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Israel's assassination Tuesday of Hamas official Saleh Arouri in Beirut marks an escalation of Israeli use of lethal force, notwithstanding the fact that Israel already had been conducting military attacks beyond its northern borders, including in Lebanon. The assassination was carried out with an armed drone that struck a Hamas office and also killed two other Hamas officials and as many as three other persons. The operation risks expansion, in multiple ways, of Israel's war in the Gaza Strip. In the near term, the greatest chance of further escalation may involve Lebanese Hezbollah. Israel and Hezbollah had already been exchanging artillery and rocket fire along the Israeli-Lebanese border. The drone that killed Arouri struck far from that border, in a portion of southern Beirut that is considered a Hezbollah stronghold. Hezbollah has not been seeking a new all-out war with Israel. In the last previous such war, in 2006, Hezbollah and Lebanon suffered significant human and material losses. But from the time of its origin, Hezbollah's main claim to popular support has been as a protector of all Lebanese in standing up against Israel. The group may have now been pushed closer to carrying out more of the threats of retaliation it has been voicing since Israel began its assault on Gaza. As the immediate target of the Israeli operation, Hamas will be looking for ways to retaliate. Arouri was the most senior Hamas figure to be killed since the current round of fighting began in October. He was deputy to exiled Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and played important roles in the group's financial network and its liaison with Hezbollah. For the time being, Hamas obviously has its hands full with the fighting in the Gaza Strip. But it probably will seek some action that could be seen as tit-for-tat retaliation for the killing of Arouri. An extraterritorial assassination of Israelis would fit that bill, although that would be difficult for the group to carry out. Israeli security measures have made it more challenging for Hamas to attempt a replay of some of its past asymmetric operations inside Israel, which have included suicide bombings. Nor does Hamas have Hezbollah's demonstrated ability to conduct such operations elsewhere in the world. To the extent that Hamas does turn more to that type of bombing and other asymmetric operations, it may foreshadow what the next phase of the Israel-Hamas contest may look like, after Israel's devastation of the Gaza Strip proves unable to realize the declared Israeli objective of "destroying" Hamas. The role of Iran routinely gets overstated in discussion of the activities of groups allied with it, but any influence it exerts on the likes of Hezbollah and Hamas will be even less in the direction of restraint than it was before this latest lethal Israeli operation. The Iranian regime already was feeling pressure from inside Iran from those who believe it has not sufficiently retaliated for Israel's killing of Sayyed Razi Mousavi, Iran's senior officer in Syria, with an airstrike outside Damascus less than two weeks ago. The parallel between that operation and the assassination of Arouri is too obvious to ignore. In many ways the killing of Arouri continues Israel's extensive extraterritorial use of force over many years. This has included its sustained bombing campaign in Syria and its much longer program of clandestine overseas assassinations. But in the present context the operation is another signal of the Israeli government's determination to continue the assault on Gaza with no end in sight and with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu having personal and political reasons to keep it going. It also suggests a low priority Israel is placing on negotiations — in which Arouri reportedly was playing a key role — for any further mutual release of prisoners. Israel's escalation also puts into perspective its recent announcement that it will withdraw a few of its brigades from the Gaza Strip. The move appears to have more to do with mitigating the effects on the Israeli economy of the mobilization of reserve troops than with any intent to de-escalate the assault on Gaza.
У статті схарактеризовано стан наукових досліджень історії українсько-польського військово-політичного союзу 1920 р.Досліджено проблеми українсько-польських відносин у 1919–1920 рр., зокрема специфіку перемовин України й Польщі у цей період, основні моменти підготовки та укладання у квітні 1920 р. між Українською Народною Республікою та Річчю Посполитою Варшавського договору. Звернуто увагу на реакцію різних українських і польських політичних сил на підписання пакту «Пілсудський – Петлюра».Реконструйовано суспільно-політичні передумови, основні події українсько-польсько-радянської війни 1920 р. та висвітлено роль у них С. Петлюри та Ю. Пілсудського. Проаналізовано співробітництво України і Польщі в боротьбі проти більшовицької агресії, а також суперечності, які поставали тоді у відносинах двох народів. Виокремлено ставлення двох державних керманичів до подій, що відбувалися в Україні у 1919–1920 рр. Осмислено підсумки українсько-польсько-радянського протистояння для Польщі й України та його вплив на українсько-польське взаєморозуміння надалі.Автор стверджує, що підготовка та підписання пакту «Пілсудський – Петлюра» викликало негативну реакцію з боку більшості українських і польських політичних сил і не було ними підтримано. Нетривалий українсько-польський військово-політичний союз у 1920 р. розпався через низку зовнішньополітичних чинників. Основні з них: негативне ставлення до України з боку Антанти, неоднозначне ставлення до союзу різних політичних партій обох країн, запізнє підписання договору та прагматизм Ю. Пілсудського, який у своїй політиці дотримувався передусім інтересів Польщі й тривалий час покладався на підтримку Антанти.Водночас підписання Варшавської угоди сприяло виходу України на міжнародну арену. Внаслідок цього і співпраці з Польщею українці продовжили збройну боротьбу за свою незалежність проти РСФРР у 1920 р. й разом із Польщею не дали можливості їй просунутися далі в Західну Європу й перенести туди «світову революцію».Підписання Ризького договору в березні 1921 р. та закінчення українсько-польсько-більшовицької війни означало поразку національно-визвольних змагань 1917–1921 рр. ; The article describes the state of scholarly research of the history of the Ukrainian-Polish Military and Political Alliance of 1920.It studies the problems of Ukrainian-Polish relations in 1919–1920, in particular the specifics of negotiations between Ukraine and Poland during that period, the main moments of preparation and conclusion of the Warsaw Pact between the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Commonwealth in April 1920. Attention is drawn to the reaction of various Ukrainian and Polish political forces to the signing of Pilsudski-Petliura Pact.The sociopolitical preconditions, the main events of the Ukrainian-Polish-Soviet War of 1920 are reconstructed, and the role of S. Petliura and J. Pilsudski in them is highlighted. The cooperation between Ukraine and Poland in the struggle against Bolshevist aggression is analyzed, as well as the contradictions that arose then in the relations between the two peoples. The attitude of the two state leaders towards the events that took place in Ukraine in 1919–1920 is singled out. The results of the Ukrainian-Polish-Soviet confrontation for Poland and Ukraine and its influence on Ukrainian-Polish mutual understanding in the future are comprehended.The author claims that the preparation and signing of the Pilsudski-Petliura Pact provoked a negative reaction from the majority of Ukrainian and Polish political forces and was not supported by them. The short-lived Ukrainian-Polish Military-Political Alliance collapsed in 1920 due to a number of foreign policy factors. The main ones are the Entente's negative treatment of Ukraine, ambiguous attitude towards the union of different political parties of both countries, late signing of the treaty and pragmatism of J. Pilsudski, who in his policy adhered primarily to the interests of Poland and relied on the Entente for a long time.At the same time, the signing of the Warsaw Pact facilitated Ukraine's entry into the international arena. As a result of cooperation with Poland, the Ukrainians continued the armed struggle for their independence against the RSFSR in 1920 and, together with Poland, did not allow it to advance further into Western Europe to bring the "world revolution" there.The signing of the Treaty of Riga in March 1921 and the end of the Ukrainian-Polish-Bolshevik War meant the defeat of the national liberation struggle of 1917–1921.
У статті схарактеризовано стан наукових досліджень історії українсько-польського військово-політичного союзу 1920 р.Досліджено проблеми українсько-польських відносин у 1919–1920 рр., зокрема специфіку перемовин України й Польщі у цей період, основні моменти підготовки та укладання у квітні 1920 р. між Українською Народною Республікою та Річчю Посполитою Варшавського договору. Звернуто увагу на реакцію різних українських і польських політичних сил на підписання пакту «Пілсудський – Петлюра».Реконструйовано суспільно-політичні передумови, основні події українсько-польсько-радянської війни 1920 р. та висвітлено роль у них С. Петлюри та Ю. Пілсудського. Проаналізовано співробітництво України і Польщі в боротьбі проти більшовицької агресії, а також суперечності, які поставали тоді у відносинах двох народів. Виокремлено ставлення двох державних керманичів до подій, що відбувалися в Україні у 1919–1920 рр. Осмислено підсумки українсько-польсько-радянського протистояння для Польщі й України та його вплив на українсько-польське взаєморозуміння надалі.Автор стверджує, що підготовка та підписання пакту «Пілсудський – Петлюра» викликало негативну реакцію з боку більшості українських і польських політичних сил і не було ними підтримано. Нетривалий українсько-польський військово-політичний союз у 1920 р. розпався через низку зовнішньополітичних чинників. Основні з них: негативне ставлення до України з боку Антанти, неоднозначне ставлення до союзу різних політичних партій обох країн, запізнє підписання договору та прагматизм Ю. Пілсудського, який у своїй політиці дотримувався передусім інтересів Польщі й тривалий час покладався на підтримку Антанти.Водночас підписання Варшавської угоди сприяло виходу України на міжнародну арену. Внаслідок цього і співпраці з Польщею українці продовжили збройну боротьбу за свою незалежність проти РСФРР у 1920 р. й разом із Польщею не дали можливості їй просунутися далі в Західну Європу й перенести туди «світову революцію».Підписання Ризького договору в березні 1921 р. та закінчення українсько-польсько-більшовицької війни означало поразку національно-визвольних змагань 1917–1921 рр. ; The article describes the state of scholarly research of the history of the Ukrainian-Polish Military and Political Alliance of 1920.It studies the problems of Ukrainian-Polish relations in 1919–1920, in particular the specifics of negotiations between Ukraine and Poland during that period, the main moments of preparation and conclusion of the Warsaw Pact between the Ukrainian People's Republic and the Commonwealth in April 1920. Attention is drawn to the reaction of various Ukrainian and Polish political forces to the signing of Pilsudski-Petliura Pact.The sociopolitical preconditions, the main events of the Ukrainian-Polish-Soviet War of 1920 are reconstructed, and the role of S. Petliura and J. Pilsudski in them is highlighted. The cooperation between Ukraine and Poland in the struggle against Bolshevist aggression is analyzed, as well as the contradictions that arose then in the relations between the two peoples. The attitude of the two state leaders towards the events that took place in Ukraine in 1919–1920 is singled out. The results of the Ukrainian-Polish-Soviet confrontation for Poland and Ukraine and its influence on Ukrainian-Polish mutual understanding in the future are comprehended.The author claims that the preparation and signing of the Pilsudski-Petliura Pact provoked a negative reaction from the majority of Ukrainian and Polish political forces and was not supported by them. The short-lived Ukrainian-Polish Military-Political Alliance collapsed in 1920 due to a number of foreign policy factors. The main ones are the Entente's negative treatment of Ukraine, ambiguous attitude towards the union of different political parties of both countries, late signing of the treaty and pragmatism of J. Pilsudski, who in his policy adhered primarily to the interests of Poland and relied on the Entente for a long time.At the same time, the signing of the Warsaw Pact facilitated Ukraine's entry into the international arena. As a result of cooperation with Poland, the Ukrainians continued the armed struggle for their independence against the RSFSR in 1920 and, together with Poland, did not allow it to advance further into Western Europe to bring the "world revolution" there.The signing of the Treaty of Riga in March 1921 and the end of the Ukrainian-Polish-Bolshevik War meant the defeat of the national liberation struggle of 1917–1921.
The economic aspects of civil wars must always be taken into account for the implementation of measures to resolve conflicts. In the Somali situation, where a salient feature is the absence of a functional central government since the fall of the Siyad Barre regime in 1991, the economic stakes are one of the driving forces in armed violence, as witnessed by the struggles to gain access to and control of resources. These stakes have however evolved over the course of sixteen years of warfare. In the years after the fall of the Siyad Barre regime in 1991 and the intervention of United Nations forces (UNOSOM 1 and 2), military subdual of warring factions and the division of the country into a multitude of fiefdoms redrew the political stakes so that the aim of fighting was not so much to take supremacy by controlling the machinery of government as to gain control of national resources and trade networks. For some of those in the "war business", the aim was to uphold a situation of lawlessness. In the second half of the 1990s, circumstances to which we shall return enabled "traditional" sectors of activity (and sometimes innovating ones as in telecommunications, financial trading and air transport) to develop in spite of the lack of government institutions. Those who promoted the revived economy managed to subdue the warlords and set up original coordination systems to compensate for the inconveniences caused by the lack of government. A third phase which began in the last few years resulted in the setup of groups of firms which were particular in that they were able to combine many different types of business: mixing legal and illegal business; trading beyond the frontiers of Somalia between the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa and, more widely, in the global market. The players in the Somali war economy do not all have the same profile and nor do they have the same expectations from the establishment of a central government. While some of them want to prevent a return of government, others have a more ambiguous outlook: it is not government per se the businessmen mistrust so much as the reappearance of a partisan collegiate government. This "government at arm's length" strategy adopted by the warlords and certain businessmen began to be seriously undermined in 2006 with the advent of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) and even more so in 2007 when the Ethiopian army established the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). Accounts by Somali businessmen in Nairobi in July 2007 describe the brief period (June to December 2006) of the UIC administration in Mogadishu as a golden age for running businesses, even though not all of them subscribe to other aspects of the movement (notably ideological). They did not mention any serious interference to regulate business, apart from the fact that the UIC leaders had restored real security to Mogadishu and most of south central Somalia (especially by getting rid of a lot of checkpoints), so legal and illegal trade could carry on (particularly the Bakaara-Mogadishu arms trade). The return to security and freedom to do business is obviously the best situation Somali businessmen and entrepreneurs could hope for. When the Transitional Federal Government came to power in January 2007, they seem to have lost on both scores. The victory of the TFG army and their powerful Ethiopian allies over the Union of Islamic Courts militias undermined the ententes built up between the most powerful cartels and upset the positions established by some of the militias and businessmen operating in south central Somalia. The first measures the TFG introduced in the defeated areas awarded to warlords who had joined it the running of revenue collecting points (airports, ports, towns and villages where taxes and trading licence duty are levied, trade routes, etc.). This did not happen smoothly and, at the time of writing, some has still not been levied, for example in Mogadishu, Kismayo and Merca where hostilities pers
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Haiti's deepening crisis — armed groups launching an assault on the government, and the de facto prime minister on indefinite layover in the San Juan, Puerto Rico airport — is a predictable consequence of 14 years of U.S. support for undemocratic regimes connected to Haiti's PHTK party as it has dismantled Haiti's democracy. Haiti has a chance at reversing this descent and returning to a more stable, democratic path, but only if the Biden administration will let it.Prime Minister Ariel Henry was stranded in San Juan Tuesday on his way back from Kenya, where he had signed an agreement for Kenyan police to come bolster his repressive, corrupt and unpopular regime. The armed groups, including many that had collaborated with Henry's regime, took advantage of his absence to attack government infrastructure, and free 5,000 prisoners, many of them members of armed groups. Henry had planned to fly to the neighboring Dominican Republic and take a helicopter ride back to Haiti's National Palace under the cover of darkness. But Dominican authorities refused entry to the prime minister's chartered plane, which re-routed to San Juan.Prime Minister Henry has not yet resigned, and the State Department denied reports that it demanded his resignation. But Henry has clearly lost the support of the United States, which for two years had allowed him to resist Haitians demands for fair elections. Absent Washington's support, Henry has little chance of regaining power. This dire situation is not only predictable, it was predicted. Haitian-American officials, Haitian civil society, members of the U.S. Congress, and other experts had been warning for years that the U.S. propping up Henry would lead to increasing tragedy for Haitians. The United States, which installed Henry in power in the first place, ignored these pleas and stood resolutely by its friend. With U.S. support, Henry's unconstitutional term as prime minister exceeded any other prime minister's term under Haiti's 1987 Constitution. Levels of gang violence, kidnapping, hunger, and misery also reached unprecedented levels.The United States is still insisting on getting Kenyan troops to Haiti. The State Department has persistently — if so far unsuccessfully — tried to deploy non-American boots onto Haitian ground since Henry requested them in October 2022. The mission's deployment initially stalled because it was widely rejected as a bad idea that will primarily serve to prop up the repressive regime that generated the crisis. Haitian civil society repeatedly insisted that the first step towards security must be a transitional government with the legitimacy to organize elections and determine how the international community can best help Haiti.Concerns that the intervention would serve only to reinforce an unpopular regime led the countries that the Biden administration first tapped to lead the mission, including Canada, Haiti's Caribbean neighbors, and Brazil, to pass. The U.N. itself concluded that the mission would require too much "robust use of force" to be appropriate for a peacekeeping mission. So, the Security Council took the unusual step of authorizing the mission, but on the condition that it not actually be a U.N. mission that the organization would have to take responsibility for. The Biden administration, likely concerned about election-year cell phone videos of troops shooting indiscriminately in crowded neighborhoods — as the last foreign intervention did — declined to send U.S. troops for the mission (but is considering deploying a small Marine contingent to Haiti in early March).Last August Kenya — which did not even have diplomatic relations with Haiti but did need the hundreds of millions of dollars that the United States offered — agreed to lead the mission. The exploratory delegation Kenya sent to evaluate conditions in Haiti quickly realized how deadly the planned mission would be for Haitians and Kenyans alike, and proposed to limit its scope to protecting public infrastructure.The United States was not open to renegotiating the deal, and Kenya withdrew its proposed limits. But Kenya's High Court temporarily blocked the deployment as unconstitutional. Ariel Henry's visit to Kenya was for the signature of an accord that Kenya's President William Ruto hoped would overcome the court's objections. Kenyan lawyers insist that the agreement itself is illegal, and are continuing their challenge. In the meantime, Kenyan officers who had volunteered for the mission are changing their minds. Another obstacle appeared on March 7, when the White House conceded that the mission cannot be deployed without congressional approval of funding.The State Department's insistence that the Kenyan deployment must nevertheless happen raises fears that the United States will also continue its policy of installing and propping up undemocratic regimes in Haiti. Finance Minister Patrick Boisvert, who Henry tapped as interim prime minister when he left for Kenya, increased concerns of authoritarian governance on March 6 when he declared a three-day curfew and state of emergency throughout the Port-au-Prince region in an edict that did not even mention the legal basis for his authority. The next day Boisvert raised more fears by extending the emergency measures for a month and adding in a ban on all protests.The State Department's rescinding its support for Henry might have been promising had the gangs not already made his ouster inevitable. State's claim that it now supports "an empowered and inclusive governance structure" that will "pave the way for free and fair elections" might have been promising if it had not added the condition that the new government must "move with urgency to help the country prepare for a multinational security support mission."A legitimate, broadly supported, sovereign transitional Haitian government might request foreign police assistance. But a government allowed to form only if it accepts a U.S.-imposed occupation force originally designed to prop up a hated, repressive government is not sovereign. It may not be legitimate or broadly-supported either.The United States tasked CARICOM, the federation of Haiti's Caribbean neighbors, to forge a civil society consensus. CARICOM has enjoyed credibility in Haiti in the past, but over the past few months it has faced criticism for trying to strong-arm civil society into an agreement that maintained Henry's power. Not surprisingly, CARICOM-led talks on March 6 and 7 failed.When allowed, Haitians have a history of coming together to make their way out of a crisis. Haiti became a country in 1804 by defeating Napoleon, with almost no outside help. In 1986, when the U.S. finally withdrew its support from Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, Haitians eventually wrested power from the military and held fair elections. In 2006, they voted their way out of the crisis created by the U.S. kidnapping of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide two years before. In August 2021, shortly after the killing of Haiti's last president, Jovenel Moïse, a broad-based group presented the Montana Accord that would have created a transitional government leading to elections in two years. The U.S. vetoed the accord, citing, among other reasons, that the two-year time frame was too long. That was 30 months ago, and there are no elections in sight.No amount of submission to U.S. demands by Prime Minister Henry and his predecessors can justify the absolute horror that our support has allowed them to inflict on the Haitian people. It is time for the United States to let Haitians come together and make their way out of the current crisis. Civil society sees an opportunity for democracy in the crisis, and people all over Haiti have been meeting, discussing and negotiating to develop platforms for a broad-based, legitimate transitional government that can hold fair elections. It is expected that soon — maybe within weeks — one of these platforms will rise to the top, and civil society will coalesce around it. The United States needs to let that process happen without interference or conditions.
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After a half century, Islamism has become the single most disruptive force—both politically and militarily—in the Middle East. It evolved from cells of political activists in the 1970s into mass movements and, for the first time, as a governing force in the late 20th century. Both Sunni and Shiites turned to their faith amid the failure of monarchies and autocracies to deliver political freedoms, economic benefits, stability, or security since the wave of independence from colonial powers began in the mid-20th century. "Islam is the solution" became a common refrain echoed by multiple movements. Islamist political parties competed in democratic elections in North Africa, the Levant, and the Gulf. Meanwhile, diverse militant movements—from Morocco to Egypt, from Lebanon across to the Gulf—turned to hostage-taking and suicide bombs against diplomatic, military and civilian targets to enhance their impact.Islamism expanded in the 21st century—in vastly different ways. Parties willing to run won democratic elections in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, and the Palestinian Authority. Some were short-lived in power. Militants simultaneously became more brazen, whatever the large loss of life among their constituents or the vast destruction. The map of the Middle East changed after huge chunks of territory were seized from Iraq and Syria to create the first modern caliphate. Militias also triggered two devastating wars with Israel in 2006 and 2023. Six PhasesIslamism has played out through six phases across two dozen countries. The first turning point was the 1973 war, when Arabs fought for the first time in the name of Islam. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser code-named Egypt's invasion of Israel "Operation Badr" after the Prophet Mohammed's first victory in 623 AD. In 1979, twin crises—the Iranian revolution ending more than two millennia of dynastic rule, and the bloody, two-week seizure of Saudi Arabia's Grand Mosque by a fundamentalist cell—reflected the rejection of modernization by both Shiites and Sunnis based on Western ways. They sought a more culturally credible form of governance.The second turning point—for both parties and militias—was in the 1980s. Branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni movement, ran in parliamentary elections in Egypt and Jordan and won seats. In Egypt, the group ran under the cover of other opposition parties. But militant Islam also accelerated, especially during the first modern jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Thousands of Sunnis, mainly from the Gulf states, joined the decade-long campaign. The so-called "Afghan Arabs" later transferred their skills and experience to other countries. Among them was Osama bin Laden, the Saudi founder of al Qaeda. In Lebanon, Hezbollah mobilized cells of Shiites in the early 1980s for the first suicide bombings of Israeli troops as well as U.S. Marine peacekeepers and two American embassies in Beirut, and on multiple embassies and business sites in Kuwait. By the end of the decade, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had launched the Intifada against Israel, which in turn spawned Hamas and further empowered Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Both called for the destruction of Israel and the creation of a state governed by strict Islamic law. The third phase was in the 1990s. Political Islam gained ground in Algeria, when the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) defeated more than 50 parties in the country's first fully democratic election. The final runoff in 1991 was preempted by a military coup that outlawed FIS, imprisoned its leaders, and triggered a more extremist movement that fought government troops for a decade. More than 100,000 Algerians died during the civil war. In Lebanon, Hezbollah evolved from an exclusively clandestine terrorist movement into a registered political party that ran for office in 1992—and won seats.But militant Islamist groups also became more ambitious in the 1990s. Hamas formed its military wing dubbed the Izz ad Din al Qassam Brigades, named after a Palestinian leader who had fought British occupation in the 1930s. The first suicide attack by Hamas on Israel, in 1993, was near the Mehola settlement in the West Bank. Al Qaeda operatives attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000. The beginning of the fourth phase was marked by brazen al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The hijacking of four commercial airlines and bombings of the U.S. financial hub and capital were unprecedented—and a boon to the jihadi movement. Over the next decade, al Qaeda spawned affiliates in North Africa, Syria, the Arabian peninsula, South Asia, and East Africa. But two U.S. wars—launched against the Taliban in Afghanistan, in 2001, and President Saddam Hussein in Iraq, in 2003—also further spurred Islamist movements and spawned new ones. From Lebanon, Hezbollah ran a daring operation into Israel—to increase pressure for the release of Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners—that triggered a 34-day war. It was then Israel's longest war Israel, and it was fought to a stalemate that the Party of God claimed as a political victory. It recouped, rebuilt and ended up with even more weaponry.The fifth phase was marked by the changing political landscape after the 2011 Arab Spring ousted leaders in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, in turn opening the way for long-banned Islamist movements to run for office. They experienced unprecedented peaks but also unprecedented lows. Ennahda in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party in Egypt both won pluralities in national elections. Mohammad Morsi of the Brotherhood won the presidency in Egypt, albeit for only a year before the movement was toppled and outlawed in a military coup. But growing instability, politically and economically, also paved the way for the mushrooming Islamic State—an offshoot of al Qaeda with more ruthless tactics—to recruit some 60,000 fighters from throughout the world. The Sunni jihadis seized a third of Iraq and Syria to form the first modern caliphate in 2014. It took a U.S.-led coalition of 83 countries and partners five years to force ISIS to retreat from Iraq in 2017 and from Syria in 2019. But by then, ISIS had franchises still active on three continents. The sixth phase, in the 2020s, initially appeared to reflect the decline of both political and militant Islamism. Ennahda had become the largest party in Tunisia's parliament in 2019 elections. But, amid public protests, the president arrested top officials and closed the party's offices in 2022, then imprisoned its leader in 2023. The two-year global pandemic also complicated recruiting and logistics for militant groups. Yet underlying grievances, built over decades, went unresolved. In 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack—in scope, tactics and casualties—across southern Israel. During the war, both Israel and the Palestinian group faced their greatest existential military challenges. Defining FactorsIslamism covered a wide spectrum that crystalized in the 1990s. "Islamism and jihadism were distinct. Islamists participated in elections, worked within the nation-state framework, and didn't typically excommunicate other Muslims," Alex Thurston, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati, told The Islamists. They accepted territorial boundaries. "Jihadists, on the other hand, had a highly exclusivist and violent revolutionary outlook that made them a different species altogether." They generally supported the overthrow of modern states and rejected the international order. Islamists and jihadists operated in "fundamentally different frameworks," Thurston said. Even militant jihadis differed. Al Qaeda, founded by bin Laden, argued that his movement had to first convert Muslims to its vision of an Islamic state and create ripe conditions for a modern caliphate to survive long-term. The Islamic State, initially an offshoot that later broke away, argued that it had to create a caliphate first and then force both Muslims and members of other faiths to accept it—under penalty of death. Among Palestinians, Hamas and Islamic Jihad both sought to eliminate Israel. But Hamas was willing to run in elections and participate in governance, while PIJ was only interested in a violent and perpetual state of war with Israel. Hamas even had its own rival factions—among leaders in Gaza, the diaspora in Lebanese refugee camps and political leaders based in Qatar. ISIS fighters in IraqImage CreditAlliances also varied, especially among Shiites and Sunnis. Iran generated, armed, trained and financed allies—Hezbollah in Lebanon, several groups of varying size in Iraq that operated under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces, Houthis in Yemen, and others. Most were Shiite, with the notable exceptions of Hamas and PIJ. Iran's proxies operated in the so-called "Axis of Resistance" that acted on behalf of Iran in varying degrees but catered to their local constituencies. They had diverse local agendas. Al Qaeda was a Sunni movement with branches in North Africa's Magreb, the Arabian Peninsula, and south Asia. They pledged fealty to the original core of leaders but operated more independently and locally, especially since the deaths of bin Laden in 2011 and Ayman al Zawahiri in 2022 in U.S. military operations.FailuresPolitical Islam witnessed a shift during its sixth phase. Islamist political parties were "far less relevant than they were a decade ago," Sarah Yerkes, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Islamists. They were "steadily losing support across the Middle East and North Africa." They needed to "figure out how to both operate in increasingly authoritarian contexts and closed spaces as well as how to re-capture public support in a region where political parties have lost the trust of the people." In general, Islamists were less relevant today than they were a decade ago because "they have often been coopted by the authoritarian regimes," she said. Unable or unwilling to make progress on their political promises, they increasingly lost credibility among followers and voters. In 2022-23, movements promoting Islamic values in society through the political process suffered "severe setbacks" in Tunisia and in Palestine, Nathan Brown, a political scientist at George Washington University, told The Islamists. Tunisia's crackdown on Ennahda and the rise of presidential authoritarianism "shut the political path" and left "no clear path back" for a peaceful party. In Gaza, the military wing of Hamas "plunged the movement into a full confrontation with Israel," Brown added. Hamas won the majority of seats in the last Palestinian election in 2006. Now, "elections will not be at the center or even periphery of Palestinian politics for a while."Political trends globally, with the rise of populism and conservatism, also shifted the momentum away from liberal and progressive movements, which took "the steam out of Islamist groups," Yerkes said. Parties based on giving religion a larger profile in the political sphere were "not able to gain the same levels of public support" they once had. The future The prospects for Islamism—both political and military—were deeply impacted by the war between Hamas and Israel. The conflict "elicited near-universal praise from militant Islamist groups" for Hamas, among both Sunnis and Shiites, Katherine Zimmerman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Islamists. Groups called on Palestinians to "seize the moment to rise up" against Israel and the United States, especially as US aircraft carriers, warplanes and forces flowed into the region. One major exception was the Islamic State, which warned against cooperation with Hamas. Its fighters had killed Hamas members and supporters in the past. Overall, however, the violent end of the spectrum appeared "more relevant" than political parties willing to work within traditional state systems at the end of 2023. "The idea that these Islamist movements have moderated has been shattered by the Hamas attack, illustrating that while they might tactically at different points appear to be buying into a broader system, their worldviews are inherently at odds with a liberal democratic order," Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told "The Islamists."Yet it became more difficult to "parse" the prospects for both political Islamists and groups willing to use violence, Zimmerman said. Jihadis who employed violence have generally had more success than those working through electoral or other political channels. "The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was elected to power and ousted shortly thereafter, having eschewed violence," Zimmerman noted. But the Houthis, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and Hamas had success through the use force, despite facing much stronger adversaries. "What this means," she noted, "is there seems to be more willingness for Islamist groups to engage across the spectrum using all means at their disposal to achieve their ends."Izz ad Din al Qassam fighters attend a military parade in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 27, 2021Image CreditThe disparate faces of Islamism will also have diverse appeal in different regions, Zelin said. Iran's Axis of Resistance network will be important in the Levant and the Gulf. The offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood network will be key in Egypt and Jordan. Al Qaeda will have pull further afield in Africa. And the Islamic State will be most pertinent to Afghanistan and Africa's Sahel region, he said. Their fates will also all be affected by local, regional and global factors in different ways. So, after a half century of experimenting with the many tactics of change, there was no single algorithm or trajectory for Islamism. Islamists in Government: 2023Image CreditAlgeria: In the 2022 elections, the Movement of Society for Peace, a Sunni Islamist party and offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, won one seat in the 174-member Council of the Nation. It also won 65 seats in the 407-member People's National Assembly, an increase of 31 seats since the 2017 election.Bahrain: The Gulf nation banned opposition movements–includingal Wefaq, a Shiite party–before the 2018 National Assembly Elections. In 2023, no Islamist parties were represented in the 40-member Council of Representatives, the elected legislative body, or the Consultative Council, the 40-member body appointed by the king. Egypt: In the 2020 elections, the Nour Party, a conservative Salafi party backed by President Abdel Fattah El Sisi, won seven seats in the 596-member House of Representatives. It also had two seats in the 300-member Senate, both by presidential appointment. Smaller Islamist parties–including Wasat, the Strong Egypt Party, and Authenticity–boycotted the 2020 elections as a "formality for outside appearances." The Freedom and Justice Party, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood that won the presidency and a parliamentary majority in 2012 elections, was banned from politics after being ousted in a 2013 military coup led by El Sisi, then chief of the armed forces. Former President Mohamed Morsi was tried and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment, for inciting violence and espionage.Iran: The 1979 revolution created the Islamic Republic of Iran, a Shiite theocracy and the first modern government to blend Islam and democracy. The new constitution stipulated that all laws had to be based on "Islamic criteria" and gave ultimate authority to a the supreme leader. Several parties—including hardline, centrist and reformist factions—reflected divergent views on whether clerics or elected leaders should have more power.Iraq: Sairoon, an alliance led by Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, won 73 out of the 329 seats in the 2021 Council of Representatives election. Despite winning a plurality, Sairoon failed to form a governing coalition. Its lawmakers resigned in 2022 to break the deadlock. State of Law, a coalition led by the Shiite Islamist Dawa Party, won 35 seats in the 2021 election. The Fatah Coalition, dominated by Shiite Islamist parties backed by Iran, won 17 seats. The Coalition of the National State Forces, which included the Shiite Islamist Nasr bloc, won four seats. The Haquq Movement, the political wing of the Kataib Hezbollah militia, an Iran-backed Shiite militia, won one seat. The Kurdistan Justice Group, a Sunni Islamist party, won one seat. Jordan: TheIslamic Action Front, long affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, won five seats in the 130-member House of Representatives in the 2020 election. The Islamic Center Party, which advocated for an Islamic democracy, won five seats. No Islamist parties were represented in the 65-member Senate appointed by the king. Kuwait: The Islamic Constitutional Movement, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, won three seats in the 65-member National Assembly in the 2023 election. Lebanon: Hezbollah's political wing, the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc, won 13 seats of the 126 seats in parliament in the 2022 election. It held two cabinet ministries. Libya: The Muslim Brotherhood won seats in parliamentary elections after the ouster of Moammar Qaddafi in 2012. But amid political and geographic divisions, it converted into an NGO after many its largest branches disbanded.Morocco: The Justice and Development Party, a Sunni Islamist Party, lost nearly 90 percent of its seats—down from 125 to 13 in the House of Representatives—in the 2021 parliamentary election. Oman: There were no Islamist parties in Oman, an absolute monarchy. Palestinian Authority: Hamas, a Sunni Islamist party backed by Iran,won the parliamentary election in 2006 with 76 of 132 seats. In 2007, it ousted Fatah, a rival secular party, from Gaza and ruled the territory largely uncontested. President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the secular and nationalist Fatah Party, governed in the West Bank. In 2018, the Palestinian Authority dissolved the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council. Qatar: There were no Islamist parties in the 45-member Consultative Assembly. Saudi Arabia: Political parties were outlawed in Saudi Arabia, a country where Sharia is the source of all laws. The 150 members of the seat Consultative Assembly were appointed by the king. Syria: There were no Islamist parties in the 250-member People's Assembly. The government has long banned Islamist parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood. In rebel-held Idlib province, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, a former affiliate of al Qaeda, ruled the Salvation Government in northwest Syria.Tunisia:Ennahda and Al Karama, two Sunni parties, boycotted the 2022 parliamentary elections over frustration with the president's increasingly autocratic rule. For the first time since the 2011 Jasmine revolution, no Islamist parties had seats in the 161-member Assembly of the Representatives of the People. In 2023, Ennahda founder Rachid Ghannouchi was tried for "plotting against state security" and sentenced to a year in prison. Turkey: In 2023, the Justice and Development Party, a movement rooted in Islamism and led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, won 267 seats in the 600-member Grand National Assembly. It allied with the Nationalist Movement Party, which advocated Turkish Islamism and won 50 seats, and the Free Cause Party, a Kurdish Islamist party. which won 4 seats. The Felicity Party and the New Welfare Party, both Islamist parties, joined the opposition in parliament. United Arab Emirates: Political parties were illegal, so there were no Islamist parties in its 40-member Federal National Council. Yemen: The Houthis, a rebel movement of Zaydi Shiites and backed by Iran, seized Sanaa, the capital, in September 2014. In November 2016, they formed a government that ruled roughly a third of Yemen's territory, in which at least 70 percent of the population lived. Jordanna Yochai, an MA candidate at Columbia University's School of International & Public Affairs, contributed research.
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Although Ukraine's summer counteroffensive brought only modest results, there are broad indications that the cumulative strategy of pressuring Russia economically and militarily by Ukraine and its supporters is working. Internal problems with Russia's cumbersome military institutions and issues affecting Russia's ability to manufacture its most effective weapons mean that Ukraine has a chance to win what is rapidly turning into a war of attrition.Russia's Military Potential, Not Ukraine's, Is Being DegradedRussia's formidable navy is mired in an increasingly dire strategic situation in the Black Sea. Ukraine has used its advantages in long-range precision targeting to inflict serious damage on the Russian fleet and Russian maritime military infrastructure, damage that Russia has struggled to respond to effectively. Russia has lost as much as a fifth of its Black Sea Fleet since summer 2023, including some of its most sophisticated ships. In the skies above Ukraine, things aren't going much better for Russia, with its air force unable to leverage much of its potential power. The growing density and sophistication of Ukrainian air defenses have greatly constrained Russia's ability to operate its heaviest bombers beyond its forward line of troops. Russia has tried to overcome this problem by relying on air-launched cruise missiles and glide bombs that can be dispatched from the safety of Russian airspace. But these weapons are significantly more expensive and difficult for Russia to manufacture than is its much larger and less used supply of gravity bombs. Russia will ensure an ample supply of cruise missiles and glide bombs for the duration of the war, but doing so will impose high costs on Russian industry. Bombardments massive enough to overcome Ukrainian air defenses can cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to conduct, greatly adding to state spending, likely making it unsustainable over the long term. For all the expense, none of these massive bombardments has yielded any decisive results in degrading Ukrainian military potential. This is largely because Ukraine's strategic depth is not in Ukraine. Stocks of Ukrainian arms and ammunition and the facilities that produce them are shielded beneath the American nuclear umbrella in Europe and the United States. Russia as a combatant in the conflict does not enjoy this advantage. Ukraine has increasingly threatened Russian industry through its acquisition and development of longer-range missiles and its expanding sabotage operations. Russia did succeed in briefly slowing the onslaught of Ukrainian long-range strikes on its industry and high-value military equipment with increased electronic jamming of Western-supplied precision guided munitions. But these adaptations have proven fleeting as Ukraine has adapted its own tactics and gained additional military capabilities in recent months. One of the most significant of these new capabilities has been American cluster munitions. Cluster munitions provide Ukraine with an alternative to smart weapons for interdicting mobile, high-value Russian targets by enabling a rapid massing of firepower over a large area.The cumulative effects of the past several months of stepped-up Ukrainian attacks on Russian logistics, air defenses, and artillery have been devastating for the Russian military. On the ground, Russia's rate of artillery fire has fallen dramatically, from a high of 45,000−80,000 shells per day during Russia's summer offensive in 2022 to 10,000−15,000 shells per day by the beginning of fall 2023. This is a serious problem for the Russian military as artillery units have arguably been its most effective fighting force, responsible for inflicting as many as 70 percent of all Ukrainian casualties. Russian forces have continued to resist Ukrainian advances behind a formidable defensive network and in some cases have even advanced. But even these positive results for the Russian military have come at a tremendous cost, with the total number of Russian casualties surpassing 315,000 and growing rapidly. The ongoing offensive Russia launched around Avdiivka closely resembles its disastrous operations in Vuhledar and its pyrrhic victory in Bakhmut in the spring of 2023. The ongoing strategy of throwing away huge numbers of lives and equipment to achieve meager ends is degrading morale and leadership and shows that the Russian military is either unwilling or unable to learn from past mistakes. None of these explanations bodes well for Russia's prospects in a long war. Russia's State-Level ProblemsThe constraints and persistent problems Russia faces at sea, on land, and in the air are symptoms of bigger problems within the Russian state. Russia's continued underperformance suggests that it lacks the ability to make full use of its theoretically greater military potential.Russia has more manpower than Ukraine, but it is unlikely to make full use of that advantage. Regardless of what any poll may say, the war is self-evidently unpopular among Russians of military age, who have fled the country by the hundreds of thousands since the beginning of the war. Previous attempts to mobilize recruits have greatly accelerated human capital flight. Russian leaders routinely claim that incredible numbers of patriotic volunteers are entering military service, but these boasts are undercut by steps that reek of desperation for manpower, such as greatly lowering standards for citizenship to attract military recruits from abroad.Government efforts to bolster the appeal of military service face a long-term uphill battle as the number of Russian casualties mounts. Maimed veterans will increasingly become the face of the war in Russia: Russian officials have suggested that as many as half of all soldiers wounded in Ukraine sustained at least one limb amputation. Even if Russia's recruitment and mobilization systems are reformed, the military itself will still face inherent limits on the number of troops it can put into the field. The June Wagner rebellion highlighted just how quickly the Russian state can be paralyzed by armed internal revolts when disaffected actors organize. As a result, it is reasonable to assume that there will be limits on the size of the Russian population under arms at any given time, well below the capacity of the Russian military to deploy effectively. This theoretical limit may even exceed that of the maximum size force the Russian military can actually employ in combat. The biggest army the Russians can put into the field may not be all that much bigger than what it has already deployed. Russia struggles to execute combined arms operations with the army's present size. Attempts by Russia to gain an advantage by putting an even larger army in the field without addressing these institutional problems may just result in more poorly coordinated and disorganized human wave attacks. The Cost of the War—to RussiaRussia may have gained control of 18 percent of Ukraine, but doing so has cost nearly eighteen years of military modernization and has exposed serious institutional weaknesses. If Ukraine maintains its determination and retains external support, it can win a war of attrition. The continued battering of both the Russian military and the Russian economy will eventually force Moscow to choose between an indecisive end to the war or risk Russia losing its place as a major power as the West slowly but massively re-arms over the next several years. The opinions expressed in this article are those solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the Kennan Institute.
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Although Ukraine's summer counteroffensive brought only modest results, there are broad indications that the cumulative strategy of pressuring Russia economically and militarily by Ukraine and its supporters is working. Internal problems with Russia's cumbersome military institutions and issues affecting Russia's ability to manufacture its most effective weapons mean that Ukraine has a chance to win what is rapidly turning into a war of attrition.Russia's Military Potential, Not Ukraine's, Is Being DegradedRussia's formidable navy is mired in an increasingly dire strategic situation in the Black Sea. Ukraine has used its advantages in long-range precision targeting to inflict serious damage on the Russian fleet and Russian maritime military infrastructure, damage that Russia has struggled to respond to effectively. Russia has lost as much as a fifth of its Black Sea Fleet since summer 2023, including some of its most sophisticated ships. In the skies above Ukraine, things aren't going much better for Russia, with its air force unable to leverage much of its potential power. The growing density and sophistication of Ukrainian air defenses have greatly constrained Russia's ability to operate its heaviest bombers beyond its forward line of troops. Russia has tried to overcome this problem by relying on air-launched cruise missiles and glide bombs that can be dispatched from the safety of Russian airspace. But these weapons are significantly more expensive and difficult for Russia to manufacture than is its much larger and less used supply of gravity bombs. Russia will ensure an ample supply of cruise missiles and glide bombs for the duration of the war, but doing so will impose high costs on Russian industry. Bombardments massive enough to overcome Ukrainian air defenses can cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to conduct, greatly adding to state spending, likely making it unsustainable over the long term. For all the expense, none of these massive bombardments has yielded any decisive results in degrading Ukrainian military potential. This is largely because Ukraine's strategic depth is not in Ukraine. Stocks of Ukrainian arms and ammunition and the facilities that produce them are shielded beneath the American nuclear umbrella in Europe and the United States. Russia as a combatant in the conflict does not enjoy this advantage. Ukraine has increasingly threatened Russian industry through its acquisition and development of longer-range missiles and its expanding sabotage operations. Russia did succeed in briefly slowing the onslaught of Ukrainian long-range strikes on its industry and high-value military equipment with increased electronic jamming of Western-supplied precision guided munitions. But these adaptations have proven fleeting as Ukraine has adapted its own tactics and gained additional military capabilities in recent months. One of the most significant of these new capabilities has been American cluster munitions. Cluster munitions provide Ukraine with an alternative to smart weapons for interdicting mobile, high-value Russian targets by enabling a rapid massing of firepower over a large area.The cumulative effects of the past several months of stepped-up Ukrainian attacks on Russian logistics, air defenses, and artillery have been devastating for the Russian military. On the ground, Russia's rate of artillery fire has fallen dramatically, from a high of 45,000−80,000 shells per day during Russia's summer offensive in 2022 to 10,000−15,000 shells per day by the beginning of fall 2023. This is a serious problem for the Russian military as artillery units have arguably been its most effective fighting force, responsible for inflicting as many as 70 percent of all Ukrainian casualties. Russian forces have continued to resist Ukrainian advances behind a formidable defensive network and in some cases have even advanced. But even these positive results for the Russian military have come at a tremendous cost, with the total number of Russian casualties surpassing 315,000 and growing rapidly. The ongoing offensive Russia launched around Avdiivka closely resembles its disastrous operations in Vuhledar and its pyrrhic victory in Bakhmut in the spring of 2023. The ongoing strategy of throwing away huge numbers of lives and equipment to achieve meager ends is degrading morale and leadership and shows that the Russian military is either unwilling or unable to learn from past mistakes. None of these explanations bodes well for Russia's prospects in a long war. Russia's State-Level ProblemsThe constraints and persistent problems Russia faces at sea, on land, and in the air are symptoms of bigger problems within the Russian state. Russia's continued underperformance suggests that it lacks the ability to make full use of its theoretically greater military potential.Russia has more manpower than Ukraine, but it is unlikely to make full use of that advantage. Regardless of what any poll may say, the war is self-evidently unpopular among Russians of military age, who have fled the country by the hundreds of thousands since the beginning of the war. Previous attempts to mobilize recruits have greatly accelerated human capital flight. Russian leaders routinely claim that incredible numbers of patriotic volunteers are entering military service, but these boasts are undercut by steps that reek of desperation for manpower, such as greatly lowering standards for citizenship to attract military recruits from abroad.Government efforts to bolster the appeal of military service face a long-term uphill battle as the number of Russian casualties mounts. Maimed veterans will increasingly become the face of the war in Russia: Russian officials have suggested that as many as half of all soldiers wounded in Ukraine sustained at least one limb amputation. Even if Russia's recruitment and mobilization systems are reformed, the military itself will still face inherent limits on the number of troops it can put into the field. The June Wagner rebellion highlighted just how quickly the Russian state can be paralyzed by armed internal revolts when disaffected actors organize. As a result, it is reasonable to assume that there will be limits on the size of the Russian population under arms at any given time, well below the capacity of the Russian military to deploy effectively. This theoretical limit may even exceed that of the maximum size force the Russian military can actually employ in combat. The biggest army the Russians can put into the field may not be all that much bigger than what it has already deployed. Russia struggles to execute combined arms operations with the army's present size. Attempts by Russia to gain an advantage by putting an even larger army in the field without addressing these institutional problems may just result in more poorly coordinated and disorganized human wave attacks. The Cost of the War—to RussiaRussia may have gained control of 18 percent of Ukraine, but doing so has cost nearly eighteen years of military modernization and has exposed serious institutional weaknesses. If Ukraine maintains its determination and retains external support, it can win a war of attrition. The continued battering of both the Russian military and the Russian economy will eventually force Moscow to choose between an indecisive end to the war or risk Russia losing its place as a major power as the West slowly but massively re-arms over the next several years. The opinions expressed in this article are those solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the Kennan Institute.
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How did this suddenly become the summer of "the draft"?There are a number of proposals in the annual defense policy bill (National Defense Authorization Act) that deal with the subject. There is one to expand selective service registration to women. Another that would make Selective Service registration for American men "automatic."Still another proposed amendment to the NDAA, which has also been introduced as a freestanding bill, S. 4881, would repeal the Military Selective Service Act entirely. Meanwhile, the Center for a New American Security just published an exhaustive blueprint for modernizing mobilization, including readiness to activate conscription.All this talk has compelled "fact checkers" to insist that no, the U.S. government isn't suddenly "laying the groundwork" for a draft.But saying the U.S. isn't preparing for a draft is like saying it isn't preparing for nuclear war. Just as the Department of Defense is tasked with maintaining readiness to initiate nuclear strikes whenever the Commander-In-Chief so orders, the Selective Service System has the sole mission of maintaining readiness to hold a draft lottery within five days and start selecting draftees and sending out notices to report for induction whenever Congress and the President so order.As such, there are currently ten thousand draft board members who have been appointed and trained to adjudicate claims for deferment or exemption. As recently as this month, states have been openly seeking volunteers to fill empty slots. And both the SSS and hawkish think-tanks have been war-gaming the government's contingency plans to activate a draft.There's room for argument about how likely it is that the U.S. would launch nuclear missiles or activate a draft. But there's no question that it's planning and preparing for both, as it has been for decades. It would seem that after years of atrophy, the government is stepping up its attention to military mobilization and readiness for a draft. Maybe it's time to ask whether more easy and efficient ways of tapping into human capital for war make it easier to get into one and whether it is in our best interest to do so.Mobilizing an army "on demand"A staff memo prepared for a 2019 meeting of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) noted that "The ability of SSS to execute a draft effectively based on its existing database and procedures has not been tested in recent decades." The NCMNPS commissioned no research on this or any other issue, instead reserving as much as possible of its budget for a planned publicity and lobbying blitz most of which it was unable to carry out due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the dissolution of the NCMNPS, Congress included a provision in the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2022 directing the DOD to conduct a comprehensive mobilization exercise which would "include the processes of the Selective Service System in preparation for induction of personnel into the armed forces under the Military Selective Service Act, and submit to Congress a report on the results of this exercise." The DOD was required to complete this exercise by September 30, 2023, but the SSS told me recently that the DOD has yet to schedule it.The SSS has, however, released records of some of its internal contingency plans and exercises as well as of an interagency planning and coordination workshop it convened in December 2023.Enforcement is conspicuously absent from these plans. The possibility that an individual could fail to report for induction is relegated to a footnote, with no indication of what would happen in that event. Nonregistration and other modes of resistance aren't mentioned at all.The Department of Justice – to which suspected violators would be referred -- was not included in the interagency workshop. The keynote speaker from the DOD at that workshop pointed out that the SSS has "No clear understanding in the supply of manpower due to undetermined criteria" including "How many would attempt to dodge the draft?"In 2021, the SSS referred 238,679 names of suspected non-registrants to the DOJ after they didn't respond to threatening letters. None of them were investigated or prosecuted, or could be prosecuted without evidence of actual knowledge and criminal intent. Nor were any of the millions of other suspected non-registrants referred to the DOJ since 1988.In 2022, the DOJ told the SSS to stop sending any more referrals of nonregistrants, presumably because the DOJ wasn't going to do anything with them. The DOJ has no idea what it would do if it were called upon to try to enforce induction orders.Meanwhile recently the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) conducted its own tabletop exercise in activating a draft, including SSS and DOD staff as well as civilian military strategists. The CNAS report on that exercise, released last month, helps show how keeping the draft in the U.S. arsenal enables more bellicose foreign policies, even if a draft is unlikely and the contingency plans for it wouldn't be workable.Better draft, more hawkish policies?In its own 2023 table top exercises, SSS used the scenario of a war between the U.S. and Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea, after which "the Department of Defense identified an immediate requirement of 100,000 bodies."Meanwhile, CNAS imagined a "large-scale invasion of Taiwan" by China, followed by a Chinese attack on "a location between San Diego and Los Angeles." At its public hearings on the draft in 2019, NCMNPS considered "a Red Dawn scenario where we are being attacked from both Canada and Mexico."Is the People's Liberation Army really going to land on the beaches of Southern California? Would activating a draft to fight a war in Taiwan or the Caspian Sea be an appropriate or effective military tactic — or a recipe for another Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan?It's tempting to think that these scenarios are so improbable that contingency planning for a draft that won't be activated is unimportant. But CNAS, SSS, and DOD strategists emphasize that readiness to activate a draft is, in and of itself, critical to U.S. deterrence.But as with nuclear weapons, to speak of readiness for a draft as a "deterrent" is also to speak of it as a threat. Like nuclear warheads, the draft is used as a weapon when it is used as a military threat – whether or not the threat of nuclear war or of a draft is ever carried out.Proponents of draft registration and readiness for a draft such as CNAS, the NCMNPS, and some in the Pentagon and Congress argue that if the great-power enemies of the U.S. believe that we are able and willing to activate a draft, we can use that threat of draft-enabled rapid and total military escalation as a tool of diplomatic and military policy.In other words, the availability of the draft helps enable the U.S. to threaten to crush any opposition to U.S. hegemony with rapid and overwhelming military escalation. And the perceived (although misguided) ability to rely on those threats makes it easier not to consider diplomatic or other alternatives to force as a response to conflicts.But that also means that, conversely, ending planning and preparation for a draft is a tool we can use to rein in the rush to total war by removing the draft from the arsenal of US military threats, forcing military planners to consider the degree of popular support for possible wars, and slowing the capacity of the U.S. to escalate to total war.Have the U.S. military errors of the last fifty years consisted more of being too slow to commit fully to war? Or of too rapid resort to military engagements that have led to quagmires rather than quick fixes?Many of the above-mentioned scenarios being used to support the need for readiness for a draft are about military engagements abroad, not attacks on the U.S. homeland. As Sen. Rand Paul said this past week in reintroducing the Selective Service Repeal Act, "If a war is worth fighting, Congress will vote to declare it and people will volunteer." In the case of an actual threat to the U.S., the limiting factor in mobilization would be the capacity of the military to rapidly train or integrate a massive number of volunteers. That's not a problem a draft would solve.Should we be putting in place mechanisms that make it easier to rush into another large overseas military adventure more quickly, on a larger scale, and with less need to wait and see if the public supports the war or will vote with its feet by enlisting to fight it?We've seen this dynamic play out in Russia, where the presumed ability to rely on conscription as a fallback helped embolden Putin's hasty military over-reach into Ukraine. Do we want the U.S. to make the same strategic mistake?
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The war has escalated into a nightmare for the people of Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of their soldiers have been killed or wounded, infrastructure and environment have been devastated. Ukraine's chances of achieving any of its hoped for goals are receding and more land is being lost every day.Furthermore, many of the dynamics that led to the start and the continuation of the war are making it especially difficult to get out of it. Having nourished the people of Ukraine during the war with promises of maximalist achievements, it will be very hard for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate an end to the war with less than maximalist success.Having led Ukraine through the war, Zelensky may be unable to lead them out. To encourage both Ukrainians and Ukraine's allies, Zelensky promised not only that Ukraine would win back territory up to its prewar borders, but that it would recapture all of its territory to 2014 borders, including the Donbas and Crimea. To negotiate an end to the war without reclaiming that territory but having lost even more would be difficult for Zelensky.Worse, it would be difficult for Zelensky to even attempt to negotiate an end to the war having decreed that Ukraine would not negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And even if Zelensky were to regroup and rescind the ban on negotiating and preserve the best case scenario for Ukraine, he would be dissuaded by the same ultra-right nationalists who persuaded him off his campaign peace platform prior to the war.Zelensky defeated Petro Poroshenko in a landslide victory in 2019 largely because of a promise to implement the Minsk Agreement and start to move toward peace with Russia. But he was pushed off that platform by a backlash in Ukraine and lack of support in the political West. Ultranationalist leaders defied Zelensky and warned that a ceasefire and fulfillment of his campaign promises would lead to protests and riots. More seriously, they threatened his life. Dmytro Yarosh, the founder of the fRight Sector paramilitary organization threatened that, if Zelensky fulfilled his campaign promise, "he will lose his life. He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk boulevard if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War. And it is very important that he understand this." During a presentation announcing Zelensky's creation of a National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity on March 12, 2020, Zelensky advisor Sergei Sivokho was thrown to the ground by a large gang from the Azov battalion.Were Zelensky to return to his prewar platform after the death and devastation of the war, he could face the same resistance from the same groups now magnified by that devastation.Zelensky could be replaced by a peacetime president with less baggage. But elections are prohibited by Ukrainian law during martial law, which is still in effect. Zelensky has ruled out holding them. Battlefield conditions would make it difficult, and many Ukrainians have already fled the country. Furthermore, a survey conducted in February 2024 found that 49% of Ukrainians definitely oppose elections right now and 18% rather oppose it, though the poll suffers from the methodological problem that it likely excludes those in the Eastern regions and those who have left Ukraine.Bottom line: Zelensky isn't going anywhere right now, but would struggle to negotiate an end to the war without help. Such assistance could come, however, from the U.S. and its partners in the West. Though Zelensky may not have the political strength to realistically reverse his maximalist promises nor to survive ultranationalist retribution, he would have a better chance of selling it if he could say that the Western powers who promised to support the pursuit of those goals for as long as it takes were pressuring him to negotiate an end of the war. Responsibility could be shifted to the United States.But would the U.S. shoulder that responsibility? U.S. President Joe Biden, from the beginning, has framed the war in Ukraine as "the great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy." The U.S. has insisted on supporting the war against Russia in defense of "core principles," including that each country has "a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships."It may be perceived as a blow to Biden's credibility, to U.S. hegemony, and to NATO to concede the inability to push Russia out of Ukraine and to defend NATO's right to expand and Ukraine's right to join.Negotiations to end the war would be a desirable path out of Ukraine. Diplomatic talks are possible as proven by the nearly successful negotiations in Istanbul in the early weeks of the war. The existence of the signed draft treaty that those talks produced has been confirmed by independent sources who have seen it, including The Wall Street Journal, Die Welt and Samuel Charap of RAND and Sergey Radchenko of John Hopkins University.Those talks "almost finalized an agreement that would have ended the war," according to Charap and Radchenko's analysis of the text of the treaty. "Kyiv and Moscow largely agreed on conditions for an end to the war," Die Welt reports. "Only a few points remained open." Oleksiy Arestovych, who was a member of the Ukrainian negotiating team in Istanbul, says the talks in Istanbul were successful and could have worked. He says that the Istanbul agreement was 90% prepared. "We opened the champagne bottle," he said.But it is the very success of the diplomatic talks that makes future negotiations difficult. It will be very difficult for Ukraine — and the United States — after over two years of war, death, destruction, disruption of lives, and loss of land to agree to terms that are essentially the same as the terms they had won before the war.But there is another way that surmounts many of these obstacles by transcending them. The diplomatic negotiations could be broader than just negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.While several aspects of any diplomatic solution must address Russian-Ukrainian issues, like territory, caps on the Ukrainian armed forces and protection of ethnic minorities in both countries, significant parts could, instead, be addressed in a wider global solution. Putin has recently suggested that future talks encompass, not just a Ukraine-Russia security arrangement, but a comprehensive European security structure. "We are open to a dialogue on Ukraine," Putin said in May, "but such negotiations must take into account the interests of all countries involved in the conflict, including Russia's. They must also involve a substantive discussion on global stability and security guarantees for Russia's opponents and, naturally, for Russia itself."Instead, the expansion of a U.S. led military alliance hostile to Russia appears to be moving to engulf Europe right up to Russia's doorstep. The insistence on defending that exclusive security structure contributed to the war in Ukraine. Addressing it could provide a more workable and lasting way out of it. Instead of building a bigger NATO that expands to Russia's borders and excludes and competes with it in conflict, the diplomatic energy could go into building a new inclusive European security structure that includes Russia in cooperation.This new structure could eliminate the need for Ukraine to join NATO and for Ukraine and the U.S. to concede the right to join NATO. It could eliminate the need for the U.S. to commit to bilateral security guarantees that it is reluctant to sign with Ukraine because they could draw the U.S. into a war with Russia should Russia again attack Ukraine. It could, at last, bring the hope of peace to Europe and of better relations across the Atlantic. Such global talks could relieve Zelensky of personal responsibility. They could bring sufficient force to defend against ultranationalist objections. They could truthfully be presented as a victory by the U.S. and not a surrender of "core principles." And they could avoid competition and comparison with the earlier talks in Istanbul by transcending them.How we get there is the hard part. But perhaps there is a way offered out of the war in Ukraine that delivers to each of Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and Europe what it wants. Perhaps the way out is to transcend negotiations on the Russia-Ukraine war with talks that include that but expand to include an inclusive global security architecture.
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With the failure of Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive despite billions in armaments and months of training, the post mortems have begun.
They follow: The West was too slow in providing missiles and aircraft; Russia had too much time to prepare trenches and minefields; Ukraine needed more time to learn combined-arms tactics and employ Western armor effectively. Yet underlying all these excuses was a broader analytical failing that has yet to be acknowledged: flawed and often facile historical analogies led defense planners to underestimate Russia's resilience.
Even today, with the horrific costs of overconfidence plain to all and Ukraine at a crucial crossroads, the same flawed analysis of the Russian adversary persists.
Time and again, policymakers and commentators based their expectations of the war based on flawed historical parallels. One example is Russia's acceptance of mass casualties and use of "human wave" attacks where they lose three or more soldiers for every Ukrainian casualty.
Time and again — right up to the present — commanders and commentators cite this as a sign of severe Russian weakness. Whether discussed in the jargon of an "asymetrical attrition gradient," or simply referring to Russian soldiers as "cannon fodder," analysts frequently note that such profligacy with human lives is a legacy of ponderous Soviet and Tsarist armies.
But what they fail to note is that this tactic often brought victory. Tsarist armies took massive casualties in battles with Swedish, Persian and Turkish forces as they built the Russian empire. In defeating Napoleon, the Russians suffered as many casualties as the French despite the advantage of fighting on their home ground and their familiarity with the Russian winter.
Soviet Marshal Zhukov absorbed 860,000 casualties to the Germans' 200,000 at the Battle of Kursk in World War II. He also lost 1,500 tanks to the Germans' 500, yet Kursk is remembered as a great triumph that crushed Hitler's final hopes of victory. Can one imagine Germany celebrating its superior casualty ratio while being defeated by Stalin's hordes?
However shocking this tactic may be, it is a resource that Moscow has and Kyiv does not. Consider the battle for Bakhmut and the daily bulletins trumpeting Ukraine's success in killing thousands of Russians, right up to the moment that Bakhmut fell to Wagner Group mercenaries — weirdly reminiscent of the Pentagon's body-count bulletins in the Vietnam war.
At Bakhmut Ukraine lost the indispensable cream of its army to hordes of dispensable Russian convicts-turned-storm troopers in doomed defense of a strategically insignificant town that President Zelenskyy vowed would not fall. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers is now 43.
Losing Bakhmut hurt Ukrainian morale, but it is Russian morale that pundits say is shot. And they remind us that military disasters sparked Russian uprisings in the past — in 1905 after defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, or the debacle of WWI that led to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in 1917.
Given their hardships and suffering, why wouldn't Russians do it again and overthrow Putin? Pundits often ignore that, after a decade of economic chaos and global humiliation in the 1990s, Putin is respected for restoring stability and national pride. Tsar Nicholas II, by contrast, was rather more like Boris Yeltsin — weak and out of touch, reliant on hated advisers, presiding over chaos.
It's also likely that, unlike a distant debacle with Japan or European carnage triggered by an Austro-Serbian dispute, many Russians believe in this war because they see Crimea and Donbas as historically and culturally Russian.
Whether it stems more from deep-seated imperial attitudes or a decade of anti-Western propaganda, Russians still back Putin and even take pride in standing up to the best NATO can throw at them. An effort to appreciate the views of Putin and his people is not being "pro Russian" even if we find those views wrong or repugnant.
On the contrary, such an approach is key to "thinking in time" with accurate historical analogies, and vital to avoiding the conceit of assuming that Russian soldiers or citizens will behave as we would.
On the eve of Ukraine's counteroffensive, U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley declared that Russians "lack leadership, they lack will, their morale is poor, and their discipline is eroding." Of course, if your main historical lesson is that Russian armies crack under strain, then you look closely for signs of dissent and soon find a looming collapse.
This is how superficial history joins with confirmation bias to produce flawed analysis. Stymied by fierce Russian fighting, Ukrainians troops themselves told Milley he was wrong: "We expected less resistance. They are holding. They have leadership. It is not often you say that about the enemy."
As Kyiv's crisis deepens and recriminations spill out in public, commanders at all levels of the Ukrainian Armed Forces agree that they and their NATO advisers badly misjudged Russian tenacity: "This big counteroffensive was based on a simple calculation: when a Moskal [slur for ethnic Russian] sees a Bradley or a Leopard, he will just run away."
But what about taking the fight to Russia? Former CIA Director General David Petraeus predicted that Russian resolve could "crumble" in response to Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow. Such strikes "bring the war to the Russian people" and might convince Putin's regime that, like the USSR's Cold War quagmire in Afghanistan, Russia's current war in Ukraine is "ultimately unsustainable."
In fact the old Soviet elite did not see the Afghan war as unsustainable, nor were they much concerned about public opinion. It took both a generational transition and a bold new leader who prioritized improving ties with the West — Mikhail Gorbachev — to finally manage an exit.
The point is not that war isn't costly. The Afghan war was, and the Ukraine war is even more so. The point is that accepting defeat in a major war that was justified as a vital national interest is unlikely until there is both a new leader and turnover in the ruling elite.
As for "bringing war to the Russian people" by bombing Moscow, when did that ever work? NATO brought the Kosovo War to the Serbian people in 1999 by bombing Belgrade, and it only rallied them to the side of dictator Slobodan Milošević; 25 years later, Serbs remain strongly pro-Russian and anti-NATO. And when Chechen rebels bombed Moscow and other Russian cities in the early 2000s, it only rallied Russians around Putin and helped justify his increasingly authoritarian rule. These aren't mere historical quibbles, but illustrations of flawed analogies that framed both strategic expectations and tactical decisions. And they have cost dearly, in both Ukrainian lives and now Western support. Confidence in Washington-Brussels elites falls even as officials still claim that Ukraine is winning and Putin "cannot outlast" the West.
In fact, as NATO empties its warehouses of equipment and misses deadlines for producing new munitions, it's hard to conclude otherwise unless one is trapped in another oversimplified WWII analogy: that of America as the "arsenal of democracy."
Many have contrasted America's innovative private arms producers with Russia's technology-starved state factories, predicting that Moscow would soon exhaust its munitions. Instead, Russia has consistently belied the "all brawn and no brains" narrative, not only outproducing the West in tanks, artillery and shells but defying sanctions to develop new precision-guided bombs, drones and missiles. Perhaps those discounting Russian ingenuity forgot the Katyusha multiple-rocket launcher, a legendary artillery weapon that both the Germans and Americans copied in WWII. With a looming crisis in efforts to keep Kyiv supplied with munitions, it is useful to look closer at American arms production in WWII, when the "arsenal of democracy" was in certain respects more like Putin's economy than Biden's. But today Washington faces a complex set of institutional obstacles: "least-cost production models," contractor aversion to stockpiling, export restrictions, and environmental regulations the likes of which do not trouble Putin. A final lesson from WWII's "armaments race" is a caution against technological hubris such as that seen in today's gushing about the superiority of Western Leopard or Abrams tanks over the Russian T-72 and T-80. Germany's Tiger tank was clearly superior to the Soviet T-34 in WWII, but the latter was cheap, reliable, and easy to produce in numbers; at Kursk, Soviet tanks outnumbered German ones by 2:1. So as NATO planners and media pundits take up the "cannon fodder" refrain again with reference to the heavy losses Russians are taking as they advance in the battle for Avdiivka, these planners and pundits would do well to consider a quip famously attributed to Soviet wartime leader Josef Stalin: "Quantity has a quality all its own."
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The geopolitical repercussions from the war in Ukraine continue to reverberate across Eurasia.With global attention preoccupied by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has been depriving the estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenian population in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh access to humanitarian aid in a blockade that has lasted over eight months and has recently intensified. Much to Armenia's consternation, the 2,000 Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in the enclave since the most recent round of fighting in 2020 have appeared ineffective in the face of increasing Azerbaijani pressure against the besieged Armenian population.As a result, Armenia is openly seeking to diversify its security relationship away from Russia, its longstanding ally, including conducting joint military drills with the United States in Armenia that began Monday and is set to end on September 20.Yerevan, Armenia's capital, has increasingly expressed a sense of betrayal at Moscow's inability, or unwillingness, to lend support to its treaty ally since last September when Azerbaijani armed forces attacked Armenia's internationally recognized territory and where they still occupy 10 square kilometers, according to Armenian officials.The Backdrop of Current TensionsThe two former Soviet Republics fought the First Nagorno-Karabakh War during the early 1990s after the indigenous Armenian majority in the autonomous oblast proclaimed their independence from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a full-scale war broke out between the two newly independent countries, eventually leaving tens of thousands casualties dead and hundreds of thousands displaced between 1992 and 1994. The war ended with a victory by Armenia.A Russian-brokered ceasefire resulted in Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions of Azerbaijan proper. The United Nations and international community, however, continued to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.After over 25 years of unsuccessful negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the U.S., France, and Russia, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, bolstered by the "brotherly" military support from NATO member Turkey and years of stockpiling Israel-supplied weapons, launched an all-out assault to recapture the disputed territory in September 2020. The 44-day war saw Azerbaijan secure a military victory with further territorial gains guaranteed under a Moscow-brokered ceasefire, leaving a rump self-governing Nagorno-Karabakh Republic alongside a Russian peacekeeping contingent as stipulated by the November 2020 ceasefire agreement. That agreement also guaranteed that a link between the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and Armenia, the Lachin Corridor, would be sustained and controlled by the Russian peacekeeping contingent. The status of Nagorno-Karabakh and its inhabitants remained unresolved. Last December, however, Baku effectively blockaded the Lachin Corridor and, five months later, it established a checkpoint on the road, formalizing the blockade. While the European Union, Russia, the U.S., and even the International Court of Justice have increasingly called for lifting the blockade, Azerbaijan remains defiant. The Azerbaijan foreign ministry insists that claims of a blockade are "completely baseless" and has accused Armenians of transporting arms into the territory, a claim Yerevan denies. Nevertheless, even the International Committee of the Red Cross struggles to continue its vital deliveries into the territory, resulting in what several United Nations Special Rapporteurs describe as a "dire humanitarian crisis." There were hopes the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been at the heart of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, would be resolved by negotiations facilitated by a complementary EU and U.S. approach (although a separate track by Moscow also persists). However, the ongoing blockade has dimmed hopes for a viable negotiated settlement. Current TensionsThe war in Ukraine has drained the Kremlin's military resources and room for maneuver, especially in a region like the South Caucasus where Russia vies with Turkey for regional hegemony. Moscow's increased reliance on Ankara over the last 18 months to balance against the West diplomatically has resulted in its inability to fulfill its own obligations in the ceasefire agreement following the 2020 war. Given this new reality, Armenia has started to hedge against Moscow by actively searching for new military partners and security guarantors. The publicity surrounding Eagle Partner 2023, the Armenian-hosted joint military exercise with the U.S., clearly worries the Kremlin, which has said it would "deeply analyze" the latest events. However, these exercises are "narrowly focused on peacekeeping operations" and do not represent a "breakthrough in U.S.-Armenia defense cooperation," according to Benyamin Poghosyan, senior fellow at APRI, a Yerevan-based think tank. Nevertheless, the exercises follow Armenia's refusal in January to host Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization exercises on its territory, citing the organization's unwillingness to support Yerevan during last September's escalation by Azerbaijan. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, has recently made a distinctly public effort to distance itself from Russian actions in Ukraine and even from Moscow itself. In just the last weeks Yerevan has moved to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and recalled its ambassador to the CSTO. Pashinyan said depending solely on Russia for security was a "strategic mistake." Pashinyan's spouse, Anna Hakobyan, traveled to Kyiv last week and delivered the first package of Armenian humanitarian aid to Ukraine. However, the fact remains that only Russia has sent peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, and that these peacekeepers are all that stands between the local Armenian population and Azerbaijani conquest, almost certainly leading to massacre and expulsion. As Poghosyan sees it, the driving cause behind a potential new attack is "Azerbaijan's desire to establish control over Nagorno Karabakh without providing any status or special rights to Armenians." This aligns with the view of Shujat Ahmadzada, a Baku-based researcher on foreign and security policies of the South Caucasus countries, who believes Azerbaijan is pursuing a "3D policy" with regard to Nagorno-Karabakh. The three D's stand for "De-internationalization, De-territorialization, and De-institutionalization." Such a process is intended to transform the status of the ethnic Armenians living there into a "purely 'internal matter' of Azerbaijan'' while "incorporating the self-governing institutions into the Azerbaijani political system in such a way that there is no single territorially defined unit for the ethnic Armenian community." While the deployment of over 80 U.S. troops on Armenian soil will hopefully guarantee against imminently anticipated Azerbaijani attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenia itself, Washington's move in a region Moscow has long viewed as a vital interest does not come without risk. Moscow views Washington's increased involvement as the Biden administration taking advantage of Russia's war in Ukraine in order to weaken or challenge its influence in the South Caucasus region, where Russia has a history of over 200 years of regional military domination. The latest American proposal for unblocking the Lachin Corridor plans to simultaneously open an alternative route to Nagorno-Karabakh through the Azerbaijani town of Aghdam. However, Armenians have regarded this proposal as a clear threat. Tigran Grigoryan, a Karabakh-born analyst and head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, a Yerevan-based think tank, assessed that, even if both the Lachin Corridor and the Aghdam route were to be opened, the potential remained for Baku to again close the corridor and create a "new status quo on the ground." Recent reports show that the first delivery of aid by the Russian Red Cross has entered Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. However, the acute crisis in food, energy, and humanitarian supplies continues as the Lachin Corridor remains shut and Azerbaijan continues its buildup along the border regions.The Biden administration would do better to use its leverage over Azerbaijan to ensure an end to the Lachin Corridor blockade while simultaneously working to achieve a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that would both recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty and provide enforceable guarantees for the future rights and security of the Armenian population there. For such an approach to work would likely require coordination with Russia. While such a scenario might be hard to imagine, Washington and Moscow have worked together in the past over Nagorno-Karabakh, even when relations were severely strained elsewhere. Such coordination is particularly compelling given the tens of thousands in the enclave who currently face famine. Rather than taking steps that Moscow views as threatening to its military presence in the South Caucasus (a process which led to disastrous consequences for neighboring Georgia 15 years ago), Washington, and the region itself, would be better off if American involvement instead demonstrated its commitment to ensuring human rights.
