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.

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.

Bottom lines up front

• The recent US capture of Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro is consistent with the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy.
• While the new strategy is primarily about narrowing and prioritizing US objectives globally, it is also committed to an expansive vision of US interests in the Western Hemisphere.
• The White House should next expand its concept of “hemispheric defense” and increase its military presence, further reducing Chinese, Russian, and Iranian influence in the hemisphere.

WASHINGTON—The daring US operation that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and transported him to the United States to stand trial for his crimes signals a dramatic shift in US foreign policy, with implications far beyond Venezuela. The Trump administration’s decision to depose the Maduro regime is the embodiment of its recent National Security Strategy (NSS), which prioritized the defense of the US homeland and the Western Hemisphere.

While most National Security Strategies are quickly forgotten, both of Trump’s strategies have served as reliable guides to his approach to foreign affairs. His 2017 NSS announced a US focus on great-power competition, principally with China, and heralded an important shift of the United States’ attention after decades of Middle Eastern preoccupation. The president’s 2025 NSS, released in December, set about prioritizing US security interests globally and identified protection of US territory and the Western Hemisphere as the central tasks of US foreign policy. Importantly, the NSS also carved out a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, citing malign activity by “extra-hemispheric powers” as a serious threat to US national security.

As such, the recent Venezuela operation should be understood as of a piece with the president’s earlier focus on acquiring Greenland, his calls for resuming US control over the Panama Canal, and his interest in stemming the flow of narcotics trafficking and illegal migration in the hemisphere. In each instance, extra-hemispheric influence has played a significant role in galvanizing Washington’s concern: Chinese outfits own key facilities along the canal. Russia and China conduct military activity near Greenland and in the High North. And Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran hold long-standing influence in Caracas. With the Maduro capture, Washington is sending a powerful signal that it is taking the NSS seriously, and that it is prepared to act swiftly to enforce the Trump Corollary.

Beijing’s ambitions in the Western Hemisphere have long been a concern for Washington, but recent trends are particularly alarming. In late December, reports emerged that China’s People’s Liberation Army was conducting war games simulating combat in the Western Hemisphere. This news came shortly after Beijing published an official strategy for Latin America that takes an increasingly belligerent tone in asserting its regional interests there. China actively supports the destabilizing Cuban regime, including by maintaining a surveillance post on the island just ninety miles from US territory. With Beijing increasing its efforts to extend coercive economic diplomacy across the hemisphere and its public interest in West African naval access fronting the Atlantic Ocean, the Trump Corollary seems poised to clash with China’s strategic posture.

The sheer number of potential flashpoints between the United States and great-power rivals such as China under the rubric of the Trump Corollary demonstrates an important point about the administration’s strategy: While the new NSS is primarily a document about narrowing and prioritizing US objectives globally, with a lesser focus on Europe and the Middle East, it is wholly committed to an expansive vision of US interests in the Western Hemisphere. This is likely to lead to near-term adjustments to US policy, with the goal of better operationalizing the Trump Corollary to address the hemispheric challenges facing the United States.

Here are three areas to watch in the coming months.

First, under the rubric of “hemispheric defense” that guided US security strategy in the hemisphere for decades, the Trump administration should expand the geographic definition of the hemisphere for the purpose of applying the Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Corollary. By stating unambiguously that the hemisphere is broadly defined as the Aleutian Islands to Greenland and the North American Arctic to Antarctica—with Central and South America and the Caribbean in between and the Pacific and Atlantic approaches to the hemisphere included—the administration could effectively place the region in lockdown, preventing encroachment by China, Russia, and Iran.

Second, to operationalize hemispheric defense going forward, the administration should expand the rotational and permanent deployment of US land, naval, Coast Guard, and air assets in the hemisphere. As the Trump administration works to reposition US forces from legacy bases in Europe and the Middle East, it could simultaneously expand or reopen US facilities in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. It could also seek to establish or expand rotational or permanent access agreements with US partners such as El Salvador, Ecuador, the Dutch Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and others.

Beyond these countries, Washington could seek a more expansive agreement with Costa Rica, which lacks a permanent military and currently allows the US military access on a case-by-case basis. A new agreement with Costa Rica could look like the comprehensive defense arrangements the United States enjoys with Pacific Island partners such as the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Micronesia. Similarly, as the administration explores its options for a broader political solution to the president’s desire to acquire Greenland, the United States could request expanded access to the island under the 1951 defense agreement and begin prepositioning anti-submarine warfare and Arctic training assets there to counter Chinese and Russian malign activity in the High North.

Third, the administration can begin leveraging such force posture changes to actively deter malign activity and advance US interests in the hemisphere. Greater US forward presence in the region would, among other outcomes, help deter Chinese and Russian collaboration with the Cuban regime, which has spread chaos and destabilization across Latin America for decades. Expanding the US presence in Costa Rica and the Dutch Caribbean would help ensure access to the Panama Canal while the administration seeks broader solutions to Chinese influence. A stronger US Coast Guard and naval presence in the Caribbean would help combat narcotics trafficking and illegal migration that pose a direct threat to the US homeland. Further north, increasing US assets in Greenland would contribute to Arctic security.

While the administration’s actions in Venezuela have shocked the world and sent a strong message to US rivals in Beijing, Moscow, Havana, and Tehran, they are likely only the starting point for a longer-term and more comprehensive reappraisal of US core interests in the hemisphere and the means to achieve them. The Trump administration has a unique opportunity, built around its NSS and its audacious Venezuela operation, to reimagine the contours of US hemispheric defense for years to come.

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On December 12th, 2025, Global China Hub Assistant Director Caroline Costello spoke to the New York Times about what the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy means for the values-based dimension of US-China competition.

The post Caroline Costello in the New York Times appeared first on Atlantic Council.

States and international organizations—including the United States, European Union, United Nations, and Gulf Cooperation Council, among others—have a vital role to play in Syria’s reconstruction and recovery, including for the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who suffered detention, torture, and abuse. But states have been responding to the conflict since its start in 2011 by initiating legal actions related to international law violations occurring in Syria. These included prosecuting companies for providing material support to terrorist organizations in Syria and imposing fines for breaching sanctions imposed in response to the conflict in Syria. From these settlements and judgments, states collected or seized significant sums—over $600 million in one instance. While the ongoing harms suffered by Syrians underpinned these cases, states have generally directed the recovered funds to their own treasuries, even as Syrians continue to desperately need international assistance to move on from over a decade of conflict.

States always had the opportunity to divert these funds to victims and survivors within Syria, but doing so while the Assad regime controlled vast portions of the country would have been complicated. Now, as states settle into their relationship with the interim government in Damascus, they should redirect the penalties they’ve collected to the underlying victims who were directly harmed. This support should be facilitated through an intergovernmental Syria Victims Fund—a mechanism for states to transfer Syria-linked funds collected from monetary judgements to a central location to better support victims of international law violations in Syria. The Strategic Litigation Project and a working group of Syrian civil society representatives have been advocating for such a fund for the past several years.

Urgent needs in Syria remain

For victims and survivors of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other human rights violations in Syria, the fall of the Assad regime marked a turning point in Syria’s history and an end to fifty-three years of state-enforced repression. It also presented significant opportunities—namely, increased access by international organizations and observers to those in need of assistance in previously inaccessible areas of the country. Both international and domestic human rights defenders and humanitarian workers have already begun administering legal and medical aid to victims and survivors living in former regime-controlled areas, and investigators have begun cataloging former detention sites and exhuming mass graves to identify the bodies recovered. Regime records are helping identify the fate of those missing.

However, the country still faces dire needs across all sectors to recover from the past decades of conflict and repression. States, international organizations, and civil society moved swiftly to support Syria after Assad fell —including lifting sanctions and providing millions in aid—but a year of aid remains insufficient in the face of decades of grievous harm, especially in light of US foreign aid cuts. While many Syrians across the country face similar humanitarian needs—such as a lack of medical, legal, or education support, the danger of unexploded ordinances, and general reconstruction in many areas devastated by the conflict—victim and survivor communities across Syria face unique challenges.

Thousands of regime detainees (who were often arbitrarily detained and subject to torture and other violations) freed from Assad’s brutal prison system—such as Sednaya prison, which has been referred to by Syrians as a “human slaughterhouse”—now need assistance in rebuilding their lives. These freed detainees, and other survivors of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians subject to regime detention, torture, and other abuses, require specialized medical care. Survivors and families of the over 500,000 Syrians believed to have been killed and of the over 100,000 believed to have been forcibly disappeared additionally require specialized psychosocial, legal, and other related aid.

Opportunities for asset collection

As Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces moved toward the Syrian capital in December 2024 in a rapid offensive across the country, regime officials—including financial administrators, leaders of state security forces, and Assad himself—fled the country in droves. Many are known or believed to have relocated their valuables and portable assets out of Syria or to have fled to the jurisdictions where they had stashed their wealth before Assad fell. Investigators should now follow the trails of evidence left behind to identify and collect these private assets.

Experts such as those at intelligence firm Alaco have indicated their long-held belief that the Assad family’s and associates’ wealth—largely accumulated through drug trafficking, corruption, and market manipulation—is in tax havens abroad. Many high-ranking government, military, and business officials connected to the regime fled to Russia to escape rebel forces. Others simply disappeared, along with millions of dollars collected through corruption and money laundering. Financial Times investigators have already uncovered troves of documents and intelligence related not only to the years of illicit wealth accumulation and the financing of human rights abuses but also to where Assad and his associates may have moved their ill-gotten wealth as they fled.

Related reading

MENASource

Dec 7, 2025

One year after Assad’s fall, here’s what’s needed to advance justice for Syrians

By Elise Baker and Ahmad Helmi

The second year of a post-Assad Syria requires structural reform, victim-centered leadership, and international reinforcement.

Democratic Transitions International Norms

According to reporting from Reuters, as opposition forces closed in on Damascus, Assad transported significant wealth to the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—including at least fifty thousand dollars in cash, as well as documents, laptops, and artwork. Reuters reported that the assets moved to the UAE reportedly included financial records, real estate, and partnerships, and details of cash transfers, offshore companies, and accounts.

Documents and intelligence recovered by HTS forces after the fall of the regime additionally revealed previously unknown dealings between prominent Syrian businessmen and the Syrian state, including millions poured into the infamous Fourth Division of the Syrian Arab Army, known for committing severe human rights abuses and stealing from the civilian population during the war.

States should now dedicate resources to identifying ill-gotten assets in their jurisdictions, pursuing legal processes to seize the funds, and repurposing them for disbursement to the Syria Victims Fund. Pursuing these actions prevents private actors from profiting off atrocities and creates an easy and sustainable pathway for states to support Syrian victims and survivors.  

While assets moved to authoritarian states such as Russia may be difficult to recover, international investigators should dedicate resources to analyzing recently revealed information and recovering this ill-gotten wealth from states with asset recovery frameworks in place. Legal teams have in the past successfully secured asset freezes linked to the Assad family’s misconduct in Syria—for example, the collection by a Spanish court in 2017 of the assets of Rifat al-Assad, the uncle of Bashar al-Assad.

The need for a Syria Victims Fund

The Syrian interim government is developing a state-led transitional justice plan  through the recently established National Commission for Transitional Justice and the National Commission for the Missing. This is welcome news, and the interim government must continue its efforts to work with Syrian civil society, victims and survivors, and others to create a comprehensive and representative plan. However, the urgent needs for victim communities in Syria necessitate an immediate response, and the Syria Victims Fund can fill this gap.

It must be noted that the Syria Victims Fund would not take the place of reparations, which will come through transitional justice processes. As has taken place in other post-conflict countries, such as Colombia, the Gambia, and Guatemala, reparations have the potential to restore victims’ dignity, acknowledge the harms which took place, and help victims to rebuild their lives—though only with input from survivors and affected populations can reparations programs be truly sustainable and restorative.

Instead, the Syria Victims Fund could draw on prior examples of repurposing seized funds, such as the BOTA Foundation in Kazakhstan. It could repurpose funds that morally belong to Syrian victims and survivors—in that they were seized in legal processes related to serious violations of international law in Syria—to provide interim reparative measures to victims, therefore equipping survivors with resources to seek the care that they want or need. The Syria Victims Fund’s efforts—such as working with victim communities and identifying needs—can also help facilitate transitional justice processes, such as by mapping violations or creating victim registries.

The creation of a Syria Victims Fund can help facilitate repair and recovery for Syrian victims, one year after the fall of the Assad regime. States shouldn’t waste this opportunity.

Kate Springs is a program assistant in the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council. Previously, she was a young global professional with the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East Programs.

Celeste Kmiotek is a staff lawyer for the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project. Her work focuses on corporate accountability and addressing the financial aspects of atrocities such as the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, as well as legal efforts to hold the Islamic Republic of Iran to account for its domestic, transnational, and transboundary crimes.

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But the prospect of justice in Syria changed overnight on December 8, 2024. Assad fled his presidential palace and later Syria, flying to Russia as opposition fighters advanced on Damascus, liberating hundreds of political prisoners from Sednaya prison and other notorious detention centers along the way.

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MENASource

Dec 7, 2025

Syria’s civil society must take center stage in reconstruction

By Tara Kangarlou and Merissa Khurma

One year since Bashar al-Assad’s fall, Syria stands to have the most potential to showcase how local ownership can accelerate reconstruction.

Civil Society Middle East

Over the past twelve months, there have been notable developments in Syria’s justice and accountability space. But progress has been conservative, likely due to a combination of factors. One such factor is the overwhelming nature of the task to secure justice for countless violations from over a decade of brutal war. Another is the Syrian transitional government’s need to build up from zero and its decision to centralize power within the ruling inner circle at the expense of civil society participation. An additional factor at play is a preference across many foreign governments to observe developments in Damascus before determining their level and modes of engagement.

In order to advance prospects of justice for Syrians after more than a decade of war, the second year of a post-Assad Syria requires structural reform, victim-centered leadership, and international reinforcement to prevent this opening from being squandered.

Justice developments in Syria since Assad’s fall

Syria has begun building out its national architecture of transitional justice. In May, transitional President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued Decree No. 20, establishing the National Commission for Transitional Justice with “financial and administrative independence.” Commissioners were appointed three months later, and they have begun meeting with civil society organizations, Syrians across the country and in the diaspora, and representatives from foreign governments, international bodies, and other post-conflict societies. However, the commission’s structure and internal regulations remain unclear, without a statute or terms of reference, and its scope of work is limited to Assad regime violations, excluding violations by other actors and those committed after December 8, 2024.

Syria’s Ministry of Justice has also begun investigating and building cases on Assad regime violations. The Ministry of Justice is investigating judges from the Assad-era Counter Terrorism Court and requesting complaints from citizens. These judges are responsible for presiding over tens of thousands of sham trials that imprisoned or sentenced to death detainees based on vague, trumped-up charges that considered the provision of medical aid and the documentation of human rights abuses, among other acts, to amount to terrorism. The Ministry of Justice has also, according to media reports, requested that Lebanon extradite former Assad regime officials accused of war crimes who fled Syria after the fall of the regime.

Finally, Syria has made progress addressing violations since December 8, 2024. The government established national committees to investigate two episodes of mass sectarian violence: in Alawite-majority coastal areas in March this year and in Druze-majority Sweida in July. The coastal committee was criticized for not releasing its report publicly and failing to acknowledge the government’s responsibility for the crimes. Nevertheless, the committee’s efforts have led to Syria’s first public trial in decades, of fourteen suspects in the March violence in coastal Syria.

Justice developments outside Syria since Assad’s fall

There have also been notable justice developments outside Syria over the past year. Foreign countries have continued pursuing universal jurisdiction trials that were in development before Assad’s fall, and Syrian civil society continues to file new complaints. After German and Swedish authorities carried out arrests in July 2024, parallel trials are now underway in both countries against Assad regime-allied suspects accused of violations in Yarmouk Camp, a district south of Damascus that regime-affiliated forces besieged and bombed during the war.

The United States is scheduled to begin the trial of former Assad regime official Samir al Sheikh in March 2026, after his arrest in July 2024 for immigration fraud, with torture charges added days after the fall of the Assad regime. In France, judicial authorities issued a new arrest warrant against Assad for his role in the 2013 chemical weapon attacks in Damascus suburbs, replacing a French warrant that was annulled in July this year due to his head of state immunity at the time it was issued in 2023. In late November, victims and survivors, supported by Syrian civil society organizations, filed a criminal complaint seeking an investigation into the role Danish maritime fuel company Dan-Bunkering may have played in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria by supplying jet fuel to Russian forces that was used in strikes against Syrians.

Foreign states have also launched new arrest warrants, charges, and indictments against high-level Assad regime figures since the fall of the regime. One day after Assad’s fall, US authorities unsealed war crimes charges against Jamil Hassan and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, two architects of Assad regime detention and torture practices, who in May 2024 were convicted in absentia of crimes against humanity in France, along with a third regime official. In November this year, France issued an extradition request to Lebanon for those three former Assad regime officials. This followed France’s September arrest warrant against Assad and six officials for their roles in the targeted killings of journalists in Homs in 2012 (which came one month before the chemical weapons arrest warrant was reissued in October). Finally, in mid-November, Austrian authorities indicted Assad regime official Brigadier General Khaled al-Halabi, who had reached Vienna with support from Israeli and Austrian intelligence, according to media reports citing Austrian intelligence agency memos.

Recommendations to advance justice for Syria

There has been notable progress on justice for Syria. Many of the developments discussed above—namely Syria’s National Commission for Transitional Justice, domestic investigations for Assad-era abuses and public trials, and multiple arrest warrants for Assad himself—were unimaginable just over a year ago. But the work of securing justice for Syria has only just begun, and more significant steps are needed from Syrian, foreign, and international actors.

As an overarching recommendation, Syria’s transitional justice process must center the calls from and preferences of Syrian victims, survivors, human rights defenders, activists, lawyers, and other civil society members who have dedicated more than a decade to pursuing justice for violations. Syria’s justice process should be Syrian-led, but that does not mean it should be led only by Syrian transitional government authorities. Syrian civil society has significant expertise, having led justice and accountability efforts for fourteen years, and the justice process must be designed to serve victims and survivors. It is certainly a welcome sign that victims, survivors, and human rights defenders have been appointed to posts in the National Commission for Transitional Justice, National Commission for Missing Persons, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But appointments alone are not enough; efforts must continue to ensure these individuals have influence in their posts, that they are not overpowered by more senior officials or executive authority, and that broader civil society expertise is incorporated within and outside formal structures.

Syrian authorities must undertake significant domestic reform to ensure future domestic accountability efforts will follow human rights standards. The Ministry of Justice, court system, and legal infrastructure helped to commit and enforce violations and corruption under the Assad regime. It will take years to rebuild these institutions and structures—to ensure they support victims rather than further victimize them, and to ensure transparency and legitimacy. Syrian law and procedure also requires significant reform: to abolish vague criminal charges that were weaponized against dissidents under the Assad regime; to adopt legislation criminalizing war crimes, crimes against humanity, enforced disappearance, and torture in line with international standards; to adopt procedures that will ensure victim and witness protection; and to abolish the death penalty, to name only a few. Given that Syrian government institutions have never untaken this work previously, it will also take years for national bodies to develop the specialized expertise required to investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other international crimes that are quite complex, and to amass the evidence required to prosecute these cases.

The new Syrian parliament should also adopt an inclusive law allowing for the prosecution of all criminals, regardless of perpetrator group, and committing to undertake all pillars of transitional justice. Syrian authorities should welcome support from specialized foreign and international experts, in addition to victims, survivors, and Syrian civil society actors who have been leading justice efforts for more than a decade. These individuals can advise on rebuilding and reforming national systems and support documentation and case-building—transitional authorities could benefit from more expertise on these tasks, especially from the expertise of international experts and Syrian civil society that have engaged on these tasks deeply. In the meantime, the Syrian authorities should grant victims’ associations and civil society organizations access to both prisons and trials, to monitor, improve transparency, help guarantee best practices, and ensure that torture and enforced disappearances do not occur again.

Finally, Syria’s transition and transitional justice process requires ongoing support and engagement from foreign and international actors. Such engagement and pressure has proven essential for post-conflict trials and transitional justice efforts in other contexts. Although foreign states’ priorities may be the stabilization and return of refugees, this agenda will be best achieved by supporting transitional justice and the rule of law. First, foreign states should continue to pursue universal jurisdiction trials, which are a necessary complement to domestic and international trials. The many perpetrators who fled Syria during the conflict or after Assad’s fall cannot evade justice simply because they left the country. Second, foreign states and international organizations should support Syrian transitional authorities in developing and rebuilding national institutions, systems, and expertise by offering trainings, expertise through secondments, and financial support. Third, foreign and international actors should push Syrian transitional authorities to take reforms or other actions to advance justice when progress stalls. Foreign and international actors should support Syrian victim, survivor, and broader civil society calls on the transitional authorities, using their influence to help ensure Syria’s transitional justice program is victim and survivor-centered. Fourth, foreign and international actors should continue to support the work of victim, survivor, and civil society organizations in documentation, case-building, and advocacy. A robust civil society will be essential to ensuring a just transition for Syria.

The Assad family controlled Syria for more than half a century. The task of securing justice for Assad-era violations is monumental. Syrian transitional authorities, civil society, and foreign and international actors must work together to have the best chance of success.

Elise Baker is a senior staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project. She provides legal support to the project, which seeks to include legal tools in foreign policy, with a focus on prevention and accountability efforts for atrocity crimes, human-rights violations, terrorism, and corruption offenses.

Ahmad Helmi is a nonresident fellow at the Tahrir Institute and a founding manager of the Taafi Initiative, supporting survivors of enforced disappearances and torture. He has worked for justice and human rights in Syria for twelve years and survived three years of imprisonment and torture in Assad regime prisons.

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The situation—a second vote in fewer than five months on whether to strip the president’s immunity—caught the attention of a sitting US Congress member as well as former and current heads of state in the region. Judging by their statements, it’s clear that there is confusion about what exactly is happening. Is Costa Rica really in crisis? Is an institutional coup underway?  

A decisive vote in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly will take place by December 18, before deputies head out on vacation, on whether to lift President Rodrigo Chaves’s immunity so prosecutors can pursue alleged electoral-law violations. 

Less than a week into the formal campaign period, on October 7, the TSE asked the Legislative Assembly to lift Chaves’s immunity so it can pursue alleged violations related to political belligerence and interference, including participation in campaign-related activities. While it is true that many of the complaints put forth for consideration of the TSE are from leaders of opposition parties, the TSE unanimously accepted fifteen out of twenty-four as admissible for “unwarranted interference.”  

This request to lift Chaves’s immunity is not the first such instance. In July, the Costa Rican Supreme Court requested the national assembly lift the president’s immunity in a corruption case tied to a communications contract financed by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration. In September, lawmakers fell short of the two-thirds supermajority needed to strip Chaves’s immunity in the corruption case. That vote, regarding a sitting president, was a first in Costa Rican history. Now, considering stripping the president’s immunity twice in one calendar year is even more remarkable.  

But it is important to note two things. First, none of these moves constitutes an impeachment: lifting immunity (desafuero) merely opens the door to investigation and a trial while the president remains in office. Second, under Costa Rican law, Chaves is not eligible for consecutive reelection, so to extrapolate that the TSE request for the assembly to consider the removal of the fuero is an institutional coup of some sort is a stretch.  

Soon after the Costa Rica ambassador spoke with US Representative Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL-26), the congressman toned down his stance on the country’s political situation. Meanwhile, the process in Costa Rica rolls ahead, with a vote on the fuero expected by December 18. Will the deputies at the asamblea entertain a second vote on Chaves’s immunity? The president already appeared before the national assembly’s special three-member commission (two members of the opposition and one “officialist” member) on November 14. Chaves left that hearing before it concluded.  

Should the two-thirds majority be reached this time, it will be uncharted territory for the “Switzerland of Central America.” A successful vote would authorize prosecutors and the attorney general’s office to open a case through criminal proceedings. Importantly, it would not amount to impeachment, nor would it remove the president. The courts, rather than politics at the asamblea, would determine whether charges advance. The presidency will continue to function, and the electoral calendar will continue to advance, as well. And regardless of the outcome, the term-limited Chaves will leave office and a new government will be inaugurated come May 8, 2026. 

Costa Rica’s confrontation is, so far, a stress test of checks and balances operating within its constitution and electoral laws. 

For Washington, the attention to Costa Rica reflects the recognition that Central American stability matters for the world’s largest economy. US efforts to strengthen democratic resilience in its own neighborhood must be accompanied by support for processes and procedures—not specific players. Doing so effectively would help advance US interests in the hemisphere.  

María Fernanda Bozmoski is director, impact and operations and lead for Central America at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, where she leads the center’s work on Mexico and Central America and supports the director with the center’s operations. 

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However, this growing conversation in Israel—and the Knesset bills pushing towards West Bank annexation—fails to recognize that any annexation proposal is illegal under international law. This is not open debate. Under current international law, annexation is always illegal, under all circumstances. While politics certainly play into international responses to annexation, Russia’s annexation of Crimea—widely condemned by the West—is just as illegal as any potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

This article lays out international law prohibiting annexation before discussing international responses to Israeli proposals for annexing the West Bank. Should Israel actually seek to implement any annexation plan, all other states have a legal obligation to not recognize Israel’s annexation as legal or otherwise aid or assist in it. Recognizing, aiding, or assisting in any annexation both violates international law and risks jeopardizing foundational principles in international law, thereby undermining the law and increasing the risk of annexation in other contexts.

What is annexation, and what does international law say about it?

Annexation is a state’s forcible acquisition of territory of another state or recognized non-self-governing entity. Annexation is distinct from other modes of acquiring territory, for example by cession through mutual agreement, by means of prescription, or by accretion or natural development of new territory.

International law has not always prohibited annexation. Prior to World War I, there were no restrictions on the rights of states to wage war on other states and forcibly acquire territory. Peace treaties concluded at the end of World War I resulted in annexation—the transfer of territory from the defeated Central Powers, to the victorious Allies or new states.

However, the law began to change in response to World War I. Seeking to establish a new world order with international peace and security and prevent wars of aggression, which had just cost millions of lives, the League of Nations Covenant called for member states to “respect and preserve … the territorial integrity” of other member states and restricted the ability to wage war. However, the League of Nations proved ineffective at preventing the next war of aggression in World War II, including the scale of territorial occupation and annexation that cost tens of millions more lives globally.

Following World War II, states collectively founded the United Nations (UN) as a second attempt to establish a new world order with international peace and security. The UN Charter doubled down on preventing wars of aggression and forcible acquisition of territory. Article 2(4) requires all member states to “refrain … from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity … of any state” except in self-defense (Article 51) or pursuant to a UN Security Council decision (Article 42). By prohibiting the use of force, Article 2(4) makes annexations illegal for all 193 UN Member States and prohibits states from recognizing as valid territorial changes by other states’ annexation.

The UN Charter reflects customary international law (legal obligations arising from established practice, rather than written texts, which all countries are required to abide by), and thus annexation is prohibited under customary international law. Further, the prohibition of aggression is a “peremptory norm of general international law (jus cogens),” or “a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted.”

The prohibition against aggression relates to annexation in that it prohibits the use of armed force by one state against another—acts that often precipitate annexation—and some definitions of aggression even include “annexation by the use of force of the territory of another State or part thereof.” The prohibition of annexation under customary international law is reflected in additional sources, including binding UN Security Council resolutions 242 (1967), recognizing the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” and 662 (1990), declaring annexations, including Iraq’s annexation of Kuwait, as “null and void,” with “no legal validity.” Additionally, UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 (XXV) states that “territory of a State shall not be the object of acquisition by another State resulting from the threat or use of force” and that “[n]o territorial acquisition resulting form the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal. Resolution 2734 (XXV) reaffirms that “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal,” and regional agreements like the Helsinki Final Act of 1970 state that participating states will “refrain from any demand for, or any act of, seizure and usurpation of part or all of the territory of any participating State.”

Aside from outlier states like Russia, virtually all states recognize annexation as illegal. This is reflected in statements and discussions in 2022 regarding Russia’s attempted annexation of the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine.

In September 2022, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres issued an unequivocal statement that “any annexation of a State’s territory by another State resulting from the threat or use of force” violates the UN Charter and international law. In October 2022, the UN General Assembly resumed its emergency special session regarding Russia’s wholescale invasion of Ukraine to address the latest annexation attempt. Dozens of UN member states made statements in the General Assembly, which then-US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield described as sharing “the same resounding message over and over again. It is the same message shared by the Secretary-General, the one I started with: It is illegal, and simply unacceptable, to attempt to redraw another country’s borders by force.”

On October 12, 2022, the General Assembly adopted Resolution ES-11/4, which condemned Russia’s “attempted illegal annexation” in Ukraine—with 143 states voting in favor, and only five against, including Russia, joined by Belarus, North Korea, Nicaragua, and Syria under the regime of its former dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Responses to proposed Israeli annexation of the West Bank

Discussions around Israel’s potential annexation of portions of the West Bank are not new. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said in past election campaigns that he would annex portions of the West Bank, as an attempt to appeal to right-wing Israelis. These statements have typically resulted in strong international condemnation because annexation is illegal.

Guterres said in 2020 that Israel’s threatened annexation of the West Bank, if implemented, “would constitute a most serious violation of international law.” Guterres has repeated similar statements this year—that “annexation is illegal” and “[t]he creeping annexation of the occupied West Bank is illegal”—as discussion of West Bank annexation has grown inside Israel ahead of elections next year.

The International Court of Justice also issued an advisory opinion in 2024 finding that Israel’s policies and practices—including imposition of Israeli law, construction of the wall and infrastructure, and establishment and expansion of settlements—“amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The court concluded that this annexation, or Israel’s attempt “to acquire sovereignty over an occupied territory … is contrary to the prohibition of the use of force in international relations and its corollary principle of the non-acquisition of territory by force.” While advisory opinions are not binding, they “carry great legal weight and moral authority” and are persuasive sources in national and international courts.

Other states have also condemned recent Israeli proposals to annex the West Bank and noted their illegality. Even staunch Israeli allies like US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio opposed the latest Knesset votes to advance annexation plans, although their statements have not condemned the annexation plans as illegal. It is an open question whether the Trump administration will maintain this hard stance against West Bank annexation proposals, especially given Trump’s 2019 recognition of Israel’s annexation of the occupied Golan Heights—an annexation that the international community recognized as illegal, is opposed by virtually every other state, and the UN Security Council condemned as “null and void and without international legal effect.”

Despite international law clearly prohibiting such action, West Bank annexation proposals are gaining traction in Israel. This is likely due to a combination of factors, including increased security concerns after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza, as well as an increasingly right-wing Israeli government and base, and a gamble that the Trump administration may allow (or support) West Bank annexation.

Select international lawyers have argued that West Bank annexation proposals are legal, because they dispute the idea of Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and/or assert that Israel has sovereign claims to the West Bank. Other arguments posit that annexation is required for Israel’s self defense, and that the Jewish people have deep historical ties to the land and thus a legal claim to it. However, these first two claims run counter to international consensus and are in the distinct minority of legal opinions; all UN bodies and virtually all countries, including Israel’s own supreme court, recognize the West Bank as Palestinian territory. And the second two arguments are contradicted by international law; the absolute prohibition against annexation has no exceptions for self defense or historical ties.

While Israeli politicians are debating West Bank annexation proposals, there must be recognition that any such proposal is illegal. Failure to recognize the illegality of annexation will help to undermine the law, while opposition to annexation can help reinforce the legal prohibition. Under international law, foreign states must reject any annexation attempts as illegal and refuse to assist or aid in annexation.

States agreed to respect territorial integrity following the two world wars because they knew the deadly consequences of wars of aggression and annexation. Failure to resist all annexation proposals or attempts, regardless of location or actor, risks further breaking the already imperfect international order—and returning to a state of heightened global conflict.

Elise Baker is a senior staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project. She provides legal support to the project, which seeks to include legal tools in foreign policy, with a focus on prevention and accountability efforts for atrocity crimes, human-rights violations, terrorism, and corruption offenses.

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And the United States was not part of that moment.

The US delegation did not attend the Johannesburg summit and declined to join the declaration—a decision that stemmed in part from concerns about the host nation and broader disagreements with aspects of the process. And the United States is making AI a focus of the G20 summit it is hosting next year, an indication that it has not ruled out collaboration. Still, this year’s absence carried symbolic weight. It suggested a narrowing US appetite to engage multilaterally at a time when many governments are moving quickly to shape the rules and norms surrounding transformative technologies. Other capitals may reasonably interpret this as an opening: If Washington steps back from these discussions, others will step forward.  

And many did.

The G20’s digital agenda this year went further than any previous summit in knitting together AI governance with sustainable development. What emerged from Johannesburg was a clear premise: AI is not just a commercial or security asset; it is a public good, one that must be governed collectively. Countries from South Africa to Brazil to India insisted that data governance, ethical guidelines, and inclusive digital infrastructure are not luxuries—they are developmental necessities.

What came out of Johannesburg wasn’t the usual tech-salon optimism or Western policy jargon. It was the voice of a world determined to stop the next wave of innovation from hard-wiring the injustices of the last. For example, the declaration insisted that AI must be “human-centered” and “development-oriented,” backed by trustworthy data governance—not just for privacy, but as the backbone of equitable AI. It called for digital public infrastructure and real capacity-building for countries long pushed to the margins of the digital economy. And it linked information integrity directly to democratic resilience. It aligned itself with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) ethical AI framework and the United Nations’ resolutions on equitable technology.

Call it whatever you want: multilateralism, solidarity, or simple common sense. But the message was unambiguous. A broad group of the world’s largest economies came together to say that AI must serve humanity, not just the handful of companies and countries capable of building it.

What makes the US absence so striking is that for decades it was the United States that championed precisely these kinds of conversations. US diplomats helped build the global internet governance system through international multilateral and multistakeholder fora, such as the Internet Governance Forum. American civil society was instrumental in pushing human rights into digital debates. American universities trained the researchers shaping AI ethics. Yet today, as major economies explore AI’s developmental dimensions, the United States is largely outside the room.

The US administration’s current approach to AI—marked by a preference for domestic industrial strategy and selective bilateral partnerships—reflects a hardening belief that multilateral governance is either futile or dangerous. In too many parts of Washington, there is a sense that global cooperation simply helps China; that multilateral institutions dilute US influence; and that if the United States leads on innovation, it doesn’t need to lead on rules.

This is a profound misreading of how power works in the digital age.

It is true, of course, that the United States remains the world’s AI frontrunner. Its companies build the most advanced models and its research institutions are unmatched—at least for the time being. But technological dominance without normative influence is brittle. Governance frameworks—data standards, safety norms, ethics principles—shape markets and behavior as much as silicon and compute. If the rest of the world agrees on a vision for AI grounded in development, inclusion, and human rights, and the United States is not part of that process, then Washington risks becoming a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker.

Some observers are already calling Johannesburg a win for China. There is some truth to that. Beijing has long argued that developing countries deserve a larger voice in global tech governance, with Chinese President Xi Jinping criticizing the idea of AI as a “game of rich nations,” a theme emphasized in Chinese state media coverage. And China’s investments in digital infrastructure across the Global South give it clear geopolitical advantages. With Washington absent, Beijing’s narrative—centered on equity, development, and multilateral dialogue—faces fewer obstacles.

But focusing solely on China misses the bigger story. Johannesburg was not a Chinese diplomatic triumph. It was a Global South diplomatic triumph. India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, and others played central roles in shaping the digital agenda. They were not passive recipients of a Chinese vision; they were co-authors of something genuinely new: a multilateral AI framework that reflects their own developmental priorities. This agency was highlighted not only in the declaration but also in the reporting across the Global South, including South Africa’s official summit briefings.

None of this means the United States has been written off as an ally. But it does reflect a growing impatience among other states. Adopting the declaration without US support was not a rebuke; it was a recognition that global cooperation cannot wait for universal participation. A generation ago, such a move would have been unlikely. Today, it feels increasingly normal.

What should worry Washington most is that this shift comes at the precise moment when AI is beginning to reshape the global economy in ways as profound as industrialization. The International Monetary Fund estimates that AI could boost global growth by nearly a full percentage point, transforming labor markets, education, healthcare, and agriculture. It could concentrate power or democratize it. And the rules that govern these transformations are being written now.

To be clear, G20 declarations are nonbinding and often aspirational. Implementation will depend on infrastructure, innovation ecosystems, and the particular needs of member states. Still, the fact that the Johannesburg declaration so explicitly anchors AI within the sustainable development agenda—at a moment when US alignment with that agenda is often questioned—signals a meaningful shift in global positioning.

By staying home, the United States is making a bet that it can shape these norms later, through market dominance alone. But history suggests otherwise. Governance norms, once set, are sticky. They embed themselves in institutions, standards, and expectations. They shape how technologies are built and how they spread. And they rarely bend to accommodate a latecomer—even a powerful one. 

It is telling that, while the world was forging a collective path in Johannesburg, Washington was charting a very different course at home with the launch of the Genesis Mission—an ambitious drive to harness AI for domestic innovation and national competitiveness. It’s a bold investment, but one that risks reinforcing a US approach to AI that is inward-looking and self-referential at the very moment the rest of the world is moving toward shared governance and collective benefit.

But retreat is not destiny. The United States still has avenues to re-engage—not by dictating outcomes, but by participating as a genuine partner. The G20 declaration did not emerge in a vacuum; it builds on existing foundations the United States helped create, including the Group of Seven’s Hiroshima AI principles and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) AI framework. Those earlier initiatives emphasized trustworthy, rights-based AI—but they lacked a deep developmental dimension. Johannesburg extends the trajectory, integrating ethical safeguards with the practical realities of inclusion and infrastructure.

If Washington wants to regain its normative footing, it can start by showing up. The upcoming India AI Impact Summit in February 2026—already gaining momentum as a convening of Global South digital priorities—offers a stage where the United States can listen rather than lecture, and even align itself with the developmental intent now shaping global AI norms. And with the United States set to host the G20 next year, it has a rare chance to reset: to bring the existing principles into conversation with the Johannesburg framework rather than treating them as competing visions.

The choice ahead is not between US power and multilateral governance. It is whether the United States can recognize that power now depends on multilateral governance—on shaping shared norms, not merely exporting products. Much of the world has signaled that AI must be human-centered, equitable, and globally accessible. The question is whether Washington is willing to take its seat—not at the head of the table, but at the table at all.

Konstantinos Komaitis, PhD, is a resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Democracy + Tech Initiative at the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).

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The current draft resolution has many strong elements, and the United States should resist efforts by other Security Council members to weaken it. The draft resolution gives international legitimacy to the Trump peace plan, including the Board of Peace (BoP), an International Security Force (ISF) with a robust authority to demilitarize Hamas and other terrorist groups, and civilian “operational entities” under the BoP, including an international oversight body and “a Palestinian technocratic, apolitical committee of competent Palestinians” from Gaza.

One of the “operational entities” could be the Gaza International Transitional Authority (GITA). It was referenced by name in the Trump plan but is not mentioned specifically in the draft resolution—perhaps because GITA and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair met some resistance from Egypt and elsewhere. The relationship between international oversight and the Palestinian committee is ambiguous in the draft resolution, and this is where improvements could make the difference between success and failure for the Trump plan.

The US experiences in Bosnia and Iraq show the importance of getting the early decisions right. In Bosnia, United Nations (UN) Security Council resolution 1031 (1995) provided a one-time-only authorization to set up the Office of the High Representative and an International Force (IFOR) to enforce the Dayton Peace Agreement. Like the ISF for Gaza, IFOR was not a UN peacekeeping force, keeping it out of the hands of a Russian or Chinese veto and the UN bureaucracy, either of which would have made a lasting peace impossible. However, the United States focused more on the military side of implementation, leaving civilian implementation in the hands of Europeans who, in the first crucial months, tried to compromise decisions that should not have been compromised. Bosnian Serb recalcitrance, in particular, threatened to unravel the peace. There are many celebrated but unpublished stories about how US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and his team rescued the peace deal in a February 1996 conference in Rome. The result was not perfect, but Bosnia has not fallen back into war for almost thirty years.

The US experience in Iraq shows how early, bad decisions are often unrecoverable. The United States delayed deciding how to administer Iraq and was not ready when Baghdad fell to US forces. Washington’s decisions to disband the Iraqi army and extend de-Baathification down to the firqa level (i.e., beyond what was necessary) led to an insurgency that crippled Iraq. Failures to understand the role of money in Iraqi elections, and to provide border security from day one, allowed Iran to gain the upper hand in Iraqi politics. The decision to let Iraqi political parties appoint individual ministers led to crippling corruption and the deeply unpopular muhasasa system.

The biggest challenge to lasting peace in Gaza is Hamas’s unwillingness to lay down its arms. Both Trump and the Israeli government are adamant that Hamas must be disarmed. Arab governments will not contribute to Gaza’s reconstruction if Hamas can keep its weapons, even if limited to AK-47s, to intimidate the locals and allow Hamas to attack Israel whenever it wants. This would result in an Israeli counterattack that would likely destroy anything that was rebuilt. Gaza will not have peace or reconstruction unless Hamas is disarmed.

At the same time, no Arab force likely wants to fight Hamas to take away its weapons. Jordan’s King Abdullah II said this publicly in October.

Instead, disarmament will have to proceed along two tracks. First, paragraph seven of the draft resolution gives the ISF the mandate “to use all necessary measures” for “ensuring the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, including the destruction and prevention of rebuilding of the military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, as well as the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.” The ISF will need some Western special operations forces or contractors able to carry out targeted raids on Hamas remnants and their weapons caches. But the language in paragraph seven is strong.

There needs to be a second track: Take away Hamas’ control over the money, jobs, and contracts in Gaza. This was how Hamas built up its fighters, weapons, and tunnels. Keeping money away from Hamas has to be a core mission of the BoP’s “operational entities.” This will require initial international control of Gaza’s tax revenues, government contracts, and key appointments to prevent Hamas from intimidating local Palestinians, as it will certainly try to do. This can be phased out when it is unnecessary, but international control is absolutely essential for both Israel and Gaza at the outset.

Just four additional words, italicized here, added to paragraph four of the draft resolution, would clarify that the BoP’s “operational entities shall be responsible for day-to-day operations of Gaza’s civil service, finance, contracts, and administration.” The present draft is ambiguous on this point, and to avoid a knock-down-drag-out bureaucratic argument, the resolution should make it clear that the entities created by the BoP, not just the Palestinian committee, are responsible for Gaza’s finance, contracts, and key personnel. Hamas will no doubt object, and Egypt may as well, but no government will invest billions of dollars if Hamas’s disarmament is not a priority—and keeping the money away from Hamas is the best nonmilitary way to ensure Hamas is unable to rebuild and rearm.

Control over the money, contracts, and key officials in Gaza is absolutely essential for the success of Trump’s plan. In the next few days, the United States and its regional allies should work to strengthen the draft resolution by ensuring that the operational entities created by the BoP will have the ability to ensure that Hamas can never come back to power.

Thomas S. Warrick is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative in the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. From 1997 to 2007, he served in the US Department of State on Middle East and international justice issues, including heading postwar planning on Iraq from 2002 to 2003.

The post The important change needed in UNSC’s Gaza resolution: Control over the money appeared first on Atlantic Council.

To shed light on what’s going on and what to expect next, we spoke earlier this week with Matt Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and Jason Marczak, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. This expert conversation has been lightly edited and condensed below.

Matt, you host a show called “So What’s the Strategy?” What do you think US strategy in the region is right now?

Jason, how do you hear that from a regional standpoint?

Matt, this is your wheelhouse. Is this Caribbean buildup a soft launch of that strategy?

This military buildup comes as Trump just returned from Asia, where he presided over a peace agreement between Cambodia and Thailand. He frequently talks up his role as a peacemaker. Are we seeing a foreign policy doctrine emerge at this point from Trump?

And related to that question: How tight is Maduro’s grip on power? What would it take to force him out?

Matthew Kroenig is vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Jason Marczak is vice president and senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. 

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Resolution 1325 was designed to increase women’s participation across UN peace and security efforts, urge parties to conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, and establish operational mandates with direct implications for member states and UN entities. Since its adoption, nine follow-on resolutions have built on 1325, providing substantive guidance to member states on implementing the agenda and addressing challenges to peace and security. However, implementation by member states remains weak, leaving civil society and women’s movements as the primary drivers of progress on the ground.

Women are not waiting for peace to be delivered from above; they are building it from the ground up, often in the most dangerous and fragile contexts. In Afghanistan, for example, where basic human rights have been stripped from women and girls, organizations such as DROPS are sustaining underground networks and using innovative digital tools to hear and respond to women’s needs despite constant surveillance. Even in exile, Afghan women leaders’ advocacy to codify gender apartheid as a crime under international law could open new pathways for accountability against the Taliban and deter governments from normalizing relations with the regime. Even in times of unprecedented repression, women continue to define the parameters of justice and equality. 

In Myanmar, where a brutal military junta continues to massacre civilians and suppress dissent, women now represent nearly 60 percent of pro-democracy and human rights defenders. They have built decentralized resistance networks that embody the WPS agenda in real time—organizing humanitarian corridors, documenting abuses, shaping local governance in liberated areas, and convening regularly across ethnic and religious lines to coordinate strategies for protection, response, and political reform. Their work illustrates that inclusion and security are not post-conflict luxuries—they are the foundation for democratic resilience.

In Ukraine, where the war grinds on, the WPS agenda has taken on a forward-looking form, focused not only on survival but on recovery and justice. Through the leadership of the government commissioner for gender equality and survivor networks such as SEMA Ukraine, the country has become the first in history to establish urgent interim reparations for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence during an ongoing war. Ukraine’s advocacy is having an effect: In August, the UN secretary-general warned Russia that it risked being listed as a state using sexual violence as a tactic of war, a designation that could lead to barring Russia from participating in UN peacekeeping missions. Ukrainian women leaders have also spearheaded the Alliance for a Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Recovery for Ukraine—a $48 million initiative uniting governments, civil society, and the private sector to embed gender equality in reconstruction. 

The same spirit of persistence defines Colombia’s experience. The 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, remains a global model for gender inclusion. This is thanks to the tireless advocacy of women’s civil society groups and the work of a dedicated Gender Sub-Commission, which ensured that commitments to equality and protection against sexual violence were embedded throughout. But as international funding declines and the implementation process falters, women leaders warn of backsliding. In Quibdó, Afro-Colombian mothers have emerged as the quiet architects of peace—organizing neighborhood dialogues to protect children from recruitment, running “ARTivism” programs that use creativity to resist violence, and demanding justice for those killed in ongoing clashes. Their daily acts of courage remind us that peace is not just negotiated in conference rooms; it is built each day in kitchens, classrooms, and community centers.

In Yemen, where water scarcity has fueled years of conflict and community division, women have stepped in to mediate what politics could not. Women leaders at Food4Humanity and the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership helped broker a local water-sharing agreement between warring tribes—an act that prevented further fighting and restored access to safe water for thousands of families. Their work demonstrates how women’s leadership in conflict prevention extends beyond formal negotiations to the everyday essentials of human security—water, food, and dignity.

These examples matter deeply because they reveal shared patterns of abuse and resistance across continents. First, sexual violence is increasingly used as a deliberate tactic of war—a means to terrorize, displace, and destroy the social fabric of communities by attacking culture and identity itself. Second, there is a growing disregard for the rules of war, with the systematic targeting of civilians and destruction of critical infrastructure—from hospitals in Gaza to kindergartens in Ukraine—undermining the very notion of humanitarian restraint. Third, the lack of international accountability mechanisms continues to embolden perpetrators; too often, justice remains out of reach. Most concerning is the interconnected web of enablers, including UN member states that provide weapons, funding, and political cover that link actors across regions. 

In recent months, the WPS agenda has faced a major backlash. The US Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, the first national legislation mandating the integration of WPS into foreign policy anywhere in the world, has been sidelined within the State Department and the Department of Defense, with annual reporting to Congress faltering. Simultaneously, cuts at the US Agency for International Development and in global funding have undermined women’s organizations’ capacity to sustain essential work. According to a global peace-builder survey by the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security published this month, 40 percent of respondents reported decreased funding over the past two years, while 43 percent identified long-term funding as critical to achieving their peace and security goals. 

In the absence of a strong and united UN Security Council, where veto powers often block meaningful action, it is vital to defend Resolution 1325 and deliver on its promise. Smaller nations now carry the mantle of moral leadership, just as Namibia did in 2000 when it led the UN Security Council to adopt the resolution. Countries such as Denmark, Panama, Greece, Slovenia, and other nonpermanent members of the UN Security Council have shown openness to leading on the agenda, offering hope that breakthroughs remain possible. As the world marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Resolution 1325, these examples remind us that while power may shift and institutions may falter, women’s leadership continues to light the path toward peace, accountability, and shared security.

Melanne Verveer is the executive director of the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security, a former US ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, and a member of the Atlantic Council board of directors. 

Ana Lejava is a senior policy officer with the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace, and Security.

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On October 31, Atlantic Council vice president and Scowcroft Center senior director Matthew Kroenig was quoted in an article in Fox News. He argues that President Trump’s call to resume nuclear testing may be referring to nuclear-powered weapon delivery systems.

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 in Fox News on US nuclear tests appeared first on Atlantic Council.

These years of Taliban rule have been marked by resistance, defeat, resilience, and humiliation. Each woman’s story reveals a fragment of today’s Afghanistan and the weight carried by its women. This article features the voices of three young women from different fields and professions, each one a mirror to the dark reality of these years. I met the women I interviewed for this article through my work with Women Beyond Borders, a women-led organization that provides online human rights education and well-being classes for Afghan women, primarily those still inside the country. The interviews were conducted online and all names in this article have been changed to pseudonyms to protect the interviewees, as it is forbidden for women to speak publicly in Afghanistan.

Farida’s story: The last generation of midwives battling for life

Midwifery was not Farida’s dream. She had been a law student with aspirations to become a defense lawyer when the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s education forced her to change majors. She entered midwifery instead, but even that door soon closed. “Mine was the last class to graduate from this program,” she says.

Since the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy following the Taliban takeover, most patients can no longer afford private hospitals. Regime-run maternity wards are overwhelmed and lack even basic supplies. “Women must bring their own necessities for childbirth,” Farida explains. “Seeing them waiting for hours in the winter cold for a sonogram is truly painful.”

With midwifery education banned, the shortage of skilled workers has reached crisis levels. In one ward, “only three midwives handle all deliveries, leaving women without safe care,” Farida says. Family planning has collapsed too. “Some secretly used hormonal drugs, but now there’s no access,” she says. “The only option left is condoms, yet many husbands forbid them, and mullahs denounce them as un-Islamic.”

She recalls one woman in her forties: “She wanted a tubal ligation because her husband insists on more children. But all medical procedures to prevent pregnancy are forbidden.” Acts of violence against women multiply under Taliban rule: an act of violence from inside the home is reinforced by another from a regime that controls women’s bodies.

A head midwife adds: “We see rising domestic violence. Men can now act with more impunity. Pregnant women come in on the verge of losing their babies, or even their own lives, because of beatings.”

Restrictions on women’s movement without a mahram (male guardian) have driven up home births, which are often unsanitary and deadly. Fatal bleeding, infections, and cases of surgical gauze left inside women’s bodies are rising.

And yet, despite this desperate need, female graduates are prohibited from working. “The health system is collapsing, but the Taliban issue work permits to doctors from abroad, in countries such as India, while Afghan women sit at home,” Farida says bitterly.

Amina’s story: Weaving hope amid oppression

“Talking about the last four years is like flipping through a diary filled with pain, passion, and resilience,” says Amina, the owner of a small clothing brand.

In 2019, she started her brand in a tiny room with two sewing machines and a few meters of fabric. A psychology graduate, she poured her creativity into garments. “Every stitch was a story of women striving to be seen,” she says.

On August 15, 2021, Amina was at her workshop when her family called: the Taliban had entered Kabul. She locked up and rushed home. “They didn’t just take my job,” she recalls. “They stole my dreams, my goals, and part of my existence. I felt like a broken soul.”

A month later, she cautiously reopened her shop, hiring back both male and female workers. Within just a few days, Taliban officials raided it. They insulted and humiliated her employees for working in mixed spaces. She tried separating the workshops by gender but in the end was forced to close her shop entirely and continue only online.

Her ordeal didn’t end there. “One day, while I was traveling with my brother to Shahr-e-Naw to deliver clothes, a Taliban soldier stopped us. He told my brother, ‘A man whose sister drives should die of shame.’ When my brother defended me, they took us both to their station. I had to sign a pledge never to drive again.”

Last month, she saw Taliban forces detaining women in markets, restaurants, even on the streets. “I’ve seen them beaten, dragged by their hair, and thrown into vehicles. I have not left home in weeks.” Still, she clings to the hope that one day she will live without fear—that the walls of her home will no longer feel like a prison.

Samira’s story: A teenage girl caught between a nightmare and hope

“It was noon. My English class was at one, and I was slowly getting ready,” recalls Samira, a young woman from Herat who was barely sixteen on August 15, 2021. “That day was not like others—rumors echoed everywhere. Fear was in the air. Some couldn’t believe Afghanistan would fall so easily. Neither could I. How could we return to the days in A Thousand Splendid Suns?” she says, referring to the 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, which depicts women’s experiences under the first Taliban government.

At 12:45 p.m., a friend called her, urging her to come to class. As she headed out, her family blocked her path, warning that the Taliban was near the city. “I became angry. I thought: Impossible! This generation won’t surrender so easily.”

By 2:00 p.m., another call confirmed the chaos. “Gunfire was echoing, fear spreading,” she remembers. “My friends said their brothers scolded them for going to class. We knew then our happiness was over, and pressure from the Taliban, and our own families, would only intensify.”

As she and her family fled the city center, two images stayed with her. One was across from her school on Mstufiat Road—a police ranger wearing a uniform that reminded her of the Afghan flag, along with officers pacing anxiously, their eyes fixed on an uncertain future. The other was the school itself. “I didn’t know my last day there would truly be the last,” she says quietly.

“I miss everything, my friends, teachers, exams, even the blackboard,” she says. “Four years of my life disappeared into a corner of my home. That day was the end. I never saw the ranger or those officers again. I never thought I would long for such ordinary moments, but I do.”

***

Farida, Amina, and Samira’s voices reflect only a fraction of the immense crisis facing the women of Afghanistan today. Deprived of education, employment, and autonomy, they endure collapsing health services, closed schools, and growing violence. Every day brings new restrictions—on their bodies, their work, their presence in society.

These are just three stories. In every province, countless women face even deeper pain and despair under a system of gender apartheid unparalleled in the world today.

Amid this suffering, it is important not only to document that grim reality but also to honor Afghan women’s persistence: their fight to preserve dignity, resist erasure, and hold onto hope under the harshest of conditions. Confronting this crisis demands more than sympathy; it requires global solidarity and the creation of safe structures for the women and girls of Afghanistan.

Mursal Sayas is a human rights advocate and the founder and CEO of Women Beyond Borders / Les Femmes Au-delà des Frontières. She is also the author of Qui Entendra Nos Cris?

This article is part of the Inside the Taliban’s Gender Apartheid series, a joint project of the Civic Engagement Project and the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project.

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The United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has already once managed to cancel Israeli annexation plans in 2020, came out with a strong statement last month saying that annexing the occupied West Bank would cross a “red line” and undermine the spirit of the Abraham Accords that established relations between the two countries.

But as the UAE raises the diplomatic stakes on such actions, domestic pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare sovereignty and annex parts of the West Bank is growing. In the past, this was called for by the smaller right-wing parties and right-wing members of Netanyahu’s own Likud party. Today, many Likud members, including some of the most prominent party officials, are calling for the annexation of West Bank territory. There are several reasons why the demand is on the rise.

The main one is the feeling that US President Donald Trump’s administration will support such a move or at least won’t object to it. This creates a relatively narrow window of opportunity between now and a possible fall of the Netanyahu government. Even though elections are set for October 2026, there is a growing belief that the current Netanyahu government will not make it there, and early elections may take place already in June. But, once elections are set, possibly by the end of March, the government becomes an interim caretaker government, which does not have the power to take such action. There is also a growing public sentiment for this in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre inside Israel. Having witnessed the result of an independently ruled Palestinian Territory, more and more Israelis, even those who have previously supported the two-state solution, do not want to have such an entity within mortar range of Israel’s heartland. Therefore, on July 23, the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) held a non-binding vote on annexation, which had seventy-one members in favor and only thirteen against.

The second reason calls for annexation are on the rise are statements by several countries, led by France, to recognize a Palestinian state. These calls have increased support within the Israeli government for annexation for two reasons. The first being that an un-negotiated change to the Oslo Accords status quo is seen by some Israeli leaders as nullifying the Oslo Accords. Second, some Israeli leaders see annexation as a punitive measure and a warning for those countries that such an act will force Israel into unilateral action.

Possible annexation steps

Today, the West Bank is divided into three zones, based on the Oslo Accords, which envisioned these divisions to be temporary, with the final division of the land to be negotiated.

Area A is fully controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and makes up 18 percent of the territory. It is mainly comprised of the major Palestinian cities and the surrounding area. Area B is administered by the PA, but Israel is in charge of security. It makes up 22 percent of the territory and is comprised mainly of Palestinian villages. Area C makes up 60 percent of the territory, and Israel is fully in charge of it. The number of Palestinians living in Area C is estimated at 200,000-300,000, and the number of Israelis is around 400,000.

There are three possible annexation scenarios. The first is the annexation of the Jordan Valley. This was proposed already in 1967 as part of the Alon plan during the Labor Party’s rule. The Knesset has tabled legislation suggesting this several times since 1992. In 2019, Netanyahu, as part of his election campaign, proposed annexing the Jordan Valley, from the river to the Alon Road. The area in question amounts to between 17 and 22 percent of the West Bank, depending on the plan. For Israelis, the main advantage of this scenario is creating a barrier between the West Bank and Jordan, to hinder a future connection of the two. The border between Gaza and Egypt, also called the Philadelphia route, was a highway of arms smuggling. Therefore, Israel would like to separate Jordan and the West Bank and maintain a wide barrier between the two. A second concern is a future Jordan, which is overtaken by its Palestinian majority or worse by a Jihadist regime and connected to the West Bank. In 2020, the Netanyahu-Ganz Government set a date for the annexation of the Jordan Valley in its coalition agreement. While the right-wing factions were looking for something bigger, relying on the first Trump administration to support this, Netanyahu, as part of the Abraham Accords and as demanded by the UAE, officially took this idea off the table. As most of this area is considered C under the Oslo Accords and has a relatively small Palestinian population, annexing the Jordan Valley might not provoke the same level of pushback as other scenarios, Therefore, senior Israeli officials believe that this will most likely pass with a lot of condemnation and maybe even a “cooling off” period in the Abraham Accords—but it won’t terminate the agreements.

The two other options are much more far-reaching. The second option suggests annexing “settlement blocks”. This area amounts to 7-23 percent of the territory but creates a very problematic map with isolated settlements and very long and impossible to defend borders, meaning the Israeli army will still want to be on both sides of it. The rationale of this plan is that almost all Israelis will find themselves in Israeli territory. At the same time, the number of Palestinians, who most likely will be offered residency in a similar way to the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, is relatively small. Those on the Israeli right object to this plan, claiming that any area not annexed will de facto become the foundation of a Palestinian state. Therefore, the annexation should be done in one step to determine the borders.

The third option that is being pushed forward by the right-wing factions calls for the annexation of 82 percent of the area, leaving out only the cities and Palestinian “village blocks” which will be left in the hands of the PA (most of area A and parts of area B). Under this plan, some eighty thousand Palestinians will find themselves under Israeli rule. Such a plan was recently tabled by Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich.

Netanyahu’s political dilemma

The government is facing challenges around several issues. The main one is the “equality in carrying the burden,” legislation required by the Supreme Court to include the extreme orthodox in the conscription from which they are mostly exempt today. The extreme orthodox parties do not agree to a law that will mandate them to enlist in large numbers, and have left the governing coalition, leaving it hanging on a thin thread with exactly 50 percent of the seats. This gives the right-wing parties more leverage regarding annexation or any other issue. By December 31 of this year, the government has to pass the budget bill. Failing to do so by March 31 mandates speed elections within ninety days. Without the extreme orthodox parties at least abstaining, the budget is unlikely to pass. Netanyahu likely assesses that one way to keep the remainder of the coalition tight could be around annexation. On another front, the two right-wing parties threaten to leave the coalition and government should a deal be struck with Hamas, which does not satisfy their demands for the dismantlement of Hamas and maintaining security control over Gaza. Here, too, Netanyahu may be able to pacify them with the prospect of annexation. Most polls show that early elections may lead to a new centrist-left government, which may help Netanyahu keep his coalition in order, but may cost him annexation.

The consequences of annexation on regional integration

The growing debate in Israel around the issue has sparked a lot of international pushback. Netanyahu, with elections looming, wants to create a series of successes which may win him another term in office. One of his goals, after ending the war in Gaza, hopefully with all remaining or most hostages back, is to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia. This will most likely not be possible if annexation goes through. Saudi Arabia strongly condemned Israeli officials’ statement on the matter. Sources present in a recent meeting between Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed said the two agreed that a pullback from the Abraham Accords would be a “realistic” option should moves toward annexation be made.

The US position on annexation is not completely clear. In 2020, it seemed there was a green light for partial annexation. When asked about annexation in July, a State Department spokesperson said that “we stand with Israel and its decisions and how it views its own internal security.” What is Trump’s feeling on this? Just last week, he declared that he would “not allow” Netanyahu to annex the West Bank.

Understanding the key is in Washington, the UAE has warned the White House that annexation could unravel the Abraham Accords. If such annexation becomes a problem in the relations between the United States and the Arab world, Trump may object to it, despite some in his inner circle supporting it, and he may have the final word on this. If Trump makes a strong statement against any annexation, it will be very difficult for Netanyahu to go through with any such plans. This is one of the issues discussed by Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer with senior US officials. On the other hand, Trump’s relatively strong relationships with Gulf countries, in particular, may help him mediate a small-scale annexation to the Arab world through a regional deal. 

Itai Melchior is a nonresident senior fellow with the N7 Initiative, a partnership between the Atlantic Council and Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation. Melchior is a former diplomat, civil servant, and business leader.

The post Why Israel’s push for West Bank annexation is going mainstream—and what it means for the Abraham Accords appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Did a political representative of a guerrilla army have command responsibility for alleged crimes committed by its members during the Kosovo war? This is the central question an international trial panel will soon have to answer in the case against Hashim Thaçi, Kosovo’s former wartime leader turned politician—as prime minister and later president.

Since November 2020, Thaçi has been in detention at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, a hybrid Kosovar–international court in The Hague, alongside three other members of the Kosovo Liberation Army’s (KLA) General Staff. Their trial began in April 2023, and the prosecution took two years, concluding in April of this year.

The indictment against Thaçi and the three others alleges that during 1998-1999—while the KLA waged a rural insurgency against the Yugoslav army and police, whose top leadership was found guilty of massacres and the ethnic cleansing of at least 700,000 Albanians—the KLA engaged in a number of illegal detentions, disappearances, mistreatment, and murders of civilians seen as political rivals and collaborators, both Albanian and Serb. The prosecution brought 125 witnesses and 155 participating victims, and it argued that members of the KLA General Staff, including Thaçi as the then head of its political directorate, bear responsibility as part of a “joint criminal enterprise.”

On September 15, the defense opened its case, announcing just fifteen witnesses—mostly senior Western officials with direct knowledge of events. The strategy is not to deny the alleged crimes, which do not implicate Thaçi directly. Instead, the defense is arguing that the KLA lacked a proper command structure and that Thaçi, often outside Kosovo and serving in a political role, had no authority over operations.

A question of control

The first defense witness carried the weight of the US government of that era. James P. Rubin, former assistant secretary of state, testified for three days, accompanied by current State Department officials as observers. He rejected the prosecution’s portrayal of Thaçi’s power at the time and disputed the notion that the KLA had anything resembling a “military structure.” According to Rubin, this was one reason why the United States refused to arm the KLA even while it was bombing Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia.

Rubin was well placed to know. Tasked by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to work with Thaçi during peace talks in France (February–March 1999) and later to secure KLA demilitarization after NATO’s intervention, he said that Thaçi’s signatory role reflected representation, not authority. Having spent time with Thaçi both in France and for three days in a KLA mountain hideout, Rubin testified that the then twenty-nine-year-old “had superiors from whom he had to get approval,” and he was “more of a public face to present to the West.”

Rubin’s testimony was reinforced by Paul Williams, an international law expert who advised Kosovo’s delegation. Williams said that Thaçi faced “extraordinary pressure from local commanders” not to sign the peace accords, and that he had to travel back to Kosovo to seek their approval. On September 22, John Stewart Duncan, then a British adviser to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe who drafted and negotiated the KLA’s demilitarization deal, further corroborated this portrayal of the KLA’s command structure, adding that the guerilla army’s real power rested with regional commanders.

Media reports suggest that more high-ranking Western officials—from the United States, NATO, the United Kingdom, and France—will testify in the coming days. The defense is expected to conclude by mid-November, with a ruling anticipated around March of next year.

Implications for Kosovo, the region, and beyond

The outcome of the case will likely have political implications for Kosovo and the Balkans, as well as for the United States. Washington’s reputation is involved because Thaçi, as Rubin noted in his testimony, worked closely with successive US administrations to lead Kosovo toward peace and independence and promote ethnic reconciliation. For two decades, he was essentially seen as Washington’s man. 

Thaçi is also being tried in a court sponsored by the United States and the European Union (EU), and the court’s chief prosecutor and presiding judge in the case are both American. This reflects a longstanding US commitment—starting with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993—to pair Balkan peace deals with justice and accountability for war crimes.

Finally, the case has elements of a domestic US political drama which—regardless of objective reality—has altered perceptions about the integrity of the process in a Balkans region that is already prone to viewing war-crimes tribunals as politically controlled by Western powers. Thaçi’s indictment in 2020 was controversially announced while he was en route to the White House to meet with US President Donald Trump to sign a peace deal with Serbia. The announcement came from Jack Smith, then chief prosecutor of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and later special prosecutor against Trump, which fueled speculation among Trump’s allies in Washington about possible domestic US political motivations behind the case.

Rubin’s testimony also frequently shifted from KLA command-and-control dynamics to these broader political issues. He accused the prosecution of distorting justice, calling the tribunal “an example of international justice that has gotten out of control.” On Thaçi’s indictment, he said that “politics had interfered in the rule of law” and sought to alter the Kosovo war narrative. Drawing on his Kosovo experience and his recent stint as the head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center under former President Joe Biden, Rubin also expressed his belief that many allegations against KLA leaders stemmed from Russian and Serbian propaganda.

Rubin’s political narratives inside the courtroom and the decision of Western governments to allow officials to support the defense have created a perception in Kosovo, particularly among Thaçi’s supporters, that an acquittal may be on the way. So much so that an opposite outcome would likely fuel a sense of betrayal and skepticism toward the West, which has been steadily on the rise in Kosovo even before Thaçi’s indictment. 

Yet if he is acquitted, Thaçi’s return to Kosovo would almost certainly shake up the political scene, which has been mired in deadlock due to an inability to form a government. It also comes at a time when caretaker Prime Minister Albin Kurti is increasingly at odds with Washington and Brussels over what US and EU officials see as destabilizing moves regarding relations with Serbia and the rights of Kosovo Serbs.

It remains unclear what political role Thaçi might play if an acquittal comes in the spring, but snap elections are looming. Yet Thaçi’s return would very likely boost Kurti’s rival camp, whatever his role may be. That camp has favored closer cooperation with the West and has shown a greater willingness to pursue a final settlement with Serbia. 

An acquittal would also likely please Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, a vocal supporter of Thaçi’s defense who sees him as the preferred ethnic-Albanian partner across the border. Rama’s relations with Kurti have arguably deteriorated beyond repair. At the same time, an acquittal would likely anger Belgrade, which has supplied the prosecution with evidence against Thaçi and would likely use an acquittal to reinforce its standard narrative of Western bias against Serbs.

Agon Maliqi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. He is a political and foreign policy analyst from Pristina, Kosovo.

***

The Western Balkans stands at the nexus of many of Europe’s critical challenges. Some, if not all, of the countries of the region may soon join the European Union and shape the bloc’s ability to become a more effective geopolitical player. At the same time, longstanding disputes in the region, coupled with institutional weaknesses, will continue to pose problems and present a security vulnerability for NATO that could be exploited by Russia or China. The region is also a transit route for westward migration, a source of critical raw materials, and an important node in energy and trade routes. The BalkansForward column will explore the key strategic dynamics in the region and how they intersect with broader European and transatlantic goals.

The post What the looming verdict in Thaçi war crimes trial could mean for Kosovo, the Balkans, and beyond appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The global maritime order is an impressive but delicate construct. It depends on countries’ and companies’ willingness to abide by rules established through international treaties, even though violating them incurs only minor punishment, if any. In recent years, a growing number of countries have begun to publicly and repeatedly violate maritime rules. This poses the urgent question of who should protect the maritime order. The maritime sector—which is, by definition, dependent on the maritime order—can agree to create new rules, and such rules will likely become necessary. Clearly, corporate governance of the high seas cannot replace intergovernmental governance but, through smaller measures, the maritime domain’s different sectors can help prevent further deterioration of the maritime order.

A brief maritime history

“I am indeed lord of the world, but the Law is the lord of the sea. This matter must be decided by the maritime law of the Rhodians, provided that no law of ours is opposed to it.” This is how Emperor Justinian quotes, in 533, the first-century Emperor Antoninus on the matter of plunder following a shipwreck.¹ The island nation of Rhodes, a maritime leader, had pioneered maritime rules later adopted by the Romans. Subsequent generations of rulers in Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Italian city-states developed their own maritime rules, but these rules, naturally, covered only the waters the countries considered theirs.  

In 1609, the Dutch legal scholar Hugo Grotius advanced the new concept of the free seas: The oceans should be considered international territory, open to ships from all the world’s nations.² The world’s nations, however, were not interested in establishing free sees, and danger continued to plague seafaring. The most successful trading nations were those that could protect their own shipping on the high seas. From the 1690s, Great Britain massively expanded its merchant shipping by investing significantly in the Royal Navy.³ This model proved exceptionally successful, but it was also costly. 

Indeed, by the beginning of the 1900s, it was clear to both the United Kingdom and other countries that individually protecting one’s merchant fleet was unsustainable and governments needed to agree on a basic set of rules to make the high seas somewhat safer for merchant shipping. The treaties, rules, and conventions that followed have allowed maritime operations to expand at a phenomenal rate. These are the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), adopted in 1914; the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage (CLC), adopted in 1969; the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLRED), adopted in 1972; the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), adopted in 1973; the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR), adopted in 1979; and, of course, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which was adopted in 1982 and is considered the constitution of the oceans.⁴ The members of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and International Labor Organization have adopted further rules, such as the International Safety Management Code, which de facto requires that shipping companies have a licence.⁵ 

In addition, the shipping industry has introduced its own rules to further increase safety for those involved, and it regularly provides input to intergovernmental bodies. “There are many kinds of technical input: how the industry works, what kind of rules will work to ensure that the measures being planned are sensible and effective,” noted Svein Ringbakken, managing director of the maritime war-risk insurer DNK.⁶ “Governments and intergovernmental bodies don’t always have full insight into how things work, so on particular issues they consult industry. And within national delegations and international organizations like Intertanko, the International Chamber of Shipping and so on, industry representatives are regularly asked to provide input because they know the situation on the ground.” The undersea infrastructure, fishing, and oil and gas sectors—other key ocean operators—operate in the same manner. For example, the International Cable Protection Committee represents nearly all owners of undersea cables and issues rules for members to follow. 

These generations-long efforts made the oceans safer than ever before. In 2024, an estimated 403 seafarers died in connection with their work, including ninety-one men overboard. No comprehensive records exist from a century earlier, but anecdotal evidence suggests seafarer deaths around that time were tragically common.⁷ However, that trend toward more intergovernmental agreements and more safety on the high seas is reversing. 

‘Broken windows’ on the seas

As noted in previous reports by the Atlantic Council’s Maritime Threats initiative, compliance with maritime rules has decreased markedly in recent years and continues to do so. Russia’s use of the shadow fleet is only the latest example of a country violating maritime rules.⁸ (Exporting oil sanctioned by some countries does not violate maritime rules, but not using port state control to detain ships with multiple defects does. Port state control (PSC) “is the inspection of foreign ships in national ports to verify that the condition of the ship and its equipment comply with the requirements of international regulations and that the ship is manned and operated in compliance with these rules.”)⁹ Iran’s indirect support of the Houthis’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea is another troubling development for the global maritime order, as is China’s maritime harassment of civilian vessels in the South China Sea. Beijing’s construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea, and its unilateral declaration of a “no-sail zone” in a part of the Yellow Sea where China’s exclusive economic zone overlaps with that of South Korea, are further examples of recent activities that undermine the global maritime order.¹⁰   

Like broken windows in a neighborhood, unaddressed maritime rule violations encourage further rule violations. As noted in a previous Maritime Threats report, proliferating rule violations risk creating two parallel maritime systems: one in which internationally agreed-upon rules apply and are obeyed by authorities and companies, and another one in which they no longer apply.¹¹ The latter is also a world in which companies can save costs. For example, maintenance and repairs obligated by PSC inspections involve expenses, as does crew welfare. Operating in a minimum-rule environment will, however, cost them in the long run. 

That makes thwarting this trend a crucial task. The question is for whom. No nation can, on its own, shore up the maritime order; on the contrary, doing so must involve the rest of global maritime community acting collectively. This has been done before. When pirates plagued the waters off the Horn of Africa in the late 2000s, nations from around the world (including the United States, European Union (EU) countries, and China) successfully formed anti-piracy initiatives. Rooting out maritime violations by major nations is naturally a much more challenging undertaking, one that is made even more difficult by the fact that the United States—the default custodian of the global maritime order—has not ratified UNCLOS.  

In addition, to adopt measures such as greenhouse gas reduction agreements, the community of nations will likely need the support of China and other nations known to violate maritime rules. When the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee met in London in April 2025 to negotiate and vote on an agreement to reduce the shipping sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, China voted in favor of the agreement, as did the EU’s member states, the United Kingdom, and a host of other nations, while the United States voted against it.¹² A few days later, the United States unilaterally announced that it would allow seabed mining in international waters.¹³ The International Seabed Authority, an independent United Nations organ, does not (yet) permit seabed mining, and its secretary general has said that “any unilateral action would constitute a violation of international law and directly undermine the fundamental principles of multilateralism, the peaceful use of the oceans and the collective governance framework established under UNCLOS.”¹⁴ 

In parallel with these developments, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted Western governments (including the Joe Biden administration) to conclude that the maritime industry could be deployed to try forcing Russia to end the war. In December 2022, Western governments imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel on Russian oil. They considered the sanction especially potent because it didn’t just bar shipping companies based in the sanctioning countries from transporting the oil; it also barred Western protection and indemnity (P&I) insurers—which insure 90 percent of ocean-going tonnage—from insuring shipments above the cap.¹⁵ Because P&I coverage is required for all merchant vessels, the governments reasoned that Russa would not be able to sell its crude above the price cap and, thus, would be unable to raise large amounts of revenue to use in its war against Ukraine. The maritime insurance industry would shore up the rules-based international order where Western governments could not. The plan failed because Russia turned to the shadow fleet, undermining the maritime order in a way Western governments had assumed it would not.  

In a geopolitically flavored maritime development of a different kind, in April 2025 the US government issued a final notice in its 301 Investigation on “China’s Targeting the Maritime, Logistics, and Shipbuilding Sectors for Dominance.” The government announced actions that “will impose significant new port service fees on vessels that are owned or operated by China-linked entities, most vessels that were built in China but that are owned and operated by non-Chinese entities, and all foreign-built vehicle carriers.”¹⁶ Line Falkenberg Ollestad, an adviser at the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association, said that “puts the maritime sector in the middle of geopolitical rivalry. This is an industry that makes its decisions based on business efficiency, not geopolitical considerations. Now those worlds are colliding.”¹⁷ 

She added: “Shipbuilding has become a new geopolitical hot topic. It’s unsurprising considering that countries have begun taking supply chains much more seriously, but frequently policymakers struggle to understand how the maritime industry works. The maritime industry is very adaptable, but the prime objective will always be to be as efficient as possible, which is why we have cost-effective global shipping. Striking that balance will be a core task for the maritime industry over the next decade.”¹⁸ 

This state of affairs, in which geopolitical tensions co-exist with commercial links established during more harmonious times, exposes the maritime sector to a range of geopolitically linked risks and pressures (as detailed in previous Maritime Threats reports).¹⁹ The situation also has a less obvious upshot. With governments increasingly unable to reach international agreements, the maritime sector might have a better chance to reach global agreements. The maritime sector—which includes not just shipping but also ports, undersea infrastructure, and maritime insurance—might, in fact, be the world’s best chance at shoring up the crumbling maritime order precisely because it focuses on efficiency, which requires the high seas to be safe for commerce.  

The obvious question is how. Companies would naturally not be willing or able to negotiate sweeping conventions like UNCLOS, but they have potential to address more limited matters. For example, should IMO member states fail to adopt the greenhouse gas reduction agreement passed by the Environment Protection Committee, the shipping industry could conceivably agree on greenhouse gas emission rules without governmental involvement. To be sure, plenty of shipping companies have no interest in tackling climate change, but most know that their industry must bring down its share of global carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions. “The shipping industry is split on the issue,” Ringbakken said. “In northern Europe, shipping companies are mostly on board with CO2 reductions, while elsewhere there’s less support, but by and large decarbonization of the shipping industry is moving ahead. Some of the largest companies are taking the lead, and leading customers are demanding CO2 reduction too.”²⁰ Indeed, if European and other countries that are serious about CO2 reduction were to adopt stricter emission rules for ships calling at their ports, the global shipping industry would likely act pragmatically and adopt sector-wide rules.  

Could the oceans’ different industries—shipping, undersea infrastructure, and other maritime operations such as oil extraction—also negotiate and adopt other measures to ensure the high seas remain safe during a period in which the world’s nations are unlikely to reach any agreements? In other words, could the oceans’ practitioners become back-up protectors of the maritime order, the actors who step in when natural protectors—key nation-states—signal that they are not going to protect it? “When it comes to the risk of piracy, the maritime sector already has industry-wide standards,” Falkenberg Ollestad said.²¹ “On more complex issues, it becomes more difficult, but what the industry does agree on is the importance of navigational freedom. If countries were to begin challenging that, you could see the global shipping industry join forces to try to protect it.” Long before such a point is reached, the maritime industry’s different sectors could collectively adopt more standards and agreements on less complex issues such as greenhouse gas emissions or safer scrapping of vessels. 

Whether corporate intervention to protect the maritime order would be a desirable development is debatable, but this matters less than the fact that it might become inevitable. The global maritime order is only viable if a critical mass of actors honor it and introduce new measures that plug existing holes. As practitioners on the high seas, shipping companies, undersea-infrastructure companies, oil and gas companies, and others have an obvious interest in maintaining the maritime order.  

It would, of course, also be a risky development, as companies would be acting in a capacity otherwise mostly reserved for governments. Matters such as the definition of territorial waters and exclusive economic zones will, of course, always remain a matter reserved for nation states, as will interventions against rule breakers. By creating additional rules and standards, the maritime industry would build on the private sector’s well-established practice of creating industry-specific rules and standards beyond those contained in intergovernmental agreements. For example, the cable industry itself has established rules and procedures for the installation and repairs of undersea cables. 

Should the maritime order deteriorate to the point at which freedom of navigation is challenged—not just in a limited number of waters like the Red Sea but more widely—the global shipping industry could, for example, negotiate industry-wide rules to protect merchant vessels from attacks or collectively reroute from waters where freedom of navigation is not guaranteed. If the shipping industry were to collectively inform the Houthis that shipping through the Red Sea will be suspended unless the Houthis cease their attacks, this would send a powerful message because the Red Sea’s coastal states depend on at least some ships calling at their ports. 

One area that needs urgent attention is the security of undersea infrastructure: data cables, power cables, and pipelines. While NATO and Taiwanese authorities have increased their patrolling of undersea infrastructure following a string of suspicious cable incidents, governments will not be able to deter every potential saboteur. Data-cable owners could, for example, agree to take over each other’s traffic in situations where several cables have been damaged. (Cable owners typically install cables in pairs, with the twin cable taking over the damaged cable’s traffic in case of damage, but there is no arrangement covering traffic in cases where both cables are damaged.)  

This would naturally involve working with competitors; indeed, given intergovernmental authorities’ current weakness, companies’ efforts would be most productive if coordinated by industry bodies. The satellite industry offers a partial example collaboration in a similar vein. Satellite companies mutually report incidents via an industry-wide body, the satellite equivalent of drivers receiving warning of accidents ahead. They do so on the basis of trust, as each report goes to their competitors, and the service is crucial because it allows the satellite industry to operate as safely as possible. 

From companies’ perspectives, shoring up the maritime order would indisputably be an additional and unwanted burden. But because no one depends more on a functioning maritime order than the maritime industry itself, the maritime domain’s different sectors might find that taking on this additional task is preferable to watching the maritime order deteriorate further. 

Conclusion

The global maritime order is one the world’s most important intergovernmental achievements, and it is indispensable for the functioning of modern economies. However, like other parts of the rules-based international order, it is under severe strain, not least because major nations actively undermine it. Because the maritime industry is directly affected by the deterioration of the maritime order—as demonstrated, for example, by the continued growth of the shadow fleet—it is in the industry’s interest to protect the maritime order where governments can no longer reach agreements.

Fellow

Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

NATO Resilience & Society

Threats to the global maritime order

Learn more about the Atlantic Council’s project Threats to the global maritime order: Protecting the freedom of the seas.

Report Jan 23, 2025

From Russia’s shadow fleet to China’s maritime claims: The freedom of the seas is under threat

By Elisabeth Braw

This report analyzes the deterioration of the global maritime order, focusing on rule violations in areas including maritime border alteration, harassment of civilian vessels, and disturbance of navigational tools

China Europe & Eurasia

Report Dec 6, 2024

The threats posed by the global shadow fleet—and how to stop it

By Elisabeth Braw

Since 2022 the number of aging ships whose ownership, insurance status, and safety is unknown has exploded, prompted by Russia’s reliance on this “dark fleet” to ship its oil in defiance of Western sanctions. What can be done about this environmental, economic, and safety threat on the high seas?

China Europe & Eurasia

Report Aug 9, 2024

What attacks on shipping mean for the global maritime order

By Elisabeth Braw

This report discusses the history of attacks on shipping, the rules implemented to keep shipping safe, and the new and serious threats posed by the Houthis and other actors. It also discusses steps Western governments and the shipping industry can take to reduce the harm posed by such attacks.

Europe & Eurasia Maritime Security

The Transatlantic Security Initiative aims to reinforce the strong and resilient transatlantic relationship that is prepared to deter and defend, succeed in strategic competition, and harness emerging capabilities to address future threats and opportunities.

Learn more

The post Private industry should step up to protect the global maritime order appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“Israel initiated it, Israel conducted it, and Israel takes full responsibility.” That’s what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday after launching strikes targeting senior members of Hamas’s political leadership in Doha, Qatar. The unprecedented Israeli attack in Qatari territory comes as Israel is preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of Gaza City and the Trump administration is pressing Hamas to accept US terms for a cease-fire and hostage-release deal. US President Donald Trump criticized the Doha strike as not helpful to US or Israeli goals, as Hamas indicated that its top leadership survived the attack. So what’s next for Israel’s campaign against Hamas? And how will Qatar, a key mediator between Israel and Hamas, respond to the attack? Our experts share their insights below.

• Daniel B. Shapiro (@DanielBShapiro): Distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and former US ambassador to Israel
• Ahmed F. Alkhatib (@afalkhatib): Director of the Council’s Realign For Palestine project and native of Gaza City
• Thomas S. Warrick (@TomWarrickAC): Nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and former deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy in the US Department of Homeland Security
• Jennifer Gavito: Nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and former US acting principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs

Israel’s thinking

• Ever since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, members of the group’s external leadership have been “dead men walking,” notes Dan, given Israel’s ability to find and target them. “What kept them alive for this long was their role in negotiations to free Israeli hostages,” Dan tells us. “And on that front,” he adds, “they proved to be limited in their utility” after multiple rounds of failed negotiations.
• The decision to target Hamas’s political leadership, which followed Monday’s Hamas terrorist attack at a bus stop in Jerusalem, “may signal that Israel no longer believes there will ever be a viable cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza,” says Ahmed.
• In Tom’s assessment, the strike “will probably not bring the end of the war in Gaza any closer, but it won’t push it further away either.” That’s because any plans for the postwar reconstruction of Gaza “will not start until Hamas is disarmed, and that depends on decisions by Hamas’s military leaders in Gaza, not its political leaders in Doha.”

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Regional reaction

• As Jen notes, the strikes “upended Qatar’s role as a critical mediator” in the Israel-Hamas war, with Doha announcing that it is suspending its role in the talks in the aftermath of the attack.
• Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman also took Qatar’s side following the attack, which Jen says is noteworthy considering that only two years ago, Riyadh was “on the precipice of a normalization agreement” with Israel.
• “Only negotiations and greater normalization [with Arab neighbors] can bring about the long-term peace and security that Israel seeks,” Jen writes. “Each strike in contravention of international law diminishes Israel’s credibility as a negotiating partner.”
• Ahmed points out that the strikes took place not far from Al Udeid Air Base, which is home to US Central Command, placing the United States in a “delicate position vis-à-vis its strong Gulf ally.”  

What’s next?

• Following this strike, “Hamas no longer will feel safe anywhere it operates, even on the soil of a major non-NATO ally like Qatar,” Ahmed observes.
• And with the attack coinciding with an imminent invasion of Gaza City, Ahmed adds, this could mark “the beginning of the end of Hamas’s existence as a cohesive entity with territory and external leadership that could operate freely without repercussions.”
• According to Dan, the strike on Hamas negotiators and forthcoming Gaza City invasion “bode poorly” for the remaining hostages in Gaza. “We are closer than we have been at any point in the war to an Israeli reoccupation of Gaza, with all that likely means for hostages, Palestinian civilians, Israeli soldiers, and the challenge of shifting to any kind of sustainable day-after arrangement.”
• Jen warns that any “short-term success” by Israel in targeting Hamas officials, “if that is what today was, may yet bring more long-term pain.”

The post Israel just struck Hamas leadership in Qatar. What’s next?  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Europe should be the counterweight. Armed with some of the world’s most progressive digital regulations—the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the Artificial Intelligence Act—the European Union (EU) has demonstrated its ability to shape the digital world in the image of democratic values. These instruments, despite their shortcomings, reflect a rights-based approach to technology governance, one that contrasts sharply with the laissez-faire model of Silicon Valley and the coercive frameworks promoted by Beijing and Moscow.

But the EU’s internal ambition has not translated into external strategy. In international forums where the future of the internet is being contested—such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations Human Rights Council, and major negotiations in Geneva and New York—Europe’s footprint remains surprisingly faint. While EU officials occasionally sponsor side events or publish position papers, these interventions are often disjointed, siloed, and lacking in sustained political heft.

Authoritarians are writing the rules

Meanwhile, authoritarian actors are playing the long game. China, for instance, has identified institutions like the ITU as strategic venues to embed its political values into the technical underpinnings of the internet. Under banners such as “New IP” and the more recent “Future Vertical Communication Networks,” Beijing has advanced proposals that would enable greater centralization, content traceability, and top-down control. These efforts are highly technical in presentation but unmistakably political in consequence: They represent an attempt to reconfigure how the internet functions and who controls it.

Russia has pursued a complementary path, using the United Nations system to legitimize its vision of “digital sovereignty.” This is particularly evident in its efforts to shape international cybersecurity norms and define the rules of engagement in cyberspace. In 2019, Moscow successfully pushed for a resolution creating a process for a global cybercrime treaty, dominating early drafts with a framing that could justify censorship, restrict civil liberties, and entrench surveillance—all under the pretext of public safety. These developments are unfolding through the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime, with active backing from like-minded states.

Against this backdrop, the EU appears reactive and fragmented. Part of the problem is bureaucratic: Responsibility for digital policy is splintered among various directorates-general within the European Commission, national ministries, and EU foreign policy instruments. This institutional sprawl hampers agility and coherence. Another part is political: Many EU member states do not treat digital diplomacy as a strategic priority, and they have failed to invest in the technical and legal expertise needed to engage in arcane but consequential negotiations, such as ITU standard-setting or the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) on Cybersecurity.

Even when the EU does manage to formulate a position, it often struggles to speak with a unified voice. Coordination mechanisms like COREPER or the Council Working Party on Telecommunications offer some structure, but these are rarely sufficient in the high-velocity, geopolitically charged environment of multilateral diplomacy. Compromise tends to water down ambition before it even reaches the negotiating table.

A UN battleground for digital power

This failure to project a coherent external agenda is more than a missed opportunity—it is a strategic vulnerability. If the EU does not actively defend its digital rights model abroad, then it risks seeing the global system drift toward norms that contradict its own. The danger is not only that the rest of the world moves away from open, rights-respecting internet principles. Instead, it is that these illiberal norms begin to creep back into the frameworks that underpin the internet globally, potentially weakening protections even within Europe’s borders.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the United Nations system, which has emerged as a central arena in the contest for internet governance. At the United Nations, processes such as the Global Digital Compact (GDC), the WSIS+20 review, and the OEWG are laying the groundwork for future rules on platform governance, data flows, cybersecurity, and digital rights. These are not abstract debates—they are producing draft texts and political declarations that, in theory, could harden into treaties or influence national laws.

Yet in these negotiations, the EU too often remains on the sidelines. Delegations often lack political mandates, strategic coherence, and technical depth. Unlike China, which sends coordinated, high-level teams that advance a consistent digital agenda, the EU tends to operate in silos. Its contributions, when they come, are piecemeal and often diluted by the need for intra-European consensus.

A moment for European leadership

The EU’s inability to counter this influence risks marginalizing its regulatory model. If global norms are written without Europe at the table, the GDPR, the DSA, and the Artificial Intelligence Act may increasingly become regional exceptions rather than global standards. Worse, the EU could come under pressure to align with international frameworks that fall short of its own protections, weakening its credibility and undermining its normative leadership.

There are diplomatic costs as well. Many countries in the Global South look to the United Nations system for leadership and capacity-building on digital policy. When the EU fails to engage meaningfully, it forfeits its influence over global norms and the chance to build partnerships based on shared values. Authoritarian states are quick to fill the gap—by offering infrastructure, training, and governance models that prioritize state control over individual rights.

This is not a matter of capability. Europe has the legal frameworks, technical expertise, and democratic legitimacy to lead. What it lacks is vision—and political will. Despite years of regulatory innovation, the EU has not built the diplomatic infrastructure needed to match its ambitions. There is no senior political figure with the mandate to lead a global digital diplomacy agenda, no coherent strategy linking domestic regulation to foreign policy, and no sustained investment in the multilateral forums where the future is being negotiated.

To fill this void, the EU must stop acting like only a regulator and start thinking like a global power. That means giving the European External Action Service a clear digital mandate, appointing a dedicated envoy, and turning its world-class internal regulations—the GDPR, DSA, DMA—into a coherent foreign policy strategy. The EU should fund open, rights-respecting digital infrastructure and invest in capacity-building across the Global South, offering a credible alternative to China’s state-led model. At the same time, it must forge strategic alliances with democratic partners to shape global norms, vote in technical standards bodies, and defend multistakeholder governance. 

If the EU wants to preserve an open internet, it needs to start acting like the internet is a geopolitical asset—because its rivals already are.

A pillar of foreign policy

The European Union can no longer afford to remain on the sidelines of global internet governance. In Geneva’s diplomatic corridors, whispers are growing that the European Commission does not intend to fill the now-vacant position of digital affairs adviser to the United Nations. If true, this is more than just a bureaucratic oversight. It is a symptom of a deeper strategic malaise.

Europe must act with urgency and purpose. It must treat internet governance as a central pillar of foreign policy, not a niche technical issue. That means investing in long-term diplomatic strategies, empowering negotiators with political backing, and forging meaningful partnerships—especially with the Global South. Just as crucially, it must ensure that the values it defends in Brussels are championed abroad, not lost in translation.

Konstantinos Komaitis is a resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Democracy + Tech Initiative at the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).

The post As the US retreats from internet governance, Europe must step up appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“I swear to you, I can barely stand or make it through the day.”

Hunger pounds the brain, louder than the Israeli drones overhead. Weakened bodies stumble through the streets with empty pots looking for a community kitchen that—at best—is doling out a broth, faces contorted in agony in a crush of bodies. Babies born relatively healthy with pinchable cheeks are wasting away, their mothers’ bodies too weak and malnourished to provide breast milk, and hospitals lack the appropriate replacement formula.

My INARA team recently sent me videos from Gaza of a distribution of fresh vegetables. This is not aid that managed to get in, but local produce from the few greenhouses that are still accessible. The prices are astronomical. The parcels, each with six kilograms (roughly thirteen pounds) of fresh vegetables, cost around $120.

I’m struck by how the little children are grinning as if it were Halloween and they are just about to dive into a major candy haul. Only it’s not a chocolate bar they pull out, it’s a cucumber. And there is nothing imagined about the horror scenes or the skeletal figures around them; it’s all real.

“Thank you, thank you, my daughter, we’re hungry all the time, all day. I didn’t eat at all yesterday,” an elderly woman says to Yousra, INARA’s Gaza program coordinator.

The reality of starvation

This is the reality across swaths of Gaza, as the Israeli government deliberately starves the Palestinian enclave, a reality just recognized by two Israeli human rights organizations. B’tselem’s report is entitled “Our Genocide,” and Physicians for Human Rights recently published its findings in “Genocide in Gaza.”

Israel has systematically denied the entry of aid, created roadblocks to ensure that the little that does get in is not safely accessible, and perpetuated false narratives intended to discredit the humanitarian community and justify its blocking of aid. This includes repeatedly stating that Hamas steals the aid and that aid organizations are working with Hamas.

While nothing could be further from the truth, these claims led to the creation of an aid distribution mechanism—the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—that meets none of the standards recognized by the vast majority of the humanitarian sector.

Israel has manufactured the perfect insidious storm to ensure Gazans’ slow and agonizing end, even though its own military, as reported by the New York Times, “never found proof that the Palestinian militant group had systematically stolen aid from the United Nations,” citing two senior Israeli military officials and two other Israelis with knowledge of the issue.

According to a United Nations (UN) statement on July 27, “Of the seventy-four malnutrition-related deaths recorded this year, sixty-three occurred in July, including twenty-four children under five. Many died before reaching medical care, their bodies showing signs of severe wasting.”

In the twenty-four hours since that statement was released, another fourteen people, including two children, died of malnutrition.

Malnutrition means the body isn’t getting the nutrients it needs—such as proteins, vitamins, and minerals. This weakens the immune system, slows wound healing, impairs growth, and causes muscle wasting and organ dysfunction. Over time, major systems—like the heart, liver, and brain—begin to fail.

Starvation is the extreme end of malnutrition. Without enough calories, the body begins to break down its own fat, muscle, and eventually organs for energy—essentially, the body starts to “eat itself.” This leads to multi-organ failure and death if not reversed.

Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks that launched the war in Gaza, the Gaza Health Ministry has recorded at least 147 deaths due to malnutrition, among them eighty-eight children. As horrific as that is, the number is likely much higher. This is because malnutrition not only first targets the young, but also those with pre-existing chronic or congenital conditions. And much of the time, their deaths are attributed to the condition, rather than malnutrition.

I remember a child I met last November, on my last trip to Gaza before Israel denied my entry. He was emaciated, malnourished, and living with cerebral palsy. We helped the family gain access to RTUF, or ready-to-use therapeutic food. I remember the way I smiled a few weeks later, when I received a photo of the little boy looking much healthier. Two months later, right before the cease-fire, when Israel had again tightened the aid screws, the child died. While it’s difficult to pin his death solely on malnutrition, studies show that children with cerebral palsy can live between thirty and seventy years, assuming they have the proper care.

Even those people in Gaza with a salary, for example, those in the journalism, medical, or humanitarian sectors, cannot get enough to eat without risking their lives. Hospitals in Gaza are reporting that their doctors and nurses are struggling to stay on their feet, fainting while trying to save the lives of their patients.

In a recent interview, Doctors Without Borders CEO Avril Benoit spoke about how one of their own was killed trying to deliver food aid. Of their one thousand staff who are Palestinian, most are on one meal a day, if that. 25 percent of those being admitted to Doctors Without Borders facilities are malnourished, with the majority being between the ages of six months and five years. 

“We’re twenty-one months into this and everything we’re seeing now is entirely predictable,”  Benoit said.

Not only is the scale of this suffering predictable, it was preventable. Humanitarian organizations have been warning about starvation in Gaza at different points over the last nearly two years now, as Israel would strangle aid, only to loosen its grip just enough to keep the population barely alive. But nothing compares to what we have seen in the last months.

In March, Israel completely shut off all humanitarian aid access. For nearly two months, nothing entered the Gaza Strip.

In May, the United States and Israel backed GHF in starting its distributions, replacing the pre-existing and proven-to-work system of at least four hundred distribution points set up by established humanitarian organizations with just four. Access requires people to cross through Israeli red zones where both the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and guns for hire foreign GHF contractors open fire using machine guns, drones, and tanks as a means of so-called “crowd control.” According to the UN, more than one thousand people have been killed, and more than seven thousand have been injured, just trying to get food.

The IDF has issued statements strongly “rejecting the accusations” that its forces deliberately fire on civilians coming to collect aid.

Those civilians who do survive, often empty-handed, describe the process as sick and twisted.

On its second day of operation, I received a message from a friend’s cousin who had tried to collect aid. “I heard bullets whizzing past my ear,” he wrote. “Panic erupted as everyone around me started running, seeking shelter behind a broken wall. The gunfire continued to hit the wall, and we were terrified, unsure of whether to flee or stay put.”

Tens of thousands of mostly men gather at night, waiting to move forward to collect desperately needed food aid. They wait for the signal. Gunshots ring out, people freeze, and some get shot. They move forward. More shots. They freeze. They make a run for it, tearing and grabbing at the aid that has been set out.

In a recent piece by the Israeli paper Haaretz, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers themselves described how they had nicknamed it “Operation Salted Fish”—the name for the popular children’s game “Red light, Green light.” The piece chronicles how IDF soldiers and officers say they were ordered to fire at will, at unarmed crowds, even when no threat was present.

In an interview with the BBC, a former contractor delivered a scathing and incriminating similar testimony. A Green Beret veteran of the US military, he stated that “in my entire career I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed starving population.”

Similarly, a report by Sky News features a former GHF security guard claiming it is a “sadistic death trap” where “snipers open fire randomly on crowds.”

The GHF, and false claims about Hamas interception

The GHF was founded under the false premise repeatedly presented by Israel that humanitarian organizations are infiltrated by Hamas, and that Hamas is stealing the aid for its own financial benefit and to use aid as a means to exert control over the population. These claims were repeated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who also denied that Gazans are starving.

“Israel is presented as if we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza,” he said. “What a bold-faced lie. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza, and there is no starvation in Gaza”, even as TV and social media screens show images of babies with sunken cheeks and hollowed-out eyes.

Netanyahu’s comments were followed by what appeared to be a rebuke by US President Donald Trump, who called on Israel to let in “every ounce of food” and stated that “some of those kids, that’s real starvation stuff . . . you can’t fake that.”

Earlier this month, in a briefing to the press, the European Commission spokesperson Eva Hrncirova stated that “we don’t have any reports of Hamas stealing the aid.” More recently, even a US government review found no evidence of widespread looting of aid by Hamas. 

We in the humanitarian community have repeatedly stated that Hamas is not stealing our aid. That is not to say that looting has not always been a massive challenge; it has. But it was largely being carried out by armed gangs that emerged in the lawlessness and that operate in the Israeli-controlled “red zone” wastelands. I wrote about this in a CNN op-ed as far back as a year ago.

Much of that looting was taking place at the Kerem Shalom or Karam Abu Salem crossing in southern Gaza. We had long speculated that the only way for armed gangs to exist in this area would be with Israel’s knowledge. In June, Netanyahu admitted himself that Israel has been arming gangs, most notably a notorious clan operating in the Rafah area, where much of the looting takes place. He defended the decision, stating these clans were helping in the fight against Hamas.

Just getting trucks cleared into Gaza by Israel is a lengthy and laborious process itself. Anything entering Gaza must get pre-approved. We must submit packing lists, and Israel can arbitrarily decide to remove items (in the past, sugar was one such example) or determine that entire pallets are not necessary (as late as last year, it was educational materials). The trucks get scanned and searched by the IDF before entering Gaza, where they are offloaded. At this point, organizations are notified that they can come and collect.

The uphill battle of aid delivery

In a recent post on X, the Israeli Foreign Ministry stated that the UN was refusing to distribute aid and instead was coming to collect supplies.

If only it were that simple. To reach our pallets, which arrive at three crossing points along the Israel-Gaza border, organizations must cross through the “red zone.” As of this writing, more than 85 percent of Gaza is either a “red zone” or under evacuation order, meaning that movement within those areas necessitates coordination with the Israelis.

In practice, this looks like a movement request being submitted, along with vehicle descriptions, license plates, driver names and IDs (any of which can be rejected or approved and then rejected at the last minute), waiting for it to be approved, waiting for on the day of the movement the “green light” to be able to proceed to a “holding point” and then waiting for a “green light” again. The process is then reversed to cross the red zone again.

Just this past Friday, for example, out of fifteen movement requests, only a third were facilitated by Israel, as is detailed by the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. It also cites the example of one aid agency that waited for nearly eight and a half hours for the “green light” to move its trucks from the crossing to its warehouse. However, at that point, they were informed by the Israeli authorities that they had to use a different route and change the warehouse for drop-off, as the original site had been subject to a displacement order that same day.

This is just one example of what happens—and has been happening all along for the last twenty-one months—on a daily basis.

With the conditions that Israel created now, with these levels of starvation, trucks that do manage to navigate all the obstacles face swarms of hungry Gazans who will, out of desperation, loot whatever is being carried. And if they gather too close to the “red zone,” the IDF is all but certain to shoot, as happened in July when crowds gathered after hearing a UN convoy carrying flour was coming through. Dozens were gunned down. Israel claimed it fired “warning shots.”

Under increasing pressure over the weekend, Israel agreed to resume airdrops and open so-called “humanitarian corridors.” It implemented a “tactical pause” in bombings for ten-hour stretches in specific areas not considered the red zone—parts of Mawasi, Deir al-Balah, and Gaza City.

The initial airdrops—carried out by Israel, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—amounted to a couple of trucks at best and injured at least ten people. Aid agencies are warning that this is a grotesque distraction, not to mention highly inefficient and costly.

Air drops cannot and will not meet the needs of the people, nor will they even begin to stem the starvation. It is absurd to any observer that air drops are the only solution that the international community can come up with when the World Food Program has enough food either in the region or en route to the region to feed all of Gaza for three months.

However, Israel’s weekend announcement does seem to have come with a slight easing of restrictions. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher said that initial reports indicated that roughly one hundred trucks had been collected.

“A moral crisis that challenges the global conscience”

But nothing will change unless Israel allows aid to be properly scaled up and delivered in a safe and humane manner.

In addition to that, you cannot just turn on the tap of food and reverse what has been done. The images we are seeing now are a result of weeks and weeks of limited calories and limited nutrients. They have no reserves of fat in their bodies, and their immune systems are destroyed. Children and adults need specialized treatment.

It can take several weeks to “stabilize” this level of malnutrition among children and others or they risk facing lifelong consequences.

“This is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a moral crisis that challenges the global conscience,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently stated.

It often seems that it is only those in Gaza who have any moral conscience left. I’m reminded of another video that the INARA team sent me. A mother had arrived hysterical at our clinic, her kids were starving, her twin babies had screaming red diaper rash, and one of her boys had an upcoming birthday. He had asked his mother not for a cake, but for bread; it had been weeks since they had last been able to find some.

Yousra, INARA’s program coordinator, returned the next day with a couple of loaves she had been able to find, stacked them on top of each other, and placed a candle on top.

“I had to do it, I had to give him a little joy,” she messaged me.

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), a nonprofit organization that focuses on building a network of logistical support and medical care to help children who need lifesaving or life-altering medical treatment in war-torn nations.

The post ‘I can barely stand or make it through the day’: First-hand views of Gaza’s starvation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Seven months later, Syrians who are still elated with “the liberation of Syria” have become very assertive in the public space, strengthened as being part of the dominant group in the Syrian society, largely aligned with the new power in place and eager to benefit from it. In addition to HTS’s support base in the Idlib governate’s conservative society, these Syrians belong mostly to the moderate to conservative Sunni community, especially members of the lower and middle classes. These groups made up the backbone of the civilian and armed opposition to the Assad regime during the 2011 revolution and ensuing war, and they consider themselves to be the winners in the new Syria. This may be reinforced by the current regional dynamic characterized with the rise of the strong Sunni leaders, like Saudi Arbia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, coupled with the collapse of what used to be the Shia crescent led by Iran.

While a “winner takes all” approach is common to many post-conflict contexts, it is especially dangerous in the fragmented Syrian society, where Assad instrumentalized religious identities to fuel the war. An emboldened group may trigger tensions with other communities, leading to a new conflict. In order to avoid the complete supremacy of Sunnis supportive of HTS’s leadership in Syria’s new order and to foster social cohesion, it is crucial to implement a comprehensive reconciliation process and to adopt power-sharing mechanisms guaranteeing religious, ethnic, gender and political inclusiveness.

Reversal after decades of marginalization

Throughout the country, Sunni Syrians who the Assad regime had for years oppressed have expressed  pride in belonging to the majority that is back in power. In the absence of reliable statistics, the European Union Agency for Asylum estimates that Sunnis accounted for around 65 to 75 percent of the pre-war population. From 1970 until last December, the country was ruled by Hafez al-Assad and then his son Bashar, who belong to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam representing between 10 and 13 percent of Syria’s pre-war population.

But Syrians cannot be reduced to a community affiliation.

Many purely define themselves as their country’s citizens, rejecting religious and ethnic differentiation, as one of the slogans of the revolution, “the Syrians are one”, illustrated. Yet, over the past decades, the Assad regime instrumentalized sects to consolidate its power, concentrated in the hands of close Alawite and a loyalist circle, with Alawites dominating the army, the security apparatus, and the administration. The Assad regime also relied on part of the Sunni elite, especially businessmen, as well as some Sunni tribes, and Christian religious leaders, who all benefited from their loyalty to the regime.

Today, my understanding based on my reporting on the ground is that those who consider themselves as the post-Assad winners now have a president they can relate to—even for those who overcame initial suspicion about his jihadist past—and they don’t feel marginalized anymore. Overall, Sunnis feel more optimistic about the future of the country and more positive about the changes it is going through than other communities, according to a public-opinion poll conducted on behalf of The Economist in March.

The Assad regime’s marginalization and oppression of the conservative Sunni lower and middle class was a driving force in the March 2011 revolution, which erupted amid a lack of access to economic opportunities or jobs for the group, and a significant migration from rural areas to impoverished suburbs amid financial and agricultural hardship. Throughout the war, the regime grew increasingly sectarian, relying on Alawite militias, Hezbollah and Iran. The regime disproportionately targeted and persecuted the Sunni community that rose against it, including sieges and constant bombings.  Therefore, the seizure of power by HTS amounts to a revenge over the defeated regime for those who suffered years of oppression, with many who I have spoken with believing that they deserve rewards in the new Syria. The new government has delegated almost all important official positions —including all positions in the security sector—to members of the Sunni community, especially members of the Idlib network.

Another indicator of the Sunni winners’ assertiveness is the extent to which their conservative traditions are becoming dominant in the public sphere. For example, in early June, a decision of the Ministry of Tourism required women to wear full-body covering swimwear on public beaches and swimming pools. While this decision triggered a public outcry, prompting the Minister to backtrack, it sent a clear signal regarding clothing and behavior in the public space.

Risk of destabilization of the fragile transition

The ascendency of the Sunnis who consider themselves to be the winners presents a danger in a country where the former regime instrumentilized sectarian identities to fuel the conflict, and it opens the way for revenge on those who benefitted from the oppressive Assad regime. The attack against Christians worshippers in a Damascus church in late June demonstrates that enemies of the transition consider the sectarian issue as the weak point of the authorities. Although the authorities have consistently repeated messages of unity and cohesion, members of various religious and ethnic groups have felt unsafe and some have felt left aside.

Tens of thousands of members of the former regime’s army, who used to employ a significant number of Alawites, have been laid off shortly after Assad’s fall. Recruits for the new army have so far come almost exclusively from the Sunni community raising concerns regarding the possibility of a Sunni-only army. Alawites have not attempted to join recruitment for the new army as the mistrust is too deep on both sides, with reports of religious speeches in army recruitment centers that would antagonize non-Sunni individuals.

Based on conversations through my reporting in Homs city, some Sunni residents feel emboldened enough to say that Alawites are not welcome and should leave. With kidnappings and killings routinely targeting members of their community, some Alawites have fled their homes and some have gone abroad. Alawites have deserted a number of previously mixed villages between Homs and Hama cities.

Although it is unclear how permanent this move is, the perspective of a redrawing of the demographic map of Syria is deeply concerning, as the former regime altered the  demographic makeup of various areas through expropriation during the war.

The authorities mainly view sectarian tensions through a security lense. Damascus frames the massacre that erupted early March in coastal areas, for example, as fighting back against a coup attempt from remnants of the Assad regime. Although that bout of violence started with attacks from Assad loyalists, fighters aligned with the government subsequently killed several hundreds of Alawite civilians. This violent episode raised the alarm on the risk of further deterioration, as killing and kidnappings of Alawites continue, according to my local sources.

Regional context

What happened in neighboring Iraq provides a textbook example of the chaos that a “winner takes all” approach may trigger. In 2003, the US military intervention overthrew Saddam Hussein, putting an end to a Sunni-minority rule. Based on a controversial power-sharing agreement, a Shia-majority government took over and Shia groups have dominated Iraq’s politics, security forces and administration since. The awakening of the Shia identity, coupled with the Sunni marginalization, led to a sectarianization of Iraq after 2003, which was exacerbated by the flaws of the power sharing mechanism. It turned into a civil war in 2006-2008, from which the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham emerged. The Iraqi experience illustrates how the domination of one community destabilizes the post-conflict phase and triggers a backlash. Syrians are mindful of the Iraqi experience and want to avoid a fate similar to their neighbor’s. 

The internal Syrian trend of Sunni assertiveness could fit into a parallel regional dynamic, potentially mutually reinforcing each other. These past months, portraits of the late Iraqi leader have emerged on banners at demonstrations and in shops next to famous soccer players and singers. It illustrates a sense of renewed pride that some members of the Sunni community feel. This coincides with the rise of the influence of Sunni strongmen like Saudi Arbia’s Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who have commanded an expanding regional influence over the last decade. Additionally, Israel’s multi-front war since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks has also significantly weakened Iran and its proxies, helping to facilitate a crumbling of the Shia crescent. This context has opened space for powerful leaders who intend to shape the direction of the region and establish a Sunni leadership.

Reconciliation and power sharing

To guarantee a peaceful transition, it is crucial to resist a “winner takes all” approach and to ensure inclusion of all ethnic and religious groups, women, and political views—including liberal Sunnis—in the new Syria.

At the political level, it is crucial that all groups are able to meaningfully participate in decision-making and to contribute to shaping the reconstruction of the country. Even though the interim government that was appointed in late March includes an Alawite, a Christian woman, a Kurd, and a Druze among the ministers, key executive powers, among ministers and in the administration, remain in the hands of HTS affiliates. HTS and its affiliates’s domination in Syria’s new political life carries a risk of marginalization of other stakeholders.

Instead, a geographic approach, guaranteeing the representation of each district of every governorate, could help to facilitate the necessary inclusion of all Syria’s communities, including ones concentrated in specific areas. The discussions these past months with Kurdish and Druze representatives about the integration of their areas under a centralized system controlled by Damascus illustrates the difficulty to find a governance model that balances power sharing, inclusion of all communities and unity of the country. While political inclusion is key, it is equally important that all Syrians are included in the reconstruction, benefit from economic opportunities and are able to join institutions.

The clashes between government security forces, Sunni Bedouin fighters, and militants from the Druze sect that erupted mid-July in the southern province of Swaida are the latest exemple of how the difficulty of the interim government to ensure the safety of all communities and their political inclusion in the new Syria undermines the transition. The fact that part of the Druze community questions Damascus’ authority and that Druze factions have not joined the national security forces has caused instability.

To further defend against the risk of sectarian conflict— an extensive transitional justice and reconciliation process is the only way to prevent the “winners” from seeking revenge, and to restore a degree of social cohesion.  For the tens of thousands of Syrians victims to be able to have a sense of closure, harms that they suffered from should be acknowledged and perpetrators should be identified. In addition, a comprehensive transitional justice process is essential to bring redress and guarantee accountability for crimes commited during the Syrian war. Such a process should go beyond criminal justice and target crimes committed by all sides through reconciliation committees and initiatives. This may also include truth and reconciliation initiatives, as other countries have resorted to at the end of war. Ultimately, members of the Alawite community who did not commit crimes should not be associated with the former Assad regime’s atrocities.

A fact-finding committee’s recent report on the massacres carried out in coastal areas in March will present a test regarding accountability. The report identified 298 suspects, whose names have been referred to the public prosecutor. Transparent prosecutions are necessary to show that individuals affiliated with the winners are not above the law.

A genuine transitional justice and reconciliation process addressing the crimes committed during the war by all parties will quell the desire of revenge and will appease sectarian tensions. In addition, meaningful inclusion of all the components of the Syrian society will mitigate grievances leading to a backlash against the new authorities, and will rather increase the chances of the transition’s success. Syrians now have the opportunity to put an end to years of sectarianism and build a shared identity, paving the way to durable peace.

Marie Forestier is a nonresident 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 and the co-director of the Syria Strategy Project.

The post In a sectarian Syria, the winners should refrain from taking all appeared first on Atlantic Council.

One consequence of this shifting landscape has been an erosion of international attention on Yezidi issues, despite the enduring failure to achieve a successful resolution to Yezidi suffering in the aftermath of the Yezidi Genocide. More than 2500 Yezidis remain missing, according to assessments from the Free Yezidi Foundation, and many are believed to be in Syria. While Yezidis had hoped that regime change might lead to the return of many of our missing, this has not been the case. There is still no coordinated, systematic effort to identify and rescue the missing; rather, only sporadic rescues. The window of opportunity to save the missing may be closing. Absence of justice, poor living conditions in Sinjar, lack of employment opportunities, political marginalization, and protracted displacement all continue to plague the Yezidi community.

Last year, as we marked ten years since the Yezidi Genocide, we published a comprehensive report reviewing key challenges and policy priorities. One year later, little progress has been achieved.

Sinjar

Yezidis were driven from their homeland in Sinjar by ISIS in 2014, and while a significant number of Yezidis have returned home, many have not. As of 2024, approximately 150,000 Yezidis remain in displaced persons camps in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, according to the Hague-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. While the Iraqi Government has publicly pushed for the closure of internally displaced people (IDP) camps by July 2024, it seems to have reached an accommodation with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to pause the closures and slow the return process generally. Authorization letters for return do not seem to be issued, and only individuals returning through a US funded International Organization for Migration (IOM) program seem able to go back home. With limited support in Baghdad or Erbil, dwindling foreign aid, and spiking regional instability, a comprehensive voluntary, dignified return of Yezidis to Sinjar appears unlikely.

The so-called Sinjar Agreement, widely promoted in Iraq and by international actors ostensibly to address instability, rebuild Sinjar, ensure security, and facilitate the return of those displaced by ISIS, has proved highly problematic due to the exclusion of the Yezidi community in shaping the agreement and its implementation. If implemented according to the current arrangement, many of the Yezidis affiliated with militias from Sinjar who joined just to defend their homeland, would be expelled, as outlined in the Sinjar Agreement. A just and logical political resolution to the current situation is required, including the demobilization and integration of Sinjar’s militia members into Iraq’s formal security architecture and empowering an elected mayor of Sinjar with meaningful decision-making authority, which would be more likely to encourage reconstruction, development, security, and ultimately, return.

Instead, Sinjar remains unstable. Its economy has collapsed, services are lacking, and most of those who returned are jobless and uncertain about the future. Despite calls for reconstruction, the Iraqi government pledged only $38 million for Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains. The Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement has ceased supporting returnees, citing the lack of funds to cover the meager stipend it was providing to Sinjar returnees.

As the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (or PKK) moves to disarm, further geopolitical shifts may affect the security situation in Sinjar. Fundamentally, the Iraqi state must establish and maintain stable, predictable, legal police and security forces, ideally drawing from Yezidi and other residents of Sinjar.

National & regional geopolitics

Perhaps most importantly, Yezidis lack political weight and influence. Like other communities, Yezidis depend on a minimum level of political representation to ensure that our voices and needs are not made invisible.

Previously, Yezidis had one quota seat in Iraq’s parliament, reserved for the Yezidi electorate. In the election upcoming in November, that quota seat can be voted upon by citizens throughout Iraq, not only Yezidi voters. This means that powerful political blocs can influence the seat. We and many in the Yezidi community expect that the seat will go to a Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) backed group. The PMF has its own political agenda and has steadily expanded its influence over Sinjar’s politics.

While Baghdad has approved mayoral appointments across most of the Nineveh governorate’s districts and subdistricts, approvals for mayorships in Yezidi-majority areas have largely stalled. While Baghdad and Erbil have continued negotiations aimed at resolving other issues like budgetary or oil and gas disputes, in Sinjar, positions remain frozen.

Further, Iraq’s parliament in January passed an Amnesty Law that may result in the release of thousands of convicted ISIS members. While Iraqi judicial proceedings are highly problematic, amnesty of ISIS members responsible for atrocity crimes is not a reasonable solution and undermines any sense of justice or fairness in Iraq from the perspective of genocide survivors.

Yezidis are also affected by Baghdad’s declining relationship with the UN. The Iraqi government’s decision to shutter the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIS (UNITAD) has left ISIS-related evidence in a basement at UN Headquarters in New York, without a clear path toward evidence-sharing and case building against ISIS perpetrators.

Iraq seeks to wind down the mandate of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) by the end of 2025, effectively ending meaningful UN engagement in Iraq. While we have been disappointed with the UN in some respects, it was at least a regular presence ostensibly designed to promote international norms, the rule of law and accountability, and protection of all citizens, including minorities like Yezidis.

In Syria, President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former leader of al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, now leads the state—with relative support, including in the form of sanctions relief, from the United States and Europe, despite his extremist roots. The future of this new government with a Jihadist history is uncertain, but at the time of writing, the atrocities already committed against Syria’s Druze and Alawite communities are alarming for any ethnic or religious minority. Given the crimes perpetrated by ISIS, which grew strong in Syria, an extreme Islamist government in Damascus poses an existential threat to Yezidis in both Syria and Iraq.

Taken together, the developments in Iraq and the wider Middle East currently portend an ominous future for Yezidis. In our conversations with Yezidis living in IDP camps or in Sinjar, it is rare to find optimism among our people in Iraq. Almost everyone would prefer to leave Iraq and live abroad.

Policy changes in both Iraq and the wider international community, as recommended in our report last year, could help to reverse this trend. But without political strength or the active support of the international community, this is extremely difficult to envisage.

Changing US priorities

The United States has, in previous years, played a unique and irreplaceable role in Iraq. Attention to human rights, including of minority communities, the rule of law, the pursuit of justice, and combating extremism have helped Yezidis in the path to recovery, even if in small ways. The absence of a US foreign policy that prioritizes these issues presents serious threats to our communities and many others, and the US policy position regarding Yezidis is currently uncertain. Over the last decades, promotion of religious freedom and protection of religious minorities was a bipartisan US priority supported by most of the world. While the United States has the right to promote its own interests, we believe advancing fair and just societies around the world increases everyone’s security and prosperity.

Conversely, the spread of sectarian violence, Islamist extremism, and corrupt governance makes the region dramatically less safe and more difficult—resulting in costly military intervention and reducing the prospect of regional economic growth and stability.

We call on US, international, and domestic Iraqi actors to reaffirm their commitment to Yezidi recovery, to common principles of justice and fairness, and to help our community achieve dignity, safety, and a future in the Yezidi homeland.

Pari Ibrahim is the founder and executive director of the Free Yezidi Foundation. She has led efforts to amplify the voices of Yezidi survivors, promote accountability for ISIS crimes, and advance women’s empowerment.

Murad Ismael is the co-founder and president of Sinjar Academy and a co-founder of the Sinjar Crisis Management Team.

The post An open wound, a fading light: Marking eleven years since the Yezidi genocide appeared first on Atlantic Council.

As India prepares to host the next AI Impact Summit in New Delhi next February, there is an opportunity for national governments to advance discussions on trust and evaluations even amid tensions in the policy conversation between ensuring AI safety and advancing AI adoption. At next year’s summit, national governments should come together to encourage a collaborative, globally coordinated approach to AI governance that seeks to minimize risks while maximizing widespread adoption.

Paris: The AI adoption revolution begins

Initial momentum for policies focused on ensuring AI safety and its potential to pose existential risks to humanity began at the first UK-hosted AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park in 2023. This discussion was further advanced in subsequent international summits in Seoul, South Korea, and San Francisco, California, in 2024. Yet, as France held the first AI Action Summit in Paris in February of this year, shortly after US President Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term and Prime Minister Keir Starmer took the helm of a brand-new Labour government in the United Kingdom, these discussions on AI risks and safety appeared to lose momentum.

At the AI Action Summit in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron declared that now is “a time for innovation and acceleration” in AI, while US Vice President JD Vance said that “the AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety.” As the summit concluded, the United States and the United Kingdom opted not to join other countries in signing the Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable AI for People and Planet. Days later, the United Kingdom renamed its AI Safety Institute to the AI Security Institute, reflecting its shift toward focusing on the national security-related risks stemming from the most advanced AI models as opposed to addressing broader concerns around existential risks to society that AI systems might pose. This approach has also been adopted by the United States, which rebranded the US AI Safety Institute to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation in June.

The Paris AI Action Summit was an early indicator of what the first six months of 2025 would further reveal: a shift away from focusing on the potential existential risks and societal harms posed by AI. Instead, more countries have doubled down on AI research and development investments and the development of secure AI data centers, further increased their focus on extended training for large language models (LLMs), developed national AI adoption mandates, and made proposals to slow down or prevent additional regulation that may inhibit AI adoption.

AI investment and adoption mandates

The United States has taken several steps in this new direction. The Trump administration repealed several Biden-era executive actions on AI during the first few weeks of January, including repealing the “Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence.” In February, the administration issued a request for information to develop a new “AI Action Plan,” pursuant to an executive order signed in January called “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence.” The Trump administration’s AI executive order calls for the reduction of administrative and regulatory burdens to AI development and adoption, as well as a further alignment of US AI strategy with national security interests and economic competitiveness goals. Taken together, these actions emphasize an approach that views deregulation as essential for US global leadership in AI.

Simultaneously, a policy debate has emerged in the United States over whether the federal government should preempt state-level AI legislation that would impose regulations on the industry. The industry has been concerned that the numerous and varying approaches to AI legislation being developed at the state level could create a patchwork of regulations that would render the compliance environment complicated and overwhelming.

But even as the debate over federal preemption continues, state-level proposals on AI risk management and governance have stalled. Virginia’s proposed High-Risk Artificial Intelligence Developer and Deployer Act was vetoed by Governor Glenn Youngkin in March. Meanwhile, the Texas Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act was significantly slimmed down before it was signed into law last month, with all references to high-risk AI systems and corresponding prohibitions removed.

Across the pond, the European Union (EU) continues to take steps to identify ways in which the implementation of its cross-cutting EU AI Act can be simplified as part of its AI Continent Action Plan. Industry expressed growing concern over the ability to meet enforcement deadlines without additional guidance and clarifications from the EU AI Office, with forty-four European CEOs calling for a delay in its implementation. This focus on adoption over safety concerns was also reflected at the Group of Seven (G7) Leaders’ Summit held in Canada last month. At the summit, G7 leaders issued a statement on AI for Prosperity, which highlighted the ways in which AI can drive economic growth and benefit people, in addition to laying out a roadmap for AI adoption.

Adapting to this shift in global AI policy

Given this marked shift in the tone of global AI policy discussions, some might wonder whether there are still opportunities to advance conversations on AI trust and safety. Yet, businesses crave certainty and trust remains paramount to creating an ecosystem that supports adoption. Moreover, the AI landscape continues to evolve, requiring continued discussions on “what good looks like” when it comes to AI models used in a variety of enterprise applications and scenarios. Emerging technologies such as agentic AI—AI systems designed to act autonomously, making decisions and taking actions to achieve specific goals with minimal human intervention—as well as evolving enterprise deployment challenges, make it clear that 2025 does not represent the dusk of international AI policy aimed at evaluating and mitigating risks, but a potential dawn.

The upcoming AI Impact Summit in New Delhi presents an opportunity to continue conversations about how creating a robust AI testing and evaluation ecosystem can drive innovation and foster trust, furthering AI security and adoption. There are four key areas that national governments should individually prioritize in their efforts to advance AI adoption while also collaborating on a global level.

1. Assess and address regulatory gaps based on new evolutions in AI technology. Agentic AI is the next evolution of AI technology. Like other iterations of the technology, it can offer significant benefits, but at the same time, either amplify existing risks or introduce new risks because it can execute tasks autonomously. Governments should undertake an assessment of existing regulatory frameworks to ensure they account for any new risks related to agentic AI. Additionally, to the extent that gaps are identified, they should consider the creation of flexible, future-proof frameworks that can be adapted to future evolutions of AI technology.

2. Advance industry-led discussions around open-source and open-weight models, including specific considerations for national security concerns. Transparency and access vary widely across open-source and open-weight models, and researchers and businesses should understand the extent to which models and data sets remain open. Stakeholders—including national governments—need to understand not only what constitutes an open-source or open-weight model, but also what elements of those models are necessary to share downstream. Additionally, enterprises and industry players need certainty around any relevant fault lines for these considerations when choosing partners and third-party vendors when open-source or open-weight models could impact national security. Such discussions will allow enterprises to determine which models and markets offer safe and secure foundations for experimentation and what transparency measures can reasonably be expected.

3. Foster trust by encouraging the development and adoption of AI testing, benchmarks, and evaluations. Governments should encourage the adoption of globally recognized, consensus-based AI testing, benchmarks, and evaluations. Frontier model developers need to be able to understand, analyze, and iterate on their LLMs with the help of detailed performance and safety evaluations. Governments should support the development of robust testing and evaluation frameworks to ensure that such frameworks are fit for purpose, address issues such as a lack of consistency and reliability in how evaluation results are reported, and improve the availability of high-quality and trustworthy evaluation datasets. These frameworks should also be built to further understand and iterate on evaluation results to improve models without overfitting, or creating models that match the training set so closely that they fail to make correct predictions on new data.

4. Drive public-private collaboration across borders to promote AI adoption and drive risk management. The technological conversation is not bound by national borders. Thus, it is important that both public-sector and private-sector stakeholders recognize and harness the interdependence of the AI value chain while engaging in conversations about AI governance and transparency. It is also vital that policymakers and different actors in the AI value chain have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities. Enterprises and national governments should continue to use international fora such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, the International Network of Safety Institutes, and the United Nations to facilitate public-private collaboration across borders. This will help ensure that different approaches are interoperable and that countries and organizations are best leveraging their own strengths.

***

The world must not lose the gains already made by researchers, policymakers, and enterprises that have been working to address AI risks over the past several years by over-indexing on adoption alone. The answers required to address the challenges and risks associated with AI are intertwined with the ability to capitalize on the opportunities AI presents and can ensure the accountability and security of these technologies for years to come. If AI adoption is the objective, then AI testing, evaluations, and governance are the methods. A collaborative effort to advance AI policy that reflects this fact should be every nation’s priority.

Evi Fuelle is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

Courtney Lang is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

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When that time comes, the United States and its partners and allies should continue to speak out, fund counter-disinformation efforts, and stand unequivocally behind the Dalai Lama’s succession plan. In doing so, the West will continue to defend not just one people’s faith, but also the principle that spiritual authority cannot be dictated by political power. It’s also in the United States’ geopolitical interest to defend the Dalai Lama’s succession from Chinese manipulation, as this can help prevent the spread of Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) influence throughout the region’s large Buddhist populations.

For human dignity and democratic values

Supporting Tibetan religious freedom is a defense of human rights as outlined in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also a matter of Tibetans’ long-term development and well-being. Western support for religious freedom reinforces the global norms of human dignity and democratic values that are proven to be remarkable drivers for prosperity and stability. The historical lack of sufficient support for Tibet from the international community is an alarming example of what happens when religious and political repression goes unchecked—it erodes cultural identity, undermines community resilience, and enables authoritarian consolidation.

The Dalai Lama’s renewed focus on succession is playing out against the backdrop of the CCP’s continued cultural genocide of the Tibetan people. For the fifth year in a row, Freedom House has listed Tibet as scoring zero out of one hundred in its index, tied for the least free place on Earth. In the past several years, the CCP has gone to new lengths to Sinicize Tibetan culture, even officially renaming Tibet as “Xizang.” Nowhere is this suppression more acute than in the sphere of religious freedom.

As former supervising attorney for the Office of Tibet in Washington, DC, I’ve witnessed the extraordinary lengths Tibetans go to preserve their faith—from risking deadly crossings over the Himalayas to reach religious freedom in India, to building Tibetan charter schools in the United States—to ensure that their beliefs are passed on to the next generation. However, the crux of China’s strategy to curtail resistance to its religious persecution is its long-standing attempt to isolate Tibetans from the Dalai Lama.

As the living embodiment of Avalokiteśvara, the patron deity of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama holds unparalleled religious and cultural significance for his followers. Yet many Tibetans are forbidden by the CCP from owning his image, uttering his name in public, or following his teachings. These acts can result in beatings, imprisonment, or worse. The CCP’s aggressive campaign is designed to repress and reshape Tibetan Buddhism under state control. Central to this effort is Beijing’s insistence on installing its own successor to the Dalai Lama.

A long history

Historically, Dalai Lamas were selected by a search committee composed of high-ranking monks and officials, including the Panchen Lama, a figure spiritually intertwined with the Dalai Lama who has historically played an important role in identifying and legitimizing the next Dalai Lama. This search committee would use traditional spiritual methods to identify the next reincarnation. Yet for more than two centuries, rulers of China have unsuccessfully sought to assert control over Tibetan reincarnations to exercise political control over Tibet and Tibetan Buddhist followers across the region. It wasn’t until well after the 1949 invasion of Tibet, however, that the CCP began institutionalizing control through regulatory mechanisms requiring state approval for recognizing reincarnate lamas.

In 1995, the Dalai Lama recognized Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who was six years old at the time, as the eleventh Panchen Lama. Three days later, the boy was abducted by Chinese authorities and has not been seen since. In his place, Beijing appointed Gyaincain Norbu, a figure widely viewed by Tibetan Buddhists as illegitimate. However, this maneuver has allowed China to exert control over the lineage of the Panchen Lama.

A divided future

As a result of the CCP’s actions, it is all but certain there will be two competing fifteenth Dalai Lamas: one recognized by the Tibetan Buddhist community in exile, and another installed by Beijing. This duality is not just a theological matter but a geopolitical flashpoint. The CCP will likely use its appointed figure to exert spiritual influence over Tibetan Buddhists and reinforce its political claims to Tibet. While the current Dalai Lama has been an incredibly potent unifier for his people both inside and outside Tibet, struggling peacefully against the CCP’s Sinicization policies, the introduction of two competing Dalai Lamas will likely fracture Tibetan unity and risk a cultural identity crisis.

Inside Tibet, for example, the presence of a CCP-backed Dalai Lama may coerce some to accept Chinese authority, especially if that figure endorses Beijing’s claims. Outside Tibet, the global Tibetan Buddhist community is likely to reject such manipulation, deepening internal divisions. It also threatens broader global discord, as Tibetan Buddhists, Chinese Buddhists, and religious practitioners worldwide are drawn into this contested succession.

Anticipating this crisis, the United States has taken proactive steps. The Tibetan Policy and Support Act of 2020 and the Resolve Tibet Act of 2024 both establish that the United States will not recognize any Dalai Lama selected by Chinese authorities. These laws reaffirm that succession is a religious matter to be decided solely by the Tibetan Buddhist community, and they allocate funding to counter Chinese disinformation and support the Tibetan government-in-exile. They even contain provisions for the sanctioning of Chinese officials interfering in the succession of the Dalai Lama. But as Beijing ramps up its efforts to install its own Dalai Lama, the United States must continue its support for Tibetan Buddhists’ religious freedom.

Cohesive support

In the face of the CCP’s attempts to control the Dalai Lama’s succession, robust Western engagement will be vital. Religious freedom is not only a pillar of human dignity but a deterrent against authoritarian overreach. By supporting the Dalai Lama’s succession, the West will support a peaceful people who have resisted violent retaliation, even under profound oppression. Such support also undermines China’s religious and political overreach, discouraging other authoritarian regimes from co-opting religious figures for political purposes.

Backing the Dalai Lama’s chosen successor will also reinforce strategic partnerships, especially in Asia. India, which hosts the Tibetan exile community and is in a soft power competition with China over the claim to Buddhism, affirmed earlier this month that the Dalai Lama alone holds the authority to determine his successor. Similarly, countries with substantial Tibetan Buddhist communities, such as Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia, will be wary of a CCP-appointed religious figure holding significant sway over large portions of their populations. While these countries have so far remained largely silent after the Dalai Lama’s succession announcement, perhaps for diplomatic reasons, the time will likely come when they will look for partnerships and countermeasures.

Despite the extraordinary resilience of the Tibetan people, China’s decades-long campaign of propaganda and suppression continues to erode religious authenticity and community cohesion. Without strong, sustained international support, Beijing may succeed in redefining Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism under state authority. The United States has already taken important steps to come to the defense of Tibetan Buddhists’ religious freedom and to counter the CCP’s attempts to gain regional influence through religious repression. Washington and its allies and partners must not waver in these efforts; they must redouble their commitments.

Peter Arvo is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Freedom and Prosperity Center and the former supervising attorney with the Office of Tibet in Washington, DC.

The post To stand up for religious freedom, the US should support the Dalai Lama’s succession plan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The United Kingdom has recently sanctioned Russian individuals and an organization for involvement in the transfer and use of chemical weapons in Ukraine. The new sanctions came shortly after German and Dutch intelligence services warned of Russia’s widespread use of banned chemical weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield.

These accusations are not new. The US first accused Russia of utilizing chloropicrin, a banned anti-riot agent first used by Germany during World War One, more than a year ago. However, with no significant costs imposed on the Kremlin in relation to these charges, it appears that Russia continues to expand the use of chemical weapons against 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.

Dutch and German intelligence agencies claim to have evidence that Russia is increasingly using chemical weapons in a “widespread and standardized” way in Ukraine. Ukrainian military officials say that at least three Ukrainian soldiers have died in connection with Russian chemical weapon use, with more than 2,500 injured troops displaying symptoms consistent with exposure to chemical weapons.

According to Dutch Military Intelligence Agency chief Peter Resink, there have been thousands of instances of Russian chemical weapons use during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities have reported 9,000 separate incidents. Resink emphasized that the occurrences of chemical weapons use in Ukraine were not the result of “some ad-hoc tinkering” but rather “a large-scale program.”

Russia’s alleged deployment of chloropicrin, which is banned under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention, has reportedly involved improvised munitions such as “filled light bulbs and empty bottles that are hung from a drone.” The chemical causes severe irritation to the skin, eyes, and respiratory tract, and is more toxic than regular riot control agents. Russia faces accusations of utilizing chloropicrin on the battlefield to force Ukrainian soldiers out of their trenches, leaving them vulnerable to enemy fire.

The European intelligence agencies also alleged in their joint statement that Russia has made “massive investments” into its chemical weapons program, with Moscow continuing to expand chemical weapons research and recruiting new scientists. This echoes earlier reports that Russia expanded a restricted military facility linked to biological weapons research following the onset of the full-scale Ukraine invasion in 2022.

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Russia’s alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine corrodes internationally recognized norms and rules of war established during the twentieth century. This includes the Chemical Weapons Convention, which Russia has signed and ratified.

Turning a blind eye to Russia’s alleged violations in Ukraine could set a concerning precedent and give the green light for other countries to develop their own chemical weapons arsenals. This would reverse the progress of the past century and set the stage for a dangerous new era of warfare.

During World War One, nearly 100,000 soldiers were killed in gas attacks and more than 1.3 million were exposed to chemical weapons. Although chemical weapons were not the deadliest force used on the battlefield, they brought “enormous psychological consequences,” and “should be classed not as a weapon of war, but as a weapon of mass terror.”

The issue of chemical weapons appeared to strike a chord with US President Donald Trump during his first term in office. When former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was accused of carrying out a gas attack against Syrian civilians in 2017, Trump said it affected his attitude toward Assad. Trump later ordered a missile strike on the airfield where stocks of the sarin nerve agent were reportedly stored.

Dutch Minister of Defense Rubin Brekelmans has stated that Russia’s alleged use of chemical weapons must be met with pressure from the international community. “This calls for more sanctions, the isolation of Russia, and undiminished military support for Ukraine,” he commented. Addressing the allegations of Russian chemical weapons use, Trump has recently indicated that he will not permit such violations of international law to pass without a response.  

Unless reports regarding the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine are addressed, other rogue regimes may be tempted to follow Moscow’s lead and deploy these weapons against civilians and soldiers alike. A safer future starts with holding Russia accountable for its alleged chemical weapons violations today.

Katherine Spencer is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

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Ukrainians have welcomed US President Donald Trump’s July 7 announcement that he intends to provide Ukraine with more weapons, but many remain deeply cynical over the longer term prospects for continued US support, writes Peter Dickinson.

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Iran has recently joined fellow Kremlin allies Armenia and Syria in discovering the limits of Russian support. Putin’s army is dangerously overextended in Ukraine and is in no position to embark on new military adventures, writes Elena Davlikanova.

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

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The post Russia accused of escalating chemical weapons attacks against Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Recent European electoral results underscore the gravity of this shift. In a tight presidential race in July, Poland swung back to the conservative right, with the Law and Justice (PiS)–backed candidate Karol Nawrocki winning the presidency. Romania avoided a far-right presidency only narrowly in May. And in Czechia, populists are tightening their grip ahead of October’s parliamentary elections. Moreover, this pattern extends beyond Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), as recent elections in Germany and Portugal demonstrate.

As Europe’s political center frays and once-marginal parties reshape national agendas, the continent’s ability to govern effectively is at risk at a moment when external pressures demand strategic coherence. At home, populist victories threaten the European Union’s (EU’s) social cohesion and democratic values, including the rule of law. Internationally, far-right gains threaten Europe’s solidarity with Ukraine as it fights for its survival. Populist advances also risk hindering the military buildup necessary to deter mounting security threats to the continent should the United States disengage more from European affairs.

Election outcomes

Following elections earlier this year in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the mixed results reveal that the contest between liberal democracy and populism remains far from settled.

Some of the populist right’s successes can be ascribed to anti-incumbent sentiment. In Romania, for example, centrist opposition candidate Nicușor Dan defeated George Simion, a right-wing opposition candidate and Euroskeptic who opposes military aid to Ukraine. But the narrow presidential contest between these two “outsiders” exposes a deeper vulnerability. Simion’s party has emerged as Romania’s second-largest political force, commanding significant influence in a parliament in which far-right legislators occupy a third of the seats. Even more worryingly, the electoral process itself proved chaotic. Simion reached the runoff only after the original first round was annulled amid allegations of Russian interference. Though he conceded defeat, Simion simultaneously contested the results, claiming improper French and Moldovan meddling—charges Romania’s Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed. Dan’s triumph preserves Romania’s westward orientation and is an important reaffirmation of the rule of law and its Euro-Atlantic alignment. Even so, the thin margin of his victory and the turmoil surrounding the election demonstrate that Romania’s democratic institutions remain vulnerable to outside threats.

In Poland, right-wing presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki’s narrow win over centrist Rafał Trzaskowski shows right-wing populism’s staying power and may prove consequential for European stability. Trzaskowski, who was backed by the centrist Civic Coalition, led the first round with 31.4 percent but ultimately fell short, dealing a severe blow to Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-EU government and to Warsaw’s unified voice on European and transatlantic affairs. While Polish presidents have a mostly ceremonial function, they can veto legislation. This power could affect the governing coalition’s hopes to reverse years of what it and its supporters see as institutional capture, court politicization, and the damage from PiS’s systematic assault on democratic norms—efforts that triggered multiple EU rule-of-law proceedings. Many Poles are now concerned that Nawrocki’s presidency could derail that restoration project, with implications that might extend far beyond Poland’s borders to the heart of European governance itself.

Turning westward, recent political developments provide little solace. Portugal’s early general election in May delivered another minority government, as well as unprecedented support for the populist party Chega (Enough) that added to both the preexisting political instability and Europe’s far-right drift. Chega ran on a populist platform of antiestablishment rhetoric and anxieties over immigration, garnering 22.6 percent of the vote and placing it alongside the historically dominant center-left Socialist Party.

Earlier this year in Germany, the right-wing, ultra-nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party came in second in federal elections, doubling its vote share from four years prior. It was the strongest showing for a far-right German party since World War II. Despite being battered by scandals and intelligence scrutiny, the AfD has continued to poll strongly on the back of anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic messaging, particularly in the former East Germany, where the party has found a foothold among young, disillusioned voters.

The strategic stakes

This pattern of populist advances may soon extend to Prague. Czechia, which has anchored Central Europe’s pro-Western and pro-Ukraine coalition in recent years, appears headed for a populist shift in October’s general elections. Former Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s ANO party leads polling, alongside the right-wing Freedom and Direct Democracy, which has built its platform on Euroskepticism, anti-immigration sentiment, and explicit opposition to military aid for Ukraine.

The rightward drift in Poland and Czechia carries outsized significance because Warsaw and Prague have punched above their weight in EU politics, bridging Western capitals with the more politically fluid EU eastern flank. Both countries have been vocal, generous supporters of Ukraine and have advocated closer European defense cooperation. A populist turn in Prague—alongside familiar foot-dragging on sanctions and dialed-down commitments from Bratislava and Budapest—could unravel that posture. It could feed broader regional and continental ambivalence toward Kyiv at a vulnerable moment, when the burden of sustaining Ukraine’s defense is falling more squarely on Brussels.

Also at stake are the EU’s nascent ambitions for a credible defense capability, since proposals for common rearmament programs and joint procurement depend on the very cohesion that Europe’s populists seek to undermine. The foreign policy challenge is nuanced: Polish and Romanian nationalists support robust defense spending at home but remain skeptical about pooled sovereignty within the EU. Yet without alignment on planning, procurement, and command structures, rising national defense budgets do little to strengthen Europe’s collective readiness. Meanwhile, Germany’s AfD opposes both domestic and EU military buildups. If every major defense initiative must first survive such centrifugal forces of domestic politics among the bloc’s twenty-seven members—some actively sympathetic to Moscow—the promises of united European defense look increasingly hollow. As with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, populists sometimes govern more pragmatically than they campaign. But whether these leaders would uphold Europe’s commitments to Ukraine and collective defense remains to be seen.

Institutional defenses: More than just elections

There are many factors that account for the recent success of populist parties, but these trends run deeper than electoral outcomes. They reflect domestic narratives that exploit grievance and mistrust, as much as a failure to counter foreign efforts to manipulate European electorates. Europe’s centrists must work to take back the language of sovereignty and security from those who wield it to divide voters, and they should do so before these messages harden into conventional wisdom under the combined weight of internal discontent and external interference.

In practice, this means connecting European cooperation to kitchen-table concerns and leaning into language an ordinary citizen can understand and appreciate. This entails stressing how coordinated defense procurement delivers better equipment at lower cost to national armies and how energy partnerships reduce household bills. It also requires emphasizing how European frameworks amplify—rather than diminish—national power by enabling small EU countries to negotiate with large ones as equals, allows states to secure better trade and investment deals that create jobs, and help deter Russian aggression through collective strength that no single nation could muster alone.

To better defend against foreign information interference, the EU should double down on auditing social media platforms and how their algorithms prioritize and distribute political content under the Digital Services Act. The EU should also enforce penalties and suspend service when platforms are shown to facilitate hostile influence operations.

Even then, the information landscape in an open Europe remains porous, and the institutional responses will lag multiple steps behind malicious campaigns. But such measures could meaningfully reduce their scale and effectiveness while signaling the EU’s resolve to tackle them as a continent-wide security imperative requiring a sustained response that could eventually tip the balance decisively in favor of democratic discourse. Given the stakes, both for the state of the EU’s democracies and the need for Europe to unite on rearmament to deter Russia, Brussels must act now to defend its institutions.

Soňa Muzikárová is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

The post Populist gains are threatening Europe’s strategic coherence. Here’s how the EU can fight back. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

According to Hochu Zhit (“I Want to Live”), a project by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, more than three thousand Central Asians are now serving in Russia’s military. The project’s finding is no revelation for those like myself who have tracked this issue closely for some time. Rather, it is a grim confirmation of what we have long seen in pieces: body bags quietly sent home, pleas for help from the trenches, and recruitment videos shot behind barbed wire.

Russia primarily draws on domestic recruits, especially ethnic minorities from its own regions. However, if figures from Hochu Zhit are accurate, Central Asians now represent the second-largest group of known foreign nationals fighting in Russia’s war in Ukraine—second only to the roughly eleven thousand North Korean troops, most of whom have reportedly vanished from the battlefield in recent weeks, following the reported deaths of nearly half that number in combat.

Russia’s disposable soldiers

The numbers recorded in the Hochu Zhit report are staggering:

• 1,110 Uzbek nationals enlisted; 109 confirmed killed.
• 931 Tajiks; 196 dead.
• 360 Kyrgyz citizens; 38 dead.
• 170 Turkmen; 27 dead.

These are not professional soldiers. They are more likely former cleaners, street sweepers, construction workers—undocumented migrants, often trapped in legal limbo, lured with false promises of fast-track Russian citizenship or pulled straight from prisons and detention centers.

Their legal vulnerability is the Kremlin’s most effective weapon. Nowhere is this more evident than at Moscow’s Sakharovo migration center—ground zero for recruitment efforts from Central Asia.

In September 2022, on the same day that the Duma passed a law fast-tracking citizenship in exchange for military service, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin launched a targeted enlistment campaign aimed at migrants.

In parallel, the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group—whose late leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin claimed in May 2023 that twenty thousand of its fighters, half of them convicted prisoners, were killed in the battle for Bakhmut—also reportedly recruited from Russia’s regions, using similar promises to entice new recruits.

Luring vulnerable Central Asians has long been a core part of this strategy. At the time of the law’s passage, Andrey Krasov, deputy chair of the Duma’s Defense Committee, framed it as a privilege, stating confidently: “A comparable number of Central Asians will want to serve, seeking citizenship or career advancement.”

What Russian authorities presented as a privilege quickly revealed itself to be a trap.

In May 2022, an Uzbek man from the Ferghana Valley appeared on camera in Luhansk wearing a Russian military uniform, stating that he had been recruited because of his prior service in Afghanistan. It was later revealed that he was paid just $590 a month under a three-month contract—only a fraction of the $4,000 monthly salary promised by Moscow’s street-level recruiters.

For him—and likely many others like him—the front line becomes a one-way ticket. By the time they arrive, it’s already too late to turn back. The promised pay rarely materializes, and most won’t live long enough to collect the money or the citizenship that they were offered.

A war built on the margins

There are an estimated 12 million-14 million migrant workers in Russia, and as many as 10.5 million are from Central Asia—a significant number of them undocumented and unprotected by labor or residency laws. It’s a legal gray zone, perfectly engineered for exploitation.

For Valentina Chupik, a Russian lawyer born in Uzbekistan, the pattern is painfully clear. “Labor migrants are treated as cannon fodder,” she told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in September 2022. “It’s called voluntary service, but migrants know that refusing can mean deportation—or far worse.”

The human loss has been staggering. A June 3 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that there nearly a million total Russian casualties in Ukraine, including as many as 250,000 deaths. No Russian or Soviet conflict since World War II has come close.

And yet, the Kremlin’s war machine grinds on. As the report demonstrates, the hidden strategy is clear: Spare the sons of the elite and conscript the invisible—prisoners, the rural poor, ethnic minorities, and foreign migrants with no voice and no leverage.

According to the CSIS report, Russian President Vladimir Putin views many of these recruits as expendable and politically safe. Central Asian migrants, stripped of rights and silenced by fear, fit that role with chilling precision.

A few on the other side

While it is rare, a handful of Central Asians have also joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine—not for promises of lucrative payments or citizenship, but, as they say, out of principle.

Zhasulan Dyuisembin, a Kazakh national, is one of them. In June 2022, he told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, Azattyk: “Russia is terrorizing Ukraine. My children have Ukrainian blood—I have to protect them.”

Another well-known figure is Kudaabek uulu Almaz, who initially came to Ukraine from Kyrgyzstan as a migrant laborer but decided to stay once the war broke out.

In May 2022, after Kyrgyz security services opened a criminal case against him, Almaz responded with a defiant video message. “Fascist Russia invaded Ukraine, killing civilians,” he said. “Having witnessed this lawlessness—and knowing the truth is on Ukraine’s side—I couldn’t leave. I’m a man.”

In a video that surfaced on YouTube on November 21, 2022, Almaz is seen flanked by armed fighters and introduced as the founder of the Turan Turkic Legion.  

Central Asian governments officially oppose their citizens fighting for Russia and have taken steps to penalize both recruiters and fighters. However, these efforts often fall short—or are undercut as authorities turn a blind eye—while Russia continues to openly recruit and send their nationals to the frontlines in large numbers.

That silence likely reflects both political and economic dependence on Moscow—and a willingness to sacrifice the vulnerable for the sake of convenience as the war rages on.

The real tragedy

As Putin intensifies his assault on Ukraine, Russia further demonstrates that its system of military recruitment is deliberately designed to exploit the powerless. And the most vulnerable among them are Central Asian migrants, stripped of rights, options, and any safe way out.

They lived in Russia’s shadows, building its cities. In death, they vanish entirely—sent to the front with promises of pay or papers that are broken more often than kept. Many never live to claim either.  

This war doesn’t just expose how far Putin is willing to go—it lays bare a profound moral collapse: where citizenship is traded for cannon fodder and economic desperation is weaponized as a matter of policy. The result is that entire communities are pulled into a war they neither started nor had the power to refuse.

If the Hochu Zhit figures are accurate, then the truth is inescapable: Putin is waging a war buttressed by an invisible army of the coerced and forgotten. Central Asians are dying in droves, while their leaders too often do too little to protect their citizens from abuse and exploitation on foreign soil.

Muhammad Tahir is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a veteran journalist and media strategist.

The post Russia’s shadow army: Central Asian migrants are dying in Ukraine appeared first on Atlantic Council.

July 1 will mark a dozen years since Croatia joined the the European Union (EU), the most recent country to do so. In the years after Croatia’s accession, the bloc’s eastern enlargement process stalled almost entirely. The EU’s enthusiasm for admitting new members waned, driven by rising anti-EU sentiment within member states and fears that further expansion could strain the bloc’s already burdened consensus-based decision-making. Meanwhile, democratic backsliding and disputes between candidate countries further undermined their cases for accession.

Then in 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine revived the geopolitical imperative for enlargement in Brussels by highlighting Europe’s vulnerability to “gray zones.” Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia swiftly advanced along their accession paths, and hopes were somewhat revived in the six countries of the Western Balkans.

While Montenegro is the most advanced in accession negotiations today, Albania is also capitalizing on this new enlargement momentum. On May 11, Albania held parliamentary elections in which the Socialist Party, led by Prime Minister Edi Rama, won its fourth consecutive mandate, promising EU membership by 2030. After gaining EU candidate status in 2013 and waiting over a decade for the next formal step, Albania and the EU have been on an unprecedented roll since October 2024. Over the span of several months, the EU opened four clusters of negotiation chapters with Albania—covering twenty-four out of thirty-three chapters—and may open the remaining ones by the end of June. The opening of chapters signals that Albania has met initial EU benchmarks in those policy areas and will now negotiate to close the chapters—which aim to align Albanian laws, institutions, and practices with EU law.

The prevailing narrative among EU leaders, including European Council President António Costa, is that Albania and Montenegro are now leading the race to become the EU’s next member states. Both Albanian and EU officials have set 2027 as the target year to conclude the technical accession talks, paving the way for a membership vote. In May, that ambitious goal received a boost from French President Emmanuel Macron—once a skeptic of enlargement—who called it “realistic” during a visit to Tirana.  

Albania is moving fast, but will face headwinds

Several factors explain why Albania and Montenegro are pulling ahead of everyone else. To begin with, both are NATO members and—unlike Russia-friendly Serbia—are fully aligned with the EU’s Common and Foreign Security Policy. Albania, in particular, is seen as a reliable pro-Western security anchor in a volatile region where ethnic Albanians dominate in neighboring Kosovo and are a politically significant bloc in NATO members North Macedonia and Montenegro. Unlike Kosovo, which remains unrecognized by five EU member states, and North Macedonia, which is blocked by Bulgaria over historical disputes, Albania faces no such bilateral hurdles to its accession path from EU members—aside from intermittent tensions with neighboring Greece over ethnic Greek property rights and maritime borders.

Yet perhaps the main driver of Albania’s recent progress has been its sweeping EU- and US-sponsored reforms in the justice sector. Over nearly a decade, Albania has overhauled its judicial institutions and established new bodies, such as the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organised Crime (SPAK). While corruption remains high, the reformed institutions have shaken the culture of impunity that has plagued the country since the fall of communism. High-profile indictments—ranging from former presidents and prime ministers to powerful mayors—have started to build a credible track record in the fight against corruption and are helping to restore public trust in the rule of law. Yet SPAK’s results need to be sustained, and political commitment to the rule of law will increasingly be tested the deeper that investigations go.

Albania’s democracy also remains fragile and polarized. While the most recent parliamentary elections improved on earlier contests from an administrative standpoint, the political playing field continues to be uneven in favor of the ruling party. Corruption, the stifling effect of politics on media freedoms, the strength of organized crime, and weak administrative capacity—all persistent problems—could hinder the adoption of EU standards. 

Most importantly, the geopolitical mood in European capitals could easily shift away from its current support for enlargement. While Rama has secured strong political backing from major countries such as France and Italy, it is not clear whether it will receive support from the new government in Germany, which is not striking equally enthusiastic tones. The German government’s coalition agreement ties enlargement to necessary internal EU institutional reforms, which means that the EU must first ensure it can operate effectively before allowing other countries in. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his Christian Democrats seem to favor intermediate integration models—such as having the Western Balkans join the European Economic Area, or layering the EU into concentric circles of states with varying degrees of integration.

What’s more, getting EU governments to support accession is one thing; getting the support of EU members’ parliaments to ratify accession is another. European public opinion remains wary of enlargement in several countries.

Race to the top

The prospect of Albania and Montenegro joining the EU ahead of their neighbors also raises pressing regional questions. With the rapid pace at which Albania is opening negotiation chapters, it has effectively leapfrogged over the region’s largest country, Serbia, whose accession talks have remained frozen since 2021.

For the Western Balkans, EU enlargement has functioned not only as a tool for political transformation but also for peacebuilding. The EU has long pursued a strategy of integrating the region as a group, using accession as leverage to foster regional stability, set up bilateral formats to resolve bilateral disputes—such as the Kosovo–Serbia dialogue on normalization of relations—and promote cooperation through initiatives like the Common Regional Market.

Critics may warn that Albania and Montenegro advancing alone could reinforce Serbia’s narrative of marginalization, fuel anti-EU sentiment, and undermine frameworks for regional cooperation—especially given Serbia’s pivotal role and the size of its population. But the long-standing Serbia-centric approach to enlargement—which posits that the region cannot move forward without accommodating Serbia due to its power and influence over other countries—has not worked. Rather, it has merely emboldened Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić to wield even greater de facto veto power and leverage over regional countries and their EU trajectory, even as he slips deeper into authoritarianism, sustains close ties with Russia, and has helped erode support for EU accession among Serbians.

The EU—and Serbia itself—might be better served by fostering a merit-based “race to the top” that either rewards or fails Montenegro and Albania depending on how they deliver on reforms. Demonstrating that EU enlargement remains a real and attainable goal could create the kind of positive societal pressure the region has desperately needed and could incentivize other EU candidate countries to seize this historic window of opportunity by embracing an agenda of reforms.

Agon Maliqi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. He is a political and foreign policy analyst from Pristina, Kosovo.  

***

The Western Balkans stands at the nexus of many of Europe’s critical challenges. Some, if not all, of the countries of the region may soon join the European Union and shape the bloc’s ability to become a more effective geopolitical player. At the same time, longstanding disputes in the region, coupled with institutional weaknesses, will continue to pose problems and present a security vulnerability for NATO that could be exploited by Russia or China. The region is also a transit route for westward migration, a source of critical raw materials, and an important node in energy and trade routes. The BalkansForward column will explore the key strategic dynamics in the region and how they intersect with broader European and transatlantic goals.

The post Are Albania and Montenegro on the fast track to EU membership? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

So far, the Taliban has adopted more than two hundred decrees targeting women and girls. The bans and restrictions affect all aspects of life—from banning girls’ education past the seventh grade and limiting women’s employment to curtailing their freedom of movement and social engagement. To implement these decrees, Taliban authorities exercise broad discretionary powers to interpret and enforce the law, relying on a range of extrajudicial methods such as physical coercion, social control, and public intimidation.

In effect, the Taliban regime has employed the instruments of lawmaking and law enforcement to establish a system of control and oppression of women that amounts to gender apartheid. The system was reinforced with the adoption of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law on August 21, 2024. While women’s rights and freedoms were already curtailed by earlier Taliban decrees, the adoption and implementation of this law has had far-reaching consequences, stripping women of even more basic rights and personal autonomy and exacerbating their economic dependence and social isolation.

To combat the Taliban’s institutionalization of gender apartheid in Afghanistan, international actors and civil society groups should document both the regime’s human rights abuses and the system of lawmaking and law enforcement that produces them. Documentation strategies should be geared toward supporting ongoing cases at international courts and catalyzing further accountability processes. An international investigative mechanism, modeled on the United Nations’ (UN) International, Impartial, and Independent Mechanism for Syria (IIIM), can help to hold the Taliban accountable for implementing gender apartheid and the specific rules and tools they use to maintain that system.

From constitutional order to rule by executive fiat

Prior to the Taliban takeover, the legitimacy and legality of the Afghan state were vested in the 2004 Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which served as the supreme law of the country for seventeen years.

The Constitution was preceded by a Constitutional Loya Jirga or “grand council,” held in 2003, and was approved by consensus in January 2004. It provided an overarching legal framework for the relationship between the Afghan government and Afghan citizens and stipulated a set of constitutional principles and rights, such as separation of powers, due process of law, freedom from persecution, and freedom of expression.

In the new order created by the Taliban, by contrast, there is no constitution or equivalent supreme law. Laws and regulations are issued by the Taliban’s leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, by his leadership council, and by a host of public officials and religious authorities in an ad hoc manner. Sometimes they take the form of written decrees, such as the “Virtue and Vice” law, but often they are only issued verbally. For example, officials from the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice set the law in declarations and conference speeches, while clerics do so in sermons—bypassing any formal process of lawmaking and ignoring basic requirements that laws must be general, prospective, clear, and stable.

Lawmaking and law enforcement as instruments of control and oppression

In the absence of a constitutional framework that anchors the legal order, regulates the exercise of state power, and protects the rights of citizens, Taliban law draws on a range of other sources. They include extremist religious ideology rooted in a rigid—and contested—interpretation of Sharia law, which has been influenced by the Deobandi school of thought, as well as patriarchal tribal norms and practices.

These sources inform and justify the system of control and oppression of women that has emerged and expanded under Taliban rule, which includes bans and restrictions on women’s education, employment, and a range of fundamental rights and freedoms. While the system is built on a multiplicity of verbal and written decrees and directives, the Taliban is aware that its effectiveness depends on more systematic codification and consolidation. This may explain the broad remit of the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Law, which, inter alia:

• Bans women from travelling without a male guardian and denies them access to parks, gyms, and other public spaces.
• Requires women to cover their faces and bodies in public; for example, Article 13(8) stipulates: “If an adult woman leaves her home for an essential need, she must cover her voice, face, and body.”
• Declares that women’s voices are awrah (private), which means that women should not be heard in public.

The law’s sweeping, vague language gives the Taliban broad discretionary powers to interpret its provisions, creating ample space for abuses. Article 17, for example, requires media outlets to adhere to religious guidelines, prohibiting any content that may be deemed contrary to Sharia law, without clarifying what that means in practice. Taliban forces are tasked with ensuring compliance with the law—especially by women—and violations are punished with warnings, fines, flogging, and imprisonment. Article 17 gives them broad surveillance and enforcement powers: “Taliban forces are present in markets, streets, universities, offices, and public transportation to ensure that people, particularly women, comply with the imposed laws.”

Such provisions of the “Virtue and Vice” law have further strengthened the core characteristics of law enforcement under the Taliban. An array of authorities—Taliban officials and forces, imams, and other religious figures—are exercising broad discretionary powers to enforce a growing number of vaguely defined rules in arbitrary ways, free from due process constraints and safeguards such as judicial review. Any attempt to resist or circumvent the regime’s bans and restrictions is met with a brutal response, often involving punishment on the spot. Human rights groups have publicized several cases of female activists being detained, disappeared, or killed for protesting Taliban laws. They have documented cases of women getting arrested for secretly teaching young girls and have reported on women being flogged for minor infringements and entire families being ostracized or punished for resisting Taliban edicts. The “Virtue and Vice” law reinforced this brutal system of arbitrary law enforcement with new written edicts that Taliban authorities could use to justify human rights abuses.

Pushing back on gender apartheid: Documentation and accountability strategies

Afghan women are already living in a system of pervasive control and oppression that is best described as gender apartheid. Left unchecked, the Taliban will further institutionalize and entrench that system, making it even more difficult to challenge and reverse in the future. International actors—including international organizations, concerned states, human rights groups, and Afghans in the diaspora—must take appropriate steps to prevent that outcome.

Documentation and accountability strategies offer a path forward. Documenting human rights abuses is critical but given their widespread and systematic character, it must be complimented with documentation of Taliban lawmaking and law enforcement—the rules and practices that produce these abuses. And it must involve structural investigations to show how egregious abuses of power and human rights violations are not byproducts of the system of gender apartheid in Afghanistan but are rather its very means and ends, central to maintaining the system.

Building robust documentation can support ongoing accountability processes and initiatives, such as the case against the Taliban at the International Criminal Court for gender persecution as a crime against humanity. It can also strengthen an anticipated case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In January, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and Canada announced that they intend to sue the Taliban at the ICJ for gross violations of women’s rights, invoking the interjurisdictional clause of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

The experiences of other countries affected by widespread and systematic repression and human rights abuses suggest that documentation efforts can open other, potentially unforeseen pathways to accountability—when such efforts are scaled up and institutionalized. Afghanistan needs an international investigative mechanism modeled on the IIIM for Syria. The Syrian IIIM was established by the UN General Assembly—bypassing the Security Council—and has contributed to a spike in universal jurisdiction prosecutions of Syrian offenders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

An IIIM for Afghanistan can serve both as a catalyst and repository for gender apartheid documentation. It can also help build structural investigations and prepare criminal cases for prosecution when jurisdictions are able and willing to take up such cases in the future. This would create a vital resource and build momentum for the growing movement to criminalize gender apartheid in international law and ensure that its architects are held to account.

Wesna Saidy is a poet and researcher with a degree in law and political science, focusing on human rights and gender justice in Afghanistan. She is a fellow at the Civic Engagement Project focusing on documentation.

Iavor Rangelov, PhD, is a research fellow at the London School of Economics and has extensive experience with documentation, justice, and accountability strategies in the Balkans, Central Asia, East Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

This article is part of the Inside the Taliban’s Gender Apartheid series, a joint project of the Civic Engagement Project and the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project.

The post How the Taliban is using law for gender apartheid, and how to push back appeared first on Atlantic Council.

While international attention focuses on the US-led effort to initiate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Moscow is dramatically escalating its aerial attacks on Ukrainian civilians. During the first twenty-four days of April, for example, UN officials verified 848 civilian casualties due to Russian bombardments, representing a forty-six percent increase over the same period in 2024.

Russia’s aerial offensive is a daily feature of the war that aims to terrorize the civilian population and render large parts of Ukraine unlivable. By bombing cities and energy infrastructure, the Kremlin hopes to force millions of Ukrainians to flee the country and break the will of the remaining residents to resist. Any future peace deal that sidelines this reality and fails to hold Russia to account would erode international law and set a disastrous precedent for future armed conflicts.

For the past one and a half years, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School and the International Partnership for Human Rights have documented and analyzed Russia’s aerial attacks in Ukraine. This research is based on extensive fieldwork, witness interviews, open-source intelligence, and forensic analysis.

After reviewing hundreds of Russian drone and missile strikes, researchers narrowed the focus down to twenty-two key attacks and identified two patterns that illuminate their impact: Attacks on energy infrastructure and on densely populated areas. The legal memorandum resulting from this work concludes that Russia’s bombing campaign amounts to the crimes against humanity of extermination and persecution.

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.

For three consecutive winters, Russia has bombed Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in a bid to deprive the civilian population of access to heating and electricity at a time when the days are short and temperatures are typically well below freezing. These attacks have had a devastating impact on the Ukrainian power grid, with around half of Ukraine’s entire prewar energy-generating capacity destroyed by summer 2024.

As well as targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure, Russia has also launched waves of drones and missiles at Ukrainian towns and cities throughout the invasion, causing widespread destruction and loss of life. There have been a number of particularly deadly attacks in recent weeks, including a ballistic missile strike on a playground in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown, Kryvyi Rih, that killed eighteen people including nine children. On Palm Sunday one week before Easter, Russia launched a targeted strike on Sumy city center as civilians made their way to church, leaving thirty-five dead.

In addition to killing and injuring civilians, Russian aerial attacks also create untenable living conditions for the wider civilian population. They leave people traumatized and fuel intense feelings of insecurity, while disrupting access to heating, power, water, healthcare, and other essential resources.

While estimating the true toll of these attacks is challenging, the number of displaced Ukrainians indicates the sheer scale of the humanitarian crisis. According to UN data from February 2025, Russian’s invasion has forced 10.6 million people to relocate, with 6.9 million recorded as refugees living outside Ukraine. Meanwhile, around 12.7 million Ukrainians are in need of humanitarian assistance, including nearly two million children.

Russia systematically and deliberately deprives civilians of objects essential to their survival and inflicts conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction, which constitutes the crime against humanity of extermination. Statements by Russian officials, such as calls for Ukrainians to be left to “freeze and rot,” corroborate this conclusion.

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How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

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Russia’s aerial terror campaign, as well as the Kremlin’s actions in the occupied regions of Ukraine, have intentionally deprived Ukrainians of their fundamental rights to life, health, education, and culture, thus constituting the crime against humanity of persecution. The crime of persecution requires special discriminatory intent to target Ukrainians as a distinct group. This intent can be seen in Moscow’s branding of Ukrainians as “Nazis” who must be “destroyed.” such language underscores that Russia is attacking the very existence of Ukrainians. Targeted Russian attacks on educational and cultural facilities across Ukraine are further evidence of this intent.

Additionally, throughout the regions of Ukraine currently under Kremlin control, the Russian occupation authorities are reportedly enforcing russification policies that aim to extinguish any trace of Ukrainian national identity or statehood. Thousands of Ukrainian children have been deported to Russia and subjected to anti-Ukrainian indoctrination. The International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin in relation to the large-scale deportation of Ukrainian children.

Holding Russia accountable for the ongoing air offensive against Ukraine is particularly important as this form of prohibited total war, where everything and anything including vital infrastructure and civilian populations are targeted to achieve victory, looks set to return. Technological advances are transforming the modern battlefield to essentially include entire countries and their civilian populations. Against this backdrop, Russia’s use of long-range drones and missiles to terrorize Ukrainian civilians is likely a taste of things to come.

To date, no international tribunal has held individual perpetrators responsible for international crimes resulting from unlawful aerial attacks. The International Criminal Court has taken an important initial step by issuing arrest warrants against four senior Russian officials for their roles in attacking Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure, but further measures are needed.

Failure to hold Russia accountable today will fuel tomorrow’s wars and embolden Putin’s fellow autocrats to embrace similar tactics against civilian populations. It is vital to make sure long-term security is not sacrificed in order to reach some kind of compromise with the Kremlin to end the bloodshed in Ukraine. By focusing on accountability for Russia’s aerial attacks, the international community can set a meaningful precedent that could help protect civilians around the world for years to come.

Anastasiya Donets leads the Ukraine Legal Team at the International Partnership for Human Rights, an independent non-governmental organization. She was previously an assistant professor in the International Law Department at Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University in Kharkiv. Susan H. Farbstein is a clinical professor of law at Harvard Law School, where she directs the International Human Rights Clinic.

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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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• “Some historians have compared the flux of ideas and connections today to the turmoil of the Renaissance and Reformation five centuries ago, but on a much larger scale. And those eras were followed by the Thirty Years’ War, which killed a third of the population of Germany. Today, the world is richer and riskier than ever before.

• I am sometimes asked whether I am optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the United States. I reply, ‘Guardedly optimistic.’ The United States has many problems—polarization, inequality, loss of trust, mass shootings, deaths of despair from drugs and suicide—just to name a few that make headlines. There is a case for pessimism. At the same time, we Americans have survived worse periods in the 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s. For all its flaws, the United States is an innovative and resilient society that, in the past, has been able to recreate and reinvent itself. Maybe Generation Z can do it again. I hope so.”

Below, members of the Atlantic Council community reflect on the impact Nye made on both our work and the wider world.

Click below to jump to an expert reflection:

Matthew Kroenig: “In a dangerous and turbulent time in global affairs, he remained an optimist”

Chuck Hagel: “He brought clarity to so many complicated issues”

Jan Lodal: He “changed our language to better communicate important diplomatic concepts”

Paula Dobriansky: “His policy advice and brilliant ideas will endure”

Daniel Fried: “He acted and advocated in the best American tradition of wanting to apply US might in the service of right”

“In a dangerous and turbulent time in global affairs, he remained an optimist”

Just recently, our CEO Fred Kempe applied the “Joe Nye rule” as a guide to the Atlantic Council’s geostrategy work. He advised that our regular, private Strategy Consortium convenings bring together the caliber of strategic thinkers who will entice people like Joe Nye to remain engaged.

We are deeply saddened to learn of Nye’s passing and that his participation in our convenings will no longer be possible. He was a longstanding Atlantic Council board director and a regular participant in our private Strategy Consortium meetings for many years, most recently in December 2024 on the topic of anticipating a future Trump administration national security strategy. He also contributed to our strategy work in other ways, authoring forwards for our Atlantic Council Strategy Papers series and articles for our website.

He was a towering intellect and a resolute and courteous commentator on global affairs. He brought penetrating insights to our meetings and did not shy away from expressing disagreement, but always in a generous way, intending only to elevate the discussion and improve the quality of the work.

In a dangerous and turbulent time in global affairs, he remained an optimist about American power, alliances, and global engagement. Even though he is no longer with us, Nye’s strategic clarity, civility, and optimism will continue to inspire the Atlantic Council.

—Matthew Kroenig is vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and the Council’s director of studies. 

“He brought clarity to so many complicated issues”

We have lost an exceptional human being. He brought clarity to so many complicated issues over the years. We all learned from him and benefitted from his wisdom and knowledge and unpretentious style. He’ll be missed by many.

—Chuck Hagel is a member of the Atlantic Council international advisory board, a former US secretary of defense, and a former US senator from Nebraska.

He “changed our language to better communicate important diplomatic concepts”

Joe’s contributions to his students, his family, and world peace and security were unparalleled. His impact will be felt indefinitely. 

Joe was also a magnificent personal friend and colleague. We survived numerous hikes to the top of the mountains in Aspen after the exhilarating discussions he had organized for the Aspen Strategy Group. He asked me to take over the group when he had to step down, which I was honored to do. I then imposed on him to join my team as assistant secretary for international security affairs under Bill Perry in the Clinton administration. He was the best ever in that storied office. 

Joe actually changed our language to better communicate important diplomatic concepts—”soft power” being perhaps the most memorable. He was a devoted husband to his dear wife, Molly, and a great art dealer from whom we obtained twelve paintings that grace our walls and remind us daily of Joe. We will miss him greatly. 

—Jan Lodal is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, a former principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy, and a former senior staff member of the National Security Council.

“His policy advice and brilliant ideas will endure”

Joe Nye was an extraordinary scholar, intellect, professor, and public servant. He was a prolific writer whose books, articles, and op-eds advanced innovative ideas and provided cogent analyses of complex national security issues. Described as a “towering figure in international affairs,” he produced writings that have had a profound impact on policymakers both at home and abroad. He was widely known for having conceived the “soft power” approach in US foreign policy, which promotes American power through influence, persuasion, and diplomacy.

Joe’s service at the Pentagon as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and as chair of the National Intelligence Council was distinguished and results-driven. During his tenure at the State Department as deputy to the under secretary for security assistance, science, and technology, he chaired the consequential National Security Council interagency group on nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.

I have long admired Joe’s achievements in foreign policy and public service. On a more personal level, I was also proud to have been his colleague and friend. He touched my life in so many ways. While at Harvard for my master’s and Ph.D. degrees, Joe was not only my professor there, but a wonderful mentor. One of his many admirable qualities that I loved was his desire to have a good lively policy debate. He always brought opposing points of view into a discussion and relished a vibrant exchange of opinions. His calm demeanor in the midst of bureaucratic squabbles or crises was exemplary.

I will miss him terribly, but I am gratified that his policy advice and brilliant ideas will endure. He was indeed a giant in international affairs and leaves a remarkable legacy.

—Paula J. Dobriansky is the vice chair of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a former US under secretary of state for global affairs.

“He acted and advocated in the best American tradition of wanting to apply US might in the service of right”

Joe Nye was the rare combination of government foreign policy practitioner with political thinker and public scholar of the first order. He has been called a “neo-liberal.” But that term, like its twin “neo-conservative,” is more of an epithet than a useful guide. Roughly put, Nye believed that the rules-based international system that the United States created and led for three generations after World War II was a good thing—that it had more potential to generate prosperity, avoid world war, and advance American values and thus American interests than the competition. Because the competition in the twentieth century was fascism and communism, Nye’s judgment was a sure thing.

But Nye’s optimistic view now seems eclipsed by the dark neo-nationalism espoused by many in the United States and indeed across Europe. When some in the Trump administration, including US President Donald Trump, call for seizing Greenland, they seem to argue that only physical control of (and raw power over) territory can secure US interests, that there is no place for cooperation between nations to achieve goals that benefit both. That’s not a new view; it’s a mere repackaging of old European, great-power imperialism that brought disaster in its time and could bring disaster in ours. Such thinking would reduce the United States to a mere grasping, greedy superpower, a larger version of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, seeking to dominate through force and fear.

Nye’s views are now, more than ever, worth considering. He was no naif about the need for power in the international arena. But he acted and advocated in the best American tradition of wanting to apply US might in the service of right. When he spoke of such things, he meant it: artful, creative, committed, and realistic in the best sense. What a compelling and inspiring legacy he leaves behind.

—Daniel Fried is the Weiser family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former US ambassador to Poland.

The post The father of ‘soft power,’ a supreme intellect, and an eternal optimist: The Atlantic Council remembers Joseph Nye appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In his “order of the day” as the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, Eisenhower spoke of the need to continue cooperation far into the future, warning against “profitless quarrels” over which country or service won “the European war.”

Speaking of fallen Allied soldiers, Eisenhower said: “No monument of stone, no memorial of whatever magnitude could so well express our respect and veneration of their sacrifice as would the perpetuation of the spirit of comradeship in which they died.”

Eighty years after VE Day, it’s hard not to think about Ukraine’s current struggle against Russia’s murderous aggression in that spirit. “As we celebrate victory in Europe,” Eisenhower said then, “let us remind ourselves that our common problems of the immediate and distant future can be best solved in the same conception of cooperation and devotion to the cause of human freedom as have made this Expeditionary Force such a mighty engine of righteous destruction.”

Perhaps the most significant foreign policy debate swirling around the Trump administration concerns the lessons of the last eighty years and how best to build upon them—or not.

There is a group, and I would count myself among them, that believes this epoch has shown the United States at its best, engaging with partners and allies to produce one of the greatest periods of prosperity and peace among great powers that the world has ever known.

With all its flaws—and no era of history is without them—this extended period since World War II has resulted in enormous benefits and prosperity for Americans, it’s helped lift billions of people around the world from poverty, and it’s helped prevent the outbreak of war between nuclear-armed great powers.

There is another line of argument that the United States has carried an unfair burden all these years, that it has shouldered too much of the cost for the defense of its allies, and that global trading arrangements have taken advantage of the United States economically (to be rectified by President Donald Trump’s tariffs).

Some making those arguments look at the last eighty years not as a legacy to be built upon, but rather as a trajectory to be ended. They argue that the rules-based international system that emerged after World War II is a thing of the past and that we have moved into an era of a more transactional, interest-based, “America first” approach to international politics.  

“I believe this is a false choice,” Stephen J. Hadley, former national security advisor for President George W. Bush and an Atlantic Council executive vice chair, tells me. “To be sure, America has interests beyond simply promoting its values of freedom, democracy, rule of law, and human rights. In particular situations, there will be a trade-off between advancing our values and pursuing these other interests and a choice will have to be made. But at the highest level, it is overwhelmingly in America’s interest that it advance its values. A world based on those values will be more congenial to Americans and better ensure their safety, security, and prosperity.”

Hadley has worked for, with, or closely observed every US presidency since Lyndon Johnson’s. “I believe they all thought they were putting America first,” he says. “What linked them was an enlightened vision of American interests. They believed that working with America’s friends and allies—and helping them to become more democratic, prosperous, and secure—made America stronger.”

The world has changed dramatically in the past eighty years, and even in the three decades since the Cold War’s end. For example, China’s position on the world stage—given its economic weight, technological capability, and global presence—is nothing like that of the Soviet Union. Clinging to the status quo isn’t a policy designed for the future. Europeans recognize that they must carry more of their own security burden, and US partners are re-examining trading relationships.

“There is no institution, process, or policy on earth that cannot be improved,” says Hadley. “The goal is to convert a period of disruption into a vehicle for progress and positive change. That is the challenge of the present moment.”

Two decades after the war, Eisenhower visited Omaha Beach, when the tide had turned against authoritarianism. “I think and hope and pray that humanity will learn more than we had learned up to that time,” he said. For him, the war, its destruction, and the role of Americans remained a lesson for the present. He said of the dead, “these people gave us a chance, and they bought time for us, so that we can do better than we have before.”

That lesson still applies today. 

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.

Editors’ note: At tonight’s annual Atlantic Council Distinguished Leadership Awards dinner, marking the eightieth anniversary of VE Day, our organization will honor Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković; General John W. Raymond, the first chief of space operations for the US Space Force; legendary singer-songwriter and humanitarian Judy Collins; and Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk. We’ll also pay tribute to nine Ukrainian military heroes attending in person, who represent the millions of Ukrainians defending their country against Russian aggression. The Atlantic Council will present a rarely given Distinguished Service Award to Stephen J. Hadley for his service to the organization and its values throughout his career. It has been presented to only five other individuals: Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, General James L. Jones, Adrienne Arsht, and Bahaa Hariri.

The post The lesson of VE Day 80 years later: Discard the ‘false choice’ between US values and interests appeared first on Atlantic Council.

With Trump now scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia next month, the issue of normalization is certain to be on the agenda. There are three reasons why Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s principal decisionmaker, should make full Palestinian statehood part of the asking price for normalizing relations with Israel. First, many Saudis and other Arabs throughout the region may look askance at bin Salman if he were to be seen as ignoring the Palestinians’ plight. Second, if he pulls it off, he will have succeeded where other, more celebrated Arab leaders failed. And finally, the longer the issue remains unresolved, the more it will continue to impede progress on Saudi and regional priorities.

Then and now

Before the Gaza war began in October 2023, Riyadh may have been close to an agreement on official diplomatic relations with Israel without the precondition of a Palestinian state. But Israel’s punishing assault on the Gaza Strip, after Hamas’s rampage through southern Israel on October 7, 2023, seems to have changed Saudi thinking. Speaking at an Arab League summit last year, bin Salman called the Israeli military campaign in Gaza “genocide.” And in a speech in September, he indicated that Saudi Arabia would not establish relations with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in an effort to develop contacts across the Muslim world, he remains staunchly opposed to a Palestinian state. In 2021, Netanyahu described the Abraham Accords—Israel’s normalization agreements with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Sudan, and Morocco—as enabling Israel to replace “the old and dangerous doctrine of territories in exchange for peace and brought peace in exchange for peace, without giving up a single inch.” 

Past failures

The term “pathway” to Palestinian statehood joins a variety of other phrases from past peace plans that included an unfulfilled Palestinian component. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat believed that he had secured “autonomy” for the Palestinians when he signed Cairo’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel. Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat believed he was gaining Palestinian “self-government” when he signed the 1993 Declaration of Principles. Jordanian King Hussein bin Talal agreed to the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty only after he was convinced the Palestinians had gained a “political horizon”—the derisory catchphrase of the Oslo process.

However, Palestinians’ autonomy, self-government, political horizon, independence, or peace with Israel never materialized; extremists on both sides undermined the deeply flawed Oslo process and subsequent negotiations. After 1994, further Israeli treaties with Arab countries did not materialize until the 2020 Abraham Accords, purchased for Israel by US concessions to the Arab signatories and conspicuously silent on the resolution of the Palestinian issue. Arab participants saw the Abraham Accords as a means to receive concrete US commitments.

When the UAE signed the first Abraham Accord in September 2020, it was primarily to gain participation in the US F-35 fighter program and access to US armed Reaper drones, over Israeli objections, as well as the understanding that Washington would prevent Israel from annexing portions of the West Bank, which Jerusalem was about to do. In exchange for their respective normalization deals with Israel, the United States recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara and removed Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Saudi considerations

Saudi Arabia is now setting its own price for an agreement. However, bin Salman should take note of two features of past Arab agreements with Israel. First, Israel has never entered into any agreement that explicitly called for Palestinian statehood. In fact, some pro-Israel observers in Washington are trying to identify a “rhetorical formula” that would satisfy Saudi demands without committing Israel to a Palestinian state. Second, the United States, despite its stated desire for a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has never pressured Israel on Palestinian statehood, limiting itself to hollow rhetoric about supporting a two-state outcome.

Bin Salman reportedly told US leaders that he cares little for the Palestinians and does not want the issue to impede plans to diversify the Saudi economy or to discourage Iranian threats to his realm. However, the Gaza war—which has left over fifty thousand Palestinians dead, including tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, televised in bloody detail by Al Jazeera, may have forced a change in bin Salman’s calculus about what is politically realistic. “Seventy percent of my population is younger than me,” the thirty-nine-year old crown prince reportedly told then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2024. “For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict.” An Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS) poll conducted in Saudi Arabia and published in February 2024 indicates that the share of the Saudi population opposed to normalization with Israel grew from 38 percent in 2022 to 68 percent in 2024.

The Trump administration may insist that Saudi Arabia relax its demand for a Palestinian state prior to a normalization deal, possibly by emphasizing other benefits bin Salman can expect. Also, the administration may, as Trump attempted in his first term, designate Palestinian municipal control of islands of Palestinian communities on the West Bank as a “state” and demand that bin Salman accept it as such.

But if bin Salman makes peace with Israel without a Palestinian state that most of his citizens believe to be credible, any Israeli action against the Palestinians, or other Arabs, will be his to justify. For example, in Gaza, apart from the high casualty numbers, massive infrastructure destruction, and the dislocation of 90 percent of the strip’s population, a United Nations Human Rights Commission report published last month states that sexual violence has become “standard operating procedure toward Palestinians” in the Gaza conflict and is “committed either under explicit orders or with implicit encouragement by Israel’s top civilian and military leadership.” This is the very leadership with which bin Salman would be reaching a normalization agreement.

Additionally, Israeli violence directed at West Bank Palestinians is growing. This has included assaults from Israeli settlers, the destruction of property, and expulsions, not to mention Israeli military offensives, in which Palestinian civilians are the inevitable victims. Bin Salman would also have to contend with Saudi public opinion regarding Israel’s capture of more Syrian territory, its strikes against Lebanese territory after a cease-fire has been concluded, and the increasing discussion of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

At present, bin Salman can comfortably join his people, regional Arabs, and the international community in condemning reported Israeli violations of the norms of war and peace. While other Arab regimes have survived peace with Israel, they did so despite the wishes of their populations, not because they made a convincing case for peace. The political risks of normalization are also exemplified by the assassination of Sadat by Islamic extremists, in part because of his perceived betrayal of Arab and Islamic causes in signing a peace agreement with Israel.

In last year’s ACRPS poll, the majority of respondents from countries whose governments have already signed agreements with Israel—including Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and Sudan—oppose their countries’ normalization with Israel. Other Arab countries such as Oman and Qatar, which have informal ties to Israel, continue to refuse normalization until Israel ends its occupation of Palestinian territories.

Bin Salman may be drawn to the idea that he can achieve something that past regional leaders like Sadat, Hussein, and Arafat, as well as current Arab leaders such as Muhammad bin Zayed of the UAE failed to accomplish. Demanding a Palestinian state may also be a means to distinguish himself from the Arab signatories of the other Abraham Accords, all of whom prioritized their respective national ambitions and did not press for progress on the Palestinian issue. Bin Salman must also consider the ability of regional malefactors such as Iran and radical Islamists to exploit the unresolved Palestinian issue to impede political, security, and economic progress for Saudi Arabia and the region. The ongoing Houthi campaign of attacks against Red Sea shipping, for example, would not be happening without the Gaza war, itself an extension of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Costs and benefits

While Israel has legitimate security concerns, its continued occupation of Palestinian territories, its war in Gaza, and growing violence in the West Bank are creating a pronounced line in the sand between nations that have peace treaties with Israel and those withholding formal relations. While there are Arab governments on both sides of this line, their publics, including the Saudi people, are overwhelmingly opposed to normalization with Israel.

Bin Salman needs to weigh popular Saudi and other Arab views, as well as the regional instability that the continued Palestinian-Israeli conflict engenders, against any benefits he anticipates from a formal peace with Israel. Then, he needs to decide on which side the kingdom benefits most. If he were to settle for equivocal language about a “pathway,” as opposed to an actual state, the history of Arab-Israeli peacemaking suggests bin Salman would join Sadat, Arafat, Hussein, and others who failed to use their diplomatic leverage to press for Palestinian statehood.

Amir Asmar is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. 

The post In a normalization agreement with Israel, Saudi Arabia should settle for nothing less than Palestinian statehood appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Understandably, many have focused on his policy and posture toward the state of Israel.

His final address on Easter Sunday was a capstone in a track record of advocacy for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, including strong and direct statements. “Dramatic and deplorable” is how he described the living conditions in Gaza. The brutal massacre of the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Defense Forces, which came almost at the conclusion of his Pontificate, had quite publicly saddened and pained him in a deep way.

Pundits and commentators have been quick in pointing out the silence coming from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since his death. President Isaac Herzog delivered a few comments, nice and positive, even if not particularly warm. The relationship between the first modern non-European Pope and the state of Israel has been contentious indeed.

The vocal standing behind the Palestinian plight—including multiple sermons on Gaza and near-daily calls with Gaza’s Christian leaders through the war—was the success of Franciscan values over a part of the Catholic Church which would have preferred a more nuanced, if not entirely favorable, position towards Israel.

Further, influential personalities like Monsignor Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the patriarch of Jerusalem, who offered himself in exchange for Hamas’s Israeli hostages in the aftermath of October 7, are a living testament to Pope Francis’ posture of opposition to the occupation of the Arab lands in Palestine.

But his legacy in the Middle East extends beyond Palestine. Bergoglio exerted influence in quite a few areas across the region.

Pope Francis exercised pressure on the European powers regarding the tragedy of the civil war in Syria and the horrors unleashed by the Islamic State. The concurrent efforts by the Church to protect and save as many members of the Church of the Levant as possible are noticeable and much appreciated—albeit not always successful.

In the wider Levant, his stance was coherently against the extremists of the Islamic State, the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and other similar organizations—whom he always saw as a danger to his vision of brotherly intent to take care of the world’s marginalized.

He was widely liked in the Emirates, with whom Pope Bergoglio understood the importance of positive relationships despite the abysmal record of the small emirates confederation in human rights and respect for pluralism. He understood the potential for success in diplomacy, negotiation, and public support that could arise for the Church if it sided with the Emiratis and their projection of growing global influence.

To summarize, Pope Francis’ policy in the Middle East and North Africa has been characterized by a wise combination of value-based policies and convenient stances, in line with the scope of the objectives the Pope set for his pastoral mission. 

However, the region is very diverse: ethnically, socially, culturally, and, obviously, religiously. This diversity—despite the frequent skirmishes and conflicts it has played a hand in sowing—has always been understood as the wealth of the region.  Trying to find a common denominator in reactions to Pope Francis’s policies, let alone the expectations of the new Pontiff, is difficult to define without risk of distorting the varied perspectives from the diverse threads of the region’s canopy.

It is possible to say that, at the popular level, the importance of the Catholic Pope is not as significant as in other parts of the world. After all, there are very few Catholics left in the Middle East.

Moving forward, answering the question of who constitutes the ruling elites of the Middle East—namely, those who hold political power and, in some cases, represent religious authority—is crucial to understanding regional expectations of the new Pope. 

For the region’s ruling elites, the Church’s spiritual component matters less, and its influence holds significance only as a political force. In this respect, the Church and its 2.2 billion followers become a heavyweight geopolitical actor, and as such, they treat it.

And there are indeed secular movements at play, particularly with respect to a growing conservatism among Catholics in Western world powers like the United States.

In the West, there is an ascent of right-wing movements that Pope Francis fiercely fought against, including populism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia.  But these emerging movements may be more in line with some of the region’s ruling powers.

Regional leaders, building on alliances with the new administration in Washington, for example, may indeed hope for the election of a conservative Pope, who could become an ally in maintaining and defending the values that Middle Eastern elites share with conservatives in the West.

Karim Mezran is the director of the North Africa Initiative and resident senior fellow with the Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, focusing on the processes of change in North Africa. 

The post Will Pope Francis’s Middle East legacy endure? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ending the war between Russia and Ukraine has been Donald Trump’s top foreign policy priority throughout the first hundred days of his new administration. This has led to mixed results. The US leader has won praise for initiating the first meaningful talks since the early months of the Russian invasion, but he has also been accused of adopting an overly Kremlin-friendly approach to negotiations that has seen the US consistently pressure Ukraine while offering Russia a series of concessions.

The eagerness of the new US administration to reach some kind of settlement comes as no surprise. During the 2024 presidential election campaign, Trump vowed to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine as soon as possible. Since returning to the White House in January, he has sought to distance himself from the current confrontation with the Kremlin, and has repeatedly expressed enthusiasm for normalizing relations with Moscow.

This dramatic shift in US foreign policy is sparking considerable alarm in Kyiv and other European capitals. Concerns are now mounting that if Ukraine is forced to accept a pro-Putin peace deal, the country would be unlikely to survive much longer as an independent state. This would represent an historic victory for Putin’s Russia, with profound geopolitical repercussions that would be felt far beyond the borders of 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.

In Russia itself, a successful peace deal would vindicate the entire invasion of Ukraine and further consolidate the country’s ongoing transition toward a fully totalitarian model of government. Today’s militarization of Russian society would intensify, with imperial propaganda dominating the national information space and defense spending rising to unprecedented levels. Unpopular aspects of the current war such as heavy battlefield losses and sanctions-related shortages would soon be forgotten as triumphant Russians embraced a new era of imperial expansionism.

Others would draw very different conclusions from a Russian victory in Ukraine. The failure of the existing international order to prevent the invasion and occupation of a major European country would send shock waves around the world and mark the dawn of a dangerous new era defined by the principle that might is right. This would soon lead to sharp increases in defense budgets as nations rushed to rearm in order to avoid suffering the same fate as Ukraine.

Russia’s frequent use of nuclear blackmail during the invasion of Ukraine would be particularly consequential. The Kremlin’s readiness to engage in nuclear saber-rattling would convince many countries that in order to be truly safe, they must acquire nukes of their own. In such a scenario, the existing nuclear nonproliferation architecture would collapse and be replaced by a nuclear arms race that would significantly increase the potential for a future nuclear war.

For Putin, a successful outcome in Ukraine would be a stepping stone toward even more ambitious foreign policy adventures. He would almost certainly seek to continue reasserting Russian dominance across the former USSR, with his next targets likely to include Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and the countries of Central Asia. He may also seek to go further into Central Europe. Confronted by a demoralized and weakened West, Putin would surely be tempted to escalate his campaign of aggression against front line nations like Finland or the Baltic states in order to expose the emptiness of NATO’s collective security guarantees and discredit the alliance.

An emboldened Russia would also seek to increase its military and economic presence in other regions of the world including the Arctic, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. With sanctions no longer in place and Russia increasingly viewed as a geopolitical winner, potential allies would flock to Moscow. In this new reality, Putin’s current authoritarian alliance with China, Iran, and North Korea would serve as the basis for a far larger anti-Western grouping.

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Any settlement that leaves Ukraine partitioned, isolated, and disarmed will not bring peace. On the contrary, it would signal the start of a new stage in the country’s agony marked by the slow bleeding of territory, population, and sovereignty. Step by step, an abandoned Ukraine would gradually be absorbed into Putin’s new Russian Empire. This would place Europe’s second-largest army under Russian control, while also providing the Kremlin with vast additional industrial and agricultural wealth to fuel Putin’s expansionist agenda.

Meanwhile, Europe would lose its Ukrainian shield at a time when the continent is already facing up to the reality of a drastically reduced US commitment to transatlantic security. While European leaders are now urgently addressing the need to rearm, few would currently be confident in their ability to withstand a determined Russian offensive. Without Ukraine’s battle-hardened million-strong army to protect them, the countries of Europe would represent an extremely inviting target that Putin may be unable to resist.

After more than three years of relentless horror and destruction, nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians themselves. But most Ukrainians also recognize that a bad peace will mean no peace at all. Handing Russia victory in Ukraine may temporarily create the illusion of peace, but in fact it would merely set the stage for a dangerous new era of international insecurity marked by militarization, authoritarianism, nuclear proliferation, and wars of aggression.

Elena Davlikanova is a fellow at CEPA. Lesia Ogryzko is director of the Sahaidachny Security Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Mar 25, 2025

Ukraine’s growing military strength is an underrated factor in peace talks

By Serhii Kuzan

Any discussion on the future course of the war against Russia and the terms of any peace deal must take into account the fact that Ukraine is a now major military power in its own right, writes Serhii Kuzan.

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UkraineAlert Apr 22, 2025

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By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin’s surprise Easter ceasefire announcement was clearly a cynical stunt, but it did inadvertently serve an important purpose by underlining the simple fact that Russia can end the war whenever it chooses, writes Peter Dickinson.

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Putin’s Arctic ambitions: Russia eyes natural resources and shipping routes

By Bohdan Ustymenko

Russia’s plans to expand its influence in the Arctic region and dominate the Northern Sea Route together with China pose serious security challenges for the international community, writes Bohdan Ustymenko.

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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 A pro-Putin peace deal in Ukraine would destabilize the entire world appeared first on Atlantic Council.

In this episode of #BalkansDebrief, Ilva Tare, Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, explores Bosnia and Herzegovina’s fragile political landscape, as the country nears the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Agreement. With separatist pressures rising and youth fleeing the country, is silent abandonment more dangerous than loud secession?

Joined by Adnan Ćerimagić, Senior Analyst for the Western Balkans at the European Stability Initiative based in Berlin, the conversation delves into:

• The implications of Milorad Dodik’s conviction and continued political activity;

• The EU’s and NATO’s stances on Bosnia’s sovereignty and why EUFOR will not get involved in a potential arrest of Dodik;

• Legal actions against Republika Srpska leadership and questions over the constitutional changes and international enforcement; and

• The future of the Office of the High Representative and the so-called Bonn Powers in Bosnia.

With tensions high and regional implications looming, this episode asks the urgent question: What will it take for Europe—and the West writ large—to finally draw a line in the sand?

#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 Europe Center promotes leadership, strategies, and analysis to ensure a strong, ambitious, and forward-looking transatlantic relationship.

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The post From Dayton to Dodik, what’s at stake in Bosnia? | A Debrief with Adnan Ćerimagić appeared first on Atlantic Council.

“The Secretary reiterated that the United States recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara and supports Morocco’s serious, credible, and realistic Autonomy Proposal as the only basis for a just and lasting solution to the dispute,” reads the statement issued by the State Department after the visit. Nevertheless, one obstacle persists: Dismantling the obsolete and dysfunctional United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO).

This time, the United States went further by urging the parties to engage in discussions without delay, stating that Morocco’s Autonomy Plan is the only acceptable framework for dialogue. Rubio even stepped up to offer to facilitate the process, signaling that the only way out of this fifty-year colonial impasse may be outside the United Nations and its legacy of failure to secure a sustainable solution for the Sahraoui people.

A mission without a mandate

As its name stipulates, the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara was initially established in 1991 by Security Council resolution 690 to prepare for a referendum in which the people of Western Sahara would choose between independence and integration with Morocco. However, the mission failed to deliver on its mandate and only served to maintain a state of paralysis throughout the years. It is essential to clarify that while the MINURSO monitors the ceasefire, which still holds for nearly thirty-five years between Morocco and the Polisario Front separatists, it is in no way an active peacekeeping mission, and Morocco continues to administer de facto over 80 percent of the Western Saharan disputed territories since the Spanish exit in 1975. MINURSO staff remained spectators, even during the rare skirmishes that were reignited along the sand wall, when Morocco decided to retake the strategic Guerguerat crossing in November 2020 to open trade routes with Mauritania.

Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations Secretary-General envoy to Western Sahara, was set for defeat from the start. Since 2022, de Mistura has felt out of place in a fast-moving international context, shifting in favor of Morocco.

First, the United States recognized Rabat’s sovereignty over Western Sahara in conjunction with re-establishing diplomatic ties between Morocco and Israel in December 2020, knocking down the chessboard in a fragile geopolitical context where MINURSO had maintained the status quo between Morocco and Algeria.

Then came the coup de grace by the two former colonizers of Morocco and Western Sahara, who are at the source of the current superfluous borders, when Spain sided with Morocco in 2022. France followed in 2024, and over twenty-nine countries decided to open diplomatic representations in Western Sahara as a sign of support for the Moroccan stance.

The Italian diplomat himself indicated in October 2024 his intention to step down, alluding to his inability to mediate between a Morocco emboldened by overwhelming international support and an Algeria obstinate in supporting the mirage of Sahraoui self-determination until the very end. In his latest faux pas, Staffan de Mistura proposed the partition of Western Sahara, suggesting that the envoy and the MINURSO are neocolonial instruments from the past, wasting a sixty-one million dollar annual budget, funded in majority by the United States.

Another flagrant example of MINURSO’s irrelevance is how the disputed Western Sahara borders have been, for decades, uncharted territories for terrorist activities from al-Qaeda to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and, more recently, a fertile ground for Iranian and Russian influence. Besides gathering intel and filing situation reports, the Mission has done very little to address the flourishing drug and human trafficking business in the disputed territories, leaving this task to the Moroccan and Algerian military.

The diversion of humanitarian aid destined for Sahrawis in the camps in Tindouf, Algeria, also continues to raise concerns, especially with evidence showing that much of the aid is subject to corruption and reselling in open markets like Nouadhibou in Northern Mauritania.

The impracticality of a Sahraoui referendum

Several founding myths surround the Western Sahara file, making a referendum a preposterous and impractical solution—a reality that Western allies like the United States started grasping in recent years.

Contrary to other conflicts, where Indigenous people claim the right to self-determination based on their distinct cultural identity, the Saharaoui people are not native to North Africa. The Arab tribes of Beni Hassan, who trace their ancestry to the Yemeni tribe of Maqil, started moving westward to the Maghreb around the thirteenth century, invited by the Almohad empire of Morocco that needed to reinforce its rule by balancing the Amazigh tribe with the Arab warrior populations. If anything, the Hassani people were the ones who pushed the Indigenous Amazigh tribal confederation of Sanhaja out of the Sahara after the massacre of Char Bouba War in the seventeenth century.

The Hassani people today are transnational communities inhabiting large sections of Mauritania, Algeria, Morocco, and Western Sahara—hence the impossibility of carrying out a census of who gets to participate in a referendum. To complicate things further for the MINURSO, the Alaouite sultan Moulay Ismail had established the “Guich System”, a feudal system where these very Hassani tribes were used to counter Amazigh rebellions in exchange for land up to the nineteenth century. The descendants of these fighters still live around the capital, Rabat, Marrakech, and Sidi Kacem, and still assert their Sahraoui roots.

In the Moroccan-administered portion of the territory, the central state had additionally provided generous incentives, including double salaries and subsidized gas and essential subsistence items, since the seventies for those willing to relocate to the Sahara, and two generations at least have been in the disputed land. Even in the five refugee camps in Algeria, where about 173,600 individuals still live, it is extremely hard to determine who is a Saharaoui and who came to Tindouf as a result of a multitude of other conflicts in the Sahel. Due to all these complexities, the MINORSO has consistently failed since its establishment to come up with voter lists that would be acceptable to all parties, thereby nullifying the prospects of a referendum and the relevance of a UN Mission entrusted to organize it.

What many Sahraoui people want

In a recent field study in July 2024 to Dakhla, Laayoun, and Boujdour, I covered nearly four hundred miles and spoke to dozens of civil society activists, journalists, officials, and ordinary Sahraoui people from my own tribesmen of Oulad Dlim. Most interviewees in the Moroccan-administered portion of Western Sahara (about 1.1 million inhabitants according to the September 2024 census) expressed extreme fatigue from five decades of conflict and a desire for normality and prosperity. They seemed more hopeful for a sustainable resolution through the Moroccan federal advanced regionalization plan proposed in 2006, which preserves their cultural identity and gives them sovereignty over local governance and natural resources under the Moroccan flag.

It was interesting to observe the shift in the Moroccan strategy toward the Sahara conflict, transcending the purely security approach under Driss al-Basri in the 1990s, beating and arresting demonstrators, to a vision focusing on regional development, a dynamic tourism sector, and the looming hope of the $1.2 billion Dakhla Atlantic harbor megaproject—the cornerstone of the kingdom’s Atlantic Initiative. This recent economic boom made some interlocutors confident in the future, although many stated that Morocco hasn’t provided any details of how the autonomy plan will work in practice and how much control they will have over their natural resources. It’s important to note that the research didn’t include Sahrawis in the camps, who may remain attached to self-determination after five decades on a different trajectory.

For the past thirty-four years, MINURSO has consistently deceived the Sahrawi people by failing to deliver on its mission, promoting a laissez-faire culture, and holding hundreds of thousands hostage to complicated geopolitical calculus. Now, the time is up, and the Sahrawi communities can no longer afford another fifty years of political stalemate. The parties to the conflict, along with US and trans-Atlantic allies, will need to defund, dismantle, and terminate it so the autonomy plan can start taking shape.

In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan said that “borders are not just lines on a map; they are a reflection of power dynamics,” and today’s dynamics are calling for greater accountability for UN programs like the MINURSO and for out-of-the-box decisive solutions under Trump’s leadership.

Sarah Zaaimi is a resident senior fellow for North Africa at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs, focusing on the Western Sahara conflict. She is also the center’s deputy director for media and communications.

The post Why it’s time to terminate the UN’s dysfunctional mission in Western Sahara appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Sovereign AI has gained a foothold in several capitals around the world. As Michael Kratisios, the Trump administration’s acting director of science and technology policy, stated in 2024, “Each country wants to have some sort of control over our [sic] own destiny on AI.”¹ Analysts have mapped the modes and methods to achieve sovereign AI, and the interplay with antecedents like data sovereignty.² However, there remains a critical gap: analysis of stated goals for these initiatives and what the core pillars of sovereign AI are, distinct from related concepts.

The goals outlined by governments are varied and wide-reaching: some center on preserving values or culture;³ others focus on the privacy and protection of citizens’ data;⁴ some initiatives center on economic growth and others of national security;⁵ and finally, there is a set of concerns around the current global governance vacuum, where in the absence of global frameworks, AI companies must be held accountable through physical presence.

However, each of these stated goals require differing levels of indigenized capability and control and will have varied consequences as a result. This paper will:

1. Outline the various stated goals of sovereign AI, suggesting illustrative categories.
2. Hypothesize the reasons for the emergence of sovereign AI as a concept, with an analysis of industry buy-in for this concept.
3. Propose a streamlined definition of sovereign AI and suggest policy implications.

Defining sovereign AI

Sovereignty is defined as supreme authority within one’s territory, including a Westphalian state system.⁶Most components of this definition are, however, malleable. What constitutes one’s territory, for instance, needs not be rooted in a fixed point in time. The digitization—and by extension, the datafication—of social and political life has disrupted traditional notions of state sovereignty, which have long been tied to physical borders. Similarly, what constitutes supreme authority within a given territory is similarly varied. There are nonabsolute forms of authority, where sovereignty does not equate to authority over all matters within a territory. Examples include regional institutions like the European Union or specialized subnational systems like those once exercised in Pakistan’s Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA) or India’s Jammu and Kashmir, a union territory.

Roland Paris noted in 2020 the reemergence of older monarchic interpretations of sovereignty, which he identifies with Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China, among others:⁷

Non-Westphalian understandings of sovereignty have also experienced a resurgence in recent years. Some portray sovereignty as the power of leaders to act outside the constraints of formal rules in both domestic and international politics, or extralegal sovereignty. Others characterize sovereign power as the quasi-mystical connection between a people and their leader, or organic sovereignty.

In the context of information and communication technologies (ICTs), sovereignty has similarly found new forms. This includes data sovereignty, which asserts a country’s legal jurisdiction over all data generated within its boundaries;⁸ and digital sovereignty, referring to the assertion of state control over information flows, whereby the state both defines and guarantees rights and duties in the digital realm.⁹Some data sovereignty laws, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulations and India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, have extraterritorial application, if data processing relates to a subject/principal within their jurisdiction.¹⁰

Sovereignty as a norm is therefore continually challenged, reshaped, and reinterpreted, contrary to beliefs about a post-Westphalian consensus. In the context of the recent artificial intelligence boom, sovereignty has taken on new modes and methods.

Sovereign AI has been defined variously as “a nation’s capabilities to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business networks”;¹¹ “countries harnessing and processing their own data to build artificial intelligence domestically, rather than relying on external entities to do so”;¹² and as a concept “asserting that the development, deployment, and regulation of AI technologies should . . . align with national laws and priorities.¹³The most all-encompassing of these is the definition from the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF) Data and Artificial Intelligence Governance Coalition: “The capacity of a given country to understand, muster and develop AI systems, while retaining control, agency and, ultimately, self-determination over such systems.¹⁴

The EU AI Act (2024) and the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy (2024) both touch on aspects of AI sovereignty. The 2023 IGF (in Kyoto) saw the launch of the official outcome document of the inaugural UN IGF Data and AI Governance Coalition, centered on sovereign AI. The term shot into mainstream parlance after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang declared that every country needs sovereign AI at the World Governments Summit in Dubai in February 2024.¹⁵

It is well worth noting the context for Huang’s statement, which came at the tail end of an Asia tour where he visited Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, and Taiwan.¹⁶ This tour culminated in the announcement of several collaborations in support of national large language models (LLMs), national supercomputers, and future telecommunications.

Nvidia reflects a broader trend in an industry which has supposedly embraced a rhetoric of digital sovereignty, in part attributable to regulatory pressures such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation,¹⁷ and now the EU AI Act. A speech at a European think tank summit in June 2020 by Microsoft President Brad Smith highlights this trend:

When I look at digital sovereignty initiatives, I see them addressing three goals. One is protection of personal privacy, a second is the preservation of national security, and a third is local economic opportunity. As a global technology player, it’s important for us to advance all three.¹⁸

Another example of major AI players embracing sovereign AI includes G42, an Emirati AI company, which boasts partnerships with Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle, IBM, and Mistral, among others.¹⁹ A G42-Politico report identifies an overlap between data sovereignty and sovereign AI, asserting there is an ideal level of data sovereignty, balanced against global coordinated approaches, which can help realize the economic and security benefits of localization.²⁰

Current understandings of sovereign AI both extend the core components of data and digital sovereignty to AI and add a value alignment component. In addition to the loose interpretation of territoriality, and the supreme authority of national law over cyberspace, statements about sovereign AI encapsulate cultural preservation and (subjective) ethics. Dr. Leslie Teo, senior director of AI products at AI Singapore, said in the context of the launch of SEA-LION, an LLM for Southeast Asia languages, “[Western] LLMs have a very particular West Coast American bias—they are very woke.”²¹ The African Union’s Continental AI Strategy similarly notes that “external influence from AI technologies developed outside Africa may undermine national sovereignty, Pan-Africanism values and civil liberties.”²²

However, sovereign AI must not be conflated with individual rights. While some aspects of sovereign AI, including value alignment and legality, may overlap with autonomy and self-determination, there is no simple cause-effect relationship. An actionable and useful definition of sovereign AI must therefore avoid category errors and capture key distinctions from its antecedent terms.

The core components of sovereign AI, recognizing the definition of sovereignty are:

1. Legality²³: The design, development, and deployment of AI should adhere to any applicable laws and regulations.
2. Economic competitiveness: The development and deployment of AI should create value for the host economy. Some sovereign AI initiatives further require the creation or bolstering of a national AI industrial ecosystem.
3. National security: AI applications pertaining to critical infrastructure, military, and other functions critical for national security require additional safeguards against disruption.
4. Value alignment: Due to anticipated wide and deep applications of AI, models should be aligned with national or regional political and constitutional values.

Sovereign AI is therefore a model of AI development and deployment where inputs adhere to a state or political union’s laws and institutional frameworks, and outputs are contextually relevant, secure, and create value for the economy.

Note that this definition is not exclusionary: Countries can turn to external partners to support their sovereign AI efforts if these partnerships adhere to the four core components mentioned above. This definition also recognizes the contemporary evolution of territoriality, such as the fact that digital sovereignty regulations have extraterritorial application with “territory” being expanded to include the digital footprint of populace. Finally, given that sovereignty is an organizing principle for states, not individuals or communities, it concretizes the abstract notion of value alignment by framing it as a constitutional and political concept.

Mapping sovereign AI initiatives

Below is an illustrative list of sovereign AI initiatives.

Conclusion

Sovereign AI as a phenomenon is going to gain momentum, as national governments find “wholesale” AI offerings unsuited to their needs. AI, especially general- purpose AI, requires sizable investments or innovative new methods of data collection, compute (mainly GPUs), related energy infrastructure, and workflow management.

An optimal blend of localization of AI inputs and regulation of outputs for each country could help each one to realize its outlined goals for sovereign AI. In other words, the four components of sovereign AI outlined in this paper—legality, economic competitiveness, national security, and value alignment—will necessarily involve different strategies, with governments weighing each one differently. US AI sovereignty strongly centers on maintaining the country’s leadership as a key driver of American prosperity, a prioritization that has not changed with the change in administration in 2025. Value alignment also holds varied meanings, with some, like the African Union strategy, grounding values in an anti-neocolonial framing, while others like Taiwan’s placing an emphasis on democratic values in opposition to mainland China.

Finally, factors will influence the possibilities of sovereign AI including infrastructure constraints, such as energy production capacity and the availability of water, and trust, both in governments as legitimate arbiters of people’s interests and in industry’s commitment to social good. Nevertheless, for now, the operative word in the future of AI appears to be sovereign.

Trisha Ray is an associate director and resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center.

GeoTech Cues Jul 26, 2024

The sovereignty trap

By Konstantinos Komaitis, Esteban Ponce de León, Kenton Thibaut, Trisha Ray, Kevin Klyman

When sovereignty is invoked in digital contexts without an understanding of the broader political environment, several traps can be triggered.

Artificial Intelligence Digital Policy

New Atlanticist Feb 13, 2025

At the Paris AI Action Summit, the Global South rises

By Trisha Ray

The summit reflected a growing consensus that AI’s future must be both innovative and rooted in shared prosperity.

Artificial Intelligence Europe & Eurasia

New Atlanticist Feb 4, 2025

Five AI management strategies—and how they could shape the future

By Kieron O’Hara and Wendy Hall

To ensure the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) are realized while minimizing the anticipated evils, it’s important to understand the different ways to approach AI governance.

Artificial Intelligence Technology & Innovation

The GeoTech Center champions positive paths forward that societies can pursue to ensure new technologies and data empower people, prosperity, and peace.

Learn more

The post Sovereign remedies: Between AI autonomy and control appeared first on Atlantic Council.

DeepSeek’s breakthrough has made the West reflect on its artificial intelligence (AI) strategies, specifically regarding cost and efficiency. But the West must also urgently consider what DeepSeek’s R1 model means for the future of democracy in the AI era.

That is because the R1 model shows how China has taken the lead in open-source AI: systems that are made available to users to use, study, modify, and share the tool’s components, from its codes to its datasets, at least according to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a California-based nonprofit. While there are varying definitions of open-source, its application for AI has immense potential, as it can encourage greater innovation among developers and empower individuals and communities to create AI-driven solutions in sectors such as education, healthcare, and finance. The technology, ultimately, accelerates economic growth.

However, according to reports, R1 appears to censor and withhold information from users. Thus, democracies not only risk the loss of the AI technological battle; they also risk falling behind in the race to govern AI and could fail to ensure that democratic AI proliferates more widely than systems championed by authoritarians.

Therefore, the United States must work with its democratic allies, particularly the European Union (EU), to set global standards for open-source AI. Both powers should leverage existing legislative tools to initiate an open-source governance framework. Such an effort would require officially adopting a definition of open-source AI (such as OSI’s) to increase governance effectiveness. After that, the United States and EU should accelerate efforts to ensure democratic values are embedded in open-source AI models, paving the way for an AI future that is more open, transparent, and empowering.

How China overtook the lead

Part of DeepSeek’s success can be understood by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) showing signs of incorporating the norm-building of open-source AI into its legal framework. In April 2024, the Model AI Law—a multi-year expert draft led by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which is influential in the country’s lawmaking process—laid out China’s support for an open-source AI ecosystem. Article 19 states that the CCP “promotes construction of the open source ecosystem” and “supports relevant entities in building or operating open source platforms, open source communities, and open source projects.” It encourages companies to make “software source code, hardware designs, and application services publicly available” to foster industry sharing and collaboration. The draft also highlights reducing or removing legal liability for the provision of open-source AI models, providing that individuals and organizations have established a governance system compliant with national standards and have taken corresponding safety measures. Such legal liability would have held developers accountable for infringing the rights of citizens. This is a notable contrast to China’s past laws governing AI that explicitly stated the goal of protecting those rights. The specific provisions in the Model AI Law, albeit a draft, shouldn’t be overlooked, as they essentially serve as a blueprint of how open-source AI is deployed in the country and what China’s models exported globally would look like.

Furthermore, the AI Safety Governance Framework, a document that China aims to use as a guide to “promote international collaboration on AI safety governance at a global level,” echoes the country’s assertiveness on open-source AI. The document was drafted by China’s National Technical Committee 260 on Cybersecurity, a body working with the Cyberspace Administration of China, whose cybersecurity standard practice guidelines were adopted by CCP in September 2024. The framework reads, “We should promote knowledge sharing in AI, make AI technologies available to the public under open-source terms, and jointly develop AI chips, frameworks, and software.” Appearing in a document meant for global stakeholders, the statement reflects China’s ambition to lead in this area as an advocate.

What about the United States and EU?

In the United States, advocates have touted the benefits of open source for some time, and AI industry leaders have called for the United States to focus more on open-source AI. For example, Mark Zuckerberg launched the open-source model Llama 3.1 last year, and in doing so, he argued that open-source “represents the world’s best shot” at creating “economic opportunity and security for everyone.”

Despite this advocacy, the United States has not established any law to promote open-source AI. A US senator did introduce a bill in 2023 calling for building a framework for open-source software security, but the bill has not progressed since then. Last year, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration published a report on dual-use AI foundation models with open weights (meaning the models are available for use, but are not fully open source). It advised the government to more deeply monitor the risks of open-weight foundation models in order to determine appropriate restrictions for them. The Biden administration’s final AI regulatory framework was friendlier to open models: It set restrictions for the most advanced closed-weight models while excluding open-weight ones.

The future of open-source models remains unclear. US President Donald Trump has not yet created any guidance for open-source AI. So far, he has repealed Biden’s AI executive order, but the executive order that replaced it has not outlined any initiative that guides the development of open-source AI. Overall, the United States has been overly focused on playing defense by developing highly capable models while working to prevent adversaries from accessing them, without considering the wider global reach of those models.

Since unveiling the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU has established itself as a regulatory powerhouse in the global digital economy. Across the board, countries and global companies have adopted EU compliance frameworks for the digital economy, including the AI Act. However, the EU’s effort on open-source AI is lacking. Although Article 2 of the AI Act briefly mentions open-source AI as an exemption from regulation, the actual impact seems minor. The exemption is even absent for commercial-purpose models.

In other EU guidance documents, the same paradox can be found. The latest General-Purpose AI Code of Practice published in March 2025 acknowledged how open-source models have a positive impact on the development of safe, human-centric, and trustworthy AI. However, there is no meaningful elaboration promoting the development and use of open-source AI models. Even in the EU Competitiveness Compass—a framework targeting overregulation, regulatory complexity, and strategic competitiveness in AI—“open source” is absent.

The EU’s cautious approach to regulating open-source AI stems from the challenge of defining it. Open-source AI is different from traditional open-source software in that it includes pre-trained AI models rather than simply source code. And, of course, the definition from OSI has not yet been acknowledged in the international legal community. The debate over what constitutes open-source AI creates legal uncertainty that the EU is likely uncomfortable to accept. Yet the real driver of inactivity lies deeper. The EU’s regulatory successes, like GDPR, make the Commission wary of exemptions that could weaken its global influence over a technology still so poorly defined. This is a gamble Brussels has, so far, had no incentive to take.

The new power imbalance in AI geopolitics 

China’s push to become technologically self-sufficient, a push which has included solidifying open-source AI strategies, is partly motivated by US export controls on advanced computing and semiconductors dating back at least to 2018. These measures stemmed from US concerns about national security, economic security, and intellectual property, while China’s countermeasures also reflect the broader strategic competition in technological superiority between both countries. The EU, on the other hand, asserts itself in the race by setting the global norms of protecting fundamental rights and a host of democratic values such as fairness and redistribution, which ultimately have shaped the policies of leading global technology companies.

By positioning itself as a leader in open-source AI, China has turned the export and policy challenge into an opportunity to sell its version of AI to the world. The rise of DeepSeek, along with other domestic rival companies such as Alibaba, is shifting the pendulum by reducing the world’s appetite for closed AI models. DeepSeek has released smaller models with fewer parameters for less powerful devices. AI development platform Hugging Face has started replicating DeepSeek-R1’s training process to enhance its models’ performance in reinforcement learning. Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta have embraced model distillation, a technique that drew much attention with the DeepSeek breakthrough. China has advanced the conversation around openness, with the United States adapting to the discourse for the first time and the EU being trapped in legal inertia, leaving a power imbalance in open-source AI.

China is offering a concerning version of open-source AI. The CCP strategically deploys a “two-track” system that allows greater openness for AI firms while limiting information and expression for public-facing models. Its openness is marked by the country’s historical pattern that restricts the architecture of a model, such as requiring the input and output to align with China’s values and a positive national image. Even in its global-facing AI Safety Governance Framework (in which Chinese authorities embrace open-source AI), the CCP says that AI-generated content poses threats to ideological security, hinting at the CCP’s limited acceptance of freedom of speech and thought.

Without a comprehensive framework based on the protection of democracy and fundamental rights, the world could see China’s more restrictive open-source AI models reproduced widely. Autocrats and nonstate entities worldwide can build on them to censor information and expression while touting that they are promoting accessibility. Simply focusing on the technological performance of China is not sufficient. Instead, democracies should respond by leading with democratic governance.

Transatlantic cooperation is the next step

The United States and EU should consider open-source diplomacy, advancing the sharing of capable AI models across the globe. In doing so, they should create a unified governance framework and work toward shaping a democratic AI future by forming a transatlantic working group on open-source AI. Existing structures, including the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), can serve as a vehicle. But it’s essential that technology companies and experts from both sides of the Atlantic are included in the framework development process.

Second, the United States and EU should, through funding academic institutions and supporting startups, promote the development of open-source AI models that align with democratic values. Such models, free from censorship and security threats, would set a powerful contrast to the Chinese models. To promote such models, the United States and EU will need to recognize that the benefits of such models outweigh the risks in the broader picture. Similarly, the EU must also continue leveraging its regulatory advantage; it must also be more decisive about governing open-source AI, even if it means embracing some uncertainty about its legal definition, in order to outpace China’s momentum.

The United States and EU may currently have a rocky relationship. However, US-EU collaboration rather than competition is crucial with China’s ascendence in open-source AI. To take back leadership in this pivotal arena, the United States and European Union must launch a transatlantic initiative on open-source AI that employs forward-thinking policy, research, and innovation in setting the global standard for a rights-respecting, transparent, and creative AI future.

Ryan Pan is a project assistant at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center.

Kolja Verhage is a senior manager of AI governance and digital regulations at Deloitte.

The views reflected in the article are the author’s views and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers.

GeoTech Cues Feb 4, 2025

Did DeepSeek just trigger a paradigm shift?

By Ryan Arant, Newton Howard

The release of DeepSeek’s AI model may have far-reaching implications for global investment trends, regulatory strategies, and the broader AI industry.

Artificial Intelligence Digital Policy

Sinographs Jan 29, 2025

Is DeepSeek a proof of concept?

By Jessie Yin

Understanding how Deepseek emerged from China’s innovation landscape can better equip the US to confront China’s ambitions for global technology leadership.

Artificial Intelligence China

New Atlanticist Jan 28, 2025

What DeepSeek’s breakthrough says (and doesn’t say) about the ‘AI race’ with China

By Kenton Thibaut

DeepSeek’s achievement has not exactly undermined the United States’ export control strategy, but it does bring up important questions about the broader US strategy on AI.

Artificial Intelligence China

The GeoTech Center champions positive paths forward that societies can pursue to ensure new technologies and data empower people, prosperity, and peace.

Learn more

The post DeepSeek shows the US and EU the costs of failing to govern AI appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Misreading Putin’s aims at this pivotal moment carries risks that could cost the United States in the long term and create a new security crisis in Europe. For the United States, one risk is that the Russian president may, after wringing steep concessions from negotiations, agree to a deal that he has no intention of upholding. Time and again, history has warned against equating concession to Russian demands with a step toward lasting peace. Peace with Russia will require more than just a handshake.

Perhaps the most important starting point for Trump’s negotiations is recognizing this: Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine has never been simply about where to draw borders. Moscow’s aggression is motivated more by ideology and regime security than a desire to acquire a bit more land. Going forward, US negotiations must understand this larger picture of what motivates Russia, as it is critical for constructing a durable and lasting peace.

Putin’s ‘Russian world’

For years, the Kremlin has promoted the idea of a “Russian World,” whose “borders do not end anywhere.” It is this ideology that informs Russia’s desire to swallow Ukraine whole and menace Europe. The idea of Ukraine joining the prosperous, democratic club of nations threatens the grip of the Russian government’s imperial, kleptocratic despotism. Today, Russia is a mafia-like state in large part held together by cruelty and fueled by a reservoir of lies and corruption. In many disturbing ways, Russia’s conduct in its war against Ukraine emulates the way its leaders have behaved within their own territory. Russia has abducted thousands of Ukrainian children, killed scores of noncombatants, and adopted military tactics that show little regard for the lives of its own soldiers.

Russia has justified its aggression by touting the supposed “historical unity” of Slavic nations. Putin’s motivation for rule-breaking seems to stem from a desire to return to a more brutish past, when violent spheres of influence, rather than international norms and laws, dictated the terms of occupation for millions of people in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, and the Baltic states.

In Russia, foreign policy is often a “tool” of domestic policy, as these civilizational claims better justify Putin’s internal repression at home. For the Russian president, his country’s capacity to menace Europe assists his goal of shaping the Russian populace. Conformity, repression, and nationalism for Russia at home is just as critical to cementing Putin’s power as events unfolding outside Russia’s borders. Putin must continually demonstrate to his own population that Ukraine’s democratic aspirations are hopeless. Otherwise, he seems to fear uprisings of a similar caliber to those in Georgia in 2024, Belarus in 2020, or Ukraine in 2014, which could threaten his kleptocratic grip on power.

Lessons from the Minsk agreements

Throughout the negotiation process, Russia’s war aims are unlikely to change. Putin wants to ensure Ukraine is ungovernable and weak, preventing it from fully integrating with the West and becoming a symbol of self-determination on Russia’s doorstep. Neither latent Russian imperialism nor the Kremlin’s fear of “color revolutions” will go away if the United States chooses to appease Russia.

Stark warnings from top US diplomats and former Russian officials alike emphasize that dealmaking with Putin will be extraordinarily challenging and fraught with the risk of deception. In 2019, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected largely on the issue of ending the war with Russia in the Donbas and resisting the slide back into the vortex of Moscow’s dystopian melodrama. The region was still simmering from Russia’s unprovoked attacks in the Donbas and Crimea in 2014, after the Ukrainian people ousted its Russia-friendly president, Viktor Yanukovych, and attempted to look toward Europe.

The 2019 agreements between Russia and Ukraine, which Zelenskyy pursued, failed because they tried to paper over an irreconcilable clash of interests. Russia is on a quest for permanent imperial control of Ukraine, and Ukraine wants to be a democratic sovereign state. As a result, Russia repeatedly broke cease-fire agreements it had signed, and there is no indication, short of credible deterrence, that Russia will honor future agreements.

As Russia’s political levers of control over Ukraine diminished in the years following Yanukovych’s ouster, the Kremlin was emboldened to use larger-scale violence to subdue its neighbor in 2022. Putin’s aims were still to ensure that the secure, sovereign, peaceful, rules-based, democratic, European way of life couldn’t infect his “Russian World.”

In both the Minsk agreements and the lead-up to the full-scale February 2022 invasion, Russian officials never discussed the parameters of arms control or the security of Russia’s pre-existing borders, according to reports. This suggests that they were never really interested in nonviolent remediation measures for their so-called “security concerns.”

Ukraine cannot end Russian aggression by signing a treaty that creates a new border demarcation line. Instead, Ukraine and its partners must reestablish credible deterrence through security guarantees that prevent destabilizing Russian aggression. In preparing for a cessation of hostilities, the United States, as Ukraine’s military partner, should prioritize engaging Ukraine and Europe, rather than focusing on appeasing a lawless, reckless Russian Federation.

Ukrainians, alongside their Eastern European neighbors, warn that Russia’s motives for launching its invasion indicate wider imperial ambitions beyond Ukraine. Ignoring this perspective risks European security, US interests, and global stability. Only security guarantees—or as Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovilė Šakalienė recently put it, only negotiations with a “gun on the table”—will give Russia pause.

Zak Schneider is a young global professional with the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

The post Peace requires more than a handshake: Misreading Russia’s war aims will prolong Putin’s aggression appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Speaking with Kelly Evans on CNBC’s The Exchange as the meeting transpired, I said that it was “highest-level geopolitics as reality TV.” It all would have been so very entertaining, if the stakes weren’t of generational importance. That seemed to have been lost in the room where it happened. 

Others will write about how Zelenskyy should respond now and what mistakes he, Trump, and Vance might have made. It’s uncertain now whether the Ukraine-US link is irrevocably broken (I hope not) and whether Kyiv and Washington can find their way back to a critical minerals deal that had been mostly negotiated (I hope so).

As British Prime Minister Keir Starmer convenes eighteen European leaders in London on Sunday, the larger and more significant question, just forty days and forty nights (why not pick a biblical framing?) into Trump 2.0, is this: What does the Oval Office bust-up tell us about what pundits already are framing as the Trump World Order? We all sense something has dramatically changed in Trump’s transformation of how the United States views its global role. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s move this weekend to order up to three thousand additional troops to the US southern border, including twenty-ton Stryker combat vehicles, provides further evidence, but of what exactly?

Since the inauguration

Those paid to think great thoughts are at pains to describe what’s unfolding in some understood analytical construct.

I’m reluctant to do so myself yet, as I don’t think Trump himself thinks in a deeply philosophical way about global order. It’s also far from certain that he can sustain his current course of domestic disruption and international change.

Conversations I had this week with three significant Trump campaign donors, who understandably spoke anonymously, underscored a growing concern among Republican ranks about the early chaos they discern in the administration’s actions.

They all mentioned how optimistic they had been a month ago, ready to do anything to support Trump’s pro-growth and deregulatory agenda. Now, they told me, they and other business leaders are slowing investments, rethinking the timing of acquisitions and initial public offerings, and withholding public support. They are also expressing concern to GOP senators and House members and individuals close to Trump.

They worry about federal layoffs, some with national-security consequences, which could build an anti-Trump constituency among hard-working, patriotic, effective federal workers. They also are concerned about Trump’s announced tariffs and threats of future ones, which they say have already driven up their costs and fueled inflation. And they don’t believe Trump’s advisers have yet dared to share with him the extent of the economic harm such policies could cause.

Markets, which are said to be Trump’s scorecard, are skittish. In February, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 fell by around 2 percent, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 4 percent. In contrast, European markets rose moderately in February, and, following a surge of optimism about Chinese startup DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence model, the Hang Seng Index ended the month up more than 13 percent.

“Wouldn’t it be ironic if the 2025 Trump trade was an anti-Trump trade, buying stocks in the places President Trump targets?” wrote James Mackintosh in the Wall Street Journal on Friday. “This year, Canadian, Colombian, Mexican, European, and Chinese technology stocks are all outpacing the S&P 500, the dollar is down and the Magnificent Seven big tech companies—five of whose CEOs stood behind the president at his inauguration—have stopped leading the US market up and turned into laggards.”

Trump World Order 101

As I wrote from Dubai in mid-February, geopolitics traditionally has been about three-dimensional chessboards and calculated moves by skilled statesman and diplomats, who achieve sometimes marginal and sometimes significant gains. This approach was embodied by long-time (and now late) Atlantic Council board members Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcroft, and Zbigniew Brzezinski. 

Today, that chessboard is toppled, and readers should be wary of anyone who claims to be certain where the pieces will land. But with that warning, here are some initial musings about the Trump World Order worth considering as the future takes shape. 

Writing in Foreign Policy, author and thinker Robert D. Kaplan calls Trump “ahistorical,” ready to cast off the long-accepted foreign policy traditions, forged through World War II and its aftermath, that made the United States the world’s preeminent power.

The United States was a country with leaders, by and large, ready to make sacrifices, however imperfectly, that they hoped would be for the sake of a better world. Most significantly, writes Kaplan, US leaders were out to “achieve the Wilsonian ideal of establishing a bastion of freedom and democracy in a large part of the European continent.”

Trump is “unappreciative of the postwar saga of the West,” Kaplan writes, and thus the US president has no intellectual starting point that would lead him to embrace, emotionally or intellectually, Zelenskyy’s existential battle for freedom, which is so consistent with what the United States has supported for the past eighty years.

Writes Kaplan: “NATO is a mere acronym to him, not a connotation of humankind’s largest ever military alliance, which emerged out of the struggle against Nazi fascism.”

At a press conference this past week that foreshadowed the Zelenskyy showdown, Trump himself proudly boasted, “My administration is making a decisive break with the foreign policy values of the past administration and, frankly, the past.”

So, if that past doesn’t provide his moorings, what does?

Alex Younger, the former chief of British foreign intelligence service MI6, said in a much-noticed exchange last week on BBC’s Newsnight, “We are in a new era where, by and large, international relations aren’t going to be determined by rules and multilateral institutions. They are going to be determined by strongmen and deals.” 

Younger, quoted in Ishaan Tharoor’s compelling Washington Post column, notes that that’s a mindset Trump shares with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

If you agree with Younger, then it’s easier to fathom why the Trump administration so easily set aside all post–World War II tradition at the United Nations last Monday by voting alongside Russia, North Korea, Belarus, and, as Tharoor puts it, “a clutch of West African juntas.” The United States joined this unsavory group in voting against a resolution condemning Russian aggression on the third anniversary of Putin’s illegal, unprovoked war on Ukraine.

The Wilson Center’s Michael Kimmage, a historian and Russia scholar, writes in the newest issue of Foreign Affairs: “In this geopolitical environment, the already tenuous idea of ‘the West’ will recede even further—and consequently, so will the status of Europe, which in the post–Cold War era had been Washington’s partner in representing ‘the Western world.’” 

Like Younger, Kimmage sees the Trump World Order as a throwback favoring nationalist strongmen, like Putin, Xi, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Zelenskyy, by this measure, doesn’t make the Trump table, despite his wartime heroics. This means that the Ukrainian president can be dismissed, as he was by Trump on Friday, as a poker player without the right cards.  

“They are self-styled strongmen who place little stock in rules-based systems, alliances, or multinational forums,” writes Kimmage. “They embrace the once and future glory of the countries they govern, asserting an almost mystical mandate for their rule.”

One helpful recent reference Trump has made to history has been his admiration for William McKinley, the twenty-fifth US president, who served from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. Trump appears to admire this little-remembered president for his realignment of the Republican Party, his economic nationalism (read: tariffs), and his territorial expansion, including the annexation of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii.

If Ukraine fails

Back at the World Economic Forum, in the first days of the Trump administration, I observed that Trump was as much a symptom as a driver of our times. The post–Cold War period, I wrote, is giving way to “global fragmentation, protectionist trends, greater instability (including wars in Europe and the Middle East), and a rising tide of government involvement in picking winners and losers.” As Nir Bar Dea, CEO of Bridgewater Associates, told me then, “What people in Davos understand is that, today, what’s in this one person’s mind will be massively important.”

With every new day in his second administration, Trump becomes less symptom and more driver. Friday morning, I was ready to declare on CNBC a stunning reversal of Ukraine-US relations, from Trump’s declaring Zelenskyy a “dictator” and embracing the murderous autocrat Putin to Trump’s signing a long-term investment in a free Ukraine’s future. The Atlantic Council’s John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, shared that assessment.

Was that wishful thinking?

I’m not ready yet to join the parade of pundits declaring the demise of Ukraine, the end of the transatlantic alliance, or the beginning of an American strongman. I’m not ready to accept a United States that would abandon Ukraine in its existential struggle, which is as much in the United States’ interests as it is in Ukraine’s.

What’s clear to me, however, is that it’s time for those around Trump who believe in Ukraine and in the United States’ transatlantic mission to argue their case strongly, before defeatist punditry becomes unfortunate reality. 

The Wall Street Journal, in a powerful lead editorial on Saturday, wrote that the point of what it called the “Oval Office Spectacle” was supposed to have been “progress toward an honorable peace for Ukraine, and in the event the winner was Russia’s Vladimir Putin.” Continued the editorial board, “Turning Ukraine over to Mr. Putin would be catastrophic for that country and Europe, but it would be a political calamity for Mr. Trump, too.”

A free Ukraine has always been about more than Ukraine, just as a free West Berlin was always about more than Germany during the Cold War. If Ukraine fails, everything the United States achieved through World War II and the Cold War to create a freer, more prosperous, more secure, and more democratic world is in jeopardy. 

One can only hope that the next episode in this geopolitical reality show produces a plot twist that puts the United States, the transatlantic community, and a free Ukraine back on course.

Trump loves to confound critics who underestimate him. This is still his script to write. Here’s hoping the “ahistorical” president seizes the historic moment.

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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In hindsight, it is now clear that the threat posed by Russian aggression in Ukraine could have been eliminated almost immediately. As soon as Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the illegal annexation of Crimea in early 2014, Ukraine could have declared war and ordered its military to defend the peninsula. Putting NATO forces on alert would have further cooled the heads of the more hawkish Russian officials in the Kremlin.

This did not happen. Instead, the international community stood by and watched the Russian invasion unfold, while Ukraine’s Western partners advocated passivity and cautioned Kyiv against doing anything that might risk provoking Putin. The opportunity to end Russia’s invasion in the early stages was therefore missed, paving the way for a series of further Kremlin escalations that ultimately led to the full-scale invasion of 2022.

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.

Over the past eleven years, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has done serious damage to the foundations of the international security system. It has undermined the inviolability of international borders that was first established in the aftermath of World War II. Russia’s invasion has also seriously discredited the cause of nuclear disarmament, with Ukraine’s 1994 decision to surrender its vast nuclear arsenal now widely recognized as one of the costliest mistakes in modern history.

Given the global implications of any negotiated settlement reached over Russia’s war in Ukraine, it is vital that the entire peace process focus on Russia’s existing international commitments. These include the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and Moscow’s recognition of Ukraine’s 1991 borders. After all, what is the point of signing any new treaties with Russia if Moscow refuses to acknowledge or adhere to the terms of the many agreements and documents it has previously signed?

At stake is the credibility of the entire treaty system governing international relations, such as the 1969 Vienna Convention. Known as the “treaty on treaties,” the Vienna Convention sets out clear guidelines for how international treaties should be drafted, defined, amended, and interpreted. Russia’s invasion poses a similarly grave threat to the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which confirmed the principle of territorial integrity.

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It is also important that the peace process specifically address the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. By giving up the world’s third largest nuclear arsenal in the 1990s, Ukraine rendered an unparalleled service to the cause of global security. Over the past three decades, this unilateral Ukrainian step in support of nuclear non-proliferation has translated into savings worth trillions of dollars for countries around the world.

Unfortunately, however, the security commitments that Ukraine believed it had received in the Budapest Memorandum have proved worthless. Instead, Russia has launched the largest European invasion since World War II, bringing untold death and devastation to Ukraine.

Adding insult to injury, the Kremlin has used nuclear blackmail against non-nuclear Ukraine as a tool to enable the invasion and deter the West from providing Kyiv with desperately needed military aid. Understandably, many in Ukraine now feel they have every right to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty unless the country is able to obtain genuine security guarantees.

A bad peace deal will compound the damage that Russia’s invasion has already done to the current international security architecture. It would legitimize international aggression and set a dangerous precedent that could have catastrophic consequences for global stability. In order to avoid this, Western leaders should return to Russia’s existing international treaty obligations with regard to the sanctity of borders and the use of force.

Crucially, Ukraine must also receive credible long-term security guarantees that can prevent any repeat of the current Russian invasion in the years to come. Failure to do so will set the stage for a new era of geopolitical lawlessness that will be felt far beyond the violated borders of Ukraine.

Ihor Smeshko is a Ukrainian politician and former head of Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence and Security Service.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jan 15, 2025

Appeasement will only fuel Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions in Ukraine

By Anastasiia Marushevska

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is an old-fashioned colonial war rooted in centuries of Russian imperial history that cannot be ended by limited territorial concessions or other attempts at appeasement, writes Anastasiia Marushevska.

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Five things Russia’s invasion has taught the world about Ukraine

By Peter Dickinson

Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has thrust the country into the global spotlight and transformed international perceptions of Ukraine in ways that will resonate for decades to come, writes Peter Dickinson.

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Europe must prepare to defend itself in an increasingly multipolar world

By Mykola Bielieskov

With the United States looking to pivot away from Europe to Asia and a revisionist Russia openly embracing an expansionist agenda, European leaders must prepare to defend themselves in an increasingly multipolar world, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

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

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Trump’s plans and goals to end many of the traditional domestic and global norms we’ve experienced in the post-World War II period were never a secret. And Tuesday night’s policy declaration is not part of a strategic master plan to get Hamas to agree to a deal with better terms for Israel and the United States. Nor is it a strategy to cajole Egypt or Jordan to be more accommodating to US preferences in the region, as some commentators have assessed.

The plan the president announced is about remaking the world and US interests in it in a fundamental way. Does the president truly believe his plan can ultimately be executed? Maybe, maybe not. If it cannot, then it could indeed serve as a starting point for negotiations over Gaza with Arab states, making the result the same regardless of whether he intended the plan to be a serious proposal or not.

But even if his plan is a nonstarter, which it almost certainly is, it’s not because that was the intent all along. Rather, it is because he doesn’t fully understand, or perhaps care, about the history of the region, the complexities of intra-Palestinian relationships, the potential implications for US allies, or, most importantly, the emotional connection most people have to their home.

Without those drivers influencing his views, the president’s proposal makes strategic sense and is not actually contradictory to his fundamental goal to end extensive US involvement in the Middle East. From his perspective, the only way to reduce long-term US financial obligations in the Middle East, which are largely tied up in security support, is to gut Gaza and start over from the ground up. If the United States doesn’t take the lead in doing that, then the long-term costs associated with having to protect Israel, for example, will continue indefinitely. A single Iron Dome interceptor missile, for instance, costs upwards of fifty thousand dollars, for which the United States provides most of the financing. And the United States gives over $1.4 billion annually in mostly security aid to both Jordan and Egypt.

For the president, a US “take over” of Gaza must appear to be the best way to incubate a region of peace, eventually allowing security costs to be significantly reduced. And while he proposed on Tuesday to do so with US efforts on the ground, the White House press secretary said today that Trump’s statement “does not mean American taxpayers will be funding this effort.” The president probably expects what he called “neighboring countries of great wealth”—almost certainly a reference to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and potentially Kuwait—to pay for some or all of it. Either way, if the United States puts in the time to rebuild Gaza, the president expects it to reap much of the economic benefit once its capacity to be, as he said, “the Riviera of the Middle East” is achieved.   

The president might genuinely view his proposal in humanitarian terms, as National Security Advisor Michael Waltz highlighted, seeking for Gazans to be moved to third countries as a means to ultimately help them. The result, however, is a distinction without a difference, both legally and politically: forced displacement is a violation of international law—and Trump does not seem to care about international laws or norms. 

A disturbing deal for regional leaders

When Trump announced his plan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may not have been aware it was coming. But ever the consummate politician, he paid credence to Trump without endorsing it during the press conference, saying that Trump “has a different idea, and I think it’s worth paying attention to this.” The reality is that implementing the plan would be a disaster for Netanyahu and Israel, given the likely destabilizing impact it would have on the region.

Nor would it be any better for other US regional partners and allies. Jordanian and Egyptian leaders’ opposition to relocating any Gazans to their countries is not just a matter of international law but of domestic stability. For both Amman and Cairo, the implications of doing so are likely to be viewed in existential terms. Such a move could be construed as endorsing the desire of those in Israel who oppose a Palestinian state. That is a grave concern for the leaders, especially in Jordan, where more than half of the population is of Palestinian descent.

And both Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah II would be equally concerned that some of those displaced are members of Hamas, Palestine Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations. These people would then become the responsibility of Egypt and Jordan to control, creating a near certainty that the terrorist groups would then seek to attack Cairo and Amman, as well. A destabilized Jordan and Egypt, Netanyahu certainly understands, would increase instability in the Levant, and with it threats to Israel.

But even worse for Israel, this project would set back Israeli and US relations with Gulf states. Tuesday night, the president said, “And I really believe that many countries will soon be joining this amazing peace and economic development transaction.” But for Riyadh, which immediately responded by highlighting that it will not normalize ties with Israel without a two-state solution, the displacement of the Palestinian population from Gaza at the behest of the United States would probably be a bridge too far. This is also true for Abu Dhabi, which has been heralded by Trump for signing the Abraham Accords. Since the attacks on October 7, 2023, both Saudi and Emirati populations have been relatively less vocal than some of their Arab brethren about the conflict. That could change. Even monarchies must be responsive at times to their people. Instead of advancing peace, the expulsion of Gazans would likely undermine the accords and jeopardize Riyadh’s willingness to consider joining them before a Palestinian state is formed.

It’s almost impossible to imagine Trump’s plan for Gaza coming to fruition. But it would be a mistake to think that he was anything but serious with the proposal he laid out Tuesday night. Doing so risks underestimating how committed he will be for the next forty-seven-and-a-half months to changing the US role not just in the Middle East, but in the world.

Jonathan Panikoff is the director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the US National Intelligence Council.

The post Trump is serious about shaking up the Middle East, even if his Gaza plan isn’t appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: If Trump is trying to pressure Hamas, it’s unlikely to work

Jonathan Panikoff: Trump is serious about shaking up the Middle East, even if his Gaza plan isn’t

Thomas Warrick: Trump has pushed the US further ahead on Gaza in a month than Biden ever did

Jennifer Gavito: It’s a concept without a plan—made all the more difficult by dismantling USAID

Arwa Damon: The way to avoid “history repeating itself” is not to repeat the core cause

Alex Plitsas: The reality of “owning” Gaza would carry large costs and risks—including an armed insurgency

If Trump is trying to pressure Hamas, it’s unlikely to work

Though many were extremely taken aback by Trump’s remarks alongside Netanyahu, a few rushed to view them through the prism of Trump’s hardball negotiation style. By setting the goalpost in such an extreme territory, Trump might then gradually negotiate down and obtain favorable conditions for whatever policy he hopes to implement between Israel and Gaza. 

However, what remains puzzling in this equation is who the president might be trying to influence with such outlandish and extreme declarations that violate decades of established US policy toward the Middle East, international humanitarian law, and diplomatic norms. 

It is well understood that Jordan and Egypt are in no position to help facilitate the forced or even voluntary removal of more than two million Gazans out of the coastal enclave and into their respective territories. Even if those countries wanted to acquiesce to the president’s blackmail, the US foreign aid that they receive is insufficient to justify the geopolitical, economic, security, and social risks and implications such a move would entail. Clearly, the president is not trying to pressure Israel or its leadership, represented by Netanyahu, who received a hero’s welcome in Washington as the first foreign leader to visit the White House in Trump’s second term. That leaves the Palestinians, and Hamas in particular, as the likely party that Trump was trying to pressure with his unprecedented declarations on Tuesday. 

Contextually, Netanyahu’s visit comes on the heels of the impending negotiations to begin the second phase of the cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. Netanyahu is involving his close confidant, Ron Dermer, instead of Mossad’s head, David Barnea, as the negotiations are expected to be political and less technical. The expected goal is to tie the implementation of the second phase with a political horizon that displaces Hamas as the sole authority in Gaza and prevents the terror group from remaining in power after the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from the decimated Palestinian strip. 

It is unclear how these threats can credibly force Hamas to moderate and shift its position vis-à-vis the negotiations. It’s also unclear whether the group is susceptible to threats of US military action against the territory as a way to induce behavioral change. Hamas has unleashed the most destructive chapter in Palestinian contemporary history upon the people of Gaza, and it is still ruthlessly acting as if it will enjoy the spoils of war, including the full reconstruction of the territory. Although the entire world, including Arab and Muslim nations, has made it clear that there will be no reconstruction of Gaza while Hamas remains in complete control (and for good reason), Hamas has yet to signal that it is willing to give up anything in order to facilitate Gaza’s recovery. 

Trump’s comments are extraordinarily harmful to the prospects of regional stability, to moderate Arab Sunni states, and to the prospects of Israeli-Saudi normalization, with the kingdom releasing a statement on Wednesday saying that it will not join the Abraham Accords if there isn’t a Palestinian state. The comments also reek of an incoherent foreign policy that is defined by threats, not compelling US leadership. Indeed, these remarks are fuel for the United States’ enemies, especially the likes of China, Iran, and Russia, the last of which will now likely point to US actions to justify its illegal and ruthless invasion of Ukraine. 

The rules-based world order that the United States has led for decades must not be sacrificed for neo-imperialism that breeds chaos and instability while eroding trust in US leadership among its allies and emboldening its foes.

—Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib is a resident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and an analyst who grew up in Gaza City.

Trump is serious about shaking up the Middle East, even if his Gaza plan isn’t

Many Americans and allies in Europe and the Middle East woke up this morning confused and shocked to learn of US President Donald Trump’s declaration that the United States will “take over” the Gaza Strip, and its approximately two million inhabitants should be moved elsewhere. They shouldn’t be.

Trump’s plans and goals to end many of the traditional domestic and global norms we’ve experienced in the post-World War II period were never a secret. And Tuesday night’s policy declaration is not part of a strategic master plan to get Hamas to agree to a deal with better terms for Israel and the United States. Nor is it a strategy to cajole Egypt or Jordan to be more accommodating to US preferences in the region, as some commentators have assessed.

The plan the president announced is about remaking the world and US interests in it in a fundamental way. Does the president truly believe his plan can ultimately be executed? Maybe, maybe not. If it cannot, then it could indeed serve as a starting point for negotiations over Gaza with Arab states, making the result the same regardless of whether he intended the plan to be a serious proposal or not.

But even if his plan is a nonstarter, which it almost certainly is, it’s not because that was the intent all along. Rather, it is because he doesn’t fully understand, or perhaps care, about the history of the region, the complexities of intra-Palestinian relationships, the potential implications for US allies, or, most importantly, the emotional connection most people have to their home. …

Read more from Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and a former deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East at the US National Intelligence Council:

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Feb 5, 2025

Trump is serious about shaking up the Middle East, even if his Gaza plan isn’t

By Jonathan Panikoff

It’s almost impossible to imagine Trump’s plan for Gaza coming to fruition. But it would be a mistake to think that he was anything but serious with the proposal he laid out Tuesday night.

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Trump has pushed the US further ahead on Gaza in a month than Biden ever did

Since his election win on November 5, I have told colleagues that Trump would eventually realize that only the United States can organize a lasting solution to the problem of who will govern postwar Gaza. I thought this would happen in June, given the start of the new US presidential administration and the seasonal rhythms of Middle East diplomacy. I never would have guessed that the realization would hit Trump during a press conference on February 4.

Those criticizing Trump for calling for the displacement of more than two million Gazans are fundamentally misunderstanding how Trump sees Gaza: Trump is a longtime billionaire property developer who has recently come to understand the extent of Gaza’s devastation. He is right that it will likely take more than a decade to rebuild Gaza—and that the only way Gaza will be rebuilt even in that amount of time is if Hamas plays no role in Gaza’s governance going forward. Trump is also right on this point: No Arab government is going to donate billions of dollars to rebuild Gaza if Hamas is able to attack Israel in three or four years, turning all that reconstruction back into rubble.

Trump, as a developer used to buying and selling properties, does not understand the depth of Gazans’ attachment to the land and their absolute unwillingness to be further dispossessed after what happened to so many of them in 1948. The obvious precedent is their next-door neighbors, who were steadfast after almost 1,900 years of dispossession. The people of Gaza are never going to leave.

Trump also underestimates Egyptian and Jordanian unwillingness to accept Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank under any circumstances, even if it were to mean the cutoff of US assistance to those countries. There is quite literally no tool in the US toolbox that could persuade the leaders of Egypt or Jordan to change their minds on this point. Trump’s advisors know this, but they would likely rather have Trump hear this directly from Jordanian King Abdullah on February 11, and from Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, who reportedly will visit the following week, rather than from them. Fair enough. Abdullah and Sisi need to tell Trump plainly, directly, and undiplomatically that they will not do this, so that discussions will move in a more productive direction.

What Palestinians and Arab leaders need to praise is the idea that the United States will directly involve itself, in a limited way, in organizing international efforts for Gaza’s transition. Trump is not serious about wanting to “own” Gaza. What the United States can usefully do needs to be negotiated with Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab governments, along with other major donors, such as European states and Japan. But the United States contributing to disarming unexploded bombs and rubble-clearing efforts, as Trump said the United States would do, is something that the Biden administration steadfastly refused to even consider. The Biden administration refused even when pressed by former US officials (I was one) who urged it to recognize that the only way this could turn out well for the United States, Israel, and the Palestinians would be for the United States to take a leadership role in organizing the efforts of others. 

Much of what Trump suggested in the past twenty-four hours will need to be dialed back to what is workable. But no one predicted that Trump would push the United States to engage more on what postwar Gaza should look like in one month than the Biden team did in fifteen months.

—Thomas S. Warrick is the director of the Future of DHS project at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Forward Defense program and former deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security.

It’s a concept without a plan—made all the more difficult by dismantling USAID

Tuesday’s comments by Trump sent shock waves not only through the Middle East, but also through his circles of supporters. The president campaigned on a platform of international disentanglement, not taking on new nation-building responsibilities like the one he is proposing in Gaza.

Not since the Marshall Plan, which saw massive investments in postwar Europe that continue to pay dividends today, has the United States successfully undertaken such a project. Indeed, most of its attempts have ended in abject failure (think Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya). Why? Because the American people ultimately weren’t prepared for the massive, all-in, long-term investment in both dollars and troops that is needed to transform a warzone into a flourishing economy. And the United States now lacks the institutional infrastructure to conceive of such a project, thanks to the ongoing dismantling of the only US government organization with nation-building expertise: the United States Agency for International Development. 

Ultimately, though, this is a concept without a plan, as it is predicated on the willingness of Israel’s neighbors—especially Egypt and Jordan—to take in massive numbers of Gazans at the expense of their already shaky political and economic stability. Other Arab foreign ministers joined them earlier this week in roundly rejecting any effort to displace Palestinians, setting the stage for a difficult conversation when Jordan’s King Abdullah becomes the first Arab leader to visit Trump in the White House next week. 

—Jennifer Gavito is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and a former US acting principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

The way to avoid “history repeating itself” is not to repeat the core cause

We just heard the US president endorse the idea of committing ethnic cleansing and forcibly resettling a population. We just heard a US president lay out the potential intent to draw the United States into a war crime. That is stunning in itself. However, it’s highly likely that Trump will be given a “pass” given how accustomed the world has grown to his history of irresponsible rhetoric. Many analysts are already predicting that his sweeping commentary will need to be dialed down into an actual executable plan. 

The speed of the Saudi response, reaffirming Riyadh’s commitment to a Palestinian state as a precondition to establishing diplomatic ties, is an indication of how unpalatable Trump’s plan is. It could also give Egypt and Jordan the courage they need to stand firm against the United States’ not-so-subtle threats of consequences if they refuse to take in more than two million Gazans. 

“It’s terrifying. But what we fear is not the rhetoric of one man,” a Palestinian friend of mine in Gaza messaged me. “We fear forced displacement and losing the right to return like our grandparents and great-grandparents did. What we fear is losing our home, our right to our home, to see our families, to have roots.”

Gaza is a demolition zone. Trump is 100 percent correct on that, even if he did neglect the fact that US bombs dropped by Israel are the culprit. Gaza does need a massive effort to clear it of explosives and rubble and then to start reconstruction. But the clarity of his comments end there. The rest of this haphazardly laid out “plan”—if it can be called that—is little more than psychological torture for a population that is already on the edge of a mental abyss. 

To somehow think that the solution, as Trump stated, to avoid “history repeating itself” is to repeat the core cause—stealing of land, illegal occupation, the forced displacement of Palestinians, denying the right of return—is rather ludicrous.

The sad irony is that it would be among the best outcomes for Palestinians to have Gaza rebuilt and transformed into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” But there is nothing in Trump’s comments or in Netanyahu’s apparent glee at them that suggest that this will be a Riviera for those whose land it is: the Palestinians. 

—Arwa Damon is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs; the president and founder of the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance (INARA); and a former international correspondent for CNN.

The reality of “owning” Gaza would carry large costs and risks—including an armed insurgency

Trump’s suggestion that the United States could clear and rebuild Gaza presupposes a significant level of US military and economic involvement. In his comments, Trump was ambiguous about the deployment of US troops to secure Gaza and oversee its reconstruction, saying “We’ll do what needs to be done.” This would require a long-term commitment, with estimates of up to fifteen years for full reconstruction. The question of who would pay for such an enormous endeavor remains unanswered. Given the immense cost and the political sensitivity of the region, it is unclear if the United States would foot the bill entirely or if there would be international partners involved.

Trump’s recent statements that he can get Egypt and Jordan to host Gazans, combined with his statement about “owning Gaza,” suggest a bargain: The United States could take on Gaza’s reconstruction but, in exchange, Jordan and Egypt would host displaced Palestinians. Neither country wants to administer or secure Gaza. But they also do not want to be seen as complicit in Israel’s actions and have historically been reluctant to host more Palestinians, fearing that it would lead to the permanent displacement of the Palestinian people and thus the end of Palestinian statehood.

While this could be seen as a diplomatic move, it raises several significant concerns, not least of which is the formation of an armed insurgency. US troops or contractors in Gaza could come under fire from militant groups, particularly Hamas, which has not been fully dismantled despite efforts by Israel and others. Recent reports of Hamas recruiting more than ten thousand new members, along with the public presence of large groups of Hamas fighters at recent hostage handover events, show that the group remains an operational force. The president could have been thinking that if Egypt and Jordan take responsibility for the Gazan people, then there wouldn’t be an insurgency as there would be no one to fight. However, that would mean Gazans would have to leave Gaza altogether, which is a tall order given their desire for statehood and fears that a temporary displacement for reconstruction would actually lead to a permanent displacement and not being able to return.

Additionally, Trump’s proposal seems to overlook the deep animosity many Gazan Palestinians have toward the United States regarding US military support for Israel. The United States is often viewed as a partial actor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which could fuel armed resistance to any perceived US-led efforts in Gaza. There is also the issue of who would take responsibility for the security of Gaza during the rebuilding process. Arab states have shown no interest in stepping into this role, fearing the political ramifications of being seen as complicit in the displacement of Palestinians or Israel’s actions.

The logistics of this plan remain unclear. Would Palestinians be willing to leave Gaza voluntarily or would they be forcibly relocated? This question is crucial, as any attempt to remove or displace a population would likely face resistance and could lead to further violence. Trump’s idea might therefore be seen as a negotiating tactic, similar to his approach with trade deals, but its success would hinge on navigating complex regional dynamics and the realities of a volatile and heavily armed Gaza.

—Alex Plitsas is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, the head of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Project, and a former chief of sensitive activities for special operations and combating terrorism in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

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Just across the border in Kosovo, the ruling party’s narrative has been that of an imminent war with Serbia, especially after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and an attempted armed insurgency in the Serbian-majority north in 2023. Government officials and their media proxies have regularly framed the government’s critics—journalists, activists, and prosecutors—as being part of Serbia’s hybrid war against the country.   

Rule through fear is neither new nor unique to the Western Balkans. It has been the political zeitgeist in the region for a while, in part because there have long been valid reasons to be fearful.

The region continues to have an unresolved security architecture, with most of its countries still limping toward European Union (EU) and NATO membership, which were supposed to make its contested borders irrelevant. Insecurity about the future has paved the way for secessionist ideas to resurface. In 2022, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine sent this anxiety into overdrive, as Moscow actively sought—to no avail—to expand the front and stir trouble in the Balkans, primarily via its allies in Serbia.     

Yet these fears also gave regional leaders a useful tool to distract attention from poor governance and to suppress dissent. For Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who has pursued a policy of hedging between Moscow and the West, the threat of regional destabilization also serves as a bargaining chip with the latter.

Nevertheless, there are hopeful signs that people in the Western Balkans, as well as Western decision makers dealing with the region, are no longer buying into this blackmail. Throughout the region, leaders seem less able to distract their citizens from socioeconomic concerns. At the same time, the EU seems to be learning not to engage with regional troublemakers from a position of fear. Indeed, Brussels has shown that it has ample geopolitical and economic leverage to press its concerns on domestic reforms, Russia policy, and regional stability to Western Balkan nations while working to integrate them into the bloc.

Diminishing returns

The current wave of student protests in Serbia against government corruption has been the most successful and sustained opposition movement against Vučić so far. This is despite attempts to discredit the protests as sparked or supported by foreign governments. The demonstrations clearly have the government worried, as indicated by the resignation of Vučić ’s appointed prime minister. A recent poll by CRTA—a prominent pro-democracy nongovernmental organization in the country—shows that 61 percent of citizens support the protests and two-thirds believe corruption to be the country’s main problem.

In Kosovo, which holds national elections on February 9, the decision by popular Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s ruling party to run entirely on a “sovereignist” agenda with the nationalist slogan “from corner to corner”—highlighting its crackdown on Serbia’s structures in the north of Kosovo—and attacking his critics as unpatriotic, may turn out to be slightly backfiring. The two leading opposition parties, which are running on platforms emphasizing economic issues, seem to be having enough of a resurgence to complicate Kurti’s ability to form a government.

To be sure, there are still real risks of violent escalation due to miscalculation, and some degree of public angst about the potential for war remains prevalent in the region. A November 2024 regional Securimeter poll by the Regional Cooperation Council, an intergovernmental body, shows that while concern about war may be low in Kosovo (only 21 percent of citizens), it remains high in Serbia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, where more than half of those polled say they are concerned about a war breaking out. Yet region-wide, security concerns remain dwarfed by socioeconomic ones: the same poll shows poverty (49 percent), corruption (48 percent), and depopulation (36 percent) as being the top three priority concerns regionally. On top of that, a staggering 77 percent of respondents in the region identified the high cost of living and inflation as the main economic concern, followed by low wages (55 percent).

A position of strength

Part of the reason why fearmongering may no longer be paying political dividends in deflecting from citizens’ economic concerns is that, with time, the security threats have run out of credibility. Russia has failed to project meaningful power beyond its efforts in Ukraine. The West, for all its faults in mishandling the Western Balkans’ accession into the EU, proved it has the leverage and instruments for deterrence in the region. Indeed, NATO is present both within the region and around it, the EU is by far the region’s biggest trade and investment partner, and US and EU sanctions against Western Balkan nations can bite.

An attempt by Serbs in northern Kosovo to start an armed insurgency in October 2023 was quashed within a day by Kosovo’s Special Police, which was aided by NATO peacekeepers. Milorad Dodik, president of the Serb-majority Republika Srpska entity in Bosnia, has backed off his regular threats to secede from the country whenever he was threatened. Over the past year, Vučić was forced to admit that his hedging space has shrunk: Serbia purchased French warplanes, granted the EU access to its lithium resources, and now is being forced to nationalize its oil and gas industry from US-sanctioned Gazprom.

The West no longer seems to need to negotiate with Vučić from a position of fear—that is, treading carefully due to a concern that the Serbian president will turn further toward Russia or cause regional instability. Despite Vučić’s latest pro-Western moves, the European Council recently decided to keep Serbia’s accession talks effectively frozen due to concerns about democracy, relations with Kosovo, and nonalignment with the EU’s Russia policy.

This tougher stance on Serbia is a welcome departure from overly cautious EU policy toward the Western Balkans for the last ten years. While the EU has been right to fear that failing to integrate the Western Balkans would leave the bloc less secure, it was wrong to be afraid to dictate accession terms to Balkan nations given the EU’s leverage over the region.

Fear had driven the EU’s thinking about Western Balkan countries’ accession for most of the past decade. Some members were worried about the EU’s ability to absorb more Eastern countries with questionable governance standards and security postures. The EU’s far right also fueled xenophobia about the region’s Muslim-majority countries. As a result, the Western Balkans was parked in an effective containment policy, which empowered authoritarians who showed they could at least keep the peace.

Yet, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the fears of bringing the region into the EU were dwarfed by fears of keeping it out. Gray zones like the Western Balkans turned out to be a security vulnerability. There is a growing recognition within the EU that it needs to bring the Western Balkans into the bloc. However, this is coupled with an awareness that Brussels can afford to make demands of aspiring members if their accession prospects are to progress. Reflecting this balance, the new momentum for EU enlargement has now opened a window for at least Montenegro and Albania—the countries with the least amount of obstacles to membership and which are undertaking some reforms—to be part of the next accession wave.

The Western Balkans’ peace and stability will, however, remain fragile for as long as its countries remain stuck in bilateral or identitarian disputes. But over the past few years, the EU has shown that it has the leverage to resolve the disputes that stand in the region’s way. The Western Balkans present the ultimate litmus test of the bloc’s geopolitical weight. Going forward, the EU should use the leverage at its disposal without allowing fearmongering from Western Balkan leaders to deter it from its efforts to bring the region into its fold.

Agon Maliqi is an independent researcher and political analyst from Pristina, Kosovo. He was the co-founder and longtime editor of Sbunker, a think tank and blog on Western Balkans affairs, as well as a former Reagan-Fascell Democracy fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.

***

The Western Balkans stands at the nexus of many of Europe’s critical challenges. Some, if not all, of the countries of the region may soon join the European Union and shape the bloc’s ability to become a more effective geopolitical player. At the same time, longstanding disputes in the region, coupled with institutional weaknesses, will continue to pose problems and present a security vulnerability for NATO that could be exploited by Russia or China. The region is also a transit route for westward migration, a source of critical raw materials, and an important node in energy and trade routes. The BalkansForward column will explore the key strategic dynamics in the region and how they intersect with broader European and transatlantic goals.

The post Fearmongering from Western Balkan leaders is no longer working on their citizens—or the EU appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Miami-native secretary has lately embraced a more isolationist approach to US engagement abroad (such as his vote last April against a $95 billion aid bill for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan) to align better with Trump’s messaging about prioritizing a robust domestic economic agenda. But one of his former advisers recently said that Rubio “still seems to favor a strong, engaged US posture in the world”—and this is a good thing. The United States cannot be everywhere and must prioritize issues critical to its national security, particularly in the Middle East. By straddling the Ronald Reagan-era and Trump-era Republican foreign policy worldviews, Rubio is now well-positioned to counterbalance isolationist voices within the president’s circle.  

A steadfast advocate for US strength 

Given Trump’s rhetorical tendencies toward isolationism, the choice of Rubio for secretary of state and former Rep. Michael Waltz for national security advisor—and their respective records while on Capitol Hill—may help to reinforce traditional Republican notions preferring a more assertive US foreign policy in the Middle East. This approach is likely to be tough on Iran, supportive of the Gulf states and Israel, and focused on expanding US influence and partnerships in the region. Rubio’s staunch support for Israel and its security concerns, a key aspect of his political career, will also appeal to Trump’s base and a large portion of the GOP’s constituency in Florida. 

Even as some critics disagree with Rubio’s hardline approach to world affairs, his deep and profound understanding of these issues, and his recognition of the United States’ indispensable role in global affairs—especially in the face of a rising China and a more aggressive Russia—make him a crucial voice in shaping US policy. Rubio, as Trump’s chief diplomat, can make the case that both peace abroad and prosperity and security at home are not mutually exclusive. He can lead an assertive foreign policy that still meets the president’s directives, as Rubio outlined at his January 15 confirmation hearing: “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”

Confronting China in the Middle East

Rubio is clear-eyed about the threats posed by Beijing, which he described as “America’s ‘biggest threat” during his confirmation hearing. However, Rubio also mentioned that a China-US armed conflict would be “catastrophic” and should be avoided. His vision and push for a policy of strength to deter China’s abuse of the US-led international system is likely to test Middle Eastern countries’ relationship with Beijing—especially Chinese efforts and capabilities to acquire US/Western technology through cooperation with US partners in the region. 

For example, China continues to act as a free-rider in the Red Sea, benefiting from US naval protection while failing to act as the responsible world leader it aspires to be and to use its agreement with the Houthis to deter attacks on international shipping. 

What’s in store for the Gulf states?

Rubio is committed to containing Iran and assured Congress during his January 15 hearing that a nuclear-capable Iran, with the resources and military capabilities to continue its sponsorship of terrorism to destabilize the region, cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. These conditions will likely be part of any future US-Iran deal, which the secretary of state remains open to. However, Rubio’s hardline stance on Iran may also face obstacles with some more moderate Gulf states that view Iran differently than they did during Trump’s first term and have taken a more conciliatory tone toward Tehran in recent years. 

Nevertheless, Rubio sees Gulf allies as essential for containing Iran and as key partners in tackling terrorism threats. He is likely to seek to build on Trump’s first-term close relationships with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and to close an Israel-Saudi Arabia deal with a Palestinian state as part of a regional grand bargain. The senator has endorsed the deal with Israel as having many security benefits for Saudi Arabia. 

Given Rubio’s commitment to maintaining a strong US force posture in the region, he will likely be supportive of the 2024 deal that extends and expands the Al Udeid military base in Qatar, relying on Doha to maintain and invest in reinforcing the US military presence in the region. While issues like the Al Jazeera news network’s editorial line could remain contentious, the rift seen in the first Trump term with Doha is also unlikely to be repeated. That’s because of the strategic importance of Qatar’s access to all actors—especially adversarial ones, such as Hamas, given that Doha’s pressure on the group may have contributed to a ceasefire in Gaza—which is an asset to an incoming administration interested in making deals. However, Rubio and the Trump administration will likely increase pressure on Doha to end its hosting of Hamas officials in the country (as seen in a letter Senate Republicans wrote to the Biden-Harris administration in November 2024, which was signed by Rubio). 

Unlocking historic opportunities for the region

Rubio emphasized during his confirmation hearing that there are historic and extraordinary opportunities in the Middle East that did not exist three months ago. He pointed to recent developments in Syria and their implications for Lebanon, as well as the future of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. While Rubio is one of the most qualified of the president’s Cabinet picks—and although his insights into the region’s outlook are invaluable—his views are unlikely to surpass Trump’s own instincts on key matters. 

However, Rubio’s close ties to Waltz and his role in helping Trump on the campaign trail should work in his favor in shaping the president’s foreign policy decision-making. Having the secretary’s principled views in the room is promising for a US policy in the Middle East that is more assertive, able to get concessions in challenging situations, and likely to meet the expectations of a new mandate from the voters who, as Rubio said, “want a strong America.”

Joze Pelayo is an associate director at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative.

The post What a Secretary of State Rubio means for the Middle East: Getting tougher on Iran and tighter with allies  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

He’s tightening his grip. Venezuelan autocrat Nicolás Maduro was inaugurated for a third term as president on Friday despite international observers, including the United States, determining that his victory in last year’s election was fraudulent. Maduro’s swearing-in was accompanied by a new round of US sanctions against Venezuelan officials and comes one day after the government briefly detained opposition politician María Corina Machado. Below, our experts explain what Maduro’s inauguration means for the region, the Venezuelan opposition, and the future of US sanctions policy. 

• Iria Puyosa (@NSC): Senior research fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab
• Jason Marczak (@jmarczak): Vice president and senior director at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center
• Geoff Ramsey (@GRamsey_LatAm): Senior fellow at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

What Biden did, and Trump can do

• “The Biden administration has slightly increased pressure” on Maduro’s regime, Iria tells us. While the United States has sanctioned two thousand individuals and raised the bounties on Maduro and his interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, US oil giant Chevron maintains its license to operate in Venezuela. “The new sanctions are insufficient to remove Maduro and Cabello from power,” she argues.
• After it takes office in ten days, the Trump administration should work with regional governments, says Jason, to “accelerate diplomatic coordination to give new momentum to the opposition and to make life harder for Maduro and his accomplices.”
• Despite the regime’s escalating crackdown on the opposition, “it is easy to overstate how strong Maduro really is,” Geoff argues. He points to Maduro’s post-election cabinet reshuffle to empower hardliners, coupled with the elevation of Cabello, a longtime rival, as “a sign of just how few friends Maduro has left.”
• Geoff advises the incoming Trump administration to take note of internal divisions in the Maduro regime that can be further undermined by economic pressure. “Sanctions alone are unlikely to unseat Maduro,” he says, “unless they are accompanied by a clear roadmap to lift them, giving fence-sitting regime figures a blueprint to follow.”

Regional rejection

• Maduro has brought Latin American leaders “from across the political spectrum together to reject his new power grab,” Jason tells us. Chilean President Gabriel Boric, Argentinian President Javier Milei, and Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, he notes, have all rejected Maduro’s claim to victory in last year’s presidential election.
• The highest-ranking foreign official at Maduro’s inauguration, Jason points out, may have been the speaker of Russia’s Duma.
• “The continued large-scale regional rejection of Maduro is no small feat,” Jason says, given Latin America’s historical divisions. “But the critical question,” he adds, “is how to avoid complacency and leverage this unity to further support the democratic opposition.”

A mobilized opposition

• Amid Maduro’s third inauguration, “Venezuelans are again taking to the streets in large numbers, demanding a transition to democracy and the inauguration of González,” says Iria. The Biden administration should use this opportunity to take more “meaningful action” against Maduro, she argues, as “the opposition is now strategically united, the people are mobilized, and the ruling coalition is showing cracks.”
• Regional governments working to pressure Maduro, Jason says, should also strive to “avoid burdening the Venezuelan people with more hardships.” Pressuring Maduro’s government while sparing the Venezuelan people from the worst effects of sanctions is “a delicate tightrope to walk” Jason adds, but is “necessary to give further hope to the overwhelming number of Venezuelans who cast a vote for democracy and freedom in July.”

The post What the world can do about Maduro appeared first on Atlantic Council.

For more context and to make sense of all the competing arguments, we turned to our experts on China and technology. 

Click to jump to an expert analysis:

Graham Brookie: The Supreme Court’s decision will shape global tech competition

Shelly Hahn: To China, algorithms are a national interest 

Kenton Thibaut: The US data security problem is bigger than TikTok

Caroline Costello: If you’re interested in protecting civil society, you should be concerned about TikTok

Mark Scott: Worries around TikTok’s data collection and security apply to all social media giants

Matt Geraci: US data privacy laws are not up to the task 

Emerson T. Brooking: If TikTok was a tool of Chinese foreign interference, someone forgot to tell China

Samantha Wong: The national security risks will remain whether TikTok is banned or not

Konstantinos Komaitis: A TikTok ban would be a direct attack on the open and global internet

Kitsch Liao: ByteDance’s First Amendment argument is a distraction from its refusal to divest

The Supreme Court’s decision will shape global tech competition 

The United States Supreme Court is set to start 2025 with a blockbuster case on a tight timeline with significant domestic tech and geopolitical ramifications.  

The law in question in the case of TikTok v. Garland—the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act—was passed by Congress in April 2024 with widespread bipartisan support: a 352–65 vote in the House and 79–18 in the Senate. US President Joe Biden signed the bill into law, giving him the authority to force TikTok’s divestiture from its Chinese parent company or be banned from the United States. The Department of Justice set a deadline of January 19—forcing this dramatic showdown. The Supreme Court will proceed in hearing the case on January 10 despite Trump’s request to delay until after his inauguration and the fact that the high court typically defers to its two co-equal branches of government on matters of national security.  

The Atlantic Council previously published an in-depth technical analysis of whether the threats of legal control, data access, algorithmic tampering, or broad influence efforts by the Chinese government are unique or singularly focused on TikTok. The threat of legal control proved to be real and ongoing. The other potential risks remain considerable with loopholes not specific to TikTok, such as the sheer amount of Americans’ data for sale on the open market or the litany of US-owned platforms the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used to perpetrate influence efforts. Chinese ownership of TikTok is undoubtedly a core strength in its global approach to “discourse power.” The key questions remain whether a Chinese company’s ownership of such a popular social media platform poses unique national security risks to the United States, whether banning such a popular app violates the rights of the company or the app’s US users, and how China may react or force ByteDance to react. Beyond TikTok v. Garland, any outcome will shape global tech competition from the global reach of digital platforms to broader tech governance. If new evidence is surfaced, it will shape both. 

—Graham Brookie is the vice president of technology programs and founding director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council. 

To China, algorithms are a national interest

The TikTok saga highlights Beijing’s strategy of using private companies to exert influence globally, while restricting foreign companies’ operations within China. 

Beijing views algorithms as critical tools to exert national power, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping emphasizing the importance of artificial intelligence in military and economic power competition. As TikTok has gained market clout, the Chinese government has taken a more assertive stance on its technologies, especially content recommendation algorithms. Since 2020, China has implemented measures to protect its technological assets, including adding algorithms to the restricted list  of technologies from export in August 2020, and passing the “Export Control Law” in October 2020, which governs the sale of these technologies to foreign buyers. China now strongly opposes any forced sale of TikTok, asserting its legal authority to veto such transactions. 

Beijing has railed against the United States’ enforcement actions against TikTok, using abusive and inflammatory rhetoric to paint those actions as a violation of international norms. Chinese officials have called these actions “an act of bullying” (Xinhua editorial), “an abuse of national power” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokeswoman Mao Ning), and “hypocritical and double standards” (Xinhua editorial). They have warned of potential consequences for the global economic order. 

That is interesting rhetoric given that Beijing would not allow a US or other foreign company to operate similarly in China. China maintains a restrictive environment for foreign media and technology companies, blocking most foreign social media platforms, search engines, and news outlets. When probed about this disparity, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson claimed that “China’s policy on overseas social media is completely incomparable to the US’ attitude towards TikTok . . . as long as foreign media companies comply with the requirements of Chinese laws and regulations, all foreign media platforms and news agencies are welcomed.” In reality, these laws give the CCP firm control over data flows and information within its borders. 

Beijing’s robust defense of TikTok and its underlying technology underscores China’s growing confidence in its tech sector and its willingness to challenge what it perceives as unfair treatment in the global marketplace. 

—Shelly Hahn is the deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. 

The US data security problem is bigger than TikTok 

There is no doubt that People’s Republic of China (PRC) state entities see the value in collecting data on Americans for intelligence purposes. However, the proposed actions on TikTok leave open serious questions on how effectively a ban or divestment would protect Americans’ data from exfiltration.

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab previously conducted a technical, policy, and legal analysis of the stated national security risks posed by TikTok. Our research found that TikTok can be said to present a unique risk in terms of its Chinese ownership, in that the PRC’s National Intelligence Law does give the government broad leeway to potentially compel the company to grant it access to TikTok’s data, including on Americans. In addition, even under the circumstances of outside control of TikTok’s data storage, it would be almost impossible to know if Chinese intelligence authorities somehow maintained a backdoor into these data streams.

At the same time, however, we found that TikTok’s data collection practices on Americans are not outside what is commonly practiced by social media companies, including Meta, X, and others. More importantly, the data that TikTok can provide on Americans pales in comparison to what the Chinese government has accessed through both its illegal hacking activities and what is available legally on the open market through US-based third-party data brokers.  

In fact, a report from Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy found that via data brokers, it is “not difficult to obtain sensitive data about active-duty members of the military, their families, and veterans, including non-public, individually identified, and sensitive data, such as health data, financial data, and information about religious practices,” noting that location data was also available for purchase. A narrow, national-security oriented focus on TikTok to address potential threats to the US data ecosystem risks overlooking much broader security vulnerabilities and thus undermines more effective policy solutions. That is to say, while there is much about TikTok’s data gathering and privacy policy to side-eye, the challenge is far wider than TikTok alone and requires a more wide-ranging policy solution to address. 

—Kenton Thibaut is a senior resident China fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council’s Technology Programs. 

If you’re interested in protecting civil society, you should be concerned about TikTok 

The debate surrounding TikTok is about a tool that empowers China to extend its high-tech surveillance state beyond its own borders. While it’s true that other social media platforms engage in similar surveillance, other platforms are not beholden to the government of a foreign adversary. 

TikTok’s owner, ByteDance, is a Chinese company. In China, the CCP has absolute control over companies. In China’s authoritarian system, the party is always above the law, but the CCP took the extraordinary step of enshrining this capability into law, likely to make very clear to Chinese companies exactly what they should expect. Article 7 of the National Intelligence Law of 2017 states that “all organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts,” meaning the government has the right to secretly demand TikTok user data, and the company must share it. 

When defending against these allegations, TikTok has insisted that it stores all US user data in the United States, but the company has also acknowledged that nevertheless, China-based employees can still access US user data, and those same employees must obey any and all edicts from the CCP. In fact, thanks to leaked audio from internal meetings, we now know that China-based employees have repeatedly done so. This includes two cases in which a China-based team at TikTok planned to use the app to monitor the location of specific US citizens.  

Chinese intelligence services have a well-documented history of harassing and intimidating human rights activists and journalists on US soil. Even if you don’t mind the PRC surveilling you, and even if you don’t care about US-China competition, if you’re interested in protecting civil society, you should be concerned about TikTok. 

There is one important caveat, though. As demonstrated in a report from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, foreign adversaries can also buy this data from brokers that rely on US-based companies surveilling their users. In fact, US-based companies have been accused of using targeted surveillance against civil society, as in the cases of Uber and Meta reportedly tracking the location of journalists reporting on their apps. TikTok is just one piece of a broader data security vulnerability perpetuated by US platforms. 

—Caroline Costello is a program assistant at the Global China Hub. 

Worries around TikTok’s data collection and security apply to all social media giants

Central to concerns around TikTok is how the app collects, stores, and uses information it gathers on users. The fear, according to US officials, is that such data may be weaponized by Beijing, though no evidence of such activity has yet to be proven. Based on a review of TikTok’s privacy policy and external analysis, the social media platform does collect a lot of information on users if they give the company permission. That includes information on individuals’ exact location, their phone numbers and those of their contacts, people’s other social media accounts, and detailed information about individuals’ devices (often used by marketers to target specific demographics). 

That may sound creepy. But TikTok’s data collection practices are no different than those of US social media giants, which similarly gather as much information as possible on their users to tailor these firms’ advertising offerings. That also includes in-app web browsers built into the likes of Instagram and X that allow these companies to collect just as much information on people’s web habits—so long as they are surfing the internet from within these social media networks. 

So would forcing TikTok off of US app stores make Americans’ data more private and secure? The short answer is no. While US officials have raised concerns about how Americans’ data may be accessed by Chinese government officials via TikTok, such personal information—from people’s phone numbers and home addresses to internet activity to consumer purchasing history—is already available commercially, via so-called domestic data brokers. The outgoing Biden administration tried to tackle that problem with the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act and prohibitions placed on these data brokers from transferring such sensitive data to foreign adversaries like China. 

Yet, in reality, the lack of comprehensive federal privacy legislation means that Americans’ data—no matter what eventually happens with the potential TikTok ban or sale—remains significantly more at risk compared to their counterparts in other Western countries. State-based laws, particularly those in California and Virginia, have provided a modest degree of greater control for people in how companies gather and use their personal information. But the removal of TikTok from US app stores, which have similarly set baseline levels of privacy protections for users, will not make Americans’ overall data either more private or more secure. 

 —Mark Scott is senior resident fellow at the Democracy + Tech Initiative within the Atlantic Council Technology Programs. 

US data privacy laws are not up to the task 

The absence of common-sense data privacy laws in the United States created an environment that allowed TikTok to become a security risk. Removing TikTok from app stores will not change this. As a 2022 Consumer Reports investigation revealed, TikTok uses many of the same data harvesting techniques employed by companies like Meta and Google for targeting ads. They also concluded that claims by TikTok and others that data is used solely for advertising cannot be verified by consumers or privacy researchers. 

The Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved unauthorized data collection from millions of Facebook users for targeted political ads, remains fresh in the minds of Americans who are skeptical about the stated reasons for removing TikTok. Although the Federal Trade Commission forced new privacy restrictions on Facebook, the scandal has not led to national legislation like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that could be applied to all companies, including TikTok. Despite this, various US states have endeavored to draft their own laws since the scandal. Yet, companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon often attempt to thwart these efforts through lobbying.  

Regulatory changes are essential to mitigate data security threats from Beijing. However, US tech companies seem to lack enthusiasm for supporting new data protections, and Congress has struggled to make progress. Nearly all the major US tech companies have been fined for violating the European Union’s GDPR (including Amazon, Google, Meta, and Twitter/X), so clearly this is an area that needs improvement. Companies are not ideal self-regulators. TikTok adds another layer given that it must answer to an authoritarian regime and thus poses even larger risks when allowed to operate in an unregulated environment. 

TikTok’s popularity, data collection practices, and Chinese ownership create a unique national security challenge requiring careful consideration. Tech companies should work with the US government to improve data privacy protections, rather than targeting TikTok under the guise of national security while simultaneously perpetuating a harmful regulatory status quo. 

—Matt Geraci is an associate director at the Global China Hub. 

If TikTok was a tool of Chinese foreign interference, someone forgot to tell China 

It’s true that the push for TikTok’s divestment from ByteDance is deeply rooted in fears of Chinese information manipulation. In a March 2024 House Committee on Energy and Commerce report on the forced divestment measure, the committee cited China’s potential use of TikTok to “push misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda on the American public.”  

It’s also true that these fears were never substantiated. The CCP’s propaganda strategy—its quest for “discourse power”—has always been premised on the incremental manipulation of information across many different platforms at the same time. The idea that Beijing built a shiny red button to turn TikTok into a tool of mass brainwashing never accorded with reality.  

Indeed, so far it appears that only a single fake CCP-adjacent TikTok account sought to influence the 2024 US election. Ironically, far more CCP accounts on other platforms sought to stir resentment about a potential TikTok ban. By contrast, Russia—which has had no unique claim to TikTok—extensively used the service for the purposes of information manipulation. In December 2023, the Digital Forensic Research Lab and the BBC uncovered a massive Russian campaign that used artificial intelligence to instrumentalize more than 12,800 accounts to undermine Ukraine.  

Perhaps the CCP was just subtly tweaking the TikTok algorithm to achieve its goals? But this is also unlikely. One of the few available independent studies of TikTok content policy suggests that the platform may have actually reduced the salience of certain hashtags in line with the wishes of US lawmakers. The bizarre nature of some of the material that goes viral on TikTok is explained by the tastes of TikTok’s Millennial- and Gen Z-majority user base, not a global conspiracy. TikTok has repeatedly failed the American people in the realm of transparency and public accountability. So has every US-based social media platform.  

—Emerson T. Brooking is director of strategy and resident senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab. 

The national security risks will remain whether TikTok is banned or not 

Last February, Biden issued a much-needed executive order limiting the sale of sensitive personal US data or US government-related data to “countries of concern,” including China, to prevent them from “engag[ing] in espionage, influence, kinetic or cyber operations or to identify other potential strategic advantage over the United States.” This is supported by additional legislation, such as the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024 and the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, both aimed at protecting sensitive US data from being accessed by “foreign adversary nations.” 

However, these new measures are not foolproof. The executive order only targets data brokers from “countries of concern,” and the bill doesn’t address data. One way China can easily circumvent these laws is by purchasing data from companies in third-party countries that obtained it through domestic data brokers that sold the data without knowledge of the final recipient or its intended use. Essentially, if TikTok was a US company, China would still be able to purchase personal US data from TikTok through third-country entities.  

Furthermore, China could easily access any sensitive, critical data through hacking US infrastructure. China is constantly investing and building up its offensive cyber ecosystem to train Chinese hackers to target and acquire critical US intelligence. Although the ban on TikTok would prevent Chinese firms from easily accessing US data, China has the resources to access this sensitive information illegally and is not afraid to implement these illicit operations if it feels the need to do so.  

Ultimately, the TikTok ban addresses only a small aspect of a much larger issue. Even if TikTok were banned or became a US-owned company, the core national security risks would remain. The United States should instead implement broader legislation aimed at strengthening domestic cybersecurity infrastructure and closing any third-party loopholes that could undermine existing protective laws. 

—Samantha Wong is a program assistant with the Global China Hub. 

A TikTok ban would be a direct attack on the open and global internet

In the conversation about whether the United States should or should not ban TikTok, there is one parameter that no one is mentioning: what will this mean for the internet? The answer is straightforward. If the United States proceeds with banning TikTok, such a move will be nothing short of a direct attack on the open and global internet.  

The internet is based on a decentralized architecture, which means that there is no center of control. The value of the open internet is that networks should be able to connect without any restrictions. The internet was not designed so that only specific networks could connect; rather, any network should be able to connect as long as it is willing to abide by certain rules—the internet’s open standards and protocols. Banning TikTok will affect how networks get to interconnect. 

 At the same time, a potential ban will also affect the internet’s global reach and integrity. The whole idea of the internet is that no entity should inspect or modify packets carried through different networks beyond what might be necessary to route the packet as advertised. This is an expectation that users have no matter where they are in the world, and it will not be met should the ban take effect.  

The United States has historically and unequivocally been a strong supporter of the open and global internet. In fact, for more than two decades, the United States has been at the forefront of pushing back at attempts by authoritarian governments to centralize internet control. A TikTok ban will be a setback to all these years of effort and will legitimize the narrative by other authoritarian states that the internet should be subject to government control and management. It will also weaken the United States’ position globally, especially at the United Nations, where conversations about the future of internet governance are currently taking place. 

 —Konstantinos Komaitis is a resident senior fellow and Global Democracy and Technology lead with the Democracy + Tech Initiative. 

ByteDance’s First Amendment argument is a distraction from its refusal to divest

ByteDance has yet to provide a rationale commensurate with freedom of speech or national security regarding why TikTok cannot be a US company without ties to the Chinese Communist party-state. Yet, on January 10, the nation will focus on the US Supreme Court’s hearing for the “TikTok ban,” highlighting First Amendment concerns. 

This is a distraction. The government has already successfully argued in court against TikTok on both national security and data collection grounds. ByteDance has sidestepped the national security argument by pointing to the lack of public evidence and argued that TikTok’s data collection practices are the same as those of other platforms. TikTok, however, failed to argue against its intent to endanger US national security, and it’s a point that bears reiterating.  

A series of reports from 2019 to 2021 detailed TikTok’s extreme security risks, including that the app allowed remote downloading and execution of binary files, essentially acting like a pre-installed backdoor ready for payload delivery. This sets it apart from other social media platforms and established its intent to harm. A “black hat” hacker would usually have to compromise a target’s devices through phishing or other means before it can achieve what TikTok pre-installed for its users. A Washington, DC court ruling also stressed TikTok’s continued malicious intent to abuse data collected from US citizens, even after the establishment of TikTok US Data Security.   

Until TikTok’s cord with the PRC is cut, it will continue to test the waters and find legal and illegal means to endanger US national security, as it clearly possesses both the intent and capability to do so.  

The essence of security is to make it harder for an adversary to do you harm. Just because China can obtain US user data through other ways doesn’t mean we should let them do so through TikTok. Deterrence through cost imposition is a foundational concept in international security, and the “cost,” be it through financial means or legal risks should China decide to furnish data through other social media giants operating within the United States, is very real. 

—Kitsch Liao is an associate director at the Global China Hub. 

The post Your expert guide to the debate over banning TikTok  appeared first on Atlantic Council.

One of Carter’s most consequential initiatives—the general elevation of human rights in US foreign policy—has usually been overlooked. Moreover, the specific application of human rights criteria to US relations with then-Soviet-controlled Central and Eastern Europe has been underappreciated. As the tributes roll in following Carter’s death on December 29 at the age of one hundred, this aspect of his legacy deserves its due.

Introducing human rights into US bilateral relations meant that the default Cold War policy that a reliably anticommunist government could be embraced and its authoritarian nature tolerated was no longer automatic. A junior foreign service officer at the time, I recall a furious debate within the State Department between the newly established Human Rights Bureau, headed by human rights activist Patricia Derian, and the more traditional State bureaus over whether the United States should use economic leverage against the Argentinian government, a repressive military regime that had a habit of “disappearing” its opponents. Derian’s people said yes, but most of State was appalled by the thought (and corridor talk was openly sexist in dismissing human rights as a policy criterion in general and Derian in particular). Derian and her people took grief for their views, but the impact of the policy grew over time; it was not dispositive, but it meant fewer free rides for dictatorships.

The impact in Europe was more profound. An implicit axiom of President Richard Nixon’s détente was that the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, marked by the imposition of the Iron Curtain, was a sad but by then immutable fact. Official Washington and most of US academia regarded the Soviet Bloc­­—communist-dominated Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea east of West Germany—as permanent and, though this was seldom made explicit, stabilizing. Talk of “liberating” those countries was regarded as illusion, delusion, or cant. Maintaining US-Soviet stability, under this view of Cold War realism, required accepting Europe’s realities, as these were then seen. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Final Act of Helsinki, a sort of codification of détente concluded under President Gerald Ford, did include general human rights language, and this turned out to be important. However, few at the time expected the Helsinki Accords to have any more operational impact than the vague language about democracy included in the Declaration of Liberated Europe issued at the Yalta Summit in 1945, which had no impact at all.

Carter’s shift toward human rights challenged this uber-realist consensus. It came just as democratic dissidents and workers’ movements inspired by them began to gather strength in Central and Eastern Europe, especially Poland. Carter, and his national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, put the United States in a better position to reach out to these movements and to work with them when communist rule began to falter as Soviet Bloc communist regimes started running past their ability to borrow money on easy “détente terms,” making them vulnerable. More broadly, by elevating human rights in the mix of US-Soviet and US-Soviet Bloc relations, Carter put the United States on offense in the Cold War and on the side of the people of the region.

In 1978, a Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyła, was elected pope John Paul II. In 1980, workers’ strikes at a shipyard in Gdańsk exploded into a national movement—Solidarity—that about ten million Poles joined within a year. Later that year, the Soviet Union, alarmed by Solidarity’s rise, started threatening to invade Poland, as it had Czechoslovakia in August 1968. At that time, the Lyndon Johnson administration, consumed with Vietnam, barely reacted. This time, the Carter administration warned the Soviets not to invade Poland. The United States under Carter was no longer ceding Central and Eastern Europe to the Soviets’ undisturbed control, as “their” sphere of influence.

Reagan’s support for Solidarity, the sanctions he imposed on communist Poland and the Soviet Union after Poland instituted martial law in December 1981, and his support for democracy around the world embodied in the new National Endowment for Democracy (of which, full disclosure, I am a board member) that he inspired have rightly been lauded since. However, these successes were built on a foundation that Carter laid down. Carter from the center-left and Reagan from the right brought together a consensus that US interests could be advanced through support for US values abroad. This was not the first time US presidents made the link between values and interests, but Carter reconnected that link after the cynical and defeated Vietnam era. He did so just in time to catch the wave of freedom that swelled and crested with the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1989 and the Soviet Union itself in 1991.

That’s some legacy.

Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and former US ambassador to Poland.

The post How Jimmy Carter’s support for human rights helped win the Cold War appeared first on Atlantic Council.

1. Why was Yoon impeached?

Yoon was impeached by the National Assembly on December 14 for his unconstitutional attempt to impose martial law. Yoon had declared martial law on December 3, citing the need to protect South Korea from “North Korean communist forces” and “anti-state forces,” as well as to “rebuild and protect” the nation from “falling into ruin.” He accused the opposition party of attempting to undermine democracy by impeaching his cabinet members and blocking budget plans. His decision appears to have been influenced by right-wing YouTube channels that propagated conspiracy theories, exaggerating perceived threats to his administration. The impeachment underscores the effectiveness of democratic checks and balances, as Yoon’s misguided and authoritarian decision was ultimately overturned through parliamentary action.

—Sungmin Cho is a nonresident senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Impeachment is a rare occurrence in the United States, with only three presidents having faced the process in nearly two-and-a-half centuries. Conversely, South Korea has seen three presidents face impeachment in just twenty years, with several others leaving office in less-than-ideal circumstances. 

Nor is martial law unknown in South Korea. The country experienced it under the control of Park Chung-hee in the 1970s. Then, the South Korean people fought with blood, sweat, and tears to institute a true democracy. It’s under this context, with martial law in the living memory of many in the country, that South Korea was galvanized to call for impeachment for an already massively unpopular Yoon. South Koreans are very protective of their democracy, and Yoon’s attempt at martial law drew comparisons to the authoritarian Park Chung-hee government, especially since Yoon’s first move after the martial law declaration was seemingly to block the National Assembly from voting to end it. This move was undoubtedly one step too far for the South Korean public and the calls for impeachment were a statement from the population that they will not take a threat to the democratic process lightly. 

—Lauren D. Gilbert is a deputy director with the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Security Initiative.

2. What is the potential removal process?

After the National Assembly impeached Yoon, his powers were immediately suspended, and the prime minister assumed the role of acting president. The impeachment case will now be reviewed by the Constitutional Court, which has up to 180 days to decide if Yoon violated the Constitution or laws to a degree warranting removal. In former President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment case that began in late 2016, the Constitutional Court took ninety-two days to reach a decision. Both Yoon and the National Assembly will present arguments, evidence, and witnesses in a trial-like process before the judges of the Constitutional Court. If upheld, Yoon will be formally removed from office, triggering a presidential election within sixty days; if rejected, he will be reinstated. Throughout this period, public opinion and political debates will intensify as the nation awaits the court’s final decision.

—Sungmin Cho

Now that Yoon is facing impeachment, the Constitutional Court has 180 days to decide, and the vote requires at least six of the full court’s nine judges to vote yes for impeachment. However, at present, the court only has six judges, with three seats on the court left vacant. This is leading to a debate over how and when the court should proceed. Some say that the vote should go through with the six current judges, while others say the vacant seats must be filled first. 

There is also debate over whether the judges should be appointed by the National Assembly or whether Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who has taken over the presidency during the impeachment process, has the right to appoint the three judges. Further complicating matters, the court has several other impeachment cases still awaiting its decision, adding to the oversaturation of the Constitutional Court. While we await the decision on how they will proceed with the appointment (or not) of the three vacant seats, there is still the possibility that Yoon’s impeachment will be overturned. There is a precedent for this. Former president Roh Moo-hyun’s impeachment was overturned in 2004, although unlike Yoon, Roh had the public’s support.

—Lauren D. Gilbert

3. What does this mean for South Korea’s relations with Japan?

In the immediate term, Japan and South Korea will broadly continue to communicate and coordinate along the lines forged over the past two-and-a-half years. However, South Korea and also to some extent Japan will have limited political capital to undertake any new measures to strengthen the relationship. Instead, Tokyo and Seoul are focusing on making both their bilateral relations and the trilateral security framework with Washington resilient and long-lasting to minimize the effects of political revisions in the future.

Japan is concerned about who will take the presidency in South Korea if the impeachment is upheld. The political momentum gained by progressives in Seoul is raising concerns about a reversal of the progress made in Japan-South Korea relations in recent years. On the plus side, however, Japan and South Korea have rebuilt ties and worked on the strategic and operational mechanisms and procedures of close coordination, setting a strong precedent for the future.  

—Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi is a nonresident senior fellow with the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative.

4. What does this mean for relations with Washington and trilateral security cooperation with the US and Japan?

In the near term, the acting president, Han, is already moving to ensure continued alliance coordination between Seoul and Washington. Key meetings and working-level coordination are likely to return to some semblance of normalcy, as the institutional memory and mechanisms of the alliance are strong. However, in practical terms, the timing of this political crisis will make it challenging to have high-level strategic coordination or make progress on key alliance issues in 2025. South Korea will have only an acting president when US President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. And depending on how long the Constitutional Court takes to decide the impeachment case, it could be as long as eight months from now before a new president is elected. We also cannot rule out a prolonged period of uncertainty followed by Yoon’s return to office, in a much-weakened and tenuous position, in the event the court does not uphold the impeachment.

—Markus Garlauskas is the director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative and a former national intelligence officer for North Korea.

5. What can we expect from North Korea right now?

North Korea appears to have been laying the groundwork for a renewed military confrontation with South Korea for some time now, and it could initiate that confrontation at a particularly inopportune moment for the alliance. Pyongyang’s silence so far suggests that North Korea will wait for the outcome of the Constitutional Court’s decision and the election of a new president in South Korea before moving to take advantage of the situation, however. North Korea likely recognizes that pursuing a confrontation with Han, the interim president, could simply strengthen the position of South Korean conservatives inclined to take a harder line against North Korea. Meanwhile, before pushing too far, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is likely to want some time to probe Trump’s new position. 

A major thaw in relations is unlikely, even if South Koreans elect a progressive president inclined to engage Pyongyang, given Kim’s moves this year to reinforce the permanence of the division between North and South. Despite optimism in some quarters about the possibility of renewed Trump-Kim summitry in 2025, not much is likely to result. A lot has changed in the four years since Trump left office, and Kim’s position has solidified in ways that make it much less likely that he would be willing to offer major, meaningful concessions to Washington or Seoul.

—Markus Garlauskas

On the surface, North Korea’s response to the political crisis has been limited to domestic media commentary and has refrained from openly confronting South Korea so, perhaps to prove wrong Yoon’s claims about North Korean infiltration. At the same time, the political turmoil in South Korea is a prime situation for North Korea to carry out covert cognitive warfare—particularly through social media and other communication methods. In particular, Pyongyang would be piggybacking and boosting the criticisms in South Korea toward Yoon and the conservatives. 

For North Korea, such measures are essentially about investing in the return of the progressives to power, which North Korea could exploit to make South-North relations and circumstances on the peninsula more advantageous for Pyongyang. North Korea’s new official policy of recognizing South Korea as an “adversary” rather than a “partner for unification” was not only to bolster its militarily confrontational stance, but a means of hybrid warfare to apply further pressure on Seoul—particularly vis-à-vis the progressives. Hence for now, North Korea will likely see how the situation in South Korea plays out while also ensuring that it has the upper hand in dictating the direction of inter-Korean relations.

—Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi

The post The global ripple effects of South Korea’s political turmoil appeared first on Atlantic Council.

I was born in Karaj, Tehran, and after many years in Iran, I returned to Afghanistan to work. At that time, Afghan women were beginning to engage with democracy and reclaim their place in public life, but the Taliban attacked this progress with a relentless assault on civilian life. The group destroyed infrastructure; attacked schools, universities, and hospitals; and ultimately seized control of the country before imprisoning women in their homes.

Days before the Taliban entered Kabul, Kandahar had fallen. My mother and siblings fled to my home in Kabul, leaving everything behind as our father’s house in Kandahar was surrounded by Taliban forces, who arrested the men in our family.

On August 15, 2021, I saw Taliban fighters in the streets as I attempted to reach my office. They were on motorcycles and in military vehicles, brandishing white Taliban flags, their faces weary yet triumphant. People were fleeing in terror. Unable to reach my destination, I turned back, a journey that stretched for hours due to the chaos. In the sixth district, Taliban soldiers angrily lowered Afghanistan’s tricolor flag, replacing it with their own.

The sight of people’s panic and the violent, angry faces of the Taliban terrified me. I began to fear that they would notice my uncovered face. At one point, a Taliban soldier slammed the car I was in and demanded to know, “Who is this, and where are you taking her?” The driver, thinking quickly, responded, “She is my daughter, and I’m taking her home.” Later, near the American University, the sounds of gunfire filled the air, and I broke down in tears.

My husband and I were on an evacuation list, but when we attempted to reach the airport with a single bag of clothes, we turned back in fear after witnessing a deadly explosion there. On the way home, I saw the Taliban whipping a woman over her clothing. Her husband pleaded for leniency, but they insulted him too, accusing him of dishonor for allowing his “bad wife” to go out in public. This is how gender apartheid operates under the Taliban—not only imposing strict regulations on women but also systematically turning men in the family into enforcers of the Taliban’s control over women.

The following day, I learned that women were banned from working. I was permitted only to collect my belongings from the office. Drivers, however, had been instructed not to pick up women who were alone or not fully covered in hijab. Waiting hours for a ride, I faced jeers from Taliban fighters, who hurled insults at women to cover their faces.

Humiliated and isolated, I decided to later join other women at the Fawara Aab, the water fountain square, to protest. My mother had taught me to resist, not to stay silent. And with no job or income, resistance through protest was our only choice. Abandoned by the international community, Afghan women were left alone to face the Taliban’s repression and apartheid regime.

When we protested, men on the streets accused us of seeking an excuse to leave Afghanistan, questioning our motives. But our revolution was all we had left. On August 13, 2022, a year after the Taliban takeover, we gathered to protest again. We met at Kabul’s Golbahar Center, but soon, Taliban forces surrounded us, firing shots into the air. They pursued us, firing directly at us as we reached Jamhuriat Hospital. Injured and separated, ten of us took shelter in an underground space. The owner, who initially reassured us, ultimately betrayed us and called the Taliban. When they arrived, the Taliban soldiers beat us with Kalashnikov rifles, accusing us of dishonoring our families. After confiscating our phones, they detained us for three hours before releasing us, though they kept us under surveillance.

On February 9, 2023, the Taliban arrested me again, dragging me from a taxi at a checkpoint and dispersing the crowd by firing shots to prevent there from being any witnesses. They took me to a security facility, where thirty armed men awaited. One of them threw a cup of hot tea at me when I told them I was from Kandahar, and I feared I had gone blind. They forced me to unlock my phone by prying my fingers, then beat me when I asked to see my family.

Around 11:30 pm, they took me to the intelligence office, twisting my arms when I resisted. Two women were brought to escort me, placing a black hood over my head. We reached Dehmazang, where they photographed me like a criminal and led me to a damp, dark cell. I was bleeding heavily, and after I fainted, they took me to the hospital under strict orders to hide my face. There, I whispered to the doctors, “I am Narges Sadat, the girl who protested and was arrested by the Taliban. They can’t silence me.” Some of the doctors even cried but could do little beyond applying ointment to my wounds.

Back in prison, they beat me and denied me sanitary items. I scratched words onto the cell walls with my nails, recounting what had happened. I saw traces left by other protesting girls who had been held there before me.

Each time they whipped me, they declared the reason: “Because you messaged other protesting women, because of your protests, because you posted photos of Ahmad Shah Massoud and General [Abdul] Raziq,” military leaders who resisted the Taliban. Their accusations piled up. When Eid approached, I hoped for release, as others had been pardoned. A prison official called my name, but instead of freedom, he accused me of causing trouble in the prison, calling me a mercenary and servant of foreigners. My nine-year-old son visited me, terrified, asking them to free me. They told me they would release me if I pledged to stop protesting. Desperate to be with my son, I agreed. After taking a heavy “guarantee” from me, they finally let me go.

In total, I was in Taliban custody for eighty days (though their official record falsely stated sixty), including thirty-five in solitary confinement. They tortured me with electric shocks and left cold water beneath my feet at night. I was denied family visits, and each trip to the bathroom involved being hooded and led several floors up in excruciating pain.

When transferred to the general cell, the pain only intensified. There were other women imprisoned with their children in deplorable conditions. Some had severe mental health issues, worsened by confinement. Girls as young as ten and fifteen were jailed because their male relatives had served under Raziq, a commander in the Afghan army who was assassinated by the Taliban in 2018. Other young women faced the threat of stoning, accused of fleeing their homes.

I even witnessed women in the prison who were affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) enjoying better conditions than ours. They were granted cell phones, water filters, and a variety of food. They often bullied other inmates, and once, they physically assaulted me.

Reflecting on my traumatic ordeal, I realize that perhaps my time in prison was part of my purpose. I endured to speak out for the women still silenced within those walls. The Taliban prison is a place where calls to prayer mix with women’s screams. We took to the streets not just for ourselves but to demand equality and resist the Taliban’s apartheid regime.

Our resistance is rooted in a long history. We are the daughters of women whose lives were stolen by the Taliban, who taught us to resist through their own stories of suffering. Today, the world’s fleeting support reminds us of Afghan women’s bravery, but we are now abandoned to a terrorist authoritarian regime that decides our fate as the world watches. Yet we will continue to rise, defying the Taliban’s will with renewed strength each day.

Today, we call on countries that claim to champion human rights to recognize gender apartheid as a crime. Our testimonies provide undeniable proof of this regime’s repressive nature. The sexual assaults on women protesters in Taliban prisons, the Taliban’s public announcements of stonings, and decrees from their Supreme Court and Amir al-Momineen establish a foundation for defining gender apartheid in Afghanistan.

To achieve a safer and more just world, gender apartheid must be recognized as a crime, and the Taliban must face accountability in international courts.

Narges Sadat is an advocate and women’s rights activist from Afghanistan. She garnered international attention for her protests against the Taliban’s gender apartheid. She graduated in the fields of literature, administration, and diplomacy.

This article is part of the Inside the Taliban’s Gender Apartheid series, a joint project of the Civic Engagement Project and the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation Project. This article is based on an interview with Sadat by Nayera Kohistani and was translated and edited by Mursal Sayas.

The post A protester’s story from inside a Taliban prison appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On October 30, Transatlantic Security Initiative senior fellow Elisabeth Braw wrote an op-ed for Engelsberg Ideas discussing Germany’s commitment to protecting international legal norms in the Baltic Sea.

Fellow

Elisabeth Braw

Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

NATO Resilience & Society

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

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The post Braw featured in Engelsberg Ideas appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian authorities have been vocal about the need to document Russian war crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. Many of Kyiv’s partners have provided extensive backing for these efforts. Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has initiated investigative proceedings, and has issued a number of warrants for the arrest of senior Kremlin officials including Russian President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges. This trend is welcome and must continue.

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.

The pursuit of justice for Russian war crimes is not just a matter of upholding the law. It is a key component of Ukraine’s broader strategy to safeguard its sovereignty and rebuild its war-torn society. If Ukraine is unable to secure justice for the millions who have suffered as a direct result of Russia’s invasion, this could seriously weaken the legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities and lead to the long-term destabilization of the country.

Crucially, enforcing accountability for atrocities will also send a powerful signal to Russia and the wider international community that war crimes will not be tolerated. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked the largest European war since World War II, and has directly violated many of the core principles of international law. If the invasion ends in an ugly compromise that leaves Moscow unpunished, much of the progress made since 1945 will be undone.

Russia currently stands accused of war crimes in Ukraine including mass killings, deportations, torture, the systematic abduction of children, and the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure. However, previous generations of Russians have faced very similar war crimes accusations without ever encountering legal consequences. This has helped foster a sense of impunity in modern Russian society that has paved the way for the atrocities currently taking place in Ukraine. Addressing Russian impunity must therefore be central to any meaningful peace process.

Eurasia Center events

Online Event Fri, January 30, 2026 • 9:00 am ET

How Russia’s winter warfare strategy targets Ukrainian civilians

Conflict Europe & Eurasia Geopolitics & Energy Security Human Rights

Ukraine’s efforts to gather evidence of war crimes during the ongoing Russian invasion have been groundbreaking. Prosecutors, law enforcement officials, legal experts, and members of the country’s civil society have all made significant contributions. One particularly important development has been the use of DNA database technologies, with mobile DNA labs enabling forensic teams to operate in recently liberated areas of Ukraine. The physical evidence acquired during these investigations has made it possible to identify victims and could also be used in future prosecutions.

Ukraine’s efforts to hold Russia accountable have also been boosted by partnerships with a range of international legal experts and organizations. This cooperation could have consequences for international justice that extend far beyond Ukraine’s borders. The experience of investigating war crimes that has been acquired in Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 can contribute to the broader objective of strengthening the international legal framework that underpins global security.

Continued international assistance in Ukraine’s quest for justice is an important element of the support Kyiv receives from its partners. By providing forensic expertise, legal guidance, and diplomatic backing, Western allies strengthen Ukraine’s efforts while emphasizing their own commitment to accountability for war crimes. This will help prevent the normalization of war crimes and other violations of international law. Failure to act decisively could embolden other actors globally, leading to the further erosion of the rules-based international order.

Looking ahead, the fight for justice must remain at the heart of efforts to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is vital to pursue victory not only on the battlefield but also in the courtroom. This will require sustained international solidarity and political will at a time when there are growing signs of war-weariness and calls for a compromise that would allow Moscow to escape accountability. Anything less than justice for the victims of Russia’s invasion will invite further aggression from Russia itself and from other expansionist powers. This would be a costly blunder that would set the stage for a new era of international instability.

Kateryna Odarchenko is a partner at SIC Group Ukraine. Lesia Zaburanna is a member of the Ukrainian parliament with the Servant of the People Party and a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Sep 5, 2024

Too many still view Ukraine through the prism of Russian imperialism

By Olesya Khromeychuk

Far too many Western newspaper editors, academics, and cultural commentators continue to view Ukraine through the distorting lens of Russian imperialism, writes Olesya Khromeychuk.

Civil Society Conflict

UkraineAlert Sep 26, 2024

Putin will keep escalating his nuclear blackmail until it stops working

By Peter Dickinson

More than two and half years since the start of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, it should now be abundantly clear that Vladimir Putin will continue escalating his nuclear blackmail until it stops working, writes Peter Dickinson.

Arms Control Conflict

UkraineAlert Sep 12, 2024

Concerns grow over possible Russian sabotage of undersea cables

By Aleksander Cwalina

The United States has recently detected indications of increased Russian military activity around key undersea cables, fueling concerns over a possible escalation in the Kremlin’s hybrid war against the west, writes Aleksander Cwalina.

Conflict Defense Policy

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 Ending Russian impunity: Why Ukraine needs justice as well as security appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Watch the full event

Transatlantic Forum on GeoEconomics

DECEMBER 11, 2026 MIAMI, UNITED STATES The Transatlantic Forum on GeoEconomics is an annual conference convening economic and financial leaders from both sides of the Atlantic.

Speaker

Lisa Monaco
Deputy Attorney General, US Department of Justice

Moderator

Stephanie Flanders
Senior Executive Editor for Economics, Bloomberg; Head, Bloomberg Economics

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much for joining us, Deputy Attorney General. I know you wanted to be here in person, but the president needed you more than even we did. But I’m looking forward to this conversation. We’ve had—I was just—we were just chatting earlier. And I was saying, you know, this is—the reason I had, you know, wanted to spend as much time as possible at this conference today is the transatlantic council is very good at getting into the weeds and having very substantive conversations for the nerds among us. We wear that as a badge of pride.

And when it comes to this interconnectedness of economic security and national security that we’ve seen play out and we see demonstrated in session after session at this conference, I think—I mean, you, in the Department of Justice, you’ve been living that dream the last few years. And there’s no greater symbol of that new interconnectedness than the Disruptive Technology Strike Force. So maybe that’s where we could start with asking you why that was created, and why it was—why it was a priority for the department. You know, and possibly—you know, in a pretty new area.

LISA MONACO: Well, great. Happy to do that. First, let me say thank you to Kim for that introduction, to the Atlantic Council and, importantly, to the Geoeconomic Center for really being such an excellent bridge between finance, economics, national security. I think it’s particularly important in today’s world that that bridge has been built. And thank you, Stephanie, for having this conversation. I really do wish I was there in person, not the least of which because it’s always good to get out of Washington. But, alas, events intervened.

So let me step back for a second as I answer your question, Stephanie, and kind of situate folks a little bit as to how we in the Justice Department see the current moment and the current landscape, and why this conversation, I think, is so, so important, and the conference that you’re convening is so important. You know, I’ve held a number of both national security and law enforcement roles over the last twenty years. And what I have seen is a real evolution in the threat landscape. And today, the most pressing challenges, I think, that we are seeing really combine and intertwine national security, economic security, and increasingly technology.

And what I am particularly concerned about these days, and it’s reflected in the intelligence that I and the other folks that you have heard from this morning, from government, and that I’m sure Daleep will talk about, is what we are seeing in the way that adversaries are seeking to exploit technology to gain national security, and economic security, military, and intelligence advantage; how they are seeking to fuel their rise and their competitive edge by projecting power both at home and abroad, challenging norms, as we’ve seen so brutally with Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion into Ukraine, and a whole host of other areas.

This threat landscape that we are seeing today, I think, is playing out certainly in physical battlefields and economic zones and in information spaces. And the real issue that we are focusing on here is how those adversaries, increasingly nation-states and their proxies, are exploiting critical technologies, emerging technologies, whether it’s through cybertheft, through traditional espionage, and through foreign investment, and I might add, which I’m hoping we can get into a little bit later.

So what we are trying to do is respond to that moment in a host of different ways and the role that we play, which is really a unique one. The Justice Department is unique in the federal government and amongst the executive branch as having both a national-security and a law-enforcement mission. The Justice Department is the lead law-enforcement and counterintelligence investigator and enforcer in the United States.

So we really are well-positioned and uniquely positioned to respond to this current moment and the current threat landscape, all of which is to say that’s why we have really focused our efforts on responding to this moment, to this threat landscape, to the actions we’re seeing, particularly from increasingly adversary nation-states and what they are trying to do as it pertains to critical technologies and emerging technologies.

That’s why I launched now last year something called the Disruptive Technology Strike Force. And it’s designed to be a joint effort, led by the Justice Department and the Commerce Department, not usually the folks that you think join forces on enforcement actions all the time. But the moment we are in and the current threat landscape really does call for it. So, together with the Commerce Department, Department of Homeland Security, our colleagues across the federal government, and, importantly, international partners, we are going after adversaries who are trying to siphon off our most critical technologies to use it against us and to fuel their own economic and national-security and military rise.

We have made—and I’ve directed our prosecutors to make AI a top enforcement priority when it comes to this strike force. And we are focusing very much on enforcing our export-control laws and the CHIPS Act and the additional authorities there, sanctions evasion, illicit money laundering and other networks that are trying to, again, siphon off this critical technology to potentially use against us, but really to fuel the rise of adversary nations.

And so this kind of unique partnership and forming of this strike force has already had really significant successes. We’ve arrested more than twenty individuals for everything from export-control violations, smuggling of sensitive technologies, dual-use items to Russia, to Iran, to China, and again, focusing on the most critical technologies that we’re most concerned about.

Just last week, we took a series of enforcement actions in five separate cases, holding individuals accountable here and abroad, who were funneling everything from lasers to UAV technologies to microelectronics with military applications to Russia, to China, to Iran, all in violation of our sanctions regimes, our export-control laws. So this is just one example in last week’s cases of the work we are trying to do to strike back against adversaries trying to use our most critical and emerging technologies against us.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: And, along with the Disruptive Technologies Strike Force, you also—you have the KleptoCapture Task Force. I would compliment—

LISA MONACO: Yeah, we’re—

STEPHANIE FLANDERS:—compliment the people who come up with these names. They watch a lot of Marvel movies, I think.

LISA MONACO: If only. If only.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: But how much of a learning curve is it if you’re trying to go after the enablers that help hide the assets and money to shell companies, to cryptocurrency exchanges? I think we saw action today announced by the president on cryptocurrency exchange. You know, are you finding you just—you need more talent to come—you know, more people who understand this stuff or you need more tools? How has that been going?

LISA MONACO: So a number of things there, Stephanie, to unpack.

One, so you did reference an announcement that we’ve just made this afternoon, a case out of our US Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, together with our national security division here in Maine Justice. This was the disruption of an illicit cryptocurrency exchange called Cryptex and the indictment of a Russian national.

Again, this is part of our—really, our effort and our focus on disruption. We will bring and always continue to bring prosecutions wherever and however we can but that’s not the only tool we’re going to use.

We are going to take disruptive action wherever we can, going after the criminal ecosystem, in this case an illicit cryptocurrency exchange, and the money laundering on the darknet that it was fueling, again, to support ransomware actors, to support drug trafficking, again, going after the whole ecosystem that is really contributing to destabilizing activities around the world and fueling, again, a criminal ecosystem that malicious cyber actors are taking advantage of.

And when we talk about our efforts like Task Force KleptoCapture, which we launched, by the way, Stephanie, just days—mere days after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine and we did that because we wanted to be poised together with our partners to go after those who are fueling Putin’s war machine, to go after the ill-gotten gains of the oligarchs and, I should say, their enablers—the money launderers, the fixers, the shell companies that are kind of propping up these networks and, in turn, propping up the war machine.

So we have seized everything from yachts in Fiji to grounding planes in Switzerland and the UAE. We’ve forfeited luxury apartments around the world and seized art. So we’re really trying to go after those who are fueling Putin’s war machine and thereby, together with our partners, really isolate what is kind of norm busting behavior by Putin, by the Russian invasion, enforcing our global sanctions regimes that, after all, don’t work unless we are moving in concert with our partners.

So these actions that I’ve mentioned, both the work I just mentioned today with the disruption of the Cryptex cryptocurrency exchange, that was done with our Dutch partners today as well as some others. All the work that we’re doing with Task Force KleptoCapture relies heavily on and is made stronger by our work with our international law enforcement and intelligence partners, whether it’s Germany or the UK.

You name it, we are much stronger when we are working together to really close off these avenues, these dark spaces that allow the work of the oligarchs and the illicit networks to really—to prosper. So we’re determined to shut those down, deprive Putin and his war machine of those ill-gotten gains. That was the whole idea behind Task Force KleptoCapture.

But what we need to do this work is absolutely our international partnerships but also we need cooperation from the private sector, right. We need the work and that’s true also, I should add, with the disruptive technology strike force.

Some of the best cases we’ve been able to make rely on tips and cooperation that we’ve received from the private sector who I have to imagine don’t want their networks and, you know, their backbone of being exploited by malicious actors.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: I mean, there’s—you talk about the fueling—the financial fueling of the war machine. Obviously, there’s also just the keeping it well stocked—the avoidance of sanctions—and I know Daleep Singh will be talking about this later this afternoon.

But, you know, you have a lot of this avoidance and evasion hiding in plain sight. I mean, even in the trade statistics where you find enormous explosion of exports potentially containing sanctioned goods embedded in them from countries in Central Asia but also countries like India.

I’m just trying to understand. I mean, DOJ has been playing a bigger role in sanctions enforcement. Does the DOJ have a role in, you know, whether Indian companies—once you put Indian companies on the entities list, are there then actions against them? I’m just trying to think of how you see your role extending.

LISA MONACO: Sure. It’s a great question and an opportunity for me to explain why the role that the Justice Department plays is so unique and so critical. I mentioned before that the Department of Justice is unique in our system because we are both a law enforcer and—a law enforcement organization and a national security agency. What does that mean? It means we have both criminal tools and law enforcement authorities, and we have national security and intelligence tools and authorities. And we can bring both to bear to get after whatever the threat is, and use the best tool that we have, together with our partners, to disrupt that threat.

So what do I mean by that? It means that the cases I’ve referenced, the investigations that we do, that can feed in—that can produce information, intelligence, evidence, that we can share with our partners to help them develop their sanctions package, to help them develop the information that is necessary to put them on the entities list—sometimes to share with our international partners to help them undertake their work within their system and their rule of law system. So it really is a virtuous cycle to be able to use both our law enforcement and criminal tools as well as our national security and intelligence authorities.

And the name of the game here, Stephanie, is all tools we have developed. And this dates back many years to how we’ve gone after other national security threats—whether it’s terrorism, whether it’s nation-states, cyber actors, to today going after autocratic regimes who are undermining the rule of law. undermining confidence in the financial system because of the actions they are taking. We are really playing an increasingly large part in getting after that national security threat, using the same kind of approach that we have in other spaces. And that is all tools, whatever tool that we can use as a government, whether it’s our criminal indictment, whether it’s our contributing to a sanctions regime, whether it’s us helping the Commerce Department, or whether it’s us feeding information into one of our international partners’ work, that is what we are going to do. And we’re not kind of prejudicing whose tool is better. We’re coming at it to decide what’s the best way to disrupt the threat.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: And you mentioned we had a very thoughtful conversation about AI before lunch. And you talked about seeking tougher penalties for criminal actions that involve misusing AI. So I’m interested in what kind of examples you’re thinking of, of that kind of misuse, in the investigations that you’re undertaking.

LISA MONACO: Sure. So this is something I’ve been talking a lot about. You know, we want our companies to be leading in this space. We want the United States to be a leader and an innovator. Companies and, indeed, government agencies should be using new and emerging technologies, like AI, to make their work better, more efficient, more precise. But we have to do so attentive to the risk posed, particularly to deliberate risk posed from deliberate misuse. So the message that I have tried to convey when it comes to corporate criminal enforcement and the use and misuse of AI, or other emerging technologies, it’s really the following.

One, first and foremost, this is a brave new world, but the law applies. We have frameworks and laws that I believe, and we believe, apply to current conduct. So, for instance, we have been sending the message that price fixing with AI is still price fixing, fraud or market manipulation with AI is still fraud and market manipulation. And we are going to treat it as such. Accordingly, we’ve also sent the message that if AI is being deliberately misused and abused within a company to perpetrate a particular crime, to make it more impactful/more serious, we will seek enhanced sentences. And that’s a direction that we’ve given to our prosecutors.

Again, we want companies to be the leaders in the development and use of these technologies, but we have to be doing it in a way that is consistent with responsible corporate behavior. So we have also directed earlier this year that the Criminal Division, which is responsible for evaluating a company’s—for instance, a company’s compliance program in the context of a potential investigation or resolution, we’ve directed that they include an evaluation of how that company’s compliance program is mitigating or addressing the potential for abuse of technologies in the course of that compliance evaluation.

So we’re telling you that you need to be asking questions like: How is the company managing the risk posed by a particular technology? How is it mitigating the potential for deliberate misuse of that technology? It’s all part of what we are trying to do, which is to incentivize a culture of compliance, incentivize responsible corporate behavior, because I think that redounds to the benefit across the board, both for our national security, our economic security, and confidence in the rule of law within the United States.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: I guess one of the examples that kind of crystalizes how much the world has changed, but just also just the complexity of what constitutes a national security threat, has been the debate around TikTok. So I just—I just wanted to ask you, I mean, there’s—obviously, ByteDance is facing—there’s a January deadline for divesting TikTok. There’s a big legislative or political battle around that. But just sort of stepping back, why is it that it’s a national security threat? What would be the case for banning TikTok?

LISA MONACO: So I—you said that we’re going to nerd out, so let me nerd out for one minute. And this is in the lane of—

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: Everyone’s sitting up in their chair now. They’re excited.

LISA MONACO: Yeah, I’m sure.

Since this is very much a matter of ongoing litigation, I have to be very careful and limited in what I can say. And, obviously, the fact that it’s ongoing is very clear by the fact that we just had an oral argument in the DC Circuit in connection with the legislation that the Justice Department is defending.

And so a few things I can say. One is that the law that the Justice Department is defending that Congress passed earlier this year is not seeking to prohibit protected speech. It is seeking to restrict foreign ownership of a company that—and a foreign ownership itself that threatens national security. So our briefs that we have filed with the court and that were the subject of this oral argument make, I think, quite clear that the central purpose of the law is to break the ties that bind TikTok to Beijing, to break the ties that bind TikTok to the PRC government. And the law that we are defending addresses—and that Congress passed—addresses, I think, the risks that we’ve been discussing, and that is the risks posed by foreign adversaries that are seeking to influence particular sectors with significant national security vulnerabilities.

So this is not a ban of TikTok or any other application that this law is reaching, and it doesn’t censor American speech. What it is responding to is a real and documented national security threat posed by nation-state adversaries who can weaponize applications or software that are running on every phone in every pocket across the United States, and that has the potential to covertly manipulate content. And I will also say, Stephanie, as part of the filing that we have made in the course of this case, there has been declassified intelligence that’s been included in that—those legal briefs that demonstrates that TikTok and ByteDance have acted in response to PRC demands to censor content outside of China. So I think I’ll leave it at that.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: I mean, I guess this is an example of something—and it’s coming up a lot here—you know, you’re having to innovate. And you said yourself, it’s about using whatever the best tool is, and then you’re—or sometimes devising new tools to respond to new threats within a framework that you can legally justify. But I guess the more you innovate—sorry, carry on.

LISA MONACO: No, I was just saying, that is exactly what you see is at play with this legislation, that Congress was responding to the moment that I’ve described earlier, the kind of—the state that we are in with regard to the challenges posed by the intersection of national security threats and the misuse and abuse of certain technologies. And I think that law that it passed is very much a response to that challenge.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: I guess the broader question I was thinking of is, you know, that the more you innovate, and you come up with new tools, you obviously want to feel like it can be justified within existing legal frameworks. But it’s inevitably going to be more open to challenge whether, as you know, by political opponents or by other legal opinion. I just wondered—I mean, and, obviously, you’ve got the court of public opinion when it comes to something like TikTok, but also when it comes to the way that we’re pursuing Russian sanctions. Are we penalizing the oligarchs more than we’re penalizing ordinary Russian people? All of those debates.

You know, as a lawyer, do you—you know, how do you kind of reach comfort with this kind of innovation? What are your sort of lodestars when you’re thinking about the effect on public opinion of doing something which, you know, doesn’t have a lot of precedent and is perhaps more contentious?

LISA MONACO: So I’ll take it in kind of two buckets. With regard to the legislation that I just referenced, obviously our role in the Justice Department is to defend the legislation that we believe is legally sound, that is—and we’ve worked with Congress to provide technical assistance on the legislation, and that it is defensible within our legal framework. And our briefs and the oral argument make that clear—the arguments we put forward in that regard.

When it comes to the sanctions, I guess I would quibble a little bit with the premise. Which is to say, I think the sanctions regimes and the kind of underlying authority, whether it’s [International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)] or other authorities, have been longstanding and, kind of, well practiced. I suppose some might say too well practiced. There is an ongoing debate about overuse, potentially, of sanctions. I think with regard to using those tools to respond to the brutal and unprovoked and illegal invasion by Russia into Ukraine to garner—and this has been the critical ingredient, Stephanie—to garner an unprecedented, kind of, alliance of nations to join in those sanctions and enforcing those sanctions, that has been a critical element.

Because, you know, when you think about what is a common currency to—you know, I guess pun intended—of these rule of law nations and rights respecting nations, it is upholding the rule of law, it is pushing back against the norms-violating behavior that we see most brutally and vividly in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And we need to be enforcing those sanctions to the best of our ability. But it obviously has to withstand a test, as they inevitably will be and have been challenged in many instances, by very well-resourced oligarchs, I would say. But we are up to that challenge. We are up to that task.

And have repeatedly been able to defend these enforcement actions and pursue these forfeiture actions, again, to take back and ensure that those who are trying to prop up Putin’s war machine are not benefiting from those ill-gotten gains and using them to fuel Russia’s brutality in Ukraine. And going after individual oligarchs who are evading our sanctions regimes, I think is obviously quite fair game. Similarly, the enablers and the shell companies, the money launderers have to be part of that enforcement regime. And it’s something that we have done in a very deliberate way, going after the oligarchs themselves but also the enablers and the facilitators that are creating a very permissive environment for some of these sanctions evasions.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: So we’ve had lots of tough subjects. I’m going to end with an easy one, which is the election. You talked about bad actors’ use of technology. What are you—I mean, briefly, but I know this is maybe the last time we’re going to hear from you publicly before the election. So, you know, what is the DOJ seeing on that front, whether it’s interference or just malign use of technology with respect to the election and its integrity?

LISA MONACO: Sure. Well, look, I’ve been, as has the attorney general, trying to be quite vocal about this, because I think it’s very important that people understand the threats that we are seeing and, importantly, what we are doing about them.

So when it comes to the threat environment with regard to election security, we are seeing, I am seeing, a more complex and diverse environment than I frankly have ever seen before. I think it’s more diverse because we’re seeing more threat actors, more nation-states getting into the game, particularly when it comes to malign foreign influence.

We are seeing more complex operations and a—all of it operating in a more polarized environment than we’ve ever had before, thereby kind of fueling disinformation and misinformation, designed to sow discord and distrust in our democracy, and all of it fueled by and accelerated by artificial intelligence.

So when it comes to Russia, it is—and our intelligence community has been quite clear about this—is the dominant and predominant actor in this space. When it comes to Iran, they also are accelerating their efforts to influence the election, including the presidential election. And you’ve seen a number of statements issued by the intelligence community, by the FBI, in that regard, including very recently last week.

And when it comes to China, we are seeing efforts to influence not the presidential campaign, unlike or in contrast to Russia and Iran, but really trying to influence down-ballot races. But all of it, the overlay here is efforts to sow discord, sow distrust in our election system and undermine confidence in our democratic process. And what we have been trying to do is investigate, expose and disrupt wherever we can so people understand and can be discerning consumers of the information that they’re getting.

So a few weeks ago we took very significant actions to expose and disrupt two operations, directed by Russia and directed by Putin, to wage an online covert malign foreign-influence campaign, one operation involving the Russian state-sponsored or state-operated media operation, the RT, where they were funneling millions of dollars through shell companies to an American company here in Tennessee and using that to coopt unwitting American commentators to push out Russian propaganda, all, again, designed to prop up pro-Russian narratives.

We also, in that same set of actions, exposed and disrupted a Putin-directed operation from a proxy company called the Social Design Agency—a very Orwellian name, I might add. And this was used by Russian actors and directed by Putin to push out AI-generated content, targeting particular voter demographics and pushing out Russian propaganda and pro-Russian influence campaigns. And we’ve seen similar work and being accelerated by Iran; again, fake personas, webs of online personas, pushing out AI-generated content, all designed to sow discord, and, in some instances, using the conflict in Gaza almost like kerosene to whip up protests and demonstrations and to fuel discord.

So it’s a very aggressive space, increasingly fueled by AI, designed to influence our elections. But our focus is on exposing it—investigating it, exposing it, disrupting it. And you have seen an unprecedented level of transparency from this government, from the intelligence community, from the Justice Department and the FBI about what we are seeing and putting that out on a regular basis so individuals and voters can be discerning about what they’re seeing.

Last thing I’ll stay, Stephanie, all that said, I have a great deal of confidence in the ability of individuals to go out and vote in a fair and safe election process because we have a very diffuse and resilient system that is undertaking that responsibility, all of it done at the state and local level throughout the nation. But part of the reason I am confident in that is because we are pointing out this information and trying to be as transparent as possible in making sure people understand the what—the lengths to which some of our foreign adversaries will go to try and influence this election.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: Well, you mentioned election integrity just there, but I know also the degree of polarization. I mean, we, obviously—on the domestic front we’ve seen the department already weighing in on some of the legal battles that are being—cases that are being raised already on what you might call a precautionary basis around the country around election integrity. Do you—do you see any serious legal cases there? Which are the ones that you’re most focused on, the sort of paper trail that’s been left?

LISA MONACO: Well, you know, the Justice Department has—this goes back to our dual national security and law enforcement mission. Our responsibilities when it comes to election security are quite wide-ranging, from exposing and holding accountable foreign malign actors in the way I just described, to enforcing our civil rights laws and our voting rights laws and ensuring that there is access—that there’s ballot access, access to voting places. And we are continuing to do that. We have filed a few lawsuits in places where we want to make sure that states are living up to their responsibilities to ensure equal and clear and fair access to election and polling places.

But there is another entrant on the election security kind of landscape, Stephanie, that I think is important to address, and that’s the unprecedented rise in threats to public officials, including election workers, that we have seen in the last several years. This is something that I had not seen in my previous many, many years of service, and something we have responded to with an Election Threats Task Force that we launched a couple of years ago because we have been seeing such a disturbing rise in threats of violence and sometimes actual violence being perpetrated against election workers—everyone from elected or appointed secretaries of state to volunteers, people who simply are volunteering to help all of us exercise our most fundamental right, the right to vote.

So we have brought more than seven hundred cases—threats cases in the last several years. More than half of those involved threats to public officials, including election workers. And we are determined to do everything we can to hold accountable individuals who would perpetrate threats of violence or actual violence against public officials because no one—no one—should have to be intimidated or feel threatened simply for doing their job. It’s unacceptable, it’s wrong, and we are determined to hold those who do so accountable.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: You’ve brought me right to my last question, which is a bit more of a sober one. But we’ve been—at Bloomberg, we’ve been running a swing state poll every month since the end of last year, and over the course of this year I think a rising majority of people responding to that poll have said they expect civil unrest around the election and after the election. Is that—is that what the department is expecting?

LISA MONACO: So I’m not going to comment on polls or expectations. There is no place for political violence. I mean, we saw the danger posed by it, of course most starkly in July with the attempted assassination against the former president and now, of course, just two weeks ago with the attempted assassination in Florida. Thankfully, the former president was unharmed most recently, and we are doing everything we can to ensure accountability particularly in this most recent case where you’ve seen we’ve now brought attempted assassination charges. That case is very much ongoing and in its early stages but we are determined to spare no resource to ensure accountability. And, again, no place for political violence. Not in July in Butler County, Pennsylvania, not two weeks ago in Florida. Not ever.

I am confident that the work that we have been doing both to hold accountable in this most recent case, the work that we have done to respond to the unprecedented threat against our democracy that we saw in the attack on January 6th of 2021, that we are showing that we are holding accountable those who would undertake threats to our democracy and that should be a very clear message to anybody who would contemplate doing so in the future.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS: Well, you’ve reminded us that the defense of national security and, certainly, economic security is on multiple fronts at home and abroad right now.

But, Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general, thank you very much for joining us.

LISA MONACO: Thanks for having me.

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Transatlantic Forum on GeoEconomics

DECEMBER 11, 2026 MIAMI, UNITED STATES The Transatlantic Forum on GeoEconomics is an annual conference convening economic and financial leaders from both sides of the Atlantic.

Speaker

R. Nicholas Burns
US Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, Department of State

Moderator

Josh Lipsky
Senior Director, GeoEconomics Center, Atlantic Council

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: With that, good morning to all—to you, and to Sigmar, and to everybody in New York City. I really do wish I could be with you, despite the traffic in New York, which is catastrophically bad in UNGA week. It’s the place to be in the world this week, at UNGA. But I have a full-time job here, as you know, in Beijing. And sometimes I have to be in Beijing to do that job. So that’s why I’m speaking to you virtually.

But I want to pay tribute to Fred and Sigmar, and to both institutions—to the Atlantic Council of the United States and to the Atlantik-Brücke. When I think about the transatlantic relationship, and as Fred said I spent a lot of my diplomatic career focused on it as ambassador to NATO but also as undersecretary of state, I really can’t think of two private organizations that played more of a foundational role in creating the modern relationship that we have, in the late 1940s through the 1950s, all the way through the end of the Cold War, and beyond, than these two organizations. And I want to pay tribute to Sigmar, who has been a great friend over many years, and to the Atlantik-Brücke. I’ve been involved with them for many years. And certainly, to the Atlantic Council. And so thank you for sponsoring this forum this morning.

I’m going to speak rather briefly about a very complicated subject, and that’s US-China relations. But I’m looking forward to being—to hearing your views, to answering questions, and mixing it up a little bit in an audience filled with Americans, Europeans, and people from all around the world, because I can’t think of anything more vital for the future of both the United States and our European allies than getting this relationship with China framed correctly and getting it moving forward.

I will say this at the beginning, to state the obvious. From an American government perspective, we have no more consequential relationship than we do with China, with the People’s Republic of China. It’s enormously complicated because, of course, we’re both a competitor with China and we are trying to be a partner, in some respects, with the Chinese as well. And I know that does mirror the strategic dilemma facing the NATO countries and the European Union as well.

I’d start talking about our relationship with some good news that might reassure everybody on a Thursday morning in New York. I’m going to have to give you some bad news in the middle of the presentation, and then we’ll go from there. Here’s the relatively better news about the US-China relationship. I think we’ve been able to stabilize it over the last nine or ten months, since President Biden met President Xi Jinping in San Francisco, on the margins of the APEC summit.

Prior to that, we’d had a very, very rocky time. I was sworn in in 2021. We had the visit of Speaker Pelosi to Taiwan, which we supported, which really led to a downturn—a significant downturn in our relationship. The government of China cut off many of our key strategic channels. Then you’ll remember, in February 2023 a strange balloon floated across the national territory of the United States, from Alaska all the way across the Great Plains to South Carolina, where it was shot down on orders of the president of the United States. That led to a downturn in our relationship on the Chinese side.

And so we went through a period of time through most of 2022 and part of 2023. We did not have any significant cabinet channels that were workable between the two countries. And as a diplomat, that concerned me greatly especially in a relationship filled with sometimes acrimony and competitiveness, and sometimes even bitterness. You need to have people at the highest level talking. And I think that’s what we’ve been able to recreate.

We now have—Secretary Tony Blinken has a very close working relationship with Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China. Jake Sullivan has a strategic dialog underway with Wang Yi. Janet Yellen with her counterpart, Vice Premier He Lifeng. Gina Raimondo, Secretary Raimondo, with her counterpart, Wang Wentao. And I think we are fortunate in this relationship to be led by President Biden, who has a very strong and long-lasting relationship over twelve to thirteen years now with President Xi Jinping.

So what do I mean by stabilizing the relationship? We’ve recreated the cabinet channels that you need to succeed, especially in a difficult bilateral relationship. What are some specific examples of that? We had not had our military leaders in contact through the two crises that I talked about. We now have our secretary of defense, our chairman of the joint chiefs, both have established contact and relationships with their Chinese counterparts. And very significantly, our admiral who leads our Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Sam Paparo, has recently had two meetings with the southern theater commander of the People’s Liberation Army.

And that’s significant because, you know, one thing I worry about, and many of us worry about, is unintended conflict—perhaps ships or planes colliding. It’s happened before, unfortunately, in this relationship. In the South or East China Sea, you want to have the ability to put our senior military commanders in touch with each other to reduce the temperature, separate with the accidental forces, and have a peaceful conclusion. And so that has begun to work for us, closer military to military ties.

On fentanyl—and for the Europeans present, fentanyl is the leading cause of death in the United States of Americans eighteen to forty-five—it’s a true national health crisis. And the majority of the precursor chemicals that make up the synthetic opioid that are made up by the drug cartels in Central America, the majority of those precursor chemicals come from black-market Chinese firms.

And so, after President Biden met with President Xi and the government of China pledged it would cooperate with us—and we’ve made progress together in trying to reduce the flow of those precursor chemicals, attack the illicit finance that funds it, and try to move down this road together of trying to resolve a major global-health problem involving the US and many other countries with the assistance of the government of China. We haven’t done enough yet. We haven’t gone fast enough. There’s more to do. But I do think that we’ve been able to at least head down the same road together. And that gives us some comfort.

Artificial intelligence is another example of a topic that we’re beginning to grapple with together. Obviously, we see in our country the benefits of AI, but we also see the risks. And we’ve begun a strategic conversation with the government of China to deal with the military risks associated with AI. We’re at the beginning of that, and we’re going to go much further. But at least we are at the beginning. And, of course, with our allies in NATO but also out here in the Indo-Pacific, we’ve gone much further.

And I’ll give you another example, a final example, Fred and Sigmar and Josh, and that is climate change. China’s about 28 percent of global emissions. The United States is 10 percent. But we’re the two leading emitters of carbon. I think we understand we have a shared responsibility to each other, to our citizens, but especially to, you know, the other eight billion people in the world to make sure that we’re working together on the Paris climate-change commitments that we undertook together back in 2015 when President Obama was in office, working with President Xi Jinping. John Podesta, who many of you know is our climate negotiator, he just visited us in Beijing three weeks ago; had a series of, I think, productive, constructive meetings.

You know, we disagree on some subjects. We would wish that the Chinese would do more on methane, more on nitrous oxide, and be very aggressive in their national declared commitments that they’re going to have to make in the next year or two. And we hope to see further progress at COP29. But I think so far, so good, in at least putting us on the same side of this effort.

And so, in those respects, I think we do have a more stable relationship in terms of high-level communication. And that allows us to have the type of conversations that are sometimes very difficult that can drive down the possibility or the probability that disagreements might lead to conflict, because obviously we don’t want that to happen. And we’re trying to be very responsible in the way we manage this relationship.

So that’s the—believe it or not, that’s the better news in this relationship. That’s point one.

Point two—and this would really be what I want to focus on, and then I’ll stop and we can have a good conversation—point two is that this remains, in large part, this relationship between the US and China, extremely competitive. We’re the two largest and strongest economies in the world. We’re the two strongest militaries in the world. We’re two countries with enormous global reach and potential to have an impact on the world. In our case, we think it’s positive.

And so we’ve got to be careful about how we handle this relationship. We’re systemic rivals, and I think we’ll be systemic rivals well into the next decade, perhaps even beyond. And that rivalry and competition plays out in four different spheres.

Certainly it plays out in the security realm here in the Indo-Pacific, where the United States has done a lot of work over the last four years, under President Biden’s leadership, to strengthen our security alliances with Japan, with the Republic of Korea, with the Philippines, with Thailand, with Australia. We’ve built up a very promising strategic initiative called AUKUS with the United Kingdom and Australia; important to keep the peace out here in the Indo-Pacific and provide for a very strong deterrent.

And you just saw the president—our president, Joe Biden—host the Quad leaders at the president’s home in Delaware just this past weekend. And India, Japan, Australia and the United States working together, that is an enormously capable and powerful quartet of countries designed, really, to work on positive issues about how to strengthen democracy, how to strengthen market capitalism, how to take on big global issues all together. So we think we’ve strengthened our relationship in the security realm out here in the Indo-Pacific.

I would also say, however, that one of the big gamechangers has been the degree to which both NATO and the European Union have begun to think about their security interests in this part of the world. When NATO leaders meet we have four security partners from the Indo-Pacific who meet with us in Western Europe or the United States or Canada or where that meeting is being held. That’s a game changer.

We see an enormous number of European members of parliament and members of the individual parliaments of the European governments traveling to Taiwan to stand up for an association with the Taiwan authorities that we hope will maintain the peace in the cross-strait basis and that’s been very, very helpful, I think, to us in this part of the world.

So competitive on the security realm, and the United States certainly is determined to maintain our leading position with our allies as a security force here in the Indo-Pacific. That’s a first order of competition. But I think both technology and economics have really taken center stage in the US-China relationship.

You know about the commercial rivalry or competition between American and Chinese companies when it comes to the development of artificial intelligence. But, obviously, as we think about AI and think about biotechnology and quantum computing there will be technologies developed in the military sphere based on what’s happening in the commercial marketplace.

And so the United States is determined to main our tech lead—to maintain our tech lead, I should say—and determined to work with other like-minded democratic countries on that basis, and the technology competition is white hot.

You’ve seen the United States shut down the possibility of American companies to export advanced semiconductors into the Chinese market. There are limits now on the ability of American private equity and venture capital firms to invest in artificial intelligence enterprises here in China.

Those are taken, this small yard high fence approach, not really for commercial reasons on our part but for national security reasons. We don’t want the PLA to gain access to our most sensitive commercial technologies that can be transformed into military capability and we’ve seen other countries begin to take these steps as well.

So technology is center stage and economics is center stage. We have a very complicated economic relationship with China. China is actually the third largest trade partner of the United States after our North American border states in Canada, in Mexico, and we have declared—and Secretary Yellen, our secretary of the Treasury, has said on multiple occasions we’re not trying to decouple the enormously large trade and investment relationship—over $600 billion last year—between the United States and China but we are going to derisk. . .

Technology and economics have combined to make this I think one of the most active areas and one of the most important in our overall relationship, and the issue of overcapacity, and I hope we get a chance to talk about that in some detail here, has taken on added importance.

We believe, and Secretary Yellen made this very clear when she visited Guangzhou and Beijing here in April, that China is engaged in massive overproduction of EVs and solar panels, of lithium batteries, of steel, of robotics, and biotechnology as well, and then in some of those areas producing two to three times here in China domestic demand and now trying to dump those products at artificially low prices in markets around the world.

I know that the European Union is engaged in a spirited debate about what action the EU should take. And I don’t want to comment on what the EU should or shouldn’t do. That’s up to the EU. But if you look around the world you’ll see that South Africa and Turkey have both raised tariffs on Chinese exports into their country to protect their markets. Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and the United States have done the same.

You saw President Biden put a hundred percent tariffs on sales of EVs—Chinese EVs—into the US market. We do this because what the Chinese are engaged in is patently unfair under international trade and we are not going to in any way tolerate a second China shock in the United States.

The first one, we lost well over a million American manufacturing jobs. We’re going to protect those jobs in the United States. And I think many other countries are reacting the same way against this overcapacity problem of the People’s Republic of China. Let’s talk more about that.

We should also talk in the economic national security domain about the fact that thousands of Chinese companies have been exporting dual-use components into Russia to strengthen the Russian defense industrial base and to allow Russia and strengthen Russia in its nefarious, brutal, illegal campaign in Ukraine and in firing Russian rockets and missiles, drones into Ukraine to kill Ukrainian civilians. We’re determined to stop this. We sanctioned over three hundred Chinese firms over the last several months. Unfortunately, we’ve not seen a change in Chinese behavior. And so they should expect that we’ll continue in this punitive effort to make our voice clear that we’re not going to stand by as China significantly helps Russia strengthen its armaments potential, but also its defense industrial base.

So in the security realm in the Indo-Pacific, on technology issues, on economic and trade issues, we have an intense competition underway between our two countries. And there’s a last—a last area. And it really is, in many ways, the most important. We have profound differences with the government of China on human rights. And we do not shy away from talking about those problems. People being held unjustly, like Ekpar Asat and Gulshan Abbas, for speaking out for freedom and the rights of the Uyghur peoples in Xinjiang.

The same is true in Tibet. The same is true in Hong Kong. The same is true in religious rights. And so we have a major disagreement with China on those issues. And we work in the UN Human Rights Council, along with many of the countries represented in the room today, to try to shine a light on the—on those terrible human rights practices of the government of China. So that’s the main bulk that would describe the very intense competition underway between our two governments.

But let me end, Sigmar, Fred, and Josh, on a slightly more positive note. I think we’re going to be competing with China. We in the United States, the European countries, and many of the Indo-Pacific countries, for a long time to come. Because we have to defend democracy. We have to defend the rule of law. We have to defend the rights of countries like the Philippines not to be subject to gross intimidation by the PLA. But we also want to make sure that we are responsible stewards of this relationship. And so we are dedicated to maintain a peaceful relationship between the United States and China.

I know that’s true for the European countries as well and for all of our Indo-Pacific allies, but it’s important to say it. And we put a lot of time and effort into creating these communication channels, into endless meetings with the Chinese leadership, so that our differences can be adjudicated peacefully and not through force of arms. The relationship’s a lot more complicated than this very short presentation that I’ve just given you. But let’s see if we can get into some of the details in the Q&A. And thanks so much, again, for inviting me to be with you.

JOSH LIPSKY: Ambassador, thank you for that. Thank you for overview and summary of the complexity of this relationship. It’s the perfect way to begin our conference today, because everything we talk about throughout the day—finance, and technology, and economic competition, and diplomacy—China is the major factor. And having you there—even though we wish you were here with us in New York—having you there from Beijing I think sends an important message. And we are very fortunate as Americans to have you as our representative in China right now. And we thank you for your service.

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Josh, thank you very much. If I could just say to the audience one thing about Josh Lipsky. I think what Josh is doing on geoeconomics at the Atlantic Council, working with Fred and others, is really pivotal as we think about American national security interests. And I got to know Josh when he was a student in my class at Harvard Kennedy School. And I can tell you how smart he is, how courageous he is intellectually. And I really admire the start—the brilliant start of his public service career. So thanks for having me with you, Josh.

JOSH LIPSKY: Thank you, Professor.

So let’s get into economics, one of the challenges you identified. It’s been an interesting forty-eight hours in China. First we saw the People’s Bank of China introduce a form of stimulus in a way we hadn’t seen them do before, and then we saw some fiscal announcements overnight here in the US in the last twenty-four hours from Beijing. I’m curious from your perspective there how you think Chinese policymakers think about the state of the Chinese economy, how you take these latest signals. And is it an indicator that maybe things are worse domestically for their economy than some forecasts are looking at right now?

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Josh, thank you. I think you’re right to point to this issue. It’s been an extraordinary couple of days looking at some of these major announcements that have been made by the Central Bank of China and others in the government here.

This is not a dodge, but we’re still looking at what they’ve announced and trying to, you know, do an analysis of how—the impact we think it’s going to have, both inside China but also on global markets. I think it’s a little bit too early to tell to make predictions, but certainly it’s a serious effort meant to try to address some of the short- and longer-term economic challenges that the government of China has.

It’s not for me to try to describe what the policymakers here are thinking. That’s their job; I’ll leave that to them. But I will say from an American economic perspective we want to see a market here that treats American firms more equitably. There are still lots of examples—and I meet with nearly every American CEO who comes through China—lots of examples of intellectual property theft, of forced technology transfer, of a dramatically unlevel playing field for American investors. And you’ve seen a dramatic drop in foreign direct investment by American investors, European investors, Asian investors—30 percent in this year alone. So that’s a major problem. And we would hope that the government here would continue to take the type of actions that would reassure foreign investors—in our case, American investors—that they can get a fair shake here and that they will be—if they make an investment or if they’re trading in a significant way, they’re going to be treated equally. And that is not always the case here.

Second, I’d say that, you know, you—we read and talk to some of the leading economic risk firms and analysis firms here, and there’s no question that China seems to be in a systemic transition as an economy, structural transition. The Rhodium Group put out a report a couple of weeks ago saying that China was in structural economic decline. Whether it’s in decline or a transition, it’s a fairly significant period. The drivers of growth in China—the property sector, the infrastructure sector—no longer are driving economic growth. And so I think, obviously, the government here has to take measures to try to increase nominal GDP growth rate. We would expect over time that growth rate would likely slow down, and continue to slow down in the second half of this decade into the next decade.

But our primary responsibility here is just to make sure that as American companies look at this market they have an accurate portrayal of what’s happening, but they’re also being treated fairly. And so Secretary Gina Raimondo and I have worked very closely together to try to make sure that American firms have that fair shake in this market, and that’s a consistent message that we’ve been sending to the government here. But certainly, what happens in the economy here is, obviously, one of the central issues that’s taking place here, and we’ll just have to see what the impact of these latest measures are.

JOSH LIPSKY: So you brought up earlier the issue of overcapacity. And based on what you’re saying of the structural slowdown, decline, however you term it, it seems the shift in China is away from the property sector and back into manufacturing, and that’s where this overcapacity problem stems from. But you’ve also said this is not the early 2000s, meaning the world is not going to react the same way that they did in the past China shock.

I’m curious what you’re seeing from other countries. You know, we talk about what the US is doing in tariffs and EVs. It’s not the early 2000s in the US. We seem to recognize that in our politics here and in our policy. But what about, as you engage with your colleagues in other countries both in Europe and beyond, how do they see this overcapacity problem and their unified or perhaps more aligned response to it?

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Well, Josh, I think you won’t be surprised—this is a very good question—that there is concern all over the world, including in countries that are close to China politically, about this overcapacity problem. It’s been a frustrating debate.

We started talking about this issue privately, obviously, with the government, and that was particularly true during Secretary Yellen’s visit here in early April. But it quickly became clear to us that the people—that the People’s Republic government was going to make a case that what they were engaged in, they say, is comparative advantage. And they simply were in a better position to manufacture products than, say, Europe or the Global South or the United States. And we contest that. Jay Shambaugh, our really able undersecretary of the treasury, made an important speech about why this was overcapacity on the part of the government of China and why, in economic terms, that was indisputable.

And so we’ve continued to press the government here for redress for American companies. But we’re not seeing much action. I think they’ve doubled down, the government here, on the overcapacity strategy. They call this the new productive forces. And so it’s been most visible, I think, the excess demand, by two to three times, domestic demand, OK, so excess demand then dumped around the world, most visible in EVs, lithium batteries and solar panels. But we also worry that this could now lead into biotechnology, into robotics, into other fields that are critical for the future.

If there’s one lesson, I think, that all of us around the world, in every single country, learned from the pandemic, don’t be reliant on a single source for critical materials, critical minerals, critical supplies that you need for your own economy. That’s the lesson we have digested and internalized in our government. And you hear that in what President Biden says about this issue. We are not going to tolerate a second China shock. And so that’s our message to the government of China.

So they shouldn’t be surprised when we, the United States, have raised tariffs on EVs, on solar panels, on lithium batteries and on other goods, and to see other countries doing it. I talk to all of my colleagues here, ambassadors from other countries—we’re all represented here in China—and to see it from Global South countries as well as Western Europe, as well as South America, as well as East Asian countries, has been a remarkable thing to see. So I think it’s a global issue. It’s a global pushback. And it’s a message that I hope the government here is going to understand and do something about.

JOSH LIPSKY: I’m really glad you mentioned the Global South countries, because that to me seems like such an important shift from when we went through this before in the early 2000s and their pushback. We’ve seen things Brazil have done and otherwise send, I hope, an important signal to China.

But there’s one country, of course, that’s happy to accept China’s support and industrial capacity, and that’ s Russia. Obviously, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell recently said China’s directly supporting China’s war effort. We had former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice here Tuesday at an Atlantic Council event. Fred interviewed her, your former boss at the State Department when you were undersecretary for political affairs. She talked about their union and alliance between China and Russia.

Do you see any recognition on the part of China that there has to be a retrenchment about this relationship? Or do you see it only further deepening?

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Unfortunately, Josh, there’s no indication that China’s going to back away from its no-limits partnership with Russia. And it’s greatly disturbing, I know, to a roomful of Europeans, as it is to Americans, as it is to a lot of people around the world. The Chinese like to say that they’re neutral in this war, that they want to be a peacemaker. But they’ve done nothing to try to end the war on terms that would be fair to the victim, and that’s the people and the government of Ukraine.

And so the Chinese have doubled down on political support, diplomatic support for the Russians in New York, at the Security Council. They have not provided—but we watch this every day—we don’t believe the Chinese have provided lethal military assistance, meaning entire armaments to complete weapon systems, to Russia, but they’ve supplied very important, critically badly needed components, dual-use technologies, to the Russian Federation, so much so that, you know, a lot of people think that the Russian defense-industrial base now is stronger than it was even at the beginning of the war, in large part because of the assistance they have from China.

And so the Chinese can’t have it both ways. And I know the depths of emotion and pushback that we’re seeing from Europe. We tell the Chinese, as do our European allies, this is a vital issue for Europe, Canada and the United States, the fact that Putin has divided Europe once again. He’s brought war to Europe in the most reckless way. And we Americans point out that we fought in the First World War, in the Second World War. We maintained three hundred thousand troops in Europe during much of the Cold War. We are an actor by virtue—on the continent—by virtue of our membership in NATO. This is a vital interest for the United States, that Europe return to being what George H.W. Bush first said on the American side it should be—whole, free, and at peace. And I look at, you know, all my friends in Germany who believe that to their core, that that’s what Europe should be, and China isn’t helping. And not just isn’t helping, it’s aiding and abetting the Russian war machine.

So this issue has really defined direct—you know, an open, direct disagreement between the countries of NATO and the EU, including my own, and the Chinese government. And I think they’ve heard that message but unfortunately, they haven’t acted on it. And so you see, as I said before, Josh, I think one of the biggest changes that I’ve seen in my over two and a half years as ambassador on the ground here is that Europe is now thinking strategically about Taiwan and about security in East Asia in a way that it hadn’t before.

And many of the countries of the Indo-Pacific, our democratic allies, want to have some kind of, you know, closer strategic relationship with Europe, with the European Union, with individual European countries, and on a partner basis with NATO. And so the Chinese have brought this upon themselves. And it’s an own goal. And I hope at—we all hope, at some point they may wake up and decide that they’ve got to cut their losses and not just have this outright 100 percent support for the Russian Federation in this bitter, cruel war.

JOSH LIPSKY: So I’m going to ask you one follow up on that. We have about ten minutes left. I want to get to some audience questions. So please use AskAC.org on your phones, or if you’re watching virtually, and we’ll get to a few if we can.

But just one follow up, Ambassador. Secretary Rice said what we should be doing is actually different than what we’re doing now. We should be highlighting the partnership between Russia and China, and by highlighting it—she called it, “slamming them together,” I think, in the conversation—show how much they don’t have in common, show the differences between them. And I just wonder, based on China’s seemingly lack of response to the policy call so far, does anything different need to be done to call China out on its support of Russia?

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Well, you know, I think that a lot of governments have been trying to do that, pointing to the reckless relationship, for instance, between Putin and Kim Jong-un, with the North Koreans supplying ballistic missiles to Russia, and the Russians agreed to have a closer military relationship. That can’t possibly be in the interest of the People’s Republic of China. Condi Rice and Bob Gates have also, as private citizens, spoken out against the loose cooperation, but very important cooperation—not an alliance, but cooperation—among Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. We see that well as a malevolent force. And so I think a lot of us, in many governments but certainly in our government, have tried to do just what Secretary Rice, I think, so rightly says, call out the obvious problems to China for a long—for hitching themselves to Russia over the—over the mid to long term.

JOSH LIPSKY: Thank you. OK, I have a lot of questions coming in. I’m going to try to bridge them together. But let me ask you one of a theme we’re going to get to at the end of the day. At the end of the day today we’re going to talk about the future of the dollar. Obviously, that’s core to our work at the geoeconomic center. We produce a wide body of research on this. How do you think China sees the yuan’s role in the global economy? There’s obviously been e-CNY, their digital currency. But I think there’s some maybe misconceptions or misunderstanding of what they want from their own currency, and how they want China and its currency—and more broadly, their economy—to play in the global economy.

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Well, certainly. I’ll just take one little step back, Josh, and say that there’s no question that China has ambitions to become the world’s strongest economic, as well as military, power eventually. Remember, all the—you remember all those predictions that China would pass the United States in nominal GDP by 2025, or 2026 or 2027? Well, that’s not going to happen, given the strength of the American economy and given some of the problems of the slower nominal GDP growth rates here in China.

On the currency, I’d just point you to data. I think the latest data, I hope—I think—I think this is right, that 4.7 percent of global payments were made in the RMB last year. And 47.8 percent were made in the dollar. So that gives you an indication of the relative strength in terms of international effect of the dollar versus the RMB. In our country, our Treasury secretary speaks about the dollar, and is the only person who really should go into depth speaking about it. So I’m going to maintain that tradition, as an American diplomat, of letting Secretary Yellen speak to that question.

But I can tell you on a comparative basis the Chinese do have ambitions for their digital currency but also for the RMB internationally. But they’re far behind the dollar at this point, and I’m, obviously, pleased about that.

JOSH LIPSKY: Well, I had to try.

So let me take a few questions here. We have—there are basically several online about AI and I’ll try to put it together for you, Ambassador. But I think the theme of the questions I see online is, is there any ability—you talked in the beginning of your presentation about areas where we can work with China. Is there anything you see on this ability to set standards on AI? It seems that this technology competition where it’s coming from is most critical, most key to our national security. Is there any traction on that front in the general use of AI or AI in the military domain, maybe most concerningly?

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Josh, I think there’s recognition, certainly in our country and in our government from the president on down, that we understand how transformative AI is going to be not just for the global economy but for our global society in a multitude of ways.

And so you’ve seen both the president this week at UNGA and Secretary Blinken talking a lot about AI, meeting with other world leaders. This has been going on for several years now but it’s very intense this week at UNGA purposefully because we understand that we’ve got to get this right, the balance between the promise of AI and risks associated with it, both in terms of the impact on human society, the impact on global economics, the impact on the balance of power, and the impact on war and peace as we look at those scenarios in the future. So that’s point one.

Point two, we’re at a very early stage, as I said, in our conversations with the Chinese leadership on AI. We had one meeting between our experts in Geneva a couple of months ago. We want to go beyond that meeting.

We would like to have an in-depth discussion particularly to address the risks associated with AI in the military sphere and that’s an exceedingly important conversation to have, and we hope the Chinese will be ready to meet us to have that dialog and we’re ready to have that dialog.

I think where we’re most advanced, Josh, is in our strategic conversations with our NATO allies, with our leading trade partners, and with our Indo-Pacific allies in terms of the geopolitical impact of AI in the future.

But we’ve got to do more. We hope to get to a more sophisticated, deeper discussion with the Chinese leadership and, as I said, we’re ready for that. We hope they are, too.

JOSH LIPSKY: A final question for me—I know it’s late in Beijing—you began your tenure in the middle of the pandemic. That’s an extraordinary difficult time to start anywhere but especially in China with the zero lockdown policy—zero COVID.

What have you seen over the past few years that surprised you and what would you like to share back with this audience here about your engagements with the Chinese people? Because I think that often gets lost in the conversations.

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Josh, thank you very much.

You know, I calculated—I added up the other day I think I’ve spent sixty days, six zero, in quarantine in two and a half years in China. That’s quite something when you think about it. The start that I had here and that many of my colleagues had here was lockdowns and daily testing and the inability to travel, and what has changed my perspective since the end of zero COVID—the Chinese government policy which ended in December 2022—is the ability to get outside of the capital city and to interact with people all over China.

People in the provinces remember, for instance, that the United States was a good friend to China here in China during the Second World War. They remember the Flying Tigers. They remember General Stilwell.

People understand the impact that American educational institutions have had in China. There are millions of Chinese who have studied in our country since China opened up under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership in the late 1970s.

We currently have just under three hundred thousand Chinese students at our universities and our door is open to them. We issued 105,000 new student visas in 2023 to Chinese students to go to the United States and we’re well ahead of that pace as we near the end of 2024.

So I think what surprised me the most and what I feel passionate about is that as we compete as two geopolitical rivals—economic and military and strategic rivals—the last thing in the world we should do is to see our peoples disconnected from each other and the data points here are very stark.

Before the pandemic there were 345 direct flights a week between the United States and China. We went down to twelve direct flights in April of 2023, and we’re up only to eighty-nine direct flights now.

When it comes to students, we had fifteen thousand American students here ten years ago. We were down to about eight hundred students, we thought, at the beginning of this academic year. We’re now actually counting to try to see if we’re at a thousand American students here. But we’re way down in terms of students.

We had millions of tourists—over five million Chinese and American tourists going both ways—in 2019, but that dropped precipitously during the pandemic.

So it’s very important that we reconnect these two countries: tourists, business travelers, students, university links, nongovernmental-organization links, think tanks like the Atlantik-Brücke and the Atlantic Council coming back to China to interact. Because in a very competitive, long-term, difficult relationship of the type that we have between our two governments, what you need to do is have some ballast in the relationship, and people are the ballast.

Condi Rice—and you’re right, I worked for Condi twice in my government career and I greatly admire her—she wrote a very important Foreign Affairs article published two weeks ago and she makes this point, that we’ve got to keep the two societies connected. We believe that in our administration. President Biden’s talked about it. Secretary Tony Blinken and I have talked about it at great length. And we’re trying to do that, keep the societies connected. That’s one way to keep the peace. It’s one way to make sure that we have a basic understanding of each other.

And, Josh, from a national security perspective, I worry about the fact that we only had eight hundred students here last year. In ten or fifteen years, those twenty-year-olds in America today are going to be running many of our institutions in the United States—our corporate boardrooms, our newspapers, our TV channels, and they’ll be the American diplomats and military officers. And if we don’t have young men and women learn Mandarin now, have had an ability to live in this country and travel widely, then we’re not going to be as adept as we should in understanding this society.

So I think there’s really almost nothing more important than keeping our two societies connected. It’s the thing that’s surprised me the most, the degree that we have been separated by the COVID pandemic. And I think we do share a desire with the government of China to reconnect the two peoples.

Maybe we should end there, Josh. It’s something that China and the United States can agree on. It’s, I think, what most people, I would hope, present today would agree, that we should be connected between our two societies.

JOSH LIPSKY: We will end it there, Ambassador, on a challenge and an optimistic note. Please join me in thanking Ambassador Nicholas Burns for joining us to open.

R. NICHOLAS BURNS: Thanks, Josh.

JOSH LIPSKY: Thank you, Ambassador, and have a good evening. Thank you so much.

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Little did we know at the time that this encounter would play a modest but, it turns out, vital role in gaining Evan’s release.

At some point the book should be written, one hopes by Evan himself, on his shameful and unjustified 491-day imprisonment and ultimate conviction on espionage charges, which called for a sixteen-year sentence.

The book will include President Vladimir Putin’s choice to hold Evan for entirely cynical reasons, intending to provide a pawn for a future prisoner exchange to recover mislaid Russian chess pieces.

The final exchange, one of historical dimensions both in the number of those released and the complexity of the negotiation, involved a host of actors that included Scholz, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob. It also involved Almar Latour, publisher of the Wall Street Journal and CEO of Dow Jones (and an Atlantic Council board member); Wall Street Journal Editor in Chief Emma Tucker; Dow Jones general counsel Jason Conti; private lawyers at WilmerHale engaged by Dow Jones; US President Joe Biden; National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens; and Evan’s parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, among others.

Wall Street Journal reporters Joe Parkinson, Drew Hinshaw, Bojan Pancevski, and Aruna Viswanatha told the story in a compelling reconstruction on August 1, but it will take further investigation to reveal all the elements and stages of this true-life thriller.

Here’s the inside story on the Atlantic Council’s part in the drama.

Black-tie back channel

For more than a year, multiparty negotiations for the release of Evan and other prisoners held in Russia had taken place behind the scenes. Our role in this story began almost from the day of Evan’s imprisonment. It included a number of public and private support efforts, most prominently the launching of a regular convening called Reporters at Risk, an initiative of Atlantic Council Board Executive Vice Chair Adrienne Arsht and our Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Each event contained an element shining a light on Evan’s plight and rallying support, including a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal.

At the Global Citizen Awards dinner in September 2023, we honored Scholz alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and Hong Kong business leader Victor Chu. Latour asked me to invite Evan’s parents to our awards dinner in the hope that we could introduce them to Scholz.

Just an hour before the event, WilmerHale lawyer Robert Kimmitt—the former US ambassador to Germany, deputy secretary of the US Treasury, and long-time friend of mine—phoned me to request that Evan’s parents be invited into a small gathering of the honorees and their introducers that included Scholz.  

“It was there where [Scholz] expressed his support for Evan—a key moment in a lengthy saga that culminated in last week’s prisoner exchange,” Latour wrote me days after Evan was freed in August 2024. Latour said that moment reflected the Atlantic Council’s “essential strengths and accomplishments: its global community of leaders who trust the organization and use it as a platform to connect with one another.” Perhaps the most crucial piece that unlocked Russian willingness to make the deal was Scholz’s willingness to trade Vadim Krasikov, a convicted killer who gunned down an opponent of the Russian regime who was seeking asylum in Germany. It was a courageous move by Scholz, one that would put domestic political heat on him but save lives.

The decision, said Scholz, was based on “balancing the interest of the state in enforcing the sentence with the freedom and the risks to the health and, in some cases, to the lives of innocent people detained in Russia.” The most tragic moment in this saga for those most deeply involved came in February 2024, when news broke that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny had died in a Russian prison, as negotiators were working to include him in an exchange. He was the individual whom German leaders most wanted free—and whose freedom posed the greatest potential political threat to Putin.

The true nature of his death might never be known. But one of those involved in the final prisoner exchange, speaking on the condition of anonymity, shared with me Navalny’s potential involvement in a prisoner release and well-founded suspicions that Putin had Navalny killed to remove that option from the chessboard.

When the final exchange took place nearly six months later, those involved whom Putin wanted free included Russian security services hit man Krasikov, hackers Vladislav Klyushin and Roman Seleznev, and spies Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva. Those whose freedom was gained by Western negotiators included Evan, former Marine Paul Whelan, journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, and opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza.

An unfair trade

Latour understood what Evan’s release, in particular, meant to me as a veteran of more than twenty-five years at the Wall Street Journal. It was during my leadership as editor and associate publisher at the Wall Street Journal Europe that my reporting colleague Daniel Pearl was taken hostage by terrorists in Pakistan and ultimately beheaded. I will never stop asking whether I and others could have done more to save him from that horror.

Perhaps not, but the question was motivation enough in this far different situation, involving a sovereign state, for Latour—who as a young news assistant sat a few desks away from Pearl at the Journal bureau in Washington, DC—the Dow Jones leadership team, and many others to leave no stone unturned. That included frequent visits by Latour and others to the White House and the State Department, flying Evan’s parents to Davos for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, where they met with media and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and a trip to Berlin where Latour, Conti, and a WilmerHale lawyer engaged with Wolfgang Schmidt, Scholz’s influential head of chancellery and federal minister for special affairs, building on the New York exchange.

I’m delighted our modest role helped. I was deeply touched by Latour’s personal letter to me, which said: “As a veteran of multiple decades at the Journal, you made many contributions to the world’s greatest news organization,” adding that through the Atlantic Council’s contributions to Evan’s release, “[you] perhaps made your greatest contribution yet to your former newsroom.” 

We are all overjoyed that Evan, Paul, Alsu, Vladimir, and others are home. But it’s worth remembering that this was an inherently unfair trade—killers and criminals for innocents and freedom fighters. It released bad people who will continue to do bad things and good people who now can continue to contribute to a better world. The worst part of it is that our willingness in civilized societies to care so much for our unfairly imprisoned provides only greater motivation for further misbehavior. Government leaders and those of us in civil society must continue to reflect and develop ideas on how to break this dangerous cycle.

When the Global Citizen Awards convene again on Monday in New York, we’ll honor Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and South Korean-American entertainment executive Miky Lee. On Tuesday, we will host another Reporters at Risk event at our Global Future Forum in New York, featuring Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post journalist who was unjustly imprisoned in Iran.

Perhaps nothing quite so significant will take place this year at our annual gathering in New York. From the stage at the Global Citizen Awards, we’ll make mention of Evan’s parents’ presence the year before in our front row and their not-so-chance meeting with Scholz. We’ll then join in applauding Evan’s character, courage, and resilience—and his return to practicing the pursuit of truth.

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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This is a positive step for accountability, and is in line with the Ukrainian government’s ongoing support for international justice efforts. Unfortunately, however, the news was marred by the Ukraine government’s reported invocation of a provision which would deny the ICC jurisdiction over war crimes committed by its nationals for seven years.

Ukraine signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but did not ratify it. In 2001, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine ruled on the constitutionality of ratifying the Rome Statute, finding that Article 124 of the Ukrainian Constitution prohibited “supplementing the judicial system of Ukraine” and therefore was incompatible with the Rome Statute. This Article was amended in 2016, removing what was considered “the final obstacle” to ratification. In August 2019, the Deputy Head of the President’s Office indicated that ratification was a priority. A draft law was submitted to the Office of the President in September 2019, but was later withdrawn.

Despite Ukraine not ratifying the Rome Statute, the ICC has limited jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity (“core international crimes”) committed in Ukraine. Under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute, states not party to it can lodge a declaration accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction. Ukraine has done so twice: In April 2014 for crimes committed on its territory between November 21, 2013, and February 22, 2014, and in September 2015 for crimes committed from February 20, 2014 onward.

The ICC therefore has jurisdiction for core international crimes committed on Ukrainian territory from November 21, 2013. In March 2022, the ICC Prosecutor requested and then opened an investigation into the Situation in Ukraine. This investigation covers the situation as a whole and therefore extends to all perpetrators regardless of nationality. The arrest warrants issued so far have exclusively been for Russian officials, but the Prosecutor could request arrest warrants for Ukrainians if there is sufficient evidence.

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.

Ratifying the Rome Statute is a laudable step forward for Ukraine’s commitment to international justice. Ukraine’s Article 12(3) declarations were a sensible and critical stopgap, as became clear after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. Ratification adds additional depth to President Zelenskyy’s prioritization of accountability by ensuring that Ukraine maintains this commitment to justice after the war ends and by binding it to the obligations of states parties, including the provision of support and cooperation to the ICC.

Further, the bill seems to include the ratification and acceptance of the Kampala Amendments, which added the crime of aggression to the Rome Statute, without invoking the option to opt out of the ICC’s jurisdiction over aggression. The crime of aggression covers the use of force by a state against the “sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political independence” of another state, such as through invasion.

For states parties, whether the ICC has jurisdiction over the crime of aggression without a UN Security Council referral depends on the victim and aggressor states’ ratification of the Kampala Amendments and invocation of the opt out option. Under the Rome Statute, the Court cannot exercise jurisdiction over aggression when committed on the territory of or by nationals of a state not party to the Rome Statute, which means the ICC does not have jurisdiction over acts of aggression by Russia, which is not a state party to the Rome Statute.

Ratifying the Kampala Amendments therefore doesn’t personally benefit Ukraine in the short term, and Ukraine is still moving forward with efforts to establish a special tribunal on the crime of aggression. At the same time, it does show a good faith effort to expand the ICC’s jurisdiction over aggression regardless.

Ukraine has sparked debate by reportedly invoking Article 124 of the Rome Statute in the bill for ratification. This Article allows a state, upon becoming a party to the Statute, to declare that for seven years after the Statute’s entry into force for that state, it does not accept the ICC’s jurisdiction for war crimes committed by its nationals or on its territory.

Article 124 was introduced during the Rome Conference after governments, especially France, expressed concerns that their personnel involved in UN peacekeeping missions “could be subject to politically motivated or frivolous prosecutions.” It therefore only offers protection for war crimes, not genocide or crimes against humanity. Article 124 has rarely been used. The ICC Assembly of State Parties adopted an amendment deleting it in 2015, though this has not yet entered into force.

In the Article 124 declaration, Ukraine seems to invoke only the active personality protection, which would shield Ukrainians from prosecution for war crimes committed anywhere, but not the territorial jurisdiction protection, which would shield anyone from prosecution for war crimes committed on Ukrainian territory. Ukraine likewise tried to limit the ICC’s jurisdiction in its second Article 12(3) declaration to “crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by senior officials of the Russian Federation” and Kremlin-controlled separatist leaders active in east Ukraine after 2014, despite a 2012 decision that rejected similar attempts.

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Ukraine’s approach presents several legal questions. First, it is not certain how Ukraine’s various declarations will interact with each other, as laid out by Dr. Kevin Jon Heller, Dr. Andreas Zimmerman, Dr. Tom Dannenbaum, and in additional discussions on X (formerly Twitter). The Article 124 declaration may supersede and thus modify or terminate the Article 12(3) declarations, or the ICC judges could decide that the Article 12(3) declarations preclude an Article 124 declaration. Alternatively, the Article 124 and Article 12(3) declarations may apply concurrently, such that Ukrainian nationals will be shielded from prosecution for war crimes committed outside Ukraine but not those committed inside Ukraine. Regardless, it does seem clear that the Article 124 declaration cannot retroactively change the ICC’s jurisdiction, so any effects would start once Ukraine’s ratification enters into force.

This leads to a second legal question of how the Article 124 declaration will affect the ICC’s jurisdiction. It is not clear if Ukraine’s Article 124 declaration can only limit the ICC’s active personality jurisdiction for war crimes without also limiting its territorial jurisdiction. Without previous examples on this exact issue, legal experts have looked to scholarship, the Rome Statute itself, and analogous ICC decisions. However, there is not yet any consensus on the issue.

Some view the active personality and territorial questions as serving distinct purposes and therefore read Article 124 as disjunctive. Others find it “highly unlikely” that the ICC would allow states to shield only their own nationals from legal scrutiny, and therefore expect that judges may view the Article 124 active personality and territorial jurisdiction limitations as a “package deal.”

Ukraine’s ratification of the Rome Statute is welcome news, but that doesn’t excuse the negative effects of the Article 124 declaration. On a practical level, Ukraine risks an adverse decision from the judges in interpreting the declaration. Namely, there is a chance the judges will rule that the declaration modifies the earlier Article 12(3) declarations and that this applies to both active personality and territorial jurisdiction. This would mean that the ICC will not have jurisdiction over Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine for seven years upon the Rome Statute’s entry into force for Ukraine, representing “a spectacular own goal.”

The Article 124 declaration also threatens Ukraine’s well-earned goodwill and “moral high ground” within the international community. President Zelenskyy has been an advocate for global justice and for the ICC itself. The declaration’s implications undermine this, indicating “a lack of confidence in the ICC’s capacity to fairly adjudicate war crimes in this conflict.” Any impunity stemming from the declaration would further erode trust in Ukraine, in line with President Zelenskyy’s own observations that Russia’s impunity in Syria played a “significant part” in its aggression against Ukraine.

Ukraine’s ratification inevitably comes with the risk that Ukrainians will be subject to prosecution for any war crimes they may commit, but Ukraine can mitigate this by holding its citizens accountable. Ukraine therefore shouldn’t need the protection Article 124 offers, and that protection certainly shouldn’t be considered so significant that it justifies the negative side effects.

Luckily, under the Rome Statute, an Article 124 declaration “may be withdrawn at any time.” The Ukrainian government has the chance to be a powerful and long-lasting champion for justice globally. To maintain its credibility and reputation, it must seriously consider withdrawing the Article 124 declaration from its ratification of the Rome Statute, accepting the ICC’s full jurisdiction.

Celeste Kmiotek is a staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council. The Strategic Litigation Project works on prevention and accountability efforts for atrocity crimes, human rights violations, and corruption offenses around the world.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Aug 20, 2024

Kursk offensive could help free Ukrainians in Russian captivity

By Olivia Yanchik

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia’s Kursk Oblast has resulted in the surrender of unprecedented numbers of Russian soldiers, raising hopes of a large-scale prisoner exchange, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Aug 11, 2024

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia is erasing Vladimir Putin’s last red lines

By Peter Dickinson

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia has erased the last of Vladimir Putin’s red lines and made a complete mockery of the West’s frequently voiced escalation fears, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Defense Policy

UkraineAlert Aug 15, 2024

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia exposes the folly of the West’s escalation fears

By Oleksiy Goncharenko

Ukraine’s invasion of Russia has shown that Putin’s talk of red lines and his nuclear threats are just a bluff to intimidate the West, writes Oleksiy Goncharenko.

Conflict Defense Policy

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 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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How did this happen? Russia, long opposed to the Council of Europe’s 2001 Budapest Convention on cybercrime, began this process in 2017. Then, in 2019, Russia, along with China, North Korea, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Syria, Cambodia, Venezuela, and Belarus, presented a resolution to develop a global treaty. Despite strong opposition from the United States and European states, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in December 2019, by a vote of seventy-nine in favor and sixty against (with thirty abstentions), that officially began the process. Already, it was clear that the member states did not share one vision. Indeed, they could not even agree on a name for the convention until last week. What they ended up with is a mouthful: “Draft United Nations convention against cybercrime: Strengthening international cooperation for combating certain crimes committed by means of information and communications technology systems and for the sharing of evidence in electronic form of serious crimes.”

This exceedingly long name reveals one of the biggest problems with this convention: its scope. At its heart, this convention is intended to allow law enforcement from different countries to cooperate to prevent, investigate, and prosecute cybercrime, which costs trillions of dollars globally each year. However, the convention covers much more than the typical cybercrimes that come to mind, such as ransomware, and includes crimes committed using technology, which reflects the different views as to what constitutes cybercrime. As if that were not broad enough, Russia, China, and other states succeeded in pushing for negotiations on an additional protocol that would expand the list of crimes even further. Additionally, under the convention, states parties are to cooperate on “collecting, obtaining, preserving, and sharing of evidence in electronic form of any serious crime”—which in the text is defined as a crime that is punishable by a maximum of four years or more in prison or a “more serious penalty,” such as the death penalty.

In Russia, for example, association with the “international LGBT movement” can lead to extremism charges, such as the crime of displaying “extremist group symbols,” like the rainbow flag. A first conviction carries a penalty of up to fifteen days in detention, but a repeat offense carries a penalty of up to four years. That means a repeat offense would qualify as a “serious crime” under the cybercrime convention and be eligible for assistance from law enforcement in other jurisdictions that may possess electronic evidence relevant to the investigation—including traffic, subscriber, and even content data. Considering how much of modern life is carried out digitally, there will be some kind of electronic evidence for almost every serious crime under any domestic legislation. Even the UN’s own human rights experts cautioned against this broad definition.

Further, under the convention, states parties are obligated to establish laws in their domestic system to “compel” service providers to “collect or record” real-time traffic or content data. Many of the states behind the original drive to establish this convention have long sought this power over private firms. At the same time, states parties are free to adopt laws that keep requests to compel traffic and content data confidential—cloaking these actions in secrecy. Meanwhile, grounds for a country to refuse a cooperation request are limited to instances such as where it would be against that country’s “sovereignty,” security, or other “essential” interest, or if it would be against that country’s own laws. The convention contains a vague caveat that nothing in it should be interpreted as an obligation to cooperate if a country “has substantial grounds” to believe the request is made to prosecute or punish someone for their “sex, race, language, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, or political opinions.”

Russia claimed that such basic safeguards, which do offer some protection in the example regarding LGBT activity as “extremist,” were merely an opportunity for some countries to “abuse” the opportunity to reject cooperation requests. Those safeguards, conversely, could also be abused by the very same states that opposed them. The Iranian delegation, for its part, proposed a vote to delete that provision, as well as all other human rights safeguards and references to gender, on the day the text was adopted. These provisions had already been weakened significantly throughout the negotiation process and only survived thanks to the firm stance taken by Australia, Canada, Colombia, Iceland, the European Union, Mexico, and others that drew a red line and refused to accept any more changes.

The possible negative consequences of this convention are not limited to human rights but can seriously threaten global cybersecurity and national security. The International Chamber of Commerce, a global business organization representing millions of companies, warned during negotiations that “people who have access to or otherwise possess the knowledge and skills necessary” could be forced “to break or circumvent security systems.” Worse, they could even be compelled to disclose “previously unknown vulnerabilities, private encryption keys, or proprietary information like source code.” Microsoft agreed. Its representative, Nemanja Malisevic, added that this treaty will allow “for unauthorized disclosure of sensitive data and classified information to third states” and for “malicious actors” to use a UN treaty to “force individuals with knowledge of how a system functions to reveal proprietary or sensitive information,” which could “expose the critical infrastructure of a state to cyberattacks or lead to the theft of state secrets. Malisevic concluded that this “should terrify us all.”

Similarly, independent media organizations called for states to reject the convention, which the International Press Institute has called a “surveillance treaty.” Civil society organizations including Electronic Frontier Foundation, Access Now, Human Rights Watch, and many others have also long been ringing the alarm bell. They continue to do so as the final version of the convention adopted by the committee has failed to adequately address their concerns.

Given the extent and cross-border nature of cybercrime, it is evident that a global treaty is both necessary and urgent—on that, the international community is in complete agreement. Unfortunately, this treaty, perhaps a product of sunk-cost fallacy thinking or agreed to under duress for fear of an even worse version, does not solve the problems the international community faces. If the UN General Assembly adopts the text and the required forty member states ratify it so that it comes into force, experts are right to warn that governments intent on engaging in surveillance will have the veneer of UN legitimacy stamped on their actions. Rights-respecting states should not allow themselves to be co-opted into assisting abusive practices under the guise of cooperation. Nor should they willingly open the door to weakening their own national security or global cybersecurity.

Lisandra Novo is a staff lawyer for the Strategic Litigation Project at the Atlantic Council specializing in law and technology.

The post The UN finally advances a convention on cybercrime . . . and no one is happy about it appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What do the 2024 Paris Olympic Games mean for France? What is the overall impression of the Paris Olympics so far? What sort of values and principles does France want to showcase to the world by hosting? And how will France pass the torch to the United States for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics?

On this episode of #AtlanticDebrief, Visiting Fellow Léonie Allard sits down with the French Ambassador for Sport Samuel Ducroquet to discuss his impressions of the Paris Olympics and the role of the Olympics in international diplomacy. 

You can watch #AtlanticDebrief on YouTube and as a podcast.

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Kharlan’s Olympic victory has additional significance for Ukraine as she almost missed out on participating in Paris altogether due to her principled stand over the Russian invasion of her homeland. During the 2023 World Fencing Championship, Kharlan refused to shake hands with a Russian opponent in protest over the war, offering instead to tap blades. The Russian declined this offer and staged a protest of her own, leading to Kharlan’s disqualification and making it virtually impossible for her to take part in the 2024 Olympic Games.

The incident sparked a heated debate over the role of politics in sport and the continued participation of Russian athletes in international events at a time when Russia is conducting Europe’s largest military invasion since World War II. Following a considerable outcry, Kharlan was reinstated and received the personal backing of International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, himself a former fencer. Meanwhile, Kharlan’s gesture made her a hero to millions of Ukrainians.

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.

The controversy over Kharlan’s refusal to shake hands with her Russian opponent has been mirrored elsewhere in the sporting arena, highlighting the complex moral issues facing Ukrainian athletes as they compete internationally while their country is fighting for national survival. Ukrainian tennis star Elina Svitolina in particular has attracted headlines for her decision to avoid handshakes with Russian and Belarusian players.

Some critics have accused Ukrainians of politicizing sport, and have argued against holding individual Russians accountable for crimes committed by the Kremlin. Meanwhile, supporters of Ukrainian protest efforts have noted the Kremlin’s frequent use of sport as a propaganda tool, and have also pointed to the often close links between some Russian athletes and the Putin regime.

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For Ukraine’s Olympic team, participation in this year’s Summer Games is an opportunity to provide their war weary compatriots back home with something to cheer, while also reminding the world of Russia’s ongoing invasion. Since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, many of Ukraine’s Olympic athletes have had to train in exceptionally difficult conditions. Some have been forced to relocate from areas that have fallen under Russian occupation, while all have grown used to the daily trauma of the war and the regular disruption caused by Russian air raids.

Ahead of the Paris Olympics, Olga Kharlan was widely seen as one of Ukraine’s best medal hopes. Born in Mykolaiv, she has been fencing since the age of ten. Prior to the 2024 Olympics, she had already amassed four Olympic medals in a glittering career that has also seen her win six world titles. The thirty-three-year-old Ukrainian star demonstrated her mental strength during the third place playoff in Paris, overcoming South Korea’s Choi Sebin in a dramatic comeback win.

Thanks to her new bronze medal, Kharlan now shares top spot among Ukraine’s leading Olympians with a total of five medals. She claimed her first medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 before securing further honors in 2012 and 2016. However, the Ukrainian star says her success in the French capital stands out. “This medal is totally different,” commented Kharlan in Paris this week. “It’s special because it’s for my country. This is a message to all the world that Ukraine will never give up.”

Mark Temnycky is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jul 25, 2024

Putin is convinced he can outlast the West and win in Ukraine

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The West’s collective fear of escalation and reluctance to commit to Ukrainian victory have convinced Putin that he can outlast his opponents and achieve an historic triumph in Ukraine, writes Mykola Bielieskov.

Conflict Defense Industry

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Andriy Yermak: Ukraine and NATO are restoring Europe’s security architecture

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Together with the country’s allies, Ukraine has set out on the path to restore the European security architecture, writes the head of Ukraine’s Office of the President Andriy Yermak.

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Ukraine is making the Russian occupation of Crimea untenable

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Ukraine’s growing air strike capabilities are decimating Russian air defenses in Crimea and making the occupation of the peninsula increasingly untenable, writes Olivia Yanchik.

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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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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 statement released by G7 leaders after their summit last week garnered ample attention for its strong language on China’s unfair economic practices and ongoing support for Russia’s war on Ukraine, and triggered a predictably sharp Chinese response. The back-and-forth is another reminder of China’s worsened relations with developed democracies over the past few years.

Beijing is by no means abandoning those relationships – Premier Li Qiang’s visit to Australia and New Zealand this week, not to mention President Xi’s trip to Europe last month, underscore a drive to mend damaged ties. But the incident is another piece of evidence confirming that Beijing’s positions on global and economic issues receive a more welcoming reception in the developing world, where China’s economic and political ties are growing by the day.

China’s strategic shift toward greater focus on the so-called Global South is unmistakable. One need only look at where China is spending diplomatic attention and propaganda dollars.

As colleagues at the Digital Forensics Research Lab explore in a new report on China’s messaging in Africa, China is increasingly promoting pro-Russian narratives about Ukraine in sub-Saharan Africa using its media platforms, commentators, social media, and broadcasting infrastructure. The effort aims to portray China as a force for peace while the United States prolongs the war, in line with Beijing’s drive to enhance its reputation relative to Washington across the developing world.

This effort to shape perceptions of China’s responsible global role in contrast to the United States is now routinely reflected in the content of high-level diplomatic engagements with developing countries.

In his speech just last week at the BRICS Dialogue with Developing Countries in Russia, Foreign Minister Wang Yi not only underscored China’s leadership of the Global South as the “largest developing country” but also called for the convening of “a true international peace conference” on the Ukraine war that involves Russia – after Beijing pulled out all the stops to try to scuttle the Swiss-organized conference earlier this month – and threw in some choice words on US efforts to “maintain its unipolar hegemony” for good measure.

As I and the Global China Hub team discovered on a trip to Brazil, Colombia, and Honduras earlier this month, China is also ramping up diplomatic, economic, and technological engagement across Latin America, and pairing those efforts with a push to shape understanding of China across the region. Our editor-in-chief Tiff Roberts dives into that and much more in this issue of Global China – take it away, Tiff!

-David O. Shullman, Senior Director, Atlantic Council Global China Hub

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Dexter Tiff Roberts

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Global China Hub

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Latin American officials flood Beijing revealing China’s global priorities

Want to know one key region of the Global South China is now focusing on? Take a look at who visited Beijing in early June. Before the first week of the month was even over, Brazil’s Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil, and special envoy of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla had all passed through China’s capital (the Brazilian vice president met with Xi Jinping and secured $4.49 billion in credit concessions. Brazil has been a key market for China too, as evidenced by an eighteen-fold surge in Chinese EV sales by value).

Latin America, with its rich resources, is a key target as China expands its global economic and political reach, and that’s a concern for the US. Testifying before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission hearing “Key Economic Strategies for Leveling the U.S.-China Playing Field: Trade, Investment, and Technology,” Pepe Zhang of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center called for a development-focused economic partnership with LAC that would make the Western Hemisphere more competitive, resilient, and better integrated with the US.

Economics used to bolster authoritarian power in Global South training

China’s commerce ministry isn’t just fretting about EU tariffs (see below). It has also spearheaded an effort to train officials in countries across the Global South. And perhaps not surprisingly, the instruction is about more than trade and economics: “This effort is integral to the PRC’s drive to transform a global order currently predicated on the centrality of democracy and individual rights to one more “values-agnostic” and thus suited to China’s rise under authoritarian CCP rule,” writes the Global China Hub’s Niva Yau in a June 12 report called “A Global South with Chinese Characteristics” (watch the launch event here). The 795 training descriptions reviewed by Yau show “how the PRC marries economics and politics in its trainings, revealing that Chinese economic achievements are used to support authoritarian ideals.”

The report certainly got the PRC’s attention. The Chinese Embassy responded, saying the report is “full of Cold War mentality and ideological prejudice,” with the Foreign Ministry adding that “China has always respected the peoples of all countries in independently choosing their development paths and social systems,” which is very reassuring.

A new, coordinated transatlantic response to China emerges on trade?

In a widely expected move, the European Union announced new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles on June 12, up as much 38.1% on top of existing taxes of 10% before, affecting companies including BYD, SAIC, and NIO. Also to no surprise was the heated response from Beijing: the move by the EU “undermines the legitimate rights and interests of China’s EV industry,” and is “blatant protectionism,” Ministry of Commerce spokesperson He Yadong said in a press briefing. On June 17, Beijing officially launched an anti-dumping probe on imported pork and its by-products from the EU in response.

With the EU action coming just over a month after US President Joe Biden imposed tariffs on EVs of 100%, is a new, more coordinated transatlantic response to the Chinese trade juggernaut emerging? On June 3rd, in an ACFrontPage conversation with United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai, she did not mince words on how the US and the EU should adapt the transatlantic trade relationship to reflect the realities of China’s economic system, saying “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics… I haven’t heard that term used in many, many years. At this point, I think it’s less diplomatic than just sort of ahistorical. The China that we’re dealing with now, the PRC, is not a democracy. It’s not a capitalist, market-based economy.”

In an Econographics article exploring a similar theme entitled “Biden’s electric vehicle tariff strategy needs a united front,” the GeoEconomics Center’s Sophia Busch and Josh Lipsky write, “tariffs, working in isolation, can’t fully achieve all the objectives—no matter how high they go. It’s only when tariffs are relatively aligned across countries… that the trajectory could change.”

And it’s not just EVs that pose a threat to global industries. Without tariffs, the EU faces a flood of Chinese imports of the “new three” clean tech exports—lithium-ion batteries, solar panels, and, of course, electric cars (along with the action against EVs, the White House also raised tariffs simultaneously on lithium-ion batteries and solar cells to 25%.) “Imports of the new-three cleantech export categories have skyrocketed in recent years. Over the course of 2023, China’s exports to the EU totaled $23.3 billion for lithium-ion batteries, $19.1 billion in solar panels, and $14.5 billion for electric vehicles,” the Global Energy Center’s Joseph Webster wrote in a piece for EnergySource.

• Beginning on June 17, Atlantic Council President and CEO Fred Kempe and former President of Latvia Egils Levits have co-led the Atlantic Council’s annual delegation trip to Taiwan, hosted by the Taiwanese government. Joined by former Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Tomáš Petříček, they will meet with Taiwan government leaders, including President Lai, think tanks, and business representatives to discuss security and economic issues facing Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.
• The Global China Hub hosted a public conversation on allied solutions to de-risking tech supply chains from Chinese investment to spur collective action between the United States and government and private sector partners in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The event was a continuation of the Hub’s work on tech competition and China’s drive to dominate emerging technologies and relevant supply chains.
• China’s trade with Russia has risen substantially since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, significantly bolstering Moscow’s war aims, according to new research by the Global Energy Center’s Joseph Webster.
• Xi Jinping’s recent visit to Europe was in part intended to divide it as the EU increasingly hardens its stance on China. The Global China Hub’s Zoltán Fehér explores the degree to which Xi was successful in these efforts in a New Atlanticist piece.

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The Global China Hub researches and devises allied solutions to the global challenges posed by China’s rise, leveraging and amplifying the Atlantic Council’s work on China across its 16 programs and centers.

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The post Global China Newsletter – Sharp words, sharper tools: Beijing hones its approach to the Global South appeared first on Atlantic Council.

On June 18, IPSI nonresident senior fellow Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi was quoted in a South China Morning Post article, discussing potential new conflict flashpoints in the East China Sea due to a new Chinese coastguard law. 

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Ryo Hinata-Yamaguchi

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Indo-Pacific Security Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Policy Indo-Pacific

The post Hinata-Yamaguchi quoted in South China Morning Post on East China Sea tensions appeared first on Atlantic Council.

While the event produced some encouraging signals and shone a light on how Russia’s invasion affects the broader international community, it did not produce any major diplomatic breakthroughs. Instead, the summit represented a small but significant step forward in what looks set to be a far longer peace process.

The absence of many leading nations from the Global South did much to weaken the summit’s potential impact, suggesting that Ukrainian diplomats still have much work to do at the bilateral level. Significantly, key participating countries including Brazil, India, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia chose not to sign the official summit communique supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Since 2022, these countries have all been hesitant to back Ukraine or openly condemn Russia’s invasion.

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.

The event in Switzerland came during a period of intense diplomatic activity for Ukraine. On the eve of the peace summit, G7 leaders agreed to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion loan financed by interest on Russian assets that remain frozen in Europe and the US. On the sidelines of the G7 meeting, the US and Ukraine signed a landmark ten-year bilateral security agreement. During the peace summit itself, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also able to hold bilateral meetings with a number of leaders from Global South nations including Argentina, Chile, and Côte d’Ivoire.

Ukraine came to the summit hoping to galvanize international support for President Zelenskyy’s ten-point peace plan. In particular, Kyiv officials sought to emphasize the importance of advancing nuclear safety, protecting food security, releasing prisoners of war, and returning Ukrainian children abducted by Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion. In a broader sense, the event also aimed to keep ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine in the international spotlight.

Ultimately, seventy-eight countries signed the final communique recognizing that respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty must serve as the basis for any future peace agreement. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sought to downplay expectations regarding the event, noting that peace could not be achieved in a single step. The summit was not a peace negotiation because Putin is not serious about ending the war, she commented. “He is insisting on capitulation. He is insisting on ceding Ukrainian territory, even territory that today is not occupied by him. He is insisting on disarming Ukraine, leaving it vulnerable to future aggression. No country would ever accept these outrageous terms,” stated von der Leyen in reference to a rival peace plan unveiled by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the eve of the Swiss summit.

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Russia did not receive an invitation to participate in the peace summit. Crucially, China also chose not to attend. US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggested Putin had asked China to turn down Ukraine’s invitation. In the build-up to the event, President Zelenskyy also accused Beijing of working to discourage others from attending Ukraine’s peace initiative. Meanwhile, a number of participating countries from the Global South spoke in Switzerland of the need to involve Russia in any future peace process.

While the Kremlin’s apparent spoiling tactics failed to derail Ukraine’s peace initiative entirely, Russian influence did nevertheless loom large over the Swiss summit and is clearly still a significant factor. China’s decision not to back the event was arguably even more important, with many observers arguing that Beijing’s stance succeeded in preventing the emergence of a more global consensus on the path toward peace in Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the participation of numerous countries regarded as being on good terms with the Kremlin underlined the potential of this peace initiative, with the likes of Qatar, Hungary, and Serbia all signing the final communique. While some had hoped for a more meaningful outcome, this modest progress should be enough to convince Kyiv officials and the country’s partners that additional diplomatic efforts in this direction are worthwhile and may yet produce results.

Mercedes Sapuppo is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

Further reading

UkraineAlert Jun 12, 2024

Ukraine is making the Russian occupation of Crimea untenable

By Olivia Yanchik

Ukraine’s growing air strike capabilities are decimating Russian air defenses in Crimea and making the occupation of the peninsula increasingly untenable, writes Olivia Yanchik.

Conflict Defense Technologies

UkraineAlert Jun 4, 2024

Vladimir Putin just tacitly admitted Crimea is not really part of Russia

By Peter Dickinson

Russia claims to have annexed five Ukrainian provinces but refuses to extend security red lines to these regions. This highlights the pragmatic political realities behind Putin’s talk of historic conquests, writes Peter Dickinson.

Conflict Disinformation

UkraineAlert May 30, 2024

If the West wants a sustainable peace it must commit to Ukrainian victory

By Hanna Hopko, Andrius Kubilius

Since 2022, Western policies of escalation management have failed to appease Putin and have only emboldened the Kremlin. If the West wants peace, it must help Ukraine win, write Hanna Hopko and Andrius Kubilius.

Civil Society Conflict