The White House and Congress currently disagree over the type and number of nuclear weapons required to deter nuclear-armed adversaries in the coming decade, including Russia and China, but also North Korea and potentially Iran. As long as this disagreement persists, it casts doubt on the viability of whatever the administration might agree to in bilateral talks—in particular, whether any new treaty could be ratified or survive a change in administrations. However, a bargain is available that bridges these differences, and it would strengthen the president’s hand in arms control negotiations, if the administration and Congress seize the opportunity.

2010 plans do not address 2030 threats

In his June 2 speech at the Arms Control Association annual forum, Sullivan called attention to the growing threats posed by China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. In doing so, he reaffirmed the warnings in the Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review that as it approaches 2030, “the United States will need to deter two near-peer nuclear powers for the first time in its history.” To address this emerging challenge, the White House is continuing the nuclear modernization program begun by the Obama administration and reaffirmed by the Trump administration, though the Biden administration has canceled the development and deployment of a nuclear sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) proposed in the 2019 Nuclear Posture Review.

These 2010 modernization plans assumed a reset with Russia. And they did not envision the rapid expansion of Chinese conventional and nuclear capabilities or the “no limits” partnership between an aggressive Moscow and Beijing bent on upsetting the international world order. This begs the question, then, whether the current nuclear modernization program—which amounts to a one-for-one replacement of nuclear force levels established in the 2010 New START—will be sufficient against two nuclear great powers.

In March, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) asked General Anthony Cotton, head of US Strategic Command, how the US nuclear command is adapting to this “new trilateral nuclear competition.” Cotton replied that the United States is “in an absolutely good place today with our [nuclear] systems… but the basis of which we did our modernization efforts was on a 2010 threat.”

The divide over more nuclear weapons

The threats have grown manifestly worse since 2010, but the administration has been ambivalent about them. According to Sullivan in his recent speech, “the United States does not need to increase our nuclear forces to outnumber the combined total of our competitors in order to successfully deter them.” Sullivan added that “effective deterrence means that we have a ‘better’ approach—not a ‘more’ approach.” This position is at odds with Republican leaders in the House and Senate armed services committees, who have advocated “higher numbers and new capabilities” for nuclear weapons. 

There are practical limits to how quickly the United States could expand its nuclear capabilities to address the expansion of China’s nuclear forces. One option by the time New START expires in 2026 is to restore nuclear warheads to existing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) that were removed to accommodate the lower New START force limits (a process called “uploading”). Additional nuclear bombs and cruise missiles could be loaded onto heavy bombers, and bombers previously converted to conventional weapons use only can be made ready for nuclear operations. 

Importantly, Sullivan said in his speech that “the type of limits the United States can agree to after [New START] expires will of course be impacted by the size and scale of China’s nuclear build-up.” The administration will require a sense of what additional nuclear forces may be needed beyond New START, both to ensure any negotiated limits provide the United States with headroom to deploy sufficient forces in the future, and because adjustments to US nuclear posture will likely take years to implement. 

It is entirely conceivable that Russia and the United States could agree to new (modestly larger) nuclear force limits that consider US requirements to address China’s expanding nuclear capabilities and limit and reduce Russia’s regional nuclear weapons and new novel long-range systems that are not covered under New START. Such an approach might maintain limits (albeit somewhat higher than the current 1,550 warhead limit in New START) on all US and Russian nuclear forces while allowing the United States to address the problem of two nuclear peers.

The bargain the White House and Congress could strike

Sullivan was correct when he said that “responsibly enhancing our deterrent capabilities allows us to negotiate arms control from a position of strength and confidence.” But if “responsibly” implies a set policy of no new US nuclear capabilities or no expansion of US strategic nuclear forces, then Russia has no reason to come to the negotiating table. A big incentive for Moscow to negotiate is if it fears the United States will build up its own nuclear arsenal. Just as important, an arms control approach that does not include some augmented nuclear capabilities will be a non-starter for Republicans and some Democrats on Capitol Hill.

A bargain is required. The Biden administration could, for example, agree to develop the SLCM-N and prepare for a nuclear upload onto existing ICBMs and SLBMs. In exchange, congressional Republicans could lend public support to the administration’s efforts, hopefully fruitful but perhaps not, to secure a post–New START follow-on arms control framework or agreement. In such a deal, the arms control community would see the value in continued constraints on arms competition, while the deterrence community would welcome augmented nuclear capabilities to answer the growth in Chinese nuclear forces. Russia also would have an interest in limiting the potential expansion of US nuclear forces. This approach leaves out China for the time being, given its unwillingness to engage in a dialogue; but any future limits on Russian and US forces will have to take into account the likely expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal. 

During the question-and-answer period following his speech, Sullivan spoke about the bipartisan US Senate support of the 2010 New START. He failed to mention, however, that the Obama administration’s commitment—insisted upon by Republican senators as part of the deal for New START—to modernize each leg of the nuclear triad enabled that consensus. It is worth demonstrating once more that nuclear deterrence and arms control go hand in hand.

Robert Soofer is a senior fellow in the Forward Defense program in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, where he leads its Nuclear Strategy Project. He formerly served as US deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy and as a professional staff member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The post Before embarking on arms control talks, Biden needs a nuclear deal with Congress appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On June 12, Forward Defense Senior Fellow Dr. Robert Soofer’s recent nuclear arms control article was republished in RealClearDefense.

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Robert Soofer

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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.

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Export controls are often thought of for their role in preventing the transfer of arms and other sensitive technologies to malign actors, or as a foreign policy tool used alongside economic sanctions to punish illegal activity. This was the angle taken at the G7 with specific reference to Russia and China, but that viewpoint obscures a different problem. The United States’ closest allies have been quietly frustrated for decades that the indiscriminate and extraterritorial application of these same export controls, in particular the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), seriously hinders efforts to share technologies and collaborate with allies on capability development projects. This is due to the costly and time-consuming processes associated with ITAR compliance. But this isn’t just a time-versus-cost-versus-quality issue for program managers to deal with. It’s much bigger than that. As William Greenwalt, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has said, “US government security policies related to export controls no longer support long-term national security interests and if not modified will likely result in the US military falling further behind in the competition with China.” ITAR was enacted during the Cold War, at a time when the United States enjoyed such technological and industrial dominance over its potential adversaries that it could afford to go it alone, write off allied contributions to military capability development, and absorb the consequences in time and cost when they did choose to partner up. None of those things are true anymore.

The Department of Defense has long recognized that it no longer holds complete technological advantage and recent administrations of both parties have promoted the critical role of allies and partners in their national security strategies. Yet ITAR directly prevents the United States from accessing some of the best allied technology and indirectly reduces the military capabilities of its allies. For example, the UK government estimated in 2017 that it costs UK companies almost half a billion dollars a year to comply with ITAR. That’s effectively a 0.7 percent tax levied by the United States on the national defense budget of a close ally, and money which could be far better spent on increased readiness or on more advanced capabilities that would benefit the United States. After all, depending on exchange rate fluctuations and production lot, half a billion dollars equates to four or five F-35B fighter jets. Even worse, that figure only covers those companies that have the resources and risk appetite to work with the United States in the first place. So-called “ITAR taint,” the risk that any technical cooperation with US entities will lead to the loss of control over their technology, prevents some non-US companies from engaging at all. Data is anecdotal as it mainly comes down to internal bidding decisions by individual companies, but it seems that small and medium size enterprises are especially affected. These are exactly the sort of cutting-edge companies that the United States needs in its corner on everything from quantum computing to materials science.

A focus for discussions at the White House

You would think that with such an obvious downside it would be an easy fix, but no. Unfortunately for the Department of Defense, it doesn’t own ITAR policy or its implementation. The State Department does, and it does not feel the pain of delayed programs and degraded technological advantage. Despite the efforts of many talented and hardworking officials who have dedicated their careers to keeping the United States’ most critical technological advancements out of enemy hands, the organizational incentives are not structured to support the pace or flexibility that modern technology and the current geostrategic and security situation demand. The outdated systems State Department officials are working within have become a mechanism of national self-harm and, at the end of the day, it is the warfighter that loses out.  

The good news is that the right people in the legislative and executive branches of the US government are starting to take notice of the problem, particularly in the context of the nuclear submarine deal involving Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, known as AUKUS. To date, much of the press about AUKUS has been on the trilateral effort to support Australia in acquiring conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines under Pillar One of the agreement. Arguably though, it is the wider cooperation in critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, autonomy, cyber, and electronic warfare envisaged under Pillar Two that represents the real generational opportunity. Behind the scenes, officials and politicians in all three nations are realizing that Pillar Two just won’t stand with ITAR as it’s currently enforced. This is driving unprecedented interest on Capitol Hill, where congressional Republicans in the House and Senate are leading efforts to force the State Department to address the problem. They are advancing the fantastically named Truncating Onerous Regulations for Partners and Enhancing Deterrence Operations (TORPEDO) Act. To quote Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this legislation “aims to speed up the implementation process by reforming the US regulatory system so we can cooperate in a timely and efficient manner on the capabilities we and our partners need.” This is extremely welcome, but in the complicated world of export controls reform the story begins with legislation but it doesn’t end there. Previous attempts at reform, such as the 2016 legal expansion of the National Technology Industrial Base and the 2022 Open General License pilot program, have stumbled on implementation issues which can only be fixed from within the State Department and will require coordinated action between the executive and legislative branches.

This is where Sunak and Biden should focus their discussions. With his reputation for pragmatism, Sunak should easily avoid the temptation to request a blanket ITAR exemption for the United Kingdom as this would be politically unpalatable and counterproductive. Biden, with his flagship foreign policy initiative in the balance, should commit to work with Congress on a bounded and enforceable exemption under the Arms Export Controls Act for AUKUS nations, and then incentivize the State Department to make it work in practice. Collaboration with longstanding allies and partners is critical to the United States’ success in combating the increasingly dynamic threat posed by its adversaries. To let that flounder on account of an out-of-date and inappropriately enforced export control regime should be an unacceptable outcome for all involved.

Deborah Cheverton is a visiting senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Cheverton is a career civil servant from the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (MOD), where she has spent almost fifteen years working across a range of policy and delivery areas with a particular focus on science and technology policy, industrial strategy, capability development, and international collaboration. She writes here in her personal capacity as an Atlantic Council fellow, not in an official government capacity. Her views are her own.

The post Export controls: A surprising key to strengthening UK-US military collaboration appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 10, Foreign Policy published its biweekly “It’s Debatable” column featuring Scowcroft Center Vice President and Senior Director Matthew Kroenig and Emma Ashford assessing the latest news in international affairs.

In their latest column, they discuss the recent leak of sensitive government documents, the ongoing conflict in Sudan, and North Korea’s recent advancements in nuclear weapon capabilities. Specifically, in light of the developments in North Korea, the pair debate the utility and feasibility of nuclear disarmament.

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Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig and Ashford debate responses to advancements in North Korean nuclear capabilities appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Rather, international partners must increase financial pressure on the RSF, former Bashir-era government officials, and the SAF to change their political calculations at the negotiation table.

Sudan cannot be stable if there are two armies and if former regime elites/Islamists are allowed to sow discord. International partners need to put coordinated financial pressure on RSF leaders to commit to integrating rapidly into the army and on former regime leaders to stop inciting violence; international partners should also put SAF generals on notice that they must honor their pledges to hand over power.

Sudan’s long-ruling former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, was able to stay in power for thirty years by fragmenting the security services and deftly playing them against each other to prevent any one of them from becoming powerful enough to launch a successful coup. In return for their obedience, military and political leaders were allowed to gain control over large parts of the economy and accumulate great wealth. Sustained protests led to Bashir’s April 2019 ouster, a brief period of military rule, and eventually a civilian-military transitional government nominally headed by then Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who governed in “partnership” with SAF General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF General Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo, the chair and vice-chair respectively of the Transitional Sovereignty Council.

International partners acquiesced to the generals taking these positions of power, thinking that it would help prevent conflict from breaking out between the two rival forces—and that competition between the SAF and the RSF would keep either from dominating the country and would allow the heavily constrained Hamdok and his civilian ministers to implement at least some reforms. While the prime minister was able to introduce some difficult but necessary economic reforms, Burhan and Hemedti launched another coup on October 25, 2021, to block a planned transfer of the Transitional Sovereignty Council chair to a civilian.

The return of military rule was roundly rejected by the Sudanese people, who held frequent protests, and donors, who paused more than four billion dollars in planned economic assistance. The coup leaders came under enormous economic and diplomatic pressure to negotiate another transition, but they occupied irreconcilable positions on security-sector reform. Burhan and his hardline generals wanted the RSF to be rapidly subsumed into the SAF, while Hemedti (backed by his supporters from the periphery) wanted to keep his independent power base and played for time. As “negotiations” dragged on, the two leaders employed different tactics to try to strengthen their own position and weaken the other’s, including importing more weapons, arming communities, trying to splinter their rival’s forces, cutting off sources of funding, allying with civilian politicians, developing bonds with foreign leaders (including Russia), and—at least according to persistent chatter in Khartoum—planning coups in case these other efforts failed to change the balance of power. Tensions waxed and waned over the past one-and-a-half years, and external actors had to intercede a number of times to prevent combat from breaking out. Unfortunately this time, with the Islamists reportedly exacerbating strife and the political negotiations seemingly about to conclude, diplomats have been unable to avert a war.

Neither the SAF nor RSF is capable of a decisive victory, particularly given Sudan’s size and its fractured political landscape. Barring decisive intervention, the most likely scenario is a long and bloody multisided civil war and a staggering humanitarian disaster, like ones seen in Somalia, Syria, or Yemen. This disaster would not be limited to Sudan; it could also destabilize the greater region and drive tens of millions of Sudanese people to flee to neighboring states, the Middle East, and Europe.

That scenario needs to be prevented in a way that ensures the political and military calculations of Hemedti, Burhan, and their supporters change when serious negotiations to restore a civilian government resume. Simply calling for ceasefires or evenly applying diplomatic pressure is not enough. This would only preserve the rough parity of military power between the RSF and SAF. This is not to suggest that either Hemedti or Burhan is “better.” Both have failed the Sudanese people and should be encouraged to move on from power. However, international partners must aim to immediately stop the fighting, bring back negotiations for a transition to civilian government, and then ensure both generals honor their public pledges to hand over power.

Thus, international and regional leaders must, in coordination, begin to strategically apply pressure by freezing Sudanese bank accounts and temporarily blocking the business activities of Sudanese leaders and their forces. This cutoff in money and revenue will impact those actors’ abilities to pay their soldiers and allies to fight and resupply. More importantly, it will impact their calculations about their willingness to return to serious negotiations and to compromise. Given the RSF is unlikely to prevail against the SAF with its heavy weapons and support from Egypt, the least bad option to stop the fighting is to first apply pressure on Hemedti’s business empire, which funds the RSF—his soldiers are loyal because they are paid better, not for any ideological reason. External actors, particularly the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia (where, because of past Western sanctions, most Sudanese have their bank accounts and base their businesses), should freeze known RSF and Hemedti-family bank accounts and business activities until RSF leaders commit to rapidly integrating their troops into the SAF. Some of the most important assets have been identified and others are known by the Emirati and Saudi governments. Similarly, international partners must quickly freeze the assets of known Bashir-regime/Islamist leaders who are inciting violence in an effort to return to power. 

Finally, partners should identify foreign-held SAF assets and business interests for possible freezing and seizure in case the army does not honor its pledge to hand over power—or perpetuates the historic political and economic dominance of elites from Khartoum at the expense of Sudanese people living in the rest of the country. Only in this way is a sustainable ceasefire and peace possible.

Ernst Jan “EJ” Hogendoorn is a former senior advisor to the US special envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, and former deputy Africa Program director at the International Crisis Group.

The post To stop the fighting in Sudan, take away the generals’ money appeared first on Atlantic Council.

A joint March 2023 International Partnership for Human Rights and Independent Anti-Corruption Commission (NAKO) report found Western components critical in the construction and maintenance of drones, missiles, and communications complexes in weapons used by Russia in Ukraine. Also in March, the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center convened a panel of experts for a virtual event to discuss how to stem the flow of dual-use technology to Russia. Moderated by Ambassador John Herbst, panelists described how sanctioned Western tech gets to Russia and offered concrete recommendations to better implement and enforce export bans on Moscow.

Panelists noted that companies and manufacturers could simply be unaware their products are entering the Russian market. Though distributors may believe they are selling dual-use components to non-sanctioned consumer markets, many components are resold through secondary markets such as Hong Kong or Turkey and end up in Russia. Urging more due diligence, Olena Tregub, executive director of NAKO, explained, “if a company has a client from Turkey, for example, it should ask if the product is for Russia. They should study the supply chain.”

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While the West should be lauded for the speed and breadth of sanctions and export controls imposed on Moscow, compliance offices are still catching up. “Western companies and countries still seem to be finding their footing when it comes to compliance, implementation, and maintenance of these restrictions,” said Jack Crawford, research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). According to Crawford, Western governments lack the capacity to effectively monitor and act against Russian sanctions evasion. This results in delays, not only in dealing with sanctions breaches but also in terms of identifying them in the first place.

As for the private sector, Sam Jones, president and co-founder of the Heartland Initiative, noted that investors and companies have increased responsibility when conducting business in respect to conflict-affected areas such as Ukraine. Jones said companies should be more diligent in determining the end use of their products, as outlined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and argued that “companies would be well advised to take the findings in these reports seriously and consider the potential material risk in terms of future investments.”

Western companies and investors also do not always appear to recognize dual-use components as belonging to the same category as other heavily restricted military technology, such as cluster munitions and anti-personnel landmines. This puts dual-use components in a sanctions gray area. Jones suggested that future steps could include increased restrictions on dual-use components through conduct-based exclusion, which would target repurposed components in terms of how they are actually used and not through their intended use.

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Another key element in efforts to successfully control Russian access to critical Western tech is effective monitoring and enforcement of sanctions. This is an area in which governments can cooperate effectively with civil society, NGOs, and think tanks.

Benjamin Schmitt, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Physics and Astronomy and Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, noted that Western companies and NGOs “have easily available open-source intelligence tools at their fingertips, whether they’re commodity trading platforms or automatic identification system-based vessel tracking websites.” These tools empower watchdog organizations and risk assessment committees in governmental and non-governmental organizations to monitor malign transfers of products and technologies that would undermine sanctions efficacy.

Panelists pointed out that the implementation of sanctions oversight depends in large part on increased interoperability between business, government, and civil society powered by information exchange, open dialogue, and cooperation with emerging intelligence technology and organizations.

Schmitt cautioned that Western hesitancy toward sanctioning Western-based entities could be a real threat to an effective sanctions regime. He pointed out that Nord Stream AG, the company behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany, evaded Western sanctions despite majority ownership by Russian state-owned Gazprom, because the company was based in Switzerland. Considering that Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine aims to fracture Western political and financial stability, it is key that Western countries work in concert and take every step possible to slow the Kremlin’s efforts to control Ukraine and threaten European security.

Tregub put it more bluntly: “War crimes are a Russian strategy. To implement this strategy, Russia needs to build weapons. Without Western components, Russia wouldn’t be able to accomplish its war aims.”

Aleksander Cwalina is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Disclaimer: The purpose of the International Partnership for Human Rights and NAKO report is to explain and illustrate how Western-made components are used by Russia to commit suspected war crimes in Ukraine. To achieve this, the report identifies several companies and governments who are believed to be involved in the manufacturing of components which have been acquired by the Russian military and are used in their military hardware. For the avoidance of doubt, the authors of the report do not allege any legal wrongdoing on the part of the companies who manufacture the components and do not suggest that they have any involvement in any sanctions evasion-related activity. Furthermore, the authors of the report do not impute that the companies which make the components are involved in directly or indirectly supplying the Russian military and/or Russian military customers in breach of any international (or their own domestic) laws or regulations restricting or prohibiting such action. Where a link is drawn between manufacturers and the weapons being used in suspected war crimes, this is done solely to highlight ethical and moral concerns. The existence of counterfeit components is a recognized global problem. The authors of the report recognize the possibility that components featuring the logos and/or branding of named entities may not have indeed been manufactured by said entities. However, given a) leaked Russian “shopping lists” showing the intent to acquire components manufactured by such companies in order to support its military, and b) the history of Soviet and Russian military procurement efforts targeting leading global technology companies, the authors of the report have worked on the assumption that the components they and third parties have identified are genuine.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Feb 20, 2023

‘You cannot outlast us’: Biden’s Kyiv visit sends strong message to Moscow

By Peter Dickinson

US President Joe Biden’s bold surprise visit to wartime Kyiv sent a strong message to Moscow that time is not on Putin’s side and Russia should not pin its hopes on a weakening of Western resolve to stand with Ukraine.

Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

UkraineAlert Mar 19, 2023

Putin the Pariah: War crimes arrest warrant deepens Russia’s isolation

By Anders Åslund

The ICC decision to indict Putin for war crimes is a highly consequential step that will deepen Russia’s international isolation while weakening Putin’s personal position both at home and abroad, writes Anders Åslund.

Conflict Human Rights

UkraineAlert Mar 8, 2023

Ukrainians will never surrender. How long can they count on the West?

By Serhiy Prytula

Ukraine’s remarkable resistance during the first days of the Russian invasion convinced the democratic world to back the country but with Putin now preparing for a long war, continued Western resolve is vital writes Serhiy Prytula.

Civil Society Conflict

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The post How to keep Western tech out of Russian weapons appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 1, Scowcroft director Matthew Kroenig’s comments on the future of arms proliferations were featured in The Wall Street Journal. Following Moscow’s suspension of the New START agreement – one of the last operating arms-control treaties between Russia and the US – the two powers are in talks to negotiate a replacement by the time the current treaty expires in February 2026. International arms control was already under stress before the Ukraine conflict, but has only been exacerbated as Russia’s aggression erodes the nuclear taboo and China continues to expand its nuclear-weapons program. In light of these developments, Kroenig conveys little hope that the US congress will agree to extend the New START treaty past 2026.

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On February 21, a tweet by Scowcroft director Matthew Kroenig was quoted by Travis Anderson of the Boston Globe discussing the geopolitical implication of Putin’s suspension of New START, the only remaining nuclear arms control pact between Russia and the US. Kroenig theorizes how this may be the start of a long-term strategic arms competition between the two powers.

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Matthew Kroenig

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We, the transatlantic community together with other like-minded democracies, face a long-term strategic confrontation with Russia—a hostile adversarial relationship that will have few guardrails, and where even the modest ambition of peaceful coexistence may be out of reach for a long time to come. 

The nature of the Putin regime, its disregard for international law, its brutal suppression of all dissent, its whitewashing of Russian history, plus Putin’s obsession with subjugating his neighbors and reconstituting the Russian empire—all these factors make peaceful coexistence difficult, if not impossible, to conceive in the near and medium term.

Even if developments on the battlefield force Russia to end the war on terms relatively favorable to Kyiv, Putin will not readily abandon his broader revisionist aims. For Putin’s Russia, Ukraine is Ground Zero in its existential war against the West. A winding down of the military conflict is not likely to lead to a reduction in Russia’s efforts to control Ukraine by other means or to dominate its other neighbors, including the Baltic states and other NATO and European Union (EU) members.

Indeed, in non-military domains the conflict is likely to intensify while Russia seeks to rebuild and reconstitute its decimated conventional forces. Information warfare, covert action, sabotage, energy blackmail, counter-sanctions, support for pro-Russian separatists, and other hybrid attacks will all remain active parts of the Russian toolkit against its neighbors and the West. For NATO and the European Union, resilience against hybrid threats will be as important as bolstering defense and deterrence, and the effort to build such resilience should receive significantly more financial support at the national level and in Brussels.

Don’t let Putin seize victory from the jaws of defeat in Ukraine

While Russia grossly underestimated Western unity and resolve, Putin may still hope that allied publics and parliaments will grow tired of supporting Ukraine and bearing the burden of sanctions, just as he hopes to break the will of the Ukrainian people by bombing the country’s civilian infrastructure. As the war grinds on into the spring and summer of 2023, it could devolve into a stalemate. In that case, Russia may count on some allies to revive proposals for early negotiations to freeze the conflict with a ceasefire in place, the first step toward a broader “reset” in relations at Ukraine’s expense. 

Allied leaders will need to explain to their citizens what is at stake, why a ceasefire in current conditions would only help Putin seize victory from the jaws of defeat, and why it is vital to maintain sanctions and supply advanced weapons to the Ukrainians for as long as it takes to defeat Russia and expel Russian forces from Ukrainian lands. US President Joe Biden hit the right notes in his remarks in Kyiv and Warsaw this week.

Russia needs to understand that there can be no normalization of relations until it once again upholds—in deed as well as in word—the fundamental principles laid down in the Helsinki Final Act, Paris Charter, and NATO–Russia Founding Act. If the United States were to settle for anything less, it would only embolden the Russians to use force to change borders again after they have had time to regroup and rearm. Chinese leader Xi Jinping and other autocrats will happily follow Russia’s example if Putin gets off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

Pursue containment to stop Russian expansionism

To prevent further damage to the rules-based international order, the United States and its allies will need a comprehensive strategy of containment that aims to deter Russia militarily, raises the cost to Russia for its destabilizing behavior, and increasingly decouples Russia from the international community, politically and economically, until Moscow has earned the right to be considered a partner once more. 

Containment today is similar to the containment policy enunciated by George Kennan and adopted in the early years of the Cold War. The idea is to stop Russian expansionism, exert forceful counter-pressure on Russian efforts to extend its influence, weaken the Russian regime economically, and conduct an aggressive information campaign to undermine domestic support—the ultimate goal being to encourage the emergence of forces that could liberalize the regime and end the geopolitical competition, as occurred in ending the first Cold War in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Containment today benefits from the fact that the Russians are much weaker militarily after the Ukraine war and more isolated politically, although today’s Russia benefits from its close alignment with China and the fact that many nations beyond the democratic West are sitting on the fence.

Containment today also means taking a patient, long-term approach to the promotion of internal change in Russia. While it may be a generation before such change happens, we should be prepared to act quickly when the Russian people themselves demand leaders who are ready to return to the path of cooperation and integration that Putin has abandoned. 

Military strength and Alliance cohesion are the foundation of an effective containment policy. We need a NATO- and EU-coordinated strategy to push back against all forms of Russian expansionism, in Ukraine and beyond, and to strengthen our resilience against conventional and hybrid warfare. 

In the short term, we need to commit unambiguously to the goal of Ukrainian victory. We should help Ukraine capitalize on its successful counter-offensives by boosting and accelerating the supply of heavy weapons, long-range strike systems, and air and missile defense that can inflict further defeats on Russia in the weeks and months ahead, while increasing economic and humanitarian assistance at the same time. 

For Ukraine to prevail, we need to speed up the weapons delivery process and restart production of the most urgently needed systems such as High Mobility Rocket Artillery Systems (HIMARS) and advanced drones, both to secure new gains for the Ukrainians and to replenish depleted allied stocks.

We need to calibrate what weapons we provide to avoid escalation, but we should not let ourselves be intimidated or self-deterred by Russian saber-rattling. Putin is more interested than we are in avoiding a direct clash with NATO, conventional or nuclear, and he understands that any use of nuclear weapons, even a “demonstration” strike, would open Pandora’s box and fundamentally change the nature of the war.

Right now, it is the Russians who are doing the escalating, with their barbaric missile and drone attacks on civilian infrastructure and terrorization of the Ukrainian people. 

In my view, it is time to reconsider our self-imposed range limits and provide systems that enable Ukraine to deny the Russians a sanctuary for launching their infrastructure attacks. If the Russians can strike with impunity from Crimea or across the Russian border, they will continue to escalate, at horrific human cost. Enabling Kyiv to target those systems is not escalation, but legitimate self-defense.

Press pause on the NATO–Russia Founding Act

Beyond helping Ukraine prevail, NATO’s number one defense priority is to implement the forward-looking decisions at the 2022 Madrid summit on deterring and defending against threats to allied territory. The Russians have suffered enormous losses of military equipment and manpower. But like the Terminator, they will be back. 

As agreed at Madrid, NATO needs to move expeditiously from forward presence to forward defense, with larger forces along the eastern flank able to repel any attempted land grab and not simply serving as tripwires. In particular, NATO needs to fully implement the decision to expand from battalion-sized battle groups to brigade-sized forces in the east as part of the shift to deterrence by denial.

Establishing the new force model could be easier if allies declared that they are no longer bound by the constraints in the NATO–Russia Founding Act on permanent stationing of substantial combat forces, given Russia’s flagrant violations of that document. This would allow a mix of permanent and rotational deployments, which would be more effective than rotational forces alone. 

The NATO–Russia Founding Act could be suspended rather than terminated. But it makes no sense to pretend that the security environment after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is anywhere comparable to the more benign security environment in 1997 when the act was signed. 

In the face of Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling since the invasion of Ukraine, allies also need to undertake a more serious review of NATO’s nuclear posture and policy than that reflected in the Biden administration’s recent Nuclear Policy Review. 

In addition to threatening “catastrophic consequences” for any Russian use of nuclear weapons, we must be sure we have a wide enough set of non-strategic capabilities to defeat the Russian “escalate to deescalate” strategy under any scenario. In this regard, developing a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile would be a valuable addition to the US force mix.

This may be another area where we should review commitments under the NATO–Russia Founding Act and consider bringing more allies into the Alliance’s nuclear-sharing arrangements. Ending NATO’s self-imposed constraint on deploying nuclear weapons on the territory of NATO’s post-Cold War members could bolster deterrence and allied cohesion by spreading responsibilities and risks among a larger number of allies.

Just raising the possibility could be effective as leverage to persuade the Russians to accept verifiable constraints on their non-strategic nuclear weapons. For the United States and NATO, limiting Russian non-strategic systems is a sine qua non for any successor to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START. Putin put that treaty’s future in doubt with his recent announcement that Russia is suspending implementation.

Aim for Europe to evenly shoulder collective defense by 2030

In implementing the Madrid summit’s decisions, NATO needs to move toward a more balanced sharing of responsibility across the Atlantic. Even before the 2022 US midterm elections, concerns were growing among congressional Republicans about burden-sharing and allied free-riding, and this could become an even bigger concern in the 2024 US presidential election.

European allies could head off a future transatlantic rift by committing now to produce and deploy, by the end of this decade, at least 50 percent of the capabilities that NATO requires for collective defense. This would also be a prudent hedge in case the United States should need to divert some of its NATO reinforcements to the Indo-Pacific theater to deal with a simultaneous China crisis.

Ensuring that European countries provide half of the capabilities and enablers for collective defense will also make it possible for Europe to become the first responder for managing crises along NATO’s periphery. That would be a tangible demonstration of greater strategic responsibility for Europe in its own neighborhood.

As NATO strengthens its own deterrence posture, the Alliance should take on a formal, long-term role in helping all of Russia’s vulnerable neighbors strengthen their own deterrence capabilities and their resilience against cyber and other hybrid threats. This could be called the “Secure Neighborhood Initiative.” 

Unfortunately, it is clear that for the foreseeable future allies will remain reluctant to give NATO membership and an Article 5 security guarantee to Ukraine, Georgia, or any other former Soviet state, no matter how deserving and qualified they may be. While NATO membership should be the long-term goal, the next-best thing allies can do now is to ensure that these vulnerable partners acquire the capabilities, training, and intelligence needed to deter and, if necessary, defeat Russian aggression. A commitment to that effect could form the core of security guarantees for Ukraine under a potential peace agreement to end the war.

Ensure containment goes beyond defense

An effective containment strategy should also seek to maximize Russia’s economic and political isolation. Economic decoupling should be achieved through a long-term policy of sanctions on the Russian economy and following through on moves to end the West’s dependence on Russian energy and raw materials.

In terms of political isolation, we need to treat Russia as a pariah or rogue state and avoid any premature return to business as usual. We should not rule out future discussions on arms control and strategic stability, while recognizing the difficulty of negotiating new agreements with a Russia that has violated every existing agreement and has behaved recklessly in occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.

While isolating Russia politically, we should look for ways to engage with Russian civil society and the growing number of political oppositionists operating from exile in neighboring countries. This should include efforts to connect to the next generation of potential leaders, making clear that our issues with Russia are with the policies of the regime, not the Russian people.

The death of Mikhail Gorbachev last year is a reminder that it was internal change that ended the first Cold War forty years after it began. It may take decades to happen this time around, but we should be ready to engage with a better Russia when it appears.

Alexander Vershbow is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. He is a former US ambassador to NATO, Russia, and South Korea; US assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; and NATO deputy secretary general. This article is adapted from a speech Vershbow delivered to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in December.

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At the one-year mark of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States slapped new sanctions on Russia’s banks, metals, microchips, and more. Meanwhile China’s foreign ministry released a “peace plan” shortly after its top diplomat visited Moscow and met with Vladimir Putin.

The announcements cap a busy week including dueling speeches by Putin and US President Joe Biden, and a surprise Biden visit to Kyiv. Below, Atlantic Council experts share their insights on all of it as the war enters its second year. This post will be updated as news around the war continues to unfold.

Expert reactions on the new US sanctions:

Brian O’Toole and Daniel Fried: New sanctions will damage Moscow’s financial networks and military tech—and send a message to other capitals

Expert reactions on China’s peace proposal:

Ahmed Aboudouh: The Global South will cheer China’s peace plan

Niva Yau: China’s continued support for Russia means losing Eurasia

Expert reactions on Tuesday’s dueling speeches:

Matthew Kroenig: The beginning of the end of legally binding US-Russia arms control

Robert Soofer: Expect Russia to comply with New START after all—but arms control doesn’t mean security

Brian Whitmore: Like a washed-up rock band, Putin plays the old hits

Daniel Fried: Biden correctly casts Putin as a twentieth-century dictator

Expert reactions on Biden’s trip to Kyiv:

John Herbst: A visit that reflects Biden’s policies—useful and sound but not strong or visionary

Oleh Shamshur: An emotional welcome for Biden from Ukrainians—and hysteria in Russia

Daniel Fried: An echo of Kennedy and Reagan

Melinda Haring: A message of continued American support, with political battles ahead

Peter Dickinson: A bitter reaction in Russia

New sanctions will damage Moscow’s financial networks and military tech—and send a message to other capitals

The US sanctions package released on the anniversary of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is a strong set of actions that will have real impact on Russia’s economy, and it signals more to come. The package covers many of the areas we assessed were likely to be hit: banking, the military, microchips, evasion networks, and the metals and mining sector. These sanctions will further impair Russia’s financial networks and military and technology procurement networks, and although the metals and mining sanctions do not yet target the largest Russian firms, they are a clear message of who is next in line to be cut off from the West. 

Notably, the United States sanctioned Russia’s MTS Bank, which was given a banking license in the United Arab Emirates shortly after a visit from the Treasury Department’s top sanctions official, Brian Nelson. The timing of the banking license announcement was a clear diplomatic slight after a visit where Russian sanctions evasion was a central topic, and Friday’s sanctions on MTS send a signal to other capitals—including Ankara, Beijing, and Delhi—that have come under scrutiny for potentially assisting Russian sanctions-busting. The United States has not gone after any new oligarchs in this round, instead opting to sanctions a wealth management firm and its key managers, which is a route of attacking those who benefit from the Kremlin’s rampant corruption without causing economic spillover to the West. 

Looking forward, this action signals where the United States and its partners are looking for additional economic pressure, and future rounds of sanctions will likely follow this blueprint. Sanctions and other forms of economic pressure such as export controls will not be airtight. They don’t have to be. The pressure they exert on Russia’s kleptocratic economy will grow over time, leading, as happened with the Soviet economy, to systemic stagnation and systemic crisis.

—Brian O’Toole is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center and a former senior adviser to the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the US Department of the Treasury. Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and served as the coordinator for sanctions policy during the Obama administration.

The Global South will cheer China’s peace plan

The Ukraine war officially ended China’s “peaceful rising” holiday from world politics and geostrategic competition with the West. This new reality is best demonstrated in China’s “peace plan,” a mere reiteration of China’s position on the war throughout the past year, but a meaningful diplomatic intervention that would turn China into a necessary peace actor in any future settlement.    

China has maintained its support for Russia—refusing to condemn the invasion or call it “war”—which makes it far from neutral. But, regardless of the moral position on the war, the Global South will find China’s call for a ceasefire and respect for all countries’ sovereignty appealing. Sovereignty in the United Nations Charter framework has always been a contentious and sensitive issue in the Western hegemonic behavior toward the South. China’s call for “stopping unilateral sanctions” and opposing “using the world economy as a tool or weapon for political purposes” is another manifestation of the South’s historical grievance toward coercion to pick sides and deprive its nations of choices except for two: With us or against us. To be clear, no other Chinese diplomatic undertaking could better reflect China’s desire to lead the Global South in promoting the third option: Neutrality without consequences. 

Another long-standing dilemma involves double standards. When it comes to Ukraine, officials in the South criticize Washington for the centrality of liberal ideology in its calculations over understanding Russia’s security concerns and the regional balance of power. China’s “position paper” stated: “The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs,” a veiled swipe at NATO. It also said: “The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly.” For many Southern countries, this position precisely reflects their view on the conflict. Food security and maintaining the stability of supply chains are two other powerfully attractive points that will further polish China’s image as a responsible and peace-loving power in the South.  

The potential embrace of China’s peace statement by the South may accelerate the emergence of a new coalition of non-aligned countries led by major powers such as China and India. In Beijing’s view, pushing this trend forward is beneficial because it creates a future front-line defense as the West moves on from calling on the world to pick sides against Russia to, very soon, pressuring it to isolate China.   

—Ahmed Aboudouh is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs

China’s continued support for Russia means losing Eurasia

In the former Soviet space, many countries have favored China with the goal of balancing Russia. The points that China made on Ukraine on Friday, however, are going to be perceived by the region as tone-deaf, cold, and detached. Reality for populations in Eurasia in the past year has been weekly, if not daily consumption of the horrific humanitarian crisis created by Russia. Stopping the war, as the Chinese press release lays out in detail, means for Ukraine to stop receiving military aid from others and for Ukraine to get rid of those reasons that triggered Russia’s invasion. “The international community should stay committed to the right approach of promoting talks for peace,” as the Chinese side sees it, is an approach that takes into consideration Russia’s demands. However, much of the proposal deviates from established norms and practices: It asks, for example, for countries to stop sanctioning Russia.     

Let’s be extremely clear: China is not asking Russia to stop its aggression. China recognizes that Russia had reasons for war, the same narrative that Russian propaganda tries to spread across Eurasia, without much success. At this point, Сhina’s failure to recognize Russian aggression toward Ukraine is a full wake-up call for Eurasia. Unlike China, many countries in Eurasia have helped Ukraine directly and indirectly. Iven Kazakhstan, which now genuinely worries what Russia’s aggression might mean for its own sovereignty, has indirectly sent humanitarian support to Ukraine. For Eurasia, the war is not simply some grand geopolitical rivalry, but its consequences dictate the capacity and ambition of Russia in the future.     

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to visit Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan early next week to meet with all Central Asian heads of state. Already, with the war, Central Asian elites who once favored China with the hope of balancing Russia are no longer so sure. On top of this, they have been trapped for years to ignore (sometimes even facilitate) the human rights violations China commits across the border toward its Turkic populations in Xinjiang, including Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz. It appears that Beijing continues to bank on this war’s ability to shake up the international order to its favor.,But it is already losing Eurasia.  

—Niva Yau is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

The beginning of the end of legally binding US-Russia arms control

On Tuesday, Putin announced that Moscow was suspending its participation in New START—its last remaining arms-control treaty with the United States. This means that, for the first time since the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) of 1972, there are no negotiated limits on Russia’s nuclear forces.  

In an accompanying statement, Russian officials explained that they would consider resuming compliance and did not intend to exceed the numerical thresholds on nuclear weapons imposed by New START. (Inspections of nuclear sites under the treaty have ceased since March 2020 due to COVID-19. Russia’s refusal to resume inspections, despite improving public health conditions, led the US Department of State to recently declare Russia in “noncompliance” with the treaty.) While it is possible that Russia will return to compliance, a return to the treaty is not a likely outcome, given the state of US-Russian relations.

Instead, this moment likely marks the beginning of the end of legally binding numerical arms control between the United States and Russia. New START was already scheduled to expire in 2026, and, given China’s strategic nuclear breakout, US strategists were already concerned about being locked into numerical parity in strategic forces with Russia, the core tenet of New START.

Washington needs to prepare for a new, long-term strategic arms competition, a first since the end of the Cold War. In doing so, the United States must ensure that it has the forces capable of deterring and, if necessary, defending against an attack on itself and its more than thirty formal treaty allies, a task complicated by its multiple nuclear-armed rivals.

—Matthew Kroenig is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a former nuclear-weapons expert in the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.

Expect Russia to comply with New START after all—but arms control doesn’t mean security

Putin’s announcement to suspend Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty is most likely intended to shore up his domestic political support and distract public attention against a failing war effort. It is also meant to weaken the will of the West by holding an arms-control treaty hostage to Putin’s demands. While Russia has suspended inspections and consultations, it is not clear whether Russia has or intends to violate any of the treaty’s central limitations by deploying additional nuclear weapons. This seems unlikely, however, because Russia already enjoys a ten-to-one advantage in regional, shorter-range nuclear weapons that are not limited by the treaty. 

It is in Russia’s interest to limit US strategic nuclear forces via New START while it enjoys superiority in regional nuclear weapons—an imbalance the Biden administration hopes to rectify in any follow-on agreement. For this reason, I believe that Russia will eventually return into compliance with the treaty, which is scheduled to expire in just over two years. The whole episode is a reminder that arms control cannot be separated from the broader geopolitical landscape, and that the United States cannot rely on arms-control treaties for its security. It also illustrates clearly why a survivable, modern nuclear arsenal is needed more than ever to hedge against an expansion of Russian (and Chinese) nuclear capabilities.

—Robert Soofer is a senior fellow in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense practice and a former deputy assistant US secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy.

Like a washed-up rock band, Putin plays the old hits

Putin hit most of his usual notes in his widely anticipated state-of-the-nation speech just days before the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He falsely characterized his war of aggression and war of choice as a struggle to defend Russia and what he inaccurately called “its historical lands which are now called Ukraine.” He blamed the war on the West, claiming, absurdly, that “the Ukrainian people have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters, which have effectively occupied the country.” He revived his nuclear saber-rattling by suspending Russia’s participation in the New START Treaty, announcing that he is putting Russia’s ground-based strategic nuclear systems “on combat standby duty” and threatening to resume nuclear tests.

But like a washed-up rock band past its prime trying to play its greatest hits, Putin’s performance was predictable, flat, and unconvincing. This was a speech by a leader who is losing a war—and is trying to convince himself and his nation otherwise. It is worth recalling that Putin was originally scheduled to give this speech in December, but it was canceled following a series of military setbacks in Ukraine. The postponement was reportedly because Putin wanted a major battlefield victory to boast about in the speech. But one wasn’t forthcoming. Russia recently suffered catastrophic losses in its unsuccessful attempt to take the city of Vuhledar, and its offensive appears to have stalled near Bakhmut. 

So instead, Putin prepared the Russian people for a long and protracted conflict, promising soldiers two weeks of home leave every six months and pledging that Moscow would continue the war “step by step, carefully and consistently.” As many commentators have noted, Putin is trying to normalize the war. But as he does so, he also clearly appears to be losing his mojo.

—Brian Whitmore is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas-Arlington.

Biden correctly casts Putin as a twentieth-century dictator

In a strong speech in Warsaw, Biden made the case for supporting Ukraine in terms of a broad struggle between freedom and autocracy. In doing so, he was right to reach back to US strategic thinking from the twentieth century: Putin in his actions and rhetoric resembles his twentieth century tyrannical predecessors, and Biden was speaking as the leader of the Free World who will defy this latest dictator and his aggressive designs. Comparisons to John F. Kennedy’s and Ronald Reagan’s iconic Berlin speeches are apt; it was another moment of US leadership coming just after Biden’s stirring Kyiv visit.

Good speeches set the stage. They do not win wars on their own. With Biden having put the case in strong terms, the administration will have to show that its assistance to Ukraine—economic and especially military, as the battle hangs in the balance—is commensurate with the stakes as Biden has described them. There has been a tension between the urgency of helping Ukraine defend itself and concern about avoiding direct confrontation with Moscow. This has sometimes led to a cautious and deliberate process of deciding which weapons to send Ukraine. Biden’s speech may, and hopefully will, move the administration to send the Ukrainians what they need to liberate their land and win this war of national survival.

—Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a former US ambassador to Poland and US assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.

A visit that reflects Biden’s policies—useful and sound but not strong or visionary

Biden’s trip to Kyiv was useful, positive, and even necessary. It is of a piece with his overall policy since the threat of a massive Russian invasion emerged in 2021. That policy is adequate to the greatest challenge to US security and prosperity since the implosion of the Soviet Union over thirty years ago. Biden’s three-part strategy is a sound one: rally allies and partners to provide weapons and other aid to Ukraine, impose major sanctions on Moscow, and bolster NATO defenses in the east. Given the great weight of the danger, even an adequate policy requires skill, great effort, and large resources. For sure, this policy has prevented Vladimir Putin from subduing Ukraine for a year.

But the policy is neither strong nor visionary, and this trip is a reflection of that. A statesman would rise to the challenge of Putin’s aggression by laying out in clear terms the threats to vital US interests: Kremlin statements and actions indicate that a victory in Ukraine could be followed by a direct threat to US NATO allies—a danger to US security and prosperity. And while the bookkeeper is comfortable with a policy that vows to “stay with Ukraine as long as it takes,” a statesman (or woman) would state clearly that the United States’ goal is a Ukrainian victory or a Kremlin defeat. Such a clear description—constantly repeated—would be followed by resolute action to make it happen. That means giving Ukraine the weapons systems—in this case, tanks in abundance, advanced fighter planes, and long-range fires (out to three hundred kilometers)—that would immediately stop Moscow’s bloody offensive near Bakhmut and enable a decisive Ukrainian counteroffensive to cut Moscow’s land bridge to Crimea. But we heard nothing along these lines from Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior administration officials at the Munich Security Conference or from Biden in Kyiv. Biden’s trip to Kyiv will be noted by historians but not cited as a shining moment of US clarity and leadership. Biden can do better. Let’s hope he does.

—John Herbst is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former US ambassador to Ukraine.

An emotional welcome for Biden from Ukrainians—and hysteria in Russia

As soon as the visit to Poland had been announced, the rumors concerning the possibility of the Biden-Zelenskyy meeting (most likely in western Ukraine), started to circulate in Kyiv. Even before the first photos appeared, many citizens of Kyiv guessed that the US president was in town because of extraordinary security measures and the blocking of several streets. Biden’s visit was one of those events when the emotional reaction of the Ukrainian governing class and the population was equally positive and even enthusiastic. It should be mentioned that the morning started for Kievites with an air-raid alert, which has become almost a part of their daily routine during the war.

Biden’s visit was definitely significant as proof of staunch US support of Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression, especially to counter the doubts generated by positions taken by some Republican congressmen. The message of continuation of military, economic, and humanitarian assistance on the part of the US-led anti-Putin coalition was extremely important for the Ukrainians to hear. Announcement of a new weapons package was meant to reinforce this message, and it did. However, given that the weapons in the package are largely what the United States has already agreed to send, one might conclude that discussion in Washington about the fighting range and power of weapons provided to Ukraine is still far from being over.

Russian reaction to the visit was predictably hysterical. While on the quasi-official level it was branded as a “demonstrative humiliation of Russia,” social media users went even further, calling for new missile and bomb attacks against Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. There is no doubt that Biden’s visit will be used by the Russian propaganda machine to fan even stronger the feelings of chauvinism and anti-American animosity already well-embedded with the majority of Russians.

—Oleh Shamshur is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former ambassador of Ukraine to the United States. 

An echo of Kennedy and Reagan

President Biden’s visit to Kyiv ranks with other great presidential moments of leadership in defense of freedom, like President John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” and President Ronald Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speeches in Berlin during the Cold War. Biden’s visit does not change US policy of support for Ukraine’s freedom, but it shows US commitment and determination to see that policy succeed. It’s not a trip a president would make if the US were planning to push Ukraine into a bad settlement on Putin’s terms; it’s a trip that sends a message to Putin of US staying power in support of Ukraine.

Biden’s Kyiv trip creates a powerful backdrop for his Warsaw visit. In Warsaw, Biden is likely to make the case that Ukraine’s cause is the Free World’s as well; that by supporting Ukraine against a tyrant’s war of conquest and national extermination the United States, Europe, and other countries are advancing their interests as well as values. The Kyiv visit gives that message greater power.

Finally, full props to the administration for pulling together such a trip at all. It’s much harder than presidential trips to, say, Baghdad during the Iraq War, where the US had massive military assets on the ground. In Kyiv, the US has a first-rate but small embassy. And the visit came off. Given the hurdles, Biden must have really wanted to make the trip—a long, complex, and risky undertaking. That suggests he means what he says about supporting Ukraine for the long haul. It’s a powerful and welcome message.

—Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.

A message of continued American support, with political battles ahead

Biden’s visit to Kyiv was pitch-perfect, as were the visuals. He even donned a blue and yellow tie as he walked enthusiastically outside in the middle of an air raid. Although he was one of the last major world leaders to visit the war-torn capital, Ukrainians feel exhausted by the fight one year in and needed reassurance that they haven’t been forgotten. His visit buoyed their spirits. Ordinary Ukrainians took to social media expressing their gratitude for the symbolism of the visit.

Biden’s words that the United States will stand with Ukraine for “as long as it takes”—his consistent talking point—are fully in line with US public opinion. One year after the war, 65 percent of Americans want to continue to support Ukraine reclaiming its territory even if it means a prolonged conflict. That number hasn’t changed from 2022 to 2023, which is remarkable, but there are serious partisan differences between Republicans and Democrats, and we should only expect them to grow. 

But Biden’s visit also raised expectations. Ukrainians want and expect more assistance, but every additional large assistance package Congress authorizes will be hard-fought. Reassuring Kyiv that Washington has its back while keeping the assistance flowing will be Biden’s big task until the US presidential election.

—Melinda Haring is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

A bitter reaction in Russia

Biden’s surprise visit to Kyiv has been widely hailed as a victory by Ukrainians, who see it as a timely morale boost and a welcome indication of the United States’ long-term commitment to their country’s fight for survival. Meanwhile, news of the trip has sparked a mixture of shock and fury among Russian audiences. On Russian state TV, pundits discussing the visit attempted to spare Putin’s blushes by insisting that Moscow must have given Washington prior “security guarantees” in order for the trip to go ahead.

Others were in a less charitable mood. Prominent pro-Kremlin journalist Sergei Mardan branded the visit a “demonstrative humiliation of Russia” that made a mockery of the Putin regime’s claims to be waging a “holy war” against the West. “It seems there are also lunch breaks during a holy war,” he commented. One popular Telegram account run by Russian servicemen noted bitterly that with the first anniversary of the Ukraine invasion now fast approaching, “Russian city” Kyiv was welcoming the US president and not Putin. Elsewhere on Russian social media, the visit sparked an outpouring of calls for the bombing of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities. It is not hard to see why Biden’s presence in the Ukrainian capital provoked such a strong Russian reaction. His visit was a painful reminder that Russia has failed to achieve its military objectives despite twelve months of efforts and huge losses.

—Peter Dickinson is the editor of UkraineAlert.

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ISSUE BRIEF

Conventional wisdom suggests that the world is approaching a tripolar arms race among the United States, Russia, and China. As Russia attempts to dramatically revise the post-Cold War security environment in Europe, China is expected to increase its nuclear arsenal to at least 1,500 warheads by 2035. In 2021, the then-commander of US Strategic Command, Admiral Richard, laid out the challenge of nuclear tripolarity before Congress testifying that: “for the first time in our history, the nation is on a trajectory to face two nuclear-capable, strategic peer adversaries at the same time.”

In this issue brief, the Scowcroft Center’s Matthew Kroenig challenges the evidence for action-reaction arms races in the post-Cold War period but warns we may be facing one in this new tripolar nuclear environment.

Action-reaction arms races are usually unlikely to occur

The theory behind action-reaction arms races is grounded in the “spiral model,” in which countries build their own weapons to protect themselves against the military forces of their rivals. But the spiral model suggests that countries will seek security by matching their adversaries in nuclear weapons warhead for warhead—empirical evidence does not match this claim. The United States, for example, does not try to match Russia’s nonstrategic arsenal, and China was content with a minimum deterrent for many decades. Countries, therefore, can be motivated by other drivers and sometimes expand—or do not expand—nuclear arsenals for financial, bureaucratic, or political reasons.

Action-reaction arms races have been absent in the post-Cold War period

Action-reaction arms races have not occurred in the post-Cold War period. In fact, the last twenty years have shown very little evidence for arms racing in the nuclear modernization of the United States and Russia, and the specific systems which China is developing do not comport with a desire to respond to US nuclear forces. Therefore, all three states have taken on their recent modernizations and buildups largely for other reasons.

Coming nuclear tripolarity may drive an action-reaction arms race

The author finds that there is a possibility of such an arms race only in strategic forces and much less of a prospect for an arms race in theater nuclear forces. US nuclear strategy does not aim to match Russia and China warhead for warhead in theater nuclear weapons, but, as China and Russia build their strategic nuclear forces, the United States must decide how to respond to this problem. It is not a foregone conclusion that Russia and China would react to an increase in US strategic forces with their own buildups, however, making an arms race possible but not inevitable.

Key recommendations

The report advances a number of recommendations to understand and respond to the future nuclear dynamics among the United States, Russia, and China in the 2020s and 2030s.

• The motivation behind China’s nuclear buildup is a key variable in assessing the possibility of a future arms race. This should be a key priority for US intelligence agencies.

• An increase in the number of US nonstrategic nuclear weapons is unlikely to touch off an action-reaction arms race. The United States should continue to develop the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile and consider other theater-range nuclear weapons.

• The United States should maintain its current nuclear strategy, including those elements related to targeting and force-sizing. It is not a foregone conclusion that Russia and China would respond to a US nuclear arms buildup. However, if they did, the United States would be better off dealing with the consequences of a nuclear arms race than accepting the risks of deterrence failure.

About the author

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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

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On November 27, Scowcroft Center acting director Matthew Kroenig was interviewed by Jennifer Griffin on Fox News Sunday discussing North Korea’s latest missile test and protests in Iran.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

Learn more

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Many people may not have noticed, but the United States and Ukraine’s other Western allies have been protecting Russia from Ukrainian counterattack ever since the invasion began on February 24. Ukraine has a legal right to hit back inside Russia, but is currently not being permitted to do so by partners whose support Kyiv cannot afford to lose. The US and others have placed limits on acceptable targets for the arms they provide, while also demanding assurances from Kyiv that these weapons will not be used inside Russia itself.

The current approach grants Putin impunity to continue attacking and escalating without fear of a proportionate response. It has resulted in a surrealistic war where the aggressor benefits from guarantees that any destruction will be limited to the territory of his victim.

This is particularly evident in the devastating recent Russian attacks on Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure, which will keep getting worse until Ukraine regains its right of retaliation. If Ukraine received the appropriate weapons and a green light from its Western partners to hit back against Russia’s own infrastructure, Moscow would likely think twice about its current bombing campaign.

Today’s war is arguably not the first time Russia has benefited from restrictions imposed by the West on Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. In 1994, the US and UK partnered with Moscow in the nuclear disarmament of post-Soviet Ukraine. There were a number of good reasons for this step, but the West should have provided Ukraine with a conventional deterrent force in exchange. It should do so now.

Self-defense is a basic right of every nation and includes proportionate lawful retaliation. This is essential in order to deter international aggression. Ukraine’s partners should be facilitating the country’s ability to exercise this right, not undermining it.

Restricting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself could lead to alarming international security consequences far from the front lines of the current conflict. It is one thing for the United States to restrain NATO allies which it is directly protecting, but it is quite another for the US to limit the right to self-defense of a friendly non-NATO country that it is helping only at arm’s length. This could establish a dangerous precedent and invite the invasion of other US allies.

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Why does the West protect Russia? The reasons given for this have often been less than logical. Some have argued that allowing Ukraine to strike targets inside Russia, or even arming Ukraine enough to win on its own turf, would provide Putin with a pretext for attacking further, as if he needed one. Instead, Putin has been granted impunity to attack and escalate at will. Unsurprisingly, he has done so.

The only reason Russia enjoys “escalation dominance,” to use the doctrinal phrase, is because the West keeps granting it. This is based on false assumptions. Russia may have more weapons, but Ukrainians are fighting for their homeland. They believe in their cause and are prepared to fight hard for it. The same cannot be said for Russians. This is the simple reality ignored by Western policymakers when they adopt a defeatist-leaning doctrine.

The flawed thinking behind current doctrines and policies also helps to explain why so many Western governments planned on Ukraine collapsing in a matter of days. It sheds light on why they did not arm Ukraine properly in advance to deter the attack, and why subsequent efforts to arm Ukraine have consistently fallen short. There has also been a widespread reluctance to voice support for a Ukrainian victory, reflecting the mistaken belief that too much Ukrainian success would be dangerous.

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The Biden Administration appears to have settled in for a war of attrition, but this approach risks weakening the alliance in support of Ukraine. Attrition undermines NATO morale and increases the prospects of a defeat that would discredit the entire alliance.

Crucially, attrition leaves Ukraine and Europe to bear the main burden of a protracted war, with Ukraine suffering destruction and Europe paying for sanctions. These costs are already nearing one trillion US dollars for Ukraine and another trillion for Europe, according to some estimates. Europeans find themselves confronted with the prospect of a perilous winter heating season and a new wave of Ukrainian refugees. Meanwhile, many Americans are angry about Europe’s failure to share the burden of arming Ukraine.

If Ukraine had been given sufficient weapons for a fair fight, the country would likely have secured victory long ago. Indeed, if Kyiv had received enough arms before Putin launched his full-scale invasion, there would probably not even have been a war at all. This is the cost of ambivalence.

Overly cautious Western policies have clearly failed to restrain Putin. Yet the realities of a losing war are now restraining him anyway. He can see that his invasion is not going according to plan. Putin wanted a short, victorious war but finds himself embroiled in the largest European conflict since World War II. The Russian military shows little enthusiasm for the war and may refuse to follow orders if he goes too far. This could have fatal consequences for the Putin regime, which is significantly more brittle than people may assume. The defeatist perspective in many Western capitals fails to take these realities into account.

The Ukrainian military has already demonstrated that it is capable of defeating Russia on the battlefield. Ukraine will win the war if we let it. This means providing Ukraine with the weapons it needs in the necessary quantities without delay. It also means lifting restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to hit Russian targets. In order to defeat Putin and end the war, Ukraine must be allowed to strike back inside Russia.

Ira Straus is chair of the Center for War/Peace Studies and senior advisor at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center. He was a Fulbright professor of international relations in Moscow in 1997-98 and 2001-02.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Oct 17, 2022

Putin’s blackout blitz: Russia aims to freeze Ukrainians into surrender

By Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti

Russia is seeking to plunge Ukraine into darkness ahead of the winter heating season by destroying the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s partners must step in to make sure Ukrainians are not frozen into surrender.

Conflict Energy Markets & Governance

UkraineAlert Nov 17, 2022

Kherson euphoria highlights the folly of a premature peace with Putin

By Peter Dickinson

Footage of the euphoric scenes in liberated Kherson should be compulsory viewing for anyone who still believes in the possibility of a negotiated settlement between Ukraine and Russia, argues Peter Dickinson.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Nov 10, 2022

Battle of Kherson: Russian retreat confirms Putin is losing the war

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk

The war is still far from over, but Ukraine’s victory in the Battle of Kherson may eventually come to be seen as one of the key turning points in the defeat of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, writes Andriy Zagorodnyuk.

Conflict Freedom and Prosperity

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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On a Middle East tour in July, US President Joe Biden set about resetting relations with pivotal leaders in the region. And in the face of rising missile threats from Iran, Biden took the opportunity to articulate the United States’ commitment to working with Middle East partners on an “integrated and regionally-networked” air- and missile-defense architecture, a commitment reiterated in the Biden administration’s long-awaited National Security Strategy.

Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) is within reach, and because of the cooperation among Middle East partners that it would require, it could potentially address deeper regional disputes. Thus, the United States should back IAMD in the Middle East—but not without reaching an agreement to reduce missile and bomb reserves for participating nations. Otherwise, the United States risks further enabling Saudi bombing campaigns of the kind that made Yemen the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. Now the Biden administration is considering scaling back military support for Saudi Arabia in the wake of the decision by the group of oil-producing nations known as OPEC+ to slow oil production. IAMD tied to cutting offensive stockpiles could be the middle ground Biden is looking for.

The US Congress has indicated that it shares the White House’s political appetite for setting up IAMD in the Middle East. In June, US lawmakers introduced the Deterring Enemy Forces and Enabling National Defenses (DEFEND) Act, which could lead to transnational information and technology sharing architecture needed for IAMD. This call for a security alliance among Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Iraq stems from the diplomatic momentum started by the Abraham Accords. In parallel, Congress has increased authorizations for missile-defense initiatives (equipment, upgrades, testing, administration, etc.) from roughly $6.6 billion for fiscal year 2022 to $6.9 billion for 2023. This US-led IAMD diplomacy and missile-defense funding has great stabilizing potential for the Middle East if US policymakers carry them out with careful forethought.

The US military industrial complex is already exporting missile defense globally. The Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Taiwan, Greece, Spain, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Romania, Sweden, Poland, and Bahrain have all purchased missile-defense systems from the United States.

Congressional debates on the above foreign military sales often center on whether recipient countries fully observe international laws and conventions. But there is a solution available to policymakers backing IAMD in the Middle East: Limit foreign military sales to missiles with an exclusive purpose of supporting IAMD and make those sales contingent on countries decreasing their missile and bomb reserves.

Through this arrangement, the US government can limit the ability of a Middle East country to wage war without detracting from US security support for that country. Saudi Arabia’s actions show why US policymakers must strike this balance. Saudi Arabia is the world’s leading importer of arms, and these imports—mainly from the United States, France, and the United Kingdom—enabled it to conduct 150 airstrikes on targets in Yemen that have amounted to 24,000 casualties, including 9,000 civilian casualties by a conservative estimate. Nonetheless, the United States’ economic and security goals in the region rely on the US-Saudi Arabia relationship, highlighting the longtime US foreign policy dissonance between American values and interests in the Middle East. And as countries across the globe look for alternatives to Russian energy in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, they’ll likely become increasingly dependent on Saudi Arabia, especially with today’s high oil prices and inflation. Saudi Arabia is not naïve about this, given its decision to team up with Russia and other oil producers in OPEC+ to choke oil production to keep prices high. In the end, countries depend on a secure Saudi Arabia but not necessarily Saudi military capabilities.

This distinction is where the strategic and political value lies for the United States in leveraging IAMD assistance to reduce missile and bomb reserves in the Middle East. If the United States provides IAMD in exchange for scaling down offensive stockpiles, it could, by matching Riyadh’s transactional nature, reconfigure the US-Saudi Arabia relationship, in which Washington’s attempts to solidify a long-term strategic relationship have so far gone unreciprocated.

Anchoring IAMD to concessions from Middle East partners to reduce their inventories of missiles and bombs may chip away at their will to participate in this US-coordinated proposal. However, the value of IAMD assistance increasingly outweighs the drawbacks of curtailing offensive stocks as more actors gain access to ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles. Superiority within this context is not a matter of the quantity of missiles and bombs: It is a matter of the quality of defensive technology. Just as guerilla warfare upset the status quo of conventional-military warfare, proxy forces firing missiles by drone press the same advantage in asymmetrical warfare today. Iran-backed Houthi rebels illustrate this as they continue to wage a missile campaign against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The most successful attack took Saudi Arabia’s Khurais and Abqaiq facilities offline, temporarily shutting off output, which amounted to about 6 percent of global daily supply. While US partners in the region may balk at any proposed constraints on their arsenals, they should reconsider as the Iranian missile threat evolves and as the tradeoff for an IAMD becomes increasingly attractive. Not to mention that the United States’ self-critical democracy makes it a more reliable IAMD provider, as its relatively open and transparent internal debate makes it less likely to overpromise technological capabilities in the face of credible missile threats. Moreover, neither China nor Russia has appeared willing or able to act as a regional security guarantor, by default making the United States the most willing and experienced partner for IAMD.

Counteracting forces at play also present opportunities. Political ruptures between countries on the seams of Iranian engagement, Israeli normalization, and Iraqi counterbalancing—coupled with Arab Gulf countries’ wider mistrust of one another—have limited the prospects for any integrated security. Some US partners in the Middle East have expressed the will to amend or evolve their air-defense capabilities for tighter or more capable IAMD, but still cite a need for US coordination. Until these countries can build enough intra-regional goodwill to trust one another, the Middle East will continue to rely on the United States for IAMD. US policymakers can use the necessity of IAMD, therefore, to broker stable relationships and as leverage for missile and bomb concessions within this splintered intra-regional context. In that event, diminishing offensive stockpiles could deter another aggravated response from Iran, a country caught in an ever-escalating security dilemma with its neighbors.

But the United States faces rightful skepticism in the region about its ability to be a reliable partner. The murder of Saudi critic and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi corroded US-Saudi Arabia diplomacy. During this volatility, Saudi leadership interpreted the US removal of Saudi-based PATRIOT missile batteries in 2021 as a direct repercussion, and the systems were returned in March 2022 after escalating tensions in Europe. International rule of law justly demands that there are consequences for human-rights violations, but this pursuit should not be at the cost of regional stability. Biden breaking the diplomatic ice with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and other Gulf Cooperation Council leaders in July was a step in the right direction because it opened more space for dialogue. Now the White House plans to “review the bilateral relationship” with Saudi Arabia as a consequence of the OPEC+ decision. It would be a mistake to shun the Saudis again. Communication, not the silent treatment, begets accountability.

The United States is strategically teed up to revisit its relationship with Saudi Arabia and logistically well positioned to back IAMD in the Middle East. Thus, US policymakers can best serve the country’s interests by moving past conventional single-partner security cooperation and taking a more long-term and regional view, one that answers the transactional foreign policy of the Arab Gulf in kind; they can do that by decreasing missile and bomb reserves and increasing regional cohesion through IAMD. Lawmakers can drive the effort by passing the DEFEND Act, but they should first amend it to de-escalate the Middle Eastern arms race. Reducing offensive stockpiles in the region lends itself to lessening negative humanitarian outcomes, or at least can remove US support from any negative humanitarian outcomes. US policymakers must remember to look ahead or risk extending the US legacy of short-sighted assistance that only worsens or enables endemic instability, with evidently little to show from its relationships in the region.

Alex Elnagdy is the assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative

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The current rush to appease Moscow is deeply unnerving and reflects a shortsighted failure to appreciate the appalling security implications of bowing down to Russian intimidation. Giving in to Putin’s nuclear blackmail would not end the war in Ukraine. What it would do is set a disastrous precedent that makes a future nuclear war far more likely while encouraging dozens of countries to acquire nuclear arsenals of their own.

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Putin first raised the prospect of a nuclear escalation in a September 21 address that saw him announce plans to annex large swathes of occupied Ukrainian territory and launch Russia’s first mobilization since World War II. “I’m not bluffing,” the Russian ruler declared. The following week, he accused the United States of “creating a precedent” by dropping atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 and vowed to use “all means at our disposal,” to defend Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia.

The Western response has been mixed. US officials have informed the Kremlin that Russia would face “catastrophic consequences” if it moves to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, while EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has warned Moscow that any nuclear attack would be met with “such a powerful answer that the Russian army will be annihilated.”

Others have been less forthright, with French President Emmanuel Macron in particular coming under fire for unilaterally ruling out the use of nuclear weapons in response to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine. Meanwhile, tech billionaire Elon Musk has been one of numerous high-profile figures to promote Kremlin-friendly peace plans while arguing that the world faces possible nuclear apocalypse unless Ukraine cedes land (and millions of citizens) to Russia.

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What comes next will determine the future role of nuclear weapons in international relations and shape the security climate for decades to come. If Russia’s nuclear threats succeed and Ukraine is forced to accept partial partition, the entire doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which served so well throughout the Cold War, will be torn up and a new age of instability will begin.

MAD worked because the two Cold War era superpowers balanced each other out. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is completely different. We are currently witnessing a nuclear superpower threatening a non-nuclear state precisely because it has failed to win a war by conventional military means. The message from Moscow is both menacing and unmistakable: countries with nuclear weapons cannot be defeated by those who have none. This is a recipe for nuclear proliferation.

If Putin is able to rescue his failing invasion and achieve his military goals through the use of nuclear blackmail, it will spark a nuclear arms race of unprecedented proportions. A long list of countries including everyone from Iran and Saudi Arabia to Nigeria and South Korea will take note of the new rules established in Ukraine and scramble to join the nuclear club. Eventually, not having nukes could come to be seen as an invitation for invasion.

This would be bitterly ironic as Ukraine was once something of a poster child for nuclear non-proliferation. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to hand over what was at the time the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for “security assurances” from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The Budapest Memorandum is now widely recognized as one of the most notorious diplomatic blunders of the modern era. It is a mistake few are eager to repeat. Indeed, given Ukraine’s current predicament, why would any country abandon their own nuclear aspirations in return for empty assurances?

The only way to prevent the world from descending into a dark future of spiraling nuclear confrontation is to make sure Putin fails. His nuclear threats require an overwhelming response spelling out that any atomic aggression in Ukraine would mean defeat and ruin for Russia. There is no longer room for strategic ambiguity or talk of proportional retaliation; Putin must be made to personally understand that neither he nor his regime would survive if he chooses to cross the nuclear red line.

Many NATO member states will no doubt be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of directly confronting the Kremlin in this manner. Others will warn that such posturing could easily ignite a third world war. These are valid concerns, but there are no longer any risk-free options available. Unless the international community stands up to Putin now, the entire world will be plunged into a dangerous new era defined by the constant threat of nuclear warfare.

Andriy Zagorodnyuk is chairman of the Center for Defence Strategies and Ukraine’s former minister of defense (2019–2020).

Further reading

UkraineAlert Sep 13, 2022

Ukrainian victory shatters Russia’s reputation as a military superpower

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk

The stunning success of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region has exposed the rotten reality behind Russia’s military superpower reputation and convinced many that a decisive Ukrainian victory is now possible.

Conflict Corruption

UkraineAlert Oct 11, 2022

Russia’s terror tactics: Putin escalates attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin has launched a new phase of his Ukraine invasion and ordered the destruction of the country’s civilian infrastructure. Ukraine’s Western partners must urgently provide air defense systems to avert disaster.

Conflict Geopolitics & Energy Security

UkraineAlert Oct 17, 2022

Putin’s blackout blitz: Russia aims to freeze Ukrainians into surrender

By Suriya Evans-Pritchard Jayanti

Russia is seeking to plunge Ukraine into darkness ahead of the winter heating season by destroying the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s partners must step in to make sure Ukrainians are not frozen into surrender.

Conflict Energy Markets & Governance

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

Read more from UkraineAlert

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraine’s politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia and Central Asia in the East.

Learn more

The post Bowing to Putin’s nuclear blackmail will make nuclear war more likely appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On September 6, Scowcroft Center acting director Matthew Kroenig was interviewed on CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” discussing the potential Russian purchase of North Korean artillery and threats to the Zaporizhzhia power plant.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig on CNBC discussing Russia’s military supply lines and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On August 26, Foreign Policy published its biweekly “It’s Debatable” column featuring Scowcroft Center acting director Matthew Kroenig assessing the latest news in international affairs.

In his latest column, he discusses ongoing US-Iran nuclear talks and outlines what an effective new Iran deal might look like.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig in Foreign Policy on a potential new Iran nuclear deal appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On August 6, Matthew Kroenig spoke on a televised panel hosted on NHK World-Japan. Dr. Kroenig covered the risks of nuclear escalation due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the implications of China’s nuclear build up, and the evolution of US nuclear posture.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Kroenig discusses nuclear risk on NHK World-Japan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Remarks by Gen. James L. Jones, Atlantic Council board director and executive chairman emeritus, on Black Sea security after the NATO Summit

Thank you, Chairman Popescu, for such a generous introduction. It is great to be back in Bucharest.

Good morning to you all.

Let me also express my appreciation to Chairman Popescu, Mr. Pottenger and the Parliament of Romania for their hospitality and for hosting and orchestrating this intelligence security forum.

It is good be among here, among old friends and in person, including, of course, Prime Minister Ciucă, Minister Bode, and President of the Parliament Marcel Ciolacu.

We convene here today, at a time when war has returned to Europe and in the days immediately following NATO Summit in Madrid.

This morning I would like to share with you some personal thoughts regarding what is at stake in Ukraine’s courageous and inspiring defense against Russia’s aggression, NATO’s response to that unprovoked invasion, and what seems to be needed in an era where the scope of international competition and conflict is becoming ever wider and, thus, more complex.

Regarding Ukraine, I fear the situation is increasingly ominous.

The Russian government’s rhetoric against Ukraine, NATO, and the West has intensified.

Although Russian territorial advances have slowed, their offensives in the East have taken on a new and dangerous intensity where they recently seized control of the Luhansk region.

The root cause of this carnage is found within the soul of one man, Vladimir Putin, his refusal to recognize Ukraine as a sovereign nation, his hatred for the NATO expansion following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and his deep-seated belief that the United State did not do enough in Russia’s hour of need. As some of you know, Putin believes that there was an unwritten agreement at the time that NATO would never expand its membership to include former Warsaw Pact nations. There is no evidence to support his belief, but it is a documented fact that he believes this fable.

As an aside, the next panel should probably not be titled “The War in Ukraine” but rather “Russia’s Unprovoked Invasion of Ukraine.”

There should be no question that this aggression was not triggered by any events or issues inside Ukraine – that is Putin’s false narrative, and we should never buy into it.

This is a war of unjustified aggression driven by the imperialist ambitions of an autocrat—whose rise to power was weaned by corruption, sustained through brutality, and now marked forever by a savage war of conquest and criminality.

In fact, Putin’s historical revisionism and territorial ambitions aim to eliminate the very existence of Ukraine, its history, and its distinctive ethnicity—and with it the Ukrainian people’s rights to independence, liberty, and democracy.

I’m certain that we all agree that much is at stake in this conflict and how it is terminated.

Ukraine’s sovereignty and survival is obviously in the balance.

It is jeopardized for the second time in a decade by a regime whose ambitions, actions, and atrocities herald back to the darkest times of the last century.

Ukraine has become today’s defining collision point between democracy and autocracy, between the rule of law in international affairs and a world whose future is shaped by brute force.

If Putin is allowed to prevail, we will find ourselves back in a world dominated by spheres of influence and military coercion — this time one that features not only new forms of aggression – such as cyber-attacks and disinformation — but also the more active and destabilizing exercise of nuclear power.

We can all agree that every aspiring autocrat, on multiple continents is watching carefully to see whether or not Putin succeeds and survives in the diplomatic sense as a legitimate head of state.

They are also keen to learn whether or not the combination of indiscriminate military force, nuclear threats, economic disruption, and time will weaken the resolve of democracies to reject his crimes and assign him the pariah status he has earned.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has also highlighted the centrality of the Black Sea region to transatlantic security.

The Black Sea region is, quite literally, the zone where Putin’s Russia has most violently confronted the West over the last two decades.

And I am not just referring the two invasions of Ukraine and Putin’s transformation of Crimea into the hub of an anti-access/area denial zone spanning the Black Sea.

I am also referring to the continued occupation of Transnistria, the invasion of Georgia, and Moscow’s exercise of the full spectrum of hybrid warfare across this region, including trade and energy embargoes, cyber-attacks, information warfare and even sabotage and assassination.

In many ways, the Black Sea region is being pounded into the soft underbelly of security in Europe.

Vladmir Putin is determined to transform the Black Sea into his personal military lake, one which he will use to further his revisionist agenda if Western allies do not take adequate steps to deter this aggression.

Only recently have our policymakers and military planners at NATO and in the US begun to focus needed attention and resources to reinforce the Black Sea region.

Indeed, it is combination of the stark brutality of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the courageous and inspiring resistance of the Ukrainian people that has precipitated this long overdue Transatlantic response.

This includes our support to Ukraine today which is significant.

The West is sending huge amounts of military equipment to that nation — as well as other forms of assistance, imposed a growing array of economic sanctions against Russia, and, of course, is bolstering NATO’s own eastern flank, including the deployment of a new NATO battlegroup here in Romania led by France

I applaud Washington’s recent announcement that it will send a rotational Brigade Combat Team to Romania to bolster the eastern flank.

I am confident that this BCT will help further deepen the US-Romanian bilateral relationship in addition to its regional duties…and I hope it will be a step toward a more robust permanent US military presence here in this nation.

These are important steps in the military domain, but Russia’s belligerence against Ukraine and beyond has long been a multidimensional assault.

Russia blends the application of its conventional military power with threats of nuclear weapons, but also disinformation campaigns, cyber-attacks, and the weaponization of energy exports, among other non-military fronts.

To be fully effective, the West’s response must be equally full spectrum.

In this regard, Romania and eleven other Central European nations are to be applauded for launching and driving forward the Three Seas Initiative.

If you have not yet heard of the Three Seas, it is an effort to accelerate the development of cross border energy, transport and digital infrastructure in the region between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas – hence the name Three Seas.

In this innovative undertaking, the nations are harnessing the power of collaboration and the free market.

They are using their combined geo-economic potential to leverage private capital to address a long-standing deficit in regional cross-border connectivity, a legacy from the era of Soviet domination that today inhibits economic growth and is a source of vulnerability – as demonstrated by Russia’s recent efforts to pressure these nations by cutting energy supplies.

In the realm of energy security, the Three Seas promises to build the infrastructure needed to diversify the region’s sources of supply, enabling it to tap more effectively into global energy markets.

The Three Seas is all about the power of infrastructure to generate growth, strengthen economic resilience, and above all provide the foundations necessary to complete the vision of a Europe undivided, prosperous, free, and secure.

Next year, Romania will host the 8th Three Seas Initiative Summit and Business Forum – the second time President Iohannis will be hosting this gathering.

We are all grateful for the leadership Romania has brought to the Initiative.

Recently, we have been heartened by another realm of collaboration, a form of transatlantic collaboration: the launch of a new strategic partnership between the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (SNSPA) in Romania and the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC.

Our work together focuses on common interests between the US and Romania and how the two can and should foster regional collaboration to strengthen and secure the Black Sea region.

Such forums allow us to discuss topics that too often don’t make it to the top tier of subjects addressed by NATO Summits, like cyber security, intelligence sharing, critical infrastructure protection, the harnessing and securing of 5G, and the leveraging of artificial intelligence and quantum-enabled technologies.

Allow me to dig into two of these areas where intensified transatlantic — and since I am in Bucharest, let me add US-Romania — collaboration is urgently needed: the integration of secure 5G technologies into civilian and military networks and cyber-security for critical infrastructure.

5G is rapidly emerging as the central nervous system of society, harnessing the sensors, communication links, computing capacity and learning that will make everybody, everything and everyplace smarter and more functional.

That is why the US military is investing hundreds of millions of dollars testing and integrating 5G into its force structure and operations.

There is a clear reason for this.

On the battlefield — my old domain — the 5G leader will be more interoperable, coordinated, agile, and lethal.

The ramifications of 5G dominance are both tactical and strategic, and they are economic as well as military.

The 5G leader – the country or group of countries that most effectively and quickly operationalizes the potentials of 5G — will enjoy a first mover advantage in developing the innovation-related goods, services, and solutions 5G will enable — and the jobs and growth that will generate

Today, it is still too early to conclude that US and West have an upper hand in the race to 5G and follow-on generations of wireless communications already in the offing.

The winner of this race — be it China or the West — will have the upper hand in setting global wireless communication norms and standards.

Nothing could be more consequential in how the global future takes shape.

Under the China model – the authoritarian model — precedent informs us that 5G capabilities will be employed to steal intellectual property, monitor and control its population, and to surveil and coerce others beyond its borders.

Under the US and allied model 5G will be a platform to empower citizens, protect their privacy, and enable growth and development.

The transition to 5G provides the United States and its allies a golden opportunity to leverage the societal and economic potentials of 5G and to build greater security into our networks by applying new technologies and creating more responsible and enforceable global norms.

Making these improvements is crucial to protecting US and Allied qualitative military edge, securing command, control and communications networks, protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, and safeguarding personal privacy.

5G collaboration is very much both an opportunity and an urgency.

Another topic for immediate action is the protection of critical infrastructure which is increasingly reliant on cyber-networks. 

Regardless of whether transportation, energy, telecommunication or other forms of infrastructure are private or state-owned, they face the same threats. 

We are all aware of the cyber-attacks endured by Ukraine over the last five months and the earlier attacks on its power infrastructure and banking systems.

Another recent example is the widespread disruptive cyberattacks on the country of Georgia by the Russian GRU.

My point is that cyber attacks on critical infrastructure have become a regular pattern of aggression from a widening array of actors ranging from our geopolitical adversaries to criminal gangs.

Addressing this challenge requires heightened vigilance and proactive measures, at the national and multi-national levels.

These should include regular assessments of infrastructure security, exercises, information sharing, collaboration in developing advanced cyber-security technology, and the coordinated plans for incident response.

5G, cyber, and infrastructure protection are but a few of the factors that are widening the breadth of what defines security today and tomorrow..

They are only a few of the reasons why NATO and the transatlantic community need to both broaden and intensify their scope of intelligence collaboration and sharing.

Nowhere is this more apparent and urgent than in the Black Sea Region

Russia’s war against Ukraine has demonstrated the value of sharing real time intelligence and enhancing shared operating pictures.

This war is a lesson on the mutual benefits of intelligence collaboration for all NATO allies.

By fostering broader and deeper intelligence cooperation, this Forum, the Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum is playing an increasingly important function – both in terms of facilitating needed exchanges among legislators and in driving forward essential collaboration between governments.

Let me close by noting that this year marks the 25th anniversary of the Strategic Partnership between the United States and Romania.

This bilateral pact reflects our two nation’s commitment to shared values and our determination to protect and promote shared interests.

This strategic partnership is more than words on paper. It has been made material by real action.

In the military domain, this has included Romania’s contribution to NATO and other joint operations in Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and elsewhere.

It underscored by the actions that Romania and the US are taking today to help Ukraine defend itself.

And for all this, American are most grateful to our Romanian hosts, and look forward to a US-Romania relationship that continues to deepen and widen, contributing ever more to the transatlantic community’s security, prosperity and freedom.

I deeply appreciate the honor of addressing you in my capacity as a private citizen and as Chairman Emeritus of the Atlantic Council. Today, Romania stands on the front lines of the 21st century’s European Defense. The United States has committed its renewed support to that defense through its NATO and bilateral pledges. We have no better ally than Romania, and we will be successful once again. Thank you.

Board director

James L. Jones, Jr.

Executive Chairman Emeritus

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In a rambling letter to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres on May 23, the Belarusian autocrat wrote that the West’s “disrespect for” what he called Russia’s “legitimate interests” led to the current East-West tension and “provoked a heated conflict on the territory of Ukraine.” Lukashenka also called on the West to “refrain from the supply of weapons” to Ukraine in order to “prevent a regional conflict in Europe from escalating into a full-scale world war.”

In the letter, which was delivered as Lukashenka was meeting Putin in Sochi, he also decried the fact that much of the world views him as a co-aggressor in the war. “We are not aggressors, as some states try to present us. Belarus has never been the initiator of any wars or conflicts,” he wrote.

The Belarus dictator’s protestations have repeatedly proven to be hollow given that Lukashenka has allowed Russia to use Belarusian territory as a platform to attack Ukraine, and this time was no exception. With Lukashenka, it is always best to watch what he does rather than listening to what he says. Shortly after warning the West about escalation and protesting that he was not a co-aggressor, Lukashenka proceeded to act like an aggressor and help Putin escalate the war in Ukraine.

One day after Lukashenka’s letter, on May 24, the Ukrainian General Staff announced that Russia had deployed a division of nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles in the Brest region of Belarus near to the Ukrainian border. “There is a growing threat of missile and air strikes on our country from the territory of the Republic of Belarus. The aggressor has deployed a battery of Iskander-M mobile short-range ballistic missile systems in the Brest region, approximately 50 kilometers away from the Ukrainian state border,” the Ukrainian General Staff wrote in a post on Facebook.

The missiles have a range of 400-500 kilometers, which puts large swaths of central and western Ukraine within striking distance. Lukashenka also announced the previous week that Belarus had purchased Iskanders and S-400 anti-aircraft missiles from Russia.

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The missile deployments and sales came as Belarus conducted military exercises near the Ukrainian border and Kyiv warned about increased troop levels and military activity. In a situation report on May 23, the Ukrainian General Staff warned that “the armed forces of the Republic of Belarus are intensifying reconnaissance and additional units are being deployed in the border areas of the Homel region.”

The Russian missile deployments to Belarus and the uptick in Belarusian military activity suggests that while the fighting in Ukraine may currently be concentrated in the east of the country, Moscow still intends to pressure Ukraine from the north.

The military build-up on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border has been mirrored by similar activity along Ukraine’s nearby northern frontier with Russia. Seven weeks after Russia withdrew from the Chernihiv and Sumy regions in northern Ukraine, Ukrainian officials have recently noted an uptick in cross-border rocket and artillery fire and an increased Russian troop presence. “In any case, we are preparing for a possible reinvasion,” Oleksandr Vadovsky, deputy commander of Chernihiv’s border guards, told The Washington Post.

The Russian deployment of Iskander missiles to Belarus also starkly illustrates that despite his claims to the contrary and his half-hearted attempts to distance himself from the conflict, Lukashenka remains Putin’s chief enabler in the war against Ukraine and is very much a co-aggressor.

He allowed the Kremlin autocrat to use his country’s territory to stage an illegal invasion of a sovereign and democratic country. Lukashenka let Belarus become a platform for Russia to bomb Ukrainian cities and villages. He is directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Ukrainian civilians. And now he is allowing Putin to deploy nuclear-capable Iskander missiles near Ukraine’s border.

The blood of any Ukrainians who may be killed by those missiles will also be on Lukashenka’s hands and he should be held accountable for it.

Brian Whitmore is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Texas at Arlington, and host of The Power Vertical Podcast.

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WASHINGTON, DC – May 17, 2022 – The Atlantic Council today welcomed the appointment of Dr. Matthew Kroenig as a Commissioner on the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. Dr. Kroenig, who will continue in his roles as the Council’s Director of Studies and the Deputy Director of the Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, is recognized globally as a leading expert in nuclear strategy and policy.

The bipartisan, twelve-member Commission is tasked with delivering a report by the end of this year with recommendations for “the most appropriate strategic posture and most effective nuclear weapons strategy” for the United States.

“New technologies and evolving geopolitical challenges are putting strategic deterrence under its greatest strain in decades,” said Barry Pavel, senior vice president at the Atlantic Council and director of the Scowcroft Center. “This Commission will serve an essential purpose in charting a bipartisan path forward for strategic forces policy, a key goal of the Scowcroft Center as we honor the legacy of our namesake, the late General Brent Scowcroft, who chaired an eponymous commission in 1983 that paved the way for US strategic forces policy for decades.”

Dr. Kroenig has served in several positions in the US Department of Defense and the intelligence community in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. From 2017-2021, he was a Special Government Employee (SGE) and Senior Policy Adviser in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capability/Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy. He was a national security adviser on the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney (2012) and Marco Rubio (2016). 

Dr. Kroenig is also a tenured professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University. He is the author or editor of seven books, including The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters (Oxford University Press, 2018). Dr. Kroenig co-authors the bi-weekly “It’s Debatable” column at Foreign Policy. He holds an MA and PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley.

In assuming his new position, Kroenig said, “The security environment has deteriorated significantly since 2009 (the last time a congressional commission issued a report assessing these issues), making it necessary for this Commission to take a fresh look at an appropriate strategic forces policy for the United States. I am honored to serve alongside a distinguished group of national security leaders to take on this important challenge.”

The Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world. The Center honors General Brent Scowcroft’s legacy of service and embodies his ethos of nonpartisan commitment to the cause of security, support for US leadership in cooperation with allies and partners, and dedication to the mentorship of the next generation of leaders. Our namesake, General Scowcroft, was the chairman of the 1983 Scowcroft Commission that established the bipartisan basis for US nuclear deterrence and arms control to this day. As the United States enters a new era of strategic challenges, the Scowcroft Center is proud to play a central role in crafting an effective and nonpartisan strategic forces policy for the twenty-first century.

For any questions or to request an interview with Dr. Kroenig, please contact us at press@AtlanticCouncil.org.

The Atlantic Council is a nonpartisan organization that promotes constructive leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the Atlantic Community’s central role in meeting global challenges. The Council provides an essential forum for navigating the dramatic economic and political changes defining the twenty-first century by informing and galvanizing its uniquely influential network of global leaders. The Atlantic Council—through the papers it publishes, the ideas it generates, the future leaders it develops, and the communities it builds—shapes policy choices and strategies to create a more free, secure, and prosperous world. For more information, please visit AtlanticCouncil.org and follow us on Twitter @AtlanticCouncil

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Putin knows there is a special terror associated with chemical and biological weapons. Ukrainians have good reason to fear their use: the effects are awful. But delivering chem-bio weapons is difficult and dangerous even for well-trained professional soldiers. There is little to suggest Russian troops would be successful.

Chemical weapons like nerve, blistering, and choking agents are designed to kill or maim victims. For example, Russia used Novichok nerve agent in an attempt to murder political opponents in Salisbury in 2018. Biological agents like ricin and botulism are deadly or incapacitating toxins or diseases. For example, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, an unknown assailant sent weaponized anthrax through the US mail in an unsuccessful effort to kill members of Congress.

I experienced the fear of chemical attack firsthand while examining suspicious unexploded shells during the 1991 Gulf War, and while invading Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003. I never quite knew if my chemical suit or mask were fitted just right, or if a tiny gap had opened up that might have exposed me to unspeakable suffering. Luckily I experienced nothing but false alarms. But even those unfounded fears were sobering.

Others have not been so lucky. Saddam used poison gas to kill thousands of Iranian troops in the Iran-Iraq War. He also deployed chemical weapons to murder thousands of his own people. More recently, Syrian civilians experienced deadly chemical attacks launched by their own Russian-backed government.

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Russia almost certainly retains a sizable store of chemical and biological weapons. Moscow’s commitments to destroy the last vestiges of its Soviet-era stockpiles are no more believable than any random story on Russian state media. But having these terrifying weapons and putting them to effective use are two different matters. I see at least three reasons why the use of chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine could go badly wrong for the Russians.

There is little doubt that direct attribution would be unavoidable for any Russian chemical weapon attack in Ukraine. Experts on chem-bio weapons and Russian tactics assume the Russians would try to use a false flag operation to deny responsibility for their attack. They might attempt to make it look like the Ukrainians attacked their own civilians in an effort to discredit Russia, or they might even try to pin the blame on NATO.

This could still be an effective tactic for the Russian domestic audience, but the days of gaslighting Western leaders and reporters are over. Advanced Western surveillance, detection, and forensics will not allow Russia’s armed forces to secretly deploy chem-bio weapons. Russia’s failure to cover up even its most highly classified assassination attempts suggest it would fail even more spectacularly to cover up much larger battlefield attacks.

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The chance of grave errors in chemical weapon delivery would be very high. Delivering chem-bio weapons is a complicated task best left to well-trained and practiced professionals. It is highly unlikely that Putin’s air, ground, or missile forces have retained the skills necessary to ensure safe and effective delivery of these deadly weapons from storage to target.

First, they must transport the weapons without mishap. Some containers, bombs, and shells are so old that their often caustic payloads may be leaking. Next, they have to prepare the weapons for delivery by airplane, missile, or artillery strike. This involves careful handling by soldiers trussed up in head-to-toe protective gear, a fraught prospect even under ideal conditions. Even before they launch their attacks, Russian soldiers would be at high risk of catastrophic failure.

It is important to note that Russian ground forces are not prepared to capitalize on chem-bio attacks. Launching these weapons can cause terror, injury, and death. But chem-bio attacks are not magical. They will not kill everyone they affect, and weaponized gasses cannot seize or hold territory. Simply firing these weapons into civilian areas like Kharkiv or Kyiv is likely to harden rather than weaken Ukrainian and Western resolve.

Chemical weapons are used most effectively to soften up targets for follow-on ground attack. Troops wearing protective gear must push forward into the contaminated zone riding in protected vehicles supported by decontamination trucks while carrying lots and lots of extra protective supplies. Given the present state of Russian forces in Ukraine and the probable lack of advanced chem-bio training, this would be all but impossible. If the Russians try to push their own troops into a chem-bio environment they are likely to suffer much the same fate as their victims.

The Russian military can certainly attack Ukraine with chemical and biological weapons. But they probably cannot do so effectively or without significant risk to their own forces. Russia will be caught out and, in keeping with its overall strategic failure in Ukraine, achieve little more than increasing international opprobrium and isolation. Putin would be wise to leave his chemical and biological weapons safely tucked away in cold storage or, better yet, to destroy them as promised.

Ben Connable is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University.

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post Will Putin use chemical weapons in Ukraine? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Which Western leaders have done enough for Ukraine?

As international support for Ukraine remains steady in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Kira Rudik, member of the Ukrainian Parliament and leader of the Voice Party, about which of Ukraine’s allies have helped the most. Why does Ukraine view British Prime Minister Boris Johnson so positively? Why isn’t US President Joe Biden viewed as favourably in Ukraine despite consistent US military aid to Ukraine? How does Ukraine view French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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The post #BritainDebrief – Which Western leaders have done enough for Ukraine? A Debrief from Kira Rudik appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 24, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and NAEI senior fellow Emma Ashford discussed the risk of a NATO war with Russia.

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The post Kroenig and Ashford in Foreign Policy: Is There a Risk of a NATO vs. Russia War? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 03, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig spoke with BBC Radio 5 live about Russia’s seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

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On March 21, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig spoke on CBS News about China’s response to the war in Ukraine and its attempt to balance between Russia and the West.

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On April 08, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and NAEI resident senior fellow Emma Ashford discussed the Pentagon’s new national defense strategy in Foreign Policy magazine.

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On April 29, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and NAEI resident senior fellow Emma Ashford discussed recent proposals to weaken Russia in the long term.

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What’s at stake in France’s Presidential Election?

As French President Emmanuel Macron maintains a lead ahead of his far-right challenger Marine Le Pen, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviews Ambassador Gérard Araud, former French Ambassador to the US and Senior Fellow, for #BritainDebrief to discuss how this election will impact France. What is France’s role in NATO? What will happen to the European Union and France-Russia relations if Le Pen wins the election?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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The post #BritainDebrief – What’s at stake in France’s Presidential Election? | A Debrief from Ambassador Gérard Araud appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On April 12, Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig participated in a Foreign Policy debate over whether Russia would use nuclear weapons, which was also featured in Politico. 

“I think one of the Cold War lessons we absolutely need to take is Ronald Reagan’s famous dictum that a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought. The problem, of course, is that everybody agrees on that, but people disagree pretty strongly on how to avoid having to fight that war in the first place. There’s a couple of models: the one that I favor…is mutually assured destruction. MAD is…both sides in a nuclear relationship have a secure second strike capability: that is to say that even after nuclear weapons start flying, they maintain the ability to strike back at the other side. Throughout much of the Cold War, MAD helped to assure that neither side felt that they could benefit from starting a nuclear war,” Ashford argued.

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On April 11, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was featured on the Ben Domenech Podcast episode “Complex strategy: Navigating international & Domestic relations.” Kroenig explains the Russian nuclear shadow over Ukraine but clarifies that Putin does not want a nuclear war.

In a way he [Putin] has already used nuclear weapons with the threat of using them to back stop this invasion.

Matthew Kroenig

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The post Kroenig on the Ben Domenech Podcast on the Russian nuclear threat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This new Lend-Lease arrangement has not yet passed the US House of Representatives, which has adjourned for a two-week break. If confirmed, it will complement previous Congressional support for Ukraine, which has already seen USD 1.7 billion in military assistance authorized since Russia’s full-scale invasion began on February 24.

The new Lend-Lease bill significantly enhances existing lend-lease authorities available to US President Joe Biden under the Arms Export Control Act, while waiving several current requirements. It should ensure that shipments of urgently-needed weapons systems, ammunition, and military assistance in other forms arrive in Ukrainian hands faster and more seamlessly.

The bill was first conceived in the months prior to the outbreak of hostilities as a measure to deter a renewed Russian onslaught. Since February 24, it has evolved into an initiative to bolster Ukraine’s war-fighting capabilities while ensuring NATO allies also receive the support they need in the new context of a major war in the heart of Europe.

The Lend-Lease bill has been bipartisan from the start. “We introduced this measure in January as part of a broad campaign to deter Russia from making a terrible mistake, which the Kremlin has nevertheless now done. This horrific, unnecessary and unprovoked war against Ukraine has to end, with Ukraine prevailing against Russia’s aggression,” commented Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD). “Our bipartisan bill streamlines the president’s ability to bolster Ukraine’s defenses, defend innocent civilians, and also to protect our frontline NATO allies who may become targets of a desperate Vladimir Putin.”

The Lend-Lease vote in the Senate happened as the US was authorizing USD 100 million in further defense support for Ukraine. This latest arms package will augment Ukraine’s Javelin anti-armor systems while providing 100 Switchblade drones which will extend the ability of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to hit Russian military targets at greater distance.

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The revival of Lend-Lease has enormous historical resonance as the 1941 initiative was a crucial factor enabling Allied victory in World War II. Stalin himself credited Lend-Lease, which benefited Great Britain, France, China and the Soviet Union, with winning the war.

As Stalin’s successor as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev wrote, “I would like to recall some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were discussing freely among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany’s pressure, and we would have lost the war.”

Lend-Lease was not used in the Korean War, where US regular forces fought. It was also never activated in Afghanistan during the 1980s, where the US supported an irregular campaign against the Soviet invasion.

After a pause of more than 75 years, Lend-Lease is now set to be revived to ensure Ukraine repels the largest attack on a European state since 1945. This revival aims to thwart a dictator whose explicit ambition to destroy Ukraine as a state and a nation echoes the criminal goals of Hitler and Stalin.

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Other democracies are taking similar approaches to countering the Kremlin. The European Union has committed EUR 1.5 billion in military support since February 24, an unprecedented step for its 27 member states. Meanwhile, Slovakia has sent an S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Ukraine, the first NATO ally to do so. The Czech Republic has delivered T-72 tanks. Even faraway Australia is sending 20 Bushmaster armored vehicles to Ukraine.

These shipments come in the wake of the latest NATO ministerial meeting, where NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged allies to provide “both light and heavy weapons” while acknowledging that distinctions between offensive and defensive weapons “don’t actually have any real meaning in the kind of defensive war Ukraine is fighting.”

The original Lend-Lease scheme was devised months before the US entered the Second World War to enable countries under attack from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan to defend themselves. Today it is being activated to help Ukraine defend itself from Russian attack, as it has every right to do under article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which confirms “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.”

Thanks to Congressional support for Lend-Lease and similar steps taken by democracies around the world, Ukraine is set to enjoy potentially unlimited military support from the United States, as well as from dozens of countries committed to defeating Russia.

Roosevelt first referred to the United States as the “Arsenal of Democracy” in a radio broadcast on December 29, 1940, over three months before Lend-Lease became law. Today, the US is resuming this central role, but this time as one of 30 NATO allies and many other partners taking similar steps to ensure Ukraine fights on to victory.

Lend-Lease is a potential game-changer for the war in Ukraine. If confirmed in the coming weeks as expected, it should cheer Ukraine’s defenders as they prepare to wage new battles against a formidable but increasingly vulnerable adversary.

Chris Alexander is a distinguished fellow of the Canadian International Council and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He was formerly Canada’s deputy head of mission in Moscow, parliamentary secretary for national defence, and minister of citizenship and immigration.

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Why Vladimir Putin is losing the information war to Ukraine

By Anders Åslund

Vladimir Putin has long enjoyed a reputation as a master of disinformation, but the Russian ruler is now clearly losing the global information war that is being waged alongside his invasion of Ukraine.

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The post Lend-Lease for Ukraine: US revives WWII anti-Hitler policy to defeat Putin appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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The post Fontenrose in Defense News: Turkish drones won’t give Ukraine the edge it needs appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 31, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig authored an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “Leaving nukes in Ukraine was not the answer.” Kroenig refutes the idea that the West should not have pressed Ukraine into nuclear disarmament upon the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

If Kyiv had tried to cling to nukes, Washington would have treated it like Iran and North Korea over the past several decades. Instead, Ukraine became seen in the West as a responsible partner.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Kroenig in the Wall Street Journal on Ukrainian nuclear disarmament appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 30, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was cited in an article in the Global Times, a nationalist daily of the Chinese Communist Party. The article criticized Kroenig’s support for a US foreign and security policy to deal with strategic simultaneity and his “Global Strategy 2021: An Allied Strategy for China.” You can read the strategy below.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Global Times cites Kroenig on strategic simultaneity appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 28, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was featured on a segment of C-SPAN, where he outlines the Russian nuclear threat against Ukraine and the West.

When talking about WMD [chemical, biological, and nuclear] use I think the risk is remote but it is not zero and I think the chance of its use now is greater than at any time in recent memory.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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On March 26, Forward Defense nonresident senior fellow Peter Huessy spoke with Warrior Maven’s Center for Military Modernization on the holistic nuclear and conventional threat that Russia poses to the West and how the United States must respond.

The only thing he [Putin] recognizes and understands is deterrence and deterrence requires a formidable nuclear and conventional capability.

Peter Huessy

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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On March 25, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in the Financial Times titled “Biden steers away from big changes to US nuclear weapons policy.” Referencing the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), Kroenig expresses concern that a shift in US nuclear posture during the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war will rebuff US allies.

It [Biden’s nuclear posture declaration] essentially says that America’s nuclear weapons might not be on the table to deter a Russian or Chinese conventional [non-nuclear] attack.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Lipner quoted in Mother Jones on Israel’s response to Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s diplomatic obstacles appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How will the war in Ukraine end?

As the Russian military advance continues to stall, Senior Fellow Ben Judah interviewed Rob Lee, FPRI Senior Fellow, for #BritainDebrief. How have lethal British military aid, like anti-tank MLAWs, performed so far? Can Ukraine continue to hold out against Russia? How real is the threat of Russian chemical weapon attacks in Ukraine?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

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Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

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The post #BritainDebrief – How will the war in Ukraine end? A Debrief from Rob Lee appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 15, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in the Atlantic titled “Putin’s Nuclear Threats Are a Wake-Up Call for the World.”

All nuclear command-and-control systems, including America’s, have a “first rule of Fight Club”-like aspect to them: you don’t talk much about them, to keep your enemies guessing.

Uri Friedman

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Kroenig quoted in the Atlantic on Russia’s nuclear threat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 15, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in the Washington Post titled “Why Putin’s nuclear threat could be more than bluster.” Kroenig postulates that Putin will use limited nuclear strikes to prevent a decisive Russian military defeat.

I think he [Putin] sees limited nuclear use as more attractive than accepting defeat.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Kroenig in the Washington Post on the Russian nuclear threat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 14, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig spoke with Providence students about the current Russia-Ukraine crisis and its potential nuclear implications.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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On March 02, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig invoked historical examples in the New York Times to evaluate the seriousness of Putin’s nuclear threat.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig quoted in New York Times on seriousness of Putin’s nuclear threat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 11, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and NAEI resident senior fellow Emma Ashford discussed the potential that Putin might use nuclear weapons in Foreign Policy magazine.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig and Ashford in Foreign Policy: would Putin use nuclear weapons? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 11, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig spoke on CBS Mornings about Russia’s stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons and the implications of their potential use.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig interviewed on CBS Mornings about Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Katz joins the Gulf International Forum to discuss the implications of Ukraine crisis on the Gulf region appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 4, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was featured on a segment of CNBC titled “This could be at least as bad as Chornobyl.” Kroenig explains the alarming risks of a potential nuclear meltdown at the Ukrainian nuclear plant and whether the Russians are purposefully targeting it.

The spread of [radiation material] could be as bad as Chornobyl and could cause a nuclear meltdown.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Kroenig in CNBC on Russia’s attack on Ukraine nuclear plant appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 3, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in Fast Company titled “How prepared are we for a nuclear attack?” Kroenig highlights that it is unlikely that Putin will actually utilize its nuclear forces.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Kroenig in Fast Company on Putin’s nuclear alert appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 2, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative associate director Jeffrey Cimmino told the Washington Examiner that Putin may have no off-ramp short of escalation — and the conflict in Ukraine is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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On March 1, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig discussed China’s recent efforts to balance between supporting Russia and avoiding international condemnation with the Washington Examiner.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig quoted in Washington Examiner on China’s response to Ukraine crisis appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 1, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig discussed Zelensky’s “resolute wartime leadership” with the Washington Examiner.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig quoted in Washington Examiner on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 1, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in the Telegraph Online titled “Vladimir Putin declares nuclear alert, Joe Biden seeks de-escalation” from his previously published article in the New York Times. Kroenig highlights that it is unlikely that Putin will actually utilize its nuclear forces.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Kroenig in the Telegraph Online on Putin’s nuclear alert appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On March 1, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer titled “Could Putin go nuclear?” from his previously published article in the New York Times. Kroenig highlights that it is unlikely that Putin will actually utilize its nuclear forces.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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 Kroenig in New York Magazine on Putin’s nuclear alert appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 28, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig was quoted in Politico discussing Russia’s “escalate to de-escalate” doctrine of backstopping conventional aggression with nuclear threats.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig quoted in Politico on Russian nuclear threats appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 28, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig was quoted in Fox News arguing that the decision to shut down the US embassy in Kiev was the “correct and prudent move.”

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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On February 28, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in the Irish Times titled “West takes seriously Putin’s nuclear weapon threat.” Kroenig asserts that Putin’s heighten nuclear alert is textbook Russian strategy and likely a bluff.

This [Putin’s nuclear alert] really is Russia’s military strategy to backstop conventional aggression with nuclear threats, or what is known as the ‘escalate to de-escalate strategy’.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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 Kroenig in the Irish Times on Russia’s nuclear threat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 27, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in the Mirror titled “Russian nuclear deterrent forces are on high alert – what this means for the West.” Kroenig explains that what Putin’s nuclear alert does is move the trucks, submarines, and aircraft that carry nuclear weapons to strategic launch positions.

The idea is that you [Russia] don’t want them [nuclear weapons] all in place as sitting ducks for the US to strike.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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 Kroenig in the Mirror on Russia’s nuclear threat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 27, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in the Financial Times titled “West takes Putin’s nuclear weapons threat seriously.” Kroenig explains that Putin’s heighten nuclear alert is a textbook strategy that stems from their ‘escalate to de-escalate strategy’ and they are unlikely to follow through.

The message to the west, NATO and US is, ‘Don’t get involved or we can escalate things to the highest level.’

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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 Kroenig in the Financial Times on Putin’s nuclear alert appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 27, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in the New York Times titled “Putin Declares a Nuclear Alert, and Biden Seeks De-escalation.” Kroenig points out that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s heightened nuclear alert is just one of multiple historical examples of leaders threatening nuclear retaliation, including former President Trump. However, Kroenig asserts that leaders will not follow through because it threatens their extinction.

Nuclear-armed states can’t fight nuclear wars because it would risk their extinction, but they can and do threaten it.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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 Kroenig in the New York Times on Putin’s nuclear alert appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On February 24, Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig was quoted in Fox News arguing for a simultaneous US defense strategy in Europe and Asia to better counter Russian and Chinese aggression against their democratic neighbors.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig in Fox News calling for a simultaneous US defense strategy on Europe and Asia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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On February 16, deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article–written by the Global China Hub’s nonresident senior fellow Michael Schuman–in the Atlantic titled “China now understands what a nuclear rivalry looks like.” Kroenig questions whether the United States is prepared for another potential nuclear competitor in light of growing Chinese nuclear capabilities.

Xi has decided the time to bide our time and hide our capabilities is over. It’s time for the coming-out party.

Matthew Kroenig

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

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.

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The post Kroenig in the Atlantic on China’s nuclear capability appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How have Germany-Russia relations changed since Angela Merkel’s departure?

As concerns about Germany’s support for Ukraine continue to rise, especially in Britain, Europe Center senior fellow Ben Judah interviewed Mathieu von Rohr, the foreign editor of Der Spiegel. What does Chancellor Olaf Scholz want to change in Germany’s relations with Russia, and does that match with what the SPD wants? How is Britain coordinating with Germany in aiding Ukraine?

You can watch #BritainDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Fellow

Ben Judah

Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Economy & Business European Union

Europe Center

Providing expertise and building communities to promote transatlantic leadership and a strong Europe in turbulent times.

The Europe Center promotes the transatlantic leadership and strategies required to ensure a strong Europe.

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The post #BritainDebrief – Britain and Germany’s Russia problem: A Debrief from Mathieu von Rohr appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 20, Manning was quoted in an RFA article about North Korea’s missile tests and the messages they send to the United States and its allies.

“Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the US Atlantic Council, told RFA on the 20th that North Korea has been using tactics to obtain concessions in its nuclear negotiations with the US by leveraging its missile test launches…In addition, Manning said, North Korea has not yet test-fired a new ICBM, the Hwasong-17, unveiled at the party founding parade in October 2020 [translated from Korean].”

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Robert A. Manning

Former Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

China Energy Markets & Governance

The post Manning in RFA: North Korea likely to launch ICBM to pressure the US soon [translated from Korean] appeared first on Atlantic Council.

TO: National Security Decision Makers

FROM: Marina Favaro

DATE: January 12, 2022

SUBJECT: Strengthening the OSCE’s role in strategic stability

Last fall, the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security hosted a private workshop with several international experts and officials to discuss how to strengthen the OSCE’s role in strategic stability. This paper is designed to give policy makers a better understanding of how emerging technologies should factor into forthcoming arms control regimes.

Strategic context: The OSCE’s present role in strategic stability

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)—an organization born at the height of the Cold War—might yet again prove instrumental in strengthening strategic stability in the twenty-first century. Shifts in global polarity, a growing role for non-traditional actors, and the unique properties of emerging technologies are all conspiring to undermine strategic stability. Meanwhile, the OSCE’s instruments for upholding strategic stability—including common norms, values, and principles of strategic restraint—are eroding in now-defunct treaties. Today, there are a range of material roadblocks to arms control, but the most significant impediment is the current lack of political will to sustain and improve it. At the OSCE, Russian obstructionism is perhaps the clearest manifestation of this trend. The categorical failure of great and middle powers to expend the time, expertise, and political capital necessary to create meaningful regimes of control is stark. It is also, fortunately, something that the OSCE can address and improve. We cannot give up on the OSCE vision of a Europe whole, free, and at peace.

Defining strategic stability

In the Cold War, the stable nuclear deterrence relationship was defined as the ability of the United States and the Soviet Union to survive a first strike and retaliate (i.e., ‘survivable second strike’). For Thomas Schelling and others, strategic stability had two components: crisis stability (wherein escalation was unlikely) and arms-race stability (wherein neither side sought a military advantage to either launch a decapitating first strike or to be completely invulnerable to attack). However, emerging technologies, new actors, and the growing complexity of systems are bringing us further from the Cold War context from which this concept emerged. Today, strategic stability is more complex: the concept is no longer defined in solely nuclear terms, but rather incorporates all five operating domains and acknowledges that emerging technologies might increase the vulnerability of nuclear arsenals.

Defining emerging technologies

There is no universal definition for ‘emerging technologies,’ but this memo defines them as technologies and technological applications that are still under development or are not well-established, and have the potential to disrupt global stability and security. Critically, the range of systems with relevance to strategic stability has broadened as a result of technological change. Whereas traditionally only nuclear weapons constituted a strategic capability, there is a growing awareness that emerging technologies can pose a threat to nuclear forces and related capabilities (e.g., early warning systems, command-and-control systems, and critical infrastructure). This includes new technologies with the potential to disable or intercept a nuclear delivery system and undermine states’ ability to survive a first nuclear strike and launch a retaliation.

The intersection of strategic stability and emerging technologies

Emerging technologies are disrupting strategic stability in the following ways:

1. The ability of emerging technologies to reduce the confidence of nuclear powers in their own deterrent or their ability to respond to a nuclear attack. The notion of a ‘survivable second strike’ is foundational to strategic stability.¹
2. Their ability to rapidly escalate an ongoing conflict, either deliberately or through miscalculation.²
3. Their ability to change the incentives for a given state to increase the quantity or quality of their nuclear forces (i.e., prompt an arms race).³
4. Their ability to challenge the moral and legal expectations of appropriate conduct as regards the use of force.

Regulating emerging technologies

Challenges for arms control today

Amid the variance and pace of development in emerging technologies, and the shift to a more confrontational geopolitical landscape, many are understandably concerned with the capacity of arms control to affect positive change. In short, they fear it is too slow, too unresponsive, and too unpopular to adequately address current and future challenges. Some of the specific challenges for arms control of emerging technologies include:

• Lack of political will. The central challenge is not lack of dialogue or communication at the OSCE, but a lack of political will. States don’t share the same values, principles, or threat perceptions anymore, as evidenced by Russian obstructionism.⁴
• Quantification and verification. Some of these innovations (e.g., artificial-intelligence-enabled military technologies) pose a unique challenge to arms control because they are not as easy to quantify or monitor, compared to other weapons systems (e.g., intercontinental ballistic missiles) that are currently limited by arms control agreements. This also makes verification more difficult.⁵
• Level of analysis. Capturing a given capability and its risks or opportunities in the language of a treaty is no easy task, and it only gets more difficult as we forecast further into the future (i.e., technology applications and implications become less clear the further away they are). Should we be regulating use cases? Enabling technologies? Behaviors? Whole domains?
• Pace of technological change. Humans have been consistently bad at forecasting, especially those futures that do not benefit us. Given the rapid pace of technological change, decision makers might find that after months or years of negotiating an arms control agreement, the outcome is out of pace with the technological reality, particularly for a treaty that is based on technical characteristics. This would render the arms control measure obsolete from the beginning.⁶
• Pace of negotiation lags significantly behind the pace of technological change. For example, at the United Nations (UN), negotiators have been debating lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) for nearly a decade and still haven’t reached a consensus on what qualifies as LAWS and what use cases are admissible.⁷
• New actors. The relentless and accelerating drive to develop new technologies is partially attributable to the actors who are driving innovation. Whereas defense innovation used to primarily flow from public sector to private sector, this direction has been reversed. Private sector actors are motivated by different incentives. If the public sector does not coordinate closely with the private sector to jointly address the potential harms of dual-use technologies, then commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies could become an unwitting part of another state’s foreign policy or non-state actors’ foreign policy objectives.⁸
• Private-sector PR and IP concerns. The private sector develops most of the technology that underpins AI military technology applications. It has also been reluctant to participate in regulatory efforts on military AI for a range of reasons, including public relations (PR) and intellectual property (IP). On the former, many companies have shied away from participating in the lethal autonomous weapons debates at the UN out of fear of being branded as ‘killer robot’ developers.⁹ On the latter, IP protects more than just an idea or a concept; it protects valuable business assets that are often central to the services of an organization and its long-term viability.¹⁰
• Weight of great powers. Mounting tensions between militarily advanced giants Russia, China, and the United States make it difficult to imagine these states engaging in a constructive manner on discussions that seeks to manage the risks associated with emerging technologies.
• Contending with sub-conventional tactics. There are a range of challenges associated with technologies in the digital information space, which could increase the likelihood of alternative and less predictable escalatory pathways.

Principles for arms control today

• Disaggregate the impacts of emerging technologies. In the existing literature, there is a widespread tendency to discuss emerging technologies either “as an abstract, monolithic risk category or via individual cases that supposedly represent the entire category. Neither approach is advancing the conversation on which technologies could impact nuclear strategic stability, and in what ways.”¹¹ Treating emerging technologies as a broad risk category is not particularly helpful because states have limited resources and limited political will to pursue arms control across the entire range of emerging technologies. This underscores the importance of prioritization exercises to disaggregate the impacts of emerging technologies on strategic stability.
• Give particular attention to hybrid threats. In the immediate future, the OSCE should continue thinking about the extent to which hybrid threats could have societal and institutional impacts. For example, critical infrastructure vulnerabilities (e.g., water, hospitals, electricity, mobile telecommunications, banking, etc.) can be weaponized to create mass disturbances with both societal and military implications (i.e., could make decision making much more difficult). Furthermore, a combination of disinformation and cyber attacks can produce a dangerous degree of confusion, with negative impacts on military decision making. The disturbances created by these hybrid threats will have a big impact in democratic societies where government decisions are dependent (in part) on public opinion.
• Situate emerging technologies within a political context. In determining whether emerging technologies could escalate an ongoing crisis, the key factor is not necessarily the technology itself, but the uncertainty generated by technological innovation and the intersection of that uncertainty with the political context. In fact, “emerging technologies are not an independent, primary driver of otherwise avoidable escalation… instead technology functions as an intervening variable—a sometimes necessary, but rarely sufficient, condition for escalation.”¹²
• Avoid pessimism and presentism as regards emerging technologies. Not all emerging technologies will create risks for strategic stability. In fact, some will create opportunities for augmenting strategic stability. Efforts are necessary to mitigate the risks associated with emerging technologies, while also remaining cognizant of the potential benefits of innovation. Furthermore, those who research and campaign in this field should work to avoid presentism. There is a tendency to view this period as one of unprecedented complexity, but this discourse typically overstates the challenges of today and understates those of the past.
• Accept different threat perceptions as a basis for bridge-building. Not all states need to ascribe to the same threat perceptions, but they must believe that all threat perceptions are equally real and legitimate. A classic example of this is Russia’s belief that missile defenses in Southeast Europe are aimed toward them, even though the United States continues to affirm that the Aegis system is not focused on Russia. This has tangible ramifications for nuclear stability talks between the two states.
• Think about arms control at the device and domain levels. When thinking about arms control from the device level, it is worth asking: How will those in the military or supporting roles know if there is an autonomous capability in the system? Could there be an equivalent of a ‘nutritional label’ to understand what is in AI-enabled systems? In terms of domain, should we have AI-weapon-free zones? How can we ensure those measures in situations where verification is not possible? These questions are worthy of consideration.

Recommendations for the OSCE

• Develop CBMs. Formal treaties are the gold standard of regulation: explicit and enforceable legally binding agreements between state parties to limit the number or potency of a particular weapon. Critically though, we cannot limit our ambition to treaties alone. Even if possible, treaties may take years to negotiate, complicating their ability to control the development trajectory of a rapidly emerging technology. Fortunately, confidence-building measures (CBMs) can be undertaken to precede, bolster, or (partially) substitute treaties. Among international organizations, the OSCE is distinctive in its history for leveraging CBMs for risk reduction. Through CBMs, the OSCE can move the ball forward between like-minded states (e.g., on information operations and emerging technologies) until we see a different type of engagement from Russia on this set of issues. Modernizing the Vienna Document is the obvious place to start.
  
  
  • For example, the OSCE could focus on CBMs for autonomous weapon systems. The Vienna Document could expand its scope to include information and communications technologies. This could involve a voluntary exchange of information regarding the nature of autonomous systems (e.g., target, decision to engage), human ability to override (i.e., on the loop vs. in the loop), and greater transparency on elements of command and control to avoid inadvertent escalation.
  • Furthermore, to mitigate the risks of crisis escalation, relevant states should develop additional crisis communication channels focused on the ability of emerging technologies to rapidly escalate an ongoing crisis.
  • Finally, it is important to note that confidence-building and arms control are not replacements for deterrence; they need to work together.
• Bridge the divide between policy folk and technical folk. Many emerging technologies originate in an ecosystem that is fundamentally different from the traditional defense industrial model, which was more top-down in nature, with a small number of sellers and a single buyer, typically the military. In contrast, many emerging technologies are already being developed in the private sector, often by multinational companies that have not traditionally worked for defense. This is a more bottom-up model.¹³ The public sector in OSCE member states must therefore be able to communicate with the private sector about the potential harms of dual-use technologies and explain why it may be worthwhile for a wider range of defense suppliers to consider the security needs of society. On the supply side, this could involve changes to national educational curricula to include technology ethics and human-centred design. On the demand side, there need to be more, and better-paid, roles for scientists and technologists who want to work in public policy, in government agencies, and legislative staffs.¹⁴ The policymakers responsible for negotiating CBMs on these issues need to have a better understanding of the opportunities and limitations presented by new technologies.
• Use foresight methods to explore possible futures. Given the uncertainty surrounding the future strategic environment, it is more important than ever that scholars and practitioners have the tools to anticipate what the future might hold. ‘Foresight’ refers to insights into how and why the future could be different from today. This, in turn, helps to improve policy, planning, and decision making. Critically, foresight methods such as wargaming and scenario planning enable us to look beyond our own perspective to consider the interests, threat perceptions, and strategic approaches of other stakeholders. This is highly relevant to the OSCE, where gaming could help states to identify how, for example, Russia might react in a given scenario. Relatedly, discussions about strategic stability could be brought alive through fiction, which enables us to expand our imagination and explore possible futures without invoking suspicion in our adversaries. Such approaches could disrupt more conventional views of security and shake up static thinking, while working toward meaningful participation from a diverse group of stakeholders, to forecast a holistic future.¹⁵

Conclusion

States are likely to see technological developments as undermining their security and to resist arms control efforts. Instead, they will prefer to play catch-up or develop their own technological capabilities and advantages. As such, the prospects for arms control in the short term are bleak. But as political circumstances evolve and the costs of an arms race increase, arms control becomes increasingly attractive. The OSCE is uniquely placed to advance certain measures that could help manage the challenges to stability caused by emerging technologies.

About the author

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Marina Favaro

Nonresident Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

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When Alyaksandr Lukashenka first raised the prospect back in November 2021, it was tempting to dismiss the remarks as just another outlandish comment from the mercurial Belarusian autocrat. But Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimir Makei has now raised the issue once again in an interview with RT Arabic on December 18.

And this week, as if on cue, two senior Russian officials endorsed the idea. Speaking to reporters on December 20, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the potential deployment of nuclear weapons to Belarus was very much on the table.

The next day, on December 21, Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko confirmed that “all options”, including basing nuclear weapons in Belarus, would be considered if Ukraine were granted NATO membership or if the alliance deployed additional forces or weapons to the Baltic states.

As all this loose nuke talk was taking place, Russia sent two nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 strategic bombers, escorted by Su-30SM fighter jets, to patrol Belarus’s western border with the EU. Adding to the increasingly bellicose atmosphere, General Uladzimir Archakov, the Deputy Secretary of the Belarusian Security Council, dismissed the Baltic states as “nothing in military terms” and declared that they would be destroyed in the event of a conflict.

As 2021 draws to a close, the Kremlin is rapidly solidifying its ongoing militarization of Belarus. Whether or not the recent talk of deploying nuclear weapons comes to anything, the steady expansion of Moscow’s military footprint in its far smaller but strategically important neighbor is dramatically altering the security equation on NATO’s eastern flank. Nukes or no nukes, Putin has turned Belarus into a military platform and a force multiplier.

The recent flurry of statements from Minsk and Moscow about deploying nuclear weapons to Belarus came immediately after the Kremlin published a sweeping set of demands in the form of two draft “treaties,” one with the United States and another with NATO.

Russia has demanded that the Western alliance agree to no additional eastward enlargement, cease all military cooperation with Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, and pledge not to station troops or weapons in the Eastern European countries that joined the alliance after May 1997. NATO and US officials have naturally rejected these demands.

Taken in this context, the threat to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus has the appearance of geopolitical blackmail. Accept our demands, the Kremlin appears to be saying, or face the reality of nuclear weapons on NATO’s doorstep.

With Russia continuing to mass troops on its border with Ukraine as fears of an all-out invasion spark international alarm, recent talk of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus could turn out to be a harbinger of a future military confrontation in Eastern Europe.

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In the event of a fresh Russian invasion of Ukraine, the West would certainly respond with sanctions, possibly including banning Moscow from the SWIFT banking payment system and sanctioning Russian sovereign debt on primary and secondary markets.

There would also be intense pressure on NATO to place additional troops, possibly along with permanent bases, in the Baltic states and Poland in order to protect the alliance’s vulnerable eastern flank. It is precisely this eventuality that Russian and Belarusian officials say would trigger the deployment of nuclear weapons in Belarus.

In a recent article for the Brookings Institution, former US ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer wondered whether the Kremlin is seeking to use the West’s rejection of its demands as a pretext to invade Ukraine. “The unacceptable provisions in the two draft agreements, their quick publication by the Russian government, and the peremptory terms used by Russian officials to describe Moscow’s demands raise concern that the Kremlin may want rejection,” Pifer wrote. “With large forces near Ukraine, Moscow could then cite that as another pretext for military action against its neighbor.”

With much of the US national security establishment focused on a potential conflict with China, 2021 turned out to be the year that the security equation in Europe changed more than at any time since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, and perhaps since the end of the Cold War in 1991. Vladimir Putin clearly sees an opportunity to put part of the old empire back together again.

The prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is very real, and arguably likely. And the prospect of nuclear weapons in Belarus no longer seems far-fetched.

Brian Whitmore is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, an Assistant Professor of Practice at the University of Texas at Arlington, and host of The Power Vertical Podcast.

Further reading

BelarusAlert Aug 4, 2021

Belarus dissident death in Ukraine fuels fears over Lukashenka death squads

By Brian Whitmore

The suspicious death of exiled Belarus dissident Vital Shyshou in Kyiv this week is fueling speculation over dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s use of death squads to eliminate political opponents across Europe.

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BelarusAlert Dec 15, 2021

Belarus joins Vladimir Putin’s Russia behind Europe’s new Iron Curtain

By Brian Whitmore

Europe’s new Iron Curtain runs along the western frontiers of Russia and Belarus. Over the past year, Putin has successfully solidified Moscow’s dominance over Belarus. The Kremlin leader now appears determined to subdue Ukraine by force.

Belarus Conflict

BelarusAlert Jul 28, 2021

Concerns mount over Russia-Belarus military exercises

By Brian Whitmore

With the quadrennial Zapad military exercises just six weeks away, Russian troops and military equipment have begun arriving in Belarus, and many in the West are concerned that Putin may seek to exploit the buildup.

Belarus Russia

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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On December 22, Deputy Director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig released an article in the US Air Force’s academic journal Strategic Studies Quarterly, titled “Will Emerging Technology Cause Nuclear War? : Bringing Geopolitics Back In.” Kroenig argues that when considering the effects of new technology on strategic stability, it is important to take into account which states are developing the technology. If status-quo oriented states like the United States and its allies deploy new strategic technology it may buttress stability by deterring revisionism. Conversely, if states like China and Russia deploy advanced weapon systems it may undermine stability by allowing them to coerce other members of the international community.

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The post Kroenig in Strategic Studies Quarterly on emerging technology and nuclear stability appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On December 17, Foreign Policy published a biweekly column featuring Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and New American Engagement Initiative senior fellow Emma Ashford assessing the latest news in international affairs.

In their last column of 2021, they reflect on major foreign policy events that shaped the year, debate the limits of US power and leadership, and question whether 2022 will bring heightened crises, from Ukraine, to Taiwan, to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

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Matthew Kroenig

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The post Kroenig and Ashford reflect on US foreign policy in 2021 and debate the year ahead appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On December 3, Foreign Policy published a biweekly column featuring Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and New American Engagement Initiative senior fellow Emma Ashford assessing the latest news in international affairs.

In the column, they discuss the latest Omicron restrictions, assess the Pentagon’s 2021 Global Posture Review and ongoing Iran nuclear deal negotiations, and debate the merits of Biden’s Summit for Democracy.

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Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

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The post Kroenig and Ashford debate US global standing under Biden appeared first on Atlantic Council.

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On December 9, Deputy Director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Matthew Kroenig was quoted by the Financial Times in an article titled “US spooks allies by seeking ways to clarify nuclear weapons posture.” The article described how the Biden administration is seeking to clarify the situations in which it would use nuclear weapons in the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review document. Kroenig noted the concern that such a statement might send the message that the US is not willing to use nuclear weapons to defend its allies against large scale conventional attacks.

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Matthew Kroenig

Vice President and Senior Director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security works to develop sustainable, nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges facing the United States and the world.

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The post Kroenig in the Financial Times on whether Biden should clarify US nuclear use policy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On November 5, Foreign Policy published a biweekly column featuring Scowcroft Center deputy director Matthew Kroenig and New American Engagement Initiative senior fellow Emma Ashford assessing the latest news in international affairs.

In the column, they discuss climate progress and pitfalls at COP26, including discrepancies between China’s climate commitments and actions. Later, they assess capabilities and intentions in a new Defense Department report on China’s military buildup.

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary
Introduction
Methodology, Assumptions, and Limitations
Main Findings
1. What firms are marketing their
interception/intrusion capabilities at arms fairs?
2. What companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities outside their headquartered region?  
3. Which arms fairs (and arms fair host countries) host the most high/medium-confidence firms? 
4. What companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities to US and NATO adversaries? 
Conclusions and Recommendations
Appendices

Executive Summary

State cyber capabilities are increasingly abiding by the “pay-to-play” model—both US/NATO allies and adversaries can purchase interception and intrusion technologies from private firms for intelligence and surveillance purposes. NSO Group has repeatedly made headlines in 2021 for targeting government entities in cyberspace, but there are many more companies selling similar products that are just as detrimental. These vendors are increasingly looking to foreign governments to hawk their wares, and policymakers have yet to sufficiently recognize or respond to this emerging problem. Any cyber capabilities sold to foreign governments carry a risk: these capabilities could be used against individuals and organizations in allied countries, or even in one’s home country. 

Because much of this industry operates in the shadows, research into the industry in aggregate is rare. This paper analyzes active providers of interception/intrusion capabilities within the international surveillance market, cataloguing firms that have attended both ISSWorld (i.e., the Wiretapper’s Ball) and international arms fairs over the last twenty years.¹ This dataset mostly focuses on Western firms and includes little on Chinese firms, due to historical under-attendance of Chinese firms at ISSWorld. However, the overarching nature of this work will help policymakers better understand the market at large, as well as the primary arms fairs at which these players operate. This paper identifies companies explicitly marketing interception/intrusion technology at arms fairs, and answers a series of questions, including: what companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities outside their headquartered region; which arms fairs and countries host a majority of these firms; and what companies market interception/intrusion capabilities to US and NATO adversaries? 

The resulting dataset shows that there are multiple firms headquartered in Europe and the Middle East that the authors assess, with high confidence, are marketing cyber interception/intrusion capabilities to US/NATO adversaries. They assume that companies offering interception/intrusion capabilities pose the greatest risk, both by bolstering oppressive regimes and by the proliferation of strategic capabilities.Whether a company is a strategic concern, primarily enabling oppression domestically, or both, depends on the exact products and capabilities it provides, and publicly available information gives limited insights into the exact products companies are offering. The authors have included those companies they deem a cause for concern in both regards, based on the information about their products that is openly available, but recognize that these assessments are imperfect. Many such firms congregate at Milipol France, Security & Policing UK, and other arms fairs in the UK, Germany, Singapore, Israel, and Qatar. 

The authors found that 75 percent of companies likely selling interception/intrusion technologies have marketed these capabilities to governments outside their home continent. Five irresponsible proliferators—BTT, Cellebrite, Micro Systemation AB, Verint, and Vastech—have marketed their capabilities to US/NATO adversaries in the last ten years.This excludes high/medium-confidence firms headquartered in US/NATO adversary countries marketing to their home country, such as Norsi-Trans, a Russian surveillance firm that frequently markets to its home country. 

This paper categorizes these companies as potentially irresponsible proliferators because of their willingness to market outside their continents to nonallied governments of the United States and NATO—specifically, Russia and China.² By marketing to these parties, these firms signal that they are willing to accept or ignore the risk that their products will bolster the capabilities of client governments that might wish to threaten US/NATO national security or harm marginalized populations. This is especially the case when the client government is a direct US or NATO adversary.  
 
This globalizing shift is important for two reasons. First, it indicates a widening pattern of proliferation of cyber capabilities across the globe. Second, many firms in the surveillance and offensive cyber capabilities markets have long argued for the legitimacy of their business model by pointing to the perceived legitimacy of their customers; yet, their marketing strategies contradict this argument. As the recent indictment of several former US intelligence personnel working for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) confirms, capabilities originally focusing on one target set may be expanded for other intelligence uses.³ When these firms begin to sell their wares to both NATO members and adversaries, it should provoke national security concerns for all customers.  

This paper profiles these important trends for their practical security impacts, and to enable further research into this topic. The authors suggest that the United States and NATO  

• create know-your-customer (KYC) policies with companies operating in this space; 
• work with arms fairs to limit irresponsible proliferators’ attendance at these events; 
• tighten export-control loopholes; and  
• name and shame both irresponsible vendors and customers.  

The authors encourage policymakers to focus their efforts to rein in companies that sell these capabilities directly to adversaries, or those willing to ignore the risk that their capabilities may be misused. The dataset presented below is open for use by others who might similarly seek to bring some measure of light to an industry that remains so insistently in the dark. 

Introduction

Offensive cyber capabilities are becoming increasingly privatized.⁴ Governments no longer need to devote significant resources to develop offensive cyber capabilities in house—in fact, almost any government can buy capabilities to accomplish a range of national security objectives, including the surveillance of domestic groups, cyber defense, foreign-intelligence collection, and the bolstering of traditional military capabilities.⁵ What used to be a “nobody but us” system—in which cyber capabilities were difficult to develop and the prerogative of a limited number of states—has evolved into a “pay-to-play” model in which any government, adversary or ally, can gain access to offensive cyber capabilities if it can hire the right firm.⁶  

While offensive cyber capabilities are helpful for law enforcement and border protection, the dual-use nature of many of these capabilities provides opportunity for malicious employment as well, especially when the capabilities are sold to authoritarian actors.⁷ Examples abound. Executives of French-owned spyware vendor Amesys/Nexa were indicted for their role in supplying the Egyptian and Libyan regimes with surveillance and intrusion capabilities during the Arab Spring.⁸ Israeli NSO Group/Q Cyber has achieved much unwanted notoriety for its Pegasus spyware, which provides authoritarian governments around the world the capability to spy on journalists, political opposition, and activists.⁹ Beyond human-rights violations, cyber capabilities sold to even regional partners of the United States and NATO may be used against the United States and NATO in the future. Emirati firm DarkMatter took over programs created by US-based Cyberpoint with help from former US intelligence employees and used those capabilities, in part, to monitor US citizens.¹⁰

These cases and others highlight how private companies, especially those offering intrusion or “lawful” interception products, have become vital vectors of proliferation for offensive cyber capabilities (OCC).¹¹ The Citizen Lab investigation into the operations of “Dark Basin”—a hack-for-hire group linked to the Indian company BellTrox—has provided evidence that similar tools have eclipsed the state-dominated market and are available on far broader scale.¹² As the number of controversial incidents of privately developed cyber capabilities is increasing, calls to rein in the operations of this market are growing.¹³ Instead, shaping the behaviors of companies proliferating cyber capabilities, and limiting their activities where they conflict with national security priorities, should be the top priority.¹⁴

However, this means first identifying those companies acting as irresponsible proliferators. Are there conferences at which these organizations tend to congregate? Which companies are marketing their wares internationally to countries that may use these capabilities against the United States, NATO, and their allies?  

The surveillance industry is multifaceted, covering a range of products and use cases. The authors assume that companies offering interception or intrusion capabilities pose the greatest risk, as suggested by the wide range of cases of misuse involving companies like NSO Group, Cellebrite, DarkMatter, and other similar firms.¹⁵ The authors have labeled companies marketing these capabilities outside their country or continent, especially to US/NATO adversaries, as irresponsible proliferators. By marketing to these parties, these firms signal that they are willing to accept or ignore the risk that their products may bolster the capabilities of authoritarian and/or adversary governments, which may use their products to target vulnerable populations within their country or conduct foreign espionage more effectively.   

The offensive cyber industry remains poorly understood by the public, and current knowledge is based on case studies of individual companies. Little systemic knowledge about the industry exists, largely due to the opaque nature of the surveillance industry. As a result, differentiating legitimately operating companies from those that enable human-rights violations is difficult.¹⁶  

To address this issue, this paper focuses on companies that are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities (e.g., mobile forensics, “lawful interception services,” non-passive communication interception/monitoring, spyware, surveillance capabilities), and also explicitly marketing their capabilities at foreign arms fairs. These companies are often unambiguously operating on the offensive side of the market, and present a compelling target for regulatory action.  

This paper identifies companies explicitly marketing interception/intrusion technology at arms fairs, and interrogates this new dataset to answer the following questions. 

1. What firms are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities at arms fairs? How has this evolved over time? 

2. What companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities outside their headquartered region?  

3. Which arms fairs (and which arms fair host countries) host a majority of these firms? 

4. Critically, what companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities to US and NATO adversaries?  

The answers to these questions will allow policymakers to better understand the market at large by enumerating players selling interception/intrusion capabilities, as well as the primary arms fairs at which these players operate. These answers also underline the overwhelming importance of addressing the shape and permissive existence of the market, not just the behavior of individual firms, as it extends globally and reaches into an increasing number of countries, including those that might leverage its capabilities counter to the interests of the United States and NATO. The proliferation of cyber capabilities in the hands of irresponsible corporate actors presents an urgent challenge to the policymaking community.

Methodology, Assumptions, and Limitations 

To answer the stated questions, this paper compares the Omega Foundation’s Arms Fair database of more than one hundred and seven thousand exhibitors to historical speaker and sponsor organizations at ISSWorld, to create a database of companies featured at both events.¹⁷  

Debuting in the early 2000s, ISSWorld is the premier dedicated trade show for lawful interception and intrusion products.¹⁸ The authors catalogued sixty-four unique conference brochures via The Wayback Machine and other publicly available sources. For each conference, they gathered publicly available information about sponsors and presenting companies, the year and location of the conference, and the title of presentations. These brochures encompass seven hundred and seventy-seven unique ISSWorld speaker and sponsor organizations across the Middle Eastern, Latin American, European, Southeast Asian, and North American conference series between 2003 and 2020.  

In the subsequent analysis, the paper compares the seven hundred and seventy-seven organizations at ISSWorld against the 107,542 unique exhibitors at arms and law-enforcement fairs from the Omega Foundation’s Arms Fair Dataset.¹⁹ Using a simple program to identify names present in both datasets, the authors identified two hundred and twenty-four companies.²⁰ They manually cleaned the matches to ensure the robustness of the dataset and added contextual information about the vendors. All matches were categorized according to the confidence level (high/medium/low) that a given vendor attended an arms fair to promote interception and/or intrusion technologies.  

The dataset also utilizes the resulting high/medium/low classification to identify the arms fairs with the most “high confidence” companies (i.e., in any given arms fair, which companies are likely to be attending primarily to market interception/intrusion capabilities?). To ensure the robustness of this coding (and confidence levels), two of the authors independently checked and compared results. 

This methodology resulted in the following matches. The full list of companies is in the Appendix, and the full dataset with classifications can be found there.²¹ 

The dataset presented here does not cover transactions. The authors assume that a company going to an arms fair or ISSWorld as an exhibitor (or sponsoring or sending speakers to ISSWorld) reveals a company’s willingness to enter the surveillance marketplace in that geographical region. 

This paper is not an exhaustive survey of the intrusion/interception capability industry, but rather profiles an important nexus between this industry and traditional arms brokers. There are likely missing players from this spreadsheet that do not frequent the arms fairs/ISSWorld conferences in the dataset, or that care more about their operational security (OPSEC) than about marketing at these two types of events, introducing a bias toward larger, globalized, and more public firms.  

Matches can also have ambiguous results, especially if a company has a generic name (such as “Nice,” “Pegasus,” etc.). Where the authors were unable to determine whether the ISSWorld exhibitor was the same as the arms-fair exhibitor in a match, the firm was not included in the final dataset.The full log of unfiltered matches can be found in the “debuglog_with_all_matches” tab within the datasheet. While the authors have tried to consolidate acquisitions of corporations, some company rebrandings (e.g., NSO/Q Cyber) remain separate. In these, and other, areas the authors encourage further exploration and additions to this dataset. 

The confidence classifications (high/medium/low) and firm headquarters locations used here are also a composite of open-source research and feedback from trusted industry partners. All high-confidence companies have been confirmed by multiple sources, while firms at other confidence rankings might see some discrepancy. In all cases, coding is conservative, and disagreement among sources or ambiguity is reflected in lower confidence levels.  

Finally, the software used to generate matches searched only in English, and so missed Cyrillic or Chinese characters. On top of this, ISSWorld is historically attended by far more Western firms than Chinese firms. Because of these two factors, and this paper’s conservative confidence classifications, the authors believe that the dataset woefully underreports the presence of Chinese companies in this space. China has made surveillance capabilities a key part of its Digital Silk Road initiative, providing training and surveillance services to interested partner countries.²² However, Chinese companies are not required to have an English name, and translations of Chinese names into English can be inconsistent.²³ Thus, the software for this dataset likely missed a few Chinese companies due to inconsistent translations. Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE do show up in the dataset, and they have track records of selling surveillance capabilities to telecommunications firms in Uganda and Iran, respectively.²⁴ However, because the authors cannot say with high confidence that these firms were marketing these capabilities at the arms fairs they attended, the authors left them out of other analysis. Their attendance at arms fairs and ISSWorld can be found in the data visualization in Appendix A.  

These factors, when taken together, suggest that there are likely far more companies operating in this market than the two hundred and twenty-four identified.

Main Findings

1. What firms are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities at arms fairs?

Of the two hundred and twenty-four organizations total (full list in the Appendix), fifty-nine are high-confidence matches. The authors assess these companies are highly likely to market interception/intrusion technologies at any arms fair they attend. Some of the companies (like Croatia’s Pro4Sec and India’s ClearTrail) advertise lawful interception services on their websites for military, law-enforcement, and intelligence-agency clients.²⁵ Others (like Italy’s Area s.p.a and Germany’s Wolf Intelligence) have vague websites or no websites at all, but have been called out by news media for selling interception/intrusion tools.²⁶ 

The twenty-two medium-confidence companies are somewhat likely to promote interception/intrusion technology at an arms fair. These twenty-two companies all offer interception/intrusion technology, but it is not their primary product or service. For example, companies like France’s Deveryware offer forensics solutions, geolocation, and data analytics, and may be marketing any one (or all three) of these services at any given time.²⁷  

The one hundred and forty-three low-confidence companies are far less likely to promote interception/intrusion technologies at an arms fair. Some of these companies include formal defense contractors (like BAE and Raytheon) that offer both interception/intrusion capabilities and traditional military or law-enforcement equipment. There are also different companies on the list, including telecommunications firms (like China’s Huawei and ZTE) and smaller firms selling defensive and/or tangential cybersecurity products. The authors exclude these organizations in some parts of the piece to focus on high/medium-confidence companies, but the fact that these organizations have been to both ISSWorld and an arms fair is worth further analysis in future pieces.

How has this evolved over time? 

Of the companies that have sent representatives to ISSWorld, the subset that has also attended arms fairs as exhibitors is largely increasing over time, likely due to the increasing number of surveillance firms entering the market. The two hundred and twenty-four total matches consist of 0.21 percent of the overall arms-fair exhibitors, but 28.96 percent of the ISSWorld speaker/sponsor organizations. In other words, almost three in ten companies from the dataset that have sponsored or sent individuals to speak at an ISSWorld conference have also been an exhibitor at an arms fair in the last twenty years.  

Number of ISSWorld Matches by Arms Fair Attendance in a Given Year

As the heatmap below shows, most of these companies have attended either an arms fair or ISSWorld between the years 2009–2020, likely because many of these companies were not founded or not offering offensive cyber capabilities prior to 2009.²⁸ The steep drop in 2020–2021 is due to lack of conference data, rather than lack of players. There does not seem to be a preference toward one type of conference or the other within the industry. This is likely because, while surveillance companies have expanded into the military space, ISSWorld has also significantly expanded its focus to invite military and intelligence organizations. 

…continue reading

In fact, the number of companies to attend both an ISSWorld conference and an arms fair in a single year has stayed fairly consistent, relative to the number of total firms, over the last ten years. Between 2009 and 2020, between 20–40 percent of companies, on average, had attended both an arms fair and an ISSWorld conference in the same year.  

2. What companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities outside their headquartered region?  

This question focuses only on the high/medium-confidence companies, as the authors cannot assess whether the low-confidence companies have been marketing these capabilities at arms fairs with enough certainty. For the high/medium-confidence companies, the data show a general willingness to market interception/intrusion capabilities internationally, even to foreign countries that do not have established intelligence relationships or alliances with the company’s home country.  

Almost 75 percent of the eighty-one high/medium-confidence companies have exhibited their wares to arms fairs outside of their home continent in the last twenty years. More than 85 percent have exhibited at an arms fair outside their home country in the last twenty years. This excludes the two firms headquartered in Five Eyes countries that have only been to arms fairs in a Five Eyes country. (The full list of the sixty firms is in the Appendix.) When broken down by year, this trend remains consistent; of all the firms marketing to arms fairs in a given year, more firms market to arms fairs outside their continent in a given year than restrict sales to their continent or country. 

Number of Surveillance firms travelling to arms fairs outside their country or continent

Above is a visualization of the arms fair marketing data over time, showing a clear globalization trend. The unidirectional lines represent firms in one country travelling to an arms fair in another in a single year, and the thickness of the lines represents the number of firms making this trip. This visualization excludes lines between Five Eyes countries. As seen in the visualization, many trips made over the last twenty years by vendors in this space consistently include Europe and the Middle East. The number and variety of trips are also growing, displaying partnerships between countries that have no set intelligence alliances. As companies travel and market to new continents and new countries, the already worrying pace of offensive cyber capability proliferation may quicken.  

Any capabilities sold to non-ally countries carry a risk: these capabilities could eventually be used to target individuals and organizations in one’s home country. This risk has notably played out in the Project Raven case, in which the US contractor CyberPoint built up cyber capabilities in the United Arab Emirates. Subsequently, the Emirati government used those capabilities to spy on US citizens, among others.²⁹ CyberPoint and its Emirati descendant DarkMatter (which took over the Project Raven program) are both featured in this dataset. Both organizations marketed to ISSWorld Middle East and arms fairs within the UAE—CyberPoint from 2013–2015, and DarkMatter from 2016–2017.

3. Which arms fairs (and arms fair host countries) host the most high/medium-confidence firms?  

While the two hundred and twenty-four companies in the dataset hail from thirty-three separate countries, most of the companies congregate at a small number of arms fairs, many of which are located in Europe. Milipol France and Security & Policing Home Office (based in the UK) are the two most widely attended arms fairs for the high/medium-confidence firms selling interception/intrusion capabilities. This is likely due to size and specialization, respectively. Milipol France is one of the world’s largest arms fairs, with more than one thousand exhibitors, while Security & Policing has a track dedicated to cybersecurity.³⁰  

France and the UK are also the top countries where high/medium-confidence firms congregate, mostly due to the two aforementioned conferences. Germany, Singapore, Qatar, and Israel are also common destinations for high/medium-confidence firms, while the United Arab Emirates and the United States play host to more firms overall, thanks to a variety of smaller arms fairs. 

4. What companies are marketing interception/intrusion capabilities to US and NATO adversaries?  

Five of the eighty-one high/medium-confidence firms have attended arms fairs in Russia and China as exhibitors in the last twenty years.This excludes any firms also headquartered in Russia and China. For example, Norsi Trans is a high-confidence Russian company that has attended Russian arms fairs in 2009, 2010, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. The authors believe that by selling to these parties, these organizations are willing to accept or ignore the risk that their products may bolster the capabilities of adversary governments, who may use their products to conduct espionage more effectively. For example, Cellebrite, a well-known Israeli firm, has consistently been an exhibitor at arms fairs in both China and Russia from 2013 onward, and is the only firm in the dataset to attend a Chinese arms fair multiple times in the last five years. Cellebrite, which sells software to physically extract and index data from mobile devices, is known to have both Chinese and Russian customers.³¹  

Some of the other firms in the below tables have received less media attention than Cellebrite, but are no less concerning. BTT is a Turkish firm that has assisted Turkish law enforcement with call-detail record collection.³² In a 2017 Al Jazeera investigation of the spyware market, BTT representatives claimed to use a wide interpretation of “telecommunications equipment” in order to circumvent export-control paperwork.³³ MSAB, a firm that has also marketed to both Russia and China, sells mobile forensics products that have been used against activists in Hong Kong and Myanmar.³⁴ 

Conclusions and Recommendations

This paper profiles an important set of firms that frequent both ISSWorld and international arms fairs, extracted from an extensive list of vendors operating in the interception/intrusion market. The data from that list show that there are multiple firms headquartered in Europe marketing capabilities to known Five Eyes/NATO adversaries. Many of these firms congregate at Milipol France, Security & Policing UK, and other arms fairs within Europe and the Middle East.  

For researchers interested in uncovering the dealings of the industry, the authors hope their data and findings can spur further research in this field. And while they do not claim that this is a complete list of potentially irresponsible vendors, or that all identified companies are, in fact, selling indiscriminately, it is a place to start for regulators interested in tightening control over the industry.  

Additional research is needed into some of the lesser-known high/medium-confidence companies in this dataset to uncover their actual products and sales. The difference between publicly marketed products and actual capabilities can differ, and marketing material offers limited insights into both the content and direction of actual sales. Case studies and media reporting have already shown how some firms on this list show a history of transactions with authoritarian regimes, and potentially attempt to evade export controls.³⁵

The United States and NATO need to better understand the proliferation of interception/intrusion capabilities; shape the behavior of irresponsible proliferator companies; and limit their activities where they conflict with national security priorities, together with international partners. This work builds on prior research and the understand, shape, and limit framework published earlier this year.³⁶ The following recommendations are meant to address the growing nation-state market for intrusion/interception capabilities and other forms of surveillance products, rather than all cyber capability proliferation. 

To understand the current state of intrusion/interception capability proliferation, the United States and NATO member states must work with the companies headquartered in their jurisdiction to encourage sufficient know-your-consumer policies. These policies should also shape the behavior of firms, giving firms the power to revoke access to a consumer should the risks associated with that consumer change. Enforcing these policies is both technically difficult (the consumer may reverse engineer and recreate the capability after the service has been revoked, for example), and difficult to enforce (especially among private companies whose internal dealings are opaquer than their publicly traded counterparts). However, working with these organizations whenever possible, rather than against them, will allow governments to develop more collaborative solutions for regulation, while continuing to encourage domestic cyber expertise. 

The United States and NATO members must also work more closely with arms fairs held in their jurisdiction to ensure they are aware of any exhibitors that are held in their jurisdiction to ensure they are aware of any exhibitors that are irresponsible proliferators—i.e., those selling to US/NATO adversaries—and limit their ability to attend when possible. Arms fair organizers should be encouraged to ban or limit irresponsible proliferators who are either directly marketing their capabilities to known adversaries, or who have known clients in authoritarian regimes and no KYC policies. 

Finally, the United States and NATO members must ensure their export controls actually accomplish what they are intended to do, evaluating both their own export laws and the export laws of countries where irresponsible proliferators are headquartered. This review should lead to a collaborative process with offending countries like Israel, Sweden, and Turkey to both tighten controls around known irresponsible vendors and close loopholes enabling those vendors to circumvent these export controls. Naming and shaming both the vendors and the regimes abusing vendor capabilities to conduct human-rights violations are also encouraged.Ibid.  

The proliferation of cyber and surveillance capabilities is a thorny policy question. Preventing the harms caused by this industry is an important policy goal, and should be treated as such. Yet, attempts at regulating the industry through export regulation and global regimes have had limited success so far. On top of this, this analysis indicates that there exists a significant group of private companies willing to act irresponsibly: marketing capabilities that carry the risk of becoming tools of oppression for authoritarian regimes or strategic tools for non-NATO allies. The United States, NATO, and their allies still have policy tools they can use to prevent privately developed offensive cyber capabilities from proliferating irresponsibly. The continued absence of assertive policy response risks a grim outlook: a growing number of private corporations that see few consequences to bolstering the cyber arsenals of major Western adversaries, and only profit.

Appendices

Appendix A:

Appendix B:

List of high/medium-confidence companies

The full list with low confidence can be found here. 

The Proliferation of Offensive Cyber Capabilities

The proliferation of offensive cyber capabilities (OCC) presents an expanding set of risks to states and challenges commitments to protect openness, security, and stability in cyberspace. As these capabilities continue to proliferate with increasing complexity and to new types of actors, the imperative to slow and counter their spread only strengthens. But to confront this growing menace, practitioners and policy makers must understand the processes and incentives behind it. 

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.

learn more

The post Surveillance Technology at the Fair: Proliferation of Cyber Capabilities in International Arms Markets appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The arms race is on. The US Defense Department’s annual report on the Chinese military, released Wednesday, revealed a chilling reality: The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could field one thousand nuclear warheads by 2030—and has the ability to deliver them. So what should the United States do to prepare for this fresh challenge from its chief geopolitical rival? Our experts weigh in.

• Barry Pavel (@BarryPavel): Director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and former US Defense Department and National Security Council official

• Matthew Kroenig (@MatthewKroenig): Deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and former US Defense Department and intelligence official

Growing fast

• According to Matt, the report suggests that China is quickly moving to match US nuclear capabilities: “China will quintuple its nuclear arsenal at a faster pace than the Defense Department had estimated in last year’s China report—or even in statements earlier this year.”

• And it’s not just about nuclear arms. The report states the Pentagon’s concerns about China’s “dual-use” research, which could violate international bans on biological and chemical weapons, and its swift gains in military space capabilities.

• Barry says the PLA has also shocked US defense officials with other advancements “such as the recently tested fractional orbital bombardment systems [aka hypersonic weapons] that already outpace equivalent US capabilities still under development.” He also reminds us that China already boasts the world’s largest navy.

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Getting real

• Anyone who thinks the Pentagon might be over-hyping the Chinese threat—or stoking a potentially dangerous arms race—doesn’t appreciate “the decades-long duration, scale, scope, and breadth” with which Beijing has been building and modernizing its military, Barry tells us.

• Reflecting on the daily intelligence briefings he used to receive during his decade-long stint in senior national-security positions starting in 1999, Barry noted, “Not a single day went by that that briefing book didn’t include specific reports on significant new advances in the PLA’s military capabilities.”

• Combined with China’s economic gains, that means the United States faces “a new and daunting circumstance,” he adds: “If such trends continue, then the ability of the US military to sustain deterrence in the Indo-Pacific will be significantly weakened.”

• What does that mean in practice? “This is all about China increasing its capabilities and therefore leverage to forcibly take Taiwan,” Barry says.

Going forward

• The first step in pushing back against China, Matt argues, is boosting (and modernizing) Washington’s own nuclear arsenal and “maintaining a quantitative and qualitative advantage” over Beijing. In this new report for the Scowcroft Center’s Forward Defense initiative, he outlines a detailed strategy to deter a potential Chinese strategic assault on the United States or its allies.

• Matt proposes a congressional commission to study what sort of nuclear force the United States should maintain after its New START nuclear arms-reduction treaty with Russia expires in 2026—since the current limit of 1,550 warheads “seems untenable,” he says, if China continues its buildup.

• Yet given the danger, he adds, talking is important, too: “It is also increasingly urgent that the United States pursues strategic-stability dialogues with China to better understand the purpose of these new nuclear weapons and to open the door to possible arms-control arrangements.”

The post FAST THINKING: China’s stunning military buildup appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Hearing on

Black Sea security: Reviving US policy toward the region

Chairman Jeanne Shaheen, Ranking Member Ronald Johnson, distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for conducting this hearing to highlight the significance of the Black Sea region and the need for a more effective United States strategy to promote peace and stability in this important and dynamic part of Europe.

For more than a decade and a half, the Black Sea region has been the zone of Europe’s most intense confrontation and violent conflict. This unfortunate reality has been driven by Moscow’s revanchist ambitions, which it has advanced by applying the full spectrum of Russian power, including brute military force.

This was underscored this last Spring when Russian President Vladimir Putin massed military forces along Ukraine’s eastern frontiers and in occupied Ukrainian territories, including Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea. That offensive posture remains in place today and poses a real threat to Ukraine and the security Black Sea region.

Russia’s military buildup, its occupation of Georgian and Ukrainian territories, and other provocative uses of armed force and hybrid warfare have transformed the Black Sea into a Russian military lake that President Putin uses to further his disruptive and expansionist objectives in the region and beyond.

This aggression underscores how the Black Sea region has become the soft underbelly of transatlantic security. Nonetheless, this part of Europe has not received the same degree of priority and focus as its northern counterpart, the Baltic Sea region. In the absence of a comprehensive and more assertive strategy on the part of the United States and its allies and partners in NATO and the European Union, the Black Sea region will likely experience a further intensification of Russian aggression. That will not only jeopardize the safety and sovereignty of the region’s democracies but will also increase risk of military conflict, including that with dangerous escalatory dynamics.

The Black Sea: A region of geopolitical significance

The Black Sea is a region of geopolitical significance and has been a long-standing zone of contest among great powers. As a crossroads linking Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, it features strategic lines of communication. The Black Sea is traversed each day by hundreds of ships transporting goods and people from its shores and beyond. The sea hosts numerous telecommunications lines and energy pipelines, including those that bring Caspian oil and gas to Europe. This important role as a trade route and the fact that the Black Sea coast features some of Europe’s fastest growing economies has also made this region a focus of China. Beijing has attempted to established footholds in the region via investments through its Belt and Road Initiative and 17+1 format for regional engagement.

The Black Sea is also a major export route for Russia’s oil and gas. As the home of Russia’s only warm-water ports, it serves as Moscow’s most important access route to the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. It serves as an important element of Russia’s main logistics route supporting military and paramilitary operations in Syria, Libya, and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa.

The six countries that surround the Black Sea include three NATO allies (Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey), two NATO partners (Ukraine and Georgia), and Russia. Turkey and Romania host two critical elements of NATO’s deployed missile defense system that protects both Europe and the United States: an advanced X-band Radar in Kürecik in southeastern Turkey and an Aegis Ashore facility in Deveselu, Romania which can detect, track, and engage ballistic missiles in flight launched from the Middle East.

The commitment of these NATO allies and partners to the Alliance’s missions should not be underestimated. It is notable that at one time Turkey, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria accounted for one third of the military forces deployed to Afghanistan under NATO’s Resolute Support mission.

The Black Sea’s geopolitical significance includes Russia’s presence but also the influence the region has on Russia’s potential to evolve into a democratic, law-abiding power. Former professor and US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski (my father) asserted that if Russia is allowed to subordinate Ukraine, Russia will never be able to cease being an empire, and an empire, by definition, cannot be a true democracy. The same logic applies to Russia’s relations with the rest of Black Sea region. A stable, peaceful Black Sea region featuring democratic and secure sovereign states is essential to the prospects of a post-imperial Russia.

A zone of confrontation and conflict

Over the last decade and half, peace and stability have not defined the Black Sea region. Instead, it has been the objective of a sustained effort by Russian President Putin to reestablish Moscow’s dominion over states that were once subordinated to the Soviet Union. Toward this end, Putin has exercised the full spectrum of aggression. Brute military force was used to invade Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. The Russian military continues to illegally occupy territories of Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has killed well over thirteen thousand Ukrainian citizens and soldiers and displaced over 1.5 million persons. This continues to be a hot war with more and more Ukrainian lives being lost.

The countries of the Black Sea region have also experienced the direct and indirect impact of Russian trade and energy embargoes. Today, all of Europe is enduring a dramatic escalation of gas prices due to Russia’s refusal to sell its gas in response to increased European demand. This apparently intentional decision is intended to force the European Union to lift restrictions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and pressure European nations back into long-term contracts with Gazprom.

Russia’s aggression in the Black Sea region also includes political subversion, cyber-attacks, sabotage, and assassination—tools it has exercised across nearly all of Europe. Moscow has repeatedly assassinated critics in Ukraine. Today, Bulgaria is investigating four explosions at arms depots between 2011 and 2020 that were holding munitions intended for Georgia and Ukraine.

Russia’s assertiveness has also been directed against NATO forces operating the Baltic Sea. US, Dutch, and British naval and air forces, among others, have been subject to harassment by Russian armed forces while operating in international waters or that of Ukraine. Moscow’s military buildup and assertiveness have transformed the Black Sea into a lake dominated by the Russian military. Over the course of its occupation of Crimea, Moscow has packed some 28,000 troops onto the peninsula. It has deployed sophisticated radars, over one hundred combat aircraft—including strategic bombers, S-400 air defense systems, coastal defense batteries armed with sophisticated anti-ship missiles, and Kalibr cruise missiles. Russia has even deployed to the peninsula Iskander tactical ballistic missiles, which can be armed with nuclear warheads.

Crimea extends deep into the Black Sea making it a strategic pivot point within the region. Russia’s military deployments on the peninsula have transformed Crimea into the hub of an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) bubble that spans across much of the Black Sea and its coastlines. This provides a Russia a significant means for area surveillance, puts at risk aircraft and vessels operating in and over the surrounding sea, and threatens the populations and territories of NATO allies and partners.

These actions by Russia not only violate the sovereignty of Black Sea states, they constitute a direct attack to the rules based international order that has been the basis of peace, freedom, and prosperity over the last seven decades in Europe and around the world.

Key elements of a comprehensive Black Sea strategy

Last week, in the run-up to the October 21, 2021 meeting of NATO defense ministers, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visited Georgia, Ukraine, and Romania. The message of US commitment and support he brought to these nations is much needed. And, hopefully, the visit is part of the Biden administration’s development of a US strategy to bring greater peace and stability to the Black Sea region.

To be fully effective, a Black Sea security strategy will have to be comprehensive, leveraging the West’s diplomatic, military, intelligence, cyber, information, economic, and other capacities that span the breadth of geopolitical competition today. It must marshal the full spectrum of efforts necessary to strengthen deterrence and defense in the region, reinforce the economic and political resilience of our allies and partners there, and mobilize the capacities and commitment of allies and partners from beyond the region as well as key multilateral institutions, including NATO, the European Union, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

The following addresses elements that should stand among the top objectives of such a Black Sea security strategy:

1) Strengthen deterrence and defense: A key priority must be to strengthen the capacity of NATO to deter and defend against aggression in this region. Toward this end, the United States and NATO should aim to do the following:

Enhance regional situational awareness: The United States and the NATO Alliance have been surprised twice by significant Russian offensive actions: the 2008 invasion of Georgia and the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Better fidelity is needed about the region’s economic, political, and military developments—to accelerate what Lieutenant General Ben Hodges (USA Ret.) calls the West’s “speed of recognition” in the Black Sea region. Russia’s recent massing of its military forces in and around Ukraine increased the urgency of this requirement. The Alliance should establish a Black Sea Intelligence Fusion Center akin to the NATO Strategic Direction South Hub in Naples which focuses on threats and developments in the Middle East and Africa. An intelligence fusion center, based in Romania or Bulgaria, should focus on the full spectrum of threats confronting the Black Sea region, with an initial focus on Russian aggression.

Strengthen allied and partner military capabilities: NATO continues to be hampered by military capability shortfalls of its member states, particularly in the realms of air and missile defense, long-range fires, and intelligence platforms. Russia’s offensive buildup in the Black Sea makes these capability gaps more ominous. Romania’s acquisition of HIMARS long-range artillery and the PATRIOT air and missile defense system bring needed capabilities to the region. Nonetheless, these systems need to be complemented by and integrated with similar acquisitions by other European NATO allies.

A second capacity building priority should be to expand efforts to strengthen the armed forces of Georgia and Ukraine. Congress is to be commended for directing more resources to meet this requirement, but both nations still need additional lethal defense systems crucial to deterring further Russian military aggression, including anti-armor weapons, air defense systems, anti-ship missiles, and unmanned aerial reconnaissance drones. Greater consideration is needed on how to assist their navies—as well as those of Bulgaria and Romania—to offset the significant naval advantage Russia now exercises in the Black Sea.

Develop a more robust persistent military presence: NATO’s tailored Forward Presence (TFP) in the Black Sea region should be upgraded to an enhanced Forward Presence, featuring land, coastal and naval elements. TFP’s land element, a multinational brigade headquarters, should be expanded to include the deployment of NATO battalions to Romania and Bulgaria—as is the case in the Baltic states. These need to be reinforced by the deployment of allied air and missile defense systems and anti-ship batteries to Romania and Bulgaria and by further increases in the deployment of Allied air and naval forces to the Black Sea region.

This expanded NATO presence should be complemented by the deployment on a rotational or permanent basis of US brigade combat team (BCT) to Bulgaria and/or Romania, (a decision that would return the number of US BCTs in Europe to levels prior to former US President Barack Obama’s mistaken reduction of US forces deployed to Europe.)

NATO’s presence in Georgia and Ukraine should be increased through additional deployments of allied air and ground units for exercises and training. The Alliance’s Joint Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC) in Georgia should be mirrored in Ukraine to both further assist the development of Ukraine’s armed forces and to demonstrate Allied commitment to Ukraine’s security.

Launch a major NATO exercise in the Black Sea region: Over the last several years, the United States has increased the tempo of military exercises across Europe. USAEUR is to be commended for launching its Defender exercises designed to deploy a division size equivalent of force from the US to Europe. Defender 2021 spanned the Balkans and Black Sea region with distributed exercises that tested the operational and logistical capacities of NATO forces.

With that said, it is time for NATO to increase the magnitude of its exercises in the Black Sea region. NATO’s largest exercise series, Trident Juncture was hosted by Portugal and Spain in 2015 and by Norway in 2018. In the latter, the Alliance deployed fifty thousand military personnel along with 250 aircraft and sixty-five ships. The next Iteration of Trident Juncture or a land-centric version of it should take place in an area of immediate concern, such as the Black Sea region.

Place Georgia and Ukraine on a clear path to NATO membership: NATO enlargement has been one of the great success stories of post-Cold War Europe. The extension of Alliance membership to the democracies of Central Europe expanded and reinforced the zone of peace and security in Europe and strengthened the Alliance’s military capability. The newest members of the Alliance have been among Europe’s most stalwart transatlanticists and most willing to contribute to US-led operations, including those beyond Europe.

That success is in stark contrast to the Alliance’s hesitancy to grant the requests of Ukraine and Georgia for membership—even as these countries have courageously contributed to NATO operations around the world. That hesitancy has relegated Georgia and Ukraine to a destabilizing grey zone of insecurity in Europe’s strategic landscape.

While Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are clearly frontline states facing military, economic, informational, and other forms of pressure from Russia, their security and the stability of the Baltic region is stronger than that of the Black Sea region. The Russian invasions of Georgia and Ukraine testify to this in stark terms. The failure of NATO to integrate these two nations as full members has only encouraged President Putin to act on his desire to resubordinate them under Moscow’s control.

NATO’s reluctance to fully embrace the transatlantic aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia has transformed the Alliance’s Open-Door policy into a destabilizing bromide. An effective Black Sea strategy has to provide Ukraine and Georgia a clear and unambiguous path to NATO membership.

2) Counter hybrid-warfare—the information domain: An increasingly assertive element of Putin’s campaign of disruption against the West has been its dissemination abroad of false and divisive information. His objective—and that of other adversaries distorting the truth—is to manipulate public perceptions to foment political tension, if not social and political unrest. Nowhere has this been more intense than in the Black Sea region. While the West has become more aware and better equipped to expose and counter disinformation efforts, the transatlantic community remains very much on the defensive.

The United States essentially unilaterally disarmed itself in the information realm in 1999 when Washington shut down the United States Information Agency. This multi-billion-dollar agency and its staff of over ten thousand professionals was dedicated to the mission of public diplomacy. It was established “to understand, inform, and influence foreign publics in the promotion of the national interest” and to “streamline the US Government’s overseas information programs and make them more effective.” USIA was our frontline sentinel on the information front during the Cold War and a critical element in our victory in that era. After USIA closed its doors, its founding purpose has only become more important and more complex as evidenced by current events.

Congress should consider recreating a modernized version of USIA so that the United States can return to the offense in this increasingly dynamic and fast paced dimension of international affairs. Succeeding in this realm is critical to reinforcing the resilience of our alliances and partnerships, including those in the Black Sea region. It can and should play an important role in our efforts to shape the internal political dynamics of our adversaries—leveraging the power of public engagement, democratic principles, and truth to undercut the authority of authoritarian regimes and to give hope, motivation and support to those yearning and struggling for freedom.

3) Strengthen regional economic resilience—The Three Seas Initiative: A key element of hybrid warfare is the exercise of economic power, and as previously noted the last two decades are replete with examples of Russian energy and trade embargoes and other forms of economic leverage used to weaken or destabilize US allies and partners, including those in the Black Sea region.

An effective Black Sea security strategy must include initiatives to strengthen the economic resilience of this region, including those that will further integrate the region’s economies with that of Western Europe.

The EU member states of Central Europe, including Romania and Bulgaria, fully recognize this requirement and toward that end launched the Three Seas Initiative, an effort to accelerate the development of cross border energy, transport, and digital infrastructure in the region between the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas.

This Central European launched and led initiative is all about: leveraging the power of infrastructure to promote economic growth; strengthening the region’s economic resilience—including its energy security through diversification of energy supplies; and completing the vision of undivided Europe through the infrastructural integration of the Three Seas nations, their Central and Eastern European neighbors, and Western Europe.

The institutional core of the Three Seas is the Three Seas Initiative Investment Fund, a new, innovative public-private partnership launched to leverage the power of the market to catalyze regional infrastructure development. Three Seas states have invested their own finances into this commercially managed fund—whose investments are driven by the commercial goal of securing the highest rate of return.

By adhering to purely market principles and by being free from political interference, this fund serves as a spotlight on the economic opportunity present across the region. It serves as a beacon to the trillions of dollars of foreign direct investment (FDI) circulating the globe seeking the long term, profitable returns offered by infrastructure.

(I believe this ground-breaking fund creates a model for infrastructure development that can and should be applied to other regions around the world.)

The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations each robustly endorsed the Three Seas Initiative as has the United States Congress—including members of this Senate Committee. In February 2020, the United States Government announced that it would invest up to one billion dollars in Three Seas energy projects.

In October of that year at the Three Seas Summit in Tallinn, Estonia, the USG announced it used $300 million of that billion to make an equity investment in the Three Seas fund. These announcements, which triggered bipartisan endorsements from Capitol Hill, not surprisingly generated significant additional momentum to the Three Seas Initiative.

However, the time is long overdue for the USG to deliver on its commitments. They remain unfulfilled a year after the Tallinn Summit and consequently are at risk of becoming a drag on the initiative, one that raises questions in capital market as to why the United States is not executing its promised investments.

The Three Seas is an initiative that merits and needs additional Congressional leadership.

First, allow me to urge the US Congress to use its authorities to direct the United States government to execute its pledge to make an equity investment into the Three Seas Fund.

The execution of that investment commitment would eliminate any doubt of US commitment to the Three Seas. It would encourage other democratic states, such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, to mirror that investment. Above all, it would significantly boost the initiative’s ability to attract and leverage the power of private capital to drive forward infrastructure development across Central and Eastern Europe —thereby increasing the region’s prosperity and strengthening its security.

Second, Congress should expand the authorities of the USG to invest in the Three Seas. In 2019, Congress provided the United States government the ability to invest in Three Seas energy projects through the enactment of the European Energy Security and Diversification Act—legislation that was introduced by members of this committee to provide for the first time the ability for the USG to help finance strategic energy projects in Europe.

Congress should complement that important legislation with a digital counterpart, the Transatlantic Telecommunications Security Act, which has been introduced to provide similar authorities to the USG to invest and catalyze the development of modern secure telecommunications infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea region.

Secure and robust telecommunications networks are a significant a driver of economic growth and are essential to economic resilience. The United States has a significant security and economic interest in having our allies and partners in the Black Sea region linked into trusted telecommunications networks.

Finally, an effective Black Sea security strategy must feature efforts not only to deter Russian aggression but also to engage Russia where constructive cooperation is possible. One area of need and mutual benefit to pursue is arms control and confidence-building measures that would enhance military stability not just in the Black Sea but also across the entirety of NATO’s geographic engagement with Russia.

Conclusion

To be effective, a US strategy to enhance Black Sea security must be comprehensive, integrating the full spectrum of geopolitical competition that defines today’s world—including, among others, their military, informational, economic, and diplomatic dimensions. It will have the greatest prospects of success when it is able to marshal the engagement of European allies and partners from beyond the Black Sea, as well as NATO and the European Union.

Requirements for success include: deeper awareness of the region’s dynamics and developments; political initiative and commitment; skillful diplomacy—not just among allies and partners, but also toward Russia; and, real economic and military investment.

Much is at stake in the Black Sea region: the security of allies and partners whose soldiers have stood shoulder to shoulder with US soldiers around the world; how the region will shape Russia’s prospects for a post-imperial transformation; and, the future of the international rules based order—which today in the Black Sea region is under sustained attack.

Board director

James L. Jones, Jr.

Executive Chairman Emeritus

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