Bottom lines up front

• US temporary protected status for Haiti is set to expire, and Haiti’s governing Transitional Presidential Council will soon reach the end of its mandate.
• The combined result could result in more dysfunction in Haiti and an increase in emigration to the wider region.
• The Trump administration, which has prioritized security in the Western Hemisphere, has options among existing programs to help create a safer, more stable Haiti.

WASHINGTON—Two deadlines in the first week of February—the end of US temporary protected status (TPS) for Haiti and the expiration of the mandate for Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (TPC)—threaten to intersect in ways that could further destabilize Haiti and the broader region. 

Since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, Haiti has found itself mired in turmoil. The government is largely nonfunctional, the economy is effectively paralyzed, basic services are collapsing, and gangs now control nearly 90 percent of the capital, Port-au-Prince. More than 1.4 million people are internally displaced, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration, while close to two million are facing acute food insecurity. The result, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres warned the Security Council this past August, is “a perfect storm of suffering.”

Haiti’s slow decline isn’t occurring in isolation. For the United States, a top destination for Haitians, the country’s continued deterioration is not a distant tragedy but a policy challenge with profound consequences. For the Trump administration, which has reasserted the importance of the Western Hemisphere in its strategy documents and actions, this is an opportunity to continue those efforts. To prevent Haiti’s further collapse, the Trump administration should focus on leveraging pre-existing, common-sense policies to stabilize the country in the short term and build state capacity to lay the groundwork for its longer-term recovery. The result would be a safer, more stable Haiti—and a safer, more secure Western Hemisphere. 

TPS expires . . .

The primary US policy tool—and the more immediate deadline—is TPS, a bipartisan humanitarian protection program that allows migrants from countries deemed unsafe to live and work in the United States for a temporary but extendable period. Haiti was first designated for TPS just days after a catastrophic earthquake struck the country in January 2010, and it has since remained eligible amid worsening political and security crises. As of March 2025, 330,735 Haitian nationals living in the United States had TPS, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The US-based diaspora sends billions of dollars home each year in remittances, an economic lifeline for Haitians facing economic deprivation. 

Barring further extensions, which are not expected at this point, TPS for Haiti is set to expire on February 3. After that date, Haitians in the United States will need to have another lawful status to remain in the country or risk deportation, even though crisis conditions persist in Haiti. 

. . . and so does the TPC’s mandate

Just days after TPS ends, Haiti faces an internal deadline that reveals another layer of dysfunction: governance. 

This year marks the country’s fifth without a president, its tenth without holding presidential elections, and its third without a single democratically elected official in power. On February 7, the TPC—the nine-member interim body currently running the Haitian government—will reach the end of its mandate.

Since 2024, the TPC’s principal duty has been to create the conditions needed to hold free and fair elections by the time their term expired. Despite undertaking several notable efforts, the TPC stated that the country’s unfettered security situation rendered elections “materially impossible” by the February deadline. The first round of elections is now set for August 2026, though experts warn the timeline will be difficult to meet absent meaningful security gains. 

As the clock winds down on the TPC’s mandate, some members have launched a last-ditch effort to remove the sitting prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aimé. Appointed by the TPC and viewed as Washington’s preferred pick to run the government after February 7, Fils-Aimé has become the target of members’ efforts to maintain influence beyond the transition window. In response, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Fils-Aimé to offer support and restricted the visas of multiple members of the TPC. 

There is little consensus on what will replace the TPC when its term inevitably ends. Will there be a power vacuum, and if so, will gangs fill it? Fils-Aimé has ruled out negotiations with powerful gangs regarding Haiti’s political future. This lack of clarity risks undermining legitimacy and further weakening the state’s capacity to combat the security crisis.

Consequences of these looming deadlines

While the expiration of both TPS and Haiti’s interim government in the same week is coincidental, the possible consequences of each could exacerbate Haiti’s internal crisis and expand the risks it poses to regional security. 

In this context, the Trump administration’s decision not to renew TPS for Haiti risks accelerating the country’s decline and backfiring by fueling additional migration. In the absence of a stable government in place to manage returns, large-scale deportations to an already fragile country—even though the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has deemed it “safe” enough for return—could deepen internal displacement and drive more irregular migration, including to the Dominican Republic and the United States. 

Early signs of this strain are already visible on the ground. With Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince closed for more than a year due to gang violence, US deportation flights have arrived in Cap-Haitien, a comparatively stable northern city already strained by internal displacement and limited municipal services. Cap-Haitien is also home to Haiti’s vital textile sector, which the US Congress recently voted to continue supporting through reauthorization of the HOPE and HELP Acts. Any large-scale increase in deportations could further overwhelm local capacity, risking the destabilization of one of the country’s most stable regions. 

And the repercussions of these deadlines would extend beyond increased migration. According to the Organized Crime Index, Haiti’s porous borders and weak enforcement mechanisms have enabled transnational criminal networks to thrive, engaging in drug and weapons smuggling that is likely to continue. As of May 2025, two Haitian gangs—the powerful Viv Ansanm coalition and the Gran Grif gang—have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the US government, underscoring the security threat that they pose. 

What Washington can do

Haiti’s overlapping crises are multi-pronged and deeply rooted, and no single policy measure will remedy years of state collapse. Amid renewed discussions of the Monroe Doctrine, past US involvement in Haiti—from the 1915 occupation to later interventions in the 1990s and 2000s—can rightly be critiqued for contributing to the erosion of Haitian institutions. Despite these challenges, it remains in the United States’ best interest to help restore a measure of stability in Haiti. 

Redesignating Haiti for TPS would help advance the administration’s broader goal of ensuring the Western Hemisphere “remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough” to prevent mass migration to US borders. Extending TPS would provide humanitarian protection and create economic opportunity for Haitians while also giving Haitian authorities time to rebuild governing capacity after the TPC’s mandate expires. However, the Trump administration is unlikely to pursue this option. 

But the administration has options to improve state capacity beyond immigration policy.

One is the UN-authorized Gang Suppression Force (GSF), which has received US support in its aim to both suppress violence and pave the path for eventual elections. Although intended to improve previous models, critics warn that the GSF, which is expected to reach full strength by summer, is still unlikely to produce meaningful results. 

The GSF illustrates a long-recurring pattern in Haiti policy, in which external actors construct parallel structures separate from Haitian institutions to address short-term challenges, only to leave little to no state capacity once funding or political support inevitably dissipates. Rather than repeating this pattern, a comprehensive vision for US-backed security policy should explicitly prioritize training and supporting Haitian forces—whether that be the Haitian National Police or a revitalized national military—so that security gains can endure long after international forces depart. 

The same logic should guide US thinking on a democratic transition. While holding elections is politically necessary and could help re-establish the rule of law, conditions on the ground mean a vote is currently infeasible and could result in a worse outcome than the status quo. 

To ensure elections are the result of stability rather than a substitute for it, the United States should prioritize institution-building approaches such as the Global Fragility Act (GFA), which was signed into law by US President Donald Trump in 2019 and implemented under the Biden administration. Although the GFA has since lapsed (and Haiti is no longer listed as a target country), a similar whole-of-government approach would align US diplomatic, security, and development tools around bolstering Haiti’s resilient civil society and the preliminary work done by the TPC. The framework for this involvement already provides a clear roadmap—now it is up to lawmakers and policymakers to follow it.

Critics of US involvement in Haiti often argue that the country is beyond repair. Yet, if the United States wants to send Haitian temporary residents home and build a more prosperous Western Hemisphere, it should support positive change rather than compound Haiti’s crises.

The United States may not be able to deliver immediate prosperity in Haiti, but promoting stability through coordinated action that strengthens Haitian state capacity is firmly in the US strategic interest. 

The post Haiti’s week ahead is the next test for Trump’s Western Hemisphere focus appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The EU-India summit came at a pivotal moment with both powers concluding the largest trade agreement either has ever signed, paired with a new security and defence partnership, elevating the relationship to a new strategic level. This marks a major shift in how both sides think about economic resilience and security cooperation, especially in a time of rising global and transatlantic uncertainty.

On this episode of the #AtlanticDebrief, Jörn Fleck sits down with Senior Fellow with ORF’s Strategic Studies Programme Rachel Rizzo to debrief on the EU-India summit and the strategic rationale of increased bilateral cooperation.

Staff

Jörn Fleck

Senior Director

Europe Center Transform Europe Initiative

Digital Policy Economy & Business

The post #AtlanticDebrief – What was the geopolitical significance of the EU-India summit?  | A Debrief from Rachel Rizzo appeared first on Atlantic Council.

That misses the real story behind the dollar’s slide to its lowest value in almost four years—and a more than 10 percent decline since US President Donald Trump’s inauguration. As The Economist argues this week: The world isn’t selling America, it’s hedging it.

If global investors were abandoning the United States, then you would see capital flight, surging Treasury yields, and a scramble for alternative safe havens. Perhaps the clearest indication of that has been the price of gold increasing by more than 25 percent so far this year.

Writes The Economist, with a nod to gold buyers: “Trading floors are abuzz with talk of the ‘debasement trade,’ a broad term for bets on the deterioration of American financial exceptionalism. If the debasement traders are right, then the sell-off in the greenback has barely begun.”

Yet even as the dollar has declined, US stocks have remained strong. The S&P 500, for example, has risen by 15 percent in the past year, briefly hitting an all-time high earlier this week. The yield on the United States’ ten-year Treasury bonds is lower than when Trump began his second term, which is a sign of enduring demand. The dollar could further decline if Trump’s just-announced nominee for Federal Reserve chair—Kevin Warsh—cuts interest rates as the president desires, but there’s no guarantee that Warsh will do so. “It’s still early and there’s no need for alarmism, as any other competitor is light-years behind the dollar,” says Josh Lipsky, the Atlantic Council’s chair of international economics. “But these trends didn’t appear overnight.”

The Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, which Lipsky leads, has been tracking these shifts for the past three years with its Dollar Dominance Monitor. The data show that the “hedge America” trade, while accelerating in recent months, is not new. In fact, the first demand signal predates Trump and has its roots in the search for alternative payment systems to work around sanctions. Interest in de-dollarization picked up, for example, after the Group of Seven (G7) sanctions response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “What’s new in the past year is that the movement is growing beyond payments and now into currency trading and even the bond market,” says Lipsky.

Dollar Dominance Monitor

This monitor analyzes the strength of the dollar relative to other major currencies. The project presents interactive indicators to track BRICS and China’s progress in developing an alternative financial infrastructure.

Robin Brooks of the Brookings Institution points to “policy chaos” as a driver of the dollar’s fall, most recently including Trump’s threat to “buy” Greenland, which he backed off of in Davos last week. “In a nutshell,” writes Keith Johnson in Foreign Policy, “in much the same way that countries are hedging their geopolitical exposure to the United States—such as the EU and India inking a historic trade and defense deal as part of a quest for new partners in an uncertain world—foreigners are hedging their bets against too much exposure to the dollar.” 

Last July, I issued “an Independence Day warning about the US dollar” in this space, writing, “For decades, the world chose the dollar without thinking about it all that much, and that was not only because of unrivaled American economic strength. Most of the world’s major economic players also trusted the United States’ financial leadership—its rule of law, its institutions, its predictability.” 

That trust is what’s eroding. Part of the problem in recent days has been that Trump has crowed that the dollar’s fall is “great,” making US products cheaper on global markets. These comments stirred rumors about a US scheme to weaken the greenback, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dispelled by reinforcing the country’s strong dollar policy.

The Economist warns that “‘hedge America’ may eventually turn into full-blown ‘sell America.’ If Mr. Trump keeps undermining the credibility of America’s financial system, that moment could come sooner.” Though I still side with those who argue that it’s never been smart to bet against the US economy, it’s concerning that a growing number of traders and allies are deciding that it’s prudent to hedge.  

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post Markets and allies aren’t ‘selling’ America. They’re ‘hedging’ it. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

There’s a new chair in town. On Friday, US President Donald Trump announced that he will nominate Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair. If confirmed by the Senate, Warsh, who was a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011, will replace Jerome Powell, who has publicly sparred with Trump over interest rates and other issues. Below, Atlantic Council experts share their insights on what a Warsh chairmanship could mean for the US economy.

• Martin Mühleisen (@muhleisen): Nonresident senior fellow at the GeoEconomics Center and former International Monetary Fund chief of staff
• Josh Lipsky (@joshualipsky): Chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council, senior director of the GeoEconomics Center, and former International Monetary Fund advisor

Who is Kevin Warsh?

• “Warsh brings real credentials,” Martin says. Given his experience on the Fed board during the 2008 global financial crisis, “he understands the institution’s machinery and the weight of its decisions.” 
• Josh calls Warsh “a curious choice for a president determined to get lower interest rates,” since he was considered “one of the most hawkish members” on fighting inflation during his time as a Fed governor.  
• However, Josh adds, the “prevailing wisdom is that Warsh has changed his views since then and is now focused on an artificial intelligence-induced productivity boom,” which could allow for lower interest rates. 

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A reset at the Fed

• Like US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Warsh has been critical of “what he sees as the Fed exceeding its mandate and using a range of expanding tools outside setting interest rates, including buying bonds and mortgage-backed securities,” Josh explains. According to this view, such quantitative easing has “helped assets on Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.” 
• Not everyone will see it that way. “Critics will recall that [Warsh] urged premature tightening after the financial crisis, a view that, in hindsight, could have slowed recovery,” Martin says. 
• Picking up on how Warsh responded to the 2008-2009 crisis, Josh looks ahead: “If you’re a country looking to the Fed to jump into the fray during an economic crisis, you may be in for a rude awakening” with Warsh at the head of the Federal Reserve, Josh argues, reflecting on Warsh’s response to the financial crisis. He adds that Warsh would put the onus on Congress or the US Treasury to act in those circumstances. 
• At the same time, Martin explains, Warsh’s “previous skepticism toward prolonged ultra‑easy monetary policy would bode well should the Fed come under pressure to subordinate monetary policy decisions to the federal government’s financing needs”—as borrowing costs rise with the soaring national debt. 

The word on the street

• “Wall Street will breathe a small sigh of relief,” about Trump choosing Warsh, Josh tells us. “Whatever his views on the balance sheet and Fed overreach, he is a relatively conventional pick—especially given some of the other names that were in the running.” 
• Josh expects “to see mortgage rates going higher this week,” as a result of Warsh’s past hawkishness on interest rates. 
• But the big question is Federal Reserve independence. Warsh’s “proximity to the first Trump administration, where he served as an economic adviser, will invite scrutiny,” Martin notes. 
• Markets and governments will view the Federal Reserve’s independence and credibility as inextricably linked. “If Warsh wants to cement the Fed’s standing,” Martin advises, “he will need to act—and be seen to act—as an independent guardian of price stability and full employment.” 

The post What Kevin Warsh means for the Federal Reserve and the US economy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

For years, Zelenskyy had kept the Belarusian democratic opposition at arm’s length as part of Ukrainian efforts to avoid angering Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka and pushing him further toward the Kremlin. That approach has brought few benefits. Ukraine now appears to have recognized that a new strategy to bilateral relations may be more appropriate.

Sunday’s meeting did not come as a complete surprise. Days earlier in Davos, Zelenskyy had identified Belarus’s 2020 pro-democracy protests as a turning point for the region and a missed opportunity for Europe. The Ukrainian leader argued that the democratic world made a mistake by failing to support nationwide protests in Belarus. As a result, the country now poses a threat to all Europe and serves as a forward base for Russia’s hybrid war against the West.

During his recent visit to Lithuania, Zelenskyy addressed the Belarusian population directly and expressed his support for their European future. He also met with recently released Belarusian political prisoners and paid tribute to Belarusian volunteers serving alongside Ukrainian forces in the fight against Russia’s invasion.

Ukrainian officials have recently made clear that Lukashenka and his regime must be held accountable for complicity in Russia’s aggression. Meanwhile, in a further indication that Ukraine is moving toward more systemic engagement with the Belarusian democratic opposition, plans have emerged to potentially appoint a special envoy and host Tsikhanouskaya in Kyiv.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Some analysts believe this recent change in tone toward Belarus may reflect the growing influence of former Ukrainian spymaster Kyrylo Budanov, who was recently appointed as President Zelenskyy’s new chief of staff. Budanov has long been involved in contacts with the Belarusian side and helped facilitate the transfer of released political prisoners to Ukraine in December 2025.

Kyiv’s apparent pivot may also reflect the fact that Russia’s military footprint in Belarus continues to grow. Ukrainian officials claim Russia uses Belarus to conduct drone attacks on Ukraine and evade air defenses. Lukashenka recently announced the deployment of nuclear-capable Russian Oreshnik missiles to Belarus, which Zelenskyy described as a threat to both Ukraine and the European Union.

Meanwhile, Russia’s integration of the Belarusian military industrial complex continues, with up to 80 percent of Belarusian enterprises reportedly now engaged in production for Russia’s military needs. Belarus is accused of supplying ammunition, providing repair services for Russian equipment, and channeling sanctioned technology to Russian defense companies.

Lukashenka is understandably eager to distance himself from any direct ties to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the available evidence indicates that his regime is becoming more deeply embedded in the Kremlin war effort. This is the reality confronting the Ukrainian authorities. As long as Belarus remains firmly under Kremlin control, it will continue to pose a serious security threat along Ukraine’s northern border.

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Europe should be paying particular attention to indications of a new Ukrainian approach to Belarus. As US foreign policy priorities shift, responsibility for managing relations between Belarus and the West will increasingly fall on the European Union. EU officials must decide between freezing the Belarus issue or recognizing the country as a strategic challenge that requires European leadership.

Belarus has most recently made headlines due to a series of prisoner releases tied to partial US sanctions relief. The humanitarian impact of these deals should not be underestimated, but it is also important to underline that more than one thousand Belarusian political prisoners remain incarcerated. Some skeptics have argued that without a broader strategy, reducing sanctions pressure on Minsk in exchange for prisoner releases risks strengthening the current regime and reinforcing an oppressive system that imprisons political opponents.

This presents opportunities for Europe to demonstrate its ability to take the lead on the international stage. While the US seeks practical short-term results such as the release of political prisoners, Europe can push for more systemic change and democratic transition in Belarus. In this context, sanctions should be seen as a tool to undermine authoritarian rule rather than locking in the current status quo. This can be achieved by closing existing loopholes while targeting the revenue streams and logistical networks that sustain the Lukashenka regime and support the Russian war machine.

In the current geopolitical climate, any talk of a neutral Belarus is delusional. Lukashenka will not turn away from his patrons in the Kremlin voluntarily. If European policymakers wish to see genuine change in Belarus, they will need to demonstrate a readiness to increase the pressure on Minsk. The enticing prospect of future European integration can play a crucial role in these efforts.

Belarus now occupies a strategic position in Europe’s rapidly shifting security landscape. The country remains deeply involved in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and also represents a key challenge for European leaders as they seek to prove that the continent is capable of defending itself in an era when US support can no longer be taken for granted. The Ukrainian authorities clearly feel the time is right for a more proactive approach to Belarus. The question now is whether Europe will follow suit.

Hanna Liubakova is a journalist from Belarus and nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 15, 2026

Veterans can shape the future of Ukrainian democracy

By Vasyl Sehin

The participation of military veterans in Ukraine’s political life has the potential to dramatically strengthen Ukrainian democracy and safeguard the country’s historic transition from centuries of Russian autocracy, writes Vasyl Sehin.

Conflict Democratic Transitions

UkraineAlert Jan 27, 2026

Unable to win on the battlefield, Putin escalates war on Ukrainian civilians

By Peter Dickinson

A war crime of staggering proportions is currently unfolding in full public view across Ukraine as Russia methodically bombs the country’s utilities in a calculated bid to freeze millions of civilians in their own homes and spark a humanitarian catastrophe, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Drones

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Ukraine’s enhanced fortifications are increasing the cost of Putin’s invasion

By David Kirichenko

As Ukraine focuses on preventing further Russian advances, Kyiv is investing in a major upgrade of the country’s defenses. This has resulted in what The Economist recently described as a “massive fortification system” covering much of the Ukrainian battlefield, writes David Kirichenko.

Conflict Defense Technologies

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

Read more from UkraineAlert

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

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

Learn more

The post Ukraine changes tone on Belarus and engages exiled opposition appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard:
Grading Trump’s second National Defense Strategy

On January 23, the Pentagon released the 2026 National Defense Strategy (NDS), a document that builds on the previously released National Security Strategy. The NDS gives the Trump administration a chance to define the military threats facing the United States and how it plans to counter them. Read on to see how our experts grade the latest strategy.

Matthew Kroenig

Vice president and senior director, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

This strategy marks a shift from past National Defense Strategies, with a distinctive focus on the Western Hemisphere. It correctly recognizes the risk of a simultaneous conflict, but would have benefited from more clearly defined goals.  

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

Prioritizing the homeland and the Western Hemisphere is distinctive and marks a shift from the past two National Defense Strategies, which both prioritized great power competition with China. The strong focus on both the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific, however, raises the question of whether hard decisions were taken about prioritization, or does this document instead reflect compromises between different factions within the administration focused on different theaters. 

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

Yes, this strategy contains a dedicated section on the current security environment that outlines the challenges posed by China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and importantly recognizes the challenge of strategic simultaneity, the risk of multiple conflicts occurring in overlapping time frames. This section risks downplaying the threat from Russia and Iran. Several past administrations, going back to at least President Barack Obama, had also hoped to do less in Europe and the Middle East in order to pivot towards Asia, only to have serious security crises erupt and thwart their plans.  

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The strategy would have benefited from a dedicated goals section. Past NDSs have laid out broader, global defense goals, such as deterring attacks against the United States and its allies, defeating adversaries if deterrence fails, and assuring allies. This strategy does not articulate such overarching goals. To be sure, it mentions more specific goals in the sections on lines of effort, such as deterring conflict in the First Island Chain, but would have benefited from providing a clearer vision of success.     

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of US foreign policy activities?

The strategy very clearly identifies four important lines of effort: defend the US homeland; deter China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation; increase burden-sharing with US allies and partners; and supercharge the US defense industrial base. The section on China seems to incorrectly imply that a confrontational US stance raises the risk of conflict, when in fact the problem is the Chinese Communist Party’s stated revisionist goals.  

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

For more than four years, I have argued that the United States needs to do three things to resource the strategic simultaneity problem: revitalize the US defense industrial base, strengthen nuclear deterrence, and get allies to step up and do more. This strategy recognizes and affirms all three of these steps, with a heavy emphasis on revitalizing the US defense industrial base, which will be supported by US President Donald Trump’s promised $1.5 trillion 2027 defense budget, and increased allied burden sharing. 

Joe Costa

Director, Forward Defense Initative, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The strategy reaffirms longstanding US principles, such as nuclear deterrence, preventing adversary dominance in key regions, increasing burden-sharing, and reinvigorating the defense industrial base. It rightfully articulates the perennial problem that global requirements consistently outpace the demand of military forces, and therefore ruthless prioritization is required. The biggest risk is the reward and punishment approach toward allies and partners. Unquantifiable factors such as unity of purpose, trust, cohesion, and reliability are the essential elements for creating these durable military alliances. By largely ignoring the core values that hold US military alliances together, and explicitly stating that the Department of Defense (DOD) will prioritize cooperating with “model allies,” this strategy could create long-term structural risks that significantly limit the DOD’s ability to deter and prevail against adversaries. 

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

Yes. Homeland defense is explicitly tied to border security and US “military dominance” in the Western Hemisphere. Allies and partners are implicitly rewarded or punished to take primary responsibility for their own defense. Economic interests prevail over core values that underpin military cooperation, and the threats posed by the United States’ adversaries are deemphasized in favor of the main message, which is: keep your “demands reasonable and cabined,” and we can maintain a “sustainable balance of power.” 

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

Persistent threats posed by the United States’ adversaries are deemphasized in favor of the larger message on deconfliction and deescalation. The strategy makes three key assumptions that deserve serious examination:  

1. the DOD can achieve NDS objectives absent a coherent approach to allies and partners across the US government (e.g., if allied economies are hurt by tariffs, will they still spend more on defense?);  
2. allies and partners will respond to US rewards and punishments in a way that aligns with NDS objectives; and
3. US adversaries will adjust their longstanding goals and accept the DOD’s “gracious offer” in favor of a “sustainable balance of power.”   

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

Yes. The four priorities are clearly stated throughout the document. 

1. Defend the US homeland 
2. Deter China in the Indo-Pacific through strength, not confrontation  
3. Increase burden-sharing with US allies and partners  
4. Supercharge the US defense industrial base

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of US foreign policy activities?

Lines of effort are defined with varying degrees of specificity. Tradeoffs exist between the four priorities. For example, forces off the coast of Venezuela, and the naval “armada” recently redeployed from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East, limit what’s available now and potentially degrade future readiness to deter China in the First Island Chain. If this new strategic approach erodes trust with allies and partners, it could adversely impact their collaboration in areas that are essential to achieving the strategy’s end states. How the DOD manages and balances the risks that come with these tradeoffs will determine the success of the overall strategy.  

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

Further analysis is required, but aspects of the strategy likely will have to be modified. For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Golden Dome could cost more than $800 billion over twenty years, with other estimates going even higher. In addition, the full impact of the DOD’s personnel actions is still unclear—including reported reductions to the cyber workforce, which could adversely impact homeland defense. Lastly, it remains an open question how allies and partners will react to this shift in US defense strategy.  

Alexander B. Gray

Nonresident senior fellow, Geostrategy Initiative, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The NDS builds usefully upon the National Security Strategy (NSS) by carefully reflecting on the primary security threats to the United States and prioritizing those threats alongside the regional areas of greatest importance to core US interests. This exercise, while contrary to nearly four decades of US strategy, is both overdue and salutary in an era of rising great power threats and diminishing domestic resources. The NDS’s call for a wartime-level mobilization of the defense industrial base (DIB) reflects the seriousness of the challenge and the DIB’s criticality in meeting even the whittled-down priorities found in the NSS and NDS. Taken together, the NSS and NDS are an epochal shift in US strategy and represent a decisive break with post-Cold War conceptions of the United States’ limitless strategic bandwidth. 

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

As with the National Security Strategy, the NDS represents an abrupt break from the strategic documents from previous administrations of both political parties. The NDS rejects explicitly the need to uphold the “liberal international order” and instead prioritizes the capabilities and requirements needed to implement the core US interests outlined in the NSS: defense of the homeland, the Western Hemisphere, and a “free and open” Indo-Pacific.

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

Building upon the NSS, the NDS captures both the greatest challenges facing the United States, beginning with China and its threat to the three core regions of US concern (the homeland, the hemisphere, and the Indo-Pacific), and the need to prioritize in a world of limited resources and domestic political constraints. By understanding the threats but also the limitations facing Washington, the NDS captures the unique environment at this moment in US security policy.  

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The NDS forces clear priorities and largely explains how the administration envisions converting those priorities, whether regions of focus or a renewed emphasis on a revitalized defense industrial base, into actionable policy. In its ruthless focus on avoiding previous periods of strategic overstretch, the NDS (like the NSS) succeeds in a goal-oriented approach to strategy.  

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of US foreign policy activities?

The NDS is anything but a laundry list, and the prioritization exercise it represents will have a cathartic effect on both resource allocation and the time and attention of government officials across the chain of command. For each priority, the NDS explains broadly how the administration will define success, which will be useful in holding officials to account for execution.  

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The strategy can be implemented but will face fierce congressional and institutional resistance by forcing prioritization on a bureaucracy and larger national security apparatus that has become accustomed to avoiding hard choices and doing everything, everywhere, simultaneously. The NDS is appropriate to available resources but must be advocated for consistently to avoid the inevitable mission creep that will be encouraged in many parts of Washington.  

Imran Bayoumi

Associate director, GeoStrategy Initiative, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The National Defense Strategy makes clear the priorities of the Department of Defense. It has clear goals and lines of effort but lacks detail in how it plans to achieve these stated outcomes. The strategy overlooks key regions and allies, such as Taiwan and Australia, and risks underestimating the threat posed by China. Failure to account for the strategic reality and the nature of the threats that the United States finds itself facing will make it harder to achieve the goals set out within the strategy.

Distinctiveness

Is there a clear theme, concept, or label that distinguishes this strategy from previous strategies?

The 2026 National Defense Strategy builds on the 2025 National Security Strategy with its clear focus on defending the homeland, with the claim that “for decades, America’s foreign policy establishment neglected our nation’s Homeland defenses.” But past NDSs have also prioritized the homeland, including the 2022 NDS, which listed “Defending the homeland” as its top priority, albeit while recognizing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a pacing threat. The strategy is distinct through its continued promotion of the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, but this concept is not expanded on throughout the document.  

Sound strategic context

Does the strategy accurately portray the current strategic context and security environment facing the United States? Is the strategy predicated on any specious assumptions?

The strategy rightly recognizes that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea all pose threats to the United States, but it does not mention China’s position towards Taiwan and seemingly downplays the global threat posed by Russia in Africa, the Arctic, and elsewhere. In Africa, the focus only on the threat from “Islamic terrorists” ignores the support provided by China and Russia to governments across the continent. At the same time, the strategy overstates some threats, saying that in the past “U.S. access to key terrain like the Panama Canal and Greenland was increasingly in doubt,” which is not true.  

Defined goals

Does the strategy define clear goals?

The strategy has four clearly defined goals that build on the priorities set forth in the National Security Strategy.  

Clear lines of effort

Does the strategy outline several major lines of effort for achieving its objectives? Will following those lines of effort attain the defined goals? Does the strategy establish a clear set of priorities, or does it present a laundry list of US foreign policy activities?

The strategy clearly lays out four lines of effort that build on the defined goals, but some are more detailed than others. More clarity on how the DOD seeks to deter China or supercharge the defense industrial base would be helpful.  

Realistic implementation guidelines

Is it feasible to implement this strategy? Are there resources available to sustain it?

The strategy calls for having allies in Europe, in the Middle East, and on the Korean Peninsula take on more of a role in their own defense but does not detail changes in US force posture or presence that would likely be expected with such an announcement. The lack of details makes it difficult to understand how exactly the strategy will be implemented and how challenging it will be to do so.  

New Atlanticist Dec 5, 2025

Experts react: What Trump’s National Security Strategy means for US foreign policy

By Atlantic Council experts

Atlantic Council experts delve into the newly released document outlining the Trump administration’s principles and priorities for US foreign policy.

Defense Policy Politics & Diplomacy

Memo to… Sep 9, 2025

Memo to Congress: Capabilities matter more than numbers for US forces in Korea

By Adam Kozloski, Markus Garlauskas

When it comes to the US military presence in South Korea, what the US force is capable of doing matters more than exactly how many troops are stationed there. As the US Senate and House draft this year’s must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, they should focus on requirements, not setting a floor for USFK.

Scorecard Oct 14, 2022

Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: What grade does Biden’s National Security Strategy get?

By Atlantic Council

Our strategy experts praised the document for being clear-eyed about the challenges posed by Russia and China, but downgraded it for a lack of focus as well as concerns about how to implement its ambitious aims.

National Security Politics & Diplomacy

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

Learn more

The post Scowcroft Strategy Scorecard: Grading Trump’s second National Defense Strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Introduction

Following a brief respite after a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas brokered by US President Donald Trump, and in the wake of the twelve-day war and US-backed strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Middle East appears once again to be sliding toward broader instability. Fractures among the Gulf states over Yemen’s future, growing instability inside Iran, and ongoing efforts to stabilize Syria are only some of the complex challenges confronting the region.

Despite these pressures, the Abraham Accords have endured, reinforcing their long-term significance. The United States—through both executive and congressional leadership—has continued to champion their success. Yet after Congress failed to reintroduce the Regional Integration Normalization Act (RINA) following the disgraceful exit of its former sponsor, Senator Bob Menendez, congressional engagement has largely become incremental and narrowly focused on defense relationships. This need not be the case.

In the summer of 2025, the Atlantic Council’s regional integration project—dedicated to strengthening cooperation between the United States, Israel, and Arab and Muslim countries—led its first-ever congressional delegation focused on the Abraham Accords to the Middle East amid the twelve-day war. Bipartisan engagement with Abraham Accords countries—then, as now—across areas such as interfaith dialogue, trade, and regional investment demonstrates that meaningful progress on normalization is possible, and may even accelerate, during turbulent times. This issue brief offers recommendations for Congress to reassert its leadership role in supporting the Abraham Accords and to expand the scope of US engagement on normalization and regional prosperity.

Advance regional prosperity through the Abraham Accords

Recommendation one: Expand business and commercial delegations supporting the economic integration of Abraham Accords countries. 

US trade missions are an essential bridge for US and foreign companies to connect and identify areas of mutual interest. Congress should consider requiring an annual US trade mission focused on a topic of high interest for regional integration, including travel to multiple Abraham Accords countries.

Following the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, then Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin led a trade delegation to Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to support the “expanded economic cooperation” promised by the Accords and announced the Abraham Fund—a planned $3 billion fund designed to support private-sector-led development projects. However, lower-level but consistent missions are also crucial to facilitate regional economic integration and prosperity. In 2022, the US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration led two trade missions to the Middle East: one to Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE, engaging aerospace and defense industries, and a flagship “Trade Winds” mission to the UAE that included an optional visit to Israel or Morocco before the main event. While these missions succeeded in connecting US firms with regional industries, there have been fewer recent US-led trade missions supporting regional integration through multi-country engagement. Against this background, Congress should make regional integration a clear priority when it benefits US commercial interests and consider codifying support for the Abraham Accords.

Recommendation two: Expand Abraham Accord Caucus engagement on regional economic projects, including the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a proposed transportation, energy, and digital corridor designed to provide more efficient and resilient infrastructure capable of meeting the needs of a changing global economy. It could serve as the backbone for regional integration while unlocking substantial economic incentives by leveraging the Middle East’s role as a bridge between Europe and Asia. If the United States can help shape IMEC development—setting standards for ports and digital infrastructure, identifying opportunities for US companies, and countering influence from Russia and China—it could effectively balance against China’s Belt and Road Initiative while reasserting US economic leadership in a critical region.

The Abraham Accords Caucus co-chairs and congressional committee leaders should organize regular briefings with both the administration and relevant private-sector stakeholders to explore how the United States can influence the development of IMEC and ensure opportunities for US companies. While Congress has advanced political and security integration initiatives, economic integration, which is foundational for regional peace and prosperity, has received less attention. IMEC and similar initiatives offer an opportunity for Congress to do more on this front. The Abraham Accords Caucuses should also establish staff-level working groups for frequent engagement on economic integration projects. Recent efforts by Representatives Brad Schneider (who joined the June congressional delegation) and Blake Moore to launch a House Abraham Accords Caucus trade working group offer excellent platforms for such briefings. Additionally, the Abraham Accords Caucus should coordinate with the US Department of Commerce to identify businesses and industries that could benefit from regional integration, generating district- and state-level connections that strengthen Middle East prosperity.

Recommendation three: Formally authorize and support the Abraham Fund and prioritize regional Abraham Accords projects for US International Development Finance Cooperation support.

After the signing of the Abraham Accords, the United States, Israel, and the UAE established a $3 billion fund to support private-sector investments and development initiatives advancing regional economic integration. Efforts by the US International Development Finance Cooperation (DFC) late in the first Trump administration attempted to energize the fund, including a call for proposals for projects in Morocco and a $50 million commitment from Uzbekistan. However, since a 2021 interagency review under then-US President Joe Biden, no public activity has been registered regarding the Abraham Fund.

In 2023, Congress signaled continued interest in supporting economic integration through Section 8 of the RINA, which would have authorized the creation of the “Abraham Accords, Negev Forum, and Regional Integration Opportunity Fund” with $105 million, enabling the US secretary of state to support interagency projects including the Abraham Fund. While this number was far lower than the Abraham Fund’s announced $3 billion, it demonstrated robust bipartisan support for US diplomatic leadership and the potential for a rigorous approach to leveraging development finance. Congress should build on the RINA example by authorizing and appropriating funds for regional economic integration projects while maintaining the current framework for special envoy leadership of the fund and clarifying the role of such an envoy in fund dispersal. By building on recent changes to DFC through the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 , Congress can advance the Abraham Fund in parallel with other new initiatives.

Institutionalize and expand US diplomatic leadership on the accords

Recommendation four: Allow exceptions for a dual-hatted Abraham Accords envoy.

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated commitment to senior official engagement on expanding the Abraham Accords. Under Biden, this included the appointment of Dan Shapiro, former ambassador to Israel, as the first Abraham Accords envoy. In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, Congress codified the role of Special Envoy for the Abraham Accords, Negev Forum, and Related Integration and Normalization Fora and Agreements. However, despite the creation of this new role, no one has been nominated to the Senate-confirmed position. Members of Congress have expressed interest in seeing the vacant slot filled, including in a widely signed letter in January 2025. One possible reason for the vacancy is that legislation codifying the role explicitly requires that the individual “. . . shall not be a dual-hatted official with other responsibilities,” which may have discouraged both the Biden and Trump administrations from making a nomination. While there is significant value in having a senior official dedicated to advancing the Abraham Accords, the reality is that the kinds of strategic economic, security, and diplomatic cooperation associated with the accords can overlap with existing portfolios within the US government. For example, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff engaged on the Abraham Accords, but this represents just one of his many priorities.

Congress should consider modifying this restriction, enabling more senior US officials with synergistic portfolios to fill the position. This would enable the administration to formally designate a “lead” for the accords, elevating their priority.

Recommendation five: Authorize the State Department to lead a new strategic multilateral forum reflecting US and regional priorities.

While the Negev Forum had a robust start in 2022, a new strategic approach is needed to operationalize the goals of the Abraham Accords. Congress should direct the State Department to develop an updated plan for a new multilateral forum that regularly brings together senior officials, advancing strategic US and regional priorities in energy, investment, and security—topics not fully covered by the Negev Forum. This forum should learn from the disruption that the Negev Forum has experienced over the past two years and adapt to evolving regional dynamics. Congress should consider constructs similar to previous regional integration legislation, such as the Deterring Enemy Forces and Enabling National Defense (DEFEND) Act and the Learning Integrated National Knowledge for the Abraham Accords Act, which authorize specific objectives and activities for the executive branch to carry out and require measurable progress—through strategies, reports, and direct action—to meet congressional intent. Priority areas for multilateral coordination among accords countries include:

• Regional security cooperation: While the present environment might not be conducive to a comprehensive security partnership, a new multilateral forum should incorporate a pathway for regional security cooperation. This could include building on existing platforms such as the Comprehensive Security Integration and Prosperity Agreement (C-SIPA) and leveraging ideas associated with past initiatives, such as the Middle East Strategic Alliance. Section 1299 of the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 provides a foundation for the further expansion of C-SIPA by requiring an assessment of the agreement’s strategic importance and its potential expansion.
• Traditional energy: Many Gulf states are seeking to diversify their economy away from fossil fuels. However, growing energy demand and the need for resilient, diverse energy systems mean that traditional energy sources will remain a critical part of the equation for the foreseeable future. Consequently, Israel, Egypt, and others have continued to develop natural gas and other traditional energy sources and have worked to integrate their projects across the region, leading to regional bodies such as the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum, which includes both Israeli and Palestinian representation. In line with Trump’s executive orders titled “Unleashing American Energy,” the State Department should use a revived accords multilateral framework to explore how initiatives like the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum can support regional economic integration.
• Investment: In addition to traditional energy, the State Department should encourage more integration in the financial space, including cooperation on regional investments and domestic barriers to intra-regional investments. This could include new forms of cooperation, such as around coordinated regulation of cryptocurrency consistent with the goals of the recent GENIUS Act. While this will take time and trust to build, integrating wealthier states with regional entrepreneurial projects would allow for an immediate and tangible demonstration of how the Abraham Accords advance participants’ prosperity. Efforts to advance investment and financial partnerships are familiar to Congress. Section 9 of the RINA, a bipartisan effort by the then-leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and all four Abraham Accords Caucus co-chairs in the Senate, outlines a directive for the special envoy for the Abraham Accords to negotiate the creation of such a financial forum.

Mobilize and deepen people-to-people and legislative exchanges

Recommendation six: Authorize and appropriate funds for interfaith religious dialogues to support tolerance and understanding across Abraham Accords countries.

The second paragraph of the Abraham Accords declaration supports promoting “interfaith and intercultural dialogue” to advance the accords’ mission of peace and prosperity. However, no State Department grants have yet been publicly made available to support interfaith dialogues across Abraham Accords countries. Such grants could support the work of organizations such as the Mimouna Association, which connects Jewish and Muslim youths through interfaith programming. The State Department’s reluctance to issue such grants contrasts with a bipartisan and bicameral effort by all eight House and Senate co-chairs of the Abraham Accords Caucus who formally requested their issuance in 2023. In addition to encouraging the use of existing funding for such efforts, the Senate included $1 million for such grants in Section 10 of the RINA. While the act remains only proposed legislation, Congress should revisit the oversight and appropriations efforts from 2023 and renew calls for interfaith and intercultural dialogue grants. The Trump administration has clarified that advancing and expanding the Abraham Accords is a priority. The Abraham Accords declaration clearly supports interfaith dialogues, and the promotion of such dialogues in the Middle East is particularly important in the current environment, as the region seeks to move past historical biases toward new bonds. Few interfaith efforts are as worthy of support.

Recommendation seven: Expand bilateral-focused congressional travel to Abraham Accords countries to support the accords.

While more than a dozen congressional delegations travel to the Middle East annually and engage with Abraham Accords partner countries, fewer delegations travel with the explicit objective of supporting regional integration. Unfortunately, even fewer congressional delegations spend sufficient time in a partner country to build the government-to-government ties essential for moving Abraham Accords countries toward further integration. The Abraham Accords Caucus, or another member-driven initiative, should organize more regular congressional delegations to Abraham Accords partner countries. These delegations should focus on specific projects or initiatives that can generate tangible improvements in bilateral cooperation, such as trade, and ultimately promote regional integration. Congress should look to the US Departments of Commerce, State, and Agriculture to help identify issues and topics that members can use to advance the bilateral relationship toward greater integration. Agencies can also assist in supporting the identification of shared commercial interests or frictions based on members’ constituencies.

Model legislation annex

The following legislative text is provided solely for educational and informational purposes as illustrative “model” language. It is not intended to advocate for or against the passage of any particular bill, nor to influence specific legislation pending before Congress. The sample provisions are offered to demonstrate how recommendations in this report could be operationalized in statutory form. Inclusion of this text should not be construed as lobbying activity but, rather, as a nonpartisan resource for policymakers, researchers, and stakeholders.

Fellow

Adam Kozloski

Nonresident Senior Fellow, N7 Initiative

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

Indo-Pacific Middle East

Through our Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, the Atlantic Council works with allies and partners in Europe and the wider Middle East to protect US interests, build peace and security, and unlock the human potential of the region.

Learn more

The post Congress has championed the Abraham Accords. Here’s how it can push them forward. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Both the negotiations and military operations against the SDF have relied heavily on the relationships the new government has built with the international community in general, and the US government in particular. These relationships are a result of a strong focus in 2025 by Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa and Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani on re-connecting Syria to the international world. Now, in 2026, Syria’s government must turn inward, prioritizing further domestic reforms and improvements. Chief among these are continued security reforms, economic development, and writing a new constitution.

Changing domestic perceptions

On November 25, thousands of Alawis took to the streets across western Syria. It wasn’t just the first Alawi demonstration since the fall of Assad; it was the first time the community had voluntarily held a protest to voice their demands in Syria’s modern history.

One resident of rural Jableh described the event to me a few days later with a proud smile on his face,“ I am fifty five years old, during my entire life any protest here was forced by the regime,” he said. “Yesterday was special, it was by our own free will, we said our demands and returned to our homes relaxed.”

The demonstrators had three demands: rejecting sectarianism, releasing the Alawi soldiers captured during the final weeks of Assad’s reign, and implementing federalism in the coast. The demonstrations were guarded against Sunni counter-protestors by the new government’s General Security Forces.

In the hours and days afterwards, many Alawi activists and residents of the coast—those who did and did not participate—spoke to me with pleasant surprise about the security forces’ professional conduct. Other commentators noted that it was the first time in Syria’s history the government had protected people criticizing it.

“So many were terrified of how the government would respond,” remarked a media activist from rural Jableh, “but we made our speeches and we were safe, and now the area feels relaxed for the first time.”

Several Alawi activists who had previously distrusted security forces told me that the day was a potential turning point in how they view local government forces.

“We trust the Ministry of Interior now, even if we don’t trust the government politically,” added the activist.

It was a stark change from the first months after Assad fell, when members of the nascent General Security forces were frequently accused of robbings and beatings, engaging in sectarian harassment, and at times executing Alawi civilians and ex-regime soldiers during raids on insurgents.

Their discipline in these most recent protests was a result of a year of reforms and institution building, reflecting broader developments across all Syrian ministries. This first year focused on rebuilding core state institutions, from security to basic administration.

Rebuilding government institutions

Outside of the public’s view, Syria’s new government spent much of its first year rebuilding the basic bureaucratic capacities of the state, which had been left gutted and derelict by the Assad regime. Regulatory agencies, courts, and basic services departments all needed to be repaired, staffed up, and streamlined. Critical but mundane state functions like water well licensing and civil registries took much of the year to rebuild. By the fall of 2025 many of these offices had begun functioning again, though often inundated with paperwork and requests from their communities.

In Homs, for example, the central court processes nearly two thousand cases a month involving administrative registrations such as property transfers, birth and death certificates, and marriage and divorce papers, a senior official told me in December. Of the twelve sub-courts across the Homs countryside, those in Palmyra and Qusayr remain non-functional due to physical damage while the courts in Talkalakh and Hassiyah are only partially functioning, having received only basic emergency repairs, according to the same official.

The massive task of (re)building the state forced the new authorities to adopt a pragmatic approach to employment. Most government employees today are the same people who were employed under the old regime. Even the Ministry of Interior (MoI) has retained non-Sunni administrative staff across several departments. Yet, every ministry still had to investigate and purge corrupt, regime-era employees or those who had criminal records, according to my discussions with officials from multiple ministries. Replacing these individuals with a qualified workforce has taken time. For the Ministry of Justice, it has been training a new batch of government judges and lawyers throughout the second half of 2025, with the first class slated to finish by early 2026.

Partial security reforms

These core state-building steps have begun to bear fruit in recent months. Governorate-level institutions have now expanded into the countrysides, and basic services like electricity have improved across both cities and the countryside (though to a lesser extent in the latter). Parallel to this, the new government had also undertaken the monumental task of creating new security and military forces. The MoI and Ministry of Defense (MoD) faced unique challenges and circumstances, each pursuing its own path and ultimately resulting in divergent outcomes. The MoI, responsible for civil policing and internal security, had to rapidly expand its forces while immediately dealing with the triple threat of ongoing Islamic State attacks, inter-communal and vigilante violence, and a growing ex-regime insurgency. The MoD, on the other hand, has had to merge dozens of armed factions with a long history of competition and violations against civilians into a single army.

Security reforms have been centered around internal accountability and coordination mechanisms. For example, Damascus formed the Military Police and Military Intelligence to monitor, investigate, and arrest security members implicated in crimes, and created additional command layers to strengthen command and control. Despite these structural improvements, Syrian opinions of the two security branches remain mixed. One year on, the MoI is generally viewed as responsive and professional, based on my months of fieldwork. Nearly every one of the activists and civilians that I have worked with over the past year have spoken about the improved professionalism and the positive engagement by most local MoI officials. Nonetheless, many remain unsure if this improvement is structural or simply, “a response to American pressure.”

Yet the army is widely distrusted due to its role in the March coastal massacres and July Sweida massacres. While its conduct has markedly improved during the fighting against the SDF in Aleppo and the northeast, many Syrians still distrust army units, especially compared to the MoI. Most army units have been pulled away from civilian areas, yet the presence of small bases on the outskirts of some rural areas remains a major complaint.

One man in southern Tartous governorate put concisely a feeling many have expressed to me in recent months: “Please just replace the army with general security checkpoints.”

Key goals in 2026

The first year of liberation saw the foundation laid for a new Syrian state. The two most important projects were the aforementioned security reforms and al-Sharaa’s tireless campaign to reconnect the country with the international community. Hundreds of diplomatic meetings in Damascus and international visits have succeeded in removing the final major sanctions against Syria and its leaders. Now, the country’s new government must prioritize three key domestic files: the economy, the constitution, and civil peace.

In September, I attended a meeting with al-Sharaa in which the president emphasized the importance of providing jobs and economic security to the entire country. Al-Sharaa has repeatedly linked economic development to social stability, something echoed by most Syrians I have met. Damascus is now largely unfettered in this pursuit as it enters its second year post-Assad, but it must begin to make tangible progress on the ground where most Syrians feel there has been little to no economic improvement.

The second most common complaint I’ve heard from Syrians is the lack of a new constitution or transitional justice for regime-era criminals. These two developments are directly linked and will likely be the two biggest milestones of 2026. Serious transitional justice steps have been delayed by the lack of a new constitution, as the current regime-era constitution lacks the necessary legal codes for trying regime officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Therefore, the first test will come when al-Sharaa appoints the remaining one-third of the People’s Assembly, whose first two-thirds were elected by committees across the country in August. The People’s Assembly will then be tasked with drafting a new constitution. The composition of the al-Sharaa-appointed third and the contents of this constitution will be closely judged and must reflect a commitment to equal rights under a civil state. Once ratified, this new constitution will allow for the full transitional justice process to unfold.

Despite the significant structural improvements that have been within government institutions over the past year, major fault lines remain within the society. These divisions are more nuanced than simple sectarian divides and are unique to each locality. For this reason, a local approach to national dialogue and inter-communal peace is required. The improvements that have been made within the MoI must be joined by improvements in local dialogues, particularly in coastal and central Syria, led by civil society and influential locals with the support of local security officials. These can take the forms of civil peace committees, civil councils, or civil and humanitarian work that brings together members of diverse communities.

Local security and political leaders will play a key role in addressing the grave security threats and civil strife prevalent across many regions. But their efforts are limited at times by ineffective or oppressive local officials, who can be damaging to trust building. This year should be one of local dialogue, both within communities and between them, with an expanded effort from the central government in Damascus as well as Syrian and international non-governmental organizations to work on social cohesion and civil peace. This requires consistent government engagement with local civil society as well as tangible changes on the ground regarding economic and security concerns.

The government would be remiss to view these solely as state-building files. Syria faces ongoing internal and external security threats exacerbating a fragmented society reeling from sixty years of Assad regime crimes. These three files are the foundations of Syria’s near future. Damascus should support the work of local and national activists, whether in civil peace initiatives or humanitarian outreach, to strengthen its approach to the constitutional drafting process and to local civil peace. Syria’s new government may feel confident in the real progress it has made in rebuilding the state after one year of liberation, but it cannot underestimate the difficulty it faces in gaining the trust of the country in year two.

Gregory Waters is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and writes about Syria’s security institutions and social dynamics.

The post Why Syria’s government must turn inward in 2026 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The March 10 agreement between Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Mazloum Abdi and interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa was intended to integrate the SDF into the new Syrian army. The Aleppo Agreement, signed in Syria’s second largest city in April, was the first practical implementation of the March 10 agreement, because it entailed the integration of local police forces: the Kurdish Asayish and Internal Security Forces linked to the interim government.

When I visited Aleppo several months after that agreement was signed, it was still largely holding. I interviewed Hefin Suleiman and Nouri Sheiko, the two Kurdish signatories of the agreement, as well as officials from the Aleppo governor’s office. Both sides were committed to continuing to work together. 

I also met a dozen Kurdish and Arab women in the Sheik Maqsoud Women’s House. The new flag of the Syrian government was on display in their spacious office. They told me proudly how they had applied for—and received—official permission to operate as a non-governmental organization (NGO) from Minister of Social Affairs and Labor Hind Qabawat, who is also the only female minister in the cabinet of the interim government in Damascus. They were genuinely eager to work with her and were planning a conference for women all across Syria. These Kurdish women in Sheik Maqsoud were literally working with Damascus down to the minutiae of complying with their rules and regulations for NGO registration. They, too, appeared committed to the Aleppo Agreement.

The Kurdish Asayish and Arab Internal Security Forces were already operating shared check points in Aleppo.  In October, the SDF has submitted a list of their commanders who could serve in the Ministry of Defense in Damascus, as part of integration talks. And in other parts of Syria, the SDF and certain units of the new Syrian army aligned with Damascus had already begun coordinated activities under US supervision, as I learned during fieldwork in Syria in December.

But on January 6, Damascus launched an assault on Aleppo.

Some 150,000 people were displaced just in two days of fighting, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. An estimated 1,200 Yezidi families were caught up in the fighting, some of whom were resisting what Iraqi Member of Parliament Murad Ismael described as a “brutal attack” by the factions of the Damascus authorities. 

Why did al-Sharaa launch an assault on the very people with whom he had signed not one, but two agreements? What went wrong?

A stalemate in negotiations

Both agreements were due to quiet US diplomacy. It was hoped they would help reunify the fractured country after over a decade of conflict.

US mediation efforts have been led by Tom Barrack, who is dual hatted as the US ambassador to Turkey and also special envoy to Syria. The mediation was a tough job, but it had already achieved important progress. The two sides did not trust each other, having fought against each other in the past. Al-Sharaa is the former commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which evolved out of Jebhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda offshoot. In an earlier phase of the war, Jebhat al-Nusra had fought against Syrian Kurds in the Kurdish People’s Defense Units, or YPG (the predecessor of the SDF).

This distrust was only compounded after sectarian killings of Alawites in the coastal regions in March, and then another round of killing in the Druze stronghold of Sweida. A Reuters investigation of the massacres of Alawites found that the “chain of command led to Damascus.” A United Nations investigation into the events in Sweida is still ongoing.

Kurds had reason to be skeptical of the new authorities in Damascus. After assuming power in Damascus, al-Sharaa has promoted several rebel leaders into positions of power who have been sanctioned by the United States for serious human rights violations. They include two notorious warlords. Sayf Boulad Abu Bakr, who had been sanctioned for kidnapping Kurdish women and abusing prisoners, was promoted to commander of the Seventy-Sixth Division overseeing Aleppo. And Mohammed Hussein al-Jasim, known as Abu Amsha, was promoted to lead the Sixty-Second Division in Hama. The US Treasury estimated that his militia generated tens of millions of dollars a year through abduction and confiscation of property in Afrin, where Turkey maintains a large security presence.

But Kurds were under significant US pressure, and the Syrian Kurdish leadership is pragmatic.

Furthermore, Kurds in Aleppo had survived under siege and managed to preserve control of the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyah neighborhoods throughout the civil war. Now Assad was gone and al-Sharaa had made verbal promises about Kurdish rights—although no constitutional guarantees until now. So in April the Kurds agreed to withdraw their military forces from Aleppo and only maintain police forces, which would also fully integrate with the Syrian government’s police forces. 

In other words, they agreed to place their trust in Damascus, knowing they would have no military forces of their own once the SDF withdrew—knowing they would be surrounded on all sides. For years, the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration has controlled a vast oil-rich region in the northeast, but it is not geographically connected to Aleppo.

The Aleppo Agreement in April was celebrated as a success story by both sides.

The Aleppo offensive, hate speech, and disinformation

Leading up to and during the government’s offensive in Aleppo and eastern Syria in January, there was an alarming rise of anti-Kurdish hate speech and disinformation, as well as more subtle attempts to undermine the SDF.

For example, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Interior in Damascus, Nour al-Din Baba, referred to them as the “so-called SDF” in an interview with Al Jazeera in late December. In the initial days of the Aleppo offensive, false news was circulated claiming that SDF commander Mazloum Abdi had said that the SDF intended to “fully recapture all of Aleppo.”  Verify Syria debunked this as disinformation. In reality, the SDF had agreed to withdraw and had never controlled all of Aleppo to begin with. Less than a week later, a video clip was circulated on social media claiming to feature a former officer of the Assad regime who was positioned alongside the SDF in Deir Hafer. Verify Syria documented that it was a fake video generated using AI techniques.

The armed groups who carried out the assault on Aleppo have made their own videos where they refer to Kurds as “sheep” or “pigs” and posted them on social media. In one particularly horrific video, which has since been verified, the corpse of a woman was thrown out of a building as men celebrated and chanted Allahu Akhbar. The Kurds identified the woman as having been a member of the Internal Security Forces—according to reports—the very police force created by the Aleppo Agreement.

The Aleppo violence is even more tragic because Damascus and the SDF were on the verge of a larger national agreement to integrate their forces.

According to reporting by Al Monitor, it was Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani who interrupted the last round of US-brokered talks on January 4 between the SDF and Damascus. After abruptly entering the room, he asked that US Brigadier General Kevin Lambert leave the meeting, and promised that the talks would resume on January 8.

But before talks could resume, Damascus launched its assault on Aleppo on January 6.

Moving forward

On January 10, Barrack called for a return to the March 10 and Aleppo agreements.  Turkish Ambassador to Syria Nuh Yilmaz said he also welcomed the return to the Aleppo Agreement, which allows for local governance in the two Kurdish neighborhoods.

In the days that followed, al-Sharaa’s forces continued their offensive against SDF-held areas, capturing large parts of Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, areas the SDF had held after defeating the Islamic State. On January 17, US Central Command Commander Admiral Brad Cooper called on al-Sharaa’s forces to “cease any offensive actions.” But the offensive continued. 

As al-Sharaa’s forces moved east, chaos ensued and numerous detention facilities housing Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) militants were opened. According to one report, at least four separate detention facilities were opened, which collectively held some 33,500 ISIS militants. It remains unclear how many have escaped.

Forces aligned with Damascus have also taken videos of themselves desecrating SDF cemeteries in Hasakah in the northeast, an area controlled by the SDF for many years. 

Understanding the origins of the violence in Aleppo is critical. While each side blames the other for the escalation, a full investigation will be needed to establish the facts. But it is equally important to examine the underlying conditions that made this eruption possible. 

The Aleppo Agreement was proof that both decentralization and integration could work in practice.

Damascus had agreed that the two Kurdish neighborhoods in Aleppo could continue to provide their own local security, could continue to offer Kurdish language instruction, and that women could continue to serve in the police—just not at shared checkpoints with men. Both sides agreed to all of this, illustrating that the two major power blocs could come to a peaceful compromise and coexist. This set an important precedent for how other contested regions of Syria could potentially be integrated.

But Turkey remains influential in these negotiations. As early as 2015, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said he will “never allow” a Kurdish statelet in Syria. After the fall of the Assad regime, he has continued to publicly state his opposition to  the continuation of Kurdish-led local governance or decentralization in Syria. Al-Sharaa’s desire to assert control over all Syrian territory appears to have aligned with Erdogan’s own opposition to Kurdish self-rule. Furthermore, Erdogan may believe that by dealing the SDF another blow, that he can extract greater concessions from the peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The PKK is a US and EU designated terror organization. The SDF is dominated by the People’s Defense Units (YPG), which Turkey views as an offshoot of the PKK.

On January 16, al-Sharaa announced a presidential decree “affirming the rights of Syrian Kurds.” While this is an important step, it could also be easily revoked by another presidential decree. Meanwhile, al-Sharaa’s forces continued their offensive into Kurdish-held areas. On January 18, a four-day new cease-fire agreement was announced. It has since been extended by another 15 days. This new timeline is divorced from the new realities on the ground.

Rebuilding trust will be even harder than before, and will take time.

Proper vetting of the various armed factions will also take time. The Islamic State militant who killed three US troops in December was a member of the Syrian government’s security forces. Al-Sharaa should prioritize rooting out jihadists from within his own ranks, rather than attempting to seize more territory and subjugate minorities. 

Instead of pressuring the SDF to integrate on a rushed timeline that carries serious risks, President Trump should pressure al-Sharaa to remove sanctioned warlords from his army and guarantee equal citizenship rights for all Syrians. Al-Sharaa must accomplish this through a constitutional guarantee, not a presidential decree that could be easily revoked.

Amy Austin Holmes is a research professor of international affairs and acting director of the Foreign Area Officers Program at George Washington University. Her work focuses on Washington’s global military posture, the NATO alliance, non-state actors, revolutions, military coups, and de-facto states. She is the author of three books, including most recently, “Statelet of Survivors: The Making of a Semi-Autonomous Region in Northeast Syria.”

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Jason Brodsky and Danny Citrinowicz have years of experience working on Iran and thoughtful but significantly different viewpoints. After they engaged in a fascinating back-and-forth on X, we asked if they would expand the conversation about the opportunities, uncertainties, and risks associated with a US military strike on Iran. 

Click to jump to a question and answer:

1. What’s the most likely outcome if Trump acts on his pledge to protect the Iranian protesters?

2. How might regime change in Iran happen?

3. What happens if the Iranian regime hangs on? 

4. What would you recommend to the US president?

1. What’s the most likely outcome if Trump acts on his pledge to protect the Iranian protesters?

Brodsky: I urge humility in predictions of what will ensue should Trump decide to militarily intervene in Iran following the protests. In the lead-up to the decision, I think the president is engaging in his usual approach of simultaneously issuing confrontational and conciliatory messages towards Tehran. This forms the basis of a psychological operation to confuse Iranian decision-making, and it feeds into the Islamic Republic’s impression of Trump as unpredictable. That has benefits, as it keeps US adversaries off base.

Nevertheless, the president has a documented record in his first term of such military interventions following human rights abuses among autocratic regimes in the Middle East. He authorized airstrikes against the Assad government in Syria after it used chemical weapons against its people in 2017 and 2018. Trump criticized his predecessor former President Barack Obama for setting a red line and then retreating from action in 2013. Therefore, I believe this, coupled with the Islamic Republic’s historic weakness and his very public messaging that help is on the way, will motivate the president to act. He favors quick, surgical, targeted, dramatic, and decisive military operations, and this will be his likely approach, potentially combining leadership decapitations with degradation of Iran’s military and security apparatuses. 

Such a US military operation in Iran would be unprecedented. Thus, it is difficult to assess with great precision what might follow it in Iran. It depends on the extent of the US strikes. The Islamic Republic is bigger than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and it has institutions, plans, and procedures to fill the void should he be eliminated. Nevertheless, Khamenei has personalized his power to a significant degree in Iran, and that, coupled with the longevity of his rule, could have short-term destabilizing impacts. It is true that observers also speculated whether the Islamic Republic would be able to survive following the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s first supreme leader, in 1989, given the singularity of his leadership. Yet the system endured. But Khamenei’s leadership style is different from Khomeini’s era, especially in his centralization of power around him and his office.

Questions remain: If the US government decides to target Khamenei, does it also target his son Mojtaba Khamenei, who is a key lieutenant of his father and considered by some to be a potential successor? There are also clerics such as Alireza Arafi, Hashem Hosseini Bushehri, Mohsen Qomi, Mohsen Araki, Ahmad Khatami, Mohammad-Mehdi Mirbagheri, Mohammad-Reza Modarresi Yazdi, Hassan Rouhani, and Ali and Hassan Khomeini, who are potential contenders to replace Khamenei. 

Does the Trump administration target other military and political personalities in Iran, such as members of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and Defense Council? This would have the potential of being doubly destabilizing should Khamenei perish, as it is from this cohort that a constitutional interim leadership council is formed—the president, chief justice, and a member of the Guardian Council—if the Office of Supreme Leader is vacant. This could spark confusion and demoralization within the armed forces and security services as to the chain of command.

Citrinowicz: The latest wave of protests in Iran caught the United States by surprise, much as it did the rest of the world. Despite tough rhetoric from Washington, the reality is that the US government had no coherent plan for regime change in Tehran—and no meaningful operational capability to engineer political transformation inside a highly repressive, tightly controlled state.

Even now, it remains unclear how Trump intends to translate rhetorical support for Iranian protesters into effective policy. His statements and social media posts leave open two competing interpretations: that Washington seeks to leverage its substantial military presence in the Persian Gulf to pressure Iran on specific issues, such as its nuclear program and conventional military buildup, or that it harbors broader ambitions of undermining or even toppling the regime itself. The latter, however appealing rhetorically, is not grounded in strategic reality.

It is critical to recognize that US military action, limited or large-scale, is unlikely to catalyze mass political mobilization inside Iran. On the contrary, a strike would more likely consolidate elite cohesion around the regime, marginalize protesters, and reinforce Tehran’s long-standing narrative of external siege.

2. How might regime change in Iran happen?

Brodsky: Should there be a leadership void, there is the very distinct possibility of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) takeover, anointing an IRGC commander such as the speaker of the parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, to assume power.

There are other potential scenarios, including a total collapse of the regime. Yet this would require mass defections within the armed forces and security services. Iran’s own history has a precedent, in February 1979, when Air Force commanders from the pre-revolutionary government pledged allegiance to Khomeini, in an episode called the Homafaran Allegiance.

Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi is relevant here. His name has been invoked during the protests—he is apparently the only specific opposition leader for whom Iranians have chanted. Iranians demonstrating view him as not only a symbol but also a potential transitional leader. This does not mean every Iranian protesting for the fall of the Islamic Republic wants a return to the monarchy per se. But it would be a mistake to dismiss him as he embodies an enduring nostalgia for the Pahlavi era among younger generations. These Iranians view the Islamic Republic as a historic mistake.

Citrinowicz: Iran lacks a credible, organized opposition capable of governing the country, even in the unlikely event of regime collapse. For Washington, regime failure without a viable successor would represent not a victory but a strategic liability.

Any attempt by the United States to impose regime change by force, whether through the assassination of Khamenei or the dismantling of the regime would almost certainly produce catastrophic outcomes. The most likely scenarios would be a full takeover by the IRCG or a descent into civil war. Iran currently lacks a viable domestic opposition capable of governing the country. At the same time, the exiled opposition, including figures such as Pahlavi, remains fragmented, weak, and organizationally unprepared to assume power.

Consequently, externally imposed regime change would likely result in a more repressive and unstable Iran, not a democratic and prosperous one. A more realistic strategy is strategic patience: allowing internal dynamics to unfold in the post-Khamenei era while maintaining and improving the enforcement of crippling sanctions. Sanctions should not be lifted prematurely. They remain one of the few effective tools for pressuring the regime until it is either forced to reform or collapses under its own weight. At present, there is no credible alternative pathway to a stable and democratic Iran.

3. What happens if the Iranian regime hangs on? 

Brodsky: The baseline for US policy moving forward should be that these protests have not stopped. They are merely paused because of severe repression. The drivers motivating Iranians seeking to oust the Islamic Republic have remained unchanged, and the grievances have only grown with time, with the system reaching a dead end and facing an economic crisis, a water crisis, an energy crisis, a deterrence crisis, and a crisis of confidence between state and society.

The Iranian system aspires for the United States and its allies to operate from the assumption that Tehran has the situation under control, there is nothing to see here, and the regime is going nowhere. But it would be misguided to center US policy on this regime-driven narrative.

Citrinowicz: Absent a fundamental change in Iranian regime policy, and despite its short-term success in suppressing recent protests, the Islamic Republic lacks the capacity to meet the basic economic and social needs of its population. As a result, regime change in Iran is highly likely in the long term, almost certainly following Khamenei’s death. The current system is not sustainable. This process may take months or even years, but as with the Soviet Union, continued stagnation without a dramatic ideological shift will eventually lead to collapse. Such a shift, however, is highly unlikely under Khamenei’s leadership.

This process may take weeks, months, or even years, but the outcome is inevitable. Iran is facing deep and persistent structural pressures: severe economic distress, deteriorating infrastructure, a collapsing energy sector, and recurring natural disasters. None of these challenges are temporary, and none are being meaningfully addressed.

While change is unlikely to be immediate, as long as the regime refuses to alter its policies and international economic and diplomatic pressure remains in place, its prospects will continue to deteriorate. Deeper ties with China, Russia, or the BRICS group cannot offset the impact of sanctions or structural mismanagement. Without sanctions relief, Iran’s economic situation will not improve, and renewed domestic unrest or internal change is only a matter of time.

4. What would you recommend to the US president?

Brodsky: The Trump administration should adopt a whole-of-government approach aimed at weakening the Iranian regime, using diplomatic, economic, military, kinetic, cyber, and covert tools.

First, the US government should freeze all diplomacy with the Islamic Republic. If the United States were to agree to a nuclear deal with Tehran now, the Iranians protesting would view it as an external US intervention to bolster the Islamic Republic when they want it gone. It would be seen as a betrayal. The Iranian protesters largely view the regime as irredeemable and incapable of reform. 

Diplomacy between the United States and Iran since 1979 has repeatedly failed because of the ideological nature of the Islamic Republic, whose leadership has no interest in a rapprochement with the US government. It is also highly unlikely the current system of power in Iran will agree to the far-reaching concessions the Trump administration is demanding, as historically the existence of protests have not moderated Iranian negotiating positions. 

The Iranian regime aspires to entrap the United States in a negotiating process because the process itself offers protection—in bolstering the currency and thwarting US military action—even without a deal. Iranian diplomats get something for just showing up. Whereas the US government would not.

In addition to putting diplomacy on ice, the Trump administration should work with its allies and partners to more fully isolate the Islamic Republic diplomatically. They should seek to bar its representatives from leadership roles in international organizations, downgrade diplomatic ties with Tehran, especially in Europe, and work to deport regime-linked individuals residing in the West and freeze their assets to the extent permitted by law. In doing so, the US government can form an Iranian Elites, Oligarchs, and Proxies Task Force (IEPO), modeled after what it constructed with respect to Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022. 

Second, the United States should continue levying economic sanctions against the Iranian regime—especially implementing the MAHSA Act to sanction the supreme leader personally for human rights abuses. Such designations deprive the Iranian regime of revenue, and the economic tailspin Tehran is facing is proof that US sanctions are eroding the power of the Islamic Republic. The Trump administration should proceed with this sanctions pressure for as long as this system endures. Designations of Iran’s supreme leader would also send an important symbolic signal to the Iranian people that the US government hears their calls and views Khamenei as an illegitimate leader.

Third, the US Justice Department and its partners around the world should seek to criminally indict Iran’s supreme leader and members of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC). Khamenei reportedly issued an order to the SNSC to “crush the protests by any means necessary” and to show “no mercy,” according to The New York Times. Such steps implicate these officials in crimes against humanity. Khamenei and the SNSC members should also be made to face additional legal exposure for their roles in approving assassination and terrorism operations throughout the West spanning years. 

Fourth, the Trump administration should pursue targeted military action against Iran’s regime. The goal here would be to hold it accountable for its abuses of the Iranian people, deter the regime from further aggression, erode its ability to retaliate and repress its people, and provide the time, space, and resources to even the playing field for the Iranian people to reclaim their country. Right now, unarmed Iranians are facing off against a highly armed state apparatus. That power differential should be reduced. Along with such operations, the Trump administration and its allies should deploy their formidable cyber and covert capabilities to assist in this effort.

If the regime limps along after such military operations, the US government should maintain pressure on the system—especially using economic pressure and diplomatic isolation—to ensure that Iranians are one day able to fulfill their national aspirations. The goal here is to give Iranians the time, space, and opportunity to take their country back from the Islamic Republic.

Citrinowicz: The dilemma facing US policymakers is stark. Military action carries a high risk of regional escalation, threatens US partners and assets in the Gulf, and could draw the United States into yet another prolonged Middle Eastern conflict. Such an outcome runs counter both to American public fatigue with endless wars and to Trump’s own preference for short, decisive engagements with clear endpoints.

As a result, the most effective tools available to Washington remain economic and diplomatic pressure. Sanctions, international isolation, and sustained constraints on Iran’s access to global markets do not guarantee political change, but they do force the regime toward a strategic crossroads: either moderate its behavior and make limited concessions to reduce pressure, or maintain ideological rigidity at the cost of a deepening economic crisis and the long-term erosion of domestic legitimacy.

From a US standpoint, encouraging political change from within the existing system is far preferable to attempting to impose regime change from without, the latter a goal that is costly, unpredictable, and historically fraught. Even if Trump ultimately opts for military action, US interests would be best served by a symbolic, tightly calibrated strike, one aimed at preserving deterrence while enabling a controlled de-escalation and maintaining broader pressure on Tehran.

Ultimately, the challenge for the United States is not to overthrow the Iranian regime, but to manage a long-term confrontation in a way that constrains Iran’s ambitions, protects US interests, and leaves the burden of internal political change where it belongs: with Iranian society and Iran’s own political system.

The US administration should leverage its significant military presence in the Gulf to strengthen the enforcement of sanctions on Tehran, with a particular focus on preventing Iranian oil exports to China. The sanctions regime should be preserved and tightened wherever possible, until the Iranian regime demonstrates a genuine willingness to make the necessary concessions.

In any renewed engagement with Iran, Washington should reassert clear and non-negotiable demands: a complete abandonment of Iran’s enrichment capabilities, including the removal of all enriched material, alongside meaningful restrictions on its missile program. At the same time, it would be counterproductive to condition diplomacy on Iran’s stance toward Israel or the Abraham Accords. Introducing such demands would likely foreclose the possibility of a diplomatic breakthrough that, under certain circumstances, could help prevent escalation.

Accordingly, as long as Iran does not fundamentally alter its behavior, the United States should maintain and intensify sanctions enforcement while continuing to project deterrence and military credibility without resorting to direct military action. US demands should focus narrowly on constraining Iran’s military and nuclear capacity, rather than on its regional posture toward Israel. Military strikes should remain a last resort, as any attack carries a high risk of triggering a broader regional escalation.

The post The expert conversation: Should Trump strike Iran? What happens next if he does? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Venezuela’s post-Maduro economic reopening will require massive reconstruction, especially in energy and infrastructure.
• Colombia is well positioned to help with this due to its proximity and existing trade links, though political tensions and border insecurity pose risks.
• With the right safeguards in place, increased US coordination with Colombia can lower barriers to private investment in Venezuela’s reconstruction, benefiting the wider region.

WASHINGTON—The recent arrest of Nicolás Maduro following a US-led operation has created a fundamentally new geopolitical scenario in Latin America. Beyond its political symbolism, the event may mark the beginning of a structural reconfiguration of Venezuela’s economy, particularly its energy sector, which has historically been the backbone of the country’s productive capacity and external revenues.

After years of production collapse, underinvestment, infrastructure degradation, and international sanctions, any meaningful economic opening in Venezuela would require a large-scale reconstruction effort. This would encompass not only oil fields, refineries, and export infrastructure, but also electricity, transportation, logistics, and basic public services. The magnitude and complexity of this task suggest that the United States, while central to any reconstruction framework, will need reliable regional partners with operational experience, market knowledge, and logistical proximity.

The role Colombia can play

Within this context, Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia emerges as a potentially critical partner, despite recent diplomatic frictions between Washington and Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Colombia’s relevance is grounded less in political alignment and more in structural and economic factors that make it uniquely positioned to support a Venezuelan recovery process. A recent example is the unexpected call between Petro and US President Donald Trump, which official readouts described as constructive. The conversation reportedly paved the way for an official visit by the Colombian president to the White House on February 3, with Venezuela’s economic recovery and cross-border security coordination among the issues slated for discussion.

First, Colombia has functioned for years as a regional operational hub for US and multinational firms with historical exposure to Venezuela. Following Venezuela’s economic collapse, many of these companies relocated personnel, assets, and regional headquarters to Colombia, maintaining limited but continuous engagement with Venezuelan markets. In a scenario of gradual liberalization, Colombia could serve as a low-risk platform for re-entry.

Second, geographic proximity and existing transport links give Colombia a natural logistical advantage. These connections significantly reduce transaction costs for the movement of raw materials, machinery, equipment, and technical personnel required for reconstruction efforts, positioning Colombia as a gateway economy rather than a direct competitor.

Third, Colombia’s productive structure complements US industrial capabilities. Its intermediate manufacturing base and professional services sector, spanning food processing, chemicals, textiles, electrical equipment, engineering, and logistics, could integrate into binational or trinational value chains supporting Venezuela’s recovery.

Fourth, Colombia’s long-standing Free Trade Agreement with the United States provides a stable regulatory framework for US firms operating from Colombian territory. This legal certainty reduces investment risk and facilitates the structuring of supply chains linked to Venezuelan projects.

Recent trends in Colombia–Venezuela trade reinforce this potential. Despite political volatility, bilateral commerce has rebounded, with Colombian exports reaching almost one billion dollars in 2024, led by food products and manufactured goods. This recovery suggests that commercial channels can expand rapidly if political and security conditions improve.

Constraints and risks ahead

Despite these advantages, Washington faces legitimate concerns regarding Colombia’s reliability as a strategic partner. The Petro administration’s foreign policy signals, domestic political dynamics, and perceived ideological proximity to certain Venezuelan actors introduce uncertainty into long-term planning.

More critically, border security remains a binding constraint. The Colombia–Venezuela border has long been characterized by weak state presence and the activity of nonstate armed actors, including the National Liberation Army (ELN), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissident groups, and criminal organizations involved in narcotics trafficking and smuggling. Without credible improvements in territorial control, any reconstruction strategy involving Colombia would face elevated operational and reputational risks.

From a US policy perspective, meaningful Colombian participation would likely require demonstrable progress in border governance. This includes expanded military and law enforcement presence, improved intelligence-sharing, and the deployment of advanced surveillance and cybersecurity capabilities, potentially supported by US assistance. Enhanced maritime control could further strengthen confidence among private investors, as well.

What’s in it for Washington

If these constraints are addressed, then closer US–Colombia coordination could yield substantial strategic benefits:

• It would lower barriers to private investment in Venezuelan reconstruction, enabling US and Colombian firms to participate in energy rehabilitation, infrastructure development, logistics services, and light manufacturing.
• It would expand US exports to northern South America, particularly in high-value sectors such as pharmaceuticals, technology, agribusiness, and professional services, reinforcing US economic influence in the region.
• It would facilitate the reactivation of regional value chains that historically linked Venezuela, Colombia, and the Caribbean, enhancing overall regional productivity and resilience.

Venezuela’s reopening represents one of the most consequential opportunities in Latin America in decades. Realizing this opportunity will require not only political change in Caracas, but also a coordinated regional strategy anchored in security, institutional credibility, and economic integration.

Colombia can serve as a pivotal intermediary in this process, not as a substitute for US leadership, but as a regional platform that reduces costs, mitigates risk, and accelerates implementation. For US policymakers, the central question is not whether Colombia should play this role, but under what conditions and with what safeguards. Clear benchmarks on security and governance will be essential to transforming potential alignment into a durable strategic partnership.

The post To boost Venezuela’s economic recovery, the US should lean into Colombia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

For decades, Brussels and New Delhi circled each other with caution—too many regulatory barriers, too much agricultural protection, and too little urgency held them apart. What brought down the obstacles, a senior Indian official told me as their negotiations advanced, was above all US President Donald Trump and the upset on both sides about his tariffs.

“The EU-India trade deal is part of the European Commission’s diversification strategy, which is a direct response to increasing pressures from the United States and China on the global trading system,” writes Jörn Fleck, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, in a smart roundup of expert reaction.

Michael Kugelman, senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council, adds, “With all the strain and uncertainty that characterize India’s ties with Washington, the EU is a logical space to embrace.” Kugelman points to shared EU-Indian interests, including the need to counterbalance China, and the fact that France and Germany are already among India’s leading trade partners. 

The deal—covering trade, investment, digital rules, supply chains, climate standards, and technology—also reflects a shared EU-India conclusion: the United States may still be an indispensable economic and political partner for both of them, but it has at the same time become an increasingly unpredictable one. Both sides, for now, have given up on the notion that Washington can anchor the global trading system. It was time to look hard for alternatives.

Together, the EU and India are building something that looks less like old globalization and more like what comes next: large, values-adjacent economies knitting themselves together to hedge against volatility from all sides—China’s product-dumping scale, the United States’ tariff-tinged uncertainties, and, from Europe’s side, Russia’s geopolitical volatility.

What makes this moment an inflection point is that the gravitational center of global trade architecture, once greatly determined by the United States and its democratic allies, is shifting, but where it lands is uncertain. Today, the United States talks more about deal leverage than global leadership. Europe and India are adapting, having learned that excessive dependence invites risk and diversification breeds resilience.   

The Atlantic Council’s Mark Linscott, who served as assistant US trade representative for South and Central Asian Affairs, scoffs at talk about the “mother of all trade deals” as hyperbolic. “The results are incomplete and will require follow-up action,” he writes, noting that both sides set aside the most complicated issues to close the deal in time for von der Leyen’s visit on India’s Republic Day this week. His analysis is worth reading.

Still, concludes Linscott, “When two of the biggest economies of the world agree to eliminate a significant proportion of their trade barriers . . . governments and stakeholders around the world should take notice.” 

No one should take more notice than Trump, whose tariffs on Europe and India without any doubt have been the accelerator for this deal. It’s time to start tallying up the unintended consequences of Trump’s trade policies, and whether the result will be more or less American influence and revenues globally. 

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

The post The ‘mother of all’ trade deals in the time of Trump appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• The India–EU free trade agreement is a major diplomatic achievement, but it’s unlikely to transform global trade or economic growth.
• Several sensitive issues were deferred, and most benefits will emerge slowly through phased tariff reductions and regulatory certainty.
• The deal need not undermine US trade ties with India or the EU—and it could be a spur to finalize the US–India trade deal. 

WASHINGTON—References to the “mother of all deals” are a clear case of political hyperbole, but there should be no doubt that the India–European Union (EU) free trade agreement (FTA) warrants attention. When two of the biggest economies in the world agree to eliminate a significant proportion of their trade barriers, particularly at a time when almost any trade deal captures news headlines, governments and stakeholders around the world should take notice.

The EU and India have been at this negotiation for roughly two decades, although with several long pauses. This negotiating duration is the clearest indicator of how complex and difficult it was to conclude this agreement. The United States and the EU have their own failed experiment in the form of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which collapsed after several years of negotiations during the Obama administration.

But observers also shouldn’t rush to conclusions about the deal redirecting global trade, speeding up economic integration, or jump-starting economic growth. In the end, the India–EU FTA may have only a modest impact using all these yardsticks. 

More to follow

First things first: The results are incomplete and will require follow-up action. Many of the early press reports breezily skip through this reality. As forecast by both sides in the closing months of negotiations, there will be unfinished business to attend to soon after the signing ink is dry. It’s always the most sensitive issues that take the longest, and India and the EU have conveniently set some of these aside in the rush to conclude an agreement in time for the bilateral summit and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s visit on India’s Republic Day. 

For example, there are likely to be follow-up negotiations on agriculture, intellectual property rights, and the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, among other issues. That said, the fact that there is unfinished business should not diminish the accomplishment of reaching agreement on preferential tariff schedules and a large number of detailed rules chapters, such as Technical Barriers to Trade. 

Additionally, each trading partner must jump through domestic approval hoops. In the case of the EU, that involves obtaining a “qualified majority” (essentially, a double majority of member states and the represented population) through the Council of the European Union and separate approval from the European Parliament.

Acknowledging the limits

The India–EU FTA will not significantly alter existing supply chains, although it can make the India–EU ones more resilient. Nor is it likely to result in trade diversion from other major trading partners. Although the FTA will include a number of new disciplines for persistent and difficult non-tariff barriers, the headline numbers from the announcement will be tariff reductions on both sides. In fact, EU tariffs are already low in general, and the benefits to India in those sectors where EU tariffs are high may be offset by the EU’s action earlier this month to eliminate preferential treatment for India under its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program. For example, the GSP program kept India competitive with the likes of Bangladesh in the EU market for textiles and apparel. Now, the FTA may simply replace a low GSP tariff with a new bilateral FTA tariff. 

For the EU, its benefits from tariff reductions are likely to emerge slowly, and transition periods for tariff reductions suggest that there will not be immediate substantial increases in exports. That said, an FTA provides a degree of certainty, stability, and predictability in market access that is absent with no trade agreement in place. Existing supply chains between the EU and India can be reinforced in the short term and even grow over the longer term.

The view from Washington

While the agreement may be interpreted as a response to the Trump administration’s tariffs and tariff threats, there is no reason it should undermine the US trade relationships with either the EU or India. Indian and EU trade negotiators have been pushed to their limits by the agendas of political leaders and responded impressively, even in orchestrating work-arounds in areas, such as geographical indications and sustainability commitments, that have long been part of the immutable template for EU FTAs with other countries. 

No doubt, journalists and many other commentators will pronounce cause and effect between the Trump administration’s tariffs and the India-EU FTA, but the history of the negotiation suggests otherwise. The current push to the finish line actually began during the Biden administration. While the Trump administration’s predictable unpredictability on tariffs has been important context for the accelerated timetable, the EU and India have long understood the economic and strategic value of striking a substantial trade deal between the two of them. 

The EU–India deal could even light a fire under efforts to conclude a US–India trade deal and help to move negotiations forward on a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement, as US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed last year.

Time will tell how consequential this FTA will be. It seems unlikely that it will be as transformational as the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement and its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement. However, that does not mean it won’t eventually be viewed as a game changer as the rules-based order, in the form of the World Trade Organization, continues to decline in relevance and new structures emerge to fill the vacuum. 

The post The India–EU trade deal is worth watching, but not overhyping appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Why is this deal happening now? 

The EU-India trade deal is part of the European Commission’s diversification strategy, which is a direct response to increasing pressures from the United States and China on the global trading system. The turmoil caused by the Trump administration’s tariff policies and China’s unfair trade practices have clearly sharpened minds, increased flexibility, and accelerated both sides’ push to come to a deal after years of stalled negotiations.

 —Jörn Fleck is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. He previously served as chief of staff for a British member of the European Parliament.

***

This deal has been in negotiations, with pauses, for almost twenty years, and there have been several pushes to complete it. So, the agreement is not entirely a response to the Trump administration’s tariffs and trade threats. But clearly, they provided the immediate impetus to get it done now, so that both countries can diversify their trade relationships in response to uncertainty, if not antagonism, from the United States.  

The deal will not be entirely easy sledding, since there remain difficult areas to work out, including agricultural market access, geographical indications, and the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Each side still also has domestic legal processes to complete. Getting major trade deals through the European Parliament has proven challenging, most recently with respect to the bloc’s trade deal with Mercosur. The full story is not yet over. 

Still, free trade agreements (FTAs) are difficult to negotiate, and the parties are to be commended for getting this one done.  

—L. Daniel Mullaney is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and GeoEconomics Center. He previously served as assistant US trade representative for Europe and the Middle East in the Office of the United States Trade Representative. 

***

The real question is: Why didn’t it happen earlier? The two sides have been at it for roughly two decades, and they’ve seen trade negotiators come and go during that period. The latest sprint to the finish actually started during the Biden administration. My take is that both sides have been motivated at top levels in recent years for a host of geopolitical and economic reasons, and the politicians pushed their negotiators to get it done, even if it meant cutting some corners. In the end, it’s truly a consequential FTA, even if I wouldn’t describe it as the “mother of all deals!” 

—Mark Linscott is an Atlantic Council nonresident senior fellow on India. He previously served as the assistant US trade representative for South and Central Asian Affairs. 

What impact will this have on Europe? 

The EU-India trade is first and foremost a strategic win for both partners, having come under increased US and Chinese pressure. The European Commission can clock another political win in its trade diversification strategy, while the Modi government can add to leverage against the US president’s 50 percent tariff punishment.  

Economically, the deal will have a modest impact at first. India accounted for only 2.4 percent of EU total goods trade in 2024, small change compared to the US share of 17.3 percent or China’s 14.6 percent. But Brussels hopes to double that piece of the trade pie over the next seven years of implementation, and India agreed to greater tariff reductions than many expected.  

India is not only seen as an important growth market for European sectors from autos to machinery and chemicals. Europe also sees the potential in building the softer connective tissue between the combined markets of two billion consumers. Brussels and Delhi are expected to agree to a framework affording greater access to Indian labor and expertise from healthcare to information technology services. European universities are keen to ride recent trendlines and attract more Indian students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. And intensifying defense tech and broader technology cooperation with India could reap not just economic but geopolitical benefits for Europe. 

—Jörn Fleck 

What impact will this have on India? 

The deal highlights two significant recent trends in Indian foreign policy. The first is New Delhi’s ongoing push for more trade deals, as India looks to shed its image as an overly protectionist economy. India has signed a series of trade accords in recent years, including with some non-EU European states.  

Second, the deal reflects an Indian inclination—at least for now—to pull back from the United States and push more toward Europe. With all the strain and uncertainty that characterize India’s ties with Washington, the EU is a logical space to embrace. They have a wealth of shared interests—from increasing trade to countering China—and the EU includes some of India’s closest partners, including France and Germany. These strong convergences can overcome areas of divergence—from relations with Russia to differences over intellectual property. In effect, this FTA could constitute the opening salvo of an Indian play to broaden its ties with one of its closest commercial and strategic partners, with the United States left on the outside looking in.  

—Michael Kugelman is a resident senior fellow for South Asia at the Atlantic Council. 

***

India is likely to benefit more concretely in the immediate term, when it starts to see increases in exports, particularly in labor-intensive industries, which were the Indian priority for cementing this deal. However, India just recently lost certain preferential tariff benefits under the EU’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, which affected important sectors, such as textiles and apparel. The FTA, then, may just substitute new low tariffs to replace the previous GSP ones. 

—Mark Linscott

What additional geopolitical implications are there?  

The geopolitical consequences of the EU-India free trade deal extend well past economics. During the Cold War, India led an initiative to create a “nonaligned movement” that refused to choose sides between the United States and the Soviet Union. In Davos last week, Canadian Prime Minister Carney sought to revive a similar coalition of “middle powers” that seek to strike pragmatic economic and political alliances with a range of strategic rivals to the United States, starting with China. The EU-India deal fits well within this geopolitical tradition. 

It is not clear whether the strategy will succeed. Whether for climate-related reasons (through the CBAM) or for geopolitical responses (through tightening economic sanctions), Europe will likely be just as dedicated as the United States is to weaning India off of Russian oil purchases. The trade deal announced this week suggests that the EU strategy will be to reward climate-friendly initiatives that increase India’s already significant shift to support rooftop solar and electric vehicles, rather than penalize India as the United States has done.  

If the positive economic incentives in the trade deal succeed in reducing India’s dependence on Russian oil, it will likely come at a cost: increased dependence on China to supply solar panels and other renewable energy equipment. Thus, over the medium term, the EU trade deal could benefit China and its export-led economy, potentially at the expense of US strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific region. 

—Barbara C. Matthews is a nonresident senior fellow at the GeoEconomics Center. She previously served as the first US Treasury attaché to the European Union. 

What should the US take away from this deal? 

This deal is very consequential, a meaningful destination after a long road, and it will give both Europe and India confidence in their ability to deepen their trade integration outside of the United States.  

The United States should similarly take note of the impact of its policies on trading partners’ willingness and ability to deepen their ties with each other. Long term, this will ultimately reduce their reliance on the United States and diminish US leverage in negotiations. But there are also shorter-term consequences for the United States. This is especially true in some areas, like geographical indications, where EU agreements may have a negative impact on the United States’ ability to sell agricultural products abroad using their common names. Additionally, deals that align regulations, such as the EU’s agreement with the United Kingdom, can effectively export EU regulatory barriers to its trading partners.  

—L. Daniel Mullaney 

***

The United States should not see this agreement as a threat. It’s consequential but not a dramatic game changer—at least not yet. A more important takeaway is that big deals can be done with India as long as there’s some flexibility to accommodate New Delhi’s political sensitivities. India is a democracy, and what voters think about its trade agreements matters. This deal can also provide new momentum to US and Indian negotiators to get their deal done. They really are very close, and the stakes are high. 

—Mark Linscott 

The post The EU and India are creating a free trade area of two billion people. What’s next? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Greenland and Ukraine will continue to dominate the European security agenda in 2026.
• The Nordic-Baltic states are increasingly taking the lead on these issues through coordinated action, joint funding, and operational support.
• Their approach shows that when small and medium-size states act together, they can have an outsized impact on European and transatlantic security.

STOCKHOLM—When US President Donald Trump escalated the Greenland crisis in early January by insisting on US ownership of the island and not ruling out military force, Denmark quickly received support from its Nordic and Baltic neighbors. This was no coincidence. Over just a few years, the Nordic-Baltic Eight (NB8)—Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—has become far more proactive and agile in shaping European security policy. 

Unity matters, and strong joint statements matter too. But in a European security debate characterized by constant declarations and uneven follow-through, matching words with action is what has truly built credibility for this Northern European forum.

If 2024 marked the year the Nordic-Baltic states became more “visible and relevant” in European security, and 2025 the year they emerged as Europe’s forward security hub—acting early and speaking clearly—then 2026 is shaping up to be the year their model will be tested under pressure. 

A regional forum with strategic intent

As the year begins, Estonia assumes the rotational chairmanship of the NB8, with an agenda focused on strengthening cooperation and raising the group’s international profile. This ambition underscores that the group’s influence is not tied to a single crisis or a particular leadership term. It is becoming structural. Coordination rotates, but strategic intent remains stable, backed by a growing track record of action and results. 

Even as Greenland dominates headlines, Ukraine remains the issue that anchors the NB8’s credibility. Throughout 2025, the group turned recurring joint signaling into a near-institutional voice, with coordinated statements issued in February, August, September, and November. Together, the members formed a sustained narrative: rejecting any settlement imposed on Kyiv, insisting that borders cannot be changed by force, and reaffirming that support for Ukraine must continue as long as Russia refuses a genuine cease-fire. 

What gives the NB8 credibility, however, is not just what it says but what it does—specifically, what it funds and delivers. Not only are the Nordic and Baltic states well on track—or already meeting—NATO’s defense spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), they are among the leading contributors of military support to Ukraine relative to GDP. Increasingly, this support is coordinated. In November, all eight Nordic-Baltic states jointly financed a $500 million package of US-sourced military equipment and munitions for Ukraine through NATO’s Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List. This was one of the largest coordinated European contributions of the year and a clear example of what a European coalition looks like when political alignment translates into operational effect. 

Over the course of 2025, Nordic-Baltic states moved from drawing down stockpiles to building sustainable capacity, including co-production with Ukraine. Sweden’s work with Kyiv on future air capabilities and Denmark’s efforts to facilitate Ukrainian defense manufacturing on Danish territory signal a shift from short-term transfers to enduring war-fighting capacity. 

That industrial turn has been matched by a dense ecosystem of Nordic-Baltic-led coalitions: Latvia driving Europe’s most dynamic drone procurement for Ukraine, Lithuania anchoring multinational demining efforts, Estonia committing a fixed share of GDP to sustained military support, and a broader Nordic-Baltic initiative training and equipping Ukrainian brigades alongside Poland. Together, these efforts translate political will into deployable capabilities, reaching the battlefield faster and with fewer institutional frictions than those of larger European formats.  

Countering Russia in the Baltic Sea is yet another example of Nordic-Baltic action. Today, the Baltic Sea is one of the most monitored maritime spaces in Europe, with continuous naval patrols, air surveillance, and undersea infrastructure protection driven largely by Nordic-Baltic contributions. The launch of NATO’s Operation Baltic Sentry in early 2025, combined with Sweden’s first major NATO maritime deployments, signals that the Alliance’s northern defense posture is moving from political concept to operational reality. 

This effort has expanded beyond ships and aircraft to the legal and regulatory domain. Countering Russia’s shadow fleet and grey-zone maritime activity, enforcing sanctions, and coordinating maritime regulation have become part of the same security logic, reflecting a Nordic-Baltic approach that treats coercion at sea as both a governance and a military challenge. 

The signal to Moscow is clear, and Beijing is registering it too. Coordinated European action, when sustained and enforced, carries strategic weight.

This message is particularly poignant today, as deterrence is increasingly about the ability to stay the course for years—whether in supporting Ukraine, countering hybrid threats, or maintaining political clarity on values and interests. Against this backdrop, Nordic-Baltic states are far from the “small” actors they’re often assumed to be. Together, their combined economic weight rivals that of Europe’s largest powers—a reminder that scale in security is often a political choice. The Nordic-Baltic states have acted on this insight, translating pooled resources into procurement decisions, industrial planning, and sustained policy commitments.  

The next phase of Nordic-Baltic leadership

What comes next is likely to follow two main tracks. First, Greenland will remain a test of allied norms and Nordic-Baltic cohesion, requiring sustained political backing as diplomacy with the United States continues. For years, Nordic-Baltic defense policy rested on a familiar logic: stay close to Washington, prove seriousness, and earn reassurance. That logic still matters, but the Greenland crisis shows it can no longer be taken for granted. In response to the US escalation, Denmark and its Nordic-Baltic partners have focused on keeping the issue firmly within a diplomatic and legal framework, while reinforcing the principle that Arctic security remains a collective NATO responsibility.

Second, Ukraine will remain the central credibility test, demanding resistance to premature settlements and continued investment in military, industrial, and political support. 

There is also a broader strategic task. The NB8 is well-positioned to strengthen the European pillar within NATO while bridging gaps between NATO and the European Union, particularly in areas where security, industrial capacity, and sanctions enforcement increasingly overlap. Equally important, the group must avoid becoming a northern island detached from the rest of Europe. The new habit of including Poland and Germany in the NB8 meetings is wise in this regard. However, credible deterrence and resilience across Europe require wider networks beyond the region, including engagement with partners in the south and the ability to connect regional leadership to continental cohesion. 

The deeper lesson, however, is the same across Greenland and Ukraine: credibility is cumulative. It is built by acting together early, speaking clearly about principles, and turning solidarity into capabilities and delivery. 

In 2026, Europe will spend more time debating which coalitions can be relied upon, which will hold under pressure, and which can shoulder responsibility amid ongoing geopolitical uncertainty. Increasingly, the answer points north—not because the members of the NB8 are Europe’s largest powers, but because they consistently deliver on their promises.

The post How the Nordic-Baltic states became Europe’s reliable security engine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam urged for the continuation of an international force in south Lebanon during a meeting last week in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron.

“We will always need an international presence in the south, and preferably a UN presence, given the impartiality and neutrality that only the UN can provide,” he told reporters a day after the meeting.

There is a general understanding that the international community cannot simply abandon south Lebanon once UNIFIL withdraws, especially given that the area remains highly volatile. Despite a November 2024 cease-fire, south Lebanon is subject to near-daily Israeli air strikes against alleged Hezbollah military infrastructure and militants. Nearly 65,000 Lebanese residents of the southern border district are unable to return to their homes in villages heavily damaged by the 2023-2024 war, and by a subsequent campaign of controlled demolitions by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF has constructed five imposing Forward Operating Bases on hills in Lebanese territory and enforces a no-go buffer zone adjacent to the Blue Line, the UN’s term for Lebanon’s southern border.

Given this volatility, some European countries are mulling deploying a new military force to the South Litani Sector (SLS), the 1,057-square-kilometer area between the Blue Line and the Litani river that serves as UNIFIL’s Area of Operations (AO). No concrete proposals have yet emerged; it remains unclear whether the preference is to establish a formal European Union (EU) mission led out of Brussels, to mold an ad hoc coalition of willing countries that would operate under a bilateral agreement with the Lebanese government, or, indeed, to create some other formulation.

Either way, proponents of a new mission to south Lebanon should be modest in their expectations and goals. There is little point in replacing UNIFIL with another military mission that could face the same mandate constrictions and potential threats as experienced by UNIFIL over the past nineteen years since it expanded from two thousand armed observers to a force of more than ten thousand peacekeepers following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. UNIFIL was seen to have fundamentally failed in its mission, resulting last August in the UN Security Council (UNSC) agreeing to terminate the force at the end of 2026. UNIFIL was unable to halt Israel’s daily aerial violations of Lebanese air space, nor block Hezbollah’s accelerated military expansion in the UNIFIL AO from around 2020, which included erecting observation posts along the Blue Line and even building several firing ranges. If UNIFIL, with its ten thousand troops drawn from more than forty countries, backed by the moral and political weight of the UNSC, ended up impotent before the competing actions, objectives, and interests of Hezbollah and Israel, what makes anyone think that a new European-dominated military force in the SLS would fare any better?

Furthermore, if a proposal emerges for a new EU-dominated military force to deploy into south Lebanon, Hezbollah would vehemently oppose it. Even if the Lebanese government chose to ignore Hezbollah’s objections and approve the mission, the soldiers comprising the new force would be deploying into a hostile and potentially dangerous environment. As UNIFIL knows all too well, Hezbollah controls the public space in the SLS, and it has the proven ability to escalate or de-escalate hostile sentiment toward the peacekeepers according to its will.

That is not to say that the international community should abandon any notion of a military mission to the SLS once UNIFIL departs and simply wash its hands of south Lebanon. There are a number of important stabilizing elements that should be implemented during, and after, UNIFIL’s withdrawal.

The first is the necessity of the international community maintaining an eye on south Lebanon to ensure that the two main players, Hezbollah and Israel, cannot act with unseen impunity. To this extent, it may not be necessary to raise a new military force for south Lebanon. When UNIFIL departs Lebanon in 2027, it will leave in place another, albeit much smaller, UN mission, the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO).

UNTSO Observer Group Lebanon (OGL) has been patrolling the Lebanon-Israel border for nearly eight decades to monitor compliance with the 1949 Armistice Agreement. OGL consists of fifty officers (captains and majors), operates from two patrol bases, and since 2006 has been embedded logistically inside UNIFIL. Perhaps a realistic and suitable solution to the post-UNIFIL vacuum would be to boost OGL’s numbers as required and slightly adjust the mandate to allow it to monitor the cease-fire arrangement and UNSC Resolution 1701 (which in part called for a weapons-free zone between the Litani and Lebanon’s southern border with Israel) as well as its original mission of observing the Armistice Demarcation Line (the original UN name given to the border).

As for any force protection concerns, its unarmed status and lack of any mandate enforcement capacity mean Hezbollah should not object to its expansion and continued presence. Furthermore, UNTSO-OGL has an institutional experience of operating alone in a worsening security environment. In the mid-1970s, before UNIFIL arrived in March 1978, the Palestine Liberation Organization was deeply entrenched in south Lebanon from where it launched attacks into Israel. The IDF erected a security fence along the border, maintained day-time observation positions just inside Lebanese territory, and regularly staged cross-border air strikes and commando raids, a situation not greatly removed from the one that exists today. Through all that, UNTSO-OGL diligently patrolled, observed, and reported.

A second critical element of stability is the continued maintenance of a tactical liaison channel between the Lebanese and Israelis. UNIFIL has long served as a vital intermediary between Lebanon and Israel, providing a trusted tactical-level channel for communication, de-escalation, and incident management along the Blue Line that has helped contain crises that might otherwise have spiraled into wider confrontation. Currently, there is a group composed of delegates from Lebanon, Israel, France, the United States, and UNIFIL, known as the “Mechanism,” which was formed after the November 2024 cease-fire agreement. The Mechanism has been criticized for focusing more on the process of disarming Hezbollah rather than ensuring both sides adhere to the cease-fire. Nevertheless, in November, Lebanon and Israel added civilian diplomats to the Mechanism, allowing for a potential expansion of discussions away from purely military matters directly related to the SLS. In the absence of such a third-party interlocutor, routine incidents, misunderstandings, or localized clashes would carry a far higher risk of rapid escalation, miscalculation, and unintended conflict between two adversaries with no direct diplomatic or military liaison mechanisms.

The third imperative for prolonged stability in the SLS is to ensure continued international support for the LAF. The LAF is seriously overstretched with a required deployment of up to ten thousand troops into south Lebanon, while simultaneously reinforcing its presence along the potentially volatile border with Syria as well as its daily internal security taskings. This is where foreign military support to Lebanon could be more usefully employed. Instead of dispatching a new military mission to south Lebanon to emulate UNIFIL’s vague mandate of supporting a weapons-free zone south of the Litani, a small LAF support mission could focus on enabling a sustained LAF presence in the SLS through logistics, training, intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance sharing, mobility support, and joint planning, areas where the LAF’s constraints are structural rather than political. This would shift the optics and substance of enforcement away from foreign troops and toward the Lebanese state with the LAF at the center of security provision. This new mission could operate in coordination with, and alongside, an expanded UNTSO-OGL, leaving monitoring tasks to the latter while the former concentrates on supporting the LAF.

Additionally, indirect support for the LAF could be achieved by bolstering the capabilities of the Internal Security Forces (ISF), Lebanon’s police force. For decades, the LAF has had to compensate for the ISF’s weaknesses by engaging in public order operations and pursuit of criminals which should be the remit of the ISF. ISF capacity building would in time allow the LAF to divert its scant resources to its core tasks of maintaining security and protecting the borders.

The imminent departure of UNIFIL, after nearly five decades of presence in south Lebanon, offers opportunities to redress the failings of the UN mission by adopting realistic and focused alternatives. Those alternatives could combine a monitoring and reporting capacity, a third-party tactical liaison channel to allow communication between Lebanon and Israel, and strengthening support to the LAF. A failure by the international community to deliver the requisite support risks overstretching the LAF to a breaking point, paving the way for a potential resurgence of Hezbollah in the SLS and further aggressive behavior from the IDF, which could lead to the resumption of a broader conflict.

Nicholas Blanford is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs, covering the politics and security affairs of Lebanon and Syria. He is an acknowledged expert on Lebanese Hezbollah. Blanford is a Beirut-based defense and security consultant.

The post When UNIFIL leaves, south Lebanon still needs an international presence appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Business and geopolitics collided at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, as leaders confronted how deeply markets, national security, and policy are now intertwined.
• US tariff policies forced a sober reassessment of global trade, while AI drew a mix of optimism and concern over risks, ethics, and regulation.
• Despite a US–Europe focus in Davos, other powers were active, too, with Canada’s prime minister warning that the rules-based order is rupturing.

DAVOS—This week Davos, Switzerland, returns to being a charming ski town. The shops and restaurants—temporarily rented by every major tech company on the planet to host events and receptions—return to their owners and will soon be filled with tourists on holiday.  

But what happened at the 2026 World Economic Forum won’t soon be forgotten. This was the year the forum changed policy. As one attendee told us on her way off the mountain, “Imagine what would have happened this week if Trump didn’t have to meet the Europeans face to face.” It’s an intriguing, if chilling, thought.

While Trump’s speech this past Wednesday and his subsequent decision to backtrack on Greenland threats drove the roller coaster news cycle of the week, there were several other notable moments that may have much longer term—and more important—policy repercussions. Here’s what we saw on the ground:

The two Davoses

Davos is always two different things at once. “Business Davos” is the place where executives huddle in Swiss office buildings negotiating deals far away from the TV cameras. This is, actually, what brings most people to the mountain year after year. That Davos traditionally operated independently from “geopolitical Davos.” That’s the Davos most people are familiar with—leaders from around the world speaking in the Congress Center, and academics, journalists, and think tankers debating on panels. 

Most years, those two Davoses can operate in their own spheres. But not this year. Last Monday, as markets swung sharply negative on the Greenland news, business Davos had its eyes glued to the Congress Center. Leaders of some of the largest companies in the world lined up and waited just like everyone else to get a seat. Suddenly, everyone was an expert on Nuuk, the Arctic, and whether military leases were a viable compromise. It was a reminder of a big lesson of the past few years—from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—that finance and national security are deeply interconnected. In fact, there’s a good word for that—geoeconomics. 

The new reality of tariffs

One year ago Davos attendees watched Trump’s inaugural address and then listened to him virtually address the forum. He hardly said the word “tariffs” once between the two speeches, and the delegates decided that his threats during the campaign were just threats. What a difference a year makes. After twelve months of the biggest shock to the global trading system in decades, which left the world facing the long-term prospect of the US economy having a 10 percent or higher tariff rate, reality settled in on the mountain. Gone was the optimistic talk about how deregulation was going to lead to an investment boom. In its place was chatter about finding new trade arrangements with emerging markets, and forecasting what would happen if the Supreme Court rules against Trump in the tariff case. 

The risk and rewards of artificial intelligence

Few topics were more in the air in Davos than artificial intelligence (AI). Almost every billboard and storefront had a reference to AI—whether for supply-chain efficiency or content creation. On the surface, businesses wanted to project confidence, with AI positioned as the engine of future growth. But step inside these company events and a different picture emerged. Many featured chief risk officers or chief ethics officers, titles that barely existed a few years ago, grappling with questions around the different types of “risks,” whether those were geopolitical risks, economic risks, or climate risks. There was a stark contrast between the glossy AI optimism outside and the sober risk assessment on the inside of these conversations, and a reminder that for all the promise of growth, the industry knows the hard questions are just beginning.

More than a transatlantic affair

On the main stage and in the global news cycle, this Davos felt like a US–Europe affair. Tariffs announced and abandoned on European allies. French President Emmanuel Macron responding directly. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlining the health of the US economy. California Governor Gavin Newsom sparring rhetorically with Washington. For audiences watching from afar, it was easy to conclude this was a narrow, transatlantic Davos.

On the ground, however, the picture was far more global. Brazil House, India House, Indonesia House, and a dozen country pavilions were packed with programming all day. A large Pakistani delegation arrived on its own official shuttle bus. Philippines House ran cultural programs, including concerts featuring traditional music, alongside policy panels.

India, in particular, projected quiet confidence. Officials framed the country as a durable pillar of global growth, especially on AI. China maintained a low profile, with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng offering brief remarks about Beijing’s willingness to buy more foreign goods and services—a notably muted presence compared to previous years.

Yet the US footprint on the promenade was impossible to miss. The US delegation was one of the largest in Davos, anchored by a sprawling USA House with a dense schedule of events and receptions. From the number of officials and security on the ground to the symbolic bald eagle overlooking the promenade, the message was clear: US influence loomed over nearly every discussion. For all the activity in country pavilions, this remained a global forum shaped by great-power rivalry.

From Canada, a clarion call 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered one of the most consequential addresses during Davos, declaring that the post–Cold War rules-based international order is “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” Carney argued that great-power rivalry, economic coercion, and unilateral actions by dominant states (not mentioning Trump by name) have weakened longstanding global norms and institutions. He called on middle powers to work together to protect their interests and build new cooperative frameworks rooted in shared values. Simply going along to get along is no longer the answer, he argued. Whether other middle powers respond to that message may be the single most important question from this year’s forum. 

Descending the mountain

As delegates packed their bags and headed down the mountain, few were under any illusions. The convergence between business Davos and geopolitical Davos is the new reality. The tightrope that companies are walking is not getting any less precarious. And the question of whether economic cooperation can survive an era of rising geopolitics remains very much unanswered.

Next year’s forum may face these same tensions. The key question is whether the world will have found ways to navigate them successfully or whether the rupture Carney described will have deepened further.

The post Inside the biggest Davos debates (other than Greenland) appeared first on Atlantic Council.

I asked this European official for further explanation. Shock therapy, after all, is more commonly a description of electrical currents treating mental illness than a theory of international affairs. In the context of European-US relations in 2025 and 2026, he said, shock therapy refers to the “rapid, disruptive, and painful transitions” forced on Europe by Trumpian jolts to the traditional transatlantic security and trade partnership. 

Europe isn’t enjoying the treatment, he said, but it is responding to it—more consequentially with every shock. Europeans have long spoken somewhat helplessly about the chronic conditions they suffer: a lack of economic competitiveness, an inability to provide for their own security, and insufficient political unity. Together these conditions have resulted in the continent’s inability to translate the weight of its 450 million people, $22 trillion-plus gross domestic product (GDP), and advanced market into geopolitical heft. 

This diagnosis hasn’t changed. But European leaders now recognize that, in the face of Trump’s United States, the continent must fundamentally treat its maladies or further surrender global relevance. What’s also changed for Europe is a growing recognition that it can no longer rely on the post–World War II global order, whose institutions and rules provided the safe context for the creation and growth of the European Union (EU).

Trump’s dramatic climbdown this week from his ultimatum that Europe either give him Greenland or face tariffs had many sources, ranging from market jitters over EU countermeasures and congressional opposition to a lack of popular American support. Most significant in Europe was that it triggered greater unity among the EU’s twenty-seven members against Trump, even among the right-wing parties that usually back him, than at any time previously.

Even after the immediate crisis was defused in Davos on Wednesday, EU leaders still met at an emergency summit in Brussels on Thursday. The Atlantic Council’s Jörn Fleck and James Batchik write about how that meeting signaled “a quiet yet dogged determination . . . to strengthen Europe’s ability to withstand US pressure in any future scenarios.”

If this change is permanent

It took a Canadian in Davos to best describe the abrupt changes unsettling European countries—and other nations that he referred to as middle powers. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney. Great powers, he continued, “have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” His conclusion: “You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of subordination.”

However, it was European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen who captured the historic moment at Davos for a continent whose current boundaries, ideologies, and collaborative structure have been forged by the previous shocks of World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Where she agreed with Carney, without mentioning Trump by name, is that his administration is sweeping away the nostalgia of common cause that has helped hold together the transatlantic alliance for eight decades.

“Of course, nostalgia is part of our human story. But nostalgia will not bring back the old order,” she said in a speech less celebrated than Carney’s but just as consequential. “And playing for time, and hoping that things will revert soon, will not fix the structural dependencies we have. So, my point is, if this change is permanent, then Europe must change permanently, too.”

The will to match the ambition

What many in the Trump administration have missed, with their focus on Europe’s weaknesses, is that the EU has been seizing upon the Trump moment for new trade deals. Von der Leyen came to Davos from Paraguay, where she signed the EU-Mercosur trade agreement, through which the EU and Latin American countries have created what she called “the largest free trade zone in the world, a market worth over 20 percent of global GDP; thirty-one countries with over 700 million consumers.”

Her next lines were aimed at Trump, without naming him. “So, this agreement sends a powerful message to the world that we are choosing fair trade over tariffs, partnership over isolation, sustainability over exploitation, and that we are serious about de-risking our economies and diversifying our supply chains.”

For those paying attention, that was something new. De-risking has been a term that Europe has associated with China until now, but in Davos this past week European political and corporate leaders increasingly applied it to the United States. A few US companies complained privately in Davos that European officials cancelled meetings—presumably to send a message. US companies with big business and investments in Europe sound more alarmed than ever that their European partners will look for ways, wherever they can, to operate without them. One US business leader told me that EU regulators are talking openly about more aggressively reducing their reliance on US technology, social media, and payment giants over the next three to five years. 

Though misgivings about dealing with China remain substantial, European leaders believe they must hedge, if only to signal to Washington that they have alternatives. As evidence of this, European leaders are lining up to visit Beijing to drum up business. Carney was there just before Davos. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will each visit in the coming days. French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited China in December, said in Davos that Europe needs to seek more Chinese foreign direct investment.

In her Davos speech, von der Leyen spoke about new trade agreements in the past year alone with Mexico, Indonesia, and Switzerland (while Trump has been slapping tariffs on them) and a new arrangement soon with Australia. The EU is also “advancing,” she said, with the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, and the United Arab Emirates. This weekend, she is in India, whose officials prioritized the EU after Trump’s tariff hit on them.

“There’s still work to do, but we are on the cusp of a historic trade agreement” with India, von der Leyen said. Then, channeling Trump-like language that no EU leader would have used previously, she said, “Indeed, some call it the mother of all deals. One that would create a market of two billion people, accounting for almost a quarter of global GDP and, crucially, that would provide a first-mover advantage for Europe with one of the world’s fastest-growing and most dynamic countries.” 

At the same time, European Union countries have launched a surge in defense spending of some €800 billion through 2030. That pledged surge, von der Leyen said, had helped triple the market value of European defense companies since January 2022, making them one of the best global investments anywhere in that time.

“All of this would have been unthinkable even a few years ago,” she said. “This now only shows how economy and national security are more linked than ever, but also what we can do when Europeans have the will to match the ambition.”

Interrupting the equilibrium

One of the other quiet takeaways from Davos was just how serious European policymakers are about economic integration. “The long-debated savings and investment union is now on a fast track, and Trump is a major factor,” says Josh Lipsky, chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council, who was in Davos this past week. “The stark realization that the US can’t always be relied on as an economic partner put new urgency in the minds of every finance official. I expect this is finally going to get done.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, the European who negotiated the deal that defused what might have been the worst transatlantic crisis in decades, gave Trump credit in Davos for a more determined Europe. “I’m not popular with you now because I’m defending Donald Trump,” he said, “but I really believe you can be happy that he is there. He has forced us in Europe to step up.” He added, “Without Donald Trump, this would never have happened.”

Whether Europe’s new steeliness endures beyond Davos remains to be seen. As a life-long Atlanticist, one who runs an institution dedicated to shaping the global future alongside US partners and allies, I regret the nature of the therapy but hope the eventual outcome will be a stronger and more confident Europe within a restored and resurgent transatlantic community, one up to the challenges of the coming century.

One can only hope that it won’t require an ever more severe shock to get there, more than likely administered by autocratic powers such as Russia and China, sensing a moment of opportunity provided by weaknesses among democratic allies. 

Shock therapy succeeds in medicine not because it heals but because it interrupts a potentially fatal equilibrium and creates a window for recovery. Applied to Europe, Trump’s shock has broken decades of strategic complacency and forced long-postponed decisions on defense, trade, and autonomy. Both in medicine and politics, a jolt can restart the system, but only sustained care determines whether it survives.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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Earlier this month, as anti-regime protests in Iran spread and reports of Iranian security forces killing demonstrators emerged, Trump pledged that the United States would “come to their rescue.” Is the arrival of US naval forces near Iran a prelude to a strike on the regime? For answers, we turned to Nate Swanson, who was the director for Iran at the National Security Council in the Biden White House and a member of the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team:

1. What are Trump’s options in Iran?

We are in unprecedented territory. Prior to Operation Midnight Hammer in June, the United States had never directly attacked Iran. The United States spent years developing the technology and expertise necessary to successfully carry out an operation against Iran’s nuclear program. Initiating strikes to protect protesters is an entirely different set of targets and objectives that are likely being developed in real time.

As the USS Abraham Lincoln enters the region, Trump likely has a range of options that fall into following broad categories. 

• Symbolic strikes: This could include strikes on conventional targets, such as Iran’s nuclear or missile program. While these strikes would do little to tangibly help the protesters, it will ensure that nobody can accuse the president of drawing “red lines” and then ignoring them.
• Strikes targeting the security apparatus: Trump likely has intelligence on a range of facilities and personnel connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, law enforcement forces, and the paramilitary Basij militia that may be connected to the crackdown on the protest movement. Cyberattacks against the security apparatus also fall into this category. These strikes might provide a measure of revenge and consolation to the protesters, but it’s unclear what impact this would have in preventing the regime from cracking down. Iran has more than a million individuals in its security apparatus. A one-off strike is unlikely to change the regime’s calculus about killing protesters. A sustained campaign against security personnel is plausible, but it would require a durable commitment that the Trump administration has thus far avoided in its use of military force.  
• Economic targets: During confrontations between Iran and Israel over the past year, there was speculation that Israel might attack Iranian economic targets. This could include oil export terminals, such as Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, as well as critical natural gas infrastructure. Such an operation would be risky and could impact energy markets, but it would also get the attention of a government that is teetering on the brink of economic collapse.  
• The supreme leader: Many protesters in Iran and observers outside of the country are clamoring for a strike that removes Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. While it’s unclear whether such a strike is feasible (much less advisable), it would be a game changer. Iran’s supreme leader is the highest political and religious authority inside Iran. There has only been one prior succession in the history of the Islamic Republic, and there is no consensus successor for Khamenei. Removing him creates an unprecedented power vacuum, and it is impossible to predict what comes next.   
• Non-kinetic options: There are numerous tangible non-kinetic options that the United States can take. Former US Deputy Special Envoy for Iran Abram Paley and I offered our own suggestions for supporting protesters, including pausing non-protest-related policy initiatives. Realistically, none would likely be decisive or would change the trajectory of the current protests. They are geared toward the next round of protests and ensuring protesters have the tools to make their own decisions about Iran’s future.

2. Would a US strike help Iranian protesters?

I am skeptical it will have a major impact, but it’s impossible to predict, because the success of a strike would best be measured on the impact it has on both the protesters’ and the regime’s psyche. Maybe a strike will provide such a significant morale boost to the protesters that they decide to keep protesting to the point that regime fissures emerge, defections ensue, and the Iranian regime collapses. An alternative is that the Iranian regime kills more of its own people. This scenario has parallels to Hungary in 1956 and Kurdish Iraq in 1991, where the United States called for the people to rise up, but had limited resources to offer, and the protesters were brutally crushed. 

In all strike scenarios, the administration will need to consider and articulate a vision for what comes next. The regime might fall and a pro-Western democracy could emerge, but an equally plausible scenario is that an even more hardline government emerges, one that is even more eager to develop nuclear weapons and utilize its missile arsenal. This concern is partially why several Gulf nations have advocated against striking Iran. 

Finally, it seems highly unlikely that US troops would be deployed on the ground in Iran. This means a political transition in Iran won’t happen because US soldiers liberate Iran or because an outside force intervenes. Instead, it will have to be a change driven by Iranians.  

3. What should we expect from the Iranian regime?

Having the USS Abraham Lincoln in theater serves two functions. First it allows the United States to more easily defend against any retaliation from Iran, thus providing greater optionality for a strike. It also provides a psychological advantage. Iran knows that any actions it takes in response to a US action could be met with a further escalation from US forces.  

This dynamic will likely deter Iran from doing anything overly escalatory. The Iranian regime will likely calibrate its response to be proportional (in its estimation) to that of any US action. For example, if the United States hits Iran with symbolic strikes, Iran will likely do something symbolic as well. Iran’s attack against US forces in Qatar in June is a useful example of what a response could look like. This scenario allows both sides to claim victory and de-escalate.   

Alternatively, in regard to a strike on Khamenei, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated earlier this month that “an attack on the great leader of our country is tantamount to a full-scale war with the Iranian nation.” What this would look like is impossible to predict, but the United States is at least now better prepared to respond to such a scenario.

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If the trends evident in 2025 persist into the year ahead, then Western Balkan countries may increasingly need to assume greater agency in shaping their own trajectories. What follows is an overview of key developments in the past year and the issues to watch in the year ahead in this important region.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

For Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2025 was in part about looking to the past, as leaders marked the thirtieth anniversary of the US-brokered Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the Bosnian War. There were several notable commemorations of the anniversary, including in Dayton at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly Spring Session, as well as in Sarajevo and Washington. These events were marked by gratitude but also uncertainty over the country’s future. The agreement was never intended to be Bosnia and Herzegovina’s lasting constitutional framework, but it has served that function for the past three decades.

The past year also raised questions about the future, with the White House and Congress bringing a sense of uncertainty to this region by sending mixed and, at times, conflicting signals. Take, for example, the Western Balkans Democracy and Prosperity Act, which was attached to the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act and signed into law in December. The act calls for sanctions on those who have “undertaken actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability or territorial integrity of any area or state in the Western Balkans.” But just weeks earlier, the US Treasury lifted sanctions on Milorad Dodik, Republika Srpska’s Kremlin-friendly former leader, as well as his associates, even though he has long threatened secession from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

More broadly, the 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) cast doubt on the US commitment to Europe going forward. If the United States reduces its engagement and presence in Europe, then Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has relied on international support since the 1990s for its institutional stability and capacity for effective governance, could be affected. Furthermore, the NSS created more than slight anxiety in Europe with the veiled threat of US intervention in domestic European politics.

As it adjusts to any US changes in the year ahead, Bosnia and Herzegovina should also advance its own agenda. Sarajevo should, for example, aim to advance major constitutional reforms and demonstrate its ability to complete major infrastructure projects. One such project that will test Bosnia’s capacity for governance is a proposed US-Bosnia southern interconnector pipeline, which would reduce the country’s dependence on Russian energy by importing gas via Serbia, terminating in Croatia. The pipeline is perhaps the best near-term example of a project that, if properly structured, can strengthen Bosnia’s institutions and take account of ethnic minority concerns but not be beholden to their demands. 

Serbia

Serbia has been rocked by student protests since November 2024, when a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad, killing sixteen people in what the protesters view as a preventable tragedy resulting from state corruption. Whether the protesters will be successful in their demand for early elections is uncertain, though President Aleksandar Vučić has publicly alluded to the possibility.

While the EU has long shown greater patience with Vučić than many in Serbia may have hoped, the bloc’s statements in 2025 were increasingly stern regarding Belgrade’s arguably antidemocratic handling of the protests. Expect this European concern to continue in 2026 should Vučić fail to meaningfully address these protests and their underlying causes. However, Washington’s perspective toward Belgrade may diverge from that of Brussels, as the Trump administration in September 2025 committed to a new US-Serbia strategic dialogue, which signals a willingness to find common ground and work together.

Another key issue to watch in 2026 is Serbia’s move to force Russian state oil company Gazprom to divest from the Naftna Industrja Srbje (NIS) refinery in Pančevo after it became the target of US energy sanctions on Russia in October 2025. Removing Gazprom’s control from NIS is critical for Serbia’s energy and security agenda. Failure to divest would allow Russia to continue its effective control of Serbian energy and keep Serbia in US and European crosshairs when it comes to energy sanctions. Washington gave Serbia until March 24 to find an alternate owner; Hungary’s MOL Group on January 19 reached a provisional agreement to buy Gazprom Neft’s majority stake.

Albania

Albania will likely continue to make headlines in 2026 as one of the frontrunners for EU accession alongside Montenegro, and hopes are high in Tirana that it could finish negotiations by 2027. Albania is also preparing to host the 2027 NATO Summit.

However, corruption scandals among Albania’s governing elite threaten to stall the country’s accession progress. Last year, Tirana Mayor Erion Veliaj was convicted of corruption and money laundering, and corruption charges against former Deputy Prime Minister Belinda Balluku led to her temporary removal from office. Further, the National Agency for Information Society (AKSHI), the government’s main digital and information technology body, is under investigation for allegedly rigging public tenders.

These developments underscore Albania’s corruption challenge and the deepening contest between the country’s anti-corruption institutions and its entrenched political and economic interests. While Prime Minister Edi Rama’s negotiations with the EU have been effective, these recent scandals will put his government under more pressure from Brussels and could potentially slow the country’s accession timeline.

Kosovo

Prime Minister Albin Kurti has presided over an increasingly calcified caretaker government and worsening relations with Washington. In September 2025, the United States suspended the US-Kosovo strategic dialogue, the key platform for US engagement with Pristina. According to the Trump administration, it suspended the dialogue for two reasons: First, Kurti’s government failed to make measurable progress toward creating an Association of Serb Municipalities in northern Kosovo, one of the terms of the 2023 EU-brokered Ohrid Agreement between Pristina and Belgrade. Second, Kurti has proved unable to form a governing coalition after his party’s electoral victory last February.

In the aftermath of snap parliamentary elections this past December, Kurti’s Vetevendosje party will still need the support of coalition partners to form a government, but his increased share of seats in the new parliament will make this easier than after the parliamentary election in February 2025. The upcoming presidential election in March of this year will be another opportunity to help end the political paralysis in Pristina. The incumbent president, Vjosa Osmani, who is known for her positive efforts to align and cooperate with the international community, is running for reelection.

Montenegro

In 2025, Montenegro drew closer to Europe, expanded economic development, and strengthened its security and defense posture. It closed multiple EU accession chapters, welcomed a European Investment Bank office, and contributed to NATO and European efforts to push back on Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Among Western Balkan countries, Montenegro is widely seen as the frontrunner for the next EU accession. While the European Commission’s reports on the Western Balkans in 2025 highlighted more challenges than cause for praise, Montenegro continues to advance structural reforms, increase investment opportunities, and modernize its military capabilities. The next EU Enlargement Package, expected in late 2026, will be another opportunity for Brussels to assess Podgorica’s progress.

Looking ahead, Montenegro will likely continue to project a European and regional leadership role. In June, it will host the EU-Western Balkans Summit, which focuses on EU enlargement and accession. And throughout 2026 Montenegro will chair the meetings and events for the Berlin Process, the German-led initiative advancing economic integration in the Western Balkans. Beginning in November, it will also chair the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, an influential post enabling Montenegro to set the Council of Europe agenda, promote initiatives, and provide leadership on sensitive political issues.

North Macedonia

North Macedonia made incremental, if limited, progress toward EU accession in 2025. According to the 2025 Enlargement Package report, North Macedonia made some gains in rule of law, public administration reform, and the functions of democratic institutions. However, Skopje continues to hold an understandably pessimistic view of the EU accession process as driven more by political leverage than technical sufficiency.

In 2019, the country implemented the Prespa Agreement, changing its official name to the “Republic of North Macedonia” in exchange for Greece dropping its threat to veto Skopje’s accession. But North Macedonia is still bound by a 2022 agreement levied by the French adding additional requirements to overcome Bulgarian concerns by amending its constitution to recognize the Bulgarian minority in the country.

The results of the municipal runoff elections in late 2025, including in Skopje, solidified the political momentum behind Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski. Given this momentum, Skopje is unlikely to make the unpopular changes to its constitution in the year ahead. While the political instability in Bulgarian does not help, as snap parliamentary elections will be held in early 2026 for the eighth time in five years, there is little prospect of significant changes or willingness to move on this issue in North Macedonia.

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Bottom lines up front

• Many Europeans view the Davos deal over Greenland as only a temporary reprieve from a crisis in transatlantic relations.
• Europe will now have to swiftly translate the lessons from the past few weeks into building greater resilience and sovereignty, if not strategic autonomy.
• Europeans will be well advised to do more contingency planning for how to resist economic coercion, even from their allies and partners.

WASHINGTON—Relief and exasperation may have been the initial reactions across European capitals as US President Donald Trump folded the cards on his Greenland gamble from Davos on Wednesday. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte excelled once again as the unrivaled Trump whisperer, helped by a combination of financial market jitters and an unexpectedly united Europe holding its ground. Rutte’s framework deal with Trump, however scarce the details, seemed to vindicate those arguing for Europe to “engage, not escalate” with the US president.

But a day after the news of the Arctic deal from the Alps, the mood among European policymakers is shifting away from mere relief. It was Trump who threatened to remember if he didn’t get his way on Greenland, but it is the Europeans who will remember this dispute even as Trump moves on. Few are celebrating the de-escalation because of how pointless and reckless they view this latest test of the Alliance’s credibility and cohesion. And because they know it’s likely only a temporary reprieve and hardly the last transatlantic crisis they can expect from this US administration. As a result, a quiet yet dogged determination is emerging to strengthen Europe’s ability to withstand US pressure in any future scenarios brought on by a US president who is seen as unpredictable, if not erratic. In a sign of the impression the last few days and weeks have left, European Union (EU) leaders still met at a special summit in Brussels on Thursday despite the immediate issue having been defused.

Trump’s speech in Davos made an impression on European decision makers. The US president appeared to be setting the terms for negotiations, forcing Europe to choose between acquiescing on his acquisition of Greenland and maintaining US support for NATO. While doing away with any potential military action, Trump outlined a nebulous rationale of US control of Greenland: No one else could supposedly defend it, and the United States needed it to protect against adversaries. He reminded Europeans of their dependencies on the United States from energy and trade to security and Ukraine. It all looked like an attempt to boost his leverage in any of these areas. But by the evening Davos time, Trump had struck a preliminary deal with Rutte.

Europeans will want to better understand the details of that agreement and what it means for Greenland, Denmark, and Europe. As long as military options and tariffs are off the table, Nuuk’s and Copenhagen’s sovereignty are respected, and the White House’s sharp rhetoric and threats subside, then NATO and EU capitals will hold back on their criticism for now. Some may even be going back to the pretense of transatlantic dialogue, cooperation, and partnership.

But beyond the diplomatic protocol and time bought, Trump’s ready willingness to engage in brinkmanship with the alliance, Europe’s economy, and personal relationships with key leaders will have a lasting impact. Trump’s approach toward Greenland has destroyed much of the domestic political space for those arguing that Europe has a weak hand and therefore few options but to engage, assuage, and accommodate Trump. That same argument, which led the EU to accept a lopsided trade deal with the United States this past summer in pursuit of “stability and predictability” in the relationship, has taken a major hit, even if few European leaders say this out loud for now.

There are clear lessons here for Europe. Over the past few days, European resolve had been building to stand tall and stay united. Markets took note of the potential costs of that cohesion, including retaliatory tariffs and a “Sell America” turn away from US assets. Europe fared better than many expected in raising the complexity for Trump in Greenland, including by swiftly deploying even just small numbers of troops to prepare joint exercises. Denmark proved resilient and built more effective rapport with Greenlanders over historically difficult relations and, together with Europe, it made important commitments to the territory and Arctic security.

Whatever time the de-escalation over this latest rift has bought Europe, it better use that reprieve effectively. It likely won’t be the last such episode under this president. Europe will have to swiftly translate the lessons from the past few weeks into building greater resilience and sovereignty, if not strategic autonomy. Efforts to strengthen defense capabilities, defense industrial capacity, and long-term support for Ukraine are well underway. But much like Europe’s initiatives at boosting its competitiveness, intensifying trade diversification, and deepening its capital markets, these efforts require greater speed, ambition, and follow-through.

Europeans will be well advised to do even more contingency planning on how to resist economic coercion, even from partners, and make unwieldy tools such as the Anti-Coercion Instrument more effective politically. Other areas to watch in the coming months are progress on new trade and critical raw materials deals or breakthroughs on long-standing initiatives such as the savings and investment union. Front and center for European decision makers’ thinking will be the problem described in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech of a “rupture, not a transition” in the world order. Whether they can act on his remedies of “strength at home [and] diversifying abroad” remains to be seen. 

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Bottom lines up front

• So far, Chinese ambitions in Greenland have been constrained by Denmark and the United States, but that could change as Nuuk moves toward independence.
• The United States, Denmark, and Greenland need a calm and results-oriented conversation that resolves their concerns about potential adversaries’ influence in the Arctic.

BRUSSELS—On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump announced that he would not implement planned tariffs on European allies after reaching a “framework of a future deal” with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Greenland and the Arctic. Coming after weeks of sharp rhetoric and threats that often obscured the strategic issues at play, this development presents an opportunity for the United States and its allies to refocus on what is actually at stake.

Greenland is the world’s largest island, located in an increasingly contested Arctic region, making it a target for Russian pressure and Chinese influence. That reality deserves serious conversation among partners, not a public quarrel that weakens all sides.

Why Greenland matters

As Trump said earlier Wednesday during his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, the United States has had a long history with Greenland. Washington first made an offer to acquire Greenland in 1867, and the idea has resurfaced repeatedly, including after World War II. Trump, too, has a history with the island. During his first term, Trump described his approach as essentially “a large real estate deal,” and he returned to that language in his speech in Davos.

It is unsurprising that Trump, who has had a long career in real estate, would approach this issue in this manner. But Greenland has never been a simple real-estate transaction. Its strategic location and mineral potential make it consequential to twenty-first-century security and economics. Its position in the Arctic among US allies and Russia introduces important geopolitical factors, as well. The problem is not the underlying interests; it is how they have been presented in recent weeks, through rhetoric and actions that have inflamed emotions and narrowed the path to a diplomatic solution that could strengthen US and allied security.

Not ownership, but alignment

Looking past the recent attention-grabbing rhetoric, there is an important issue here: Without a credible US security guarantee, the world’s largest island—sitting in a volatile and strategically critical Arctic region—is potentially vulnerable against future pressure from Russia and, more importantly, China. 

That is why the central question is not ownership but alignment, especially as Greenland moves toward its expected independence from Denmark. In that event, will Greenland’s political and economic future remain anchored in the transatlantic community, where its natural resources can benefit Greenlanders and strengthen the free world? Or, will an independent Greenland drift into a gray zone of influence and insecurity that the adversaries of the United States and Europe could exploit? 

Trump’s announcement that he would not levy additional tariffs on European allies could offer much-needed diplomatic space for a new approach that would address these questions. Driven by both national security and economic realities, the United States could use this moment to seek strategic certainty that Greenland will remain secure, stable, and anchored in the West. 

For Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and other political leaders in Denmark in an election year, there is little room for nuance: Greenland is not for sale. Many Greenlanders feel insulted by the mere suggestion of being “bought,” and that reaction is understandable. But the recent outrage has also made it harder to have a rational conversation about the realities shaping Greenland’s future. Moreover, it distracts from the fact that Danish-Greenlandic relations remain complicated, shaped by history and unresolved questions about Greenland identity and autonomy as a nation. 

As Anne-Sofie Allarp, a well-respected Danish journalist and author, wrote ahead of last week’s meeting in Washington between high-level US officials and their Danish and Greenlandic counterparts, “Danish and Greenlandic politicians of the past 30-40 years need a conversation with themselves about the real relationship between Greenland and Denmark.” She goes on to warn that Greenland’s independence could leave this “strategically important area close to the United States, on which the United States has important installations and which has important rare earths and metals, with an absolutely uncertain political future.” 

The China factor

What has been underrepresented in the current debate, however, is that China has previously made overtures to Greenland—something that understandably raises concern in Washington. A 2022 study by the University of Copenhagen concluded that “Greenland views China as a deep-pocketed investor and a huge consumer market, especially in the mining, fishing, and tourism industries. Greenland therefore views China as an important partner in its economic development, which is important for its independence from Denmark.”

Chinese efforts to build infrastructure and gain economic leverage in Greenland have, so far, been held back by Danish and allied pressure. Without Danish insistence, Greenland might have allowed it to move forward. In 2018, for example, the Chinese state-owned company China Communications Construction Company was shortlisted to build three airports in Greenland, in Nuuk, Ilulissat, and Qaqortoq. This effort stalled only after Danish and US officials stepped in. China has also proposed to build “science stations” in the region with dual-use capabilities, consistent with Beijing’s broader ambition to expand its presence in the Arctic through the Polar Silk Road initiative. And the Chinese company Shenghe Resources has sought through other companies to exploit rare earth and uranium mining projects, including Kvanefjeld in Greenland, which was halted on environmental rather than geopolitical grounds. 

For now, Chinese ambitions in Greenland have been constrained by Denmark. But the political trajectory inside Greenland is moving in the direction of independence. Nearly all the major political parties in Greenland support independence, only differing on the timing and the process. A referendum in Greenland to break with Denmark, while unlikely after the recent developments, cannot be excluded in the future. Even if a valid, pro-independence referendum required negotiations with Denmark to move forward, the long-term impact could be precarious. An independent Greenland would be free to pursue partnerships of its choosing, and it might choose to remain outside of the European Union and keep its distance from NATO. It might even attempt to balance between the United States and China, expecting investment and other benefits to be extracted from each. In short, preventing Beijing from gaining a lasting foothold in the Arctic could be far more difficult at that point than it is today. 

There are no simple answers to these challenges. But to avoid an uncertain and dangerous future, the United States, Denmark, and Greenland need a sober and results-oriented conversation that begins to resolve these issues. This conversation must, moreover, treat Greenland’s people with respect while confronting the hard security realities of the Arctic. Those who wish to weaken the transatlantic alliance are watching this process closely. The task now is not rhetorical escalation, but strategic certainty that secures Greenland, anchors it in the West, and protects the long-term interests of all three parties.

The post To get the Greenland issue right, focus on alignment appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Russia’s “shadow fleet” helps Moscow avoid sanctions and poses a threat to critical infrastructure, such as undersea cables.
• While the US has started stopping suspected oil tankers, European nations have been more restrained in their direct action against such vessels.
• Especially in the Baltic region, European nations should interpret UNCLOS’s provisions broadly and ramp up interdiction of suspected vessels.

WASHINGTON—For years, Russia has operated a so-called “shadow fleet” of sanctions-evading oil tankers, which have provided revenue for the Kremlin to continue its war against Ukraine. For nearly as long, Western maritime policy toward this fleet has been reactive, legalistic, and ultimately permissive. 

That changed late last year, when the Trump administration started taking bold action against the shadow fleet to enforce its blockade of Venezuelan oil exports. By targeting the vessels, logistics, and enablers of this opaque maritime network, the United States flipped the initiative. Instead of allowing Russia to exploit legal gray zones and Western restraint, Washington forced Moscow into a defensive crouch—raising costs, increasing uncertainty, and signaling that abuse of maritime norms would no longer be consequence-free.

This matters well beyond oil tankers. Strategic initiative is not about a single sanctions package or interdiction; it is about shaping the overall operating environment. By introducing ambiguity over what it will tolerate, the United States demonstrated that Russia’s shadow fleet is not an untouchable fact of life but a vulnerability. European states—especially the Baltic and Nordic states—should recognize that this is precisely the approach they should have applied long ago in the Baltic Sea.

Russia’s “shadow fleet” is a malign actor in the Baltics

Russia’s shadow fleet is an instrument of state power operating under civilian cover. In the Baltic Sea, its malign activity has taken several forms.

First, the tankers help Russia evade sanctions. Shadow tankers—often uninsured, aging, and operating under flags of convenience—have become essential to sustaining Russian energy exports in defiance of international restrictions. Their opaque ownership structures, frequent flag-hopping, and noncompliance with safety and reporting standards create systemic risks in one of the world’s most congested and environmentally sensitive maritime spaces.

Second, the shadow fleet poses a threat to undersea critical infrastructure. The Baltic Sea hosts a dense web of pipelines, power cables, and data links essential to European security and economic life. The presence of poorly regulated, state-directed vessels with unusual loitering patterns near such infrastructure has rightly raised alarm. Several pipelines and cables under the Baltic Sea, including the Balticconnector gas pipeline and Estlink 2 power cable connecting Estonia and Finland, as well as fiber-optic cables between Lithuania and Sweden, and between Finland and Germany, have been damaged between October 2023 and December 2024. Even when direct attribution is difficult, the pattern is unmistakable: Russia has both the capability and the incentive to use maritime assets to map, probe, and potentially sabotage critical seabed infrastructure.

Third, the shadow fleet increasingly functions as a platform for hybrid operations. There are growing concerns that shadow fleet vessels serve as launchpads, logistical nodes, or intelligence enablers for drone and electronic operations. Incidents involving unidentified drones near critical sites, including major airports near Copenhagen and Oslo, underscore how maritime proximity can be exploited to project disruptive capabilities ashore while maintaining deniability.

Taken together, the shadow fleet’s actions go well beyond commerce. They are committing acts of hybrid warfare at sea.

Europe’s self-imposed restraint

Europe has taken important initial steps to address Russia’s shadow fleet. To date, the European Union has imposed sanctions on hundreds of vessels, subjecting them to port access and servicing bans. Some European countries—Finland, Estonia, Germany, and France—have boarded some suspicious vessels in the past months but have claimed a lack of sufficient grounds under international maritime law to justify permanent seizure. Most recently, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the French navy intercepted and boarded a sanctioned Russian-linked tanker in the Mediterranean, reiterating that such operations are necessary to enforce sanctions and disrupt the shadow fleet’s role in financing Russia’s war effort.

Despite these positive steps, European nations have been unable to stop the vast majority of shadow fleet vessels from transiting the Baltic Sea, even though it is known that Russia transports around 60 percent of its seaborne oil exports using this illicit sanctions-evasion network, with many of the tankers crossing the Baltic Sea. The primary justification for this reticence to apply stronger sanctions enforcement is often legal: the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the principle of freedom of navigation. These are important norms—but Europe has turned them into a strategic straitjacket.

UNCLOS was adopted in 1982, in a radically different security environment. It was designed for an era when maritime threats were largely military-to-military and when civilian vessels were not routinely weaponized as tools of sabotage, coercion, and deniable attack. Today’s maritime actors possess a vastly expanded toolkit: drones, cyber capabilities, seabed interference, and hybrid operations that deliberately exploit the protections afforded to civilian shipping. 

More importantly, the legal restraint is one-sided. Russia does not respect the spirit—or often the letter—of the rules Europe clings to. Shadow-fleet vessels routinely operate without proper insurance, obscure their ownership, falsify registries, and sail in conditions that would not be tolerated for legitimate commercial shipping. These practices alone raise serious questions about seaworthiness, environmental safety, and compliance with international law. Europe is not defending UNCLOS by tolerating such behavior; it is hollowing it out. A legal regime that is systematically abused by hostile actors cannot be treated as sacrosanct if it undermines the security of those who follow it in good faith.

Time to join the momentum

By moving decisively against the shadow fleet, the United States, having never ratified UNCLOS but operating largely in accordance with its provisions as customary international law, has established the very strategic ambiguity Europe has long advocated. The US seizure and boarding of the illicit tankers demonstrate that states can reassert deterrence in the hybrid domain when they are willing to broadly interpret UNCLOS’s provisions on boarding and seizing ships, thus defending the intent—not just the letter—of maritime law.

Baltic and Nordic countries are uniquely positioned to act. They possess exceptional maritime domain awareness, capable coast guards and navies, and dense legal and regulatory ecosystems. This enables them to broadly interpret UNCLOS’s legal authority to board and seize shadow fleet tankers, especially as they violate Article 92 of UNCLOS by engaging in flag-hopping and operating without proper insurance. Coordinated pressure can raise the operational and financial costs of shadow-fleet activity and make the Baltic Sea inhospitable to Russia’s illegal and dangerous maritime practices.

By stepping up its measures against shadow fleet vessels, Europe can seize this moment to make a substantive contribution to the reform and modernization of the UNCLOS framework. This does not mean abandoning UNCLOS but interpreting its provisions broadly to uphold the values underpinning it—above all, the obligation to ensure safety at sea. The convention was never designed for a world in which civilian vessels are routinely applied to dual-use purposes. Nor did it anticipate today’s vast networks of undersea critical infrastructure, now central to national security and economic resilience.

Strategic initiative in the hybrid domain is shifting. The United States has set a clear example of the operational possibilities at hand. In this changing environment, Europe should not hold itself hostage to regulations that adversaries openly flout and deliberately weaponize. This is a chance for Europe to act decisively by forcing Russia’s shadow fleet out of the Baltic Sea and helping to reshape the maritime legal order so that it responds to today’s challenges.

Energy Sanctions Dashboard

This dashboard focuses on US sanctions and restrictive measures placed on crude oil from Russia, Iran, and Venezuela—including the unintended consequences and the lessons learned.

The post The US is taking action against Russia’s shadow fleet. In the Baltic Sea, Europe should follow suit. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

An unusual stop in Jordan

Of the three countries on Wang’s itinerary, Jordan stands out as unusual. Chinese leaders frequently engage with countries in the Gulf, but Jordan isn’t a typical destination for Beijing’s officials. While in Amman, he met with King Abdullah II, Crown Prince Hussein, and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi.

At the bilateral level, the message was that China wants to enhance the strategic partnership signed during the king’s 2015 visit to Beijing. This elevated partnership would focus on increased economic and investment cooperation and deeper political trust. As Wang conveyed to Safadi, “China will remain Jordan’s most reliable strategic partner in its development and revitalization process.”

This is an odd description of the China-Jordan relationship, which is not especially strategic. There has been little in the way of political or security cooperation between the two; Jordan is deeply tethered to the United States, limiting opportunities for China to make serious inroads. The economic side of the relationship has also been modest. Data from the American Enterprise Institute’s China Global Investment Tracker shows relatively insignificant engagement, with $1.96 billion in investments over the past twenty years and $5.54 billion in construction contracts for Chinese companies in Jordan since 2005. Trade has also been muted. Data from 2023 shows China exported $5.44 billion to Jordan, while Jordan exported $986 million to China.

Given the limited political and economic relations at the bilateral level, the likely reason for the Amman stop in Wang’s Middle East trip was to discuss diplomatic efforts on the Palestine issue. Beijing has been making efforts to be a more significant actor on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and with no influence with the Israelis, working with the Palestinians is China’s only access point. In July 2024, Beijing hosted a delegation of fourteen Palestinian political groups, releasing the Beijing Declaration in which these factions pledged to end their divisions and form an interim national unity government. Since then, Chinese diplomacy has been active but not particularly effective, although to their credit, they continue to advocate for Palestine, regularly voicing support in the United Nations and offering Beijing as a potential mediator.

In Wang’s talks with the king and crown prince, the focus was on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, “the need for cooperation between China and the Jordan Hashemite Charity Organization,” the cease-fire in Gaza, and the urgency of stopping attacks on West Bank Palestinians. 

The week before Wang’s trip, the third round of China-Saudi-Iran trilateral talks were held in Tehran, and discussions significantly focused on regional security issues—including on Israel-Palestine. Clearly, Chinese diplomats are working to enhance their profile on the issue. 

With the China-Arab States Summit scheduled for June 2026, regional analysts should expect more coordination between China and the Arab League on Palestine. And Wang’s visit to Jordan might indicate King Abdullah’s presence at the summit. If so, it would be his first trip to China since 2015, when the strategic partnership was announced.

Engagements with the Gulf

The Saudi visit was not at all surprising given the depth of relations between Beijing and Riyadh. Chinese capital has been flowing into the kingdom at a higher rate in recent years, with Saudi media noting a 29 percent gain in the stock of Chinese investment in Saudi Arabia from 2023 to 2024. Trade continues to surge, with China ranking as Saudi Arabia’s top trade partner. 

During the visit, Wang met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan. The foreign ministers jointly held the fifth High-Level Joint Committee (HLJC) meeting, a mechanism developed after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s 2016 state visit, which resulted in the China-Saudi comprehensive strategic partnership agreement. Since then, the HLJC has been used to chart the course for bilateral cooperation, with regular senior meetings that coordinate trade, investment, contracting, and diplomatic efforts.

Wang emphasized the increasing depth of the partnership while meeting with the Saudi crown prince, telling him that “China is ready to be the most trustworthy and reliable partner in Saudi Arabia’s national revitalization process.”

Contrasting the United States on trade

That Wang focused on trustworthiness and reliability in both Amman and Riyadh was clearly carefully chosen messaging. In his meeting with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary-General Jasem al-Budaiwi, Wang tried to position China’s reliability as a reason to jump back into talks for the long-negotiated China-GCC free trade agreement. Wang noted that “the talks have lasted for more than twenty years, and conditions for all aspects are basically mature, it is time to make a final decision.” Claiming that free trade is “under attack,” he described a China-GCC free trade agreement (FTA) as “a strong signal to the world about defending multilateralism.” All of this served as a not-particularly-subtle means of comparing China as a defender of trade in the face of US tariffs. 

The FTA was also a focus in Wang’s talks with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed. Wang expressed hope that the UAE could play a role in moving the FTA towards a conclusion, while his counterpart responded that he’s willing to play a positive role in the matter.

Despite Wang’s positioning of Beijing as a reliable trade partner, the China-GCC FTA talks have been stalled for nearly a decade. During Xi’s 2016 visit to Riyadh, he said he wanted a deal done within a year. Four rounds of talks that year didn’t get the FTA finished, and the GCC rupture from 2017 to 2021 put negotiations on hiatus. Since then, every meeting between senior Chinese and Gulf officials has included Chinese statements about the need to conclude the agreement as soon as possible. 

It’s worth pointing out that since 2023, the GCC initiated six anti-dumping investigations against China, while Saudi Arabia has launched four of its own and Oman recently launched one as well, citing the need to “safeguard the local market from price distortions caused by imported products sold at unfair prices that do not reflect actual production costs.” UAE Minister of Foreign Trade Thani al-Zayoudi said at the World Economic Forum in October that “we are seeing huge dumping coming from China to our local markets,” and “we must make sure we are protecting our industries.” 

As Gulf countries look to develop local manufacturing, free trade with China isn’t an easy sell. Yes, China is a global trading superpower, but it is very much a one-sided trader, pursuing a mercantilist growth model that floods other countries’ markets while decreasing its own imports. Unfettered Chinese imports look more like a threat than an opportunity for Gulf countries at this stage in their development.

In any case, Wang’s visit did highlight the many areas of cooperation between China, the Saudis, and Emiratis. Talks included cooperation on oil and natural gas, renewable energy, technology, research and science, education, tourism, and security. China may not have reached the status of most reliable and trustworthy, but it is clearly signaling its ambition to be a more serious partner. 

Jonathan Fulton is a nonresident senior fellow for the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative. He also serves as an associate professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. 

The post Wang Yi’s MENA tour was long on messaging, short on outcomes appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Today started with ice and ended with a thaw. Shortly after a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland—in which he made his case for why the United States should own the “big, beautiful piece of ice” that is Greenland—Donald Trump announced that he had reached a “framework of a future deal” on the issue. The breakthrough came after Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and led to the US president dropping his tariff threats against European nations that had opposed the US acquisition of the semiautonomous Danish territory. According to Trump, the deal will concern potential US rights over Greenland’s minerals, as well as the island’s involvement in his administration’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense system. Below, our experts shed light on all the transatlantic tumult. 

• Josh Lipsky (@joshualipsky): Chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council, senior director of the GeoEconomics Center, and former International Monetary Fund advisor  
• Matthew Kroenig (@MatthewKroenig): Vice president and senior director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security
• Tressa Guenov: Director for programs and operations and senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and former US principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs 
• Jörn Fleck (@JornFleck): Senior director of the Europe Center and former European Parliament staffer

Tariff troubles

• Now that Trump appears to have backed down from both his military and economic threats, “Europe is breathing a sigh of relief,” Josh reports from the World Economic Forum, but it’s one that “will be short-lived.”
• Don’t expect Europe to jump back in to last year’s US-EU trade deal, which Brussels paused in recent days. European leaders “feel like they’ve been burned by the volatility, paid a political price at home, and want commitments that next weekend they don’t wake up to new tariff threats,” Josh tells us. “Businesses, many of which said as much privately to the Trump administration this week in Davos, want the same” sort of commitments. 
• “Markets had their say” as well, Josh writes, noting that fears of a US-EU trade war drove up bond yields in recent days. That’s “the exact kind of pressure point that made Trump relent” in April 2025 when he paused his “Liberation Day” tariffs. “With mortgage rates shooting up” in response to the volatility, says Josh, “Trump showed that he can be especially sensitive to the bond markets.”

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NATO’s next steps

• “The idea that Trump would attack a NATO ally was always hard to imagine,” says Matt, who argues that “Trump’s threats were clearly part of his now-trademark style of building leverage to force a negotiation.”
• Matt now expects a future deal to include “increased military presence in Greenland from Denmark and other NATO allies and increased access and basing for the United States.”
• The “hard work” ahead for negotiators, he explains, will be “hammering out an agreement that addresses Trump’s legitimate security concerns while also respecting the sovereignty of NATO allies.”
• Matt identifies several cases that could provide “creative solutions,” including “the United Kingdom’s ‘sovereign base area’ in Cyprus, the bishop of Urgell and the president of France’s ‘shared sovereignty’ over Andorra, and the United States’ possession of a perpetual lease in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.”

The bigger picture

• But even if a deal gets done, says Tressa, Trump’s pressure campaign against Europe over Greenland could have consequences for security issues that must be solved on both sides of the Atlantic: “A sustained atmosphere of crisis has the potential to detract from Trump’s own success in getting NATO countries to spend 5 percent of gross domestic product on defense and, he hopes, buy American products.” She points out that “many of the countries that he threatened with tariffs are the ones who have stepped up defense spending the most.” 
• Jörn agrees on the lasting impact of “Trump’s willingness to engage in brinkmanship with the Alliance, Europe’s economy, and personal relationships with key leaders.” The approach “has destroyed much of the domestic political space in Europe for those arguing that Europe has a weak hand and therefore few options but to engage, assuage, and accommodate” the US president, “even if few European leaders will say this out loud for now.”  
• Still, while “Davos is sometimes criticized for a lot of talk but little action, this year no one can doubt the forum mattered,” Josh adds. “Having Trump meet in person with leaders—privately—is where the US-European alliance was, at least temporarily, put back on track.”

The post The future of Greenland and NATO after Trump’s Davos deal appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• In Davos, US President Donald Trump pledged not to use force to take Greenland and agreed to a “framework” deal to address the issue further.
• Europeans’ response has been to offer Trump more security cooperation in the Arctic but stand firm against US ownership of Greenland.
• By addressing Arctic security, among other US concerns, the newly announced “framework” deal may be a way out of the current crisis.

WASHINGTON—The best line of Donald Trump’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos was his pledge that the United States would not use force to seize Greenland. But the best news of the day was the announcement a short time later that the United States had reached a “framework” deal with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Arctic security, and the US president was therefore rescinding the tariffs against Denmark and several other European countries that Trump had announced just days earlier.

While the details of the deal are still emerging, it may be that when faced with Denmark’s and Greenland’s resistance to US threats, European solidarity against those threats, unease in financial markets, and significant congressional unhappiness with the United States bullying a loyal ally, Trump decided to take a win on Arctic security and forgo a needless fight on Greenland’s sovereignty. 

Taking force off the table

In the speech, Trump took the use of force to seize Greenland off the table. But he continued to demand US sovereignty over Greenland, rooting his argument in dubious history and poor logic. He claimed, for example, that countries that cannot defend their own territory cannot claim the right to possess it. That echoes a similar assertion by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. But the whole purpose of alliances, including NATO, is that security is greater if responsibility for it is shared. A doctrine that the power to seize territory is its own justification—which is close to what Trump and Miller argue—would legitimize every aggressor.  

Trump also claimed that to defend territory, the United States needs “title” to it. But the United States successfully defended Germany, South Korea, Japan, and hosts of other countries during and after the Cold War without seeking to annex them, and it did so from military bases that were “rented” and not part of the United States. 

Trump argued that the United States was mistaken to “return” Greenland to Denmark after World War II. The United States did put military bases on Greenland during the war after Germany conquered Denmark in April 1940. But the United States never annexed Greenland during the war: it put military facilities on it pursuant to an agreement with the Danish government-in-exile, and that agreement recognized continued Danish sovereignty over Greenland. In 1951, the United States and Denmark concluded the Defense of Greenland Agreement, which enshrined extensive US basing rights. 

While Trump ruled out war to conquer Greenland, he did suggest, albeit obliquely, that continued US support for Ukraine and for NATO depended on European acquiescence in his demands for Greenland. “Now what I’m asking for is a piece of ice,” Trump said of Greenland. “It’s a very small ask compared to what we have given them for many, many decades,” he added about NATO. To underscore the point, Trump said several times in the speech that allies had not been there for the United States. 

In fact, NATO has invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty once in its history: that was on September 12, 2001, the day after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I was in the White House that day as part of my job on the National Security Council staff. “We need this,” is what then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told the French government, referring to the decision to invoke Article 5. So the allies did—and it was not an empty gesture. NATO members, Denmark among them, later sent forces to fight alongside the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of those soldiers did not come home.  

Trump rightly pointed out that NATO nations have not devoted enough to defense. He also took credit, also rightly, for helping fix that problem by pushing for NATO’s decision at its 2025 summit in The Hague to set new, high targets for members’ military spending. But Trump cannot take a win on NATO defense spending and then demand that NATO members acquiesce to US aggression against a fellow NATO member. 

Trump seemed to be counting on threats of US economic pressure plus US reduction of support for NATO and Ukraine as sufficient leverage to force Denmark’s allies to abandon Greenland. That didn’t happen. 

Getting to a deal in Davos

Europe does need US support against Russia’s aggression. But Denmark did not yield, and its fellow European countries largely held together. In the United States, many Americans seemed skeptical of the administration spending a great deal of time and money to acquire Greenland, especially as economic conditions at home remain uneven. More immediately, an adverse Supreme Court decision on the president’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act statute for imposition of tariffs could attenuate Trump’s economic leverage. And Congress has already passed legislation (the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act) that complicates Trump’s ability to withdraw US forces from Europe. 

The Europeans (and especially the Danes) knew all this, and it bolstered their willingness to resist. Their response from the start has been to offer Trump all the security cooperation he wants in the Arctic but stand firm against US demands for annexation, knowing that they can make the case to Congress and the US public. They were offering security but not surrendering on sovereignty. 

Though details so far are thin, the meeting between Trump and Rutte seems to have settled on just that sort of deal: some arrangement to bolster security in the Arctic and, one hopes, the United States backing off on meritless claims to Greenland. Trump could justly claim such an arrangement as a win for both US and allied security in the Arctic.

Trump’s walk back of the threat of war in his speech and rescission of the tariff threats as part of an apparent framework deal on Arctic security may mean that, after unnecessary drama, a way out of this crisis can be found. 

The post By taking a win on Greenland, Trump set US and allied security in the Arctic on a better path appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP)—a planned rail and road route through southern Armenia—is poised to reshape Eurasian trade.
• While the TRIPP itself is less than thirty miles, it will be critical in connecting Central Asia to Turkey and Europe while bypassing Russia and Iran.
• TRIPP is also part of larger efforts by the Armenian prime minister to reduce Russian influence over his country—efforts the US should support.

WASHINGTON—A twenty-seven-mile stretch of land running through southern Armenia is poised to reshape the geopolitics of the South Caucasus. On January 13, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ararat Mirzoyan announced a detailed framework to implement the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). This US-brokered corridor, which promises to become a vital connectivity link between Europe and Asia, could go down as one of US President Donald Trump’s most impressive foreign policy achievements of his second term.

TRIPP’s connectivity potential

The idea for a US-brokered transport route in southern Armenia that would link the main part of Azerbaijan to Baku’s Nakhchivan exclave grew out of 2025 peace talks between the two countries coordinated by US officials. Azerbaijan wanted to implement a crucial element of its 2020 cease-fire agreement with Armenia—unfettered transport access to Nakhchivan. At the same time, Armenia sought to maintain control over its sovereign territory along the proposed twenty-seven-mile route across its land.

In stepped Trump and his team with a creative solution: a US-led consortium would construct and manage the route, in concert with Armenian authorities, that would in turn safeguard Azerbaijani access to Nakhchivan. At a summit at the White House this past August, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and Trump agreed to implement TRIPP with a view toward a comprehensive Armenia-Azerbaijan peace deal. This was a significant achievement: Armenia and Azerbaijan had clashed for more than thirty years, and they had fought a handful of wars in that time that killed tens of thousands.

But no details about how TRIPP would be built and managed were made public officially until this past week. In a joint statement, Rubio and Mirzoyan announced a new TRIPP Development Company (TDC) to construct the initial rail and road elements of the project, with the United States taking a 74 percent controlling stake for forty-nine years, which will revert to a 51 percent stake for the following fifty years. The agreement envisions the United States government providing upfront capital to develop the route and making a financial return via the TDC over the life of the project through transit fees and commercial opportunities along the route, in addition to construction contracts to US companies. Armenia will earn revenue based on its minority stake in the TDC, plus taxes and customs duties along TRIPP.

It’s an arrangement that should work well for both parties. The White House can tell Americans that they are getting an economic return for US diplomatic engagement in the South Caucasus and opening new opportunities for US companies. At the same time, Pashinyan can sell the agreement as a means of attracting high-quality Western infrastructure investment—something he had pursued through his Crossroads of Peace initiative—that can help position Armenia as a regional transport hub, all while maintaining control over Armenian territory.

TRIPP could provide spillover benefits to Washington, Yerevan, and the broader Caspian region, as well. The US government has been quietly supportive of the Middle Corridor, a multi-modal trade route that connects Central Asia to Turkey and Europe via the Caspian Sea and infrastructure chokepoints in Azerbaijan and Georgia. Washington and its European partners see the Middle Corridor as a way for overland trade with Asia to bypass Russia, including the potential export of critical minerals and rare earths from Central Asia. The South Caucasus and Central Asian countries seek prosperity through better integration with global markets. TRIPP provides another route across the Caucasus, increasing transport volume capacity as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan work to build port capacity to meet trade demand.

The successful implementation of TRIPP would make it cheaper and faster to ship products and critical raw materials from Central Asia to Europe and beyond.

But cheaper, faster, better connectivity also carries some risks. The South Caucasus has at times swelled into a hotbed for sanctions evasion to both Russia and Iran, and possibly even evasion schemes between Moscow and Tehran. TRIPP can be a success as a regional trade route, but realizing its full potential relies on demand for trade between Europe and Asia. High transport costs along the Middle Corridor due to geopolitical instability or project economics—or an unforeseen increase in willingness to ship goods via Russia or Iran—could derail TRIPP’s prospects.

Pashinyan looks west

The finalization of TRIPP is not only an achievement of the Trump administration, but also a new peak of Pashinyan’s shift away from Russia. For thirty years, Armenia relied solely on Moscow for its security, leading to Russian domination of the country’s internal and foreign politics. When Russia failed to intervene during the 2020 Karabakh War, Pashinyan made a change. Understanding that a peace deal with Azerbaijan was the only way to remove Russian leverage and therefore achieve true independence, the Armenian prime minister staked his political future on such a deal. Simultaneously, he inked major defense deals with India, France, Greece, and Cyprus, among others.

But the United States is the only power capable of truly offering Armenia an exit ramp from Russian domination. By conducting peace negotiations under US auspices and placing US interests directly over TRIPP, Pashinyan and Aliyev have protected the most sensitive part of the deal with a US deterrent. But more than that, they tied the success of the peace process to closer relations with Washington. As Aliyev attested at the peace summit, “If any of us—Prime Minister Pashinyan or myself—had in mind to step back, we wouldn’t have come here.”

Yet Russia is not the only neighbor disturbed by a growing US presence in the South Caucasus. Iran has consistently called any change of the status quo to its northern border with Armenia a “red line.” In 2022, Tehran even staged large-scale military exercises on the Azerbaijani border when it thought Baku may try to take over the area by force. Recently, Ali Velayati, a senior advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened to turn the South Caucasus into a “graveyard for the mercenaries of Donald Trump.” However, Iran is weaker than it has been in decades, and Pashinyan has taken advantage. As protests threaten the stability of the Iranian regime, Tehran weakly voiced concern that Washington could use TRIPP “within the framework of its security policy,” a far cry from red lines, graveyards, and military exercises. 

Last month, Pashinyan sent Deputy Foreign Minister Vahan Kostanyan, responsible for TRIPP coordination with Washington, to Israel to discuss the corridor. Kostanyan’s visit showed that Pashinyan would not make the same mistake with Iran as it did with Russia, instead choosing to align with the US-backed regional order.

Such moves come at a key time. With parliamentary elections set for 2026, Pashinyan needs to show that his pursuit of peace and ties with the West have been successful. Already, there are some signs. Azerbaijan has begun to ship oil and gas to Armenia, driving fuel prices down by 15 percent. Meanwhile, incoming stability and regional integration with Azerbaijan and Turkey have the potential of transforming Armenia into a transit country and providing easy access to the European market.

Russia has organized against Pashinyan ahead of the elections in the way it knows best—information operations. Last month, Armenian outlet Civilnet reported a spike in fake news targeting Armenian authorities, often spreading through anonymous social media accounts and Russian-language Telegram channels. Moscow will almost certainly seek to expand these efforts ahead of the election.

Nonetheless, the coming implementation of the TRIPP route looks like a major success in the Trump administration’s commercially focused foreign policy, and it is a model of constructive partnership that the White House should use elsewhere around the world. The project promises openings for American companies to build a small but crucial link to knitting the Middle Corridor together, a boon for the United States, as well as its partners in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. Sidelining Russia and Iran in the process may also decrease their ability to exert economic pressure in the region, giving leaders such as Pashinyan and Aliyev a freer hand to exercise their sovereignty and pursue their countries’ best interests.

The post How Trump’s ‘TRIPP’ triumph can advance US interests in the South Caucasus appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• No fewer than five important leadership positions in Guatemala—ranging from the courts to higher education—could get new leaders in 2026.
• These institutions form the country’s most important line of defense against cartels and organized crime.
• To safeguard US interests in the region, Washington should support an appointment process that reinforces Guatemala’s rule of law.

WASHINGTON—This year, Guatemala will undergo the most consequential institutional reset since its return to democracy in 1986. Five bodies that determine who gets prosecuted, who gets protected, who gets elected, and, ultimately, who governs the country will be renewed within a tight five-month window.

The attorney general, the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the comptroller general, and the rector of the University of San Carlos (USAC) all come up for selection between February and August 2026—a timing so unusual that analysts have described it as a “planetary alignment.”

Most of the posts are selected by nominating commissions composed of delegates from universities, the Bar Association, and other sectoral representatives that send shortlists to Congress or the president. Others are chosen directly by the legislature or the executive. Although intended to promote merit-based selection, the system is highly vulnerable to manipulation: Its complex composition and the influence of already captured institutions leave commissions susceptible to intimidation, vote-buying, and procedural maneuvers.

This year’s appointments process is not a mere exercise in bureaucratic housekeeping, nor is it an ideological contest between left and right. These institutions form Guatemala’s most important line of defense against cartels and organized crime, help safeguard the rule of law, and ensure fair competition. With illicit interests already moving to influence the process, this is a battle over whether Guatemala’s institutions will serve the public and the wider region or remain instruments of criminal groups for the next decade.

This past weekend underscored just how high those stakes are. On January 18, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo declared a thirty-day “state of siege” after suspected gang members killed seven police officers in Guatemala’s capital. These killings followed sieges by authorities aiming to end riots in three prisons, in which gang-affiliated inmates had taken nearly fifty hostages. Arévalo cautioned that entrenched “political-criminal mafias” created the conditions for such violence, reinforcing the need for clean and capable institutions.

Why these institutions matter—and what has gone wrong

For decades, Guatemala has faced entrenched corruption, with criminal networks penetrating deep into the state, fueling violence and migration. Hopes for change surged with the 2023 election of Arévalo, who won over 60 percent of the vote on an anti-corruption, reformist platform. 

Yet Arévalo’s ability to deliver has been severely constrained by a legislature and, most critically, a judicial system largely captured by the so-called pacto de corruptos, or corruption pact—a loose coalition of politicians, economic elites, and criminal groups. Through the control of key institutions, these actors have shielded allies from accountability and obstructed reform efforts. 

1. The Attorney General’s Office (MP)

The Attorney General’s Office, or Ministerio Público (MP), is the state’s principal weapon against gangs and transnational criminal organizations. Its performance directly shapes public security and regional stability.

Under Attorney General María Consuelo Porras, the MP has faced widespread criticism for obstruction, and she has been sanctioned by the United States, European Union (EU), and United Kingdom for corruption. Over 93 percent of criminal cases go unaddressed, including those involving organized crime, while the MP has aggressively pursued judges, political opponents, and anti-corruption figures.

A captured MP means one thing: Criminal organizations operate with state protection. The 2026 appointment will determine whether Guatemala continues to enable these networks or begins dismantling them.

2. The Constitutional Court (CC)

The Constitutional Court (CC) is Guatemala’s highest judicial authority. Its role is to ensure the rule of law, protect investors, and act as a backstop against executive or congressional overreach.

In the past five years, however, it has moved in the opposite direction. The CC has issued rulings that have been denounced for protecting corrupt officials, weakening accountability and prosecutions, and undermining electoral integrity. 

Co-opting the court is the ultimate prize for any criminal network: With compliant magistrates, illegal acts can be in effect legalized after the fact. 

3. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE)

The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) runs Guatemala’s elections and certifies results. Its independence determines whether democratic competition, rather than political mafias, decide who governs.

Despite facing immense pressure from the corruption pact, the TSE validated Arévalo’s victory in 2023. However, the body was immediately targeted by the MP and CC, which suspended magistrates, raided electoral facilities, and sought to annul the election results. Such measures raise serious concerns about institutional stability ahead of the 2027 general elections. 

With many municipalities heavily influenced by criminal groups, a weakened TSE could further destabilize the country and region. 

4. The Comptroller General (CGC)

The comptroller general (CGC) is Guatemala’s financial watchdog. When independent, this office is one of the country’s most effective tools for preventing corruption. 

When captured, it becomes a tool for shielding allies and enabling illicit contracting schemes that directly undermine fiscal integrity and free market competition. Also, given that the law disqualifies any political candidate under investigation by the CGC, a co-opted comptroller’s office can—and has been—used to selectively target political competitors. 

5. Rector of the University of San Carlos (USAC)

The head of Guatemala’s only public university wields significant influence. The rector shapes USAC’s representation in multiple nominating commissions, but the role’s reach extends far beyond academia. The university holds seats in more than fifty-three state bodies—including important financial institutions.

Under the current rector, Walter Mazariegos, who is under US sanctions, the university has appointed aligned actors to influential bodies while sidelining independent academics and students who have mobilized against corruption and fraud at the institution. On January 19, Mazariegos was sworn in as head of the nominating commission for the TSE.

An independent rector is essential for ensuring that Guatemala’s judiciary is staffed by competent professionals rather than political operatives unwilling to confront organized crime.

What role the United States can play

Guatemala is central to US regional interests, as highlighted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s decision to include the country in his first foreign trip in early 2025. In recent years, Guatemala has become a major transit route for drugs and other illicit flows, while also serving both as a source of migrants and a transit country for hundreds of thousands more. If the institutions that are meant to address illicit activity and corruption remain captured, these trends will worsen, putting US national security at risk.

Guatemala is also one of the few countries in the region to recently sign a new trade deal with the Trump administration aimed at lowering tariffs and expanding investment and exports. However, reaching these objectives seems unattainable under a Guatemalan judiciary that favors certain interests at the expense of fair competition and foreign businesses. 

For the United States, Guatemala has historically been a “friend in the Hemisphere,” as it is framed in the 2025 National Security Strategy. Guatemala remains a strong partner on issues such as drug trafficking, port security, Chinese influence, and migration. It is now time for Guatemala’s judicial institutions to align with that partnership and work for hemispheric security and prosperity rather than enabling the criminal networks that undermine them.

Here are four steps the United States can take with Guatemala in 2026.

1. Deploy proactive, sustained diplomacy

The United States should directly engage Guatemala’s party leaders, congressional blocs, and judicial elites, as well as members of the nominating commissions. The message should be unambiguous: Manipulating this year’s appointments will have consequences.

Elements of Guatemala’s private sector have financed efforts to influence appointments, largely because the current system shields them from competition and accountability. They must also understand that supporting such efforts risks diplomatic isolation and sanctions, including trade penalties, fines, and the suspension of trade benefits under the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement.  

The US Embassy should be more vocal in calling out intimidation and providing protection or asylum when necessary. It must signal that candidates and commissioners facing threats will not be left alone and help foster reformist coalition-building. 

2. Expand targeted sanctions—and use them early

The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has already sanctioned more than fifty Guatemalan actors for corruption and anti-democratic actions. However, given the immense consequences of judicial capture, US sanctions should be broadened to target business elites financing institutional capture, commissioners accepting bribes, judges enabling impunity, and political operators coordinating interference. 

Sanctions must go beyond travel bans to restrict access to banking systems and foreign assets. To be effective, these sanctions should be extended to immediate family members of the primary targets of sanctions, who are often used to circumvent restrictions.

Measures should be coordinated with partners such as the EU and especially Spain, where several sanctioned former Guatemalan officials have relocated.

3. Support observation and transparency efforts

Washington should support the EU and Organization of American States observation missions in Guatemala, as international presence can meaningfully deter manipulation across all stages of the nomination process. 

Additionally, the unusual complexity of the 2026 appointment cycle, coupled with the high probability of illicit influence, warrants investing in transparency. The State Department should provide short-term, targeted grants to local civil society organizations and legal watchdog groups to follow the process and flag concerns in real time.

4. Mobilize the US and Guatemalan private sectors

Guatemala has the largest economy in Central America, and over two hundred US and other foreign firms have active investments in the country. Washington should encourage US businesses to communicate clearly that judicial capture will jeopardize investment and redirect capital to more stable markets. The Guatemalan private sector should also be vocal in support of a clean election process and independent candidates. 

High stakes, high reward

This year’s appointments offer a rare chance to break Guatemala’s cycle of institutional capture. Some actors are deliberately reframing the nominations as an ideological contest between left and right, hoping to shield themselves and cause US hesitation. In reality, the stakes are institutional, not ideological: It is a choice between a justice system that upholds the law and one that continues to serve criminal interests.

With a reformist executive in place and five key bodies being renewed simultaneously, the window for change is real. For US policymakers, safeguarding US strategic interests in the region requires supporting a 2026 appointments process that reinforces Guatemala’s rule of law and, in doing so, strengthens security and prosperity across the Western Hemisphere.

The post What to watch in Guatemala’s year of institutional reset appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Klaus Schwab founded the World Economic Forum in 1971, a decade after the Atlantic Council’s own birth, with a post-World War II premise that held until recently: that greater security cooperation, economic interdependence, institutional cooperation, and shared rules could prevent another global catastrophe and advance more lasting peace and prosperity in a manner that also served US interests.

Trump travels to Switzerland this week as perhaps the most forceful skeptic of that internationalist assumption ever to occupy the Oval Office. He set the stage on Saturday by threatening new 10 percent tariffs on European nations that stood in the way of his heightened efforts to acquire the Danish territory of Greenland.

Trump has pledged to slap those tariffs on NATO allies Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland on February 1. If those countries don’t yield, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, he will jack up the tariffs to 25 percent—presumably atop the tariffs he has already put on Europe—on June 1 “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”

For their part, European leaders are considering a number of possible economic counterstrikes. The Financial Times reports that the European Union (EU) is considering €93 billion of new tariffs, while the French are reportedly pushing for the first-ever use of Brussels’s “Anti-Coercion Instrument.” Known as ACI, it is regarded as the nuclear option in that it could put limits on foreign direct investment, restrict US suppliers’ access to the EU market (excluding them from public tenders), and place export and import restrictions on goods and services.

That turns Davos, whose theme this year is “A Spirit of Dialogue,” into the epicenter of the worst transatlantic economic conflict in memory. European leaders hope they can still reach yet another deal with Trump. That said, one senior allied official told me it is hard to imagine common ground given Trump’s “absolutist” position that the only outcome he will accept is Greenland becoming US property. Another European official described Trump to me as an aberrational bully willing to risk eighty years of accumulated transatlantic trust to achieve territorial ambitions.

A nineteenth-century president in a twenty-first-century world 

To better understand who they’re dealing with, a long-time friend of Trump’s suggested to me that European leaders should look less to the past eighty years and more to the time before the world wars. He calls Trump a nineteenth-century US president governing in a twenty-first-century world—a leader who combines the expansionism of US President James Polk, pushing to enlarge the United States’ territorial realm as part of a “Modern Manifest Destiny,” with the twenty-first-century nationalism of current counterparts like Russian President Vladimir Putin (whom the Kremlin claims has just been asked to join Trump’s Gaza peace board), China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

While it was journalist John L. O’Sullivan who coined the term “Manifest Destiny,” it was Polk who popularized and implemented the notion that the United States was divinely ordained to expand its realm and spread democracy, capitalism, and American values across the entire North American continent.

To refresh your history: Polk, the eleventh US president, presided over Texas’s formal entry into the United States on December 29, 1845, though President John Tyler and Congress had initiated the process before Polk took office. That helped trigger the Mexican-American war that resulted in Mexico’s ceding of the entire American southwest to the United States. After a negotiation fraught with the risk of war, Polk acquired the Oregon Territory from Great Britain in 1846, giving the United States land for the future states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, along with parts of Montana and Wyoming, while Britain kept Vancouver Island.

That history lesson won’t hearten the leaders of Denmark or its Europeans allies, who presumably believed the nineteenth century was, well, history. Polk’s era was an age not of global governance but of sovereign states, great power competition, mercantilism, and jealously guarded spheres of influence, followed by two world wars. Diplomacy was personal and transactional—just as Trump likes it. Leaders wielded commitments as conditional and trade as an instrument of power, as was the case this week when Trump upended trade deals he had negotiated with European states to open a new fight over Greenland.

What’s further capturing conversation in Davos is Trump’s military-judicial operation that brought Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to New York to face criminal charges, part of a heightened focus on the Western Hemisphere through his “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine; his on-again, off-again threats to strike Iranian targets in response to Tehran’s killing of protesters; the US Department of Justice’s criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell; and a series of domestic events that have made global headlines, most significantly the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis at the hands of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

A world-historic figure—but in what sense?

Many in Trump’s electoral base charge that he’s paying far too much attention to global affairs at the expense of their own economic struggles. However, don’t expect Trump’s focus to shift—not even in a mid-term electoral year when the Republican hold on Congress is in doubt. Trump’s eye is on history, not congressional seats.

“The world, he thinks, is where a political figure makes his mark,” writes Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. “He desires a big legacy, still wants to show Manhattan (not to be too reductive, but there’s still something in it) that the outer-borough kid you patronized became a world-historic figure.” If that’s true regarding Manhattan, it is even more so for Davos, given that it symbolizes for Trump the club of first-tier global business leaders to which he never previously belonged.

If Trump’s aim is to be a world-historic figure—and that’s increasingly beyond dispute early in his second term—then what’s most important to ask is: world-historic in what sense? For that reason alone, it will be worth listening closely to how Trump describes himself this week in Davos and comparing that to his previous three appearances.

In 2018, early in his first administration, he declared in Davos, “America first doesn’t mean America alone. When the United States grows, so does the world.” In 2020, ten months before his electoral defeat, he highlighted two trade deals he had just closed, one with China and the other with Mexico and Canada. “These agreements represent a new model of trade for the twenty-first century—agreements that are fair, reciprocal, and that prioritize the needs of workers and families.”

Then in 2025, three days after his second inauguration, he set a far feistier tone. Appearing remotely via video, Trump declared the beginning of “a golden age of America,” speaking of the most significant US election in 129 years, lambasting his predecessor President Joe Biden, and announcing a storm of executive orders to address a “calamity,” particularly regarding immigration, crime, and inflation. He said little about the tariffs that would follow. “They say that there’s a light shining all over the world since the election,” Trump told the Davos crowd.

The big question chasing Trump this week, as I asked earlier this year in this space, is: “What sticks?”

It’s still uncertain whether Trumpism will usher in a new and enduring ideology of some sort. US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought the world New Deal liberalism, an ideology that has remained until this day; US President Ronald Reagan ushered in an era of internationalist conservatism that won the Cold War alongside allies, and it still lingers. When American presidents break with the past and usher in new eras, those trends tend to stick.

Many argue that Trump’s emergence underscores and advances a new nationalist era, one of nineteenth-century tenets laced with twenty-first-century technologies and geographies, even though those who know him best say Trump is not a student of history himself.

If it’s a new nationalism that’s emerging, what brand of nationalism might that be? Autocratic or democratic? Isolationist or internationalist? Realist or imperialist? The range of possibilities is immense.

A new vocabulary

What has stuck over the past year—a shift that’s palpable in Davos—is the erosion of old certainties. Trump’s emphasis on tariffs, industrial policy, and economic security has redrawn global trade rules and attitudes. His skepticism about multilateral arrangements has forced allies and partners to question systems they’ve depended upon since World War II. Trump’s blunt focus on borders, energy dominance, and the Western Hemisphere has global partners rethinking their own concepts of geography and leverage.

Davos matters this week not in terms of whether Trump will convert his listeners to his worldview, but rather because the world has already begun to change around those gathering there. The Davos vocabulary of cooperation and convergence coexists now with the new language of fragmentation, national interest, and strategic autonomy.

When he appears at Davos this week, Trump arrives with the ambitions of a nineteenth-century president confronting leaders with a twentieth-century mindset inadequate to the uncertainties of a twenty-first-century world. At this inflection point, all three eras are colliding. There’s no settled script for what comes next.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on X @FredKempe.

This edition is part of Frederick Kempe’s Inflection Points newsletter, a column of dispatches from a world in transition. To receive this newsletter throughout the week, sign up here.

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On January 19, Atlantic Council vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig was quoted in The Wall Street Journal on the Trump administration’s policy toward Greenland, arguing that threats are a negotiating tool.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

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

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig quoted in Wall Street Journal on Greenland appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 18, Atlantic Council vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig was interviewed on BBC’s Newshour on how Trump’s threats towards Greenland are impacting the NATO alliance.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

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

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig on BBC on Greenland appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• The Trump administration’s rhetoric regarding Greenland is escalating, with the president now threatening tariffs on several European countries. 
• But congressional action and European moves to head off a military confrontation could create space for diplomacy. 
• There’s a deal in reach that would avoid blowing up the transatlantic alliance and even increase security in the Arctic.

WASHINGTON—The transatlantic divide over Greenland just deepened, with US President Donald Trump announcing on Saturday that he will impose escalating tariffs on Denmark and other European nations until they agree to a deal for the United States to purchase Greenland. At this precarious moment, three lines of effort are underway to avoid a catastrophic clash over the world’s largest island. 

One is diplomatic: through the high-level working group agreed to at a January 14 meeting in Washington between US, Danish, and Greenlandic officials. The second includes congressional efforts to block an outright US invasion of Greenland. The third is deterrence: an increase of Danish and NATO member states’ military presence and exercises in and around Greenland. 

This problem should not have arisen. But it is still possible to achieve an outcome that leaves NATO and the transatlantic alliance intact and Arctic security strengthened. 

What does the White House want with Greenland (and what might it settle for)?

The United States has longstanding and legitimate security interests in Greenland. Because of these interests, Washington has sought several times since the mid-nineteenth century to acquire it. After World War II, the United States addressed its security interests through the 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement, which gives the United States extensive military basing rights on the island and does not question Denmark’s sovereignty or Greenland’s status. That agreement served US interests well throughout the Cold War and is still in force. 

Those interests do not seem to be driving policy, however. Currently, notwithstanding White House claims of Chinese and Russian threats to Greenland, neither Trump nor his administration has cited specific, unmet US security requests related to Greenland. Nor has the Trump administration taken steps to increase US military presence in Greenland. The Trump administration also has not cited unmet requests with respect to Greenland’s mineral deposits.

As it often does, the Trump administration is starting with an extreme position that is not simply tactical. Trump seems to really want to plant the American flag in a nineteenth-century expansionist style. The US president recently told The New York Times that annexation of Greenland “was psychologically needed for success.” Asked by CNN about Greenland, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller claimed that the “iron laws” of the world include strength, force, and power, and little else, and that therefore the United States can take Greenland if it so decides. While seeking to purchase Greenland seems the administration’s preferred route, it has not ruled out the use of force to acquire the island. 

Nevertheless, the Trump administration has sometimes backed off extreme initial positions when faced with counterpressure, as it has with tariff policy. Can counterpressure against the administration’s most extravagant ambitions in Greenland open up the possibility for a diplomatic deal?

The January 14 US-Danish/Greenlander meeting achieved about as much as it could have. The sides agreed to keep talking, and they announced the creation of an important working group. The intention of this group is to discern whether US interests in Greenland could be reconciled with Denmark’s red lines, including the integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark. The White House’s characterization of the working group as merely a mechanism to discuss US acquisition of Greenland didn’t help, but diplomacy still has a chance.

If the White House is interested in a deal, then there is space to make one through this working group. The group could affirm the generous terms of the Defense of Greenland Agreement or even renegotiate it. Though it is hard to see what more the United States could want in a renegotiated agreement, the ceremony of signing a new deal similarly generous in its terms could be claimed as a feather in the cap of the Trump administration. 

The working group could also address one contingency in a useful way. Some Greenlanders have been pushing for independence. An independent Greenland would be unable to provide for its own security, and the working group could address that challenge. The Trump administration might insist that an independent Greenland join with the United States in, for example, a Compact of Free Association similar to US agreements with some of the smaller Pacific Island states. But a less fraught alternative might be to agree to apply the Defense of Greenland Agreement to an independent Greenland, if that were to happen, and to bring an independent Greenland into NATO. As a member of NATO, an independent Greenland would be in a position similar to Iceland, which has no military of its own but whose security has been assured by the Alliance. Iceland is home to an air base that is an important asset for US force projection. 

Enter Congress and Europe

Given the Trump administration’s continued pressure, the US-Danish working group by itself is unlikely to lead to a solution. But the administration’s talk of annexation also has generated counter moves from the US Congress and from Europe that, if sustained, could create conditions for  a more productive outcome. 

In Congress, bipartisan bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate that would prohibit the use of appropriated funds for any military action against a NATO ally—including against Danish and other European forces defending Greenland. Whether those bills could capture a veto-proof majority is not clear, but public support among Americans for annexing Greenland is low (17 percent support annexation and only 4 percent support doing so through use of force). Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) has said that if US military action against Greenland appeared imminent, legislation to block it could pass with veto-proof majorities.

Europe is responding as well. In the days since the Trump administration’s rhetoric about Greenland has intensified, Denmark has announced plans to increase military exercises and its military presence in Greenland. European NATO members—Germany, Sweden, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, and the United Kingdom—have announced plans to send small military contingents to Greenland, with some already arriving. The contingents are likely to grow, and they could be supplemented by Danish special forces, some of which are working with the United States in the Middle East against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and other common adversaries. Trump’s response has been to accuse these countries of playing a “very dangerous game” and threaten them all with tariff increases of 10 percent as of February 1 and 25 percent by June.

The Danish military presence in Greenland, supplemented by modest European contingents, is unlikely to withstand a determined US assault. But it could succeed in complicating US planning, effectively removing from consideration a risk-free and low-cost military occupation of Greenland’s capital Nuuk. Wisely, Danish and other Europeans have spoken in general terms about bolstering Arctic security and not about the threat from the United States. But they have used the word “deterrence.” For Europeans to speak in such terms about the United States, even implicitly, is a low point, but it is needed. 

There’s a deal to be done

With counterpressure from Congress and European allies, the Trump administration may see the real opportunity to make a good deal without continuing down the risk-filled road to forced annexation. 

Trump and his administration are capable of redefining their objectives quickly, and in so doing achieving real, positive results. Faced with inadequate defense spending by NATO allies, the Trump administration squeezed hard, even seeming to threaten to leave NATO. This effort achieved what US presidents had sought for decades: allied commitments at NATO’s 2025 Summit in The Hague to increase defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product for defense and defense-related infrastructure. Trump could claim, with a basis in fact, that his unorthodox and sometimes confrontational style achieved something that had eluded his predecessors back to President Dwight Eisenhower. 

So it could prove with Greenland. US security in the Arctic is better achieved by working with Denmark and NATO allies, not against them, from Greenland to Norway’s Svalbard and Sweden’s Gotland. If NATO’s European members and Canada agreed to contribute more forces to Arctic security, the Trump administration could assert that its pressure tactics worked; Trump could claim a win and retroactively claim vindication for his initial threats. 

The alternative—the United States acquiring Greenland through threats or war—poses far too many risks and costs. The United States and the free world alliances it built would likely not be able to recover from the United States launching an aggressive war for the sake of seizing Greenland. But a deal on Greenland and Arctic security is possible. The costs in transatlantic resentment and stress on US-European confidence will be real but can be recovered from. If greater Arctic security, with Europeans doing heavy lifting, lies at the other side of whatever it is the West is going through, NATO and the transatlantic alliance could emerge in still solid shape.

The post The US and NATO can avoid catastrophe over Greenland and emerge stronger. Here’s how. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Israeli leaders have been notably quiet in public about Iran's protests, even as they are working closely with US officials.
• Overt Israeli support for the protestors could hand the Iranian regime a pretext to crack down in Iran and even launch attacks against Israel.
• Israel might nonetheless find itself in danger if the current regime survives and stabilizes, or if the regime is replaced by hardliners. 

JERUSALEM—Since the outbreak of mass protests in Iran, Israel’s public response has been unusually muted. 

Cabinet ministers were instructed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from commenting on the unfolding events, while Netanyahu himself limited his remarks to a brief statement expressing support for the Iranian protesters.

At first glance, this restraint appears puzzling. Iran is facing its most serious internal unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. For Netanyahu, who has long argued that the Iranian regime is inherently unstable and illegitimate, this moment would seem to bring his strategic vision closer to realization. Yet it is precisely this possibility that explains Israel’s caution.

Netanyahu understands that overt Israeli involvement in encouraging the protests would be counterproductive. Public Israeli support would hand Tehran a ready-made justification for violent repression, reinforce the regime’s narrative of foreign interference, and provide Iran with diplomatic pretext to act against Israel. More importantly, Israel has little real capacity to influence Iran’s internal balance of power. Symbolic gestures by Israel would carry high costs and minimal benefits.

There is also a broader strategic consideration. If regime change in Iran were to materialize, then it would almost certainly be driven by US actions and decisions, not Israeli ones. For years, Netanyahu has pressed Washington to confront Iran more forcefully. He is acutely aware that visible Israeli activism now could be perceived in the United States as an attempt to push the administration toward military action, echoing the controversies surrounding his past interventions in American domestic debates, most notably in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Another important factor behind Israel’s silence is the fear of premature escalation. Jerusalem is concerned about being drawn into a direct confrontation with Tehran before completing its own military and civilian preparations. In this context, Israel has reportedly conveyed calming messages to Iran, some via Russian intermediaries, signaling that it is not seeking an immediate confrontation. The objective is to reduce the risk of miscalculation that could lead Iran to conclude, mistakenly, that an Israeli strike is imminent.

Behind the scenes, however, Israel remains deeply engaged. It is maintaining close military and diplomatic coordination with the US administration and quietly preparing for scenarios in which US action against Iran could trigger Iranian retaliation, possibly against Israel itself. Such retaliation could, in turn, provide Israel with both the justification and the strategic opening for a broader campaign against Iran.

It is worth recalling that shortly before the unrest erupted, Netanyahu met with US President Donald Trump and sought a green light for military action against Iran, citing Tehran’s accelerated missile buildup. From Israel’s perspective, regime change would be the optimal outcome—one that could spare Jerusalem from another major conflict driven by Iran’s growing strategic capabilities, which Israel is unwilling to tolerate indefinitely.

Yet even if Netanyahu’s long-standing goal were achieved and the Iranian regime were fundamentally transformed, Israel could still find itself facing a more complex and potentially dangerous reality.

One possibility is that Trump might seek to capitalize on the regime’s weakness by pursuing a new nuclear agreement with Tehran. Even if such a deal were to include significant Iranian concessions—such as limits on enrichment—Israel would likely oppose it, arguing that it would stabilize and legitimize the existing regime while constraining Israel’s ability to sustain international pressure on Iran.

Other scenarios are even more troubling. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could consolidate power, accelerate a dash toward a nuclear weapon, or preside over a fragmented state in which control over Iran’s strategic weapons becomes uncertain. There is no guarantee that moderate, pro-Western forces would emerge victorious from a period of instability.

In Israel, there is sometimes a romanticized vision of a return to pre-1979 relations with Iran, harking back to the era of the shah. In reality, the likelihood of such a scenario is extremely low. Some Israelis’ quiet support for Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last shah, carries significant risks and may end in disappointment, given his limited domestic legitimacy and organizational capacity inside Iran.

Ultimately, Netanyahu appears closer than ever—at least in his own assessment—to seeing the collapse of the Iranian regime. This explains Israel’s current strategy: public silence combined with intense behind-the-scenes coordination with Washington. Yet, as in other strategic arenas, Israel lacks a coherent, well-developed plan for “the day after” in Iran beyond hopeful assumptions about regime change.

Absent such plans, perhaps it is best for Israel to focus on what it wants most to avoid. The most serious risk is that Israel could be drawn into a large-scale conflict under unfavorable conditions, at a time when the United States—focused primarily on protecting its own forces and regional assets, and increasingly focused on its own hemisphere—may have limited bandwidth or willingness to come to Israel’s aid.

The post Why Israel is responding to protests in Iran with caution appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• With the incumbent president term-limited, the field of candidates is the widest it has been in decades.
• There are five viable contenders for the presidency, three of whom are not backed by or affiliated with the traditional center-left and center-right parties.
• Polling indicates that no candidate is likely to get a majority in the first round of voting, which would trigger Portugal’s first presidential runoff election since 1986.

Another year, another election in Portugal. In a country that has weathered three parliamentary elections since 2022, the Portuguese will again go to the polls on Sunday, January 18, to elect their next president. Current president Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa will finish his second five-year term this spring and, under the Portuguese Constitution, cannot run for a third consecutive term. This year’s campaign has been the most unpredictable presidential race that Portugal has seen in the past three decades.

Foundations of the Portuguese presidency

Portugal, a parliamentary democracy under the nation’s constitution, also elects a president to serve as head of state. While many presidential functions are semi-ceremonial, the Portuguese system bestows on the country’s president several important responsibilities. These include veto powers, the role of supreme commander of the nation’s armed forces, and oversight of the country’s democratic institutions. While not a requirement, most candidates from established political parties renounce their party membership to show a commitment to the entire Portuguese population. However, this does not prevent Portugal’s political parties from supporting certain candidates.

Portugal’s presidents serve a five-year term, as compared to a four-year mandate for the government in power. If one candidate does not secure greater than fifty percent in the initial vote, then the top two candidates will compete in a runoff election. This has only happened once since Portugal’s transition to democracy in the mid-1970s, with a runoff election taking place in 1986. Since then, a candidate has captured the necessary majority to be elected president in the first round. But it looks unlikely that this will be the case this time.

Who are the leading candidates?

Although there are eleven candidates for the presidency, it has been primarily a five-candidate race among the following politicians:

António José Seguro is a senior voice of the center-left Portuguese Socialist Party (PS). Seguro served as a member of the Portuguese Parliament, the European Parliament, and was the PS secretary general from 2011 to 2014 until he lost an election for party leadership to former Prime Minister (and current European Council President) António Costa. Following the loss to Costa, Seguro stepped away from politics to teach and became a regular commentator on Portuguese television. His candidacy is still supported by the PS, but he vows to serve independent of party interests should he be elected, promising to lead a “modern and moderate” presidency.

João de Cotrim Figueiredo is a businessman and a relative newcomer to Portuguese politics. In 2019, he joined the newly formed, pro-business Liberal Initiative (IL) party. Cotrim (as he prefers to be addressed in the media) served as IL’s first member of Parliament following its creation, and he subsequently held the position of party leader from late 2019 to 2023. He is currently a member of the European Parliament, with his national IL party aligned with the Renew Europe group in the Parliament. Cotrim has appealed to younger voters, and his sustained and strong performance in the presidential campaign demonstrates changing dynamics within the Portuguese electorate. However, a late-breaking sexual harassment allegation from a former adviser to the IL’s parliamentary group could derail his campaign.

André Ventura is the president of the far-right populist Chega party (“Enough” in Portuguese). Ventura founded Chega in 2019 and has guided its meteoric rise. The party went from having only one member of Parliament in 2019 to becoming the second largest force in Portuguese politics during the 2025 parliamentary elections. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in 2021 and continues to use anti-corruption and anti-immigration as the foundations of his political platform.

Luís Marques Mendes is a long-time member of the center-right Social Democrat Party (PSD), serving in various capacities throughout his career since the 1980s. Marques Mendes, who was deputy prime minister from 1992 to 1995 and led the PSD from 2005 to 2007, still garners strong support from Portugal’s center-right parties. His candidacy, though, has not attracted a larger slice of the Portuguese electorate despite the center-right’s current minority government. Marques Mendes’s campaign has emphasized his political experience and his ability to build consensus.

The candidacy of Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a retired admiral in the Portuguese Navy, is one of the more fascinating stories of the campaign. Gouveia e Melo was a career naval officer, serving in the Portuguese Navy’s submarine fleet and rising to lead the Navy from 2021 to 2024. He gained national popularity when he was chosen to lead the government’s COVID-19 vaccination task force during the pandemic. Under his leadership, Portugal had one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe. As a result, Gouveia e Melo gained national popularity practically overnight, and he hoped to ride this momentum once he declared his candidacy for president following his retirement from military service. The admiral is not supported formally by any political party and claims to be above “partisan disputes.” Critics cite Gouveia e Melo’s lack of political experience as a major weakness, while the admiral champions his problem-solving experience and his ability to serve independent of political influence.

A fractured political field with a likely runoff to come

For most of the campaign, the top five candidates were in a virtual tie, with polling showing each within the margin of error of the others in the polls. But as the campaign draws to a close, there are signs of a divergence within the top five. According to CNN Portugal, the PS-supported Seguro, Chega’s Ventura, and the liberal Cotrim are all polling above 20 percent as of January 15, with Seguro polling the highest at 24.2 percent. Polls show the candidacies of the center-right Mendes and the independent Gouveia e Melo falling to the low-to-mid teens. The rest of the candidates are polling below two percent.

For most observers, it is a near certainty that the presidential election will move to a second round on February 8, but it’s not yet clear which two candidates will advance to the likely runoff. However, polling does show, that should the populist Ventura progress to the second round, he would lose to each of the other four top candidates in the various runoff scenarios.

Impact on foreign policy and transatlantic relations

Although Portuguese presidents’ responsibilities are principally semi-ceremonial, they can still influence foreign policy. While there is some divergence among the top candidates on issues such as European Union integration, defense spending, and immigration, none of them would be likely to divert from the nation’s preference for a strong US-Portuguese relationship.

What to watch for

Portuguese presidents have been a stabilizing force in the country’s politics since the creation of the republic, with the five previous presidents winning two consecutive five-year terms. The Portuguese electorate has historically chosen presidents that balance against the dominant political force of the day. In this light, it is not surprising that the Socialist-supported Seguro is leading the polls despite the party’s massive loss during the 2025 parliamentary elections. But with three candidates coming from outside the traditional center-left and center-right parties, the field is wide-open. With such a large slate of candidates, the Portuguese will likely have two opportunities to refine their preference for the next president of the Republic and occupant of the Palace of Belém.

The post Why Portugal’s upcoming presidential election has echoes of 1986 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In this special #BalkansDebrief interview, Congressman Mike Turner, co-chair of the Congressional Bosnia Caucus and head of the U.S. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, discusses whether the United States is truly re-engaging in the Western Balkans under its new national security strategy released in late 2025.

The Republican Representative of Ohio’s 10th District – and former mayor of the city of Dayton, Ohio – Mike Turner speaks candidly with Ilva Tare, Resident Senior Fellow at the Europe Center, about U.S. sanctions, the Western Balkans Democracy and Prosperity Act included at the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and Washington’s long-term commitment to peace, stability, and democratic institutions in the region. He reflects on 30 years since the Dayton Peace Accords, arguing that while Dayton ended the war, it was never meant to be a permanent governing framework.

The conversation also addresses Bosnia and Herzegovina’s fragile political balance, including concerns over Milorad Dodik’s secessionist rhetoric. Rep. Turner notes that sanctions remain a tool on the table if destabilizing behavior continues, while emphasizing the need for renewed international engagement to support reform and reconciliation.

The Debrief also discusses Serbia–Kosovo normalization and U.S. diplomatic leverage, Russian influence in the Balkans, NATO and EU enlargement, Montenegro as an EU frontrunner, U.S. cooperation with Albania and North Macedonia, and a message to young people who feel the region’s democratic transition is taking too long.

#BalkansDebrief is an online interview series presented by the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center and hosted by journalist Ilva Tare. The program offers a fresh look at the Western Balkans and examines the region’s people, culture, challenges, and opportunities.

Watch #BalkansDebrief on YouTube and listen to it as a Podcast.

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The post Is the U.S. Back in the Western Balkans? A Debrief with Congressman Mike Turner appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Atlantic Council vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig was interviewed on “The President’s Inbox,” a Council on Foreign Relations podcast, where he discussed the first year of Trump’s foreign policy.

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The post Kroenig in “The President’s Inbox” on Trump’s foreign policy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ukrainian legislation does not allow for elections under the current martial law conditions. Beyond legal constraints, the practical obstacles to wartime elections are also overwhelming. Fair campaigning conditions and safety during voting cannot be guaranteed. Meanwhile, over ten million Ukrainians have been displaced by Russia’s invasion, with millions more currently serving in the military or trapped in Russian-occupied regions.

The impracticality of elections is broadly accepted by Ukrainian society and among the country’s European partners. They recognise that any premature vote would risk undermining the legitimacy of Ukraine’s institutions and eroding public trust at a moment when democratic resilience is essential. Tellingly, the idea of wartime elections is mainly promoted by Russia as part of Kremlin efforts to weaken Ukraine from within.

When conditions allow for free and fair Ukrainian elections to take place, a key issue will be the inclusion of those who are currently defending the country. According to a preliminary forecast by the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, after the war ends, the number of war veterans and their family members will reach five to six million people, or one in six Ukrainians.

Opinion polls indicate strong public trust in the Ukrainian military along with widespread support for the participation of veterans in Ukrainian politics. In contrast, Ukraine’s existing democratic and political institutions are among the least trusted entities in society. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that veteran involvement in politics could help counter this trust deficit and strengthen Ukrainian democracy.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

It is important to note that most Ukrainian veterans are not career military personnel. The vast majority of today’s Ukrainian soldiers joined the military voluntarily or were mobilized and expect to return to civilian life in peacetime. Veterans are also not a homogeneous group and do not represent a specific political agenda. They differ in views, values, and priorities, and should be understood as individuals seeking meaningful participation within legitimate democratic institutions.

Electing military personnel to public office is not without risk. Military experience does not automatically translate into political skill. Veterans transitioning from the battlefield to politics may face challenges in terms of essential political know-how such as policy coherence, negotiation tactics, coalition-building, and working within institutions. Without targeted support and a clear civilian framework, veterans risk being marginalized within political parties or exploited as symbolic figures without real influence.

Ukraine has previous practical experience of veterans entering politics, notably during the country’s 2014 parliamentary elections. One of the former military personnel elected on that occasion was Oksana Korchynska, who recalled at a recent Kyiv event how she “came from the front line, from Mariupol, two days before taking the oath of MP.”

Korchynska noted that in 2014, veterans were frequently included on electoral lists without being integrated into decision-making structures. While veterans enjoyed high public trust, their actual influence within parties and parliament has so far often been limited. This experience underscores a critical lesson: Political inclusion must be substantive, not symbolic. Veterans need pathways to real influence within parties and institutions, not mere visibility.

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Members of Ukraine’s veteran community do not need to wait for elections to take up a role in public life. Many are already serving in local government or building civic organizations and veteran associations. Kateryna Yamshchykova is a veteran who became acting mayor of Poltava in 2023. “Opportunities already exist for everyone,” she reflected. “Did I really want the position of acting mayor? It was the last thing I wanted in my life, but I understood that this responsibility had to be taken on in order to build the country we are fighting for.”

This kind of local engagement can help veterans develop the skills they need to run as candidates in national elections after the war ends. Democratic participation, civic habits, and political responsibility cannot be developed overnight. Instead, early engagement can help bring about a stable postwar transition.

For established Ukrainian political parties, engagement with the country’s veteran community is already becoming increasingly necessary to maintain public support. This will likely lead to intensified internal competition as veterans seek leadership roles alongside longstanding party members.

Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK and former commander of the Ukrainian army, has warned that established political elites might see veterans as a threat to their position. If this happens, everyone in Ukraine stands to lose. Public trust in politicians would erode further, undermining the legitimacy of decisions that will be essential for European integration and postwar recovery.

A critical step toward the meaningful political participation of veterans is the development of a clear legal framework for Ukraine’s first postwar elections. This should ensure inclusive participation, clarify registration requirements for new political parties, and potentially impose stricter campaigning rules to protect electoral integrity.

Ukraine’s democracy is not on pause; it is being reshaped under fire. The emergence of veterans as political actors represents a profound structural change in Ukrainian society. In and of itself, this change is neither a threat to democracy nor a guarantee of positive change. Instead, it requires a deliberate and inclusive approach. If Ukraine succeeds in integrating veterans into civilian political life while preserving pluralism, accountability, and fair competition, it may emerge from the war with a more resilient democracy capable of sustaining inclusive recovery, reforms, and European integration.

Vasyl Sehin is the WFD Country Director in Ukraine.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood

By William Dixon, Maksym Beznosiuk

Putin has no obvious route to victory in 2026 but cannot accept a compromise peace as any settlement that safeguarded Ukrainian independence would be seen in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat, write William Dixon and Maksym Beznosiuk.

Conflict Nationalism

UkraineAlert Jan 11, 2026

Belarus hosts nuclear-capable Russian missiles despite talk of US thaw

By Mercedes Sapuppo

Russia’s recent delivery of nuclear-capable Oreshnik missiles to Belarus is a very deliberate act of nuclear saber-rattling that underlines Belarus’s continued role in Putin’s war machine as Minsk seeks to improve ties with the US, writes Mercedes Sapuppo.

Belarus Conflict

UkraineAlert Jan 13, 2026

Putin is weaponizing winter as Russia tries to freeze Ukraine into submission

By Peter Dickinson

Russia is “going all in” to destroy Ukraine’s power system, Ukrainian Deputy Energy Minister Mykola Kolisnyk said on January 13 following the latest in a series of major bombardments targeting civilian energy infrastructure in cities across the country.

Conflict Crisis Management

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

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

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

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The post Veterans can shape the future of Ukrainian democracy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Somaliland’s leaders hailed Israel’s decision as “historic,” celebrating it as long-awaited validation of de facto statehood, with the Israeli flag projected in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa. The decision builds on Somaliland’s record of relative stability and functioning democratic institutions, factors that have long differentiated it within a volatile region. However, beyond its symbolism, the significance of recognition will be shaped by its implementation. How Israel translates this decision into security, economic, and diplomatic engagement, while managing regional sensitivities and coordinating with key partners, particularly the United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), will determine whether recognition evolves into a durable framework for regional cooperation.

Recognition and its limits

Israel’s recognition of Somaliland reshapes the scope of bilateral engagement but does not eliminate the diplomatic and political constraints tied to Somaliland’s contested status. In practical terms, recognition elevates Israel–Somaliland relations from informal coordination to institutionalized state-to-state ties, enabling formal bilateral channels for security dialogue, economic cooperation, and diplomatic presence. The Israeli statement has already signaled an intention to expand cooperation in areas such as agriculture, health, technology, and economic development with Somaliland.

The security implications are most pronounced in the Red Sea context. Israeli officials have confirmed that the recognition is linked to countering Iran and its regional proxies, particularly the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Somaliland’s leadership has, according to regional reporting, been open to hosting an Israeli security presence in exchange for recognition. Formal ties now allow for open discussions on intelligence sharing, port security, and, over time, potential logistical or monitoring arrangements aimed at Red Sea threats.

Economically, recognition reduces political risk for investment and long-term cooperation. Israeli engagement in sectors such as water management, agriculture, health technology, and logistics now rests on a formal diplomatic foundation, creating pathways for trade relations and tangible economic outcomes.

At the same time, recognition does not resolve Somaliland’s contested international status. The Somali Federal Government considers Somaliland part of its territory and opposes any foreign engagement implying recognition. Israel remains the sole United Nations member to have taken this step. The United States, European Union, African Union (AU) members, and even Somaliland’s closest regional partner, the United Arab Emirates, have thus far refrained from recognition. The AU has rejected Israel’s move, reaffirming its commitment to Somalia’s territorial integrity and limiting Somaliland’s access to international institutions in the near term.

Nor does recognition eliminate regional resistance. Somalia’s federal government and several regional actors view Israel’s move as divisive rather than a stabilizing development. In a joint statement, Somalia, Egypt, Turkey, and Djibouti condemned Israel’s decision and reaffirmed their support for Somalia’s territorial integrity. The recognition raises concerns about regional fragmentation and risks inflaming nationalist sentiment in Somalia, while straining Israel’s relations in Africa.

Taken together, recognition expands what can be done while narrowing the margin for error. It enables cooperation but also raises expectations and diplomatic costs that must now be actively managed.

Why this decision came now

Israel’s unprecedented recognition of Somaliland reflects a convergence of strategic and political calculations. Domestically, Netanyahu is under intense pressure from the “Qatargate” scandal: allegations that his top aides accepted Qatari funds to influence policy. With Netanyahu facing calls to resign and looking ahead to a 2026 election year, the move offers an opportunity to shift the narrative with a diplomatic win. Netanyahu explicitly framed the decision “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” aligning it with US President Donald Trump’s revived normalization framework. This alignment allows Netanyahu to tout a foreign-policy success at a time when both Saudi Arabia and Indonesia appear reluctant to normalize relations with Israel in the near term, largely due to sustained political sensitivities around the war in Gaza.

Security dynamics further help explain the timing. As Israel emerges from a multifront war in which it has significantly degraded Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iranian assets in Syria, one front remains unresolved: the Houthis in Yemen. Despite extensive US and Israeli military action, including more than 1,100 US strikes and repeated Israeli operations, the Iranian-backed group continues to strike Israel and disrupt international shipping in the Red Sea, exposing enduring intelligence and operational constraints for both Washington and Jerusalem.

In this context, Somaliland’s geography takes on heightened relevance. Located across from Yemen near the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint, Somaliland offers a stable platform for intelligence cooperation, maritime monitoring, and contingency planning against a shared Houthi threat that neither Israel nor the United States has been able to decisively neutralize. The recognition, therefore, is not merely diplomatic; it reflects a recalibration toward long-term Israeli positioning in a theater where the conflict is not over.

Washington’s calculus

Trump responded to Israel’s recognition by making clear that Washington is not prepared to follow Jerusalem’s lead, reiterating that the matter remains under review. This caution comes despite growing bipartisan pressure in Congress toward recognition. In August, Republican Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) publicly urged the administration to consider recognition, framing Somaliland as a reliable security partner and a strategically aligned actor in the region. At the time, Trump acknowledged that the administration was “looking into” the question of recognition, signaling openness without committing to a policy shift.

The hesitation reflects competing strategic calculations. On one hand, US defense planners have long recognized Somaliland’s value. Senior US Africa Command officials have recently visited Hargeisa, and Somaliland has reportedly offered military basing that could enhance US capabilities to counter Houthi maritime disruption and limit Chinese influence along the Horn of Africa. On the other hand, formal recognition carries diplomatic costs. A unilateral shift risks undermining US relations and counterterrorism coordination with Somalia’s federal government while also straining ties with regional partners.

Therefore, Washington will continue to face pressure from Mogadishu and the AU to preserve the status quo. Still, the strategic consequences of Israel’s move, combined with US interests in the region, make eventual US recognition increasingly plausible.

Abu Dhabi’s balancing act

The UAE takes a more nuanced position. Abu Dhabi has been Somaliland’s most significant partner for nearly a decade, investing heavily through DP World’s development of Berbera port and maintaining a diplomatic liaison office in Hargeisa. These ties reflect a strategic interest that predates Israel’s recognition and position the UAE as a central economic and security actor in Somaliland.

Notably, while the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) issued a collective statement condemning Israel’s recognition, the UAE has not issued a standalone national condemnation. This distinction matters. Abu Dhabi’s posture signals its careful balancing of Somaliland engagement against broader Gulf dynamics, particularly Saudi Arabia’s firm response. Riyadh’s stance, aligned with Somalia and reinforced through the GCC and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, constrains the UAE’s room for maneuver, even as intra-Gulf competition in the Horn of Africa continues to shape Emirati strategy.

In practice, the UAE is unlikely to scale back its presence in Somaliland. Instead, Abu Dhabi is expected to deepen engagement quietly, continuing port and infrastructure projects while avoiding a high-profile diplomatic break. Formal recognition remains possible over time, but would likely be pursued in coordination with Washington and in consultation with the AU.

Turning recognition into strategy

With Israel and Somaliland now formal partners, the priority should be to consolidate this diplomatic opening without inflaming regional tensions. What follows should be guided by coordination, restraint, and sequencing, particularly with the United States.

For Israel, close coordination with Washington is essential. Acting in parallel with the United States, rather than ahead of it, will reduce friction with regional partners and avoid working at cross purposes. At the same time, Israel should quietly engage key Arab and African partners, including the UAE, Ethiopia, and Kenya, to explain its move, encourage pragmatic cooperation, and mitigate long-term fallout.

Israel should prioritize a phased rollout of cooperation with Somaliland. Rushing into highly visible steps, such as military facilities or overt security deployments, risks provoking backlash from Somalia and its allies. In the near term, Israel would be better served by avoiding provocations and emphasizing civilian and developmental cooperation, signaling good faith and framing recognition as stabilizing rather than militarizing. Security cooperation, while clearly part of Israel’s calculus, should initially remain low-profile, focused on intelligence-sharing and counterterrorism rather than overt operations.

Finally, Israel should embed its engagement with Somaliland within a multilateral framework. Coordinating security and economic initiatives with the United States and the UAE, leveraging the UAE’s established military and logistical presence in Somaliland and existing US Africa Command infrastructure, would anchor cooperation within broader regional architectures, enhancing legitimacy and durability.

The United States, even if not prepared to recognize Somaliland at this stage, remains central to shaping outcomes through its regional security presence and diplomatic influence on both African and Arab actors. The Trump administration has stated that the issue remains under review; this window should be used to conduct a structured interagency assessment of US policy toward Somaliland and its implications for Red Sea security, counterterrorism, and regional diplomacy.

Short of recognition, Washington can deepen engagement incrementally. Options include upgrading its diplomatic presence in Hargeisa to a liaison office, expanding security cooperation and training, and increasing investment; steps that advance US interests while preserving strategic flexibility.

At the same time, Washington should leverage its influence with Mogadishu to discourage escalation with Somaliland. A US-facilitated confidence-building process, building on this administration’s successful mediation track record, could help preserve space for dialogue.

Ultimately, Israel’s unprecedented recognition of Somaliland reflects confidence in a stable partner and a belief that engagement can strengthen security in the Red Sea. If implemented in alignment with Washington, this move has the potential to reshape regional dynamics beyond the Horn of Africa.

Amit Yarom is a graduate student at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is a foreign policy researcher, specializing in the Arabian Gulf.

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As of January 13, the Human Rights News Agency, a US-based human rights group, estimated that the death toll has climbed above two thousand since the start of the protests on December 28 last year. This is while the Iranian government, as it has done previously, enacted a complete internet blackout, where the entire nation continues to remain under the world’s largest digital prison.

“I saw snipers in our neighborhood—in all these years I’ve never seen such scenes,” said Sahar, a doctoral student in the Saadat Abad neighborhood in Tehran, in a brief phone conversation via Starlink satellite connection.

Her voice was more distraught than in our previous conversations earlier in the week. She also explained how, since Saturday, fewer people have been going on the streets. “At first, there were families, old, young, but now everyone’s terrified, given the bloodbath.”

So far, Tehran’s crackdown on the demonstrations appears to have turned into a bloodbath, in which the only victims appear to be ordinary Iranian people—those who for long have been paying the price of the brutality of the Islamic regime, topped with the global isolation resulting from decades of sanctions and pressure imposed by the United States and its allies.

Against this backdrop, US President Donald Trump may have a real opportunity to be an effective dealmaker with Iran. However, if he is serious about a durable, win-win outcome for both the United States and Iranians, there is only one asset worth betting on: the Iranian people.

Today, Iranian society is more unified against the Islamic Republic than at any point since 1979. Nearly three weeks into the latest nationwide protests, this time ignited not by a single spark but by the country’s wider economic freefall, Iranians have taken to the streets in extraordinary numbers.

Speaking shortly before the regime’s blackout began, Sepideh, an Iranian journalist who has been arrested multiple times and isn’t using her last name for security concerns, explained how she believes Iran is at one of the “most dangerous junctures” in its modern history.

“There is zero possibility of reform within this regime,” she told me. “But history also shows that the [United States], the UK, and Israel don’t prioritize the Iranian people either—only their own interests. This is what makes me afraid of what’s coming.”

Asked about Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last monarch, she says with a deep sigh that “he has some supporters because there is no strong domestic opposition, as those voices have been crushed domestically over the years. But I struggle to believe in someone backed by foreign powers, tied to monarchy, and unable to form a coalition.”

Some others express a more fatalistic openness, including Sahar, who—prior to the internet blackout—told me how many Iranians “believe anything after this regime will be better. We want a complete separation of religion and state. This deck of cards needs to be reshuffled.”

These voices capture the nuances within the Iranian society today—united in its rejection of the Islamic Republic, deeply wary of foreign agendas, and desperate to reclaim agency over their own future.

For the United States, meaningful support for the Iranian people requires resisting the impulse to frame their uprising through the language of takeover or intervention, and instead prioritizing concrete protections for civilians in light of the brutal repression inside Iran. This means keeping Iran connected to the world, shielding protesters and journalists from digital isolation, and ensuring that accountability efforts target perpetrators of violence rather than a population already trapped between domestic repression and coercion from abroad.

Furthermore, it means treating internet access as humanitarian aid—funding circumvention support, satellite connectivity where feasible, and protection for independent journalists. This can help to ensure that the regime cannot repeatedly convert blackouts into a weapon of mass impunity.

An open, empowered Iranian civil society would not be a liability to US interests; it would be one of Washington’s greatest assets.

If the goal is to empower Iranians rather than freeze them into permanent victimhood, economic engagement must run alongside pressure on the state. This does not mean enriching the regime or reopening a flood-gate of funds to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-backed entities. Rather, it means expanding lawful, carefully assessed, people-to-people commerce that bypasses state hijacking and manipulation.

This includes enabling small and medium-sized Iranian businesses, freelancers, and entrepreneurs to access global markets; lifting travel bans for Iranian students, artists, medics, scientists and civil society members while banning entry to government-affiliated individuals; widening licenses that allow US and European firms to provide cloud services, payment rails, logistics support, and professional tools directly to Iranian users; and supporting diaspora-led investment vehicles that fund Iranian startups, cooperatives, and cultural industries without routing capital through regime-controlled entities. Such engagement gives Iranians income, skills, and stake—converting isolation into leverage and dignity rather than dependency.

Despite decades of sanctions, Iran has cultivated one of the most educated populations in the region and a resilient tech ecosystem that mirrors Silicon Valley’s platforms under far harsher conditions. Iranian youth have built local equivalents of Amazon, Uber, YouTube, and DoorDash with little capital and almost no global access. With the right engagement, Iran could generate trillions in long-term value—benefiting not only Iranians but also US businesses and consumers. A reintegrated Iran, charged by its people, would open a new frontier in trade, education, technology, and culture.

Meanwhile, none of this negates Iran’s military capacity. After more than four decades of isolation, Iran recently went head-to-head with the world’s most powerful militaries. Even Israeli defense analysts were surprised by some of its capabilities—proof that such sophistication does not emerge from a broken society. Beneath the Islamic regime’s aggression lies decades of scientific and technological investment made by the Iranian people themselves, who—if empowered and allowed self-determination—could become Washington’s strongest allies in the region.

Trump’s rhetoric amplifies the contradictions Iranians already live with. His warnings to Tehran and expressions of solidarity have landed with equal parts validation and fear. For some protesters, his words signal that their struggle is finally seen as entwined with an uncertainty of what’s to come. For others, Washington’s bombast risks giving the regime a pretext to paint the Iranian people’s unified dissent as foreign-engineered. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s accusations that protesters act “to please Trump” reveal just how threatening even rhetorical pressure can be to a regime terrified of losing control—one that’s now at its weakest point than ever before.

Iranians understand the stakes. They have watched Russia and China extract economic leverage from their isolation, and they fear becoming yet another bargaining chip. As Behzad, an Iranian journalist who is going by his first name for security purposes, told me, “everyone wants a piece of Iran. Sometimes I wish we lived in a poorer, smaller country; so at least we could live freely—far from domestic corruption and foreign interference.”

Still, across class, gender, and belief, Iranians remain united in one demand: the dismantling of the current regime. They do not ask the United States for bombs or saviors. They ask for surgical, effective, and thought-through support that enables them to reclaim their own agency in the absence of the current regime.

If Trump is serious about peace, stability, and a lasting legacy, the path forward does not run through air strikes or transactional deals with a failing theocracy. It runs through the Iranian people who, if given the chance, could build one of the world’s most dynamic democracies and one of Washington’s most valuable partners.

Tara Kangarlou is an award-winning global affairs journalist, author, and humanitarian who has worked with news outlets such as NBC, CNN, CNN International, and Al Jazeera America. She is also the author of the bestselling book The Heartbeat of Iran, the founder of nonprofit Art of Hope, and an adjunct professor at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, teaching on humanized storytelling and journalism.

The post Voices from Iran: As rejection of government reaches all-time high, Iranians also wary of foreign intervention appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Venezuela needs to attract foreign investment to revive its economy and oil production. To do that, it needs to reduce its debt service costs.
• The IMF can help Venezuela address its debt overhang; a recently passed reform could allow the institution to provide support even if China were to block or delay a debt restructuring.
• The Trump administration can help support the IMF’s efforts to stabilize Venezuela, which should include a speedy restructuring that provides for a comparable treatment of different creditor classes.

WASHINGTON—Without US support, Venezuela’s post-Maduro government stands little chance of stabilizing its shattered economy. The United States is the main customer for Venezuela’s oil, US creditors hold the bulk of Venezuela’s debt, most bonds were issued under New York state law, and the White House has strong political influence over the new government. But even with US support, an economic recovery will be difficult. It’s too early, for example, to tell whether the United States has sufficient levers to initiate a successful recovery in Venezuela, and it’s unclear whether the government in Caracas is capable and willing to do what’s necessary to make a recovery stick. 

What’s needed first is clear, however. Economic stabilization requires a reduction of Venezuela’s massive debt obligations, which likely exceed $150 billion and are owed to a tangled web of bondholders, arbitration claimants, Russia, and—most problematically—China. Venezuela’s debt is where the Trump administration should start, and it should do so while working with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A debt crisis of staggering proportions

Venezuela’s external debt represents roughly 180–200 percent of its gross domestic product, making it one of the world’s largest unresolved sovereign defaults. The $60 billion in defaulted bonds once issued by the government and the state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, SA have ballooned past $100 billion as a result of accumulated interest. International arbitration awards from companies expropriated by the Chávez regime add another $20 billion. And among other creditors, China holds at least $10 billion in bilateral debt, collateralized by oil shipments that give Beijing secured creditor status and operational leverage over Venezuela’s petroleum sector.

Without addressing this debt overhang, Venezuela will find it difficult to attract the massive foreign investment needed to revive its oil production. There are differing assessments of what Venezuela can realistically service while rebuilding its economy, but substantial debt reductions will be necessary. Citigroup, for example, estimates that restoring debt sustainability requires principal haircuts of at least 50 percent. Other estimates suggest even deeper reductions—down to a 30 percent recovery value—to avoid a cycle of repeated defaults that would cause permanent economic dysfunction.

Why the IMF matters

It has been encouraging to see US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent engage with IMF and World Bank leadership to discuss Venezuela’s economic reconstruction. Given the IMF’s expertise in resolving complicated debt situations and restoring macroeconomic stability, support by the Bretton Woods institutions will be critical.

At the same time, the IMF must be careful to preserve its independence and its legitimacy. Especially in cases of sovereign arrears, the fund needs to be seen as an impartial arbiter that adheres to its legal mandate and its rules-based framework. For example, the decision to recognize a new government in Caracas as a legitimate counterpart—which is necessary for Venezuela to negotiate access to the IMF’s financial resources—is up to the IMF’s executive board and to it alone.

What follows assumes that this prerequisite is met and that the IMF can embark on what is likely to be an extraordinarily complex restructuring effort. The fund has not conducted an economic assessment of Venezuela since late 2004, representing a twenty-one-year gap in formal relations. Moreover, the capacity of the government and central bank to implement necessary policies will need to be demonstrated, and statistical processes will likely have to be substantially rebuilt.

Nevertheless, an IMF program offers something no bilateral arrangement can provide: a multilateral framework that legitimizes deep debt restructuring and provides Venezuela with the financing and technical assistance to implement reforms. While designing a program that gives confidence that future claims on Venezuela will be honored, the IMF can bring credibility to debt sustainability analyses, work closely with diverse creditor groups, and impose program conditionality that prevents preferential treatment of powerful creditors, particularly China.

Who gets paid first?

In this regard, it is important to recognize that the large investment and economic needs of Venezuela should take precedence over short-term payouts to official or private creditors. Neither the IMF nor other creditors will be able to provide fresh funds without being assured that Venezuela has the capacity to repay such loans.

This means that creditors will likely need to agree to substantial deferments on interest and principal repayments. It will take time for creditor committees to form, however, and the negotiations will need to identify different options that ensure broad compatibility of treatment, including oil‑linked debt instruments and bond exchanges with different coupons and maturities.

The Trump administration will play an important role in this process. The administration’s stated goal of kickstarting Venezuela’s oil industry is dependent on a speedy debt resolution, which it can facilitate, for example, through executive orders that protect Venezuelan assets from litigating creditors. At the same time, the administration should avoid the impression that it uses its policy leverage and legal powers to help US creditors without ensuring comparable terms for foreign creditors, whether private or official.

The latter principle will be important for the position of China. Under traditional IMF rules, Beijing could until recently effectively veto a Venezuelan program by refusing to provide upfront restructuring commitments and, instead, engaging in multiyear negotiations that would leave the country in limbo while economic conditions deteriorate further. In this scenario, China would retain its secured position through oil-for-loan agreements while Venezuela remained shut out of multilateral support.

The strategic opening: Lending into Official Arrears

Fortunately, the IMF reformed its Lending into Official Arrears (LIOA) policy in April 2024 specifically to address coordination problems with large creditors in debt restructurings. The new mechanism allows the IMF to lend even as official bilateral creditors refuse to commit to restructuring—provided that the fund implements enhanced safeguards.

These safeguards are powerful: phased disbursements, program conditionality prohibiting preferential creditor payments, and quarterly reviews monitoring restructuring progress. Most importantly, once an IMF program is operational, Venezuela would be contractually bound not to provide official holdout creditors better treatment than bondholders and other creditors receive. The oil-for-loan arrangements that currently give Beijing privileged access to Venezuelan revenues would be explicitly prohibited under program terms.

As a result, China would have to choose between two options: It could participate constructively in restructuring on terms comparable to other creditors, or it could watch from the sidelines while Venezuela receives IMF support, stabilizes its economy, and implements rules preventing Chinese preferential treatment.

Should it be necessary to enact the new policy, Venezuela’s case would resonate well beyond the country itself. China is now the world’s largest bilateral creditor, but recent debt restructurings in Zambia, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, and Ghana faced lengthy delays, with months or years passing from staff-level IMF agreement to financing assurances. The LIOA reforms were designed precisely to give the IMF leverage in such situations. Venezuela would become the highest-profile test yet of whether these reforms achieve their intended purpose.

Charting a path forward

The Trump administration’s best path forward is to pursue a sequenced strategy to achieve broad international buy-in while minimizing the potential for Chinese obstruction. To do this, the administration should:

First, clarify government recognition and lift sanctions. Acting President Delcy Rodríguez governs under a ninety-day mandate that lacks European Union recognition. Washington should work with other countries to establish a transitional framework—likely requiring elections—that provides the legitimacy necessary for IMF engagement.

Second, unlock Venezuela’s frozen special drawing rights (SDRs). The approximately five billion dollars in SDRs are Venezuela’s own reserves, not new lending. Releasing them provides immediate liquidity for stabilization and humanitarian assistance while IMF program negotiations proceed. If properly executed under international supervision, this would demonstrate US commitment to Venezuela’s economic recovery rather than merely extracting oil resources.

Third, coordinate creditor groups early. Representing major bondholders, the Venezuela Creditor Committee has already expressed willingness to negotiate a restructuring. The administration should facilitate such discussions to quickly establish realistic recovery expectations, including by discouraging holdout creditors.

Fourth, encourage Venezuela to formally request Chinese participation in restructuring on terms comparable to other creditors. When it does this, Caracas should give Beijing a four-week window to respond, as required under IMF policies. If China provides constructive commitments, then these should be incorporated into the program framework. But if China holds out, then the United States should direct its IMF executive director to support enhanced safeguards under the IMF’s LIOA policy, proceeding with program approval despite Chinese resistance.

Fifth, design robust program conditionality. Besides identifying appropriate macroeconomic policies, along with governance and other structural reforms, the IMF program should include strict caps on debt service payments to ensure comparability of treatment, prohibition of secured lending arrangements such as oil-for-loans, and transparent reporting on all creditor interactions. These safeguards would protect both IMF resources and the integrity of the restructuring process.

The strategic imperative

The Trump administration’s Venezuela intervention raised profound questions about US power projection in the post–Cold War era. Answering those questions requires more than military force—it requires strategic sophistication in wielding economic and institutional tools. An IMF program deploying the new LIOA mechanisms, if necessary, to ensure China’s active participation while delivering consensual and sustainable debt relief would offer precisely that opportunity. The question is whether Washington possesses the diplomatic patience and multilateral discipline to see it through.

The post How the IMF can help Venezuela stabilize its economy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

• Defining the terms of the debate
• Europe’s missing Silicon Valley
• Geopolitics and the rise of tech sovereignty
• Trump actions spur renewed calls for greater independence
• Key issues:
  • Snowden’s revelations and the ‘kill switch’
  • US law enforcement access to data on European servers
  • The US u-turn on data flows
  • A single European data market
  • EU content moderation and free speech
  • Cybersecurity and cloud services
• Looking ahead: Transatlantic tensions will persist
• Seven recommendations for Brussels and Washington

Introduction

Over the past several years, the concept of digital sovereignty has become ever more central to European notions of competitiveness and economic resilience. Formerly a niche idea within the digital policy community, it has now gone mainstream with major European leaders, from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to former head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi, calling for the European Union to achieve digital sovereignty.¹ It has also become integral to European debates about technological sovereignty and strategic autonomy, and even to trade policy. And as digital sovereignty has become more prominent in European discussions, it has shifted from being a vague aspiration to a concept that EU policymakers increasingly seek to put into operation—raising the possibility of future EU restrictions on procurement from companies outside Europe, as well as other regulatory measures.

Yet, despite its growing centrality in European digital debates, digital sovereignty still does not have a clear definition.² At times, it seems to have been encompassed by the broader term of tech sovereignty, which reflects the EU’s desire to boost its industrial capabilities—not only in the digital space, but also in renewables and other green and future technologies. European policymakers also regularly refer to data sovereignty and cloud sovereignty, which can be seen as focused on particular aspects of digital sovereignty.

What all these definitions share, however, is the notion that Europe and its economy should be less dependent on others and more capable of protecting its own interests, including its interests in the digital sphere. That leads to the key unresolved questions at the heart of digital sovereignty. Does sovereignty require an economic approach that is exclusively European or, at minimum, favors European companies? Is ownership or effective control over key companies important, or is a risk-based system more appropriate? Is it desirable to limit sovereign requirements to certain sectors of the economy? Can Europe achieve a measure of sovereignty as part of a common enterprise among international partners? And if the partnership model is acceptable, who are the partners?

The transatlantic relationship is, in turn, entangled with Europe’s internal debate about digital sovereignty. Until recently, this has been an evenly divided contest, with some European experts calling for Europe to strategically decouple from the dominance of US companies, while others—including most member-state governments—have noted the lack of local alternatives and hesitated to discriminate against US and other non-EU companies.

But the Trump administration’s initial open hostility to the EU and continuing general unpredictability have caused even the most transatlantic of EU leaders to question the reliability of the United States. The July 2025 US-EU trade deal provided some temporary clarity and predictability in transatlantic commercial relations, although digital issues were addressed in only limited ways. President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post a few weeks later, threatening additional tariffs on countries with “Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets regulations [that] are all designed to harm, or discriminate against American Technology,” was immediately criticized by the European Commission, France, Germany, and others as a violation of Europe’s sovereignty.³ Nevertheless, during a November 2025 visit to Brussels, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick directly linked the removal of EU digital regulation with a potential US-EU agreement on steel and aluminum tariffs.⁴

Given Trump’s close connections with leading tech executives, the US administration’s combative posture toward European tech regulation is likely to continue being a point of transatlantic friction. Whether a continued focus by the Trump administration on Europe’s digital rules will create an even stronger push in Europe for an exclusive form of digital sovereignty is not yet evident. What is clear is that without some guidelines, such as those offered in the conclusions to this report, the European Union and United States might find that their differences regarding digital sovereignty and digital rules make creating and maintaining an open transatlantic digital marketplace much more challenging.

Defining the terms of the debate

One reason why digital sovereignty has become an increasingly inflammatory label across the Atlantic is that the lack of a clear definition allows everyone to define it in ways that support their own arguments. Its rise has also coincided with the European embrace of strategic autonomy in foreign and security policy—a notion that has predictably ruffled some US feathers, especially in the defense community. Further confusion has developed as similar terms (i.e., tech sovereignty, cloud sovereignty) have emerged in related areas. To introduce some clarity into this discussion, it can be useful to categorize these different notions.

• Strategic autonomy: First arising in the context of foreign and security policy, strategic autonomy refers primarily to Europe developing defense and foreign policy capabilities that would allow the EU to play a more independent geopolitical role. Aside from a few defense funding efforts, the idea has not yet inspired major legislative initiatives. To indicate that partnership and autonomy were not contradictory, the EU later adopted the related idea of open strategic autonomy in trade policy. More recently, the EU has begun to embrace the concept of regulatory autonomy—the idea that “the Union’s values, interests, and regulatory autonomy underpin EU action, including in the digital sphere.”⁵ In these notions, autonomy is a more ambiguous and flexible concept than sovereignty, which implies a legal order backed by legislative initiatives.
• Technological sovereignty: While the first European Commission headed by von der Leyen focused largely on legislation related to the online world, the importance of technologies—and Europe’s reliance on Chinese and US technologies—had come to the fore by the end of that mandate. This was not only about the digital world, but crucially about the European Green Deal. While the commission argued that carbon reduction would be key to the future EU economy, it became woefully clear that Europe remained dependent on others for many essential technologies: solar panels, wind turbines, semiconductors, electric vehicle batteries, etc.
  
  Thus, in the second von der Leyen commission, the position of executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy was created to oversee the development of EU capabilities to support the digital agenda. Others in the commission, including Executive Vice Presidents Teresa Ribera and Stéphane Séjourné, were tasked with strengthening EU technological capabilities across the Green Deal and industrial strategy generally. In June 2025, a key European Parliament committee defined tech sovereignty as “the ability to build capacity, resilience and security by reducing strategic dependencies, preventing reliance on foreign actors and single service providers, and safeguarding critical technologies and infrastructure.”⁶ Unlike strategic autonomy, however, tech sovereignty underlies significant legislative initiatives, from the Net Zero Industry Act and the Critical Raw Materials Act to the Public Procurement Directives. It also entails a strong focus on industrial policy, including state aid, competition policy, and other means of boosting key tech-related industries.
• Digital sovereignty: While often used interchangeably with tech sovereignty, digital sovereignty focuses primarily on the online world. Legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Digital Services Act (DSA), Digital Markets Act (DMA), and Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA) have sought to establish a comprehensive system of governance for the online world, especially by regulating corporate behavior vis-à-vis individual or business users. With the exception of semiconductors and the EU Chips Act, much less attention has been paid to the technologies that enable the online world. However, recent proposals for a Eurostack—a European capacity to provide all elements of digital infrastructure, from cables to cloud—are indications of growing European concern about both governance and technologies.⁷

• Data sovereignty: This subset of digital sovereignty—one of the earliest variants—initially focused primarily on protection of personal data under the GDPR. However, with the Data Act and other initiatives, increased attention is now paid to the re-use of industrial data that are either sensitive or commercially valuable, and to safeguarding the capacity of EU businesses and governments to exploit data generated in Europe.
• Cloud sovereignty: The proliferation of data requires enhanced storage capabilities and increased focus on cloud storage and the security of data stored in the cloud. An increasingly sharp debate has centered on whether Europeans’ data should be stored exclusively within the EU, or whether they can be stored outside the EU by non-EU providers considered trustworthy and secure. This discussion has accelerated with the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and its enormous requirements for cloud services and data centers. Cloud sovereignty also poses questions about how Europeans’ data can be accessed by foreign law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
• Sovereignty over speech: Users of online services today confront a wide array of illegal or undesirable content, from child sexual abuse material to advertisements for illegal products to political disinformation. EU efforts to regulate platforms’ responsibility for illegal content and systemic risks have recently sparked criticism from the Trump administration, which regards aspects of these efforts as violations of free speech.⁸ Who has the right to determine allowable speech available online in a jurisdiction other than where it was produced?
• Cybersecurity: Given the ever-growing number of cyberattacks, both in Europe and globally, the protection of the online world has become a growing element in digital sovereignty. In the past, cybersecurity had not been central to the debate about digital sovereignty, but since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 there has been a rapidly growing understanding that resilience against such attacks is an essential part of sovereignty. Europe in particular has faced numerous attacks from Russia and related online actors. The EU effort to establish standards for cybersecurity has already led to US-EU tensions, but there will likely be even more attention paid to cyber-proofing as the EU operationalizes its concept of sovereignty.

As part of the growing effort to operationalize digital sovereignty, both EU institutions and member states have initiated efforts to elaborate the meaning of this elusive concept. The European Council, in formal conclusions to its October 23 meeting, declared, “It is crucial to advance Europe’s digital transformation, reinforce its sovereignty, and strengthen its own open digital ecosystem,” adding that “this requires reinforced international partnerships and close collaboration with trusted partner countries.”⁹

On November 18, 2025, the French and German governments convened a Summit on European Digital Sovereignty. The summit identified several areas for building digital sovereignty, including AI, data, and public infrastructure, and launched a joint task force on European digital sovereignty to report in 2026.¹⁰ Its final declaration underscored the EU member states’ “shared ambition to strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty in an open manner as a cornerstone of our economic resilience, social prosperity, competitiveness and security.”¹¹

The European Commission, for its part, issued a Cloud Sovereignty Framework in September 2025 that identifies eight types of sovereignty-related objectives to be considered in the government procurement context. In a stab at precision, the framework encourages contracting authorities to assign each objective a sovereignty effective assurance level (SEAL). The results of that assessment should provide a mathematically derived sovereignty score.¹² But as EU discussions on this topic progress, there are still key differences among the member states about the choice between strict autonomy or international partnerships, and whether the model should be based on exclusive EU control or on risk management.

Europe’s missing Silicon Valley

While many non-European observers would say that the EU’s regulatory power already gives it significant influence domestically and externally, the EU’s sovereignty in the European digital arena is vulnerable at best. Despite its role as a regulatory superpower, Europe finds itself reliant on non-EU companies for many essential elements of the digital world. A European Parliament report estimates that “the EU relies on non-EU countries for over 80% of digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property.”¹³ This perception of dependency is at the heart of the EU push for digital sovereignty.

The EU has failed to develop a tech sector with either the vibrancy of Silicon Valley or the growing capabilities of China’s industry. In particular, Europe has not seen the emergence of world-leading new companies based on digital technologies. Indeed, while the US industry has created six companies with a market capitalization of €1 trillion or more, the EU has created none.¹⁴ In 2021, three US cloud companies supplied 65 percent of the EU cloud market, while EU-headquartered companies had less than 16 percent.¹⁵ As a consequence, European consumers and businesses must rely on non-EU companies—mostly US and some Chinese enterprises—for basic digital services. Initially, this largely applied to software, social media, search engines, and a wide array of shopping services. More recently, the importance of cloud, encryption, and AI, along with the prospective emergence of super-fast quantum computing, has made Europeans realize that this dependence on others has significant and potentially long-lasting effects on their own industries and economies, including those far beyond the tech sector. 

Of course, a few European companies are exceptions to these trends. Nokia and Ericsson were already leaders in the cables and fiber optics that are key to connectivity. They became even stronger in the market as concerns rose about the security of Chinese components. The Dutch company ASML has been a leader in the machines required to make the semiconductors that guide and manage so much of the digital world. SAP is the world’s largest vendor of enterprise resource planning software. But these European companies are not in the same league as their US equivalents in terms of market capitalization. For example, ASML has a market capitalization of $376 billion, while Nvidia is at $4.3 trillion and Microsoft is at $3.8 trillion.¹⁶

One consequence of Europe’s struggle in the digital marketplace has been the emergence of an EU-wide debate on competitiveness, as represented most prominently by the reports by former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta and former head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi.¹⁷ Draghi specifically underlined the importance of Europe’s failure to develop an innovative tech sector by noting the increasing productivity gap between the EU and the United States, with European labor productivity falling to 80 percent of US productivity. He concluded that this was mainly due to “Europe’s failure to capitalise on the first digital revolution led by the internet—both in terms of generating new tech companies and diffusing digital tech into the economy.”¹⁸

The competitiveness debate has also sought to identify the causes of Europe’s lack of digital champions. Europe has a vibrant startup community, as demonstrated by the growing role of venture capital.¹⁹ But many of these innovative enterprises end up moving to the United States or elsewhere, while others fail to commercialize entirely. The most popular rationale for this failure to scale—cited by US and European analysts, including Draghi—is overregulation.²⁰ Other suggested reasons include a chronic lack of indigenous capital, overly strict bankruptcy laws, and a culture that fears failure.²¹ Whatever the reason, Europe’s inability to provide the resources and capabilities for its innovative companies to become continental champions, let alone world leaders, means it must rely on companies from elsewhere.

This was already the case in 2018, when the GDPR—the first major piece of EU digital legislation—came into force. During the next five years of von der Leyen’s first term as commission president, the EU passed several other pieces of digital legislation, most notably the DSA, DMA, and AIA. These measures made progress in harmonizing diverse member-state laws, both existing and anticipated. But while EU leaders saw this body of legislation as protecting their citizens from the excesses of data collection and illegal social media content, many outside the EU, especially in the US tech community, viewed these laws as overly burdensome at best and discriminatory at worst. Some EU policymakers, such as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Andreas Schwab, early on were open about their desire to counter the dominance of US firms.²² Others, however, saw Europe as offering a positive alternative to the lightly regulated environment tech companies faced elsewhere. EU rules inevitably had the most impact on US companies, which provided the overwhelming majority of digital services in the EU market. Chinese companies also came to feel the impact of EU regulations as their market share grew over time, especially in shopping and social media.

Throughout this period of intense legislative activity, there were clear voices calling for greater digital sovereignty in Europe. The body of legislation passed in the first von der Leyen commission can certainly be viewed as an effort to place limits on the US companies that dominate Europe’s digital space—and as a way for Europe to regain some control, or sovereignty, over that market. But as competitiveness emerged as a top EU priority in 2023, the discussion about digital sovereignty became part of a much broader discussion about innovation and economic security.

Geopolitics and the rise of tech sovereignty

The earliest indication of a geopolitical element to EU digital sovereignty came during the first Trump administration, when the United States protested the use of Huawei components in European digital networks. Reluctantly at first, Europeans came to understand the risk of a Chinese capability to disrupt those networks and developed the EU Toolbox for 5G Security, a list of best practices released in January 2020. The toolbox identified states and state-backed actors as the most serious threats. It also set out criteria for identifying trusted versus untrusted vendors, including closeness to a foreign government, lack of democratic accountability in that government, lack of a data protection agreement with the EU, and ability of the third country to exercise pressure on the EU.²³

The toolbox was the first real effort to identify foreign companies and governments that might threaten Europe’s digital sovereignty and those that might not. There was clearly a focus on China and Chinese companies, as demonstrated by the criteria for vendors. But it should be noted that the toolbox is primarily voluntary guidance developed by the member states for themselves, with progress tracked by regular EU Commission reporting.

In 2019, the EU identified China as both an economic competitor and a “systemic rival,” but initially with little consequence, especially in terms of economic relations.²⁴ Over the next few years, the EU would increasingly focus on China and the dangers posed by its investments in the European economy, especially in critical European infrastructure. By March 2023, when von der Leyen called for de-risking Europe from China,²⁵ commission officials had identified a number of EU dependencies on China—including in critical raw materials, solar panels, and batteries—that had the power to disrupt European industry.²⁶ In June 2023, the commission reported that it considered Huawei and ZTE “materially higher risks” than other fifth-generation (5G) suppliers.²⁷

The EU also initiated a few measures to address those vulnerabilities: heightened screening of inward foreign investment, primarily at the member-state level; enactment of the European Chips Act, providing funding for advanced semiconductor manufacturing in Europe; adoption of the Critical Raw Materials Act, which established goals for EU production of key materials; and passage of the Net Zero Industry Act, which sought to build EU manufacturing capacity in clean technologies such as solar, batteries, and hydrogen. While these measures were not aimed only at China, concerns about that country’s ambitious global plans were a main motivation. Moreover, they had the effect of broadening the initially limited discussion of digital sovereignty beyond the realm of digital governance to include both digital and green technologies, resulting in a broader focus on technological sovereignty.

This European debate regarding the geopolitical dimensions of sovereignty—both digital and tech—intensified significantly following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Along with a focus on territorial security, as seen in the increased defense spending of most EU member states, the EU realized that it needed to address other vulnerabilities. Most urgently, the invasion led to a swift and drastic shift in Europe’s energy supply, as Russia went from providing 45 percent of Europe’s oil and gas in 2021 to 19 percent in 2024.²⁸ But the digital arena was also vulnerable: Russian cyberattacks and apparent sabotage against undersea cables demonstrated the dangers facing Europe’s digital infrastructure, while Russian-origin disinformation flooded European social media.

Perhaps the most important consequence of the Russian invasion, however, was the realization that Europe was vulnerable and that preserving its sovereignty—digital and otherwise—would require concrete actions. Many of the green technology initiatives mentioned above were still in the legislative process when the invasion began but moved to enactment by mid-2023 as the commission’s term began to close and as Europeans became even more conscious of those vulnerabilities. Competitiveness, resilience, and sovereignty became linked together in the concept of economic security as the EU sought to reduce its external dependencies, especially on Russia and China.

By the end of 2024, the tech sovereignty impulse in Europe had become a key policy priority, as demonstrated by the appointment of Henna Virkkunen to the new position of European Commission executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy. But before the second von der Leyen commission could get its program under way—or make progress in implementing the Draghi report—Trump’s reelection as US president pushed the impulse toward European digital sovereignty into hyperdrive.

Trump actions spur renewed calls for greater independence

European suspicions about US intentions and capabilities in the digital world have existed since 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed the extent of US National Security Agency interception of Europeans’ communications. Nevertheless, the United States and EU enjoyed relatively open trade in digital services. The advent of the second Trump administration, however, has energized the transatlantic debate over digital sovereignty. While Trump’s focus during the 2024 campaign was on the EU’s trade in goods surplus with the United States, once back in office he frequently criticized the EU’s digital regulations as a whole, despite the US surplus in services trade driven by the success of US tech companies.

Only a month after Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, the White House issued a memorandum on “Defending American Companies and Innovators from Overseas Extortion and Unfair Fines and Penalties,” calling for tariffs and other responses in cases “where a foreign government, through its tax or regulatory structure, imposes a fine, penalty, tax, or other burden that is discriminatory, disproportionate, or designed to transfer significant funds or intellectual property.”²⁹ The memo specifically highlighted “regulations imposed on United States companies by foreign governments that could inhibit the growth or intended operation of United States companies.”³⁰ It also called for the US trade representative to determine whether to renew Section 301 investigations of several digital service taxes (DSTs), including those adopted in France, Austria, Italy, and Spain. The fact sheet accompanying the memo made clear that the target was the European Union and specifically “regulations that dictate how American companies interact with consumers in the European Union, like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, will face scrutiny from the Administration.”³¹

Such an aggressive approach brought the issue of digital sovereignty to the fore, as it seemed to disregard the EU’s right to regulate its own market. As the United States and EU pursued a trade agreement, there were conflicting reports as to whether the DSA and DMA (as well as other EU regulations) were on the negotiating table.³² In the end, the joint statement published on August 21, 2025, did not mention either regulation or the DSTs adopted by several EU member states.

But the joint statement was hardly the last word. On August 25, Trump posted on Truth Social: “As the President of the United States, I will stand up to Countries that attack our incredible American Tech Companies. Digital Taxes, Digital Services Legislation, and Digital Markets Regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American Technology.”³³ Meanwhile von der Leyen, in her September 2025 State of the Union speech, defended the trade deal but also stated: “Whether on environmental or digital regulation, we set our own standards. We set our own regulations. Europe will always decide for itself.”³⁴

The Trump administration has continued criticizing EU digital regulation. For example, on December 16, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the EU had “persisted in a continuing course of discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives against U.S. service providers,” and suggested that the United States would retaliate.³⁵ It would be relatively easy for the administration to renew the Section 301 investigations of DSTs. The US government might also look for a mechanism to counter the impact of the DSA and DMA, especially if US companies are fined significantly under those laws. On April 23, 2025, the European Commission fined Apple and Meta €500 million and €200 million, respectively, for noncompliance with the DMA.³⁶ In September, Google was fined €2.95 billion for “distorting competition in the advertising technology industry,” although this case was pursued under the European Commission’s long-time competition authorities rather than under the DMA.³⁷

The commission is also investigating X as well as Meta’s Facebook and Instagram for alleged violations of the DSA, along with separate probes of the Chinese firms AliExpress, Temu, and Tiktok, and several European-based online pornography platforms. On December 5, 2025, the Commission fined X €120 million under the DSA for issues related to its blue checkmarks and advertising repository.³⁸ Beyond these specific cases, the growing criticism of Europe from the US executive branch and parts of Congress, which claim it is censoring “free speech,” is an indication that an influential segment of the Republican Party in the United States will continue to push for action against European efforts to moderate digital content. The EU has been a key target, as has the United Kingdom with its Online Safety Act.

At the same time, the European Commission has embarked on a process of simplifying some regulations as part of an effort to make the EU economy more competitive. A digital omnibus—a legislative package designed to amend several regulations across a sector simultaneously—was presented on November 19, 2025.³⁹ As with other commission proposals for simplifying regulations, the digital omnibus focuses on reducing requirements for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), along with streamlining reporting in cases of cybersecurity incidents. It also proposes delaying implementation of AIA requirements for high-risk systems until relevant guidance has been issued and calls for “targeted amendments” to the GDPR to boost innovation, including that related to AI training.⁴⁰ While simplification is likely to reduce the regulatory burden on tech companies in Europe—including large US companies—it has not yet addressed issues related to digital sovereignty.

Apart from potential revisions to existing legislation, the commission plans to move forward on two tracks. First, the second von der Leyen commission anticipates deploying more financial resources to support research on emerging technologies such as AI and quantum. Early in 2025, von der Leyen announced InvestAI, an initiative to raise €200 billion in investment capital.⁴¹ The EU also plans, through the 2025 EU Startup and ScaleUp Strategy, to support startups in their search for the funding that will allow them to grow.⁴² While these funds should be viewed with some caution—it is unclear whether sufficient private funds will join this public-private effort—they demonstrate the EU’s commitment to building its own capabilities.

Second, the commission has made clear that it will continue to pursue new rules governing activities and companies in the digital arena. The Financial Data Access (FiDA) regulation, now in the final stage of negotiations, is intended to allow greater sharing of financial data among financial institutions in order to develop new digital financial products for consumers. European legacy banks have launched an effort to exclude those companies designated as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act from participation in FiDA; this effort will primarily affect US tech companies.⁴³

The EU Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) will attempt to address the EU’s shortcomings in cloud and AI capacity by encouraging the permitting of new data centers and other infrastructure, and by providing greater computational capacity and resources to startups, especially those focused on AI. But it is also expected to establish EU-wide eligibility requirements for cloud service providers, along with harmonized procurement processes, in ways that could restrict participation by non-EU companies. It is not clear yet whether CADA will address concerns through risk-based assurance models or ownership restrictions. It has reportedly been delayed until the first quarter of 2026 as the commission considers the concept of European effective control as a way of supporting EU digital sovereignty.⁴⁴

The Digital Fairness Act, expected to be introduced in mid-2026, will be the EU’s flagship legislation for business-to-consumer relations and will address protection of minors online, transparent online pricing, the abuses of manipulative and addictive design, and marketing by influencers—all of which are likely to be of significant interest to US platforms. Other initiatives expected to be launched in the next eighteen months include the ICT Supply Chain Toolbox, the Quantum Europe Strategy, and the Digital Networks Act. Finally, the European Data Union Strategy, released on November 19 along with the digital omnibus, establishes the ambition of “safeguarding the EU’s data sovereignty through a strategic international data policy.”⁴⁵ It aims to do this by “making fair conditions for data access and cross-border transfer . . . protecting sensitive EU non-personal data . . . and deepening cooperation with trusted partners.”⁴⁶ While a strategy is not a legislative document, we can expect that it will help guide EU policy on international data flows.

The European Parliament is also active in the digital sovereignty debate. MEP Axel Voss, one of the parliament’s leaders on these issues, wrote in an October 2025 post on LinkedIn: “We need immediate decisions to regain a digitally competitive and sovereign EU. Eurostack, deregulation, venture capital, chips, energy, access to quality data and a flourishing environment for Start Ups and creators are crucial for our sovereignty.⁴⁷ He proposes a number of measures, from digital special economic zones to using only EU programs within EU institutions to integrating “buy and deploy European tech” in public procurement.⁴⁸

These initiatives will undoubtedly continue to have an impact on the transatlantic relationship, as they will affect the major actors in the market, most of them American. Even with the best of intentions—and no ambition to exclude those companies—EU adoption and implementation of such rules will likely raise questions about the openness of its future market and the participation of non-EU firms.

The next section explores how the United States and EU have wrestled with the competing pressures of sovereignty and open markets, as presented by a set of key issues relating to government access to data.

Snowden’s relevations and the ‘kill switch‘

More than a decade has passed since the Snowden revelations, but the topic continues to shadow transatlantic digital relations. Many in Europe hailed Snowden as a hero for revealing Europe’s vulnerability to US signals intelligence, and the European Parliament invited him to appear and speak at a plenary meeting. The Obama administration, which charged Snowden under the Espionage Act, objected vehemently to the invitation and, in the end, Snowden addressed the parliament only by video link.⁴⁹ Now, however, US domestic sentiment regarding Snowden’s actions has begun to shift, at least in Republican circles, as several of Trump’s advisers have called for him to be pardoned.⁵⁰

Snowden’s disclosures started a chain of legal proceedings in Europe that generated substantial uncertainty among companies about the legality of their indispensable transfers of personal data to the United States. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) twice invalidated EU-US international transfer arrangements, judging them insufficient to protect Europeans’ fundamental rights. In 2015, the court struck down the EU-US Safe Harbor Framework, and a successor arrangement, the Privacy Shield, met the same fate in 2020.⁵¹ Meta, the object of the litigation both times, took the issue seriously enough that it publicly conceded to US securities regulators that it might need to withdraw Facebook and Instagram from Europe if it could not legally transfer data to the United States.⁵²

A third arrangement, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF), concluded in 2023, put significant additional safeguards in place for Europeans’ personal data when they are transferred to the United States. It has stabilized the situation, at least for the time being. On September 3, 2025, the EU General Court rejected a challenge to the DPF brought by Philippe Latombe, a French parliamentarian.⁵³ The case tested the sufficiency of US legal reforms made to overcome the CJEU’s 2020 judgment on the Privacy Shield. The court rejected claims that a redress mechanism created by the agreement lacked independence within the US legal system. It also validated the sufficiency of US safeguards relating to the collection of bulk data for intelligence purposes. Latombe has appealed the General Court verdict to the Court of Justice, however, so a definitive verdict on the fate of DPF has yet to be issued.⁵⁴

The European privacy advocacy organization None of Your Business (NOYB)—headed by well-known Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems, who brought the 2015 and 2020 CJEU cases—reacted with disbelief to the Latombe ruling. Schrems drew attention to Trump administration actions against the independence of the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He also said that he is mulling bringing a second challenge to the DPF in EU courts.⁵⁵

US cloud service providers, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, have responded to European unease over data transfers to the United States by introducing service features that allow enterprise customers to store certain types of data exclusively on servers located on the continent.⁵⁶ Offering to localize data in this fashion can reassure European customers concerned about the long arm of US government’s potential access to their data.

However, the Trump administration exacerbated European anxiety over data flows to and from the United States by briefly cutting off Ukraine from US intelligence sharing in early 2025.⁵⁷ The specter of a US government kill switch—in the form of an order to US cloud providers to stop commercial data transfers to Europe—has spurred further efforts by US cloud providers to reassure their European customers. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, went so far as to issue a public statement in April that, “In the unlikely event we are ever ordered by any government anywhere in the world to suspend or cease cloud operations in Europe, we are committing that Microsoft will promptly and vigorously contest such a measure using all legal avenues available, including by pursuing litigation in court.”⁵⁸

In response, some European companies have spied a business opportunity. For example, the German company Ecosia and its French counterpart Qwant announced their intention to build a European web index called European Search Perspective (ESP) to compete with Google’s search engine.⁵⁹ Ecosia’s chief executive officer (CEO) cited concern about the political winds blowing in the United States: “With the US election turning out as it has, I think there is an increased fear that the future US president will do things that we as Europeans don’t like very much . . . We, as a European community, just need to make sure that nobody can blackmail us.” He also emphasized Europe’s current dependence on Google’s services: “If the US turned off access to search results tomorrow, we would have to go back to phone books.”⁶⁰

The European dream of regaining data sovereignty by generating companies that can compete with the US cloud giants has a long history of failure. Our 2022 report chronicled the ambitious Franco-German effort to develop GAIA-X, a federated data and cloud ecosystem.⁶¹ In the years since, the vision of an interoperable network of trusted European cloud providers has had limited success. Its major output is a series of standards, specifications, and labels for European cloud providers, rather than a transformation of the commercial landscape.⁶²

Draghi’s 2024 report on the single market effectively conceded defeat in this area of endeavor. “It is too late for the EU to . . . develop systematic challengers to the major US cloud providers,” Draghi wrote.⁶³ Nonetheless, European anxiety over the possibility, however small, that dominant US platform services could withdraw from the continent, be blocked from serving it by the US government, or be a mechanism for channeling EU data to the US government, will continue to power a push for European sovereign alternatives.

A second continuing impetus is an awareness in Europe—thanks to Snowden—that the dominance of US digital services in Europe offers US intelligence agencies a strategic advantage. The Biden administration even boasted of this during the 2023 congressional debate to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a principal authority for collecting intelligence information on non-Americans. The pervasiveness of US digital service providers worldwide, the administration noted, allows US intelligence agencies to “leverage this national advantage to collect foreign intelligence information . . . in order to protect America from its adversaries.”⁶⁴

US law enforcement access to data on European servers

US intelligence collection in Europe is not the only challenge to data sovereignty that the EU sees emanating from the United States. Another is the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act), a 2018 US law. This statute confirmed that US law enforcement can unilaterally order cloud service providers with a presence in the United States to turn over personal data they host on servers in Europe and other foreign locations for criminal investigations and prosecutions. Although several EU countries, including Belgium, give their law enforcement authorities similar extraterritorial criminal evidentiary powers, this part of the CLOUD Act is seen in Europe as singularly intrusive. When EU legislators call for companies to be immune to foreign law, they are often referring to the CLOUD Act.

However, the CLOUD Act also contains a conciliatory dimension. Part II of the act authorizes the US Department of Justice to negotiate binding international agreements under which criminal investigators and prosecutors can obtain foreign-located electronic evidence directly from providers. Because CLOUD Act agreements are consensual, they do not violate a foreign state’s judicial sovereignty by commanding that a legal measure be taken on its territory. Instead, they remove legal obstacles that companies otherwise face in voluntarily assisting foreign law enforcement. This new type of international agreement can substantially reduce reliance on mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), which can be too slow and cumbersome for obtaining e-evidence in fast-moving investigations.

The United States has concluded CLOUD Act agreements with the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia, and negotiations are under way with Canada, all of which are members of the Five Eyes intelligence collective.⁶⁵ The UK agreement, the first to be concluded, has had a positive effect for that country’s law enforcement agencies.⁶⁶ According to the US Department of Justice, UK agencies have already made more than twenty thousand direct requests to companies holding electronic evidence in the United States, including many for real-time interception of communications.⁶⁷ The results “provided UK Law Enforcement and Intelligence Agencies with critical data to tackle the most serious crimes facing UK citizens including terrorism; child sexual exploitation; drug trafficking; and organised crime,” a UK government minister said in late 2023.⁶⁸

Prosecutors from EU member states have looked across the channel jealously as their UK counterparts have made use of this powerful new investigative tool. In 2019, the EU authorized negotiation of an e-evidence agreement with the United States.⁶⁹ Talks began in earnest after the EU finalized its controversial counterpart to the CLOUD Act, the 2023 E-Evidence Regulation.⁷⁰ Progress has been slow and painstaking. In June 2024, senior EU and US home affairs and justice officials issued an optimistic joint statement welcoming “further progress” in the negotiations and looking “forward to advancing and completing” them.⁷¹

The Trump administration has paused EU-US negotiations without explanation. It might have concluded that CLOUD Act agreements operate overwhelmingly to the advantage of foreign partners—the inevitable consequence of most relevant data being housed on servers located in the United States. As the Trump administration has demonstrated in trade negotiations with foreign countries, it is singularly focused on agreements that it can present as bringing more benefits for the United States. However, such a narrow focus overlooks other benefits of CLOUD Act agreements—sparing cloud providers conflicts of law, deterring data localization measures, and reducing the burden on the mutual legal assistance process.

In mid-2025, the UK government added an element of controversy to the use of CLOUD agreements by allegedly serving a request to Apple that it globally disable security features on its products.⁷² If the UK successfully required Apple to remove security from a product (for example, by building in a backdoor to data that would otherwise be end-to-end encrypted), it could then use the CLOUD Act agreement to request the now-vulnerable data directly from the company. Apple challenged the request in a UK administrative court proceeding and issued a public statement warning customers about the measure’s impact.⁷³ In addition, the White House and Congress sharply criticized the reported UK measure.⁷⁴ In August, the UK government withdrew its demand for access to Apple US customers’ encrypted data, effectively conceding to the US objection.⁷⁵ It recently confirmed that the order had been reissued to apply only to UK users.⁷⁶ The US government could well demand that any EU e-evidence agreement include a similar commitment safeguarding US persons’ data from surveillance by member states’ authorities.

A US-EU e-evidence agreement would be an important advance in calming Europe’s sovereign sensitivities about how US law enforcement authorities collect foreign-located evidence, just as the Data Privacy Framework has at least temporarily allayed Europe’s concerns about US national security agencies’ collection practices. Taken together, the two agreements would neutralize much of the political tension that has prevailed in these realms for more than a decade.

The US u-turn on data flows

After decades of the United States propounding unrestricted international commercial data flows—and bemoaning Europe’s privacy impediments to them—the Biden administration made a dramatic course correction in late 2023.⁷⁷ Through parallel legislation (the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act) and executive action, it imposed controls on certain categories of data exports to China, Russia, and other “foreign adversaries” citing national security reasons.⁷⁸ Subsequently, the Department of Justice issued a final rule and guidance to companies on compliance and enforcement.⁷⁹ Both the legislation and regulatory actions were spurred by reports that data brokers were collecting publicly available bulk data on US persons and selling them to foreign governments, which could enable them to—among other things—track the location of US military personnel.⁸⁰

In addition to enacting domestic measures to limit certain international commercial data flows, the United States reversed course internationally. In the fall of 2023, the Office of the US Trade Representative withdrew its proposal to include in the Joint Statement Initiative on Electronic Commerce (JSI)—a World Trade Organization negotiation—a guarantee of the free flow of data across borders.⁸¹ The final text of the JSI, announced in July 2024, not only lacks such an obligation but allows parties essentially unlimited scope to restrict data flows for data protection reasons, precisely as the EU had sought.⁸² Even with these changes, the United States declined to join the JSI because it regarded the agreement’s national security exception as insufficiently flexible, a move that some European Commission officials found puzzling.⁸³

In contrast to the United States—and despite its long history of controlling data exports through the GDPR—the EU has moved slowly to evaluate the risks of data transfers to authoritarian states such as China and Russia. In 2021, the European Data Protection Board commissioned an outside report from academics that confirmed both countries’ governments have access to individuals’ personal information without commensurate rule-of-law protections, but it took no further action.⁸⁴ Even Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has not served to entirely staunch the flow of European data to Russia. The Finnish and Dutch data protection authorities investigated data transfers by Yango, a subsidiary of the Russian search engine Yandex, but have not yet imposed restrictions.⁸⁵

The past year, however, has seen a gradual shift in European regulators’ thinking regarding data transfers to China. In May 2025, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined TikTok €530 million after discovering it was transferring data to China without requisite data protection safeguards.⁸⁶ In July, the DPC broadened its TikTok inquiry into whether the Chinese government could access such data when they are stored in China.⁸⁷ The Finnish data protection authority began a separate investigation into possible Chinese government access to health data that a Finnish university had shared with a Chinese genetic analysis company.⁸⁸

Even Schrems, who has long challenged European data transfers to the United States, has turned his attention to China. Early in 2025, he filed complaints with European data protection authorities against six major Chinese consumer companies, including Shein, Temu, and WeChat, alleging government access to Europeans’ personal data by an “authoritarian surveillance state.⁸⁹

Recent moves by European data protection authorities to question whether China’s government has impermissible access to Europeans’ personal information mirror the rise in geopolitical tensions between Brussels and Beijing. Ireland’s inquiry into TikTok data transfers, for example, can be read as asserting European data sovereignty against a geopolitical rival. The data dynamics are, in effect, a microcosm of Europe’s larger dilemma with China—deep commercial dependency, but also a recognition that a degree of sovereign control is needed.

A single European data market

Brussels has recently expanded its laws promoting the secondary use of data for commercial, research, and government purposes, in hopes that these innovative legal measures will give homegrown companies a much-needed advantage in competing with data-rich foreign tech giants. However, the transfer of such data to non-EU companies has raised concerns about potentially protectionist restrictions. The Data Governance Act, the Data Act, and the European Health Data Space regulation—all enacted during the first von der Leyen commission—seek to stimulate a market for the secondary use of European data for commercial purposes.⁹⁰ These measures are based on the recognition that data collected by—and locked within—governmental or commercial organizations can have societal and economic benefits if made available for reuse by other entities.

The 2022 Data Governance Act grew out of a post-pandemic recognition of the potential for reuse of government-held data. It facilitates reuse by the private sector, for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, of government-held data (G2B), including data originally collected by public health, environmental, and transport authorities. Then Commissioner Thierry Breton hailed it as a step toward “an open yet sovereign European Single Market for data.”⁹¹

The Data Governance Act was followed a year later by the even more ambitious Data Act, which concentrated on expanding business-to-business sharing of non-personal data, such as the industrial data generated by connected devices. The Data Act sought to ease legal issues that arise with reuse by third parties, such as intellectual property protection and trade secret rules. Both laws insisted upon additional safeguards for transferring data to companies in third countries, such as the United States, where that data could become subject to governmental access. The European Commission further envisaged a series of sector-specific European data spaces, each requiring separate legislation.⁹² They would cover sectors—from agriculture to energy to transportation—that generate large amounts of industrial data ripe for reuse. The European Health Data Space regulation is the first of this series to be enacted.

At the start of the current commission mandate, von der Leyen’s mission letter to Virkkunen instructed her to deepen focus on the reuse of data. She was asked to “present a European Data Union Strategy drawing on existing data rules to ensure a simplified, clear and coherent legal framework for businesses and administrations to share data seamlessly and at scale, while respecting high privacy and security standards.”⁹³ The commission duly launched a public consultation process, articulating as its aim “expanding the availability and use of data to support AI development.”⁹⁴ Published on November 19, 2025, the Data Union Strategy seeks to safeguard the EU’s data sovereignty by ensuring fair conditions for cross border flows of non-personal data; “linking EU data ecosystems with those of like-minded partners;” and “boosting the EU voice in global data governance.”⁹⁵ This is intended to build a comprehensive legal regime for secondary data access that will enable European industry to catch up with the US tech giants that already enjoy access to vast pools of proprietary data.

EU content moderation and free speech

One of the EU’s proudest recent legislative accomplishments is the 2023 Digital Services Act, a sprawling and complex framework regulating online platforms’ accountability for illegal content, including illegal hate speech.⁹⁶ It imposes the most onerous requirements on very large online platforms, half of which are US companies. The Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress have sharply criticized the DSA, viewing it as a tool for the suppression of right-wing populist political speech.⁹⁷ On the contrary, the EU views certain DSA provisions, such as transparency tools and safeguards against arbitrary content moderation, as intended to protect free speech.

Trump singled out the DSA for criticism in the February 2025 official memorandum on preventing the “Unfair Exploitation of American Innovation,” while the Republican chair of the Federal Communications Commission called it “incompatible with both our free speech tradition in America and the commitments that these technology companies have made to a diversity of opinions.”⁹⁸ The US State Department began a diplomatic campaign, alleging, “In Europe, thousands are being convicted for the crime of criticizing their own governments.”⁹⁹ A leaked August 2025 cable to European posts directed US diplomats to advocate for a narrowing of the DSA’s definition of illegal content, among other ambitions. The European Commission firmly pushed back, describing the censorship allegations as “completely unfounded” and insisting that its digital legislation “will not be changed.”¹⁰⁰

The Republican majority on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee also weighed in with a strongly worded staff report describing the DSA as an “anti-speech, Big Brother law.”¹⁰¹

The report identified a handful of examples of how the act could function to restrict speech extraterritorially. For example, in an August 2024 letter, then Commissioner Breton warned Elon Musk’s X platform that the effects of a campaign interview it hosted with Trump could spill over into the EU and spur commission retaliatory measures under the DSA.¹⁰² The committee also cited a request to X by the French national police that the platform remove a post originating from a US-based account suggesting France’s immigration and citizenship policies were to blame for a 2023 terrorist attack a Syrian refugee committed in that country.¹⁰³

The chairman of the US FTC launched a further salvo in August, warning US companies that their very compliance with the EU’s DSA, or with the UK’s similar Online Services Act or its surveillance authorities, could constitute a violation of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive commercial acts or practices. FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson suggested, “It might be an unfair practice to subject American consumers to censorship by a foreign power by applying foreign legal requirements, demands, or expected demands to consumers outside of that foreign jurisdiction.”¹⁰⁴

This transatlantic dispute over the DSA and similar content moderation laws reflects differing US and European historical traditions on speech regulation.¹⁰⁵ The US Supreme Court has identified only speech creating a “clear and present danger” of inciting violence or other illegal conduct as suitable for restriction. Many European judiciaries, informed by their countries’ twentieth century histories of hate speech, take a more cautious view. For example, Germany bans speech glorifying or denying the Holocaust, while Denmark makes it illegal to burn the Quran. The DSA is the EU’s attempt to ensure that platforms remove content deemed illegal, both offline and online, but the act’s lack of definitions leaves a door open to abuse.

On December 23, 2025, the Trump administration raised the stakes in its free speech campaign against European content moderation laws. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued determinations under the Immigration and Nationality Act barring from entry into the United States five Europeans associated with content moderation.¹⁰⁶ The headliner was Thierry Breton, an architect of the DSA; the others hail from European non-governmental organizations that track hate speech and disinformation on the internet. The European Commission quickly issued a statement that it “strongly condemns” the US actions, reiterating its “sovereign right to regulate economic activity in line with our democratic values.”¹⁰⁷ As the Trump administration continues its ideological campaign against the DSA, the transatlantic dispute over free speech seems bound to escalate.

Cybersecurity and cloud services

In 2022, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) began an effort to harmonize member-state cybersecurity requirements for government data processing contracts. The European Commission averred that cloud services were a “strategic dependency” on a handful of large providers headquartered in the United States.¹⁰⁸ Several EU member states, led by France, argued for including sovereignty requirements in the envisaged EU Cybersecurity Scheme (EUCS).

A leaked 2023 ENISA draft proposed that the EU impose sovereignty requirements similar to those in France’s domestic security certification and labeling program, SecNumCloud, for contracts involving the most sensitive government data. SecNumCloud has an announced goal that, in order to obtain a trust certificate, cloud service providers must be “immune to any extra-EU regulation.”¹⁰⁹ ENISA proposed incorporating this requirement into EU law as well, adding restrictions on foreign ownership and insisting on localization of cloud services operations and data within the EU.

EU member states divided over whether to adopt such cybersecurity requirements, which could have the effect of disqualifying large foreign cloud service providers from sensitive government data processing contracts. In addition, some European companies, especially in the financial sector, argued that the foreign providers offered greater cybersecurity as well as a superior technical product.¹¹⁰ The Office of the US Trade Representative formally questioned whether the potential EUCS restrictions were consistent with the EU’s obligations under the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement (GPA).¹¹¹

In 2024, the Belgian EU presidency put forward a compromise proposal that discarded the foreign ownership restrictions in favor of data labeling and localization requirements.¹¹² French authorities and technology companies expressed dismay at the prospect of EU-level cybersecurity certification rules weaker than France’s own.¹¹³ ENISA has yet to issue the final implementing measure, and this debate could well reemerge in the context of the anticipated CADA.

Looking ahead: Transatlantic tension will persist

The European debate over digital sovereignty—now firmly linked to the wider debate over technological sovereignty—is likely to be a continuing point of tension in the US-EU relationship. For many years, this has been a rhetorical exercise with few real consequences for non-EU firms, especially US companies. But the shift in geopolitics and the increasing drive to support EU industries to build a more competitive economy have led many European policymakers to conclude that now is the time to act. Moreover, the geopolitics are not just about Russia’s aggression or China’s export domination. They are also about the shifts and inconsistencies in US policy that have made many in Europe believe that it must now begin to fend for itself, in terms of both defense and the economy. 

As a result, the debate over digital sovereignty has moved from a discussion of whether there should be limits on non-EU companies to a discussion of how many restrictions there will be, and of what type and in what sectors of the economy. That discussion is likely to be pursued through several key legislative initiatives planned for late 2025 and 2026. CADA is already expected to identify requirements—including sovereign requirements—for cloud services.

Perhaps most relevant, the public procurement directives are already under internal review, with a proposal for revision expected from the commission in 2026.¹¹⁴ Because much of the debate is about who can sell which products and services to whom (including to governments), procurement policy will be a key instrument in imposing sovereign requirements. EU and member-state procurement rules currently privilege price as the key selection criteria but, in the Net Zero Industry Act and other new measures, other considerations have been introduced into the procurement calculation.

As the EU pursues these initiatives, it will face a dilemma: To what degree does sovereignty require autarky? Or does the EU require partnerships, despite the risk of dependencies, because of the current lack of key capabilities? Some in Europe have argued that the right way forward is to develop end-to-end EU capabilities in the form of a Eurostack.¹¹⁵ From fiber-optic networks and computing hardware to software development and cybersecurity capabilities, all would be provided by EU companies.¹¹⁶ Others have pointed to the difficulties with this, asking whether the lack of EU-owned capabilities in cloud, AI, search, and other key functions would doom such an effort to be inferior and thus push Europe farther behind in the race to innovate essential digital technologies for the future. They also fear that European companies will not be able to compete internationally if they are cushioned by sovereign requirements.¹¹⁷ Some see no contradiction between sovereignty and being open to non-EU firms; indeed, they see access to the most innovative global companies as essential, especially given Europe’s competitiveness challenge.¹¹⁸ For others, the key element is timing. The EU tech sector currently lags in innovation but, with proper support and time, it should be fully capable of growing world-leading firms and technologies.¹¹⁹ Indeed, the EU’s International Digital Strategy emphasizes the importance of partners in boosting EU competitiveness and innovation, and the EU’s ambitions in global governance for data can hardly be accomplished without cooperative partners.¹²⁰

But in all these versions of digital sovereignty, as well as in the larger arena of tech sovereignty, there is a central question: who owns the companies involved, and does it matter if they are not EU firms as long as they abide by EU laws and regulations? The recent negotiations over an EU-wide cloud certification system stalled on exactly this point (see the above discussion of EUCS). The Toolbox for 5G Cybersecurity put forward the concept of a “high-risk supplier” to warn against non-EU companies that were insufficiently independent of their home governments. While this was aimed at Chinese companies—especially Huawei—concerns have more recently focused on the United States and its companies.

The EU’s concerns are not only about the dominant position of US platforms in the European digital market, but also the potential actions of the US government—especially the Trump administration. The administration’s inconsistency on Ukraine, highlighted by its threats in July 2025 to cease sending weapons and other military supplies to Ukraine (reversed shortly after), alarmed many in Europe.¹²¹ Reports that the Trump administration threatened to block Ukraine’s access to the vital communications network Starlink during negotiations over critical minerals also raised European concerns.¹²² While these instances were primarily about defense, not the digital arena, they have created a heightened sense of insecurity in Europe. Coupled with the experience of the trade negotiations, they put into question the reliability of the United States as a partner in any undertaking.

In this environment, the EU will need to make choices about how best to ensure it has sufficient sovereignty over its digital market. Will the answer be found in more restrictions on non-EU companies, or with a more open arrangement that also boosts European economic growth and competitiveness?

Seven recommendations for Brussels and Washington

Given the economic stakes involved for both parties, the EU should engage the United States as it moves forward, and should keep the following guidelines in mind.

Competitiveness is key to innovation and economic success.

Throughout the coming debates over sovereign requirements, the EU must balance the need for security and for its own industrial and digital capabilities with the efficiencies and productivity required for a globally competitive economy. Settling for a more expensive and less capable product or service because it is European owned is not the way to grow the economy. There are times when it is necessary, but these instances should be rare and well considered, not routine.¹²³

Heated rhetoric on either side does not help the economy.

As the EU moves forward with legislation, both Washington and Brussels should seek to lower the temperature. While some US executive orders and statements from top officials have seemed to decry any EU regulation that impedes US companies, the reality is that Europe has the right to regulate as it sees fit in its own market, as does the United States. At the same time, European threats of broad sovereign restrictions do not encourage needed investment. It should not be forgotten that the US-EU trade and investment relationship is the largest such partnership in the world, worth around $1.5 trillion in goods and services trade in 2024, and with mutual investment worth several times that.¹²⁴ As both parties establish regulatory or investment requirements intended to boost domestic capabilities and add resilience to their economies, there will inevitably be tensions and misunderstandings. Creating barriers to trade and investment is sometimes necessary in limited circumstances, but careful consultations can ameliorate their impact.

Agreed legal frameworks in key areas can ease the need for sovereign protections.

As the discussion of data policy demonstrates, the transatlantic economy is not just about products and services, but also the data generated by them. Sharing those data—and being able to use them to generate revenues—is key to success in the digital economy. Of course, those transferring and using data must comply with local laws, including the GDPR. But the US and EU regulatory regimes collide at times, offering inconsistent or even conflicting requirements. Negotiated arrangements, such as the US-EU Data Privacy Framework, can overcome those differences and provide a stable context for business. A US–EU agreement on law enforcement access to data likewise could provide the protections and access both parties need. Similarly, an agreement that facilitates transfers of non-personal data might be useful in response to the Data Act and Data Union Strategy. Now is the time to make sure the United States and EU are developing compatible regimes.

Ringfencing can be a valuable strategy, as can trusted vendors.

Not all suppliers and customers are equal. Arrangements among allies and partners can lessen risks while preserving as much of the open, prosperous economy as possible, even in sensitive sectors. It makes no sense for Europeans to focus more on the transfer of data to the United States than to Russia or China. Using criteria such as those in the EU Toolbox for 5G Cybersecurity to identify foreign companies that can partner in key sectors will provide clarity and ease transactions. Similarly, a proposal floated in the EUCS negotiations that the trusted circle of cybersecurity providers be based on NATO membership might be appropriate. The Group of Seven (G7) could also offer a starting point for developing a set of compatible, interacting regulatory regimes in the digital economy, as it has done to some degree through its discussion of data free flow with trust and the AI principles and code of conduct.¹²⁵

Certain sectors of the economy are more sensitive than others.

Digital sovereignty requirements should not be imposed on broad swaths of the economy. There are two main reasons for such requirements: national security and creating an indigenous capability in those areas where national economic resiliency is required. Policymakers should carefully identify the areas of the economy where these two reasons apply. Cybersecurity for essential government operations and protecting critical infrastructure are good examples. Management of more prosaic, but still sensitive government data—including where they are stored and who has access—might not need such stringent requirements. Because digital elements—data, cloud, software, and increasingly AI—exist across the economy, it might be more helpful to think about specific functions and make a risk-based assessment of the consequences of failure. Sovereign requirements should be limited to those areas in which a failure or breach will have consequences across society and the economy.

The type of sovereign requirement can vary with the economic sector and even particular conditions.

Among European policymakers, the sovereign requirements currently under discussion can be divided into two types: those that require a supplier to adhere to specific rules and those that involve restrictions relating to the ownership of the company supplying a particular service or product. The first might involve data localization or restricting access to data or use of a particular technology, such as AI. The second, which has been applied in the French SecNumCloud, is far more restrictive and affects the ability of any US-based company to provide the service in question. In some cases, an ownership restriction might exclude companies with the best capabilities from providing the service, and could even expose those using the service to more risk. Thus, ownership restrictions are unlikely to be worthwhile except in rare cases. In the United States, these exist in areas of defense contracting, in which companies dealing with US classified material must set up a US company with US governance and employees. But most government digital contracts, both in the United States and in Europe, are not defense related and would not require such far-reaching ownership rules.

Instead, for those functions in which a breach or disruption would cause significant harm, creating a category of trusted vendors might be appropriate. This could apply to sensitive government functions, as well as to critical infrastructure provided by private-sector enterprises. A system based on trusted vendors could balance the desire to boost local providers while also securing access to top-quality services from non-EU companies. The EU might consider whether there are lessons to be learned from the US government’s FedRAMP system, which certifies companies (including non-US companies) to provide cloud services to different government customers. Companies need to meet criteria that become more restrictive and complex through the three levels of certification (low, moderate, and high).¹²⁶ While FedRAMP applies across most of the US government, individual agencies have the ability to impose their own requirements, allowing national security and intelligence agencies to impose further restrictions on those involved in classified functions. Despite these exceptions, FedRAMP’s graduated approach—matching certification level to sensitivity of the data—is much more tailored than some European proposals in matching certification requirements to the risk level of the cloud service required.¹²⁷

Sovereign requirements should be implemented in a consistent manner, including at the member-state level.

One of the persistent challenges of EU policy is ensuring that implementation is the same throughout the union. Both the Draghi and Letta reports cited differences in member-state requirements for businesses (or implementation of those requirements) as a key factor slowing EU competitiveness. The US trade representative has cited as trade barriers numerous instances of different requirements among EU member states, meaning that companies must follow multiple sets of rules even within the single market.¹²⁸ The European Commission recognized this problem when it decided that, under the DSA, very large online platforms (VLOPs) should be regulated at the EU level, not by member-state authorities. As the EU develops sovereign requirements in the digital sphere, it should be alert to efforts by member states to toughen criteria in ways that add unwarranted restrictions.

While the EU certainly has the right to decide on its own digital sovereignty requirements, those measures will undoubtedly affect access of non-EU companies to the market as well as the capabilities that are accessible to the EU and its member states. There will be costs for the EU, especially as it tries to build a more competitive economy. For that reason, any restrictions should be focused on those circumstances in which risks are high and security is necessary. This exercise should not be about denying access to non-EU companies, but instead about building a secure digital environment and resilient European capabilities. The EU should engage with its partners—not only the United States, but also Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others—to ensure that the fewest possible frictions arise. This will be a test for the transatlantic relationship, but one that can lead to greater cooperation rather than continued angst. 

Fellow

Frances Burwell

Distinguished Fellow

Europe Center

Central Europe Digital Policy

Fellow

Kenneth Propp

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Europe Center

European Union Digital Policy

The authors would like to thank James Batchik, Emma Nix, and Jack Muldoon for their tireless support on the report’s editing, research, and data visualization.

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Executive summary

While US and European Union (EU) policies differ in their approaches to online safety and the regulation of the internet, there is agreement about the need to protect children online. That is one high-level takeaway from a recent round of US-EU dialogue hosted by the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) and the Atlantic Council.

Such dialogue helps to identify common policy approaches for the protection of minors and common approaches to enforcing rules. Ultimately, it can also help facilitate faster and more efficient rollout of technologies to protect users. Dialogue will also help global platforms develop services to comply with rules and expectations on both sides of the Atlantic.

At the recent roundtable hosted by CERRE and the Atlantic Council, the synergies and differences in regulatory approaches and philosophies on both sides of the Atlantic centred on four themes. For each theme, some common threads seemed ripe for further discussion and cooperation.

• New legislation and approaches to enforcement: In terms of the overall governance landscape, legislation has a key role to play in Europe and in the United States, where long-standing federal rules have been supported by an increasing number of state laws.The bulk of legislation in the EU—such as the Digital Services Act (DSA)—is adopted at the EU level, while some member states are adopting supplementary rules. In the United States, most legislation is now being adopted at the state level. Public enforcement by regulators plays a big role in the EU and the United Kingdom (UK). In the United States, state attorneys general are taking action to enforce rules, with powers similar to those of regulators in Europe. More alignment and cooperation on enforcement would be beneficial. Private enforcement through courts is also possible but, while this is already widespread in the United States, it is just emerging in Europe.
• The harms from which children should be protected: On both sides of the Atlantic, there is a large degree of alignment on the harms from which children need to be protected. A strong commonality is that rules in Europe and the US both require compliance by design to avoid particularly harmful conduct, such as unwanted contact by unknown adults. Other common design elements include data minimization, which is a central component of the European Commission’s guidelines on protecting minors under Article 28 of the DSA and in the UK Office of Communication’s (Ofcom) age-appropriate design code and guidance under the Online Safety Act (OSA).
• Balancing rights: To balance the protection of fundamental rights (in particular, privacy and freedom of expression) against the need to protect children, there is widespread agreement that everyone—not just children—deserves protections online. The EU, UK, and United States are all cautious about dictating which content is acceptable online and are instead converging on approaches that require platforms to use processes and systems to ensure safety by design. Ensuring the protection of fundamental rights is a common concern and, ultimately, a matter of balance, including at the enforcement level.
• Age verification: Current debates about banning access to social media and about age verification are critical in Europe and in the United States, both in general and in relation to certain types of platforms (particularly those that host pornographic content). There is no agreement on a single type of technology that should be used, but there are prototypes and guidance on the high-level principles that the technologies should reflect. There are similar discussions on both sides of the Atlantic about how to attribute responsibility for age assurance across the supply chain—i.e., where in the supply chain age verification should take place—and how the division of responsibilities between players in supply chains could work in practice.

Introduction

The EU has put in place important legal building blocks to protect children online. These include the DSA and the European Commission’s guidelines on Article 28 of the DSA, which require providers of platforms accessible to minors to “put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security of minors.”¹ They also include the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), which contains rules to safeguard minors’ personal data and to protect children online, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which provides rules on collection and processing of minors’ data. Other proposals yet to be finalized include the pending Digital Fairness Act (DFA) proposal and the Regulation on Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM).² Member states retain certain powers to enact national laws to protect minors online.³

In the United States, the protection of minors online is an important consideration at both the federal and state levels. At the federal level, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) proposal, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the COPPA 2.0 proposal all seek to address certain aspects of children’s safety online (in particular, privacy, advertising, and CSAM).⁴ At the state level, California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (CAADCA) has been challenged in court on First Amendment grounds.⁵ Other states, including Nebraska and Vermont, have recently adopted similar codes that they hope will withstand First Amendment scrutiny.⁶ Utah has also recently enacted a law to protect content-creating minors from financial exploitation and privacy violations.⁷

News headlines focus on apparent differences between US and European policies, which are spiraling into growing transatlantic tension. However, there is a large degree of alignment on the need to protect children online while also safeguarding fundamental rights such as privacy and freedom of expression.

The overall governance landscape

The European and US approaches are fairly aligned on some governance aspects of regulating child protection online. Since the adoption of its rules for video sharing platforms in 2018, the EU has embraced a legislative path to protect minors online.⁸ This legislative framework was strengthened in 2022 with the adoption of the DSA. Both the video sharing platform rules and the DSA are largely principle based and rely on a form of collaboration with the industry,placing the onus on the platforms themselves to decide what constitutes an appropriate and proportionate level of protection for minors. The UK has also adopted a legislative path with the OSA and the detailed guidance produced by Ofcom.⁹ Like the DSA, the OSA adopts a risk-based approach, with the larger and riskier platforms subject to stricter measures. The UK regulator, Ofcom, has supplemented the legislation with detailed guidance.

The European Commission recently adopted guidelines to help online platforms understand and comply with their obligations under Article 28 of the DSA, including setting out a list of recommendations for platforms, but these are nonbinding. Safety by design is at the heart of the guidelines. The EU’s legislative approach focuses on ensuring platforms put in place systems and processes, while steering away from regulating the type of content that should be outlawed.

So far, the EU’s legislative framework has not led to a full harmonization of approaches to protect minors, and some member states have adopted more restrictive approaches. For example, France, Germany, Ireland, and Italy have adopted supplementary legislation to protect minors from harmful content such as online pornography.¹⁰

In the United States, the federal government has adopted legislation such as the COPPA to tackle some problematic areas such as the need to protect minors’ personal data.¹¹ Despite heightened partisanship in Congress, leaders of both the Republican and Democratic Parties have expressed interest in supporting additional bipartisan legislation to protect children online.¹² Although there is less appetite for federal legislation with binding obligations on platforms in terms of platform liability, there is appetite at the state level to embrace the legislative path, and safety by design is the cornerstone of many of these initiatives.¹³ That being said, the Kids Online Safety Act (a federal initiative) received the support of sixty co-sponsors at the federal level, which shows that this is an area with some bipartisan support. The EU and the United States are also converging on some important aspects: more obligations are placed on larger platforms; there is an emphasis on protection and safety by design; and there is no “one size fits all” solution.

There is broad consensus among experts that, irrespective of geopolitical tensions, there has never been so much space for alignment at the policy level between different jurisdictions—and between Europe and the United States in particular. This is partly because Europe (with the DSA at the EU level and the OSA in the UK) takes a systemic risk approach and does not focus on moderating individual pieces of content. That places responsibility on the platforms to have processes and systems in place to design safe spaces at the outset.

There are also similarities in public and private enforcement of norms. In the EU and the UK, regulators play an important role in making sure that industry complies with the DSA, the AVMSD, and the OSA. In the United States, even if new federal laws are adopted, the creation of a dedicated federal regulator to publicly enforce the legislation is unlikely, though existing agencies such as the US Federal Trade Commission already have a remit over some of these issues. At the state level, attorneys general are empowered to enforce COPPA via civil actions despite it being a federal law. State attorneys general have many enforcement tools at their disposal, including the power to undertake industry-wide investigations. These are broadly in line with the enforcement powers of national competent authorities and the European Commission under the DSA (and Ofcom under the OSA). On both sides of the Atlantic, private enforcement through courts is also set to play an important role, though, to date, it has been more common in the United States than in either the EU or UK.

Harms against which children should be protected

In the EU, the harms against which children should be protected are potentially very wide and are not specifically defined in the DSA, which refers only to protecting minors’ “privacy, safety and security.”¹⁴ Furthermore, member states are free to set their own rules provided they are in the line with EU legislation.

Some harms are outlawed at the EU level, such as the sharing of child sexual abuse material, dark patterns (i.e., deceptive techniques used by online platforms to manipulate users’ behavior), the processing of minors’ personal data without the consent of parents, and the sending of targeted advertising to children based on profiling.¹⁵ US policy initiatives at the state and federal levels also identify these harms as targets for regulation. The dissemination of child sexual abuse material, for example, is already a criminal offense.

A strong focus of legislation to protect minors on both sides of the Atlantic is to make sure that children cannot be contacted on platforms by unknown adults. At the state level (Vermont in particular) lawmakers frame these as safety bills to avoid framing them as content regulation, which could bring challenges on First Amendment grounds. These design architecture elements, such as default settings that prevent children being findable, are also central in the European Commission’s guidelines on Article 28 of the DSA in the UK Information Commissioner’s Office’s age-appropriate design code and in Ofcom guidance under the OSA.¹⁶

Data minimization (meaning only a minimum amount of data can be gathered and processed) is seen as critical to mitigating harms in general, because there is a strong correlation between collecting vast amounts of data about children’s behavior online and using the data to target minors with harmful content. Also, data minimization could lead to stronger protection for all users. While enforcing data minimization principles is a challenge, it can be done. In the UK, for example, Ofcom is required to work closely with the data protection authority. Operational coherence and cooperation between regulators are crucial in this area.

Balancing fundamental rights

The debate about balancing the need to protect children against the protection of certain fundamental rights (especially privacy, freedom of expression, and the rights of the child) is critical in the United States and in Europe. Initiatives in Europe and the United States tend to focus on tools and processes to protect minors, but steer away from regulating content on the platforms. Despite this, there is mounting debate regarding whether laws are creating a form of censorship or unlawfully constraining free speech, limiting users’ choices, or infringing on the rights of children. The question is wider than the need to protect children online, in the sense that some content can be inherently dangerous for some individuals whereas that same content might not be harmful for another person (minor or adult). This need to protect users from harmful (but legal) content is the most difficult to reconcile with the need to protect freedom of speech and the need for data minimization.

In the United States, the question is being argued in court. Some federal courts have ruled that laws requiring age verification are unconstitutional because they undermine the US Constitution’s First Amendment and threaten privacy rights.¹⁷ Age verification laws are being challenged by NetChoice (a coalition of tech companies) and by free speech coalitions. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the age verification law in Texas does not violate the First Amendment because it only requires proof of age to access content that is obscene to minors; it does not directly regulate adults’ speech.¹⁸ In both the EU and the United States, a considerable amount of policy work and research is being conducted on how to balance safety and privacy, especially in the context of age assurance requirements.¹⁹

At the EU level, the debate about balancing rights was not prominent while the DSA and the AVMSD were being adopted, probably because the rules were principles based and did not mention bans or age verification per se. Furthermore, the DSA contains safeguards to protect fundamental rights, such as giving users’ the right to challenge content moderation decisions (such as removals of posts, demotions of content, and account suspensions). The central article on the protection of minors in the DSA (Article 28) assumes that there cannot be safety for minors unless other rights, such as privacy, are protected as well.

Now that the DSA is being enforced, the protection of minors has become an enforcement priority for the European Commission, and some member states are calling for bans on children accessing social media platforms, some political parties are questioning the legislation and the push for age verification solutions on free speech grounds. This debate is particularly intense in the context of the regulation on the fight against CSAM, which the European Parliament and the Council of the EU are amending in an attempt to reduce the impacts of CSAM detection mechanisms on privacy, particularly in the context of end-to-end encryption.

The ultimate goal should be to protect everyone online, not just minors. This would avoid the need to put in place age assurance and age verification.

A “digital age of consent” and age verification

The debates on getting the balance right on the need to protect minors online and the need to protect some fundamental rights are crystallizing on age verification and on proposals for an outright ban on access to social media for children.

To date, there is no outright ban at the EU level on children accessing social media. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had pledged to examine the questionwith the help of a panel of experts originally scheduled to be set up before the end of 2025.²⁰ Some member states are also discussing the option of a social media ban for children.²¹ There is a strong call in the commission’s recently adopted guidelines under the DSA for certain platforms (such as adult content platforms) to prevent children from accessing them. Also, the Danish presidency of the EU and ministers from twenty-five member states recently adopted the Jutland Declaration, which welcomed “assessments” of a digital majority age.²² This assessment could help to determine the age at which minors should be allowed access to social media and other digital services—“giving them more time to enjoy life without an invasive online presence.”²³ This question is also high on the agenda in the United States, with some states requiring social media to ban minors from accessing them (or requiring parental consent for a minor to have an account).²⁴

On age verification, there is no mandatory technology at the EU level, but the EU guidelines on the protection of minors adopted under the DSA set out principles that age verification technology used by online platforms should meet.²⁵ In particular, the systems should be based on the “double anonymity” principle. According to this principle, the platform knows the age of users without identifying them, whereas an external site—which carries out the age verification by issuing a token—does not know which site the user will visit. The EU is also about to launch an EU mini-wallet as a temporary solution, pending the adoption of national solutions.²⁶ Some member states have also set requirements on age verification that are enforced by national regulators.

In the UK, the OSA has just entered into force, and the biggest and most popular adult platforms such as Pornhub must now deploy age checks for users based in the UK. Other platforms—including Bluesky, Discord, Reddit, and X—have also announced that they will deploy age assurance in the UK as a result of the act. This has led to a surge in virtual private network (VPN) downloads, which shows the importance of global alignment where possible.

In the United States, as noted above, state legislation imposing age verification is subject to frequent court challenges.²⁷ As in Europe, there is little agreement among the states on the methods and tools to use when verifying the age of online users. Also, like in Europe, states seem to recognize that age assurance alone is not the solution.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the debates are similar in practice, including debates regarding how to attribute responsibility for age assurance across the supply chain (i.e., at what level age verification should take place, whether at the app store layer or by individual applications or websites). Questions about where verification happens raise additional questions about the extent to which other players in the chain can rely on this, or whether relying on a single point of verification could undermine safety by discouraging applications and websites from making their own assessments.

Michèle Ledger is a researcher at the Research Centre in Information, Law and Society (CRIDS) of the University of Namur where she also lectures on the regulatory aspects of online platforms at the postmaster degree course. She has been working for more than twenty years at Cullen International and leads the company’s Media regulatory intelligence service.

This issue brief benefits from the insights of discussants at an online roundtable on EU-US regulatory co-operation hosted jointly by CERRE and the Atlantic Council. However, the contents of this brief are attributable only to the author.

Providing high-quality studies and dissemination activities, the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) is a not-for-profit think tank. It promotes robust and consistent regulation in Europe’s network, digital industry, and service sectors. CERRE’s members are regulatory authorities and companies operating in these sectors, as well as universities.

CERRE’s added value is based on

• its original, multidisciplinary, and cross-sector approach covering a variety of markets (e.g., energy, mobility, sustainability, technology, media, and telecommunications);
• the widely acknowledged academic credentials and policy experience of its research team and associated staff members;
• its scientific independence and impartiality; and
• the direct relevance and timeliness of its contributions to the policy and regulatory development process impacting network industry players and the markets for their goods and services.

CERRE’s activities include contributions to the development of norms, standards, and policy recommendations related to the regulation of service providers, to the specification of market rules, and to improvements in the management of infrastructure in a changing political, economic, technological, and social environment. CERRE’s work also aims to clarify the respective roles of market operators, governments, and regulatory authorities, as well as contribute to the enhancement of those organizations’ expertise in addressing regulatory issues of relevance to their activities.

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

The Atlantic Council’s Europe Center conducts research and uses real-time analysis to inform the actions and strategies of key transatlantic decision-makers in the face of great-power competition and a geopolitical rewiring of Europe. The center convenes US and European leaders to promote dialogue and make the case for the US-EU partnership as a key asset for the United States and Europe alike. The center’s Transatlantic Digital Marketplace Initiative seeks to foster greater US-EU understanding and collaboration on digital policy matters and makes recommendations for building cooperation and ameliorating differences in this fast-growing area of the transatlantic economy.

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This followed a series of similar recent statements from Kremlin officials reiterating Moscow’s uncompromising position and dismissing a 20-point peace plan prepared by Ukraine, Europe, and the United States. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared in December that Russia’s war aims in Ukraine will be met “unconditionally” and vowed to “liberate” what he termed as Russia’s “historical lands.”

Moscow’s approach toward peace talks has remained consistently uncooperative ever since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House one year ago. While Putin has been careful not to directly rebuff Trump in order to avoid provoking fresh sanctions, there have been ample indications that the Kremlin is not ready to engage seriously in US-led diplomatic efforts. Instead, Russia seems intent on stalling for time while escalating its invasion.

There are no signs that this trend will change anytime soon. Despite mounting economic challenges on the home front amid falling energy export revenues, Russia’s defense budget for 2026 remains close to record highs. Moscow will continue to prioritize domestic drone production this year, while also allocating large sums to finance the system of generous bonus payments and salaries for army recruits who volunteer to serve in Ukraine.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Russia’s refusal to embrace the idea of a compromise peace should come as no surprise. After all, Putin has built his entire reign around the promise of restoring Russian greatness and reversing the perceived humiliations of the Soviet collapse. After nearly four years of full-scale war, a negotiated settlement that secured Ukraine’s status as an independent country would represent a major political failure.

Since 2022, Kremlin officials and Russian state media have consistently portrayed the invasion of Ukraine as an existential struggle against Western aggression with the aim of establishing a new world order and returning Russia to its rightful place as a great power. However, a peace deal based on the current line of contact would leave approximately 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and firmly anchored in the West. Such an outcome would be viewed in Moscow as an historic Russian defeat.

This framing creates a political trap of Moscow’s own making. Putin knows he would face a potentially disastrous domestic backlash if he accepted anything less than a clear Russian victory in Ukraine. Peace terms that failed to force Ukraine back into the Kremlin orbit would raise difficult questions about the enormous costs of the invasion. Russians would want to know why the country had spent vast sums of money and sacrificed so many men in order to achieve so little. Putin would risk entering Russian history as the man who lost Ukraine.

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Putin has begun 2026 in a challenging position. He remains reluctant to upset Trump, but he dare not accept the compromise peace the US leader is proposing. Instead, Putin needs either total victory in Ukraine or indefinite conflict. Any attempt to end the war without establishing complete political control over Ukraine would threaten the stability of Putin’s own regime. His interests are therefore best served by seeking to prolong negotiations while working toward a military solution.

If Western leaders wish to change the current political calculus in Moscow, they must first acknowledge that there is no alternative to increasing the pressure on Putin. At present, the Kremlin dictator views escalation as necessary for regime survival and has no plans to end the war.

Two scenarios could disrupt this trajectory. A collapse in global oil prices combined with successful secondary sanctions enforcement could create an economic crisis that would force Putin to revise his priorities. Alternatively, mass casualties during a failed spring 2026 Russian offensive could trigger domestic instability, while also highlighting the fading prospects of a military breakthrough.

Both these outcomes are realistic but would require significant additional action from Ukraine’s partners. If the West is unable to muster the requisite political will, escalation remains Moscow’s most rational path in 2026. Putin has little choice but to continue his invasion. Even if Russian victory remains out of reach in the coming year, he knows he cannot accept any peace deal that secures Ukrainian statehood.

William Dixon is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Service Institute specialising in cyber and international security issues. Maksym Beznosiuk is a strategy and security analyst whose work focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and international security. 

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Bottom lines up front

• Greenland has substantial reserves of rare earth elements, uranium, and other strategically important minerals.
• Yet there are substantial obstacles to mining and processing these minerals, including Greenland’s limited infrastructure, its harsh climate, and local opposition to mining.
• A unilateral approach by the United States risks limiting its ability to engage productively with Greenland’s mineral sector; a better option is for Washington to collaborate with partners to help de-risk projects for investors.

WASHINGTON—Greenland is a land of stark contrasts. Larger than Mexico and Saudi Arabia but home to only 56,000 people, this autonomous Danish territory has an economy traditionally built on fishing and substantial subsidies from Denmark. Yet beneath its ice and rocky coasts lies mineral wealth that has attracted growing international attention—including from US President Donald Trump. Greenland has firmly rejected notions of being “for sale,” and European allies have responded with alarm at US overtures about seizing the territory. Regardless of the rhetoric, the United States has compelling opportunities for commercial and diplomatic partnerships with Greenland.

As a mineral frontier, Greenland offers clear advantages: Its geological endowment is significant and comparatively unexplored, and it presents relatively low above-ground investment risk as a stable democracy aligned with Western institutions. However, these advantages come with major caveats. With fewer than one hundred miles of road on the entire island and significant local resistance to mining, Greenland lacks both the basic infrastructure and social license needed for large-scale mining operations. As a result, the path from exploration to production is likely longer, riskier, and more expensive than in more developed mining jurisdictions.

Yet, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio prepares to meet with Danish officials in the coming days, these challenges inform how the United States can most effectively engage: through collaboration rather than confrontation.

What critical mineral reserves does Greenland have?

Greenland’s mineral wealth presents a geographical puzzle. The country’s ice-free area, which is nearly double the size of the United Kingdom, represents less than 20 percent of the island’s total surface. Vast areas of the interior remain unexplored beneath ice that can exceed a mile in thickness. 

Nonetheless, Greenland possesses an impressive array of critical minerals, from traditional commodities such as copper, lead, and zinc that have been mined on a small scale in ice-free coastal areas since 1780, to modern critical minerals essential for energy and defense technologies.

Greenland’s most geopolitically significant resources include:

• Rare earth elements (REEs): Greenland is estimated to hold approximately 36 million tonnes of rare earths, though only 1.5 million tons are currently considered proven, economically viable reserves. Greenland is generally ranked around eighth globally in reserves, placing it among the most significant undeveloped REE holders; with further exploration and feasibility studies, it may be proven to contain the world’s second-largest reserves after China. 
• Uranium: Greenland has one of the largest uranium deposits in the world, which is notably co-located with major REE deposits. However, Greenland reinstated a ban on uranium mining in 2021 following sustained local opposition. This prohibition has had direct implications for projects where uranium is present alongside other minerals.
• Other strategic minerals: Greenland holds known deposits of copper (essential for electrical infrastructure), graphite (key to battery production), gallium, tungsten, zinc, gold, silver, and iron ore. It also holds various specialty metals with high-tech and defense applications, including platinum, molybdenum, tantalum, and vanadium. While many of these resources are geologically promising, few have progressed beyond early exploration.

To date, exploration activity has focused primarily on coastal and southern Greenland, where logistics are more feasible. The latter half of the 2010s saw an explosion of exploration permits in this region; by early 2020, exploration permits had been granted across almost the majority of southern Greenland. Despite this explosion of interest, there are only two active mines on the entire island, Nalanuq (a gold mine) and White Mountain (an anorthosite mine). To date, no rare earth, uranium, or other high-profile critical mineral projects have entered commercial production.

Though further exploration and feasibility studies may foster additional interest, the sites currently receiving the most attention include:

• The Kvanefjeld project on Greenland’s southern tip, one of the world’s most significant deposits of both rare earths and uranium.
• The Tanbreez mine in the same fjord network, which contains substantial deposits of eudialyte ore rich in rare earth elements (in particular heavy rare earths) and gallium.

What are the main obstacles to developing Greenland’s mineral resources?

Greenland’s mineral deposits are globally significant, particularly for rare earth elements. However, unlike established mining regions in Australia, Canada, or even emerging sources in Africa and South America, Greenland has minimal production infrastructure and no large-scale operating critical mineral mines.

From a supply perspective, Greenland’s reserves are largely theoretical. Though it represents a substantial reserve in a politically stable, Western-aligned jurisdiction, bringing that potential online faces several notable challenges:

Infrastructure deficits: Outside of Greenland’s few small cities, roads and railroads simply do not exist. Transport depends almost entirely on ships and aircraft, greatly increasing costs and complexity. This infrastructure gap extends the typical decade-long timeline from discovery to production and dramatically increases capital requirements. While mining projects can spur infrastructure development, the initial infrastructure investment represents a significant barrier to entry—especially since it is generally too cold in Greenland to construct durable roads from concrete and asphalt. This poses a significant challenge to project economics. Transportation of minerals can sometimes be even more expensive than the mining process itself, and Greenland’s remoteness, limited economies of scale, and harsh Arctic conditions make it one of the world’s most expensive mining jurisdictions.

Social and political opposition: Though the government has periodically promoted mining as a tool for economic development, mining remains politically contentious. All land in Greenland is publicly owned and administered, making closed, privately controlled mining sites culturally unfamiliar and politically sensitive. Local opposition reflects deeper concerns about environmental impacts, changes to traditional ways of life, and the terms under which mining would proceed. Most significantly, in 2021, Greenland’s parliament passed legislation prohibiting uranium exploration and limiting uranium content in mined resources, effectively halting rare earths development at the Kvanefjeld project given the presence of uranium. 

Geopolitical complications: Recent US rhetoric about acquiring or annexing Greenland has naturally generated diplomatic friction and intensified local sensitivities around sovereignty, complicating social license for mining. At the same time, broader US-China competition has played out in Greenland’s mining sector. In one notable example, US officials reportedly successfully lobbied the Tanbreez mine CEO to sell to American bidders for less than Chinese-linked competitors. The Kvanefjeld project is owned by Australian company Energy Transition Minerals (formerly Greenland Minerals Limited)—but China’s Shenghe Resources is its second-largest shareholder, raising concerns in Washington, which sees the mining sector as a backdoor for Chinese encroachment in the Arctic. Though Shenghe only holds a 6.5 percent stake, a nonbinding 2018 MOU reflects the intent to have Shenghe “acquire all rare earth output produced at the Project,” positioning it as the primary prospective offtaker and downstream processing partner.*

What are viable paths for US engagement?

Greenland’s strategic value lies in its role as a long-term diversification partner in a concentrated global market, rather than an opportunity for immediate production. While annexation rhetoric has drawn attention to Greenland’s resources, a unilateral US approach would limit their potential value. More effective alternatives include:

Strategic partnerships with Greenland and Denmark: Rather than pursuing ownership, American companies and the US government could support mining development through direct investment, financing mechanisms, and technical assistance—tools well suited to institutions such as the US Development Finance Corporation and Export-Import Bank. Coordination with European partners could amplify these efforts, as seen in the Lobito Corridor, where European capital helped bridge infrastructure gaps. Diplomatically bundled investment could help de-risk projects that might otherwise fail to attract private capital, an approach far less viable under a confrontational strategy.

Competing effectively with Chinese investment: The Tanbreez case demonstrates that US diplomatic engagement can influence ownership and investment outcomes, but effective competition requires more than lobbying against Chinese involvement. It demands credible alternatives such as competitive financing, technical expertise, market access, and partnership structures that align with project needs—all of which are more successful in concert with a wide pool of partners. One complementary step could be the development of an investment screening mechanism in Greenland, akin to a Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States–style review, to assess national security and strategic risks associated with foreign capital. Such a framework would strengthen Greenland’s own security and governance while providing greater assurance to US and allied markets that upstream assets are not vulnerable to strategic capture. However, even with successful mining development, rare earth ores from Greenland would likely still be processed in China absent expanded allied processing capacity, underscoring the need for parallel, collaborative investment in downstream infrastructure.

Supporting responsible development: Projects that lack local legitimacy are unlikely to succeed. Emphasizing environmental safeguards, indigenous rights, and meaningful benefit-sharing is both ethically and commercially essential. Greenlanders have consistently expressed a much stronger interest in independence than in joining the United States. An overly aggressive US approach would likely further complicate social license for mining.

Greenland’s mineral wealth will take a decade or more to translate into meaningful supply. Its greatest value lies not in rapid extraction but in long-term diversification within a trusted political framework. For the United States and its allies, the challenge is clear: securing access to critical minerals and strategic space without undermining the very alliances and norms that underpin long-term stability. Patient, partnership-based engagement that respects Greenland’s autonomy and international law will not generate immediate headlines, but it offers the only credible path through a period in which intensifying competition over critical resources threaten to upend the established geopolitical order.

Note: This article was updated on January 29 to more accurately reflect Shenghe Resources’s role in mining operations in Greenland.

The post Greenland’s critical minerals require patient statecraft appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The outbreak of violence killed more than twenty people, according to media reports, and displaced thousands of Aleppo residents.

It’s the latest iteration of conflict in a consequential and difficult year for Syria, as the country seeks to build stability after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and over a decade of brutal and factionalized civil conflict.

Our experts unpack why violence erupted, what it means for Kurdish and wider minority safety and integration under the new Syrian government, and how Washington is engaging.

1. What is the political and military background of this conflict?

On April 1, Damascus and the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG)-dominated SDF agreed on a localized integration arrangement covering the two SDF-held neighborhoods of Aleppo city. Despite the initial atmosphere of goodwill, SDF-affiliated Asayish forces that remained in these neighborhoods obstructed the implementation phase and refused to subordinate themselves to Aleppo’s Internal Security Forces, as stipulated in the agreement. 

On multiple occasions, Asayish units attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure, triggering violent clashes. Throughout this period, Damascus repeatedly agreed to cease-fires in an effort to preserve negotiations over the broader March 10 integration agreement with the SDF. However, after the deadline of the integration deal expired, final US-mediated talks in Damascus failed, and Asayish forces again targeted civilian infrastructure, and the Syrian army opted to launch a limited military operation.

—Ömer Özkizilcik is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

For the last fourteen years, the Kurds enjoyed de facto autonomy, and they currently control a large chunk of eastern and northeastern Syria. An agreement inked in March last year, which the Kurds reluctantly agreed to under immense external pressure, was meant to see the SDF and the Kurdish civilian institutions integrated into the Syrian state. It has effectively gone nowhere, with both sides blaming each other.  

The fighting in Aleppo broke out just days after negotiations stalled again and came to an end after external forces, notably the United States, intervened, preventing a potentially greater bloodbath. Turkey stated it would take action—if needed—on behalf of the Syrian government, and Israel threw its weight in behind the Kurds.

—Arwa Damon is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East and president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance (INARA).

2. What does the withdrawal of SDF-affiliated units mean for stability in Aleppo?

The withdrawal does bring with it a sigh of relief for the residents of Aleppo. But taking stock of the destruction, for those who lost loved ones, it’s hardly a win. The days-long fighting further ripped open one of the many fissures that the Syrian government says it has been trying to repair as it attempts to consolidate power under Damascus. The Kurdish population—who largely remain wary of President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government—might just prove to be the toughest to win over.  

While an even worse scenario has been avoided for the time being, if anything, the fighting is evidence of how much more work lies ahead for Syria and how its path to “stability” will not necessarily be free of suffering.

—Arwa Damon

3. What does the dismantling of the Kurdish military presence in Aleppo mean for SDF status in Syria?

Losing Aleppo weakens the SDF’s negotiating position significantly. Damascus will never support the SDF in retaining an autonomous military or administrative structure in the northeast, but al-Sharaa has repeatedly said that Kurdish language and cultural rights will be enshrined in the future constitution. The current government is already highly localized, and we will likely see the same model applied to the northeast with or without a peaceful integration of the SDF.

—Gregory Waters is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and writes about Syria’s security institutions and social dynamics.

4. How credible are government assurances of inclusion and rights protections to Kurdish communities?

The components of the new Syrian government have a mixed track record of treatment towards Kurds. The factions that came from Idlib, most notably Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have no serious history of ethnic targeting of Kurds, while several Syrian National Army (SNA) factions, which now serve in parts of the new army, have been sanctioned for years for systematic abuses against Kurds in northern Aleppo. It is now up to Damascus to ensure these ex-SNA factions no longer abuse or exploit Kurdish communities.

—Gregory Waters

There were no reports of large-scale violations by government security forces during the fighting in the Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafiye neighborhoods, unlike the abuses that occurred in coastal areas or in Swaida last year. This demonstrates progress in managing security operations in areas where diverse communities live. Another episode of violence and killings would be too costly politically for Damascus. In Aleppo, security forces have been overall mindful to show that they are able to protect the Kurdish community.

—Marie Forestier is a nonresident senior fellow for the Syria Project in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. She is also currently a consultant for the European Institute of Peace.

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5. What does the Aleppo violence imply for future negotiations with other armed groups?

The issue in Aleppo is distinct from more general political or ideological dissent in Syria because it involved an armed group that controls territory. However, the government’s slower, methodical approach to the dispute this week, mixing continued diplomatic outreach with military pressure, shows a more mature leadership in Damascus compared to how it approached similar dissent in Swaida in July.

—Gregory Waters

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US officials described the events as “a rivalry” between Syria’s Druze and Bedouins. But this framing strips the crisis of its historical and political context.

Civil Society Conflict

The operation in Aleppo was not a response to dissent, but rather a consequence of the deadlock of negotiations. A significant part of the Syrian population would like to see Kurds and the northeastern region fully integrated into the new Syria. The positive outcome of the military operation in Aleppo—at least from the government’s perspective—and the way security forces managed it raise the question of a possible replication of a similar operation in other areas in the northeast.

—Marie Forestier

6. How does the confrontation fit into the broader Turkish-Israeli rivalry over Syria?

Israel and Turkey hold fundamentally opposing views on Syria. Ankara sees the evolving situation as an opportunity to promote stability through a strong and centralized Syrian state, while Israel views such an outcome as a strategic threat and prefers a weak and fragmented Syria. 

During the clashes in Aleppo city, both countries once again positioned themselves on opposite sides. The intensity and limited duration of the fighting did not allow for direct or indirect intervention by either actor. Nevertheless, Turkey publicly signaled its readiness to support the Syrian army if requested, while Israel called on the international community to protect the Kurds. This contrast underscores Turkey’s greater capacity to intervene in northern Syria, as well as the constraints on Israel’s options. 

In light of the outcome in Aleppo city, Turkey’s vision of a unified Syria appears to have scored a tactical victory. At the same time, the episode served as a reminder that Turkish-Israeli competition over Syria—rooted in irreconcilable strategic perspectives—will persist.

—Ömer Özkizilcik 

7. Where does the United States stand in all of this?

The escalation highlights two key realities for US policy in Syria. First, US mediation efforts aimed at facilitating integration and supporting a unified Syrian state have failed. Washington repeatedly brought Damascus and the SDF to the negotiating table and attempted to steer the process in a constructive direction, yet no breakthrough was achieved. 

Second, the crisis has created a new opportunity for the United States. The exposure of the SDF’s fragility in Aleppo city may increase its willingness to make concessions and accept Damascus’s terms. If Washington seeks to prevent a broader military escalation in northeastern Syria, it can once again convene talks and press the SDF to adopt a more pragmatic stance. Should the SDF demonstrate genuine willingness, the United States could play a constructive role in facilitating integration and rebuilding trust between the parties.

—Ömer Özkizilcik

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The decision is a shift in the country’s alignment—from Russian and Iranian spheres of influence to one in NATO and GCC regional orbits.

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8. Did disagreements among SDF factions contribute to the violence?

The exact degree of internal disagreement within the SDF—and the extent of central command control over Asayish forces in Aleppo—remains contested. Nonetheless, it is evident that multiple decision-making centers are involved. Following the escalation, Damascus and the SDF agreed, under international mediation, to evacuate all Asayish forces from the contested neighborhoods. Some Asayish units, however, refused to comply and instead chose to fight. 

According to Turkish intelligence sources cited in the media, this decision followed orders issued by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) cadres in Qandil, reportedly led by Bahoz Erdal. This suggests a rift between the Syrian branch of the PKK, which dominates the SDF, and the PKK’s central leadership in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq. 

A second layer of fragmentation became visible on the battlefield itself. While the Syrian army initially pursued a limited operation, cohesion within the Asayish ranks collapsed, with many fighters deserting or laying down their weapons.

—Ömer Özkizilcik

The post Eight questions (and expert answers) on the SDF’s withdrawal from Syria’s Aleppo appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Unlike many of its neighbors, Argentina relies heavily on export taxes to raise revenue for its often overstretched government finances.
• Argentina’s export tariffs are so high that they have discouraged production and exports, reducing the overall tax base.
• The Milei government has taken some steps in the past year to reduce export taxes. It should accelerate these efforts, while working to replace some of the lost revenue with other sources.

The midterm victory for Argentine President Javier Milei’s ruling party in October expanded its legislative authority and provided a renewed mandate from voters to continue the country’s transformative economic reforms. Since the election, headlines have largely focused on how the Milei administration will approach much-needed fiscal and labor reforms. But Argentina should also focus on further liberalizing its foreign trade. As part of the Milei administration’s efforts to optimize efficiency and broaden the domestic tax base while lowering tax pressure on the economy, Argentina should reduce its unusually burdensome taxes on exports, known as the retenciones.

Over the past few months, the Milei administration has taken some steps on the right track. On December 9, for instance, the administration lowered the export tax on soybeans from 26 percent to 24 percent. This and other recent steps are welcome, but further reforms of the export tax are needed. Failing to reduce these taxes further could cost Argentina a sizable share of its export potential in key sectors, trapping the economy in a disequilibrium. 

The history of distortive fiscal dependence

Argentina’s current system of taxes on exports is the result of a tumultuous history of measures imposed to fill fiscal shortfalls. The problem is that these export taxes uniquely punish the country’s most efficient, globally competitive industries by forcing capital and labor away from competitive sectors—a problem economists around the world have long recognized. These taxes have been imposed, adjusted, rescinded, and reintroduced time and again, particularly targeting Argentina’s highly competitive agribusiness products in a recurrent dynamic that has discouraged production and overseas sales. The loss of overseas sales creates further problems: it limits the inflow of foreign currency, primarily US dollars, into the economy, making it more difficult for Argentina to meet its foreign currency debt obligations.

Tellingly, several Argentine administrations have altered or canceled these taxes altogether to boost languishing production and sales. Argentina has also been an outlier in charging these export tariffs, with almost none of its regional peers charging these except for very limited and targeted exemptions.

The distortive effects that these taxes have had on Argentina’s exports are clear: Comparing export volumes (rather than export values, which are subject to price fluctuations in commodities) shows that Argentina’s exports have stagnated in recent years. At the same time, its peers in the Mercosur trade agreement (Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay) saw their export volumes grow considerably in the same period while charging only limited duties on certain exports. This loss of potential exports costs Argentina economic growth and stifles its agricultural sector.

Although the problem is clear, solving it is not as simple as it sounds. Argentina’s duties on agricultural exports, which had been mostly eliminated in 1992, were reintroduced in 2002 as an emergency fiscal stopgap measure following the country’s historic 2001 debt crisis and subsequent default. No government since then has been able to remove all of these taxes because of how important they have become for the country’s often overstretched finances.

Famously, Argentina has run budget deficits through most of the past two decades, as well as the better part of the twentieth century. Once these duties are imposed, they then experience fiscal inertia—the fiscal cost of removing them prevents governments from doing so. Argentina relies on taxes on international trade (both imports and exports) for over 10 percent—and sometimes as much as 20 percent—of its federal government revenue. As our research shows, this makes it an outlier among its peers. The 2022 average for Latin America, for example, was slightly under 4 percent, while the upper-middle income country average stood at around 3.5 percent.

Since coming into office in December 2023, the Milei administration has made great strides to bring government spending back under control. In its first year in office, it achieved and sustained a consolidated fiscal surplus for the first time in almost two decades. The government achieved this by implementing spending cuts and freezes, as well as eliminating several subsidies, all measures that were politically costly. At the same time, the government has eliminated other distorting taxes, including the PAIS tax on foreign currency purchases.

There has been some progress on export taxes. In 2025, the administration reduced and eliminated export duties on certain agricultural products, as well as several import duties. In September, the government approved a temporary suspension of duties on grain exports as part of a drive to accrue much-needed foreign currency reserves. In October, it temporarily suspended export duties on aluminum and steel to assist the sector following the United States’ imposition of universal tariffs on these products earlier in the year.

Nevertheless, the latest available data show that Argentina still relies on taxes on taxes on international trade (6 percent of total federal government income comes from export taxes, while at least 4 percent comes from duties on imports). Any major reduction of taxes on international trade could have serious implications for the government’s goal of keeping its deficit under control. According to the latest International Monetary Fund projections, which are largely based on Argentina’s current tax system, the government is expected effectively to break even fiscally in 2026, with little, if any, surplus space left after accounting for upcoming debt repayments.

The case for accelerating the reduction of export taxes

Reducing these taxes should be a priority for Argentina because of two well-known challenges. First, Argentina’s export tariffs are so high that they have discouraged production and exports, in turn reducing the size of the taxable export base, which reduces the tax’s efficacy. That is why an export duty reduction is likely to yield a greater increase in exports. However, to do this responsibly the government would need to work in stages, steadily replacing taxes from exports with other fiscal income sources, even as it continues to rein in overall spending. Some of the replacement tax revenue could come, for example, by increasing tax collection efficiency and broadening the tax base by including larger shares of the informal economy into the mainstream.

Second, Argentina operates on a tight currency band and has debt obligations denominated in US dollars that are due early this year and next year. This means that to maintain economic stability, the country needs dollar reserves, which have become increasingly scarce. Indeed, the lack of dollar reserves necessitated the US-Argentina swap line that the Trump administration instituted in October.

Argentina generates reserves through a conversion system that requires exporters to repatriate and sell dollar earnings to the central bank at the official rate. However, this mechanism, which would otherwise mechanically generate reserves, is undermined by the high export duties’ stifling effect on overseas sales.

Additional reforms are needed

As the Milei administration goes into the second half of its term, it should double down on its reform agenda, accelerating the pace of the country’s incremental liberalization. This means committing unambiguously to a liberal program that anchors expectations for, and delivers on, gradual export and import duty reductions that give room for the economy to grow—but also to adjust—in the process. The reduction of export duties should be gradual to account for the country’s tightly kept and necessary budget surplus. Import duties, which also generate revenues, should be reduced in a gradual process that eases the purchase of goods, especially those that are needed for Argentina’s own productive sectors. However, Argentina’s import duties are governed in part by Mercosur, so this will need to be done in close coordination with the country’s partners in the bloc. 

To further boost exports as an engine of growth, Argentina needs to move toward a more orthodox economic and fiscal model that does not punish exports and does not rely on export duties for an inordinately large share of its total tax revenues. 

The moment to move in that direction is now. The next general election will take place in October 2027. Any signal that the Milei administration’s fiscal consolidation agenda is stalling, that currency reserve issues persist, or that productivity is static may reignite capital flight once again. For its economic reform agenda to succeed, the Milei government must achieve what previous administrations could not: fiscal discipline with a sustainable export-driven growth model.

The post To unlock growth, Argentina should reduce its export taxes appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 13, Atlantic Council vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig was interviewed on NPR’s “Morning Edition” where he discussed the Trump administration’s threats of military action against Iran.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

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

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig interviewed on NPR on Trump’s threats against Iran appeared first on Atlantic Council.

There’s a high level of interest in what happens next. The US Justice Department is undertaking a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, following a year of sparring between Powell and US President Donald Trump over interest rates. On Sunday night, Powell went public with his response to “this unprecedented action.” He called questions about the costs of the Fed’s headquarters renovation and Powell’s testimony to Congress “pretexts” for the administration’s ongoing pressure campaign. “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” he said. 

How will these developments affect US and global markets, and what future actions should we expect from the White House and the Fed? We turned to our chair of international economics to make sense of it all.

• Josh Lipsky (@joshualipsky): Chair of international economics at the Atlantic Council, senior director of the GeoEconomics Center, and former International Monetary Fund advisor  

The backstory

• The clash between president and Fed chair “was a shocking escalation,” Josh tells us. “Until now, Powell had done everything possible to avoid an outright confrontation. That is what made his comments last night so powerful.” 
• Trump would prefer lower interest rates to boost consumer spending, but the Powell-led Fed, Josh says, has “remained cautious [about reducing rates], wary of sticky inflation and the potential inflationary impact of tariffs.” 
• “What is particularly surprising is the timing” of the Powell probe, Josh says, since his term as chairman expires in May, and the Fed has been cutting rates gradually in recent months.  
• “Without having to fire the Fed chair, Trump was already getting the policy outcome he wanted—and would soon have the opportunity to appoint a new ally,” Josh tells us. Still, he predicts that neither the White House nor the Fed will back down. 

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The markets

• On Monday, US and global markets were basically flat. Josh thinks this is likely due to the relatively limited economic fallout from Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and other major events such as the US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.  
• “Markets are choosing to wait and see rather than overreact, and they have data from Trump’s first year that suggests this strategy has worked,” he explains. 
• But Josh says this dynamic “creates a strange tension: Markets believe they can constrain the president through negative reactions, and therefore often don’t react [to Trump’s economic actions]—while the president, seeing little immediate financial cost, believes he can continue to push forward.” 

The fallout

• Since Sunday’s announcement, two US Senate Republicans have pledged to block Trump’s Fed nominees until the case is resolved. Josh predicts it will be hard to confirm a new chair while the case is pending, so it’s possible Powell could continue as temporary chair past his scheduled departure—not the result Trump desires. 
• While all this drama is unfolding, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments this week on the case of Trump’s attempted firing of Fed governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud. And as soon as Wednesday, the court will decide the fate of many of Trump’s tariffs, potentially putting the president at odds with the Fed and the high court at the same time. 
• “Even Wall Street will not be able to ignore” the impact of a Supreme Court tariff decision, Josh tells us. “While markets are hoping that year two looks like year one, Trump is signaling—from Venezuela to the Federal Reserve—that this time is different.” 
• Global central bankers and finance ministers are watching with concern, Josh reports, given the Fed’s role as a “global model of an independent central bank” that makes decisions for the sake of economic health rather than as a result of political pressure.  
• “This is not academic,” Josh says. The Fed “has repeatedly stabilized both the US and global economy in moments of crisis,” and “independent central banks are proven to deliver stronger growth, more jobs, and better economic outcomes. Trillions of dollars and millions of jobs are at stake.” 

The post How will the Trump-Powell clash shake the global economy?  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The post Charai for The National Interest: Saudi Arabia, Strategic Clarity, and the Architecture of Middle East Stability appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 12, Atlantic Council vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig was quoted in a Fox News article titled “Marco Rubio emerges as key Trump power player after Venezuela operation.”

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Matthew Kroenig

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

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig quoted in Fox News on Trump Venezuela policy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In addition to hosting Oreshnik missiles, Belarus has also recently been accused of aiding Russian drone attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed on December 26 that Russian drone units are using Belarusian territory to penetrate Ukraine’s air defense network and strike targets across the country. “We note that the Russians are trying to bypass our defensive interceptor positions through Belarus. This is risky for Belarus,” Zelenskyy commented. “It ⁠is unfortunate that Belarus is ‌surrendering its sovereignty in favor of Russia’s aggressive ambitions.”

Meanwhile, Russia is reportedly building a major ammunition plant in Belarus to help supply the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Construction is said to be underway close to Belarusian capital Minsk, according to opposition group BELPOL, comprised of former members of the Belarusian security services. Responding to news of the plant, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya accused Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka of “dragging Belarus deeper into Russia’s war.”

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

Evidence of Belarusian involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine is not new, of course. On the eve of the invasion, Lukashenka allowed Putin to station tens of thousands of Russian troops in Belarus. The country then served as the main gateway and logistics hub for Russia’s blitzkrieg offensive to seize Kyiv in spring 2022. The Lukashenka regime is also implicated in the Kremlin campaign to abduct and indoctrinate thousands of Ukrainian children.

Reports of Lukashenka’s ongoing involvement in the Russian war effort come amid speculation of a potential thaw in diplomatic relations between Belarus and the United States. In December, 123 political prisoners were freed by the Belarusian authorities, with the US easing sanctions measures in exchange. This followed two smaller scale trade-offs earlier in 2025 as the Trump administration seeks to increase diplomatic dialogue with Minsk as part of ongoing efforts to broker a negotiated settlement to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Despite these headline-grabbing humanitarian steps, there is little sign of a more comprehensive shift in Minsk away from domestic repression or any reduction in support for Russia’s aggressive foreign policy agenda. On the contrary, the available evidence indicates that while Lukashenka may seek increased engagement with the West, he has no intention of turning away from Moscow or ending human rights abuses inside Belarus.

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By continuing to provide Moscow with its full backing, Belarus enhances Russia’s ability to wage war in Ukraine. This is undermining the Trump administration’s efforts to end the Russian invasion and secure a lasting peace settlement. Belarus also remains deeply implicated in Putin’s hybrid war against Europe and stands accused of weaponizing everything from migrants to balloons against its EU neighbors.

US outreach to Minsk over the past year has secured the release of many prominent prisoners, but continued arrests mean that the overall number of political detainees in the country remains high. Naturally, Lukashenka is happy to reengage with American officials in order to secure a relaxation of sanctions pressure, but there are also concerns that the current approach risks incentivizing hostage-taking.

Yes, a less isolated and more neighborly Belarus remains a worthwhile goal, but in the current circumstances, Lukashenka has little motivation to compromise. He is looking at possible gains without actually reducing the current level of repression in Belarus.

Sanctions relief would be a significant gain for Lukashenka. In exchange for that, the US should be able to achieve some limits on Belarusian facilitation of Kremlin aggression in Ukraine or, at a minimum, a notable decrease in the number of political prisoners in Belarus.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 8, 2026

Ukraine’s robot army will be crucial in 2026 but drones can’t replace infantry

By David Kirichenko

Ukraine’s growing robot army of land drones will play a vital role in the country’s defense during 2026, but they are not wonder weapons and cannot serve as a miracle cure for Kyiv’s manpower shortages, writes David Kirichenko.

Artificial Intelligence Conflict

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Ukraine security guarantees are futile without increased pressure on Putin

By Peter Dickinson

Western leaders have hailed progress toward “robust” security guarantees for Ukraine this week, but until Putin faces increased pressure to make peace, Russia will remain committed to continuing the war, writes Peter Dickinson.

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UkraineAlert Dec 16, 2025

The only winner from Ukrainian wartime elections would be Putin

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Ukrainians are fighting to defend their democracy against Kremlin authoritarianism, but they are also in no rush to hold wartime elections amid relentless Russian bombardment and with millions of Ukrainians displaced, writes Yuriy Boyechko.

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

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The post Belarus hosts nuclear-capable Russian missiles despite talk of US thaw appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 10, Imran Bayoumi, associate director of the GeoStrategy Initiative, was quoted in an Associated Press article titled “How the US could take over Greenland and the potential challenges,” arguing that Trump’s threats against Greenland reflect broader US failures to prioritize Arctic strategy.

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Imran Bayoumi

Associate Director

GeoStrategy Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The GeoStrategy Initiative, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, leverages strategy development and long-range foresight to serve as the preeminent thought-leader and convener for policy-relevant analysis and solutions to understand a complex and unpredictable world. Through its work, the initiative strives to revitalize, adapt, and defend a rules-based international system in order to foster peace, prosperity, and freedom for decades to come.

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The post Bayoumi quoted in AP News on the US lack of Arctic strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 9, Tressa Guenov, director of operations and programs and senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security was interviewed on Times Radio about the US-Russia relationship. She argues that though the Trump National Security Strategy does not name Russia as an adversary, oil tanker seizures demonstrate a harder line from the US against Russia in the Western hemisphere.

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Tressa Guenov

Director, Programs and Operations and Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The post Guenov on Times Radio about how Venezuela impacts the US-Russia relationship appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 9, Alexander B. Gray, a GeoStrategy Initiative nonresident senior fellow, published an article in The Wall Street Journal titled “A Defense of the Donroe Doctrine in Greenland.”

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Alexander B. Gray

Nonresident Senior Fellow

GeoStrategy Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

The GeoStrategy Initiative, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, leverages strategy development and long-range foresight to serve as the preeminent thought-leader and convener for policy-relevant analysis and solutions to understand a complex and unpredictable world. Through its work, the initiative strives to revitalize, adapt, and defend a rules-based international system in order to foster peace, prosperity, and freedom for decades to come.

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The post Gray in The Wall Street Journal on the Donroe doctrine in Greenland appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What impact will this deal have on European competitiveness and South American export markets? And what details remain to be ironed out as the deal moves onto the European Parliament for final approval? Our experts provide their insights into this decades-in-the-making trade pact below. 

1. Why is the EU-Mercosur deal happening now?

Those European farmers and others opposed to the EU-Mercosur deal can blame US President Donald Trump for the conclusion of this significant free trade agreement. Negotiations between the EU and Mercosur were essentially on hold after the basic agreement, finalized in 2019, was met with serious opposition by key EU member states. During 2024 and 2025, the European Commission and Mercosur negotiated an “additional instrument” with protections on labor, human rights, and environmental issues. With Trump’s tariffs in effect by summer 2025, pressure mounted for the EU to diversify its trading partners. Last year, the EU finalized a new trade agreement with Indonesia and updated an existing agreement with Mexico. The bloc also made significant progress on an EU-India trade deal.

Nevertheless, the Mercosur deal still faced near-fatal opposition until it received two final pushes: First, the European Commission proposed safeguards to protect agricultural interests from import surges. Second, the new US National Security Strategy made clear for the EU that trade relations with Latin America were a geopolitical imperative. Nevertheless, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni refused to provide her country’s needed vote until the European Commission promised additional agricultural support in the next EU budget. With Italy’s support today—and in the wake of a US operation in Venezuela that left Europe on edge about Greenland—the EU-Mercosur agreement finally made it over the finish line. 

—Frances Burwell is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

***

The EU–Mercosur trade deal comes at a moment of growing pressure to diversify export markets and trade partners amid heightened geopolitical uncertainty, particularly in light of US tensions with China and the imposition of US tariffs. For Mercosur, this urgency has been especially acute for Brazil, the bloc’s largest economy, which has faced an additional 40 percent US tariff on top of baseline duties and whose number one trading partner is China.

—Valentina Sader is a director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, where she leads the Center’s work on Brazil, gender equality and diversity, and manages the Center’s Advisory Council.

***

The European Commission has sought to expand the EU’s network of trade relations to compensate for pressures from US tariffs, aggressive challenges from China, and the need to secure access to critical materials. Whether that diversification strategy is credible hinged in no small part on this trade deal—not just on the substance of market access and comparative advantages but also on the geopolitical feasibility of such a major agreement. The shifts in US trade policy under Trump, the challenges to the global trading system that Europe’s export-oriented economies depend on, and the demonstration of China’s stranglehold on critical resources clearly accelerated the decadeslong negotiations between the EU and Mercosur, which first opened in 1999 and were only finalized in 2024.

Last-minute additions were made by the EU in 2025 to provide more protections for European farmers. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hoped to sign the deal in Brasília in December 2025 after the initial safeguards were agreed upon in September, but Italy threw an unexpected wrench in those plans until further guarantees were made to protect domestic producers. Dramatic protests by farmers in Brussels in December solidified the momentum against signing the deal before Christmas.

On Wednesday, the safeguards Italy wanted were agreed upon by the EU’s agricultural minister and Rome lifted its veto. This paved the way for the European Council to vote in favor of the deal today by qualified majority—despite France voting against it, amid fresh farmer protests in Paris and increased political pressure on French President Emmanuel Macron—and for von der Leyen to officially sign the deal with Mercosur leaders in Paraguay as soon as January 12.

—Jörn Fleck is the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

2. What impact will this have on Europe?

Europe worked hard to reach consensus on how to assuage doubts from European farmers about any negative impacts on their livelihoods. The additional measures added to the deal include “safeguards” for sensitive agricultural sectors, such as poultry, beef, eggs, citrus, and sugar, which would “suspend tariff preferences” in the case of “serious injury” to EU farmers. Serious injury is defined as an increase in import volume or a decrease in prices by more than 8 percent compared to the three-year average. The European Commission also introduced a slew of regular monitoring instruments, which will have to report to the European Council and European Parliament for increased accountability on enforcement. The Commission will be able to suspend imports from Mercosur in sensitive sectors if it deems this to be necessary. The final concessions agreed this week to bring Italy on board also include a revision to the 2028-2034 EU budget to allow farmers early access to roughly €45 billion in subsidies, as well as lowering import duties on fertilizers, the unaffordability of which was a major sticking point for protesters.

Economically, the agreement will remove approximately four billion euros worth of tariffs between the two trading blocs, which is significant for several key EU sectors that were previously subject to high tariffs when exporting to Mercosur. European exporters will no longer face 35 percent tariffs on car parts, 28 percent tariffs on dairy, and 27 percent tariffs on wine. The Commission estimates that the agreement could increase EU exports to Mercosur by 39 percent each year and support more than 440,000 jobs in Europe. However, not everyone shares this rosy assessment. Macron, in his announcement that France would not support the deal, stated that the economic gains would be minimal and that the agreement is “from another age.”

—Jörn Fleck

***

Despite the very visible and sometimes violent protests by European farmers, the Mercosur pact is likely to make a positive contribution to the European economy. The agreement removes most Mercosur tariffs for industrial goods (currently set at rates ranging from 15-35 percent), opening the market for European machine tools, cars, pharmaceuticals, and other products. Mercosur tariffs on most food and agriculture products (ranging from 20-35 percent) will also be removed.

While EU farmers have expressed concerns about Mercosur agricultural products, especially meat, flooding the EU market, that is very unlikely in reality. The agreement includes limited tariff-free quotas for Mercosur products, and once those quotas are reached, current tariffs are reimposed. For beef, the quota allows in only an additional 1.5 percent of total EU production, and for poultry, only 1.3 percent. Moreover, if there are sudden, sharp rises in imports, the EU can impose measures to limit them. Despite the rhetoric, agriculture remains a well-protected sector under the EU-Mercosur accord. And for European industry, this agreement opens an important new market.

—Frances Burwell

3. What impact will this have on South America?

Covering countries with a combined population of more than 700 million people, the trade deal promises to expand South American access to the European market, boosting exports and attracting greater EU investment. At the same time, it will pressure Mercosur industries to modernize, digitize, and improve efficiency to remain competitive amid increased exposure to European manufactured goods. 

Politically, the deal strengthens Mercosur’s credibility and cohesion at a moment of internal fragmentation, signaling that the bloc remains a viable platform for collective trade policy and diplomacy despite ideological differences among its members. As the bloc turns thirty-five this year, it is reasserting its strategic purpose, having finalized a deal with the European Free Trade Association, restarted negotiations with Canada, and now locked in a landmark agreement with the European Union.

—Valentina Sader

4. What should the US take away from this?

The Trump administration is unlikely to provide any public support for this agreement, but it is also unlikely to make it a significant issue in the US-EU relationship, despite its current emphasis on Latin America as its sphere of influence. This is a serious underappreciation of the importance of this accord. The EU will now have free-trade agreements with close to eighty countries, while the United States has free trade agreements with only twenty. While Trump has signed additional “deals” with many countries, they have generally raised trade barriers, rather than opening markets, and US demands for inward investment and other conditions have left many trading partners bruised and resentful. 

The EU is certainly a tough negotiator, and the Mercosur accord will make some constituencies on both sides unhappy, but it is likely to raise trade levels between two significant economic blocs. The reduction in high Mercosur tariffs for EU goods will mean more exports for European industries, luxury goods, and other products. EU companies will be able to bid on public tenders in Mercosur countries on an equal basis with local firms. The agreement also safeguards the branding of more than three hundred traditional EU food products, such as champagne and parmesan cheese, meaning that US products with those same names must be rebranded to enter the Mercosur market. This is not only an economic loss for the United States, but a geopolitical one as well. EU and Mercosur businesses will generate more partnerships, and these growing economic ties are likely to lead to more political alignment at a time when many in the Southern Hemisphere are balancing their interests between China and the United States. 

For Mercosur leaders and their citizens, the contrast could not be starker: In the same week that the United States conducted a military operation against a neighbor, the EU has finally agreed to a significant trade pact based on the rule of law.

—Frances Burwell

***

As the EU and Mercosur double down on a multilateral, rules-based free trade geopolitical reality, the United States appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Given the current geopolitical context and in the wake of a new US National Security Strategy that places the Western Hemisphere at the center of US foreign policy, this deal is an opportunity for Mercosur member countries to reduce their economic reliance on the United States.

—Valentina Sader

***

On a symbolic level, and perhaps most importantly, the deal demonstrates Europe’s willingness to adapt to an increasingly volatile global economy, the headwinds from US tariffs, and a new China challenge in critical sectors. For those in Brussels who call for the EU to stand more on its own footing economically, this is a strategic win. Moreover, if EU leaders had once again failed to reach internal consensus on the deal, it could very well have closed the door to any future deal with Mercosur and proven correct Washington’s doubts about Europe’s ability to act decisively on the world stage.

—Jörn Fleck

The post The EU and Mercosur are creating one of the world’s largest free trade areas. What’s next? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

This is the fourth chapter in the Freedom and Prosperity Center’s 2026 Atlas. The Atlas analyzes the state of freedom and prosperity in ten countries. Drawing on our thirty-year dataset covering political, economic, and legal developments, this year’s Atlas is the evidence-based guide to better policy in 2026.

Evolution of freedom

Singapore’s post-independence development strategy was clear and, for a long time, well suited to the country’s advantages and constraints. A free port under British colonial rule since 1819, Singapore separated from Malaysia in 1965, which made continued outward orientation an existential necessity for the city-state’s survival. Developed-country trade liberalization encouraged offshore sourcing by multinationals, enabling Singapore’s government to build an export-oriented economy anchored in foreign direct investment. It prioritized manufacturing, later adding high-end services, and used targeted industrial policy to achieve its priorities. The strategy was reinforced by disciplined macroeconomic management, public investment in world-class infrastructure, and efficient public administration.

But what made the approach distinctive was not just openness to trade and investment—it was also the degree to which the state integrated regulatory, proprietorial, and allocative power. The government planned land use, owned most of the land base, channeled compulsory savings, and exercised strategic ownership through sovereign wealth funds and government-linked companies. This tight coupling of state and market produced order and speed and made full use of a global economic environment that favored openness. At the same time, however, it embedded government discretion at the center of daily life.

The economic engine was an extensive growth model, which expanded output by adding capital and labor to a fixed land base, rather than by sustained gains in total factor productivity. Singapore incentivized multinationals to produce in the country, scaled public investment, and—critically—liberalized foreign labor inflows to keep costs predictable. That choice made sense when the priority was to build a platform economy quickly. It is less convincing as a path to future prosperity. Heavy reliance on lower-wage foreign workers depresses incentives to automate, redesign jobs, and raise productivity. At the same time, large inflows of higher-skilled foreigners add to demand for scarce urban resources and amenities, especially housing, putting pressure on prices and widening social distance. Such social distance is seen where differences in income, opportunities, and daily living conditions deepen divides between groups. In such a system, the state can point to impressive aggregate outcomes while households at the lower end experience stagnant real wages and rising costs.

Institutionally, Singapore has combined strong commercial rule of law and administrative capability with persistently narrow political competition. Elections are regular and cleanly administered, but contestation is constrained. The playing field is shaped by districting changes implemented shortly before each election; official campaign periods that last just nine days; and a long tradition of filing defamation actions against critics, including for statements made during the hustings. Mainstream media is not fully independent—there is substantive state ownership and oversight—and online speech is governed by broad statutes that give the executive sweeping, fast-acting powers. Passage of POFMA (Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act) in 2019 and FICA (Foreign Interference [Countermeasures] Act) in 2021 was justified by the government as defenses against misinformation and foreign interference, but the measures have also generated uncertainty about what is out of bounds. In practice, the fear and reality of punishment lead risk-averse citizens and institutions to overcomply. The effect is anticipatory discipline, more than visible coercion, engendering a climate in which people self-censor and where policy debate narrows.

The legal environment reinforces this equilibrium. Singapore courts are efficient, free from corruption, and commercially reliable—central reasons investors locate there. But the same state that regulates also owns land, large companies, and the largest pools of domestic savings. Political appointments, the use of civil defamation in political contexts, and the fusion of political and administrative authority create ambiguity for anyone engaged in contentious public speech or organizing. For most commercial actors, rules are clear and enforcement swift; for citizens considering robust political contestation, the boundaries are less legible and the costs potentially high. That asymmetry lowers the expected return on civic initiative and removes information the state needs for timely course correction.

The tight state-economy nexus is particularly visible in land, housing, savings, and capital allocation. Because the government owns nearly all the land and leases public housing on 99-year terms, “market prices” are necessarily shaped by policy. The Central Provident Fund (CPF) holds employees’ mandatory savings (currently amounting to 37 percent of employee compensation) and links a very large share of it to housing purchases and other government-defined uses. The sovereign wealth funds Temasek and GIC intermediate large public assets and maintain strategic holdings in major enterprises, while government-linked companies dominate substantial portions of the corporate landscape. This architecture has delivered order, speed, and scale. It has also raised economy-wide prices, encouraged rent extraction through asset inflation, and tilted returns toward capital and land rather than labor. When the state is everywhere—as de facto landlord, employer, investor, banker, business partner, regulator, customer, supplier, and even competitor in the provision of goods and services beyond public goods—experimentation by private enterprise narrows, not by prohibition but by crowding out, and by the rational impulse to align with official priorities, especially when reliant on the state for incentives or sales.

These facts sit awkwardly with conventional measures of “economic freedom,” such as those produced by the Fraser Institute or Heritage Foundation, which reward contract enforcement, low tariffs, and investment openness, have historically placed Singapore at top positions in their indexes. The economic pillar of the Freedom Index, mainly based on these same external sources, consequently ranks Singapore as the eighth most economically free country among the 164 nations covered. Those measures capture real policy strengths, but rankings such as these cannot capture how a directed ecosystem works on the ground when the state chooses where investment is most desired, sets the volume and terms of labor inflows, prices land it largely controls, and deploys large public capital to back favored sectors. Under such conditions, entrepreneurship is not forbidden, but it is less central to the model than in economies where the state is smaller and competition wider. A rules-based marketplace can coexist with discretionary steering from above. The visible results—macro stability, fast approvals, coordination in areas the state prioritizes—are valuable. But hidden costs—muted productivity incentives, lower household consumption, and limited diffusion of capability—accrue slowly and become apparent only when the external environment turns unfriendly.

Some might argue that Singapore’s example indicates that political freedom is unnecessary for economic development. After gaining independence, the government justified expanded restrictions on labor, media, and freedom of association as necessary to ensure political stability and attract foreign direct investment (FDI). But these restrictions remain in place even as South Korea and Taiwan, formerly authoritarian regimes, showed that political liberalization and a more participatory system could reinforce and enhance, not undermine, stability as economies mature (see Figure 1). In Singapore, constraints on expression—including in academia—reduce the diversity and depth of policy discussions. When dissent is costly and information selectively released, the system hears less from those who see problems first: low-wage workers, squeezed middle-class families, independent researchers, and small firms facing rising costs. This is not an abstract normative concern but rather a practical handicap in a complex, rapidly changing economy.

Figure 1. Political liberalization did not slow economic growth in South Korea or Taiwan

Gross domestic product per capita (purchasing power parity-adjusted, in 2021 constant international dollars) was obtained from the IMF data portal. The Political Rights component has been extended back to 1980 using V-Dem data and the same methodology as in the Freedom and Prosperity Indexes.

Evolution of prosperity

Singapore’s achievements on headline income are undeniable. Gross domestic product per capita has tripled since 1990, placing the country among the richest in the world. The Prosperity Index also records the country’s high levels of life expectancy and educational attainment. Singapore joined the world’s most developed countries several decades ago. These are the peers with which it should be compared, not its lower-income regional neighbors, particularly since the Singapore model of growth is clearly distinct from that of other high-income nations. An extensive growth model powered by factor accumulation leaves characteristic fingerprints. Singapore runs large current-account surpluses (over 20 percent of GDP annually since 2005) and builds fiscal buffers (persistent large budget surpluses); public investment is high; private consumption is low by advanced-economy standards; and productivity growth has been episodic outside a few frontier activities. This is the logic by which the system operates: Singapore prioritizes external competitiveness, recycles surpluses into foreign assets, and leans on a managed exchange-rate regime to hold down imported inflation and to maintain credibility. The main questions behind the numbers are how broadly they translate to all social strata and whether the current model is sustainable in the long run.

The inequality component of the Prosperity Index gives a visual answer to the first question. Compared to the Nordic European countries, Singapore has a much higher level of income inequality (see Figure 2). Other distributional measures, such as an estimated 0.7 Gini coefficient in terms of wealth inequality, point to the same conclusion. What’s more, these numbers most likely underestimate the actual level of inequality in Singapore. Most OECD countries include all legal immigrants (permanent and temporary residents) when estimating inequality, but Singapore excludes non-permanent immigrants, though they account for 39 percent of the labor force and are concentrated at the lower end of the income distribution. The country’s official measures of inequality (a 2024 Gini coefficient of 0.435 before and 0.364 after taxes and transfers) also exclude non-labor income, more than half the total. The real inequality gap in Singapore, compared with other developed countries, is probably much wider than estimated, while Singaporeans’ share of national income has almost certainly shrunk since 2014, the last time this number was released. Socioeconomic inequality is a direct product of the Singapore model, which generates costs borne by households through higher local-currency prices, crowding out of small and medium enterprises, thin wage growth at the base, and a muted share of national income going to labor and citizens.

Figure 2. Income inequality is higher in Singapore than in Scandinavian countries

Labor-market design is central to these outcomes. Liberal foreign-worker inflows have long been used to match demand cycles, contain wage pressures, and deliver what has been referred to as “labor peace.” Over time, this has reduced the incentive for employers to automate or redesign low-productivity work. A dual structure persists. At one end, a sizeable segment of the economy depends on low-paying, physically demanding and risky jobs that do not lead to productivity ladders for residents. At the other end, inflows of professionals and executives meet genuine skills needs but also fuel demand for scarce urban resources and amenities, especially housing, raising costs and intensifying competition for positional goods and elite educational tracks. The structure widens the gap between those at the lower and upper ends of the economy without building domestic capability commensurate with the country’s income level.

Housing and savings amplify the distributional effects. Singapore links a very large share of forced savings to Housing and Development Board (HDB) purchases on 99-year leases, with 76 percent of the population (down from 85 percent) housed in these government-run properties. When home values rise, owners enjoy wealth effects; when leases age and policy signals shift, uncertainty grows for households that cannot easily diversify. Land prices—set in a market the state effectively controls—ripple through business costs and wages. The expectation of continuing asset inflation encourages rent-seeking over entrepreneurship and leads families to shoulder significant leverage. A model that relies on rising asset prices to sustain consumption in a city of high living costs is one that exposes households to policy-driven valuation risk. It also depresses fertility (the 0.97 total fertility rate is among the world’s lowest) by increasing the cost of raising children in an expensive, dense, competitive urban environment.

Singapore’s 37 percent labor share of national income has been low relative to its peers, while gross operating surplus and property-related incomes loom large, at 54 percent. Government-linked firms and multinationals dominate many input and output markets, crowding out smaller domestic enterprises. Private consumption’s share of GDP (36 percent in 2024, down from 49 percent in 2001) is strikingly low for an advanced economy. These features set Singapore apart from the most prosperous and inclusive societies, where thicker wage floors, broader diffusion of capability, and less reliance on asset inflation anchor the social contract.

Education and health present a complex picture. Attainment is high and standardized test scores in math and science rank among the world’s best. But in a relentlessly competitive school system, there are concerns that heavy reliance on private tuition (70 percent of students) contributes to unequal educational outcomes and diminished social mobility by giving an advantage to those whose families can afford the extra expenditure. Additionally, translating education into broad-based opportunity is uneven since the economic structure does not generate enough high-productivity, middle-income jobs for residents outside elite tracks. Without stronger productivity growth at the firm level—driven by job redesign, automation, and diffusion of best practice—credentials do not guarantee commensurate wages. On the health front, a technocratic system achieves strong population outcomes (in terms of average life expectancy) at relatively low public cost, but it deliberately shifts financial risk to households through compulsory savings and copayments. In a city with high living costs and thin wage growth at the base, that risk burden is felt keenly even when headline indicators look strong.

Externalities are increasingly salient. Sustaining growth through population increases and construction intensifies congestion and environmental stress in a tropical, high-density city increasingly beset by climate change (high temperatures, frequent floods, rising sea level). Industry clusters that anchor the export platform—energy-intensive manufacturing, petrochemicals, aviation-related services, data centers—carry emissions and transition risks that will be costlier to manage as climate policy tightens globally. Meanwhile, the shift to attracting family offices and private wealth poses reputational and security risks—from money-laundering and accusations of “Singapore-washing” (intermediating funds through Singapore to disguise their origin or destination) to international criminal syndicates and scammers who use Singapore as a hub for their illicit activities. The result of this shift is to concentrate purchasing power in neighborhoods and assets where residents already feel priced out, with only modest spillovers to domestic capability building and financial-market depth.

When the cost of dissent is high and data releases are selective, independent journalists, researchers, and civic groups struggle to map distributional outcomes in real time. That deprives policymakers of useful feedback, early warnings, and good ideas from outside the official complex. It also erodes trust. Citizens are more likely to accept difficult adjustments when they believe the system listens to their concerns and shares risk fairly. Today, too much downside is borne by households, which face rising prices and policy-shaped asset risks while being told that government largesse through periodic non-entitlement transfers will cushion the blow. Such discretionary transfers—conditional, temporary, inadequate, and uncertain—are inferior to market wages that rise with productivity and distort political preferences by making the citizenry beholden to the governing party. 

The path forward

Singapore will not succeed in the next decade by doing more of what worked in the last half-century. The world has changed. Globalization is retrenching, the international tolerance for mercantilist policies is narrowing, and great-power rivalry is intensifying with increased willingness to use economic pressure to exact political concessions. Regional competitors—from China to Vietnam and Indonesia—combine improving infrastructure and skills with labor costs Singapore cannot match. Subsidy races in major economies are reshaping value chains and contesting investment decisions with tools Singapore cannot or should not emulate at scale. The uncertain impact of technological disruption by artificial intelligence makes investment decisions difficult and complicates long-term planning. In this environment, doubling down on a model optimized for inflows of foreign labor and capital will yield diminishing returns and increasing vulnerabilities, while wasting scarce resources.

The first imperative is to move decisively from extensive to intensive growth. That means closely linking firm survival to productivity improvement. A credible path would temper reliance on lower-wage foreign labor in ways that raise the payoff from automation, process innovation, and job redesign—especially in service sectors where productivity lags and resident employment is concentrated. It will close some firms and raise costs for others in the short run, but without this shift, wages at the base will remain thin and inequality will worsen, no matter how many transfers the government can deploy. Complementary reforms should ensure that inflows of higher-skilled foreigners are aligned with building domestic capability rather than simply satisfying short-term demand and bidding up urban resource costs.

Second, the scale and use of surpluses and reserves should be revisited, especially as the sovereign wealth funds which invest reserves have underperformed. A stronger exchange rate and slower reserve accumulation would lower imported inflation and relieve cost-of-living pressures. A larger share of fiscal resources can be redirected from broad corporate inducements and opaque industrial bets toward social spending that reduces household risk without dulling work and investment incentives. None of this implies fiscal profligacy or acting imprudently. It reflects a recognition that the opportunity cost of very large buffers, in a rich and aging society, includes foregone domestic investment in human capital, diffusion of capability, and life-cycle security.

Third, land and housing policy must be reoriented to lower systemic costs and reduce dependence on asset inflation. More retirement savings should be decoupled from housing, the long-term treatment of aging leases clarified, and the state’s control of land used to dampen, not amplify, economy-wide price pressures. Greater transparency around land pricing and HDB cost structures would improve trust and policy effectiveness, and enable better planning of investment decisions by households and businesses. Lower land costs would cascade through wages and prices, reduce the attraction of rent-seeking, and shift capital toward productive enterprise. It would also promote family formation by lowering the cost and uncertainty associated with housing, childcare, and eldercare.

Fourth, the growth playbook should move from picking winners at scale to catalyzing broad-based experimentation by private actors. Singapore has spent heavily, over decades, on research parks and sectoral “bets” that delivered mixed results. In a world where value is increasingly created in ideas, services, and intangibles, the priority should be to lower entry barriers, democratize access to data and infrastructure, and crowd in private risk-taking outside state-linked incumbents. Public capital can be powerful when it is allocated with discipline: to back competitive markets, not sustained rents; to fund diffusion of capability, not trophy projects; and to hold itself accountable to transparent criteria and sunset clauses.

Fifth, the political-legal setting must evolve in tandem with the economy. Removing the conflation of government and ruling party interest with the public interest, strengthening checks and balances on the executive’s exercise of powers, normalizing robust debate, and making distributional data routinely available would lower the implicit tax on civic initiative and improve policy through better feedback. Complex societies govern better when they listen widely and when the rules are clear and contestable—as evidenced by other Asian countries that have shown that political liberalization can coexist with order and strengthen legitimacy. Confidence in performance should reduce, not increase, the state’s reliance on ambiguity and speed in controlling speech and association.

Geopolitics adds urgency. Singapore cannot count indefinitely on frictionless access to foreign capital, technology, and markets. Practices once tolerated may be penalized. If the country continues to rely primarily on incentive-led FDI and imported labor in a city with high costs and rising environmental constraints, it will confront sharper trade-offs: either slower growth with rising inequality and social tension, or continued growth with greater external exposure and domestic fragility. Neither is an optimal strategy for the future.

The better alternative is a new “social compact” that matches the high-income status Singapore has achieved. It would place productivity and diffusion of capability at the center of economic strategy; align immigration and industrial policy with those goals; share risk more fairly with households; and widen the channels through which citizens can speak, organize, and help solve problems. It would move society from discretionary benevolence toward institutionalized confidence that rules are predictable and fair. It would sustain high income without leaning on ever-rising asset prices, grow wages at the base faster than the cost of essentials, and ease the pressures that make everyday life feel precarious to many in one of the world’s richest cities.

Singapore possesses the administrative capacity, fiscal resources, and human talent to make this transition. The PAP government, which has ruled for 66 years, faces no short- or even medium-term threat to its overwhelming hegemony. It recognizes the external and domestic challenges the economy faces, expresses concern about social mobility and social cohesion amid a “foreign-local divide,” and is attempting to “listen more” (albeit through channels and processes it controls). The government has even acknowledged that the model that got the country to where it is today is not the model that will take it further, because the world will not arrange itself to suit the old playbook. What it has not done is change the playbook. Instead, it is ratcheting up growth acceleration by placing bigger bets on “industries of the future” while holding on to established ones as a hub for “leading global firms.” Recognizing that “not everything will succeed,” the government argues that “if just one or two do, they can transform our economy and carry Singapore to the next level.” It is not moving toward political and intellectual liberalization, insisting instead that maintaining “social harmony”—given economic openness, racial and religious diversity, divisive social media and geopolitical tensions—requires holding fast to the tight rules of the past.

If Singapore changes its playbook, its freedom profile will become less lopsided—still strong on commercial rule of law and execution but balanced by more open contestation and clearer legal protections for speech. Its prosperity will be more inclusive and sustainable. Without the change, the headline numbers may stay impressive for a while, but the trade-offs will sharpen, and the miracle will appear less as a model to emulate and more as a cautionary warning. In the long run, a city-state’s greatest asset is the capability and confidence of its people. Building institutions that allow competition in markets and ideas and that trust and empower ordinary citizens, rather than domestic and foreign elites, is the surest way to keep Singapore exceptional.

Linda Y.C. Lim, professor emerita of corporate strategy and international business at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, has studied the Singapore economy for 50 years, and published other research on international trade and investment, women in the labor force, and overseas Chinese business in Southeast Asia. She co-edits AcademiaSG, an academic blog promoting scholarship “of/for/by Singapore.” 

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2026 Atlas: Freedom and Prosperity Around the World

Against a global backdrop of uncertainty, fragmentation, and shifting priorities, we invited leading economists and scholars to dive deep into the state of freedom and prosperity in ten countries around the world. Drawing on our thirty-year dataset covering political, economic, and legal developments, this year’s Atlas is the evidence-based guide to better policy in 2026.

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2025 Atlas: Freedom and Prosperity Around the World

Twenty leading economists, scholars, and diplomats analyze the state of freedom and prosperity in eighteen countries around the world, looking back not only on a consequential year but across twenty-nine years of data on markets, rights, and the rule of law.

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2024 Atlas: Freedom and Prosperity Around the World

Twenty leading economists and government officials from eighteen countries contributed to this comprehensive volume, which serves as a roadmap for navigating the complexities of contemporary governance. 

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The Freedom and Prosperity Center aims to increase the prosperity of the poor and marginalized in developing countries and to explore the nature of the relationship between freedom and prosperity in both developing and developed nations.

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Bottom lines up front

• The ongoing election staged by the ruling junta in Myanmar is structured less as a democratic exercise and more as a managed performance of legitimacy.
• The election represents a test for neighboring nations on how much to engage with the junta to legitimize its rule.
• Regardless of the outcome of the elections, Myanmar’s unraveling will continue to destabilize the region.

On January 11, Myanmar will conduct the second phase of its general election, which began in December and will continue in a third phase later this month. When completed, it will have been the first such election in Myanmar since the 2021 military coup there. But what the ruling junta touts as a return to democratic governance is, in reality, a carefully managed exercise in self‑preservation by the generals who seized power almost five years ago. The elections, staged amid civil war and repression, will neither restore genuine democracy in Myanmar nor stabilize its fractured society. Instead, the electoral charade threatens renewed regional instability with implications for Bangladesh, India, and South Asia as a whole.

A “sham” election

Already, human rights organizations and civil society groups have condemned the process as illegitimate and incapable of meeting democratic standards. Human Rights Watch characterized the election as a “sham,” while the International Crisis Group, the International Republican Institute, and regional monitors such as the Asian Network for Free Elections have raised alarms about the absence of conditions for a credible vote.

The organizations’ concerns are valid. Myanmar’s vote is being conducted amid ongoing civil war, mass displacement, and widespread violations of political freedoms. Major opposition parties are blocked from meaningful participation. For example, the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party is contesting widely, but the National League for Democracy (NLD)—the party of imprisoned opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi—remains banned from meaningful competition, with most of its leadership detained or barred from standing. Reports indicate that civilians feel coerced into voting out of fear rather than choice. Testimonies describe pressure to vote from local authorities, military-linked administrators, and security actors, creating a climate in which participation is seen less as civic exercise and more as fearful compliance.

The geographic scope of the vote itself reflects the imbalance at the heart of this process. Rather than a nationwide election, only a portion of Myanmar’s townships are included in the polling, with the rest excluded on the grounds of conflict, insecurity, or administrative decisions that conveniently remove opposition strongholds from participation. Out of the country’s 330 townships, polling is scheduled in just 274; in other words, 56 townships—and in some assessments, even more—will not vote at all because authorities have designated them too unstable. Almost entire regions—particularly in the states of Rakhine, Chin, Kachin, Sagaing, and Karenni—remain cut out of the process, highlighting how the vote is structured less as a democratic exercise and more as a managed performance of legitimacy.

Bangladesh: Caught between crisis and containment

For Bangladesh—already host to more than a million Rohingya refugees and undergoing its own fraught political transition—the outcome offers little hope of resolution. The Rohingya crisis dates back several decades, with the biggest influx happening in 2017 because of mass expulsions from Rakhine State, which occurred under the NLD-led government that many Western observers once hailed as Myanmar’s democratic success story. Successive crises since then have exposed Dhaka’s limited leverage over Naypyidaw’s rulers, whether in military uniform or in civilian dress, and these elections are unlikely to change that calculus. The forced return of refugees without guarantees of safety and citizenship remains unrealistic under a Myanmar regime seeking legitimacy rather than reconciliation.

Continued violence in western Myanmar risks further displacement toward Cox’s Bazar, in southeastern Bangladesh. The border region has also seen shifts in control by armed groups, complicating trade and security cooperation and heightening anxiety in Dhaka about criminal networks and militant spillover. Prospects for stable, collaborative border governance remain dim.

Analysts characterize the current moment as a Rohingya stalemate, warning that the junta-driven polls offer “no meaningful pathway” for resolving the crisis and that any hope of voluntary, safe return remains illusory while the junta remains in place. Bangladesh already hosts more than a million Rohingya, while fresh fighting in Rakhine since 2024 has generated another surge of displacement, estimated at 150,000 people. Dhaka has rejected requests to send election observers, interpreting them as a bid to manufacture legitimacy. The interim Bangladeshi government, under pressure from domestic rights advocates, refuses to negotiate with Myanmar authorities who have no intention of allowing a safe and dignified return.

Security concerns compound this stalemate. The northern frontier is contested by the Arakan Army, Rohingya armed groups, and splinter factions, driving militarization. Bangladesh’s fence-building and patrol deployments respond to periodic cross‑border raids and trafficking networks, while nongovernmental organizations document camp‑level violence and extortion. In this context, even small escalations could trigger humanitarian emergencies and force Dhaka into defensive postures rather than constructive diplomacy.

India: Strategic ambivalence in the face of uncertainty

India’s stance reflects a tension between strategic interests and democratic principles. New Delhi shares a long, porous border with Myanmar’s restive northwest—an area where insurgent groups have long operated across boundaries and where any new wave of refugees, fighters, or illicit flows can inflame fears about the demographic balance in sensitive frontier states such as Mizoram, Manipur, and Nagaland. India’s priority is to prevent these pressures from spilling deeper into its territory, a task historically underpinned by security cooperation with the Myanmar military. Yet such cooperation is now a political liability given international condemnation of the junta.

At the same time, India has clear interests in counterbalancing China in Myanmar. Connectivity and energy projects under the Act East Policy—including highways and ports—depend on at least a minimal degree of order in Myanmar. The ongoing elections, marred by conflict and exclusion, do not provide that. New Delhi faces tough choices as it seeks to balance pragmatic ties with the junta even as doing so could enable Myanmar’s authoritarian consolidation, all while Chinese-backed infrastructure and security influence deepens along India’s eastern flank. India’s recent willingness to engage a wide spectrum of actors in the region—from Myanmar’s military to the Taliban government in Kabul, which New Delhi hosted for talks in October 2025—underscores how far it is prepared to stretch diplomatic orthodoxy to protect its strategic and connectivity interests.

This pragmatism reflects security pressures as well. Since the 2021 coup in Myanmar, New Delhi has documented increased flows of arms, refugees, and insurgents into India’s northeast, with groups such as the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang exploiting Myanmar’s political vacuum. Analysts warn that if the junta’s authority erodes further, Indian factions could seek sanctuary across the border or develop support channels through Bangladesh, threatening to upset the demographic balance in sensitive border states. Meanwhile, India’s signature projects—the Kaladan multi‑modal transit route and the India–Myanmar–Thailand highway—remain stalled by conflict, allowing China‑aligned infrastructure to gain relative momentum. Even as India dispatches observers and calls for an “inclusive poll,” critics argue that if India aligns too closely with the junta, it would cause a future resistance‑led government to tilt more toward Beijing. The dilemma is clear: Stability is indispensable for India’s Act East calculus, but stability anchored in repression could prove strategically self‑defeating.

The regional stakes

Myanmar’s electoral theater unfolds against a backdrop of great‑power competition. China sees the process as a means to safeguard strategic corridors linking Southeast Asia to the Indian Ocean. For China, it is a dual‑track strategy—formal engagement with the junta, informal management of militias—ensuring continued influence regardless of electoral credibility. Beijing wants elections above all for the promise of order: Even a tightly controlled, unfair vote is preferable, from its perspective, to open-ended civil war that threatens pipelines, ports, and overland trade routes. Chinese officials have leaned on some ethnic armed organizations to enter talks with the junta, with activists alleging that elements of this pressure campaign have veered into coercive tactics. These actions underscore the lengths to which Beijing is prepared to go to secure border stability, energy corridors, and uninterrupted trade.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sent inconsistent messages on Myanmar’s election. Publicly, the bloc signals unease and maintains a measure of diplomatic distance, showing little appetite for a strong multilateral stance. Privately, however, several member states have opened bilateral channels with Naypyidaw—through security cooperation, commercial agreements, and selective political engagement—effectively diluting ASEAN’s collective leverage. Malaysia has taken a more critical line, warning that partial elections “achieve nothing without peace,” while Vietnam has broken with the broader consensus by sending observers and portraying the polls as a possible starting point for stability.

In sum, the election functions less as a transition than as a diplomatic sorting mechanism, clarifying who will tolerate the junta for strategic gain and who will condition engagement on democratic legitimacy.

False dawn, real dangers

Myanmar’s ongoing elections do not mark a step toward democratic recovery; they mark the consolidation of an authoritarian holding pattern whose shockwaves extend far beyond Myanmar’s borders. What is unfolding is not a transition but a recalibration of power, engineered through selective participation, territorial exclusion, and coerced consent. If anything is clear for South Asia, it is that Myanmar’s unraveling is no longer contained within its borders. Elections may freeze formal politics, but the conflict itself continues to move—across borders, through refugee flows, supply routes, insurgent networks, and competing infrastructure projects.

In the absence of a coordinated regional response that prioritizes accountability, humanitarian protection, and a political settlement rooted in more than military control, this democratic crisis will only become harder to manage.

The post Neither free nor fair: What Myanmar’s ‘sham’ elections mean for the country and its neighbors appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Venezuela’s new acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, must satisfy Washington’s demands while maintaining sufficient support among the Venezuelan elite to avoid a regime fracture.
• Rodríguez’s most complex challenge will be managing Venezuela’s deep entanglements with Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba as the Trump administration demands that the regime cut ties to those countries.
• Venezuela’s long-repressed civil society will need to work to remain relevant amid a power transition dominated by US economic interests and the regime’s factional politics.

The United States’ extraction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from his bunker on January 3 triggered an explosion of activity across Venezuelan social media. Across Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp status updates, millions of Venezuelans shared jubilant reactions to images of the former dictator in custody. Venezuelan diaspora communities from Buenos Aires to Madrid posted celebratory videos, while domestic users circumvented internet restrictions to express relief and hope.

The regime’s communication apparatus—typically one of its most formidable weapons—collapsed during the crucial first fifteen hours following the operation. Targeted strikes on antennas disrupted the radio communications of the security forces, while an electricity outage impacted the area around the Fuerte Tiuna Army Base. However, internet and phone communications continued to function normally. State TV and radio stations were broadcasting prerecorded programming rather than providing critical news coverage. Chavismo took refuge on Telegram channels and groups.

When government communications finally resumed, conflicting statements revealed chaos within the regime. Late on January 3, former Vice President Delcy Rodríguez proclaimed Maduro “the only president of Venezuela” and demanded his release while simultaneously assuming the role of acting president. In contrast, US President Donald Trump claimed that she was cooperating with his administration and was willing to fulfill all his requests regarding the US takeover of the Venezuelan oil industry. This dissonance highlighted the regime’s turmoil, torn between defiant rhetoric for domestic audiences and pliant negotiations with Washington.

The regime’s double game

Hours after Maduro’s removal, María Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s democratic opposition movement, whose candidate won 67 percent of the vote according to tallies from the stolen 2024 election, declared on social media “Venezuelans, the HOUR OF FREEDOM has arrived!” However, despite her overwhelming popular legitimacy and moral authority, she operates under the constraints of surveillance and repression. The opposition’s mobilization capacity remains uncertain, as the Maduro regime’s systematic repression has crushed the country’s civil society.

For her part, Rodríguez confronts an unprecedented challenge for a Venezuelan leader: She must satisfy Washington’s demands while maintaining sufficient Chavista coalition support to prevent an internal fracture or a military coup. The Trump administration demands sufficient cooperation to enable US oil company operations, likely including transparent property contracts and regulatory stability—precisely the institutional environment that Chavismo systematically dismantled. Rodríguez making such an agreement with Trump would alienate the regime’s hardliners, who would view her accommodation as a betrayal. Thus, Rodríguez may be unable to guarantee the stability required for the business operations Trump wants to run in Venezuela.

Her public contradictions reflect this impossible position. In her first televised addresses as interim president, she demanded Maduro’s immediate release to demonstrate loyalty to domestic audiences. Less than twenty-four hours later, however, she declared it a priority to move toward a “balanced and respectful” economic cooperation between the United States and Venezuela.

This double game cannot persist indefinitely. Rodríguez must choose between accommodating Trump’s demands or preserving Chavista unity. Trump’s threat that if Rodríguez “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” makes clear that there will be consequences of noncompliance. Purging the hardliners may be Rodríguez’s best option.

Navigating the geopolitical minefield

Perhaps Rodríguez’s most complex challenge is managing Venezuela’s deep entanglements with China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba while simultaneously partnering with the Trump administration. This is especially the case after the Trump administration demanded that Venezuela immediately cut ties and cease intelligence cooperation with Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba. These relationships represent more than diplomatic alignments—they constitute binding financial obligations, operational dependencies, and strategic commitments that cannot simply be abandoned without triggering massive economic and security consequences.

China presents the most significant financial exposure. Venezuela owes Beijing around twenty billion dollars in loans. These debts are secured through oil-for-loan arrangements that require repayment through crude deliveries, with China currently absorbing more than half of Venezuela’s oil exports (approximately 746,000 barrels per day in November 2025).  

Beyond petroleum, Chinese state enterprises control critical Venezuelan infrastructure. Huawei built and maintains control over Venezuela’s national fiber-optic backbone. China Electronics Import & Export Corporation built and operates the VEN911 surveillance system. ZTE Corporation designed the Homeland Card system and operationalized the Patria System database used for social control. These companies don’t simply provide services—they embed operational control within Venezuela’s digital infrastructure, creating dependencies that cannot be severed without system collapse. Expelling Chinese technology companies would require the complete reconstruction of Venezuela’s telecommunications and surveillance systems.  

Russia’s Strategic Partnership Treaty with Venezuela, signed in May 2025, commits Caracas to comprehensive cooperation with Moscow across the hydrocarbons, military technology, and strategic sectors. Russia is Venezuela’s primary supplier of naphtha and diluents—essential additives for processing Venezuela’s heavy crude. These Russian commitments create immediate conflicts with a potential US partnership, as the Trump administration’s demands make clear. The energy deal announced by the Trump administration on January 7 indicates that US diluent will be sent to Venezuela, meaning that Russia will have to withdraw from that market.

Iran provides Venezuela’s most operationally sensitive international cooperation—drone technology production at El Libertador Air Base, where Iranian personnel set up operations. On December 30, 2025, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on Empresa Aeronautica Nacional SA, the Venezuelan company operating in a joint venture with Iranian companies at drone manufacturing facilities in Venezuela. This military-technical cooperation directly threatens US interests and almost certainly constitutes a nonnegotiable red line for Washington.

Cutting ties with Cuba would resent the deepest ideological and operational challenge for the regime. Cuban intelligence advisors remain embedded throughout Venezuelan security services despite the neutralization of Maduro’s personal protection unit. These advisors provide counterintelligence expertise, interrogation training, and repression coordination—exactly the capabilities Rodríguez needs to maintain internal control against potential coup attempts. Cuba’s own survival depends on Venezuelan oil shipments, with Havana receiving subsidized petroleum. Severing Cuban intelligence cooperation would affect operational expertise within the security forces, potentially triggering a military fracture. Yet Washington has demanded the immediate severance of Venezuela’s ties to Cuban intelligence. Moreover, on January 3, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a warning to the Cuban leadership: “If I lived in Havana and was part of the government, I’d be at least a little concerned.” He also emphasized that Cuba would no longer receive oil from Venezuela.

Democracy deferred

Each day of ambiguity increases pressure from all directions, making Rodríguez’s balancing act increasingly untenable. There are three competing scenarios: First, Rodríguez could successfully navigate between Washington and Chavismo. Second, hardliners could resist accommodation with the United States, triggering Trump’s threatened “second wave” operation. Third, a rebellion could replace Chavista leadership, opening the door to a transition.

Amid this uncertain picture, Venezuelan civil society, having demonstrated extraordinary resilience through the October 2023 primary elections and the July 2024 presidential campaign despite systematic repression, now confronts a different challenge. It must fight to remain relevant amid a power transition dominated by US economic interests and Chavista factional negotiations. In the days following Maduro’s capture, a clear priority has emerged for Venezuelan civil society: the total liberation of all the regime’s political prisoners, who currently number nearly one thousand. Only then will Venezuela’s transition to democracy truly begin.

The post Delcy Rodríguez’s untenable balancing act appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 8, Imran Bayoumi, associate director of the GeoStrategy Initiative, published an article in Foreign Policy titled “Trump’s Greenland Threats Paper Over a Lack of Arctic Strategy,” arguing that instead of threatening Greenland, the US should work to increase Arctic security burden sharing.

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Imran Bayoumi

Associate Director

GeoStrategy Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The GeoStrategy Initiative, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, leverages strategy development and long-range foresight to serve as the preeminent thought-leader and convener for policy-relevant analysis and solutions to understand a complex and unpredictable world. Through its work, the initiative strives to revitalize, adapt, and defend a rules-based international system in order to foster peace, prosperity, and freedom for decades to come.

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The post Bayoumi in Foreign Policy on Trump’s lack of Arctic strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Although the protests are inspiring and potentially historic, some of the developments are being overshadowed by the United States. On January 2 (and again two days later), US President Donald Trump issued an unspecified threat to the regime not to use further violence against its citizens. It is admirable that the Trump administration is focusing attention on the Iranian people, but it is also inconsistent with the administration’s past decisions to cut funds for vital internet circumvention services in Iran and avoid speaking out against the regime’s human rights violations.

The United States should not miss this opportunity to reaffirm support for the Iranian people as a centerpiece of a more comprehensive approach to its Iran policy. With this context in mind, and drawing on our past experiences serving in various capacities for the US government working on Iran—including during the Mahsa Amini protests—we authors suggest a few key policy recommendations.

Recommendations for the United States and its partners

1. Pause all major non-protest-related policy initiatives. Now is not the time for renewed nuclear negotiations or military strikes. The Biden administration famously paused negotiations about resuming the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action during the protests in response Mahsa Amini’s death. This does not mean diplomacy is dead, but any hypothetical nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran need to be postponed indefinitely. This is also not the time for Israel (or the United States) to restart military attacks. The Iranian people deserve the time and space to see these protests through. In June, the Iranian government benefited from an ill-conceived Israeli strike on Evin prison that attempted to liberate, but ended up killing, a number of prisoners. It is vital to not give the government a similar propaganda victory. 
2. The US government should designate a new Iran envoy. The Trump administration should immediately name or designate an envoy or senior official to engage with the Iranian diaspora and to more broadly focus on all aspects of Iran policy full-time. Regular engagement with this community and other Iran-focused government and nongovernment contacts is important to emphasize that the administration is serious about the Iranian people. This individual would not replace US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff but would report to him and other senior officials who remain focused on wider-ranging issues. Full-time attention on the portfolio would also help provide an internal advocate within an administration focused on budget cuts for low-cost, high-reward spending to advance a broader Iran policy, such as internet circumvention funding.
3. Partner governments should fund Iran initiatives that the administration ended. At the height of the Mahsa Amini protests, thirty million Iranians used US-funded circumvention services. Some of these services are being temporarily funded by private enterprises. Over the long-term, they require consistent support from a government entity. The same is also true of the Iran human rights programs that the current administration proposed cutting in its entirety in the Congressional Budget Justification. If the administration does not reconsider its cuts, other foreign governments would have an opportunity to pick up the technical and moral leadership that the United States has relinquished.
4. The international community should unite in backing the Iranian people. We authors have heard directly from Iranians who participated in past protests that a unified signal from the international community not only helped buoy sentiment within the movement but also served as a deterrent against human rights abuses by the regime. For instance, Iran significantly decreased its executions of drug offenders following sustained international pressure. Joint statements, including those issued by the Group of Seven and United Nations, have the best chance of impacting Iranian behavior. 
5. Create a nimble emergency funding mechanism. During the Mahsa Amini protests, several Iranian advocacy groups suggested to us that there was need for urgent funding, and they proposed possible emergency initiatives such as setting up funds to help pay striking workers living wages. Although we supported these ideas, the Biden administration was not nimble enough to fully evaluate and fund them in a timely manner. The United States or other partner nations should consider establishing a fund or program to explicitly facilitate crisis response operations. If the United States is unable or unwilling to fund it, the Treasury Department should, at a minimum, issue (or reissue) guidance to allow private individuals and organizations quick and legal ways to send money to protestors.
6. Increase human rights sanctions. The United States and partner governments should move quickly to issue targeted sanctions against human rights abusers and those involved in the crackdown against protestors. The 2024 bipartisan MAHSA Act provides the Treasury and State Department with new sanction authorities. To date, not a single designation has been imposed under this authority. Implementing MAHSA sanctions now—ideally in coordination with actions from our foreign partners—would send a symbolic, but powerful, message that the international community condemns Iran’s crackdown on protestors. 

Recommendations for nongovernmental actors

1. Minimize partisan politics. Iran policy has long been a victim of brutal partisan politics in Washington. Support for the Iranian people should be an approach that both parties should be able to get behind, as it aligns with US interests and values.  
2. More constructive engagement with the diaspora. As admittedly non-Iranian Americans involved in Iran policy, we authors will never fully understand the intricacies of the diaspora. From our past experiences, the online and in-person abuse directed at other members of the diaspora and at proposed policies limited government-diaspora engagement, and hindered the diaspora’s ability to effectively advocate for policy changes.
3. Provide clear and tangible recommendations. During the Biden administration, then-Vice President Kamala Harris led efforts to support the Iranian people’s call for the regime to be removed from the UN Commission on the Status of Women. This was a direct result of lobbying by civil society. Once the Harris team had a clear recommendation and knew it aligned with US policy priorities and values, the United States successfully led the campaign to remove Iran from the Commission.

A final recommendation for everyone: Keep the focus on Iran

The Iranian people themselves are bravely leading the current protests. It is essential to keep the focus on them, rather than on Washington politics and social media, to ensure the Iranian people get the support they need at this critical juncture.

Abram Paley is an incoming nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He most recently served as acting special envoy for Iran from 2023 to 2025 and, before that, Middle East advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris.

Nate Swanson is a resident senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at the Atlantic Council. He most recently served as director for Iran at the National Security Council in the Biden White House and a member of the Trump administration’s Iran negotiating team.

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On December 29, Iraq’s newly elected parliament met for the first time since the top court confirmed the November 11 election results. The session started the process of forming a new government in a parliament where no single party has a majority. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Sudani, who wants a second term, won the most seats with forty-six out of 329. However, in Iraq’s political system, winning the most seats does not guarantee the top job. Instead, the next prime minister is chosen through coalition deals among the main Shia factions. Whether Sudani gets another term is still uncertain, but these coalition talks will shape not only the next cabinet but also Iraq’s direction during future challenges.

In Washington, many believe that Sudani is different from Nouri al-Maliki, leader of the State of Law Coalition and the only prime minister who has previously served two terms in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. This assumption is both comforting and misleading. Sudani is often seen as more focused on technical issues and less divisive, leading a country that seems more stable than before. This could suggest that the status quo is the safest choice, as Sudani will likely continue efforts to work with Washington on critical issues of reform and militia disarmament in the next four years.

But this perspective conflates personal leadership qualities with deeper structural problems that have haunted Iraq historically. Iraq’s political system has weak checks and balances, and the state is seen as a source of rewards by the political elite. In this kind of political landscape, one leader staying in power too long can turn temporary authority into lasting control. Even capable leaders can weaken institutions if they stay for a second term.

The main issue for the country’s stability is not whether Sudani is like al-Maliki, but whether Iraq’s political system allows real competition. For true contestability, losing groups must believe they can return to power through talks and elections, and rivals should keep competing within the system instead of looking for power elsewhere. In Iraq, this kind of competition is important for security, not just for democracy.

The structural risks of a second term

Since the overthrow of the former Iraqi regime in 2003, Iraq’s politics have been competitive but lack strong limits. The political elite have utilized ministries and agencies not just for policy but also to manage coalitions by handing out jobs, contracts, and security roles to keep alliances together. All former prime ministers have been guilty of turning the state into a system of political favors, but they have differed in how far they pushed it. Prime ministers such as Haider al-Abadi, Adel Abdulmahdi, and Mustafa al-Kadhimi were not aggressive enough and lost power. Still, they left the state more stable than their predecessors.

In comparison, leaders who treated the state as spoils of war and built strong patronage networks, such as al-Maliki, served longer.

Iraqi prime ministers are often perceived as practical in their first terms, because they take office through a quota-sharing bargain that parcels out ministries and senior posts across blocs. This limits a premier’s control over a bureaucracy shaped by party patronage. This is visible at the point of government formation. For example, former Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi was sworn in in October 2018 with only a partial cabinet after parties deadlocked over key portfolios, and Mustafa al-Kadhimi began in May 2020 with several ministries still vacant as blocs continued to bargain over nominees.

Under those constraints, first-term premiers tend to lower immediate friction among rival power centers and prioritize deals, including Baghdad-Erbil arrangements such as budget-oil agreements. They also try to contain armed factions through a mix of formal incorporation and selective pressure. For example, the 2016 law that placed the Popular Mobilization Forces on a state footing to Kadhimi’s June 2020 raid on a Kata’ib Hezbollah site was followed days later by the release of most detainees after militia pushback.

In contrast, a second term changes the incentives by making it more rewarding to hold onto power. Leaders expecting to stay longer often put loyal people in top jobs, use government contracts to protect themselves, weaken oversight bodies, and use audits or investigations more against their opponents than their allies. Sudani’s government began moving in this direction toward the end of its first term, including by directing a federal oversight committee to scrutinize the Kurdistan Regional Government’s revenues and spending. In 2025, similar audit claims were often cited to justify delaying or withholding the Kurdistan region’s federal budget transfers.

This is the second-term trap in Iraq: It does not always lead straight to authoritarianism but slowly turns appointments, contracts, and enforcement tools into a system that limits political change and weakens institutions. This process often happens quietly and is often explained as being efficient or stable by outsiders who may not see how serious it is.

How state capture unfolds

In Iraq, administrative capture usually happens gradually through legal, political, and economic steps, rather than through open announcements.

This process often begins with key appointments in areas such as the interior and intelligence agencies, which control force; as well as finance and planning ministries, which manage spending; and justice positions, which oversee investigations. It continues with hard-to-audit procurement practices, such as emergency approvals, unclear contracts, secret spending, and the use of state-linked groups to move money. Over time, oversight bodies and courts may start enforcing rules selectively, targeting opponents more while letting allies off the hook, especially when these institutions are open to political pressure.

The main effect of administrative capture is on how the state functions, not just its reputation. It weakens the state’s ability to handle crises by distorting information and valuing loyalty over skill. Intelligence becomes less open, leadership roles become more political, and contracts are awarded for favors rather than for readiness. This creates a false sense of strength at the top level but breeds public distrust by hiding real problems. As people lose trust, the state’s legitimacy and its ability to respond effectively during crises like insurgencies, militia violence, or protests are greatly reduced.

Iraq has gone through this before, though it is often forgotten during quieter times. In 2014, military units that looked strong on paper fell apart when faced with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Reports blamed this on corruption, poor leadership, political appointments, and sectarian splits—problems that happen when security forces serve politics instead of acting as professional institutions. What seems stable can quickly fall apart in a crisis.

This is the main lesson from al-Maliki’s second term in office, which can be defined as the slipping slope toward the end of Iraq as one unified country. The problem was not just one leader’s style but the failure of institutions to stop power from becoming too personalized once someone stayed in office too long.

Supporters of Sudani point out his focus on service, his governance style, and the alleged deliveries to the Iraqis. Even his critics often admit he handles competing pressures with discipline.

However, in Iraq, a leader’s personal style cannot overcome deeper systemic pressures for long, especially when seeking a second term. Sudani’s support comes from the Shiite Coordination Framework, which brings together many groups with different interests, including some close to Iran. This coalition is more about bargaining than unity, so individual goals often take a back seat to group dynamics.

If Sudani wins a second term, he is likely to use the state to advance his personal power in the absence of real checks and balances, a concern reflected by the Shia Coordination Framework’s veto of his staying in power. Even if he secures a second term, his coalition partners could also impose strict demands and conditions on him, expecting that Sudani would use his power to make appointments that strengthen their networks, financial benefits, and use enforcement to help his allies and further limit rivals. The same practical skills that help manage coalitions, such as avoiding conflict and keeping support, can also make administrative capture worse by slowly tying state institutions to political groups.

Contestability as a stabilizing force

Since 2014, Iraq has faced instability, with mass protests, political deadlock, and repeated crises of legitimacy. Still, things have experienced somewhat incremental improvements since then because prime ministers have not been able to see their power as permanent. Even during messy transitions, the belief that no leader stays forever has kept politics open and allowed for change.

This openness changes how political groups act. When they think losing an election means they can still bargain later, they are more likely to take part in elections, talks, and building coalitions, and less likely to use force. But if it looks as though leaders cannot be replaced, rivals try to block decisions, build armed groups outside the system, and see politics as a fight for survival. In a country where armed groups exist alongside the government, this can slowly, then suddenly, destroy stability.

From this point of view, the real question for US policymakers is not about the personal qualities of Iraq’s next prime minister but whether the political system is open enough to stop the state from becoming a tool for narrow group interests.

What should the United States do?

The United States has limited influence in Iraqi politics, and being too direct can backfire by increasing nationalism, helping spoilers, or making it look as though the United States is picking leaders. So, any good US strategy should be careful and focused, aiming to support strong institutions and political change without backing any one leader.

Although it’s understandable that Washington seeks stability in Iraq after years of upheaval, its strategy should prioritize institutional processes over individual leaders to achieve that end. Iraq’s history demonstrates that apparent calm can coincide with institutional erosion, and the consequences of such hollowing become evident during subsequent crises.

The key question is not whether Sudani is like al-Maliki, but whether a second term would reduce competition and weaken institutions. Keeping the same leader can help stability only if there is real oversight and a chance for political change. Without these, stability is a credit borrowed on time until the next crisis happens. 

Yerevan Saeed is a nonresident senior fellow with the Iraq Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. Saeed is the Barzani scholar-in-residence in the Department of Politics, Governance & Economics at American University’s School of International Service, where he also serves as director of the Global Kurdish Initiative for Peace.

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On January 8, Imran Bayoumi, associate director of the GeoStrategy Initiative, was quoted in a CBC News article titled “With Trump’s Venezuela move and Greenland threats, are Canadians vulnerable?” discussing Trump’s renewed focus on the Western hemisphere. He argues that US threats of military action against Greenland are unproductive, urging for bolstered cooperation without threats.

Staff

Imran Bayoumi

Associate Director

GeoStrategy Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The GeoStrategy Initiative, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, leverages strategy development and long-range foresight to serve as the preeminent thought-leader and convener for policy-relevant analysis and solutions to understand a complex and unpredictable world. Through its work, the initiative strives to revitalize, adapt, and defend a rules-based international system in order to foster peace, prosperity, and freedom for decades to come.

learn more

The post Bayoumi quoted in CBC News on Trump’s approach to Greenland appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• A Trump-promised renaissance for Venezuelan oil and gas will be difficult to achieve.
• International oil companies are unlikely to make major new investments in the country without greater legal and regulatory certainty, but it may be possible to modestly raise production through immediate steps.
• Without real change from within, the Venezuelan industry will not be able to support the survival of the current regime or address entrenched humanitarian problems.

Within hours of the astonishing US intervention in Caracas this past weekend that captured Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration framed it as, among other things, a boon to its US “energy dominance” agenda. Citing Venezuela’s vast hydrocarbon resources—arguably the largest oil reserves in the world—President Donald Trump repeatedly promised that the next phase for Venezuela will involve US energy companies helping to restore the country’s failing oil and gas production, benefiting global oil markets with expanded supply. 

But the pathway from promises to meaningful production increases is likely to be a fraught one. The Trump administration seems to recognize this, as indicated by the administration seizing two oil tankers and quickly announcing an opaque arrangement wherein the United States will acquire thirty-to-fifty million barrels of already available Venezuelan crude oil. These fast wins might help justify the expenditure of US resources to continue its naval blockade and pursue further intervention, as the administration has hinted. But these moves do not fundamentally change the dynamics above or below the ground that have wrecked the Venezuelan industry. Nor do they alter the long path to a major recovery.

Indeed, a Venezuelan oil and gas production renaissance would require, among other factors, meaningful renewed interest and investment from US and international oil companies (IOCs). This will be difficult. As the Venezuelan people look ahead to a murky future and an uncertain US-led transition, leveraging their valuable energy resources to secure the country’s democratic future may prove easier said than done. 

How an industry fell apart

Decades ago, Venezuela’s oil and gas industry was a powerhouse that promised to drive the country forward. The country boasts 17 percent of global oil reserves, with an estimated 303 billion barrels of producible crude oil. In 2000, Venezuelan oil production reached a peak of 3.2 million barrels per day, enabled by joint ventures and effective partnerships between the national oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, SA, or PDVSA, and a host of IOCs.

In the early 2000s, however, the Chávez administration oversaw a nationalization of the Venezuelan oil sector that dramatically changed the terms of engagement for foreign companies. The nationalization resulted in asset seizures, international arbitration, and marked investment decline in Venezuela’s oil-producing regions by most Western companies. Following Chávez’s administration, Maduro and his officials then faced a punishing and ever-accelerating slate of US sanctions. Beginning in 2017, the first Trump administration targeted Venezuela’s oil and gas sector as the primary engine for the Maduro regime’s deepening authoritarianism.

Today, Venezuela’s oil and gas industry is in disarray. Production fluctuates below one million barrels per day, while the wider industry reels from years of underinvestment, neglect, lack of maintenance, and limited access to the engineering and technological prowess of Western IOCs. Improving this situation will require a sea change both for the Venezuelan oil and gas industry and its governing institutions; the former cannot proceed without the latter. By extension, the next steps taken by the country’s remnant Maduro-era leadership, the Trump administration, and the Venezuelan democratic opposition movement are of paramount importance to the future of the country’s energy industry. 

A stable, secure transition

The ideal first step in returning Venezuela’s industry to its former heights would be enabling a democratic transition, leading to a government that would then pass new legislation, revamp supervisory institutions, and operate in accordance with the rule of law. As of now, however, it is unclear that such a transition is the goal of either the Trump administration or Venezuela’s remaining powerbrokers. 

This concern is not a matter of idealism but rather of hard business realities. For any major corporation to engage in a foreign industry, especially in the oil and gas sector, that corporation must know who it is negotiating with. Contract designs and terms can vary considerably, but they must be developed by reliable partners who each understand the other’s roles and responsibilities. After all, a major factor that presaged the decline of Western companies’ engagement with Venezuela (and jump into arbitration proceedings) was Caracas’s reneging on contracts governing how the Venezuelan oil and gas assets were managed in terms of investment and eventual profits. Under the framework in place today, PDVSA has a majority stake in joint ventures. But in its bankrupt condition, it would be impossible for it to meet its capital commitment for nearly any project.

At this stage, it remains unclear who is actually in control of Venezuela and for how long. The Trump administration has indicated, for example, that the United States will remain in control of Venezuelan oil and gas assets for the foreseeable future, perhaps adjusting US licensing and sanctions policy to legitimize US-controlled sales of oil stored in tankers. It’s unclear how willing the Venezuelan regime will be to tolerate this. Moreover, US control is necessarily a short-term strategy. Selling off Venezuela oil stored in tankers and depositing those funds into blocked accounts controlled by the US government will avoid forcing PDVSA to shut in existing production, ensure useful supply to US Gulf Coast refiners, and provide the US government with a significant supply of funds it can manage. But volumes of floating storage are finite, and the Rodríguez government will not remain in power if it seems to be agreeing to sell off the government’s primary source of funds for the sole benefit of the United States or American creditors. 

In addition to legal considerations, the physical risk and security outlook is crucial for any industry that requires intensive on-site, day-to-day operations. These operations must be managed by crews of skilled laborers, geologists, and engineers, to say nothing of the initial construction teams and costly repairs that will be necessary throughout Venezuela’s oil and gas regions. The Trump administration has yet to detail its plan for Venezuela’s transition process apart from the acceptance of Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, as the acting president. But even as Trump praised Rodríguez on Saturday, he also warned her that a failure to cooperate with a US-led transition could result in another action from US forces. 

Meanwhile, the democratic Venezuelan opposition, led by María Corina Machado, has found its role and potential future influence downplayed, with Trump saying that her movement lacks sufficient legitimacy among the Venezuelan people to be a realistic alternative. Yet another factor is the vast, complex networks of substate and illicit organizations—including violent militias and their overlords—that operate freely throughout Venezuela, have their own assets to protect, and will assuredly have opinions on who should run the country. These same stakeholders—and their foreign allies, who include geostrategic adversaries of the United States—may likewise take a dim view of the acting president’s apparent complicity in passing Venezuelan crude oil along to the United States if there are not immediate, tangible benefits for doing so outside of the remnant regime’s top brass. 

Any rational business leadership would think carefully before committing itself to new investment under these conditions. For a genuine oil sector renaissance to commence, the Venezuelan government must prove that it possesses stability, legitimacy, and resilience. US promises that a conciliatory administration in Caracas (for now) can ensure these conditions will be met with justified skepticism. 

Attracting private investment

Regulatory and financial certainty are essential factors for major international oil businesses when making significant investment decisions. This is especially true when oil and gas prices are already soft, at around sixty dollars per barrel, and most outlooks predict a global oversupply throughout the coming year. In other words, for Venezuelan oil and gas investment to make fiscal sense, IOCs will require a return on investment in a reasonable timeframe. Moreover, such businesses will need reasons to believe that long-term engagement (possibly thirty years or longer) in the country will ultimately be profitable based on global oil and gas market outlooks for the next decade or more. 

The United States removing or making major adjustments to existing sanctions on Venezuela will be crucial to expanding oil production over the short run, as well as attracting new large scale private investment to the country. At present, both the Venezuelan government and its oil and gas sector (principally PDVSA) face a punishing tranche of US sanctions that have cut them off from money, credit access, partnerships, and technology essential to running the country’s oil and gas industry. As of now, any transactions between Venezuelan entities and any foreign company are subject to US restrictions, US Treasury sanctions designations, and lost access to the US financial system. This state of affairs makes the immediate reentrance of US or other Western companies impossible.

Ideally, IOCs would like to see a scenario where most sanctions are lifted or significantly eased, along with reassurance that a reversal would not occur anytime soon. In addition, they are looking for a revamped Venezuelan regulatory framework for its energy sector, including changes to regulations governing operations, trading and exports, terms for joint ventures, asset ownership, and legal rights. Lastly, the Trump administration has hinted at measures that would enable the repayment of companies that previously exited the country in compensation for their prior losses.

A revamped licensing process that allows existing investors to expand their operations could potentially lift production by 300,000 barrels a day over the course of a year, industry experts have suggested. Allowing smaller companies to invest in production sharing, including through productive participation contracts, could likewise incentivize participation. These adjustments could enable another 200,000 to 300,000 barrels a day in new production over the course of the next twelve to eighteen months, the industry experts estimate. Funds from that production could go into a blocked account, which would realistically need to be dedicated to humanitarian benefits in Venezuela, with perhaps a share reserved for repayment of US creditors. 

For now, the Trump administration has not signaled that a major softening of the existing sanctions slate is imminent and the oil blockade remains in place. The Rodríguez leadership likewise has not signaled that a reshaping of its oil and gas regulatory framework is incoming at the behest of the United States or anyone else. Instead, the administration’s new plan for selling up to fifty million barrels of Venezuelan crude oil suggests that its focus is on growing near-term, low-hanging fruit production opportunities to prevent the industry from total collapse and shut-in of its existing production.

A positive financial and investment signal might encourage buy-in and engagement from IOCs and smaller companies. One means of doing so would be creating a new escrow account, under US control but presumably with some percentage of profits reverting back to the Venezuelan government. Such a fund could serve as the deposit site for new oil and gas profits over the near-term, ahead of a full lifting of sanctions and/or successful national elections in the future. This account could be enacted through adjustments to the existing sanctions slate, and it could provide a vehicle for early seed funds to be fed into any new Venezuelan governing institutions as a revamped regulatory design is developed. Optimistically, this fund could also serve as a test run for a new sovereign wealth fund, which could help prevent a reversion to the illegitimate use of Venezuela’s resource wealth that had been a hallmark of the Maduro regime.

For now, the Trump administration is hoping that it can deliver a strong enough signal to private oil and gas companies that there can be some compensation and long-term gains to reengagement with Venezuela, if only to enable immediate, easy repairs and infrastructure salvaging. The attractiveness of that offer, and its long-term durability and legality, are yet to be seen. 

However, much more political and regulatory change will be necessary to revive the Venezuelan energy industry. Such changes will be far more difficult to achieve than handshake deals to split revenues for a handful of oil sales; moreover, these modest steps forward are far from sufficient to address the depth of the political challenges ahead. Lifting production in the neighborhood of half-a-million barrels per day might preserve what is left of Venezuelan production capacity, but it will not be enough to keep Maduro’s remnant leadership stable or meet the population’s profound humanitarian and economic needs. As a result, the entrenched challenges of migration, drug and other illicit trafficking, intensified substate violence, and perhaps de facto Balkanization of the country by various strongmen (and their domestic or foreign backers) remain palpable risks. The Trump administration, focused on resource management in Venezuela, has so far shown little interest in resolving these issues. But they will not go away, and they could derail the administration’s vision for a more stable energy industry and country.

The post What it takes to revive Venezuela’s oil and gas industry appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 7, Atlantic Council vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig was interviewed in a The New Yorker article titled “The Former Trump Skeptics Getting Behind His War in Venezuela.” He contends that President Trump demonstrated the credibility of US threats through the use of military force, while distinguishing between targeted, limited applications of force and long-term wars.

The post Kroenig interviewed in the New Yorker on military action in Venezuela appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 7, Alexander B. Gray, a GeoStrategy Initiative nonresident senior fellow, wrote an article in National Interest titled “How the UK Is Undermining US Indo-Pacific Security,” discussing the UK transfer sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius.

Fellow

Alexander B. Gray

Nonresident Senior Fellow

GeoStrategy Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

The GeoStrategy Initiative, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, leverages strategy development and long-range foresight to serve as the preeminent thought-leader and convener for policy-relevant analysis and solutions to understand a complex and unpredictable world. Through its work, the initiative strives to revitalize, adapt, and defend a rules-based international system in order to foster peace, prosperity, and freedom for decades to come.

learn more

The post Gray in National Interest on US Indo-Pacific strategy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 7, Imran Bayoumi, associate director of the GeoStrategy Initiative, was quoted in a BBC article titled “How could Donald Trump ‘take’ Greenland?” discussing avenues for increased US engagement with Greenland. He contends that, rather than military action, an influence operation encouraging Greenlandic independence followed by close collaboration with the United States is more likely.

Staff

Imran Bayoumi

Associate Director

GeoStrategy Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

The GeoStrategy Initiative, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, leverages strategy development and long-range foresight to serve as the preeminent thought-leader and convener for policy-relevant analysis and solutions to understand a complex and unpredictable world. Through its work, the initiative strives to revitalize, adapt, and defend a rules-based international system in order to foster peace, prosperity, and freedom for decades to come.

learn more

The post Bayoumi quoted in BBC on future of Greenland appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• Following the recent US operation in Venezuela, the Trump administration has revived the idea of the United States taking Greenland, and it has not ruled out using US military force to do so.
• The Danish prime minister has responded by suggesting such a move by the United States could lead to the end of NATO, the most successful alliance in history.
• A collapse of NATO over Greenland would be contrary to US national interests as defined in the Trump administration’s own recently published National Security Strategy.

STOCKHOLM—After a bumpy start with the new Trump administration in 2025, NATO enters 2026 facing what could become the worst crisis of its existence. “We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security,” US President Donald Trump said on Sunday, ignoring the warnings of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen that the United States should stop threatening the Kingdom of Denmark or it might lead to the end of NATO.

Following the US intervention in Venezuela and the capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, the wife of Trump’s close adviser Stephen Miller, Katie Miller, a Republican podcaster, posted on social media a map of Greenland covered by the American flag and accompanied by one word in capital letters: “SOON.” Sparking harsh reactions in Europe, the remarkable post was followed by Stephen Miller himself, who stated that Greenland should be part of the United States and that no one would militarily challenge a US takeover.

For NATO, this means the worst possible start to the year. The possibility that the United States, the leading member of the Alliance, would use its might to annex part of another ally’s territory is almost beyond imagination and a nightmare for NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. As expressed in the first paragraph of the North Atlantic Treaty, the Alliance rests on the principles of the United Nations Charter that international disputes are settled by peaceful means, and that the parties refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force inconsistent with the charter.

Denmark is a founding member of the Alliance, and it has been a loyal ally since 1949. In Afghanistan, Denmark fought alongside the United States in the tougher mission areas and suffered the most casualties in relation to its population of all NATO allies, apart from the United States.

There is nothing new about Greenland’s importance to US national security. An autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland has hosted a US military base since the 1950s for exactly that reason. A 1951 treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Denmark allows for increased US presence on Greenland if requested. But that is not what Trump is looking for, as the harsh dialogue between Copenhagen and Washington over the past year has revealed. The Trump administration argues that Greenland is part of the Western Hemisphere, and as such it should belong to the United States, which Greenland clearly opposes. This extraordinary US stance, in flagrant disrespect of international law, has caused the Danish defense intelligence service to flag the United States as a concern to Danish national security.

More broadly, the Trump administration’s stance risks dissolving the transatlantic community and putting an end to the most successful military alliance in history.

Trump has nurtured the idea of US ownership of Greenland for a long time. In his first term, he suggested a US purchase of the island on several occasions. When reelected, Trump renewed his interest, stating that “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.” This time, he did not rule out the use of military force to get it. A few months later, when Rutte visited the White House, Trump suggested that NATO could help him get Greenland, a request that Rutte declined.

Trump has defended his stance, saying there are “Chinese and Russian ships everywhere” near Greenland and that Denmark cannot protect it. Former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz has emphasized the need for the United States to access Greenland’s vast natural resources. But since Denmark has signaled that the United States is welcome to increase US troop numbers on Greenland should it so wish, and Greenland has announced that it is open for business if US companies are interested, neither of these arguments make sense.

Perhaps importantly, there is a parallel interest in Greenland stemming from the tech giants with close connections to the Trump administration. As reported by Reuters and The Guardian, a circle of US tech entrepreneurs and venture capital figures is promoting Greenland as a potential site for so-called “freedom cities” and large-scale extraction and infrastructure projects. These ideas are framed through libertarian concepts of minimal corporate regulation and ambitions spanning artificial intelligence, space launches, and micronuclear energy. Several of these actors are among Trump’s largest campaign donors and investors, including investors linked to mining operations in Greenland, fossil fuels, and cryptocurrency ventures. Collectively, this cohort reportedly contributed more than $240 million to his 2024 campaign and potentially stand to benefit from a US takeover of the island.

As the United States starts implementing the “Trump corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, first by intervening in Venezuela and then quickly threatening Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, and Greenland, Europe is witnessing its strongest ally voluntarily retreat from global leadership to excel in regional dominance. “This is OUR hemisphere”, the State Department declared in an X posting on Monday to underline the launch of its new strategy, presumably sending a message to Russia and China. However, from a NATO perspective, where does this leave allies such as Canada and Denmark? Are they targets of this message as well?

Copenhagen certainly feels that way. In the past year, Denmark has substantially increased its military support in the Arctic. In January 2025, it committed 14.6 billion kroner ($2.05 billion) to Arctic defense, followed by an additional 27.4 billion kroner ($2.7 billion) later in the year. Denmark has also invested in its relationship with Greenland, including a formal apology for government abuses against Inuit women involving forced birth control in the 1960s and 1970s. On Monday, Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, downplayed concerns of a military takeover and repeated to the Trump administration that Greenland is not for sale. Nor, he said, are the people of Greenland interested in voluntarily becoming part of the United States.

The Trump administration’s latest escalating rhetoric about seizing Greenland has sparked intense activity in European capitals in support of Greenland and Denmark. Statements clarifying that Greenland belonged to the Greenlanders came quickly from the Nordic and Baltic capitals, and then British Prime Minister Keir Starmer followed suit, before he was joined in a statement on Tuesday by France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Denmark. NATO ally Canada has been explicit in its support as well, and Ottawa is opening a consulate in Greenland to strengthen relations further.

For NATO, Rutte’s ambition to keep the issue off the table in the Alliance is getting increasingly difficult. Rather, he is cautiously joining the diplomatic efforts to prevent a US intervention. On Tuesday, he said that NATO “collectively . . . has to make sure that the Arctic stays safe.” He added, “We all agree that the Russians and Chinese are more and more active in that area.”

Meanwhile NATO officials continue their important work to strengthen the role of the Alliance in Arctic security through increased surveillance, patrolling, exercises, and training. This work embodies the Alliance’s collective efforts to ensure security while addressing the concerns of underinvestment expressed by the Trump administration. Allies should promptly increase these efforts even further.

So far, Denmark has rejected an offer from France to send troops to Greenland as a signal of European solidarity, likely to avoid provoking the United States. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also signaled a preference for negotiations to US lawmakers, indicating that the military threat is primarily being used to force Denmark to sell Greenland.

Regardless, diplomacy seems like the most reasonable, albeit challenging, option. Those European countries that have been able to establish good communication channels with the Trump administration, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Finland, should side with Denmark and lead efforts to settle the crisis, in a similar manner as Europe was able to support Ukraine in the peace process after Trump’s Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Rutte, another voice that has good relations with Trump, needs to engage further, as well.

The argument should be that the survival of NATO is at stake if the United States intervenes to seize Greenland, and that such a development would be contrary to US national interests. For example, the Trump administration’s own National Security Strategy (NSS) emphasizes that it is a US interest to maintain strategic stability with Russia. For that, the United States needs its European bases. Proximity matters, as the operation this past summer against Iran’s nuclear facilities clearly illustrated. Furthermore, the NSS outlines how the United States depends on Europe to succeed with its economic agenda elsewhere.

The US Congress recently went further and conditioned a range of measures in its latest defense bill to preserve NATO and US engagement in Europe. Engaging with members of Congress in Washington, DC, and with the delegations soon visiting the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Munich Security Conference is therefore crucial, as well.

Should the darkest hour come and the United States uses military force to annex Greenland, the essence of Article 5 and collective defense within NATO would lose its meaning. As Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide recently put it: “The idea of NATO will be broken if the US takes Greenland.” It would be perfectly clear to Russia, China, and other adversaries that credible extended deterrence no longer exists for Europe or Canada, and that the United States has lost its closest and most powerful allies.

The post Trump’s quest for Greenland could be NATO’s darkest hour appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On January 7, Atlantic Council vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig was interviewed on DW News about the US seizure of a Russian flagged oil tanker carrying Venezuelan oil. He contends that the move signaled US resolve in quarantining the Venezuelan regime and adopting a firmer approach toward Russia in the Western hemisphere.

Staff

Matthew Kroenig

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

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

China Defense Policy

The post Kroenig on DW News on US oil tanker seizures in the Caribbean appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bottom lines up front

• The ongoing protests in Iran demonstrate the Iranian people’s courage, tenacity, and yearning for freedom. The protests also expose the Iranian government’s inability to meet the economic, social, and political demands of its people.
• It is not possible to predict how the ongoing protests will end, but the status quo in Iran is not sustainable.
• Protest size in Tehran, the development of a viable alternative, and regimes fissures will be key indicators to watch in determining the trajectory and effectiveness of the demonstrations.

WASHINGTON—The Iranian regime appears to be at its weakest point in its nearly half century in power. For the past two weeks, Iranians throughout the country have taken to the streets in protest over Iran’s deepening economic crises, stirring up memories of the Mahsa Amini protests of 2022-2023 and the Green Movement demonstrations of 2009-2010. This is compounded by a record level of inflation, a potentially existential water crisis, and an open admission from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that his government is incapable of meeting the needs of its own people. Moreover, these protests follow a series of strategic setbacks for the regime, including Israel’s near destruction of Iran’s foreign proxies, the Assad regime’s fall in Syria in December 2024, and the devastation of the twelve-day war in June 2025. 

Yet, this confluence of factors has been partially overshadowed by US President Donald Trump and his increasingly interventionist administration. Trump’s social media post on January 2 offering lethal protection to Iranian protesters if the regime cracked down on them was shocking even before this week’s events in Venezuela. Although I initially saw Trump’s post as a rhetorical and cost-free gesture, it cannot be dismissed entirely considering that the Trump administration was willing to attack Venezuela and arrest former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro earlier this month. Indeed, Trump’s threat could increase turnout at the protests. In theory, hesitant Iranians might be more likely to protest if they might have some form of US support. 

As the protests continue, it is worth following several important indicators that may determine how they differ from past mass movements in Iran, what trajectory they may take, and what they might mean for the Islamic Republic’s future.

Mass protests are, of course, not new in Iran. They have played a critical role in shaping Iran’s modern political landscape, helping to bring the current regime to power in 1979 and consolidate its rule. In the 1990s, protests evolved to challenge the regime’s governance. The 1999 student protests and the 2009 Green Movement primarily focused on regime reform, with the latter adopting the slogan “Where is my vote?” Since the December 2019 Bloody Aban uprising, which began following an increase in fuel prices, there has been a significant shift in the tone and objective of protests. Initially sparked by social or economic issues, mass protests in Iran have morphed into broader and prolonged anti-regime demonstrations, with protesters increasingly chanting “Death to Khamenei!” 

Here is what to watch as the current protests unfold:

1. The size of the protests in Tehran

The 2009 Green Movement protests challenged the rigged presidential election and, for the first time in Iran, used social media to draw millions to the street, mainly in Tehran. Iran ultimately employed brutal repression and detained opposition leaders to quell the movement. Subsequent protests have had a wider geographic scope and more aggressive platform—revolution, not reform—but have not drawn the same volume of people to the streets. Absent massive, sustained protests in Tehran, it is difficult to envision the regime falling or making major changes.

2. Opposition unity and a viable alternative

There is no elected leader that the opposition fully supports who could take power immediately after a potential transition. Perhaps the imprisoned former official Mostafa Tajzadeh or the deposed Shah’s eldest son, Reza Pahlavi, could become a transitional leader following the fall of the current government. Pahlavi has a devoted following among certain segments of the diaspora and appears to have name recognition inside Iran, given some videos coming out of the country. However, he is also a controversial figure, and his supporters were partially blamed for sabotaging attempts to unify the Iranian diaspora opposition in 2022. Infighting within the Iranian diaspora has continued during this round of protests, but one interesting development is the near-unanimous perspective from social media that Iran will never be the same. Maybe that is progress.

Nonetheless, the lack of a viable alternative has undermined past protests in Iran. There may be a thousand Iranian dissident activists who, given a chance, could emerge as respected statesmen, as labor leader Lech Wałęsa did in Poland at the end of the Cold War. But so far, the Iranian security apparatus has arrested, persecuted, and exiled all of the country’s potential transformational leaders. 

3. Regime fissures (and defections)

Iran has done a masterful job maintaining regime unity and avoiding high-profile defections. Regime survival is always the paramount consideration, perhaps partially because the country’s leaders don’t have anywhere to go. Russia would likely harbor certain elites, as it took in Bashar al-Assad after his flight from Syria. But the mid-level security officials implementing the crackdown would have no safe refuge. This is why the work my Atlantic Council colleagues at the Strategic Litigation Project are doing is so important. Exposing and holding officials responsible for crackdowns raises the costs of individual actions. This may contribute to additional regime fissures and security defections in this round of protests.

All of this is to say that despite working on Iran policy for nearly twenty years, it is not possible to predict how the ongoing protests will end. I see the same images and reports as everyone else, and I can ask individual Iranians for their assessment. But I don’t know whether this is the protest that brings down the regime, or whether the Islamic Republic will be able to successfully repress these protests as it has done before.

Regardless, the protests are important. They once again demonstrate the Iranian people’s courage, tenacity, and yearning for freedom. The protests also expose the Iranian government’s inability to meet the economic, social, and political demands of its people. They are a clear directive sent up from the streets and heard around the world that the status quo in Iran is not sustainable.

The post What to watch as anti-regime protests engulf Iran appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As details of a possible security framework for postwar Ukraine continue to take shape, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron signed a joint declaration committing to deploy troops to Ukraine in the event of a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv. Crucially, US officials attending the talks in France also voiced American backing for security guarantees, with the United States expected to play a supporting role that will focus on ceasefire monitoring.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised the “substantive discussions” and suggested that he was now more confident about the credibility of the security commitments being proposed by Ukraine’s partners. “Military officials from France, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine worked in detail on force deployment, numbers, specific types of weapons, and the components of the armed forces required and able to operate effectively. We already have these necessary details,” he commented.

As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox.

This was the latest in a series of meetings over the past year that have sought to define workable security guarantees for Ukraine as a key element of the US-led push to end Russia’s invasion. Since early 2025, Britain and France have been at the forefront of ongoing efforts to establish a Coalition of the Willing bringing together countries prepared to contribute to postwar security measures. The objective is to prevent a resumption of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The Paris Declaration signed on January 6 is a step in the right direction, but many key questions remain unanswered. The document does not provide the kind of NATO-style commitment to collective security that many believe is essential in order to deter Putin. Nor does it clarify the exact role of a potential European military contingent on Ukrainian territory, or define whether their mandate would include defending themselves in the event of a Russian attack. Instead, it contains vague references to “the use of military capabilities.” This language is hardly likely to convince the Kremlin, especially in light of the escalation fears that have dominated the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The other obvious problem with the current peace plan is implementation. The signatories of the Paris Declaration all agree that the envisioned package of security guarantees for Ukraine can only be put in place once a ceasefire has been agreed. This will inevitably strengthen Moscow’s objections. Over the past year, Russia has repeatedly rejected ceasefire proposals while stressing its unwavering opposition to any Western military presence in Ukraine. That is exactly what the Coalition of the Willing is now proposing.

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As Ukraine’s partners discuss the technical aspects of security guarantees, the elephant in the room remains Russia’s lack of interest in peace. The Kremlin was not represented at talks in the French capital this week, just as it has been absent during a similar series of recent meetings between US, Ukrainian, and European officials.

While the Trump administration has sought to maintain a parallel dialogue with Moscow, there is no indication whatsoever that Russia shares the optimistic assessments being offered by Zelenskyy and other Western leaders. On the contrary, Putin and his Kremlin colleagues continue to signal that they have no intention of compromising and remain committed to the maximalist goals set out at the start of the invasion in February 2022.

Throughout the past year, Putin has been careful to avoid openly rejecting US peace proposals due to concerns over possible retaliatory sanctions. Nevertheless, his actions speak for themselves and underline his opposition to ending the war.

Just one day after Trump and Zelenskyy met in Florida in late December and announced significant progress toward a settlement, Putin called the US leader and accused Ukraine of launching an attack on his presidential residence. The news appeared to shock Trump and placed the entire peace process in jeopardy. However, it soon transpired that the incident had been hastily invented in a bid to discredit Ukraine and derail peace talks. Trump has since acknowledged that Putin’s resident was not targeted. “I don’t believe that strike happened,” he told reporters on January 4.

The Kremlin dictator’s apparent readiness to lie directly to Trump says much about his determination to disrupt peace efforts. The faked attack on Putin’s residence was the latest in a series of Russian steps over the past year to stall or otherwise obstruct negotiations. This has led to mounting claims that Putin is playing for time without having any intention of ending his invasion.

Putin’s rejection of a negotiated settlement should come as no surprise. His army is advancing in Ukraine and retains the upper hand in a war of attrition that strongly favors Russia. With the Ukrainian military suffering from increasingly acute manpower shortages and Kyiv’s allies showing growing signs of weakening resolve, Putin remains confident that he can achieve a decisive breakthrough in 2026.

Even if he did not believe that victory was on the horizon, Putin would be highly unlikely to risk a compromise peace involving limited territorial gains. After all, he is not fighting for land in Ukraine; he fighting for Ukraine itself.

Putin views the invasion of Ukraine in the broadest of possible historical contexts as a sacred mission to reverse the injustice of the Soviet collapse and revive the Russian Empire. The terms currently on offer would leave around 80 percent of Ukraine beyond Kremlin control and free to pursue further European integration. To Putin, that would not be a partial victory; it would be a catastrophic defeat.

In the coming weeks, Russia will almost certainly reject the latest peace framework agreed in Paris. How will the Coalition of the Willing respond to this setback? Unless they are willing to impose more costs on the Kremlin and bolster Ukraine’s ability to hurt Russia militarily, all talk of postwar security guarantees and reassurance forces will continue to ring hollow. If Western leaders are serious about ending the war in Ukraine and safeguarding European security, they must acknowledge that there is no alternative to increasing the pressure on Putin.

Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Dec 23, 2025

Reclaiming Russia’s ‘historical lands’: How far do Putin’s imperial ambitions extend?

By Peter Dickinson

Putin has again vowed to “liberate Russia’s historical lands” via negotiations or military means. The list of countries that could qualify as “historically Russian” in Putin’s revisionist worldview is long and extends far beyond Ukraine, writes Peter Dickinson.

Central Europe Conflict

UkraineAlert Dec 16, 2025

The only winner from Ukrainian wartime elections would be Putin

By Yuriy Boyechko

Ukrainians are fighting to defend their democracy against Kremlin authoritarianism, but they are also in no rush to hold wartime elections amid relentless Russian bombardment and with millions of Ukrainians displaced, writes Yuriy Boyechko.

Conflict Elections

UkraineAlert Dec 9, 2025

Europe’s choice: Fund Ukraine now or pay a far higher price if Russia wins

By Elena Davlikanova, Lesia Orobets

Europe’s reluctance to pay for Ukraine’s defense is shortsighted, write Elena Davlikanova and Lesia Orobets. If Russia’s invasion succeeds, Europe will soon have to boost defense spending to levels that would completely dwarf the current cost of backing Ukraine.

Conflict European Union