Diplomacy & Crisis News

There is a Turkish proverb: When an idiot throws a stone into a well, forty wise men can’t pull it out. Well, that’s what an anti-Muslim activist succeeded in doing last Saturday when he burned a Quran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm.

According to the perpetrator, Rasmus Paludan, the leader of a fringe Danish party, Stram Kurs (“Hard Line”), he was put up to the idea by a consultant for the right-wing Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats), who paid $30 for his demonstration permit. The Sweden Democrats provide parliamentary support for the Swedish government, but their view of Sweden’s NATO membership is ambivalent. Whatever the motive for the provocation, it has thrown a spanner in the works.

Adding insult to injury, ten days earlier a pro-Kurdish group hanged an effigy of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan upside down from a lamppost outside Stockholm’s City Hall.

At the best of times, the Turkish president has a short fuse but burning the Quran played into his hands. With popular support, he roundly condemned the provocation and declared Sweden could no longer expect Turkey’s support for its application for NATO membership. A visit by Sweden’s minister of defense has been canceled, and Turkey has postponed NATO accession talks with Sweden and Finland.

Protests have also spread to the Middle East, Pakistan, and Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population. However, Paludan’s provocation is not the first time this has taken place in Scandinavia.

In 2005 the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in protest against the fact that a Danish writer couldn’t find an illustrator for a children’s book about the Prophet. Eleven Muslim ambassadors called on the Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen “to take all those responsible to task under law of the land.” Rasmussen replied that “The freedom of expression has a wide scope and the Danish government has no means of influencing the press.”

There were widespread demonstrations, some of them violent, in a number of Muslim countries and a boycott of Danish goods. Turkey, as it already intends to do in the present situation, made political capital out of the situation, and strongly opposed Rasmussen’s appointment as NATO’s new secretary-general.

America also has its Bible burners, but their activities are met with a shrug. However, there is no doubt Paludan’s demonstration is gratuitously offensive and has met with international condemnation.

In Erika López Prater v. Trustees of the Hamline University of Minnesota  America faces a conflict similar to that of the cartoon crisis in Denmark. Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, showed a fourteenth-century painting of the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson on Islamic art, and was fired because the university considered her conduct “undeniably Islamophobic.”

Hamline has admitted its action was “a misstep” but López Prater has opened a lawsuit claiming religious discrimination and defamation.

On the whole, there seems to be confusion as to what constitutes Islamophobia and criticism of political Islam. The Turkish constitution states in its preamble that sacred religious feelings shall absolutely not be involved in state affairs and politics as required by the principle of secularism.

Further, in Article 24, “no one shall be allowed to exploit or abuse religion or religious feelings, or things held sacred by religion, in any manner whatsoever, for the purpose of personal or political interest or influence, or for even partially basing the fundamental, social, economic, political, and legal order of the State on religious tenets.”

Yet, as I have pointed out here, Erdogan has imposed his Islamist mindset not only on Turkey’s domestic policy (including the economy) but also foreign policy.

With regard to freedom of expression, there is also a conflict of interest between the Islamic and Western views. The Islamic definition, as defined by the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam (1990), limits the expression of opinion to a manner that would not be contrary to Sharia—Islamic law based on the Quran—which is incompatible with the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

But Turkey is a signatory to both the Cairo Declaration and the International Covenant. Furthermore, as a member of the Council of Europe, it is also a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Erdogan’s chief advisor and spokesperson, Ibrahim Kalin, in his keynote speech at the Istanbul Forum in 2012, mentioned the growing gap between Islamic and Western notions of what constitutes sacred religious rights and freedom of expression.

In Wednesday’s meeting of the Turkish National Security Council, it was underlined that states wishing to join NATO should also act in accordance with the law and spirit of the alliance.

It would be timely to point out that NATO in its preamble states that the organization is founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law.

Robert Ellis is an international advisor at the Research Institute for European and American Studies in Athens.

Image: Mustafa Kirazli / Shutterstock.com

Planned economics is enjoying yet another revival. Climate protection advocates and anti-capitalists are demanding that capitalism be abolished and replaced with a planned economy. Otherwise, they claim, humanity has no chance of survival.

In Germany, a book called Das Ende des Kapitalismus (The End of Capitalism) is a bestseller. Its author, Ulrike Hermann, has become a regular guest on all the talk shows. She openly promotes a planned economy, although this has already failed once in Germany—just like everywhere else it has been tried. Unlike under classical socialism, in a planned economy, though companies are not nationalized and are allowed to remain in private hands, it is the state that specifies precisely what and how much is produced.

There would be no more flights and no more private motor vehicles. The state would determine almost every facet of daily life—for example, there would no longer be any single-family houses and no one would be allowed to own a second home. New construction would be banned because it is harmful to the environment. Instead, existing land would be distributed “fairly,” with the state deciding how much space is appropriate for each individual. And the consumption of meat would only be allowed as an exception because meat production is harmful to the climate.

In general, people should not eat so much: 2,500 calories a day are enough, says Herrmann, who proposes a daily intake of 500 grams of fruit and vegetables, 232 grams of whole meal cereals or rice, 13 grams of eggs, and 7 grams of pork. “At first glance, this menu may seem a bit meager, but Germans would be much healthier if they changed their eating habits,” reassures this critic of capitalism. And since people would be equal, they would also be happy: “Rationing sounds unpleasant. But perhaps life would even be more pleasant than it is today, because justice makes people happy.”

Such ideas are by no means new. Popular Canadian critic of capitalism and globalization Naomi Klein admits that she initially had no particular interest in climate change. Then, in 2014, she wrote a hefty 500-page tome called This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. Why did she suddenly become so interested? Well, prior to writing this book, Klein’s main interest was in the fight against free trade and globalization. She says quite openly: “I was propelled into a deeper engagement with it partly because I realized it could be a catalyst for forms of social and economic justice in which I already believed.” She calls for a “carefully planned economy” and government guidelines on “how often we drive, how often we fly, whether our food has to be flown to get to us, whether the goods we buy are built to last…how large our homes are.” She also embraces a suggestion that the most well-off 20 percent of the population should accept the largest cuts in order to create a fairer society.

These quotes—to which many more such statements in Klein’s book could be added—confirm that the most important goal of anticapitalists such as Herrmann and Klein is not to improve the environment or find solutions for climate change. Their real goal is to eliminate capitalism and establish a state-run, planned economy. In reality, this would involve the abolition of private property, even if, technically, property rights continued to exist because all that would be left is the formal legal title of ownership. The “entrepreneur” would still own his factory, but what and how much it produces would be decided by the state alone. He would become an employed manager of the state.

The biggest mistake planned economy advocates have always made was believing in the illusion that an economic order could be planned on paper; that an author could sit at a desk and come up with the ideal economic order. All that would be left to do would be to convince enough politicians to implement the economic order in the real world. It may sound cruel, but the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia also thought that way.

The most radical socialist experiment in history, which took place in Cambodia in the mid to late 1970s, was originally conceived in the universities of Paris. This experiment, which Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot called the “Super Great Leap Forward,” in honor of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, is most revealing because it offers an extreme demonstration of the belief that a society can be artificially constructed on the drawing board.

Today, it is often claimed that Pol Pot and his comrades wanted to implement a puritan form of “primitive communism,” and their rule is painted as a manifestation of unrestrained irrationality. In fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The Khmer Rouge’s masterminds and leaders were intellectuals from upstanding families who had studied in Paris and were members of the French Communist Party. Two of the masterminds, Khieu Samphan and Hu Nim, had written Marxist and Maoist dissertations in Paris. In fact, the intellectual elite who had studied in Paris occupied almost all of the government’s leading positions after the seizure of power.

They had worked out a detailed Four-Year Plan that listed all the products the country would need in exacting detail (needles, scissors, lighters, cups, combs, etc.). The level of specificity was highly unusual, even for a planned economy. For example, it said, “Eating and drinking are collectivized. Dessert is also collectively prepared. Briefly, raising the people’s living standards in our own country means doing it collectively. In 1977, there are to be two desserts per week. In 1978 there is one dessert every two days. Then in 1979, there is one dessert every day, and so on. So people live collectively with enough to eat; they are nourished with snacks. They are happy to live in this system.”

The party, the sociologist Daniel Bultmann writes in his analysis, “planned the lives of the population as if on a drawing board, fitting them into pre-determined spaces and needs.” Everywhere, gigantic irrigation systems and fields were to be built to a uniform, rectilinear model. All regions were subjected to the same targets, as the Party believed that standardized conditions in fields of precisely the same size would also produce standardized yields. With the new irrigation system and the checkerboard rice fields, nature was to be harnessed to the utopian reality of a fully collectivist order that eliminated inequality from day one.

Yet the arrangement of irrigation dams in equal squares with equally square fields in their center led to frequent flooding because the system totally ignored natural water flows. 80 percent of the irrigation systems did not work—in the same way that the small blast furnaces did not work in Mao’s Great Leap Forward.

Throughout history, capitalism has evolved, just as languages have evolved. Languages were not invented, constructed, or conceived. Rather, they are the result of uncontrolled spontaneous processes. Although the aptly named “planned language” Esperanto was invented as early as 1887, it has completely failed to establish itself as the world’s most widely spoken foreign language, as its inventors had expected. Socialism has much in common with a planned language, a system devised by intellectuals. Its adherents strive to gain political power in order to then implement their chosen system. None of these systems have ever worked anywhere—but this apparently does not stop intellectuals from believing that they have found the philosopher’s stone and have finally devised the perfect economic system in their ivory tower. It is pointless to discuss ideas like Herrmann’s or Klein’s in detail because the whole constructivist approach, i.e. the idea that an author can “dream up” an economic system in their heads or on paper, is wrong.

Sociologist and historian Rainer Zitelmann is the author of the book In Defense of Capitalism, published in 27 languages.

Image: Flickr/White House.

“Every ten years, it is decline time in the United States,” wrote journalist Josef Joffe in 2009. Yet the story of U.S. decline has constantly turned out to be the story of the boy who cried wolf. Time and again the United States has shown that its leading position in international politics, what some have classified as a hegemony, is unique and capable of withstanding a variety of economic, political, and security crises.

What is distinctive about U.S. hegemonic endurance, however, is that it does not rest primarily on coercive power, international regimes, capitalist ideology, or sheer wealth. As data shows, U.S. relative power is declining in all of the aforementioned dimensions. Yet this is not the case when it comes to the U.S. global monetary centrality. Even in times of severe economic and monetary crisis, such as the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, or the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, we have not witnessed such a decline. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The U.S. dollar fortified its global centrality after each and every crisis. This remained the case, currently as well, during the global pandemic of 2020–22 and its related economic aftershocks. Recognizing the link between monetary centrality and overall international influence is critical if the United States policy is to sustain U.S. power globally.

Predictions suggesting that perhaps the euro, renminbi, or IMF special drawing rights (SDR) would replace the dollar have not panned out, primarily because the system surrounding the U.S. dollar reinforces its centrality. But what if the fundamentals of that system were displaced through a new modality of currency—a change not simply in who stood behind the currency but a change in currency form itself? Our research indicates that this prospect is what should concern American decision-makers and those that rely heavily on American centrality.

Little Snakes

Two of the most often evoked substitutes for the U.S. dollar are the euro and the renminbi. However, both lack the market, institutional, and geopolitical fundamentals for such an endeavor. As such, they do not generate confidence, which is the crucial criterion for a currency to be central to global economic activity. Both alternatives remain subject to greater uncertainty, and thus reliability, than the U.S. dollar.

Looking at the euro first: the European financial system is still dependent on the United States and the U.S. dollar. U.S. financial markets account for 30 percent of the movement in the euro financial markets, whereas the number is only 6 percent in reverse. The eurozone lacks a clear authority. In contrast, everyone knows that behind the U.S. dollar is a political entity and an institution that makes decisions and vouches for those decisions. Who is the Euro’s political head, who is the Euro’s guarantor? There are no eurobonds. Lastly, the euro does not reach beyond its region. Almost two-thirds of all Euro “banknotes exports” stay on the European continent as they are obtained by non-eurozone European states, and only 50 percent of EU trade is invoiced in euros. Benjamin Cohen stated in 2009: “Europe’s money in a sense could turn out always to be the ‘currency of the future’—forever aspiring to catch up with the dollar but, like an asymptote, destined never to quite get there.”

Regarding the renminbi, Standard Chartered Bank’s index of renminbi globalization displays global stagnation since 2015. There is no genuine global demand for the renminbi. This is not a surprise as the Chinese economy’s foundations are underlined by demographic decline, falling labor productivity, issues with transparency and property rights, housing and financial bubbles, and rising debt. Institutionally, China lacks the political will to change domestic policies that would enable the renminbi a greater global role: open financial accounts within the balance of payments, floating not managed exchange rates, full foreign access to China’s asset market with legal and property rights, and central bank independence. It is difficult to see how China might move forward with necessary reforms since party elites, state-owned enterprises, and local governments that currently dominate China’s political economy all have everything to lose with such relaxation. Moreover, Chinese foreign loans are by and large denominated in U.S. dollars, not in renminbi. China is thus a bank-driven economy, which is potentially prone to burst. Again, fundamentals that do not inspire confidence.

A Crucial Threat: Central Bank Digital Currencies

A third, and we argue a more likely threat to U.S. dollar centrality, are Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Our claim rests on the assumption that cryptocurrencies indicate a changing nature of the economy—akin to the introduction of fiat money or financial economy.

By and large, there are three types of cryptocurrencies: private cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and CBDCs. Although all are tokens of a new era (pun intended), only the latter present a challenge for the U.S. dollar, while the first two suffer from embedded flaws that will cap their potential preeminence.

Private cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin suffer from several deficiencies contributing to their volatility and, in the words of former IMF director and current Europen Central Bank president Christine Lagard, “le Bitcoin, ce n’est pas une monnaie.” They do not function as a currency (i.e. as a store of value, unit of account, and medium of exchange). Rather, they should be understood as (risky) financial assets. Stablecoins are digital assets that are pegged to a traditional currency. So, when the latter moves, this puts pressure on the issuer of the former to assure the peg. There are legitimate empirical doubts if stablecoins can deliver when the situation will be dire’—i.e. if each stablecoin can indeed be backed by its respective currency.

Finally, there are CBDCs. Our proposition is that it would be incorrect to assume the digital economy and digital monetary relations as merely an extension of the traditional economic world. Although the actors are the same in both worlds, their respective power is not. It is possible that the fundamentals in the digital space can reset and therein lies the threat to U.S. global monetary centrality. The relations between the state, individual, private bank, and international relations will be profoundly impacted by the introduction of CBDCs. Although the political and legal authority is not questioned when it comes to CBDC, its revolutionary potential comes in a new source of monetary power and monetary relations.

Specifically, CBDCs potentially can leapfrog the intermediary role of private banks, which has been a mainstay of traditional economic activity. Under fully implemented CBDC arrangements, efficiency and profitable economic activity may dictate that citizens and business hold their electronic wallets directly with a central bank. In other words, private banks could potentially run out of business as the transactional activity of economic exchange bypasses them and central banks managing CBDCs become direct support institutions. Policy surrounding the introduction of CBDCs is not being coordinated globally. This could exacerbate market forces driving a change in this fundamental institutional arrangement. Central banks are closely observing each other’s CBDC activities. Some even cooperate in pilot projects and research. Yet, even joint research about an interoperability system for CBDCs, the most advanced is the mCBDC endeavor, does not constitute nor assure a coordinated approach in designing the international CBDC architecture.

Perhaps the best example of how the introduction of CBDCs could threaten the centrality of the U.S. dollar is the eurodollar market. This market has been a crucial mainstay reinforcing U.S. dollar centrality. But what would a digital eurodollar market look like? Would this market even exist under the architecture of no intermediate banks? If not, then what would generate preferences for the usage of e-dollar not e-euro nor e-yuan? There are multiple scenarios and designs of how CBDSs can be introduced. We can assume that there will be a period of trial and error, in which multiple alternative architectures will exist. These are the questions and challenges that the United States needs to face if it wishes to solidify its global economic centrality.

One of the reasons why no one challenges the greenback is that there is no alternative. In the emerging digital currency economy this is not the case. The advantages of the real U.S. dollar are not transcended onto the e-dollar automatically. Potentially, the e-yuan, the Chinese CBDC, could have a first-mover advantage. If e-yuan really takes off as an internationally leading CBDC, then China would be in a good position to determine the rules, standards, and economic trends of CBDCs globally. Or in other words, China would center the global digital economy around itself—which in fact is essential for hegemony.

Although the e-yuan project has several deficiencies, the United States should not be a passive observer assuming its traditional dollar advantages will hold against this new technology. Ultimately, setting up an international CBDC order will not be a consequence of “being the first,” but “getting it right” if U.S. policy recognizes how this all relates to its position in the world. Questions of security, personal freedom concerns, a transparent legal framework, universality, and the very manner in which a CBDC is introduced (token or account based) can outweigh the first-mover advantage—but only if the United States positions itself in a strategic fashion. Whatever the Chinese do technically, it will not be simply adopted by others without the aforementioned ethical and political considerations. Therefore, the United States should step up with its own CBDC project as part of an international strategy.

What Should the United States Do?

In the past, U.S. hegemony endured because it withstood the test to renew itself and incorporate new technologies and innovations that reinforced an imbalance of global power in its favor. The United States was able to generate the buy-in dynamic of the rest of the world regardless of the novel nature of the economy. Its objective in digital monetary relations should be the same – meaning it should seek a policy environment in which other states in the system reinforce continued centrality as it introduces the e-dollar.

We endorse proposals made by the Roosevelt Institute to build efficient, inclusive monetary and financial systems, expand the emerging FedNow payment system, take on a serious study of a public option for banking offered by the U.S. Federal Reserve or Treasury Department, and regulate the stablecoin market. We view these as necessary tactical advancements. Yet, without a strategic framework guiding them, they will not reinforce the core element that itself reproduces American advantages.

The United States should as soon as possible explore the introduction of the e-dollar with a strategic objective to advance the principles that have supported the liberal economic order it created at the end of the Second World War. Rapidness is necessary so that it signals to the world that it is aware of the changing nature of the economy.

Second, it should strategically seek a public-private alignment for the future in which its big-tech retail companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and others, universally accept payments also in e-dollars. Subsequently, it should make efforts to other companies to follow suit.

Next, it should make clear that changes to the architecture of the e-dollar are likely to be made in the future—it should create an early regulatory oversight mechanism that is flexible and allows for adaptive change as clarity about fundamentals become clearer. As the digital economy evolves, so too will solutions for assuring the advancement of liberal democratic values such as privacy and transparency. The United States, if it seeks to continue to lead in the latter twenty-first century, must intentionally serve as the vanguard for introducing new digital financial instruments. This is why close cooperation with the fintech industry, think tanks, and other stakeholders is necessary along with cooperation with other liberal democratic currencies. Essentially, the United States should lead the development of e-financial markets.

Lastly, the United States should develop a network of bilateral relations with other states issuing CBDCs and design bilaterally tailored agreements that would include the determination of the exchange rate of their CBDCs, exchange of information and innovations, and other rules for joining the two e-financial markets. Such bilateral approaches will serve as confidence-building mechanisms and are easier to address than multilateral larger arrangements.

Change is coming. The potential for CBDCs must be regarded not as a technical extension of current economics, but as a resetting of some core fundamentals. The United States cannot be on auto-pilot and expect its global dominance to sustain. That will require strategic action that shapes the emergence of CBDCs. Ceding the initiative to others in this area is not simply about an economic transactional mechanism—it is about the centrality of American global power. A centrality that must be protected now.

Dr. Igor Kovac is Secretary at the Government Information Security Office of the Republic of Slovenia and a Research Affiliate at the Center for Cyber Strategy and Policy at the University of Cincinnati.

Professor Richard Harknett is Co-Director of the Ohio Cyber Range Institute.

The views expressed are the authors’ and do not represent any department or agency of the governments of the United States or Slovenia.

Image: Shuttersock.

Despite the F-22 Raptor’s reputation as the world’s most capable air superiority fighter, the stealth jet has lost a number of notional dogfights over the years to older and less advanced platforms like the F-16 and even the Navy’s electronic-warfare specialist, the EA-18G Growler. But few exercises have done more damage to the mighty Raptor’s reputation than a series of training dogfights with German Eurofighter Typhoons that took place just about a decade ago.

These losses may have been notional, but some people clearly took them seriously. So seriously, in fact, that German Eurofighters were spotted wearing F-22 kill markings on their fuselages after telling the press that they had “Raptor salad for lunch.”

With the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance fighter cruising toward service in the coming decade, it now seems likely that the mighty Raptor will retire without ever firing a shot at another aircraft in anger, making these simulated combat exercises and a handful of exciting intercepts the extent of the Raptor’s air-to-air legacy.

So what is that legacy exactly? Is the F-22 truly as dominant as people believe? Or is this fighter’s biggest advantage not stealth… but hype?

Where it all started…

Arguments about the F-22 and Eurofighter Typhoon largely stem from German Eurofighters’ participation in the Air Force’s large-scale Red Flag air combat exercises over Alaska in 2012.

Red Flag is an advanced aerial combat training course that pits a wide variety of aircraft, often from multiple nations, against large-scale and realistic threats meant to simulate a real near-peer fight.

That year, Germany sent 150 Airmen and eight Eurofighter Typhoons from JG 74, or the Luftwaffe’s 74th Tactical Air Force Wing, to Eielson AFB in Alaska to participate in a wide variety of missions over two weeks. Included among them was a series of close-range Basic Fighter Maneuver (BFM) drills with America’s Raptors. BFM, of course, is fighter-pilot parlance for dog fights.

After the exercises were over, Germany’s Eurofighter pilots arrived at 2012’s Farnborough International Air Show, where they were quick to discuss their victories over the F-22. According to David Cenciotti’s coverage for The Aviationist, Germany’s Typhoon pilots explained that when the F-22 was flying with external fuel tanks attached and fighting within-visual range, Typhoons were often able to outclass the Raptor.

How does the Eurofighter Typhoon compare to the F-22 Raptor?

Despite their generational differences, the F-22 Raptor and Eurofighter Typhoon actually have a number of things in common. They were both originally designed to serve as air superiority fighters born out of the Cold War, with the Typhoon first taking to the skies in 1994 and the F-22 following behind in 1997. Likewise, both fighters ultimately entered service in the early-to-mid 2000s, with the Typhoon entering active duty in 2003 and the Raptor, once again, following behind in 2005.

But despite these aircraft being designed at around the same time to serve in similar capacities, they differ dramatically in how they go about accomplishing their mission.

The F-22 Raptor was always meant to be a revolution in airpower, leaning heavily into America’s groundbreaking stealth technology to produce what was—and remains—the stealthiest operational fighter on the face of the planet. But it’s not just stealth that makes the Raptor a capable platform. It also boasts a high degree of sensor fusion and advanced avionics that allow for an extreme degree of situational awareness while reducing cognitive load for the pilot. In other words, the F-22’s onboard computers allow the pilot to devote more attention to the fight and less to operating the aircraft.

“When you’re flying the Raptor, you’re not thinking about flying the Raptor,” explained F-22 pilot Randy Gordon in a lecture he gave at MIT, “You’re thinking about employing the Raptor. Flying is secondary.”

But the F-22 isn’t all about stealth and sensor fusion. It also incorporates elements of what might be considered 4th-generation dogfighting design: like thrust vector control — or the ability to orient its jet nozzles independent of the airframe to perform incredibly aerobatic maneuvers, a high thrust-to-weight ratio, and an M61A2 20mm Gatling gun that can fire its onboard 480 rounds at a blistering rate of 6,000 per minute.

“Raptor has vector thrust: Typhoon doesn’t,” RAF Typhoon pilot and squadron commander Rich Wells told Breaking Defense in 2013. “What the aircraft can do, it’s incredible. The Typhoon just doesn’t do that.”

And while it usually carries a total of eight weapons internally (six AMRAAMs and two AIM-9 Sidewinders), it can be fitted with four external pylon stations for additional munitions when it’s tired of speaking softly and decides to become its own big stick.

As a result, the F-22 bridges two combat philosophies — offering such a high degree of stealth and situational awareness that it can win most fights before the opponent even knows that it’s there, alongside a highly respectable slew of traditional dogfighting traits that allow it to stand and swing with the most dynamic hotrod dogfighters of the previous generation.

The Eurofighter Typhoon, on the other hand, wasn’t aiming to reinvent the existing air superiority model, so much as to perfect it as it was. Its delta-wing design, a shape nearly adopted by the F-22’s defunct bomber sibling, offers a high degree of subsonic maneuverability alongside increased lift and range. The design, as well as the materials that make up the Typhoon, all lend it a higher degree of stealth than you might find in most comparably advanced 4th-generation fighters.

In fact, according to Eurofighter promotional materials:

The aircraft is built with advanced composite materials to deliver a low radar profile and strong airframe. Only 15% of the aircraft’s surface is metal, delivering stealth operation and protection from radar-based systems

Like many other fighters, including the F-22, the Typhoon also leverages electronic warfare capabilities to obscure its radar return. And unlike the maintenance-heavy Raptor, the Typhoon was designed to be easy to maintain, assembled out of 15 interchangeable modules to minimize repair time. When up close and personal, the Typhoon’s Mauser BK27mm gun fires at either 1,000 or 1,700 rounds per minute, with 150 rounds carried onboard.

Since entering service, the Typhoon has matured into an extremely capable multi-role platform, leaving its air superiority roots behind to become one of the most well-rounded fighters in service today, leveraging its 13 hard points for a wide variety of mission sets.

“The Eurofighter is certainly, as far as smoothness of controls and the ability to pull (and sustain high G forces), very impressive,” explained Gen. John P. Jumper, former Air Force Chief of Staff and among the few pilots to have seat time in both the Raptor and Typhoon. “That is what it was designed to do, especially the version I flew, with the avionics, the color moving map displays, etc. — all absolutely top notch. The maneuverability of the airplane in close-in combat was also very impressive.”

The Typhoons pair of Eurojet EJ200 afterburning turbofan engines aren’t quite as powerful as the Raptor’s, propelling the Eurofighter to a top speed of Mach 2, vice the Raptors 2.25 — but top speed doesn’t mean much in a fight, and the Eurofighter’s comparatively lower weight allows for a better thrust-to-weight ratio for the Typhoon (in its interceptor configuration) than a similarly equipped Raptor.

F-22 vs. Eurofighter Typhoon: What do we know about the exercises?

Although many details remain murky, there are some things we know for sure about these 2012 dogfight exercises. Based on pilot statements, we know that at least some (if not all) of them were one-on-one engagements. Most importantly, they occurred within visual range with a number of reports stating that the Raptor was carrying stealth (and aerobatics) hindering external fuel tanks.

This distinction is essential because it means the fighting began under a forced pretense that effectively neutered the Raptor’s greatest strength: its ability to use stealth and situational awareness to dictate how an engagement begins and, if the reports of fuel tanks are true, its aerobatic maneuverability.

In real life, F-22 pilots would almost certainly be aware of the Typhoon before the Typhoon was aware of it, allowing the Raptor to put itself into an advantageous position before the fighting began (or simply taking out the Typhoon from beyond visual range). And it practically goes without saying that no pilot would dogfight for their lives with external fuel tanks still hanging from their wings.

This type of exercise is common in military training, however, and could be compared to offensive and defensive positions in scholastic wrestling. A neutral start in wrestling begins with both athletes on their feet — this would be like two fighters flying into an exercise in the same way they might in real life.

Starting in a defensive (or disadvantaged) position, on the other hand, is when one wrestler begins the period on their hands and knees, with their opponent next to them on one knee with an arm over their back (the advantage). In the case of these specific exercises, the F-22 played the role of the disadvantaged wrestler starting from its knees — playing to the Eurofighter’s strengths, rather than its own.

But like in wrestling, we should note that starting in a defensive or disadvantaged position isn’t an excuse for losing. It’s just part of the game.

Some allowances were also made for the Eurofighter before the fighting began. While the F-22 was carrying external fuel tanks that, to some extent, compromise both its aerobatic and stealth performance, the Eurofighter Typhoon that participated in one-on-one dogfights against the Raptor was allowed to fly not only without fuel tanks, but without any external munitions at all. This not only improved the Typhoon’s maneuverability, but it also couldn’t happen in a real fight lest the Eurofighter be left with nothing but its guns.

“There were two mornings where we flew against them 1v1. We pulled off all the tanks to get the most alpha [angle of attack]; the Eurofighter really is an animal with no tanks,” Germany’s Maj. Marc Gruene, one of the pilots that participated in the drills, explained.

How many of each fighter participated in these drills, what the rules of engagement were, and what the final kill ratios for each fighter were are all details that neither nation has disclosed, though there have been a number of claims made online. While these claims haven’t been confirmed, they all report more wins for the F-22 than the Eurofighter, but F-22s clearly took home some losses as well.

Today’s Eurofighter Typhoons come equipped with both a helmet-mounted targeting system to engage enemy fighters off-boresight (without aiming the nose of the aircraft at them), as well as the PIRATE infrared search and track (IRST) system that’s potentially capable of spotting stealth fighters at distances as great as 30 miles out. This would have been a significant advantage over the F-22 — which carries neither capability to date — but at the time of these dogfight exercises, these systems were still being rolled out to Germany’s Air Force, and the Typhoons that participated in the drills did not have them.

What happened when the F-22 and Eurofighter squared off?

According to the German pilots, once the fighting began, the F-22’s thrust-vector control (TVC) actually hindered the Raptor, rather than helping it when sparring in close quarters with the Typhoon.

“The key is to get as close as possible to the F-22 and stay there. They didn’t expect us to turn so aggressively,” Gruene told Combat Aircraft magazine back in 2012. “As soon as you get to the merge… the Typhoon doesn’t necessarily have to fear the F-22.”

The Merge, for clarification’s sake, isn’t just the name of a great aviation newsletter. It’s also what fighter pilots call it when two fighters meet head-on in a close-quarters pass.

TVC does allow a fighter to perform extreme maneuvers, but they come at a high cost. In a dogfight, airspeed is life, and the exotic displays TVC allows all scrub a great deal of it. When the F-22 uses its thrust-vectoring nozzles to turn on a dime, the jet is vulnerable until it can regain airspeed. If it doesn’t manage to score a kill immediately after performing such a maneuver, the Raptor becomes easy prey until its powerful pair of F-119-PW-100 turbofan engines can get all 70,000 pounds of fighter moving again.

Here’s how it was explained by an unnamed Eurofighter test pilot to Cenciotti:

If you are ‘defensive’ and your aircraft has Thrust Vectoring, you can possibly outturn your enemy, but that most likely won’t prove to be a great idea: an energy fighter like the Typhoon will conveniently ‘use the vertical’ to retain energy and aggressively reposition for a missile or gun shot. Also the subsequent acceleration will be extremely time (and fuel) consuming, giving your opponent the opportunity to tail chase you forever, exploiting all its short range weapon array.

But even on the offensive, using TVC to quickly orient the nose of your fighter toward the enemy isn’t always a good idea either. Because aggressive maneuvers strip the fighter of energy, you may score a kill against the opponent in front of you, but you’re left vulnerable to any others nearby. This inherent issue with thrust vectoring combat tactics is really why no other American fighters are equipped with it, and in fact, Raptor pilots themselves will tell you that the real benefit of TVC in their aircraft is maintaining a degree of maneuverability while flying at a high angle of attack when control surfaces aren’t as effective, rather than performing air show maneuvers in a dogfight.

We know for sure that at least some (likely two) Eurofighters actually scored notional kills against their F-22 opponents in these drills. That story was quickly picked up by news outlets around the world, eager for a story about America’s expensive Raptor failing to live up to expectations.

What we don’t know, however, is how many kills Raptors scored against Typhoons, though it seems clear from official statements that the number was definitely not zero. In other words, the story wasn’t that Raptors consistently lost to Eurofighters, but rather, that sometimes they did.

So what does that mean, exactly?

When aviation buffs start squaring off in the comments sections below articles and videos about their favorite (or least favorite) fighter platforms, it usually doesn’t take long for the discourse to stop sounding like a well-informed debate and start sounding like 3rd graders arguing about whose dad can beat up who’s. The complex context of air combat gives way to oversimplification and hyperbole until everything devolves into ad hominem attacks and seemingly made-up and uncitable statistics.

What can I say — Airplane folks go hard.

There are, however, reasonable arguments to be made from both sides of this debate — which I’ll try to capture below:

The Raptor Fan Argument

Those in the Raptor camp will contend that exercises like these, with their contrived circumstances and intentionally one-sided rules of engagement may be good for training, but they’re a poor measure of a fighter’s actual performance in the absence of broader context. The very nature of these exercises set out to put the Raptor at a disadvantage, eliminating the platform’s greatest strengths — its stealth and beyond-visual range capabilities, in favor of an old-fashioned shoot-out the likes of which haven’t been seen at scale since the Vietnam War. According to media reports, the F-22 “decimated” the Typhoon when able to engage from beyond visual range because it didn’t have to fly with one wing tied behind its back.

In a real fight, the F-22 would likely be aware of the Typhoon’s presence well before the Typhoon was aware of it, and even if the Eurofighter and pilot proved too quick on the stick to be taken out with an AMRAAM at long distance, the Raptor could use its superior situational awareness and low observability to close in on its European foe from an advantageous position, greatly improving its chances of success.

And perhaps most importantly of all, Raptor fans will argue that Germany was bragging about scoring a few kills against the Raptor… but they never once claimed that the Eurofighter won more sparring matches than the Raptor did. They simply claimed that it won some, and that was with a number of distinct advantages handed to them.

The fact of the matter is, the headline-grabbing story wasn’t about Eurofighters dominating the F-22… It was about two of them managing to score wins at all against an aircraft many think of as invincible.

The Typhoon Fan Argument

Those in the Eurofighter Typhoon’s camp, on the other hand, will argue that these exercises, like real combat, aren’t about being fair. The Eurofighter’s ability to stand and scrap with the Raptor in close quarters is proof positive that the Typhoon is capable of competing with the most advanced (and expensive) fighters on the planet when it comes to close-quarters air combat.

And that, combined with its improved avionics and beyond-visual range capabilities that have manifested since that interaction, make the Eurofighter Typhoon one of the best pound-for-pound fighters anywhere on the planet.

Its foreign-sales price is, after all, right around $124 million — which is an incredible bargain compared to the estimated $400 million or so per Raptor, at least, when you include its research and development costs in each F-22’s price tag.

Even if Raptors did score more kills against Typhoons than the Germans did against Raptors as a number of sources have reported, the fact that the 4th generation Eurofighter was a genuine threat to the F-22 at all proves that its supremacy isn’t as assured as so many Raptor fanboys like to believe.

Both of these arguments are right. The F-22 Raptor isn’t considered the most dominant air superiority fighter in the sky because it can’t lose. That’s not how combat works — heck, it’s not how any kind of fighting works. No matter how capable, no matter how advanced, no matter how well trained, anyone can find themselves knee-deep in a disadvantage they can’t overcome.

Eric Wicklund, a former Operations Specialist in the U.S. Navy, made this point rather eloquently earlier this year:

World War 2 ace, Erich Hartmann is the highest scoring ace, ever, with 352 kills. That doesn’t mean he never lost. He got shot down 16 times! He’s still the greatest ace, because he won much more often than he lost.

The F-22’s advanced avionics, high degree of maneuverability, and extremely low observability all make it an incredibly capable platform, but nothing makes a fighter invincible. If you stack the deck against anything, it’ll find its limits — and it’s important to note that finding those limits, of both the pilot and the platform, is the real reason these exercises exist.

Red Flag isn’t about winning internet dog fights, it’s about going on to win real ones. Taking home a few W’s in a series of staged exercises doesn’t mean nothing, but it doesn’t mean everything either.

The truth is, the Eurofighter Typhoon is an incredibly capable 4th generation fighter, but when you pit it against a 5th generation fighter, that stealthy opponent — be it F-22, F-35, or maybe even J-20 — is likely going to win most engagements in a relatively boring (and rather sneaky) way.

But if these stealth jets happen to find themselves within gun’s reach of the Eurofighter, the victor isn’t as easy to divine. And that’s an important lesson for both 4th and 5th generation pilots to take away from these exercises.

This assertion is substantiated in numbers we can confirm — in its earliest appearances at Red Flag back in 2006 and 2007, F-22s racked up 144 and 241 wins respectively, but lost a handful of jets as well to lowly 4th generation fighters like the F-16C — which was the first platform ever to down an F-22. in a mock dogfight. In fact, in the F-22’s first air-to-air outing (without being limited to within visual range), it took out eight F-15s without them ever managing to paint it with a target.

But… if you can get in close with the F-22 and eliminate its technological advantages, the Raptor is just another aircraft in a fight for its life.

“The Raptor’s unique capabilities are overwhelming, but as soon as you get to the merge, which is [admittedly] only a very small spectrum of air combat, the Typhoon doesn’t necessarily have to fear the F-22 in all aspects. We gain energy better than the F-22 when we are slow, for example,” Fighter Wing 74 commander Col. Andreas Pfeiffer said of the mock engagements.

This all reminds me of something an American intelligence contractor told me years ago about U.S. special operations units. They’re the most elite operators in the world with the best training, the best equipment, and the best support… but just about every Navy SEAL, Delta operator or Army Ranger who’s been killed in combat over the past two decades wasn’t taken down by a similarly elite group of ISIS or Al-Qaeda commandos. More often than not, it’s a poorly trained young man with a poorly maintained AK-47, no body armor, and some luck on his side.

You can give your warfighters all the advantages in the world, but nobody knows how a fight will play out until it does. In fact, according to Air Force Col. Thomas Bergeson, in Red Flag exercises, “you have a great day if you lose only 10 percent of your forces.” And he’s not alone.

“If you see numbers where you never have a loss, I don’t think you’re training to your full ability,” explained Lt. Col. Wade Tolliver, 27th FS commander, back in 2007. “If you don’t, at some point, have that simulated loss, we’re not going to push ourselves to be as capable as we are.”

That’s the unfortunate reality of defense technology analysis. The real answer is rarely pithy, rarely simple, and rarely can stand on its own without some broader context. The internet prefers that we speak in concise absolutes, but the only incisive answer you can really give when asked which out of two contemporary platforms is best is… it depends.

It depends on the mission, the circumstances, the rules of engagement, the pilots, the mission planning, the training, the budget, the over-arching combat doctrine, and if any of the pilots had two extra cups of coffee this morning and is distracted by the pressing need to find a toilet.

“No matter how magical the F-22, any pilot can make a mistake, explained Air Force Lt. Col. Dirk Smith in 2007. “The beauty of Red Flag is that we were able to go out and practice our tactics in a challenging scenario, make a mistake, learn a lesson, and be that much better prepared for actual combat.”

So what’s the verdict between the F-22 Raptor and Eurofighter Typhoon?

Can the Eurofighter Typhoon beat the F-22 Raptor in a dogfight? The answer is an unequivocal yes. It’s a very capable jet and, under the right set of rare and unusual circumstances, just about anything could beat the F-22. In fact, if you were really impressed by the F-22 kill markings on those Typhoons, you should know that they’ve been applied to other aircraft after notional victories… including at least one A-10 Warthog (alongside another mark for an F-16 kill).

But are F-22 pilots losing sleep over this? The answer there is no.

“When the sensors work and each plane talks to each other, the Raptor is nearly untouchable when things are right,” F-22 pilot Mike ‘Dozer’ Shower said in Bertie Simmonds’ book, “F-15 Eagle.”

“The F-22 versus a 4th-generation fighter is like having two football teams against each other and one of them [the F-22] is invisible!”

People don’t call the F-22 Raptor the reigning king of the skies because it never loses. Having the F-22 Raptor on your wing in the sky, like Micheal Jordan on the basketball court or Chesty Puller on the battlefield, isn’t a guarantee of victory. They all have a few L’s on their resumes.

Nobody wins all the time. Not even the mighty Raptor.

But if you want to get a fight going in the comments anyway… I still think my dad could have beaten up yours.

This article was first published by Sandboxx.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran who specializes in foreign policy and defense technology analysis. He holds a master’s degree in Communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

Image: Flickr/Department of Defense.

The recent ASPI report by Marcus Hellyer and Andrew Nicolls is a welcome addition to the B-21 debate in Australia. In the report, Hellyer and Nicolls cite Michael Mazarr, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, and define the concept of deterrence by denial as ‘having sufficiently robust capabilities to convince an adversary that the cost of acting militarily against Australia isn’t worth any gains that might be made’.

However, that’s not quite correct. In the paper cited, ‘Understanding deterrence’, Mazarr defines deterrence by denial as seeking ‘to deter an action by making it infeasible or unlikely to succeed, thus denying a potential aggressor confidence in attaining its objectives’; he gives ‘deploying sufficient local military forces to defeat an invasion’ as an example. This is very different from simply raising the cost of any gains.

In fact, if you are only looking at raising the cost of gains, then you are engaging in deterrence by punishment. Mazar defines deterrence by punishment as threatening severe penalties (costs) if an attack were to occur. This distinction was first established by Glenn Snyder, and has since been explored more by Lawrence Freedman, to show that punishment is not just about counter-value targeting (hitting an adversary’s homeland) but about inflicting unacceptable military losses.

But why does this pedantic definitional distinction matter?

Imprecision in the definition of deterrence affects three key elements for capability decisions: force structure, operational tempo, and alliance relationships.

The difference between assuring an adversary that you will defeat their attack, as opposed to only imposing costs, will dictate, first and foremost, just how many platforms you need render an attack infeasible. To declare a strategy of denial, Australia would therefore require a fleet of B-21s (as a joint force) capable of defeating an adversary’s attack, not just inflicting losses. Any quick calculation of how many platforms it would take to do that would drive the force structure designers to require (among other capabilities) a larger fleet than a force that’s only expected to exact costs.

A deterrence-by-punishment strategy, then, assures significant costs, rather than defeat. And that’s a distinction that has implications when you sit down to design a force and pay for it. A deterrence-by-denial strategy simply costs more, and requires more platforms, than a punishment strategy.

The difference in the two strategies will also affect the operational tempo required of the fleet (and of the force as a whole). Deterrence by denial would require more frequent, more intense and larger demonstrations of the capability to defeat an attack than deterrence by punishment. The B-21’s contribution to a joint force’s ability to render attacks infeasible would place significant strain on a fleet. That would be especially so if the strategy called for denial but there was only enough money for a fleet that could inflict punishment. The distinction between the two strategies has real implications for how operational planners would have to use the B-21.

Lastly, the distinction affects alliance relationships. The US is well versed in deterrence. It has a strong scholarly capability and institutional memory. Therefore, if Australia were to say that it was going to enact a deterrence-by-denial strategy and join the B-21 program, then it would set up expectations in Washington that it will acquire a larger fleet than it intends to acquire, and that it will exercise more frequently than it plans to exercise. Anyone who has worked with the US in the Australian Department of Defence can point to an example where the US military came to an event with a size and scale that Australian forces just couldn’t match—and sometimes that Australia didn’t want. For example, exercising capabilities in the region with a large denial force and its attendant size and tempo can have unwanted consequences for Australia’s immediate neighbouring countries. If Australia is going to speak the language of deterrence with its biggest ally, it must make sure they are defining deterrence in the same way.

Hellyer and Nicolls’s report expertly analyses the arguments for and against the B-21, and importantly it outlines the alternative options. In addition to the analysis, it is essential to clearly define Australia’s strategic intent, and then match that to the capability options that are on the table. I strongly suspect that while Australia may wish to deter by denial, it would only be able to afford and sustain a B-21 fleet (and consequently a force structure) that can inflict deterrence by punishment—and that distinction matters.

This article was first published by ASPI’s The Strategist.

Gregory MacCallion is a senior managing consultant at OCRT, based in Copenhagen. He conducts research for the Department of Defence on deterrence. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not represent the position of OCRT or the Australian government.

Image: DVIDS.

From proclamations that “America is back” to promises of “relentless diplomacy,” President Joe Biden’s foreign policy framework sounds decisively Wilsonian. By centering his foreign policy on restoration—of treaty alliances, trade partnerships, and international institutions—Biden seeks to “recreate the dominance of the Wilsonian worldview,” as John C. Hulsman put it. But it is unclear why the strategy of the 1920s should be the foremost paradigm of the 2020s. The Biden doctrine is fundamentally about one predominantly ideological goal: making the world safe for democracy.

To some analysts, Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan characterizes the administration’s foreign policy as a pragmatic, not ideological, system. But the Afghanistan withdrawal was not a shift from Biden’s fundamental doctrine. Rather, it represented a regional reprioritization of interests necessary in an evolving threat environment. The hasty, uncoordinated nature of the withdrawal is emblematic of a political and ideological display, not a calculated strategic effort. Indeed, Biden had little choice. Former President Donald Trump had committed to the withdrawal, and an active decision from the new administration to renege on that commitment would have provoked a strong response from an electorate tired of fighting “forever wars.” This ideological grounding explains why, counter to what those who believe Biden’s foreign policy puts “pragmatic realism above liberal primacy” would expect, American troops in Syria fight on as hordes of airstrikes are continually launched in Iraq despite more pressing challenges elsewhere.

Nonetheless, Biden has had considerable success in his years in office, capitalizing on some of the low-hanging fruit left by his predecessor: rejoining the Paris Climate Accords, extending the New START treaty, and recommitting Washington to its NATO allies. The administration has even managed to find a bipartisan spin to these efforts by leaving some Trump initiatives as-is—the Space Force, the Abraham Accords, and the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem—while employing a forceful, rallying response to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

Undoubtedly, the administration’s shortcomings have come as well. The transition from name-calling to fist-bumping with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman was only outdone by the Biden administration’s failure to revive the Iran nuclear deal. But as Biden looks to the coming years, the easy choices will become few and far between. Biden’s conception of a new grand strategy in Washington will increasingly shape material actions, and putting ideology over interests and shared values over mutual threats ultimately risks creating a more dangerous world for America. While the rhetoric coming out of the White House does little to materially convince wavering allies that Washington is committed to its partnerships, it risks limiting Washington’s maneuverability in an increasingly less democratic world.

Democratic coalition-building is only important insofar as it serves as a unifying principle for nations with common interests. If these countries’ shared democratic values produce unity on strategic goals, then an alliance of democracies might be the bloc Washington needs to outcompete Russia and China. However, this opposition to rising powers should be a strategic, not ideological, contest.

This is not the Cold War, and castigating the modern threat environment as a “fundamental debate” between democracy and autocracy risks doing more harm than good. Considering the following three reasons.

First, the United States needs China. Biden has recognized the growing importance of international cooperation to address the global challenges of pandemics, climate change, and nuclear proliferation, among other issues. He must similarly recognize that the West and its democratic allies will need help in successfully addressing these obstacles. With its economy outpacing America’s, Beijing has employed a political, economic, and technological machine to gain pervasive global influence. Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, push to globally deploy 5G technology, and vaccine diplomacy during the pandemic worked to form a nation with a considerable stake and valid demand for inclusion in efforts to face transnational challenges. While the competition on the explicit threats posed by China is important, framing U.S. grand strategy as focused on “taking down illiberal powers” risks precluding cooperation with powerful potential partners on areas of mutual concern.

Second, framing U.S.-China relations as an “us-or-them” confrontation helps China build its coalition. Those with anti-Western tendencies are handed, vis-à-vis Biden’s push for transnational ideological alignment, their conduit for a united opposition. Despite its historical rivalry with Beijing, the Kremlin has established a marriage of convenience with China as the two autocracies cozy up into a “no limits” partnership. China has since provided an alternative to the SWIFT payment system for post-sanctions Russia, and the two are now cooperating on de-dollarization and disinformation campaigns intended to undermine American hegemony. The United States should exploit gaps between autocratic nations, not give them a reason to join together despite their differences. Ultimately, Biden’s Wilsonian desire to transplant American democratic systems onto other nations—ostracizing countries that fail to acquiesce—only creates a stronger anti-American bloc.

Third, Biden’s approach makes potential allies choose between the United States and China. Instituting a “with-us-or-against-us strategy” means countries must make a decision. Though this doctrine would in theory make clear who the United States can trust in times of conflict, in reality, a considerable number of countries with whom the U.S. needs partnerships to advance its interests will pick China. In the same way, Washington should seek to preserve its flexibility by recognizing that other countries also want flexibility. The Biden administration should take comprehensive commitments when it can get them, but it shouldn’t disavow limited cooperation on narrow interests.

Indeed, Biden’s democratic qualification for partner nations cannot be exclusive. Cooperation with autocracies will be a necessity whether or not that aligns with the president’s idealized vision for the twenty-first century. Fortunately, it seems the administration is willing to make these ideology-for-strategy trade-offs despite its rhetoric to the contrary. Biden has, correctly, sought to expand the Quad and deepen security ties with Australia, Japan, and India, even in the face of the latter’s trend towards nationalism, suppression of the free press, and second-class treatment of its Muslim minority under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But Biden’s insistence on occupying this democracy-promoting, autocracy-condemning moral high ground forces him into the awkward position of overlooking Modi’s anti-democratic policies and publicly asserting that the U.S.-India relationship is rooted in a “shared commitment to democratic values.” Rather than engaging in these rhetorical gymnastics, Washington should acknowledge, condemn, and work to improve human rights issues in India while also being honest about New Delhi’s strategic importance. With a clear line drawn between limited security cooperation and wholesale endorsement of Modi’s rule, Washington can have its cake and eat it too. While a more sober approach might limit Biden’s ability to profess a democratic world, it does more to satisfy both the administration’s moral and strategic standards.

Even among pillars of U.S. strategic security, the Biden administration’s all-or-nothing democratic rhetoric risks legitimacy-diminishing contradictions. Democratic backsliding within NATO countries has forced the alliance to reconcile this inconvenient truth. Whether intentional or not, Biden has publicly condemned the erosion of democracy within the organization to which he ensured the United States would make a glorious return, indicting then-President Donald Trump for supporting the “totalitarian regimes” of Poland and Hungary.

Biden cannot square his words with the White House's actions. This discrepancy—in the same way administration-to-administration policy swings reduce the credibility of U.S. commitments—makes countries wary about partnering with an administration with ill-defined priorities. Building trust and flexibility not only better advances Washington’s strategic goals but also provides backsliding nations with a clear reason—as opposed to unfounded, often contradictory White House rhetoric—to pursue democracy at home.

The reform process for the Biden administration requires substantial reframing and some uncomfortable lesson-learning. The president, especially in his public addresses and formal policy documents, should focus less on shared values and more on shared threats, concerns, and interests. Make clear that America’s allies are its allies because of their actions, not their domestic political systems. With a democratic, human-rights-protecting state, these partnerships can, of course, be more comprehensive, but Washington needs to make clear where its inherent security interests start and where its perceived role as the global moral authority ends. The administration must sideline its Wilsonian tendencies in favor of strategically sound partnerships.

Domestically, Biden must work to build consensus by shifting its rhetoric. Using the same language to describe the GOP’s policy positions writ-large (i.e., stating republicans are a fundamental “threat to democracy”) and the great powers the administration seeks to rally against risks defiance in Congress. The president can have all the right ambitions, but without a willing Congress, they may never have the necessary support to be translated into policies. There is certainly work to be done to shore up American democracy at home, but this is hardly accomplished by name-calling that undermines Washington’s foreign objectives.

To be fair, there is some domestic value to this binary democracy-autocracy framing, primarily in that it elevates China as the chief threat to U.S. interests—be they Biden’s ideological tenets or a realist’s material sensibilities. This characterization is a potential point of bipartisan, cross-theory unity: China poses the greatest risk to a democratic world and also embodies the single most potent threat to U.S. commercial and strategic interests. Divisions on particular policies will inevitably emerge, but both Biden and the Republican leadership should be able to find common ground on the importance of the China issue—both in the potential for cooperative compromise and in the instances that require a firm stance. Playing his political chips correctly, Biden can nudge even the most Republican of post-midterm Congresses to follow his lead on Beijing.

Though the White House seems convinced its “democracy first” rhetoric is sure to mobilize Americans, the Trump administration’s referendum on globalization did prove one thing: Americans care about America. Biden must frame his foreign policy agenda as one primarily designed to guarantee American commercial interests and bring prosperity to the middle class. Asking the electorate to make sacrifices for the sake of the rest of the world and Biden’s personal ideological value system will make for an abrupt one-term presidency. The administration should be hesitant in calling for the United States to take on a larger global burden for the sake of other nations. Instead, it should work to convince the public of the need for a limited, strategic expansion of Washington’s global role in order to secure certain explicit commercial and security interests.

Ultimately, Biden’s notion that America must make a return to the world—a referendum on his isolationist and entrenching predecessor—is a correct one. But the world has seen inspiring visionaries and talented politicians fail before. Despite being “one of the greatest legislative leaders to ever sit in the White House,” Wilson is too often remembered as the naive optimist—America’s idealist spearhead of a deeply unstable peace. Biden must not repeat these mistakes.

Kendall Carll is an undergraduate at Harvard studying History and Government. His interests are primarily in grand strategy, great power competition, East Asia, and weapons of mass destruction.

Image: Flickr/White House.

My generation of Sahrawis grew up believing in the United Nations-led peace process. In 1991, the Sahrawi national movement, led by the Polisario, suspended the armed struggle it had waged against Morocco since it occupied Western Sahara in 1975. In exchange for a ceasefire, Rabat agreed to a UN-organized referendum that would allow the Sahrawi people to decide how they wanted to fulfill their right to self-determination.

We long maintained hope in a diplomatic agreement to end the conflict. But after thirty years of stalemate with no referendum in sight due to Rabat’s opposition, we now feel that diplomacy and international law are empty words. We used to believe in peace. The Polisario made a huge compromise by agreeing to pursue national liberation through negotiations. But all this achieved was to allow Morocco to deepen its hold over Western Sahara with the military and diplomatic support of the United States and the European Union (EU).

Today, we feel forgotten and betrayed. The West claims to be committed to international law and human rights. Yet, from our perspective, these so-called values are nowhere to be seen. Instead, the United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara while the EU bent international law to justify the territory’s inclusion in its trade agreements with Morocco without our consent. By siding with Morocco and its plundering of our natural resources, we see Washington and European capitals as complicit in Morocco’s violation of Sahrawi rights.

Instead of the self-determination promised to us, we are now a minority in our own land due to Morocco’s settlement policy. Under Moroccan occupation, Sahrawis are denied their national and cultural identity, reflecting Rabat’s opposition to anything that connects the native people of Western Sahara to their territorial roots and national heritage. As leading international human rights organizations have documented, Moroccan authorities regularly commit human rights abuses by targeting Sahrawis who voice pro-independence views with arbitrary house arrests, beatings, and harassment.

Meanwhile, over 173,000 Sahrawis live as refugees in Algerian camps, suffering from protracted water and food insecurity issues. Decades of emergency food rations distributed by aid agencies have caused malnutrition among women and children and higher-than-average rates of cancer. Sahrawi refugees must also confront the growing impact of climate change in a desert region.

In the current context, peace serves only Morocco’s interests, leaving it free to exploit our territory without cost or consequence. After decades of unkept international promises and without tangible diplomatic achievements, many Sahrawi youths are now committed to resuming the armed struggle against Morocco. This comes at a tremendous personal cost. My brother and five of his friends joined the Sahrawi army after fighting resumed against Morocco in November 2020. Last month, they were hit by a Moroccan drone strike. My brother was the only one left alive.

We may not win the war. But at least Morocco is also losing men and financial resources due to daily attacks by the Polisario against the Moroccan-controlled Berm, a 2,700-kilometer-long sand barrier dividing Western Sahara from north to south. Violence appears to be the only way to draw attention to our cause.

Given the lack of positive change from Rabat and the international community, this week’s Polisario General Congress, which brought together over two thousand Sahrawi representatives, has called for further escalation. The re-election of Brahim Ghali as Polisario secretary-general is a further indication of the Sahrawi people’s support for the current strategy of military confrontation against Morocco.

My family was originally from the town of Mahbes in Western Sahara. Like thousands of Sahrawis, they fled Moroccan violence and sought refuge in neighboring Algeria. We dream of returning to our lost land. My family thought it would only be a matter of months before they could return home. Sadly, it has now been almost fifty years of exile.

This is also a fight about our identity and place in the world. We Sahrawis completely reject Morocco’s autonomy proposal, which would integrate Western Sahara into Morocco under the guise of devolved governance. This plan has gained traction in some international quarters, including, most recently, the Spanish government, which described it as “the most serious, realistic, and credible [basis] for resolving the dispute.” In truth, Morocco’s autonomy plan is none of these things. My generation does not want to be Moroccan or live in an undemocratic system that does not represent us as Sahrawis and represses our human rights and national identity.

If given the chance, a majority of Sahrawis would vote for independence. Finding an outcome that satisfies both the Sahrawi people's aspiration for freedom and Morocco’s expansionist ambitions is therefore neither realistic nor just. Instead, we want to be able to choose our people’s future in a referendum and build a modern democratic state of our own. This remains the only credible and durable solution to the decades-long conflict.

Najla Mohamedlamin is a Sahrawi refugee and civil society activist focusing on climate justice and women’s rights. She lives in the Smara refugee camp in southern Algeria and is the founding director of the Almasar Library Center, which educates Sahrawi women and children about health and the environment.

Image: Natalia de la Rubia/Shutterstock.com

With the decision to send tanks to Ukraine and increase artillery production sixfold, America and its allies are moving to a war footing against Russia. Just as it took over a year to respond to Joseph Stalin’s incorporation of Eastern Europe, so the West’s determination to resist Russian president Vladimir Putin’s attempted subjugation of Ukraine has been a protracted process. Now the die is cast. Putin was convinced that he could outlast the Western alliance, but it is intent on outlasting him. Any hesitation about confronting Moscow for its depredations in Ukraine has gone by the wayside. President Joe Biden is determined to crush Russian aspirations for hegemony in Europe once and for all.

Despite initial hesitations, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has agreed to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine. His decision has both symbolic and practical import. Symbolically, it frees Germany from the strictures that it operated under after World War II. Practically, it liberates countries such as Poland and Finland to transfer German-made tanks as soon as possible to aid a forthcoming Ukrainian offensive this spring. The United Kingdom has already promised to supply fourteen Challenger 2 tanks to Kyiv. Poland and the Baltic States have been publicly pushing for Germany to abandon its ostrich-like position against aiding Ukraine with tanks. “The Leopard is freed,” declared Bundestag vice-president Katrin Goering-Eckardt on Twitter. She added, “now he can hopefully help Ukraine quickly in its struggle against the Russian invasion…” In all, Ukraine expects to receive 100 Leopard 2 tanks from twelve countries.

The driving force in altering Germany’s adamantine stance against dispatching tanks was its new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, who has made no secret of his support for Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression and who demanded that the Bundeswehr, as an initial step, examine its inventory of tanks. While some in the Social Democratic Party have clung to obsolete notions of reaching some kind of accommodation with Putin and his camarilla, Scholz’s coalition partners, the Free Democrats and the Greens, have been stalwart in pushing for a more hard-line stance. So has the Christian Democratic Union, whose leader Friedrich Merz declared, “it’s the right decision.” In essence, Scholz was bowing to the inevitable.

But it apparently took Biden to sweeten the pot before he would. Biden has apparently pledged to send thirty M-1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, a move that Scholz had demanded in return for altering his previous opposition to supplying tanks to Ukraine. It’s the decision to ramp up military production of artillery that should also worry the Kremlin. Russia’s stocks are running low. America has the capability to ramp up production rapidly. Biden is signaling that America is in the fight for the long haul. Rep. Rob Wittman is calling it a “Sputnik” moment. Neither Republicans nor Democrats are unaware that expanding military outlays amounts to a jobs program for Americans.

The blunt fact is that Biden is becoming a war president. Putin reckoned he could roll over Biden. He miscalculated. He thought he could sweep over Ukraine in a week. He was wrong. He thought the Western alliance would crack up. Wrong again.

No one has done more to revivify the Western alliance than Putin. As the West ramps up military production, he is mired in a conflict that threatens the continuation of his tyrannical rule over Russia. Now that he has inadvertently aroused America from its post-Cold War torpor and unified Ukrainians in their resolve to oppose him, Putin faces a fight to the finish—one that he cannot win. It is now clear that when Putin invaded Ukraine, he signed his death warrant.

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest.

Image: DVIDS.

Japan’s announcement in December 2022 of a much more activist defense strategy heralds a new era in the U.S.-Japan alliance. In a joint briefing with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on January 13, President Joe Biden stated that “we’re modernizing our military alliance, building on Japan’s historic increase in defense spending and [Japan’s] new National Security Strategy.”

Japan is a critical component of America’s security architecture in Northeast Asia. It hosts roughly 54,000 U.S. military personnel who have access to eighty-five bases or facilities. In addition, Japan provides about $1.7 billion a year in host nation support to fund U.S. troops. 

The original rationale for the alliance can be traced to the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the communist takeover of mainland China and the onset of the Korean War. In this context, the United States viewed Japan as a critical counterweight to the growing threat of communism. A 1951 National Intelligence Estimate cited three key reasons why the United States had to bring Japan into its Pacific alliance system: Japan’s industrial potential; its trained workforce; and the country’s geographic location next to the Asian mainland.

Writing in 1965, Ambassador Edwin Reischauer outlined three key objectives for America’s relationship with Japan: 1) to ensure that Japan’s “industrial potential does not drift to the Communist side or into a position of neutrality”; 2) to maintain access to U.S. bases located within Japan and in the Ryukyu Islands (including Okinawa); and 3) to encourage Japan to play an active role in the economic development of free countries in East and Southeast Asia.

But another American goal was urging Japan to build up its military capabilities so that it could contribute more to its own defense and, eventually, to regional missions. This was a challenge because, as Reischauer characterized it, the Japanese people had “built up the myth that peace in Japan [had] been the product of their ‘peace constitution,’ not the U.S. defense posture in the Far East.“ 

However, not everyone in the U.S. government shared the view that Japan should be pressured in this way. In 1968, the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Council issued a report titled “Japan’s Security Role in Asia.” It posited three possible scenarios for Japan's military evolution that ranged from a minimum to a maximum military buildup.

On the extreme minimum side was the Alpha strategy (“defense only”), in which Japan would maintain minimum capabilities while relying exclusively on the United States. The middle scenario was the Beta strategy (“defense plus peacekeeping”), in which Japan would develop defensive military capabilities, but would limit international engagement to peacekeeping. 

The maximum scenario was termed the Gamma strategy (“major regional military power”), in which Japan would pursue a robust military buildup and thus enjoy “a greatly expanded regional role...that would permit her to assume a significant share of the security, at least of the Northeast Asian area for which U.S conventional military forces are now required.” The study noted that for many American defense planners, the Gamma strategy appeared optimal since it would result in a military-capable Japan that could “relieve the U.S. of some of its regional security burden.”  

But the study also noted that the Gamma strategy would be a double-edged sword. A Japan possessing “significant autonomous...military power” could lead to “nationalist pressures” encouraging Tokyo to pursue “strategic independence from the U.S.”

In the contemporary context, a Japan that possesses new capabilities, such as counterstrike missiles, may be in a position to initiate or respond to hostilities at a time and place of its own choosing. In such a scenario, the United States, per Article 5 of the defense treaty, would be obligated to support its ally and potentially enter the conflict. 

More significantly, the Gamma strategy has broad implications for the second major issue in the U.S.-Japan alliance: extended deterrence, considered the bedrock of the alliance. The Department of Defense defines extended deterrence as the American “commitment to deter and, if necessary, to respond across the spectrum of potential nuclear and non-nuclear scenarios in defense of allies and partners.”   

Although the Pentagon prefers the freedom of action that a “spectrum” of responses—nuclear and non-nuclear—implies, American extended deterrence promises to Japan have often emphasized the nuclear dimension, hence the term “nuclear umbrella.” However, a Gamma strategy in which the U.S. encouraged Japan to invest more resources in its military could result in Japan being more willing to pursue “an independent nuclear capability,” according to the study.

Consequently, the study concluded that the option most in accord with America’s national interests would be to encourage the Beta (middle) option, in which Japan had reasonable capabilities and only limited international deployments (peacekeeping).

However, the security environments of 1968 and 2023 are quite different. Japan—and indeed the U.S.-Japan alliance itself—faces acute nuclear and conventional threats emanating from neighboring countries that would have been unimaginable just a decade earlier. Thus, Japan is pursuing the Gamma option on its own initiative.

So how can the pitfalls of the Gamma strategy be avoided? Among other actions, the United States and Japan should tighten their operational relationship through increased and substantive joint exercises (featuring thorough and honest after-action reviews). To improve functional fluidity, the two countries could also reconcile their disparate views and practices regarding information security.

The old days in which the U.S.-Japan alliance was based on a hierarchy (with the United States providing the military muscle while Japan focused largely on logistical and financial support) are clearly over. Japan is emerging as an equal partner. This will inevitably feature growing pains, but careful management and planning will result in a far more resilient alliance capable of confronting contemporary security threats well into the future.

Dr. Paul J. Smith is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed here are the author’s own.

Image: Flickr/U.S. Navy.

Both sides of the Atlantic Ocean could witness migration crises this year. But the number of illegal arrivals is likely to be much smaller in Europe than in the United States.

That’s in large part due to the role of gatekeepers: nearby countries with which the European Union (EU) and various member states made agreements to stop, or at least mitigate, the flow of irregular mass migration.

The scope of the challenge is huge. In 2022, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, detected approximately 330,000 irregular entries at the EU’s external border. This number does not include the more than 13 million people who left Ukraine after the Russian invasion and who, thanks to the EU-Ukraine visa-free agreement and the temporary protection directive activated by the EU in March 2022, crossed the border legally into the EU. In the case of the United States, border “encounters” totaled 2.38 million in the 2022 fiscal year, not to mention undetected illegal entries, which, according to some analyses, could add hundreds of thousands to that figure.

In Europe, however, if we examine longer-term trends (with the exception of the 2015 migration and refugee crisis), irregular arrivals over the last five years were between 126,000 and 330,000 per year. By comparison, the number of encounters at the U.S. Southwest border never fell below 458,000, even at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic (and its travel restrictions) and with the strict border policy of President Donald Trump in 2020, almost four times the similar European rates.

Why such a difference? Do people from the Middle East and Africa simply have less of a desire to come to Europe? According to the African Youth Survey and IPL, this is not the case: millions of people have the intention to move to the EU. And, if they manage to reach the relatively open sea border of Europe, it is almost impossible to send them back. Between 2015 and 2019, only 19 percent of non-EU citizens with orders to leave were returned to countries of origin outside Europe.

Then why can’t more of them reach the southern border of Europe? The gatekeepers.

From Turkey and Egypt to Niger, Senegal, and Morocco (just to mention a few), Europe has an extended network of agreements, cooperation, and common policies with states that have tools to stem illegal migration toward the EU. Perhaps the most famous example is Turkey, which hosts at least 3.6 million Syrian nationals and hundreds of thousands of other refugees.

Following the EU-Turkey Statement, Ankara agreed to prevent migrant crossings toward Europe. As compensation, the EU and its member states have mobilized €9.5 billion ($10.3 billion) for refugees and host communities since 2015. While it seems like a significant amount, compared with the potential cost of managing millions of new irregular arrivals, it is really a cheap solution.

There are similar understandings all along the Mediterranean coast. For instance, in the first nine months of 2022, Morocco foiled 40,000 illegal crossings toward the EU. In compensation, Brussels pledged € 500 million ($540 million) in development assistance for Morocco’s migration management efforts. In October 2022, in reaction to increased irregular migration from Egypt, the EU signed an agreement with Cairo on an €80 million ($87 million) border management program to “help Egypt's coast and border guards reduce irregular migration and human trafficking along its border, and provides for the procurement of surveillance equipment such as search and rescue vessels, thermal cameras, and satellite positioning systems.” There were at least 9 million migrants in Egypt in 2022—3 million more than the previous year, mostly due to unrest in Sudan and the economic consequences of Covid-19. Many arrived in Egypt illegally with the intention to move on to Europe—without measures taken by the Egyptian government, they would have.

Collaboration with gatekeepers is not without challenges and risks. Nevertheless, Europe’s experience over the past decade shows that it is an important instrument in the protection of Europe’s external borders. Indeed, without the assistance of partner countries, the number of arrivals in Europe would increase exponentially.

In comparison, the United States has modest agreements with gatekeeper countries, some elements of which—for instance, Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as “Remain in Mexico”—were jeopardized in recent years. Much of the previously promised aid for certain transit states and countries of origin—such as the $4 billion package of assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—hasn’t materialized. Therefore, countries south of the U.S.-Mexican border have little intention of stopping the flow of irregular migration. President Joe Biden’s recent summit in Mexico is not likely to change this; the policies outlined by the three North American leaders may well increase the flow of migration.

Walls and proper border policies are key instruments for solving migration crises. But it is also true that the protection of a country does not start at its borders. In the age of irregular mass migration, gatekeeper states must be part of a durable solution—even if it requires attention, and sometimes financial investment, from the destination country.

Viktor Marsai, PhD, is the Director of the Budapest-based Migration Research Institute and an Andrássy Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC.

Image: Flickr/Customs and Border Patrol.

The controversy caused by the discovery of top-secret documents at the home, garages, and university offices used by President Joe Biden, following on the heels of an FBI raid on the home of former President Donald Trump, is legitimate. American justice acts independently of who is being investigated. This equal justice underlines that the rule of law is supreme, no matter which party is in power. This is how democracy ought to work.

However, this case, despite its legal and political freight, should not distract our attention from the real threats facing the United States and the global order of liberal states.

The first of these challenges is surely climate change. It is literally an existential threat to the whole world.

Biden pledged to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2030. He also announced plans to spend $2.3 billion to build electric infrastructure strong enough to survive the warming climate and its projected increase in violent storms, surging floods, and rising seas. The president’s decision to create an international fund to help poor countries fight the effects of climate change, which they did little to cause but will suffer disproportionately from, is fair.

This could also benefit rich countries since it will reduce the waves of expected climate refugees, which Al Gore estimates in the tens of millions per year. Such a human tidal wave would swamp or sink even the largest nations.

American leadership is needed here, since two of the world’s largest polluters, Russia and China, have shown no interest in reducing fossil-fuel use, which provides jobs and growth for their own people, but puts the rest of the world at risk. Only America, alongside its allies, has the weight to pressure these time-zone-spanning nations into seeing their enlightened self-interest.

Iran

The Islamic Republic is on the brink of the atomic bomb as well as the long-range ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads. That puts both NATO nations and the United States itself in the crosshairs. It is simply an appalling prospect.

Sanctions are an important tool of U.S. policy toward Iran, and in the absence of an agreement to end its nuclear program, they should continue. But sanctions alone are not enough. Iran, since 1979, has been among the most sanctioned nations on Earth, and yet, in all of these years, it has shown few signs of changing course.

A new, larger American strategy towards Iran is urgently needed.

Diplomatic efforts must be paired with a credible military threat. Biden has been explicit that he will not allow Iran to have nuclear weapons. These words cannot be hollow. An empty promise would mean that neither America’s friends nor its rivals can trust its promises. With trust, chaos rules.

In the wake of the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a twenty-two-year-old woman who was allegedly beaten to death by Iranian security forces for refusing to cover her face and hair, the Iranian government has reportedly killed hundreds of demonstrators and arrested thousands more. Iran’s leaders do not rule by the consent of their people, but, in spite of them. As a result, the regime is unstable.

A shaky regime with the ability to send nuclear bombs thousands of miles is an unacceptable combination.

The United States should strengthen its outreach and support for Iran’s students, trade unions, minority leaders (especially Kurds in its northwest and the Arabs in its southwest), and dissident clerics—and feature them on Voice of America’s Persian-language broadcasts. Biden should cite them by name in presidential speeches and Congress should hold hearings featuring eyewitnesses to Iran’s savage war against its own people.

Ukraine

The whole world was impressed by the indomitable courage of the Ukrainian people, who courageously faced down Vladimir Putin’s murderous invaders in 2022. Outnumbered and outgunned, they fought on. Once the West agreed to provide powerful long-range weapons, including HIMARS, the tide turned and Ukraine won back large stretches of its stolen land. 

Without U.S.-supplied arms, Ukraine might have fallen, taking Europe’s faith in America down with it. NATO would have been a dead letter; U.S. leadership an anachronism. China would have noticed too. It might have gone to Taiwan’s shores as Putin’s tanks toured Kyiv. Fortunately, this nightmare has been prevented by the United States’ strong leadership.

It is more of this enlightened, active leadership that the world cries out for.

Ahmed Charai is a Publisher.  He is on the board of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.

Image: Shutterstock.

A leading U.S. role in nurturing democracy worldwide can operate in either or both of two ways. One is by reaching out, using any of several foreign policy tools, to shape events in a foreign country in a pro-democratic direction. The American policy context for such efforts has ranged from the human rights agenda of Jimmy Carter to the more militant democracy-spreading objectives of the neoconservatives. 

The reaching out can include persuasion of governmental leaders through diplomacy, and the use of economic carrots and sticks such as aid and sanctions to reward moves toward democracy and to punish backsliding toward authoritarianism. The work of two organizations associated with U.S. political parties—the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute—such as the teaching of political skills to potential candidates in free elections, also represents an active U.S. effort to promote democracy abroad.

The other fundamental way in which the United States can affect the strength or weakness of democracy in other countries is by setting an example. The concept goes back to John Winthrop’s metaphor of a shining city on a hill, which in modern times Ronald Reagan resurrected. Some analysts argue this is the more effective way in which the United States can affect the prospects for democracy in other countries. As a superpower, any example the United States sets—intentionally or unintentionally, for better or for worse—is bound to be powerful. And being an exemplar on a hilltop avoids possible backlash from those who might see more active democracy-promotion activities as meddling or interference in another country’s internal affairs.

Today, the main story about democracy worldwide is not its advance but rather its decline. Much of the analysis of the reasons for this decline focuses on conditions and developments within the individual countries where democracy is most under attack. But as with an advance of democracy, the erosion of it involves influences that cross international boundaries. Again, the United States is a major player in the process. And again, influence gets exerted both through direct action and through example. 

The attack on government offices in the capital of Brazil by supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro earlier this month was a violent demonstration of the example effect. The attack copycatted the assault on the U.S. Capitol two years earlier by supporters of Donald Trump, even down to some of the costumes the rioters favored. Both attacks were efforts by backers of a defeated demagogue, who preached a right-wing faux-populist message, to overturn the result of a free election. Bolsonaro himself—the “Trump of the tropics”—emulated the former American president, especially with his fraudulent claims of election fraud. 

Direct transnational action also has been part of a global democratic decline, and again the MAGA portion of American politics has been involved in the action. Bolsonaro and Trump were both part of a larger surge in ethnic nationalist regimes, parties, and movements that appeal to xenophobia, present themselves as populists, and has included, for example, the National Rally party in France. Even though such movements ostensibly are anti-internationalist, the assistance across international boundaries and the cross-fertilization among the groups has been substantial. Trump’s former chief political strategist, Steve Bannon, has been a leader in organizing institutionalized cooperation—in what participants simply call “The Movement”—among hard-right ethnic nationalist parties and groups, mostly in Europe.

The most conspicuous European case of sliding from democracy into authoritarianism has been the Hungarian regime of Viktor Orban. Hungary under Orban is the only member country of the European Union that the watchdog organization Freedom House does not rate as free but instead as only “partly free.” The EU has been largely powerless to do much about the Hungarian backsliding because the Law and Justice Party in Poland—its other authoritarian-tending problem regime—has blocked most action against Orban.

Orban and his Fidesz Party are part of the transnational hard-right, ethno-nationalist phenomenon, and again the American Right has played a large role. Trump and Orban endorsed each other’s election bids, and Trump granted the Hungarian prime minister a meeting at the White House in 2019—the first time Orban had received that privilege since 1998. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson did a week of shows from Hungary, and the Conservative Political Action Conference held one of its meetings there last year. Later in 2022, Orban was the featured and much-applauded speaker at a CPAC conference in Dallas, just days after he had controversially criticized “mixed-race” societies.

Recent hand-wringing by American commentators about the erosion of democracy abroad has focused especially on the newly installed extreme right-wing Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is part of the same hard-right ethno-nationalist international as Orban and Bannon. The concept of a regime rooted in xenophobia and unafraid to use harsh measures to cement its rule and to keep non-favored groups subjugated is the basis of the chumminess between Netanyahu and Orban, notwithstanding the anti-Semitic vibes that emanate from the latter’s regime.

A theme of the hand-wringers is a desire to maintain the extraordinary U.S.-Israeli relationship, with their fear being that Israel’s further descent into extremism will weaken political support in the United States for that relationship. Their analysis of U.S. politics is probably at least partly correct, but they overlook how the relationship itself, given its extraordinary character, has contributed to the extreme turns in Israeli politics.

Some of the moves by Netanyahu’s new government, including an attempted emasculation of the judiciary, might indeed reduce the democratic content of political processes within the dominant ethno-religious group of Israel. But even before those moves, “democracy” was not a label that could justifiably be applied to a country that denies political rights to millions of residents of the land that the country treats for other purposes as an integral part of its territory. As successive U.S. administrations have continued unqualified support for successive Israeli governments that have solidified this system of apartheid, Israeli hardliners have been encouraged to keep moving in the same direction without paying any political price.

The government that emerged from last fall’s Israeli election is just the latest, unsurprising step in this process. There is strong awareness across the Israeli political spectrum of the importance of the relationship with the United States. If the United States had managed that relationship differently, it is very likely that the most recent Israeli election, and the government to emerge from it, would have been much different from what exists today.

The United States still is the biggest single influence on democracy worldwide, both as an exemplar and through its direct actions abroad. But in both these modes, it has often become less a promoter of democracy than a danger to it. In this respect, Winthrop and Reagan have been stood on their heads, and so have Carter and the neocons.

Paul Pillar retired in 2005 from a twenty-eight-year career in the U.S. intelligence community, in which his last position was National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia. Earlier he served in a variety of analytical and managerial positions, including as chief of analytic units at the CIA covering portions of the Near East, the Persian Gulf, and South Asia. Professor Pillar also served in the National Intelligence Council as one of the original members of its Analytic Group. He is also a Contributing Editor for this publication.

Image: Shutterstock.