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91. Sanctions and US foreign policy in the Trump era: A perfect storm

Author:
Ville Sinkkonen
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
A newfound focus on great-power competition has brought geoeconomics to the forefront of strategic thinking in Washington D.C. The United States is well positioned to use coercive economic tools, particularly unilateral sanctions, in this game because of its structural advantages in the global economy and financial system. President Donald Trump and his administration have also signalled a preference for the unilateral use of sanctions to excel in the competitive international geostrategic environment and confront “rogue regimes”. Meanwhile, wrangling between Congress and the White House over sanctions policy has intensified since the 2016 presidential election. These systemic, policymaker-bounded and domestic-political factors have created a perfect storm in US sanctions policy. While the US may be able to pursue sanctions unilaterally in the short term, in the long run this may dissuade allies from cooperating and erode America’s structural advantages as other states resort to hedging.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Military Strategy, and Sanctions
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, Middle East, and North America

92. The militarization of US foreign policy: Engagement with Europe increasingly about defense

Author:
Deborah A. McCarthy
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Finnish Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The US Department of Defense is playing a predominant role in US foreign policy due to expanded mandates, large budgets and the disparagement of diplomacy by the Trump Administration. Defense relations may be the steadier foundation for transatlantic cooperation.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, Budget, and Transatlantic Relations
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and North America

93. Crossed Wires: Recalibrating Engagement with North Korea for an Era of Competition with China

Author:
Kristine Lee, Daniel Kliman, and Joshua Fitt
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for a New American Security
Abstract:
The United States’ current diplomacy with North Korea has enduring implications for its strategic competition with China. Yet within the American foreign policy establishment, rising to the China challenge and managing the nuclear threat emanating from North Korea are often treated as two distinct rather than connected strands of the United States’ agenda in Northeast Asia. The rationale for maintaining some degree of bureaucratic and substantive segmentation between the two issue sets is well-founded. Addressing the North Korean threat warrants energy, resources, attention, and expertise independent of the “great power competition” framework delineated in the 2017 National Security Strategy and the 2018 National Defense Strategy. But excessive stovepiping may, at best, cause Washington to leave opportunities on the table that could advance its regional priorities, and at worst to risk the creation of mutually incompatible approaches to North Korea and China. U.S. negotiations with North Korea have already created strategic openings for China. The “security guarantees” that Pyongyang has demanded include, for example, the cessation of U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea and the removal from the Korean Peninsula of all American “strategic assets” such as nuclear-capable air and naval assets as well as anti-missile systems that could also be leveraged in a military contingency with China. As U.S. negotiators have locked horns with North Korean interlocutors since President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s initial diplomatic foray in June 2018, China has touted its role as a champion of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, while using its relative proximity to Pyongyang to systematically undercut America’s approach. During the United States’ “maximum pressure” campaign in 2017, Beijing cast Pyongyang a vital lifeline, facilitating illegal ship-to-ship transfers of North Korean coal and petroleum in 2018, while leading a concerted push with Russia at the U.N. Security Council to try to fragment the North Korean sanctions regime. And China is poised to open the floodgates of investments into North Korea, particularly through strategic infrastructure projects in the event that Pyongyang’s demands for the relief of international sanctions yield results. Despite all of this, U.S. officials at the highest levels have publicly downplayed intimations of China’s counterproductive activities, thereby validating Beijing’s narrative that it has played a constructive role in supporting the United States’ approach to North Korea.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, and Nuclear Weapons
Political Geography:
China, Asia, North Korea, North America, and United States of America

94. Bolton’s Stated Predicate for War With Iran Doesn’t Work

Author:
Oona A. Hathaway
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Legal Challenges, Yale Law School
Abstract:
The President’s National Security Advisor John Bolton has long been beating the drums of war with Iran. Those drums are growing louder. In the last month, Bolton has repeatedly threatened that Iran’s support for its “proxies” could bring “a very strong response”—even military force. By threatening military action against Iran in retaliation for the acts of groups it supports, Bolton is trying to frame a war on Iran as a justified—even righteous—act of self-defense even if he cannot prove that Iran itself has participated in any attacks. Such a war would, however, be illegal.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, Military Strategy, Law, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

95. Avoiding a Post-INF Missile Race

Author:
Nikolai Sokov
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Abstract:
On November 7, 2019, the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and the Center for Energy and Security Studies held a forum titled “US-Russia Dialogue on Nuclear Issues: Does Arms Control Have a Future?” Dr. Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow with the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, prepared the briefing paper, “Avoiding a Post-INF Missile Race,” to address the concerns about a new arms race in Europe arising after the end of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Though comparisons to the Euromissile crisis of the early 1980s are inevitable, the present situation is different in one important respect: neither Russia nor NATO want a new arms race, and both have demonstrated a degree of restraint. “Nevertheless,” Dr. Sokov argues in the paper, “the situation is fragile, and it is difficult to predict how long mutual restraint can hold.” Furthermore, the military balance today includes additional, complicating features, including the replacement of nuclear weapons’ missions with high-precision long-range conventional weapons, the enlargement of NATO and the collapse of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, the risk of escalation presented by increased dual-capable delivery systems, as well as the role of Asia in the global strategic balance. The window of opportunity for addressing these rising concerns is relatively narrow. Since “full-scope arms-control negotiations aiming at legally binding and verifiable treaties are hardly feasible in the current and projected political and security environment,” this CNS brief suggests a “more modest” approach to expanding and securing the restraint that exists, before it disappears altogether.
Topic:
NATO, Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Nonproliferation, Missile Defense, Deterrence, and Arms Race
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, and North America

96. On the Struggle for Peace

Author:
Sergei Karaganov
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
East View Information Services
Abstract:
The U.S.’S wiThdrawal from the Treaty on the elimination of intermediate- and Shorter-range Missiles (iNF) may prove useful – however, only if it gets normal people throughout the world and, most importantly, many of us russians to come out of years-long hibernation. This hibernation could be described as strategic parasitism. There has not been a large-scale war in the world for more than 70 years now. Over the past three decades, relative peace has been accom- panied by a rapid increase in living standards for billions of people. People have begun to think that this state of peace is not only normal but will also stay with us forever. Meanwhile, 95% of it is the result not of our responsibility and peacefulness, but the fear of a nuclear apocalypse and hope for mutual nuclear deterrence. however, reliance on it is becoming increasingly fragile. in recent years, strategic stability (this term usually refers to the level of the threat of nuclear war) is rapidly deteriorating. i will venture to say that the current level of threat is comparable to the time right after the Cuban missile crisis that almost led to a global catastrophe. Prior to it, in the 1950s, the situation was perhaps even worse than it is now: an uncontrolled arms race and bitter hostility. Nevertheless, the vector of development is toward the 1950s. russia’s policy needs reviewing. The struggle to avert war should become the most important vector of this policy.
Topic:
Arms Control and Proliferation, Diplomacy, Military Strategy, and INF Treaty
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

97. Back to the Russia-U.S.-China “Triangle”?

Author:
S. Trush
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
East View Information Services
Abstract:
FOr SeVeral MONThS, the world expert community has been actively discussing the obvious resurgence of the russia-the U.S.-China “triangle.” This happens every time when the key, or even “sacral,” prob- lem of international interaction – the problem of security – comes to the fore. The high level of confrontation inside two of the three sides of the “triangle” – the U.S. vs. russia and China vs. the U.S. – predetermined this resurgence against the background of donald Trump’s non-orthodox and unyielding foreign policy. he brought to the white house his “no-nonsense” approach to add more prominence to the traditional efforts of american pragmatists to keep russia and China apart. his obvious preference for Moscow and his clear intention to rely on it to oppose China were defused by an unprece- dented attack launched against him by the anti-Trump opposition inside the United States. due to the internal balance of power, russia was cho- sen as the potentially most promising target with the best foreign policy dividends perfectly suited to the task of either pushing the president out of the white house or at least, narrowing down his political leeway. This attack and the fairly painful Korean issue created a pause in the america-China relations obvious in the first year of the new administra- tion that ended late in 2017 by the “tough and realistic” description in the National Security Strategy of the United States of “revisionist powers of russia and China.... that challenge american power.” This launched an aggressive trade war with China; today, it has become abundantly clear that it is part of the exacerbated systemic confrontation with China over economic, technological and military leadership.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, International Cooperation, and Military Strategy
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Asia, North America, and United States of America

98. A Frank Conversation About War and Peace

Author:
S Ryabkov
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
East View Information Services
Abstract:
This interview discusses the diplomacy and military affairs between Russia and the United States.
Topic:
Diplomacy, International Cooperation, Military Strategy, and INF Treaty
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, North America, and United States of America

99. Strategic Stability in the Early 21st Century

Author:
A. Orlov
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International Relations
Institution:
East View Information Services
Abstract:
one hunDReD YeaRs ago, mankind entered the 20th century as the “golden age” of realized ideals of freedom and humanism. Reality proved to be different: this was the cruelest and the bloodiest period in the histo- ry of modern civilization. The new generation of political dreamers, with anglo-saxon roots in the first place, expected the 21st century to become a period of a more or less stable development of the world led by the united states with the help of its closest satellites. In his The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Zbigniew Brzezinski (who together with henry Kissinger can be described as a “classic” of the contemporary geopoliti- cal thought) wrote that since the end of the Cold War the united states “assumed the unique global security role” and “america’s global socio- cultural celebrity makes it the world’s center of attention.”1 he arrived here at a fairly debatable (as later developments showed) conclusion that “america’s role in ensuring the security of its allies ... justifies it in seek- ing more security for itself than is predictably attainable by other states.”2 This trend of military-political thinking that dominated across the ocean in the 1990s and early 2000s has not changed in fifteen years that elapsed since the time when the maître of american political science wrote the lines quoted above. Formally a Democrat and President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor in the latter half of the 1970s, he nur- tured the ideas that differ but little from those of the present master of the White house, a conservative Republican determined to “make america great again,” that is, to restore its role of the unquestioned world leader in all trends and in all hypostases. nothing what President Trump has said so far clarifies when, in his opinion, america lost its greatness. It seems that he piles the accusations on Democrat obama whom he called a “softy” and who allegedly allowed the adversaries to push america into a tight corner from which the country is scrambling out under his guid- ance. let’s go several decades back. The end of the Cold War, the victory in which Washington arrogant- ly “appropriated” and its rise, at least in its own eyes, became a watershed of sorts in american understanding of the contemporary realities and of certain basic postulates that for a long time remained the cornerstone of the perception of the world by Washington and Moscow. This relates, first and foremost, to the strategic security concept. Brzezinski admitted: “It was until the late 1950s and perhaps not even until the Cuban Missile Crisis that america was jarred into recognition that modern technology has made vulnerable a thing of the past.”3 “The intense national debate on these issues [in the united states] eventually led to a consensus that a relationship of stable deterrence with the soviet union was attainable only through mutual restraint.”4 henry Kissinger fully agrees with the above. In his World Order, he has written: “strategic stability was defined as a balance in which neither side would use its weapons of mass destruction because the adversary was always able to inflict an unacceptable level of destruction in retalia- tion.”5 This adds special importance to what anatoly Dobrynin, soviet ambassador to the u.s., had to say in his book In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents about his talk to Robert Mcnamara, united states secretary of Defense, in april 1967: “Mcnamara explained that u.s. nuclear doctrine was grounded in the idea that the united states should be ready to absorb a surprise nuclear- missile strike while preserving its capability to hit back and cause irreparable damage to the enemy. as far as he could understand, Mcnamara said, the soviet military doctrine was based on the same prin- ciple. he was convinced that both sides possessed such capability. It was precisely this factor that in a peculiar way provided the stability and ade- quately guaranteed that neither of the two great powers would attack the other, because each well knew that an attack on the other meant suicide.”6 Colonel-general Yury Baluyevsky, a prominent soviet and Russian military theoretician who served as Chief of the general staff of the armed Forces of the Russian Federation, has pointed out the fol- lowing: “[The] term strategic stability has been used for a fairly long time to assess the situation in the world. at first it was limited to the relations between the two superpowers – the soviet union and the united states – and described them as the mutually assured destruction of the sides and the rest of the world in a global nuclear war.... This stability is a product of nuclear arms race that resulted in the parity of strategic offensive armaments of the ussR and the u.s. and the situation of the so-called nuclear stalemate.”
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Military Strategy, and Political stability
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, North America, and United States of America

100. Religious Intolerance and America’s Image and Policies Abroad

Author:
Amy Lillis and Arsalan Suleman
Publication Date:
11-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University
Abstract:
The Oct. 27, 2018 attack on worshipers in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was a stark reminder that hate crimes and religious persecution threaten not just individuals and communities, but undermine fundamental human freedoms. A new ISD report on “Religious Intolerance and America’s Image and Policies Abroad” examines the rise in domestic hate crimes against Jews, Muslims, and other faith communities in America – and how the impact of domestic religious intolerance and bigotry extends far beyond the U.S. border. The report, based on a March 2018 working group and public forum with experts from the diplomatic corps, academia, nongovernment organizations, and U.S.-based faith communities, explores these dynamics and ways in which governments and civil society can mitigate the dangerous consequences.
Topic:
Crime, Diplomacy, Religion, Freedom of Expression, Discrimination, and Soft Power
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America