Mar 13, 2024

Why joining NATO won't help Kyiv, no such thing as limited war, how strategic overreach impacts military readiness, and more.

Spring fighting season

Why NATO membership won't help Ukraine—and what to pursue instead

It's true that the U.S. and our NATO allies owe Ukraine an answer on the alliance membership question, DEFP Fellow Daniel R. DePetris wrote in a letter published by WaPo. Washington should "give the Ukrainians an answer: Thanks, but no thanks."

To understand why it doesn't make sense for Ukraine to join NATO, as well as what U.S. policymakers should pursue instead, let's start with a look at notable recent developments in this conflict.

Notable developments

Late last month, French President Emanuel Macron raised the possibility of sending troops into Ukraine. [WSJ / Stacy Meichtry et al.]
- Soon after, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened nuclear reprisal if NATO troops enter Ukraine. [WaPo / Francesca Ebel and Robyn Dixon]
- Is Washington "seriously going to discuss" nuclear controls, Putin asked, "while at the same time trying to inflict, as [U.S. leaders] themselves say, a 'strategic defeat' on Russia?" [NYT / David E. Sanger]
- A German military leak last week suggested U.K. troops are already in Ukraine. [The Guardian / Dan Sabbagh and Kate Connolly]
"Kyiv is bracing for a Russian spring offensive" while "short on fresh soldiers and ammunition." [WSJ / Matthew Luxmoore and Daniel Michaels]
"Russia appears on track to produce nearly three times more artillery munitions than the US and Europe." [CNN / Katie Bo Lillis et al.]
However, some "Western analysts say Moscow's arms-production figures mask various challenges and could be misleading." [WSJ / Alistair MacDonald and Kate Vtorygina]

What about letting Ukraine in NATO?

"The conventional wisdom holds that Ukraine's long-term security is best accomplished by bringing Kyiv under the NATO umbrella," DePetris argued. "But this is wrong":

"First, it would likely lengthen the duration of the war, not shorten it," because keeping Ukraine out of NATO is a major incentive for Putin to "stop waging war, let alone negotiate peace."
"Second, even if Ukraine did join NATO, it's not clear Russia would believe that the United States and its European allies would fight on Kyiv's behalf."
"Instead of continually teasing Ukraine with phantom NATO membership at some undefined point in the future, the alliance should be honest" with Kyiv. [WaPo / DePetris]

Harvard's Stephen M. Walt made a similar case at Foreign Policy, pushing for more U.S. aid to Ukraine but arguing that "bringing Ukraine into NATO now is a bad idea that will prolong the war and leave Kyiv in an even worse position over time," in no small part because "one of the main reasons Putin launched his illegal invasion in February 2022 was to prevent Ukraine from gravitating closer to the West and eventually joining the alliance." [FP / Walt]

As DEFP's Benjamin H. Friedman has argued, "Guaranteeing Ukraine's security serves no major U.S. interest and would increase the risk of a U.S. or NATO war with Russia and nuclear escalation. Moreover, "U.S. security guarantees will likely damage Ukraine's security overall by antagonizing Russia, preserving a cause of the war, and encouraging Ukraine to take risks in expectation of help that will not come."

Looking ahead to talks

Friedman's case for neutrality—and Walt's grimly realistic assessment of Ukraine's battlefield prospects—should inform any discussion of diplomacy.
It's still early for actual negotiations, say Samuel Charap and Jeremy Shapiro at Foreign Affairs, but "it's time to talk about talking":
- "Ukraine and its Western backers have precious little common ground with Russia. Yet all the key players seem to agree on one critical issue: The war in Ukraine will end in negotiations."
- "If neither side begins this process, the warring parties will likely remain stuck where they are today—fiercely battling over inches of territory, at a terrible cost to human life and regional stability, for years to come." [Foreign Affairs / Charap and Shapiro]

QUOTable

"Escalation of violence is in no one's interest, and there is no such thing as a limited war."

– U.S. Special Envoy Amos Hochstein on the prospect of war on the Israel-Lebanon border. [Reuters]

TALKING HEADS

How strategic overreach impacts military readiness

What compounds U.S. military readiness problems, DEFP Fellow Ret. Col. Daniel L. Davis said on a Fox News panel, is "that we want to do everything all over the place. We want to stay forever in the Ukraine war; we want to keep our troops in Iraq and Syria."

For Ukraine alone, Davis continued, Washington has sent thousands of military vehicles and millions of rounds of ammunition. "We can't continue that without seriously degrading our ability to defend ourselves."

Watch the full clip here, or go deeper with two recent DEFP explainers:

Sober Analysis

Don't overstate THE Army's role in the Pacific

[U.S. Naval Institute / Matthew C. Mai]

[It] is not clear how adding more forward [U.S.] presence [inside the first island chain] will credibly bolster deterrence against China, especially considering the vulnerabilities of the current U.S. posture to Chinese long-range missiles. A resilient and survivable posture that can withstand and recover from the initial volley of Chinese strikes requires dispersion and distance.

Surging more ground forces to the first island chain to "influence" the local environment with support installations would just present Chinese planners with additional targets rather than give U.S. planners meaningful warfighting capability.

Read the full analysis here.

EXIT HERE

U.S. troops in Syria are in harm's way because of a reckless, costly, and unjustifiable grand strategy

"A month after a drone attack killed three American troops at a U.S. military outpost in Jordan's borderlands with Syria, decisionmakers in DC are still contending with restricted policy options," writes Violet Collins—options that don't limit U.S. exposure to similar attacks and lend themselves to further regional escalation instead.

The "violence has revealed the growing constraint on America's foreign policy choices in the Middle East as a result of maintaining active troop deployments." As is most acutely evident in Syria at present, this force posture is "all cost, no benefit" for U.S. security, the holdover of a failed grand strategy that policymakers should jettison once and for all.

A failure of grand strategy

In the post-Cold War—and especially post-9/11—era, Washington's bipartisan "grand strategy of 'liberal hegemony' sought to cultivate a U.S.-led international order," explains DEFP Fellow Christopher McCallion in a new explainer.

It was costly, bloody, and often counterproductive to U.S. security interests, accurately understood:

"Military force and economic sanctions were used promiscuously (and sometimes exclusively) as instruments of statecraft toward so-called 'rogue states,' including Iraq, Iran, and North Korea."
"Regime change—often in the name of protecting human rights or promoting democracy—became a popular option for Washington policymakers."
That led to "a series of ill-fated interventions and occupations in the Middle East that unleashed a decades-long paroxysm of chaos and bloodletting, costing millions of lives in the region (and beyond) and $8 trillion to the American public."
"Without exception, the outcomes of these interventions were contrary to U.S. interests, resulting either in a return to the status quo ante bellum (Afghanistan), descent into chaos and anarchy (Libya), gains in influence for official adversaries (Iraq), or some combination of the above (Syria)." [DEFP]

No time like the present to course-correct

Washington is no longer fighting large-scale wars in the Middle East and has troop levels ranging from zero (Afghanistan) to the high hundreds (Syria) to the low thousands (Iraq) at the sites of previous interventions and occupations.

These forces may not typically be in combat. But particularly as the Israel-Hamas war fans fresh conflict with Iran-linked groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, keeping Americans on the ground in the Mideast is an unnecessary risk:

It is reckless in the extreme to maintain military outposts that serve no vital national security interest and are in close proximity to regional rivals and adversaries in wartime. This puts U.S. troops in harm's way while creating a constant opportunity for escalation.
Complete U.S. withdrawal is especially urgent in Syria, where Russia joins Iran as a larger power involved in hostilities on the opposite side of U.S. forces. The danger of unintended, maybe even accidental, U.S.-Russia conflict in Syria is heightened by concurrent U.S.-Russia tension over Moscow's war on Ukraine.
The Biden administration "is reportedly exploring options for a military withdrawal from Syria." This is long overdue and compatible with the continued suppression of the remnants of the Islamic State. [Newsweek / Alexander Langlois]
It is in the interest of diverse regional actors—including the Syrian Democratic Forces, Iran, Turkey, Russia, Jordan, Iraq, and the Syrian regime—to continue to weed out ISIS elements that the lingering U.S. presence theoretically serves to combat. [Newsweek / Langlois]
"Washington should expedite [the withdrawal] process in collaboration with partners and foes sharing an interest in Syria's stability." [Newsweek / Langlois]

QUOTED

"Perhaps the new strain of foreign policy emerging on the right is neither isolationist nor realist. The Republicans pioneering this vision tend to be hawkish on Latin America, Iran, and China, and also encourage close U.S.-Israel ties. At the same time, they are 'more skeptical of liberal internationalist insistence that our security is tied up in places like Ukraine,' the policy director at the think tank Defense Priorities, Benjamin Friedman, tells the Sun. 'I'd call it Jacksonian, with a lot of Trump influence.'"

– DEFP Policy Director Benjamin Friedman, as quoted in, "Pendulum of GOP foreign policy is swinging away from neoconservatives of the Reagan era." [The New York Sun / M.J. Koch]

MAPPED

Iran's affiliates in the Middle East

"The January 28 drone attack that killed three U.S. troops near the Jordan-Syria border follows more than one hundred attacks by Iran-backed militias against U.S. forces since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip," reports the CFR. The U.S. risks "an escalation trap with these groups" (shown in the map above), unless we remove American forces from needless and dangerous outposts, particularly those in Syria.

► Go deeper with a DEFP explainer: Withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Iraq ◄

Sober Analysis

U.S. voters face a stark choice on foreign policy

[The Guardian / Emma Ashford]

Political scientists have long known that American voters do not typically vote on foreign policy issues, which pale in comparison with economic or social issues. In 2024, however, that rule is not likely to hold. A plethora of recent polls suggest that Americans are increasingly concerned about foreign policy; one survey found that four in 10 voters rank the issue among their top concerns. […]

U.S. voters are increasingly skeptical about the idea that America is the world's indispensable nation; and young voters in particular are dubious about the Biden administration's commitment to human rights and appalled by his support for Israel's war in Gaza. Biden's other problem, of course, is that it is easier to criticize than to fix complex international problems.

Read the full analysis here.

Year three

Putin's losses, Washington's ambitions, and Kyiv's need for a realistic peace

After two years under brutal Russian attack, most Ukrainians still believe their country will triumph … eventually. "A majority now believe it will take years," The Economist reports. "And for the first time since the start of the war, polling also suggests a majority feel that the country is heading in the wrong direction."

Outside Ukraine, other recent surveys show lower hopes. Only 12 percent of Americans foresee a military victory for Ukraine, and just 10 percent of Europeans say the same.

That isn't because Moscow is expected to win. Slightly fewer Americans (11 percent) and slightly more Europeans (20 percent) think Russia can secure a military victory, but in both places the most predicted outcome is a negotiated settlement.

That's not a certain resolution—but it could be a tolerable and achievable one if Western and Ukrainian policymakers can grasp what Russia's Vladimir Putin has already lost, how Washington overreached, and why Kyiv would do well to seek a realistic peace.

Putin's losses

At this point, writes DEFP Director of Grand Strategy Rajan Menon at The New York Times, "it has become a commonplace that time favors President Vladimir Putin." But in a very real sense, "Putin's war has failed."

"[E]ven if this war ends with Russia retaining all the Ukrainian land it now holds … Ukraine will go its own way."
"If the fundamental purpose of Mr. Putin's war was to keep Ukraine within Russia's orbit—politically, culturally, and economically—it has had the opposite effect."
For Putin, this war has also backfired in the European Union and NATO Europe, prompting higher defense expenditures and new ties to Ukraine.
"Even a truncated Ukraine would be among Europe's biggest countries, its heft added to by a battle-tested army of 500,000." [NYT / Menon]

Washington's ambitions

Washington, meanwhile, has made too much of Ukraine, argues DEFP Fellow Daniel DePetris in a new brief:

The U.S. “remains Ukraine's most prolific backer as it defends itself against Russian aggression,” but our “security interests in the conflict are far narrower than” rhetoric in D.C. suggests.
In the third year of the war, the U.S. should have more limited ambitions, not anticipating that American support will lead to Ukraine reclaiming all its territory.
U.S. priorities are to “avoid escalation to direct U.S. or NATO conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia; shift the burden of aiding Ukraine and defending Europe to the Europeans; and refuse U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine.” [DEFP / DePetris]

What Kyiv should do next

As DePetris contends, the U.S. “should actively pursue exploratory peace or armistice talks between Ukraine and Russia, which have been neglected to date in favor of supporting Ukraine’s maximalist, unrealistic objectives.” [DEFP]
For Kyiv, the time to abandon those objectives has long since come. "The goal still today is not to enable Ukraine to take back all of its territory—I understand this is Ukraine official policy, but I don't think that [is] a theory of victory," as Carnegie's Michael Kofman said at a recent DEFP panel discussion. Rather, Ukraine is positioned to “negotiate with Russia war termination … and then to attain a durable peace." [Business Insider / Ella Sherman]
That might involve an armistice, Ukrainian neutrality, a compromise on territory, or something else livable if less-than-ideal.Trendlines

"Though public support for Ukraine in the West remains high, there are growing concerns in Kyiv about the depth of U.S. commitment," The Wall Street Journal reports. "A Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults found that the percentage of people saying Washington is providing too much support rose to 31 percent in December from 7 percent at the start of the war."

See more data on the war in Ukraine from the WSJ.

Quoted

"Absolutely I'm in favor of rethinking the U.S. role in NATO. I'm skeptical of permanent alliances, because that offers all sorts of trouble in the form of entanglements and getting involved in conflicts because of our relationships with countries rather than a sober look at U.S. security interests."

– DEFP founder and President Edward King, as quoted in, "Russia looms over yet another Trump presidential campaign." [WaPo / Ashley Parker]

Timelines

Two months of Houthi attacks

"The Houthis have said they are seeking to disrupt shipping links with Israel to force Israel to end its military campaign in Gaza," The New York Times reports. "But ships connected to more than a dozen countries have been targeted, and a Houthi spokesman said [earlier this year] that they consider 'all American and British ships' to be enemy targets."

Since this initial two-month stretch, Houthi attacks have continued on a similar, near-daily basis, as Military Times has chronicled. As U.S. and U.K. counterstrikes continue, the militant group has reportedly escalated its efforts to include knocking out undersea communication lines.

Livestream

Can Ukraine still win? Evaluating U.S. interests and policy options

Defense Priorities hosted a live discussion on Tuesday, February 20 on how U.S. policy should adjust to deal with Ukraine's changed fortunes. Panelists were Michael Kofman, Emma Ashford, Daniel Davis, and moderated by Benjamin Friedman.

Sober Analysis

What the Western media gets wrong about Taiwan

[FP / Clarissa Wei]

"You watch the news and see footage of war planes, and it seems like it's tense on the ground here in Taiwan," said Tina Liu, a Taiwanese journalist who took on her first fixing gig with an Italian outlet this year. "But it really isn't. And even though it isn't, people are still pursing that tense atmosphere." […]

This year, a lot of [a fixer named] Jesse's clients have been war correspondents—fresh out of Ukraine or Israel and looking for action. "Some were visibly disappointed when they realized life was normal," he said. By speaking up, the fixers hope for a more accurate and even-keeled portrayal of Taiwan.

"I know a lot of people come here because of our relationship with China," [Taiwanese journalist Tina] Liu added. "Everyone says Taiwan is the next Hong Kong, or the next Ukraine. But our history is different from these places."

Read the full analysis here.

Unhappy anniversary

Ukraine's defense is in dire straits. What would a realistic victory look like?

The second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine sees Moscow riding high: battlefield gains for Russian and "extremely difficult" conditions for Ukraine, the prison death of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, a Russian economy unexpectedly resilient under sanctions, rumors of Russian space nukes, and U.S. aid to Ukraine tied up in a divided Congress.

Ukrainians' courage and dogged self-defense have won sympathy and support the world over. But we do Ukraine no favors if we are unrealistic about political and military realities, however grim they may be. At the two-year mark, it is unfortunately necessary to ask: Can Ukraine still win? Or perhaps we should say: What would an acceptable and attainable peace look like in Ukraine—and what would it take to get there?

Conditions at the two-year mark

A year ago, many "thought Russia might be on the verge of strategic defeat in Ukraine. … Now that optimism appeared premature at best, faintly delusional at worst." [NYT / David E. Sanger and Steven Erlanger]
This month, "Russia made its first major gain in Ukraine in nearly a year, taking the ruined city of Avdiivka, at huge human cost to both sides, the bodies littered along the roads a warning, perhaps, of a new course in the two-year-old war." [NYT / Sanger and Erlanger]
"Without dominant hills, larger rivers or extensive fortifications of the kind it built around Avdiivka over the better part of a decade, Ukraine will probably have to cede more ground to hold back Russian units." [NYT / Thomas Gibbons-Neff]
"[D]isaffection about Ukraine aid in the United States really isn't a Russian plot, as some pundits are starting to claim. It's about broad-based unhappiness about the amount of money that's being sent over there, the question of why European states aren't contributing more, and why the Biden administration appears to have no endgame for resolving the conflict." [FP / Emma Ashford]
"People came to very strong conclusions based off the first month of the war," said Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "And I think a lot of those conclusions were wrong." [The New Yorker / Keith Gessen]

Toward an acceptable and attainable peace

Seek a realistic victory: "You have to create the space for Ukraine to claim victory under less-than-ideal conditions. Because, if you say the only thing that is victory is the Russians go home entirely from Crimea and Donbas, Ukraine is in NATO, and Moscow somehow disappears off the face of the earth—that's an unrealistic goal," said Olga Oliker of the International Crisis Group. [The New Yorker / Keith Gessen]
Focus on defense: "[V]ictory for Kyiv and its Western partners does not necessarily require gaining back specific chunks of territory. It simply requires that Russian President Vladimir Putin be denied his goal of subjugating Ukraine," and that denial in turn can "open the door for negotiations." [Foreign Affairs / Emma Ashford and Kelly A. Grieco]
Plan for diplomacy: "[T]he United States could be doing more to enable diplomacy. […] Laying the groundwork for eventual negotiations could reduce the risk of … dangerous outcomes and help chart a path toward ending the war." [Foreign Affairs / Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe]
Consider an armistice: "Embracing a 'Korean Scenario' may provide the best prospect for both the Ukrainian people and a return to global stability. It would allow both sides to stop fighting with an immediate armistice along the present line of contact, while putting aside most of the complexities of peacemaking." [RS / Lyle Goldstein]
Think beyond NATO: "Guaranteeing Ukraine's security serves no major U.S. interest and would increase the risk of a U.S. or NATO war with Russia and nuclear escalation." [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]

Trendlines

"Though public support for Ukraine in the West remains high, there are growing concerns in Kyiv about the depth of U.S. commitment," The Wall Street Journal reports. "A Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults found that the percentage of people saying Washington is providing too much support rose to 31 percent in December from 7 percent at the start of the war."

See more data on the war in Ukraine from the WSJ.

Quoted

"Does Trump sound like a mafia don running a protection racket? He sure does. But is there something more to this debate? I think so. The polite establishmentarian wing of the policy community has made these complaints too. The rude, boorish mafia don Trump version of this, sad to say, may be required to get the Europeans' attention. Trump has gotten the Europeans' attention."

– Justin Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, as quoted in "Trump didn't quit NATO, but a potential second term alarms allies." [WaPo / Isaac Arnsdorf]

livestream

Can Ukraine still win? Evaluating U.S. interests and policy options

Defense Priorities hosted a live discussion on Tuesday, February 20 on how U.S. policy should adjust to deal with Ukraine's changed fortunes. Panelists were Michael Kofman, Emma Ashford, Daniel Davis, and moderated by Benjamin Friedman.

Sober Analysis

Why America can't have it all

[Foreign Affairs / Stephen Wertheim]

American officials bear responsibility for making a failed wager of their own. They hoped entire regions of the world would sit still because they preferred to turn their gaze elsewhere, even as the United States remained ensconced in those regions' security arrangements. The Biden administration wanted to prioritize what in its view mattered most while declining to disentangle the United States from what mattered less.

This is a form of wishful thinking—perhaps as naive as invading countries to liberate them—and ought to be recognized as such. […] Going forward, the options are stark: the United States can selectively retrench and control costs and risks, or it can stick with global primacy and lurch from crisis to crisis.

Read the full analysis here.

BURDEN SHIFTING

Trump's NATO rhetoric is feckless and obtuse—but the burden-shifting talk it prompted is long overdue

"One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, 'Well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us?'"

"I said: 'You didn’t pay? You're delinquent?'" former President Donald Trump boasted of his conversations with NATO allies at a campaign rally on Saturday. "'No, I would not protect you,'" he continued. "In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills."

Trump's remarks followed his longstanding pattern of mischaracterizing NATO members' defense spending commitment—a target of 2 percent of GDP that most members do not hit—as a "bill" to be paid to the U.S. But his invitation of Russian aggression went beyond past rhetoric on this topic and raised widespread alarm in European capitals and Washington alike.

The candidate's framing is typically ill-considered. But the rethinking of burden shifting his comments prompted is good—overdue, actually. Here's what this shift should look like, regardless of Trump's policy whims and political fortunes.

Reality sets in

Though NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg claimed to "expect that regardless of who wins the presidential election, the U.S. will remain a strong and committed NATO ally," other leaders across Europe recognized the continent's need to defend itself. [BBC / Adam Durbin]
- Trump's comments "make more urgent Europe's nascent efforts to 'develop its strategic autonomy and invest in its defense,'" said European Council President Charles Michel.
- "Europe may soon have no choice but to defend itself," wrote German MP Norbert Röttgen. "Anything else would be capitulation and giving up on ourselves." [NYT / David E. Sanger]
- "The European Union, France, and Poland must become strong and ready to defend their own borders," said Polish PM Donald Tusk.
- French President Emmanuel Macron spoke of making "Europe a security and defense power complementary to NATO, the European pillar of the Atlantic alliance." [The Guardian / Daniel Sabbagh]
Along similar lines, an editorial from FT made a rueful but sobered case for NATO Europe learning "how to plan for war without America":
- "The one admirable thing about Trump's message was its clarity. It is an unambiguous signal to Europeans that they must start preparing to protect their continent's security without U.S. involvement."
- "That requires a European pillar within NATO with Europeans able to provide the crucial military assets like heavy lift and intelligence that only the U.S. currently possesses."
- "Europeans cannot count on" a reversal and/or election loss by Trump. "They must prepare for a new world, in which they take care of their own security." [FT / The Editorial Board]

The way forward

The FT piece makes a case that "needed to have been made even if Trump hadn't ignorantly made NATO sound like a protection racket," argued DEFP Director of Grand Strategy Rajan Menon. [X]
Menon himself has made the case for burden shifting in far greater detail in a DEFP explainer, "Reconfiguring NATO." Key points:
- NATO should be reconfigured to shift the primary responsibility for defending Europe to Europeans. This far-reaching change is appropriate given Europe’s transformed security environment.
- Reducing or ending the American military presence in Europe should not depend on whether European governments implement burden shifting; indeed U.S. force reductions are a prerequisite for burden shifting.
- Europe has the economic and technological resources needed to assume the principal responsibility for its own defense.
- Burden shifting is not merely about increased European defense spending; it also requires better military coordination among European states.
- Russia's attack on Ukraine has revealed the weaknesses of the Russian military, which makes burden shifting even more appropriate. [DEFP / Menon]

Quoted

"No country on earth has constructed dozens of nuclear warheads only to negotiate them away. North Korea is not going to be the first, particularly when its conventional military capacity is weak relative to the U.S. and its Asian neighbors."

— DEFP Fellow Daniel R. DePetris, as quoted in "U.S.-North Korea arms control talks or denuclearization? Analysts are divided." [VOA / Christy Lee]

Survey says

Poll: Americans are wary of a Syria mission if it claims U.S. lives

Defense Priorities commissioned a YouGov poll to learn more about Americans' awareness and opinion of the U.S. troop presence in the Middle East, particularly Syria. The data conveyed general opposition to a U.S. troop presence in Syria grows as its cost in American lives increases.

See the full survey results here.

Upcoming livestream

2023 shifted the war in Ukraine in Russia's favor: Ukraine's failed counteroffensive, the firing of Ukraine's top general, diminishing Western support, and more. How should U.S. policy deal with Ukraine's changed fortunes?

Please join Defense Priorities on Tuesday, February 20 for a thoughtful discussion on these important issues, featuring Michael Kofman, Emma Ashford, Daniel Davis, and Benjamin Friedman.

Feb 15, 2024

Feb 7, 2024

Do Americans want U.S. troops in the Middle East?

Feb 7, 2024

Insights into the public's attitude toward American troops in Syria, attacks on U.S. troops and danger of war with Iran, and more.

DRAWDOWN

Why are we in Syria, and should we be?

From January 8–15, 2024, DEFP commissioned YouGov to conduct a poll regarding public attitudes towards the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Syria and American involvement in the region's escalating crisis. The poll was featured in USA Today.

Most of those polled were not aware that American troops were deployed or under attack in Syria. Respondents indicated their opposition to a U.S. military presence in the region would increase if American troops were killed. The poll was conducted before January 28, when 3 American soldiers were killed and 40 injured on the Jordan-Syria border by a Shia militia drone attack.

Most respondents also said they were concerned that the presence of American troops in Syria could escalate into a broader regional conflict. Among those who did not support the U.S. mission in Syria, two-thirds concluded it was a waste of resources.

See the full poll here.

For more analysis, see DEFP Visiting Fellow Will Walldorf's piece in TIME.

CHARTED

Risks of attacks and escalation

Militias backed by Iran have launched at least 166 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since October 7. [The New York Times / Eric Schmitt]
A drone attack on a U.S. base in Syria killed six Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters on February 5. [BBC / David Gritten]
A U.S. warship in the Red Sea narrowly avoided being hit by a Houthi-fired cruise missile on Tuesday. [CNN / Brad Lendon]
Despite expanding its retaliatory airstrikes against Iran backed militias, neither they nor Tehran appear deterred. [NBC News / Dan DeLuce, et al.]
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has returned to the Middle East for a new round of shuttle diplomacy with leaders in the region. [AP / Matthew Lee, et al.]

Withdraw U.S. forces

Writing in December, DEFP Fellow Daniel DePetris argued that "U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq are at significant risk as long as they remain deployed there."
- "[T]here is no good reason to risk U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq," DePetris claims. "ISIS's capabilities have been degraded, capable local actors eagerly hunt the group's remnants, and the United States can still strike from long distance, if necessary, without local bases."
- Instead, the U.S troop presence "pointlessly risks war with Iran," and "grants U.S. adversaries in the region added leverage by giving them the ability to threaten U.S. forces." [DEFP / DePetris]
- Read the full report: "Withdraw U.S. Troops from Syria and Iraq."
DEFP Contributing Fellow Geoff LaMear calls for the "Reagan option," referring to the former President's order to withdraw U.S. troops from Beirut following the barracks bombing in 1983 that left hundreds of American personnel dead and wounded. [UnHerd / Geoff LaMear]
- LaMear notes that "[n]o stake in the region is commensurate with the loss that would be incurred by stumbling into a war with a regional power in the Middle East" such as Iran.

For more, watch this recent DEFP panel discussion:Does the Middle East still matter?

Quoted

"Previous U.S. strikes in Iraq and Syria over the last three months failed to deter much of anything and in fact contributed to the ongoing tit-for-tat dynamics we see today[. . .] This has less to do with a lack of U.S. resolve and more to do with the inherent difficulties of influencing the decisionmaking of non-state actors, who don't have to worry about defending territory, regime preservation, or maintaining a favorable balance of power."

— DEFP Fellow Daniel DePetris, quoted in "Joe Biden faces Republican wrath for 'anemic' Iran response." [Newsweek / Brendan Cole]

Upcoming livestream

Can Ukraine still win? Evaluating U.S. interests and policy options

2023 shifted the war in Ukraine in Russia's favor: Ukraine's failed counteroffensive, the firing of Ukraine's top general, diminishing Western support, and more. How should U.S. policy deal with Ukraine's changed fortunes?

Please join Defense Priorities on Tuesday, February 20 for a thoughtful discussion on these important issues, featuring Michael Kofman, Emma Ashford, Daniel Davis, and Benjamin Friedman.

Sober Analysis

The U.S. had to respond to the attack in Jordan—but it shouldn't attack inside Iran

[MSNBC / Rajan Menon and Daniel DePetris]

Some pundits and lawmakers want Biden to include Iran itself on its list of targets[…]

Underlying all of this chest-thumping is the assumption that U.S. military action would be so painful that Iranian leaders would respond the way we would like them to: by standing down and ordering their proxies in the Middle East to cease further attacks against U.S. troops and installations in the region. Unfortunately, this is a low-probability scenario.

Iran's reaction might confound our expectations. Embarrassed and angered after being struck by American bombs, Iran could up the ante and attack U.S. troops and bases. Washington's extensive military presence in the region, while commonly viewed as a source of strength, may prove to be a vulnerability by providing Iran a long menu of targets to strike.

Read the full analysis here.

Mark your calendar

Lecture: "Globalization of the U.S. defense supply chain"

[SAIS / Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies Seminar Series]

Speaker: Dr. Eugene Gholz, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Notre Dame

When: Thursday, February 8, 2024, 4:30–6:00 PM

Where: 555 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington D.C., 20002, room 222

See event info here.

DRAWDOWN

U.S. forces should have left Syria and adjacent countries years ago. Get them out now.

The drone killing of three American troops by an Iran-linked militia on the Jordan-Syria border on Sunday was, as journalist Matthew Petti wrote at Reason, an "avoidable tragedy."

And the chief task of U.S. policymakers as the Biden administration weighs its promised response is to, in fact, avoid similarly avoidable missteps that will put even more U.S. service members needlessly in harm's way. The first step: Withdraw U.S. forces from Syria and adjacent countries immediately—as should have happened years ago.

An avoidable tragedy

"The soldiers killed and the service members wounded in an outpost on the border of Jordan and Syria should not have been there. The outpost attacked seems to be attached to the U.S. mission in Syria, which is unauthorized, increasingly foolish, and an invitation to war with Iran." [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]
The U.S. base where the attack occurred is part of "an effort to police the border against Iran-linked forces. But we never hear any larger rationale for that aim which justifies risking American lives. Congress does not perform oversight and the executive branch does not tell us." [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]

First responses

President Joe Biden has pledged to "hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing." [X]
"Actions may be tiered. We may see several rounds of action," an unnamed administration official said. [Politico / Matt Berg and Erin Banco]
Some lawmakers immediately pushed for war on Iran:
- "The only answer to these attacks must be devastating military retaliation against Iran's terrorist forces, both in Iran and across the Middle East," said Sen. Tom Cotton.
- Sens. Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham also called for retaliation against Iran itself. [Axios / Barak Ravid et al.]
Biden has claimed authority for recent Mideast airstrikes under the post-9/11 AUMFs, despite bipartisan objections from Congress. [NBC / Scott Wong and Kate Santaliz]
- Those authorizations were passed in 2001 and 2002 and covered force against the perpetrators of 9/11 and Iraq, respectively.
- Neither document mentions Iran.

Realism and restraint

"There are better ways to hit back than starting another massive war in the Middle East and signing up for exponentially more death and destruction." [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]
Diplomacy is one such option here and in other conflicts with Iran-linked groups, e.g. in Yemen. [RS / Michael DiMino]
But the most immediate priority is to remove U.S. forces from worse-than-useless bases in territory it only harms us to occupy, as DEFP explainers have detailed for years:
- Keeping U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria courts war: U.S. troops in the Mideast "are especially vulnerable to direct and asymmetric reprisals from Iran; Iranian-directed proxies; and even rogue groups not controlled by Tehran."
- It is time for U.S. troops to leave Syria: Since the end of the anti-ISIS mission, the U.S. presence here has been subject to mission creep, "murky objectives and needless risks."
- Apply the logic of Afghanistan withdrawal to Syria: "[O]ver-the-horizon capabilities are sufficient to achieve U.S. counterterrorism aims" in Syria.

Quoted

"Jordan is a longtime security partner, but we are going to have to ask ourselves whether the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and Syria is worth it."

– DEFP Fellow Gil Barndollar, as quoted in, "Biden faces pressure to confront Iran after U.S. troops killed." [Bloomberg / Peter Martin and Eric Martin]

LIVESTREAM TODAY @ 2

Heightened Chinese military capabilities, rising tension, and limited U.S.-China diplomatic engagement fuel growing concerns that a war could break out between the world's two largest powers. What strategy will serve U.S. interests best?

Please join Defense Priorities today, Wednesday, January 24, for a thoughtful discussion on these important issues, featuring David Kang, Peter Harris, Susan Shirk, and Lyle Goldstein.

TALKING HEADS

The democracy-defense credo does not serve U.S. interests

[The Atlantic / Stephen Wertheim]

When supporting democracy aligns with countries' sovereign status and serves U.S. interests, the U.S. can play a positive role. But privileging democracy above sovereignty leads to grief. It injects an endlessly destabilizing principle into international relations, implying that states do not have legitimate rights unless they are democracies, as defined by Washington.

Under [the Biden administration], the United States has abandoned the disastrous foreign-policy choices of the post-9/11 era—invading other countries to overthrow their governments and install democratic ones—yet it continues to speak as though it reserves the right to do so.

The point is not lost on states around the world. And one day, Americans will not want a yet more powerful China to assert the same principle of intervening abroad on behalf of the form of government it favors.

Read the full analysis here.

STRATEGERY

U.S. strikes on Yemen aren't working, Biden admits. Maybe try something else?

After 10 days of near-daily strikes on Yemen's Houthi rebels, who have been attacking ships in the Red Sea, Biden administration officials told WaPo on Saturday that they are settling in for the long haul, "crafting plans for a sustained military campaign."

How long? Hard to say! Officials "don't expect that the operation will stretch on for years like previous U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Syria"—which isn't saying much, as those wars lasted 20, 18, and 10+ years, respectively. Beyond that hollow promise, they "can identify no end date" or even estimate when a strategic goal might be achieved.

Perhaps that's because, as President Biden himself observed, U.S. strikes aren't working: "Well, when you say 'working,' are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes."

Here's a rundown of how we got this Kafkaesque strategy—and what we could do instead.

Red Sea strikes

"Since mid-November 2023, the Houthis have conducted more than 30 attacks on international vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden," as DEFP's Michael DiMino explains in a new policy brief. But the details matter:
- "To date, the group's drone and missile volleys have not caused casualties or sunk any ships."
- "The overwhelming majority of Houthi attacks have either missed their targets or been defeated."
- "The group's few successful hits have resulted in minimal damage with ships remaining seaworthy." [DEFP / DiMino]
"With respect to a wartime action, the Constitution is quite clear: The legislative branch has the sole responsibility to decide whether the nation enters hostilities," whether that is through a formal declaration of war or at least a narrowly defined authorization for use of military force. [Chicago Tribune / Daniel DePetris]
And strikes on Houthi positions haven't deterred further attacks. Indeed, some analysts think "this new phase of hostilities may strengthen the Houthis" by garnering attention and clout. [WaPo / Ishaan Tharoor]

'An unenviable choice'

"Very predictably, attacking the Houthis failed to stop them from attacking shipping, and they have instead escalated," as Friedman wrote. "Now we are left deciding whether to back down and look feckless, or pointlessly escalate." [X]
"The Biden administration is now confronted with an unenviable choice," noted DEFP's Daniel R. DePetris: "Take more military action after each Houthi attack, or hold your fire. The first increases the prospects of escalation, which the U.S. should be avoiding. The second will make the U.S. look confused and disjointed." [NYT]
"Ideally," DePetris added, "U.S. officials would have thought through these dynamics before the initial order to strike." [NYT]

What next?

"There is no credible military option that will guarantee a cessation of Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Strikes alone are unlikely to alter Houthi strategic intentions; decrease the frequency of attacks on cargo shipping; or significantly degrade Houthi" capabilities. [DEFP / DiMino]
Instead, "a policy response of diplomatic engagement could be considered. It would include incentives-based inducements and negotiation, which are low-cost options for the United States that might resolve the crisis." [DEFP / DiMino]
Alongside diplomacy, the U.S. should also consider complementary low-risk options like "strategic inaction" and "zone defense," DiMino argues, with extensive analysis of the costs and benefits of these and other options. Read his full analysis here.

LIVESTREAM TODAY @ 2

Heightened Chinese military capabilities, rising tension, and limited U.S.-China diplomatic engagement fuel growing concerns that a war could break out between the world's two largest powers. What strategy will serve U.S. interests best?

Please join Defense Priorities today, Wednesday, January 24, for a thoughtful discussion on these important issues, featuring David Kang, Peter Harris, Susan Shirk, and Lyle Goldstein.

Quoted

"[Strikes] won't work. They won't sufficiently degrade Houthi capability or will stop their attacks on shipping. Why do something that is so evidently reckless? […] We always have the option not to employ pointless violence."

– DEFP Policy Director Benjamin Friedman, as quoted in, "The era of interventionist dominance is over." [TAC / Kelly Beaucar Vlahos]

Mapped

Countries with U.S. counterterrorism exercises, 2021–2023

In recent years, the primary focus of U.S. foreign policy has turned from counterterrorism to great power conflict, particularly the prospect of a U.S.-Russia war (linked to Ukraine), a U.S.-China war (over Taiwan or North Korea), or a regional conflagration in the Mideast.

But post-9/11 counterterrorism continues to a degree many Americans do not realize, USA Today reports, based on a new publication from Brown University. That includes U.S. counterterrorism military exercises in the dozens of countries mapped above.

"We still have this counterterrorism apparatus trudging onward," said Brown researcher Stephanie Savell. "It makes U.S. forces vulnerable to attack and increases the likelihood of the U.S. engaging in a much bigger offensive war."

Read more from USA Today, or see the full report from Brown's Watson Institute (PDF).

Election analysis

Peace is still the chief U.S. interest in Taiwan

"Mr. President," a reporter asked Saturday on the south lawn of the White House, "do you have a reaction to the Taiwan election?"

"We do not support independence," President Biden replied.

The simplicity and clarity of Biden's comment was welcome—particularly given his past pattern of rhetorically committing the U.S. to Taiwan's defense, then his aides immediately walking his comments back. And it followed shortly after a strikingly sensible statement on Taiwan from a senior administration official.

Here's a rundown of what happened in Taiwan's election, what those results mean, and where U.S. interests in the situation lie.

The election results

Taiwan's presidential election was won by the Democratic Progress Party (DPP), which already held power. Beijing has called William Lai, the president-elect, a "separatist through and through." [Axios / Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian]
The DPP's founder argues Taiwan is "already, in fact, independent, because its people had won their democratic self-determination." [NYT / Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien]

What they mean

"The result shows voters backing the DPP's view that Taiwan is a de facto sovereign nation that should bolster defenses against China's threats and deepen relations with fellow democratic countries." [CNN / Eric Cheung et al.]
"Taiwan's election result poses major challenges for regional and global security," said DEFP Director of Asia Engagement Lyle Goldstein. "China has repeatedly made it clear that it regards DPP rule as anathema, since DPP leaders insist that Taiwan has already achieved independence."

Where U.S. interests lie

Biden's comment on the lawn came two days after a longer statement from an unnamed official, shared in a background press call on Thursday, which is worth quoting at length:

The United States and China of course have had differences on cross-Strait issues, but over the last 40 years we have managed these differences.

When President Biden met with President Xi in San Francisco this past November, he made clear that U.S. policy toward Taiwan has not and will not change. He reiterated that we are committed to our longstanding One China policy which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the Three Joint Communiqués, and the Six Assurances.

He indicated that we oppose any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side. We do not support Taiwan independence. We support cross-Strait dialogue, and we expect cross-Strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means, free from coercion, in a manner that is acceptable to the people on both sides of the Strait. We do not take a position on the ultimate resolution of cross-Strait differences, provided they are resolved peacefully.

This one remark does not negate past missteps on Taiwan from the Biden administration, of course. Nor can it substitute for long-term, working level diplomacy or rectify the U.S. force posture in East Asia, which is bloated with worse-than-useless outposts and should move toward an offshore balancing model, as DEFP's Peter Harris recently argued.

But it does hit on three crucial points:

The status quo of Taiwan vis-à-vis China is certainly not ideal, but both Taiwan and the U.S. can live with it—and indeed have lived with it for decades.
Though the cause of formal Taiwanese independence is undoubtedly sympathetic, it is not Washington's prerogative to initiate change to that status quo. That could pull the United States into a war with China that we should be laboring to avoid.
For all that sympathy, the chief U.S. interest here is not independence for Taiwan but peace, and especially avoidance of a catastrophic U.S.-China war.

One immediate implication: The Biden administration would do well to cancel its planned post-election delegation visit to Taiwan. The trip will antagonize Beijing without meaningfully enhancing Taipei's security.

Go deeper with DEFP's explainers:

QUOTED

"After Houthi attacks on shipping targets continued into this week, Ben Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, a think tank which advocates restraint in U.S. foreign policy, sighed in frustration. The Biden administration is 'left deciding whether to back down and look feckless, or pointlessly escalate.' He added: 'The only way out of this is diplomatic.'"

– DEFP Policy Director Benjamin Friedman, as quoted in, "What Yemen's Houthis gain through their Red Sea strikes." [The Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor]

MAPPED

Countries with U.S. forces engaged in combat, 2021–2023

"Nearly a quarter-century after the U.S. launched its response to 9/11, the Pentagon continues to pursue military actions in the Middle East and in many more parts of the world than Americans may realize," USA Today reports, based on a new report from the Costs of War project at the Watson Institute at Brown University.

"The findings cover the first three years of the Biden administration and show the range of globe-spanning operations where U.S. troops have engaged in direct combat" and other military interventions. The nine countries reported to have seen U.S. combat operations in the Biden years are Afghanistan, Iraq, Kenya, Mali, Somalia, Syria, Tanzania, UAE, and Yemen.

Read more from USA Today, or see the full report from the Watson Institute (PDF).

Sober analysis

How Ukraine can win through defense

[Foreign Affairs / Emma Ashford and Kelly A. Grieco]

Much of the aid to Ukraine over the last two years has focused on offensive capabilities—advanced Western tanks, mine-clearing equipment, and long-range missiles—in a bid to push Russia back. But victory for Kyiv and its Western partners does not necessarily require gaining back specific chunks of territory. It simply requires that Russian President Vladimir Putin be denied his goal of subjugating Ukraine.

If Ukraine can defend the territory it controls in the coming months by using capabilities such as antitank mines and concrete fortifications, it can deny Russia a path to complete victory and perhaps even open the door for negotiations. Putin evidently believes that time is on his side; a strong, sustainable Ukrainian defense would prove him wrong.

Read the full analysis here.

ENTANGLEMENT

The Biden team is wary of a regional Mideast war. So why are U.S. troops still in harm's way?

"Israel said its military is starting to shift from a large-scale ground and air campaign in the Gaza Strip to a more targeted phase in its war against Hamas," The New York Times reported Monday. Troop levels in civilian areas will draw down, the story said, and Gaza will see more surgical ground operations and fewer airstrikes.

But just one day prior, a Wall Street Journal report told a more complicated story. "We are fighting an axis, not a single enemy," the paper quoted Israel's defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who pledged Israel will use enough force not only to crush Hamas but to deter other regional adversaries through long-term war.

The hopeful narrative in the Times report is appealing, but the darker forecast at the Journal should serve as a caution to U.S. decisionmakers—especially given extant U.S. military activity in the region. This could be a yearslong, region-wide conflict, and it is crucial to avoid unnecessary U.S. entanglement.

Tangling threads

Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured the Middle East over the past week to urge against escalation. [WSJ / Dion Nissenbaum and William Mauldin]
- Blinken argued Monday that an expanded conflict serves no one's interests, claiming a wide array of regional leaders are "doing everything possible to deter escalation." [State Department]
- In meetings Tuesday, he "present[ed] a plan for Gaza's future based on his discussions with Arab and Turkish leaders [but] received little public response from Israeli officials." [WaPo / Steve Hendrix and John Hudson]
Meanwhile, a U.S. strike in Baghdad last week "killed an Iran-linked militia commander and risked accelerating the regional fallout" from Gaza. [WaPo / Mustafa Salim et al.]
- The attack means "peace is not lasting," Baghdad resident Sarah Jamal told WaPo. "It started in Syria, then Lebanon, then Iran, and now here. We're being dragged into this, and we have no say." [WaPo / Salim et al.]
- Iraq said the strike violated U.S. assurances, and Baghdad announced plans—which may or may not come to fruition—to remove U.S. forces from the country. [Reuters / Ahmed Rasheed and Phil Stewart]
- "We stress our firm position in ending the existence of the international coalition after the justifications for its existence have ended," said Iraq's prime minister. [Reuters / Rasheed and Stewart]

Savvy strategy

The Israel-Hamas war risks escalation in two senses, DEFP's Rajan Menon and Daniel R. DePetris argue at The Guardian: "a vast increase in death and destruction" and spread to include new parties.
- Already there are "daily skirmishes along the Israel-Lebanon border" between Israel and the Iran-linked Hezbollah.
- The "IDF has been attacking Iranian proxies in Syrian-controlled territory," too.
- "In Yemen, the Houthis, another Iranian-linked militia, have attacked Red Sea shipping lanes more than two dozen times, prompting the U.S. to create an international maritime coalition to maintain freedom of navigation and, along with 11 other nations, to issue a warning: cease or face the consequences." [The Guardian / Menon and DePetris]
At Inkstick, analyst Alexander Langlois is not optimistic about prospects for the second type of escalation:
- Tehran "appears to be tempering its bombastic rhetoric," but it can only do so much to moderate the militias it backs around the region.
- "Militias can be unorganized, especially during increased tensions," and one "mistake or misinterpretation, coupled with long-running and hated U.S. troop deployments in the Middle East, could spell disastrous results."
- The Biden administration "should implement a restrained diplomatic approach that focuses on de-escalating potential and actual points of friction in the region or risk putting U.S. soldiers and citizens in harm's way."
- "U.S. policymakers must consider a serious exit strategy [from Iraq and Syria] or, at minimum, efforts to relocate exposed forces to secure locations." [Inkstick / Langlois]

YOU’RE INVITED

You're invited to join DEFP for a free livestream discussion with the Quincy Institute's Andrew Bacevich, the Stimson Center's Barbara Slavin, DEFP Policy Director Benjamin Friedman, and DEFP Fellow Daniel DePetris on Tuesday, January 16th at 11 AM ET.

QUOTED

"Israel has a right to target Hamas members abroad, and the United States has a right to defend its forces in the region. Yet the flareups that threaten wider war for the United States confront us with the question of what U.S. interest is served by going to war for Israel, effectively on behalf of its war in Gaza."

– DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman, as quoted in, "Killing of senior Hamas leader in Lebanon stokes fears of Gaza war spreading beyond enclave." [CNBC / Sam Meredith]

MAPPED

U.S. forces in the Middle East

The United States still maintains a robust military presence of around 46,000 forces in the Middle East. Enlarging that force presence could deter regional powers, chiefly Iran, from greater involvement in the Israel-Hamas war—or it could escalate the conflict, drawing the U.S. into a needless regional fight.’

Learn more in DEFP's explainer, "Withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Syria."

Sober analysis

Deterrence gap: Avoiding war in the Taiwan Strait

[USAWC Press / Jared M. McKinney and Peter Harris]

In this monograph, the authors argue that the risk of the People's Republic of China invading Taiwan has been increasing for two reasons: a constellation of discrete deterrents that once constrained Beijing from invading Taiwan has decayed and, simultaneously, the incentives for China to exercise restraint toward Taiwan have decreased. […]
While this is an alarming assessment, the authors are not fatalistic. Leaders in Taiwan and the United States can establish policies to lower the risk of invasion (to say nothing of Beijing's obvious potential to rule out war as an option). In this way, alarming prognoses can reverse trends, allowing preferable paths to emerge—in this case, pathways to a stable peace across the Taiwan Strait.
This is the monograph's second purpose: to deduce sound policy recommendations for deterring China. Just because an invasion is becoming more likely does not mean Taiwan, the United States, or any other entity should treat war as inevitable. It matters why war is becoming more likely and what can be done about it.

Read the full analysis here.

ROCKET MAN

Realistic diplomacy should've been our answer to Pyongyang's provocation in 2017. And 2019. And 2022. It's still the right answer in 2024.

North Korea's isolated and repressive regime kicked off the new year with a fresh round of saber rattling at its southern neighbor—and the United States.

Dictator Kim Jong-un pledged Monday to "thoroughly annihilate" the U.S. if provoked, per state media reporting. Kim's government also announced plans to "scrap its efforts to reunify the Korean Peninsula due to South Korea's 'collusion with foreign forces.'" And in 2024, he promised, Pyongyang will "launch three additional military spy satellites, produce more nuclear materials, and introduce attack drones."

Kim will almost certainly make good on his promise of armament: This fresh bellicosity follows a new round of ICBM testing last month, and Kim has spent years honing the "treasured sword" of his nuclear arsenal.

For Washington, as ever when Kim lashes out, it would be foolish to meet provocation with provocation. The right strategic response remains a pivot to realistic diplomacy backed by confidence that U.S. deterrence will hold.

Don't panic

"The U.S. retains overwhelming nuclear and conventional military superiority with respect to North Korea. Deterrence has worked against North Korea for seven decades and will continue to work." [DEFP / Lyle Goldstein]
- Kim talks wildly, but he has a consistent and serious interest in regime (and personal) survival, and he understands that attacking the U.S. or South Korea guarantees his own destruction. [The Spectator / Daniel R. DePetris]
- "If North Korea dared to launch an ICBM at the U.S., North Korea would be destroyed. Pyongyang is extremely unlikely to commit national suicide in this way." [DEFP / Lyle Goldstein]
"Because its nuclear deterrent keeps it safe and provides leverage for negotiations with major powers, it is exceedingly unlikely the DPRK will denuclearize. But deterrence means a deal to remove the DPRK's weapons is not essential to U.S. security." [DEFP]

Do negotiate

The very survival instinct that keeps Kim from launching an unprovoked attack also makes current U.S. strategy—the maximalist demand of "complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization" (CVID) as a baseline for U.S.-North Korea talks—totally nonviable.
- "It's exceedingly unlikely the United States, under any president, can bribe or compel the North Koreans to disarm" due to "the Kim dynasty's prioritization of regime stability above all else."
- "While it leaves a bad taste in the mouth to concede the point, nuclear weapons remain the best deterrent to a foreign attack, which is why handing them over is strongly resisted in Pyongyang." [MSNBC / Daniel R. DePetris]
U.S.-North Korea relations will remain at a standstill so long as CVID is the only outcome Washington will countenance. An incremental approach to diplomacy would be more prudent and effective.
- The U.S. should negotiate for "more attainable objectives and [tie] the normalization of relations and economic sanctions relief to concessions the Kim dynasty may be open to exploring." [MSNBC / Daniel R. DePetris]
- Those concessions could include a moratorium on ICBM development, domestic and economic liberalization, a nuclear freeze, and more.
- Such smaller shifts would increase stability, help secure the peace, and perhaps increase quality of life for ordinary North Koreans at little risk or cost for the U.S. [DEFP]

QUOTED

"We shouldn't be encouraging the Philippines to get into a fight with China—they are likely to lose that fight. We do have a treaty with the Philippines […] but that treaty should be read very narrowly [… and] we should not even consider going to war over rocks and reefs or different interpretations of the law of the sea. That would be extremely foolish and reckless, and it would be very hard to explain to American taxpayers."

–DEFP Director of Asia Engagement Lyle Goldstein, as quoted in, "U.S. policies pushing China, Philippines to brink of conflict." [Responsible Statecraft / Mark Episkopos]
Related reading:

Philippines says it is not provoking conflict, accuses China of 'extremely dangerous' behavior [Reuters]
Why China is stepping up its maritime attacks on the Philippines [FP / Elisabeth Braw]
The China-Philippines face-off requires restraint [The Diplomat / Sarang Shidore]

MAPPED

U.S. military bases in Asia

The U.S. has a robust network of military bases across Asia, but their proliferation has not consistently enhanced our security. A better strategy is offshore balancing, in which Washington would reduce its military presence while encouraging friendly regional partners to play a greater role in maintaining the status quo. The first step in that direction must be U.S. military drawdowns—that is, a dramatic change to the map above.

Learn more in DEFP's explainer, "Moving to an offshore balancing strategy in East Asia."

Sober analysis

Withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Iraq

[DEFP / Daniel R. DePetris]

With 46,000 troops spread across a network of bases throughout the Middle East, the United States has far more force there than necessary to serve its key interests of defending against anti-U.S. terrorist threats, preventing disruptions to the flow of oil, and ensuring no regional power can achieve hegemonic status. The United States can meet these narrow interests without the high cost and baggage of a bloated force posture. […]
Once viewed as critical assets to accomplish counterterrorism goals, U.S. bases in Syria and Iraq have turned into liabilities and enable U.S. adversaries, including Iran and Russia, the opportunity to dial up the pressure.

Read the full explainer here.

STRATEGY

Everyone wants to deter Chinese aggression. But Washington must reassure Beijing, too.

Strengthening U.S. deterrence of Chinese military ambitions—in general, but particularly where Taiwan is concerned—may be the easiest foreign policy sell in Washington these days.

Republicans are split over ongoing Ukraine aid, and Democrats are divided on the Israel-Hamas war. But though polling shows the American public remains broadly wary of sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan should China invade, rising cross-strait tensions are a consistent source of alarm, and the prospect of arming Taiwan for deterrence is popular.

So the opening call in a new piece from scholars Bonnie S. Glaser, Jessica Chen Weiss, and Thomas J. Christensen at Foreign Affairs—the proposal that Washington "support Taiwan's efforts to develop a defensive 'porcupine strategy'"—will fall on eager ears.

But what about the rest of the piece? What about the call to remember that effective deterrence requires reassurance as much as defense? It's less crowd-pleasing, perhaps, but arguably more strategically necessary in the present moment.

Recommit to reassurance

"As the Nobel Prize–winning economist Thomas Schelling wrote years ago, '"One more step and I shoot" can be a deterrent threat only if accompanied by the implicit assurance, "And if you stop, I won't."'"
"The three parties involved in the Taiwan Strait are not providing one another with sufficient assurances."
"Washington must make clear that it opposes any unilateral change to the status quo" and "avoid giving the impression that it is moving toward restoring formal diplomatic relations or a defense alliance with" Taiwan.
"U.S. military threats will lose their potency if Chinese leaders believe that the United States will take advantage of their restraint."
Washington "should avoid making statements or taking actions that could lead Beijing to conclude that unification can only be achieved through force." [Foreign Affairs / Glaser et al.]

QUOTED

"[The Biden administration] should be looking for ways to end the war, and that means convincing Ukraine that it's not going to get all its territory back. I would try to make a virtue out of the political uncertainty [of U.S. aid to Ukraine. The ambiguity] doesn't mean 'I'm cutting you off,' but it does mean that [Kyiv] should start to expect less and plan accordingly. The idea would be you would get Ukraine's politics moving in the right direction."

– DEFP Policy Director Benjamin Friedman, as quoted in, "Ukraine-aid cutoff would 'kneecap' Kyiv as it fights Russia, White House says. Here's what Biden wants now." [MarketWatch / Chris Matthews]

BY THE NUMBERs

U.S. trade volume with China (2000–2022)

Despite increasing geopolitical tensions and talk of decoupling, bilateral trade between the U.S. and China remains robust. Last year, bilateral trade volume topped $700 billion, so military conflict would be economically devastating for both countries.

Learn more:

Moving to an off-shore balancing strategy for East Asia [DEFP / Peter Harris]
Can the U.S. really decouple from China? [FP / Jeffrey Kucik and Rajan Menon]
Emphasize responsible competition, cooperation with China [DEFP / Lyle Goldstein]

Sober analysis

The bipolarity paradox

[North Korea Review / Lyle Goldstein et al.]

As summarized by Russia Matters, a blog from Harvard's Belfer Center:

Today, the Kremlin's isolation is undoubtedly a deep impetus for rapidly warming North Korea-Russia ties that precipitated the recent landmark Kim-Putin summit. That is indeed a major development, but Beijing's influence is significantly more important, of course. Chinese leaders remain cautious about embracing any kind of troika encompassing Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang, since [China] views solidifying bipolarity in Northeast Asia as counter to its conception of regional security and development.
The West and its close allies in East Asia should recognize that the situation is delicate and could suddenly become much more fraught, for example if major quantities of North Korean military equipment or even DPRK "volunteers" were to appear in Donbas. Understanding such major risks of an escalation spiral that a return to the hard bipolarity of the 1950s would entail for the Korean Peninsula, decision-makers on both sides of this divide are urged to act with due caution and restraint.

Read the full analysis here (PDF download available at the link).

WINTER WAR

Russia's in it for the long haul. Ukraine's building fortifications. What next?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "continues to deny the notion, expressed by Ukraine's top military officer, the various maps in circulation, and our own eyes, that the war is at a stalemate," griped Defense Priorities Fellow Daniel DePetris on X late last month, posting maps showing nearly undetectable shifts in Ukrainian battle lines between June and November.

Just a few days later, however, Zelensky finally took a different tack: He ordered "the construction of an extensive network of fortifications aimed at holding back Russian forces, signaling a switch to the defensive posture after a monthslong Ukrainian counteroffensive yielded only small gains." In that context, here's the outlook for the winter ahead.

Russia’s long haul

"The Ukrainians call the Russian assaults 'meat waves.' … Kyiv estimates that Russia currently has over 400,000 troops in Ukraine." [WSJ / Marcus Walker and Ievgeniia Sivorka]
"Russia has amassed a large missile stockpile ahead of winter, and we see new attempts to strike Ukraine’s power grid," said NATO's Jens Stoltenberg. "We must not underestimate Russia. Russia's economy is on a war footing." [FT / Henry Foy et al.]
The European Union has reached the "end of the line on Russian energy sanctions," meaning "new restrictions are unlikely to hit the Kremlin’s war chest." [Politico / Gabriel Gavin and Victor Jack]
"Russian society has gotten used to living against the backdrop of a brutal armed conflict. A significant part of the population has reconciled itself" to long-term war. [Carnegie Endowment / Denis Volkov and Andrei Kolesnikov]
Russians say "the economy has stabilized, defying the Western sanctions that were once expected to have a devastating effect. Putin's regime, they say, looks more stable than at any other time in the past two years." [WaPo / Mikhail Zygar]

Ukraine’s winter impasse

In this year's counteroffensive, "Ukraine has retaken only about 200 square miles of territory, at a cost of thousands of dead and wounded and billions in Western military aid in 2023 alone." [WaPo / David M. Herszenhorn et al.]
"As winter approaches, and the front lines freeze into place, Ukraine's most senior military officials acknowledge that the war has reached a stalemate." [WaPo / Peter Finn et al.]
Zelensky's decision to build fortifications "is the clearest official acknowledgment that Ukraine faces a hard winter defending the territory it holds." [WSJ / Matthew Luxmoore]

U.S. strategy implications

In January of this year, DEFP Director of Asia Engagement Lyle Goldstein argued for the advantages of a "Korea solution" in Ukraine. For Washington, the argument is worth revisiting now. [RS / Goldstein]
- A Korea solution means an armistice, where both sides agree to stop fighting without settling their conflicting claims.
- While this is less ambitious than a full settlement, it would still likely require protracted, multilateral negotiations, which could take years. That's why it makes sense to engage diplomatically with Russia now. Russian leaders have consistently claimed they are eager to talk, even as fighting continues.
- Battlefield setbacks this year have moved Ukrainian leaders toward realization that recovering all their territory is not possible, making a settlement more plausible. [RS / Goldstein]

Victory for Ukraine—"if it's even possible"—would "take years and a lot of blood," said an unnamed British security official. "Is Ukraine up for that?" Is the West? [WaPo / Peter Finn et al.]
These are questions for U.S. policymakers to seriously consider, especially as the Israel-Hamas war consumes limited defense resources and tensions remain high around Taiwan. [CNN / Christopher McCallion]

QUOTED

"The Gaza war comes at a terrible time for Ukraine. It sucked a lot of the political oxygen out of the room. There's a competition for resources no matter how you slice it."

– DEFP Director of Grand Strategy Rajan Menon, as quoted in, "As its counteroffensive fizzles, Ukraine battles itself, Russia and a shift in the world's attention" [NBC News / Yuliya Talmazan and Daryna Mayer]

MAPPED

U.S. military base openings (1948–2021)

Using date from Brown University's Costs of War project, USA Today has mapped the shocking proliferation of U.S. bases and other military installations around the globe over the past seven decades. "There are up to 800 U.S. military bases overseas," the paper reports, citing information the DoD and American University scholar David Vine.

At its peak density in 2021, the map above shows about 350 U.S. outposts, less than half the total American military footprint worldwide. Read more from USA Today.

Sober analysis

Our national disgrace in Iraq and Syria

[TAC / Dan Caldwell]

[Thousands of U.S. troops remain] in Iraq and Syria as part of a self-defeating combat operation that has largely flown under the radar of the American people for the last several years. The Biden administration prefers this lack of scrutiny. They declared combat operations over in Iraq at the end of 2021—a declaration not reciprocated by Iran's proxies—and have largely left Syria policy on autopilot since taking office.
Keeping U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria without a clear military mission does not make America safer, but instead risks a catastrophic loss of American life that could escalate into a major war. That many of our policy makers appear intent on sustaining this policy is a national disgrace.

Read the full analysis here.

GRAND STRATEGY

America is ending 2023 with overstretched defenses and needless risk

The first year of President Joe Biden's foreign policy was dominated by the remnants of the post-9/11 era, most notably the overdue U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. Nearly three years into his tenure, though U.S. drawdown from longstanding conflicts in the greater Middle East is far from complete, the overall picture looks markedly different.

Now, as DEFP Fellow Christopher McCallion contends in a carefully argued new article for CNN, "America currently finds itself embroiled in three major geopolitical crises, in three distant parts of the world, pitting it against three consequential powers"—Russia, China, and Iran—"on behalf of three countries"—Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel—"that are not treaty allies of the United States."

Now, in fact, "Biden is making more foreign policy messes than he's fixing." U.S. grand strategy is due for review and reform.

THree global crises

Russia's invasion of Ukraine: "In Eastern Europe, the U.S. is essentially engaged in a proxy war with Russia over the latter's invasion of Ukraine."
Rising tensions over Taiwan: "In East Asia, the U.S. risks a catastrophic showdown with China over the political status of Taiwan."
The Israel-Hamas war: "U.S. forces are still on hand in the Middle East to deter Iran and Hezbollah from intervening against Israel in its war with Hamas, putting American troops at risk and threatening to pull the U.S. into another major war in the region."
- Israel is conventionally spoken of as a U.S. "ally," but there is no U.S.-Israel mutual defense treaty.
- As DEFP's Natalie Armbruster and Benjamin Friedman explain, Israel is one of several "'major non-NATO allies,' a legal status that 'provides military and economic privileges,' but 'does not entail any security commitments to the designated country.'"
- This is a unilateral U.S. designation which does not obligate the recipient country to come to American defense.

A FLAWED THEORY OF LEADERSHIP

The theory behind our current strategy is as tired as it is predictable—and dangerous.
These "flashpoints are interconnected fronts" in "a global struggle between democracy and autocracy," Biden said in October. "American leadership is what holds the world together," he argued then, reiterating the theory in a WaPo op-ed this month.
"These claims do not stand up to scrutiny," McCallion writes, "America's entanglement in these crises is only further overstretching its capabilities, courting unnecessary risks, inflaming local enmities, and depriving the American people of resources better used at home."

A BETTER STRATEGY

"The U.S. should adopt a more restrained grand strategy," McCallion concludes, "one that would more rigorously set priorities among foreign interests, entail fewer risks of entanglement, be less prone to provoke distant rivals, and be more aligned with America’s domestic resources and needs."
- "First, the U.S. should not maintain eternal allies and enemies."
- "Second, the U.S. should stop uniting its adversaries."
- "Third, the United States should shift the burden of managing regional threats over to its regional partners."
- "Finally, if the U.S. wants to advance democratic values around the world, it should do so by providing a compelling model of successful democracy at home."

► Read McCallion's full analysis here ◄

QUOTED

"It's certainly an important accomplishment [for Ukraine] to get a foothold east of the Dnipro, less for the pure military value than the ability to argue that they are still making progress and can still evict Russia from their land by force. [But] it's not likely to be a prelude to any breakthrough. So I think it's a bit helpful politically to buck up Western supporters, but won't matter much."

– DEFP Policy Director Benjamin Friedman as quoted in, "Ukraine makes small—but significant—gains in counteroffensive against Russia" [Yahoo News / Alexander Nazaryan]

MAPPED

Territorial control in Syria's civil war (2017–2023)

After 12 years of civil war, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government has consolidated its power. The anti-Assad armed opposition is relegated to the northwestern province of Idlib, and after the defeat of its territorial caliphate, ISIS remnants only pose a local threat.

In this context, keeping hundreds of U.S. forces in Syria in perpetuity exposes us to risks—including sporadic attacks and escalation with various actors—which outweigh any rewards.

Sober analysis

What good does Israel-Saudi normalization do for the U.S.?

[DEFP / Michael DiMino and Daniel DePetris]

The question isn't whether normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia should be supported—it's how much the U.S. should pay for it. If normalization were instrumental to achieve core U.S. objectives in the Middle East, then perhaps the U.S. should meet Riyadh's demands. But this isn't the case. The U.S. should instead consider any KSA demands on an ad hoc basis by their proportional ability to serve American interests and alleviate U.S. involvement in the region.

Read the full analysis here.

SIMMER DOWN

What U.S. restraint looks like in the Israel-Hamas war—and why it's vital

"The response to a terrorist atrocity is best conducted carefully but actively over a period of months. Hasty action leads to mistakes and losing public sympathy," writes Tim Willasey-Wilsey of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). "However, the atmosphere in crisis meetings does not lend itself to restraint"—and terrorism itself, as its name implies, is meant to induce an emotional and imprudent response.

That "restraint in counterterrorism is so important, yet so hard to achieve," as Willasey-Wilsey puts it, is a lesson the United States should have learned from our post-9/11 misadventures in the greater Middle East. It is also a lesson we—and our Israeli allies—would do well to apply now, as the Israel-Hamas conflict threatens to spread across borders and become a regional conflagration, maybe even one with direct U.S. involvement.

THE NECESSITY OF RESTRAINT

"[G]overnments make their biggest blunders in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, and then spend years trying to undo the harm caused." [RUSI / Willasey-Wilsey]
Mistaken or careless retribution is "a sure-fire way of radicalizing a population."
- We saw this "with some of the early U.S. bombing errors in Afghanistan. Whole communities, many of which had no sympathy for either the Taliban or al-Qaeda, were alienated."
- Likewise, after al-Qaeda embassy attacks in 1998, "the over-hasty and ineffective U.S. response of launching Cruise missiles at Afghan camps and a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory soon eclipsed the outrage at the original offense." [RUSI / Willasey-Wilsey]
That said, "Restraint does not mean inertia," Willasey-Wilsey notes. To argue that Israel should proceed with prudence, care, and realistic, clearly defined strategic objectives is not to argue that Israel should not act.
For the U.S., the most immediately necessary step toward restraint in counterterrorism right now is closing bases and hubs that needlessly put U.S. troops at risk and "make foolish wars too easy to start." [DEFP / Benjamin Denison]
Also, here and elsewhere, Washington shouldn't be "backing U.S. allies to the hilt and inheriting their conflicts as our own, costs and risks be damned." [NYT / Stephen Wertheim]

Rumbles of escalation

Israeli defense officials are warning of a potential new front on the Israel-Lebanon border. "What we can do in Gaza, we can also do in Beirut," said Israel's defense minister. [WSJ / Omar Abdel-Baqui and Dov Lieber]
In interviews, Hamas leadership described deliberate pursuit of regional chaos, boasting that "no one in the region is experiencing calm" and hoping for permanent war "on all the borders." [NYT / Ben Hubbard and Maria Abi-Habib]
The DoD on Sunday announced a U.S. airstrike on Iran-linked facilities in Syria last week. That was the third such U.S. retaliatory strike in a period of about two weeks.
- Around the same time, a U.S. drone was "shot down off the coast of Yemen by militants armed by, and closely aligned with, Tehran." [WaPo / Dan Lamothe et al.]
- "[A]t least 40 separate drone and rocket attacks that have been launched at U.S. forces by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria over the past three weeks." [Reuters / Phil Stewart et al.]
The U.S. should avoid direct involvement in this war, work to contain its spread, and withdraw U.S. forces in the region—especially in Syria—at risk of unwanted implication in this conflict. [DEFP / Michael DiMino]

QUOTED

"To make genuine and lasting improvements in bilateral ties and steer the relationship away from militarized rivalry would require not a brief meeting on the sidelines of a multilateral summit, but instead the sustained, high-level attention of an annual U.S.-China summit lasting at least two full days."

– DEFP Director of Asia Engagement Lyle Goldstein, as quoted in "Xi and Biden meet amid a fracturing world." [WaPo / Ishaan Tharoor]

Survey says

In Ukraine, Americans prioritize avoiding direct war with Russia

The Eurasia Group Foundation reports:

Survey takers were asked to select the two most important goals of America's support for Ukraine. A plurality think the United States should prioritize avoiding a direct war with Russia, and a third or more selected preventing Ukrainian suffering, defending democratic countries from authoritarian governments, or preserving Ukraine's sovereignty. The least frequently selected goal was weakening Russia to punish it.

Read more from the Eurasia Group Foundation here.

Sober analysis

America's withdrawal from Afghanistan did not spur Russia's invasion of Ukraine

[Foreign Affairs / Peter Schroeder]

Many U.S. policymakers have drawn the wrong lessons by believing that U.S. weakness, displayed in the pullout from Afghanistan, factored heavily in Putin's choice. But, in fact, a close analysis of Russia's actions and Putin's comments in the summer of 2021—as well as subsequently revealed information—indicates that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan had no influence on Putin's calculus. Putin had likely already decided to invade Ukraine in the late spring of 2021, well before the U.S. withdrawal.
During that time frame, the United States had shown notable strength on behalf of its partner Ukraine. Putin was almost certainly not trying to take advantage of perceived U.S. weakness. It is more likely that he was acutely concerned about U.S. strength.
Putin decided to proceed with a large-scale invasion of Ukraine despite witnessing a show of U.S. resolve. This demonstrates that deterring him is not a simple matter of projecting strength. It may even show that in some circumstances, U.S. displays of strength can backfire.

Read the full analysis here.

STRATEGY BRIEF

Three U.S. priorities amid the Israel-Hamas war

The United States is not a direct party to the Israel-Hamas war, of course. But close U.S. ties to Israel and an ongoing American military presence in the region—particularly U.S. boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq, but also the tens of thousands of American forces stationed in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere—mean the U.S. is inevitably affected by the conflict.

The reality of that connection makes it vital for policymakers in Washington to understand the risks of escalation and how the U.S. could be drawn into a wider war. It is also crucial for U.S. leaders to clarify our narrow and consistently defensive security priorities in this situation, which may overlap with Israel's but are far from identical.

U.S. priorities

The United States can and should avoid direct military involvement in the conflict, as it has in previous Arab-Israeli conflicts. No major U.S. interest is served by direct involvement, Israel can handle its own defense, and the risk of escalation and blowback against the United States is profound.
Washington should work with all parties to prevent the conflict from spreading to new fronts and expanding into a regional war. A wider war would pose significant harm to U.S. national security interests around the world.
The U.S. should redeploy its troops from Syria—and eventually Iraq—to larger and better defended bases in order to deny Iran its most dangerous lever for escalating the war. The U.S. presence in northeast Syria is the most urgent to redeploy, as it remains most at risk of succumbing to a major attack that kills American troops.

Key risks, context, and implications

American support for Israel shouldn't include U.S. ground troops. The U.S. also shouldn't contribute troops to any hypothetical U.N. peacekeeping mission, which could last decades.
The U.S. can exert pressure to:
- Push Israel to adhere to the law of war, especially where Gazan civilians are concerned.
- Push Qatar, which hosts senior Hamas leadership, to facilitate release of Hamas-held hostages.
The longer the war continues, the more it expands regionally, and the more civilians are killed, the greater the risk of blowback to the U.S. through terrorist attacks on U.S. bases, embassies, and citizens.
- U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria were attacked by Iran-backed Shia militia groups at least 27 times in the latter half of October, per the Pentagon.
- Redeploying U.S. troops from northeast Syria would deny Iran leverage to widen the war.
- Here and elsewhere, U.S. force posture should evolve to a "surge" rather than "maintain" framework.
For Israel, the issue of post-conflict governance in Gaza remains a major and, so far, unaddressed question. The dismal U.S. record in Iraq and Afghanistan should serve as a cautionary tale.

Read more in DEFP's new explainer: "Understanding the Israel-Hamas war"

Quoted

"[Washington should] stop confusing charitable impulses with U.S. national security interests and seeing our own security on the line in every conflict in the world. [That thinking] has this tendency to compel us to be a kind of global empire."

– DEFP Policy Director Benjamin Friedman, as quoted in "As Biden prepares a pitch for aid to Ukraine, Israel in a single package, foreign policy 'realists' are asking, 'Exactly where is this taking us?'" [The New York Sun / M.J. Koch]

Survey says

Most Americans think it's time to push for peace talks in Ukraine

The Eurasia Group Foundation reports:

Diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia has so far floundered. Russia recently dismissed a Ukrainian peace plan. And outside powers—such as Italy and China—have, to no avail, pushed peace proposals in the last year to nudge the warring parties toward a negotiated settlement. The United States, for its part, has so far refrained from pressuring Ukraine to conduct peace talks with its invader. As one senior official put it, it's up to Ukraine "to determine how victory is decided and when and on what terms."
Most Americans, however, think the United States should push for a negotiated settlement. Across the political spectrum, the most frequent reason given is the high human cost of war.

Read more from the Eurasia Group Foundation here.

Sober analysis

Moving to an offshore balancing strategy for East Asia

[DEFP / Peter Harris]

The distribution of power in the Western Pacific has been shifting in China's favor for the past several decades. The popular view in Washington is that the United States must counteract these adverse shifts in power via a strategy of military primacy in East Asia—that is, the pursuit of local military superiority in all possible theaters of Asia by U.S. forces.
This view is misguided. Primacy should not be considered a desirable end in itself, nor is it necessary to secure U.S. policy goals in East Asia.
For present purposes, America's policy priorities in East Asia can be defined as follows:
1. Prevent the outbreak of a major war in East Asia, especially one involving a treaty ally.
2. Preserve the territorial status quo, except for amendments made via the peaceful resolution of existing boundary disputes.
3. Dissuade any large country or regional bloc from embracing economic autarky.

Read this new explainer from DEFP here.

BALANCING ACT

Is America at risk of being pulled into a broadened Israel-Hamas war?

"For a half-century," Stanford and AEI fellow Oriana Skylar Mastro recently argued at The New York Times, "America has avoided war with China over Taiwan largely through a delicate balance of deterrence and reassurance." But in recent years, that balance has been upset, Mastro contends: The U.S. military footprint in the Indo-Pacific is expanding, but reassurance has been neglected.

That's a serious risk, Mastro argues, and matters more than Washington seems to realize (not least as Beijing's focus shifts toward security, as DEFP's Andrew Latham details at The Hill). Understanding—and restoring—the balance will help steer clear of war.

Deterrence

Maintaining credible deterrence requires prioritization, even for America. Our adversaries can tell when we're doing too much:
- "[T]he U.S. is stretched dangerously thin. [The Israel-Hamas war]—and the ongoing war in Ukraine—is really testing the Biden administration's assertion that the United States can still do everything." [FP / Emma Ashford]
- "If we do more, everywhere, then our capabilities will be so stretched that we cannot actually make a credible deterrent threat." [FP / Emma Ashford]
"The United States might be able to build the necessary military power in the region to deter a Chinese war of choice. But the level of dominance needed to stop [Chinese President Xi Jinping] from launching a war he sees as necessary might be impossible to achieve." [NYT / Mastro]

Reassurance

In meetings with Chinese officials, Mastro found Beijing "far less" concerned about U.S. deterrence "than with the political rhetoric" suggesting the U.S. "is moving away from past ambiguity" on Taiwan. [NYT / Mastro]
Provocations from Congress and the Trump and Biden administrations "put great pressure on Mr. Xi, who won't tolerate going down in history as the Chinese leader to have lost Taiwan." [NYT / Mastro]
Remember: "A war between the United States and China over Taiwan could be the most brutal since World War II. As politically difficult as it may be, U.S. leaders have a duty to try to prevent conflict." [NYT / Mastro]

A win for the taking

Deterrence is not reckless. It must be prudent and wary of missteps. Restoring U.S.-Chinese military communications, which the Pentagon reportedly hopes to begin next week, is vital. [WSJ / Alastair Gale]
Beijing is also "willing to develop military relations with the U.S.," China's most senior military official said Monday, but only "based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win co-operation." [FT / Kathrin Hille]
This is an offer of talks in exchange for assurance, and it's an eminently practical win Washington should take.

Quoted

"I understand the desire to destroy the Hamas apparatus, but I just don't think it's doable. If you envision any degree of Palestinian self-rule, then I think some version of Hamas 2.0 remains in power, and Gaza goes back to what it was, but with fewer people and buildings."

– DEFP Policy Director Benjamin Friedman, as quoted in "Israel aims to defeat Hamas, then leave Gaza. Who would fill the vacuum?" [CSM / Howard LaFranchi]

See more from DEFP experts on quandaries of the Israel-Hamas war:

DIPLOMACY

Most Americans say the U.S. should talk to adversaries

While policymakers sometimes cast willingness to negotiate with adversaries as weakness, Americans are not similarly squeamish about the necessary but messy work of diplomacy, a new survey suggests.

"Adroit diplomacy with allies as well as adversaries is critical for securing U.S. interests," the Eurasia Group Foundation report says. "Most Americans (67 percent)—regardless of political leaning—support negotiations with adversaries, even if they are human rights abusers, dictators, or home to terrorist organizations."

Read more from the Eurasia Group Foundation here.

Sober analysis

The return of nuclear escalation

[Foreign Affairs / Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press]

[O]ptimists in the United States argue that the risk of nuclear war remains low. Their reasoning is straightforward: the countries that are building up and brandishing their nuclear capabilities are bluffing. Nuclear weapons cannot paper over conventional military weakness because threats to escalate—even by a desperate enemy—are not credible. According to the optimists, giving credence to the nuclear bluster of weak enemies is misguided and plays squarely into their hands.
Unfortunately, the optimists are wrong. The risk of nuclear escalation during conventional war is much greater than is generally appreciated. [...] The United States will be in grave danger if it underestimates the will of desperate, nuclear-armed adversaries.

Read the full analysis here.

Escalation

Is America at risk of being pulled into a broadened Israel-Hamas war?

"As a former CIA officer who has personally worked a number of major crises in the Middle East, I've repeatedly warned the risk of direct U.S. involvement in the Israel-Hamas war is higher than most people realize," DEFP Public Policy Manager Michael DiMino has argued. "Once that box is opened—even if due to accident or miscalculation—it can't easily be closed."

It's very unlikely, as DiMino and others have observed, that the Biden administration has any appetite for that kind of American involvement in this conflict. But sometimes, "intent isn't enough to prevent things from spiraling out of control."

Hints of a larger conflict

There's no prudence in exaggerating the possibility that the U.S. will somehow join this fight. But neither is that scenario inconceivable, as many recent reports suggest:
- U.S. forces were attacked last week by drones thought to be controlled by Iran-backed militias. [Air & Space Forces / Chris Gordon]
- The U.S. has sent a carrier strike group and missile defense systems to the Persian Gulf. [CBS / Faris Tanyos]
- The White House has reportedly “been discussing the possibility of using military force if Hezbollah joins the war in Gaza." [Axios / Barak Ravid]
- And the secretaries of defense and state have signaled their expectation that the war "escalate through involvement by proxies of Iran," promising U.S. reprisal if U.S. troops are targeted. [AP / Darlene Superville]
- "Never before have we talked to so many top government officials who, in private, are so worried" about this conflict (and others) spiraling into something larger, Axios reports. [Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen]

But talk about "spiraling" may suggest accidental U.S. involvement is the most likely scenario. The greater risk is a chosen war with Iran—especially while U.S. troops remain in Iraq and Syria.

These forces "have little to achieve, but are vulnerable to attack and are sources of potential escalation with Syria's government, Iran, Russia, and even Turkey," as DEFP Policy Director Ben Friedman recently said. And the "terrible case for leaving these troops in place only got worse with the war in Israel."

Strategies for de-escalation

Escalation in this kind of situation can happen very rapidly, DiMino notes, so "even if it's a minimal risk, it's one that we should take seriously and that we should steel ourselves against." Here, as elsewhere, entering an overseas war is a choice, not an inevitability, for the United States. To make it less likely, we should be:

Keeping a realistic view of U.S. capacity to influence the course of events as "a third party located on the other side of the world." [TAC / Robert Moore]
Foregrounding the fact that as "bad as this situation is in Israel, it will be significantly worse if the war spreads to include additional parties." [Newsweek / Daniel L. Davis]
Looking beyond the failed foreign policy playbook of the post-9/11 era:
- The Biden team has many "skilled mechanics," but "they are stuck in an outdated vision of America's global role," including "its handling of its various Middle East clients." [FP / Stephen Walt]
- "Biden may despise endless wars and unnecessarily foreign entanglements," but he still sees the U.S. as the "indispensable nation" against authoritarians worldwide. That encourages intervention. [The Spectator / Daniel R. DePetris]
"We should be holding our policymakers to account to ensure that any" U.S. involvement in this war is done "with a mind to de-escalate." [RS / DiMino]
"[W]e want to ultimately have a responsible foreign policy that does less in the Middle East. To the extent that we can have reasonable engagement with the Saudis, the Israelis, the Iranians, the Emiratis, whoever else, that's in America's best interest in the long term." [RS / DiMino]

Quoted

"[President Joe Biden] will need to utilize all of the avenues available to send Tehran a message: The U.S. has no intention of entering the conflict and that it’s in Iran's best interest to stay out as well. Otherwise, U.S. moves meant to deter escalation could be miscalculated."

– DEFP fellow Daniel R. DePetris, as quoted in "Biden equates Hamas with Putin, asks Americans to support Israel, Ukraine" [VOA / Patsy Widakuswara]

Mapped

Syria's normalizing relations with its neighbors

However much Washington objects, the Middle East has moved on from trying to oust or reform the Assad regime and is instead living with the political reality of Assad's rule. The United States' policy is the opposite: insensitive to changed circumstances and detached from achievable objectives. U.S. partners in the region recognize the United States' inflexibility and are trying to work around U.S. restrictions. This means hardline U.S. policies are not only brutal for ordinary Syrian civilians; they're also ineffective for inducing change in Syria's government.

Read more about the need to reset U.S.-Syria policy here.

Sober analysis

The failed lessons of Libya

[UnHerd / Rajan Menon]

[Libya's current dysfunction] can be traced to the NATO-led intervention launched on March 19, 2011. Libya's state didn't passively "fail;" the West triggered its failure through its program of so-called humanitarian interventionism. […]
The humanitarian intervention movement … was motivated by a high-minded mission: eliminating or at least mitigating the persistent, serious harm of mass atrocities committed mainly by governments. Yet the lesson offered by Libya—and Iraq and Afghanistan too—is that deploying military force in other countries in order to stop bloodshed and oppression can unwittingly promote prolonged disorder and violence, upending the lives of the intended beneficiaries.
Perhaps Western leaders have learned this lesson. Then again, the hubris produced by overweening power dies hard.

Read the full analysis here.

Strategy check

American boots still on the ground in Syria

U.S. military intervention in Syria's civil war has long since dropped out of the headlines. But while foreign affairs attention focuses on elsewhere—first Afghanistan, then Ukraine, now Israel—the intervention continues.

There is very little reason to think, more than a decade into this brutal conflict and the humanitarian crisis it has fostered, that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will be ousted. And there is even less reason to think that core U.S. security interests will be significantly affected whether he stays in power or not.

So why are we still intervening? Why are American boots still on the ground? That's what DEFP Fellow Daniel DePetris explores in a new explainer arguing for a reset of U.S.-Syria policy.

Key points

Assad's government has consolidated its power and defeated credible threats to its rule. The anti-Assad armed opposition, which once controlled half of Syria, is relegated to the northwestern province of Idlib.
While the Biden administration recognizes that Assad will likely remain in office, U.S. policy remains punitive, maintaining comprehensive sanctions on Syria without a realistic endgame. This policy amounts to collective punishment of ordinary civilians and won't advance U.S. interests.
Meanwhile, approximately 900 U.S. troops remain in eastern Syria, allegedly to train and assist anti-ISIS fighters. But ISIS lost its territorial caliphate more than four years ago, and keeping U.S. forces in Syria in perpetuity brings serious risks without reward.
Neither the sanctions nor the occupation of eastern Syria serves U.S. security interests. The latter embroils the United States in a risky mission with no security payoff and no evident exit plan.

Read the full explainer: "Reset U.S.-Syria policy"

Sober analysis

The Israel-Gaza war means hard choices for Ukraine

[NYT / Ross Douthat]

[W]ith the massacres in Israel and the unfolding Israeli assault on Gaza, we have a new front of engagement for American power, a new demand for U.S. resources, a new stress point for our stressed imperium and new risks of a wider war.
With this new challenge, the Ukraine hawks' answer is the same: "The False Choice Between Ukraine and Israel" runs theheadlineof a Wall Street Journal editorial. And the Journal editors are correct in the narrow sense that the United States should not simply cut off Ukraine tomorrow and redirect that aid to Israel, as Senator Josh Hawley recently suggested. Our interest in restraining Russian ambitions does not dissolve the instant a Middle Eastern ally goes to war.
But in a larger sense, of course there are real strategic choices here, potential trade-offs in hardware shipped and dollars delivered …

Read the full analysis here.

Mapped

America’s naval sprawl—and China's naval ambitions

China has just one overseas naval base—the solid blue square in the Horn of Africa above—and several militarized artificial islands, a markedly smaller and more regionally constrained footprint than America's sprawling network of naval bases across the Eastern Hemisphere. But U.S. officials believe Beijing may be interested in establishing new bases abroad, CNN reports, mostly around the Indian Ocean, but perhaps as far as Africa's Atlantic coast.

For a deep dive into what this possible maritime expansion would mean for Chinese ambitions and U.S. security, read this explainer from DEFP's Mike Sweeney: "Assessing Chinese maritime power"

Questionable

"America can certainly afford to stand with Israel and to support Israel's military needs, and we also can and must support Ukraine in its struggle against Russia."

– Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, making the case that the U.S. can afford another war. [Sky News / James Sillars]

In the most literal sense, of course, Yellen is correct: Washington can raise enough funds—via taxation, borrowing, or both—to continue to send large amounts of money and other aid to Ukraine and Israel. And, sure enough, President Joe Biden is soon "expected to ask Congress for at least $100 billion in supplemental funding to address Israel, Ukraine," and other projects, Politico reports.

But the fact that our government can get its hands on some cash does not address the more important matter of grand strategy. The first question is not: Can we afford this? But rather: Does this serve U.S. interests? And maybe it does—but the answer can't be given with Yellen's breezy confidence.

Learn more with these analyses from DEFP experts:

ON HOLD

The U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal is now at risk—but is it even worth saving?

"Perhaps U.S. President Joe Biden's strangest policy U-turn since taking office," writes Stimson Center scholar Emma Ashford at World Politics Review, "has been his total reversal on U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia."

Before taking office, Biden was downright hostile toward the Saudi regime, but lately, Ashford writes, "as part of a drive to secure Saudi Arabia's diplomatic recognition of Israel, the Biden administration is inching ever closer toward offering Riyadh the kind of security guarantees only given to Washington's closest and most important allies."

The future of that arrangement is newly uncertain after the outbreak of war in Israel this week following heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas. Does it serve U.S. interests to try to salvage the deal?

At risk

The war "is threatening to delay or derail the years long, country-by-country diplomatic push by the United States to improve relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors," the Associated Press reports.
- And perhaps predictably so, as "critics have warned that [the deal] skips past Palestinian demands for statehood."
- Indeed, "Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Hamas attacks may have been driven in part by a desire to scuttle … the sealing of diplomatic relations between rivals Israel and Saudi Arabia." [AP / Aamer Madhani and Ellen Knickmeyer]
Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the Eurasia Group, went so far as to say the deal "is for now off the table," and other experts have expressed similar doubts. [Fortune / Paolo Confino]
The Biden administration is still pushing for the deal to go through, officials have said. [NYT / Edward Wong et al.]
Still, at the very least, Blinken tacitly granted on Sunday, the deal will take a back seat to the current focus on "dealing with Hamas." [FT / Felicia Schwartz and Samer Al-Atrush]

Worth saving?

But should the push for an agreement with Riyadh be preserved? Or is this, perhaps, an out the administration should take?
Writing before the Hamas attacks, Ashford takes a skeptical view of the prospective deal, laying out a critique which included concerns about unintended consequences in Israel.
Her primary contention, though, is that the "deal as it is currently being reported is that it would do little to advance U.S. interests" on three counts:
- Energy: "[G]rowing U.S. energy self-sufficiency has reduced the Cold War-era security risks that drove Washington to make Saudi Arabia a linchpin of U.S. strategy. To put it bluntly, the U.S. now has enough domestic energy production if it ever needs to fight a war."
- Stability: "As with all security guarantees, there will be strong incentives for the U.S. to maintain forces in the region to strengthen deterrence and reassure its allies—and equally strong incentives for those allies to perpetuate that dynamic and shift the burden of their defense to the United States."
- China: "[T]he idea that a U.S. security guarantee will somehow peel Saudi Arabia away from China is naïve in the extreme. Indeed, the most likely scenario for this deal is that the U.S. will take responsibility for Saudi security while China remains the kingdom's most important economic partner." [WPR / Ashford]
All told, "Saudi-Israeli normalization deal would be historic, but the price the U.S. is preparing to pay for it is simply too high." [WPR / Ashford]

Sober analysis

The U.S. nuclear arsenal can deter both Russia and China

[Foreign Affairs / Charles L. Glaser, James M. Acton, and Steve Fetter]

At first glance, a repeal of the [2002 AUMF that authorized the U.S. invasion of Iraq] may seem like a symbolic gesture. After all, the main body of U.S. troops in Iraq withdrew more than a decade ago, and the small force that remains ceased combat operations in 2021. And the Biden administration, which supports the repeal, has made clear that it would have no impact on ongoing U.S. military operations.
But focusing on current operations misses what repeal would accomplish.More than20 years of practice has substantially expanded the effective scope of the 2002 Iraq AUMF, making it susceptible to unexpected uses beyond its original motivationof removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power—including in ways that could allow a future president to bypass Congress while pursuing another major war in the Middle East. Repeal is the only way to ensure this doesn't happen, and a prudent step that the House should take regardless of where the broader debate over AUMF reform might lead.

Read the full analysis here.

Related reading: Why Biden and Xi need to meet more often [Asia Times / Quinn Marschik]

By the numbers

U.S. aid to key allies and partners, compared

See more comprehensive data on U.S. spending on Ukraine at The Washington Post.

Conversation

Lyle Goldstein, DEFP's director of Asia engagement, joined author Robert Wright in a conversation for his Nonzero newsletter about the lessons of Ukraine for Taiwan.

GOLDSTEIN: [O]ne reason that China is so obsessed with Taiwan is not that they dream of conquering the island. Honestly, it's more that it makes them horribly uncomfortable—the idea that this island is swarming with Americans and foreigners. That is truly offensive to them. […]

My view is that if we said, Okay, we're going to take the One China policy seriously—that is, we regard Taiwan, in fact, as part of China [and] we're going to stop giving them endless support, I actually think the temperature would drop in the Taiwan Strait a lot. I think China would sort of relax about it. In other words, I don't think the idea of autonomous Taiwan is so offensive to them. It's the idea of Taiwan as a foreign base.

Watch the full conversation here, or listen on Apple Podcasts. Read the Nonzero writeup here. Read Goldstein's series of coauthored articles on the same subject at The Diplomat:

Cracking coalition

Strategic implications of battlefield stalemate and rising ambivalence on Ukraine aid

"MAGA wants to betray Ukraine," blares the headline of a Paul Krugman column at The New York Times this week, a melodramatic rendering of a somewhat more mundane reality: that Western enthusiasm for providing military and financial support for Kyiv's fight against Moscow's invasion is less uniform than it was a year and a half ago.

Yes, there's more vocal ambivalence on the subject from the American right than among their counterparts on the left, but across the political spectrum—and across the Atlantic, too—backing for an open-ended, blank-check commitment to Ukraine aid is visibly wavering. What does that mean for Ukraine's defense, and how should it affect U.S. strategy?

Stalemate in Ukraine

The "Ukrainian military is facing an enemy that impedes maneuver. As a result, the Ukrainian army is pursuing an attritional approach" which is foreign to U.S. tactics and training. [WOTR / Robert Rose]
That approach may be Kyiv's best option, but it is not taking much territory.
- Neither Ukraine nor Russia have gained significant ground this year. The fight is effectively stalemated.
- "Although both sides have launched ambitious offensives, the front line has barely shifted. After 18 months of war, a breakthrough looks more difficult than ever." [NYT / Josh Holder]
Czech President Petr Pavel argued in July that whatever Ukraine achieves "by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation." [NYT / Matthew Mpoke Bigg]

Will the spigot stay open?

That doesn't preclude actively pursuing pragmatic diplomacy, which serves U.S. interests by keeping open lines of communication even when it produces no dramatic wins at the negotiating table.
- "You don't just talk to your friends," Secretary of State James Baker once said. "You talk to your enemies as well," and this doesn't somehow "reward" them, especially "if you are tough and you know what you are doing." [Newsweek / Daniel R. DePetris]
- Or, as the famed American diplomat (and containment advocate) George Kennan more memorably mused in 1963, "We should be prepared to talk to the devil himself, if he controls enough of the world to make it worth our while." [Foreign Affairs / Andrei Kolesnikov]

Strategic implications

The prospect of Ukraine aid becoming politically infeasible should only increase the urgency of pursuit of a diplomatic resolution to this war, as RAND scholar Samuel Charap has argued. [Foreign Affairs]
If Pavel's forecast proves correct—and if current trends hold—the diplomatic baseline is already foreseeable and basically identical to where things stood after Ukraine's successful counteroffensive last fall.
- Accepting only a battlefield resolution "discounts how the war's structural realities are unlikely to change even if the frontline shifts, an outcome that itself is far from guaranteed." [Foreign Affairs / Charap]
- "Perhaps Zelensky's biggest moral failure will prove to be prolonging a war that in a year or two won't look any different on the ground, save for much larger cemeteries on both sides." [Harpers / Michael C. Desch]
For Kyiv, if international—and especially European—support is soon to wane, it would be wise to realistically assess whether a stronger negotiating hand is likely in the foreseeable future.
For Washington, avoiding U.S.-Russia escalation should remain the priority. In practice, that will entail burden-shifting to Europe and rejecting a security guarantee for Ukraine.

Sober analysis

Why the Iraq AUMF is still dangerous

[FP / Scott R. Anderson]

At first glance, a repeal of the [2002 AUMF that authorized the U.S. invasion of Iraq] may seem like a symbolic gesture. After all, the main body of U.S. troops in Iraq withdrew more than a decade ago, and the small force that remains ceased combat operations in 2021. And the Biden administration, which supports the repeal, has made clear that it would have no impact on ongoing U.S. military operations.
But focusing on current operations misses what repeal would accomplish.More than20 years of practice has substantially expanded the effective scope of the 2002 Iraq AUMF, making it susceptible to unexpected uses beyond its original motivationof removing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power—including in ways that could allow a future president to bypass Congress while pursuing another major war in the Middle East. Repeal is the only way to ensure this doesn't happen, and a prudent step that the House should take regardless of where the broader debate over AUMF reform might lead.

Read the full analysis here.

DATA

U.S. military aid to Ukraine, by type

"More than a year and a half into the conflict" in Ukraine, "U.S. public support for funding the war is wavering, particularly among Republicans," The Washington Post reports. It was "a central issue in negotiations over U.S. spending," so much so that the temporary funding bill signed by President Joe Biden over the weekend "left out $20 billion in assistance to Ukraine."

On Sunday, Biden urged Congress to "stop playing games" and approve additional assistance to Ukraine as quickly as possible, and OMB chief Shalanda Young expressed confidence that will happen. If lawmakers do indeed fall in line, they'll be adding to the more than $43 billion in military aid Washington has already sent to Kyiv.

Debatable

What does Nagorno-Karabakh's fall mean for great power influence?

[FP / Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig]

ASHFORD: It's also true that the ability of U.S. policymakers to shape outcomes here is very slim, and when they do try, they mostly mess it up—see then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's controversial visit a few years back. The 2020 war was ended only through Russian mediation. But it doesn't speak well of U.S. foreign policy that all the principles U.S. officials claim are overridingly important elsewhere just don't seem to apply in Nagorno-Karabakh. […]
Actually, this whole incident should be a warning to those in Washington—and more so in Eastern Europe—who argue that the collapse of Russia should be the goal of the war in Ukraine. A lot of these frozen conflicts might have gone the way of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s—ethnic cleansing, civil war—if Russia hadn't intervened with peacekeepers. Now, those peacekeepers were also Russia's way of keeping influence. But it wasn't all bad. A weaker Russia will offer regional revisionists more scope for their intentions.

Read the full debate here.

Back in the USSR?

Strategic patience—not containment—is the right Cold War lesson to apply to Beijing

Many commentators have proposed we "dust off the containment playbook" for U.S. policy toward China, observes Cato Institute scholar John Mueller in a new article at Foreign Affairs.

But this idea is "certainly overconfident and probably misguided," Mueller argues. The strategy's reputation is disproportionately positive given its actual Cold War track record, he says, and it's "unlikely to work well against China today." A Cold War-informed approach of strategic patience and pragmatic diplomacy would better advance U.S. interests and enhance American security.

A mismatched strategy

There are important differences between the Chinese and Soviet postures toward the world which make containment—even if it were as effective as is widely believed—wrong for U.S.-China policy.
- Though "increasingly assertive," China isn't spreading an ideology like the USSR did.
- Moreover, its territorial ambitions seem to consist only of "reincorporating Taiwan at some point and settling disputes over parts of its border and over the seas around it."
- Indeed, most "of China's expansionist moves have nothing to do with force."
"There is no military answer to a grand strategy built on a nonviolent expansion of commerce and navigation," as Mueller quotes former U.S. diplomat Chas Freeman saying. [Foreign Affairs]

Wait it out

But like Moscow during the Cold War, Beijing is beset by a "growing set of domestic difficulties." It's on track to defeat itself, and Washington should practice a strategic patience while the communist state is slowly hoist with its own petard.
- "[M]ore than anything else, it was the Soviet Union's own errors and weaknesses that caused its downfall."
- Now as then, the key "is not so much to search for ways to balance against the rising hegemon. It is to let this troubled and perhaps declining country make its own mistakes."
- The right Cold War lesson the apply here is "about the wisdom of standing back, keeping your cool, and letting the contradictions in your opponent's system become apparent." [Foreign Affairs / Mueller]

Keep talking

That doesn't preclude actively pursuing pragmatic diplomacy, which serves U.S. interests by keeping open lines of communication even when it produces no dramatic wins at the negotiating table.
- "You don't just talk to your friends," Secretary of State James Baker once said. "You talk to your enemies as well," and this doesn't somehow "reward" them, especially "if you are tough and you know what you are doing." [Newsweek / Daniel R. DePetris]
- Or, as the famed American diplomat (and containment advocate) George Kennan more memorably mused in 1963, "We should be prepared to talk to the devil himself, if he controls enough of the world to make it worth our while." [Foreign Affairs / Andrei Kolesnikov]

Quoted

"Taipei is under 'severe pressure from these continual exercises' and has had to adjust its former practice of continually intercepting Chinese aircraft, according to Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities and a visiting professor at Brown University. 'This could be part of China's strategy to stretch and intimidate Taiwan's forces,' he told Stars and Stripes by email."

— DEFP's Lyle Goldstein, as quoted in "'Military harassment': China sends record number of aircraft near Taiwan" [Stars and Stripes / Alex Wilson]

Go deeper with expert insight from Goldstein:

Landmines in Ukraine: Lessons for China and Taiwan [The Diplomat]
C-SPAN discussion of China's military capabilities [C-SPAN]
The trouble with Taiwan [Bulletin of Atomic Scientists]
Wargaming a Taiwan invasion scenario [The China Project]

DATA

Reported civilian deaths from U.S. strikes in Somalia, 2007–2023

The five confirmed and 80 fairly suspected civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes, as well as the presence of U.S. forces in Africa more generally, foster popular frustration and anger at the U.S. that inadvertently helps terrorist recruitment.

In Somalia, U.S. intervention has unintentionally helped Al-Shabaab. Drawing on a collective Somali identity, the group has made the departure of foreign forces a central component of its messaging and overall agenda.

In this way, U.S. military engagement in Africa might fuel the next generation of 9/11 terrorists. Coupled with association with repressive African regimes, the U.S. military presence gives "credence to the anti-imperial narratives of African jihadi groups associated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State," according to experts at the 2022 terrorism conference at West Point.

Read more about U.S. counterterrorism in Africa here.

Sober Analysis

The truth about the U.S.-Iran prisoner deal

[The Spectator / Daniel R. DePetris]

Some say the U.S. shouldn't have made a deal with the Iranians at all. Providing concessions, the logic goes, will just encourage Iran and other adversarial states to arrest more Americans.
Point taken. But we ought to face up to what this means in practice. Remove concessions from the equation and the Americans who are locked up unjustly will continue to languish behind bars for years, if not decades, to come. This is unfortunate on a moral level; ideally, no foreign government would treat an American citizen as a political pawn. Ideally, U.S. adversaries would release Americans without asking for a thing.
But we don't live in an ideal world. Concessions, whether in the form of a mutual prisoner exchange, limited sanctions relief or something entirely different, are often required. If somebody has a better system, I'm curious to hear what it is.

Read the full analysis here.

Mr. Zelensky goes to Washington

The state—and future—of the war in Ukraine as Zelensky visits America

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is traveling to Washington this week, where he will meet with President Joe Biden and congressional leaders to request additional U.S. military and financial support for his country's rebuff of Russia's invasion.

This is Zelensky's second trip to the U.S. since Russian President Vladimir Putin's attack in February of 2022, and he is expected to receive a more mixed welcome than that of last December. Then, Zelensky was riding the momentum of a strikingly successful fall counteroffensive. Now, he arrives in Washington after a summer counteroffensive with far fewer victories to its credit.

The situation in Kyiv

Zelensky and his advisers are now hoping to do more than make the Russian bear bleed for attacking Ukraine; they imagine they can rout Russia's army and bring about Putin's demise." [Harpers / Michael C. Desch]
"Ukraine's army has shifted away from the aging infrastructure and antiquated doctrines that defined it during the post-Soviet era, becoming heavily reliant on Western equipment and strategic planning." [Foreign Affairs / Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage]
Ukraine has reported some impressive wins, but overall, the summer counteroffensive, very near its expiration date, has not performed as hoped, and "idea that there is a shortcut to victory"—especially via the right equipment provision—"raises expectations for a quick end to the carnage that Ukraine is unlikely to fulfill." [FP / Franz-Stefan Gady]

The situation in Moscow

"Meanwhile, Russia is waging war on Ukraine's economy, which would struggle to function without international help." [Foreign Affairs / Fix and Kimmage]
"Putin [has] indicated he [is] bracing for a long war in Ukraine, saying that Kyiv could use any ceasefire to rearm and that Washington would continue to see Russia as an enemy no matter who won the 2024 U.S. election." [Reuters / Guy Faulconbridge]
The West has failed to convince key emerging economies—including India, Brazil and South Africa—to join in its isolation of Moscow. [WSJ / Laurence Norman]
Unsurprisingly, then, "Russia has managed to overcome sanctions and export controls imposed by the West to expand its missile production beyond prewar levels." [NYT / Julian E. Barnes et al.]

The situation in Washington

"Continued Western commitment to Ukraine cannot be guaranteed. Political constituencies in Europe and the United States are questioning long-term support for Ukraine." [Foreign Affairs / Fix and Kimmage]
"Skepticism is growing among House Republicans on the approval of more Ukraine funding as Congress faces its first test on America's role in the war against Russia." [The Hill / Brad Dress]

The implications

"Western policymakers would be well-advised not to automatically assume that Russia or any other adversary is non-rational, as they often do. That only serves to undermine their ability to understand how other states think and craft smart policies to deal with them." [UnHerd / John Mearsheimer and Sebastian Rosato]
"[T]he West's gradual approach has served a vital strategic purpose. It is no accident that the war has avoided certain forms of drastic escalation." [Foreign Affairs / Austin Carson]
- "A direct conventional or nuclear clash between Russia and NATO would clearly be ruinous for both sides, inflicting tremendous economic, political, and military damage."
- However, "[e]scalation control measures that have worked today may need to evolve to keep working tomorrow." [Foreign Affairs / Carson]
"[T] he United States could be doing more to enable diplomacy. […] Laying the groundwork for eventual negotiations could reduce the risk of … dangerous outcomes." [Foreign Affairs / Samuel Charap and Miranda Priebe]
- But peace seems unlikely for the moment, and the major U.S. policy focus should be to limit its own risk, by continuing to avoid escalation and avoiding any purported solution that entails giving Ukraine security guarantees, which is likely to prolong war and increase the danger of the U.S. being drawn into one, all without offering meaningful protection to Ukraine. [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]
- Washington should not cut off Ukraine but should push the burden of supporting it increasingly to European allies. [DEFP / Rajan Menon]

DEBATE

"This thing has played out almost exactly as I expected it to—actually, Ukraine has achieved slightly less than I thought they might at the beginning, but I didn't think they would get any more than this. And the reasons are very practical. It's that if you don't have air superiority, you don't have sufficient air defense, if you don't have a superiority in artillery, and, most crucially, if you don't have sufficient mine-clearing capacity, there's just almost no chance for you to defeat a well-equipped, dug-in enemy force. […] So then you have to ask the bigger question, at least for this operational concern: Then what?"

— Ret. Col. Daniel L. Davis, a DEFP senior fellow, speaking in "Ukraine's offensive: Too slow to triumph?" [BBC / The Real Story]

DATA

Exactly what are U.S. troops doing in Africa? In short, they are fighting terrorist insurgencies to a degree most U.S. citizens are almost certainly unaware of.

As U.S. troops have become more engaged in ground operations in Africa since 2006, U.S. drone and air strikes against terrorist groups have naturally expanded in kind to support those operations. Most of this activity has come in Somalia and Libya.

The numbers of civilian deaths from drones in these two countries are murky because of poor reporting by AFRICOM, but reliable estimates put deaths in the thousands. Whether this type of collateral damage aids terrorist recruitment is a debatable topic, but it certainly can't help the U.S. cause.

Read more about increasingly militarized U.S. counterterrorism policy in Africa here.

Related report: U.S. resumes drone operations in Niger

Sober Analysis

Why does the U.S. oppose Taiwanese independence?

[The Diplomat / Seamus Boyle]

[It is a critical error to conflate] Taiwanese independence (a term that refers to the de jure establishment of a new "Republic of Taiwan" in place of the island's current constitution) with the idea of plain Taiwanese autonomy and self-governance, a "lower case" independence. Understanding the difference between the two is critical for understanding the United States' approach to cross-strait politics, and how U.S. policy can continue to prevent conflict over Taiwan. […]

The Taiwanese people are, as they have been for generations, content to live in the liminal space of nebulous yet functional self-governance. While the United States' opposition to Taiwanese independence is painful for the movement's fiercest proponents, the general Taiwanese populace's willingness to abstain on the issue for the foreseeable future enables the U.S. to continue making a vital assurance to China at comparatively little cost to Taiwan.

Ultimately, U.S. opposition to Taiwanese independence is not an act of undue interference nor abandonment, but a shrewd and critical piece of policy, largely agreeable to all parties, which has been fortunately preserved amid the freefall of China-U.S. relations, and which must be kept intact for a peaceful status quo to endure.

Read the full analysis here.

Putin-kim Summit

How the U.S. should respond to strengthening Russia-North Korea ties

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un promised Russian President Vladimir Putin his "full and unconditional support" at a summit in eastern Russia on Wednesday. The meeting is widely expected to produce an arms deal in which Pyongyang will supply Moscow munitions for its war in Ukraine while Moscow offers economic aid and military technology in return.

The directionality of the weapons flow would be novel, but friendly relations between North Korea and Russia are not new. The isolated smaller nation enjoyed Soviet sponsorship in decades past, including Soviet provision of arms in the Korean War and Soviet installation of Kim's grandfather, Kim Il Sung.

For the U.S., then, this summit should not be cause for special alarm, but it should serve as a reminder to policymakers of the ongoing importance of pursuing productive, incremental diplomacy with North Korea and avoiding needlessly driving American antagonists into each other's arms.

It's still worth talking to North Korea

It may be true, as international studies scholars Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker argue, that this summit signals the end of Kim's willingness to pursue normalization with the West. [Foreign Policy]
But it would be foolish to assume that door is closed forever—or to ignore Washington's role in pushing it shut.
- Denuclearization has never truly been on the table for North Korea, but it is the only outcome U.S. negotiators across multiple administrations have been willing to discuss.
- Kim has been clear that he "fears forcible, U.S.-orchestrated regime change like that in Iraq and Libya, and he believes, understandably, that nuclear weapons are the only sure deterrent."
- Dropping denuclearization as a near-term U.S. prerequisite for normalized relations is not a concession; it is simply recognition of reality.
- We should instead "return to negotiations with more plausible aims. For the United States, this means a nuclear freeze and an end to surprise weapons testing," among other options. [The Diplomat / Bonnie Kristian]
More broadly, it is vital for U.S. security that Washington decisionmakers better grasp the purpose and nature of diplomacy.
- Diplomacy is not appeasement nor a reward for friendly nations. It is a basic part of international relations which is most needful when dealing with adversarial powers doing provocative and dangerous things. [Newsweek / Daniel R. DePetris]

Don't incentivize a Moscow-Pyongyang friendship

North Korea is a problem to be managed, not solved. [DEFP]
Part of that management—as with other antagonistic and rivalrous relationships—should include avoiding policies which needlessly drive Moscow and Pyongyang together.
DEFP Fellow Daniel R. DePetris has explored this dynamic with Moscow and Beijing, and the same warnings apply with Pyongyang, albeit on a different scale:
- Enhanced Russian-North Korean military partnership could "increase the threat to U.S. allies" and "drive U.S. military spending increases."
- U.S. relations with both countries are tense in part "due to [U.S.] punitive measures, like sanctions, trade restrictions, [and] encirclement of each with military bases."
- Some tension is inevitable, particularly so long as Russia's invasion of Ukraine continues.
- But Washington should review sanctions and other punitive policies and prune those which aren't enhancing to U.S. security but are increasing Russian and North Korean incentives to balance against the U.S. [DEFP]

Mapped

U.S. military footprint in Africa

The U.S. has substantially increased its military presence in Africa since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Prior to 2006, the United States had no bases or permanent military personnel in Africa. Today, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has upwards of twenty-nine military bases and outposts across fifteen African nations, according to the most recent data.

Read more about U.S. counterterrorism policy in Africa here.

Quoted

"In an op-ed for Politico published in spring 2022, [University of Birmingham professor Patrick] Porter, along with the grand strategy experts [DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H.] Friedman and [Cato Institute scholar] Justin Logan, cautioned against the risk of 'giving Ukraine false hope,' and stressed that 'the rhetoric-policy gap could also raise excessive Ukrainian expectations of support.' Eighteen months into the war, with a dejected Zelensky chastising NATO for insufficient support, their unheeded warnings look prescient."

— "The realists were right" [The New Statesman / Lily Lynch]

You’re invited

Overshadowed by wars in the Greater Middle East, the U.S. has conducted aggressive counterterrorism operations in Africa for more than 20 years.

But what are U.S. objectives in Africa? Has the U.S. strategy successfully achieved them? Are there alternative policies we should consider? Join us for a thoughtful discussion on these issues on Monday, September 18, at 1 PM ET.

Panelists:

Elizabeth Shackelford, senior fellow, Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs
Tricia Bacon, associate professor, American University
William Walldorf, DEFP visiting fellow

Moderator: Jessica Trisko Darden, associate professor, Virginia Commonwealth University

Out Of Africa

How misguided U.S. counterterrorism policy contributes to African coups and undermines American security

At the end of August, the coastal African country of Gabon became the continent's latest nation to undergo a coup. Rebellion leaders installed a general to succeed the ousted president, who is now under house arrest on corruption charges, and promised stable governance.

It's a promise of which many are understandably skeptical. Gabon joins Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Sudan is hosting a successful coup in the past three years. In the U.S., this string of takeovers has often been framed as a blow to American security, as DEFP's Daniel R. DePetris observes at National Review. Niger in particular gets cast as crucial to U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

But, as a new explainer from DEFP Visiting Fellow William Walldorf explains, what the U.S. is doing in Africa is better described as "counterinsurgency"—and troublingly close to nation building—than "counterterrorism," and it isn't necessary to keep Americans safe. On the contrary, it "could be helping to inspire the next generation of global jihadists" and is misusing limited defense resources to boot.

Overreach in Africa

The current U.S. military presence in Africa includes at least 6,500 troops—not counting temporary rotations—as well as airstrikes and 127e activities (advise/assist/accompany operations that are functionally active combat).
Two decades of U.S. counterterrorism in Africa have "not only been disappointing," Walldorf writes, "but counterproductive."
There are two chief problems with our current approach, he contends:

The U.S. "is applying too much force against too little threat." Outside of ISIS-Libya, groups active in Africa do not have global reach.
U.S. counterterrorism is "the primary driver of terrorist recruitment in Africa." Our programs are self-perpetuating and worse than useless.

Research also suggests that "when foreign military leaders receive training from the U.S., the probability of those leaders later carrying out military coups increases significantly." Burkina-Faso, Mali, and Niger—three recent coup sites—are all U.S. partners. [DEFP / Walldorf]

A new strategy for AFRICOM

Use of "force needs to be limited exclusively to global reach terrorist organizations." That means a drawdown of U.S. forces across Africa and consolidation of dozens of U.S. bases.
This would not preclude select "light-footprint military operations like special operations raids and drone strikes launched from" remote bases.
However, any such strikes must be subject to stricter rules, consistently applied, to prevent civilian casualties.
Finally, we should "eliminate most security assistance and military training to African countries" instead of continuing to lay the groundwork for coups yet to come. [DEFP / Walldorf]

Read the full explainer: "Overreach in Africa: Rethinking U.S. counterterrorism strategy"

Quoted

"There are people who are looking with a good-faith effort to try to see if there's a way out of this box. And for their trouble they've basically been lambasted as appeasers or sympathetic to Putin and so on. This has got to stop."

— Rajan Menon, DEFP director of grand strategy, as quoted in "The case for negotiating with Russia." [The New Yorker / Keith Gessen]

Related reading: "As Ukraine's fight grinds on, talk of negotiations becomes nearly taboo" [NYT / Steven Erlanger]

Charted

U.S. naval patrols around Taiwan, 2021-2023

U.S. naval patrols around Taiwan have decreased in recent years while Chinese military activity in the area has increased, FT reports, though surveillance remains constant. As DEFP Fellow Mike Sweeney has explained, it "is at sea where the greatest likelihood exists for a direct clash between Chinese and U.S. forces." He continues:

Specifically, the Western Pacific is the most likely site of open conflict between this era's two most prominent powers—just as the plains of Central Europe once were the central flashpoint between the Soviets and Americans. Accurately calibrating the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese maritime power is therefore essential in determining U.S. risk and potential responses.

Read Sweeney's assessment of China's "powerful, but uneven" naval force here.

Sober Analysis

China ponders Russia's logistical challenges in the Ukraine war

[The Diplomat / Lyle Goldstein and Nathan Waechter]

A saying attributed to General Omar Bradley notes that "amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics." Any attempt by China to use military force to seize Taiwan would be an immense logistical undertaking requiring moving large quantities of troops and materiel across the Taiwan Strait. What then, are Chinese observers learning from the logistical realm of the war in Ukraine? […]
Certainly, in considering an invasion of Taiwan, many of the challenges faced by Russia in Ukraine might be further exacerbated for China in a military campaign focused on capturing an island separated by open ocean and thus completely lacking in direct and relatively simple ground lines of communication for resupply.
However, it's a safe bet that China would be better prepared from the outset of a Taiwan scenario than Russia was at the start of its invasion of Ukraine—not least because PLA planners are closely watching and learning from the Ukraine War.

Read the full analysis here.

You’re invited

What are U.S. objectives in Africa? Has the U.S. strategy successfully achieved them? What are the costs and benefits for the U.S. and the host nations and their people? After more than two decades of effort, what do we know about the most effective ways to prevent terrorist attacks? Are there superior alternative policies the U.S. should consider? Join us for a thoughtful discussion on these issues moderated by VCU's Jessica Trisko Darden.

When: Monday, September 18 @ 1 PM ET

Panelists:

Elizabeth Shackelford, senior fellow, Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs
Tricia Bacon, associate professor, American University
William Walldorf, DEFP visiting fellow

Falling China

The paradox at the heart of U.S.-China relations

There's a paradox at the heart of U.S.-China relations—one the Washington foreign policy consensus doesn't seem to rightly comprehend.

On the one hand, Beijing stands with Moscow as one of just two plausible rivals to U.S. power on a global scale. China's nuclear arsenal is smaller than Russia's, but it’s backed by a markedly larger defense budget and GDP. A U.S.-China war would be catastrophic for the world even without going nuclear.

But on the other hand, Beijing looks less and less the economic and military juggernaut it's often made out to be. Open conflict with China is horrifying to contemplate; peaceful rivalry is not.

Chinese power

"By virtue of its large population and high level of economic growth, China is soon to replace the Soviet Union," as a rising pole, the first since the fall of the USSR. [DEFP / Michael Desch]
"If we must dabble in the absurd horror of ranking great-power conflicts, war with China is the deeper nightmare." In a 2022 wargame, "the U.S. prevailed over Beijing, but only at a terrible cost." [Reason / Bonnie Kristian]
"Even if war over Taiwan led to the collapse of the PRC regime—an unlikely outcome […] —it would create serious economic and security problems" for the U.S. and our allies. [DEFP / Peter Harris]

Chinese weakness

A number of recent reports indicate ill economic health …
- "The economic model that took [China] from poverty to great-power status seems broken, and everywhere are signs of distress." [WSJ / Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie]
- "As a real estate meltdown ripples through the [Chinese] economy, small businesses and workers are owed hundreds of billions of dollars, and new projects have dried up." [NYT / Alexandra Stevenson]
- "China's long-term demographic problems don't fully explain its current financial difficulties, but they do tend to make those short-term problems worse." [NYT / Peter Coy]
- "China is facing a series of dramatic economic ailments, not least of which is growing resistance from its trade partners to its mercantilist economic policies." [RCP / Erik Gartzke]
… and unrealized strategic ambitions:
- China "developed an ambitious vision of itself as a 'near-Arctic' power, perhaps even a 'polar great power,' over the past decade or so." That vision has not come to pass. [The Hill / Andrew Latham]
- Look closely at Chinese maritime capabilities, and "the picture that emerges is less an unstoppable colossus and more a powerful, but uneven force, with important capability gaps." [DEFP / Mike Sweeney]
- "China hoped Fiji would be a template for the Pacific. Its plan backfired." [WaPo / Michael E. Miller and Matthew Abbott]
- Regionally, "mountains and oceans with capable militaries across them, and nuclear neighbors Russia and India, hem" China in. [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]

Policy in the paradox

Washington's default response to this paradox of Chinese strength and weakness is strategically confused and there dangerous:
- overhyping the imminence and supposed inevitability of U.S.-China conflict
- recklessly escalating the very tensions that make such a conflict more likely
The right response, even if China's growth and ambitions advance, is the reverse:
- prioritizing avoidance of U.S.-China war, which is not inevitable and risks global catastrophe
- maintaining deterrence and regional balance, fostering prudent diplomatic relations, and deescalating wherever possible

Quoted

"Whatever the U.S. intent, Beijing will regard Biden's effort as involving the creation of an East Asian NATO, [and] that in turn raises the question of whether Beijing will be deterred or provoked."

— Rajan Menon, DEFP director of grand strategy, as quoted in "Biden's three-way Asia summit makes strides, but it's battling history." [CS Monitor / Howard LaFranchi]

Mapped

Europe's major military alliances, 1990 and 2023

NATO has dramatically expanded its territory since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and it is naïve to imagine this has no relevance to Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to launch a war of aggression against Ukraine.

Indeed, as DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman has argued, "the weight of the evidence says the prospect of Ukraine getting Western protection was an important cause of war, if not a sufficient one."

"This is not to justify the invasion or suggest it resulted due to legitimate security concerns," Friedman adds. "It is rather to note that Ukraine joining NATO, or getting NATO's protection less formally, was a Russian 'red line,' as so many officials and scholars warned."

Sober Analysis

Is Israeli-Saudi normalization worth it?

[National Interest / Daniel R. DePetris and Rajan Menon]

[I]t's unclear how this deal would improve U.S. security. True, the Biden administration could claim success for a major diplomatic achievement. But bragging rights aside, the gains would be minimal, the costs likely substantial. […]
As for the downsides, committing American forces to defend the kingdom risks dragging the U.S. military into regional rivalries and possibly conflicts of scant importance to U.S. interests. A security guarantee could embolden the kingdom to act more aggressively toward the Houthis in Yemen and more confrontational toward Iran—perhaps even at the risk of precipitating a wider war. All of this would be counterproductive at a time when the United States is seeking a negotiated outcome in Yemen and preserving diplomatic space with Tehran on the nuclear issue.

Read the full analysis here.

TANGLING WITH THE TALIBAN

The Taliban is hanging on to power in Afghanistan. It serves U.S. interests to engage.

Two years after the chaotic but necessary U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country is no one's idea of a success story—neither for Washington’s two-decade nation-building fiasco nor for the Taliban, which established some semblance of a state after the American exit.

As DEFP Fellow Daniel R. DePetris details at Newsweek, Afghanistan is in acute crisis, and dealing with the Taliban will be a difficult but unavoidable task for Washington for the foreseeable future.

Two years with the Taliban

"Afghanistan has become one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with more than 28 million people—two-thirds of the population—in urgent need of humanitarian assistance." [HRW]
"The women in Afghanistan are being slowly erased from society, from life, from everything," said Afghan women's rights activist Mahbouba Seraj. [CNN / Jessie Yeung et al.]
The Taliban is responsible for "at least 218 extrajudicial killings" of former members of the U.S.-backed Afghan government, the U.N. reported Tuesday, contra a promise of amnesty. [NYT / Richard Pérez-Peña]
"Afghanistan's gross domestic product has contracted by 35 percent since 2021, with near universal poverty level," and "91 percent of Afghan households surveyed said food was their top priority." [Newsweek / DePetris]

The task for Washington

"No country has officially recognized the Taliban government as legitimate," DePetris notes. But, in practice, "foreign embassies are still operating on Afghan soil." [Newsweek / DePetris]
These dealings with the Taliban aren't ideal, but they're inevitable—and sometimes effective in pursuit of U.S. security goals:
- For example, the Taliban pledged to keep Afghanistan from being used as a base for anti-U.S. terror attacks, and "there hasn't been a single anti-U.S. terrorist operation emanating from Afghanistan since August 2021."
- "The U.S. will have no choice but to continue to collaborate with the Taliban to ensure those commitments are implemented over the long-term."
- And remember, prudent diplomacy doesn't preclude targeted counterterror operations. [Newsweek / DePetris]
Moreover, as DePetris explored at greater length in an explainer for DEFP, "any U.S. attempts to harm the Taliban economically will harm the Afghan people."
- Removing U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan could improve humanitarian conditions in for ordinary Afghans. [DEFP / DePetris]
- Washington should also unfreeze Afghan assets which it has held since the 2021 withdrawal, as the freeze has badly damaged the Afghan economy but failed to shift Taliban behavior. [The Critic / Bonnie Kristian]
- Sanctions can always snap back, "but for now, the U.S. should cooperate" on counterterrorism and to "reduce the suffering of Afghans." [DEFP / DePetris]
U.S. interaction with the Taliban could include formal diplomatic recognition, as former Afghan Ambassador Javid Ahmad and former CIA officer Douglas London argue at Foreign Policy—but as DePetris observes, Washington doesn't have to make a decision on that point to productively engage.

by the numbers

U.S. military expenditures compared to the next 10 countries, combined

"The Biden administration's request of $886 billion for national defense spending in 2024 is an extraordinary amount," DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman said earlier this year. "That total, in real terms, would be higher defense spending than at any point since World War II, and far more than at any point in the Cold War, even without spending destined for Ukraine, which is not included in regular defense appropriations."

As this chart illustrates, U.S. military spending is particularly remarkable in its global context. It's not surprising that American expenditures would outpace those of our closest—but still quite distant—peers. But it is worth understanding how much more we are spending than even a rising China or a revanchist Russia.

"Regular Americans are not getting a good security return for this vast investment—it is a drag on their welfare," as Friedman concluded. "The defense budget mostly serves special interests and other countries' security. The real cost of U.S. security is far cheaper than what we pay for it."

Read more from Friedman here.

Sober Analysis

Almost nothing is worth a war between the U.S. and China

[FP / Howard W. French]

There is almost nothing that is worth a war between the United States and China. I'll come back to the tricky sounding "almost" in a second—it's actually not as big of an asterisk as some might imagine. […]

Most Americans (and most Chinese) probably spend precious little time thinking about what war would do to their own country. It would be useful to give a wider airing of war game scenarios, such as one carried out recently by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that make clear just how devastating a conflict could be.

In this example, just one of many, Hawaii, Guam, Alaska, and San Diego, California, would all come under withering Chinese attack, up to and potentially including with nuclear weapons. Lest Chinese people think that they would have little to fear by way of direct impact, just for starters, many areas of coastal China, where the country's population and wealth are heavily concentrated, could face a rain of U.S. missiles. […]

So how can we restore some confidence on both sides? First the asterisk from above. War should be ruled out except in the case of a direct attack by one side on the other, which means we should rule out attacking each other.

Read the full analysis here.

See also: China's 40-year boom is over. What comes next? [WSJ / Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie]

Strategic Continuity

How and why Washington should preserve the status quo around Taiwan

Late summer is the season for fresh escalation in U.S.-China-Taiwan tensions over the independent, democratic island—if the pattern of the past year is any indication, at least.

In 2022, August saw visits to Taipei by a series of U.S. officials, most notably then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei. Her trip was discouraged by the Biden administration and roundly condemned by Beijing, which responded by increasing its military demonstrations in and around the Taiwan Strait.

In 2023, July concluded with Taiwan's first-ever "anti-takeover drill" at its international airport. August began with Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-Te's plans to visit the U.S. twice on his way to and from Paraguay—also much-protested by Beijing, of course. And throughout the latter half of summer, Chinese military drills literally pushed the boundaries of Taiwanese defense, with PLA planes coming "to the very edge of Taiwanese airspace, 12 miles off the coast."

The temptation in Washington will be to do something, to take some kind of bold, new action to upset this pattern. But the more prudent course, argues DEFP Senior Fellow Ret. Col. Daniel L. Davis at Chicago Tribune, is the opposite: We need to preserve the status quo.

The end

For half a century, Davis notes, the status quo "has preserved the peace, safeguarded Taiwan's freedom and ability to flourish as a sovereign polity, and prevented periodic crises from exploding into open warfare."

The status quo isn't ideal, but it's workable for U.S. and Taiwanese security alike. We know we can live with it because we've already lived with it for decades.
Washington should ensure the status quo "continues into the indefinite future." [Chicago Tribune / Davis]

The Means

Talk to Beijing. At present, "communication between the U.S. and Chinese militaries is virtually nonexistent at the highest levels." This is petty and reckless behavior.

Defend, deter, and compete. "It is important that Washington do all it can to protect our economic interests from Chinese espionage and our national security from any Chinese attacks. Robust competition with China is appropriate and necessary."
Avoid open conflict. "A war in the Taiwan Straits would be the worst possible outcome for the United States, Taiwan, China, and the global economy. It must, therefore, be avoided at all costs." [Chicago Tribune / Davis]

Quoted

"I've been regularly documenting all kinds of nuclear threats that have traded back and forth, and I personally think that we've kind of underplayed those for political reasons."

— Lyle Goldstein, DEFP director of Asia engag

Mapped

Ukraine’s land border with Russia

"Promising to fight for Ukraine would not enhance U.S. security,” DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman argued in a recent explainer, and that’s partly due to the sheer geographic reality such a promise would involve.

Even if we avoided open conflict with Russia, which could escalate to nuclear war, the U.S. "would be promising to secure a 1,200-mile land border with Russia," Friedman observes:

That would be expensive and require substantial manpower to be stationed in Ukraine, if taken seriously. After all, for all its defensive success, Ukraine could not stop Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014 or broad advances in 2022. This manpower, like other U.S. capabilities dedicated to Ukraine, would not be available for other contingencies more important to U.S. security.

Sober Analysis

Time to change U.S. policy toward Niger and its West African neighbors

[Defense One / C. William Walldorf Jr.]

The coup in Niger [in July] should be a wake-up call for U.S. policymakers: The current approach to security in West Africa isn't working. The United States is using too much force against too little threat in the region. Leaders must resist the temptation to escalate in the current crisis. Instead, they should draw down forces from Niger, limit missions to reconnaissance, and focus on peacemaking in conflict zones.

Read the full analysis here.

DIRE STRAITS

Beijing may lash out over Taiwan's veep visiting America. Washington should play it cool.

Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-Te will land in New York on Saturday en route to Paraguay, then stop over in San Francisco on his return trip next week. Beijing said it was a "priority" to prevent the visit when it was announced last month, with Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Xie Feng describing the trip as a threat "like a grey rhino charging at us" and, last week, a state media outlet labeling it a new example of American provocation.

The Biden administration returned the charge, warning that Beijing "should not use as a pretext any transit by Vice President Lai for brazen coercion or other provocative activities." But realistically, whatever the White House says, Chinese military exercises in and around the Taiwan Strait should be expected in coming weeks. In fact, they've already begun.

For Washington, a commitment to prudent restraint is the name of the game. China's actions may be provocative, but the U.S. should refuse to be provoked into any escalation that could make open war—especially one in which the U.S. is a combatant—more likely.

Gauging Chinese power

It's not yet obvious to what extent China will grow into its long-projected role as a rival to the U.S., as Harvard political scientist Stephen M. Walt has explained. [FP]
- "China's economy is now facing growing headwinds that are unlikely to abate."
- "[T]he more power [Chinese President Xi Jinping] amasses, the worse his policy judgments seem to be."
- However, "a balancing coalition in Asia faces significant collective action problems." [FP / Walt]
Recent high-ranking ousters in Beijing—Xi replaced his foreign minister and two top nuclear officials—have raised eyebrows. [NYT / Chris Buckley]

Assessing U.S. interests

Much as in Ukraine, "U.S. interests at stake are too low and the risks too high to justify war" with China over Taiwan, as DEFP's Sascha Glaeser has written. [DEFP]
- Three key reasons to avoid U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan, Glaeser says, are the "lack of a formal security commitment, the profound costs of a conventional conflict, and the very real risk of nuclear escalation or miscalculation."
- By contrast, Beijing "views the integration of Taiwan with the mainland" as a vital interest and therefore would be "willing to endure great costs … to achieve this goal."
- Even a non-nuclear conflict would be enormously damaging, and "a U.S. victory is not assured." [DEFP / Glaeser]

Committing to restraint

Pragmatic, working-level diplomacy with Beijing continues to be vital.
- Pentagon efforts to establish crisis communications channels with China are wise and should continue. [Defense News / Bryant Harris]
- Reported progress on "two working groups to focus on Asia-Pacific regional issues and maritime issues, and a possible third group to focus on broader areas" is welcome news. [FT / Demetri Sevastopulo]
"The U.S. has a goal to avoid a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but the overriding U.S. interest is to avoid a ruinous war with China," DEFP's Peter Harris has argued. [DEFP]
- "Proposals to deter China by bolstering U.S. military deployments in the Western Pacific are unlikely to succeed and fraught with danger."
  "America's role should be to support Taiwanese-led efforts to deter China while working to convince all sides that the status quo is sustainable."[DEFP / Harris]

Sober Analysis

Ukraine has a breakthrough problem

[FP / Barry Posen]

The breakthrough problem emerged during the First World War, when European countries first became rich and populous enough to defend very long fronts—in some cases nearly their entire borders. They were assisted in this effort by vast improvements in firepower, including range, rate, accuracy, and lethality, which augmented the typical advantage that defenders have: the ability to choose the terrain on which they will fight, to construct fortifications, and to arrange their forces in ways that allow the most effective use of firepower—for example, by ambushing.

The perfection of the tank, fighter aircraft, and radio allowed skilled attackers to overcome defenses early in World War II, but over time, defenders found ways to employ the same assets. […] A military rule of thumb emerged that at least a 3-to-1 advantage in combat power is necessary to have a reasonable chance of success against a well-crafted defense.

See the full analysis here.

Quoted

"My view is that defensive warfare has benefitted from modern technology like drones, so it's tough going to take land against even a semi-motivated enemy, especially without air superiority."

—DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman, as quoted in "Is the Ukrainian counteroffensive faltering?"

The advantage Friedman describes works for Ukraine's defense, but it's also relevant to Kyiv's slow-moving counteroffensive. However, a "stalemate might lead to major political movement, such as a reopening of talks," Friedman observed. [Yahoo News / Alexander Nazaryan]

Charted

Chinese military aircraft in Taiwan's Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), by month

"Chinese aircraft have been making larger and larger aerial displays around the island," observed DEFP Director of Asia Engagement Lyle Goldstein at The National Interest in 2021, when the above chart’s upward trend began:

Unquestionably, rising Chinese nationalism is partly to blame for this volatile situation.
However, Americans are not blameless in this situation, and the current round of grave tensions really goes back to former President Donald Trump's foolish decision to take a phone call immediately after his 2016 election from Taiwan’s leader, Tsai Ing-wen, in brazen defiance of the "one-China policy" that has been the foundation of U.S.-China relations since 1972.
Other measures, such assendingsenior-level officials to the island, increasingarms sales, completing a $255 million "mammoth new complex" in Taipei in 2018 that resembles an embassy, andparadingwarships through the Taiwan Strait, have been duly noted in Beijing.

Read more from Goldstein here. Read more about recent Chinese ADIZ incursions here.

DEBATABLE

Does U.S. military training embolden coup plotters in Africa?

[FP / Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig]

At FP, the Stimson Center's Emma Ashford and the Atlantic Council's Matthew Kroenig debate whether the U.S. should continue the kind of training for foreign military personnel afforded to Brig. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, one of the leaders of the recent coup in Niger:

ASHFORD: The Niger coup marks yet another occasion in which U.S.-trained military personnel—the officers that we are educating and training—have sponsored or directly supported an antidemocratic coup. It's a long list, including Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Gambia, Burkina Faso, and Sudan, all since 2008.

These aren't just low-level troops who've been trained in combat techniques. These are often coup leaders, the cream of the crop of foreign militaries, trained here in the United States at our top service academies. Washington hosts tens of thousands of foreign students from around the world each year, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It doesn't seem like America is getting its money's worth, does it?

See the full analysis here

Entanglements

The risk of U.S. quasi-alliances with Saudi Arabia and Ukraine

Who is an ally, and why does it matter? That's the question DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman and Contributing Fellow Natalie Armbruster considered in depth in a DEFP explainer last fall.

It's also a newly pressing question as Thomas L. Friedman reports in his column at The New York Times that President Joe Biden "is wrestling with whether to pursue the possibility of a U.S.-Saudi mutual security pact"—not to mention ongoing debate over future NATO membership for Ukraine.

As it stands, both Saudi Arabia and Ukraine fit Friedman and Armbruster's category of "quasi-allies," "states the United States is not committed to defend but to which it provides a substantial degree of military and political support." As they explain, this is a dangerous category to maintain—but formalizing each relationship would be imprudent, too.

The Saudi pact rumor

"When I interviewed President Biden in the Oval Office last week," Thomas L. Friedman writes, the president said he was mulling this security guarantee idea and has deputized his team to talk terms with
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud of Saudi Arabia. [NYT]
Though the deal would be intended to resolve Israel-Palestine conflict, it would also more thoroughly involve the U.S. in Saudi activities in Yemen and beyond.
"Even if one ignores the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents, Saudi Arabia has been a prickly and unhelpful" partner. [FP / Stephen Walt]
"If a mutual defense treaty with Saudi Arabia is on the White House's agenda, it's time to take a pause and ask how such an idea came to look reasonable in the first place." [X / Stephen Wertheim]

The NATO-Ukraine debate

"The U.S. and its NATO allies have thus far avoided fighting directly for Ukraine precisely because they lack an interest vital enough to risk nuclear war." [Politico / Benjamin H. Friedman and Christopher McCallion]
"[F]ake security guarantees would likely degrade Ukraine's security on balance, both by preserving a cause of the war and by encouraging Ukrainian leaders to make dangerous choices based on the false prospect of U.S. protection." [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman]
"[E]ven offering Kyiv a membership action plan on the road to full NATO membership runs the risk of lengthening the present conflict." [NRO / Daniel R. DePetris]

Why quasi-allies are such a bad idea

By creating uncertainty about U.S. commitments both at home and abroad, quasi-allies' ambiguous status creates dangers for both the United States and the quasi-allies.
For the United States, the danger is entanglement; having quasi-allies can pull the United States into trouble outside its core interests.
Quasi-allies may suffer a kind of moral hazard; they may falsely believe they have U.S. military protection and fail to secure themselves. [DEFP / Benjamin H. Friedman and Natalie Armbruster]

Quoted

"My view is that defensive warfare has benefitted from modern technology like drones, so it's tough going to take land against even a semi-motivated enemy, especially without air superiority."

—DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman, as quoted in "Is the Ukrainian counteroffensive faltering?"

The advantage Friedman describes works for Ukraine's defense, but it's also relevant to Kyiv's slow-moving counteroffensive. However, a "stalemate might lead to major political movement, such as a reopening of talks," Friedman observed. [Yahoo News / Alexander Nazaryan]

Charted

Iran’s Stockpile of enriched Uranium

After U.S. withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal during the Trump administration, Tehran began gradually increasing its production of enriched uranium—production that had basically ceased while the deal was intact.

In January, as FT reports, an International Atomic Energy Agency inspection discovered dust containing uranium "enriched to a purity of up to 83.7 per cent, by far the highest level detected in Iran. The finding suggested Tehran was closer than ever to having the capacity to produce nuclear weapons."

That should give new urgency to U.S. diplomatic efforts with Iran, but Washington can also remain confident U.S. deterrence can "ensure core U.S. security objectives in the region are protected," even without a new deal constraining Tehran, as DEFP Fellow Daniel R. DePetrishas argued. Other concrete steps for Iran policy include:

The U.S. should stop using secondary sanctions to prevent others from buying Iranian oil, which alienates many countries without benefit.
The U.S. should not thwart ongoing diplomacy between Iran and the Gulf states.
The U.S. should withdraw remaining troops from the Middle East, whose presence makes them vulnerable to Iranian strikes and undermines, or isn't necessary for, limited U.S. interests there.

Read more from FT here. Read more from DePetris here.

Sober Analysis

Why the U.S. should offer concessions to North Korea

[WaPo / Frank Aum]

The empirical evidence is compelling. When the United States engages North Korea, it behaves significantly better.

A study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that, between 1990 and 2017, there was a strong correlation between periods when Washington was negotiating with Pyongyang and a decrease in North Korean provocations. If the study included data from 2017 to today, it would have also shown that North Korea conducted zero nuclear or ballistic missile tests in 2018 when bilateral summitry occurred, and more than 100 missile tests between 2019 and 2023 after diplomacy collapsed.
The problem is that neither side seems particularly interested in talking. The Biden administration has outwardly sought working-level talks with Kim Jong Un's regime multiple times, to no avail. To North Korea, however, U.S. overtures seem insincere and halfhearted when accompanied by aggressive military muscle-flexing and terse messages from President Biden to Kim.

See the full analysis here.

Newsletters

Latest issues

Spring fighting season

Why NATO membership won't help Ukraine—and what to pursue instead

Notable developments

What about letting Ukraine in NATO?

Looking ahead to talks

QUOTable

"Escalation of violence is in no one's interest, and there is no such thing as a limited war."

How strategic overreach impacts military readiness

Sober Analysis

Don't overstate THE Army's role in the Pacific

TRENDING

EXIT HERE

U.S. troops in Syria are in harm's way because of a reckless, costly, and unjustifiable grand strategy

A failure of grand strategy

No time like the present to course-correct

QUOTED

Iran's affiliates in the Middle East

Sober Analysis

U.S. voters face a stark choice on foreign policy

TRENDING

Year three

Putin's losses, Washington's ambitions, and Kyiv's need for a realistic peace

Putin's losses

Washington's ambitions

What Kyiv should do next

Quoted

Timelines

Two months of Houthi attacks

Livestream

Can Ukraine still win? Evaluating U.S. interests and policy options

Sober Analysis

What the Western media gets wrong about Taiwan

TRENDING

Unhappy anniversary

Ukraine's defense is in dire straits. What would a realistic victory look like?

Conditions at the two-year mark

Toward an acceptable and attainable peace

Trendlines

Quoted

livestream

Can Ukraine still win? Evaluating U.S. interests and policy options

Sober Analysis

Why America can't have it all

TRENDING

BURDEN SHIFTING

Trump's NATO rhetoric is feckless and obtuse—but the burden-shifting talk it prompted is long overdue

Reality sets in

The way forward

Quoted

"No country on earth has constructed dozens of nuclear warheads only to negotiate them away. North Korea is not going to be the first, particularly when its conventional military capacity is weak relative to the U.S. and its Asian neighbors."

Survey says

Poll: Americans are wary of a Syria mission if it claims U.S. lives

Upcoming livestream

DRAWDOWN

Why are we in Syria, and should we be?

CHARTED

Risks of attacks and escalation

Withdraw U.S. forces

Quoted

Upcoming livestream

Can Ukraine still win? Evaluating U.S. interests and policy options

Sober Analysis

The U.S. had to respond to the attack in Jordan—but it shouldn't attack inside Iran

Mark your calendar

Lecture: "Globalization of the U.S. defense supply chain"

TRENDING

DRAWDOWN

U.S. forces should have left Syria and adjacent countries years ago. Get them out now.

Quoted

"Jordan is a longtime security partner, but we are going to have to ask ourselves whether the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and Syria is worth it."

LIVESTREAM TODAY @ 2

TALKING HEADS

The democracy-defense credo does not serve U.S. interests

TRENDING

STRATEGERY

U.S. strikes on Yemen aren't working, Biden admits. Maybe try something else?

Red Sea strikes

'An unenviable choice'