For nearly twenty years following the end of the Cold War, military confrontation between the United States and the Russian Federation seemed implausible. Even during periods of tension, as during the Kosovo crisis in the late 1990s, few believed that disagreement between Washington and Moscow could lead to a serious crisis, no less war. Before the first decade of the new century had passed, however, Russian officials were accusing the United States of working to isolate Russia. Such apprehensions have mounted steadily in Russia in the years since. At the same time, Russian behavior, including interventions in Ukraine and Syria, military posturing and harassment in Europe, and interference in Western elections, has led many in the United States to conclude that, while a U.S.-Russian conflict is by no means inevitable, the risk of such a confrontation is growing.

Even as U.S.-Russian tensions have risen, fundamental shifts in the military-technological environment threaten to erode strategic stability between the two nations. In the coming years, both sides’ extensive dependence on information technology, coupled with likely perceptions of lower risk for the use of “nonkinetic” and nonlethal attacks, are creating new incentives to use cyber and/or counterspace weapons early in a crisis or conflict. At the same time, the advent of novel cyber, counterspace, precision-strike, missile-defense and autonomous military systems could cause one or both nations to lose confidence in their nuclear second-strike capabilities—thereby eroding the stability afforded by mutually assured destruction.

The Russian government rates the United States and NATO as the most serious threats to Russian national security. From its standpoint, the United States is intent on remaining the world’s sole hegemon, and, as such, is unwilling to tolerate a strong Russia that enjoys its own sphere of influence. Moscow has spoken out against American and European efforts to encircle the Russian Federation by integrating former Soviet republics into Western institutions like NATO and the European Union. Russian officials further condemn the United States’ purported use of “color revolutions”—or, as Moscow would characterize them, the sponsorship of coups d’état under a guise of democracy promotion—to install proxies in Russia’s “near abroad.” In addition, Russian analysts assert that the United States and NATO are using a variety of political, economic and informational tools to penetrate and disrupt Russian society itself. In response to these perceived threats, Russia has undertaken a major military modernization effort and used more aggressive rhetoric and military operations, economic coercion and inducements, and information operations to counter alleged U.S. and NATO expansionism.

The view from Washington and Europe differs markedly. In the assessment of the United States and NATO, the Kremlin appears intent on restoring a buffer zone of compliant or client states throughout its self-declared “near abroad.” Western officials condemn Russia’s violations of international law and norms by using force against Ukraine, changing borders in Europe through violence, violating arms-control agreements and seeking to undermine Western democratic elections. They are equally concerned by Russian military modernization, which, coupled with intensified military exercises, activities and bellicose rhetoric, is seen as a direct threat to NATO security. The United States and its allies have responded to perceived Russian aggression by strengthening NATO’s deterrent posture, as well as holding increasingly frank discussions about NATO’s central role in defeating a Russian attack.

U.S.-Russian relations in the coming years will take one of three forms: strategic rapprochement, intensified military competition or managed competition. Although a long-term rapprochement cannot be ruled out, and indeed is a valuable (very) long-term goal, striving for such an outcome—or even another attempted “reset” (or “re-reset”)—in the near term would likely lead to quick disappointment. This reality does not eliminate room for the pursuit of common interests on issues such as nuclear nonproliferation, counterterrorism and counternarcotics. Yet both the United States and Russia must act on the understanding that there is a real potential for political disputes to lead to crisis, and for crisis to lead to conflict.

At the same time, Russia’s nuclear forces will, for the foreseeable future, allow it to destroy the United States as a functioning society. Hence, as distasteful as “working with” Russia may seem, the alternative of full-throated confrontation would pose unacceptable and unnecessary risks to the United States. That said, one should not brim over with unbridled optimism. Russian leaders are engaged in continuing efforts to undermine America’s alliances, democratic processes and global role. A change in this strategic approach appears highly unlikely, and as a result U.S.-Russia competition is the likeliest path short of outright confrontation. The challenge, then, is charting a balanced path ahead that recognizes the real competition and potential for conflict, while allowing for prudent cooperation and improvement in the relationship where possible.

THE UNITED States and Russia are each pursuing a range of advanced military technologies in order to bolster their respective conventional military postures in Europe (and in the western Pacific, in the case of the United States). Priority investments for both sides include novel cyber, counterspace, long-range nonnuclear-strike, missile-defense and autonomous weapons systems. Russian strategists writing in Military Thought, the in-house journal of the Russian General Staff, rightly note that these technologies are likely to significantly increase the pace of military engagements. Uncertainty about these systems’ effects will also increase risk of miscalculation or misunderstanding. These factors, both singularly and in interaction with one another, could lead to “slippery slopes” of rapid escalation from crisis to conflict, especially in cyberspace and outer space.

The U.S. and Russian militaries are increasingly dependent on networked information technology (IT), and both have embarked on ambitious offensive cyber programs. Because of the frailty of cyberweapons—once a weapon is revealed in detail, the adversary can fashion effective defenses—there exists a tremendous premium on secrecy regarding both states’ cyber tool kits. As a result, a great deal of uncertainty surrounds each side’s capabilities. Even so, a 2013 Defense Science Board report conveyed a sense of cyberweapons’ potential impact: “The benefits to an attacker using cyber exploits are potentially spectacular.” Similar dynamics obtain in the space domain. The United States relies heavily on vulnerable military satellites for a host of critical military functions. The Russian Federation does so too, but to a far lesser extent. At the same time, both side possess inherent antisatellite (ASAT) capabilities in their ballistic-missile defense interceptors, and are developing other ASAT weapons, such as co-orbital satellites, missiles, directed-energy weapons and cyberattacks.

Five specific factors could lead to rapid and unintended escalation in cyberspace and outer space. First, the United States and Russia will likely face strong incentives to use cyber and counterspace attacks early in a future crisis or conflict. These capabilities could offer—or be seen to offer—an opportunity to rapidly degrade an adversary’s information systems at the outset of a conflict, conferring a significant advantage to the first mover. Indeed, Russian strategists have been clear in their assessment that seizing the initiative in the information domain will be key to victory in future wars. In addition, Washington and Moscow may perceive the use of cyber and nonkinetic counterspace weapons as less escalatory than that of kinetic weapons, since they can be employed in nonlethal, non-physically-destructive and reversible ways. This assessment is also reflected in Russian doctrinal writings. Russian strategists characterize both ASAT and cyberweapons as optimal tools for deterrence, since they can be used to destroy enemy infrastructure without inflicting heavy civilian casualties. Such a belief could further lower the threshold for early cyber and counterspace attacks.

Second, cyber and counterspace attacks intended to be highly discriminative against military targets may cascade to affect critical infrastructure essential to a broader society and economy (e.g., electrical grids or commercial satellites). If this occurred, an attack intended to be precise and limited to military targets could instead result in the widespread loss of electrical power, water or other essential services, with resulting economic disruption and potential loss of life. The attacked side could feel compelled to respond at least in kind. Alternatively, a tit-for-tat cycle may occur, as one side might believe it could gain coercive advantage by intentionally demonstrating its ability to pose risks to the other side’s critical infrastructure through a combination of cyber, counterspace and perhaps sabotage attacks. Prominent Russian strategists endorse this view, arguing that attacks on socioeconomic targets can frighten an enemy population into abandoning its war effort against Russia. Yet such countervalue strikes could lead to major conflict and even, in an extreme scenario, nuclear war.

Third, attacks intended to target nonnuclear systems (including but not limited to cyber and space attacks) could inadvertently impinge on nuclear systems, and be misread as a much more escalatory move. For instance, some assets in outer space support both conventional and nuclear missions—particularly in the case of the United States—and both theater and strategic missions. In addition, many terrestrial elements of U.S. command, control and communications, as well as long-range strike systems, are dual-use, and there may be co-location of conventional and nuclear systems by one or both sides. Cyber or counterspace attacks on these systems could therefore implicate nuclear systems, raising the potential for inadvertent escalation.

Russian strategists are especially cognizant of these dynamics and recognize that a drawn-out conflict will likely force both sides up the escalation ladder. To avoid this outcome, a number of Russian military theorists argue for the use of defensive preemptive strikes—especially using nonnuclear capabilities—on enemy military and/or socioeconomic targets. Some suggest that these strikes could degrade adversary power-projection capabilities, such that Russia could avoid being forced into a situation where it had to use or lose its strategic-level assets in the first place. Others say—as previously mentioned—that tailored preemptive strikes could deter aggression by communicating to target policymakers and publics alike that the costs of attacking or escalating a military confrontation with Russia would outweigh the benefits.

Fifth, inadvertent escalation could result from a misattributed attack or third-party false-flag operation. Chance errors in a key system, in the midst of crisis, such as an internal fault in a side’s command-and-control system or one induced by natural causes (e.g., a solar flare or an electrical surge), could be construed by one side to be an intentional act by the other. In addition, the diffusion of offensive cyber capabilities could allow smaller powers or nonstate actors to provoke a conflict—for instance, by conducting a “false flag” digital operation designed to trigger a crisis. Alternatively, once a conflict has begun, they could use their own capabilities to expand the scope or scale of the conflict.

The possibility of escalation to large-scale war stemming, even inadvertently, from lower-order conflicts or tensions has long been appreciated in the context of the United States and Russia. The contention here, however, is that technological advances, their integration into military postures and doctrines on both sides, and the often-unanticipated ways in which such integrations may interact are together heightening the possibility of inadvertent, rapid and dramatic escalation in the event of crisis or conflict between the United States and Russia.

STRATEGIC STABILITY between the United States and Russia has long rested on each side’s confidence that it could absorb even an all-out nuclear first strike by the other side and then unleash a devastating nuclear second strike. That confidence, however, is being tested by the deployment of new military systems. As these capabilities mature, each side is likely to have growing fears that the other side might employ these capabilities (with or without also using nuclear weapons) in a first strike to attempt to negate its nuclear second-strike capabilities, thereby obviating mutually assured destruction.

Cyber weapons could be used against vulnerable nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and command, control and communications (NC3). The potential vulnerability of these systems, particularly as both countries’ offensive cyber capabilities mature, may exacerbate each side’s fears about the vulnerability of its nuclear deterrent to the other side’s potential preemptive attack. For instance, if a cyberattack on NC3 could delay the other side from giving an order to execute a nuclear strike for even thirty minutes, it could potentially negate the other side’s ability to launch its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) under attack, increasing the risk to such ICBM and narrowing the potential response options for the victim’s leadership. In a future crisis, in which one side believed that the other was able and willing to stage such an attack, it could perceive itself as having extremely little time to make a decision and might employ cyber or other capabilities (e.g. nonnuclear or nuclear weapons) preemptively, or more extensively than otherwise might be the case.

Counterspace attacks also pose serious escalation risks given space systems’ relevance to nuclear operations, especially for the United States. There appears at this time little prospect that either side could substantially impact the other’s second-strike capabilities through counterspace attacks, and unclassified reporting suggests that neither the United States nor Russia has a robust counterspace capability. Moreover, even if it were able to disrupt or destroy key elements of the other side’s space architecture, each side has ground-based radars to support early warning and substantial terrestrial and/or airborne communications to support secure communications. However, as ASAT technologies improve—for instance, with the deployment of space-based interceptors or directed-energy systems—the risk of an adversary using counterspace operations to disable critical NC3 systems, intentionally or otherwise, will grow commensurately.

Long-range nonnuclear weapons could also pose a threat to strategic stability. Neither side has yet deployed conventional-prompt global-strike (CPGS) capabilities—either conventional weapons on long-range ballistic missiles or hypersonic cruise missiles—that could realistically threaten to disarm an opponent’s strategic deterrent or decapitate its NC3. However, nonnuclear precision strike appears likely to become an increasingly severe problem over time, for two reasons. First, there is concern that the launch of a CPGS missile could be mistaken for the launch of a nuclear-tipped missile, leading the side that fears attack to launch nuclear-tipped missiles in response. Second, the United States and Russia could develop and deploy sufficient numbers of highly capable CPGS weapons to imperil the strategic nuclear deterrent of the other side. Many nuclear delivery platforms, such as road- and rail-based ICBM launchers, might readily be destroyed by conventional forces if they could be effectively targeted. Moreover, future CPGS systems, some Russian and other analysts believe, might ultimately be able to destroy even more defended targets, such as hardened ICBM silos. Missile defenses could “mop up” residual second-strike forces, in turn. The counterforce threat posed by a combination of long-range nonnuclear strike and improved missile defenses is a priority concern for Russian (and Chinese) officials.

As with long-range nonnuclear weapons, neither the United States nor Russia has sufficiently capable or extensive missile-defense systems to deny the other side from being able to conduct a devastating nuclear attack, including in a second strike. Three possible future developments in missile defenses could, however, undermine strategic stability. The first is the deployment of large numbers of kinetic-kill or nuclear-tipped interceptors with the sensor capability, burnout velocity and other features required to engage CPGS and SLBM. The second is the deployment of space-based kinetic-kill interceptors. Third is the deployment of directed-energy systems for missile defense, which appear increasingly plausible as advances are made in solid-state lasers. Any of these developments could seriously threaten the viability of a nation’s second-strike capability.

Finally, the advent of autonomous systems and artificial intelligence may allow states to more reliably target adversary SSBNs and mobile ICBMs. Inasmuch as these systems form the backbone of the U.S. and Russia nuclear forces, respectively, such a breakthrough would pose a severe threat to one or both sides’ nuclear deterrents. Ultimately, however, it is very difficult in an unclassified article to assess the plausibility of developments in strategic antisubmarine warfare or the ability to target mobile ICBMs. It is possible that advances in big-data analytics, for example, yield a breakthrough in antisubmarine warfare and/or time-critical targeting of mobile missiles. Even in this case, however, it is one thing to locate a system, for instance in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean or the Siberian forest. It is another thing to be able to deliver a sufficiently destructive and accurate weapon against the targeted system before it is able to fire or conceal itself.

STABILIZING U.S.-Russian relations requires actions along each of these three pathways, conducted in parallel. Shaping and managing the overall relationship is fundamentally important. But whatever the course of U.S.-Russian relations in the future, there will remain a possibility (one, we argue, that is growing over time) of sliding into crisis and even armed conflict. Moreover, if a crisis or conflict does occur, there is a possibility (also growing over time) that escalation to strategic attack could occur. The following recommendations seek to manage these risks by helping shape the ongoing debate regarding U.S.-Russian relations and guide actions affecting U.S. nuclear posture, ballistic-missile defenses, cyber deterrence and space resilience. The recommendations also address the American role in NATO and NATO-Russia relations, both of which are of critical importance to all three pathways.

To safeguard American interests in the face of Russian actions, the Trump administration should begin by articulating a clear policy on Russia, in close coordination with Congress and NATO allies. In the absence of a coherent American approach, Russian leaders are less likely to cooperate on common interests, since Russian advocates of cooperation will wonder whether the United States will reverse itself and make them appear naive. Russian leaders are also less likely to be deterred, as advocates of a more aggressive approach can argue credibly that Russia should take advantage of a window of incoherence in Washington. And of fundamental importance, in the absence of a clear U.S. policy, Russian leaders are more likely to miscalculate how the United States will respond in a crisis—and, if a crisis does occur, be more likely to miscommunicate.

A clear U.S. policy toward Russia should include sanctions in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its continued military intervention in Ukraine, and its meddling in U.S. and European elections. The absence of painful and sustained costs would prompt Putin and his leadership coterie to conclude that they have little to fear from Washington and its allies, as long as there is the thinnest patina of deniability. At the same time, however, the United States should clarify for Moscow what actions it can take (or avoid taking) over a given period of time to achieve relief from sanctions. Unconditional—or poorly conditioned—sanctions would leave Russia with little incentive to alter threatening behavior.

In addition, the United States should respond with military deployments to Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. This should include strengthening America’s nonnuclear long-range strike capabilities in Europe and supporting its partners’ efforts to do so as well. Washington should also work with NATO allies to continue to improve missile defenses in Europe. It should make clear that EPAA deployment, along with other missile-defense capabilities, will have a role in deterring Russia’s use of missiles in Europe, while reaffirming that EPAA deployments in Romania and Poland will still be unable to engage Russian ICBMs aimed at the United States. The U.S. response to Russia’s INF violation should further include the deployment of a follow-on to the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile–Nuclear (TLAM-N), built with stealth features based on the Long-Range Standoff (LRSO) nuclear cruise missile. This follow-on to TLAM-N would fill a deterrence gap by adding a survivable and credible theater nuclear deterrent that complements dual-capable fighter-bombers (potentially vulnerable both to preemptive attacks on air bases and to advanced air defenses) and dual-capable long-range bombers (the use of which, if in response to theater use of nuclear weapons by Russia, would require the United States to be the first to engage in homeland-to-homeland nuclear strikes).

Finally, the United States should continue to develop areas of cooperation with Russia. Washington will need Russian support for (or abstention on) further U.N. Security Council–imposed sanctions on North Korea, and likely other threats to international peace and security that come before the council in the future. The two might productively cooperate in some areas of the Arctic, in civilian space activities, in diplomatic negotiations over Syria’s future and in the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism, which Russia and the United States cochair. Even as American leaders continue to press a modest, positive agenda, they should put greater priority on deterring bad behavior and avoiding a slide toward crisis and conflict.

THE UNITED States should take additional steps to mitigate the potential for attacks in cyberspace and outer space to trigger rapid, uncontrolled escalation. One of the first steps should be to define its desired rules of the road for cyberspace and outer space, not only in peacetime, but also in crisis and conflict. It should then seek consensus with key allies and partners, with whom a common understanding of preferred guidelines for offensive cyber and outer-space activities remains lacking. Armed with an allied consensus, Washington should test the degree to which arriving at a common view with Moscow (and, likely separately, Beijing) is possible. Even if the United States and Russia fail to reach a common view, well-prepared bilateral discussions regarding rules of the road in cyberspace and outer space would help clarify where various actions might fall on the escalation ladder, thereby reducing the risk that either side unwittingly takes actions viewed by the other as extremely threatening.

Next, following a framework offered in a Defense Science Board Task Force report on cyber deterrence, DOD should bolster cyber and space resilience for critical military capabilities in three ways. First, it should ensure the cyber and space resilience of the nuclear triad, and the “thin line” of NC3 systems that supports it even in a nuclear exchange. Second, the department should ensure the essential cyber and space resilience to support a select but substantial subset of nonnuclear long-range strike capabilities, such as the new B-21 bomber and JASSM-ER and attack submarines equipped with conventional Tomahawk cruise missiles. Having punishing nonnuclear strike options available for response even after withstanding the other side’s best efforts at cyber and space attacks would significantly decrease the incentive to conduct such an attack, without requiring the president to escalate to a nuclear response. Third, DOD should ensure that select offensive cyber (and, if applicable, offensive counterspace) capabilities are highly resistant to both cyber and counterspace attacks, so that the United States may respond in kind to an attack limited to cyberspace and outer space.

The United States should also improve the digital resilience of its critical infrastructure. A focused national effort sustained over a period of many years could fundamentally reduce the cyber vulnerability of at least the most essential U.S. critical infrastructure, including the electrical grid, key elements of the financial sector, water and wastewater systems, and the electoral system. There will be no quick fixes, but with strong leadership from both the public and private sectors, the United States could substantially reduce the digital vulnerabilities of select portions of its critical infrastructure over the next ten to twenty years. By addressing these vulnerabilities, Washington can reduce Russia’s incentives to attack and the potential escalatory impact if it does so.

In addition—and critically—the United States should reopen diplomatic and military lines of communication with Russia. These channels are crucial for reducing the risks of miscommunication and avoidable conflict. Notwithstanding how difficult U.S.-Russian relations are today, the United States should work to reopen channels of communication, including diplomatic as well as military-to-military ones. Some initial steps—for example, tactical deconfliction in Syria—have taken place already, but much more is needed.

JUST AS the integration of a range of new technologies is undermining strategic stability, so too is an integrated program necessary to buttress strategic stability between the United States and Russia in the coming years and decades. This program must consider changes in both nuclear and nonnuclear systems, and in both nuclear and nonnuclear strategies.

As a first step in such a program, the United States should adopt a “triad-plus” strategic force structure. This means proceeding with the Columbia-class strategic submarine modernization program, B-21 dual-capable bomber program, and LRSO missile program. It also means that, rather than pursuing a one-for-one replacement of Minuteman III ICBMs in underground silos, the United States should develop a replacement ICBM that is significantly lighter than the Minuteman III and deploy perhaps two or three hundred of the missiles in silos. The United States should also initiate a mobile ICBM research-and- development program, including prototypes, so that the United States can shift weight to a mobile ICBM force in the event of a Russian breakthrough in antisubmarine warfare (ASW). Remanufacturing a stealthy version of the TLAM-N would also allow the United States to hedge against Russian ASW improvements.

At the same time, the Department of Defense should address vulnerabilities in NC3 systems and review launch-under-attack postures. DOD should invest first in ensuring that its nuclear forces and NC3 are highly resilient to a top-tier cyber adversary. Next, both the U.S. and Russian leadership must understand the reality that their NC3 systems could suffer some degradations in crisis or conflict—some of which may not be due to attacks by the other side; a third party might attempt a false-flag operation. Accidents and acts of nature can also cause service disruptions of some systems. Both sides should ensure that their planning and exercises account for such events. Finally, the U.S. and Russian postures to be prepared to launch ICBMs under attack deserve careful review, so as to minimize the risk of launching on false warning. How both sides can adjust their postures to this effect remains difficult to say. It is important to note, however, that the more the United States hedges through other means (e.g., TLAM-N and mobile ICBMs) in the future, the less pressure there will be to launch ICBMs under the warning of attack.

As the United States proceeds with a program of nuclear modernization, it should also develop and deploy nonnuclear hypersonic weapons, tailored to defeat major improvements in the air-defense systems of potential U.S. adversaries. The United States should aim for a “sweet spot” for nonnuclear hypersonic weapons in terms of military effectiveness (high), cost (relatively low), potential for high-volume strikes (significant) and impact on strategic stability (low). Medium-range ballistic missiles (with and without boost-glide vehicles) and hypersonic cruise missiles, launched from heavy bombers and/or attack submarines, could fall in this sweet spot. The systems would have a low impact on strategic stability because their infrared and other signatures would be substantially different and distinguishable from those of U.S. nuclear-delivery systems (including SLBMs and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles), attacks on one nation would not require overflight of others, and these systems would either lack the range to attack deep into Russia (the case for submarine-based medium-range systems) or would be unable to do so in volume without creating a massive detectable signature (the case for bomber-based systems).

The United States should also invest in its missile-defense architecture. To start, as North Korea improves its nuclear-tipped ICBM capabilities, the United States should continue to grow its missile defenses. Second, the United States should continue to press forward with directed-energy systems for defensive purposes. Priority should be given to helping to deal with the immediate challenge of negating North Korean long-range and medium-range missiles, likely by deploying directed-energy systems on manned or unmanned aircraft. Third, the United States should forswear space-based missile defense interceptors and directed-energy systems, strongly urge Russia to do the same and pursue a bilateral agreement with Russia (and, separately, a bilateral agreement with China) to this end. Because of the massive and immediate threat that such systems would pose to American satellites and their essential support to warfighting—and potentially to early warning and secure communications satellites that are vital to the U.S. nuclear deterrent—any Russian deployment of space-based missile defense interceptors or lasers would pose an immediate and unacceptable threat.

Finally, the United States should regularize strategic-stability talks with Russia and seek to extend the New START treaty by five years. The U.S.-Russian meeting in Finland in September 2017 was an important first step toward a regular Track 1 dialogue on strategic stability issues in the coming years. The American and Russian governments should sustain these sorts of efforts. At the same time, however, in view of the volatility of U.S.-Russian relations at this time, and recognizing that circumstances may delay or derail Track 1 efforts, both parties should pursue Track 2 and Track 1.5 dialogues on strategic stability. Extending New START would serve strategic stability through its verification provisions, which provide transparency and predictability, thereby reducing the propensity of each side to rely on worst-case assessments. It would not currently be helpful to press for further reductions in force levels, as having some extra margin above the bare minimum force levels that each side thinks it needs will help buffer the impact of new military capabilities as they are deployed.

THE UNITED States and Russia have reentered a period of serious tension that shows no sign of abating. Relations between the two sides appear likely to remain tense, if not hostile—at least through the medium term—and may involve considerable turbulence. Bluntly put, serious disagreement and even outright conflict are possible. Exacerbating this geopolitical reality, emerging new military capabilities—cyber, space, missile defense, long-range strike and (cutting through all) autonomous systems—are increasing uncertainties associated with strategic stability. Unless measures are taken to cushion the consequences of these military trends, conflict may become more probable and escalation more dramatic and severe than they need to be—all in an era when both crisis and conflict are more plausible than they were just ten years ago. If adopted by the Trump administration and its successors, a fresh American approach to U.S.-Russian relations will protect American and allied interests. If the U.S. approach is also articulated clearly and is consistent over time, it may well reduce the risk of crisis or conflict arising from Russian miscalculation.

nationalinterest.org

What do superpowers and teenagers have in common? Speaking as a Washington-based foreign policy analyst, and as a parent, I would suggest that each becomes rather frustrated when their friends don’t get along. They likewise have the same broad options in managing this problem—join one side at the other’s expense, drop them both or press the parties to reconcile. January’s U.S.-Qatar Strategic Dialogue suggests that while the Trump administration remains determined to pursue reconciliation, U.S. officials have abandoned what some saw as an earlier tilt toward Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in their dispute with Qatar. There are good reasons to do so.

In June 2017, Riyadh and its partners cut diplomatic and transit links to Qatar, effectively imposing a blockade. While each of the players has its own narrative about the origins of the crisis, and neither is entirely agreeable to most U.S. observers, their differences center around what many see as the Arab world’s most profound security challenges—the external threat from Iran and the internal threat from (Sunni) Islamist political forces, including the Muslim Brotherhood. At risk of oversimplifying, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain prefer to confront them, while Qatar has tried to engage them.

Qatar’s interaction with Islamist groups is a more complex matter. Without minimizing the Muslim Brotherhood’s problematic actions and aims, Qatar has effectively made a judgment call about the region and its future, namely, that to the extent that citizens in the Arab Middle East demand greater political roles and rights—something the United States has thus far supported, albeit with mixed success—Islamist political forces will become more important. For a small country in a turbulent neighborhood, the clear policy implication is to engage them. Saudi Arabia has taken the opposite view, not merely rejecting engagement but seeking to shut down groups that could seriously threaten its domestic stability. That Saudi Arabia’s leaders would have this view makes sense considering that their country, with its far larger population, is likely to have a much more difficult time sustaining its wealth-based political legitimacy and, consequently, seems more vulnerable than Qatar to these kinds of internal pressures.

Qatar’s very substantial energy resources make its security strategically important to the United States; over half of the country’s natural gas exports go to U.S. allies in Europe (where Qatar’s gas competes with Russia’s and thus reduces dependency on Moscow) and especially in Asia. However, in a manner that one assumes President Donald Trump would welcome, Doha has been quite willing to use its energy wealth to cover substantial share of the expenses for the U.S. airbase at Al-Udeid, which the Qatari government largely built and recently agreed to expand for the United States, and to buy U.S. military hardware, including thirty-six F-15 fighter jets for about $12 billion. Al-Udeid houses about 10,000 U.S. troops, hosts U.S. Central Command in the region, and supports missions in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Having recently visited the base and met with the American base commander and other top officers (as a guest of the Qatari government, with about a dozen other U.S. experts), I can attest to its vast scale and its essential role in U.S. military operations.

The U.S.-Qatar Strategic Dialogue yielded three bilateral agreements, some of which looked like Qatari efforts to address long-standing American concerns in order to facilitate a U.S. embrace that might deflect some of the pressure Doha faces from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Perhaps most notable from this perspective were what the Department of State described as “Understandings” that would expose and constrain Qatari government subsidies to Qatar Airways, an ongoing target of U.S. air carriers pressing for fair competition.

All in all, however, the most significant outcome of the Strategic Dialogue may well be one that immediately drew the attention of Qatar’s Al-Jazeera network but has yet to receive much attention in Washington. A formal Joint Statement of the Inaugural U.S.-Qatar Strategic Dialogue, a negotiated text endorsed by the two governments, states explicitly that “the United States expressed its readiness to work jointly with Qatar to deter and confront an external threat to Qatar’s territorial integrity that is inconsistent with the United Nations Charter.” A joint statement isn’t a treaty and, as a result, isn’t a legally binding commitment. But this is a clear political declaration that the United States is prepared to defend Qatar against an unprovoked attack—a strong statement in the current context, despite its mild and bureaucratic phraseology.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis did not emphasize this in their public remarks prior to the Strategic Dialogue, though each was likely at least broadly familiar with the contents of the Joint Statement, which was released about six hours later. Tillerson referred to Qatar as “a strong partner and a longtime friend of the United States”; Mattis used almost the same language, calling Qatar “a strong and valued partner” and “a longtime friend in the region.” Tillerson’s counterpart, Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, mentioned the “45th anniversary of the U.S.-Qatar alliance”—a more ambitious characterization of the relationship—and his colleague Defense Minister Khalid bin Muhammed al-Attiyah likewise referred to Washington and Doha as “strategic military allies.” Both Qatari officials are quite sophisticated and impressive and were surely aware of the distinction between their statements and the U.S. language. Still, so long as they do not reflect a dangerous underlying misunderstanding, these differences are entirely within the normal parameters of diplomacy. And the agreed text of the Joint Statement speaks for itself.

All in all, the U.S.-Qatar Strategic Dialogue and the public statements accompanying it were necessary and constructive correctives. Only by clearly and visibly identifying Qatar as a partner and friend can Washington hope eventually to ease the Saudis and others toward some form of reconciliation. The key, of course, is to find a face-saving solution that gives a semblance of symbolic victory to all sides. This will be especially tough in dealing with Saudi leaders, who also face pressure over a less-than-successful war in Yemen, and probably can’t back out of too many such situations too quickly. From this point-of-view, Qatar’s willingness to adjust its own approaches will be important as well; any agreed end to this messy situation will require something from everyone. It’s never easy to mediate disputes among friends, but in this case, the Trump administration seems to have made a good start.

nationalinterest.org

Strolling the cavernous and well-appointed halls of Russia’s carefully renovated Central Naval Museum [Центральный Военно-морской Музей] near the Neva River in St. Petersburg, one can find an assortment of interesting artifacts, not least the small skiff in which Peter the Great learned to sail more than three centuries ago now. Among the many captured battle standards from Sweden, Turkey and Germany that are proudly displayed, a few of the expansive oil paintings took me by surprise. There was, for example, a picture depicting the Russian fleet at anchor off of Kodiak in Alaska during the mid-eighteenth century. Another showed the Soviet Navy’s first submarine kill by torpedo on July 31, 1919. On that day, the British destroyer HMS Vittoria was sunk by the Bolshevik submarine Pantera under the command of Alexander Bakhtin. I had known, of course, that Allied forces intervened in the Russian Civil War during 1918–22, but was not aware that the intervention had occasioned such deadly incidents.

I was starkly reminded of this fact again during a December 2017 visit to Vladivostok, when quite by chance I came upon a full page article in the December 5 issue of the local newspaper The Competitor under the following headline: “Atrocities of the American Invaders in Primorye”. A close reading of the reasonably detailed Russian-language article (which seems to have been republished) suggests that the allegations are serious. In keeping with the mission of this Bear Cave series of columns to try to gain insights into the Russian mind-set or weltanschauung, we will take a close look at this article. It not only reveals a plethora of history long forgotten in the United States, but is also suggestive of the new and dangerous Cold War climate that is quickly overtaking U.S.-Russian relations that only a decade ago could be considered friendly or at least pragmatic. However, a careful study of Russian history and U.S.-Russian relations, in particular, could help to defuse this most dangerous rivalry even as the conventional media (in both countries it seems) daily stirs the boiling cauldron of rivalry.

What were more than 7,000 “doughboys” doing in Siberia at the end of the First World War? To make a long and complex story—explored in detail by such luminaries as George Kennan—a bit shorter, the intervention by a large group of allied powers was not simply anti-Bolshevik, but was premised at the outset as a wartime operation to prevent Germany from gaining access to Russia’s resources and especially Allied supplies and material. That explains the focus on large ports, including both Murmansk and Vladivostok. An additional bizarre wrinkle in this tale is the subplot of a large group of Czech soldiers, seemingly trapped in the Russian Civil War, and trying to “escape” to the east in order to rejoin the fight with the Allies. But as an impressively detailed English-language account of the U.S. mission in the Russian Far East records, these operations extended well beyond Vladivostok, reaching Khabarovsk for example, and U.S. forces engaged in quite extensive combat. On the bloodiest day, June 25, 1919, twenty-five American soldiers were killed when “partisan units” attacked their encampment near the village of Romanovka about twenty miles northeast of Vladivostok.

Our interest here, however, is the Russian perception of these events and how they resonate today. Hinting at a rather anti-American disposition, the author asks at the outset: “… where have the Americans not stuck their nose, leaving behind a not so fond memory of themselves”? [куда они свой нос не совали, оставив недобрую память о себе] Then, it is further lamented that “… the majority of our youth today, educated by American action films and nurtured by hamburgers and Coca-cola do not even have a small bit of understanding [of this history].” According to the author, all the evidence is available in local papers and in the archives. Many examples of atrocities are given. Four men, accused of being partisans, are alleged to have been buried alive. The wife of a partisan is said to have been “pierced by bayonets and drowned in a garbage pit” [искололи тело штыками и утопили в помойной яме]. The author (who is unnamed) states that his own elderly father was taken as a hostage by Allied forces from the town of Kharitonovka [Харитоновка]. He was returned home alive but in a bloodied condition. He is said to have died a few days later, after asking “Why did they torture me…”? [За что меня замучили]. The man is said to have left five orphans behind. It further describes young men from Vladivostok that were accused of being partisans, who were “tortured for days, had their teeth knocked out and their tongues cut off.”

The author acknowledges that the Americans were not alone in allegedly committing such atrocities, suggesting that the Japanese were hardly inferior in this respect. Two towns are said to have been destroyed by Japanese soldiers in January and February 1919. Citing a Japanese reporter, many inhabitants were burned in their homes when the villages were “completely torched.” [были полностью сожжены]. In addition to local papers, the author explains that pictures of these atrocities can be found in the archives of museums in Vladivostok. It is lamented that, “It is true that politicians today do not want to remember [these events] (and many of them, alas, do not even know about this).”

I am not a historian and the point here is not to dig up old wounds from a century ago. Moreover, I should note that the Russians I met in Vladivostok could not have been more friendly and welcoming to our American delegation. That made the article all the more jarring after reading it. Whether there is some validity to these accusation or this is instead just warmed over Soviet propaganda is not clear. Given the inherent difficulties of counterinsurgency, the lack of oversight (the “CNN effect”) in those times, and the other atrocities that are known to have occurred in the Asia-Pacific, specifically in the Philippines just a few years before, these accounts cannot be dismissed altogether. In fact, watching the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions unfold, one is tempted to conclude that the Washington foreign policy establishment has learned little over the past century. But these stories also serve Moscow’s nationalist and propagandistic agenda, as well of course. Russia may indeed have as many Ameriphobes [Aмерoфобы] by now as our country counts Russophobes. If one reads the Washington Post and the New York Timesregularly, one is familiar with the concept that great power rivalry sells newspapers, of course. Even the editorial teams at those rabidly Russophobic newspapers would have to concede that allegedly stolen e-mails or purchased facebook advertisements are in a rather different category than allegations of torture and murder of civilians, even if those incidents occurred some time ago.

Yet there is more “obscure” history in U.S.-Russian relations that is actually much more pertinent to the strategic quandaries that confront us today. During 1854–56, a quarter million Russians died fighting against the combined forces of France, Britain and Turkey in order to hold Crimea in the Russian Empire. That was Russia’s first Gettysburg-like bloodletting on Crimea. Count Lev Tolstoy, as many readers will know, was in Sevastopol then to record the slaughter. The second “Gettysburg moment” for Russians on Crimea came during the Second World War, when the determination of the Soviet defenders of the Sevastopol fortress forced the Nazis to commit major forces that were then significantly battered just before the decisive battle at Stalingrad. Had the Red Army not held out to the tragic end, Hitler might have been victorious in WWII.

But let us return to that scenic, but blood-soaked piece of real estate, jutting prominently out into the Black Sea known as Crimea, which has seemingly tipped European security on its head during the last three years. For all the extensive punditry explaining how Russia’s absorption of Crimea upset the “rule-based order,” there has been hardly a reflective thought regarding the Crimean War and its significance. After all, that grisly conflict, which spawnedthe poetic legend of the Charge of the Light Brigade and figures such as Florence Nightingale, was essentially fought by London and Paris for the same purpose ostensibly that NATO has had for the last several decades: namely containing alleged “Russian aggression.” In his brilliant 2010 book on the Crimean War, author Orlando Figes explains the evolution of strategy in London during the decades prior to that unfortunate war: “… the phantom threat of Russia entered into the political discourse of Britain as a reality. The idea that Russia had a plan for the domination of the Near East and potentially the conquest of the British Empire began to appear with regularity in pamphlets, which in turn were later cited as objective evidence by Russophobic propagandists in the 1830s and 1840s.” Hmm … sounds eerily familiar.

However, it is most interesting to consider how Americans of that era looked upon Russia’s epic struggle against Britain and France for control of Crimea. Figes’ explanation is worth quoting at length:

US public opinion was generally pro-Russian during the Crimean War … There was a general sympathy for the Russians as an underdog fighting against England, the old imperial enemy, as well as a fear that if Britain won the war against Russia it would be more inclined to meddle once again in the affairs of the United States. … Commercial contracts were signed between the Russians and the Americans. A US military delegation (including George B. McClellan…) went to Russia to advise the army. American citizens sent arms and munitions to Russia… American volunteers went to Crimea to fight or serve as engineers on the Russian side. Forty US doctors were attached to the medical department of the Russian Army.

The above American inclination to take Russia’s ownership of Crimea rather seriously “way back when,” points to the peculiarity that exists today of basing U.S. strategy in Eurasia (and other parts of the world) on contesting Russia’s claim to that blood-soaked peninsula in the Black Sea. Never mind that everyone knows that the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 gave over Crimea to the Ukraine SSR as a rather meaningless gesture with obviously unintended consequences. It might further be recalled that Russia first acquired Crimea in the same year, 1783, that marked the end of the American Revolution. To put it bluntly, Russians have controlled Crimea for quite a long while now and are extremely unlikely to give it up, so let’s neither hold our breath, nor premise our strategy on absurdly ahistorical, neo-liberal premises. European security specialists have much more pressing issues to address obviously, including primarily the refugee crisis and terrorism. A more thorough knowledge of history could help American policymakers draft more responsible policies to stop the “free fall” in U.S.-Russian relations that now imperils Ukraine, Europe and the entire world.

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As Douglas Irwin said, if “truth” is the first to be sacrificed in the war, then “free trade” will be the scapegoat in the populist electoral politics. The most recent examples are the Brexit and the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP-12). While the British government is facing contentious negotiations with the EU, the United States under President Trump’s “America First” trade policy will be less supportive of outward-looking policy and more assertive on U.S. national interest.

Trade deficit in any country is fundamentally a sectoral imbalance in the macroeconomy between domestic saving and investment—as well as that between tax revenue and government spending. U.S. Commerce Department data shows that the percentage of manufactures in total GDP after the financial crisis of 2008 is rather flat around 12 percent with minor fluctuations within one percentage point between 2008 and 2015 periods. The estimated millions of manufacturing jobs lost since then are due to automation of production process. Hence, it is “technology” and not “trade” that caused the loss of manufacturing jobs for American people.

President Trump prefers “bilateral” to “multilateral” trade deals. Other than domestic political consideration of fulfilling his campaign rhetoric, the probable rationale is the asymmetrical power between the United States and most of its trading partners; bilateral trade agreements would allow the dominant country, such as the United States, which has bargaining chips to bring its power advantages, to secure a trade deal that is more aligned to its own interests rather than those of the relatively weaker partner country.

Deepening bilateralism, if fully implemented, can plausibly lead to a hub-and-spoke relation centered on the dominant “hub” power. Moreover, it could generate a domino effect on other nonmember states to join the bandwagon of multiple free-trade agreements (FTAs) to avoid being an outlier. The other aspect of bilateral trade deal is the competitive liberalization among those trading partners who wish to benefit from preferential trade agreement from the “hub.”

To what extent would multiple bilateral trade deals affect the landscape of the trade regime in the Asia-Pacific region? In general, the broader the framework within which trade can take place, the greater will be the scope for division of labor and the higher the gains from international trade. But bilateral trade deals can’t grapple all the gains from a multilateral trade agreement, and they will unhelpfully cut across global and regional supply chains.

From geoeconomic perspective, the America First policy is blinded by the U.S. role in the Asia-Pacific region and global-trade system, not to mention that the geostrategic role that the United States has had in the region as a Pacific power under which much of the regional peace and stability relies. As Johnathan Stromseth and Ryan Hass have argued that “without an affirmative economic agenda for the region that takes into account the integrated nature of Asian supply chains, Washington will lose influence in Asia, no matter how many U.S. aircraft carriers operate in the region.” Though Japan will take the lead to push the TPP without the United States, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans Pacific Partnership (CPTTP) agreement, the Asian drama is now just like “Hamlet without the Prince.”

As the largest center of production networks in the global economy, East Asia has much at stake in the push back by the United States against an open, global rules-based trading system underneath the current trading framework. No doubt that many Asian countries are very nervous about the trade policy undertaken by the Trump administration amid the parallel development from China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative and its establishment of Asian Infrastructure Development Bank.

Four Pillars for the America First Policy

Under the America First trade policy, the United States Trade Representative lists four major components for the U.S. trade policy initiatives:

2. Strictly Enforcing U.S. Trade Laws

3. Using Leverage to Open Foreign Markets

4. Negotiating New and Better Trade Deals

These four pillars, if fully executed, could generate, at least two major legacies on the trading framework; the first one is the different “rules of origin” under various trade accords, and even different rules in different sectors within the same trade pact. That is the “spaghetti bowel” phenomenon which led to the low utilization rate of FTAs; a survey from Asian Development Bank showed that the utilization of FTA among the signatory in Asian countries such as Korea and Singapore is less than 25 percent because the administration cost of complying with the different “rules of origin” specified by the trade accord is higher than the marginal benefits of the FTAs signed.

The second is that multiple bilateral trade accords are no substitute for multilateral ones for regional economic integration. This is one reason why the original TPP-12 is intended to be the most comprehensive and integrated trade accord to link Asia and the Pacific states with those on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Similar rationale is for the five ASEAN + 1 FTAs (ASEAN + Australia and New Zealand, China, India, Korea and Japan) to merge into a unified trade accord as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

If the United States will maintain its leadership in the APEC in pushing the Free Trade Area in the Asia Pacific, then the withdrawal from the TPP is a terrible policy mistake. One reason that Japan takes the lead to push the CPTPP is waiting for the Sleeping Beauty to wake up in the near future. That is why only about twenty clauses of the original text of the TPP are frozen, rather than being scrapped in the CPTPP.

Make It or Break It on the Renegotiations of NAFTA

There are several rounds of renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico. While it is too risky to predict its final outcome, there are several indications which will help us understand the situation. First of all, Canada has signed a “Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with European Union (EU) and negotiated with China for a similar FTA, though the deal didn’t work out during the visit to China by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in November 2017. Canada took advantage of the United States leaving the TPP to change the terms of the bargain in the CPTPP; Canadian stand is understandable because she had come late to the TPP-12 negotiations in 2012 and had to accept the negotiating results up to that point, not all of them are in her favor; One thing that Canada wanted to change was the “cultural exemption,” which mainly means the requirement for Canadian content in the media.

But, model simulations from Canadian economist Dan Ciuriak and his associates show that not only Canada, but also three other Pacific States, i.e. Chile, Peru and Mexico will benefit more from the TPP without the United States than from the original TPP-12.

Economic interdependency between Canada and the United States may leave less leverage for the Trump administration to demand much more than what the original NAFTA has made. There are several items on the agenda of negotiations table such as a five-year termination, an opt-out investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, the rule of origin on auto parts. Secretary Wilbur Ross showed the blue-red map of the electoral votes to President Trump that many of his die-hard constituents in the red dotted states were against the dismantling of the NAFTA.

Trade structure between Mexico and the United States is very different from that between China and the United States; while China’s exports to the United States are predominantly final consumption goods (though a great deal of U.S. imports from China such as iPhone have more U.S. content than Chinese), much of Mexican exports to the United States is mainly in intermediates with parts and components accounting the most. In other words, the negative impacts of U.S. imports from Mexico is much less than that from China. Therefore, relatively speaking, President Trump may be able to take a strong stand on China economically, but he has much less economic rationale to impose tariff on import from Mexico. More important, Mexico will have a national election on July 1, 2018. It is hard for any incumbent to make serious trade concession prior to election in any democratic countries.

Claude Barfield at the American Enterprise Institute predicted that the chances that the United States, Canada and Mexico will reach agreement for an update of NAFTA are no more than 50–50. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer failed to reassure Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee that he could prevent a NAFTA withdrawal in early December, 2017. Will President Trump be able to say “take it or leave it” to Canada and Mexico?

The sunset clause of the Trade Promotion Authority Act

Under the Trade Promotion Authority Act (TPA) signed by President Obama in June 2015, the Congress authorizes the U.S. president to engage in trade negotiation. With the due process of prior notice, consultation before and during the trade negotiation, the Congress can only have a straight up or down vote, without amendments. Without the TPA, the Congress could theoretically ratify any signed trade deal article by article. In fact, the procedure is so complicated that no trade deal can be ratified under such circumstance.

The TPA has a sunset clause which will phase out in three years after it went into effect on July 1, 2015. So, after July 1, 2018, the TPA will be phased out unless the president requests the Congress to extend/renew it and both House and Senate approve it.

Given the inconsistency of the incumbent administration in many of its trade policies, and the fact the TPA was a policy initiated by the previous administration, there is no guarantee that President Trump will ask Congress to renew the TPA before it expires.

Moreover, the TPA was persistently demanded by other TPP members to show U.S. commitment for the trade accord before they could agree to wrap up the final deal. When TPA was ratified in June 2015, three quarters of the “yes” votes were from the Republican Senators and Congressmen. The anti-trade rhetoric since the 2016 general elections has made it difficult even for those pro-trade members of the Congress to support any bills for trade agreements.Now that a Republican president is undertaking an inward looking America First trade policy, and the trade skeptics Democrats are aiming to retake the control of the House in November, 2018 elections, it is very risky to assume that the TPA will be automatically renewed next year.

The incumbent party usually won’t do too well in the mid-term elections in any countries, especially for the United States because all the 435 members of the Congress are subject to re-elections in November 2018. Testing voters’ appetite on any trade deal is not a wise political gambit for the Republican administration at all.

Who Will Write the Trade Rules?

If the Trump administration does not get the fast track authority act renewed and lets it slip away, then there is the possibility that none of the bilateral trade pacts will be negotiated. Many trade dependent countries in Asia Pacific-most of them are U.S. long-term allies, which have long aspired to sign the bilateral trade pact with the United States may lose their confidence in the U.S. leadership in the region. They may seek alternative paths in pursuing their trade and development.

There are two likely emerging trade blocs in the Asia-Pacific region in the near future; The “Hamlet without the prince” (CPTPP) is still the second best trade accord for many signatory as well for those countries which wish to join. After freezing the twenty clause of the original TPP which are mostly demanded by the United States on the intellectual property rights, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, the CPTPP still is the highest quality trade accord ever. The China-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is more on liberalization on commodity trade, much less on the service trade, labor and environmental standard, which are WTO-extra. From the perspectives of developing countries, they may be better off by joining RCEP than the CPTPP.

As Christopher Dent at the University of Leeds has noted: if both CPTPP and RCEP are inked in the near future, then both trade blocs could be either Coca-Cola vs Pepsi if they are similar (a more or less even split of agreement utilization and influence between them prevails), or Microsoft vs Apple if they are different (depending on which agreement sets the “network standard” of trade/commerce rules and economic diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific). Given that there are seven overlapping member states in both trade blocs—Japan, Australia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and New Zealand—there could be two different layers of trade liberalization in the Asia Pacific region in the near future. Which trade bloc will lead to the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific aspired by the APEC? It all depends on whether Japan or China takes the lead with a declining role of the United States to write the rules of trade regime in the region, and whether CPTPP or RCEP will expand their memberships for those outliers. Under such circumstances, no one will know for sure where the America First policy will stand.

nationalinterest.org

As tensions flare on the Korean Peninsula, concerns mount about North Korea’s nuclear- weapons capability. Secretary of Defense James Mattis recently stated that, contrary to rumors and alarmist media reports, Pyongyang does not yet pose a serious threat to the American homeland. The same cannot be said, however, for the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and Japan. Those tripwire forces have become little more than nuclear hostages, well within range of North Korea’s current missile fleet. Keeping the troops in such a vulnerable location is foolhardy.

Ironically, their presence may even reduce the credibility of the U.S. security commitment to the East Asian allies—contrary to the conventional wisdom about the effect of such deployments. The rationale for stationing tripwire forces in both East Asia and Europe during the Cold War was that the move guaranteed U.S. involvement in any conflict that broke out. Christopher Layne, the Robert M. Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security at Texas A&M University’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service, points out in his crucial history of the Cold War, Peace of Illusions, that U.S. allies repeatedly sought those deployments precisely for that purpose. Successive presidential administrations obliged, believing that the step was essential to reassure Washington’s security partners that America would never, indeed could never, renege on its promises. Once American military personnel died from an enemy offensive, it would be nearly impossible for a president to walk away from treaty obligations.

Most Americans were unaware of the decision to lock the United States into its commitments and deny policymakers the element of choice. Officials certainly did not inform the public about the implications of that approach. And the bulk of the news media also left the American people blissfully ignorant that the presence of tripwire forces on the front lines in dangerous arenas increased the risk that a conflict would escalate and, therefore, lead to catastrophe for the U.S. homeland. Attitudes toward Washington’s alliance commitments might have been quite different if the public had known about the danger flowing from those commitments and troop deployments.

Whatever the logic or wisdom of tripwires and the resulting denial of policy choice during the Cold War when the United States was attempting to deter the existential security threat that the rival superpower posed, the risk-benefit calculation should be far different today. Nowhere is the need more evident than in Korea. In the context of the Cold War, U.S. leaders would have viewed a North Korean attack on South Korea as the opening phase of a general communist offensive to shift the balance of power throughout East Asia. Both Moscow and Beijing regarded Pyongyang as an important strategic ally. Chinese officials even described the relationship with North Korea as being as close as “lips and teeth.” Soviet and PRC backing for an attempt by Pyongyang to unify the Korean Peninsula through force, thereby eliminating one U.S. ally and intimidating Japan, an even more important ally, was hardly a far-fetched notion. Indeed, both communist powers had supported North Korea’s invasion of the South in 1950.

The current situation is totally different. Both Moscow and Beijing maintain diplomatic ties with South Korea and (especially in China’s case) have lucrative economic ties as well. Neither Russia nor China wants Kim Jong-un’s regime to do anything reckless. Indeed, Beijing and Moscow repeatedly have urged both sides in the current confrontation to exercise caution and restraint.

Consequently, the U.S. defense commitment to South Korea (much less the stationing of American troops in that country), is no longer necessary to deter a wider security threat from rival great powers. Moreover, both South Korea and Japan now have the economic resources to build whatever military capabilities of their own they might need to deter or defeat North Korea. Pyongyang’s menace would normally be purely a sub-regional one that an upstart, third-rate power poses to its immediate neighbors. U.S. involvement—and especially the presence of tripwire forces—is what gives the current crisis wider import. The outbreak of a conflict on the Peninsula would put those forces at grave risk for modest intrinsic stakes to America.

Moreover, the probable effect of the U.S. tripwire in Northeast Asia today is more unpredictable than the role of such units played during the Cold War. Hostile great powers, such as the Soviet Union or China, probably were deterred from launching a war of aggression against a U.S. ally, knowing that, given the crucial interests at stake, Washington might have little choice but to respond and even escalate the conflict. But the vulnerability of forward-deployed U.S. military units also inhibited American leaders from taking rash actions that might trigger a conflict.

The latter point is especially pertinent regarding the current situation in Korea. Although the Trump administration insists that all policy options, including the use of force, are on the table to compel Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, launching a preventive war could doom thousands of tripwire personnel. Most of them are stationed near the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea. Even a brilliantly executed air and naval strike on North Korea would probably not be able to prevent a sizable counterstrike that would do the most damage in the area along the DMZ and in the Seoul metropolitan area, located barely 50 kilometers from that line. And if any portion of the U.S. blitzkrieg failed, the possibility exists that nuclear-armed North Korean missiles could land on American bases in both South Korea and Japan. A reasonable appreciation of the potential danger logically would inhibit even the bold Trump national security team from launching a preventive war.

Americans disagree sharply about policy toward North Korea. Hawks suspect that patient diplomacy is no longer feasible, since North Korea will soon have the capability to strike targets throughout the United States, and normal assumptions about deterrence may not work with that government. Some even openly advocate a preventive war. Doves and cautious realists believe that additional, and more flexible, diplomacy is essential, because a second Korean War would be horrific.

All factions, though, should recognize that keeping U.S. tripwire forces in East Asia no longer serves a logical or constructive purpose. They are hostages that limit Washington’s policy options, if officials conclude that neutralizing the North Korean threat warrants drastic action. At the same time, if an accident or miscalculation occurs on either side, those troops become the first victims in an extremely tragic war. No matter if they are hawks, doves, or cautious realists regarding North Korea, Americans should agree that it is time to remove the nuclear hostages.

nationalinterest.org

Mass migration, on the sustained and massive scale that western Europe continues to experience, creates tensions not only within states but also between them. These tensions will sometimes erupt into open conflict; already a new age of “Migration Wars” has begun.

This represents a curious inversion. Across the centuries, war has been a major, and often the main, driving force behind mass migration. Most obviously, an indeterminable number of civilians was forced to flee the fighting that raged in Europe and elsewhere during the Second World War, while the ongoing civil war in Syria has created perhaps 5.3 million refugees, in addition to many others who are “internally displaced.” Today, however, not only does war continue to cause mass migration, but it can itself become a cause of war.

Parts of the world besides western Europe are also affected: since August 2017, for example, around half a million Rohingya people have fled violence and persecution in their native Myanmar for the relative sanctuary of neighboring states, notably Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. Above all, in sub-Saharan Africa millions are fleeing poverty from the landlocked states of the Sahel and heading for the relative prosperity of West Africa: around one fifth of Côte d’Ivoire’s population, for example, comprises people who were born elsewhere.

The sheer vastness of this contemporary refugee crisis does not represent any increase in the number of wars and conflicts, although it is arguable that, because of the proliferation of small arms in recent decades, this is one cause: in a speech in 2000, for example, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan warned that the bloodshed created by small arms and light weapons meant that “they could well be described as ‘weapons of mass destruction.’” But more important is the proliferation of economic migration, as increasing numbers flee poverty at home. The causes of this may be varied—some blame overpopulation, or the destructive impact of climate change upon food sources—but one driving force is the heightened awareness that many refugees have. Because of images broadcast on satellite television, mobile phones and the internet, they are aware, in a way earlier generations were not, of the relative material comfort the developed world can offer. This is probably the reason why some relatively affluent African countries, such as Senegal, also have high outflows of migrants.

Another difference lies in the proliferation of criminal gangs that, in return for exploitative fees, organize and finance their journeys. Such trafficking gangs are prevalent in two major hubs of migrant movement: Thailand, which is a transit point for Rohingya refugees, and Libya.

Whatever the causes, this major movement of people has now acquired its own momentum. Because so many refugees have reached the shores and borders of, in particular, western Europe, and because so much media attention has focused on this new phenomenon, an idea has taken hold in the minds of many people who would never otherwise have contemplated undertaking the hazardous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea or overland journey through Central Asia or the Balkans: that it is possible to start a new life in distant but affluent countries. This has been accentuated by the decision of the German government, taken in 2015, to open its borders to around one million refugees. In other words, many of the millions who have fled to Europe in the past few years have climbed on a bandwagon, following what they have seen others do rather than what they have been forced, by adverse circumstance, to undertake. Despite the determined efforts of Western governments to stop them, there is no reason they will not continue trying to do so.

SUCH A vast migrant flow, or even its mere threat, will tempt Western governments to intervene in foreign lands—either countries of departure or transit countries, such as Libya—in a bid to curb those flows. This, of course, is nothing new. One country always has an interest and motive to intervene in the affairs of another if it is being affected by a flow of refugees from that country; this was true, to take one obvious example, of Western involvement in the Balkan Wars of the early- to mid-1990s. But the advent of sustained mass migration, from so many different venues and across so many different routes and borders, is a new phenomenon that is prompting changes of strategic direction in Western capitals.

Such “migration interventionism” could of course be entirely peaceful—such as the provision of foreign aid, for example, to specific programs and initiatives that are designed to reduce the level of migration. But it could also take more ambitious, militaristic forms, such as troop deployments to stabilize foreign countries, or regions within them, that are experiencing, or could potentially experience, a significant outflow of population. This would not only reduce or eliminate any incentive for putative migrants to leave, but also allow those foreign governments to deport and return existing migrants to a “safe country”: many international and domestic laws (Article 16a of German Basic Law is an example) prohibit the deportation of a refugee to a country that is not “safe.” However, the legal and practical difficulties of deporting migrants may mean that “migration interventionism” will, in the years ahead, be undertaken more as a preventive exercise—to prevent any possible outflow—than a reactive one.

The emergence of migration interventionism became clear at the Munich Security Conference in February 2017, when the UK defense secretary, Sir Michael Fallon, justified the ongoing, if limited, British presence in Afghanistan on the grounds that the collapse of the country would lead to a massive refugee crisis. “We here will feel the consequences, very directly,” he claimed. “There could be three to four million young Afghan men sent out by their villages to migrate westwards, and they are heading here.” This was a new justification for the allied presence in Afghanistan, which had previously been rationalized on a number of other grounds, varying from combating terrorists who presented a threat to the West to preventing the flow of narcotics and establishing democracy and human rights.

Instead of committing their own troops overseas in order to prevent or reduce migration into their territory, governments can also sponsor foreign armies to act on their behalf. An example is the G5 Sahel Joint Force, which the French government, supported by other Western countries, began to establish in the Sahel in the course of 2017. Comprising five thousand soldiers drawn from the armies of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad, the force is funded by the EU, whose leaders regard it partly as an anti-insurgent force, but also as a means of reducing the flow of migrants. “Our support will be an important contribution to the efforts to counter terrorism in the Sahel region, as well as irregular migration from West Africa to Europe,” the Danish minister for foreign affairs, Anders Samuelsen, has said. The force is also sanctioned by UN Security Council Resolution 2359, which points to the “serious challenges posed by . . . the smuggling of migrants [and] trafficking in persons” from the Sahel. In the future, such a force could also guard any Western nationals who are posted on foreign soil in order to process asylum claims. (It was just such a proposal that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, appeared to make in the summer of 2017 when he said France could establish processing “hotspots” in Libya—which, since the overthrow of Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011, has been a major departure point for millions of refugees.)

Countries that are seeking to stem the migrant flow into their own territory are also increasingly diverting their existing military resources, not just within departure states, but also outside their borders. In the summer of 2015, for example, the EU began EUNAVFOR MED, a naval operation in the Mediterranean Sea that was intended to end human smuggling from Libya by seizing or destroying some of the boats that the gangs were using. Under its mandate, this €12 million operation involved “boarding, searching, seizing and diverting” smugglers’ boats, and wherever possible, efforts to “dispose” of those vessels. “This important transition,” as an EU official argued, “will enable the EU naval operation against human smugglers and traffickers in the Mediterranean to conduct boarding, search, seizure and diversion on the high seas of vessels suspected of being used for human smuggling or trafficking, within international law.” Vessels, drones and aircraft drawn from at least ten member states formed part of what the EU’s foreign-policy chief, Federica Mogherini, called a “holistic” approach to the migrant crisis.

Such operations raise the prospect of confrontation and military clashes between recipient states and countries of departure and transit. When the Italian government sent two patrol ships close to the Libyan coast in August 2017, for example, Gen. Khalifa Haftar, the ruler of a large swath of Libya, threatened to attack them if they entered Libyan waters to search and destroy refugee boats: “Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, issues orders to the Libyan naval bases in Tobruk, Benghazi, Ras Lanuf and Tripoli to confront any marine unit that enters the Libyan waters without the permission of the army,” a statement from the Libyan National Army proclaimed. His warning reflected a growing popular anger among Libyans against Italian interference in their domestic affairs.

Such clashes may be more likely if a foreign government threatens to exploit or manipulate a refugee crisis in a bid to extort concessions from other countries toward which those migrants are likely to head. This appears to have been true of the Libyan government under the rule of Qaddafi. Addressing a gathering in Rome in August 2010, Qaddafi had claimed that unless he was given large sums of money, Europe would experience the “advance of millions of immigrants” that would transform it into “another Africa.” He had added that “tomorrow Europe might no longer be European and even black as there are millions who want to come in,” and alleged that “we don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.” Demanding a payment of €5 billion to prevent this from happening, his comments were condemned as “unacceptable blackmail” by Italian parliamentarians. In the context of these remarks, it is possible that the Anglo-French attack on Libya in 2011 was the first migration war of the contemporary age: this may explain why, from the onset of the crisis, in March 2011, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the British leader, David Cameron, sought to oust Qaddafi from power and ignored his offers of peace talks.

Turkey, which is the host of over three million refugees, has made similar sallies at political blackmail in recent years against the European Union: in March 2017, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan threatened to tear up a key migrant deal with the EU, in apparent retaliation for a ban placed by the German and Dutch governments on political rallies by his followers living in those countries. Istanbul had already struck a hard bargain when negotiating the deal, which came into effect in March 2016, having demanded in return a $3.3 billion aid package and new negotiations on its membership in the European Union. Should other states use similar tactics against more powerful ones in the future, they may risk provoking armed attack.

BESIDES FOREIGN intervention in countries of departure, or armed clashes with governments that seek to manipulate migration, the world will witness other types of migration wars. In particular, foreign powers may deliberately create, or exacerbate, a refugee crisis in another country in order to divert the resources of the countries where those refugees are likely to go. Of course, innocent civilians have always been deliberately targeted in times of war: during World War Two, the Allied bombing campaign was designed to undermine German civilians’ morale and shorten the war. However, deliberate attempts to drive civilians out of a country, in a bid to weaken a third party, have historically been much less common. Such a scenario is more likely to happen today for the simple reason that a sustained mass migration of people is already under way. This means that a government or militia has more opportunities to manipulate the phenomenon, because it is easier to accentuate any such movement than to create one; it is also less likely to risk international condemnation by observers who cannot so easily blame foreign intervention.

An example is the post-2011 Syrian refugee crisis. In March 2016, several months after Russia had openly intervened in the conflict on the side of President Bashar al-Assad, Gen. Philip Breedlove—the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and head of U.S. European Command—claimed that Vladimir Putin and Assad had “weaponized” migration through a campaign of bombardment against civilian centers. Their agenda, he continued, was to undermine NATO and western Europe: “Together, Russia and the Assad regime are deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve,” General Breedlove told the Senate Armed Services Committee. In particular, Russia’s indiscriminate use of weapons, such as barrel bombs, seemed to have “no other purpose” other than to get civilians “on the road.”

It is also likely that the Islamic State (ISIS) has deliberately created or accentuated the flow of refugees from Iraq and Syria. Its shocking acts of cruelty, such as the beheading of captives, and the careful propagation of such images on the Internet, had a clear rationale: to strike fear into the hearts of civilians and force them to flee. Its advances during 2014–16 led to the displacement of three million in Iraq, with far more internally displaced—more than 1.5 million in the Kurdish region alone.

ISIS calculated that this would not only clear a path for its own foot soldiers, but also overwhelm the resources of neighboring and perhaps pro-Western regimes, such as Lebanon and Jordan, while adding to the flow of refugees into western Europe. In the long term, this would probably be seen as a way of “Islamizing” the West—increasing the numerical presence of Muslims—but most obviously, in the short and medium terms, it was a means of infiltrating Europe with sympathizers: there have been numerous attacks across Europe, including Paris, Nice, Manchester, London and Berlin, by ISIS-linked insurgents. And in December 2016, Europol published a report that pointed out another danger: “A real and imminent danger is the possibility of elements of the [Sunni Muslim] Syrian refugee diaspora becoming vulnerable to radicalization once in Europe and being specifically targeted by Islamic extremist recruiters,” argued the authors of “Changes in Modus Operandi of Islamic State Revisited.”

However, it is also possible that Islamic State had another motive. Instead of deliberately creating a flow of refugees in order to carry out attacks or overwhelm its enemies’ resources, it may have been trying to provoke them to undertake a “migration intervention.” Its motive for doing this would have been either to spark a confrontation with other regional actors or to tie down foreign troops in a protracted insurgency and steadily drain its resources. For example, if NATO had undertaken a large-scale deployment into parts of Syria to fight ISIS, then its presence would have sparked a conflict not just with President Assad but also with his chief supporter, Russia. Alternatively, NATO troops would have faced sustained casualties from a protracted insurgency, comparable to the conflict that they (and the Russians) fought in Afghanistan as well as the experiences of the United States in Vietnam in the 1960s, and Israel in Lebanon in the 1990s.

THE ADVENT of sustained mass migration could also trigger conflict if a country tried to forcibly return or expel some or all of its new arrivals. This scenario is, of course, also a recipe for civil unrest. The migrants themselves may resist: such violence broke out at Calais in northern France in the fall of 2016, for example, when the French riot police forcibly removed thousands of refugees from a camp known as “The Jungle.” However, violence could also break out between neighboring states, for instance if one tried to drive refugees away from its own territory onto the soil of the other; or if it closed its own border to stop a column of refugees crossing its own borders, thereby forcing them to move into, or remain within, another country.

This scenario is already causing political conflict within the EU, as the Polish and Hungarian governments continue to resist demands for a quota of refugees that other member states, notably Italy, Germany and France, are already hosting. However, it could in some circumstances spark military confrontation—for example, between countries that already have unstable and tense relations, or even when countries of destination are severely overstretched by the strains of coping with a large influx of people. This nearly happened in Southeast Asia in the late 1980s, when a huge exodus of civilians from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia threatened to overwhelm neighboring countries—Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia—which, in return, used naval and police boats and helicopters to push back refugees away from their coasts. The prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad, admitted, “All we are doing is preventing foreign vessels from entering our waters.”

Another variety of migration wars will break out when migrants from one country will be pursued and persecuted by militias—or perhaps by government forces—based in their countries of origin. This may be because, for example, those soldiers seek to take revenge, or to destroy a political cause that the refugees are seen to represent. Such cross-border attacks would then trigger conflict with the host country in which those migrants have taken refuge. Such a scenario took place in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in the mid-1990s, as Rwandan troops crossed the border, killing thousands of Hutu refugees who had fled there. This provoked resistance from the Zairean army, whose leader was broadly sympathetic to the Hutu cause. More recently, in September 2017, there were also reports that Myanmar helicopters had crossed into Bangladeshi airspace in hot pursuit of Rohingya refugees.

But because of the vociferous international condemnation it inevitably provokes, this type of conflict is only likely to occur in relatively obscure parts of the world, and at moments when events elsewhere distract international attention. Otherwise, a more likely outcome is an intelligence-led war against elements within a refugee population, comparable to Soviet spies assassinating émigrés during the Cold War.

Tension might also arise if one country demands the repatriation of any number of its civilians who have fled for the sanctuary of another. Such tensions are nothing new, and have previously arisen not only between countries of origin and destination but, on occasion, with third parties too. After the 1848 revolutions in Europe, for example, the fate of Hungarian and Polish exiles, whom the Russian government wanted to extradite from Turkey, became a cause célèbre in Britain. However, such international tensions are likely to become more frequent in the years ahead and may conceivably erupt into confrontation. The most obvious single example was the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, after the Taliban regime refused to hand over its “guest,” Osama bin Laden.

There may also be occasional circumstances in which mass migration will prompt states not to fight against each other, but to join forces and wage a collective war against innocent refugees. During the Rohingya migrant crisis of August and September 2017, for example, Sheikh Hasina’s secular Awami League government in Bangladesh proposed joint military operations with Myanmar against Rohingya insurgents. But such a campaign—where innocents are extremely difficult to distinguish from militants—could easily spiral into a wider war against all Rohingya refugees.

Finally, the phenomenon of mass migration may spark armed clashes between states and activists that act—or claim to act—either on behalf of migrants or, in some cases, to defend their own homeland from migrants. In the summer of 2017, for example, a far-right German group, “Defend Europe,” sent a vessel into the Mediterranean to confront refugee boats and send them “back to Africa.” Such clashes, which could also erupt between activists, are of course not likely to be sustained or large-scale, but could be brief and bloody. The violence at Calais in 2016 was orchestrated by activists who confronted the police, while in August 2017 the Libyan authorities expressly warned ngos that had been helping some refugee boats in crossing the Mediterranean to steer clear of its territorial waters. The low-level clashes that could erupt between states and activists are exemplified by the tension between the French government and Greenpeace in the 1970s and 1980s over the issue of nuclear testing in the South Pacific. French warships harassed Greenpeace vessels, and on occasion used violence: French commandos stormed aboard Vega in 1973, for example, to seize its equipment and, in a notorious case in July 1985, used explosives to sink the Rainbow Warrior.

However, such low-level clashes could also spark a more serious type of confrontation if, in the process, one government is deemed responsible for injuring or killing foreign nationals. This would certainly create very serious political tension, just as the Rainbow Warrior incident provoked a loud chorus of excoriation from across the world, particularly from the two governments that represented the Dutch-Portuguese activist who was killed in the bombing. Another example was the tension between Tel Aviv and Ankara that followed Israel’s attack on the “Gaza Peace Flotilla” in May 2010, which led to the deaths of ten activists. However, it could in some circumstances also trigger war, just as in August 1998, the death of eleven Iranian diplomats in Afghanistan came perilously close to sparking a full-scale conflict between Iran and the Taliban.

The new migration phenomenon, in other words, is not just a humanitarian tragedy, but it also threatens to destabilize whole regions of the world in far-reaching ways. This means that it is imperative for every country—in the developing as well as the developed world—not just to manage the flow of people, but to tackle the causes of the migration problem at their source. More attention must focus on the phenomenon’s root causes, whether it is attributed to war, corruption or population growth. The ongoing situation in Myanmar, where discrimination against Rohingya remains institutionalized, also illustrates the dangers of injustice. More radical, drastic solutions will need to be considered. The consequences of inaction will be profound for all; the new age of migration wars has already begun.

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This was an extraordinary year for North Korea. It finally achieved a regime dream going back decades: establishing direct nuclear deterrence with the United States. Despite months of tough rhetoric and war threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, the North pushed on and became the first rogue state to acquire a functional nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile.

Negotiating with North Korea will become that much harder from now on. The resources devoted to these weapons are rumored to represent perhaps as much as 5 percent of the GDP. For a state as small and poor as North Korea, they are an enormous sacrifice. Hence, Northern leader Kim Jong-un will almost certainly not trade them away, or the concessions he will demand will be tremendous. But some kind of negotiations with the North are almost inevitable now. North Korea with nuclear weapon and no outside supervision at all—no participation in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—is so frightening that pressure for the United States to talk to Pyongyang will grow dramatically. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recent free-lancing on negotiations suggests this.

Probably the most important lesson we learned this year is that North Korea is going to have these weapons no matter what the rest of the world says or does and is prepared to carry heavy costs for them. Since the collapse of the Six Party Talks, North Korea has been increasingly sanctioned and isolated. Former South Korean president Park Geun Hye (now impeached) sought to worsen that isolation by trimming away at the North’s diplomatic relationships, especially in the global South. China, too, has slowly stepped up sanctions and broadly concurs with the Americans on a denuclearized North. Despite all this, the North persisted. In the face of global rejection, it nonetheless tests bombs and missiles relentlessly under the leadership of this newest Kim (Jong-un).

That the North clawed its way into these weapons despite decades of hassle, global isolation, and sprawling multilateral efforts to prevent it should serve as a warning. Any rogue state with sufficient resources and ruthlessness can now likely acquire these weapons. If the North can do it against all odds, then many other troublesome states might well be considering this too.

2. Bluster will not stop them.

Trump’s harsh language on North Korea was arguably an experiment. No U.S. president had ever talked to the North this way; perhaps it would intimidate the North Koreans? Trump talked as the North does. Pyongyang has threatened for years, for example, to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire.” Trump turned such incendiary rhetoric back on the North, threatening to send an “armada” to “totally destroy North Korea” and use “fire and fury” to do so.

Unsurprisingly though, the schoolyard taunting did not work. The North, predictably, refused to bend, rather matching Trump insult for insult. In the end, even Trump seemed to realize that his large threats were leading nowhere, given how risky the strike options are. After the most recent missile test on November 29, Trump restrained himself, saying only, “we’ll take care of it.”

3. Safety is a looming issue.

As North Korea nuclearizes outside the NPT-IAEA framework, questions about safety are growing. We have little technical information about the state of Northern reactors, their safety protocols, waste disposal practices, maintenance and so on. A tunnel at North Korea’s primary testing facility collapsed this fall, and the North Koreans said nothing. A Japanese newspaper broke the story several months later, and South Korean scientists are now predicting that continued testing at Punggye-ri nuclear test site may actually bring down the mountain and release radioactivity in the manner of Chernobyl.

When talks do eventually resume, this will provide a curious form of leverage to the North. Its nuclear program is now well-established and growing; Kim has spoken of making North Korea “the world’s strongest nuclear power.” Outsiders will be increasingly desperate to get into the North to inspect its facilities, at minimum to insure it is not proliferating or on the cusp of a meltdown. This problem will worsen significantly in coming years.

4. Hawks are dominating the debate over North Korea.

It is an irony that just as the North’s overt nuclearization is forcing talks back to prominence, hawks seem to be ascendant in the debate over responding to the North. Major western outlets like CNN, Fox, the National Interest, TheEconomist, The Atlantic, and the big American papers are dominated now by hawkish pundits on North Korea. Even the left in South Korea, which took the presidency earlier this year, has felt compelled by North Korea’s extreme intransigence to sign up for Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach. South Korean President Moon Jae-In, an earlier architect of outreach to North Korea and no hawk, has followed Trump’s lead on pressuring the North. China too inched further and further along the path of yet more pressure.

This shrinkage of the debate to a one between moderate and ultras among the hawks is cutting out dovish voices encouraging engagement. Now, the debate seems to be more about more sanctions and isolation (the moderates) or airstrikes (the ultras). North Korea’s adamant refusal to talk has encouraged this, and it raises the likelihood of eventually exasperation and a willingness to risk strikes.

These four 2017 trends are unlikely to change much next year. North Korea will not likely rein in its program, thereby increasing marginalizing doves in the debate over what to do. As the program grows apace, safety anxieties will worsen and that may push the United States, South Korea, and Japan back toward talks. But if Trump did teach us anything this year, it is that the North Koreans will not get brow-beaten into giving up their program. It is here to stay.

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Much has been made of the immediate ramifications of President Trump’s Wednesday announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and initiating the relocation of the U.S. Embassy: namely, the specter of Palestinian violence in Israel and the occupied territories and implications for a future two-state solution. Yet, perhaps the most underappreciated impact will be on the United States’ standing in the Middle East, and the world more generally. The Trump administration has abdicated Washington’s role as a responsible custodian for Arab-Israeli affairs. The president’s comments go further than any of his predecessors’ to prematurely settle a final-status issue. Right-wing Israeli officials will see a license for freedom of action in all of Greater Jerusalem, and Palestinian leaders will share this appraisal, albeit as pretext to abandon altogether any semblance of a peace process now or in the future. Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab states will find no suitable replacement to fill the opening. Indeed, the Jewish state and its neighbors are entering a new chapter in their relations, one in which external actor may be largely absent.

Historically, the United States has played an indispensable role mediating the Arab-Israeli conflict. After the Soviet Union severed ties with Israel in 1967, the United States became the only major power that could carry significant influence on both sides. The collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the end of the Cold War firmly established the United States as the main steward of the peace process. Only American diplomatic pull could bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table. Only American military power could provide a security guarantee for a territorial compromise. More symbolically, but nonetheless important, only the self-perception of Americans as leaders of a unipolar world could justify mobilizing the political will necessary for serious negotiations. Countries like Russia, India and China may have international aspirations, but in practice they reserve their diplomatic energy for more proximate conflicts.

Of course, the Americans have not been alone in pursuing the role of mediator. Other countries have launched initiatives, but these tend only to influence one party to the dispute, typically the Arab/Palestinian constituency. For instance, Saudi Arabia and its Arab Peace Initiative could go a long way in advancing a two-state solution and Israel’s integration into the Middle East. The concession of most Arab League members to recognize Israel in the context of a final-status agreement on the Palestinian question is an achievement in and of itself. Nevertheless, Israelis are hardly a natural audience for Riyadh’s diplomacy, and this fact has borne itself out in Israel’s rather cool reception of the Saudi plan. Other would-be peacemakers, like France, have not generated interest from either side.

The U.S. role in the peace process has never been without its critics. Various Palestinian officials have lambasted American administrations, Democratic and Republican, for allegedly failing to act as an honest broker. This is likely in part to shore up domestic political support from anti-American constituents and partly because some Palestinians leaders genuinely feel aggrieved with Washington. Yet the United States was always been able to at minimum retain the pretense of being an honest broker because it publicly held fast to a core set of final status issues from 1967 on: land-for-peace (later, two states), Jerusalem and Palestinian refugees. While the United States has often faced the epithet of “Israel’s lawyer” at the United Nations, successive presidents have both openly and tacitly supported UN resolutions reinforcing the sanctity of the aforementioned final-status subjects, beginning with Resolution 242, which was passed just weeks after the Six-Day War.

Far from being pure political theater, U.S. adherence to safeguarding final-status topics helps Palestinian and Arab state officials to sell a peace process to those who are less than amenable to compromise with Israel. In a leaked 2009 conversation with American Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell, Palestinian Liberation Organization Secretary-General Saeb Erekat claimed, somewhat hyperbolically, that without a clear U.S. stance on two-states, Palestinian “negotiating under continuing settlement and without recognition… would be the nail in AM’s [Abu Mazen/Mahmoud Abbas] coffin.” Still, there is some truth to Erekat’s argument. Each failed U.S.-sponsored peace initiative undermines popular Palestinian faith in the PLO as a national institution and the Americans as serious brokers with the Israelis.

The new United States policy on Jerusalem alters this formula as the first time an American administration has explicitly taken an action that can be construed as prejudicing the outcome of a final-status issue. While President Trump made reference to a two-state solution in his Wednesday speech, such passing mention will most certainly be lost on Israelis and Palestinians alike. By declaring Jerusalem Israel’s capital and initiating an embassy move without making a robust distinction between western Jerusalem (inside Israel’s internationally recognized borders) and the contested eastern sections of the Greater Jerusalem municipality, both Palestinian officials and right-wing Israeli officials—with competing motivations—will likely see the United States as endorsing Israeli sovereignty over the Green Line.

If the White House’s recent decision on Jerusalem upends the Trump administration’s pursuit of the “ultimate deal,” will anyone fill the void? The obvious contenders would be a regional player like Saudi Arabia or a country with global ambitions like Russia or China. As has been mentioned, the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative is worth little without Israeli interest. Meanwhile, Russia and China have offered their own Middle East peace plans, but these are simply unimaginative regurgitations of previous American-led programs. Russia was already a cosponsor of the Oslo process, but the Kremlin played that role more as a formality than a serious foreign-policy pursuit. To be sure, Russia is eagerly restoring its position in the Middle East, but a two-state solution is not a prerequisite for the Russians’ more pressing concerns in Syria, Egypt and Libya.

Where Beijing and Moscow lack interest in Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the European Union may seriously desire an activist role in midwifing an agreement. However, the more forceful tactics Brussels has applied in the past, such as labeling settlement products, cannot be credibly backed up by economic or military clout in the same way American administrations once fielded sticks and carrots with the Jewish state. The EU has no loan guarantees to walk back on with Israel. It cannot hold a military-aid package over Israel as a bargaining chip. As a supranational body, it doesn't even have a security council veto to influence discourse about Israel at the UN.

The good news is that a future U.S. president seeking to pick up the pieces on Israeli-Palestinian talks will not have to compete with a new mediator to reassert Washington’s previous position. An American administration serious about negotiations could even apply Trump’s policy as negative reinforcement, threatening to dial back the American diplomatic presence in Jerusalem in response to Israeli moves against a two-state outcome. In the interim three-to-seven years, however, there will be no outside mediator to discourage Israelis and Palestinians from engaging an increasing unilateralism. When that happens, both sides will regret abandoning external sponsorship for negotiations, just as U.S. officials may wish to restore the intermediary status that President Trump ceded on Wednesday.

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Nothing less than accusations of fondling a fourteen-year-old, along with copious proof of dating sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, was needed to stop Roy Moore from becoming the next U.S. Senator of Alabama. The scandals suppressed Republican turnout, while the fundraising boom Democrat Doug Jones enjoyed helped him mobilize black voters—who, to be sure, may not have needed much extra incentive to mobilize. NeverTrump Republicans are as pleased as Democrats by the outcome, and even Sen. Mitch McConnell might be breathing a sigh of relief. His majority has lost a seat. But it has also dodged a bullet. McConnell had few practical options for ostracizing Moore in the Senate, and even before Lolitagate, Moore was poised to be a nuisance to the majority leader.

President Donald Trump and Steve Bannon are the losers here, according to conventional wisdom. Bannon tried to turn Moore into a showpiece for populist insurgency in next year’s Senate races. And Trump has now backed two failed candidates in a row in Alabama, first endorsing GOP incumbent Sen. Luther Strange, only for Strange to lose to Moore, and then exerting himself for Moore, when the safe course would have been to abandon the ex-judge to his fate.

The conventional wisdom is wrong. Mostly, that is: pundits who see in Moore’s fall a premonition of things to come from the Republican Congress in 2018 are almost certainly correct. But they’re right for the wrong reasons: Moore would have won if ordinary Republicans—including Alabama’s other senator, Richard Shelby—had not been disgusted into staying home or voting against him thanks to the allegations of preying on teens. Whether Moore won or lost, however, the Democrats would certainly have had the wind at their backs, performing better than usual in Alabama. And even if Moore had won, the pendulum of American politics would have been swinging towards the Democrats going into next year’s midterms. Republicans will very likely lose the House, and it’s not out of the question that they’ll lose the Senate, too. Jones’s victory brings the Democrats one step closer already.

But this is not Trump’s loss, and it’s not Bannon’s loss either. Trump played nice with McConnell and the Republican establishment by backing Strange, but populist Republicans in Alabama voted for Moore anyway. That shows the strength, not the weakness, of Trumpism, just as surely as Goldwater voters’ supported Ronald Reagan in 1976. This was in spite of Goldwater’s own loyal Republican support for President Gerald Ford and highlighted the growing strength—not the weakness—of the conservative faction of the GOP. And Moore had a shot at winning the general election, even in the face of accusations that would have annihilated any ordinary Republican or Democrat. Consider how allegations of groping grown women were more than enough to take down Al Franken, and Franken wasn’t even up for election. Put bluntly: hard-right candidates like Moore are increasingly successful in GOP primaries, and they weather nuclear fallout in a general election better than ordinary Republicans or Democrats conceivably could. That’s the lesson to be learned here.

Twenty or thirty years ago the GOP electorate was still timid enough to react to a hardline conservative’s ballot-box failure by embracing a moderate or a “kinder, gentler” conservative the next time around. Pundits are prating as if the GOP electorate today thinks the same way. It does not. Party elites, who have always preferred safe-bet candidates (often even safe-bet losers) to hardline conservatives, no longer command the loyalty of the rank and file. Forces like talk radio and Breitbart now possess more authority with the base. The “conservatives” of yesteryear are as much out of step with the party today as the Rockefeller Republicans were when the Goldwater-Reagan conservatives first took over. But don’t think of this in terms of a linear “conservatism.” The labels are less important than the pattern, which is a familiar pattern of Republican insurgency against a stale leadership class.

This time is different, however: history rhymes, it doesn’t repeat. The GOP is like a dying star that begins by growing hotter, not colder, as it shrinks. In this case what’s happening is that the white-hot core of the GOP is becoming more and more self-consciously antiestablishment and nationalistic. This new configuration of the GOP is able, for a time at least, to attract voters in Rust Belt America who never felt the urge to cast a vote for the likes of Mitt Romney, or even George W. Bush. But even as it pulls in some new voters, the GOP is boiling within, and college-educated Bush-Romney voters are set to blast out of the party. The Bannonites will be glad to see them go, up to a point. But a hard-right nationalist party, even one that claims a larger share of the old twentieth-century industrial America’s loyalty, won’t win elections if it doesn’t hold onto a critical mass of the upwardly mobile. The trouble for the Republicans is that the nationalists, who own the party now, seem little inclined to find a formula for keeping enough of the old non-nationalists, while the non-nationalists themselves indulge in nostalgic fantasies of a GOP whose clock can be turned back to the year 2000.

And that’s not all: the GOP’s awkward alliance between populists and plutocrats, the former supplying the votes, the latter getting the legislation, can’t long endure in its present form. At some point—not only in 2018, when a swing toward the Democrats is inevitable, but also in 2020—those Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voters who made Trump president will ask what Main Street has to show for it. If a Trump or Bannon doesn’t have a convincing answer, those votes will defect to someone else: a Perot or a Sanders, or God knows what. The GOP does indeed need its financial backers as well as populist voters, but its survival depends on delivering results for more than just Wall Street.

The Democrats, meanwhile, are spoiled by success. They don’t have to answer the question of whether they’re the party of Bernie Sanders or the party of Chuck Schumer so long as they can count on electoral recoil to give them back a legislative majority. The Democrats are counting on identity politics to save them in the long run: as America becomes less white and less Christian, it has to become more Democratic, doesn’t it? But the conceit that race and “culture” are primary to politics while class is at best a secondary concern is not a safe assumption in the long run. The younger, multicultural America on which the Democrats rest their hopes is also deeply in debt and increasingly skeptical of democracy itself. It’s an America ripe for a Gracchus, and in time a Caesar. It’s certainly not an America that looks to the likes of a Hillary Clinton or Chuck Schumer for its salvation, no more than Bannon’s America does.

Doug Jones is a lucky man, and the Democratic Party is in for a very good year. The anti-Trump Republicans can bask in self-satisfaction a little longer, imagining that their day is coming back, even as the new right-wing media shovels dirt onto the coffin of the old Bush-era conservatism. But don’t be fooled. The future is still heading toward new and harder forms of left and right.

nationalinterest.org

To much anticipation, on August 21 President Donald Trump announced “our new strategy” for Afghanistan. Unfortunately, it revealed neither a succinct strategy nor even anything new. It was instead a list of a dozen pronouncements defining various U.S. policies tied to Afghanistan. Leaving aside their wisdom, they describe almost perfectly the policy of President George W. Bush and the initial policy of President Barack Obama.

More importantly, the announcements form not even the semblance of a strategy. A strategy is a plan for the deployment of (limited) resources in support of a set of objectives and in the face of obstacles (like adversaries), as President Trump said himself, it is “a plan for victory.” President Trump elucidated none of the elements.

At best, Trump removed Obama’s troop limitations and timetable noting that “conditions on the ground—not arbitrary and counterproductive timetables will guide our strategy from now on” and the United States will “no longer announce in advance the dates we intend to begin, or end, military options… or talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities.” Moreover, unlike Bush and Obama, Washington will no longer “micromanage” military decisions but rather expand the authority of field commanders to “target the terrorist and criminal networks.” (Now targeting criminal networks too? Plenty of those outside and inside the government itself.) Principles guiding a strategy may be better than nothing, but they are no substitute for an actual strategy whether developed by Washington or by field commanders.

As for objectives, they are either unclear or, based on the last sixteen years, utterly over-ambitious and unrealistic: “win a victory…, bring about the defeat of our enemies and the arrival of peace,” and (even more expansive) “from now on, victory will have a clear definition: attacking our enemies, obliterating ISIS, crushing Al Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over Afghanistan, and stopping mass terror attacks against America before they emerge.” Tall order for a war that has so far produced none of them and not for lack of trying. Indeed, a bit quizzically given the braggadocio about obliterating, crushing and preventing, “it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban” in the governance of Afghanistan but, unlike President Obama, President Trump said nothing about the prerequisites for that possibility.

Apropos the participation of other actors, nothing was said about the coalition countries, which apparently were not consulted, or about Russia or Iran, which are now apparently supporting the Taliban. And regarding the most important partner: “America will work with the Afghan government as long as we see determination and progress. However, our commitment is not unlimited, and our support is not a blank check. The government of Afghanistan must carry their [sic] share of the military, political and economic burden. The American people expect to see real reforms, real progress and real results. Our patience is not unlimited.” However, in a major departure from Bush and Obama, “we are a partner and a friend but we will not dictate to the Afghan people how to live, or how to govern their own complex society, we are not nation-building again, we are killing terrorists.” Indeed, in a departure from his predecessors more globally: “we will no longer use American military might to construct democracies in faraway lands, or try to rebuild other countries in our own image. Those days are now over. Instead, we will work with allies and partners to protect our shared interests. We are not asking others to change their way of life, but to pursue common goals” under a U.S. policy of “principled realism.” So the United States is requiring “real reforms” but not how to govern? And how exactly, absent U.S. involvement, the foundering and ineffective Government of Afghanistan will now successfully undertake those reforms and carry its share of the military, political and economic burden was left unclear except that the United States will take a hands-off role… until its patience runs out. If only Bush and Obama had followed this clear “strategy” perhaps the insurgents would now be losing rather than gaining territory and sovereignty and the war would have ended with victory. Trump did not disclose the timetable for his patience or criteria for his qualified funding “no blank check” any more than for U.S. troop presence.

Within the region, the United States will “change the approach and how to deal with Pakistan. We can no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations… Pakistan has much to gain from partnering with our effort in Afghanistan. It has much to lose by continuing to harbor criminals and terrorists.” Simultaneously, the United States will “further develop its strategic partnership with India—the world’s largest democracy and a key security and economic partner of the United States.” Four problems here. First, although no strategy is likely to succeed in Afghanistan while Pakistan provides safe-haven to what it calls “the good Taliban,” i.e. those that oppose any government of Afghanistan which is not “friendly” (some say “subservient”) to Pakistan, no sovereign Afghan government will agree to Pakistan’s conditions for servility and no Pakistani government has been willing (or able) to meet the conditions of Afghanistan and the United States on combatting all terrorism. Second, Pakistan was named by President Bush as a “major non-NATO ally” but any Pakistan government will doubt that designation by—and be even more resistant to—a United States developing a closer partnership with its arch-enemy, India. Third, Pakistan’s warming relation with China renders U.S. threats even less credible. Fourth, Pakistan’s cooperation may be essential to a U.S. strategy but it would be only one element in such a strategy.

In short, President Trump announced some piecemeal policies, changed some directions, and pretty much turned Afghanistan over to his generals. He did not, however, disclose his “plan for victory.” He did not explain the envisioned endgame or convincing objectives for U.S. participation in Afghanistan. He definitely did not disclose how the United States would achieve those objectives or even the principles or conditions by which he would expand or contract troop levels or missions let alone under what conditions, if any, the United States would leave Afghanistan or stay except for the maximalist crush and obliterate language. Most certainly, he did not discuss contingencies, options, or suboptimal blueprints and objectives. For example, just leaving in some orderly way, which was the option (absent the orderly part) favored by candidate Trump, does not appear to be a priority. So no plan, no strategy, new or old. Dozens of additional questions and factors would be required of a real strategy even if they are contingent and uncertain.

Perhaps President Trump and his team have a secret strategy which they did not want to disclose or, at least, critical elements they do not want to divulge to the adversaries. Fair enough. But that presumes what theater critics call the suspension of disbelief. It requires the public—and the Congress—to support this so-called new strategy on the assumption that someone in the White House has a plan to put them into effect and at a cost in lives, casualties and treasure proportional to the benefits of the objectives both to Afghans and to the coalition partners. How probable is that? In fact, President Trump made no such claim. The “strategy” he announced is presumably the entire plan.

And yet notwithstanding these clear lacunae, former critics like chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain, who properly maintained just a few weeks ago that “we have no strategy” now believes that we do, and one he acclaims as well. It is unlikely in the extreme that the new strategy will survive public opinion for more than a few months as U.S. casualties accumulate while the Taliban seem to be gaining not losing ground, authority and population… perhaps just long enough to create fodder for the next election cycle. Absent a truly new and convincing strategy, the likely, indeed almost inevitable, result is another three-and-a-half years of insurgency advances, hundreds of coalition and thousands of Afghan lives lost or maimed, billions of additional dollars spent, and continuing strategic stalemate before the next Afghanistan strategy review.

Congress should instead push now for much more comprehensive responses and much more elaborate detail to the Trump omissions—even if in executive sessions. Almost certainly, it will find the new strategy is woefully deficient, no more satisfactory certainly than the “plans” of Presidents Bush and Obama, which aroused such bitter, sweeping and sarcastic criticism by candidate Donald J. Trump. Congress should insist on a real strategy, author one itself, or else consider getting out of Afghanistan.

nationalinterest.org