Relations between the United States and the Vatican have never been easy and, indeed, they have no reason or way of being so. More enemies than friends, or rather frienemies, an inescapable fate seems to condemn the two empires to a warlike confrontation wherever their lines intersect, in each of the emerged lands and in any era.

The United States and the Vatican are and always will be frienemies. They can only be this. They can only aspire to negotiated antagonism, or rather to competitive cooperation whenever collaboration is necessary – as in the presence of a common and potentially deadly enemy – and to confrontation whenever history allows it. A perpetuum bellum, theirs. And it cannot be otherwise: the United States is the City upon the hill in the image and likeness of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the beacon of a unique Luther-shaped Protestant Christianity imbued with messianic contents and full of millenarian expectations; the Vatican is what remains of the Heritage of St. Peter and the Res publica christiana.

Ideological differences aside, there is a reason behind the animosity between these two powers whose kings swear by the Bible and have historically sought to proclaim the Gospel to every creature. That reason is Latin America, or rather hegemony over it, and it has served as a casus belli of a conflict that, over time, has assumed a world-scale dimension. As a result, today, the United States and the Holy See are at war: the World War of Crosses.

Roosevelt’s prophecy, Rockefeller’s shadow

The story between the United States and the Church is one of love-hate – more hate than love, actually – whose origins can be traced back primarily to the thought of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Founding Fathers, secondly to the historically WASP-centred structure of North American society and in tertiis to America’s imperial mindset. The latter, for a long time, led ordinary people and the ruling class to associate with danger, or rather with enmity, everything that WASP was not: from African Americans to Catholics, with the latter suspected of double loyalty – an accusation that, in 1960, would also be made against John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Catholics, as long as they exist, will be a problem for the American Empire. Theodore Roosevelt, the author of the homonymous corollary to the Monroe doctrine, was strongly convinced of this. He was the one who, in 1912, identified in the Catholic-majority of the subcontinent the main obstacle to its assimilation to the American sphere. Nelson Rockefeller was also convinced of this, and, in 1969, he warned the White House against the Liberation theology-driven turn to the Left of the Church.

The United States, in the end, would come to terms with the Catholic question in the simplest of ways: investments in proselytism, that is, the establishment of programs and foundations, such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy, having as their sole focus the conversion of the three Latin Americas – Mesoamerica, the Caribbean and the Southern Cone – to an American-friendly, WASP-shaped Protestantism.

History, as is well known, proved Roosevelt and Rockefeller right: the Americanization of the subcontinent went hand in hand with its Protestantization. This is demonstrated by the incontestable and undeniable fact that the more Protestant a nation is, the more it supports the White House’s foreign agenda, whether it is moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – as Guatemala and Honduras did – or slavishly accepting every line adopted by the United States.

From Latin America to the world

The success experienced in Latin America – where one in five people is now Evangelical, while in Brazil one in three is – encouraged the United States to export the strategy elsewhere, in each of the emerged lands, in the hope-expectation of a profitable harvest in terms of soft power, cultural influence and diplomatic fallout.

Today, what arose during the Cold War as a confrontation between two empires for the hegemony of Latin America, against the background of the anti-Soviet containment, is a world-scale conflict. There is no theater, in fact, where the followers of Peter and Luther do not fight each other by means of evangelization campaigns, humanitarian activities, charity and development cooperation, competing to see who attracts more souls. Their wars are being fought in the People’s Republic of China – where there are twenty Evangelicals for every Catholic –, in Africa – where Evangelicals have surpassed Catholics, who represent respectively 30% and 21% of the total population –, in Oceania, in Asia and within Europe itself.

In Europe, where Catholicism increasingly resembles a faded postcard in an ever-growing list of countries – from Germany to Portugal, passing through Italy, France and the Netherlands –, American-style Protestantism grows, thrives and spreads. In France, today, there are almost one million evangelicals, in Spain they have come to constitute 2% of the population and in Portugal nine out of ten new churches belong to Evangelicals.

The Popes against the White House

History seems (in part) to agree with the United States, which has historically seen the Catholic Church as more of a natural-born adversary than a potential collaborator. The two empires, not surprisingly, have put aside this genetic rivalry only in the presence of force majeure, such as Nazism and Communism, or dossiers requiring joint efforts in light of common interests, such as the Cristero War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and climate change.

In the absence of threats to world peace, and in the absence of contingent convergences, between the United States and the Church has always been war, although a covert one. It is history that Pius XII and Hirohito inaugurated diplomatic relations a few months after Pearl Harbor, to the dismay of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is history that Pius XII tried until the last moment to prevent the nuclear attacks on Japan. And it is history, or rather Vatican conspiracy theory, that the United States saved Kyoto by preferring Nagasaki – the beating heart of Japanese Catholicism since 1580 – to punish the Pope.

Not even the entry of the humankind into the Cold War era would have had a decisively long-lasting impact on the quality of relations between the two biblical empires. They cooperated in anti-Communist activities across Central and Eastern Europe, but in the same years both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan would give extraordinary impetus to the previously non-existent Protestantization campaign of Latin America.

Perhaps, because of the awareness of having been deceived, added to a strong opposition to any form of totalitarianism, John Paul II became a major detractor of the Unipolar moment and of the West’s post-Cold War value system. It is history that he fought veemently against the rise of what he dubbed the culture of death, while also opposing the excesses of capitalism. And it is history that he unsuccessfully attempted to convince the Bush administration not to invade Iraq and that he tried to make peace with Russia.

Today, a Cold War ended, but a new one begun. As in the past, between the two empires is collaboration whenever they have to, but it is competition, if not confrontation, whenever they can. Unlike the past, however, due to historical awareness and geopolitical foresight, the Church seems to have chosen the other field, as shown by Pope Francis‘ sympathy for the Multipolar transition, emblematized by the iron pact with the two Russias – the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate – and by the Pivot to China.

Today, although not much is written about it, one of the most important fragments of the so-called piecemeal Third World War, mainly starred by the United States, Russia and China, is the World War of Crosses. Therefore, all eyes on the Washington-Rome line.

L'articolo The Popes, the White House and the World War of Crosses proviene da InsideOver.

Today if we talk about soft and hard power, it’s because Professor Joseph Nye theorized them in the late 1980s.

Nye is a Political Science researcher at Harvard University and throughout his long and prestigious career he has been a fundamental point of reference in US politics, which he helped to shape through his original studies. From 1977 to 1979, Professor Nye was Deputy to the Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology and chaired the National Security Council Group on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In 1993 and 1994, he served as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates intelligence reporting for the President. During the Clinton administration from 1994 to 1995, Nye served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, while in October 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry appointed him to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, a body that discusses strategic issues and provides the Secretary and other senior Department officials with insights and ideas that can translate into courses of action.

Thanks to his ten-year experience in international politics and his revolutionary ideas, Professor Nye is certainly the most suitable person to provide a different perspective, compared to the realist one, of the current global situation.

We’ve recently managed to have a brief interview with the professor, who explained to us some key concepts of soft and hard power and how the major global powers are interacting today, with a small look at the future and the European situation.

Given that, especially in Italy, the public has difficulty understanding what soft power and hard power are, could you give us a brief definition?

Power is the ability to affect others to get what you want and it can be done in three ways: coercion, payment, attraction. Soft power is the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payment.

What are the substantial differences between US, Chinese and Russian soft power?

Russia attracts primarily in parts of its cultural area in its former empire. China has wider aspirations and attracts by culture, it economic performance, and its economic assistance. The US attraction through its culture and civil society, primarily where liberal values are involved .No country has universal attraction to all audiences, but polls show that the US has more soft power than China or Russia at this stage in history.

The war in Ukraine has revolutionized the global order: Russia has further tied itself to China, and is now to all intents and purposes the junior partner in this bilateral relationship. When the war ends how can Russia be reintegrated into the international system? Will it be possible to untie it from China?

The Russia/China alignment will not be easily undone, but there are some tensions between them. It will be important to reintegrate a post Putin Russia into Europe to the extent that is possible.

In 2018, you wrote that the real danger is that China proves to be too weak rather than too strong, and thus fail to contribute to the multilateral order it did not help to create. Do you still believe so? Why?

No. Though I think China faces serious demographic and productivity problems, it is strong enough to seek to reshape rather than to contribute to the liberal international order.

For years, US security policy has identified China as the “pacing challenge” as it has been demonstrated (and demonstrable) that Beijing is working to try to counter US global economic/military power. In the light of the speed of Chinese rearmament, do you think that the “Thucydides trap”, which you believe is unlikely but still possible, is closer?

I still do not think that the analogy with Thucydides’s Greece fits well. I prefer Kevin Rudd’s metaphor of a “managed competition” between two strategic rivals who are not an existential threat to each other and who can gain from areas of cooperation such as climate change.

Around mid-2022, you believed that we were not in a “new Cold War”. However, the United States is trying to free itself from some ties with China (I am thinking, for example, of the microchip supply chain and therefore that of the Rare Earth Elements). So, I ask you: is decoupling actually possible? Given this attempt to cut these ties, is it still not entirely correct to speak of a “new Cold War”?

A full scale decoupling of the US (and Western) economies with China would be enormously costly to both sides. It is unlikely that will happen unless we blunder into a war. But selective decoupling of supply chains with military and strategic significance is likely. Nonetheless this is not like the Cold War where there was almost no economc, social or ecological interdependence with the Soviet Union.

In your opinion, how could the West reinvigorate soft power with non-aligned countries (especially African and Latin American ones)?

We should take their agenda seriously, particularly on development

In a recent interview with a South African international relations researcher, it emerged that non-aligned countries do not want to be the stage of confrontation between global powers. So, partnership proposals must have the sole purpose of mutual benefit, and not oppose the presence of rival powers. Do you think the United States and European countries are still capable of it?

Yes, there are joint gains to be made in development and climate.

Speaking of Europe, do you think that the European Union is a limit or a multiplier of the soft power capabilities of the individual member countries?

Definitely a multiplier!

Featured image from Chatham House

L'articolo “China-Russia axis hard to shake. The EU should not give up on Moscow.” Soft power according to Joseph Nye proviene da InsideOver.

US Envoy to Sri Lanka Julie Chung made a scathing remark recently that China is a ‘spoiler’ as it is holding up Sri Lanka’s application for the USD 2.9 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout, a dire need for the government of Sri Lanka. When the BBC questioned Ms. Chung about the IMF and the current state of Sri Lanka, she responded in the affirmative. Her remarks came while Sri Lanka remains silent keeping its fingers crossed over China’s decision.

Her statement came at the right time as still it is not known what the Chinese think of Sri Lanka’s IMF deal and there are only rumours that China has agreed to a two-year repayment plan for the country’s debt to China of approximately USD 7 billion.

China’s position

There are several rumors currently circulating in the social media over China’s position regarding its restructuring programme.

A letter dated January 18 to President Ranil Wickremesinghe of the Chinese government declaring that they can only give a five-year moratorium and that they cannot go beyond that prompted inquiries from several media outlets.

The letter, which the Chinese Embassy has declared to be a forgery, was circulating on social media and claimed that Chinese financial institutions had contacted Sri Lankan officials to offer their assistance in finding a suitable solution to the country’s maturing loans. The falsified letter stated that because of the slowdown in the real estate market and the already-stressed status of the Chinese banking system, they regret to advise that China would not be able to pay off the outstanding debt but are willing to reduce the repayment terms.

The Chinese government immediately reacted to the forged letter, however, they are yet to convey what is true.

Also, another story broke out about China’s stand. This time it was according to a letter seen by Reuters. The Reuters said that the Export-Import Bank of China reportedly offered Sri Lanka a two-year debt moratorium, according to a Reuter’s story. It also consented to aid the nation in its quest to obtain a USD 2.9 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. Which of these two stories is correct, is not known and yet to be determined by the government of Sri Lanka.

US envoy statement

But the US envoy statement that the greater onus to move was on China, as the biggest bilateral lender, irked China. She openly said, “We hope that they do not delay because Sri Lanka does not have time to delay. They need these assurances immediately.” “For the sake of the Sri Lankan people, we certainly hope China is not a spoiler as they proceed to attain this IMF agreement.”

It is also unclear whether India and China will ultimately agree to write down their loans to Sri Lanka which is widely anticipated. India has already agreed to the terms but their recommendations are not made transparent.

Ms.Chung said after Argentina plunged into economic crisis and default in 2001, some American hedge funds, rather than accepting a restructuring of the sovereign bonds they had bought on the open market, demanded full repayment and took the country’s government to court in the US to achieve it.

In response to Ms Chung, the Chinese Embassy in its official media release said it’s always “China, China, China is our US colleague starts chanting this infamous mantra and blaming China as a spoiler to the Islands negotiation with the IMF during her recent interview on Sri Lanka debt Issue.”

But one of the remarks was the US is printing dollar with more than USD 3 trillion in 2020 alone. China criticized, “Who is keeping on printing money?” referring to the US. But China needs to be retold that the US dollar is the global reserve currency. In other words, most countries and companies from other countries usually need to transact business in US dollars, making them exposed to the value of their currency relative to U.S. dollars. The United States and the Federal goverment in particular, don’t face this “currency risk”.

However, the economist suspects that China is still undecided on the IMF recommendations to Sri Lanka. “China will test the waters from time to time to see what idea will succeed,” an economist said. China is unwilling to completely commit. They simply require 100% commitment from the debtors in order to finally take over their assets.

Despite making the Sri Lankan government scratch its head over the IMF deal, China has scooped up another joint venture to establish a cargo service hub at Colombo Port. The contractor is none other than China’s CM Port group, which has taken the Hambantota Port for 99 years lease. The proposed deal is worth USD 150 million.

L'articolo US calls China a “spoiler” as China still “cold” over restructuring its debt to Sri Lanka proviene da InsideOver.

After one year of war in Ukraine, Nato is stronger and more united. Inside Over dialogues with General (ret.) David Petraeus about the dynamics shaped by the conflict at the global level, the role of the Alliance in the world competition between powers and the possible ends of the war. Petraeus, born in 1952, has served 37 years in the U.S. Army and has served in many leading roles. From 2007 to 2008 he was the commanding general of Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I), from 2008 to 2010 he has served as commander of the U.S. Central Command (Centcom), between 2010 and 2011 he has been the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and commander, U.S. Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A). From to 2011 and 2012 he has been the 4th Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (Cia). Now  Partner at KKR and Chairman of the KKR Global Institute,

How has the Ukraine War changed the strategic context in Europe? 

“I think it is accurate to observe that while Vladimir Putin set out to “Make Russia Great Again,” what he really has done is make NATO great again: prompting two historically neutral (and very capable) countries to seek NATO membership; fostering a level of unity in NATO that has not been seen since the end of the Cold War; resulting in increased defense budgets in Europe and the U.S., with Germany, notably, now committed to achieve the NATO goal of spending 2% of GDP on defense, after having not event gotten to 1.5% previously; leading to augmentation of forces in the Baltic States and eastern Europe; and, finally, dramatically reducing Russia’s military capability, with Russian forces having sustained enormous casualties and staggering losses of weapons systems and vehicles, as well as dramatically depleting its stocks of munitions.  In sum, Russia is very substantially diminished and NATO substantially strengthened”.

Can we state that the West is more united one year after the beginning of the war? 

“Yes, absolutely, despite occasional hesitation over provision of certain weapons to Ukraine (as in the decision over the provision of western tanks to Ukraine, which is now agreed, of course).  As I noted earlier, NATO and other western countries have not been this united since the end of the Cold War”.

What was the role of Western weapons and Intelligence support in strengthening the Ukraine resistance? 

“Absolutely vital.  Ukraine has done a truly extraordinary job of mobilizing the entire country to fight what Ukrainians see as their War of Independence; they have done vastly better than Russia in recruiting, training, equipping, organizing, and employing additional forces and capabilities.  But that would not have been possible without the massive assistance from the U.S. and other western countries.  The U.S. alone has now provided over $27 billion in arms, ammunition, and materiel to the Ukrainian military since the invasion last February, with another $2B reportedly about to be added.  And the weapons systems provided continue to be more and more capable.  And, reportedly, sharing of intelligence has been very helpful, as well, though I don’t want to speculate further on that”.

Which mistakes were committed by the Russian Army? 

 A staggering number of mistakes, – everything from the terribly deficient initial campaign design, overestimation of Russian capabilities, complete underestimation of the capabilities (and incredible determination) of the Ukrainian forces and people, lack of appreciation of western support for Ukraine, poor command and control and communications, failure to achieve combined arms effects (armor, infantry, artillery, engineers, close air support, air defense, and electronic warfare all working together), wholly inadequate logistics, terrible indiscipline by Russian forces, lack of a professional noncommissioned officer corps, poor senior leadership (which is why multiple leaders have been fired), and, clearly, a failure to take advantage of all the time Russian forces had in Belarus and Russia to actually train and prepare the forces for the invasion. 

Is the perspective of an Ukraine victory a feasible one for the end of the War? 

“Yes, though the answer to that question obviously depends on how one defines “victory” and it also depends on a number of factors, most significantly continued strong western security and economic assistance for Ukraine and further tightening of the sanctions and export controls on Russia.  At the end of the day, I believe the war will end with a negotiated resolution when Russia realizes that it is unsustainable on the battlefield (where Russia has already lost more than 8 times the soldiers the USSR lost in nearly 10 years in Afghanistan) and also on the home front, given the ever-tightening sanctions and export controls.  And we need to do all that we can to hasten that day – and also to be ready with a Marshall-like plan to help rebuild Ukraine and also with an ironclad security guarantee for Ukraine, as well (whether that is NATO membership, which would be ideal, or a U.S.-led coalition commitment, if NATO membership is not achievable”.

President Biden stated in his Inauguration Speech that America was coming back as a global, reliable leader. Has the Ukraine War proven that he was right or America’s leadership is still in doubt? 

“I think that America’s leadership of the NATO and western effort to support Ukraine and to impose sanctions and export controls on Russia has shown that the U.S. is “back,” to use President Biden’s term (and that is particularly important in the wake of the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, which allowed potential adversaries to contend that the U.S. was an unreliable partner and a great power in decline).  And in offering that assessment, please recall, Andrea, that I am not a member of any political party in the U.S. and do not even register to vote, much less vote.  I stopped voting when I was promoted to two-star general and have sought to stay non-political ever since”.

At the global level, the US is dealing with Russia’s expansionism in Europe and China’s ambitions in the Far East. What will be the most important issue for Washington in the coming years? 

“I think there is no question, that the most important relationship in the world is that between the U.S. – together with our allies and partners – and China.  Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s National Security Advisor, has described the relationship with China as one of “severe competition.”  And we all – all like-minded nations – must work together to ensure that competition doesn’t turn into conflict.  One might hope that patient, pragmatic, firm engagement could help reduce the sense of competition and increase areas of cooperation, eventually producing a relationship that is as mutually beneficial as is possible.  But we have to be clear eyed and coldly realistic, even as we seek to deal with differences and, again, ensure that they do not result in true conflict.  And we also all have to work together to ensure that the elements of deterrence (capabilities and willingness to employ them) are rock solid”.

L'articolo “Putin has made NATO great again”: a dialogue with David Petraeus proviene da InsideOver.

In a political twist in the summer of 2022, President Joe Biden secured one of the most important successes of his presidency, a prelude to holding the midterm elections. This is the agreement with the “rebel” Democratic Senator Joe Manchin for the approval of an important law, the Inflation Reduction Act. The reader who does not know the law in detail could guess that it is a provision aimed, precisely, to reduce inflation, but the issue of the law is another: the competition between China and the United States in the sphere of energy transition. To understand its rationale, we must start from its premise, from an inconspicuous but concrete movement in the last twenty years: the Chinese rise in the industrial supply chains that today we identify, in a broad sense, with clean energy.

Also in the summer of 2022, in the report on the global supply chain of the photovoltaic industry, the International Energy Agency describes the situation with an effective synthesis: “The world will almost completely rely on China for the supply of the key elements for the production of panels to 2025. Based on the production capacity under construction, China’s share of global polysilicon, rod and wafer production will soon reach nearly 95%. Today, the Chinese province of Xinjiang accounts for 40% of the world’s polysilicon production.”

This highlights a relevant element of Chinese development: competitiveness on elements that all the other players need to achieve ambitious green plans. The Europeans, for example, literally paid for Chinese industrial development with their subsidies, because their plans for years did not set goals for autonomous technological production. And measures to counter China’s industrial policy, for example through trade disputes, have always lagged behind economic reality. The photovoltaic supply chain, rather than by great technological discontinuities, has been characterized by the reduction in prices, and scale also weighs on Chinese competitiveness. The capability of the People’s Republic has also been repeated, with remarkable results, even in more complex supply chains, such as that of electric mobility.

In this context, on the one hand, the People’s Republic has leveraged its market strength, as in other sectors: its consumers and the growth of the middle class have made it, in this century, an increasingly important automotive market, capable of attracting foreign investors, even in places of special political interest to the Chinese government, including Xinjiang. On the other hand, Beijing has failed in the past to significantly narrow the gap with other automotive powers in terms of traditional systems. This has justified a large and ambitious investment in the electricity supply chain, with a crucial prerequisite: understanding the “material” structure of the transition.

If we consider lithium, cobalt and other raw materials useful for the energy transition, China has therefore acted on several levels. First step: Chinese companies, also through development banks, have secured capacity in the main mining powers, from Australia to South America. Contrary to what is commonly believed, it is not the internal availability of raw materials that generates the Chinese advantage. Second step: the crucial Chinese investment has been on technology and capacity in terms of refining and treatment. This is the step that must take place at home, also to accompany a chemical supply chain in which China has climbed international positions, both for the construction of the “chemical leviathan” Sinochem Holdings and for its presence in numerous niches. Third step: the large-scale industrialization of technologies developed by other Asian players (such as lithium-ion batteries) and the experimentation of some policies, for example relating to the adoption of electric cars, on a local scale, according to a classic mechanism Chinese “market of policies”, in which the various local governments also compete through the incentives for the creation of the best innovative ecosystems.

The success of companies such as BYD (present in both the battery supply chain and in the electric car) and Catl (world leader in batteries that has surpassed the Korean and Japanese masters) testifies to the strength of the Chinese position. China has no intention of stopping. Even in an age of economic slowdown, it will continue to leverage the strength of its market, which involves Tesla itself. In 2022, most of Elon Musk’s company cars were produced in Shanghai. In the near future, China will invest in research and development on new technologies, so as not to be surprised by the change. For example, the former minister of science and technology, Wan Gang, who also due to his technical experience in Germany was fundamental for the construction and implementation of the Chinese strategy, has often stressed the importance of investing in hydrogen.

Now, if the situation is the one photographed by companies such as Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, with Chinese dominance in the production of cathodes, anodes and batteries, what are the prospects? We must not forget that a legacy of the Chinese strategy is also the competitiveness of car companies, which will be able to flood the main markets, starting with Europe, with electric cars at very low prices. Are we therefore facing an endgame, with the inevitable Chinese victory?

The Inflation Reduction Act, from which we started, fits here. It represents an example of the phenomena that I have defined in my books as political capitalism and sanctions, to read the close relationship between the economy, national security and technology that characterizes our era. In order for companies and consumers to receive the generous subsidies from the US government, the law imposes a threshold of “local content”, with a very ambitious effect: the relocation of supply chains, for extraction, treatment and production, on US soil, American or countries with which the United States has a free trade agreement. Objective, clearly inserted in an anti-Chinese perspective but which also has repercussions on Europeans, given that the EU does not have such a treaty, and which has led to protests from the main leaders, starting with Macron. What will be the future of the competition triggered by the Inflation Reduction Act, after the long-term Chinese “spark” that we have described? A global race for subsidies? The creation of structured alliances on production? Different scenarios are possible, but the competition on the energy transition will remain between us. And it will remind us of the centrality of chemistry and the end of the illusions of a costless transition. To exist, one must extract, build, transform.

L'articolo How United States and China compete to dominate energy transition proviene da InsideOver.

Fair is fool and fool is fair: we must fish out Shakespeare and Macbeth to read the economic competition between the US and Europe that emerged after the approval of the Inflation Reduction Act by the Biden administration. The White House preaches the unity of the Western camp in the face of global crises, pleads it in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis, speaks of common values and democracy but promotes an economic intervention that moves a real economic war on strategic sectors to what would be its main partner, Europe.

It seems contradictory, almost unthinkable, but it is so: Biden signed the IRA in August hailing the rule as the most “incisive” action the country had taken to address the climate crisis. In fact, the law provides for 370 billion dollars of subsidies to critical technologies and the energy transition with the reference to the decarbonization objectives promoted at the COP26 in Glasgow. But for Brussels, the incentives “discriminate against the EU’s automotive, renewable, battery and energy-intensive industries.” Word of the rigorist hawk Valdis Dombrovskis, who in his position as vice-president of the Commission combines both the control over the accounts of the countries and the delegations to trade. For example, the IRA provides $ 7,500 subsidy for the purchase of electric vehicles bought by American citizens, as long as they are assembled in the large economic space ex NAFTA (Canada, USA, Mexico).

The American challenge

Subsidies became a central talking point at the recently held Trade and Technology Council in Washington. On Monday 5 December, Commissioner Dombrovskis met at the US-EU transatlantic meeting with US Secretary of State Tony Blinken. The two said Washington and Brussels had discussed the future of U.S. industrial policy on climate, but had not announced any agreements.

The US philosophy was made known by Biden’s Treasury Secretary, former Fed Governor Janet Yellen, who speaking at the DealBook Summit indicated the IRA as an act capable of guiding a new phase of industrial policy and that can help create “adequate supply chains” around the rare raw materials needed for green technologies, obviously controlled from Washington. “This is a form of ‘friendshoring,'” said the top economist on Biden’s team.

The IRA goes beyond any incentive policy promoted by the Union which, recalls the Financial Times, “is already disbursing its €800 billion NextGeneration EU programme” (including the complementary fund and allocations for plans such as Horizon EU), which requires each member state to “devote at least 37% of national recovery spending to climate-related investment and reforms”. The EU is also allocating money to “green projects under its regional aid scheme, as well as supporting initiatives in areas such as hydrogen and batteries. And it is looking to increase the firepower of its RepowerEU energy plan, which aims to wean the EU off Russian fossil fuels and improve energy infrastructure. But no plan provides for direct subsidies comparable to those in the US.

The combined IRA and the Chips Act, the $52 billion maneuver to subsidize the domestic semiconductor industry, may open a wedge between the US and Europe. The Chips Act, after all, is functional to the IRA and could be the largest effort by the U.S. government in decades to shape a strategic industry from scratch. The New York Times recalled how much resources it will mobilize: “About $28 billion from the so-called CHIPS for America Fund should go toward grants and loans to help build facilities for manufacturing, assembling and packaging some of the world’s most advanced chips. An additional $10 billion will be dedicated to expanding production for previous generations of technology used in automobiles and communications technology, as well as specialty technologies and other industry suppliers, while $11 billion will go to industry-related research and development initiatives.

Industrial reshoring and political capitalism based on the massive return of state dirigisme even in liberal economies such as the US mark a phase of de-globalization and can at the same time corner Europe. That does not want to be overwhelmed by what it considers to be a surreptitious wave of protectionism.

How to respond to the American challenge

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck recently hinted that Europe’s leading industrial power, Germany, supports symmetrical responses and is ready for a trade war with the US. Emmanuel Macron has promoted the idea of a “Buy European Act” in response to US moves. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also said she was in favor of responses to the American move. The idea that the US is waging an economic war to promote its supremacy in frontier technologies and make Europe a satellite emerges from many sides in the EU public discourse. With one hand, Washington invests in the European race for technologies directly in the Old Continent: it builds plants such as Intel’s chips based in Italy; gets its hands on the European sovereign cloud with Big Tech; with its funds, it participates in the race of the energy transition and in the game of LNG and regasification terminals. With the other, it raises the barriers to entry into its market.

The fact that Joe Biden has in fact followed Donald Trump in his tariff plans and overtaken him on the industrial policy front speaks for itself. On December 10, the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruled that former President Donald Trump violated global trade rules in 2018 when he invoked national security reasons to impose tariffs on aluminum and steel, triggering the “tariff war” in response to subsidies declared illegal by the WTO provided by the European Union to the Airbus consortium. The WTO rejected the US appeal, explaining that the tariffs were not introduced “in a period of war or other emergencies”. But the Biden administration condemned the decision and reiterated that it will not remove tariffs, which are believed to be central to defending the internal market and Washington-centered value chains.

Biden has made it clear that his friend-shoring will initially be a near-shoring that aims to exploit the regionalization of value chains by shaping around the US a vibrant and competitive system with the great poles of the global economy. From this point of view, Europe appears more like a second-rate satellite precisely because it is perceived as lagging behind in all key areas: from batteries to chips, from the common energy agenda to the innovation agenda. Dependence in strategic sectors as a derivative before political subordination, in a phase in which the war in Ukraine has had the great defeat in European autonomy and in the ability to imagine an Old Continent protagonist of globalization: the Biden agenda applies with ruthless lucidity what, moreover, the president had written in his dirigiste and interventionist electoral program.

Europe must not die of laziness

Crushed between competition with China, Russia’s energy and psychological war and the will of its major ally (on paper) to attract it as a geo-economic satellite after ensuring its geopolitical minority, Europe can and must react. And it can only do so by thinking big: from semiconductors to the race for critical raw materials, the EU must play like great power. By investing, planning and changing paradigms: less regulatory rigorism at Domborvskis and more frontier vision at Thierry Breton, the super-commissioner French for Industry among the few to imagine the policies that are keeping Europe in the game on batteries, microchips, innovation, artificial intelligence.

In general, in Europe, Alessandro Aresu told Data Manager, “it is as if the will to do or to be able to do something great, to create important institutions, which mainly involve European countries, no longer materializes. ESA and CERN were born between the fifties and seventies in response to the great tensions of the Cold War that also involved science and technology. After that, we didn’t build anything really comparable. Not even in the response to the current crisis.” From European transition projects to challenges such as the ITER nuclear reactor and European infrastructure corridors, the basis exists. We need to think about the industry of the future and what will determine tomorrow’s balance of power on a global scale. In order not to die of laziness in the face of the challenges brought by rivals and, most worryingly, allied countries.

L'articolo Energy and technology: the incoming economic war between Europe and United States proviene da InsideOver.

For more than a century, the scramble for oil sparkedwars, forced nations to form unusual alliances and sparked more diplomatic disputes. Now, the world’s two largest economies compete for another precious resource – semiconductors, the chips that literally power our daily life. It has become the “new oil” of the 21st century. The United States and China are engaged in a pitched chip war.

These tiny electronic chips of silicon are at the heart of a $500 billion industry expected to double by 2030. Whoever controls the supply chain is the key to becoming an unparalleled superpower. With the development of technology, more and more chips are used in modern equipment. For example, in 2021, there will be about 1,200 chips per car on average, twice as many as in 2010.

America is winning the war

China wants to own the technology to make chips, most of which comes from the US, which is why the US is cutting off Beijing’s access to chip technology to prevent high-end chips from powering China’s tech applications – from military use and artificial intelligence to supercomputers.

The BBC reported that Chris Miller, author of “War on Chips” from American Tufts University, said that the two countries are clearly engaged in an arms race in the Asia-Pacific region. But, he added, there’s more to the race, “it is happening in traditional areas, like the number of ships or missiles produced, but it is also it’s taking place in terms of the quality of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms that can be employed in military systems”.

The BBC said that the United States is winning in this chip war, but the chip war it has declared on China is reshaping the global economy.

Semiconductors were invented in the US, but East Asia became a manufacturing hub over time. The US dominance of semiconductor technology enabled the country to develop commercial ties and strategic alliances with regions vulnerable to Russian influence during the Cold War. The same holds true now in the face of Beijing’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

The current race is to be able to mass-produce the best and most efficient microchips, and the smaller the chips, the better. Even for top chipmakers, that goal will not be easy. In mid-2022, Samsung will become the first company to start mass-producing three-nanometer chips. Later that same year, Taiwan’s TSMC followed suit.

These smaller, high-end chips are more powerful, which means they’re going into more valuable devices – supercomputers and artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things. Although non-high-end chips still power some of the devices in people’s lives, such as microwave ovens, washing machines and refrigerators, demand may shrink in the future.

US Chip Restriction Hit China’s Ambition

Most of the world’s chips are made in Taiwan, underscoring the importance of the West protecting Taiwan from Chinese influence. China has also prioritised chip production and is investing aggressively in supercomputers and artificial intelligence. While China is far from becoming a global leader, it has been catching up over the past decade, especially in its chip design capabilities, Miller said.

The Biden administration is trying to stifle China’s access to chipmaking technology. Last October, Washington announced total export controls, making it nearly impossible for global companies to sell chips, chipmaking equipment and software containing US technology to China. What’s more, the United States also prohibits American citizens and permanent residents from supporting certain companies in China to “develop or produce” chips.

The US measures deal a heavy blow to China, which relies on imported hardware and foreign talent to fuel its fledgling chipmaking industry.

The BBC said that the US restrictions are hitting the pain points of China.  Following the restrictions, Apple has shelved a deal to buy memory chips from China’s Yangtze Memory Corp (YMTC).The United States is also seeking the support of its allies in the export of chips to China. White House National Security Advisor Sullivan confirmed on 12 December last year that the United States has discussed with partners in countries, including Japan and the Netherlands, how to tighten exports of chips and related equipment to China.

Dutch company ASML has a monopoly on key advanced chip-making tools. The United States has been working hard to prevent ASML from exporting advanced chip-making tools to China. The Wall Street Journal has reported that analysts believe that without ASML’s state-of-the-art machines, Chinese chipmakers cannot make leading-edge chips. It is estimated that it will take at least ten years for the CCP to reach ASML’s technological level.

China doesn’t have a good option to deal with this problem. Withdrawing goods or services or imposing its own export controls would backfire and could do more damage when China’s economy faces a severe slowdown.

L'articolo US-China Chip War: Battle for “New Oil”  proviene da InsideOver.

Democratic Europe has habitually craved U.S. leadership of the transatlantic community since the end of World War 11.  Indeed, President Donald Trump’s comment that he was willing to reconsider some of America’s alliance commitments induced borderline panic in Europe.  When Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020 and declared that “America is back,” the sense of relief among European governments and populations was palpable. 

Such fondness for U.S. leadership is misplaced, or at least excessive.  Washington’s policies do not always serve Europe’s best interests; at times they even undermine those interests, while creating needless burdens and dangers.  Dragging the European allies into the Afghanistan nation-building fiasco is a prime example.  So too is the attempt by both the Trump and Biden administrations to enlist NATO members in a common front for a containment policy against China.

The most graphic case, though, is Washington’s insistence that European countries sign on to the U.S. campaign to isolate and punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.  Revulsion at Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression understandably caused Europe’s democratic nations to embrace the Biden administration’s call for punitive action.  However, Washington’s multiple misjudgments are causing its European allies to endure the bulk of the collective pain caused by an increasingly dubious strategy.

The Biden foreign policy team made several major miscalculations from the outset of the Ukraine crisis.  U.S. officials overestimated the extent of international unity in favor of a coercive policy toward Russia, they had an inflated sense of the West’s economic leverage against Putin, and they seriously underestimated Moscow’s ability to retaliate for the West’s imposition of economic sanctions.  Europe is now paying a heavy price for Washington’s myopia and overconfidence.  

Barely days into the war, Biden boasted that the world stood united in its opposition to Russia’s aggression.  But his assumption soon proved to be wishful thinking.  Already in early March, there were extensive defections from a United Nations General Assembly vote calling for the withdrawal of Russian forces.  In addition to the 5 “no” votes, there were 35 abstentions—even though the resolution did not commit UN members to take any substantive action. 

Most of the abstentions came from nations in Africa and Asia, and the vote proved to be a harbinger of widespread indifference to the war and to Washington’s call to isolate and punish Russia.  Aside from NATO and longstanding U.S. allies in East Asia, the global map still shows almost no support for economic sanctions against Russia, much less for economic and military backing for Ukraine.  Hudson Institute scholar Walter Russell Mead provides an apt summary of Washington’s lack of success in broadening the anti-Russia coalition beyond the network of traditional U.S. allies.  “The West has never been more closely aligned.  It has also rarely been more alone.  Allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization plus Australia and Japan are united in revulsion against Vladimir Putin’s war and are cooperating with the most sweeping sanctions since World War II.  The rest of the world, not so much.”

Most damaging for Biden’s campaign to isolate Russia, Asia’s two demographic and economic giants, India and China, have stubbornly remained on the sidelines.  They continue even to exhibit a slight pro-Russia tilt despite Washington’s sometimes excruciating diplomatic pressure.

The Biden administration not only overestimated global support for an anti-Russia policy, it overestimated the ability of even a united democratic West to inflict economic pain on that country. Initially, the Ruble plunged in value, and Biden referred to it derisively as “the Rubble.”  However, the Ruble has rebounded, and Russia’s economy has cushioned the other shocks by increasing its links to China, Iran, and other countries.  

Although Russia has experienced significant economic discomfort, it has not come close to being enough to alter the Kremlin’s Ukraine policy. In August, Russia exported a record amount of crude oil, and the state-owned energy company Gazprom has doubled its revenue in 2022, despite sending far less natural gas to Europe.  Higher prices and new markets elsewhere in the world more than offset the loss of European customers.  Such developments indicate that Russia hardly is on the verge of economic collapse because of Western sanctions. 

Indeed, there are growing signs that the sanctions strategy has backfired.  Populations in NATO members now are at risk of experiencing more pain than the Russian people from those measures, and that problem is especially true with respect to the energy sector.

Just as the Biden administration overestimated the West’s economic leverage on Russia, it greatly underestimated the Kremlin’s ability to retaliate. The Kremlin’s manipulation of energy supplies—especially natural gas flows to Europe has sent energy prices soaring.  That spike has produced a 2 trillion Euro increase in gas and power spending–a hike in energy bills by 200% across Europe.  Such an increase amounts to 20% of household disposable income, and that awful trend is almost certain to get worse.  Russian gas pipeline deliveries via the three main routes to Europe have fallen by almost 90% in the last 12 months.  In an early September speech Putin warned that energy and food (especially grain) shipments to the West were now in further jeopardy.  His rhetoric and actions underscore that Moscow is determined to play diplomatic and economic hardball in its dealings with the West and is quite capable of doing so.  

Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, contends that the European Union has “shot itself in the lungs” by joining the U.S. crusade to coerce Russia with economic sanctions.  If those measures are not reversed soon, he argues, they might well wreck Europe’s economy and cause even more widespread suffering.  Indeed, multiple signs now point toward a cold, dark winter for European populations and the EU’s descent into a deep economic recession.

Blindly following Washington regarding policy toward Russia is costing the European people dearly, and it already is fueling a surge of resentment against the continent’s current political leaders.  This episode again underscores the need for the EU nations to develop their own security policies instead of relying on the United States to make the key decisions.  Europe’s interests overlap with America’s, but they are far from being congruent.  It is apparent that Europe will pay a much greater price than the United States for the current economic war against Russia.  Europeans must take steps to ensure that Washington cannot lead them down a garden path to calamity ever again.

L'articolo US “Leadership” is Damaging Europe proviene da InsideOver.

The friendly and close relations between Israel and the United States have become over the years, since the sixties of the last century, a cornerstone of Israel’s national security doctrine. The security, economic and political aid that Washington provides to Israel is significant in scope and beyond that it helps to strengthen Israel’s regional and international standing and its deterrence capability in the face of its adversaries. 

Israel has always been careful to emphasize its part in the unwritten alliance established by the two countries, mainly its contribution to the United States national security – during the Cold War, but also today, when Israel stands at the forefront of the struggle against Iran as well as against terrorism and Islamic radicalism.

The close relations between the two countries have withstood the test of time and even deepened. They relied on bipartisan support of Israel (on the part of both Democrats and republicans), as well as broad support of the American public, and especially of American Jewry. AIPAC, the pro-Israel Jewish lobby in the United States, is instrumental in maintaining these close relations.

President Donald Trump’s term in office (2016-2020) undoubtedly brought American support for Israel to a peak. But at the same time cracks were exposed during Trump’s term that could affect the intimacy and the strength of American-Israeli relations. 

The awareness of Israel, its government and the general public, of the importance of the unwritten alliance with the United States and even of Israel’s dependence on it ensures that no Israeli government will act to harm this alliance, intentionally or unintentionally. And yet, the shift to the right in Israel, and alongside it, deep processes within American society, such as the strengthening of the progressive camp in the Democratic Party, may erode the strength of these close relations and require a special effort on the part of the American and Israeli governments to preserve it. 

Relations between Israel and the United States – Difficult Beginnings

The relationship between Israel and the United States has become over the years one of the cornerstones of Israel’s national security doctrine and is seen as one of Israel’s main sources of strength.

However, it is interesting to discover that in the first decades of Israel’s independence, in the fifties and early sixties, its relations with the United States were characterized by coldness and suspicion. President Harry Truman (1952-1944) supported the partition resolution at the United Nations in 1947 and was the first to recognize the State of Israel shortly after it became independent. However, he did so under the influence of some of his Jewish associates, and contrary to the position held by the Department of Defense and the State Department, which opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, because they believed that it would not be able to withstand the attacks of its Arab neighbors and that it might become a Soviet outpost due to the fact that the majority of its Jewish population originated from Eastern Europe.

Under President David Eisenhower (1952-1960), the United States refrained from selling arms to Israel, provided it with negligible economic aid, and repeatedly pressured it to agree to territorial and other concessions, such as the return of the Palestinian refugees to its territory, in order to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to an end. During the Suez crisis in 1956, the United States stood up against Israel and against France and Great Britain, who joined forces in this war, and demanded that Israeli forces withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, which they had captured from the Egyptians. In those years, the United States hoped to mobilize Arab support in the struggle against the Soviet Union, and therefore tended to view Israel as an obstacle to Arab friendship with the West. However, many of the Arab countries, led by Nasser’s Egypt and also Syria and Iraq, chose to align themselves with the Soviet Union over the West. And yet, even when it became clear that the Arab countries were turning to Moscow, the American hesitation and reservation concerning the relations with Israel remained unchanged. Thus, Israel’s Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, met President Eisenhower for the first time only in March 1960, near the end of his term in the White House, and even then in a private meeting and not as part of an official visit to the United States. 

The tension between Israel and the United States continued during the administration of President John Kennedy (1960-1963). Kennedy sought to improve Washington’s relations with Egypt and this was seen in Jerusalem as a move that could come at Israel’s expense. The tension in American-Israeli relations was however rooted in the pressure of the Kennedy Administration on Israel not to develop nuclear capabilities. Israel was forced to allow American inspectors to visit the Dimona nuclear reactor and only in the early 1970s the two states reached an understanding, according to which Israel would be allowed to maintain and develop its nuclear capabilities, but would not become nuclear power (i.e. would not conduct nuclear tests and would not declare itself a nuclear power).  

The change in the relationship between Israel and the United States took place during Lyndon Johnson’s presidency (1968-1963) and especially after the Six Day War. The Israeli victory in this war strengthened Israel’s strategic importance, due to its ability to defend itself and to defeat its Arab adversaries, who were Soviet allies. Thus, the Arab-Israeli conflict turned into a part of the ‘cold war’ between the West and the Soviet Union, and the American military establishment started to see Israel as an ally. 

Indeed, it was in the period after the Six Day War, that the foundations of the “special relations” between the United States and Israel were laid and became a central component of Israel’s national security doctrine, based on Israel’s need, as a small country with limited resources, surrounded by hostile neighbors, of an alliance with a superpower that would provide it with economic aid, political support and weapons it needed for its defense. 

The United States supplied Israel with weapons during the October 1973 war and then played a central role in the efforts to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict into its end, for example in the signing of the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt in March 1979 and in the 1990s, when it launched an Arab-Israeli peace process  that led to the signing of the Oslo accords in September 1993 between Israel and the Palestinians, and a peace agreement between Israel and Jordan in October 1994. 

The American-Israeli relations have also an economic dimension, since the United States gives Israel economic aid every year in the amount of about 2.5 to 3 billion dollars, and over the years has given it special grants and guarantees in the cumulative amount of tens of billions of dollars – for example after the signing of the peace agreements with Egypt; after the signing of the  Oslo Accords; and after the signing of nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. It should be noted that the United States is Israel’s largest trading partner (after the European Union), and the volume of Israeli export to the US is about a third of Israel’s total export, while the import from the United States is about 18% of all Israeli import.

It should also be noted that the rise of the high-tech industry that began in the late 1990s led to a dramatic increase in the number of Israeli companies (mostly high-tech companies) traded on the New York Stock Exchange to such an extent that they constitute the largest group of foreign stocks there.

Despite tensions that erupted in relations between the two states, the main interest of Israel’s foreign policy since 1967 has been to maintain close relations with the United States and establish bipartisan support for the special relationship between the two states.  Israel was assisted by the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States, AIPAC, which derives its strength from the commitment to Israel of the American Jewry, the second largest Jewish community in the world, which has significant weight and standing in American society and American politics.

Israel therefore attaches great importance to maintaining its special relationship with the Jewish community in the United States. However, during the last two decades, support for Israel grew among evangelical communities in the United States, although such support has provoked a backlash among liberal audiences in the American society.

Looking Ahead

The last decade was marked by several developments and processes that affected and probably will continue to affect the relationship between the two states:

On the one hand, the importance of Israel as an American asset in the Middle East increased significantly – Israel has become a regional power thanks to its economic and military strength. The contribution it provides to the United States, both in the intelligence and Cyber warfare and through the development of security and defense technologies, such as the Iron Dome and Arrow missile systems, strengthen and deepen the security ties between the two states and especially ties between the Israeli and the American military establishments. The operational and intelligence cooperation between the two countries has been proven invaluable in the struggle against terror and radicalism as well in confronting Iran’s ambitions in the region. 

On the other hand, the bond with Israel among parts of the American public and even the Jewish community has weakened – the shift to the right in Israel led to the abandoning of the of two states solution to the conflict with the Palestinians and to the efforts (at least by the Netanyahu government – 2009-2021) to preserve an Israeli presence in the West Bank, and to ensure that it would be possible in the future to annex it to Israel. 

All of these were perceived by the American administration as a development that could undermine regional stability, encourage violence and terror and thereby harm American interests in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world. As someone who considers itself a close ally of Israel, the American administration also believes that such Israeli policy harms the long-term interests of Israel itself.

In American society, deep processes of a growing rift between liberals and conservatives, alongside the strengthening of the progressive camp within the Democratic Party, are evident. This camp tends to show suspicion and even animosity towards Israel, mainly against the background of its never ending conflict with the Palestinians. However, the shift to the right inside Israeli society and within the Israeli political system, as well as the close alliance forged between the right-wing circles in Israel and the Republican Party, especially during the Trump era, deepened the gap with Israel even among the “mainstream” Democrats. These processes do not spare the Jewish community in the United States either and certainly the young generation. The Jewish community is also affected by the strengthening of the ultra-Orthodox political power within the Israeli political system (the ultra-Orthodox community is hostile to the Reform and Conservative communities that make up the majority of American Jewry).

It is worth noting that the older generation of American politicians who led the American political system in the 1980s and 1990s were influenced by the events of the Holocaust and felt committed to Israel as the state of the Jewish people. These politicians were also influenced by the cold war and tended to see Israel as a Western outpost surrounded by Arab countries, which were Soviet allies. However, the new generation of American politicians is freed from these historical memories and burdens, and therefore their commitment to Israel is not self-evident.

All of this has burst to the surface already during Barack Obama’s presidency (2008-2016). Obama repeatedly expressed his “unshakable” support for Israel, however, at the same time he also showed sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians and tried to promote the vision of “two states for two peoples” based on the 1967 lines. Obama was also determined to reach a nuclear deal with Iran that was perceived by Israel as dangerous. The tension between the two states reached its peak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress in May 2015 in which he challenged, with the support of Republican Party, the president’s policy. 

Relations between Israel and the Trump administration that replaced Obama (2016-2020) flourished, and there will be those who would argue that this happened due to Trump’s efforts to win the support of the Jewish vote in the Presidential elections. Trump was perceived as sympathetic to Israel, as evidenced by his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (December 2017) and the transfer of the American embassy to Jerusalem and the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli sovereign territory (on March 2019). In May 2018, the United States also announced its withdrawal from the nuclear deal with Iran and imposed additional sanctions on its economy. In January 2020 he presented the “deal of the century,” an American peace plan, favorable to Israel,  to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an end.  Finally, the United States played an important role in obtaining the Abraham Accords, the peace agreements signed between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and later also Morocco and Sudan. This was part of an American effort to promote regional cooperation, and even to form a Middle Eastern NATO, to face common threats to these countries, mainly from Iran.

President Biden, who replaced President Trump, belongs to the older generation of American politicians whose commitment to Israel is deeply rooted. During the years of his tenure, the close relations between the two countries continued and even deepened. The war in Ukraine and the world need for energy resources, mainly gas, have also increased the importance of Israel in the eyes of the Americans. But it must be admitted that in Biden’s party – the Democratic Party – the voices that show suspicion and express criticism and even hostility towards Israel are growing stronger, especially in the progressive camp in the party. As mentioned, the intimate relations between former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump led to the erosion in the bipartisan support for Israel and created a rift between Israel, and at least Netanyahu’s government, and the Democrats. The establishment of a new government in Israel under Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, a “government of change”, somewhat improved the atmosphere, but the possible comeback of a right-wing government in Israel may change this trend back.

And finally, Israel’s importance in the Middle East had to do with the importance of the region in general in the American strategic view, due to its central location on the world map and the dependence of the US on its oil resources. However, in the last decade, the United States seeks to disengage from the region, as its importance in its eyes has decreased, as compared to other regions in the world. This might have repercussions on the importance of Israel in the eyes of the Americans. It seems thus that the Middle East was pushed aside by other regions, such as the Far East, where the United States maintains competition and even rivalry with China, or Eastern Europe (mainly following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine at the beginning of this year). Israel, which sought to walk between the drops and preserve its relations with China, an important economic partner of Israel, as well as with Russia, has often provoked Washington’s irritation for not standing by its side in the rivalry between the United States and these countries.

In conclusion, the relationship between Israel and the United States is deep and based on political and security interests. It still relies on broad support both among the American security and political establishment, and among large segments of the American society and public opinion.

Taking into account the interest that both countries have in preserving and promoting these relations and the benefit they see from these relations, it can be assumed that they will do all they can to preserve and even deepen these relations.

It should be noted that Israel’s great advantage in the eyes of the United States has always been that it does not need American soldiers to fight for it. And thus, the Americans were asked only to help Israel help itself rather than to send troops to help it on the battlefields, as they were required to do in South Vietnam, Korea, and later in Afghanistan and Iraq.

However, an ill-considered Israeli conduct, in the case of a right-wing government coming to power in Israel – such as leaning too much on one side of the American political map or try to annex the West Bank to Israel, or even a deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian conflict, could put a strain on the relations between the two countries. These can meet the deep processes of slow but continuous erosion in the commitment to Israel that is already taking place within serval segments in the American public and thus damage the relations between the two countries.

And yet, as far as can be expected, the special relationship that Israel and the United States are establishing will continue for the foreseeable future as it is a vital interest for Israel and an major  interest for the United States, and both countries recognize this.

L'articolo The future of US-Israel Alliance proviene da InsideOver.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has revitalized the question of ethnicity in the former USSR.  The rhetoric and the actions of the Kremlin have indicated the adoption of a new doctrine, the Putin Doctrine, which requires the protection of ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers. In effect, the Putin Doctrine is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Monroe Doctrine; the former Soviet space is to become a Russian sphere of influence. Therefore, it is vital to understand how the Kremlin has explored inter-ethnic relations in Ukraine as a pretext to launch a full-scale attack.

Ukraine has been a multi-ethnic country, with Russians being the largest minority. Nevertheless, high rates of intermarriage, a common religion, and strong historical bonds have created a unique relationship between Ukrainians and Russians that probably has no parallel in modern European history. In fact, the break-up of the Soviet Union did not lead to a massive exodus of ethnic Russians from Ukraine like it happened with those living in Central Asia and the South Caucasus. In contrast, most Russians even supported Ukrainian independence. Despite the occasional outbursts of Ukrainian nationalism, ethnic Russians have been well-integrated into the society. Moreover, Russian has been the second official language since it is widely spoken throughout the country.

Yet, Moscow has been able to mobilize many ethnic Russians against the Ukrainian authorities. Putin and his local allies have capitalized on eastern Ukraine’s grievances about the highly centralized nature of the state and the parliament’s hostile attitude toward the Russian language. During April and May 2014, many pro-Russian protests ended up in occupying public buildings in eastern Ukraine. It is open to speculation the role of Russian secret agents in these events, but it is clear that there was some coordination between secessionist leaders and the Kremlin. 

Moscow has probably drawn valuable lessons from its experiences in Moldova and the South Caucasus during the 1990s. It was the time when the Russian army was covertly involved in ethnic conflicts supporting secessionist movements in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorno Karabakh and Transnistria. Ethnic mobilization often leads to confrontation with state authorities. If there is a military response, the civilian population will suffer enormously. The victims would be turned into heroes and the perpetrators would be accused of being inhuman. As a result, a cycle of violence is then unleashed that would fuel a campaign for secession and would eventually provoke a Russian intervention. This process can be summarized as follows: 

Ethnic mobilization state military response  violence against civilians

        glorification of victims and demonization of perpetrators more violence and campaign for secession Russian intervention

Eastern Ukraine clearly fits this model: it is an ethnically diverse region with a large Russian community that has been mobilized against state authorities. During 2014-2016, the Ukrainian government escalated the crisis by sending troops to defeat the separatist forces. Many locals rallied around the separatist leadership which blamed Kiev for the violence. As a result, the logic goes, Russia has a moral obligation to assist ethnic Russians and enforce peace. 

Simultaneously, the Kremlin has initiated a process of new identity formation among Russians living in Ukraine. Thus, Putin has frequently mentioned the term Novorossiya (New Russia) to describe the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine. It was first used during the tsarist rule to describe Russian-controlled territories of Ukraine that had been liberated from the Crimean Khanate at the end of the 18^th century. The renaming of Ukrainian territories indicates a long-term strategy to reinforce a sense of ethnic consciousness among the local population. It is not coincidence that the pro-Kremlin separatists have invented a flag and other state symbols for this new entity.

The Russian strategy of weaponizing ethnicity is deep-rooted, embedding a sense of injustice about the disintegration of the Soviet Union. While it is difficult to predict whether the Kremlin would intervene in another country, there is one former Soviet republic that already feels the heat of the war in Ukraine. Kazakhstan is the largest country of Central Asia, with a multi-ethnic population of 19 million and significant energy reserves. The Russian minority resides in the northern part of the country which shares a 7,644 km border with Russia. While its percentage has fallen since the early 1990s, the Russian minority still constitutes around 18 percent of the total population. Not surprisingly, Kazakhstan has increasingly attracted the attention of Moscow.

In early January 2022, following social unrest sparked by rising energy prices, a Russian-led peacekeeping force was deployed to stabilise Kazakhstan. Yet, President Tokayev has frequently mentioned the principle of territorial integrity in his speeches since the beginning of the Russian-Ukraine war. This is hardly a coincidence. For many years, the Russian far right has made territorial claims against his country. The Kremlin had never openly embraced such rhetoric because Kazakhstan was viewed as a loyal ally. However, last August, former president Dmitry Medvedev called Kazakhstan “an artificial country” and claimed that “Kazakhstani authorities implemented resettlement policies of various ethnic groups inside the republic, which can be qualified as the genocide of Russians”. While Medvedev later denied that he made the comments, part of the Russian political elite harbours some territorial claims against Kazakhstan. If the Putin doctrine is to be implemented again, Kazakhstan would probably be the next victim of Russian revisionism.

In conclusion, the invasion of Ukraine has produced fear and uncertainty among Russia’s neighbours. Putin’s weaponization of ethnicity could ultimately lead to more interventions. The United States has been viewed as a stakeholder in the former USSR because it is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. While a U.S. military intervention in the region is highly unlikely, Washington could send a message of reassurance to former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan. The creation of a greater Russia, in which all ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking would live, cannot be written off as “a thing of the past”. Hence, the Biden administration needs to be more proactive and prepare for more crises like Ukraine. Ethnicity has become a factor of division and irredentism in the former USSR.

*Dr Emmanuel Karagiannis is a Reader in International Security at King’s College London

L'articolo Russia’s weaponization of ethnicity in Ukraine: Lesson Learned for Washington proviene da InsideOver.