Suchergebnisse

Several questions continue to swirl around the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and its larger implications. In this special episode, Chicago Booth's Raghuram Rajan – former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India and IMF Chief Economist – joins Bethany and Luigi to explore the risks in the financial system and possible solutions.

Rajan discusses a paper he presented (with NYU Professor Viral Acharya) at the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole conference in 2022, arguing that the Fed's liquidity provision left the financial sector more sensitive to shocks, and suggesting that the expansion and shrinkage of central bank balance sheets involves tradeoffs between monetary policy and financial stability. Together with the hosts, Rajan discusses the path forward on inflation, given economic and political pressures, and his recommendations on how to manage risks and tradeoffs.

Rhiannon Ruff, Wikipedia Expert and Founding Partner at Lumino, discusses how politicians and brands can effectively manage their Wikipedia presence. We discuss why Wikipedia is important for Google Search and AI like ChatGPT, and how the tone, norms, and editors of Wikipedia make editing your own page difficult. Rhi shares her tips on how to...
The post #171: Wikipedia Public Relations for Politics, Brands, and Crisis Communication, with Rhiannon Ruff appeared first on Social Media and Politics.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, EU Member States managed to agree on key financial instruments to support the economic recovery of Europe. The decision to manage these instruments within the existing European Semester procedure has put this procedure into the spotlight. Adequate parliamentary involvement in this procedure is crucial. The pandemic can serve as […]
The post Democratizing the European Semester: the involvement of national parliaments appeared first on Post-Crisis Democracy in Europe.

Marc Joffe


Most state and local governments file their financial statements on time, but there are some notable exceptions. Among those are the last two cities to declare bankruptcy—Fairfield, AL and Chester, PA—as well as Puerto Rico, the largest municipal bond issuer to ever file a bankruptcy petition. Now another perennially late financial statement filer is getting attention from local media and its state government.
Hopewell, VA, a city south of Richmond, with about 23,000 people, is four years behind in producing audited financial statements. Further, its audits for the years 2015–2018 did not receive "clean" opinions from the Certified Public Accountants hired to review them, suggesting serious irregularities. The 2018 opinion was especially negative, with the auditor observing:
There were material differences between the Treasurer Office's June 2018 bank reconciliation and the City and Component Unit School Board's adjusted general ledger and financial statements. The City, Treasurer's Office and Component Unit School Board were unable to provide sufficient appropriate audit evidence for these material discrepancies in cash transactions.

In connection with federal grant oversight, the auditor also assessed Hopewell's accounting systems and procedures and found them to be inadequate. City management accepted these findings and attributed the problems to "staff turnover, minimal documented procedures/​guidelines."
Hopewell last issued municipal bonds in 2011. At that time, it received strong ratings from all three of the major credit rating agencies. But the city's mounting financial reporting challenges have compromised its credit. In 2017, both Moody's and Standard and Poor's withdrew their ratings due to Hopewell's failure to provide timely disclosure. Fitch followed in 2018.
At a City Council meeting, Ward 1 Councilor Rita Joyner noted the lack of credit ratings and concluded that, as a result, the city could no longer fund capital expenditures. That is not necessarily the case. Many governments issue unrated bonds and Hopewell's bonds traded in the secondary market multiple times (albeit at significantly elevated yields) in late 2022, suggesting that some investors are willing to shoulder the city's elevated credit risk if the city chooses to issue "junk bonds".
In recent months, the State of Virginia has been investigating Hopewell's financial status and offering assistance. The state government took a largely hands‐​off approach to local government finance until the City of Petersburg suffered a financial crisis in 2016. (Petersburg is just a ten‐​mile drive from Hopewell.) In 2017, the state legislature directed the Virginia Auditor of Public Accounts (APA) to create a local fiscal distress early warning system.
But, although the state can now identify distress situations, its intervention options are limited. State law allows the governor to allocate up to $500,000 to provide technical assistance to distressed local government but cannot compel the governing body to accept this assistance.
After determining that Hopewell was in distress, the state hired the firm of Alvarez and Marsal to assess the situation and make recommendations. In May, the consultants issued a 161‐​page report with 27 recommendations including the establishment of a fiscal turnaround project management office, the development of a multi‐​year financial plan, and the creation of new monthly and annual accounts closing processes.
In July, Virginia Secretary of Finance Stephen Cummings sent City Council members a letter, offering to fund an interim City Manager and Finance Director to help implement the consultant's findings if those individuals are approved by state officials. The Council rejected the state's offer by a 4–3 vote. Without Hopewell's cooperation, there is little more the state can do.
North Carolina has a much more aggressive local intervention law. If the state's Local Government Commission determines that a local government's finances have become unsustainable, it can take over "all of the powers of the council as to the levy of taxes, expenditure of money, adoption of budgets, and all other financial powers conferred upon the council by law." Further, the Commission has the power to merge or dissolve local governments which lack a path back to sustainability.
Hopewell's problems illustrate the need for Virginia to adopt a similar set of policies.

The rise of authoritarianism in the world will continue to compel migrants to leave their home countries for years to come. Investing in our immigration system now will not only help the US to manage the current border crisis but will prepare us for future waves of immigration.
The post Why Biden's Border Policies Haven't Been Working appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

The United States has conducted two retaliatory airstrikes against Iraqi militias this week after ballistic missile attacks against America's Al Asad Air Base, the latest in a troubling tit-for-tat between the U.S. and Iran-backed militias in the region that was triggered by the Israel-Hamas conflict. CENTCOM appears to believe that the status quo of attack and reprisal with Iraqi militias is sustainable. There's an assumption that Washington, Iran, and Iraq's militias understand each other's red lines. However, this assumption comes with a lot of risks.The potential for one-upmanship between various Shi'a militias, each trying to prove they're more hostile toward Americans than the others, is a concerning possibility. A deadly attack on U.S. troops could prompt the Biden administration to respond more forcefully, especially in an election year. What is the administration's plan to manage escalation and prevent a larger regional war (with heavy U.S. involvement) if this were to occur? While the timing and scale of the war in Gaza may have been unpredictable, it was always evident that the presence of scattered U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria posed a risk of escalating the U.S. into greater conflict in such an unpredictable region. That's why I've long argued for rethinking America's military posture in Iraq, including in new research this year exploring how Washington could conduct a phased withdrawal of troops and successfully recalibrate our approach to the country and region.It is true that the presence of U.S. military advisors in Iraq helps maintain cohesion and a working relationship between competing factions of Iraq's military. U.S. troops also offer critical capabilities in the fight to contain ISIS. But it is time for Washington to consider whether these benefits are outweighed by the risk of malign actors using U.S. troops to provoke a wider conflict – either intentionally or inadvertently.While the risks of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq are apparent, the overall utility of their presence is unclear (particularly in deterring attacks on themselves). With each new day comes a fresh opportunity for crisis. It's past time Washington grappled with the true costs and benefits of our military presence.

The U.S.-China relationship has emerged from one of its lowest points in decades and successfully entered a new, albeit cautious and uncertain, phase of renewed dialogue and cooperation, verging on a delicate detente. Months of high-level meetings and diplomatic signaling have paved the way for a summit between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping in San Francisco tomorrow, marking Xi's first visit to the United States since 2017. Among the substantive agreements the two may reportedly announce are a pledge limiting the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear command and control systems as well as autonomous weapons such as drones, and a deal to limit the flow of fentanyl from China to the United States. Even absent such agreements, the summit broadly represents an affirmation of the Biden administration's approach to China: "intense diplomacy" is possible amid "intense competition." But it also exposes this approach's fatal flaw: managing tensions through dialogue will, in the long run, not be enough. Sustainable peace and stability ultimately requires getting at the root causes of those tensions, and must be built upon a foundation of genuine negotiation and compromise to slow down the escalating military competition and arms race between the two countries. Washington has yet to wake up.To start, this is a detente deferred. The Biden-Xi summit comes nearly a year to the day since the two met in Bali, Indonesia, seeking to mend the rupture caused by then-Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan last August, and laying the groundwork for wide-ranging diplomatic engagement in the months ahead. This was to include a trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China in February, the first by a member of Biden's Cabinet, but that was canceled amid the diplomatic fallout over the Chinese spy balloon. The relationship came to a sudden, grinding halt, but channels gradually reopened in the subsequent months, driven in no small part by China's own economic woes.The two sides now have a chance for redemption. A sign that this time is different would be Xi agreeing to Biden's longstanding request to reopen military-to-military channels that were shuttered following Pelosi's visit to Taiwan and have remained closed. If the summit produces this or other tangible outcomes, and contributes to a sustained lowering of tensions and further rounds of high-level dialogue, this would represent a powerful affirmation of the Biden administration's overall approach to China from the beginning.In its first few years, the administration spoke of placing the United States in a "position of strength," by repairing and revitalizing its alliance system, coordinating with those allies to increase economic and geopolitical pressure on China, and "getting our own house in order" by overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic and implementing economic and political reform at home.From this position of strength, the administration then moved toward creating a new status quo in the relationship, setting new terms and norms that would mark a clear and final departure from the decades-long era of "engagement" and the true start of the era of "competition." Whereas Trump took a sledgehammer to the foundations of engagement, Biden has sought to build a comprehensive and coherent approach out of the rubble, one designed to last for the decades ahead.The "new terms" of the relationship are that the United States and its allies will adopt aggressive, and sometimes unprecedented, military, economic, and diplomatic policies to secure their interests, but that dialogue and cooperation on common challenges would continue for their own sake, and in fact would serve as a release valve for the tensions and pressures of competition.Speaking on background to the press, a senior White House official stressed that "our China policy has not changed." Indeed, the Biden-Xi summit represents the logical evolution and maturation of the administration's approach, exemplifying what "responsible competition" means in practice. "Intense competition requires and demands intense diplomacy to manage tensions and to prevent competition from verging into conflict or confrontation," the official said.A key pillar of "intense diplomacy" is "guardrails," particularly military-to-military dialogue and crisis management mechanisms meant to ensure that aggressive maneuvers from both sides do not cause an accident that inadvertently sparks a crisis which metastasizes into a wider war neither seeks.This is where the Biden administration's vision goes wrong. Even if there is a re-opening of some military channels, Beijing has a history of not picking up the phone. In its view, "guardrails" of this sort serve as a source of moral hazard, creating a safety net that only incentivizes and encourages the United States to engage in military activities that Beijing sees as anathema to its interests, security, and prestige.Throughout the current thaw, Beijing has demonstrated its conviction to maintain an assertive military posture, instigating tensions with the Philippines in the South China Sea, threatening Taiwan with a record number of aircraft incursions, and repeatedly harassing U.S. and allied forces conducting patrols in the region. Last month, the Pentagon declassified evidence demonstrating that the PLA Air Force had engaged in more "coercive and risky" actions over the past two years than in the entire decade prior.At a CSIS event last week, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, asked matter-of-factly: "Wouldn't it make more sense for us to open a military-to-military communications channel right now, when just the other day, a bomber, one of our bombers, was approached within 10 feet by a J-11 fighter of the People's Liberation Army, and almost had a collision? Imagine what would have happened if there's a fatality."This question reflects either a basic misunderstanding of the strategic dynamics between the two sides, or a deliberate, willful ignorance: for Beijing, the risk and uncertainty is the point.As the Stimson Center's Yun Sun wrote in July, "Beijing thinks that such dialogue serves as a guardrail or a safety net that allows the United States to keep conducting military activity in the western Pacific without fear of repercussions," and that answering crisis hotlines is "a sign of weaknesses and an indication that it is willing to deescalate, which defeats the entire purpose of brinkmanship.""Beijing wants Washington to worry about China's provocative military acts, to ask for reassurance, and then not receive it," Sun continued. "Ultimately, to manage crises and prevent conflict, China believes the United States must stop talking and start eliminating what Beijing sees as the source of tension: Washington's presence in the western Pacific."The Biden-Xi summit is, of course, an unmitigated good. But the Biden administration's China policy will ultimately have amounted to a tragic failure, for it has failed to grapple with the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the relationship: the United States' primary tool for maintaining the status quo and responding to military tensions with China — military power, pressure, and deterrence — is, from Beijing's perspective, the underlying structural cause of those tensions.Sun further observes that "within China, there is an increasingly popular (if fatalistic) view that a military crisis may be inevitable, and perhaps even desirable," as "Beijing and Washington need to reach an impasse akin to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962… before they can sit down and negotiate the terms of their coexistence," including establishing "ground rules the United States will follow when operating in China's periphery."Unfortunately, history is likely to remember Biden as the president who only set the stage for the crisis that eventually forced such a reckoning, rather than the one who had the political courage, strategic foresight, and diplomatic acumen to face down this reckoning himself.

In fragile states, democracy needs, even more, strengthening in times of pandemics as citizens and institutions are exposed to increased vulnerabilities. In some cases incipient dialogue and reconciliation networks may break down as social groups turn inward as a self-protection reflex, cultural barriers might exclude women and other marginalized groups from receiving healthcare, and armed groups might exploit the situation to increase their influence. In addition to the extraordinary effort of medical personnel providing life-saving health services, governments, civil society, and citizens alike need to do their part.
Trust in institutions is key to citizens' compliance with measures that restrict individual liberties. Extraordinary measures, such as declaring a state of emergency, restricting movement, and mobilizing emergency funds, come with an increased need for government leadership and responsibility. The government's response needs to be measured and expenses appropriate, though. More than ever, the executive branch of the government should allow parliamentary control over policy implementation, because lack of proper and functional oversight mechanisms may lead authorities to abuse—or be seen as abusing—their powers.
As multiple priorities will compete for limited resources in the coming weeks and months, political parties should build political consensus not only on ways to manage the current health crisis but also on a path to socio-economic recovery over the coming months.
Strengthen social solidarity. The distribution of resources to treat medical cases—and to protect communities at large—should be and viewed as being fair; a sense of inequity can lead to deteriorating social cohesion due to perceptions that some regions or ethno-sectarian groups are getting more than their fair share. Encourage cross-group networks of solidarity that complement government efforts.
Demonstrate effective leadership and communication. Political leaders have a duty to make tough decisions, but also reassure citizens and inspire those in the frontlines of the fight against the coronavirus. Leaders should explain the strategy, and show empathy, letting experts tackle medical and legal details. The government should communicate often, with "one voice," and with clarity. Always tell the truth—misleading information or manipulated statistics tend to avenge quickly, especially in an age when everyone can easily share information using smart devices. Also, keep in mind that preexisting socio-economic and political issues will not disappear during this time; constituents still need access to services, jobs, safety, etc.
Media and citizens need to exercise good judgment and critical thinking to avoid creating panic and inflicting unnecessary suffering on the already stressed population. Deliberate disinformation is meant to sow confusion, distrust between social groups, between citizens and their government, and lead eventually to doubt that democracy can delivery in times of crisis.
Have a positive outlook—acknowledge the effort and give hope. People need inspiring models, and strong characters are forged in difficult times. Moreover, fragile countries need positive stories of challenges to overcome together to spawn a sense of resilience and pride. All should praise the hard work and commitment of first responders and try to instill the same values of self-sacrifice, discipline, and resilience across the public sector and the society at large. Last but not least, decision-makers should project hope and explain how the country and the society will be transformed and made stronger, how it will be more cohesive, through a rediscovered sense of common purpose.


Credit: Ibrahim Naji

Democracy (General), Countries: Iraq

As much as COVID-19 is a health and economic crisis, at its core, it is also a governance crisis.

NDI President Derek Mitchell and new Director of Democratic Governance Kristen Sample delve into ways governments and the international community have risen (or not) to meet the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Derek Mitchell: As we all continue to shelter in place and respond to the colossal health and economic crisis that is COVID-19, we must not forget that at its core, pandemics are as much a result of governance failure as any failure of healthcare or health system.
Since working to support democratic processes, institutions and governance around the world is what NDI does for a living, we thought it useful to delve into the role governance has played in the COVID-19 pandemic with NDI's experience in more than 50 countries around the world serving as a guide. Welcome to DemWorks. My name is Derek Mitchell, president of the National Democratic Institute.
To discuss all this with me in this podcast, I'm joined by NDI's new director of democratic governance, Kristen Sample.
Kristen Sample: Thank you so much Derek.
DM: Kristen just joined us on March 1. She brings more than 20 years of democratic governance experience with her to NBI having advised and evaluated programs at UN Women, UN Democracy Fund, the Open Society Foundation, Global Partners, Governance and International IDEA. Kristen is an expert on countering corruption, legislative strengthening in the nexus of gender and politics and she has led projects focused on the impact of democratic reform on economic development and citizen security. At a moment when the global crisis in governance is at the center of international conversation, at least before the pandemic push pause, we are thrilled to have Kristen aboard to look at that issue with fresh creativity here at NBI. So welcome Kristen to your very first DemWorks podcast.
KS: I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to speak with you today on such important issues.
DM: So we'll speak about the crisis of governance but also the pandemic factor as well. But I do want to start with this global governance crisis that has sort of preceded this. This is a broader overhang. We've seen all over the world popular demonstrations over the past year and more and everywhere from Moscow to Managua, to Hong Kong, to Khartoum, to Algeria, to Istanbul, to Paris. You can go on and on. And what it represents is a frustration with the quality of governance. Democracy somehow is not delivering for people. And I want to hear your thoughts on that. It's a moment of turmoil certainly. People will look at this and say, "Well, democracy is failing," but it's more than democracy that this is happening. It's a general quality of governance question that I think actually provides an opportunity. So let me just ask your thoughts on that first off, Kristen.
KS: Yeah. Thanks so much for that question, Derek. I think that NDI, since we have officers or programs spanning every region of the world basically in more than 50 countries, we're in a very good position to be able to take the pulse of what's happening in the different countries. In fact, we have been conducting surveys every two weeks of our country programs to get a sense of what's happening on the ground and we've received some very interesting signals that I'm really happy to be able to share with you today.
On the one side, we are saying that in many countries governments are responding very seriously, in very concerted ways to the health crisis. I mean in more than two thirds of the countries. The governments in the countries where we work are closing nonessential businesses in over 60%, they are communicating in ways, having very intensive communication campaigns that really are reaching all citizens. But when it comes to the democracy side, when it comes to implementing that response and pursuing a response that's consistent with democratic principles and norms and values and institutions, we are seeing some troubling developments at the same time.
For instance, the number of governments by our account, over 40% of the governments in the countries where we work are declaring emergency powers and it's clear that this is an extraordinary situation that requires extraordinary measures, but in many cases these emergency powers are inconsistent with democratic principles. They are not linked to the crisis. There is no provision for legislative oversight or in many cases, these have no sunset class, so there's no time limit and these are simply open-ended.
And link to that and linked in many cases to these emergency powers, emergency decrees, we're seeing an uptick also in threats to fundamental freedoms. For instance, nearly half of our countries are reporting that there are measures in place where governments are repressing non-state media who are critical of the government's response to the pandemic and that in some cases, again, almost 50% of our countries, there are measures in place where governments are limiting space for civil society to engage in political actions.
Another factor that I'd like to highlight too is while we're all distracted by the pandemic and while people are at home and perhaps with less access to information and less direct contact with government, there are also signals that many governments are using this as an opportunity to diminish anti-corruption controls. So that means that in some cases economic response packages or healthcare delivery is taking place with less transparency and less openness, which as you can imagine is a risk in terms of making sure that those resources are actually getting where they need to be.
And all of this, all of the stresses, the frustration and these concerns of course also have impacts when it comes to citizen trust, interpersonal trust citizen trust of the government and also we're seeing greater potential for civic unrest and a deteriorating security environment.
So all together, I hate to start with such a pessimistic view, but I think it is important again, through the networks that we have, the relationships that we have with political and civic actors on the ground, to convey the seriousness of the situation and to make sure that we're always communicating that well, this response requires really drastic measures. These measures need to be consonant of course, with the principles of democratic governance.
DM: Right. It fits into this broader competition of narratives that occurred even before the pandemic began, where China or Russia saying, "Look, authoritarian governments are more efficient in providing services. We do this stuff better. Democracy is messy." And they're able, as you say, to take advantage of this moment when people are looking for strong central control to make that case and to both do that rhetorically but also through provision of services.
And then it's not just those major countries. You'll have folks whether it's Hungary or Poland or you just go around the world, they're postponing elections. They are shutting down civil society, they're settling scores with adversaries. They're constraining public debate, saying that those things are luxuries during a time of crisis and that gives them an opportunity then as you said, for not just power grabs, but resource grabs and money grabs and they say, "Look, these are extraordinary times. They require extraordinary measures." And the concern is that these extraordinary measures will be permanent, that they'll say you need us to be surveilling people.
So this is a challenge for certainly those who do democracy work and for folks inside these countries. But I think the broader question of security, we'll talk about that maybe a little bit later, but it's interesting what we're seeing on the ground as you say.
You do a lot of work in the legislative sphere, you have a lot of background on that. How legislatures are particularly important. Civil society is too, but just focusing on legislature's role as a check and balance against executive overreach, can you talk about from the NDI experience or your other observation, how legislatures are being challenged, how they're dealing with this moment, how they're adapting to deal with the COVID-19 moment.
KS: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm so glad you brought this point up. The first challenge that I'd highlight is this risk that the legislative branch is getting sidelined. In a crisis like this, the executive branch is generally front and center. Their role is clearly understood by citizens. Head of state might be the one out there doing daily press briefings or a health minister communicating medical reports. And there's this sense of emergency that as I sort of alluding to before, it seems to empower the executive branch. And unfortunately that seems to be, in many cases, at the expense of the legislative power.
And additionally, another challenge and another reason that legislatures are perhaps getting crowded out or sidelined is simply that, the coronavirus, by it's dynamic, it's not socially compatible. And since parliaments are these multi-member bodies that have more diffuse operations, more diffuse leadership and that involve hundreds of different people, it's simply just a challenge to assemble a large group of people together, bring them together and keep them front and center in this crisis.
So if that first challenge is making sure that people just keep in mind that legislatures matter and the legislatures are able to exert their rights and their authority, I'd say that the second challenge of course is just how do parliaments, legislatures operate in a virtual world. Politicians are by nature, they like to shake hands, they like to get out on the street, they need to be in touch with their constituents. And there are so many challenge involved in this current world that we have where we should all be social distancing.
So looking across the world where we work, their parliaments are adopting different measures. Some of them are using social distancing restrictions like reducing the number of MPs in sessions. Others are moving to remote voting, remote deliberations. And then others are not meeting at all, which of course is quite terrible. And in those cases where legislatures have been dissolved or have been suspended for long periods of time.
We are working too, as you were saying, as NDI closely with parliaments in a number of countries to try to do those adaptations to the rules of procedures so that they're able to continue meeting in session and continue deliberating and continuing exercising oversight. For instance, we have connected parliamentarians in Colombia with parliamentarians in Ecuador. We have virtual sessions to learn from Ecuador's experience in adopting a regulation for the implementation of virtual session and teleworking.
So we are trying to connect parliamentarians across countries to understand how some parliaments have been moving forward in terms of remote procedures and how that's going for them. And two more challenges. One I'd highlight is that oversight role that we've been talking about. And from the same survey that we conducted with our country programs, we found that in 59% of the countries, checks and balances have been weakened, have deteriorated under the pandemic.
And this is happening at such an unfortunate time when there's so many policy measures that need to be approved and put in place. If we just take the issue of debt policy for instance, I saw a statistic from the Westminster Foundation that more than 80 countries have already requested emergency aid from the IMF. I mean these countries are struggling of course to meet different types of fiscal obligations and they are desperate for cash in order to ramp up health services and put in place economic measures.
And so these governments are taking on debt obligations, debt burns that are going to have far reaching impacts and long lasting impacts that should really be approved by the legislative branch and include monitoring and reporting. And that's not always the case in most of these instances.
DM: So you just say it's a very dangerous time and folks are adapting procedurally, but there are really implications to this longterm, including for security. And I think we'll get to that after the break.
For more than 35 years, NDI has been honored to work with courageous and committed pro-democracy activists and leaders around the world to help countries develop the institutions, practices and skills necessary for democracy's success.
KS: Welcome back. Derek, I've heard you speak to the issue of authoritarian systems and how they're operating in this crisis and that the authoritarian nature in itself makes health crises more likely. And you've also said in some of your speeches and some of the conversations we've had that it's not a coincidence that the pandemic started in China and I'd really like to hear from your expertise, your deep background on China specifically. Can you explain to listeners why that is? Why there is that connection?
DM: Well, as I said at the top, this is not just a health crisis, it's a governance crisis. It's a factor of governance both in the prevention of the pandemic and the response to it. We talked so far mostly about the response, how we're responding to the pandemic, but the core of the pandemic is a failure of governance. The difference between a local health crisis that is contained and a pandemic lies in the ability of a political system to respond to that early challenge quickly and effectively. And that requires both government and civic action. And if you're going to deal with this crisis early, it requires both. To do that, you have to act swiftly. You have to have widespread testing and contact tracing. You need critical support from citizens. In order to do all that and to ensure that that happens, you have to have basic civic trust.
Closed societies routinely fail that test of having that civic trust and that rapid action for some very practical reasons. When a government suppresses a free flow of information, when it fails to empower independent civic institutions, when it's too insecure to convey bad news candidly, doesn't feel that it has a political legitimacy, therefore, it's insecure to convey bad news. When its data can't be trusted because it's opaque, when its officials are afraid to speak truth to power or communicate inconvenient truths to their superiors or act decisively, absent waiting for some strict orders from the very center and they can't move quickly, the result can be deadly.
It turns what is a local health issue into a pandemic so it crosses borders. It becomes not just a problem for one country but for all others. So democratic governance is very, very practical and once again in this regard, transparent, accountable, inclusive, responsive, open governments is essential to crisis response but it's also essential to prevent the crisis from emerging to begin with.
And it is a matter of national security. This highlights frankly what many of us have known all along, that this is not just nice but has very practical national security effects. And as we just talked earlier, the irony is that just as the world needs more open democratic societies to prevent future crises and deal with the current one, there are opportunistic politicians who are closing political and civic space. That I think is a very practical reason why that closed societies cause these pandemics.
KS: I think that all of those points that you've been raising in terms of the threats and the vulnerabilities are so important for us to keep front and center. At the same time, here in NDI, as you know, is we're very keen to make sure that there are also opportunities to elevate the many examples around the world where governments are acting democratically and effectively in response to the crisis and they're framing and working with citizens in ways that are absolutely consistent with democratic values and principles. And so I do want to showcase some of those.
I think it's received a lot of press around the world how New Zealand, for instance has reacted, and I read this week that New Zealand is perhaps one of the very first countries to have been able to successfully eliminate COVID. They have no new COVID cases. And it's a case that really stands out for the way that the prime minister has been able to deliver information in a very clear, compassionate, inclusive way, a way that's very grounded in science of course, and transparent.
And at the same time where the legislature has had an important role developing a parliamentary select committee that's providing scrutiny of the government's response. The government has also been very affirmative there I think, in terms of issues of freedom of information and media freedom and has said that they would not slow down, for instance, their commitment to responding to requests for information during the crisis. So there's certainly the case of New Zealand, which is so interesting and it's shown such early success, but there are other places around the world too where specific measures taken by the government I think have been so positive and far reaching.
Uruguay comes to mind for instance. We see so many cases where authoritarian leaders are using this crisis to be able to settle scores as you were saying, or to act in a very partisan fashion. But in Uruguay, the president convened all of the former presidential candidates to give a joint press conference to send a powerful message of unity and to show that across the party divide, they were working together to develop responses.
Taiwan also really stands out for its cross party coordination, the transparent communications they've had, the very creative efforts that the government has put in place there, I think they've called it humor, not rumor. A campaign to share facts in real time to counter disinformation, to manage fear. So there aren't many cases out there as I was saying, of governments that are responding effectively and in ways that are building that citizen trust that you were mentioning.
DM: Yes. And then a further one, another democracy that's a leading democracy, probably the first out of the gate is South Korea. They did exactly what was necessary. People are looking at that example, a democratic example. They didn't sacrifice rights at all. They obviously had very strong controls at times of the society, but it took very swift action. They did widespread testing, contact tracing and they worked with civil society and is shown over and over that civil society is probably one of the most important factors. It's not simply a government driven thing that makes a response success. Civil society serves as a very efficient force multiplier for government. We saw that in Katrina, hurricane Katrina. We see it's proved over and over that it really is effective in getting the word out and messaging.
Ensuring is like in Taiwan through their civic tech community, they're sort of hackers. They're young citizens, who themselves in a voluntary fashion, formed a community. They were viewed as allies and partners not alienated from the government. And that partnership has been a success in Taiwan, has been a success in South Korea and is essential for a success. And that means that governments need to be open, need to be transparent, they need to see society as partners. So this is absolutely critical.
KS: Yeah. And I just want to add on the South Korea example. I'm so glad you brought that up because South Korea held elections during the pandemic on April 15, they had national assembly lessons and they were actually able to organize those elections in a way that was seen as very transparent, that was very consistent with electoral integrity and they had higher levels of turnout than in previous elections, which is pretty amazing. And there's so many countries around the world that are facing elections in 2020. I think the way that South Korea was able to do it with a very intensive communication campaign as you were speaking again to their transparency of communication, they had expanded early voting measures in place. They had home voting, they had very comprehensive safeguards for people to be able to vote in person. So even organizing an election in a time that seems so difficult and so challenging, I think that as you were saying, democracies like South Korea are showing that there is a way forward.
DM: Right. And I think we can learn some lessons from that as well. There are groups, including NDI has been at the center of this, of putting together documents that say here are the election integrity guidelines for this moment, that democracy should not be sacrificed at the alter of crisis response, that elections need to move forward if they can be done in the right way and if they need to be postponed, it's postponed within a certain timeframe and only during a period of high crisis. So there are principles here where democracy can continue to move forward. It makes the society stronger, it builds that civic trust that's important for crisis response. But we need to... You can walk and chew gum at the same time at this moment. So I'm glad we were able to talk about some of these democratic examples.
KS: Absolutely. And I will be right back after this quick message.
You can hear more from other democracy heroes by listening to our DemWorks podcast available on iTunes and SoundCloud.
DM: Welcome back with Kristen Sample. Of course you're new to NDI, but you know NDI very well and it's a fundamental principle everywhere that nations will only succeed when societies are fully inclusive, where they don't leave anybody behind. They enable all to contribute equally. That means women, that means young people, that means traditionally marginalized groups, LGBT communities, et cetera. It's just plain logic that if you leave anybody behind, that you're not going to get the most out of your citizen when you're going to hold your country back, and yet we are witnessing negative impacts toward these populations during this COVID-19 moment. Kristen, can you speak to this, explain what's going on here and why it matters?
KS: Sure, absolutely. I mean obviously this crisis isn't occurring in a vacuum. It's occurring in a context where across the world, across all countries, there are already this array of existing intersecting inequalities where some people were coming into this crisis already in a disadvantaged place. And then the pandemic itself has differentiated impacts that affect women and other marginalized groups disproportionately. I'll just give a few examples.
I mean lockdown for women who are living in relationships of power imbalance and of abuse perhaps, lockdown for them means locked in, with an abusive partner. And for instance our survey of country offices that I was referring to previously, in 66% of our countries, there seems to be an increase in sexual and gender based violence since the pandemic. In 15% of those countries, it's a significant increase. Of course these women might be locked in in vulnerable situations and then at the same time have less access to government resources, government support. So that's one example.
Others, people with disabilities for instance, who have always struggled to access health services, transportation in an equitable fashion, you can imagine that that lack of access and the differentiated impact of the pandemic on them is life threatening in some cases.
There are digital divide concerns, people in rural areas or women, other marginalized groups who may have less access to information, to resources. There are real concerns also and cases around the world where this pandemic is being exploited by anti migrant hate groups for instance, who try to link movement and migration to the origin of the virus. Or in some cases, for instance in Africa and some of the countries where we work, media outlets are perpetuating stereotypes against people with albinism for instance, and placing the blame for the virus on them.
So there are so many challenges around making sure that people have access to resources, people are safe and that we are able to convey and support a message of social cohesion and solidarity instead of the divisions that we're seeing pop up around the world. I think that in our case, for instance in Indiana, what we're trying to do is reinforce the need for inclusive decision-making, making sure for instance, that women are involved in decision making and other marginalized groups are involved in decision making and representation and in these deliberation bodies, making sure that the policymaking is taking into account these vulnerabilities and these different differentiated needs. And also the government messaging is inclusive, getting to everybody and it's supporting the social cohesion messaging and solidarity messages.
DM: And again, this is critical for the crisis response, pandemic response. I mean COVID-19 doesn't discriminate. Whoever has it, whoever is vulnerable or subject will get it and it will spread to the society writ large. So if you're not inclusive, if you're excluding folks, if politicians then see that there is an opportunity here as some politicians will to divide and conquer, to play on fear. Or spoilers from the outside may see that there are opportunities if they're divided societies, to create tensions that then require or enable them to negotiate the deal that you want to make or promote corruption within the society.
There are all kinds of ways this makes societies less stable, less secure, and affects the development and certainly the response to crises. So this is not just a nice thing, it's not just a human rights thing. This is fundamentally important to national security, international security and to everything that we're seeking to achieve through democracy.
KS: Absolutely. And I think along the things I'd really like to hear from you too, Derek, in terms of how you see along the lines of this being an international crisis that includes the whole world, that joins us all although we are in very different places. How you see role NDI's role in supporting that cross border cooperation and solidarity and having the international community come together?
DM: Given that authoritarians are claiming their model is unique for this moment, we have to be out there making our case. But in terms of our specific adaptations that we are doing, we are working in places like Ethiopia to ensure that the public opinion surveys are necessary invents of their postponed elections or continue forward, but can be done virtually. That we can adapt legislative rules of procedure in places that need it to allow for remote voting and continue the legislative process to ensure that election integrity is maintained.
As I mentioned earlier, there are certain principles and established accepted international principles for when and how to postpone elections, how to hold them during moments of crisis. And we put together crisis response kits that can be used. It's called the practical toolkit for politicians during a pandemic that can help political parties figure out how to do crisis management or help the government put together crisis communication.
So a lot of things that can be done internally and done across different countries that ensure the solidarity is still there, the momentum for democracy is still there. The expectation that democratic norms are sustained in this moment so that the headlines are not simply roll back authoritarian opportunism, that massive surveillance, all the things that people may succumb to because of fear during crisis, that there is an alternative voice and it says it doesn't have to be like that. Or if it does have to be like that now, it doesn't have to continue to be like that indefinitely and that there are some standards by which these things are being imposed.
So that international norm setting at this moment, it's probably more important than ever to do and we are trying to do at national level. We're trying to do it across different countries to ensure that there is not a vacuum to which the authoritarian voice moves and has free open season for its own values. It goes across, I think, a lot of different countries. And Kristen, I'd be interested in your thoughts from your perspective of governance, how that's working.
KS: I think that there's a real role for the international community to play. And I wanted to highlight that too in what you're saying because these challenges are so vast that clearly we have to work together on people to people exchanges and supporting lesson sharing. And so I do think that there's an absolute role for the international community playing in terms of getting out the messages of that democracy is not a luxury, it's not something that could be put into a coma or put on hold while we're all sheltering, that it's something that has to be reaffirmed on a daily basis.
And so I do think that countries also have to, in addition to standing firm, standing on their own ground on democratic principles, they also have to be willing to promote and expand those democratic principles across borders, especially to counter those liberal influences that you were referring to earlier, that in some cases are, really transmitted and increased through disinformation campaigns or phony PR campaigns that need to be called out of course by all actors.
DM: Thanks again, Kristen for joining me in conversation about how democracies can best meet the challenges of COVID and how NDI with its global partners are meeting the moment.
KS: Thank you, Derek.
DM: I'd also like to say thank you to our listeners. To learn more about NDI or to listen to other DemWorks podcasts, please visit our website at www.ndi.org. Thanks very much.


World map of Coronavirus (Covid-19)



19. Governance is Key During COVID-19? (w/ Kristen Sample) Posted 6 days ago

Democracy (General), COVID-19 Podcast NDI Listen democracy

Taiwanese voters elected Vice President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) as their next president on Saturday, which will be the third consecutive presidential win for the party and an indication voters want to stay the course — in policy and in current US-China-Taiwan relations.Whether it will result in heightened tensions between the island and mainland China, and Beijing and Washington, remains to be seen, and will likely be determined by the public actions and reactions by each party in the immediate days and weeks.Despite a late tightening of the presidential race between Lai and his main opponent, Hou You-ih of the Kuomintang (KMT), the candidate of the incumbent party prevailed with 40% of the vote in a three-way race that included Ko Wen-je of the Taiwanese People's Party.The failure of the two main opposition parties to unite on a joint ticket last fall paved the way for Lai's victory. While opposition campaign rhetoric painted a win for Lai as a vote for confrontation and conflict with China, enough Taiwanese voters opted to stick with the policies of outgoing president Tsai Ing-wen to give the DPP the unprecedented third term in office. Lai campaigned on a message of continuity with Tsai. In a popular campaign ad, Tsai and Lai were seen driving in a car together and then the outgoing president got out and let Lai get behind the wheel, saying to him, "You can drive better than me." Despite Tsai's somewhat low overall approval ratings, the appeal to staying on the same course was effective enough to secure Lai the win. Lai's victory is unlikely to trigger a major crisis right away, but it will ensure that cross-Strait dialogue will not resume. The lack of dialogue between Taiwan and China has coincided with and contributed to a period of increasing Chinese pressure and deteriorating relations between the United States and China. As a result, the tensions that have built up between Taiwan and China and between the U.S. and China over the last eight years will remain high for the foreseeable future. The Biden administration was already adding to those tensions last week with the announcement that it would be sending a delegation of former high-level officials to Taiwan after Saturday's election. This move was unwelcome to Beijing, and the Chinese government condemned the decision, saying that the administration should "stop sending wrong signals to 'Taiwan independence separatist forces and refrain from interfering in elections in the Taiwan region in any form."For their part, the Chinese government had been putting additional pressure on Taiwan in the weeks leading up to the election with threats of punitive trade measures. The DPP triumph is not in itself a prelude to war, but it could encourage hardliners in Washington to pursue more aggressive and provocative policies toward China while making the Chinese use of coercive tactics more likely. As the Quincy Institute's Michael Swaine said in response to the election result, Lai's victory "will likely worsen the negative dynamics" in the U.S.-China relationship that he and his colleague James Park discussed in their recent QI brief. Depending on how Lai manages relations with the U.S. in the coming years, there is a danger that his efforts to strengthen ties with Washington will cause a backlash from China that brings all parties closer to a new crisis. Lai has expressed a desire to see a Taiwanese president visit the White House sometime in the future. If Lai were to pursue such a visit, and if the Biden administration indulged him in this, that would almost certainly be met with significant Chinese punitive measures, whether in the form of economic warfare, military drills, or some combination of the two. More modest efforts to build up the relationship with the U.S. may not have such dramatic consequences, but they will contribute to the ongoing strains in U.S.-Chinese relations. The old status quo between the U.S. and China has been steadily eroding for at least the last eight years, and this has accelerated over the last three years under Biden. The bipartisan consensus in Washington in favor of containment and rivalry and ill-conceived gestures of "support" for Taiwan have fed a cycle of threat inflation and overreaction in both countries. Officials in both governments tend to assume the worst about the intentions of the other side, and there are few safeguards in place in the event of a crisis. Cross-Strait relations and relations between the U.S. and China have both suffered significantly since then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei in 2022. Following that and the spy balloon incident, it took almost all of last year for the Biden administration to stabilize the relationship between Washington and Beijing. That has left Taiwan measurably worse off under the "new normal" conditions that have been created. It has also undermined the peace in East Asia that has endured for more than 40 years. It is against this backdrop of growing mutual mistrust and hostility that we need to view the implications of the Taiwanese election results. The U.S. can expect and should prepare for at least four more years of heightened tensions and worsening relations with China.That is why it is imperative that the U.S. approach become much more cautious and responsible than it has been in a long time. The U.S. not only needs to avoid taking provocative actions like extending an explicit security guarantee to Taiwan or restoring normal diplomatic ties, but it must also seek to offer credible assurances to Beijing that it has no interest in encouraging what the Chinese government considers separatism.Reassurance is as important as, and possibly more important than, making deterrent threats. As Bonnie Glaser, Jessica Chen Weiss, and Thomas Christensen recently explained in their article in Foreign Affairs, "For effective deterrence, both threats and assurances must be credible." The U.S. has no trouble in convincing other states that it is prepared to use force. The difficulty is in getting other states to believe that the U.S. can be trusted to leave well enough alone. The U.S. should take care in the coming months not to make any moves that suggest that it is upgrading the relationship with Taiwan. The post-election delegation that Biden is sending should be the last one of its kind for a long time. The Chinese government already perceives a gap between the Biden administration's rhetoric and its actions, so it is crucial that this gap not get any wider than it already is. The administration also needs to communicate privately to the incoming president that he should not take any actions that are likely to antagonize Beijing. Given the political incentives in an election year to engage in gratuitous China-bashing, that may be a tall order, but it is what needs to happen if the U.S. and Taiwan are going to navigate the year ahead without serious incident.

Hamas's horrific attacks last weekend and the subsequent Israeli bombings of Gaza have put the entire world on edge. Beyond concerns for the fate of the 2.2 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza with nowhere to flee, there is also a palpable fear that the conflict will escalate into a region-wide war. None of the main actors — with the possible exception of Hamas — want or benefit from such a war, yet all sides are acting in a manner that increases its risk by the day. There is little to suggest that Israel or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seek to widen the war. The chaos in Israel and his government's failure to not only prevent the attack but also manage its aftermath defies the idea that he was preparing or yearning for a larger war. Israel would indeed find itself in a precarious situation if it ends up in a two-front war with Hezbollah attacking Israel from the north.There is also nothing to suggest that Hezbollah desires a war with Israel either, despite the Wall Street Journal reporting that Hamas had coordinated the attack with Hezbollah and Iran. Hamas alone attacked Israel, and there was no simultaneous or subsequent large-scale attack from the north. Given Lebanon's dire economic situation — it is in its fourth year of a deep economic and political crisis, with inflation at 350% and 42% of the total population facing acute food insecurity — war with Israel would risk bringing the entire nation to a breaking point. Similarly, there is no evidence that Tehran would benefit from a larger war. As a European diplomat put it to me, "Iran prefers a low-intensity conflict with Israel, not open warfare." The regime in Tehran has just survived one of the greatest challenges to its rule and appears relieved that the anniversary of the killing of Mahsa Amini did not reignite these protests on a large scale. Its economy is also in dire straits, and its focus has mainly been on reaching a de-escalation understanding with Washington that would secure the release of Iranian funds and the softening of the enforcement of US sanctions on Iranian oil sales. Rather than coordinating the attack with Hamas, Tehran was taken by surprise, according to US intelligence. Tehran has also taken the unusual step of sending a message to Israel through the United Nations, stressing that it seeks to avoid further escalation. It has, however, warned that it will be compelled to intervene if Israel continues bombing Gaza.If there is any rationality in the Biden administration's Middle East policy, it too will oppose further escalation of the fighting. Between the war in Ukraine and a potential crisis with China over Taiwan, the Biden administration simply cannot afford a broader war in the region. The administration's focus — however misguided —has instead been on securing a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The White House has been so obsessed with this idea that they have even begun considering offering the Saudi rulers a security pact as well as nuclear enrichment technology. War in the Middle East has not been on Biden's agenda. Finally, the Arab states in the region, from Egypt to Syria to Saudi Arabia, have nothing to gain and much to lose from a larger war. Egypt fears a massive influx of Gazans into the Sinai that, in the words of David Hearst, has the "potential to tip Egypt over the edge after a decade of economic decline." Syria's Bashar al-Assad has been focused on normalizing relations with Sunni Arab states and re-entering the Arab League — critical both for his political rehabilitation and Syria's economic rebuilding. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — who was on the verge of normalizing relations with Israel and throwing the Palestinians under the bus — felt compelled to revive Saudi Arabia's traditionally pro-Palestinian profile given the wider Arab world's immense anger over Israel's bombing of Gaza. His call this week with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi — the first time the two ever spoke — was at least partly motivated by a desire not to cede leadership on this issue to Tehran. Both a bloodbath in Gaza and a broader war will severely complicate his ambition to assert himself as the undisputed leader of the Arab world, given his neglect of and disdain for the Palestinians. Despite clear interests on almost all sides against a regional war, all sides are acting in a manner that makes such a war increasingly likely. If Israel's invasion of Gaza proves successful in terms of decimating Hamas, Hezbollah may feel compelled to intervene — not necessarily to save Hamas, but to save itself. A successful Israeli campaign against Hamas will tilt the balance in the region, with Israel having freer hands to go after Hezbollah. An attack from the north by Hezbollah may not save Hamas as much as it will make it too costly for the Netanyahu government to extend the war into Lebanon after Hamas has been defeated. Hezbollah may not be able to prevent an Israeli victory, but it will have a compelling interest to turn it pyrrhic. Hezbollah's involvement, in turn, will bring Iran much more directly into the conflict. While declaring its opposition to a wider war, Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has warned that unless Israel stops its attacks, the war will be widened and that Israel will suffer "a huge earthquake." With Iran and Hezbollah drawn into the conflict, the Biden administration will be under tremendous pressure to intervene militarily despite clear U.S. interest in staying out. There is little in Biden's conduct thus far that suggests that, in this scenario, he will prioritize America's long-term strategic interest over what is politically expedient for him in the immediate term. Direct American military intervention in Gaza, or against Hezbollah and Iran, is all but certain to generate major attacks against U.S. troops and interests throughout the Middle East by armed groups supported by Tehran. Militias in Iraq and Yemen have already issued stern warnings of a multi-front response to any American intervention. The White House is well aware of these escalation risks. At a meeting earlier this year between two senior American officials and a high-level representative of the Iranian government, one of the Americans warned Tehran that if it enriched uranium to 90% purity, the U.S. would strike Iran militarily. Without skipping a beat, the Iranian official responded that Iran would respond immediately by destroying fourteen American bases in the region by raining thousands of rockets on them within 24 hours.It is in this context that the Biden administration's refusal to call for de-escalation and a ceasefire — or to practically pressure Israel to exercise its right to defend itself within the confines of international law — is so problematic. It is not just the moral bankruptcy of the Biden White House to stand in the way of efforts to end the crisis (shocking internal emails have revealed that State Department officials have been prohibited from using terms such as de-escalation, ceasefire, ending the bloodshed, and restoring calm). It is not the blatant disregard for human life shown by the White House when its spokesperson blasts Democratic lawmakers advocating for a ceasefire and calls them "repugnant."It is also the strategic malpractice of giving Israel a carte blanche to act as it wishes despite knowing and understanding the tremendous risk that Israel's unrestrained actions in Gaza can drag Washington into a wider regional war that neither serves the interest of the U.S. nor Israel. The combination of issuing warnings to Hezbollah and Iran to show restraint, while demanding no restraint from Israel, may be politically expedient for Biden, but it is likely to produce the very nightmare scenario Biden presumably seeks to avoid. As Ben Rhodes from the Obama White House put it in his podcast this past week, counseling restraint and calls "to follow the laws of war, are not to show a lack of regard for what Israel has gone through. On the contrary, it's kind of what I wish someone had done for the United States after 9/11."But Biden is not only giving Israel bad advice. He is giving Israel bad advice that risks getting thousands of Americans killed in yet another senseless and preventable war in the Middle East. If he lacks the humanity to call for a ceasefire to prevent the killing of thousands of Palestinians, he should at least not abdicate his responsibility as President of the United States to keep Americans out of the killing zone.

The State Department has approved an $80 million military aid package to Taiwan. Though hardly a military game-changer, this modest transfer is unprecedented in its funding source: the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, which is primarily a grant account for military assistance to foreign countries. The transfer, the State Department insists, does not imply the recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state. "Consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act and our longstanding One China policy, which has not changed, the United States makes available to Taiwan defense articles and services necessary to enable it to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability," a State Department spokesperson said.Yet the FMF grant follows a consistent pattern of rhetoric and behavior that appears to dilute strategic ambiguity, or the longstanding U.S. policy of deliberately maintaining uncertainty around the question of whether the U.S. would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack. President Joe Biden explicitly stated, and reaffirmed in response to a clarifying question from 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, in September 2022 that U.S. forces will fight to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion. The ongoing dilution of strategic ambiguity as a credible foreign policy concept, accompanied by a sharp and rapid decline in the overall U.S.-China relationship, raises the specter of military confrontation in the Taiwan Strait. Now more than ever, there is a pressing need to articulate a viable vision not only on Taiwan policy but on the broader issues surrounding the U.S. defense posture in the Asia-Pacific. To unpack the dynamics of the Taiwan conflict and what it means for U.S. strategy, it is worth revisiting an age-old concept of international politics: the security dilemma. The security dilemma, in short, holds that actions taken by states to increase their security can be perceived as threatening by other states, triggering a chain reaction that makes everyone involved less safe. It is a foundational idea in international relations thinking, and for good reason. It speaks to a deeply salient aspect of state behavior, observed over the course of thousands of years from the Peloponnesian War onwards and extensively reproduced in numerous geopolitical contexts. The dilemma has been most clearly and frequently expressed through cases of military buildup. Imagine a scenario in which you, as a leader, have come to believe that your neighbor harbors aggressive intentions toward your country. Your belief may be premised, as these situations so often are, on decades or even centuries of bad blood including real acts of aggression previously committed by your neighbor. So, you resolve to arm yourself to deter and, if need be, repel your neighbor's aggression. But it turns out that you are not the only one driven by such fears. Your neighbor, informed by their own history, interests, and strategic culture, believes something awfully similar about you and concludes that your defensive buildup is a prelude to an attack on them. They might respond with a buildup of their own, thus heightening the risk of miscalculation and catastrophic accident, or by launching a preemptive strike on you. The Taiwan situation is, admittedly, more complex than a simple border buildup crisis between two contiguous powers because it is a maritime conflict centered on a third actor that, despite not being recognized by Washington as a sovereign country, is widely considered key to U.S. regional and global interests. Yet the basic logic outlined by the security dilemma not only still applies but is more relevant than ever to understanding what makes the Taiwan conflict so dangerous and difficult to solve. Taiwan is the geopolitical fulcrum between competing Chinese and U.S. spheres of influence in the Asia-Pacific. Any U.S. effort to impose military costs on a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or even to maintain relations with Taipei, will be bemoaned by Beijing as an attempt to "strangle" China and runs the risk of incurring reciprocal Chinese military actions. The security dilemma over Taiwan is, as former Pentagon official and Principal of the Marathon Initiative Elbridge Colby rightly observes, both real and unavoidable, but it need not lead to catastrophe. The dilemma cannot be solved outright, but it can and should be mitigated. Colby and others advocating for a more proactive Asia-Pacific policy are correct in their assessment that the train has left the station when it comes to strategic ambiguity. Chinese strategy is likely already premised on the assumption, increasingly reflected in American foreign policy discourse and military planning, that U.S. forces will directly intervene to defend Taiwan. Strategic ambiguity was a masterstroke of American diplomacy, guaranteeing Taiwan's integrity and advancing U.S. regional interests for over 50 years at exceedingly low cost and with little risk. But the veil has been lifted. The conditions in which strategic ambiguity thrived are not sustainable, not least of all because the Chinese, as the primary audience for which the message of ambiguity was designed, no longer view it as a credible sentiment. The illusion of ambiguity has been dispelled and cannot be recreated in the context of present U.S.-China relations.In thinking about solutions, it is important to highlight that strategic ambiguity and the One China Policy, though historically intertwined, are not and have never been a package deal. It is fully possible to acknowledge Taiwan's vital importance to U.S. interests and to act accordingly without recognizing it as a sovereign country. Recognition would bolster China's pretext for an invasion and massively increase the likelihood of a military showdown over Taiwan. Actions that can be interpreted as a signal that U.S. policymakers are mulling recognition, such as the recent FMF transfer, needlessly risk a disproportionate Chinese response. This is not to suggest that there isn't room for deterrence in the U.S. policy toolkit. Indeed, there is both military and political value in aiding Taiwan with the goal of conveying to Beijing that any attempt at "reunification" through force will be the opposite of quick and painless. But such efforts, while worthwhile, must be accompanied by a coherent and realistic Asia-Pacific strategy that leverages the unique advantages offered by America's regional alliances and balances competition with engagement where appropriate. Our rhetoric and policies on Taiwan should be firm, not bombastic; predictable, not shrill; and guided by concrete material interests, not the promulgation of abstract values. Asia-Pacific is the theater where the configuration of the international order will be decided in coming years and decades. There is no greater strategic challenge confronting American policymakers than to manage the Taiwan crisis in a judicious and forward-looking manner — U.S. global standing hinges on it.

As famine looms in northern Gaza, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees is hurtling toward collapse."What I can say today is that we can run our operation until the end of May, whereas a month ago I had just the visibility for the next week or two weeks," Philippe Lazzarini, head of the U.N. Palestinian refugees agency (UNRWA), told reporters in Geneva last week, just days after Israel denied him entry into Gaza. "But that shows also how bad the financial situation of the organization is."The money crunch stems in part from a fateful U.S. decision. When Israel accused a dozen of UNRWA's 13,000 Gaza-based employees of facilitating the Oct. 7 attacks, American officials immediately paused funding for the organization pending an investigation. Many other top donors followed suit, leaving UNRWA scrambling to stay afloat.It's since become clear that Israel's accusations relied on less-than-definitive evidence. This revelation led most funders to turn the spigot back on. But the U.S., with its unusually deep pockets, is now banned from changing course. Less than two weeks ago, Congress passed a law blocking all funding for UNRWA until March 2025. The timing of this decision is nothing short of disastrous, according to Christopher Gunness, a former spokesperson for UNRWA. "Mass starvation has already set in, but without UNRWA it's impossible to even slow that down," Gunness said.Despite Israel's claims to the contrary, there is no way to replace UNRWA's role in Gaza, especially amid the largest Palestinian humanitarian crisis since Israel's war of independence, according to experts on humanitarian aid and UNRWA's history. Analysts also fear that potential interruptions in the agency's operations across the Middle East — including in war-torn Syria and crisis-riven Lebanon — could further undermine regional stability.A State Department spokesperson told RS that getting aid to Palestinians in Gaza is a "team effort." "[W]hile we will continue to provide funding to organizations like the World Food Programme [WFP], we will be looking to other donors to continue to provide critical funding to UNRWA as long as our funding remains paused," the spokesperson said in a statement.But groups like WFP simply don't have the capacity to fill the gap made by defunding UNRWA, according to a humanitarian working to get aid into Gaza who requested anonymity to prevent Israeli retribution."The work they do on a day-to-day basis, no one else does it, and you couldn't stand up an organization to do it," the humanitarian worker told RS. "There's literally no other place for [Gazans] to go."A love-hate relationshipDecades removed from its founding, it can be easy to forget where UNRWA came from. In a practical sense, it sprung from the need to get aid to 700,000 Palestinian refugees when it became clear that Israel would not let them return home after the 1948 war. But ideologically, UNRWA's story begins in the Tennessee Valley.
In the 1930s, Congress launched a New Deal project known as the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The TVA was a development initiative; it enlisted some of those hardest hit by the Great Depression and put them to work building dams, boosting crop yields, and bringing electricity to rural communities. It was, by most accounts, a rousing success.
After the humanitarian disaster of the 1948 war, President Harry Truman hoped TVA chief Gordon Clapp could bring that success to the Middle East. With the support of the fledgling U.N., which had yet to establish an agency for refugees, Clapp visited the region in 1949 and became convinced that the Jordan Valley and other fertile areas in the Levant were ripe for TVA-style development. The U.N. General Assembly agreed, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency was born.
It didn't take long for "works" to disappear from the mission. Development projects sputtered, missing deadlines due to infighting among host countries and the refugees' general unwillingness to be relocated once more. "Most refugees refused to work," said Jalal al-Husseini, an expert on UNRWA's history and an associate researcher at the Insitut français du Proche Orient (Ifpo). "They wanted to go back home." Donor states also realized that large-scale public works are a good bit more expensive than more mundane relief projects.
UNRWA's other activities — from schools to healthcare facilities and aid distribution — were far more successful. The organization provided much-needed help to the governments of Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, each of which had little capacity to manage the refugee influx on their own.
Besides a brief period in the early 1950s, Israel had little to do with UNRWA until 1967, when its forces routed Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in the provocatively named Six Day War. The conquest created a problem: As an occupying power, Israel was suddenly in charge of the welfare of millions of Palestinians. Tel Aviv quickly struck a deal with UNRWA to keep its operations going in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Since the vast majority of UNRWA's local staff is Palestinian, the agency was "never really seen by Israel as a neutral and independent and impartial U.N. organization," according to Lex Takkenberg, a 30-year veteran of UNRWA who left the agency in 2019.
"It started off with an explicit request by Israel for UNRWA to continue operating," Takkenberg said. "Since that time, there has sort of been a hatred-love relationship."
Israel-Palestine watchers will recognize the pattern. Since the 1960s, Israel has periodically bemoaned the contents of UNRWA textbooks or accused staff of ties to Palestinian political groups (or terrorist organizations, in Tel Aviv's telling), drawing scrutiny from Western donors. UNRWA responds by excising objectionable content from courses and firing employees with apparent conflicts of interest. Over the years, these back-and-forths forced the agency to develop a comprehensive "neutrality framework" to keep politics out of its work.
"Almost without exception, Israel never provided evidence" that employees had ties to groups like Hamas, Takkenberg recalled. But UNRWA would still usually fire them to protect the organization as a whole. "Then the Israelis would be back to business as usual," he said. "It never reached the point that [Israel] asked UNRWA to stop operations."
In substance, the Oct. 7 allegations were the latest entry in this story. Israeli officials made bold allegations that UNRWA employees facilitated the attacks but have yet to provide evidence, even to U.N. investigators.
But the reaction from donors was different. While the International Court of Justice has twice demanded a surge of aid into Gaza to avert disaster, most Western countries suspended support for the strip's leading relief group. Many have restarted their funding, but the U.S., United Kingdom, and Australia are still holding out.
"Prohibiting the Biden administration from contributing to UNRWA creates a large gap in the Agency's annual operating budget," said William Deere, the head of UNRWA's Washington office. The shortfall "will make it harder for UNRWA to assist starving Gazans and potentially further weaken regional stability," Deere argued.UNRWA in crisisUNRWA is, of course, no stranger to crises. When Saddam Hussein's Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, Israel imposed a blanket curfew on the West Bank and Gaza, leaving many Palestinians with limited access to food. Quick mobilization from UNRWA prevented a bad situation from getting worse, according to Takkenberg."I organized massive food distributions during short periods that Israel lifted the curfew so that people could collect food from distribution points," he remembered.In the tumultuous period since, UNRWA has managed to stay afloat and provide aid across the Levant despite wars and a blockade in Gaza; a brutal conflict in Syria; and a protracted economic crisis in Lebanon.When President Donald Trump cut off funding in 2018, it came as a shock. "We found out that the Americans were not going to be giving us their money when the check did not arrive in the post," Gunness, the former spokesperson, recalled. This diplomatic equivalent of an Irish goodbye lit a fire under UNRWA staff, who put fundraising efforts into overdrive and filled the gap with pledges from wealthy Gulf countries. Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly backed the effort to avert "disaster" in Gaza.But all of these crises pale in comparison to the trial that the organization faces today. Gulf donors have so far failed to fill the gap left by the U.S. decision to cut off funding. At least 154 UNRWA employees have been killed since Oct. 7, and many of its facilities have been destroyed in the bombing. These direct attacks have been paired with an unprecedented Israeli PR effort to discredit the organization, all with the substantive backing of a Democratic U.S. president.Fringe Israeli activists have long argued that UNRWA is illegitimate in some fundamental sense, perpetuating a fanciful dream that Palestinians will eventually return home. Its existence, they argue, encourages false hope and prevents an end to the conflict. As Israel's political scene has lurched to the right, this view has become more popular. Now, multiple members of Netanyahu's cabinet are publicly opposed to UNRWA's very existence.Israel is now actively working to undermine UNRWA. In January, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich blocked a large shipment of U.S. aid in order to stop it from reaching UNRWA. The U.N. claims that Israeli officials are holding up visas for aid workers affiliated with the agency."UNRWA are part of the problem, and we will now stop working with them," an Israeli spokesperson said last week. "We are actively phasing out the use of UNRWA because they perpetuate the conflict rather than try and alleviate the conflict."Israeli opposition can only do so much to block the agency's work in the short term, according to Takkenberg, who noted that other groups are likely importing humanitarian aid in their own name and simply handing it off to UNRWA upon arrival. But that workaround has its limits as Israel allows only a trickle of aid to enter Gaza each day. There are currently as many as 30,000 trucks sitting in Egypt waiting to cross the border, according to a Jordanian official who spoke with NPR. "There are trucks that have been at the border for three months," the humanitarian worker told RS. "There's all sorts of crazy restrictions that make no sense, even from a security standpoint," they said, adding that they've had medical equipment and food confiscated during inspections.This has left UNRWA, and Gaza as a whole, on the verge of collapse. Israel and its Western backers will likely regret their role in bringing the crisis to this point, argued Gunness. "Any donor governments, especially those who are friends of Israel, who think that it's somehow in Israel's security interests to have millions of angry, hungry, radicalized, mourning, grief-stricken people living in appalling refugee camps and other circumstances on the doorstep of Israel, I wonder what planet they are living in," he said.

Since October, Egypt has joined most of the international community in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. With Egypt being the only Arab country to border Gaza, Cairo's stakes are high. The longer Israel's war on the besieged enclave continues, the threats to Egypt's economy, national security, and political stability will become more serious.Located along the Gaza-Egypt border is Rafah, a 25-square-mile city that until recently was home to 300,000 Palestinians. Now approximately 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering in Rafah because of the Israeli military's wanton destruction of Gaza City, Khan Younis, and other parts of the Strip. Having asserted that four Hamas battalions are now in Rafah, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that deploying Israeli forces to this Palestinian city is necessary for his country to defeat Hamas amid this war. As of writing, Israel's military is preparing to launch a campaign for Rafah.Officials in Cairo fear that Israeli military operations in Rafah could result in a large number of Palestinians entering the Sinai. "An Israeli offensive on Rafah would lead to an unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe and grave tensions with Egypt," said European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell on February 10.Not only could such a scenario fuel massive amounts of friction between Cairo and Tel Aviv, but it could also severely heighten tensions between the Egyptian public and President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi's government. It's easy to imagine a mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, which would amount to essentially a "Nakba 2.0," triggering widespread unrest in Egypt if the government in Cairo is widely seen by Egyptians as playing a role in permitting, if not facilitating, such an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. Along with economic considerations, this is one of the main reasons why Cairo has articulated that Israel depopulating Gaza of Palestinians and forcing them into Egypt is a red line that Tel Aviv must not cross."The biggest concern for Cairo is related to the fate of the [Palestinians in Gaza] forcibly evacuated by the Israelis and who might find a 'safe haven' in Sinai. An uncontrolled influx of Palestinians into the [Sinai] Peninsula would be an enormous burden on Egypt, which would have to manage a problematic situation from a political and security point of view, as well as having to justify internally to its own public opinion an imposition that came from outside," Giuseppe Dentice, head of the Middle East and North Africa Desk at the Italian Center for International Studies, told RS."It is no coincidence that Cairo has reinforced the border with Gaza, closed the Rafah crossing, and warned Israel that any unilateral action involving a forced exodus of the Strip's inhabitants to Egyptian territory could jeopardize not only bilateral relations, but the preconditions for peace and stability guaranteed in the [Camp David Accords]," added Dentice.On February 15, Maxar Technologies, a Colorado-headquartered space technology company, captured satellite images showing Egypt's construction of a wall roughly two miles west of the Egypt-Gaza border. The following day, the London-based Sinai Foundation for Human Rights said that this construction "is intended to create a high-security gated and isolated area near the borders with the Gaza Strip, in preparation for the reception of Palestinian refugees in the case of [a] mass exodus."What might happen to the Camp David Accords?On February 11, two Egyptian officials and one Western diplomat told the Associated Press that Cairo might suspend the 1979 Camp David Accords if Israeli troops wage an incursion into Rafah. A day later, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry denied such reports about his government's plans to freeze the peace treaty with Israel, yet he emphasized that Egypt's continued adherence to the 1979 deal would depend on Tel Aviv reciprocating. Alarming to Egyptian officials were Netanyahu's statements late last year about the Israeli military taking control of the Philadelphi Corridor (a nine-mile-long demilitarized buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt which was established in accordance with Egypt and Israel's peace treaty) because such a move on Israel's part would be a breach of the Camp David Accords.Are Egyptian officials serious about possibly freezing the historic peace deal? Or does such talk amount to empty threats issued for political purposes at home, as well as pursuing certain Egyptian aims vis-à-vis Washington and Tel Aviv? Mouin Rabbani, a political analyst and co-editor of Jadaliyya, told RS that if these statements from anonymous Egyptian officials are geared toward a domestic audience but Cairo doesn't follow through, Sisi's government could have a "potentially serious problem on its hands."Ahmed Aboudouh, an associate fellow with the Chatham House and a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council, doubts that Egypt would go as far as suspending the Camp David Accords. "In the end, Egypt is unlikely to take the first step to tear the treaty up unilaterally," he said.But what Egypt is doing is embracing "discursive strategic posturing" whereby Cairo uses "rhetorical escalation" and directs messages at three audiences, Aboudouh told RS. First is the domestic audience to say that Cairo is standing up for Egypt's core security interests as well as the Palestinian cause. The second is Washington to relay the Egyptian government's anger at the Biden administration for not stopping Israeli actions that threaten to displace Palestinians into the Sinai. Third is to Netanyahu, generals in the Israeli Defense Forces, and the Israeli intelligence community.Gordon Gray, a former U.S. Ambassador to Tunisia, also discounts recent suggestions that Cairo would suspend its peace treaty with Israel for three main reasons. "First, Egypt does not seek military confrontation — even an inadvertent one — with Israel. Second, Egypt does not want to risk losing U.S. military assistance ($1.3 billion annually), which was granted as a direct result of the Camp David Accords. Finally, while Egypt abhors the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, it shares Israel's views about the threat Hamas poses," said Gray in an interview with RS.What would come from Egypt freezing the treaty?Despite many experts believing that Egypt would not freeze the Camp David Accords, that potential scenario should be considered. There are important questions to raise about what it could lead to in terms of region-wide ramifications, as well as Cairo's relationships with Western capitals. But it's difficult to predict how events would unfold if Egypt took that step because there would be so many unknown variables in play.Egypt could act in different ways after suspending the peace treaty with Israel. Rabbani asked, "Would it simply declare the peace treaty suspended and leave it at that or would it stop implementing provisions of that treaty?"Regardless, any freezing of the Camp David Accords by Egypt would inevitably bring a layer of instability to Egyptian-Israeli relations never seen since Jimmy Carter's administration, which — with help from Iran, Morocco, and Romania — brought Egypt's then-President Anwar Sadat and Israel's then-Prime Minister Menachim Begin together in northern Maryland's Catoctin Mountains to sign the peace treaty in September 1978. The response from Washington would likely be extreme, particularly given how central Egyptian-Israeli peace has been to U.S. foreign policy agendas in the Middle East for almost half a century while surviving a host of regional crises, including Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and all the previous Gaza wars."The U.S. is certain to act true to form and retaliate against Egypt without holding Israel in any way accountable for producing this crisis, and Washington may well cease foreign assistance to Egypt, which is a direct function of its peace treaty with Israel. The EU will probably announce it is launching an investigation of the Egyptian school curriculum or some other nonsensical initiative," Rabbani told RS.Irrespective of how Egypt approaches its relationship with Israel, the fact that officials in Cairo are suggesting a potential freeze of the Camp David Accords speaks volumes about the Gaza war's impact on Israel's diplomatic standing in the Arab world. With the probability of more Arab countries joining the Abraham Accords in the foreseeable future having essentially dropped to zero, the pressing question is not which Arab government might be next to normalize with Tel Aviv. The focus has shifted to questions about how Arab countries already in the normalization camp, such as Egypt, will manage their formalized relationships with Israel at a time in which Israeli behavior in Gaza is widely seen across the Arab-Islamic world as genocidal.

With the failure of Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive despite billions in armaments and months of training, the post mortems have begun.

They follow: The West was too slow in providing missiles and aircraft; Russia had too much time to prepare trenches and minefields; Ukraine needed more time to learn combined-arms tactics and employ Western armor effectively. Yet underlying all these excuses was a broader analytical failing that has yet to be acknowledged: flawed and often facile historical analogies led defense planners to underestimate Russia's resilience.

Even today, with the horrific costs of overconfidence plain to all and Ukraine at a crucial crossroads, the same flawed analysis of the Russian adversary persists.

Time and again, policymakers and commentators based their expectations of the war based on flawed historical parallels. One example is Russia's acceptance of mass casualties and use of "human wave" attacks where they lose three or more soldiers for every Ukrainian casualty.

Time and again — right up to the present — commanders and commentators cite this as a sign of severe Russian weakness. Whether discussed in the jargon of an "asymetrical attrition gradient," or simply referring to Russian soldiers as "cannon fodder," analysts frequently note that such profligacy with human lives is a legacy of ponderous Soviet and Tsarist armies.

But what they fail to note is that this tactic often brought victory. Tsarist armies took massive casualties in battles with Swedish, Persian and Turkish forces as they built the Russian empire. In defeating Napoleon, the Russians suffered as many casualties as the French despite the advantage of fighting on their home ground and their familiarity with the Russian winter.

Soviet Marshal Zhukov absorbed 860,000 casualties to the Germans' 200,000 at the Battle of Kursk in World War II. He also lost 1,500 tanks to the Germans' 500, yet Kursk is remembered as a great triumph that crushed Hitler's final hopes of victory. Can one imagine Germany celebrating its superior casualty ratio while being defeated by Stalin's hordes?

However shocking this tactic may be, it is a resource that Moscow has and Kyiv does not. Consider the battle for Bakhmut and the daily bulletins trumpeting Ukraine's success in killing thousands of Russians, right up to the moment that Bakhmut fell to Wagner Group mercenaries — weirdly reminiscent of the Pentagon's body-count bulletins in the Vietnam war.

At Bakhmut Ukraine lost the indispensable cream of its army to hordes of dispensable Russian convicts-turned-storm troopers in doomed defense of a strategically insignificant town that President Zelenskyy vowed would not fall. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers is now 43.

Losing Bakhmut hurt Ukrainian morale, but it is Russian morale that pundits say is shot. And they remind us that military disasters sparked Russian uprisings in the past — in 1905 after defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, or the debacle of WWI that led to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in 1917.

Given their hardships and suffering, why wouldn't Russians do it again and overthrow Putin? Pundits often ignore that, after a decade of economic chaos and global humiliation in the 1990s, Putin is respected for restoring stability and national pride. Tsar Nicholas II, by contrast, was rather more like Boris Yeltsin — weak and out of touch, reliant on hated advisers, presiding over chaos.

It's also likely that, unlike a distant debacle with Japan or European carnage triggered by an Austro-Serbian dispute, many Russians believe in this war because they see Crimea and Donbas as historically and culturally Russian.

Whether it stems more from deep-seated imperial attitudes or a decade of anti-Western propaganda, Russians still back Putin and even take pride in standing up to the best NATO can throw at them. An effort to appreciate the views of Putin and his people is not being "pro Russian" even if we find those views wrong or repugnant.

On the contrary, such an approach is key to "thinking in time" with accurate historical analogies, and vital to avoiding the conceit of assuming that Russian soldiers or citizens will behave as we would.

On the eve of Ukraine's counteroffensive, U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman General Mark Milley declared that Russians "lack leadership, they lack will, their morale is poor, and their discipline is eroding." Of course, if your main historical lesson is that Russian armies crack under strain, then you look closely for signs of dissent and soon find a looming collapse.

This is how superficial history joins with confirmation bias to produce flawed analysis. Stymied by fierce Russian fighting, Ukrainians troops themselves told Milley he was wrong: "We expected less resistance. They are holding. They have leadership. It is not often you say that about the enemy."

As Kyiv's crisis deepens and recriminations spill out in public, commanders at all levels of the Ukrainian Armed Forces agree that they and their NATO advisers badly misjudged Russian tenacity: "This big counteroffensive was based on a simple calculation: when a Moskal [slur for ethnic Russian] sees a Bradley or a Leopard, he will just run away."

But what about taking the fight to Russia? Former CIA Director General David Petraeus predicted that Russian resolve could "crumble" in response to Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow. Such strikes "bring the war to the Russian people" and might convince Putin's regime that, like the USSR's Cold War quagmire in Afghanistan, Russia's current war in Ukraine is "ultimately unsustainable."

In fact the old Soviet elite did not see the Afghan war as unsustainable, nor were they much concerned about public opinion. It took both a generational transition and a bold new leader who prioritized improving ties with the West — Mikhail Gorbachev — to finally manage an exit.

The point is not that war isn't costly. The Afghan war was, and the Ukraine war is even more so. The point is that accepting defeat in a major war that was justified as a vital national interest is unlikely until there is both a new leader and turnover in the ruling elite.

As for "bringing war to the Russian people" by bombing Moscow, when did that ever work? NATO brought the Kosovo War to the Serbian people in 1999 by bombing Belgrade, and it only rallied them to the side of dictator Slobodan Milošević; 25 years later, Serbs remain strongly pro-Russian and anti-NATO. And when Chechen rebels bombed Moscow and other Russian cities in the early 2000s, it only rallied Russians around Putin and helped justify his increasingly authoritarian rule.
These aren't mere historical quibbles, but illustrations of flawed analogies that framed both strategic expectations and tactical decisions. And they have cost dearly, in both Ukrainian lives and now Western support. Confidence in Washington-Brussels elites falls even as officials still claim that Ukraine is winning and Putin "cannot outlast" the West.

In fact, as NATO empties its warehouses of equipment and misses deadlines for producing new munitions, it's hard to conclude otherwise unless one is trapped in another oversimplified WWII analogy: that of America as the "arsenal of democracy."

Many have contrasted America's innovative private arms producers with Russia's technology-starved state factories, predicting that Moscow would soon exhaust its munitions. Instead, Russia has consistently belied the "all brawn and no brains" narrative, not only outproducing the West in tanks, artillery and shells but defying sanctions to develop new precision-guided bombs, drones and missiles. Perhaps those discounting Russian ingenuity forgot the Katyusha multiple-rocket launcher, a legendary artillery weapon that both the Germans and Americans copied in WWII.
With a looming crisis in efforts to keep Kyiv supplied with munitions, it is useful to look closer at American arms production in WWII, when the "arsenal of democracy" was in certain respects more like Putin's economy than Biden's. But today Washington faces a complex set of institutional obstacles: "least-cost production models," contractor aversion to stockpiling, export restrictions, and environmental regulations the likes of which do not trouble Putin. A final lesson from WWII's "armaments race" is a caution against technological hubris such as that seen in today's gushing about the superiority of Western Leopard or Abrams tanks over the Russian T-72 and T-80. Germany's Tiger tank was clearly superior to the Soviet T-34 in WWII, but the latter was cheap, reliable, and easy to produce in numbers; at Kursk, Soviet tanks outnumbered German ones by 2:1. So as NATO planners and media pundits take up the "cannon fodder" refrain again with reference to the heavy losses Russians are taking as they advance in the battle for Avdiivka, these planners and pundits would do well to consider a quip famously attributed to Soviet wartime leader Josef Stalin: "Quantity has a quality all its own."