Out of Alignment: What the War in Ukraine Has Revealed About Non-Western Powers

 

Source: Foreign Affairs
By Shivshankar Menon
February 9, 2023


For the past year, many Western analysts have regarded the war in Ukraine as marking a turning point in geopolitics, bringing together not only the United States and its NATO allies but also a broader liberal coalition to counter Russian aggression. In this view, countries around the world should naturally support the West in this defining contest between democracy and autocracy.

Beyond the borders of North America and Europe, however, the past 12 months have looked very different. At the outset of the war, numerous countries in the global South identified with neither the West nor Russia. Several dozen—including such large democracies as India, Indonesia, and South Africa, as well as numerous other countries in Africa—abstained from resolutions condemning Russia at the UN General Assembly and in the UN Human Rights Council. Many of them have also been reluctant to formally adopt the West’s economic sanctions against Russia while respecting them in practice, and as the war has unfolded, some of them have sought to maintain relations with Russia as much as with the West.

Moreover, in many parts of the world, the most crucial issues of 2022 had little to do with the war in Ukraine. Emerging from the havoc of the pandemic and confronted by far-reaching challenges ranging from debt crises to a slowing world economy to climate change, many developing countries have been alienated by what they view as the self-absorption of the West and of China and Russia. For them, the war in Ukraine is about the future of Europe, not the future of the world order, and the war has become a distraction from the more pressing global issues of our time.

Yet despite this disillusionment, a coherent third way, a clear alternative to current great-power rivalry, has yet to emerge. Instead, these countries have sought to work with present realities, respecting Western sanctions on Russia, for instance, in an international system that no longer inspires much faith in its relevance to their security and economic concerns. In this sense, for many parts of the globe, a year of war in Ukraine has done less to redefine the world order than to set it further adrift, raising new questions about how urgent transnational challenges can be met.

GREATER RIVALRY, DIMINISHED POWER

A year of war in Ukraine has weakened the world order in two important ways. First, the Russian invasion, combined with the continuing effects of the pandemic and the global economic slowdown, diminished all the great powers in both power and prestige. The diminution was most apparent for Russia itself: in the unanticipated course of the war, in the country’s increasing economic and political isolation, and in the acceleration of its decline. It was least evident in the United States, which has managed to respond forcefully to the war without involving its own forces or causing serious escalation while strengthening Western unity and staying focused on the main game in Asia.

Worries remain, however, about the United States being distracted by Ukraine from its roles elsewhere, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. The precipitate withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 also raised questions about U.S. staying power and perseverance, especially now as it enters a new presidential electoral cycle. Nor has its own domestic politics permitted the United States to provide constructive leadership to the international multilateral system. For Europe, the war has limited its ability to play a broader global role, given its preoccupation with European order for the foreseeable future, regardless of whether the war ends in victory for either side or in a protracted frozen conflict.

China, too, has been taxed by the war. Because of its secondary effects on the world economy, on China’s own energy and food imports, and on China’s virtual alliance with Russia, the war has limited Beijing’s influence abroad. Unlike other permanent members of the UN Security Council, China has not played a meaningful political or military role in the Ukraine crisis. Other middle powers outside Europe have experienced similar effects. But in China’s case, two additional factors have been at play. One was Beijing’s domestic preoccupation through much of the year with its own economic slowdown and its need to project a smooth buildup to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October. The other was China’s “zero COVID” policy, which compounded its inward fixation. Together, these domestic concerns reinforced the effects of China’s unproductive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy, which created an inability to find negotiated solutions to bilateral disputes or to play a meaningful role on transnational issues such as climate change and the developing-country debt crisis.

It is not yet certain how China and the other powers will respond to their straitened circumstances. Since the party congress, China seems to be attempting to restore some balance in important relationships with Australia, Europe, and the United States. But Beijing’s domestic imperatives to reignite economic growth and to control the social and political fallout of its COVID-19 policies are likely to take precedence and limit meaningful shifts away from its recent assertive actions in maritime Asia and its land border with India.

The second effect of a year of war is that economic policies of major powers such as China, the United States, and Europe are now shaped by politics as much as by economics. Today, in many cases, security of supply and political interests take priority over price considerations in global manufacturing and value chains. “Friend shoring” and onshoring are being driven by political considerations rather than by economic responses to the changing situation. Although globalized markets have limited the extent of decoupling between China and the United States, they have not prevented strong efforts by both countries to reduce mutual dependence in strategic sectors such as semiconductor manufacturing, artificial intelligence, energy, and rare-earth metals.

The response of countries that have hitherto relied on their economic strength for global influence has varied. Japan is now making a transition to stronger defense and security policies that are better suited for today’s challenges, giving it a more balanced stance that emphasizes political and military power, too. Germany’s government speaks of a Zeitenwende, or historic turning point. And China, a global economic power that is militarily and politically constrained in its own neighborhood, has recalibrated both the nature of its engagement abroad and the way that it projects that engagement to its own people and to the world. Meanwhile, Europe and many countries in the global South pay an economic price for the West’s unprecedented sanctions against Moscow, and recession looms in some of the world’s most important economies.

ALIENATED AND UNALIGNED

As much as the war has affected relations between the major powers, the effect of a weakening world order is also profound on countries outside the West. One year later, these countries seek alternatives to the present order, but a clear third way, whether economically or politically, has yet to emerge. A growing debt crisis has affected over 50 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America since before the pandemic, according to the International Monetary Fund. This limits the developing world’s ability to strike out on an independent economic path. Indeed, most countries have respected the sanctions on Russia in practice.

Politically, too, the present situation inhibits the emergence of a single or coherent third way akin to the Non-Aligned Movement during the Cold War. A crucial difference is that today, unlike in the Cold War, there is no bipolar order. For all the talk of autocracies and democracies facing off against each other, economic interdependence between China and the United States and the reality of a globalized economy mean that the world does not have a clear two-part division offering opportunities for traditional balancing. Instead, it is a world in which great-power rivalry is not between two superpowers but among multiple players. As a result, the multisided competition and great-power rivalry have led many countries in the global South to be unaligned rather than nonaligned, dissociated from the present order and seeking their own independent solutions rather than an alternative set of widely held approaches to global issues.

Alienated and resentful, many developing countries see the war in Ukraine and the West’s rivalry with China as distracting from urgent issues such as debt, climate change, and the effects of the pandemic. Take South Asia. Three countries in the region—Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka—have been in talks with the IMF for more than a year about adjustment packages to deal with their debt. And over the last 18 months, five countries in the region—Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka—have also changed governments, and not always smoothly or constitutionally. Sri Lanka defaulted on its international debts in April 2022. During the summer, one-fifth of Pakistan’s population was rendered homeless by floods inundating one-third of the country—a devastating consequence of climate change. Neither international institutions, nor the West, nor its Chinese and Russian rivals, have found or offered meaningful solutions to these problems.

Great-power rivalry complicates the task of addressing such issues. In dealing with Sri Lanka’s debt, for instance, the West is naturally reluctant to pay for Sri Lanka to settle accounts with China, the country’s largest creditor. For its part, Beijing is waiting for the rest of the international community to act, worried that if it moves to reschedule Sri Lanka’s debt, it will set a precedent for other countries that have taken on significant loans in China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, many of which are only marginally more solvent than Sri Lanka. Indeed, the situation in South Asia is paralleled in many other parts of the developing world. Many countries now feel that they have been left to their own devices in the absence of a working multilateral system or international order. But this malaise has yet to produce a coherent or organized response.

INDIA’S OPPORTUNITY?

All in all, the war in Ukraine and the growing rivalry between China and the United States has produced a fluid situation for countries outside the United States and Europe. For some larger and more powerful middle powers, there are new opportunities in this uncertain world. India, for example, can work with neighbors to build the peaceful and more prosperous periphery that its own development demands. It can participate in the remaking of the rules of the international system now underway, particularly in new domains such as cyberspace. And it can reengage economically with the dynamic economies of Asia, participating in global value chains, to further its own transformation.

But many smaller states are more vulnerable than ever. And overall systemic risk is higher than it has been for many decades. That heightened risk is less about the prospect of a direct great-power conflict: as the first year of the war in Ukraine and the aftermath of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August have shown, the United States and other great powers are capable of avoiding direct conflict among themselves. But their ability to contain local conflicts, or even to get their way in their own neighborhoods, has been constrained by their rivalry and by the demands of a globalized economy. It is also limited in Asia in particular by the fact that power in the region is much more evenly distributed than it was during the Cold War or the subsequent unipolar moment of U.S. dominance.

With India chairing the G-20 in 2023, New Delhi may be tempted to try to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, though that seems unlikely to produce results for now. A more fruitful way ahead would be for India to bring the concerns of the global South to the forefront of the international agenda. For the time being, however, it seems likely that the international system will continue to drift. Amid a prolonged war and continued great-power rivalry, the coming year is unlikely to see more than incremental progress in addressing the urgent issues that preoccupy much of the developing world.

SHIVSHANKAR MENON is Visiting Professor of International Relations at Ashoka University. From 2010 to 2014, he served as National Security Adviser to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

After Coronavirus: A Recent Atlantic Council Analysis

Source: EPRS

July 2020

Summary

The Atlantic Council’s analysis starts from the assumption that the coronavirus pandemic is delivering a substantial shock to the post-war order, established by the United States and its allies. For the past 75 years, they have led a rules-based system predicated on liberal democratic values, an open global economy, and formal institutional bodies backed by powerful democratic states. The study argues that a downturn in Western economies could boost a rising China, while a global depression could breed support for protectionism. International bodies designed to safeguard public health appear weak and unable to contain the crisis, and alliances with transatlantic partners are fraying as nations turn inward and close borders. Sustaining and revitalizing the rules-based order that has guaranteed freedom, prosperity, and peace for decades requires a decisive global and US-led response to the pandemic’. It concludes that, in a context where coronavirus might become entrenched, US-China rivalry could continue to intensify and go global’, setting up pressures that could destabilise the European Union and endanger the US' alliance system in Asia. In response, it argues that America, Europe and China can and must respond to the emerging situation by cooperating to develop a positive, global 'new normal'.

Click to read

US-Iran Conflict and Implications for US Policy: CRS

Source: CRS

May 8 2020

By Kenneth Katzman (Specialist in Middle Eastern Affairs), Kathleen J. McInnis (Specialist in International Security), Clayton Thomas (Analyst in Middle Eastern Affairs)

"Since May 2019, U.S.-Iran tensions have heightened significantly, and evolved into conflict after
U.S. military forces killed Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and one of Iran’s most important military commanders, in
a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. The United States and Iran have appeared to be
on the brink of additional hostilities since, as attacks by Iran-backed groups on bases in Iraq

inhabited by U.S. forces have continued."

Click to Read

US sends oil to Belarus, seeking to diversify from Russia

Source: abcNEWS

May 15 2020

By AP

The Belarusian government says the United States has dispatched a shipment of oil to Belarus as the country seeks to diversify its supplies after a price dispute with Russia.

MINSK, Belarus -- The United States has dispatched a shipment of oil to Belarus, which is seeking to diversify its supplies after a price dispute with Russia, the Belarusian government said Friday.

The 80,000-ton shipment is expected to arrive at the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda in June and from there will sent by rail to Belarus.

Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei said cooperation with the U.S. on oil is "an element of energy security.”

Tensions between Belarus and Russia have been heightened in recent months by stalled negotiations over deeper integration of their economies. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accused the Kremlin of using oil supplies as leverage to push for an eventual merger of the two countries.

Belarus had long relied on discounted oil from Russia, but most shipments from there halted in January after disagreement over prices. Belarus subsequently received oil shipments from Norway, Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia.

Russia and Belarus later reached a compromise agreement and Russian state oil company Rosneft said Friday it expected to ship about 9 million tons to Belarus this year — about half the amount Belarus had bought in previous years.

US approves helicopters to Egypt but says rights concerns remain

Source: AFP

May 8 2020

Washington (AFP) - The United States has approved a $2.3 billion deal on attack helicopters for Egypt, but an official insisted Friday that Washington was still pressing on human rights concerns.

President Donald Trump's administration informed Congress on Thursday that it has given the green light to the package to refurbish 43 Apache helicopters.

R. Clarke Cooper, the State Department official in charge of military sales, said the deal was intended to support Egypt's campaign against Islamist militants in the Sinai peninsula and to ensure its interoperability with Israel's military.

The deal came despite appeals to cut off US military sales from April Corley, an American tourist visiting Egypt's Western Desert who was seriously injured and whose boyfriend was killed in an Apache attack on their tour group in 2015.

She said Egyptian authorities admitted a mistake but have refused compensation.

Another US citizen, Mustafa Kassem, died in Egyptian custody in January from a hunger strike. He was rounded up on a visit to Cairo in 2013 as part of a sweeping crackdown.

"We have been very clear with our Egyptian counterparts and interlocutors about the death of Mustafa Kassem and about the case with April Corley and that settlement," Cooper told reporters.

"Those have not gone away and they have not gone off the table," he said.

"But they do remain an important partner on the global counterterrorism campaign and they certainly remain a partner not only with us but also with our Israeli ally," he said.

Egypt in 1979 became the first Arab country to make peace with Israel, becoming one of the biggest recipients of US aid, with the defense assistance largely going back to US arms manufacturers.

Trump has cultivated a close relationship with Egypt's general turned president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has highlighted his fight against the Islamic State group and recently shipped coronavirus aid to the United States.

Representative Tom Malinowski, who served as the top State Department human rights official under president Barack Obama, told a forum last year that Egypt's military was "utterly, disastrously incompetent in addition to being cruel" and said its Apaches often fired at any spotted target without intelligence.

"The only thing they know how to do well with these F-16s and Apaches is to show them off in parades and air shows that are designed to make the regime look good," he said.

Turkey's occupation of northern Syria includes population transfers

Source: Al-Monitor

May 8 2020

By Fehim Tastekin

Turkey’s transfer of Syrian families to Tell Abyad from Afrin has reignited worries of demographic engineering in northern Syria.

Turkey has transferred hundreds of people to the northeastern Syrian town of Tell Abyad from the Turkish-controlled Operation Euphrates Shield region, stunning many families displaced from the town that have been hoping to return to their villages in the area, which fell under Turkish control during a military operation in November 2019. A new round of population transfers is reportedly underway.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes no secret of his intention to uproot Kurdish self-rule in northern Syria and change the demographic character of the region, often reiterating Ankara’s plan to move up to two million refugees to a safe zone that is planned to be set up in the Operation Peace Spring region in the northeast. Addressing the UN General Assembly last year, Erdogan said Turkey initially planned to transfer up to one million refugees to the area by constructing 140 villages and 10 towns in the region. The second phase of the plan involves extending the resettlements to the town of Deir ez-Zor, which lies on the critical M-4 highway linking the country’s east and west.

Turkey’s cross-border operations in Syria remain in full swing despite the novel coronavirus outbreak that sent the world into turmoil. Population transfers to the east of the Euphrates River from the western side are increasing along with the Turkish military activities.

On April 20, a convoy of 151 vehicles, including 14 buses, departed from Jarablus, arrived in Turkey via the Karkamis crossing and then crossed into Tell Abyad from the Turkish town of Akcakale.

Videos of the convoy were leaked over social media, forcing the governor’s office in Turkey’s southern border province of Urfa to respond. A written statement on April 21 inexplicably claimed that the convoy was carrying families displaced from Tell Abyad under the Kurdish administration. Turkish media reports hailed the news, saying downtrodden families who had escaped the Kurdish rule in Tell Abyad and settled in Afrin were now returning to their homes.

Some people who had escaped Tell Abyad during the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces offensive against the Islamic State in 2015 did take refuge in Turkey. Yet, there is no evidence showing Afrin was hosting displaced people from Tell Abyad. Most of the families resettled in Afrin were Syrians who escaped the battles in other parts of the war-torn country and took refuge in the Operation Euphrates Shield area. Another lingering question about the move is why the convoy crossed into Turkey from the Karkamis crossing instead of Oncupinar, only eight kilometers (five miles) from Afrin. Four parliamentary questionnaires submitted by Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party on the transfers also remain unanswered.

According to local Syrian Kurdish and Arab sources contacted by Al-Monitor, the convoy carried the families of Syrian fighters who fought alongside the Turkish army during Operation Euphrates Shield. It was one of demands of the fighters who staged two separate protests against Turkey on March 17 and April 7 in Tell Abyad over their overdue salaries. Thus, Turkey’s move might be a response to fighters’ demands to reunite with their families west of the Euphrates.

Hamdan al Abd, an ethnic Arab and the former co-chair of Tell Abyad’s now defunct Kurdish-led local council, also thinks the people transferred to the region are mainly families of Syrian opposition fighters that fought under the banner of the Syrian National Army.

“The demographic characteristic of Tell Abyad is systematically being changed through population transfers from eastern Ghouta, Homs, Idlib, Daraa, Deir ez-Zor and the countryside of Damascus,” Abd told Al-Monitor. “The arrivals are resettled in Tell Abyad city, eastern Tell Abyad, Ain al-Arus, Ali Bayli, Hamam al-Turkman, Suluk, Khurmaza, Khirbet al-Ruz, Havice and Sherian.”

Local Kurdish sources deem the attempts a demographic intervention against the Kurds. Yet, according to Abd, the moves do not just target the Kurdish population and the Arab population suffers as well.

“Armed groups and the Turkish forces are displacing people everywhere regardless of their ethnic or religious identities. Their houses are being taken over by their men. People are getting arrested, stripped of their rights for allegedly cooperating with the self administration or with the Kurds,” he said.

Armed clashes between Turkish-backed groups in Tell Abyad and Ras al-Ain are another source of concern for the locals, Abd said. The clashes are reportedly caused by disputes over the sharing of money and property that the opposition fighters deem the spoils of war.

“It's tragic for the locals. [The fighters] are racketeering, looting private property. They steal agricultural products, furniture, water pumps and other technical wares. They loot the granaries and sell the grain to Turkey. Bakers are having trouble finding flour. They seize generators,” he said. “Even doctors can’t go to their clinics out of fear of being kidnapped or extorted.”

According to Abd, some 140,000 people left Tell Abyad and surrounding villages for refugee camps near Raqqa, Ain Issa and Kobani, and the displacements are ongoing.

Apparently, Russia, which conducts joint patrols in the region under a deal between the two countries to end Operation Peace Spring, is not willing to interfere.

“We asked Russia to provide safe passage for people who seek to return to their homes but we couldn't receive an assurance or an answer,” he said. “For example, houses in the village of Ser Kerek on the M-4 highway were bulldozed. We sent a protest note to Russia about this but couldn't receive any answer. We also sent a list of the people whose houses were demolished.” Ras al-Ain has suffered similar atrocities, Abd added.

An April 25 joint statement by dozens of Arab tribes echoes this outcry. Drawing attention to the Syrian opposition fighters’ crimes in the region, the statement accuses fighters of kidnapping people for ransom and disrupting education and health care services. It also accuses Turkey of demographic engineering in the region.

Tell Abyad became a hot spot for Erdogan after the Kurdish-led SDF liberated the town from IS in 2015. “Whose land is it? 95% of the people in that town are Arabs and Turkmens, with 5% Kurds. … This is now posing a threat to Turkey, thus Turkey will take necessary measures,” Erdogan raged, accusing the Kurdish groups of ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Turkmens in the region.

Yet not just Kurds, but also Arabs dispute Erdogan’s figures. According to Abd, 20-22% of Tell Abyad’s population is Kurdish, 5% is Turkmen and some 2% is Armenian, with the rest being Arabs. Kurdish sources, in turn, say some 30-40% of the population is Kurdish.

Erdogan’s accusations of ethnic cleansing also seem questionable. Most of the displaced people who left their homes during the fight against IS returned to the region by 2015, except for those who are wary of returning because of their former links with IS.

Similarly, Ras al-Ain had been almost equally Kurdish and Arab, with the Arabs living mainly in the west and the Kurds in the east. The region hosted a Chechen population that had been exiled from Caucasia during the 19th century.

It is far from the first time Kurds have faced demographic engineering attempts. Following the Syrian independence in 1945, northern Syria saw many attempts to set up an Arab corridor against the Kurdish population. In 1969, the Syrian government expropriated more than one million hectares of territory owned by Kurds under what it called “land reform.” Another Arabization attempt was a plan to set up an Arab corridor 280 kilometers (174 miles) long and 15 kilometers (nine miles) wide stretching from Ras al-Ain to the Iraqi border to swallow more than 330 Kurdish villages in the region.

Following the construction of the Tabqa Dam, 56 villages were set up in the area, 41 of them on this corridor and 15 in the Raqqa countryside. Some 4,000 Arab families whose lands had been submerged by the dam were settled into these villages, each of which consisted of some 150 to 200 houses. An additional 7,000 Arab families from Aleppo, Manbic and al-Bab who lost their homes to various irrigation projects were also settled in another mainly Kurdish town of Jazeera. They received a wide range of government support from housing to weapons. It seems that history is repeating itself.

EU says it is expecting Turkey to flood Greece’s border with illegal immigrants again

Source: Greek City Times
May 8 2020
By Paul Antonopoulos


The European border protection agency Frontex expects that a number of illegal immigrants will soon be heading towards Greece again from Turkey, according to Germany’s Welt.

This emerges from an internal and confidential situation report from the so-called Frontex Situation Center dated May 5, which Welt got access to.

The report literally states under the heading “Turkey”: “The restrictions on Covid-19 have been gradually lifted in most Aegean provinces, but not yet in Dardanellia (Δαρδανέλλια, Turkish: Çanakkale), Constantinople and Smyrna (Σμύρνη, Turkish: İzmir). If freedom of movement is restored in these areas, massive movements of migrants towards the Greek-Turkish border can be expected.”

In this context, the report also notes that 262 additional police officers from other regions of Greece have been sent to the Evros border area.

“The planned deployment of another 400 newly trained police officers to the Evros area – as announced by the Greek authorities in early 2020 – has been postponed due to the Covid-19 crisis,” the report continues to warn.

In late February and early March this year, thousands of illegal immigrants who came from Turkey had already besieged the Greek-Turkish border and tried to cross the European external border. Chaotic scenes took place with Turkish soldiers shooting at Greek police and they were even caught on camera using vehicles to try and pull down the border fence.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Turkish authorities picked up the illegal immigrants from the border and brought them back inland in failure.

With Turkey allowing millions of illegal immigrants into their own country to serve as an asymmetric army against Greece, they will be desperate to quickly offload them.

The Turkish economy is in ruins, with the lira reaching an all-time low to the U.S. dollar yesterday, and Turkey’s three largest banks, Garanti, Akbank and İşbank, on the verge of bankruptcy, according to New Economy.

Turkey and Italy say shells hit near their Libyan embassies

Source: The Times of India
May 8 2020

TUNIS: Shells landed near the Turkish and Italian embassies in central Tripoli late on Thursday, they said, in an apparent expansion of bombardment by eastern-based forces to a central district of the Libyan capital. 

The eastern-based Libyan National Army  (LNA) of Khalifa Haftar has been bombarding Tripoli for months as part of a year-long war to capture the city, causing four fifths of civilian deaths in the conflict this year, according to the United Nations. At least 131 civilians were killed or injured in the fighting in the first quarter of 2020, the UN has said. However, Turkish military support for the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) has helped its forces push the LNA back from several areas in recent weeks, threatening to end Haftar's campaign in western Libya. 

The Turkish ambassador told Reuters in a message that a Grad missile had struck the High Court building next to the embassy and another landed by the Foreign Ministry. Italy's Foreign Ministry said on Twitter the area near around the Italian ambassador's residence was hit, causing at least two 

 deaths. "Italy strongly condemns yet another attack by Haftar forces," it said. 

 

Shells also landed around the city's port, where the United Nations migration agency had to abort an operation to disembark migrants who had been rescued at sea. 

 

The LNA's military spokesman had this week announced the start of a new air campaign, and said strikes had targeted an airbase at Misrata. Local authorities there said the loud blasts that occurred late on Wednesday were caused by a storage problem with old munitions. 

 Pro-GNA forces have been able to reverse some of the losses they suffered last year with the help of Turkish drones and air defence systems, which stopped most air strikes by the LNA and its allies. The LNA is supported by the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Russia. 

 

Wednesday's Misrata blasts came after an attack by the pro-GNA forces on al-Watiya airbase west of the capital, one of the LNA's most important strongholds in western Libya. The pro-GNA forces have also moved towards Tarhouna, another key LNA bastion. 

 

The UN Libya mission said last month that during the first quarter of 2020, at least 131 civilians were killed or injured, a rise of 45% over the last quarter of 2019 as the fighting escalated. 

 

It said ground fighting was the main cause of the deaths and that four fifths of them were caused by forces affiliated to the LNA. 

Why the US is removing Patriot Missile Protection from Saudi Arabia?

May 8 2020

According to The Wall Street Journal US is removing the Patriot antimissile systems from Saudi Arabia and considers reduction to other military capabilities based on assessments by some officials that Tehran no longer poses an immediate threat to American strategic interests.

The U.S. is removing four Patriot missile batteries from Saudi Arabia along with dozens of military personnel sent following a series of attacks on the Saudi oil facilities last year along with two U.S. jet fighter squadrons while considers a reduction soon in the U.S. Navy presence in the Persian Gulf.

This could be interpreted as an act of punishment for the low oil prices. Saudi Arabia have declared that it would flood world oil markets in a quest to regain lost market share and indirectly punish Russia that refused to accept additional production cuts proposed under OPEC.

But the fact is that in early February Greece agreed to sent a Patriot system to Saudi Arabia as US army planed to move them in to Iraq. "The deployment contributes to energy security, promotes our country as a factor of regional stability and strengthens our ties to Saudi Arabia," Petsas, a spokesperson for the Greek government, said. “As a defensive system, this constitutes no threat to other countries in the area" he said, adding that discussions about sending Greek Patriots to Saudi Arabia first began in October 2019, which is not surprising. The month before, unprecedented suicide drone and cruise missile strikes had caused significant damage to Saudi oil infrastructure. 

The Greek deployment could be especially beneficial for the United States now, which is looking to deploy Patriot units to Iraq in the aftermath of the Iranian ballistic missile strikes on facilities where U.S. troops are situated in that country on Jan. 7. Those strikes were in retaliation for the U.S. decision to kill Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani outside Baghdad International Airport just days earlier.

Turkey says it is still delivering parts for U.S. F-35 jets

Source: Reuters

May 7 2020

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey is still producing and delivering parts for U.S. F-35 jets despite being suspended from the program nearly a year ago over its purchase of a Russian anti-aircraft defense system, Defence Industry Director Ismail Demir said on Thursday.

Washington announced last July, when the first Russian S-400 units arrived in Turkey, that it was suspending Ankara from the F-35 program and expected to “wind down” Turkey’s involvement by March 2020.

The United States also said the purchase meant Turkey could be subjected to sanctions under U.S. legislation aimed at discouraging defense purchases from Moscow.

Turkey was both a parts manufacturer and major buyer of the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth jets. Washington says the S-400s jeopardize the jets - which Ankara denies - and are incompatible with NATO defense systems.

“There was an understanding in the United States that nothing would be bought from Turkey for the F-35s after March 2020, but that approach is no longer there,” Demir said. He suggested the global coronavirus pandemic meant the March deadline no longer applied, without elaborating.

“Our companies continue their production and delivery,” Demir said in an online interview, adding that Turkey remained a “loyal partner” of the F-35 program.

Taking Turkey out of the project would cost other members of the program up to $600 million, he said.

Turkish officials have said the deployment of the S-400s has been put back from April because of the coronavirus outbreak, but will ultimately go ahead.

Demir said a new timetable for activating the S-400s would be drawn up once operations were back to full capacity after the outbreak.

Israel signs deal to lease drones to Greece for border defence

Source: Reuters
May 7 2020

TEL AVIV, May 6 (Reuters) - Israel said it will lease drones to Greece to defend its borders, in the first military deal between the two countries which includes an option to buy the system.

The Israeli Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that the agreement with the Hellenic Ministry of National Defence was signed digitally due to the coronavirus crisis.

Under the deal, Israel's Defence Ministry will lease the Heron unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system, made by state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries for three years.

The Heron system, which is used by Israel's military and in naval forces around the world, is equipped with both day and night activity platforms, maritime patrol radars and satellite communications.

It will be used by Greece primarily for border defence, the Israeli ministry said in a statement, adding that security relations between Israel and Greece were expanding.

"We hope to sign additional agreements with Greece as well as other European partners, assisting them in addressing security challenges – in times of the corona pandemic and beyond," Yair Kulas, head of the Israel's International Defence Cooperation Directorate, said.

The coronavirus crisis as a critical juncture for Ukraine and the world

Source: New Eastern Europe
May 4 2020
By Andreas Umland and Pavlo Klimkin

Deliberations on the political repercussions of the ongoing pandemic for international relations and Ukrainian foreign affairs.

In their seminal 2012 study Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Daren Acemoglu and James A. Robinson identified the Bubonic Plague of 1346-1353 not only as one of the greatest calamities in human history. The Black Death – as the pandemic is also called – also acted as a critical juncture in European political history. While the 14th century pestilence encouraged the gradual abolition of feudalism in Western Europe, it led to the so-called Second Serfdom in most of Eastern Europe – not the least, in parts of today’s Ukraine.

The Black Death thus fundamentally reset European affairs during the Middle Ages, resulting in consequences that reach as far as today. The COVID-19 pandemic will presumably result in far fewer victims than the Bubonic Plague, which claimed the lives of between 70 to 200 million people. Yet it seems that the coronavirus crisis could also become a critical juncture in world history, with far-reaching repercussions for both states’ domestic affairs and their international relations.

Today, most serious politicians and experts share a general understanding of the pandemic’s wide-ranging consequences for the world system. But there is, so far, no common and clearly articulated understanding regarding the exact nature of these political repercussions as well as how to properly react to them. There is even less thinking, so far, regarding the international coalitions that will need to be created in order to implement plans designed to address the pandemic’s socio-political impact. For the time being, many leading thinkers are cautious in their inferences, forecasts and proposals.

Being employed at a Kyiv think-tank suggestively called ‘Institute for the Future’, we have decided to do the opposite. At a time when it is still unknown how and when the crisis, as well as the subsequent disorder generated by it, may end, we are starting a series of texts concerned with how the world system could and should change. Drawing far-reaching conclusions and suggestions has become possible as the ongoing crisis is causing a fundamental break with the past and may soon be joined by other challenges in years to come. For Ukraine, moreover, the stakes are especially high regarding how this and other future international crises will be resolved.

Of course, a transformation of the international system is hard to predict and even more difficult to enact by its very nature. Yet postponing debate regarding what is already happening and may happen in the future could delay our understanding of these fundamental changes. A transition to some new world order already appears under way and is likely to become contested in the future. Starting to discuss these issues now may ultimately help improve the quality of future outcomes.

Such reflections can, at this early stage, be neither systematic nor definitive. Rather, we address in the following texts a range of areas where radical changes are likely and/or desirable. Subsequently, we develop some tentative propositions regarding these ideas. The geopolitical transformations we are foreseeing here may, to be sure, not happen in the immediate future. But we expect these transitions ultimately to occur and be comprehensive.

Ukraine needs to take an active part in international discussion regarding these new and forthcoming political challenges. Kyiv also needs to participate, as far as possible, in the search for possible solutions to these problems as well as in their implementation. The current crisis and its political repercussions bear special risks for the Ukrainian nation. But they may also contain chances for the country to move from the global periphery closer to the centre of international decision-making.

The rise of the deep state

First, as a result of the current crisis, both national and international public institutions are likely to obtain stronger popular mandates. In the future, they will consequently play a larger and in some cases more authoritative role in societies than today. The relations between people and their states will likely change as domestic and intergovernmental institutions become increasingly focused on providing basic necessities. In some cases, the transfer of new powers to these institutions may be well-defined and limited. In other cases, such as Orban’s Hungary, this has led and may further lead to a strengthening of executive powers that undermine democracy. Despite this, not all of these new powers will necessarily lead to more authoritarianism, with many state organs using these novel competences in a different manner.

A desire to ensure better public protection and professional expertise may, in particular, lead to a strengthening of what has come to be known as the “deep state”. This concept is here understood in a neutral sense and not in the way the phrase has been misused by Donald Trump and various conspiracy theorists. The original meaning of the term “deep state” refers to those highly qualified bureaucrats, diplomats, experts and researchers whose often invisible work secures the proper functioning of governmental or semi-governmental institutions. Members of the “deep state” are assumed to combine patriotic devotion to their country​​with high professionalism in their public service. If other global challenges similar in scale to the coronavirus crisis appear in the coming years, a trend of strengthening governmental structures as a whole and of the “deep state” in particular may become ever more prominent.

For international relations, this growing importance of state institutions in relation to the wellbeing of societies can mean either of two things. It could imply a strengthening of classical principles of state-centred realism and increased competition between different national institutions. Or it could lead to new levels of interaction between national governments and especially the “deep states” of many countries.

The latter scenario may eventually lead to the formation of a “deep globalism” that would be different from the current structures found in the UN and other international organisations. “Deep globalism” would not only embrace today’s international bureaucrats. Rather, it could result in properly institutionalised, funded and empowered global networks of experts or “epistemic communities”, who would collect and analyse critical information on a transnational scale. Ideally, these associations of specialists – that nascently already exist in academia – would have sufficient authority to make and implement decisions based on the best of their knowledge.

This development would mean that classic representative democracy and relations between governments will no longer operate as they do now. To justify, organise and, most importantly, legitimise this new values-based and expert-driven international structure would constitute a considerable political challenge. Yet it is clear that current models of interaction and cooperation between states have become inadequate. They are only able to produce insufficient responses to various health, economic, environmental and migration crises that we are now facing and will be probably even more encountering in the future.

As for now, the old concept of ‘every country for itself’ is benefitting from these increasing challenges. However, while we are far from the end of the pandemic, the problems facing the national model of crisis management are already visible. They were illustrated, for instance, by the bizarre world-wide hunt for face masks by states during March and April. Still, even an international solution to these material and economic issues may not be enough by itself.

For example, a global multi-phase Marshall Plan is now being discussed by governments and international bodies. Any project that supports the world economy should only be welcomed. Yet, these anti-crisis measures will remain incomplete as long as they only focus on international financial transfers, developmental support and investment incentives. Without a simultaneous reset of the international political system, these measures will not prevent a repetition of past and current problems. Purely economic measures will not provide for a more secure and sustainable future.

The problematic post-World War II system and Ukraine

Second, as countries continue to pursue national forms of crisis management, they naturally draw on lessons from their own experiences. So far, only the corona virus itself appears, to most people, as a truly global question to be solved by international networks of researchers, medical staff and health care workers. Addressing socio-economic issues resulting from the pandemic and meeting today and tomorrow’s international challenges is still largely seen through a national, rather than international, lens.

Since World War II, a number of prominent structures and projects, to be sure, have emerged that are designed to foster closer cooperation between nations and civilizations. Theoretically, they could and should provide platforms for solving virtually all relevant international questions. Yet, today most critical issues continue to be resolved mostly at levels other than global. These uncoordinated efforts sometimes lead to fierce national, regional and local competition for resources. As long as countries continue to prioritize solving their own problems, richer states will possess a better chance to survive and thrive. The strong will become even more powerful while weak states will become even more feeble.

Ukraine is, by most indicators, a third world country. Even among this group it is not in the first tier. Consequently, for Ukrainians it is difficult, if not impossible, to win in this growing competition between nations. For Ukraine and other relatively weak states, therefore, the emergence of stronger intergovernmental and even supranational institutions represents a preferable vision of the future. However, participation in such new or renewed global organisations implies that Ukraine will need to radically improve the quality of its own national institutions.

Third, when Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began in 2014, it was not only Ukrainians who realized that the existing system of post-war international institutions is ineffective. An aggressor that has a permanent seat in the UN Security Council continues to use its position and veto rights to prevent full official acknowledgment that an aggression is taking place. This has led to an absurd situation in which one part of the UN Charter cannot be implemented due to conflict with another. By its mere existence, the UN’s most prominent decision-making body, the Security Council, has implicitly legitimized an illegal territorial expansion by one of its permanent members at the expense of a recognized UN member state. Paradoxically, the UN’s peculiar structure thereby undermines one of its key founding values.

In the past, there was little that Ukraine could do other than to continue fighting Russian aggression. There has been, to be sure, some talk recently about reforming the Security Council. Working groups were created, some new concepts were developed. However, these developments did not lead anywhere.

That is because the world’s key players saw no real need to reset the existing international system. Even worse Russia, despite facing sanctions after being expelled from the G8, has attempted to convene a summit solely comprised of the Security Council’s permanent members. The Kremlin wants to discuss the fate of Ukrainians and others without them being present by exploiting the outdated peculiarities of the UN’s structure.

Towards a new international system

After the pandemic – which has often been compared to a war – a new international situation, however, may emerge. This could amount to a new critical juncture resembling the situations at the end of the two World Wars. Such sentiment may not only renew debate regarding humanity’s general norms. Repercussions from the current pandemic and future global challenges could also trigger a direct crisis in the existing structures of major international organisations. Under these circumstances, it could become possible for countries like Ukraine to find influential, like-minded actors with whom they could raise the issue of a fundamental transformation of the UN.

Resistance, to be sure, to such a proposal would be strong. However, the UN system is already today losing legitimacy as a result of poor crisis management regarding, for instance, the ongoing pandemic. The world’s current institutional set-up is already perceived by many, not least by Ukrainians, as having become irrelevant in dealing with international challenges and ineffective in addressing increasingly acute human problems.

Today’s reform-minded UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has not been able to implement any of the substantive changes he had planned when he took office. As a result, we may have already missed the chance for gradual reform of the UN system. The world’s current institutional structure is increasingly perceived as inadequate when it comes to addressing some of today’s most burning issues. With every passing month, radical rather than moderate change is becoming increasingly likely.

In order to reset the entire UN system it would have to be thoroughly reassessed. This would ideally be done by an external and independent auditor. The body perhaps in most need of reform is the World Health Organization, which failed to provide adequate monitoring and warning of the corona virus when it began spreading. More timely analysis, clearer public communication and more resolute advice may have saved tens of thousands of lives. Preparations for the pandemic could and should have started earlier. This includes Ukraine where the prior coronavirus surge in Western Europe was at first not taken seriously.

In light of this and other experiences, humanity should ideally reinvent rather than merely reform the current UN system. The organisation and its organs simply do not deliver what they are expected to provide. They often give only belated and/or limited responses to crises or emergency that they are designed to tackle. What is the purpose of a World Health Organization that behaves “politically correct” when assessing the outlook for an epidemic? Why does much of mankind now have to pay dearly because WHO officials were, in a crisis situation, unwilling to complicate their relations with China? International institutions that cannot act on the basis of impartial analysis are doomed to be ineffective. They put under question the reasons why they were created in the first place.

What could the future international system look like?

The question regarding what institutions or groups could adequately deal with these and similar questions remains, however, unresolved. There does not yet seem to be a clear driving force that could initiate and enforce a reset of existing international institutions.

Some speculate that a reboot of the current international system will lead to the emergence of a global structure with executive powers, which would effectively be a form of world government. Yet, the chances of such an institution, even with limited powers, appearing any time soon are low. The creation of a permanent supranational institution by nation-states, that would have to relinquish their powers, is currently unrealistic. In spite of its common values, geography and heritage, European civilization has for almost 70 years failed to transform the European Commission (once founded as the European Coal and Steel Community’s High Authority) into an EU government.

One could imagine, however, a worldwide structure that could act only during emergencies. This organisation would have the task of temporarily coordinating countries in order to ensure an urgent transcontinental crisis is resolved. As the current pandemic continues and ever more clearly global challenges will become urgent, such an idea may increasingly find support among politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats and citizens around the world. The financing of such a new organisation could be secured by collecting a global emergency tax or contributions to a world insurance scheme. Such an institution could have a supervisory board consisting not only or not at all of politicians, but of scientists as well as other experts with a high global reputation.

Obviously, the creation of such an international body would be difficult. For example, the exact conditions under which a supranational structure would take over powers from the national level would be difficult to formulate. Many governments of the world may perhaps support such an idea in principle. Yet, some will try to resist any real sharing of power and cost even in the case of a global emergency. Still, future transnational crises, similar to the current pandemic, could over time delegitimise and gradually reduce such resistance. Each subsequent calamity will presumably increase the popularity of global emergency structures or other similar schemes.

Changing geopolitics and Ukraine’s Western integration

Fourth, there is increasing speculation regarding whether border changes may soon appear on the current world map. Whether or not the unification or separation of countries happens will depend on the length and intensity of crises that question today’s nationally ordered system. What exactly will happen is difficult to foresee. However, it seems clear that a profound transformation of the existing means of interaction between countries is under way.

The peculiar system of balances and institutions created after World War II can neither be wholly abandoned nor be revived. A sort of “Yalta 2.0” – that is, a conference of great powers concerned with the partition of the world into spheres of control – is also no longer possible. Maintaining clear areas of influence in today’s world is difficult. For instance, armed intervention today can be resisted by a variety of non-military means. It can also be repelled with non-conventional methods that cause unforeseen damage and costs to the intervening force.

The domination of regions by the world’s big players will, to be sure, remain a regular fixture of the international system. But zones formerly subject to semi-colonial control will become increasingly hybrid. They will experience neither full nor no control by one large power, but rather a mix of competing influences at various levels. The Kremlin understands this well, as illustrated, for instance, by its issuing of Russian passports in the Donbas and its promotion of Ukraine’s “federalisation” (i.e. Bosnification). Moscow feels that its grip on the former USSR republics is waning. Despite this, it wants to maintain influence in post-Soviet republics like Ukraine that may experience Western integration in the future.

Whatever else Moscow may come up with, joining NATO as a full member will remain Ukraine’s strategic goal. Can Ukrainians, however, be sure that NATO will be ready to embrace a country with potentially millions of Russian passport holders? Will NATO countries be ready to observe, with regards to Ukraine, treaty obligations to protect a fellow member of the alliance? Even today this is an open question among the organisation’s member states.

Ukraine’s desire to be a future EU member is no less of a challenge. Joining the EU requires even more purely Ukrainian action. The basic patterns which govern Ukraine’s state and society must be fundamentally changed. Even so, deep reforms will not be enough.

We also have to win the hearts and minds of other Europeans. This includes, for example, the French and the Dutch, who will one day hold a referendum on the question of whether Ukraine can join the EU. If we act as we have done before, it will be difficult to win this battle. Perhaps, the pandemic and its far-reaching repercussions can give Ukrainians a chance to jump over our own shadow.

Unlike other politicians and commentators, we do not expect today’s crisis to cause the weakening or indeed disintegration of NATO and the EU. On the contrary, we believe that strengthening these organisations is necessary for the West’s continued leadership in the future. If NATO and the EU do not live up to the expectations from them, the transatlantic space of today will no longer exist. The stakes are indeed high, but that may be also an advantage.

For Ukrainians, the stakes are even higher and are nothing less than existential. Will we remain a socio-economic hybrid and geopolitical grey zone, or will we finally enter the Euro-Atlantic community? To believe that we will be welcomed into a renewed transatlantic world simply because of who we are is futile. The coronavirus pandemic as a critical juncture does not change our goals. However, it does provide us an opportunity to abandon old mentalities and build new institutions necessary to integrate into the Euro-Atlantic space with the help of our friends and partners.

Pavlo Klimkin was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine in 2014-2019, and is Head of the European, Regional and Russian Studies Program of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv.

Andreas Umland is General Editor of the book series “Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society” at ibidem Press in Stuttgart, and a Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv.

China's new Military Capabilities and the New Geopolitics

Source: FPRI
May 4 2020
By Jeremy Black

Discussion of Chinese intentions inevitably draws attention to the pronounced buildup of naval weaponry in recent years, with each year bringing fresh confirmation of China’s ability to leapfrog existing assessments of the size of its navy. Thus, in April 2020, China constructed a second Type 075 warship, a class designed to compete in amphibious capability with the American Wasp class ships. Two more are anticipated, as are two more aircraft carriers. These are clearly designed to match American warships, and raise interest in China’s ability to sustain distant interest by sea, most obviously in the Indian Ocean, but also wherever Chinese geopolitical concerns may be favored by naval power projection. Areas where China has maritime interests include not only the South-West Pacific, where it has been actively developing alliance partnerships, much to the disquiet of Australia, but also the Caribbean. Moreover, Chinese maritime partners include Equatorial Guinea. So, the notion that China might automatically “limit” itself to dominating a “near China,” of the East and South China Seas is implausible. Even were that to be the goal, the need to prevent external intervention in that dominance, intervention most obviously by the American and Japanese navies, but also by that of Australia, would require a greater range of naval activity in terms of “access denial.” It was that principle that led the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the modern counterparts would be seeking to thwart the use of Guam and to block chokepoints of naval access.

This approach presupposes that the Chinese wish for war, which is highly unlikely, but any policy inherently requires planning for the possibility of conflict, and that is true of the Chinese as well as for their possible opponents. Of course, that brings with it the danger that preparing for conflict might actually help precipitate it.

In terms of planning, there are a host of imponderables, but this is scarcely new. It was true of the two world wars as the relevant weapons systems had not been tested hitherto. That puts a premium on wargaming, and that, eased by computer simulation, has been underway for years. Indeed, during the 2000s, the American navy planned accordingly, notably at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and advocated what in effect was an alternative strategic prioritization and different foreign policy. While the American government, army, air force, and marines were focused on Iraq and Afghanistan, the navy regarded this as at best a second-order priority (a view shared by Chinese policymakers), and, instead, urged the need to focus on the waters off East Asia. That underlay Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” and, as in so much else, and to a degree that neither man wishes to acknowledge, there is continuity between Obama and Trump, as there would have been between McCain/Romney and Hilary Clinton.

In part, this situation poses a major problem for Britain. For political “show” reasons, there is the deployment of naval assets off East Asia, but Britain can in practice contribute relatively little there, not least as America’s crucial regional partners are Japan, followed by Australia. Instead, the value of “Europe,” that most curious, indeed in many respects implausible of military units, is in the wider geopolitics posed by China. For the Chinese challenge is not simply a matter of a certain (and growing) number of naval units, combined with the formidable access-denial capability produced by land-based missiles. Instead, China became more threatening essentially because of the collapse of the strategic nexus that had enabled the West to win the Cold War on the cheap: the Sino-American axis. It was that axis, negotiated by Kissinger and sold by Nixon, with the Americans and Chinese each profiting from the weakness of the other, that enabled the Americans to exit the Vietnam War with a strategic triumph, not that public history will permit such a presentation. Indeed, by the end of the 1970s, the Chinese and the Vietnamese were at war.

The condition of Western strategic mastery was Sino-Soviet division, and this to a degree that triumphalist voices ignored in the 1990s. As a result, the key strategic disaster of the early 2000s was not al-Qaeda, but, rather the Sino-Russia reconciliation. That was the major Western failure of the 2000s, one that was neglected due to the particular focus on the conflicts of the period.

That is germane to the military situation today for the challenge posed by China is made much stronger by that added by Russia. Indeed, that element is more significant than the specifics of particular weapon systems, for example new-model Chinese fighters and tanks. Any military focus on China is challenged by the need also to address Russian prospects, and vice-versa. That also explains the issue of Britain’s role, and, indeed, that of “Europe” as a whole. Despite the claims of some British navalists, the major value of Britain in any confrontation with China, or deterrence toward it, is not going to be provided by the dispatch of HMS Elizabeth to the South China Sea. Indeed, as one former First Sea Lord put it to me, it would be “every submarine’s dream” to sink that carrier, which would indeed be vulnerable. The value of Britain, instead, is to be part of the deterrence to Russia. That, indeed, provides a threat in the Atlantic that would be part of, but different to, any long-range Chinese military commitment, one made costly through the risk incurred through the distance of the presence. Thus, there is a new version of the military challenge of the Cold War, one best countered by the submarine skills of that period than by the attempt to force an equation of power toward China based on what Britain (and the United States) have in the form of a count of carriers.

Of course, a full-spectrum Chinese challenge includes hybrid warfare in its various forms, including cyber-warfare, the encouragement of dissidence, and a range of unconventional and/or irregular forms of conflict. The nature of the current world economic crisis, the foolish consequence of the mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, will help China far more than any individual weapons program. The increase in unemployment will be only one of the more obvious crises of hope, and this offers much to China, a power with a range of strategic means. Thus, for China, many opportunities are in prospect.

The Western strategy, transposed from that of the 1950s, was containment, but the present situation offers China the possibility of leapfrogging containment, rather as the Soviet Union was to do with Egypt, Cuba, Ethiopia, et al. This forces Western powers to consider the possibility of China exploiting developments that might not otherwise seem to be anything to do with that country.

In these circumstances, the prime strategic deterrent to China would be better relations between the West and Russia. That appears unlikely given the shared interests of China and Russia in revisionism, but, at the same time, there is an uneasiness in their relationship.

The alternative idea, of a reliance alone on the strengthening of the West underrates the tensions within the West, and, indeed, within individual countries. Consistency in alliance is scarcely an easy remedy given the divisions within Europe and the extent to which American policy is so obviously dependent on electoral results. The divisions within Europe are such that it is easier to propose an approach toward Russia, via NATO, rather than China, for which there is no comparable mechanism. That suggests that the burden of defense against China is likely to depend on America’s existing Pacific system. Its resilience in the face of China’s ambitions is uncertain.

Jeremy Black is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is Professor of History at Exeter University.

COVID-19 and the Geopolitics of Petroleum

Source: Military.con

April 1 2020

By Joseph Micallef

Of all the world's commodities, petroleum best epitomizes the geopolitical consequences of natural resources. Countries that were fortunate to possess large reserves of hydrocarbons found themselves with incredible wealth and in control of a powerful driver of economic development. Countries that were unable to produce enough oil and gas for their needs found themselves vulnerable to supply disruptions and at a major geopolitical disadvantage.

The oil and gas industry had a significant Achilles heel, however. Oil and gas development had significant up-front development costs but, in many cases, relatively low operating costs. Once a well was brought into production, the cost of keeping it operating was relatively low, even if the revenue was insufficient to amortize the development cost. The result was that, historically, the oil and gas industry has been subject to volatile swings in pricing.

In 1919, the Texas Railroad Commission (TRC) was charged with setting production levels among Texas oil producers in order to control the supply and stabilize prices. From 1930 through 1960, the TRC was largely responsible for setting the price of oil worldwide.

In 1960, a group of oil-producing countries, led by Saudi Arabia, adopted the TRC model and formed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to regulate oil production and stabilize prices. OPEC did not eliminate oil price volatility, but its willingness to regulate its production levels helped moderate some of the pricing instability. Between 2000 and 2020, average yearly oil prices varied from a low of $21.99 per barrel in 2001, to a high of $102.58 per barrel in 2011. The average price in 2019 was $57.92 per barrel. Currently, average oil prices are approximately $20 per barrel.

Canada, Russia, Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States, all significant oil producers, were among the oil-producing countries that did not join OPEC. The U.S., a major producer, began to import oil in 1959. Although the U.S. still imports oil, it has been a net exporter of both refined petroleum products and crude oil since November 2019.

OPEC's share of the global oil market peaked at slightly more than 50% in 1973. In 2019, it was approximately 30%. Energy conservation; new discoveries; improvements in drilling and production technology; and, most significantly, the development of horizontal drilling to open "tight" oil- and gas-bearing formations and the development of the Canadian tar sands, have all cut into OPEC's market share. In addition, Asia, principally China, India and Japan, have now become the main market for OPEC's exports.

In 2017, Russia, along with 10 other non-OPEC oil-producing countries, agreed to coordinate production cuts with the group in order to stabilize prices. The countries were referred to as the "Vienna Group" and the arrangement as OPEC+. The agreement represented a strategic alignment of Saudi Arabia and Russia to rationalize prices. It lasted through March 2020.

One of the immediate effects of the COVID-19 pandemic was a sharp drop of approximately one to two million barrels per day (BOPD) in world demand for petroleum. In early March, OPEC agreed to extend its current cutbacks of 2.1 million BOPD and to reduce production by an additional 1.5 BOPD to a total of 3.6 million BOPD.

OPEC requested that Russia and the other 10 oil-producing countries in the OPEC+ group decrease their production by an additional 500,000 BOPD. Russia refused to accept the additional production cuts, arguing that any production cutbacks would simply be made up by American shale oil producers.

In retaliation, Saudi Arabia declared that it would flood world oil markets in a quest to regain lost market share and indirectly punish Russia for its unwillingness to cooperate.

Within a matter of days, world oil prices cratered by approximately 60%. The collapse of oil prices, coupled with rising anxiety over the economic consequences of the growing COVID-19 pandemic, triggered widespread economic turmoil and a marked decline in financial markets.

U.S. Strategic Interests and OPEC

The governments of both Russia and Saudi Arabia are heavily dependent on petroleum exports to fund the bulk of their expenditures. In Riyadh's case, oil exports supply 70% of its revenues; in Moscow's case, the number is approximately 46%. Both countries have sovereign funds designed to cover shortfalls in government revenues from falling oil prices. Saudi Arabia's Sovereign Wealth Fund had $320 billion in assets, while Russia's National Wealth Fund had approximately $124 billion at the end of 2019.

The Trump administration was quick to characterize the Saudi and Russian decisions to increase oil production as a thinly veiled attack on American shale oil producers. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that 7.7 million BOPD, or about 2.81 billion barrels, of crude oil were produced from tight oil formations in the United States in 2019. This was equal to about 63% of total U.S. crude oil production last year.

This was not the first time that Saudi Arabia had tried to use low prices to force the producers of the more expensive shale oil out of the market. In response, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would buy up to 77 million barrels of oil from American producers for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Funding for these purchases was not, however, included in the recently passed 2020 Cares Act. In the meantime, the TRC announced that it would consider limiting Texas oil production to stabilize prices. Texas represents 40% of U.S. oil production.

Pundits were quick to take positions on which country, Saudi Arabia or Russia, would be able to hold out the longest in the ensuing price war. Meanwhile, television commentators pointed out that lower gasoline prices represented a boon for American consumers.

The more germane questions, however, are where does the U.S. interest lie? Is the U.S. better off from lower or higher petroleum prices? What are the consequences of lower oil prices on America's strategic interests around the world?

From the 1960s through 2013, the U.S. was the largest net importer of petroleum in the world. Lower petroleum prices were in America's interest as they decreased the balance of payments deficit created by oil imports and represented savings to American households. Today, gasoline costs represent around 2% of average household income. So even significant reductions in gasoline prices are not going to represent a major change in a family's income -- certainly not in respect to the current economic turmoil.

Moreover, given that the U.S. is now a net exporter of oil and natural gas, lower prices reduce its export earnings. Additionally, over the last two decades, the U.S. shale oil industry has emerged as an important driver of economic development and a source of high-paying blue-collar jobs. On balance, the U.S. economy would be better off if prices returned to their $50-to-$60 pre-crash levels than if they continue at their current depressed levels.

From Washington's standpoint, the strategic implications of low oil prices around the world are mixed. On the one hand, low oil prices are a significant constraint on the Russian government and on the Kremlin's ability to fund the expansion and modernization of Russian military forces. Russia needs oil prices at around $50 a barrel or higher to balance its budget, and closer to $75 to finance the more ambitious social and military programs that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to implement.

On the other hand, low oil prices threaten to destabilize countries that are American allies and to create new areas of regional instability or aggravate existing ones. This is particularly true of the Gulf region, but also of countries such as Nigeria and Mexico. Roughly one-third of Mexico's federal budget comes from oil exports.

The average cost of producing a barrel of oil in the world is around $25. It's a difficult number to pin down because operating costs are typically in local currency and are affected by exchange rates, as well as each country's relative market share. Costs per country, however, can vary dramatically.

The U.K., whose North Sea oil fields are mature and declining, has a production cost of $52 per barrel. Norway, whose oil fields are in a similar position, has an operating cost of $36.10 per barrel. On average, the amortization of capital costs typically represents about 50% of operating costs. Direct production, overhead, taxes and transportation costs represent the other half.

The U.S., where oil shale production represents two-thirds of output, has an equally high cost at $36.20. Brazil and Canada, whose new oil production is particularly capital intensive, have costs of $48.80 per barrel and $41 per barrel, respectively. Russia's average production cost is around $19.20, although the cost of new production, especially in its Arctic oil fields, is much higher.

At the other extreme, Saudi Arabia has a production cost of $9.90 per barrel, while Kuwait has the lowest production cost at $8.50. Across OPEC, the average production cost is probably between $25 and $30 per barrel. That means, at current prices, most OPEC producers' costs exceed revenues after they factor in capital costs.

Only Iraq, Iran and the UAE have costs comparable to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. In short, current oil prices are unsustainable long term. Even those countries that can produce oil profitably at these levels cannot produce enough to make up in volume the revenues they need to fund government expenditures. In the short term, prices may drop even lower but, in the long term, low prices are both unsustainable and extremely destabilizing politically.

The trends that produced the current instability in petroleum markets are not new. They have been in process for some time. The COVID-19 pandemic simply accelerated those trends and brought them to a culmination faster and more dramatically than would otherwise have been the case. Ironically, instead of dealing with the consequence of "peak oil" and skyrocketing prices, today we are dealing with too much production capacity and insufficient demand.

For much of its existence, OPEC has been an American nemesis, a position underscored in 1973 when the Arab members of OPEC (OAPEC) embargoed oil shipments to the U.S. in response to American aid to Israel. Historically, as a net consumer of oil, the U.S. wanted lower prices, while producers wanted higher prices. Today, however, it's a different world, one in which the interests of OPEC and the U.S. are more closely aligned.

Prices in the $50 to $60 range are sufficient to keep the U.S. shale oil industry economic and afford OPEC members a basis of financial stability. It's also in Russia's interest, as it stabilizes the Kremlin's finances, even if it falls short of Moscow's more ambitious goals. In the meantime, the U.S. petroleum industry will continue to innovate and to bring down its shale oil production costs, while continuing to expand its liquefied natural gas export capability. Moreover, the U.S. would likely get Canada, Brazil, the U.K. and Norway to participate, even if unofficially, in such an arrangement. The Alberta provincial government is already limiting oil production.

In light of the financial repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. and the global economy, stabilizing the oil market and a key American industrial sector would be a first step in repairing the economic damage. It's time for Washington to make a deal with OPEC and Russia to stabilize the oil market, even if that means the U.S. must agree to some production cuts or export curtailment to ensure price stability.