、家園和城市所做的事情的恐懼可能會壓倒他們。 哈馬斯擁有一個可能失敗的組織的所有要素。 儘管如此，哈馬斯的裂痕可能會擴大，甚至導致其崩潰。其軍事和政治領導層並不總是同步的：據《紐約時報》報道，該組織駐加沙的軍事領導人葉海亞·辛瓦爾(Yahya Sinwar) 與少數軍事指揮官一起發動了10 月7 日的攻擊，使哈馬斯的政治領袖哈尼亞(Haniyeh) 繼續處於困境之中。路透社的報導顯示，一些哈馬斯領導人似乎對襲擊的時間和規模感到震驚。該組織也面臨來自巴勒斯坦伊斯蘭聖戰組織的壓力和競爭，該組織規模比哈馬斯小，但與伊朗的關係更為密切。隨著哈馬斯在加薩的大部分組織被摧毀，其他權力結構，包括部落甚至犯罪網絡，可能會爭奪控制權並削弱該組織。 但哈馬斯更有可能失敗的方式是民眾的強烈反對。哈馬斯透過壓迫統治加沙，使用逮捕和酷刑來鎮壓異議。加薩人普遍厭惡其內部的總安全局，該局監視並保存人們的檔案，鎮壓抗議活動，恐嚇記者，並追蹤被指控「不道德行為」的人。自10月7日以來，許多巴勒斯坦人對哈馬斯誤判襲擊後果表示憤怒——這一嚴重的瞄準錯誤間接導致數萬加薩人死亡。受苦受難的巴勒斯坦人很清楚，哈馬斯建造了一個複雜的隧道系統來保護其領導人和戰士，但卻沒有採取任何措施來保護平民。 為了幫助哈馬斯失敗，以色列應該盡其所能，讓加薩的巴勒斯坦人感覺到，除了哈馬斯之外還有其他選擇，而且一個更有希望的未來是可能的。以色列不應將人道援助限制在少量，而應大量提供。以色列不應該只是摧毀基礎設施和房屋，還應該分享在哈馬斯之後的未來重建領土的計劃。以色列不應該實施集體懲罰並希望巴勒斯坦人最終指責哈馬斯，而應該傳達這樣的訊息：它看到哈馬斯戰士和絕大多數加薩人之間的區別，後者與該組織無關，他們本身就是其殘暴統治的受害者和魯莽的暴力。 經過數十年與哈馬斯的鬥爭以及數月的大規模殘酷戰爭，以色列似乎仍然不太可能擊敗該組織。但它仍然可以獲勝——通過幫助哈馬斯擊敗自己。 奧黛麗·庫斯·克羅寧 (AUDREY KURTH CRONIN) 是卡內基美隆大學戰略與技術研究所所長，也是《恐怖主義如何結束：了解恐怖主義活動的衰落與消亡》一書的作者。 奧黛麗·庫爾思·克羅寧的更多作品 更多的： 以色列 巴勒斯坦領土 地緣 政治 輿論 安全 防務與軍事 人道幹預 戰略與衝突 戰爭與軍事戰略 哈馬斯加沙巴以衝突以色列與哈馬斯戰爭美以關係 最常閱讀的文章 哈馬斯如何結束 讓團體打敗自己的策略 奧黛麗·庫爾思·克羅寧 去全球化的危險神話 對全球經濟的誤解正在推動糟糕的政策 布拉德·塞瑟 普丁在南高加索的隱藏遊戲 阿塞拜疆的崛起、喬治亞的漂移以及俄羅斯尋求通往伊朗和中東的門戶 托馬斯·德瓦爾 印度與中國的危險邊境對峙 莫迪的強硬立場可能會招致而不是阻止中國的侵略 普拉文·東西 推薦文章 2023 年 10 月，德黑蘭的反以色列廣告牌 伊朗與以色列戰爭的淺層根源 德黑蘭的極端主義背後，是一段失落的伊朗與猶太人深厚連結的歷史 阿里·M·安薩裡 2019 年 1 月，荷蘭海牙國際刑事法院大樓 不要與國際刑事法院開戰 美國可以在不攻擊法院的情況下幫助以色列 烏娜·A·海瑟薇 How Hamas Ends A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself By Audrey Kurth Cronin July/August 2024 Published on June 3, 2024 Matt Rota The war in Gaza has settled into a mind-numbing pattern of violence, bloodshed, and death. And everyone is losing—except Hamas. When Israel invaded the territory last fall, its stated military objective was to destroy the terrorist group so that it could never again commit acts of barbarity like the ones it carried out during its October 7 attack. But although the war has culled Hamas’s ranks, it has also vastly increased support for the group—among Palestinians, throughout the Middle East, and even globally. And even though Israel was fully justified in taking military action after the attack, the way in which it has done so has caused immense damage to its own global standing and put intense strain on Israel’s relationship with the United States, its most important partner. Israel’s overwhelming, unfocused military response has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, mainly women and children, even as Israelis taken hostage on October 7 languish or die in the custody of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian groups. By limiting the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza, Israel has produced near-famine conditions in parts of the territory. Late last year, South Africa, with the eventual support of dozens of other countries, filed a complaint at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza. In May, the Biden administration halted some U.S. arms shipments to Israel, signaling its displeasure with Israeli plans to invade the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where more than a million civilians had taken refuge. The Israeli war in Gaza has been a strategic disaster. Worse yet, although Israel claims to have killed thousands of Hamas fighters, there is little evidence to suggest that the group’s ability to threaten Israel has been significantly compromised. In some respects, Israel’s response has even helped Hamas. A March 2024 opinion poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research showed support for Hamas among Gazans topping 50 percent, a 14-point rise since December 2023. It’s upsetting to see that the slaughter of Israeli civilians—including children and elderly people—could indirectly build sympathy for Hamas. As a nonstate actor that deliberately targets civilians with violence for symbolic and political ends, Hamas meets all the criteria for being considered a terrorist organization. The group is composed of self-serving, violent extremists who prioritize armed struggle over effective governance and the welfare of Palestinians. There is no question that eliminating Hamas would be good for Palestinians, Israel, the Middle East, and the United States. But the Israeli government’s highly lethal response to the October 7 attack and seeming indifference to the death and suffering of Palestinian civilians has played into Hamas’s hands. Among the audiences that the group most wants to reach, including Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Arab populations throughout the region, and young people in the West, the heinous deeds of October 7 have receded from view, replaced by images that support the Hamas narrative, in which Israel is the criminal aggressor and Hamas is the defender of innocent Palestinians. Simply put, despite some tactical victories, the Israeli war in Gaza has been a strategic disaster. For Israel to defeat Hamas, it needs a better strategy, one informed by a deeper understanding of how terrorist groups generally end. Fortunately, history provides ample evidence on that subject. Over the course of decades of research, I have assembled a dataset of 457 terrorist campaigns and organizations, stretching back 100 years, and have identified six primary ways in which terrorist groups end. These pathways are not mutually exclusive: frequently, more than one dynamic is at work, and multiple factors play a role in the termination of a terrorist group. But Israel should pay close attention to one route in particular: groups that end not through military defeat, but through strategic failure. Since October 7, Israel has been trying to crush or repress Hamas out of existence, to little avail. A smarter strategy would be to figure out how to chip away at the group’s support and hasten its collapse. RETURN OF THE REPRESSED The least common pathway to termination is success; a small number of groups cease to exist because they achieve their goals. One familiar example is uMkhonto weSizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress in South Africa, which carried out attacks on civilians early in its campaign to end apartheid. Another is the Irgun, the Jewish militant group that employed terrorism in an effort to push the British out of Palestine, force many Arab communities to flee, and help lay the groundwork for the establishment of Israel. But it is exceedingly rare for a terrorist group to achieve its core objectives: in the past century, only about five percent have done so. And Hamas is not likely to join that list. Israel is much stronger than Hamas in every military and economic dimension, and it has the support of the United States. The only way Hamas could succeed in achieving its goal of “the complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” would be if Israel so undermined its own unity and integrity that it destroyed itself. A second way a terrorist group can end is by transforming into something else: a criminal network or an insurgency. Criminality and terrorism overlap, so that particular shift is more like moving along a spectrum than like morphing into something new as a group stops trying to catalyze political change in favor of exploiting the status quo for monetary gain. A shift to insurgency happens when a group mobilizes enough of the population that it can challenge the state for control of territory and resources. That, unfortunately, is a possible outcome in Gaza—and perhaps the West Bank and even Israel proper—if Israel maintains its current strategy. A third way terrorist groups end is through successful military repression on the part of a state. That is the ending that Israel’s current campaign against Hamas hopes to bring about. Repression can succeed, although at enormous costs. Take, for example, Russia’s second campaign against separatists in Chechnya, which began in 1999 and continued for nearly a decade. Accurate figures are hard to come by, since Russian authorities prevented journalists from reporting on the conflict (and even targeted some who tried), but most independent sources have estimated that at least 25,000 civilians were killed and that hundreds of thousands were displaced. The bloodshed was massive and the destruction epic, but Russia did wipe out the main separatist groups, depopulating the region and paving the way for a pro-Russian government. Israeli armored personnel carriers operate near Israel's border with Gaza, May 2024 Israeli armored personnel carriers operate near Israel's border with Gaza, May 2024 Ronen Zvulun / Reuters Similarly, in 2008–9, the Sri Lankan government set out to annihilate the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by trapping the group on a small strip of land in the northeastern region of the island country. The resulting operation killed tens of thousands of civilians, according to the United Nations. But it also eliminated the LTTE leadership, effectively ending the group and the broader civil war that had raged in Sri Lanka for nearly three decades. Overall, however, military repression has a poor track record as a form of counterterrorism. It is difficult and costly to sustain and tends to work best when members of a terrorist group can be separated from the general population, a condition that is hard to create in most places. Repressive campaigns erode civil liberties and strain the fabric of the state. Scorched-earth tactics change the character of society and raise the question of what, precisely, the government is defending. Consider, for example, Uruguay in the early 1960s. At the time, the country had a robust party system, an educated urban population, and an established liberal democratic tradition. But when the Tupamaros, a Marxist-Leninist group, carried out a series of assassinations, bank robberies, and kidnappings, the government unleashed the armed forces. By 1972, the military had eradicated the group. Even though the attacks had ended, the army then launched a coup, suspended the constitution, dissolved parliament, and established a military dictatorship that ruled the country until 1985. In their short campaign, the Tupamaros had carried out 13 bombings (with an unknown number of casualties), executed one hostage, and assassinated fewer than ten officials. The military regime, however, killed, maimed, or displaced thousands. The Tupamaros were gone, but ordinary Uruguayans remained the victims of violence, only now at the hands of the state, as the military government destroyed the country’s democracy. In explaining their repressive approach in Gaza, Israeli leaders have argued that Hamas is similar to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and can be defeated in a similar way. It is true that, by 2017, a U.S.-led coalition had reconquered territory that ISIS seized in Iraq and Syria in 2014, reducing the group’s presence in those places. Yet ISIS has not ended. Instead, it has splintered into nine groups it calls “provinces,” which are based all over the world and still plot and sometimes successfully carry out bloody attacks. This past March, ISIS-K—the group’s “Khorasan province,” based in Afghanistan—attacked a concert hall near Moscow, killing more than 140 people. Moreover, unlike ISIS, which is an explicitly transnational movement, Hamas is an exclusively Palestinian group, focused on winning control of contested territory. Military force can degrade Hamas’s hold on Gaza, but without a political solution to the underlying territorial dispute, the group would soon reemerge in some form and resume targeting Israeli military forces and civilians. Counterterrorism that is purely military rarely works. Some might argue that the real trouble is not that Israel is relying on the wrong strategy but that it doesn’t have the right target. In this view, it is Iran, and not Hamas, that is the heart of the problem, since the theocratic regime in Tehran supports, arms, and funds the terrorist group. But any government that launches an attack against the state sponsor of a terrorist group risks getting itself into an even bigger mess. This past April, Israel and Iran engaged in an unprecedented series of tit-for-tat attacks that could have escalated into a full-blown war. But both countries eventually stepped back from the brink, and for now, Israel remains rightly focused on dealing with Hamas directly. Ultimately, Israel’s lack of success in Gaza so far should come as no surprise: counterterrorism that is purely military rarely works and is especially difficult for a democracy to pull off. For one thing, it requires suppressing media coverage to a degree that is difficult to achieve in today’s global digital media landscape (although the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that more than 100 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza since the war began). Also, compared with other governments that have relied on military repression in fighting terrorists, many of which are authoritarian, Israel is somewhat more hemmed in by its own laws and policies and because it relies heavily on a patron—the United States—that criticizes the use of excessive force, opposes the commission of war crimes, and at least putatively conditions its military aid on lawful conduct. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS A fourth way that terrorist groups end is through decapitation: the arrest or killing of leaders. Direct Action, a radical left-wing French group, carried out a campaign of assassinations and bombings in the 1980s but ceased operations after the arrest of its principal leaders in 1987. In 1992, Abimael Guzmán, the leader of the far-left Peruvian terrorist militia the Shining Path, was arrested; violence immediately declined, the militants accepted a government amnesty, and the group fragmented into much smaller narco-criminal gangs over the next ten years. Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese terrorist doomsday cult, changed its name and eventually renounced violence after its leader, Shoko Asahara, was arrested in 1995. Groups that end through decapitation tend to be small, hierarchically structured, and characterized by a cult of personality, and they usually lack a viable succession plan. On average, they have been operating for less than ten years. Older, highly networked groups can reorganize and survive. Hamas, then, is not a good candidate for a decapitation strategy. It is a highly networked organization that is almost 40 years old. If killing Hamas leaders could end the group, it would have happened long ago—and the Israelis have certainly tried. In 1996, Israeli security forces set off an explosive device inside a mobile phone used by Yahya Ayyash, a senior figure in Hamas and the group’s chief bomb maker; he died instantly. With the outbreak of the second intifada a few years later, the assassinations ramped up, and in 2004, Israel killed Hamas’s founder, Ahmed Yassin. A 2006 study by the scholars Mohammed Hafez and Joseph Hatfield examined rates of Hamas violence before and after such assassinations and concluded that their impact was negligible. Subsequent studies have reached similar conclusions. Targeted killings have barely affected the group’s capabilities or intentions. Yet in the wake of October 7, the Israeli government reached for the tactic again. A few weeks after the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that Israel would “assassinate all the leaders of Hamas, wherever they are.” Ronen Bar, the chief of Israel’s internal intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, told members of the Israeli parliament that Israel would kill Hamas leaders “in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everywhere.” Since last October, Israel has reported killing over 100 Hamas leaders, including some senior commanders in the group’s military wing. But these assassinations, although degrading Hamas’s military strength in Gaza, have not affected the group’s long-term capabilities; over the decades, it has demonstrated an ability to replace key leaders. And in addition to yielding few tactical gains, this approach has created strategic costs. When killing a leader may prevent an imminent attack, it is justified self-defense. But endless targeted killings not publicly connected to specific operations lead many observers to see a state’s actions as morally equivalent to those of the terrorist group itself. That is especially true the wider the list of targets grows: consider, for example, an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in April that killed three sons and four grandchildren of the Qatar-based Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, which allowed him to portray himself not as a terrorist mastermind but as a grieving father and grandfather. THE TALKING CURE Instead of trying to kill Hamas leaders, Israel might try negotiating with them on a long-term political solution. That idea would be anathema to most Israelis, of course. And no one familiar with the long history of failed negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians—not to mention the profound anger that both groups currently feel—would be foolish enough to recommend peace talks now. But negotiation does represent a fifth way that terrorism can end. Think, for example, of Northern Ireland, where the 1998 Good Friday Agreement ended the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s decades-long campaign of terrorism. In 2016, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia entered into a complex agreement with the government and agreed to disarm and operate as a normal political party. Like Hamas, those groups had enthusiastically murdered civilians. Talking to them was difficult for officials, and accepting former members back into society was hard for the public, especially the group’s victims and their families. But the bloodshed stopped, and in the end, states gave up relatively little. Negotiations are risky for terrorist groups because showing up at the bargaining table gives away useful intelligence and undercuts the narrative that there is no alternative but to engage in violence. Only about 18 percent of terrorist groups ever negotiate at all, and talks usually drag on while violence continues, just at a lower level. Groups that have been around a long time are more likely to negotiate; the average lifespan of a terrorist group is eight to ten years, but groups that negotiate tend to have been around for 20 to 25 years. Palestinians walk amid houses destroyed in Israeli strikes, Gaza, May 2024 Palestinians walk amid houses destroyed in Israeli strikes, Gaza, May 2024 Mohammed Salem / Reuters Of course, there must be something tangible to negotiate over, and the most successful negotiations with terrorist groups involve conflicts over territory as opposed to religion or ideology. But even in the absence of an agreement, serious talks can cause divides within terrorist groups, splitting those who seek a political settlement from those still wedded to fighting. (On the other hand, negotiations sometimes prove futile: before moving to wipe out the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government spent more than five years negotiating with the group in talks brokered by Norway.) Negotiations may not seem a likely way for Hamas to end. For one thing, the group has a long history of scorning talks with Israel. In the 1990s, it would engage in spoiler attacks when it believed the peace process was making progress. And today, Hamas is more committed than ever to pursuing a variant of the so-called one-state solution that would involve obliterating the other side, as are some Israeli extremists. Still, Hamas and Israel have conducted negotiations in the past, generally through intermediaries such as Qatar—including talks that led to a short cease-fire and an exchange of hostages and prisoners last November. It seems possible that external actors such as the United States, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia might eventually find a way to push Israel and the Palestinians into a renewed diplomatic process aimed at creating a two-state solution. And it is possible to imagine Hamas, or at least some faction or remnant of the group, being involved in some way. Such negotiations would be long, fraught, and hamstrung by extremists on both sides. But merely announcing a process would have salutary effects. Indeed, it could even create the conditions for what might be the most likely way for Hamas’s terrorism to end: self-defeat. THEIR OWN WORST ENEMIES Most terrorist groups end in a sixth way: because they fail, either by collapsing in on themselves or by losing support. Groups that implode sometimes die out during generational shifts (the far-left Weather Underground in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s), disintegrate into factions (remnants of the IRA after the Good Friday Agreement), break down over operational disagreements (the Front de Libération du Québec, a Canadian separatist group, in the early 1970s), or fracture over ideological differences (the communist Japanese Red Army in 2001). Groups also fail because they lose popular support. Sometimes, that is because governments offer members a better alternative, such as amnesty or jobs. But by far the most important reason terrorist groups fail is that they miscalculate, especially by making targeting errors that stir revulsion among important constituencies. The Real IRA’s August 1998 bombing of Omagh, a small market town in Northern Ireland, killed 29 people, including a number of children. Widespread disgust at the attack unified disparate parts of society and solidified support for the Good Friday Agreement. Chechen separatists made a similar mistake in 2004 when they seized a school in Beslan, Russia, leading to the deaths of more than 300 people, including almost 200 children, and sparking a near-total collapse of support for the separatist cause inside Chechnya and throughout Europe. The following year, suicide bombers belonging to al Qaeda in Iraq (the forerunner of ISIS) attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing around 60 people. Opinion polls later showed that, in the aftermath, 65 percent of Jordanians changed their view of al Qaeda from positive to negative. (Historically, at least a third of al Qaeda’s victims have been Muslims, which is the main reason that the group has not become the popular movement that Osama bin Laden hoped it would be.) Hamas has all the ingredients of a group that can fail. Most important, perhaps, is the fact that it is not popular. Shortly after the group took control of Gaza in 2007, Palestinian support for Hamas began to deteriorate. According to polling by the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of people in the Palestinian territories had a favorable view of Hamas in 2007. By 2014, only a third did. Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian political scientist and pollster, has found that support for Hamas generally spikes during confrontations with Israel but then dissipates when the group fails to deliver positive change. Israel’s excessive use of military force, however, has strengthened Hamas’s hold and aided the group’s propaganda about what happened on October 7. According to a poll that Shikaki conducted in March, 90 percent of Palestinians dismiss the idea that Hamas engaged in war crimes that day. Any revulsion that ordinary Gazans might have felt about what Hamas did in their name was likely overwhelmed by their horror over what Israel has done to their loved ones, homes, and cities. Hamas has all the ingredients of a group that can fail. Still, Hamas has fissures that could widen and even lead to its collapse. Its military and political leadership are not always in sync: according to The New York Times, the group’s Gaza-based military leader, Yahya Sinwar, launched the October 7 attacks with a handful of military commanders, keeping Hamas’s political leader, Haniyeh, in the dark until just a few hours before the operation began. Reporting by Reuters revealed that some Hamas leaders seemed shocked by the timing and scale of the attacks. The group also faces pressure and competition from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is smaller than Hamas but more closely aligned with Iran. And with much of Hamas’s organization in Gaza destroyed, other power structures, including clans and even criminal networks, could vie for control and undercut the group. But the far more likely way that Hamas could fail is through popular backlash. Hamas rules Gaza through oppression, using arrests and torture to suppress dissent. Gazans widely loathe its internal General Security Service, which surveils and keeps files on people, stamps out protests, intimidates journalists, and tracks people accused of “immoral acts.” Since October 7, many Palestinians have expressed anger at Hamas for having misjudged the consequences of the attack—a serious targeting error that has indirectly led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Gazans. And suffering Palestinians are well aware that Hamas built an elaborate tunnel system to protect its leaders and fighters but did nothing to protect civilians. To help Hamas fail, Israel should be doing everything in its power to give Palestinians in Gaza a sense that there is an alternative to Hamas and that a more hopeful future is possible. Instead of restricting humanitarian aid to a trickle, Israel should be providing it in massive quantities. Instead of merely destroying infrastructure and homes, Israel should also be sharing plans for rebuilding the territory in a post-Hamas future. Instead of carrying out collective punishment and hoping that Palestinians will eventually blame Hamas, Israel should be conveying that it sees a distinction between Hamas fighters and the vast majority of Gazans, who have nothing to do with the group and are themselves victims of its thuggish rule and reckless violence. After decades of struggling with Hamas and months of fighting a massive, brutal war against it, Israel still seems unlikely to defeat the group. But it can still win—by helping Hamas defeat itself. AUDREY KURTH CRONIN is Director of the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology and the author of How Terrorism Ends: Understanding the Decline and Demise of Terrorist Campaigns. MORE BY AUDREY KURTH CRONIN More: Israel Palestinian Territories Geopolitics Public Opinion Security Defense & Military Humanitarian Intervention Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy Hamas Gaza Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Israel-Hamas War U.S.-Israeli Relations Most-Read Articles How Hamas Ends A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself Audrey Kurth Cronin The Dangerous Myth of Deglobalization Misperceptions of the Global Economy Are Driving Bad Policies Brad Setser Putin’s Hidden Game in the South Caucasus Azerbaijan’s Rise, Georgia’s Drift, and Russia’s Quest for a Gateway to Iran and the Middle East Thomas de Waal India’s Perilous Border Standoff With China Modi’s Tough Stance Could Invite—Not Deter—Chinese Aggression Praveen Donthi Recommended Articles An anti-Israeli billboard in Tehran, October 2023 The Shallow Roots of Iran’s War With Israel Beneath Tehran’s Extremism, a Lost History of Deep Iranian-Jewish Ties Ali M. 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Ansari) 2024 年 5 月 29 日 2023 年 10 月，德黑蘭的反以色列廣告牌 馬吉德·阿斯加里普爾/WANA/路透社 4月初，伊朗和以色列的冷戰驟然升溫。以色列在大馬士革發動的一場戲劇性空襲導致伊朗革命衛隊七名高級指揮官喪生，這讓伊朗領導人陷入了困境。如果他們採取相應的軍事反應，他們就會面臨升級的風險，從而動搖其政權的根基。如果他們不這樣做，他們就會在伊朗抵抗軸心的強硬派和盟友中面臨信譽危機，該網絡包括加薩地帶的哈馬斯、黎巴嫩真主黨、也門胡塞武裝以及伊朗支持的各種民兵組織。 最終，由於電報和技術上的無能，伊朗領導人最終取得了一個金髮女孩的結果。 4月13日，他們動用300多枚飛彈和無人機對以色列發動大規模空襲。但可靠的西方情報以及以色列及其盟國部署的先進預警技術和防空系統確保了損失很小。伊朗最高領袖阿里·哈梅內伊宣稱，重要的是攻擊本身，而不是「擊中目標」。以色列被鼓勵“取得勝利”，在進行了有限的報復之後，這兩個不共戴天的敵人之間的現狀以令人驚訝的速度恢復了。 自從以色列和伊朗危險地接近戰爭以來的幾週內，其他事態發展暫時將這一事件推到了幕後。自5月19日伊朗總統易卜拉欣·萊西和伊朗外長侯賽因·阿米爾·阿卜杜拉希安在直升機失事中喪生以來，國際社會的注意力又回到了該政權的穩定以及誰將接替哈梅內伊這一迫在眉睫的問題上。同樣，四月初的事件及其出乎意料的迅速解決，引發了人們對這個政權的重大質疑，以及伊斯蘭共和國對猶太國家的強​​烈對抗往往如何因其日益難以駕馭的國內政治而得到緩和的方式。 一方面，一般伊朗人對加薩戰爭表現出相對較小的興趣。儘管伊朗是哈馬斯的主要支持者，但它是中東唯一一個其政府一直在努力激發人們對巴勒斯坦事業的熱情的穆斯林國家，即使考慮到該政權對允許興奮的人群聚集在街頭的焦慮，這一點也值得注意。事實上，與席捲西方和阿拉伯國家首都的針對以色列的大規模抗議活動形成鮮明對比的是，德黑蘭自戰爭開始以來最大規模的此類集會只有區區 3,000 人參加。 伊朗政府一直在努力激發人們對巴勒斯坦事業的熱情。 造成這種情況有一些明顯的政治原因，首先是伊朗人對德黑蘭領導階層和整個伊斯蘭主義普遍不滿。許多伊朗人認為哈馬斯的勝利就是統治他們的高壓教士政權的勝利。此外，伊朗人往往關注自己的問題，包括高失業率和生活品質下降。當他們舉行抗議活動時，經常聽到這樣的口號：“無論是加薩還是黎巴嫩，我的命都是伊朗！”他們在自己的國家爭取權利，而許多西方人認為這是理所當然的，但他們立即對來自美國大學校園的支持哈馬斯的評論感到困惑和恐懼。 但伊朗對戰爭的矛盾心理也有更深的社會文化根源。在政權長期主導的「猶太復國主義佔領國」的言論背後，隱藏著與以色列之間更為複雜的動態。特別是在前伊斯蘭時代，歷代波斯國家都與猶太人民有著令人驚訝的密切聯繫。在二十世紀的幾十年裡，伊朗和以色列之間的共同點似乎比兩國與阿拉伯世界的共同點還要多。這種親和力也沒有隨著1979 年伊斯蘭革命而完全結束。微妙觀點以色列在中東的角色。 如今，這項遺產已被雙方的強硬派所淹沒，伊朗和以色列之間的代理人衝突仍有可能爆發為災難性的直接戰爭。然而，波斯人和猶太人共存的悠久歷史表明，當前的地緣戰略競爭可能比表面上看起來更偶然。無論該地區的主要對手之間的敵意有多大，他們共同的歷史提供了未來在不同情況下可以利用的替代方案。 以色列為母親，伊朗為父親 來到耶路撒冷的遊客可能會驚訝地發現其中一條街道是以波斯國王的名字命名的。居魯士大帝（波斯語為Kourosh ，希伯來語為Koresh）在公元前六世紀統治期間，因將猶太人從巴比倫的囚禁中解放出來而聞名。由於他決定允許他們返回家園並在耶路撒冷重建聖殿，猶太人對伊朗人產生了一種在古代大部分時期都持續存在的同情心。 （許多猶太人沒有返回耶路撒冷，而是滿足於在巴比倫的波斯帝國中心定居，那裡所謂的「巴比倫」塔木德的神學發展反映了他們的波斯環境。）在另外兩個場合，伊朗軍隊發現自己已經來到了耶路撒冷城門口——公元前40 年在帕提亞人的統治下，六個半世紀後在薩珊王朝的統治下——猶太人將他們視為解放者。 事實上，這種政治關係在許多方面都次於更深層的文化和宗教關係。以色列總理班傑明·內塔尼亞胡偏愛意識形態而非歷史，他利用《以斯帖記》來論證波斯一直在尋求消滅猶太人。但聖經的敘述實際上將以斯帖描繪成波斯女王，她警告她的國王亞哈隨魯（被認為是居魯士的孫子薛西斯）邪惡的宰相哈曼對她的人民密謀。最後，亞哈隨魯王盛怒之下，以「陰謀反對猶太人」的罪名將哈曼絞死，並將哈曼的財產交給以斯帖。換句話說，又是波斯國王拯救了猶太人。位於伊朗西部哈馬丹的以斯帖和她表弟末底改的墳墓聖地（至今仍是猶太人的朝聖地）以及位於伊朗西南部蘇薩的先知但以理的墳墓，凸顯了這些聖經聯繫的重要性。 2007 年 3 月，德黑蘭，一名婦女拿著伊朗猶太社會創始人的照片 莫爾泰扎尼庫巴茲爾/路透社 隨著七世紀阿拉伯人征服波斯，建立了伊斯蘭哈里發國，猶太人成為更廣泛的伊斯蘭社區內受保護的聖書人民。儘管如此，猶太-波斯傳統仍在繼續。災後出現的一些現存的最早的新波斯語例子是用希伯來字符寫的。在接下來的幾個世紀裡，伊朗和猶太思想家都努力保護波斯前伊斯蘭歷史的獨特遺產。十四世紀，猶太作家沙欣·設拉子（Shahin Shirazi）根據聖經中以斯帖的一生寫下了波斯史詩《Ardashir Nameh》 ；它讓人想起一個名叫居魯士的兒子，他是猶太人的以斯帖和波斯人亞哈隨魯（阿爾達希爾）的結合而生的，這與歷史無關。沉浸在這樣的傳說中，伊朗猶太人有時將以色列稱為母親，將伊朗稱為父親也就不足為奇了。 十六世紀薩法維王朝將什葉派確立為伊朗的國教後，猶太人更多的是被容忍而不是被擁抱。儘管他們很少遭受其他宗教少數群體（如瑣羅亞斯德教）和十九世紀以來的巴哈教（巴哈教）所面臨的更殘酷的迫害，但他們的命運卻根據特定統治者的傾向而波動。例如，沙阿阿巴斯大帝在 16 世紀末邀請他們定居在他的首都伊斯法罕，而他的曾孫阿巴斯二世則試圖透過武力使猶太人皈依伊斯蘭教，這種限制後來被修改為要求他們穿著獨特的服裝。 到1906 年伊朗憲法革命（這場運動導致建立了該地區第一個議會制度）時，估計約有35,000 人的猶太社區已成為受保護的少數群體，並很快在新議會中獲得了自己的代表。與其他宗教少數群體一樣，猶太人也加入了民族主義情緒，認為世俗伊朗民族認同的出現只會增強他們的整體地位。儘管存在著慣常的偏見，但他們的處境逐漸好轉。 賽勒斯和猶太復國主義者 在伊朗，與阿拉伯國家不同，1948 年以色列建國並沒有迫使其猶太社區受到清算。與席捲埃及、伊拉克、利比亞和敘利亞的反猶太暴力相反，沒有發生大屠殺，也沒有大規模逃往應許之地。就像居魯士時代的祖先一樣，許多伊朗猶太人樂於留在原地：儘管1948 年至1978 年間，大約有60,000 人移民到以色列，但仍有相當數量的人（約85,000 人）留下來，據一些人估計，他們是世界上最大的猶太人口。 阿拉伯領導人將新的猶太國家視為阿拉伯土地的剝奪者和對阿拉伯團結的威脅，而伊朗政治人物則傾向將其視為潛在的盟友。對於1941 年繼位的君主穆罕默德·禮薩（沙阿）巴列維來說尤其如此。了他的注意。對國王來說，以色列代表了中東另一個具有共同古老血統的非阿拉伯國家。 儘管他沒有正式承認以色列，以避免激怒阿拉伯政府和他自己的國內宗教選民，但國王悄悄地培養了密切的關係，特別是在經濟發展和情報合作方面。在他統治期間，以色列在德黑蘭可能沒有官方大使館，但每個人都知道非正式大使館的所在地以及以色列「大使」是誰，伊朗在特拉維夫設有辦事處。以色列航空公司每週兩次飛往德黑蘭。 1950 年，以色列總理大衛·本-古里安和伊朗外交官禮薩·薩菲尼亞在耶路撒冷的一次聚會上 但支持以色列的不僅是君主政體。伊朗持不同政見者和革命思想家也在這個新興的猶太國家中發現了許多值得欽佩的地方。賈拉勒·阿爾·埃·艾哈邁德(Jalal Al-e Ahmad) 是一位多產的異見作家，後來撰寫了伊斯蘭革命的經典文本之一。他的發現印象深刻。在題為《以色列土地之旅》的遊記中，他讚揚了當時猶太復國主義的開拓精神和集體主義精神，他將其視為反資本主義社會民主主義未來的模板。 1967 年戰爭以以色列征服和佔領阿拉伯領土而告終，伊朗的輿論開始降溫。艾哈邁德抱怨說，猶太復國主義者開始效法他們所反對的殖民列強。但國王仍然將以色列視為朋友和盟友。值得注意的是，伊朗沒有加入為回應尼克森政府在 1973 年贖罪日戰爭中支持以色列而實施的阿拉伯石油禁運，儘管伊朗在當年年底幫助策劃了油價上漲並從中獲利豐厚。國王在阿以衝突中也始終保持公正。三年後，當他在電視新聞節目《60分鐘》中被問及美國的“猶太遊說團”時，他陰鬱地抱怨說，它“控制了很多事情”，並產生了適得其反的影響。儘管如此，敏銳的觀察家指出，他的批評並未延伸到以色列國本身。 然而，到了 1970 年代末，伊朗獨裁政權陷入了高通膨和動盪不安的困境。受到左派和伊斯蘭主義者抗議的影響，它變得越來越偏執，國王在 1976 年發表的不經意的反猶太主義開始越來越頻繁地浮出水面。他的顧問沒有提供協助。助手們很難理解正在發生的事情，並且不願意承認伊朗人已經變得不滿，或者伊斯蘭主義者可能有能力自治組織，因此助手們建議他向他可能冒犯的各種人“道歉”，而他們現在顯然正在報復——特別是「猶太遊說團體」和英國人。 （國王在 1974 年的一次採訪中對英國的職業道德發表了一些批評言論）。這種擔憂蔓延到英國表明，這更多地與他的政權對外國干涉的痴迷有關，而不是與反猶太主義本身有關。 宿醉和強硬派 然而，當政權最終屈服於伊斯蘭革命時，所有舊的地緣政治理解都被拋在了一邊。 1979 年2 月凱旋返回伊朗後，阿亞圖拉魯霍拉·霍梅尼毫不留情地批評國王及其美國和猶太復國主義盟友，儘管他對猶太復國主義者和一般猶太人沒有什麼區別。伊斯蘭主義者對君主制國家的報復迅速而殘酷，很快就佔領了美國大使館並劫持了 50 多名美國人質。由於伊朗猶太人被視為熱情的保皇派，他們也面臨新秩序的憤怒。革命期間，領導德黑蘭猶太社區的商人哈比卜·埃爾加尼安 (Habib Elghanian) 因腐敗和與以色列「有聯繫」的指控而被處決——這一事件促使猶太人迅速移民到以色列和美國。很快，這個繁榮的社區人口就減少到了大約 20,000 人。 與華盛頓的關係一樣，伊朗對以色列的態度也發生了明顯的變化，伊斯蘭共和國轉向了毫不妥協的敵對意識形態。該國新領導人迅速將以色列在德黑蘭的非官方外交設施移交給巴勒斯坦解放組織，至今這些設施仍掌握在該組織手中。在地區層面上，他們也開始凝聚輿論並動員代理人力量反對以色列。 但事實證明，1980 年 9 月開始的伊朗與伊拉克戰爭比革命領導階層預期的更為困難。隨著事態的發展，伊朗發現自己越來越孤立：阿拉伯國家從一開始就支持伊拉克獨裁者薩達姆·侯賽因，而巴解組織主席亞西爾·阿拉法特是第一位訪問新伊斯蘭共和國的外國政要，他決定改變組織的立場。到 1980 年代中期，該政權從國王那裡繼承的美國製造的軍事硬體也缺乏備件。然後，它決定悄悄地開始從一個不太可能的來源採購武器，這一事件後來被稱為「伊朗門」醜聞。 拉夫桑賈尼更從政治而非意識形態的角度看待以色列。 雷根政府和以色列政府利用一位名叫馬努切赫·戈爾巴尼法爾（Manuchehr Ghorbanifar）的伊朗猶太軍火商的服務，制定了一項周密的戰略：他們將秘密向德黑蘭提供急需的武器，以換取緩和關係的可能性。人們相信，一旦革命塵埃落定，伊朗被潛在敵對的阿拉伯國家包圍的地緣政治現實就會重新出現。這在很大程度上是革命前遺留下來的一廂情願的想法，但也許最引人注目的是德黑蘭根本沒有考慮過這項軍火交易。當黎巴嫩一家報紙披露秘密談判時，伊朗人很快就叫停了談判，甚至處決了據報道的洩密源。 值得注意的是，被認為是伊朗門協議中德黑蘭主要對話者的官員是狡猾的伊朗議會議長阿克巴爾·哈希米·拉夫桑賈尼（Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani），他在霍梅尼去世後於1989 年就任總統。他被廣泛認為是一位實用主義者，與他的許多同革命者相比，他不太關心革命的輸出，這意味著他更多地透過政治而非意識形態的視角來看待以色列。最重要的是，對拉夫桑賈尼來說，重要的是總統職位和共和國，而不是聚集在新最高領袖阿亞圖拉·阿里·哈梅內伊周圍的革命和宗教權力機構。 拉夫桑賈尼的前景被證明是樂觀的。他因試圖將帝國總統職位強加給國家而受到廣泛嘲笑，並很快被日益強大的最高領導人辦公室所擊敗。在建立自己的權威時，哈梅內伊熱衷於與拉夫桑賈尼的政策保持距離，並開始在他周圍拉攏一群強硬派，他們對革命及其野心的看法更加頑固。在革命原則上讓步不是一個選擇。 清教徒的回歸 正如拉夫桑賈尼必須與國內的革命精英談判和妥協一樣，他很快就發現自己在國外也處於劣勢。 1993年奧斯陸和平進程公開後，伊朗政府官員公開反對，聲稱將剝奪巴勒斯坦人的權利。私下里，他們想知道為什麼他們沒有被邀請參加談判。當然，他們沒有這樣做的原因之一是因為哈梅內伊周圍的圈子決心追求意識形態的純潔性。無論如何，在真主黨（最終是伊朗）被指責為一系列國際恐怖襲擊的罪魁禍首之後——即1992 年以色列駐布宜諾斯艾利斯大使館和1994 年該市猶太中心發生致命自殺式爆炸事件－任何將伊朗納入其中的想法都被排除在外。 就以色列而言，它擺脫了對伊朗的那種一廂情願的想法，這種想法曾助長了反伊朗計畫。隨著以色列與阿拉伯世界的和解初露端倪——以色列於 1994 年與約旦簽署了和平條約——它的戰略視角從將伊朗視為平衡者轉變為將伊朗視為敵人。從此以後，美國將被鼓勵排斥和孤立伊斯蘭共和國，而柯林頓政府也非常願意這麼做。 1995年，拉夫桑賈尼向美國石油公司康菲石油公司提供了一份價值10億美元的合同，在伊朗開發一個油田——這是一項超越意識形態的權宜之計，本可以結束多年來與西方的經濟孤立——但該交易立即在華盛頓被否決。 伊朗不可能比巴勒斯坦人更巴勒斯坦化。 在改革派總統穆罕默德·哈塔米（Mohammad Khatami，1997-2005）的領導下，實用主義與純潔性之間的緊張關係持續存在。在以色列問題上，哈塔米試圖緩和伊朗的做法，甚至允許政府內部使用「以色列」這個名字來代替通常的「猶太復國主義實體」。他的整體觀點是，伊朗不可能比巴勒斯坦人更巴勒斯坦化，如果巴勒斯坦人想要追求許多伊朗強硬派認為不公正的和平，那是他們的選擇。正如哈塔米政府的一位官員當時告訴我的那樣，“以色列是一個現實，我們必須應對它。” 2001 年 9 月 11 日恐怖攻擊事件發生後，哈塔米的和解態度達到高潮，他意識到劫機者是遜尼派而非什葉派。對於那些將伊朗視為萬惡之源的人來說，這是一個難以忽視的事實，但同時也是與美國緩和關係的難得機會。但在此期間，哈塔米在德黑蘭的強硬派對手竭盡全力削弱他的政策。此外，隨著以色列發現明顯從伊朗向巴勒斯坦運送武器，以及布希政府於2002 年1 月做出重大決定，將伊朗列為「邪惡軸心」的一部分，9/11 事件後短暫打開的窗口迅速關閉。 最後的轉捩點出現在隔年，當時伊朗試圖達成「大交易」的最後一搏有點不透明，但被美國毫不客氣地駁回。由於布希政府現在正忙於伊拉克戰爭，它幾乎沒有能力與鄰國進行建設性接觸。無論如何，華盛頓的焦點現在轉向伊朗的秘密核子計畫。同時，德黑蘭的強硬派利用哈塔米在國內外的失敗來鞏固自己的地位。 2005 年，隨著馬哈茂德·艾哈邁迪·內賈德 (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) 的當選，他們取得了勝利，這位煽動者為該政權最極端的反以色列傾向注入了新的活力。 更多歷史，更少仇恨 艾哈邁迪內賈德聲稱“以色列將從歷史的書頁上消失”，聲稱要回歸霍梅尼所信奉的基本真理。但他的煽動性重述，以及他對大屠殺的否認，提供了一種不受歡迎的澄清。艾哈邁迪內賈德在這充滿仇恨的信息中添加了適量的激進左翼意識形態，根據這種意識形態，以色列是二戰後建立的不公正的西方資本主義霸權的基石。對於那些認為這只是說說而已的人來說，掛著宣布以色列滅亡的旗幟的伊朗飛彈應該可以消除任何疑慮。透過譴責他所謂的大屠殺“神話”，伊朗總統試圖破壞以色列國家的道德正當性。 艾哈邁迪內賈德的極端立場很快就開始影響伊朗的官方聲明。所謂的以色列即將崩潰被認為是資本主義西方普遍衰落和等待已久的隱藏伊瑪目（神秘的第十二伊瑪目）回歸的前兆，根據什葉派信仰，他將在世界末日回歸。現在，他要宣告一個無恥的伊朗什葉派世界新秩序。在這段時期出現的其他荒謬事件中，艾哈邁迪內賈德告訴驚恐的德國官員，他理解他們對1945 年強加給他們國家的不公正「和平解決」的痛苦，並且一切很快就會得到解決。 伊朗總統馬哈茂德·艾哈邁迪內賈德於 2006 年 12 月在德黑蘭舉行的否認大屠殺會議上 伊朗總統馬哈茂德·艾哈邁迪內賈德於 2006 年 12 月在德黑蘭舉行的否認大屠殺會議上 拉赫布·霍馬萬迪/路透社 許多普通伊朗人對這些事態發展感到苦惱，尤其是對政府決定於 2006 年在德黑蘭主辦否認大屠殺的會議感到尷尬——暫且不考慮這對國內剩餘猶太人的影響。同樣，儘管伊朗人和以色列人仍可能參加同一個國際會議，但伊朗人努力避開對方的目光，拒絕握手。渴望與中東主要國家實現正常化的以色列人卻沒有這樣的疑慮。 儘管內賈德的粗俗行為不同尋常，但背後的意識形態潮流卻根深蒂固。他的繼任者哈桑·魯哈尼試圖軟化言辭，因為他專注於與歐巴馬政府達成一項旨在結束伊朗經濟孤立的核協議。但即使魯哈尼的健談的外交部長穆罕默德·賈瓦德·扎里夫重拾舊有的實用主義，也無法回到拉夫桑賈尼-哈塔米時代培養的模棱兩可和矛盾心理。以色列國的消滅現在已成為國家意識形態：政權的忠實信徒透過對它的堅持來將自己與其他人區分開來，並且他們加倍努力。不用說，這反過來又助長了以色列國內強硬派的反伊朗言論，形成了相互反饋循環，加深了敵意。如果魯哈尼試圖淡化演講的力度，那麼 2021 年繼任他的萊西則強化了這一點，而且幾乎沒有跡象表明這種情況會隨著萊西的繼任者而改變。 更大的悲劇是，大多數伊朗公眾認識到了這種意識形態的本質：這是對相信新世界秩序「經過耶路撒冷」的革命精英忠誠度的考驗，從而需要擊敗以色列。他們不想參與其中。像許多以色列人一樣，他們只是渴望在該地區和更廣闊的世界中正常生活。對於那些尋求解決甚至只是緩和兩國之間衝突的國家來說，挑戰是顯而易見的。當一方不承認對方的生存權並鼓動對方滅亡，而另一方則陷入瘋狂的歷史文盲時，如何建立雙方對話？當然，一條途徑是利用猶太人和伊朗人之間的古老聯繫，以色列官員在某種程度上一直在嘗試這種方法，區分德黑蘭政府和更廣泛的伊朗社會。 更大膽的是，西方和國際大國可以邀請伊朗參加任何涉及兩國解決方案的加薩後和平談判，以換取關係正常化。當然，任何此類提議產生積極結果的可能性很小，但它可能為迫切需要它的情況提供一些道德上的明確性。伊斯蘭共和國與以色列和更廣泛的猶太社區的關係日益不可避免地給我們帶來的教訓是，歷史中的政治太多，而政治中的歷史又不夠。在這種不平衡得到解決之前，取得有意義進展的機會很小。 ALI M. ANSARI 是聖安德魯斯大學伊朗歷史教授。他是《1797 年以來的現代伊朗：改革與革命》一書的作者。 阿里·M·安薩裡的更多作品 更多的： 以色列 巴勒斯坦領土 伊朗地緣 政治 安全 國防與軍事 戰略與衝突 戰爭與軍事戰略 哈馬斯加沙巴以衝突以色列與哈馬斯戰爭 美國、伊朗和贊助人的困境 以色列和哈馬斯的支持者並未引發加薩戰爭，但他們可以結束戰爭 作者：喬斯特‧希爾特曼 2024 年 3 月 28 日 2024 年 2 月，伊拉克納傑夫，為在美國空襲中喪生的卡塔布真主黨領導人阿布巴吉爾薩阿迪舉行的送葬隊伍 正如人們廣泛指出的那樣，以色列安全官員對哈馬斯 10 月 7 日令人震驚的襲擊完全措手不及，這一疏忽導致暴動持續了數小時，然後以色列軍隊才重新控制。但以色列人並不是唯一沒有準備好的人。哈馬斯自己的盟友也是如此，包括其主要贊助人伊朗。正如伊朗及其所謂抵抗軸心的其他成員明確表示的那樣，哈馬斯未能尋求其計劃的批准或事先通知他們。 但伊朗官員認為，他們不能讓哈馬斯為自己奮鬥，特別是當以色列在加薩走廊的毀滅性軍事行動開始引發整個中東地區的憤怒之後。儘管如此，他們仍對引發更廣泛的戰爭持謹慎態度。因此，伊朗透過其軸心國客戶——包括黎巴嫩真主黨、也門胡塞武裝以及伊拉克和敘利亞的什葉派民兵——試圖在回應行動要求和阻止軸心國對以色列的反應之間保持微妙的平衡。從本質上講，哈馬斯在沒有與其表面上的霸主協調的情況下採取行動，引發了一場危險的危機，這場危機也有可能席捲德黑蘭。 加薩戰爭五個月後，美國面臨類似的問題。作為以色列的主要贊助人和盟友，美國堅定支持以色列剷除加薩哈馬斯的決心。然而，以色列政府卻不斷無視美國採取克制行動的要求，造成了一場人道災難，造成 3 萬多名巴勒斯坦人喪生。現在，以色列領導人威脅要對加薩南部的拉法地區發動大規模攻勢，拉法地區有超過一百萬平民，儘管拜登政府一再表示反對這項舉動。 由於不願聽從華盛頓的建議，以色列可能會削弱美國在中東的地位，讓拜登政府在想要為烏克蘭爭取全球支持之際面臨雙重標準的指控。它甚至可能最終將美國自己捲入該地區更廣泛的軍事衝突。美國和以色列領導人之間的分歧如此之大，以至於美國在3月25日採取了罕見的步驟，對聯合國安理會要求加薩停火的決議投了棄權票，而不是否決票。 儘管性質不同，但這兩個案例都說明了所謂的贊助人困境。幾十年來，從美國、俄羅斯到伊朗和沙烏地阿拉伯等全球和區域主要大國一直在尋求當地盟友和客戶，以擴大其在中東的影響力和投射力量。從理論上講，這種庇護關係有助於在大國之間提供緩衝，為否則可能升級的行動提供合理的推諉。但在武裝和支持這些地區依賴者時，贊助者也必須給予他們很大的空間來推行自己的政策。在當前加薩戰爭規模的武裝衝突中，缺乏直接控制可能會導致損害贊助者利益的事件，甚至有可能將他們拖入與對手的直接對抗。當國際領導人敦促加薩結束時，他們需要解決這種動態所帶來的特定風險和機會。 遠處的怪異動作 也許當今中東最複雜的庇護關係是伊朗與其各個當地盟友之間的關係。對伊朗來說，支持真主黨和哈馬斯等一系列地區組織構成了其所謂的「前線防禦戰略」。其目的是讓伊朗能夠在多條戰線上對針對其的任何攻擊或威脅做出軍事反應，而不必涉及伊朗軍隊。例如，以色列政府意識到真主黨的大型火箭武器庫可以到達以色列各地的目標，這為伊朗提供了重要的保險政策。但這項戰略的成功仍需要伊朗決定何時何地啟動其客戶。 伊朗和軸心國成員致力於讓美軍撤離中東。但德黑蘭認為這是一個長期目標，需要透過逐步讓美國在該地區維持軍事足跡變得更加困難，並且在當地更加不受歡迎來實現。伊朗當地盟友的魯莽行動可能會造成不可預測的局勢，從而破壞這些雙重目標，哈馬斯 10 月 7 日的襲擊就生動地表明了這一點。 在軸心國組織中，真主黨與伊朗關係特別密切：正如伊朗需要該組織作為其在以色列邊境的前沿防禦一樣，真主黨也需要伊朗的資金和軍事支持來確保其在黎巴嫩的主導地位。因此，未經伊朗批准，真主黨不太可能對以色列發動全面攻擊。與哈馬斯的聯絡相比，真主黨與其贊助人的關係更具共生性。然而，如果德黑蘭阻止真主黨按照其認為適合黎巴嫩環境的方式運作，無論是作為一個參與議會和政府的政黨還是作為一支軍隊，即使是真主黨也會宣布毫無疑問地效忠於德黑蘭，這一點值得懷疑。 捲入也門戰爭的胡塞武裝與其伊朗支持者的關係更具彈性。作為也門多年來的政治棄兒，他們長期以來一直向伊朗尋求支持。然而，胡塞武裝不只一次無視伊朗的戰略指導。例如，2015年，胡塞武裝佔領也門首都薩那後，德黑蘭建議他們不要向南衝向亞丁，試圖完全控制國家。但他們還是繼續前行，被困在南方，最後被迫撤退。正如也門紅海部隊指揮官兼該國總統領導委員會副主席塔里克·薩利赫(Tareq Saleh) 一月份在他位於紅海小鎮莫卡的軍事總部對我和一位同事說的那樣：“伊朗具有戰略意義：它一步一步行動。但胡塞武裝已經不耐煩了。他們想搬家——現在。這種魯莽行為可能會給伊朗帶來麻煩。 2024 年 3 月，也門薩那，胡塞武裝在加薩集會支持巴勒斯坦人 2024 年 3 月，也門薩那，胡塞武裝在加薩集會支持巴勒斯坦人 哈立德·阿卜杜拉/路透社 在這種情況下，胡塞武裝的衝動得到了回報。值得注意的是，在亞丁攻勢之後，伊朗開始向胡塞武裝提供軍事援助，使他們能夠抵禦沙烏地阿拉伯和阿聯酋的干預，同時保持伊朗在也門的影響力。此外，胡塞武裝的對手——沙烏地阿拉伯支持的國際公認的也門政府軍隊——的徹底分裂，確保了胡塞武裝能夠維持對也門大部分地區的控制，而伊朗也能在那裡獲得穩步增長的影響力。隨著也門戰爭的深入，伊朗的支持不斷增加，使胡塞武裝能夠向沙烏地阿拉伯和阿拉伯聯合大公國派遣無人機和飛彈。這為德黑蘭對抗其地區競爭對手提供了明顯的壓力點。 伊朗和沙烏地阿拉伯一年前恢復外交關係後，地區緊張局勢有所緩解。加薩戰爭為胡塞武裝提供了增強其國內影響力的機會，這次他們對紅海和亞丁灣的商業航運發動持續攻擊。在這樣做的過程中，他們一直在與伊朗支持的聯盟的其他成員合作。 作為遜尼派伊斯蘭組織，哈馬斯與伊朗的關係更為寬鬆。從2012年開始，當敘利亞的民眾起義開始威脅巴沙爾·阿薩德總統的政權時，哈馬斯與敘利亞政府及其贊助人伊朗決裂，因為他們正在攻擊遜尼派叛亂組織。結果，哈馬斯領導人被迫離開大馬士革，伊朗也減少了對該組織的資助。哈馬斯與德黑蘭的關係在 10 月 7 日襲擊發生前幾年才得到修復，當時哈馬斯在加薩的軍事領導人在該組織中取得了主導地位。這些領導人恢復了哈馬斯與伊朗的關係，伊朗開始提供他們資金、武器和軍事訓練。 對德黑蘭來說，哈馬斯加入軸心意味著它現在可以從黎巴嫩和加薩兩個方向對以色列施加壓力，理論上甚至可以迫使以色列打兩線戰爭。然而，默契是哈馬斯將繼續以自 2007 年控制加薩以來在加沙發動的各種戰爭中相對有限的方式對抗以色列。希望其軸心盟友能夠趕來援助。相反，這次襲擊使伊朗和真主黨陷入了微妙的境地：雙方都在努力表達對哈馬斯和巴勒斯坦人的支持，同時與哈馬斯的行動保持距離並避免升級。 罪與罰 正如加薩戰爭所表明的那樣，贊助人必須特別小心，以防止他們的客戶失控，無論他們是以色列這樣的國家還是伊朗當地盟友這樣的非國家團體。想想一月份伊朗支持的伊拉克準軍事組織卡塔布真主黨對約旦東部美國軍事哨所的攻擊。據廣泛報道，1月28日，該組織派出一架武裝無人機進入前哨基地，殺死了三名美國士兵。儘管這起事件可能是誤判而非故意，但這是多年來美國士兵首次被伊朗支持的組織殺害。美國反擊，轟炸了敘利亞和伊拉克的多個準軍事設施，炸死了40 多名屬於其他伊拉克準軍事組織的戰士（包括一些沒有得到伊朗直接支持的組織），以及負責敘利亞行動的卡塔布真主黨高級指揮官，阿布·巴吉爾·薩阿迪。 事實上，伊朗和卡塔布真主黨指揮官都立即意識到22號塔的攻擊已經跨越了美國的紅線。事件發生後數小時內，伊朗聖城軍指揮官埃斯梅爾·加尼飛往巴格達，勸告伊朗在伊拉克​​的客戶團體停止對美軍的攻擊。卡塔布真主黨立即宣布暫停軍事行動，並與志同道合的伊拉克組織一起撤離在敘利亞的陣地。加尼的迅速反應向華盛頓發出訊號，顯示伊朗無意使局勢升級；伊朗透過沙烏地阿拉伯並可能透過其他管道向拜登政府發出了類似的訊息。此外，儘管美國殺害卡塔布真主黨指揮官薩阿迪在伊拉克激起了憤怒，軸心國組織卻沒有採取任何報復行動，儘管卡塔布真主黨後來推翻了先前暫停行動的決定。此後，伊拉克組織恢復了對敘利亞的襲擊，但明確遵守不殺害美國人的紅線。 但這並不是伊朗第一次感到有必要對卡塔布真主黨施加壓力。 2019 年底，美國軍隊對該組織的一名承包商（顯然是死於伊斯蘭國之手）的死亡進行了報復，殺死了多名真主黨旅戰士，之後該組織指揮一群憤怒的支持者襲擊了美國駐巴格達大使館。儘管他們未能滲透到接待區以外的大院，但這次襲擊說服川普政府殺死了加尼的前軸心經理卡西姆·蘇萊馬尼。 2020 年初，一架無人機在巴格達國際機場殺死了阿布·馬赫迪·穆漢迪斯(Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis)，他是卡塔布真主黨(Kataib Hezbollah) 領導人、伊朗支持的伊拉克準軍事組織副協調員。 哈馬斯領導人伊斯梅爾·哈尼亞 (Ismail Haniyeh) 於 2024 年 3 月在德黑蘭舉行的新聞發布會上 哈馬斯領導人伊斯梅爾·哈尼亞 (Ismail Haniyeh) 於 2024 年 3 月在德黑蘭舉行的新聞發布會上 馬吉德·阿斯加里普爾/WANA/路透社 值得注意的是，儘管伊朗對駐伊拉克美軍殺害蘇萊馬尼進行了報復，但它也通過切斷該組織與伊朗最高領導人阿里·哈梅內伊的直接聯繫，表達了對卡塔布真主黨未經授權襲擊大使館的不滿。這種接觸對卡塔布真主黨等什葉派伊斯蘭組織很重要，因為正如去年 12 月一名伊拉克記者向巴格達的一位同事和我解釋的那樣，接觸哈梅內伊（該組織的穆爾希德，阿拉伯語的精神導師）是一項罕見的榮譽，這表明德黑蘭的重要性重視這種夥伴關係。 伊朗可以採取進一步措施控制其客戶，包括暫停軍事支援。但大多數軸心國成員似乎都很清楚伊朗希望他們遵守的紅線。例如，在對紅海航運的襲擊中，胡塞武裝一直小心翼翼地不殺死美國水手，儘管考慮到他們發射了大量彈藥，這也可能是運氣問題。此外，從胡塞武裝持續不斷的攻擊來看，美國和英國的打擊並沒有顯著威懾胡塞武裝。為什麼胡塞武裝在加強攻擊的同時卻沒有針對美國人員，更合理的解釋是德黑蘭命令他們不要這樣做。 透過 10 月 7 日的襲擊，哈馬斯在藐視其贊助人的潛規則方面比任何其他軸心組織都走得更遠。這次襲擊引發了與以色列的殘酷戰爭，在哈馬斯和軸心國之間造成了嚴重裂痕。伊朗和真主黨已經表達了對哈馬斯的不滿，因為哈馬斯未能向他們通報其計劃，而哈馬斯似乎嚴重錯誤估計了以色列的反應，這無疑加劇了這種反應。哈馬斯領導人則對軸心國缺乏更強有力的支持表示深感失望，甚至暗示伊朗對為巴勒斯坦人實現真正的變革不感興趣。 「伊朗在道德和精神上支持巴勒斯坦人，但不符合巴勒斯坦人的願望，」一位哈馬斯政治領導人去年 12 月在杜哈告訴我。 “這強化了巴勒斯坦人應該為自己挺身而出的想法。” 因此，加薩戰爭使德黑蘭陷入了困境，這在某種程度上是自己造成的。透過將哈馬斯武裝到可以對以色列發動強大軍事攻擊的程度，伊朗已經失去了對其前沿防禦戰略所需的組織的控制。戰爭的結果是不確定的，並且可能不會以軸心國成員所說的永久停火來結束。因此，更廣泛戰爭的風險仍然存在，而且隨著加薩人道災難的加劇，這種風險只會增加。 魔法師的學徒 伊朗並不是唯一必須應對不守規矩的當地盟友的國家。美國也必須如此，它發現以色列現任領導階層是最頑固的合作夥伴。美國和以色列在消除哈馬斯威脅以色列能力的目標上達成一致，但在手段上存在巨大分歧。以色列數月的空中和地面進攻摧毀了加薩大部分地區，導致數萬名平民死傷，並使近 200 萬人流離失所（幾乎是該地區的全部人口），拜登誓言他將擁有“與以色列總理本傑明·內塔尼亞胡一起來到耶穌身邊」的時刻。但這位以色列領導人的權力不穩定取決於其右翼聯盟夥伴的持續支持，儘管他的國家仍然嚴重依賴美國的武器和彈藥，但他卻公然無視美國的擔憂和戰略指導。 這種緊張關係因以色列威脅對拉法發動攻擊而達到了緊要關頭。拉法位於加薩南部，現在有超過一百萬巴勒斯坦人從該領土其他地區被背井離鄉，拉法已經面臨人道主義危機，對拜登來說，以色列對其的襲擊已經成為紅線。為了要求以色列採取措施限制對拉法平民的傷害，拜登召集以色列官員前往華盛頓討論他們計劃的攻擊。從理論上講，這應該是讚助人懲罰其客戶的機會。但事實上，美以關係變得複雜得多。 美國國務卿安東尼·布林肯於 2024 年 3 月抵達以色列特拉維夫舉行會談 美國國務卿安東尼·布林肯於 2024 年 3 月抵達以色列特拉維夫舉行會談 伊芙琳霍克/路透社 3月25日，美國對聯合國安理會停火決議投了棄權票——這罕見地背離了華盛頓在這個論壇上一貫保護以色列的立場——內塔尼亞胡的回應是取消了以色列代表團的華盛頓之行。目前尚不清楚內塔尼亞胡是否只是簡單地利用進攻威脅迫使哈馬斯按照以色列的條件停火，或者確實打算派遣以色列國防軍進入拉法追擊據稱駐紮在那裡的剩餘哈馬斯營。不管怎樣，這位以色列領導人堅決反對拜登強烈表達的停火願望。 這種不尋常的決裂提出了一個問題：美國如何利用其對以色列的真正影響力：使其例行提供的巨額軍事援助——特別是在加薩使用的進攻性武器——以以色列結盟為條件與美國結束戰爭的方法一致。答案可能部分在於美國對加薩走廊以色列的支持被認為會在多大程度上影響拜登 11 月的選舉機會。但如果不採取這樣的步驟，美國和歐洲國家無力遏制以色列已經對其世界地位產生了實質的影響。例如，美國和歐盟外交官員發現其貿易和發展夥伴敞開的大門突然關閉。中國和俄羅斯等全球競爭對手已經試圖利用非洲、拉丁美洲和亞洲民眾的憤怒，因為西方在俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭和以色列長期軍事佔領巴勒斯坦領土的反應中採取了雙重標準，這可能會讓他們的處境變得更加困難。 圍繞加薩戰爭的事件可能會加速美國實力的衰落，在這種情況下，美國的實力是受到以色列的幫助和慫恿的，以色列是一個頑固的附庸國，一心想透過軍事手段來解決其在持久敵對環境中尋求更大安全的長期追求。如果不與巴勒斯坦人透過談判達成解決方案（美國長期以來聲稱支持的做法），以色列很難實現這一目標，76 年來一直未能實現這一目標。 贊助人解決方案？ 對伊朗和美國來說，加薩戰爭引發了更危險的直接軍事對抗風險。兩國政府都表示，至少目前他們不尋求這樣的對峙。這讓人放心。然而，在庇護關係中並不存在所謂的完全控制，也沒有萬無一失的方法可以防止意外或誤判引發全面的地區戰爭。當雙方鷹派都敦促各自領導人採取更激烈的報復行動時，地區對峙的升級週期就很難遏制——就像一些共和黨國會議員在卡塔布真主黨事件後呼籲拜登政府尋求對伊朗進行報復一樣。 反過來，贊助人的當地盟友也必須對自己的公眾做出回應，特別是在事態需要時。例如，如果真主黨或巴勒斯坦從黎巴嫩發射的火箭擊中以色列城市並造成大規模傷亡，以色列領導人幾乎肯定別無選擇，只能以比目前更強的武力回應。此外，數以萬計的以色列人和大致相當數量的黎巴嫩人離開以色列和黎巴嫩邊境兩側的家園，這給兩國領導人帶來了新的壓力。雙方民眾都要求採取果斷行動──如果無法透過外交手段採取軍事行動──讓流離失所者安全返回。 對這些風險的認識可能在一定程度上解釋了華盛頓和德黑蘭自10 月7 日以來努力與各自合作夥伴保持一定距離的原因。藝術，表明他們不贊成客戶的主張。 （即使是美國在聯合國安理會上不同尋常的棄權也應該這樣理解。） 伊朗和美國都有製止戰爭的工具。 考慮到其中一個客戶的魯莽決定或升級行為可能引發地區戰爭，贊助人應該熱衷於採取措施來降低這種情況的風險。雙方都有辦法控制自己，但只有當他們相信自己可以避免在過程中丟臉時，他們才會這樣做。這需要默契，可以透過悄悄的後門外交來實現。令人鼓舞的是，自 10 月 7 日以來，美國和伊朗高級官員至少進行了兩次間接會談，兩國政府也透過其他間接方式向對方傳遞了訊息。 對伊朗來說，最好的出路是卡達——不是盟友，而是與其保持友好關係的國家——成功地斡旋加薩停火，伊朗一直試圖與美國和埃及一起協調停火。沒有跡象顯示伊朗正在阻礙這一目標的實現；相反，伊朗官員知道，如果他們希望從伊朗最近與沙烏地阿拉伯和阿聯酋的和解中獲得經濟利益，他們就不能破壞海灣地區支持的停火。然而，如果停火協議落實，德黑蘭將需要讓其當地盟友退出：真主黨必須停止對以色列的攻擊，胡塞武裝必須停止對航運的攻擊，伊拉克準軍事組織必須停止對以色列的攻擊。伊拉克和敘利亞利益的攻擊。伊朗官員可能不會放棄將美國趕出中東的戰略目標，但可能會敦促其軸心勢力在短期內退縮。 對美國來說，加薩停火也將是擺脫贊助人困境的最佳途徑。然而，為了讓以色列同意其中一項，拜登政府將需要開始採取更多手段。華盛頓需要要求以色列透過停火來實現其戰爭目標，並與美國、阿拉伯政府和歐洲密切協調，為加薩起草一份可行的日後計畫。而美國需要用實際行動來支持這個訴求。當其他誘因不起作用時，顯而易見的槓桿就是根據結束戰爭的進展來調整攻擊性武器的持續供應。同樣，華盛頓可以透過停止出口以色列定居者使用的自動步槍來嘗試減少以色列在約旦河西岸的暴力行為。 當前戰爭中最大的諷刺之一可能是，作為任性客戶的贊助人，美國和伊朗的共同點可能比他們意識到的要多。雙方都將從結束地區戰爭風險的停火中受益。可以說，雙方都可以在幕後獲得一些支持這樣的停火協議並確保其有效的功勞。當然，贊助人何時能夠阻止這場戰爭，甚至是否能夠阻止這場戰爭還遠未確定。但與其他外部勢力不同的是，他們至少擁有這樣做的工具。如果他們不盡快使用它們，他們可能會發現加薩戰爭只是一場更危險的大火的前奏。 喬斯特‧希爾特曼 (JOOST HILTERMANN) 是國際危機組織中東和北非計畫主任。 更多喬斯特·R·希爾特曼的作品 更多的： 美國 中東 以色列 巴勒斯坦 領土 地緣 政治 安全 防禦與軍事 戰略與衝突 戰爭與軍事戰略 美國外交政策巴以衝突 以色列 與哈馬斯戰爭哈馬斯美以關係 加薩真主黨 最常閱讀的文章 哈馬斯如何結束 讓團體打敗自己的策略 奧黛麗·庫爾思·克羅寧 去全球化的危險神話 對全球經濟的誤解正在推動糟糕的政策 布拉德·塞瑟 普丁在南高加索的隱藏遊戲 阿塞拜疆的崛起、喬治亞的漂移以及俄羅斯尋求通往伊朗和中東的門戶 托馬斯·德瓦爾 印度與中國的危險邊境對峙 莫迪的強硬立場可能會招致而不是阻止中國的侵略 普拉文·東西 推薦文章 2024 年 1 月，胡塞武裝支持者在葉門薩那集會 伊朗的新好朋友 胡塞武裝已成為德黑蘭尋求地區主導地位的關鍵合作夥伴 穆罕默德·阿亞圖拉希·塔巴爾 伊朗總統易卜拉欣·萊西 2023 年 2 月在北京會見中國國家主席習近平 伊朗的新贊助人 為什麼中國和俄羅斯加強支持力度 魯埃爾·馬克·格里克特和雷·塔基 最常閱讀的文章 哈馬斯如何結束 讓團體打敗自己的策略 奧黛麗·庫爾思·克羅寧 去全球化的危險神話 對全球經濟的誤解正在推動糟糕的政策 布拉德·塞瑟 普丁在南高加索的隱藏遊戲 阿塞拜疆的崛起、喬治亞的漂移以及俄羅斯尋求通往伊朗和中東的門戶 托馬斯·德瓦爾 印度與中國的危險邊境對峙 莫迪的強硬立場可能會招致而不是阻止中國的侵略 普拉文·東西 推薦文章 2024 年 5 月，德黑蘭，在為在直升機失事中喪生的萊西和其他人舉行的葬禮上 伊朗強硬派之死 易卜拉欣·萊西幫助策劃了伊斯蘭共和國的鷹派轉向——無論誰接替他都不會改變路線 穆罕默德·阿亞圖拉希·塔巴爾 2024 年 2 月，伊拉克納傑夫，為在美國空襲中喪生的卡塔布真主黨領導人阿布巴吉爾薩阿迪舉行的送葬隊伍 美國、伊朗和贊助人的困境 以色列和哈馬斯的支持者並未引發加薩戰爭，但他們可以結束戰爭 喬斯特·希爾特曼 去全球化的危險神話 對全球經濟的誤解正在推動糟糕的政策 布拉德·塞瑟 2024 年 6 月 4 日 2024 年 5 月，一艘貨櫃船離開巴西桑托斯港 人們正在形成一種共識，即世界正在分裂——不僅在地緣政治上，而且在經濟上也是如此。 2020 年，經濟學家道格拉斯·歐文 (Douglas Irwin) 寫道，“COVID-19 大流行正在推動世界經濟從全球經濟一體化中倒退。”此後的幾年裡，如何應對這種所謂的去全球化一直是世界經濟論壇會議的一致主題。五月，《經濟學人》的封面描繪了一幅世界地圖，其中的世界實際上分裂成相互競爭的經濟集團。相關報告認為，去全球化是長期必然的結果，並認為「隨著投資人在一體化程度較低的世界中重新定價資產並重新調整資本，經濟數據中可以明顯看出去全球化」。上週，彭博社的一位專欄作家繼續說道，“全球貿易和金融正在分裂成相互競爭且日益敵對的集團，一個以中國為中心，延伸到南半球，另一個則圍繞美國和其他西方國家。” 但去全球化是事實的假設存在一個問題：數據並沒有完全支持這個觀點。作為持續去全球化的證據，觀察家經常引用諸如美國不願建立新的自由貿易協定、世界貿易組織（WTO）監督的爭端解決體係遭到削弱、新的國家限制措施激增等現象。和長期資本流動從過去的高峰下降。 COVID -19大流行確實揭示了經濟相互依賴帶來的風險，以及俄羅斯自 2022 年以來利用其天然氣管道影響七國集團對其入侵烏克蘭的反應所做的努力，以及七國集團的許多製裁7 號法令旨在削弱俄羅斯經濟，凸顯了各國跨越地緣政治分歧進行貿易時可能出現的脆弱性。但仔細觀察經濟數據就會發現，儘管各國政府越來越多地採取旨在增強自身抵禦能力的政策，但世界經濟在關鍵方面仍在不斷演變，變得更加全球化，而不是減弱，尤其是更加依賴中國的供應。 疫情期間全球貿易激增，世界對華貿易不減反增。大流行時代從服務轉向商品的轉變是這項加速的部分原因。但與中國貿易的成長也反映出這樣一個事實，即中國祇是以很少有人能比擬的價格生產產品——電動車、風力渦輪機、太陽能電池板以及重要電子和電池組件等高科技出口產品。 2019年至2023年間，中國製造業順差佔全球GDP的比重上升了約1個百分點；現在它的盈餘遠大於世界其他製造強國德國和日本的盈餘。 資本流動的下降也沒有表面看起來那麼嚴重。例如，2016 年後外國直接投資 (FDI) 的下降很大程度上是由於稅收法規的具體變化導致盧森堡、荷蘭和其他一些歐洲主要稅收國家大幅減少了專用工具的使用中心。而且稅收簡化並沒有削弱全球化中不太令人愉快的一種形式：貿易和金融流動似乎只是跨國避稅的工具。 現在普遍存在的對世界經濟的誤解產生了後果。政策制定者透過將更多的全球貿易流量等同於效率的提高來捍衛全球化的努力往往忽視了現實更為複雜的情況：例如，即使是那些追求健康形式的全球化的國家也需要努力減少跨國公司的避稅行為。更根本的是，如果觀察家淡化世界經濟整合的程度，他們就會低估破壞世界經濟的行動的成本，例如在台灣問題上發動衝突或美國單方面退出貿易。世界領導人必須採取措施增強經濟韌性，但他們必須先了解這些措施的真正成本。 交易升級 2016 年美國總統川普當選後，世界經濟正去全球化的觀點開始盛行。川普在言論中否定了二戰後兩黨就自由貿易價值達成的共識。他也做出了一些真正的政策轉變：退出跨太平洋夥伴關係協定（TPP），重新談判北美自由貿易協定以收緊汽車貿易的原產地規則，並對大約五分之三的汽車徵收關稅。和中國之間的貿易。 但全球化如今已根深蒂固，此類雙邊貿易政策幾乎沒有改變其基本軌跡。新的貿易協定和關稅計劃總是會引起大量關注。事實上，現代自由貿易協定中關稅稅率的變化往往很小，因為大多數關稅已經很低或為零。缺乏進入美國市場優惠的國家仍然可以在世貿組織的標準貿易條件下取得令人難以置信的出色表現。事實上，過去六年來，美國從東南亞的進口激增。川普退出TPP後，TPP東南亞成員國對美國的出口成長速度比以前快得多。 任何關於貿易驅動因素的嚴肅討論都必須超越關稅和貿易協定。貨幣價值也影響貿易流量，全球儲蓄和投資模式也是如此。自美國退出TPP以來，美元一直保持強勢，美國消費者毫不猶豫地購買外國商品，有助於推動美國進口的成長。 自2018年川普徵收關稅以來，中國對美國的出口有所下降，據報道，中國持有的美國國債和政府支持機構債券也有所下降。但這些指標不足以衡量這兩個經濟體的真正相互連結。在考慮美國大肆宣揚的雙邊關稅對中國產品的影響時，重要的是要超越顯示從中國直接進口下降的美國數據 ，並更多地關注中國本身的數據。令人驚訝的是，這些數據顯示，中國與美國的直接貿易降幅要小得多，而中國對美國出口增加的國家的出口卻急劇增加。國際清算銀行和經濟學家卡洛琳·弗羅因德對川普關稅影響的仔細研究發現，雙邊關稅最重要的影響是拉長供應鏈，而不是全球貿易整體萎縮或美國基本面下降。對中國關鍵投入的依賴。現在，更多的中國零件將運往馬來西亞、泰國和越南（還有少量運往墨西哥）進行最終組裝。對中國的潛在依賴較不明顯，但也同樣嚴重。 事實上，自從川普徵收關稅以來，中國經濟在世界貿易中變得更加重要。這裡的數據點經常被美國和歐洲評論員忽視，但它們是明確的。從2018年底到2023年底的五年間，中國製成品出口成長了40%，從2.5兆美元成長到3.5兆美元，遠高於2013年至2018年約15%的增幅。 儘管全球金融危機後中國出口占GDP的比重下降，但出口再次成為中國經濟成長的重要推手。扣除 零件進口後，中國製成品出口佔GDP的比重從疫情前的約11%增至2022年的14%。 ：雖然2023年出口成長因全球消費者支出減少而放緩，但目前已經復甦，2024年第一季出口量成長超過10%。上升2018 年佔中國 GDP 的百分比到 2023 年將達到驚人的 10%。 中國疫情後的出口繁榮削弱了世界經濟正去全球化的論點。儘管中國經濟存在種種弱點，但其商品生產規模仍是其他國家無法比擬的。在持續十多年的房地產繁榮結束後，中國透過加大投資用於出口製成品的生產來應對內部需求疲軟的情況。考慮一個重要產業的發展軌跡：汽車。 從歷史上看，中國並不是主要的汽車出口國。但隨著國內汽車需求下降，中國在短短三年內從汽車淨進口國變成全球最大汽車出口國。這股出口浪潮不會減弱：中國可以生產至少兩倍的內燃機汽車來滿足不斷萎縮的國內需求，而中國領先的電動車製造商比亞迪正在將產能提高一倍，以增加出口。很難想像比比亞迪現在從中國造船廠訂購的龐大汽車運輸船隊更能體現中國與全球經濟整合的穩定發展。 躲避球 美國政策制定者有理由擔心世界在供應方面過度依賴中國，特別是在清潔能源和綠色技術方面。美國國家經濟委員會主任萊爾·布雷納德在5月中旬的一次演講中說得好：「中國的工業產能及其在某些領域的出口現在如此之大，以至於可能會損害美國和其他國家投資的可行性。 ……市場需要可靠的需求訊號和公平競爭，讓最好的公司和技術能夠創新並投資於清潔能源和其他領域。中國政府已明確表示，中國對電動車、太陽能電池板和電池的大規模投資是有效佔領這些領域的有意戰略。 中國的政策制定者也應該擔心中國的經濟已經變得過於依賴世界需求。但事實似乎並非如此。中國領導人習近平支持「新生產力」的政策，加上他對「福利主義」的抵製或許令人驚訝，導致國內經濟失衡，必須日益將其內部扭曲外部化。過去幾年，中國製造業順差相對於世界GDP的成長幅度與中國加入世貿組織後的第一次中國衝擊時的水平相當，當時中國出口激增，中國製造業順差急劇上升，導致全球各地的工人失業。作為世界GDP的一部分，中國的製造業盈餘目前大幅超過二戰結束以來任何其他國家的盈餘記錄。 然而，中國需要透過出口成長，並不是全球化令人驚訝的韌性的唯一解釋。另一個是企業避稅。製藥公司行為方式的變化頗具啟發性：美國製藥公司現在經常將有前途的新藥的利潤權出售給位於低稅收管轄區的子公司。這些藥物在國外生產，然後在美國以高價出售。結果，美國主要製藥公司和其他跨國公司現在報告幾乎所有利潤都在國外賺取，並且很少或根本不繳納國內企業所得稅。這種特殊形式的全球化超出了製藥業的範圍：美國跨國公司現在經常在海外生產，以便在離岸避稅天堂獲得巨額利潤。 愛爾蘭這個低稅天堂，而不是中國或印度，現在是迄今為止美國最大的藥品出口國：2023年，美國從愛爾蘭進口的藥品數量是從加拿大、中國、印度和墨西哥的總和。這一趨勢遠遠超出了製藥領域。愛爾蘭也是美國研發服務出口的最大全球市場。開曼群島和英屬維京群島是美國金融服務最大的出口市場，百慕達是美國主要的國際保險服務供應國。國際貨幣基金組織 2017 年的一項研究表明，2008-09 年全球金融危機後 FDI 流動的彈性在很大程度上可歸因於透過企業避稅中心的 FDI 流動的穩定增長。 2015年，經濟合作暨發展組織成員國同意改變稅務法規，試圖讓企業更難將利潤轉移到零稅管轄區。但這些在2020年底實施的變化並沒有遏制避稅驅動的全球化。遵循蘋果公司首創的稅收策略，許多美國大公司指示其愛爾蘭子公司在零稅管轄區收購受影響的子公司，有效地「支撐」其智慧財產權，同時產生大量折舊津貼，降低了其有效稅率在愛爾蘭。 這些措施使企業避稅行為更加明顯，因為愛爾蘭是唯一遵循歐洲嚴格的經濟和國際收支資料揭露標準的避稅中心。因此，很容易追蹤外國跨國公司在愛爾蘭的利潤如何從十年前的每年約 400 億美元飆升至如今的每年超過 1800 億美元，目前約佔愛爾蘭實際國內經濟的 70%。更重要的是，這些利潤佔歐元區GDP的百分之一以上，占美國GDP的近四分之三。由此造成的美國稅收損失遠比大多數分析所描述的要大，因為企業沒有動力強調他們在美國實際繳納的稅款有多麼少。 風險逆轉 如果包括政治領導人和有影響力的評論家在內的許多人誤解了當代全球化的軌跡，並誇大了政治支持下降對進一步經濟整合的影響，為什麼這很重要？首先，如果政策制定者將討論重點放在去全球化的成本上，他們就有可能忽視許多不健康的全球化形式，這些形式仍然存在，並且相對不受干擾地持續存在。中國在中美洲去工業化中的作用現已廣受認可。但美國企業稅法在去工業化中所扮演的角色卻並非如此。允許美國企業繼續使用避稅策略，將利潤和生產轉移出美國，對全球經濟來說是不健康的，即使這會促進美國貿易和外國投資的措施。相反，如果美國國會修改稅法以提高全球最低稅率，並加大將美國創造的智慧財產權轉移到低稅率司法管轄區的難度，美國製藥公司可能會將其利潤最高的藥品的生產轉移出去愛爾蘭和新加坡等地點，然後返回美國。 那些擔心去全球化的人也常常認為所有形式的經濟整合都是健康的。但事實並非如此：例如，全球金融危機前跨境銀行流動的激增反映了世界大銀行的槓桿率和風險水平不健康。今天，世界上過多的外國直接投資流量也僅僅反映了避稅，而不是生產性經濟活動。 還有一個相反的風險：如果政策制定者不承認全球化持續的程度，他們就會嚴重低估中美貿易更全面脫鉤所帶來的衝擊。即使美國對中國加徵關稅，世界經濟仍深度融合。如果有什麼不同的話，那就是自川普徵收關稅以來，中國在全球貿易中變得更加重要，美中之間的相互依存關係被掩蓋了，而不是被切斷了。例如，如果美國沒有巨額貿易逆差，中國就不可能實現目前8,000億美元的貨物貿易順差。中國央行不再透過直接購買美國債券來彌補赤字。但它仍然是由中國間接融資的，其形式是中國出口商現在在海外持有大量美元庫存。中國的順差仍然是美國赤字的鏡像，這只是美國和中國經濟繼續相互依賴的眾多複雜形式之一，儘管這種聯繫在主要經濟數據中變得越來越難以看出。 美國公司稅法在全球化中所扮演的角色常常不為人所知。 事實上，一定程度的去全球化也可能是健康的。如果中國減少對全球需求的依賴來彌補其內部弱點，那麼對其貿易夥伴製造業的壓力就會減少，美國、大多數歐洲國家和其他民主國家對中國關鍵投入的過度依賴也會減少。但目前，中國面臨透過增加出口來解決國內經濟問題的強大壓力，這可能會繼續推動世界走向更深層、更不平衡的經濟整合。美國正試圖在電動車領域抵制這種壓力，但代價是美國消費者付出了代價。然而，隨著中國電動車企業走向全球，美國能否僅透過對雙邊貿易徵收關稅來成功隔離本國電動車產業尚不清楚。避免與中國的相互依賴可能需要更大的政策轉變，並且更願意支付區域而非全球一體化供應鏈的成本。 從歷史上看，汽車貿易的區域性多於全球性。在中國供應不斷增長的情況下保持這種貿易模式將需要對貿易施加更多限制。但這些部門限制只能限制新的一體化形式的發展；它們無法逆轉全球化。中國現在為七國集團決策者帶來的最大經濟挑戰是如何限制中國日益依賴出口和製造業的經濟所帶來的混亂。關於去全球化的討論沒有切中要害。 對美國來說，在不久的將來，任何與中國經濟的真正脫鉤都將付出高昂的代價——遠比過去幾年表面脫鉤的代價要高得多。美國避免雙邊關稅的一個簡單且相對便宜的方法是從越南進口中國運往越南進行最終組裝的零件。將中國零件完全排除在美國供應鏈之外將會困難得多。中國也同樣難以重組經濟，因此更依賴內需。 去全球化為分析師提供了一個簡單的故事來講述全球經濟的變化。但現實更為複雜：簡單地說，美國有巨額赤字、中國有巨額順差的全球經濟不可能真正分裂。世界需要就經濟一體化的弊端和好處進行良性辯論。但這場辯論必須先坦白承認，當代全球經濟的許多特徵仍然推動著更多而不是更少的一體化，而解決這些因素將付出實際代價。 您正在閱讀一篇免費文章。 訂閱《外交事務》 布拉德·塞瑟是外交關係委員會惠特尼·謝潑德森高級研究員。 布拉德塞瑟的更多作品 更多的： 亞洲 中國 世界 外交 全球化 經濟 商業 經濟發展 貿易 美國外交政策 拜登政府 中美關係 最常閱讀的文章 哈馬斯如何結束 讓團體打敗自己的策略 奧黛麗·庫爾思·克羅寧 去全球化的危險神話 對全球經濟的誤解正在推動糟糕的政策 布拉德·塞瑟 普丁在南高加索的隱藏遊戲 阿塞拜疆的崛起、喬治亞的漂移以及俄羅斯尋求通往伊朗和中東的門戶 托馬斯·德瓦爾 印度與中國的危險邊境對峙 莫迪的強硬立場可能會招致而不是阻止中國的侵略 普拉文·東西 推薦文章 2024 年 5 月，中國合肥一家工廠組裝太陽能板 中國不切實際的創新探索 集權經濟無法培養創造力 喬治·馬格努斯 美國總統川普於 2020 年 1 月在華盛頓特區與美國貿易代表羅伯特萊特希澤交談 自由貿易後 川普的遺產和全球經濟的未來 羅伯特·E·萊特希澤；戈登·H·漢森 The Dangerous Myth of Deglobalization Misperceptions of the Global Economy Are Driving Bad Policies By Brad Setser June 4, 2024 A container ship leaving the port of Santos, Brazil, May 2024 Aconsensus is emerging that the world is cleaving into blocs—not only geopolitically but economically, too. In 2020, the economist Douglas Irwin wrote that “the COVID-19 pandemic is driving the world economy to retreat from global economic integration.” In the years since, how to manage this purported deglobalization has been a consistent theme at World Economic Forum meetings; in May, an Economist cover depicted a map of the world physically fracturing into competing economic blocs. The associated story presumed that deglobalization is a long-term certainty, arguing that it is becoming “visible in the economic data, as investors reprice assets and redirect capital in a less integrated world.” Last week, a Bloomberg columnist piled on, concluding that “global trade and finance are fragmenting into rival and increasingly hostile blocs, one centered on China and extending into the global South and another around the United States and other Western countries.” But there is a problem with the assumption that deglobalization is a fact on the ground: the data does not fully back it up. As evidence of continuing deglobalization, observers often cite phenomena such as the United States’ reluctance to establish new free-trade deals, the debilitation of the dispute-settlement system overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the proliferation of new national measures restricting trade, and declines in both short- and long-term capital flows from their past peaks. The COVID-19 pandemic certainly did reveal that economic interdependence carries risks, and the efforts Russia has made since 2022 to use its natural gas pipelines to influence the G-7’s response to its invasion of Ukraine—as well as the many sanctions the G-7 has imposed to try to weaken Russia’s economy—have highlighted the vulnerabilities that can arise when countries trade across geopolitical divides. But a closer look at economic data shows that even though governments have increasingly adopted policies aimed at strengthening their own resilience, the world economy is still evolving to become more, not less, globalized in key ways—and more dependent on Chinese supply in particular. Global trade surged during the pandemic, and the world’s trade with China accelerated rather than slowed. A pandemic-era shift toward goods and away from services partly accounts for the acceleration. But the growth in trade with China also reflects the fact that China is simply producing things—high-tech exports such as electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, and vital electronic and battery components—at a price point few can match. Between 2019 and 2023, China’s manufacturing surplus rose by about a percentage point of global GDP; it is now far larger than the surpluses run by Germany and Japan, the world’s other manufacturing powerhouses. There is also less to the fall in capital flows than meets the eye. The decline in foreign direct investment (FDI) after 2016, for example, largely resulted from specific changes in tax regulations that led to a big reduction in the use of special-purpose vehicles in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and a few other key European tax centers. And that tax simplification has not blunted one of the less savory forms of globalization: trade and financial flows that appear to serve only as a vehicle for multinational tax avoidance. The now pervasive misperception of the world’s economy has consequences. Policymakers’ efforts to defend globalization by equating more global trade flows with increased efficiency tend to ignore the ways reality is more complex: for example, even those pursuing a healthy form of globalization will need to work to reduce multinational corporations’ tax avoidance. More fundamentally, if observers downplay the extent to which the world’s economies are still integrated, they will underestimate the cost of actions that would fracture the world economy, such as launching a conflict over Taiwan or a unilateral U.S. retreat from trade. World leaders must take steps to increase their economies’ resilience, but they must first understand those steps’ true costs. TRADING UP The idea that the world’s economy is deglobalizing took hold after the 2016 election of U.S. President Donald Trump. In his rhetoric, Trump repudiated the post–World War II bipartisan consensus around the value of free trade. And he also made some genuine policy shifts: pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement to tighten the rules of origin for the trade of automobiles, and introducing tariffs on roughly three-fifths of the trade between the United States and China. But globalization has deep roots by now, and such bilateral trade policies did little to change its fundamental trajectory. New trade deals and tariff programs always get a lot of ink. In reality, the changes in tariff rates in modern free-trade deals tend to be small, as most tariffs are already low or zero. Countries lacking preferential access to the U.S. market can still do incredibly well with the WTO’s standard trade terms. In fact, U.S. imports from Southeast Asia have soared in the past half dozen years. The Southeast Asian members of the TPP increased their exports to the United States much more rapidly after Trump withdrew from the TPP than they had been able to before. Any serious discussion of what drives trade must extend beyond tariffs and trade deals. The value of currencies also factors into trade flows, as do worldwide patterns of saving and investment. The dollar has remained strong since the United States withdrew from the TPP, and American consumers have not hesitated to buy foreign goods, helping drive the growth in U.S. imports. Chinese exports to the United States are down since the 2018 introduction of the Trump tariffs, as are China’s reported holdings of U.S. Treasury and government-backed agency bonds. But those indicators are poor measures of these two economies’ true interconnection. When considering the impact of the United States’ much-ballyhooed bilateral tariffs on Chinese products, it is important to look beyond U.S. data showing a fall in direct imports from China and pay more attention to data from China itself. Surprisingly, those data reveal a much smaller decline in direct trade with the United States and a steep rise in Chinese exports to countries that are now exporting more to the United States. Careful studies of the impact of the Trump tariffs by the Bank of International Settlements and the economist Caroline Freund have found that the most important effect of bilateral tariffs was to lengthen supply chains, not to shrink overall global trade or to reduce the United States’ fundamental reliance on Chinese-sourced critical inputs. More Chinese parts now head to Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam—and to a more modest degree, Mexico—for final assembly. The underlying dependence on China is less visible, but no less substantial. In fact, since the introduction of the Trump tariffs, China’s economy has become only more central to world trade. The data points here are often overlooked by American and European commentators, but they are unambiguous. Over the five years between the end of 2018 and the end of 2023, China’s exports of manufactured goods increased by 40 percent, from $2.5 trillion to $3.5 trillion, much more than the roughly 15 percent increase between 2013 and 2018. Although China’s ratio of exports to GDP fell in the years following the global financial crisis, exports have once again become a crucial driver of Chinese growth. After discounting imports of parts, China’s exports of manufactured goods increased from around 11 percent of GDP before the pandemic to 14 percent of GDP in 2022. Predictions that this increase would turn out to be a one-off pandemic-related surge have not been borne out: although export growth slowed in 2023 as consumer spending diminished worldwide, it has now recovered, with export volumes growing by over ten percent in the first quarter of 2024. China’s manufacturing surplus has increased even more dramatically, rising from a low of around six percent of China’s GDP in 2018 to a stunning ten percent in 2023. China’s post-pandemic export boom undermines the argument that the world’s economy is deglobalizing. For all of China’s economic weaknesses, it can still produce goods at a scale that no other country can match. After the end of a property boom that lasted more than a decade, China responded to weakening internal demand by investing more in the production of manufactured goods for export. Consider the trajectory in one prominent sector: automobiles. Historically, China was not a major auto exporter. But as domestic automobile demand trended downward, China went from being a net importer of automobiles to the world’s largest exporter of them in just three years. This export wave is not about to weaken: China can produce at least twice as many internal combustion cars as it needs to meet shrinking domestic demand, and the country’s leading electric car manufacturer, BYD, is doubling its production capacity to ramp up exports. It is hard to think of a more potent symbol of China’s steadily growing integration with the global economy than the enormous fleet of car carriers BYD now has on order from Chinese shipyards. DODGE BALL U.S. policymakers are rightly concerned that the world has become too reliant on China for supply, particularly with respect to clean energy and green technology. In a mid-May speech, Lael Brainard, the director of the U.S. National Economic Council, put it well: “China’s industrial capacity and its exports in certain sectors are now so large that they can undermine the viability of investments in the U.S. and other countries. … Markets need reliable demand signals and fair competition for the best firms and technologies to be able to innovate and invest in clean energy and other sectors. The Chinese government has made clear that China’s massive investments in electric vehicles, solar panels, and batteries are an intentional strategy to effectively capture these sectors.” Chinese policymakers should be equally worried that their country’s economy has become too dependent on the world for demand. But they do not appear to be. Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s policy of supporting “new productive forces,” together with his perhaps surprising resistance to “welfarism,” has yielded an unbalanced domestic economy that increasingly must externalize its internal distortions. China’s surplus in manufacturing has risen as much relative to world GDP in the last few years as it did during the first China shock following the country’s accession to the WTO, when a surge in Chinese exports and a sharp rise in China’s manufacturing surplus displaced workers across the world’s advanced economies. As a share of the world’s GDP, China’s manufacturing surplus now substantially exceeds any other country’s recorded surplus since the end of World War II. China’s need to grow through exports, however, is not the only explanation for globalization’s surprising resilience. Another is corporate tax avoidance. Changes in the way pharmaceutical companies behave are illuminating: U.S. pharmaceutical firms now often sell the rights to profit from promising new drugs to subsidiaries located in low-tax jurisdictions. These drugs are manufactured abroad and then sold at a high price in the United States. As a result, the major U.S. pharmaceutical companies—and other multinationals—now report earning almost all their profits abroad and pay little or no domestic corporate income tax. This particular form of globalization extends beyond the pharma industry: American multinationals now often produce abroad in order to book large profits in offshore tax havens. The low-tax haven of Ireland, and not China or India, is now by far the largest exporter of pharmaceuticals to the United States: in 2023, the United States imported twice as many pharmaceutical products from Ireland as it did from Canada, China, India, and Mexico combined. The trend extends well beyond pharmaceuticals. Ireland is also the biggest global market for the export of U.S. research-and-development services. The Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands are the biggest export markets for U.S. financial services, and Bermuda is the United States’ main international supplier of insurance services. A 2017 International Monetary Fund study showed that the resilience of FDI flows in the wake of the 2008–09 global financial crisis can largely be credited to a steady rise in FDI flows through centers of corporate tax avoidance. In 2015, the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development agreed to change their tax regulations to try to make it harder for companies to locate their profits in zero-tax jurisdictions. But these changes, which were implemented at the end of 2020, have not curbed tax-avoidance-driven globalization. Following a tax strategy pioneered by Apple, a number of major U.S. companies directed their Irish subsidiaries to buy their affected subsidiaries in zero-tax jurisdictions, effectively “Ireland-shoring” their intellectual property while simultaneously generating large depreciation allowances that lower their effective tax rates in Ireland. These moves have made corporate tax avoidance more visible because Ireland is the only center of tax avoidance that follows Europe’s rigorous standards for the disclosure of economic and balance-of-payments data. Consequently, it is easy to track how foreign multinationals’ profits in Ireland have soared from around 40 billion dollars per year ten years ago to over 180 billion dollars per year today and now constitute roughly 70 percent of Ireland’s real domestic economy. Even more important, these profits represent over one percent of the eurozone’s GDP and close to three-quarters of a percent of the United States’ GDP. The resulting loss of U.S. tax revenue is far larger than most analyses capture, because corporations have no incentive to highlight just how little tax they actually pay in the United States. RISK REVERSAL Why does it matter if many people, including political leaders and influential commentators, misunderstand the trajectory of contemporary globalization and overstate the impact of a decline in political support for further economic integration? First, if policymakers focus discussion on the costs of deglobalization, they risk overlooking the many unhealthy forms of globalization that still exist and persist relatively undisturbed. China’s role in middle America’s deindustrialization is now widely acknowledged. But the role that the U.S. corporate tax code plays in that deindustrialization is not. Allowing American corporations to continue to use tax-avoidance strategies that transfer profits and production out of the United States is unhealthy for the global economy, even if it boosts measures of U.S. trade and foreign investment. If, instead, the U.S. Congress changed the tax laws to raise the global minimum tax and made it harder to shift intellectual property created in the United States to low-tax jurisdictions, U.S. pharmaceutical companies would likely shift the production of their most profitable drugs out of locations such as Ireland and Singapore and back to the United States. Those who worry about deglobalization also often assume that all forms of economic integration are healthy. But they are not: the surge in cross-border bank flows before the global financial crisis, for example, reflected an unhealthy level of leverage and risk in the world’s big banks. Today, too, an excessive amount of the world’s FDI flows merely reflect tax avoidance, not productive economic activity. There is also an opposing risk: that if policymakers do not acknowledge the degree to which globalization persists, they will grossly underestimate the shocks that would stem from a fuller decoupling of Chinese and U.S. trade. Even with the rise in U.S. tariffs on China, the world’s economy is still deeply integrated. If anything, China has become more central to global trade since Trump imposed his tariffs, and U.S.-Chinese interdependence has been masked, not severed. For instance, China could not have achieved its current $800 billion trade surplus in goods if the United States did not have a large trade deficit. That deficit is no longer financed by the direct purchase of U.S. bonds by China’s central bank. But it is still indirectly financed by China, in the form of the large stockpiles of dollars that Chinese exporters now hold offshore. The way China surplus’s remains the mirror image of the U.S. deficit is just one of the many, complex forms in which the U.S. and Chinese economies continue to rely on one another, even as the ties become harder to see in topline economic data. The role that the U.S. corporate tax code plays in globalization often goes unacknowledged. Some deglobalization here could, in fact, also be healthy. If China relied less on global demand to make up for its internal weaknesses, that would put less pressure on its trading partners’ manufacturing sectors as well as reduce the overdependence of the United States, most European countries, and other democracies on China for critical inputs. But right now, the strong pressures on China to solve its domestic economic problems by increasing exports are likely to keep driving the world toward deeper, more unbalanced economic integration. The United States is trying to resist this pressure in the realm of electric vehicles, at a cost to U.S. consumers. As Chinese electric vehicle firms go global, however, it is not clear that the United States can successfully insulate its own electric vehicle industry simply by imposing tariffs on bilateral trade. Avoiding interdependence with China would likely require bigger policy shifts—and a greater willingness to pay for the costs of regionally rather than globally integrated supply chains. Historically, the trade in automobiles has always been more regional than global; preserving that trading pattern in the face of a growing Chinese supply will require more restrictions on trade. But those sectoral restrictions can only limit the development of new forms of integration; they cannot reverse globalization writ large. The biggest economic challenge China now poses to G-7 policymakers is how to limit the dislocations that flow from China’s increasingly export- and manufacturing-dependent economy. Discussions about deglobalization miss the point. For the United States in the near future, any true decoupling from the Chinese economy would be costly—far more costly than the past few years’ superficial decoupling. An easy, and relatively cheap, way for the United States to avoid bilateral tariffs is to import parts from Vietnam that China has shipped there for final assembly. It would be much harder to engineer Chinese parts out of U.S. supply chains entirely. And it would be equally difficult for China to restructure its economy so it relies more on internal demand. Deglobalization offers analysts a simple story to tell about changes to the global economy. But the reality is more complex: put plainly, it is impossible for a global economy characterized by a large U.S. deficit on one side and a large Chinese surplus on the other to truly fragment. The world needs to have a healthy debate about the drawbacks and benefits of economic integration. But that debate must start from a frank acknowledgment that many characteristics of the contemporary global economy still push toward more, not less, integration, and that addressing these ​factors will have real costs. BRAD SETSER is Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. MORE BY BRAD SETSER More: Asia China World Diplomacy Globalization Economics Business Economic Development Trade U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration U.S.-Chinese Relations Most-Read Articles How Hamas Ends A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself Audrey Kurth Cronin The Dangerous Myth of Deglobalization Misperceptions of the Global Economy Are Driving Bad Policies Brad Setser Putin’s Hidden Game in the South Caucasus Azerbaijan’s Rise, Georgia’s Drift, and Russia’s Quest for a Gateway to Iran and the Middle East Thomas de Waal India’s Perilous Border Standoff With China Modi’s Tough Stance Could Invite—Not Deter—Chinese Aggression Praveen Donthi Recommended Articles Assembling solar panels at a factory in Hefei, China, May 2024 China’s Quixotic Quest to Innovate A Statist Economy Can’t Foster Creativity George Magnus U.S. President Donald Trump talking with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer in Washington, D.C., January 2020 After Free Trade Trump’s Legacy and the Future of the Global Economy Robert E. Lighthizer; Gordon H. Hanson How Climate Change Threatens Democracy Extreme Weather Now Affects Elections All Over the World By Karen Florini and Alice C. Hill June 5, 2024 Waiting to vote in Bhubaneswar, India, May 2024 This year, at least 68 countries will hold elections, with billions of voters heading to the polls. Voting will be subject to many of the usual electoral risks, including disinformation campaigns, foreign interference, and rigging by incumbents. In some states, both incumbents and challengers could even use violence to keep certain people at home. But there will be another factor, one not yet widely considered, that could skew results: the physical forces unleashed by climate change. They present a unique and novel challenge. Although all electoral threats are serious, the ones brought by climate change have the potential to disenfranchise voters even in the absence of malevolent intent. The disenfranchisement of even a few voters can make a profound difference in election outcomes, as in the case of the 537 votes in Florida that determined the U.S. presidential election in 2000. As extreme weather events become more frequent, the risk to voters will grow. Electoral authorities in all countries, including Australia, Canada, India, and the United States, must take action to ensure that—even if polling places, ID cards, and communication networks are damaged or destroyed—citizens can exercise their fundamental democratic right to vote. Options include relocating polling stations, making the rules on registration more flexible, and protecting communications networks. FLOODING THE POLLS Since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s, societies have produced ever higher amounts of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, chiefly by burning fossil fuels. These gases linger in the atmosphere for decades, if not centuries, and there are now more of them in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 4.3 million years. Temperatures are soaring as a result. Every one of the ten hottest years in recorded history occurred during the past decade, with 2023 leading the pack. In the 2015 Paris agreement, 196 countries and international bodies—including China, the United States, and the European Union—pledged to limit the increase in global average temperature to below two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and preferably to 1.5 degrees. But the necessary commitments to achieve these goals have yet to be made, much less implemented. Moreover, although these numbers may sound modest, detailed analyses by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group of scientists charged with informing UN climate negotiations, show that every tenth of a degree of warming above 1.5 has a severe impact. Higher temperatures bring more intensity to hurricanes and cyclones, for example, as well as inland and coastal flooding, wildfires, and extreme heat waves. In 2023, global temperatures climbed to 1.36 degrees above preindustrial levels. Recent assessments by the UN Environment Program conclude that by 2100 the planet will reach three degrees above preindustrial levels unless current policies are strengthened. Already, extreme-weather disasters are occurring with greater frequency. In the United States, billion-dollar catastrophes—including wildfires, severe storms, and flooding—struck on average every two to three months during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Now they occur on average every two to three weeks. Similar trends likely exist around the world. As a result, emergency responders, government officials, and nongovernmental aid groups have less time to respond, recover, and redeploy. And when weather disasters repeatedly strike a particular community, residents struggling with the aftermath of one calamity find themselves less able to deal with the next—physically, financially, and psychologically. Such disasters will surely upend elections. Indeed, they already have. Between January 2019 and January 2024, more than a dozen countries contended with extreme weather events around the time of local or national elections, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. In March 2019, for example, Mozambique was hit by Cyclone Idai just before the opening of the voter registration period. The storm displaced more than 400,000 people, many of whom lost the identity documents that they needed to register to vote. The storm also destroyed thousands of classrooms used as registration, polling, and vote-counting centers. Six weeks later, Cyclone Kenneth struck, destroying electoral registers, polling materials, and printers. Meanwhile, outbreaks of cholera, which can spike after flooding, further impeded voting. A similar situation occurred in Pakistan in 2022, when extreme precipitation led to flooding that covered a third of the country before its national contest. Close to eight million people were displaced, with hundreds of thousands moving into temporary shelters. Some of the displaced could not access government-issued national identity cards, which meant that they could neither register nor vote. Meanwhile, floodwaters severely damaged many polling places. It made others completely inaccessible. Analysis by World Weather Attribution, an international scientific consortium, concluded that climate change likely made the extreme precipitation 50 percent more intense. Richer countries have more resources to respond to climate-worsened disasters. But they are by no means immune to disruption. In the United States, Hurricane Ian hit Florida just six weeks before the 2022 midterm elections, damaging polling locations and other infrastructure used by more than 12 percent of the registered electorate. Rainfall from Hurricane Ian was 18 percent higher than it would have been in the absence of climate change, according to researchers at SUNY and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Then, beginning in March 2023, Canada suffered the worst year of fires in its history, leaving it struggling to conduct regional elections. Climate change doubled the risk of the spring wildfires by creating hot, dry, and windy conditions, which persisted for the rest of the year. In the fall, wildfires spread to the sparsely populated Northwest Territories and displaced 65 percent of inhabitants in the weeks leading up to the general election. And in Spain, extreme heat during July 2023 prompted some voters to don swimwear to cast their ballots. The World Weather Attribution consortium concluded that the month’s maximum heat would have been “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change. EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED If current trends continue, extreme weather events will increasingly compromise citizens’ right to vote. Election officials must therefore understand how climate change can affect elections. They must think, of course, about election day itself, when voters must often stand outdoors for hours in line to cast their votes. In an era of extreme heat, such queues will be dangerous for those at risk of heat stress, including those over 65 or with medical conditions, as well as pregnant women and children brought by their parents. But election day is just the tip of the iceberg. As previous disasters have made evident, extreme-weather events can disrupt activities along the months-long electoral process, from voter registration through to vote counting. Severe weather can also impact candidates’ campaigns, as well as canvassing by their supporters. Climate disruptions hardly end when extreme weather does. Voters driven from their homes by emergency conditions may flee without the identity documents they need to register or cast a ballot. Even if they do get their papers out, floodwaters or flames may damage or destroy them. Voters may also face lengthy periods of displacement far from their assigned polling places if their homes remain uninhabitable. Even for those voters who are not displaced, road closures and other lingering transportation disruptions can make it impossible to reach the polls. Similarly, climate-worsened disasters can displace election officials and poll workers, rendering them unable to reach their offices or polling stations, which may themselves have been damaged or destroyed. When storms interrupt power supplies, election officials face additional challenges both in keeping polling places operational and in communicating with colleagues and the public. And ballots themselves can be destroyed by the same elements that take out identity documents, either before distribution or after their collection. If current trends continue, extreme weather events will increasingly compromise citizens’ right to vote. Regardless of whether one’s vote determines the outcome of an election, individuals who are unable to vote because of climate-driven extreme weather lose a fundamental democratic right. Preparing for the inevitable worsening of climate impacts on elections is, therefore, essential. Yet almost no one has taken action. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, for example, advised in 2014 that “advance planning minimizes the disruption and aids in a quick recovery while preserving the security and integrity of the election.” But a decade later, U.S. election officials have largely ignored climate risks in their planning, even as they make other changes to the electoral system. Americans can increasingly vote by mail, for example, but battered roads may prevent postal services from delivering ballots or conveying completed ballots to election officials. Other countries are also failing. In 2023, the Election Commission of India revised its Manual on Electoral Risk Management to include a section on natural disasters. The updated manual, however, makes no mention of climate change or extreme heat. This is despite the fact that most voters under 80 are required to vote in person and India has experienced high temperatures during this year’s elections, which began in April and stretch into early June. During much of that period, human-caused climate change made extreme heat in portions of the country at least fivefold more likely, according to the Climate Shift Index. To protect human health, the head of the Indian meteorological service, Mrutyunjay Mohapatra, urged authorities to provide adequate supplies of water, as well as fans and air-conditioned spaces. Notwithstanding these measures, voter turnout was significantly lower than normal, prompting Indian authorities to create a task force to examine the impact of heat waves on the election. News reports indicate that at least 77 people died from the extreme heat during the final ten days of voting, including 33 poll workers. Elsewhere election officials have embraced new, more flexible approaches, on a mostly ad hoc basis. Following a devastating storm in Quebec in 2022, Canada extended polling station hours. In the midst of the 2023 wildfires, the province of Alberta offered to mail special ballots to 29,000 evacuated residents and the Northwest Territories broadened its “Vote Anywhere” initiative, allowing voters to use any polling location within the jurisdiction. The Territories also postponed its elections by six weeks. After flooding in 2022, Australia allowed flood victims to vote by phone, an option that previously had been allowed only for disabled voters because of the significant staff time required. Meanwhile, in the United States, California has developed mobile voting units that it can deploy during disasters. But these initiatives, although all useful, are not yet broad enough, or systemic enough, to make sure elections are resilient to disasters. VOTING IN A WARMING WORLD To better account for climate change, election officials can start by improving their own capacity to prepare for and respond to disasters through training and planning. Officials can, for example, use widely available tools to assess climate risks when organizing elections, including Climate Central’s Coastal Risk Screening Tool, which provides free, highly localized flood risk maps for coastal communities—allowing officials to identify safer locations for polling stations. Artificial intelligence may be able to play a role in site selection by digesting data on vulnerabilities, population locations, power sources, potential transportation disruptions, and other variables. Officials must also afford themselves greater flexibility in running elections. Experts at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems recommend measures such as allowing same-day voter registration, thereby permitting citizens to register and cast ballots in a single process, and creating online systems to enable voters to update their addresses more easily after displacement. Another option is allowing voters multiday periods in which to cast their votes. Officials could also let voters obtain replacement or temporary ID cards at no cost. Similarly, installing backup election and power equipment, creating alternative methods to produce or reprint ballots, and expanding avenues of public outreach can lessen voting disruptions. Major disasters typically disrupt communications, meaning that climate-resilient election plans should include robust methods to inform citizens of when and where to vote, and to inform polling officials of changes to their duties. Where electrical power is available, radio and television announcements can spread information about alternative polling places, expanded times, and other adjustments, as can social media if connectivity allows. Nongovernmental organizations can help election officials in getting the word out. In the United States, the Lawyers’ Committee on Human Rights runs nonpartisan hotlines to answer questions from voters regarding election processes. Such hotlines can help disseminate updated information. The right to vote is fundamental to democracy. Climate extremes will batter and test it, as they already have. But building more resilient election infrastructure and introducing greater flexibility in how, when, and where people register and vote can limit the damage. Doing so will be increasingly essential on a rapidly warming planet. Every voter should have the ability to cast a vote that gets counted—no matter the weather. KAREN FLORINI is Vice President of Strategic Impact at Climate Central. ALICE C. HILL is David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council of Foreign Relations. MORE BY KAREN FLORINI MORE BY ALICE HILL More: World Campaigns & Elections Environment Climate Change Politics & Society Civil Society Political Development Most-Read Articles How Hamas Ends A Strategy for Letting the Group Defeat Itself Audrey Kurth Cronin The Dangerous Myth of Deglobalization Misperceptions of the Global Economy Are Driving Bad Policies Brad Setser Putin’s Hidden Game in the South Caucasus Azerbaijan’s Rise, Georgia’s Drift, and Russia’s Quest for a Gateway to Iran and the Middle East Thomas de Waal India’s Perilous Border Standoff With China Modi’s Tough Stance Could Invite—Not Deter—Chinese Aggression Praveen Donthi Recommended Articles An African National Congress rally, Johannesburg, South Africa, May 2024 South Africa’s High-Stakes, Low-Impact Election Why an End to the ANC’s 30-Year Reign Won’t Change the Country Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh A Reset for America and Mexico? What New Leadership—Possibly in Both Countries—​Might Mean for Cooperation Shannon K. O’Neil India’s Perilous Border Standoff With China Modi’s Tough Stance Could Invite—Not Deter—Chinese Aggression By Praveen Donthi June 4, 2024 An Indian air force helicopter in the Ladakh region of India, September 2020 High up in the mostly uninhabitable stretches of the Himalaya Mountains, the world’s two largest armies are facing off. The tensions at the disputed Chinese-Indian border, where around 100,000 troops are garrisoned at remote outposts, rarely makes international headlines. But it is one of the world’s most dangerous flash points. In 2020, clashes at the border left over 20 soldiers dead, marking the most significant fighting between China and India since the two countries fought a war in 1962. Tensions at the roof of the world have persisted ever since. In the last four years, both sides have sought to build up infrastructure and position yet more troops along the border. Just as China spars with many of its neighbors over competing territorial claims, the unresolved boundary dispute with India is a great source of volatility. The annual threat assessment released in March by the U.S. director of national intelligence warned that sporadic encounters between Indian and Chinese troops “risk miscalculation and escalation into armed conflict.” The deepening border crisis reflects the growing strategic rivalry between India and China. Bilateral ties sharply deteriorated in the wake of the 2020 clashes. Facing China’s superior military and its increasingly aggressive foreign policy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to deepen India’s alignment with the United States and other countries wary of Beijing. He has embraced India’s new role as a counterbalance to China in the Indo-Pacific. He has boosted the country’s participation in the so-called Quad, its security partnership with Australia, Japan, and the United States. And he has ensured that in many areas, bilateral relations between China and India are functionally frozen, harking back to the era between 1962 and 1988 when the two countries did not maintain normal diplomatic ties because of the border dispute. Beyond the border—the most dangerous flash point—Indian officials see Beijing entering their backyard. India has long claimed that China is using its alliance with India’s archnemesis, Pakistan, to keep India pinned down in the region. China’s belligerence also resurrects India’s old strategic concern about a potential two-front war with Pakistan acting in tandem with China. Across South Asia, China and India are also vying for influence in smaller countries, such as Bangladesh, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Modi seems to have realized that the expansion of India’s role on the international stage will depend on how it manages China militarily and politically. At the time of publication, he looked likely to win a third term as prime minister in this year’s parliamentary elections. If his victory is confirmed, it will be propelled in part by the strength of the image he projects of himself as a confident world leader driving India toward great-power status—and keeping China in check. This increasingly aggressive stance, however, is likely to invite more trouble. Modi’s tack toward Washington makes the rivalry between India and China look like a subset of the bigger competition between China and the United States. Some Indian analysts fear that this state of play will encourage Beijing to deal with Washington directly rather than with New Delhi, reinforcing perceptions in India that China does not see it as an equal. India’s closer alignment with the United States might also encourage China to use coercive tactics toward India to send a firm message to the United States and its allies. Although it may serve a domestic purpose, Modi’s strongman posturing makes diplomacy with China harder, thereby prolonging the crisis. To be sure, Modi has engaged Beijing before, and little came of those efforts. But getting back to high-level talks with China remains the best bet for both establishing stability on the border and burnishing India’s great-power credentials. ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD The origins of China and India’s border dispute go back to the 1950s, when Chinese forces occupied Tibet, which had long served as a buffer zone between the two countries. The governments of China and India inherited the borders of the regimes they replaced, the Qing dynasty and British India, leading to a welter of overlapping claims. In 1962, a brief war broke out along the disputed border, resulting in a crushing defeat for India. That humiliating loss engendered a deep and lasting distrust of China that haunts Indian policymakers to this day. A de facto border imposed by Beijing after 1962 called the Line of Actual Control (LAC) functions as a working boundary, although the two countries do not agree on exactly where it lies. Between 1993 and 2013, Indian and Chinese diplomats signed a series of border agreements to try to minimize the dispute and reduce the risk of violent escalation by restricting, for instance, the use of firearms by both armies. But the fundamental disagreement persisted and sparked recurring flare-ups, including a streak of border standoffs in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017. Both countries sought to paper over their differences through two informal summits in 2018 and 2019, but the worst was yet to come. In the spring of 2020, thousands of Chinese troops advanced into areas claimed by India, leading to clashes in which at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed. After every big crisis in the past, both sides tried to work out peace agreements and suppress their differences—but not after the 2020 clash. In an interview in April, Modi finally admitted that the standoff had taken a toll on relations between India and China: “the prolonged situation on our borders,” he said, has led to “abnormality in our bilateral interactions.” China has loomed larger over many of India’s strategic and foreign policy choices in the last four years. Since gaining independence in 1947, India has sought strategic autonomy and pursued a policy of general nonalignment, eschewing formal alliances. But China’s increasingly aggressive posture and growing power in Asia has pushed India’s foreign policymakers toward the United States and its allies. The two largest armies in the world face off high in the Himalayas. This is not the turn Modi had hoped for. Before he came to power in 2014, he warned Beijing to shed its “expansionist mindset.” But that tough talk belied tangible moves to establish trust and a one-to-one channel with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Modi enthusiastically sought deeper economic ties, welcomed Xi to India a few months into his first term, and traveled to Beijing in May 2015 to visit Xi. Between 2014 and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Modi met with Xi 18 times and visited China five times, an unprecedented level of interaction between the two countries’ leaders. This bonhomie, however, did not produce any real change in Beijing’s foreign policy. Its long-standing alliance with Islamabad remained intact. And China worked to thwart Modi’s global ambitions. New Delhi resented Beijing for standing in the way of India’s efforts to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council in 2015 and for failing to back India’s entry to the elite Nuclear Suppliers Group in 2016. China blocked Indian appeals to the UN Security Council between 2016 to 2019 to designate the chief of the Pakistani jihadist group Jaish-e-Muhammed, which was responsible for attacks on Indian soil, as a terrorist. Then China ratcheted up the pressure on the border. In line with other expansionist moves in the South China Sea, where it has sparred with the Philippines and other countries over maritime claims, China grew bolder in asserting its territorial claims in the Himalayas and in criticizing India for any attempt to strengthen its position in those regions. The bloody clash that ensued in 2020 and the resulting Chinese land grabs put Modi in a difficult position, as admitting that China had brazenly taken land claimed by India would make him appear weak. Initially, he flatly denied that Chinese troops had crossed the border and entered Indian territory. He asserted that not even an inch of land has been lost, although by some accounts India has lost access to around 775 square miles that it once patrolled. He continues to avoid talking directly about China, out of fear of inviting scrutiny of the fact that India has lost ground to its neighbor on his watch. At the same time, his government has retaliated through other means. It has banned 59 Chinese apps, targeted Chinese companies with tax raids, and created hurdles for Chinese investment. Indian public opinion has also grown steadily more hostile to China, disincentivizing diplomatic engagement and compromise. Modi’s domestic critics and political opponents have blamed him for losing territory to China, but that has not hurt his government. By pounding the drum of Hindu nationalism and insisting on India’s great-power status, Modi has deflected domestic criticism of his foreign policy. With the help of a pliant Indian media and a fervently pro-government social media, there is little discussion about India’s China policy in the public sphere, never mind in Parliament. His hardened stance against China has helped him forge stronger ties with the United States and its allies, but it has done little to resolve the underlying dispute or bring stability back to the border. NOT FRIENDS, NOT ENEMIES In the words of Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s foreign policy is now focused on how “to manage a more powerful neighbor while ensuring its own rise.” In line with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s predilection for condemning prior governments, Jaishankar has argued that former Indian leaders were responsible for “consciously underrating the China challenge” until Modi brought about a strategic revolution and more openly aligned with the United States. New Delhi and Washington were already “natural allies,” according to Indian officials in 1998; they signed a civil nuclear deal in 2005 and became “closest partners” in 2013. But the Modi government took this defense and security relationship from fine words to hard fact. In 2016, India signed a military logistics pact with the United States, which soon designated India a “major defense partner” on par with its “closest allies and partners.” Once studiously nonaligned, India under Modi has drifted ever closer to the American camp. As the rivalry between China and India becomes subsumed by broader geopolitical dynamics, the border is becoming more volatile. The prospect of either side’s ceding ground and striking a territorial compromise appears to be vanishingly small. Over 20 rounds of high-level military talks since the 2020 clash have yielded little progress, and any small provocation or miscalculation could easily provoke another round of fighting. With China consolidating its military positions in the last four years and India trying to mirror those moves, the border has been significantly militarized, and an accidental escalation could carry very serious consequences. Modi may well feel he has landed on a strategy that wins him domestic popularity. But if he does not change his approach to China, he risks undermining all his gains by taking India to the point of no return with a full-scale armed conflict that he can ill afford. The best way forward for India would be to restart high-level political engagement to address differences related to the Himalayan dispute with China. Many of these disagreements may take a long time to resolve, but some can be broached. In the interim, both sides must make crisis management an urgent priority, reassert their commitment to the existing bilateral agreements, and explore ways to strengthen them, given the fast-changing dynamics on the border. Both China and India can take small steps toward the goal of permanently delineating the LAC by restarting the process of border demarcation, which came to a halt in 2002. Modi can ill afford to take India to the point of no return and a full-scale armed conflict with China. New Delhi could take a page out of Washington’s playbook in managing its relationship with Beijing by striving to set up guardrails and prevent a competitive relationship from escalating into an outright feud, without having to achieve a full reconciliation. This would, of course, require Beijing to be willing to engage, which is not guaranteed. But by sticking to his strongman image for domestic purposes, Modi heightens the risk of turning the border into a permanent flash point. In the past year, China has reached out to the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and Vietnam—but not to its neighbor India, sending a message that it’s in no hurry to resolve the crisis. The fact that Indians have a very low opinion of China at the moment is likely dissuading Modi from making any overture lest he appear to be normalizing relations. But he has enough political capital and nationalist credentials to convince the public that leader-to-leader discussions will advance India’s interests. It will take high-level negotiations to break this impasse. Meetings between Chinese and Indian military officials since 2020 are little more than formalities. Only the engagement of the top leaders will bring about any real change. Any resolution to the border dispute may involve both countries’ exchanging stretches of territory with the other—and Modi will have to convince an increasingly jingoistic Indian public that such compromise is worth it. But it is in the interest of both Beijing and New Delhi not to let this crisis escalate. China does not want to divert resources from its primary security concern in the east, the near seas in the Pacific, to its western front with India. Modi does not want to get caught in a prolonged crisis with a more powerful neighbor that would impede his domestic and global ambitions. Returning stability to the border between China and India falls short of rapprochement, but it would be a far better outcome than overt war. PRAVEEN DONTHI is Senior Analyst for India at the International Crisis Group. 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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 How the World Can Deal With Trump Advice for Leaders Facing the Potential Return of “America First” By Malcolm Turnbull May 31, 2024 Former U.S. President Donald Trump in New York City, May 2024 In this year of major elections around the world, none is more consequential than that in the United States on the first Tuesday in November. Polling suggests Donald Trump will enter the White House again in January 2025. If he does, he will return to office perhaps no wiser but certainly more experienced and more convinced than ever of his own exceptional genius. More ominously, he will be determined to rectify in his second term what he insists was the major failing of his first: that both his own advisers and Washington officialdom got in his way. Like most people, Trump