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Why did Europe go to war in 1914? How did the Cold War end? Will the U.S. and China go to war over Taiwan? Imagine a grand chessboard stretching across the globe, where great powers with vast resources strategize and maneuver their pieces. In this high-stakes game of survival, each move reflects a nation's pursuit of security, wealth, prestige and influence. Every nation must navigate the wide and intricate web of alliances and trade, rivalries, and war. The great powers must vigilantly track all the pieces on the board and anticipate many moves ahead. Every move — a trade agreement, military deployment, or diplomatic negotiation — can have far-reaching and unintended consequences. It can either strengthen bonds of cooperation or push nations closer to conflict.Dale Copeland, professor of international relations at the University of Virginia, has authored two magisterial books on great power hostilities, which can serve as essential guides to this most dangerous and complex game. His 2014 Opus Magnum "Economic Interdependence and War" offers in-depth analyses of all the great power wars from the Napoleonic Wars to the end of the Cold War. His latest book, "A World Safe for Commerce" takes a comprehensive examination of U.S. foreign policy from the Revolution to China's rise. Both books present an impressive variety of evidence in favor of Copeland's unique theoretical perspective, which he calls "dynamic realism."According to Copeland, dynamic realism synthesizes the greatest strengths of offensive and defensive realism by recognizing "how states grapple with the tension presented by needing to reduce simultaneously the risk of spirals of misunderstanding and the risk of not doing enough to build the nation's power sphere."Copeland concurs with offensive realists that "rational security-maximizing states may need to expand to hedge against future threats." But he just as strongly agrees with defensive realists that "if this expansionism ends up creating those future threats, then it may be self-defeating." States constantly need to assess "the likelihood of the other being nasty rather than nice."Copeland's second key distinction from other schools of realism is his emphasis on the significance of economic relations. He argues that the complex economies of great powers are deeply dependent on vital foreign markets, trade routes and raw materials. Their leaders view access to critical strategic commercial networks as a security necessity. If they anticipate positive trade relations with another nation will continue, they strengthen ties of peaceful cooperation. However, if they fear losing access to crucial markets, they adopt hardline policies that often lead to war. "This tension between needing to expand one's economic sphere of influence and wanting to avoid an escalatory spiral that might restrict access to vital markets is baked into the DNA of modern great power politics," he says."Economic Interdependence and War" convincingly demonstrates that dynamic realism surpasses all other theories of international relations in explanatory power. Copeland shows that "in thirty of the forty case periods, economic interdependence played a moderate to strong causal role." Trade expectations often mattered when we least expected it. Japan tried hard to make peace with the U.S. until 1941, when the U.S. embargo pushed its leaders into a desperate attempt to secure the nation's survival through conquest and war. Pessimistic trade expectations also exacerbated German fears of encirclement, which partially explain both world wars.Copeland explores how regime type, interest groups and psychology shape great power dynamics, despite his conviction that domestic factors rarely serve as the primary cause of war. Ideological divides sparked the French revolutionary wars and intensified the Cold War. Nationalism drove the German and Italian wars of unification.Copeland discusses statistical studies indicating that democracies are less likely to engage in conflict with one another only if both are developed nations. He suggests that developed nations are better positioned to cultivate strong trade ties. This perspective overlooks a crucial explanation highlighted by Jack Levy and William Thompson in their fact-filled book "The Arc of War" — developed states increase both the costs of war and the benefits of trade for every other nation. As a result, developed nations are highly motivated to avoid conflict with each other. Although highly developed democracies and autocracies have frequently waged asymmetric wars against weaker opponents, the absence of war between them since 1945 offers hope that a stable peace among major powers is achievable."A World Safe for Commerce" is an engaging history of U.S. foreign policy that uncovers how the motives of American leaders were frequently less benign than most Americans think: "Even if they cloak their policies in the warm and fuzzy language of liberalism and freedom, and occasionally find themselves trapped by it, they are careful calculators of national security through the lens of commercial power."Copeland recounts that Britain's harsh mercantilist restrictions pushed the American revolutionaries into their war for independence. The ideology of liberty only gained momentum when the first shots were fired. The Wars of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War and numerous interventions in Latin America and Asia were all fought to safeguard and expand the U.S. sphere of economic interests.The U.S. came close to war with Britain in 1916, but ultimately declared war on Germany when it became the greater threat to U.S. trade with Europe and Latin America. The massive expansion of U.S. power during World War II was primarily driven by the imperative to ensure access to global markets in order to counter the threat of Axis dominance over Eurasia. The U.S. economic containment policy against the Soviet Union initiated the Cold War, while the lifting of U.S. sanctions played a crucial role in facilitating Gorbachev's efforts to bring about its end. Trade expectations and classic geopolitics also explain the wars in Korea and Vietnam.Copeland outlines why China's Belt and Road Initiative and military buildup could be interpreted as either aggressive moves or the predictable actions of a rising power seeking security and resources. He emphasizes the need for the U.S. to better understand the forces driving China's behavior to craft "a balanced policy that both signals resolve and avoids creating spirals of hostility." He argues that an all-out economic containment strategy and interference in China's domestic policies could push China toward military conflict over disputed regions like Taiwan and the South China Sea.In his view maintaining open trade and diplomacy can build trust and reduce fears of economic decline. He advises the U.S. to project military strength in East Asia to deter Chinese expansion, while reassuring China that economic engagement will continue as long as it avoids aggression.The vivid historical case studies in both volumes are packed with surprising insights into the root causes of the largest wars in modern history, challenging the conventional wisdom. Copeland's pioneering work serves as a dire warning that any "downward spiral in commercial and political relations" can lead us straight to catastrophe. Indeed, wise leaders must play a grand chess game for peace.

Benny Gantz, the former chief of the Israel Defense Forces and prime minister in a revolving arrangement with Benjamin Netanyahu several years ago, announced that he is quitting the war cabinet. What impact this has on Netanyahu's government and its war policy in Gaza is now the subject of high speculation.He and another centrist former IDF commander, Gadi Eisenkot, had accepted a place in the war cabinet to underscore Israeli unity in the wake of the October 7 Hamas assault on Israeli towns in the southern Negev. They have, for the most part, supported, or at least acquiesced in, the government's Gaza campaign.Despite international insistence that a ceasefire was essential to the well-being of Gaza's battered civilian population and diplomatic intervention, Gantz and Eisenkot have backed Netanyahu's insistence that a ceasefire before Hamas had been completely dismantled would be unacceptable to Israel. Their position mirrors the Hamas view: any ceasefire that does not recognize Hamas's authority in Gaza or permits Israel to resume the war after hostages and their remains have been repatriated is unacceptable to Hamas's Gaza wing. Much ink has been spilled analyzing Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. missteps or hidden agendas in the negotiations, but the fact is that neither Yahya Sinwar nor Benjamin Netanyahu could sign up to ceasefire terms that granted the other even the most symbolic of victories.The stated reason for Gantz's defection, which he foreshadowed a couple of weeks ago, was Netanyahu's failure to produce a post-conflict plan for Gaza that wasn't laughable. The prime minister has floated various arrangements. The first was to use Gazan businessmen for service delivery, essentially of humanitarian goods, but of more kinds of imports as time progressed, and as the Israeli conduit to Gaza for non-military purposes. How this would evolve into a government for Gaza was not clear, but the Israeli government did seem to think that its business partners would eventually coalesce into a governing authority. This idea was shredded by the first attempt to put it in practice, when a shipment of food that Israel had transferred to these new partners was raided by Hamas. Thereupon another conception took flight involving the Saudis, or other moderate Arab states, accepting security responsibility and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, offering "temporary" refuge to Gazans displaced by Israeli military operations. This idea was promptly and predictably derided by the proposed participants. More recently, the government's planning crossed the line between absurdism and surrealism by circulating a brochure of the "new" Gaza, which depicted a science fiction version of contemporary Dubai. This made the Onion look like the Wall Street Journal. Gantz himself advanced the idea of a kind of Star Wars bar governing authority consisting of personnel from an array of moderate Arab governments, Western powers, NGOs and some Gazans who could verify that had never heard of Hamas. Both Gantz and Netanyahu refuse to countenance a role for the Palestinian Authority; Gantz, it's well to remember, opposes a two-state solution. Gantz's criticism of Netanyahu's lack of a "day after" plan is certainly apt, but Gantz's own seems unequal to the desolation of Gaza and the vacuum that Israel's campaign will have created.Be that as it may, the question on the tips of many tongues is whether Gantz's departure will unleash a political process resulting in Netanyahu's defenestration. This seems unlikely. The Knesset numbers are what they are. Netanyahu's coalition will not fall. And the Knesset calendar is what it is. Netanyahu just has to last until 25 July, when the legislature goes into recess. It won't come back until the week before the November 4 U.S. elections, which could produce a Trump presidency.And before the Knesset recesses, Netanyahu will have had yet another occasion to address both houses of the U.S.Congress. This will stir up the large reservoir of American support for Israel's Gaza campaign, burnish Netanyahu's credentials as custodian of the U.S.-Israel relationship and set the stage for nearly three more years of Netanyahu's leadership.One of Netanyahu's claims is likely to be that under his skillful leadership, dire predictions of a widening war and escalating violence have not come to pass. While it is true that Israel's north is in parts uninhabitable, the same could be said for Lebanon's south. As for increasing exchanges of fire across the Blue Line that separates the two countries, "…well, you should see the other guy." A confrontation with Iran in April was handled like a clockwork Kennedy School class project orchestrated by Thomas Schelling. Israel organized a coalition of the U.S., France, UK, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to neuter Iran's attack and responded with the perfect blend of constraint and precision firepower. The picture of course was more complicated than that and raised ominous questions about how a real war would play out. But for Netanyahu's domestic political purposes these considerations are obviously irrelevant.Even as Netanyahu's probable durability leaves a workable Gaza endgame open to grave doubt, it also raises the question of what Israel will do in the north. Israel pundits and officials have been beating the war drums for weeks, suggesting that the IDF is prepared to enter Lebanon and push Hezbollah 30 kilometers or more back from the Blue Line. Hezbollah has up to 100,000 missiles and rockets it could rain on Israel in response. The IDF however has been planning for an operation in Lebanon since the fiasco of the 2006 war. Military planners likely believe they have got the problems sorted: Swift attrition of Hezbollah's missiles via thousands of airstrikes and a well-stocked air defense umbrella; new and improved tactics for use of armor and infantry; and the advantage of surprise. Much of Israel's armor is in the north, there aren't any Israeli civilians in the area to worry about, and the ongoing exchanges of fire would provide cover for a surprise attack.On the other hand, Netanyahu will probably shy away from the tremendous risks that such a war would entail; he would be especially averse to starting another full-scale and far more challenging fight until Gaza has been digested. If he is attracted to the idea, he might prefer to wait until after Election Day in the U.S. Dealing with Trump might make a Lebanon War easier to prosecute; a Biden White House would be decidedly less sympatico.As for the near term, Gantz should take the opportunity for a relaxing vacation. The only real question is Itamar Ben-Gvir's demand that he be included in the war cabinet upon Gantz's departure. This might make the hair stand up on the backs of many necks in Washington and Israel, but the fact is that Netanyahu has been quite attentive to Ben-Gvir's preferences from the outset. Indeed ,he was channeling this ultra-right winger in his latest public statement on Israel's war aims, in which he doubled down on the proposition that the security of Israel – that is, the destruction of Hamas – takes precedence over the fate of the hostages.

The RAND corporation's Samuel Charap and Johns Hopkins University professor Sergey Radchenko published a detailed timeline and analysis of the talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators just after the Russian invasion in February 2022 that could have brought the war to an end just weeks after it had begun.
Much of the piece confirms or elucidates parts of the narrative that had previously been reported. In the spring of 2022, the two sides appeared relatively close to a deal, one that, according to the authors, would "have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU."
But due to a combination of changing battlefield dynamics that convinced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he could win the war militarily, Western allies' hesitance to engage diplomatically with Russia and simultaneous ramping up of military support for Ukraine, and the discovery that Russian forces had committed atrocities in Bucha, the talks eventually fell apart.
On some of these points, the authors contend that earlier accounts have been overstated. The idea that the U.S. and the UK "forced" Zelensky to back out of peace talks is "baseless," say Charap and Radchenko, though they acknowledge that "the lack of Western enthusiasm does seem to have dampened his interest in diplomacy."
On the suggestion that the discovery of war crimes convinced the Ukrainian president to abandon negotiations, the authors note discussions "continued and even intensified in the days and weeks after the discovery of Russia's war crimes, suggesting that the atrocities at Bucha and Irpin were a secondary factor in Kyiv's decision-making."
But taken together, these factors, along with certain details of the agreement that were never finalized, were enough to imperil the negotiations.
In the two years since Ukrainian and Russian interlocutors last convened, the realities on the ground have changed. By April 2022, Vladimir Putin had likely realized that he would fail to achieve his most maximalist war aims. Now, with Western aid stalled and the war tilting in Moscow's favor, Ukraine is in a less favorable negotiating position than it was and Russia may be less inclined to enter talks.
But, as George Beebe and Anatol Lieven detail in a recent Quincy Institute paper, all sides still have a reason to pursue a diplomatic solution, one that could both end the war and provide for a new European security architecture once the fighting ceases.
As Charap and Radchenko note in their Foreign Affairs piece, one of the reasons the original talks broke down was because the two sides were more focused on the broader endgame rather than on shorter-term solutions.
"A final reason the talks failed is that the negotiators put the cart of a postwar security order before the horse of ending the war," they write. "The two sides skipped over essential matters of conflict management and mitigation (the creation of humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire, troop withdrawals) and instead tried to craft something like a long-term peace treaty that would resolve security disputes that had been the source of geopolitical tensions for decades."
The two years of war have only increased distrust between Russia, Ukraine, and Kyiv's Western backers, and diplomacy appears to be more difficult today than it was in 2022. But, say Charap and Radchenko, Zelensky and Putin surprised us once before with the concessions they may have been willing to make, and perhaps they will do so again. The consequences of that failed first effort at diplomacy are clear, as Thomas Graham, former senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff, argued this week.
"The great tragedy of the Russian-Ukrainian war is that it will ultimately prove to have been futile. The likely outcome — territorial adjustments in Moscow's favor, security guarantees for Ukraine and Russia — could have been peaceably negotiated beforehand had leaders had a firmer grasp of the real balance of power or greater political courage," he wrote in the Hill. "The cost of failed diplomacy is already hundreds of thousands of lives lost and hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of property destroyed."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— After months of waiting, the House may hold a vote to give Ukraine another tranche of aid over the weekend. On Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) introduced four separate bills, including one that will provide approximately $60 billion in aid for Kyiv. The House Speaker is already facing backlash from members of his own party, but the legislation is likely to have enough bipartisan support to pass if it is brought to the floor for a vote.
— There are reportedly increasing points of tension between Washington and Kyiv as Ukraine awaits more aid and its war effort falters. Zelensky was frustrated that Washington has not offered his country the same missile defense help as it provided to Israel during Iran's strikes over the weekend. "European skies could have received the same level of protection long ago if Ukraine had received similar full support from its partners in intercepting drones and missiles," Zelensky wrote in a post on X. "Terror must be defeated completely and everywhere, not more in some places and less in others."
Moreover, Kyiv has expressed frustration over Washington's recommendations that Ukraine not strike Russian oil refineries, according to The Washington Post. Vice President Kamala Harris reportedly privately made the suggestion to Zelensky in February at the Munich Security Conference.
"The request, according to officials familiar with the matter, irritated Zelensky and his top aides, who view Kyiv's string of drone strikes on Russian energy facilities as a rare bright spot in a grinding war with a bigger and better-equipped foe. Zelensky brushed off the recommendation, uncertain whether it reflected the consensus position of the Biden administration, these people said." according to the Post. "Instead of acquiescing to the U.S. requests, however, Ukraine doubled down on the strategy, striking a range of Russian facilities, including an April 2 attack on Russia's third-largest refinery 800 miles from the front."
— Russia and Ukraine nearly struck a deal late last month to renew the agreement that allowed for the safety of shipping in the Black Sea before Kyiv suddenly pulled out, according to Reuters.
"A deal was reached in March 'to ensure the safety of merchant shipping in the Black Sea', and though Ukraine did not want to sign it formally, Kyiv gave its assent for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to announce it on March 30, the day before critical regional elections, the sources said," reports Reuters. The reason for Kyiv's withdrawal is unclear. Russia and Ukraine previously struck a deal to allow for safe shipping in June 2022 but Moscow withdrew from that agreement after one year.
U.S. State Department News
In a press briefing on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Vedant Patel urged the House to pass the aid bill for Ukraine quickly.
"So it certainly would not be hyperbole to say that every day matters, and the House, we believe, needs to act this week to support Ukraine and Israel as they respectively defend against Putin and the Russian Federation and the Iranian regime. And so this is something that we need Congress to provide urgently," Patel said.

Rhetoric from the Pentagon and the arms industry suggests that integrating artificial intelligence, or AI, into U.S. weapons, communications, and surveillance systems will improve efficiency, innovation, and national security. The Pentagon is beginning to back its rhetoric on emerging technology with resources. The department's Office of Strategic Capital now has the authority to grant executive loans and loan guarantees to invest in firms researching and developing 14 "critical technologies," including hypersonics, quantum computing, microelectronics, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act authorizes the Advanced Defense Capabilities Pilot, which contains a mandate to establish public-private partnerships with the goal of "leverag[ing] private equity capital to accelerate domestic defense scaling, production, and manufacturing." Proponents argue that the rapid development and deployment of autonomous systems, pilotless vehicles, and hypersonic weapons will shorten the time between recognizing a potential threat and destroying it — a process analysts and military leaders often refer to as shortening the "kill chain." This shift is portrayed as a positive development, when in fact it could easily enable deadly escalations by accident or design. A case in point is Israel's use of targeting systems incorporating AI to generate targets for military strikes in its brutal seige on Gaza. A recent investigation revealed the use of "Lavender," an AI-based program developed by the Israeli army designed to identify all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad as potential bombing targets. Rather than using this capability to focus on discrete targets and spare civilians, the Israeli Defense Forces are using Lavender to multiply the number of targets to attack in a given time frame, increasing the pace of attack and the number of casualties, which now stand at over 33,000 deaths and tens of thousands injured. The investigation revealed that the Israeli army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as "dumb" bombs (in contrast to "smart" precision bombs) to target alleged junior militants marked by Lavender. These bombs can indiscriminately destroy entire buildings and cause significant casualties. "You don't want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it's very expensive for the country and there's a shortage [of those bombs]," said C., one of the intelligence officers speaking to +972 Magazine, which broke the story on Lavender. The Lavender machine is not the first time the Israeli military has used AI. "The Gospel," another system largely built on AI, is said to generate targets at a fast pace. As noted by +972 Magazine, "A fundamental difference between the two systems is in the definition of the target: whereas The Gospel marks buildings and structures that the army claims militants operate from, Lavender marks people — and puts them on a kill list." Far from enabling more precise strikes that reduce civilian harm, the AI-targeted attacks increased impunity in the bombing of Gaza. As a member of the Israeli military posted to Gaza put it, "I don't know how many people I killed as collateral damage … the focus was on creating as many targets as quickly as possible."The U.S. Congress has demonstrated its commitment to spurring on "collaborative defense projects between the United States and Israel in emerging technologies" through bills such as the United States-Israel Future of Warfare Act, which is just one avenue through which the United States continues to fund and support Israeli military operations. In February, the Senate approved an additional $14.1 billion for Israeli military operations via a supplemental funding package, but the fate of that aid package awaits action by the House. But some members of Congress have pushed back against the risks of emerging technologies by introducing legislation to establish governance and regulations of AI. The Federal AI Governance and Transparency Act, for example, aims to ensure that "the design, development, acquisition, use, management, and oversight of artificial intelligence in the Federal Government… [is] consistent with the Constitution and any other applicable law and policy, including those addressing freedom of speech, privacy, civil rights, civil liberties, and an open and transparent Government."Accidents in the use of AI systems have their own potentially dire consequences, as pointed out by Michael Klare in a report for the Arms Control Association: "many analysts have cautioned against proceeding with such haste until more is known about the inadvertent and hazardous consequences of doing so. Analysts worry, for example, that AI-enabled systems may fail in unpredictable ways, causing unintended human slaughter or uncontrolled escalation."The Pentagon has given lip service to the potential dangers posed by widespread weaponization of AI, but its calls for responsible use of these systems ring hollow in the face of its public commitments to deploy advanced technology as quickly as possible. Last August, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks unveiled her department's "Replicator Initiative" in front of an audience of arms-producing companies, pledging to deploy large numbers of new systems by late 2025, possibly including "swarms of drones" designed to overwhelm Chinese defenses in a potential U.S-China conflict.Meanwhile, venture capital firms like Andreesen-Horowitz and the Founders Fund are pouring billions of dollars into emerging military tech startups, hoping to cash in when some of them become major Pentagon contractors. In addition, these firms have been rushing to increase their lobbying clout by hiring dozens of ex-military officers as advisers and advocates for higher Pentagon spending on AI-driven systems. The promoters of these new battlefield technologies are marketing them with evangelical fervor, suggesting that not only are they central to being able to "beat" China in a conflict, but that they are the key to restoring U.S. global military dominance. At a time when cooperation between Washington and Beijing is essential for addressing urgent threats like climate change, pandemics, and global poverty, cheerleading for a new high-tech arms race with China is both dangerous and counterproductive.So what is to be done? First, there needs to be greater transparency about new weapons systems in development, how they might be used, and whether the technology is being shared with other nations. Also, the revolving door between the military, the Pentagon, and the emerging tech sector needs to be carefully regulated, including prohibitions on direct lobbying of former colleagues still in government. In addition, Washington should consider the calls of scientists and advocates for a ban on robotic weapons and in the meantime, increase transparency, regulation, and oversight of these technologies. And all this needs to be coupled with a rethinking of U.S. global strategy that reduces reliance on military intervention and prioritizes diplomacy in U.S. interactions with governments, organizations, and individuals.Developing a new generation of military technology will not solve our world's most pressing problems, and there is a strong chance that it will make them worse. The time to push back against the illusions promoted by the people who will profit from taking AI to war is now.

"European leaders' biggest concern is Trump's potential return to the White House in 2025... plans for a 'dormant NATO' and advocating a shift from burden-sharing to 'burden-shifting,'" groaned an essay from the European Council on Foreign Relations, as NATO started to gear up for its 75th anniversary with Brussels painted blue, in reflection of the sanctity of the alliance, which President Biden has called sacred. One would be forgiven to notice the religious instinct behind something that is supposed to be an amoral alignment based purely on interest. "NATO 's shield against aggression 'will permit us to get on with the real business of government... of achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens,'" says Secretary Blinken. Atlanticist think tanks agreed. Incidentally, at the same time, NATO is planning to move executive decision making out of American political chaos, to Europe. Politico reported that officials hope to move the Ukraine Defense Contact Group "into the alliance's control, according to three European officials and a U.S. official with knowledge of the internal deliberations." The hope is "to finalize the move at the NATO leaders' summit in Washington in July," Politico wrote, adding that it would be better to institutionalize the process, in case Trump wins again. "With NATO's supreme allied commander, General Chris Cavoli, in charge, such a step could protect the structure from any political change that may result after the November elections," reported Bloomberg.But why should talks of "burden shifting" be a "concern?" Why will NATO have to "institutionalize" decision making regarding humanity's greatest questions of war and peace, and then make it undemocratic? These are not idle questions; the very future of NATO hinges on them. Everyone, from President John F. Kennedy onwards, has talked about "burden sharing." It hasn't worked, because thus far there was no actual policy guideline about achieving burden shifting in certain domains. This shouldn't be a concern, as burden shifting is purely a moderate compromise. Burden shifting in certain domains is a strategy in order to achieve burden sharing, which is the aim. Only those who want to free-ride should be concerned about burden shifting. Likewise the issue of institutionalizing is the original curse of NATO. Unless NATO assumes a supranational political role instead of a defense alliance — which has been, and is, a valid worry of conservatives — one is skeptical of how any institutionalizing will work, much less guard against democratic mandates. Consider a hypothetical. NATO established a command and coordination where Americans are working. A government back home wins election saying they would put a stop to all that. The NATO leadership proceeds to refuse civilian oversight, Congress or Presidential order and continues as is.Getting NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe to decide on matters of war and peace, instead of the elected President or the Congress, will in reality mean that NATO bureaucracy (and American forces operating under the said NATO bureaucracy) will continue working despite changes to the civilian leadership back home and despite a democratic mandate to the contrary. That's a worldview, I suppose. But it is no different than military leadership in Pakistan or Egypt. One either believes in democracy and civilian leadership, or one doesn't. One cannot, however, tout a system of governance of and by unelected military bureaucrats, and then claim that it is for an alliance to ostensibly defend democracy.Contrary to some, I don't think NATO should be disbanded completely, nor do I think it is even possible to do that. Realists are not utopians. And NATO was a decent alliance, for as long as it was doing what it is supposed to do. In that light, the strategy of a future Dormant NATO is predicated on three assumptions. One, as I wrote, the "NATO bureaucracy is increasingly a barrier in the path of reduced American commitment. It is self-sustaining and prone to push missions that are beyond NATO's core role and, at times, opposed to the domestic interests of the United States." Two, there is no "Europe" as a coherent political identity, in the sense that there is no common European interest. Interests and threat perceptions are based on primarily geography, offensive power, offensive intention, and proximity. Both NATO and the European Union exist as artificial constructs, maintained by American martial prowess. Without American military power, the chances of the EU collapsing under its own contradiction are relatively high. This also gives America a unique leverage to shape and reshape Europe to its advantage, and not get taken for a ride. Three, the expansion of NATO has led to a "curtailing" of American power. This third point is counterintuitive but crucial. As I wrote, "the larger the alliance, the bigger the constraint on the hegemon. Expanding an alliance would, in turn, consolidate the liberal-internationalist orthodoxy and multiply an imperial, self-sustaining and expanding bureaucracy, making it more difficult for a hegemon like the U.S. to act on its own interests as opposed to the interests of the group. The bigger the alliance and the worse Russo-American relations are, the better the deal for protectorate states." To put simply, the tail now has more power than the dog. One can argue that our "liberal internationalist" friends also believe in all these assumptions. They believe that democratic passions are opposed to their grand plan of social engineering through military power, which is why they want to take the power out of the hands of messy electoral processes. They absolutely believe that the European Union is an artificial construct, and a potential future trade rival to America, which is arguably why they want to ensure its survival and are worried about an American retrenchment. They have swallowed their own worldview that members of alliances are all equal, and it is not asymmetric, and there are no hegemons and protectorates.A Dormant NATO will put a stop to all further expansions, all out of area operations, and would focus strictly on military defense of those within the club. A Dormant NATO framework will delegate all further European military burden, from infantry to logistics, armor, to artillery, in the hands of European states, for them to pay and man the posts, under an overarching American nuclear umbrella. The Cold War style of garrisoning was obsolete by the 1990s, as understood by the troop drawdown from a total of around 300,000 to around 70,000 over a span of half a decade. For a country that is reaching its Weimarian fiscal cliff, and increasingly looking like a late stage Soviet Union — with a bloated national security bureaucracy on autopilot with no democratic control, anti-meritocratic academia, broken manufacturing base, and foreign interventions and overstretch based on promoting a craven secular theocracy at home and abroad — the time to reform NATO and redistribute a fiscal burden was yesterday. Dormant NATO is therefore the moderate compromise. It is time to let the 75 year old entity sleep more.

As the foreign ministers of NATO member countries gathered this week in Brussels to celebrate the alliance's 75th anniversary, the war in Ukraine is at a crossroads.
On the one hand, despite incremental movement in recent weeks, the latest tranche of aid for Kyiv remains stalled in the U.S. Congress. And while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to urge Washington to approve the package, Ukrainian military officers are now acknowledging that even if that aid ever arrives, it is unlikely to shift battlefield dynamics that currently favor Russia.
"There's nothing that can help Ukraine now because there are no serious technologies able to compensate Ukraine for the large mass of troops Russia is likely to hurl at us," an anonymous military source told Politico this week. "We don't have those technologies, and the West doesn't have them as well in sufficient numbers."
So far, however, NATO appears unmoved by these realities. Instead of pivoting its strategy, the alliance is leaning into a military-only solution to the war. To mark the anniversary, the foreign ministers of France, Germany, and Poland co-authored an op-ed in Politico, celebrating NATO as "the most successful defense alliance in history" and playing up the stakes of the war in Ukraine.
"For Europe to be at peace, Russian imperialism must be stopped. We cannot allow for any 'gray zones' because Putin sees them as an invitation to undermine territorial integrity and sovereignty, draw imaginary lines on the map and, ultimately, use military force," the foreign ministers wrote. "His full-scale invasion of Ukraine has also proven that a policy of concessions vis-à-vis Russia, in the hopes that it could bring peace or stability back to the Continent, is naive."
Given the possibility that Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2025 — and considering his and many in his party's apparent skepticism to continuing funding Ukraine's war effort — NATO is planning for ways to overcome Washington potentially taking a step back on the issue.
"Under a proposal being discussed this week at the military alliance's headquarters, NATO would oversee the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a group currently led by the United States that coordinates the donation and delivery of weapons to the battlefield," according to the New York Times. "Discussions are also underway about a plan floated by Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, to secure an additional $100 billion from the alliance's 32 member states for Ukraine over five years."
The $100 billion fund has been described by other media outlets as a way to "Trump-proof" future aid for Ukraine. Sources close to NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg told the Financial Times that he had framed the proposal as a way to "to shield the mechanism against the winds of political change."
Both the long-term funding structure and the plan to shift the leadership of the Defense Contact Group are in their early stages and could run into roadblocks. Hungary, which was the lone hold out on a recent European Union long-term aid package for Kyiv before eventually acquiescing, is again expected to raise opposition to Stoltenberg's suggestion.
And the U.S. may not want to take a step back from its leadership role in coordinating military support for Kyiv. While the Biden administration has refused to comment directly on the proposal, U.S. officials "appeared dubious," according to the New York Times. Both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Council spokesman John Kirby lauded the success of the group under Washington's leadership.
"The contact group has been very, very effective," said Kirby. "We're going to continue to lead and convene it. And we know that our leadership of that contact group is valued, it's important."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— Zelensky signed a law this week lowering his country's draft age from 27 to 25, bringing an end to a battle that started when the law was first passed last summer. "Discussion over who and how many people to mobilize has been divisive in a society that has otherwise been united by a common Russian foe," according to the The Washington Post. "Although support for the military is extremely high among Ukrainians, few people who haven't already volunteered to fight want to. Meanwhile, Ukrainian commanders have said they are in desperate need of reinforcements, especially in the forwardmost positions. Some soldiers have been fighting for more than two years with few breaks."
— In another sign of turmoil in Kyiv, Zelensky fired a number of aides last weekend. According to the Associated Press, Zelensky removed Serhiy Shefir from his post of first assistant, as well as three advisers and the presidential representatives in charge of volunteer activities and soldiers' rights.
— U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) pledged to address the Ukraine aid package quickly once Congress returns from a two-week recess on Monday. It remains unlikely that the House takes up the national security supplemental that passed the Senate in February that contains about $60 billion for Kyiv, with the Speaker instead saying he would propose alternatives with some "important innovations." In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Johnson floated three possible innovations: sending aid to Kyiv in the form of a "loan" instead of a grant; using seized Russian assets as a way to fund Ukraine; and tying the passage of more aid to legislation that would end a hold on new exports liquefied natural gas. Whether any of these options will be able to get through a fractured House remains unclear.
—Russia's defense minister warned his French counterpart on Wednesday against sending French troops to Ukraine while also noting that Moscow was prepared to take part in negotiations, according to the Associated Press. This was the first time since October 2022 that the two defense ministers had spoken and came in response to comments from French President Emmanual Macron in February in which he did not rule out the possibility of NATO troops being sent to Ukraine. The Wall Street Journal published a profile of Macron on Wednesday that sought to explain how he had gone to one of the leading NATO proponents of having dialogue with Vladimir Putin to floating the possibility of having Western boots on the ground.
"In recent weeks, Macron has begun using dark rhetoric to prepare the French public for the possibility of a more direct confrontation with Moscow, warning that if Ukraine falls then a host of Central and Eastern European countries would be next," according to the Journal.
U.S. State Department news:
— In two press briefings held this week, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller fielded few questions on the war in Ukraine. In Monday's briefing, he was asked about an upcoming meeting between Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
"So we have made clear that we have concerns with the, I think, full-scale partnership – I'm going to get the words exactly wrong – that we have seen between Russia and China," Miller said. "We have made very clear that we don't want to see China do anything to help support Russia's aggression in Ukraine, and we will continue to make that clear."

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing to launch an invasion of Rafah, a city located along the Gaza-Egypt border where more than 1.5 million Palestinians currently shelter.Egypt's stakes are extremely high given how much spillover from Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula could be destabilizing. Cairo understandably wants this war to be over immediately.A massive refugee influx into the Sinai from Gaza could result in Palestinians waging an armed resistance against Israel from Egyptian soil — a nightmarish scenario from Cairo's perspective. Egypt also does not want to be seen as accepting Palestinian refugees in exchange for money from the U.S., which would contribute to perceptions on the "Arab Street" that President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi's government is complicit in a "Nakba 2.0."Understanding Egypt's vulnerability to spillover from Gaza requires considering Cairo's other foreign policy challenges too. The Gaza war's spread into the Red Sea has harmed Egypt's economy in the form of lost Suez Canal revenue with ships rerouting to avoid the body of water altogether. Additionally, Rafah isn't the only border security crisis concerning Egyptian officials. "They've got Sudan in the south, which is a mess. To the west, Libya is a mess. So basically, everywhere Egypt looks now is a problem. There's also the issue of the Renaissance Dam," noted Kenneth Katzman, a Senior Fellow at the Soufan Center, in an interview with RS.The U.S. RoleSince October, Egyptian diplomacy has been key to efforts aimed at implementing a ceasefire, negotiating hostage-prisoner swaps, and delivering Gaza humanitarian assistance. As a result, the Biden administration perceives Egypt to be more indispensable than ever. Notably, Biden and his team haven't recently criticized the Sisi government's human rights record — a major contrast to Biden's rhetoric as a presidential candidate.The White House understands Cairo's concerns and Biden's public position is that Israel should not wage a full-scale assault on Rafah without ensuring the safety of Palestinians sheltering there. But Egypt continues to be frustrated with Biden's refusal to deploy Washington's leverage to pressure Israel into actually changing its conduct on the ground."Washington's support [for Egypt on this front has been] confined to making clear its opposition to any full-scale transfer of refugees, forced, unforced, permanent, or temporary," Charles Dunne, a former U.S. diplomat who served in Cairo and Jerusalem, told RS. "It is pushing back on talk in Israel — so far unofficial — that a mass population transfer could be part of the solution to Israel's Gaza problem," he added."My personal conclusion is that [U.S. officials] probably made the point [to their Egyptian counterparts] that some of the Gazans would inevitably be needed to be let into Egypt in order to prevent a greater humanitarian catastrophe as the Israelis move military operations closer to Rafah," Dave DesRoches, an assistant professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, told RS. "My guess is the Egyptians are concerned both that the Gazan presence would become permanent as well as that Egypt would be seen as abetting the Israeli military operations," he added.If Israel wages an all-out assault on Rafah and there is a massive displacement of Palestinians into Egypt, Washington would probably financially assist Cairo. But Katzman belives the White House is likely more focused on trying to prevent that from happening. "My impression is that [the Biden] administration is not really tackling the idea of what if there is a flood of refugees into the Sinai, while I think [its] strategy is to make sure that doesn't happen in the first place," he told RS.Katzman added, "The U.S. is encouraging Israel to coordinate with Egypt to the extent possible, which I think is happening. But beyond that, I don't think the administration has done any planning because they don't expect that worst case scenario to happen.""Cairo worries that even entertaining the idea for emergency planning purposes could be seen as a green light to the IDF. That appears to be where we are for now, and Cairo has focused on building a fortified buffer zone along the border with Gaza to prevent a refugee crisis," said Dunne.Red Sea CrisisAnother important aspect of U.S.-Egypt relations amid the Gaza war and its regionalization is the Red Sea security crisis. Since November, the Houthis have been launching missiles and drones at ships off Yemen's coast, claiming to support Gaza by targeting vessels linked to Israel, the U.S., and the UK. As of last month, Egypt's Suez Canal revenue had decreased by 40 to 50 percent throughout the crisis, according to Sisi.Gordon Gray, the former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, told RS that there is "strong incentive for Egypt to assist the U.S. efforts to guarantee freedom of the seas" given what is at stake for Egypt in terms of Suez Canal fees amid Houthi maritime attacks.But despite economic setbacks from the Red Sea security crisis, Egypt did not join Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG) and Cairo has played no official role in the Washington-led bombing campaign against the Houthis that began almost two months ago. This is not because Cairo doesn't share the West's concerns about the Houthi attacks on vessels. To the contrary, Egypt and the U.S. strongly agree that no Yemeni group should be allowed to disrupt maritime shipping in the region. In fact, when Saudi Arabia launched Operation Decisive Storm in March 2015, Egypt committed its naval forces to provide security in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. At that time, Sisi referred to the Red Sea as an "Arab lake" and identified the Bab al-Mandab as important to "Egyptian and Arab national security."Public opinion at home mostly explains Cairo not joining OPG nor formally supporting the U.S.-UK strikes. Many Egyptians would now see their government overtly aligning with Washington and London against the Houthis as Cairo facilitating Israel's war on Gaza."Egypt has refused to join [OPG] and, while it's possible that Egypt is making some behind-the-scenes contribution, any such contribution is pretty much invisible to the naked eye at the moment. If anything, it's the very least they can get away with doing," according to Dunne.DesRoches believes that the Egyptians have probably been allowing London to use Egyptian airspace for bombing Houthi targets in Yemen. "Extrapolating, I'm confident that U.S. support, intelligence, and resupply flights are probably transiting Egyptian airspace," he told RS. "I have a slightly lower degree of confidence that the Egyptians share intelligence and the common operating picture from their various assets to locate missile tracks and launch sites. This is probably limited more by the lack of Egyptian capacity than by any policy decision to not cooperate." Ultimately, the U.S.-Egypt alliance remains strong. But Cairo must approach this relationship with more caution given Washington's role in Gaza's destruction and its growing isolation in the Arab-Islamic world.

The gulf between the United States and the rest of the world — in particular the Global South — on the Israel-Palestine conflict remains sharp and wide. This was demonstrated yet again at The Hague last week, where the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is hearing a case triggered by a U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) resolution in December 2022 seeking an advisory opinion on the "legal consequences" of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.The case has taken on even greater significance in the current context of Israel's military action in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli assault (in response to Hamas's October 7 attack) has led to around 30,000 Palestinian deaths and widespread destruction of homes, mosques, churches, hospitals, and community centers with seemingly no end in sight. A BBC investigation at the end of January found that between 50% and 61% of the Gaza Strip's buildings had been destroyed or damaged in the war, while over 80% of the population had been displaced.This case also comes on the heels of last month's ICJ hearing in a separate case brought by South Africa alleging serious violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention by Israel in its current assault on Gaza. In that case, the ICJ issued a provisional order that Israel's actions in the current war against the Palestinians could plausibly be considered genocide. Other Global South states have initiated measures at the International Criminal Court. Overall, states representing close to 60% of the Global South's population have either directly or indirectly backed international legal action on Palestine, as our previous analysis showed.Last week's proceedings were the early stage of the UNGA-triggered case, in which the oral arguments focused on whether the court has jurisdiction over the matter. Of the 49 countries and three international organizations (the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the African Union) that argued before the court's judges — the most of any case in the ICJ's history — only four argued that the court lacked jurisdiction and should therefore not render an opinion: the United States, the United Kingdom, Hungary, and Fiji.Although this round of argumentation centered around the question of the court's jurisdiction, the representatives who spoke on behalf of their respective countries presented their view of Israel's occupation as well as current and past military activity in Palestine. Cuba went as far as to explicitly argue that Israel's military aggression in the current war amounts to a "genocide." Several others, including Bolivia and Chile, argued that the occupation violates international law, and should therefore end.The extent to which this issue resonates across the Global South is evident in the fact that Indonesia, the world's fourth-most populous country and a U.S. partner, so strongly supports the Palestinian cause that the country's foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, left the G20 Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Brazil to personally present Indonesia's argument before the court. She argued that Israel's "unlawful occupation and its atrocities must stop and should not be normalized or recognized." Indonesia sees Palestine as the last unresolved issue of decolonization, which it is mandated to oppose according to its constitution. Bangladesh spoke of violations of three basic tenets of international law: the right to self-determination; the prohibition to acquire territory by force; and the prohibition of racial discrimination and apartheid. Namibia also cited apartheid in its arguments, while The Maldives spoke of appropriation of water resources for Palestine, among other things. The African Union, collectively representing 54 African states, described "an asymmetrical situation in which an oppressed people is confronted with an occupying power."Other Global South states arguing in favor of the ICJ's jurisdiction in this case even called out the United States by name. Guyana, for example, said that the U.S.'s argument fails because the U.S. wrongly claims that there is an ongoing peace negotiation between Israel and Palestine, therefore leaving no legal authority for the ICJ to deliver an opinion on this issue.Algeria also explicitly said that this case not only stains Israel's image, but also hurts that of the United States, as the U.S. government continues to support Israel despite its continued violation of international law.Fiji was the only Global South state in the hearings to broadly align with Israel and the United States in its arguments. It argued that a two-state solution could only come about when (Palestinian) terrorism ended. It also stated that Israel had not agreed to the case, the ICJ approach circumvents the Oslo process, and the information available to the court was one-sided. Additionally, Zambia struck a cautious tone, supporting a two-state solution but also saying that a solution should not "squarely blame one party."The deep opposition to U.S. and Israeli positions was not just confined to the Global South. Most core U.S. allies in the Global North were also opposed. For example, France argued that Israel's settlements in Palestine are illegal. France also asked the court to render an opinion on the extent to which the Palestinians have suffered damages, and asked that the court consider how much restitution or compensation is appropriate for the damages suffered by Palestinians under Israeli occupation.Even the United Kingdom — the lone core U.S. ally aligned with American and Israeli positions in the case — called out Israel's occupation. The country's representative stated that although the UK opposes ICJ jurisdiction in this case, in part because the scope of a fact-finding mission would be too broad in the context of an ongoing conflict, Israel's continued and expanding occupation of Palestine is illegal under international law.China and Russia, the two great power rivals of the United States, both supported the majority opinion, arguing in favor of the ICJ's jurisdiction in the case and against Israel's occupation of Palestine.This comes as growing security, economic, and political ties are being formed by the Chinese and Russians with states across the Global South. The Russian mercenary group known as the Wagner Group — recently rebranded as Africa Corps — has tapped into strong anti-Western sentiment to form military and security ties with states across central and west Africa, largely replacing unpopular and outdated U.S. and French security projects in the area. Meanwhile, China continues to promote its Belt and Road Initiative globally, connecting with countries across the world, claiming to meet their economic demands and support development projects. China and Russia's positions against the Israeli occupation of Palestine have only hardened in recent months.Both China and Russia are also leading members of BRICS, in which they are in a de facto coalition with leading middle powers of the Global South looking to plug existing and major gaps in the current international system as well as prominently project their voice on the global stage.Washington's isolation on Palestine may not have mattered much if we were still in a unipolar world. But with relative power slowly diffusing away from Washington, the United States may benefit from shifting its policies and bridging its position with the rest of the world on the highly emotive issue of Palestine that is causing enormous human suffering and already beginning to destabilize the wider region.

For a conflict discussed in starkly moralistic terms, the ways the Ukraine war is talked about by its most enthusiastic Western supporters can be remarkably cynical about the human carnage involved. "Aiding Ukraine, giving the money to Ukraine is the cheapest possible way for the U.S. to enhance its security," Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of the Economist, recently told the Daily Show's Jon Stewart. "The fighting is being done by the Ukrainians, they're the people who are being killed." This view is not unique to Beddoes. It's been widely expressed by those most in favor of an open-ended, prolonged war and most against the kind of peace negotiations that would shorten it. "Four months into this thing, I like the structural path we're on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person," said Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) early into the war, accidentally voicing what the war's critics have often said about the war — that the U.S. will fight it "to the last Ukrainian." Later, Graham called it the "best money we've ever spent." "It is a relatively modest amount that we are contributing without being asked to risk life and limb," Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told the Associated Press last year. "The Ukrainians are willing to fight the fight for us if the West will give them the provisions. It's a pretty good deal." "I call that a bargain," North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has said about the war funding, pointing to the damage Ukrainian forces had inflicted on the Russian military. "No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine. We're rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that," U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) remarked.Americans "should be satisfied that we're getting our money's worth on our Ukraine investment," wrote Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), because "for less than 3 percent of our nation's military budget, we've enabled Ukraine to degrade Russia's military strength by half," and "all without a single American service woman or man injured or lost." But politicians aren't the only armchair warriors who look at the enormous death and destruction suffered by Ukraine by prolonging the war as akin to a brilliant business decision. Hawkish think tanks have made similar arguments. "When viewed from a bang-per-buck perspective, U.S. and Western support for Ukraine is an incredibly cost-effective investment," Timothy Garten Ashe wrote for the weapons maker-funded Center for European Policy Analysis. "Support for Ukraine remains a bargain for American national security," wrote Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia Peter Rough. "For about 5 percent of total U.S. defense spending over the past 20 months, Ukraine has badly degraded Russia, one of the United States' top adversaries, without shedding a single drop of American blood." And major U.S. newspapers have likewise published similar perspectives. "We have a determined partner in Ukraine that is willing to bear the consequences of war so that we do not have to do so ourselves in the future," former top George W. Bush officials Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates celebrated in the pages of the Washington Post. "For all the aid we've given Ukraine, we are the true beneficiaries in the relationship, and they the true benefactors," wrote Bret Stephens at the New York Times, pointing to the fact that NATO is paying in only money, while "Ukrainians are counting their costs in lives and limbs lost." What's distasteful about this is not just the flippant way it treats the unimaginable scale of loss of life, permanent disability and emerging long-term crises being experienced by Ukrainians — as mere abacus beads to be moved around in a cost-benefit analysis centered on the United States and its NATO allies. It's also the fact that, far from being "willing," "determined" and ready to "fight to the last person," many Ukrainians have demonstrated that they do not want to risk their lives in this war — a share of the population that is getting larger and more vocal the longer the war has gone on. Since the start of the war, when many fleeing Ukrainian men were stopped at the border and ordered to return to potentially fight, thousands of Ukrainians have defied the government's ban on men aged between 18 and 60 leaving the country — to the point of spending large sums of money and even risking their lives to get out. Many hunkered down in their homes to dodge enlistment officers, while tens of thousands signed a petition opposing increasingly aggressive conscription practices. Early last year, Ukraine's parliament upped the punishment for desertion, which soldiers have this year admitted is still a growing problem. By November 2023, the BBC determined that a total of nearly 20,000 Ukrainian men had fled the country to avoid being drafted, while the State Border Service revealed a month later that more than 16,500 had been stopped from leaving. At one point, the country's law enforcement uncovered a massive scheme across nearly a dozen regions that gave out falsified medical certificates declaring someone unfit for military service in return for as much as $10,000. This phenomenon has only intensified as Kyiv has dramatically expanded its conscription plans to make up its disadvantage in manpower, including proposals for lowering the draft age and creating a central database of potential recruits, all while resorting to more aggressive drafting tactics and recruiting increasingly older and less healthy men. These plans have engendered massive opposition, with protests by soldiers' families that have taken place around the country since last year calling for a cap on the length of military service continuing and intensifying; earlier this month. One hundred women blocked a road and mistakenly attacked another woman due to rumors of draft officials coming to take the village's men away. "I don't see the 500,000 more people ready to die," admitted a former Ukrainian government minister and current army captain last November. It increasingly appears that many of those who are most enthusiastic to keep the war going and avoid a negotiated end aren't, as we keep being told, the Ukrainians who are most likely to be killed or wounded in the fighting. Instead they are politicians and commentators far, far away from the front line in other countries who view its attendant death and destruction as akin to a board game — or, in their words, as a "good deal," a "bargain," and a satisfying "investment" for their own countries.In other words, it looks increasingly like all too many other U.S.-led wars.

Western countries have asserted since the beginning of hostilities in Ukraine that they would use sanctions as a critical tool to suppress Russia's economy and sever its ability to trade with the rest of the world. They have kept their promise by continually adding to the number of sanctions as Russia's war in Ukraine has stretched into it second year.As of January 2024, the Russian Federation was subject to over 28,000 sanctions and the majority of these occurred after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Approximately 16,000 of these sanctions were imposed against individuals, while nearly 10,000 were imposed against companies and 3,200 against institutions. Additionally, there have been sectoral sanctions such as general trade embargoes on gas and oil. The EU and the U.S. have imposed most of these but countries like Japan, South Korea and Switzerland have also participated. While these sanctions intended to hamper Russia's war effort and foment domestic economic and political instability, most have not achieved these objectives. Russia has maintained its military activities in Ukraine while recent IMF forecasts predict growth of 2.6 percent in 2024 — at a time when many EU countries are heading toward recession amidst significant political uncertainty in 2024 — a pivotal election year in many Western democracies.Perhaps the greatest achievement has been reinforcing Russia's trade pivot to the East and the Global South and away from the European Union. As a result, Russia's trade turnover reached $530.2 billion in the first nine months of 2023. Exports reached $316.9 billion, while imports reached $213.3 billion. Russian exports to Asian countries reached $226.6 billion, an increase of 10.3% year on year, while imports amounted to $139.7 billion, increasing 39.5%. China accounted for $105 billion during the same time period compared to $78 billion for all of 2021. And Chinese imports of fuels were $52.7 billion in 2021 compared to $77.0 billion in the first nine months of 2023. China comprised $81.8 billion in imports to Russia (almost 40%) in the first nine months of 2023 while imports were 54.5 billion in all of 2021. During that same time, Russia's exports to India were $52 billion versus $8 billion for 2021. Indian imports of Russian fuel increased from $4 billion in all of 2021 to $46 billion during the first nine months of 2023.In contrast, Russian exports to the EU were $47 billion in the first nine months of 2023, a significant decrease from $192.8 billion in all of 2021. Russian imports from the EU sunk below $32 billion in the first nine months in 2023 from $81 billion just 21 months earlier. Fuel imports from Russia to the EU collapsed from $120 billion in 2021 to less than $27 billion in the first 9 months of 2023. Lastly, sanctions greatly reduced the share of imports from Russia from 28% in 2021 to 3% in 2023.Building a new trade frameworkThe trade numbers clearly depict the momentous redirection in Russian trade flows during the nearly two years since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But they don't reflect the geopolitical activities underpinning this seismic change nor do they indicate recent initiatives that the Russian government has undertaken to solidify the direction of trade. In this respect, Russia has actively engaged in a wide array of diplomatic activities, ranging from bilateral talks with countries like India and Iran to efforts to expand the membership and geopolitical reach of the BRICS and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU).Late last year, India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met in Moscow to discuss issues concerning the usual political, defense, and cultural partnerships. They also discussed more seriously, economic cooperation issues intended to buttress the strong growth in Russia-India trade that has occurred since 2022. The focus of these economic discussions centered on logistics, particularly those related to the establishment of the North-South International Transport Corridor (INSTC). All three segments of the corridor are now functional. These include the Western route (Russia-Azerbaijan-Iran-India), the Middle route (Russia-Iran-India) and the Eastern route (Russia-Central Asia-Iran-India). Russia hopes the increased use of the corridor will improve the infrastructure in Caspian ports and the ability to improve the status of Astrakhan and Makhachkala as transport hubs. Now that the Vladivostok-Chennai Sea route or Eastern Maritime Corridor (EMC) is also operational, India and Russia will have a realistic opportunity to elevate economic cooperation going forward and this will only bolster bilateral relations.The corridor is beneficial to India as well, both economically and geopolitically. It reflects the Indian elite's desire for viable alternatives to China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). India is also confident the corridor will provide greater access to Central Asia bypassing Pakistan and continue to strengthen its economic ties with Iran and Russia. Another way that Russia is seeking to enhance regional trade is through the EEU. On December 25, EEU leaders met and signed an agreement with Iran. The agreement marked the end of two years of negotiations and will come into force after the ratification by the national parliaments. The Iran-EEU Free Trade Agreement eliminates tariffs of 87% of traded goods between the parties. It represents Iran's most extensive trade deal to date and it's an important deal for Russia as it solidifies another trade partner and underscores its leading role in the trade group and in Central Asia's economic development. Finally, in January 2024 the BRICS announced the expansion of the group by five new members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The new membership will increase total BRICS GDP to $28.5 trillion or 28.1% of global output, compared to the G7 countries' 43.2% of global output. While the expansion of BRICS is notable from an economic perspective, it's more meaningful in a geopolitical context. The addition of Middle Eastern and more African countries gives the group a larger presence along key shipping and trade routes. It also increases the BRICS share of global oil production to 43% and 25% of exports. It's also important to note that BRICS accounts for 72% of global rare earth elements, which are key to high-tech weapons and consumer goods, including circuit boards and mobile phones.While many in the West only pay attention to the rhetoric about Russia's weak and collapsing economy and its economic isolation, Western policymakers need to follow closely Russia's continued initiatives in the geopolitical sphere. Russia's economic engagement may be complicated due to the joining of some difficult geopolitical realities, but the evolving framework has the potential to disrupt the traditional "rules-based global order" if not undermine it. Therefore, a policy of constructive and unrestricted engagement in trade and economic relations on a global scale needs to be a key tool of commercial diplomacy for Western policymakers going forward. This would include greater restraint from the heavy-handed sanctions policies that only reduce Western access to key goods and lead to higher global inflation, the brunt of which is borne by the middle- and lower-class consumer.

Out of several countries in the coup-stricken African Sahel slated to hold elections this year, Senegal looked like the only one that might escape the threat of voter suppression, rigging, or other corrupt practices.But this is no more the case as a sudden turn of events last week plunged the West African nation into an unprecedented constitutional crisis, which pundits argue could lead anywhere at this point, from an uneasy elite pact to a total state collapse. On February 3, the eve of the official presidential campaign, Senegal's President Macky Sall announced a postponement of the election, citing dispute over the candidate list. His decision to postpone came weeks after a controversy erupted over the exclusion of opposition candidates from the ballot. The opposition Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS), whose candidate Karim Wade was among those excluded by the Constitutional Council from running in the election for possessing a dual French-Senegalese citizenship, had earlier filed a formal request to postpone the vote. Also excluded is the opposition PASTEF's popular leader Ousmane Sonko, who opposed Sall in 2019 and has been behind bars since last year for immoral behavior and plotting an insurrection. His candidacy in the 2024 election was rejected last month by the Constitutional Council in a move critics say was targeted at eliminating the most potent obstacle to Sall's preferred candidate, Prime Minister Amadou Ba, running and winning the forthcoming elections. Bassirou Diomaye Faye, Sonko's substitute candidate, is also in jail on charges of contempt of court, defamation, and acts likely to compromise public peace.OutrageNever before has Senegal postponed a presidential election. Ordinary Senegalese are shocked by the strange turn of events in part due to the sense of security created by Sall's decision in July last year not to run for a third term."I feel sad for Senegal, a beautiful and peaceful country always considered as an example of democracy and for the Senegalese people who fought in 2011 in the name of democracy so that the current President Macky Sall could be elected," Awa Diouf, a Senegalese activist, told RS. Sall has repeated his stance not to run for a third term, but the opposition doesn't believe him, accusing Sall of premeditated plans to cling to power or to force his preferred candidate on the people. After the decision, protests resurfaced in the country's capital Dakar reminiscent of scenes of deadly clashes with police that were once a fixture of life from 2021 to 2023. One leading opposition politician was arrested in the renewed disturbance on Feb. 4, as police fired tear gas to disperse angry protesters amidst a growing crackdown which has seen a private television station, Walf TV, suspended for 'inciting violence' and internet cut. The crisis continued into last week at the country's parliament where a bill seeking to fix a new date for the elections and extend Sall's tenure led to a row with some opposition MPs forcibly removed by police clad in riot gear. At the end of proceedings, the parliament, which is dominated by the ruling coalition, Benno Bokk Yakaar (which includes President Sall's Alliance for the Republic party) voted for a 10-month extension of the election until December 15. Sall's term was originally meant to lapse in early April. In response, activists are once again mobilizing for new protests and many fear for more violent crackdowns.A diplomatic solutionThese developments, which occurred on the heels of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's tour of the region last month, have attracted widespread condemnation. The West African bloc, ECOWAS, whose credibility has taken a beating over its handling of a string of coups in the region, failed to condemn the postponement.In sharp contrast, a statement by the U.S. State Department was more decisive in describing the poll's postponement as a move that runs "contrary to Senegal's strong democratic tradition," while also calling the National Assembly's vote illegitimate, "given the conditions under which it took place." The U.S. also condemned the attacks on press freedom and the severing of internet communications in the country. "The U.S. is a strong all round partner with Senegal and is the leading provider of development assistance valued at $238 million per year," Dr. Joseph Siegle of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies noted to RS. Besides the significant economic ties and trade, it is in the area of regional security that Senegal is most important for the United States. As one of the most stable democracies in Africa and a model for religious and ethnic tolerance, Senegal has been a longtime partner of the U.S. in promoting peace and security in Africa. "[Senegal's] importance has become even more outsized in the wake of recent coups and military regimes in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Guinea," Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, a research analyst with the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD-West Africa) explained. Although an outlier in the region's anti-democratic trends, this does not mean Senegal's democracy has been free of turmoil. For instance, out of four Presidents that have governed Senegal since it gained independence from France in 1960, only two have taken office in peaceful transfers of power — the first of which occurred in 2000. In 2012, Sall was only elected following a period of widespread protests against his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade's attempt to undemocratically cling to power. After 12 years at the helm of the country, critics now accuse Sall of the same crimes as Wade's, which include eroding the country's democratic credentials through a pattern of jailing political opponents under spurious charges and bending Senegal's justice system to his will. What is most significant, however, is that even in the midst of chaos "the struggle of the Senegalese people always takes place within the framework of institutions as much as peaceful and unarmed resistance," activist Louise M. Faye told RS. The hope is that today's disagreements won't be litigated in a coup like Senegal's Sahelian neighbors.By and large, experts believe what is likely is an uneasy pact within the elite, which has been brought about as a result of rising opposition to conventional politics. "The US [needs to start] talking directly to all of the relevant Senegalese actors as well as ECOWAS to navigate a stable, constitutionally-based, democratic outcome," Siegle explained. The Biden administration's playbook for the continent, U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, mandates Washington to "stem the recent tide of authoritarianism and military takeovers by working with allies and partners in the region to respond to democratic backsliding and human rights abuses."While doing this, however, Washington needs to be mindful that recent anti-French sentiment has played into Russia's plans to expand its influence in the region. "While that does not necessarily mean direct anti-American perceptions, it will also need to ensure it can retain backchannels to the different factions if it wants to diplomatically intervene. Washington's important role will be to maintain pressure on Dakar to ensure a fair and transparent review process, or national dialogue as President Sall has put it, ahead of the elections," Adekaiyaoja added.

Momentum in Washington to cut or eliminate U.S. funding for a United Nations agency that aids Palestinians is moving forward almost entirely unchecked. But it's based on unproven allegations — largely uncritically amplified by U.S. media — that the agency's staff had links to Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The allegations are contained in an Israeli government dossier claiming that 13 employees (one of which was not identified), out of a total of 13,000, at the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) either took part or assisted in the Hamas-led atrocities. Israel notified UNRWA of the allegations early last month and authorities at the U.N. agency immediately fired the 12 employees without conducting an investigation. News of the allegations broke soon thereafter which opened the floodgates of knee-jerk reactions, including donor countries pausing their funding for UNRWA — which could result in millions of Palestinians in Gaza stranded without aid amid a humanitarian crisis —and efforts in Washington to cut UNRWA's funding entirely and forever.Meanwhile, these debates have been buttressed by inaccurate media coverage of Israel's allegations. More specifically, many major U.S. news outlets have been leaving out one key detail when reporting on the Israeli dossier: while the Israelis make a number of claims and accusations that they say are based on intelligence and other source data, the document itself contains no direct evidence that these 12 identified UNRWA employees participated in or assisted the Oct. 7 attack. Some outlets at least tried to make this point clear in wider stories or segments on the saga. For example, the Associated Press has noted that the Israelis provided no evidence. CBS News's Debora Patta noted on the network's Nightly News program on January 29 that in the document, "Israel accuses 12 UNRWA employees of being involved in the October 7 Hamas attack, including the kidnapping of Israeli citizens," adding, "But they have yet to provide evidence substantiating these claims."CNN reported that the network "has not seen the intelligence that underlies the summary of allegations" and that that summary "does not provide evidence to support its claims." CNN anchor Anna Coren asked Ophir Falk, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu, to provide evidence — which he could not — and wondered why the alleged perpetrators haven't been arrested. "Well the first step is for them to be fired," Falk said. Outside of the AP, CBS, and CNN, major U.S. media reporting on this issue has largely accepted the Israeli claims or have even gone further as to advance the Israeli narrative on UNRWA. The New York Times, for example, has published several stories on the UNRWA saga, and none of them have mentioned that the Israeli dossier has no specific evidence (it's probably worth noting here that one of the reporters covering this issue for the Times once served in the Israeli Defense Forces).The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy article giving credence to the Israeli allegations and in another, reported that the dossier "is the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the UNRWA employees and militants." Another Journal article said the allegations are "a blow" to UNRWA without telling readers the dossier provides no evidence. Meanwhile, ABC World News Tonight's report on the dossier not only failed to tell its viewers it contains no specific evidence, but it went a step further reporting that "the U.N. has not denied the claims."Others like NBC Nightly News and the Washington Post provided lengthy coverage of the Israeli allegations and mention only in passing that the outlets have not independently verified the claims. Conversely, some non-traditional media outlets have been more forceful in their coverage of the dossier, making the lack of evidence a key feature of their reporting. For example, Breaking Points' Krystal Ball this week took the Israeli claims to task. "It is literally just a[n] evidence-free list of allegations, …no actual evidence is provided," she said, adding, "Now maybe they did participate and maybe they didn't. I can tell you there is definitely not enough that has been provided to say anything about this. Again, zero evidence provided."Most of the mainstream reports also omit key contextual information, like for example, that UNRWA routinely provides the Israeli government with a list of the names of its employees, or that many on the right in Israel, and their allies in the United States, have been trying to shut down UNRWA for decades because they believe the U.N. agency legitimizes Palestinians' claims to land they say was stolen by Israel. "There has been a long standing aim for Republicans and some Democrats in Congress to defund UNRWA long before Oct. 7, as they see the agency as responsible for enabling the right of return to be an ever growing final status issue," Joel Braunold, managing director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, told RS. Indeed, the Biden administration worked with Senate leaders this week on an aid bill that would bar any funding from going to UNRWA and prevent any funding going to the agency that has already been allocated to it. And the House is now considering a bill that would permanently block U.S. funds to UNRWA."While the bipartisan consensus is not where the House is currently, the Overton window has shifted closer to those wishing for congressional cut off to the agency," Braunold said. Meanwhile, UNRWA says it will run out of money by the end of February if donor countries like the United States continue to withhold their funding. Top U.N. officials are pleading with donors to keep the agency funded. "Our humanitarian operation, on which 2 million people depend as a lifeline in Gaza, is collapsing," UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillipe Lazzarini said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter. "Palestinians in Gaza did not need this additional collective punishment."Former UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness is asking wealthy countries in the region to underwrite the aid agency should its funding collapse at the end of the month. "Some of the most desperate people in the Middle East are now facing starvation, they're facing famine, and the Arab states need to step up to the plate," he said.It appears that the Biden administration agrees with that sentiment. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby even suggested recently that the administration would support UNRWA even if a formal investigation finds that the 12 employees assisted Hamas's attack. "I do think it's important to remember that UNRWA does important work across the region, certainly in Gaza," he said last week on NBC's Today Show. "They have helped save thousands of lives and we shouldn't impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the terrible allegations lobbied against just a small number of their employees."

As the United States plunges ever deeper into a fresh Middle East conflagration — this time fighting Iran-backed non-state actors, including Yemen's Houthis and Shiite resistance groups in Syria and Iraq — its closest allies from the EU and NATO stand divided.
These divisions reflect a long-standing failure of the EU member states and institutions to speak with "one voice" on the Middle East.
When the U.S. called for an international coalition to stop the Yemen-based Houthi militias attacks on the international shipping in the Red Sea, only a few European nations signed the joint statement: the UK, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Italy. Of that initial group, only Britain, Denmark, Netherlands, plus Greece joined as the European contingent of "Operation Prosperity Guardian."
Others like France, while condemning the Houthi attacks, expressed preference for an autonomous, European-led operation. Still others, like Spain, were skeptical of any involvement in any anti-Houthi action whatsoever.
So far, Britain has been the only navy to engage in actual strikes against the Houthis (so far, with limited success), as part of the U.S.-led operation. Meanwhile, EU defense ministers agreed to launch the EU-led "Operation Aspides" to help guarantee free navigation and the safety of commercial traffic — initially, under Italian command.
Securing maritime freedom is considered vital, as approximately 40% of EU trade with Asian and Middle Eastern countries passes through the Red Sea. But the precise mandate and rules of engagement for this mission remain unclear. The EU foreign ministers are supposed to decide on those questions at their meeting on February 19. The EU high representative for foreign affairs Josep Borrell, however, seems to have ruled out anything beyond defensive actions to protect ships and intercept the Houthi attacks, including taking part in U.S.-UK-led strikes against the Houthis or conducting their own offensive strikes.
Once the EU operation is set in motion, however, that distinction might become blurred. In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, a top Houthi leader, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, declared that Italy will "become a target" if it participates in attacks on the group. That prompted a swift response from Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who insisted that Rome "will not be intimidated by the Houthi threats." Yet he was also careful to emphasize the planned mission's defensive nature. And it is notable that neither Italy nor the EU as a whole have followed Washington's lead in designating the Houthis as a terrorist organization.Reactions to the U.S. strikes against Iran's allies in Syria and Iraq — in response to the deaths of three U.S. troops caused by a drone attack on Jan. 29 — present a similarly fragmented picture. Borrell assessed those strikes as a "domino effect" resulting from the Israel-Hamas war. He called on "everybody should try to avoid that the situation becomes explosive." Britain, predictably, supported Washington's "right to respond to attacks" while condemning "Iran's destabilizing activity throughout the region."
Meanwhile, Poland's hawkish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski emphasized that "Iran's proxies have played with fire for months and years, and it's now burning them." The European Parliament, meanwhile, in its resolution on the situation in Gaza adopted in mid-January, pointed to Iran's "aggressive actions and use of proxies as a means of deliberately destabilizing the region" as the principal cause of the escalation.
The rhetoric aside, there is no sign so far that the EU is gearing up to join the U.S. conflict with the Iran-backed "forces in Syria and Iraq, either militarily or through diplomatic support. There are good reasons behind such restraint: the open-ended nature of the U.S. commitment increases the risks of a direct U.S.–Iran clash. That, in turn, could incentivize Iran to move aggressively to obtain a nuclear weapon as an ultimate deterrent as it's already a de-facto nuclear threshold state.
Such a step would ruin for good any prospects for a nuclear agreement with Iran, a policy still promoted by the EU. In fact, as recently as mid-January, Enrique Mora, the political director of the European External Action Service, discussed the nuclear file with the Iranian chief negotiator Bagheri-Kani at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Also, increased instability in Iraq and Syria and a decimation of the Shiite militias there could also create conditions for a revival of ISIS, their sworn enemies, who have committed atrocities on European soil as well as across the Middle East and beyond. EU officials have been warning about the growing risks of terrorism in Europe as a spillover from the war in Gaza for some time now.
And that brings us back to the root cause of the European divisions on the Houthis, Syria, Iraq and Iran: diverging perspectives on Israel's campaign in Gaza. While all EU member states strongly condemned Hamas' pogrom, their reactions belie different priorities. Some countries, such as Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany, are closely aligned with Israel and therefore, privilege Israel's right to self-defense. However, others like Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Slovenia, and, to some extent, France, see the war in Gaza and the Israel-Palestine conflict more generally as a principal cause of the expanding mayhem in the Middle East. They find it increasingly problematic to compartmentalize the Gaza carnage, Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and the growing tensions between the U.S. and Iran-backed Shiite groups in Syria and Iraq.
They think that taking a more forceful action against the "resistance front" would reduce the pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.
It is unlikely that the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) imposing a number of measures on Israel on its conduct of war in Gaza will bridge the intra-European differences, despite the EU's professed commitment to international law. The EU emphasized that the ICJ rulings are binding and have to be implemented "fully, immediately and effectively."
Predictably, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Slovenia issued statements to the same effect. Germany, despite its generally pro-Israeli position, joined them. France supported the ruling but failed to call for its implementation. The real actions, post-ICJ ruling, however, reflect the remaining deep divisions: a number of countries announced that they will suspend the funding of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the principal humanitarian actor in Palestine, following the accusations against some of its workers for links with Hamas. Those include Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Romania and the Baltic states.
Others, like France and Germany, said they'll wait for the results of the investigations on those alleged Hamas links, and still others, like Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, Spain and Slovenia, pledged to continue the funding. Borrell, the EU's top diplomat, stressed that defunding UNRWA "would amount to collective punishment" of Palestinian civilians. To underscore the divisions further, the EU still failed to agree on sanctions against the violent Israeli settlers, due to the opposition from Hungary and Czech Republic, even though the U.S. has already announced that it will take that step.
It is, therefore, fair to expect that the EU and its member states will continue to muddle through, agreeing only on the lowest common denominator, further hobbling their capacity to act as relevant actors in the Middle East.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban agreed to a funding plan for Ukraine on Thursday, allowing the European Union to clear the final hurdle on its $54 billion aid package that will run through 2027. Orban, who had pushed for an annual review of the fund so that he would have the opportunity to veto additional aid each year, had been the sole holdout on the package since it was introduced last December.. It is unclear what, if any, material concessions Orban received before agreeing to the new package. The Financial Times earlier this week reported that Brussels had itself drawn up a plan to "sabotage" Budapest's economy if it vetoed the aid package. "All 27 leaders agreed on an additional €50 billion support package for Ukraine within the EU budget. This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for #Ukraine," Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, wrote on the social media platform X. "EU is taking leadership & responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed, saying it was "very important" that the funding plan had been agreed to unanimously. "Continued EU financial support for Ukraine will strengthen long-term economic and financial stability, which is no less important than military assistance and sanctions pressure on Russia," Zelensky wrote on X. This development comes at a precarious time for Ukraine, as the stalling of aid from Europe and the United States had left it on the verge of an economic crisis. While the support from Brussels is welcome news, new aid from Washington remains tied up in Congress. "The only way to preserve macroeconomic stability is support from the United States," Ukraine's finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko told the New York Times this week. The fate of President Joe Biden's national security supplemental request, which contains $60 billion for Kyiv remains unclear. Negotiations regarding the border security policy that is included in the bill have been ongoing for weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Thursday that the text of the bill is expected to be finalized by Sunday, and that the legislation will be brought to a vote no later than next Wednesday. Whether or not it makes its way through the Senate, the bill faces even longer odds in the Republican-led House.NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg traveled to Washington this week to try to convince notable skeptics of continuing aid to Ukraine. He met with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) and gave a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Stoltenberg struck a positive tone about his visit, saying that he was optimistic that Washington would pass another tranche of aid."I expect that the United States will find a way to support Ukraine, because this is in U.S. national security interests to ensure that President Putin doesn't win and that Ukraine prevails," Stoltenberg told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday. He also released a joint statement with Johnson saying that they had "addressed the importance of sending a clear, decisive message to President Putin that he will not win his war of aggression in Ukraine."But, as RS's Connor Echols explained this week, the secretary general's efforts are up against serious roadblocks. "[Stoltenberg's arguments are] unlikely to satisfy concerns from budget hawks and restrainers, who fear the possibility of open-ended conflict with sky-high cost," Echols wrote. "But, as Ukraine's military capacity continues to degrade, only time will tell if Stoltenberg's last-ditch effort proved persuasive."In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— The U.S. and Germany are pushing back at an attempt from other NATO members — namely Poland and the Baltic countries — to formally invite Ukraine to join the alliance during an upcoming summit this July, according to Foreign Policy. "[P]roponents of this view believe that bringing Ukraine into NATO sooner rather than later will be cheaper in the long run than the current Western strategy of funneling arms and munitions to Ukraine in perpetuity while keeping NATO membership on the back burner," according to the report. "Letting Ukraine into NATO too soon, however, particularly as large swaths of its territory are still occupied by Russian forces, could trigger a full-scale NATO-Russia conflict, given the 31-member alliance's bedrock collective defense clause that calls for all NATO countries to defend any one country that has been attacked. — Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis said that there may be a window for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine at the end of 2024, as both sides continue to suffer from war fatigue. "I think toward the end of this year, probably after the U.S. elections, we've got a moment for potential negotiation," Stravridis said, according to The Hill. He also laid out the broad parameters of what such a deal could look like, saying that the conflict will end "like the Korean War, meaning that Russia will probably still have control of some portion of Ukraine, Crimea, the land bridge to Russia. "On the other hand, I see Ukraine coming into NATO," he continued "I think the outline of that deal will probably become more clear as this year goes on."— Russia and Ukraine completed another round of prisoner exchanges on Wednesday. The exact figures were disputed, with the Russian defense ministry saying that each side had released 195 prisoners, while Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said that it had received 207 prisoners . This was the first prisoner exchange since a plane carrying a reported 65 Ukrainian POWs crashed while heading to a similar swap last week. Moscow accused Kyiv of shooting down the plane, calling it "a terrorist act." Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. —The Washington Post is confirming earlier reports that Zelensky is planning to fire top military commander Valery Zaluzhny at some point in the near future. "Zaluzhny's popularity — both within the military and among ordinary citizens — makes his removal a political gamble for Zelensky. It also poses strategic risks at a time when Russia has intensified its attacks and Western security assistance for Kyiv has slowed," according to the Post report. "The general has built strong rapport with his Western counterparts and has often been able to advocate directly for certain materiel and seek counsel on battlefield strategy." However, friction between the two men has continued to grow following last summer's failed counteroffensive and ongoing disagreements over how many more soldiers Kyiv will need to mobilize this year.U.S. State Department news:In a Wednesday press briefing, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller denied reports that Washington was working behind the scenes to delay Ukraine's path to joining NATO."Those reports are incorrect," Miller said. "You've heard the President himself as well as the Secretary say it a number of times, that Ukraine will be a member of NATO."

In the past week, a pair of major stories have blown the doors off the dominant narrative about the Ukraine war, opening the possibility that a ceasefire — or even a peace deal — may be more achievable than previously thought.
The first comes from Politico, which reported Wednesday that American and European officials are "quietly shifting their focus from supporting Ukraine's goal of total victory over Russia to improving its position in an eventual negotiation to end the war."
The U.S. and Europe, according to Politico's sources, have already started to push Ukraine to shift toward defensive operations following a failed counteroffensive earlier this year — a shift that would focus on giving Kyiv a strong hand at the negotiating table.
The report suggests that President Joe Biden's recent comments about Ukraine having won "an enormous victory already" could be the first step in an effort to shift the narrative around eventual concessions. If the reporting is true, then the West is far more open to accepting the idea of territorial concessions in Ukraine than previously thought.
But, as Politico notes, a move toward a pro-negotiation posture will face substantial political difficulties given the Biden administration's previous insistence that it will defend Ukraine "as long as it takes" to achieve Kyiv's key aim of removing Russian troops from the entirety of Ukraine, including Crimea.
And, despite public pronouncements from the Kremlin that it's ready for talks, Ukraine and its strongest Western backers have long argued that they see no hope for negotiation until Russian President Vladimir Putin is removed from power. His goal, they argue, is nothing short of the full subjugation of Ukraine, and a negotiated peace would represent Chamberlain-style appeasement.
That brings us to the second story, which the New York Times (somewhat inexplicably) published on the Saturday before Christmas. Putin, the Times reports, has been signaling since at least September that he is ready for a ceasefire along the current lines in Ukraine.
A "senior international official" told the Times that Putin's public comments about the war are mostly bluster and that the Russian leader has shown consistent interest in pausing the war on current lines. A former Russian official confirmed that the Kremlin is content to stop the fighting as it currently stands but added that Putin is "not willing to retreat one meter."
Moscow's willingness to enter a ceasefire agreement is based on its view that average Russians, despite supporting the war effort in principle, would happily accept a "victory" that falls short of some of the Kremlin's professed aims, the Times reported.
Notably, this openness to talks is nothing new. According to the Times, Putin first signaled his interest in a ceasefire back in the fall of 2022, when a Ukrainian counteroffensive swept Russian troops back to the lines that have more or less held since. The revelation suggests that the Biden administration's long standing argument that there is no partner for peace in Moscow is, at best, misleading.
It also raises questions about what Mark Milley, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knew when he argued in December 2022 that the war would likely not end in a decisive military victory for either side and that the time appeared ripe for a negotiated peace. Was this a clever response to Putin's overtures? The possibility is hard to ignore.
Taken together, these stories suggest that an opportunity is opening to pursue talks, whether quietly or in a more public forum, to bring this brutal war to an end after nearly two years of fighting. They are also a reminder of a common theme in modern war: No matter how long or hard you fight, you almost never achieve all of your stated goals.
Of course, neither of these stories bears on the thinking of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has his own domestic issues to deal with and promises to keep. Of particular importance is his commitment to joining NATO, a move that Putin had sought to block by invading in the first place.
And, while Russians may be ready for an end to the war, the Ukrainian public has made clear its opposition to losing any territory. Russia's invasion has left Ukrainians so frustrated that they've even decided to move Christmas from January 7, the Russian Orthodox date, to December 25.
Just a few days ago, a majority of Ukrainians celebrated their first Christmas in December. "It's historical justice," a Ukrainian soldier told AP News. "We need to move forward not only with the world but also with the traditions of our country and overcome the imperial remnants we had."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— The blockade of Poland-Ukraine border crossings by Polish truckers could finally be coming to an end, according to Reuters, which reported Wednesday that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is making progress in his efforts to settle the dispute. The main issue is the truckers' demand that the European Union reinstitute a system of permits for Ukrainian trucks entering European territory that was suspended due to Russia's invasion and blockade of Black Sea ports. Though the current regulations will likely stay in force until at least June, the recent election of Tusk — a former president of the European Council — has reportedly facilitated talks to end the blockade, which some officials now say could be over before the new year.
— Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar met with Putin on Wednesday during a multi-day trip to Moscow, with talks focused on building a multipolar world order, according to the New York Times. Jaishankar's visit highlights India's unique place in international politics as a powerful state with strong ties to both Russia and the West. The Ukraine war was also reportedly on the agenda, though it is unclear if the diplomat broached the possibility of peace talks.
— Russia threatened a harsh response if the West follows through on its plans to seize Russian Central Bank assets stored in the United States, according to the Guardian. Among the options for retaliation are seizures of Western assets under Russian control or even a full breakdown in relations between Washington and Moscow.
— The Kremlin lashed out at U.S. claims that Russia rejected a prisoner swap, arguing that talks are "extremely delicate" and that a resolution to the issue could be "hampered by being actively discussed in public," according to Reuters. The comments confirm that talks are ongoing to secure the release of ex-Marine Paul Whelan and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, both of whom the U.S. government considers wrongfully detained. The U.S. envoy for hostage negotiations told PBS that the U.S. is in frequent contact with both men and their families, adding that he hopes to "get them both at the same time."
U.S. State Department news:The State Department did not hold a press briefing this week.