The recent coup in Niger threatens to unleash more private military and security companies on a continent where they have become steadily more powerful in recent decades.

In the wake of the July 26 coup in Niger, the world’s spotlight has once again turned to the expansion of private military and security companies (PMSCs) across Africa. Following the removal of the relatively pro-Western government, Niger’s new military rulers asked Russian PMSC Wagner to help defend against a possible military intervention by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning of the PMSC seeking to exploit the instability.

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In a continent marked by decades of post-colonial turmoil, PMSCs have steadily gained influence, evolving from their historical role as mercenaries into powerful, corporate-driven forces. As the Sahel region continues to grapple with instability and conflict, the strengthening of PMSCs, both domestic and foreign, will continue to reshape Africa’s security in profound and unpredictable ways.

Africa’s experience with PMSCs dates back to the decolonization period after World War II. Though mercenaries had been steadily sidelined in conflicts for centuries, rag-tag groups of privateers emerged as shadowy accomplices to colonial powers, aiding in suppressing rebellions and fomenting unrest while providing a degree of ambiguity. Britain’s “Mad Mike” Hoare and France’s Bob Denard came to exemplify this era through their active involvement in military operations that undermined the sovereignty of African states.

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The end of the Cold War ushered in a new chapter for PMSCs. With millions of demobilized soldiers seeking employment and civil conflicts on the rise in the early 1990s, these entities evolved into more corporate forms. The South African PMSC Executive Outcomes (EO), founded in 1989 by Eeben Barlow, gained notoriety by accepting contracts to protect energy infrastructure in Angola and to fight Sierra Leone’s civil war.

Pressure from South Africa’s post-apartheid government led to the disbandment of EO in 1998. But other PMSCs had emerged, including Sandline International, also financed by EO backer Anthony Buckingham and Canadian businessman Rakesh Saxena, that helped gain control over mineral rights in Sierra Leone. And after Washington began to lean heavily on PMSCs during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the taboo of using them was broken.

Existing in a legal gray zone, PMSCs have leveraged their strategic capabilities worldwide—no more so than in Africa. Fragile government institutions, powerful criminal and militant groups, international power struggles, and competition over Africa’s natural resources have nurtured an environment supportive of a growing network of PMSCs. Across the continent, they are used to secure energy facilities, government buildings, and private infrastructure, protect local actors and foreign personnel, and provide police and military training, intelligence, and active fire support to governments and corporate clients.

Through entities like the colossal PMSC Wagner, Russia has found an unconventional and effective way to assert influence in Africa’s security landscape. In the Sahel region, Russian PMSCs have filled a void left by departing French military forces and capitalizing on local anti-French sentiment in recent years.

Amid shifting allegiances, Wagner underscores how Russia’s indirect power projection allows the Kremlin to wield substantial influence without deploying conventional military forces. Wagner’s activities are believed to span across Mali, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Angola, Madagascar, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Central African Republic (CAR), and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Other Russian PMSCs, such as RSB Group, Moran Security Group, and Patriot, also operate across Africa.

At the center of Russia’s PMSC network in Africa stands Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s financier. The Russian tycoon celebrated the success of the coup in Niger and declared Wagner capable of handling the situation, though the Russian government declined to support it. Despite Prigozhin’s longstanding quarrels with the Russian military, which culminated in his insurrectionist march toward Moscow in June, Prigozhin was recently seen meeting with African dignitaries on the side of the Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg.

As the Nigerien government grapples with its situation, Wagner could again act as a Kremlin surrogate, safeguarding Russia’s interests by filling the security vacuum left by the ousted French military. Already, there are fears that Niger may halt uranium exports, vital to both French and EU supplies, and forcing the West’s attention to the country. Russian media has criticized Prigozhin since his rebellion and officials have downplayed state connections to Wagner’s activities in Africa. But Prigozhin’s ongoing role in Africa suggests the Kremlin is relying on smoke and mirrors to obscure its true motivations.

Beyond Russia, numerous Western PMSCs have embedded themselves within Africa’s security. Unlike Russia’s PMSCs, most do not operate on the frontlines of conflict and primarily operate in security and training roles, though do coordinate with official military deployments. French PMSC Secopex made headlines in 2011 when its founder was killed in Libya during the country’s revolution, and it remains unclear as to what the PMSC’s role was.

Secopex had also been involved in the CAR and Somalia, while Corpguard (also created by the co-founder of Secopex, David Hornus) has been involved in training the Cote D’Ivoire’s military.

Other French PMSCs, such as Agemira, are active in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Though French-owned, Agemira is registered in Bulgaria to take advantage of the country’s lack of regulation and transparency. The UK’s Aegis Defence Services is believed to have worked in 18 African countries, while G4S, Erinys, and Olive Group are also active in Africa.

U.S. PMSCs have been active across the continent since the 2000s, with MPRI, CACI International, and Academi (previously the notorious Blackwater) among the most notable. Others, such as DynCorp, have provided training and logistical support to Liberia, Sudan, and Somalia, while Triple Canopy has been active in Niger. AdvanFort Co in turn offers anti-piracy maritime protection in East and West Africa. Germany’s Xeless and Asgaard are also active in Africa, with the latter having operations in Sudan, Libya, Mauritania, and Egypt.

PMSCs have increasingly begun to operate in the same conflict zones. Somalia, which lacked a functional state for more than two decades, provided fertile ground for PMSC expansion. PMSCs from the U.S., UK, China, UAE, and even Norway have helped Somalia train its official government forces and provide maritime protection from piracy and terrorism and ensure stability. But in Libya, PMSCs from or backed by Russia, France, the UK, the U.S., Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and more have all been sent to the country since 2011 to exploit the chaos and advance their interests.

Active in Libya, Turkey’s SADAT group has also signed deals to train African troops while pitching itself as a Muslim alternative PMSC for Islamic-majority countries. The UAE-based Black Shield Security Company was accused in 2020 of promising Sudanese citizens security contractor jobs but instead sent them to conflict zones in Libya. Other UAE PMSCs have been active in East Africa, including in Somalia, while China has developed a multitude of PMSCs to secure its Belt and Road projects in Africa. Israeli PMSCs have their own African operations.

In 2014, the Nigerian government began hiring PMSCs to help defeat the Boko Haram insurgency. One of them, Specialized Task, Training, Equipment, and Protection (STTEP), was also set by EO’s Barlow and saw significant success that helped grant it additional contracts. Other modern South African PMSCs include Osprey, Blackhawk, and Dyck Advisory Group, the latter of which was hired by Mozambique to combat Al-Shabaab militants but was accused of killing civilians indiscriminately by the UN in 2020.

The use of PMSCs in Africa is likely to expand. They often offer African governments a quick, relatively inexpensive, and tailored way to manage crises instead of relying on ineffective state forces. PMSCs also enable international companies to protect themselves without relying on the fanfare of official military deployments by working with another corporate entity.

Nonetheless, this raises questions about sovereignty, a recurring issue in a continent where it has consistently been violated since African countries won their independence. The monopoly on the use of violent force by their police and military institutions has been steadily eroded by criminals, militants, foreign countries, and increasingly, PMSCs.

The dangers of commodifying security are evident. Foreign companies and powerful local actors can afford security, while the core issues of instability in countries or regions are not addressed. Furthermore, instability is often used by outside forces to their advantage. Many Africans also end up working for PMSCs outside the continent because they are cheaper than recruits from other parts of the world.

Furthermore, PMSCs, and the governments and companies that employ them, remain largely uncommitted to stronger regulation. The Montreux Document aimed to enforce greater rules for PMSCs, but has been criticized for its limited scope and lack of binding nature. Other countries, including the five members of the UN Security Council, have refused to ratify the UN International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries.

Criticism of PMSCs in Africa is growing. In February 2023, the African Union (AU) commissioner for political affairs, peace, and security, Bankole Adeoye, called for the “complete exclusion of mercenaries from the African continent.” But U.S. PMSC Bancroft Global had already been hired by the AU to assess the risk of Somali forces trained by Blackwater founder Erik Prince to continue operating in the country.

These entities epitomize globalization. Aegis Defence Services was acquired by Canadian company GardaWorld in 2015, while DynCorp was bought by Amentum in 2020. Academi and Triple Canopy merged in 2014 to form Constellis Group, while Triple Canopy has outsourced work to Peru-based PMSC Defion International. Erik Prince, through the Hong Kong-based Frontier Services Group, has helped China train its own PMSCs for use in Africa and elsewhere. G4S was meanwhile bought by Allied Universal in 2021 and is now North America’s third-largest private employer. Allied Universal itself is owned by institutional investor Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and private equity firm Warburg Pincus.

Many PMSCs provide legitimate and needed security for civilians and government officials. But considering the wide-ranging motivations, means, and methods of so many PMSCs on the continent—and increasingly in the same spaces—it is critical for Africa’s governments, leaders, and populations to consider how comfortable they are in allowing this rapidly developing global PMSC network to continue expanding in their own backyards.

AUTHOR BIO: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

Understanding the actions and justifications behind territorial colonial behavior by the UN Security Council since 1945.

One of the underlying principles of the UN Charter is the protection of the sovereign rights of states. Yet since 1945, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Soviet Union/Russia, France, UK, U.S., and China) have consistently used military force to undermine this notion. And while acts of seizing territory have grown rare, ongoing military domination allows imperialism to further manifest through economic, political, and cultural control.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

System justification theory helps explain how policymakers and the public defend and rationalize unfair systems through the surprising capacity to find logical and moral coherence in any society. “Reframing” neocolonial policies to reinforce system-justifying narratives, often by highlighting the need to defend historical and cultural ties and maintain geopolitical stability, has been essential to sustaining the status quo of international affairs.

Naturally, the five UNSC members have often accused one another of imperialism and colonialism to deflect criticism from their own practices. Yet prolonging these relationships in former colonies or spheres of influence simply perpetuates dependency, hinders economic development, and encourages instability through inequality and exploitation.

France

In response to comments made by Russia’s foreign ministry in February 2023, which singled out France for continuing to treat African countries “from the point of view of its colonial past,” the French foreign ministry chastised Russia for its “neocolonial political involvement” in Africa. The previous June, French President Emmanuel Macron meanwhile accused Russia of being “one of the last colonial imperial powers” during a visit to Benin, a former French colony that last saw an attempted coup by French mercenaries in 1977.

Independence movements in European colonies grew substantially during World War II, and Paris granted greater autonomy to its possessions, most of them in Africa, in 1945. Yet France was intent on keeping most of its empire and became embroiled in independence conflicts in Algeria and Indochina. Growing public sentiment in France, since referred to as “utilitarian anti-colonialism,” meanwhile promoted decolonization, believing that the empire was actually holding back France economically and because “the emancipation of colonial people was unavoidable,” according to French journalist Raymond Cartier.

France left Indochina in defeat in 1954, while in 1960, 14 of France’s former colonies gained independence. And after Algeria won its independence in 1962, France’s empire was all but gone. But like other newly independent states, many former French colonies were unstable and vulnerable to or reliant on French military power. France has launched dozens of military interventions and coups since the 1960s in Africa to stabilize friendly governments, topple hostile ones, and support its interests.

French military dominance has been able to secure a hospitable environment for French multinational companies and preferential trade agreements and currency arrangements. More recently, the French military has consistently intervened in Côte d’Ivoire since 2002, as well as in the countries of the Sahel region (particularly Mali) since 2013, and the Central African Republic (CAR) since 2016. The French-led campaigns have received significant U.S. help. Speaking in 2019 on the French deployments, Macron stated that the French military was not there “for neo-colonialist, imperialist, or economic reasons. We’re there for our collective security and the region.”

But growing anti-French sentiment in former colonies in recent years has undermined Paris’ historical military dominance. Closer relations between Mali and Russia saw France pull the last of its troops out of the country in 2022, with Russian private military company (PMC) forces replacing them. A similar situation occurred in the CAR months later, and in 2023, French troops pulled out of Burkina Faso, with Russian PMC liaisons having reportedly been observed in the country.

Frustration with the negative effects of France’s ongoing influence in former colonies has also been directly tied to problems in immigrant communities living in France. The fatal shooting of a North African teenager by police in the suburbs of Paris in June 2023 caused nights of rioting, with Russia and China accusing France of authoritarianism for its security response.

UK

Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson denounced the Russian president for still believing in “imperial conquest.” Yet like France, the UK has often been accused of using military force to help promote British interests in its former empire, including the dominant role of British banks and financial services and other firms, for decades.

As the only European colonial power not defeated by Nazi Germany, British forces were sent to secure Indochina and Indonesia before French and Dutch forces could return after World War II. But London’s focus soon turned to protecting its own empire and emerging independent states. British forces helped suppress a communist insurgency in Malaysia from 1948-1960, fought in the Kenya Emergency from 1952-1960, and intervened across former colonies in Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Pacific islands.

Additionally, British, French, and Israeli forces invaded Egypt in 1956 after the Egyptian government nationalized the Suez Canal before diplomatic pressure from the U.S. and Soviet Union forced them to retreat. Over the next few decades, almost all former British colonies were steadily granted independence, and by 1980 the rate of British military interventions abroad had slowed.

Nonetheless, the 1982 Falklands War somewhat reversed the perception of the UK as a declining, imperial power. The successful defense of the Falkland Islands’ small, vulnerable population against Argentinian aggression enhanced the perception of the UK as a defender of human rights and champion of self-determination. Additionally, Britain’s focus on naval power “was important to the self-image of empire” as naval strength is often perceived as less threatening than land armies. Prominent British politicians such as former Prime Minister David Cameron have similarly restated Britain’s commitment to protecting the islands from Argentinian colonialism.

More recently, the British military intervened in the Sierra Leone Civil War in 2000 and was also a crucial partner for the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. And alongside ongoing official deployments, British Special Forces have meanwhile been active in 11 countries secretly from 2011-2023, a report by Action Against Armed Violence revealed. The residual presence of the British military has often made it difficult to embrace the “new and equal partnership” between Britain and former colonies, championed by former British Foreign Minister William Hague in 2012.

The domestic perception of Britain’s colonial legacy continues to play a divisive role in British politics and society. Winston Churchill, the winner of a 2002 BBC poll on the top 100 Great Britons, was “cited as a defender of an endangered country/people/culture, not as an exponent of empire.” Yet during anti-racism protests in the UK in 2020, a statue of the former prime minister was covered up to avoid being damaged by protestors. Believing him to be a figurehead of the cruelty of British colonialism, the covering up of Churchill’s statue shows the contrasting and evolving domestic views of British imperialism.

Soviet Union/Russia

After 1945, Soviet troops were stationed across the Eastern Bloc to deter NATO and suppress dissent. Several military operations in support of communist governments against “counterrevolutionary” protestors were approved in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968). Soviet forces also took part in a decade-long conflict to prop up Afghanistan’s government from 1979-1989.

In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, however, the Soviet Union presented itself as the leading anti-colonial force. It proclaimed an ideological duty to financially, politically, and militarily support numerous pro-independence/communist movements and governments, tying these efforts to confronting the colonial West.

The Soviet collapse forced Moscow to prioritize maintaining Russia’s influence in former Soviet states. But even today, many Russians do not see the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire as empires, as Russians insist that they lived alongside their colonized subjects through a “Friendship of Peoples,” unlike the British or French. This sentiment drives much of the rhetoric defending Russia’s ongoing dominance across parts of the former Soviet Union.

On the eve of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin once again called into question Ukrainian statehood. Ukraine, like other former Soviet states, has often been labeled an artificial creation by Russian politicians. Alongside the necessity of military force to protect Russian speakers/citizens, Russian officials have justified conflict and exploitation of fragile post-Soviet borders in separatist regions of Georgia, Moldova, and Armenia/Azerbaijan since the early 1990s.

Russia has also worked to maintain a dependency on its military power in former Soviet states. The Kazakh government’s reliance on the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military alliance was clearly demonstrated during the CSTO intervention during protests in January 2022. Prominent Russian politicians such as Sergey Lavrov have consistently compared the CSTO favorably to NATO, but the lack of support from CSTO member states (except for Belarus) for Russia in its war with Ukraine has demonstrated its limitations.

The Russian military has also been active in Syria since 2011, while dozens of Russian private military companies have increased operations across Africa over the last decade. The Kremlin is increasingly tying these conflicts, as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine, to reinforce Moscow’s traditional role as an anti-colonial power. Russia has performed significant outreach to Africa since the start of the war, and at the annual St. Petersburg economic forum in 2023, Putin declared the “ugly neo-colonialism” of international affairs was ending as a result of its war.

By amplifying criticism over the domination of global affairs by the “Golden Billion” in the West, the Kremlin believes it can blunt foreign and domestic criticism over its war in Ukraine, as well as over its approach to other post-Soviet states.

USA

The USA, born out of an anti-colonial struggle, has naturally been wary of being perceived as a colonial power. U.S. Presidents voiced support for decolonization after World War II, particularly John F. Kennedy. But because “anti-communism came before anti-colonialism,” Washington often supported neocolonial practices by European powers to prevent the spread of Soviet influence and secure Western interests.

The U.S. has also been criticized for its own imperial behavior toward Latin America since 1823 when the Monroe Doctrine was first proclaimed. The United States’s sentiment that it had a special right to intervene in the Americas increased during the Cold War as Washington grew wary of communism. U.S. military forces intervened in Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989 to enforce Washington’s political will.

The U.S. War on Drugs, launched in 1969, also destabilized much of Latin America, while other instances of covertly fostering instability have prevented the emergence of strong sovereign states in the region.

Major foreign conflicts involving U.S. forces since 1945 meanwhile include the Korean War (1953-1953) Vietnam War (1955-1975), the Gulf War (1991), intervention in the Yugoslav Wars (1995,1999), and the War on Terror (2001-present). U.S. forces also intervened in Haiti in 1994-1995 during “Operation Uphold Democracy” and again in 2004, while leading international interventions in Libya (2011) and Syria (2014). These interventions have often been criticized for perpetuating instability and weakening local institutions.

Nonetheless, the global U.S. military presence has continued to grow. Since 2007, United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) has seen the U.S. expand its military footprint across Africa and today, 750 known military bases are spread across 80 countries. U.S. special operations forces are meanwhile estimated to be active in 154 countries. The U.S. global military presence also gives Washington considerable control over transportation routes, with the U.S. Navy routinely seizing ships violating trade restrictions.

U.S. officials have continued to lean on the country’s history as a former British colony to highlight solidarity with other countries and propose greater cooperation. In 2013, for example, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated that the Monroe Doctrine, which allowed the U.S. “to step in and oppose the influence of European powers in Latin America,” was over. And in a 2023 address from the White House briefing room proclaiming the start of Caribbean-American history month, President Biden noted how the U.S. and Caribbean countries are bound by common values and a shared history of “overcoming the yoke of colonialism.”

But domestic divides over Washington’s role in global affairs have increased calls for the U.S. to return to its early foreign policy of isolationism. While this will not be enough for the U.S. to retreat on the global stage, it has helped prevent the U.S. military from committing to new major conflicts in recent years.

China

The conclusion of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 marked the end of China’s “Century of Humiliation” at the hands of European powers, the U.S., and Japan. The victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) allowed Beijing to consolidate power and look toward expanding China’s borders. This included launching the “peaceful liberation” of both Xinjiang in 1949 and Tibet in 1950, steadily bringing these regions under China’s control—though China only took Taiwan’s seat at the UN in 1971.

China’s history of exploitation by foreign powers has frequently been cited by Beijing to increase solidarity with other countries which suffered from Western imperialism. Key to this messaging was fighting against U.S.-led forces in the Korean War, as part of a “Great Movement to Resist America and Assist Korea” and opposing wider Western neocolonialism, while Chinese forces also engaged in border clashes with the Soviet Union as relations between Moscow and Beijing soured in the 1960s.

But Chinese forces have also been involved in clashes with former European colonies. This includes confrontations with India, as well as China’s launch of a major invasion of northern Vietnam in 1979. Tens of thousands of casualties were recorded on both sides during the month-long operation, while continued border clashes between Chinese and Vietnamese forces continued until relations were normalized in 1991.

Since 2003, Chinese officials have instead placed great emphasis on China’s “peaceful rise,” which has seen the country drastically increase its power in world affairs without having to resort to military force. But while large-scale Chinese military operations have not materialized, China has rapidly increased the construction of ports, air bases, and other military installations to enforce its territorial control over the South China Sea over the last decade, at the expense of several Southeast Asian countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping has justified these developments because the islands “have been China’s territory since ancient times.”

China’s extensive maritime militias and civilian distant-water fishing (DWF) fleets have also been accused of asserting Chinese maritime territorial claims while blurring the lines between civilian and military force. Additionally, there is also fear that China’s growing economic and military might will be enough to force countries in Central Asia to accept the Chinese position on various territorial disputes.

While China has avoided any major military operations this century, it has used its growing economic and military might to pressure other countries into accepting its territorial claims. To offset criticism, Chinese officials have turned their attention toward ongoing and historical imperialism by the West. Following British criticism over China’s handling of pro-democracy protests in 2019, China criticized the UK for acting with a “colonial mindset,” and, in support of Argentina, accused the UK of practicing colonialism in the Falklands in 2021. These claims help sustain domestic support for China’s policies, help to increase solidarity among other countries which have suffered from Western imperialism, and put China’s geopolitical rivals on the defensive.

Conclusions

It is true that the U.S. military provides necessary security deterrence to numerous countries, and has also proven essential to responding to natural disasters and other emergencies. But like other major powers, the use of U.S. military force has consistently been abused since 1945. The historical legacy of Western imperialism and interventionism has helped explain why Western calls for global solidarity with Ukraine have often fallen on deaf ears today.

Additionally, some of the consequences of the war in Ukraine, including rising energy and food prices, are being most acutely felt in poorer countries, while the growing dominance of Western firms in crucial Ukrainian economic sectors has also undermined the West’s messaging over Ukraine further.

Honest accountability by major powers for the historical and ongoing exploitation of weaker countries remains rare. But public, government-funded initiatives, such as the U.S. Imperial Visions and Revisions exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, documents the beginning and justification behind empire-building in the U.S., and is an important step to addressing past and contemporary wrongdoing, as envisioned by the UN Charter in 1945. In 2018, French President Macron meanwhile commissioned a report that discovered that “around 90 to 95 percent of African cultural heritage” was located abroad, prompting the French parliament to pass a bill in 2020 allowing these artifacts to be returned.

The promotion of actual history and accountability may also remove barriers to more selfless assistance to weaker countries by major powers. This approach could, in turn, invite greater cooperation and positive repercussions than costly military interventions, and would also serve as an example for weaker states grappling with their own legacies of violence, exploitation, and suppression.

AUTHOR BIO: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022

Around the world, significant issues are negatively impacting water security. While the situation appears dire, cooperation initiatives show some signs of relief.

In May 2023, the Arizona Department of Water Resources imposed restrictions on the construction of new housing in the Phoenix area, citing a lack of groundwater. The decision aims to slow population growth in one of the fastest-growing regions in the U.S. and underlines the dwindling water resources in the drought-stricken southwest.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

As water levels in the Colorado River have declined, the states dependent on it (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming) are increasingly at odds over how to distribute the declining supply.

The U.S. is not alone in the contentious domestic debate over water supplies. Australian states have constantly quarreled over water rights across the Murray-Darling Basin. Disruptions to water supply or perceived misuse can cause immediate social unrest, and countries like Iran and France have seen violent protests regarding water recently.

Constant and affordable access to fresh water is recognized as a basic human right by the UN. And in addition to providing a foundation for life, fresh water is also crucial for industry and manufacturing, energy production, agriculture, sanitation, and other essential societal functions.

But around the world, its availability is threatened. Desertification, climate change, man-made water diversion, dam building, pollution, and overuse have seen rivers, lakes, and aquifers dry up. Since 2000, the world has added almost 2 billion people, putting further strain on global water infrastructure and supplies.

Poor water management and infrastructure also play a major role in water scarcity around the world. In Iraq, up to 14.5 percent of the country’s water is lost to evaporation and two-thirds of its treated water is lost due to leaks and poor infrastructure. Up to 25 to 30 percent of South Africa’s water is lost to leaks, while even in many industrialized countries, up to 15 to 20 percent of water supply is lost.

Inequality can also exacerbate water stress. Amid Cape Town’s water shortages in recent years, 14 percent of the population has been found to be responsible for more than half of the freshwater use in the city. Across Africa, one in three people already faces water scarcity, where “the availability of natural hygienic water falls below 1,000 m3 per person per year.”

On top of government control of water supply and infrastructure, multinational companies like Nestlé S.A., PepsiCo, Inc., the Coca-Cola Company, and the Wonderful Company LLC play a huge role in the global water industry. In 2013, former Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe was forced to backtrack after a 2005 interview resurfaced where he stated it was “extreme” that water was considered a human right.

However, water privatization has increased significantly over the last few decades. In 2020, Wall Street allowed water to begin trading as a commodity, and today, “farmers, hedge funds and municipalities alike are now able to hedge against—or bet on—future water availability in California.” Monetization has even seen countries like Fiji, the world’s 4th-largest water exporter in 2021, face water supply shortages over the last few years.

Tap water remains drinkable only in certain countries, but fears of contamination can occur rapidly and incite alarm. After thousands of gallons of a synthetic latex product spilled into the Delaware River in 2023, Philadelphia authorities shut down a nearby water treatment plant. While it was ultimately deemed that tap water was still safe to drink, government warnings and alarm on social media led to panic-buying of water.

Contamination can also lead to longer-term damage to public faith in water infrastructure. After heightened levels of lead were found in Flint, Michigan’s drinking water in 2014 (together with the tepid government response), the local population remained hesitant to resume drinking it even after it had been declared safe.

Water security also has a major impact on relations between countries. The U.S. and Mexico have historically competed over water rights to both the Colorado River and the Rio Grande. Strong population growth on both sides of the border in recent decades, coupled with drought, has exacerbated bilateral tensions.

In 2020, tension over Mexico’s inability to meet its annual water delivery obligations to the U.S. from the Rio Grande, laid out in the 1944 Water Treaty, saw farmers in northern Mexico take over La Boquilla Dam, weeks before the deadline. While the crisis was eventually resolved, the fundamental issue of strained water flows remains ongoing.

Iraq has meanwhile increasingly accused Iran of withholding water from tributaries that feed into the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, with Iran accusing Iraq of failing to use water responsibly. Iraq and Syria have also disputed Turkey’s construction of dams and irrigation systems that have hindered the traditional flows of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Relations between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia have similarly deteriorated since the latter began construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in 2011. The project has aggravated regional fears over Nile River water shortages, and though outright conflict has so far been avoided, it has inflamed concern over supply in Sudan, which saw deadly clashes over water shortages in 2023.

China has been labeled an “upstream superpower” because several major rivers begin in China. The construction of dams and hydropower plants on the Mekong River has caused friction with Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, while Kazakhstan and China have often disagreed over water rights regarding the Ili River.

Fears have also arisen that India and China, the world’s two most populous countries, could come into conflict over the Brahmaputra River and Indus River. But India and downstream Pakistan have their own disputes over rights in the Indus River basin that have raised regional concern.

Other countries have weaponized water as part of a wider conflict. Ukraine and Russia have both used water to harass each other since the first round of unrest between them began in 2014. Ukraine almost immediately cut off Crimea from water supply from the North Crimean Canal, shrinking the peninsula’s arable land from 130,000 hectares in 2013 to just 14,000 in 2017.

Russia reopened the canal following the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022. Additionally, Russian forces have since been accused of withholding water to some Ukrainian regions, deliberately flooding others, and targeting Ukraine’s water infrastructure. Both Russia and Ukraine accused one another of blowing up the Kakhovka Dam and hydroelectric power station located on the Dnieper River on June 5, 2023, which flooded downstream communities.

The Islamic State (IS) was meanwhile instrumental in causing water shortages during its rise across Syria and Iraq a decade ago, by polluting and cutting off water supplies and flooding regions. The Taliban also repeatedly attacked water infrastructure in Afghanistan throughout the U.S.-led occupation of the country.

Longstanding disputes between the Taliban and Iran over access to the Helmand River also resulted in deadly clashes at their mutual border in 2023. And in recent years, cyberattacks have increasingly targeted the vulnerable water infrastructure of the U.S.

Thankfully, the future of water stress may be less dire than feared. Global population growth has slowed significantly over the last few decades and the population is expected to peak by the end of the century. Furthermore, regions experiencing water stresses are typically not high-population growth areas. The global community is also taking renewed steps to address global water security, with the UN holding in 2023 its first summit on water since 1977.

And even countries with longstanding disputes have recognized the importance of maintaining water supplies. The 60-year-old Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan has largely held despite persistent tensions between them. China has initiated cooperation with downstream states on transportation and water flows, including the Lancang-Mekong River Dialogue and Cooperation forum to share data and prepare for shortages and flooding.

There have also been recent breakthroughs regarding the GERD. Sudan’s de facto leader, Abdel-Fattah Burhan, recently came out in support of the dam, noting it could help regulate flooding. Greater cooperation between Ethiopia and Egypt could see less water evaporate from Egypt’s Aswan High Dam if it can be stored in the GERD during warmer months.

And though seawater desalination remains expensive and energy-intensive, it is becoming more efficient and widespread. In Saudi Arabia, 50 percent of the country’s water needs are met by desalination, while Egypt plans to open dozens of new desalination plants in the coming years. Currently, 70 percent of the world’s desalination plants are found in the Middle East.

Domestic U.S. initiatives are also promising. California’s Orange County recycles almost all of its waste water back to the nearby aquifer through the world’s largest water reclamation plant, which opened in 2008. Arizona, California, and Nevada also agreed in May 2023 to reduce water intake by 10 percent over the next three years, and Arizona’s decision to suspend housing construction may mark the beginning of more restraint over domestic water consumption.

Ongoing domestic and international cooperation will nonetheless be required to resolve water disputes and create sustainable water management practices. Preventing the use of water as geopolitical leverage or a tool of war, coupled with effective management of climate change and pollution, will be integral to avoiding wars over water in the future.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s growing strength have accelerated Taiwan’s military overhaul. Taipei is exploring multiple ways to enhance its security, but unorthodox methods risk escalation.

In early May 2023, a U.S. delegation consisting of 25 defense contractors arrived in Taiwan for a security summit, aimed to increase interoperability between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries. It marks the latest step toward Taiwan’s years-long efforts to strengthen its defense capabilities and pose credible deterrence to the Chinese military.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

The military relationship between Taiwan and the U.S. expanded significantly during the Trump administration. Washington approved major arms sales, increased cooperation with the Taiwanese military, and conducted more naval patrols in the Taiwan Strait to emphasize the U.S. position on Taiwan. During the Biden administration, it was revealed that dozens of U.S. military personnel were training Taiwanese forces on the island since at least 2020, numbers which have increased since.

And while conscription was previously considered an outdated military policy characteristic of the Cold War, the war in Ukraine has reversed this notion. Taiwan’s attempted transition to Western-style volunteer force in previous years now appears far less credible in being able to realistically oppose the Chinese military, and Taiwan’s government has since reverted to upholding its military reserve system.

But though Taiwan’s 1.7 million reservists appear to form a formidable challenge to China’s roughly 2 million active military personnel, Taiwan’s forces largely exist only on paper. Its military currently only has 169,000 active military members and an estimated 300,000 combat-ready reservists, according to Wang Ting-yu of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

The Taiwanese government was therefore quick to explore increasing training times for reservists after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and in December 2022 lengthened conscription from four months to one year, bringing praise from the U.S. By boosting pay and training, the Taiwanese government hopes to bolster its forces and bring it closer to South Korea’s 18-month compulsory military service.

But China’s population of 1.4 billion dwarfs Taiwan’s mere 23 million, meaning additional Taiwanese conscription initiatives are futile if China resorts to additional conscription as well. Taiwan’s $19 billion defense budget also pales in comparison to the $230 billion spent by Beijing.

Washington’s hypothetical efforts to resupply the relatively isolated island of Taiwan during a conflict would meanwhile prove far more difficult than the ongoing Western effort to assist Ukraine. While stockpiling weapons could partially negate this issue, a prolonged conflict or blockade of Taiwan by China would steadily diminish Taiwan’s ability to continue fighting.

With the inherent disadvantages of the Taiwanese armed forces and the unwillingness of even the U.S. to officially commit to the island’s defense, Taiwan’s government has explored increasing engagement with the private sphere to ensure its security. The May 2023 U.S. contractors’ visit was just part of Taiwan’s recent efforts to increase engagement with both domestic and foreign private military firms.

Before the breakout of conflict in Ukraine in 2022, Taiwan had taken incremental steps toward greater privatization in its defense sector, such as privatizing the state aircraft manufacturer Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation in 2014.

However, the war in Ukraine completely altered the Taiwanese government’s view of private war. Russian private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been active in Ukraine since 2014, while the Russian PMSC known as Wagner has played an essential part in the war and in Russian propaganda. Various Western and Russian PMSCs are also fighting in Ukraine, while Chinese civilian drones have been used to great effect by both sides.

The Taiwanese government has since taken significant steps in engaging with Taiwan’s private sector to increase drone production. But more notable are the proposed changes to the Private Security Services Act, which regulates PMSCs operating in Taiwan, early into the war. Taipei has various types of private services to consider, such as those providing security, consulting, and training services, intelligence gathering, logistics support, and cyber and maritime security.

Enoch Wu, a politician from Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party and a former special operations soldier, founded the security and civilian defense organization Forward Alliance in 2020. Alongside programs to treat injuries and respond to crises, Forward Alliance’s combat training programs expanded significantly following the outbreak of war in Ukraine. The number of Taiwanese private programs run by various companies “specializing in urban warfare and firearms training” has also increased since the start of the war, according to Voice of America.

In September 2022, Taiwanese entrepreneur Robert Tsao pledged to spend $100 million training 3 million soldiers over three years in the Kuma Academy (also known as the Black Bear Academy). While his claims are ambitious, Russian billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin’s financing of Wagner has already played an integral role in the war in Ukraine, at the same time drastically increasing his stature in Russia and notoriety abroad.

Due to its own limited industry, any Taiwanese effort to promote greater military cooperation with the private sphere would require Western assistance. The U.S. scrapped its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan in 1979 to normalize relations with China but the Taiwan Relations Act enables the U.S. to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, and privatization could make it easier for the West to support the Taiwanese military. Alongside weapons deals, Western PMSCs like G4S have been active in Taiwan for more than two decades and could quickly expand their operations on the island.

Greater cooperation with Western PMSCs may not be able to help Taiwan repel a Chinese assault. But they could complement Taiwanese military efforts to create a volunteer force modeled on Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force and advocated by former Taiwanese defense chief Admiral Lee Hsi-min. The U.S. has explored developing guerilla forces in the Baltic States to harass Russian forces if they were to invade, and growing the multiple private initiatives already underway in Taiwan could form a powerful guerilla network that could remain active even if Taiwan’s military is forced to stand down.

But committing to privatization has its own consequences for Taiwan. The role of Chinese PMSCs abroad has grown significantly over the last few years, with an estimated 20 to 40 Chinese active largely to guard Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure projects. However, China’s 7,000-plus PSMCs operating domestically “suggests ample opportunity for the future growth of internationally active” Chinese firms according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And, while Chinese law prohibits them from using force abroad except for defense, Beijing’s assertion that Taiwan is part of China’s territory could erode legal and political barriers to using them.

In recent years, China has also deputized maritime militias of fishing boats to swarm parts of the South China Sea and establish control over certain areas. By collaborating with Chinese PMSCs, these militias could even avoid Taiwan and surround the Kinmen, Matsu, or uninhabited Pratas islands. Although these islands are claimed by Taiwan, they are geographically closer to China. This could be justified on the grounds of economic interests or security concerns. The use of these fishing militias to harass Taiwan could make up for significant underdevelopment in Chinese PMSC capabilities and help China to avoid using its official military forces.

The scale of cooperation between the Taiwanese government and private military actors is so far limited. But Taiwan’s manpower shortages and lack of official military and diplomatic ties have made the prospect of private military assistance far more attractive. The lack of international regulations sustaining Taiwan’s recent increased engagement with the private military sphere, however, will further encourage China to respond in kind.

Ukrainian oligarchs had turned to PMSCs to protect their assets in Ukraine after 2014, while Ukraine has come to heavily lean on foreign PMSCs to supplement the war effort. Wagner and other Russian PMSCs have meanwhile grown in importance to Russian military efforts in Ukraine as well. The growing power of PMSCs in Ukraine, as well as worldwide, suggests further military privatization of the dispute over Taiwan may be inevitable.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

The Taliban’s ability to lead Afghanistan remains questionable and ongoing instability has provided the Islamic State the opportunity for expansion.

On April 25, 2023, U.S. officials confirmed that the Taliban had killed the head of the Islamic State (IS) cell operating in Afghanistan. Though his identity has not been revealed, the IS leader is believed to have masterminded the 2021 Kabul airport attack that killed 170 Afghan civilians and 13 U.S. military personnel.

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His assassination marks the latest escalation of violence between the Taliban and IS in Afghanistan this year. Several senior Taliban officials were killed or targeted in March 2023 by IS, while several IS leaders in Afghanistan were killed by the Taliban in January and February.

The Taliban, a loose Pashtun-centric political movement active across Afghanistan and Pakistan, previously ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. The U.S. withdrawal and ensuing collapse of the Afghan government in 2021 allowed the Taliban to re-establish their rule over the country, but they have been prevented from gaining full control thanks to IS, which has existed in the country since 2014.

Initially, many Taliban members were supportive of IS’s ability to seize territory and challenge U.S. and Western forces in Syria and Iraq in 2013 and 2014. Yet despite their common U.S. and Western enemies and shared hardline Sunni interpretation of Islam, the Taliban’s animosity arose after IS began to establish itself on Afghan territory and attract Afghans to its cause.

At the time, Taliban forces had failed to make territorial gains and had recently begun another round of negotiations with the U.S. government. The Taliban had also traditionally suppressed the Salafist brand of Islam in eastern Afghanistan in favor of Hanafi Islam, making IS’s Salafist leanings attractive to many Afghans in the region. There was also significant division across the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban leadership, further allowing IS to poach members.

Several high-ranking members switched allegiance to IS in 2014, which also found support from smaller regional militant groups. But of significant importance was IS’s ability to attract disillusioned members of its rival, Al Qaeda, to its ranks. Disagreements over policies, tactics, and leadership caused Al Qaeda to disavow IS in 2014, and they have competed for dominance over the global jihadist movement since. The Taliban’s close relationship with Al Qaeda only made IS more resolute in challenging them in Afghanistan.

In January 2015, IS announced its vision to create the province of “Khorasan,” which would include much of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and is part of IS’s effort to establish a global caliphate. The group began to expand more rapidly across Afghanistan while accusing the Taliban of being “filthy nationalists” and neglecting Islam in favor of their ethnic and national base.

As clashes between the Taliban and Islamic State in Khorasan (IS-K) intensified in 2015, the Taliban’s then-leader, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, wrote a letter to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi urging him to abandon recruitment in Afghanistan and insisting the war against the United States should be led by the Taliban. But it failed to dissuade the IS leadership, who were also aided in part by the Afghan Army’s initial decision to avoid fighting IS to focus on the Taliban.

As IS emerged as a serious threat to Afghanistan’s stability, however, both Afghan and U.S.-led international forces increasingly came to focus on the group in the country. IS targeting of religious minorities also brought it into further conflict with parts of the Afghan population. Despite an initial expansion, IS lost significant territory and fighters from 2015 to 2018, while from 2019 to 2020 many of its fighters and leaders surrendered to authorities.

The Taliban, in comparison, had steadily increased its influence in Afghanistan, convincing the Afghan and U.S. governments to commit to talks to end the war. The Doha Agreement in 2020 put forth a withdrawal timeline for foreign soldiers, saw thousands of Afghan and Taliban soldiers released in a prisoner swap, and the Taliban pledged to prevent terrorist groups from operating in Afghanistan. IS denounced the agreement, accusing the Taliban of deviating from jihad to please “their U.S. masters.”

But suggestions of IS’s demise in Afghanistan by then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani proved short-lived, particularly as Afghanistan was engulfed by the power vacuum caused by the U.S.’s departure. IS’s numbers were also bolstered by thousands of prisoners who escaped or were freed from Afghanistan’s prisons.

While IS’s estimated 4,000 members in Afghanistan as of 2023 pale in comparison to the Taliban’s roughly 80,000 troops, its guerilla warfare campaign, similar to the one used effectively by the Taliban against U.S. forces, has made it a formidable opponent in parts of the country. By the end of 2021, the group had killed or injured more people in Afghanistan than any other country, and clashes between the Taliban and IS are common occurrences.

On top of attracting more members to IS’s ranks, the Taliban fears IS will erase what little legitimacy it has as a governing force by keeping Afghanistan unstable. The Taliban’s leadership remains plagued by division and lacks any international recognition. The Taliban is also now fighting IS-K largely alone and without the high-tech weaponry and air support enjoyed by the previous Afghan government forces. And having been beaten back in Syria and Iraq, Afghanistan provides IS-K one of the few places where it can expand, causing the group to double down in the country.

To shore up their position, the Taliban leadership has sought to engage with other governments. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are cautiously cooperating with the Taliban, while Pakistan, which has a complex history of working with the Taliban, continues to conduct dialogue with them. The Taliban is also courting India, China, and Russia, which seek to stabilize the country and potentially exploit Afghanistan’s estimated $1 to $3 trillion in mineral wealth.

Pressure is on the Taliban to get results. Chinese and Russian citizens and infrastructure in Afghanistan have been targeted by IS, drawing criticism. And though the Taliban has said it will not allow its territory to be used to attack its neighbors, IS has already tested this in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

The Taliban’s ongoing cooperation with Al Qaeda (exemplified by the assassination of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul in 2022) continues to dissuade Western cooperation, coupled with the Taliban’s crackdown on women’s freedom in Afghanistan. Reversing their more radical policies could in turn instigate more defections to IS.

Having fought the Taliban for two decades, a rapprochement with the Taliban would be a difficult sell to Western audiences. But having already worked with the Taliban to evacuate its citizens in August, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley stated the possibility of coordinating with the Taliban to defeat IS in 2021. Nick Carter, his British counterpart, expressed a similar sentiment as well. U.S. officials have also stated that they “do not support organized violent opposition” to the Taliban.

With the Afghan government disbanded (many members have joined the Taliban or IS) and the weaknesses associated with the National Resistance Front, there is little viable opposition that Western forces can support. Yet The U.S. “over-the-horizon” approach to ignoring the Taliban to deal with IS and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan has its own consequences—a drone strike intended for the mastermind behind the 2021 Kabul Airport attack instead ended up killing 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children.

Nonetheless, the Taliban’s assassination of the individual responsible in April 2023 may encourage soft coordination and informal diplomacy with other countries, including the U.S. Yet because the Taliban remains dependent on cooperation with extremist groups like Al Qaeda, its formal international isolation risks becoming long-term.

Providing a haven for groups like Al Qaeda and promoting a strict interpretation of Shariah law is also a double-edged sword. These conditions helped IS establish itself in Afghanistan, aided further by the poverty and lack of basic services in many parts of the country. IS will continue to attempt to weaken the Taliban militarily, exploit its divisions, and erode its claims to have restored peace and stability to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s instability since the 1970s remains ongoing, and the country continues to be a hotbed of regional concern, great power rivalry, and ideological clashes. While most foreign governments view IS as a greater threat, this may not be enough for the Taliban to end its vulnerable isolation and help Afghanistan achieve peace and stability.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

The centers have highlighted China’s growing influence, as well as the increasing legal complexity of managing citizens and dual citizens in Chinese diaspora communities.

The apprehension of two men in New York on April 16, 2023, marked the first known U.S. arrests in connection with Chinese overseas police stations. Both men were working in a building in Manhattan’s Chinatown rented by the America ChangLe Association, a charity that had its tax-exempt status revoked in May 2022. More Chinese police stations are believed to be operating across the U.S.—though, like in other countries, not all their locations are known.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

While foreign intelligence agencies conduct extensive espionage operations in other countries, domestic law enforcement agencies are also occasionally active abroad. The FBI trained many Latin American police units throughout the Cold War and has been covertly active in the region for decades. In 2020, Russia also offered to send a police force to Belarus during mass protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who blamed the West for trying to foment a color revolution.

However, the scale of China’s international program and the scope of its responsibilities is notable. Run primarily by ethnic Chinese residents, the main concern of these stations appears to be managing the more than 10.5 million Chinese citizens living overseas, and to a lesser extent the 35 to 60 million people in the Chinese diaspora. The considerable size of Chinese overseas communities has allowed Beijing to field an extensive global presence through these stations.

China’s first known use of these stations occurred in 2004 with the establishment of the Community and Police Cooperation Center in Johannesburg, following several attacks on Chinese citizens and businesses. The center opened with the blessing of the South African government, and more than a dozen have since opened in the country. As in other countries, they help Chinese citizens obtain documents, assist in criminal matters, integrate into the country, as well as offer “security, fire, and ambulance teams.” The Chinese government maintains that they are not police stations but instead function as “service centers.”

Two reports, released in September and December 2022 by the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders, indicated that there are now more than 100 overseas Chinese stations active in more than 50 countries. Managed by China’s Ministry of Public Security, the stations are operated by police agencies from three Chinese provinces (Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian) and are divided into centers, which are greater in scale, and liaisons, which have a lower profile but are more numerous.

Though the stations had previously drawn little attention, the reports have made Western countries far more wary of them in the context of intensifying geopolitical tensions with China over the last few years. There are also fears that the stations act as part of China’s United Front system to build political, economic, and cultural connections to influence other countries.

The stations have also brought increased Western attention due to their role in convincing Chinese citizens to return to China to face legal charges. Now known as Operation Fox Hunt, Safeguard Defenders estimates that from April 2021 to July 2022, 230,000 Chinese citizens were persuaded or coerced into returning to China, with China’s Ministry of Public Security itself stating that 210,000 citizens returned in 2021. Western officials had already criticized China for abusing Interpol’s Red Notice system to arrest and extradite citizens abroad for political purposes, while Operation Fox Hunt has allowed Chinese officials to bypass Interpol and deal directly with its own citizens.

Interrupting the ability of China to carry out this program is increasingly becoming a domestic security priority for the U.S. But the two men who were arrested in New York appear to be both U.S. and Chinese citizens, and the incident has become the latest attempt by Chinese and Western authorities to exert authority over each other’s citizens, as well as dual citizens.

Several dual Chinese/U.S. citizens were prevented from leaving China in 2017 and 2018 in an apparent effort to convince their family members living in the U.S. to return to China. Meanwhile in 2018, Meng Wanzhou, a Chinese national and CFO of Huawei, was placed under house arrest in Canada to await extradition to the U.S. for fraud. In response, two Canadian businessmen in China were also detained and prevented from leaving, based on espionage allegations. All were released in 2021, with Chinese and U.S. authorities denying any connection between them.

The U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with China, while the few European countries that do have taken steps to reduce China’s ability to enforce it in recent months. While Chinese officials have demonstrated their willingness to detain dual citizens in China, the overseas stations allow Chinese officers to locate and contact citizens living abroad directly. Through harassment, intimidation, and coercion, Beijing has bypassed formal extradition methods and quietly convinced hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens to return home.

Beijing’s approach to dealing with wanted citizens abroad contrasts with techniques employed by other countries. Many, including the U.S., Russia, and Iran, have used military, intelligence, or organized crime assets to assassinate citizens opposed to the governments. Iran is also known to have resorted to kidnapping to bring citizens back to the country, though this has also generated significant attention.

The role of these stations in advancing Chinese interests and extraditing Chinese citizens has naturally caused concern in the West. Yet until the 2022 Safeguard Defenders reports, the Western response had been somewhat slow. Only after the scale of the stations became public knowledge did Western officials take substantial steps to clamp down on them. FBI director Christopher Wray stated in September 2022 that he was “looking into the legal parameters” of the stations, and the Manhattan station was raided by the agency in October.

More than a dozen other countries have also launched probes against the stations in recent months, and other countries have significantly scaled back their cooperation with them. The growth in the number of Chinese tourists traveling abroad previously incentivized many governments to facilitate cooperation with Chinese police forces, for example, and Chinese police officers were formerly permitted to assist Chinese tourists visiting Italian cities. But this decision was reversed in December 2022, while Croatia is under similar pressure to restrict Chinese tourist assistance police patrols in its cities. Other restrictive measures in the U.S. and Europe are likely to be introduced.

Western officials, however, have so far refrained from bringing too much attention to the centers. Allegations of McCarthyism and racial profiling could cause social unrest and provide Beijing with evidence of hostile Western intent toward overseas Chinese communities. Additionally, acknowledging the existence of covert Chinese officials operating across the West would publicly undermine the sanctity of Western sovereignty and reinforce perceptions of China’s growing power in international affairs.

The stations, nonetheless, are destined to remain a sticking point in the Western-Chinese relationship. Operation Fox Hunt reveals that not even the U.S. has been able to protect dual citizens or those seeking asylum on its own soil. Though Chinese officials will likely have to act even more discreetly for some of their overseas operations, U.S. officials have yet to locate where all these stations are. And even if they are found, the Chinese government has traditionally cultivated close ties with overseas Chinese communities and has additional avenues to project influence.

Despite Western countries’ increasing concern with the stations, other countries which host them appear unperturbed and will continue to cooperate with China for a variety of reasons. In 2019, Chinese police officers began patrolling several Serbian cities alongside Serbian police forces to assist Chinese tourists. Additionally, Chinese police officers have worked out of an office in Cambodia’s national police headquarters since 2019 to manage Chinese citizens suspected of being involved in crime. Chinese police and security forces have also drastically increased their cooperation with their Latin American counterparts over the last decade to “speed up the signing process of treaties concerning judicial assistance in criminal matters, and expand cooperation in such areas as fighting crimes, fugitive repatriation and asset recovery,” according to the Chinese government.

In February 2023, China also unveiled its Global Security Initiative to enhance training and cooperation with developing countries’ security forces. And because Chinese stations do act as legitimate centers aimed to help Chinese citizens abroad, countries with good relations with China and existing and growing Chinese immigrant and worker communities will likely allow further expansion for Chinese overseas stations.

The stations will continue to evolve to suit the environment of their host countries. Their ongoing operations show the increasingly sophisticated ways China aims to aid its citizens abroad, convince others to return home, and extend its cooperation agreements and influence activities around the world.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

The struggles of Russian weapons manufacturers have added to historic shifts in the global arms market.

On March 21, 2023, India’s air force confirmed that a major Russian arms delivery would not occur, citing Russia’s logistical challenges stemming from its war in Ukraine. It has served as the latest example of Russia’s inability to complete weapons deals with India since the conflict began in February 2022.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

India is the world’s largest arms importer, and as the country’s largest supplier, Russia plays an outsized role in India’s defense. But Russia’s ongoing military challenges in Ukraine will naturally increase India’s push to develop homegrown defense alternatives and diversify foreign suppliers.

Strong growth in Russian defense spending since the start of the war indicates that the country’s domestic weapons manufacturers can rely on stable demand from the Russian state. But sanctions have meant they are already having difficulty completing these orders, and risk losing further international market share as their products increasingly flow to the Russian military.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) estimates that six countries—the U.S., Russia, France, China, Germany, and Italy—were responsible for 80 percent of global weapons exports from 2018 to 2022. The U.S. alone counted for 40 percent, while Russia was a distant second at 16 percent.

It is difficult to place an exact value on the global arms industry. What exactly constitutes “arms” is debated, while the same products can be sold for different prices. Weapons may also be shipped discreetly or on the black market. Nonetheless, SIPRI uses a “trend-indicator value” that allocates a specific value to individual weapons or weapons systems based on their capabilities.

Maintaining and growing their market share is a prerogative for countries that export weapons. For Russia, weapons deals are a key method to gain access to hard currency. But weapons exporters also gain leverage over recipient countries by shaping their security situation, helping to lock in long-term constructive relations with other countries.

The strength of national weapons industries can often fluctuate. After the Soviet collapse, for example, state funding for Russia’s arms industry declined markedly, while much of the weapons manufacturing infrastructure formerly under Moscow’s control was spread across the former Soviet Union.

But even Eastern European countries seeking to make their armed forces more interoperable with NATO and Western weapons struggled to wean themselves off Russian weapons. Increasing exports to China and India meanwhile helped sustain Russia’s arms industry in the 1990s. And after Putin came to power in 2000, Russia’s weapons industry managed to flourish by rebuilding part of its former client base and expanding across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Despite remaining the world’s second-largest arms exporter, Russia’s industry has faced significant headwinds in recent years. Sales had already declined following the imposition of the first round of sanctions in 2014, which limited technology imports to Russia and punished countries for purchasing Russian weapons.

Sales to China, Russia’s other major weapons market have declined substantially since the 2000s, despite a slight rebound in 2018. And while China has developed its own domestic industry, it has also begun to export overseas to traditional Russian markets.

The struggles of Russia’s defense industry since the start of the war in Ukraine have also forced the Kremlin to reach out to recipient countries. In March 2022, U.S. intelligence indicated that Russia asked China for military assistance, a claim denied by both Russia and China. Russia has also reportedly turned to India in search of spare parts, sought artillery shells from North Korea, and purchased drones and missiles from Iran.

Contrastingly, the U.S. has provided Ukraine with $30 billion worth of both excess weapons and vehicles and some of its latest weaponry. Doing so has weakened Russian military capabilities significantly without having to involve U.S. forces directly. U.S. weapons exports surged in 2022, spurred by deliveries to Ukraine and other allies increasingly wary of Russia and China.

Other countries have also sought to take advantage of the struggles facing Russia’s defense industry. French weapons exports had already increased from 7 percent of the global total from 2013 to 2017 to 11 percent from 2018 to 2022. France has also looked to rejuvenate its image as a leading arms exporter after the 2021 AUKUS deal between Australia, the U.S., and the UK terminated a high-profile French-Australian submarine program, humiliating Paris.

As India’s second-largest arms source, France is a frontrunner in a deal to deliver 27 Rafale fighter jets to the Indian Navy, having already delivered 36 to India since a deal was signed in 2016. And as sanctions have hindered Russia’s ability to provide essential parts, Serbia, another Russian weapons customer, declared it was in talks to place an order for French jets as well.

Germany’s arms industry has also exported significant quantities in recent years, with 2022 being the second-largest year for arms exports in German history. Germany’s ruling coalition initially wanted to scale back the country’s arms exports to avoid sending weapons to countries deemed human rights offenders, before the war in Ukraine saw exports surge.

However, the difficulties many European countries faced when they attempted to send German-built Leopard tanks to Ukraine demonstrated some of the underlying issues affecting Western weapons industries. Many Leopard tanks did not function properly and required significant refurbishment and additional parts, while other countries were unwilling to part with the few working tanks in their possession. Despite the hundreds of Leopards that Ukraine requested, only a few dozen have been delivered.

Western weapons stockpiles have also been significantly reduced in an effort to bolster the Ukrainian military. The focus on high-tech “luxury” weapons has meanwhile meant that European countries have struggled to transition to mass production industries. Russia’s focus on using artillery and relying on its ammunition stockpile have undercut the West’s technological and industrial advantages by forcing Ukraine to engage in artillery battles.

Both U.S. and Russian defense industries have also struggled to produce cheap drones, which have had a significant impact in recent conflicts, most notably during the 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Turkey in particular has rapidly developed its homegrown drone industry, and Turkish drones have been used against Russian weapons to great effect during the 2020 Armenia-Azerbaijan war as well as in Libya and Syria.

Turkey has sold many drones to Ukraine, while Iran has sold its own arsenal to Russia. Both Turkey and Iran are aiming to pitch their products as low-cost alternatives to Western manufacturers. Turkey, however, is still in talks to buy Russia’s S-400 missile defense system. Its provision of weapons to Ukraine, while it continues to negotiate weapons deals with Russia, demonstrates the complicated nature of the global arms industry.

The war in Ukraine continues to underline how integral the arms industry is to geopolitics and the importance of being able to manufacture weapons domestically and cheaply. China, for example, has not provided weapons to either Ukraine or Russia, but its largest civilian drone maker, DJI, is one of the most important suppliers for their militaries.

Weapons manufacturers must also be wary of their exports one day being used against them. China’s supply of weapons to Vietnam to fight U.S. forces in the 1960s and 1970s saw them used against the Chinese military during the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. Additionally, many of the U.S. weapons given to Afghanistan and Iraq ended up in the hands of the Taliban and the Islamic State.

In the court of public opinion, weapons exporters are also increasingly seen as partly responsible for how recipients use their products. The U.S. has been criticized in recent years for its weapons exports to Saudi Arabia, which is under fire for human rights abuses and for its conflict in Yemen. And though claims of Western weapons being smuggled out of Ukraine have often been dismissed, there is concern that many of the weapons sent to the Ukrainian military have or will end up on the black market.

Above all, the ongoing massive weapons deliveries that continue to shape the conflict in Ukraine have elevated the profiles of major multinational weapons corporations, reinforcing one of the most uncomfortable aspects of war—profiteering.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

On March 20, 2023, the British government confirmed it would supply Ukrainian forces with tank shells made with depleted uranium, which can “penetrate tanks and armor more easily due to its density and other physical properties.” The affair quickly reignited Western and Russian efforts to shape the global narrative regarding nuclear weaponry in the Ukraine war.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the UK’s decision was part of the collective West’s “nuclear component” against Russia. British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly responded by saying, “The only country in the world that is talking about nuclear issues is Russia.” On March 25, Putin announced that Russia and Belarus had reached an agreement to deploy Russian nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.

The possibility of a nuclear standoff over Ukraine was not always as likely. By late summer 2022, there was hope that Russia and the U.S. could avoid nuclear brinksmanship. Both countries agreed to begin creating a successor to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) at the 10th Review Conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in August.

But as the Russian military suffered significant defeats around Kharkiv and Kherson in the weeks that followed, this line of thinking declined. Numerous Russian officials, including Putin, began alluding more to the use of nuclear weapons. Putin also stated in late September 2022 that the U.S. had already created the “precedent” of using nuclear weapons in conflict when it dropped nuclear weapons on Japan in World War II.

Russia has, like other nuclear powers, spent billions of dollars upgrading its nuclear weapons program in recent years. The use of hypersonic Russian missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon behind the front lines in Ukraine, or deployment of a “tactical” nuclear weapon, a smaller, low-yield bomb to be used in battle, remains possible. The Kremlin could also conduct nuclear tests as a show of force and to send a message to Ukraine and the West that its threats should be taken seriously.

As Western officials condemned Russia’s nuclear posturing, Putin and other Russian officials in turn suggested that Ukraine might use a “dirty bomb,” an improvised nuclear device that spreads radiation, on its own territory. Western officials believed Russia would use such a false-flag operation to escalate its war efforts.

Speaking to the Russian Federal Assembly in February 2023, Putin announced Russia was suspending participation in the New START deal and would no longer allow the U.S. to inspect its nuclear arsenal. This had already been disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In 2019, the U.S. meanwhile pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

Nonetheless, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s comments in November 2022 about avoiding the threat or use of nuclear weapons appeared to have a calming effect on the Russian leadership. And after the battlefield in Ukraine stabilized over the winter and Russia made small advances in the country’s southeast since, the fear of Russia using nuclear weapons declined further.

A Ukrainian attempt to retake Crimea would be the most likely scenario in which Russia would use nuclear weapons. But the Kremlin’s nuclear posturing is likely an attempt to inflame and control the narrative over nuclear weapons in Ukraine. By highlighting the UK’s provision of depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, Russian officials demonstrate to the domestic population the collective military threat emanating from the West. Meanwhile, Russia’s pointing to its own nuclear arsenal reinforces domestic perceptions of Russian strength and its right to employ “strategic deterrence.”

Alluding to the threat of nuclear weapons also forces the West to respond diplomatically. Western officials helped organize an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visit to Ukraine in November 2022, for example, to ensure Ukraine did not have a dirty bomb and to undermine Russia’s claims. Moscow has also been increasingly resorting to tactics that threaten the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. On March 29, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi made his second visit to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant since the start of the war “to reduce the risk of a major nuclear accident.” Both Russia and Ukraine have accused one another of bombarding the facility since the start of the war.

While the threat of Russian nuclear weapons against Ukraine appears to have receded for now, the U.S. remains concerned over Russia’s ability to help other countries develop their nuclear weapons programs. Russian nuclear scientists (and those from other post-Soviet countries) gave significant assistance to North Korea’s nuclear program in the 1990s, helping it achieve its own nuclear detonation by 2006.

Today, the focus is on Iran, which is increasingly tied to Russia and China. After the collapse of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal in 2018, the U.S. no longer has as much leverage over Iran as it did eight years ago when the agreement was first reached. U.S. officials stated in November 2022 that Iran was seeking Russian help to develop its nuclear program if a new nuclear deal did not materialize.

Russia has housed Iranian enriched uranium as part of the JCPOA agreement since 2015, and U.S. foreign intelligence officials in March 2023 are alleged to have said that Putin had agreed to return it if a new nuclear deal collapses. With Russia’s current challenges in Ukraine, Russia also has less leverage over Iran than it did in 2015, and Iran is suspected to have pressed for the return of its enriched uranium in exchange for the weapons it has supplied Russia in recent months.

A nuclear-armed Iran would significantly undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East and would require Washington to divert significant resources to the region, a notion that is obviously tempting in Moscow. But helping Iran gain nuclear weapons would cause a significant downturn in Russian-Israeli relations, leading to a likely destabilizing scenario for the Russian military in Syria. It would also invite the Israeli military and government to drastically increase their support for Ukraine, while spurring a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

In January 2023, IAEA Director General Grossi stated that Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons. But Iran will likely only move forward with its nuclear weapons program with Russian and Chinese support. For Russia, prolonging negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program is a useful bargaining chip with the U.S. Helping forge a new nuclear deal would also help Russia portray itself as a responsible actor in world affairs after its reputation has been damaged because it invaded Ukraine.

But Washington is also concerned over Russian efforts to aid China’s nuclear program. In December 2022, Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, began sending nuclear fuel to China’s fast breeder nuclear reactor on Changbiao Island, expected to be functioning by the end of 2023. U.S. military officials fear the reactor, capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, will be used by China to rapidly increase its nuclear arsenal, as well as to dethrone the U.S. as the world’s top nuclear energy provider by the 2030s.

In addition to the billions of dollars of deals it has around the world, Rosatom is also essential to the U.S. nuclear power industry. Russia accounts for almost half of global uranium enrichment capacity, and the U.S. depends on Russia for both uranium supply and enrichment services. Kazakhstan meanwhile accounts for 35 percent of U.S. uranium supply, and its industry works closely with Rosatom. Several European countries’ nuclear industries also remain reliant on Rosatom, preventing the West from sanctioning the company.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin has alluded to the use of nuclear weapons in the country and undermined the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. But growing Russian nuclear collaboration with countries like China and Iran and the reliance of the U.S. and European countries on Rosatom show the multifaceted nuclear threat Russia poses to Western interests. While the risk of nuclear weapons being used by Russia remains low, Moscow has numerous ways to cause nuclear headaches in Washington and Brussels.

John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

Concern over Russia’s potential use of nuclear weapons has been a constant feature of the Ukraine war. But Moscow has several ways to complicate Washington’s global nuclear outlook.

On March 20, 2023, the British government confirmed it would supply Ukrainian forces with tank shells made with depleted uranium, which can “penetrate tanks and armor more easily due to its density and other physical properties.” The affair quickly reignited Western and Russian efforts to shape the global narrative regarding nuclear weaponry in the Ukraine war.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that the UK’s decision was part of the collective West’s “nuclear component” against Russia. British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly responded by saying, “The only country in the world that is talking about nuclear issues is Russia.” On March 25, Putin announced that Russia and Belarus had reached an agreement to deploy Russian nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory.

The possibility of a nuclear standoff over Ukraine was not always as likely. By late summer 2022, there was hope that Russia and the U.S. could avoid nuclear brinksmanship. Both countries agreed to begin creating a successor to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) at the 10th Review Conference for the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in August.

But as the Russian military suffered significant defeats around Kharkiv and Kherson in the weeks that followed, this line of thinking declined. Numerous Russian officials, including Putin, began alluding more to the use of nuclear weapons. Putin also stated in late September 2022 that the U.S. had already created the “precedent” of using nuclear weapons in conflict when it dropped nuclear weapons on Japan in World War II.

Russia has, like other nuclear powers, spent billions of dollars upgrading its nuclear weapons program in recent years. The use of hypersonic Russian missiles to deliver a nuclear weapon behind the front lines in Ukraine, or deployment of a “tactical” nuclear weapon, a smaller, low-yield bomb to be used in battle, remains possible. The Kremlin could also conduct nuclear tests as a show of force and to send a message to Ukraine and the West that its threats should be taken seriously.

As Western officials condemned Russia’s nuclear posturing, Putin and other Russian officials in turn suggested that Ukraine might use a “dirty bomb,” an improvised nuclear device that spreads radiation, on its own territory. Western officials believed Russia would use such a false-flag operation to escalate its war efforts.

Speaking to the Russian Federal Assembly in February 2023, Putin announced Russia was suspending participation in the New START deal and would no longer allow the U.S. to inspect its nuclear arsenal. This had already been disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In 2019, the U.S. meanwhile pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF).

Nonetheless, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s comments in November 2022 about avoiding the threat or use of nuclear weapons appeared to have a calming effect on the Russian leadership. And after the battlefield in Ukraine stabilized over the winter and Russia made small advances in the country’s southeast since, the fear of Russia using nuclear weapons declined further.

A Ukrainian attempt to retake Crimea would be the most likely scenario in which Russia would use nuclear weapons. But the Kremlin’s nuclear posturing is likely an attempt to inflame and control the narrative over nuclear weapons in Ukraine. By highlighting the UK’s provision of depleted uranium shells to Ukraine, Russian officials demonstrate to the domestic population the collective military threat emanating from the West. Meanwhile, Russia’s pointing to its own nuclear arsenal reinforces domestic perceptions of Russian strength and its right to employ “strategic deterrence.”

Alluding to the threat of nuclear weapons also forces the West to respond diplomatically. Western officials helped organize an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visit to Ukraine in November 2022, for example, to ensure Ukraine did not have a dirty bomb and to undermine Russia’s claims. Moscow has also been increasingly resorting to tactics that threaten the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. On March 29, IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi made his second visit to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant since the start of the war “to reduce the risk of a major nuclear accident.” Both Russia and Ukraine have accused one another of bombarding the facility since the start of the war.

While the threat of Russian nuclear weapons against Ukraine appears to have receded for now, the U.S. remains concerned over Russia’s ability to help other countries develop their nuclear weapons programs. Russian nuclear scientists (and those from other post-Soviet countries) gave significant assistance to North Korea’s nuclear program in the 1990s, helping it achieve its own nuclear detonation by 2006.

Today, the focus is on Iran, which is increasingly tied to Russia and China. After the collapse of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal in 2018, the U.S. no longer has as much leverage over Iran as it did eight years ago when the agreement was first reached. U.S. officials stated in November 2022 that Iran was seeking Russian help to develop its nuclear program if a new nuclear deal did not materialize.

Russia has housed Iranian-enriched uranium as part of the JCPOA agreement since 2015, and U.S. foreign intelligence officials in March 2023 are alleged to have said that Putin had agreed to return it if a new nuclear deal collapses. With Russia’s current challenges in Ukraine, Russia also has less leverage over Iran than it did in 2015, and Iran is suspected to have pressed for the return of its enriched uranium in exchange for the weapons it has supplied Russia in recent months.

A nuclear-armed Iran would significantly undermine U.S. interests in the Middle East and would require Washington to divert significant resources to the region, a notion that is obviously tempting in Moscow. But helping Iran gain nuclear weapons would cause a significant downturn in Russian-Israeli relations, leading to a likely destabilizing scenario for the Russian military in Syria. It would also invite the Israeli military and government to drastically increase their support for Ukraine, while spurring a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

In January 2023, IAEA Director General Grossi stated that Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons. But Iran will likely only move forward with its nuclear weapons program with Russian and Chinese support. For Russia, prolonging negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program is a useful bargaining chip with the U.S. Helping forge a new nuclear deal would also help Russia portray itself as a responsible actor in world affairs after its reputation has been damaged because it invaded Ukraine.

But Washington is also concerned over Russian efforts to aid China’s nuclear program. In December 2022, Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, Rosatom, began sending nuclear fuel to China’s fast-breeder nuclear reactor on Changbiao Island, expected to be functioning by the end of 2023. U.S. military officials fear the reactor, capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, will be used by China to rapidly increase its nuclear arsenal, as well as to dethrone the U.S. as the world’s top nuclear energy provider by the 2030s.

In addition to the billions of dollars of deals it has around the world, Rosatom is also essential to the U.S. nuclear power industry. Russia accounts for almost half of global uranium enrichment capacity, and the U.S. depends on Russia for both uranium supply and enrichment services. Kazakhstan meanwhile accounts for 35 percent of U.S. uranium supply, and its industry works closely with Rosatom. Several European countries’ nuclear industries also remain reliant on Rosatom, preventing the West from sanctioning the company.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Kremlin has alluded to the use of nuclear weapons in the country and undermined the safety of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants. But growing Russian nuclear collaboration with countries like China and Iran and the reliance of the U.S. and European countries on Rosatom show the multifaceted nuclear threat Russia poses to Western interests. While the risk of nuclear weapons being used by Russia remains low, Moscow has numerous ways to cause nuclear headaches in Washington and Brussels.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

China has sought to portray itself as a neutral party in the Russia-Ukraine War. But Beijing's balancing act masks its support for the Kremlin that enables it to continue its campaign.

Days before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2023, U.S. officials claimed that China was considering providing Russia with lethal weaponry to support its military campaign. China denied the accusations, and on the anniversary of the invasion instead put forth its 12-point peace plan to end the conflict. These events followed after tensions between Beijing and Washington flared during the Chinese spy balloon scandal that began in early February 2023.

Since the war's inception, the U.S. has cautioned China not to support Russia. Following reports that Russia had asked China for military assistance in March 2022, Washington warned that countries providing "material, economic, financial [or] rhetorical" support to Russia would face "consequences." The Biden administration also confronted China in January 2023 with "evidence that [suggested] some Chinese state-owned companies may be providing assistance" to the Russian military.

China has largely adhered to Western sanctions restricting business with Russia. Nonetheless, it has been essential to Russia's economic resilience and its war campaign since February 2022. China substantially increased its coal, oil, and natural gas imports from Russia in 2022, for example, which alongside India's increased imports, have helped the Kremlin negate some of the effects of declining energy sales to Europe. The underlying motive for increased Chinese and Indian purchases of Russian energy, however, remains the steep discounts they have been offered by Russia, which is desperate to replace its former customers in Europe.

China has also increased its technology exports to Russia for use by its defense industry after many Russian companies were denied access to technology from Europe and the U.S. because of the imposition of sanctions. According to the think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator, "Russia continues to have access to crucial dual-use technologies such as semiconductors, thanks in part to China and Hong Kong." Additionally, China has helped Russia undermine Western economic sanctions by developing international payment systems outside of Western control and has advocated for building an "international alliance of businesses" comprising non-Western companies.

Beijing has also been essential in undermining Western efforts to portray Russia as an international pariah. China has repeatedly abstained from UN votes condemning the Russian invasion and voted against an April 2022 resolution to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council. Beijing also seems to have vacillated between calling the situation in Ukraine a conflict and calling out the breaking of UN rules regarding borders. In addition, China, alongside Russia, declined to endorse the G-20 communique that featured language critical of the war in Ukraine at the end of the meeting on March 2, 2023. Chinese state media has also been largely favorable or neutral to Russia since the invasion began.

Russian and Chinese forces have held several bilateral military exercises and patrols since February 2022. The last exercise took place in the East China Sea in December 2022, and the "main purpose of the exercise [was] to strengthen naval cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China and to maintain peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region," the Russian Ministry statement said. Meanwhile, both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met and posed for photos at the September 2022 Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit. And in the coming months, Xi Jinping is expected to travel to Russia after top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi visited Moscow in February 2023.

While China has shown it is willing to assist Russia, it has been careful to avoid perceptions of overt support. China has cited the need to respect and safeguard "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries," without denouncing Russia or calling for it to end the conflict. But after China's top drone maker, Da Jiang Innovations (DJI), banned exports of its drones to Ukraine and Russia in April 2022, Russia has continued to freely operate DJI surveillance technology to target Ukrainian drone operators, demonstrating the limits of Chinese neutrality.

Alongside the suspected impending Chinese military supplies to Russia, that were referred to by the Biden administration, Beijing is clearly more invested in a Russian victory than a Ukrainian one, even if it won't admit it publicly.

So why is China so invested in supporting Russia while refusing to do so openly? There is no doubt a calculus in Beijing that the greater and longer the West focuses on Ukraine, the fewer resources Western countries can afford to give to Taiwan and the Asia-Pacific region. Prolonging the conflict would also weaken Russia, which in some Chinese nationalist circles is still viewed as a competitor and as having unjustly seized Chinese territory in the 19th century.

Still, there are clear benefits for China if the conflict ends sooner rather than later, and on Russian terms. Just weeks before the invasion in February 2022, Russia and China had signed their "no limits" partnership, while both Xi and Putin have called the other their "best friend." Giving support to allies will help increase trust toward Beijing while also growing its leverage over a strained Russia.

China also desires a stable, friendly neighbor. A Russian defeat could lead to the country's collapse, potentially destabilizing much of Eurasia. Russian leadership change, in case of a defeat, could also usher in a pro-Western Russian government on China's doorstep, something Beijing is keen to avoid.

The war has in turn destabilized global energy and food markets and caused extreme instability in the global economy, at a time when China's national economy is still fragile as it recovers from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Russia is a vital economic partner to China, largely in the energy industry, but also owing to the Kremlin's role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative to increase trade across Eurasia.

While Russia's importance in this regard has diminished since the invasion, Moscow retains significant leverage among the former Soviet countries that form the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), as well as across the energy industries of Central Asia.

A Ukrainian military defeat would also have negative effects on the U.S.' standing in global affairs by proving Western military assistance was unable to turn the tide of a major conflict. Contrastingly, a Ukrainian victory would solidify Western support for Taiwan, embolden Western-style democracy advocates around the world, and reverse perceptions in China of Western decline in global affairs.

But an open supply of lethal weaponry could destroy China's economic relations with the West when China is still studying the effects of sanctions on a major economy like Russia. This has not prevented Beijing from pointing out the U.S.' double standard in supplying the Taiwanese military with weapons, most recently in March 2023, when Foreign Minister Qin Gang asked "Why, while asking China not to provide arms to Russia, has the United States sold arms to Taiwan in violation of a [1982] joint communique?"

While relations between the U.S. and China are increasingly tense, there is fear in Beijing that overt support for Russia could damage Beijing's relations with the EU. The EU is now China's largest export market, and China still hopes to drive a wedge between the EU and the U.S. and prevent the development of a joint trans-Atlantic policy toward China. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on March 5, 2023, said that China will not supply Russia with lethal military aid "suggesting that Berlin has received bilateral assurances from Beijing on the issue." Together with Xi Jinping's comments in November 2022 stressing the need to avoid the threat or use of nuclear weapons, China seeks to highlight its mediating position and prove it is a responsible actor in world affairs that promotes peace. The Chinese-brokered deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia to re-establish official relations on March 10, 2023, was further evidence of this initiative.

Contrastingly, China views the U.S. as a rogue superpower, and sees "confrontation and conflict" with the U.S. as inevitable unless Washington changes course, according to Qin Gang. And while China continues to be suspicious of U.S. attempts to contain it, such policies have become increasingly acknowledged even in U.S. political circles in recent years.

Nonetheless, both lethal and non-lethal military aid to Russia from China will likely increase, funneled indirectly through willing third countries. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko's arrival for a state visit to Beijing on February 28 caused alarm in the U.S. precisely because of this reason. Ultimately, China sees the Ukraine war as part of a wider conflict with the U.S.-led Western world. Aiding Russia is seen as a strategic decision for China, meaning its "pro-Russian neutrality" will continue to be cautiously tested in Beijing.

While China did not cause the Ukraine crisis, it seeks to navigate it effectively. The Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s allowed Beijing to rapidly expand its ties with the West, and the Ukraine crisis will help China benefit from its relationship with Russia amid global economic uncertainty. China will take the necessary steps to avoid spooking the EU, while recognizing that tension with Washington may be inescapable.

Recent events suggest the use of sabotage is growing as fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war continues to escalate.

On February 8, Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh published an article detailing the role of the U.S. and Norway in the September 26, 2022, Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions. U.S. officials denied the findings, while Russia, which previously blamed the UK for the attack, hailed the article as proof of Western involvement.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

There remains "no conclusive evidence" indicating Russia was behind the Nord Stream attack, according to a December 2022 article by the Washington Post. At the same time, apart from Hersh's report, there is little evidence currently indicating the U.S. was responsible for the explosions. Nonetheless, the ongoing dispute has underlined the increasing role of sabotage in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Around two weeks after the Nord Stream explosion on October 8, another explosion took out much of a key bridge, which connects the Russian mainland to Crimea. While no one has taken responsibility for the attack, Russia blamed Ukraine for it. Weeks before in September, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy encouraged Ukrainians in Russian-occupied territory to "sabotage any enemy activity" and "interfere with any Russian operations."

Throughout the war, dozens of mystery fires in Russia have damaged or destroyed transportation routes, commercial and industrial centers, military and government facilities, and other infrastructure. Believed to be the work of both Ukrainian commandos and Russian dissidents, some U.S. experts also believe the U.S. and NATO states may be responsible for these "covert sabotage operations." The Ukrainian government has typically neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in most attacks.

The Russian government often blames Ukraine for these fires but has downplayed their effects. While acts of sabotage can be used by governments to garner support for their cause, they may be wary of admitting successive instances of sabotage for fear of encouraging more, as well as showing their inability to protect the population and country. Furthermore, relentless acts of sabotage demonstrate that the effects of war have come home to populations thought to be removed from the conflict.

The attacks on the Nord Stream pipeline and the bridge in Crimea likely escalated the Kremlin's resolve to respond to Western and Ukrainian sabotage efforts. While Russia's most pressing concern is undermining Ukraine and damaging its capacity to sustain its war effort, conducting sabotage operations across the West has also become a major Kremlin policy.

Even before the war, Russia had indicated its ability to disrupt global underwater communications networks through its Main Directorate of Deep-Water Research (GUGI). In recent years, Russia has taken steps to develop submarines specifically to sever undersea cables that transport the world's internet traffic. In early February 2022, Russia held military exercises in the Atlantic Ocean at a critical juncture where several submarine cables between the U.S., the UK, and France are located as a show of force.

The same month, France declared it would develop a fleet of underwater drones to protect undersea cables, while the European Defence Agency is expected to release a proposal soon for "a dedicated program for critical seabed infrastructure protection." These developments show how seriously Western governments are preparing for Russian sabotage, particularly as recent cuts to Taiwan's internet cables are believed to be the work of Chinese vessels and serve as an example of "a dry run for further aggression."

Several incidents in Europe and North America in recent months have raised suspicions over the Kremlin's involvement in these attacks, even if government agencies do not always label Russia as being responsible for them. On January 13, 2023, for example, an explosion at a gas pipeline in Lithuania near the Latvian border led to the nearby town of Valakelie being evacuated. While the pipeline's operator dismissed suggestions of sabotage, Latvia's Defense Ministry said it could not be ruled out. "Western leaders stopped short of publicly blaming Russia for the attack, but privately briefed their suspicions that Moscow was behind it," stated a Daily Mail article about the explosion.

On February 7, 2023, a fire broke out at a U.S. company drone production facility in Latvia that supplies Ukrainian forces and NATO allies, with the local police stating that there was "no indication" of it being an act of sabotage. Moldovan President Maia Sandu, meanwhile, declared on February 13, 2023, that Russia was planning a coup, including the use of sabotage, to destabilize the country.

In January 2023, Polish authorities questioned and later released three divers who claimed to be Spanish citizens off the coast of northern Poland. The divers were rescued after their boat broke down while they were apparently looking for amber deposits. But amber farming is difficult to carry out in the dark and the divers also lacked the proper "amber-hunting equipment," according to a CBS News article, raising suspicion about the explanation offered by them. Despite being caught near vital Polish energy infrastructure, the trio were let go and left Poland altogether shortly after. Speaking after the incident, Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that "amid the war in Ukraine, when the risk of sabotage by Russia increased immeasurably, it was necessary to strengthen the supervision of critical infrastructure. We are also reviewing this supervision."

Western Europe has also emerged as a major target of apparent Russian sabotage efforts. On October 8, the same day as the Crimean bridge explosion, German officials stated that sabotage caused a three-hour halt in rail traffic in the north of the country after "cables vital for the country’s rail network were intentionally cut in two places." On October 10, undersea cables providing electricity to the Danish island of Bornholm were cut. And barely a week later, internet cables in southern France were also cut, impacting connectivity "to Asia, Europe, U.S. and potentially other parts of the world."

Suspicion over these attacks and others in Europe has fallen on Unit 29155, part of Russia's military intelligence agency General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces (GRU). As mentioned in an article in the New York Times in 2020, the unit is believed to operate small groups across Europe and was responsible for a 2014 ammunition depot explosion in the Czech Republic, the 2018 poisoning of Russian dissident Sergei Skripal in the UK, and other attacks on the continent.

From 2012 to 2015, Russian-backed patriotic youth camps also emerged in California, Washington, and Oregon. Often targeting Russian and Slavic communities for recruitment, they mirrored attempts to develop militia groups in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. While it is difficult to say whether these groups are active, these initiatives demonstrate the Kremlin's intention to make them viable actors in the U.S.

A series of train derailments in the U.S., fires at food processing plants, attacks on energy facilities, and other incidents across the country since 2022 have caught the attention of international news outlets and fueled conspiracy theories over who is responsible. Considering Russia's reach in Europe, the possibility of Russian assets being responsible for some of these incidents in the U.S. cannot be ruled out entirely. On March 3, 2023, Peter Karasev, a Russian immigrant, was charged for two separate attacks on Pacific Gas and Electric transformers in San Jose, which took place on December 8, 2022, and January 5, 2023.

Russia, of course, is not the only country capable or willing to target the U.S. through sabotage. Several Iranian/Hezbollah sleeper agents in the U.S. have been caught in recent years surveilling vulnerable targets within the country to attack should they be given the greenlight. The downturn in U.S.-Iranian relations in recent years suggests that Iran too may be actively seeking to covertly harm the U.S. as payback.

Officially, the Russia-Ukraine war remains a conflict between the two states. Nonetheless, Russian and Ukrainian allies have supplied Moscow and Kyiv with significant aid. But sabotage is increasingly seen by both sides as a viable option to undermine their opponent. We should expect more sabotage incidents, not only in Ukraine and Russia but also across the Western world and beyond, as the conflict rages on.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas', was published in December 2022.

Thousands of foreign volunteers have traveled to Ukraine to support both Ukrainian and Russian war efforts. Their arrival has not been without controversy and could result in a wider escalation of the war.

On February 2, 2023, former U.S. Marine Peter Reed was killed in Ukraine while evacuating civilians in the front-line city of Bakhmut. Two days later on February 4, the bodies of two British volunteers, Christopher Perry and Andrew Bagshaw, were returned as part of a prisoner swap deal with Russian forces. Their deaths mark some of the latest Western casualties in Ukraine one year after Russian forces invaded the country in February 2022.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Foreign fighters have flocked to Ukraine since the initial round of Russian military intervention in 2014. But following the Russian invasion in February 2022, the number of fighters making their way to Ukraine has skyrocketed. After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked foreigners to join the International Defense Legion of Ukraine at the beginning of the war on February 27, around 20,000 volunteers from more than 50 countries arrived in Kyiv over the next two weeks.

Many traveled to the country for ideological reasons. In contrast to the disillusionment many Western veterans felt after combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, the belief that they would be helping to "ease Ukrainian suffering" and would be defending democracy have been powerful motivators in bringing thousands of volunteers to Kyiv.

However, the vast majority of foreign arrivals returned home before the summer of 2022 for several reasons. Some lacked credible experience and were accused of being "war tourists" instead of being dedicated to Ukraine's liberation. Western soldiers who volunteered also found themselves operating without strong air support and other key technological advantages enjoyed over militant groups in the Middle East.

Language barriers have often inhibited foreign fighters from not being able to communicate clearly with their Ukrainian counterparts. Allegations of criminality, both in their home countries as well as in Ukraine, have also been levied on some foreign volunteers.

Most estimates place between 1,000 and 3,000 foreign fighters currently supporting Ukrainian forces, largely serving in three battalions of the International Legion. Hundreds of more professional foreign volunteers are believed to be serving in smaller units separate from the International Legion.

These include groups dominated by citizens from across the former Soviet Union, such as the Georgian Legion, Chechen battalions, and Kalinoŭski Regiment, a group of Belarusian fighters. Western-dominated military units include groups like Alpha, Phalanx, and the Norman Brigade. However, even these units have faced controversy. The leadership of the Norman Brigade, a Canadian-led unit, for example, has been repeatedly criticized by former members.

Western private military and security companies (PMSCs) are also active in Ukraine. The Mozart Group, a U.S. PMSC, styled to counter the Russian PMSC Wagner Group (similarly named after a German composer), was active in the Ukrainian conflict in the early days. But as funding dried up and remarks by some of its members drew negative attention on social media, the Mozart Group fell apart. Its remaining leadership is currently attempting to reorganize itself and get back to the front line.

The involvement of U.S. volunteers in Ukraine has also raised questions over potential violations of the Neutrality Act, enacted in 1794 to prevent American citizens from getting involved in foreign wars. Yet while the U.S. State Department has recommended against U.S. citizens from traveling to Ukraine, Washington has done little to prevent thousands of its citizens from traveling there.

The U.S. is not alone in its mixed messaging over foreign fighters. The British government has stated it is illegal for British troops and ex-service personnel to travel to Ukraine to fight, but just days into the Russian invasion in February 2022, then-Foreign Secretary Liz Truss announced her support for British individuals traveling to Ukraine to do so. Other Western governments have, meanwhile, declared they would discourage individual citizens from traveling to Ukraine but would not prosecute those who did so.

This has not prevented some legal action from being taken against those who are caught. In June 2022, a court in the Russian-controlled separatist region of Donetsk sentenced two British citizens and a Moroccan to death for fighting in the Ukrainian military. "Such treatment of prisoners of war constitutes a war crime, but the Russians claimed that they were mercenaries and, thus, the rules of war did not apply to them," stated the Harvard International Review.

Wary of instigating a wider war between NATO and Russia, Western officials have refrained from putting official boots on the ground. Nonetheless, U.S. special operations forces have been active in Ukraine since before the war and continue to operate in the country, along with CIA personnel. Additionally, special forces from Britain, France, Canada, Lithuania, and other Western allies are also active in Ukraine.

Alongside the lack of clarity over the intelligence and special forces operations, it is difficult to confirm the exact number of Westerners in Ukraine, what type of roles they are serving, where exactly they are, and how many have died. Seemingly erroneous claims are also often made regarding their casualties. On January 25, 2023, a Turkish website, allegedly citing what is assumed to be data from Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, stated that thousands of soldiers from NATO countries had been killed, including hundreds from the U.S. and the UK. This claim was quickly denied by NATO.

The Kremlin has, meanwhile, highlighted how Russia is not just fighting Ukraine, but NATO itself, and captured Western fighters are key to portraying this message to both the Russian public and international audiences. Moscow has sought to frame the conflict as a wider struggle against the West, which it believes will resonate with other populations around the world.

In March 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin called for foreign fighters to help liberate the Donbas, while according to Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, 16,000 foreigners had indicated they were willing to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, according to Newsweek.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the financier of Wagner Group, declared on his company's Telegram channel in February 2023 that more than 10 million U.S. citizens had signed up with the group to fight for Russia. While Wagner has found most of its new recruits from Russian prisons, the Kremlin has had some luck in recruiting foreign fighters to Ukraine. Many Russian PMSCs have typically recruited from former Soviet states, and Central Asian fighters are suspected to be fighting on both sides of the conflict.

Many Serbians also resent the West's historical role in their country's affairs and small groups of Serbian nationals have been fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine since 2014. Serbian officials noted in January 2023 that they were monitoring reports of additional Serbians serving Russia in Ukraine. Montenegrin officials are also attempting to prevent their citizens, many of whom share pro-Serbian and pro-Russian sentiment, from going to Ukraine, with some having already done so since 2014 as well.

Iranian soldiers and personnel are in Ukraine helping Russians operate Iranian-made drones, and according to a Ukrainian official, 10 Iranians were killed during an attack on Russian positions in October 2022. Hundreds of Syrian fighters are also suspected to be in Ukraine, mirroring the dynamics of the Syrian civil war where Iranian, Syrian, and Russian troops have fought together since 2015.

The possibility of additional volunteers from other countries joining the war on both sides remains high. In August 2022, Russian state media began suggesting that up to 100,000 North Korean volunteers could end up supporting the Kremlin's campaign in Ukraine. While that number is clearly optimistic, North Korean volunteers may come to exceed the handful of South Korean citizens known to have traveled to Ukraine to fight for Kyiv.

Additionally, small numbers of U.S. citizens have also gone to fight for Russia, alongside U.S.-trained Afghan commandos also now fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Though the Kremlin denies the reports, it is believed Afghan soldiers have been actively recruited by the Kremlin for months.

The Russia-Ukraine war is clearly more than a war between two countries. In addition to the material aid, both Russia and particularly Ukraine have received from their allies, thousands of foreign fighters from around the world have arrived to fight alongside them. As more volunteers continue to arrive, there is a greater risk of other countries becoming entangled in the conflict. Establishing safeguards to deal with foreign volunteer casualties and prisoners of war is crucial to preventing the conflict from escalating further.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

The modern globalized world has made it easier and far more lucrative to facilitate and enable international drug networks, and several governments, or elements within them, actively work with criminal groups to support the flow of drugs around the world. This has led to a surge in drug usage among people worldwide, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report 2022, with 284 million people between the ages of 15 and 64 using drugs globally in 2020, which amounts to “a 26 [percent] increase over the previous decade.”

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

State involvement in the drug trade occurs for a variety of reasons. The allure of profiteering can entice state actors to produce and transport drugs, particularly if their country is under financial duress. Producing drugs or merely taxing drug routes can bring in much-needed funds to balance budgets, create sources of “black cash,” or enrich elites. Allowing the drug trade may also be deemed necessary to ensure regional economic stability and can prevent criminal groups from confronting the state.

In other instances, government agencies and institutions might be “captured” by criminal elements that have gained extreme influence over political, military, and judicial systems through corruption and violence. Government entities also often become too weak or compromised to stop criminal groups, which “have never before managed to acquire the degree of political influence now enjoyed by criminals in a wide range of African, [Eastern] European, and Latin American countries.”

Finally, some governments use the drug trade to promote foreign policy objectives as a form of hybrid warfare. Supporting criminal groups in rival or hostile countries can help challenge the authority of the governments in these states, but it is also an effective way to promote social destabilization. Introducing drugs to other countries fuels local criminal activity, plagues their court and prison systems, induces treatment and rehabilitation costs, and causes immense psychological stress and societal breakdown through addiction.

The Complicity of State Actors in the Drug Trade

The Russian government’s involvement in the international drug trade is due to several reasons. Russian state entities have sought to raise cash for their own benefit but have also historically worked with powerful criminal groups due to corruption and to avoid bloodshed (though the Kremlin has steadily absorbed Russia’s criminal elements under Russian President Vladimir Putin). Additionally, with the West imposing sanctions on the Kremlin after its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin is seeking to punish some EU countries for supporting Kyiv by bringing drugs into the bloc, leveraging its connections to the Eurasian underworld to do so.

The Kremlin’s role in the drug trade has provided it with influence over former Soviet states in Central Asia, which have also facilitated the drug trade from Afghanistan to Europe for decades. The criminal elements that control this northern route have immense influence over the political and security elites of Central Asian states and rely on cooperation with Russian intelligence services.

Much of the drug trade provides funding for Russian intelligence services, and the Kremlin appears to have approved an increase in drug trafficking in 2022 largely because of the financial difficulties stemming from its invasion of Ukraine.

The Balkans are also a key gateway for drugs entering Europe. In Bulgaria, corruption has seen high-level politicians implicated in drug smuggling, in addition to officials in Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. The Council of Europe, meanwhile, accused Hashim Thaçi, the former prime minister and president of Kosovo, as well as his political allies, of exerting “violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics” “and [occupying] important positions in ‘Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organized crime’” in 2010. Kosovan politicians continue to face allegations of corruption.

Morocco’s government has largely accepted drug networks to support national economic livelihood, which serves “as the basis of a parallel economy,” while this relationship is reinforced by corruption in the country. Libya had more of a state-backed drug production and export apparatus under former leader Muammar Gaddafi, though this mechanism broke down following the civil war in 2011. However, the close relationship between Guinea-Bissau’s “political-military elites” and drug smugglers has made it Africa’s greatest example of state complicity in aiding international drug networks. The country’s importance in the international drug trade stems from its proximity to Latin America and Guinea-Bissau’s geographic use as a transit stop for criminal groups seeking access to the European market.

In recent years, politicians from Venezuela, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia, and other Latin American countries have been accused or suspected of aiding and abetting criminals involved in the drug trade. United States officials have also accused former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and his political allies of “state-sponsored drug trafficking,” as he awaits trial in the United States.

But there has been a decades-long involvement of the United States in the drug trade. In the 1950s, for example, the CIA gave significant support to anti-communist rebel groups involved in the drug trade in the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet. The cooperation lasted into the 1970s, and ongoing corruption in the region means state authorities continue to permit criminal groups a degree of operability.

The CIA also admitted to ignoring reports about Nicaraguan Contra rebels selling drugs in the United States to fund their anti-communist campaign in the 1980s. The United States permitted Afghan farmers to grow opium poppy during the Obama administration’s handling of the War in Afghanistan in 2009 and has been suspected of cultivating Latin America’s drug networks to control the region.

Drug deaths in the United States have, meanwhile, been rising significantly since 2000 and hit record highs during the pandemic, with fentanyl responsible for two-thirds of total deaths. China has been accused by Washington of allowing and enabling domestic criminal groups to import fentanyl into the United States.

While this trade partially diminished after pressure from Washington, fentanyl exports from China now often make their way to Mexico first before crossing the U.S. border. China’s willingness to cooperate with U.S. authorities, as well as authorities in Australia, where Chinese drugs are also imported, has declined as relations between Beijing and Western states have worsened. China’s government is also mildly complicit in the Myanmar government’s far more active and direct role in facilitating the drug trade in Southeast Asia. This is due to Myanmar’s need to both raise funds and control militant groups in the country.

Drug Trade Supporting Economies in Some Countries

Drug production and exporting also give regimes an option for long-term survival. A 2014 report from the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea indicates that after North Korea defaulted on its international debts in 1976, its embassies were encouraged to “‘self-finance’ through ‘drug smuggling.’” In the 1990s, this gave way to state-sponsored drug production to further increase access to foreign currency.

Most of the suspected or arrested drug traffickers from North Korea over the last three decades have been diplomats, military personnel, or business owners. In 2003, Australian authorities busted a North Korean state-sponsored heroin smuggling operation while following Chinese suspects. But by 2004, China was also admitting to problems with North Korean drugs crossing their mutual border. And in 2019, Chinese authorities arrested several people with connections to the North Korean government who were involved in a drug smuggling ring near the border.

The Syrian government has produced and exported drugs for decades. But sanctions and civil war since 2011 have severely weakened Syria’s leadership, prompting it to drastically increase its drug operations to raise funds and maintain power. Exports of Captagon and hashish now generate billions of dollars a year for the Syrian government and far exceed the value of the country’s legal exports.

In neighboring Iran, government officials, as well as state-affiliated groups like Hezbollah, are also complicit in profiting off the drug trade, which also implicates Lebanese officials. Involvement in the drug trade by state-sponsored groups like Hezbollah or Turkey’s Grey Wolves reveal attempts by Tehran and Ankara respectively to make these groups self-sustaining when state support withers.

Overt participation in the drug trade by certain states is likely to continue. Sanctions help fuel the drug trade by making states more inclined to resort to these networks to make up for lost economic opportunities. Additionally, most efforts to combat the drug trade are largely domestic initiatives. Less corrupt law enforcement agencies are often unwilling to work with their counterparts in other countries through forums like Interpol, for fear of their complicity in illegal drug networks. The drug trade also remains a valuable geopolitical tool for states.

Nonetheless, state involvement in the drug trade is a risky venture. It emboldens criminal actors, often involves inviting drugs into national territory, and can result in enormous public backlash. While preventing the involvement of state actors in these practices will be a difficult task, the most overt instances should be scrutinized more thoroughly to ensure these policies are given greater attention.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

Since the Ukrainian army’s counteroffensive started gaining momentum in September 2022, the Russian army has largely been on the defensive. Russian drone and missile strikes continue to target Ukraine’s major cities, but its military forces have retreated from attempts to take Kherson, Kharkiv, or any other major Ukrainian settlement. Strong defensive fortifications built by Russian and Ukrainian armed forces across the frontline have stalled major advances as troops from both sides have mostly opted to dig in.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

But the Kremlin has directed thousands of its forces since August 2022 to attack the small Donetsk city of Bakhmut. The war has in several ways been an “old-fashioned conflict, based on attrition, on devastating artillery strikes, and on dug-in positions reminiscent of the trenches of World War I,” as opposed to some of the quick offensives and counteroffensives that were seen during the first part of the current conflict.

According to a January 10, 2023, article in PBS NewsHour, the Ukrainian-backed governor of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, “estimated more than two months ago that 90 percent of Bakhmut’s prewar population of over 70,000 had fled since Moscow focused on seizing the entire Donbas.” The fighting and destruction have only intensified since Kyrylenko made this statement, but the Kremlin appears intent on capturing Bakhmut for propaganda purposes and to tout a tactical victory after months of retreats. According to a Ukrainian analyst, “Bakhmut is mostly a political goal for Russia—it’s being done mostly for the sake of propaganda reasons to show everybody that after so many months and utter failures in Kherson and Kharkiv, it still can capture a more or less significant city,” stated a TRT World article.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sought to prove that Ukrainian forces still have the capability to hold back the Russian advance, and made a surprise visit to Bakhmut on December 20. On January 9, 2023, Zelenskyy declared that the defense of the nearby city of Soledar had led to the gain of “additional time and power for Ukraine.” But the Ukrainian armed forces have had to divert “significant reinforcements” to the battle from other parts of the country since January, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defense. And despite heavy Russian casualties, high Ukrainian casualties have also become a concern for Kyiv.

Western and Ukrainian officials have often downplayed the strategic importance of Bakhmut, depicting it as a sinkhole for Russian forces that may result in a “Pyrrhic victory.” Nonetheless, the phrase “hold Bakhmut” has become a Ukrainian rallying cry, and Zelenskyy’s visit demonstrated the growing symbolic importance of controlling the city.

Bakhmut, however, does possess some strategic value. Few major settlements exist to its west until the Dnieper River, and the flatter and open terrain would make Ukrainian attempts to reinforce from this direction vulnerable to Russian surveillance and firepower. Ukraine also has relatively poor road infrastructure, and Bakhmut serves as a critical juncture of transport and communication lines for Ukrainian forces in the region, including strategic supply lines to the Ukrainian-controlled settlements of Siversk, Lyman, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk.

For Russia, seizing Bakhmut would allow it to disrupt these supply lines, as well as take pressure off the battle over Russia-controlled Kremmina, which Ukrainian forces have been fighting to recover. Bakhmut is therefore key to Russian attempts to consolidate and stabilize the Donbas, where Russia has fought since 2014 and initially made gains in 2022, before the Ukrainian counteroffensive in September.

Taking or destroying key industrial centers in the Donbas region will also reduce Ukraine’s industrial output, leading to its economy suffering further.

Bakhmut stands out as the only major area where Russian forces are on the offensive, but the frontline has been relatively stable up until recently. Yet throughout January 2023, Russian forces have moved to the city’s flank and made increasing gains in the nearby town of Soledar. After weeks of fighting, the Kremlin stated that Soledar had been captured on January 13, this was later confirmed by the Institute for the Study of War and Ukrainian armed forces.

Russian forces have enjoyed an advantage over Ukrainian forces in artillery numbers, and an early transition to a wartime economy by the Kremlin has further helped sustain months of relentless artillery strikes by it. Nonetheless, Russia has turned to countries like North Korea in recent months to obtain more artillery, and its artillery fire has decreased in recent days, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

But Ukraine’s more limited artillery capabilities have also recently been threatened. Despite pleas for more 155-millimeter artillery rounds, Western manufacturers have struggled to supply an adequate quantity and ramp up production. This has forced the U.S. to ask South Korea for artillery and Washington also secured hundreds of thousands of 155mm artillery shells for Ukraine from its stockpiles in Israel. Meanwhile, according to U.S. defense officials, “A third of the roughly 350 Western-made howitzers donated to Kyiv are out of action at any given time.”

Western countries have now been focusing on delivering more advanced weapons to Ukraine, such as missile defense systems, tanks, and armored vehicles. Recent pledges by the UK and Canada to supply Ukraine with heavy vehicles (as well as pressure on Germany and the U.S. to do so as well) will no doubt help Ukrainian forces on the frontline. But with Russia currently dictating where the fiercest fighting will take place, Bakhmut’s vulnerability to artillery has made holding it a significant challenge.

Local militia groups and the Russian military have naturally played essential roles in the ongoing battle for Bakhmut and its surrounding regions. But perhaps most notable is that much of Russia’s recent progress has been made by the Russian private military company, Wagner.

Wagner has operated in Ukraine since 2014 and has expanded its reach to countries across Africa and the Middle East, while the company’s owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, has been keen to demonstrate his private army can accomplish major military objectives. Additionally, the deaths of Wagner mercenaries are not counted as official Russian casualties, making the costly effort to take Bakhmut easier for the Russian public to stomach. In early January 2023, the first Wagner fighters, who were “secretly pardoned convicts” recruited by the company returned home after completing their contracts, causing controversy in Russia and highlighting the role of the non-state actor in the conflict.

Western and Ukrainian observers believe that Wagner troops have suffered casualties in the thousands. Prigozhin, meanwhile, stated on a telegram channel in November 2022 that “Our goal is not Bakhmut… [itself] but the destruction of the Ukrainian army and the reduction of its combat potential, which has an extremely positive effect on other areas, which is why this operation was dubbed the ‘Bakhmut meat grinder.’”

It is also suspected that Prigozhin aims to seize the salt and gypsum mines in the region, similar to other Wagner efforts to gain access to resources across conflict zones in Africa and the Middle East.

The outsized role of Wagner in the battle, as well as Prigozhin’s growing profile in Russia, has led to significant tension between the oligarch and the Russian military. After the capture of Soledar, Prigozhin claimed this was solely due to Wagner, while the Russian Defense Ministry claimed a few days later that victory was thanks to the Russian armed forces without mentioning the Wagner mercenaries.

The dispute between the Russian military and Wagner has come amid a leadership shakeup among the top brass of the Russian military. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian general staff, replaced Sergei Surovikin as the Ukraine campaign’s overall commander on January 11. The change indicates the Kremlin’s frustration with the fledgling promises of the Russian armed forces. Nonetheless, the slow success of Russian artillery strikes in Soledar combined with Wagner troops shows that the two can work together.

But Bakhmut, so far, remains elusive for the Kremlin. Whichever side controls the city will have an advantage over any potential offensives later in 2023 and will have more say over where the next major battles take place. While Ukraine’s armed forces remain united under a more centralized command, the Kremlin will have to be careful of the growing tension between its armed forces, local militia groups, and private military companies.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. His book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

Since September, Kosovo’s fragile stability that has endured since 1999, following intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), has grown progressively precarious. Clashes between ethnic Serbians and Kosovo security forces saw Serbia’s military placed on high alert in November. Several high-profile Serbian officials, including President Aleksandar Vučić, announced that the Serbian military could be deployed to northern Kosovo to protect the ethnic Serbs, who make up the majority of the population in the region.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Moscow has natural incentives to provoke the crisis. An unraveling of regional security would create more obstacles for Serbia’s EU aspirations, optimistically slated for 2025. The West’s support for Kosovo has historically undermined Serbia’s European integration effort, and 51 percent of Serbs polled by Belgrade-based pollster Demostat in June 2022 said they would vote against EU membership in a national referendum.

But by escalating tensions, Russia can also prevent further EU and NATO expansion in the region, and potentially reduce Western pressure on Russian forces in Ukraine by diverging resources from Kyiv to the Balkans.

Throughout the 1990s, NATO took a leading role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, perceived to be dominated by Serbia. While the West supported Bosnian and Croatian independence initiatives and Kosovan autonomy, Serbia was supported by Russia. These policies led to considerable tension between NATO and Russia, with the Kremlin’s occupation of Kosovo’s Slatina airport in 1999 leading to “one of the most tense standoffs between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.”

However, Russia was too weak to adequately support Serbia in the 1990s. And after then-Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milošević was overthrown in 2000 and Russian forces withdrew from Kosovo in 2003, Serbian political elites instead pursued cautious integration with Europe while keeping the U.S. at arm’s length. At the same time, Serbia and Russia forged closer relations through growing economic ties, embracing their common Slavic Orthodox heritage, and sharing resentment toward NATO’s role in their affairs.

Territories under Serbian control continued to secede in the 2000s, with Montenegro peacefully voting for independence in 2006 and Kosovo in 2008. Yet unlike other secession initiatives in the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo’s failed to gain universal recognition. Almost half of the UN General Assembly refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence, with NATO/EU members Spain, Greece, Slovakia, and Romania among them.

Moscow was firmly against Kosovo’s independence, and prior to the February 2008 declaration of independence, the Kremlin warned of geopolitical consequences if it were to move forward. Six months later, Russia invoked the “Kosovo Precedent” to invade Georgia and recognized the separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. The Kremlin is now using the same paradigm to justify its support for Russian-backed separatist territories in Ukraine.

Currently bogged down in Ukraine, the Kremlin is exploring fomenting additional unrest in the Balkans by exploiting Serbian nationalist sentiment. Doing so will undoubtedly redirect some Western political, economic, and military efforts away from Ukraine.

Russia’s influence over Serbia has grown in recent years, and Serbian politicians have become more assertive regarding northern Kosovo. Though overall trade between Russia and Serbia is negligible in comparison to the EU, Russia provides one-quarter of the oil imported to Serbia, while Gazprom finalized 51 percent share in Serbia’s major oil and gas company, Naftna Industrija Srbije (NIS), in 2009.

Russia’s veto power at the UN Security Council has prevented greater international recognition of Kosovo, demonstrating Moscow’s usefulness as a diplomatic ally. Putin has, meanwhile, become Serbians’ most admired international leader, with pro-Putin and pro-Russia rallies having been held in Serbia since the invasion of Ukraine. According to recent polling, almost 70 percent of Serbians hold NATO responsible for the conflict.

Balancing Putin’s popularity and Serbia’s relations with Europe has been a delicate task for Serbian President Vučić. Though he condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he refused to implement sanctions against the Kremlin, prompting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to signal that Vučić had to make a choice between Europe and Russia in June.

But the Serbian leader had already signed a three-year gas deal with Russia in May, and in September agreed to “consult” with Moscow on foreign policy issues. Other ventures, such as doubling flights from Moscow to Belgrade, have demonstrated Serbia’s willingness to assist Russia in undermining Western sanctions.

More concerning to Western officials is Russia’s attempts over the last decade to alter the military balance between Serbia and Kosovo. A Russian humanitarian center located in the Serbian city of Niš, which is close to the Kosovo border and opened in 2012, is suspected of being a secret Russian military base “set up by the Kremlin to spy on U.S. interests in the Balkans.” Additionally, Serbia has increased imports of Russian weaponry, while joint military exercises between Russia, Belarus, and Serbia (labeled “Slavic Brotherhood”) have been held annually since 2015.

Russian-backed non-state actors have in turn become increasingly present in Serbia. In 2009, Russian private military and security companies, as well as organizations composed of Russian military veterans, began conducting, in coordination with Serbian counterparts, military youth camps in Zlatibor, Serbia. These were seen as attempts to develop the next generation of fighters and were eventually shut down by the local police in 2018.

Russia’s Night Wolves biker gang, which has played a pivotal role in the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the unrest that has followed in Ukraine since, also opened a Serbian chapter and conducted road trips in the region for years. And in December, a cultural center was opened by the Russian private military company Wagner—which is similarly fighting in Ukraine—in Serbia, “to strengthen and develop friendly relations between Russia and Serbia with the help of ‘soft power.’”

Using these forces to threaten a low-level insurgency in Kosovo would cause enormous alarm in NATO and the EU. But Russia’s efforts to fan the flames of Serbian nationalism will also be directed toward Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country’s Serb-dominated territory, Republika Srpska, accepted power-sharing stipulations as part of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, and Russian forces similarly withdrew from the country in 2003.

Nonetheless, Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska (who was also the president from 2010-2018), has increasingly allied himself with the Kremlin and has taken greater steps toward declaring his region’s independence from the rest of Bosnia and Herzegovina over the last decade. Republika Srpska security forces are now well-equipped with Russian weaponry, while Moscow has given subtle approval to supporting and developing Republika Srpska paramilitary groups. A Bosnian-Serb militia group called Serbian Honor is believed to have received training at the humanitarian center in Niš and the Night Wolves have also repeatedly held rallies in the territory.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Dodik has expressed his support for Russia, raising alarm over his ability to instigate unrest in Bosnia and Herzegovina with limited Russian state and non-state support. In response, the EU’s peacekeeping mission in the country, EUFOR or Operation Althea, almost doubled its presence from 600 to 1,100 since the invasion in February.

Yet this still pales compared to the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR), which has roughly 3,700 troops in a country with a smaller population and less territory than Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is further aided by the EU Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX). Pushing Republika Srpska’s independence initiative to a point where Russia can officially recognize and support it may in turn rapidly overwhelm the smaller international force there. It would also provoke calls for independence among Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ethnic Croatian minority, whose leaders have close relations with Moscow.

Disagreements in the Western alliance over the collective approach to the Balkans have been revealed in recent months. While the UK and the U.S. placed sanctions on “various Bosnian politicians who are threatening the country’s territorial integrity,” the EU chose not to, notably due to opposition by Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary. And while Croatia was accepted into the Schengen area in December, Romania, and Bulgaria, already EU members since 2007, were denied entry by Austria, while the Netherlands similarly opposed Bulgaria being part of the Schengen area.

Effectively managing potential violence in the former Yugoslavia while continuing the integration efforts of other Balkan EU/NATO members would prove to be a difficult procedure for the Western alliance. Billions of dollars in aid and assistance have already been provided to Ukraine in 2022. Confronting additional instability in the Balkans would also highlight the flaws of NATO policy in the region since the 1990s and the lack of a viable, long-term solution to confront the issues plaguing the Balkans.

Yet regional integration efforts have picked up in recent months. In July, the EU restarted membership talks of bringing Albania and North Macedonia into the organization, Bosnia and Herzegovina was officially accepted as a candidate on December 15, and Kosovo applied for EU membership on December 14. NATO membership for both Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina remains largely on hold, however, and is currently out of the question for Serbia, which considers NATO its “enemy.”

Considerable work will be required to integrate these divided states into the Western alliance, and recent attempts to speed up this process have been largely unsuccessful. The scheme by former President Donald Trump’s administration to change the Serbia-Kosovo border amounted to little, while the proposed Association of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo has been criticized for outlining the creation of another Republika Srpska.

The role of Russian intelligence and Serbian nationalists in the attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016, which sought to derail the country’s NATO accession, reveals the lengths to which Moscow will go to achieve its aims. Western officials must, therefore, remain wary of Russia’s potential in the region. Escalating unresolved Balkan conflicts is now a major part of the Kremlin’s attempts to stall Western integration in Europe and take pressure off its war with Ukraine.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

On November 1, the deputy director of Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation downplayed remarks made on October 30 by an agency official, who warned of Western weapons bound for Ukraine being smuggled into Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Nonetheless, the affair generated significant attention and reflected previous concerns expressed by European authorities over Ukraine’s vulnerability to organized crime and the repercussions for the continent.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Organized crime emerged as a potent force in Ukraine after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Criminal groups exploited flawed economic privatization measures to amass significant economic power, while the collapse of the Soviet security state allowed armed criminal factions to replace government authority and entrench themselves permanently.

These developments were mirrored in many former Soviet states in the 1990s, including Russia. But after Vladimir Putin assumed the Russian presidency in 2000, he and his allies in Russia’s intelligence community reestablished a strong security apparatus and clamped down on many domestic organized crime syndicates.

However, the Kremlin chose not to eradicate them completely. Wary of further violence, Putin sought to consolidate power rather than risk a return to the instability that characterized Russia in the 1990s.

And perhaps more importantly, criminal groups could provide Moscow with unique opportunities. By turning a blind eye to much of their activities and legitimizing their wealth and businesses, the Kremlin gained access to illegal profit-making schemes, extensive smuggling networks, manpower, and other illicit services.

The Kremlin also expanded cooperation with criminal groups across the former Soviet Union. In Ukraine’s southeast, where criminal activity has been most concentrated, Russian intelligence figures have cultivated relationships for decades, with most of Crimea’s high-end criminal businesses dependent on relations with Russian criminal networks to survive.

Organized crime in Ukraine had also evolved significantly by the time Putin entered office. In 2006, a U.S. Embassy cable stated that Crimean criminals were “fundamentally different than in the 1990s: then, they were tracksuit-wearing, pistol-wielding ‘bandits’ who gave Crimea a reputation as the ‘Ukrainian Sicily’ and ended up in jail, shot, or going to ground; now they had moved into mainly above-board businesses, as well as local government.”

These developments allowed Russia to quickly assume political control over Crimea when Russian forces seized it in 2014. Dozens of pro-Russian politicians elected to Crimean political offices, including the Crimean Prime Minister Sergei Aksyonov and speaker of the Crimean Parliament Vladimir Konstantinov shared suspected ties to organized crime.

In Ukraine’s Donbas region, the “density of criminality, combined with the weakness of local institutions” similarly allowed criminal groups to amass significant economic and political power after the Soviet collapse. But following the launch of Russia’s proxy war in the region alongside the seizure of Crimea in 2014, Donbas criminal groups also provided much of the manpower for newly-created militant groups and attempted to recruit others in neighboring Ukrainian regions to take up arms against government forces.

Despite their higher density in Crimea and the Donbas, Russian-supported criminal groups operate across Ukraine and the Black Sea region. Speaking with Mark Galeotti, an expert on modern Russia, in 2019, a Bulgarian security officer detailed a smuggling operation through Bulgaria’s port of Varna, bringing in drugs and counterfeit goods from Ukraine’s port of Odessa.

Operated by “Ukrainians working for a Russian-based gang,” the Bulgarian officer believed the criminal group was being taxed by Russian authorities and was “feeding information on Odessa” back to the Kremlin.

The threat of Russian-backed organized crime has only grown since Russia’s invasion in February. Conflicts generally tend to weaken state capacity, or the ability of governments to function properly, allowing organized crime groups to increase their power and influence. The Kremlin has expanded its use of criminality to both weaken Ukraine and complement its own war effort.

While reports of Ukrainian criminal groups smuggling Western weapons out of Ukraine have been consistently downplayed, it would be in the Russian government’s interest to dilute the effectiveness of Western military aid. Additionally, many weapons successfully smuggled out of Ukraine will likely end up in Europe, with weapons from Eastern Europe having been used in several terrorist attacks over the last decade. “Just beyond the countries of Western Europe, with their restrictive gun laws, lie the Balkan states, awash with illegal weapons left over from the conflicts that raged there in the 1990s,” stated Time magazine.

In April, Ukrainian officials also accused Russia of smuggling weapons into Ukraine from the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria in an effort to arm local allies, as well as using smugglers to bring in sanctioned weapons and military technology for the Russian military via Georgia.

Economic sanctions have in turn forced the Kremlin to expand its criminal profiteering activities, according to Western intelligence and law enforcement officials who spoke with VICE World News. A report by the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute mentioned an incident from April 2022 where the “Ukrainian Ministry of Justice officials charged a Ukrainian individual with helping a Russian business to launder money using a Cypriot company, registering their accounts into a private bank in Ukraine.” Meanwhile, a metal shipment worth more than $3 million was intercepted before it could leave a port in Ukraine’s Odessa region.

On top of existing, lucrative tobacco-smuggling networks, NATO and EU officials believe that a large tobacco smuggling ring in Belgium exposed in September was sponsored by both Belarusian and Russian intelligence to raise funds for their operations in the face of sanctions. Russian and Belarusian state-controlled industries have similarly increased cooperation with criminal groups to export oil, gas, and counterfeit goods to bypass sanctions.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, European security officials have also noted a rise in drug smuggling to Europe through the northern route from Afghanistan through Central Asia and Russia—likely due to Moscow easing restraints on these activities. Central Asian political and security circles have historically had direct involvement in the drug smuggling networks and often work closely with Russian criminal groups aligned with the Kremlin.

Taxing the drug trade allows Russian government entities to raise cash. But as with guns, flooding Europe with drugs creates its own problems. Court systems, prisons, hospitals, and other state and social institutions can be overwhelmed by increased drug flows, while distribution fuels local criminal activity—similar to Washington’s concern over Chinese drug trafficking to the U.S.

Additionally, Russia has turned to Central Asian smugglers to gain access to essential sanctioned products from abroad, while the Kremlin may explore selling Russia’s vast gold reserves on the international black markets depending on the compounding effects of sanctions.

And following the West’s decision to freeze much of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves and other financial assets, Russian criminals, in coordination with the Kremlin, have turned to cryptocurrencies to help raise funds and evade sanctions. Criminal hacking groups have also been used by Moscow to help launch cyberattacks on Ukraine and Western targets.

Notably, the Russian government has taken steps in recent months to further institutionalize illegal activity among Russian companies. In March, the Kremlin legalized “parallel imports,” allowing Russian companies to import commodities into the country without the consent of the overseas producer.

Though often innovative, the Kremlin’s embrace of organized crime underlines Russia’s sense of desperation as the most sanctioned country in the world. Yet Russia poses a greater challenge than other sanctioned rogue states like Venezuela, Iran, or North Korea. Its relatively large, industrialized economy, natural resources, extensive borders, and economic integration with Eurasia make isolating it far more difficult.

Continued collaboration with organized crime will be essential for Russia to safeguard its economy and prolong its war effort. Despite the risks of greater integration with the underworld and a growing dependency on their illicit networks, the Kremlin will continue these policies so long as sanctions remain in place.

Encouraging the growth of organized crime in Ukraine also has its own benefits for Moscow. Domestic criminal groups have helped Ukrainian men seeking to avoid conscription to leave the country, reducing the manpower available to Kyiv. In addition, sustaining Ukraine’s entrenched criminal culture and corruption prevents its further Westernization through economic and political reform.

Western law enforcement agencies have attempted to increase cross-country coordination with Ukraine to stem Russian-backed organized crime since the outbreak of the war. The European Multidisciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats (EMPACT) gathered in April to discuss the situation, while entities such as Interpol, Europol, Frontex, and others have increased cooperation with both Ukraine and Moldova in recent months in “fighting serious and organized crime.”

The fight against Russian-backed organized crime clearly remains essential to Ukraine’s war effort. But as Kyiv has observed since the 1990s, just as much attention should be paid to how organized crime in the country will continue to evolve once large-scale fighting subsides.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

At the recent Commonwealth for Independent States (CIS) summit held on October 14 in Astana, Kazakhstan, Tajik President Emomali Rahmon expressed previously inconceivable remarks. His public admonishment of Russian President Vladimir Putin to treat Central Asian states with more respect showed the growing confidence of Central Asian leaders amid Russia’s embroilment in Ukraine and China’s expanding regional influence.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

After coming under Russian imperial rule in the 18th and 19th centuries, five Central Asian states—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—emerged independent from the Soviet Union in 1991.

While these countries remained heavily dependent on Russia for security, economic, and diplomatic support, China saw an opportunity in their vast resources and potential to facilitate trade across Eurasia. Chinese-backed development and commerce increased after the Soviet collapse and expanded further after the launch of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013.

Billions of dollars in investment, access to Chinese goods, and opening up China’s enormous consumer market allowed Beijing to restructure Central Asian economies. Soviet-era gas pipeline networks, for example, traditionally forced much of the region’s natural resources to flow through Russia to access the European market. The Central Asia-China pipeline and Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline are just some of the newer pipelines built to transport resources to the Chinese market instead.

These developments have added to friction between Central Asian states and Russia. Disputes between Turkmenistan and Russia over gas prices and a mysterious pipeline explosion in 2009 saw Russian gas imports from Turkmenistan decline until they halted completely in 2016, upending Turkmenistan’s access to Europe. Turkmenistan redirected much of its supply to China for the next three years, before a rapprochement with Moscow in 2019 saw imports to Russia resume.

This affair demonstrated the economic opportunities China could provide to Central Asian states that were previously dependent on Russia. Competing Chinese and Russian attempts to supply Central Asia with COVID-19 vaccines was another demonstration of Beijing’s multifaceted approach to increasing its regional influence.

Sensing the inevitability of Chinese investment in revolutionizing regional economies, the Kremlin announced the “Greater Eurasian Partnership” in 2015. This partnership attempted to integrate the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan are members of, with the BRI. Though this partnership has only been partially successful, Putin has sought to use Chinese investment to help develop Russia’s Far East.

Russia’s connections to the remaining Soviet political networks and military power in the region have allowed Moscow to contend with China’s growing economic edge in Central Asia over the last two decades. But the increasing international pressure on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine has suddenly upset the traditional “division of labor” between Russia and China in Central Asia. Though still a vital partner to Central Asian states, Russia risks losing greater economic and security ground to China in the coming years.

After cross-border trade between the EU and Russia and Belarus was reduced following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for example, China placed renewed focus on developing the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), or “Middle Corridor,” of the BRI. Instead of Chinese trade flowing from Russia into Europe, it is increasingly being transported through Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Turkey. The newly built Baku-Tbilisi-Kars (BTK) railway, as well as other projects like the China-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) railway, will further erode Russia’s importance to the BRI.

On September 14, 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Kazakhstan on his first foreign trip since the pandemic began. His destination was symbolic—the BRI was first announced by Xi in Kazakhstan in 2013, and the country has fashioned itself as the “buckle” of the project.

Alongside signing economic deals during his visit in September, Xi vowed to back Kazakhstan “in the defense of its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” This contrasts with Russian political figures who have questioned the validity of Kazakhstan’s statehood in the past, including Putin. Xi then traveled to Uzbekistan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit on September 15 and 16 and signed deals worth $16 billion with Uzbekistan, dwarfing the $4.6 billion signed between Uzbekistan and Russia.

China’s auto industry has also increased its manufacturing presence and share of the market in Central Asia in 2022, as sanctions have hindered Russia’s production capabilities.

China’s growing military presence in Central Asia has similarly been a major concern for the Kremlin. Over the last decade, China has rapidly increased its arms exports to the region. And though China has conducted bilateral military exercises in Central Asia since 2002 in coordination with the SCO, in 2016 China held its first antiterrorism exercises with Tajikistan, and held the “Cooperation 2019” exercises with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, “marking the first time their national guard units had trained with China on counterterrorism.”

In 2021, Tajikistan also approved the construction of a Chinese-funded military base in the country near its border with Afghanistan—though China’s focus on Tajikistan is “linked more to Afghanistan than to Central Asia as a whole.” However, the use of Chinese private military and security companies (PMSCs) in Africa and the Middle East has also led to concern in Moscow that China’s PMSCs may expand further across Central Asia.

Moscow’s strained military situation became evident in September, when Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, both members of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) military alliance, engaged in deadly border clashes. While Russia and the CSTO were unable to calm hostilities, the leaders of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan met on the sidelines of the SCO summit on September 16 to cool tensions.

Nonetheless, several factors inhibit China from eclipsing Russia’s geopolitical influence in Central Asia. Beijing has typically been hesitant to commit military forces abroad and continues to see the Russian military as an asset against instability in the region. The Russian-led CSTO intervention in Kazakhstan in January 2022 showed the Kremlin was capable of stabilizing vulnerable national governments facing social unrest in the region, as well as cementing their authority and international legitimacy.

Russia also operates a military base in Tajikistan, while Kyrgyzstan hosts a Russian military air base. Kazakhstan’s large ethnic Russian minority, meanwhile, holds local economic and political power, and the Kazakh government remains fearful of a Russian military intervention ostensibly to protect them.

Additionally, Russia retains some economic leverage over Central Asian states. Russia conducts billions of dollars worth of trade with them annually and maintains several Soviet legacy projects that have bound Central Asia to it, such as common gas and oil pipelines, waterways, railway networks, and electricity grids. Central Asian states also have some of the largest annual remittance rates in the world, with the remittances from Russia to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan accounting for roughly 30 percent of their gross domestic product in 2021.

The Kremlin also has the ability to shape local perceptions of Russia through its dominant media and social media channels in Central Asia. But positive public opinion toward China across the region steadily declined between 2017 and 2021 for a variety of reasons, especially in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Many Central Asians are concerned over China’s “debt-trap diplomacy,” while large numbers of Chinese workers brought in to develop BRI projects in the region have resulted in deadly protests and clashes with locals.

Competition between China and Central Asian states over scarce regional water supplies, as well as China’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, a Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim ethnic group, who “see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations,” have also damaged China’s ties in the region.

Evidently, China’s own obstacles and Russia’s lingering presence in the region have helped sustain the geopolitical balance in Central Asia. But mutual pledges by China and Russia to respect one another’s core interests, most recently repeated in June 2022, have contributed the most to preventing greater agitation in the region. While Beijing and Moscow are destined to compete in Central Asia, careful diplomacy will likely prolong their cautious cooperation.

Ultimately, China remains more concerned with Taiwan, the South China Sea, and the broader Asia Pacific region, while Russia is more preoccupied in its eastern and southern regions, most notably Ukraine.

Russia has so far borne the brunt of U.S.-led efforts to contain their foreign policies. But the launch of the U.S.-China trade war in 2018 under former U.S. President Donald Trump marked a serious turn in the U.S.-Chinese relationship, which has continued under President Joe Biden. The Biden administration (as well as the EU) has criticized and sanctioned China over its policies in Xinjiang, and most recently imposed significant technology export controls on China on October 7.

Heightened tensions with the West will draw China and Russia closer together. While Central Asia is where their interests collide the most, Beijing and Moscow will continue to avoid conflict there to focus on pushing back against Western power elsewhere in the world.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

With the U.S. midterm elections looming and Europe’s economic situation deteriorating, the threat of reduced international support for Ukraine could limit Kyiv’s options heading into the new year.

Since February 24, 2022, Ukraine’s armed forces have successfully defended much of their country. But without American assistance, the Ukrainian military campaign would have likely floundered months ago. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. has provided the lion’s share of military aid to Ukraine, alongside enormous financial and humanitarian assistance. With the U.S. midterm elections to be held on November 8, 2022, both President Joe Biden’s administration and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy fear that these channels of support for Ukraine will diminish significantly.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

The economic effects of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, such as higher energy prices, have taken their toll on American voters, and recent polling shows that U.S. support for the war is waning, especially among Republicans. According to Pew Research Center, the belief that the U.S. is providing too much support to Ukraine surged among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents from 9 percent in March to 32 percent in September.

While the U.S. economy is in a relatively good state compared to much of the rest of the world, Republicans have exploited domestic economic concerns to undermine Biden and the Democrats for months. And though many influential Republicans, such as Senator Lindsey Graham, continue to voice strong support for Ukraine, others aligned with the Tea Party and former U.S. President Donald Trump form the GOP’s increasingly vocal “isolationist wing.”

The influence of this populist group has been reflected in the growing split between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, with both of them recently sparring over the issue of Ukraine aid. In May, 57 House Republicans voted against the $40 billion aid package to Ukraine, and during the middle of October, McCarthy warned that the U.S. is “not going to write a blank check to Ukraine.” With elections polls predicting a Republican House majority, future aid packages to Ukraine are likely to face greater GOP resistance.

Support for NATO and Ukraine among Trump-leaning Republicans has traditionally been low. Trump derided NATO throughout his 2016 presidential campaign and presidency, and his July 2019 phone call with Zelenskyy led to the first official efforts to impeach him. Florida Republican Governor and Trump ally Ron DeSantis was also comfortable enough to ignore calls to pull his state’s $300 million investments from Russia shortly after the war began.

Unfortunately for Kyiv, Democratic support for Ukraine has also fallen, according to the September Pew Research Center poll, as anxiety over the economy, access to abortion, and other issues have mounted. Another Pew Research Center poll from October found that the economy is the top issue for voters heading into the midterm elections. Biden’s explanation of rising inflation as “Putin’s price hike in gasoline” has only reinforced the notion in some voters’ minds that U.S.-led sanctions targeting Moscow and support for Ukraine have been partly responsible for their economic pain.

And on October 24, 30 members of the progressive caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to Joe Biden urging him to hold direct talks with Russia and end the war. While the letter was retracted the next day, it further demonstrated Ukraine’s falling support with the left in the U.S.

Any significant drop in American assistance to Ukraine—the U.S. has provided more than 52 billion euros in military, humanitarian, and financial aid to Ukraine from January 24 to October 3, 2022—will severely impact the latter’s ability to defend itself. According to Christoph Trebesch, head of the team compiling the Kiel Institute for the World Economy’s Ukraine Support Tracker, “The U.S. is now committing nearly twice as much as all EU countries and institutions combined.”

The UK has led major European efforts to defend Ukraine and is on track to train up to 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers on its own soil this year. But the UK is experiencing political destabilization following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September and the resignation of two prime ministers in under two months. These events have inhibited the British government’s ability to form a coherent foreign policy and expand its support for Ukraine.

Furthermore, the UK has its own disputes with the EU regarding Brexit and is unlikely to rally many of the EU states to join its efforts to support Ukraine without strong U.S. coordination.

The EU has sent billions of euros of financial aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict, but far less humanitarian and military aid. Bilateral military aid from Ukraine’s most important EU suppliers—France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Poland—fell significantly since the end of April 2022, with no new military pledges being made in July. Large-scale European military assistance only resumed following the launch of the successful Ukrainian offensive that has reclaimed a large part of the territory since early September.

Yet around the same time (on September 5), EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned that member states’ weapons stocks were “severely ‘depleted’” after months of providing Ukraine with arms, reinforcing perceptions of the EU’s inability to provide long-term military support to Kyiv.

On October 17, the EU formed its own military training program for Ukrainian soldiers. France declared it would train 2,000 on its soil, while other EU members will train another 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers. Though they are unlikely to match NATO-led initiatives, the latest round of EU sanctions against Russia, which were approved on October 5, demonstrate Europe’s commitment to keeping pressure on Russia.

A drastic increase in EU assistance to Ukraine and confrontation with Russia, however, remains unlikely. Poland, the leading member state advocating for these policies, was the largest recipient of EU funds between 2007 and 2020, and will not be able to coalesce the bloc for these purposes on its own. And with Europe’s energy costs mounting, the ability of the EU countries to maintain, let alone increase, their support for Ukraine may also soon come under much further strain.

As in the U.S., much of Europe’s political right-wing (as well as left-wing political elements) is already far less enthusiastic about maintaining support for Ukraine than the political mainstream. Citing economic pain at home, fueled in part by rising energy costs, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has led the continental criticism against Russian sanctions since the Ukrainian invasion. His enthusiastic reception at the August 4 Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas, Texas, proves that these policies have not caused much concern in the GOP.

With the threat of reduced support from the U.S. and Europe, Ukraine’s ability to hold off Russia will weaken significantly in 2023. While most UN members voted to condemn Russia for its invasion, only Western allies like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have chosen to sanction Russia and aid Ukraine. This is unlikely to change, particularly if pressure from Washington and Brussels subsides.

Because the newly elected and reelected representatives in the 2022 U.S. midterm elections will not take office until January 2023, the Biden administration appears intent on using this window to build up its support for Kyiv. Lawmakers have begun discussing a $50 billion aid package for Ukraine that is expected to be finalized by January.

One problem with this strategy is that winter weather risks grinding Ukraine’s autumn offensive to a halt. Any potential Russian counteroffensive may wait until next spring, and Ukraine’s needs may have changed by then. Russia has shifted strategies throughout the war, including bolstering the use of artillery, Iranian drones, and other weapons. The first of the roughly 300,000 Russian reservists and volunteers are expected to arrive soon in Ukraine, allowing Russia to change strategies once more.

By then the war would be more than a year old, and U.S. public and political support would likely have fallen further. Having already provided more than 52 billion euros in military, humanitarian, and financial aid to Ukraine since January 24, 2022, Washington is unlikely to provide Ukraine with more large aid packages until the U.S. domestic economic situation improves.

It remains to be seen if Republicans win the House or the Senate. And if Ukrainian forces manage to regain a significant amount of territory from Russia over the next few months, then current levels of U.S. support could be mostly maintained even if Republicans gain control over either chamber of Congress. Nonetheless, Kyiv may be wise to prepare for one more extensive U.S. aid package and focus on maintaining support for current sanctions while appealing for greater help from Europe. While the Ukrainian armed forces may not mount any new major offensives for the foreseeable future, they may be able to prevent the Russian military from doing so.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

A multifaceted response from Europe has so far prevented its energy woes from creating widespread social and economic destabilization. But with winter approaching, the crisis is far from over and risks are getting worse.

While European energy prices have eased slightly in recent months, stress continues to build across a continent that has long been dependent on access to cheap Russian energy.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Protests related to high energy costs have been held from Belgium to the Czech Republic in Europe. Fuel shortages have led to long queues to buy petrol at gas stations in France. The Don’t Pay UK movement has urged British citizens to enter a “bill strike” by refusing to pay energy bills until gas and electricity prices are reduced to an “affordable level.” Europe’s remarkably high energy prices have also fueled climate change protests across the continent.

European governments have resorted to diverse measures to manage the crisis. After the EU banned Russian coal imports, coal regulations were reduced in Poland, which has led to illegal coal mines being operated in the country. Aid packages, such as Austria’s 1.3 billion euro initiative, aim to help companies struggling with mounting energy costs. The UK “has capped the price of average household energy bills at 2,500 pounds ($2,770) a year for two years from October” and also announced a cap on energy per unit for businesses, charities, and NGOs in September.

Italy has shown considerable capability in diversifying its energy imports from Russia since the beginning of the year to reduce its dependence on the Kremlin. Under former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Italy began to increase its reliance on Russian energy, a process that continued even after his election defeat in 2011 and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

This reliance came to an abrupt end after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Italy signed natural gas deals with Egypt and Algeria in April and held additional talks with the Republic of Congo and Angola regarding energy supplies as well. In June, Italy also purchased two additional liquefied natural gas (LNG) vessels, adding to the three LNG terminals it already operates, to further diversify its natural gas (gas for short) supplies.

Not all countries, however, have matched Italy’s success of diversifying their energy imports. France declared it would cap power and gas price increases for households at 15 percent in 2023. But since more than half of France’s 56 nuclear reactors have been shut down for maintenance (Europe’s summer drought also prevented the water-based cooling systems of the French nuclear plants from functioning), France will struggle with mounting energy costs as well as upholding its traditional role as an electricity exporter to other European countries.

Like other European countries, Germany chose to nationalize some of its major energy companies, such as Uniper in September. In October, the German government proposed a 200 billion euro energy subsidies initiative. With gas storage projected to reach 95 percent capacity by November, Germany has also provided itself with significant protection.

But Germany lacks LNG infrastructure and remains vulnerable if Russia cuts off gas through pipelines completely. Currently, Germany is at level two of the country’s three-tier emergency gas plan, with the last stage introducing direct government intervention in gas distribution and rationing.

Because Germany makes the largest contributions of funds to the EU, its economic vulnerability poses concerning implications for the rest of the bloc. And in addition to suffering from gas shortages, Central European countries will “also suffer from the effects of gas rationing in the German industrial sector, given their integration into German supply chains.” Such uncertainty has blunted investment in the region, further compounding Europe’s economic issues.

These issues have underlined the perception that while Russian coal has been relatively easy to ban in Europe and Russian oil is slowly being phased out, Russian natural gas remains too important for much of the continent’s energy mix to be shunned completely.

Dozens of ships carrying LNG have been stuck off Europe’s coast, as the plants “that convert the seaborne fuel back to gas are operating at maximum limit.” High gas prices have meanwhile resulted in key industries across Europe that are reliant on the energy source to shut down, sparking fears of “uncontrolled deindustrialization.”

In addition to national strategies, European countries have pursued collective initiatives to confront the energy crisis. On September 27, Norway, Denmark, and Poland officially opened the Baltic Pipe to supply Poland with natural gas. On October 1, Greece and Bulgaria began commercial operation of the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria (IGB) pipeline, which serves as another link in the Western-backed Southern Gas Corridor project to bring natural gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.

On October 13, France began sending Germany natural gas for the first time, based on an agreement that “Germany would generate more electricity to supply France during times of peak consumption.” The European Council stated on September 30 that EU states will implement “a voluntary overall reduction target of 10 percent of gross electricity consumption and a mandatory reduction target of 5 percent of the electricity consumption in peak hours.”

Additionally, the EU continues to debate imposing a price cap on Russian gas to the EU, and the G7 countries and its allies agreed on September 2 to implement a price cap on Russian crude oil and oil products in December 2022 and February 2023, respectively.

Germany, however, has led criticism over the “proposal to cap the price on all gas imports to the EU,” stating that the EU lacks the authority to do so, alongside expressing concerns that gas providers will simply sell gas to other countries. Norway, traditionally Europe’s second-largest gas provider after Russia, also indicated it would not accept a cap on gas, and Russia stated it would not sell oil or gas to countries doing so either. The resulting restrictions in energy supply would likely further raise prices.

European countries also remain bound by their own interests, further undermining multilateral cooperation. Croatia, for example, announced it would ban natural gas exports in September. Many European countries have criticized Germany’s planned 200 billion euro subsidies plan for fear that it “could trigger economic imbalances in the bloc.” Germany, meanwhile, declared it would not support a joint EU debt issuance on October 11, only later agreeing to the measures out of pressure from its European allies.

In September, the UK accused the EU of pushing British energy prices higher by severing energy cooperation following Brexit. The U.S. and Norway have also been singled out by EU members for profiting off the current energy crisis.

Varying levels of vulnerability have resulted in some European countries breaking with the continental norm and negotiating with Russia. Serbia, which is not in NATO or part of the EU, signed its own natural gas deal with Russia in May, while Hungary drew the ire of Western allies by signing its own gas deal with Russia in August. Hungary was among the first European countries to agree to purchase Russian natural gas in rubles, stabilizing the Russian currency as sanctions were placed on the Russian economy. If the crisis worsens considerably, other countries may follow suit.

As Europe’s energy crisis has continued, many countries across the world have become increasingly wary. European demand for LNG and a willingness to pay premiums has meant suppliers are increasingly rerouting gas to the continent.

Though rich competitors like South Korea and Japan have been able to contend with European competition for LNG, it has caused shortages elsewhere. Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example, have struggled to secure their traditional LNG imports since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Blackouts in these countries have increased, causing them to resort to more carbon-intensive energy alternatives and prompting renewed talks with Russia over LNG imports and developing pipeline networks to supply natural gas to Asia.

Europe’s decades-long exposure to Russian energy means that its current energy crisis will persist for years. Even with predictions for a relatively mild upcoming winter, overcoming this energy crisis will require cooperation and sacrifice among European states—particularly if the war in Ukraine escalates further. While the West’s solidarity will be put to the test, poorer, energy-vulnerable countries will continue to fall victim as a result of the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

While far from an alliance, the SCO is increasingly utilized for managing Eurasian affairs without traditional Western mechanisms and organizations.

Held in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from September 15 to 16, the 2022 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Heads of State Council demonstrated that the SCO was continuing to evolve into a viable international political congregation independent from the West.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Beginning in the early 1800s, international organizations (IOs) began to emerge as modest arbiters of European affairs. But during and after World War II, new IOs established themselves as far more prominent actors on a global scale. The United Nations (UN), the Arab League, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and several other IOs were created to manage the affairs of their member states.

After the Soviet collapse, more IOs were created to manage the independence of new states, globalization, and regional cooperation. The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), created in 1991, attempted to coordinate military, economic, and political policies between post-Soviet states. The European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU), created in 1993 and 2002, respectively, bound member states more forcefully to common economic and political norms. Other IOs, like the Arctic Council (1996) and Asia Cooperation Dialogue (2002), aimed to foster broader regional cooperation.

Most new international organizations meshed neatly with the Western-led liberal world order. But in 2001, the formation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was formally announced, and it established itself as an exclusionary outlier. Originally known as the Shanghai Five when it was created in 1996, it included China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, with Uzbekistan later joining when it evolved into the SCO in 2001.

The SCO was created partly to help coordinate a new era of peaceful relations between Moscow and Beijing and to manage their coalescing interests in Central Asian states. In addition, combatting the “Three Evils” of extremism, separatism, and terrorism were major priorities for the organization, which included data and intelligence sharing and common military drills among its member states.

Over time, the SCO began to embrace greater political and economic integration. Support for autocratic rule and limiting criticism of human rights violations set it apart from other Western-aligned IOs, with the SCO also overseeing the growth of joint energy projects, the fostering of trade agreements, and the introduction of the SCO Interbank Consortium in 2005 “to organize a mechanism for financing and banking services in investment projects supported by the governments of the SCO member states.”

But the organization’s most pressing vocation was facilitating a multipolar world order. Investing in an independent forum for economic, political, and military affairs outside of Western influence became a key component of Russian and Chinese attempts to reduce Western power in global affairs.

Russia and China have also developed complementary mechanisms to the SCO, which have helped decentralize its mission. Following the blacklisting of several Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) in 2014, for example, the Kremlin approved the creation of the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) to replicate SWIFT and introduced the National Payment Card System (now known as Mir), while China created the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS).

These initiatives even proved attractive to states that were more aligned with the Western-led global order. India and Pakistan began SCO accession talks in 2015 and officially joined the organization in 2017. Despite relatively positive relations with the West, India and Pakistan have both faced Western criticism over human rights and democratic backsliding in recent years. India’s introduction of platforms like RuPay in 2012 and Unified Payments Interface, which eroded the traditional dominance of Visa and Mastercard in the country, also complemented SCO’s attempts to reduce Western economic preeminence globally.

At the 2022 summit of the SCO Heads of State Council, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev reiterated that the SCO was not an anti-U.S. or anti-NATO alliance. But the organization’s original motive to create a multipolar world was echoed in its Samarkand Declaration, the final declaration of this meeting, and continues to conflict with Washington’s attempts to maintain the U.S.-led world order. According to the declaration, the member states “confirm[ed] their commitment to [the] formation of a more representative, democratic, just and multipolar world order.”

This core stratagem continues to appeal to countries around the world. Alongside the leaders of its eight member states, the SCO invited the presidents of Belarus, Mongolia, and Iran as official observers to the recent summit. Having started its accession process in 2021, Iran signed a memorandum of understanding with the SCO to join the institution by April 2023.

The SCO would likely alleviate Iran’s sense of economic isolation stemming from Western sanctions, a sentiment shared by Iranian officials at the summit and something that was also noted back in 2007. Belarus has also found itself under increasing sanctions in recent years and enhanced its accession procedures to join the SCO in Samarkand.

The presidents of Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Turkey were also invited to the SCO summit as special guests, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announcing that his country would seek full membership to the SCO. In 2012, Erdoğan joked to Russian President Vladimir Putin about abandoning Turkey’s EU aspirations if Russia would allow them into the SCO. Turkey’s renewed attempt comes at a time when its ties with the rest of the Western world are increasingly strained and could instigate other NATO states, and potentially the EU states, to join the SCO as well.

The SCO has also established strong relations with other IOs. Representatives from ASEAN, the UN, the Russian-dominated CIS, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) were invited to the 2022 summit. Notably absent were any representatives from the EU or NATO. Meanwhile, in 2005, the U.S. was rejected from gaining observer status, solidifying the SCO’s status as a bulwark against U.S. influence in Eurasia.

Like all major international organizations, the SCO faces systemic obstacles that hinder its effectiveness and long-term viability. At the recent summit in Uzbekistan, China’s Xi Jinping was welcomed to the country by his Uzbek counterpart, Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Putin, however, was greeted by Uzbek Prime Minister Abdulla Aripov, highlighting Russia’s strained relations with many of the former Soviet states and the growing strength of Beijing over Moscow. Unlike in the CSTO and the EAEU, Russia is not the dominant actor in the SCO, and will increasingly have to contend with China’s predominant authority.

Disputes also remain between SCO member states. India and Pakistan, for example, are afflicted with an ongoing struggle over Kashmir. China and India have their own territorial disputes and have engaged in minor violent skirmishes since India joined the SCO. Additionally, deadly clashes between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan erupted during the recent summit, while admitting Armenia and Azerbaijan, both of which are SCO dialogue partners, will only further increase the number of members currently locked in their own territorial disputes.

But the SCO has consistently portrayed itself as a vehicle to supervise these issues. The leaders of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan met for talks during the summit to assuage tensions. And since 2002, the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) has encouraged military coordination between member states, with the Indian and Pakistani militaries conducting RATS drills in 2021. More drills between them are planned for October, and while they are aimed primarily at countering unrest from Afghanistan, they are also part of SCO’s attempts to manage relations of member states.

China and Russia have also agreed to “synergize” the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the EAEU to help mitigate possible tension between them, with both Xi and Putin meeting on the sidelines of the 2022 SCO summit and pledging to respect each other’s core interests.

The SCO member states clearly believe the organization can, and has greater potential to, effectively manage their concerns and regional affairs, and its appeal continues to grow. Besides the additional SCO dialogue partners (Cambodia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt were granted the status of SCO dialogue partners at the 2022 SCO summit. Myanmar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the Maldives were also granted the status of dialogue partners.

Russian and Chinese influence will fall as more members join, which will also dilute consensus within the organization. But it remains a Beijing and Moscow-led initiative to manage world affairs and to demonstrate that the “international community” is not just the West. With almost half of the world’s population and a quarter of the global GDP, the SCO is increasingly becoming a representative of the Global South.

By pooling together other IOs into an umbrella forum, the SCO can further its goal of challenging the wider Western-dominated IO ecosystem and prevent Washington from setting the global agenda. This will require the constructive management of Russian and Chinese ambitions and the increasingly complex needs of more member states.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

Libya’s competing domestic actors are being exploited by foreign powers seeking to downplay their role in the fragile country.

After leading a military coup in 1969, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi cemented his rule over Libya for more than 40 years. A variety of different political ideologies—Pan-Arabism, Pan-Africanism, socialism, Islamic leftism, and others—characterized his leadership, which were further reinforced by a cult of personality. While living standards for Libyans increased under his rule, Gaddafi attracted resentment among some non-Arab populations, Islamic extremists, and other political opponents.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

As the Arab Spring spread outward from neighboring Tunisia into Libya in February 2011, protestors and militant groups seized parts of the country. Loyalist armed forces retook control of much of what they had lost over the next few weeks after the outbreak of the protests, but Gaddafi’s historical antagonism toward Western governments saw them seize the opportunity to impose a no-fly zone and bombing campaign against Libyan forces in March 2011.

Alongside assistance from regional Middle Eastern allies, the NATO-led intervention was successful in helping local militant groups topple Gaddafi, who was later captured and executed in October 2011. Soon after his death, questions were immediately raised about how Libya could be politically restructured and avoid becoming a failed state. After militant groups refused to disarm, they along with their allies began to contest territory and control over Libya’s fragile new national institutions.

The National Transitional Council (NTC) was established to coordinate rebel groups against Gaddafi, and naturally inherited much of the Libyan government after the war. But a number of countries did not recognize its authority, and after handing power over to the General National Congress (GNC) in 2012, Libya’s weak central government steadily lost political control over its enormous territory to competing groups.

Libya’s population of almost 7 million people lives in a highly urbanized society that has led to the development of strong regional identities among those living in its northern coastal cities. There has also historically been an east-west divide between the two coastal provinces of Cyrenaica in the east and Tripolitania in the west.

A large Turkish and part-Turkish minority also live throughout Libya’s major cities, particularly in the city of Misrata. Most of them have descended from the Ottoman troops who married local women during Ottoman rule from 1551-1912, and though not a strictly homogenous group, the majority revolted against Gaddafi as nationwide protests began in Libya.

The historical lack of central authority in Libya’s more rural south resulted in widespread autonomy for the Tuareg tribe in the southwest and the Tubu tribe in the southeast. While the Tuaregs largely supported Gaddafi, the Tubu joined the revolutionaries, sparking increased tension between these two tribes to gain control over the city of Ubari, local smuggling routes, and energy infrastructure.

Alongside ethnic and cultural disputes, Libya was further destabilized by radical Islamists after the fall of Gaddafi. Mass unemployment among Libya’s relatively young population fueled recruitment for ISIS and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Sharia. Having gained battlefield experience and with limited economic prospects, many militants in Libya had little incentive to return to civilian life, while the influx of foreign jihadists also kept the violence ongoing.

Rivalries between these numerous factions helped lead to the outbreak of the second Libyan civil war in 2014. The UN-brokered Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) was signed in December 2015 to create a Presidential Council (PC) for appointing a unity government in Tripoli but failed to curtail growing violence between local actors.

Two major entities came to dominate the country. The Government of National Accord (GNA), which was presided over by the PC, was recognized in March 2016 to lead Libya, with Fayez Serraj as the Libyan prime minister. This move partly incorporated elements of Libya’s political Islamic factions.

The Libyan House of Representatives (HoR), meanwhile, refused to endorse the GNA, and relocated to Tobruk in Cyrenaica after political pressure and Islamist militias forced it out of Tripoli in 2014. The HoR is led by former General Khalifa Haftar, who commands the Libyan National Army (LNA).

The GNA retained official recognition by the UN as well as Libya’s most important economic institutions, including the Central Bank of Libya (CBL). But both the GNA and the HoR continued to fight for influence over the National Oil Corporation (NOC), while many other national institutions were forced to work with both factions.

Military force has also been integral to enforcing rival claims to Libya’s leadership. In 2017, Haftar’s forces seized Benghazi, consolidating power across much of the east and center of the country. But his attempt to take Tripoli in 2019-2020 was repelled by GNA and allied forces, prompting an HoR retreat on several fronts. A ceasefire between the GNA and the rival administration of the LNA declared an end to the war in October 2020, but tensions and violence persisted.

Libya’s civil conflict has also been inflamed by outside powers. Turkey opposed the original NATO-led intervention in 2011 but supported Libyan Turks, some of whom founded the Libya Koroglu Association in 2015, to coordinate with Turkey. Ankara has also supported the GNA with arms, money, and diplomatic support for years, and Turkish forces and military technology were integral to repelling Haftar’s assault on Tripoli.

Turkey’s business interests in Libya and desire to increase its power in the Mediterranean remain Ankara’s core initiatives, and in June it voted to extend the mandate for military deployment in Libya for another 18 months. Both Turkey and Qatar, which has also been a strong backer of the GNA, are close with the Libyan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and associated political circles in Libya, to attempt to promote a brand of political Islam that rivals Saudi-led initiatives.

With few core interests in Libya, the U.S. has shown tacit support for intervening again in a conflict it had allegedly won, but from 2015 to 2019, U.S. airstrikes and military support helped the GNA push ISIS out of many Libyan cities. Yet, Washington has remained wary of being associated with the Libyan conflict and with Islamists allied with the GNA, and the U.S. harbored and provided support to Haftar for decades to pressure Gaddafi before the civil war.

Egypt has been one of the HoR’s most crucial allies, providing weapons, military support, and safe haven through Libya’s eastern border. Besides protecting Libya’s Egyptian population, Egypt’s military-led government is also seeking to suppress political Islam in the region after Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood briefly ruled Egypt from 2011 to 2013 following Egypt’s own revolution. In 2020, Cairo approved its own intervention in Libya.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have similar interests in suppressing rival political Islamic forces in the region and have provided funding and weaponry to Haftar. Doing so has brought them closer to Russia, which has also supported Haftar with substantial military assistance. This includes warplanes piloted by the Russian private military company Wagner, which is suspected to be partially bankrolled in Libya by the UAE.

Libya’s destabilization complements the Kremlin’s attempts to influence Europe. Haftar’s forces and supporters managed to block Libyan oil exports in 2020 and again earlier this year, threatening continental supply and increasing Russia’s leverage. Additionally, instability in the region and porous borders encourage migrant flows to Europe, often increasing the popularity of right-wing political parties which have grown closer to Russia over the last two decades.

The HoR has also found less direct aid from France. Officially, Paris has supported UN negotiations and the GNA and has sought to minimize perceptions of its involvement in the conflict. But the death of three undercover French soldiers in Libya in 2016 showed that Paris remained deeply involved in the country’s civil war, and it has sold billions in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE to help Haftar. This is part of France’s efforts to suppress Islamist groups in Africa, where France retains considerable interests.

France’s position has brought criticism from Western allies. In 2019, Paris blocked an EU statement calling on Haftar to stop his offensive on Tripoli, while its support for Haftar has severely undermined its relationship with Italy, which has seen its economic influence in Libya decline.

Since the conclusion of the second Libyan civil war in 2020, steps have been taken to unify the country. A Government of National Unity was established in 2021 to consolidate Libya’s political forces, and the new Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh reached an agreement with Haftar in July 2022 to enforce a ceasefire.

But based on the current dynamics of limited intervention, there is relatively little risk and high rewards for foreign powers to continue destabilizing Libya. Turkey and Russia are also using the conflict to add to their leverage over one another in Syria. With repeated delays in holding elections in Libya and rival local and foreign actors seeking to dominate the country, Libyan citizens risk continuing to be used instead of being helped to ensure a stable and secure future for their country.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

The suspension of collaborative projects between Russian and Western space agencies will enhance their traditional rivalries. But the new space race is also being driven by other countries—as well as private companies.

Shortly after Russia was sanctioned for invading Ukraine in late February, Russia’s state-run space agency, Roscosmos, announced that it was officially suspending the U.S. from an upcoming Venus exploration mission. Weeks later, on March 17, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced the suspension of a joint mission to Mars with Roscosmos, and further said that it would not be taking part in upcoming Roscosmos missions to the moon.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

These decisions have naturally generated concern across the space industry and political landscape. For decades, Russian and Western countries have collaborated in space despite flare-ups in tensions on Earth. In 1975, the U.S. Apollo capsule linked up with the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft briefly as a symbol of cooperation amid the Cold War. In 1995, the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian space station Mir.

And in 1998, the International Space Station (ISS) was launched, featuring a Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) and a United States Orbital Segment (USOS), the latter being operated by NASA, the ESA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

Sustained cooperation on the ISS has been a notable exception to the growing tensions between Russia and the Western states over the last decade. But in April, Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, declared that Russia would end cooperation on the ISS, as well as other joint projects, if sanctions against Russia were not lifted. While such threats have been issued before, notably after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, the heightened confrontation between Russia and the West since the start of the Ukrainian invasion has reinforced this possibility.

NASA, meanwhile, chose to downplay Rogozin’s claims and stated that it will continue to operate the ISS until at least 2030. But Roscosmos has previously stated that it intends to develop its own space station by 2025, and has also revealed plans for a potential manned mission to the moon. Russia’s GLONASS satellite navigation system, which achieved global coverage in 2011, has also become a viable rival to the United States’ GPS system. These developments show the Kremlin’s growing commitment to pursuing its own interests in space without partnering with Western states.

In comparison, Roscosmos has increased its collaboration with the China National Space Administration (CNSA), particularly after the first wave of Western sanctions in 2014. In 2021, China and Russia announced plans to build a lunar research station, a direct rival to NASA’s Gateway project, which will be coordinated with the space agencies from Europe, Japan, and Canada.

China has already created its own space station, the Tiangong Space Station, which was launched in 2021. While far smaller than the ISS, China’s space agency has six more launches planned this year to complete the installation. China also sent a rover to the far side of the moon in 2019, as well as to Mars in 2021, and has announced plans for its own manned moon mission this decade.

While the space programs of some countries in the Global South, such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Iran, are certainly less impressive, their development demonstrates the growing accessibility to space, which has long been dominated by Russia, China, and Western states. More than 70 countries now have space agencies, while 14 are capable of orbital launch.

For these countries, success in space in recent years has often come from collaborating with existing space powers. In 2005, Iran’s first satellite was built and launched in Russia, while in 2008, China, Iran, and Thailand launched a joint research satellite on a Chinese rocket. Technology sharing, domestic innovation, and decreasing costs have also allowed more countries to compete in space. India made history in 2013 after it sent its own orbiter to Mars, notably on a smaller budget than the space movie “Gravity,” which came out the same year.

The growing number of countries active in Earth’s orbit and beyond have also revitalized fears of the possibility of the militarization of space. So far, only Russia, China, the U.S., and India have successfully demonstrated anti-satellite weapons. Other countries, however, including Iran and Israel, are believed to either be developing or already have similar capabilities.

Of course, Western countries remain far ahead technologically than any other state or group of states. NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, for example, aims to place humans on the moon again by 2025, while three NASA rovers are currently active on Mars. NASA’s unmanned X-37B program—which began in 1999, was transferred to the U.S. military in 2004, and is now being run by the Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office—has so far conducted four missions, while collaborative projects with the ESA have further underlined Western dominance in space.

But a growing phenomenon in space is the role of private companies. They have been involved in many of NASA’s and the ESA’s high-profile projects, including Boeing’s involvement in the X-37B project. Largely based in the U.S. and the UK, these companies have helped reduce costs and have increased opportunities for government space agencies, and they will be essential for exploiting the vast resources on the moon, asteroids, and other celestial bodies.

Though hundreds of space-related companies exist, a handful have stood out as pioneers of the modern space age. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, owned by entrepreneurs Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson respectively, both made history in 2021 after conducting their own manned space flights. Blue Origin, defense contractor Lockheed Martin, and other corporations have also signed contracts to create private space stations in the future.

The most notable private company operating in space, however, is SpaceX, which is owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk. In recent years, the company has helped reduce the United States’ dependency on Russian Soyuz rockets to bring astronauts and deliveries to the ISS following the termination of the NASA program as a consequence of the Ukraine war.

SpaceX has launched more than 2,000 Starlink satellites into space, with plans to launch more than 12,000 by 2026. Most will form part of the Starlink project that aims to provide internet access to populations around the world.

Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted at Elon Musk in February to use the Starlink project to bring internet to Ukraine after some services were disrupted by the Russian invasion. Within days, Starlink was active across the country, and in early May, Ukrainian officials stated that 150,000 Ukrainians were using the service daily.

The use of Starlink satellites was no doubt seen in Moscow as a direct challenge to the Kremlin. While Russia is currently unlikely to attack the network, it has raised questions as to how future confrontations between private companies and countries in space might play out. The growing use of private military companies on Earth by both states and the private sector could inspire similar moves to protect government and private assets in space.

The growing profile of private space-related companies threatens to upend the rules of regulations regarding space, most of which were written decades ago. This includes the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which through Article VI established that countries have the legal authority to regulate space and not international bodies, with private companies not yet having started space exploration when the treaty was finalized. The Artemis Accords, a modern U.S.-sponsored agreement to regulate space created in 2020, has so far only been signed by 16 countries.

Nonetheless, the increasingly competitive space industry has already demonstrated that even smaller countries can play a large role in it. Overseeing the development of technologies and tempering the weaponization of space, by both countries and companies, should become a priority globally to help ensure that growing competition in space does not lead to avoidable and destructive consequences on Earth.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.

Since the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last August and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the White House has been desperate to showcase U.S. strength on the world stage. But the Biden administration has struggled to rally traditional Middle Eastern allies against Russia, raising questions over U.S. influence in the region.

For decades, U.S. policy in the Middle East has relied on coordination with the Saudi-led Gulf states, Israel, Egypt and Turkey. Since the Obama administration, however, relations between Washington and its core regional allies in the Middle East have floundered, confounding the United States’ ability to manage Middle Eastern crises and formulate consensus in the region.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Washington’s troubled relations with its Middle Eastern allies have become particularly pronounced since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. Though all the Middle Eastern countries that are American allies—Saudi-led Gulf states, Israel, Egypt and Turkey—condemned Russia at the UN Resolution in March for starting a war with Ukraine, only Israel has implemented sanctions, albeit minimally. The reluctance to impose sanctions by the United States’ allies in the Middle East reflects their intention to avoid antagonizing Russia, which is increasingly influential in the region, and also reflects their dissatisfaction with Washington and confirms the perception that its influence in the region is waning.

U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia began to deteriorate notably in 2015. The Iran nuclear deal implemented by former President Barack Obama caused considerable alarm in Riyadh, while Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen, which also began that year, received only lukewarm U.S. support. Obama’s successor, President Donald Trump, took a more pro-Saudi approach upon entering the White House in 2017, traveling to Saudi Arabia on his first foreign trip as president and increasing weapons sales to the country.

President Joe Biden, however, adopted a hard stance against Saudi Arabia during his 2020 presidential campaign. He declared he would make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” if elected, criticized Saudi policies in Yemen and called for the country to take accountability for the 2018 assassination of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

These foreign policy stances taken during Biden’s presidential campaign continued after he became president. Weeks after entering office in 2021, Biden released a 2018 U.S. intelligence report on the assassination of Khashoggi—which concluded that the assassination in Turkey was carried out “on behalf of

Biden’s intent to downsize the U.S. presence in the Middle East, part of an ongoing trend seen since the Obama administration, has also caused alarm in Riyadh. The Saudis have long relied on the U.S. presence to deter threats in the Middle East, from when Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq to Iran today, and Biden’s remarks spelling out the United States’ diplomatic stance in the Middle East have further enhanced Saudi fears over its own security. In 2021, more than 300 Houthi drone and missile attacks hit Saudi Arabia, and there have been recent attacks on the United Arab Emirates by the Houthi rebels as well. The UAE has also joined the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen.

The Gulf States’ deteriorating security situation and the belief that the U.S. is unwilling to provide satisfactory assistance to them have instigated Arab attempts to diversify their security guarantors. In August 2021, for example, Saudi Arabia and Russia signed a military cooperation agreement “aimed at developing joint military cooperation between the two countries.” The UAE agreed to purchase dozens of French Rafale jets and helicopters in December 2021 and signed a multibillion-dollar contract with South Korea for an air defense system (based on a Russian design) in January 2022.

It was also revealed in December 2021 that Saudi Arabia was building its own missiles with Chinese assistance, while a suspected Chinese military base under construction in the UAE was shut down in November 2021 following pressure from the U.S.

Leaders of both Saudi Arabia and the UAE have recently declined calls from Biden to discuss the Ukraine crisis soon after Russia attacked the country, while Riyadh also rejected U.S. calls to increase oil production and help lower oil prices in mid-February 2022. And in March 2022, Saudi Arabia and Qatar criticized the West for the resolute response to Russia in Ukraine while neglecting crises in the Middle East.

Israel’s relationship with the U.S. has also fluctuated in recent years. Obama and former Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu shared a strained relationship over Palestine as well as the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. U.S.-Israeli ties were revived under Trump, who moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and took a more forceful approach against Iran (including canceling the Iran nuclear deal).

But the Biden administration’s renewed efforts to reimplement the Iran nuclear deal, coupled with warnings over Israel’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank, have complicated U.S.-Israeli relations again. Russia’s influence over Iran and Syria has also made Israel cautious of condemning the Kremlin, lest it may need Moscow’s assistance to alleviate future crises with both these countries.

Perceptions persist in Egypt that the U.S. abandoned former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 after he faced nationwide protests as part of the wider Arab Spring. Following his downfall, the Muslim Brotherhood under Mohammed Morsi led the country for more than a year until a military coup, denounced by the White House, deposed him in 2013.

Biden has taken a tepid approach to build back the United States’ relationship with Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has led the country since 2014. While the U.S. has maintained its military assistance to Egypt, it cut $130 million in military aid to Egypt in January 2022 over human rights concerns in the country. The move blunted Egyptian enthusiasm for a tough response against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine the following month.

Raising tensions with Russia over Ukraine will also have drastic consequences for Egypt’s food security. Ukraine and Russia are both major food exporters to Egypt, and the spike in grain prices in 2010-2011 played a major role in raising public frustration that culminated in the Arab Spring. Cairo will not jeopardize its fragile food situation further by sanctioning Russia. Moreover, increasing military and energy ties between Egypt and Russia since 2014 have also helped cement positive relations between the two countries.

The degradation of the U.S.-Turkish relationship over the last decade has also become increasingly obvious. President Recep Erdoğan has faced U.S. criticism over his domestic policies, while many in Turkey have accused the U.S. of involvement in the attempted coup that almost removed Erdoğan from power in 2016.

In 2018, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Turkey’s aluminum and steel exports following rising tensions between the two countries. The following year, in 2019, Turkey agreed to purchase Russia’s S-400 air defense system, leading to Turkey’s removal from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program with the U.S, and more U.S. sanctions were imposed on Turkey in December 2020.

Turkey has also increased its economic relationship with Russia through energy deals, tourism ties and trade. Russia is Turkey’s largest importer, and their burgeoning economic relationship has continued to develop despite the shooting down of a Russian bomber by Turkish jets while it was flying over Syria in 2015—according to Russia—as well as their opposing sides in proxy wars in Libya, Syria and the former Soviet Union countries.

So far, Turkey has opposed sanctions on Russia, and has called on the West to avoid isolating Russia and, instead, look at focusing on dialogue as the way forward in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Clearly, Russia’s strained relations with major U.S. allies in the region, notably Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have not prevented the Kremlin from leveraging its power in the Middle East to prevent greater regional blowback for its invasion of Ukraine.

The United States’ dismissal of Egypt’s Mubarak in 2011, alongside the Biden administration’s current rapprochement with Iran, has again underlined the bipolar nature of U.S. foreign policy in an already unstable region. In comparison, Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war has shown the Kremlin is willing to consistently back its allies even when they themselves are under intense pressure.

The belief that the U.S. cannot offer its traditional Middle Eastern allies meaningful support means their allies are naturally wary of upsetting Russia, which, thanks to its more coherent strategy in the Middle East in recent years, has greatly increased its regional influence. With nothing new to offer them, the Biden administration risks seeing American allies continue to drift away in the region.

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C. He is a contributing editor to Strategic Policy and a contributor to several other foreign affairs publications. He is currently finishing a book on Russia to be published in 2022.