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The integration of autonomous drones and robotic technology marks a turning point, heralding a transformative era in battlefield care. The future of military medicine lies in harnessing these advancements while maintaining the ethical integrity and human touch essential to medical care.

Washington manages its alliances with Tokyo and Seoul separately. But growing South Korean and Japanese military capabilities make a conversation about more integration unavoidable.

Experience in New Zealand illustrates that cultural integration of indigenous peoples can lead to stronger outcomes of representation in the military. For countries like Australia and Canada, a shift in recruitment strategies begins with cultural awareness.

A new era of antagonism between the US and China has emerged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is seen in the mounting rhetoric of "strategic competition" escalating military expenditures and efforts at alliance building such as AUKUS. Increasingly important are the US's efforts to contain China economically, as seen in the US CHIPS Act that restricts exports of US and Taiwanese semiconductors and advanced technological components. However, at the heart of worsening relations between the US and China is a paradox: the US and China are integrated into global capitalism and deeply interdependent in processes of accumulation. The major fault line of international antagonism no longer lies between the capitalist world and its external enemies as in the last Cold War, rather it is between the two major capitalist powers.
It was this puzzle of antagonism amidst integration, that I sought to unknot in my Honours thesis in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.
The post From ‘New Imperialism’ to ‘New Cold War’ appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Russia's invasion of Ukraine opened with a march toward Kyiv. The northern thrust of this push came from Belarusian territory. To this day, Belarus remains a hub for Russian attacks on its southern neighbor. Worryingly, the country now hosts Russian tactical nuclear weapons, a situation unthinkable a few years earlier. Why did Belarus, previously keeping its distance from Russian power, throw in its lot with Moscow? Could the United States have prevented such an outcome?Since its independence, Belarus has had close relations with Russia but always stayed out of the Kremlin's overwhelming shadow. Following the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, Minsk refused to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, despite Russia's insistence. A dispute over dairy product exports led to the 2009 "Milk War." Relations became so poor that Russian TV channels aired programs presenting President Alexander Lukashenko as a despicable tyrant, something unimaginable today.Before 2014, Americans and Europeans had little sympathy for "Europe's last dictatorship." But the Crimean annexation, the Donbas war, and the Russian threat's resurrection changed the West's outlook. Some envisioned pulling Belarus away from Russia's orbit and associating it with Europe instead. Western capitals put democracy promotion on hold for dialogue's sake. Belarus, too, felt an existential threat and pursued better relations with the West. It became defiant toward Moscow and tried to limit Russian influence over the national military.Belarus released all its political prisoners in 2015 to please the United States. In turn, Washington ended some sanctions on the regime. While the Russians pushed hard to establish an air base, the Belarusians resisted. They also distanced themselves from Russia's most confrontational policies. For instance, Lukashenko invited NATO observers to the massive 2017 Russian-led Zapad military maneuvers, fearing the exercises would scare away its Western neighbors.Bilateral U.S.-Belarus relations kept improving. In October 2018, Assistant Secretary of State Wess Mitchell was the first senior American diplomat to travel to Belarus and meet Lukashenko in over a decade. Diplomatic contacts intensified, and the two countries signed a bilateral "Open Skies" agreement, a sign of increasing trust. Then-national security adviser John Bolton visited Minsk in August 2019. Lukashenko responded enthusiastically to American openings, encouraging him to resist Russian pressure to accelerate political and economic integration in the supranational "Union State." That year also saw Belarus take significant steps to hedge against the Russian risk. Minsk introduced a policy of "Belarusianization" to mobilize the populace's nationalism and insulate it from Russian societal influence while introducing a visa-free regime for EU and American citizens' short-term travels. The country intensified its efforts to modernize the military and sent security cooperation feelers toward Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine, all countries at odds with Russia. Minsk expressed hope for building up ties with NATO.In February 2020, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Belarus. Never had U.S.-Belarus relations been so cordial, and never had Russia-Belarus relations been so poor. When Belarus faced an oil price dispute with Russia, Pompeo quickly agreed to sell it oil, justifying that this deal "strengthens Belarusian sovereignty and independence," a wise policy if one fears Russian influence. But the U.S.-Belarusian honeymoon was not to last, and the Russians soon gained more than they ever bargained for.In 2020, Lukashenko's decision to run for the upcoming presidential election profoundly disgruntled the liberal opposition, as the election would likely be rigged in his favor. Indeed, he won the August election in a landslide. This engendered a mass protest movement against the regime. Following the EU, the United States refused to recognize Lukashenko's victory, sanctioned his regime, and openly sided with the opposition. U.S.-Belarus ties became nonexistent. After relations with the West collapsed, Belarus threw in its lot with Moscow. Sensing the opportunity, Putin was quick to congratulate Lukashenko for his victory. He assured Minsk he would deploy Russian security forces if the protest movement got out of control. Now in the Kremlin's debt, Lukashenko and Putin had a flurry of conversations and meetings, and Lukashenko accelerated the Union State integration process in exchange for Russian money. In retaliation to the West's hostility, Minsk engineered a migrant crisis by pushing large numbers of refugees toward the Polish border. Throughout 2021 and early 2022, military cooperation reached a height unseen before, which we know in hindsight was preparation for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The two countries' air defense units started joint combat duties, and Belarus finally agreed to host the Russian air force. In November 2021, Lukashenko promised to intervene in a future war in Ukraine and acknowledged Russian sovereignty over Crimea. Belarus also decided to amend its constitution to introduce Russian nuclear weapons. Previously, Russian forces could enter Belarus only during prearranged exercises. But pretexting military maneuvers, Russian troops arrived en masse. Ultimately, Belarus received the West's opprobrium for accepting that Russian forces use its territory to attack Ukraine on February 24, 2022.This sequence shows that adroit statecraft can accomplish much at little cost and that ideology can create widespread, unforeseen damage to U.S. interests. Minsk resisted aligning with Moscow until 2020 despite intense Russian pressure. Indeed, the U.S. and European engagement policy after the 2014 Ukrainian crisis offered Belarus leverage over the Kremlin. However, following the 2020 elections, Washington abandoned engagement and opted for maximum pressure, perceived as regime change. Out of options, Lukashenko requested Russian help. Now forced to do Putin's bidding, he accepted the Russian military on his soil, enabled the thrust toward Kyiv in early 2022, and now even hosts Russian nuclear weapons. Washington had no direct interest in openly siding with the opposition against Lukashenko. Had the protesters seized power, it could have endorsed them. Had Lukashenko triumphed, it could have maintained the course of strengthening Belarus's hand against Russia. But America's urge to support the losing side for ideological motives sank U.S.-Belarus relations to the bottom and made it impossible for Minsk to play the West against Russia. Lukashenko was then forced to follow the orders of Putin, his last backer, ultimately leading to Belarusian support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.Now under Russian military control, independent Belarus's race is run. The current regime might remain in office as a Russian satrap. But the Kremlin will probably conclude that annexing the country represents the safest option to guarantee long-term domination and grow Russia's power base. Counterfactuals are always risky, but Moscow would have struggled to subjugate Lukashenko had the United States not jettisoned engagement for maximum pressure in 2020.Although Belarus's fate is sealed, Washington must not repeat the same mistake elsewhere. Many potential partners to counterbalance Russian and Chinese power are unsavory authoritarian states. Preaching non-proliferation and liberalization, legacy neoconservative policies pushed North Korea toward Beijing despite Pyongyang expressing fear of China's rise. While Iran traditionally eschewed great power alignment, American intransigence and Trump's abandonment of the 2015 nuclear deal encouraged Tehran to embrace China and Russia, even supporting Putin's war effort. Washington can continue growing Beijing and Moscow's spheres of influence by letting ideology drive American foreign policy. In that case, China and Russia will gain additional means to threaten the United States and its allies. Otherwise, it could use efficient statecraft, such as its pre-2020 Belarus policy, to secure new partners and limit its rivals' opportunities. Of prudence or ideology, which will prevail?

Ukraine and the UK announced a security agreement Jan. 12, the first of its kind and one that Kyiv hopes puts it on a glide path into NATO. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also increased military funding for Ukraine by 200 million pounds to 2.5 billion pounds in 2024-2025. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the deal an "unprecedented security agreement." This seeming hyperbole is accurate. It is the first bilateral security pact involving Ukraine forged since the Russian invasion in 2022. However, he then slipped into speculation, tweeting "If the UK and other countries had provided such a level of guarantees after 1991, there would have been no Russian aggression at all." Maybe. If such pacts had accelerated Ukraine's entrance into NATO, before Russia recovered from its 1990s collapse, the 2022 invasion might never have occurred. However, all evidence from 2008 onward is that Moscow implacably opposed Ukraine joining NATO. If the West had moved in the 1990s to extend security guarantees to Ukraine, it is equally likely that Russia would have intervened much earlier — and if Russia was much weaker in the 1990s, so too was Ukraine.Elements of the new UK-Ukraine security pact, like intensified intelligence sharing, have already made Moscow suspicious that the West intends to end-run a possible NATO membership, that is, to supply Ukraine with actual NATO soldiers. Indeed, the pact's announcement drew a swift response from Kremlin hard-liner Dmitry Medvedev — no stranger to hyperbole himself — accusing London of planning just that, and threatening a nuclear response. So what does this bode for the war's future? Nothing good. It is not that the UK on its own can guarantee anything to Ukraine, let alone sufficient military aid to maintain Ukraine's defense. (The British army now has only around 150 main battle tanks and in 2022 Britain's production of artillery shells for the entire year was less than the number expended by Ukraine in a three-day period at the height of the counteroffensive. Contracts inked in 2023 to ramp up will take an estimated two years to fulfill.) Rather, this British move will create yet another impediment to the opening of peace talks, both by increasing Russian distrust and by strengthening opponents of talks elsewhere in Europe.The Kremlin's goal of keeping Ukraine out of NATO has been consistent since peace talks collapsed in spring of 2022, and this latest British assault can only serve to slow Russian willingness to end combat and talk. Indeed, there's little evidence right now that Moscow intends to cease fighting; this new security deal only makes things worse. As Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute tells me in an email, "Although as far as London is concerned much of this agreement is just the usual British play-acting as a great power, it could have serious consequences in the real world." In short, it's a provocation. The British announcement comes at an especially bad time, too, amid reports that the Biden administration wants to start moving toward a negotiated settlement to end the war. This security pact ensures that no such settlement will be forthcoming soon. Because if it sketches out the West's general refusal to contemplate a neutral Ukraine, it's hard to see Moscow backing off. Indeed, on Jan. 15, came news of the "Moldova Highway" between Ukraine and Romania. According to reports this highway will greatly speed the time needed to transfer U.S. weapons and equipment to Ukraine.In addition to the security agreement funds, this pact promises "swift and sustained" help for Kyiv, if Moscow attacks again. It also advocates Ukraine's future NATO membership, provides "comprehensive assistance to Ukraine for the protection and the restoration of its territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders," including the maritime zone, rebuilding the economy, protecting citizens, preventing and deterring Russian military escalation, and support for Ukraine's European integration, according to the agreement's text. Key elements are intelligence sharing, military and medical training, cyber security, and defense industrial cooperation. The UK's commitment to provide thousands of military drones, "the largest ever," according to Sunak's office, doubtless also did little to advance peace negotiations.In the context of President Joe Biden's remarks two weeks ago about a "U.S.-Russia direct war" — and his earlier claim to congressional Republicans that if they failed to fund Ukraine, American and Russian soldiers would fight each other, in other words, World War III would erupt with all its dreadful nuclear implications — one might well conclude that Washington plans to follow London along the escalatory route. "The stakes of this fight extend far beyond Ukraine," Biden recently said, "and affect the security of both NATO and Europe." That is an open question. There is little evidence that Moscow intends to invade other neighbors, though fears are often whipped up by the media and carelessly chattering politicians, only impeding the necessary shift toward diplomacy.However, given the failure of Ukraine's counteroffensive, and Russia's slow, steady forward movement all along the line of contact, the U.S. has indicated an interest in talks in recent months. This is the wiser of the two courses currently, albeit schizophrenically, being signaled from inside the Beltway. Ukraine is running out of manpower, and European military cupboards are bare, since almost everything was shipped to Ukraine and destroyed by Russia, while Moscow's wartime industrial base has expanded. Meanwhile, NATO is out of ammo. Talks now would likely secure a better deal for Ukraine than they would in six months or a year."It is now obvious to all that the Ukrainian summer counteroffensive failed. Meanwhile, as Russian military supplies have been ramping up, Ukrainian supplies have been dwindling," notes Nicolai Petro, University of Rhode Island professor of comparative and international politics, in an interview. "This inevitably sets the stage for a potential Russian counteroffensive."But recognizing that requires a depth of Western realism for which there is so far little evidence. If Russia is the victor – and that is the path events currently follow – the Kremlin will dictate the terms. And Moscow has long made clear that it must talk with Washington, not just Kyiv. Time to salvage any aspect of this fiasco for the West is running out. New aggressive security pacts just make it run out faster.

On the morning of April 15, 2023 in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan,the country's de facto national army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took up arms against one another. Through temporary ceasefires and multiple attempts by foreign countries and international bodies to mediate an end to the war, the fighting persists.
Over the past year, the civil war has created one of the world's most severe humanitarian crises. Thousands have been killed and over eight million have been displaced. With over 6.5 million people internally displaced, Sudan is home to the highest number of internally displaced people in the world. Relentless fighting has forced many to leave Sudan entirely, with 1.5 million having fled to neighboring states as refugees.
The regionalization of this conflict is risking further destabilizing the wider Horn of Africa and Gulf regions, with regional powers now becoming involved. The UAE has reportedly provided military weapons to the RSF while Egypt has reportedly supported the SAF. A recent report suggests Iran is providing drones to SAF forces, which has helped them regain lost territory in and around Khartoum.
As more players become implicated in the military outcome of the war and as the humanitarian crisis deepens, the war is becoming increasingly complex and layered. Yet, at its most basic level, this conflict is of a genre as old as war itself. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who heads the SAF, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (commonly called "Hemedti"), who leads the paramilitary RSF, are vying for power. Each is hoping to be the sole leader of Sudan.
Though now rivals engaged in a vicious war, Al-Burhan and Hemedti were once allied military leaders. In 2019, the two worked jointly to overthrow the country's long-time dictator, Omar al-Bashir, who had led the country since 1989. Following the successful coup, street protests erupted calling for a rapid transition of power to a civilian-led government. On June 3, 2019, the SAF and RSF responded violently, killing over 100 people in Khartoum. During the massacre, over 70 men and women were raped by RSF personnel.
Following international pressure, in August 2019 the military leaders agreed to allow for the formation of a transitional military-civilian government — the Transitional Sovereign Council — with elections scheduled to be held in 2023. But in October 2021, just over two years after the formation of the transitional government, the two military leaders again worked together to overthrow the government and regained full control over Sudan.
As the two sought to establish a governing structure in the months after this second coup, differences emerged between the two leaders' visions for the future of Sudan's government.
Al-Burhan sought to allow many of the political elites formerly allied with al-Bashir to reenter government. Hemedti, a Darfuri Arab, opposed such a plan, concerned that reinstating the old political guard would eventually return Sudan to a governing structure too similar to that which they overthrew, and erode his standing in the face of political elites who look down on those, like him, who are from Darfur.
Another essential point of disagreement was in the plan to unify the two armed forces into a single national force. Al-Burhan, whose SAF serves as the de facto military of the country, demanded that Hemedti's RSF force integrate into the SAF within two years. Hemedti, however, wanted the integration period to be spread out over a decade, giving his paramilitary more autonomy in case conflict resumed.
Following months of rising tensions, Hemedti deployed RSF forces to strategic locations throughout the country, including Khartoum, in anticipation of armed conflict. In the early hours of April 15, 2023, the RSF attacked SAF bases across the capital, including at the city's airport, signaling the start of what would turn out to be the region's most devastating conflict in many years.
Despite having fewer fighters, in the year since the civil war began, the RSF has successfully gained control over much of the capital and large portions of the country's western provinces in the Darfur region.
As conflict has spread, civilian suffering has reached levels unprecedented even for a region well acquainted with war, displacement, and humanitarian disaster.
The humanitarian toll is hitting children the heaviest. UNICEF estimates that 24 million children are at risk of "generational catastrophe." Of these, 14 million are in dire need of humanitarian support and 3.7 million are acutely malnourished. With 19 million children out of school, the long-term effects on the mental development of children will continue long after the war has ended.
Despite the massive humanitarian challenges facing the Sudanese people, international humanitarian support has fallen far short of what is needed. OCHA — the U.N.'s humanitarian agency — estimates that out of the $2.5 billion needed to fund a sufficient humanitarian response in 2024, only $155.2 million has been received thus far, amounting to just 6% of the needed support for this calendar year. The U.S. has provided 10% of that humanitarian aid. For 2023, OCHA says that 51% of the total funding needed for humanitarian relief was received.
The humanitarian crisis has been augmented by both armed groups committing widespread and severe human rights abuses across the country. Both forces have summarily killed civilians and ransacked cities, looting and then destroying unwanted property, including homes. The RSF and SAF have also both forcibly enlisted men and boys, threatening to kill them if they refuse to fight.
A U.N. report determined that between May and November of last year, the RSF committed at least 10 attacks against civilians in El-Geneina, the capital of West Darfur province, killing thousands, most of whom were part of the African Masalit ethnic group. The report also reveals that by mid-December, at least 118 people — including 19 children — had suffered from sexual violence, including being raped and gang raped by members of the military and paramilitary forces.
Throughout Darfur, the RSF has demanded that women leave their homes, forcing many to flee west to bordering Chad. The paramilitary also singles out men, and sometimes boys, systematically killing them one-by-one as they try to escape. Attacks specifically perpetrated against the Masalit community have spurred conversations about whether Darfur is again the site of a genocide.
Despite the remarkable levels of devastation and widespread displacement, the international community has been slow to respond. Relative to other conflicts, many far less devastating than the war in Sudan, this war has received limited media attention and has not been prioritized by countries outside the region. Yet, as the crisis worsens and as the effects spread beyond Sudan's borders, foreign governments have increased their attention over the past few months.
On February 26, over 10 months into the war, the Biden administration announced the appointment of former congressman Tom Perriello as Special Envoy for Sudan. Tasked with leading the U.S. government's efforts to resolve the conflict, Perriello — who previously served as U.S. envoy to the Great Lakes region during the Obama administration — has traveled on multiple occasions to the region where he has engaged civil society groups and regional governments in a dialogue with the hope of restarting peace negotiations.
As the war enters its second year of heavy fighting, Perriello will find it difficult to tie the conflict's many threads together and mediate an end to the war. But with a growing chorus of Sudanese civilians and many throughout the region pleading for an end to the conflict, the Biden administration has done well to increase its focus on ending the war through diplomatic engagement — a sign to those in East Africa that the U.S. is committed to rolling up its sleeves and leading the effort to achieve long-term peace in the region.

Relations among the European backers of Ukraine have been roiled by recent battlefield developments indicating momentum may have passed to Russia amid stalled American funding for military support to Ukraine.The Franco-German "tandem," which has underpinned European integration for decades, has been disturbed by obvious disagreements between French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The recent friction comes from the continued refusal by Scholz to consider providing long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and from Macron's highly contested declaration on February 26 that the deployment of NATO forces in Ukraine should not be excluded. The next day, Scholz categorically ruled out any deployment of German or NATO forces in Ukraine.Over the past two years of war, Germany has surprised critics by rising to second place behind the U.S. as a supplier of weapons for Ukraine. In recent weeks, however, Germany has returned to whipping-boy status, as Scholz has refused to grant Ukraine's long-standing request for Taurus missiles. This seems to be a replay of the 2022 debate over supplying German Leopard tanks, but the then-hopeful prospects for eventual Ukrainian victory have faded considerably. Scholz's objection to providing the Taurus missile is contested within his governing coalition (which includes the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, as well as his own Social Democrats). He has stated, most recently on March 4, that his main reservation is that the Taurus missile could not be used by Ukraine except with the help and presence on Ukrainian soil of some German military personnel. A public opinion poll published on February 27 showed that 56% of Germans opposed sending the Taurus missile to Ukraine. A plurality of SPD supporters opposed the deployment (46% versus 41%), while a plurality of FDP supported it (48% to 46%). Among the governing parties, the Greens were the only party supporters who favored sending the missiles by a majority (52% to 34%). Surprisingly, more respondents who identified with the main center-right opposition Christian Democrats opposed the deployment than supported it (48% versus 45%), despite the support of their parliamentary delegation for providing the missiles. Finally, a huge majority (87%) who identified with the populist far-right AfD opposed the proposed deployment.Russian leak of air force officers on Taurus deploymentA conversation of Luftwaffe chief General Ingo Gerwartz and three other senior German air force officers on February 19 was intercepted and published online on March 1. The conversation dealt extensively with how Taurus missiles could be deployed without having German military personnel on-site. The officers were preparing a briefing for Defense Minister Boris Pistorius addressing the feasibility, timing, and practicalities of the deployment, but not clearly endorsing or opposing it.
The officers discussed how Taurus missiles could be used to destroy the Kerch Bridge, but did not themselves advocate the selection of this target. Their discussion reached no conclusion about how Germany could deploy the missiles effectively without breaching the political red line about a German military presence in Ukraine.
Moreover, Gerwartz indicated that the destruction of the Kerch Bridge, while technically achievable, was unlikely to change the course of the war. The transcript of this conversation was published by the Russian state broadcaster RT and is presumed to have been intercepted by Russian intelligence. The Russian official press has falsely characterized the officers' conversation as amounting to a plot being hatched to ensure the missiles are deployed, and to force the hand of the chancellor.
Pistorius has called the release of the transcript a case of Russian information warfare intended to sow discord among the Western supporters of Ukraine. The German domestic debate on this scandal has mainly focused on assigning responsibility for the egregious failure of communications security. Advocates of deploying the Taurus have used the incident to redouble their efforts to force Scholz to change his mind.
Since the release of the conversation, Scholz has reiterated that the problem of providing Taurus missiles boils down to the insuperable problem of how to ensure effective use of the Taurus missiles without itself becoming a party to the conflict. The leaked conversation alluded to the alleged presence and involvement of UK and French military personnel in the operation of the Storm Shadow and Scalp cruise missiles provided to Ukraine by Britain and France, respectively. Both countries have expressed outrage at the lax security that permitted the conversation's interception.Macron rises to the occasion?With Germany locked in its characteristic caution, French President Macron launched an effort to mobilize a united European drive to re-vitalize support for Ukraine by convening a hastily organized meeting of European leaders on the defense of Ukraine in Paris on February 26.
This followed on the heels of the fairly downbeat mood about the prospects of reviving Ukraine's military fortunes that prevailed at the annual Munich Security Conference the previous week. At the closing press conference of the Paris meeting, Macron made his surprising assertion that the deployment of NATO troops should not be ruled out, though he acknowledged that "no consensus" had yet formed around this idea. Macron seems to have in mind the deployment of French or NATO troops in non-combatant roles, such as de-mining. This idea has nevertheless come under fire from much of the political opposition in France.
The leaders at the conference decided to pursue a Czech proposal to increase European bilateral funding to buy 800,000 artillery shells for Ukraine from non-EU countries to make up for the inadequate supplies of shells in Europe. Macron traveled to Prague on March 5 to explore this idea further and insisted that eventual deployment of NATO forces should not be ruled out, and that allies should not be "cowardly." Germany's Pistorius quickly called this language unhelpful.It is galling to Germans that France, which has given far less military support to Ukraine than Germany, should chide others for being timid. The Ukraine Support Tracker at the Kiel Institute in Germany (last updated on January 15) puts German military aid commitments at $17.7 billion and the U.S. at $42.2 billion, with France well down the list at $0.6 billion. Paris has challenged Kiel's methodology.Why it mattersThe New York Times' Roger Cohen recently noted that, without any obvious attempt to build advance support for his initiative, Macron sought to reinject confidence among European supporters of Ukraine and produce "strategic ambiguity" to shake Russian confidence. Instead, he laid bare the divisions among allies about how far they are willing to go in defense of Ukraine and provoked an open breach with Germany. Macron's own twisted path toward his latest hawkish incarnation limits his credibility to mobilize Europe behind him.
German resistance to providing Taurus missiles is directly related to its alarm at what it sees as Macron's reckless stance on eventual NATO deployments in Ukraine. Germany apparently remains determined not to cross the line between assisting Ukraine in its self-defense and becoming a party to the conflict. The opposition to deploying the Taurus from the German public across the political spectrum (with the Greens as the noteworthy exception) bolsters Scholz's stance.
Even if Macron's initiative seems to have divided rather than mobilized a united European front to defend Ukraine, his activism demonstrates the dawning awareness that Europe will have more responsibility for arming Ukraine due to the stalled American aid package and the approaching U.S. elections.
The unfortunate upshot of these recent developments is to hobble the Franco-German tandem that has been crucial to the effective functioning of the EU for decades. This open rift is unwelcome when the EU as a whole is groping toward a more unified, coordinated, and generously funded rearmament, in which Berlin and Paris must be leading players.

At the end of January, the National
Security Archive declassified new documents from thirty years ago that show
how the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, was deceiving the
president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, about the expansion of NATO towards ex-communist
countries. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia had accepted
and supported a Partnership for a United Europe that would include both NATO
countries and former members of the Warsaw Pact. Clinton offered the compromise
of accepting Russia in the Group of 7, which became the Group of 8, and in
other multilateral organizations, but at the same time he was accelerating the
integration of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary into NATO, which would be
followed by the three Baltic republics and the other four Eastern Euro
countries.

Before this, Secretary of State
James Baker and several European leaders had already deceived Russian President
Mikhail Gorbachev by promising him that there would never be NATO troops in the
former East Germany or beyond its territory.

Despite everything, Yeltsin
chaired the G-8 summit in Moscow in 1996 and Vladimir Putin chaired the summit
in St. Petersburg in 2006. A year later, the United States presented a plan to
deploy missiles in Europe that Putin described as a "serious provocation that
reduces the level of mutual trust…no one feels safe." In 2008, President George
W. Bush offered NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia, which was considered by
the French and German governments, followed by other European ones, as an
"unnecessary offense to Russia." Already in 2014, NATO carried out military tests
on Ukrainian territory. And in 2019 Ukraine enshrined in the Constitution the
aspiration to join NATO and the EU as the "strategic course of the country."

A year ago, the US and NATO
offered Putin a disarmament deal at the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe in exchange for a de-escalation of
the military threat to Ukraine. Moscow declared that this was an acceptable
starting point for negotiations and announced the withdrawal of part of the
troops deployed along Ukraine's borders. However, former British Prime Minister
Boris Johnson, who had already landed theatrically in Kyiv when he was in
office, returned and persuaded President Volodymyr Zelensky to "keep fighting."

CIA Director William Burns had
predicted that last summer would see which alternative was more likely: a rapid
military turnaround followed by negotiation and peace or an escalation into a
protracted war. Since then, we have seen that the Ukrainian counteroffensive
failed and Zelensky has fired the head of the army. Regarding the other side, I
could be wrong, when Putin now says that he would prefer the next president of
the United States to be Joe Biden, it seems that he is not considering holding
out for another year with the dubious expectation that Trump would "end the war
in 24 hours," as he says.

As things stand, neither side can
win a total victory in the foreseeable future. Both should prefer peace
negotiations. If, under these conditions, they continued bombing and
destroying, there would be only a so-called attrition war. The longer the war
lasts, the more difficult it is to end it because a political compromise can
make the sacrifices suffered seem unnecessary, as if all the costs were for
nothing. Game theory exemplifies this behavior with duopoly competition when
both firms lose money but hope that one day the other firm will fold and the
"winner" will be the one that has lost the least. He who has the least to lose
(in this case, Russia) persists the most. But it is a pyrrhic victory because
if the attrition lasts long, the losses are greater than the gains for the
"winner" as well. As Plutarch tells it, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, achieved a
victory over the Romans at the cost of thousands of his men and, contemplating
the outcome of the battle, said: "With another victory like this, I am
lost." In the end, those who win are the producers and sellers of weapons.

After two years of war, Ukraine's
future does not look very favorable. NATO has changed its mind three times
about its candidacy. Full integration into the European Union is imaginary
because Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe and would absorb all the aid
to agriculture, which is half of the EU's total spending. Meanwhile, millions
of Ukrainians have fled the country, elections have been suspended, and martial
law remains in effect.

Seen in perspective, the war in
Ukraine evokes other processes of expansion and contraction of great empires. The
dissolution of the USSR brought about the separation of half of its population
and one-fourth of its territory, thus generating new borders, new areas of
foreign influence, and also extraterritorial enclaves. This way were formed the
pro-Russian enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, Transnistria in
Moldova, Kaliningrad in Lithuania, open to the Baltic and then to the Atlantic,
and now Crimea and Donbas in Ukraine with access to the Black Sea, which
entails passage to the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal.

There are examples of these disarrangements
in all parts of the world. For example, the breakup of the British Empire left
an English enclave in Northern Ireland, a Turkish one in Northern Cyprus, and Gibraltar
in Spain. Regarding the latter, you may also want to check the location on the
map of the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, and Western Sahara.

On December 4, Venezuelan voters reportedly approved a referendum to annex Essequibo, a Florida-sized portion of neighboring Guyana. On December 5, president Nicolas Maduro ordered his government to "immediately" explore and exploit the oil, gas and mines in the disputed region. But by December 15, a military conflict between the two countries had ostensibly been avoided, for now. So what happened?The status of EssequiboThe modern history of the Essequibo dispute began in 1814, when Great Britain assumed control of the future British Guyana (including Essequibo) via a treaty with the Dutch. For the rest of the century, Britain and the newly independent Venezuelan state filed competing claims to the region, largely either in favor of or against the Schomburgk line, a territorial boundary drawn in service of the British. Once gold was discovered there, these claims became increasingly aggressive, and the parties agreed to submit to an international tribunal (with the United States representing Venezuela).The 1899 tribunal awarded British Guyana more than 90% of the territory and every gold mine. Venezuela criticized the ruling, and many Venezuelans believe the decision was the result of collusion between the Russian and British delegations. Earlier this year, Maduro said, "Our [Essequibo] has been de facto occupied by the British Empire and its heirs and they have destroyed the area."Over the years, the intensity of the dispute has ebbed and flowed. In 1958, Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez planned an invasion of Essequibo before he was ultimately overthrown, and Venezuela continued to insist into the 1960s that the 1899 tribunal's ruling was null and void (owing to the alleged collusion). In 1966, Guyana was granted its independence, shortly after that year's Geneva Agreement between its colonial ruler and Venezuela. This accord is essentially a temporary agreement to come to a permanent solution, stating that, should the two parties fail to resolve the border dispute peacefully, "they shall refer the decision as to the means of settlement to an appropriate international organ upon which they both agree or, failing agreement on this point, to the secretary-general of the United Nations." It is likewise important to note that while the document recognizes Venezuela's position that the 1899 ruling was null and void, it does not endorse it, and therefore the territorial status quo remains.In the wake of the mid-2010s discovery of massive offshore oil deposits in Guyanese waters, the Maduro regime has pursued a revanchist line. In addition to the referendum, his government has instructed the state oil company PDVSA to begin planning the extraction of oil in Essequibo, directed the legislature to nullify offshore oil contracts granted by Guyana, and increased its military presence along the disputed border.In response, Guyana has fortified security ties with Brazil and the United States. The two parties are closer to conflict than they have been in years.Reasons for skepticismThe specter of Essequibo looms large in Venezuela. The region is marked in red in school textbooks as the "zone in reclamation," and Venezuela's claims resonate with much of the country's population. Even the opposition primary's victor, Maria Corina Machado, posted, "We Venezuelans know that Essequibo belongs to Venezuela and we are determined to defend it," while attacking the Maduro government for its insufficient devotion to the cause of annexing Essequibo.
Yet there are sound reasons to believe a full-scale invasion is not imminent. The chief indication is the timing of this latest escalation. The referendum was announced prior to the opposition primary. The opposition, though divided on whether the referendum should occur (an alternative, supported by Guyana's President Irfaan Ali and some of the Venezuelan opposition, was to let the claim go before the International Court of Justice, where the UN said it should go), overwhelmingly supports the Venezuelan claim to Essequibo. With a general election on the docket in 2024 and an unpopular Maduro presiding over precarious economic conditions, Maduro was likely using this crisis to rally nationalists around his platform, divide the opposition, and brand them as puppets of foreign interests.
Furthermore, Maduro might not want to mess with what appears to be an improved reputational standing in the region. Despite what many see as Washington's failed "maximum pressure" regime change campaign, governments are increasingly more willing to engage with Venezuela. In Brazil (which shares a border with both Guyana and Venezuela), President Lula da Silva supported Caracas's aspiration to join the BRICS grouping.
Meanwhile, Colombian President Gustavo Petro hosted negotiations to resolve the Venezuelan political crisis and partnered with Maduro to achieve ceasefires with Colombia's armed groups. Even the United States forged an agreement with Venezuela to lift some oil sanctions in return for political concessions, and Washington is permitting Chevron to again pump Venezuelan oil. Venezuela is no longer the pariah it was, and Maduro has survived several overlapping challenges to his rule. It would not stand to reason that he would jeopardize his standing at home and abroad over Guyana.
At the same time, many of the governments willing to engage with Venezuela have a stake in avoiding war. Prodding from Brazil, Colombia, and Caribbean states encouraged both parties to come to the table for negotiations in St. Vincent on December 14, which produced a mutual agreement not to use force, a commitment to establishing a joint commission to address Essequibo-related issues, and a framework for future negotiations in Brazil. While not a permanent solution, this could defuse tensions for a period of time.
Brazil's interests in regional integration and UN Security Council permanent member status have guided its stance, which has combined military deployments and calls for negotiations in response to Maduro's calls to annex the disputed territory. The Caribbean Community has backed Guyana despite receiving energy subsidies from Venezuela for years. Finally, China, which has taken a neutral position on the dispute and has strong relations with both countries, has a vested interest in preventing a war, given its national oil company's 25 percent stake in the ExxonMobil-led consortium controlling the Stabroek oil fields, located just offshore of Essequibo.
Then there is the question of capability. Venezuela's military would initially be better equipped than Guyana's, with more than 100,000 men, 600 armored vehicles, 200 main battle tanks, 100 combat capable planes, and dozens of helicopters, in comparison to Guyana's 4,000-5,000 active personnel. However, the Venezuelan military suffers from corruption, mismanagement, and desertions, which have hindered its performance. Namely, the tanks Venezuela sent to the Colombian border during a standoff in 2008 failed to make a difference, as poor maintenance rendered many of their gun sights inoperable. Lack of maintenance and parts reportedly have left much of their air force currently grounded.Even if Maduro were able to garner the requisite soldiers, a Venezuelan incursion would have to navigate jungles and swampland, as well as overcome the inherent advantage of the defense. There are no roads from Venezuela into Essequibo (rendering even well-maintained tanks useless), and sustaining a military presence in the country would prove a challenge given the terrain and the military's state of disrepair.Role of the United StatesSo far, U.S. officials "have yet to see the sort of activity along the border they would expect if Maduro intended to launch an imminent, full-scale invasion." But should one occur, Washington should not intervene militarily. An American intervention would lend credence to Venezuelan propaganda that claims the conflict is the product of Western imperialists and ExxonMobil. It could also, as was the case in Libya, morph into a regime change campaign in a country where Washington's recent track record of picking winners and losers is abysmal.
Finally, there are few American interests at stake in the jungle of Guyana, so sending forces to the region would endanger them for little geopolitical gain.While a Venezuelan invasion would be a tragedy for the people of Guyana, it is also an unlikely outcome in the near term, as well as one that should not be countered by the United States joining the war.

For the United States to commit itself in advance to take the side of some other country that becomes involved in an international conflict is an extraordinary step that is justified only under extraordinary circumstances. There needs to be a credible external threat to the country being protected. And there must be enough commonality of interests and values between the United States and the protected state that the difference between that state falling or not falling to external aggression is highly significant for U.S. interests.A possible standard for measuring the appropriateness of security commitments is the grandest such U.S. commitment, under the North Atlantic Treaty. Whatever one may think of NATO's later expansion and out-of-area activities, the circumstances justifying a U.S. security commitment were present when the alliance was created in the late 1940s. The Soviet Union's military had overrun Eastern Europe and converted its states into satellite communist dictatorships. If the then-fragile democracies of Western Europe experienced the same fate, the result would have been disastrous for U.S. interests.Nothing remotely resembling those circumstances exists today in the Persian Gulf region. No Red Army is poised to take over the region. No would-be regional hegemon exists. Certainly not Iran, weakened by sanctions, preoccupied with internal divisions, and facing the disadvantage of being an ethnic and religious minority in a region that is largely Arab and Sunni.Saudi Arabia is the state that has had the most recent go at something approaching regional hegemony. It has employed military force outside its borders to prop up an unpopular regime in Bahrain and, on a much larger scale, to try to impose its will on Yemen through a highly destructive air war. That attempt failed, and Riyadh evidently has come to realize that its security is better served through accommodation rather than a quest for domination.Nor is there anything in the region like the difference, in terms of values and interests, that there was in 1940s Europe between Western democracies and Soviet satellite dictatorships. The Gulf Arab states are absolute monarchies. The only thing in those states that sounds close to democracy is a mostly elected National Assembly in Kuwait, but whenever that body gets too noisy and difficult to suit the ruling regime, the emir simply dissolves it.Despite these circumstances, the Biden administration is extending security guarantees to Gulf states, most recently by signing a Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement with Bahrain. The agreement commits the United States, "in the event of external aggression or the threat of external aggression" against Bahrain, to "immediately meet at the most senior levels to determine additional defense needs and to develop and implement appropriate defense and deterrent responses as decided upon by the Parties, including in the economic, military, and/or political realms."An anonymous administration official took pains to point out that the agreement is not a treaty and therefore does not need approval by the U.S. Senate. But apparently seeking to have it both ways, the official also stated that the agreement is "legally binding."No effort was made to identify what external aggression the parties have in mind. Iran, of course, is the state that automatically gets mentioned as a supposed threat. But the image of Iran mustering a D-Day-like invasion fleet and crossing the gulf to conduct an amphibious invasion of Bahrain is so fanciful as to be absurd (whether or not U.S. warships were in the gulf).Bahrain certainly has had its differences with Iran, probably at least as much as does any other member of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Historical baggage in the relationship includes an old Iranian claim to Bahrain as the "14th province" of Iran, but in recent decades Iran has not tried to act on any such claim. The situation is quite unlike, say, the one involving Taiwan, in which China constantly declares to the world that it considers the island a part of China and periodically uses military saber-rattling to advertise the possibility of an invasion.To the extent the regime in Bahrain faces a security threat, it involves not external aggression but instead internal strife stemming from an unpopular Sunni regime repressing a largely Shia population. The Saudi military intervention in Bahrain in 2011 was intended to help the Bahraini regime suppress an Arab Spring-era popular uprising.The regime oppression and popular discontent continue. This year, Bahraini prisoners conducted a months-long hunger strike to protest harsh conditions in the prison. The hunger strike was suspended when the regime, on the eve of crown prince's trip to Washington to sign the new security agreement, eased some of the conditions. But Bahrain remains a serious violator of human rights.The unlikelihood of any external aggression against Bahrain means the clause in the new agreement that dictates the response to such aggression probably will not be invoked. The disadvantages of the agreement lie principally in two other areas. One involves getting more deeply in bed with an oppressive regime, with everything that implies regarding the U.S. image among, and relations with, the Bahraini population and Shia generally, among others. Many external and internal critics of Bahrain are reportedly angered and disappointed by the agreement. The director of the Britain-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy said that Bahraini authorities would interpret the agreement as a "green light" to increase political repression.The other main ill consequence of the agreement is that it runs counter to and undercuts a beneficial trend toward reducing international tensions in the Persian Gulf region. Bahrain's fellow GCC members have all been moving in the direction of warmer, less confrontational, relations with Iran. Kuwait and Oman have long had businesslike relations with Tehran and have at times served as diplomatic intermediaries for others. Similarly with Qatar, which shares with Iran exploitation of a huge gas field. Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates has been improving its relations with Tehran, and this month Saudi Arabia and Iran exchanged ambassadors as implementation of their agreement earlier this year to restore diplomatic relations.The issue of confrontation versus rapprochement with Iran gets into the larger game that the Biden administration is playing and of which the Bahrain agreement is only a part. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during the signing ceremony, "We're looking forward to using this agreement as a framework for additional countries that may wish to join us in strengthening regional stability, economic cooperation and technological innovation."The additional country the administration clearly has most in mind is Saudi Arabia, which has identified a security pact with the United States as part of the price it is demanding in return for upgrading its already significant relationship with Israel to full diplomatic relations. The administration evidently hopes the agreement with Bahrain can be a model for the kind of pact that would satisfy the Saudi demand while bypassing likely opposition on Capitol Hill.Despite the effort the administration is putting into brokering an agreement to upgrade relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, it still has not explained how any such agreement would serve either U.S. interests or the cause of peace and stability in the Middle East. In fact, it would do neither, and instead would only prolong and even increase confrontation and instability in the region. To understand why, note the principal Israeli objectives in seeking exchanges of embassies and ambassadors with the Persian Gulf Arab states, with which it is not at war.One objective is to intensify and institutionalize confrontation with, and fear and loathing of, Iran, thereby keeping it as a bête noire that can be blamed for all problems in the region and divert international attention from any problems that involve Israel's conduct. This means more, not less, tension and risk of escalation in the Persian Gulf region. And that is even before considering more of the Saudi regime's price for upgrading relations with the Israelis, including more unrestricted arms sales and help with a Saudi nuclear program.The other Israeli objective is to demonstrate that Israel can enjoy normal relations with regional states while continuing its occupation of Palestinian-inhabited territory. Far from being a "peace" agreement, an upgrading of relations with Saudi Arabia — like the earlier upgrading with Bahrain, Morocco, and the UAE — would be about Israel not making peace with the Palestinians.Given the extreme right-wing nature of the Israeli government, led by a prime minister determined to keep his coalition intact and keep himself away from prosecution for corruption, any gesture toward the Palestinians that Riyadh and Washington could wring out of Israel would be little more than that — a gesture. It is inconceivable that the current Israeli government would do anything substantial that would bring closer a Palestinian state or any other resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.In short, the administration's project of buying an upgrade of Arab relations with Israel is not justified. And thus, neither is the agreement with Bahrain that is one part of that project.

(JAKARTA, INDONESIA) — Soon after voting ended in the world's fourth-largest country and third-largest democracy, Prabowo Subianto is claiming a knock-out blow winning more than half the vote and the necessary number of provinces to eliminate both his challengers.According to unofficial tallies, which have been historically accurate, Prabowo has garnered 58% of the vote in today's contest. The official count will not be announced until mid-March and his opponents have yet to concede defeat.Nevertheless, highly popular incumbent president Joko Widodo (Jokowi)'s backing for the former special forces commander, and active undermining of his own party's candidate Ganjar Pranowo, is a big reason for the ostensibly lopsided result. But the famously temperamental Prabowo's clever rebranding as a cute and cuddly grandpa seems to have helped quite a bit, too.Arriving in Jakarta just as the three-day "quiet period" was beginning spared me all the raucousness of the election campaigning. But the billboards of the three candidates — Anies Baswedan, Ganjar Pranowo, and Prabowo — were prominently plastered across the city. The few everyday folk I spoke to seemed to favor the former general. A young hotel housekeeper told me she voted for Prabowo (as did almost all her friends and family) as he was "a strong leader, and honest." Reports here speak of the youth vote as being a big factor in the result. Much of the U.S. commentary has pointed out that Prabowo was once banned from entering the U.S. for his links to a military unit accused of human rights atrocities. To that the feisty general might say: get over it. After all, the United States was forced to lift the ban on his entry after Jokowi — after beating Prabowo in a bitterly-fought election in 2019 — invited him to become his defense minister. Now that Prabowo is likely to become president, such musings are chiefly academic. While my interlocutors in town seemed worried about democratic backsliding in the country (and this has been apparently underway for a couple of years), relatively few voters appear swayed by this concern. And in an increasingly multipolar world, Washington is less able to influence how other countries choose their leaders, and tell them how they should govern. For his part, as president Jokowi has focused relentlessly on economic growth and domestic issues, though he also skillfully steered Indonesia's G20 presidency in the turbulent wake of the Ukraine war. Under him Indonesia has not only prospered, but also put into place a tough industrial policy, including limiting or banning the export of certain valuable natural resources, such as nickel. This encourages these resources to be processed in-country, which helps grow and sustain economically valuable industries that require these resources, such as electric vehicle parts, thereby diversifying and strengthening the Indonesian economy.The European Union has responded by taking him to the WTO, and the United States has not been exactly enthusiastic on these "downstreaming" policies. But China has played ball, building ore-processing plants in the country. Beijing has also built shiny new infrastructure, most prominently a new "Whoosh" bullet train from Jakarta to Bandung.Meanwhile, Jakarta has not expressly taken sides in the U..S-China tussle. This is hardly surprising. Non-alignment (or bebas dan aktif — free and active — as the Indonesians call it in Bahasa) is a core Indonesian grand strategy principle. Indonesia was a foundational contributor to the idea of non-alignment in the Global South, with the famous 1955 Bandung conference being held there. Even under the authoritarian leader Suharto, who tilted toward the United States, Indonesia maintained strong relations with arch-communist Vietnam. Though China was shunned by Suharto — and the Chinese-Indonesian minority treated poorly — it all seems in the rear-view mirror in today's Indonesia. China is Indonesia's biggest trade partner and among its biggest investors. Hoardings commemorating the Chinese new year are visible in parts of the city and the community is much better integrated than in the past. Furthermore, when it comes to Russia, Indonesian social media has been rife with sympathy with Moscow on the Ukraine war. What will Prabowo's foreign policy be like? His past record indicates that the ex-general is much more a strong-willed, if volatile, pragmatist than an ideologue. Today, this means a continuation of Jokowi's policy record of economic growth and the development of domestic industry and infrastructure. Thus business-friendly relations with Beijing, as also attempts to attract more American investment and trade, will continue.Prabowo is also far more exposed in his youth to the world than was Jokowi when he was sworn in. The former general has lived in Europe and Singapore and was trained by the U.S. military. Which means that Indonesia under him could be somewhat more vocal on regional and international issues than it has been. Recall Prabowo's bold play on a Ukraine peace plan at the United Nations last year. Nevertheless, unless Washington makes a big deal of past human rights issues (unlikely), there are opportunities for incremental strengthening of ties. Military exercises between the two have been on an upswing lately. Indonesia has also softened its earlier opposition to AUKUS and refrained from joining BRICS, partly keeping relations with Washington in mind.Trade relations are something to watch however, with Washington's new focus on imposing labor standards on its major trading partners. This is not always welcome in Global South capitals which see lower labor costs as a comparative advantage. Unlike the United States these days, Indonesia is also very comfortable with trade integration. It was the most important ASEAN member leading the RCEP process and continues to lead in shaping the implementation of the world's largest trade agreement. Should there be a Republican in the White House next year, issues such as trade deficits could loom large. Indonesia also seeks a critical minerals agreement with the United States and hopes to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act's clean energy subsidies, but it will be a long haul to get there.As long as Washington understands that Indonesia is committed to a non-aligned rise, there is much scope to deepen ties. Indonesians see their relations with other major powers as being defined on their own merits and not as a byproduct of any other relationship. That ought to be a good basis for moving forward.

Last month, the U.S. announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, a naval coalition aimed at deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Bahrain was the only Arab nation to join. The reasons why — and why other U.S. allies and partners in the region did not — should be of interest to us.Many countries have valid concerns about the Gaza war's further regionalization. The Houthis say they are targeting commercial vessels that are Israeli owned or heading for Israeli ports with missile and drone strikes, and have already hijacked a ship. They vow to continue these attacks until Israel agrees to a ceasefire.The U.S. has been thwarting most of these attacks with their naval-based missile defenses.Much is at stake economically with the Red Sea's security crisis. Separating the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa is the Bab el-Mandeb strait, which links the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. Roughly 30 percent of all global containers transit the Bab el-Mandeb and the Suez Canal, as does about 12 percent of all world trade. But since the Houthi attacks in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden began in October, major shipping carriers have stopped transiting the Suez Canal and have re-routed their vessels around Africa, threatening consumer prices hikes. This disruption to Red Sea trade can seriously harm economies across Europe, which were already contracting before this crisis.Operation Prosperity GuardianThat Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which were the two main states in the Arab military coalition that began fighting the Houthis in 2015, did not join Operation Prosperity Guardian is quite significant. Also notable is the fact that Egypt, a major Arab country with a 930-mile Red Sea coast, refused to join, too. Most Arab states avoided formally joining Operation Prosperity Guardian for several reasons. First, Arab societies are so enraged about Israel's indiscriminate bombing, forced starvation, and displacement of millions of Palestinians in Gaza, that the governments in the region do not want to be seen as complicit by openly siding with Washington, which is clearly funding and arming Israel's operations.Second, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member-states — particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE — want to avoid actions that could trigger a resumption of Houthi attacks on their energy and civilian infrastructure or further destabilize the Red Sea, where many of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 projects exist. Third, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi fear that joining this security initiative could upset their détentes with Tehran, which sponsors the Houthi movement.Bahrain's Unique PositionBahrain, which the George W. Bush Administration recognized as a Major non-NATO Ally in 2002, made a different calculation. An important factor to keep in mind is that Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet. Also, Bahrain and the U.S. signed the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement, a strategic security and economic pact, in September."Bahrain has long perceived an existential threat from Iran that shapes its security stance, so by providing a home for U.S. assets, Bahrain gains protection and relevance which is another layer beyond the security protection it receives from Saudi Arabia and the UAE," said Steven Wright, an associate professor of international relations at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, in an interview with Responsible Statecraft."Other GCC members seem to have more complex calculations: for Saudi Arabia and UAE, existing efforts to climb down tensions with Iran explains their position," he added.Joseph A. Kéchichian, a senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, noted that Bahrain, which has a single guided missile frigate and two smaller guided missile ships called corvettes, has not sent these assets to join the task force, at least not yet."Manama's contribution may be similar to Amsterdam's and Canberra's, as The Netherlands and Australia announced that they would send military personnel, but no vessels," he said. "Yet, because Bahrain is the headquarters of the US Navy's Fifth Fleet, as well as the home of the Combined Maritime Forces that coordinate coalition operations in the area, it makes sense for the kingdom to join if only to provide and receive information of actual maneuvers."He suggested that other Gulf Cooperation Coalition (GCC) members would be sharing information vis-a-vis the new task force, although it is unclear how that would occur. "As far as it is known, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which could have deployed naval vessels, opted to stay out of Operation Prosperity Guardian because they disagreed with its narrow objectives," added Kéchichian.Post-Oct. 7 Blowback in BahrainHaving normalized with Israel in 2020, Bahrain has been in an awkward position since October 7. When it comes to relations with Israel, there is a major divide between the Bahraini leadership and its citizenry. This divide has deepened amid the Gaza war.As Gaza's Palestinian death toll steadily rises, Bahraini authorities must contend with increased risks of blowback at home given how unpopular the Abraham Accords are with Bahraini citizens across the country's political spectrum and among diverse civil society groups. As Human Rights Watch recently documented, Bahraini authorities have used oppressive tactics to repress Palestine solidarity protestors across the country."The Al Khalifa monarchy has proven adept historically at subduing dissent through a variety of tools. It seems clear that Bahrain has calculated that involvement in the Abraham Accords serves its overall economic, foreign policy and security interests despite criticism," offered Wright."The bottom line is that the economic perks and U.S. backing is outweighing public opinion objections from its domestic political groups," said Wright.Courtney Freer, a fellow at Emory University, noted to RS that Bahrain's elected lower house of parliament issued a statement in November claiming that the country's ambassador had left Israel and that economic ties between the two states had been severed."It is worth noting that this language is coming from a primarily loyalist parliament, which suggests that such feelings of animosity towards Israel are not just associated with opposition parties, which, in turn, may make it more difficult to ignore," said Freer. "Notably, citizens have become involved in pro-Palestinian protests, and so there is anger, but it is uncertain whether this anger will be translated into political risk for the regime."Bahrain's diplomatic relations with Israel and military alliance with the U.S. may subject the archipelago kingdom to blowback from Iran-aligned actors in the region. But Bahrain abrogating the Abraham Accords or fundamentally changing its relationship with Washington is highly unlikely. Ultimately, Bahrain's leadership seems to assess that such risks of blowback are worth the benefits of normalized relations with Israel and American support."The Al Khalifa monarchy has proven adept at managing domestic dissent through various means, so the risks from Iran within this context will be viewed as manageable. Any public concerns over cooperation with Israel/U.S. is unlikely to seriously challenge its stability and at most is likely to be limited in scale," Wright said."Basically, Bahrain is seeking to be relevant to the U.S. by backing its counter-Houthi maritime initiative," he added. "This allows it to further cement its relationship with both the U.S. and also Israel, given that this is part of an approach to counter Houthi and Iranian geopolitical reach."

From the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we've been told that the issue of NATO expansion is irrelevant to the war, and that anyone bringing it up is, at best, unwittingly parroting Kremlin propaganda, at worst, apologizing for or justifying the war.So it was curious to see NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg earlier this month say explicitly that Russian president Vladimir Putin launched his criminal war as a reaction to the possibility of NATO expanding into Ukraine, and the alliance's refusal to swear it off — not once or twice, but three separate times."President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement," Stoltenberg told a joint committee meeting of the European Parliament on September 7. "That was what he sent us. And [that] was a pre-condition for not invade [sic] Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.""He went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite," Stoltenberg reiterated, referring to the accession of Sweden and Finland into the alliance in response to Putin's invasion. Their entry, he later insisted, "demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he's getting the exact opposite."It's not clear if Stoltenberg was referring to the draft treaty Putin put forward in December 2021 and simply mixed up the seasons (the provisions of each are the same), or if he's referring to an earlier, as-yet-unreported incident. In any case, what Stoltenberg claims here — that Putin viewed Ukraine's NATO entry as so unacceptable he was willing to invade to stop it, and put forward a negotiating bid that might have prevented it, only for NATO to reject it — has been repeatedly made by those trying to explain the causes of the war and how it could be ended, only to be dismissed as propaganda.The only logical conclusion, if we're to listen to the hawks, is that the man in charge of the very alliance helping Ukraine defend itself from Putin is, in fact, working for the Russian leader and spreading his propaganda.This isn't the only instance from a member of the NATO establishment. Testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee in May this year, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said, alongside Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, that "we assess that Putin probably has scaled back his immediate ambitions to ... ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally." Earlier in her testimony, Haines had said that Putin's invasion had backfired by "precipitating the very events he hoped to avoid such as Finland's accession to NATO and Sweden's petition to join."Likewise, in a March 2023 interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit, Russia expert Fiona Hill — who served as an intelligence analyst under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as on the National Security Council under President Donald Trump — told the paper that "it was always obvious that NATO's enlargement to Ukraine and to Georgia was a provocation for Putin." Yet the opposite claim, that the invasion was entirely "unprovoked," has become such an article of faith in Western discourse that this word is ubiquitous in news reports and official statements on the war.On a similar note, an August 2022 Washington Post report based on "in-depth interviews with more than three dozen senior U.S., Ukrainian, European and NATO officials" reported four separate instances of high-ranking Russian officials telling their U.S.counterparts in the lead-up to the war that NATO expansion was a core part of the grievances motivating Moscow's threatening troop build-up. That included Putin himself, who told President Joe Biden in a December 2021 video call "that the eastward expansion of the Western alliance was a major factor in his decision to send troops to Ukraine's border," according to the report.To some extent, this isn't surprising. As the analysts, journalists, politicians, and others pointing to NATO expansion as a leading cause of the war have copiously documented, the decades before the invasion saw countless members of the Washington national security establishment, from famed Cold War strategist George Kennan and current CIA Director William Burns to a parade of diplomats, military officials, NATO leaders and even Biden himself, warn that the alliance's eastward creep was a fundamental source of Russian unhappiness and that it would provoke Russian hostility and aggression — or even spark war. But what was once uncontroversial and widely acknowledged before the invasion has become verboten since it started in February 2022, as debate or dissent on the matter of the war and U.S. and European policy toward it have been clamped down on, often via vicious McCarthyite tactics. The topic has become verboten, that is, unless you happen to be a U.S. or NATO official.It's not just individual officials, either. Elements of this supposedly Kremlin-originating argument also pop up in major U.S. government documents. Take, for instance, the Annual Threat Assessment put out by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence a year after the invasion started. Meant to reflect the "collective insights" of Washington's various intelligence agencies, the report states that it expects Moscow to continue "to insert itself into crises when it sees its interests at stake, the anticipated costs of action are low, it sees an opportunity to capitalize on a power vacuum, or, as in the case of its use of force in Ukraine, it perceives an existential threat in its neighborhood that could destabilize Putin's rule and endanger Russian national security." Yet today, anyone else saying that Putin or the Russian establishment genuinely view Ukraine's growing integration into NATO as a security threat is liable to receive all manner of scurrilous accusations.As with officials' words, you can find similar points in documents before the war. A 2020 U.S. Army War College paper states that "future admissions to NATO for states in Russia's near abroad will likely be met with aggression." A 2019 paper from the Pentagon-funded RAND Corporation — and sponsored by the Army Quadrennial Defense Review Office — states explicitly that the Kremlin's fear of a direct military attack by the United States is "very real," plus that "providing more U.S. military equipment and advice [to Ukraine in the war on the Donbas] could lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it," including by "mounting a new offensive and seizing more Ukrainian territory." The 2017 National Security Strategy states outright that "Russia views the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and European Union (EU) as threats."It's the central paradox of the current war discourse: What is widely acknowledged by Western policymakers and officials in the halls of power, who rely on an evidence-based understanding of the world to shape foreign policy, is unspeakable anywhere outside of them.What's at stake is more important than just finger-pointing and apportioning guilt. By steadfastly refusing to understand one of the foundational causes of the war and the U.S. and NATO role in it, we will continue to fail to end it and to secure a lasting peace, leading to many more Ukrainian deaths, and to many more years of living in the shadow of global catastrophe.

Europe's top diplomats made history this week when they made a surprise trip to Kyiv for a meeting aimed at projecting a unified front in support of Ukraine's war with Russia and bid to join the European Union.
"It is the first time that we met in a candidate country," said Josep Borrell, the bloc's top foreign policy official. "And unfortunately, it was also the first time that the foreign ministers of the European Union met in a country at war."
"The EU remains united in its support to Ukraine," Borrell continued. "I don't see any member state folding on their engagement."
Shortly after the summit, which included 23 of the EU's 27 foreign ministers, Ukraine got another piece of good news when reports emerged that Kyiv could start official accession talks by the end of this year.
But, far away from the spotlight, a number of obstacles remain before Ukraine joins the powerful bloc. The first challenge is to meet the EU's standards for democracy and good governance. As of August, Ukraine had only met two out of seven legal benchmarks, and it remains unclear how Kyiv will make progress on the remaining five amid a brutal, all-out war with Russia.
If Ukraine manages to surpass that hurdle, it will face the arduous task of convincing each and every member of the consensus-driven bloc that Kyiv should become a member.
Slovakia will have little appetite for making concessions to Ukraine given the results of the country's recent elections, in which a leftist party opposed to arming Kyiv returned to power. Robert Fico, Slovakia's likely new prime minister, said last month that it is "illusory to deal with" the question of Ukraine joining the EU amid a "sharp military conflict."
There is, however, one factor working in Ukraine's favor: Fico had a history of pragmatism during previous stints as prime minister, leaving open the possibility that he could change his tack on Kyiv for the right price.
Reports also indicate that Hungary, led by firebrand Prime Minister Viktor Orban, will not back Ukraine's bid for free. In fact, EU officials are now considering unlocking as much as $13 billion in handouts that the bloc has withheld from Budapest due to concerns that Orban has reduced the independence of the country's courts. In return, EU officials hope Hungary will approve aid to Ukraine and back the effort to open accession talks.The final obstacle will be convincing the EU's smaller states to accept a fundamental shift in the economic balance of the bloc. Ukraine would get nearly $200 billion from the bloc over seven years, forcing some member states to go from net receivers of EU largesse to net payers, according to an EU report leaked to the Financial Times. Kyiv would also become the largest recipient of agricultural subsidies, dropping payments for all other states by about 20 percent.
Despite the long odds, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains determined to help his country achieve EU membership. "Our key integration goal is to hammer out a decision to start membership negotiations this year," Zelensky said. "Today, I heard once again at the meetings and negotiations that this is absolutely possible."
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
— The end of Rep. Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) term as speaker of the House could mean the end of U.S. aid to Ukraine, according to Blaise Malley of RS. As Malley notes, all of McCarthy's likely successors have been critical of American aid, and options for bypassing the speaker and forcing a vote on more Ukraine funding would require some Republicans to either break with leadership or do some clever horse trading to convince Kyiv's skeptics. The news comes as public support for aid continues to fall, according to a new Reuters/ Ipsos poll, which found that only 41% of Americans want to continue arming Ukraine, while 35% were opposed and the rest were unsure.
— NATO's top military official warned that "the bottom of the barrel is now visible" when it comes to Western stocks for arming Ukraine, according to CNN. "We give away weapons systems to Ukraine, which is great, and ammunition, but not from full warehouses," said Adm. Rob Bauer.
— Zelensky met with European leaders in Granada, Spain, on Thursday in an effort to bolster support for Ukraine, according to Reuters. "Our joint goal is to ensure the security and stability of our common European home," he said on X, formerly known as Twitter. "We are working together with partners on enhancing the European security architecture, particularly regional security. Ukraine has substantial proposals in this regard."
— Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Monday that U.S. aid for Ukraine is "irrational," marking a shift in the controversial leader's rhetoric about the war, according to Reuters. "I was just looking at how now they're not authorizing aid for the war in Ukraine," AMLO said. "But how much have they destined for the Ukraine war? $30 to $50 billion for the war, which is the most irrational thing you can have. And damaging." AMLO has previously called for peace talks to end the conflict.
U.S. State Department news:In a Wednesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel called on Congress to pass new aid for Ukraine. "We cannot under any circumstances allow America's support for Ukraine to be interrupted," Patel said. "A lapse in support for even a short period of time could make all the difference in the battlefield."