Strong Together: Why Europe’s Security Crises Invite Opportunities for Cooperation

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered this year’s State of the Union address in Strasbourg, France, like every other year. But events still occurring in another location far to her east dominated her thoughts and remarks. Though she waxed poetic about Europe’s united and swift response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this February, von der Leyen did not mince her words about the dangers remaining for Europe: “this is a war on our energy, a war on our economy, a war on our values and a war on our future.”

Ukrainians bear the biggest brunt of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against their nation, but its ramifications extend across the European continent. The conflict presents a security dilemma with immediate and lasting dimensions, as well as domestic and external implications. In particular, Europe has recognized the necessity of indigenous military capacity, prompting renewed focus on defense spending. More abrupt, perhaps, is the challenge of securing energy supply as winter approaches and many countries can no longer look to Russia. A significant rethink is accordingly underway in most capitals about how much to trust Moscow as long as it is led by Putin or someone likeminded, rewriting the playbook of currying a cooperative relationship through security pacts and economic exchange.

Although some European Union (EU) member-states face more daunting threats than others, this new security environment imperils the entire bloc. It also presents overwhelming incentive for enhanced cooperation across national borders. Several member-states, however, from those friendly with Moscow to those skeptical of deeper alignment to those whose political landscape skews nationalistic, may not be as keen on “more Europe” in these times. As the Euractiv Green Brief newsletter suggests, von der Leyen likely aimed her comments at “national governments who tend to pursue national interests when confronted with crises on a European scale.” 

Unilateralism would squander this opportunity. The impetus to pool resources is not simply for European integration’s sake, but because multilateral action could deliver better results. Not only would joint development, purchasing, and planning of military capabilities yield a more formidable Europe, but current energy insecurity endangers the European market and threatens to leave citizens literally out in the cold. Though von der Leyen’s address was promising, the present challenge is to translate her sentiment into attitude and action.

Toward a Geopolitical Europe

February 24, the day Putin launched his most recent invasion of Ukraine, is seen as a turning point for Europe. With Washington’s support, Brussels quickly marshaled numerous sanctions packages that have eroded Russia’s post-Cold War economic progress and upended its relationship with Moscow. Since then, the European Commission has adopted a more “geopolitical” approach, embracing candidate status for Ukraine and Moldova, and becoming more deeply involved in Europe’s foreign policy toward Russia. At the core of these developments is a recognition that efforts to build a constructive relationship with Russia since 1991 have failed. 

Germany’s recent history with Russia underscores these challenges. Berlin pursued Russian energy resources, even after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, through natural gas pipelines like Nord Stream 2, believing sustained commerce might incentivize Russia to temper its foreign policy so as to sustain such lucrative arrangements. Europe hoped Putin was truly “rational,” or, as writes Nathalie Tocci of Italian think-tank Istituto Affari Internazionali, subscribing to “a rationality that puts material interests above ideology.” But despite the threat of losing Germany’s business, Putin launched his attack on Ukraine and cut supply to European countries as retribution for supporting Kyiv. Reflecting on the unfolding war, then-recently elected German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock acknowledged that Europeans should have diversified their energy imports to rely less on Russia years ago, as “energy policy is always power policy… always security policy.” Because Putin has used energy as a political tool since the invasion, and indeed in other moments in the past two decades, this ideal relationship based on sanctity of contract, interdependence, and trade is unlikely.

Putin’s behavior seeks to anchor Ukraine in Moscow’s mir, or world, consistent with the Russian president’s conception of upholding Russian civilization and great power status. That Kyiv could opt to “join the West” through pursuit of EU or NATO membership was thus an unacceptable prospect, especially considering Putin’s view that the Western world is incompatible with Russia’s. This sense of historical right, if taken to its conclusions, is a different mode of thinking than that which underpins the European project, which in theory rejects sphere of influence politics and embraces the sort of peace through common progress that makes the EU’s promise so special. Because this undertaking does not interest Putin, the EU should adapt and fortify itself, not in the pursuit of war but of internal security. This pertains especially to the two most glaring areas: defense capabilities and energy.

Building European Defense Capability

In recent years, an increasingly complex security situation has imperiled Europe’s defense. The continent relies on U.S. capabilities, including military aid, troops, and large-scale sophisticated firepower, to guarantee its security. Though EU member-states’ military budgets have increased since Putin’s incursion in Crimea in 2014, Donald Trump’s presidency sparked unique concern over American commitment to Europe, given his questioning of NATO commitments and transactional approach to foreign policy. Most rank-and-file Republican lawmakers still support NATO, but a growing, vocal wing of the party shares Trump’s antipathy toward Europe. 

Perhaps the most durable shift in U.S. politics, however, is a bipartisan prioritization of great-power competition with China, auguring a strategic shift toward the Indo-Pacific. Though war in Ukraine returned considerable focus to Europe, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan reaffirmed the Biden administration’s view of China as “the most consequential geopolitical challenge,” a belief echoed by the most recent U.S. national security strategy. Realizing these trends will persist, Europeans – notably French President Emmanuel Macron – have emphasized a need for “strategic autonomy,” or development of continental defense apart from Washington. So long as these efforts do not replace NATO or entirely reject the United States, but instead enhance existing systems, Europe will better insure itself against U.S. domestic volatility and strategic shifts as well as external threats by adopting this path.

The Ukraine crisis has introduced new urgency by demonstrating that war is still possible on the continent and that lack of preparation will prove costly. Europe’s dilemma thus remains improving capabilities in a productive manner, fearing that a lack of coordination and planning will limit the benefit of any additional spending. In EU High Representative Josep Borrell’s words, “after the Cold War, we shrunk our forces to bonsai armies. If each European state just increases its military capabilities… the result will be a big waste of resources. We’ll just have 27 bigger bonsais.” The EU has little competence over military strategy and, like NATO, does not have its own independent armed forces separate from the member-states. Its initiatives instead rely on the contributions of national forces.

Building the necessary technology will prove daunting. Ian Bond and Luigi Scazzieri of the Centre for European Reform write that, given current spending promises, it will still take years to procure necessary equipment and higher inflation rates will erode the value of new spending. And because the EU does not have a unified defense industrial base from which to draw, capacity development between member-states is limited and procurement processes remain biased toward national companies. This leaves European countries vulnerable to duplication and financial or practical obstacles. For example, two fighter aircraft programs in progress – one between Britain, Italy, and Sweden and another between France, Germany, and Spain – may both take longer and cost far more than might occur with greater cooperation, as both struggle to achieve economies of scale. Further, without common agreement on standardization and interoperability, EU member-states could find collaboration difficult in times of crisis. 

For its part, Brussels seeks to facilitate this process through initiatives like Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) aimed at easing integration of member-states’ armed forces. The European Commission is also preparing proposals to incentivize joint procurement of weapons through VAT waivers and update the European Defense Fund (EDF) accordingly. Such steps toward greater multilateral planning could help maximize the defense of the European project and, in turn, each individual member.

Powering a New Energy Security

The more immediate concern for most EU member-states, however, is energy insecurity and economic havoc, especially with the downgrading of EU-Russia energy trade. As Jason Bordoff and Meghan L. O’Sullivan caution in Foreign Affairs, Moscow is “the dominant supplier of natural gas to Europe and a major exporter of coal and the low-enriched uranium used to power nuclear plants.” Some member-states like Lithuania or France rely less on Russia for energy to varying degrees, but before war broke out, others like Germany and several Central European counterparts counted on supplies from the east. Even before the EU’s ban on Russian oil imports, the European Commission and member-states like Italy resorted to a diplomatic blitz in preparation for a harsh winter without a key source. 

Russia progressively sealed the spigots to several countries over the course of the summer, weaponizing energy trade. With commodity prices so high, persistent supply disruptions threaten to worsen inflation and usher in a recession with global ramifications. Europe has turned to alternatives in lieu of Russia, between bilateral agreements and large-scale deals with partners like Norway, Algeria, Qatar, and Azerbaijan, to compensate for vulnerability. The United States has been supplying more liquified natural gas (LNG) than expected, resulting from the European Commission’s energy diplomacy early on in the crisis. These efforts have hardly been for naught; EU gas storages are 90% full and von der Leyen has expressed confidence ahead of winter. Among the most vulnerable are Central and Eastern European countries lacking the infrastructure to diversify quickly. However, bilateral deals like the one Greece and Bulgaria have reached on a long-delayed gas pipeline, providing the latter with an affordable alternative to its usual Russian flow, are promising. 

European countries’ collective efforts have evidently already yielded dividends. However, continued consensus may be necessary to deal with two additional challenges: weathering price fluctuations and ensuring future supply, especially ahead of the winter of 2023. Member-states have increasingly been engaging Brussels given the implications of energy policy in the European market. Discussion of price caps has dominated, alongside Germany’s announcement of a relief package worth 200 billion euros for households and businesses, which has attracted widespread criticism for undermining a level playing field in the single market. Whatever the result of these debates, divergent national measures threaten to unsettle markets and fracture an integrated approach to energy, which is why continued bloc-wide solutions to additional challenges like decreasing consumer demand are of paramount importance.

On the supply front, Ben McWilliams, Simone Tagliapietra, and Georg Zachmann write that the EU stands the best chance if member-states pool their resources with an eye to securing supply for the entire bloc if necessary. Just as with national defense capacities, having 27 different energy strategies makes the pursuit of EU-wide supply more costly and risks leaving some countries out in the cold. If breakthroughs on other fronts arrive, such as on the stalled pipeline between Spain and France, Europe would further be equipped to supply all of its members, especially with future winters in mind.

“Forged in Crisis”

As new obstacles confront the EU, a united front presents the greatest chance of success at handling them. Countries like Hungary – whose prime minister, Viktor Orban, maintains close ties with Putin – within the bloc are cumbersome realities that must be managed. Further, governments must stand firm in their support of Ukraine through sanctions on Russia when the temperature drops. Brussels has been quite active in and recognizing a new geopolitical imperative and seeking a uniform policy since February. However, not all authority needs to be centralized in Brussels for member-states to communicate with each other. This is significant, considering governments skeptical of greater European integration but seemingly likely to support Ukraine and improved European defense, like the one likely to form in Italy following September’s elections, can still engage productively in building European capacity.

It has long been said that the EU is forged in crisis. Russia’s behavior has granted EU member-states even more reason to mold a new security architecture, from heating homes this winter to deterring future aggression for years to come. Though Putin continues to wreak havoc on Ukraine, the EU can emerge a more capable ally by fortifying its own security. The chilling scenes emanating from Europe’s east this year are stark warnings of a new geopolitical relationship to come, but also reason to take action. If member-states maintain their momentum and unify behind this common motivation, they can realize von der Leyen’s goal of “a union that stands strong together,” and turn platitude into prophecy.

No Longer Human: Addressing the use of Artificial Intelligence in IR

Artificial intelligence is a principal instrument for international relations. In areas such as cyber security, military application, and threat monitoring, artificial intelligence isn’t just something that could change the political landscape as we know it: AI will create it. The idea of a non-human entity having a specific agency could make a massive change in politics at the international level. AI has been a doctrine of apocalyptic notions that the world will end with robots. Artificial intelligence has long been a fanciful vision for the future in cinema, art, and literature. The future, however, might be nearer than we think. Already, forms of artificial intelligence affect our everyday lives, including Google translate and search, facial recognition, navigation apps, social media, banking, and even Netflix. From the moment we wake up, AI impacts and influences our lives. Our preferences are tailored to what we are likelier to buy and what we would most likely watch and go. How is this advancement in technology going to change the political and international community? It is safe to assume that artificially intelligent systems might dominate decision-making in the future and that the next cyber attack might not even be human.

In 2022, artificial intelligence will have progressed far enough to become the most revolutionary technology ever created by man. According to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, its impact on our evolution as a species will be comparable to fire and electricity. He also warned that the development of AI was still in its very early stages but that its continued growth would be extreme, stating, “I view it as the most profound technology that humanity will ever develop and work on.” The 2022 trends of AI include advanced language modeling, no-code AI platforms, computer vision technology in business, and creative AI. In global security ventures, artificial intelligence will be increasingly more significant in handling and adequately managing. However, these 2022 AI trends do not come without a cost. Cybercrime has been identified as a substantial threat to global prosperity by the World Economic Forum, which urged nations worldwide to work together to address it. This cybersecurity threat is expansive, transformative, and critical, and with the continued rise in cyberattacks, there is massive growth in the AI market. A July 2022 report by Acumen Research and Consulting says the global market was $14.9 billion in 2021 and is estimated to reach $133.8 billion by 2030. More and more money is being put into this industry, and consequently, working together as an international community is essential in preventing catastrophic damage. Specifically for international relations, AGI might be capable of executing any cognitive or operational task for which human intelligence is currently necessary. These advancements in IR will fundamentally change how the world will look in the near future. 

In a Chatham House Report titled “Artificial Intelligence and International Affairs Disruption Anticipated,” AI can be used in international politics and policymaking in three categories: Analytical roles, predictive roles, and operational roles. In the first category, Artificially intelligent systems are already found in analytical roles, combing through large datasets and deriving conclusions based on pattern recognition. This can be especially helpful when monitoring the outputs of sensors set up to confirm compliance with, for example, a nuclear, chemical, or biological arms control treaty that might be too demanding for human analysts. In predictive roles, artificially intelligent systems may offer opportunities for policymakers to understand possible future events. One such example in the arena of international affairs would be the possibility of modeling complex negotiations. AI might take on other predictive roles with a bearing on geopolitics, contributing to more accurate forecasting of elections, economic performance, and other relevant events. The last category, operational roles, is the traditional sense of robots. The day-to-day functioning of the international system would not be expected to change if truck drivers, ship crews, or pilots were replaced with automation. Still, the large-scale replacement of existing human labor in these capacities will likely cause widespread economic and political disruption in the short to long term. MIT economist Daron Acemoglu’s new research showcases this shift in labor. From 1990 to 2007, adding just one additional robot replaced about 3.3 workers nationally. With this rapid transformation in the labor force, the ethical landscape of AI is becoming more and more significant to the lives of everyone on Earth. 

From a policy standpoint, it is essential to know what data is used, an AI model’s guiding assumptions and the kinds of practices developers employ. The Council on Foreign Relations recently conducted a conference titled “The Future of AI, Ethics, and Defense.” Speakers discussed the intersection of technology, defense, and ethics and the geopolitical competition for the future of innovation. Speakers included former secretary of defense Ash Carter, cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman, and professor at the Institute for Human-centered artificial intelligence Fei-Fei Li.  Discussing these implications of AI, Fei-Fei Li states, “We have a society that wants to respect human rights, we want to be inclusive, we want to use AI or technology for good, we can have a culture of transparency and accountability, and we can form multi-stakeholder allegiance to both push for innovation, but also put the right guardrails. And this kind of foundation in our world is our competitive advantage.”  Showcasing the ethics that need to be addressed as artificial intelligence advances, Fei-Fei Li concludes that these technologies can benefit society instead of holding it back in the long run. The accountability and transparency related to AI are crucial for the international community to maintain an ethical environment. But what exactly are the ethical challenges of AI? 

Brian Patrick Green, director of Technology Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, addresses these challenges in his article titled “Artificial Intelligence and Ethics: Sixteen Challenges and Opportunities.” Fundamentally, artificial intelligence is increasing at a tremendous rate. Technical safety and if the technology works as intended are important for companies. Another challenge is bias and the malicious use of AI. For example, China's facial recognition system logs more than 6.8 million records daily. The Chinese government is accused of using facial recognition to commit atrocities against Uyghur Muslims, relying on the technology to carry out "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today." In Russia, authorities have long used biometric data for artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition to surveil and prosecute peaceful protestors and other critics. Additionally, during the Invasion of Ukraine, Russia employed “deepfakes” in propaganda warfare. Deepfakes are images or videos created using AI that can show scenes of things that never happened or even people that never existed. This technology is still increasingly advanced and could be extremely realistic in the future. Furthermore, using AI technology to create cyber weapons to control autonomous tools like drone swarms are being developed. Russian President Vladimir Putin when speaking about the international race to develop artificial intelligence noted, “whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.” 

Anja Kaspersen and Wendell Wallach are senior fellows at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. In November 2021, they published an article that changed the AI ethics conversation: “Why Are We Failing at the Ethics of AI?” Concerning the ethical implications of AI, the article states, “Society should be deeply concerned that nowhere near enough substantive progress is being made to develop and scale actionable legal, ethical oversight while simultaneously addressing existing inequalities.” There has been some work done to address ethical concerns, however. There are many ethical proposals, but they are not always coinciding, uniform or unanimous, even in an organization like the EU. A number of publications on AI highlight the need for policies and regulations that would diminish the risks and direct AI development and use toward public benefit. Public policy and governance can ensure that global AI development is a positive-sum game increasing benefits for all. Suggestions for the  US  leadership include calls for building strategic partnerships worldwide. Balancing competition and cooperation is indispensable, for artificial intelligence isn’t just a component of policy anymore but integral in global security. 

With artificial intelligence dominating everyone on the Earth and advancing at an alarming rate, understanding ethical implications and security risks is necessary to maintain a peaceful world that benefits citizens' lives instead of harming them. Artificial intelligence has a multitude of issues that need to be addressed by the international community, including the capability of cyberattacks, the creation of cyberweapons like drones, and propaganda warfare. With the malicious use of facial recognition and privacy crises, there is a plethora of panic and anxiety for the public. With continued technological advancement, policies must be updated and executed. U.S policymakers must balance risks, benefits, and responsibilities when continuing AI endeavors. Additionally, an enormous amount of ethical issues still need to be tackled. AI research will dominate global affairs, and it can be hard to predict outcomes with this transformation. Whatever the future holds, it is clear that artificial intelligence will be a part of it, or perhaps more accurately, directly beside humankind. 

The European Economy under Russia’s Threats

Early morning on February 24th  2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. While Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, this time, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia was considered by the international community to be an act of aggression.  The invasion triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II, more than four million Ukrainians have left the country and a quarter of the population has been displaced. In response to this invasion, the international community imposed a number of economic sanctions on Russia, in an aim to limit its power and influence in Ukraine. Economic sanctions, as defined by the Council on Foreign Relations, are “the withdrawal of customary trade and financial relations for foreign- and security-policy purposes. Sanctions may be comprehensive, prohibiting commercial activity with regard to an entire country … or they may be targeted, blocking transactions by and with particular businesses, groups, or individuals.” These sanctions have been imposed by many, such as the United States, the European Union, and G7.  

Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, has mentioned that Russia invaded Ukraine in the sole purpose of denazifying Ukraine, as well as protect its citizens who have been facing humiliations and genocides by the Kyiv regime. Ukraine has a long history with neo-nazis. Indeed, Azov is a far-right military group that has been accused of harboring neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology. The group is now part of Ukraine's armed forces. However, Putin’s claim to denazify Ukraine was quite an interesting and bold statement given that the current president of Ukraine is Jewish, and lost relatives in the Holocaust. 

This invasion of Ukraine has mostly - as expected - affected the country and its citizens. Many were forced to flee the country and seek asylum in neighboring countries such as Poland, Romania, and Moldova. However, many Ukrainians were forced to stay, and fight for their country. Ever since the invasion, Ukraine’s economy has contracted. According to the International Monetary Fund, “the loss of life, damage to critical infrastructure, trade disruption and an outflow of refugees would lead to gross domestic product falling by a minimum of 10% in 2021”. However, many countries have stepped up and helped Ukraine in these difficult times. Countries have donated weapons, funds, and have delivered humanitarian and non-lethal aid. While many countries have helped Ukraine, they have also simultaneously worked against Russia. Through economic sanctions, they hope to weaken the country and its president, Vladimir Putin. But many challenges have arisen as economic sanctions against Russia persist.    

Many Ukrainians have fled the country to a safer place. While most women and children are able to successfully escape the war and seek refuge in neighboring countries such as Poland, men are forced to stay in Ukraine to fight and protect their country. However, this conflict has greatly affected Ukraine, who found itself cut off from the world by war. Trade has been disrupted throughout the country, and according to the UN, hundreds of thousands of people inside Ukraine have been cut off from life-saving aid such as humanitarian aid due to the military encirclement of cities. Vulnerable populations in Ukraine such as elderly citizens, or the economically disadvantaged are most likely to become refugees and will have the greatest difficulty coping with rising food and fuel costs. Relief efforts are underway around the world to ensure that people's basic needs for food, shelter and psychological safety are met in the conflict zone and beyond.

Trade-wise, the conflict has disrupted the global supply chain of diverse goods, and affected international trade as a whole. Ukraine is a massive producer and exporter of seed oil, corn, wheat, and iron ore. However, since the beginning of this war, the country’s production has declined as people have fled the country and men were forced to give up their occupations to join the army and help fight against the Russians. Similarly, the concentration of wheat, fertilizer, and related production in Russia will strain food supplies globally. Securing the continuous supply of food to the countries most tied up to exports from these regions is becoming an issue. Stocks - about half of the corn Ukraine was expected to export for the season - are increasingly difficult to get to buyers, providing a glimpse of the disruption caused by the war in Russia, which accounts for roughly $120 billion global grain trade. Already disrupted by supply chain blockages, surging freight rates and weather events, markets are expecting further turmoil as shipments from Ukraine and Russia - which together account for about a quarter of the global grain trade - become more complicated and raise the specter of food shortages.        

Ports, railroads, and roads throughout Ukraine have either been closed, or taken over by the Russian army. No foreigners have really been able to get in the country ever since the start of the war due to fear. Thus, the Ukrainians that remain in the country have found themselves unable to access foreign goods and services that the country once imported. The lack of production, manufacturing, and transportation in Ukraine due to the war has also disrupted the global supply chain, as previously mentioned, which has had and will keep having a negative impact on the world’s economy and other countries that relied on Ukrainians and Russians export of agricultural goods, which consisted of a wide variety of goods. Citizens that remain in Ukraine have done so to fight for their country against the Russian army, as a result, there are fewer people than ever that work to produce and provide goods not only for Ukrainian citizens, but also for foreign citizens who relied on such goods. 

As the effects of war can be felt everywhere, other countries such as the United States and NATO cannot get involved in the conflict due to the concern that it will become a war between Russia and the West. Since Ukraine is not a member of NATO, the alliance is not obligated to defend the country. Similarly, as the United States is an ally of NATO, the country cannot get involved in the conflict, unless Russia invades a NATO country, which is not so likely to happen as this could result in World War III. However, both NATO and the United States are determined to do all that is in their power to support Ukraine. 

Their inability to get physically involved in this conflict is due to the fact that Ukraine is not a member of both the European Union and NATO. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose country is facing a massive unprovoked invasion from neighboring Russia, has called on the European Union to grant Ukraine EU membership under a special procedure as soon as possible. However, it is not as easy as it sounds, the process to gain EU membership is very long and many EU countries are against an expansion of the European Union. Similarly, Ukraine is unable to join NATO just yet, but the organization is committed to helping the country and its citizens in these difficult times.

As a response to the war, many countries have set up a number of economic sanctions in the aim to weaken Russia. But as these sanctions take place, a big question arises: who do these sanctions actually hurt? Economic sanctions on Russia have a goal to affect the economy of the country. SWIFT - the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is a Belgian cooperative society providing services related to the execution of financial transactions and payments between banks worldwide - has banned Russia. As a consequence, Russian banks are no longer able to use the financial interface to transfer money. But financial sanctions, not banishment from SWIFT, are the key economic punishments being imposed on Russia. Economic sanctions on Russia such as a ban on exports, blocking of Russian assets, sanctions against individuals, ban of oil and gas imports from Russia. Additionally, all Russian banks have had their assets frozen. But who are these sanctions truly affecting? The government? Or the people? 

As horrible as it is, economic sanctions against Russia are actually impacting Russian citizens who have seen their assets abroad frozen, and who also cannot access goods and services that they once did. The lower class in Russia is the one suffering the cost of these sanctions, but as time passes, Russia as a whole will feel the effects of these sanctions, as many foreign companies have pulled out of the country in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Sanctions would prohibit Russian energy exports, which would traumatize the European economy, which is heavily dependent on Russia, and would worsen the surge in energy prices. As companies have pulled out of the country, Russia’s GDP is expected to heavily shrink as an outcome. Russia's central bank has been struggling to stabilize the value of the ruble and prevent a sharp rise in interest rates without access to about half of its foreign exchange reserves. The Russian stock market was also closed for weeks, suspending shares of domestic companies that could plunge as soon as trading resumed. 

The sanctions also have an impact on the European and global economy, which is heavily dependent on Russia for oil, gas, and different goods. The country is also a big importer of luxury goods, so countries such as France and Italy will see their export of luxury goods decline in the next year (and more). This will greatly impact the economy of these countries as such exports contribute to a big portion of their gross domestic product. Businesses have also been hurt, they have lost a lot of their revenues as they pulled out of Russia. However, if they had stayed in the country, with the increasing number of economic sanctions, they would have suffered the long lasting effects of these sanctions on their businesses, which would have also impacted other countries that are also home to such companies.

Oil prices have gone up throughout the world. The United States, France, or the United Kingdom are all three big importers of Russian gas and oil. The “Russian oil ban” as it is called has created a lot of discontent in many European countries, whose citizens have to suffer the cost of an increase in oil and gas prices. Europe exports 45% of gas from Russia, and has pledged to reduce its purchases of Russian gas by two-thirds before the end of the year. However, an alternative must be found in the aim to reduce the price of oil and gas in European countries. Europe has become too dependent on Russia for gas, but until an alternative is found, citizens will have to deal with the increase of gas and oil prices in their respective countries. 

Overall, the economy of Europe has been slowing down as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Not only was the supply chain disrupted by this invasion, but citizens in both countries are completely left alone. No one can really get into Ukraine, as a result, the country struggles to import goods that its citizens once consumed on a daily basis. They are left with local producers and manufacturers. Similarly, countries who used to trade with Ukraine can no longer do so. Wheat and grains are agricultural goods that the country used to export, however, as a port has been destroyed, the country has been cut off from the world, unable to export its goods to countries who relied on them. But similarly, many companies have backed out of Russia, leaving citizens unable to access certain goods and services.

As Russia keeps invading Ukraine and does not seem to be willing to put an end to this conflict that has already cost the lives of many, I wonder whose economy will be the most impacted: Russia’s economy, or Europe’s economy? Both are really powerful, but the sanctions that countries in the European Union and NATO have set up against Russia have also affected more than just Russia. Although Russia’s GDP is expected to shrink this year as a result of this invasion, I wonder how much longer can the country go without the help and support of other countries, or even companies that were once in the country. Left completely alone, Russia is left with its own resources, and is fully aware that its citizens are suffering from this conflict. It makes me wonder how much longer will they be able to fund this war, and allow for its citizens, especially the lower class, to be impacted by it.

Although much has been done by the international community in response to this conflict, Ukraine is still being invaded by Russia, and many face the consequences of this conflict every day. It is extremely hard for other countries and NATO to physically be involved in this conflict as it could lead to world war III. Many fear Russia, a powerful nation that has access to numerous nuclear weapons. While it is understandable that the international community is unable to get too involved in this conflict, and with the long process that is for Ukraine to be able to join NATO and the EU, the international community is left with the options to use sanctions against Ukraine, or to donate to Ukraine, military aid, humanitarian aid, weapons, and funds. As the situation does not seem to be getting any better, the international community should do everything that is in their power to limit the influence of Russia on Ukraine, in the hope that one day, Russia will back out. 

To conclude, this conflict has taken a turn that no one really expected. While many were aware of Russia’s threats, it was still a big shock when Russia actually invaded Ukraine. As the international community is doing everything that they can to help Ukraine in these difficult times. Many countries have welcomed refugees, sent humanitarian and military aid, as well as many other resources, Ukraine and its citizens that have remained in the country still greatly suffer from this war. Russia’s citizens have also been greatly affected as the economic sanctions are directly affecting them. The economy of Russia, Ukraine, and Europe is shrinking. Unless Russia backs out of Ukraine, the consequences of this conflict will be long lasting and an entire economy will have to be rebuilt, which will take time. In the meantime, we can hope that Ukraine will be able to join the EU and NATO, in the aim to get more support and help from other countries, as Ukraine puts up a big fight against the superpower, Russia.

The Middle East’s Stake in the Ukraine Crisis

Introduction

Scholars, strategists, and pundits alike would agree that the Ukraine crisis has escalated far beyond what many originally envisioned on February 24th, 2022. Where early pieces championed a surefire Ukrainian victory and the incompetence of the Russian military, recent articles have speculated that the conflict might rage for weeks to months from now. Although unbiased stories are difficult to find, vivid descriptions of Russian war crimes pepper the firsthand accounts of Ukrainian refugees. Initial articles, such as those reporting on Russian soldiers using children as hostages in Kyiv, shocked few. But it was on April 6th, 2022 that the first mass-media reports of torture, rape, and executions in the recaptured city of Bucha emerged. The bodies of more than 300 civilians were discovered scattered around the city and its outskirts, most clearly having been bound and immobilized before being severely beaten and shot from point-blank range. In response to this and other acts of brutality, the UN General Assembly passed an emergency resolution to suspend the Russian Federation from the Human Rights Council. With 93 countries in favor and only 24 countries—mostly common opponents like China, the DPRK, and Belarus—directly opposing the motion, it is clear that numerous states view Russia as an aggressor and support Ukrainian sovereignty.

However, this leaves 58 countries remaining that voted to abstain from the resolution, each with their own reasons for sitting on the fence. Some of these neutral states, like Angola, Barbados, or Vanuatu, likely lack a stake in the conflict and would prefer to avoid angering either side. But the diversity in these abstentions betrays an observable trend in the action, that being the Middle East’s near-universal desire to remain exempt from opining on the matter. Of the states comprising the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel, Libya, and Turkey joined with the states that pushed through Russia’s disbarment from the HRC. A majority of the remaining states refused to formally strike a side in the debate, with nations from Iraq to Saudi Arabia remaining non-aligned. Three countries in the area—Syria, Iran, and Algeria—even went as far as to officially reject the UN resolution, effectively aligning themselves closer to Russia in the wake of the conflict. Thus, one can easily see the complex relationships between the Middle East and the two forming sides in this situation. This article aims to provide an overview of American, European, and Russian relations with the Middle East and North Africa, particularly with regards to oil, as well as what stakes—if any—exist for countries in this region and what predictions surround the how these states will address the crisis as it develops.

The Middle East & The World: Addressing the Oil Derrick in the Room

It is impossible to holistically examine the Middle East’s relationships with the US, Europe, and Russia in the course of a single article. Entire volumes of literature have been written analyzing the associations between just one of these groups and the Middle East, with usually little more than lip-service provided to the others. That being said, in order to effectively organize the narrative which revolves around this issue, I have chosen to examine these relationships with respect to the common denominator present in all of them: oil. The world quite literally runs on oil. Aside from providing fuel for the estimated 1.3 billion passenger and commercial vehicles that exist across the world, oil (or petroleum) provides use in heating and electricity generation as well as in the production of the various plastics, chemicals, and other synthetic materials we use in our day-to-day lives. Understandably then, a key point of contention between states in the course of national development and prestige has been the exchange (and occasionally the appropriation) of global oil reserves. Vital players in the oil industry are largely clustered in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq all possessing a billion barrels or more in oil reserves compared to the US’ 400,000. This fact alone has irreversibly transformed the Middle East into a region composed mostly of rentier states, and has further shaped the Middle East’s relationships with the major players in the Ukraine Crisis.

Historically, the United States has engaged in a complicated relationship with the Middle East as a result of its dependence on the region’s oil reserves. Dubbed the “American Oil Strategy”, politics between the country and MENA has been almost entirely influenced by politicians shoring up support in the region to secure oil for trade. In fact, the US has even gone so far as to insist on military presence in the region, and further, to ignore blatant policy inconsistencies to maintain this oil relationship. This explains, rather grimly, why America will effectively ignore Saudi Arabia’s horrid human rights record or Turkey’s incremental shift toward authoritarianism. Anywhere else, these crimes might otherwise serve as catalysts for sanctions, condemnation, or military intervention. But the US views its stake in maintaining this Oil Strategy to be far too great to be jeopardized by moral grandstanding. Although the US has made effort in recent years to decouple itself from dependency on foreign oil—largely by way of off-shore drilling and domestic fracking—the US will be at least partly reliant on overseas oil for the foreseeable future. In turn, the Middle East’s relationship with the US is similarly blemished by the latter’s reliance on Gulf oil. While some politicians in the region praise the US as a harbinger of democracy, freedom, and liberal thought, others decry America as a neo-imperialist state with the primary concern of lining its coffers. Every praise for the Abraham Accords can be met with blame for the Iraq War, War in Afghanistan, or war crimes in Yemen, meaning few in the area view the United States as a wholly benevolent power.

Europe possesses a similarly complicated relationship with the Middle East and its near-monopoly over energy. Like the US, Europe is no stranger to hydrocarbon imports from the Middle East, with figures from Eurostat’s 2020 energy memo reporting 18% of Europe’s crude oil and 12.4% of its natural gas deriving from the region. In this same report, Saudi Arabia alone was reported to have provided more than 7.8% of Europe’s crude oil imports. Moreover, the region’s historical association with Europe in regards to its oil means that this relationship is nothing new. As early as the late-19th century, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company began surveying Gulf sites for extraction. The consequences of this arrangement—especially in relation to its history of upholding authoritarian states in the interest of protecting British and French aims—have had a jarring effect on the region’s modern political and economic stability. This has led to a paradoxical relationship over time, with European states sometimes directly interfering, for example during the Gulf War, while simultaneously staying silent on other issues. Understandably then, few living in the Middle East view the European Union or its member-states in an outright beneficial light.

Starkly contrasted with these relationships is that of Russia with modern Middle Eastern states. Unique to Russia is its heavy supply of oil and natural gas, largely attributable to its massive geographic and topographic scale. As such, although Russia has historically not been one to ignore the bountiful gains of hegemony in the Middle East, it certainly is not suffering from oil crises or shortages. Russian influence in the region has been idiomized as that of a “Jack of all trades, master of none”. What this means is that, although Russia has begun to work its way into better relations with virtually all modern Middle Eastern countries—most notably Syria, Israel, and Turkey—few (minus Syria) are willing to directly align themselves too closely to the Kremlin. Part of this is historical, owing to Soviet proxy management during the Cold War, while most of it stems from Russia’s inability to deliver on its promises for aid and support. Foreign aid inefficiencies have been best shown in Syria, where the Russian Center for Reconciliation of Conflicting Sides (CRCS) has been critiqued for 717 of its 731 communities having been symbolically serviced only once over the last five years. It is for this reason that Turkey has notably denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and officially labeled it a “war”. However, states in the region continue to look to Russia as an alternative to American beneficence. Although Russia has failed in many regards, it has impressed Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar along with other Levantine states simply by virtue of valuing the status quo over democratization. Where American officials might arrange for oil exchanges that include clauses—however fleeting—on the importance of liberalized economies, Russia is more relaxed, caring little about whether these countries respect civil liberties or uphold human rights. It is because of these complicated, often conflicting variables that Israel’s PM Naftali Bennett has pledged a “measured and responsible” response to the Ukraine Crisis while still hesitating on formally condemning Russia or Vladimir Putin.

All of this is to say that it has become clear in recent years that support toward the Russian sphere is slowly but surely ramping up. Where Europe and the US are constricted in their ability to influence the region based on past crimes, blunders, and miscalculations; Russia is poised to drastically shape the politics of the region. Although few states would publicly—or even privately—praise Russia and its leaders, trends in the region point toward a closeness to the Kremlin that Europe and America could only dream about.

Shut-Offs and Sanctions: Stakes At-Home and Abroad

Thus, the question remains, where does the Middle East sit in all of this? During a time when supply-chains have been disturbed, trade agreements have been terminated, and sanctions have been employed by countries everywhere, no country can sit on the sidelines. Whether they want to be involved or not, states around the world must accept the geopolitical shift that comes with this crisis, along with the immediate, tangible ramifications that come with continued conflict between Russia and Ukraine. As indicated above, the most prominent points for policymakers right now center around how to compensate for the intense reduction in oil and natural gas imports from Russia. Although Europe certainly relies on energy from the Middle East, the same Eurostat report referenced earlier in this piece pointed out that, in fact, 25% of European crude oil and 38% of natural gas actually come out of Russia. The US, although not nearly as reliant, still imports over 8% of its crude oil from Russia and continues to import 20% of its unrefined petroleum products as well. Whether or not a state directly garners its petroleum from Russia, the fact remains that consumer-side and producer-side markets alike are suffering from the conflict. World prices for a barrel of oil have skyrocketed, hitting upwards of $130/barrel in early March of this year, while drivers everywhere have complained of soaring prices, with gas hitting roughly $4.50/gallon in the US and upwards of $7.50/gallon in Italy and $8.00/gallon in the UK as of April of this year.

Obviously, the initial plan to offset this supply shortage was to contact Middle East suppliers—specifically the 7 of those within OPEC+—and increase crude oil flow into the European continent and toward the US. Initial hopes that the organization would respond eagerly to the hope of renewed demand following the COVID-19 plunge were dashed when an emergency meeting on March 2nd between OPEC member states ended with them agreeing to only raise supply by the prescribed amount (400,000 barrels per day in April). Only lasting 13 minutes, the meeting went without a mere mention of the Ukraine crisis and its pressures on the industry. Outside of OPEC, responses are not exactly positive either. Even former-OPEC member Qatar has expressed hesitation in helping the West in its scramble to secure more oil, with Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi stating even before tensions erupted that it lacked the capacity to remotely replace Russian oil in Europe let alone abroad. Fears have only grown after this response, with Europe increasingly eyeing an outright ban on Russian oil and petroleum products and prices only continue to rise.

The situation is not without its light, of course. On March 9th, Emirati Ambassador to the US Yousef Al-Otaiba, expressed the UAE’s desire to hike oil outputs from OPEC. Saudi Arabian officials offered the same sentiments on March 10th, and countries with the capacity to continue bolstering oil supplies to Europe and the US have attempted to support the call to arms. In yet another show of the American Oil Strategy, US officials are increasingly looking to Iran to cover the difference. In the words of Alex Vatanka of the Middle East Institute, “Iran’s Achilles’ Heel is the state of its economy…and the possibility of a new [JCPOA] presents Tehran with an opportunity.” While circumstances are continuously developing and little is certain, these factors mean that hope might not be lost for the Middle East to assist the West during a time of crisis.

But it is not only in the West that the ripple-effects of the Ukraine crisis have been felt. Virtually every state in the Middle East has reported severe economic and supply consequences directly resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was Egypt that was first hit hardest by these ramifications, specifically with respect to its food supply. Disruption in Ukrainian supply and export chains, coupled with intense sanctions placed upon Russia, have prevented Egyptian ports from receiving wheat shipments that make up 85% of the country’s grain supply. Iran too has been hit hard by the situation, with severe threats to their supply of sunflower oil, wheat, corn, barley, and soybeans due to economic obstacles. Similar stories have played out across the Middle East and North Africa, as the two combatant states collectively make up 25% of global wheat production, 15% of barley, and 45% of sunflower. Prices have escalated not just for grain itself, but also for fertilizer and general agricultural supplies, meaning countries are increasingly incapable of growing their own crops let alone relying on others. Not only does this threaten to disintegrate the global agro-economy, it risks subjecting millions to food insecurity in a region already wracked from drought and famine. Part of the issue also stems from the fact that NGOs themselves often relied on Ukraine and Russia for food security aid. This was best put by CEO of the World Food Program David Beasley with regard to continued food aid to Yemen: “We have no choice but to take food from the hungry to feed the starving.”

Luckily, this situation is also not entirely insurmountable in the region, even in the face of the worsening conflict. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar have already pledged a collective of $12 billion in aid (with an additional $10 billion promised from Saudi Arabia in the future) to Egypt. Western leaders have been similarly jolted to action by the conflict with regard to food security, as European powers and the US have begun promising increased food aid to suffering countries. A major part of the COP26 Agriculture Innovation Mission in the Middle East involves bringing 140 public, private, and non-profit partners together to normalize the region’s dependence on foreign food imports. $4 billion has been provided by the US to the program, of which a sixth of the budget is intended to be allocated toward the MENA region’s crippled agricultural infrastructure. So soon after over 132 million in the area were made victim to starvation in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its supply-chain deficiencies, this cannot be allowed to stand. Increasing direct investment into the region should be a top priority for not just the United States but the European Union and the developed world as a whole.

As often said, in every crisis, there arises an opportunity. Growing food insecurity in the Middle East is the perfect means through which the US and EU can not only leverage its own oil stakes in the situation, but improve relations, rehabilitate their images and save lives in the process. Especially in Iran, the time is right to completely reform relations with a state which has become increasingly abrasive over the last few decades.

Written in the Stars: Examining the Complexities and Dilemmas of Foreign Policy in Space

Space is increasingly becoming the next global arena. Growing international attention toward space as a political terrain has made countries, including the US, need to focus on implementing policies that combat straining competition and the difficulties of space traffic and debris. Not only is space becoming an important topic in international relations, but each state is also responding differently to how they wish to exert their presence in this unique field. The US, through NASA, has installed its preeminence in space through early projects like the launch of Skylab, the first U.S. space station, and the Space Shuttle. Yet, NASA has its own set of challenges and the space landscape is growing more competitive with the rise of other countries like China, Russia, and India pushing for their own undertakings. From historical significance to modern-day implications, understanding how countries respond to this modern arena is essential to predicting outcomes and looming variables when it comes to foreign policy and national security. As modernization moves forward, the Earth is no longer the only political landscape for policymakers to analyze. 

Space has long been a motivator for innovation and competition. In October 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite named Sputnik. This caused a powerful reaction, as the US in a matter of months prompted measures to build and compete with Russia’s space program. With the creation of a civilian space exploration agency dubbed NASA, the international system became even more extensive and vast, calling for long-term missions in places humans have never been before. On September 12th, 1962, President John F. Kennedy addressed Rice University in his powerful speech that committed the United States to a moon landing stating, “Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why he wanted to climb it.” He said, "Because it is there. Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.” Without fully grasping the significance of this major event, the moon landing kick-started the national intrigue in space. The world was watching as spectators as it marveled at the sheer amount of willpower and aptitude required to complete this dangerous mission. The adventure didn’t end at the moon landing and certainly hasn’t ended today.

After six successful lunar missions, NASA’s robotic programs followed with Voyager and Viking and sent astronauts into low Earth orbit with the 1973 launch of Skylab, the first U.S. space station, and the Space Shuttle. These projects not only set the US on the map for space invention, but they also showed how the global system was changing and evolving. Each U.S administration made progress in its respective areas, as different presidents sought to make their own intentions when it came to space. The George W. Bush administration pushed for a return to the moon and a trip to Mars, while President Barack Obama pushed for an asteroid mission and made a subsequent project to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s. President Donald J. Trump’s administration urged a return to the moon and directed the Department of Defense to create a branch of the military under the Air Force that would concentrate completely on threats from space. In February 2020, President Joe Biden’s administration announced its support of a space force. Interestingly, President Biden’s defense budget shows that the Space Force, the smallest brand of the armed forces, accounts for about 2.5% of total Defense Department spending. There was a $2.2 billion increase in 2022, a considerable gain that shows the elevated prominence and focuses on space for the U.S government. Concerning the president’s plans, the Pentagon released documents on May 28, 2021, responding stating the budget “funds capabilities for the contested domain of space” adding that “Competitors like China and Russia are challenging America’s advantage in space by aggressively developing offensive weapons to deny or destroy U.S. space capabilities in conflict.” Each administration, regardless of the distinct goals or plans, understands the critical role space has in security and international relations. The competitive agenda is evident in how space is becoming an embedded factor in policy, economic, and national plans. It is no longer about shooting for just the moon anymore, countries now have their eyes on the stars. 

There is still much to look forward to in the next few years as these programs continue to capture and captivate audiences. NASA’s efforts continually inspire and drive a new generation of scientists and innovators, pushing humans far from just the bounds of Earth. NASA is collaborating with the private sector for its new Artemis program, which aims to put astronauts, including the first woman, on the moon by 2024. These new and exciting projects are not the only benefit of space exploration. After more than fifty years of human activity in space, the societal benefits and the improvement of the quality of life on Earth are seen all over. In a 2009 survey, it was found that fifty percent of the internationally renowned scientists who published in the prestigious publication Nature for three years had been inspired by the mission of Apollo to become scientists. Even more so, an astounding total of 89 percent of the respondents also agreed that human spaceflight inspires younger generations to study science. These statistics give a very clear picture of what space exploration can do for the US, the world, and humankind. Not only does pursuing space exploration help accumulate valuable knowledge, but the progression also enables an improvement in technology, and the job market, and provides an opportunity for scientific discovery. 

Unfortunately, this exploration can come at a cost like the growing multinational competition among states. Although the United States has had a considerable range in space, experts say U.S. dominance in space could be contested by a range of nations. For starters, China became the third nation to independently launch a human into orbit in 2003 and its capabilities have since expanded exponentially. On January 28, 2022, China released a white paper outlining its plans and priorities for the next five years of spaceflight and exploration that gave considerable ambitious and impressive reach. The document states, "In the next five years, China will continue to improve the capacity and performance of its space transport system and move faster to upgrade launch vehicles. It will further expand the launch vehicle family, send into space new-generation manned carrier rockets and high-thrust solid-fuel carrier rockets, and speed up the R&D [research and development] of heavy-lift launch vehicles.” This plan not only demonstrates the extensive international stage but also illuminates the comprehensive census to pursue space. It isn’t just China that contests and strains this competitive nature either. During the December 6th, 2021 summit, Russia and India agreed to joint activities in a human spaceflight program and satellite navigation. These two countries promised to seek “mutually beneficial” cooperation by creating launch vehicles and developing the use of outer space for peaceful purposes, including planetary exploration. These examples show the efforts and strategies of various countries to also seek space development. Through the employment of foreign policy, countries are also establishing key relationships and collaboration models that are perpetuating change and assembling a new global network. 

Simple competition and cooperation isn’t the only factor that U.S policymakers have to pay attention to. The UN’s 2021 Outer Space Security Conference in Geneva, Switzerland held talks about the potential of an arms race and the emergence of how space will be a new harmful battleground in the future, illuminating the recent emergence of counter-space technologies. China and Russia are developing offensive capabilities, including jammers, lasers, and cyberweapons that could damage satellite operations. Benjamin Silverstein, a research analyst for the space project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, shared this concern noting,  “I contend that we are watching an arms race unfold. We’re probably past the point at which it’s prudent to focus our main efforts on preventing that arms race.” Many scholars and policymakers like Silverstein are urging countries to update diplomatic resources and establish relationships between rival actors. In an effort to contend with this tribulation, the UN panel voted 163-8 on November 1st, 2021 to create an open-ended working group aimed at preventing an arms race in space. This working group will consider threats to space systems and recommend rules for military activities in outer space, meeting in Geneva for two sessions of five days each in both 2022 and 2023 and reporting to the General Assembly in the fall of 2023. Stressing international collaboration and peaceful talks, the UN, analysts, and scholars are working together to prevent tragedies that would devastate the planet. There seems to be a thread of anxiety that is interwoven in the international community as space diplomacy becomes more and more important if not crucial in preventing war. 

The crisis in space concerning accommodating the new technology and traffic is also a concern for Earth. A growing number of private corporations, including SpaceX Amazon, OneWeb, and China’s iSpace are creating constellations of hundreds or even thousands of orbiting satellites, to provide global wireless internet coverage and other outputs. Their advent raises questions about regulation and how to include a limited resource like a satellite. Many satellites pose risks for managing space traffic and the accumulation of debris. In the MIT Technology Review by Mark Harris, currently planned mega-constellations “could generate over 67,000 ‘collision alerts’ annually, forcing operators to choose between precautionary evasive maneuvers and assuming the small risk of collision.” This could end in disaster for Earth, as orbit could become unusable because of debris. Space is becoming more and more congested, and any future treaties and global agreements must take into account these new rights and obligations of non-state actors and be proactive in these constant changes in technology. 

The employment of multilateral cooperation demands greater awareness of space foreign policy. A larger asteroid or space debris striking an urban area could kill millions, making a disaster waiting to happen. U.S. officials have pressed countries to adopt a basic set of norms and rules for operating in space. For instance, Defense Secretary Lloyd had a talk on Washington Post Live on April 30, 2021, expressing this push, “The other thing I would encourage is norms of behavior, and they talk a little bit about responsible behavior in space. Right now, it is the wild wild west. Short of you can't put weapons of mass destruction in space, or you can't build a military base on a celestial body.” A couple of months later, in July, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III signed a memo pledging the Pentagon to follow five “tenets of responsible behavior in space” operating in space with “due regard” for others and in a professional manner, limiting the creation of space junk, avoiding harmful interference, maintaining separation and safe trajectories, and communicating to enhance safety and stability. This effort needs to be collective, as competition continues to rise and technology gets developed. Innovation, although a pivotal tool for curiosity and captivation, has its setbacks. Although world leaders are reaching for the stars, there needs to be a further job on Earth to keep catastrophes like congestion and warfare at bay. Never has there been a more exciting time in space exploration, yet the shadow of potential conflict looms overhead. Nations need to continue to work together as the Earth becomes not the only arena in which conflict can emerge. There is a prevailing question that can’t help but arise after this ceaseless stress in competition and innovation continues to plague the international community: When does reaching for the stars go too far?

Does Peacekeeping Work?

When the average American thinks of UN peacekeeping operations, they tend to think of failures. Images of dead Americans being dragged through the streets in Somalia, Blue Helmets failing to prevent the Rwandan Genocide, and the failed safe zone in Srebrenica spring to mind. Younger generations might think about sexual abuse and exploitation scandals involving UN peacekeepers and a cholera outbreak caused by peacekeepers in Haiti. Empirically, a 2022 Gallup survey found that only 37% of Americans thought that the United Nations is doing a good job, compared to 58% of Americans at the turn of the millennium. In the American imagination, peacekeeping is an expensive failure.

The actual results could not be more different. UN peacekeeping is, in actuality, a highly effective institution that is capable of protecting civilians and building peace in post-conflict countries. This essay will try to debunk the common American perception of the success of UN peacekeeping, building on the existing scholarly literature. The essay will then conclude by examining how these different understandings of UN peacekeeping came to be, and why the misperceptions surrounding UN peacekeeping matter.

Let’s start at the beginning of a UN peacekeeping operation, its deployment. Despite popular perceptions of peacekeepers as cowardly or conflict-shy, the existing academic literature suggests that peacekeepers deploy to the most difficult combat zones, rather than the easiest. Hegre, Hultman, and Nygard 2019 find that UN peacekeepers tend to deploy to the most difficult conflicts with the highest casualty rates and weakest central governments. In these countries, such as the DRC, South Sudan, and the CAR, conflict is widespread and both governments and rebels frequently attack civilians. Within countries, peacekeepers will continue to put themselves at risk by deploying subnationally to the most dangerous parts of the country. Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis studied eight peacekeeping operations and found that peacekeepers deploy to areas, such as near international borders, where conflict is most frequent.

While getting peacekeepers to the right places is important, what matters more is what they do once they get there. After hundreds of thousands of civilians died under the UN’s watch in Rwanda and Bosnia, the UN developed a new doctrine known as the “Protection of Civilians” (POC). This task put direct protection of civilians, including the use of force to do so, at the center of modern UN peacekeeping operations. In doing so, it moved past a previous emphasis on neutrality and restraint that handicapped peacekeepers facing active atrocity situations. This new POC doctrine should on paper address many of the failures that occurred in the 1990s, where the Protection of Civilians was not part of the peacekeepers' toolkit. So, the question is: can peacekeepers protect civilians? 

The answer is yes. Many studies, such as the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, have taken advantage of new data sets on violence against civilians to study what impact peacekeepers have had on violence against civilians in the areas they deploy in. The vast majority of these studies have found that the presence of peacekeepers has a statistically significant negative effect on violence against civilians. Phayal (2019) examined the UN peacekeeping in Darfur and found that the deployment of peacekeepers “restrains belligerents from targeting civilians.” While several mechanisms have been established to explain this, the most common has to do with the cost-benefit analysis of potential perpetrators. Although attacking civilians runs little risk and thus incurs little potential cost, attacking civilians protected by armed peacekeepers backed by the international community has a higher cost and is, thus, less likely to occur. Using a variety of different cases and methodologies, this same conclusion is found by Melander (2009), Hegre, Hultman, and Nygard (2019), and Kathman and Wood (2016). 

In South Sudan, for example, as many as 200,000 civilians fleeing violence gathered in IDP camps around UN bases in late 2013, forming “Protection of Civilian sites.” UN peacekeepers have guarded those sites ever since, protecting those civilians from other larger ethnic groups in the region who had previously attacked them. At the same time, the UN has started to work to create the necessary conditions for civilians to return home and for the South Sudanese government to take over security provision.

While the literature shows that peacekeepers are able to successfully protect civilians in their areas of operations, there are a few key caveats to keep in mind. First, Payal and Prins 2020 found that, while peacekeepers are successful in preventing attacks by rebel groups, they are less able to protect civilians from government forces.5 Given the need for host state consent for most peacekeeping missions and the fact that most peacekeeping missions are mandated to support and improve the host government, this isn’t exactly surprising. We also have to consider the role of respective capabilities in protecting civilians. Di Salvatore (2018) found that peacekeepers were less capable of protecting civilians as power asymmetries grew. Conversely, however, Haass and Ansorg 2018 found that peacekeepers are better able to protect civilians when they are better equipped, funded, and trained. This makes logical sense, peacekeepers are more effective the better their advantage is over possible perpetrators, and vice-versa.

However, the Protection of Civilians is only a short-term objective. The long-run objective is to create a sustainable peace where peacekeepers are no longer needed. The evidence suggests that peacekeepers are able to accomplish this. Fortna (2008) analyzes the role that UN peacekeepers have in armed group decision-making during civil wars. She finds that the presence of peacekeepers alleviates mistrust and miscalculation and prevents escalations, thus leading to a higher success rate of peace implementation. Kathman and Benson (2019) provide empirical support for this idea. They found that the deployment of additional peacekeepers decreases the length of the conflict. Peacekeeping deployments can also prevent conflicts from spreading to other nearby countries. Beardsley (2011) empirically finds that “the risk of armed conflict onset increases by 71% on average when a neighboring state experiences a conflict without peacekeeping.”

An example of this can be seen in the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). The mission was deployed in 1999 to replace a regional peacekeeping operation that had failed to contain the countries civil war. Following several high-profile failures including the kidnapping of peacekeepers and internal divisions, the mission was able to regain the trust of the public and create the necessary conditions for peace. They ensured the withdrawal of Liberian rebels across the border, disarmed local groups, and implemented national elections. The mission withdrew in 2005, and conflict in Sierra Leone has been minimal since. So we’ve seen that peacekeepers frequently accomplish their two primary objectives (protecting civilians and building peace). However, that’s not everything they can do. Reeder (2018) found that peacekeeping deployments are associated with better health outcomes, as quantified by vaccination rates. Reeder and Polizzi expand on this theme of service delivery in their 2021 article, where they found that peacekeeping deployment is associated with better education outcomes in their areas of deployment. In both cases, this is because peacekeepers help create a safer environment for other groups (such as government agencies and NGOs) to deliver services such as health and education. Finally, Bakaki and Bohmelt (2021) found that UN peacekeeping deployments increase the environmental quality in their areas of operation. The existing literature shows that UN peacekeeping is incredibly effective at a variety of different tasks across a variety of different countries, despite frequently deploying to the most dangerous combat zones. However, as mentioned earlier, this is not the perception that most Americans have of UN peacekeeping. There are several theories why this might be the case: the first has to do with media coverage. The failures of UN peacekeeping in the 1990s were highly publicized on major American news networks such as CNN. This is because often, such as in Bosnia and Somalia, they involved US forces. They also frequently deployed to geopolitical or human rights hotspots such as Rwanda. Times on the security council have changed since the 1990s, however. While peacekeepers still deploy to the most dangerous areas, they avoid the conflicts where great power competition is at its strongest (such as Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine). Instead, peacekeepers deploy to “under the radar” conflicts such as in the Central African Republic, Mali, and South Sudan. Peacekeeping’s success stories have received far less press coverage than its failures, and the end result is that peacekeeping is perceived as a failure by the media-consuming public.

Another potential cause of the gap in peacekeeping’s public perception has to do with the US’s perceived relationship with the UN and the idea of American exceptionalism. While the US government has always been a decently strong supporter of the UN, the US public has been less supportive. Part of this can be explained by the idea of American exceptionalism, the nationalist and widespread idea that American civilization is superior or exceptional to all others. In this context, the UN represents a threat: as an organization that could potentially overrule America’s sovereignty at home, such as the UN’s role in organizing climate change agreements, and decision-making abroad, such as the UN's refusal to authorize the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There’s a reason that the UN has emerged as a common actor in conspiracy theories, including those that deal with hot-button domestic topics such as gun confiscations. It’s no surprise then that nationalist Americans wouldn’t support UN peacekeeping because it can be construed as a threat.

This is unfortunate for two reasons. In the short term, some US politicians have decided they don’t need to support UN Peacekeeping. The Trump administration previously refused to pay its needed UN dues. Given that the US is the largest UN’s financial contributor, this had a significant negative effect on peacekeeping effectiveness. The Trump administration knew it could get away with unilaterally not paying its bills because the US public by and large doesn't care about peacekeeping. In fact, UN ambassador Nikki Hailey bragged that “Just 5 months into our time here, we've cut over half a billion $$$ from the UN peacekeeping budget & we’re only getting started.” The backlash was minimal and the US only started to fully pay its dues during the Biden administration. 

In the long term, US distrust of the UN has limited the US military's ability to contribute. The US has remained mostly withdrawn from UN peacekeeping since the 1990s. Despite its large and effective military, the US currently contributes only 31 peacekeepers out of nearly 80,000 total. As the US withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has a large number of effective units that it could contribute to UN peacekeeping operations (recall that better funded and equipped militaries, such as the US, are better capable of protection).

However, the idea of deploying US forces at any scale is ludicrous in the current environment given the American public’s current hostility to peacekeeping operations. The only way to improve that public opinion, and potentially awaken a sleeping giant in the form of the US military, is to begin to counter the incorrect narratives about peacekeeping that have sadly become commonplace amongst the American public. 

References

Bakaki, Zorzeta, and Tobias Böhmelt. “Can UN Peacekeeping Promote Environmental Quality?” International Studies Quarterly 65, no. 4 (December 17, 2021): 881–890.

Beardsley, Kyle. “Peacekeeping and the Contagion of Armed Conflict.” The Journal of Politics 73, no. 4 (2011): 1051–1064.

Fortna, Virginia Page. Does Peacekeeping Work?: Shaping Belligerents’ Choices after Civil War. Book collections on Project MUSE. Princeton: University Press, 2008

Haass, Felix, and Nadine Ansorg. “Better Peacekeepers, Better Protection? Troop Quality of United Nations Peace Operations and Violence against Civilians.” Journal of Peace Research 55, no. 6 (November 1, 2018): 742–758.

Hegre, Håvard, Lisa Hultman, and Håvard Mokleiv Nygård. “Evaluating the Conflict-Reducing Effect of UN Peacekeeping Operations.” The Journal of Politics 81, no. 1 (January 1, 2019): 215–232.

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Women in Terrorist Organizations- Victims or Accomplices?

The role of women in terrorist organizations, particulary jihadist groups in the Middle East (the most notorious of which are the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and the current governing force of Afghanistan, the Taliban) has been studied from a variet of perspecties, mostly focusing on their victimization. Terrorism is both a consequence and perpetrator of instability and violence, which, as is the case with most marginalized populations, affects women in particular. Women living under terrorist-controlled strongholds in the Middle East are brutally subjugated, forced into sexual and domestic slavery, forced to serve the organizations dominating them, and tasked with indoctrinating the next generation. When we consider the women who willingly join terrorist groups and engage in acts of terrorism such as suicide bombing, we more often that not only consider women in the West - to take one infamous example, Shamima Begum, who traveled from the United Kingdom to an Islamic State-controlled region of Syria and was charged with terrorism upon her return to the United Kingdom. However, plenty of women in the Middle East have willingly joined terrorist organizations, defying the “jihadi bride” trope which will be examined in more detail later in this article. In refusing to acknowledge the agency of Middle Eastern women - in the negative context, the agency to commit crimes and harm others, not just the agency to obtain an education or to start a business - we risk not only underestimating the security threat that women pose, but we deny ourselves the possibility of a more well-rounded and well-informed counterterrorism strategy and fail to fully comprehend the socio-political factors that both breed terror and inspire women to join the movement. 

Chief amongst those factors seems to be a well-documented feeling of a lack of agency on the part of many women who join terrorist organizations. As a Washington Institute study found, “one of the principle reasons these women can choose to take part in terrorism is to gain a sense of agency and power that they were never given in their communities through leaning into extremist ideology and accepting the new leadership roles opening up for women within those structures–even as these organizations treat them as second citizens and will even use women to generate revenue through sex trafficking.” In other words, women frustrated with a lack of agency viewed jihadism and joining terrorist organizations as a way to reclaim a sense of independence previously lacking. The emphasis on preserving a patriarchal system was part of a broader rejection of diversity that included the repression of racial and ethnic minorities. Put simply, those who tried to choose a life outside of the communal norm were seen as threats, an attitude that has suffocated the creative and productive abilities of women and, indeed the this region as a whole. What is relatively new is that some of the women who have lived through these traumas, especially those already exposed to a radical upbringing, increasingly see joining terrorist groups as a way of recapturing the agency denied to them by society. In a twisted way, some women respond to socially accepted oppressive traditions to women’s rights, as well as social pressures that encourage radical thoughts and definitions of self-sacrifice in the name of the sacred, by seeking agency through the most extreme performance of these 'values.' The fertile soil in which some women naturally harvest radical ideas stems from the lack of alternative ways to express their inner anger-turned-hatred. An interesting perspective to explore 

The BBC has warned of the dangers of falling into the habit of assuming women only join or are affiliated with terrorist organizations as ‘jihadi brides’.  ISIS’ capture of the Syrian city of Raqqa in 2013 led to a a shift in their online propaganda; not only were women actively recruited for traditional roles like wife and mother (which still remains their primary function), but as doctors, nurses, teachers, and administrators. “Notably, women were eventually given the responsibility to monitor compliance among other women, evident in the establishment of the all-female al-Khansaa police brigade. This adaptation by the Islamic State to changing circumstances was later reflected in the seventh edition of the group’s online propaganda magazine, Dabiq, which included a new section directly addressing women.”

One of the most vital roles that women play in terrorist organizations is that of a recruiter. As USAToday found, “Western women have also been highly effective online recruiters for young girls from their countries of origin. Teenage girls — justifiably skittish about conversing with strange men online — are likely to be less circumspect about communicating with someone of the same gender who holds allure by being slightly older, sharing their interests and confidences and conveying a sense of inclusion. Thus Hoda Muthana from Alabama recruited American girls, while Aqsa Mahmood from Scotland successfully recruited girls from Great Britain.”  Failing to recognize this can have deadly consequences, with the Washington Post stating “Extremist groups rely upon women to gain strategic advantage, recruiting them as facilitators and martyrs while also benefiting from their subjugation. Yet U.S. policymakers overlook the roles that women play in violent extremism—including as perpetrators, mitigators, and victims—and rarely enlist their participation in efforts to combat radicalization. This omission puts the United States at a disadvantage in its efforts to prevent terrorism globally and within its borders.”

The Washington Post summarized it best, saying that “Pull factors for joining a terrorist organization were a desire for a new environment, pride, support of a political cause, free education and training, image, and access to social and political roles. Push factors were deprivation, redemption and honor, revenge, romantic ties, family influence, commitment to an ideological cause, traumatic experiences, and protection of self and family.”

It has already been established in the literature on terrorism that a wide range of social, political, cultural, and economic trend contribute to the rise of terrorist organizations. Almost ironically, the global war on terror has both caused and strengthened many of these trends. By recognizing the veritable threat that female terrorist fighters pose, as well as the vital role that they play in terrorist networks and their strengthening, we can more holistically broaden our understanding of terrorism dynamics, and in doing so, our understanding of effective counterterrorism strategies.

The Islamic State- Beaten but Not Broken

In the early morning hours of February 3rd, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the second leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, was killed in an American operation in northwest Syria. His death followed that of the organization's founder and self proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019. Al-Qurashi’s death is an important milestone in continuing the struggle against the forces of ISIS - yet it appears to have overshadowed the more significant events of the previous month. 

On January 20th, a truck in the northeastern Syrian city of Al-Hasakah suddenly veered towards the walls of the Al-Sina’a prison. It detonated, marking the beginning of a prison break at the largest detention camp of ISIS fighters in the world, and the largest and most complex operation of the organization since their territorial defeat three years earlier. 

The military defeat of ISIS and the loss of its territory did not mean the end of the organization's existence, despite the rhetoric and lack of attention paid by many Western governments. For the tens of thousands of the organization's fighters, there were few options. Many fought to the death, others attempted to slink away into unpopulated or barren areas to try and avoid detection - but thousands of fighters, along with their wives and children, were either captured or surrendered. These fighters have been held in a kind of purgatory - crammed into massive detention centers for years with no end in sight. 

The Al-Sina’a prison in Al-Hasakah was one of these detention centers and held an estimated  3,500 and 4,000 prisoners, all either ISIS militants or their children - some of whom were child soldiers. Al-Hasakah is under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a multi-ethnic - but primarily Kurdish - armed group seeking to carve out an autonomous zone in northwest Syria.

Al-Sina’a has long been infamous for holding both the former militants and their children (the so called ‘cubs of the caliphate’) in atrocious and inhumane conditions. The prison is overcrowded, with food, water, and medicine being in short supply. 700 of the prison's occupants are children, and their continued incarceration without charge or chance of rehabilitation is particularly problematic. 

Yet it's important to note that these conditions are not on account of the SDF’s cruelty but instead of a lack of resources. Of the 3,500-4,000 prisoners, only a quarter are from Syria. The diverse makeup of the prison population is representative of the global nature of ISIS' membership. Indeed, the continued presence of these multinational prisoners is due to the refusal of the rest of the world to repatriate their citizens who left to join ISIS. It is an underreported absurdity that the international community has abandoned the people of Syria and Iraq to deal foreign citizens. So these fighters are stuck, with their countries unwilling to bring them home and prosecute them. They have no chance at rehabilitation by rotting away in sweltering inhumane conditions surrounded by hardened terrorists. Without any program of rehabilitation, the militants remain ready and committed to their ideology. This situation is particularly unjust for the children of these prisons, imprisoned for the crimes of their parents, still surrounded by a hateful and twisted ideology.

Beyond its horrid conditions, Al-Sina'a has been commonly referred to as a "ticking time bomb" for an ISIS resurgence. Several months earlier the Aisyah, the police of Rojava, had intercepted an earlier attempt by ISIS to attack this very same prison. On January 20th, they were not so lucky. 

The ISIS attack was sudden and intense. The first car bomb cleared the way for an ISIS cell to rush into the prison, bringing arms to the prisoners, who had been ready and rioting for their comrades - an indication of the complexity of the operation - before they raided the prison armory. What followed was the beginning of a brutal week of urban warfare. Fighting raged for days as the SDF, with air support from the American led-international coalition, mobilized troops to confront the sudden and massive insurgency. The residents of the Ghweiran neighborhood of Al-Hasakah, where the Al-Sina’a prison is located, found themselves in the midst of a ferocious battle. Approximately 45,000 people were displaced on the first day of fighting alone. It also appeared that the SDF had prematurely declared victory at times - after the battle had been declared over, a new ISIS pocket would either be found in door to door sweeps or would suddenly open fire on SDF forces. When the dust truly did settle, close to 500 militants and escapees were killed, with close to one hundred SDF fighters and prisoner workers dying as well. Worryingly, it is still unclear how many members of ISIS were able to escape. 

Though the battle ended with the defeat and capture of the prisoners and their would be liberators, it is frankly too early to conclusively call this operation a victory against the ISIS. It is still unknown who the escapees are and if high level leaders may have been able to disappear and rejoin their organization's insurgency. Notably, experts worry about the attack’s implications. It is a clear propaganda victory for ISIS, demonstrating that they still have the capability to stage large, complex, and deadly operations. This attack was also not an isolated event. On the contrary, the last few months have seen a resurgence in ISIS' activity in both Iraq and Syria. When this prison break is viewed with the proper context - that of an emboldened ISIS willing and able to operate a cross border insurgency - the implications are worrying.

Which leads to the question - what is to be done? Multiple conditions must be addressed in order to remedy the underlying problems that led to this attack. More significant aid must immediately be distributed to the people of Iraq and Syria that are responsible for ensuring hardened ISIS veterans remain behind bars. Assistance should provide for both more humane conditions for prisoners as well as address the ability for inmates to properly repatriate back into normal society. In the case of the SDF in Rojava, the issue of Turkey must be addressed as well. Turkey has been hostile to the Kurdish-dominated SDF since its inception. This hostility can be seen in both the Turkish invasions of Rojava as well as in the allegations that Turkey had bombed SDF reinforcements on their way to the Al-Sina’a prison. Continued Turkish aggression towards the SDF in Rojava only serves to pull resources away from the detention of ISIS fighters and produces the instability that allows for the ISIS to continue to fester.

In the long term, the international community must come to terms with the fact that they cannot merely wash their hands of their own civilians and must repatriate the foreigners that joined ISIS. The presence of thousands of foreign fighters held in detention camps in Iraq and Syria is not a viable solution. Only with the action of the international community can this issue be truly resolved. In the future, these attacks will continue to occur unless these changes are made. The rest of the world needs to begin to repatriate their citizens and must stop delegating the task to the people of Syria and Iraq. If nothing is done, the prospects of an ISIS resurgence remain high and the future of northern Syria looks bleak.

An Analytics Revolution in UN Peacekeeping: Laying the Groundwork

UN Peacekeeping is often faced with difficult trade-offs. As Paul Williams of George Washington explains, “the [Security] Council's three strategic goals for peacekeeping operations—implementing broad mandates, minimizing peacekeeper casualties and maximizing cost-effectiveness—cannot be achieved simultaneously.” Given the current trend of falling Peacekeeping budgets, it’s clear that Peacekeepers will have to offset their more conservative allocation of resources. A possible way to accomplish all three goals could be using statistical analysis to identify and exploit undervalued assets, as well as maximizing the potential of existing assets. I argue that, by adopting such a perspective, peacekeepers can accomplish more with less.

Assets, in this case, can mean several different things. For example, it can refer to troop contingents in the military component, the types of peacebuilding projects undertaken by the civilian component, and the tactics used by both. Each of these assets has a different cost to acquire and use in mission, both in terms of financial and political capital. It will be cheaper and easier to acquire an infantry battalion from a large troop contributing country (TCC) like India than an infantry battalion from the United States. Each of these assets will also provide different levels of value to the mission. The new Peacekeeping strategy would be to identify the assets that contribute the most value compared to their cost.

This identification will come from statistical analysis. The advantage of statistical analysis over conventional value analysis is that, with statistical analysis, we can identify assets that are undervalued because conventional value analysis also sets the cost of an asset. In order to identify which assets are undervalued, we first must determine what factors create value to a PKO in certain classes of assets, with a special emphasis on the use of new technology. If we are to adopt the statistical approach to PKOs, this research must start immediately.

There are, however, two potential issues with this approach. First, the data we use to determine value may be unreliable or unavailable. Second, we must define what constitutes success for a PKO. Given the many objectives of the average PKO, this is significantly complicated for peacekeepers.  

Even with those two caveats in mind, embracing greater statistical analysis and other technologies in Peacekeeping would let Peacekeepers achieve their broad mandates in a safe manner, even with limited financial resources.  The UN has already started to embrace this thinking with a new “Digital Transformation” where new technology, such as drones, and statistical analysis combine to maximize the cost-effectiveness of peacekeepers in the field.

The next three sections will provide case studies that highlight this new type of thinking: force generation reform, increased airpower, and conflict prediction. Hopefully, by embracing some of these ideas, a technological revolution can lead UN Peacekeeping to cost-effectiveness and success.\

Case Study A: Force Generation Reform

While it’s easy to outline this new statistics-based methodology in broad strokes, it’s a bit harder to visualize the strategy in practice. This section aims to apply the methodology to a specific hypothetical case, in order to better illustrate the entire methodology.

In this hypothetical scenario, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations Force Generation Service is trying to acquire an additional infantry battalion. They have five choices, as shown in the table below. C represents the total cost in USD to use the infantry battalion for a year, as measured in both direct payments and the indirect effort needed to convince the TCC to loan the infantry battalion. V represents the expected decrease in civilian casualties in the battalion deployment area.

Country: C. V. C/V

A. $50 million. 60% reduction. 833,333.333

B. $40 million. 55% reduction. 727,272.727

C. $40 million. 45% reduction. 888,888.889

D. $30 million. 30% reduction. 1,000,000

E. $25 million. 20% reduction. 1,250,000

In his hypothetical scenario, the Force Generation Service should prioritize recruiting from country B, because the C/V (or the cost in USD for each percent expected decrease in civilian casualties) is the lowest. Importantly, this strategy ignores all other factors, such as whether B is a large or influential TCC, whether B has a long history in PKOs, or whether the Force Generation Service thinks that battalions from B are harder to acquire than from the other countries. We can also compare assets: as shown below. This is a change from the current system of unit evaluation. The current standard operating procedure for the “Assessment and Evaluation of Formed Police Unit Performance,” for example, relies on subjective responses by evaluators to preset questions on a scale of 1-4

Asset: C. V. C/V.

Infantry Battalion from B. $40 million. 55% reduction. 727,272.727

UAV Squadron from B. $20 million. 30% reduction. 66,666.667

In this scenario, it would be more efficient to bring in the UAV unit instead of the infantry battalion. Even if the UAV unit is smaller, it is more cost-efficient than the infantry battalion. 

Again, this brief thought exercise is intended to illustrate the statistical strategy in practice. Decisions in this model are made based on statistical value, instead of more subjective evaluations. It’s easy to accomplish this with hypothetical values, in the real world calculating C and V is much more difficult. But attempting to determine the specific values of  C and V of military units throughout the DPO’s PCRS system.

Case Study B: Increased Airpower

A consistent effect of underfunded PKOs is that there are never enough peacekeepers to adequately guard the number of people they are charged with protecting. As Williams again notes, even with a modest ratio of 1 peacekeeper for every 100 civilians, the big four UN PKOs would require 397,000 peacekeepers. In reality, they have 69,302 peacekeepers across the four missions. It’s unlikely the UN will be able to afford a larger number of peacekeepers, so the objective would be to allocate their existing peacekeepers in the most efficient way possible. A continued and increased reliance on airpower could maximize this efficiency, for two main reasons. They are increased rapid reaction capability and increased intelligence gathering capability.

Given that peacekeeping missions are understrength, they can’t be in every populated area of their areas of responsibility. This means that when attacks on civilians or other crises occur, particularly in rural areas, peacekeepers have to deploy to the affected areas quickly. Given the poor infrastructure in some of these areas, this is no easy task. One way to dramatically increase the effective deployment range of peacekeeping units is the use of utility transport helicopters. These let peacekeepers bypass physical and political barriers to rapid deployment (such as roadblocks) and reach crisis areas faster.

Right now there is a helicopter shortage in UN PKOs. The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), for example, has only 25 helicopters for 18,106 peacekeepers. Increasing the ratio of helicopters to peacekeepers would be a cost-effective way to maximize the rapid reaction ability of peacekeepers in the field.

However, this advantage is primarily reactive instead of proactive. In order to anticipate attacks on civilians before they happen, and deploy forces to counter beforehand, real-time intelligence and data is needed. Drones offer a possible low-cost way to increase the intelligence gathering capability of UN PKOs.

Drones have several key advantages. First, like other aircraft, they are unconstrained by terrestrial impediments on patrolling, such as harsh terrain or the presence of hostile forces. Second, they are able to remain airborne for a longer period than other forms of airborne surveillance. Third, they are less expensive per flight hour than other forms of airborne surveillance.

The data from drones has proven capable of helping protect civilians. As Karlsrud and Rosen note, the photographic and infrared equipment on UAVs let peacekeepers “track movements of armed militias, assist patrols heading into hostile territory, and document atrocities.” This situational intelligence will help peacekeepers proactively deploy to the same areas hostile groups are moving into. Despite that benefit, UAVs have only widely available in one mission, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). 

By increasing their pool of aircraft, UN PKOs can compensate for their lack of personnel at a lower cost than increasing the number of peacekeepers deployed. The DPO has recognized the need for aircraft within their missions. Additional helicopters were deemed a substantial part of their critical mission gaps in a recent report.  Another way to increase that efficiency would be to increase the emphasis on conflict prediction, which will be discussed below.

Case Study C: Conflict Prediction

UN PKOs gather large amounts of data from their patrols, and if they embraced some of the recommendations of this article they would gather even more. But that data needs to be used effectively to optimize peacekeeping deployments. One of the best ways to do that would be to further invest in conflict prediction software.

Some existing models have proved successful. A machine learning model developed by Chris Perry, for example, was able to mostly accurately predicate which African countries would experience conflict using publically available data. There are some studies on how these types of conflict predicting algorithms can be applied to PKOs. Duursma and Karlsrud argue that machine learning can provide quantitative analysis in a field dominated by qualitative analysis. If these algorithms can accurately predict where conflict will spike in the mission area, extra peacekeepers and other conflict prevention measures can be deployed to that area. These algorithms, like the accurate calculations of C and V mentioned earlier, are not fully developed. Thus, an analytics revolution is not fully possible immediately.

Conclusion

By setting a broad and bold statistical research agenda, UN leadership can optimize peacekeeping missions. When combined with continuing to embrace new technologies like UAVs and helicopters, this should let PKOs accomplish their broad mandates and protect civilians even in the face of reduced fiscal ability.

Is the United Nations Still a Relevant International Body?

The United Nations (UN), created in 1945, had the goal of actively maintaining peace within the international community. In the wake of World War II, the world was ready for calm and there was widespread motivation to create peace as a joint community. However, the world of international politics today is even more complex, thus calling into question the relevance of the United Nations as a governing international body. There are many arguments that highlight the shortcomings of the United Nations, deeming it irrelevant. However, since the UN is a long-standing institution that has facilitated beneficial actions, it is essential to implement structural revisions to adapt institutions for the modern day. 

The Ineffectiveness of the United Nations Security Council:

One of the arguments at the forefront in support for eliminating the United Nations is that the most powerful organ of the UN, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), is not relevant to the modern world. The main evidence for this claim is that the UNSC only has five permanent member states: USA, Russia, Britain, China, France) and 10 non-permanent member states. This structure results in misuse of veto power, often blocking key decisions that are needed by nations with little to no representation. It also prevents developing countries from being represented, which is necessary in the present day. 

Over the years, it has become clear that the Security Council’s permanent members have little interest in internal reform. Since this is the case, it is in the best interest of the other UN member states to continue to push for reform. With powerful countries moving to unilateralism, populism, and nationalism at the expense of multilateralism and collective action, a united and forward-looking Security Council capable of effectively driving the wider United Nations to achieve its goals is essential. 

Global Health and the Role of the UN:

Critics of the UN believe that the failure of the World Health Organization (WHO), during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and in its prevention, is another sign that the UN is irrelevant. With the occurrence of future global health crises rising, instead of creating a global approach, the WHO should simply be reformed. This can be done by creating an international antivirus consortium, protecting biodiversity, and strengthening warning protocols within UN agencies. 

The main priority should be to reform the WHO to create an international antivirus consortium. This would guarantee access to a COVID-19 vaccine for all countries, as well as access to future vaccines for new viruses. The consortium would be funded the same way the UN and peacekeeping budgets are - using a scale of quotas under which every member country financially contributes according to its payment capacities. The responsibility of the consortium would be to ensure the equitable distribution of vaccines and personal protective equipment to every country.

Second, a new international strategy for the protection of biodiversity is key. Neither the antivirus consortium nor future vaccines will be enough without other preventive measures. The preservation of biodiversity is one of the best ways to do that. New viruses emerge because human activities disturb ecosystems and undermine their biodiversity. Creating a global emergency plan to identify, safeguard, and protect biodiversity and the ecosystems of endangered species would help countries that cannot afford other protective measures themselves.

Lastly, due to the increase in likelihood of future pandemics, the likelihood of pandemic-adjacent threats is also increasing. Therefore, the world needs new information-sharing procedures between specialized agencies to take quick and preventive action to detect, prevent, and mitigate potential new threats that could undermine international security, national economies, sanitary and health conditions, and food security. Early warning protocols on international emergencies including famines and pandemics can help alert all UN members to take appropriate early and preventive action, such information-sharing procedures should be proposed as resolutions at the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

The Modern Role of the Indo-Pacific and its Recognition:

Since World War II, the pillars of global governance are rapidly changing. Institutional infirmities are being highlighted and a normative shift is becoming increasingly relevant. These changes show why another very important reform would be safeguarding the Indo-Pacific. 

India’s pursuit of permanent membership on the UN Security Council is evidence of its global ambitions. Additionally, it is equally important for New Delhi that global institutions better reflect contemporary global realities – like the reality of the economic and strategic strengths of India. 

The security dynamics in the immediate aftermath of World War II focused on managing a divided Europe and safeguarding its peripheries from the Soviet bloc. However, in the modern international political sphere, the Indo-Pacific is driving the global economic and political agenda. Because of this reality, global institutional frameworks should reflect this power shift, especially when a weakening United Nations is leading to a proliferation of self-selected groups. The issue of UN reform is also linked with that of ensuring proper resourcing. Discussing reforms without making provisions for adequate resources will lead nowhere; the flip side is that channeling more resources in the absence of genuine reforms only perpetuates the status quo. While some countries have gradually deemphasized the United Nations in favor of new frameworks to address their most pressing challenges, others have been gaming the UN system to further their narrow interests. For example, the danger in having UN officials and agencies champion China’s Belt and Road Initiative is immense. 

The Bigger Picture:

Unlike in 1945, the international community faces three common enemies: climate change, infectious diseases, and nuclear weapons. The existence of these threats also highlights their commonality: only global, multilateral efforts can reduce their destructive potential. The United Nations can prioritize these threats by debating and drafting a resolution identifying them as the core global challenges. A permanent coordinating platform should be set up to integrate the UN response across agencies, funds, and related organizations, and to act quickly, comprehensively, and efficiently in various fields, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization. Establishing such communication channels will bolster cohesiveness, which is fundamental when dealing with ongoing, multidimensional threats in a fragmented UN system.

This coordinating platform could be created through the existing Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB). The platform’s goal would be to link threat mitigation to all policy fields in the UN system when planning, deciding, and assessing results. Ideally, the Security Council should be stripped of veto power when a matter relating to these existential threats is on the agenda; such a move, however, is unfortunately unrealistic. More realistically, prioritizing this debate would lead to greater focus on what matters most. On its seventy-fifth birthday, the United Nations needs to think big if it is to see its one hundred and fiftieth.

Looking to the Future:

The United Nations is still relevant, especially since the world has become interconnected and where current global problems, such as hunger and climate change have emerged, thus the UN’s collective efforts are essential to tackle these modern challenges. The UN has attempted to improve its structure, however, the lack of willingness by member states has impeded the UN’s progress. The reform agenda should be directed towards strengthening the UN’s outstanding thinking and could be a solution that would encourage \ member states to be involved in building such a network which could ultimately lead to better adherence to the UN’s structural reform agenda. Clearly, it is relatively complicated to determine the measures that can generate the will and it is not going to be easy to design a new UN once these measures are discovered either. However, if the member states notice that the only alternative without the UN is to address the growing number of complicated interconnected and wide scope challenges by themselves. They will be left with no choice but to accept the fact that it might be better to collectively repair the UN rather than be left alone to face the dramatic challenges of today's world.

Shedding Light on the “Prison-to-Jihad” Pipeline: Islam, Radicalization, and Terrorism in French Prisons

Since the Islamic State’s creation in June 2014, France has witnessed the most terrorist related violence across all of Europe and the United States. Brookings’ scholars McCants and Meserole recently published a landmark study identifying Francophone status as the biggest determinant for whether European countries experience Sunni radicalization and violence. These two data points highlight the continued risks posed by violent extremist organizations (VEOs) to the government of France and its citizens. Terrorism in France is too often wrapped up in conflicting narratives of nationalism, Islam, and immigration. Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen frequently used the trope of Middle Eastern refugees seeking to unleash violence against France in the name of Islam, a narrative that secured her one-third of the national vote in the 2017 presidential elections. Yet the overwhelming majority of recent terrorist attacks haven’t been carried out by refugees, but by French citizens socialized in the country’s secular schools. Moreover, a wide variety of groups have engaged in terrorism across France since the 1800s, including Basque, Breton and Corsican separatists, pro- and anti-Algerian independence movements, the far-left Action Directe, the far-right Organisation Armée Secrète, neo-Nazis, and more recently, Islamic extremists. Islamic extremists, as defined by the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), engage in the violence in the name of a faith-based ideology in order to impose strict regulations on social life, though they often lack even rudimentary religious education. In the case of Islamic extremism in France, this violence is particularly anti-state, as the French government’s strict interpretation of secularism, or laicite, results in heavy restrictions on Islam in public spaces. Yet the roots of radicalization lie in specific social processes which take place at the individual rather than community level. While Muslims in France, and overlapping African and Maghrebi immigrant populations, face state violence and widespread economic discrimination, the overwhelming majority continue to reject violence and extremist ideologies. Prisons offer a clearer view of this complex relationship between government policies, Islam, radicalization, and terrorism. If authorities are to effectively dismantle radicalization networks in prisons, they must create targeted rehabilitation programs, end isolation of suspected radicals, empower Imams as independent authorities, and avoid securitizing entire populations who face continued discrimination.

Race and identity in the French criminal justice system

French pundits consistently highlight prisons as “incubators” for radicalization. The government estimates that 1,400 radicalized inmates currently reside in prison, 300 of whom are serving sentences for terrorism charges. A major blind spot for security services comes not from convicted terrorists, but from petty criminals who are radicalized while serving their sentences and who carry out attacks upon leaving. Notable former inmates charged with crimes like petty theft, drug possession, and larceny include Mohammed Merah, perpetrator of the 2012 Toulouse attacks, Mehdi Nemmouche of the 2014 Brussels Jewish Museum attack, and the assailants from the January 2015 Paris attacks, Amedy Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi. Countering violent extremism (CVE) policies must, therefore, highlight both convicted terrorists and inmates more broadly susceptible to radicalization, despite clear indicators.

Hardline ideologies in French prisons exist alongside more broadly followed religious practices, namely Islam, which plays a major role in inmates’ social networks. Islam spread rapidly across the prison population in the 1970s with the spread of Tablighi, a movement within Sunni Islam which emphasizes piety. At first, prison authorities welcomed this trend and its stabilizing effect on prisoners, as it weakened the influence of organized criminal groups. It was only in the 1990s, during the Algerian Civil War and the growth of Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) cells across France, that prison officials began securitizing Islam, resulting in greater surveillance and the use of isolation on Muslim inmates. Currently, more than 60 percent of inmates identify as Muslim (almost 40,000 inmates total), despite making up only 12% of the general population. One reason for this overrepresentation stems from the failure of integration on the part of the government, as explained by sociologist Moussa Khedimellah. Many Muslim inmates come from banlieues, segregated neighborhoods predominantly populated by immigrant communities, with few opportunities for higher education or employment. Arrest rates in these neighborhoods far surpass the national average. While the government is prohibited from collecting statistics on race or religion, French Muslims, mostly from Arab or African descent, are estimated to comprise the majority of those arrested on drug charges, especially for marijuana. Another potential reason for the skew is widespread institutional violence directed towards France’s Arab and African population. The state of emergency passed in the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris attacks saw wide-scale police repression targeting French Muslims, with tens of thousands targeted with random searches and online surveillance, and thousands more subjected to house raids. Economic and political discrimination create additional issues. French Muslims are reportedly 400% less likely to receive a job offer than their Catholic counterparts, even when controlling for education and skill level. Second and third generation citizens with Arab and African surnames are told to change their names when submitting job applications. As a result of this widespread discrimination, charismatic “influencers” in prisons have little difficulty persuading inmates about the perceived irreconcilability of French identity and Islam when they can easily draw on lived experiences of institutional Islamophobia and the openly racist and violent discourse of political groups like the French National Front.

While the linkages between impoverished banlieue and radicalization are appealing, a closer look at recent attacks shows a more nuanced picture. In fact, while some attackers like the Kouachi brothers fit an expected pattern of fragmented social networks, poverty, barriers to employment, and repeat criminality, other attackers emerged from middle-class, secular families with access to education, like Coulibaly. Moreover, the average French citizen traveling to Iraq or Syria to fight for the Islamic State is increasingly white, middle-class, and occasionally female. France must address the rampant economic and social exclusion facing Arab and African populations in banlieu neighborhoods but should do so without the pretense of addressing the root causes of radicalization, which are far more nuanced. While difficult conditions certainly shaped the path to radicalization for some notorious individuals, the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of ‘banlieusards’ are not taking up arms against the French state. Therefore, while environmental factors can serve as stressors to sensitize an individual to radicalization, the unique social process that place in prisons requires a closer look.

The “Prison to Jihad Pipeline”

Most literature supports the idea that prisons, under certain conditions, can serve as potent incubators for radicalization. Across the Middle East, prisons hosted numerous jihadist figures, including Al Qaeda notables Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Spanish, British, Belgian, and French prisons have all produced terrorists socialized during their detention who went on to carry out major acts of terrorism. Given the varying quality of life and style of detention across these different countries, radicalization is likely an individual process of socialization exacerbated by broader environmental stressors. Prisons offer unique opportunities for ideological indoctrination. The combination of emotional shock, isolation, and the need for social belonging push many prisoners to turn to moral frameworks or spirituality during their incarceration. Sociologist Farhad Khosrokhavar explains prison radicalization as a multi-stage process. Often, vulnerable inmates enter prison on minor charges and have little to no religious education. Once in prison, highly charismatic individuals will approach them and offer them a sense of belonging, beginning a gradual socialization process. The ideology used is designed to push individuals out of existing social isolation by giving them a worldview that is both empowering and highly intolerant, one that is especially attractive to those who already hold anti-state views. Once the relationship is established, the influencer uses a combination of violence and social norms to create a social network. These groups can outlast prison sentences, and connect former inmates to other extremists across Europe, and even with VEOs around the world. This radicalization process is seen clearly in the cases of Merah and Coulibaly. Both grew up in mostly non-religious households, and as a result of repeated experiences with criminal networks and the French justice system, came into contact with charismatic convicts who socialized them to violent, anti-state ideologies. This process of socialization continues to produce terrorists within the criminal justice system, and requires a strong policy response.

The general French state’s response to terrorism, informed by waves of domestic terrorism in the late 20th century, established a system that easily arrests and convicts suspects by casting a broad net over any individuals remotely linked to terrorist networks. While this allows a whole-of-network approach and can theoretically preempt terrorist attacks, it also solidifies otherwise weak links between terrorist networks and larger illicit economies present in banlieues. For example, the trabendo criminal networks present among first and second generation Maghrebi communities are mostly unconnected to terrorism, yet are frequent targets during mass arrests targeting potential terrorists, creating new linkages. Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving perpetrator of the November 2015 Paris attacks, managed to evade capture for over 150 days using social and family networks tied to the drug trade in the suburbs of Brussels. The very same ISIS cell involved in the attacks previously worked with petty criminals and drug dealers to recruit fighters for ISIS. While terrorism ought to be treated as a law enforcement issue, the government’s current approach is to broad and risks strengthening ties between otherwise unaffiliated criminals and terrorist cells. Moving beyond this approach would require greater intelligence gathering to target individual suspects, as well as broader policy shifts in urban development and limited drug legalization to weaken existing illicit economies.

Beyond arrests, the French approach towards deradicalization within prison focuses on more on sentencing than rehabilitation, an approach which undermines the potential for effective deradicalization programs. Over the last decade, in light of high profile attacks committed by former inmates, the government adopted several new approaches. First, prison officials gained an increasing power to overrule prisoner rights, notably the right to privacy, in the name of security. With the creation of a new Bureau of Prison Intelligence, prison officials can now wiretap phones, place hidden cameras, and examine electronic communications, using tools previously only available to intelligence services. Second, the government launched a new program designed to separately target “influencers” and inmates in the process of being radicalized. The program involves a higher ratio of wardens to prisoners, with staff trained in psychology, sociology, Islam, and history. Inmates are offered theatre workshops, debate seminars, and courses covering subjects ranging from legal studies to Japanese literature. These programs are intended to last six months, after which the inmate is released into the general population under close supervision by prison staff. Beyond prisons, the government has attempted to passed new laws to counter radicalization within schools, by better communicating the reasons for laicites to faith communities, teaching more colonial history in classrooms, and encouraging Arabic language courses within public spaces, although these have proven politically unattractive with conservative voters. This combination of policies seeks to deradicalize individuals through a variety of tools, which combat root factors in marginalized populations, engage with individuals along the path of radicalization, and isolate individuals deemed “too far gone.”

Results so far have been mixed. While the combination of isolation targeting influencers and robust CVE engagement with those at risk of radicalization has reduced the number of reported incidents of radicalization in prisons, analysts warn against premature declarations of success. In fact, many argue that influencers are now more hidden than they were in the past, as the policies have not stopped radicalization but rather pushed it further underground. This mirrors the government’s crackdown on hardline Imams in the early 2000s. One unintended consequence of this policy was that radicalization moved underground into social spaces where it couldn't be monitored or challenged by the government or community members. Another policy, the construction of dedicated isolation facilities for radicalized inmates, poses numerous problems. First, radicalization is difficult to measure and this sort of segregation results in pious inmates being lumped in with hardened extremists. Second, isolating radical prisoners from the general population risks pushing them furthers their radicalization, as they lose exposure to information beyond their personal beliefs and that of prison officials. Finally, this move risks empowering more radical cells amongst convicted terrorists. When the UK established such a special segregated unit in 2005, it put members of Al Qaeda, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, and smaller Algerian outfits in the same unit. The result was a book, Limatha Intasarna (Why We Were Victorious), written by one of the inmates, collecting lessons from different inmates on military and organizational tactics, which was then smuggled out of prison for distribution to VEOs worldwide. Isolating radicals in special units may give the appearance of greater security, but simply enforces existing hardline ideologies and reduces the chance for radicalization to be challenged through a marketplace of ideas with other prisoners. However, the higher staff-to-inmate ratios and opportunities for education are promising, and show strong results in other countries where they are already deployed.

Beyond the potential backlash produced by isolating high-level influencers and radicalized inmates from the general population, these programs fail to fully interact with the environmental stressors that make inmates vulnerable to radicalization. One major issue in French prisons is the lack of faith services available to Muslim inmates. Research points to the crucial role that Imams can play in counter-radicalization efforts, as they can use theological arguments to dispel extremist ideologies. Yet as of 2008, only 100 Imams serviced France’s 200 prisons, compared with 480 Catholic, 250 Protestant, and 50 Jewish chaplains. More broadly, general debates about religion are heavily stifled by France’s strict interpretation of secularism, or laicite. In stark contrast to the United States, which bans government interference in religion, French laicite places strict restrictions on religious displays in public, notably in schools. Yet the country’s strong Catholic roots ensure that, to some degree, these restrictions target French Muslims to a greater degree than any other group. What debates do occur within prisons, are often undertaken by underpaid Imams and Islamic scholars who are vetted by authorities.  The strict regulations placed on their sermons by officials limit their ability to engage with radicalized inmates and result in their image as a tool of the state. As a result, radicalized inmates avoid contact with them, out of suspicion or fears of being punished for interacting with them. The government ought to empower Imams with more resources and independence, in order to create strong voices in prisons which can mediate between prisoners and officials, and counteract the power of influencers.

In addition to empowering religious figures, French prisons must better support the freedom of Muslim inmates to express their faith while serving their sentences, as current restrictions on gives additional ammunition to influencers. While Muslim prisoners can forego pork products, true halal meals are not an option in most prisons. Christian inmates receive special gifts from family members for Christmas, but Muslim inmates don’t receive the same on Ramadan. French authorities can significantly weaken “influencers” by enforcing religious requirements in line with standards established by the European Court of Justice and the United Nations. These include, among other things; defined halal menu options, alarm clocks to indicate prayer times, access to Korans, flexible dinner schedules to accommodate for fasting during Ramadan, the provision of soap and water at prayer spaces, and the right to meet with spouses in a private room. Religious accommodations in line with international standards can only serve to weaken influencers, and is crucial to promoting human rights in prisons.

If France seeks to break the prison to jihad pipeline, it ought to move beyond discourses which securitize broad segments of the population and empower moderate voices in prison indirectly, by giving Imams more support and autonomy, while ensuring that prisoners can freely practice their faith. While targeted support for prisoners at risk of radicalization can provide positive outcomes, it should be done in a manner that doesn’t fully isolate them, at risk of cementing hardline views. Finally, the prison debate should force a broader discussion in French society about the treatment of Muslims in general, with an emphasis on economic inclusion and genuine police reform.

Boots On The Ground: Accountability and Responsibility for Private Military Contractors Abroad

Private military contractors (PMCs) are a fixture on battlefields across the globe dating back thousands of years. Their form continues to evolve as state governments become increasingly reliant on them. Today, military contractors are divided into three groups which perform distinct tasks within the broader PMC grouping; military provider firms (MPFs) focus on tactical elements and engage in direct fighting; military consulting firms (MCFs) provide training and advice for the restructuring and operating of a client’s military; and military support firms (MSFs) that provide military services categorized as supplementary including intelligence, technical support and logistics.

As the United States’ use of contractors continues to grow, with contractual obligations rising from $187 billion in 2000 to $283 billion in 2011, the amount of control the US government has over these contractors declines. This lack of oversight and accountability gives rise to situations where the actions and/or ethics of members of the private firms who, while operating on American dollars, are bound by neither the same rules nor protections as American troops operating in the same regions; producing situations such as the Blackwater killings, and raising concerns about their ability to act outside the confines of U.S. laws while under the umbrella of government funding. Allegations of PMC involvement in human rights violations also fuel upset.

PMCs cannot be labeled as purely good or bad, they exist in a complex market wherein they are private firms with leading roles in the theatre of public warfare. They enjoy a level of autonomy which has become increasingly problematic; the incidents of PMC misconduct or mishandling rose as their degree of use in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts did the same. There has long been a debate over the loyalties and motives of PMCs. Leaders of the contracting groups claim their employees are subject to contractual accountability, and that it is just as binding as the oaths of enlistment taken by government armies.

Conversely, advocates of PMC policy reform state that controversy occurs when public interests diverge from those of the company. PMCs are businesses first and their ultimate goal is profit, which will always serve as a roadblock to the contractors effectiveness as military forces. By this line of reasoning, finding a way to more closely align the two sets of interests - those of the US military and PMCs - would bring about a more harmonious and successful relationship. In the case of the PMCs this may be done by writing contracts more carefully with stricter regulations or enforcing changes stipulated by the Commission on Wartime Contracting.

The aforementioned issues are largely boardroom fights; the most difficult scenarios to provide answers for take place in the field, where tensions run high and the most important component of maintaining order is a clear, respected chain of command. In the military, soldiers are subject to their immediate supervisors, but also to court-martials and ultimately to the President of the United States, as well as the nation herself.  Alternatively, PMCs have little to no disciplinary structure aside from their shareholders. International law currently addresses only traditional mercenaries; there is little to no legal recourse for misconduct. PMC employees currently fall into the grey area also inhabited by detainees of Guantanamo Bay; they are neither civilian nor soldiers. This can be dangerous for the contractors, who are not protected under the Geneva Conventions.

Shrouded in secrecy, PMCs “diffuse” responsibility across actors, and in doing so, the answer to who should be held accountable becomes more and more elusive. Speaking on the subject, U. S. Army Colonel Peter Mansoor said the Army needed to take:

“a real hard look at security contractors on future battlefields and figure out a way to get a handle on them so that they can be better integrated - if we’re going to allow them to be used in the first place...if they push traffic off the roads or if they shoot up a car that looks suspicious, whatever it may be, they may be operating within their contract –to the detriment of the mission, which is to bring the people over to your side. I would much rather see basically all armed entities in a counterinsurgency operation fall under a military chain of command.”

Even before stepping onto foreign soil, PMCs represent a problematic threat from within their ranks; member recruitment is private. While many recruits are well-qualified ex-servicemen, a sizeable percentage lack proper experience or have unsavory records which include possible human rights violations. PMCs like to keep violations hidden from the media and may release employees who are then hired by other firms, unaware of their past misconduct. In the Balkans, a group of DynCorp employees was found to be involved in sex crimes, slavery, illegal arms trade, and prostitution rackets. There was even a tape of the Bosnia supervisor raping two women; DynCorp whisked the men out of the country and they never faced prosecution. Instead, they fired the “whistleblowers.” Another similar situation occurred in the Abu Ghraib prisons.

The lack of oversight present in the operations of PMC is alarming in another facet; it often allows governments to complete public goals through private means. While governments favor this option, it is a slippery slope wherein they can partake in endeavors which may not otherwise be approved, either by the public or by legislative branches. Although PMCs receive government money, their activities are not state-sponsored. Activities are happening away from public view which may have lasting impacts on foreign policy. One example of this is how President George W. Bush used PMCs to interfere in the Colombian Civil War to a greater extent than approved by Congress for U.S. military forces.

This was a source of serious discussion and debate during the Iraq war, where an average of 21,000 PMC troops in the region from 2003-2009, spiking from 10,000 to 40,000 between 2003 and 2008. PMC troops carried out countless military operations which are not accessible under the Freedom of Information Act, and which will remain secret as private contractors are not answerable to Congress.  This is another grey area inhabited by PMCs; some engage in tactics not sanctioned, or even not legal, in the countries they are working in and/or under contract with. This issue again has roots in the lack of structure for assigning responsibility and accountability to employees of PMCs as they operate, and the absence of legal repercussions for misconduct.

The foundation for reforms will be the PMCs legally binding contracts. In writing and negotiating them, the DOD has the opportunity to include strict outlines for a chain of command; akin to a hierarchy for responsibility one might find in the U.S. armed forces. The establishment of a clear and necessary power structure will be instrumental in controlling the behavior of PMC employees abroad. While it is unrealistic to expect an immediate willingness from the PMCs to cooperate, the US government funnels billions of dollars to these companies every fiscal year and taking a hard line with them over contractually based responsibilities will be beneficial as the DOD continues to do business with them in the future.  

Perhaps even more important than the presence of a mandated accountability apparatus is the need for it to be enforced once agreed upon. As mentioned before, there are currently some documents which place limitations on PMC conduct but they remain unenforced, enabling the accountability vacuum presently seen in the PMC theatre. Enforcement and oversight procedures must be put in place at the same time as the new chain of command.

As there are currently no international statutes under which PMC can stand trial for misconduct, the DOD must require their contractors to submit to U.S. jurisdiction or jurisdiction of the region in which they are operating under in each specific contract. This will likely be the hardest point to reach agreement on with the PMCs, but it is arguably the most important. Creating and enforcing a chain of command aimed at requiring accountability for one’s actions are crucial steps forward, but if at the end of the day PMC employees still cannot face legal consequences for misconduct, some instances being horrific acts of violence, then contractors are able to remain in their loop of unchecked power. The capacity to follow through with disciplinary actions is critical.

These are not all encompassing solutions, there are other issues which will need to be addressed. Presently, the issues of accountability and responsibility for PMC actions abroad are the most pressing in this realm and the basis for reforming these areas lies in the power of contracts.

Putin and the Central African Republic: Implications of Russian Involvement for Future Peace Prospects

Moscow’s involvement in Sub-Saharan Africa is growing in a manner not seen since the Cold War. Since 2016, Russia weapons, advisors and mining contracts have been quietly trickling into the Central African Republic (CAR), in a new twist to the ongoing conflict. CAR is still recovering from the destabilizing effects of the 2013 civil war and the ensuing intercommunal violence. Despite the presence of a UN peacekeeping force with strong European backing, the Central African state only controls 20% of the country, and one quarter of the population remains displaced. Even prior to the recent violence, CAR ranked at the bottom of most development indicators, the result of a negligent colonial past and external backing for post-colonial autocrats. Today’s violence stems from these unresolved historical legacies and the state’s structural failings. The subtle presence of Russian weaponry and military expertise, a model tested and perfected in Ukraine and Syria, risks worsening ongoing violence and weakening democratic growth. External support for a peaceful resolution to the conflict requires engaging with local communities to renegotiate the social contract, rebuilding inter-communal trust, and ensuring the primacy of CAR’s nascent democratic institutions. Such policies require careful coordination between Addis Ababa, Washington, Paris, Brussels, and now, Moscow.

In 2013, coalition of armed groups known as the Séléka and largely composed of Muslim Central Africans marched on the capital, Bangui, in a bid to remove long-time President François Bozize. In response, a mostly Christian armed movement called the anti-Balaka formed, and thousands died in the ensuing sectarian violence. While the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) deters armed groups from marching on Bangui, it lacks the capacity to restore state presence in the rest of the country or to reduce communal tensions. MINUSCA’s attempt to disarm militias in Muslim districts of Bangui generated backlash from community members who fear reprisal attacks absent the presence of informal security actors. Outside of the capital, clashes continue between community self-defense groups, factions from the former Séléka movement, the anti-Balaka, and various transnational armed groups, including the Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The ongoing African Union (AU) peace process attempts to bring together these disparate groups to mediate with the state, with participation from various civil society organizations. This inclusive process has buy-in from most armed groups, who see visible-EU support for the reformed Central African Armed Forces (FACA) as reducing their power to contest the state in the long term, increasing their incentives to negotiate in the short term. Central Africans fear the FACA due to its past involvement in sectarian violence and atrocities. The EU is currently on track to train and equip six battalions, creating a powerful military force that, theoretically, adheres to human rights standards. However, Russia’s involvement in CAR risks sidelining the AU peace process and the EU’s efforts to reform the FACA, while dampening ongoing democratic consolidation in CAR.

Russian engagement in CAR includes economic involvement, military aid, and attempts to build ties with the various armed groups active across the country. Following Moscow’s initial overture on security assistance in mid-2017, the two governments signed bilateral agreements on natural resource extraction. When Presidents Putin and Touadera met in Sochi in October, they discussed opportunities to cooperate on rebuilding CAR’s economy, with a focus on resource extraction, trade and infrastructure development. Russian trucks are now a common sight in northern CAR, carrying equipment to build medical facilities in several small towns. This development-investment strategy has borne fruit, as Bangui and Moscow signed multiple bilateral economic agreements over the last year. The opaque nature of these agreements hints at the involvement of Russian economic elites with close ties to Putin. They likely contain a subtle quid pro quo, in which Moscow provides Bangui with military support in return for Putin’s allies receiving discounted access to CAR’s vast resource wealth, which includes oil, minerals, and rare earths metals.

Moscow’s primary engagement with CAR occurs on the security front. The first joint meeting between the two governments resulted in an agreement for Moscow to provide CAR with security assistance. Moscow followed up by successfully lobbying the UN Security Council (UNSC) for an exemption from the arms embargo facing CAR. Throughout 2018, Russian armaments, ammunition, and civilian and military trainers began arriving into the country. The equipment provided includes 900 Makarov pistols, 5,200 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 140 sniper rifles, 840 Kalashnikov PK 7.62-millimeter machine guns, 270 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 20 man-portable anti-air defense systems, hand grenades, mortars and millions of rounds of ammunition. As the world’s second largest arms exporter (after the United States), Russia enjoys an advantage in supplying industrializing nations, as its equipment is inexpensive. Building off its role in the Cold War, Russia maintains its status as the largest arms supplier for Africa, accounting for 35% of arms imports in the continent. This explains the recent creation of Russian military across Africa, hinting at Moscow’s long-term strategic interests in the region. Amidst a growing appetite for military spending among African governments, increasing arms sales to African states allows Moscow to increase its influence while benefiting the influential Russia military industrial complex.

In addition to security sector assistance, Moscow has an active footprint in CAR in the form of Russian personal, serving in both official and unofficial capacities. There are about 1,400 Russian forces in CAR, most of whom are employed by private military contractors such as Wagner and Sewa Security Services. Russian citizen Valeri Zakarov is one of Touadera’s advisors, and the Central African Presidential Guard employs 400 former Russian special forces. The use of private military contractors (PMC) with unofficial ties to the Kremlin is an emerging component of Russian foreign policy, as demonstrated by events on the battlefields of Syria and Ukraine. Russian personnel in CAR are bolstering state capacity while also forging ties with various armed non-state actors, including the former Séléka fighters. Russian officials met with former Séléka leader Michael Djotodia and current Muslim rebel leaders Nourredine Adam and Abdoulaye Hissene. While a recent joint Russian-Sudanese attempt to mediate between the rebels and Bangui was largely rebuffed by the Touadera administration, which remains committed to the African Peace Process Initiative, Moscow’s growing involvement in the conflict is unavoidable due its economic investments and strategic interests. Entering in negotiations with rebel groups hedges the risk of clashes between rebels and Russians, and grants Russia access to rebel-held territory, which contains several resource rich sites. Moreover, expanding Russian influence with the government and armed factions is a cheap and effective way to undercut Western influence in the region. This intervention may intentionally coincide with growing American isolationism and fraying transatlantic ties, providing a new space for external powers to intervene in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, Touadera originally agreed to meet with Putin due to his frustration with the under-resources UN mission in the country, and his anxiety over a potential loss of Western interest in the conflict. The Kremlin is bolstering its investments and arms supplies to CAR with the presence of Russian personnel, in order to secure access to natural resources and undercut US influence.

Moscow’s invigorated economic and security engagement in CAR generated surprise in foreign capitals. The EU and U.S. openly welcome Russian support for the Central African state, yet reports indicate that senior western policymakers are deeply unsettled by this unfolding dynamic. The EU continues to focus on training the FACA and Western support for MINUSCA and the AU Peace Process Initiative remains strong. The French, who hold relatively healthy ties with Russia compared to other western states, continue to resist unwelcome foreign involvement in their former colony. Under the policy of Françafrique, Paris holds a vested interest in remaining the so-called gatekeeper for external interventions in Francophone Africa. Even non-western powers are wary of Russia’s engagement, including China. Highly visible Chinese engagement with African states easily outpaced regional initiatives by the United States and Russia. Beijing is aims to hold premium diplomatic access to African capitals, a position it is loath to lose. In response to Moscow’s newfound interest in CAR, Beijing is stepping up its own involvement. In 2018, China absolved the government of CAR of $17 billion of debt, created a training program for Central African government officials and donated military equipment to the FACA. Previously, Chinese firms were present in oil drilling in the northeast, although they shuttered operations during the civil war, after the Séléka-aligned Rebirth of Central Africa (FPRC) criticized the close nature of Beijing-Bangui ties. While Moscow and Beijing push for deeper, potentially competitive, engagement in CAR, Washington and Paris risk being crowded out.

Russia is Washington’s current bogeyman. Moscow’s attempts to support its client states often end up on the opposing end of U.S. foreign policy interests. While Americans may exaggerate the extent to which Russia is a consistently destabilizing force, current Russian involvement in CAR risks exacerbating violence, undercutting the democratic gains and weakening the AU peace process.

First, Russian security involvement will further proliferate small arms in CAR, increasing the lethality of the conflict. The FACA participated in atrocities during the outbreak of the conflict, siding with the anti-Balaka and targeting Muslim civilians for reprisal attacks. Russian efforts to train FACA battalions separate from the EU risks creating a splintered state security service, with one branch lacking human rights training and civilian oversight. Moreover, even if Russian support to the FACA overlaps with current EU efforts, the risk of arms spillage is high, as the FACA is plagued by corruption and theft. Past research highlights how increased small arms flows prolong conflicts and increase civilian casualty rates.

Second, Russian involvement is working against the delicate peace process. The AU Peace Process Initiative relies on momentum from the recent Bangui forum to engage with all armed factions, civil society, and the government. This process is broadly inclusive and encourages groups to compile lists of grievances, which can serve as a starting point for future negotiations. Reconciliation at this stage is critical, and Russian attempts to start a new peace process without consulting Bangui represent a dangerous trend. Forum shopping occurs when international actors fail to collaborate in a domestic context, leading different domestic factions to selectively engage with deals that suit them. This race to the bottom fosters distrust and empowers spoilers. In the case of CAR, the presence of a separate peace deal could provide rebel factions with additional leverage over the Touadera administration, or splinter rebel groups and prolong the conflict regardless of the outcome of the AU Peace Process Initiative.

Third, Russian security support for the government combined with investments in the extractive resources sector weakens CAR’s democratic institutions. President Touadera enjoys international support and a reputation as a reformer committed to democratic norms. Yet Central African political institutions remain weak, in terms of capacity and popular support. Historically, external involvement played a crucial role in African elites’ incentives to engage in political reform. External security assistance and access to natural resource rents increase the costs of reform for elites. Powerful backers provide crucial support for elites who rule over hollow states with little legitimacy, as was the case with the French-backed Central African autocrats who dominated most of the postcolonial era. Resource rents provide revenue to elites independent of taxation, eroding bottom-up accountability and the state’s provision of public goods. While these outcomes are far from likely in the short term, the pressures of external military support and increased resource exploitation for CAR, which has a history of unaccountable autocrats, does not bode well. Democratic consolidation enables conflict resolution by providing non-violent means through which communities can resolve contentious issues. In CAR, representation in government and equal distribution of public goods could go a long way to resolving the root grievances at the heart of the conflict.

While the current nature of Russian involvement will further destabilize CAR, careful cooperation between Moscow, Washington, Paris and relevant multilateral institutions could turn Moscow’s new African engagement into a catalyst for peace. On the security front, Russia should work with the United Nations and European Union to provide secure weapons storages and serial numbers to decrease the risks of arms spillage. With that, Russian support for the FACA would promote stability. It would bolster the current trend in which armed groups see their power relative to the state decreasing in the long run. Negotiating from a position from strength while being aware of future time horizons encourages actors to compromise. Moreover, a strong FACA is a crucial step in ensuring state presence across CAR. In terms of the peace process, Russian ties with rebel groups could open up new avenues for back channeling in support of the AU peace process, in which certain armed groups see mainstream external actors as pro-government. Moreover, the limited presence of Russia could spur more productive engagement by other great powers. On one hand, it would limit French dominance over CAR’s domestic affairs. Moreover, it can spur greater US attention to CAR. Finally, Russian investment in CAR’s natural resource industry, coupled with strong western support for democratic reform and local participation, could spur economic growth. The government needs additional revenue to invest in infrastructure and provide public goods. This would support the peace process at the local level, by spurring cross-community trade and restoring state legitimacy. If Russia’s economic interests in CAR win out over its desire to weaken American influence, Moscow can engage collaboratively with other great powers to assist Central Africans in creating sustainable peace.

Unrest Over Austerity Measures in Tunisia

Unrest erupted across Tunisia following a government decision to implement a new finance act on January 1st, 2018. The government’s actions mainly targeted the wealthy but also triggering higher prices for people of middle and lower classes throughout the country. It lifted Tunisia’s value-added tax from 18% to 19%, making the consumption of taxed goods and services more expensive. Thousands gathered in public spaces across Tunisia to protest the decision. According to Al Jazeera, “Protesters torched government buildings, looted shops and blocked roads, prompting the army to deploy some 2,100 troops to different parts of the country,” (Al Jazeera). Tunisia has unquestionably made progress since initiating the Arab Spring in December 2010. It would be a shame to have it reversed due to public impatience and a harsh miscalculated government response.

Austerity measures were adopted by the government in response to World Bank requests that the country  act urgently to fix its budget deficit, which swelled to  6% of its GDP in recent months. The IMF committed to providing Tunisia with $2.8 billion in loans to achieve sustainable economic growth and stability. The loans were provided on the condition that the country’s governing bodies implement significant social and economic reforms. As mentioned earlier, the finance act elevated prices of basic consumer goods including bread and fuel, cars, phone calls, internet and hotel accommodation. The IMF should provide additional recommendations to the Tunisian government and its Finance Ministry to help resolve the budget deficit without increasingly burdening the Tunisian people. Steps to improve the country’s deficit are crucial to establishing lasting stability.

According to statements released by the United Nations, since the beginning of the protests, which began immediately following the decision to implement the act, more than 778 people have been arrested. A spokesperson for the Tunisian Interior Ministry stated that at least 151 people were arrested on charges of vandalism and looting. Tunisians should not use the unrest as an excuse to commit crimes and foster instability in the country following the significant progress it has made since protests began in 2010 over corruption and the desire for basic freedoms which were then uncommon throughout Tunisia and the wider MENA region.

Government military and police forces quickly responded to the protests using rubber bullets and live ammunition to disperse masses in public areas and near government buildings. At least one person was reportedly killed in the western city of Tebourba. Protests that turned violent in other cities resulted in multiple injuries as well which exacerbated unrest. The Tunisian government should refrain from arresting people arbitrarily and should respect the Tunisian people’s right to peaceful protest, demonstrations, and assembly. Tunisian security forces should be ordered to respond to the protests with calculated caution and restraint. Threat miscalculation and the use of force has stimulated civil unrest in the region before in countries such as Syria. Great caution should be exercised in order to prevent escalations in violence and social unrest.  

Protests began peacefully in the Tunisian city of Sidi Bouzid. They quickly spread to other parts of the country, with the largest demonstrations occuring in the capital, Tunis. People chanted, waved Tunisian flags, and held banners demanding the Tunisian government abandon the act. The majority of protesters were young Tunisian students and activists who, in calling for reform, demanded progress and government accountability sparking the conflagration that came to be known as the Arab Spring in 2010. Tunisia is widely revered as the only country to emerge from the Arab Spring as a stable democracy. However, the country has experienced sluggish economic growth, fueling public dissatisfaction. The Tunisian President was quoted as saying, “2018 will be the last difficult year for Tunisia,” (Reuters). Through the most recent protests, Tunisians have clearly demonstrated  an understandably impatient yearning for progress.

In response to mass detentions, students and activists from around the country railed against the government, encircling official buildings and overflowing public squares demanding the release of protesters arrested during the past week. Rupert Colville, a spokesperson for the UN Office on Human Rights  stated to press in Geneva, Switzerland, "We're concerned about the high number of arrests, some 778 people we understand have now been arrested since Monday, and around a third of those arrested were between the ages of 15 and 20 - so very young." Governments around the world have responded to the protests by encouraging peace, reform, and restraint. Both France and the United States have voiced their concerns over the deadly use of force against civilians. Such action carried out by the Tunisian government could result in heightened tension between government affiliates and Tunisian society.

According to Al Jazeera correspondent Hashem Ahelbarra reporting from Tunis, “People on the streets were enthusiastic about the movement's momentum. People here say that they want to continue to take to the streets in order to put more pressure on the government to scrap the austerity measures," (Al Jazeera). Protesters have also used the protests to express discontent with the government for failing to stand by promises to improve living standards, reduce poverty and lower high unemployment rates. The government would be wise to pursue options that will address the budget deficit without imposing too steep a cost on the middle and lower class. This could be achieved by encouraging investment and consumption through reduced taxation of goods and services and private sector deregulation. The heightened economic activity such steps would encourage would provide the Tunisian government with greater tax revenues which could be used to improve its budget deficit without increasing prices for a population that already struggles with poverty.

Progress in Tunisia will come in time. Its people are determined and hopeful to achieve the rights and prosperity they were promised in 2011. Just as they brought about change then, they will so today. It is important that the government reminds people it is working for and not against them. Though plodding, the country has made a great deal of progress since the revolution in 2011. According to an article from The Economist Intelligence Unit,

“The dictatorship that repressed opposition parties, jailed political dissidents and curtailed free speech and human rights has been replaced by a pluralistic political system with over 200 registered political parties, freedom of speech and assembly, and free and fair elections, underpinned by a progressive constitution. (EIU)” If this progress is not hindered by unrest, progress will continue. The international community should continue to encourage dialogue between the Tunisian government, the private sector, the public sector, activist groups, and perhaps most importantly, students. Caution should be exercised in responding to civilian unrest in order to prevent unnecessary and dangerous escalations in violence. The international community and its institutions must be prepared to support Tunisia’s progress. Tunisia is a prime example of what can be achieved when people voice their concerns about changes in political and economic policy, and the government responds through thoughtful reform. The country should continue to lead by example this way. If it does, the Tunisian people will see the progress for which they have yearned. At the moment, the protests are likely to continue.

The North Korea Question; U.S. Strategy in the Korean Peninsula

For decades, the United States’ foreign policies toward North Korea have centered on non-proliferation, with the objective of preventing North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. Unfortunately, these policies have failed. Considering that change, it is time to transition into a new era of policies focused on another goal; preventing catastrophic war between the United States and North Korea. The United States has two options; the first, to use the U.S. military to either bring about regime change in North Korea, or to conduct surgical strikes on North Korean missile test sites or storage facilities; or the second, to de-escalate tensions and to adopt a policy of deterrence. The military option is no option—It likely would lead to retaliation by North Korea against the United States, or U.S. allies, and even then it might not succeed, which leaves only the second option. Sadly, both the United States and North Korea have adopted a policy of brinkmanship and threats, which does not de-escalate tension. Neither country wants nuclear war to occur, but it is quite possible that the continuation of these policies of brinkmanship will cause the U.S. or North Korea to bumble into a war with unimaginable consequences. This needs to be avoided at all costs. If the United States is going to have to learn to live with a nuclearized North Korea, which they are going to have to whether they like it or not, is necessary that a policy of de-escalation is pursued immediately.

A Slow Moving Cuban Missile Crisis? 

Robert Litwak, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, has described the current standoff between the United States and North Korean as “the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion.” However, one could argue that the current crisis between the United State and North Korea is actually more dangerous than the crisis President Kennedy handled so skillfully in October of 1962. For one, the Cuban missile crisis was not between the United States and newly emerging nuclear state. For another, the current standoff is between two leaders who do not have advisors who can effectively speak the truth if it differs from what their leader wants to hear. Kim Jong Un has had his own family members killed, and it has become clear during his presidency that Donald Trump does not suffer advisers who disagree with him, going as far as to call Lt. General McMaster a “pain” for correcting him in a meeting. This combination of factors means that the situation the U.S. and North Korea find themselves is even more dangerous than what the United States, the U.S.S.R, and Cuba were in in 1962.

The Military Option is No Option

When faced with options like the United States has with North Korea, it is easy to make the mistake of overestimating the United States’ chances of success, and underestimating the costs of an attack. Arguments for using preventative military options against North Korea severely overestimate the likelihood that the United States would succeed in their objectives. The history of attempted decapitation strikes by the United States is rife with failure, as is the history of surgical strikes. Given North Korea’s fears of U.S. infringement on their sovereignty, any sort of strike would need to have a 100 percent success rate. If the strikes were not completely successful in decapitating the Kim regime or in removing North Korea’s ability to retaliate, it is highly unlikely that North Korea would do nothing. If they retaliated, untold death and destruction would envelop the Korean peninsula, and potentially targets outside of the peninsula which are in range of attack.

If it were to retaliate, it is possible that North Korea would use a nuclear weapon. It is challenging to estimate the fatalities of a nuclear strike by the North Koreans, but all attempts to do so have indicate that the impact would be catastrophic. According to NUKEMAP, a modelling tool that allows users to estimate the impact of a nuclear weapon on a map, a 100 kiloton (the estimated explosive yield capability of North Korean nuclear weapons based on their tests) nuclear weapon detonated over Busan, South Korea, would kill 440,000 people immediately. A similar-sized bomb over Hagåtña, Guam would kill 14,360 people instantly, and in Tokyo around 191,820 would be killed in the first few minutes after the blast. These estimates only account for the impact of the initial blast, not the impact of the ensuing fallout, which would increase that number drastically. No matter their target, if North Korea were to detonate a nuclear weapon it would be catastrophic.

Even if the North Koreans chose not to use their nuclear weapons to retaliate and instead employed their conventional weapons, the results would also be catastrophic. The Nautilus Institute published a study in 2012 entitle “Mind the Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality,” in which they found that North Korea has thousands of pieces of artillery along the demilitarized zone which could inflict around 64,000 fatalities in Seoul alone on the first day of war. This study did not account for North Korea’s five thousand metric tons of chemical weapons, which would drastically increase the number of fatalities if they were employed against South Korea. Whether chemical weapons would be employed or not, even if the retaliation was to remain localized to the Korean peninsula, the results would be horrific. In such an event, the South Koreans would likely retaliate as well, completely enveloping the peninsula in destruction. The costs of not engaging in preventative military options are far smaller than the costs of engaging and triggering retaliation. Despite what has been said by the Trump administration and previous administrations, there is no military option.

Brinkmanship and Threats

When the United States’ goal was to prevent North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons, utilizing threats was a viable option. In the strategic environment that exists now, this strategy is ineffective and dangerous. Brinkmanship is a strategy employed by nuclear states when attempting to convince another nuclear state to do or not do something, in which one state exerts pressure on the other state by taking steps that raise the risk that events will spiral out of control. The United States and North Korea are both employing this strategy, North Korea by repeatedly testing missiles and making threats, such as the one directed at Guam, and the United States by repeatedly threatening military action against North Korea. In situations in which brinkmanship is practiced, there is a real risk of events culminating in a catastrophic exchange. At each stage, a state is faced with the choice of acquiescing, or holding on a little longer—increasing the risk of a catastrophic event in hopes the other state will bow out. If no state backs down, the crisis continues to escalate until a state does out or events spiral out of control. In brinkmanship games, the state that has the higher resolve will prevail, unless a catastrophic event occurs in which case both states lose. According to a game theoretic model of brinkmanship designed by Robert Powell, in cases where a larger state is engaged in brinkmanship with a rogue state, the rogue state will usually prevail—the cost of an attack on the larger state is far worse than the consequences of not intervening in the rogue state. The United States will not prevail in a game of chicken with North Korea because North Korea the risk of their regime is at stake, their resolve is clearly higher than the United States’.

The Kim regime has made it clear since the outset of their nuclear program that the impetus behind the program is to prevent the United States and other states from infringing on their sovereignty. They theorize that the United States will not risk nuclear war by trying to bring about regime change in North Korea. The logic behind this has been confirmed by the actions of the United States in the past in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and the North Korean government knows that and has issued a number of statements in which they argue that if those states had had nuclear weapons, the United States would not have attacked them. North Korea will not follow in South Africa’s footsteps, they won’t voluntarily end their nuclear program, and they certainly won’t do so in the face of threats from the United States that just further qualify their fear of the United States. Actions by the United States to increase tensions between the United States and North Korea will not induce North Korea to give up their weapons, it will just increase the risk that a catastrophic event occurs.

De-escalation and Deterrence 

The past three U.S. administrations have stressed that “all options are on the table.” This statement sounds less threatening than the alternative threats of “fire and fury,” but it still increases tensions between the United States and North Korea in an irresponsible fashion. The longer these increased tensions exists, the more likely it is that some sort of catastrophic event will occur. To effectively navigate out of this crisis, the United States needs to convince the Kim regime that an attack on the U.S. or its allies will automatically lead to the to end of their regime, but the United States also needs to acknowledge that the United States is not interested starting a war. North Korea will not take these types of statements at face value, so it also will be necessary to stop offering a preventative strike as an option. In addition to its legally dubious status, a preventative attack on North Korea will all but guarantee the deaths of millions. The U.S. has serious qualms with North Korea, but as long as there is not an actionable threat by the North Koreans, the cost of failure is far higher than the cost of not interfering with the regime.

In 1947, George Kennan, already famous for the “Long Telegram,” published an article in Foreign Affairs under the pseudonym “Mr. X,” in which he argued that a strategy of “patient but firm and vigilant containment,” would eventually lead to “the break up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.” Kennan’s argument was based upon the idea that if the U.S.S.R. could be contained and deterred, the structural issues within the country would eventually bring about its down fall. While there are immutable differences between the U.S.S.R. and North Korea, there are many similarities, the largest being the structural problems in both of their economies. Eventually, the ineffectiveness of the North Korean economy will lead to its downfall, just as it did for the U.S.S.R. Until that point, the United States just needs to ensure that nuclear war doesn’t occur.

“Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” 

This type of policy change runs contrary to much of the rhetoric espoused by past U.S. administrations, and it particularly runs contrary to President Trump’s “tough-talking” mantra. It also ignores the human rights abuses that are occurring within North Korea, which is a challenging pill to swallow for anyone who cares about humanitarian issues. Strategies for addressing North Korea are often referred to as the “least bad option,” and this instance is no different. The U.S. administrations don’t need to “love” the bomb, but they need to realize that the opportunity to prevent North Korea from obtaining nuclear weapons has long past. It is time to move into a new era of policies that aren’t centered around threats of military action, and instead use other methods of addressing individual crises with North Korea. Even rational actors can make mistakes, and the longer the United States and North Korea embrace brinkmanship, the higher the likelihood of something terrible happening is. The impact of such an event is unimaginable, thus everything possible needs to be done to prevent it from occurring. The United States should strategize to play the long game.

Why the World Needs NATO

If one follows today’s geopolitical conversations, they are likely to notice that the current world order is being questioned by politicians and citizens across the world, most recently in the United States and the United Kingdom. Multilateral organizations and trade agreements are not functioning, with their costs over weighing their benefits.

One such organization, which has been persistently questioned, is NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NATO has been in existence since 1949 and it is an organization worth examining. In order to understand the importance of NATO, one must analyze its impact on European security, its adaptability to 21st century challenges and its significance to the U.S. In this essay, I explore how NATO enlargement contributed to security in Europe and how NATO has been restructured to meet 21st century challenges. In the end, I examine how the organization contributed to U.S. defense post 9/11 and even today.

While it seems tempting to dismiss NATO as obsolete, the organization’s structure is necessary to resolve rising challenges. NATO is able to create collaborative spaces for countries across Europe and beyond to discuss terrorism and cyber security. Without the cooperation of NATO the resolution of security challenges would be slower and less effective.

NATO History and Enlargement

In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in the midst of fears of Communist expansion. In 1948 the Soviet Union sponsored a coup in Czechoslovakia overthrowing its democratic government and replacing it with a communist one. The United States and Europe, fearing further destabilization in Europe, crafted a joint security agreement, which came to be known as NATO. This agreement was meant to protect European allies from Soviet invasion. The creation of NATO signaled an important shift of U.S. foreign policy because for the first time since the 1700s the U.S. tied its security to that of its European allies.

Today, NATO is a political and military alliance, consisting of 28 member states. Politically, NATO promotes democracy and encourages cooperation on security issues. Militarily, NATO manages crises that would pose a threat to the security of member states. Such crises can be humanitarian, political or military. Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty stipulates that an armed attack against one or more of the member states is an attack against them all. Member states agree that if such an attack occurs, they will assist each other to restore security.

The promise of collective defense has prompted many countries in Europe to seek NATO membership. The conditions placed for membership in NATO created a more peaceful Europe. The criteria for joining NATO spans across military and political dimensions. The membership action plans prepared for countries who want to join NATO are a process by which current members can review the progress of potential members in meeting the necessary conditions which encapsulate five areas: political economy, defense, resources, security; and legal issues. The political economic conditionality is that countries must have a democratic system of government, have good relations with their neighbors, show commitment to human rights and have a market economy. The defense section encourages countries to strengthen their military so they can contribute to collective defense and the resource section focuses on increased funding for defense. The security and legal sections require protection of sensitive information and bringing national legislation in line with the alliance.

The settlement of disputes with neighboring countries is a pivotal condition for joining NATO. Current member states do not want to inherit the territorial conflicts of new member states. These conflicts can turn into wars and can trigger Article 5, forcing member states to defend new members in conflicts that could have been prevented. Through its conditions for membership, NATO plays an integral role in mitigating potential disputes in Europe by encouraging countries to settle these disputes peacefully. In order to join NATO, for example, Hungary gave up territorial claims in Romania. NATO also encourages the strengthening of democratic institutions across Europe by placing an emphasis on stopping corruption and stopping maltreatment of minority groups. These contributions to the security of Europe must not be overlooked when debating the validity of NATO.

Adaptability to 21st Century Problems: Terrorism and Cyber Security

While NATO began as a defense mechanism against the Soviet Union, the organization has restructured itself to meet the challenges of the 21st century such as terrorism and cyber security.

In an effort to ease the transfer of information between Middle Eastern states and NATO, NATO established the Mediterranean Dialogue. The Mediterranean Dialogue members are Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. The annual Work Program of the dialogue includes seminars and workshops focused on border security, small arms and light weapons as well as consultations on terrorism. The annual program also includes an invitation to representatives of the Dialogue countries to observe NATO military exercisesand attend courses at the NATO School in Germany and the NATO Defense College in Rome. The Mediterranean Dialogue is the main instrument available for these Middle Eastern countries to coordinate on shared security concerns.

Through the NATO Training Cooperation initiative, NATO also created a “NATO Regional Cooperation Course” which is a strategic course focused on security challenges faced in the Middle East. The course links issues of importance in the Middle East with the international community. The course is open to officers of the rank of Brigadier General, Colonel, and Lieutenant Colonel as well as civilian officials. It is geared toward Mediterranean Dialogue and Istanbul Initiative member countries.

The Mediterranean Dialogue and the strategic courses focused on the Middle East show the flexibility and necessity of NATO. NATO has moved away from its original mandate to recognize the rising challenge of terrorism and it has created a space to deliberate best solutions for not only countries in Europe but also in the Middle East. Without NATO, the level of coordination on combatting terrorism across countries and continents would be difficult to realize.

After a Russian linked cyber attack on Estonia in 2007, NATO also implemented a cyber defense capability, which did not exist previously. Through cyber defense initiatives, NATO seeks to prevent the theft or damage of software, hardware or information from computers. In 2014, NATO members agreed that cyber defense is part of the core task of collective defense committed to by NATO. In 2016, member states added cyberspace as an operational domain for NATO, in addition to sea, air, and land. Through its cyber security initiative, in 2017 NATO will define targets for countries to implement their own national cyber defense capabilities. Through the Smart Defense Initiative, member states work together to develop cyber security capabilities that they could not afford to create or procure on their own.

Through its cyber security program, NATO protects its own systems but also helps member states develop their own protection. NATO officials recognized the importance of cyberspace in today’s world and developed innovative ways to integrate it into their defense mission. Again, without NATO the sharing of information and innovative ways to combat threats would be more costly and difficult. NATO is then necessary because it has the ability to unite countries across Europe and beyond to meet rising challenges. NATO is not outdated, as it has proven able to incorporate new global threats into its already established structure to find solutions.

NATO and the U.S. post 9/11

Another reason why NATO should not be dismissed as unnecessary is the defense the alliance provided to the United States after 9/11. Despite persistent criticism that NATO allies are free riders by America’s president elect, the only time the collective defense article of NATO was invoked was in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

After an October 2nd, 2001 briefing, NATO’s political decision making body agreed that if an attack was directed from abroad against the U.S, it would violate Article 5. NATO agreed to eight measures to support the United States in its fight against terrorism. These measures included an increase of intelligence sharing between the member states and a provision of capabilities for countries that may be subject to terrorist threats. NATO countries also agreed to provide over flight clearance for U.S. flights related to anti- terrorism and to provide access to ports and airfields.

On the request of the U.S., NATO launched its first ever anti-terror operation, Eagle Assist from October 9, 2001 to May 16, 2002. Seven NATO aircraft patrolled U.S. skies in order to prevent any planned attacks by air.

On October 26th, 2001, the Alliance launched Active Endeavor from Naples, Italy. Under this mission, naval forces were sent to patrol the Eastern Mediterranean and monitor shipping to detect terrorist activity, including illegal trafficking. Active Endeavor also offers escorts to ships passing through the Straits of Gibraltar, between Spain and Morocco. In 2004, the operation was extended to monitor the whole Mediterranean Sea and to analyze regional shipping patterns in order to target suspicious activity. This NATO operation has both enhanced security and commerce in the Mediterranean region. After 9/11, NATO contributed to the defense of the United States and continued to support America in the fight against terrorism.

NATO and U.S. Today

NATO continues to support the U.S. by facilitating military operations through logistical support. For instance, in 1991 NATO supplies and bases were used by the U.S. led coalition to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Today, the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey is used against ISIS in an operation not conducted by NATO. Without NATO, the U.S. military would need to craft separate bilateral and multilateral agreements in order to facilitate the use of bases and equipment from its European allies. Such agreements might even need legislative approval so U.S. military operations would be slowed down.

Since the United States’ political and military agendas may not be acceptable to some countries, NATO also exists as a channel through which to sidestep potential bilateral tensions. In 2003, the United States proposed sharp cuts to U.S. forces in Germany after persistent German opposition to the Iraq War. Although Germany did not deny access to American bases during the war, the German government announced that it would not recognize the validity of a war against Iraq without United Nations approval. At the time the Pentagon said that the withdrawal of troops had nothing to do with German opposition to the war. Yet, American officials showed a preference for stationing troops in places that approved of the unilateral invasion of Iraq. The multilateral nature of NATO operations decreases this type of tension. European allies are much more likely to approve military operations that are multilateral, and therefore such diplomatic tensions as the ones, which arose after the invasion of Iraq, can be avoided.

Conclusion

While it seems tempting to dismiss multilateral organizations, NATO is an organization worth maintaining because of its adaptability and practicality. NATO managed to reimagine itself from an organization designed to promote democracy to one which combats terrorism and cyber warfare. Additionally, NATO facilitates the sharing of information across borders and access to bases and equipment around the world.

Moving forward, we must recognize that defense spending is a valid concern about NATO, but also acknowledge that the same levels of spending cannot be duplicated across countries. While the cost sharing within NATO can be renegotiated, there are also alternative methods to ensure that defense spending is maintained without burdening member nations. Recognizing their own tightening budgets, NATO countries have figured out innovative ways to share the costs of defense spending. The Nordic Defense Cooperation is one organization, made up of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The organization works on cost sharing and developing joint solutions. Defense cooperation agreements between countries not only save money but are also a space for more information sharing and potential innovation.

Whether through cooperation agreements or re-negotiating contributions, NATO allies must move forward to create an organization that is equally valuable to all members. Throughout this process, however, leaders in Europe and the United States must reflect on the importance of NATO to the security of Europe, the United States and even the Middle East. Only after such reflection will the world understand the importance of multilateral agreements such as NATO.