Judicial reform for many post-socialist countries is an ongoing process. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 saw several Eastern European states embark on a journey to integrate into the EU, facing extensive pressure to conform to more stringent standards of judicial independence and rule of law. Anti-corruption campaigns have become central to this effort, particularly across the Balkans. Yet the question remains, “How can governments pursue aggressive anti-corruption prosecutions while still safeguarding democratic justice systems?”

Pressure increased significantly in February of 2018 when the EU–Western Balkans Strategy was adopted. This ramped up pressures through the introduction of comprehensive rule-of-law initiatives. Regional judicial overhauls commenced, with efforts to create specialized anti-corruption bodies taking center stage, whereas structural judicial changes in each country have often been paired with anti-corruption efforts encouraged by the EU. The aim of these efforts has been the eradication of entrenched exploitative networks. As a cursory review of these processes reveal, reform can often create new imbalances.

The case of Albania is one example. There was a time when Tirana was depicted as a leader for EU accession. Indeed, the country commenced one of the region’s most ambitious justice reforms, with extensive international support from the U.S. and the EU, with the centerpiece of this new anti-corruption architecture being the Special Structure against Corruption and Organized Crime (SPAK), established in 2019.

Highlighting the extent of the involvement of actors from outside the EU, this institution was created with assistance from USAID and the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), including the Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance and Training (OPDAT) and the International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), also played supporting roles, creating a structure that would resemble that of the FBI.

SPAK was intended to strengthen investigative capacity, supporting broader rule-of-law reforms and civil society oversight. SPAK was depicted as a landmark achievement capable of accelerating the country’s path toward EU membership, however SPAK has increasingly become the subject of debate. Possessing the mechanism and budgets to combat corruption the challenge facing Albania today is how to ensure the methods used remain consistent with rule-of-law principles.

Fighting corruption does not produce immediate results. Institutional restraint and procedural fairness are required. Concerns have grown that the sweeping powers granted to anti-corruption prosecutors risk undermining these very safeguards. Congressman Keith Self  noted that Albania’s judicial reforms have created delays of 8 to 15 years, a backlog that “undermines the rule of law, public trust, and due process.” Systemic delays illustrate how institutional reforms are not a catchall solution.

An area of particular concern is the expanded use of pretrial detention, which usually serves as an exceptional measure when courts determine there to be a genuine flight risk, threat of interference with an investigation, or threat to public safety. In Albania this has increasingly become a routine prosecutorial tool.

The case of Tirana mayor Erion Veliaj illustrates the controversy. Veliaj was detained by SPAK over a year ago, while to date, no formal charges have been levied. He continues to be held without bail, with another postponement in March 2026, and prevented from being able to perform his municipal duties. Veliaj’s detention, and that of other elected officials, presents a governance dilemma.

When elected officials are held for extended periods without conviction, public service becomes inhibited and voters disenfranchised. Tirana’s Council of Ministers attempted to remove Veliaj from office after three months of detention but the Constitutional Court later reinstated him as mayor, ruling that elected officials cannot be removed from office solely due to being detained.

Similar controversies have emerged in Turkey, where the detention, and trial of Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, has been criticized as politically motivated. In Bulgaria, the detention of Varna mayor Blagomir Kotsev sparked nationwide protests. Although each case must be seen within its own political context, together they illustrate a broader tension between anti-corruption enforcement and democratic governance.

A November 20, 2025, Washington Post article described Albania’s approach as an example of “muscular prosecution,” as part of which Albania seems to emphasize that no one should be above the law. Yet framing anti-corruption in these terms risks conflating aggressive enforcement with lawful enforcement. Effective justice systems depend not only on the vigor of prosecutions but also on strict adherence to procedural safeguards, without which the legitimacy of such prosecutions should be brought into question.

In Veliaj’s case, for example, SPAK has barred him from communication with the public. Criticisms have also been levied against the prosecution for violating the principle of equality of arms, a core judicial standard according to which all parties must have equal procedural opportunities, including access to evidence. The balance of power between prosecutors, judges, and defendants within Albania’s evolving justice system is thus brought into question.

Albania’s reliance on pretrial detention has drawn criticism from the U.S. State Department, the European Court of Human Rights, and United Nations torture prevention experts. NGOs have similarly warned about structural imbalances that leave judges reluctant to challenge anti-corruption prosecutors.

Concerns have also been raised by regional leaders. The mayors of the B40 Balkan Cities Network, representing 76 municipalities across the region, recently issued a joint letter warning of a “dangerous trend” threatening local democracy. Citing both the European Convention on Human Rights and the Venice Commission’s October 2025 report, the mayors emphasized that pretrial detention of sitting elected officials must remain a measure of last resort.

Under Albanian law, consistent with prevailing standards across the EU and the U.S., detention before trial is intended to remain exceptional. The EU, considering Albania’s accession ambitions, has a clear interest in this. At the same time, the U.S. cannot simply distance itself from an institution it helped create. Successful judicial reforms must be judged through the way institutions can uphold accountability while preserving democratic liberties. For Albania, it must reconcile the need to fight longstanding corruption while maintaining an open and fair judicial system that is acceptable to the global community.

Luka Petrović is a political analyst of Balkan descent based in Germany, with a focus on the Western Balkans, international relations, and human rights. Luka has contributed research and analysis for major international NGOs, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with a focus on human rights monitoring, minority protection, and conflict-affected communities in the Balkans. The views expressed are the author’s own.

Can the Balkans Fight Corruption Without Weakening Due Process? was originally published on Global Security Review.

This important agreement, which places limits on strategic nuclear arsenals and provides verification mechanisms, may face an uncertain future under Trump’s leadership. During his first term, President Trump demonstrated a dislike of arms control, a trend that could seriously undermine multilateral efforts in maintaining global strategic stability.

 Trump’s Arms Control Record

 During Trump’s first term, the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a landmark agreement with Russia that had eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons. While the US cited Russian violations of the treaty as the reason for American withdrawal, the move is concerning for European security and removes a crucial safeguard against nuclear escalation.

Trump also expressed skepticism toward extending New START, instead demanding the inclusion of China in future agreements. While China is increasing its nuclear capabilities, its nuclear arsenal remains smaller than the American and Russian arsenals. Trump’s insistence on China’s inclusion delayed negotiations, nearly causing the treaty to lapse even before the Biden administration secured its five-year extension.

These actions reflect a broader pattern of undermining multilateral arms control frameworks. Trump’s transactional approach prioritizes American advantage over long-term global stability, raising concerns about the future of arms control agreements under his leadership. Given his resounding victory in the recent election, the American people support his “America first” agenda, which will embolden Trump’s efforts to pursue his approach further.

 The Risks of Unilateralism

 Arms control agreements like New START, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and the now-defunct INF Treaty historically relied on multilateral cooperation to reduce the risks of nuclear conflict. These agreements were/are built on principles of mutual trust, verification, and a shared commitment to minimizing the threat of nuclear escalation. Russia’s suspension of New START and increasing US-China and US-North Korea tensions further empower Trump’s unilateralism. Taken together, the already fragile architecture of global arms control is likely to fracture.

If Trump allows New START to expire or pursues a renegotiation on his terms, the consequences could be severe, with both openly increasing their strategic nuclear forces.

A Fragmented Global Landscape

 The dissolution of New START would not only impact Russo-American relations but also have negative implications for global security. European NATO member states are, however, more concerned about the credibility of NATO’s nuclear deterrent. The bigger threat is Trump’s withdrawal from NATO, which could spur NATO member-states to expand their own arsenals in nuclear-sharing arrangements, while others might consider developing independent nuclear capabilities. This fragmentation could destabilize the transatlantic alliance and further weaken the global arms control regime.

Beyond Europe, arms control agreements are importantly observed by all states. In the Middle East, where tensions are already high, countries like Iran countries might accelerate its nuclear program. Similarly, North Korea may interpret American instability in arms control as an opportunity to modernize its arsenal.

Emerging Technologies and Strategic Instability

The erosion of multilateralism in arms control is compounded by the rise of emerging technologies such as hypersonic missiles, artificial intelligence, and cyber warfare. These advancements could transform the nature of modern conflict, introducing new challenges that traditional arms control frameworks are ill-equipped to address.

Under Trump’s leadership, the US is likely to prioritize investments in these technologies, potentially at the expense of traditional arms control efforts. For example, Trump’s first term emphasized missile defense systems, which Russia perceives as destabilizing. In response, Moscow invested heavily in countermeasures like hypersonic weapons. The potential weaponization of space and advancements in cyber capabilities further complicates the strategic landscape, creating new risks of miscalculation and escalation.

Lessons from History and the Importance of Multilateralism in Arms Control

The history of arms control offers valuable lessons about the importance of cooperation. Agreements like the INF Treaty and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty were not merely symbolic but played critical roles in reducing nuclear risks during the Cold War. These treaties demonstrated that even adversaries could find common ground in the pursuit of mutual stability.

To mitigate risks, the international community must reaffirm its commitment to multilateral arms control. Organizations like the United Nations and NATO have a critical role to play in facilitating dialogue and promoting transparency. Only through a renewed commitment to multilateralism can the world hope to navigate the complex challenges of the 21st century and maintain global stability in the face of evolving threats.

Syed Ali Abbas is a Research Officer at the Center for International Strategic Studies in Islamabad. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Trump 2.0: Unilateralism and the Future of Arms Control was originally published on Global Security Review.

One example is instructive. The rate at which aircraft locations are electronically manipulated, “spoofed,” increased 500 percent in the first three quarters of 2024. An average of 1,500 flights a day were impacted by the beginning of September. In a recent survey of almost 2,000 flight crew members, 70 percent described their concerns about the impact on aviation safety as either “very high” or “extreme.”

The world depends upon signals from GPS and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) to underpin virtually every technology. Yet the essential positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) service they provide is incredibly vulnerable.

Weak and Vulnerable Signals

These signals from space are, of necessity, very weak. The sun shining produces stronger radio signals than a GPS satellite. Yet, through a miracle of technology, receivers on earth can find coded signals in the radio noise floor, decipher them, and tell Americans where they are and the exact time.

Exceptionally weak signals mean that almost any interference on the right frequency can prevent them from getting through. For less than ten dollars, delivery drivers looking to electronically hide from their employers, people worried about being tracked by their spouse or the government, and bad actors wanting to disable receivers can buy a GPS “jammer” from any number of internet vendors. Such sales are illegal in most countries, as is the use of such devices. However, enforcement is almost always lax or nonexistent.

Keep in mind, signal specifications were made public as part of GPS becoming America’s “gift to the world,” with the US government encouraging GPS’s broad use. Other GNSS operators did the same.

While incredibly successful in promoting the wide adoption of signals, it has also facilitated spoofing. Compounding the problem, advances in digital technology brought inexpensive software-defined transmitters into the world. Now, for a few hundred dollars, a reasonably sophisticated hobbyist can easily imitate GPS and other satellite navigation signals.

The necessity of PNT services for everyday life and over-reliance on GPS/GNSS for PNT makes the vulnerability of signals to denial and imitation a primary weapon in conflicts around the globe.

This impacts millions of those not involved in these conflicts because any receiver within line-of-sight of the interfering transmitter can be affected. Thus, cell phone systems in Finland are degraded by drone defenses in St. Petersburg. First responders across the Middle East must use paper maps because of ongoing conflicts. Ships and aircraft, hundreds of miles from military actions, lose their navigation and collision avoidance systems. Given the number of conflicts around the planet, many regions of the world are adversely affected.

To date, appeals by international maritime and aviation professional organizations have failed to make an impact on the problem. The same is true for resolutions by the United Nation’s International Maritime Organization and International Civil Aviation Organization. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which seems to have the principal jurisdiction for this, is proving similarly ineffective.

At its World Radio Conference in December 2023, ITU delegates approved what, at first glance, appears to be a strong resolution enjoining member states to refrain from interfering with GNSS signals. The only way the resolution could pass was with an exception allowing interference “for security or defense purposes.” It is hard to imagine any other reason for which a state would disrupt signals.

Despite the failures of international diplomacy to mitigate this growing problem, there is likely a path for it to be much more successful. Attacks on GPS and other GNSS signals are useful only because most nations and systems over-depend on them with few alternatives.

Fortunately, many countries are actively considering establishing robust and resilient terrestrial PNT systems to complement signals from space. These can provide GPS-like information, but do not have common vulnerabilities and failure modes with GNSS.

The US Department of Transportation, the lead in America for civil PNT issues, said that intelligently using a combination of independent signals from space, terrestrial broadcast, and fiber cable can be the foundation of a resilient national PNT architecture.

Establishing such a system of systems will not make the services invulnerable. However, it will make them hard enough to disrupt so that antagonists will look elsewhere for opportunities to create mischief. Some nations are already taking significant steps toward achieving such resilience.

South Korea and Saudi Arabia field high-power terrestrial systems that provide PNT. The United Kingdom fields a partial system and seems poised to expand it, as well as a deployable capability. Much of Russia is also served by such a system.

China has the world’s most complete and advanced resilient PNT architecture. It includes three constellations of satellites in different orbital planes, an extensive terrestrial broadcast system, and a 20,000-kilometer fiber timing network with 295 “timing stations.”

Yet much of the world remains vulnerable to disruption. Those who interfere are therefore incentivized.

International diplomacy, in the form of the United Nations, can help improve the inevitable transition to resilient PNT by encouraging states to implement sovereign terrestrial systems. These systems will complement and cooperate with GNSS, while also operating independently.

As part of this effort, international standards can be developed to ensure aircraft, ships, and vehicles are able to seamlessly transit between nations. Technical assistance can be provided to nations with little local expertise in the field.

These efforts will greatly reduce the incentive to interfere with GNSS, thereby making it safer and more reliable. It will also reinforce the sovereignty and security of every involved nation.

The alternative is to continue down the path of increasing interference and increasing risk to life and property. Safety margins are already impacted. Ships are already colliding, and passenger aircraft are nearly straying, unannounced, into hostile airspace, all because of spoofing. It is only a matter of time before the world witnesses an avoidable tragedy.

The international community, perhaps in the form of a United Nations task force, must intervene to protect these fragile signals from space and disincentivize future disruptions.

Safer and more reliable signals from space and resilient sovereign terrestrial PNT are in the long-term interest of every nation. Diplomatic efforts must illuminate that shared interest bring parties together and nurture progress for everyone’s benefit.

Dana A. Goward is President of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, www.RNTFnd.org, an educational and scientific charity. He is a member of the president’s National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board and formerly served as the maritime navigation authority for the United States. Views expressed in this article are the author’s own. 

How Diplomacy Can Save GPS was originally published on Global Security Review.

As the international community struggles to manage the escalating crisis, the prospect of a peace process remains distant. Russia maintains that peace is only achievable when its objectives are met. These objectives, central to Moscow’s stance from the beginning of the war, include the demilitarization and neutralization of Ukraine, as well as changes that align with Russia’s security interests. These include control over Crimea and influence in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, dismissed peace talks with Russia, insisting that any resolution must involve the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.

He emphasized that Russia, as the sole aggressor, must be compelled to comply with international law and respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Despite ongoing military engagements and international diplomatic efforts, both sides remain entrenched in their positions, with Russia demanding territorial concessions and Ukraine insisting on sovereignty and territorial integrity.

A potential resolution could involve establishing a neutral zone in contested areas, facilitating a phased withdrawal of both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Ukraine’s commitment to its territorial integrity should be upheld, while Russia could receive assurances regarding its security concerns, particularly concerning the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) commitment to Ukraine’s future membership. Such a balanced approach could open avenues for dialogue, encourage a more stable regional environment, and ultimately benefit both nations while contributing to broader international stability.

Russia’s Domestic Situation

Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined Russia’s conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, which focus on Ukraine’s full withdrawal from the entire territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia—regions Moscow claims as Russian land. He also demands that Ukraine abandon its bid to join NATO—addressing Russian concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion. Furthermore, Putin called for Ukraine’s demilitarization and insisted on the lifting of Western sanctions that, while not crippling, impact Russia’s economy.

Domestically, Putin frames the war as essential to Russia’s security and national identity, maintaining significant support despite economic hardships caused by sanctions. The extended nature of the war, however, is seeing inflation, falling living standards, and localized protests over conscription. Despite these pressures, Putin shows little interest in peace, viewing the war as vital to Russia’s strategic objectives. Without significant internal shifts or international pressure, it is unlikely that Russia will pursue peace soon. Putin’s current stance suggests that the conflict will persist, with little sign of de-escalation unless broader geopolitical changes occur.

Ukraine’s Domestic Conditions

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky maintains strong public support despite the immense challenges the country faces. The Ukrainian population remains united in their resistance against Russian aggression, bolstered by a deep sense of national pride and resilience. However, the ongoing conflict has taken a severe toll on the country’s infrastructure, economy, and civilian population.

Ukraine’s desire for peace is clear, but not at the cost of sovereignty or territorial concessions. Zelensky’s government has repeatedly stated that any peace deal must include the withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.

President Zelensky dismissed the idea of peace talks with Russia, urging for decisive global action to compel Moscow into peace. Speaking at a United Nations Security Council meeting, he emphasized that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion violated numerous international laws and will not cease through negotiations. Zelensky’s government consistently maintains that any peace deal must include the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. He argued that as the sole aggressor, Russia must be forced into peace, underscoring the need to uphold the UN Charter’s principle of respecting every nation’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The Collapse of Peace Proposals for the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Multiple international peace efforts failed to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict. China’s 12-point peace proposal for the Russia-Ukraine conflict advocated for an immediate cease-fire and respect for national sovereignty. It called for the lifting of non-UN sanctioned sanctions, protection of civilians, and the promotion of dialogue while emphasizing humanitarian issues and global energy security. The plan also included a cease-fire that would freeze Russian troops in place on Ukrainian territory and urged cooperation among nations to achieve lasting peace.

However, it was dismissed by the West for favoring Russia and not addressing Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. The Geneva talks regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict sought to establish a framework for dialogue aimed at addressing security concerns and finding pathways to a peaceful resolution. Key topics included NATO expansion, security guarantees for Ukraine, and managing the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. These discussions, however, have faced obstacles due to differing views among the parties involved, leading to limited progress and a continuing stalemate in negotiations.

Hungary’s attempts to mediate in the Russia-Ukraine conflict faced significant challenges, culminating in the European Union’s (EU) decision to strip Budapest of its right to host foreign and defense ministers’ meetings due to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s meeting with Vladimir Putin. EU leaders viewed it as undermining a united European response to the war. As a result, Hungary’s role as a mediator has been called into question, with criticism from various EU member states highlighting the lack of consensus around its diplomatic initiatives.

Is Peace Possible?

The prospect for peace in the Ukraine-Russia conflict remains vague at best. A potential resolution could involve creating a neutral zone, phased troop withdrawal, and maintaining Ukraine’s territorial integrity while addressing Russia’s NATO-related concerns. However, entrenched geopolitical dynamics may prolong the conflict for years, worsening devastation, and complicating diplomatic efforts.

Seher Intikhab is a university student majoring in international relations. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

Ukraine’s Incursion into Russia: What’s Next for the Peace Process? was originally published on Global Security Review.

The recent passage of the Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence by the Council of Europe marks a significant turning point in the quest for effective and long-lasting control of AI. The document is a statement about how European states will harness AI, a relatively new and powerful technology, to empower humanity while limiting its abuses.

The March 2024 adoption of a US-led United Nations General Assembly resolution on seizing the opportunities of safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems for sustainable development also highlights the common ground the United States shares with Europe and democracies around the world. While the US differs in some important areas with Europe, the significant agreement is valuable. This convention provides a foundation for others to build on.

Although new technologies often appear benign at first glance, there are many ways AI, in particular, can negatively impact the values held dear by so many around the world. From facial recognition systems interfering with privacy to machine learning that amplifies injustice, the potential cost of AI’s misuse is high.

Until now, there was not an effort at global governance of AI. This fostered a string of national laws that lack the capacity to address the transnational nature of AI adequately. A system of fractured development silos creates a wide gap wherein technological advancement is prioritized over ethics.

There are a few AI regulatory developments  around the world for AI management worthy of note. First, the US House of Representatives debated the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act of 2022 (H.R.6796) and the Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2023 (H.R. 5628). The AI Disclosure Act of 2023 (H.R. 3831) was also introduced before the House of Representatives.

Canada saw the introduction of the Artificial Intelligence Data Act (AIDA). The European Parliament began discussing the EU Artificial Intelligence Act in 2023, which represents a shift toward “hard law.” China is also addressing the issue and undertook the Interim Administrative Measures for the Management of Generative AI Services, which was enacted in 2023.

Recently, the United States passed the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which included a five-year implementation plan to adopt AI applications to accelerate decision advantage for both business efficacy as well as warfighting capability.

China also released the Global AI Governance Initiative, “calling for all countries under the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution, and shared benefits to enhance exchanges and cooperation, work together to prevent risks, and develop an AI governance framework based on broad consensus, to make AI technologies more secure, reliable, controllable, and equitable.”

The Council of Europe’s Framework Convention, discussed above, provides a comprehensive legal structure to protect human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, besides promoting innovation. This strikes a balance where the use of technology should not be limited but society must ensure that development is in the right direction—with most of the technologies promoting ethical usage.

The Convention offers a set of guidelines for the advancement of AI that include respecting human dignity and upholding the idea that one should not infringe upon the rights and liberties of others. There is a significant urge to pursue explainability, which requires an explanation for each decision an AI makes and highlights how these systems have the power to significantly impact people’s lives in fields like criminal justice and healthcare. Additionally, the Convention calls for fairness in the creation of AI by considering prejudice in learning systems.

The Convention clearly aspires to international cooperation, which is important because it is a central element of the liberal international order. Numerous states agreed to the treaty, realizing that artificial intelligence is not a local problem. Such collaboration is required since artificial intelligence affects all states, and its advantages and disadvantages can only be addressed jointly. The agreement’s openness to other parties is crucial because it enables people from different backgrounds and cultures to voice their thoughts, enhancing and leveling the playing field.

As AI advances, concerns will grow about the agreement’s direction, applicability, and resource allocation. It implies that ethically right deeds now might turn unethical as technology develops, highlighting the necessity of a progressive framework for a code of ethics.

Since the development of AI must be accompanied by its ethical application, the Convention on Artificial Intelligence represents an important accomplishment in European regulation of the technology. Therefore, this treaty serves as a guide for how human rights, accountability, and openness should be upheld when integrating AI into society. The journey has only just begun. However, the political will and spirit to act, observe, and adopt the proper approach to governance can serve to achieve the benefits of AI.

Nevertheless, it will probably be difficult to put these rules and policies into foolproof practice. It will certainly be a work in progress. The European Council is certainly providing a road map for managing global mutual technology advancement concerns.

Huma Rehman is Director of Research at the Islamabad Policy Institute (IPI) and a Defense & Foreign Affairs Analyst. The views expressed are her own.   

Paving the Ethical Route for AI was originally published on Global Security Review.

August 2, 1990: the end of the Cold War and the revival of imperialism in the Middle East. American troops have indisputably experienced the darkest bounds of these wars. Still, no one warned us about the consequences that three decades of missile launches would have on Middle Eastern civilians, their culture, and quotidian lives — except renowned philosopher, diplomat, and scholar — Charles Malik. The former UN Diplomat and General Assembly President faithfully preached for an autonomous  Near East and disapproved of any external engagement that deterred it.

To understand why foreign interference hinders the chances of peace and prosperity in the region, we must first acknowledge its significant effects on its indispensable assets. Malik humbly reminded us that all of humanity culturally and genetically originated within a 900-mile radius around Jerusalem, Beirut, or Damascus — including modern-day cities of Alexandria, Constantinople (Istanbul), Athens, and Mecca. In a 1952 Foreign Affairs piece, he referred to the complex region as the “Cradle of Civilization,” rich in ancient history, culture, and common agricultural staples which advanced human progress.^[1] Malik aimed to synthesize two perspectives that many considered antithetical; the West and Near East are deeply linked, a departure from the perspective that the two civilizations would always clash. Since Malik’s era, the modern dichotomy exacerbated from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. In our post-9/11 minds, the West seems to perceive the other to be unsaveable.

Malik lived through arguably the most volatile decades of the 1900s, coming from a region stitched with eternal violence and genocide. His bold ideas were unique and challenged powers who sought to define borders according to their interests, including the British and French mandates for Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq. Despite his Christian Orthodox faith, he sided against the British, another Christian Empire, and their century-long occupation that hindered Egyptian sovereignty and its potential to lead the region into a new era of peace and security. Malik particularly disapproved of France’s influence on his Lebanese homeland and the post-World War I Sykes-Picot Agreement that essentially placed its population (along with Syria) under French social and economic control. Though Lebanon declared its independence in 1926, the struggle for complete autonomy would last an additional twenty years.

As Lebanese Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, the thriving scholar embraced his political inclinations when he vocalized without hesitation his disapproval of global powers’ “formula after formula to reconcile imperial interests” and advocated for Arab independence from the West.^[2] Malik promoted Lebanon and the rest of the Near East’s autonomy through his fight for human rights and fundamental freedoms of conscience, reason, and liberal expression. One of his most celebrated contributions to this cause was the adoption of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights when he did not hesitate to vocalize the importance of the rightful hegemony of Cradle countries from external interference.

Malik did not believe in the UN as a replacement authority to fill the vacuum of power within the Post-WWII Cradle of Civilization, rather as the premier mechanism to display how humanity could fulfill its highest ideals. Instead, he looked to the West’s major thinkers and events as a blueprint, cultivating its highest ideas, such as natural rights from the Cradle’s Abrahamic faiths.

Yet much to Malik’s detriment, the British would return for Suez, France would come back for the Levant, the US would send arms to the Israelis, and even the Soviet Union would intervene on behalf of various regimes. Nevertheless, Malik still hoped that the Cradle could progress economically, socially, and politically without external interference.

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According to Malik, the American-led West became a shell of what it once was in the name of countering communism. The West had a blueprint for multi-societal civilization to prosper under liberty. Still, it traded its core virtuous idea for short-term gains over lands that it had no legitimate claim to against a rival who also had no legitimate claim.

“The Near East mirrors, by deposit or reaction, the problems of the world. Whatever face the Near East shows today is fundamentally a face the West has shown it; and whatever weaknesses the Near East expresses are largely the weaknesses of the West. Thus, in a deeper sense of the problem of the Near East is the problem of the West.”  – “The Near East: The Search for Truth.” Foreign Affairs Journal, January 1952.

The West’s previously enlightened pursuit of reason, liberty, and progress is expelled in the apparent chase for oriental treasures in the name of power, profit, and geopolitical chess. The above quote, though written decades ago, can be applied today, perhaps even more appropriate. Yet what is most profound, as Malik would point out today, the Post-Cold War West, in search of another superpower foe, thought it could revamp a superpower region, a land which the scholar remarked as “eternal,” the Cradle of Civilization.

Malik’s fight for the right to a peaceful and prosperous life for the Near East is nowhere near its end. Humanity’s genesis from this exceptional region makes today’s Near East issues even more relevant to our daily lives. The West has enjoyed the Cradle’s food, dance, entertainment, and language for decades, romanticizing the unique aspects of its culture while ignoring its most crucial humanitarian issues, such as the genocide and banishment of minorities like the Assyrians.

As Malik would argue today, only when we realize that our connection to its thousands of years of war, migration, and progress lies deeper than the pursuit of superficialities such as power, natural resources, and profit will we realize the staunch impact that our passiveness wields on these pressing conflicts that ultimately affect us all? Charles Malik did not use the term “Cradle of Civilization” lightly, and it is up to us to vindicate its use.

^[1]  Malik, Charles. “The Near East: The Search for Truth.” Foreign Affairs Journal, January 1952.

^[2] Malik, Charles. “The Near East: The Search for Truth.” Foreign Affairs Journal, January 1952.

Middle East Versus the West? How a UN Diplomat’s Christian Perspective Resonates with Today was originally published on Global Security Review.

“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the number of border walls between nations has more than quadrupled” precisely at a time when cultural and economic globalization has both simultaneously and paradoxically promoted and invited greater human mobilization and internationalization of production, workforce, and education. The reappearance of the border-centered discourse has, in recent months, coincided with one of the most consequential mass population movements since World War II – The Syrian Refugee Crisis – displacing more than 12 million people in 2015 alone and quickly becoming the focal point of election slogans and innumerable public debates in some of the most traditionally open and astutely liberal polities. Legal and illegal, documented and undocumented border crossings by migrants, immigrants, and refugees prompted, in no small measure, reflections on national identity and social co-existence in a globalized, highly volatile, and increasingly mobile world. The pre-Brexit referendum debates evidenced dissatisfaction with pan-European arrangements of open borders, resulting demographic changes, and stringent economic austerity measures. A turn toward the “America First” approach was made out of perceivably lapse border controls between the United States and Mexico and a poorly administered U.S. immigration system. Alternative for Germany (AfD) party platform in the 2017 election cycle echoed political themes of “It’s about us, our culture, our home, our Germany” and “Get your country back!” that gave momentum to the nationalist movements in Merkel’s multicultural Germany and translated into seats in the Bundestag. The March 2018 Italian election campaign manifestos revolved around the country’s 600,000 migrants of mostly African descent, who were no longer welcome in the Mediterranean “La Patria” or fatherland. Anti-migrant sentiments and slogans are reinforced further by a tangible security apparatus, which manifests a determined proclivity toward the hardening of borders and increasing land and maritime border surveillance. It is no accident that since its creation in 2005, Frontex, the European agency tasked with the management of the continent’s external borders has enjoyed a generous budget and a steady increase in financial support (Agier, 2016) as migration is ever more tightly bound with security.

Given the above-cited precedents, what prompts the periodic resurfacing of nationalistic sentiments and isolationist tendencies? How should tensions between liberal proclivities to hospitality towards strangers be reconciled with communitarian values and patriotic fervor? Why do visions of exclusivity tend to prevail over cosmopolitan aspirations of undivided humanity? Do walls demarcating borders succeed and when do they matter most?

The developments of recent months give rise to a number of questions, which the subsequent pages mean to intimate at and explore but by no means definitively answer. The contemporary migratory landscape and political responses to the changing patterns of movement of people outlined in this article, however, offer a fertile ground for further reflection on the contours and character of our liberal polities and contents of our responsibility toward strangers or a distant ‘other’.

Migration and Its Consequences

 The question surrounding the status of minorities within the social and legal milieu is one of significant historical weight in Europe, a continent burdened by the legacy of the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian imperialism and subsequent travails of the World War II experience of mass genocide forced repatriations and ethnic expulsions. It is all the more pressing in view of ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and resulting in mass population migrations of refugees. In 2015, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) monitoring system, more than one million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe, resulting in a humanitarian crisis of considerable proportions and by 2017 the total number of asylum-seekers reached 3.5 million. Mass movements of refugees from Syria and Afghanistan into Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Turkey, and Sweden to name a few, have posed significant social and security dilemmas not seen on the Continent since the wars in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina of the 1990s. Population displacement of vulnerable at-risk populations due to war and protracted conflict, especially of women and children, carries with it existential risks and societal implications requiring long-term assistance and diligent care. The IOM found that close to seventy percent of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean have fallen victim to exploitation, abuse, human trafficking, imprisonment, and rape. Traumatized and exploited survivors, in turn, suffer debilitating long-term health consequences that require diligent medical help and legal assistance. Meanwhile, EU polities have struggled to come up with a concerted response to the refugee influx, spurring Parliamentary debates on the shape and character of EU’s refugee integration policy, financial support, and job creation, revamping of border security, reform of the asylum system and implementation of a humane return policy (EU Parliament News, 2017). Apart from a lack of pan-European consensus on a unified response to ongoing refugee flows, unilateral “open door” policies adopted by Sweden and Germany have proven politically controversial and socially and financially unsustainable. The integration of nearly 1.1 million refugees into German society has met with public disapproval. In a January 2016 Insa public opinion poll, forty percent of Germans wanted Merkel to quit over her “refugees are welcome” policy.  A number of EU member states declined to follow a similar path opting instead for refugee admission quotas resulting in a continent bitterly divided over integration, security, and financial sharing of burdens. All too often, however, the world’s response to mass atrocities is a compromise between a trial and error.

Mass population displacements due to protracted conflicts around the world have grown in scale and brutality. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that some 65.3 million people were forcefully displaced by conflict and persecution in 2015 alone. The all too familiar shipwrecks carrying refugees across the Mediterranean, walls and barbed-wire fences, the camps in Calais, and the barrels of the gun have become the discomforting images that once again test our laws, our morality, and our humanity.

Walls and Borders in Historical Context

At the conclusion of World War II, there were fewer than five border walls in the world. By the end of the Cold War in 1989-90, the number steadily increased to fifteen. Despite the celebratory triumph of liberal values over Marxist-Leninist ideology that put an end to the symbolic ‘Iron Curtain’ represented by the Berlin Wall, more physical barriers have been erected than ever before with a singular purpose of keeping people in as well as out. According to researchers at the University of Quebec at Montreal, there are at present 65 walls standing or under construction. Old as well as new democracies guard themselves against, what Ai Weiwei’s recent documentary dubbed the ‘Human Flow’ (Amazon Studios, 2017). Despite its idealized pioneering project of visa-free entry, the Schengen Agreement, the EU is a leader in the construction of new border walls. Austria is erecting a physical border to deter migrants from traveling through Hungary and Norway and Slovenia are building walls to keep immigrants from Russia and Croatia. Spain’s 7-mile steel structure blocks immigration from Morocco and both Egypt and Israel erected massive steel barricades with Gaza. Bulgaria, Turkey, India, Myanmar, have all built walls on their borders and the United States is testing eight prototypes of barriers to be eventually erected on its nearly 2,000-mile-long Southwest border with Mexico. The EU, in the meantime, signed an agreement with Turkey to halt the flow of asylum-seekers and stop them from crossing the Aegean Sea. Containment of population flows by means of material barriers to entry conflicts with long-held liberal visions of undivided humanity and its accompanying humanitarian impulse and ethics of care proffered by the EU as an idea and an institution. Despite considerable elisions of ideological differences that separated people and fractured relations between the East and West at the height of the Cold War, the union of like-minded democratic states confoundingly gives rise to more physical walls that had historically estranged East and West Berliners.

Contemporary Patterns of Migration

Between 2005 and 2014, some 40,000 people died trying to cross borders across the world (Jones 2016, 4). According to the International Organization for Migration, 10,000 of them died since 2014. In 2016 alone, more than 4,000 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean. No monument has been raised to commemorate the victims. No special mention or a minute of silence has been dedicated to this modern-day atrocity. To borrow Judith Butler’s words, those ‘precarious’ lives lost in war or in transit may simply not be ‘grievable’ enough (2009). After all, from the comforts of ones’ home or office, one cannot imaginatively enter into a condition of conflict displacement, making the perilous journey of a refugee or an asylum-seeker not sufficiently ‘intelligible’ to the Western mind to ‘matter’ on a social scale (Butler, 2009). On the contrary, the sheer depersonalized statistical certainty of people perishing as a result of a hazardous border crossing is met with distracted indifference and reinforces the perception of modern-day migration as an underground enterprise rife with deception and danger that make death if not inevitable, certainly highly possible. The undocumented, the paperless, the undesired, and the uninvited – left in despair or helplessness that only war can bring – have increasingly turned to networks of smugglers who in their attempt to breach the ‘walls’ of the security state apparatus expose the victims of their own unlucky stars to the arsenal of civil and criminal state responses. The 2011 Human Rights Watch Report recorded instances of arrests and detentions of migrants held in overcrowded detention centers that did not meet minimum human rights standards. Failure to separate men from women on religious grounds, the internment of unaccompanied children in unsanitary and poorly ventilated cells, and use of physical violence by guards prompted the European Court of Human Rights in M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece to hold Belgium and Greece liable for violations of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights by exposing migrants to ‘inhuman and degrading treatment’. On the U.S.-Mexican border, border patrols use live ammunition to deter crossings (Agier, 2016). Non-response to migrant crossings is also a response. In 2011, the ‘left-to-die’ migrant boat off the coast of Lampedusa failed to meet with a concerted rescue effort from commercial and NATO ships in the area and Spanish and Italian Coast Guard vessels resulting in the death of sixty-three people (including two babies) and launching the European Council investigation that exposed a “double standard in valuing human life.”

It would be too facile, however, to confine the phenomenon of the proliferation of border walls to the limitations of our imagination or a symptom of a decline or failure of liberal values. Globalization, warfare, threats of terrorism elucidate tensions between democratic ideals and realpolitik propped up by a muscular security apparatus of state power retrofitted for operations in the theatre of a perpetual state of modern-day displacement. Neither pinning our hopes on the human rights conception of free movement of peoples and the subsequent desire of states to thwart such lofty aspirations seems especially helpful in elucidating the return of the wall as a psychological, legal, political, and physical barrier, which amplifies socio-economic divisions and reinforces hierarchies of power. Nor will the desire for security and preservation of identity – hijacked by political elites – offer sufficient explanatory justifications for the dramatically high numbers of barriers separating states and peoples in the 21st century. It is not any of those taken separately that captures the lived reality on the ground. Taken together, however, they present an ignoble image of the world undone by specular failures of institutional and ideological regimes of global governance currently in place.

Precedents to the Refugee Crisis and a Path Forward

 The less emphasized story in the debate on walls and borders is one of the wide-ranging failures of the Western liberal regimes that now opt to wall themselves off against the existential threats from abroad; threats, which the West bears significant responsibility for creating. There are, at minimum, six consequential events of the last two decades that directly contribute to the refugee crisis of today. The ongoing population displacement, which gives rise to disenchanted Western publics’ search for populist solutions to elite entanglements, can be said to have germinated with:

1. George W. Bush’s misconceived Afghanistan and Iraq Wars resulting in sectarian divisions, instability, and conflict in the Middle East.
2. Failure of multiculturalism in Europe (recall Angela Merkel’s or David Cameron’s statements to this effect) resulting from an inadequate level of cooperation across multilateral institutional domains on migrant integration and assimilation.
3. Military incursions of Western powers into the Middle East (Libya, Yemen, Syria), which undermined existing institutional capacities and crippled the region with a lack of strategic purpose and defined military objectives.
4. Moral, legal, and political paralysis of the UN System as global humanitarian crises ensue.
5. E.U.’s ill-conceived and unevenly implemented refugee policy post-2015
6. Uneven patterns of globalization resulting in wide inter-regional developmental divergences and economic disparities driving mass migration.

Until the West rectifies the past wrongs brought about by foreign policy misadventures; men, women, and children will continue to wash up on Europe’s inhospitable shores stoking anti-migrant sentiments, criminalization of movement, nationalism, and isolationism. This entails ensuring that needlessly protracted conflicts are settled – even if and when politically inconvenient for one of the parties involved – and that the very places of origin of displacement are again made safe for the purpose of rebuilding and resettlement. Institutional mechanisms that respond to the movement of people must also put an end to routine humiliations of migrants, immigrants, and refugees on account of their dispossession, religious denomination, place of origin, or race in the form of regional quotas or particularly pernicious public pronouncements made by candidates or parties at election time. Western powers should be wary of displacing the battlefield in the ‘global war on terror’ and needlessly projecting it onto the civilian sphere protected by a plethora of civil, political, and human rights, which become regularly abrogated. International law should be an active, rather than a passive, and a proactive, rather than merely reactive, mechanism of protection and intervention. As a framework for global law, it should complement state and regional laws rather than serve as a back-up instrument activated and used in cases of state failure to abide by the law’s original doctrines and precepts.

Humanity, inevitably, is on the move, it is high time the laws that regulate borders moved with it eliminating thus the condition of exclusion and social irrelevance on account of ones’ foreignness and uncertain legal status. This means that inherent features of the globalizing world – migration – are no longer treated as an aberration but a norm in need of protection and safe passage.

References

Agier, Michel. 2016. Borderlands. Cambridge: Polity.

Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? New York: Verso.

Jones, Reece. 2016. Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move. New York: Verso.

Humanity on the Move: Migration in the Age of Walls and Borders was originally published on Global Security Review.

Even among allies at the Security Council, such as the United States, France, and the U.K. — known informally as the P3 — relations have also broken down on critical issues, from the response to civil war in Libya to the role of the World Health Organization in the fight against coronavirus. More frequent use of informal meeting formats, especially among democratic countries, is a necessary step in efforts to end increasingly complex conflicts around the world.

In a recent attempt to ease tensions, the U.K.’s former Permanent Representative, Karen Pierce, initiated a new informal meeting format over the past year. Known by diplomats in New York as “sofa talks,” these gatherings take the form of unscripted meetings, which aim to develop a problem-solving mindset among representatives. There are no agendas and no minutes. The formula also differs from other meeting formats because representatives do not submit issues for discussion, and only Permanent Representatives (and the catering staff) are present. Crisis Group’s Richard Gowan coined the term “Pierce formula” to describe the new meetings.

In late March 2020, as the United States went into its coronavirus lockdown, Ambassador Pierce left New York to become British Ambassador in Washington. This transitional moment requires Security Council members to cement the format Pierce initiated as an essential tool for internal dispute resolution.

A diplomat at the U.K. Mission with whom I spoke welcomed the continued use of informal sofa talks, even if the prospect of holding in-person meetings in the near future remains low due to social distancing measures. While their exact form may be different in the future, informal meetings without agendas have demonstrably led to better working relationships, even when diplomatic ties are strained. From the British perspective, Pierce formula meetings have helped the U.K. to rebuild some semblance of a working relationship with fellow permanent member Russia since the low point of the Skripal poisoning in 2018.

Concerns about transparency at the United Nations should not limit the use of the Pierce formula. Transparency remains essential for the UN’s credibility. Over the past decade, the number of formal, open meetings of the Security Council has increased significantly to reflect member states’ desire for greater public accountability. In 2018, there were 275 open meetings and only 120 closed consultations. This marked a significant shift since the early 2010s when around half of meetings took place behind closed doors. In light of the broader trend towards greater transparency, the Security Council should not shy away from closed-door informal meetings when necessary if the formula delivers results in conflict de-escalation and peacebuilding.

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As the period of increased Security Council productivity immediately after the end of the Cold War demonstrated, private, informal meetings can generate more honest discussion and lead to better decision-making. In March 1992, for example, a Croatian priest contacted Venezuelan Permanent Representative Diego Arria during Venezuela’s presidency of the Security Council. He wanted to share his account of the ongoing violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but only UN Secretariat officials were typically able to brief the Council formally. Instead, Arria gathered Security Council members informally to hear the priest’s first-hand accounts. From there, the “Arria-formula” emerged. The arrangement allows non-state actors, representatives of NGOs, and others, to brief the Council in an informal setting and is now a fully institutionalized feature of Security Council operations.

From 1989 to 1994 alone, the Security Council authorized 20 new peacekeeping missions. These resolutions required extensive informal discussions to reach an agreement on new Security Council mandates. Then, as now, the global order was in a state of transformation, and the increasingly divergent interests of permanent members in the 21st century necessitate more informal consultation to build trust and rapport.

Despite the challenges that the pandemic will continue to pose for face-to-face diplomacy, the need to maintain informal lines of communication, as well as open in-person discussions where possible, remains. During the pandemic, local actors, such as the Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar, took advantage of an international community distracted by domestic concerns about the coronavirus by escalating military action.

In a time of crisis, a coordinated international response is more important than ever. If Haftar and other regional players continue to sense paralysis on the part of the Security Council, the conflict will only escalate further beyond the reach of multilateral solutions. Frequent, unscripted dialogue between Security Council members is the first step toward greater unity, especially in the context of greater activism at the Security Council by Russia and China.

On the civil war in Libya, more Pierce formula meetings may enable France, the U.K., and the United States to understand each other’s positions more clearly, and thus formulate a unified set of proposals for peace. If U.S. Permanent Representative Kelly Kraft is serious about her recent assertion that Libya must find “a political path to stability,” then the use of informal meetings to reach consensus among traditional allies at the Council may be part of a multilateral solution. Without the improved understanding and cohesion that informal meetings can provide, it seems unlikely that the P3 can reign in their wayward Turkish and Gulf allies, whose continued incursions into the conflict in Libya divide the Council. While France continues to offer support to the United Arab Emirates’ intervention on behalf of Haftar, the United States is concerned about Russia’s involvement on the same side. Neither country’s approach helps the UN-backed government in Tripoli. As permanent members of the UN’s most powerful body, such an incoherent policy is unacceptable.

As the role of proxies and external actors in the wars in Libya, Syria, and Yemen continues to shape the conflict, unity among allies at the Security Council is essential. Unity, especially among democratic Security Council members, acts as leverage against outside intervention in local conflicts, and may, in turn, influence Russian and Chinese geopolitical calculations. Informal mechanisms like the Pierce formula provide a critical forum for this effort.

The views expressed in this piece are solely those of the author.

A new formula for the UN Security Council was originally published on Global Security Review.

The Core Assumptions of Liberalism

At its base level, liberalism emphasizes inalienable rights and individuality. From this baseline, thinkers have developed theories and ideas about how these rights should be manifested. The conclusion is at the crux of whether liberalism acts as an expansionist ideology or not. Although one could trace liberalism quite far back in historical political thought, John Locke acts as a cornerstone of the philosophy. Importantly, Locke lays the groundwork in Two Treaties of Government that all men are in “a state of perfect freedom,” that is to say, that humans have natural or inalienable rights.¹

Although different thinkers have come to different conclusions of the type of liberalism that is dominant. In the American case, which will be the primary subject for the remainder of this piece, progressive liberalism and its emphasis on positive rights is the only dominant strand. According to John Mearsheimer in The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities, this is true for three reasons: The Industrial Revolution, nationalism, and modern peacetime militaries.² Since the United States is the sole world superpower and also subscribes to modern liberalism, the next section will explore how those two characteristics make liberalism incredibly expansionist in its aims.

Liberalism is Inherently Expansionist

To first explain why liberalism is inherently expansionist, one must understand how important the concept of inalienable rights is too liberal thinkers. It is through this understanding that the other layers form. If one believes, as liberals do, in inalienable rights, it means that everyone in the world has the same inherent set of rights. This is so important to internalize as a concept because of what this belief drives a country to do. For instance, if the fundamental principle is that each human has the same rights, then there is inevitably a duty to ensure that these rights are protected.  It is from this duty that humans feel a calling, and eventually, a nation-state can be provoked to meddle.

The American view of liberalism and its focus on positive rights results in social engineering. Social engineering manifests itself through policies aimed at leveling the playing field. On the domestic side, an example of this would be affirmative action. This policy manipulates the playing field in order to give a group who is historically disadvantaged a fairer opportunity. This is done at the expense of negative rights. Since people within a nation have more in common with each other than they do with people of other nations, it is possible to agree on foundational rights within the confines of one’s borders. For example, in the United States, the Bill of Rights is mostly noncontroversial. However, since each nation-state has its own identity, agreeing on foundational rights between states, or worse, globally is all but impossible. However, many liberals feel confident that they can project positive rights aboard. It is from this confidence that nation-states begin to feel obligated to intervene in places that rights are threatened.

Even though a desire to meddle and optimism of success is in the DNA of liberal internationalists, they frequently lack the number one characteristic needed for liberal hegemonic pursuit, unipolarity. For most of the modern world, the globe existed with multiple superpowers. In a world with more than one superpower, countries’ foreign policies were preoccupied with survival. Since there is not a global state, the nation-state is the highest level of authority. In a multipolar world, nation-states are required to operate using a realist strategy. This strategy forces countries to balance, position, and align themselves in a rational way. However, in 1991, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States found itself without a rival. This unipolar world gave the liberal United States the rare opportunity to pursue any foreign policy strategy they wanted without fear of attack or significant pushback.

Thus far, it has been established that liberal internationalists believe in global inalienable rights and that these rights are positive in nature thus requiring social engineering. Further, they have profound confidence in their own ability to execute global social engineering. Now, as the lone global power, the United States is unencumbered in its choice of foreign policy strategy. With all of this in place, according to liberal logic, one has the duty to protect and enforce the rights of others. From this duty, the next question is how is this accomplished? Despite the liberal internationalist fascination with international organizations, it is interesting that the policies of those institutions mirror that of the dominant state. With the United States being that state, the United Nations and NATO have taken their lead in liberal projection and have acted as a puppet organization.

By the logic presented, it is unreasonable not to promote rights abroad if able. Now that the United States is able, that is exactly what they have done. Also, as established above, international organizations are part of the bedrock of liberal internationalism. It is through the ruse of these organizations that the United States can act under the veil of legitimacy. With these two pillars, the United States the state, and the United States the United Nations, numerous interventions have been waged, and there is no logical conclusion, with the exception of the emergence of another superpower. As the unipolar power, the United States not only has tried to liberalize several countries as the dominant front but has also led non-U.S. participant resolutions in the U.N. which started violent interventions. An example of this is the AMISOM run intervention in Somalia. While the United States is not a direct participant, they fronted and legitimized this effort using the international community.³

It’s illogical for liberalism as a foreign policy to be non-expansionist and has proven itself to be very expansionist. If inalienable rights are real, then how can a liberal internationalist not protect those rights abroad, even if it is through violence. It is from this paradox that one should understand that despite the peaceful façade, liberalism as a foreign policy is not only inherently expansionist but innately violent.

Arguments Against Liberalism Being Expansionist

Logic supports the understanding that liberalism as foreign policy is expansionist and violent, but some clearly don’t believe this. The proponents of liberal internationalism do so for three main reasons: democratic peace theory, economic interdependence theory, and liberal institutionalism. If these theories are true, then liberal internationalism is not only the peaceful approach to foreign policy but ultimately non-expansionist, at least in the militaristic sense.⁴

Democratic peace theory is the idea that democracies do not go to war with each other. Therefore, it stands to reason the more democracies in the world would lead to less conflict. While not 100-percent true, this theory is mostly true. It is also assumed through this theory that as liberal democracies spread, it will be contagious, and more countries will join up. Further, despite liberal democracies not often fighting each other, they frequently wage wars against both non-democracies and illiberal democracies. Even if the theory was factually and theoretically true, the act of spreading democracy in the first place requires intervention. Autocrats typically don’t yield their authority from stern warnings or even sanctions. In addition to the expansionist beginnings of the democratic peace theory, there is reason to believe that even with military defeat, nation-states are not hardwired to desire liberal democracy. For reasons beyond the scope of this piece nationalism and rational choice trump democracy in most cases.

Economic interdependence theory’s core assumption is that when two countries are economically tied, they do not fight. This theory is being played out in the modern world through the correlation of globalization and the decline of interstate wars. This theory is based on logic and observations but again misses one of the core tenants of the global landscape and that is security always trumps economics. From this, it stands to reason that security concerns, for instance, a rising China, combined with nationalism and political autonomy make economic interdependence theory a level of protection against interventions but not a shield from it. Further, in the liberal’s playbook, rights are at the center. These inalienable rights would always be protected above economic cohesion.

The final idea promoted by liberals to support their peaceful internationalist pedigree is the idea of liberal institutionalism. This argument rests on the idea that states that join international institutions more often cooperate with one another. Again, on the surface this makes sense, and likely often does work. For instance, nation-states who have a platform to discuss issues would likely be less inclined to choose violence. Unfortunately, despite liberalism’s reliance on tolerance, they remain intolerant of non-liberals. For example, Rawls in Law of Peoples makes the claim that countries that are not tolerant of liberal nations are subject to violent intervention.⁵ This furthers the above theme that even though liberal nations in organizations may fight less, it is still on the liberal state to intervene and violently force the illiberal state to conform.

So what?

Even if all the liberal theories are correct, and a world full of liberal democracies would be the one Francis Fukuyama in The End of History suggests, expansionist efforts would be needed to achieve those goals.⁶ So long as inalienable rights are at the core of the liberal project, and the world is made up of nation-states, it is inevitable that liberal internationalism will be interventionist and expansionist in nature.  Further, so long as nationalism and realism are present in the world, host countries will fight to avoid this aggressive pursuit of international social engineering.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and may not reflect the views and policies of the U.S. government, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Air Force, or the U.S. Air Force.

¹ Locke, John. Two Treaties of Government : In the Former, the False Principles and Foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and His Followers Are Detected and Overthrown, the Latter Is an Essay concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government. Making of the Modern Economy Digital Collection. London: Printed for Awnsham and John Churchill …, 1698.

² Mearsheimer, John J. Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities. S.l.: Yale University Press, 2019.

³ Marina E. Henke, “Buying Allies: Payment Practices in Multilateral Military Coalition- Building,” International Security 43.4 (2019).

⁴ These reasons and arguments are based heavily on those found in Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities

⁵ Rawls, John. The Law of Peoples ; With, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.

⁶ Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” National Interest, Summer 1989.

Liberal Internationalism, an Ideology of Violence was originally published on Global Security Review.

In the following, I will take stock of the lessons and conclusions I have drawn from the global crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, focusing on the main actors of international politics and the world order. Drawing from international relations theory, I make the somewhat surprising claim that a Realpolitik lens would suggest self-interested cooperation among countries in the age of COVID-19. The countries of the world would fare better at managing the coronavirus pandemic if they were to cooperate—cooperation is in their national interest.

But first, a disclaimer. The lesson of Captivity is that we, as human beings find it challenging to see the most critical processes in the present, and we can rarely predict what the future may bring. As we are currently in the middle of this pandemic crisis (or perhaps only at the beginning), we cannot see clearly in the captivity of our current situation, from the captivity of our contemporary perspective. Nevertheless, I will attempt to draw out the most important lessons, while remaining cautious about predicting significant trends in the future.

What is Realpolitik?

Although Realpolitik was conceived by Prussian journalist-politician Ludwig von Rochau for domestic politics in the 19^thcentury, it has since become a prominent concept in the theory and practice of international politics. Henry Kissinger defines Realpolitik as “foreign policy based on calculations of power and the national interest.”¹ According to Kenneth Waltz, Realpolitik “indicates the methods by which foreign policy is conducted and provides a rationale for them.” Waltz lists the elements of Realpolitik as follows: “the state’s interest provides the spring of action; the necessities of policy arise from the unregulated competition of states; calculation based on these necessities can discover the policies that will best serve a state’s interests; success is the ultimate test of policy, and success is defined as preserving and strengthening the state.”² The 20^th century theorists of Realpolitik argue that such a concept (not necessarily under the same name) has been an ever-present thread running through the history of thinking about international relations. Kissinger associates Realpolitik with Napoleon III and Bismarck, while Waltz traces the concept back to Machiavelli in the Italian Renaissance and Thucydides in ancient Greece. Realpolitik is as old as humankind.

International Cooperation based on Self-Interest

Overall, the response of countries and governments around the world to the COVID-19 epidemic has been a significant failure, and this has been primarily a failure of global governance. The virus has spread globally, but in its management,  we barely find any traces of international cooperation. It has been handled entirely on the level of the nation-state. This is not surprising to those who look at the world through a Realpolitik lens.

International politics is characterized by anarchy, as there is no world government. Nation-states consider their interests first and shape their foreign policies accordingly. That is why it is telling that even Henry Kissinger, a diplomat-scholar often associated with Realpolitik, advocates for international cooperation on COVID-19 in his recent Wall Street Journal article. I agree there is a role for global governance in stopping this pandemic. Nation-states cannot do it on their own. Let’s see why.

The European Union

The European Union (EU) as a community and as an institution was virtually invisible in the period following the outbreak. Italy, the first and most dramatically affected member state in the EU, received assistance from China sooner than from the EU. It is no coincidence that the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had to apologize to the Italians for the EU’s delayed reaction. The EU’s image and the popularity of the pro-federalist position are significantly undermined by the fact that each EU member state has responded to the epidemic on a national level. In contrast, action at the EU level has been almost wholly absent.

Even the fact that the EU eventually provided substantial funding to help member states take action improved the EU’s image only slightly. It is also clear that a strictly national approach combined with a failure to share best practices has resulted in very different levels of effectiveness in slowing the spread of the disease in each member state. Consequently, the problems each member state now faces are very different, hence the possibility of EU-level cooperation and solutions is next to nothing.

China

Undoubtedly, China is primarily responsible for the outbreak and global spread of the epidemic. The Chinese Communist leadership practiced one of the worst traditions of their Soviet predecessors, the so-called “Chernobyl method,” at the beginning of the epidemic: denial and silencing. The existence of the outbreak was denied, and doctors who sounded the alarm were silenced and arrested. Then by mid-January, the Communist leadership realized that the coronavirus was a real problem and needed practical solutions. Subsequently, the government introduced strict measures in Wuhan and a few other parts of China, from curfews to mandatory mask-wearing to quarantining of those suspected of illness. All these measures were enforced by the iron fist of the Chinese police state. With these measures, the spread of the coronavirus in China was slowed down and then halted by March.

However, in the meantime, from November to January, the virus had already spread to most of the world. If China had not denied the existence of the epidemic and had closed its borders late last year, it could have spared the world its current level of suffering. In parallel with the rigorous management of the epidemic, China has also been working since the beginning of the year to spread misinformation about the American origins of COVID-19, and to portray itself as a “benevolent superpower” by sending masks and ventilators to many countries around the world. China is once again playing the game of international politics very shrewdly (applying a distorted sense of Realpolitik), and this time it is trying to strengthen its international image, its soft power, which has always been a weak point.

The United States

The number of Americans infected with the coronavirus is now over 1.7 million. This shows that American society has so far failed to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. I’ve identified five reasons for this, which fall into two groups: governance-related and socio-cultural factors.

The first group of reasons includes the fragmented nature of the U.S. government system and the public health management failures of the federal and state governments. (1) Unified action against a nationwide epidemic has been made impossible by the federal structure of the U.S. government, which has produced a fragmentation of authority and capabilities. While the federal government has deep financial pockets, it lacks many public-health authorities. At the same time, the state governments lack financial leverage and have limited legal authorities of their own. (2) President Donald J. Trump and his administration delayed by several months the necessary preparations for the epidemic despite having the world’s most extensive intelligence apparatus. Many constituent agencies were alerting the White House to the news of the coronavirus as early as November 2019. (3) State (and local) governments also woke up too late to the threat of the coronavirus (especially in the state of New York and in New York City, from where the virus spread all over the country). As I mentioned, state governments lack the financial resources to deal with such an epidemic, so they need the help of the federal government. The Trump administration has not responded to state requests for assistance very effectively either, and for weeks the president himself has been embroiled in a highly partisan war of words with the mostly Democratic governors of the most heavily infected states.

However, the delayed responses of political leaders alone do not fully explain the current catastrophe situation in the United States. There are also very deep-rooted socio-cultural reasons for the failure to manage the coronavirus. (4) American society has traditionally exhibited a high degree of individualism and a strong attachment to individual freedoms, and the role of the “state” is consequently limited. While in much of the world, a full lockdown has been imposed by central governments and enforced by police, in the United States, most “lockdowns” have been nothing more than a stay-at-home advisory from state governors. The federal government formulated even more restrained advice. (5) Finally, an essential socio-economic reason behind the extent of the outbreak in the United States is the privately operated and fragmented health care system—some of the demographic groups most exposed to the coronavirus do not even have access to adequate healthcare.

U.S.-China Competition

The dominant geopolitical competition of the 21^st century is unfolding between the United States and China. As a result, there is much discussion about which great power the current situation will propel forward and which will fall far behind. The jury is still out. Both great powers have been hit hard by the virus, but it currently appears that America has taken the harder blow. However, we must be careful with such a comparison because we do not exactly know what is going on in China, as the Chinese Communist leadership does not provide real data about either the epidemic or the economy. Joseph Nye shares this view in his recent Foreign Policy article; despite significant speculation to this effect, the coronavirus will not decide the competition between the United States and China, since more important factors play a role in it. His article fits into the debate of recent years among U.S. political scientists and historians about U.S.-China competition, in which Graham Allison and others warn that China, building on its significant resources (cheap labor, global trade network, fast-paced economic and technological development), will soon overtake the United States economically and push it off the top of the international system. On the other hand, Nye, Michael Beckley, and others emphasize that the United States has important structural advantages (geographic location, democratic political system, R&D capabilities, soft power, etc.) over China, and, on the other hand, the Asian superpower has many internal problems and weaknesses (demographic crisis, corruption, social inequality, regional disparities).

I share the latter point of view, but with one qualification. The United States starts from a good position in its competition with China, but its abovementioned domestic problems (fragmented government structure, polarization, weak healthcare system, growing social inequality) pose serious risks for the United States in this rivalry. The United States can compete with China and maintain its position of international leadership only if it remedies these deep domestic structural problems in the years to come. It is certainly relevant to the competition that China—having managed to control the epidemic domestically—has been building a new international role for itself, extending aid to many countries in fighting the pandemic. At the same time, the United States is currently hardly able to deal with its internal problems managing the pandemic, and cannot play any real international role in the fight against the coronavirus. What is more, the Trump administration has even withdrawn its support from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Global Economy

The global economy is facing an unprecedented recession. As part of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, most countries in the world have shut down significant portions of their economies. Prolonging this situation for months is leading to a severe economic downturn. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that the recession has been brewing for quite some time. China’s economic growth – even based on unreliable official data – plummeted to around 3 percent in the last quarter of 2019, an incredible dive compared to the 7 percent expected by Beijing or to China’s average growth in recent decades. As a result of COVID-19, China’s economy suffered a 6.8 percent contraction in the first quarter of 2020; for the first time since 1976, the Chinese economy has shrunk and not expanded. The economic downturn in the European Union had also begun earlier. In the last quarter of 2019, the EU achieved 0 (zero) percent growth. Therefore, the economic crisis may have happened even without the coronavirus pandemic.

The United States recently joined China and the EU among the crisis hubs. The number of unemployed in America has risen to 43 million in the last ten weeks. The U.S. GDP posted a 4.8 percent decline in the first quarter of this year, and analysts expect an almost unprecedented 30 percent (!) contraction in the second quarter. World oil prices reached historic lows in April. We have to gradually reopen the economy everywhere as soon as the public health situation allows. However, I would caution against the overly optimistic view that reopening the economy now will avert the economic downturn. Even if the economy was reopened today, the virus is here to stay (until there is a vaccine), and many people will be afraid to resume their previous lifestyles completely; therefore, economic recovery will remain limited. And the coronavirus has already done much damage to our economies. The long-feared global economic recession is no longer on its way. It has already begun.

World Order

In the United States and elsewhere around the world, there has been a serious debate for some years now about how the world order is changing, what has characterized the international order so far, and what can replace it in the future. The abovementioned two articles, by Henry Kissinger and Joseph Nye, are also part of the continuation of these debates. Kissinger’s article is titled “The Coronavirus Will Forever Alter the World Order,” while Nye’s article counters with, “No, the Coronavirus Will Not Change the Global Order.” Indeed, the coronavirus has not changed the world order (yet), but the world order is changing.

There are several ways we can talk about the world order. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991, the international system changed from bipolar to unipolar. With the rise of China, however, a bipolar international system has re-emerged. This system, nonetheless, also bears some semblance to multipolar systems, as there are currently no two allied blocs behind the two superpowers like there were during the Cold War, and even America’s allies are busy building ties with China.

The United States established the current so-called liberal international order after World War II. After decades of successfully deepening and expanding this order, America has been gradually withdrawing from its leadership role under the administrations of Barack Obama and especially Trump. Kissinger writes in his article that to overcome the health and economic effects of COVID-19 and to defend the values ​​of the liberal international order, the world needs international cooperation, in which Washington must play a leading role. On this point, Joseph Nye formulates an idea similar to Kissinger’s: “Both for self-interested and humanitarian reasons, the United States should lead the G-20 in generous contributions to a major new COVID-19 fund that is open to all countries.” I agree with these suggestions because they combine Realpolitik and cooperation. Unfortunately, it seems there is little chance of the current U.S. administration leading such initiatives. Instead, it is imaginable that China will play such a role. It would certainly strengthen China’s position in the currently emerging new world order.

What the different international actors do not realize is that more cooperation would have helped avert the current pandemic or at least mitigate its spread and consequences. Theorists in international relations have long sparred over whether states are inherently more or less prone to cooperate. Realpolitik argues that cooperation is the exception, not the rule. A country will work with another country only if it is in its national interest. In this case, ironically, a Realpolitik lens would tell us that it is in countries’ national interests that they cooperate against the Covid-19 pandemic.

As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, billions of us have become captives in our own homes. Not only are we physically in captivity, but the economy (national economies and the world economy) has also become a captive of the coronavirus, and it is in this captivity that international politics also finds itself today. Moreover, just as the lesson of the novel Captivity shows us, our governments have been captives of their own circumstances and perspectives, and have not been able to see beyond them and to look at the crisis from a more holistic view. Such a view, in line with Realpolitik, would have shown us the path toward self-interested cooperation.

Once the immediate crisis is over, countries will need to rethink their cooperation in the fight against pandemics. A Realpolitik lens, however, shows that individual countries will only do this when they realize that such cooperation is in their well-conceived self-interest. Let’s hope they realize it. The sooner they do, the sooner our captivity ends.

¹ Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 137

² Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1979), p. 117

Realpolitik & Cooperation in the Age of COVID-19 was originally published on Global Security Review.

Venezuela kicked 2019 off with a turbulent and fragile political start of the year. President Nicolás Maduro began his second presidential term on January 10th. The May 20th presidential election last year was internationally decried as illegitimate by the United States and the 14-member Lima Group throughout the region. On January 5th, a new face in Venezuelan politics emerged, Juan Guaidó, the 35-year-old newly elected President of the National Assembly.

As public and military support continue to mount, Guaidó is preparing to challenge Maduro and has called for a change of power. At Guaidó’s behest, the first public rally for Maduro to resign took place on January 23rd, with a massive protest against the Maduro government.

Guaidó rapidly emerged as a young new leader of the opposition in the National Assembly. Following his participation in the 2007 student protests of Hugo Chavez, Guaidó began to make a name for himself within the Venezuelan opposition. His involvement in the protests ultimately led him to Leopoldo Lopez, the long-standing leader of the Venezuelan opposition. Lopez ultimately mentored Guaidó through the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) political party, preparing him to assume the Presidency of the National Assembly.

With Lopez’ continued house arrest and ban from serving public office, Guaidó emerged as the leader of the opposition within the National Assembly. Upon assuming his new position, on January 5, Guaidó became increasingly vocal through his first few weeks in office, declaring Maduro a usurper of the presidency. On January 13, Guaidó was briefly detained by police officers in La Guaira on the way to a town hall rally. A video of the detainment taken by a motorist rapidly circulated social media. Guaidó was soon released, but the detention spread international awareness about the opposition’s struggle and brought Guaidó to the international stage.

Despite Guaidó’s prominence in the National Assembly, his efforts will lead to limited results without the support of the armed forces. While the military command remains under the control of the Maduro regime, personnel have begun to desert their ranks. Voluntad Popular has called on the National Guard to break ranks to help bring about a transition in government in exchange for amnesty. Videos were circulated on Monday of dissident soldiers swearing loyalty to Guaidó in Cotiza. The soldiers in question headed to the special security unit headquarters to commandeer military vehicles and call for a local uprising. On Monday, 27 soldiers of the National Guard were detained for their insubordination in connection to the transgression.

Maduro has overseen a steady decline in his executive power and public approval since taking office. In 2017, protestors took to the streets of Caracas for months, beginning in March and ending in August. Despite their conviction, the protestors were forced to discontinue their demonstrations after six months of continuous protesting and heavy-handed police repression. The repression of political dissent in Venezuela caused many countries within the Lima Group began to question the policy of diplomatic support for Maduro. In August of 2017, a bizarre drone attack was launched against Maduro during an open air rally. The Maduro government blamed the Lima Group for organizing the assault.

Maduro’s consistent response to the decline of the state has been to centralize state authority. Although the Supreme Court remains under the bridle of Maduro, the majority in the National Assembly remains unyielding in opposition of Maduro. In March 2017, the Supreme Court tried to dissolve the National Assembly and engineer a replacement executive-run legislative body called the Constituent Assembly. The Supreme Court ultimately failed to win the legal battle following strong pressure from the international community and fierce opposition from the National Assembly. Yet Venezuela’s highest court remains a central voice in Venezuelan politics — on January 21st, the Supreme Court ruled Guaidó’s leadership and calls to remove Maduro illegal.

Going Global

Debate and politicking over the Venezuelan Crisis is not confined to the domestic space. For years, the United Nations, U.S., Europe, and neighboring states have decried the abuse of executive authority, illiberal governance, and repression of the Venezuelan public. Now, it seems, the world is ready to assume a more active role in countering Caracas.

In the past year, Trump expressed on several occasions that all options remain on the table with the Venezuelan conflict. In September 2018, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration had met with dissident Venezuelan military officers about plans to overthrow Maduro. The meetings proved inconclusive — U.S. officials ultimately decided not to aid the officers in a coup attempt. However, the fact that the U.S. administration actively considered a kinetic engagement to support a regime change in Venezuela at a time when President Trump is scaling back the United States’ military presence in the Middle East underscores the dire threat that Maduro’s grip on power poses to regional stability and the level of engagement that the international community believes necessary to restore democratic governance to Caracas.

As widespread disapproval across the region for a military coup persists and the U.S. government remains mired in its own political showdown, it is unlikely that Washington will sponsor or encourage a military coup d’état in Venezuela. However, Guaidó has already indirectly presented the United States with a way to support the struggling democratic opposition. By amplifying Guaidó’s message and drawing attention to the conflict — Washington has already contributed to Guaidó’s international image and credibility.

The United States and the Lima Group have already voiced public support for Guaidó and backed his denouncement of the Maduro regime as illegitimate. Taking it a step further, on January 15, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence spoke on the phone with Guaidó and expressed the U.S. government’s “unwavering support” for the opposition. That message was then amplified by a public video that the Vice President released on Twitter, expressing the U.S. government and American people’s support for both the Venezuelan opposition and general public.

In the video, Pence affirms that “We will stay with you until Democracy is restored and you reclaim your birthright of Libertad.” In response to the video, Maduro has called for a revision of diplomatic relations with the United States on television and on Twitter, claiming that Pence is overstepping his authority.

Diplomatic reprisals in U.S.-Venezuelan relations are nothing new. In 2008, President Hugo Chávez expelled U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy from Caracas, citing a U.S.-crafted coup plot against his administration. Since then, the United States has been unable to send an official ambassador to Venezuela, relying on Foreign Service Officers to serve as the Chargé d’Affaires. That tenuous diplomatic thread was finally cut last year after Maduro targeted the remaining leadership of the diplomatic mission and expelled the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Todd D. Robinson and the Deputy Chief of Mission Brian Naranjo. Given the current state of relations, it is difficult to see how Maduro can take any meaningful action against Washington short of military escalation, which would immediately undermine his efforts at diverting international engagement.

In addition to the brazen violation of civil liberties and human rights, the U.S. Government has denounced Venezuela’s burgeoning relationship with Russia. The Russian government has become a key ally of the Maduro government, providing aid in the form of debt-restructuring, the creation of the petro crypto-currency, and recently, procurement of military bomber planes. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly criticized American support for the Venezuelan opposition.

Trial by Fire

Regardless of the outcome, these events will prove to be a turning point in Venezuela. Either the opposition will succeed in rallying the people and the military to overthrow Maduro with the support of the Lima Group, or Maduro will demonstrate his unshakable control over Venezuela’s government. The culmination of the opposition’s appeal to the people combined with the gravitas placed upon the outcome by the international community has given the occasion particular weight. The opposition must demonstrate to the Venezuelan people and the international community that they can — and will — bring about a peaceful democratic transition. The time is now, or never.

In a grand gesture, Guaidó timed the widespread protests to coincide with the anniversary of the 1958 ousting of Venezuelan Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez. Responding to a fellow member of the National Assembly on Twitter, Guaidó proclaimed, “We only have one clear action: to remain united and firm for a democratic and free Venezuela.” The stage is set. Whatever follows will influence Venezuelan politics and governance for years to come.

This article was originally published on The International Scholar.

Trial by Fire: Guaidó Calls on Venezuela to Oust Maduro was originally published on Global Security Review.

Approximately twenty-two million civilians require immediate aid, 1.2 million cases of cholera have been reported, and 8.4 million are experiencing severe food insecurity.  The conflict in Yemen, which has become a battleground for a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, has resulted in the worst humanitarian crisis in existence today.

United States policy regarding the Arabian Peninsula has failed to address this tragedy. The U.S. has remained silent as its allies have contributed to increasing levels of human suffering. As peace talks start in Stockholm, the United States must call on Saudi Arabia to join the conversation for a peaceful resolution with the immediate goal being ensuring the security of Yemeni civilians.

For three years, the Saudis have been at war with the Houthis—a Shia rebel group that seized power in Yemen that has received support from Iran.  Saudi Arabia views the relationship between the Houthis and Iran as a threat, seeing the Houthis as Iranian proxies. Their response to the possibility of Iran expanding its influence on the Arabian Peninsula has been severe. The Kingdom has carried out air strikes and blockaded Yemen’s borders and ports, preventing essential food and supplies from reaching Yemen’s civilian population.

The United States has supported Saudi Arabia by providing the Kingdom with intelligence, weapons, and logistical support. Now, however, the U.S. needs to take an active role in paving a path to peace and security.

First, the United States must accept accountability. In August, the Saudi-led coalition used bombs purchased from the U.S. to carry out an air strike in Yemen.  The bombs hit a school bus and killed forty children.  The international community placed the blame on both Saudi Arabia and the United States.  The U.S. needs to acknowledge its role in the ongoing humanitarian crisis—failure to do so will damage the moral authority of the United States.

Second, the United States must assist Yemen in the road to recovery.  Washington must induce Riyadh to lift the blockades and halt air strikes. USAID could provide immediate life-saving assistance such as nutrition, clean drinking water, safe shelter, and treatment to those suffering from cholera. Doing so would prevent further spread of disease by administering vaccines to citizens in high-risk regions. Humanitarian intervention by a U.S.-led coalition may also alleviate some of the reputational damage that resulted from the Saudi air strikes.

Third—and most important—the United States needs to encourage and facilitate constructive dialogue between the opposing parties.  In November, the Houthis offered to agree to talks if the Saudis would agree to a cease-fire.  This was a sudden and surprising development.  On December 3rd, U.N. Special Envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, traveled to the capital city of Sana’a to work with the Houthis to set the stage to move negotiations forward.  The United States must exert substantial pressure on Saudi Arabia de-escalate and take concrete steps toward a ceasefire.

The Khashoggi murder will no doubt complicate relations with Saudi Arabia, but the United States also has pressing interests in Yemen: a lasting peace settlement and a resumption of humanitarian aid to Yemen’s suffering civilian population. Failure to do so will only lead to greater regional insecurity for years to come.

Time for the U.S. to Act on Yemen as Negotiations Begin in Sweden was originally published on Global Security Review.

Governments and institutions will be tested by considerable challenges over the next decade as the international order is restructured and global trends converge.

All forms of government in every region will face increasing tensions both domestic and foreign. In the short-term, these global trends will increase the threat posed by all types of terrorism, and the ability for asymmetrically-powerful state and non-state actors to adversely affect the International order and the global balance of power.

Tensions are rising because citizens around the world are raising questions about the relationship that exists between governments and themselves. The social contract that exists between society and their governments is unraveling as people demand increasing levels of security and prosperity. Globalization means that domestic conditions are shaped, to an ever-greater degree, by occurrences overseas.

Growing populism in the West threatens an international order governed by rule-of-law. Tensions between governing elites and their citizens are reshaping global geopolitics. A weakened United States would mean less of an emphasis on human rights and maintenance of global order.

Less of a U.S. presence on the global stage creates gaps for authoritarian powers like China and Russia. It also means a heightened risk of conflict arising between competing for regional powers like India and Pakistan or Iran and Saudi Arabia, and an international order comprised of competing “spheres of influence.”

1. Sharpening tensions and heightened doubts concerning the U.S. role in the world will continue for several years.

In the short term, the U.S. will have a diminished presence abroad due to domestic political divisions. These political divisions compounded by with the Trump administration’s preference for unilateral action, which threaten to isolate the U.S. diplomatically.

Economic crises and inequality have contributed to widening societal and class divisions. The number of men who are not working and not seeking work is at its highest since the Great Depression. However, incomes have risen slowly, and investors see high rates of return on both domestic and foreign investments.

Politically, the country is still profoundly divided. However, growing solidarity and activism around critical issues such as healthcare have been useful in checking executive and congressional power.

2. The European Union will need to implement badly needed reforms to maintain its legitimacy.

The Brexit vote of 2016 and rising popularity of far-right nationalist political parties in Western Europe has led many observers to question the long-term viability of a united Europe. In the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, many were concerned that European far-right politicians like Marine Le Pen would gain traction in their electoral contests.

However, despite considerable attempts by Le Pen’s campaign—and the Kremlin—Emmanuel Macron led a stunning rebuke of the populist trend circumventing the globe. Europe initially seemed to be trending away from the right as the United States Government continued to be paralyzed by the competing factions of the governing Republican Party. In light of a slew of populist and right-wing victories across E.U. member state, however, it’s clear that politics on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly polarized.

Rising ethnic, demographic, and economic tensions will make European integration more difficult. Furthermore, Europeans must repair the structural problems in E.U. institutions.

For example, E.U. agencies set monetary policy for members of the Eurozone; however, member states retain control over their financial and security obligations. This leaves poorer E.U. states like Greece with vast amounts of debt and decreasing growth prospects. There is no unified E.U. security policy; each member state determines its national security strategy.

3. Ongoing uncertainty surrounding the future North Korea’s nuclear program threaten East Asian security.

In North Korea, Kim Jong Un has consolidated his grip on power through patronage and fear and has doubled down on his nuclear and missile programs, developing long-range missiles that may soon endanger the continental USA.

Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington have a shared incentive to handle security risks in Northeast Asia, but a history mutual distrust, warfare, and occupation makes cooperation between the different parties difficult.

A resumption of North Korean provocations, such as nuclear and missile tests, may destabilize the balance of power in the region and result in the North’s immediate neighbors potential taking unilateral action to defend their security interests.  Kim is determined to secure international recognition of the North as a nuclear power, for security, prestige, and political legitimacy.

Contrary to his father and grandfather, he’s had substantial success in terms of achieving those goals.  He codified the North’s nuclear status in the party constitution in 2012 and reaffirmed it during the Party Congress in 2016.

Beijing faces a continuing strategic conundrum about the North.  Pyongyang’s behavior both undermines China’s argument that the US army presence in the region is anachronistic and demonstrates Beijing’s lack of influence–or perhaps lack of political will to exert influence—within its neighbor and customer.

North Korean behavior leads to tightening U.S. alliances, more assertive action by US allies, and, on occasion, greater cooperation between these partners themselves—and might lead to a change in Beijing’s approach to North Korea with time. However, long-simmering tensions between South Korea and Japan fueled by the South’s historical grievances may hinder Washington’s efforts to present a united front against North Korea.

4. Populism and dissent will spread across Latin America.

Leftist governments have been kicked out in Argentina, Peru, and Guatemala. Venezuela’s left-wing populist government is stripping the country of its democratic institutions in a sharp slide towards authoritarianism, leading to a sharp increase in lawlessness across the country.

Furthermore, while Venezuela doesn’t produce drugs, it’s become a major transport hub for drugs going to Europe or  Africa before being routed to Europe. Drug trafficking increases under as the rule of law decreases. After a 2009 coup in Honduras, the country was run by a fragile government—lawlessness increased dramatically.

Honduras now has one of the highest homicide rates in the world. Countries like the United States are seeing a significant increase in the number of people arriving from countries like Honduras that are plagued with violence.

5. Expect increasing assertiveness from Beijing and Moscow as both governments seek to lock in competitive advantages.

Beijing and Moscow will seek to lock in competitive advantages and also to right what they perceive as historical wrongs before economic and demographic trends can present impediments and the West regains its foundation.

Both China and Russia maintain worldviews where they’re rightfully dominant in their regions and able to form regional politics and economics to match their security and material interests.

Both have moved aggressively in latest years to exert more considerable influence in their regions, to contest the U.S., and also to force Washington to accept exclusionary regional spheres of influence—a situation that the US has historically opposed.

6. The standoff between Russia and the West will continue throughout 2019.

Diplomatic spats, strategic political and political tensions will last between Russia and the U.S. In Washington, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration may have few choices for relieving the strain because of increased checks on the president’s power and enlarged sanctions from the U.S. Congress.

In Moscow, meanwhile, forthcoming local and national elections will prevent the Kremlin from creating significant concessions. Consequently, sanctions enacted on Russia from the US along with the European Union probably will stay through the end of the year. Depending upon how investigations into Russia’s role at the 2016 U.S. Presidential election shape upward, Washington might even ramp up the political and financial pressure on Russia.

Similarly, North Korea will remain a factor in determining the direction of U.S.-Russian relations over the next several months. Russia will keep going along with the overtures that Washington has made to Pyongyang, but will skirt sanctions requirements and continue provide economic aid to North Korea as it sees fit.

7. China, for its part, may have domestic concerns to grapple with this year.

The Chinese Communist Party’s careful preparation for a change of direction was realized in the October 2017 party congress. The event reshuffled the highest ranks of the party and was a proof of President Xi Jinping’s near-absolute consolidation of power.

To date, all indications point to the Xi’s success in strengthening his grip over top decision-making bodies of both the Party and the state. Xi has already achieved the status of core leader of the Communist Party, the Chinese state and People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Xi has also managed to quickly promote a lot of his partners to prestigious positions in 2017 and 2018. Even more significant, party members nearly unanimously endorsed the addition of Xi’s philosophy of the Communist Party Constitution at the Party Congress, positioning him alongside the venerated figures of Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong.

8. Expect Persisting Volatility in Southeast Asia

Nuclear deployment requirements for naval-based delivery vehicles remove a safety valve that, until now, has kept atomic weapons stored separately from missiles in South Asia.

At-sea deployments of atomic weapons by India, Pakistan, and perhaps China, would increasingly militarize the Indian Ocean throughout the next two decades.

The presence of multiple nuclear powers with uncertain doctrine for controlling your stresses at sea incidents between nuclear-armed vessels increases the potential risk of miscalculation and inadvertent escalation.

New Delhi, however, will continue to offer smaller South Asian nations a stake in India’s financial growth through development assistance and increased connectivity to India’s economy, contributing to India’s broader effort to assert its role as the predominant regional power.

India will be the world’s fastest-growing economies throughout the next five years as China’s economy cools and growth elsewhere sputters, but internal tensions over inequality and religion will complicate its expansion.

9. Violent extremism, terrorism, and instability will continue to hang over Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the region’s fragile communal relations.

The threat of terrorism, from Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LET), Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and al-Qaeda and its affiliates as well as the Islamic State’s expansion and sympathy for associated ideologies—will remain prominent in the area.

Competition for jobs, coupled with discrimination against minorities, might contribute to the radicalization of the region’s youth, especially given unbalanced gender ratios favoring males in several nations.

Populism and sectarianism will intensify if Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan fail to provide employment and education for growing urban populations and officials continue to govern principally through identity politics.

10. The Middle East and North Africa will see continued, if not escalating instability.

Continuing conflict and lack of political and economic reform threaten poverty reduction, the area’s one last bright spot.  Resource dependence and foreign assistance have propped up elites even as it fostered widespread reliance on the nation by inhibiting markets, employment, and human capital.

With oil prices unlikely to recover to levels of the petroleum boom governments may have to limit cash payments and subsidies.  In the meantime, social networks have provided new tools for citizens to vent their political frustrations.  Conservative religious groups—including Brotherhood affiliates and movements—and ethnically-based organizations like those based on Kurdish identity are poised to be superior alternatives to weak governments in the region.

Such groups typically supply social services better than the nation and their politics resonate with a general public that is more conservative and religious than the region’s political and economic elites.

11. Sub-Saharan Africa will struggle with authoritarian regimes

Practices have changed, civil society groups have proliferated, and citizens across the region demand better and more just governance.  However, many nations continue to struggle with authoritarian rule, patronage politics, and favoritism.  Many leaders remain focused on political survival as opposed to reform–with a few term limitations.

Global economic headwinds also threaten improvement by keeping commodity prices low and investment weak.  Some nations who’ve made progress toward democracy remain fragile and predisposed towards violence corresponding elections.  Tensions between Muslim and Christian groups can escalate into conflict.

12. Threats from terrorist and insurgent groups will persist and are likely to become more decentralized.

The threat of terrorism is likely to increase as the means and the motivations of states, groups, and people to impose harm diversify. Prolonged conflicts and the info age allow terrorists to recruit and operate on a large scale, demonstrating the evolving nature of the threat.

Terrorism kills fewer people globally than crime or disease, but the potential for new capabilities reaching the hands of people bent on apocalyptic destruction is all too real. This ultimate low-probability, high-impact event underscores the imperative of international cooperation and state attention to the issue.

Terrorists will continue to justify their violence by their very own interpretations of religion, but several underlying drivers are also in play. Within nations, the breakdown of state structures in much of the Middle East carries on to create space for extremists.

The world order is changing. The question is, how?

The post-World War II international order that enabled today’s political, economic, and security arrangements and institutions is in question. As power diffuses worldwide, seats at the table of global decision making are reshuffled.  Today, aspiring powers seek to adjust the rules of the game and international context in a way beneficial to their interests.

This complicates reform of international institutions such as the UN Security Council or the Bretton-Woods institutions, also brings into question whether political, civil and human rights—hallmarks of liberal values and US leadership since 1945—will continue to be so.

Norms that were believed to be settled will be increasingly threatened if present trends hold, and consensus to build standards can be elusive as Russia, China, along with other actors such as the Islamic State seek to shape regions and international norms in their favor.

12 Predictions for Global Geopolitics for 2019 through 2025—and Beyond was originally published on Global Security Review.

The stated purpose of the new branch of service would be to protect U.S. space interests by overseeing debris and commercial movement. Implicitly, however, this could mark the first overt step towards the militarization of space, in order to maintain global hegemony and achieve strategic dominance over rival powers like China and Russia. Both countries have civilian and military space programs of their own, but could this move by the Trump administration lead to an arms race in space?

Ultimately, the creation of a sixth branch of the U.S. Armed Forces would have to be approved by Congress—and even if it isn’t, the Air Force would remain the service branch responsible for military strategy and operations in space as it is now. Regardless of what branch of the military is responsible, what are the ramifications for the militarization of space—by the United States and other powers?

Protecting National Interests Extends to Outer Space

The efforts of any one state to place armaments in space would disrupt the global balance of power, and encourage others to follow suit, setting in motion a race for strategic dominance that could well lead to weapons testing and further escalation. When on actor assumes a dominant position, rival actors will need act similarly in order to maintain deterrence and ensure the security of their respective national interests.

The rise of globalization and ever-increasing global inter-connectivity has led to a dependence on space-based technology like the Global Positioning System (GPS) for everything from simple navigation to the coordination of military operations. Such a reliance has made the destruction of satellites a priority for military planners in the event of a conflict.

As the potential for space-based threats grows, more world leaders will move to protect against the potential destruction of their space-based assets by deploying the necessary technology to deter such an attack.

Challenges of Arms Control in Space

Though the United Nations has advocated for a complete ban on the armament of space, it lacks the support of the United States in related Proposed Prevention of an Arms Race in Space (PAROS) resolutions. Since the U.S. has such a well-developed military, civilian, and commercial presence in space, it would be senseless to attempt to incur a treaty without U.S. participation, as other states would still feel the need to protect their interests.

Beyond the question of U.S. participation in any international conventions, a strong space-based arms control policy would still be difficult to implement. In space, almost anything can be used as a weapon. With enough speed in orbit, an object no larger than a rock can destroy a satellite. Simply put, even if something is not designed to be a weapon, it can be used as one in space. If policymakers cannot effectively identify what constitutes a weapon in space, weapons cannot be regulated or prohibited, making verification and enforcement close to impossible.

Consequences of Armament and Aggression in Space

The consequences of weapons testing and aggression in space could span generations, and current technological advances only increase the urgency for policymakers to pursue a limitations treaty. As it stands, there are three major ramifications of a potential arms race in space:

The destruction of satellites

As both financial and technological barriers to the space services industry have decreased, the number of governmental and private investors with assets in space has inevitably increased. There is now an abundance of satellites in space owned by multiple states and corporations. These satellites are used to not only coordinate military actions, but to perform more mundane tasks, like obtaining weather reports, or managing on-ground communications, and navigation.

Should states begin weapons testing in space, debris could cloud the orbit and make positioning new satellites impossible, disrupting our current way of life. More pressing, however, is that if a country’s satellites are successfully destroyed by an enemy state, military capabilities can be severely hindered or destroyed, leaving the country vulnerable to attack and unable to coordinate its military forces on the ground.

Diminished future use of near space

Whether caused by weapons testing or actual aggression, the subsequent proliferation of debris around the planet would damage our future ability to access space. Not only would debris act as shrapnel to preexisting assets in space, but it would also become much more difficult to launch satellites or rockets, hindering scientific research, space exploration, and commercial operations.

From the past fifty-odd years of activity in space alone, the debris left behind in Earth’s orbital field has already become hazardous to spacecraft — a main reason why the U.S. and the Soviet Union did not continue with ASAT testing during the Cold War. If greater pollution were to occur, space itself could be become unusable, resulting in the collapse of the global economic system, air travel, and various communications.

Power imbalances and proliferation on the ground

Only so many states currently have access to space—which means any militarization be by the few, while other states would be left to fend for themselves. This would establish a clear power imbalance that could breed distrust among nations, resulting in a more insecure world and a veritable power keg primed for war. Additionally, deterrence measures taken by states with access to space would escalate, attempting to build up weapons caches not dissimilar to the nuclear weapons stockpiling activities of the Cold War.

In any arms race, it is inevitable that more advanced weaponry is created. Yet, this does not only pose a risk to assets in space. Should a terrestrial war break out, this weaponry may eventually be deployed on the ground, and space-faring states would be able to capitalize on the power imbalance by using these new developments against states that have not yet broken into the space industry or developed equally-advanced weaponry.

Into the Future

The militarization of space would inevitably increase the chances of war, and also threaten the industries that rely on space to carry out their daily operations. Without treaties and resolutions to regulate and limit armament in space, the international community risks facing extreme consequences. Furthermore, with the history of U.S. disinterest in UN efforts to regulate space, the implementation of a meaningful, multilateral agreement for arms control in space is unlikely.

Ultimately, the international community will need to regulate actions, militarization, and the possibility of eventual armament in space sooner rather than later in order to reduce the threat of major war, economic destruction, and global insecurity.

What are the Consequences of Militarizing Outer Space? was originally published on Global Security Review.

On August 19, 2017, President Donald Trump gave his first speech to the UN General Assembly. In his speech, he stated that if the Pyongyang regime does not give up its nuclear program, the United States will have no choice but to “destroy North Korea. We have patience, but we have another option.”

Trump called the regime of Kim Jong-Un “depraved and responsible for the death, oppression, torture, and imprisonment of many citizens of the country.” He said North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is irresponsible and threatens the entire world with an “unthinkable loss of human life.” He said the North Korean leader is on a suicide mission for himself and his regime.

Trump tells UN: North Korea “Will be Destroyed” if Threats Persist was originally published on Global Security Review.