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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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This forced cancellation is the latest in a series of very public humiliations for Putin, who is struggling to maintain his authority as the full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues to unravel. The March 2023 ICC decision to charge him with war crimes dealt a powerful blow to Putin’s standing at a time when unprecedented sanctions and revelations of Russian atrocities in Ukraine had already made him a toxic figure. Weeks later, he was forced to cancel traditional Victory Day parades in cities across Russia amid rumors of shortages in both troops and tanks due to heavy losses in Ukraine.

Putin’s most humiliating moment came in late June, when units of Russia’s state-funded paramilitary Wagner Group staged a mutiny and briefly threatened to seize control of the country. The Wagner uprising ended as suddenly as it had begun, but not before mutinous troops had captured one of Russia’s largest cities without a fight and marched virtually unopposed to within 200 kilometers of Moscow. The mutiny exposed the fragility of the current regime and the lack of popular support for Putin himself; while crowds of ordinary Russians flocked to cheer Wagner rebels, nobody rallied to defend the country’s current ruler.

The Wagner episode may have played a role in this week’s decision to miss the forthcoming summit in South Africa. With Putin looking weaker than at any point in his 23-year reign, there is widespread speculation that it is only a matter of time before he faces fresh domestic challenges. Coups are often staged when dictators leave the security of their capitals and few in Moscow will have forgotten the failed KGB coup of 1991, which took place in August while Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was in Crimea.

The Kremlin’s inability to find a way for Putin to attend next month’s BRICS summit in South Africa is a clear indication of Russia’s declining influence on the global stage. Ten years ago, Putin was a respected statesman and the leader of a G8 nation. Today, he must plan his international travel based on the likelihood of being arrested for war crimes. Commenting on Putin’s canceled South Africa visit, US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said there was “no better illustration” of Russia’s vastly diminished standing in the world. “President Putin can hardly leave his own borders now,” he noted. “He’s an international pariah who can barely leave his own borders for fear of arrest.”

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

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Zelenskyy’s claims that the Kremlin is planning to orchestrate a nuclear disaster in Ukraine are not at all far-fetched, given how Putin’s forces have been purposely laying waste to the country for the past sixteen months. The invading Russian army has planted landmines across an area the size of Switzerland, displaced more than ten million people, and destroyed dozens of Ukrainian towns and cities. Countless residential apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals have been reduced to ruins. A comprehensive and methodical nationwide bombing campaign has targeted the country’s civilian infrastructure.

In recent weeks, Russia is suspected of having blown up the Khakovka dam in southern Ukraine, causing an ecological catastrophe. However, even this unprecedented act of ecocide failed to stop Ukraine’s counteroffensive. With Russia’s military predicament expected to become increasingly grim in the weeks and months ahead, the likelihood of further extreme measures will grow. “They constantly need destabilization here. They want the world to put pressure on Ukraine to stop the war,” commented Zelenskyy.

Putin has been making nuclear threats since the very first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion. During the initial stages of the war, he very publicly placed his nuclear forces on high alert. With the invasion in danger of unravelling in September 2022, he again hinted at a possible nuclear response while warning, “I’m not bluffing.”

Not everyone is convinced. Former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, who resigned after last year’s invasion, told Newsweek in early 2023: “today [Putin is] bluffing and we know that he has bluffed about nuclear threats. Ukrainians recovered some parts of their territory, and there was no nuclear retaliation. If you’re afraid of Putin using nukes, then you already lose the war against him and he wins.”

Others warn against possible complacency. The recent destruction of Kakhovka dam has caused many observers to reassess their earlier skepticism over Russia’s readiness to go nuclear in Ukraine. Putin has also crossed another red line by vowing to place nukes in Belarus. The Russian dictator is currently holding all Europeans hostage with the threat of a deadly explosion at the continent’s largest nuclear plant, and is moving nuclear weapons closer to the heart of Europe.

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The world must heed Ukraine’s warnings before it is too late. Zelenskyy first raised the alarm about the Kakhovka dam in October 2022 but the international community failed to react. Since the destruction of the dam, the relatively weak and ineffective international response has fuelled fears that Russia will read this as a green light to go further.

For now, most international attention appears to be focused on Putin’s placement of nukes in Belarus. “I absolutely believe that moving weapons to Belarus demands an unequivocal response from NATO,” Polish President Andrzej Duda said recently before meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Significantly, Russia’s decision to deploy nukes to Belarus even drew a critical response from Chinese officials, who renewed calls for de-escalation and reminded Russia that its leaders had reaffirmed their opposition to nuclear war at their March 2023 summit with China in Moscow.

Ultimately, there is no way of knowing whether Russia’s nuclear threats are genuine or not, but Western leaders cannot afford to let Putin’s nuclear blackmail tactics succeed. If the Russian dictator’s nuclear saber-rattling enables him to rescue the faltering invasion of Ukraine, he will do it again and others will follow. To prevent this nightmare scenario, the West must respond forcefully by escalating support for Ukraine militarily, diplomatically, and economically. The only sensible answer to Russia’s reckless nuclear intimidation is a heightened international commitment to Ukrainian victory.

In parallel to increased support for Ukraine, international watchdogs must be dispatched to monitor the situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and other Ukrainian infrastructure sites that Russia could potentially target. Strong pressure must also be placed on China and India to condemn Russia’s nuclear threats. The invasion of Ukraine has already transformed the international security climate; Putin must not be allowed to normalize nuclear blackmail.

Diane Francis is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, editor-at-large with the National Post in Canada, author of ten books, and author of a newsletter on America.

While the call did not produce any major breakthroughs, the two leaders agreed on the appointment of a new Ukrainian Ambassador to China. Xi also committed to dispatching former Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui as a special envoy to Ukraine and other unspecified countries with a brief “to conduct in-depth communication with all parties,” as Beijing seeks to lead peace efforts.

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The timing of Wednesday’s call sparked considerable debate. Zelenskyy has sought to engage directly with Xi for a number of months, publicly expressing his readiness for dialogue in late March following the Chinese leader’s high-profile visit to Moscow. However, in early April, Xi refused to confirm when he planned to call his Ukrainian counterpart, stating instead that the conversation would take place “when the conditions and the time are right.”

It is unclear why Beijing decided that conditions are now suitable for renewed dialogue with Kyiv. The most recent diplomatic development certainly did little to convince doubters that China is a credible peacemaker. Speaking in Paris last Friday, Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty and indicated that all former Soviet countries lack “effective status under international law.” His comments sparked a strong diplomatic backlash, with Ukraine branding the Chinese ambassador’s position “absurd” and senior officials in other post-Soviet capitals demanding urgent clarification.

In a bid to defuse tensions, China’s foreign ministry officially distanced itself from Ambassador Lu Shaye’s remarks early this week and confirmed that it respected the independence of all post-Soviet states. Wednesday’s call to Zelenskyy may have been viewed in Beijing as an opportunity to repair the damage caused by the scandal and shift international attention back toward China’s push for progress toward a negotiated peace.

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022, China has sought to portray itself as neutral. At the same time, Beijing has refused to condemn Russia for the war, preferring instead to express cautious understanding for Moscow’s actions while voicing criticism for the alleged role of the West in provoking the conflict. A 12-point plan published in February 2023 was China’s first major intervention, but the vague document failed to gain serious traction.

China’s attempts to position itself as a neutral mediator have inevitably been undermined by the country’s close relations with the Kremlin. Moscow and Beijing have strengthened ties considerably over the past decade, notably in the wake of the 2014 Russian occupation of Crimea and military intervention in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Following Xi’s official visit to Moscow in March 2023, China said the bilateral relationship had now “acquired critical importance for the global landscape and the future of humanity.”

At the same time, other Chinese officials have attempted to downplay the significance of Beijing’s links to the Putin regime. Speaking to the New York Times in early April, Chinese Ambassador to the European Union Fu Cong denied China is on Russia’s side in the war and dismissed earlier official statements about a “friendship without limits” between the two countries as “nothing but rhetoric.” The diplomat also stated that China would not provide arms for Russia to use in Ukraine now or in the future.

While China’s decision to call Kyiv is a welcome gesture, there is little to suggest Beijing is currently in a position to broker a sustainable peace. Both Russia and Ukraine continue to reject talk of a compromise settlement, with Moscow demanding recognition for its claims to around 20% of Ukrainian territory and Ukraine insisting on the complete deoccupation of the country.

Despite these obstacles, Wednesday’s conversation between Zelenskyy and Xi is nevertheless noteworthy. The call was a diplomatic victory for Ukraine and an indication of China’s desire to be seen as a global force for peace rather than a Russian ally. This positioning could take on greater significance in the coming months if battlefield developments create opportunities for serious talks to take place.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Oleksiy Goncharenko — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 23:46:50 +0000

On March 18, the UN announced an extension to the Grain Deal, an agreement brokered in summer 2022 which allows for limited amounts of Ukrainian grain to be exported to global markets via the country’s blockaded Black Sea ports. This is good news. However, within days, it became clear that Russia wanted further concessions and was only prepared to prolong the deal for a limited period of 60 days. Once again, we were reminded of how Moscow seeks to weaponize global food security in order to hold the international community hostage.

The blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports began on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. It aims to break Ukraine economically by undermining the country’s position as one of the world’s leading agricultural exporters. The impact of the blockade goes beyond Ukraine and is global in scale. By preventing the free passage of merchant shipping in the Black Sea, Russia deprives world markets of vital Ukrainian agricultural produce while also challenging the core principles of international maritime law.

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From the very beginning, Russia’s attack on Ukraine has always gone beyond the boundaries of conventional military operations and attempted to strike at Ukraine’s very ability to exist as a functioning state. Russian troops have systematically destroyed vast swathes of farmland and made Ukraine the most mined country in the world. For the past six months, Russia has conducted a campaign of airstrikes targeting Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure in a bid to deprive Ukrainians of access to heating, electricity, and water supplies. The maritime blockade is another element in this war against Ukrainian statehood.

The suffering inflicted by Russia’s brutal invasion is not restricted to Ukrainians. According to the country’s Ministry of Infrastructure, more than 400 million people in Asia and Africa face the prospect of mounting food insecurity as a result of Russian efforts to restrict Ukrainian agricultural exports. While the current Grain Deal goes some way to countering this threat, it offers only a partial and short-term solution. Much more is needed in order to improve global food security and reaffirm the right to free passage for merchant shipping in international waters.

It is clearly in the interests of the international community to work toward ending Russia’s Black Sea blockade. First and foremost, this would lead to dramatically improved food security for many of the world’s most vulnerable communities. The resumption of maritime trade in the Black Sea would also provide the Ukrainian economy with approximately $20 billion in additional annual revenues. This would significantly reduce the economic burden on Ukraine’s partners and international financial institutions, which are now being asked to prop up the struggling Ukrainian economy indefinitely. Renewed merchant shipping would also be good for other economies, allowing Ukraine to resume imports worth tens of billions of dollars in 2021.

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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Ukrainians understand that there is no international appetite for any direct military intervention to break Russia’s Black Sea blockade. Nevertheless, there are numerous other tools available to the international community that could be used to pressure Moscow. The most obvious measures would include additional sanctions and restrictions targeting Russian shipping.

This approach has yet to be fully explored. At present, Russian ships are not subject to the same checks and inspections that Ukrainian vessels must undergo in line with the terms of the Grain Deal. Instead, they are free to continue their international trade unhindered. Over the past year, Russia has reportedly increased its maritime exports by more than a quarter. At the same time, there have been numerous accusations made against Russian vessels for allegedly shipping military cargoes, including in contravention of the 1936 Montreux Convention governing maritime passage through the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits in Turkey.

By blockading Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, Russia is violating the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the UN Charter. In response, Ukraine is calling on the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to force Russia to unblock the country’s sea ports. The IMO must use its powers as a UN agency to hold Russia accountable for violating the UNCLOS, and must be ready to impose suitable sanctions measures if Moscow refuses to comply.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a wide range of fundamental challenges to the rules-based international order that first emerged from the ashes of World War II. This is very much part of Putin’s plan. He wishes to return the world to an era when a handful of major powers were able to dictate to their weaker neighbors.

One of the many front lines in this geopolitical confrontation is the maritime front. Putin seeks to bankrupt Ukraine and overcome international opposition to his war by weaponizing agricultural exports. He does so in clear violation of international maritime law. If he succeeds, other autocrats will take note and adopt similarly aggressive tactics, with potentially catastrophic consequences for global trade. Ending Russia’s Black Sea blockade will not be easy and will require considerable political courage, but failure to do so will lead to rising costs in the years to come.

Oleksiy Goncharenko is a Ukrainian member of parliament with the European Solidarity party.

Twenty years on from the US invasion of the country, Iraq has fallen off the policymaking agenda in Washington, DC—cast aside in part as a result of the bitter experience of the war, the enormous human toll it exacted, and the passage of time. But looking forward twenty years and beyond, Iraqis need a great deal from their own leaders and those of their erstwhile liberators. A national reconciliation commission, a new constitution, and an economy less dependent on oil revenue are just some of the areas the experts at the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative highlight in this collection of reflections marking two decades since the US invasion.

What else will it take to transform Iraq into a prosperous, productive regional player? What can the United States do now, with twenty years’ worth of hindsight? And just how far-reaching were the effects of the war? Twenty-one experts from across the Atlantic Council take on these questions in a series of short essays and video interviews below.

Oula Kadhum on what March 20, 2003 was like for a young Iraqi

How the Iraq war changed…

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The cause of democracy in the region

When the United States invaded Iraq two decades ago, one of the public justifications for the war was that it would help spread democracy throughout the Middle East. The invasion, of course, had the opposite effect: it unleashed a bloody sectarian conflict in Iraq, badly undermining the reputation of democracy in the region and America’s credibility in promoting it.

Yet the frictions between rulers and ruled that helped precipitate the US invasion of Iraq persist. The citizens of the region, increasingly educated and connected to the rest of the world, have twenty-first-century political aspirations, but continue to be ruled by unaccountable nineteenth-century-style autocrats. Absent a change, these frictions will continue to shape political developments in the region, often in cataclysmic fashion, over the next two decades.

The George W. Bush administration’s failures in Iraq severely set back the cause of democracy in the region. In the perceptions of Arab publics, democratization became synonymous with the exercise of American military power. Meanwhile, Iraq’s chaos strengthened the hand of the region’s autocrats: as inept or heavy-handed as their own rule might be, it paled in comparison to the breakdown of order and human slaughter in Iraq.

Citizens’ frustrations with their political leaders finally erupted in the Arab Spring of 2010 and 2011, but their protests failed to end autocracy in the region. Gulf monarchs were able to throw money at the problem, first to shore up their own rule and then other autocracies in the region. The Egyptian experiment with democracy proved short-lived; Tunisia’s endured far longer but also appears over. More broadly, the region has seen democratic backsliding in Lebanon and Israel as well.

The yawning gap between what citizens want and what they get from their governments remains. The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators show that, on aggregate, states in the region are no more politically stable, effectively governed, accountable, or participatory than two decades ago. Unless political leaders address that gap, further Arab Spring-like protests—or even social revolution—are probable.

Having apparently gotten out of the business of invasion and occupation following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States could play a new and constructive role here. It could both cajole and assist the region’s political leaders to improve governance for their citizens.

The United States exacerbated political tensions in the region two decades ago; now it has an opportunity to help ameliorate them.

—Stephen R. Grand is the author of Understanding Tahrir Square: What Transitions Elsewhere Can Teach Us About the Prospects for Arab Democracy. He is a nonresident senior fellow with the Council’s Middle East programs.

State sovereignty

Since the seventeenth century, more or less, world order has been based on the concept of state sovereignty: states are deemed to hold the monopoly of force within mutually recognized territories, and they are generally prohibited from intervening in one another’s domestic affairs. The invasion of Iraq challenged this standard in three important ways.

First, the fact of the war represented a direct attack on the sovereignty of the Iraqi state, which undermined the ban on aggressive war. While the Bush administration cast the invasion as a case of preemptive self-defense, it was widely seen as a preventive war of choice against a state that did not pose a clear and present danger. Moreover, the main exceptions to sovereignty that have developed over time, such as ongoing mass atrocities or United Nations authority, were not applicable in Iraq. Thus, the United States dealt a major blow to the rules-based international system of which it was one of the chief architects. This may have made more imaginable later crimes of aggression by other states.

Second, the means of the war, and especially the occupation, powered the reemergence of the private military industry. Driven by the need to sustain two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US armed forces became dependent on military contractors, which sometimes involved authorizing paid civilians to kill. The US effort to (re)privatize warfare brought back into fashion the use of private military force, generating a multibillion-dollar industry that is here to stay. Over time the spread of private military companies could unspool the state’s exclusive claim to violence and hammer the foundations of the current international system.

Third, the consequences of the war led to the spectacular empowerment of armed nonstate actors in the region and beyond, who launched a full-frontal assault on the sovereignty of many states. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, of course, emerged amid the brutal contestation of power in post-invasion Iraq and pursued its “caliphate” as an alternative (Sunni) political institution to rival the nation-state. While the threat has been contained, for now, in the Middle East, it is only beginning to gather force on the African continent. In addition, because Iran effectively won the war in Iraq, it was able to sponsor a deep bench of Shia nonstate groups which have eroded state sovereignty in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq itself.

The US invasion of Iraq left us a world with less respect for state sovereignty, more guns for hire, and a dizzying array of well-armed and determined nonstate groups.

—Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and host of the Guns for Hire podcast.

Abbas Kadhim on the opportunities missed

US-Turkish ties

By launching a war on Turkey’s border, against Turkish advice, in a manner that prejudiced Turkish interests, the United States in 2003 upended a strategic understanding that had dominated bilateral relations for five decades.

During and immediately after the Cold War, Turkey and the United States shared a strategic vision centered on containing the Soviet Union and its proxies. In exchange for strategic cooperation, Washington provided aid, modulated criticisms of Turkish politics, and deferred to Ankara’s sensitivities regarding its geopolitical neighborhood. With notable exceptions (e.g., Turkish opposition to the Vietnam War and US opposition to Turkey’s 1974 Cyprus operation), consensus was the norm and aspiration of both sides. After close collaboration in the Balkans, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2001, though, Ankara became increasingly alarmed about the prospect of a new war in Iraq.

Bilateral relations deteriorated sharply after the Turkish parliament voted against allowing the United States to launch combat operations from Turkish soil. The war was longer, bloodier, and costlier than its planners had anticipated. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (known as the PKK and designated by the United States as a terrorist organization in 1997) ended a cease-fire in place since the 1999 capture of its founder, Abdullah Öcalan, and gained broad new freedom of movement and action in northern Iraq. US military aid to Turkey ended, while defense industrial cooperation and military-to-military contacts dropped. In July 2003 US soldiers detained and hooded a Turkish special forces team in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, on suspicions that they were colluding with insurgents. This event, coupled with Turkish anger over the bitter conduct and conclusion of the prewar negotiations, helped fuel a sustained rise in negative views about the United States among the Turkish public.

Sanctions and the war in Iraq damaged Turkish economic interests, though these would rebound from 2005 onward. The relationship of the US military to the PKK—first as tacit tolerance of PKK attacks into Turkey from northern Iraq despite the US presence, and later with employment of the PKK affiliate in Syria as a proxy force against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—rendered the frictions of 2003 permanent. That US forces train, equip, and operate with a PKK-linked militia along Turkey’s border today is fruit of the Iraq war, because US-PKK contacts were brokered in northern Iraq, and US indifference to Turkish security redlines traces back to 2003.

The story of US-Turkish estrangement can be told from other perspectives: that Ankara sought strategic independence for reasons broader than Iraq, that President Erdoğan’s anti-Westernism drove divergence, that the countries have fewer shared interests now. There may be truth in these arguments, though they are based largely on speculation and imputed motives. Yet they, too, cannot be viewed except through the lens of the 2003 Iraq War, which came as Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party was assuming power and greatly influenced his subsequent decision-making.

Many effects of the Iraq War have faded, but the strategic alienation of Turkey and the United States has not.

—Rich Outzen, a retired colonel, is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY and a geopolitical analyst and consultant currently serving private-sector clients as Dragoman LLC.

China’s rise

As George W. Bush took office in 2001, managing the US-China relationship was regarded as a top foreign policy concern. The administration’s focus shifted with 9/11 and a wartime footing—which in turn altered Beijing’s foreign policy and engagement in the Middle East.

A high point in US-China tension came in April with the Hainan Island Incident. The collision of a US signals intelligence aircraft and a Chinese interceptor jet resulted in one dead Chinese pilot and the detention of twenty-four US crew members, whose release followed US Ambassador Joseph Prueher’s delivery of the “letter of the two sorries.”

But after the September 11 attacks, the United States launched the global war on terrorism, and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq became the all-encompassing focal points. While that relieved pressure on China, the US decision to invade Iraq raised serious concerns in Beijing and elsewhere about the direction of global order under US leadership.

American willingness to attack a sovereign government with the stated goal of changing its regime set a worrisome precedent for authoritarian governments. Worries transformed into something else following the global financial crisis in 2008. Chinese leaders became even more wary of US leadership, with former Vice Premier Wang Qishan telling then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson after the financial crisis, “Look at your system, Hank. We aren’t sure we should be learning from you anymore.”

The war in Iraq was especially troubling for Chinese leaders. Few believed that the United States would engage in such a disastrous war over something as idealistic as democracy promotion in the Middle East. The dominant assumption was that the war was about maintaining control of global oil—and using that dominance to prevent China from rising to a peer competitor status. The so-called “Malacca Dilemma” became a feature of analysis in China’s strategic landscape: the idea that any power that could control the Strait of Malacca could control oil shipping to China, and therefore its economy. Since then, China has developed the world’s largest navy and invested in ports across the Indian Ocean region through its Maritime Silk Road Initiative. Its defense spending has increased fivefold this century, from $50 billion in 2001 to $270 billion in 2021, making it the second-largest defense spender in the Indo-Pacific region after Japan, and higher than the next thirteen Indo-Pacific countries combined.

Since the Iraq war, the Middle East has become a much greater focus in Chinese foreign policy. In addition to building up its own military, China began discussing security and strategic affairs with Middle East energy suppliers, conducting joint exercises, selling more varied weapons systems, and pursuing a regional presence that increasingly diverges or competes with US preferences.

Would China’s growing presence in the Middle East have followed the same trajectory had the United States not invaded Iraq? Possibly, although one could argue that the same sense of urgency would not have animated decision makers in the People’s Republic of China.

—Jonathan Fulton is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and host of the China-MENA podcast. He is also an assistant professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. Follow him on Twitter: @jonathandfulton.

The country’s readiness to meet climate challenges

Over the course of the last two decades, Iraq has become one of the five most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. It has been affected by rising temperatures, insufficient and diminishing rainfall, intensified droughts that reduce access to water, sand and dust storms, and flooding. Iraq’s environmental ministry warns that the country may face dust storms for more than 270 days per year in the next twenty years.

While not the sole cause of environmental mismanagement in Iraq, the muhasasa system of power sharing has exacerbated and contributed to a culture of corruption and political patronage that has undermined efforts to protect the environment and to sustainably manage Iraq’s natural resources. Muhasasa is an official system that allocates Iraqi government positions and resources based on ethnic and sectarian identity. It may have been a good temporary compromise to promote stability in the early 2000s, but today it is widely viewed as a harmful legacy of the post-invasion occupation period.

In the context of protecting the environment, the muhasasa system has led to a situation where some government officials are appointed to their respective positions without the necessary skills or qualifications to manage resources efficiently or effectively. Forced ethnosectarian balancing has encouraged natural resource misuse for political or personal gain to the immediate detriment of average Iraqis. While muhasasa was intended to promote political stability and prevent marginalization of minority groups, in practice it has contributed to a culture of corruption and nepotism, and undermined efforts to promote good governance and sustainable development.

To address its acute climate challenges, Iraq needs to move away from the sectarian-based power sharing and toward a more inclusive, merit-based system of governance. It must strengthen its environmental regulations, commit itself to sustainable development, and better manage its natural resources for the country and as part of the global effort to mitigate climate change. The international community has a role to play here through supporting technical assistance, capacity building, and providing financial resources to help address these concerns along the way.

—Masoud Mostajabi is an associate director of the Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council.

Iran’s regional footprint

From the outset of the invasion of Iraq, the United States’ decision was built on several dubious premises that the administration masterfully overhyped to build support for its aspirations of removing Saddam Hussein by force. The last two decades have tragically shown the consequences of this decision—with high costs of blood and treasure and a serious blow to American credibility. But from a strategic standpoint, one particular miscalculation continues to create blowbacks to US regional security interests: top US policymakers willfully ignored the need for an adequate nation-rebuilding strategy, leaving a power vacuum that an expansionist Iran could fill.

With the removal of the Baathist regime, Iran finally saw the defeat of a rival it could not best after eight years of one of the region’s bloodiest wars. This cleared the path to influence Iraqi Shia leaders who had long relied on the Islamic theocracy next door for support. Even as some Shia learning centers in Najaf and Karbala challenged (once again) Qom, new opportunities of influence that never existed before opened up for Iran.

By infiltrating Iraq’s political institutions through appointed officials submissive to its regime’s wishes, Iran succeeded in two goals: deterring future threats of Iraqi hostilities and preventing the United States from using Iraqi territories as a platform to invade Iran. Through its Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Qods Force, Iran trained and supplied several militia groups that later officially penetrated Iraq’s security architecture through forces called Popular Mobilization Units, which have repeatedly carried out anti-American attacks. Nevertheless, those groups would eventually prove valuable to the United States in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—yet even then Iran succeeded in appearing as the protector of Iraq’s sovereignty by immediately equipping the Popular Mobilization Units, unlike the delayed US response that arrived months later.

Regionally, Iran’s military leverage and political allies inside Iraq provided it with a strategic ground link to its network in Syria and Lebanon, where the Qods Force ultimately shifted the political power dynamics to Iran’s advantage, especially as they crucially strengthened engagement in recruiting volunteers to support Bashar al-Assad’s fighters in Syria. Through the land bridge that connects Iran to the Bekaa Valley, Iran has helped spread its weapons-trafficking and money-laundering capabilities while reinforcing an abusive dictatorship in Syria and a crippled state in Lebanon.

Twenty years ago, the United States went to liberate Iraq from its oppressive dictatorship. What it left behind is a void in governance and an alternative system that fell far short of what the United States wanted for Iraq. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime continues to base its identity on anti-Americanism while it gets closer to its political and ideological ambitions. With US sanctions having so far failed to halt Iran’s network of militia training and smuggling—and the attempt to revive the nuclear deal stalled, despite being the main focus of US Iran policy—the question remains: How long will the United States tolerate Iran’s regional ascendancy before it intensifies its efforts toward restraining it?

—Nour Dabboussi is a program assistant to the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs.

How governments counter terrorist financing

Without the experience of the war in Iraq, US and transatlantic economic statecraft would be less agile and less able to prevent terrorist financing. However, more work and continued international commitment is needed to ensure Iraq and its neighbors are able to strengthen and enforce their anti-money-laundering regimes to protect their economies from corruption and deny terrorists and other illicit actors from abusing the global financial system to raise, use, and move funds for their operations.

The tools of economic statecraft, including but not limited to sanctions, export controls, and controlling access to currency, became critical to US national security in the wake of 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sanctions and other forms of economic pressure had been applied against the government of Iraq and illicit actors prior to 2003. However, economic pressure and the use of financial intelligence to combat terrorist financing became increasingly sophisticated as the war progressed. Since 2001, the State Department and Treasury have designated more than 500 individuals and entities for financially supporting terrorism in Iraq. Following the money and figuring out how terrorist networks raised, used, and moved funds was a critical aspect in understanding how they operated in Iraq and across the region. Information on terrorist financial networks and facilitators helped identify vulnerabilities for disruption, limiting their ability to fund and carry out terrorist attacks, procure weapons, pay salaries for fighters, and recruit.

Sanctioning the terrorist groups and financial facilitators operating in Iraq and across the region disrupted the groups’ financial flows and operational capabilities while protecting the US and global financial systems from abuse. Targets included al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, among others. For example, the US Treasury recently sanctioned an Iraqi bank moving millions of dollars from the Revolutionary Guard Corps to Hezbollah, preventing terrorists from abusing the international financial system.

Notably, the fight against terrorist financing set in motion the expansion of the Department of the Treasury’s sanctions programs and helped the US government refine its sanctions framework and enforcement authorities and their broad application.

Equally important, the US government’s efforts and experience in countering the financing of terrorism increased engagement and coordination with foreign partners to protect the global financial system from abuse by illicit actors. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the inter-governmental body responsible for setting international anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist financing standards, strengthened and revised its standards, recommendations, and red flags to account for what the international community learned from the experience of combatting terrorist financing in Iraq. The United States and partner nations provided, and continue to provide, training and resources to build Iraq’s and its neighbors’ capabilities to meet FATF standards and address terrorist financing and money laundering issues domestically.

—Kim Donovan is the director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

—Maia Nikoladze is an assistant director at the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

The United States

Perhaps no event since the end of the Cold War shaped American politics more than the invasion of Iraq. It is fair to say that without the Iraq war neither Donald Trump nor Barack Obama would likely have been president.

Weirdly, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is still almost a forbidden topic in GOP foreign policy circles. After the Bush years, a kind of collective-guilt omerta about the Iraq war took hold among Republicans. It was as if US-Iraqi history had started in 2005, or 2006, with Democrats and a few Republicans baying for a needed defeat. It never came. The 2007 surge, as David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy came to be known, was the gutsiest political call by an American leader in my lifetime.

It happened also to be right when very little else about the war was: There were, of course, no weapons of mass destruction found. Iran did expand its power, massively. Iraq did not offer an example of democracy to the region: rather, it horrified the region. It became linked to al-Qaeda only after the invasion. The White House refused to take the insurgency seriously until it was very serious. Iraq pulled attention away from Afghanistan. And of course there were 4,431 Americans killed.

By 2016, the narrative favored by Republicans had become that the execution of the war was flawed. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, was the villain in this story: But for Bremer’s incomprehensible decision to disband the Iraqi army and institute de-Baathification in early 2003, so the story went, the Iraq war could have succeeded. But in retrospect these decisions were defendable. Bremer was erring on the side of satiating the Shia majority, not the Sunni minority, and trying to reassure them that a decade after they were abandoned in 1991 the United States would deliver them political power. And the one real success of the Iraq war, beginning to end, is that the United States never faced a generalized Shia insurgency.

The other villain was Barack Obama, who played in the sequel. (Obama largely owed his electoral victory to the Iraq war, brilliantly using Hillary Clinton’s vote for the invasion to invalidate her experience and judgment and thus the main argument for her candidacy.) In this version of events, Obama’s precipitous decision to withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 contributed to the country’s near-collapse three years later under the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). This was basically accurate. The withdrawal of US forces eliminated a key political counterweight from Iraq, and the main incentive for then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to hedge his sectarianism and friendliness with Iran. This accelerated political support for Sunni rejectionist movements like ISIS.

Both the Bremer narrative and the Obama narrative allowed George Bush’s Republican party to avoid revisiting the core questions of American power: intervention, exceptionalism, and its limits—precisely the same questions that had featured prominently in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

This was the broken market that Donald Trump exploited: that Republican voters’ views on Iraq after 2008 looked much like Democratic voters’, but the Republican establishment’s views did not. And it was no accident, in the 2016 presidential primaries, that the two candidates most willing to criticize the interventionism of the 2000s, Trump and Ted Cruz, were the ones who did best.

This debate remains critical. More than any other decision, Bush’s war created the contemporary Middle East. Above all that includes the unprecedented regional dominance of Iran, the power of the Arab Shia, and the constraints on American power in buttressing its traditional allies. That imbalance, combined with a decade-long sense that America is leaving the region and wants no more conflict, has led Sunni Arab states to look for their security in other places.

Especially in the wake of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which if anything has sharpened foreign policy divisions, the Republican party and the United States need a dialectic, not a purge; a discussion, not a proscription; and a reasonable synthesis of the lessons of Iraq. People want to vote for restraint and realism, as much as or more than they want to vote and pay for interventionism and idealism. Was the Iraq War a mistake? Let us start this debate there, and produce something better.

—Andrew L. Peek is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He was previously the senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council and the deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Iraq at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

Andrew Peek on the historical context of the 2003 invasion

US foreign policy

The US decision to invade Iraq twenty years ago was, to use the words of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, a wily French statesman and diplomat of the Napoleonic era, “worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.”

While Saddam Hussein was a monster, and had ignored numerous United Nation-mandated commitments, the US-led effort in 2003 to topple him as president of Iraq was strategically unnecessary. It became the center of a failed mission in nation-building—one that has proved disastrous for US interests in the greater Middle East and beyond.

Iraq was at the center, but it was only one of four failed American interventions in the region. The others were Afghanistan, Libya, and, to a lesser extent, Syria. The operation to take down the Taliban was fast and efficient, but consolidation of a post-Taliban Afghanistan never occurred. Part of the reason for that was the United States’ war of choice in Iraq, which began less than eighteen months after Afghanistan. That sucked up most of the resources and attention for the rest of that decade. But the other reason for US failure in Afghanistan was that we were beguiled by the same siren song that misled us in Iraq: that we could overcome centuries of history and culture and create a stable society at least somewhat closer to US values. Failure on such a scale is not good for the prestige and influence of a superpower.

But that is not the end of it. There is also the domestic side. The misadventures in the greater Middle East were a failure not just of the US government but of the US foreign policy elite. It was a bipartisan affair. Neoconservative thinking dominated the Republican Party throughout the aughts, while liberal interventionism prevailed in the Democratic Party. They were all in for the utopian policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

While the failures in the greater Middle East were widely understood even before the unnecessarily embarrassing 2021 departure from Afghanistan, there has never been a public reckoning. There was nothing like the Church Committee, which in the mid-1970s shined a very harsh light on US failures in Southeast Asia. Few prominent thinkers or officials have publicly acknowledged their failed policy choices. And the same figures who led us into those debacles are still widely quoted on all major foreign policy matters.

This has had the consequence in the United States of providing ground for the growth of neoisolationist thinking. In running for the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump was not wrong in pointing out the failures of elites in both parties in conducting foreign policy in the greater Middle East. Since then, populists on the right have used this insight to undermine the credibility of foreign policy experts. And like generals fighting the last war, they have applied their “insight” from the Middle East to the latest challenges to US interests, such as Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

In this reading, US support for Ukraine is comparable to US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and will result in failure. There is no analysis—simply dismissal—of the dangers that Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine poses to US security and economic prosperity. No recognition that, as Putin has stated numerous times, he wants to restore Kremlin political control over all the states that used to make up the Soviet Union—which includes NATO and European Union (EU) member states. In other words, he seeks to undermine NATO and the EU.

Furthermore, there’s no understanding that despite the presence of American troops, the United States’ local allies in Iraq and Afghanistan could not win—but without one NATO soldier on the battlefield, Ukraine is fighting Russia to a standstill. Indeed, Ukraine has destroyed between 30 percent and 50 percent of Moscow’s conventional military capability. These analogies with the Iraq war ignore the reality that if Putin takes control of Ukraine, the United States will likely spend far more in financial resources and perhaps American lives in defending its NATO allies.

These failures of understanding are not simply or mainly a consequence of US errors in the Middle East. Utopian thinking in the United States and especially Europe was a natural consequence of the absence of great-power war since 1945. Especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, people on both sides of the Atlantic got comfortable with the notion that Russia was no longer an adversary. And isolationism also has a long pedigree in US society. So it would be vastly oversimplifying to blame the confusion of today’s neoisolationists exclusively on US failures in the Middle East. But the strong US response to the challenge of a hostile Soviet Union was possible because a bipartisan approach on containment was endorsed by leaders of both parties. After the United States’ misadventures in Iraq, such endorsements carry less weight today. In US foreign policy as elsewhere, we still do not know what the ultimate impact of the decision to invade Iraq will be.

—John Herbst’s 31-year career in the US Foreign Service included time as US ambassador to Uzbekistan, other service in and with post-Soviet states, and his appointment as US ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006.

What Iraq needs now

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William F. Wechsler on the future of Iraq

A reconciliation commission to rebuild national unity

One of the most devastating shortcomings of the 2003 Iraq invasion was the dismantlement of state institutions and the weakening of the Baghdad central government. That structural vacuum of power and services forced Iraqis back into tribal, religious, and ethnic allegiances, contributing to the nation-state’s fragmentation and exacerbating divisive sectarian discourses and intercommunity tensions. A quota-based constitutional system only served to institutionalize and legitimize the ethnosectarian distribution of power.

Conflicting groups grew further apart over the past two decades and became more motivated by accumulating political positions, hefty oil incomes, and territorial and symbolic gains rather than collectively seeking to rebuild their balkanized nation. Iraqi youth, on the other hand—who campaigned in the name of “We Want a Homeland” [نريد_وطن#] during the 2019 Tishreen (October) protests—seem to have understood what political elites might be missing: the necessity for national reconciliation and memorialization.

The bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra in 2006 unleashed the chaos trapped inside Pandora’s box and resulted in violent Sunni-Shia confrontations, which pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Today, political elites, aware of the fragility and precariousness of the political consensus, pretend the time of friction is over. My firsthand work in Iraqi prisons and camps, and the research projects I led in the country’s conflict zones off the beaten path, such as west of the Euphrates, in Zubair, and in rural areas in the Makhoul Basin, prove the absolute contrary.

A flagrant example of the sectarian ticking bomb that persists in Iraq is the mismanagement of the Sunni populations in the aftermath of the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Many pretended that ISIS fighters came from some fictional foreign entity and refused to face the fact that most of them, including their leader, were Iraqi-born and raised, which I observed as an eyewitness working with the International Committee of the Red Cross during the ISIS war in Nineveh and Salahuddin. Many people who were accomplices of the atrocities even engaged in rewriting the narrative altogether after 2017 in the name of national unity.

A number of Sunni populations in Iraq were mystified by their sudden loss of power with the toppling of Saddam Hussein and were in disbelief that the Shia they stigmatized as shrouguis—literally, “easterners,” a derogatory reference used by Sunni elites to refer to Shia Iraqis from the southeast—became the new lords of the land. Instead of engaging in meaningful mediation and reconciliation to work through these social changes, the majority parties preferred to bury their heads in the sand. This tendency led them to allow militia groups to displace and isolate the Sunni inhabitants of a key city like Samarra, to submerge under water the citizens of northern Kirkuk and Salaheddin, or to conceal the evidence incriminating Tikrit Sunnis during the Speicher massacre, in which ISIS fighters killed more than a thousand Iraqi military cadets, most of them Shia.

These are not isolated examples in a chaotic political and constitutional system in which many communities feel persistently misunderstood, including Kurds, Assyrians, Mandaeans, Baha’is, Afro-Iraqis, Turkmen—and even the Shia themselves. The only possible and plausible pathway for the country to be one again in the next twenty years is to engage in an excruciating but indispensable reconciliation process, through which responsibilities are determined, dignity is restored, and justice is served.

—Sarah Zaaimi is the deputy director for communications at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs.

A new constitution

Iraq needs a new constitution. A good constitution spells out the framework and structure of government. It provides essential checks and balances to prevent dictators from coming to power. It helps protect the people’s rights. It has measures to prevent gridlock or the collapse of a functioning government.

Judged by these standards, the 2005 Iraqi constitutionis only a partial success.

However, complaints have built up since 2005: over the muhasasa system under which the established political parties divide up ministerial appointments; over the failure of Iraq’s government or other institutions to deliver basic services like electricity and water; over perceptions of excessive Iranian meddling in Iraq’s politics; and over the inability of the government to provide meaningful employment for millions of young Iraqis—or to foster a private sector capable of doing so. These grievances came to a head in the 2019 Tishreen protests in which more than 600 Iraqis died.

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 in part to bring democracy to Iraq, so it is ironic that Iraq’s 2005 constitution was the product of mostly Iraqi political forces unleashed by the failure of the United States to ensure a democratic transition. It was expected that the Kurdish political parties, which had worked closely with the United States for years, would insist upon a federal republic to ensure their autonomy from a central government whose long-term character and leanings in 2005 were far from settled. Beyond this, however, the small number of Americans actually involved in advising the key Iraqi players in the constitutional process—in the room where it happened—actually had relatively little experience in constitutional mechanics or modern comparative constitutional practice. The American sins of commission during the first two years after Iraq’s liberation were replaced by sins of omission during the crucial months of negotiation of the 2005 constitution.

Genuine constitutional reform in Iraq is not likely to be accomplished directly through the parliament, given the interests of Iraq’s political parties and the parliament’s need to focus on legislative responsibilities. Instead, Iraqi civil society—including scholars, lawyers, religious and business leaders, and retired government officials and jurists—should initiate serious discussions about constitutional reform. Many of these voices were not heard when the 2005 constitution was adopted. Their effort can be far more open and transparent than the process was in 2005.

Foreign governments should have a minimal role, limited to supporting and encouraging Iraqi-led efforts, without trying to broker a particular outcome. International foundations, institutes, universities, and think tanks can offer outside expertise, particularly in comparative constitutional law and other kinds of technical assistance. But the overall effort needs to be Iraqi-led, with input from a broad spectrum of Iraqi voices.

While civil society discussions in Iraq could begin with considering amendments to the 2005 constitution, US experience may be relevant. The US Constitutional Convention convened in May 1787 to consider amendments to the Articles of Confederation decided to completely redesign the government, resulting in a Constitution that, with amendments, has been in force in the United States for more than 230 years. Sometimes it’s better to start over.

Iraq’s path to constitutional reform is not clear today, but there is a path nevertheless. Incremental reform is possible, but reform on a larger scale may achieve a more lasting result. The more promising outcome could be for a slate of candidates to run for office with the elements of the new constitution as their platform. A reform slate is not likely to gain an absolute majority, but if its base of support is broad enough, it may be able to gain support in a new parliament needed to send a revised constitution to the Iraqi people for their approval. A new constitution, done right, could propel Iraq towards a better future.

—Thomas S. Warrick led the State Department’s “Future of Iraq” project from 2002 to 2003, served in both Baghdad and Washington, and was director (acting) for Iraq political affairs from July 2006 to July 2007. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Thomas S. Warrick on the need for Iraqi-led constitutional reform

An economy diversified away from oil

The post-2003 political order, based on the muhasasa system of sectarian apportionment, came with the promise of a complete break with the past. The 2005 constitution, drafted by the new order, promised: “The State shall guarantee the reform of the Iraqi economy in accordance with modern economic principles to insure the full investment of its resources, diversification of its sources, and the encouragement and development of the private sector.”

As with other bold promises made, the economic promise was broken as soon as the constitution came into effect, as the political order pursued a decentralized and multiheaded evolution of the prior economic model, and persistently expanded the patrimonial role of the state as a redistributor of the country’s oil wealth in exchange for social acquiescence to its rule.

Over the last twenty years the economy developed significant structural imbalances, and was increasingly bedeviled by fundamental contradictions. Essentially, it was dependent on government spending directly through its provisioning of goods and services as well as public services, and indirectly on the spending of public-sector employees. However, this spending was almost entirely dependent on volatile oil revenues that the government had no control over; yet the spending was premised on ever-increasing oil prices.

The political order had the opportunity to correct course and honor the original promise during three major economic and financial crises, each more severe than the last and all a consequence of an oil-price crash: in 2007 to 2009, due to the global financial crisis; in 2014 to 2017, due to the conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham; and in 2020, due to the emergence of COVID-19. Yet, paradoxically, the political order doubled down on the policies that led to these crises as soon as oil prices recovered.

On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the political order—buoyed by the bounty of high, yet unsustainable, oil prices—is planning a budget that is expected to be the largest ever since 2003, to seek legitimacy from an increasingly alienated public. These plans will only deepen the economy’s structural imbalance and its fundamental contradictions, and as such could likely lead to even greater public alienation if an oil-price crash triggers yet another economic and financial crisis. Even if oil prices were to stay high, however, the country’s demographic pressures will in time create the conditions for a deeper rolling crisis.

—Ahmed Tabaqchali is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. An experienced capital markets professional, he is chief strategist of the AFC Iraq Fund.

Andrew Peek on the current state of Iraq and the US-Iraq relationship

An inclusive vision, representative of all its people

One of the enduring legacies of the 2003 invasion has been its deleterious effect on the many diverse ethnic and religious minority communities that make up the social fabric of Iraq. Yet it is that diversity and rich heritage that could now unlock a brighter future for the nation, if the political system can recognize and represent it.

Marginalized by an institutionally inscribed political system and few representative seats in parliament, Iraq’s minority communities have found themselves peripheralized by the state—and in the imaginations of the country’s future. Many have emigrated and now reside in diaspora, changing the ethnic and religious heterogeneity of Iraq.

Calculating the cultural toll of war goes beyond the destruction of shrines and artifacts, and the looting of museums and buildings: One of the biggest social and cultural losses for Iraq has been the exclusion of minority communities from the nation-building processes. This is a tragic state of affairs for Iraq, whose uniqueness, strength, and richness stems from its ancient histories and cultures, its religious, artistic, and musical traditions, and the languages that have contributed to its heritage and development. That heritage deserves to be protected and celebrated.

Until the day the muhasasa system is dismantled, and a new Iraq built on meritocracy can thrive, minority communities must be safeguarded and included in Iraq’s future. Yet, this can only be achieved through the protection of minorities’ rights in Iraq’s political life, and genuine and concerted effort to increase parliamentary seats and legal representation of minorities. Investment in areas destroyed by terrorism and conflict, more reparations for communities whose livelihoods and homes have been ruined, and more boots on the ground to protect communities and religious shrines should be a priority.

Twenty years of destruction, corruption, violence, and the subsequent emigration of many communities cannot be erased. Yet the twentieth anniversary of Iraq’s occupation ought to serve as a point of reflection for the kind of Iraq that Iraqis want now. There is certainly much hope in a new generation of Iraqis calling for new national visions, an end to muhasasa, more civil rights, and expanding economic opportunities.

Yet all of Iraq’s communities must be part of this conversation. A more inclusive Iraq that applauds its diversity and takes pride in difference could be the driving force needed to unify the nation.

—Oula Kadhum, a former nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, is a postdoctoral research fellow at Lunds University in Sweden and a fellow of international migration at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom.

Oula Kadhum on the reforms needed to reposition Iraq in the next twenty years

A new US Iraq policy focused on youth and education

As the global community reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq and looks to the future, it is time for foreign policy toward Iraq to move beyond its traditional, security-heavy approach.

While security threats persist, including a potential resurgence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and should be a priority, US aid to Iraq has historically been ineffective and financially irresponsible. Humanitarian assistance, meanwhile, tends to focus on short-term issues like the response to COVID-19 and assisting displaced individuals. And while such aid can be beneficial, continuing with the traditional avenues of support is not a sustainable solution to rebuild Iraq. The United States and the international community must begin to focus on long-term solutions that address human security, development, infrastructure, education, and the economy. At the center of all these issues are two key variables that must be the focal point of policy: education and the youth population.

A 2019 UNICEF report estimates that a staggering 60 percent of Iraq’s population is under the age of twenty-five. Learning levels and access to education in Iraq remain among the lowest in the region. The great challenges these two facts pose can also be seen as a unique opportunity: to place its large youth population at the epicenter of Iraq’s future through policy that increases the number of educators and trains them, ensures sanitary and competent learning conditions, and increases access to education.

The benefits of a long-term investment in Iraq’s education system and youth population go beyond simply educating its citizens: It would be the first step in unlocking the human potential of Iraq. More education means more qualified professionals; more doctors would increase the quality and access to healthcare, an increase in engineers will ensure that the country’s infrastructure continues to develop, and additional business leaders and entrepreneurs will assist in growing the economy.

To truly rebuild Iraq, the United States and the international community can no longer view the country as only a security issue. Rather, this moment must be seen as an opportunity to empower bright Iraqi youths, who hope to lead in rebuilding their own country—providing them with a fair shot of again being a cradle of civilization.

—Hezha Barzani is a program assistant with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative. Follow him on Twitter @HezhaFB.

Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Fuad Hussein reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion

What the United States can do now

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Recommit to the cause of Iraqi freedom

It’s hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the US invasion of Iraq. As I sat waiting to launch my first mission on March 20, the war’s historical significance was not my primary thought. How I found myself flying on the first night of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq was. That thought was accompanied by the tightness in the pit of my stomach that I always got before launching into the unknown.

We didn’t debate the case for the war among ourselves. It has been discussed thoroughly since, and I don’t claim to have any new insight to offer on that topic. We were focused on not letting down our fellow Marines and accomplishing our mission: to remove Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and replace it with a democracy that would give the people of Iraq the freedom that people everywhere deserve as their birthright.

Did we succeed? We certainly succeeded in rapidly destroying the Baathist regime and its military, the third largest in the world. The answer to the second question is less clear. On my second and third tours in Iraq, I saw the chaos from the al-Qaeda-fueled insurgency in 2005 and 2006 and the dramatic turnaround following the al-Anbar “Sunni Awakening” in 2006-2007. From afar, I watched the horrors that the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham inflicted on its people after US troops withdrew without a status-of-forces agreement.

Today, Iraq is rated “not free,” scoring twenty-nine out of one hundred in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2022 report. Although not up to Western liberal democracy standards, this is an improvement over 2002, when it received the lowest score possible and was listed as one of the eleven most repressive countries in the world. Moreover, Iraq’s 2022 score is vastly better than most of its neighbors: Iran scored fourteen, Syria scored one, and Afghanistan scored ten.

Despite Afghanistan being widely seen as “the good war” of the two post-9/11 conflicts, where the casus belli was clear, today it is Iraq, and not Afghanistan, that gives me hope that twenty years from now, on the fortieth anniversary, we will see our efforts to promote democracy in Iraq come entirely to fruition. We owe it to the 36,425 Americans killed and wounded there, the thousands of veterans who took their own lives, and the many more still struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder to stay engaged in Iraq and the region to try and make sure that they do.

—Col. John B. Barranco was the 2021-22 Senior US Marine Corps Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. These views are his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or Department of the Navy.

Balance confidence and humility

I officially swore into the military at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, on April 4, 2003, during the early stages of the US “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq. Having decided to join the Air Force following 9/11, the lengthy administrative process I’d endured to get to this point had been agonizing. I recall going through the in-processing line at Officer Training School on April 9, when an instructor whispered to us: “Coalition forces have taken Baghdad, stay motivated.” The thought that immediately went through my mind was: “I’m going to miss the wars.”

I had made the choice to pursue special operations and still had two years of training ahead of me. At the time, the war in Afghanistan seemed like it was nearing completion, and the swift overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq had me convinced that, by the time I was ready to deploy, there would be no fighting left. Little did I know that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with their expansions across the Middle East and Africa, would end up consuming a large majority of my twenty years of service, take the lives of many of my special operations teammates, and impact the health and well-being of a generation of US service members and their families.

It’s impossible to know how the war in Iraq shaped other US endeavors in the region. Did it take our focus from Afghanistan and put us on a path of increased escalation and investment there? Did it set conditions for the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham to take root many years later, setting off another expansive counterterrorism campaign?

More broadly, did it allow adversaries the time and space to study US capabilities and ultimately inform their strategies for malign influence? I often think of this today when I’m asked about what’s going to happen with the Russian war in Ukraine, or how prepared the United States is to defend Taiwan.

The United States needs the confidence to confront global challenges to peace and prosperity, but also the humility to know we get things wrong, and mistakes involving direct military intervention can be catastrophic. Given the escalatory risks associated with the security challenges in the world today, our pursuit of a balance of confidence and humility has never been more important.

—Lt. Col. Justin M. Conelli is the 2022-23 Senior US Air Force fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

William F. Wechsler on the current political discourse around Iraq

Recognize the successes as well as the failures

“Was the invasion of Iraq worth it?”

I’ve spent a great deal of my military and postmilitary career answering questions about Iraq, but this one—from a brigadier general in the audience—caught me off guard. It was 2018, seven years after the formal withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, and I found myself in front of a roomful of Army officers giving a talk on the future of US-Iraq security cooperation. By that time, such talks had become a little frustrating. The fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (aka the Islamic State group) demonstrated that Iraqi forces could rise to the immediate challenge; however, the conditions that led to their unceremonious collapse in 2014 had not much changed. As a result, there remained many questions about the best way to continue the security partnership to prevent future catastrophe.

The question I got that day, however, had little to do with how to partner with Iraqi forces. A co-presenter from Kurdistan jumped in immediately to answer the brigadier general’s question: the US invasion had removed Iraqi Kurdistan’s most significant threat—Saddam Hussein—and had provided opportunities for economic and political development it would not have had otherwise. Sensing a trap, I nonetheless walked right into it. While Iraqi Kurdistan was certainly in a better position, I pointed out that was not consistently so for the rest of Iraq. The US invasion had unleashed a sectarian free-for-all that allowed Sunni extremists, Shia militias, and their Iranian sponsors to fill the vacuum of oppression Saddam’s departure had left. Moreover, this vacuum had empowered Iran to challenge the United States and its partners regionally. So my answer was no, toppling Saddam likely did not outweigh the costs.

In previous years, the questions had been more policy-focused. For example, when I arrived at the Pentagon’s Iraq Intelligence Working Group in August 2002, the first question asked was how Iraq’s diverse ethnic and confessional demographics would affect military operations and enable—or impede—victory. By early 2003, the questions were about the larger effort to construct a new political order. Before long, we were asking how the confluence of Islamist terrorism, sectarian rivalries, and external intervention drove resistance to efforts to reconstruct Iraq.

In 2012, I became the US defense attaché in Baghdad, just after the last US service members withdrew. At first, the question I heard in this capacity was how to continue the reconstruction project with a limited military and civilian presence whose movement was often severely restricted in a sovereign, sometimes uncooperative, Iraq with frequent interference from Iran. Before I left, al-Qaeda had metastasized into the Islamic State group and the question became how to cooperate to prevent the group’s further expansion and liberate the territory it had seized. Meanwhile, Iran’s influence with the Iraqi government continued to grow.

In retrospect, the conditions I described in 2018 were accurate (and still largely hold today), but I wish I had given a more considered response. What I wish I had said was that a better question than “was it worth it” is: what have we learned about past failures to assess future opportunities? A prosperous Iraq that contributes to regional stability was not possible under Saddam. Now Iraq is an effective partner against Islamist extremists, and the Iraqi people, if not always their government, are in a position to push back on Iran in their own way, exposing Tehran for the despotic government it is. Moreover, Iraq’s hosting of discussions between Saudi Arabia and Iran was a catalyst to their recent normalization of relations.

The point is not to rationalize failure. Rather, the question now is: what have we learned from those failures to effectively capitalize on the success we have had, and how can we take advantage of the opportunities the current situation presents?

—C. Anthony Pfaff, PhD, is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative and a research professor for strategy, the military profession, and ethic at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Tony Pfaff on the future of US-Iraq relations

Remember the price of hubris

For me, the memories of those first days and weeks in Iraq remain quite clear. I remember calling my family from a satellite phone on the tarmac of Baghdad International Airport to let them know I was alive, late night meetings with Iraqi agents in safe houses, wrapping up Iraqi high-value targets, the fear amid firefights and the carnage on streets strewn with dead and mutilated bodies, and a confused Iraqi population that at the time did not know what to make of US forces who claimed to be liberating them from the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Upon arrival in Baghdad in early April, there were few signs of the resistance that would haunt the United States for decades to come. Yes, there were still combat operations underway, but that was against Iraqi military and paramilitary units. So, as we tracked down Iraqi regime targets one by one—members of the famed “deck of fifty-five cards” that US Central Command had dreamed up and distributed like we were trading baseball cards—we saw this as part of a new beginning.

Yet soon after, the wheels began to fall off. Orders came from Washington policy officials with absolutely zero substantive Middle East experience both to disband the Iraqi military and purge the future government of Baath party officials, which immediately put tens of thousands of hardened military officers, conscripts, and officials out of work and on the street. The CIA presence on the ground protested, but to no avail. I had never seen Charlie, my station chief, so angry, including face-to-face confrontations with senior figures in the Coalition Provisional Authority. Charlie—the most accomplished Arabist in the CIA’s history—sadly predicted the insurgency that was about to come. If only Washington had listened.

I rarely think of Iraq in terms of big-picture strategy. As a CIA operations officer, I was a surgical instrument of the US government, and I gladly answered the bell when called upon to do so. I am proud to have served with other CIA officers and special operations personnel who performed valiantly. I suppose I can defend the invasion on human rights grounds. It seems we forget that Saddam was one of the great war criminals in history, and Iraq has been freed from his depravity. Yet two numbers are haunting: 4,431, and 31,994. Those are the number of Americans killed and wounded in action, per official Department of Defense statistics.

War is a nasty business, and many times a terrible price is paid for hubris. The casualty figures noted above paint a stark picture of the historic intelligence failure that the analytic assessment that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was. The CIA in particular suffered a credibility hit that has taken decades to recover from.

—Marc Polymeropoulos, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, served for twenty-six years at the CIA before retiring in 2019.

Thomas S. Warrick on the lessons to learn from the Iraq War

The post How the war in Iraq changed the world—and what change could come next appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Calls mount for Russia to face tribunal for aggression against Ukraine

Irina Paliashvili — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 22:02:47 +0000

The idea of a special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine was first proposed by Professor Philippe Sands immediately following the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in early 2022. As the war now enters its second year, this initiative continues to gain momentum.

Since the invasion began, the concept of a special tribunal has been developed by various groups of international and Ukrainian legal experts. There have been several significant breakthrough developments in the past few months that have elevated this proposal from an academic proposition to the decision-making level and placed it firmly on the international agenda.

The crime of aggression is the underlying crime that triggers all other crimes. It is a leadership crime, for which those perpetrators who organized, decided on, and ordered aggression are tried. If plans for a special tribunal proceed, the crime of Russian aggression against Ukraine would be tried for the first time since the Nazi leadership was tried and convicted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg following World War II.

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It has already been established that the International Criminal Court (ICC) at present and for the foreseeable future does not have jurisdiction over Russia’s use of aggression against Ukraine, so a special tribunal is needed. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan appears to be an isolated voice disputing this consensus. He argues for reforms to address the gap at the ICC, but has not been able to advance any practical and timely solution, keeping in mind the principle that justice delayed is justice denied.

So far, three options for a special tribunal have crystallized. The first is the institution-based option, which envisages a tribunal established on the basis of a treaty between Ukraine and the UN, following the adoption of the relevant UN General Assembly resolution. If this scenario does not work out, a tribunal could be set up on the basis of another international organization such as the Council of Europe, EU, or G7, preferably still with the backing of the UN General Assembly.

Another option is the treaty-based approach. This would involve setting up a tribunal on the basis of a multilateral international treaty, which would potentially be open to any state. There is also a hybrid option, which could see a specialized court based on Ukrainian law and jurisdiction, with some type of international element. At this stage, the institution-based option involving the UN is widely seen as optimal.

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When the idea of a tribunal was first introduced, it was supported by international law experts, civil society, and opinion leaders, but not by individual governments. This began to change after the Ukrainian government elaborated on its initial concept and started working with expert groups to develop the possible format of a future tribunal. Towards the end of 2022 and during the first months of 2023, the debate advanced to the inter-governmental level.

The first breakthrough came in November 2022, when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared that the EU was proposing “to set up a specialized court, backed by the United Nations, to investigate and prosecute Russia’s crime of aggression.” At the same time, the French Foreign Ministry announced that it had started “working with our European and Ukrainian partners on the proposal to establish a special tribunal on Russia’s crime of aggression against Ukraine.” Dutch officials also confirmed that the Netherlands would be willing to house a new UN-backed tribunal to try Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In the first weeks of 2023, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock noted the “disastrous” limitations on the ICC’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression and called for a “special solution” to address what she termed as a gap in international law. Minister Baerbock also backed the immediate establishment of an investigating authority in The Hague to address Russian aggression.

Speaking in January, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he could not accept that the international community would let the Russian invasion of Ukraine go unpunished, and confirmed Dutch officials are working with their Ukrainian colleagues and others to set up an aggression tribunal, preferably in The Hague. Meanwhile, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani stated, “if a special tribunal is created, we are not against it.”

The European Parliament adopted a resolution in January 2023 backing the establishment of a special tribunal. Also in January, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) voted for a resolution which confirmed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meets the definition of international aggression and reiterated its call “to set up a special international criminal tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, which should be endorsed and supported by as many states and international organizations as possible, and in particular by the United Nations General Assembly.”

Recent months have witnessed further practical steps toward the establishment of a special tribunal. In early 2023, a core group of more than 20 countries was created to develop plans for a tribunal, with the first in-person meeting taking place on January 26 in Prague. On February 2, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that an international center for the prosecution of the crime of aggression in Ukraine would be set up in The Hague.

It is evident from recent developments that initial calls for a special tribunal are now evolving toward practical implementation, with the various legal options taking more concrete form and being evaluated in terms of preference. This process will continue in the coming months as inter-governmental engagement on the issue deepens.

Dr. Irina Paliashvili is Chair of the Legal Committee at the US-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC) and International Rule of Law Officer at the IBA Rule of Law Forum.

Many analysts see Russia’s failure to topple Kyiv as a sign of Russian weakness. They argue that Washington and Brussels need not worry about Russia’s threat to NATO because Russia’s military is weaker than we thought. These data tell a different story: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows that Moscow—which controls roughly 108,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian land, according to Institute for the Study of War data analyzed by the New York Times—is capable of seizing and occupying territory on its border the size of two Baltic states. Estonia’s total territory is about 45,000 square kilometers, while Latvia checks in at 64,000 and Lithuania at 65,000. The Russian military is potentially strong enough to cause World War III and break NATO. These are the data that keeps US European Command planners and vulnerable Eastern flank NATO allies up at night.

—Matthew Kroenig is the senior director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

8 million+

Refugees from Ukraine recorded in Europe since the start of the war

Russian atrocities in Ukraine over the past year have caused untold disaster and spurred the largest humanitarian crisis in Europe in nearly eighty years. The Kremlin has launched unrelenting assaults on civilian infrastructure, culminating in the deaths of civilians and permanently damaging energy facilities. Meanwhile, over fifty thousand allegations of war crimes have emerged from recently liberated Ukrainian cities, including harrowing reports of mass graves, torture in detainment camps, and the utilization of sexual assault as a weapon of war.

As a result, Europe has opened its doors to more than eight million refugees fleeing from Ukraine for their safety. While the prevailing belief is that large, Western European countries have led Europe’s efforts to counter Russia’s aggression, Central and Eastern European countries bear the brunt of refugee waves coming from Ukraine—due to both their proximity and already established Ukrainian diaspora communities. Nearly one-third, or 2.5 million, of total refugees from Ukraine in Europe have settled in countries included in the United Nations’ Refugee Response Plan (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Moldova, Romania, and Slovakia), while Poland has settled the greatest number of refugees at over 1.5 million and has seen over eight million refugees cross its border seeking safety since the start of the war (though six million have also returned to Ukraine).

Looking at the refugees taken in as a proportion of national population, Estonia, Montenegro, and the Czech Republic top the list, while some larger countries such as France and the United Kingdom fall toward the bottom. As Ukraine’s closest neighbors, Central and Eastern European countries have served on the front line of Europe’s greatest refugee crisis in generations and are likely to continue doing so as the war enters its second year.

—Kristen Taylor was a Young Global Professional at the Europe Center in the fall of 2022 and is a master’s student at American University. Akshat Dhankher and Emma Nix are program assistants at the Europe Center and lead the Ukraine Aid Tracker project.

Nearly 90%

Reduction in Russia’s piped natural gas export volumes

Russia’s piped natural gas export volumes have shrunk from four hundred to five hundred million cubic meters (mcm) per day to around sixty mcm per day, one year after Putin unleashed his bloody war of choice on Ukraine and an energy assault on Europe, Moscow’s biggest energy consumer at the time. Neither is going as planned.

While oil and gas are vital for Russia’s state budget, Moscow leans heavier on oil exports for revenue and gas exports for geopolitical leverage, which Putin unleashed by abruptly stopping supplies to multiple nations in Europe in order to discourage support for Ukraine. But by cutting supplies, Moscow also cut itself out of the European market as nations adjusted to the massive curtailment—albeit at a hefty price. Much of the market share will be challenging or impossible to recover, regardless of the war’s outcome, as European buyers commit to long-term contracts with alternative suppliers and invest in new liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure to bring gas to areas previously monopolized by Russian exports.

However, a full decoupling from reliance on Russian gas is far from complete. New projects must come online to fill the supply gap in the long term, and the allure of discounted Russian exports could tempt some regions in Europe to take in gas from the Kremlin after the war. Additionally, Russian LNG exports to Europe increased in 2022—an important trend for European nations to observe as they work to unburden themselves from dependance on an unreliable producer.

Nevertheless, Putin accelerated Europe’s preexisting diversification efforts with his energy blackmail and, ironically, without Western sanctions on Russian methane. Moscow will never again supply 40 percent of Europe’s natural gas.

—Olga Khakova is the deputy director for European energy security at the Global Energy Center.

60.2%

Amount of Russia’s forecasted 2023 budget deficit reached by January

Moscow’s budget deficit in the month of January alone is more than half of its planned deficit for the entirety of 2023. Looking at the below graph, you’ll see a clear surge in Russia’s budget deficit in December. While December spending in Russia is usually high, January remained far into negative territory at a loss of 1.8 trillion rubles. Why the mismatch with Moscow’s predictions?

It’s because the 2023 budget is calculated based on oil revenues coming in at sixty dollars per barrel—the same value that the Group of Seven (G7) nations set as its price cap on December 5—but prices have since dropped well below that mark. With income shrinking, and heavy costs of the war to bear, Russia’s budget deficit is likely to widen past its own 2023 estimate of 2.9 trillion rubles.

—Sophia Busch is a program assistant at the GeoEconomics Center.

52.5%

Proportion of Russia’s tank arsenal destroyed

Prior to last February’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia was estimated to possess around 3,330 operational tanks. After one year of fighting, open-source intelligence has visually confirmed that Russia has lost over 1,700 tanks, or just over 50 percent of its pre-war total operational stocks. One estimate suggests that the total lost could be over 70 percent, given that not all losses are accessible to open-source intelligence. Russia is estimated to have around 17,000 additional tanks in storage, ranging from early Cold War-era T-55s, T-62s, and T-64s to more recent T-72s, T-80s, and T-90s, however the condition of these stored tanks is unclear.

—Jeffrey Cimmino is an associate director in the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Countries with domestic accountability responses to Russia’s invasion

The response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—and the 68,321 crimes of aggression and war crimes registered by Ukraine—has included rapid international action to ensure accountability. Ukraine tops the list with domestic investigations and trials, advocacy to establish a Special Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression, and work to establish a claims commission. However, other countries have followed suit with domestic processes including criminal investigations, targeted sanctions designations, and asset seizures, as well as coordinated efforts through a joint investigative team and the Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs Task Force.

This is an atypical amount of legal action. This is partly due to practical reasons: Ukraine has an incentive to cooperate with other jurisdictions, and countries close to Ukraine are likely to have refugees who can provide evidence and perpetrators arriving on their territory. However, there are also known double standards in global access to justice—there is less clamor for international action when the perpetrators are from politically well-connected Western countries or part of intractable conflicts—which are considered likely to be a contributing factor to a reported lack of support for certain measures from the Global South. These accountability efforts will shape international legal precedent as they progress, but authorities should also ensure that they become the norm and serve to expand the options available to all atrocity victims.

—Celeste Kmiotek is a staff lawyer for the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project.

Number of countries in a new nonaligned movement

On March 2, 2022, in an emergency special session following Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations General Assembly advanced resolution ES-11/1 demanding full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. A total of 141 countries voted in favor of the resolution, including many of the world’s democracies. Thirty-five countries, from China and India to Iran and South Africa, abstained. Five countries— Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, Russia, and Syria—voted against it.

Seven months later, the General Assembly voted again to condemn Russia’s invasion and not recognize Russia’s claims to Ukrainian territory. The votes remained largely unchanged, with only two additional countries voting in favor (a total of 143) of a weakened resolution, thirty-five abstentions, and the same five no’s. (Several countries missed the vote in both cases.)

Both votes show that the international community overwhelmingly stands together to rebuke Russia’s invasion. But such little movement in vote numbers and member groupings—after nearly a year of an increasingly brutal and illegal war, human-rights abuses and apparent war crimes, and massive disruptions to the global economy—suggests that the world is roughly divided into three blocs. The first is a collection of countries, encompassing many members of the free world, that stand together to defend international law and order when it is most under threat. The second is a new nonaligned movement of countries that, for varied political or strategic reasons, choose to hedge or stay out of the fray completely. The third is an “axis of autocracies” that act to disrupt or displace the rules-based order.

These groups are of course not exact or exhaustive. Many states who voted in favor of both resolutions are not free or democratic or may not be supportive of more punitive steps to punish Russia, such as sanctions. Still, how countries have voted on these resolutions displays a real fact of today’s global order: Countries are increasingly coalescing into democratic and autocratic blocs when responding to international issues, with some remaining non-aligned.

—Danielle Miller and Imran Bayoumi are assistant directors with the Scowcroft Strategy Initiative.

50 billion euros

Monetary value of assistance sent to Ukraine by the EU and its member states since the start of the war

Despite the Kremlin’s bet that its war of aggression would isolate Ukraine from Europe, the European Union (EU) and its member states have responded with unity of purpose by sending immediate and continued aid to Ukraine.

An estimated 12 billion euros of this assistance was dispatched in the form of military aid, which accounts for both the 3.6 billion euros the EU has contributed via the European Peace Facility and bilateral donations from twenty-four EU member states. European partners not only sent a major wave of this military assistance immediately after Russia’s initial incursion but have also sustained donations throughout the year since—progressively sending heavier and longer-range weaponry—suggesting growing trust in Ukraine’s defensive capabilities and an increasing realization that Ukraine is the front line for the defense of Europe overall.

Meanwhile, an estimated 1.7 billion euros has taken the form of humanitarian aid, which has provided food, clothing, shelter, health care, and other basic needs to nearly fourteen million people in Ukraine. The European Commission has coordinated this unprecedented operation under the auspices of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism, standing up logistical hubs in Poland, Romania, and Slovakia to direct aid into the country. Lastly, as the challenge of Ukraine’s physical and institutional reconstruction looms ahead, the EU has provided 7.2 billion euros in macro-financial assistance—with an additional 18 billion euros of loans approved by the European Council in December 2022—and is sending other financial support through the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

—Akshat Dhankher and Emma Nix are program assistants at the Europe Center and lead the Ukraine Aid Tracker project.

The post One year, eight world-changing numbers. Quantifying Russia’s war in Ukraine. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Vladimir Putin must not be allowed to bankrupt the Ukrainian breadbasket

Andriy Vadaturskyy — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 20:34:20 +0000

While Western countries are providing desperately needed military and economic support to the Ukrainian government, private businesses in Ukraine are struggling largely on their own to survive the devastation caused by the ongoing Russian invasion of their country. This situation is simply not sustainable.

My company, Nibulon, is one of Ukraine’s largest grain producers and exporters. We were enjoying some of the best years in our 30-year history before the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. In a matter of weeks, we went from being a healthy business with a bright future to one battling for survival.

Around 20% of Nibulon’s assets are currently inaccessible in temporarily occupied regions of Ukraine. Other assets including grain elevators, barges, silos, and terminals have been destroyed. In 2022, our exports collapsed because we could no longer access our main export route through the port of Mykolaiv. Thousands of other Ukrainian companies have had similarly grim wartime experiences.

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The liberation of Kherson and the surrounding region in late 2022 revealed the scale of the effort that will be necessary to restore agricultural production in regions of Ukraine subjected to Russian occupation. These regions are now believed to be among the most heavily mined areas in the world. De-mining will add significant costs and delays before farming activities can resume. Experts say that one day of war means one month of de-mining. We are already investing in de-mining equipment and personnel. At present, we calculate that with 20-25 people working ten hours a day, it will take three years to clear our fields in the worst affected areas.

To a greater or lesser degree, these problems are affecting the entire agricultural industry in Ukraine. The UN estimates that this strategically crucial sector of the Ukrainian economy has already suffered damages and losses of over $30 billion. Prior to the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022, Ukraine had been steadily expanding its global reach as a food exporter and was widely seen as an emerging agricultural superpower. There is now a very real danger that Putin will succeed in bankrupting the Ukrainian breadbasket.

Like so many other Ukrainian companies, we have been adapting our business model to wartime conditions. We have successfully re-routed exports via land and rail and have built a new grain terminal on the Danube close to the Romanian border. However, we need to invest more in order to increase our exports and reduce the much higher transportation costs that farmers are now having to pay.

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One of the key problems facing the entire private sector in wartime Ukraine is the lack of access to financing because of prohibitively high borrowing rates domestically and internationally. Not surprisingly, war creates a significant risk premium. As a result, international capital markets are effectively closed for Ukrainian companies. Alternative forms of financing are urgently needed.

The United Nations and Turkey have succeeded in establishing a grain corridor to allow limited exports of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea. Now is the time to establish a “financing corridor.” Just as the grain corridor has been a lifeline for Ukraine’s agricultural sector, the Ukrainian economy needs a mechanism to help private businesses secure immediate survival and safeguard their futures by investing to become more resilient and competitive.

A financing corridor would help ensure private businesses are not forced to close and can instead go on to underpin Ukraine’s reconstruction and recovery. The requirements are simple. First, lenders should offer Ukrainian businesses a standstill on their existing liabilities. A standstill will provide much-needed flexibility to address some of the immediate challenges to their operations. Second, international institutions should provide fresh financing for urgent working capital needs or strategic investments. Third, G7 countries and international financial institutions should offer partial guarantees to enable Ukraine’s major exporters to issue new debt at acceptable cost levels.

In the agricultural sector, enhanced financial support is essential as businesses look to repair or replace damaged equipment and facilities. The World Bank estimates the sector will require $18.7 billion in new investment over the coming decade. The next agricultural planting season is just around the corner. Without increased access to capital, farmers will not be able to obtain the equipment and fertiliser they need to sow their crops as planned.

If this happens, the consequences will be felt not only in Ukraine but far beyond the country’s borders as well. Reduced yields in Ukraine will impact global food security. The UN World Food Program estimates that the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine could increase the number of people at risk of acute hunger by 47 million, with the greatest impact on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Agriculture is a slow-motion business. If producers cannot invest today, the negative effects will be felt for years to come. The survival of the country’s major agricultural exporters is essential for Ukraine’s long-term economic reconstruction and recovery. It is also important for global stability. Good business strategy requires looking to the risks and opportunities that lie ahead. Western governments need to think beyond the immediate challenges of the war today and also consider what will be needed to secure Ukraine’s future.

Andriy Vadaturskyy is the owner and CEO of Ukrainian agribusiness Nibulon.

To kick off 2023, the oil and gas and climate communities gathered this weekend for the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum, launching the annual Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. After decades of mutual mistrust, there is a growing recognition that they can’t live without each other.

Thank Russian President Vladimir Putin’s criminal war in Ukraine, and his ongoing weaponization of energy, for injecting a new dose of hard-headed reality into climate conversations. It’s seldom been so clear that energy security and cleaner energy are indivisible. The guiding principle is “the energy sustainability trilemma,” defined as the need to balance energy reliability, affordability, and sustainability.

What’s contributing to this new pragmatism is a recognition by much of the climate community that the energy transition to renewables can’t be achieved without fossil fuels, so they must be made cleaner. They have come to accept that natural gas, in particular liquified natural gas (LNG), with half the emissions footprint of coal, provides a powerful bridging fuel.

Once derided by green activists, nuclear power is also winning over new fans—particularly when it comes to the small, modular plants where there are fewer concerns over safety and weapons proliferation.

For their part, almost all major oil and gas producers, who once viewed climate activists with disdain, now embrace the reality of climate science and are investing billions of dollars in renewables and efforts to make their fossil fuels cleaner.

“Every serious hydrocarbon producer knows the future, in a world of declining use of fossil fuels, is to be low cost, low risk, and low carbon,” said David Goldwyn, the former State Department special envoy for energy. “The only way to ensure we do this is to have industry at the table.”

Nowhere is this shift among climate activists more evident than in Germany, where Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, the Green Party leader, is serving as the pragmatist-in-chief.

Habeck, who serves as federal minister for economic affairs and climate action, has been the driving force behind extending the life of the country’s three nuclear plants through April and in launching Germany’s first LNG import terminal in December, with as many as five more to follow.

“I am ultimately responsible for the security of the German energy system,” Habeck told Financial Times reporter Guy Chazan in a sweeping profile of the German politician. “So, the buck stops with me. … I became minister to make tough decisions, not to be Germany’s most popular politician.”

Some climate activists were aghast this Thursday when the UAE named Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), as president of this year’s COP28.

“This appointment goes beyond putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” said Teresa Anderson of ActionAid, a development charity. “Like last year’s summit, we’re increasingly seeing fossil fuel interests taking control of the process and shaping it to meet their own needs.”

What that overlooks is that Al Jaber’s rich background in both renewables and fossil fuels makes him an ideal choice at a time when efforts to address climate change have been far too slow, lacking the inclusivity to produce more transformative results.

Full disclosure: Al Jaber’s companies ADNOC and the clean-energy innovator Masdar (where he was founding CEO in 2005 and is now chairman) are sponsors of the annual Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi, a fact that has given me a close-up look at his years-long commitment to reducing emissions and promoting renewables.

Al Jaber also represents a country that despite its resource riches has become a major nuclear power producer, was the first Middle East country to join the Paris Climate Agreement, and was the first Middle East country to set out a roadmap to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Over the past fifteen years, the UAE has invested forty billion dollars in renewable energy and clean tech globally. In November it signed a partnership with the United States to invest an additional one hundred billion dollars in clean energy. Some 70 percent of the UAE economy is generated outside the oil and gas sector, making it an exception among major producing countries in its diversification.

Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, has explained his country’s approach this way: “There will be a time, fifty years from now, when we load the last barrel of oil aboard the ship. The question is… are we going to feel sad? If our investment today is right, I think—dear brothers and sisters—we will celebrate that moment.”

Al Jaber, speaking to the Global Energy Forum, captured his ambition to drive faster and more transformative results at COP28.

“We are way off track,” said Al Jaber.

“The world is playing catch-up when it comes to the key Paris goal of holding global temperatures down to 1.5 degrees,” he said. “And the hard reality is that in order to achieve this goal, global emissions must fall 43 percent by 2030. To add to that challenge, we must decrease emissions at a time of continued economic uncertainty, heightened geopolitical tensions, and increasing pressure on energy.”

He called for “transformational progress… through game-changing partnerships, solutions, and outcomes.” He said the world must triple renewable energy generation from eight terawatt hours to twenty-three and more than double low-carbon hydrogen production to 180 million tons for industrial sectors, which have the hardest carbon footprint to abate.

“We will work with the energy industry on accelerating the decarbonization, reducing methane, and expanding hydrogen,” said Al Jaber. “Let’s keep our focus on holding back emissions, not progress.”

If that sounds utopian, let’s have more of it.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 A new world energy order is taking shape
Rana Foroohar | FINANCIAL TIMES

In this smart piece, the FT’s Rana Foroohar warns of a China-led energy order and how that could shift the global balance of power.

“What does that mean in practice?” Foroohar asks. “For starters, a lot more oil trade will be done in renminbi. [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] announced that, over the next three to five years, China would not only dramatically increase imports from [Gulf] countries, but work towards all-dimensional energy co-operation.”

“This could potentially involve joint exploration and production in places such as the South China Sea, as well as investments in refineries, chemicals, and plastics. Beijing’s hope is that all of it will be paid for in renminbi, on the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange, as early as 2025.”

This is something any serious thinker on energy should bear in mind. Read more →

#2 Ships going dark: Russia’s grain smuggling in the Black Sea
ECONOMIST

In this thought-provoking narrative, the Economist highlights the growing economic potential of the North Sea, particularly as a producer of wind power.

While the Economist acknowledges significant hurdles, from the vagaries of weather to the threat of cheaper competition in Southern Europe, it also writes that if “these problems can be overcome, the new North Sea economy’s impact on the continent will be momentous.

“As Europe’s economic epicentre moves north, so will its political one, predicts Frank Peter of Agora Energiewende, a German think-tank. Coastal Bremen, one of Germany’s poorest states, could gain clout at the expense of rich but landlocked Bavaria. At the European level, France and Germany, whose industrial might underpinned the European Coal and Steel Community, the EU’s forebear, may lose some influence to a new bloc led by Denmark, the Netherlands and, outside the EU, Britain and Norway.” Read more →

#3 Time is not on Ukraine’s side
Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates | WASHINGTON POST

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, two of the most perceptive international strategists out there, deliver a compelling argument for how President Joe Biden’s administration should do more for Ukraine now.

The only way to avoid Russian domination of Ukraine, they write, “is for the United States and its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability — sufficient to deter a renewed Russian offensive and to enable Ukraine to push back Russian forces in the east and south. Congress has provided enough money to pay for such reinforcement; what is needed now are decisions by the United States and its allies to provide the Ukrainians the additional military equipment they need — above all, mobile armor.”

“Because there are serious logistical challenges associated with sending American Abrams heavy tanks, Germany and other allies should fill this need,” they write. “NATO members also should provide the Ukrainians with longer-range missiles, advanced drones, significant ammunition stocks (including artillery shells), more reconnaissance and surveillance capability, and other equipment. These capabilities are needed in weeks, not months.”

One hopes Biden is reading. Read more →

#4 Robert Habeck was Germany’s most popular politician. Then he took office
Guy Chazan | FINANCIAL TIMEs

Don’t miss Guy Chazan’s brilliant, sweeping profile of German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who oversees his country’s energy and economic policies, and his struggle as a Green politician to diversify resources away from Russia.

“As the energy crisis continued, traits that distinguished Habeck from other politicians came to the fore,” Chazan writes, reporting on Habeck’s willingness to make tough decisions. “On the day of the invasion last February, amid rounds of emergency meetings, he found time to visit Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin. ‘That was the most important meeting I had since the war began,’ Melnyk told Der Spiegel, ‘because he offered real human sympathy.’ Habeck also spoke openly about the uncertainties the government faced.”

Read this for a profile of the type of leader who, understanding the importance of compromise and pragmatism, will be vital in making the energy transition a success. Read more →

#5 American Democracy is Still In Danger
Erin Baggot Carter, Brett L. Carter, and Larry Diamond | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

This week’s must-read is a clarion call on the importance of US democracy and the dangers it faces, from Erin Baggot Carter, Brett L. Carter, and Larry Diamond.

“The health of American democracy,” they write, “is both a domestic and a national security concern. China and Russia—the United States’ principal authoritarian adversaries—have been using (and exacerbating) America’s democratic divisions and travails to gain advantage in the competition for global leadership. To regain the advantage, the United States must both repair its own democracy and reinvigorate its voice for democracy in the global arena. Democracy must go on the offensive.”

To do this, they argue, “Washington must rejoin the battle for global soft power, in a manner that reflects American values. It must transmit the truth, and in ways that engage and persuade global audiences. The goal must be not only to counter disinformation persuasively with the truth but to promote democratic values, ideas, and movements. In order to counter disinformation and report the truth that autocracies suppress, multiple credible streams of information are needed. Furthermore, they must be independent; while the US government may provide material support, these outlets must operate free of editorial control. That way, they will be seen to be independent because they are.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

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COP28 president-designate: With the world ‘way off track’ on Paris goals, ‘transformational progress’ is needed

By Daniel Malloy

In his first remarks since being named the incoming president of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber spoke on Saturday morning at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Fast Thinking Jan 9, 2023

How Brazil can respond to its democracy stress test

By Atlantic Council

Now that authorities have cleared the protests and launched an investigation into security failures, our experts break down what’s to come.

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Russian War Report: Russian hacker wanted by the FBI reportedly wins Wagner hackathon prize

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In December 2022, Wagner Group organized a hackathon that was won by a man wanted by the FBI for his connection to computer malware.

Conflict Cybersecurity

The post Dispatch from Abu Dhabi: How to reduce carbon emissions without blocking progress appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Individual Russians must be held accountable for war crimes in Ukraine

Stanislav Aseyev — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 19:45:15 +0000

The broken windows theory of criminal justice holds that if comparatively minor instances of social disorder such as broken windows are not addressed, they will pave the way for more serious crimes. The same principle can also be applied to international relations and geopolitics.

In 2014, Russia began “breaking windows” in Crimea. When the world failed respond adequately, Russian aggression expanded into eastern Ukraine and escalated into armed hostilities that left more than 14,000 dead while forcing millions to flee their homes. Again, the international community did not react with sufficient decisiveness. This led directly to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine which began in February 2022.

For the past eight-and-a-half years, Russia has been permitted to slowly but steadily challenge and undermine the global security order established in the decades following World War II. For many in the West, this process has been unspectacular and has involved minor inconveniences such as rising food prices and mounting energy bills. Some even complain of “Ukraine fatigue,” seemingly oblivious to the fact that atrocities are being committed in Europe on a scale not seen since the days of Stalin and Hitler.

This leads us back to the broken window theory. In order to arrest this slide toward a dark future of international lawlessness, it is vital to hold Russians accountable for the crimes they are committing in Ukraine. And yet at present, the issue of war crimes is being addressed in vague terms without any real mechanisms in place to bring specific defendants to court.

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While there is general recognition within the international community that Russia is guilty of grave war crimes in Ukraine, we currently lack the tools to prosecute thousands of potential suspects. This could create a dangerous precedent for future conflicts and must change.

I have first-hand experience of Russian crimes in Ukraine. I previously spent two-and-a-half years as a prisoner in the notorious Izolyatsia prison in Russian-occupied Donetsk. I was subjected to torture during my incarceration and was eventually freed in a prisoner exchange. Following my release, I helped locate the commandant of the prison and contributed to his arrest.

I was able to do this thanks to the Justice Initiative Fund (JIF), an initiative I founded that seeks to identify and track down Russian war criminals. The JIF lists those who are officially suspected of war crimes and offers a reward for anyone who can provide information that will lead to their arrest.

This task is just beginning. Huge obstacles must yet be overcome before justice can be served. Today’s Russian war criminals are not like the Nazis after World War II, who were scattered around the world. On the contrary, they overwhelmingly live in Russia itself, and have no intention of leaving. Most are part of a vast Russian underclass with low incomes and even lower expectations that Putin has been careful to cultivate during his two decades in power.

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The first step toward justice is to identify war criminals. There is currently no single international organization that is willing or able to identify and search for large numbers of war crimes suspects around the world. The JIF seeks to expand its scope internationally in order to help meet this challenge. There is a logic to these ambitions. Many of the war crimes suspects in locations such as Africa and Syria are also sought in relation to atrocities committed in Ukraine.

The war crimes committed by the Russian military wherever it is deployed can be traced to the sense of impunity felt by the perpetrators. In order to bring this impunity to an end, it is vital to identify individual war criminals. This will require the combined efforts of the international community. Ukraine should be at the heart of such efforts.

Along with identification, the other key goal is bringing war crimes suspects to trial. The experience of recent decades indicates that only a handful of suspects ever actually make it to the courtroom, while thousands of actual perpetrators never face justice. I have personally participated in three war crimes trials relating to atrocities committed at the Izolyatsia prison, and only one of the three featured an actual defendant.

I would like to see the democratic world take the lead in developing new legal procedures for the transfer of war crimes suspects to the jurisdiction of the relevant international and national courts. Everyone is well aware that Russia will never hand over war crimes suspects within the framework of existing extradiction procedures. New mechanisms are required that will place war criminals on an equal footing with terrorism suspects, with all the legal consequences of this status.

Without these initiatives, there is a risk that all the current work being done to collect evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine will be futile. Unless we have the resources to identify the perpetrators and the tools to bring them to justice, exposing the atrocities committed in Ukraine will fail to prevent these crimes from being repeated.

Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian author, journalist, and founder of the Justice initiative fund.

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Zelenskyy’s initiative appears to be gaining international momentum. In recent days, France became the first major Western nation to publicly back the creation of a special tribunal. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also stated on November 30 that the European Union will try to set up a specialized court, backed by the United Nations, to “investigate and prosecute Russia’s crime of aggression” in Ukraine.

While the US has yet to adopt an official position on the issue, individual US politicians and commentators have spoken in favor of establishing a special tribunal. Speaking at this week’s Washington DC event, Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova noted growing support for the idea of a special tribunal both in the US and in Europe. The Ukrainian diplomat underlined the importance of the initiative for the future of international security. “We need this tribunal for Ukraine, but we also need it for the entire world,” commented Markarova. “If we can hold Putin accountable, we can prevent more wars.”

Fellow panelist Andriy Smyrnov, who serves as Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Office of the President, highlighted the legal barriers that currently prevent the International Criminal Court (ICC) from prosecuting Russia for crimes of aggression. At present, the ICC is only able to address the crime of aggression via referral from the UN Security Council, where Russia has a veto, or if both the aggressor and victim states have ratified the Kampala Amendments to the Rome Statute, which neither Russia nor Ukraine has done. “We have come to the conclusion that the only effective mechanism for holding the Russian Federation accountable for the crime of aggression is the creation of a special international tribunal,” Smyrnov commented.

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The exact structure of a possible future special tribunal has yet to be determined. However, most observers agree that in order to gain the confidence of the international community, it would need to involve the United Nations. Former US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues David Scheffer told fellow panelists this week that a UN role was “entirely feasible.” Scheffer has a wealth of personal experience to draw on, having participated in the creation of international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. He also headed the United States negotiating team during talks on the creation of the International Criminal Court.

Scheffer noted that a framework agreement to establish a special tribunal could be reached relatively quickly once the necessary support had been secured from the United Nations General Assembly. “You have to have political will at the UN, and right now you do have that political will,” he commented, pointing to the numerous UN General Assembly votes since the invasion began in February that have overwhelmingly condemned Russian aggression against Ukraine.

The creation of a UN-backed special tribunal may well be technically feasible, but many skeptics continue to argue that Russia’s status as a major world power makes it practically impossible to put senior Russian officials on trial. Ambassador John Herbst, who serves as Director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, acknowledged that most previous international war crimes trials have targeted comparatively smaller nations. He also noted that the only trials involving major powers took place following the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan at the end of World War II. While nobody envisages similar circumstances in relation to Putin’s Russia, Herbst said there were a number of reasons why the current push for a special tribunal is nevertheless worthwhile.

One of the most compelling arguments in favor of establishing a special tribunal is the role such an institution could play in exposing the invasion and ensuring Russia’s defeat in Ukraine. Herbst highlighted that in recent weeks, some of the Kremlin’s top propagandists have already begun publicly complaining that senior Russian officials are talking about the possibility of prosecution in The Hague. “This is helping to undermine the morale of the bad guys conducting this war and bringing it to the attention of the entire Russian people,” he commented. Herbst also noted that a special tribunal could create a legal framework to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine as reparations for war damage.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

But since then, in all three cases—Russia, China, and Iran—autocratic leaders’ errors of commission have deepened their countries’ underlying weaknesses while breeding new difficulties that defy easy solutions.

That’s most dramatically the case with Putin, whose reckless, unprovoked, and illegal war in Ukraine has resulted in 6,490 civilian deaths, per the United Nations’s most recent estimate, and has prompted more than a million Russians to flee his country. International observers point to proof of crimes against humanity.

Beyond that, Putin has set back the Russian economy—some experts believe by as much as a decade—and sanctions are only beginning to bite. He’ll never regain his international reputation, and his military has revealed itself—despite many years of investments—as poorly trained, badly disciplined, and lacking morale.

Xi’s mistakes are less bloody in nature thus far. The excesses of his zero-COVID policy set off large-scale, spontaneous protests that amounted to the most serious challenge of his decade in leadership. Just last month, the Twentieth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party anointed Xi with a third term as China’s leader, but the protests that followed shortly thereafter shattered that aura of invincibility and apparent public support.

“Xi is in a crisis of his own making, with no quick or painless route out,” wrote the Economist this week. “New COVID cases are near record levels. The disease has spread to more than 85 percent of China’s cities. Clamp down even harder to bring it back under control, and the economic costs will rise yet higher, further fueling public anger. Allow it to spread and hundreds of thousands of people will die… China’s leaders appear to be searching for a middle ground, but it is not clear there is any.”

Beyond COVID-19, what is in danger is the unwritten social contract between the Chinese Communist Party of just 96 million members and the total Chinese population of 1.4 billion. Namely, the Chinese people accept restricted freedoms and fealty to the party so long as the party provides economic rewards and social security. A series of policy mistakes has slowed Chinese growth to just 3 percent in 2022, yet Xi continues to prioritize party control over economic freedoms.

Though the global stakes of Iran’s protests are less obvious, the Mideast and world would be far better off with a more moderate and pluralistic Iran that focuses on its public needs, retreats from its regional adventurism, and steps back from the nuclear brink. Here, too, the regime’s problems have been self-created, the protests being a result of excessive regime brutality and endemic corruption.

So, what should be done in 2023 to transform these authoritarian setbacks into a more sustainable advance of the “free world” (helping to reverse a sixteen-year global decline of democracy, as measured by Freedom House’s 2022 report)?

First and most immediately, the United States and its partners should deepen and expand their military and financial support for Ukraine. The Biden administration’s top officials understand this is the defining battle of our post-Cold War era. Without US military and financial support, and without US rallying of allies, all of Kyiv’s remarkable courage and resilience might not be enough.

That said, Biden’s caution and his often-stated fears of setting off World War III have limited the sorts and amounts of armaments Ukraine receives—and the speed at which they reach the battlefield. Faster delivery of more and better air defense could have saved Ukrainian lives.

It’s remains difficult to understand continued limits put on Ukraine’s ability to strike the targets from which they are being hit as Putin murderously pummels more civilian targets and infrastructure.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has rightly accused Putin of weaponizing winter in the hope of freezing Ukraine’s citizens into submission. Perhaps the greater danger is that of Western fatigue in supporting Ukraine and growing external pressure on Kyiv to negotiate, when only further battlefield gains will prompt Putin to withdraw his troops and provide concessions that would allow a secure, sovereign, and democratic Ukraine to emerge.

Even as Russia requires action now, managing the Chinese challenge requires a more patient course, one that will be made easier should Putin be strategically defeated in Ukraine. Biden was right to meet with Xi in Bali, on the margins of the Group of Twenty meeting, to build a floor which can keep the world’s most crucial bilateral relationship from sinking.

Where the United States should step up its efforts in 2023 is in coalescing allies in Europe and Asia around a sustainable, consensus-driven approach to China that recognizes Beijing’s underlying weaknesses and deters its efforts to absorb Taiwan and remake the global order.

There are three potential outcomes at this “inflection point”: a reinvigoration and reinvention of our existing international liberal order, the emergence of a Chinese-led illiberal order, or the breakdown of world order altogether on the model of Putin’s “rule of the jungle.”

As 2022 ends, the failures and costs of those alternative models are clearer than ever.

Therefore, what’s crucial in the year ahead is for democracies to unify in common cause to shape the global future alongside moderate, modern non-democracies that seek a more secure, prosperous, and just world.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 China’s failing COVID strategy leaves Xi with no good options
ECONOMIST

To understand Xi’s dilemma, read this smart Economist essay breaking down the consequences China will face if it abandons Xi’s “zero-COVID” policy—and the consequences it will face if it doesn’t.

One jarring image of Xi’s determination to go all-in on “zero-COVID” is an empty vaccine factory. “The stifling of debate,” the Economist writes, “has had baleful consequences. China has not approved the use of foreign vaccines, including the most effective ones, the mRNA jabs made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.”

What experience shows is “the protection accorded by Chinese shots appears to wane significantly after six months. Worse, the authorities have focused on testing and building quarantine sites this year, while failing to administer third (or even fourth) doses to all, even though these would require no new infrastructure or political messaging.” Read More →

#2 Enough about democracy’s weaknesses. Let’s talk about its strengths.
Fareed Zakaria | WASHINGTON POST

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, one of the premier strategic thinkers out there, has written a compelling defense of democracy’s virtues in the face of authoritarianism’s setbacks.

“It is astonishing to remember that when America’s Founding Fathers were constructing their experiment in government,” Zakaria writes, “they were virtually alone in a world of monarchies. These politicians were drawing on the writings of Enlightenment intellectuals such as Montesquieu and John Locke, studying historical examples from ancient Greece and Rome, and embracing key elements of English governance and common law. But they were mostly making it up in their heads. They had failures; their first effort, the Articles of Confederation, collapsed. In the end, however, they concocted something stunning: a system that protected individual rights, allowed for regular changes in leadership, prevented religious hegemony, and created a structure flexible enough to adapt to massive changes.” Read More →

Kevin Rudd | INTERPRETER

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, one of the keenest observers of China anywhere, has delivered a brilliant obituary on former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin that provides insight into China’s reformist past and puts in perspective its unfortunate return to Marxism-Leninism under Xi.

His narrative recalls his own experience of Jiang, then mayor of Shanghai, singing O Sole Mio at the Sydney Opera House in 1987. It then tracks how this larger-than-life individual navigated the shoals of Communist Party politics to usher in China’s era of rapid economic growth and private sector expansion.

“Jiang’s death this week at 96,” writes Rudd in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter, “marks the final, flickering embers of that now-distant reformist age—and the unambiguous beginning of the brave, new world of Xi Jinping.” Read More →

#4 The Russian Billionaire Selling Putin’s War to the Public
Betsy McKay, Thomas Grove, and Rob Barry | WALL STREET JOURNAL

This WSJ investigation is a powerfully reported exposé of Yuri Kovalchuk, also known as “Putin’s banker,” an oligarch and media baron, who has used his banking and media empires to promote Putin’s murderous war in Ukraine.

“A physicist by training,” three WSJ reporters write, “Kovalchuk is motivated more by patriotic ideology than by the trappings of wealth, say people who know him. He doesn’t hold a formal position in the Russian government. Yet he has deep influence over Kremlin policy and personnel, and helps supply dachas and yachts for Putin’s use, and lucrative jobs and stockholdings to the president’s family and friends, according to people familiar with the deals, financial documents and anticorruption groups.”

“Kovalchuk,” the WSJ adds, “controls the US-sanctioned Russian Bank Rossiya. The bank, in turn, built a network of offshore companies that have benefited Putin and his associates, and invests in projects important to the state, according to interviews with former US officials and Kremlin analysts as well as public documents and information revealed in the Panama Papers, a trove of leaked documents detailing offshore financial holdings.” Read More →

#5 Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials
Shane Harris, Souad Mekhennet, and Yeganeh Torbati | WASHINGTON POST

This week’s must-read is chilling. In a remarkable narrative, the Washington Post pieces together a large-scale Iranian campaign of kidnapping, intimidation, and assassination against critics and opponents, which has escalated in recent years.

One heartbreaking case is that of the Iranian journalist Ruhollah Zam, who was lured to Iraq where he was arrested and turned over to Iranian authorities. “The IRGC,” the Post writes, referring to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “publicly boasted of its own deception, portraying Zam’s capture as a triumph for the Iranian security services, which had outfoxed their Western adversaries. Zam was tried and sentenced to death for ‘corruption on Earth.’ He was hanged on Dec. 12, 2020, at the age of 42.”

“Another chilling example is of a failed Iranian plot to kidnap Masih Alinejad, an American citizen. “The plan to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn is illustrative of a global effort to intimidate exiled Iranians by showing they aren’t safe anywhere outside Iran,” the Washington Post authors write. “Last year, the Justice Department indicted four alleged Iranian intelligence officials and agents in the plot, saying they targeted Alinejad because she was ‘mobilizing public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regime’s laws and practices.

“The operatives allegedly hired private investigators to photograph and take video recordings of Alinejad and her family and researched how they might use speedboats to secret her out of New York and eventually on to Venezuela, ‘a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran,’ the Justice Department said in a statement.” Read More →

Atlantic Council top reads

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Nov 30, 2022

Preparing for victory: A long-haul strategy to help Ukraine win the war against Russia—and secure the peace

By Stephen J. Hadley, William Taylor, John E. Herbst, Matthew Kroenig, Melinda Haring, and Jeffrey Cimmino

Ukraine’s counteroffensives, backed by expanded and accelerated US and allied support, continue to push Russian forces out of Ukrainian territory, although at a reduced rate. These hard-won successes, however, bring with them possible challenges that also must be addressed.

Europe & Eurasia Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist Dec 2, 2022

What to expect from the new Russian oil price cap

By Reed Blakemore, Charles Lichfield, Brian O’Toole

As the EU comes to an agreement on a $60 price cap, here’s how it will work—and what impacts the world will see on the global and Russian economy.

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

TURKEYSource Dec 1, 2022

The risks and rewards of Erdogan’s next military operation

By Rich Outzen

The November 13 bombing in Istanbul, blamed on the PKK, is spurring a planned Turkish offensive against PKK affiliates in Northern Syria, fulfilling a long term goal to better secure the country’s southern border.

Conflict Iraq

The post Autocratic setbacks offer Biden his ‘inflection point’ for democracies appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Warrick in Newsweek on diplomatic options to deter Russian nuclear use

Atlantic Council — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 15:51:38 +0000

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative

On October 28, Thomas Warrick wrote an opinion-editorial for Newsweek. Warrick argued for that the US and its allies should be prepared to use the “diplomatic nuclear option” of reconstituting a United Nations without a Russian veto on the security council if Russia were to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

That leaves the West a diplomatic “nuclear option”: re-constituting the United Nations without a Russian veto. This would strike directly at one of Russia’s major sources of power and leverage in world affairs.

Thomas Warrick

Fellow

Thomas S. Warrick

Forward Defense Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

National Security Terrorism

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

Learn more

The post Warrick in Newsweek on diplomatic options to deter Russian nuclear use appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Vladimir Putin’s Ukrainian Genocide: Nobody can claim they did not know

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 01 Dec 2022 21:55:07 +0000

The liberation of Kherson in early November sparked a wave of euphoria as Ukrainians celebrated a landmark victory over Vladimir Putin’s invading army. Weeks later, this celebratory mood has now given way to all-too-familiar feelings of grief and fury as the Ukrainian authorities uncover evidence of war crimes committed during the city’s eight-month Russian occupation.

This grim process has already been repeated in hundreds of liberated villages, towns, and cities throughout northern and eastern Ukraine. On each occasion, retreating Russian troops have left behind a vast crime scene of mass graves, torture chambers, sexual violence, and deeply traumatized communities. Specific accounts of civilian suffering are strikingly similar from region to region, indicating that these crimes are the result of deliberate Kremlin policy rather than the rogue actions of individual Russian army units.

Wherever Russia establishes control, anyone regarded as posing a potential threat to the occupation authorities is at risk of abduction. This includes elected local officials, military veterans, civil society activists, journalists, and anyone suspected of overtly pro-Ukrainian sympathies. Many victims are subjected to torture and execution. Others simply disappear. Those who avoid abduction face the threat of forced deportation to the Russian Federation. Millions of Ukrainian civilians, including thousands of children, are believed to have been deported in this manner over the past nine months.

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The atrocities committed by Russian troops in occupied regions of Ukraine are only one part of a wider genocidal agenda that defines the invasion unleashed by Vladimir Putin on February 24. In areas of Ukraine occupied by the Kremlin, all symbols of Ukrainian statehood have been methodically removed and a new Russian imperial identity imposed on the civilian population. Teachers have been brought in from Russia to indoctrinate Ukrainian schoolchildren, while access to the Ukrainian media has been blocked and the Ukrainian language suppressed.

Putin’s intention to extinguish Ukrainian statehood and eradicate Ukrainian national identity was evident long before Russian tanks crossed the border in early 2022. His menacing statements have since been matched by the criminal actions of his army. Apologists had earlier been able to dismiss the Russian dictator’s genocidal rhetoric as mere political hyperbole, but that is no longer possible.

For years prior to the current invasion, Putin publicly denied Ukraine’s right to exist and insisted Ukrainians were actually Russians (“one people”) who had been artificially and unjustly separated from the motherland. In summer 2021, he took the highly unusual and revealing step of publishing a 5000-word treatise arguing the illegitimacy of Ukrainian statehood.

On the eve of the invasion, Putin lambasted today’s independent Ukrainian state as an intolerable “anti-Russia” and declared that Ukraine was an “inalienable part of Russia’s own history, culture, and spiritual space.” More recently, he has directly compared his invasion to the eighteenth century imperial conquests of Russian Czar Peter the Great and boasted that he is “returning historically Russian lands.” In late September, he illegally annexed four partially occupied Ukrainian provinces while proclaiming that they had joined the Russian Federation “forever.”

Other senior Kremlin officials and regime propagandists have been even more explicit in terms of the genocidal language they have employed to champion the invasion. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently described Ukrainians as “cockroaches” while dismissing the Ukrainian nation as “mythical.” Meanwhile, on Russia’s carefully curated state TV political talk shows, calls for genocide against Ukrainians have become completely normalized. Pundits dehumanize and demonize Ukrainians while routinely questioning the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation and casually discussing the necessity of destroying the Ukrainian state.

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The staggering quantity of genocidal statements coming out of Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began nine months ago makes it relatively easy to demonstrate the intent that is so crucial when identifying acts of genocide. The United Nations defines genocide as meaning any one of five acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.” The mass killings, systematic human rights abuses, forced deportations, and deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure carried out by the Russian military mean that Moscow is arguably guilty of committing all five genocidal acts in Ukraine.

Despite widespread awareness of the war crimes taking place in Ukraine, many in the international community remain reluctant to speak explicitly about the genocidal objectives of Russia’s invasion. Instead, debate continues over the dangers of humiliating Putin and the need for a negotiated settlement. Numerous senior officials and prominent commentators insist on addressing the invasion as if it were a particularly unruly border dispute rather than an exercise in national extermination. In reality, any talk of compromising with the Kremlin is both absurd and obscene. Advocates of appeasement must recognize that there can be no middle ground between Russian genocide and Ukrainian national survival.

In the aftermath of World War II, post-war audiences looked back on the horrors of the Nazi regime and asked how crimes of such magnitude were allowed to happen. Many of those who lived through the war protested that they had been completely unaware of the atrocities taking place around them. Similar excuses will not work in the current situation. On the contrary, the overwhelming evidence of Russian war crimes and the openly genocidal intent on display in Moscow mean that when future generations look back at Putin’s Ukrainian Genocide, nobody can claim they did not know.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

The international community must prepare for a post-Putin Russia

Francis M. O’Donnell — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 21:09:44 +0000

Nine months is enough time to bring a human being to birth, but it is apparently not long enough for Russian President Vladimir Putin to realize the folly of his war against Ukraine. Instead, it is becoming increasingly clear that no meaningful settlement will be possible as long as Putin remains in power. The international community must therefore seek pathways to a lasting peace with a future post-Putin Russia.

For many decades, the USSR and subsequently the Russian Federation played a major role in advancing humanity’s progress. In sharp contrast to his predecessors, Vladimir Putin is now leading Russia away from that legacy and is transforming the country into a pariah state. Russian acts of hostility are global in scale and include everything from waging war in Georgia to the subversion of domestic politics throughout the West. Since the unprovoked attack on Ukraine began in 2014, the Putin regime has embarked on a further diplomatic frenzy that has increasingly alienated Russia’s erstwhile closest friends and foreign partners.

Yet just four years ago, Russia was party to a UN Security Council resolution on the protection of civilians in armed conflict which recognized for the first time the intrinsic link between hunger and conflict. Russia now behaves in stark defiance of these principles. On four separate occasions this year, the UN General Assembly has resoundingly rebuked Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and unwarranted and egregious violations of UN norms. Russia has been suspended from the UN Human Rights Council and the Council of Europe, and has lost its seat on the Governing Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization.

In a March 2022 resolution, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva agreed to establish a commission to investigate violations committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A subsequent resolution examined the deteriorating human rights situation in Ukraine stemming from the invasion. This led to a report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine addressing events during late February and March 2022 in the Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy regions of northern Ukraine.

Evidence continues to mount indicating tens of thousands of war crimes committed by Russian forces acting under command responsibility, as distinct from occasional rogue elements. This evidence includes official statements, actions, and systemic politically-driven campaigns with clear genocidal intent, including widespread ethnic cleansing, deportations, and repeated large-scale missile and artillery targeting of civilian populations and vital civilian infrastructure.

For a comparatively minor territorial gain, Putin has sacrificed Russia’s reputation and socio-economic well-being. Even worse, the ricochet effects have also surged around the world creating food and energy insecurity, escalating inflation, and widespread impoverishment. There would never have been a good time for such willful misadventure, but coming in the wake of the Covid pandemic, the timing could hardly be worse.

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The increasing mendacity of the Putin regime is now so severe that members of the elite cannot even trust each other, with key figures close to the Kremlin engaging in public attacks on the leadership of the Russian military. As battlefield failure and international isolation continue to erode Putin’s authority, his entire model of government is now under threat. Russia’s prospects today are the dimmest they have been since World War II, with a range of possible dangers now emerging including deepening internal divisions and the potential collapse of the country.

While it is important to rule out any interference in the internal governance of the Russian Federation, the West can and should call for full compliance with Russia’s international obligations to defend the human rights and legitimate aspirations of Russian citizens. At this stage, the inclusion of Russian local governments and municipalities in the global effort to tackle climate change and pandemic recovery could be an opener to the de-concentration or leveling of power. When President Trump pulled the US out of the Paris Accord on Climate Change, several US states and municipalities strengthened their commitment to it.

We may already be witnessing the early warning signs of a degradation in the Russian state as sanctions and military defeats take their toll and warlords like Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov openly question Putin’s leadership of the war. Members of the Russian elite need to take stock of this decline and move beyond today’s misguided imperialism with a view to harnessing the energies of Russian society and thoroughly reforming the country’s institutions.

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Check out all our work on COP27 here.

After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

Eastern Europe NATO Security & Defense Ukraine

The real Russia is deeper and richer than today’s stolen billions in assets and the forfeited lives from Putin’s genocidal wars against the country’s neighbors. The real Russia, including its repressed civil society and talented Russian communities around the globe, can strive to optimize broad-based outcomes that uplift the people of Russia and enhance their lives whilst restoring international partnerships and global respect. This will only be possible through the openness, transparency, and accountability of elected leaders divorced from the power of money, media, and mania. Multiple networks of Russians abroad need to coalesce around a reform agenda that looks to a post-Putin Russia and ushers in a new era of benign leadership that puts the well-being of the Russian people before the narrow predatory interests of the country’s current kleptocratic leadership.

The international community should therefore focus their attention and resources not only on enabling Ukraine to win the war but also to encourage a process of reconciliation and convergence that unites all the various and often conflicting elements of the Russian opposition both internally and in the diaspora. This would not be unprecedented. It was the unifying of the Serbian opposition that led to the overthrow of Milosevic regime.

A recognition of the dilemmas and internal stresses that Russia is facing, as distinct from but in addition to the harm caused to Ukraine and the world at large, warrants attention at the forthcoming G20 summit. The stifling of civil society and dissent has deprived the people of Russia of their rightful freedom of expression. Despite various Russian opinion polls indicating majority support for the invasion of Ukraine, this cannot be credibly authenticated. By its behavior and utterances alone, the Kremlin has disqualified itself from international relations. It is time for world leaders to acknowledge that a change of tack in Moscow is essential.

In order to advance toward the goal of peace, the international community must act to help empower alternative Russian voices. The global networks, institutions, and methods that can enable capacity for mediation and negotiation in conflicts around the world, are a vital resource to foster engagement with Russian civil society, which is largely silenced internally but not abroad, and can also be approached virtually at the local level. Getting Russian civil society to converge on peaceful alternatives and a different narrative than the Kremlin’s is the key to de-concentrating political power in Russia and incubating real participatory reform. It may also be the best way to achieve a sustainable peace.

Ambassador Francis M. O’Donnell (Ret.) is the former UN Representative in Ukraine (2004-2009)

Have countries heeded this year’s wake-up calls with bold commitments at COP27? Our experts—many of whom were in Sharm el Sheikh—dispatched their insights and recommendations for world leaders throughout the course of this critical conference. This post was continuously updated as their reactions streamed in.

The latest analysis from Sharm el Sheikh

COP27 readout: The good and the bad as COP27 concludes
The big success and bigger failure of COP27
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 23, 2022 | 3:30 PM WASHINGTON | 10:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

COP27 readout: The good and the bad as COP27 concludes

Requiring an additional thirty-six hours of negotiation, official delegates finally reached a settlement and final communique early Sunday morning. The deal is underpinned by the landmark agreement to create a fund for climate compensation, bringing a nearly three-decade journey for “loss and damage” closer to the finish line. Even if details are sparse regarding contributions to the fund and the criteria for disbursement to vulnerable or impacted nations, bringing forth a commitment from two hundred participating countries is representative of the amount of influence the Global South has wielded throughout the past two weeks.

The disappointing absence of increased emissions reduction targets in the communique is an indicator of how the needs of the developing world have underpinned this COP. Ambitions for economic development amidst a global energy crisis have given enough influence to global oil and gas producing states that room for a significant push to reduce the role of oil and gas in the energy mix has been significantly limited.

EnergySource

Nov 23, 2022

COP27 readout: The good and the bad as COP27 concludes

By Global Energy Center

Global Energy Center experts take stock of two weeks of COP developments in Sharm el Sheikh.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 21, 2022 | 8:57 AM WASHINGTON | 3:57 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The big success and bigger failure of COP27

The Global South won, but did the climate? Negotiators at the UN climate-change conference known as COP27 extended their stay in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt to hammer out a final agreement that will create a loss and damage fund to compensate developing countries harmed by climate change. But the deal barely addresses other urgent topics such as reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, even as the consequences of climate change become clearer by the day. Have negotiators done enough to help save the planet and the people on it? What other surprises cropped up at COP? Our experts, who were on the ground in Sharm el Sheikh, are here to weigh in.

Read their takeaways

Fast Thinking

Nov 21, 2022

The big success and bigger failure of COP27

By Atlantic Council

What other surprises cropped up at the conference? Our experts, who were on the ground in Sharm el Sheikh, are here to weigh in.

Brazil China

Stepping up ahead of negotiations

Solutions for achieving net-zero emissions and improving energy access for all
How climate change affects peace and security across the world
Insurance for a climate-safe future
Dispatch from the Resilience Hub: Why countries can’t give up on the 1.5 degree Celsius cap on warming
Will countries step up on loss and damage?
Saudi Arabia’s take on aligning energy security needs and decarbonization goals
How Freetown is addressing extreme heat
Addressing Africa’s rapidly rising energy demand
Why now is the best time to address energy security and climate change in tandem
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 18, 2022 | 6:18 AM WASHINGTON | 1:18 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Solutions for achieving net-zero emissions and improving energy access for all

Our Global Energy Center pulled to the side top thinkers, leaders, and innovators on climate solutions at COP27 to talk about their ideas for achieving net-zero ambitions while ensuring energy access for all.

Watch the full playlist

NOVEMBER 17, 2022 | 9:28 AM WASHINGTON | 4:28 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How climate change affects peace and security across the world

By Lama El Hatow

As climate change impacts intensify—fueling migration and competition over scarce resources—so does the risk that conflict that may emerge. That risk has only been exacerbated by recent economic shocks, energy-supply disruptions, and increasing food insecurity.

While climate-linked migration and displacement (or “human mobility”) are discussed extensively at COP27, they are not officially on the agenda. The US Center, as well as several other pavilions at COP27 like the Climate Mobility Pavilion, have hosted series of events discussing the connections between climate change, conflict, peace, and security. At these events, speakers explained how, with assessments by officials from the US Departments of State and Defense, the United States is looking at hotspot zones around the world that are at risk from severe climate impacts—including how fragile and conflict-affected countries are negatively affected by these impacts. The United States is conducting these assessments in an attempt to provide an early warning about which regions are most at risk from climate change.

One of the most concerning ways that climate change will impact these regions is by contributing to increasing food insecurity. According to a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, up to 205 million people across forty-five countries are expected to face acute food insecurity, while up to 45 million people across thirty-seven countries are projected to face severe malnourishment that may result in starvation or death. The report also explains that more than 70 percent of people facing acute food security over the last year were living in conflict-affected countries; and in several countries and regions, climate change and extreme weather events are driving increases in food insecurity. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has only added to the crisis by elevating prices for food and energy, the latter key to distributing food worldwide.

The report also identified nineteen hotspots—seventeen countries and two regional clusters—that are most at risk of worsening food insecurity over the next few months due to climate change effects, increasing conflict, economic shocks, and more. The 970,000 people who are projected to face the most severe conditions are located in five countries—Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.

With the number of climate refugees increasing, countries are beginning to assess how to manage this new movement of people, which will likely have spillover effects across regions. Although climate change is impacting the world all over, some countries have more capacity and resilience to manage the crisis than others; hence, migration flows in the Global South are steering toward countries with better resilience. Many at COP27 have argued that developed countries have a moral and ethical responsibility towards the migrants from the Global South, since they are coming from countries that didn’t contribute as much to the world’s emissions problem. Historically, however, there has been a pervasive anti-immigration sentiment that fuels restrictive policies and a general reluctance to provide legal protection to people fleeing their home countries due to conflict or climate change. Additionally, there has not yet been an established finance arrangement or action protocol on climate-linked mobility at the global level. Extensive work with significant cooperation still needs to be done to address this worsening crisis.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 17, 2022 | 1:55 AM WASHINGTON | 8:55 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Insurance for a climate-safe future

With COP27’s focus on climate change adaptation, in addition to mitigation, the insurance sector now has an “absolutely integral role to play” in helping people manage disasters after—and even before— they happen, said Francis Bouchard, Marsh McLennan’s managing director of climate.

In conversation with Jorge Gastelumendi, director of global policy at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, Bouchard explained that insurance still has a very “traditional” role in terms of signaling to people the risks they may be acquiring in a new venture and paying claims after events unfold.

But there’s a new way that the insurance sector is helping send those risk signals earlier: Anticipatory finance, in which some companies offer a way to pay before a disaster strikes. “So if you statistically know that at some point [an] event is going to turn into something that would’ve been insured, you can actually put money in peoples’ hands before the event,” Bouchard explained. “They can spend that money to protect their families, their businesses, their cattle, their farms, whatever it is; but they can take steps before.”

Bouchard warned, however, that the idea hasn’t been scaled yet, as companies undergo a “mindset shift” from paying a claim after an event to making a claim never happen. Yet, he added, with momentum sparked by the global focus on risk reduction, which has resulted in new initiatives like the Group of Seven’s Global Shield, “the time is now for the insurance industry to lead.”

Watch more

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 7:18 PM WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 17, 2022 | 2:18 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from the Resilience Hub: Why countries can’t give up on the 1.5 degree Celsius cap on warming

If countries that signed the Paris Agreement agree that we’ll exceed 1.5°C & change the temp, it means accepting more floods, fires & extreme heat+more people vulnerable to climate impacts. We must accelerate solutions that protect people &communities from climate disasters pic.twitter.com/4jIWd2JZgH
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 17, 2022

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 12:04 PM WASHINGTON | 7:04 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Will countries step up on loss and damage?

By Lama El Hatow

While loss and damage is near the top of the agenda at COP27, it has been a sticky point for many countries as they debate how to finance the loss and damage payments.

Climate mitigation looks to avert climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the development of zero-emission solutions; climate adaptation aims to minimize the chance that climate change impacts a given community. But loss and damage addresses the harms and costs induced by climate change, which is already happening.

In Pakistan, for example, the recent disastrous floods, which put one-third of the country under water, damaged over a million homes, and killed over a thousand people. The damage has been estimated to cost more than thirty billion dollars and it displaced more thirty million people from their homes, raising an immediate need for loss and damage compensation. Overall, while some countries like Belgium and Scotland have been willing to pledge funding for loss and damage, other leading economies, including the United States, showed resistance.

At the same time, climate finance has traditionally been in the form of loans to developing countries. So essentially, developing countries are borrowing money from developed countries for a problem they mostly haven’t caused—and are being asked to pay it back with interest. Additionally, when climate disasters cause significant damage, they bring significant costs for the impacted country and, for developing countries, wipe out their financial resources, so the net outcome of the loan is almost nil. This essentially is why Pakistan has called for debt restructuring and debt relief after the flooding, to change this unfair setup.

At the institutional level, the Vulnerable Twenty Group (V20), a “cooperation initiative” of finance ministers from the countries most vulnerable to climate change, was formed in 2015 to present a unified voice on climate action. V20 members are also members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a non-treaty organization of fifty-five member countries which are estimated to have collectively lost $525 billion from 2000 to 2019 due to climate change. These two forums are actively pushing to promote a loss and damage payments mechanism.

While reaching a consensus on loss and damage has been challenging, some developed countries proposed alternative funding mechanisms for vulnerable countries. For example, the Group of Seven-led Global Shield announced at COP27 provides immediate financial support to V20 countries when climate-change-related disasters strike. With Germany’s contribution of $175 million, and with additional contributions from France, Austria, Denmark and Ireland, the total financial coverage of the Global Shield is about $207 million. But the V20 countries also warned earlier this year that they could stop paying their debt service (estimated at about $685 billion) if lenders are not willing to restructure these debts and deduct the climate induced costs. In the words of Ghanaian Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, by leaving nations at the mercy of climate catastrophe, “you could be triggering a global economic meltdown.”

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 11:00 AM WASHINGTON | 6:00 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Saudi Arabia’s take on aligning energy security needs and decarbonization goals

Global Energy Center Senior Director sat down with Khalid M. Abuleif, chief negotiator for the climate agreements for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to talk about Saudi Arabia’s latest plans to meet its commitments in the Paris Climate Accords and the world’s needs for energy security.

The Paris Agreement has the potential to “be very costly for Saudi Arabia,” Abuleif explained. “The countries that will be most impacted… [are] going to be oil producers, developing countries; the reasoning is because their economies are not fully diversified and they rely heavily on limited sectors.”

But now is still the time for global climate action, Abuleif said. So as Saudi Arabia moves forward, it is working on making the country more resilient “to any kind of measures that could be taken,” Abuleif explained.

Watch the full interview to hear about Saudi Arabia’s latest initiatives geared toward improving energy security, boosting the country’s economy, and meeting its climate obligations.

Watch more

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 9:05 AM WASHINGTON | 4:05 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How Freetown is addressing extreme heat

Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, caught up with Kathy Baughman McLeod at the Resilience Hub and explained how her city is using an affordable and “simple solution” to protect women from extreme heat at markets across the city.

Watch the full conversation

We’re coming #TogetherForImplementation with our partner @yakisawyerr! https://t.co/pPQr4to3pO

She stopped by the @COPResHub to chat with @KBMcLeodFLA about how Freetown is building a cooler future with adaptation solutions. Watch our latest #COPChat now! pic.twitter.com/vOdCaHuo7u
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 16, 2022

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 2:03 AM WASHINGTON | 9:03 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Addressing Africa’s rapidly rising energy demand

The African Development Bank Group’s Kevin Kariuki joined Global Energy Center Deputy Director Reed Blakemore at COP27 to talk about sustainable development and energy access across Africa.

“Africa has endemic energy poverty which must be addressed,” Kariuki said, “and at the same time, we must address the issues of the climate crisis.”

To do that, Kariuki explained that he hopes leaders at COP27 realize that “what is actually required today is synergizing growth in energy demand with climate action.” He said that would help “[meet] the needs of Africa.”

“But we must also be realistic,” Kariuki added, “that renewable energy on its own will probably not be able to provide the security of supply and affordable power that is required to be able to underpin Africa’s social economic development.”

Watch more

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 1:10 AM WASHINGTON | 8:10 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Why now is the best time to address energy security and climate change in tandem

Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz joined the National Grid’s Rhian Kelly at COP27 to talk about addressing energy security in tandem with the energy transition.

“I think in many ways they’re more aligned than they’ve ever been because if we want to get ourselves off Russian gas, the cheapest form of self-reliant energies are renewables,” Kelly explained. She added that because global politics have changed, she thinks it’s “the best time to be thinking about energy security and climate change together.”

Watch more

A strategy for the Global South

How cities in the Global South are adapting to climate change
The first global ambassador for heat action lays out his top priorities
Dispatch from the Resilience Hub: How women are impacted by climate change
How to inhabit an uninhabitable region
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 | 5:07 PM WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 12:07 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How cities in the Global South are adapting to climate change

At the Thailand Pavilion, Mauricio Rodas talked about urban resilience and climate adaptation in cities across the Global South. “Extreme heat is the climate hazard that [effects] more people than any other, and it is particularly severe in cities,” he explained. He pointed out the innovations that are addressing extreme heat, such as the Cool Capital Stack investment portfolio recently launched by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and its partners.

See the highlights

Today at @COP27P discussing in different sessions the need to implement Nature based Solutions in cities, and highlighting the importance of the recently launched Cool Capital Stack as an innovative financial mechanism to address extreme heat related risks. @ArshtRock pic.twitter.com/sTtcx5lgtA
— Mauricio Rodas (@MauricioRodasEC) November 15, 2022

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 | 10:05 AM WASHINGTON | 5:05 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The first global ambassador for heat action lays out his top priorities

Newly appointed Global Ambassador for Heat Action Felipe Calderón outlined his agenda for tackling extreme heat in conversation with Mauricio Rodas, the senior advisor for heat and city diplomacy at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.

“The first thing we need to do is gather information… [and] second, to transmit that information to the right people,” Calderón said.

He said that he believes “the main problem is the lack of awareness about the importance of the problem, about the magnitude of the problem.” But, he added, getting information out to leaders, the media, and other stakeholders can help boost the urgency among leaders to address heat.

Afterall, Calderón explained, “the most cost effective way to avoid human deaths… [is] preventing or taking action on heat waves.”

He also stressed the importance of nature-based solutions like planting trees in cities. That, he said, is an effective one because it “combines an adaptation solution with a mitigation solution.”

Watch more

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 | 7:49 AM WASHINGTON | 2:49 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from the Resilience Hub: How women are impacted by climate change

Arsht-Rock’s Director @KBMcLeodFLA shares that “80 percent of the people displaced by climate change are women, and women are 14 times more likely to die from climate disasters.” Action here at #COP27 is to understand how to better protect them from climate change. pic.twitter.com/RPUx2fN6vW
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 15, 2022

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 | 7:17 AM WASHINGTON | 2:17 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How to inhabit an uninhabitable region

By Lama El Hatow

The latest analysis from the United Nations (UN) indicates that we are still nowhere near limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—the target set by the Paris Accords—and are actually headed towards 2.8 degrees. That means we may see regions around the globe become completely uninhabitable. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about six hundred million people across the Middle East and North Africa will face heat waves that go beyond the human survivability threshold by 2100. The Middle East North Africa (MENA) region is already a hot arid climate, and it will get hotter and drier with the impacts of climate change—with summertime temperatures that make it dangerous to be outdoors.

In this respect, we are heading toward an uninhabitable world and need to consider how best to adapt to it, particularly during the summer months. The immediate impact will be for people to spend more time indoors with the safety of air conditioning, which increases the demand for energy even further—bringing greater urgency to the search for clean renewable energy to power a smooth green transition. Additionally, within this year’s COP there have been many discussions about the possibilities of heat resilience within cities, including urban reforestation that can create cooler micro climates, shaded areas above bicycle lanes, and holistic urban planning with an eye toward resilience.

Consider the way many cities in Canada and the far north have adjusted to their harsh winters by creating underground infrastructure to minimize outdoor exposure, including public transportation, tunnel systems, and connections to buildings. Similarly, countries in MENA such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are already working to enhance their infrastructure to limit outdoor exposure by connecting their metro lines through tunnels to buildings, along with tailoring cultural attractions to the climate from the world’s largest indoor ski slope in Dubai to indoor stadiums and indoor golf courses. The MENA region is already building its cities to adapt to an uninhabitable world. The biggest risk, however, does not lie in wealthier countries that have the capacity to do this, but in the most vulnerable communities that will suffer tremendously in an environment made uninhabitable by climate change.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

The future of climate adaptation

Water Day comes to COP27
Delivering on UPS’s emissions-reductions commitments
Here’s what to know heading into week two of negotiations
Dispatch from virtual reality: How games are informing decision makers on climate adaptation
What to make of USAID’s new adaptation and resilience plan
The United States is finally stepping up—but it there are also other climate leaders to watch
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 14, 2022 | 2:37 PM WASHINGTON | 9:37 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Water Day comes to COP27

By Lama El Hatow

Monday was Water Day at COP27; it was a reminder that putting water in the center of the climate debate is imperative, necessary for crucial action, and long overdue.

Water access is still a challenge for many local communities. While the world leaders are striving to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 (clean water and sanitation for all), they are in many ways moving backwards.

For example, in many parts of the world, the privatization of water has shifted communities away from bodies of fresh water hat sustain their livelihoods. Water is a public good, and commodifying water takes away very basic human rights. Private companies have bought the rights to use bodies of water for profits, while poor and marginalized communities struggle to pay the higher prices on water. In many cases, private companies are not only limiting access to this public good but also polluting it further with industrial processes.

Several groups at COP27 have discussed how vital it is to preserve water as a public good. With the impacts of climate change, the world is seeing water scarcity in some regions (such as the Middle East and North Africa), and floods and extreme rainfall in others. The COP27 president and the World Meteorological Organization launched the Action for Water Adaptation and Resilience initiative to focus on the climate and water nexus and on water adaptation.

Climate adaptation and covering loss and damage will require more climate financing, and much of that money needs to go toward water—specifically, toward efforts supporting water security for vulnerable communities. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the New Orleans area lacked sufficient access to clean water for days. Similarly, the floods in Pakistan left millions without access to clean water as some of the infrastructure needed to provide it was severely destroyed. Drought-stricken countries are banding together to share their technologies and expertise to manage water scarcity. For example, a group of countries led by Spain and Senegal launched the International Drought Resilience Alliance at COP27 to “shift drought management from emergency response to resilience against climate change impacts.” Spain is committing five million euros to start it off.

As countries continue to partner with one another on water action, it will be crucial to ensure that there is appropriate focus on action for adaptation and resilience.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 14, 2022 | 10:38 AM WASHINGTON | 5:38 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Delivering on UPS’s emissions-reductions commitments

Laura Lane, executive vice president and chief corporate affairs and sustainability officer of the United Parcel Service (UPS), sat down with Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz at COP27 to talk about UPS’s emissions-reductions goals.

Lane hopes that COP27 ultimately helps foster a “greater sense of collaboration between government, the private sector, and the NGO community. If they all come together, they “can solve a lot of the challenges that lie ahead for companies like [UPS],” that, Lane explained, are part of “one of the… hardest to abate industry sectors.”

She pointed out that while UPS has a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050, global tensions and supply chain shortages are making it difficult to hit key checkpoints. For example, the global shortage of microchips is making it more difficult to electrify their ground fleet.

“And so we are trying to find other ways to be able to get the emissions out of our… operations,” Lane explained. She said that UPS is searching for alternative fuels for its ground fleet and is working with other companies to incentivize the production of sustainable aviation fuel to power its operations in the air.

Watch more

NOVEMBER 13, 2022 | 1:16 PM WASHINGTON | 8:16 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Here’s what to know heading into week two of negotiations

By the Global Energy Center

As COP27 reaches its midway point, technical discussions are set to gain speed in week two. The twin realities of an energy security crisis and the sweeping impacts of climate change on the developing world remain at the forefront of discussions throughout Sharm el Sheikh. The multi-stakeholder drive to surmount both challenges is drawing stronger linkages between climate action and energy security, opening new avenues for collaboration between governments, civil society, and industry.

After week one, a few things are clear:

US climate leadership is achieving legitimacy through action. Midterm elections at the start of COP27 served only to further energize a US delegation already operating with confidence following passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. President Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, the Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese, and many others arrived in Egypt emphasizing an optimistic outlook for the energy transition in the United States, while underscoring the need to unlock “trillions” in private financing to replicate US momentum in the developing world. The steadfast presence of US congressional delegations from both sides of the aisle further reinforced the United States’ commitment to addressing the climate crisis.

Next, the narrative at COP27 is no longer Western-led. The introduction of “loss and damage” to the COP agenda illustrates how the global south has successfully used the conversation in Europe and the West around energy security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to underscore the need for access to sustainable energy resources that enable economic growth.

And finally, the hard conversations which have often been missed or dodged at prior COPs are now front-and-center.

Overall, the twin realities of a global energy security crisis and a developing world at the forefront of a majority of the worst impacts of climate change have created an opportunity to better integrate the policy spheres of climate action and energy security.

EnergySource

Nov 13, 2022

COP27 readout: Week 1 comes to a close

By Global Energy Center

Global Energy Center react to the first week of COP27 proceedings.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 3:34 AM WASHINGTON | 10:34 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from virtual reality: How games are informing decision makers on climate adaptation

Our Director of Extreme Heat Initiatives @KurtShickman & @ACMideast’s Lama El Hatow caught up at Arsht-Rock’s virtual reality booth https://t.co/4YjD37Q4iq

Great to see @AtlanticCouncil representation on the ground at #COP27! #ArshtRockAtCOP pic.twitter.com/iPcxCaSFs8
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 12, 2022

NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 2:57 AM WASHINGTON | 9:57 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

What to make of USAID’s new adaptation and resilience plan

At #COP27 @SamanthaJPower, citing the devastating $30+ billion flooding of Pakistan of @USAID announces new push to urgently drive private investment in adaptation & resilience. Big opportunity and vision here – @ArshtRock is ready – let’s go! pic.twitter.com/ITz3hKu5Qb
— Kathy Baughman McLeod (@KBMcLeodFLA) November 12, 2022

NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 2:33 AM WASHINGTON | 9:33 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Experts praise the United States for finally stepping up—but there are also other climate leaders to watch

Global Energy Center Deputy Director Reed Blakemore sat down with the World Resources Institute’s Dan Lashof to talk about the countries taking the lead on climate action.

Lashof explained that while this is the twenty-seventh COP, “it’s COP1 for the United States being able to show up with a transformative climate law in place domestically.” He thinks “that gives President Biden much more credibility,” but he added that the world will be watching whether Congress will be able to sustain the momentum on climate action.

Lashof explained that, while people still pay a lot of attention to how politics in the United States impact the country’s climate leadership, the world is “no longer unipolar.”

“People are also looking to the EU and to China,” he said. So I think those three major players are pushing the wall forward, sometimes together, sometimes not so much. But as long as they’re moving and accelerating action, then we’re seeing progress.”

Watch more

Public-private partnerships

COP’s focuses on implementation, emerging economies, and public-private partnerships raise hopes
At the “corporate COP,” a new focus on private-sector solutions
Partnerships to benefit the planet—and the private sector
Gaming and social tech can reorient the world toward a climate-resilient future
Quick take: The attendance at COPs has transformed. Here’s what that means for the energy transition.
Improving clean-energy access for everyone
The energy crisis shows the need to accelerate the energy transition
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 7:12 PM WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 2:12 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

COP’s focuses on implementation, emerging economies, and public-private partnerships raise hopes

By Roger Martella

In this pivotal moment for global action on climate change, I’m in the full optimist camp regarding COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh—not only for Egypt, but for the precedent Egypt is setting for the future.

Two main reasons drive this enthusiasm. First, COP27 is focused on implementation—putting climate promises into action. Second, the event is committed to highlighting the needs and challenges of emerging economies. This will place a global spotlight on the unique opportunities for countries where most of the 750 million people without reliable access to electricity live.

Another reason to be optimistic about COP27 is the rapidly growing role of public-private partnerships between policymakers and corporate stakeholders. The growing role of companies to be part of the solution and partner with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and other companies in industrialized and emerging markets is leading to unprecedented collaborations, some already having an impact.

The pursuit of public-private partnerships is perhaps the top undercurrent at COP27, as many collaborators and odd bedfellows alike come together for bold pronouncements of projects and initiatives together. These examples demonstrate how emerging economies, through public-private partnerships and tangible proof points, are addressing the energy transition by blending different approaches, technologies, and perspectives. Additionally, they illustrate how emerging economies are positioning strategically to build climate resilient infrastructure that grows access to energy at the same time. The lessons learned from each will help inform the many ongoing discussions and negotiations in Sharm el Sheikh.

Roger Martella is the chief sustainability officer of GE. GE is a presenting partner of GEC at COP27: Ambitions for All.

EnergySource

Nov 11, 2022

Partner perspectives: In emerging markets, partnerships and proof points are key to driving the energy transition

By Roger Martella

COP27 is an opportunity for emerging economies to lead the energy transition. Public-private partnerships can help drive progress towards their goals.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 12:37 PM WASHINGTON | 7:37 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

At the “corporate COP,” a new focus on private-sector solutions

By Lama El Hatow

The private sector has an immense presence at COP27 in all the various zones within Sharm El Sheikh, earning this conference the label of the “corporate COP.” The business role comes in several forms.

First, there is a growing recognition that the private sector will have to close the gap in the unfulfilled one hundred billion dollar per year climate finance promise made by developed countries. We already know that one hundred billion is insufficient, with reports now claiming that two trillion dollars per year is what’s needed for the Global South. UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for Egypt Mahmoud Mohieldin and US climate envoy John Kerry have argued that various modes of blended finance (using development funds to leverage private capital), as well as regulations on the private sector, are the only way to meet the one hundred billion dollar pledge and move toward the two trillion dollar goal. Kerry even announced that the US Energy Transition Accelerator would be carried out in partnership with Bezos’ Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Fund, solidifying the role of the private sector in implementation.

Second, fossil-fuel and high-polluting companies are frightened and lobbying quite strongly. During decarbonization day today, their viewpoints were expressed in various sessions discussing how they are shifting their practices to renewable energy and phasing out fossil fuels. However, they are concerned, as Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and other island state leaders opened COP27 by stating that fossil fuel companies should pay a global carbon tax on profits to fund loss and damage for the Global South. The massive third quarter profits recently reported by Saudi Aramco ($42.4 billion), Exxon ($20 billion), and Chevron ($11.2 billion) alone show why this could be an attractive option for policymakers seeking loss and damage funds.

Third, businesses along with banks are under new pressure from investors to meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, and they are trying to catch up and understand what needs to be done. The Net Zero Banking Alliance, which is one of the four pillars of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero that emerged at the last COP, has been convening to see how to enable as well as enforce banks to transition to net zero. CEOs of top commercial and investment banks including Blackrock, Citibank, and Standard Chartered are skipping the summit as they focus more on issues such as the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine, energy crises, rising inflation, and the threat of recession. It is no secret that many large-scale corporations produce more greenhouse gas emissions than many countries. The argument is that these companies should be liable for compensation, not only to their consumers and board of directors, but also to the Global South and the world’s most vulnerable people.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 11:23 AM WASHINGTON | 6:23 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Partnerships to benefit the planet—and the private sector

Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz hosted Dorothy McAuliffe, the US State Department’s special representative for global partnerships, to talk about how governments can work with the private sector to develop climate solutions.

“Governments can’t tackle this challenge alone,” McAuliffe explained. “We have to be in this all together.”

While there are major benefits for the planet to be reaped from this partnership, McAuliffe explained that there are benefits for the private sector too: “There are jobs and opportunities that come along with this clean energy transformation… and finding these solutions.”

Watch more

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 10:43 AM WASHINGTON | 5:43 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

By increasing awareness of climate adaptation measures, gaming and social technologies are creating impact on the ground in many countries.

On Friday, the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center hosted an event at the COP27 Resilience Hub that brought together gaming and technology experts to talk about innovative solutions to build resilient communities.

For example, games like Garden Story help users acquire the knowledge and skills they need to take climate action in their communities. Similarly, Meta aims to help users understand the types of climate-adaptation tools that are available to prevent future damage and loss.

See top moments from the event

“Gamers are ahead on the curve on climate & we’re seeing this permeate the industry a little faster than others,” says @ChanceGlasco. Arsht-Rock’s VR pilot & games like @gardenstorygame integrate climate solutions, equipping players w/knowledge & skills for climate action. pic.twitter.com/aF6XSVyNv3
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 11, 2022

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 11:12 AM WASHINGTON | 6:12 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Quick take: The attendance at COPs has transformed. Here’s what that means for the energy transition.

#COP27 quick take: As uniform acceptance of the #EnergyTransition takes hold, an increasing number of energy and finance executives – many for the first time – are gravitating to the conference. A post-denial posture is empowering a groundswell of new solution-oriented actors.
— Landon Derentz (@Landon_Derentz) November 11, 2022

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 7:30 AM WASHINGTON | 2:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Improving clean-energy access for everyone

As the energy transition gets underway, experts are searching for ways to bring clean energies to everyone—and particularly low-income and developing countries.

Doing so will require focuses like improving financing, making the energy supply chain more efficient, and turning toward cooling solutions, said panelists at an Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center event at the Resilience Hub.

“We need to make sure that access to energy is resilient,” said Lavinia Bauerochse, global head of ESG at Deutsche Bank. “Climate change-induced weather extremes like floods and heat must be factored in. Without a resilient infrastructure, our efforts will be short lived.”

See top moments from the event

“One billion people have no access to cooling… & are considered highly vulnerable to heat events,” says @jmcurtin of @RockefellerFdn.

But traditional cooling contributes to emissions. We must bring cooling to vulnerable communities w/o further exacerbating climate-driven heat. pic.twitter.com/rAw06gdiAo
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 11, 2022

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 6:46 AM WASHINGTON | 1:46 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The energy crisis shows the need to accelerate the energy transition

Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz sat down with HIF Global’s Meg Gentle to talk about decarbonization ambitions at COP27.

“There are so many incredible ideas here in Egypt this year, and we can show that eFuels, this synthetic fuel, this is happening now,” Gentle explained. HIF Global produces eFuels in countries like Chile and Australia.

EFuels, which are fuels created by renewable energies and carbon capturing from the air, have potential now, added Gentle. “These are fuels that can be used immediately; this is a solution for today.”

Watch more

The innovative solutions at play

Gaming and virtual reality set out to change how decision makers tackle climate change
Investments in climate technologies must begin with software
Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor at COP27: The US won’t abandon its climate leadership, regardless of who controls Congress
Energy security and the energy transition are “mutually reinforcing,” says US official
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | 2:08 PM WASHINGTON | 9:08 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Gaming and virtual reality set out to change how decisionmakers tackle climate change

By Lama El Hatow

As climate change becomes the world’s reality, groups are using technology to bring it to virtual reality as well.

With the evolution of technologies over the years and the emergence of the gaming industry, there has been an increase in the number of innovative ways through which people can see how climate change impacts the world and, by association, how to deal with it. The COP27 Resilience Hub, run in part by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, has created a VR experience that allows each user to click on various places around the globe to see what would happen in a +2 degree Celsius or +4 degree Celsius world. Based on the Paris Agreement and the science, we need to remain underneath 1.5 degree Celsius of warming to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. In this VR experience, one can see that the city of Miami, for instance, would be completely submerged underwater from flooding. Experiencing this submersion is quite difficult to process.

Additionally in this experience, the user has the option to select from various adaptation measures that can help the city of Miami avoid these catastrophic changes. For instance, after selecting “reforestation,” a nature-based solution, the user can see how Miami is able to withstand floodwaters. Alternatively, users can choose measures that may not be as effective, such as breakwaters in the case of Miami; from that, users can understand that decisions on adaptation must be designed for the particular contexts of each city. This technology allows policymakers to decide what kind of Miami they’d like to plan for in the future based on climate impacts.

Similarly, the video game “Eco” allows users to explore the “tragedy of the commons”—a situation in which users competing over environmental resources act in their own interest and ultimately deplete the resources entirely. Other games show how people’s physical conditions change in response to increased temperatures and heatwaves in certain settings—for example in poorly serviced areas versus in areas with resilient infrastructure. This game can be useful to help users understand how workers who are exposed to the outdoors for long periods of time are impacted by a world that is continuously heating.

The gaming industry and VR have opened up ways to envision the world in the future and how best to live in it. Ultimately, this technology and innovation is important in that it can help decisionmakers decide which adaptation measures to employ.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | 12:15 PM WASHINGTON | 7:15 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Investments in climate technologies must begin with software

By Scott Reese

The annual United Nations Conference of Parties is underway in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, with delegates from around the world gathering to address one of the most urgent of global imperatives: climate change and the energy transition. Central to the conversation is tackling carbon emissions, the leading contributor to planet-wide warming.

During last year’s conference, leaders reinforced the sense of urgency to take action. Since then, important moves have been made to drive progress. Notably, the United States, currently the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, took its biggest step yet in combating climate change with a $369 billion investment via the Inflation Reduction Act that will reduce US carbon emissions to an estimated 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is in addition to steps to fund a modernized grid and breakthrough technologies in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. These two landmark climate change laws not only aim to reduce climate emissions, but they also advance US investments in both energy security and grid resiliency as well as critical breakthrough technologies.

Yet a problem so daunting can leave us all wondering, how does the world move faster?

While it’s critical to invest in long-term, high-impact levers like renewable energy, hydrogen, and carbon capture and sequestration technologies, software is an investment that can pay dividends today and accelerate our ability to embrace electrification and decarbonization tactics.

EnergySource

Nov 10, 2022

Partner perspectives: The next unlock: Why software is key to the energy transition

By Scott Reese

The energy transition requires scale, but it also requires speed. Through the marriage of human ingenuity with data and computing power, software integration can enable the acceleration of electrification and decarbonization, moving the world closer to loftier climate ambitions.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | 9:00 AM WASHINGTON | 4:00 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor at COP27: The US won’t abandon its climate leadership, regardless of who controls Congress

By Katherine Walla

The United States is officially back “in the game,” leading the fight against climate change, said US Representative Kathy Castor, chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. “And we’re not leaving the playing field ever again.”

Castor and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke on Thursday about how the United States is addressing the climate crisis at an Atlantic Council Front Page event hosted by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

While the United States—which withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords in 2019 but rejoined the agreement in 2021—has seen its climate leadership questioned, Castor said the country now has the tools to meet its emissions reduction goals. Those tools, she explained, include the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the latter of which she deemed the “most important climate bill” in US history.

At COP27, Pelosi hopes that US and global leaders will “find common ground” to address climate change, especially because of how pervasive the effects will be on health, economies, and even security globally. “The competition for habitat and resources can cause conflict,” Pelosi noted. “We have to avoid that.”

COP

Nov 10, 2022

Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor at COP27: The US won’t abandon its climate leadership, regardless of who controls Congress

By Katherine Walla

The US House speaker and the chair of the climate committee appeared at an Atlantic Council Front Page event in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | 6:52 AM WASHINGTON | 1:52 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Energy security and the energy transition are “mutually reinforcing,” says US official

On Thursday, Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz sat down with US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt to talk about global energy security.

“Energy is at the white hot center of international affairs in a way that it has not been in a long time,” Pyatt said. But despite countries scrambling for cheaper and more destructive energy sources like coal amid global gas shortages, Pyatt argued that energy security and the energy transition “are not in conflict with each other; in fact, they’re mutually reinforcing.”

“We need to continue to work… to build an energy system internationally which helps our allies and partners to advance their economies [and] to deliver results for their citizens,” he said. “But we also need to keep working on the energy transition.”

Watch more

Protecting the planet—and people

For COP outcomes that benefit the groups most vulnerable to climate change, representation must improve
Reasons to be optimistic about the “implementation COP”
The health sector’s role in climate change and ambitions
The newest advocate of heat resilience: The world’s first global ambassador for heat action
Cash for cooling
How cities are taking the lead on heat action
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 12:30 PM WASHINGTON | 7:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

For COP outcomes that benefit the groups most vulnerable to climate change, representation must improve

By Lama El Hatow

Looking around to see who is present at COP27, there’s a lot of diversity and an array of ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds across groups that aim to represent their communities and share their stories about how climate change impacts them. But not everyone has the privilege to be able to attend this COP and convene in an effort to inform policymakers of the realities on the ground. In fact, the most vulnerable and impacted communities around the world are often the ones that face the most hurdles in attending these conferences. Hence, these communities’ stories oftentimes never make it to the ears of the decision makers in the negotiating rooms deciding the world’s fate.

It thus becomes the international community’s responsibility to inform those decision makers for the sake of those not present at COP27. Within Egypt, minority groups such as the Nubian communities in Aswan and the Bedouins of Sinai will not be present at this COP. In November 2021, a severe storm hit the city of Aswan, destroying homes, flooding small islands, and decimating the already limited agriculture—and the community there is still healing from this disaster today. They report that such a storm has not hit Aswan in the last forty years. As these communities rely on the Nile River for their daily livelihood, the impacts of climate change, including lower water levels in rivers, are acute and detrimental for them. There are other examples of detrimental impact worldwide, most recently with floods in Pakistan destroying over a million homes and killing over a thousand people.

As leaders discuss the financial mechanisms for loss and damage payments in the negotiating rooms, it is important to know how and where these losses and damages are taking place across the globe. The Global Stocktake launched at COP26 requires countries to report on local- and community-level participation in nationally determined contributions, thus making the participation more feasible but still far from what is needed. That is why representation matters; and having local communities, tribes, indigenous peoples, and minority groups present at such a convening as COP is not only necessary but vital so that any outcomes of negotiations are holistic and take into consideration the needs of those most vulnerable to climate change. To ensure the inclusion of these groups, they must be allowed access to funding as well as partnerships with local and international civil-society organizations.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 10:41 AM WASHINGTON | 5:41 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Reasons to be optimistic about the “implementation COP”

COP27 has, to date, been scarce on tangible results, with the majority of action occurring outside of the negotiating room as a diverse coalition of industry and nongovernmental organizations descends on Sharm el Sheikh.

But there are clear signs emerging that should offer optimism as technical groups dominate the balance of the next two weeks:

Finance remains center stage. Financing both energy transitions and climate adaptation has, at least thus far, remained front-of-mind for policy leaders over the past two days. Commitments from a handful of European countries seeking to accelerate international climate adaptation finance are one such bright spot, despite the relative lack of optimism for progress leading up to the COP this year. Yet this box is still largely unchecked.
Private sector participation. COP’s transition from a largely technocratic convening to an increasingly multifaceted climate convention filled with corporations and civil society continues. Observers should be encouraged that the dialogue is moving past simple greenwashing, in favor of efforts to establish a widespread coalition of parties engaged in the climate conversation.
Implementation is in limbo. Though COP is meant to focus on acting on the pledges laid out in COP26 and the Bonn intersessional, homing in on details that expose the current tension between energy security and climate ambitions is proving to be more difficult than gaining commitments from governments for these pledges in the first place.

Significant work remains to be done in the coming days.

EnergySource

Nov 9, 2022

COP27 readout: Days 1 and 2

By Global Energy Center

Global Energy Center experts are on the ground at COP27. Here’s what they observed over the first two days.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 10:30 AM WASHINGTON | 6:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The health sector’s role in climate change and ambitions

Global Energy Center Deputy Director Reed Blakemore sat down with John Balbus, acting director of the Office of Climate Change and Heath Equity at the US Department of Health and Human Services to talk about health equity and decarbonizing the health sector.

“Health is often mentioned as a reason to be acting on climate change, but the health community isn’t present,” Balbus explained. But over the last year, he added, “the health sector has mobilized in a way that it has not over the last twenty-six COPs.”

“So what we’re hoping is that by mobilizing the health sector,” Balbus said, the sector can provide health information to national leaders that convinces them to increase the urgency to tackle climate change.

According to Balbus, the health sector is responsible for about 5 percent of global carbon emissions, but no countries focus on the decarbonization of the health sector. He said they should include the health sector in both reducing emissions and adapting to climate change.

Watch more

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 7:16 AM WASHINGTON | 3:16 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The newest advocate of heat resilience: The world’s first global ambassador for heat action

On Wednesday, the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center unveiled a new leader in climate adaptation. At COP27, Felipe Calderón, former president of Mexico, took the reins as the first-ever global ambassador for heat action with a mandate to raise the issue of extreme heat among the world’s leaders to protect people, jobs, and the economy.

Watch the unveiling

Agradezco enormemente a @ArshtRock Resilience Center la invitación para ser Embajador Global para la Acción frente a las “Olas de Calor”. En el marco de la #COP27 en Egipto. Las “olas de Calor” mata muchos más personas en el mundo que el resto de los eventos climáticos extremos. https://t.co/Vxxps9fJy1
— Felipe Calderón (@FelipeCalderon) November 9, 2022

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 10:05 AM WASHINGTON | 5:05 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Cash for cooling

As the temperature goes up, it’ll be vital to protect people, communities, and local economies from extreme heat and its effects.

The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and partners including the Rockefeller Foundation, JP Morgan Chase & Co, ClimateWorks, Marsh McLennan, and IFC, gathered together at COP27 to launch the Cool Capital Stack, the first investment portfolio dedicated to supporting cooling solutions for the world’s most vulnerable.

Watch top moments from the launch

Cities are taking the lead in implementation, like Freetown’s market shading project. https://t.co/eplPzcyxkT

But it’s hard to scale. “There just is not enough [money] flowing to the Global South,” says @yakisawyerr. “The difference between the rhetoric & the reality is huge.” pic.twitter.com/I2CnmMZMzi
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 9, 2022

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 1:15 AM WASHINGTON | 8:15 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How cities are taking the lead on heat action

On Wednesday, Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, mayor of Monterrey, Mexico, recounted watching his city’s temperature rise ten degrees over the last thirty years. “We are ill-prepared for this silent killer and people are facing the consequences,” he said.

The mayor gave his thoughts at an Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center event focused on what cities are doing to take the lead on heat action. Earlier this year, the city of Monterrey appointed a chief heat officer committed to reducing the threat of extreme urban heat for vulnerable people.

Global Chief Heat Officer Eleni Myrivili explained that the way cities are built makes them “death traps” of heat for people. It is important to listen to cities, she added, as they know “where the problem is and what they really need to do to respond to it.”

Watch top moments from the event

“The way cities are built are death traps for people, that’s why it’s important to listen to cities.” We know that people don’t have to die from #ExtremeHeat.

Global Chief Heat Officer @leniomyrivili explains why cities need a seat at the policy table to protect people. #CoP27 pic.twitter.com/QB1NtbeA87
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 9, 2022

Takeaways as negotiations get underway

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 | 6:47 PM WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 1:47 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from the World Leaders Summit: The most fundamental plan for adaptation in a decade

LIVE FROM #COP27 Director of Global Policy @Gasteluj gives you an inside look at the newly launched Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda, with 30 adaptation outcomes to accelerate climate resilience. Watch now #cop27egypt pic.twitter.com/ddo4DP4OkZ
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 8, 2022

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 | 2:45 PM WASHINGTON | 9:45 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Some MENA countries are under-represented at COP27. Here’s what that means for the negotiations.

By Lama El Hatow

The delegates at COP27 face the challenging and daunting dilemma of tackling the world’s climate crisis in the midst of a series of global political and economic crises.

The world is still feeling the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic with supply chain stalls from China and insufficient resources elsewhere. Add to that Russia’s war in Ukraine has pulled a plug on global gas flows—raising Europe’s worries about staying warm this winter—and has also generated concern about wheat-supply shortages and food insecurity globally.

The compounded effect of all of these issues has led to broadening global inflation. So not only are the least developed countries becoming more vulnerable to the worsening global economic outlook, but even some of the wealthier countries have difficulties staying afloat. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), several countries face their own economic and political turmoil with Syria still at war, Sudan reeling from political instability after a coup last year, and Lebanon facing the worst economic crisis in its history with power outages and bank closures that put the Lebanese people in unforeseen circumstances.

Without ignoring political and economic turbulences like these, how will the delegations at COP27 deal with global crises while also asking the world to commit to more ambitious pledges and enforce the execution of them? The limited representation of many delegations from MENA countries at COP, including some of the most water-scarce countries in the region, raises concerns about the outcomes of the negotiations. Since the conflict-affected MENA countries are very consumed with their local economic and political challenges, the capabilities of these countries to address the climate crisis at COP27 are certainly going to be limited.

While some countries are being represented by delegations made up of several dozens of negotiators and experts, conflict-afflicted countries from the MENA region only have a few delegates to cover an agenda with so many key topics. They’ll likely, therefore, have less negotiating power to tackle and influence the outcomes of the more controversial topics on the agenda, including climate financing and loss and damage.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 | 11:17 AM WASHINGTON | 6:17 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Public capital is key to funding solutions to the “energy trilemma”

By Susan Flanagan

It is abundantly clear that achieving net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century is necessary to avoid the worst climate outcomes. However, the path to decarbonizing the energy sector is not “one-size-fits-all” between developed and developing markets. Given the historical tensions between developed economies, which modernized with fossil fuels, and developing economies, now being asked to forgo this route, it is evident that sustainable, long-term global cooperation will require addressing the ”energy trilemma”—the need for the people to have access to sustainable, reliable, and affordable energy.

Sustainability is more urgent for countries hardest hit by climate change and often exposed to greater environmental risks. Reliability remains an elusive goal in many countries still working to bring basic electricity to their citizens in a secure and dependable way. Many of these developing economies also face roadblocks to electricity affordability due to weak government finances and credit, and the corresponding higher cost of capital for infrastructure development.

To drive global decarbonization and increase electrification in developing countries, policymakers and financial institutions must partner with project sponsors to tailor capital solutions that best fit each region and country.

Susan Flanagan is the president and chief executive officer of GE Energy Financial Services. GE is a supporter of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

EnergySource

Nov 8, 2022

Partner perspectives: With COP27 underway, there’s no time to waste—public capital is a key conduit to a just energy transition

By Susan Flanagan

The sheer scale of needed investments to enact the energy transition will require an unprecedented mobilization of capital. Given its unique capabilities, public capital must play a significant part in this effort.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 | 3:35 AM WASHINGTON | 10:35 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Ensuring both a just energy transition and access to affordable energy

Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz sat down with General Electric’s Roger Martella to talk about ensuring a just energy transition and decarbonization while ensuring access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable power for everyone.

“We want to help countries, particularly in emerging economies achieve these goals by focusing on bespoke solutions for each country. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach here,” Martella said. He explained that while solutions may be different in each country, they’ll all need to have the “same tools in the toolbox”: a combination of renewable energy, gas, and grid.

General Electric is a presenting partner for the Global Energy Center’s Ambitions for All project, which you can read about here.

Analysis as leaders assembled

NOVEMBER 7, 2022 | 1:43 PM WASHINGTON | 8:43 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

What’s happening beyond official negotiations?

Alongside other @AtlanticCouncil colleagues, Arsht-Rock’s Director of Global Policy @Gasteluj set the scene for COP27 and the work that goes on beyond the official negotiations https://t.co/BKdk4GBGs3 @PoliticoRyan pic.twitter.com/y1CMuml9N2
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 7, 2022

NOVEMBER 7, 2022 | 12:36 PM WASHINGTON | 7:36 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The private sector holds a lot of the cards at COP27

By Lama El Hatow

As COP27 gets underway, various platforms of engagement are taking place.

In the blue zone, countries’ official delegations are coming together to meet and negotiate on the agenda items put forth and agreed upon with the support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Glasgow, the COP26 host. These agenda items include increasing ambition on pledges for greenhouse gas emission reductions by all countries to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, making progress on climate adaptation and ways to propel it forward, boosting climate finance and pushing developed countries to meet their financing commitments of $100 billion per year, and discussing a mechanism for loss and damage payments. The delegations agreed on Saturday to include the loss and damage fund as part of the agenda; it’s considered a huge win for the Global South that is most vulnerable to and at risk from climate change impacts.

Meanwhile, the green zone is designated for civil-society pavilions, where various ministries from Egypt elsewhere can showcase their work; it is also a culture and arts hub for participants to network and have side events outside the negotiation rooms.

Additionally, there is a third zone this year: The Climate Action Innovation Zone, which has been set up as a private-sector hub for companies and corporations from around the world to showcase their work through exhibitions, side events, and networking sessions. Many of the region’s largest players including Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power and Neom, the United Arab Emirates’ IRENA, and Egypt’s TAQA Arabia are all present on the sidelines of COP27 to discuss technology and innovation that sets the stage for a smoother green transition. Adjacent to the climate innovation zone is the Saudi Green Initiative, which also has its own designated area to showcase its work.

While the world focuses on the blue zone with government pledges and commitments, it appears the private sector holds a lot of the cards in this convening. As UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP27, Mahmoud Mohieldin reiterated that nonstate actors need to lead the way with regard to climate finance. It appears the role of the private sector and the deals happening on the outskirts of the COP may help set the stage for advancement in climate technology, innovation, and even financing.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 7, 2022 | 11:23 AM WASHINGTON | 6:23 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from the Singapore Pavilion: How to build cities resilient to heat

Kurt Shickman, director of Extreme Heat Initiatives at our Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, shared his readout from an event with the Mayor of Monterrey, Mexico, Luis Donaldo Colosio and Athens Chief Heat Officer Eleni Myrivili about the best solutions for managing extreme heat in cities.

Watch more

Live from #COP27 ! @ArshtRock‘s Global #ChiefHeatOfficer @LenioMyrivili & City Champion for Heat Action Mayor @colosioriojas joined @RCitiesNetwork to share climate resilience lessons from cities. Our Director for Extreme Heat @KurtShickman shares his key takeaways. Watch now pic.twitter.com/XPw0lsEtvT
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 7, 2022

Gearing up for COP27

NOVEMBER 5, 2022 | 3:13 PM WASHINGTON | 10:13 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How a lack of energy security will impact the speed and impact of the energy transition

As today’s energy crisis intensifies, Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz points out that a lack of energy security will slow the energy transition and spell trouble for ensuring affordable energy is accessible for all. “The world is short energy,” he writes, “now and over the next decade.” That calls for investment across the board—in zero-carbon energy sources and also oil and gas, he argues.

Read the thread

Policymakers must accept the path to climate progress starts with inclusivity. Unlike in prior decades, the bulwark of industry now accepts that the energy transition is real. They are engineers, put them to work. 8/x
— Landon Derentz (@Landon_Derentz) November 5, 2022

NOVEMBER 4, 2022 | 3:30 PM WASHINGTON | 10:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The new partnership financing a just energy transition in emerging economies

By Christopher Cassidy, Rainer Quitzow, and Maia Sparkman

As the global community convenes for COP27, Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) are poised to play an expanded role in financing the energy transitions of emerging economies. Conceived as multi-donor agreements to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired power plants, JETPs first gained attention at COP26 with the announcement of the Just Energy Transition Partnership with South Africa, an $8.5-billion venture between the governments of South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the European Union. Since then, several other countries have expressed interest in their own JETPs, presenting an opportunity to drastically reduce global coal emissions. Nonetheless, while JETPs may represent an avenue for increased climate engagement with high-emitting emerging economies, they also face several key challenges moving forward.

Despite those challenges, JETPs bear the potential to represent a turning point in the climate finance agenda. By combining funding from several major Group of Seven (G7) donor countries, they not only offer substantial financial support to partner countries, but they also send an important political signal. To be sure, the sums under discussion only represent a fraction of the capital needed to reach the needed scale of investment to place these countries on a pathway that is compatible with the 1.5 degree Celsius target. Nevertheless, the hope is that they can lend additional momentum to ongoing reform efforts.

EnergySource

Nov 4, 2022

Just Energy Transition Partnerships: Will COP27 deliver for emerging economies?

By Christopher Cassidy, Rainer Quitzow, and Maia Sparkman

The JETP model is poised to deliver results in South Africa. Now, at COP27 and beyond, the true test will be translating the model to other country contexts.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

NOVEMBER 4, 2022 | 9:30 AM WASHINGTON | 4:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The West must rethink its development strategy to help electrify the African continent

By William Tobin and Maia Sparkman

Electricity access in Africa is in a dire state, and progress is being reversed. Outside of North Africa, around half of the population is electrified, and the electrification rate has decreased by 4 percent since 2019.

This problem is self-perpetuating. When energy infrastructure is weak, there is less signal to invest as individual projects are less viable and are deemed riskier, particularly by the private sector, which has historically provided around 10 percent of infrastructure funding across the continent. Infrastructure, in this sense, should be expanded beyond the state of electricity grids or gas pipelines to include public services such as trained utility workers, water resources, public safety and security forces, and much more.

It is becoming clearer that the paradigm of “aid,” which has underpinned Western countries’ development strategies in the African continent, is increasingly insufficient. Providing aid alone to African nations will not provide the tools and enablers of self-sustaining, endogenous growth. For that, the continent needs investment, not just aid.

EnergySource

Nov 4, 2022

To meet energy security and climate goals, Africa needs investment in infrastructure

By William Tobin, Maia Sparkman

To this point, Western engagement in Africa has primarily taken the form of aid. For the continent to achieve widespread electrification and form the foundation for robust economic growth, that engagement will need to morph into investment and partnership.

Africa Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 3, 2022 | 9:00 AM WASHINGTON | 4:00 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

What leaders at COP27 should take away from the World Energy Outlook

By Emily Burlinghaus

The International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook (WEO), released last week, is historic in its first-ever presentation of a scenario where fossil fuels peak or plateau based on prevailing policy settings. But despite the cause to celebrate, the global transition to net-zero carbon emissions remains precarious. Developing countries are most vulnerable to the effects of both climate change and capital and resource restrictions. Meanwhile, global conflict and supply chain disruptions threaten national efforts to ensure food security, meet energy demand, and deploy resilience and adaptation measures. The WEO serves as a roadmap for where and how countries can allocate money at COP27 to maximize impact and ensure that no country is left behind.

EnergySource

Nov 3, 2022

The IEA World Energy Outlook 2022 highlights climate finance needs ahead of COP27

By Emily Burlinghaus

The new IEA World Energy Outlook 2022 should be used as a roadmap at COP27 for the allocation of climate-oriented resources. Doing so would better enable developing nations to ride the wave of interest in clean technologies amid the global energy crisis and share in the benefits of the transition.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 1, 2022 | 10:04 AM WASHINGTON | 5:04 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How Europe can reclaim international climate leadership at COP27

By Michał Kurtyka and Paddy Ryan

COP27 will be uncomfortable for Europe. The continent’s energy crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine has upended the lofty objectives set at COP26. In Glasgow, the European Investment Bank and over a dozen European states pledged to cease financing fossil fuel projects abroad. Now, Europe is scouring the globe for new gas supply, pricing out poorer nations while maintaining opposition towards their development of reserves for domestic use. Europeans stand accused of climate hypocrisy, charges likely to be echoed at a COP notable for taking place in Africa.

Europe needs gas, and will for some time. The continent must reconcile short-term efforts to source new imports with long-term climate ambitions. Through more constructive gas diplomacy with the developing world and by accelerating domestic decarbonization, Europe can begin to repair its damaged climate credibility in Sharm el Sheikh. Doing so, Europe can reclaim international climate leadership by advancing low-carbon, energy-secure growth with partners in Africa and the developing world.

EnergySource

Nov 1, 2022

How Europe can salvage its climate credibility at COP27

By Michał Kurtyka and Paddy Ryan

Europe’s recent energy policies have begotten accusations of climate hypocrisy, as the continent blocks access to financing for gas projects in developing countries yet scours those countries for gas supplies for its own use. At COP27, Europe can—and should—responsibly reconcile those contradictions.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 1, 2022 | 4:00 PM WASHINGTON | 11:00 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Will the West’s competition with China get in the way of a clean-energy future?

By Joseph Webster and William Tobin

China uneasily straddles both sides of the energy transition. On the one hand, China is indisputably a world leader in numerous clean energy technologies, including electric vehicles, renewable generation, and supply chains. On the other hand, it is also the world’s largest carbon emitter and coal producer, and is constructing over half of the world’s new coal-powered electricity plants. With Western-China tensions rising and Beijing increasingly focused on energy security, there is a shrinking scope for climate cooperation. Perversely, however, US-China political competition could deliver climate benefits, as both sides will face pressure to provide clean energy leadership at COP27 and beyond.

At COP27, Western leaders will need to grapple with the emerging reality that two competing climate camps may be forming, one led by the West and another by China.

Not only will this dynamic unfold as a competition between economies in China and the West, but as a paradigm of global engagement and investment on climate mitigation and adaptation, particularly with respect to engagement with the developing world. For instance, in Africa, China’s trade volumes exceeded the United States’ by a factor of four. Moreover, China has not shied away from financing fossil fuel projects that rank high on the priority list of less developed countries with limited energy access. This has been welcomed by many African nations, as 43 percent of all people on the continent do not have access to modern energy services.

As the developing and developed world seek to resolve key issues on the agenda at COP27 such as loss and damages, closing the climate finance gap, and financing for natural gas projects in Africa, Western leaders will need to keep in mind that competition with China is likely to become a more prominent feature of climate negotiations.

EnergySource

Nov 1, 2022

China’s energy security realities and COP27 ambitions

By Joseph Webster, William Tobin

China will enter COP27 firmly playing both sides of the energy transition. The country is a global leader in clean technologies, but it is also pouring money into new coal plants and production. Beijing may have to choose between its climate aspirations and its coal realities to compete successfully with the West.

China Energy & Environment

OCTOBER 13, 2022 | 8:28 AM WASHINGTON | 3:28 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Cairo’s next steps forward on climate adaptation and human rights at COP27

By Shahira Amin

Skeptics are questioning Egypt’s leadership of COP27, citing human rights concerns and unideal environmental policies. Others are doubtful about the choice of Sharm el Sheikh as the host city. They argue that the holiday resort may not be the most suitable venue for a global conference of this magnitude and scale, given the logistical, organizational, and managerial challenges of hosting such a gathering.

Nevertheless, the opportunity to host COP27 has incentivized Cairo to take steps forward in regard to climate adaptation and human rights, even if a lot more needs to be done to show that authorities are serious about political and environmental reforms. Meanwhile, continued financial and moral support from the United States and other development partners—and further scrutiny of human rights violations committed—would ensure there’s no backtracking on the country’s progress in the past year.

Cairo needs to keep the momentum going and show that it is actually committed to continuing the progress made so far. To do this, it needs to speed up its green transition, taking steady and concrete steps to lower its emissions and shift towards renewables. Moreover, Cairo needs to free all political detainees, many of whom are imprisoned for nothing more than exercising their right to free speech and free expression. By doing so, it can expect to reap the rewards of its serious efforts: greater support from the international community and prosperity and stability for Egypt and all Egyptians.

MENASource

Oct 13, 2022

Egypt has made some progress on human rights and the environment in preparation for COP27. But there’s still more to be done.

By Shahira Amin

Skeptics are questioning Egypt’s leadership of the climate talks, citing human rights concerns and unideal environmental policies.

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022 | 8:28 AM WASHINGTON | 3:28 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

What Egypt’s COP presidency means for how this conference may play out

By Lama El Hatow

Egypt has a huge role to play during its presidency of COP27, as all eyes will be geared towards how the country can lead by example. To put things in perspective, with 1.3 percent of the world’s population, Egypt accounts for only 0.6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and ranks twenty-eighth on the global list of polluters. This number appears to be relatively small from a global perspective. Regionally, however, Egypt contributes 31 percent of the overall GHG emissions from North Africa and 13 percent of the overall GHG emissions from the entire African continent. Thus, Egypt has a great responsibility to establish a pathway towards a green energy transition.

This year, Egypt’s presidency for COP27 is very important as a middle-income, African, and Middle Eastern country hosting this event. Egypt may, therefore, be able to influence the agenda items and bring more focus to Africa’s increasing needs for adaptation and mitigation financing.

There are four main items at the top of the agenda: climate finance, adaptation, loss and damage, and increased ambition. Egypt has a significant role to play in all of them.

MENASource

Sep 22, 2022

Egypt is hosting COP27. What are the expectations?

By Lama El Hatow

As the host country for the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Egypt has a huge role to play during its presidency of the event, as all eyes will be geared towards how the country can lead by example.

Energy & Environment Middle East

The post Live updates from COP27 as leaders battle climate change amid global crises appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Putin’s failing Ukraine invasion proves Russia is no superpower

Taras Kuzio — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 19:09:17 +0000

For centuries, Russia has seen itself as one of the world’s great powers. This superpower status was somewhat sullied by the humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse, but post-Soviet Russia has worked hard under Vladimir Putin to reclaim its position among the leading nations on the global stage. During the first two decades of his reign, Putin won plaudits for rebuilding Russia’s military and economic might, and was credited with returning the country to the top table of international affairs. However, his disastrous invasion of Ukraine has now done much to reverse this progress by exposing the deep dysfunction and hollow boasts that lie behind the facade of Russia’s superpower pretensions.

Russia’s weakness has not come as a total surprise. Ever since the fall of the USSR, Western commentators have noted the debilitating impact of corruption at every level of the modern Russian state. In recent decades, some have branded the Putin regime a “mafia state,” where the boundaries between the authorities and organized crime are blurred.

Corruption has flourished under Putin amid a climate of stagnation inherited from the late Soviet era. Unlike Ukraine, post-Soviet Russia has never undergone de-communization or acknowledged the need to reject the Soviet legacy. Instead, Putin has rehabilitated the Soviet era and placed the Red Army’s role in the defeat of Nazi Germany at the heart of his vision for a modern Russian national identity. Efforts to honor the memory of Stalin’s victims have been silenced and attempts to acknowledge the crimes of the USSR drowned out by a victory cult that has elevated the Soviet World War II experience to the level of religious cult and re-established Josef Stalin as a national hero. In 2020, Putin condemned Russians to a further sixteen years of stagnation when he staged a referendum on constitutional reforms that made it possible to extend his reign until 2036.

From politics to the economy, the consequences of widespread corruption and stagnation can be seen throughout Russian society. Crucially, this negative impact is also highly visible in the invasion of Ukraine. Whereas Ukrainian troops have repeatedly demonstrated the kind of initiative and leadership that one would expect from a society shaped by two post-Soviet pro-democracy revolutions, the Russian military remains hamstrung by a deeply hierarchical system and rigid chain of command.

On the eve of this year’s invasion, the Russian military was widely touted as the world’s number two army, but such claims have been brutally debunked by subsequent events in Ukraine. Putin’s army has been exposed in almost every department, from poor leadership and outdated tactics to equally out-of-date equipment. Chronic corruption within the Russian Ministry of Defense has hampered military logistics, with soldiers in many instances receiving kit dating from the 1970s or earlier. It has also become painfully obvious that many of the vehicles and weapons listed as part of the vast Russian arsenal exist on paper only. With the war now in its ninth month, chronic supply problems mean that Russia is now increasingly reliant on Iran for drones that it is unable to produce itself.

These shortcomings have highlighted the cosmetic nature of the much-vaunted military reforms carried out by Russia over the past two decades. In reality, the Russian army under Putin remains largely a Soviet relic with a distinctively Soviet political culture that allows Russian commanders to treat soldiers with contempt. This lack of consideration for troops has been particularly evident in the treatment of recently mobilized Russians, many of whom have been sent to the front in Ukraine with minimal training and inadequate equipment.

The human price of Russia’s military failures in Ukraine has been exceptionally high. An estimated 70,000 Russian soldiers have been killed during the first eight months of the invasion, according to the latest Ukrainian Ministry of Defense data. While this figure is disputed, even the most conservative independent analysis indicates tens of thousands of Russian casualties. This makes the invasion of Ukraine far deadlier than the nine-year Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, which resulted in the loss of 15,000 Soviet troops and has been widely cited as a contributing factor in the collapse of the USSR.

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The invasion of Ukraine has also revealed other areas where today’s Russia falls well short of superpower status. Unlike China and other rising powers, Russia has never diversified or modernized its economy. Instead, the country’s ruling elites have prioritized the accumulation of staggering personal fortunes. As a result, today’s Russia remains heavily dependent on commodities exports and has no technological equivalent of China’s Huawei or South Korea’s Samsung. With sanctions imposed in response to the invasion of Ukraine restricting access to a range of cutting-edge tech, Russia has struggled to produce sophisticated weapons and has in some instances reportedly resorted to cannibalizing elements of household appliances.

Russia’s excessive economic reliance on the export of energy and arms now looks to have been even more of a strategic blunder as international demand plummets due to the invasion of Ukraine. The EU has weaned itself off Russian gas earlier than expected and will enter 2023 with a high degree of independence from the Kremlin’s energy blackmail. With European customers turning away from Russian energy, Moscow will struggle to find sufficient alternative buyers for gas in the coming year as Russia has not invested in LNG.

Meanwhile, Russia’s defense industry also faces bleak prospects. The often abysmal performance of the Russian military in Ukraine has been a PR disaster for Russian arms exporters, who must now explain why their products are so technologically inferior. Numerous traditional clients have already cancelled weapons contracts. More are expected to follow suit.

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Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, Russia has become something of an international pariah. The entire Western world has condemned Moscow’s actions while even traditional allies such as China and India have offered muted criticism. Only a handful of fellow pariahs such as Syria, North Korea, and Nicaragua have been prepared to stand with Russia and back Moscow at the United Nations. In the former Soviet region, only Belarus has voted with Russia at the UN.

This international isolation has highlighted the fundamental weakness of Russia’s geopolitical position and the absence of any meaningful message behind Moscow’s anti-Western posturing. Putin’s attempts to position Russia as a champion of traditional values have failed to resonate. In reality, abortion, divorce, suicide, and alcoholism rates are all significantly higher in Russia than in most European countries. Russians have a far shorter life expectancy and are poorer on average than their European neighbors. This poverty is reflected in the mass plundering of household goods from Ukrainian homes, with Russian soldiers stealing everything from washing machines to used underwear.

The war has also revealed the limitations of Russian soft power, with Western audiences in particular overwhelmingly rejecting Russian attempts to justify the invasion. Even in regions with strong historic links to Russia such as the the South Caucasus and Central Asia, audiences have treated Kremlin narratives with deep distrust.

Despite massive investment in media operations, the invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the limitations of Kremlin disinformation. In the West, Moscow has largely been preaching to the converted and has failed to move beyond a minority audience driven primarily by anti-Americanism and conspiratorial thinking. The picture is similar in the political sphere. As the recent election of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has shown, Russian support for right-wing populists and nationalists has not led to any major breakthroughs in European politics.

The war in Ukraine has ruthlessly revealed Putin’s Russia as a Potemkin Great Power. Like the Potemkin villages erected along the banks of Ukraine’s Dnipro River in the late eighteenth century to impress visiting Russian Empress Katherine the Great, Russia’s much-hyped revival under Putin is in fact a masterly facade designed to disguise a far less impressive reality. This illusion has now been shattered by the harsh realities of Europe’s largest armed conflict since World War II.

Russia is heading toward an historic defeat in Ukraine that will have profound ramifications for the way Russians view their state and themselves. Defeat in Ukraine will undermine the imperial identity that defines Putin’s Russia. It will force the Russian public to belatedly confront decades of nationalistic myth-making by their own rapacious elites. It is still far too early to predict what kind of Russia will emerge from the wreckage of Putin’s Ukraine invasion, but it already looks unlikely that anyone will continue to view the country as one of the world’s superpowers.

Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and author of the forthcoming book “Fascism and Genocide. Russia’s War Against Ukrainians.”

The ITU election pitted the United States and Russia against each other for the future of the internet

Konstantinos Komaitis and Justin Sherman — Thu, 29 Sep 2022 19:17:56 +0000

Earlier this morning, the 193 member states of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations’ (UN) tech agency and oldest institution, elected as Secretary-General the American candidate Doreen Bogdan-Martin, the first-ever woman to head the ITU. Bogdan-Martin is the current head of the ITU’s development bureau, ITU-D. Her now-former opponent, Russian candidate Rashid Ismailov, is president of Russian telecom VimpelCom, former deputy minister of Russia’s Ministry of Communications, and a former executive at Chinese telecom company Huawei. The current Secretary-General is Houlin Zhao, a Chinese citizen who has held the position since 2014.¹

Many challenges to an open and global internet lie ahead, and the US win should provide a sigh of relief to the internet community. Nonetheless, the way the election for the ITU’s leadership unfolded underscores how internet governance processes, international internet policymaking, and internet standards creation are becoming increasingly political issues. In an unprecedented move, for instance, both US President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted messages in support of the US candidate.

For the United States, it was evident that this election was a foreign policy issue—and rightly so. Over the years, the Russian and Chinese governments have grown closer in pushing for a state-controlled vision of internet governance, and both have long wished to see the UN play a central role in the management of the internet. Their vision is gaining traction, especially among African countries, which have historically felt excluded from internet governance conversations and see the ITU as one of the few places they can wield political power. In addition, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine might have strained Russia’s relationship with the West, but for many other parts of the world, it remains business as usual.

At the center of the election, therefore, was indeed the future role of the ITU in governing the internet. The organization currently has little involvement, but some governments maintain an interest in the ITU becoming more central to the process. Presently, internet governance is largely the purview of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a nonprofit, multi-stakeholder internet standards-setting body, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a nonprofit that, along with five regional internet registries, manages domain names and internet protocol (IP) addresses globally. This governance system, though imperfect, works because it is agile, inclusive of industry and civil society, and not directly subject to intergovernmental negotiations and maneuvering. It has worked based on a relatively common objective among these institutions: an open, global, and interoperable internet.

However, not every country buys into this system. A number of countries, including Russia, China, and some in both Africa and the Asia-Pacific, look at the ITU as a more appropriate institution to manage the internet. Its broad development agenda has allowed the organization to become increasingly active on issues as wide-ranging as cybersecurity, connectivity, cybercrime, IP number allocation, and network management. At the same time, for decades, the Chinese government and the Russian government have both pushed for the ITU to have a greater role in governing the internet, from suggesting that the ITU literally take over ICANN to pushing for internet standards-setting to move to the ITU almost entirely. The United States, Japan, Australia, Germany, South Korea, and other open-internet supporters have managed to push back, but the tides may be shifting. More governments are adopting a “cyber sovereignty” approach that seeks to increase their perceived decision-making power or increase government surveillance online (or both).

The stakes in the election, therefore, were high. A Russian-led, China-friendly ITU would, most likely, have sought more control over the internet; and from Moscow and Beijing’s past efforts, standards development is one of the likeliest routes. The Chinese government already knows this and has been working towards such a goal with its “New IP,” a proposal that seeks to centralize core functions of networking. The proposal has persisted in the ITU’s study groups for the past two years, and it has recently moved to another study group dealing with issues of the environment. Beijing has even renamed the standard “IPv6+” to repackage the same, top-down protocol proposal as merely a technological advancement. In a similar vein, China, at another study group, submitted a proposal for the standardization of the “metaverse.” In such a volatile environment, Ismailov’s victory would increase the likelihood of passage of government-controlling-internet proposals at the ITU.

Heavy government involvement in standards setting with Russia at the ITU’s helm would be catastrophic for the internet. Presently, internet standards follow an open, participatory process and are voluntarily adopted on a global level; they serve as the building blocks for products and services targeted to meet the needs of consumers and the market. Now, try to imagine 193 different states negotiating standards about, say, privacy or security; the pace and the formality of an organization like the ITU cannot support the technical specificity and informality that is required by internet standards setting. Not to mention, the same issues that have plagued UN cyber norms discussions will become more prominent in the ITU: the Russian and Chinese government pushing for an expansive definition of terms like “information security” or “cybercrime” that allow them to promote censorship and surveillance under the guise of international security.

In order, therefore, to preserve an internet that is relatively open and globally connected while navigating the processes and politics at play, the ITU needed a leader who understands the value of collaboration and bottom-up coordination when it comes to the internet. The United States can deliver on this; Russia cannot.

For Russia, the UN has always been a core part of its internet governance strategy. Although its pushes over the last thirty-or-so years for more UN involvement were unsuccessful, in 2019, Russia achieved an unexpected win when it managed to get the votes for a cybercrime treaty at the UN General Assembly. The Kremlin’s tech envoy celebrated this as a significant win and a sign of Russia’s influence in the UN. For Moscow, this moves a step closer to a multipolar world in which the Russian government takes a more central role. The US victory means Russia doesn’t yet have the votes to continue on this trajectory.

Even with Bogdan-Martin prevailing, it will be a rough road ahead to maintain an ITU that respects existing internet processes and institutions, while also trying to drive genuine progress in areas like internet development and capacity-building (which Bogdan-Martin presently leads at the ITU). Beijing and Moscow will not sit on the sidelines, as the past decades have shown. Not having a voting bloc to pass resolutions has not stopped the Chinese and Russian governments from “flooding the zone” with proposals before. But without a doubt, navigating a rough road with a US leader at the helm, experienced in internet development and a believer in an open internet, is better than cutting the brakes entirely.

Authors

Konstantinos Komaitis (@kkomaitis) is an internet policy expert and author.

Justin Sherman (@jshermcyber) is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative.

The Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, under the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), works at the nexus of geopolitics and cybersecurity to craft strategies to help shape the conduct of statecraft and to better inform and secure users of technology.

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1 Although several candidates, representing different countries, could theoretically run at once, the US and Russian governments were the only ones to throw a candidate’s hat in the ring.

The post The ITU election pitted the United States and Russia against each other for the future of the internet appeared first on Atlantic Council.

From the UN to The Late Show, Ukraine’s diplomats are winning

Pete Shmigel — Mon, 26 Sep 2022 15:35:53 +0000

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba delivered one of the more memorable quotes of the war during his recent visit to New York. Commenting on Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s hasty departure from a United Nations Security Council session on Ukraine, Kuleba quipped, “I also noted today that Russian diplomats flee almost as aptly as Russian soldiers.”

Just hours after Kuleba’s instantly viral one-liner hit social media, he was starring on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Ukraine’s top diplomat received a rousing reception on the flagship US talk show, including a standing ovation from the studio audience in honor of the Ukrainian people and the country’s armed forces. Speaking with dignity, candor, and a dash of humor, Kuleba concisely expressed Ukraine’s view of the Russian invasion in a nine-minute interview that was hailed as a masterclass in public diplomacy.

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister’s strong showing in New York was a good example of the innovative approaches that are enabling Ukraine to gain the upper hand over Russia on the diplomatic front. In many ways, this confrontation is a generational clash between two very different diplomatic schools. While Russia is still represented by a Soviet-era generation of diplomats epitomized by 72-year-old Cold War veteran Sergei Lavrov, Ukrainian diplomats who came of age in the post-Soviet era are embracing new methods and achieving considerable success.

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Ukraine’s wartime diplomacy has already delivered numerous significant results. These include securing the largest military support for any ally since World War II, along with unprecedented sanctions against Russia and other measures to increase Moscow’s international isolation. With the war now in its eighth month, the broad alliance of international partnerships created and nurtured by Ukrainian diplomats shows no signs of weakening.

What has Ukrainian diplomacy been doing differently in support of the country’s strategic interests? Based on personal interaction with and observation of Ukrainian diplomats at work, several aspects of Ukraine’s new diplomacy are noteworthy.

One key feature is empowerment. I first met Dmytro Kuleba when he was an advisor to the Ukrainian President a few years before his 2020 appointment as the country’s Foreign Minister. At the time, he gave the impression of a thoroughly modern person. It was also clear that Kuleba feels entirely at home as a manager of issues, relationships, and teams. In concert with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, he appears to be providing explicit direction to Ukraine’s diplomats in the form of specific, country-based military support goals. This approach is combined with an expectation of proactivity on the part of individual ambassadors.

Thirty years after Ukraine’s independence, Kuleba is presiding over the final dismantling of the inherited Soviet diplomatic corps, which was notoriously clunky, bureaucratic, and sometimes truly under-skilled. Amid the pressure and pace of a full-blown war, a new organizational culture is emerging at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that includes self-belief, positivity, and an emphasis on initiative.

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Savvy communication is at the heart of Ukraine’s diplomatic progress. As part of their empowerment, Ukraine’s current generation of diplomats have strong license to communicate. Ministry officials in Kyiv and Ukrainian ambassadors around the world are now routinely using a wide array of contemporary channels including social media, traditional mass media, stakeholder relations, and cultural ties in order to build Ukraine’s image and articulate the country’s wartime needs. The innovative and often unorthodox use of social media by Ukrainian officials has won particular praise.

Ukraine’s clever communication is very sensitive to the cultural norms and expectations of individual audiences. Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko noted recently that media skills are now central to successful diplomacy. “The impact of the full-scale Russian invasion on Ukraine’s diplomacy can be compared to the influence of COVID-19 on digital transformation,” he commented. “One of the key changes has been in the communications sphere. The ability of our ambassadors to provide compelling arguments for why a host nation should support Ukraine has played an important role in rallying military assistance. Being media savvy and fully proficient in the local language is no longer just an advantage. It is a must at times of war.”

Ukraine’s diplomatic engagement with partner governments and international audiences is particularly important in terms of the struggle against Russian disinformation. While Russian embassies often serve as hubs for anti-Ukrainian fakes and efforts to weaken Western unity, Ukraine’s diplomatic corps has framed its communication as accessible, reasonable, fact-based, and engagingly human. Today’s Ukrainian diplomats are not afraid to demonstrate a sense of humor or employ pop culture references in ways that would have shocked their stuffy Soviet predecessors.

This positive framing of Ukraine, Ukrainians, and their future is attractive and encourages international audiences to engage. Modern communications studies consistently show that how you communicate, especially in terms of tonality and timing, is as important as the actual message you are communicating. This is a lesson Ukrainian diplomats have clearly learned.

Ukraine’s wartime embrace of public diplomacy has been particularly striking. The country’s diplomats are now regularly in newspapers, on TV, at conferences, and in corporate boardrooms articulating their country’s needs and making the case for further support. This approach is designed to reach not only political partners, policy experts, and diplomatic representatives, but also the general public. Ukraine’s emphasis of public diplomacy reflects an awareness that public opinion in democracies is critical to maintaining policy support.

The success of Ukraine’s wartime diplomacy is rooted in the same progressive values that are helping the country to advance on the battlefield and as a young democracy. These values reflect a nation that feels increasingly at ease with itself and confident of its position as part of the wider democratic world. Ukrainian diplomats are winning because they have a winning story to tell and the skills to do so effectively. Their progress mirrors Ukraine’s historic coming of age over the past seven months and captures the spirit of a country that is finally finding its voice on the international stage.

Pete Shmigel is an Australian writer with a background in politics, mental health, and Ukrainian issues.

Here are three places to start:

First, the multilateral system needs to be restructured from closed to more collaborative, with more trust-building cooperation between regional and global organizations. While the UN’s work with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is a good illustration of regular and active cooperation, today’s networked world calls for increased efforts. They must be framed within a broader multilateralist discussion that fosters inclusivity and provides a mechanism for regional concerns to be fed into policy decisions. Partnerships like this need to be guided by pragmatism, with each organization building on its strengths. Regional organizations, for instance, have historical ties and can be more capable of implementing global policies due to their knowledge of regional challenges. More interactions between the UN and regional organizations will build trust, maximize efficiency across all UN domains, and establish knowledge-transfer mechanisms. To put this vision into practice, an independent expert body should map out the regional organizations’ capabilities in different areas such as security and conflict resolution. Then, the UN should establish an official partnership with selected regional organizations, which could include regular meetings between the leaders of members of the UN Security Council and heads of the regional organization, or an annual meeting for top UN officials from the Security Council, General Assembly, UN agencies, and all regional organizations.

Second, the Bretton Woods Institutions must utilize their capabilities to enhance investments in global public goods. These are broadly shared, non-exclusive benefits such as the environment, health, peace, security, and technology. In today’s interconnected global economy, climate change, pandemics, financial crises, and regional conflicts create cascading challenges across borders, with the most acute effects often felt among the poorest countries and marginalized communities. Investing in global public goods will compete with traditional financial assistance. However, today’s agenda has shifted from country-specific issues to global ones. This requires multilateral banks to pivot away from their traditional country-focused models and prioritize global public goods investments. This is crucial for promoting the sustainable advancement of poor and rich countries, enabling inclusive economic growth, and reducing poverty and inequality. One way to accomplish this is through enhanced partnerships with regional development banks to facilitate public goods investments in low-income countries.

Third, the new multilateralism must embrace its global role in driving data governance and the digital economy. While data presents incredible opportunities, it also poses risks in terms of misuse and cybersecurity. There are many governments attempting to leverage the global digital economy for domestic economic growth, but dozens of governments have enacted measures that prevent data from flowing across borders. Multilateral organizations such as the WTO should establish data-governance frameworks and common standards to combat the trend of data localization and foster cross-border data sharing and public-private data collaboration. They should also play a role in helping governments maintain a strong national statistical system, develop talent, and foster cybersecurity solutions and data-governance policies. Also, more actions are needed to enable governments to utilize data ecosystems. For instance, the UN Development Program and the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology are promoting the concept of open technology, This concept aims to enable the development of solutions that are made available for anyone to adapt. Examples are digital public goods (DPGs), such as open source software, and digital public infrastructure (DPIs), such as payment systems. Moving forward, it is key to further develop country capacity, which requires multilateral actors to come together so that no one is left behind in the deployment of DPGs-DPIs.

The world leaders gathering in New York this week face a world growing more volatile by the day—and they are acting within a system ill-equipped to handle the moment. To meet today’s challenges and take advantage of tomorrow’s opportunities, they must change how they work and rethink multilateralism.

Yomna Gaafar is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center.

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Atlantic Council to honor heads of state, artistic and business leaders at 11th Atlantic Council Global Citizen Awards

msmallman — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 14:46:19 +0000

Highlight of UN General Assembly Week honors individuals who make unique contributions towards improving the world

NEW YORK –SEPTEMBER 19, 2022—The Atlantic Council today announced that the 11th Atlantic Council Global Citizen Awards will honor the President of the Republic of Indonesia Joko Widodo; President of the Republic of Finland Sauli Niinistö; Prime Minister of Sweden Magdalena Andersson; Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai; and Academy Award-winning actor and humanitarian Forest Whitaker.

The honorees will be recognized at a ceremony this evening, September 19, on the margins of United Nations General Assembly week in New York. The event celebrates unique individuals who embody the notion of global citizenship, and has traditionally brought together a high-level international audience of current and former heads of state, United Nations ambassadors, members of the US administration, global business leaders, and world-renowned artists.

“The concept of global citizenship takes on new importance and urgency as we’ve passed through a period of pandemic, Putin’s war in Ukraine and a host of other challenges and opportunities around the world,” said Frederick Kempe, president and CEO of the Atlantic Council. “By shining a light on these remarkable individuals, we hope to draw attention to their leadership as well as inspire others’ contributions to shaping a better global future.”

President Widodo will be honored for his leadership during Indonesia’s G-20 Presidency, efforts to build bridges to end the devastating war in Ukraine, as well as his advocacy for human rights, democracy, and a greater global health architecture. Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum, will present the award, which will be accepted on Widodo’s behalf by Indonesian Minister for Foreign Affairs Retno L. P. Marsudi.

President Niinistö and Prime Minister Andersson will both be recognized for their countries’ historic decision to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This choice serves as a significant contribution to the alliance’s security and capabilities, and transatlantic unity. Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt will present the award to both leaders, which will be accepted in-person by Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto and Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde, respectively.

Pichai will receive the Global Citizen Award in recognition of his exceptional leadership of Google’s response to Russia’s continuing war in Ukraine, commitment to digital resilience, and ongoing support for refugees and displaced people throughout the world. Professor Schwab will also present Pichai with his award.

Whitaker, as the Founder and CEO of the Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative and Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation for UNESCO, will be honored not only for his artistic achievements, but also for his dedication to social activism and empowerment of the next generation of global leaders. Whitaker will be presented with the award by Hans Vestberg, chairman and CEO of Verizon.

This year’s event will also feature tributes to the late Shinzo Abe, former Prime Minister of Japan and 2016 Global Citizen Award recipient, as well as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

This event is on-the-record and open to press. To request accreditation or for additional details, please email press@atlanticcouncil.org.

Follow @AtlanticCouncil and use #ACAwards for live updates throughout the evening.

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Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine demands special international tribunal

Olena Khomenko — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 11:00:35 +0000

What did we do to stop Russian war crimes in Ukraine? This question inevitably comes to mind for anyone who visits the sites of recent Russian atrocities in places like Bucha and Irpin outside Kyiv.

The desire for justice is a fundamental expression of the human spirit, but the international community currently lacks the tools to hold Russia accountable. This is dangerous. If the world does not put an end to the sense of impunity fueling Russia’s genocidal invasion, we will inevitably witness further Russian crimes against humanity in Ukraine and beyond.

Over the past six months, international support has proved vital for the Ukrainian resistance. Weapons supplies have helped the Ukrainian military to stall the invasion and force Russia to retreat from large parts of the country, while financial aid has kept the Ukrainian economy afloat. It is now equally vital for the international community to make sure that Russians do not escape punishment for their war crimes in Ukraine and other flagrant violations of international law.

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American psychologist Philip Zimbardo has identified in his research that deindividualization and impunity are to a great extent responsible for mass crimes committed by soldiers in wars. This is why the inevitability of punishment has to be our guiding principle if we want to discourage new Russian atrocities in Ukraine and defend the basic human rights that form the foundation of the international security system.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a crime in itself that brutally violates the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of force against the territorial integrity of nations. Nor did this criminality begin with the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022. Russian aggression against Ukraine actually dates back to the February 2014 invasion of Crimea and has been gradually escalating ever since. Failure to respond decisively to Russia’s landmark breach of the international order eight years ago directly paved the way for what is now the largest European conflict since WWII.

Russia is already under investigation for war crimes in Ukraine. However, existing legal mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court in The Hague offer an agonizingly slow road to justice and are limited in their ability to hold the Russian Federation and individual Russian leaders fully accountable for their actions.

This is why it is so important to establish a special tribunal to prosecute Russia for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. Aggression is recognized as the “mother of all crimes” in international law as it sets the stage for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. A special tribunal focusing on the crime of aggression would make it possible to hold significant numbers of Russians individually accountable.

Charging Russian leaders with the crime of aggression would allow a special tribunal to prosecute suspects regardless of rank and effectively bypass the issue of immunity for the highest state and military officials. If we want to see Russia’s political leadership prosecuted for atrocities in Ukraine, we need to find them guilty of the crime of aggression.

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The idea of establishing a special tribunal to prosecute Russia for aggression against Ukraine was first voiced by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in March 2022. Kuleba reiterated his call for a special tribunal on September 7 following Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s latest incriminating comments on the war. “Putin has just publicly confessed to the crime of aggression against Ukraine: “We did it consciously”. I once again call on all states: back the creation of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine. The crime is in plain sight. Justice must be served,” he tweeted.

A number of international organizations have already adopted resolutions supporting the idea of a special tribunal. The list currently includes the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The Lithuanian parliament has passed a resolution backing a special tribunal. Other national parliaments are expected to follow suit in the coming months. Securing the support of more countries is a top priority.

A special tribunal would potentially be able to address the crime of aggression in a far more timely manner than the existing mechanisms for prosecuting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. There is already ample evidence to demonstrate that Russia’s political leaders are guilty of the crime of aggression based on the definition for the act of aggression adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1974.

The jurisdiction of a future special tribunal should cover all events since the February 2014 invasion and seizure of Crimea, as this marked the beginning of Russian aggression against Ukraine. The tribunal would have a mandate to investigate and prosecute both the political and military leadership of the Russian Federation.

A special tribunal would seek to complement rather than hamper or replace the work of the ICC in Ukraine. The ICC is primarily focused on war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, but experience has demonstrated that it will be difficult and time-consuming in practice to pass guilty verdicts against senior Russians and establish their personal responsibility for specific atrocities committed in Ukraine such as the mass killings in Bucha.

The ICC also faces other potential obstacles in terms of jurisdiction over the crime of aggression in relation to the situation in Ukraine. The existing rules do not allow the ICC to address Putin’s war of aggression as a crime because Russia has not ratified the Rome Statute and the relevant amendments. Meanwhile, any attempts to refer the issue to the United Nations Security Council would inevitably be vetoed by Russia.

It is only natural that some of Ukraine’s partners might be cautious about the idea of a special tribunal. This is particularly true of those Western leaders who remain under the illusion that constructive dialogue with Russia is still possible. Skeptics need to accept that Russia’s decision to launch a genocidal invasion on February 24 placed the country in direct opposition to the existing international order and the entire civilized world. It is not possible to be half-pregnant. The sooner the international community recognizes this grave reality, the better equipped we will all be to deal with it. The best way to do so is via the creation of a special tribunal for the crime of aggression against Ukraine.

Olena Khomenko is a member of the Ukrainian parliament with the Servant of the People party.

With these uncertainties in mind, we need to ask what true accountability would look like. Holding criminals accountable is meant to deter them and others from future crimes, foster reconciliation between perpetrators and victims, and promote sustainable peace. As Putin’s crimes are rooted in an historic failure to impose accountability, any legal punishments for the invasion of Ukraine would only go so far in accomplishing these goals. Prosecuting war criminals must go hand in hand with efforts to challenge the historical narrative that drove the invasion in the first place. This means confronting Russia’s imperial identity and addressing the toxic notion that Ukrainians have no right to exist as an independent nation.

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If Russia is to be held accountable, the international community must do everything possible to ensure a Ukrainian military victory and the liberation of all occupied Ukrainian land. Following Russia’s defeat on the battlefield, Ukraine will need to receive credible security guarantees offering protection equivalent to NATO membership. Likewise, Western leaders should commit to making Russia pay reparations. Above all, the war must end on Ukraine’s terms. Any attempts to push Ukraine into accepting a compromise peace would be an affront to the country’s immense sacrifices and would also fly in the face of the need for accountability. It is vital that Russia publicly recognize its guilt and acknowledge the sanctity of Ukrainian sovereignty.

One way to achieve greater accountability is by empowering Ukrainians. The international community must work to support Ukrainian society in its efforts to hold Russia accountable. This support should include everything from technical assistance to helping local civil society systematically gather evidence and document atrocities. Ukraine has a functioning legal system but it does not have nearly enough capacity to cope with the volume of war crimes committed by Russian forces over the past six months. International assistance can make a big difference.

Ukraine’s international partners should also assist in the long quest to identify all the victims of Russia’s genocide. For the average Ukrainian, anger at Putin may be something of an abstraction. Indeed, while he is the individual most directly responsible for the invasion, he is neither the soldier who pulled the trigger nor the one who launched the bombs that destroyed civilian homes, hospitals, and schools. Like genocidaires throughout history, Putin’s intent is to destroy Ukrainian culture, language, and national identity, but he does not act alone. Recognizing each and every victim is an important step towards meaningful accountability for the crimes committed against the Ukrainian nation.

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We need to consider how to target Putin’s false historical narratives at their very roots. One way to do this is to recognize, as Yale historian Timothy Snyder has said, that we need more history and less memory. While it is an open question to what extent Russians themselves bear collective responsibility for Putin’s invasion, polls indicate that a clear majority of Russians do support the war. While exact figures remain elusive, many Russians have evidently bought into Putin’s views of history. With Russia becoming an increasingly closed and authoritarian country, where does that leave those of us who want to see accountability from the inside out?

Here, we need to think beyond the immediate term. “Canceling” Russian culture is not necessarily the answer, but amplifying Ukrainians and their culture absolutely is. Getting their stories to Russians is critical, whether through technologies like VPNs or by supporting the Russian investigative journalists who have fled the country but are continuing their courageous work while based outside Russia.

Here in the West, we can work to advance public awareness, both of today’s Russian genocide and of historic Soviet crimes. This means making sure we document them in history books, teach them in schools, memorialize the victims in public places, and even recognize our own complicity in ignoring past events like the Soviet-era Holodomor famine in Ukraine.

Putin and his regime must face legal punishment for the genocidal invasion of Ukraine. But in order to achieve meaningful accountability, we must also address the unrepentant imperialism that makes it possible for Russians to dehumanize Ukrainians and destroy entire Ukrainian cities. This will require a long-term approach to historical justice that goes beyond the courtroom and seeks to strengthen every aspect of Ukrainian statehood while fundamentally challenging the way Russians view their own past.

Danielle Johnson holds a PhD in Politics from Oxford University and specializes in Russian and Ukrainian affairs.

This is well understood by Ukrainians, who appreciate that they are fighting not only for their country’s independence but for their survival as a nation. However, there are still indications that many in Europe refuse to acknowledge the scale of the Russia problem facing the international community.

The current war is not just about Ukraine. It is a struggle to determine who gets to set the rules the whole world will live by. The confrontation actually began eight years ago with the Russian occupation of Crimea. This year’s full-scale invasion marked a major escalation in Russia’s ongoing campaign to wipe Ukraine off the political map of Europe and undermine the foundations of the existing world order.

Ever since Vladimir Putin’s shameless denials during the Russian seizure of Crimea in spring 2014, the Kremlin has placed barefaced lies at the heart of its diplomacy. Moscow has routinely violated international law while protesting its innocence. The existing international institutional architecture has proved powerless when confronted by this Russian cynicism. The United Nations, the OSCE, the ICRC and others have all failed to prevent Russia from waging war and have been unable to impose meaningful consequences on the Kremlin.

Unsurprisingly, this has only served to encourage further Russian aggression. We have now reached the stage where Russia is openly waging a genocidal war while at the same time engaging in nuclear blackmail. Kremlin officials and regime proxies regularly threaten Europe with the prospect of nuclear attack, while the Russian military is currently using the seized Ukrainian atomic energy plant in Zaporizhia to hold the wider international community hostage.

It is increasingly obvious that dramatic changes are needed in order to avoid a further deterioration in the global security climate. International institutions that were founded to serve as pillars of a more civilized world have evidently lost their way and need to go back to basics.

The most recent example of this malaise was the deeply flawed report published by Amnesty International in early August, which completely failed to acknowledge the circumstances of Ukraine’s fight for survival and denied Ukrainians the right to defend themselves. The fact that Amnesty International’s report was enthusiastically embraced by the Kremlin and deployed to justify ongoing Russian war crimes in Ukraine spoke volumes about the moral morass which much of the international community now finds itself in.

The Russian invasion has also exposed the extreme reluctance among many of the world’s wealthiest and most developed nations to leave their comfort zone and defend the core principles of Western civilization. This is perhaps due to long decades of peace and rising prosperity, which have created the illusion of a world where the horrors of military aggression are consigned to the barbaric past.

Such delusions place today’s tyrants at a distinct advantage. They are able to seize the initiative and in many instances advance their agenda undetected until the damage has already been done. One good example of this trend is the international expansion of Russia’s propaganda media empire, which has grown rapidly over the past decade while many have turned a blind eye or dismissed the phenomenon as “just a dissenting opinion.” In reality, Russia has been able to establish a powerful Kremlin-controlled information apparatus dedicated to undermining Western societies from within. Countries cannot effectively defend themselves if they refuse to acknowledge they are under attack.

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The prevailing mood of denial in Europe has allowed Russian society to wholeheartedly embrace an anti-Western fascist ideology while at the same time enjoying the benefits of Western civilization. Moscow actively attacks Western values and routinely depicts the United States, NATO, and the European Union as implacable adversaries. At the same time, the Kremlin elite and Russia’s middle classes send their wives and children to live in the hated West and take advantage of Europe’s superior education and healthcare opportunities. They buy up Western real estate, invest in Western businesses, settle their disputes in Western courts, and keep their savings in the same Western currencies they preach against.

Russians have grown used to the idea that they can use violent rhetoric, violate international norms, and even invade their neighbors with impunity. They are supremely confident that Western leaders will nevertheless seek to maintain dialogue with Moscow.

This has fostered a culture of contempt. Not unreasonably, Russians believe the West has no stomach for confrontation and is utterly unable to defend the values it so readily betrays. After years of engaging with the perceived hypocrisy of the West, Russians see nothing wrong in professing their hatred for democracy while enjoying its fruits. Likewise, they are entirely comfortable calling Ukrainians “brothers” and in the same breath proclaiming that Ukraine itself cannot be allowed to exist.

Until this absurd situation is addressed, there is little hope of ending Russian aggression. Instead of viewing the country as a difficult partner or a competitor, the West must acknowledge that today’s Russia is an unambiguously hostile power that is waging war against the entire democratic world.

One key measure would be to declare Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. A small number of countries have already taken this step, but others including the United States remain reluctant. Skeptics argue that such a move would lead to unwelcome consequences that should be avoided. This is a slippery slope. Experience since 2014 demonstrates that failing to respond forcefully to Russian aggression only leads to bigger problems and higher costs further down the line. Rather than seeking compromises with a hostile power, Western leaders should designate Russia a state sponsor of terror without delay.

Europe must also deploy its considerable soft power tools to demonstrate that the days of double-dealing are over. You cannot expect to drive luxury German cars while scrawling “to Berlin” slogans on Russian tanks and parading them on state TV as symbols of national identity. You cannot expect to drink French wine or Viennese coffee while simultaneously threatening to nuke Europe.

Sanctions should be tightened and loopholes closed. Russian citizens should face a Schengen Zone tourist visa ban, with only humanitarian cases permitted to enter the EU. A wealth of evidence indicates that the vast majority of Russians support the war in Ukraine. They need to understand that they will face negative consequences for the war crimes being committed in their name.

Until the Russian middle classes begin to lose access to the trappings of Western civilization, they will continue to dismiss Western criticism of Russia as hypocritical and insincere. Once they are denied access to the privileges they previously took for granted, serious change in Russia may finally become possible. This will not happen overnight, of course. But until the current double standards are addressed, there is no chance whatsoever of Putin facing genuine domestic pressure.

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Ukraine is celebrating Independence Day for the thirty-first time this week precisely because Ukrainians are prepared to fight for their country and defend their choices. Many of our Western partners were initially guilty of underestimating the strength of Ukrainian society, much as they underestimated the transformations taking place within Ukraine’s state apparatus and the Ukrainian military.

Thankfully, this is no longer the case. Ukraine has impressed the watching world during the first six months of the Russian invasion and has received colossal support from our partners. This has included large quantities of everything from artillery and MLRS systems to armored vehicles and ammunition.

Thanks to the leadership of the United States and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III personally, the Ukraine Defence Contact Group has been established bringing together more than 50 nations in the Ramstein Format. Under the leadership of UK Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace, a series of donor conferences have been held to support Ukraine. This initiative was expanded thanks to the active stance of Denmark and Defense Minister Morten Bødskov. As a result, we now enjoy particularly strong support from a number of North European states.

From the very first days of the invasion, Ukraine has received unprecedented support from the Polish government and nation. Our trusted friends from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have stood by us during what have been some of the toughest moments in our modern history. We deeply appreciate the support of our Turkish partners together with Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Australia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany and many other states. I am happy to report that the list of Ukraine’s partners is extensive and continues to grow.

Half a year after the launch of Russia’s invasion, it is evident that Ukraine is no longer a post-Soviet state. Instead, Ukraine has returned to its historic position within the family of European nations. This return was formalized in summer 2022 when the European Union granted Ukraine official EU candidate nation status. I only wish this success had not come at such a staggering price.

Ukraine’s further integration will benefit Europe as a whole. The events of the past six months have illustrated that Europe will become significantly more secure if it recognizes that Ukraine can serve as a shield in the east. Europe has a Russia problem and a strong Ukraine is the obvious solution.

Ukraine has already provided ample evidence that Russia will back down whenever it encounters serious resistance. On multiple occasions, Russian troops have responded to battlefield setbacks with retreats disguised as “goodwill gestures.” The lesson for advocates of appeasement could not be clearer: failure to confront Russia will lead to escalating aggression, whereas a firm response will force Russia to back down and withdraw.

Military support for Ukraine is already bringing security benefits for the whole of Europe. Since the invasion began, Ukraine has succeeded in seriously weakening the Russian military. Around 45,000 Russian soldiers have been killed including approximately one-third of the Kremlin’s elite troops. More than 1000 Russian tanks have been captured or destroyed, along with hundreds of fighter jets and helicopters. Key successes have included the sinking of the Russian Black Sea Fleet flagship, The Moskva, victory in the Battle for Kyiv, and the liberation of Snake Island.

This has shifted the military balance of power on Europe’s northeastern flank, with the threat to Scandinavia and the Baltic states now noticeably reduced. Additional military backing for Ukraine will lead to further reductions in Russia’s ability to menace its neighbors and the wider European community.

The Kremlin is counting on Western weakness and believes European leaders will ultimately cave in when confronted by a combination of rising economic costs and escalating terror tactics. If this expectation proves correct, the consequences for European security will be disastrous. Instead, it is in Europe’s best interests to provide Ukraine with the tools it needs to finish the job of defeating Putin.

Oleksii Reznikov is Ukraine’s Minister of Defense.

The Soviet authorities experienced almost no negative consequences as a result of this unparalleled slaughter. Indeed, just months after the peak of the famine, the United States granted the USSR official recognition. The outside world simply refused to listen to the handful of courageous voices such as British journalist Gareth Jones who attempted to shed light on the apocalyptic reality of the famine.

Instead of being celebrated for his revelations, Jones was shamefully attacked by his fellow international correspondents. The loudest voice was that of Walter Duranty, the Moscow bureau chief of the New York Times. It says much about how little has been learned that this disgraced genocide accomplice still holds a Pulitzer Prize despite calls for him to be posthumously stripped of the award.

Since regaining independence in 1991, Ukrainians have thrown off the shackles of Soviet censorship and chronicled the full extent of the Holodomor (“Death by Hunger”), as the famine is known in Ukraine. During the post-Soviet era, growing awareness of the Holodomor has been instrumental in bringing about a broader re-evaluation of the country’s totalitarian past.

The same cannot be said for modern Russia. Far from acknowledging the famine as an act of genocide, Moscow continues to downplay or deny Soviet crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to rehabilitate the entire Soviet era and has built modern Russian national identity around a cult-like veneration of the USSR’s role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. Attempts to condemn the mass murders of the Soviet regime are now routinely dismissed as unpatriotic and anti-Russian, while Stalin himself is once again openly celebrated as a great leader.

Given the complete failure to hold Russia accountable for the crimes of the past, it is hardly surprising that these crimes are now being repeated. As Lemkin feared, impunity has set the stage for a new era of atrocities.

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The ideological foundations for today’s genocide were first laid in the wake of Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution. This Ukrainian pro-democracy uprising was a watershed moment for the entire post-Soviet region. It was viewed with horror by many in Moscow, who saw it as the next stage in a Russian imperial retreat that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Putin’s response was to enter into increasingly open confrontation with the West while seeking to reassert Russian authority throughout the post-Soviet region. In the years following the Orange Revolution, the Kremlin developed the concept of the “Russkiy Mir” (“Russian World”), meaning a community of people beyond the borders of modern Russia bound by common ties of language, culture and religion who owe their allegiance to Moscow.

As the concept of the Russian World evolved, state officials and regime proxies in Moscow began to directly question the legitimacy of the Soviet collapse and challenge the verdict of 1991. It became increasingly common to hear prominent figures publicly deny the sovereignty and national identity of former Soviet republics or reject the entire notion of an independent Ukraine.

This unashamedly imperial agenda was actively promoted for over a decade throughout the Russian information space via everything from blockbuster movies and TV documentaries to opinion pieces and public holidays. Kremlin troll factories seeded social media with revisionist historical narratives justifying Russian expansionism, while an endless parade of Kremlin-curated political talk shows primed the Russian public for the coming genocide.

A major landmark in these efforts came in summer 2021 with the publication of Putin’s personal essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” This historically illiterate 5000-word treatise was widely interpreted as a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood. The Russian dictator used the article to reiterate his frequently voiced conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people” while also claiming that much of modern-day Ukraine occupies historically Russian lands. He concluded with a thinly veiled threat, declaring, “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”

Despite these very public preparations for genocide, few observers were prepared for the atrocities that would come in the wake of Russia’s February 2022 invasion. In the weeks leading up to the invasion, reports emerged of detailed Russian plans for mass detentions, concentration camps, and priority kill lists. These warnings were widely dismissed as inconceivable but were to prove all too accurate.

The scale of Russia’s crimes over the past six months remains difficult to comprehend. Entire cities have been reduced to rubble. Thousands have been executed. Millions have been forcibly deported to Russia. The core infrastructure of the Ukrainian state has been methodically targeted for destruction, along with the country’s cultural heritage. In areas under Russian occupation, all national symbols and traces of Ukrainian identity are being eradicated. The entire world is witnessing a textbook example of genocide unfolding in real time on smartphone screens and social media threads.

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A sense of shock over the magnitude of Russian atrocities is understandable. However, it is also important to note that recognizable elements of the current genocide have already been underway for an extended period in regions of Ukraine occupied by Russia since 2014. Over the past eight years, Crimea and eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region have become human rights black holes marked by the suppression of Ukrainian identity, language, and history along with the physical displacement of Ukrainians and arrival of Russian citizens. Once again, impunity has invited escalation.

The world is slowly waking up to Russian genocide in Ukraine. Parliaments in countries including Canada, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have all recognized the Russian invasion as an act of genocide. Others are expected to follow suit. At the same time, there is still considerable international reluctance to confront Putin’s Russia. Advocates of appeasement point to Moscow’s nuclear arsenal and highlight the need to maintain a dialogue with the Kremlin in order to address a range of global issues. Russia is simply too big and too important to isolate, they argue.

This emphasis on compromise over confrontation risks further eroding international security. If Moscow is able to evade justice for committing genocide in Ukraine, other authoritarian regimes will surely see this as a green light. China in particular is closely monitoring the democratic world’s response to Russia’s invasion and will draw the necessary conclusions for its own foreign policy.

It is now painfully clear that failure to hold the USSR accountable in 1991 was a major error. A Nuremburg-style trial exposing the crimes of the Soviet era could have helped facilitate the post-Soviet transition to democracy and prevented Russia’s return to authoritarianism under Putin.

This makes it all the more imperative that Vladimir Putin and his accomplices now face justice. Even if they remain in power and beyond the reach of international law, there is nothing to stop the civilized world from holding a trial in absentia. Such an undertaking would send a clear message to the Russian people and to authoritarian regimes around the world that the age of impunity for crimes against humanity is over.

Genocide is no longer a crime without a name. On the contrary, the global community officially recognizes genocide as the gravest of all crimes. Nevertheless, this has not prevented today’s Russia from plotting and conducting a genocidal invasion in plain sight. Moscow’s boldness owes much to the sense of impunity engendered by a complete lack of accountability for the crimes of the Soviet regime. The world cannot afford to make the same mistake again.

Alexander Khara is a fellow at the Centre for Defence Strategies.

The role played by Ukrainian agricultural produce in international food security should not be underestimated. Long known as the breadbasket of Europe, Ukraine has in recent years become a global garden. On the eve of the Russian invasion, it was estimated that Ukraine was providing food for as many as 400 million people around the world. Ukrainian officials stated in early 2022 that this figure would rise to a billion by 2030, representing around one in nine people on the planet.

The resumption of Ukrainian agri-food shipments is no less important for Ukraine itself. Agriculture is the engine of the Ukrainian economy representing over 40% of the country’s total exports. The bulk of Ukraine’s agricultural riches reaches global markets via the country’s Black Sea ports. Given this reliance on the farming industry, Russia’s Black Sea blockade has proved economically devastating and has contributed to a collapse in Ukrainian GDP.

The effectiveness of Russia’s blockade and its importance in Moscow’s wider campaign to extinguish Ukrainian statehood makes it unlikely that Putin will be prepared to abandon this strategy altogether. Instead, many observers remain cautious and anticipate that Russia will engineer reasons to disrupt the current grain deal. While grain ships may continue to leave Odesa, the most likely scenario would involve limited export volumes that will reduce the diplomatic pressure on Moscow without easing Ukraine’s economic woes or solving global food shortages.

Putin certainly has no qualms about weaponizing global hunger in his war against Ukraine. While Moscow officially seeks to blame Ukraine and the collective West for food shortages and rising commodities prices, senior regime representatives have openly discussed Kremlin plans to starve the world into submission. Speaking at the high-profile Saint Petersburg International Economic forum in June, the Chief Editor of Kremlin media platform RT, Margarita Simonyan, declared, “All our hope is in famine.”

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If the international community wishes to secure Ukrainian agricultural exports, it cannot rely on Russia’s word alone. While the current grain deal is a step in the right direction, Russia retains military control over Black Sea maritime routes and can still unilaterally end export shipments from Odesa and other Ukrainian ports.

While diplomatic dialogue with the Kremlin has helped achieve the recent breakthrough, the only language Putin truly understands is the language of strength. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the grain agreement signed in late July came following a series of significant military setbacks suffered by Russia in the Black Sea zone of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

When the Russian invasion began on February 24, the Black Sea blockade was already in place under the guise of naval exercises. Putin sought to supplement this naval blockade by invading southern Ukraine from Crimea and seizing Odesa. The ultimate goal was the occupation of Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coastline. However, things did not go according to plan. During the first weeks of the invasion, Putin’s troops ran into unexpectedly tough opposition and were forced to retreat from Mykolaiv, a key city in southern Ukraine which was to serve as the gateway for Russia’s Odesa offensive.

In April, plans for an amphibious assault on Odesa were dealt a crushing blow when Ukraine sank Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, the Moskva. Russian forces suffered a further Black Sea setback in early July when they abandoned the strategically vital Snake Island after suffering days of Ukrainian bombardment. Embarrassed Kremlin officials attempted to spare Putin’s blushes by rebranding the retreat as a “goodwill gesture.”

These defeats on land and sea helped persuade Putin to sign the new grain deal and relax his blockade. Further strong measures are now needed in order to make sure Ukraine’s ports remain open and secure the sea lanes that serve as vital arteries for global food security.

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From a military perspective, the best way to safeguard Ukrainian grain shipments would be to form an international naval coalition that would take on the task of policing maritime routes across the Black Sea. However, this would create significant risk of direct military confrontation between participating countries and the Russian navy. Past experience indicates that Western leaders have no appetite for such risks.

One creative option would be to place Odesa under United Nations control as a neutral port. This could be justified based on the key role Odesa plays in global grain exports. UN officials would oversee port operations and provide assurances that ships were not delivering weapons to Ukraine, but the problem of safeguarding merchant shipping would remain along the challenges of avoiding potential clashes with Russian warships.

Arming Ukraine remains by far the most practical and realistic solution. Providing the country with enhanced anti-ship and anti-submarine capabilities would dramatically change the balance of power in the northern Black Sea zone. The Ukrainian military has already demonstrated its ability to sink Russian warships and has forced the Russian navy to retreat from the country’s southern shores. Indeed, Ukrainian officials boasted recently that the Russian Black Sea Fleet had cancelled this year’s Navy Day celebrations in late July rather than risk exposing itself to Ukrainian attack.

If Russia is made aware that further attempts to blackmail the world will result in the destruction of the country’s Black Sea Fleet, there is every reason to believe that Putin will back down. Like all bullies, the Russian dictator is a coward at heart who withdraws whenever he encounters resolute opposition. Ukraine is ready to demonstrate this resolve but must receive the tools to do so.

Russia’s five-month Black Sea blockade has underlined the crucial contribution of Ukrainian agricultural exports to the fight against world hunger. Diplomatic deals to resume Ukrainian grain shipments are welcome but can hardly be regarded as reliable when one of the signatories is Russia. Instead, the international community must seek more credible ways of safeguarding global food security. That means arming Ukraine to keep vital sea lanes open.

Oleksiy Goncharenko is a Ukrainian member of parliament with the European Solidarity party.

John E. Herbst — Mon, 25 Jul 2022 14:13:56 +0000

Some illusions die hard; others have a short shelf life. Moscow’s July 23 attack on port facilities in Odesa—which came less than twenty-four hours after Moscow and Kyiv signed separate agreements with Turkey and the United Nations (UN) to unblock Ukraine’s Black Sea ports—illustrates both points.

In exchange for ending the Russian blockade on Ukraine’s grain exports, the Kremlin received assurances that Western sanctions did not apply to fertilizer, opening the way to export sales. The deal was aimed at avoiding food shortages—if not full-on famine—in Africa, the Arab world, and across much of Asia.

But this is the first illusion: For months, Moscow’s blockade has been designed, among other things, to produce pain in the Global South and raise pressure on the West to force Ukraine into an unsatisfactory peace with Russia. While Russian President Vladimir Putin has been called out by the United States, NATO, and the European Union for this cynical policy, he has faced no criticism from the actual victims of the policy. For instance, during a June trip to Moscow, Senegalese President Macky Sall, the current African Union chief, echoed Kremlin talking points that the food shortages were a result of the ongoing war and Western sanctions rather than Moscow’s blockade. This week, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is certainly looking for more allies during his charm offensive in Africa.

The July 22 agreements took the UN and Turkey weeks to negotiate, but there was only one problem: Moscow had no reason (and probably no intention) to honor the deal. Its blockade was working. Pressure on the West was rising, and Moscow was paying no political price for the food shortage it was creating. It was not even clear why Moscow felt the need to go through the charade of signing the agreement. Whatever the case, its missile strike on Saturday ended that charade quickly—and with it, the illusion that the food crisis had been averted.

This leads to the other illusion. The Biden administration understands that the United States has a major interest in ensuring that Moscow’s war on Ukraine ends in failure—which requires substantial support from Washington and its allies and partners in the West. It also understands that a Moscow-manufactured food shortage would produce a humanitarian disaster and send refugees streaming into Europe. Yet it is still under the illusion that it can achieve its objectives by slow half-steps—fooling itself that permitting Moscow to deter the United States from taking more resolute steps is actually the prudent policy of avoiding, as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan recently underscored, “a third world war.”

Time after time since Moscow began massing its troops on Ukraine’s borders, the administration has delayed sending Ukraine the weapons it needs for fear of provoking the Kremlin. Then, when it eventually sends some of those weapons, it finds that—somehow—it has indeed avoided World War III. Yet for some reason, the illusion persists. When it comes to the food crisis, Adm. James Stavridis, the former NATO supreme allied commander, has described how a humanitarian naval corridor could be set up almost entirely within the territorial waters of NATO littoral states in the Black Sea. But the White House has ruled out a US-led naval convoy to ensure grain shipments. If the Biden administration is to redeem its inaction, now is the time to seriously reconsider this decision.

It is a coincidence that the Black Sea agreements were signed the same day Sullivan made his comments to explain why the White House wouldn’t send long-range artillery to Ukraine. But perhaps it is no coincidence that Moscow—seeing once more how easily it can deter Washington by waving its nuclear wand—decided to immediately break the grain-export agreement and underscore its malign intention to provoke a food crisis in the Global South.

The Biden team is blowing an uncertain trumpet as it tries to project US leadership, resulting instead in supporting Ukrainian efforts to merely stave off Russian forces rather than deal them a decisive blow. But this is self-defeating. No wonder Macky Sall is mouthing Kremlin talking points.

John Herbst is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former US ambassador to Ukraine.

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Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine at risk from infections and epidemics

Ihor Kuzin — Sat, 09 Jul 2022 23:04:46 +0000

Around 20% of Ukraine is currently under Russian occupation. Along with the pressing military and human rights issues this creates, Russia’s ongoing invasion has also produced a range of public health challenges that require urgent international attention.

One of the key problems facing the Ukrainian authorities is a lack of access to information. Unfortunately, Ukraine’s Ministry of Health no longer has a comprehensive picture of the medical situation in occupied regions of the country. This makes it difficult to get insights and assess the scale of the healthcare problems in areas under Russian control. Nevertheless, assessments of the available evidence and an awareness of the general situation in Russian-occupied Ukraine can help identify the top priorities for Ukrainian and international healthcare professionals.

One of the most significant risks comes from the possible spread of pathogens. As temperatures reach seasonal highs throughout July and August, human contact with blood-sucking insects and ticks becomes more common. This often leads to the spread of infectious diseases.

Another major problem is limited access to drinking water. This increases risks posed by contaminated water and also makes it difficult for people in occupied regions of Ukraine to maintain desirable standards of personal hygiene and sanitation. This can cause mass outbreaks of diarrhea, hepatitis A, cholera, and other infections.

Due to Russia’s military strategy of carpet-bombing Ukrainian towns and cities into submission, basic infrastructure has been severely damaged in much of occupied southern and eastern Ukraine. Many areas now have limited access to drinking water, while remaining water supplies are often not subject to normal treatment.

The risk of a cholera outbreak is believed to be particularly high in Mariupol, a Russian-occupied Ukrainian port city in Donetsk Oblast with a pre-war population of almost half a million that was largely reduced to rubble during a brutal Russian siege. According to the Mariupol municipal authorities, the city’s 22 pumping stations were all destroyed during the fighting, while sewage treatment and drainage systems are also unable to function properly. Large numbers of dead bodies remain trapped beneath the rubble and are decomposing, further complicating the city’s precarious healthcare situation.

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Russia’s invasion has displaced millions of Ukrainians and thrown large numbers of people together in ways that create potential for healthcare emergencies. Concentrations of children with different vaccination status during evacuation procedures risks fueling outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illnesses such as measles and diphtheria.

COVID-19 also remains an issue. Prior to the Russian invasion, only 35% of the Ukrainian population had been vaccinated, representing one of the lowest rates in Europe. A sharp increase in COVID cases could lead to overcrowding in hospitals at a time when healthcare facilities are desperately needed to care for military and civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, possible delays in the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis are a matter of considerable concern. In particular, if patients stop taking their medications due to impaired access to medical care in occupied parts of Ukraine, this can lead to a rise in cases of antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis.

Similarly, people living with HIV cannot afford to stop taking their medications. Skipping doses may lead to the reappearance of strains resistant to treatment which pose a high risk not only to current patients but to those who may contract the disease in the future.

Large numbers of abandoned livestock are further complicating the healthcare situation in wartime Ukraine and increasing the threat from animal-borne diseases. The uncontrolled movement of animals or their undisposed carcasses, as well as the destruction of wildlife habitats, can lead to the spread of pathogens among humans along with wild and domestic animals.

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International support for Ukraine has so far focused on the provision of weapons along with humanitarian aid efforts for those displaced by the fighting. Looking ahead, it is vital that Ukraine’s partners also help to address the growing healthcare issues created by the Russian invasion.

The list of medical items currently required by Ukraine is long. This includes diagnostic kits, rapidly deployable field hospitals, immunobiological drugs for the treatment of the diseases like diphtheria, tetanus, botulism, and malaria, as well as vaccines for routine immunization (including against hepatitis A and cholera), disinfectants, portable water treatment systems, and means for pest control.

In order to establish a healthcare system capable of responding to epidemic risks, the Ukrainian parliament is set to finalize the second draft of a law on public health that features over 850 proposals from MPs and 400 proposals from international experts.

In preparation for the second reading, experts from the WHO, USAID, the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, and the Ukrainian Public Health Center are involved in finalizing the draft law. Considerable revisions remain before this law can be implemented. This sizable task will require further support from the international community.

Ihor Kuzin is Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Health and Chief State Sanitary Doctor.

Oleksii Reznikov — Tue, 14 Jun 2022 15:34:17 +0000

NATO leaders will gather in the Spanish capital at the end of June for a potentially historic summit. They are expected to approve a landmark new Strategic Concept at a time when the Russian invasion of Ukraine has created the most dramatic international security challenges for a generation. The choices made in Madrid will likely shape the geopolitical agenda for decades to come.

Europe is currently witnessing its largest conflict since WWII. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed. Dozens of Ukrainian cities have been razed to the ground. Millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homeland and seek safety in neighboring EU countries.

The impact of the war is not restricted to the European continent alone. Russia also blackmails the world with the possibility of global hunger and energy shortages. Kremlin officials openly intimidate the international community with threats of nuclear escalation.

This is a time for NATO to lead. The alliance’s highly anticipated Strategic Concept will serve as a roadmap for the future of the free world. It will be the first major document of its kind to be officially adopted since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine shattered the international security system which had been established in the aftermath of WWII.

Other key international institutions have already been found wanting. The Russian rocket attack on Kyiv in April while UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited the city was intended as a show of open contempt for the United Nations. Clearly, the UN Security Council is incapable of upholding peace as long as one of its permanent members retains veto power while committing genocide in Ukraine. The OSCE has suffered a similarly grave loss of legitimacy since the outbreak of hostilities on February 24. Unless these institutions undergo radical reform, they will disappear.

With the international security system in crisis, NATO’s new Strategic Concept will acquire a status and symbolism that far exceeds earlier expectations. It will provide a vision for the future of international relations. If this vision is defined by inertia and empty expressions of concern, it will signal that the free world is no longer able to stand up to international aggression. This would be interpreted by authoritarian regimes as an open invitation to act with impunity. If the Strategic Concept demonstrates genuine leadership, this will send an altogether different message.

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It is crucial to recognize that today’s authoritarian regimes depend on the inertia of the international community. Autocracies are able to act faster than democracies and much faster than international alliances. This enables them to establish facts on the ground before others are able to react. The negotiations that then follow are typically in the aggressor’s interests and to the detriment of the victim. Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova have all experienced this to their cost.

The democratic world urgently needs to regain the initiative. For far too long, Western leaders have allowed authoritarians like Putin to set the international agenda and make the first move while they remain reactive.

Ukrainians can confirm that this is the wrong approach. The international community is currently debating exactly the kinds of sanctions that Ukrainian officials were calling for more than a year ago when Russia first massed troops along the Ukrainian border and threatened a full-scale invasion. Instead of sanctions, the Western response in spring 2021 was to reward Putin with more dialogue.

Similarly, every current conversation with our international partners focuses on how to defend Ukraine’s skies with enhanced aviation and missile defense systems, but this is nothing new. I recall addressing the need for Western air defense systems back in August 2021 while in the US. Nor was I the first Ukrainian official to do so.

President Zelenskyy then enjoyed a successful White House meeting with President Biden, which saw the adoption of a framework document lending new meaning to our defense partnership. Nevertheless, cooperation continued to lack of sense of urgency. Discussions dragged on for some months over the delivery of Stinger missiles, with authorization only coming as reports began to mount of an imminent Russian invasion.

Despite widespread warnings that Moscow was poised to invade, Ukraine received nothing but infantry weapons for close combat or guerilla warfare. Instead of tough Western sanctions that could have served to deter Russia, we were confronted with predictions that Kyiv would fall within three days.

We did not share this fatalism. While we had access to the same intelligence data as our partners, we were confident that our ongoing preparations would make it impossible to take Kyiv in three weeks, never mind three days. Military units were repositioned to mirror the deployment of the Russian and Belarusian armies. Aviation and air defense systems were moved. Supplies were gathered that would allow Kyiv to survive a three-month siege. Needless to say, such reserves were not accumulated overnight.

As we readied to defend our country, our partners continued to hesitate. At the Munich Security Conference just days before the war began, the Ukrainian delegation had a series of memorable conversations with our partners. If our colleagues were so certain of an imminent invasion, why were they not ready to impose deterrent measures? Again and again, we were told that this could lead to an escalation.

Efforts are now underway to persuade Ukraine of the need to enter into negotiations. These negotiations are not intended to establish the amount of Russian reparations or determine which Ukrainian city will host a future Russian war crimes tribunal. Instead, Ukrainians are being encouraged to negotiate how much of our land we should gift to Moscow in order to avoid “humiliating” Putin. Such thinking will not bring about a lasting peace. Quite the opposite, in fact.

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Many observers describe the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as inadequate. I personally believe the key problem is inertia. At every stage of the crisis, the West has handed the initiative to Russia and allowed Moscow to dictate the pace.

Will the new NATO Strategic Concept echo the inertia that has brought us to the current crisis, or will it demonstrate the kind of leadership that will allow the democratic world to reassert its authority? I remain fundamentally optimistic. After all, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, and UK Secretary of State for Defense Ben Wallace are not just great friends of Ukraine; they are all also proof that leadership can still overcome inertia on the international stage. There are many more similarly inspirational leaders among our EU partners.

The challenges we face can only be overcome together. Ukraine is now looking for a clear signal from NATO regarding our future role in European security. During the past four months, Ukrainians have demonstrated conclusively that we can serve as Europe’s eastern shield.

The signal Ukraine expects must go beyond mere words of encouragement. We must develop a common strategy that looks forward and anticipates the practical security issues that lie ahead. For example, it is evident that Ukraine and NATO have a shared interest in defending our skies. Which planes should Ukrainian pilots train with? Should they be flying F-15 and F-16 jets, or perhaps they should immediately jump to the F-35? Could it be Gripens? The same dialogue is needed on everything from missile defense and tank units to naval forces and cyber security.

If NATO’s new Strategic Concept has no clear place in it for Ukraine, the document will be divorced from today’s security realities and dead on arrival. This would be a victory for inertia and a green light for dictators like Putin to pursue aggressive foreign policies. The entire world would become a far more dangerous place.

By the time the NATO summit gets underway in Spain, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will have entered its fifth month. This invasion has already imposed staggering costs on the Ukrainian people and transformed the geopolitical landscape. By demonstrating strong leadership, NATO members can determine the outcome of the war and define the future of global security.

Oleksii Reznikov is the Ukrainian Minister of Defense.

A banner promoting the vaccination drive still hangs at the site, but this banner is all that remains of the facility. The rest of the clinic is now a heap of brick and concrete rubble along with fragments of glass and plastic, chunks of timber, and the wreckage of equipment. Heavy mortars flattened the clinic in March as part of the Russian army’s failed offensive toward Kyiv.

The destruction of a modern healthcare clinic in Makariv is no isolated incident. Kovtonyuk notes that a total of at least 169 Ukrainian medical facilities have sustained significant damage since the Russian invasion began in February, while 18 healthcare personnel have been killed.

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Kovtonyuk says the attack in Makariv is part of a deliberate campaign. Through the work of his team at the Ukrainian Healthcare Center NGO, Kovtonyuk believes he has sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the Makariv clinic and multiple other medical facilities were targeted intentionally as part of Russia’s genocidal campaign to destroy the Ukrainian state and nation.

“It could be argued that the destruction of medical facilities is just part of the general Russian policy of attacking Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure. Those are war crimes under the Geneva Convention. But this is more than that. It is the unprecedented weaponization of healthcare destruction by the Russian Federation,” Kovtonyuk says during a recent visit to the Makariv site.

To back up these claims, he notes that the clinic is located close to a larger hospital campus. While the clinic was completely destroyed by the advancing Russian army, there is limited damage to other structures. Similarly, buildings throughout the surrounding area are relatively unscathed. Nor are there any conceivable military targets nearby.

The targeted nature of the clinic attack has convinced Kovtonyuk that it was an intentional act rather than random destruction. A former World Health Organisation (WHO) senior manager, he is a man who is precise and conservative in his allegations and his investigations. Indeed, he is compiling hard evidence for a possible future case at the International Court of Justice.

Kovtonyuk believes the evidence gathered in Makariv and dozens of similar sites indicates a systematic Russian plan to destroy Ukraine’s medical infrastructure. “The Russians are destroying healthcare here to terrorize citizens and to force a genocide by migration,” he states. “They think they can get away with it. They believe the WHO will not act, the world will not notice, and the few local people who remain here will ultimately have their memories erased in a new Russian-controlled Ukraine. That cannot be allowed.”

At the Makariv site, Kovtonyuk points out a series of regularly spaced crater holes in the grass around the destroyed clinic extending in a straight line toward the target. A Ukrainian artillery officer trained to inspect impact sites later confirms that this pattern of fire indicates soldiers attempting to fix a target. He believes a Russian mortar team of two was probably operating a kilometer or so away, while a spotter with communications was directing their fire within visual range of the target. This suggests that a group of Russian soldiers not only accepted an illegal order but also knew exactly what they were targeting and chose to destroy it.

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Russian attacks on Ukrainian medical facilities have not yet sparked a major international backlash. Kovtonyuk is particularly critical of the World Health Organization (WHO). He points out that it wasn’t until the forty-second day of the war that the WHO Director General issued a statement condemning the invasion. According to Kovtonyuk, no internal sanctions under the WHO Constitution have been applied to the Russian Federation, while a recent resolution indicated that WHO officials may consider some measures if Russia continues its actions.

Kovtonyuk sees this as inadequate. “Russia’s Health Minister is still on the WHO Executive Council. He is also at Putin’s cabinet table together with Defense Minister Shoigu. He is directly culpable, but the WHO has done nothing to even mildly sanction the Russians. It hasn’t even disinvited them from a single Zoom meeting,” he comments.

Ukraine’s former deputy health minister admits to being frustrated by much of the Western response to the Russian invasion and accuses the Western establishment of failing to fully grasp the gravity of the situation. At the same time, he emphasizes that Ukraine has surpassed all expectations. “There is one thing that nobody counted on, whether it’s the Western establishment or Russian despots. Namely, that those cast as victims in this situation, the Ukrainians, would refuse to play that part. The victim will not be victimized. We fight, each in his own way. We do not fade or fold,” says Kovtonyuk.

This fighting spirit has turned an anticipated three-day military walkover into the largest European conflict since WWII. Ukraine’s remarkable resilience has won the admiration of the watching world but the country continues to pay a terrible price for its courageous stand. The deliberate targeting of Ukrainian healthcare facilities is one of the many war crimes Russia currently stands accused of as Putin seeks to break Ukraine’s will to resist. Attacks on healthcare facilities will serve as a focus for ongoing investigations as the international community seeks to hold Russia accountable for crimes committed in Ukraine.

Pete Shmigel is an Australian writer with a background in politics, mental health and Ukrainian issues.

Atlantic Council — Sat, 28 May 2022 16:51:00 +0000

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Asat quoted in Al Jazeera on what the UN will see when it visits Xinjiang, China

Atlantic Council — Wed, 25 May 2022 16:01:00 +0000

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Putin’s Black Sea blockade leaves millions facing global famine

Andriy Zagorodnyuk — Wed, 18 May 2022 21:52:11 +0000

During the first three months of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine’s ability to defeat Russia on the battlefield has astonished the watching world and led to mounting speculation that Vladimir Putin’s invasion will end in defeat.

At the same time, the situation at sea remains significantly more favorable for the Kremlin and demands urgent international attention. Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports is strangling the country’s economy and also threatening to spark a global food security crisis by preventing Ukrainian agricultural exports from reaching international markets. Unless this issue is addressed, it will cause famine around the world in the coming months.

Unfortunately, Ukraine has traditionally overlooked the issue of maritime security. Following the onset of hostilities with Russia in 2014, military spending remained overwhelmingly focused on improving the country’s ground forces. Nevertheless, the importance of the Black Sea cannot be overstated as the gateway for Ukrainian exports to the outside world. Since February 2022, this gateway has been closed.

While Russia enjoys almost complete naval superiority in the northern Black Sea, Ukraine has been able to secure a number of notable maritime victories during the past three months of hostilities. The most striking success was the sinking of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship, The Moskva, which was hit by Ukrainian Neptune missiles fired from a coastal battery. Ukraine has also repeatedly struck Russian forces on Snake Island and damaged or sunk Russian vessels in the surrounding waters.

The prolonged struggle for Snake Island reflects the vital role played by this rocky little outcrop in the battle to dominate the wider Black Sea region. Russia clearly recognizes its significance and sought to capture Snake Island on the first day of the war, leading to a legendarily defiant exchange between a Russian warship and the tiny Ukrainian garrison. If Russia is able to consolidate its grip on Snake Island, it will serve as a base for missile systems that would allow the Kremlin to control much of the Black Sea along with the airspace across southern Ukraine.

While the democratic world has taken up the challenge of arming Ukraine to resist Russian aggression on land, international involvement in the war at sea has been more limited. The most significant contribution so far has been Turkey’s decision in the early days of the conflict to enforce the terms of the 1936 Montreux Convention and close the Bosporus and Dardanelles Straits to Russian warships.

Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, the US had provided Ukraine with a number of vessels. More recently, Britain has included naval missile systems in its military aid packages for Ukraine but these systems have yet to arrive. Meanwhile, the planned purchase of a corvette warship from Turkey did not produce results prior to the start of the war.

Despite moderate Ukrainian successes and localized setbacks for Russia, the overall outlook at sea remains highly unfavorable for Ukraine. The Russian Black Sea blockade is having a devastating impact on Ukraine’s agricultural industry, which is the engine of the country’s entire economy. With limited alternative capacity and only land routes available, Ukrainian farmers are unable to ship 90% of grain exports.

This has serious implications for global food supplies. Ukraine is one of the world’s largest grain exporters and an emerging agricultural superpower which feeds hundreds of millions of people. Unless Russia’s Black Sea blockade is brought to an end, experts are predicting a mounting crisis in the months ahead with particularly devastating consequences for poorer countries. “Millions of people around the world will die because these ports are being blocked,” UN World Food Program Head David Beasley warned in early May.

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Clearly, freedom of navigation in the Black Sea and Azov Sea are critical elements of any post-war peace settlement. It is equally clear that the world must not wait until the war is over before addressing the issue of unblocking Ukraine’s ports.

Ukraine cannot end the blockade simply by targeting Russia’s remaining warships and hoping for more successes similar to the sinking of The Moskva. Even without the power of the Black Sea Fleet, Russia could still enforce a blockade of Ukraine’s southern ports by threatening to target merchant shipping with aviation and missiles. Without a firm solution, international insurers will simply refuse to cover the risk of sailing to or from Ukrainian ports.

The only viable solution at this time is the creation of a protected maritime zone enforced by the international community. There are a variety of expert opinions on how this might best be achieved, with many relying on NATO capabilities. One of the most frequently cited options would involve the establishment of a humanitarian navigation corridor patrolled by NATO ships and aircraft to ensure the safety of commercial shipping.

If it proved too difficult to reach a consensus within NATO for such an initiative, a coalition of participating countries could be created for the purpose. With global food security at stake and millions of lives at risk, it would theoretically be possible to justify such a move while deflecting accusations of direct intervention in the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Of course, the first question regarding any protected maritime zones would be the rules of engagement for both ships and aircraft. If they came under Russian attack, would they engage in direct combat?

This would essentially be a replay of the earlier debate regarding a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine which ended in wholesale rejection of the idea. Notably, much has changed since a No-Fly Zone was ruled out in March. After almost three months of heavy losses and military humiliations in Ukraine, the Kremlin currently has little interest in provoking a direct confrontation with NATO.

Russia’s reputation as a military superpower has already been greatly diminished by events in Ukraine. It is time for NATO leaders to recognize that Putin is a bully who feeds off their caution. In reality, he has no stomach for a direct confrontation which Russia can ill afford.

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In addition to political obstacles, there are also a number of practical problems to overcome before a protected maritime zone could be imposed. Even during peacetime, the naval vessels of non-Black Sea nations are only allowed to enter the Black Sea for limited periods. With the Montreux Convention now in force, warships are not able to enter the Black Sea at all.

With no realistic possibility of renegotiating the terms of the Montreux Convention, the simplest solution would be for the Turkish Navy to take the lead in providing the necessary ships to enforce a protected maritime zone. Fellow NATO members Bulgaria and Romania could also contribute, while smaller vessels from other participating countries could enter the Black Sea via the Danube River. Meanwhile, the policing of airspace over the Black Sea could be handled by a coalition of countries using existing NATO bases in the region.

The only alternative to a militarily enforced maritime corridor would be a diplomatic agreement with the Kremlin. Reports indicate that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is currently attempting to negotiate with Moscow over a partial relaxation of the blockade in order to restart Ukrainian grain exports. However, any deal would likely mean relaxing sanctions imposed for the invasion of Ukraine, which many view as a completely unacceptable and dangerous concession that would only serve to encourage further acts of Russian aggression.

Unless Putin’s Black Sea blockade is broken, the Ukrainian economy will suffer grave damage and countries around the world will soon face the prospect of famine. This is a strong argument for immediate international intervention.

The only question is whether the political will exists to risk a confrontation with the Kremlin. Russia’s limited military capabilities have been brutally exposed in Ukraine, but many Western leaders nevertheless remain reluctant to challenge Putin so directly in the Black Sea. This excessive caution risks extending the carnage in Ukraine and causing a global food crisis.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk is chairman of the Center for Defence Strategies. He is the former Minister of Defense of Ukraine (2019–2020) and was the head of the MOD Reforms Project Office (2015–2018).

Atlantic Council — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 11:39:00 +0000

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Nia joins WNYC Studios to discuss international law and Russian war crimes in Ukraine

Atlantic Council — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 17:54:00 +0000

The post Nia joins WNYC Studios to discuss international law and Russian war crimes in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

At what point do Russian war crimes in Ukraine qualify as genocide?

Bohdan Vitvitsky — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 14:21:32 +0000

On the US Senate floor on the evening of April 6, US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer directly accused Russia of waging a genocidal war in Ukraine. “When we murder wantonly innocent civilians because of who they are whether it be their religion, their race, or their nationality, that is genocide, and Mr. Putin is guilty of it.”

However, not everybody agrees with Schumer’s interpretation. Just a few days earlier in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken demurred when asked the genocide question.

Similarly, at a White House press conference on April 4, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stopped short of acknowledging that a genocide was underway in Ukraine. “Based on what we have seen so far, we have seen atrocities. We have seen war crimes. We have not yet seen a level of systematic deprivation of life of the Ukrainian people to rise to the level of genocide.”

It is indisputable that multiple units of the Russian military have committed mass murder in Ukraine, whether by executing hundreds of civilians in occupied towns and villages or by bombarding civilian targets in cities such as Mariupol, Kharkiv and Chernihiv. Russian soldiers have also engaged in widespread sexual violence, the abduction of municipal leaders, and the forced deportation of refugees to camps in Russia.

These actions all constitute war crimes. No one executes over 300 civilians in a single town by mistake or accidentally reduces an entire city to rubble. But do Russia’s crimes in Ukraine pass the threshold to qualify as genocide? Much depends on the issue of intent.

Any attempt to determine whether the crimes committed by Russian troops in Ukraine are driven by genocidal intent must necessarily focus on the statements of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For many years, Putin has publicly questioned the legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood while insisting that Ukrainians are really Russians (“one people”). He has repeatedly dismissed Ukraine’s long struggle for statehood while arguing that the entire notion of a separate Ukraine has been artificially created over hundreds of years by foreign powers seeking to undermine Russia.

Many of Putin’s most problematic claims were laid out in his lengthy July 2021 essay entitled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” In this remarkable treatise, Putin denied the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation while claiming that modern Ukraine was guilty of occupying historically Russian lands. His essay was seen as a declaration of war against Ukrainian statehood and has since been made required reading for all members of the Russian military.

Putin went even further in late February 2022 with a series of unhinged rants designed to justify the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He branded Ukraine as an “anti-Russia” run by “neo-Nazis and drug addicts” and vowed to “de-Nazify” the entire country. The message to Russia’s invading army could hardly have been clearer: Ukraine is an illegitimate state and Ukraine’s rightful place is as part of Russia. Any Ukrainians who insist otherwise are traitors and enemies of Russia who should be dealt with appropriately.

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Putin is not the only Russian currently preaching genocide. On the contrary, genocidal statements have become alarmingly commonplace on Kremlin TV since the outbreak of hostilities with Ukraine on February 24.

One article in particular is worthy of closer attention. As the world recoiled in horror from the revelations of Russian war crimes in the suburban town of Bucha outside Kyiv, Russian state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti published an article entitled “What should Russia do with Ukraine.” This nightmarish text has been widely condemned as a manifesto for genocide.

The article explains that the term “Nazi” as used by the Kremlin in relation to Ukraine actually applies to anyone who self-identifies as Ukrainian. It also admits that “de-Nazification” really means “de-Ukrainianization” or the destruction of a separate Ukrainian nation. Ukrainian independence itself is denounced as a criminal “Nazi” act, while millions of Ukrainians are labelled as Nazis and condemned to the “inescapable hardships of our just war.” In this depraved vision of a future Ukraine without Ukrainians, the country can no longer be sovereign, nor can it be known as Ukraine.

This chilling document did not appear on the extremist fringes of the Russian national debate. It was published and given prominence by one of the country’s leading state media platforms during a period of heightened wartime censorship. As such, it represents a semi-official endorsement of genocide.

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Given the ample evidence of Moscow’s genocidal intent towards Ukraine, why is there still no international consensus over whether Russia’s war crimes qualify as genocide?

Many officials and diplomats remain cautious and feel constrained by the United Nations definition of genocide, which is itself problematic. The UN defines genocide as the killing or a series of other acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” It also distinguishes between “genocide,” “conspiracy to commit genocide,” and “attempt to commit genocide.”

Unfortunately, there is no clear definition of what constitutes the “in part” element of this UN definition. Meanwhile, attempts to distinguish between attempted genocide and genocidal conspiracy on the one hand, and actual genocide on the other, also raise troubling questions. Is it really only possible to identify a genocide after it has been committed substantially or completely?

The debate over whether Russia’s actions constitute genocide is not merely technical or academic in character. Acknowledging that a genocidal campaign is underway in the heart of Europe would set off all manner of geopolitical alarm bells and spark calls for action throughout the international community. However, critics of the current UN definition fear that it effectively absolves the watching world of any responsibility to respond until the genocide in question has already taken place.

Time is now rapidly running out to prevent a catastrophe. Almost every day, advancing Ukrainian forces encounter new evidence of Russian atrocities and uncover freshly dug mass graves. The crimes of the Russian military in Ukraine clearly and unambiguously mirror the genocidal language of Putin and his propagandists. Indeed, it is a genocide so brazen that the perpetrators have actually advertised their intentions in advance. If millions of Ukrainians now perish due to international inaction, nobody can claim they did not know.

Bohdan Vitvitsky has served as a Resident Legal Advisor at the US Embassy in Kyiv and as Special Advisor to Ukraine’s Prosecutor General. He has also served as a federal prosecutor in the US.

The quick reaction of many, then as now, has been to assume that the perpetrators of war crimes will never be brought to justice. Russia’s veto in the United Nations Security Council and Ukraine’s need to eventually make peace with Moscow are sometimes cited as reasons why there will never be accountability for Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Some said then, as now, that efforts to achieve accountability could prevent peace, but diplomats in the 1990s found a way to finesse this, just as diplomats will today. Others argued then that it was necessary to prosecute at least some of those trying to rescue the victims of war crimes, meaning NATO in the Balkans and Ukrainian forces today. In the 1990s, after a credible investigation by the Yugoslavia war crimes prosecutor, that did not happen.

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There are three lessons for both international justice advocates and perpetrators alike. First, it will take international perseverance to bring those responsible for war crimes in Ukraine to justice. This is what happened in the Balkans and Rwanda, where governments and non-governmental advocates combined with victims of war crimes to demand justice and scaled-up efforts to track down perpetrators. It took advocates both outside and inside governments to bring around a revolution in international priorities that led to accountability.

Second, perseverance can succeed. It took years to marshal the resources necessary to bring many of those responsible for war crimes in the Balkans to justice. Saddam Hussein was tried and convicted in 2006 by a free Iraqi government for crimes against humanity, some of which had taken place almost thirty years earlier.

Third, the demand for accountability is so strong that its direction cannot be foreseen, even if its ultimate goal is clear from a moment like now when war crimes are first exposed to the world. I was assured by many experts in the 1990s that it was inconceivable that US efforts to document Saddam Hussein’s crimes against humanity, which started in the 1980s but ramped up in 1998, would ever bear fruit. Nobody in the 1980s and 1990s foresaw that the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks against New York and Washington would lead to an invasion of Iraq in April 2003.

Just as importantly, by 2003, international justice advocates had so permeated the US government and Iraqis living in exile that accountability for Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants was a core objective both of US policy and among Iraqi oppositionists who disagreed about almost everything else.

I was on the committee that developed the “deck of cards” of Iraqi war criminals and top regime leaders (not all of whom, it should be noted, were responsible for crimes against humanity). That effort and the efforts of heroic soldiers and jurists led to Saddam Hussein and his henchmen facing justice before a court that did not exist when the evidence of his crimes was first collected.

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We do not yet know the full extent of criminal culpability for the crimes of Russian units against Ukrainians in the current war. A number of efforts are already underway to document the extent of those crimes. Investigators of the International Criminal Court, United Nations human rights bodies, nongovernmental organizations, and the Ukrainians themselves all deserve support and a chance to do their work.

Key facts to prove command responsibility, including the responsibility of Putin himself, are likely to already be in the hands of the Ukrainian government and Western intelligence agencies. That evidence needs to be preserved against the day it can be declassified and used in court, as happened with some of the intelligence collected during the 1990s Balkan wars. Fortunately, the “book” on how to do all of this is well understood today, compared with the ad hoc efforts we built up during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

It is important that those motivated to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity receive an unambiguous message that they will need to look over their shoulders forever. It may deter some of them from committing more such crimes as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues.

Experience teaches that we can expect further revelations of Russian war crimes in the coming weeks as more Ukrainian territory is liberated. This should intensify the effort to collect evidence and make clear that there will be accountability. Experience also teaches that, eventually, justice will be done.

Thomas S. Warrick is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is a former senior official at the US Department of State and deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), whose mission is to promote peace and stability, evacuated its special monitoring mission from eastern Ukraine on the first day of the war, passing up the opportunity to monitor the invasion.

Meanwhile, NATO has made it clear that it will not impose a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine or otherwise intervene in the conflict. While individual NATO member states have provided Ukraine with arms, the alliance has repeatedly ruled out any involvement. During a recent extraordinary NATO summit in Brussels, alliance members chose to focus attention on defending NATO’s eastern flank rather than enhancing Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.

The war has also exposed the limitations of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. IAEA officials were unable to influence developments in Ukraine despite a dangerous loss of power at the Chornobyl site and damage to Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant in Zaporizhia caused by a Russian military assault. This was the first time in history that one IAEA member attacked the nuclear facilities of another, but the watchdog proved powerless to act.

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Ukrainians have been particularly disappointed by the role of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has been criticized for failing to organize humanitarian corridors and for prohibiting the use of its emblems on vehicles during evacuations of Ukrainian civilians.

There has been considerable disquiet in Kyiv over ICRC president Peter Maurer’s decision to visit Moscow and meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. This trip resulted in an agreement to open a new office in Rostov-on-Don, a step which many in Ukraine fear will be used to help legitimize the forced deportation of Ukrainian civilians from the conflict zone to Russia.

Criticism of the UN has largely focused on the ineffectiveness of the United Nations Security Council, with permanent UNSC member Russia using its veto power to block any measures designed to stop the war. This farcical situation has fuelled renewed calls for changes to prevent UNSC members abusing their position in order to wage wars of aggression. Without fundamental reform of the Security Council, United Nations General Assembly votes serve little purpose other than to assess the geopolitical mood and identify Russia’s remaining international supporters.

Ukrainians have paid a high price for the toothless response of international institutions to Putin’s invasion. Thousands have lost their lives while more than ten million have been forced to flee their homes. Entire Ukrainian cities now lie in ruins, while Russian atrocities committed against the civilian population during the first month of the war have traumatized the Ukrainian nation and sent shock waves around the world.

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It is important to acknowledge that the international community has done much since the outbreak of hostilities to help Ukraine. First and foremost, Ukraine’s partners have provided vital military aid that has helped the Ukrainian Armed Forces defend their country and inflict punishing losses on Putin’s invasion force. Unprecedented sanctions measures have also been imposed on Russia, while countries across Europe have demonstrated remarkable hospitality in welcoming Ukrainian refugees.

Unfortunately, these measures are not enough. The war unleashed by Putin on February 24 represents a moment of reckoning for the world’s key international institutions that underscores the urgent need for fundamental reform. The unforgiving spotlight of the current crisis has exposed them as increasingly obsolete and overly bureaucratic organizations that are no longer capable of performing their core functions.

There are obvious parallels here with the experience of the early twentieth century League of Nations. Founded in the aftermath of World War I, the League of Nations was undermined by its inability to prevent the march towards World War II and ultimately fell victim to a conflict it could not prevent. We may now be approaching a similar moment.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the obvious shortcomings of today’s international institutions and demonstrated the need for a complete rethink of the institutional infrastructure governing world affairs. This will require a combination of leadership and vision that is currently lacking. Ukrainians are ready to play their part in this process, but they also expect much more from the international community.

Oleksii Riabchyn is an advisor to the CEO of Naftogaz and advisor to Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. He previously served as a Ukrainian MP and deputy energy and environmental protection minister. Daryna Kulaga contributed to this article.

Ukrainian civil society can help hold Russia accountable for war crimes

Danielle Johnson — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 21:45:11 +0000

As Russia’s war against Ukraine drags on into a second month, the world watches in horror while Putin’s forces deliberately target Ukrainian civilians. At this point, there is little doubt that Russian troops have committed an array of atrocities which could result in legal charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Unsurprisingly, some leading voices in the international community have already called for Putin himself and possibly some of his colleagues to stand trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Many actors are gearing up to make this happen. At the request of over forty countries, the ICC has opened an investigation into alleged atrocities in Ukraine, while the UN’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have both established missions to collect evidence. Eurojust, Europe’s agency for criminal justice cooperation, has announced its support for a joint Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian investigation team, which may be expanded to include other countries. In addition, members of the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have asked the Director of National Intelligence to prioritize documentation of Russian atrocities.

There is also a massive and increasingly formalized grassroots effort underway. Unprecedented media coverage of the war has made the issue of proof something of a moot point, since there has been extensive reporting on the conduct of Russian troops in Ukraine. As the war escalates, coordination is increasing. For example, the Associated Press and Frontline recently established a War Crimes Watch service with the explicit goal of “gathering, verifying and documenting evidence of potential war crimes in Ukraine.”

Social media is playing a critical role in bringing to light and archiving evidence, while Ukrainian NGO groups like Truth Hounds, who have been conducting fact-finding missions in eastern Ukraine since 2014, are ramping up their efforts.

These initiatives are critical, because without such documentation there can be no legal accountability. International war crimes trials matter because the guilty deserve to be punished and victims deserve to see this happen. They show would-be perpetrators that the world will not tolerate impunity. By recording exactly what happened, they also build a historical record that the international community can learn from. Finally, since Putin himself appropriated the language of atrocities to justify his invasion, shining a light on these lies in an international courtroom helps combat Russian misinformation.

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There is an important caveat to the current discussions surrounding justice for Ukraine. Thus far, they have focused far too narrowly on criminal accountability for atrocity crimes. Victims strive for justice when they have been made to feel powerless. And so the question must be asked: what kind of justice will restore their sense of agency? Retribution through the punishment of perpetrators cannot fully give Ukrainians back a sense of justice. In order for Ukrainians to truly come to terms with what has happened, it is crucial to consider how to give them real recognition.

One concern is that criminal trials have important limitations. Trials in The Hague tend to be lengthy and complex, and are often quite controversial. Survivors can be left disenchanted by plea bargains along with sentences that seem too short. Perpetrators often seek to use the world stage for self-aggrandizement. There is also the potential for re-traumatization of survivors as they watch images of the war splashed again across the international media. For those who are called to testify, it can be extremely challenging to recount their horrific experiences in a very public courtroom.

Furthermore, such trials are not always effective in reaching the goals they set out to achieve. For example, research from Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina has suggested that while it was meaningful for ordinary people to see perpetrators punished through the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in other ways the institution fell far short. Perhaps most glaringly, despite being established in 1993, it failed to deter the July 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Nor did the court’s “historical record” succeed in undermining denialism and revisionism about such crimes, which persist in the Balkans today.

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These limitations may not matter much given that Putin is unlikely to physically appear in The Hague. Although the Soviet Union played an important role in the organization of the Nuremberg tribunals and prosecuting crimes of aggression in the aftermath of WWII, today’s Kremlin has shown little interest in holding the Russian military accountable for its conduct in other countries. It is wishful thinking to believe Moscow will cooperate in any way with the ICC. Given Russia’s nuclear status, the West lacks the kind of leverage it had in the former Yugoslavia to achieve the extradition of suspects.

Acknowledging these limitations at the outset is important in order to strategize how to make the justice process more robust and serve the needs of victims. Ukrainians deserve more than what The Hague alone can do, especially if they do not get to see Putin himself in the dock.

The current war has destroyed millions of lives and many people have lost everything. The ICC, for all its important work, cannot replace what has been lost and cannot heal collective trauma on this scale. Instead, the international community must push for a broader range of efforts. This should include reparations and apologies, special provisions for victims of gender-based violence and displaced persons, adequate and sustainable humanitarian assistance, and psychosocial support.

The role of civil society is crucial here and the international community must work hard to support Ukrainian “bottom-up” efforts even while institutions like the ICC work to impose justice from the top down. In other victimized communities around the world, survivors have done extraordinary work to exhume mass graves, determine the whereabouts of the disappeared, claim reparations, and share their stories of violence. The potential for ordinary Ukrainians to engage in these kinds of civil society efforts may ultimately be more empowering than watching proceedings in The Hague from afar, although both are, of course, complementary.

In order to ensure real justice for Ukraine, we must stretch the boundaries of how we think about justice itself. We must include a strong bottom-up component to any measure of justice and look beyond criminal accountability to the true reaffirmation of Ukrainians’ humanity.

Danielle Johnson holds a PhD in Politics from Oxford University and specializes in Russian and Ukrainian affairs.

Drun in Taiwan News: US must actively counter China’s distortion of UN treaty to isolate Taiwan – think tank report

Atlantic Council — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 13:27:00 +0000

On March 24, 2022, Global China Hub fellow Jessica Drun’s report was discussed in a Taiwan News article, “US must actively counter China’s distortion of UN treaty to isolate Taiwan: think tank report.”

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Drun quoted in New York Times: China’s push to isolate Taiwan demands US action, report says

Atlantic Council — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 13:20:00 +0000

On March 24, 2022, Global China Hub fellow Jessica Drun’s German Marshall Fund report with GMF Asia Director Bonnie Glaser was featured in a New York Times article, “China’s push to isolate Taiwan demands US action, report says.”

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Russia’s veto makes a mockery of the United Nations Security Council

Shelby Magid, Yulia Shalomov — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 10:55:47 +0000

“This is an extraordinary moment,” declared US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield during a recent UN General Assembly (UNGA) emergency special session on Ukraine. “Now, at more than any other point in recent history, the United Nations is being challenged. If the United Nations has any purpose, it is to prevent war, it is to condemn war, to stop war.”

With this purpose in mind, in a sweeping show of international unity, 141 countries voted in favor of an UNGA resolution demanding an immediate end to the Russian offensive in Ukraine. While non-binding and largely symbolic, this overwhelming show of global support for Ukraine came at a time when it was doubly needed, both for Ukraine itself and for the sake of the UN.

Only four countries joined Russia in voting against the resolution. To the surprise of nobody, the list included Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, and Syria. Thirty-five nations abstained.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy applauded the outcome, declaring “Destructive results of the vote in the UN for the aggressor convincingly show that a global anti-Putin coalition has been formed and is functioning. The world is with us.”

Yet while Zelenskyy’s description of a global anti-Putin coalition may ring true for the UNGA, a meaningful multilateral response is still being blunted by Russia’s veto power in the UN Security Council (UNSC).

While the UNGA vote showed overwhelming global support for Ukraine, just a few days earlier the UN’s most powerful body sent a very different message. Despite the support of 11 Council members, the UNSC failed to adopt a resolution necessitating the immediate cessation and withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine following a single “no” vote from Russia. This once again highlighted the privileged and troubling role the five permanent members (P5) enjoy within the international body’s most powerful organ.

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Under the UN Charter, the Security Council is imbued with both primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security and the capacity to pass binding resolutions. Such decisions, however, are to be made with “the concurring votes of the permanent members,” thus requiring unanimous support (or abstention in lieu of) from the P5 nations.

While the UN Charter endeavors to restrict member states party to a conflict from blocking UNSC action, the provision has rarely been enforced by members reluctant to see similar caps placed on their own powers. As a result, no member state has moved to forestall or challenge Russia’s veto of the resolution.

The P5 have frequently wielded their veto power to torpedo resolutions incongruent with their national and foreign policy interests. Such machinations have been at the root of repeated Council inaction on Syria, Israel, and perhaps most memorably, Ukraine following the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia.

Unilateral obstruction in the Council has over time fed into growing criticism of the UN’s alleged irrelevance on the international stage. Established to foster global cooperation for the common good and consensual laws governing international behavior to preempt and mitigate interstate conflicts, today the UN is becoming increasingly captive to geopolitical rivalry and indecision. Russia is using its perch on the Security Council to distort international norms and sow discord in the pursuit of national interests.

In a series of perturbing televised addresses on February 21 and 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin evoked terms of international law in an undisguised bid to cloak Russian military aggression behind the guise of self-defense against alleged abuses and genocide perpetrated by Ukraine against Russians and Russian-speaking minorities in the Donbas, and the existential threat posed to “the very existence of [the Russian] state and to its sovereignty” by the West. The utter absurdity of these statements belies the extent of Russia’s exceptional interpretations and weaponization of normative frameworks governing national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the use of force.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine represents the largest conventional military attack since World War II. Over 2.8 million Ukrainian refugees have fled the country since the start of the assault as the civilian death toll continues to rise. Global outrage over the invasion has been powerful and the collective response has been surprisingly united, swift, and increasingly bruising.

Russia has faced a multifaceted international backlash with repercussions for its war on Ukraine hitting the nation in all parts of its economy and society. As British foreign minister Liz Truss said, Russia is becoming a “global pariah” and facing deserved isolation on the global stage.

A major part of such isolation has come through enactment of massive sanctions targeting Russian commerce and banking systems. Societal backlash has also been extensive, as a slew of multinational corporations from Apple to Boeing have suspended operations in the country.

Furthering its ostracization on the global arena is a growing movement to boycott Russian sports and cultural engagement. Perhaps most noteworthy is the galvanization of dramatic reversals in European foreign and security policy away from engagement with Russia.

Yet whereas much of the global response has been decisive in its freeze out of Russia, the UN remains a disappointing if not surprising holdout. The failure to mount more than symbolic condemnation for an attack perpetrated by a member of the P5 is irresponsible at best and evidence of a system fundamentally unable to live up to its mission.

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The magnitude and sheer audacity of Russian actions must represent an urgent wake-up call for the global community. This includes a pressing need to reevaluate the very institutions that enable the perversion of international laws and permit totalitarianism to flourish with no retribution.

Such reevaluations must include the United Nations. As the premier intergovernmental organization with the aim of maintaining peace and security, the United Nations has a unique responsibility to question how it moves forward.

Addressing the UN General Assembly, the Austrian ambassador to the UN warned, “The Security Council cannot remain silent when basic principles of our international rules-based order are trampled by military boots and squashed by tanks.” Anything less than a resolute response to Russia’s systemic cooption and undermining of UN values puts the institution at risk of losing its moral grounding and irrevocably shattering public faith in the multilateral system.

Since the start of Putin’s invasion, numerous countries have joined calls for more punishing consequences for Russia in the UN Security Council. A gamut of responses, ranging from the pragmatic to the sobering, continue to be discussed. These include a mandated convening of the General Assembly after any use of veto power in the UNSC.

Some have also questioned the legitimacy of Russian succession to the USSR’s UNSC seat. This issue was raised most vocally by the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN. Given the gravity of the situation, there have also been demands for Russia’s removal from the UNSC, including in a recent US Congressional resolution. Others have advocated ending veto power entirely.

Change will not come easily. Security Council reform has been on the Assembly’s agenda for more than two decades to little avail.

However, Russia’s latest actions have given renewed impetus to reform discussions. At no point in time has a member of the P5 so blithely abandoned international law to launch an unsanctioned assault on another country and used their position in the Security Council to shield itself from punishment.

Perfunctory warnings about the futility or infeasibility of censuring Russian actions threaten to make a mockery of the multilateral system. Recent reports of the UN’s internal guidance to avoid usage of the words “war” or “invasion” in reference to the Russian assault on Ukraine further underscore this point.

Putin’s war has fundamentally transformed the geopolitical landscape. This new reality must be reflected in the way the United Nations functions. If not now, when?

Shelby Magid is Associate Director at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Yulia Shalomov is Assistant Director at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs.

Atlantic Council — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 20:25:01 +0000

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Nia quoted in Radio France Internationale on legal accountability for war crimes in Syria at The Hague

Atlantic Council — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 19:37:00 +0000

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Slavin quoted in The Irish Times on challenges of the US-Iran nuclear talks in Vienna

Atlantic Council — Sun, 13 Feb 2022 12:57:00 +0000

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Qaddour quoted in Foreign Policy on US-Russia deals in the UN on Syria’s Civil War

Atlantic Council — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 15:41:00 +0000

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Alyemany joins Yemen Today to discuss the economic and political importance of the Red Sea in regional conflicts

Atlantic Council — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 21:06:00 +0000

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Fulton quoted in The National on Russian and Chinese foreign policy implications in the region

Atlantic Council — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 21:44:00 +0000

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Azodi joins BBC Persian to discuss the status of the international community in today’s world

Atlantic Council — Fri, 19 Nov 2021 23:44:00 +0000

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Sakhi with Notre Dame Events: Prioritizing Afghan Voices: How the International Community Can Assist Afghanistan

Atlantic Council — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 16:15:01 +0000

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Qaddour quoted in The New Arab on the prospect of US normalization with the Syrian regime

Atlantic Council — Thu, 21 Oct 2021 18:50:00 +0000

Original SOurce

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A Digital Asset Bill of Rights

Michael Greenwald — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 14:17:13 +0000

A Little History

In 1918, after more than four years of bloody conflict in World War I, American President Woodrow Wilson presented his first concept of the League of Nations. His idea and motivation stemmed from the thought that countries may be able to mitigate future conflicts and avoid significant bloodshed through diplomacy, open communication, and international cooperation. Though the United States (US) did not join the League of Nations at the time due to congressional dismissal of the contract, it existed for 26 years with more than 60 member states and has since evolved into the United Nations (UN), which boasts 193 member states.

In a time of confusion and warring interests across Europe, Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations provided a structure for stability and a platform for discussing shared challenges. Today, the UN has become a widely popular international organization, whose foundations for international peace and security were poured in the initial 1918 proposal. While many countries consider the UN to be deeply flawed, it plays an essential role in enabling international dialogue which no other institution offers. All UN missions serve significant positive purpose. But more than anything, the existence of the UN is critical to American security because it is a legacy of US leadership at a time of doubt. The agreements set forth by this international body deliver and uphold certainty about basic human rights. Like-minded member countries understand the critical nature of the UN in the world and appreciate its role in enforcing standards for human existence.

The Recent State of Affairs

While the UN held an influential role throughout the latter 1900s, it would be remiss to ignore fluctuating economic trends in its membership over time. In 1945, the victors of World War II were also the five largest economies in the world — together, they comprised two-thirds of global growth. Fast forward 75 years and the original five are slipping behind. Today, the permanent members of the UN Security Council represent only 50% of the global economy. If seats were assigned by GDP, Russia and France would have to step aside for Germany and Japan.

That kind of musical chairs is minor compared to what will play out over the next thirty years. By 2050, it is projected that the original P5 will control only 40% of the global economy. In order to align security and economic power as it existed in 1945, the permanent seats would be held by Brazil, India, Indonesia, the United States, and China. There are a number of reasons why UN edicts don’t pack the same punch they did two decades ago — and economics is one of the main factors.

The UN? Is it even relevant?

Even though some may say that the UN doesn’t have any teeth or that it is not as effective as it was set out to be, let’s take a second to think about an alternative world without this open forum for discussion and multilateralism. What if authoritarian governments had determined the rules of conflict and (likely) left out clauses about basic human rights? The soft power of the UN plays a substantial role in shaping our international community. As we become more closely connected with emerging technologies, guidelines developed by bodies like the UN become central to writing the modern playbook for liberal governments.

While private companies are increasingly playing an important role in determining global norms and transnational conduct, governments must keep pace. When it comes to digital currencies, this point is especially pertinent due to the rapidly increasing conflict between private innovation and public sector regulation.

The G-7 Framework – Applied to Digital Assets

For the US government, whose mission it is to ensure the security and prosperity of the US citizenry, it will be important to start thinking about how to revamp a “League of Nations-esque” agreement focused on digital assets. Since American power owes much to the US-centric financial system, policymakers already understand the necessity of US leadership in this endeavor. With privacy, security, inclusion, free markets, and rule of law at the heart of historical US prosperity, this body will drive a value-based approach to adopting guidelines for modern transactions and stores of value.

A similar strategy was taken by the Obama administration in 2012, when it offered a “a blueprint for privacy in an information age.” The Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights that it set forward was not a binding legal document. But it set the course and allowed policymakers to think about modern challenges with a modern framework of ethical understanding in the best interest of its citizens.

Though it may struggle at the outset to “have teeth” as it builds credibility and members, this Digital Assets Bill of Rights will set the founding principles for understanding the future of modern stores of value and mediums of exchange. The United States, just as it led the convention of the League of Nations, should once again take this initiative. While more technical details will have to be hashed out in the years to come, the basis of this group of like-minded countries must be established with a baseline of inherent human rights.

Establishing the Digital Assets Bill of Rights cannot wait for front-running stablecoins to develop first mover advantage and instead must be an initiative led by like-minded governments with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Former Governor of the Banks of England and Canada Mark Carney has commented on the existence of stablecoins and CBDCs, noting that if vigorous oversight and rules must exist for stablecoins, then “what would differentiate them from CBDCs?” Although the popularity of stablecoins has increased, in his view, “It’s not clear why a single CBDC wouldn’t perform better.” As a result, central banks around the world should be charged with adapting financial value systems to modern day technologies. They must work closely with finance ministries as well as the legislative branch to adapt their countries’ financial systems to CBDCs & stablecoins.

Though much thought will need to be given to developing these guiding principles, an initial set of these rights are as follows:

The Digital Asset Bill of Rights for Non-Authoritarian Countries

1. The right to remain separate from harm caused to society from digital assets (money laundering, etc.). This includes the establishment of a Digital Asset Framework modeled after the Financial Action Task Force.

2. The right to be left alone (privacy). This includes the creation of privacy safeguards for consumers to protect confidential information

3. The right to have access. This includes the prioritization of financial inclusion for financial services at low rates that all consumers can access.

4. The right to be informed on good computer hygiene and protection from cyber incursions. This includes a public and private sector partnership to deal with national security instances where illicit actors use digital assets to deploy ransomware.

5. The right to be educated. This includes an education campaign on digital assets for schools, industry, and non-profits to create more pockets of innovation.

6. The right to set standards. This includes the creation of a Central Bank Governor Working Group across like-minded countries (United States, European Union, New Zealand, Japan, and Australia) to create a digital asset Bretton Woods.

In the coming years, the United States needs to lead in value-setting, even if not to create its own digital dollar or CBDC framework. If it does not lead, it risks the potential of China taking the digital asset mantle globally and setting the rules of the road for the international community. As we enter a multipolar world, where a “basket of currencies” becomes more and more of a reality every day, the United States needs to be the world convener on digital assets rather than admiring their development from afar. No longer will white papers or domestic task forces be satisfactory. The United States should lead on a global stage as it has done during previous geoeconomic inflection points in history.

Michael B. Greenwald is Director at Tiedemann Advisors and Director for Digital Asset Education. He was the first US Treasury attaché to Qatar and Kuwait, acting as the principal liaison to the banking sector in those nations, while serving in two presidential administrations and under three treasury secretaries from 2010-2017. He is a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Geoeconomics Center.

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

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The 5×5—The future of cyber diplomacy

Simon Handler — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 17:11:31 +0000

This article is part of The 5×5, a monthly series by the Cyber Statecraft Initiative, in which five featured experts answer five questions on a common theme, trend, or current event in the world of cyber. Interested in the 5×5 and want to see a particular topic, event, or question covered? Contact Simon Handler with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at SHandler@atlanticcouncil.org.

The cyber domain is not just the newest domain of conflict and cooperation, but one that pervades modern societies and is constantly evolving. A lack of mutually agreed upon rules of the road poses a challenge to stability. In 2015, the United Nations published a consensus report from the Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security to build out a framework of international norms for responsible cyber behavior. The report has provided an important starting point, but in practice has had little impact on states’ cyber behavior.

The international community has yet to develop a common understanding of what constitutes a norm violation, which specific categories of targets should be off-limits to certain types of cyber operations, and so on. In June 2021, US President Joe Biden presented Russian President Vladimir Putin with a list of sixteen critical infrastructure sectors that should be off-limits to hacking, but the list encompasses certain traditionally legitimate targets, such as the defense industrial base, and Russia-linked cyber operations do not appear to have slowed since.

Effective cyber diplomacy requires the involvement of more than just states, as industry and civil society actors play a vital role in shaping capabilities and norms. We brought together a group of leading experts with a range of perspectives to discuss cyber diplomacy and what the future of responsible cyber statecraft looks like.

#1 What makes cyber diplomacy different, or notable, when compared to other forms of diplomacy?

Kaja Ciglic, senior director, digital diplomacy, Microsoft:

“The very nature of the Internet as a borderless, interconnected system makes it too complex to be solely managed by any single country, company, or organization. Making a meaningful difference and countering threats emanating from cyberspace, especially state cyberattacks, will require effective cooperation among all relevant stakeholders. Cyber diplomacy is different from other forms of diplomacy, because it is the first real multistakeholder diplomacy.”

Aude Géry, postdoc in public international law, specialist in international legal issues of cybersecurity, Geopolitics of the Datasphere (GEODE), University of Paris 8:

“First, the resilience of our societies is dependent upon the security and stability of the digital space. Second, the digital space can be a driver to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. So, cyber diplomacy participates in the definition of all aspects of our current and future world. It impacts all other domains of cooperation and issues.”

Klara Jordan, senior fellow, Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security; chief public policy officer, Cyber Peace Institute:

“Cyber diplomacy’s key difference when compared to other forms of diplomacy is that it is a relatively new area of competition and collaboration between states, where rules, norms, and effects of actions or omissions of states are not clearly defined. Those that engage at the diplomatic level on cyber issues had to develop a framework for engagement in a short period time, without the possibility of using frameworks from other domains as a guide. Rapid digitization increases the attack surface at a pace that is not matched by efforts to secure it or by the international community as a whole showcasing responsible behavior in cyberspace, so the diplomatic community is left to grapple with these issues. It is also a domain of not only strategic importance, but one that touches and influences the everyday lives of individuals at every level. Global progress, democracy, and physical and emotional wellbeing can be impacted by negative trends surrounding cyberspace. So, the stakes are high, the rules of the game are not sufficiently defined, and the topics and equities are complex.”

Elaine Korzak, affiliate, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Stanford University:

“As technology is becoming ever more important, various discussions under the umbrella of “cyber diplomacy” are noteworthy since they seek to build a normative framework for cyberspace. This framework is significant and consequential – its regulatory choices carry economic, political, social, and security ramifications for individual states and the international community as a whole. Though diplomatic processes move slowly and progress has been incremental, it deserves much more attention than it has received thus far.

Christopher Painter, president, The Global Forum on Cyber Expertise Foundation; former coordinator for cyber issues, US State Department:

“Cyber diplomacy is essentially applying a diplomatic tool set to cyber challenges, and encompasses: building alliances and collective response to cyber threats; negotiating a cyber stability framework that includes rules of the road for state actions in cyberspace; negotiating bilateral agreements and cooperative frameworks; ensuring human rights are respected in cyberspace; using diplomatic tools to respond to threats; fostering capacity building; and integrating cyber issues into larger discussions of national and economic security, among other issues. For too long, cyber has been relegated by senior policymakers to technical experts in a failure to recognize the vital policy issues at stake as we have become more dependent on cyberspace for everything from our economic to societal growth. It is important to draw attention to cyber issues and make them a diplomatic priority to help mainstream them as real national security and foreign policy concerns. This is particularly true given the increasing cyber threats we have witnessed, but also the real promise of growth that these technologies offer. Fortunately, there has been good recent progress in elevating both cyber and cyber diplomacy to real areas of national and international priority.”

#2 How do agreed upon norms in cyberspace (or lack thereof) impact diplomatic approaches to cyber crises?

Ciglic: “Agreed-upon norms introduce greater stability to cyberspace and, in combination with confidence-building measures, provide options to prevent escalation and, hopefully, allow for easier resolution of disputes. Norms can also signal what kind of behavior is unacceptable. This is why the attribution of a cyberattack to a state that is in violation of international norms, even when using a third party, should always include an explicit and direct articulation of which norm was transgressed and how.”

Géry: “Norms offer common understanding of what to do or not do, and serve as incentives to cooperate. But, by themselves, they cannot prevent or limit cyber crises. Because many provisions related to crises are confidence-building measures, they are not binding, and their implementation may require capabilities. This is why international law, confidence building measures, capacity building, and norms all reinforce each other.”

Jordan: “While most of the international community has agreed on set of norms, agreed upon by consensus in 2015 and endorsed in 2021 by the UN Group of Governmental Experts on Advancing Responsible State Behaviour in Cyberspace, the international community has not agreed on what some of these norms mean, and what behavior would constitute the violation of a norm. Therefore, we lack clarity and consensus on where the lines of responsible behavior, or the lack of thereof, lie, complicating clear-cut conversations on responsibility and accountability in a crisis. Because we have a lack of historical precedence of crisis management mechanisms in this area, the diplomatic community has to fly the plane as they are building it – explaining the norm and why a violation has occurred, presenting technical evidence, and discussing proportional response to an act or omission.”

Korzak: “Following the promulgation of the 2015 cyber norms, the agreement was criticized for having little to no impact on states’ behaviors and cyber crises. Abstract norms agreed upon in diplomatic venues seemed to be detached from the string of cybersecurity incidents occurring worldwide. Since then, there has been a shift to actively promote norms in cyberspace and to support states in their implementation. As a consequence, there has also been greater emphasis on accountability in case of norm violation. Cyber norms provide a framework or benchmark to judge states’ actions as responsible or irresponsible. More countries are starting to use the norms agreed upon in the United Nations more explicitly and deliberately in their handling of cyber crises, calling out violators and the norms that need to be upheld. Similarly, cyber crises offer opportunities to point to the need for additional norms or regulations that are currently lacking.”

Painter: “Norms and international law are a baseline of acceptable state conduct in cyberspace. Without them, it would be a lawless space. Even when states violate agreed-upon norms, they provide a rallying point for other states to demand compliance and foster accountability (and consequences for bad actors). For example, the US call for Russia to get a handle on malicious cyber gangs operating from its territory is backed up by previously agreed to norms.”

#3 How do countries balance freedom of offensive (or defensive) action in cyberspace with norms dictating avoidance of certain targets, tactics, or capabilities?

Ciglic: “We have rules in all aspects of our lives that enable us to function as a society. There is no reason for cyberspace to be any different. In addition to agreed-upon norms, international law, international humanitarian law, and human rights law all govern what type of action states can take in cyberspace.”

Géry: “Countries do so by introducing a threshold criterion in the scope of what is acceptable or not. For example, not all cyber operations against critical infrastructures are targeted by norms, but only those operations that cause a certain level of damage. They thus leave outside of the norms’ scope operations limited to mere data collection.”

Jordan: “The norms of behavior that states discuss and agree on express their aspirations for certain principles and behavior in cyberspace. Ultimately, though, norms shape the political and normative environment by states’ actions and decisions, which are an outcome a balancing of complex equities. For example, to balance the strategic benefit of exploiting a zero-day vulnerability for offensive actions, with risk cased to society or civilian equities, some states have implemented a vulnerability equities process. In a situation of an armed conflict, states use the rules of international humanitarian law to determine which objects are protected and cannot be targeted by cyber (or other) capabilities. While balancing equities is difficult and complex, states should always prioritize human-centric equities in decision making.”

Korzak: “That balancing calculation depends on every country and their specific circumstances. Although the international community is working towards regulating state behavior in cyberspace (and with that offensive and defensive action) through cyber diplomacy, different states seek different regulations in this conversation. The United States and like-minded states promote a set of norms that have been agreed in UN Groups of Governmental Experts to limit states’ actions in cyberspace. These include norms prohibiting the targeting of certain structures, for instance critical infrastructure or Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs or CSIRTs). Additionally, states have acknowledged the applicability of international law, which places constraints on the activities of states in cyberspace and would have to be taken into account in national balancing calculations. Particularly international humanitarian law contains numerous provisions regulating the development of capabilities and their use. However, these provisions are interpreted by every state, and it still remains to be seen where different interpretations of the law may converge or diverge.”

Painter: “Countries do so the same way as they do in physical space. There are targets that are off limits in the physical world in peacetime because of their nature (i.e., hospitals), and the same should apply in cyberspace. Of course, as a new area, countries need to be comfortable in restraining their capabilities, and this requires coordination both within and between governments. But norms, such as ones prohibiting attacks on critical infrastructure during peacetime, have already achieved a high level of consensus (though we have, as yet, not been good at holding violators accountable). Agreements of restraint and cooperation are vital to future cyber stability.”

The 5×5—The state of cybersecurity in the Middle East

Collective cybersecurity for the Three Seas

Broken trust: Lessons from Sunburst

#4 Why do some technology companies have cyber diplomacy teams (e.g., Microsoft) and some governments tech ambassadors (e.g., Denmark)?

Ciglic: “The number of countries with tech ambassadors grows year by the year, and we are finally also seeing increasing interest in international processes dealing with cybersecurity across the private sector – and not just the tech sector. This is a welcome and long-overdue development. The reason for this is simple – as more and more of our lives are spent online, this is an area that will only grow in importance over the next decade, impacting not just some countries and some companies, but societies across the globe.”

Géry: “If diplomacy is first and foremost an inter-state activity, the digital space has been created and is managed by non-state actors that are directly impacted by states’ activities. Achieving peace and security in the digital space will thus not be possible without non-state actors, requiring a discussion between these two categories of actors.”

Jordan: “This stems from the commitment of these stakeholders to contribute to safer and principled cyberspace. I believe that industry players engaged in this space want to prevent the weaponization of their technology – not only because they understand the negative impact it can have on their bottom lines, but also because they are concerned that abuse of technology can undermine trust in digital technologies and jeopardize their great potential. They are also operationalizing their part of being responsible actors in cyberspace by investing resources and expertise to inform diplomatic discussion in this domain, especially because it is one built and operated by the industry.

As for governments, these actions are part of their commitments of responsible state behavior. Governments are utilizing all of the tools in their toolboxes to ensure that their national security and foreign policy interests have a chance to prevail, including in this domain of strategic importance. Also, states want to ensure that their citizens can enjoy safe and stable cyberspace where they will be able to benefit from technology without being concerned about security safety and privacy.”

Korzak: “An organization’s decision to dedicate resources to cyber diplomacy can be based on many factors, just as in other policy fields. Increased engagement can be driven by the interest of individuals in leadership positions. It can be spurred by a cybersecurity incident that affected a certain company, sector, segment of society, or state, etc. It can emanate from coordinated civil society pressure on a certain topic. An organization, be it a company or a government, can view itself as particularly capable or vulnerable when it comes to cybersecurity issues and may thus see it in their interest to shape international regulatory outcomes accordingly. Another factor might be peer pressure if certain countries or companies build up diplomatic capacity either regionally or internationally. On the whole, we have seen an increase in corporate engagement and diplomatic posts in governments in the past five-to-six years. However, the more interesting question to me is, why certain technology companies and governments have so far not dedicated noticeable resources to cyber diplomacy in spite of this trend.”

Painter: “I think countries, the private sector, and civil society are all recognizing that much of future prosperity lies in cyberspace, and that decisions made in a multitude of global and regional forums will help shape the future of cyberspace and how we respond to threats. The United States had the first high-level dedicated cyber diplomat and now over forty countries have a version of this. While Denmark created a special position for the tech sector, many existing cyber diplomats have that relationship as part of their portfolios.”

#5 What countries, companies, or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) handle cyber diplomacy exceptionally well? Which have room for improvement?

Ciglic: “The groups, whether in the public or private sector, or members of civil society, that have managed to make a meaningful difference in this complex area are the ones that recognize that they need to reach out across the aisle. That means building partnerships, finding new ways to collaborate across the different stakeholder groups, and investing in bringing others along for the ride. In short, those who are most successful in this space are those who understand and embrace the importance of multistakeholder, digital diplomacy.”

Géry: “Today, we see more and more state and non-state actors involved in cyber diplomacy. This is great, because the digital space shapes our societies and creates interdependencies. Everyone needs to be on board, but there is still a long way to go. The Open-Ended Working Group at the United Nations has brought many states into the discussion. On the non-state actors’ side, there is still a lack of interests. To make concrete progress, raising awareness and capabilities are needed on both sides.”

Jordan: “Rather than calling out specific countries, I would like to highlight a certain approach to cyber diplomacy. Organizations and governments that walk the walk of multistakeholder engagement in cyber issues have the potential to present a comprehensive engagement strategy that does not leave out any stakeholder and considers all the equities that can be impacted or influenced by an outcome of a diplomatic engagement. Additionally, entities that have practical approaches to diplomacy that manage to connect the diplomatic with practical have had some successes in this domain.”

Korzak: “The negotiations of the United Nation’s Open-Ended Working Group from 2019-2021 offer a good starting point to see which states and non-state actors have been particularly active in cyber discussions. For states, this includes the United States, several EU states (Estonia, France, The Netherlands, among others), Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Singapore, as so-called like-minded states. Further, Russia has been driving diplomatic discussions for over two decades and China has become significantly more involved in recent years. On an individual level, the chairs of the Open-Ended Working Group and the latest Group of Governmental Experts, Ambassador Lauber of Switzerland Ambassador Patriota of Brazil, respectively, have been credited with the successful completion of diplomatic talks. With regard to companies and civil society organizations, human rights and privacy groups have been quite involved. On the corporate side, Microsoft has been a long-time leader on cyber diplomacy, and other companies have joined through the Tech Accord. (For a detailed account, the multistakeholder dialogue organized as part of the Open-Ended Working Group has a list of non-governmental organizations that participated; though not all entities that registered also attended.) On the whole, however, a more diverse set of companies and civil society organizations, particularly from the Global South, is still missing.”

Painter: “Really, there are many (and I am not going to choose), but I think the United States has played a leading role – and, hopefully, its posture will be buttressed with re-elevated organizational priority and resources by the Biden administration. Microsoft has been a leader as a company, and I would like to see other companies becoming more active in policy issues. There are also a lot of active and talented NGOs, but I will selfishly plug The Global Forum on Cyber Expertise (GFCE) that I help run. The GFCE is a global multi-stakeholder organization that seeks to promote and coordinate cybersecurity capacity building around the globe – a foundational pillar to the world’s diplomatic and response efforts.”

Simon Handler is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also the editor-in-chief of The 5×5, a series on trends and themes in cyber policy. Follow him on Twitter @SimonPHandler.

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Alam was quoted in Outlook India News article: UN and Afghanistan’s Taliban, figuring out how to interact

Atlantic Council — Sun, 26 Sep 2021 19:52:00 +0000

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Make way for Wakanda: The UN Security Council needs an African seat

Rama Yade — Fri, 24 Sep 2021 15:39:40 +0000

Pouring new wine into old wineskins will simply lead them to burst, goes the Bible verse. When it comes to the United Nations Security Council, the wineskins are seats: five permanent ones and ten rotating seats. For a rising generation of African leaders, the idea of serving a two-year term and rotating off does not square with their demand for fair and equal opportunities. What these creators and innovators aim to do is rewrite the African narrative in a manner that correctly represents their continent.

In this seventy-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly, Africans represent the largest group, with 28 percent of the votes, ahead of Asia with 27 percent, and well above the Americas at 17 percent, and Western Europe at 15 percent. Yet everyone knows that Africa does not decide anything. The real decision-making body is the Security Council, and its five permanent members are China, Russia, France, Great Britain, and the United States.

The founding of this prestigious council was based on the results of World War II, where global superpowers were defined based on hard power. What about the African people? Weren’t they involved in the victory over Hitler’s Germany? The French launched the Resistance from Brazzaville, and numerous African countries served in the war. They deserve their seat at the victory banquet.

Besides, the United Nations Security Council still functions on a conventional framework, which was written back in 1945, before the majority of African countries had gained independence from their colonizers—which is another fault to correct.

This gap is all the less bearable because the African continent has dealt with issues threatening peace and security for centuries. Africa even was home to one of the world’s first human-rights charters: the Manden Charter, launched by the great Sundiata Keita, founder of the Mali Empire, long before the English Bill of Rights (1689) and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), and perhaps even before the Magna Carta (1215).

Capitalizing on culture

The composition of the UN Security Council—let’s call it aristocratic for this argument—does not reflect the current world at all. Today, the notion of power has evolved from hard power, which is forceful and coercive, to a subtle but more influential power. Soft power enables a nation to lead other countries through influence, which allows those countries to lead their own development without coercive interference, which is what the Security Council should note. Afghanistan and the Sahel are proof of the limits of hard power—and Black Panther, the 2018 movie based on a Marvel comic, is the consecration of soft power. That’s right, it’s Wakanda time.

Africa and its powerful creative industries—driven by connected youth amid the biggest digital revolution of the past two decades—shine beyond the borders of Nollywood to influence Hollywood. This growing market expands its influence everywhere: Nigeria’s entertainment and media market doubled from 2014 to 2019 to become the fastest-growing in the world, according to the audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). When Nigeria incorporated Nollywood in its gross domestic product in 2013 (in a rebasing of data), it became the largest economy in Africa. From Dior to Louis Vuitton, luxury fashion has been renewed with African inspirations. Ready-to-wear brands such as Sweden’s H&M and Spain’s Zara have joined in as well. African Fashion Weeks from Johannesburg to Lagos have inspired international celebrity entertainers like Beyoncé and Rihanna, who is a fashion designer herself.

Beyoncé’s Disney-produced musical, Black Is King, is a celebration of Africa, dreamed up in line with the global success of Black Panther, which featured award-winning African actors in Hollywood such as Lupita Nyong’o and Daniel Kaluuya. Moreover, Netflix has greatly enriched its platform of African series, targeting African audiences and not just English speakers. In the music industry, Nigerian artists such as Burna Boy, Davido, and Wizkid have signed with major US labels such as Sony and regularly win Grammy awards. Burna Boy’s songs were included on the playlist for US President Joe Biden’s inauguration. Jay-Z, Will Smith, and Jada Pinkett Smith backed a Broadway musical, Fela!, about a Nigerian singer that won three Tony Awards in 2010. Not so long ago, Nigerians were paying dearly for collaborations with American and European stars, but now the opposite is true. Soft power is now the predominant power.

At United Nations Plaza, these changes have not been taken into consideration. It is quite alarming that the ruling procedures for the security council have not been amended since 1982. The Security Council was built on the principle of sovereignty and equality of all nations; therefore, democratization and reformation of this organization are overdue and a reassessment must ensure fairness and justice for the African continent. Fairness should start with demography. Africa is predicted to become the largest population of the world in the next twenty years, and it already is the youngest: Almost one in four world inhabitants will be a sub-Saharan African in 2050.

Three options for the Security Council

Several African candidates merit consideration for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. First, Nigeria is the continent’s most populous nation, at more than 210 million people. In 1963, after its independence in 1960, Nigeria was one of the founding members of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union. From 1960 to 1995, Nigeria provided $61 billion in funding for the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. This country also assisted prominent leaders of liberation movements in decision-making against the military government regimes of the time throughout the continent. Nigeria founded the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1975, when it utilized its soft power to address a civil war in Angola through OAU policy. By nationalizing Barclays Bank and British Petroleum in the late 1970s, Nigeria was able to pressure the British and contribute to Zimbabwe’s independence.

Another contender for a permanent seat is South Africa. Despite recent concerns about xenophobic violence against African migrants, South Africa has a universal audience because of its powerful story of transformation. The iconic struggle and leadership of the late Nelson Mandela, who went from jail to the presidency, is known the world over. After holding its first democratic elections in 1994, one of the most multiracial countries in Africa went on to have one of the most remarkable constitutions in the world through the Convention for a Democratic South Africa talks, where the current president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, was chief negotiator for Mandela’s African National Congress party. Since then, South Africa has diversified its industry and now plays a role in the Southern African Development Community, is a member of the Group of Twenty (G20) nations, and is regarded as one of the “BRICS”—five major emerging economies, alongside Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

Sports has played a role in South Africa’s appealing story. Shortly after its first free elections, South Africa won the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Bafana Bafana, the South African soccer team, was allowed to play international soccer again, after being banned due to nation’s apartheid policy, and went on to win the 1996 African Cup of Nations. These achievements through sports showed that diversity is far more powerful than segregation, and provided a stepping-stone for the country’s influence in Africa and around the globe. In 2010, South Africa was the first African country to host the FIFA World Cup. This year, South Africa assumed the presidency of the Confederation of African Football, the leading voice on sports on the continent and a hub for creative industries.

“Oho! Congo, couched in your forest bed, queen over subdued Africa,

Let the phalli of the mountains bear your pavilion high…”

Right in the middle of Africa’s heart lies the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), heralded above through the words of poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal. The DRC is not only a queen—it is mythical Wakanda. It has always been and was so much so that, in a crazy move, the bloodthirsty Belgian King Leopold II decreed Congo as his personal possession. The richness of the resources surfaced in US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s recent remarks at the Atlantic Council. Speaking about Congolese minerals including cobalt, copper, zinc, silver, gold, platinum, and other resources that contribute to the world electronics industry, she said: “Every time I see the movie Wakanda, I think this is DRC. And I know it was an imaginary story, but imagine a DRC where the resources that are available there are being used to build the country, are being used to educate the people, are being used to provide health care and services for the people of DRC, and we would have a Wakanda in the making.”

Not only is this country rich in terms of its soil, but also in history and culture. With two hundred ethnic groups and two hundred different languages, the DRC is the largest French-speaking country in the world, with more students in school than residents of France. Kinshasa, with its seventeen million inhabitants, is the largest French-speaking city in the world, before Paris. At the UN Security Council, Congo would know how to speak to the three hundred million French-speaking people in the world and the thirty million Lingala-speakers of Africa.

But the most important reason why the DRC should be a permanent member of the Security Council lies less in its strengths than its weaknesses: thirty years of civil wars, political coups, the impotence of the six thousand UN peacekeepers in the eastern DRC (present for two decades), and the distress of 4.5 million displaced people. These are the reasons why the DRC is never quoted among the pretendants to a UN permanent seat. Its tragedy does not even seem to upset the international community, even though a collapse of the DRC, under the pressure of dark forces, would have a tragic, deep, large, and long-term effect on the African continent and beyond.

The reasons why the DRC should join the Security Council are to gain a powerful lever to stop myriad manipulations by its neighbors and the international community, and to help this country’s voice to be heard. The DRC would bring to the Security Council something referred to as “weakness politics”: the effects of fragility causing processes that lead to achievements and the shaping of events. Such a change would be the best and most innovative way to reform and democratize this body. Bring out the new wineskins!

Rama Yade is senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center and a senior fellow at the Europe Center.

FAST THINKING: Biden’s UN reality check

By Atlantic Council

President Biden spoke of “relentless diplomacy” at the UN on Tuesday. But can that relentlessness overcome transatlantic strains, not to mention a still-raging pandemic and climate crisis?

Africa Crisis Management

New Atlanticist Sep 10, 2021

Gregory Meeks: For counterterrorism and economic opportunity, turn toward Africa

By Katherine Walla

After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, it has become clear that “terrorism now is global, and we’ve got to work in a multilateral way to combat and fight that,” said US Representative Gregory Meeks.

Afghanistan Africa

New Atlanticist May 25, 2021

Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Africa’s most overlooked crises and opportunities

By Katherine Walla

Africa Crisis Management

The post Make way for Wakanda: The UN Security Council needs an African seat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Zelenskyy slams UN inaction over Putin’s Ukraine war

Peter Dickinson — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 20:30:11 +0000

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy used his September 22 address at the United Nations General Assembly to criticize the international community’s ineffective response to Russian aggression in Ukraine and support calls for the reform of the UN itself, which he branded a “retired superhero.”

The Ukrainian leader painted a grim picture of the damage done to international security by the failure to stand up for international law and hold Vladimir Putin accountable for his attack on Ukraine. “No one in the world feels safe anymore. I emphasize: no one feels safe. And no one can hide behind international law as if behind a stone wall,” commented Zelenskyy.

He argued that continued international inaction over Russian aggression in Ukraine would fuel the rise of instability and authoritarianism around the world. “This can lead to the collapse of the entire architecture of international relations. We will no longer have any rules other than might is right. It will be world where, instead of collective efforts, selfishness will dominate; a world with more and more dictatorships, less equality, less democracy and freedom.”

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The UN’s decision not to join the inaugural Crimea Platform summit, which took place in Kyiv on August 23, was targeted for specific criticism. The Crimea Platform initiative seeks to put the ongoing Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula back on the international radar. A total of 46 countries and international organizations participated in the initial summit last month, but the United Nations was not among them.

Zelenskyy accused the UN of “ignoring a platform designed to solve the problems of international law and occupation,” and implied that this was due to misguided concerns over offending permanent UN Security Council member Russia. “ If we want to revive the UN, let us remember that there are no chosen ones here who cannot be offended. The UN is all of us, all 193 countries.”

Continuing his attack on the alleged international appeasement of Russia, the Ukrainian President pointedly expressed gratitude to fellow UN members who risked Moscow’s displeasure in order to raise the issue Putin’s Ukraine war during the current United Nations General Assembly. “I thank all the states that mentioned Ukraine in their speeches here this year. It is very important. And many others who are not ashamed that Ukraine is their friend and partner. Who can call things by their names, call occupation occupation, and call aggression aggression, without fear that someone will leave this hall for everyone to see.”

Questioning the effectiveness of the UN in its current format, Zelenskyy pointed to the organization’s apparent inability to counter Russian policies of passport imperialism in occupied eastern Ukraine, which has seen the Kremlin reportedly issue more than 600,000 Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens since spring 2019. “Isn’t this evidence of an international crime? Isn’t it proof of impunity and disrespect for international law? Moreover, the Russian Federation itself officially declares it. And it forces our citizens of Ukraine to take part in elections to the Russian parliament. If the UN does not react efficiently and strongly to this, isn’t it proof that it is too late to revive the UN?”

The former showman concluded his address in characteristically colorful style, comparing today’s UN to a “retired superhero” who has long since forgotten what he was once capable of. “He considers himself a burden, a weak, frail, useless old man, whose life was in vain. Or maybe the UN will remember something?”

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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Zelenskyy’s strongly worded UN speech reflects the noticeably more combative stance adopted by the Ukrainian leader on foreign policy issues since early 2021. This has seen him becoming increasingly vocal over what he sees as insufficient international support for Ukraine as it battles against an eighth year of Russian aggression. He has also expressed his frustration at the failure of some partners to fully grasp the high geopolitical stakes of the confrontation between Moscow and Kyiv.

In recent months, Zelenskyy has called on the US and EU to provide Ukraine with a clearer road map for the country’s further Euro-Atlantic integration. Speaking to the Western media in summer 2021, he said he wanted US President Joe Biden to provide a clear “yes or no” answer regarding a NATO membership action plan for Ukraine. Senior members of Zelenskyy’s administration such as Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba have echoed the Ukrainian leader’s move to more direct language.

This demanding tone has failed to produce any major breakthroughs, leading to accusations that Zelenskyy risks undermining the goodwill of the democratic world to no purpose. However, his vocal criticism of perceived Western inaction and policies of appeasement is very much in step with Ukrainian public opinion.

Many Ukrainians have long felt that the international community does not treat Russian aggression against Ukraine sufficiently seriously, and are happy to see Zelenskyy voice their concerns on the global stage. This should bolster domestic support for the Ukrainian President, but it remains to be seen whether it will help his country’s cause internationally.

Peter Dickinson is Editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert Service.

Introducing your annotators for this edition of MARKUP:

Amanda Rothschild: Nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a former senior national security speechwriter in the Trump White House. Rothschild worked with former President Donald Trump on his UN General Assembly addresses.

Ash Jain: Director for democratic order at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a former member of the secretary of state’s policy planning staff, focusing on US alliances and partnerships

Julia Friedlander: Deputy director of the GeoEconomics Center and a former senior policy advisor for Europe in the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence at the US Treasury Department

MARKUP: Our experts annotate the NATO communiqué

By Transatlantic Security Initiative

But what were they really saying amid all the jargon? And what was missing? Atlantic Council experts combed through the document and left their insights in the margins.

Europe & Eurasia European Union

Fast Thinking Sep 21, 2021

FAST THINKING: Biden’s UN reality check

By Atlantic Council

President Biden spoke of “relentless diplomacy” at the UN on Tuesday. But can that relentlessness overcome transatlantic strains, not to mention a still-raging pandemic and climate crisis?

Africa Crisis Management

Experts react Sep 21, 2021

Experts react: The AUKUS deal has shaken the transatlantic alliance. What should the US and its allies do now?

By Atlantic Council Experts

The Biden administration’s sunny declarations about America being “back” are facing a sobering reality check.

Defense Policy European Union

The post MARKUP: Our experts annotate Biden’s UN General Assembly speech appeared first on Atlantic Council.

FAST THINKING: Biden’s UN reality check

Atlantic Council — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 00:49:47 +0000

JUST IN

Rhetoric, meet reality. In his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, US President Joe Biden declared that after twenty years of “relentless war, we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy.” But can that relentlessness overcome transatlantic strains over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and a nuclear-powered submarine deal with Australia and the United Kingdom, not to mention a still-raging pandemic and climate crisis? Here’s what our equally relentless experts have to say.

TODAY’S EXPERT REACTION COURTESY OF

Daniel Fried (@AmbDanFried): Weiser Family distinguished fellow and former US assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia

Rama Yade (@ramayade): Director of the Africa Center and former French minister

Emma Ashford (@EmmaMAshford): Resident senior fellow with the New American Engagement Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Not the former guy

Our experts note how Biden sought a break with his predecessor by embracing US alliances and portraying a global clash between democracies and autocracies. “Biden’s appeal to a rules-based international order aligned him with US presidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt and contrasted him with the unilateralist nationalism of former President Donald Trump,” Dan tells us.

Dan was particularly taken with Biden’s “most stirring language extoll[ing] the advocates of the democratic world” from Cuba to Belarus to Myanmar.

“This was a welcomed restatement of US purposes: generous in seeing the advance of values and US interests as being linked,” Dan says. “But reality is apt to complicate these principles, as it always does.”

We’ve seen plenty of examples in recent weeks of reality intruding on such rhetoric. Rama notes that the vision of “Biden as champion of multilateralism” is actually “the opposite of the impression left [among] some of his allies with the unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan or the crisis of the submarines.”

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War, what is it good for?

Though “admirably pragmatic,” the speech in Emma’s eyes “was out of step with realities on the ground” when Biden spoke about moving on from “relentless war.”

“American troops are still deployed to a variety of combat zones—from Syria to Niger—and there has been far less progress in ending that aspect of the global war on terror,” Emma says.

Her proposed remedy? Congress should repeal the authorizations for the use of military force that have given four presidents free rein to deploy troops around the world.

Future focus

Rama notes that Biden’s “main commitments for the future go through Africa”—from climate change to the pandemic to the war on terror to emerging technologies.

“His strategy of containment of China prioritizes the Indo-Pacific,” Rama points out. “We would like to know if he plans the same on the African continent, which is a tough battleground [in] this competition between global powers.”

Biden talked of a “decisive decade” ahead for the climate, Emma notes, but that statement “could as easily apply to the future direction of US foreign policy and the world order.”

The post FAST THINKING: Biden’s UN reality check appeared first on Atlantic Council.

FAST THINKING: Who’s funding the Taliban?

Julia Friedlander — Fri, 03 Sep 2021 19:01:00 +0000

Though the Taliban is facing the threat of sanctions as it takes power in Afghanistan, such measures may not provide much leverage after all. The insurgents who now rule the country are bankrolled by illicit dealings and various informal financial networks. So where exactly is the money coming from?

On this episode of Fast Thinking, the Atlantic Council’s Julia Friedlander and Mark Nakhla, the executive vice president of Kharon, dive into the Taliban’s funding networks (don’t miss the helpful visuals!), which are primarily outside the reach of the international finance system.

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What Afghanistan’s fall means for the future of NATO and Turkey

Atlantic Council IN TURKEY — Fri, 27 Aug 2021 16:40:54 +0000

The Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan and the ensuing chaos surrounding evacuations following the United States’ withdrawal from the country have inflicted a blow to the prestige and image of NATO. Alper Coşkun, former director general for international security affairs at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs joins the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY to discuss the repercussions of the developments in Afghanistan on the future of the NATO alliance and transatlantic relations.

Coşkun also speaks about the opportunities and challenges regarding Turkey’s engagement and relations with the new Afghan administration and the potential role Turkey, in conjunction with the international community, can play in ensuring the Taliban lives up to the inclusive and conciliatory rhetoric the group put forth in the wake of its takeover.

Amb. Alper Coşkun, Former Director General for International Security Affairs at the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2016-2019)

Ambassador Coşkun is a retired Turkish career diplomat of thirty-two years with extensive experience in both bilateral and multilateral settings. He was the director general for international security affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2016-2019), covering NATO and transatlantic relations, as well as Euro-Atlantic security/defense and arms control/disarmament matters. Before that, he was posted to Baku as ambassador to Azerbaijan (2012-2016), where he oversaw one of Turkey’s most active and largest diplomatic missions, with a wide multi-agency composition. He held positions within the foreign ministry on issues related to maritime jurisdiction, counter terrorism/intelligence and NATO/Euro-Atlantic security. He has served in the cabinets of both the minister of foreign affairs and the undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His foreign assignments include Turkish missions in Moscow, Athens, and the United Nations, as well as NATO, where he was the deputy permanent representative. Previously, he was a faculty member at the NATO Defense College in Rome, where he also acted as the Turkish national representative. Ambassador Coşkun is married and has two daughters aged 10 and 11.

The views expressed in TURKEYSource are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Can energy be the key to Turkish-US relations in the Biden era?

By Eser Özdil

In spite of ups and downs in the political relationship, the United States and Turkey have always shared mutual interests on energy including through the Southern Gas Corridor and emerging LNG trade. Shared priorities on developing renewables and cooperation to strengthen the energy security of Eastern Europe are now emerging areas of cooperation.

Climate Change & Climate Action Economy & Business

TURKEYSource Jun 29, 2021

Biden-Erdoğan icebreaker could set the stage for a bilateral thaw

By Grady Wilson

Biden and Erdogan emerged from a long meeting on the sidelines of the June 14 NATO summit upbeat and positive, setting the stage for dialogue and progress in bilateral relations. Turkey and the United States share an expansive list of disagreements and tensions points as well as mutual interests and opportunities. Both sides are unanimous on the importance of bilateral relations but it remains to be seen how the two countries will manage their current challenges.

Conflict International Organizations

TURKEYSource Jun 14, 2021

Expert React: The key takeaways from the Biden-Erdoğan Meeting

By Atlantic Council IN TURKEY

US President Joe Biden and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met on the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Brussels on June 14 for the first time since Biden’s election. Atlantic Council experts offer their reactions on the meeting and its key takeaways.

Conflict Defense Technologies

The post What Afghanistan’s fall means for the future of NATO and Turkey appeared first on Atlantic Council.

They aren’t listed, but make no mistake: The UN has sanctions on the Taliban

Brian O’Toole — Mon, 23 Aug 2021 19:54:12 +0000

Obscured by the evacuation effort in Kabul and the searing critiques of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is an important question: What do United Nations sanctions actually mandate concerning the Taliban’s assets?

The answer lies in the archaic, nuanced language of the organization’s resolutions. Unlike al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Pakistani Taliban, and many other similar groups, the Taliban is not specifically listed on any UN sanctions list, but it remains sanctioned nonetheless. Poring through Talmudic UN Security Council resolution (UNSCR) text from more than twenty years ago may seem a job fit only for lawyers and bureaucrats (or especially bureaucratic lawyers), but the real-world implications are significant. As the militant group settles in to rule the country again, sanctions remain one of the only viable points of leverage for the international community.

The confusion stretches back to 1999, when UNSCR 1267 was adopted in response to the Taliban’s sheltering of Osama bin Laden, wanted at the time for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The resolution froze the Taliban’s funds and other financial resources, including money generated from property the group controlled directly or indirectly. Since then, the security council has not nullified the language of this resolution, which legally binds all member states, meaning that it remains in force. The Taliban was not added to any sanctions list because no such list existed at the time. In fact, that resolution formed the mechanism for the first UN sanctions list, to which al-Qaeda and other parties were later added.

In 2011 the sanctions regime established in UNSCR 1267 was split up to create separate tracks for the Taliban (UNSCR 1988) and al-Qaeda (UNSCR 1989) in part to provide momentum to the Afghan-led peace process by creating incentives for the Taliban to improve its behavior. This split, however, seems to have created some of the confusion. The original criteria for listing al-Qaeda were for supporting the Taliban and bin Laden, and it strains credulity to think that the security council had not intended to impose sanctions on the Taliban itself via UNSCR 1267, given that the asset freeze language is clear. Statements from the security council and key member states support the existence of the broader asset freeze on the group.

Seeing through the fog

As the Taliban seeks international legitimacy, the lack of clarity over the group’s sanctions status by the UN may have serious ramifications.

On one hand, China and Russia—both eager to see the United States embarrassed—may seek to exploit confusion over their legally binding obligations as UN member states to strike deals with the Taliban and assist the group in consolidating power in Afghanistan. Both countries have been credibly accused in recent years of violating UN-mandated sanctions on North Korea. Striking deals with the Taliban in the absence of clear guidance from the security council would hardly be out of character for Beijing or Moscow. Once those deals are struck, it may be too late to argue over the nuances of relevant UNSCR language.

On the other hand, debate over the scope of sanctions may present tactical advantages. The UNSC—chaired by Ireland in September—needs to clarify and update a sanctions regime that has been largely dormant for fifteen years. The UNSC could and should use the threat of sanctions and the possibility of sanctions removal to push the Taliban to respect human rights and freedoms. Hibatullah Akhundzada, the de facto leader of the Taliban’s government, is not on the UN sanctions list—but the security council should warn him that this could change if the Taliban rules as brutally as it did in the 1990s.

Similarly, for those Taliban leaders who are on the list, the security council could dangle the possibility of delisting, or modifying the sanctions regime as a whole, as a reward for good behavior. Many of the Taliban’s leaders are on the sanctions list, and the measures clearly apply to them. The Taliban cares about the stigma of UN sanctions; for more than a decade, much of the Taliban’s leadership has clamored to be removed from the UN’s blacklist.

Separate from the status of the Taliban, the security council also needs to issue clear guidance on humanitarian exemptions and work to ensure that they are viable paths to aid the Afghan people. The population must not be left dangling, especially with a possible economic disaster looming.

Prepare to act

Despite pledges by the group’s public relations personnel, early returns on the Taliban’s human-rights governance are disturbing. Reports of abuses and targeted killings are already prevalent—as are accounts that the group is hunting people who supported US and coalition efforts. But whether the Taliban behaves or not, Russia or China could veto the UN’s entire Taliban sanctions regime during a review scheduled for December—presenting a new diplomatic crisis.

The looming threat of a resurgent Taliban repressing its own people and potentially serving as a training ground for terrorist groups lends great urgency to clarifying the obligations of all member UN states regarding the group’s financing and assets.

A Taliban with tax revenues, access to official levers of power, and control of the country’s opium production is frightening enough. But one that is also striking mining deals with China and Russia, as well as securing access to International Monetary Fund reserves or loans from other major economies, would be a substantially larger threat. The United States and its partners must work with the United Nations to make one thing clear: Despite any dithering over the Taliban being “listed” or not, member states must adhere to the asset freeze already in place to refrain from financing this dangerous regime.

Brian O’Toole is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former senior US Treasury Department official.

The Taliban now controls the Afghan economy. Here’s what that means.

By Alex Zerden

The reality of a strengthened Taliban running the Afghan government creates substantial and imminent economic policy challenges for the United States and the international community.

Afghanistan Economic Sanctions

Experts react Aug 15, 2021

Experts react: The Taliban has taken Kabul. Now what?

By Atlantic Council experts

Atlantic Council experts, many of whom have spent many years in the trenches on Afghanistan policy, weigh in on the fall of Kabul.

Afghanistan Conflict

EconoGraphics Jun 29, 2021

Global Sanctions Dashboard: 5th edition

By Julia Friedlander, Michael Albanese and Castellum.AI

China’s anti-foreign sanctions bill, mapping Belarusian KGB sanctions, and building an anti-kleptocracy playbook.

Belarus China

The post They aren’t listed, but make no mistake: The UN has sanctions on the Taliban appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Qaddour in Foreign Policy: When Humanitarian Aid Becomes a Bargaining Chip

Atlantic Council — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 18:23:00 +0000

The post Qaddour in Foreign Policy: When Humanitarian Aid Becomes a Bargaining Chip appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What choices remain for the United States in Syria?

Nate Rosenblatt and Jomana Qaddour — Mon, 14 Jun 2021 11:59:00 +0000

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Syria is home to one of the world’s most complex conflicts. The chaos caused by the Syrian regime and its allies — within Syria, across the Middle East, and beyond — poses immediate and enduring threats. Considering its foreign policy promise to defend democracy and human rights, the Biden administration does not have the luxury of ignoring what happens in Syria. Accepting that there are fewer options for the United States today than there were ten years ago does not mean normalizing the Assad regime or turning a blind eye to Russian and Iranian efforts to tip the balance of power in the region.

In a new issue brief from the Atlantic Council’s Syria program, “What Choices Remain for the United States in Syria?,” Nate Rosenblatt and Jomana Qaddour describe the challenges the United States faces in Syria, including Russia’s attempt to expand the UN Strategic Framework as well the struggle to keep the UN humanitarian border crossings open in northern Syria. The memo then lays out the three potential strategies in Syria: one prioritizing the withdrawal of US forces, a second protecting humanitarian access and ensuring progress on limited, critical files, and a third maintaining US support for, as well as coordination with, partners to dial up the pressure on the Syrian government and its allies.

The paper ultimately argues that the Biden administration should seize this opportunity to establish a clear strategy in Syria by aligning its defense, development, and diplomatic capabilities with those of its global allies and partners to shape a better outcome in Syria.

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Through our Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, the Atlantic Council works with allies and partners in Europe and the wider Middle East to protect US interests, build peace and security, and unlock the human potential of the region.

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The post What choices remain for the United States in Syria? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

When sanctions violate human rights

Peter Piatetsky and Julian Vasilkoski — Fri, 11 Jun 2021 16:20:01 +0000

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Castellum.AI has developed a methodology to determine whether, and how, sanctions from particular countries violate human rights, designating Russia, Pakistan, and Turkey in that order as the biggest violators. Castellum.AI’s methodology relies on how sanctions of different countries hold up with a number of criteria, the four most important being: clear standards for designations; provisions of evidence for designations; whether or not clear legal pathways exist to challenge designations; and whether procedures exist for unblocking incorrectly frozen funds.

Our analysis found that unilateral sanctions do not equate to human rights abuse. What does lead to human rights abuse are sanctions processes with little or no transparency in the listing rationale and process.

Despite the United States being one of the countries with the most number of unilateral sanctions, this does not violate human rights given that transparent processes in which to appeal these listings exist and the motivations and reasoning behind the US’ sanctions are readily available; the same cannot be said of Russia, Pakistan, or Turkey, all of whom have unclear processes and reasons, whether intentionally or due to a lack of organization. The Office of Foreign Affairs in the US, the department responsible for sanctions administration, provides more guidance than both the EU and UN, explaining the rationale behind its actions and its implementation, publishing its work and holding press conferences. Meanwhile, China has recently passed legislation allowing it to react to foreign sanctions with its own, however, it only retains about one hundred sanctions, mostly political rather than economic in nature, and is not considered a significant program.

Russia, the United States, and Pakistan (in this order) have the world’s largest sanctions programs, and all three are unilateral. Although Russia has the most designees, it has almost no overlap with other countries except its neighbors Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan.

In terms of methodology, Castellum.AI looked only at financial sanctions, not travel bans or export controls, and relied on their own database, which relies on their own database, consisting of over six hundred watchlists covering two hundred countries and six categories (sanctions, export controls, law enforcement most wanted, contract debarment, politically exposed persons, and elevated risk).

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Syrian lives in peril: The fight to preserve Syria’s last humanitarian border crossing

Salman Husain, Yasmine Chawaf — Fri, 04 Jun 2021 15:00:00 +0000

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In 2014, under immense pressure to ensure the delivery of aid to neglected Syrian populations, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution to authorize cross-border humanitarian operations from Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq to different parts of Syria. This allowed the UN to coordinate cross-border responses that have channeled billions of dollars in assistance to vulnerable populations in Syria; however, Russia and China have abused their veto power in recent years to reduce the four original border crossings to just the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey to advance their political support for the Syrian government. Now ahead of a critical vote in July 2021, Russia has already signaled its willingness to veto any resolution that would seek to preserve what remains of the cross-border operations to Syria, placing millions of Syrian lives in jeopardy.

A new Atlantic Council report, “Syrian Lives in Peril: The Fight to Preserve Syria’s Last Humanitarian Border Crossing,” places humanitarian considerations at the forefront of the cross-border debate. In addition to examining the devastating impacts of losing Bab al-Hawa, this report explores the limitations of cross-line operations (from government-held areas of Syria to areas outside of its control), which are presented as feasible alternatives. It seeks to unpack the political arguments advanced by Russia to justify its opposition to the cross-border set up and to support the Syrian government to obtain a monopoly over all humanitarian operations, despite its track record of aid obstruction and human rights abuses. This report recognizes that no alternative set-up can compensate for the loss of the last remaining border crossing, and presents recommendations for actions that should be adopted in case the resolution is not renewed, as well as recommendations to address limitations of cross-line programming and aid obstruction in Syria.

The loss of Bab al-Hawa would have devastating effects on the lives of millions of Syrians who have endured years of war and displacement and now find themselves struggling to survive amidst a rapidly collapsing economy and global pandemic. The failure to prevent a veto would place the burden on the United States and all donor governments providing aid to Syria to mitigate the impacts of a humanitarian disaster that could become unmanageable with a UN withdrawal and an end to all formal cross-border operations to Syria.

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Mezran quoted in Formiche on Dabaiba’s role

Atlantic Council — Mon, 31 May 2021 19:09:00 +0000

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Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Africa’s most overlooked crises and opportunities

Katherine Walla — Tue, 25 May 2021 21:58:36 +0000

Although Africa continues to face challenges like the pandemic, terrorism, and poverty, the Biden administration understands that “we need to focus on the opportunities” in working with the continent, said US Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Thomas-Greenfield spoke about US President Joe Biden’s outlook on Africa with Ambassador Rama Yade, director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, at an event celebrating Africa Day and introducing the Africa Center’s new team and mission. She added that while Africa hosts many of the world’s fastest-growing economies, COVID-19 has caused an alarming crisis.

“In order for those countries to come back, they need to diversify their economies, they need to rebuild their capacity, and they need to harness the extraordinary opportunity that their youth provide for them,” Thomas-Greenfield said. It will be important to encourage that young population, she added, as they can help “build this continent into a place that we can all be proud of being a part of.”

So where should US foreign policy on Africa begin? Here are key takeaways from the conversation.

Where there’s success—and where there’s concern

Thomas-Greenfield singled out Liberia for its transformation after civil wars that, together, lasted from 1989 to 2003 and killed up to 250,000 people: “Liberia eventually came out of that war electing the first woman ever to be elected a president on the continent of Africa… and she came with a firm commitment to helping Liberia become normal again and helping children find a future that was not marred by the sound of gunfire.” Thomas-Greenfield, who served as US ambassador to Liberia from 2008 to 2012, recalled her experience working with then-Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on that rebuilding effort.

Ethiopia had been considered “on the rise” under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, which makes the crisis in Tigray “extraordinarily disappointing,” Thomas-Greenfield said. She maintained that the United States has “been engaged diplomatically—and aggressively diplomatically” in Ethiopia, including by sending Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) to secure commitments from Abiy to address the crisis in March. She noted that while “some of those commitments were honored; others were not,” like one requiring Eritrean troops who had committed atrocities to leave Tigray. Those troops entered the region in November after Abiy sent Ethiopian forces there. The US State Department also recently announced restrictions on US economic and security assistance to Ethiopia, plus visa restrictions for some Ethiopian and Eritrean government officials and security-force members.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), beset by violence, displacement, disease, and poverty, is an overlooked humanitarian crisis, Thomas-Greenfield said. In May, the Allied Democratic Forces militia attacked the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, killing one Malawian peacekeeper. She added that the United States will need “to impress upon [DRC leaders] the importance of how they should address the needs of the people of the DRC.”

Reaching across the Atlantic

Marking the anniversary of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Thomas-Greenfield said the event “was traumatizing” to African Americans and even resonated across the Atlantic Ocean. “For the first time, I actually heard African countries and African leaders issue statements on” what happened to Floyd, after she had previously wondered “where were the voices of Africans when events taking place in the United States were affecting their descendants in this country.”

But US strife can also serve as a model of resilience, Thomas-Greenfield said. The January 6 riots at the US Capitol “showed our imperfections for the entire world to see” but also proved that the United States’ “strong institutions can stand against any attack.” While Africans have already “affirmed that democracy is the best way forward for the continent,” Thomas-Greenfield noted that leadership is lacking. “Leadership that is committed to the people: That’s something that is a work in progress across the continent.”

Thomas-Greenfield said that there is a missed opportunity between the African diaspora community and those who live in Africa “to really harness our relationships [and] to empower each other.” She added that there are African Americans who feel a close emotional connection to Africa, but they don’t always feel as though Africans share that connection. “I think the next step… is for the African continent to fully embrace their relatives in the United States,” she advised.

Katherine Walla is assistant director of editorial at the Atlantic Council.

Africa is America’s greatest geopolitical opportunity. Does the US know it?

By Rama Yade

Biden can further build ties with Africa: He should do so not only because these countries have long been underrepresented within leading multilateral organizations, but also because they offer innovative solutions to global challenges including terrorism, climate change, migration, debt, and COVID-19.

Africa Economy & Business

AfricaSource Apr 6, 2021

Keys to African recovery: Vaccines, debt, and commodities

By Rabah Arezki

In the wake of COVID-19, African markets are consumed by uncertainty about the economic recovery. Because of its large population—1.2 billion people—developments in Africa will weigh heavily on the world. The recovery from COVID-19 in Africa will depend on three factors—vaccines, debt, and commodities.

Africa Coronavirus

AfricaSource Mar 3, 2021

The unintended consequence of Ethiopia’s civil war might be a border war with Sudan

Ethiopia is at war with itself—and the international community is struggling to respond. The stakes in Tigray are high and the civilian toll could be considerable. But there’s another scenario, with the potential to exact an even higher toll, that many observers are overlooking: conventional war that could break out at any moment between Sudan and Ethiopia and their many allied proxies.

Africa Conflict

The post Linda Thomas-Greenfield on Africa’s most overlooked crises and opportunities appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Samad joins the AISS to discuss the feasibility of transition from a NATO-led mission to a UN-led mission in Afghanistan

Atlantic Council — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 21:05:50 +0000

The post Samad joins the AISS to discuss the feasibility of transition from a NATO-led mission to a UN-led mission in Afghanistan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Qaddour in JCL-MENA: Syria: The Constitutional Committee is No Longer Sufficient

hmalik — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 20:06:00 +0000

New American Engagement Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The post Qaddour in JCL-MENA: Syria: The Constitutional Committee is No Longer Sufficient appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The top ten risks and opportunities for 2021

Mathew Burrows, Robert A. Manning — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 17:00:00 +0000

It’s not being called the “year from hell” for nothing. The pandemic, the kind of “grey swan” event that is predicted but never pinpointed in time, finally came calling in 2020, aggravated by deepening political division and tribalism. International institutions continued to fragment, with the United States withdrawing from the World Health Organization right in the middle of the plague and engaging in obstructionist behavior in other multilateral organizations.

Yet there were rays of light even in the abyss. Democracy prevailed in the US presidential election, even as the US political system remains polarized and dysfunctional. In a surge of spectacular innovation, aided by artificial intelligence and big data, scientists created COVID-19 vaccines with stunning alacrity.

It’s tempting to say that in 2021, there’s nowhere to go but up. But there will be further unanticipated shocks and no shortage of risks. Drawing on years of foresight experience at the US National Intelligence Council, we’ve assessed the knowable and drawn on our best judgment to identify the top ten risks in the new year for the United States in particular, but with global implications. We’ve attached a probability to each potential scenario, with “medium” denoting a 50/50 chance that it will occur in the coming year. The ordering of the risks is by importance for the United States and the rest of the world.

And in the spirit of optimism for the new decade—hope springs eternal, after all—we’ve made an addition this year: ten opportunities in the coming year for the new US administration, beginning with the most important and using the same probability scale for each potential scenario.

Top risks

The COVID-19 crisis deepens amid a slow vaccine rollout

COVID-19 will continue spiking in the United States, the European Union (EU), and Russia, with the consequences from holiday travel, gatherings of family and friends, and widespread pandemic fatigue likely extending into 2021. Many could further let their guards down in anticipation of receiving vaccines. Vaccine distribution could encounter unexpected production and logistical problems, pushing back the timeline for when the bulk of the public can be vaccinated. In the United States in particular, polls show that 42 percent of Americans won’t take any vaccines, which could lower the chances of stopping the contagion until well into the second half of 2021. International travel restrictions will remain in place for much of 2021 since distribution of the vaccine overseas, particularly in developing nations, will likely be spotty. The virus also continues to spread and mutate, potentially limiting vaccine effectiveness.

Probability:

Source: Daniel Schludi, Unsplash

The Biden presidency is stifled

Joe Biden’s ability to govern will be constrained, especially if Republicans retain Senate leadership. In his last days, President Donald Trump is making it as difficult as possible for his successor: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has returned $455 billion in recovery funds to the government, while Trump threatens China with additional arms sales to Taiwan, warns Iran of additional sanctions, and withdraws the United States from the Open Skies Treaty in a further dismantling of arms-control measures. Polls show some 70 percent of Republicans believe the election was stolen from Trump and that the Biden presidency is illegitimate. Trump could be a thorn in Biden’s side for the next four years, particularly if he announces another run for the presidency. Meanwhile, progressives will pressure Biden from the left, draining support for his administration among moderates.

Probability:

Another global financial crisis, driven by debt, breaks out

Global debt from emergency COVID-19 spending, especially in developing economies, is exploding. Total debt increased by $15 trillion in 2020 and is expected to reach 365 percent of global GDP by the end of the year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has had to disburse pandemic-driven financial aid to eighty-one countries already, and capital flows to low-income countries are projected to drop by $700 billion from 2019 levels in 2020. Developing economies need $7 trillion to repay debt by the end of 2021. Zambia is the sixth nation to default in 2020. Such financial distress could spark yet another global financial crisis. In an effort to stem the growing crisis, the Group of 20 (G20) has created a “Common Framework” (including China) to manage debt relief, but US congressional reluctance to approve any new resources for the IMF could undermine G20 efforts.

Probability:

Western countries struggle with a slow economic recovery

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently reduced their original estimates for 2020 of downside economic damage to the United States and other countries from COVID, but most of the world won’t get back to pre-2020 GDP even by the end of 2021. Only one major economy—China—will experience significant growth (almost 2 percent) in 2020, ending up 10 percent larger by the end of 2021. The situation could become worse for the West if there’s inadequate fiscal stimulus. Many economists believe the slow US recovery from the 2008 financial crisis was partly due to the premature withdrawal of stimulus and an emphasis on deficit-reduction starting in 2010. In Europe, post-2008 austerity measures exacerbated the problem of slow growth. Keep in mind as well that the 2008 financial crisis spawned the ongoing populist surge in the United States and Europe. Once again, the darkening financial prospects of millions of citizens, pushed down just when they started to get back on their feet, could lead to even worse longer-term political repercussions.

Probability:

Once again, the darkening financial prospects of millions of citizens, pushed down just when they started to get back on their feet, could lead to even worse longer-term political repercussions.

North Korea manufactures a crisis

When it comes to addressing the nuclear threat from North Korea, Biden will inherit the failed diplomatic legacies of the last four presidents. Despite Trump’s three meetings with Kim Jong-un, North Korea now boasts an even more capable nuclear-weapons arsenal, including some twenty to thirty bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles that may soon be able to reach the US mainland. The pattern in the past has been for new American presidents to be greeted with a North Korean provocation in the form of either a missile or nuclear test. Expect one in the first quarter of Biden’s presidency. Such a demonstration will lead to pressure on Biden in the media and in Congress to do something, raising tensions and likely leading to a pseudo-crisis that could spin out of control. Kim is not suicidal; US deterrence still works with him, though it needs to be strengthened in the face of new and emerging North Korean capabilities. The Biden administration will be most effective in this regard if it avoids saber-rattling and instead pursues multilateral opprobrium and works with South Korea and Japan to enhance deterrence.

Probability:

Source: Reuters

The confrontation between the US and Iran intensifies

Israel’s suspected assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist plus Trump’s possible heaping-on of sanctions before leaving office could poison the well with Iran, thwarting Biden’s hope of rejuvenating the nuclear deal. In Iran, there is widespread anger at the United States and Europe, and a debate over next steps ahead of presidential elections scheduled for June. Should Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei follow through on his vow to retaliate—against Israel, the United Arab Emirates, or Saudi oil facilities—before January 20, it could trigger a strong reaction from the Trump administration, such as bombing the Natanz nuclear facility. This could, in turn, spark an escalatory cycle between Washington and Tehran, undermining Biden’s diplomatic aspirations. A US return to the nuclear deal is based on an Iranian reversion to the status quo ante plus a willingness to expand the old agreement. A “more-for more” negotiation to extend timelines on halting Iranian nuclear activities, freezing missile development, and halting missile sales, along with a winding down of the war in Yemen, in exchange for easing UN sanctions against Iran, could begin to rebuild a modicum of trust among the parties to the nuclear deal. But that scenario is far from a certainty.

Probability:

Israel’s suspected assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist plus Trump’s possible heaping-on of sanctions before leaving office could poison the well with Iran, thwarting Biden’s hope of rejuvenating the nuclear deal.

The US and China clash over Taiwan

Taiwan may be where tensions in the US-China relationship reach a denouement. A negative dynamic has escalated over the past year or so: Each move by the United States to show support for Taiwan—such as arms sales, high-level official visits, and military exercises—has led China to ratchet up pressure on Taiwan with near-daily air and sea intrusions. Taiwan is an existential issue for the Chinese Communist Party. If the US-China confrontation worsens, Xi Jinping may feel compelled to move toward unification of Taiwan with mainland China. This will not necessarily mean a Chinese military invasion, though inadvertent clashes are a risk. More likely is a Sun Tzu-type, frog-in-boiling-water strategy of squeezing Taiwan’s economy, putting the onus on the United States to escalate. Any US military intervention would trigger an outright conflict between the world’s two superpowers.

Probability:

Source: Military News Agency, ROC, Wikimedia Commons

The worst food crisis in decades ravages the world

The United Nations (UN) has warned that the world is on the brink of its worst food crisis in at least fifty years. The pandemic has disrupted global food supply chains. And with more people falling into extreme poverty as a result of the economic damage inflicted by COVID-19, rising food prices could not come at a worse time. The UN forecasts that more people will die of COVID-related malnutrition and its associated diseases than from the coronavirus. That doesn’t take into account the toll for those who survive; childhood malnutrition has lifelong health and mental repercussions. The World Food Program believes that Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso may already be suffering famine conditions. Afghanistan, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Lebanon, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe are not far away from it. Even in advanced economies, the poor are suffering from higher food prices at a time of high unemployment. In the United States, more than one in five households are now food insecure.

Probability:

The expansion of the global middle class comes to an end

Perhaps the world’s top achievement of the last three decades was the rise of millions out of extreme poverty and the growth of a global middle class. This may be jeopardized unless there is a strong recovery from the COVID crisis in 2021 and beyond. Experts believe that for the first time in half a century, the middle class has started to shrink—potentially by 52 million people in Latin America alone. At the same time, the World Bank predicts that by the end of 2021 up to 150 million additional people will fall into extreme poverty, defined as those living on less than $1.90 a day. Lower than expected economic growth next year would increase that figure. Historically, the erosion of the middle class correlates with political instability, democratic backsliding, and greater conflict.

Probability:

Perhaps the world’s top achievement of the last three decades was the rise of millions out of extreme poverty and the growth of a global middle class. This may be jeopardized unless there is a strong recovery from the COVID crisis in 2021 and beyond.

Neo-Ottoman Turkey goes more rogue

Increasingly authoritarian, Islamist, and expansionist, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has either intervened militarily or has placed troops in Somalia, Qatar, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and the Balkans. Ankara has been confronting Russia in Syria, Libya, and Azerbaijan while attacking US-allied Kurds that are fighting ISIS. Turkey is deploying the Russian S-400 air-defense system, which poses a threat to NATO and has prompted US sanctions. And it has conducted naval provocations in the Eastern Mediterranean, contravening the Law of the Sea Treaty and threatening Cyprus. Many Arab states see Turkey as a threat, while Erdogan is also provoking France over its handling of recent terror attacks. Ankara’s multi-front military assertiveness could spark more conflict and force a reckoning within NATO, which counts Turkey as a member.

Probability:

Top opportunities

The World Trade Organization experiences a rebirth

The World Trade Organization (WTO) faces an uncertain future with global trade rules and systems for settling disputes at risk. Absent strong institutional leadership and a new consensus driven by US-EU cooperation, the WTO could unravel, fragmenting global trade, fostering more protectionism, and leaving trade largely governed by differing regional arrangements and the power and size of respective economies. Amid a protracted COVID-19 pandemic, that would contribute to slower economic growth, if not recession. Rejuvenating global rules-based trade would be an important achievement, but it will require three steps to be taken in 2021: choosing a new WTO director-general; picking judges for the organization’s dispute-settlement mechanism, which has ceased to function as Trump has refused to appoint new judges; and framing both moves in the context of major institutional reform supported by a coalition of allies (the US, EU, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea). Like-minded partners could reach consensus on common positions and push back against China’s predatory industrial policies.

Probability:

Source: Enrique Mendizabal, Flickr

Multilateralism gets updated for the 21st century

Biden promised in his campaign to revive America’s multilateralist policies. An easy first move would be for Biden to rejoin all the international agencies and agreements that Trump withdrew from, including the World Health Organization, UN Human Rights Council, and Paris climate accord. But there’s also an opportunity for renewing US leadership in a reformed UN system. To begin with, the US absence in the global body under Trump left a vacuum that China has been filling. Even more importantly, however, a reinvigorated US presence that mobilizes Europe and other pro-multilateralist members could update the United Nations for the twenty-first century. When it comes to addressing governance deficits in space, autonomous weaponry, and new forms of dual-use biotechnology and geoengineering, there are few international agreements setting standards and regulations. Instead of waiting until the inevitable catastrophe happens in these domains, the Biden administration could get ahead of coming crises by helping create conditions where emerging technologies can be a force for universal good.

Probability:

The US and Russia pursue a relationship built on mutual interests

VladimirPutin is in bad shape, with COVID-19 afflicting Russia and the country’s “near abroad” in turmoil: Alyaksandr Lukashenka under siege in Belarus, a pro-EU president in charge in Moldova, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict forcing the deployment of permanent Russian peace-keeping troops. At home, $40-$50 oil is undermining the Russian economy. As a result, Putin may be seeking a more stable relationship with the United States and Europe. Rebuilding that relationship could include establishing an architecture of mutual restraint—starting with the negotiated extension of the New START nuclear arms-reduction treaty, involving an agreement on missiles and a nuclear-stability framework that brings in China. It could also include some progress toward a peace deal in Ukraine. Relations could stabilize into a cool, business-like relationship that provides Moscow with some options beyond dependence on China.

Probability:

Source: White House

The new Sunni Arab-Israeli alignment expands and deepens

The recent flurry of agreements to normalize ties between Israel and many Sunni Arab states may be the only low-hanging fruit that Trump has bestowed on Biden. The Saudis appear to have postponed an opening to Israel after a US-brokered, not-so-secret meeting between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Saudi Arabia likely sees such an opening as a card to play in resetting ties with the next US administration, knowing Biden’s critical perspective on Saudi human-rights violations and the war in Yemen. The next step for Washington would be to facilitate a regional free-trade agreement and investment treaty among Sunni states and Israel. Biden may have to guard against Saudi pressure for harsher US measures against Iran, including not rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement.

Probability:

The United States leads an expanded Trans-Pacific Partnership

The Bush and Obama administrations launched the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as a pillar of US strategy toward the Asia-Pacific, in order to shape 21st-century rules of trade in the world’s most dynamic economic region. The logic was that by creating an accord with high standards for labor, environmental, and e-commerce rules among 40 percent of the world’s economy, the United States and its partners could compel China to eventually abide by those rules. Instead, Trump withdrew from the TPP, making the United States the outlier. Japan went ahead with the other eleven members and launched a scaled-down version of the accord, which Tokyo structured to facilitate a US re-entry. Meanwhile a second Asia-Pacific accord—the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which includes China and has narrower standards—was finalized in November. Rejoining the TPP would be an important way for the United States to recapture the regional economic space it has vacated, restore US credibility, and bolster American leadership on economic rulemaking. Biden has expressed interest in returning to the TPP but has also voiced concerns about elements of it. If he were to push for rejoining the agreement, he would need to make the case for doing so to his own party as well as to Republicans who may not want to see him succeed. Any political reservations notwithstanding, having a seat at the negotiating table again would allow the United States to press for a review of the accord.

Probability:

Rejoining the TPP would be an important way for the United States to recapture the regional economic space it has vacated, restore US credibility, and bolster American leadership on economic rule-making.

The US and its allies build new international structures for digital governance

Data and algorithms are the drivers of the 21st-century economy. Yet the internet is beginning to fragment into three digital regimes—led by the European Union, the United States, and China, amid a trend toward “internet sovereignty.” Avoiding the balkanization of the Internet will be a key challenge for the Biden administration. The good news is that the US is well-positioned to lead efforts to forge global standards for the free flow of data and a 5G infrastructure to enhance it. The Trans-Pacific Partnership included the first effort to generate global standards for unhampered e-commerce. These rules were further strengthened in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) and the US-Japan digital trade accord of September 2019. Biden could build a coalition of the US, EU, Japan, Australia, and others to encourage the WTO to embrace free cross-border flows of data with no duties and no data-localization rules for e-commerce, since current talks on digital standard have stalemated. In addition, the US should spearhead efforts by the public and private sectors to develop and scale up Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN), a software-based approach to 5G that is inter-operable with all hardware and could leapfrog offerings from China’s Huawei. There are two international private-sector coalitions working on O-RAN with Japan and the European Union, and the private sector could accelerate commercial deployment of the technology.

Probability:

Source: Pete Linforth, Pixabay

Artificial intelligence breeds new forms of cooperation, not just competition

Based on the set of ethics and principles on artificial intelligence (AI) independently adopted by China, the United States, the European Union, and others, there’s consensus on the need for common standards and norms, including: being technically safe; showing accountability and transparency in assessing failure; ensuring privacy and good data governance; and working in service to society and the environment. The challenge is to operationalize and codify such standards. Big Tech has already done so for some apps using technologies such as facial recognition. All governments have an interest in avoiding potential catastrophes. So shouldn’t governments take the next step and establish a universally agreed-upon baseline on the harms versus the benefits coming from the AI revolution? Such a measure could provide direction for international and national institutions developing regulations to minimize negative impacts while maximizing potential benefits. As AI leaders, the United States and China should begin a dialogue on these matters. The US should also consult with key allies on bringing an agenda to the Group of 20 and the UN that includes a global AI Commission to set and enforce standards and monitor AI usage.

Probability:

A “Manhattan Project” emerges for battery-storage breakthroughs

The biggest single impediment to accelerating the transition to a post-petroleum economy is energy storage. Better, cheaper batteries could bring down costs and increase capacity, making electric cars less expensive and more appealing. Solar and wind energy only work when the sun is shining and there is wind, so energy storage is key to scaling up fast-growing renewable sources. More capable, cost-effective batteries—not arbitrary “we’ll be carbon-free by X date” aspirations—are essential to meeting climate goals with green energy. Biden should bring together the private sector, Congress and governors, national labs, and academia to form, under the leadership of the White House and the Department of Energy, a public-private National Commission with ample funding to accelerate a breakthrough in energy storage.

Probability

A universal coronavirus vaccine is developed

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought focus to the persistent threat of ever-mutating viruses. The rapidity of vaccine development is the product of artificial intelligence, big data, and accumulated research, all of which have allowed bioscience to move with unprecedented speed to combat new viruses. It will be difficult, but within our grasp, to create a global public good: a universal vaccine to prepare for the next pandemic. The United States should take the lead—building on work by the World Health Organization and US National Institutes of Health, and on international cooperation to address the novel coronavirus—in assembling a consortium of the willing and able that pools research-and-development efforts to create a universal coronavirus vaccine.

Probability

Source: Marcos Cola, Pixabay

Transatlantic ties are renewed to cooperate on technology and counter China

The EU Commission is already formulating ideas for a “tech alliance” and greater cooperation with the United States against China, though EU member states will have the last word on what this looks like. There’s a growing belief in Europe that the region must establish “strategic autonomy,” and many Eastern and Central European members of the EU want stronger economic ties with China, if they don’t already depend on China as a prime export market. Brussels is interested in widening cooperation where possible with Beijing and in engagement with Moscow, even if there are limited immediate gains. The EU is also still intent on “taxing” US tech giants, if not finding ways to trim their market dominance, and remains wedded to its General Data Protection Regulation guaranteeing consumer privacy. Nevertheless, Biden has an early opportunity to rebuild transatlantic relations to better coordinate tech and China policy, so long as his administration doesn’t alienate EU allies by calling on them to join a new cold war against China and Russia. The US-EU tech alliance, if it happens, will require concessions from both sides.

Probability:

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Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Oct 30, 2019

Global risks 2035 update: Decline or new renaissance?

By Mathew Burrows

Our conclusion in 2016’s Global Risks 2035 was that state-on-state conflict posed a bigger threat than terrorism. In the two years since, the post-Cold War order has continued to unravel without a “new normal” emerging.

China NATO

Issue briefs and reports Jul 7, 2020

What world post-COVID-19? Three scenarios

By Mathew Burrows, Peter Engelke

A preliminary look at the geopolitical implications of the pandemic and possible directions for the global system after the still-unfolding crisis.

Coronavirus G20

The post The top ten risks and opportunities for 2021 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

FAST THINKING: Meet the picks for Biden’s national security team

Atlantic Council — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 01:08:35 +0000

JUST IN

Tony Blinken for secretary of state (get up to speed with our previous edition). Avril Haines for director of national intelligence (she’d be the first woman in the role). Alejandro Mayorkas for Homeland Security secretary (he’d be the agency’s first Latino leader). Not to mention Linda Thomas-Greenfield for ambassador to the United Nations and Jake Sullivan for national security advisor. Joe Biden’s selections for his incoming national security team are coming in fast. But what’s the bigger picture that’s coming into focus?

TODAY’S EXPERT REACTION COURTESY OF

Julia Friedlander (@jfriedlanderdc): Former director at the National Security Council and deputy director of the GeoEconomics Center

James Cunningham (@JBCunningham_): Former US ambassador to the UN and nonresident senior fellow

Bronwyn Bruton (@BronwynBruton): Director of programs and studies in the Africa Center

Tom Warrick (@TomWarrickAC): Former Department of Homeland Security official and nonresident senior fellow

Mat Burrows (@matburrows): Former counselor to the National Intelligence Council and director of the Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Emma Ashford (@EmmaMAshford): Grand strategist and Atlantic Council resident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Center’s New American Engagement Initiative

National Security Advisor: Jake Sullivan

Sullivan, who will be 44 when he takes office, will be the youngest person in the role since McGeorge Bundy during the Kennedy administration. But he’s a veteran of the Obama administration who will be a trusted aide at Biden’s side. That’s important, because the White House was in constant turmoil under Donald Trump, who cycled through four national security advisors (plus two acting ones). As Julia notes, the chaos spread throughout the National Security Council. Sullivan “will have the task of reasserting a strong, deliberative interagency process,” she tells us.

Julia was a director on Trump’s NSC. “Under pressure from backdoor decision-making, distrust of the civil service, and internal rivalries, the Trump administration saw this process effectively break down,” she says. “Agencies learned to work around the NSC, not through it.”

“This will change,” Julia thinks, with Sullivan in the post. She expects him to make “meaningful but not fundamental structural changes to the organization.” But more important than that, she adds, is “getting the right people in the door.”

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UN Ambassador: Linda Thomas-Greenfield

Biden will reportedly restore this post to cabinet status, potentially giving Thomas-Greenfield an NSC seat. (The post requires Senate confirmation.) James thinks she’ll be able to accomplish a lot: “Returning the American UN ambassador to cabinet rank means that the one person in the US foreign-policy instrument who literally has daily contact with influential representatives from the world over will have the authority of the president, and his senior leadership, behind her when she speaks.”

Trump had minimized America’s role at the United Nations. “There is no avoiding the fact that America’s influence has deteriorated over the past four years, and there is much damage to be repaired,” James says. “Today’s announcement tells the world that President-elect Biden is set on restoring a sense of purpose, seriousness, and professionalism not just to the chambers of the United Nations, but to America’s engagement with the world.”

Thomas-Greenfield was assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Obama administration and before that held diplomatic posts around the world, including US ambassador to Liberia. Bronwyn tells us she’s known “for her quiet competence, her gravitas as a stateswoman, and her tremendous capacity for building bridges and understanding.” She adds that she expects Thomas-Greenfield to “begin her tenure with a listening tour of our allies, a first step in what will be a long effort to restore the United States’ reputation for professionalism and integrity in our foreign dealings.”

And her deep experience in Africa could help Biden manage the aftermath of Trump’s moves to de-emphasize US commitments there, Bronwyn notes. “It will probably be difficult for Biden to reverse those actions in the early years of his presidency,” she says. The new ambassador “will be forced to explain the logic and limitations of US engagement in Africa at what promises to be a difficult time. She will be invaluable in that regard.”

DHS Secretary: Alejandro Mayorkas

Tom is pleased with the pick of Mayorkas, a former US attorney who was deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration after serving as director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services. He calls him “an excellent choice who bridges the worlds of immigration policy, national security, and law enforcement that are central to the breadth of DHS’s responsibilities.” He notes that Mayorkas, who was born in Cuba, also “brings the perspective of immigrants who came to the United States for freedom and liberty.”

Mayorkas has a reputation as a quick study, Tom adds, which would help him understand and manage a bureaucracy with sprawling responsibilities: “immigration, cyber, border, and maritime security, as well as counterterrorism, emergency management, continuity of government, and being the largest law enforcement department in the federal government. There is a reason the Secretary of Homeland Security is sometimes called the second-toughest job in Washington.”

Just as importantly, Tom notes, “Mayorkas is an extraordinarily effective public communicator. His personal story, his professional experience, and his management abilities running large organizations are all going to be put to use restoring DHS’s credibility with Democratic constituencies that, until recently, were calling for ‘Abolish ICE’ or ‘Abolish DHS.’”

Director of National Intelligence: Avril Haines

If confirmed, Haines, who was deputy director of the CIA and then deputy national security advisor under Obama, would inherit a position that has been badly scarred by the politics of the Trump era. “Her biggest challenge will be to restore the integrity of the DNI’s role, which under Trump was widely seen outside and inside the US intelligence community as being politicized by the previous holder, John Ratcliffe,” Mat explains.

Done well, Mat says, the DNI role can serve as an important conduit between the intelligence community and the president. The office of the DNI prepares the President’s Daily Brief, and the director often attends the briefing sessions with the commander-in-chief. Haines can help to “boost the intelligence community’s workforce morale,” he says, if she uses this access to establish a reputation for “speaking truth to power.” Her experience with the CIA will help, Mat notes, “but she will have her work cut out for her.”

So what does all of this say about the president-elect?

Emma notes the air of restoration that has surrounded Biden’s picks. The team so far, she says, “is predominantly composed of appointees who hope to restore American foreign policy to the way it was before Donald Trump’s presidency, with the possible exception of Jake Sullivan, who has argued in the past that “Trump’s approach is dangerous, but he has surfaced questions that need clear answers.”

“Restoring American foreign policy, however, is both problematic and easier said than done,” Emma says. “The world has changed over the last four years.” Not least among these changes, she adds, is “an increasing perception that US foreign policy has become partisan.”

At the same time, as Emma sees it, “restoration of the pre-Trump consensus is also deeply problematic. America’s post-Cold War liberal international consensus had become unwieldy, over-militarized, and too focused on coercing other states. Thus, while there are many reasons to welcome Biden’s announcement of qualified, competent foreign-policy hands to key roles, the fact that they mostly seek to restore US foreign policy to this largely unsustainable status quo is problematic.”

The post FAST THINKING: Meet the picks for Biden’s national security team appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Nurkin and Hu in The Hill on countering Chinese influence in multinational organizations

Atlantic Council — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 15:00:00 +0000

Nonresident Senior Fellow

On October 9, The Hill published an opinion piece from Forward Defense Non-Resident Senior Fellows Tate Nurkin and Evanna Hu discussing the need to counter Chinese influence in multilateral institutions.

In this piece, they discuss how China has weaponized its role in international bodies like the United Nations and the International Technology Union to advance its foreign policy goals. To restore US world leadership, the authors recommend that the United States reinvigorate the norms which helped it set forward these global institutions in the first place.

Within these [multi-national organizations, the United States has] the flexibility to create new strategic alliances and even new multilateral alignments

Tate Nurkin and Evanna Hu

Fellow

Evanna Hu

Forward Defense Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Extremism Defense Technologies

Fellow

Tate Nurkin

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Forward Defense Indo-Pacific Security Initiative

China Defense Industry

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Fernandes in UNESCAP: The Disaster and Health Nexus Amid The COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges Of Protecting At-Risk Communities

Atlantic Council — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 19:14:00 +0000

The post Fernandes in UNESCAP: The Disaster and Health Nexus Amid The COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges Of Protecting At-Risk Communities appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Manning in VOA: What is the “North Korea Problem” of the United Nations General Assembly?

Atlantic Council — Sat, 12 Sep 2020 20:35:27 +0000

The post Manning in VOA: What is the “North Korea Problem” of the United Nations General Assembly? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Hudson quoted in Foreign Policy on the politics behind leadership selection for the new United Nations mission to Sudan

Atlantic Council — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 16:11:47 +0000

The post Hudson quoted in Foreign Policy on the politics behind leadership selection for the new United Nations mission to Sudan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Turkey’s Refugee Resilience: Expanding and Improving Solutions for the Economic Inclusion of Syrians in Turkey

Bastien Revel — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 15:00:00 +0000

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Since 2014, Turkey has not only hosted the world’s largest refugee population but has also modeled a best practice for the global refugee policy discussion. Turkey’s experience on the key issues such as jobs and employment should be examined as lessons for both refugee hosting countries and donor countries alike. The country has provided Syrians under Temporary Protection the right to access work permits and formal employment. Facilitating self-reliance for such a large number of refugees’ households remains a challenging task, even in the medium to long-term. This is especially the case in a context where increasing levels of unemployment in Turkey compounded by the socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have posed a serious challenge to job creation and increased competition for available opportunities. Many Syrians living in Turkey experiencing partial or complete loss of income while incurring higher expenses, which is compounded for most households by a lack of savings.

Addressing these challenges requires to draw lessons learnt at both policy and operational level to effectively support access to livelihoods opportunities. This notably involves fostering greater engagement and partnership with the private sector, on the one hand, and exploring innovative solutions such as e-work and online livelihoods opportunities on the other. The COVID-19 pandemic is proving to be an important test on the government’s and their international partners’ relevance and flexibility and their ability to quickly step up efforts in that direction.

In this context, UNDP Turkey—a longstanding development partner and the co-lead of the Refugee and Resilience Response Plan (3RP)—joined hands with the Atlantic Council’s program on Turkey—”Atlantic Council IN TURKEY”—to explore policy options to foster socioeconomic inclusion among Syrians under Temporary Protection. Building on the experience and expertise of both organizations, our joint policy report : “Turkey’s Refugee Resilience: Expanding and Improving Solutions for the Economic Inclusion of Syrians in Turkey” aims at outlining pragmatic and innovative options to facilitate refugees’ access to decent employment so as to contribute to our common objective to #leavenoonebehind.

The post Turkey’s Refugee Resilience: Expanding and Improving Solutions for the Economic Inclusion of Syrians in Turkey appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Linscott in Law360: US Could Better Effect WHO Reform From Within

Atlantic Council — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 14:17:00 +0000

The post Linscott in Law360: US Could Better Effect WHO Reform From Within appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Coronavirus proves what Ukrainians already knew—the UN doesn’t work

Pavlo Klimkin and Andreas Umland — Tue, 21 Apr 2020 14:59:15 +0000

The coronavirus crisis is still in full swing, but attention is already turning towards the international environment we are likely to encounter in the post-pandemic world. With entire countries currently in lock down and comparisons with major wars becoming commonplace, many expect the impact from the crisis to be genuinely historic.

One popular subject of speculation is the need to rethink the global architecture of international relations. In particular, many observers are highly critical of the United Nations response to the coronavirus outbreak and see it as a damning verdict of an organization that was first established in the aftermath of WWII to transform the way the nations of the world interacted. Such criticism is nothing new in Ukraine, where the idea that the UN is not fit for purpose has been enthusiastically discussed and widely embraced since 2014. Will the coronavirus crisis now lead to serious debate over the need for fundamental reform at the United Nations?

When Russian aggression against Ukraine first began six years ago, it quickly became obvious that the existing international institutions were completely ineffective and often failed to function at all. Ukrainians found themselves in the absurd position of facing an aggressor country with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council that used this exclusive position to veto any official acknowledgment that international aggression was taking place at all. This created a farcical situation wherein one part of the UN Charter could not be implemented because of another part. By its mere existence, the UN’s most prominent decision-making body, the Security Council, had come to implicitly legitimize the military expansion of one of its permanent members at the expense of another UN member state. This sorry state of affairs directly undermined the central rationale behind the creation of the United Nations following WWII, which was to prevent any more wars of aggression.

Despite the obvious injustice of the situation the country found itself in, there was little in practice that Ukraine could do except continue fighting Russian aggression while attempting to rally international solidarity and support. Admittedly, Ukraine’s plight did help to generate discussion over the need to reform the UN Security Council. Working groups were created with this in mind, and some new concepts emerged. However, the debate did not lead anywhere.

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This failure to reform was due to the fact that the world’s leading nations did not see sufficient need to reboot the entire existing international system. Even more troubling has been Russia’s efforts to bypass its expulsion from the G8 group of leading nations and engage diplomatically with the permanent members of the UN Security Council. In effect, the Kremlin has sought to discuss the fate of Ukraine without any Ukrainians being present, and has exploited the outdated idiosyncrasies of the UN’s structure in order to do so.

The current pandemic is now disrupting international affairs in ways that make reform of the United Nations realistic for the first time in a generation. Indeed, the global mood is now beginning to share some similarities with the climate at the end of the twentieth century’s two world wars in 1918 and 1945, which gave birth to the League of Nations and United Nations respectively. In this environment, Ukraine has a far greater chance of finding like-minded allies who also seek to pursue the wholesale transformation of the United Nations.

Resistance to any such proposals would be stiff. However, failure to address the shortcomings exposed by such landmark events as the coronavirus crisis and Russian aggression against Ukraine would risk further undermining the legitimacy of the current UN system. This could lead to the United Nations becoming increasingly irrelevant and ineffective in addressing the major challenges facing humanity, much as its predecessor the League of Nations faded into redundancy and was eventually washed away by a rising tide of totalitarianism in the late 1930s.

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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Talk of change at the United Nations is not in itself controversial. Today’s reform-minded UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has initiated a wide-ranging discussion on the subject. However, he has not yet been able to implement any of the substantive changes he planned when he first took office in January 2017. As a result, we may have already passed the chance for a gradual reform of the UN system. Instead, with confidence in the world’s current institutional structures dwindling with every passing week of coronavirus shocks, the prospect of radical change becomes more and more realistic.

Before beginning any reboot, the entire UN system would have to be thoroughly reassessed. Ideally, this would be done by an external and independent auditor. The most obvious candidate for change is the World Health Organization, which is widely seen to have failed in its duty to provide adequate monitoring and early warning of the current pandemic. A more decisive response could have saved thousands of lives and prevented the economic collapse that now menaces the entire planet. Questions are also being asked over the WHO’s relationship with China and its apparent unwillingness to complicate ties with Beijing. International institutions that cannot act on the basis of impartial analysis are doomed to be ineffective. Ukrainians learned this painful lesson in 2014. It is now also increasingly obvious to wider international audiences.

The question remains of who would be best-placed to initiate, formulate and implement a global solution to the questions currently being asked of the existing international system. During the two previous formative periods following WWI and WWII, the victorious allies inevitably took the lead. In today’s very different circumstances, there is no clear candidate camp or driving force to initiate and push through a comprehensive reboot. Instead, Ukrainians should look to join forces with other nations seeking a fundamental remake of the current UN system. Their goal should be to put the issue on the agenda for diplomats, politicians, and journalists. The coronavirus crisis is exposing the weakness of today’s international institutions, but it may also pave the way for long overdue and radical reform.

Pavlo Klimkin was Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2014 until 2019 and is Head of the European, Regional and Russian Studies Program at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv.

Andreas Umland is General Editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” at ibidem Press in Stuttgart and a Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv.

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The United Nations system was built as a forum open to all countries, but it has respected a delicate balance to recognize the interests and influence of great powers in terms of posts or policy. In this regard, the United States has been particularly successful in playing a central role, but this is the result of actively participating in the work and debates of UN bodies. Since 2017, Washington has expressed such indifference and even hostility to the multilateral fora that it’s unsurprising competitors like China are filling the vacuum and exerting a growing influence in the UN and elsewhere.

In the case of the WHO, not only had the administration not appointed a representative to the executive board of the organization since 2017 (until March 18 of this year) but the provisional 2021 budget would have cut US public funding to the organization below China’s (although voluntary private US support represents a majority of the organization’s funds). The same is true for other multilateral bodies. The World Trade Organization for example hasn’t been able to appoint judges to its Appellate court, due to US opposition, effectively blocking the institution and undercutting others’ efforts to raise concerns over Chinese unfair trade practices.

But the case is not lost. The United States has much stronger assets than its rivals to reassert itself. Its partners and allies, especially in the EU, have expressed their will to work with Washington to push back against China that the EU dubbed a “systemic rival” last year, and, more importantly, to reform international organizations. Today, many European and Asian countries share US concerns over China’s initial secretive handling of the virus followed by Beijing’s aggressive propaganda efforts to prop its authoritarian regime as a model to respond to the crisis. The French foreign minister has even summoned the Chinese ambassador to Paris this week to complain against China’s rhetoric.

Taken together these nations represent a critical part of the WHO’s funding and diplomatic support. The United States could consult its partners and together propose an independent committee to audit the WHO’s performance and offer potential reforms. The United States, the European Union, and major Asian democracies could then propose a clear timeline for these reforms to be implemented and tie this to a gradual increase in funding. Such approach, rather than budgetary blackmail, would provide legitimacy and widespread support. As for the World Trade Organization, the EU has sent the US administration proposals to give it the means to effectively monitor the implementation by China of its commitment of fair trade practices. Washington should work with the Europeans on this.

More US withdrawal from international institutions will only further damage US leadership and undermine the international system painstakingly built by its diplomats since 1945 to sustain it. More importantly it will give others opportunities to shape them for their own interests. It is now up to the supporters of multilateralism to go beyond their easy outcry and respond to Trump’s stance by concretely showing their will to rebuild an effective international system for the challenges of the twenty-first century. Today’s institutions are rooted in the post-1945 settlement and in the Cold War. They have to evolve and to be reformed to be more effective and to reflect our values. In a global world, COVID19 reminds us that “America first’’ can’t mean “America alone.”

Gerard Araud is France’s former permanent representative to the United Nations in New York and former ambassador to the United States.

Benjamin Haddad is the director of the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council.

A more coordinated global coronavirus response is needed, Turkish foreign minister argues

By David A. Wemer

Çavuşoğlu cautioned that it is very possible that the pandemic ushers in a “world that is less open, less prosperous, and less free,” but he hoped that effective global leadership would allow the international community to grow stronger. The need for solidarity might even “force us into more multilateralism,” as governments pursue common solutions to the crisis. While many leaders continue to be singularly focused on the situations within their own borders, “we can only eradicate this threat through collective effort,” Çavuşoğlu said. “We must work together.”

Coronavirus Economy & Business

New Atlanticist Apr 16, 2020

NATO allies have stepped up to help each other during coronavirus emergency

By David A. Wemer

Although the coronavirus pandemic has strained the medical infrastructure and economies of countries across Europe and North America, NATO allies “are coming to the rescue of those in need,” NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoană said on April 16. Despite initial focuses on the dire situation within each country’s own borders, Geoană reported that he has seen “this almost natural reaction to come to the assistance of our neighbors.”

Coronavirus NATO

New Atlanticist Apr 15, 2020

“Disaster Diplomacy” and the US response to COVID-19

By C. Anthony Pfaff

Global efforts to engage in “disaster diplomacy” during the COVID-19 virus have not met with much success. This failure has as much to do with the nature of the virus as it does with the nature of the response. Getting disaster diplomacy right requires alignment of ends, means, and interests. Otherwise, it risks being perceived as exploitive or ineffective.

Coronavirus Politics & Diplomacy

The post There is a better way to counter China in multilateral organizations: Lead with allies appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Time for the European Union to reassert itself in the UN Security Council

Peter Pindják — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 15:25:23 +0000

Brexit has not only cost the European Union (EU) one of its members, but also a coveted permanent seat at the UN Security Council (UNSC). The UK and France often provided a reliable tandem for the European Union at the UNSC, but now London and Paris may start to diverge more prominently, since the UK is no longer obliged to coordinate its positions with EU member states through Article 34 of the Treaty on the European Union. To retain its influence and maintain its global geopolitical ambitions, the EU should look for another permanent seat on the UNSC.

Although often bogged down in political paralysis, the UNSC continues to play a significant role in international affairs, mainly through its ability to impose economic sanctions, approve the use of force, and provide legal mandates for peace operations around the world. The five permanent members have a particular privilege and responsibility in the UNSC’s deliberations—the power of veto. Losing a permanent seat and the potential for the UK and France to split on occasion presents a particular challenge for the EU, which has much to gain from projecting power on this internationally important body. At a time when new emerging powers want to have their say at the UNSC and multilateralism is too often trumped by power politics, the EU should aim for at least two guaranteed seats at the table. The most plausible course of action for Brussels is to support efforts to increase the permanent membership of the UNSC, thus presenting an opportunity for the EU to grab another seat.

But this reform path is likely to be a bumpy road. The UNSC has not undergone serious reform since 1965, when its size increased from eleven to the current fifteen members (five of them permanent (P5) and ten elected (E10). The weakening of multilateralism, the reemergence of power politics, and the rise of new actors in the geopolitical arena certainly present a compelling case for changing the UNSC, and some countries understand this more than others. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently called for a summit of the P5 countries, on the margins of the 75^th session of the UN General Assembly, to discuss the role of the UNSC in an evolving global environment.

Since the UN Charter does not allow regional organizations such as the EU to become members of the UNSC, the best bet for the EU member states lies in ensuring they have at least two permanent seats on the UNSC. From the perspective of the EU, the best candidate to become a new permanent member of the UNSC is Germany. It is the most populous European country, the strongest economic partner for the majority of EU member states, the fourth largest contributor to the UN budget, and has considerable political influence and soft power globally.

The UNSC reform push, however, remains stalled, as it has been discussed only in informal settings and the proceedings are not subject to the Rules of Procedure of the UN General Assembly. To formalize the process, the G4 states (India, Germany, Japan, and Brazil) have continued to press for a text-based negotiation, which may offer some hope for progress. Having an official draft document on the UNSC reform, which UN member states can work with and negotiate, would certainly be a step forward.

This initiative has garnered support of the UK and France, who agree that the four members of the G4 group should have a permanent seat on the UNSC. Russia and China, however, have been skeptical of this reform process and the United States seems to prefer the effectiveness of the UNSC over its representativeness. The European Union should actively support the G4 states’ push and lobby its international partners to advance discussions on this issue.

Germany is currently a member of the UNSC, but only as an elected member for a two-year term. The cooperation among all EU countries presently on the UNSC (France, Germany, Belgium, and Estonia) has been strong. Franco-German cooperation, in particular, has been effective, highlighted by Paris and Berlin holding a joint “twin presidency” in the UNSC last year and with the possibility of this happening this year as well. Building upon the bilateral Treaty of Aachen signed last year, the two countries have pledged to closely cooperate in numerous areas, including diplomacy, security, and defense. The treaty also explicitly mentions that France will help Germany in becoming a permanent member of the UNSC.

The transatlantic community needs a strong and stable Europe, whose bold vision can be backed by resolute action. As long as the UNSC remains an indispensable international body with executive powers to impose sanctions and authorize the use of force, the EU must actively work towards its proper representation at this important table. If this chance for European reassertion in global affairs is missed, other countries may sense this strategic hesitation and pursue actions that weaken Europe and, inadvertently, the transatlantic alliance as well. The time for the EU to act is now.

Peter Pindják serves as political coordinator at the Slovak Permanent Mission to the UN and as vice-chair of the 4th Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) of the UN General Assembly. In 2012, he was a member of the Atlantic Council’s Young Atlanticist NATO Working Group. As a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar, he earned MPIA in security and intelligence studies from the University of Pittsburgh and PhD. in national and international security from the Slovak Armed Forces Academy in Liptovský Mikuláš.

French minister: Europe is ready to prove its strength

By David A. Wemer

Despite anxiety about the state of the European Union in the face of Brexit and political populism, French Minister of State for European Affairs Amélie de Montchalin argued that there is growing evidence that Europeans are “starting to see Europe as capable of being strong [and] sovereign.” Recent joint European actions and renewed focus on building Europe’s ability to act autonomously has proved “that we can use the capabilities that we have, the power we already have, to take initiative,” de Montchalin said at the Atlantic Council on March 6.

European Union Politics & Diplomacy

New Atlanticist Mar 5, 2020

UK remains committed to positive global role after Brexit, defence secretary says

By David A. Wemer

“The security of Europe is vital to the United Kingdom’s security [and] that will not change because we have left the political union of the European Union,” UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said on March 5.

European Union NATO

Inflection Points Feb 29, 2020

Coronavirus special edition: Europe’s historic test amid expanding, global ripples

By Frederick Kempe

If the EU and its member states respond smoothly and in a coordinated fashion, the coming days could reinforce the collective value of the European Union. Should the EU appear ineffective as the virus spreads, that will color European attitudes for decades to come.

Coronavirus Crisis Management

The post Time for the European Union to reassert itself in the UN Security Council appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Real talk on Kyiv’s talks with Moscow

Diane Francis — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 19:07:53 +0000

Vladimir Putin has beaten Ukraine. For five years, Russia has occupied seven percent of the country and extracted a staggering 5 to 7 percent from Ukraine’s economy in defense costs each year. To date, some 13,000 Ukrainians have died, tens of thousands have been wounded, and 1.6 million dispossessed.

But this is not an absolute victory. This is a stalemate, thanks to Ukraine’s valiant military. So, there is no reason to surrender, but neither is there reason to enter into hasty negotiations with the enemy.

I sympathize with Ukrainians protesting on the streets, but attitudes must change. They must disavow themselves of the delusion that anything other than a form of capitulation is possible or that France and Germany have the best interests of Ukraine at heart. Trade between Russia and France is booming and Russia and Germany will profit mightily once Nord Stream 2 is built.

And any search for face-saving is pointless. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed on to the Steinmeier Formula which stipulates the withdrawal of forces, local elections, and autonomy for the occupied region within Ukraine. But details were scant. For instance, who will pay the more than 10 billion Euros needed to rebuild the region, and how can legitimate elections be staged in a region controlled by lawless Russian operatives and criminals.

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This has brought the crowds back to the streets. The Donbas has also been destroyed. Its cities are unrecognizable and 1.6 million Ukrainians have already fled. More would leave if they could. Once the industrial heartland of the country, its infrastructure has been destroyed, its housing neglected and infested by undesirables with mafia in charge posing as a government.

Without containment, the Donbas will be a Trojan Horse or another “Trashcanistan” along 350 miles of Ukrainian border like Moldova’s Transnistria, a staging ground for crime.

Despite a sincere desire to stop the fighting, the Russians are mocking Zelenskyy and Ukrainians alike, according to reports.

“What Ukraine was so afraid of has happened… Zelenskyy doesn’t understand what he signed,” concluded Vladimir Soloviev, the host of the nightly The Evening With Vladimir Soloviev on Russian state television.

At the Russian Energy Week forum, Putin said that Zelenskyy “will have to decide how relations between Ukraine and the Donbas will develop,” referring to the Ukrainian region as though it was a sovereign nation. He opined that Ukraine “did much better when it was a part of the Soviet Union, along with Russia.”

Clearly, Ukraine must devise its bargaining position, and anticipate Russia’s, or it will be devoured in upcoming talks, left to the mercy of Putin as well as of France and Germany, both co-opted by Putin.

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After Vilnius: What’s next on Ukraine’s path to NATO?

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Before talks, Ukraine must demand that the Americans and British also be at the table. In 1994, both nuclear powers signed the Budapest Memorandum commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty. But before ceasefire talks in 2015 Putin rejected their involvement, and suggested Germany and France. And then President Petro Poroshenko agreed which was an incalculable mistake. If Russia balks, then the United Nations should be the arbiter or at the table.

Next, Ukraine must determine its bottom line. This is essential because any successful negotiation is about finding a compromise between two clearly articulated positions. Putin’s offer is already known: Russia will withdraw its forces, allow local elections, then dump what’s left of the Donbas, leaving his proxies in power, and pay nothing toward the damages it caused. Oh, and besides, Crimea is off the table and sanctions must end.

Here is what Ukraine’s unvarnished position should be: Russia must withdraw all its military, proxies, and weaponry from the Donbas and compensate the 1.6 million refugees who fled and to rebuild the damage to infrastructure, industry, and housing caused by its five-year occupation and war. Then Russia must sign a 20-year contract to provide Ukraine’s pipeline with natural gas. Crimea can be set aside for a second set of negotiations once Russia pays compensation and guarantees energy security.

If Putin rebuffs such an offer, or any version, then he will be internationally reviled and Ukraine must immediately disengage from talks. From there, the only viable strategy would be to fortify the military, ask for United Nations’ peacekeepers to patrol the war front, and concentrate all efforts on gaining membership to the European Union by eliminating corruption and lifting living standards.

This is not surrender. The reality is that the war with Russia has already been lost. It’s recognition that Putin holds all the cards and that Ukraine’s best strategy is to stand up for justice in front of the world and, if denied, embark on a transition course immediately.

At the end of the day, Putin’s legacy will not be glory, but he will go down in history as a pariah who has brought about death and destruction. As for vindication—for those who lost their lives and made sacrifices—an end to future murder and mayhem may simply have to suffice.

A free, fair, and prosperous Ukraine may be the best, and only, revenge available and is Putin’s worst nightmare.

Diane Francis is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Editor at Large with the National Post in Canada, a Distinguished Professor at Ryerson University’s Ted Rogers School of Management, and author of ten books.

Ukraine’s most vulnerable children deserve a passport, too

Anna Babko — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 16:45:06 +0000

Children born in the occupied territories of Ukraine face a real risk of statelessness. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, only 43 percent of children born in the non-government controlled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts have obtained Ukrainian birth certificates.

The remaining 57 percent of NGCA children born without proper birth registration by the Ukrainian authorities may be unable to qualify for a Ukrainian passport at age 14. Of course, NGCA children could obtain a passport issued from the self-proclaimed “People Republic’s,” but these are not recognized by Ukraine and are of limited utility.

Statelessness is an issue in Ukraine, and one on the rise. The UNHCR estimates that there are more than 35,600 stateless persons and persons at risk of statelessness in Ukraine. In addition, there are more than 40,000 children who were born in the NGCA that face problems with proper documentation.

Children born in the NGCA receive a birth certificate issued by the self-proclaimed “People Republic’s,” which is only recognized by Russia as valid. If a child fails to obtain a Ukrainian birth certificate and cannot confirm their Ukrainian citizenship, the child will remain in limbo. This is the nightmare scenario.

In 2018, the Ukrainian government adopted a law which should fix the problem. The law would enable the Ukrainian authorities to recognize birth certificates issued by hospitals in the non-government controlled areas in Donetsk and Luhansk.

However, no administrative procedure was introduced to implement the change. Thus, an NCGA child must undergo a cumbersome court procedure to obtain a Ukrainian birth certificate, and many families cannot afford the time and effort required.

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To obtain a birth certificate for NGCA children, a child’s representative needs to cross into the government-controlled area and apply at a civil registry office of the Ministry of Justice with the birth certificate issued either by the NGCA registry or hospital. Any civil registry office in Ukraine can handle the procedure, regardless the child’s place of residence, which simplifies the process. In general, people from the NGCA tend to approach civil registry offices closest to them.

Next, the registry office issues a written rejection. The child’s representative must then approach the court with the rejection, the medical records, and a claim outlining the case.

If the facts are in order, courts generally issue judgements that clear up an NGCA child’s status. In 1970, the International Court of Justice found that documents issued by an occupying authority must be taken into consideration by the courts if otherwise the rights of inhabitants of the mentioned territories would be violated or seriously restricted, and Ukrainian courts comply with this judgement.

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“Despite the relative simplicity of birth registration through the court procedure, the Kramatorsk civil registry is overwhelmed with applications for birth registration for GCA and NGCA-born children,” the head of the Kramatorsk civil registry office has stated. Kramatorsk is a city in the government-controlled area of the Donetsk region near the NGCA.

For NGCA families, a Ukrainian birth certificate comes with social benefits. The mother of a NGCA child who registers her child in Ukraine is entitled to social payments at birth and more for single mothers.

The process isn’t terribly complicated, but it still remains challenging for many people. Even though there is no court fee, it takes a few days for people to undergo the administrative and court procedures. Thus, the child’s representative needs funds to cover the costs for food, accommodation, and transportation while they wait.

Moreover, sometimes the physical limitations of a child’s representative can be a reason for not undergoing the birth registration procedure in the GCA. Thus, due to the physical and financial obstacles of child representatives to travel to the GCA, a majority of children born in the NGCA remain without proper birth registration.

To prevent the growth of statelessness in Ukraine, it is extremely important to implement the administrative procedure for birth registration for NGCA children as an alternative.

Anna Babko is an expert on statelessness at Right to Protection in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Editor’s note: The nonprofit organization Right to Protection” (R2P) provides legal assistance to the stateless and IDPs. R2P’s attorneys have provided primary and secondary legal aid for birth registration of NGCA children. R2P helped establish a template for the representatives of NGCA children to present in court in order to establish birth and the organization’s attorneys have helped dozens in court.

That other Ukraine controversy that just won’t go away

Oleksiy Goncharenko — Mon, 07 Oct 2019 14:12:34 +0000

Yesterday, thousands marched in Kyiv and twenty other cities across Ukraine to protest that other Ukraine controversy that just won’t go away. On October 1, Ukraine’s president signed the Steinmeier Formula, a framework for eventually holding elections in Ukraine’s occupied east and giving them special status, which many are convinced will lead to Ukraine’s dismemberment.

After signing the Steinmeier Formula, Ukraine woke up with two eternal questions: what to do and who to blame? Some also started questioning where to emigrate. The problem is not in the Steinmeier Formula itself, which we still only partly know. The problem is that Ukrainians still have not reached a compromise on what to do with the Donbas. So now there are only two solutions—to lose the country or to lose the Donbas.

Ukraine stands between two conflict resolution formulas: to freeze the Donbas or to try and integrate it. To freeze the Donbas means to ignore the conflict potentially for several more decades. Fence off the border, stabilize and improve the economy through social programs, and strengthen the military. The idea behind this is that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime will eventually fall and by that time Ukraine will be strong enough to reclaim its territories. There are some problems with this line of thinking. Even if Ukraine successfully reforms itself, this will not necessarily facilitate conflict resolution. Look at South Korea. Germany, which had been divided since 1945, however, ultimately was able to reunite and continue to subsist as a strong state and as a single nation. We are unlikely to follow the path Germany chose. Instead, we should expect a far worse option. Look to Ukraine’s western border to see how things will likely play out.

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Regrettably, we will have another Transnistria, the crime-ridden no-man’s land between Moldova and Ukraine, bordering the Russian Federation on Ukraine’s eastern border as well. Russia will continue to wage war with us through the eastern territories using any suitable pretext.

The second way is to reintegrate the Donbas. Unfortunately, we don’t understand under which conditions and what exactly we have agreed upon with Russia. This is why thousands are still protesting days after Zelenskyy signed on.

Another problem is the way Ukrainians learned about the agreement. Russia publications broke the news. We saw the document signed by former president Leonid Kuchma in Kommersant, a Russian publication, and the Russian information agency TASS was the first to deliver the news. Why didn’t Zelenskyy’s office inform its citizens first? The president hastily arranged a press conference at the end of the day, which clarified little and angered many.

First, we should rightfully describe the formula for what it is. It’s not Steinmeier’s Formula, it’s Putin’s formula. Steinmeier suggested it years ago when the ceasefire agreement was stuck and the diplomatic community forgot about it. The Russians dusted it off and have been pushing it for months. The bottom line is that Ukraine has agreed to comply with the creation of an enclave on the territory of Ukraine.

The biggest and most objectionable issue is that the conditions of Donbas integration were forced upon us, not in the fact that we will provide special status to the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

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We are most likely responsible to rebuild these territories, which is outrageous. Russia has been waging war there for more than five years, ravaged the cities, destroyed the infrastructure, reallocated the industrial capacities on its territory, and now Ukraine will have to restore the Donbas at its own expense. This is not only economically difficult but simply impossible. Besides the costs, there will be other controversies able to tear Ukrainian society apart, such as how to accept the monument to Motorola—a Russian citizen who led the Sparta Battalion, which includes some of the militants fighting the Ukrainian army in the Donbas—for example.

With the Donbas, we not only get Putin’s enclave inside our country, but we also give him a permanent place from which he will rule over the country. Ukraine’s keys are in the Donbas and they will be in Putin’s hands. Ukraine will be stuck in a permanent crisis that will revolve around the perpetual problems of the status of the official language and NATO membership.

We should begin with some common truths. If we think Putin will return the Donbas on a silver platter, we are either idiots or mere amateurs. The first is more likely. Putin wants to avoid a stable Ukraine, which obviously will focus on returning Crimea after getting the Donbas back. Putin needs an incessant crisis and destabilization. Neither peace nor war. He wants sanctions lifted and to block Ukraine from joining the EU and/or NATO. This why Steinmeier’s Formula is Putin’s formula and Putin has never been happier. Our question is whether we will be able to turn it into a Ukrainian formula and whether we as a society will find a compromise to resolving the future of the Donbas before its too late.

Oleksiy Goncharenko is a Ukrainian lawmaker with the European Solidarity party.

Ellinas in Cyprus Mail: EEZ: Cyprus has the right, Turkey has the might

Atlantic Council — Sun, 06 Oct 2019 16:49:02 +0000

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Expert Q&A: Will the Steinmeier Formula bring peace to Ukraine?

Mattia Nelles — Fri, 04 Oct 2019 15:50:47 +0000

On October 1, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine had agreed to implement the Minsk Agreement with the help of the so-called Steinmeier Formula. What does that mean for Ukraine and could this be the first step in a peaceful settlement of the Donbas war?

We asked the following experts for their assessments:

Timothy Ash, economist, main focus on Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey: Zelenskyy was a little vague. His problem is the Steinmeier Formula is very unpopular in Ukraine and he risks a backlash if he comes out too enthusiastically for it. Nationalists will be on the street. Many people see it as a sell out to Moscow which it is really. The crux of the problem as with Minsk is defining what kind of autonomy the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic have. Russia wants a federal Ukraine where the DPR and LPR have vetoes on Ukraine’s strategic direction. That is a non-starter for many in Ukraine.

I also worry what backroom deals have been done. In exchange for supporting Zelenskyy in his push for the Steinmeier plan, is the price letting oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky have PrivatBank back? Kolomoisky and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov control some of the militia forces in Ukraine. The hope is the West look the other way on PrivatBank as the price of peace in the East.

Nataliya Gumenyuk, editor-in-chief of Hromadske International: Indeed, this could be a breakthrough moment. What is different is that the Ukrainian government openly declared its maximum willingness to negotiate the conflict. That doesn’t mean that the Russians would be willing to, but that’s quite a moment. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs told us during a recent interview, why and for what should we wait? There were four years of waiting. Despite the great distrust of the Kremlin, it’s a good opportunity to show them that the old government under Poroshenko was not full prepared to bring about peace.

Zelenskyy appeals to the people of the Donbas. Whatever happens, he would look like he is the one who cared about them from the beginning. If he waits, he can be prevented from doing so. I know most people are super cautious that the Donbas could be dangerous for Ukraine.

What about the reaction of the democratic parties in Ukraine? Former President Petro Poroshenko despises Minsk and pretends that the Steinmeier Formula is a betrayal. What a shame for a person who has been involved in the process for four years and knows about the difficulties in the process. New parties like Holos are very loud about “red lines.” It is true that many aspects are unclear and we have to be careful, but it has to be discussed objectively. Otherwise no advance is possible.

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Orysia Lutsevych, Research Fellow & Manager, Ukraine Forum, Russia and Eurasia Programs Chatham House: Zelenskyy campaigned on the promise to bring peace to Ukraine. He rarely specified how exactly he will go about delivering this. Since October 1, we have at least partial answer from Zelenskyy. But the devil is in the details. What are the modalities of local elections? What is the road map to prepare for elections? How and who will ensure security? Will the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe get access to monitor Ukrainian-Russia border in the East?

Currently, a majority of Ukrainians reject the idea of enshrining a special status for the Donbas in the constitution. In addition, there are often contradictory messages from the Zelenskyy administration. Ukrainians got the news about Kyiv’s agreement to the Steinmeier Formula from the Russian media. This is only help to increase tensions and raises suspicions that Ukraine’s national interests will not be safeguarded by the president.

Olexiy Haran, research director of the Democratic Initiatives Foundation: The Steinmeier Formula explains how local elections in the non-government-controlled areas of the Donbas lead to a law on the so-called “special status” of these areas. Kyiv believes that this cannot happen without two things: first, security for elections, including the withdrawal of Russian troops, and second, really free elections, which means that there would be quite a long transition period before the elections. Perhaps Kyiv hopes to demonstrate this by accepting Ukraine’s readiness for the Steinmeier Formula and Russia’s unwillingness to reach peace. But what could happen at the next summit in Normandy? Joint Russian and Western pressure on Zelenskyy, who invested much in his peace rhetoric can lead to dangerous concessions for Ukraine. A danger has already been created: With the withdrawal of troops, the gray zone, in which Ukrainian citizens are not secure, danger is already increasing.

Sergiy Solodkiy, New Europe Center: From the very beginning, Ukraine’s new president declared his willingness to end the bloodshed in the Donbas as soon as possible. Accepting the Steinmeier Formula is just another proof of Ukraine’s commitment to move through the diplomatic process. One of the Ukrainian leadership’s intermediate goals is to revive the Normandy Format negotiations at the highest level. Official Kyiv has not made clear if it has any strategy on stopping Russian occupation in the Donbas. The main principle guiding Ukrainian leadership may sound like this: “We will make the first step and then we will see what to do next.” This can lead to the degradation of public trust in Ukraine toward authorities which is now unprecedentedly high (70 percent). The saddest thing is that a lack of communication can also have a negative impact on dialogue between the leadership of Ukraine and the leadership of partner countries in the EU (in particular Germany). The current effort is clearly enough to carry out a new Normandy summit and to approve new legislation in the framework of the Minsk commitments. However, there are still great doubts about Russia’s willingness to make the same steps forward. That is why we may expect certain dynamics in negotiations, but I do not think we may expect any strategic breakthrough in conflict resolution.

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Andreas Umland, Senior Nonresident Fellow at the Center for European Security of the Institute for International Relations Prague: While many diplomats and politicians in the West may react with hope and relief to the news, the agenda that has been agreed upon is rather complicated and even risky. The so-called Steinmeier Formula is extremely unpopular with significant parts of Ukrainian society that harbor a deep distrust toward not only Russia, but also partly toward the West. These politicians and analysts fear that the implementation of the Steinmeier Formula will eventually lead to an international legalization of de facto Russian control over the occupied territories in the Donets Basin, if not of a larger area comprising all of the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. Many in Ukraine regard this compromise as a covert capitulation of Kyiv to Moscow. In a worst-case scenario, the deep aversion that significant parts of Ukraine’s political class and civil society have toward the Steinmeier Formula could lead to a—now real—civil war in Ukraine. That is, of course, exactly what the Kremlin has always been aiming at, for over five years now.

Mattia Nelles is the editor of the German-language website Ukraine verstehen. This article was first published in German on October 2 by Ukraine verstehen and has been lightly edited for clarity.

Hard questions for Mr. Zelenskyy

Bohdan Nahaylo — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 02:19:24 +0000

The latest big news from Kyiv as of October 1 is that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed that he and his team have accepted the “Steinmeier Formula” as the basis for moving the Normandy Four leaders out of their impasse and toward peace in Ukraine.

At a hastily convened press conference late in the day, he made the announcement but also gave assurances that this does not spell capitulation before Moscow. Ukraine has been under growing pressure to accept this compromise plan, with France’s President Emmanuel Macron continuing to take the lead in promoting this German diplomatic initiative from 2016 that Ukraine has been wary of.

After Zelenskyy’s announcement, angry protestors from former President Petro Poroshenko’s camp and others demonstrated in front of the presidential building.

But all sides want to be seen to be moving forward and breaking the deadlock. Hence, Russia, France, Germany, and more reluctantly Ukraine, seem to be prepared finally to give it a try.

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Without going into details, as this formula has already been amply discussed, I would like to offer some questions for Zelenskyy and his team to consider, as a former UN diplomat and someone who previously served for almost 20 years with UNHCR.

In applying the Steinmeier Formula, the key question is the sequence. The order in which things will take place is the main source of divergence between the Ukrainian and the Russian sides. The order of things has to be clarified and agreed upon.

Security has to come first, which means not only the withdrawal of troops but the disarming of armed formations. But who will oversee this?

At what stage will Ukraine recover control of the Russian-Ukrainian border? Sooner, rather than later? This is important.

For democratic, read fair and representative, elections to be held it is not enough simply to insist that they be held under Ukrainian law and be endorsed by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. What about the 1.6 million IDPs, effectively forced out from the occupied areas and who fled westward seeking the protection of the Ukrainian state? And those who chose to flee the conflict to Russia and Belarus? Will all of them have an opportunity to vote—even as absentee voters? If not, can the residual population be accepted as fully representative of the wishes and allegiances of the occupied area? Is Ukraine, and the outside world, prepared to accept the verdict through the ballot box of a pro-Russian element and the Moscow-appointed leaders as a democratic plebiscite?

All sides are conspicuously silent about the tricky question of an amnesty for those who have promoted Russia’s cause in the occupied area, whether by arms or other anti-Ukrainian activity. Clearly, Ukraine does not want to pardon such people, let alone allow them into the Ukrainian body politic as “representatives” of the Donbas.

And, of course, the issue of limited self-government for the “separatist” areas so insisted on by Moscow. On what terms and for how long? Ukraine has already made it clear under the present and previous administrations that it will not agree to federalize Ukraine, or grant something resembling autonomy for the areas in question, especially with the right to veto Kyiv’s westward leaning foreign and security goals.

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How does all this connect with undoing Russia’s annexation of Crimea, altering Putin’s attitude toward Ukraine and securing a safer security architecture in Europe and beyond?

Last, but not least if, at the next Normandy Four summit, which both Presidents Macron and Zelenskyy indicate should take place fairly soon, what happens if there is no agreement or breakthrough? Can Zelenskyy, given the political climates in both Washington and London, realistically hope to apply his plan B—namely, invite the United States and British leaders into the Normandy Four process?

Already there is considerable anxiety in Ukraine, even if stirred up for political purposes, that Zelenskyy is caving in to Moscow. Between the pressure on him from Moscow, France, and Germany to compromise, and Washington absorbed in its own political wrangling, is Ukraine about to be sold out and further weakened by internal splits? These are the questions the president and his team should weigh.

Bohdan Nahaylo is a British-Ukrainian journalist and veteran Ukraine watcher based in Kyiv, Ukraine. He was formerly a senior UN official and policy adviser, and director of Radio Liberty’s Ukrainian Service.

Slavin joins France 24 to discuss Trump, UNGA, and sanctions on Iran

Atlantic Council — Fri, 27 Sep 2019 17:27:24 +0000

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Dagres joins The Monocle to discuss Rouhani’s UNGA speech

Atlantic Council — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 17:11:54 +0000

The post Dagres joins The Monocle to discuss Rouhani’s UNGA speech appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Explainer: Five things about the Ukraine controversy you need to know (plus a freebie)

Melinda Haring — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 15:01:34 +0000

At the center of a fierce partisan debate regarding the American presidency, Ukraine is on the front page of every newspaper and the subject of the week. The stakes are high: Democrats allege that Donald Trump held up nearly $400 million in US assistance to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into his rival Joe Biden and his son who had been doing business in the country. On September 24, Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that the House would launch an impeachment inquiry for violating the constitution. The Republicans dispute this claim and argue that it is the latest twist of a years-long effort to end the Trump presidency early.

The Atlantic Council is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to shaping the future with friends and allies. We do not take an institutional position on issues that become partisan, domestic affairs.

That said, UkraineAlert and our Eurasia Center have been at the forefront of providing greater context on Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. We maintain that it is in the interests of the US to help defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to promote reforms that strengthen its democracy.

With that in mind, we provide some background on Ukraine as the public attempts to sort through the controversy.

Many of the names are new to general readers, so we attempt to answer a few basic questions. If you have others, please drop us a line on Twitter.

Who is Viktor Shokin? One side presents him as a decent attorney general and another side says he stood in the way of reform. What’s the truth?

Shokin was the prosecutor general of Ukraine for fourteen months in 2015-2016. He blocked investigations and prevented Ukraine from fighting corruption. The former US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called him “an obstacle” to anti-corruption efforts. Ukrainian civil society pushed for his dismissal constantly. The IMF, the G-7 ambassadors, and the EBRD agreed that Shokin needed to go. When he was fired, they all breathed a big sigh of relief.

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Why was Shokin fired?

Shokin was fired for obstructing the fight against corruption. Former Vice President Joe Biden—the point person on Ukraine in the Obama administration—did pressure Ukraine to fire Shokin and even threatened to cut off $1 billion in aid if he wasn’t removed.

Some claim that Shokin was fired because he was investigating Burisma, a gas company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Activists in Ukraine and former Ukrainian officials dispute that claim. They say that the investigation into the gas company was suspended before the vice president’s ultimatum. According to Vitaliy Kasko, the deputy prosecutor general under Shokin and someone whom civil activists trust, the case had been shelved by prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015.

Christopher Miller with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty examines the Shokin timeline here.

Who is the new prosecutor general in Ukraine, and what is his reputation?

Ruslan Riaboshapka is the new prosecutor general in Ukraine and he is widely considered by top civil society watchdogs to have the right instincts. He helped write the 2014 anti-corruption legislation after the Euromaidan Revolution.

Sources tell us that Riaboshapka has a good relationship with the president.

Brian Bonner at the Kyiv Post has an excellent look into the new prosecutor general’s priorities.

Who was the US ambassador to Ukraine and was she politically biased?

Marie Yovanovitch was the US ambassador to Ukraine from 2016 until she was recalled early on May 20, 2019. Some allege that Yovanovitch was unfairly biased toward the previous government in Ukraine and some allege that she was too hard on former President Petro Poroshenko. Before Yovanovitch was recalled and three weeks before the Ukrainian presidential election, she gave a tough speech pointing out where the Poroshenko administration had failed to seriously fight corruption that was widely viewed as an indictment of the Poroshenko government when it was vulnerable before the election.

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Yovanovitch is a consummate diplomat. She has served as a US ambassador three times. This is highly unusual. Only the best of the best become ambassadors, and even the top diplomats generally only serve as an ambassador twice. In my interactions with her, she chooses her words carefully and has been utterly professional and apolitical.

Civil society in Ukraine and the independent press in Ukraine heap praise on Yovanovitch for her professionalism and for defending reforms.

How much does the European Union give to Ukraine?

A lot. The EU and European financial institutions have given more than 15 billion Euro in grants and loans since 2014.

And a freebie: Is it the Ukraine or just Ukraine?

It’s not “the” Ukraine. Countless observers keep putting a definite article in front of Ukraine. Ukraine has been an independent country since 1991 and isn’t a vassal state. Please don’t do it.

Melinda Haring is the editor of the UkraineAlert blog at the Atlantic Council and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. She tweets @melindaharing.

Sanctions supersede overtures between US and Iran at the UN

Barbara Slavin — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 07:51:41 +0000

United Nations General Assembly summits can be an opportunity for ice-breaking encounters between long and bitter adversaries. For the US and Iran this year, however, it was another missed opportunity.

Chances that Presidents Donald Trump and Hassan Rouhani would meet this year were always slim given Iranian insistence that the US first ease sanctions re-imposed after the US unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But those chances evaporated as the Trump administration imposed yet more sanctions—against Chinese shipping companies transporting Iranian oil in contravention of a US-imposed embargo and against Iranian government officials and their families. Meanwhile, Trump faced new domestic challenges in the form of an impeachment inquiry.

Trump, in his speech to the UN on September 24, harshly criticized Iran but also held out an olive branch when he noted that “many of America’s closest friends today were once our greatest foes. The United States has never believed in permanent enemies. We want partners, not adversaries. America knows well that anyone can make war, only the most courageous can choose peace.”

French President Emmanuel Macron made strenuous efforts to arrange a Rouhani-Trump encounter at the UN. But Rouhani, instead of meeting Trump, followed the example of his foreign minister earlier this year and for the first time granted an interview to Trump’s favorite television channel, Fox TV, to explain his case.

The US, Rouhani asserted, was the interloper and aggressor in the Middle East, not Iran. Asked whether he was prepared to “bump into” Trump on the sidelines of the UN gathering, the Iranian president said, “Why would we bump into one another? If we seek to pursue higher goals to benefit both countries, both people, it must be planned… But prior to that, we must create mutual trust. And the trust is something Mr. Trump took away” by quitting the JCPOA.

Rouhani reiterated this point during his formal UN address on September 25, saying that a “memorial photo is the last station of negotiation not the first one.”

Iran, he suggested, would be willing to negotiate additional understandings with the US and the international community and even change the name of the JCPOA—presumably so Trump could put his brand on it, if the US would come back into compliance with the original deal. But Rouhani did not specify what more Iran would do and it appeared that he was referring to a proposal by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif earlier this year for Iran to ratify the Additional Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—allowing for intrusive inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities—in return for the US Congress voting to permanently lift sanctions. That appears unlikely.

“I would like to make it crystal clear,” Rouhani said. “If you are satisfied with minimums, we will also be working with the minimums; either for you or for us. However, if you require more, you should also give more.”

The language seemed tailored to appeal to the wheeler-dealer in chief.

Instead of bridging gaps, however, both countries used the platform of the UN to try to build broader coalitions against each other—each with limited success.

Rouhani announced something he called the “Coalition for Hope” or “Hormuz Peace Endeavor” to restore stability to the Persian Gulf, where Iran is believed responsible for a series of attacks on shipping and oil installations following the US announcement in May that it would try to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero. Notably, the initiative appeared to call for the exit of some 70,000 US forces in the region and is thus an obvious non-starter for US allies such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“The security of the region shall be provided when American troops pull out,” Rouhani said, not “with American weapons and intervention… Security cannot be purchased or supplied by foreign governments,” he added, in an obvious dig at Saudi Arabia for failing to defend its main oil refinery despite having spent billions of dollars on US military hardware.

While Rouhani was talking up his “hope” proposal, the Trump administration was trying to marshal a broader coalition against Iran.

Shortly before Rouhani spoke, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressed United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), an organization that opposed the JCPOA and has supported ever more sanctions against Iran.

Pompeo boasted that Britain, France and Germany—the key European negotiators of the JCPOA along with the European Union, China and Russia—had issued a joint statement blaming Iran for the September 14 attacks on Saudi oil facilities. This statement was the “beginning of awakening that Iran is the aggressor, not the aggrieved,” Pompeo said. Announcing new sanctions on Chinese companies that transported Iranian oil, he urged more countries to pressure Iran and at the same time “help us get Iran back to the negotiating table.”

But while Pompeo spoke, the Europeans were meeting with Iran to discuss how to shore up the JCPOA. The US forfeited its seat at this Joint Commission when it quit the deal in 2018.

The Trump administration insists that its “maximum pressure” campaign is intended to bring new negotiations. But the US message has been blurred by US officials’ flirtation with groups that support regime change. Pompeo, for example, spoke at UANI’s annual summit even though a day earlier, the organization reportedly hosted members of the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) and other Iranian opposition groups that advocate the overthrow of the Iranian government. (UANI later denied planning the event, though their name was on the program as an organizer.)

Pompeo’s State Department earlier this year changed its talking points to no longer exclude the MEK as a viable alternative to the Iranian government. Most Iranians detest the group for its alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War.

With Trump now embroiled in defending his presidency against an impeachment inquiry following his admission that he asked the president of Ukraine for help in investigating the son of Democratic rival Joe Biden, Iran is unlikely to soften its stance, sensing Trump’s increasing desperation for a foreign policy achievement.

One avenue to de-escalate tensions could be talks on exchanging Americans jailed in Iran for Iranians jailed in the US or in third countries at the behest of the US. Iran signaled its willingness to hold such talks earlier this year when it freed an American green card holder of Lebanese origin, Nizar Zakka.

The US, in turn, could lift stringent restrictions on the movement of Iranian diplomats assigned to the United Nations. The restrictions are so tight that Iranians who live just outside New York City must move their families to the pricey east side of Manhattan within a year and Foreign Minister Zarif—who has been personally sanctioned by the Trump administration—was told he could not visit Iran’s UN ambassador, who has been hospitalized.

With the two sides at an impasse, the prospect is for more US sanctions, more incidents in and around the Persian Gulf and even a direct confrontation that Trump has sought to avoid—at least until Trump’s fate is determined by the US Congress or the American electorate.

Barbara Slavin is director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Follow her on Twitter: @BarbaraSlavin1.

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Pyper quoted in KCRW on climate action summit and global climate strikes

Atlantic Council — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 17:43:30 +0000

The post Pyper quoted in KCRW on climate action summit and global climate strikes appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What’s at stake with the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting

Paul Grod — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 01:12:16 +0000

Ukraine is at the center of a US domestic political crisis that may impact the American presidency and weaken Ukraine at a critical moment. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy comes to the United States this week for the opening of the UN General Assembly and his first meeting with US President Donald Trump, he has a tough task ahead: he must not get pulled into the partisan fight, while convincing Trump to back Ukraine’s position for peace.

In October, Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany are expected to meet in Paris to hammer out a peace deal to end a war that Russia started five years ago, killing 13,000 Ukrainians, seriously wounding thousands, and displacing another 1.6 million in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine is at risk of coming to the table with a weak hand, unless the United States throws its full support behind it and encourages Europe to do the same. Germany and France see Zelenskyy’s political inexperience as an opportunity to achieve a breakthrough in the Normandy Format talks, hoping he will compromise on issues when his predecessor would not.

During a recent discussion at the Yalta European Strategy annual meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, with Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s former president and lead negotiator in the Minsk Agreements, he sensibly said “Let’s comply with the Minsk accords. Security comes first. You need to pull out the troops, pull out the heavy weaponry, give us back the border, and then we will hold a free election.” The formula for peace is clear. Unfortunately, Kuchma was not optimistic about the much-anticipated Normandy Format meeting. “Zelenskyy will have a very hard time—it will be one against three people,” he predicted.

Last month’s successful prisoner exchange between the Kremlin and Kyiv renewed hope that peace might finally be achievable. But Moscow’s actions show that there is no willingness by Russia to find a lasting solution. Putin’s objectives are straightforward. He wishes to control Ukraine as part of Russia’s sphere of influence by either permanently inserting a Russian-controlled regional government in Ukraine or by continuing to destabilize Ukraine and turn it into a failed state through his ongoing war.

The challenge is not whether the Minsk Agreements should be implemented but how they are implemented. Russia wants Ukraine to recognize special status for the Donbas region and hold immediate elections that would have the Russian-controlled mercenaries become members of Ukraine’s parliament. Ukraine and its allies have always held the position that elections will be held in the Donbas only after the Russian troops and mercenaries together with their weapons leave the territories and Ukraine regains control over the Russian-Ukrainian border, IDPs are allowed to return to their homes, and several months passes and rebuilding begins.

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Earlier this month in Berlin, German interlocutors who are directly involved in the Normandy Format peace discussions, outlined their peace proposal. Astonishingly, they proposed that Ukraine should agree to Russia’s terms and hold elections in the occupied territories prior to any troop withdrawal or return of the half the population who fled because of the occupation.

The Germans proposed that these elections be supervised by the Organized for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Russian forces would be contained to their barracks. This is a farcical proposal. When the OSCE invariably declares that the elections failed to meet international standards, the new leaders will face no recourse from the OSCE, as has happened in dozens of elections throughout the former Soviet Union.

The “peace at all costs” formula will legitimize the foreign occupation forces in Ukraine, create a lasting divide in the country, and pull Ukraine away from its path toward EuroAtlantic integration, which is exactly what Putin wants. Ukraine cannot agree to elections until security for its citizens can be guaranteed, real political discourse is allowed, and those residents that were forced to flee are able to return and vote.

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The United States, Germany, and France must not force Ukraine’s hand in accepting any form of peace deal that will compel Ukraine to hold elections while the occupied territories in the Donbas remain a police state under Russian control. Otherwise, these “allies” will permanently destabilize Ukraine with a Russian-controlled enclave in eastern Ukraine. A Putin-led peace plan will fracture Ukraine beyond repair.

If anyone’s hand must be forced, it should be Vladimir Putin’s. The United States, Canada, EU, and their allies must continue to increase sanctions against Russia and support for Ukraine. Buckling to Putin will further embolden him and prove that aggression works, which will have grave consequences far beyond Ukraine.

Paul Grod is president of the Ukrainian World Congress. He tweets @PaulMGrod.

Trump defends his foreign policy to the world at UNGA

David A. Wemer — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 18:58:31 +0000

US President Donald J. Trump justified his vision for the United States’ role in the world during a wide-ranging speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 24. In a speech that bore resemblance to his other two annual addresses to the gathering of world leaders, Trump again emphasized his belief that core national interests should matter more to political leaders than simply achieving more international cooperation. “The future does not belong to globalists,” the US president said. “The future belongs to patriots…[and] sovereign and independent nations.”

Trump argued that “the free world must embrace its national foundations” and “must not attempt to erase them or replace them,” echoing criticisms he has levelled against international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization (WTO), which he believes unfairly disadvantages the United States and threatens its sovereignty. “Wise leaders put the good of their own people and their own country first,” he told UNGA.

Atlantic Council Weiser Family Distinguished Fellow Daniel Fried argued that Trump’s emphasis on sovereignty and description of patriotism as the converse of globalism was misguided, however. “Patriotism is at its best when inseparable from universal values,” Fried said. While “the universal without the particular of the nation risks becoming mere abstraction…patriotism that is not answerable before universal values risks degenerating into tribalism,” he argued.

Atlantic Council Distinguished Fellow Alexander Vershbow noted that Trump’s discussion of sovereignty importantly “made no reference to Russia or Ukraine.” Trump declared “if you want democracy, hold onto your sovereignty,” which Vershbow noted “is exactly what Ukraine has been trying to do in the face of Russian aggression,” since Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 and continued military activity in eastern Ukraine, except “now with wavering support from Trump.”

In his nearly forty minute speech, Trump discussed most of the other major pillars of his foreign policy, including his effort to redo major trade deals with US partners and economic competitors such as China, US attempts to prevent Iran and North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons, and the United States’ response to migration from Central America and the destabilizing situation in Venezuela.

Here is a look at the major topics he discussed, with reaction from Atlantic Council experts on what his words mean for future US foreign policy:

Iran and the Gulf

The September 14 drone attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities—which US officials have blamed on Iran—has been the latest escalation in a growing showdown between Tehran and Washington in the Persian Gulf since this spring, when Iran announced that it would stop abiding by the terms of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the Trump administration withdrew from in 2018.

Trump doubled down on his decision to leave the JCPOA during his September 24 speech saying that the deal had “very little time remaining, did not allow inspection of important sites, and did not cover ballistic missiles.” Trump decried Tehran as “the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism” and accused the country of “fueling the tragic wars in Syria and Yemen.”

The United States has leveled several rounds of economic sanctions on Iran in response to its regional activity and an in attempt to get Tehran to renegotiate a deal on its nuclear deal. In response to the September 14 drone attack, US officials also unveiled new restrictions against the Central Bank of Iran on September 20.

Trump promised that unless Tehran changes its behavior “sanctions will not be lifted; they will be tightened.” He also called on other international leaders to refuse to do business with Tehran in response to its attack on Saudi Arabia. “All nations have a duty to act,” Trump said. “No responsible government should subsidize Iran’s bloodshed.”

Barbara Slavin, director of the Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative:

“Trump’s language on Iran was characteristically harsh but he ended with an olive branch when he noted that ‘many of America’s closest friends today were once our greatest foes. The United States has never believed in permanent enemies. We want partners, not adversaries. America knows well that anyone can make war, only the most courageous can choose peace.”

“The chances for reconciliation between the Trump administration and the Islamic Republic have never been good and diminished significantly when Trump quit the nuclear deal, imposed a total embargo on Iranian oil exports, and Iran retaliated with an escalating series of attacks on US allies in the Persian Gulf. But Trump clearly doesn’t want a war with Iran and he remains open to some sort of negotiation. My fear is that he doesn’t have a clue how to get there. He has better prospects with North Korea for an incremental agreement that will improve on the current standoff; with Iran, the Iranian leadership has been clear that sanctions relief must precede new talks. The Iranians, sensing Trump’s growing political weakness, will likely hang tough until our 2020 elections.”

Holly Dagres, nonresident fellow with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Middle East Security Initiative and editor of the Iran Source blog:

“US President Donald Trump’s comments do not stray from what he’s been saying all along about the multilateral nuclear agreement and Iran’s ‘malign behavior.’ Though Trump talks about the tightening of sanctions, he does not seem averse to the idea of meeting with the Iranians. Trump merely isn’t open to their pre-conditions—at least for the time being—which is the lifting of US sanctions prior to a potential meeting.”

Trade and China

Trump continued his push to reset the United States’ international economic relationships and took particular aim at China as both countries remain locked in negotiations on a potential new trade agreement.

The US president said that China has “declined to adopt promised reforms [and] has embraced an economic model dependent on massive market barriers, heavy state subsidies, currency manipulation, product dumping, forced technology transfers and the theft of intellectual property and also trade secrets on a grand scale.” While he reiterated that he wants to see a deal with Beijing to address these grievances, he also stated that he would “not accept a bad deal for the American people.”

Trump also argued that “the World Trade Organization needs drastic change,” especially on how the organization allows countries to self-declare as ‘developing’ in order to receive special treatment. Trump decried this provision which has allowed China, “the second-largest economy in the world…to declare itself a developing country to game the system at others’ expense.”

In addition to his harsh criticism of Beijing, Trump said that the United States is close to reaching a new agreement with Japan and that his administration hopes to work with the United Kingdom on a new free trade agreement once that country exits the European Union.

Barbara C. Matthews, nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global Business and Economics Program:

“It has been clear for some time that significant components of the Bretton Woods international economic and monetary system require reform and updating. President Trump is not wrong that China’s development model in many respects is inconsistent with foundational principles for the international monetary system. The United States is not alone—and has not been alone for quite some time—in pursuing alternative bilateral trade arrangements. However, it is also far from clear that the UNGA was an appropriate or effective forum for pursuing reform of the international economic and monetary system.”

Hung Tran, nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global Business and Economics Program:

“President Trump’s strong criticism of the Chinese economic model basically reiterates the key US demands in the eighteen-month long trade talks amid growing tension with China. This will make it difficult for the United States to agree to a minimal deal with China in the scheduled October meetings—any such agreement will be seen as inadequate by many US constituents having gone along with the administration’s hard line on China. His insistence that China stops being designated a developing country [at the WTO] resonates with Europe and Japan, and could form a basis for concerted actions in dealing with China. This would have been a more effective approach, but it’s not clear that President Trump sees it that way.”

Immigration and Venezuela

The US president continued to denounce the illegitimate regime of Nicolás Maduro, while maintaining support for the Venezuelan people to take back control of their country. Venezuela has endured an economic and political collapse under Maduro, who was inaugurated for a second term after fraudulent elections in May 2018. Trump described Maduro as “a Cuban puppet protected by Cuban bodyguards” who has no legitimacy with the Venezuelan people. “To the Venezuelans trapped in this nightmare,” Trump said, “please know that all of America is united behind you.”

Trump described the increased migration from Central America into the United States as “one of our most critical challenges.” He explained that “the receiving countries are burdened with more migrants than they can responsibly accept, and the migrants themselves are exploited, assaulted, and abused.” Trump thanked Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador “for the great cooperation we’re receiving and for right now putting 27,000 troops on our southern border.”

Despite the increased cooperation from Mexico, Trump called on “anyone crossing the border illegally listen to these words— do not pay the smugglers. Do not pay the coyotes. Do not put yourself in danger. Do not put your children in danger. If you make it here, you will not be allowed in.”

Jason Marczak, director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center:

“Latin America rarely gets the amount of attention as it did on September 24 during the president’s annual UN address. As expected, President Trump rightfully used a good portion of his speech to condemn the human rights abuses committed by the Maduro regime and to call on other nations to recognize Juan Guaidó as interim president. Calling out the role of Cuba in propping up Maduro was right. But missing was the role played by China, Turkey, and especially Russia where President Vladimir Putin is welcoming Nicolás Maduro in Moscow on September 25. This week is pivotal for renewed global attention to resolving the Venezuela crisis.

“Congratulating Mexican President López Obrador for his cooperation on migration issues hopefully puts a stake in the ground in a new reset for US-Mexico relations. A strong US-Mexico relationship based on cooperation and mutual respect is fundamental for US interests and for advancing US policy in the rest of the hemisphere.”

Paula Garcia Tufro, deputy director in the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center:

“While Trump rightly highlighted the rampant human rights abuses committed by the Maduro regime in Venezuela, one glaring omission in his comments was the lack of any mention of the more than 4 million Venezuelan migrants who have had to flee to countries throughout the region due to the crisis in Venezuela and the millions more who are expected to flee unless the current crisis comes to an end.

“This is now a regional crisis with global ramifications and the president missed an opportunity to use this important platform at UNGA to highlight the need for collective action by the international community to address the largest humanitarian and migration crisis in the Western Hemisphere’s recent history, and the political crisis that is the root cause of the suffering of the Venezuelan people and threatens the stability of the region.

“Also missing from the president’s remarks was any mention of many critical global challenges that have captured the rest of the world’s attention, most notably climate change and the historic numbers of displaced people around the world. The president instead focused squarely on illegal immigration, and made no reference to the United States’ responsibility to share the burden of providing refuge to those fleeing oppression and violence around world, and seeking asylum in the United States.”

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Atlantic Council — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 19:11:34 +0000