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21. Reinforcing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific: Diplomacy and Deterrence in the Pivotal Year of 2022

Author:
James J Przystup
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Hudson Institute
Abstract:
On February 24, 2022, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine presented the world with a dramatic challenge to the rules-based international order. Ukraine’s fierce and continuing resistance has earned the backing of Western democracies. Under the leadership of the United States, democracies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific have rallied to provide political, diplomatic, and military support to Ukraine. As of this writing, despite difficult coordination on sensitive military issues, that unity remains intact. In the Indo-Pacific, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought preexisting security challenges into sharper relief. Across the region, security concerns were heightened and acquired greater definition in the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula. More broadly, Russia’s aggression called into question the staying power of the rules-based international order and, at the same time, raised recognition of the inseparable nature of that order. As the United Kingdom’s former Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told the Atlantic Council on March 10, “conflict anywhere threatens security everywhere. Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security are indivisible.”1 This study begins with a consideration of the Indo-Pacific security environment as it evolved during 2022. It goes on to consider the measures by key regional actors—primarily but not exclusively the United States, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and India—that strengthened deterrence in the face of an increasingly challenging environment. Expanding diplomatic coordination and security cooperation reflects a strategic commitment by the region’s democracies to support a rules-based order and advance a shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific. At the same time, European democracies have continued to expand diplomatic and security engagement with Indo-Pacific partners. The policy challenge for the United States and Western democracies has been to resist Russia’s aggression in Europe in support of the rules-based international order and, at the same time in the Indo-Pacific, to strengthen deterrence against the use of force or coercion to change the status quo.
Topic:
Security, Diplomacy, Deterrence, International Order, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, United States of America, and Indo-Pacific

22. Latin America Reacts to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Author:
Ariel González Levaggi and Nicolás Albertoni
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI)
Abstract:
The post-Cold War international order drastically changed after the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Now Latin America must face an international order marked by competition between great powers, fragmentation, and crisis. Latin American countries' relationships with Russia will bear an additional cost. Although Moscow will lose political, economic, and diplomatic influence, observers should not overlook the Russian push to strengthen its military presence in the region.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, International Order, Russia-Ukraine War, and Invasion
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, and Latin America

23. Strict and Uniform: Improving EU Sanctions Enforcement

Author:
Kim B. Olsen and Simon Fasterkjær Kjeldsen
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
Abstract:
For as long as the EU has been using sanctions as a foreign policy instrument, countering violations has been a challenge. With the EU rapidly expanding the breadth and depth of its sanctions, its ­institutions and member states must find ways to ensure stricter and more uniform enforcement to deter violations, enhance efficiency, and ensure a more level playing field for economic actors. The stakes are high: the success of the EU’s response to Russia’s military aggression hinges largely on effective sanctions, and the long-term legitimacy of the tool itself depends on its enforcement.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Governance, Sanctions, European Union, International Order, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Eastern Europe

24. Putin’s Challenge to NATO and to the Global Enterprise

Author:
Thomas E. McNamara
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
American Diplomacy
Institution:
American Diplomacy
Abstract:
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the most powerful and destructive example in generations of a nation-state attempting to recreate its lost imperial history. This is not a defense of empire. It is Russia’s rejection of nationhood as a legitimate basis for sovereign existence in the world order. That this is being done by a major power with a long history of imperial ambition, expansion, and domination makes it a serious global issue. Putin’s actions are his rejection of the 20th century decline and extinction of empires and a challenge to the international order founded on and by nation-states.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, NATO, International Order, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

25. Understanding Russia’s perception of international agency in the context of the war against Ukraine

Author:
Andrey Makarychev
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dominated international politics in 2022 and this looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future. But how did we get to this point in the first place? The core argument presented here is that Russian foreign policy agency – the intention and the ability to act as transgressor and challenger to the liberal international order, defined as the space for norms-based multilateralism – played the key role in the full-fledged restart of the war in Ukraine in February 2022. Taking a critical look at the five pillars of Russian agency, this inaugural CEPS Explainer concludes that the current model of Russia’s international agency is a precarious and vulnerable construct that is unlikely to survive the regime currently sat in the Kremlin.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Multilateralism, International Order, and Russia-Ukraine War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Ukraine

26. China, the West, and the Future Global Order By Julian Lindley-French and Franco Algieri

Author:
Julian Lindley-French and Franco Algieri
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
PRISM
Institution:
Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), National Defense University
Abstract:
The primary purpose of this article is to respectfully communicate to a Chinese audience a Western view of the future world order. China needs the West as much as the West needs China. However, the West has awakened geopolitically to the toxic power politics that Russia is imposing on Ukraine and China’s support for it. China is thus faced with a profound choice: alliance with a declining and weak Russia or cooperation with a powerful bloc of global democracies that Russia’s incompetent and illegal aggression is helping to forge. The West is steadily morphing into a new global Community of Democracies with states such as those in the G7, Quads, and Quints taking on increasing importance as centers of decisionmaking.2 All three groupings reflect an emerging implicit structure with the United States at their core, European democracies on one American geopolitical flank, with Australia, Japan, South Korea, and other democracies in the Indo-Pacific region on the other American geopolitical flank. The force that is forging such a community is China as it morphs into a superpower. Specifically, China is choosing to be an aggressive putative superpower. President Xi Jinping’s aggressive worldview is of a China defined by its opposition to the United States and, by extension, America’s democratic allies and partners. A new world is being forged from within the increasingly hot cauldron of U.S.-Chinese strategic competition. However, does that mean this new world is inevitably now set on a crash course to conflict, something akin to a re-run of the collapse of pre–World War I Europe into systemic war? Or is it not too late for both sides to forge a pragmatic peace—a peace forged from respect, rather than destructive and disrespectful confrontation? On the face of it, President Xi seems to have made his choice, but in some very important respects siding with Russia in geopolitical conflict with the community of democracies seems counterintuitive when we look at China from a Western perspective (as this article does). This perspective also implies China’s “choice” might not be as firm as some would have it—a profound but essentially simple choice between siding with Vladimir Putin and confrontation with the West or continued growth, wealth, and power through collaboration with the West? The facts speak for themselves. Using the most favorable economic statistics for the combined Chinese and Russian economies—purchasing power parity—their combined economies are worth some $27 trillion in 2022. Using the same data for G7 countries, the core of the emerging Community, the total is $39 trillion.3 Add Australia and South Korea to the aggregate and the figure is $42 trillion. If nominal gross domestic product (GPD) is compared, the contrast is even more striking with the combined GDPs of China and Russia in 2022 totaling $20.2 trillion, while the combined GDPs of the G7 countries amount to $45.2 trillion, which when Australia and South Korea are added increases to $48.8 trillion.4 Critically, China’s trade with the democracies is over 10 times greater than that with Russia,5 while in 2020, China’s merchandise trade surplus with the rest of the world totaled $535 billion, with much of that figure due to surpluses with both the United States and Europe.6
Topic:
Security, Geopolitics, Strategic Competition, International Order, and Superpower
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, and United States of America

27. Russian Foreign Policy in 2020: Strengthening Multi-vectorialism

Author:
András Rácz and Milan Nič
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP)
Abstract:
In 2020, DGAP’s Strategy Group on Russia focused on Moscow’s long-term efforts to diversify its foreign policy portfolio, turn away from Europe, and build-up other non-Western vectors in its diplomacy. Against this background, this report assesses Russia’s relations with the EU, China, and the United States. While Russian relations with the West are unlikely to improve in 2021 – especially ahead of this fall’s Duma election – there is still a chance for limited engagement on issues of mutual interest.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Diplomacy, European Union, Democracy, and International Order
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Europe, Eurasia, and United States of America

28. Global Order in the Shadow of the Coronavirus: China, Russia and the West

Author:
Bobo Lo
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Lowy Institute for International Policy
Abstract:
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the dismal state of global governance. The rules-based order has given way to a new world disorder, dominated by narrow self-interest. The crisis of the liberal order reflects a collective Western failure to live up to its principles. The actions of Donald Trump have damaged the moral authority of the West. There is a future for liberalism in global governance, but on a more inclusive and less antagonistic basis. The primary focus must be on meeting universal challenges, such as climate change, pandemic disease, and global poverty.
Topic:
Coronavirus, Pandemic, COVID-19, and International Order
Political Geography:
Russia, China, Eurasia, and Asia

29. WHAT GAME OF THRONES CAN TELL US ABOUT RUSSIA’S FOREIGN POLICY

Author:
Betcy Jose and Christoph Stefjes
Publication Date:
05-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
Political Violence @ A Glance
Abstract:
White House National Security Advisor John Bolton recently declared, “In this administration, we’re not afraid to use the phrase ‘Monroe Doctrine.’” The Monroe Doctrine harkens back 200 years to a policy that captures the idea that a hegemonic power holds dominion over a particular geographic region—its sphere of influence—where it serves as the sole arbitrator of the rules of the game. Bolton likely referred to the doctrine’s Roosevelt corollary where, “the United States was justified in exercising ‘international police power’ when there was unrest in Latin America.” In explicitly referencing this doctrine from the past, Bolton seemingly took a page from the playbook of the Game of Thrones’s (GoT) Night King, bringing back to life things once considered dead. As President Obama’s Secretary of State John Kerry stated, “’The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over. The relationship that we seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other American states.’”
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, United Nations, and International Order
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, North America, and United States of America