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The Korean War ended more than 70 years ago, and a tense peace has reigned ever since on the Korean peninsula. The two Koreas have exchanged artillery fire, battled in the economic and diplomatic arenas, and even covertly dispatched spies to each other's territory. But the threats of a resumption of conflict, disproportionately coming from North Korea in recent years, have been rhetorical. The firepower of the South Korean military, backed by a U.S. defense pact, has deterred Pyongyang; the sheer number of soldiers in the North Korean army, backed by a small but operational nuclear arsenal, has deterred Seoul.But borders don't seem quite as inviolable as they once did. Russia has invaded Ukraine, Israel has sent forces into Gaza, and even Venezuela recently seemed to contemplate an incursion into Guyana. The United States, meanwhile, has recently attacked various targets abroad, from the Houthis in the Red Sea to Iranian commanders in Syria.Against this geopolitical backdrop, are the latest threats emanating from Pyongyang still rhetorical?North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sounds more and more embattled and belligerent. In power since the death of his father at the end of 2011, he has been constrained by a hemorrhaging economy and uncompromising adversaries abroad. The growth rate of the North Korean economy wasn't too bad at the beginning of his tenure. Since 2017, however, the arrow has simply gone downward, with a devastating 4.1 percent contraction in 2018, followed by a further 4.5 percent decline during the pandemic year of 2020. International sanctions have made North Korea dangerously dependent on China for trade, which explains in part Kim Jong Un's current interest in covering his bets by improving relations with Russia.Meanwhile, the two leaders that promised some form of engagement with Pyongyang—South Korea's Moon Jae-in and Donald Trump—are no longer in office. South Korea's current government is very cool toward engagement. Joe Biden, focused on a raft of other foreign policy challenges from Ukraine to Gaza, has not expressed much interest in expending political capital on a risky venture like negotiating with Pyongyang.Washington's failure to remain engaged with North Korea is the primary reason that longtime North Korea watchers Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hecker believe that Kim Jong Un has abandoned the default approach of more-or-less peaceful coexistence in favor of launching an attack against South Korea. In some ways, Kim is following the logic of Hamas, an illiberal force also in charge of a largely failed entity. Kim, too, perceives his adversaries as complacent, uninterested in any real negotiations, and vulnerable to a surprise attack. Presiding over an "open air prison" in Gaza, Hamas decided it had nothing left to lose. The North Korean leadership, in charge of an impoverished country with a horrific human rights record, may well have decided that it also has run out of options."The literature on surprise attacks should make us wary of the comfortable assumptions that resonate in Washington's echo chamber but might not have purchase in Pyongyang," Carlin and Hecker write in 38North. "This might seem like madness, but history suggests those who have convinced themselves that they have no good options left will take the view that even the most dangerous game is worth the candle."Carlin and Hecker don't have what the Israeli intelligence community possessed a year before the October 7 attacks, namely a detailed description of preparations to launch a surprise attack. They are relying on official North Korean statements eschewing reunification of the peninsula and a constitutional change that now identifies South Korea as an adversary rather than as tanil minjok ("one people, one blood"). This week, reports based on satellite images showed the destruction of Pyongyang's iconic Monument to the Three Charters for National Reunification, also called the Arch of Reunification, which Kim earlier referred to as "an eyesore," and called for its demolition.North Korea has also recently conducted a rash of missile tests, including one with a hypersonic warhead, as well as military drills near the maritime border that seem designed to provoke a response from the South. As sober analysts, Carlin and Hecker are not given to overstatement, so their warnings must be taken seriously.At the same time, the usual North Korean approach has been to make wild threats to get the attention of an otherwise indifferent U.S. government in order to pave the way for a fresh round of negotiations. Missile launches, nuclear tests, and promises to turn South Korea into a "sea of fire" have all, in the past, signaled not an interest in war but, perversely, a determination to restart peace talks with newly attentive adversaries. Also, Kim might be eyeing elections in South Korea where the pro-engagement opposition party is hoping to increase its parliamentary majority in the April elections and in the United States where Donald Trump is now running even or better against Joe Biden in the polls. Trump has long boasted of the 27 "love letters" he exchanged with the North Korean leader. Perhaps, Kim strategizes, the love could continue if Trump is reelected.Beware wishful thinking. Most analysts misinterpreted Vladimir Putin's warlike rhetoric and military preparations at the end of 2021 as merely a bid for Western attention and a better bargaining position at the negotiations table. Conventional notions about the deterrence of superior force—Israel, NATO, South Korea—may not apply in a world of increasingly volatile leaders and increasingly violated borders.Kim's closer relationship with Putin may well prove pivotal in North Korean calculations. Beijing has traditionally attempted to rein in Pyongyang because an overly provocative neighbor is not good for the Chinese economy in addition to boosting U.S. military presence in the region. Moscow, on the other hand, might be sending different messages, given Putin's more confrontational approach to the West. Just as the war in Gaza has proven a boon to the Kremlin, in that it has distracted attention and military hardware away from the European theater of operations, a conflict on the Korean peninsula would be an even greater draw on U.S. and European resources.In the late 1940s, Stalin was skeptical about the advantages of North Korea attacking South Korea. Kim Jong Un's grandfather, Kim Il Sung, eventually convinced Stalin otherwise and won Soviet support for the attack on the south that took place on June 25, 1950. Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, has indicated that he will visit North Korea "at an early date," his first trip there since 2000. Pundits and policymakers take note: Putin's visit might tip the balance one way or the other in North Korea's deliberations over war and peace.In the meantime, it's not too late for the United States and South Korea to offer Kim Jong Un an offramp from the conflict he has yet to initiate.

A mounting maritime dispute between China and the Philippines, underwritten by spiraling U.S.-China tensions, threatens to ignite the South China Sea. "China-Philippines relations are at a crossroads," Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned his Philippine counterpart Enrique Manalo in a call on Dec. 20 following a string of contentious encounters in the South China Sea, including allegations that Chinese boats rammed a Philippine coast guard ship and fired water cannons at a resupply vessel. China, Wang Yi told Manalo, will "definitely safeguard its rights" and "respond resolutely" if the Philippines "colludes with malicious external forces to continue causing trouble and chaos." Wang's warning comes on the heels of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr's announcement earlier this year that his government is mulling a tripartite security pact with the U.S. and Japan. The Philippines and its treaty ally, the United States, have repeatedly accused China of harassing Philippine vessels in the South China Sea. "We condemn, once again, China's latest unprovoked acts of coercion and dangerous maneuvers against a legitimate and routine Philippine rotation and resupply mission," said Jay Tarriela, spokesperson for the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea (NTF-WPS), on the heels of a confrontation earlier this month near the Second Thomas Shoal. "These actions reflect not only reckless disregard for the safety and livelihoods of Filipinos, but also for international law," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a Dec. 10 statement."The United States stands with our Philippine allies in the face of these dangerous and unlawful actions. We reaffirm that Article IV of the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft – including those of its Coast Guard – anywhere in the South China Sea," Miller added.China, which claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, previously accused Philippine coast guard ships of trespassing in what it describes as Chinese waters. A 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling found China's maritime claims in the South China Sea — commonly referred to as the nine-dash line — to be legally baseless. Beijing, which rejected the court ruling as "ill-founded" and "naturally null and void," has persisted in vigorously defending its expansive claims as part of a larger delimitation dispute also involving Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Taiwan. What exactly is at stake for China in its intensifying dispute with Manila and, by extension, its U.S. ally? "I think a lot of people in southeast Asia are mystified by why China is so pushy on this question," said Sarang Shidore, Director of the Global South Program at QI, adding that the unresolved issue of Taiwan's status is far more important to Beijing. "The South China Sea, these tiny features and islands, their economic potential is relatively small, there's fishing, but none of this rises to the level where you'd think China would be risking so much by pushing a very expansive claim," Shidore added. There are fishing and maritime disputes across the world, even including between allies, noted Lyle Goldstein, Director of Asia Engagement at Defense Priorities. "We have a major maritime territorial dispute with Canada… France and Britain go at it all the time over fisheries. It's fairly normal activity even among friends," Lyle told RS. The China-Philippines squall is far from the only theater in Beijing's ongoing maritime disputes, but it has escalated to a greater degree than many of the others due to Manila's readiness to push back against China's pressure tactics. Beijing has not engaged in an escalatory spiral with Malaysia and Brunei, despite their conflicting maritime claims, because these two states "are unlikely to make an issue of Chinese incidents and they don't really even talk about them," said Shidore, adding that their desire to preserve economic ties with China makes them "willing to absorb some costs." The Philippines has taken a more strident approach vis-à-vis Beijing than others in the South China Sea, said Shidore, partly as a byproduct of American presence in the region. "I think U.S. involvement is a big reason —the fact that the U.S. is present in the theater, and there is an alliance commitment, makes the situation not just a China-Philippines issue but a China-U.S. issue, and that's when everything changes from the Chinese perspective," he added. "The Chinese, I think, are more concerned about the U.S., at this point, than the Philippines," continued Shidore, "the U.S. presence is making them see red and emboldening all the nationalist and hawkish forces in the Chinese structures." American obligations under the 1951 U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty have raised concerns that Washington could find itself embroiled in a war in the South China Sea in the event of a direct military confrontation between China and the Philippines. "I think, unfortunately, all the signs are there for an escalating conflict," Goldstein said. "They [the Chinese] perceive that the stakes for them are very high," Goldstein explained. "I believe all this tension with the Philippines is an outgrowth of Taiwan tension," he said, noting that the Luzon strait, situated just south of Taiwan, has become an increasingly important fixture in U.S. preparations for a Taiwan contingency following the sharp spike in cross-strait tensions accompanying Nancy Pelosi's 2022 visit to Taipei. "The U.S. has been trying to put in place the groundwork to prepare for a day when they have to surge forces in a major way into Luzon," he said. Beijing, in reaction to these developments, has sought to dial up the pressure on Manila with threats and maritime shows of force. "The subtext is: if you are going to cooperate with the U.S. on the Taiwan scenario, your interests will suffer badly, and that, I think, is why this bullying is occurring," Goldstein said. Shidore said the White House, in light of growing regional tensions, should "pull back in being so frontal on this issue, whether rhetorically or materially, in terms of its presence in the theater." The U.S. has an active interest in exercising its substantial leverage over Manila "to nudge its more vulnerable partner to be more restrained in some of its actions," Shidore wrote in a piece published by The Diplomat last week. "We shouldn't be encouraging the Philippines to get into a fight with China — they are likely to lose that fight," said Goldstein. "We do have a treaty with the Philippines… but that treaty should be read very narrowly. It should be read as, we defend the main islands of the Philippines — if they are threatened acutely, we will be there," he added. "And if it means we need to put some defensive forces in those areas to reassure the Philippines, I'm okay with that. But my view is that we should not even consider going to war over rocks and reefs or different interpretations of the law of the sea. That would be extremely foolish and reckless, and it would be very hard to explain to American taxpayers." The China-Philippines maritime dispute does not, in of itself, reflect anything approaching an existential conflict. It has, however, become an increasingly dangerous proxy and potential flashpoint for underlying China-U.S. tensions in the South China Sea.

The Biden administration's foreign policy record in 2023 won't give the president much to boast about in next year's election. The U.S. is even more overstretched at the end of 2023 than it was at the beginning, and the president has had very few policy successes. For most of the year, there weren't any major debacles, but that changed over the last two months as the president gave the Israeli government a blank check to wage a brutal war in Gaza. The president committed Washington to support another foreign war in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel while the conflict in Ukraine settled into a stalemate. Even though the U.S. was under no obligation to support this war, the president made a point of turning it into one of his signature policies and linked it closely with support for Ukraine in his public rhetoric. Biden did not, and has not made a compelling case that unconditional support for Israel's campaign is in the best interests of the United States, and the costs of that support have been rising ever since. Furthermore, backing the war exposed U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria to renewed attacks from local militias, and it has also led to increasing risks for U.S. ships in the Red Sea as the Houthis have been launching attacks on commercial shipping to protest the war. The risks that the conflict could escalate and spread into other parts of the region have been growing, and so has the risk that the U.S. could become directly involved in a multi-front war. The president's instinct to back Israel to the hilt has made a wider war more likely and it has put U.S. forces in greater danger.U.S. support for Israel in Gaza has not only overshadowed the rest of Biden's foreign policy agenda, but it has also tied the U.S. to an indiscriminate bombing campaign and a punishing siege that is driving hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians into famine conditions. The Biden administration has not only torched whatever remained of Washington's credibility on human rights and international law, but it has closely associated the U.S. with the war crimes committed against Palestinian civilians.The damage to America's reputation has already been considerable, and the damage to American interests in the Middle East and beyond over the longer term will likely be significant.The setback for Biden's own agenda has been undeniable. The administration's biggest diplomatic initiative of 2023 — the ill-advised pursuit of Saudi-Israeli normalization — stalled when the war in Gaza showed the administration's understanding of the region to be fundamentally flawed. Having bought into the false assumption that U.S.-facilitated normalization agreements between Israel and Arab clients would stabilize the region, the administration failed to recognize how bad things were getting in occupied Palestine. Like their predecessors, the Biden administration did nothing to keep Netanyahu's coalition government in check as it pursued its creeping annexation of the West Bank. Believing that the Palestinians could be safely sidelined and that their grievances could be ignored, the administration was trying to find out what inducements it would take to get Mohammed bin Salman to endorse normalization. If they had been successful, it would have meant another security commitment and more costs for the United States, so it was just as well that this policy was derailed.It isn't clear how much of a factor the push for Saudi normalization was in contributing to Hamas' decision to attack, but it clearly wasn't helpful for the U.S. to waste so much effort on trying to entice the Saudis into a deal while tensions between Israel and the Palestinians was about to explode. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's infamous line uttered shortly before the start of the war about how the region was quieter than it had been in decades reflected how much the administration had come to believe its own press releases. Support for the war has cost the U.S. a lot of goodwill in countries of the Global South, and the administration's stubborn opposition to a ceasefire has left the U.S. as deeply isolated at the United Nations as it has ever been on a major issue. The administration had earlier emphasized the importance of competing for influence with other major powers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, but with its hardline position on Gaza it seems to have frittered away most of whatever gains it has made. Especially for an administration that constantly talks about the importance of America's leadership role, it has outdone itself in alienating and driving the rest of the world away from the U.S. on this issue.U.S. support for the war in Ukraine has been undermined by backing for the war in Gaza in two ways. First, it has diverted U.S. attention and resources away from Ukraine as the U.S. has turned its focus once again to the Middle East. It has also made a mockery of the administration's rhetoric in support of Ukraine. The U.S. spent the better part of two years extolling the importance of international law to rally support for Ukraine, and then demonstrated that the U.S. doesn't hold its own clients and partners to the same standard that it expects from other states. The Biden record this year wasn't all bad. On the plus side, the U.S. made some modest progress in stabilizing relations with China near the end of the year after months of deteriorating ties in the wake of the spy balloon incident in February. There was a small diplomatic breakthrough with Iran in the summer that led to the release of five Americans that had been wrongfully detained by the Iranian government. Unfortunately, the administration then reneged on releasing Iranian funds that had been frozen under "maximum pressure" sanctions because they didn't want to be seen as "rewarding" Iran following Hamas' attack.The administration also recently secured another prisoner release agreement with the Venezuelan government. While these were positive results, they were also hardly earth-shattering.The Biden administration had more success in working with established allies. They further developed the technology-sharing AUKUS arrangement with Australia and Britain, and they took advantage of a temporary improvement in relations between South Korea and Japan to strengthen ties with both. In both cases, the administration was pushing on an open door, and it is questionable whether either arrangement will endure, but they can at least point to these things as examples of advancing Biden's agenda. Even more than in previous years, the Biden administration's foreign policy in 2023 has been defined by too much reliance on military tools and too little effort put into diplomatic engagement. That may be one of the reasons why the public now broadly disapproves of Biden's handling of foreign policy. Both for his own sake and for the sake of U.S. interests, the president needs to make some major course changes in 2024 in Gaza and in his overall approach to the world.

Not only will the start of 2024 greet Bossier City
with a decision
whether and how to extend the city's public-private partnership with Manchac
Consulting, but also a chance to signal to a beleaguered citizenry that
holds taxing decision-making power that its days of splurging on questionable
spending priorities are over and the consequences mitigated.

Until recently for two decades, an out-of-control
City Council majority, aided by past mayors, spent several hundred million
dollars, with a couple
hundred million of that – on a money-losing arena, a parking garage for a
landlord that went into receivership, on a high-tech office building that never
lived up to inflated promises, on a road to nowhere, and for other less
grandiose schemes – going to what charitably might be called questionable
priorities, but perhaps more realistically can be described as wasted and unneeded.
Debt owed at the end of 2022
was almost $435 million and has left residents with the highest per capita debt
of any city in Louisiana at just under $7,000 each.

Operating monies as well show a pattern of dubious
use. Besides the Manchac contract, the city
subsidizes tennis playing and out-of-towner
use of parks at residents' expense. And a new hybrid, potentially giving
away to the Port of Caddo-Bossier a water distribution facility unless an
unlikely chain of events occurs to compensate fully the city, is an unforced
error looming over the city for decades to come. Meanwhile,
many city employees can't receive pay raises in an era of higher inflation, or
retired firefighters get stiffed on the city contributing to their health insurance
premiums due to overbearing debt and poor current spending choices.

This background of fiscal imprudence establishes
the environment under which the city will ask next year for a renewal of two
property taxes that provide funding for public safety. At its last
meeting, the City Council set a public hearing for renewal at its meeting
after the next, Jan. 16, that begins the process of asking voters for another ten
years' worth set currently at  a combined
11.03 mils dedicated to maintenance and operations.

It follows the playbook when the calendar puts a
millage expiration the year of city elections, which it adhered to in 2020 for the
6.19 mil tax currently set at 5.98 for public safety salaries. That is, cue up
a vote before national elections in that year in time for both budgeting with,
if the measure passes, assurance of that revenue for the next year and before
the next year's city elections, to avoid conflating talk of taxes with
incumbents' quest for reelection the next year and for that year keeping turnout
low so that the directly affected party of city employees – in public safety – disproportionately
are likely to participate in that election to help achieve item passage.

The expiring millages, like the previous (these are
the only three subject to votes; the city's other, the general alimony charge for
operations currently set at 5.57 under the Constitution doesn't need voter
approval) actually were approved at a maximum of 11.41 in 2015 but were not
rolled forward. Unlike levies on economic activity like sales taxes, property
taxes hit assets, and the Constitution
distinguishes between the two by forcing local governments to roll back
millage rates after the required quadrennial reassessments that occur during
presidential election years so that any reassessed property (not new to the roll
or part of a transaction where the market sets a value) pays the same amount as
prior to reassessment, as calculated in the aggregate of all parish property.

Alternatively, a local government may choose to roll
forward millages the year after a reassessment, at least up to the maximum authorized
rate, recapturing some or all of the revenue forgone by any increase in the parish
tax base. In the case of a city government, that requires a two-thirds supermajority
vote by its council, or five votes in Bossier City. Note that it could work the
other way, and did
in 2017 in Bossier City: a decline in the tax base automatically could
shift rates higher up to the maximum rate without need of a Council vote.

This is why elected officials like to send
renewals off at the previous rate approved by voters rather than a rate that they
have not stopped from rolling back, or even voluntarily set themselves. Indeed,
after the 8/15/2020 renewal of the salaries millage at the original 6.19 rate,
the Council
a month later rolled it back down to the 5.98 rate charged previously prior
to the 2016 reassessment, in the knowledge that the 2020 reassessment rose –
only about six months prior to 2021 city elections.

The same scenario could well play out in 2024. The
four graybeard councilors for whom this will  be their fourth or more reassessment –
Republicans David
Montgomery and Jeff Free,
Democrat Bubba
Williams, and no party Jeff Darby
– assuming less than a year from now city voters haven't amended into the
charter lifetime three-term limits that would disqualify all four from running
for reelection and all succeed, may want to put onto the August ballot for
renewal the previous
maximum rates of 8.61 and 2.80 and then roll back to the current 8.32 and
2.71 shortly thereafter if the measures are approved, as they did in 2020 with
the other levy.

Except that then, given the city's fiscal problems
that they foisted onto it, the temptation remains palpable months after 2025
elections, and weeks after their new terms begin, to roll all 2025 rates
forward partially or entirely up to the (current combined) maximum of 23.36. It
would take one more affirmative vote, and over the past 30 months Republican rookie
Councilor Vince
Maggio, assuming he runs for reelection and succeeds, on many occasions has
proved himself to be a compliant lapdog to the graybeards and could provide
that vote.

Therefore, to prevent unequivocably any chance at
a tax increase, the renewals should be authorized for an election at the 8.32
and 2.71 rates. One thing hampering the city's growth – it barely gained in
population from 2010 to 2020 – is its higher-than-necessary property tax rates,
which put in fifth-highest among Louisiana's ten largest cities and 50 percent
higher than its peer cities Kenner and Lake Charles.

The Council vote to ask for renewal that will come
soon – and it must by its last meeting in February to make the Apr. 27 general
municipal election date since the July and August dates in 2020 were one-offs
to make up for pandemic-cancelled elections and aren't available this time – must
reflect the current rates, not the past maximums. It's the best way to build
trust in the citizenry for renewing that it won't have to pay for councilors'
past mistakes, as well as sets the city up better for future growth.

It is the time of the year in Micronesia for the annual "Operation Christmas Drop." It was in the spirit of Christmas-giving that OCD began over half a century ago. Andersen Air Force Base (Guam) is now the basecamp for a range of U.S. military interservice, community/volunteer-supported, regional allies and partners events that delivers mostly school supplies, clothing, rice, fishing equipment, and toys. OCD is estimated to impact 20,000 people in the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau. For a host of reasons, Operation Christmas Drop has become window-dressing for a romanticized, fossilized view of U.S. assistance and Pacific islanders. This high-profile media event masks nearly a century of U.S. under-development in Micronesia. Against the backdrop of the FSM and Palau being heavily indebted and dependent on U.S. funds and identified as relationships the U.S. has taken for granted, it is possible that the Grinch is propping up this Christmas event. It is the U.S. under-development of the region (OCD notwithstanding) that contributes to the welcoming that Chinese economic investment has received. Although Chinese development debt trap diplomacy in the region has been flagged as a concern by some, in Micronesia, there is a continuum of underdevelopment and dependency overseen by the U.S.It is not unusual for countries to create and tell stories about themselves. Great powers spin self-promoting projections and try to shape how the world works. In this narrative frame, OCD is a "heritage of generosity" to help out "remote islands" and is the "longest-running humanitarian airlift in the world." The narrative gaps in this story, however, are glaring.In the 50 years that have passed since the first Christmas drop, much has changed in the islands. From a logistics standpoint, some islands that receive a Christmas drop have something they did not have a half century ago— regular cargo service. In some cases, such as Koror, in the Republic of Palau, Santa's parachute drop zone even has scheduled international air service. Today, the idea of the Christmas drop may be larger than the material benefit that accrues to these island locations. The FSM and Palau are approaching 40 years of a freely associated state (FAS) status, a relationship the U.S. legally regards as "special" and "highly privileged." The basic parameters of this relationship have been (1) an arguably subsistence level of U.S. financial support for the FAS in exchange for (2) U.S. military access and rights of strategic denial in the FAS. The U.S. has what it seeks in the relationship, but this has not been a balanced equation. Over three decades as part of the "Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands" overseen by the United States under the United Nations yielded little in the way of development. Four decades as "Freely Associated States" has rendered little more in the way of sustainable economic activity. Stimulating and supporting local economic development in Micronesia does not seem to have ever been a U.S. goal in its special relationship with the region. If it was, it has been a dismal failure. Not surprisingly then, built into the relationship with the U.S. is the "safety valve" of an open border to the U.S. for Micronesians who find little opportunity at home. For FAS citizens, the real benefits of the relationship only seem to gain fruition when they leave their homelands to find work, education, and the benefits of U.S. social welfare programs in the United States.By any objective telling of this Christmas story, delivering "humanitarian" aid to a people whom you have had a special relationship with for almost three-quarters of a century would be prima facia evidence of failure. But in the OCD version of the story, Santa is real as "children scan the skies not for a sleigh, but for a U.S. Air Force plane." It is the gap between the story that the hegemon tells itself and the ground truth that makes the OCD story increasingly unbelievable. A growing recognition that the Santa story is something of a fable is poignant this Christmas. After two U.S.-led Pacific Island Summit in two years, promises of aid and regional reengagement, and renegotiations of the Compacts of Free Association (COFA), the U.S. has not delivered. At the recent Pacific Island Forum meeting, the head of the U.S. delegation "pledged to work with Congress to provide over $8 billion in new funding and programs for the Pacific." Never mind that the U.S. had not delivered the prior year pledges, or that over $7 billion of the new funding was for the COFA economic packages. Yet, even these subsistence COFA economic packages have not yet been approved, leading to the FSM saying they face a "fiscal cliff." Increasingly agitated parties in Washington are heralding that the loss of COFA funding would present an opportunity for the CCP to expand its economic influence. Even efforts to prioritize new funding for the COFA states in the U.S. National Defense Authorization Act failed in late November, setting up a less than festive spirit in the islands as they head into Christmas. Finding out about Santa"Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" was an 1897 editorial response in the New York paper The Sun to 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon's question about the existence of Santa. The author leaned heavily into the spirit of Christmas faith to assert that it was the idea of Santa that made him real.This is the Santa story that has been told to Micronesia. Uncle Sam-as-Santa gets a timely rendition each year as OCD presents fall from the sky. The Santa story is tricky for nations that fancy themselves as Santa himself. What is clear this Christmas in Micronesia is that as much as we celebrate the season with another Christmas Drop — whose presents are no doubt appreciated by the recipients — antiquated fables are not a substitute for good policy and execution.Put simply, the Christmas Drop, as good as it may feel, is not a substitute for a failed U.S. economic policy in the region. Sadly, even the anticipated renewal of the COFA economic packages sometime in 2024 will not change the condition of underdevelopment in Micronesia. There is no realistic plan for regional development. While some in Washington decry expanding Chinese economic influence in Micronesia, few understand that it is U.S. policy that has created the hospitable environment for Chinese effect. Setting a low bar for yourself—that you clear with fables—works only as long as everyone believes your story and is happy with it.The U.S. relationship in the Pacific region in general — and the COFA states in particular — have outgrown the Santa narrative. And the region is watching. It is not yet clear that Washington understands this. Most Pacific Island states, of course, will be grateful for any new levels of U.S. funding. That does not make them believers in Santa. It also does not mean that they will shun support from other interested parties.So as Santa makes his "humanitarian assistance" rounds this year amongst the Pacific Islands that have a closer affinity than any other to the U.S., it will be more than just the FAS that are looking to what is actually delivered after December 25.Tis the Season?

The EU Council summit of December 14-15 offered a significant, if perhaps mainly symbolic, gesture toward Ukraine in agreeing to the formal opening of accession negotiations. But at the same meeting, the bloc failed to approve financial (not military) support for Ukraine for the four-year period through 2027, amounting to 50 billion euros. Approval of this aid was vetoed by Hungary. Thus, a very muddled message about how EU countries are dealing with the Ukraine war issue, nearly two years from the start of the Russian invasion in Feb. 2022. Supporters of the aid package have agreed to take it up again in January, and, if necessary, to get commitments from the 26 supporters of the package to provide the funding for Ukraine bilaterally, rather than as part of the EU budget. In the lead-up to the meeting, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban pledged to block both the opening of accession talks and the financial aid package. In the end, he left the room just before the vote to open accession talks was held. He may have done so because, days before the Council meeting, the Commission unblocked 10 billion euros of funding for Hungary that had been suspended because of Hungary's failure to meet EU rule-of-law standards. In acquiescing to the opening of accession talks for Ukraine, Orban is very much aware that the process will require unanimous approval by the Council at many junctures ahead. Moreover, it may be very protracted: accession talks are still ongoing with North Macedonia (since 2020), Montenegro (2012), Serbia (2014) and Albania (2022). But the war aid issue is much more urgent. According to the Kiel Institute's Ukraine assistance scorecard, the EU institutions have been to date by far the largest provider of financial support to Ukraine. The IMF has cautioned that even a brief delay in providing this support could potentially destabilize Ukraine's precarious fiscal situation and the provision of essential services to its people. ​The mood in Europe shifting?Efforts to persuade Orban to end his opposition to the Ukraine aid package could well produce results in time for a January reconsideration, but the optics of the EU hesitations are not good, coming as they do in lockstep with those of Washington. These developments have been widely depicted in Western media as a failure of President Zelensky's personal lobbying efforts to unblock essential U.S. and EU aid before the end of 2023. Hungary was alone in open opposition to the two measures of support for Ukraine. It is nevertheless clear that the mood in Europe has turned cooler on Ukraine, given the Eurozone's weak economic performance and the failure of the counteroffensive to make any significant territorial gains. The recent electoral success of the populist, Euro-skeptic Freedom Party in the Netherlands, whose leader Geert Wilders has long opposed military aid to Ukraine, can be interpreted as part of a trend toward Ukraine fatigue in Europe. On the other side of the ledger, pro-European and pro-Ukraine Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who led liberal forces to victory in October against the nationalist-populist former ruling party, made his inaugural appearance at the Council summit and firmly aligned himself against Orban. Although French President Emmanuel Macron had also personally lobbied Orban to change his position, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed credit for persuading him to leave the room when the accession vote was about to be taken. Interpreting the accession decision— strategic intent and economic constraintsThe EU Council voted unanimously to open EU accession talks with Ukraine for "strategic" reasons — because not doing so would have been seen as a rebuke to Ukraine's deepest aspirations. The appeal of this message of encouragement to Ukraine apparently was enough to assuage the worries in several member states in Central and Eastern Europe about the potential impact on their own national economics of eventual EU membership for Ukraine. A leaked internal analysis from the Commission estimates the budgetary impacts of an EU enlarged to include Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and six western Balkans states. By far the most significant impact would be due to Ukraine's accession. The study found that EU agricultural and cohesion funds for Ukraine as an EU member would amount to 186 billion euros in the first seven years. Agricultural support to other EU members would need to fall by about a fifth, and the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta – would no longer be eligible to receive cohesion funding. Unless there were a dramatic reform of EU programs, the enlargement to include nine new members would turn several net recipient countries into net contributors to the EU budget. The politics of such a dramatic reversal of fortunes in countries accustomed to EU largesse could be difficult to manage and might well give rise to greater popular euro-skepticism. Early indications of this potential impact have arisen in Poland, where popular support for the Ukrainian war effort remains quite robust. However, the situation has been clouded since mid-2023 by emerging grievances among those affected by competition from Ukraine. Troubles arose earlier this year among Polish grain producers affected by cheaper Ukrainian grain. Since November 6, Polish truckers' grievances have erupted in protests involving hundreds of trucks at all major border crossings, bringing Ukrainian trucks' passage to a standstill. The protesters claim that a relaxation of permit requirements for Ukrainians trucks entering the EU — a measure adopted by the European Commission to support Ukraine's economy after Russia's invasion — has harmed the livelihood of Polish truckers. In recent weeks, Hungarian and Slovakian truckers have joined in blocking major border crossings with Ukraine to their respective countries. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has stated that he will end the blockade but will do so in a way that meets some of the Polish truckers' grievances. Even as a convinced European, Tusk is proceeding cautiously. The opening of accession talks is a substantial watershed for Ukraine, but it seems highly unlikely that Ukraine could accomplish the daunting agenda of legal and institutional reforms required for accession while being engaged in a full-scale military confrontation on its territory. Bulgarian regional expert Ivan Krastev argues that the providing of this long-term perspective to Ukraine in fulfillment of its aspirations to be recognized as fully European and a part of the West may induce greater willingness by Ukraine's leaders to consider pursuing a negotiated settlement. "Only strong security guarantees and a promised European future could persuade Ukrainians to accept territorial concessions at some point," he said.In other words, the promise of Europe, while genuine on its own terms, may also serve as encouragement of efforts to end the war short of the full accomplishment of Ukrainian war aims.

As Congress starts its last scheduled workweek of 2023, observers are becoming increasingly concerned that U.S. aid for Ukraine will at least temporarily run out.The reality of the situation is starting to set in both in Washington and Kyiv. The Biden administration announced recently that aid will run out before the end of the year, and Joe Biden himself argued last week that a cutoff in funding could lead to a direct Russia-NATO conflict.These stark warnings led Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make a surprise visit to the United States this week for emergency meetings with the White House and congressional leadership. It remains unclear whether his pitch will prove convincing to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who now poses the largest obstacle to continued aid.So what actually happens if U.S. support for Ukraine dries up? While Kyiv could likely weather a short gap in funding, a longer delay or even permanent cutoff would force the Ukrainians to substantially cut back their military operations, raising the possibility that Russia could reverse Ukraine's hard-won gains in the country's east. The sudden move would also make it substantially harder to reach a negotiated solution in the short term, according to George Beebe of the Quincy Institute."[T]hose tempted to believe that the United States could end the war by simply ending its aid to Ukraine should think hard" about how such a move would affect Kyiv's leverage in talks, Beebe argued in RS."The United States should not remove cards from its hand by ending aid to Ukraine unilaterally or playing them prematurely," he wrote. "But unless it moves quickly to complement aid with diplomacy, it may find that the opportunity to play its cards has suddenly disappeared."Playing the numbers gameOne important factor complicating discussions about future aid is the widespread uncertainty about exactly how much cash the U.S. still has left to burn. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in October that even Congress has struggled at times to get a straight answer on a deadline for new funding.
As of last month, the White House said it had spent roughly 96% of the more than $100 billion Congress has allocated for Ukraine. A Pentagon accounting error left the Department of Defense with several billion dollars of extra "presidential drawdown authority," which allows the Biden administration to send equipment from U.S. stockpiles. But there is only about $1 billion in funding left to replace those weapons, and the White House has so far been reluctant to send arms without promises to replace them, according to Mark Cancian of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The impact of a cutoff in funding would not be immediately apparent, especially given the slow pace of fighting during the winter, but would lead to a progressive reduction in Ukrainian operations, Cancian told RS. In his estimation, the pace of aid is "already declining" when compared with the early days of the war, though a steady stream of weapons deliveries will continue for years given the timeline needed to produce new arms.
"As that flow declines, then Ukraine's military capability will decline with it," Cancian said. "At some point, probably in January, they would be unable to launch a full-scale counteroffensive, and then maybe in February they'd be unable to do any attacks at all."
"Maybe later in the spring, Ukraine would be hard-pressed to hold the Russians off," he continued. "It's not that they won't have any [weapons], but they won't have the flow that's needed to maintain operations at a high level."
Biden's supplemental request would allocate about $59 billion in funds related to Ukraine. One third of that goes to humanitarian aid and direct economic support, while the majority goes to various military funding needs.
Of the $38.7 billion in military aid, roughly $30 billion is earmarked for purchasing weapons to send Ukraine or drawing down U.S. stockpiles. The remaining $8 billion would support the expanded U.S. troop presence in Europe in response to the Ukraine war, with a small portion of funds going to aid oversight.
Cancian noted that much of this funding should be understood as an investment in the U.S. economy given how much of it will be directed to American contractors. This argument, which the Biden administration has also made, has drawn criticism from opponents of increased military spending, who note that defense dollars produce fewer jobs than many other forms of government spending.On the economic front, a sudden cutoff in U.S. funding would be less drastic than an end to military spending given that much of Ukraine's budgetary aid comes from the European Union. Though even that funding could be blocked by Hungary, which, under right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has often frustrated its European partners. (Zelensky and Orban appeared to get into a heated argument on the sidelines of the presidential inauguration in Argentina this past weekend.)Political reverberationsAn end to U.S. aid would be a sharp rebuke of the Biden administration, which has long argued that American support for Ukraine will last as long as it takes for Kyiv to achieve its stated aim of retaking all of its territory, including Crimea.
Many believe that European states would also pull back their funding if American support ends, according to Cancian. "The logic is the same as in the U.S.," he explained. "They have elements that are opposing, on both the left and the right, the high costs and the lack of success. If the United States stops, then many of their critics will point to this and say, 'The United States is stopping. Why are we sending money for a failing effort?'"
As the possibility of an aid cutoff grows, some analysts have argued that it's time for the Biden administration to shift its approach to the war and set more realistic objectives — a move that could tamp down concerns in Europe while also responding to the White House's domestic critics, who argue that the president has no clear strategy for the war.
"[T]he White House should seek to build a new narrative: that this is a war of defence for Ukraine, and a strategic defeat for Russia, and that the US can support Ukraine while also acknowledging that there are other national security priorities that might need to take precedence," Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center argued in The Guardian. "This narrative is less aspirational, but more pragmatic.""[M]ost importantly, if the Biden administration is re-elected in November, this approach would place them in a much stronger position to pursue armistice negotiations in late 2024," Ashford wrote.

Central Asia, an area stretching from the Caspian Sea to Russia, China, Iran, and Afghanistan, has been firmly under Moscow's influence for several centuries due to Russian and Soviet conquest. However, as Russia has concentrated its attention and resources on the Ukraine war and China's economic engagement with Central Asia has deepened, Moscow's role in the region has diminished. Meanwhile, the region has grown in importance to the United States, first during the "Global War on Terror," when the United States established temporary bases (now closed) in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and later as a source of natural resources, including oil and gas and rare-earth minerals. The changing dynamics of Russian, Chinese, and American engagement in Central Asia raise a critical question: What combination of great power involvement and Central Asian autonomy will best advance American interests and ensure stability in the region? As the region's most populous and influential player, Uzbekistan is the key to answering this question. Recognizing this, Washington has formed a strategic partnership with Uzbekistan. Recently, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu met with Uzbek officials last month to highlight mutual open channels of communication, aiming to boost trade and investment, specifically in energy and technology.U.S. policy toward Uzbekistan has made several missteps that compromise what could be a fruitful, limited partnership with Tashkent. The most significant of these blunders has been the relentless harping on Washington's commitment to Uzbekistan's "independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity." Support for Central Asian sovereignty implies military assistance akin to the Regional Cooperation 22 military exercise, which took place in 2022 with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan participating. These military activities in a region with a robust Russian security presence are dangerous and unnecessary. After Washington's proper decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, not only is Central Asia's relevance to U.S. national security relatively low, but Uzbekistan's chances of being invaded by Russia are slim, as Moscow continues to face difficulties in achieving maximalist goals in Ukraine.A better strategy for Washington is to allow Russia, Central Asia's historic security guarantor, to continue to play a security role in what Vladimir Putin calls Russia's "most stable region." There is little danger that Russia, already overstretched in Ukraine, will be capable of restoring its former dominance in Central Asia. But Russia helps to maintain regional stability through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), encompassing its military allies Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, all of which host Russian military bases. Deepening U.S. military involvement in Central Asia ruins Tashkent's attempts to balance regional actors, cooperate with the West, and not be stuck in the middle of great power competition. While military exercises between the United States and Uzbekistan may seem appealing to Tashkent in the short term, such practices will inevitably raise Moscow's threat perceptions and contribute to a higher degree of great power competition in the region. Rather than Washington viewing its relationship with Tashkent as an opportunity to expand militaristic influence in Russia's backyard, Uzbekistan should be considered by the United States as a regional facilitator and convenor, as Uzbekistan has acted as such in recent years. This would improve Uzbekistan's ability to counterbalance Russian and Chinese involvement and facilitate an equilibrium between great power actors in the region. After Uzbekistan's first president, Islam Karimov, died in 2016, Uzbekistan quickly mended ties with Tajikistan and its other neighbors, removing the greatest obstacle to regional cooperation. Under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who took power in 2016, Tashkent's foreign policy has been one that has strived for regional connectivity and cooperation. It has also sought to present Central Asia as a platform for multilateral cooperation to expand the region's economic, transport, and logistics potential.The desire for Central Asia to act as a transport and logistics hub has materialized through the "Middle Corridor," a trade route that spans the Central Asian steppe, the Caspian Sea, and the Caucasus Mountains. Amid a lack of viable alternatives, the Middle Corridor will only become more relevant as the geopolitical disruption of the Russo-Ukrainian War obstructs other trade routes like the "Northern Corridor" that flows through Russia. The Middle Corridor also facilitates the transport of Chinese goods to European consumer markets.Openness with regional great powers, including Russia and China, will be critical to the success of Central Asian connectivity projects. China's incentives for such transit projects are clear as they give Beijing more significant access to Western markets. On the surface, it may appear that Russia will disapprove of alternative trade routes. Still, these routes could be useful for Moscow in the future as the Middle Corridor has turned into a North-South logistic opportunity rather than a direct challenge to the Northern Corridor, with Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan becoming critical corridors for Russia to reach international markets. Uzbekistan could continue to act as a regional facilitator to ensure openness among all parties.Unfortunately, legislation that was relevant to the Soviet Union is still inhibiting constructive cooperation with Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan, along with Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, is subject to the archaic, Soviet-era Jackson-Vanik Amendment, a law designed to punish the Soviet Union on Jewish immigration issues and other human rights. This legislation denies permanent trade relations with its targeted countries, including Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.One could argue that independent Uzbekistan should be exempt from Jackson-Vanik because Tashkent is being penalized for the actions of the Soviet Union. Since Uzbekistan's independence, it has never repressed its Jewish population. Independent Uzbekistan has allowed its Jewish population to emigrate freely to destinations like Israel and the United States. Emigration from Uzbekistan to other countries has been mainly due to better economic opportunities elsewhere rather than oppression. Uzbekistan has a vibrant Jewish population that practices its religion openly and has access to Jewish schools and synagogues in Bukhara, the historical Jewish center of Uzbekistan, where Jews have lived for more than two thousand years.Additionally, the United States continues to punish Tashkent for its human rights record despite its improvements. For decades, the government of Uzbekistan, under President Karimov, forced adults and children to pick cotton under appalling conditions during the harvest season. However, under President Mirziyoyev, these forced labor policies were abolished, and Uzbekistani cotton is now 100% free from any allegations of forced labor. Despite the United States lifting sanctions on Uzbek cotton in 2019, Uzbekistan is still punished by being included under Jackson-Vanik.The United States has a valuable opportunity to contribute to peaceful, limited cooperation and expand economic opportunities in Central Asia. Abandoning militaristic activities, focusing on the transit of goods that serve the U.S. interest while maintaining openness with regional great powers, and discarding irrelevant legislation will be conducive to a productive relationship with Uzbekistan, a regional leader for years to come.

It's legacy-salvaging time as the embers die on the
Democrat Gov. John
Bel Edwards Administration, with a full-bore effort to turn impossibly a
sow's ear into a silk purse.

At the specific policy level, for example, you
have its Commissioner of Administration trying to stave off the undoing by
incoming governor Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry of a costly
and counterproductive taxpayer-funded parental leave scheme for state employees
while proclaiming
"History is going to look very favorably on … Edwards and what he's done." This
shilling is backed more broadly by a propaganda campaign
using tax dollars touting alleged accomplishments, if not reframing failures.

Dardenne is dead wrong: if history is kind, it
will relegate the Edwards years as a footnote; if bluntly realistic, it will
register the 2016-23 period as one where his policies botched economic growth
and development and coarsened society while privileging special interests at
the expense of Louisianans – all in all, a retreat into the past following an
agenda that disserved the state for decades. The data leave no other assessment
possible.

While Landry has yet to take office, already he
has signaled he will undo as much as he can of what Edwards inflicted. There is
not much of what Edwards did which can't be reversed in its entirety, but,
unfortunately, where he did the most damage are things that will be the hardest
to contain.

Most egregiously, he grew government at an alarming
rate, much higher than inflation. From the total spending by the state from six
months into his first term through what is budgeted through the six months after
his second term ends, total
state spending will rise 91 percent. Some of this was driven by bad choices
that force fed federal dollars into the state (which now comprise just over
half of budgeted spending), but even from state sources general
fund spending will rise 36 percent in the period while statutory
dedications will rise 72 percent and self-generated dollars will rise 50
percent. For all 50 states, the fiscal
year 2016 to FY
2022 increase was only 59 percent. Meanwhile, inflation increased
only 28 percent in the period through last month.

This spending orgy particularly was egged on by
expanding Medicaid at the start of FY 2017. It now costs Louisianans over
$450 million extra a year in state funds (using FY 2021 figures; this will
rocket higher because of Wuhan coronavirus pandemic policies for the next couple
of years which fortunately since have been discontinued), redistributing wealth
to eligible enrollees anywhere from a third to a half of whom already had
health insurance and providing a benefit that discourages work. And not that it
seems to have done much relative to other states, as its 2017 rank is the same
as its 2023 rank for public
health according to U.S. News and World Report, 45th, while
United Health Care's America's Health Rankings annual report for 2017
and 2022
shows the state slipped – from next from dead last to dead last.

Meanwhile, spurred by this ballooning of
government, the state began falling behind, if not retreating, economically.
Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated, and is the most prominent legacy of
Edwards' policies, than in the depopulation of the Louisiana from the middle
of 2016 through mid-2022.
While the nation grew 3.2 percent and the state's southern neighbors experienced a 5.2 percent increase in residents, Louisiana lost 1.9 percent or 88,000
people as they left seeking better opportunity, if not better-run government.

Naturally enough, because of the state's relatively
poor economic performance. A lower proportion of able-bodied
adults younger than age 65 worked in last month, 59 percent, as opposed to
when Edwards' first budget kicked in in Jul., 2016, then at 60.2 percent, with
this latest figure seventh-lowest in the nation (and only as high as it is because
of the state's depopulation). Contrast this with the national rate of 62.7 percent. And the state's
rate is only as high as it is because of depopulation and aggregate job loss; since Jul., 2016 the state actually has
lost (preliminary Oct., 2023 estimate, seasonally adjusted) 6,000 jobs.

For those who did work, the Edwards' years have
been marked by falling behind. While personal
per capita income grew 39 percent from mid-2016 through last month nationally,
and in the southeast 40.7 percent, it grew just 35.6 percent in Louisiana. In compound
annual terms, the 4.6
percent growth rate ranked 35th among the states.

Regrettably, it will take time to unwind the
massive growth in government and effort to find ways to curtail Medicaid
expansion, unless it is eliminated which may be difficult politically to do
with a critical mass of individuals now hooked on redistribution of wealth to
them. Perhaps the only other consequential policy change – again, with an
overall negative impact – Edwards foisted was his criminal justice changes designed
to incarcerate fewer individuals that supposedly would save money.

People incarcerated since
the end of 2016 through Sept., 2023 have fallen around a fifth although by only
about a thousand in state prisons. Yet this was less than the over quarter
decline in all states (through
2021, the latest available data) And claims that the changes, designed to
send fewer people to prison, caused this decline are tempered
by demographic changes with the proportion of younger individuals falling
(younger males disproportionately commit crime) in this period. Nor was much
money saved, since the charge to house state prisoners in local jails increased.

Worse, despite these changes violent crime
increased in Louisiana from 2016-22,
some 11 percent. Meanwhile, violent crime across the U.S. barely budged, up
about a percent making it just 54 percent as high as Louisiana's. This lends credence
to charges by Landry and many others that the changes came at a cost of safety,
and portends they will intensify efforts over the past couple of years to clamp
down that didn't make it into law because of Edwards' vetoes.

Finally, perhaps the most insidious and tragic impact
Edwards had concerned his pandemic policy, which employed stricter measures
than in many states and, which research has demonstrated, largely
were useless in
combatting viral spread and suffering, but ending up induced misery in
other ways. In fact, running the numbers shows that Edwards'
lockdown policies cost more lives than they saved and certainly did more
damage to the economy and civil society (not
to mention the state Constitution) than did far less
heavy-handed responses from other states' governors who had access to the
very same data but who made wiser decisions.

Unquestionably, overall Edwards – aided by too few
legislative Republicans doing too little to counter him, although things would have
been worse had they not at least resisted his more egregious efforts to raise
taxes, to spend more, and to regulate more heavily – has produced a reign of error
that left the state and its people in relatively worse condition than when he
took over, if not absolutely worse in terms of residents, jobs, and lives lost.
No length to which public relations campaigns will go or amount of lackeys
trying to deflect from their own culpability in disserving the public can
change that fact.

The long-anticipated move by leftist MP Sahra Wagenknecht to form a new left-populist party opens the prospect of a more active debate within Germany on the policy course taken by the now highly unpopular coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and liberal Free Democrats (FDP).The potential appeal of this new party will depend largely on whether voters agree that the policy of supporting Ukraine is responsible for Germany's economic downturn.Party ConfigurationThe German political scene has evolved in recent decades away from the alternation in power of the center right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the center left Social Democrats (SPD), often with the FDP in coalition with one or the other of these, to present a spectrum of parties including the center left Green party, the far-left Die Linke (the Left) party and the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD).With the lone exception of AfD, these parties all broadly support Ukraine's war effort, until Ukraine itself is ready to seek a negotiated settlement. CDU/CSU support now stands at 29.4%. The AfD comes second with 21.2%. Support for the three governing parties together has fallen to 35.6%. The AfD's spectacular rise in polls seems to many analysts to suggest a generalized dissatisfaction with the status quo, and not necessarily the sudden conversion of many Germans to far-right extremist views. Wagenknecht has called this a "representation gap," one that her party would seek to exploit. The long-anticipated announcement on October 23 of the launch of a new party led by Die Linke MP Sahra Wagenknecht makes the course of German politics much less predictable. Even more than the AfD, the new party foregrounds its opposition to the prevailing stance on the war in Ukraine. Antiwar politics and the "representation gap"A majority of Die Linke's Bundestag delegation has backed tough sanctions against Russia, while still opposing weapons exports to Ukraine. Tensions within the parliamentary delegation grew as Wagenknecht, in public and in the Bundestag, assailed the sanctions policy and called for the opening of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The party has hovered since the last election just below the 5% threshold of support needed to win representation in the Bundestag. The breaking away of Wagenknecht and her nine colleagues from the Die Linke faction reduces that party to a parliamentary group, rather than a faction, affecting its funding and other prerogatives in the Bundestag.Wagenknecht and the nine other Die Linke MPs who have joined her effort to form the new party have provisionally named it the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. They plan to have the party officially formed and ready to contest the European Parliament elections of June 2024 and three state elections in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg (all in the former East Germany) later next year. This timing seems well chosen: European Parliament elections are typically favorable to smaller parties, and many voters in the eastern states are, for various reasons, favorable to the Wagenknecht initiative. A snap poll reported on October 31 found that 14% of voters could imagine themselves voting for the new party. This would immediately place it in fourth place, behind the CDU/CSU, AfD, and the SPD, and ahead of the Green party. The new party's impact would be felt mostly on the AfD, but would attract support from all parties other than the Greens and Die Linke itself. Wagenknecht's stated aim is to fill a "representation gap," which means her party will seek to represent those German voters who do not support further arming of Ukraine and who favor efforts to settle the conflict through diplomacy. Evidence of the existence of this gap is the spectacular rise of AfD which began just after Russia's invasion in February of 2022 (when AfD support stood at 9.5%) and more recent polls placing AfD support above 20% since mid 2023. As of March of this year, about 30% of Germans found the arming of Ukraine to have been excessive, and a small majority — 52% — said diplomatic efforts to end the conflict had not been adequate. More recently, a majority (52%) opposed providing Taurus missiles to Ukraine.Wagenknecht's anti-war popularityWagenknecht has been an MP since 2009 and was co-leader of Die Linke in the Bundestag from 2015 to 2019. Born in East Germany, she became active after 1989 in the post-communist Party of Democratic Socialism, initially heading its leftmost, avowedly communist wing. The PDS merged with disaffected leftists of the west German SPD in 2007 and became Die Linke, which for some time enjoyed some electoral success, including in western Germany. Former SPD leader and finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine, was co-founder of Die Linke and is Wagenknecht's husband.Because of her frequent appearances on political talk shows, Wagenknecht is fairly well known to the German public. Often the lone dissenter against the prevailing posture on Ukraine, her arguments are always persuasive, articulate and above all dispassionate. She is a controversial figure, but one that remains among the most popular German politicians. A recent poll showed her finishing third behind Defense Minister Pistorius and CSU leader Markus Söder in national approval ratings.Ukraine War positions: AfD and WagenknechtAlthough AfD's published program states that there can be no viable security order in Europe that excludes Russia, this issue is not often emphasized in their appeal to voters. By contrast, Sahra Wagenknecht's notoriety is entirely wedded to her very public antiwar stance. In February 2023, Wagenknecht joined Alice Schwarzer, a leading anti-war activist and editor of the feminist journal EMMA, to put forward a Manifest für Frieden (Manifesto for Peace) and inviting signatures online.The antiwar demonstration in Berlin on February 25, led by Wagenknecht and Schwarzer, attracted participation by about 10,000 people, but did not produce the momentum that the organizers might have hoped for.Wagenknecht has called herself a "conservative leftist," faulting Die Linke with having built its support base among younger, urban progressive voters while allegedly neglecting voters of the working class. This dispute has taken the form of a contest between an identity vs a class basis of leftist politics. Wagenknecht argues for the refocus of the left on defense of the interests of the German working class. She has sounded some caution about what she sees as excessive openness to flows of migrants.What does it mean?The launch of organizational efforts to form Wagenknecht's new party opens the prospect of a more active debate within Germany on the policy course taken by the weak governing coalition. Wagenknecht has stated that she and her party will not cooperate with AfD. The AfD made a very strong showing in recent state elections in the prosperous western states of Hesse and Bavaria, suggesting that its own potential is not confined to eastern Germany. By filling a tempting "gap" in German politics, the Wagenknecht alliance could endeavor to to curb the rise of AfD.

As the war between Israel and Hamas rages on, with horrifying humanitarian toll for the civilians in Gaza, the United States is continuing its unwavering support for Israel: it is not only sending Israel arms and shielding it from criticisms at the United Nations, but also boosting the deterrence against the so-called "axis of resistance," which includes Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.The U.S. moves to show solidarity with Israel are understandable. However, unless they are complemented by a credible diplomatic strategy in pursuit of a comprehensive stabilization in the Middle East, not only will they fail to bring the U.S. any benefits, but, to the contrary, they would risk entangling it in a wider regional war. To prevent such a dire scenario, Washington should, in addition to its existing contacts in the region, launch a direct channel to Tehran and seek serious talks about the future not only of Gaza and Palestine, but the broader Middle East.Since the war started on October 7, following Hamas's terrorist attack on Israel, Washington reportedly warned Tehran, through third parties, against expanding, either directly or through allies, the front against Israel. To deter Iran, Biden sent an attack submarine to the Persian Gulf, in addition to two aircraft carriers with warplanes and other military assets already dispatched to the region in the immediate aftermath of Hamas's attack.The usual suspects in Washington were quick to jump on the war's bandwagon to push for their favorite obsession: make it all about Iran. Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), true to form, threatened military action to target Iran's oil infrastructure. United Against Nuclear Iran, hawkish advocacy group, painted doomsday scenarios of impending multi-front "Iranian escalation" against Israel. And others like the Atlantic Council's Matthew Kroenig fell back on a tired cliché of Iran and its allies being the principal source of all instability in the Middle East.Making the Israel-Hamas war being all about Iran not only completely denies Palestinians' own agency and conditions under the occupation. It also misreads actual Iranian policies, as opposed to the rhetoric.As usual, Tehran presents a mix of ideology and pragmatic pursuit of national interest. Top officials, starting with the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while expressing full support for Hamas, clearly emphasized that Iran had no operational role in the attack of October 7. Iran is not willing to confront Israel or the U.S. directly as such a conflict would be too destructive for it and its most prized assets in the region, like the Lebanese Hezbollah. Hence, Tehran insists that the "resistance front" has autonomy in its actions against Israel and the U.S.Another factor that the rulers in Tehran need to take into account is that the Iranian population on the whole cares far more about the difficult economic conditions in their own country rather than Gaza. With the regime hard-liners doubling down on divisive policies, such as insistence on mandatory hijabs for women, the gap between the establishment and significant portion of the Iranian population is growing. Since the commitment to Palestine is one of the Islamic Republic's enduring identity badges, it is not surprising that a growing disaffection with the system translates into a weaker support for Iran's involvement in what many Iranians consider a foreign conflict.The fact that Iran is compelled to act, so far, in a restrained fashion, opens a window of opportunity for some bold, creative diplomacy on the U.S. side. A true diplomatic effort should go far beyond sending warnings to Tehran through third parties like Qatar, Oman, or Iraq. It should include direct talks not only about how to end the war in Gaza, but also the outlines of a broader order in the Middle East.Given the entrenched enmity between the U.S. and Iran, it may seem like a tall order. Yet, as international relations scholar Stephen Walt reminds us, some of the roots of the current situation could be traced to the Madrid peace conference on the Middle East in 1991 and subsequent Oslo agreements on Palestine. While crediting then-President George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state James Baker with a serious effort to bring peace to the Middle East, Walt points to a fatal flaw of the Madrid/Oslo process: the exclusion of Iran and the whole "rejectionist" front from the discussions, which only incentivized Iran to act as a spoiler against a regional order that was being shaped explicitly against its interests.Importantly, that happened at a time when Iran, exhausted by the long, brutal war with Iraq and under the pragmatic presidency of Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani was showing signs of moderation and willingness to re-engage with the U.S. Rebuffed, Iran turned to Islamic Jihad and other extremist Palestinian groups that contributed to a collapse of the peace process.As the U.S. and its allies ponder their next steps, they should avoid repeating the same fatal mistake. The costs of non-relationship between Washington and Tehran are already highlighted by the almost daily attacks by the Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq on U.S. military assets in those countries. The U.S. retaliates in what it claims to be "self-defense strikes" against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). In the absence of a meaningful diplomatic track and de-escalation mechanisms, these exchanges could easily spiral out of control and lead to a direct military confrontation between the U.S. and Iran.In such a scenario the U.S. would have little regional support as the Arab and Islamic world is focused on ending Israel's war in Palestine, not joining a new one against Iran. It is highly meaningful that it was the war in Gaza that provided the context for the first visit of Iran's president Ebrahim Raisi to Saudi Arabia after years of hostility — for a joint meeting of the League of Arab States and Organization Islamic Conference. A handshake between Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman in Riyadh would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.The U.S. should encourage these regional reconnections and establish its own direct dialogue with Iran. The alternative — dividing the region neatly into the moderates (such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Jordan) and pariahs (Iran and its allies and proxies) — has been tried and failed abysmally. The consequences of this failure are being tragically played out in Gaza. Establishing direct talks with Iran will not solve all of the region's problems. It may also carry domestic political risks for Biden in the pre-election year. But doubling down on the strategy of exclusion of Iran from any solution in Gaza and future security configuration in the Middle East is guaranteed to perpetuate the cycles of violence in the region.

Can an opera about drone warfare sponsored by a weapons maker ever really be considered "antiwar"? The head of New York's Metropolitan Opera certainly thinks so.Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, said earlier this year that he feared a growing "misperception" that the new opera "Grounded" fails to provide a nuanced take on the costs of war. If that view took hold, Gelb lamented, "the work would be somehow tainted before anybody ever got a chance to see it."When I first saw Gelb's comment, I admit that I took it to heart. I had helped spin up an online controversy with a piece that slammed "Grounded" as militarist propaganda. My (brief) argument relied on two facts: The show's main sponsor was weapons contractor General Dynamics, and its primary advertisement was teeming with blithe comments about its "hot shot" pilot lead who, after having a baby and being relegated to the role of a drone operator, "tracks terrorists by day and rocks her daughter to sleep by night."The Washington National Opera, which is putting on the show's first production on the Met's behalf, responded by toning down the ad and highlighting that General Dynamics — the maker of main character Jess's beloved F-16 fighter jet — was the sponsor of the season, not just the show, and had no direct input on the production.I couldn't help but wonder if I had unfairly skewered a well-meaning attempt at conveying the horrors of war, so I took Gelb's warning as a challenge and secured a media ticket, promising myself and my editors that I would give the show a fair shake. (If you plan to see the opera, beware of spoilers ahead.)I'll start with the good. The show, which was composed by Jeanine Tesori and written by George Brant, featured massive, high definition LED screens that streamed captivating visuals of the view from a drone's camera and the desert road that Jess drove home from her base near Las Vegas. The vocal performances, to my ear at least, were excellent, led by an outstanding Emily D'Angelo in the role of Jess."Grounded" is at its best when it details the very real and very under-recognized trauma that drone operators experience through their work. When Jess kills a group of militants who were planting an improvised explosive device (IED), her confidence wavers when she sees their charred remains and slowly watches their heat signature disappear from her camera's view — something she never had to do in her fighter pilot days.Jess's worlds gradually collapse upon each other as she tracks a sedan that looks eerily like her own, and the line blurs between her world and the war, with any visible camera liable to set off a bout of paranoia that she is next on the kill list. The performance destroys the myth that drone warfare is more of a video game than real combat, and in so doing gives voice to the pain that drone operators often experience as a result of their service. As the program notes, drone operators are diagnosed with PTSD as frequently as their fighter pilot colleagues.But, in focusing narrowly on the personal struggles of a drone operator, "Grounded" dodges more profound questions about America's endless wars, which continue today in Niger, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and whichever other countries the Pentagon would rather not say it's operating in. (For those keeping score at home, this is the start of the "bad" section.)Like much supposedly "antiwar" work, "Grounded" falls short by restricting its critique to the conduct of war rather than its very nature. As Samuel Moyn has written in these pages, each side of the debate over U.S. military interventions "bicker[s] over how far to go in making ongoing war more humane, against the background of ongoing American militarism — even as questions about whether, where, and how long war is fought are relegated to the margins."In fact, "Grounded" goes further at times by suggesting that Jess's work as a fighter pilot was in some way more moral — or at least less psychologically tortuous — than her days as a drone operator. This suggestion will come as a surprise to the many American pilots who have returned from the frontlines of the Global War on Terror with PTSD, as well as the innocents who were all too often killed in the crossfire.Much like the film "American Sniper," the show urges us to sympathize first and foremost with the person whose finger rests on the trigger. "Grounded" reaches its climax when, after tracking a high-value target for days, Jess is ready to fire on him until his daughter suddenly emerges and runs toward him. Our "hot-shot" friend panics when she sees the girl's face — in implausible HD — and crashes the Reaper instead of taking the shot. The child in the crosshairs only becomes human when compared to Jess's own daughter, who earned a life free from fear of random immolation the old fashioned way: being born in America.These shortcomings are in part explained by the fact that the opera is an adaptation of a one-woman show, which by its nature would focus closely on the emotions of its protagonist. But the operatic version of "Grounded," which is twice as long as its predecessor, still struggles to find a place for the inherent humanity of civilians caught up in far-off killing fields.Even Jess's tragic ending — a court martial that will no doubt lead to a long sentence for destroying an expensive drone — fails to strike a resounding antiwar note. In the end, the show devotes far more energy to showing the eeriness of war than any of its deeper flaws and causes.Some shots of sleek Reaper drones verge on war porn. "Grounded" is peppered with long, fawning descriptions of the drone's cameras and missiles, which seem designed to make the audience salivate over the cutting edge tech that will finally — finally! — make war a moral endeavor.And while the special effects are remarkable, they felt tailored toward another great myth of American militarism: the so-called "revolution in military affairs," which allegedly made it possible to conduct war with made-for-TV precision. We're asked to believe that Jess knows exactly what she is firing at and chooses not to — far less disquieting than the reality, in which drone operators often shoot at vaguely understood targets that all too often contain civilians.In other words, "Grounded" musters an interesting critique of the hagiography of American warfare, but, by spending most of its time describing that idealized view, the show never bothers to imagine an alternative to endless war.Prior to the performance, an ad above the stage thanked General Dynamics for its generous sponsorship of the opera season. As I walked out, I couldn't help but wonder if General Dynamics was thanking them back.

While the United States remains the dominant extra-regional superpower as the war between Hamas and Israel threatens to spread more broadly, China's growing presence across the Middle East raises important questions about how it conceives its response to the crisis.Enjoying close ties to Israel and decent relations with major Palestinian and Lebanese players, including Hamas and Hezbollah, Beijing's foreign policy in the post-Mao era has been quite balanced between Israel and Arab actors. But Israel's conduct of the war is pushing Beijing to take a stance that is increasingly pro-Palestinian, which risks harming its relations with Tel Aviv.China's main interestsUltimately, what China wants in the Middle East more than anything else is stability. The region is extremely important to the success of the Belt and Road Initiative, which will face serious problems if wars continue to plague the region. To help stabilize the Gulf, in particular, China played a catalyzing role in the renormalization of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran almost eight months ago. Now, he escalating conflict in Israel/Palestine and along the Israeli border with Lebanon has raised growing concern in Beijing about the possibility of a wider war. Beijing has called for a ceasefire, followed by a lasting political settlement to the conflict based on the implementation of a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians as the best course.China and Israel's multifaceted and complicated bilateral relationship has evolved over the decades. Under Chairman Mao Zedong's rule (1949-76), China supported left-wing and "radical" Arab regimes — namely Algeria, Egypt, South Yemen, and Syria — as well as national liberation movements in the Middle East, including the Palestinian struggle. By contrast, Mao saw Israel as a base of Western imperialism in the Arab world. But since Beijing and Tel Aviv established diplomatic relations in 1992, economic relations between China and Israel have flourished across countless sectors, including technology, infrastructure, tourism, health, education, logistics, ports, and cosmetics. There is also a history of a military-tech exchange between the two countries going back to the 1980s. Sino-Israeli relations have deepened to the point where U.S. officials have pressured Tel Aviv to cool its ties with the Asian giant.Despite these deep economic relations, however, China has opposed Israel's occupation of Palestinian and Syrian territory outside its United Nations-recognized borders and criticized its past bombing campaigns against Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon. Unlike Israel, the United States and some other Western states, China has refused to designate Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, instead viewing them as legitimate representatives of segments of the population in Palestine and Lebanon.Beijing reacts to Hamas' surprise attackIn response to Hamas' unprecedented incursion into southern Israel on October 7 and the Israeli bombing campaign of Gaza that followed, Beijing has stressed three main messages. First, it condemned all attacks on civilians. Second, it called for the reactivation of dialogue between the warring sides. Finally, it has called for the effective establishment of a Palestinian state based alongside Israel's 1949-67 borders."China has tried to maintain [neutrality], criticize attacks on civilians, and call for de-escalation and ceasefire," said Yun Sun, co-director of the China Program at the Washington-based Stimson Center, in an interview with RS. "Hamas's attacks on civilians are inexcusable. But for China, Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory is also the origin of the attacks."China's response to October 7 was similar to the way Beijing positioned itself after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to some experts. "If in Ukraine there was talk of a 'pro-Russian neutrality,' in this case it is a 'pro-Palestinian neutrality,'" according to Enrico Fardella, Director of the Italy-based ChinaMED Project."Neutrality is functional to maximize [China's] diplomatic flexibility by presenting itself as the only major power capable of dialogue with both sides," he told RS. "This serves to win consensus at the center (among all those actors critical of the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government but at the same time disgusted by Hamas' brutalities), showing the superiority of its own diplomatic action in the face of the American one that is decidedly pro-Israel. The pro-Palestinian component, on the other hand, serves to gather support on the left, i.e., in the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel (and therefore anti-American) area inside and outside the Middle East."Can China help de-escalate?Earlier this year, the Chinese offered to mediate between the Israelis and Palestinians. Now more than ever, the region could benefit from an outside actor playing an effective peacemaking role. But given Beijing's apparent inability to muster the leverage necessary to bring the Israelis and Palestinians toward a peaceful settlement, it is doubtful that China can succeed."We know that Beijing wants to prevent the escalation of the crisis, but I do not think that it has enough instruments to defuse the crisis," said Nurettin Akçay, of the Center for Global Studies at Shanghai University. He explained that China's limited leverage over Israel is a major obstacle to Beijing successfully de-escalating this conflict through diplomatic means. "It is my belief that China's position in the Middle East is somewhat overstated. Its actual power to shape events in the region is quite limited, despite its economic clout. The ongoing crisis has highlighted the fact that China lacks the necessary hard power to pursue its objectives," he told RS."I think all countries that call for de-escalation will help," noted Sun. "Beijing has relatively good relationships with both Israel and Palestine, as well as other regional players. But such good relationships do not necessarily translate into influence on such a major issue," she added. "To assume that Beijing can effectively help de-escalate is to assume that parties to the conflict are willing to change their course, which I do not see as probable at this point."Implications for U.S.-Israel tiesHow much the ongoing violence in Israel-Palestine and Lebanon will impact China's relationship with Israel is unclear. In recent years, China has become more vocal about the Palestinian cause, which serves to boost Beijing's standing among governments and societies across the Islamic world and much of the Global South. This has served to differentiate China from the U.S. and helps Beijing to depict Washington as the isolated player on this issue while countering Western efforts to use the Xinjiang human rights file to distance Muslim-majority countries from China.While the Chinese and Israelis have generally managed to separate their political disagreements from their economic ties in recent years, China's increasingly pro-Palestinian position has the potential to create considerable irritation in the bilateral relationship. And while Netanyahu was flirting earlier this year with the idea of traveling to China and meeting with President Xi Jinping in the face of Biden administration's criticism of the Israeli leader's far-right domestic agenda, such a show of defiance and independence seems highly unlikely given both Washington's strong backing for Israel in the current conflict and Beijing's more pro-Palestinian position.

Recent elections in Central Europe swept out incumbents, but in opposite directions, with the nearby Ukraine war and its impact on citizens and the economies never far from the political surface.Poland's liberal opposition managed to defeat the stubborn hold on power of the conservative nationalist party that has ruled since 2015. With the exception of the far-right Konfederacja party, the victors and the vanquished in Poland both support Ukraine's war effort. However, the campaign period exposed some economic grievances related to supporting Ukraine's European Union membership bid.In Slovakia, former prime minister Robert Fico, whose SMER party combines social democratic welfare policies with conservative nationalism, defeated the pro-EU and pro-Ukraine incumbents by emphatically opposing further military aid for Ukraine. Poland: Return to the European fold?The victory of Poland's liberal opposition in the October 15 parliamentary elections was momentous for the European Union, since it could signal the end of the uneasy relations with Europe under Poland's conservative Law and Justice party (PiS).The prospective coalition will be composed of the Civic Platform led by former Prime Minister Donald Tusk, along with the centrist Third Way coalition and the New Left bloc. Together, these three parties won 54% of the vote in a record turnout. Tusk, who served as president of the EU Council from 2014 to 2019, is committed to unblocking over 30 billion euros withheld by the EU pending the reversal of measures taken by PiS seen as having curbed judicial independence.Although it has no obvious coalition partner, PiS got the largest share of votes of any single party at 35.6 percent, allowing their leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski to claim a victory of sorts. The Law and Justice party, having governed for eight years, will be formidable in opposition, in part because the PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda's term ends only in 2025. Even if Duda bows to the election arithmetic and allows Tusk and partners to form a new government, PiS can rely on the presidential veto and court challenges to hobble Tusk's policy agenda.Law and Justice took a stubborn anti-German stance while in power and has sought to depict Tusk and other liberal opponents as agents of Germany. Moreover, Kaczynski has long accused Tusk of conspiring with Russia to cause the Polish presidential aircraft to crash as it attempted to land in the Russian city of Smolensk in 2010. For several years prior to this event, Tusk had, as Prime Minister, pursued a limited rapprochement with Russia, part of his attempt to bring Polish diplomacy more into alignment with that of France and Germany.A rare exception among nationalist-populist parties in Europe, PiS enthusiastically pushed for greater and more advanced weapons deliveries to Ukraine. However, during the election campaign this fall, PiS exploited Ukraine fatigue among Polish farmers calling for barring Ukrainian grain from the Polish market. In mid-September, in the midst of the electoral campaign, Duda likened Ukraine to a drowning man that risked taking others down with it.Polls indicate that many Poles resent the alleged economic impact of the roughly 1 million Ukrainian refugees resettled in the country. The Polish population seems to be torn between this resentment and the otherwise still solid support for Ukraine's war effort. There are also unresolved historical grievances held by some Poles against Ukrainians. Insightful polling last year concluded that Poles love Ukraine but not Ukrainians. PiS in opposition will likely seek to block Ukrainian EU accession, which can easily be depicted as disadvantageous to Polish economic interests and will respond to the frustrations exposed by the swing in public opinion.Slovakia's elections move country away from Ukraine supportSlovakia's elections of September 30 brought former Prime Minister Robert Fico's SMER (Direction) party back to power in coalition with two other parties. Fico and his coalition partners — the social democratic Voice Party and the hard-right nationalist Slovak National Party — campaigned openly on halting military support to Ukraine and on resisting any new sanctions on Russia. The pro-EU and pro-Ukraine Progressive Slovakia finished a distant second.Slovak public opinion shows a swelling Ukraine fatigue. Inflation, a weak economy and a general positive disposition among many Slovaks toward Russia are among the causes.At his first EU summit on October 27, Fico announced an end of any further military support from Slovakia to Ukraine and called for the EU to press for a negotiated settlement. He pledged to oppose any new sanctions against Russia that would adversely affect Slovakia's economy. In these positions, Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban were in close alignment. Since matters of foreign and security policy in the EU are decided unanimously, Hungary and Slovakia have some leverage over policy outcomes.How might the balance have shifted?The Polish election result may well reinforce Poland's already pronounced Atlanticist orientation. But Tusk's government may also align Poland more closely with the somewhat more nuanced and reserved position taken by Germany on supporting Ukraine. Germany has been cautious to avoid escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and has only reluctantly come on board with the US in the provision of longer-range and more advanced weaponry. Poland, under its conservative government, publicly derided German hesitations. This may change under Tusk.Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French president Macron have also championed intensified cooperation in defense-industrial modernization for Europe, a cause which Poland has not heretofore espoused. This could also change under Tusk's leadership. But Tusk's role will be under constant challenge, since PiS will hope to divide his coalition and bring forward new elections. The ongoing drag on the Polish economy will ensure that the question of balancing support for Ukraine with other objectives will not disappear from public discourse.Kaczynski's PiS was strongly in sympathy with Orban's Hungary in decrying the imposition of the European normative agenda on the scope of their powers. But the two parties never began to close the gap between their views on questions of war and peace. Relations between the two countries will now be far less cordial.Slovakia, on the other hand, is a small but unreserved ally for Hungary in resisting further military support for Ukraine. Fico has already fully committed Slovakia to opposing new military aid from the EU to Ukraine and any new sanctions against Russia. This will on balance reduce the marginalization of Hungary in the EU and in NATO.The net effect of these two elections leave the disposition of Europe as a whole toward support for Ukraine still very much in play. Poland returns to the top table of European decision-making but in doing so will be expected to accommodate to some extent the views of Germany and France. Slovakia under Fico will offer important cover to Orban's Hungary, which would otherwise be isolated.

On October 19, the USS Carney shot down four missiles and multiple drones fired from Houthi controlled Yemen. Saudi Arabia reportedly intercepted a fifth missile. US officials said the missiles and drones were headed north, possibly toward Israel. On October 27, what appears to be an errant Houthi drone or missile damaged a building in Taba and a projectile or debris fell near Nuweiba, Egypt. Yemen's Houthi rebels, the preeminent military power in Yemen, are in danger of ensnaring themselves and Yemen in an escalatory loop that will lead to a re-acceleration of fighting in Yemen. While the Houthis do possess missiles and armed drones that can reach Israel, neither are likely to evade Israel's air defenses. The latest provocations by the Houthis will have no impact on the Israel-Hamas war, but they may provoke retaliatory strikes by the U.S. and its allies. It is probable that the Houthis will respond to any airstrikes by further escalating missile and drone launches which may well target Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The Houthis have successfully targeted sites deep within the territory of both countries, including vital energy infrastructure. Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE remain involved in the war in Yemen and both will be forced to respond to Houthi led attacks, possibly with renewed airstrikes of their own.The Houthis, a Zaidi Shi'a group, are allied with Iran and receive material and technical support from Iran. However, they are rooted in Yemen's socio-cultural matrix. Unlike Hezbollah, Iran has less control over the Houthis' decision making. Iran can and does limit the operational breadth of Hezbollah and its other proxies. In the case of the Houthis, the most senior leadership, among whom all decisions of consequence are made, is closed to all but the highest-ranking members of the organization. It is possible that Iran had no foreknowledge of the Houthis' decision to launch missiles toward Israel. The Houthis' decision to launch missiles and drones toward Israel is first and foremost driven by the group's domestic concerns. The organization faces growing discontent among the 80% of Yemen's population of 32 million that it rules over. While the Houthis' brutally efficient security services maintain an iron grip on power in most areas, there are some cracks emerging in the Houthis' power base. Yemen's economy is moribund, its currency (divided into a Houthi controlled and government controlled rial) is in free fall, and public sector salaries have not been regularly paid since 2016.In addition to acute economic problems, which are Yemen-wide, the Houthis have also stoked resentment by recent moves to overtly consolidate their top-down control of northwest Yemen. On September 27, the Houthis announced the dissolution of the National Salvation Government. Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the leader of the Houthis, outlined the need for "radical change, to be commenced with the restructuring of government." The speech and the dissolution of the government are in many respects a repudiation of Yemen's republican history. The "reforms" called for by Abdul Malik also sideline the Houthis' allies from Yemen's former ruling party, the General People's Congress (GPC). The Houthis' move to formally consolidate their rule over northwest Yemen is a high risk strategy that has fueled resentment among many of the increasingly impoverished Yemenis they rule over.By launching missiles and drones toward Israel, the Houthis are hoping to distract Yemenis from their failure to deliver economic opportunity. At the same time, the Houthis are well aware of how the launches, at least in the short-term, are to be perceived by many Yemenis. Anti-Israel sentiment in Yemen, as in much of the Muslim world, is high and rising. The Houthis' attempt to target Israel may be viewed favorably by many Yemenis, even those living outside of Houthi control. The Houthis must also be seen to be abiding by their infamous shi'ar (scream/ slogan) that states, "death to America, death to Israel, curse upon the Jews."The Houthis are also keen to further burnish their credentials as a member of the "Resistance." Iranian financial and material assistance to the Houthis, while often exaggerated, is consequential. Iran has contributed to the Houthis' development of a wide and growing range of largely domestically assembled missiles and armed aerial and maritime drones. Ironically, the Houthis' increasing competence with the development and use of missiles and drones with ever greater ranges combined with their opaque decision making are a liability for Iran. Despite its rhetoric, the Iranian government has little interest in a regional war. The Iranian economy is fragile and the government is contending with significant internal unrest.Before Hamas' attack on Israelis, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia were making significant progress in their bi-lateral negotiations with one another. These negotiations were subtly aided by Iran which put pressure on the Houthis to fully engage with the Saudis. The Saudi government recognizes that there is no viable military solution to the problem of Houthi control of northwest Yemen.Instead, the Saudis sought to engage with the Houthis' leadership in a way that attempts to foster more moderate members of the organization. At the same time, the Saudis have maintained their support for the Houthis' domestic rivals, namely the Internationally Recognized Government (IRG) and select forces allied with the IRG.In the aftermath of the Houthis' missile launch as well as threats by the group to target ships transiting the Red Sea, Saudi-Houthi negotiations are likely to be paused or shelved indefinitely. If the Houthis' attacks continue — and it is likely that they will— the prospect of reaching any kind of agreement between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis will dim further. On October 24, the Houthis appear to have targeted a Saudi military post near Jabel al-Dawd killing four Saudi soldiers. This follows a September 25 attack by a Houthi drone on Bahraini soldiers serving on the Saudi-Yemeni border that resulted in the death of four soldiers. Both attacks are an ominous sign of where Saudi-Houthi relations may be heading. Unfortunately for Yemen and the region, the Houthis' ability and willingness to become belligerents in the Israel-Hamas war is going to add fuel to a simmering fire. Despite the expiration of the April 2022 ceasefire, Yemen's warring parties have avoided a return to widespread fighting due to a delicate balance of power among rivals. The Houthis' actions and the response they may justifiably illicit from the US and its allies will upset this balance of power. If this happens, fighting across Yemen will reaccelerate with grave consequences for not only the long-suffering Yemeni people, but also for the wider region. Any new attacks on the Houthis by outside powers will ensure that the hardliners who are ascendant within the organization predominate. This will all but guarantee the start of an escalatory cycle with few off-ramps.