China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine· FA

FA-2024·8 Collecting material from a dead porpoise during an outbreak of bird flu in Sao Jose do Norte, Brazil, November 2023 The World Is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic Governments Need to Invest Far More in New and Better Vaccines Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Aras, Iran, October 2022 The Indomitable IRGC How the Revolutionary Guards Prevent Iran’s President From Charting a New Course Jon B. Alterman and Sanam Vakil This article is paywall-free America’s Missed Chance in Afghanistan How Washington’s Early Insistence on Total Victory Set the Stage for Defeat Michael A. Cohen, Christopher A. Preble, and Monica Duffy Toft This article is paywall-free What Was the Biden Doctrine? Leadership Without Hegemony Jessica T. Mathews Audio available for this article This article is paywall-free Most-Read Articles China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine Why Chinese Thinkers Underestimate the Costs of Complicity in Russia’s Aggression Jude Blanchette The Undoing of Israel The Dark Futures That Await After the War in Gaza Ilan Z. Baron and Ilai Z. Saltzman How Everything Became National Security And National Security Became Everything Daniel W. Drezner The Crisis of Indian Capitalism Why Politicians Choose Statist Solutions Over Economic Reforms Yamini Aiyar China’s Real Economic Crisis Why Beijing Won’t Give Up on a Failing Model Zongyuan Zoe Liu 世界尚未為下一次大流行做好準備 政府需要對新的更好的疫苗進行更多投資 邁克爾·T·奧斯特霍爾姆和馬克·奧爾沙克 2022 年 10 月，伊朗阿拉斯的伊斯蘭革命衛隊成員 不屈不撓的伊斯蘭革命衛隊 革命衛隊如何阻止伊朗總統制定新路線 喬恩·B·奧爾特曼和薩南·瓦基爾 美國在阿富汗錯失良機 華盛頓早期對全面勝利的堅持如何為失敗奠定了基礎 邁克爾·A·科恩、克里斯托弗·A·普雷布爾和莫妮卡·達菲·托夫特 什麼是拜登主義？ 沒有霸權的領導 傑西卡·馬修斯 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (Ilan Z. Baron) 與伊萊‧Z‧薩爾茲曼 (Ilai Z. Saltzman) 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 亞米尼·艾亞爾 中國真正的經濟危機 為什麼北京不會放棄失敗的模式 劉宗元 世界尚未為下一次大流行做好準備 政府需要對新的更好的疫苗進行更多投資 作者：邁克爾·T·奧斯特霍爾姆和馬克·奧爾沙克 2024 年 8 月 15 日 2023 年 11 月，巴西北聖若澤爆發禽流感期間，從死去的鼠海豚身上收集資料 COVID-19 爆發不到五年，世界仍然容易受到另一場大流行的影響。在過去五個月裡，在乳牛中檢測到的 H5N1 流感病毒突變株構成了引發大流行病毒的潛在風險。然而，各國政府和國際組織在應對這種情況方面做得太少，儘管他們應該從全球與 COVID-19 的鬥爭中吸取教訓。 在 COVID-19 危機暴露出全球公共衛生應對系統的缺陷後，許多人認為各國政府和國際組織將努力解決最明顯的問題。考慮到這場流行病對人類和經濟造成的災難性損失，各國有強烈的動機開始投入大量資金開發新一代更具保護性的流感和冠狀病毒疫苗，並大幅擴大全球製造和分銷網絡。但這並沒有發生。按照目前的資金水平，開發更有效、更持久的疫苗可能需要十年或更長時間。儘管有一些團體正在研究新的治療方法和其他抗病毒舉措，但總體而言，全球社會似乎並沒有比五年前更好地應對未來的冠狀病毒或流感大流行。 H5N1 流感在人類和動物的捲土重來凸顯了這些失敗。儘管該病毒在 20 世紀 90 年代就被發現，但在過去 20 年裡它不斷變異，一次又一次地自我改造。如今，它正在感染數百萬隻鳥類，但它也變得更有能力蔓延到至少 40 種哺乳動物。它仍然不容易在人與人之間傳播，但乳牛的感染表明存在新的大流行的風險，乳牛的乳房中同時具有禽流感病毒和人類流感病毒的流感受體。 我們不可能知道何時會出現新的大流行，也不可能知道哪種特定病原體會導致其發生。 H5N1 只是可能變異為引發大流行的病毒之一。但最終，這種情況將會發生。因此，現在是時候放棄模糊的建議和最佳實踐，轉向更大規模的計劃，旨在生產新的、更好的疫苗、抗病毒藥物和其他對策，並建立保護全體人口所需規模的基礎設施。儘管此類努力代價高昂，但不採取這些措施可能會帶來災難性的後果。 鳥類威脅 儘管 H5N1 病毒從未引起人類大流行，但幾十年來它一直受到公共衛生關注。它於 1996 年底首次被發現，當時一種新的流感病毒開始在亞洲鳥類中傳播，最初被稱為高致病性禽 H5N1。流感病毒株根據病毒粒子表面的兩種蛋白質（血凝素和神經氨酸酶）的特徵進行分類。該病原體因 1997 年在香港爆發疫情而引起國際關注，導致 18 名感染者中的 6 人死亡。為了控制疫情蔓延，香港被迫從市場和供應農場撲殺數百萬隻家禽。 2003年12月，H5N1再次出現。在接下來的三年裡，野生鳥類將病毒傳播給亞洲、非洲、歐洲和中東的家養水禽和雞。它還感染了有限數量的哺乳動物，包括泰國動物園的老虎，並最終感染了五個亞洲國家的 148 人。其中 79 例（53%）被證明是致命的。隨著病毒的傳播，公共衛生官員越來越擔心世界正處於毀滅性疫情的邊緣。 2005 年，在恐慌最嚴重的時候，我們中的一個人（奧斯特霍爾姆）寫了一篇外交事務文章，解釋政府應如何為這種情況做好準備。文章指出，世界衛生組織（WHO）和各國的大流行應對計劃含糊其辭，沒有為如何讓人們度過可能持續一到三年的大流行提供現實的藍圖。文章建議採取一項為全世界提供疫苗的舉措，並制定明確的時間表以確保及時實施。 幸運的是，H5N1 病毒並未在 2005 年引發大流行。 COVID-19 是一種新型冠狀病毒，因其病毒粒子表面的蛋白質尖峰使其具有類似日冕的外觀而得名，它開始感染中國武漢的數千人。很快，它傳遍了中國，然後傳遍了大陸，然後傳遍了世界。新冠肺炎 (COVID-19) 在第一年就感染了數億人，並導致至少 300 萬人死亡。 人類攪拌碗 流感大流行並不是一個新現象。 2009 年至 2010 年，H1N1 病毒（俗稱豬流感）在全球迅速傳播，估計導致 575,000 人死亡。在美國，疾病管制與預防中心 (CDC) 估計有 6,080 萬人感染，273,300 人住院，12,469 人死亡。這種發病率和死亡率水平是悲慘的，但對於流感大流行來說，相對溫和。畢竟，1918 年流感大流行（即 H1N1 流感）導致全球 5,000 萬至 1 億人死亡，即至少佔世界人口的 2.7%。 人們可能很容易得出這樣的結論：2009 年的大流行比 1918 年的大流行致命性要低，因為 90 年來的干預性醫療進步，包括改進的疫苗。不幸的是，這個結論是錯的。 2009 年病毒的毒性比 1918 年傳播的病毒要低。正如 COVID-19 所表明的那樣，當今世界對於流行病的準備並不比一個世紀前更好，而且在某些方面甚至更糟。如今，人口數量是 1918 年的三倍。航空旅行可以在數小時內將受感染的攜帶者運送到世界任何地方。 （每年有超過十億個國際過境點。）全球供應鏈已經創造了更大的國際相互依賴。換句話說，人類已經成為一個極其高效的生物攪拌碗以及一個高產量的病毒突變工廠。 這並不意味著 H5N1 大流行即將爆發。世界衛生組織和疾病預防控制中心均評估目前人類感染 H5N1 病毒的風險較低。到目前為止，沒有令人信服的證據表明目前的病毒正在變得更好地附著在人類呼吸道中的流感受體位點上，H5N1 病毒必須清除這一關鍵障礙才能引起大流行。迄今為止，在美國，人類感染 H5N1 的主要後果是結膜炎，無論是透過受感染的家禽群還是與受感染的乳牛相關。這並不奇怪，因為人類的眼睛中有鳥類病毒的受體位點。 但大自然變化很快。病毒不斷變異和重組。當人類、豬或牛同時感染兩種不同的病毒時，就會發生流感重配，這為病原體提供了交換關鍵基因片段並產生新病毒株的機會。儘管絕大多數這些改變要么意義不大，要么使新形式的穩健性和適應性較差，但偶爾突變或重配會使病毒更具傳播性和/或危險性。 H5N1 隨時可能經歷這樣的轉變，顛覆目前的共識。 H5N1只是流行病學界正在密切監測的流感株之一。 官員不應犯錯：將會出現更多的流感和冠狀病毒大流行，其中任何一種都可能比 COVID-19 大流行更具災難性。無論何時發生，它幾乎肯定是一種病毒，主要透過空氣傳播，是一種“帶翅膀的病毒”，這意味著病毒顆粒可以長時間、遠距離地懸浮在空氣中。當這種疫情爆發時，在人們意識到世界正處於長達數年的大流行的最初階段之前，全球就會迅速傳播。各國政府迫不及待要等到病毒在世界各地傳播時才做好準備。正如過去五年所表明的那樣，即使是中等程度致命的疾病也會產生巨大的健康、經濟、社會和政治後果。 尋找銀彈 現在是所有國家意識到危險並為新的大流行做好準備的時候了。首要任務應該是對政府為對抗流感病毒和冠狀病毒所採取的醫療對策進行革命性的改進。具體來說，這意味著疫苗、藥物治療和診斷測試。改進快速、足夠數量製造個人防護裝備的設計和系統也至關重要。各國政府必須開始大力投資疫苗研發，包括旨在創造通用流感和冠狀病毒疫苗的研究：這些疫苗能夠針對任一病毒的多種病毒株提供保護，提供長期持久的保護，並且可以快速生產並在全球範圍內分發。 為了完全有效，改進的疫苗必須是安全的，並且能夠針對大多數可能的流感病毒株提供多年保護。它們必須顯著降低嚴重疾病、住院和死亡的可能性，並防止感染和傳播。理想情況下，它們應該在大流行病毒出現之前生產出來並定期向普通人群施用，並且在低收入和中等收入國家很容易獲得。儘管實驗室目前的進展顯示這是可能的，但研究人員距離開發出這種疫苗還有很長的路要走。但按照目前的研發支援水平，可能需要十年或更長時間才能實現這些改變遊戲規則的疫苗。如果政府大力支持，這項時間表幾乎肯定會縮短。 此類措施的代價將會很高，而且並非所有投資都會帶來紅利。但一場新的流行病可能比一場新的戰爭更加致命或代價更高，而且各國政府很少會迴避在新的、更好的武器上花費一切必要的開支。生物安全與軍事安全同樣重要，美國需要接受這樣一個想法：它將與微生物敵人開戰，而微生物敵人可能比任何可以想像的人類敵人都要危險得多。 我們擁有的武器 在研製出這些通用或近乎通用的疫苗之前，政策制定者將需要使用現有的流感和 COVID-19 疫苗。這些鏡頭不錯，但談不上出色。例如，它們限制了 2009-10 H1N1 流感和 COVID-19 大流行造成的疾病和死亡，但它們提供的針對感染的保護效果差異很大。即使是現在，COVID-19 疫苗針對症狀性疾病、疾病嚴重程度和住院治療的有效性在很大程度上取決於當時傳播的病毒變種以及感染者是否免疫功能低下。同樣，在任何特定的流感季節，流感疫苗對需要醫療照護的疾病的有效性從低於 20% 到高達 60% 不等。 COVID-19 和流感疫苗也缺乏耐久性。在最近的一項研究中，CDC 發現，在接種疫苗後平均 52 天時，接種 COVID-19 疫苗可提供約 54% 的保護，避免醫療照護的需要。根據另一項研究，疫苗在一年後幾乎失去所有保護作用。目前的流感疫苗保護效果較短，僅一兩個月後就開始減弱。 為了跟上步伐，衛生當局通常每年都會建議接種流感加強疫苗，甚至更頻繁地建議接種 COVID-19 加強疫苗，其抗原成分會發生變化，以匹配最新流行的病毒株。但當出現具有大流行潛力的重配或突變病毒時，它可能會顯著不同，導致疫苗無法達到其目標。這在某種程度上是 H1N1 能夠在 2009 年引發大流行的原因。和藥品管理局。但如果新的 H5N1 變種引起大流行，病毒組成的變化可能會使現有疫苗在很大程度上或完全無效。 COVID-19 和流感疫苗缺乏耐久性。 即使目前庫存的疫苗確實有效，也沒有足夠的劑量來控制新出現的 H5N1 大流行。美國有 3.33 億人口，每人需要注射兩劑才能完全免疫，這意味著現有的 480 萬劑疫苗只能覆蓋約 7% 的人口。當然，政府會嘗試迅速擴大生產規模，但這樣做會很棘手。 2009 年 H1N1 大流行期間，第一批疫苗於 10 月 1 日發布，距宣布疫情已近六個月。在發病高峰之前，只有 1,120 萬劑可用。 其他國家也沒有更好的裝備。在2019年的報告中，世界衛生組織和三個學術中心估計全球季節性流感疫苗年產能為14.8億劑，潛在產能為41.5億劑。這意味著最多 20 億人（佔全球人口的 25%）可以在疫情大流行的第一年接種疫苗。 世界衛生組織的估計取決於一些樂觀的假設。例如，如果發生大流行，研究假設會有充足的產蛋雞供應，因為受精雞蛋是大多數流感疫苗生長的容器。但由於所有流感病毒株的天然宿主都是禽類，因此該病毒可能會殺死或以其他方式危害大量雞。即使沒有，當製造商正在進行正常的季節性疫苗生產時，H5N1 大流行也可能爆發，這使得他們很難快速轉換。大流行性流感疫苗株在雞蛋和細胞中的生長可能不如季節性病毒疫苗。 2019 年世界衛生組織的研究也發現了幾個潛在的瓶頸。製造商可能沒有足夠的設施將疫苗裝入小瓶或註射器中，並且可能無法及時充足地供應這些小瓶和注射器或試劑（生產疫苗的化學品）。在許多低收入和中等收入國家，疫苗的運輸和管理將是一項重大挑戰。製造商可能缺乏確保連續生產所需的勞動力保護。生產商可能缺乏佐劑和增強免疫反應的化合物。如果沒有它們，每劑需要兩倍的抗原。 軍事模式 公共衛生專家和政府衛生官員意識到另一場疫情的威脅，並已採取各種措施來減輕這種威脅。流行病防範創新聯盟（專注於開發傳染病疫苗和治療方法）概述了一項計劃，將在世衛組織宣布後 100 天內提供「對抗大流行的疫苗」。 CEPI 列出了實現這一目標所需的五個創新領域：為多個病毒家族的病原體創建原型疫苗庫、準備好臨床試驗網絡、加快免疫反應標記物的識別、建立全球疫苗生產能力、加強疾病監測和全球預警系統。這些創新如果實現，將大大提高世界應對大流行病的準備能力。但就目前的資金水平而言，該計畫的 100 天目標非常雄心勃勃，無論是流感還是冠狀病毒，在未來十年內都不太可能實現。由於公共衛生專家和政府正確地致力於縮短從疫情開始到獲得第一劑疫苗的時間，同樣重要的是每個人都接種疫苗需要多長時間。 儘管如此，自 2019 年報告以來已經取得了一些重要的進展。 mRNA 技術的改進首先用於製造最成功的 COVID-19 疫苗，可能有助於加速流感疫苗的生產。三項 3 期試驗正在進行中，以評估 mRNA 流感疫苗的有效性。但此類疫苗尚未準備就緒，也不清楚何時準備好。 為了應對所有這些缺點，從 2019 年開始，現任作者之一（奧斯特霍爾姆）領導的明尼蘇達大學傳染病研究和政策中心已牽頭努力協調新的季節性和通用疾病的研究和開發。疫苗。 CIDRAP 由 147 名多學科專家組成的團隊啟動了流感疫苗研究和開發路線圖，以推進生產更好的疫苗和追蹤進展所需的科學和政策知識。到目前為止，該倡議已確定了 420 多個項目，這些項目至少實現了其中一個戰略目標，總金額超過 14 億美元，其中約 85% 的研究由美國政府機構資助。這是開發更有效疫苗的開始，但只是一個開始。最近，美國衛生與公眾服務部生物醫學高級研究與開發局 (BARDA) 向 Moderna 提供了 1.76 億美元，用於開發針對多種病毒株的基於 mRNA 的大流行性流感疫苗。這項努力應該會提高在新出現的流感大流行中提供疫苗的速度，但預計不會提高當前一代 mRNA 疫苗的有效性。 希望不是策略。 BARDA 最近發起了一項名為 Project NextGen 的計劃，旨在開發更好的冠狀病毒疫苗和抗病毒藥物。雖然人們希望這項努力能帶來更好更快的結果，但50 億美元的政府投資——僅占美國武器系統採購投入的一小部分——只是實現這一目標所需的研發的最低首付。目前立法進程中沒有任何跡象顯示 NextGen 計畫將繼續獲得政府的重要支持。 鑑於這些缺陷，科學家可能需要很長時間才能開發出改變遊戲規則的疫苗。在此期間，各國政府將必須大幅提高生產全球已有疫苗的疫情規模疫苗的能力。這將意味著高收入國家補貼自己的藥品生產能力，並幫助中低收入國家建立設施並培訓工人。 乍一看，成本似乎高得令人望而卻步。但請考慮一下其中的利害關係。如果 H5N1 或任何其他空氣傳播的病毒開始在人群中傳播，引發一場死亡率比新冠病毒高 3% 到 5% 的大流行，那麼世界將與可怕的微生物敵人開戰。這將比人們記憶中的任何流行病或二戰以來的任何軍事衝突都要致命得多。從這個角度來看，採用軍事模式進行規劃、採購和開發不僅是合理的，而且是必要的。是的，政府資助的一些流行病防範計畫可能不會成功。其他的可能永遠不會投入使用。但各國政府和投票讓他們掌權的人民早已接受了這樣的事實：航空母艦、戰鬥機和其他武器系統的價格昂貴，需要多年的融資、設計、建造、測試和調試。他們也承認，其中一些武器可能會被儲存起來，直到被淘汰。無論如何，各國都會進行投資，因為在戰爭中，這類武器變得不可或缺。各國政府迫切需要開始以同樣的方式思考大流行病的防範。 當然，這樣的大流行仍然有可能永遠不會發生，或者很多年都不會發生。但希望不是一種策略。美國和其他高收入和中等收入國家需要立即開始投入必要的資源來開發更好的疫苗、治療方法和其他對策。如果沒有這樣的承諾，人類就無法戰勝引起大流行的病毒。 奧斯特霍姆 (MICHAEL T. OSTERHOLM) 是明尼蘇達大學攝政教授兼傳染病研究與政策中心主任。 馬克·奧爾沙克 (MARK OLSHAKER) 是一位作家和紀錄片製片人。 他們是即將出版的《大事件：如何為即將到來的改變世界的流行病做好準備》一書的合著者。 邁克爾·T·奧斯特霍爾姆的更多作品 馬克·奧爾沙克的更多作品 更多的： 美國 世界 政治與社會 健康 冠狀病毒 最常閱讀的文章 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (Ilan Z. Baron) 與伊萊‧Z‧薩爾茲曼 (Ilai Z. Saltzman) 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 亞米尼·艾亞爾 推薦文章 2022 年 8 月，亞利桑那州圖森市的公共衛生診所 美國仍未準備好應對下一次疫情爆發 如何恢復對公共衛生機構的信任 凱特琳·里弗斯 2022 年 11 月，馬拉威布蘭太爾，一名病患正在接種霍亂疫苗 貧窮國家對抗疾病和促進農業發展的新方法 創新的專利法如何激勵研發並拯救數百萬人的生命 克里斯多福·巴雷特 世界的外交政策 拜登和尋找新的美國策略 本·羅茲 2024 年 7 月/8 月 發表於2024 年 6 月 18 日 阿爾瓦羅貝爾尼斯 “美國回來了。”在擔任總統初期，喬·拜登重複了這句話，作為其外交政策的起點。這句話提供了一個汽車保險桿貼紙的口號，以擺脫唐納德·特朗普混亂的領導。它也顯示美國可以重新確立其作為良性霸主的自我認知，可以使基於規則的國際秩序再次偉大。然而，儘管恢復正常狀態是理所當然的，但拜登政府的恢復心態有時會與我們這個混亂時代的潮流發生衝突。美國領導力的更新概念—量身定制 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 作者：亞米尼‧艾亞爾 2024 年 8 月 13 日 學生輔導服務廣告牌，印度普拉亞格拉吉，2024 年 6 月 6月4日上午，許多印度人都盯著電視螢幕等待2024年大選的結果。但在遠離公眾目光的地方，240 萬名有抱負的醫生參加了競爭激烈的政府考試，他們也在不耐煩地刷新螢幕，期待著影響他們未來的結果。到今天結束時，選舉和醫學院入學考試都帶來了巨大的不確定性。總理莫迪 (Narendra Modi) 領導的印度人民黨 (BJP) 成為單一最大政黨，但在未能贏得議會多數席位後感到羞愧。 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 作者：Ilan Z. Baron 和 Ilai Z. Saltzman 2024 年 8 月 12 日 2024 年 7 月，以色列特拉維夫爆炸現場 1948 年 5 月，以色列建國之初，其創始人設想建立一個以人文主義價值觀和維護國際法為特徵的國家。以色列的建國文件《獨立宣言》堅稱，國家“將確保所有居民，無論宗教、種族或性別，社會和政治權利完全平等”，並且“忠實於《以色列憲章》的原則”。但這願景從一開始就從未實現——畢竟，在宣言簽署後的近二十年裡，以色列境內的巴勒斯坦人一直生活在戒嚴之下。以色列社會始終無法解決宣言理想的普遍訴求與建立以色列作為猶太國家以保護猶太人民的狹隘緊迫性之間的矛盾。 幾十年來，這種內在矛盾一次又一次地浮現出來，造成了政治動盪，塑造並重塑了以色列的社會和政治，但矛盾從未解決。但現在加薩戰爭和先前的司法危機使這條道路變得比以往任何時候都更加困難，將以色列推向了崩潰的邊緣。 這個國家正走在一條日益不自由、暴力和破壞性的道路上。除非改變方向，否則隨著以色列走向更黑暗的未來，其建國之初的人文主義理想將完全消失，在這個未來中，非自由價值定義了國家和社會。以色列不僅對待巴勒斯坦人，也對待其本國公民，都將變得越來越獨裁。它可能很快就會失去許多仍然擁有的朋友並成為賤民。由於與世隔絕，它可能會被國內的動盪所吞噬，因為不斷擴大的裂痕有可能導致國家本身的分裂。以色列目前的危險狀況如此，這些未來一點也不奇怪，但也不是不可避免的。以色列仍有能力將自己從懸崖邊拉回來。不這樣做的代價可能會難以承受。 猶太復國主義的終結 哈馬斯 10 月 7 日的血腥襲擊襲擊了以色列，當時以色列已經面臨巨大的國內不穩定。該國依靠比例代表制的選舉制度，近幾十年來允許越來越多的邊緣和極端政黨進入以色列議會。自 1996 年以來，已經出現了 11 個不同的政府，平均每兩年半就有一個新政府，其中 6 個政府由現任總理本傑明·內塔尼亞胡領導。 2019年至2022年間，以色列不得不舉行五次大選。小政黨在組成和推翻政府方面發揮了關鍵作用，並發揮不成比例的影響力。 2022 年 11 月上次選舉後，內塔尼亞胡在極右翼政黨和領導人的支持下組建了政府，使長期潛伏在以色列政壇邊緣的勢力上台。 2023年，內塔尼亞胡和他的極右翼盟友隨後推動一項司法改革法案，尋求大幅減少最高法院對政府的監督。內塔尼亞胡希望擬議的改革能夠保護他免受正在進行的針對他的刑事案件的影響。他的極端正統派盟友希望進行改革，以防止數千名長期免服兵役的猶太學院學生應徵入伍。宗教猶太復國主義者設計的改革旨在阻止最高法院限制定居點建設的能力。 以色列正走在一條日益不自由、暴力和破壞性的道路上。 擬議的司法改革引發了全國範圍內的大規模抗議，揭示了社會的嚴重分裂，一部分人希望以色列保持民主，擁有獨立的司法機構，另一部分人希望政府可以為所欲為。示威者使城市陷入癱瘓，預備役軍人威脅稱，如果該法案通過，他們將不再服役，投資者暗示他們會將資金帶出該國。該法案的一個版本仍於 2023 年 7 月在議會獲得通過，但在今年年初被最高法院否決。目前，儘管加薩戰爭愈演愈烈，執政聯盟仍試圖恢復司法改革的某些內容。 司法改革抗議無疑暴露了以色列內部對該國民主性質的擔憂，但它並沒有引發以色列對生活在佔領下的巴勒斯坦人的責任的質疑。事實上，許多以色列人認為他們國家對待巴勒斯坦人的方式與其作為民主國家的運作是分開的。以色列人長期以來一直容忍猶太定居者針對巴勒斯坦人的暴力行為，即使沒有製裁。以色列違反國際法，對生活在其統治下的西岸和東耶路撒冷的巴勒斯坦人實行實際的戒嚴。歷屆以色列政府都監督了約旦河西岸猶太人定居點的擴張，這危及了未來巴勒斯坦主權國家的建立。根據保守估計，以色列軍隊在加薩戰爭中造成約 4 萬人死亡，這表明該國似乎無法或不願意維護其獨立宣言中的抱負願景。 正如以色列境內的許多進步人士長期以來所承認的那樣，軍事佔領的殘酷性和作為軍事佔領國的必要性對整個以色列社會產生了腐敗影響。以色列科學家兼哲學家耶沙亞胡·萊博維茨 (Yeshayahu Leibowitz) 觀察到了 1967 年六日戰爭後的“民族自豪感和欣喜感”，並看到了更黑暗的轉折。他在 1968 年警告說，這種對國家的慶祝只會「把我們從驕傲的、高漲的民族主義帶向極端的、彌賽亞式的極端民族主義」。萊博維茨聲稱，這種極端的熱情將導致以色列計劃的毀滅，導致「殘酷」並最終「猶太復國主義的終結」。現在，這目標已經比許多以色列人願意承認的更接近了。 斯巴達與圓頂小帽 在目前的道路上，以色列正走向極度不自由的方向。目前，在政治家及其許多選民的推動下，以色列正在轉向極右翼，可能會看到以色列成為一種民族主義神權國家，由猶太司法和立法委員會以及右翼宗教極端分子管理，這無異於猶太版本伊朗的神權國家。以色列的人口和社會政治變化，包括極端正統派人口的迅速增加、以色列年輕猶太人的右傾，以及被認為是世俗的以色列猶太人數量的下降，產生了一個更虔誠的政治體，這種政治體認為，以色列猶太人的信仰持續存在。 公開呼籲宗教在國家中發揮更明確作用的極端正統民族主義政客包括貝扎雷爾·斯莫特里奇、伊塔馬爾·本·格維爾和阿維·毛茲——他們都是內塔尼亞胡聯合政府的關鍵人物。他們代表了猶太復國主義宗教運動中一個相對較新但影響力越來越大的部分，即哈達爾派，他們相信上帝應許了以色列整個聖經土地給猶太人，拒絕西方文化和價值觀，並從根本上反對以色列自由主義的公認規範，例如 LGBTQ 權利、 猶太教堂與國家之間的某種分離以及性別平等。與哈達爾有關的人物目前在以色列政府中擔任部長，在以色列議會中佔據重要職位，並且是猶太學院和被稱為“ mechinot”的預軍事預備學院的傑出領導人。政治和人口趨勢表明，在可預見的未來，以色列極右翼仍將在選舉中保持影響力，甚至佔據主導地位。 但許多不是特別虔誠的以色列人也開始認同這種日益極端的民族主義意識形態。自10月7日襲擊以來，以色列右翼變得更加激進。對他們和以色列的許多其他人來說，哈馬斯的屠殺證明，與巴勒斯坦人或其支持者不能妥協。這些保守派認為以色列處於永恆的戰爭狀態，和平是不可想像的——借用以色列歷史學家大衛·奧查納的話說，這個國家類似於「戴著圓頂小帽的斯巴達」。 極端正統猶太男子抗議以色列最高法院關於徵兵神學院學生的裁決，耶路撒冷，2024 年 6 月 2024 年 6 月，極端正統猶太男子在耶路撒冷抗議 Ronen Zvulun / 路透社 這一立場可能會在以色列猶太人中形成廣泛共識，並產生一個完全不自由的以色列，加薩戰爭導致被內塔尼亞胡及其盟友削弱的民主規範和製度被徹底侵蝕。戰爭已經為政府提供了限制公民自由的藉口；例如，議會國家安全委員會最近推動立法，授權警察在沒有搜索令的情況下進行搜索。約旦河西岸國家批准的針對巴勒斯坦人的暴力行為也增加，以色列和平活動人士也越來越被視為叛徒。由極右翼主導的以色列將變得更加專制，公民自由尤其是性別權利受到限制。國家將對公共教育產生有害影響，公民對以色列民主的全面理解被一種更赤裸裸的民族主義和非自由主義的理解所取代。 一個不自由的以色列也將成為賤民國家。以色列在國際上已經變得越來越孤立，多個國際組織正在尋求針對它的懲罰性法律和外交措施。國際法院（ICJ）的種族滅絕案及其最近關於佔領非法性的意見、國際刑事法院（ICC）對內塔尼亞胡和國防部長約阿夫·加蘭特的逮捕令，以及許多關於戰爭罪和人類罪的可信指控侵犯人權的行為對以色列的全球地位造成了打擊。即使有主要盟友的支持，負面輿論、法律挑戰和外交譴責的累積影響也將使以色列在全球舞台上日益邊緣化。 非自由的以色列仍將獲得包括美國在內的少數國家的經濟支持，但它將在政治和外交上與國際社會的其他大部分國家（包括大多數七國集團國家）隔絕。這些國家將停止與以色列在安全問題上協調，維持與以色列的貿易協定，並購買以色列製造的武器。當越來越多的美國人質疑以色列對猶太國家的無條件支持時，以色列最終可能完全依賴美國，並容易受到美國政治格局變化的影響。 以色列國家與社會之間的社會契約目前懸而未決。如果內塔尼亞胡及其盟友得逞，以色列的民主將變得空洞和程序化，傳統的自由制衡將迅速受到侵蝕。這將使該國走上一條不可持續的道路，可能導致資本外逃和人才流失，並加劇內部緊張局勢。 支離破碎的以色列 隨著以色列變得更加獨裁，這種不自由的轉變並不能掩蓋以色列社會內部日益擴大的裂痕。國家將日益失去合法使用武力的壟斷，分歧可能會激化到內戰的地步。最近在斯德泰曼拘留所發生的暴力對抗，涉嫌虐待哈馬斯恐怖分子的士兵被帶去接受審問，這可能預示著接下來會發生什麼。預備役士兵、平民，甚至一名極右翼議員襲擊了基地內的憲兵，對軍事人員因虐待巴勒斯坦囚犯而被拘留感到憤怒。未來，此類事件可能會變得更加普遍。以色列安全機構內部已經出現分裂的其他跡象包括定居民兵的增長——儘管這些團體對巴勒斯坦人進行暴力襲擊，但以色列卻不願意鎮壓——以及士兵向治安維持者通風報信，非法阻止人道主義援助的運送。 以色列的法治可能會崩潰。以色列或多或少仍將是一個正常運作的經濟國家。它將保護私有財產。仍然會有大學、醫院和某種公共教育系統。高科技經濟——以色列自稱為「創業國家」的核心——仍然可以運作一段時間。但國家將在沒有法治的情況下運作，這符合極右派所青睞的空洞民主。安全將變成一個沒有監督、沒有統一指揮的支離破碎的系統，對合法使用武力的壟斷將被削弱。不同的團體會聲稱擁有暴力權利，包括武裝定居者民兵、與極右翼結盟的平民以及現有的安全部隊。 這個未來不是反烏托邦科幻小說的範疇。加薩衝突加劇了該國內部的政治分歧，尤其是主張採取完全無視國際人道主義法的極端軍事和安全措施的右翼團體與呼籲對巴勒斯坦人採取更和解態度的其他團體之間的分歧。戰爭也加深了世俗猶太人和宗教猶太人之間的分歧。以色列內部關於極端正統猶太人是否應該像所有其他以色列人一樣有義務服兵役的重大辯論加劇了這些緊張局勢。以色列最高法院最近裁定，政府無法避免招募極端正統的猶太人，並且必須避免資助那些學生未按照現行法律規定入伍的猶太學院——這一決定刺激了恢復司法改革立法的嘗試。 國家中央權力的削弱可能預示著更令人震驚的崩潰。除了管理經濟之外，政府將無法（甚至不願意）履行任何其他傳統政治責任，包括提供安全和保證問責制的穩定的治理立法體系。相互競爭的安全團體的存在和鬆懈的議會監督將削弱以色列的整體安全威懾力，並破壞以色列安全機構中任何連貫的治理體系。處於這種狀況的以色列很可能會自相矛盾。它可能會成為一種巴爾幹化的實體，宗教和民族主義右翼分子會建立自己事實上的國家，最有可能在約旦河西岸的定居點。或者它可能會見證宗教極端分子和極端民族主義者的叛亂，這將導致以色列陷入武裝宗教右翼與現有國家機器之間的暴力內戰。如果沒有內戰，這種局勢仍然不穩定，經濟將會崩潰，使以色列成為一個失敗的國家。 遠離混亂的道路 事件的影響力和盛行的政治勢力正將以色列推向這些危險的方向。它正在成為一個其創始人不會承認的國家。但它並不需要走這條路。為了避免這些結果，以色列需要透過鞏固其憲法基礎、加強法治、更有效地持久解決與巴勒斯坦人的衝突以及更好地在該地區安身立命來恢復該國的政治穩定。 以色列應成立獨立的憲法委員會來解決該國的政治不穩定問題，並為以色列民主的未來奠定堅實的基礎。該委員會需要起草一部不像《基本法》那麼容易改變的憲法——14部法律共同構成了以色列最接近憲法的法律——並且必須堅持建國時最初的人文主義價值觀。這樣的委員會過去曾經舉行過，其復興需要政治中間派、政治左派和以色列阿拉伯政黨的剩餘成員之間進行大力合作。有趣的是，以色列現任國防部長約阿夫·加蘭特呼籲將以色列《獨立宣言》作為此類憲法文件的第一個文本。 2024 年 7 月，抗議者聚集在以色列貝爾謝巴附近的 Sde Teiman 拘留所外 2024 年 7 月，抗議者聚集在以色列貝爾謝巴附近的 Sde Teiman 拘留所外 阿米爾科恩/路透社 以色列也需要在以色列境內和西岸更好地執行法治，這意味著該國不能再容忍定居者對巴勒斯坦人的暴力行為。此外，需要結束對巴勒斯坦人的軍事佔領，需要啟動一個有中立第三方談判代表參與的具有約束力的和平進程。至少，以色列應致力於解決國際法院最近關於以色列佔領巴勒斯坦領土的意見。 為了更好地保障國內穩定，以色列需要在《亞伯拉罕協議》的成果基礎上鞏固其在中東的地位，並加強與沙烏地阿拉伯和該地區其他政權的關係。為了維護與七國集團國家和更廣泛的國際社會的關係，以色列應重申其對國際法的承諾，包括提高軍事行動的透明度，確保對任何違反國際法的行為追究責任，並批准《羅馬規約》，該規約規定了國際商會，2002年。 上述步驟可能會在以色列面臨潛在的難以克服的反對，但這種反對只會再次證實我們對以色列未來的擔憂。可以肯定的是，以色列確實面臨真正且危險的敵人，這些敵人和哈馬斯一樣，都犯下侵犯人權的罪行。但以色列目前的發展軌跡並不是一條勝利之路。按照目前的進程，國家可能會演變成一種會摧毀激勵世界各地許多其創始人和支持者的人文主義猶太願景的東西。對以色列來說，拯救自己免於滅亡並尋找另一條前進之路還為時不晚。 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (ILAN Z. BARON) 是杜倫大學國際政治與政治理論教授，也是猶太文化、社會與政治研究中心的共同主任。 ILAI Z. SALTZMAN 是馬裡蘭大學以色列研究副教授兼約瑟夫和阿爾瑪吉爾登霍恩以色列研究所所長。 更多伊蘭·Z·巴倫的作品 更多伊萊·薩爾茨曼的作品 更多的： 以色列 巴勒斯坦領土 政治與 社會政治發展 安全 國防與軍事 衝突後重建 加薩 以巴衝突 以色列與哈馬斯戰爭 本傑明·內塔尼亞胡 最常閱讀的文章 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (Ilan Z. Baron) 與伊萊‧Z‧薩爾茲曼 (Ilai Z. Saltzman) 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 亞米尼·艾亞爾 推薦文章 2024 年 7 月，黎巴嫩貝魯特，真主黨支持者參加宗教遊行 真主黨不想與以色列發生戰爭 美國可以加強克制 莫哈納德·哈格·阿里 美國國務卿安東尼·布林肯出席 2024 年 6 月在約旦斯威梅舉行的聯合國會議 為什麼美國未能促成以色列與哈馬斯停火 迫使交戰方對話很少奏效，有時還會適得其反 艾瑞克·敏 什麼是拜登主義？ 沒有霸權的領導 傑西卡·T·馬修斯 2024 年 9 月/10 月 發表於2024 年 8 月 14 日 安吉莉卡·阿爾佐納插圖 儘管現在判斷喬拜登一屆總統任期的歷史意義還為時過早，但顯然過去四年在外交政策方面取得了令人矚目的成就。拜登也犯了一些明顯的戰略錯誤，主要是當他選擇遵循前任唐納德·川普的政策時。但他完成了一項至關重要的任務：將美國外交政策的基礎從不健康地依賴軍事幹預轉向積極追求以實力為後盾的外交。他贏回了朋友和盟友的信任，建立並開始將美國在亞洲的深入存在製度化，恢復了美國在重要多邊組織和協議中的作用，並結束了該國最長的「永遠的戰爭」— —這是一個進步他的三位前任都沒有勇氣承擔。 這一切都是在中國和俄羅斯面臨新的嚴重威脅的情況下發生的，這兩個大國為了結束美國的霸主地位而結盟。拜登對其任期內最緊迫的緊急情況——俄羅斯 2022 年對烏克蘭的全面野蠻入侵——的反應既巧妙又創新，展現了對治國之術傳統要素的把握，並願意採取一些非常規步驟。中國的情況則更加複雜，長遠來看，中國對美國外交政策構成了最複雜的挑戰。拜登對北京的態度有時反映出與川普的連續性令人失望，並加劇了美中關係中最敏感問題台灣問題的不確定性。但與前總統不同的是，拜登將他的對華政策融入了亞洲各地新的和恢復的聯盟的強大矩陣中。可以說，他已經實現了美國長期以來尋求的「重返該地區」的目標，但沒有使用這個詞。 在中東，記錄令人失望。拜登從阿富汗撤軍所表現出的大膽，在他對加薩戰爭的反應中明顯沒有體現出來，他對以色列過時的理解使他無法向以色列領導層施加更大壓力，要求其採取更明智、破壞性較小的做法。 隨時了解狀況。 每週提供深入分析。 在一個嚴重分裂的國家，四年的時間對於建立外交政策原則來說太短了。拜登所取得的大部分成就可能​​很快就會被繼任者抹去。然而，他迄今為止的遺產表明了一種非常適合當今世界的新方法的輪廓。其中最重要的是決心避免戰爭以重塑其他國家並恢復外交作為外交政策的核心工具。這種外交復興並非沒有缺陷：它沒有形成一個連貫的全球經濟策略，也缺乏對防擴散和軍備控制的堅定承諾。但它向世界展示了一個毫不含糊地拋棄了冷戰後「單極時刻」的傲慢的國家，證明美國可以在沒有軍事行動或霸權污點的情況下深入參與世界事務。 拜登的世界 拜登上任後最重要的任務就是恢復海外信任。他競選時的口號是“美國回來了”，並承諾美國將再次“坐在談判桌的首位”。然而，入主白宮後，他似乎意識到美國的實力和他常說的「我們榜樣的力量」都已不再是過去的樣子了。相反，政府的重點是讓其他人相信，他們不必再擔心川普的「美國優先」政策、對北約的公開貶低以及對從氣候變遷到新冠病毒大流行等問題上的多邊合作的蔑視。 這並不容易。即使是熱情的政府也明白，川普（或持類似觀點的領導人）可能會在下次選舉後儘快回歸。為了強調這一轉變，拜登在上任第一天就讓美國重返世界衛生組織和巴黎氣候變遷協議，而這兩項協議都是川普退出的。拜登迅速採取行動，確認華盛頓對許多經濟和安全協議和機構，特別是北約的承諾。在接下來的三年多時間裡，達到國防支出至少相當於 GDP 2% 的基準目標的北約成員國數量從 9 個增加到 23 個，而且很快就會有更多國家這樣做。瑞典和芬蘭這兩個軍事強國放棄了幾十年來所珍視的中立立場，加入了聯盟。如今，整個聯盟的準備程度大大提高，在俄羅斯邊境附近的部署也是如此。 拜登政府投入了更多的外交精力，在亞洲各地建立所謂的跨越地緣政治和經濟利益的深化和新聯繫的“網格”，所有這些都是為了對抗中國。縱橫交錯的關係網絡的形象與人們所熟悉的「中心和輻條」比喻截然不同，後者將美國描繪成處於一切事物的中心，其他國家排列在其周圍。 這種改變不僅是抽象的問題，也是行動的問題。連接澳洲、印度、日本和美國的四邊安全對話（簡稱「四方」）夥伴關係從外交部長論壇提升為國家元首論壇。為了建立一支能夠在遠距離隱密行動的澳洲核動力潛艦艦隊，加強對遠至太平洋的中國的威懾，拜登團隊制定了AUKUS，這是一項將澳洲、英國和美國聯合起來的新安全安排。三邊峰會將美國、日本、菲律賓、日本和韓國連結起來，安全是核心目的。東南亞國家聯盟峰會首次在華盛頓舉行。新的雙邊協議允許美國擴大對澳洲、日本、巴布亞紐幾內亞和菲律賓的軍事訪問。拜登加深了美國與印度、印尼和越南的關係。即使是這份部分清單也反映了不到四年的非凡努力和成就，新的和恢復的關係在可能的情況下通過正式協議得以鞏固，這些協議旨在應對華盛頓方向的改變。 二十多年來，華盛頓領導人一直口頭上強調亞洲在二十一世紀的中心地位以及美國外交政策相應轉變的必要性。但喬治·W·布希政府卻因其全力以赴的「全球反恐戰爭」而偏離了方向。歐巴馬政府意識到在亞洲加強戰略存在的重要性，但未能實現這一目標。川普政府對聯盟的蔑視削弱了整個地區的關係。拜登政府實現了這項轉變。 失敗的事業 為了給美國制定新的路線，拜登認為有必要結束9/11後時代最長的「永遠的戰爭」。到他上任時，美國已在阿富汗作戰了 20 年，損失超過 2 兆美元，相當於每天 3 億美元。美國的戰略已經從反恐轉向反叛亂，然後又轉回來。從低調依靠特種部隊和空中力量，到在國內部署10萬大軍；從向喀布爾政府示好，到暗示阿富汗政府的腐敗是進展的主要障礙。華盛頓嘗試了多種策略：建立一支國家警察部隊，試圖建立一支軍隊，提高婦女和女孩的識字率和教育程度。最後，大部分都是徒勞。拜登就職時，美國情報部門明確顯示，儘管塔利班投入巨額資金，但多年來對阿富汗地區的控制仍在不斷增強——這一事實在很大程度上被美國公眾所不知道或低估。 拜登在2021年8月的演講中詢問阿富汗的「重大國家利益」是什麼，並給了正確答案。 “我們只有一個：確保阿富汗永遠不會再次被用來對我們的祖國發動攻擊。”拜登指出，隨著 2011 年擊敗基地組織並擊斃奧薩馬·本·拉登，美國已經實現了這一目標。但後來，他說，“我們又待了十年。” 阿富汗軍隊和國家政府出人意料地、令人震驚地迅速崩潰、塔利班接管、喀布爾因數千名阿富汗人試圖逃離而陷入混亂，以及 13 名美國軍人和 160 多名阿富汗平民在一場戰爭中喪生。附近發生自殺式爆炸事件，外交政策專家紛紛批評撤軍決定。隨著混亂的加劇，時任外交關係委員會主席理查德·哈斯在推特上寫道：「阿富汗局勢之所以如此令人沮喪，是因為（美國及其盟國）以較低的可持續成本達到了某種程度的平衡。 “這不是和平或軍事勝利，但它比正在展開的戰略[和]人類災難要好得多。”但表面上的低成本是由於前幾個月沒有美國人死亡而造成的幻覺：塔利班決定停止對美軍的襲擊，等待美軍根據川普政府談判的協議撤軍。如果美國不離開，美國的損失就會重新開始，而留下來的代價將再次顯而易見。 拜登一直不願意利用美國對以色列的影響力。 嚴峻的事實是，美國早在 2021 年 8 月之前就已經輸掉了這場戰爭。在川普的大力推動下，太多的美國人記住了最後幾天的混亂，忘記了之前幾年的失敗；最終有 13 名美國人死亡，而不是前幾年的 2,461 人死亡和 20,744 人受傷。拜登的決定並沒有造成任何戰略損失——恰恰相反。總統在演講中正確指出，“沒有什麼比中國或俄羅斯更願意讓美國在阿富汗再陷入十年困境了。”華盛頓未能預料到喀布爾政府會如此迅速地垮台。但與拜登成功抓住退出的持久戰略利益的意義相比，這一失敗的意義就顯得黯然失色了。 “關於阿富汗的這一決定，”他說，“是為了結束一個通過重大軍事行動重塑其他國家的時代。” 離開阿富汗幾個月後，俄羅斯總統普丁對烏克蘭發動全面入侵，拜登政府再次面臨考驗。在他上任的第一周，拜登和普丁同意在《新削減戰略武器條約》（唯一剩餘的雙邊核子軍備控制協議）到期前幾天同意延長該條約。這是一個充滿希望的跡象。但幾週後，莫斯科將數千名士兵和重型武器調往與烏克蘭的邊境。儘管普丁的意圖並不透明，但此舉在政府內部引起了警覺。美國國務卿安東尼·布林肯 (Antony Blinken) 對《華盛頓郵報》的大衛·伊格內修斯 (David Ignatius) 表示：“我們正在非常仔細地研究此事，24/7” ——這距離俄羅斯入侵早一年，即2022 年2 月。後來，普丁談到，如果西方對基輔的支持太過分，他將使用戰術核武。隨著戰爭的拖延，他加大了賭注，將這些武器轉移到鄰國白俄羅斯，並下令進行聯合作戰演習。 整體而言，拜登對戰爭的處理非常高超。在入侵前夕，他徹底打破了傳統做法，公開披露了美國有關俄羅斯軍隊演習的情報，以提醒全世界注意普丁的計劃，並壓制克里姆林宮的虛假資訊活動。攻擊一開始，他就大力捍衛烏克蘭，首先堅決禁止美軍介入烏克蘭——他經常重複這項承諾，這在很大程度上抑制了公眾對積極支持烏克蘭的反對。隨後，他發揮了強有力的政治和個人領導作用，團結歐洲國家、北約和美國國會支持基輔，並下令開始謹慎但穩定成長的武器和資金流動。他調整了華盛頓提供的武器的先進性，以應對俄羅斯暴力的曲線，只是落後而不是領先。他也透過前瞻性地利用美國軍事和情報專業知識，以不太明顯的方式增強了烏克蘭的實力。 閃點 儘管尚未找到結束戰爭的途徑，但拜登對俄羅斯入侵的處理一直是美國的功勞——就像從阿富汗撤軍一樣，儘管有傳統觀點。另外兩個優先事項的記錄則更加模糊：中國和中東。 拜登政府的2022年國家安全戰略將中國定義為有能力、也有意願重塑國際秩序，取代美國及其民主價值。毫無疑問，中國最近在印太地區的行為、軍事開支的急劇增加、激進的貿易政策以及與俄羅斯的「無限制」夥伴關係（包括支持烏克蘭戰爭）都要求美國做出強有力的回應。拜登政府明智地採取了謹慎態度，加強與亞洲盟友和夥伴的關係，加強美國的軍事存在，同時避免恐嚇和不必要的挑釁。 一個不幸的例外是政府在台灣問題上的記錄，台灣是美中關係的熱點。華盛頓和北京四十多年前透過談判達成的故意模糊的「一個中國」政策，自此維持了台海的和平。維持它需要不斷關注語言和象徵意義，特別是當涉及到如果中國發動攻擊華盛頓是否會使用武力保衛台灣的問題時。然而，拜登多次明確表示美國會這樣做，並要求白宮做出澄清，加劇了北京的不確定性。更嚴重的是，他不負責任地默許眾議院議長南希·佩洛西(Nancy Pelosi) 於2022 年對台灣進行正式訪問。是總統職位的第二順位繼承人。作為民主黨領袖，拜登本可以輕易禁止這次訪問，此前其他人也違反了禁止官方訪問的不成文的「一個中國」規定。不出所料，裴洛西的任務引發了北京方面前所未有的一系列軍事和網路報復，並再次加劇了兩岸緊張局勢。 烏克蘭總統澤倫斯基和拜登於 2024 年 6 月在義大利法薩諾簽署新安全協議當天握手 凱文拉馬克/路透社 華盛頓只能猜測北京的意圖。中國的軍力建設可能預示著對台灣或美國的直接威脅。或者，也許中國共產黨正在回應它所認為的美國侵略，或者只是採取任何新崛起的大國都認為應有的步驟。同樣，北京也無法知道華盛頓是否有意放棄「一個中國」政策。也許拜登正在鼓勵台北維護其獨立性，如果這樣做的話，他會在軍事上支持它。雙方唯一可以確定的是，與台灣有關的行動和反應正在不斷升級，而且雙方都沒有採取必要措施來阻止它。 拜登上任後決心不因中東長期衝突而分散對亞洲和其他地區優先事項的注意力。他繼承了川普政府的政策，似乎取得了巨大成功。透過所謂的《亞伯拉罕協議》，以色列與巴林、摩洛哥、蘇丹和阿拉伯聯合大公國實現了關係正常化。這些協議體現了這樣一種觀點，即如果給予阿拉伯國家適當的激勵，即使不解決巴勒斯坦人的命運，它們也有可能與以色列談判和平協議。但隨著政府試圖將該地區最重要的國家沙烏地阿拉伯納入協議，內塔尼亞胡政府正在將巴勒斯坦人驅逐出西岸越來越多的地區，為以色列定居點讓路。總而言之，這些步驟對許多巴勒斯坦人來說是一座太遙遠的橋樑，激進組織哈馬斯利用他們的絕望和憤怒感來為其在2023 年10 月7 日（以色列歷史上最糟糕的一天）發動的可怕恐怖攻擊辯護。 美國國家安全顧問傑克·沙利文在襲擊發生前幾天發表了令人難堪的言論，稱該地區“今天比二十年來更加安靜”，這體現了政府的疏忽和一廂情願的態度。拜登以前所未有的個人支持回應了這次襲擊，這反映了他職業生涯對以色列的熱情。但隨著以色列軍事反應的展開，他似乎看不到實地發生了什麼事。華盛頓已竭盡全力試圖促成永久停火，以色列領導層和哈馬斯領導層都認為這一結果不符合其最佳利益。拜登仍然頑固地不願意利用美國所擁有的影響力迫使以色列減少加薩令人震驚的平民死亡和痛苦，解決那裡的人道主義災難，並製定一項現實的長期計劃。 核忽視 拜登帳簿的負面一面還包含其他一些項目。拜登延續了川普的貿易保護主義，繼續並在某些情況下提高了川普對中國進口產品徵收的關稅。與川普不同的是，拜登將關稅重點集中在高科技和清潔能源產品上，並透過各種出口禁令、制裁和補貼來提高關稅的有效性，以促進國內生產並減緩中國科技產業的發展。他也努力與歐洲盟友和其他國家協調這些步驟。即便如此，關稅仍然是糟糕的經濟政策：它們會帶來倒退和通貨膨脹，並會招致報復。由於它們是偽裝成外國人支付費用的隱性稅收，因此也會引發危險的國內高人一等：在拜登將中國電動車關稅提高四倍至100%後，川普呼籲將關稅提高至200%。 隨著連續兩屆在幾乎所有問題上都存在分歧的美國政府採用相同的經濟工具，全球貿易可能已經到達了一個轉折點：全球化和自由貿易的時代也許已經徹底結束。如果其他國家效仿華盛頓的做法，可能的結果將是讓所有國家變得更加貧窮——就像 20 世紀 30 年代保護主義盛行時世界所學到的那樣。 拜登的外交浪潮中明顯缺少的是推動核武軍控和核不擴散的持續努力——考慮到他在參議院職業生涯和副總統任期內直言不諱地倡導這兩個目標，這是一個令人驚訝的遺漏。政府初期的猶豫不決嚴重甚至可能致命地損害了解決當今最重要的擴散問題的前景：如何處理伊朗核協議，正式名稱為「聯合全面行動計畫」。 2018年，川普讓美國退出了伊朗一直遵守的來之不易的協議——拜登和他的團隊認為這項決定是災難性的烏龍目標。但為了證明自己對伊朗的態度與共和黨批評者一樣強硬，拜登任命的人在參議院確認聽證會上採取瞭如此激進的反伊朗立場，以至於給德黑蘭和華盛頓留下了他們並不真正相信聯合全面行動計劃的印象。當這件事得到解決時，讓德黑蘭相信政府仍然希望恢復協議的狹窄機會之窗已經關閉。 拜登在 AUKUS 協議談判中也擱置了防擴散考量。該協議通過轉移高濃縮（武器級）燃料為澳大利亞這個沒有核武器的國家的潛艇提供動力，開創了一個破壞性的先例，其他國家可以效仿，利用海軍反應堆計劃作為開發核武器的掩護，違反了《核武器條約》。 拜登必須扭轉「美國優先」的信念和行為。 在軍備控制方面，政府也表現不佳。 2022年1月，五個最初擁核國家的領導人申明「核戰不可能獲勝，也決不能打」——重申了1980年代蘇聯領導人米哈伊爾·戈巴契夫和美國總統雷根會談中提出的突破性聲明。然而，普丁無端戰爭的特徵是一再威脅使用核武。 2023年，他暫停了俄羅斯對延長的《新削減戰略武器條約》的遵守，此舉不是因為美國不遵守條約，而是因為華盛頓對烏克蘭的支持。同時，中國計畫在2030年將核武數量增加一倍，達到1,000枚。來了希望。 不幸的是，拜登政府並沒有做出重大努力來扭轉這一趨勢，甚至為黯淡的前景做出了貢獻。它仍然願意就《新削減戰略武器條約》的後續行動進行談判，並為與北京開啟軍控談判採取了一些小步驟。但政府也在對其核武力量的所有三個支柱（包括陸基飛彈）進行耗資巨大的現代化改造。由於這些飛彈被困在敵人眾所周知的發射井中，因此它們是「先發制人」武器，必須在衝突中快速發射，否則就會在敵人的攻擊中丟失。因此，它們既脆弱又不穩定。延長少量現有民兵 III 飛彈的壽命，而不是花費超過 1500 億美元購買新的陸基核飛彈部隊，將更好地服務於美國安全和避免新的軍備競賽。 作為副總統，拜登致力於美國政策的重大改變：宣布威懾是核武的「唯一」（而不是「主要」）目的。這個看似微小的改變隱藏著重要的意義：核武在戰爭中沒有用。這種轉變將對核武力量的設計和國際軍備控制產生深遠的影響。巴拉克·歐巴馬總統選擇不做出這項改變，而身為總統，拜登也做了同樣的事情。這是一個錯失的機會。然而，考慮到烏克蘭戰爭和中國核擴張的現實，他可以說沒有其他政治空間。 拜登政府的一些反對者呼籲擴大美國核武庫，甚至恢復核試驗，部分原因是軍備控制前景黯淡。在進行了 1000 多次測試之後，美國沒有什麼可以從進行更多測試中學到什麼。但中國已經進行了不到 50 次測試，並且正在遵守目前的暫停測試規定，如果美國將恢復測試合法化，中國可能會受益匪淺。不久之後，其他國家，無論是有核國家還是無核國家，也紛紛效仿——這是一個巨大的飛躍，回到了 20 世紀 50 年代。 美國終極版 拜登就任總統後，前任犯下的大量錯誤有待修正。他必須扭轉「美國優先」外交政策固有的信念和行為。他需要恢復美國政策的可預測性，並重建其他國家支持華盛頓措施的意願。儘管他的政黨在擔任總統的頭兩年控制了國會兩院，但以微弱的優勢控制了國會兩院，拜登後來面臨著由日益極端的共和黨核心小組領導的眾議院，該小組在外交政策中優先考慮政治得分而不是實質內容。幾乎從上任第一天起，他就面臨俄羅斯在烏克蘭的意圖這一迫在眉睫的問題。不久之後，他面臨著戰後歐洲首次大規模國際侵略的令人震驚的現實。最後，他必須處理與中國的關係，其特點是不斷加劇的尖刻、未履行的協議、軍事威脅以及幾乎完全缺乏有目的的溝通。 拜登也做出了需要調整或收回的承諾。他錯誤地將世界分為獨裁國家和民主國家，暗示外交政策是兩個陣營之間的摩尼教競爭。他兌現了召開「民主高峰會」的不明智承諾，不出所料，這引發了一場決定哪些國家有資格入選的外交噩夢。最終，會議大多在網路上舉行，期望值不高，也沒有任何成果。最突出的是，拜登承諾「為中產階級制定外交政策」。實際上，這主要意味著在國內對製造業、教育、醫療保健和降低中產階級債務進行大規模投資。在國外，不幸的是，它採取了保護主義貿易政策的形式，這是拜登遺產的一個組成部分，美國和世界可能會感到遺憾。 但拜登最終實現將優先事項轉向亞洲的決心取得了顯著的成功。與中國的關係比他繼承的關係更穩定。現在至少有一個可以建造更多設施的底線，儘管台灣仍然是一個醞釀中的緊張局勢根源，而華盛頓和北京都對此關注甚少。但亞洲新的夥伴關係以及經濟、地緣政治和軍事協議的數量，以及新的和恢復的關係的密度證明了專注的外交可以取得什麼成果。 塔利班成員慶祝美軍從阿富汗撤軍一週年，喀布爾，2022 年 8 月 阿里卡拉/路透社 無論加薩是否達成穩定停火，拜登的遺產必須包括他明顯無法將以色列視為本傑明·內塔尼亞胡總理領導下的反自由、軍國主義國家，而不是拜登幾十年前記憶中的勇敢的年輕民主國家。以色列決定試圖長期治理加薩並繼續吞併西岸，這將排除兩國解決方案的可能性；讓以色列在軍事、財政和聲譽上流血；對巴勒斯坦人民構成歷史性的不公義。只要美國與以色列保持特殊聯繫，它就不能像拜登政府試圖做的那樣，忽視這個正在潰爛的瘡口。 拜登決心結束華盛頓最長的戰爭是一項重大成就。現在沒有美軍參與持續戰鬥，這是四分之一個世紀以來的第一次。他的政策反映出他認識到美國將繼續擁有全球利益，但其雄心壯志必須根據對其現有資源、黨派分歧和政治意願的現實評估來調整。在一個面臨生死攸關的全球挑戰的世界中，拜登對聯盟和寬鬆的伙伴關係給予了適當的高度重視，認為它們是美國實力的主要組成部分，並看到了跨國解決方案的價值。他重申，民主國家是特殊的政治親屬，但他似乎意識到，由於許多國家處於民主與專制之間，因此很少有事業能從美國外交政策視為兩者之間的競爭中受益。 世界瞬息萬變，我們無法預測拜登短暫的總統任期將如何適應歷史的趨勢。美國和歐洲的選民會轉向民粹主義、單幹民族主義，甚至孤立主義嗎？中國在太平洋等地區的意圖是什麼？能否結束烏克蘭戰爭而不開創獎勵赤裸裸侵略的先例？大國是否會步上後塵，邁向第二次核武軍備競賽的懸崖？當然，拜登是否會有一位與他世界觀相同的繼任者，或者川普的繼任者將尋求扭轉他所做的大部分事情？無論答案如何，儘管出現了國內政治兩極化的跡象，拜登還是在外交政策上做出了深刻的改變——不是為了適應美國的衰落，而是為了反映該國的內在實力。 傑西卡·馬修斯 (JESSICA T. MATHEWS) 是卡內基國際和平基金會的傑出研究員和前主席。 更多傑西卡·T·馬修斯的作品 更多的： 美國 安全 美國外交政策 拜登政府 美國政治 烏克蘭戰爭 美中 關係 以色列與哈馬斯戰爭 最常閱讀的文章 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (Ilan Z. Baron) 與伊萊‧Z‧薩爾茲曼 (Ilai Z. Saltzman) 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 亞米尼·艾亞爾 推薦文章 世界的外交政策 拜登和尋找新的美國策略 本·羅茲 美國總統川普與中國國家主席習近平於 2017 年 11 月在北京會面 以實力回歸和平 為川普的外交政策辯護 羅伯特·奧布萊恩 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 2024 年 8 月 13 日 俄羅斯總統普丁與中國國家主席習近平 2024 年 5 月在中國北京 在俄羅斯 2022 年 2 月入侵烏克蘭後的幾週內，中國政府對莫斯科採取了謹慎的支持態度。中國政府發言人多次強調俄羅斯有權按照自己的意願行事，聲稱「入侵」一詞是西方對事件的解釋，並暗示美國支持俄羅斯總統普京，此舉激怒了俄羅斯總統普丁。中國外交部長王毅對俄國的「合理關切」表示同情。 然而，在中國共產黨領導階層之外，人們的反應更令人擔憂。儘管中國絕大多數大學和智庫都是國家資助的，但在那裡工作的分析家和學者仍然保留一定程度的獨立性，他們的觀點對政府產生一定程度的影響。烏克蘭戰爭爆發後，這些分析家公開擔心這場衝突可能會損害中國與歐洲和美國的關係，進一步破壞全球經濟，並削弱中國最重要合作夥伴俄羅斯的財富和實力。 中國最重要的國際關係學者之一閻學通在 2022 年 5 月表示，「戰爭對中國的負面影響將是巨大的」 ，他警告說，曠日持久的衝突將對全球經濟造成嚴重破壞，並引發「緊張局勢加劇」中國與日本等鄰國之間的關係。正如國際關係學者李偉所說，西方「前所未有地聯合」制裁俄羅斯經濟，令中國專家感到驚訝。中國銀行前副行長王永利等人擔心製裁會威脅到中國經濟所依賴的全球化。 然而，戰爭已經過去兩年多了，公眾的這種赤裸裸的悲觀情緒已經消散，取而代之的是謹慎的樂觀情緒。這些專家現在認為，俄羅斯和中國的經濟基本上避免了西方制裁造成的嚴重損害。俄羅斯正在重建其國防工業基礎，並避免了一度看似可能是普丁策略的結果的極端外交孤立。 這些分析家關於烏克蘭戰爭的一些結論——例如，美國國內支持武裝基輔的共識將會動搖——已經得到證實。但中國公共論述中顯然沒有提及其他現實。事實上，中國因普丁的戰爭以及北京對其的經濟和外交支持而付出了代價。歐洲並未完全背棄中國，但中國與俄羅斯的關係不斷加深，導致與許多歐洲國家的關係嚴重惡化，且無法輕易扭轉。普丁奪取烏克蘭領土的慾望與北京長期以來吞併台灣的慾望之間的對稱性促使美國及其印太盟友加強防禦。 這些盲點很重要，因為在中國，烏克蘭戰爭既是中國的觀察站，也是中國為與美國加劇地緣政治衝突做準備的實驗室。在分析烏克蘭事件時，中國學者試圖評估美國和歐洲的決心，並了解中國在地緣政治或軍事危機中可能被迫承擔哪些風險。著名軍事戰略家週波等一些專家得出的結論是，北約在代表烏克蘭進行某些重大干預方面猶豫不決，這證明除了美國之外，台灣在未來與中國的衝突中將缺乏捍衛者。儘管這些學者往往小心翼翼地避免過於明確地討論台海潛在戰爭的輪廓，但許多人似乎正在從美國支持烏克蘭的決心及其可能容忍烏克蘭的意願中找出一條直線。 憂心閣 中國專家，特別是來自精英學術機構或政府或軍隊附屬智庫的專家，既是官方政策的解釋者，也是影響者。他們在政府認可的期刊和媒體上發表文章，儘管他們的觀點經常與政府的正統觀點一致，但他們中的許多人也測試官員尚未公開表達的政策想法，或提出新的政治主張作為試驗氣球，以衡量官方的反應。即使在公共言論受到嚴格控制的中國領導人習近平政權下，其中一些專家仍然可以謹慎地探討敏感話題，在知識獨立和政治忠誠之間保持微妙的平衡。 中國專家對於普丁的戰爭並不是鐵板一塊。自2022年俄羅斯軍隊進入烏克蘭以來，中國分析人士就這場衝突對中國利益的影響以及對西方反擊俄羅斯攻勢的正確解釋提出了不同的看法。然而，總體而言，他們的早期反應是出於對這場戰爭將標誌著冷戰後歷史性轉折點的擔憂。中國學者一致認為，俄羅斯的入侵將推動國際秩序的重大調整。中國現代國際關係研究院的一群學者尖銳地表達了這一觀點，儘管直接隸屬於中國國家安全部，但仍以其高品質的分析而聞名。 2023年2月，這些學者認為這次入侵是“歷史的分水嶺”，揭示了一種“潛在的新秩序”的存在， 這種秩序不同於冷戰結束後主導了三十年的安全架構。 當然，習近平談到了全球秩序「新時代」的到來。他一再宣揚世界正在經歷“百年未有之大變局”，其特點是風險不斷增加，但中國也可能從中受益，因為美國將顛覆美國在地緣政治、科技和全球經濟中的主導地位。 中國學者最初的結論是，俄羅斯的入侵將顛覆國際秩序。 許多學者最初擔心俄羅斯的攻擊可能會破壞中國謹慎進入新時代的能力。這事件刺痛了他們的感覺，即中國比美國以外的任何國家都更有能力決定全球經濟和世界事件的軌跡。此外，對烏克蘭的迅速、出人意料的襲擊凸顯了中國與西方關係突然重大破裂的危險。中國銀行前副行長王毅感嘆，美國主導的對俄羅斯制裁將加速“兩個尖銳對立陣營的形成”，這將對推動中國經濟增長的全球化進程“構成巨大威脅”。 2022年6月，外交政策學者陳東曉擔心，長期戰爭將「大幅增加北京處理中美關係的難度」。 中國分析家尤其對西方協調一致地制裁俄羅斯經濟感到震驚。李寫道，這項努力「生動地展示了美國可以動用的經濟實力工具」。並非所有中國專家都同意制裁可能產生的效果。黃精等人認為，西方的“沒有火藥的世界大戰”將會失敗，因為對能源和金融部門的製裁是出了名的“漏洞”，而且他認為，美國和歐洲之間會出現分歧。 但其他人得出的結論是，美國仍然對國際金融體系擁有無與倫比的影響力。中國人民銀行分析師張蓓預測，美國對關鍵支付和結算機制的影響力，包括處理銀行間訊息傳遞的 SWIFT 系統，將使其能夠威脅俄羅斯的「國家金融安全」。經濟學家王達更進一步，將俄羅斯從SWIFT中除名比喻為核子攻擊。美國在金融上摧毀競爭對手的能力將對中國產生嚴重影響：2022 年10 月，中國央行的一位研究員警告稱，中國必須準備好抵禦美國在全球範圍內「複製這種針對中國的金融制裁模式”的行為。 “中美戰略博弈加劇和台海衝突的背景下。 隨著制裁開始生效、俄羅斯軍隊陷入困境，中國學者也擔心俄羅斯作為重要戰略夥伴的地位可能面臨危險。中國最著名的俄羅斯問題專家之一馮玉軍預測，「俄羅斯在世界經濟和國際政治體系中的影響力」將「大幅下降」；另一位專家袁迅預測，制裁將「使俄羅斯企業籌集資金變得困難，增加[俄羅斯]股市崩盤的風險，[導致]大量中小企業可能面臨破產風險，減少就業機會，增加失業率，並減少[俄羅斯]公民的收入。 陽光面向上 然而如今，中國專家的言論主要是一種更樂觀的前景。他們指出，西方對戰爭的反應並沒有產生許多人預測的最災難性的結果。中國人民大學重陽金融研究院的學者在2024 年2 月的一份報告中總結道，“歷史上最猛烈的製裁浪潮”“沒有達到預期效果，反而帶來了反彈和反制裁”，正如俄羅斯發現的那樣其貨幣以及與中國和其他國家的貿易的生命線。許多中國分析家也認為，普丁避免了真正具有破壞性的外交孤立，理由是他最近對北韓和越南進行了國事訪問，並在7月在莫斯科接待了印度總理莫迪。正如普丁河內之行後中國版《環球時報》的頭條大肆宣揚的那樣：“西方對俄羅斯的孤立已經被打破。” 根據這種觀點，中國避免為支持普丁的戰爭努力付出任何重大的經濟或外交代價。事實上，這場戰爭創造了可能有利於中國的趨勢。俄羅斯經濟抵禦西方制裁的能力令許多中國學者印象深刻。俄羅斯經濟專家徐波嶺2024年2月訪問莫斯科後表示，烏克蘭戰爭「為昏昏欲睡的俄羅斯經濟注入了一針強心劑，使其變得更加強大、更有活力」。他甚至推測普丁「並不急於結束衝突」。其他分析人士對這場戰爭如何重振了俄羅斯陷入困境的軍工複合體感到驚訝，《環球時報》的分析得出的結論是，該聯合體一直「處於投資和生產不足的狀態」。分析指出，自2022年2月以來，它“加快接受國家投資並增加產能”，導致“俄羅斯軍工企業全面復甦”，新型戰術導彈、裝甲車的生產“取得重大進展”。 隨著戰爭的拖延，中國分析家也認為，西方的團結正在破裂。著名歐亞研究專家丁小星在二月寫道，隨著民主黨和共和黨「相互激烈對抗，隨著[美國總統]選舉的臨近，局勢對烏克蘭越來越不利」。鷹派國際關係學者金燦榮預測，歐洲國家和美國大眾對支持烏克蘭的「強烈抵制」最終將毀掉基輔的自衛能力。 損失調整 中國專家的許多分析是公正的，甚至是精明的。但中國面向公眾的討論卻缺乏對北京因支持普丁戰爭而承擔的成本的真正認識。專家們的早期評估仍停留在對中國可能造成的巨大損害。現在，他們往往忽視或低估北京所付出的嚴重代價。中國與大多數歐洲國家的關係已經惡化，而且可能是不可逆轉的。在 7 月峰會後的聲明中，北約對北京的行為進行了前所未有的嚴厲譴責，稱中國是俄羅斯戰爭努力的「決定性推動者」——這種措辭在 2022 年 2 月之前是不可想像的。 對中國的不滿不僅限於歐洲決策者。最近非常看好中歐關係的歐洲人——尤其是那些在中國有商業利益的人——現在的看法要悲觀得多。歐洲工業圓桌會議五月對歐洲執行長進行的一項調查發現，只有 7% 的人認為歐洲與中國的關係將在未來三年內改善。超過 50% 的人預計未來會惡化。歐洲外交關係委員會7月對近2萬人進行的一項調查顯示，15個歐洲國家的65%受訪者同意中國在烏克蘭持續戰爭中發揮了「相當消極」或「非常消極」的作用。 儘管西方制裁並未擊垮俄羅斯經濟，但烏克蘭戰爭卻加劇了全球經濟的片段化。幾十年來，北京一直致力於實現經濟自給自足。中國政府規劃者在 2018 年左右加強了這些努力，試圖讓中國為全球化的分裂和供應鏈的斷裂做好準備。但中國還沒有準備好應對烏克蘭戰爭，加上許多國家對中國的技術依賴日益加劇的國家安全擔憂，加速了這種分裂，促使美國和歐洲政府、公司和投資者將資本從中國重新配置出去。以及其他受地緣政治影響的市場。俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭加劇了外國投資者對中國市場的擔憂，因為人們擔心北京也可能因與莫斯科結盟以及對台灣動武而面臨制裁或經濟影響。 烏克蘭戰爭，特別是北京決定加強與俄羅斯的戰略夥伴關係，也加劇了本已緊張的美中關係的裂痕。拜登政府多次警告北京，中國向莫斯科提供的經濟、技術和外交生命線與其所宣稱的與美國建立穩定雙邊關係的願望背道而馳。但北京繼續加大對俄羅斯的賭注，包括最近與俄羅斯轟炸機在阿拉斯加海岸附近的空域進行聯合巡邏。今年五月，華盛頓制裁了十幾家直接支持莫斯科戰爭努力的中國公司。無論即將到來的美國總統選舉結果如何，都可能會實施更多製裁。 慘痛的教訓 今年2月，中國人民大學專家小組對全球局勢進行了盤點，得出的結論是「外部環境不再持續進步和改善」。相反，他們接著說，“我們面臨的情況是巨大的變化和偉大的鬥爭，是對抗性的、長期的和殘酷的。”儘管普丁在莫斯科仍然牢牢掌握權力，而且他吞併烏克蘭領土的努力尚未產生許多中國分析人士最初預測的徹底的戰略悲劇，但北京的外部環境遠非良性。與美國的關係仍然緊張。在中國的近鄰，澳洲、日本和菲律賓等美國盟友正在加強防禦能力。衝突正在破壞中東的穩定。中國在國際秩序中的地位依然穩固，但日益不穩定。 所有這些對於中國自己對台灣的設計來說都具有非凡的意義。俄羅斯對烏克蘭的戰爭提供了關於現代戰爭的複雜性、國際社會對所謂的地區爭端作出反應的可能性以及曠日持久的軍事衝突的代價的普遍教訓。習近平從這場危機中學到了什麼仍然難以捉摸。但中國分析家的觀點為了解中國政府從普丁戰爭中可能學到的教訓提供了一個窗口。他們的解釋多種多樣且各不相同。然而，在目睹了烏克蘭兩年的戰爭之後，許多人得出的結論是，西方不願意發生衝突，如果經濟成本高昂，就會厭倦支持面臨入侵力量的民主國家。這個結論常常被誇大，而且可能低估了美國的決心。但他們繪製這張圖的事實表明，台灣海峽乃至整個世界可能正朝著更危險的方向發展。 裘德‧布蘭切特 (JUDE BLANCHETTE) 是戰略與國際研究中心中國研究弗里曼主席。著有《中國的新紅衛兵：激進主義的回歸與毛澤東的重生》。 裘德·布蘭切特的更多作品 更多的： 中國 烏克蘭 俄羅斯 外交 地緣 政治 安全 戰略與衝突 戰爭與軍事戰略 美國外交政策 烏克蘭戰爭 普丁 習近平 最常閱讀的文章 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (Ilan Z. Baron) 與伊萊‧Z‧薩爾茲曼 (Ilai Z. Saltzman) 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 亞米尼·艾亞爾 推薦文章 俄羅斯總統普丁 (Vladimir Putin) 向被釋放的刺客瓦季姆·克拉西科夫 (Vadim Krasikov) 致意，莫斯科，2024 年 8 月 普丁的新混亂代理人 俄羅斯不斷壯大的破壞者和刺客隊伍如何威脅西方 安德烈·索爾達托夫和伊琳娜·博羅根 2023 年 7 月，士兵在台灣桃園行進 阻止中國攻擊台灣的正確方法 美國硬實力還不夠 瑞恩·哈斯和裘德·布蘭切特 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 作者：丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 2024 年 9 月/10 月 發表於2024 年 8 月 12 日 塞爾曼設計 在美國政治中，給某事貼上「國家安全」的標籤自然會提升其重要性。用外交政策觀察家的話來說，國家安全問題，例如大規模殺傷性武器的監管，屬於「高級政治」議題，而人權等其他議題則屬於「低級政治」。 當然，並非所有人都同意哪些議題屬於國家安全範疇。隨著時間的推移，美國對國家安全的定義也發生了巨大的波動。喬治·華盛頓和亞歷山大·漢密爾頓 在革命時期都使用過這個術語，但沒有明確的定義。冷戰開始時，聯邦政府在 1947 年《國家安全法案》通過後大幅擴大了「水桶」的規模，但該法律從未對該術語本身進行定義。隨著1960年代末與莫斯科的緊張關係緩和，國家安全的範圍開始略有縮小，但隨著1973年石油禁運引發對能源安全的新擔憂，這種情況結束了。 20 世紀 80 年代，這項定義不斷擴大，直到冷戰結束。 在 1991 年蘇聯解體和 2001 年 9/11 襲擊之間的幾年裡——美國似乎幾乎沒有直接競爭對手——即使是安全學者也很難定義國家安全的含義。不出所料，他們未能達成共識。然而，自從隨後的「反恐戰爭」以來，國家安全的水桶已經陷入低谷。從氣候變遷到勒索軟體，到個人防護設備，到關鍵礦物，再到人工智慧，現在一切都是國家安全。 誠然，經濟全球化和快速的技術變革增加了美國面臨的非常規威脅。然而，似乎也存在著一種棘輪效應，外交政策機構在國家安全領域增加了新事物，卻沒有擺脫舊事物。世界政治中的問題很少會消失。充其量，它們往往會非常緩慢地衰退。新的危機需要緊急關注。擱置的問題如果不解決，將不可避免地轉移到隊列的頂部。各個政治領域的政策企業家都希望政府、國會議員和美國外交政策的其他制定者將他們的問題列為國家安全優先事項，以便獲得更多關注和資源。美國民粹主義者和民族主義者傾向於將一切視為國家安全威脅，毫不羞於這麼說。例如，傳統基金會的「2025計畫」被視為唐納德·川普贏得今年大選後川普第二屆政府的藍圖，該計畫呼籲將國內大型科技公司和TikTok等外國公司視為潛在的國家安全威脅進行監理。鑑於這種政治利益和結構性誘因的持續存在，外交政策機構的國家安全問題清單很容易擴大，而很少縮小。 但如果一切都被定義為國家安全，那麼沒有什麼是國家安全的優先事項。如果政策制定者不就什麼是國家安全問題、什麼不是國家安全問題進行更深思熟慮的討論，華盛頓就有可能將其資源過於分散，涉及範圍過於廣泛的問題。這增加了錯過對美國安全和保障的真正威脅的可能性。無論誰明年一月宣誓就任總統，都需要考慮首要原則，以便正確確定國家安全的定義。否則，政策制定者就有可能陷入一種想盡一切辦法卻一事無成的模式。 語意叢林 理論上，國家安全應該很容易定義。對美國來說，任何直接挑戰美國主權或生存的惡意跨國威脅或崛起大國都構成有效的國家安全疑慮。強大的外國軍隊顯然會影響國家安全，但其他威脅也會影響國家安全。港口、能源工廠和其他脆弱的經濟基礎設施可能會造成國家安全疑慮；氣候變遷也是如此，例如威脅邁阿密和紐約等主要沿海城市的經濟。然而，也有一些重要的公共政策議題不屬於這些範圍。無論一些美國人如何大聲喊叫，促進跨性別權利或禁止批判性種族理論都不是國家安全問題。 在實踐中，美國人的國家安全觀始終難以界定。喬治·華盛頓向國會發表的第一份國情咨文提供了一個良好的開端。他幾乎沒有提及這個新生共和國所面臨的外部威脅。相反，他概述了美國如何阻止任何和所有威脅的理論。他強調需要向士兵、軍官和外交官支付體面的工資，並為他們提供完成工作所需的物資。 「為戰爭做好準備是維護和平最有效的手段之一，」他解釋道。 許多外交政策專家都熟悉華盛頓在那次演講中所表達的觀點。不太為人所知的是他在第二次國情咨文演講中所說的話。在那條訊息中，華盛頓列出了一份廣泛的「嚴重挑釁」清單，列舉了美洲原住民部落「以新的敏捷性和更大的影響力重新實施暴力」和「歐洲的不安局勢，特別是偉大的海上霸權的關鍵姿態」。權力」。然而，一旦美國橫跨非洲大陸並與其他大國相隔兩洋，其地理位置的偏遠限制了它所面臨的威脅。學者阿諾德·沃爾弗斯 (Arnold Wolfers) 將 1820 年至 1900 年這段時期描述為「美國政策可以主要關注保護外國投資或本國國民市場的時期」。 世界政治中的問題很少會消失。充其量，它們往往會非常緩慢地衰退。 隨著美國在二十世紀上半葉開始宣稱自己是世界主要強國，其外交政策話語時而相信美國必須向海外派遣軍隊以保護不斷擴大的美國利益，時而堅信「美國優先」。維護和平。但直到冷戰開始，「國家安全」一詞才開始融入美國政治論述。 1947 年的《國家安全法》創建了中央情報局並成立了國家安全委員會，形成了今天的安全架構。對蘇聯整體威脅的認識促使建立了一系列致力於研究國家安全的研究中心、智庫和大學計畫。 沃爾弗斯有先見之明地觀察到，當“國家安全”等術語普及時，“它們對不同的人來說可能意味著不同的事情。”事實上，他寫道，“它們可能根本沒有任何精確的含義。”在 1950 年代和 1960 年代初，對蘇聯威脅的共識緩解了其中一些擔憂。但到了越南戰爭，國防部長羅伯特·麥克納馬拉就已經警告公眾，美國官員在國家安全問題上“迷失在語義叢林中”，將國家安全與武器採購等嚴格的軍事問題混為一談。 隨著冷戰的結束和蘇聯的解體，可以預期 國家安全籃子將隨著軍事預算規模的縮小而縮小。然而相反的情況卻發生了。考慮《國家安全戰略》的歷史，該戰略是總統每年向國會提交的有關當前威脅的報告，儘管實際上發布的頻率通常較低。對 1990 年後報告的回顧顯示，符合條件的擔憂不斷擴大：能源安全、核擴散、販毒和恐怖主義等等。 9/11 事件之後，這一趨勢只會加速，政治人物和政策制定者更加重視國家安全以及影響國家安全的因素。流行病預防出現於本世紀頭十年，並持續至今。過去十年，中國的崛起​​加上俄羅斯的復仇野心，導致第一屆川普政府和拜登政府在其國家安全戰略文件中都提到了「大國競爭」。納入這些威脅的理由是充分的。但當它們被添加時，這些文件並沒有淡化先前的擔憂。 2017 年版本包括承諾「投入更多資源瓦解跨國犯罪組織」。 2022 年文件認為，“全球糧食安全需要各國政府不斷保持警惕並採取行動”，並聲稱美國將“在整個糧食系統中開展工作，考慮從種植到消費的每一步”。不斷地。 五角大廈，維吉尼亞州阿靈頓，2020 年 10 月 五角大廈，維吉尼亞州阿靈頓，2020 年 10 月 卡洛斯·巴里亞/路透社 美國總統的國情咨文演說中也出現了類似的模式。自冷戰結束以來，總統們經常利用年度演講來確定美國面臨的新威脅，或至少擴大其範圍。最初，恐怖主義、核子擴散和流氓國家是中心問題；最終，氣候變遷和網路安全等其他國家安全問題也隨之出現。 “我們沒有面臨迫在眉睫的威脅，但我們確實有一個敵人，”比爾·克林頓總統在 1997 年表示，“我們時代的敵人是不作為。” 9/11 事件後，歷屆總統及其安全戰略家描述了一個被威脅包圍的國家。 「國家安全的前沿可以無所不在，」喬治·W·布希總統2002 年戰略的設計者之一菲利普·澤利科(Philip Zelikow) 解釋道，並補充道，「安全政策對國內和國外的劃分正在被打破。 過去十年，國家安全的定義進一步擴大。聯合國前秘書長科菲·安南所說的“無護照問題”，即網路安全、氣候變遷等無國界問題如雨後春筍般湧現。新科技促使外交政策思想家將目光投向新的地方。過去，軍隊只關注來自陸地、海上和空中的威脅，但在本世紀，網路空間和太空已成為複雜的衝突領域。人工智慧和量子運算現在是關鍵技術，因此是國家安全的優先事項。隨著氣候變遷和化石燃料的轉型，全球對電池和其他清潔能源應用所需的稀土金屬的需求不斷增加，「關鍵礦物」的清單也不斷擴大。 歷屆美國政府也增加了來自國內或在國內發生的威脅。國內極端主義首次出現在2010年的《國家安全戰略》。拜登政府宣布與鈷等關鍵供應鏈相關的國家緊急狀態，目的是「近岸」關鍵生產技術。 孤立地看，這些問題中的每一個都可以被視為國家安全的優先事項。問題在於，行政部門不斷累積這些最重要的擔憂，使這個概念越來越沒有意義。 優先事項不斷增加 一旦國家安全威脅確定，政府很少會降低其優先級，但蘇聯的解體是一個啟發性的例外。冷戰結束後，美國決策者不再將莫斯科視為壓倒性的問題，俄羅斯也從國家安全戰略文件中消失。國會開始將俄羅斯排除在冷戰時期的法律之外，例如所謂的傑克遜-瓦尼克修正案，該修正案限制與不尊重人權的非市場經濟體的貿易。 隨後，俄羅斯在普丁總統的領導下再次成為威脅。華盛頓短暫地將莫斯科降級為國家安全優先事項的做法不同尋常，因為美國官僚機構實際上已經適應了這一轉變。儘管威脅從國家安全戰略中刪除的情況很少見，但外交政策官員同意刪除威脅的情況就更罕見了。大多數跨國威脅會隨著時間的推移而消退，但很少會消失。 1987 年的戰略將恐怖主義視為主要的國家安全問題。這種威脅一直持續到 20 世紀 90 年代，並在 9/11 襲擊後躍居首位。然而，經過二十年的“全球反恐戰爭”，美國官員似乎成功地在文件和公共言論中降低了這一威脅的等級。隨後哈馬斯於 2023 年 10 月 7 日在以色列發動的可怕襲擊再次使其成為優先事項。 新型武器的出現等技術創新對戰略家管理國家安全優先事項的努力提出了另一個挑戰。例如，核子技術和彈道飛彈技術的擴散需要對哪些國家或團體構成重大風險進行全面重新計算。隨著取得大規模殺傷性技術的障礙減少，名單中不僅包括大國（中國、俄羅斯），還包括小國（伊朗、北韓），甚至包括非國家行為體（伊斯蘭國、胡塞武裝）。 但挑戰要深遠得多。隨著新技術的出現，新資源變得至關重要，而以前重要的資源往往失去了意義。一個世紀前，煤炭和石油的位置是各國發動戰爭的因素之一。如今，鈷和鋰被貼上了「關鍵礦物」的標籤，一些分析師擔心，對它們的爭奪可能會引發戰爭。然而，在這種轉變期間，可能很難確定是否優先考慮新資源而不是更成熟的資源。俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭為能源供應鏈帶來了嚴重壓力，迫使歐洲和非洲國​​家爭奪石油、煤炭和天然氣。同時，氣候變遷的壓力以及碳驅動國家向綠色技術必要組成部分的競爭的轉變。因此，許多美國人呼籲聯邦政府優先考慮石油和天然氣等傳統能源的安全，儘管許多人呼籲美國擺脫對這些能源的依賴。 雙方必須明確哪些國家安全問題是最迫切的。 新技術也增加了競爭對手和修正主義者可以用來威脅國家安全的途徑。資訊和通訊技術可以幫助增強軍隊實力，並成為宣傳和虛假資訊的強大工具。同樣，生物科學的突破可以拯救戰場上的生命，但也會增加生物戰的風險。圍繞不明空中現象的謎團暗示著美國高級官員無法輕易解釋的先進技術。正如佛羅裡達州參議員馬可·盧比奧最近所說，“任何進入不應該存在的空域的東西都會構成威脅。” 華盛頓根深蒂固的政治動態也將越來越多的問題推向國家安全層面。五角大廈的資金比國務院好得多；向國會和美國人民推銷安全比推銷外交更容易。在預算有限的世界中，政策創業家願意將他們最關心的問題視為國家安全問題，以釋放國防部的資源。國際關係學者將這種現象稱為「安全化」。在本世紀之交，美國官員開始將愛滋病毒/愛滋病描述為國家安全問題，認為這種疾病削弱了非洲國家的經濟，並威脅到推翻政府。這種說法可能被誇大了，但這是調動資源對抗全球流行病的一種方式，其中包括總統愛滋病緊急救援計劃，該計劃自喬治·W·布希政府啟動以來被認為挽救了非洲數百萬人的生命。 在國家安全辯論中，經濟和技術問題往往會引起兩黨的關注。自1957年蘇聯啟動人造衛星太空計畫以來，許多美國決策者一直對美國的技術優勢被另一個大國奪走感到恐慌。在冷戰的最初幾十年裡，莫斯科是主要關注點。 1980年代和90年代，是日本。本世紀，是中國。這不可避免地導致政策制定者將重點放在被認為對確保國家經濟霸主地位至關重要的技術上。近幾十年來，他們關注的是半導體。至少在這十年剩下的時間裡，他們將沉迷於人工智慧。所有這些動態確保了國家安全優先事項清單不斷增加。 並非越多越好 國家安全議程上的問題越多，政策制定者就越難關注最重要的議題。冷戰導緻美國官員以簡化的視角看待世界，但也使他們能夠理清外交政策中真正重要的內容。然而，最近幾屆政府傾向於將一個又一個問題宣佈為國家安全問題，這使得許多潛在威脅很容易掩蓋最迫在眉睫的危險。 縮小和澄清國家安全理論的一種方法是透過兩個主要政黨之間的權力潮起潮落。冷戰期間，總統候選人經常談到“導彈差距”或“脆弱之窗”，這些已成為國家安全的優先事項。共和黨人往往表現出更強硬的本能，優先考慮來自惡意行為者的威脅；民主黨人更有可能認真對待氣候變遷或流行病等分散威脅。這些差異可能導致在關鍵國家安全問題上發生衝突。例如，在能源安全方面，保守派將氣候變遷帶來的威脅最小化，而進步派則強調這一點；眾議院共和黨人警告說，逐步減少美國煤炭、石油和天然氣的生產會損害國家安全，而進步人士則警告說，不這樣做才是真正的威脅。 可以預期，每當權力從一黨轉移到另一黨時，華盛頓的國家安全重點就會相應轉移。但實際上，即使總統政府上台時與前任截然不同，國家安全優先事項清單也往往會擴大，而不僅僅是改變。例如，2002年《國家安全戰略》發佈時，澤利科表示，喬治·W·布希政府“超越了克林頓政府”，因為它“始終將貧困、流行病、生物和遺傳危險以及環境退化視為國家面臨的重大問題”。安全威脅。”儘管布希政府2002年的戰略臭名昭著地關注恐怖主義與大規模殺傷性武器之間的聯繫，但它也非常重視柯林頓政府的國家安全優先事項。 最近，川普政府對大國競爭的強調在 2017 年國家安全戰略中佔據了中心位置，這可能被視為一種失常。然而，拜登政府的2022年戰略並不迴避將與中國和俄羅斯的競爭視為核心挑戰。事實上，它明確表示，“中華人民共和國有意願並且越來越有能力重塑國際秩序，以建立有利於其利益的全球競爭環境。” 川普就國家安全戰略發表講話，華盛頓特區，2017 年 12 月 川普就國家安全戰略發表講話，華盛頓特區，2017 年 12 月 約書亞羅伯茨/路透社 歷屆政府不願淡化前任國家安全疑慮的原因之一是出於政治上的謹慎。當政府大肆宣揚國家安全威脅，而事實證明這種威脅被誇大時，大多數美國人似乎並不關心。政策制定者總是可以解釋說，他們只是保持謹慎，或者他們的警告有助於消除威脅。另一方面，人們往往會記得政府淡化國家安全擔憂並最終演變成全面危機的情況。川普政府在應對新冠肺炎(COVID-19) 疫情方面表現不佳的原因有很多，但其中之一是它於2018 年解散了國家安全委員會全球健康、安全和生物防禦局。報道，這一決定表明，川普“並沒有像該領域的許多專家那樣看待流行病的威脅。”總統和政策負責人經常以《教父》電影中的麥可柯里昂看待有組織犯罪的方式看待國家安全問題：每次他認為自己已經出局時，他們就把他拉了回來。 舊的國家安全優先事項很少被放棄的另一個原因是官僚政治。只要某個議題繼續在戰略文件中被歸類 為國家安全問題，政府機構就可以依賴持續的資金支持。對於許多外交部門和外國地區官員來說，需要花費數年時間才能對某個特定國家或問題有足夠的了解，才能被視為專家。因此，官僚機構 會抵制任何降低現有優先事項的嘗試，如果這種舉動會影響其核心任務或貶低其培訓價值。 決策菁英對未來是樂觀還是悲觀，也會影響政府是否願意淡化較小的威脅。當菁英認為地緣政治發展正朝著有利於美國的方向發展時，就更容易透過提出長期解決方案來將可能的威脅去政治化。例如，在 1990 年代，美國官員相信自由國際秩序將吸引俄羅斯和中國變得更像美國，從而消除它們所構成的國家安全威脅。這項假設允許對兩國保持數十年的戰略耐心。 然而，當政策制定者認為未來對美國不利時，他們可能會傾向於放大任何潛在的國家安全威脅。突然間，每個問題都被視為可能加速國家實力進一步衰落的轉折點。由於官員們將任何事情視為生存威脅，因此安全成為一個整體問題。目前，無論是民調或精英話語，都顯示出對美國未來實力的深刻悲觀情緒。近年來，基於規則的國際秩序的好處已經減弱。世界正經歷 1945 年以來最多的衝突。許多國家正陷入嚴重的民主衰退，民粹主義和獨裁領袖聲稱他們的治理模式更為優越。這些趨勢都不利於美國的國家安全，國內分歧加劇了民眾對這些威脅的恐懼。鑑於當前的地緣政治局勢，期望政策制定者篩選出國家安全優先事項的清單是魯莽的。 調整威脅規模 有幾個因素將一系列新議題推入國家安全範疇。正如最近的《國家安全戰略》所表明的那樣，不斷增加威脅會淡化國家安全的概念。該文件通常只不過是行政部門機構的檢查活動，因此在思考外交政策時用途有限。近年來，這一點變得很明顯，因為歷屆政府都忽略了自己的國家安全戰略中提到的問題。例如，川普政府官員將疫情風險降到最低，拜登政府官員堅稱中東平靜。 公平地說，這些年度報告中指出的大部分國家安全問題都是真實存在的。俄羅斯和中國是敵對大國，其價值觀與美國不同。過去十年已經充分證明，流行病和氣候變遷對美國人的生活方式造成了多麼嚴重的威脅。人工智慧等新技術很可能在未來幾年對國家安全構成嚴重威脅。 但如果國家安全挑戰不能輕易降級或消除，至少應該要對其進行更好的分類。即使是外交政策新手也知道，人們可以按國家（伊朗、北韓）和主題（防擴散、網路安全）對國家安全問題進行分類。然而，在考慮如何分配稀缺的時間和資源時，至少有兩種方法可以更好地組織這個不斷增長的清單。 一項改進是美國官員按照時間範圍和緊急程度對國家安全問題進行排序。恐怖主義和俄羅斯復仇主義等一些擔憂構成了直接而緊迫的風險。其他問題，例如人工智慧和中國實力的崛起，則是中期擔憂。還有一些問題，例如氣候變化，會在此時此地帶來挑戰，但長期來看將產生最大的影響。政策制定者對特定威脅的預期時間越明確，政府就越容易正確分配資源。這並不意味著緊急的事情應該排擠重要的事情。相反，它意味著制定一個合理的基礎，將一些資源從重要但長期的威脅中轉移出去。優先考慮緊迫性還可以讓歷屆政府明確他們打算在任職期間實施哪些措施。 澄清國家安全威脅相對重要性的另一種方法是明確該問題是否需要採取主動措施、防禦性反應或兩者結合。可能引起大流行的新病毒在出現之前無法解決，一旦出現也很難遏制，因此需要採取預防措施。公共衛生官員需要做好接觸者追蹤和檢測的準備；科學家需要為研究和合成測試和疫苗做好準備。然而，試圖徹底根除已經從動物傳播到人類的疾病是浪費時間和資源。另一方面，挫敗恐怖組織可能需要採取 秘密行動或使用特種部隊等攻擊措施。應對中國不斷增長的經濟和軍事實力需要採取一系列進攻和防禦反應，以更好地保護美國，而避免不必要地加劇緊張局勢直至武裝衝突。 如果一切都被定義為國家安全，那麼沒有什麼是國家安全的優先事項。 政府還可以製定年度記分卡，以當前重要性對國家安全問題進行排名。這種方法既能讓政策制定者強調他們認為現在最值得關注的國家安全領域，又能向公眾展示隨著時間的推移如何評估不同的威脅。同樣重要的是，記分卡將使政府能夠淡化某些威脅，而不是完全忽視它們——也就是說，它將迫使美國官員指出哪些問題不如其他問題那麼重要。即使具體的排名被證明存在爭議，這樣的做法也會讓國家安全辯論更加受到關注，並有助於識別被低估的威脅。 調整國家安全優先事項一直是美國官員面臨的挑戰。 1950 年 1 月，國務卿迪安·艾奇遜在全國新聞俱樂部發表了著名的演講，其中明確指出了全球哪些地區位於美國的「防禦範圍」內。他沒有包括朝鮮半島。儘管如此，不到六個月後，當北韓入侵韓國時，杜魯門政府就部署了 30 萬軍隊。北韓本來就不是美國國家安全的優先事項——直到它成為美國國家安全的優先事項。 70年來，國家安全的定義幾乎擴展得面目全非。新科技增加了外部力量威脅美國的媒介。此外，由於安全問題需要更多的人員和預算，政策制定者有強烈的動機將自己的利益視為國家安全問題。將問題納入國家安全隊列的力量遠比導致政策制定者將其排除在外的力量強大得多。然而，即使有了這種擴張，美國還是被以下事件打了措手不及：9/11、COVID-19 大流行、10 月 7 日襲擊。僅僅擁有更長的威脅清單並不能真正幫助我們為意外情況做好準備。 全國選舉活動暴露了國家安全官僚機構的所有病態，並使它們變得更糟。總統候選人經常宣稱，選舉關乎國家的靈魂，如果對方獲勝，美國人將不再有國家需要保衛。鑑於美國現在的兩極化程度，這種趨勢似乎只會在 2024 年大選前夕加劇。儘管如此，兩黨候選人都應該澄清他們認為哪些國家安全問題更為緊迫，哪些問題屬於次要問題，哪些需要積極應對，哪些需要更好的準備。 美國人可能永遠不會就什麼是國家安全問題、什麼不是國家安全問題達成完全一致。但讓政策制定者就如何表達不同意見達成一致的過程將有助於改善國家安全話語——而且在理想情況下，還能改善國家安全。 德雷茲納 (DANIEL W. DREZNER) 是塔夫茨大學弗萊徹法律與外交學院國際政治學傑出教授。 更多丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納的作品 更多的： 美國 安全 防禦與軍事 情報 恐怖主義與反恐 美國外交政策 冷戰 911 最常閱讀的文章 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (Ilan Z. Baron) 與伊萊‧Z‧薩爾茲曼 (Ilai Z. Saltzman) 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 亞米尼·艾亞爾 推薦文章 1951 年 11 月在內華達試驗場測試原子彈 為什麼美國如果恢復核子試爆就會遭受損失 中國和俄羅斯終於能夠迎頭趕上 傑弗裡·劉易斯 共和黨總統候選人唐納德·川普於 2024 年 7 月在威斯康辛州密爾瓦基舉行的共和黨全國代表大會上 帝國總統職位被釋放 最高法院如何消除對行政權最後的限制 莎拉·賓德、詹姆斯·戈德蓋爾和伊麗莎白·桑德斯 不屈不撓的伊斯蘭革命衛隊 革命衛隊如何阻止伊朗總統制定新路線 作者：喬恩·B·奧爾特曼和薩南·瓦基爾 2024 年 8 月 15 日 2022 年 10 月，伊朗阿拉斯的伊斯蘭革命衛隊成員 伊朗總統的命運並不幸福。他們以英雄的身份上任，承諾做出重大改變以改善同胞的生活。幾乎無一例外，他們都以破碎的姿態離開。 事實證明，伊朗的問題往往比新領導人預期的更棘手。但伊朗總統面臨的一個更大障礙是，他們有責任但沒有權力。由於政府和經濟的大部分部門都在伊朗教士精英的控制之下，因此超出了政治家的影響範圍，因此總統對伊朗生活基調的影響力大於對伊朗生活實質的影響。伊朗是一個混合體系，分為民選領導人和非民選領導人，而後者幾乎總是佔上風。 儘管如此，馬蘇德·佩澤什基安 (Masoud Pezeshkian) 7 月 5 日在伊朗提前舉行的總統選舉中獲勝，還是讓國內外重新燃起了希望，認為這次情況可能會有所不同。佩澤什基安以改革派身分參選，承諾提高政府透明度、經濟成長和個人自主權。早期跡象表明，他正在尋求一條務實的道路，激發公眾對其議程的熱情，同時表現出對最高領袖阿里·哈梅內伊的絕對忠誠。佩澤什基安的賭注似乎是，他將能夠從宗教機構中爭取到一些讓步，從而改善伊朗人的日常生活。 隨時了解狀況。 每週提供深入分析。 佩澤什基安可能會幫助伊朗人贏得更大的社會自由，他或許能讓國家擺脫西方嚴厲的製裁。但這些成就並不預示著伊朗將走向更溫和的方向。伊朗日益採取的侵略姿態和與西方的孤立不僅是由勢力日漸減弱的神職人員推動的，而且是由安全機構（主要是伊斯蘭革命衛隊）驅動的，該機構對該國政府和經濟積累了巨大影響力。這應該會讓那些希望德黑蘭採取更和解態度的人感到擔憂：伊斯蘭革命衛隊在其中發揮更大權力的伊朗將是一個更孤立的伊朗，而一個更孤立的伊朗將是一個更危險的伊朗。 與伊朗其他任何派系相比，伊斯蘭革命衛隊從孤立中獲益更多。受到嚴厲制裁的伊朗經濟從該組織主導的走私收入中賺取了數十億美元。這筆錢反過來又支持保守派的庇護網絡，並 為中東地區的伊朗代理人提供資金，這些代理人構成了所謂的抵抗軸心。實際上，伊斯蘭革命衛隊實施了一個複雜的龐氏騙局，以犧牲普通伊朗人的利益為代價，維持了少數人的權威和影響力。這一事實，比教士精英對佩澤什基安的任何抵制，都將對他為改革和溫和派所做的任何努力構成最大的障礙。 革命的誕生 1979 年伊朗革命後，該國首任最高領導人阿亞圖拉霍梅尼 成立了伊斯蘭革命衛隊來保衛年輕的伊斯蘭共和國。這個想法是建立一個獨立於常規武裝部隊的嚴格忠誠的實體，至少有兩個原因。其一是作為一支可能反動或有權力野心的軍隊的製衡力量。另一個是更廣泛地保護新系統免受內部和外部安全威脅。伊斯蘭革命衛隊的意識形態連結和對伊斯蘭共和國的忠誠幫助其發展，並賦予其在國家內的影響力和特權地位。在 1980 年至 1988 年的兩伊戰爭期間，伊斯蘭革命衛隊在迅速動員起來抵禦薩達姆·侯賽因的入侵方面發揮了重要作用。其成員參與了前線戰鬥和遊擊戰爭。同時，巴斯基民兵（一支主要是志願力量，最終併入伊斯蘭革命衛隊）被用來鎮壓異議和維護公共秩序。 戰爭結束後，伊斯蘭革命衛隊在伊朗基礎設施重建中發揮了重要作用，不僅限於軍事重建，還包括重大經濟項目。 1989年，伊朗革命衛隊成立了卡塔姆安比亞建築總部，成為伊朗最大的承包商之一。該組織承擔了大壩建設、道路建設和能源部門的發展，並顯著增加了伊斯蘭革命衛隊的經濟足跡。此後的幾年裡，該集團已擴展到電信和銀行業。這種經濟多元化為伊斯蘭革命衛隊提供了獨立於國家控制的大量免稅財政資源。 2015 年簽署《聯合全面行動計畫》後，伊朗伊斯蘭革命衛隊擔心失去市場份額，進行幹預，放慢了與國際企業的交易。因此，伊斯蘭革命衛隊的角色遠遠超出了其最初的任務，其規模也顯著增加，從 1979 年底估計的 10,000 名成員增加到今天的 150,000 至 190,000 名成員。 旨在限制甚至改變伊朗行為的製裁和經濟孤立已成為美國對伊朗政策的事實上的工具。然而，制裁並沒有促使德黑蘭行為改變，反而產生了相反的效果。伊斯蘭革命衛隊已經是一個主導角色，它在經濟中的影響力越來越大，以維持該體系的運轉，但犧牲了普通民眾和私營部門的利益。伊斯蘭革命衛隊捕獲了合法和非法貿易，透過用於規避制裁的空殼公司網路嵌入腐敗和黑手黨式犯罪行為。在缺乏國際投資和石油銷售限制的情況下，伊斯蘭革命衛隊已開始透過石油出口來輸送資金，儘管價格有折扣，該組織依靠其在伊拉克、黎巴嫩和敘利亞的金融網絡來進入這些市場和，隨之而來的是流動性。 國中之國 自 1979 年以來，伊朗政權一直試圖展現其伊斯蘭和革命的誠意。在那些看似為電視製作的場景中，身著長袍的神職人員經常勸說大批群眾反對美國、它所代表的西方領導的全球秩序以及它所支持的「猶太復國主義實體」。同時，伊朗及其盟友和代理人——敘利亞的阿薩德政權、黎巴嫩真主黨、巴勒斯坦領土的哈馬斯、也門的胡塞叛亂分子以及伊拉克的各種什葉派民兵——參與了破壞穩定的邊緣政策、挑釁和恐怖主義行為。 但對多數伊朗人來說，這種抵抗政治只不過是抵抗劇場。他們很久以前就對神職人員的領導失去了耐心，並對革命的伊斯蘭主義失去了興趣。一般伊朗人最關心的問題是停滯的經濟（導致有能力的年輕人的人才流失）和強制的社會鎮壓（最嚴厲的措施是針對女性的）。這些不滿情緒導致伊朗人近年來走上街頭進行大規模示威活動。 隨著伊朗文職機構的地位下降，伊斯蘭革命衛隊彌補了這一空缺，越來越多地以國中之國的形式運作。儘管伊斯蘭革命衛隊至少在名義上與神職人員保持一致，並且只要哈梅內伊還活著，就對其心存感激，但伊朗革命衛隊擁有自己的財富和權力來源，幾乎沒有外部問責來源。該組織在大多數（如果不是全部）伊朗機構中培養了政治影響力。憲法規定的保護國家安全的任務使其能夠在最高領導人的支持下，在國內建立鎮壓機構，同時在國外推行以抵抗為導向的外交政策。 伊朗真正的重心是悄悄崛起的伊斯蘭革命衛隊。 伊斯蘭革命衛隊的政治影響力隨著其經濟擴張而成長。許多前伊斯蘭革命衛隊成員在政府（包括內閣和議會）中擔任職務，並擔任省長。該組織的高級指揮官是最高國家安全委員會的成員，該機構的任務是製定核政策、外交政策和國防政策。伊斯蘭革命衛隊的許多關鍵人物在最高領導人的辦公室中發揮著至關重要的作用。伊斯蘭革命衛隊也監督幾個主要的安全機構，甚至影響審理與國家安全相關案件的革命法院。自1999年學生示威爆發以來，以及過去20年的每一次示威活動，包括2009年、2017年、2019年和2022年的全國性抗議活動中，伊斯蘭革命衛隊在鎮壓國內異見方面發揮了突出作用。該組織還帶頭推動伊朗與莫斯科迅速發展的安全和國防關係，其外國武裝「聖城軍」為抵抗軸心成員提供直接的財政和物質支持。 然而，伊斯蘭革命衛隊並不是鐵板一塊。儘管像任何大型機構一樣，它具有高度的忠誠、紀律和偏執性，但它也經歷了內部緊張局勢。在參與地區衝突、與西方的關係以及抗議的處理等問題上出現了分歧和代溝，年輕的實用主義者似乎比年長的退伍軍人意識形態更少，對參與和社會自由化更加開放。伊斯蘭革命衛隊也不僅僅由保守派組成。一些成員支持改革派政客，包括在最近的總統大選中。對腐敗、財務不當行為和參與國內鎮壓的指控也損害了伊斯蘭革命衛隊的公眾形象，並可能影響其長期角色。 儘管如此，毫無疑問，每當哈梅內伊離開現場時，伊斯蘭革命衛隊將充當穩定的保障者。該組織肯定會影響繼任過程，支持保護其自身利益並維護其作為抵抗軸心的設計者和首席管理者的角色的結果。這種持續的鞏固將以犧牲已經下降的教士影響力為代價。 一支不會溫和的軍隊 為了了解伊朗在伊斯蘭革命衛隊崛起的後哈梅內伊時期可能會是什麼樣子，人們可能會認為埃及提供了一個暗示。自1952 年一群軍官推翻君主制以來，士兵一直領導埃及並主宰其政府。的外牆。該國祇有一位文職總統：穆罕默德·穆爾西，一位伊斯蘭主義者，於 2012 年初阿拉伯之春叛亂後當選，並於 2013 年 7 月在軍隊和安全部門的幫助下將其趕下台。 自此統治該國的阿卜杜勒法塔赫塞西 (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi) 是一名前將軍，他從 16 歲起就進入軍事機構，並對軍事機構保留最深切的信任。埃及省份一半以上的省長都是退休將軍，塞西招募了將軍來領導大量政府和準政府的經濟措施。軍方也透過軍事生產部、埃及武裝部隊工程局和阿拉伯工業化組織（主要是武器製造商）等機構直接參與經濟。 在埃及，軍事控制最初促使外交政策重新定位，總統賈邁勒·阿卜杜勒·納賽爾在冷戰時期擁護反殖民主義和不結盟，並支持也門和阿爾及利亞等地的革命運動。然而，埃及軍隊的鞏固最終成為外交政策的穩定力量。 1970 年代，在前軍官安瓦爾·薩達特 (Anwar al-Sadat) 總統的領導下，埃及成為中東地區的強國，部分原因是軍方領導層的經濟利益與西方投資緊密相連。薩達特與以色列簽署了和平條約，並不斷尋找其他方式為埃及吸引數千億美元的援助和投資。同時，軍方在經濟中保持特權地位，並獲得了豐厚的利潤。薩達特的繼任者，首先是胡斯尼·穆巴拉克（前將軍），然後是塞西，都維持了這項政策。 但從目前的情況來看，伊斯蘭革命衛隊在伊朗的鞏固地位將會以截然不同的方式發揮作用。儘管隨著時間的推移，擁有禁衛軍精英已經緩和了埃及的國際姿態，但在伊朗卻產生相反的效果。埃及從未受到嚴格製裁，埃及軍方的商業模式也從未依賴埃及與全球經濟的隔離。相較之下，伊斯蘭革命衛隊從違反制裁的收入中獲利，其獲得的大部分投資來自中國，而中國有興趣維持伊朗與西方的疏離。此外，伊朗的地區代理人網絡為該國提供了戰略縱深，戰略調整遠離中國以及俄羅斯和北韓等其他反西方國家 將使伊朗陷入孤立和暴露。 實用主義戰勝壓力 西方觀眾常常關注伊朗政治中的錯誤因素。他們把憤怒集中在伊朗那些陰沉、留著鬍鬚的神職人員身上，並把希望寄託在具有改革思想的總統身上。然而，伊朗真正的重點卻不太明顯：靜靜崛起的伊斯蘭革命衛隊。佩澤什基安可以在對抗保守派對手的過程中取得一些小的內部勝利，但如果把他贏得的反對教權社會控制的任何戰鬥與根本性的權力鬥爭或伊朗國際姿態的轉變混為一談，那就是錯誤的。真正的權力日益掌握在伊斯蘭革命衛隊手中，其利益和商業模式不利於與外界妥協。因此，希望鼓勵更深層轉變的西方國家不應只相信佩澤什基安；相反，他們需要找到塑造伊斯蘭革命衛隊利益的方法。 一種途徑是加倍加大國際制裁和恐怖分子認定的單向升級，以加速政權崩潰。這通常是華盛頓阻力最小的道路，部分原因是伊朗所做的很多事情都是站不住腳的。但重要的是要注意兩件事。首先，美國主導的製裁很少能打倒一個政權，無論它多麼可憎——無論是菲德爾·卡斯特羅的古巴、穆阿邁爾·卡扎菲的利比亞還是巴沙爾·阿薩德的敘利亞。隨著時間的推移，政權會適應它們，並且像伊斯蘭革命衛隊一樣，學會利用對抗來滿足自己的政治和經濟需求。至少在短期內，更嚴厲的製裁將繼續保護伊斯蘭革命衛隊，而不是削弱它。其次，純粹對抗的道路迫使伊朗革命衛隊做出美國最反感的行為，以犧牲伊朗人民為代價扼殺國內經濟，並強化其抵抗軸心，以表明其在伊朗問題上毫不屈服。壓力。 伊朗政權可能已經走到了最後的盡頭，一個更有利於美國利益的政權可能會取而代之。如果是這樣，美國應該歡迎這樣一個政權，同時意識到美國對政權更迭的影響更有可能使伊朗新統治者失去合法性，而不是幫助他們——特別是考慮到美國1953年在伊朗政權更迭方面的努力引起了長期的共鳴。 相反，更好的政策應將壓力與拉攏和接觸結合起來，以塑造伊朗內部的選擇和結果。伊朗的權力掮客不僅必須知道他們的惡毒行為將招緻美國的懲罰性反應；他們還必須知道，如果他們停止這種惡意行為，美國將會注意到並做出反應。例如，如果德黑蘭減少對其代理人的支持或與俄羅斯保持距離，華盛頓可以透過減少制裁的執行來回應。 可以想像，伊斯蘭革命衛隊會像埃及軍隊一樣，受制於現狀而不是地區動亂。外界常常認為，由於伊朗統治者充滿敵意，他們一定是非理性的，但記錄顯示並非如此。對伊斯蘭革命衛隊領導人真正擔心的事情以及他們願意忍受的事情進行清晰的評估可以闡明緩解緊張局勢的途徑。佩澤什基安可能有助於促進更好的關係，或者他可能被證明無關緊要。無論哪種方式，美國的做法都應尋求問責制和一致性，並允許其與埃及尋求務實和解的可能性。從長遠來看，這種做法更有可能符合美國的利益。另一種施壓途徑只會強化伊朗革命衛隊對國家的控制，並促使伊朗革命衛隊加倍對抗。 喬恩‧阿爾特曼 (JON B. ALTERMAN) 是戰略與國際研究中心中東計畫資深副總裁兼主任。 SANAM VAKIL 是查塔姆研究所中東和北非計畫主任。 喬恩·B·奧爾特曼的更多作品 更多薩南·瓦基爾的作品 更多的： 伊朗 競選與選舉 外交 地緣 政治 外交政策 政治與社會 民事與軍事關係 政治發展 國防與軍事 最常閱讀的文章 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (Ilan Z. Baron) 與伊萊‧Z‧薩爾茲曼 (Ilai Z. Saltzman) 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 亞米尼·艾亞爾 推薦文章 伊朗當選總統馬蘇德·佩澤什基安於 2024 年 7 月在德黑蘭發表演說 一個更正常的伊朗？ 馬蘇德·佩澤什基安 (Masoud Pezeshkian) 如何實現變革 納爾吉斯·巴喬格利和瓦利·納斯爾 2024 年 7 月，佩澤什基安在德黑蘭向人群揮手 為什麼伊朗新總統不會改變他的國家 馬蘇德·佩澤什基安不會冒犯最高領袖 穆罕默德·阿亞圖拉希·塔巴爾 美國在阿富汗錯失良機 華盛頓早期對全面勝利的堅持如何為失敗奠定了基礎 作者：麥可·A·科恩、克里斯多福·A·普雷布爾和莫妮卡·達菲·托夫特 2024 年 8 月 15 日 2001 年 12 月，阿富汗坎大哈的普什圖士兵 阿德里斯·拉蒂夫/路透社 對許多美國人來說，美國20年阿富汗戰爭的主要形像出現在最後時刻：驚恐的阿富汗人衝進喀布爾機場，緊緊抓住即將起飛的飛機，有些人摔死，拼命試圖以塔利班的身份逃離這個國家。三年前的這個月，美國歷史上持續時間最長、代價最高的戰爭，造成 2,459 名美國士兵死亡和 20,000 多人受傷，最終以慘敗告終。 儘管現在對美國在阿富汗無能的指責集中在 2021 年 8 月的最後幾天，但真正的錯誤很久以前就犯下了，當時美國在阿富汗取得了最偉大的勝利：2001 年 12 月推翻了塔利班。由於渴望復仇，並且對徹底擊敗塔利班充滿信心，美國既不尋求與阿富汗前領導人和解，也不尋求妥協。相反，它試圖為他們樹立榜樣。在此過程中，喬治·W·布希政府為塔利班叛亂埋下了種子，塔利班叛亂的出現並最終抹去了阿富汗二十年的犧牲。 了解 2001 年阿富汗發生的事情，以及美國如何扭轉戰局，有助於解釋為什麼戰爭持續了這麼久，結局卻如此糟糕。但它也提供了有關戰爭的更廣泛、普遍適用的教訓：軍事全面勝利是一個虛幻而危險的目標。可以肯定的是，總有一些群體是真正不可調和的，不可能與之進行談判或政治妥協。但這樣的例子只是例外，而不是規則。戰爭的勝利往往是在談判桌上而非戰場上取得的，而對政治對手錶現出同情比頑抗能帶來更多的好處。 隨時了解狀況。 每週提供深入分析。 早期勝利 現在很多人都忘記了，但美國在阿富汗最初的勝利是迅速而壓倒性的。美國於2001 年10 月7 日開戰，距離基地組織恐怖分子於9 月11 日殺害近3,000 人不到一個月。其安全避難所，並在美國空軍和數百名美國特種作戰人員的重要支持下，塔利班政府潰敗。 面對這種武力展示，塔利班武裝份子簡直消失了。許多人回到了自己的村莊，接受了這個國家新的政治現實——而不僅僅是普通戰士。除了該組織領導人毛拉·奧馬爾希望繼續戰鬥外，塔利班領導層對他們的失敗範圍不抱任何幻想。 「我們都知道時間到了，」一名軍事指揮官後來告訴記者阿南德·戈帕爾。 “即使是最好的計劃，命運也會嘲笑。” 2001 年 12 月初，阿富汗和國際官員在德國波昂召開會議，成立了一個由哈米德·卡爾扎伊 (Hamid Karzai) 領導的臨時政府。同一天，由國防部長毛拉·奧拜杜拉和毛拉·奧馬爾的親密助手塔耶布·阿加率領的塔利班代表團前往會見卡爾扎伊並達成投降協議。卡爾扎伊很快向記者宣布了這筆交易。塔利班已同意交出其名義控制下的其餘省份。卡爾扎伊說：“塔利班將放下武器，帶著榮譽和尊嚴回家。”在向該國現任前領導人伸出橄欖枝時，卡爾扎伊解釋說，“阿富汗塔利班是我們的兄弟，他們沒有理由擔心。”他補充說：“不要有報復，不要有仇殺。”卡爾扎伊甚至建議前塔利班官員可以在未來的阿富汗政府中發揮作用。 卡爾札伊承諾將驅逐或審判「外國恐怖分子」。他宣布對普通塔利班戰士進行“大赦”，並要求毛拉奧馬爾“完全遠離恐怖主義”。但卡爾札伊也表示，臨時政府將決定處理該組織前領導人的最佳行動方案。他堅稱，他沒有就奧馬爾毛拉是否會面臨正義的問題與美國進行磋商。 「這是一個阿富汗問題，」他宣稱。卡爾札伊的叔叔和密友阿齊祖拉·卡爾扎伊同意他的觀點，他告訴美國國家公共廣播電台，部落長老將決定如何對待塔利班。但是，卡爾扎伊補充說，“在那之前，他們不應該受到傷害。” 在伊斯蘭堡，塔利班駐巴基斯坦大使阿卜杜勒·薩拉姆·扎伊夫也宣布投降，並表示塔利班已得到保證，毛拉·奧馬爾將被允許留在阿富汗，「有尊嚴地生活」。 「卡爾扎伊和部落首領已承諾保護他，」扎伊夫告訴記者。 艱難討價還價 這些事情都沒有發生。相反，塔利班領導層仍然完全孤立於新的阿富汗政治體系之外，並重新集結，並最終重新奪回了對阿富汗的控制權。原因很簡單：美國官員無意接受塔利班投降，並竭盡全力破壞任何和解。 關於美國對塔利班在 2001 年後阿富汗所扮演角色的立場，幾乎沒有公開的文件記錄。那個時期的國家安全委員會文件仍然屬於機密，許多與美國國防部長唐納德·拉姆斯菲爾德密切合作或當時與卡爾扎伊在現場的人都拒絕了多次採訪或評論的請求，包括我們的請求。因此，美國在協議失敗中所扮演的角色仍然是一個激烈爭論的問題。但布希政府的內部審議並不重要。當時的公開聲明明確表明，塔利班官員的投降和最終重返社會不僅不在討論範圍內，而且幾乎沒有被討論過。 戈帕爾和記者貝蒂·達姆都聲稱卡爾扎伊告訴他們，他接到拉姆斯菲爾德的電話，要求他撤銷投降提議。記者傑克·費爾韋瑟在其著作《善戰》中報道說，當時與卡爾扎伊在一起的美國特種作戰人員之一戴維·福克斯“奉命”告訴卡爾扎伊“與塔利班的這種安排不符合美國的利益」。 2004年至2005年擔任美國駐阿富汗大使的紮爾梅·哈利勒扎德直到十多年後才發現這筆流產的交易。 當哈利勒扎德在 2013 年或 2014 年就該協議與卡爾扎伊對峙時，卡爾扎伊確認了其大致輪廓。哈利勒札德感到震驚的是，在他與時任總統的多年接觸中，這個主題幾乎從未被提及。 “我們幾乎討論了所有事情，”哈利勒扎德告訴卡爾扎伊，“你忘了向我提及這一點？”卡爾札伊告訴哈利勒扎德，他已要求塔利班代表團交出武器和車輛，並宣讀他們在當地電台向他提交的信函，以確認協議。當哈利勒扎德問卡爾扎伊塔利班是否按照他的要求行事時，他說他們做到了。 然而，卡爾扎伊的故事並沒有說明為什麼擬議的交易沒有通過。 “發生了什麼？”哈利勒札德問。卡爾扎伊沒有回答。 美國官員是否直接否決了該協議仍然是一個誘人的懸而未決的問題，但美國的立場並不神秘。布希政府官員公開和私下譴責了向塔利班提出的提議，幾乎可以肯定，他們向卡爾扎伊施壓，要求其撤銷投降提議。 美國既不尋求與阿富汗前領導人和解，也不尋求妥協。 在塑造這種強硬路線方面，沒有任何政府官員比拉姆斯菲爾德發揮了更大的作用，而且隨著塔利班投降的可能性開始增加，他對和解的態度也變得更加棘手。 2001 年 11 月 19 日，當在五角大樓新聞發布會上被問及毛拉奧馬爾試圖透過談判投降的報導時，拉姆斯菲爾德解釋說，美國「無法決定或控制」阿富汗的事件。一周後，他稱允許塔利班參與新政府的前景“不明智”，但沒有譴責這項協議，而是在 11 月 26 日五角大樓的新聞發布會上宣布，“這由阿富汗人民決定。” 然而，到了 11 月 30 日，拉姆斯菲爾德的語氣變得強硬起來。他宣稱美國將“強烈反對任何提供[毛拉奧馬爾]特赦或任何類型安全通行的想法。”然後，在 12 月 6 日的新聞發布會上，拉姆斯菲爾德更進一步。拉姆斯菲爾德援引新出現的關於允許毛拉奧馬爾留在阿富汗的投降協議的報道，明確表示這樣的協議將“不符合[美國]利益”，因此是不可接受的。為了強調這一點，拉姆斯菲爾德向該國新領導人發出了含蓄的威脅：「顯然，我們一直在做很多事情來協助反對派力量……如果我們的目標受到挫敗和反對，顯然，我們更願意與其他不會反對我們目標的人一起工作。 在白宮，新聞秘書阿里·弗萊舍爾將毛拉·奧馬爾稱為“反對美國和其他國家的鬥士”，轉達了布希的信息，即必須將包括毛拉·奧馬爾在內的恐怖分子窩藏者繩之以法。根據美國國家公共廣播電台2001年12月6日報道，美國官員曾與卡爾札伊直接接觸，並了解與塔利班領導人的談判。報告稱，美國「在這些討論中非常明確地表示，它不會支持任何讓毛拉奧馬爾逃脫正義的協議」。其他阿富汗人聲稱也聽過類似的警告。北方聯盟駐華盛頓特使哈倫·阿明告訴美聯社，“已經非常明確地表示”，任何允許釋放毛拉·奧馬爾的計劃都會讓卡爾扎伊失去美國的支持。 卡爾扎伊不僅面臨來自美國的壓力，還面臨來自北方聯盟成員的壓力。安全副部長阿卜杜拉·揚·塔維迪抱怨說，他「站在阿富汗人民的敵人一邊」。因此卡爾扎伊很快就改變了方針。在 12 月 8 日接受路透社採訪時，他呼籲毛拉奧馬爾和塔利班高層領導人承擔責任。卡爾扎伊說：“如果他被發現，他必須接受審判。”他接著說：「當然，我想逮捕他。他是一名逃犯。 即使在投降協議破裂後，美國官員仍然堅持不給予塔利班任何寬恕。拉姆斯菲爾德於12月中旬前往喀布爾告訴記者：「該國、山區、城市、洞穴和邊境地區仍然有基地組織和塔利班分子。有很多狂熱的人。我們需要完成這項工作。他聲稱已向阿富汗新領導層傳達了同樣的訊息，「以確保我們在剩下的工作上達成一致」。政府官員發出的信息很明確：針對塔利班的戰爭將繼續下去，任何政治和解的討論都是不可能的。 2001 年 12 月，卡爾札伊和他的內閣在喀布爾臨時政府就職典禮上祈禱 彼得安德魯斯/路透社 認為美國有理由懷疑塔利班投降提議的誠意是可以理解的。畢竟，塔利班為蓋達組織提供了庇護所。在9/11之前，它拒絕了美國一再提出的交出恐怖組織領導人並關閉其訓練營的要求，並且因虐待婦女、宗教和少數民族而臭名昭著。此外，有正當理由要求毛拉奧馬爾對其行為負責。 然而，到了2001年12月，塔利班和蓋達組織之間已經不再有什麼好感了，蓋達組織對美國的危險攻擊促使美國入侵阿富汗並推翻了塔利班。在 9/11 之前的幾年裡，許多與奧馬爾毛拉關係最密切的人都認為奧薩馬·本·拉登和他的外國戰士造成的麻煩遠遠超過了他們的價值。 9/11 事件後，他們的擔憂得到了證實。據稱，本·拉登沒有提前將襲擊事件告知奧馬爾毛拉，就像他對 1998 年美國駐肯尼亞和坦桑尼亞大使館遭受襲擊一事一無所知一樣。 這兩個組織一直有根本不同的議程：蓋達組織尋求全球聖戰，而塔利班的重點幾乎完全集中在阿富汗。 2001 年 12 月之後，兩個組織之間的差距變得更加明顯，因為越來越多的塔利班開始憎恨外國闖入者，因為他們引發了戰爭，將他們趕下台。然而，美國官員從未認識到這些複雜性，常常將伊斯蘭塔利班視為不可調和的敵人，基本上與蓋達組織的薩拉菲聖戰士沒有區別。 但無論華盛頓對塔利班投降的願望（同時仍然是一支政治力量）抱持什麼疑慮，塔利班領導人2001 年12 月之後的表現都應該可以緩解這一點。一再試圖自首。 2002年1月，曾擔任塔利班政權外交部長的瓦基勒·艾哈邁德·穆塔瓦基勒在阿富汗對話者的說服下向中央情報局官員投降。但在被拘留後，他提出的放下武器並尊重新政府權威的提議遭到了布希政府的拒絕，他反而被送往巴格拉姆空軍基地的拘留所，並在那裡待到 2003 年年底。 在接下來的幾週和幾個月裡，幾乎所有塔利班高級部長——以及揮舞鞭子、執行嚴厲宗教法令的宗教警察——要么向當地部落領袖投降，要么叛逃到卡爾扎伊政府。其他塔利班官員宣布有意參加未來的阿富汗選舉，而卡爾札伊一直尋求和解，但遭到美國官員的多次拒絕。更重要的是，塔利班領導人並沒有齊心協力拿起武器對抗美國人或新生的卡爾札伊政府。 再犯 反事實，尤其是有關戰爭與和平的反事實，總是令人擔憂。但回顧 2001 年底和 2002 年初錯失的和平機會，很明顯，美國官員對塔利班在阿富汗的未來所表現出的靈活性本可以防止後來出現叛亂。到 2001 年 12 月，塔利班已成為一個被擊敗的政治運動，對與卡爾札伊政府發動戰爭幾乎沒有興趣。但美國領導人對阿富汗複雜的政治所知甚少，更不關心。對他們來說，阿富汗是一個抽象概念，也是打擊全球恐怖主義的場所，也是向其他國家展示美國實力的地方。正如當時負責政策的美國國防部副部長道格拉斯·費斯後來解釋的那樣，美國在阿富汗的關鍵戰略目標之一是「推翻塔利班政府，以此向支持恐怖主義的國家傳達訊息，即對恐怖主義的支持者實施非常嚴厲的懲罰」。因與攻擊美國的組織有聯繫而獲得報酬。”撇開其他人是否會明白這一訊息的問題不談，美國的立場忽視了這樣一個現實：阿富汗人民將感受到阿富汗戰爭的直接影響，並且他們將決定衝突的最終行動。 在任何戰爭中，允許前戰鬥人員最終重新融入社會的協議是從衝突狀態轉向和平狀態的重要一步。塔利班的正式投降將是一個強大的催化劑：結束該組織關於它是阿富汗真正政府的說法，確保前塔利班戰士不必擔心卡爾扎伊政府或美軍，最重要的是，給予前塔利班武裝力量人物及其支持者是阿富汗未來的政治出路和聲音。 將塔利班排除在該國新興的政治帳篷之外，鼓勵該組織成為戰後最初幾年累積的不滿和挫折感的儲存庫。隨著阿富汗 911 事件後的自治實驗步履蹣跚，塔利班卻獲得了政治回報。更糟的是，透過積極瞄準塔利班殘餘分子，並將他們視為基地組織的代理人，華盛頓在根本不存在的地方製造了敵人，無意中助長了一場叛亂，如果不是美國採取行動，這種叛亂可能永遠不會出現。 華盛頓在阿富汗的失敗反映了美國根深蒂固的病態：認為戰爭的勝利是一場零和遊戲，美國必須取得明確的勝利，而對手必須失去一切。透過要求在軍事和政治上徹底擊敗塔利班，並在該組織對美國國家安全構成威脅很久之後對其進行追捕，美國直接削弱了自己幫助建立一個穩定和安全的阿富汗的努力。兩年後，布希政府在伊拉克重蹈覆轍，迅速解散了伊拉克軍隊，並推行「去復興黨化」政策，使該國陷入混亂，最終陷入內戰。在這兩種情況下，美國都不允許敵人投降，除了戰鬥之外別無選擇。 布希政府並不是唯一一個被誤判的政府。 2009年，美國總統歐巴馬(Barack Obama)承諾為該國被遺忘的戰爭制定新戰略，向阿富汗增兵5萬，但仍拒絕向塔利班伸出政治橄欖枝。即使面對新近自信的叛亂分子在軍事和政治上不斷取得進展，華盛頓也拒絕與它認定為恐怖分子的人進行談判。它不會支持塔利班發揮政治作用。官員們相信，美國將在阿富汗取得完全勝利。當美國在唐納德·特朗普總統領導下最終改變路線並開始與塔利班直接談判時，情況與美國失敗的越南戰爭有著驚人的相似之處。美國外交官只是在就該國最終的失敗進行談判。 少有人走的路 美國不會與恐怖分子談判、將對抗並擊敗邪惡、給對手一個教訓的狂妄建議聽起來很適合大眾消費。但打仗並結束戰爭的現實往往要混亂得多。堅持必須徹底擊敗對手，或必須放棄最初促使他們拿起武器的不滿，既不現實，也不有效。可以肯定的是，總有一些群體是真正不可調和的，不可能與之進行談判或政治妥協。但這樣的例子只是例外，而不是規則。 因此，雖然與拉登這樣僵化的理論家進行談判可能是不可能的，但 2001 年 12 月進行談判並最終向卡爾扎伊投降的塔利班領導層顯然更加理性，而且更願意接受失敗。今天看似棘手的衝突也是如此。以加薩戰爭為例：哈馬斯可能永遠不會與猶太國家和解，但三十年來，巴勒斯坦權力機構已經這樣做了，並且像以色列同行一樣，它的利益和政治目標有可能在談判桌上得到滿足。對於俄羅斯的普丁或中國的習近平等非自由政權也是如此。莫斯科幾乎肯定不會在烏克蘭被擊敗，北京也不會放棄其在東亞的政治抱負，但他們可能願意在自己的野心上做出妥協，讓世界變得更加穩定，即使看起來他們「他們已經得到了他們想要的東西。 雖然沒有一個民主黨人會高興地看到塔利班領導人逃脫責任，看到俄羅斯因非法入侵烏克蘭而繁榮，或看到中國擴大影響力，但另一個選擇是——讓報復心重的塔利班乘著叛亂重新掌權，透過一場無止盡的戰爭來奪回政權。華盛頓必須考慮和平的代價，並著眼於一旦衝突開始就停止戰鬥。第一步應該是認真吸取2001年和2021年的教訓：那些重視軍事全面勝利而不是不令人滿意但必要的政治妥協的國家注定只會經歷更多戰爭。 邁克爾·A·科恩 (MICHAEL A. COHEN) 是塔夫茨大學弗萊徹法律與外交學院戰略研究中心的非常駐高級研究員。 克里斯多福·普雷布爾是弗萊徹學院戰略研究中心的非常駐高級研究員，也是史汀生中心重新構想美國大戰略計畫的高級研究員和主任。 莫妮卡‧達菲‧托夫特 (MONICA DUFFY TOFT) 是弗萊徹學院學術院長、國際政治學教授及其戰略研究中心主任。 他們是弗萊徹學院阿富汗假設計畫的首席研究員。本文摘自該專案的工作文件。 更多邁克爾·A·科恩的作品 克里斯多福·A·普雷布爾的更多作品 莫妮卡·達菲·托夫特的更多作品 更多的： 美國 阿富汗 安全 防務與軍事 戰略與衝突 戰爭與軍事戰略 美國外交政策 阿富汗戰爭 塔利班 最常閱讀的文章 中國否認烏克蘭戰爭 為什麼中國思想家低估了俄羅斯侵略的共謀成本 裘德·布蘭切特 以色列的毀滅 加薩戰爭結束後等待的黑暗未來 伊蘭‧Z‧巴倫 (Ilan Z. Baron) 與伊萊‧Z‧薩爾茲曼 (Ilai Z. Saltzman) 一切如何變成國家安全 國家安全成為一切 丹尼爾·W·德雷茲納 印度資本主義的危機 為什麼政治人物選擇國家主義解決方案而不是經濟改革 亞米尼·艾亞爾 推薦文章 2022 年 8 月，一名婦女在阿富汗喀布爾行走 不要背叛阿富汗婦女 與塔利班關係正常化使女性苦難正常化 麗莎·柯蒂斯和哈迪婭·艾米里 2023 年 8 月，塔利班成員在前美國駐阿富汗喀布爾大使館附近 美國無法孤立塔利班 為什麼區域大國重新與阿富汗建立關係 阿斯凡迪亞·米爾和安德魯·沃特金斯 The Indomitable IRGC How the Revolutionary Guards Prevent Iran’s President From Charting a New Course By Jon B. Alterman and Sanam Vakil August 15, 2024 Members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Aras, Iran, October 2022 The lot of Iranian presidents is not a happy one. They enter office as heroes, promising big changes to improve the lives of their fellow citizens. Almost without exception, they leave as broken men. Iran’s problems frequently prove more intractable than its new leaders anticipate. But a bigger obstacle Iranian presidents face is that they have responsibility without authority. With large swaths of the government and economy under the control of Iran’s clerical elite and thus beyond politicians’ reach, presidents are able to affect the tone more than the substance of Iranian life. Iran’s is a hybrid system, divided between elected and unelected leaders, and the latter almost always have the upper hand. Masoud Pezeshkian’s July 5 victory in Iran’s snap presidential election nevertheless revived hope inside and outside the country that things might be different this time. Pezeshkian ran as a reformist, promising greater government transparency, economic growth, and personal autonomy. Early indications suggest that he is seeking a pragmatic path, building public enthusiasm for his agenda while showing unalloyed loyalty to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Pezeshkian’s bet seems to be that he will be able to wrest some concessions from the clerical establishment that will enhance Iranians’ daily lives. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. Pezeshkian may help Iranians win greater social freedom, and he might be able to get the country some relief from crushing Western sanctions. But such achievements would not herald a more moderate direction for Iran. Increasingly, Iran’s aggressive posture and isolation from the West is driven not just by the clerical establishment, which is a waning force, but rather by the security establishment, principally the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has amassed tremendous influence over the country’s government and economy. This should worry those who hope for a more conciliatory approach from Tehran: an Iran in which the IRGC wields greater power will be a more insular Iran—and a more insular Iran will be a more dangerous Iran. More than any other faction in Iran, the IRGC profits from isolation. The heavily sanctioned Iranian economy spins off billions of dollars in smuggling revenues that the group dominates. That money, in turn, supports conservative patronage networks and funds the Iranian proxies across the Middle East that form the so-called axis of resistance. In effect, the IRGC runs a complex Ponzi scheme that perpetuates the authority and influence of a select few at the expense of ordinary Iranians. That fact, more than any resistance the clerical elite put up to Pezeshkian, will pose the most significant obstacle to any effort he makes toward reform and moderation. BORN OF REVOLUTION After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, the country’s first supreme leader, established the IRGC to safeguard the young Islamic Republic. The idea was to create a rigorously loyal entity separate from the conventional armed forces for at least two reasons. One was to serve as a counterweight to an army that might be reactionary or have its own ambitions for power. The other was to protect the new system from internal and external security threats more broadly. The IRGC’s ideological connectivity and fealty to the Islamic Republic has helped it grow and given it influence and privileged status within the state. During the Iran-Iraq War, which stretched from 1980 to 1988, the IRGC was instrumental in quickly mobilizing to defend against Saddam Hussein’s invasion. Its members were involved in both frontline combat and guerrilla warfare. Meanwhile, the Basij militia, a largely volunteer force eventually incorporated into the IRGC, was used to repress dissent and maintain public order. After the war ended, the IRGC played a major role in the reconstruction of Iran’s infrastructure, extending beyond military rebuilding to include significant economic ventures. In 1989, the IRGC established Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, which became one of Iran’s largest contractors. The organization has undertaken dam construction, road building, and energy sector development, significantly increasing the IRGC’s economic footprint. In the years since, the group has expanded into telecommunications and banking. This economic diversification provided the IRGC with significant untaxed financial resources independent of state control. After the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was signed in 2015, the IRGC, fearing a loss of market share, intervened to slow down deals with international companies. Consequently, the IRGC’s role has expanded far beyond its initial mandate, and its size has increased significantly, from an estimated 10,000 members in late 1979 to somewhere between 150,000 and 190,000 today. Designed to constrain if not alter Iranian behavior, sanctions and economic isolation have become the de facto tools of U.S. policy toward Iran. Rather than provoking a change in Tehran’s behavior, however, sanctions have produced the opposite effect. The IRGC, already a dominant actor, has become more present in the economy to keep the system afloat, at the expense of ordinary people and the private sector. The IRGC has captured licit and illicit trade, embedding corruption and Mafia-style criminality through a network of shell companies used to circumvent sanctions. In the absence of international investment and limits on oil sales, the IRGC has taken to funneling its money through oil exports, albeit at discounted prices, and the group relies on its financial network in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria for access to these markets and, with it, liquidity. A STATE WITHIN A STATE Since 1979, the Iranian regime has sought to project both its Islamic and revolutionary bona fides. In scenes that have often seemed made for television, robed clerics regularly exhort huge crowds to oppose the United States, the Western-led global order it represents, and “the Zionist entity” it supports. Meanwhile, Iran and its allies and proxies—the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and various Shiite militias in Iraq—engage in destabilizing acts of brinkmanship, provocation, and terrorism. But for most Iranians, this politics of resistance is little more than resistance theater. They long ago lost patience with the clerical leadership and lost interest in revolutionary Islamism. The issues that concern ordinary Iranians the most are the stagnant economy (which has produced a brain drain of capable young people) and enforced social repression (whose harshest measures are reserved for women). Those are the grievances that have led Iranians to take to the streets in massive demonstrations in recent years. As Iran’s clerical establishment has lost stature, the IRGC has picked up the slack, increasingly operating as a state within a state. Although it is at least notionally aligned with the clerics and beholden to Khamenei for as long as he survives, the IRGC has its own sources of wealth and power and few sources of external accountability. The group has cultivated political influence throughout most if not all Iranian institutions. Its constitutionally defined mandate to protect national security has enabled it, with the support of the supreme leader, to establish a repressive apparatus at home while also advancing a resistance-oriented foreign policy abroad. The true center of gravity in Iran is a quietly ascendant IRGC. The IRGC’s political influence has grown alongside its economic expansion. Many former IRGC members hold positions within the government (including the cabinet and the parliament) and serve as provincial governors. The group’s senior commanders sit on the Supreme National Security Council, the body tasked with formulating nuclear, foreign, and defense policy. Many key figures in the IRGC play crucial roles in the office of the supreme leader. The IRGC also oversees several major security institutions and even influences the revolutionary courts, which hear cases related to national security. Since the outbreak of student demonstrations in 1999 and in every demonstration over the past 20 years, including nationwide protests of 2009, 2017, 2019, and 2022, the IRGC has played a prominent role in cracking down on domestic dissent. The group is also spearheading Iran’s burgeoning security and defense relationship with Moscow, and its foreign arm, known as the Quds Force, provides direct financial and material support to members of the axis of resistance. And yet the IRGC is not monolithic. Despite high degrees of loyalty, discipline, and paranoia, like any large institution, it has experienced internal tensions. Disagreements and generational gaps have emerged over involvement in regional conflicts, relations with the West, and the handling of protests, with younger pragmatists appearing less ideological and more open to engagement and social liberalization than older veterans. The IRGC is also not composed of only conservatives; some members have supported reformist politicians, including in the recent presidential election. Allegations of corruption, financial misconduct, and involvement in domestic repression have also tarnished the IRGC’s public image and could affect its long-term role. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the IRGC will act as a guarantor of stability whenever Khamenei passes from the scene. The organization will surely influence the succession process, supporting an outcome that will protect its own interests and safeguard its role as the architect and chief administrator of the axis of resistance. This continued entrenchment will come at the expense of already declining clerical influence. A MILITARY THAT WON’T MODERATE For a sense of what Iran might look like in a post-Khamenei period in which the IRGC is ascendant, one might imagine that Egypt offers a hint. Soldiers have led Egypt and dominated its government since a group of officers overthrew the monarchy in 1952. In the decades since, nominal civilian rule has provided a thin façade over the country’s real powers: the military establishment and the security services. The country has had a single civilian president: Mohamed Morsi, an Islamist who was elected in early 2012, after the Arab Spring revolts, and whom the military and security services helped dislodge in July 2013. The man who has ruled the country ever since, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is a former general who has been embedded in military institutions since he was 16 and reserves his deepest trust for the military establishment. More than half of the governors of Egyptian provinces are retired generals, and Sisi has recruited general officers to head a large number of governmental and quasi-governmental economic initiatives. The military also has a direct hand in the economy through institutions such as the Ministry of Military Production, the Egyptian Armed Forces Engineering Authority, and the Arab Organization for Industrialization (which is principally a weapons manufacturer). In Egypt, military control initially prompted a foreign-policy reorientation, with President Gamal Abdel Nasser embracing anticolonialism and nonalignment in the Cold War and supporting revolutionary movements in places like Yemen and Algeria. Eventually, however, the entrenchment of the Egyptian military acted as a stabilizing force in foreign policy. In the 1970s, under President Anwar al-Sadat, a former officer, Egypt became a status quo power in the Middle East, partly because the military leadership’s economic interests became deeply tied to Western investment. Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel and searched constantly for other ways to draw hundreds of billions of dollars of aid and investment into Egypt. All the while, the military maintained its privileged place in the economy and profited handsomely. Sadat’s successors, first Hosni Mubarak (a former general) and then Sisi, have sustained that policy. But as things stand today, the IRGC’s entrenchment in Iran would play out in a far different manner. Whereas having a praetorian elite has over time moderated Egypt’s international posture, in Iran it will have the opposite effect. Egypt was never under strict sanctions, and the Egyptian military’s business model never relied on Egypt’s isolation from the global economy. By contrast, the IRGC profits from sanctions-busting revenues, and much of the investment it receives comes from China, which has an interest in sustaining Iran’s estrangement from the West. In addition, Iran’s network of regional proxies provides the country with strategic depth, and a strategic reorientation away from China and other anti-Western powers such as Russia and North Korea would leave Iran isolated and exposed. PRAGMATISM OVER PRESSURE Western audiences have too often paid attention to the wrong factors in Iranian politics. They focus their ire on Iran’s cadres of dour, bearded clerics and get their hopes up for reform-minded presidents. The true center of gravity in Iran, however, is less visible: a quietly ascendant IRGC. Pezeshkian can score some small internal victories against conservative opponents, but it would be a mistake to confuse any battle he wins against clerical control of society for a fundamental power struggle or a shift in Iran’s international posture. The real power increasingly lies with the IRGC, and its interests and business model militate against accommodation with the outside world. And so Western powers hoping to encourage a deeper shift shouldn’t put their faith in Pezeshkian alone; instead, they need to find ways of shaping the interests of the IRGC. One path is to double down on a one-way escalation of international sanctions and terrorist designations, with the hope of precipitating regime collapse. This is often the path of least resistance in Washington, in part because so much of what Iran does is indefensible. But it is important to note two things. First, U.S.-led sanctions have rarely brought down a regime, however odious—whether Fidel Castro’s Cuba or Muammar al-Qaddafi’s Libya or Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. Regimes adjust to them over time and, like the IRGC, learn to use the confrontation to serve their own political and economic needs. At least in the near term, greater sanctions will continue to secure the IRGC rather than weaken it. Second, a path of unalloyed confrontation pushes the IRGC to respond with precisely the sorts of behavior that the United States finds most objectionable, strangling the domestic economy at the expense of the Iranian people and bolstering its axis of resistance to show it is unbowed in the face of U.S. pressure. The Iranian regime may be on its last legs, and a regime much more favorable to U.S. interests may replace it. If so, the United States should welcome such a regime while conscious that U.S. fingerprints on regime change are more likely to delegitimize Iran’s new rulers than help them—especially given the long resonance of U.S. efforts at regime change in Iran in 1953. Instead, a better policy would combine pressure with co-optation and engagement, with the aim of shaping internal Iranian choices and outcomes. Iran’s power brokers must not only know that their malign behavior will elicit a punishing U.S. response; they must also know that the United States will notice and respond if they cease such malign behavior. For example, if Tehran reduced its support for its proxies or distanced itself from Russia, Washington could respond by reducing its enforcement of sanctions. It is possible to imagine an IRGC that, like Egypt’s military, becomes beholden to the status quo rather than regional upheaval. Outsiders often assume that because Iran’s rulers are hostile, they must be irrational, but the record suggests otherwise. A clear-eyed assessment of what the IRGC’s leaders genuinely fear and what they are willing to live with can illuminate pathways to a reduction in tensions. Pezeshkian may help facilitate better relations, or he may prove irrelevant. Either way, the United States’ approach should seek accountability and consistency and allow for the possibility of the pragmatic accommodation that it has pursued with Egypt. Such an approach is more likely to serve U.S. interests over the long term. The alternative path of pressure will only strengthen the IRGC’s grip on the country and push the IRGC to double down on confrontation. JON B. ALTERMAN is Senior Vice President and Director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. SANAM VAKIL is Director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. More By Jon B. 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The term was used by both George Washington and Alexander Hamilton during the Revolutionary era without being precisely defined. At the start of the Cold War, the federal government greatly expanded the size of the bucket after the passage of the 1947 National Security Act, but that law never defined the term itself. As tensions with Moscow eased at the end of the 1960s, the scope of national security began to shrink a bit, but that ended when the 1973 oil embargo triggered new fears about energy security. In the 1980s, the definition widened until the Cold War ended. In the years between the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the 9/11 attacks of 2001—an era in which the United States seemed to have few immediate rivals—even security scholars had difficulty defining the meaning of national security. Unsurprisingly, they could not reach a consensus. Since the subsequent “war on terror,” however, the national security bucket has grown into a trough. From climate change to ransomware to personal protective equipment to critical minerals to artificial intelligence, everything is national security now. It is true that economic globalization and rapid technological change have increased the number of unconventional threats to the United States. Yet there appears also to be a ratchet effect at work, with the foreign policy establishment adding new things to the realm of national security without getting rid of old ones. Problems in world politics rarely die; at best, they tend to ebb very slowly. Newer crises command urgent attention. Issues on the back burner, if not addressed, inevitably migrate to the top of the queue. Policy entrepreneurs across the political spectrum want the administration, members of Congress, and other shapers of U.S. foreign policy to label their issue a national security priority, in the hope of gaining more attention and resources. American populists and nationalists tend to see everything as a national security threat and are not shy about saying so. For example, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has been regarded as a blueprint for a second Trump administration if Donald Trump wins this year’s election, calls for regulating both domestic big tech and foreign firms such as TikTok as potential national security threats. Given the continual presence of such political interests and structural incentives, it is easy for the foreign policy establishment’s list of national security issues to expand and rare for it to contract. But if everything is defined as national security, nothing is a national security priority. Without a more considered discussion among policymakers about what is and what is not a matter of national security, Washington risks spreading its resources too thin across too broad an array of issues. This increases the likelihood of missing a genuine threat to the safety and security of the United States. Whoever is sworn in as president next January will need to think about first principles in order to rightsize the definition of national security. Otherwise, policymakers risk falling into a pattern of trying to do everything, ensuring that they will do nothing well. A SEMANTIC JUNGLE In theory, national security should be easy to define. For the United States, any malevolent transnational threat or rising power that directly challenges the sovereignty or survival of the United States constitutes a valid national security concern. Powerful foreign militaries obviously impinge on national security, but other threats do, as well. Ports, energy plants, and other vulnerable economic infrastructure can pose national security concerns; so can climate change, by, for example, threatening the economies of major coastal cities such as Miami and New York. Yet there are also important issues of public policy that fall outside these parameters. No matter how loudly some Americans yell about them, neither the promotion of transgender rights nor the banning of critical race theory is a matter of national security. In practice, Americans have always had difficulty limiting their conception of national security. George Washington’s first State of the Union message to Congress offered a promising start. He barely mentioned the external threats to the fledgling republic. Instead, he outlined his theory of how the United States could deter any and all threats. He stressed the need to pay soldiers, officers, and diplomats a decent wage and supply them the materiel necessary to do their jobs. “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace,” he explained. The sentiments Washington conveyed in that speech are familiar to many foreign policy experts; less well known is what he said in his second State of the Union address. In that message, Washington ticked off an expansive list of “aggravated provocations,” citing Native American tribes that had “renewed their violences with fresh alacrity and greater effect” and “the disturbed situation of Europe, and particularly the critical posture of the great maritime powers.” Nonetheless, once the United States spanned the continent and was separated from other major powers by two oceans, its geographic remoteness limited the threats it faced. The scholar Arnold Wolfers described this era, from 1820 to 1900, as “a time when the United States policy could afford to be concerned mainly with the protection of the foreign investments or markets of its nationals.” Problems in world politics rarely die; at best, they tend to ebb very slowly. As the United States began to assert itself as a major world power in the first half of the twentieth century, the foreign policy discourse alternated between a belief that the country had to send troops overseas to protect expanding U.S. interests and a conviction that an America First posture of isolationism would best preserve the peace. But it was only with the onset of the Cold War that the term “national security” became embedded in American political discourse. The National Security Act of 1947, which among other things created the Central Intelligence Agency and established the National Security Council, brought about the security architecture that exists today. Recognition of the overarching Soviet threat spurred the creation of a panoply of research centers, think tanks, and university programs dedicated to studying national security. Wolfers presciently observed that when terms such as “national security” are popularized, “they may not mean the same thing to different people.” Indeed, he wrote, “they may not have any precise meaning at all.” During the 1950s and early 1960s, consensus on the Soviet threat allayed some of those concerns. But by the Vietnam War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was already warning the public that U.S. officials “have been lost in a semantic jungle” on national security questions, conflating national security with strictly military issues such as weapons procurement. With the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it might have been expected that the national security basket would shrink along with the size of the military budget. Yet the opposite occurred. Consider the history of the National Security Strategy, the report on current threats that the president is supposed to deliver to Congress annually, although in practice it is usually released less often. A review of post-1990 reports reveals a steady expansion of qualifying concerns: energy security, nuclear proliferation, drug trafficking, and terrorism, among many others. After 9/11, the trend only accelerated, with politicians and policymakers giving ever-greater emphasis to national security and the number of things that putatively affect it. Pandemic prevention emerged in the first decade of this century and has stayed there ever since. Over the past decade, the rise of China combined with the revanchist ambitions of Russia caused the first Trump administration and the Biden administration to refer to “great-power competition” in their National Security Strategy documents. The reasons for including these threats were sound. But when they were added, the documents never de-emphasized earlier concerns. The 2017 version includes a pledge to “devote greater resources to dismantle transnational criminal organizations.” The 2022 document argues that “global food security demands constant vigilance and action by all governments” and asserts that the United States will be “working across entire food systems to consider every step from cultivation to consumption.” And on and on. The Pentagon building, Arlington, Virginia, October 2020 The Pentagon building, Arlington, Virginia, October 2020 Carlos Barria / Reuters A similar pattern appears in U.S. presidents’ State of the Union addresses. Since the end of the Cold War, presidents have routinely used the annual speech to identify new threats facing the United States or at least to expand their scope. Initially, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and rogue states were the central issues; eventually, other national security concerns, such as climate change and cybersecurity, crept in. Even when presidents acknowledged that U.S. national security was strong, they sought to convey a sense of urgency to the American people. “We face no imminent threat, but we do have an enemy,” President Bill Clinton argued in 1997. “The enemy of our time is inaction.” After 9/11, presidents and their security strategists described a nation surrounded by threats. “The frontiers of national security can be everywhere,” Philip Zelikow, one of the architects of President George W. Bush’s 2002 strategy, has explained, adding, “The division of security policy into domestic and foreign compartments is breaking down.” Over the past decade, the definition of national security has expanded even more. What the former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan referred to as “problems without passports”—that is, problems not delimited by borders, such as cybersecurity and climate change—have mushroomed. New technologies caused foreign policy thinkers to look in new places. Militaries used to focus only on the threats from land, sea, and air, but in this century, cyberspace and space have become complex terrains of conflict. Artificial intelligence and quantum computing are now critical technologies and therefore a national security priority. The list of “critical minerals” also keeps expanding, as climate change and the transition from fossil fuels generate insatiable global demand for the rare-earth metals needed for batteries and other clean energy applications. Successive U.S. administrations have also added threats emanating from or playing out inside the country. Domestic extremism made its first appearance in the National Security Strategy in 2010. The Trump administration declared a national emergency at the United States’ southern border, citing the growing inflow of narcotics, criminal gangs, and migrants. The Biden administration declared national emergencies related to critical supply chains, such as that for cobalt, with the aim of “near-shoring” key production technologies. Viewed in isolation, each of these concerns could plausibly be identified as a national security priority. The problem is that by ceaselessly accumulating such paramount concerns, the executive branch has made the concept increasingly meaningless. PROLIFERATING PRIORITIES Once a national security threat has been established, an administration seldom deprioritizes it, but the collapse of the Soviet Union is an instructive exception. After the end of the Cold War, American policymakers no longer saw Moscow as an overriding concern, and Russia disappeared from national security strategy documents. Congress began excluding Russia from Cold War–era laws like the so-called Jackson-Vanik amendment, which restricted trade with nonmarket economies that failed to respect human rights. Then Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, became a threat all over again. Washington’s short-lived downgrading of Moscow as a national security priority is unusual in that the U.S. bureaucracy actually adapted to this shift. As rare as it is for a threat to be removed from the National Security Strategy, it is even rarer for foreign policy officials to agree on that removal. Most transnational threats wax and wane over time but rarely fade away. The 1987 strategy treated terrorism as a major national security concern. That threat persisted into the 1990s and leaped to the top of the queue after the 9/11 attacks. After two decades of a “global war on terror,” however, it seemed as though U.S. officials had successfully downgraded the threat in documents and public discourse. Then Hamas’s horrific attacks on October 7, 2023, in Israel made it a priority again. Technological innovation, such as the advent of new kinds of weapons, poses another challenge to strategists’ efforts to manage national security priorities. The proliferation of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies, for example, required a wholesale recalculation of which countries or groups posed major risks. As the barriers to acquiring technology for mass destruction have declined, the roster has come to include not only major powers (China, Russia) but also smaller states (Iran, North Korea) and even nonstate actors (the Islamic State, the Houthis). But the challenge runs much deeper. With new technologies, new resources become critical and previously vital resources often lose their significance. A century ago, the location of coal and petroleum factored into how states prosecuted wars; today, it is cobalt and lithium that are labeled “critical minerals,” and some analysts are concerned that the race for them could start wars. Yet during such shifts, it can be hard to determine whether to prioritize new resources over the more established ones. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put severe stress on energy supply chains, forcing countries in Europe and Africa to scramble for access to oil, coal, and natural gas. At the same time, the pressures of climate change and the transition from carbon drive countries to race after the necessary components for green technologies. As a result, many Americans are calling on the federal government to prioritize the security of traditional energy sources such as oil and gas even as many others clamor for weaning the country from those sources. Both parties must clarify which national security issues are most urgent. New technologies also multiply the number of pathways that rivals and revisionists can use to threaten national security. Information and communication technologies can help empower a military and serve as powerful tools for propaganda and disinformation. Similarly, breakthroughs in biosciences can save lives on the battlefield but also heighten the risk of biological warfare. Mysteries surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena hint at advanced technologies that top U.S. officials cannot explain away easily. As Senator Marco Rubio of Florida put it recently, “Anything that enters an airspace that’s not supposed to be there is a threat.” Entrenched political dynamics in Washington also push more and more issues onto the national security platter. The Pentagon is much better funded than the State Department; it is easier to sell security than diplomacy to Congress and the American people. In a world of constrained budgets, policy entrepreneurs are willing to frame their pet issues as national security concerns to unlock resources from the Department of Defense. International relations scholars call this phenomenon “securitization.” At the turn of this century, U.S. officials began to describe HIV/AIDS as a national security issue, arguing that the disease sapped economies and threatened to topple governments in African countries. This argument may have been exaggerated, but it was a way to marshal resources to combat the global epidemic, including the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, credited with saving millions of lives in Africa since it was launched by the George W. Bush administration. Economic and technological concerns tend to have bipartisan appeal in national security debates. Since the Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik space program in 1957, many U.S. policymakers have been in a panic about the United States’ losing its technological edge to another great power. In the early decades of the Cold War, Moscow was the principal concern. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was Japan. In this century, it has been China. This has inevitably led policymakers to focus on technologies perceived as critical to ensuring the country’s economic supremacy. In recent decades, their concern has been semiconductors. For the rest of this decade at least, they will obsess about artificial intelligence. All of these dynamics ensure an ever-increasing list of national security priorities. MORE IS NOT BETTER The more issues that are placed on the national security docket, the harder it may be for policymakers to focus on those that matter most. The Cold War led U.S. officials to view the world through a reductive lens, but it also enabled them to sort out what was truly important in foreign policy. The tendency of recent administrations to declare issue after issue a matter of national security, however, makes it easy for a multitude of potential threats to obscure the most imminent danger. One way that national security doctrine can be narrowed and clarified is through the ebb and flow of power between the two major political parties. During the Cold War, presidential candidates often spoke of “missile gaps” or “windows of vulnerability” that became national security priorities. Republicans have tended to display more hawkish instincts, prioritizing threats from malevolent actors; Democrats are more likely to take diffuse threats such as climate change or pandemics seriously. These differences can lead to conflict on key national security questions. On energy security, for example, conservatives minimize the threat posed by climate change, whereas progressives highlight it; House Republicans warn that winding down U.S. production of coal, oil, and natural gas undermines national security, whereas progressives caution that it is the failure to do so that poses the real threat. It might be expected that whenever power shifts from one party to the other, Washington’s national security focus would shift accordingly. But in practice, even when a presidential administration comes to power that is radically different from its predecessor, the list of national security priorities tends to expand rather than merely shift. For example, when the 2002 National Security Strategy was released, Zelikow stated that the George W. Bush administration was “surpassing the Clinton administration” because it had “consistently identified poverty, pandemic disease, biologic and genetic dangers, and environmental degradation as significant national security threats.” Although the Bush administration’s 2002 strategy infamously focused on the nexus between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, it also gave significant emphasis to the Clinton administration’s national security priorities. More recently, the Trump administration’s emphasis on great-power competition, which took center stage in the 2017 National Security Strategy, could have been viewed as an aberration. The Biden administration’s 2022 strategy, however, did not shy away from identifying competition with China and Russia as a central challenge. Indeed, it stated explicitly that “the People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit.” Trump delivering remarks on the National Security Strategy, Washington, D.C., December 2017 Trump delivering remarks on the National Security Strategy, Washington, D.C., December 2017 Joshua Roberts / Reuters One reason administrations are reluctant to deemphasize their predecessors’ national security concerns is simple political prudence. Most Americans do not seem to care when an administration hypes a national security threat that turns out to be overblown. Policymakers can always explain that they were just being cautious or that their very warnings helped neutralize the threat. On the other hand, people tend to remember when an administration downplays a national security concern that metastasizes into a full-blown crisis. There are many reasons why the Trump administration bungled its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but one of them was that it had disbanded the National Security Council’s Directorate for Global Health, Security, and Biodefense in 2018. According to the Associated Press, the decision suggested that Trump “did not see the threat of pandemics in the same way that many experts in the field did.” Presidents and policy principals often look at national security concerns the way that Michael Corleone of The Godfather films looked at organized crime: every time he thought he was out, they pulled him back in. Another reason that older national security priorities are rarely discarded is bureaucratic politics. As long as an issue continues to be categorized in strategy documents as a matter of national security, a government agency can count on continued funding. For many Foreign Service and foreign area officers, it takes years to learn enough about a particular country or issue to be considered an expert. As a result, bureaucracies resist any attempt to downgrade an existing priority if such a move would affect their core missions or devalue their training. Whether policymaking elites are optimistic or pessimistic about the future can also play into the willingness of an administration to de-emphasize a lesser threat. When elites believe that geopolitical developments are moving in a favorable direction for the United States, it is easier to depoliticize possible threats by suggesting long-term solutions. During the 1990s, for example, U.S. officials were confident that the liberal international order would entice Russia and China into becoming more like the United States, thereby eliminating the national security threats they had posed. This assumption allowed for strategic patience toward both countries for decades. When policymakers believe the future will be less favorable to the United States, however, they may be tempted to amplify any potential national security threats. Suddenly, every issue is viewed as a possible tipping point that could hasten further decline in national power. Security becomes a totalizing issue as officials perceive anything and everything as an existential threat. At present, both public opinion polling and the discourse of elites suggest a deep pessimism about the strength of the United States in the future. The benefits of the rules-based international order have cratered in recent years. The world is experiencing the greatest number of conflicts since 1945. Countries are racing to erect barriers to trade and migration while restricting civil liberties. Many states are in a deep democratic recession, with populist and authoritarian leaders arguing that their mode of governance is superior. None of these trends benefit U.S. national security, and domestic divisions exacerbate the public’s fears about these threats. Given the current geopolitical situation, it would be foolhardy to expect policymakers to winnow their list of national security priorities. RIGHTSIZING THREATS Several factors have pushed a host of new issues into the national security bucket. Adding threat after threat dilutes the concept of national security, as recent iterations of the National Security Strategy make clear. The document is often little more than a box-checking exercise for executive branch agencies and is therefore of limited use in thinking about foreign policy. This has been obvious in recent years, as successive administrations have neglected issues that were mentioned in their own National Security Strategies. For example, Trump administration officials minimized the risk of pandemics, and Biden administration officials insisted that the Middle East was calm. In fairness, most of the national security issues identified by these annual reports are real. Russia and China are rival great powers whose values diverge from those of the United States. The past decade has made abundantly clear just how drastically pandemics and climate change can threaten the American way of life. New technologies such as artificial intelligence may very well pose critical threats to national security in the years to come. But if national security challenges cannot easily be downgraded or eliminated, at least they should be better categorized. Even foreign policy neophytes are aware that one can classify national security concerns by country (Iran, North Korea) and by theme (nonproliferation, cybersecurity). In thinking about how to allocate scarce time and resources, however, there are at least two ways to better organize this ever-growing list. One improvement would be for U.S. officials to sort national security issues by timescale and degree of urgency. Some concerns, such as terrorism and Russian revanchism, pose immediate and pressing risks. Others, such as artificial intelligence and China’s rising power, are medium-term concerns. Still others, such as climate change, create challenges in the here and now but will have their greatest effect over the long term. The more explicit policymakers are about the anticipated timing of specific threats, the easier it will be for the government to properly allocate resources. This does not mean that the urgent should crowd out the important. Rather, it means formulating a reasoned basis for diverting some resources away from important but longer-term threats. Prioritizing urgency would also allow successive administrations to make clear which initiatives they intend to enact while in office. Another way of clarifying the relative importance of a national security threat is to specify whether the issue demands proactive measures, defensive responses, or a mix of both. New viruses that risk causing pandemics cannot be addressed before they emerge and are difficult to contain once they do, so a preventive posture is called for. Public health officials need to be ready for contact tracing and testing; scientists need to be prepared for researching and synthesizing tests and vaccines. Attempting to completely eradicate diseases that have already moved from animals to humans, however, is a waste of time and resources. Thwarting terrorist cells, on the other hand, may require offensive measures such as covert action or the use of special forces. Coping with China’s rising economic and military power requires an array of offensive and defensive responses to better protect the United States without needlessly exacerbating tensions to the point of armed conflict. If everything is defined as national security, nothing is a national security priority. The government could also produce an annual scorecard to rank national security concerns by order of current importance. Such an approach would both enable policymakers to highlight which arenas of national security they believe warrant the greatest attention now and show the public how different threats have been rated over time. Equally important, scorecards would allow administrations to de-emphasize some threats without dismissing them entirely—that is, it would force U.S. officials to state which issues are less vital than others. Even if the specific ranking proved controversial, such an exercise would bring more focus to national security debates and help identify underrated threats. Calibrating national security priorities has always been a challenge for U.S. officials. In January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously delivered a National Press Club speech in which he specified which parts of the globe were within the U.S. “defense perimeter.” He did not include the Korean Peninsula. Nonetheless, when North Korea invaded South Korea less than six months later, the Truman administration deployed 300,000 troops. Korea was not a U.S. national security priority—until it was. In the 70 years since, the definition of national security has been stretched almost beyond recognition. New technologies have multiplied the vectors through which external forces can threaten the United States. Furthermore, because security issues command greater staffs and budgets, policy entrepreneurs have strong incentives to frame their interests as matters of national security. The forces that push issues into the national security queue are far more powerful than the forces that lead policymakers to exclude them. Nevertheless, even with this expansion, the United States has been blindsided by events: 9/11, the COVID-19 pandemic, the October 7 attacks. Simply having a longer list of threats hasn’t really helped prepare for the unexpected. National election campaigns take all the pathologies of the national security bureaucracy and make them worse. Presidential candidates routinely declare that the election is about the soul of the nation and that if the other side wins, Americans will no longer have a country to defend. Given how polarized the United States is now, this tendency seems only likely to grow in the run-up to the 2024 election. Still, both parties’ candidates should clarify which national security issues they believe are more pressing and which ones belong on the back burner, which demand proactive responses and which necessitate better preparation. Americans may never completely agree about what is and is not a national security issue. But a process that lets policymakers agree on how to disagree would allow for an improved national security discourse—and, ideally, improved national security. DANIEL W. DREZNER is Distinguished Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. More By Daniel W. Drezner More: United States Security Defense & Military Intelligence Terrorism & Counterterrorism U.S. Foreign Policy Cold War 9/11 Most-Read Articles China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine Why Chinese Thinkers Underestimate the Costs of Complicity in Russia’s Aggression Jude Blanchette The Undoing of Israel The Dark Futures That Await After the War in Gaza Ilan Z. Baron and Ilai Z. Saltzman How Everything Became National Security And National Security Became Everything Daniel W. 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Following Beijing’s decision, in late 2022, to abruptly end its draconian “zero COVID” policy, many observers assumed that China’s growth engine would rapidly reignite. After years of pandemic lockdowns that brought some economic sectors to a virtual halt, reopening the country was supposed to spark a major comeback. Instead, the recovery has faltered, with sluggish GDP performance, sagging consumer confidence, growing clashes with the West, and a collapse in property prices that has caused some of China’s largest companies to default. In July 2024, Chinese official data revealed that GDP growth was falling behind the government’s target of about five percent. The government has finally let the Chinese people leave their homes, but it cannot command the economy to return to its former strength. To account for this bleak picture, Western observers have put forward a variety of explanations. Among them are China’s sustained real estate crisis, its rapidly aging population, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on the economy and extreme response to the pandemic. But there is a more enduring driver of the present stasis, one that runs deeper than Xi’s growing authoritarianism or the effects of a crashing property market: a decades-old economic strategy that privileges industrial production over all else, an approach that, over time, has resulted in enormous structural overcapacity. For years, Beijing’s industrial policies have led to overinvestment in production facilities in sectors from raw materials to emerging technologies such as batteries and robots, often saddling Chinese cities and firms with huge debt burdens in the process. Simply put, in many crucial economic sectors, China is producing far more output than it, or foreign markets, can sustainably absorb. As a result, the Chinese economy runs the risk of getting caught in a doom loop of falling prices, insolvency, factory closures, and, ultimately, job losses. Shrinking profits have forced producers to further increase output and more heavily discount their wares in order to generate cash to service their debts. Moreover, as factories are forced to close and industries consolidate, the firms left standing are not necessarily the most efficient or most profitable. Rather, the survivors tend to be those with the best access to government subsidies and cheap financing. Since the mid-2010s, the problem has become a destabilizing force in international trade, as well. By creating a glut of supply in the global market for many goods, Chinese firms are pushing prices below the break-even point for producers in other countries. In December 2023, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned that excess Chinese production was causing “unsustainable” trade imbalances and accused Beijing of engaging in unfair trade practices by offloading ever-greater quantities of Chinese products onto the European market at cutthroat prices. In April, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that China’s overinvestment in steel, electric vehicles, and many other goods was threatening to cause “economic dislocation” around the globe. “China is now simply too large for the rest of the world to absorb this enormous capacity,” Yellen said. Despite vehement denials by Beijing, Chinese industrial policy has for decades led to recurring cycles of overcapacity. At home, factories in government-designated priority sectors of the economy routinely sell products below cost in order to satisfy local and national political goals. And Beijing has regularly raised production targets for many goods, even when current levels already exceed demand. Partly, this stems from a long tradition of economic planning that has given enormous emphasis to industrial production and infrastructure development while virtually ignoring household consumption. This oversight does not stem from ignorance or miscalculation; rather, it reflects the Chinese Communist Party’s long-standing economic vision. As the party sees it, consumption is an individualistic distraction that threatens to divert resources away from China’s core economic strength: its industrial base. According to party orthodoxy, China’s economic advantage derives from its low consumption and high savings rates, which generate capital that the state-controlled banking system can funnel into industrial enterprises. This system also reinforces political stability by embedding the party hierarchy into every economic sector. Because China’s bloated industrial base is dependent on cheap financing to survive—financing that the Chinese leadership can restrict at any time—the business elite is tightly bound, and even subservient, to the interests of the party. In the West, money influences politics, but in China it is the opposite: politics influences money. The Chinese economy clearly needs to strike a new balance between investment and consumption, but Beijing is unlikely to make this shift because it depends on the political control it gets from production-intensive economic policy. For the West, China’s overcapacity problem presents a long-term challenge that can’t be solved simply by erecting new trade barriers. For one thing, even if the United States and Europe were able to significantly limit the amount of Chinese goods reaching Western markets, it would not unravel the structural inefficiencies that have accumulated in China over decades of privileging industrial investment and production goals. Any course correction could take years of sustained Chinese policy to be successful. For another, Xi’s growing emphasis on making China economically self-sufficient—a strategy that is itself a response to perceived efforts by the West to isolate the country economically—has increased, rather than decreased, the pressures leading to overproduction. Moreover, efforts by Washington to prevent Beijing from flooding the United States with cheap goods in key sectors are only likely to create new inefficiencies within the U.S. economy, even as they shift China’s overproduction problem to other international markets. To craft a better approach, Western leaders and policymakers would do well to understand the deeper forces driving China’s overcapacity and make sure that their own policies are not making it worse. Rather than seeking to further isolate China, the West should take steps to keep Beijing firmly within the global trading system, using the incentives of the global market to steer China toward more balanced growth and less heavy-handed industrial policies. In the absence of such a strategy, the West could face a China that is increasingly unrestrained by international economic ties and prepared to double down on its state-led production strategy, even at the risk of harming the global economy and stunting its own prosperity. FACTORY DEFECTS The structural issues underlying China’s economic stasis are not the result of recent policy choices. They stem directly from the lopsided industrial strategy that took shape in the earliest years of China’s reform era, four decades ago. China’s sixth five-year plan (1981–85) was the first to be instituted after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping opened up the Chinese economy. Although the document ran to more than 100 pages, nearly all of it was devoted to developing China’s industrial sector, expanding international trade, and advancing technology; only a single page was given to the topic of increasing income and consumption. Despite vast technological changes and an almost unrecognizably different global market, the party’s emphasis on China’s industrial base remains remarkably similar today. The 14th five-year plan (2021–25) offers detailed targets for economic growth, R & D investment, patent achievement, and food and energy production—but apart from a few other sparse references, household consumption is relegated to a single paragraph. In prioritizing industrial output, China’s economic planners assume that Chinese producers will always be able to offload excess supply in the global market and reap cash from foreign sales. In practice, however, they have created vast overinvestment in production across sectors in which the domestic market is already saturated and foreign governments are wary of Chinese supply chain dominance. In the early years of the twenty-first century, it was Chinese steel, with the country’s surplus capacity eventually exceeding the entire steel output of Germany, Japan, and the United States combined. More recently, China has ended up with similar excesses in coal, aluminum, glass, cement, robotic equipment, electric-vehicle batteries, and other materials. Chinese factories are now able to produce every year twice as many solar panels as the world can put to use. For the global economy, China’s chronic overcapacity has far-reaching impacts. With electric vehicles, for instance, carmakers in Europe are already facing stiff competition from cheap Chinese imports. Factories in this and other emerging technology sectors in the West may close or, worse, never get built. Moreover, high-value manufacturing industries have economic effects that go far beyond their own activities; they generate service-sector employment and are vital to sustaining the kinds of pools of local talent that are needed to spur innovation and technological breakthroughs. In China’s domestic market, overcapacity issues have provoked a brutal price war in some industries that is hampering profits and devouring capital. According to government statistics, 27 percent of Chinese automobile manufacturers were unprofitable in May; at one point last year, the figure reached 32 percent. Overproduction throughout the economy has also depressed prices generally, causing inflation to hover near zero and the debt service ratio for the private nonfinancial sector—the ratio of total debt payments to disposable income—to climb to an all-time high. These trends have eroded consumer confidence, leading to further declines in domestic consumption and increasing the risk of China sliding into a deflationary trap. When Beijing’s economic planners do talk about consumption, they tend to do so in relation to industrial aims. In its brief discussion of the subject, the current five-year plan states that consumption should be steered specifically toward goods that align with Beijing’s industrial priorities: automobiles, electronics, digital products, and smart appliances. Analogously, although China’s vibrant e-commerce sector might suggest a plethora of consumer choices, in reality, major platforms such as Alibaba, Pinduoduo, and Shein compete fiercely to sell the same commoditized products. In other words, the illusion of consumer choice masks a domestic market that is overwhelmingly shaped by the state’s industrial priorities rather than by individual preferences. This is also reflected in policy initiatives aimed at boosting consumer spending. Consider the government’s recent effort to promote goods replacement. According to a March 2024 action plan, the Ministry of Commerce, together with other Chinese government agencies, has offered subsidies to consumers who trade in old automobiles, home appliances, and fixtures for new models. On paper, the plan loosely resembles the “cash for clunkers” program that Washington introduced during the 2008 recession to help the U.S. car industry. But the plan lacks specific details and relies on local authorities for implementation, rendering it largely ineffective; it has notably failed to lift the prices of durable goods. Although the government can influence the dynamics of supply and demand in China’s consumer markets, it cannot compel people to spend or punish them if they do not. When income growth slows, people naturally tighten their purses, delay big purchases, and try to make do for longer with older equipment. Paradoxically, the drag that overcapacity has placed on the economy overall means that the government’s efforts to direct consumption are making people even less likely to spend. DEBT COLLECTORS At the center of Beijing’s overcapacity problem is the burden placed on local authorities to develop China’s industrial base. Top-down industrial plans are designed to reward the cities and regions that can deliver the most GDP growth, by providing incentives to local officials to allocate capital and subsidies to prioritized sectors. As the scholar Mary Gallagher has observed, Beijing has fanned the flames by using social campaigns such as “common prosperity”—a concept Chinese leader Mao Zedong first proposed in 1953 and that Xi revived at a party meeting in 2021—to spur local industrial development. These planning directives and campaigns put enormous pressure on local party chiefs to achieve rapid results, which they may see as crucial for promotion within the party. Consequently, these officials have strong incentives to make highly leveraged investments in priority sectors, irrespective of whether these moves are likely to be profitable. This phenomenon has fueled risky financing practices by local governments across China. In order to encourage local initiative, Beijing often does not provide financing: instead, it gives local officials broad discretion to arrange off-balance-sheet investment vehicles with the help of regional banks to fund projects in priority sectors, with the national government limiting itself to specifying which types of local financing options are prohibited. About 30 percent of China’s infrastructure spending comes from these investment vehicles; without them, local officials simply cannot do the projects that will win them praise within the party. Inevitably, this approach has led to not only huge industrial overcapacity but also enormous levels of local government debt. According to an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, in July, the total amount of off-the-book debts held by local governments across China now stands at between $7 trillion and $11 trillion, with as much as $800 billion at risk of default. Although the scale of debt may be worse now, the problem is not new. Ever since China’s 1994 fiscal reform, which allowed local governments to retain a share of the tax revenue they collected but reduced the fiscal transfers they received from Beijing, local governments have been under chronic financial strain. They have struggled to meet their dual mandate of promoting local GDP growth and providing public services with limited resources. By centralizing financial power at the national level and offloading infrastructure and social service expenditures to regions and municipalities, Beijing’s policies have driven local governments into debt. What’s more, by stressing rapid growth performance, Beijing has pushed local officials to favor quickly executed capital projects in industries of national priority. As a further incentive, Beijing sometimes offers limited fiscal support for projects in priority sectors and helps facilitate approvals for local governments to secure financing. Ultimately, the local government bears the financial risk, and the success or failure of the project rests on the shoulders of the party’s local chief, which leads to distorted results. A larger problem with China’s reliance on local government to implement industrial policy is that it causes cities and regions across the country to compete in the same sectors rather than complement each other or play to their own strengths. Thus, for more than two decades, Chinese provinces—from Xinjiang in the west to Shanghai in the east, from Heilongjiang in the north to Hainan in the south—have, with very little coordination between them, established factories in the same government-designated priority industries, driven by provincial and local officials’ efforts to outperform their peers. Inevitably, this domestic competition has led to overcapacity and high levels of debt, even in industries in which China has gained global market dominance. Every year, Chinese factories produce twice as many solar panels as the world can use. Take solar panels. In 2010, China’s State Council announced that strategic emerging industries, including solar power, should account for 15 percent of national GDP by 2020. Within two years, 31 of China’s 34 provinces had designated the solar-photovoltaic industry as a priority, half of all Chinese cities had made investments in the solar-PV industry, and more than 100 Chinese cities had built solar-PV industrial parks. Almost immediately, China’s PV output outstripped domestic demand, with the excess supply being exported to Europe and other areas of the world where governments were subsidizing solar-panel ownership. By 2013, both the United States and the European Union imposed antidumping tariffs on Chinese PV manufacturers. By 2022, China’s own installed solar-PV capacity was greater than any other country’s, following its aggressive renewable energy build-out. But China’s electric grid cannot support additional solar capacity. With the domestic market completely saturated, solar manufacturers have resumed offloading as much of their wares as possible onto foreign markets. In August 2023, the U.S. Commerce Department found that Chinese PV producers were shipping products to Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam for minor processing procedures to avoid paying U.S. antidumping tariffs. China’s PV-production capacity, already double the global demand, is expected to grow by another 50 percent in 2025. This extreme oversupply caused the utilization rate in China’s finished solar power industry to plummet to just 23 percent in early 2024. Nevertheless, these factories continue operating because they need to raise cash to service their debt and cover fixed costs. Another example is industrial robotics, which Beijing began prioritizing in 2015 as part of its Made in China 2025 strategy. At the time, there was a clear rationale for building a stronger domestic robotics industry: China had surpassed Japan to become the world’s largest buyer of industrial robots, accounting for about 20 percent of sales worldwide. Moreover, the plan seemed to achieve striking results. By 2017, there were more than 800 robotics companies and 40 robotics-focused industrial parks operating across at least 20 Chinese provinces. Yet this all-in effort did little to advance Chinese robotics technology, even as it created a huge industrial base. In order to meet Beijing’s ambitious production targets, local officials tended to invest in mature technologies that could be scaled quickly. Today, China has a large excess capacity in low-end robotics yet still lacks sufficient capacity in high-end autonomous robotics that require indigenous intellectual property. Overcapacity in low-end production has plagued other Chinese tech industries, as well. The most recent example is artificial intelligence, which Beijing designated as a priority industry in its last two five-year plans. In August 2019, the government called for the creation of about 20 AI “pilot zones”—research parks that have a mandate to use local-government data for market testing. The aim is to exploit China’s two greatest strengths in the field: the ability to quickly build physical infrastructure, and thereby support the agglomeration of AI companies and talent, and the lack of constraints on how the government collects and shares personal data. Within two years, 17 Chinese cities had created such pilot zones, despite the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic and the government’s large-scale lockdowns. Each of these cities has also adopted action plans to induce further investments and data sharing. On paper, the program seems impressive. China is now second only to the United States in AI investment. But the quality of actual AI research, especially in the field of generative AI, has been hindered by government censorship and a lack of indigenous intellectual property. In fact, many of the Chinese AI startups that have taken advantage of the strong government support are producing products that still fundamentally rely on models and hardware developed in the West. Similar to its initiatives in other emerging industries, Beijing risks wasting enormous capital on redundant investments that emphasize economies of scale rather than deep-rooted innovation. RACE OF THE ZOMBIES Paradoxically, even as Beijing’s industrial policy goals change, many of the features that drive overcapacity persist. Whenever the Chinese government prioritizes a new sector, duplicative investments by local governments inevitably fuel intense domestic competition. Firms and factories race to produce the same products and barely make any profit—a phenomenon known in China as nei juan, or involution. Rather than try to differentiate their products, firms will attempt to simply outproduce their rivals by expanding production as fast as possible and engaging in fierce price wars; there is little incentive to gain a competitive edge by improving corporate management or investing in R & D. At the same time, finite domestic demand forces firms to export excess inventory overseas, where it is subject to geopolitics and the fluctuations of global markets. Economic downturns in export destinations and rising trade tensions can stymie export growth and worsen overcapacity at home. These dynamics all contribute to a vicious cycle: firms backed by bank loans and local government support must produce nonstop to maintain their cash flow. A production halt means no cash flow, prompting creditors to demand their money back. But as firms produce more, excess inventory grows and consumer prices drop further, causing firms to lose more money and require even more financial support from local governments and banks. And as companies go more deeply into debt, it becomes harder for them to pay it off, compounding the chance that they become “zombie companies,” essentially insolvent but able to generate just enough cash flow to meet their credit obligations. As China’s economy has stalled, the government has reduced the taxes and fees levied on firms as a way to spur growth—but that has reduced local government revenue, even as social-services expenditures and debt payments rise. In other words, the close financial relationship between local governments and the firms they support has created a wave of debt-fueled local GDP growth and left the economy in a hard-to-reverse overcapacity trap. A production line for electric vehicle batteries in Hefei, China, March 2021 A production line for electric vehicle batteries in Hefei, China, March 2021 Aly Song / Reuters Yet even now, China shows few signs of reducing its reliance on debt. Xi has doubled down on his campaign for China to achieve technological self-sufficiency, amid intense geopolitical competition with the United States. As Beijing sees it, only by investing even more in strategic sectors can it protect itself from isolation or potential economic sanctions by the West. Thus, the government is concentrating on funding advanced manufacturing and strategic technologies and discouraging investments that it sees as distracting, such as in the property sector. In order to promote more indigenous high-end technology, Chinese policymakers have in recent years mobilized the entire banking system and set up dedicated loan programs to support research and innovation in prioritized sectors. The result has been a tendency to deepen, rather than correct, the structural problems leading to excess investment and production. For example, in 2021, the China Development Bank created a special loan program for scientific and technological innovation and basic research. By May 2024, the bank had distributed more than $38 billion worth of loans to support critical, cutting-edge sectors, such as semiconductors, clean energy technology, biotech, and pharmaceuticals. In April, the People’s Bank of China, along with several government ministries, launched a $69 billion refinancing fund—to fuel a massive new round of lending by Chinese banks for projects aimed at scientific and technological innovation. Barely two months after the program’s launch, some 421 industrial facilities across the country were designated as “smart manufacturing” demonstration factories—a vague label given to factories that plan to integrate AI into their manufacturing processes. The program also announced investments in more than 10,000 provincial-level digital workshops and more than 4,500 AI-focused companies. Beyond hitting top-line investment numbers, however, this campaign has few criteria for measuring actual success. Ironically, this new program’s stated goal of filling a financing gap for small and medium-sized enterprises that are working on innovations points to a larger shortcoming in Beijing’s economic management. For years, China’s industrial policy has tended to funnel resources to already mature companies; by contrast, with its massive effort to develop AI and other advanced technologies, the government has committed the financial resources to match the venture capital approach of the United States. Yet even here, China’s economic planners have failed to recognize that the real driving force of innovation is disruption. To truly foster this kind of creativity, entrepreneurs would need unfettered access to domestic capital markets and private capital, a situation that would undermine Beijing’s control of China’s business elites. Without the possibility of market disruption, these enormous investments merely exacerbate China’s overcapacity problem. Money is funneled into those products that can be scaled most rapidly, forcing manufacturers to overproduce and then survive on the slim margins that can be reaped from dumping onto the international market. THE AGONY OF EXCESS In industry after industry, China’s chronic overcapacity is creating a complicated dilemma for the United States and the West. In recent months, Western officials have stepped up their criticisms of Beijing’s economic policies. In a speech in May, Lael Brainard, the director of the Biden administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned that China’s “policy-driven industrial overcapacity”—a euphemism for antimarket practices—was hurting the global economy. By enforcing policies that “unfairly depress capital, labor, and energy costs” and allow Chinese firms to sell “at or below cost,” she said, China now accounts for a huge percentage of global capacity in electric vehicles, batteries, semiconductors, and other sectors. As a consequence, Beijing is hampering innovation and competition in the global marketplace, threatening jobs in the United States and elsewhere, and limiting the ability of the United States and other Western countries to build supply chain resilience. At their meeting in Capri, Italy, in April, members of the G-7 warned, in a joint statement, that “China’s non-market policies and practices” have led to “harmful overcapacity. ” The massive inflow of cheap Chinese-manufactured products has already raised trade tensions. Since 2023, several governments, including those of Vietnam and Brazil, have launched antidumping or antisubsidy investigations against China, and Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, the United States, and the European Union have imposed tariffs on various imports from China, including but not limited to electric vehicles. Beijing’s industrial policies have driven cities and regions across China into debt. Faced with mounting international pressure, Xi, leading party journals, and Chinese state media have consistently denied that China has an overcapacity problem. They maintain that the criticisms are driven by an unfounded U.S. “anxiety” and that China’s cost advantage is not the product of subsidies but of the “efforts of enterprises” that “are shaped by full market competition.” Indeed, Chinese diplomats have maintained that in many emerging technology industries, the global economy suffers from significant capacity shortages rather than excess supply. In May, the People’s Daily, the official party newspaper, accused the United States of using exaggerated claims about overcapacity as a pretext for introducing harmful trade barriers meant to contain China and suppress the development of China’s strategic industries. Nonetheless, Chinese policymakers and economic analysts have long acknowledged the problem. As early as December 2005, Ma Kai, then the director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, warned that seven industrial sectors, including steel and automobiles, faced severe overcapacity. He attributed the problem to “blind investment and low-level expansion.” Over the nearly two decades since, Beijing has issued more than a dozen administrative guidelines to tackle the problem in various sectors, but with limited success. In March 2024, an analysis by Lu Feng, of Peking University, identified overcapacity problems in new-energy vehicles, electric-vehicle batteries, and legacy microchips. BloombergNEF has estimated that China’s battery production in 2023 alone was equal to total global demand. With the West adding production capacity and Chinese battery makers continuing to expand investment and production, the global problem of excess supply will likely worsen in the years to come. Lu warned that China’s overdevelopment of these industries will pressure Chinese firms to dump products on international markets and exacerbate China’s already fraught trade relations with the West. To address the problem, he proposed a combination of measures that the Chinese government has already attempted—such as stimulating domestic spending (investment and household consumption)—and those that many economists have long argued for but which Beijing has not done, including separating government from business and reforming redistribution mechanisms to benefit households. Yet these proposed solutions fall short of addressing the fundamental coordination problem plaguing the Chinese economy: the duplication of local government investments in state-designated priority sectors. LOWER FENCE, TIGHTER LEASH Thus far, the United States has responded to China’s overcapacity challenge by imposing steep tariffs on Chinese clean energy products, such as solar panels, electric vehicles, and batteries. At the same time, with the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration has poured billions of dollars into building U.S. domestic capacity for many of the same sectors. But the United States should be wary of trying to isolate China simply by building trade barriers and beefing up its own industrial base. By offering large incentives to companies that invest in critical sectors in the United States, Washington could replicate some of the same problems that are plaguing China’s economy: a reliance on debt-fueled investment, unproductive resource allocation, and, potentially, a speculative bubble in tech-company stocks that could destabilize the market if it suddenly burst. If the goal is to outcompete Beijing, Washington should concentrate on what the American system is already better at: innovation, market disruption, and the intensive use of private capital, with investors choosing the most promising areas to support and taking the risks along with the rewards. By fixating on strategies to limit China’s economic advantages, the United States risks neglecting its own strengths. A ship transporting Chinese electric vehicles on the Bosphorus, near Istanbul, April 2023 A ship transporting Chinese electric vehicles on the Bosphorus, near Istanbul, April 2023 Yoruk Isik / Reuters U.S. policymakers also need to recognize that China’s overcapacity problem is exacerbated by Beijing’s pursuit of self-sufficiency. This effort, which has been given major emphasis in recent years, reflects Xi’s insecurity and his desire to reduce China’s strategic vulnerabilities amid growing economic and geopolitical tensions with the United States and the West. In fact, Xi’s attempts to mobilize his country’s people and resources to build a technological and financial wall around China carry significant consequences of their own. A China that is increasingly cut off from Western markets will have less to lose in a potential confrontation with the West—and, therefore, less motivation to de-escalate. As long as China is tightly bound to the United States and Europe through the trade of high-value goods that are not easily substitutable, the West will be far more effective in deterring the country from taking destabilizing actions. China and the United States are strategic competitors, not enemies; nonetheless, when it comes to U.S.-Chinese trade relations, there is wisdom in the old saying “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” The U.S. government should discourage Beijing from building a wall that can sanction-proof the Chinese economy. To this end, the next administration should foster alliances, restore damaged multilateral institutions, and create new structures of interdependence that make isolation and self-sufficiency not only unattractive to China but also unattainable. A good place to start is by crafting more policies at the negotiation table, rather than merely imposing tariffs. Waging trade wars amid geopolitical tensions will heighten the confidence deficit in the Chinese economy and lead to the depreciation of the renminbi, which will partly offset the impact of tariffs. China may also be more flexible in its trade policies than it appears. Since the escalation of the U.S.-Chinese trade war, in 2018, Chinese scholars and officials have explored several policy options, including imposing voluntary export restrictions, revaluing the renminbi, promoting domestic consumption, expanding foreign direct investment, and investing in R & D. Chinese scholars have also examined Japan’s trade relations with the United States in the 1980s, noting how trade tensions forced mature Japanese industries, such as automobile manufacturing, to upgrade and become more competitive with their Western rivals, an approach that could offer lessons for China’s electric-vehicle industry. Apart from voluntary export restrictions, Beijing has already tried several of these options to some extent. If the government also implemented voluntary export controls, it could kill several birds with one stone: such a move would reduce trade and potentially even political tensions with the United States; it would force mature sectors to consolidate and become more sustainable; and it would help shift manufacturing capacity overseas, to serve target markets directly. Xi is attempting to build a technological and financial wall around China. So far, the Biden administration has taken a compartmentalized approach to China, addressing issues one at a time and focusing negotiations on single topics. In contrast, the Chinese government prefers a different approach in which no issues are off the table and concessions in one area might be traded for gains in another, even if the issues are unrelated. Consequently, although Beijing may seem recalcitrant in isolated talks, it might be receptive to a more comprehensive deal that addresses multiple aspects of U.S.-Chinese relations simultaneously. Washington should remain open to the possibility of such a grand bargain and recognize that if incentives change, China’s leadership might shift tactics abruptly, just as it did when it suddenly ended the zero-COVID policy. Washington should also consider leveraging multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization to facilitate negotiations with Beijing. For example, China might agree to voluntarily drop its developing country status at the WTO, which gives designated countries preferential treatment in some trade disputes. It may also be persuaded to support a revised WTO framework to determine a country’s nonmarket economy status—a designation used by the United States and the EU to impose higher antidumping tariffs on China—on an industry-by-industry basis rather than for an entire economy. Such steps would acknowledge China’s economic success, even as it held it to the higher trade standards of advanced industrialized countries. Xi views himself as a transformational leader, inviting comparisons to Chairman Mao. This was evident when he formally hosted former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger—among the few widely respected American figures in Xi’s China—in July 2023, just four months before Kissinger’s death. Xi believes that as a great power, his country should not be constrained by negotiations or external pressures, but he might be open to voluntary adjustments on trade issues as part of a broader agreement. Many members of China’s professional and business elite feel despair about the state of relations with the United States. They know that China benefits more by being integrated into the Western-led global system than by being excluded from it. But if Washington sticks to its current path and continues to head toward a trade war, it may inadvertently cause Beijing to double down on the industrial policies that are causing overcapacity in the first place. In the long run, this would be as bad for the West as it would be for China. ZONGYUAN ZOE LIU is Maurice R. Greenberg Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances Its Global Ambitions. 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Mathews September/October 2024 Published on August 14, 2024 Illustration by Angelica Alzona Although it is too soon to judge the historical significance of Joe Biden’s one-term presidency, it is clear that the past four years have witnessed remarkable achievements in foreign policy. Biden has made some notable strategic mistakes, as well, mostly when he chose to follow the policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump. But he has carried out a crucial task: shifting the basis of American foreign policy from an unhealthy reliance on military intervention to the active pursuit of diplomacy backed by strength. He has won back the trust of friends and allies, built and begun to institutionalize a deep American presence in Asia, restored the United States’ role in essential multilateral organizations and agreements, and ended the longest of the country’s “forever wars”—a step none of his three predecessors had the courage to take. All of this happened in the face of grievous new threats from China and Russia, two great powers newly allied around the goal of ending American primacy. Biden’s response to the most pressing emergency of his term—Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022—has been both skillful and innovative, demonstrating a grasp of the traditional elements of statecraft along with a willingness to take a few unconventional steps. The picture is more mixed when it comes to China, which in the long term poses the most complex challenge to U.S. foreign policy. Biden’s approach to Beijing has occasionally reflected a disappointing degree of continuity with that of Trump and has fostered uncertainty over Taiwan, the most sensitive issue in U.S.-Chinese relations. But unlike the former president, Biden has embedded his China policy in a vigorous matrix of new and restored alliances across Asia. He has arguably pulled off the long-sought U.S. “pivot” to the region, without using that term. In the Middle East, the record is disappointing. The boldness Biden showed in withdrawing from Afghanistan has been conspicuously absent from his reaction to the war in Gaza, where his outdated understanding of Israel has prevented him from exerting more pressure on its leadership to adopt a wiser, less destructive approach. In a deeply divided country, four years is too little time to establish a foreign policy doctrine. Much of what Biden has achieved could be quickly erased by a successor. Yet his legacy to date suggests the lineaments of a new approach well suited to today’s world. Most important among them is a resolve to eschew wars to remake other countries and to restore diplomacy as the central tool of foreign policy. That diplomatic revival has not been without flaws: it has not fostered a coherent global economic strategy, and it has lacked a strong commitment to nonproliferation and arms control. But it has presented to the world a country that has unambiguously left behind the hubris of the “unipolar moment” that followed the Cold War, proving that the United States can be deeply engaged in the world without military action or the taint of hegemony. BIDEN’S WORLD On taking office, Biden’s most important task was to restore trust abroad. He had campaigned on the slogan “America is back” and promised that the country would once again “sit at the head of the table.” Once in the White House, however, he seemed to appreciate that neither U.S. power nor, as he frequently put it, “the power of our example” were what they had been. The administration focused instead on convincing others that they no longer had to worry about Trump’s “America first” policies, open disparagement of NATO, and contempt for multilateral cooperation on issues from climate change to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was not easy. Even warmly disposed governments understood that Trump (or a leader with similar views) could return as soon as the next election. To highlight the shift, on Biden’s first day in office, he returned the United States to the World Health Organization and the Paris agreement on climate change, both of which Trump had exited. Biden moved quickly to affirm Washington’s commitment to numerous economic and security agreements and bodies, NATO in particular. In the next three-plus years, the number of NATO members reaching the benchmark goal of spending the equivalent of at least two percent of GDP on defense grew from nine to 23, with more set to do so soon. Two militarily strong states, Sweden and Finland, dropped decades of cherished neutrality to join the alliance. Today, readiness is substantially higher across the alliance, as are deployments near Russia’s borders. The Biden administration directed even more diplomatic energy into building what it calls a “latticework” of deepened and new connections across Asia spanning geopolitical and economic interests, all with the motive of countering China. The image of a crisscrossing web of relationships is meaningfully distinct from the familiar “hub and spokes” metaphor, which portrayed the United States as ensconced in the center of everything with other countries arrayed around it. The change was not merely a matter of abstraction but of action. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (known as the Quad) partnership linking Australia, India, Japan, and the United States was elevated from a forum for foreign ministers to one for heads of state. To build an Australian nuclear-powered submarine fleet that could operate stealthily and at very long range, strengthening deterrence against China far into the Pacific, the Biden team forged AUKUS, a new security arrangement aligning Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Trilateral summits connected the United States with Japan and the Philippines and with Japan and South Korea, with security as the central purpose. For the first time, a summit of the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations was held in Washington. New bilateral agreements allowed for expanded U.S. military access in Australia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. And Biden deepened U.S. relations with India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Even this partial list reflects an extraordinary level of effort and achievement in less than four years, with new and restored ties cemented, where possible, in formal agreements designed to survive a change of direction in Washington. For more than two decades, leaders in Washington have paid lip service to the centrality of Asia in the twenty-first century and the necessity of a commensurate shift in U.S. foreign policy. But the George W. Bush administration was sidetracked by its all-consuming “global war on terror.” The Obama administration recognized the importance of a stronger strategic presence in Asia but failed to achieve it. The Trump administration’s disdain for alliances weakened relations across the region. The Biden administration made the pivot happen. A LOST CAUSE To set a new course for the United States, Biden saw that it was necessary to end the longest “forever war” of the post-9/11 era. By the time he took office, the United States had spent 20 years fighting in Afghanistan at a cost of more than $2 trillion—the equivalent of $300 million a day. U.S. strategy had shifted from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency and back again; from taking a low-profile approach that relied on special forces and air power to deploying 100,000 troops in the country; from wooing the government in Kabul to suggesting that the Afghan government’s corruption was the main impediment to progress. Washington had tried a vast array of tactics: creating a national police force, attempting to build an army, improving literacy and education for women and girls. In the end, it was mostly for naught. By the time Biden was inaugurated, U.S. intelligence showed unequivocally that the Taliban’s control of areas of Afghanistan had been growing for years despite this immense investment—a fact largely unknown or underappreciated by the American public. In his speech in August 2021, Biden asked what the “vital national interest” was in Afghanistan and offered the correct answer. “We have only one: to make sure Afghanistan can never be used again to launch an attack on our homeland.” The United States had achieved that goal with the defeat of al Qaeda and the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, Biden noted. But then, he said, “we stayed for another decade.” After the unexpected, shockingly swift collapse of the Afghan army and the national government, the takeover by the Taliban, the chaos in Kabul as thousands of Afghans tried to flee, and the deaths of 13 U.S. service members and more than 160 Afghan civilians in a suicide bombing near the airport, foreign policy experts leaped to criticize the decision to withdraw. “What makes the Afghanistan situation so frustrating is that the [United States and] its allies had reached something of an equilibrium at a low sustainable cost,” Richard Haass, then president of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on Twitter as the chaos grew. “It wasn’t peace or military victory, but it was infinitely preferable to the strategic [and] human catastrophe that is unfolding.” But the apparent low cost was an illusion created by the absence of American deaths in the preceding months: the Taliban had decided to cease attacks on U.S. forces as it waited for them to withdraw under an agreement negotiated by the Trump administration. Had the United States not left, American losses would have resumed, and the price of staying would have been clear once again. Biden has been unwilling to use U.S. leverage over Israel. The stark truth was that the United States had lost the war long before August 2021. But defeats are easier to forget than to absorb. With plenty of prompting from Trump, far too many Americans remember the few days of disarray at the end and forget the years of failure that preceded them; the 13 Americans who died at the very end rather than the 2,461 killed and the 20,744 injured in the years before. No strategic loss stemmed from Biden’s decision—quite the reverse. “There’s nothing China or Russia would rather have,” the president correctly noted in his speech, “than the United States to be bogged down another decade in Afghanistan.” Washington failed to anticipate how swiftly the Kabul government would collapse. But the significance of that failure pales beside the significance of Biden’s success in grasping the lasting strategic benefits of withdrawing. “This decision about Afghanistan,” he said, “is about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.” Months after the departure from Afghanistan, the Biden administration was tested again when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. During his first week in office, Biden and Putin had agreed to extend the New START treaty—the only remaining bilateral nuclear arms control agreement—a few days before it would have expired. It was a hopeful sign. But a few weeks later, Moscow moved thousands of troops and heavy weapons to its border with Ukraine. Although Putin’s intentions were opaque, the move raised alarms inside the administration. “We’re looking at it very carefully, 24/7,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told David Ignatius of The Washington Post—nearly a year before Russia invaded, in February 2022. Immediately after the attack began, Moscow put its strategic weapons on heightened alert. Later, Putin spoke of using tactical nuclear weapons should the West’s support of Kyiv go, in his opinion, too far. As the war dragged on, he upped the ante by moving those weapons into neighboring Belarus and ordering joint combat drills in their use. On the whole, Biden’s handling of the war has been masterful. In the run-up to the invasion, he broke sharply with traditional practice by publicly disclosing U.S. intelligence on Russian troop maneuvers to alert the world to Putin’s plans and neuter the Kremlin’s disinformation campaigns. Once the attack was underway, he made his case for an energetic defense of Ukraine by starting with an emphatic prohibition against the involvement of U.S. troops there—a pledge that he repeated often and that largely kept public opposition to active support for Ukraine in check. He then exerted vigorous political and personal leadership to rally European states, NATO, and the U.S. Congress to support Kyiv and ordered an initially cautious but steadily growing flow of weapons and money. He has calibrated the sophistication of weapons Washington has provided against the curve of Russian violence, staying just behind rather than leading it. And he has bolstered Ukrainian strength in less visible ways with the forward-leaning use of U.S. military and intelligence expertise. FLASH POINTS Although a path to ending the war has not been found, Biden’s handling of the Russian invasion has been a credit to the United States—as was the Afghanistan withdrawal, conventional wisdom notwithstanding. The record is murkier on two other priorities: China and the Middle East. The Biden administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy defined China as having both the capacity and the intent to reshape the international order, displacing the United States and its democratic values. Without question, China’s recent behavior in the Indo-Pacific, its steep increase in military spending, its aggressive trade policies, and its “no limits” partnership with Russia (including support for the war in Ukraine) demand a strong American response. The Biden administration has provided that, wisely walking a fine line by strengthening its relations with Asian allies and partners and bolstering the U.S. military presence while dispensing with bluster and needless provocation. An unfortunate exception has been the administration’s record on Taiwan, the flash point of U.S.-Chinese relations. An intentionally ambiguous “one China” policy negotiated by Washington and Beijing more than four decades ago has kept the peace across the Taiwan Strait ever since. Maintaining it requires constant attention to language and symbolism, especially when it comes to the question of whether Washington would use military force to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. Several times, however, Biden has heightened uncertainty in Beijing by plainly stating that the United States would do just that, requiring the White House to issue clarifications. More serious was his unaccountable acquiescence to an official visit to Taiwan in 2022 by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a high-profile critic of Beijing and longtime supporter of Taiwan who was at the time second in line to the presidency. As the leader of the Democratic Party, Biden could have easily forbidden the trip, which followed others that also broke an unwritten “one China” rule against official visits. Pelosi’s mission predictably sparked an unprecedented spate of military and cyber-retaliation by Beijing and another ratcheting up of cross-strait tensions. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Biden shaking hands on the day of signing a new security agreement in Fasano, Italy, June 2024 Kevin Lamarque / Reuters Washington can only guess at Beijing’s intentions. China’s military buildup may presage a direct threat to Taiwan or the United States. Or perhaps the Chinese Communist Party is responding to what it perceives as American aggression, or simply taking the steps that any newly arrived great power feels are its due. In the same way, Beijing cannot know whether Washington has purposely abandoned the “one China” policy. Perhaps Biden is encouraging Taipei to assert its independence and would militarily support it if it did so. The only thing both sides know for certain is that an escalating spiral of action and reaction relating to Taiwan is underway, and neither is taking the necessary steps to interrupt it. Biden took office determined not to be distracted from priorities in Asia and elsewhere by perennial conflict in the Middle East. He inherited a Trump administration policy that seemed to have achieved substantial success. Through the so-called Abraham Accords, Israel normalized relations with Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates. The accords embodied the view that if Arab countries were given the right incentives, it would be possible for them to negotiate peace agreements with Israel even without addressing the fate of the Palestinians. But as the administration sought to add the region’s most important state, Saudi Arabia, to the accords, the Netanyahu government was expelling Palestinians from more and more of the West Bank to make way for Israeli settlements. Together, these steps were a bridge too far for many Palestinians, and the militant group Hamas exploited their sense of despair and rage to justify the horrendous terrorist attack it carried out on October 7, 2023—the worst day in Israeli history. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s mortifying remark made days before the assault that the region was “quieter today than it has been in two decades” captures the administration’s mix of inattention and wishful thinking. Biden responded to the attack with unprecedented personal support that reflected his career-long passion for Israel. But as the Israeli military response unfolded, he seemed unable to see what was happening on the ground. Washington has put all its weight into trying to broker a permanent cease-fire, an outcome that neither the leadership of Israel nor that of Hamas believes is in its best interest. Biden has remained stubbornly unwilling to use the leverage the United States holds to compel Israel to reduce the staggering level of civilian death and suffering in Gaza, address the humanitarian calamity there, and craft a realistic plan for the long term. NUCLEAR NEGLECT The negative side of Biden’s ledger contains a few other items, as well. Biden has extended Trump’s trade protectionism, continuing and in some cases raising tariffs that Trump imposed on imports from China. Unlike Trump, Biden has sharply focused the tariffs, mostly on high-tech and clean energy products, and enhanced their effectiveness with a variety of export bans, sanctions, and subsidies to boost domestic production and slow the development of the Chinese technology sector. He also worked to coordinate such steps with European allies and others. Even so, tariffs are bad economic policy: they are regressive and inflationary and invite retaliation. Because they are hidden taxes disguised as fees paid by foreigners, they also invite dangerous domestic one-upmanship: after Biden quadrupled tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles to 100 percent, Trump called for a raise to 200 percent. With two successive U.S. administrations that disagree on almost everything having adopted the same economic tool, global trade may have reached a turning point: the era of globalization and free trade has perhaps definitively ended. If others follow Washington’s lead, the likely result will be to make all states poorer—as the world learned when protectionism reigned in the 1930s. Notably missing from Biden’s diplomatic surge has been a sustained effort to advance nuclear arms control and nonproliferation—a surprising omission, given his outspoken advocacy of both goals during his Senate career and vice presidency. Dithering in the administration’s earliest days seriously and perhaps fatally damaged prospects for resolving the most important proliferation issue of the day: what to do about the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. In 2018, Trump pulled the United States out of the hard-won agreement, which Iran was abiding by—a decision that Biden and his team saw as a catastrophic own goal. But in trying to prove that they were as tough on Iran as their Republican critics, Biden’s appointees took such aggressively anti-Iranian stances in their Senate confirmation hearings that they left the impression in Tehran and Washington that they did not truly believe in the JCPOA. By the time this got untangled, the narrow window of opportunity to convince Tehran that the administration still wanted to revive the deal had closed. Biden also set aside nonproliferation considerations in negotiating the AUKUS agreement. By transferring highly enriched (and thus weapons-grade) fuel to power the submarines of Australia, a country without nuclear weapons, the accord set a damaging precedent that other countries could follow by using naval reactor programs as covers for developing nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Biden had to reverse “America first” beliefs and behaviors. On arms control, too, the administration has come up short. In January 2022, the leaders of the five original nuclear powers affirmed that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”—repeating the breakthrough statement that emerged from talks held by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Yet Putin’s unprovoked war has been marked by repeated threats of nuclear use. In 2023, he suspended Russian adherence to the extended New START treaty, tying the move not to any lack of U.S. compliance but to Washington’s support for Ukraine. Meanwhile, China plans to double the number of nuclear weapons in its arsenal to 1,000 by 2030. Coupled with the fundamentally new situation created by the deepening Chinese-Russian partnership, these moves have made the prospects for any progress on arms control, or even for maintaining the status quo, unlikely in the extreme. Unfortunately, the Biden administration made no major effort to reverse this trend and has even contributed its bit to the bleak outlook. It maintains a willingness to negotiate a follow-up to New START and has taken a few small steps toward opening arms control talks with Beijing. But the administration is also pursuing a hugely expensive modernization of all three legs of its nuclear forces, including its land-based missiles. Because those missiles are stuck in silos whose locations are well known to adversaries, they are “first strike” weapons, which must be quickly launched in a conflict or lost to enemy attack. They are therefore both vulnerable and destabilizing. U.S. security and the prospects for avoiding a new arms race would be better served by extending the life of a smaller number of existing Minuteman III missiles instead of buying a new land-based nuclear missile force at a cost of more than $150 billion. As vice president, Biden fought for a major change in U.S. policy: a declaration that deterrence is the “sole” (rather than the “primary”) purpose of nuclear weapons. That seemingly minor change hides the major meaning: that nuclear weapons have no utility in warfighting. Such a shift would have profound consequences for the design of nuclear forces and for international arms control. President Barack Obama chose not to make this change—and, as president, Biden did the same. It was a missed opportunity. Given the realities of the war in Ukraine and China’s nuclear expansion, however, he arguably had no political leeway to do otherwise. Partly as a consequence of the poor prospects for arms control, some of the Biden administration’s opponents are calling for expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal and even for a return to nuclear testing. After conducting more than 1,000 tests, the United States has little to learn from carrying out more. But China, which has conducted fewer than 50 tests and is observing the current testing moratorium, could benefit substantially if the United States were to legitimize a return to testing. It would not be long before other states, nuclear and nonnuclear, did likewise—a giant leap backward to the 1950s. AMERICA REDUX Biden assumed the presidency with a mountain of his predecessor’s mistakes to undo. He had to reverse the beliefs and behaviors inherent in an “America first” foreign policy. He needed to restore predictability to U.S. policy and rebuild willingness among other countries to support Washington’s initiatives. Although his party controlled both houses of Congress for his first two years as president, it did so by the slimmest of margins, and Biden later faced a House of Representatives run by an increasingly extreme Republican caucus that prioritized scoring political points over substance in foreign policy. From almost his first day in office, he confronted the looming question of what Russia intended in Ukraine; soon after, he faced the stunning reality of the first act of large-scale international aggression in Europe in the postwar era. Finally, he had to manage a relationship with China characterized by rising acrimony, unfulfilled agreements, military threats, and an almost total lack of purposeful communication. Biden also had made promises that would need to be adjusted or walked back. He had wrongly described the world as divided between autocracies and democracies, suggesting that foreign policy was a Manichean contest between the two camps. He followed through on an unwise promise to hold a “Summit for Democracy,” which, predictably, produced a diplomatic nightmare of deciding which countries qualified for inclusion. In the end, the meetings were mostly held online, with low expectations and little to show in terms of results. Most prominently, Biden had promised “a foreign policy for the middle class.” In practice, this mostly meant massive investments at home in manufacturing, education, health care, and lowering middle-class debt. Abroad, it unfortunately took the form of protectionist trade policies, an element of Biden’s legacy the United States and the world may come to regret. But Biden’s determination to finally realize a shift in priority to Asia has been a notable success. Relations with China are steadier than those he inherited. There is now at least a floor on which more can be built, even though Taiwan remains a simmering source of tension to which both Washington and Beijing are paying far too little attention. But the number of new partnerships and economic, geopolitical, and military agreements in Asia and the density of new and restored ties there are a testament to what dedicated diplomacy can achieve. Taliban members celebrating the first anniversary of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Kabul, August 2022 Ali Khara / Reuters Whether or not a stable cease-fire is reached in Gaza, Biden’s legacy must include his apparent inability to see Israel as the illiberal, militaristic state it has become under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than as the plucky young democracy that Biden remembers from decades ago. An Israeli decision to attempt to govern Gaza for the long term and continue to annex the West Bank would foreclose the possibility of a two-state solution; bleed Israel militarily, financially, and reputationally; and constitute a historic injustice for the Palestinian people. As long as the United States maintains a special connection to Israel, it cannot afford to ignore this festering sore, as the Biden administration tried to do. Biden’s determination to end Washington’s longest war was a major achievement. There are no U.S. forces in sustained combat now for the first time in a quarter century. His policies reflect a recognition that the United States will continue to have global interests but that its ambitions must be tailored to a realistic assessment of its present resources, partisan divisions, and political will. In a world facing existential global challenges, Biden assigned an appropriately high value to alliances and looser partnerships, recognizing them as a major component of American strength, and saw the value of multinational solutions. He reaffirmed that democracies are special political kin but seemed to learn that since so many countries lie somewhere between democracy and autocracy, few causes benefit from a U.S. foreign policy framed as a contest between the two. The world is so much in flux that it is impossible to predict how Biden’s short presidency will fit into the flow of history. Will voters in the United States and Europe turn to populism, go-it-alone nationalism, or even isolationism? What does China intend in the Pacific and beyond? Can the war in Ukraine be ended without setting a precedent that rewards naked aggression? Will the major powers follow each other over the cliff of a second nuclear arms race? And, of course, will Biden have a successor who shares his worldview or be followed by Trump, who will seek to reverse most of what he has done? No matter the answers, and despite the symptoms of debilitating political polarization at home, Biden has made profound changes in foreign policy—not to accommodate American decline but to reflect the country’s inherent strength. JESSICA T. MATHEWS is a Distinguished Fellow and former President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. More By Jessica T. Mathews More: United States Security U.S. Foreign Policy Biden Administration U.S. Politics War in Ukraine U.S.-Chinese Relations Israel-Hamas War Most-Read Articles China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine Why Chinese Thinkers Underestimate the Costs of Complicity in Russia’s Aggression Jude Blanchette The Undoing of Israel The Dark Futures That Await After the War in Gaza Ilan Z. Baron and Ilai Z. Saltzman How Everything Became National Security And National Security Became Everything Daniel W. Drezner The Crisis of Indian Capitalism Why Politicians Choose Statist Solutions Over Economic Reforms Yamini Aiyar Recommended Articles A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy Ben Rhodes U.S. President Donald Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, November 2017 The Return of Peace Through Strength Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy Robert C. O’Brien The Crisis of Indian Capitalism Why Politicians Choose Statist Solutions Over Economic Reforms By Yamini Aiyar August 13, 2024 Advertising boards for coaching services for students, Prayagraj, India, June 2024 On the morning of June 4, many Indians were glued to their television screens awaiting the results of the 2024 general elections. But far away from that public glare, 2.4 million aspiring doctors who had sat for an intensely competitive government-administered exam were also impatiently refreshing their screens, anticipating the results that would shape their futures. By the end of the day, both the elections and the medical school entrance exams raised enormous uncertainties. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single largest party but were humbled after they failed to win a majority in Parliament and could The World Is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic Governments Need to Invest Far More in New and Better Vaccines By Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker August 15, 2024 Collecting material from a dead porpoise during an outbreak of bird flu in Sao Jose do Norte, Brazil, November 2023 Less than five years after the outbreak of COVID-19, the world remains vulnerable to another pandemic. Over the past five months, a mutated strain of the H5N1influenza virus detected in dairy cattle poses a potential risk for a pandemic-causing virus. Yet governments and international organizations have done far too little to prepare for such a scenario, despite the lessons they should have learned from the global battle with COVID-19. After the COVID-19 crisis revealed the shortcomings of the global public health response system, many assumed that governments and international organizations would strive to fix the most obvious problems. Given the catastrophic human and economic costs of the pandemic, countries had a strong incentive to start spending heavily on developing new generations of more protective influenza and coronavirus vaccines, as well as to greatly expand global manufacturing and distribution networks. But this has not happened. At current funding levels, it likely will take a decade or longer to develop more effective and longer-lasting vaccines. Although there are groups at work on new treatments and other antiviral initiatives, on the whole, global society does not appear to be much more prepared for a future coronavirus or influenza pandemic than it was five years ago. The resurgence of H5N1 influenza in humans and animals has highlighted these failures. Although the virus was identified in the 1990s, over the last 20 years it has continued to mutate, reinventing itself over and over again. Today, it is infecting millions of birds, but it has also become more capable of spilling over into at least 40 species of mammals. It still cannot easily transmit between humans, but infections in dairy cattle, which have influenza receptors for both avian and human influenza viruses in their udders, demonstrate the risk for a new pandemic. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. It is impossible to know when a new pandemic will arise, or which specific pathogen will be its cause. H5N1 is just one of the viruses that could mutate into something that will start a pandemic. But eventually, one will happen. It is therefore time to move away from vague recommendations and best practices to a far larger-scale program aimed at producing new and better vaccines, antiviral drugs and other countermeasures, and building the infrastructure at the scale needed to protect entire populations. Although such efforts will be costly, failing to take these steps could be catastrophic. THE AVIAN THREAT Although it has never caused a human pandemic, the H5N1 virus has been on the public health radar for decades. It was first identified in late 1996, when a new influenza virus began circulating in avian species in Asia, initially known as high pathogenic avian H5N1. Influenza strains are classified by the characteristics of two proteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, on the virion particle’s surface. The pathogen gained international attention for causing a 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong, killing six of the 18 people infected. To control the spread, Hong Kong was forced to cull millions of poultry from its markets and from the supplying farms. In December 2003, H5N1 reemerged. For the next three years, wild birds spread the virus to domestic waterfowl and chickens in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. It also infected a limited number of mammals, including tigers in Thai zoos, and eventually made its way to 148 humans in five Asian countries. Seventy-nine of those cases—53 percent—proved fatal. As the virus spread, public health officials grew concerned that the world was on the brink of a devastating pandemic. In 2005, at the height of that scare, one of us (Osterholm) wrote a Foreign Affairs article explaining how governments should prepare for such a scenario. The essay noted that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) and various countries’ pandemic response plans were vague and did not offer a realistic blueprint for how to get a population through a potential one-to-three-year pandemic. The article recommended an initiative to provide vaccines for the entire world, with a well-defined schedule to ensure that it would be carried out in a timely way. Fortunately, H5N1 did not cause a pandemic in 2005. But in late 2019, a different virus did. COVID-19 was a novel coronavirus—so called because of the protein spikes on the virion surface that give it a corona-like appearance—that began infecting thousands of people in Wuhan, China. Soon, it spread across China, then the continent, and then the world. In its first year, COVID-19 infected hundreds of millions of people and killed at least three million. THE HUMAN MIXING BOWL Influenza pandemics are not a new phenomenon. From 2009 to 2010, an H1N1 virus—popularly known as swine flu—rapidly spread around the planet, killing an estimated 575,000 people. In United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that 60.8 million people were infected, 273,300 hospitalized, and 12,469 died. This level of morbidity and mortality was tragic, but for a flu pandemic, relatively mild. After all, the 1918 flu pandemic, also H1N1, killed between 50 million and 100 million people worldwide, or at least 2.7 percent of the world’s population. It might be tempting to conclude that the 2009 pandemic was less deadly than its 1918 counterpart because of 90 years of intervening medical progress, including improved vaccines. Unfortunately, that conclusion is incorrect. The 2009 virus was simply less virulent than the one that spread in 1918. Moreover, the most vulnerable group—people over 65—already had H1N1 antibodies thanks to previous infections with related viruses. As COVID-19 showed, the world is no better prepared for pandemics today than it was a century ago and, in some ways, worse off. Today, there are three times as many people as in 1918. Hundreds of millions live close to poultry and pigs. Air travel can transport infected carriers anywhere in the world within hours. (There are more than a billion international border crossings annually.) And global supply chains have created far greater international interdependence. Humanity, in other words, has become an extraordinarily efficient biological mixing bowl as well as a highly productive viral mutation factory. That does not mean an H5N1 pandemic is about to unfold. Both the WHO and the CDC assess the current risk of H5N1 in humans to be low. So far, there is no compelling evidence that the current virus is becoming better at attaching to the receptor sites for influenza in the human respiratory tract, the critical bar H5N1 must clear before it can cause a pandemic. To date, the primary outcome of humans becoming infected with H5N1 in the United States—whether by association with infected poultry flocks or working with infected dairy cows—is conjunctivitis. This is unsurprising since humans have receptor sites in the eye for bird viruses. But nature can change fast. Viruses are constantly mutating and reassorting. Influenza reassortment can occur when a human, pig, or cow becomes infected simultaneously with two different viruses, presenting the opportunity for the pathogens to swap critical genetic segments and create new strains. Although the vast majority of these alterations either have little significance or make the new form less robust and adaptable, occasionally a mutation or reassortment will make a virus more transmissible, dangerous, or both. H5N1 could experience such a transformation at any point, turning the current consensus on its head. And H5N1 is just one of the influenza strains the epidemiology community is closely monitoring. Officials should make no mistake: there will be more influenza and coronavirus pandemics, and any one of them could prove far more catastrophic than the COVID-19 pandemic. Whenever it occurs, it will almost certainly be a virus, primarily transmitted from person to person via the airborne route, a “virus with wings,” meaning the viral particles can be suspended in the air for long periods and distances. When such an outbreak transpires, rapid global transmission will happen before anyone realizes the world is in the earliest days of a years-long pandemic. Governments cannot wait to prepare until a virus is already spreading around the world. As the last five years have shown, even a moderately deadly disease can have enormous health, economic, social, and political consequences. IN SEARCH OF A SILVER BULLET It is time for all nations to wake up to the danger and prepare for a new pandemic. At the top of the list should be a game-changing improvement in the medical countermeasures that governments put in place to fight influenza viruses and coronaviruses. Specifically, this means vaccines, drug treatments, and diagnostic tests. Improving the design and systems for manufacturing personal protective equipment quickly and in sufficient numbers will also be essential. Governments must begin investing heavily in vaccine research and development, including studies aimed at creating universal influenza and coronavirus vaccines: ones that provide protection against multiple strains of either virus, offer durable protection for extended periods, and can be manufactured quickly and distributed globally. To be fully effective, improved vaccines must be safe and provide multiyear protection against most possible influenza strains. They must significantly reduce the likelihood of serious illness, hospitalization, and death, as well as prevent infection and transmission. Ideally, they should be produced and routinely administered to the general population before a pandemic virus emerges, and be readily available in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers are still a long way from creating such a vaccine, though current developments in the lab suggest it is possible. But at the current level of support for research and development, it could take a decade or more to achieve these game-changing vaccines. With significantly greater government support, this timeline almost certainly could be shortened. The price tag for such measures will be high, and not all of the investment will pay dividends. But a new pandemic could prove far more deadly or costly than a new war, and governments rarely shy away from spending whatever is deemed necessary on new and better weapons. Biological security is just as important as military security, and the United States needs to accept the idea that it would be going to war against a microbial enemy potentially far more dangerous than any conceivable human foe. THE WEAPONS WE HAVE Until these universal or near-universal vaccines are created, policymakers will need to work with currently available influenza and COVID-19 vaccines. These shots are good, but hardly great. For example, they limited illness and deaths caused by the 2009‒10 H1N1 influenza and the COVID-19 pandemics, but the protection they provide against infection varies widely. Even now, the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines against symptomatic illness, disease severity, and hospitalization is largely determined by the viral variant then circulating and whether the infected person is immunocompromised. Similarly, the effectiveness of influenza vaccines against illness requiring medical care ranges from less than 20 percent to as high as 60 percent for any given flu season. COVID-19 and flu vaccines also lack durability. In one recent study, the CDC found that COVID-19 inoculations provided approximately 54 percent protection against the need for medical care at an average of 52 days after vaccination. According to a different study, the vaccine loses almost all of its protective powers after a year. Current flu vaccine protection is even shorter, beginning to wane after only a month or two. To keep up, health authorities generally recommend booster vaccines every year for influenza and even more often for COVID-19, with the antigenic component changing to match the most recent circulating strain. But when a reassorted or mutated virus with pandemic potential emerges, it is likely to be significantly different, causing vaccines to miss their targets. That, in part, was why H1N1 was able to spark a pandemic in 2009. The United States has tried to get out ahead of H5N1 by stockpiling 4.8 million vaccine doses, which were recently tested and found to be potentially effective against H5N1 by the Food and Drug Administration. But if a new H5N1 variant were to cause a pandemic, the changes to the virus’s makeup could render the present vaccines largely or entirely ineffective. COVID-19 and flu vaccines lack durability. Even if the vaccine in the current stockpile does prove effective, there are not enough doses to control an emerging H5N1 pandemic. The United States is home to 333 million people, each of whom would need two shots to be fully immunized, meaning the 4.8 million doses on hand would cover only about seven percent of the population. The government would, of course, try to scale up production quickly, but doing so would be tricky. During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, the first lot of vaccine was released on October 1, almost six months after the pandemic was declared. Only 11.2 million doses were available before peak incidence. Other countries are no better equipped. In a 2019 report, the WHO and three academic centers estimated annual worldwide seasonal influenza vaccine production capacity to be 1.48 billion doses, with potential production capacity to be 4.15 billion doses. That means a maximum of two billion people—25 percent of global population—could be vaccinated in the first year of a pandemic. The WHO’s estimates rely on some optimistic assumptions. In the event of a pandemic, for example, the research assumes that there would be an adequate supply of egg-laying chickens, since fertilized chicken eggs are the vessels in which most influenza vaccines are grown. But since the natural reservoir for all influenza strains is avian, the virus could kill off or otherwise compromise large numbers of chickens. Even if it didn’t, an H5N1 pandemic might erupt when manufacturers are in the middle of their normal, seasonal vaccine production, making it hard for them to rapidly switch. And a pandemic influenza vaccine strain may not grow as well in eggs and cells as do seasonal virus vaccines. The 2019 WHO study also identified several potential bottlenecks. Manufacturers may not have sufficient facilities to put their vaccine into vials or syringes, and there may not be a sufficient and timely supply of those vials and syringes, or of reagents- the chemicals to produce the vaccines. Shipping and administration of shots will be a significant challenge in many low- and middle-income countries. Manufacturers could lack the workforce protection needed to ensure continuous production. And producers may be short on adjuvants, compounds that enhance immune responses. Without them, twice as much antigen would be needed per dose. THE MILITARY MODEL Public health experts and government health officials are aware of the threat of another pandemic and have launched a variety of initiatives to mitigate it. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations—focused on developing vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases—has outlined a plan for delivering “pandemic-beating vaccines” within 100 days of a WHO declaration. CEPI has laid out five areas of innovation needed to make this a reality: creating a library of prototype vaccines for pathogens across multiple virus families, having clinical trials networks at the ready, speeding up identification of immune response markers, building global vaccine manufacturing capacity, and strengthening disease surveillance and global early-warning systems. These innovations, if realized, would greatly improve the world’s pandemic readiness. But with current funding levels, the project’s 100-day target is hugely ambitious and unlikely to be realized over the next decade for either influenzas or coronaviruses. And as public health experts and governments rightly focus on shortening the time from the beginning of the pandemic until the first vaccine doses are available, just as important is how long it takes until everyone is vaccinated. Nonetheless, some important steps forward have been made since the 2019 report. Improvements in mRNA technology, first used to make the most successful COVID-19 vaccines, could help speed up influenza vaccine production. Three Phase 3 trials are underway to evaluate the effectiveness of mRNA influenza vaccines. But no such vaccines are yet ready, and it is unclear when they will be. In response to all these shortcomings, beginning in 2019, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, which one of the current authors (Osterholm) directs, has led an effort to coordinate research and development of new seasonal and universal influenza vaccines. Using a team of 147 multidisciplinary experts, CIDRAP launched the Influenza Vaccines Research and Development Roadmap to advance the scientific and policy knowledge needed to produce better vaccines and track progress. So far, the initiative has identified more than 420 projects that address at least one of these strategic goals, totaling over $1.4 billion, with U.S. government agencies funding approximately 85 percent of these research studies. This is a start toward more effective vaccines, but only a start. Recently the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) provided $176 million to Moderna to develop an mRNA-based pandemic influenza vaccine aimed at multiple strains of the virus. This effort should improve the speed with which a vaccine can be made available in an emerging influenza pandemic, but it is not expected to improve on the effectiveness of the current generation of mRNA vaccines. Hope is not a strategy. BARDA has recently launched an initiative to develop better coronavirus vaccines and antiviral drugs, called Project NextGen. While it is to be hoped that this effort leads to better and quicker results, the $5 billion government investment—a tiny fraction of what the United States devotes to weapon systems procurement—is only a minimal down payment on the research and development needed to accomplish this important goal. There is nothing currently in the legislative pipeline to suggest that Project NextGen will continue receiving vital government support. Given these shortfalls, it will likely be a long time before scientists develop game-changing vaccines. In the interim, governments will have to dramatically increase the capacity to produce at pandemic scale the vaccines the world already has. This will mean high-income nations subsidizing their own pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity and helping middle- and low-income countries establish facilities and train workers to staff them. At first glance, the costs may seem prohibitively high. But consider the stakes. If H5N1, or any other airborne virus that begins to spread in the human population, sparks a pandemic with a fatality rate even three to five percent higher than COVID, the world will be going to war against a terrifying microbial enemy. It would be far more deadly than any pandemic in living memory or any military conflict since World War II. Viewed from that perspective, adopting a military model of planning, procurement, and development is not just rational but essential. Yes, some of the pandemic preparedness projects the government funds may not pan out. Others may never go into use. But governments, and the people that vote them into power, have long accepted that aircraft carriers, fighter jets, and other weapon systems come with enormous price tags and take many years to finance, design, build, test, and commission. And they also accept that some of these arms may sit in storage until they are obsolete. Nations invest anyway, because in war, such weapons become indispensable. It is urgent that governments begin to think the same way about pandemic preparedness. Of course, it is still possible that such a pandemic may never arise—or that it doesn’t occur for many years. But hope is not a strategy. The United States and the rest of the high- and middle-income world need to start devoting the necessary resources to developing better vaccines, treatments, and other countermeasures immediately. Humanity will not get ahead of a pandemic-causing virus without such commitment. MICHAEL T. OSTERHOLM is Regents Professor and Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. MARK OLSHAKER is a writer and documentary filmmaker. They are co-authors of the forthcoming The Big One: How to Prepare for World-Altering Pandemics to Come. More By Michael T. Osterholm More By Mark Olshaker More: United States World Politics & Society Health Coronavirus Most-Read Articles China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine Why Chinese Thinkers Underestimate the Costs of Complicity in Russia’s Aggression Jude Blanchette The Undoing of Israel The Dark Futures That Await After the War in Gaza Ilan Z. Baron and Ilai Z. 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Barrett China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine Why Chinese Thinkers Underestimate the Costs of Complicity in Russia’s Aggression By Jude Blanchette August 13, 2024 Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, May 2024 Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, China, May 2024 Sergei Bobylev / Sputnik / Reuters https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-denial-about-war-ukraine-jude-blanchette In the weeks following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese government struck a tone of cautious support for Moscow. Spokespeople for the Chinese government repeatedly stressed that Russia had the right to conduct its affairs as it saw fit, alleged that the word “invasion” was a Western interpretation of events, and suggested that the United States had provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin by backing a NATO expansion. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, expressed sympathy for Russia’s “legitimate concerns.” Yet outside of the Chinese Communist Party leadership, the reaction was more concerned. Although the vast majority of universities and think tanks in China are state funded, the analysts and academics who work there still retain a degree of independence, and their views exert a measure of influence on the government. After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, these analysts openly fretted about how the conflict could damage China’s relationship with Europe and the United States, further fracture the global economy, and diminish the wealth and power of Russia, China’s most important partner. “The negative impact of the war on China [will be] huge,” Yan Xuetong, one of China’s foremost international relations scholars, argued in May 2022, warning that a protracted conflict would wreak havoc on the global economy and trigger “heightened tensions” between China and neighbors such as Japan. The West’s “unprecedentedly united” effort to sanction the Russian economy, as the international relations scholar Li Wei put it, surprised Chinese experts. Some, such as Wang Yongli, a former Bank of China vice president, worried that sanctions would threaten the globalization on which the Chinese economy depends. More than two years into the war, however, such stark public pessimism has dissipated, replaced by cautious optimism. The Russian and Chinese economies, these experts now reckon, have largely avoided crippling harm from Western sanctions. Russia is reconstituting its defense industrial base and has avoided the extreme diplomatic isolation that once seemed a plausible outcome of Putin’s gambit. Stay informed. In-depth analysis delivered weekly. Some of these analysts’ conclusions about the war in Ukraine—for instance, that the United States’ domestic consensus in favor of arming Kyiv would falter—have been borne out. But other realities are conspicuously absent from the Chinese public discourse. China has, in fact, incurred costs as a result of Putin’s war and Beijing’s economic and diplomatic support for it. Europe has not completely turned its back on China, but the country’s deepening relationship with Russia has caused a significant deterioration in its relations with many European countries that cannot easily be reversed. And the symmetry between Putin’s lust to seize Ukrainian territory and Beijing’s long-standing appetite to absorb Taiwan has provoked the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific to harden their defenses. These blind spots matter because in China, the war in Ukraine is serving as both an observatory and a laboratory as the country prepares for heightened geopolitical conflict with the United States. As they analyze events in Ukraine, Chinese scholars seek to assess the United States’ and Europe’s resolve and understand what risks China might be forced to bear in a geopolitical or military crisis. Some experts, such as the leading military strategist Zhou Bo, have concluded that NATO’s hesitancy to make certain major interventions on Ukraine’s behalf proves that, aside from the United States, Taiwan would lack defenders in a future conflict with China. Although these scholars tend to be careful not to discuss the contours of a potential war in the Taiwan Strait too explicitly, many seem to be drawing a straight line from the cracks in the United States’ determination to support Ukraine and its likely will to stomach a possible protracted conflict with Beijing. WORRY COURT Chinese experts, particularly those based at elite academic institutions or at think tanks affiliated with the government or military, serve as both interpreters and influencers of official policy. They publish in government-sanctioned journals and media outlets, and although their opinions frequently align with government orthodoxy, many of them also test policy ideas not yet publicly voiced by officials or float new political propositions as trial balloons to gauge official reaction. Even under the regime of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, where public discourse is tightly controlled, some of these experts can still cautiously explore sensitive topics, walking a fine line between intellectual independence and political loyalty. Chinese experts have not been monolithic on Putin’s war. From the moment Russian troops crossed into Ukraine in 2022, Chinese analysts have offered differing perspectives on the impact the conflict would have on Chinese interests and the proper interpretation of Western efforts to counter the Russian offensive. On the whole, however, their early reactions were shaped by concern that the war would mark a historic post–Cold War turning point. Chinese scholars consistently concluded that Russia’s invasion would drive a major realignment of the international order. This view was trenchantly expressed by a group of scholars at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, a think tank known for its high-quality analysis despite its direct affiliation with China’s Ministry of State Security. In February 2023, these scholars argued that the invasion was a “watershed in history” that revealed the existence of a “latent new order” different from the security architecture that dominated for three decades after the end of the Cold War. Xi has, of course, spoken of the dawn of a “new era” for the global order. He has repeatedly touted the idea that the world is undergoing “profound changes unseen in a century” that will be marked by growing risks but also potential benefits to China, by overturning the United States’ dominance in geopolitics, technology, and the global economy. Chinese scholars initially concluded that Russia’s invasion would upend the international order. Many scholars initially feared that Russia’s attack could upset China’s ability to steer itself carefully into this new era. The event punctured their sense that China, more than any country besides the United States, enjoys the capacity to decide the trajectory of the global economy and world events. Moreover, the swift, unexpected assault on Ukraine highlighted the dangers of a sudden, significant rupture in relations between China and the West. U.S.-led sanctions on Russia would hasten “the formation of two sharply opposing camps,” Wang, the former Bank of China vice president, lamented, which would “pose a great threat” to the ongoing process of globalization that fuels China’s economic growth. In June 2022, the foreign policy scholar Chen Dongxiao worried that a prolonged war would “significantly increase the difficulty for Beijing in handling Sino-U.S. relations.” Chinese analysts were especially startled by the West’s coordinated push to sanction the Russian economy. That effort offered a “vivid demonstration of the tools of economic power” that the United States could muster, Li wrote. Not all Chinese experts agreed on the sanctions’ likely efficacy. Some, such as Huang Jing, argued that the West’s “world war without gunpowder” would fail because sanctions on the energy and financial sectors are notoriously “leaky” and because, he contended, disagreements would emerge between the United States and Europe. But others concluded that the United States still wields unrivaled power over the international financial system. Zhang Bei, an analyst at the People’s Bank of China, predicted that the United States’ leverage over key payment and settlement mechanisms, including the SWIFT system, which handles interbank messaging, would allow it to threaten Russia’s “national financial security.” The economist Wang Da went further, likening the expulsion of Russia from SWIFT to a nuclear attack. The United States’ capacity to devastate a rival financially would have stark implications for China: in October 2022, one researcher at China’s central bank warned that China must be ready to defend against a U.S. effort “replicating this financial sanction model against China” in the “context of the intensified Sino-U.S. strategic game and the Taiwan Strait conflict.” As the sanctions began to take hold and the Russian military stumbled, Chinese scholars also worried that Russia’s standing as a valuable strategic partner might be in peril. One of China’s most prominent experts on Russia, Feng Yujun, predicted that “Russia’s influence in the world economy and international political system” would “decline significantly”; another expert, Yuan Xun, predicted that the sanctions would “make it difficult for Russian companies to raise funds, increase the risk of [Russian] stock market crashes, [lead to] a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises potentially facing bankruptcy risks, reduce employment opportunities, increase unemployment rates, and reduce [Russian] citizens’ incomes.” SUNNY SIDE UP Today, however, a substantially more sanguine outlook dominates the discourse of China’s experts. They have noted that the Western response to the war has not produced the most catastrophic outcomes that many had predicted. The “most intense wave of sanctions [in] history,” scholars at Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies concluded in a February 2024 report, “did not achieve the expected results, but instead brought a backlash and counter-sanctions” as Russia found lifelines for its currency and trade with China and other countries. Many Chinese analysts also contended that Putin has evaded truly damaging diplomatic isolation, citing his recent state visits to North Korea and Vietnam and that in July, he hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Moscow. As a headline from the Chinese edition of the Global Times trumpeted after Putin’s trip to Hanoi: “The West’s Isolation of Russia Has Been Broken.” In this view, China has avoided paying any significant economic or diplomatic price for propping up Putin’s war efforts. Indeed, the war has created trends that may redound to China’s benefit. The Russian economy’s ability to weather Western sanctions has impressed many Chinese scholars. After a visit to Moscow in February 2024, Xu Poling, an expert on the Russian economy, remarked that the war in Ukraine “has injected a steroid shot into the lethargic Russian economy, making it stronger and more vigorous.” He even speculated that Putin “is not exactly in a hurry to end the conflict.” Other analysts have marveled at how the war has reanimated Russia’s languishing military-industrial complex, which, a Global Times analysis concluded, had been “in a state of insufficient investment and production.” Since February 2022, the analysis observed, it has “accelerated the acceptance of state investment and increased production capacity,” leading to a “comprehensive recovery of Russian military-industrial enterprises” and “significant progress” in the production of new tactical missiles, armored vehicles, and drones. As the war drags on, Chinese analysts also believe that the West’s unity is fracturing. As Democrats and Republicans fight “fiercely against each other and as the [U.S. presidential] election approaches, [the] situation is getting more and more unfavorable for Ukraine,” the prominent Eurasian Studies expert Ding Xiaoxing wrote in February. Jin Canrong, a hawkish international relations scholar, predicted that a public “backlash” against support for Ukraine in European countries and the United States would eventually doom Kyiv’s ability to defend itself. LOSS ADJUSTMENT Many of these Chinese experts’ analyses are fair, even astute. But missing from the public-facing discussion in China is a true recognition of the costs Beijing has assumed as a result of its support for Putin’s war. Experts’ early assessments lingered on dramatic potential damage to China; now, they tend to ignore or underappreciate the serious costs Beijing has incurred. China’s relations with most European countries have degenerated, probably irrevocably. In the declaration following its July summit, NATO included an unprecedentedly sharp denunciation of Beijing’s behavior, calling China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war effort—language that would have been unthinkable before February 2022. Frustration with China is not limited to European policymakers. Europeans who were recently very bullish on Chinese-European relations—especially those with business interests in China—now hold a much dimmer view. A May survey of European CEOs by the European Round Table for Industry found that only seven percent believed that Europe’s relations with China would improve in the next three years. More than 50 percent saw future deterioration. In a July survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations that polled nearly 20,000 people, 65 percent of respondents in 15 European countries agreed that China has played a “rather negative” or “very negative” role in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Although Western sanctions have not broken the Russian economy, the war in Ukraine has spurred further global economic fragmentation. For decades, Beijing has worked to build economic self-sufficiency; Chinese government planners stepped up these efforts around 2018 as they sought to prepare China for the splintering of globalization and the fracturing of supply chains. But China was not ready for the degree to which the war in Ukraine—coupled with growing national security concerns in many countries about technological dependence on China—hastened this fragmentation, prompting U.S. and European governments, companies, and investors to reallocate capital away from China and other geopolitically exposed markets. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine intensified foreign investors’ concerns about the Chinese market as it raised fears that Beijing could also face sanctions or economic repercussions because of its alignment with Moscow and its saber rattling toward Taiwan. The war in Ukraine, and particularly Beijing’s decision to strengthen its strategic partnership with Russia, is also exacerbating the rifts in an already fractious U.S.-Chinese relationship. The Biden administration has repeatedly warned Beijing that the economic, technological, and diplomatic lifeline China is extending to Moscow works at cross-purposes with its stated desire for a stable bilateral relationship with the United States. But Beijing has continued to double down on its Russian gamble, including by launching a recent joint patrol with Russian bombers in the airspace just off the Alaskan coast. In May, Washington sanctioned over a dozen Chinese companies for their direct support of Moscow’s war effort. More sanctions are likely to come irrespective of the outcome of the upcoming U.S. presidential election. FRAUGHT LESSONS In February, a group of experts at Renmin University took stock of the global situation and concluded that “the external environment no longer continuously progresses and improves.” Instead, they went on, “we have a situation of great changes and great struggles that are confrontational, protracted, and cruel.” Although Putin remains firmly in power in Moscow, and his effort to annex Ukrainian territory has not yet yielded the outright strategic tragedy many Chinese analysts initially predicted, Beijing’s external environment is far from benign. Relations with the United States remain fractious. In China’s immediate neighborhood, American allies such as Australia, Japan, and the Philippines are strengthening their defensive capabilities. Conflict is destabilizing the Middle East. China’s position in the international order remains strong but is increasingly unsettled. All of this has extraordinary salience for China’s own designs on Taiwan. Russia’s war on Ukraine offers general lessons about the complexities of modern warfare, the possibilities for an international response to a purportedly regional dispute, and the costs of a protracted military conflict. What Xi is learning from this crisis remains inscrutable. But Chinese analysts’ views offer a window into the possible lessons the Chinese government is drawing from Putin’s war. Their interpretations are varied and individual. After watching two years of war in Ukraine, however, many have concluded that the West has no stomach for conflict and will grow tired of supporting democracies facing an invading force if the economic costs are high. This conclusion is often overstated and probably underestimates American resolve. But the very fact that they have drawn it suggests that the Taiwan Strait—and the world at large—may be heading in a still more dangerous direction. JUDE BLANCHETTE is Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is the author of China’s New Red Guards: The Return of Radicalism and the Rebirth of Mao Zedong. More By Jude Blanchette More: China Ukraine Russia Diplomacy Geopolitics Security Strategy & Conflict War & Military Strategy U.S. Foreign Policy War in Ukraine Vladimir Putin Xi Jinping Most-Read Articles China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine Why Chinese Thinkers Underestimate the Costs of Complicity in Russia’s Aggression Jude Blanchette The Undoing of Israel The Dark Futures That Await After the War in Gaza Ilan Z. Baron and Ilai Z. Saltzman How Everything Became National Security And National Security Became Everything Daniel W. 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