As Asian nations in the Indo-Pacific Rim emerge as potential future powers and enjoy greater global visibility, prestige, and power, great powers in the region have found themselves pressed with the need to pursue more comprehensive foreign policies towards the region. Beijing believes that by merging foreign and economic policy to reshape global infrastructure it can re-shape global trade routes and put China at the epicenter of both Asia and the world economy, making Beijing a global Milliarium Aureum of sorts.
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Zelenskiy’s victory came as a shock to many, but was not entirely unexpected. Although Zelenskiy’s fresh face might be a balm in domestic politics, where corruption is rampant and toxic, but will it be enough to face Russia in the East?
5G technology will allow companies to “slice the network” and sort the signals bandwidth for different uses that require immediate and continuous connection. Nevertheless, 5G technology presents significant risks to cybersecurity. The plethora of suspected and confirmed cases against Chinese actors seeking the theft of trade secrets and extralegal network access has left many Western governments wary of both Huawei and of introducing 5G technology domestically.
The Crimean Peninsula may have strategic significance for the Russian military, but Russian President Vladimir Putin can no longer play the Crimea card at home for political gain. Even though the 2014 annexation of Crimea resulted in a sharp increase in the Russian president’s approval ratings, five years on the matter has been overshadowed by widespread economic hardship.
With a return to great power competition, national security priorities are shifting. States, rather than non-state actors like terrorist groups or insurgencies, are the primary security threat. The idea that security encompasses more than military and defense issues alone has returned. The security paradigm of the twenty-first century has expanded to nearly every facet of human life.
Terms like strategic autonomy and defense union have become commonplace in the face of wavering American commitments to NATO and the transatlantic alliance. The shift in the discussion hints at a move towards greater European collective action on the world stage. With the resurgence of China, the return of Russia, the retreat of the United States, and the rise of the rest, Europe needs to define its own grand strategy.
The Kremlin often wields access to its oil and natural gas supplies as deft foreign policy tools to pressure nations into political and economic action beneficial for Russia. In the interest of U.S. national security, we should respond with new policies in response to Russian energy weaponization.
It is well known the world over that the European Union is a major economic power thanks to the single market. Yet, it is far behind other major world powers in arms development and sales. Despite the inclusion of weapons in the single market, there exists no common market for the defense. The advantages to unifying the defense industry and creating a single market for defense are clear and undeniable.
China has been pursuing an aggressive technological development agenda that threatens to undermine traditional U.S. superiority in advanced technologies. The Chinese technology sector’s alarming growth and emerging status as a real competitor to both Silicon Valley and the U.S. defense technology industry mirrors China’s ambitions for global leadership in political, economic, and military arenas. An increase in technological capabilities could become a sort of “cherry on top” that threatens the dominance and security of the U.S. and its allies in the Pacific.
Despite Trump’s apparent drive to torpedo the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), often referred to as the Iran Deal, President Macron seemed cautiously optimistic about the prospect that the United States would remain party to the deal, suggesting the development of an add-on deal or revised JCPOA which would address ancillary concerns in Washington. But the Europeans will have to do much more to save the Iran Deal and bring lasting peace between Brussels, Washington, and Tehran.
As ISIS crumbles in the Levant and the variety of anti-ISIS operations reach their crescendo, the Syrian civil war appears to have acquired yet an additional degree of complexity—Operation Olive Branch, a Turkish military campaign against Syrian Kurdish forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces.
While U.S. analysts have a keen eye on activity in Ukraine and Syria, few have seriously considered the fact that Russia has slowly been expanding its presence in Latin America. Last spring a new Russian compound was erected in the jungles near Nicaragua’s capital city Managua. Nicaraguan officials claim that the compound is used to house the surveillance equipment necessary in the fight against international drug trafficking, but some U.S. analysts suspect that the Russians have ulterior motives.