PAUL SCHARRE,

STANLEY M CCHRYSTAL,
SUMMER 2023
ALONDRA NELSON,
AND MORE THINKERS
ON THE DAWN
OF A NEW AGE
IN GEOPOLITICS.

THE SCRAMBLE FOR

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 Essay
28 Fortress Eurasia
China, Russia, and their autocratic
friends are leading another epic clash
over the world’s largest landmass.
SUMMER 2023 HAL BRANDS

Arguments On the Cover

7 Brazil Is Ukraine’s Best Bet for Peace The Scramble for AI
JORGE HEINE AND
THIAGO RODRIGUE S 35 The New Nuclear Race
PAU L S C H A R R E
9 The Era of Neoliberal
Foreign Policy Is Over 42 Why It’s Not All About China
MARIANO -FLORENTINO CUÓ ELLAR
M AT T H E W D U S S A N D A N D M AT T S H E E H A N
G A N E S H S I TA R A M A N

11 U.S. Foreign Policy Must 46 AI in the Situation Room

S TA N L E Y M C C H RY S TA L
Consider the Global South AND ANSHU ROY
AU D E DA R NA L
50 Rules and Regulations
12 America Has Dictated Its A N I N T E RV I E W W I T H
Economic Peace Terms to China ALONDRA NELSON

ADAM TO OZE
53 ChatGPT Takes an FP Test
14 China’s ‘Peace Plan’ for
Ukraine Isn’t About Peace Review
J O I N G E B E K K EVO L D

16 India’s G-20 Presidency 61 The Infinite Possibilities

of Afrofuturism
Is an Ad for Modi
A kaleidoscopic history of
M A N JA R I C H AT T E R J E E M I L L E R
AND CLARE HARRIS Black futures at the Smithsonian.
C H A N DA P R E S C O D -W E I N ST E I N
18 Japan Needs a Defense
Industrial Revolution 66 Banking On It
RENA SASAKI How the Fed became the lender
of last resort to the whole world.
20 U.S. Policies Paved the D AV I D W E S S E L
Way for War in Sudan
J U S T I N LY N C H 70 Who Can Tell Native Stories?
A new book reaches the outer limits of what
22 Incrementalism Is Throttling European-style academic research can accomplish.
U.S. Support for Ukraine B. “ TOASTIE” OASTER

75
NADIA SCHADLOW
Art of Diplomacy
24 How to Benchmark The foreign service finally gets the Netflix treatment.
Victory in Ukraine ROBBIE GRAMER
LIANA FIX
82 It’s Not a Barbie World
25 Why Neutrality Is A Z A D E H M O AV E N I
Obsolete in the 21st Century
F R A N Z - ST E FA N GA DY 85 Quiz
Cover illustration by ERIK CARTER SUMMER 2023 1
FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS
Aude Darnal is a research Paul Scharre is the vice president
associate in the Reimagining and director of studies at the Center
U.S. Grand Strategy Program at the for a New American Security and
Stimson Center, where she also author of Four Battlegrounds: Power
leads the Global South in the in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.
World Order project.

Stanley McChrystal is a retired four- Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is

star U.S. Army general and former a theoretical physicist specializing
commander of Joint Special Operations in early universe cosmology and an
Command and of U.S. and coalition assistant professor at the University
forces in Afghanistan. He is the author of New Hampshire. She is the author
of My Share of the Task and a co-author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey
of Team of Teams, Leaders, and Risk: A Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and
User’s Guide. Dreams Deferred.

B. “Toastie” Oaster is an award- Azadeh Moaveni is a journalist,

winning journalist and a staff writer, and associate professor
writer for High Country News at New York University, where
writing from the Pacific Northwest. she directs the Global Journalism
They are a citizen of the Choctaw Program. She is the author of
Nation of Oklahoma. Guest House for Young Widows:
Among the Women of ISIS.

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FROM THE EDITOR

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS SUDDENLY EVERYWHERE. It

seems as though no conversation about jobs, education,
health care, technology, or politics happens without an
inevitable question about how AI could disrupt it all.
This surge in public interest can feel surprising.
After all, the concept of AI—the intelligence derived
from machines sifting through data—isn’t particularly
new. But when the AI-powered ChatGPT launched last
November, it was a global a-ha moment. The chatbot
captured the world’s attention precisely because it mim-
icked conversation with an all-knowing human friend.
Now we could see what AI was capable of. It could pass
a bar exam and ace the SATs and do the kinds of things
generations of humans have spent countless hours slav- What about warfare? Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal,
ing over. Advances in computing had finally caught up who led U.S. forces in Afghanistan, pairs up with
with science fiction; the possibilities of AI’s applications AI expert Anshu Roy to describe how unbelievable
in a range of industries emerged into view. amounts of data points are now being fed into machines
The areas concerning AI that have so far gener- to predict battlefield outcomes (Page 46). This isn’t just
ated relatively less public attention—relative to, say, hypothetical. Their systems are already in use. The ques-
jobs—are the ones intersecting with foreign policy. But tion is how to make sure AI is used in war planning the
that’s going to change. Cutting-edge AI requires vast right way and by the right actors.
amounts of computing power, which involves the most This sounds like a good time to discuss ethics and
advanced semiconductors. And only a handful of com- safeguards. Alondra Nelson, who served in the first
panies and countries have a lock on that market. The two years of the Biden administration as a top science
great scramble for AI is having a profound impact on and technology policymaker, explains how we should
global power. In fact, it has for a while. Semiconductors think about regulation (Page 50). The rules of the real
are already shaping wars, cyberattacks, alliances, and world should apply online and beyond, she says.
more. One of the main areas of disagreement between Finally, back to where it all started: ChatGPT. Think
the United States and China—the independence of a you can tell the difference between an essay written
small string of islands with a population of 23 million— by a machine and a smart human student? There’s
is intractable in part because Taiwan is responsible only one way to find out (Page 53). Our analysis will
for nearly 90 percent of the world’s high-end chips. reveal the machine’s tells—until the next version of
Consider this issue—“The Scramble for AI”—an GPT, of course.
early attempt on the part of the FOREIGN POLICY team Working on this issue, it has often felt as though
to understand how this new technology is shaping we’re living through a science fiction novel. Down
geopolitics. In our lead essay, Paul Scharre likens the on Washington’s National Mall at the Smithsonian
current race for supremacy in AI to the nuclear race National Museum of African American History and
several decades ago (Page 35). Now as then, competi- Culture, a new exhibition reveals a kaleidoscope of dis-
tion will likely mean a sprint to secure the materials tinctly Black futures. Don’t miss cosmologist Chanda
that go into computing hardware. It will also create a Prescod-Weinstein’s review of this landmark show,
world of haves and have-nots. Thankfully for FP sub- with an exhilarating conclusion from the author that
scribers, Scharre lays out a strategy for winning—and she is living “an Afrofuturist dream come to life.”
regulating—this race. The future is well and truly with us.
Will the United States stay ahead of China on AI?
That might be the wrong question, according to two As ever,
ORIANA FENWICK ILLUSTRATION

top scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for Inter-

national Peace, Mariano-Florentino Cuellar and
Matt Sheehan (Page 42). They think policy wonks
should instead be asking how the United States can
reduce the likelihood of catastrophic AI-related acci-
dents in interactions with China. Ravi Agrawal

4
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LEARN MORE
 ARGUMENTS
UNITED STATES | CHINA | ASIA | MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA | EUROPE
AMERICAS

Brazilian President Luiz

Inácio Lula da Silva (center)
waves to the crowd after
his inauguration in Brasília
on Jan. 1.

Brazil Is ince Russia’s invasion of

Ukraine in February 2022,
countries’ neutrality—and their unwill-
ingness to become de facto belligerents

Ukraine’s Best the resurgence of nonalign-

ment across the global
in a European war—has been described
as shameful, if not a moral failure. Some
CARL DE SOUZA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Bet for Peace south has baffled West- critics have even gone so far as to say
ern officials. The United States and that the region’s overwhelmingly non-
its allies seem confused that many aligned stance puts the rules-based
countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin international order at risk.
America refuse to join the sanctions Brazil—Latin America’s largest coun-
By Jorge Heine and Thiago Rodrigues campaign against Russia or ship weap- try and diplomatic heavyweight—has
ons to Ukraine. Many Latin American come under particular scrutiny for its

SUMMER 2023 7
position. While the United States has phone call with Zelensky in late April This means that on some issues (such
pledged to support Ukraine in the war for would seem to indicate a potential as democracy or human rights), Latin
“as long as it takes,” Brazilian President breakthrough. American countries may take positions
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pressed for Brazil’s foreign policy has so far closer to the United States’, while on oth-
a truce and peaceful solution to the con- entailed a delicate balancing act ers (such as international trade) they may
flict; some frank statements by Lula have between Western positions and those take positions closer to China’s. What
generated pushback in Washington. But of Russia. Instead of abstaining from a countries will not do is side unequivo-
Brazil remains the country best posi- Feb. 23 vote on a United Nations General cally with one or the other. This requires
tioned to act as an honest broker to end Assembly resolution that demanded highly calibrated diplomacy that eval-
the war in Ukraine—precisely because Russia withdraw from Ukrainian terri- uates each issue on its merits and then
it has refused to take sides. tory—as fellow BRICS members China, decides how to respond. It is a much
Lula got to work on his peace pro- India, and South Africa did—Brazil more exacting task than doing as one is
posal quickly after his inauguration voted in favor. (The BRICS grouping also told on every issue, as aligned countries
in January. During a February visit includes Russia, which voted against are expected to do. But it lends devel-
to Washington, Lula suggested to U.S. the resolution.) Yet Brazil did so only oping nations greater leverage in their
President Joe Biden that Brazil create a after introducing amendments advo- dealings with great powers.
so-called “peace club” to facilitate talks cating for a total cease-fire in Ukraine. Active nonalignment also stresses
between Russia and Ukraine. The group On other issues, Brasília has sided with the need for regional cooperation and
might include rising powers such as Moscow—such as when it voted in favor multilateralism. Brazil has excelled at
China, India, Indonesia, or Turkey. of a Russian-introduced resolution at this in the past, both in Latin America
A 30-minute video call between Lula the U.N. Security Council to investigate and beyond. In the region, it helped
and Ukrainian President Volodymyr the Baltic Sea attack on the Nord Stream found the Rio Group in the 1980s and
Zelensky in March showed that Brazil 1 and 2 pipelines last September. the Union of South American Nations in
means business. Then, later that month, Far from reflecting ambiguity or 2008. Within the global south, Brazil has
Lula’s chief advisor, Celso Amorim, trav- indecisiveness, Brazil’s foreign policy been instrumental in the India-Brazil-
eled to Moscow, where—breaking all embodies what we call active nonalign- South Africa forum launched in 2003,
protocol—he was received by Russian ment. As Latin America is buffeted by BRICS, and the G-20 of agriculture-
President Vladimir Putin. On his return pressures from the great powers to take exporting nations. The same can be
trip to Brazil, Amorim met with a top sides in what is becoming a new cold war said for entities such as the Africa-Latin
foreign affairs advisor to French Pres- between the United States and China, America dialogue and the Arab-Latin
ident Emmanuel Macron. Macron has active nonalignment dictates that the America dialogue that Lula created
also appeared interested in negotiating region should focus on its own interests during his first two terms in office.
an end to the conflict. and not on the interests of others. Brazil’s mediation efforts in Ukraine
The result of Amorim’s meeting Active nonalignment takes a have so far faced obstacles. Both war-
with Putin is uncertain, with Amorim page from the Non-Aligned Move- ring parties are reluctant to go to the
acknowledging that neither side is ready ment that bloomed in the 1960s negotiating table, and Western nations
to sit down for talks. Still, Amorim’s per- and ’70s, but it is not its equivalent. have preferred to denounce Brazil’s
sonal audience with Putin indicates Founded in 1961, the Non-Aligned efforts as naive at best and as parrot-
how seriously Moscow is taking pro- Movement provided a platform for ing Russian and Chinese propaganda
posals from Brasília. postcolonial states grappling with at worst. These difficulties have led
Lula’s April visit to China allowed development challenges and fragile some to recall Brazil’s 2010 joint ini-
Brazil to continue to pursue its media- sovereignty in a bipolar world. Today’s tiative with Turkey to get Iran to limit
tion effort. The two countries released active nonalignment is a foreign- its nuclear program at the end of Lula’s
a joint statement agreeing that negoti- policy doctrine, not a movement. It second term in office. Brazil aimed to
ation is “the only viable way out of the comes during what the World Bank has get the West to partially lift sanctions
crisis in Ukraine.” Though the Chinese referred to as a “wealth shift” from the on Iran if Turkey offered guarantees to
peace proposal released in February North Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific and safely handle Iran’s enriched uranium.
suggested a total cease-fire without as rising powers from the global south But a new round of U.S. sanctions on
the withdrawal of any Russian troops are starting to flex their muscles. Iran tanked the deal.
from Ukraine—a prospect the United Active nonalignment is not about One lesson Western commentators
States and its allies oppose—Chinese neutrality or equidistance between drew from the ordeal was that Brazil
President Xi Jinping’s hourlong great powers. Rather, it is dynamic. had gotten in over its head and should

8
 ARGUMENTS
not get involved in ambitious out-of- permanently. Until now, Ukraine’s pref-
area undertakings. But one could easily erence has been to not give up any terri-
reach the opposite conclusion. Given the tory. Yet that could prove a costly wager
state of Iran’s nuclear program today, the for the country’s people—and its econ- U N I T E D S TAT E S
United States in 2010 arguably wasted a omy. Although precise estimates vary,
good opportunity to close a deal that was leaked U.S. intelligence documents—
not perfect but good enough. Instead, the authenticity of which Russia and
Washington sabotaged Brazil’s efforts— Ukraine have questioned—estimated
and now seems to be paying the price. that Ukraine had suffered 124,500 to
There is something to be said for hav- 131,000 casualties from the war as of
ing previously uninvolved parties act late February. (Some 189,500 to 223,000
as honest brokers on serious interna- Russians were estimated to have been
tional issues. killed or wounded.)

The Era of
The lessons from Brazil’s Iran initia- While both Russia and Ukraine
tive should be applied to today’s war in have experienced staggering casual-

Neoliberal
Ukraine. If there is a country that is ide- ties, Ukraine has endured far more eco-
ally positioned to act as a broker among nomic harm. In 2022, Ukraine’s GDP fell
north, south, east, and west, it is Brazil,
whose strong diplomatic traditions and
by 29.1 percent; Russia’s only dropped
by 2.1 percent. Russia has three times Foreign Policy
coalition-building capabilities put it in
an unrivaled position to press ahead
the population of Ukraine, yet, in 2021,
its economy was 15 times larger. Inter- Is Over
with bringing peace to Ukraine. These national Monetary Fund projections for
credentials are only bolstered by having 2023 indicate that Russia’s economy will
an experienced and respected leader perform better than Germany’s, with
such as Lula in office. A key next step Russian GDP growing by 0.3 percent. By Matthew Duss
should be to bring India (whose minis- In other words: Western sanctions are and Ganesh Sitaraman
ter of external affairs, S. Jaishankar, has barely making a dent. One reason for or communities around
played a key role in keeping the G-20 in that is Russian trade with the global the world, especially in the
line this year) into the peace club. south is thriving. global south, it has been
On April 6, Lula made a statement A stalemated war—which is where clear for decades that the
proposing that Ukraine abandon its Ukraine may be headed—is ultimately neoliberal Washington
claim to the Crimean Peninsula, which about economic resilience. There, Rus- Consensus, which emerged in the 1980s
Russia invaded and annexed in 2014, sia has the upper hand. The Brazilian and focused on deregulation, privatiza-
while Russia would withdraw from mediation initiative to bring the con- tion, austerity, and trade liberalization,
the territories it invaded in 2022. (This flict to an end soon may be an oppor- was a predatory and destructive model.
means Russia could stay in the Don- tunity to save Ukraine—rather than the The unfairness of this system was the
bas and other areas it previously held naive, misguided undertaking many in message of the global justice movement
in eastern Ukraine.) The following day, the West describe it to be. Q that protested global north-controlled
the spokesperson for Ukraine’s Min- economic institutions, such as the World
istry of Foreign Affairs responded on JORGE HEINE is a professor at Boston Trade Organization, World Bank, and
Twitter: “There is no legal, political or University’s Pardee School of International Monetary Fund, in the
moral reason why Ukraine should give Global Studies. THIAGO RODRIGUES is 1990s and early 2000s. The same ideas
up even a centimeter of its land. Any a professor of security studies at have powered multiple waves of global
mediation efforts to restore peace must Fluminense Federal University. protest since then, including Occupy
be based on respect for the sovereignty Wall Street. The system of neoliberal-
and full restoration of Ukraine’s terri- ism inspired outrage for being prone to
torial integrity.” LATIN AMERICA BRIEF: Catherine Osborn corruption, unresponsive government,
Whether negotiations happen will in Rio de Janeiro traces the contours of environmental destruction, and elite
come down to whether the West has an debates that shape the region’s future, self-dealing—for creating a safety net
interest in bringing an end to this tragic from geopolitics to business to human for the rich and doling out market dis-
war or whether it prefers to fight it as rights. Sign up for email newsletters cipline for everyone else.
long as is necessary to weaken Russia at ForeignPolicy.com/briefings. For four decades, the dominant

SUMMER 2023 9
view in both U.S. parties was a neolib-
eral approach to economics at home
and abroad. But April 27 marked the
day that the global justice movement’s
memo finally landed in Washington.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sul-
livan gave the most significant foreign-
policy speech thus far by any Biden
administration official. It effectively
announced that the era of neoliberal
foreign policy was over.
In doing so, it harked back to April
2021, when U.S. President Joe Biden
marked the first 100 days of his admin-
istration with an address to a joint meet-
ing of Congress. While most media U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan takes questions
attention focused on the early steps at the White House in Washington on April 24.
his administration had taken on the
COVID-19 pandemic and resulting eco-
nomic crisis, the clear subtext of the Sullivan confronted head-on the the other way around. Sullivan’s speech
speech was that the U.S. government flawed assumptions that underlay the should therefore be a welcome state-
would be investing in the American peo- neoliberal global economic order that ment not only in the United States but
ple again and heavily. had dominated foreign policy for 40 for much of the world as well.
Sullivan’s speech made the subtext of years: “that markets always allocate cap- The hard part for the Biden admin-
Biden’s speech into text. At first glance, ital productively and efficiently—no istration, of course, will be turning this
it may seem odd that the national secu- matter what our competitors did, no rhetoric into a sustainable reality. Old
rity advisor would give a landmark matter how big our shared challenges habits die hard, and many neoliberal
speech on global economic policy, grew, and no matter how many guard- commentators and corporate lobbyists
rather than national security policy as rails we took down.” Sullivan rejected remain deeply invested in the old order
traditionally understood. But economic the philosophy that “championed tax and its ideology and are thus likely to
policy and foreign policy have always cutting and deregulation, privatization fight this new, post-neoliberal foreign
been interrelated, as have domestic and over public action, and trade liberaliza- policy tooth and nail. Indeed, there have
foreign policy. tion as an end in itself” and observed already been reports that Big Tech com-
Consider Sullivan’s description of the that this approach had also failed as a panies are lobbying for a so-called digi-
Biden administration’s approach to trade geopolitical strategy. “Economic inte- tal trade agreement, which could stymie
policy. Sullivan said it was “the wrong gration didn’t stop China from expand- the emerging cross-partisan movement
question” to focus on how the adminis- ing its military ambitions in the region in the United States to regulate them.
tration could reduce tariffs further. The or stop Russia from invading its demo- Despite the premature declara-
right question, he said, was, “How does cratic neighbors,” Sullivan said. tions of some commentators, there
trade fit into our international economic When Sullivan acknowledged “the is no “new Washington consensus”—
policy, and what problems is it seeking challenge of inequality and its dam- at least, not yet. There is, instead, a
to solve?” Sullivan’s answer focused on age to democracy” generated by the contest for what will be the next par-
creating resilient supply chains, invest- old economic thinking, he was echo- adigm for U.S. foreign policy. Some
ing in clean energy, creating good jobs, ing a critique sounded by progressives policymakers, mostly driven by wor-
addressing corporate taxation, and tack- for decades. The 2016 U.S. presidential ries about China, wish to organize the
ling corruption. These are, of course, all election finally provided a wake-up call world into democratic and authoritar-
JIM WATSON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

areas closely related to domestic policy. that the establishment, or at least some ian blocks or to subordinate all other
By breaking down the silos separating of it, could no longer ignore. It has taken concerns to the imperatives of great-
economic policy at home and abroad, a long time for foreign-policy makers in power competition. Others want sig-
Sullivan’s analysis offers a more realis- Washington to come around to the idea nificant retrenchment and withdrawal
tic foundation for confronting today’s that markets should be crafted for the from global affairs. Of course, there
challenges. benefit of human beings rather than remain those who cling to every scrap

10
 ARGUMENTS
of the neoliberal international order. last November, known as COP27, smaller dedicated to the global south’s role in
Still others are focusing on build- states such as Barbados led efforts to the world order should be the first step.
ing resilience, at home and with allies spur climate financing for vulnerable Mainstream policy discussions in
and friends, in order to withstand and developing countries. And at a leaders’ the West tend to use the term “global
flourish in the face of climate change, summit in Washington at the end of the south” as a synonym for developing
pandemics, cyberconflict, and great- year, the United States courted Africa. countries—or what was once called
power competition. For progressives, It’s clear there is a shift underway that the “Third World”—but the label has a
Sullivan’s speech should be cause for pushes back against the traditional West- broader meaning. The global south is
cautious celebration and a redoubling ern leadership of global institutions. not strictly delineated by either geog-
of effort. Years of persuasion and work Figures within the global south are raphy or economics, instead taking
have paid off in getting to this point, denouncing inequalities and demand- into account shared experiences and
but the struggle to define the new par- ing the reform of these institutions. In inequalities rooted in the colonial era
adigm is still underway. January, India hosted a summit that and sustained by global capitalism. The
In order to move beyond neoliber- sought to amplify the perspectives and term remains imperfect: It is not neu-
alism, the Biden administration will interests of the global south—part of its tral, and it should not be used to homog-
have to stand firm against those, both ambitions as this year’s G-20 president. enize different geopolitical contexts.
inside and outside the government, who “Most of the global challenges have not Beyond semantics, appreciating the
are more attached to an old ideology been created by the global south. But global south means parting ways with a
than to confronting the problems of they affect us more,” Indian Prime Min- hierarchy among states and approach-
our time. But it will also have to keep in ister Narendra Modi said at the summit. ing Western dominance of the interna-
mind that the choices it makes in con- “The search for solutions also does not tional system more critically.
fronting today’s problems could set in factor in our role or our voice.” Discussion of the global south still
motion the paradigm that defines the Policymakers and researchers in largely occurs in academic circles; it
next period of U.S. foreign policy. Q Washington generally take a regional has become an object of study, with a
approach to foreign policy. U.S. think significant body of literature and a few
MATTHEW DUSS is a visiting scholar tanks acknowledge the benefits of bet- specific research centers in Western uni-
at the Carnegie Endowment ter representation, and programs are versities. But scholars from countries in
for International Peace. GANESH increasingly led by experts from the the global south remain marginalized in
SITARAMAN is the director of the regions they cover. However, there is the field, a discrepancy that several stud-
Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. an urgent need to develop policy spaces ies have highlighted. That underrepre-
that focus on perspectives from the sentation reflects inequalities in access
global south in a systematic way—not to international academic journals—

U.S. Foreign just in response to major events. Such

platforms would facilitate thinking
overwhelmingly based in the West—and
affects many fields, including interna-

Policy Must
beyond geographic borders and lead tional studies, the social and medical sci-
to exchanges around common interests ences, and climate science and ecology.

Consider the and challenges for the global south.

As countries in the global south seek
Beyond academia, few if any Western
think tanks have programs dedicated

Global South
to exert their power on the world stage, specifically to international politics
U.S. policymakers must adapt their from the global south’s perspective.
framework to better understand these Today more than ever, many countries
countries’ concerns. That means recog- in the global south share common inter-
nizing that these countries are valuable ests and challenges. It is thus urgent to
By Aude Darnal partners on their own; above all, the enable discussions that are relevant to
s 2023 began, the global United States should avoid putting pres- these countries across regions and that
south seemed to be in sure on them while disregarding their uplift experts and practitioners from
the spotlight. Russia’s desire for policy independence. For U.S. these regions. Despite positive efforts
war in Ukraine had wors- foreign policy to shift course, lawmak- to this effect, political marginalization
ened the food crisis in ers must be exposed to more perspec- remains a challenge, and the world’s
many countries, revealing underlying tives from the global south, rather than most influential leaders may overlook
tensions with Western powers. At the developing policies based on miscon- valuable experiences, knowledge, and
annual United Nations climate summit ceptions. Fostering new policy spaces sources of innovation because of it.

SUMMER 2023 11
 cated such a process can become, with
no less than five proposals for reform.
Non-Western multilateral institutions,
such as China’s Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank and the New Devel-
opment Bank established by the BRICS
states, have recently flourished, but their
reach remains limited compared with
U.S. Secretary
of State Antony traditional international organizations.
Blinken meets with The first step toward better integrating
Indian External perspectives from the global south into
Affairs Minister S.
Jaishankar on the international politics is to create spaces
sidelines of the G-20 that elevate voices from these countries
foreign ministers’ on issues including development, gov-
meeting in New Delhi
on March 2. ernance, security, trade, and climate
change. Such spaces will increase aware-
ness among policymakers in the United
States and beyond about the values of
Currently, the United States tends to address the shortcomings of the inter- the countries that comprise the global
to treat its partners in the global south national institutions that are the site of south. Ideally, they could shape a U.S.
as pawns in great-power politics and global governance, from the U.N. Security foreign policy geared toward achieving
exerts pressure to follow U.S. leadership, Council to the International Monetary mutual benefits in terms of peace, secu-
a strategy based on outdated assump- Fund. It is neither viable nor accept- rity, and human prosperity. Q
tions—such as the idea that the United able that a minority of powerful states
States is the only relevant partner for use their dominance within the global AUDE DARNAL is a research associate in
countries in the global south. These order to advance their interests and set the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy
approaches impede cooperation and the agenda for economic rules or secu- Program at the Stimson Center,
discount solutions that better align with rity solutions, with negative repercus- where she leads the Global South in
the interests of these countries. With- sions falling largely onto the global south. the World Order project.
out incorporating new perspectives, the Russia’s war in Ukraine and the differ-
policies most in need of revision will ing responses to the crisis have shown
remain the same—risking inefficiency
and even running counter to U.S. values
that this status quo has reached its lim-
its. The lack of representation for the America Has
Dictated Its
and interests. global south in decision-making leads
Creating platforms that take the to ineffective policies toward vulnerable
global south as a starting point could
further amplify such perspectives,
states and a lack of ownership among
local actors, from national leaders to Economic
Peace Terms
explore gaps in current debates, and grassroots NGOs. For reform to hap-
build bridges among experts and activ- pen, the world’s countries must decide
ists in the global south—and between
them and Western policymakers. To
on a common agenda—as difficult as
that may be. The Biden administration to China
start this shift, U.S. policymakers should has an opportunity to demonstrate its
first acknowledge unequal access to commitment to such reform and put
international decision-making pro- actions behind its promises to advance
OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

cesses as well as the challenges that dis- this agenda. By Adam Tooze
proportionately affect the global south. An alternative to reform is, of course, ow far will mounting
Because the global south itself is flexible to create new institutions, but that poses tension with China be
and dynamic, policy spaces that take it its own complex challenge, given the translated into U.S.
as a starting point must account for the need to find consensus on principles, economic policy? After
possibility of shifting geopolitics, too. representation, and working methods. a rash of sanctions
Although strengthening regional The unresolved issue of U.N. Security and overtly discriminatory legisla-
forums is valuable, more must be done Council reform shows just how compli- tion, with action on U.S. investment

12
 ARGUMENTS
in China pending, and with talk of has “no reason to fear healthy economic for instance, that among the country’s
war increasingly commonplace in the competition with any country.” And then “most pressing national security con-
United States, the Biden administra- Yellen delivers the punchline: “China’s cerns” is the defense of Ukraine against
tion knows that it needs to clarify its economic growth need not be incom- Russian aggression. Anyone who falls
economic relations with the country patible with U.S. economic leadership.” within U.S. jurisdiction and chooses to
that is the largest U.S. trading partner It is worth lingering over the impli- ignore U.S. sanctions against Russia will
outside North America. cation here. Conflict is not inevita- face serious consequences. Likewise,
In the wake of this year’s Interna- ble, because the United States is doing since the United States has decided that
tional Monetary Fund and World Bank well. That, in turn, means that China it wishes to deny certain technologies
spring meetings, U.S. Treasury Secre- can grow without threatening U.S. eco- to the Chinese military, it will impose
tary Janet Yellen made her first major nomic leadership. But what if that were sanctions and trade limits accordingly.
statement on economic relations with not the case? Yellen does not spell out So a strong and self-confident United
China since 2021. Judged by the tone, the implication. Yet, in that eventual- States has no reason to stand in the
her message was intended to clarify ity, where Yellen leaves little room for way of China’s economic and techno-
and calm the waters of speculation and doubt, all bets would be off. Even now, logical modernization except in every
debate about motives and intentions. even when the Biden administration area that the U.S. national security
In the current situation, however, it is professes to be confident about U.S. eco- establishment, the most gigantic in
far from clear whether clarity actually nomic prospects, Yellen insists: “As in the world, defines as being of essen-
contributes to calm. all of our foreign relations, national tial national interest. For this to be
The scenario that Yellen rejects is that security is of paramount importance anything other than hypocrisy, you
of the Thucydides Trap, but her rea- in our relationship with China.” have to imagine that we live in a Gold-
sons for doing so are telling. The idea At one level, this is obvious. No pub- ilocks world in which the technology,
that “conflict between the United States lic official will ever say anything else. industrial capacity, and trade that are
and China” is “increasingly inevitable” Security is the basic function of states. relevant to national security are inci-
is, she insists, based on a false prem- But everything depends on the scope of dental to economic and technological
ise. That outlook was “driven by fears, your vision of national security and the modernization more broadly speaking.
shared by some Americans, that the level of trust. And if you have to state Yellen pays lip service to that Goldi-
United States was in decline. And that the priority of national security in for- locks vision by insisting that U.S. mea-
China would imminently leapfrog us as eign relations out loud, you know you sures against China will be tightly
the world’s top economic power, lead- have a problem. targeted. But, as everyone knows,
ing to a clash between nations.” The For Yellen, it is obvious that the United those targeted measures have so far
United States would seek military con- States is entitled to define its national included massive efforts to hobble the
frontation to forestall the unfavorable security at a planetary level. She claims, world leader in 5G technology, Huawei,
shift in the power balance attendant on sanctions against the entire chip supply
China’s phenomenal economic growth. chain, and the inclusion of most major
This makes no sense, Yellen reassures research universities in China on the U.S.
us, because the U.S. economy, thanks Entity List, which strictly limits trade.
to its foundational institutions of free- Meanwhile, to add to the perplex-
dom, its culture of innovation, and the ity, while Yellen insists that national
wise governance of the Biden adminis- security sanctions tell us nothing about
tration, is in rude health. U.S. intentions toward Chinese growth,
“The United States remains the most she trumpets legislation passed on the
dynamic and prosperous economy in Biden administration’s watch—nota-
the world.” So, Yellen insists, it has no bly the CHIPS and Science Act and the
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

reason to seek to “stifle China’s eco- Inflation Reduction Act, which feature
nomic and technological moderniza- strong anti-China elements—as con-
tion” or pursue a deep decoupling. U.S. tributing significantly to America’s own
economic power, the treasury secretary U.S. Treasury Secretary future prosperity.
goes on, is “amplified” by its relation- Janet Yellen speaks about the The upshot is that the United States
ships with “close friends and partners U.S.-China economic relationship welcomes China’s economic modern-
at the Johns Hopkins School
in every region of the world, including of Advanced International Studies ization and will refuse the lure of the
the Indo-Pacific.” The United States thus in Washington on April 20. Thucydides Trap so long as China’s

SUMMER 2023 13
development proceeds along lines that change. Otherwise, it is simply asking peace proposal for Ukraine, with which
do not infringe on U.S. leadership and for a fight. Q China aims to strengthen its position vis-
national security. And America’s atti- à-vis the United States among three spe-
tude will be all the more benign the ADAM TOOZE is a professor and the cific audiences: the global south, Europe,
more successful it is in pursuing its own director of the European Institute and postwar Ukraine.
national prosperity and preeminence at Columbia University, as well as First, China aims to present itself to
precisely in those areas. a columnist at FOREIGN POLICY the global south as a future peace bro-
It is telling that what seems to be and co-host of Ones & Tooze, FP’s ker. The very same week in late Febru-
intended as a reasonable and accommo- economics podcast. ary that Beijing presented its Ukraine
dating statement is, in fact, so jarring. proposal, it also issued a concept paper
China must accept U.S. demarcation of outlining the Global Security Initiative
the status quo. If it does not respect the (GSI). This was no coincidence. First
boundaries drawn for it by Washington announced in April 2022, the GSI is Chi-
between harmless prosperity and his- CHINA nese President Xi Jinping’s master plan
torically consequential technological for a new global security architecture,
development, then it should expect to which envisions an enhanced role for
face massive sanctions. China in safeguarding world peace—
One must be grateful to Yellen for especially in the global south—through
stating the point so clearly. But how dialogue, development, and negotia-
on earth does Washington expect Bei- tion. Beijing knows that a number of
jing to respond? China is not Japan or countries in the global south interpret
Germany after 1945. In relation to the the Russia-Ukraine war differently from

China’s ‘Peace
United States, if the question of lead- the West, are more inclined to take
ership is posed, parity is the least that Russia’s side, and call for an early, nego-

Plan’ for
Beijing must aim for. The status quo tiated end to the war.
that Yellen takes for granted clearly Beijing has long emphasized its rela-

Ukraine Isn’t
cannot be legitimate in the long run. As tionship with the global south. Under
Beijing has said, it aspires to a funda- Chinese leader Mao Zedong in the 1960s
mental reordering of world affairs such
that U.S. talk of leadership is retired
forever. Nor is China the only major
About Peace and ’70s, China strongly identified with
various independence and liberation
movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin
Asian power to share this view. India’s America. It was with the support of a
understanding is no different. growing number of decolonized nations
In Washington, this meets with blank By Jo Inge Bekkevold that China in 1971 replaced Taiwan in
incomprehension or even a sense of hina’s peace proposal the United Nations and, most impor-
wounded pride. Does China not under- for Ukraine has come to tantly, the U.N. Security Council. Today,
stand that it owes its growth to a U.S.- nothing—if, that is, peace in the context of Sino-U.S. rivalry, the
led order? To rebel against that order, in Ukraine were actually global south is arguably more import-
Yellen says quite openly, is not in Beijing’s main motivation. ant to Beijing than ever before. It is
China’s interest. Yellen is right that The 12 points outlined in “China’s Posi- China’s largest source of many natu-
conflict between China and the United tion on the Political Settlement of the ral resources, a vital voting base for
States is not inevitable. It does depend Ukraine Crisis” are clearly too abstract Beijing’s influence in multilateral insti-
on the moves that both sides make. to be a road map to end the war. Instead, tutions, and the potential site of mil-
But it is hard to see how her vision, the proposal should be viewed as a piece itary bases if China one day wants to
in which the United States arrogates in China’s intensified informational leapfrog the geopolitical constraints
to itself the right to define which tra- and diplomatic rivalry with the United of its home region and deploy military
jectory of Chinese economic growth is States. After running its diplomatic power beyond Asia. Conflict resolution
and is not acceptable, can possibly be activity at reduced speed for almost is one contribution that Beijing may
a basis for peace. If the United States is three years due to the COVID-19 pan- offer in return, together with invest-
still interested in global economic and demic, Beijing has recently launched a ments and development. Even if the
political order, and it surely should be, number of foreign-policy initiatives. The Ukraine proposal was dead in the water
it must be open to negotiate peaceful most prominent of these is its so-called from the start, it was an important

14
 ARGUMENTS
signal of how Beijing sees its future role.
Peace has been a central theme in
official Chinese rhetoric ever since
the founding of the People’s Repub-
lic. In 1954, in the context of the global
decolonization movement, China estab-
lished the “Five Principles of Peaceful
Coexistence” as a guideline for its for-
eign policy. In 2005, Beijing issued a
white paper titled “China’s Peaceful
Development Road,” framing its own
rise in the context of world peace and
development. Occasionally, Chinese
leaders even portray Chinese culture as
more peace-loving than others, claim-
ing that China has never started a con- Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin
flict or war. Needless to say, these are toast each other at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 21.
unfounded statements. Not only has
China’s history been just as violent as
Europe’s or any other region’s, but also Second, China’s Ukraine proposal on China—even in security terms. In
nothing in Chinese strategic culture is part of its attempt to reset its rela- 2019, the European Union published a
would indicate that China is more or tionship with Europe. In February, strategy paper that labeled China a sys-
less peaceful than other nations. That China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, visited temic rival, and in 2021, Brussels decided
said, China has not been at war since France, Italy, and Hungary, as well as to put an EU-China investment agree-
it invaded Vietnam in 1979, and it is the Munich Security Conference in Ger- ment on ice. Furthermore, European
indeed engaged in peacemaking. many, where he announced China’s policymakers have taken steps to imple-
Since 1990, China has dispatched Ukraine plan and told European lead- ment a number of new defensive instru-
more than 50,000 peacekeepers to ers that if China and Europe chose dia- ments, including investment screening,
nearly 30 U.N. peacekeeping mis- logue and cooperation, Cold War-style trade enforcement, and procurement
sions. The two largest undertakings are bloc confrontation would not emerge. reciprocity. In addition, NATO’s Strate-
Beijing’s anti-piracy task force in the Beijing reckons that Washington’s shift gic Concept in 2022 identified China as a
Gulf of Aden and the deployment of from engagement toward decoupling potential security challenge for Europe.
an infantry battalion with the United and rivalry is a lasting change. Bei- On top of this, Beijing’s continued sup-
Nations in South Sudan in 2015. In jing believes that Europe is still in play port of Moscow amid its war in Ukraine
2019, U.N. Secretary-General António and knows that Russia, not China, is has further harmed China’s relationship
Guterres appointed a Chinese diplomat Europe’s top security challenge. Bei- with Europe.
as his special envoy for Africa’s Great jing understands that there is no pros- Despite these setbacks, Beijing finds
Lakes region; Chinese diplomats have pect of Europe staying completely Europe sending mixed signals. Euro-
also participated in the Oslo Forum, the neutral. Yet, as Oxford University his- pean leaders and policymakers talk
preeminent annual retreat on conflict torian Rana Mitter recently pointed about competition and rivalry with
mediation. And only a few weeks after out, China will continue reminding China, but they also signal strong inten-
China presented its Ukraine proposal, Europeans that “simply following the tions to continue cooperating. When
it brokered a deal to resurrect Saudi- [U.S.] line is not the only option.” Given German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vis-
PAVEL BYRKIN/SPUTNIK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Iranian diplomatic ties. China’s evident loss of the United States, ited China in November 2022 with a
With the exception of the Ukraine it wants at least to secure its economic heavyweight business delegation, he
plan, these efforts may indeed contrib- relationship with Europe and ensure it told then-Chinese Premier Li Keqiang
ute to peace. But with the return of a can continue cooperating with Europe that the two countries were no friends of
great-power rivalry, the United States on various global issues. decoupling. On a visit to Beijing in April,
and China will increasingly view each Sure, Europe’s perception of China French President Emmanuel Macron
other’s policies through a zero-sum has changed dramatically as European pledged to continue to develop a “close
lens—including their peacemaking policymakers and companies increas- and solid global strategic partnership”
endeavors. ingly adopt a more competitive outlook with China, and other French officials

SUMMER 2023 15
have argued that the United States and Many European countries are particu- And if the proposal also helps China
Europe have different views on how to larly concerned about Chinese invest- improve its deteriorating relationship
manage China. Moreover, both Scholz ments in critical infrastructure, and with Europe, including by engaging
and Macron have said they are opposed the EU is determined to play a major with postwar Ukraine, that would be
to a bipolar world, indicating that they role in Ukraine’s reconstruction and no small achievement at all. Q
foresee an autonomous role for Europe recovery process in order to ensure that
in international affairs. China wel- it goes hand in hand with reforms pre- JO INGE BEKKEVOLD is a senior China
comes French ideas of European stra- paring Ukraine for membership. More- fellow at the Norwegian Institute for
tegic autonomy, a message that Chinese over, if Ukraine is no longer willing to Defence Studies.
leaders and diplomats often convey to be a buffer state between NATO and
their European counterparts. Russia, Kyiv’s only real alternative is
European leaders should be encour- to seek some sort of security guarantee CHINA BRIEF: FP’s James Palmer
aged to continue talking with Bei- from NATO and/or the United States, explains the political drivers behind
jing, including about Russia’s war in which could distance Ukraine further the headlines in Beijing and shows you
Ukraine. However, they need to have from China. Nevertheless, Europe has the stories the West has missed. Sign up
a realistic understanding of what, if not closed its door entirely on China. for email newsletters at ForeignPolicy.
anything, Xi is able and willing to do Absent formal NATO membership com/briefings.
to make Russian President Vladimir for Ukraine, which seems unlikely as
Putin stop the war. Some European long as the war with Russia lingers
governments may believe that Beijing on, Chinese investments could actu-
can be wooed away from Moscow, but ally be an alternative form of guaran- ASIA &
that is not a likely scenario. tee against Russian aggression. Given
Third, China’s peace proposal is part Moscow’s growing dependence on T H E PAC I F I C
of its effort to position itself in the recon- Beijing’s goodwill, Russian military
struction of Ukraine after the war. In attacks affecting Chinese infrastruc-
fact, China’s position paper on Ukraine ture projects in Ukraine would become
explicitly states that it stands ready to highly improbable.
provide assistance and play a role in In the end, however, China has only
post-conflict reconstruction. No other limited ability to bring a peaceful solu-
country is possibly better equipped than tion to the Russia-Ukraine war. The

India’s G-20
China to assist in rebuilding Ukraine. It peace plan that Ukrainian President
has constructed more railways, high- Volodymyr Zelensky presented to the
ways, airports, bridges, pipelines, ports,
and high-rise buildings at home and
G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, last
November calls for the full restoration Presidency
Is an Ad for
abroad than any other nation over the of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and a
last two to three decades, giving Chinese complete withdrawal of Russian troops.
companies a unique set of experiences.
In addition, China has money. Welcom-
Beijing is not likely to ask Moscow to
act accordingly. This is why Washing- Modi
ing Chinese assistance, expertise, and ton and most European capitals are
investments must be a tempting prop- skeptical of China’s initiative. Indeed,
osition for Ukraine. Seen from Beijing, the United States and Ukraine recently
contributing to the reconstruction of cautioned against giving any weight By Manjari Chatterjee Miller
Ukraine would strengthen China’s over- to alternative peace plans that seek a and Clare Harris
all engagement with Europe. cease-fire without the full withdrawal f you go almost anywhere in New
Kyiv’s growing links with the EU, of invading Russian forces. Delhi, you won’t be far from a
NATO, and Washington, however, pres- But even though its peace initiative giant poster advertising India’s
ent Beijing with a complicating factor. will do little to end the Russia-Ukraine presidency of the G-20—a group
Even if Ukraine’s two-year timetable war, Beijing had nothing to lose by for- of 19 large economies plus the
for securing EU membership is overly warding a rather vague proposal. On European Union—alongside a por-
ambitious, it is planning to closely align the contrary, it enables Beijing to tap trait of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
with a Europe that is increasingly appre- into the disconnect between the West Switch on the TV or pick up a news-
hensive about China’s growing might. and the global south about the war. paper, and you’ll encounter gushing

16
 ARGUMENTS
media coverage about how India’s India plans to host more than 200 On the other hand, Modi’s goal isn’t
term in charge of the group represents meetings in 56 cities during its leader- just to further the G-20 among the
a moment for the country to showcase ship year. (Indonesia, as last year’s pres- Indian public but also to project him-
its global leadership. ident, hosted meetings in just over 20 self as the only capable steward of a
The rotating G-20 presidency is usu- cities.) Along the way, New Delhi will rising India. India’s G-20 strategy posi-
ally symbolic: The presiding country highlight the country’s economic suc- tions Modi and the BJP as the vehicle
hosts meetings and has the power to set cesses, including its advancements in for India’s presence on the global stage.
the annual theme. Perhaps unsurpris- solar power and digital health. The con- This year’s logo replaces the zero in
ingly, international media covering this venings will culminate in a summit in G-20 with the image of a globe inside a
year’s G-20 meetings have focused on November, which commentators have lotus, using the colors of the Indian flag.
the obvious tensions between member already declared will be India’s “most Although the Modi administration has
states. In March, a G-20 foreign minis- prestigious diplomatic fete” since the said the lotus stands for hope, it is also
ters’ meeting in New Delhi made head- Non-Aligned Movement summit in 1983. the symbol of the BJP—prominent on
lines when disagreements over Russia’s New Delhi’s G-20 strategy includes election ballots for any of the approxi-
war in Ukraine came to the fore. But an unusual level of public involvement, mately 200 million Indian citizens who
what the rest of the world seems to have a fact highlighted in the government’s cannot read. Indian opposition leaders
ignored so far is how Modi is shrewdly marketing campaign. State and local have issued repeated reminders that
marketing India’s presidency of the officials have organized a mass educa- the G-20 leadership rotates and urged
group to burnish his personal image and tion campaign on India’s presidency, Modi not to frame the presidency as his
elevate his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). initiatives to encourage public partic- personal achievement, but the BJP has
By highlighting India’s position as ipation, and school activities such as so far ignored those calls. Ahead of the
a major power courted by countries quizzes, essay-writing competitions, 2024 national elections, this position-
including the United States, Modi and and debates. The government has asked ing can help Modi further his claim to
his supporters have boosted nation- universities to prepare students to act be the only person capable of bringing
alist sentiments among the country’s as local facilitators for foreign delegates India’s major-power status to fruition.
masses. This is no small public rela- in events and celebrations during the This growing clout is accompanied
tions feat. The G-20 was meant to be a year. On one hand, this highly innova- by growing expectations of India—
staid forum little known outside wonky tive strategy should be applauded. It and by extension, of Modi. There is the
circles; it is now trendy in India. This democratizes an elitist summit, edu- tantalizing hope among India’s part-
canny marketing has important ram- cates the public, and encourages them ners that India could leverage its non-
ifications for Modi’s chances to return to understand foreign-policy making— aligned position and historic ties with
to power in elections next year and for typically the province of a tiny minority Russia to negotiate diplomatic cooper-
his stature on the global stage—but it in most countries. ation between Moscow and other G-20
is also not without risks. If, as India’s
G-20 marketing seems to imply, Modi is
responsible for the country’s increasing
clout, then he could also shoulder the
blame for a potential failure to deliver
on global expectations.
When India assumed the G-20 pres-
idency last December, there was an
inkling that the Modi administration’s
approach would be different from those
of other recent group leaders. A hun-
dred monuments around the country,
R.SATISH BABU/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

including UNESCO World Heritage

sites, were illuminated for an entire
Bharatiya Janata
week in celebration. Newspapers Party supporters
printed full-page ads to call attention await the arrival of
to the start of India’s term. The Modi Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi
government rebranded the grouping a in Chennai, India,
“People’s G-20.” on April 8.

SUMMER 2023 17
capitals. Modi has also championed aims to show that India can speak to the low. Japan is an island nation, however,
India’s role as a connector between the needs of smaller, developing nations as and in a conflict—likely with China or
West and global south. In January, India well as major world powers. Simultane- North Korea—its waterways and ports
hosted its Voice of Global South Sum- ously, through aggressive advertising would be cut off early, making it incred-
mit, with delegates from 125 developing and by inviting the Indian public to be ibly difficult to replenish its stocks with
countries. But when Russia and China a part of this usually elite, remote, and foreign infusions once fighting were
refused to sign a G-20 communique that even boring event, the government is underway. Japan does make some of
mentioned the ongoing war in Ukraine, making the case that India’s G-20 presi- its own supplies, but having been hin-
it dented the hope of India serving as a dency and growing influence are a con- dered by self-imposed restrictions, its
mediator between Moscow and Kyiv. sequence of Modi’s strong leadership. defense industrial capacity is too low to
Beyond giving “resonance to the The challenge for Modi lies in deliver- withstand a rapid increase in demand
voice of the global south,” an initiative ing on heightened expectations. Q if a war were to break out, let alone to
that is not new but that India has cham- sustain a prolonged conflict.
pioned for decades as one of the archi- MANJARI CHATTERJEE MILLER is a senior Despite its long-standing policy of
tects of the Non-Aligned Movement, fellow and CLARE HARRIS a research pacifism, Tokyo now seems to believe
New Delhi has not laid out the concrete associate, both at the Council on that beefing up its military capabili-
deliverables of a global south grouping. Foreign Relations. ties may be its only path to long-term
For example, it is bringing the agenda peace. Last December, Japanese Prime
of digital public infrastructure to the Minister Fumio Kishida’s government
G-20 table, but India—which has led
in services rather than as a producer Japan Needs released three new national security
strategy documents that, among other
of technological goods—has yet to fully
prove how it could offer such infrastruc- a Defense reforms, included the long-eschewed
acquisition of long-range precision
ture to countries in the global south.
The facilitation of cross-border digital Industrial strike missiles and a major military
spending boost that will give Japan
payments is one possibility: India estab-
lished a real-time payments linkage sys- Revolution the world’s third-biggest military bud-
get, behind only the United States and
tem with Singapore, where citizens of China. But this influx of cash and capa-
both countries can use India’s UPI and bilities will do little to fix the military’s
Singapore’s PayNow to directly send wartime problems if it does not also
payments each way. Whether India can By Rena Sasaki reform its struggling defense industry.
dramatically and rapidly expand this to he ongoing Russia-Ukraine Japan’s 2013 National Security
other countries eager to establish such war has dispelled the Strategy contained only one mention
linkages remains to be seen. notion that any future of defense industry. In 2022, Tokyo
Further complicating matters is the military conflict will be determined that strengthening Japan’s
fact that China, which didn’t partici- fast, clean, or easy. Hav- defense production and technology
pate in India’s global south summit, ing watched this war closely, Japan is base was indispensable to its national
also positions itself as a champion of now rethinking many of its long-stand- security.
non-Western countries and has stepped ing assumptions about its security envi- For much of its postwar history,
up its role beyond infrastructure devel- ronment, particularly concerning its Japan limited its military capabilities
opment and financing. In March, its supplies and equipment. Simply put, solely to those needed to defend against
breakthrough diplomatic mediation no country can win a war without small-scale invasions. As such, Japan
between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with enough of the right equipment. This is has traditionally kept its defense indus-
negotiations reportedly conducted especially true for countries fighting a try to a minimum and instead relied on
only in Chinese, Persian, and Arabic prolonged conflict. When it comes to foreign suppliers for most of its physical
to avoid leaks, came as an uneasy sur- getting the equipment they need, coun- needs. But over time, as Japan’s secu-
prise to many. tries have two options: to get it from rity objectives have shifted, Japanese
The Modi government is being strate- someone else or make it themselves. companies have become responsible
gic and intentional about using the G-20 Because it shares land borders with for an increasing share of the coun-
presidency to its advantage. By high- several countries, Ukraine has been able try’s military manufacturing, includ-
lighting India’s heritage and economic to receive crucial shipments of foreign ing ships, ammunition, and much of
successes as a rising world power, Modi equipment when its supplies have run its land-based equipment.

18
 ARGUMENTS
Despite these developments, Japan’s
military is still very much reliant on
foreign suppliers. Japan procures most
of its aviation equipment—including
F-35 fighter aircraft, Global Hawk sur-
veillance drones, and V-22 helicop-
ters—from the United States through
Foreign Military Sales agreements. This
is a problem because, as foreign defense
contractors have shifted their business
strategy from being hardware suppliers
to service providers, foreign products—
even from friendly suppliers—increas-
ingly come with strings attached. Parts,
maintenance, and repair are now a key
part of defense contractors’ business
models. Under current agreements, Members of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force attend a live-fire
Japan is unable to replace parts for exercise in Shizuoka prefecture, Japan, on May 28, 2022.
equipment it purchased overseas and
can only make minor repairs unless it
is specifically authorized to do other- to entry for companies hoping to con- legislation that will raise profit margins
wise. When equipment needs repair or tribute—and a high turnover rate for for its defense equipment contractors
replacement, Japan can get the neces- companies that manage to get in. In the up to 15 percent to increase the financial
sary parts and services from the prime past 20 years, more than 100 compa- incentives for Japanese companies to
contractor, but this process can be cum- nies have exited Japan’s defense sector stay in this sector. By shouldering some
bersome and slow, even under the best due to a lack of business sustainabil- of the costs and risks of private compa-
of circumstances—let alone during ity. Without reform, many promising nies, the government can prioritize its
times of war. companies will continue to withdraw policy needs instead of being beholden
It makes sense, then, that Japan or downsize their operations to invest to market pressures.
wants to reduce its reliance on foreign elsewhere, and Japan will lose out not This would be a welcome change, but
equipment. But as it stands, Japan’s only on critical short-term production it’s not enough on its own. Japan’s long-
defense industry isn’t up to the task. capability but also the expertise needed term success will hinge on its ability to
Defense-related sales account for only for long-term growth. not only make its own equipment but
4 percent of the total sales of major Facing this reality, Japan is consider- also sell it to others. The more Japan’s
Japanese manufacturing companies, ing bringing parts of the defense sector defense industry can expand its market
and in 2020, defense-related procure- under government control. Kishida’s internationally, the less costly it will be
ment from domestic manufacturers Liberal Democratic Party has pushed to make these products for Japan itself.
made up less than 1 percent of Japan’s the idea of state-owned factories to Increased production leads to lower
total industrial production value. For reduce the investment burden on man- prices and higher profit margins, which
comparison, roughly 10 percent of the ufacturers while maintaining the pri- in turn improve the sustainability of
United States’ factory output is directed vate sector’s technical expertise. Under these businesses and lower the risk
toward defense manufacturing. this model, the state would lease facto- of withdrawal. In other words, what
Compounding matters is that in ries to manufacturers that possess rel- Japan’s defense industry really needs
Japan, defense manufacturing belongs evant technology and clearances. The is an economy of scale.
to the private sector, unlike in coun- government would then assign the pro- Yet again, there are barriers in the
tries such as France and Italy, where the duction of essential equipment, such way of undertaking the kinds of reforms
TOMOHIRO OHSUMI/GETTY IMAGES

state is a predominant stakeholder in as explosives used in ammunition, to Japan so desperately needs. Part of this
most defense companies. In theory, this these firms. This program would elimi- obstacle is cultural, and part is legal.
model promotes innovation through nate the cost of installing and maintain- In the post-World War II era, Japan
market competition and shifts the bur- ing equipment, which otherwise could has developed a strong culture of paci-
den of risk away from the government. be prohibitive to a company’s finan- fism; even today, companies that make
However, it also creates a high barrier cial success. Tokyo is also preparing weapons aren’t generally accepted by the

SUMMER 2023 19
Japanese public. This can create hesita- countries with nonlethal military aid
tion among defense manufacturers that in an effort to counter China—a major
are concerned about the reputational departure from its previous policies that
MIDDLE EAST
risk of being labeled merchants of death. forbade the use of development aid for
The aversion to defense companies may military purposes other than disaster & AFRICA
be shifting, though, in light of the Rus- relief. Tokyo will further increase its
sia-Ukraine war. Public demonstrations accessibility if it passes legislation to
against Japan’s new National Security establish a fund to provide financial
Strategy were paltry—the largest gath- support to Japanese defense manufac-
ering attracted only 1,100 people, com- turers that support projects in develop-
pared with the estimated 120,000 who ing countries. To be most impactful, the
attended one such protest against the fund should allow for flexible payment
2015 Peace and Security Law. Japanese
society has traditionally been hesitant to
methods to keep costs as low as possible
for partner states, which might struggle U.S. Policies
accept the practice of defense equipment
transfers, but many in Japan now sup-
to make high initial payments.
Alongside these efforts, Japan Paved the
Way for War
port strengthening defense capabilities. should also allow for and facilitate mili-
Legally speaking, however, under tary-to-military channels of communi-

in Sudan
Article 9 of its constitution, Japan is cation with potential buyers, which is
prohibited from conducting or aiding in far more efficient than handling deals
the act of war, which includes sending through civilian government bodies,
troops and weapons to other countries such as Japan’s Ministry of Foreign
in conflict. In 2014, Tokyo lifted the ban Affairs. To jump-start this effort, Japan
on overseas defense transfers for certain could also consider transferring used By Justin Lynch
countries, hoping to capitalize on the equipment to Southeast Asian militar- ighting in Sudan began on
lucrative export market. Even with this ies, as it has already done with the Phil- April 15 after years of ten-
flexibility, Tokyo’s hopes for increased ippines and Vietnam. sion between the country’s
defense exports have failed to mate- Despite its long-held pacifist hesi- two power brokers: Gen.
rialize. To date, Japan has completed tations, Tokyo clearly recognizes that Abdel Fattah al-Burhan,
only one overseas transfer of finished defense transfers could be a powerful the country’s de facto leader and head
equipment—a contract with the Philip- tool for creating a more stable and desir- of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF),
pine Department of National Defense able security environment in its neigh- and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo,
for four warning-and-control radars borhood—as it acknowledged in its widely known as Hemeti, who leads
in the summer of 2020. Japan still has latest National Security Strategy. Exe- the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces
strict rules that prohibit sending weap- cuting these changes, however, will be a (RSF). Running street battles started in
ons to countries in a state of war, but tall order. Tokyo will need to act quickly Khartoum and spread across the coun-
it has been able to provide Ukraine if it wants to make up for lost time. Q try. Residents reported low-flying air-
with economic support and nonlethal planes strafing the ground as well as
defense equipment and technology. RENA SASAKI is an incoming Ph.D. horrendous human rights violations.
However, Japan is considering revis- student at the Johns Hopkins School Fighting in Darfur resulted in the
ing these rules, which could potentially of Advanced International Studies deaths of aid workers with the World
allow Japanese companies to export to and a fellow of the Pacific Forum’s Food Programme. United Nations and
countries fending off an invasion. Young Leaders Program. NGO compounds were invaded and
Longer term, if Japan wants to be an looted across the country. The Euro-
attractive supplier, it needs to make its pean Union’s ambassador to Khartoum
processes easier and more accessible SOUTH ASIA BRIEF: Michael Kugelman was assaulted in his home.
for potential buyers and users of Jap- writes a weekly digest of news and Sudan now faces a state collapse sim-
anese defense products, particularly analysis from India and seven ilar to Yemen’s.
developing countries in the Indo-Pa- neighboring countries—a region that What may emerge out of a civil war
cific region. It has made progress toward comprises one-fourth of the world’s is a conflict that also sucks in the entire
this goal already: In April, it unveiled a population. Sign up for email news- region and some global powers. Egyp-
new program to provide “like-minded” letters at ForeignPolicy.com/briefings. tian soldiers who were training with the

20
 ARGUMENTS
SAF were arrested by the RSF in the early which is a civilian government. It’s like first 21 months of the transition, followed
hours of the conflict. Diplomats fear that having a diversion in the middle of your by civilians for the next 18 months.
Cairo will provide support to the SAF. journey.” Although Hamdok was a civilian
The United Arab Emirates has been a Burhan was the head of state and was prime minister, it was a mostly pow-
key ally for Hemeti during the former’s trusted with following through on his erless job. Still, the U.S. government
war in Libya and Yemen. The UAE also promise of democracy. insisted on this phrase, even when
benefits from financial ties to Hemeti’s Immediately when the transitional the military handover date to civilians
businesses. Global Witness reports that period began, it was apparent that was repeatedly delayed. U.S. officials
the UAE has also been a key supplier of Western hopes for democracy were told me that they knew the term was
military equipment to the RSF. Russian far-fetched. more aspirational than descriptive. But
Wagner Group mercenaries trained I interviewed the new civilian prime the linguistic acrobatics Washington
RSF troops and had officials stationed minister, Abdalla Hamdok, in a house employed suggested officials believed
inside some of their bases. that was given to him by a prominent that they could simply call Sudan a
Perhaps the only powers that have a Sudanese family because Burhan and democracy and it would become one.
limited ability to shape events in Sudan the military initially refused to even pro- It’s not clear if the U.S. or Western gov-
are the United States and its Western vide him with a place to stay. The core ernments could have prevented the 2021
allies. To try to prevent the bleak out- elements of Sudan’s protest movement coup against Hamdok. The U.S.-backed
look of state disintegration in Sudan, the in 2019, Sudan’s labor unions, lost power transitional constitution was a bad deal.
U.S. government is working with Arab due to infighting. Civilian political par- However, the ensuing U.S. and Western
states—namely Egypt, Saudi Arabia, ties squabbled over power. Reforms that policies in Sudan directly contributed to
and the UAE—but these U.S. allies are Hamdok wanted to make were blocked the latest violence. It is a story of Western
on opposing sides in Sudan. A return to by Burhan and Hemeti. The illusion of peacebuilding and its limits.
the pre-April 15 status quo is becoming any civilian authority ended in 2021, Sudan’s feuding generals bear pri-
increasingly unlikely as the fighting when Hamdok was removed in a mil- mary responsibility for the current
continues. The absence of U.S. influ- itary coup. The military’s promise to fighting in Sudan. But the precipitating
ence comes just four years after a high hand over power to civilians proved hol- event of the current war in Sudan was a
point for Washington’s hopes in Sudan. low. The U.S.-backed transition revealed reconciliation agreement and security
Months of protests in early 2019 led itself as fundamentally flawed. sector reform plan that was pushed by
to a military coup against former dic- Perhaps the greatest example of U.S. the United States and the U.N. mission
tator Omar al-Bashir. It appeared that delusions was Washington’s insistence in Sudan. Immediately after the coup
three decades of U.S. policy to support on calling Sudan’s transition “civil- against Hamdok, the United States and
democracy could finally bear fruit. But ian-led.” There was nothing about the U.N. revitalized the plan. It meant
the United States and other Western Sudan’s transition that was civilian-led. returning to a version of the failed 2019
nations pressured civilian protesters The 2019 transitional constitution laid constitution and trusting the military
and the military to form a transitional out that the military would lead for the leaders to keep their promises.
government. The eventual transitional
constitution meant that elections were
scheduled to take place in 2022.
If there was a moment when hope
for democracy was lost in Sudan, it was
when this transitional constitution was
agreed to. The military was allowed to
MAHMOUD HJAJ/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES

run the country for the first part of the

transition. “We still have not achieved
what we are fighting for,” Sara Abdelgalil,
then a spokesperson for the Sudanese
Professionals Association, which helped
organize the protests, told FOREIGN
POLICY in 2019. “Omar al-Bashir is not
there, but the regime itself is still there.
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (center), the head of the Sudanese Armed Forces
Objective one has not been achieved. and de facto leader of Sudan, and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (left), his deputy
Objective two has not been achieved, and a rival general, attend a ceremony in Khartoum, Sudan, on Dec. 5, 2022.

SUMMER 2023 21
 The basic idea of the security sec- only failed to bring about democracy made no firm commitments on deliv-
tor reform was to unify the SAF and but contributed to Sudan’s collapse. ery of the planes themselves. Just four
RSF into a single army. It is difficult It’s not clear if Washington is ready. months earlier, in January, Washington
to estimate each force’s size. The SAF Once fighting began on April 15, U.S. had announced that it would send 31
has around 100,000 soldiers, while the Secretary of State Antony Blinken M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine but said
RSF has a smaller standing army of any- repeated U.S. delusions on Sudan: “This it would take at least a year before the
where between 30,000 and 50,000 fight- is a real opportunity to finally carry for- tanks were delivered. At the time, one
ers but a large reserve force because it ward the civilian-led transition.” Q official clarified to the Washington Post
can mobilize tribal allies. that the tanks were “probably not for
Negotiations were held for months JUSTIN LYNCH is a researcher and the near fight.” Both cases are exam-
trying to get the two sides to agree on analyst in Washington, D.C., and ples of Ukraine’s allies upping the ante
a path forward. The problem was that co-author of Sudan’s Unfinished with Russia without achieving tangible
neither Burhan nor Hemeti wanted to Democracy. operational effects. This gives Moscow
give up the power that he’d accrued. time to adapt and plan, degrading the
The plan became a pressure cooker. potential benefits of the new weap-
“It became a real shit show with all AFRICA BRIEF: Nosmot Gbadamosi ons to Ukraine. Moreover, in a year or
the participants being real amateurs,” rounds up essential news and analysis more, the war could be over or look
a Western diplomat in Khartoum told from Algeria to Zimbabwe and very different.
me after one of the negotiation work- countries in between. Sign up for email These decision lags illustrate the
shops between the SAF and RSF. “Dip- newsletters at ForeignPolicy.com/ persistent problem of incremental-
lomats here and headquarters think briefings. ism, which has characterized the U.S.
one-dimensionally.” and allied effort toward Ukraine—with
The outcome that we see of the plan ad hoc, one-off decisions and lagging
was predictable, in part because it is implementation undermining the stra-
a repeat of history. The peacemaking tegic effects of this assistance.
effort was a reproduction of agreements EUROPE A successful military campaign is
that were made in South Sudan in 2013 guided by an overall strategy and by
and 2016. Those also led to civil wars. what the U.S. military calls “mission
In his excellent book When Peace Kills analysis.” Leaders define the desired
Politics, Sharath Srinivasan details how end state, analyze the opponent and
international peacemaking in Sudan other operational factors, and develop
and South Sudan has contributed to a plan that specifies the forces, weapons
these types of civil wars. “[P]eacemak- systems, materiel, and logistics needed
ing—because of how its ways of working to succeed. Adjustments are made—war
inevitably collide with the politics of a is unpredictable—but mission analysis
civil war—can risk reproducing logics Incrementalism offers a way to provide an answer to the
of violence,” he writes.
The security sector reform in Sudan, Is Throttling question of what it takes to achieve the
end state.

U.S. Support
as it has elsewhere, created a competi- What the United States has done in
tion that incentivized Hemeti and Bur- Ukraine departs from that template.

for Ukraine
han to build up their forces. It also meant Since Russia’s invasion in February
that both men would have to be placed 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden has used
under civilian control, which was in nei- his presidential drawdown authority—
ther’s interest. The generals publicly which purportedly allows for the faster
committed to reform and democracy, but By Nadia Schadlow delivery of defense equipment and ser-
it seems the only people who believed t the G-7 summit in May, vices from the U.S. Defense Depart-
them were U.S. and U.N. officials. allied leaders announced ment to foreign countries in the event
Diplomats have told me that they their intention to train of emergencies—at least 36 times. The
face limited tools to stop the violence Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fact that the administration has used
in Sudan. But once the current crisis fighter jets. At the same this authority so many times suggests
is over, there needs to be a reckoning time, they noted that it would take at that the United States could do bet-
that U.S. and Western policy has not least 18 months for the training and ter in thinking through—upfront—

22
 ARGUMENTS
the equipment required to achieve
its objectives. It also suggests that the
administration has no clear and artic-
ulable strategic objective.
Incrementalism has plagued Wash-
ington’s Ukraine policy for a long
time. After Russian President Vladi-
mir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea,
the Obama administration refused to
provide arms to Ukraine, instead opting
to provide nonlethal equipment, such as
night vision goggles and training. The
Trump administration began to send
around 200 Javelin anti-tank weapons
to Ukraine in 2018. Although then-U.S.
President Donald Trump threatened to
hold off on this aid, it was released a few
months later. Members of Ukraine’s 80th Air Assault Brigade fire rockets toward
By June 2021, Russia was massing Russian positions on the front line near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on April 18.
forces along Ukraine’s border. Yet the
Biden administration halted a military
aid package to Ukraine that included 25th presidential drawdown package, had to “[wage] war on the Pentagon” to
lethal weapons, such as short-range and which committed Hawk surface-to-air get mine-resistant, ambush-protected
anti-tank weapons, purportedly due to missiles and added more Stingers. Yet vehicles to troops quickly in Iraq.
an impending meeting between Biden these missiles had been in U.S. stock- “The very size and structure of the
and Putin. It was not until after the war piles all along. [Defense Department] assured pon-
began that Biden authorized the deliv- Although some might rationalize the derousness, if not paralysis, because so
ery of lethal aid. Biden administration’s approach by many different organizations had to be
Once lethal aid was restarted after arguing that it reduces the risk of Rus- involved in even the smallest decisions,”
the invasion, it was provided in ad hoc, sian escalation, the opposite is likely Gates writes. “The idea of speed and agil-
incremental steps rather than in sup- true. Russia, from the outset of the war, ity to support current combat operations
port of a plan based on mission analysis. was already throwing all of its available was totally foreign to the building.”
In just the eight months between August conventional forces at Ukraine. A sup- The Pentagon has yet to institution-
2021 and April 2022, the United States port program driven by sound mission alize the Gates mindset. Despite emer-
completed six drawdowns of equipment analysis and campaign planning would gency authorities, the U.S. government
from Pentagon inventories for Ukraine. checkmate Russia’s attack, giving Mos- is rarely able to act quickly.
Two months after the invasion, cow a choice between losing and com- Time—and time lag—must be a key
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zel- ing to terms with Kyiv. Fears of nuclear input in war planning and in arming
ensky continued to request tanks, escalation were exaggerated, principally allies. The Biden administration needs
missile defenses, and anti-ship weap- because few suitable targets existed in to engage in an emergency trouble-
ons. And some eight months after the Ukraine for such weapons—the costs shooting exercise to figure out how to
invasion, by the fall of 2022, Zelensky of such escalation exceeded potential overcome the sclerotic performance
continued to request more “air and benefits. Ukrainian military strength that is compromising U.S. support
missile defenses from the West.” The and Western resolve decrease, rather for Ukraine’s war effort and costing
United States and its NATO allies stag- than increase, the risk of escalation. Ukrainian lives. This requires doing
gered their assistance throughout this Incrementalism is compounded mission analysis upfront and breaking
period, with Javelin missiles, Stinger air by the U.S. government’s inability to down the barriers to rapid implemen-
defense systems, laser-guided rocket move fast—a problem that existed well tation, even if that means tapping U.S.
systems, and eventually High Mobil- before Biden took office. As former U.S. prepositioned stocks, weapons from
ity Artillery Rocket Systems all arriv- Defense Secretary Robert Gates puts National Guard units, or emergency
ing at different times in the fall of 2022. it in his book Duty: Memoirs of a Sec- ramp-ups of production.
By late fall, the United States was at its retary at War, during the Iraq War he No matter your views on Ukraine,

SUMMER 2023 23
incrementalism increases the chances it to push Russia back to the line that own definition of victory—a return to
of escalation and, at the same time, existed before Feb. 24, 2022, restoring Ukraine’s lawful 1991 borders, including
makes strategic defeat more likely. Q a status quo ante that leaves Russia in Crimea, by force, if necessary—many
control of Crimea and the Donbas? Is it Western leaders (apart from Central and
NADIA SCHADLOW is a senior fellow at to enable a major Ukrainian push on the Eastern Europeans) refuse to wholly
Hudson Institute and former U.S. battlefield, followed by a cease-fire and commit to this outcome, presumably
deputy national security advisor for negotiations that somehow—though it out of concern that a fight over Crimea,
strategy. is unclear how—induce Russia to with- which Russia illegally annexed in 2014,
draw from Ukraine? could lead Moscow to escalate in some
Western ambiguity—leaving open unpredictable way.

How to what victory means—made sense in

the early phase of the war. With a wide
This creates a dangerous political
vacuum in the midst of a war that has

Benchmark range of possible outcomes, ambiguity

allowed for a flexible framing of victory
been, to a great extent, fought by nar-
ratives. If Ukraine’s supporters fail to

Victory in and defeat: Even if Russia were success-

ful on the battlefield, its success could
benchmark victory, Russia will. If the
West focuses on its own fears of esca-

Ukraine
still be framed as an overall strategic lation, the Kremlin will fan those fears
defeat that isolates it in the eyes of the with renewed threats of nuclear war.
world. Ambiguity was also a useful way Not defining victory—and, in turn, not
to avoid telegraphing any limitations of defining Russian defeat—allows Russia
Western support to Moscow or demor- to negate Ukraine’s successes and to
By Liana Fix alizing Ukrainian forces with unat- frame a Ukrainian victory as unattain-
hen U.S. Presi- tainable goals or timelines. Hence the able. Without a clear aim, Western pub-
dent George W. frequent Western talking point of sup- lics will increasingly perceive the war
Bush gave his porting Kyiv with whatever it takes for as a protracted, indeterminate strug-
“mission accom- as long as it takes—which sounds force- gle, ultimately undermining Ukraine’s
plished” speech ful enough, until you ask what “it” is. moral high ground and the West’s own
aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln only In the war’s second year, the situa- morale. Ukraine and the West therefore
six weeks into the Iraq War in 2003, tion is much less uncertain. Although need to provide a benchmark for victory
it quickly became a cautionary tale Ukraine is still targeted by Russian in this stage of the war.
against declaring victory in an unpre- missiles and front-line battles remain Continued Western ambiguity also
dictable war. Washington didn’t with- unimaginably brutal, the potential tra- contributes to a polarized debate
draw most of its forces until eight years jectories of the war have narrowed. Kyiv between advocates for quick negotia-
later, and the pullout resembled defeat will not fall, and Ukraine will not be tions and those who support a full mil-
much more than victory. overrun by the Russian army. Ukraine itary victory for Ukraine. The sobering
Twenty years later in Ukraine, the risk is also unlikely to lose the territory it has reality is that neither of these—early
is not declaring victory prematurely— already liberated, as Russia’s unsuccess- negotiations or complete liberation—
but not defining victory at all. ful winter offensive made clear. But even is the most probable scenario. Nego-
For almost a year and a half, Ukraine’s if there is greater clarity about battlefield tiations would very likely lead to a
Western supporters have provided it contingencies, there is still no strategic temporary cease-fire instead of a sustain-
with the weapons, munitions, training, clarity about what victory means. able peace, pausing a war that Russian
funds, and political support to push Western publics are getting contra- President Vladimir Putin can resume
back Russian invading forces. With this dictory signals from their leaders on this at any time. He has committed to sub-
help, Ukraine has been able to regain question. Most often, Western officials jugating Ukraine as his life’s legacy. He
about half the territory Russia has occu- say it is up to the Ukrainians to define has enshrined into law the annexation
pied since Feb. 24, 2022. It is a remark- what victory means. In reality, however, of four regions of Ukraine. It is folly to
able and undeniable success. the most important factors for achiev- believe that Putin will let Ukraine be.
But Ukraine’s supporters have shied ing victory are the type, quantity, and He may not have started this war pri-
away from defining the outcome they arrival date of Western weapons and marily for domestic power purposes,
aim to achieve with their aid. Is it for munitions in Ukraine, which give the but keeping Russia in a constant war-
Ukraine to liberate its entire territory, West a major influence on the outcome. like, half-mobilized state has turned
including Crimea, by military force? Is And whenever Ukraine brings up its into his best chance to stay in power.

24
 ARGUMENTS
territories gained at such a heavy cost
may plant the seeds of doubt in the
minds of Russia’s soldiers, public, and
elites: What was this war for if we are
now back to where we started? In many
unsuccessful wars of the past—includ-
ing Russia’s in Afghanistan and the
United States’ in Iraq—a pervasive and
demoralizing sense of futility turned
into a powerful enemy at home and on
the battlefield. The constant dripping of
doubt can wear away any great power.
For Ukraine and its supporters, of
course, a return to the pre-2022 lines
is a less satisfactory outcome than Rus-
sia’s full military defeat or a negotiated
A Ukrainian soldier makes the victory sign as he moves withdrawal. However, it is a useful, real-
toward the front-line city of Bakhmut on March 11. istic, and clear-to-communicate bench-
mark. Defining an interim victory this
way will help bolster public support in
Reassured by Chinese President Xi Jin- Ukraine and the West should bench- the West and undermine Putin’s objec-
ping that China supports his regime and mark an interim victory that is realistic tives at home. It will not be possible to
fight against the West, Putin does not to achieve this year. Instead of giving say “mission accomplished” with this
need an offramp or exit strategy. ambiguous answers to the question of outcome. But an interim victory is bet-
At the same time, the West’s willing- what victory means, Western leaders ter than not defining any victory at all. Q
ness and ability to continue providing should state publicly that their aim for
the current massive flow of military sup- this year is a return at least to the lines LIANA FIX is a fellow for Europe at the
port to Ukraine are not indefinite. Right before 2022 and that they will supply Council on Foreign Relations.
now, Western countries are arming Ukraine with everything needed to
Ukraine to bring it into the best possible reach this objective. While the over-

Why
position for a renewed offensive. After all goal remains restoring Ukraine’s
that, contentious negotiations in the full territorial integrity, setting a clear
U.S. Congress over future support for
Ukraine and a U.S. presidential primary
benchmark for an interim victory would
provide an anchor point for Western Neutrality
Is Obsolete
season await. Meanwhile, Europe could publics in the strategic communica-
face another winter with high energy tion of this war. It fills the discursive
prices. Support for Ukraine will not
stop, but the peak of Western weapons
vacuum with a specific goal that West-
ern publics can support and counters in the 21st
Century
deliveries may have been reached. That Russia’s strategy of framing Ukrainian
means 2023 is Ukraine’s best chance to victory as unattainable.
get as far as it can. But even under these In NATO parlance, this interim vic-
favorable circumstances, a full military tory should be the floor, not the ceiling.
victory—meaning the liberation of all If Ukraine can advance even further,
of Ukraine’s territory—is a tall order that would be a huge and welcome suc- By Franz-Stefan Gady
for this year. More likely, and perhaps cess. If not, the pre-2022 lines are an he Italian diplomat Nic-
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

the best-case scenario, is a successful important preliminary milestone. It colò Machiavelli had his
breakup of the land bridge between Rus- would turn back the clock to Feb. 23, doubts about the wis-
sia and Crimea, isolating Russian forces 2022, and apply the weapon of futility dom of a state remaining
in the south and making their position against Russia itself. With a restoration neutral, as it usually risks
there untenable. of the status quo ante, Russian sacrifices alienating both sides in a conflict. “He
To right-size both overly optimistic since the start of the war would appear who conquers does not want doubt-
and overly pessimistic expectations, entirely in vain. The total loss of all ful friends who will not aid him in the

SUMMER 2023 25
time of trial,” Machiavelli wrote in his How long can these neutrality doc- that neutral powers can be success-
16th-century strategy manual, The trines survive in the 21st century with- ful conveyors and mediators between
Prince. “And he who loses will not har- out becoming a security risk for the hostile powers is generally not borne
bor you because you did not willingly, states practicing them? Maintaining out by history. Neutrality is no precon-
sword in hand, court his fate.” neutrality will be more difficult for two dition to facilitating a postwar settle-
Following Russia’s brutal invasion of main reasons. First, the existence of ment; one of the most successful cases
Ukraine in February 2022, two formerly European neutrals is much less use- of peace-brokering in European history
neutral European states—Finland and ful to non-neutrals today than it was was the Congress of Vienna, where the
Sweden—have heeded Machiavelli’s during the Cold War, when it served hosting Austrian Empire was clearly
advice. In April, Finland joined NATO the purposes of both East and West. Not on the side of the Napoleonic Wars’
as its 31st member, and neighboring only will great powers be less inclined victors. Similarly, the United States’
Sweden will soon follow. Europe’s to respect neutrality in the future. The and France’s intervention in the Bal-
four remaining traditional neutrals— European Union, too, will increasingly kan Wars did not keep them from
Austria, Ireland, Malta, and Switzer- find its neutral members an obstacle supervising negotiations to end these
land—are sticking to their neutrality as the bloc tries to develop a common conflicts in Dayton, Ohio, in 1995 and
for now. Ireland, which has de facto dis- security and defense policy. Second, at Rambouillet, France, in 1999. Nor is a
armed, claims to be militarily neutral the military level, 21st-century warfare neutral state necessarily a better loca-
if not politically so; still, the country is increasingly requires highly integrated, tion for multilateral diplomacy; the
training some Ukrainian soldiers and sophisticated, and interoperable capa- United Nations’ headquarters in New
has been cozying up to NATO since the bilities that small, neutral powers sim- York are at least as important a diplo-
outbreak of the war. Austria and Malta ply cannot afford on their own. macy hub as the organization’s offices
likewise insist they are militarily neu- Proponents of neutrality argue that in Vienna and Geneva. The latter cities
tral but “not neutral on values.” Swit- as long as neutral states remain use- are good diplomatic hubs not because
zerland is the most uncompromising ful to larger powers or alliances, they of their neutral status but because they
of the bunch, remaining both politi- have little to fear. Historically, they have have easily accessible airports, plenty
cally and militarily neutral, going as been useful as buffer states or diplo- of five-star hotels, and excellent con-
far as refusing to grant other countries matic go-betweens. A good example ference infrastructure.
permission to re-export Swiss-made is Austria during the Cold War: For the Today, Austrian, Irish, and Mal-
weapons to Ukraine. Critics argue that Soviets, a neutral Austria was useful tese neutrality contributes to the EU
Switzerland’s stance actively under- because it physically separated NATO remaining a weak player in security
mines Ukraine’s defense. Neutral- allies Italy and West Germany. A weak and defense. There are, of course, many
ity, like pacifism, leaves the victim of Austria also offered the Soviets a poten- other reasons why the EU is unlikely to
aggression to its fate. tial route for a rapid flanking attack on become a European alternative to (or
Yet, out of Europe’s four remaining NATO forces in southern Germany. Sim- complement of) NATO. Carnegie fel-
neutrals, only Switzerland maintains ilarly for NATO, Austria’s status as a buf- low Sophia Besch has named some of
robust conventional defenses capable fer state gave the alliance the option of them: “the absence of a common Euro-
of fielding a credible military deterrent a forward defense on Austrian territory. pean threat perception, a lack of finan-
against a potential aggressor. Austria, Austria’s official Cold War neutrality was cial resources, a shortage of creative
Ireland, and Malta, on the other hand, very profitable for Vienna, which turned policy proposals, successive U.S. gov-
have effectively outsourced their territo- itself into a diplomatic hub by enticing ernments poised to blockade the EU’s
rial defense to NATO, with the implicit international organizations—including ambitions, and member states unwill-
expectation that their neighbors will the Organization for Security and Coop- ing to delegate power over defense to
come to their aid when needed. This eration in Europe, OPEC, and various the supranational level.” But neutral
enabled each of the three to spend United Nations bodies—to establish members contribute to this weakness,
less than 1 percent of GDP on defense their headquarters there. not least because the so-called Irish
before the Russian invasion. Although However, the end of the Cold War clause of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty effec-
the three countries have announced also ended Austria’s usefulness as tively gives them an opt-out when it
spending increases, these will not be a buffer state. Russia’s invasions of comes to providing military support
enough to boost military capabilities to Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 show that to a fellow EU member state under
a level where they could defend them- staying out of alliances, as Ukraine did, attack. Some EU members’ neutrality
selves in a high-intensity conflict any- offers no protection from a revision- can also be readily exploited by coun-
time soon. ist great power. What’s more, the idea tries such as Russia to drive wedges

26
 ARGUMENTS

People watch the ceremonial raising of the Finnish flag

at NATO headquarters in Brussels on April 4.

into the bloc via influence campaigns. a general lack of trust make it difficult specialize in air defense. Neutral coun-
Neutrality also leads to fissures in sup- for NATO members to share sensitive tries would be left out of these arrange-
port for Ukraine: Austria, Ireland, and real-time tactical data with Austria or ments—and would need to invest in
Malta have abstained from decisions Ireland in a military crisis. Even short capabilities across all domains to mount
to arm Ukraine under the European of crisis, neutrality already makes it dif- a tenable defense. Austria, for exam-
Peace Facility financing instrument. ficult for some NATO member states ple, would have to triple its defense
This is weakening the EU’s response to share data with these countries on spending—to 3 percent of GDP—or
to Russia’s invasion. a permanent basis—for example, on more for decades to come, an unlikely
Military neutrality also makes less cyberthreats. proposition.
and less practical sense when one con- It’s an open secret that Austria and From both diplomatic and military
siders the future of warfare. Western Ireland are de facto NATO militaries, perspectives, the Austrian, Irish, and
armed forces are adopting a doctrine of having adopted the bloc’s operational Maltese governments’ case to remain
multidomain operations, which require concepts, doctrines, procedures, and neutral is weak—unlike Switzerland’s,
the coordinated use of military capa- munitions. But maintaining interoper- since the Swiss maintain an effective
bilities in multiple domains such as ability with NATO partners will become military. For the former countries, neu-
air, sea, land, space, and cyberspace— increasingly challenging as sensitive trality could endanger their military
and the ability of allied countries to data will not be shared outside the alli- security should the United States or
do so jointly, smoothly, and quickly. ance. In addition, Europe’s neutrals NATO not intervene in times of crisis.
The fuel for these highly complex mil- would not be permitted to participate Naturally, this security free-riding
itary operations is intelligence, sur- in large-scale military exercises focused is breeding resentment among non-
veillance, reconnaissance, and other on multidomain operations in a high- neutrals, most of which spend a sig-
types of data collection using multiple intensity war. In other words, advanced nificantly higher share of GDP on
sources, including satellites, uncrewed training will become extremely difficult defense or plan to do so. Austria, Ire-
aerial vehicles, and cyberspace opera- for Austria and Ireland. land, and Malta expect others to fight
tions, which feed into command, con- Finally, their status will prevent on their behalf, while they are unwill-
trol, and communications to create a Europe’s neutrals from pooling and ing to do the same for their neighbors.
sophisticated picture of the battlespace sharing military capabilities at the oper- For Europe’s last neutrals, it’s time for
or overall strategic environment. ational level, where it matters most in a genuine, open-minded discussion
Given the relatively limited capabili- a military crisis. Within NATO, there about the diplomatic and military util-
JOHN THYS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

ties of individual European militaries, are already discussions about vari- ity of neutrality in the 21st century. Q
sharing technologies and data across ous countries specializing in different
allied militaries will be key to future capabilities. One country might provide FRANZSTEFAN GADY is a consulting
military effectiveness. Neutral coun- offensive cyber-capabilities, another senior fellow for cyberpower and
tries would be largely cut out of these could provide advanced electronic future conflict at the International
arrangements. Classification issues and warfare capabilities, and a third could Institute for Strategic Studies.

SUMMER 2023 27
 FORTRESS
EURASIA

China, Russia, and their

autocratic friends are leading
another epic clash over the
world’s largest landmass.

BY HAL BRANDS

THE WAR IN UKRAINE may have many positive out-

comes: a Russia bled white by its own aggression,
a United States that has rediscovered the central-
ity of its power and leadership, a democratic com-
munity that has been unified and energized for
the dangerous years ahead. There will also be one
very ominous outcome: the rise of a coalition of
Eurasian autocracies linked by geographic prox-
imity to one another and geopolitical hostility to
the West. As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
folly rallies the advanced democracies, it hastens
the construction of a Fortress Eurasia, manned by
the free world’s enemies.
Revisionist autocracies—China, Russia, Iran,
and, to a lesser degree, North Korea—aren’t sim-
ply pushing for power in their respective regions.
They are forming interlocking strategic partner-
ships across the world’s largest landmass, and
they are fostering trade and transportation net-
works beyond the reach of the U.S. dollar and the

28
Illustration by JOAN WONG
U.S. Navy. This isn’t, yet, a full-blown alliance of autocracies. would have seemed ascendant, while the democracies suf-
It is, however, a bloc of adversaries more cohesive and dan- fered another demoralizing defeat. That scenario unraveled
gerous than anything the United States has faced in decades. with Putin’s shambolic offensive. Yet the war has still had
All the great conflicts of the modern era have been contests profoundly polarizing effects.
over Eurasia, where dueling coalitions have clashed for dom- It has undoubtedly galvanized the advanced democra-
inance of that supercontinent and its surrounding oceans. cies. NATO is rearming and expanding. Democracies in Asia
Indeed, the American Century has been the Eurasian Cen- have supported Ukraine and sanctioned Russia for fear that
tury: Washington’s vital task as a superpower has been keep- successful aggression in one region may encourage deadly
ing the world in balance by keeping Eurasia divided. Now the adventures in others. Countries linked by liberal values and
United States is again leading a coalition of democratic allies on support for the U.S.-led international order are strengthening
Eurasia’s margins against a group of centrally located rivals— their defenses from Eastern Europe to the Western Pacific,
while crucial swing states maneuver for advantage. and they are rethinking economic and technological ties to
Countries such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and India have the tyrannies in Moscow and Beijing. What U.S. President
a critical role in this era of rivalry, thanks to the geography Joe Biden calls the “free world” is again taking shape. So,
they occupy and the clout they wield. In many cases, these unfortunately, is an autocratic coalition.
powers are determined to play both sides. Containing the Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang all seek to
Eurasian challenge will involve strengthening the bonds overturn the balance of power in their regions and view
within and between the United States’ alliance networks. Yet Washington as the primary obstacle. All worry about their
what makes the current moment so daunting is that oppor- vulnerability to sanctions and other punishments the United
tunistic swing states will also shape the fight between For- States and its global posse can impose. All need the others
tress Eurasia and the free world. to survive because if the United States and its allies destroy
any one of them, the remainder become more isolated and
EURASIA HAS LONG BEEN the world’s key strategic shatter zone vulnerable. Finally, all are located within Eurasia and enjoy
because it is where the richest and most powerful coun- proximity, if not contiguity, with at least one other revisionist
tries—the United States excepted—are located. And since state. As the Russia-Ukraine war heightens global tensions,
the early 20th century, this sprawling supercontinent has these autocracies are drawing together, for self-protection
seen vicious brawls for geopolitical primacy. and strategic profit.
In World War I, Germany sought an empire from the
English Channel to the Caucasus; it took a trans-Atlan- THIS TREND ISN’T NEW, OF COURSE. Iran and North Korea have
tic coalition of democracies to beat the challenge back. long shared missile technology and other means of mischief;
In World War II, Germany and Japan conquered Eurasia’s the Sino-Russian strategic partnership has been developing
vibrant rimlands and drove deep into its heartland; an for decades. But if the Ukraine war has strained that partner-
even grander, more ideologically diverse coalition rallied ship, it has also underscored the convergent aims and anx-
to restore the balance. In the Cold War, a centrally located ieties of the revisionists. It has thus accelerated integration
superpower, the Soviet Union, tried to overawe a free-world at the world’s Eurasian core.
coalition on Eurasia’s margins. The specifics change, but A Eurasian bloc is cohering militarily, as the war fosters
the basic clash—between those who seek to rule Eurasia overlapping and increasingly ambitious defense ties. Russia’s
and those, including the overseas superpower, who oppose military relationship with North Korea has become a two-
them—endures. way street, as Pyongyang sells Moscow badly needed artil-
After their Cold War victory, Washington and its friends lery ammunition. Russia and Iran, meanwhile, are building
were preeminent in all of Eurasia’s key subregions: Europe, what CIA Director William Burns calls a “full-fledged defense
East Asia, and the Middle East. Yet challenges have since partnership.” That partnership involves transfers of drones,
reemerged from rivals that have increasingly coalesced artillery, and, reportedly, missiles that have strengthened
around their shared hostility to the status quo. And just as Russia on battlefields in Ukraine; it may presage the trans-
major crises often speed up history, the Russia-Ukraine war fer of advanced Su-35 fighter aircraft, air defense systems,
is accelerating the rise of a new Eurasian bloc. or ballistic missile technology, which would make Tehran a
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a bid to remake Eurasia tougher enemy for the United States and Israel.
by force. If Russia had conquered Ukraine, it could have China, for its part, hasn’t openly supported Putin’s war
restored the European core of the old Soviet Union. Moscow with lethal military aid, for fear of U.S. and European sanc-
would have had a commanding position from Central Asia to tions. It has, however, provided so-called nonlethal assis-
NATO’s eastern front. The Sino-Russian strategic partnership tance—from drones to computer chips—that helps Putin

30
protract his fight, and Beijing would probably go further if Bilateral trade in Russian oil and Chinese computer chips
its most important ally were facing defeat. For now, the con- is surging; Russian firms are turning to Hong Kong to raise
spicuous presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s defense capital while skirting sanctions. And as Chinese technology
experts during his recent summit with Putin in Moscow sig- spreads throughout Eurasia, its currency proliferates, too.
naled that the larger military relationship—which already This February, the yuan overtook the dollar as the most
features joint exercises, arms sales, and significant techno- traded currency on the Moscow Exchange. China and
logical cooperation—continues to race past the limits many Iran are also experimenting with cutting the dollar out of
Western observers expected a decade ago. bilateral trade. “Geopolitics will not, of course, lead to the
It wouldn’t take a formal Sino-Russian alliance to upend global dethronement of the dollar” anytime soon, Alexan-
the military balance. If Russia provides China with sensitive der Gabuev, the director of the new Carnegie Russia Eur-
submarine-quieting technology or surface-to-air missiles, it asia Center in Berlin, wrote in Bloomberg in March. But it
could profoundly change the complexion of a Sino-American could promote a Sino-centric economic and technological
war in the Western Pacific. In today’s Eurasia, well-armed bloc at the heart of the Old World.
revisionists are making common cause. Finally, this Eurasian bloc is cohering intellectually and
They are also restructuring international trade. Commerce ideologically. The Sino-Russian joint statement in February
or weapons shipments that traverse Eurasia’s marginal seas 2022 portrayed the two countries as defending their auto-
can be seized by globe-ranging navies. Dollar-dependent cratic political systems while resisting the United States’
economies are vulnerable to U.S. sanctions. A second aspect Cold War-style alliance blocs. Iranian officials describe
of Fortress Eurasia, then, involves building trade and trans- Eurasian cooperation as the antidote to U.S. “unilateral-
portation networks safe from democratic interdiction. ism”; Putin deems Eurasia a haven for “traditional values”
besieged by Western “neoliberal elites.” Because
the current war has severed Putin from the West,
it has also resolved Russia’s perennial debate
about which direction to face. For the time being,
Russia, China, Iran, and Russia’s destiny is Eurasian.
North Korea all seek to overturn To be sure, there are limits. Whatever Putin
says, the North-South corridor will never put
the balance of power in their the Suez Canal to shame. A globally integrated
regions and view the United China won’t have to go all-in on Eurasia as a more
States as the primary obstacle. isolated Russia must. Tensions lurk within the
league of autocracies: Some Russian national-
ists, if not Putin himself, must worry that a Eur-
asian orientation ultimately means economic
vassalage to Beijing. In the meantime, however,
For years, China has invested in overland pipelines and rail- Fortress Eurasia will make life much harder for Washing-
roads meant to ensure access to Middle Eastern oil and other ton and its friends.
crucial resources. Beijing is now seeking to sanction-proof Eurasian integration will also make the United States’
its economy by reducing reliance on foreign inputs, a proj- antagonists less vulnerable to sanctions. It will strengthen
ect that has gained urgency thanks to the Western economic them militarily against their foes. It will lead to wide-ranging
war on Moscow. Russia and Iran are energizing the Interna- diplomatic cooperation—such as stronger Russian support
tional North-South Transport Corridor, which connects the for China’s position on Taiwan—or perhaps even material
two countries via the land-locked Caspian Sea, as Tehran assistance to one another in a war against the United States.
instructs Moscow in sanctions evasion. Likewise, Russia If Russia had the opportunity to help China bleed the United
and China are deepening cooperation to develop the North- States in a fight in East Asia, does anyone doubt it would
ern Sea Route, the least vulnerable maritime path between have the motivation?
China’s Pacific ports and European Russia. When “interna- Even short of that, Fortress Eurasia will make the world
tional trade is in crisis,” as Putin said euphemistically last safer for violent revisionism. The more secure these coun-
November, Eurasian integration is essential. tries feel in their Eurasian stronghold, the more support they
Indeed, Russia-Iran trade has spiked since February 2022, have from one another, the more emboldened they will be to
while China has become Moscow’s key commercial partner project power into peripheral regions—the Western Pacific,
“by a wide margin,” as the Free Russia Foundation reports. Europe, the Middle East—and beyond.

SUMMER 2023 31
BIDEN ISN’T WRONG, THEN, in describing a great struggle Each of these swing states has already bolstered Putin’s war
“between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and in Ukraine, by helping him to reduce the impact of sanctions.
repression, between a rules-based order and one governed Saudi Arabia did so most spectacularly in late 2022, via oil
by brute force.” Yet this binary doesn’t fully capture the Eur- production cuts that sent prices—and Moscow’s revenues—
asian landscape. The Russia-Ukraine war has also under- higher. Their choices have other critical implications, as well.
scored the importance of strategically located swing states, The UAE may be moving toward hosting a Chinese base
which seek advantage from both Fortress Eurasia and the on its territory—and thereby helping Beijing to insert its mil-
free world and affect the balance between the two. itary power in a sensitive region. Saudi Arabia has already
In the Persian Gulf, a resource-rich region at the cross- welcomed Chinese diplomatic power into the Persian Gulf,
roads of three continents, longtime U.S. security partners relying on Beijing to broker a mini-détente with Tehran. In
now deem monogamy less rewarding than polyamory. Saudi South Asia, a Pakistan closely bound to Beijing will make it
Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are shifting, econom- far easier for China to escape its “Malacca dilemma”—the
ically and technologically, toward China. Both keep strong fact that much of its westward trade must pass through a
ties with Russia, even amid its war in Ukraine. Anti-commu- narrow strait it does not control. India’s decisions will influ-
nism once provided ideological glue in these monarchies’ ence the global distribution of technological influence and
relations with Washington. Today, however, modernizing manufacturing capacity—the latter being particularly essen-
autocracies have more in common politically with the United tial as the threat of great-power war grows—as well as how
States’ rivals than with the United States itself. much trouble China faces on land as it pushes outward at
To the West, Turkey occupies the intersection of two seas sea. Turkey’s choices will affect the level of economic pres-
and two continents, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip sure Putin faces, the strength and solidarity of NATO, and the
Erdogan is, likewise, playing a double game. Ankara enjoys geopolitical landscape from Central Asia to the Middle East.
NATO’s protection while importing Russian air defenses; it The competition for the swing states isn’t merely some
supports Ukraine while helping Moscow to evade sanctions; global popularity contest. It will help determine whether
and it has become a key player in conflicts from the Caucasus the defenses Washington must erect around Fortress Eur-
to the Horn of Africa, often in opposition to U.S. interests. asia are strong or full of holes.
How Turkey aligns, in other words, varies from issue to issue.
And so long as an ambitious, increasingly illiberal Erdogan IN 1944, JAPAN DISPATCHED A SUBMARINE carrying gold, tung-
rules, it will aim, as Turkish analyst Asli Aydintasbas wrote sten, and other materials to Nazi-occupied Europe. It was a
in Foreign Affairs in 2021, “to keep a foot in each camp.” suicide mission: After traveling thousands of miles around
Then there is South Asia. Pakistan, once a critical U.S. part- Asia and Africa, the submarine was sunk by U.S. aircraft near
ner, now leans toward Beijing, which sees it as a conduit to the Bay of Biscay. Berlin and Tokyo were fighting to remake
the Indian Ocean. India, conversely, is tilting toward Wash- the world, but the cruelties of geography made cooperation
ington for protection against China. But it still relies on Rus- impossible.
sia for arms and energy, and ideology and self-interest make Today’s revisionists don’t have this problem. The location
India more comfortable navigating between the great powers of the Eurasian autocracies doesn’t simply make the new red
than tying itself to any of them. It is a mistake to think New blob look scary on a map. It helps them reduce asymmetric
Delhi has irrevocably made its choice: At some point, Prime U.S. strengths and fight back-to-back against the outside
Minister Narendra Modi might welcome détente with China world. As during the Cold War, a geographically dispersed
were Beijing to relax the pressure along the countries’ shared free world confronts a geographically coherent coalition.
frontier. And in other countries around the Eurasian periph- Now as then, there is also a third group that can cast a swing
ery, from Indonesia to Egypt, alignments are more fluid still. vote in global affairs.
The swing states are diverse, but the commonalities are The United States can’t easily reverse the formation of
striking. None are among the rich, economically advanced Fortress Eurasia because that process is the result of strong
democracies. All prefer to maneuver between rival coalitions, shared interests and sharpening global tensions produced
in hopes of keeping options open and eliciting the best pos- by the war in Ukraine. In theory, perhaps, Washington could
sible deals from each. All have been ambivalent, at best, in split the coalition by reconciling with one or more of its
responding to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine because they value members. In practice, if such reconciliation were possible,
their relationships with Moscow and worry that polarized it would require concessions—abandoning Ukraine and
geopolitics will preclude diplomatic flexibility. And all can parts of Eastern Europe to Moscow, for instance—that would
meaningfully affect the configuration of power around the worsen Washington’s global problems. What remains, then,
world’s central landmass. is a twofold response.

32
 The United States has alliance blocs that give it tremen- ambivalence, this will be an arduous, often unsatisfying task.
dous leverage in East Asia and Europe. In the aggregate, the It will require separating the essential from the import-
United States and its treaty allies are mightier—econom- ant—namely, identifying those issues, such as keeping
ically, diplomatically, militarily—than their adversaries. Chinese military bases out of the Persian Gulf, where the
So the first imperative is to strengthen the alliances that United States should aggressively employ its leverage to
anchor Eurasia’s endangered margins while strengthening avert a meaningful change in the Eurasian equilibrium. The
the bonds between them so aggression anywhere meets an corollary involves accepting that moral compromises—and
increasingly global response. trade-offs between the short term and the long term—will be
starker in dealing with swing states than in deal-
ing with advanced democracies. The United States
can make Saudi Arabia a pariah or directly chal-
lenge India on issues of domestic governance but
not without jeopardizing cooperation on issues of
strategic importance. This suggests that Washing-
ton should also tailor its message to its audience:
Outside the global West, appeals to democratic
norms will be less effective than an emphasis on
Eurasian integration will make sovereignty, territorial integrity, and other norms
Washington’s antagonists less that are threatened by the behavior, as opposed to
the regime type, of the revisionist quartet.
vulnerable to sanctions and These points, in turn, underscore the frankly
strengthen them militarily transactional nature of diplomacy with swing
against their foes. states. The U.S.-Saudi special relationship is his-
tory, and appeals to democratic solidarity won’t
get Washington very far in New Delhi. The United
States will have to buy cooperation from Saudi
Arabia, India, and other players by offering ben-
efits of real value while also withholding those
benefits when swing states consistently conduct
foreign policies contrary to important U.S. inter-
ests. If the United States regularly punishes swing
states for their diplomatic choices, it risks turning
To its credit, Washington is pursuing elements of this strat- ambivalence into hostility; if it never does so, it risks losing
egy—by tightening alliances with Japan and the Philippines, all leverage. Yet, because this is such a tricky balancing act,
bolstering NATO’s eastern front, and crafting partnerships, it is important, finally, to shift the underlying incentives
such as AUKUS, that bind like-minded democracies across over time.
multiple regions. The next steps would be to further integrate By depleting the Russian defense industry, Putin’s war
free-world defenses where threats are most severe, perhaps has created an opportunity to help Turkey, India, Vietnam,
by pursuing a trilateral U.S.-Japan-Australia commitment to and other states move away from Moscow’s military gear—
resist Chinese aggression or by laying out serious plans for and thereby change their calculus on discrete geopolitical
how European powers might respond, militarily or econom- issues. Encouraging Indian economic ties with the Persian
ically, to conflict in the Western Pacific. The difficulties here Gulf can, similarly, reduce reliance on Chinese trade and
are hardly trivial, and a U.S. presidential election outcome in money in two important regions.
2024 or after that would restore a unilateralist, America First For the fourth time in little more than a century, an epic
administration could complicate matters further still. But, clash over Eurasia is underway. Winning it will require the
for the moment, the task is a familiar one of alliance manage- United States to rally its free-world allies while also compet-
ment and fits comfortably within Biden’s free-world frame. ing, imperfectly, to influence countries that won’t commit
More conceptually challenging is the second impera- either way. Q
tive: maximizing strategic convergence with the swing
states while minimizing divergence where it would hurt HAL BRANDS is a professor of global affairs at the Johns
the most. Because these countries have good reasons for their Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

SUMMER 2023 33
Illustration by ERIK CARTER
 WHAT
MEANS FOR
GLOBAL
POWER
IN THE NUCLEAR ERA,
S TAT E S C O O P E R AT E D
O N R E G U L AT I O N . N O W T H E Y
MUST COME TOGETHER AGAIN.
BY PAUL SCHARRE

NEW TECHNOLOGIES CAN CHANGE THE GLOBAL BALANCE OF POWER. Nuclear weapons divided the
world into haves and have-nots. The Industrial Revolution allowed Europe to race ahead
in economic and military power, spurring a wave of colonial expansion. A central question
in the artificial intelligence revolution is who will benefit: Who will be able to access this
powerful new technology, and who will be left behind?
Until recently, AI has been a diffuse technology that rapidly proliferates. Open-source
AI models are readily available online. The recent shift to large models, such as OpenAI’s
ChatGPT, is concentrating power in the hands of large tech companies that can afford the
computing hardware needed to train these systems. The balance of global AI power will
hinge on whether AI concentrates power in the hands of a few actors, as nuclear weapons
did, or proliferates widely, as smartphones have.
Access to computing hardware creates haves and have-nots in this new era of AI. Frontier AI
models such as ChatGPT and its successor, GPT-4, use massive amounts of computing hard-
ware. They are trained using thousands of specialized chips running for weeks or months at
a time. Production of these chips and the equipment used to manufacture them is limited to

35
a few key countries: Taiwan, South Korea, the Netherlands, give users information that could be used to cause harm—
Japan, and the United States. That means these nations have with mixed success. In one experiment, GPT-4 refused to syn-
veto power over who can access the most cutting-edge AI capa- thesize mustard gas, but it was willing to synthesize chlorine
bilities. The United States has already weaponized this depen- and phosgene gas, chemical weapons used in World War I.
dency to cut off China’s access to the most advanced chips. Even when AI models correctly refuse to perform a harmful
States responded to the challenge of the nuclear age by task, users can often “jailbreak” the model through simple
controlling access to the materials needed to make nuclear tricks, such as asking it to simulate what a bad actor would
weapons. By limiting countries’ access to weapons-grade do. As AI capabilities increase and as access to them prolif-
uranium and plutonium, the international community has erates, there is a serious risk of malicious actors using them
slowed nuclear proliferation. Control over the specialized for cyberattacks or chemical, biological, or other attacks.
hardware needed to train large AI models will similarly shape Given these and other risks, a growing chorus of voices
the global balance of power. are calling for AI regulation. Leading AI researchers recently
advocated a six-month pause on developing next-genera-
THE DEEP LEARNING REVOLUTION began in 2012, and as it moves tion AI models because of the risk of societal harms. Oth-
into its second decade, there are several important paradigm ers have argued that improvements in AI capabilities must
shifts underway. New generative AI models such as ChatGPT stop entirely. The heads of all of the leading AI labs recently
and GPT-4 are more general purpose than prior narrow AI sys- signed an open letter warning that future AI systems could
tems. While they do not (yet) have the generality of human pose an existential risk to humankind. The European Union
intelligence, they can perform a diverse array of tasks. GPT-4 is drafting AI regulations. In May, U.S. President Joe Biden
achieves human-level performance on the SAT, GRE, and the met with the CEOs of top AI labs to discuss safety practices,
Uniform Bar Exam. The AI agent that beat top human player and the U.S. Senate held a hearing on oversight of AI.
Lee Sedol in the Chinese strategy game Go in 2016, AlphaGo, Though many AI regulations will be industry-specific,
could only play Go. It could not hold a conversation, write a general-purpose AI models require special attention because
poem, analyze an image, play chess, craft recipes, or write of their dual-use capabilities. Nuclear technology is also
computer software. GPT-4 can do all of these things and more. inherently dual use, but society has found ways to balance the
These new, general-purpose AI models have the potential positive benefits of nuclear energy with the risks of nuclear
for widespread societal benefit, but they can also cause real weapons proliferation. Society must similarly find approaches
harm. Large language models are already capable of gener- that harness the benefits of AI while managing its risks.
ating disinformation at scale, but future harms are poten- A key way to reap the benefits of AI while reducing its
tially much worse. Language models can be used to generate risks is to control access to the computing hardware needed
software and assist in cyberattacks. They can synthesize to train powerful AI models. Machine learning algorithms
chemical compounds and can also aid in building chemi- are trained on data using computing hardware in the form
cal or biological weapons. Their general-purpose abilities of chips. Of these technical inputs—algorithms, data, and
make these models inherently dual-use, with both civilian computing hardware—hardware is the most controllable.
and military applications. Unlike data and algorithms, chips are a physical resource that
While current models have limitations, AI systems are rap- can be controlled. The most cutting-edge AI models, such
idly improving with each generation. Researchers are increas- as ChatGPT, are trained using massive amounts of special-
ingly empowering AI models with the ability to access and ized chips. Without vast amounts of these specialized chips,
use external tools, such as logging on to the internet, inter- one cannot train these powerful AI models. Hardware sup-
acting with other AI models, and using remote “cloud labs” ply chains have multiple strategic chokepoints. The most
to conduct scientific experiments—all force multipliers for AI advanced chips are produced in Taiwan and South Korea,
capabilities. Some researchers worry about even greater risks, and they can only be made using equipment from Japan,
such as an AI model demonstrating power-seeking behavior, the Netherlands, and the United States. These five countries
including acquiring resources, replicating itself, or hiding its control global access to the most advanced chips.
intentions from humans. Current models have not demon- Hardware is already a barrier to accessing frontier AI models
strated this behavior, but AI capability improvements are often for all but a few actors. Unlike in the space race or the Manhattan
surprising. No one can say for certain what AI capabilities will Project, the leading actors in AI research are not governments
be possible in 12 months, much less a few years from now. but private companies. Only a handful of companies—OpenAI,
What is clear is that current state-of-the-art AI models are Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, and Meta—are competing to
not safe and no one knows how to reliably make them safe. develop or field the most capable AI models. As they do so,
OpenAI has attempted to train ChatGPT and GPT-4 to not these companies are spending billions of dollars to build ever

36
bigger and more computationally intensive AI models. The Korea—those chips are made using U.S. tools, such as the spe-
amount of computing hardware used in training cutting-edge cialized software used to produce chips, giving the United
machine learning models has increased by a factor of 10 billion States unique leverage over who can buy them. The United
since 2010 and is doubling about every six months. (Growth in States imposed extraterritorial restrictions on Taiwan and
computing hardware to train the largest models is doubling South Korea using U.S. equipment to manufacture advanced
about every 10 months.) This is much faster than the 24-month chips destined for China, even if the chips themselves had
doubling in chip performance seen since the 1970s, sometimes no U.S. technology. Additional U.S. export controls on semi-
characterized as Moore’s law. This growth is also much faster conductor manufacturing equipment deny China the equip-
than hardware improvements alone, so AI labs are making ment needed to produce its own advanced chips.
up the difference by buying more chips. As a result, costs for This March, Japan and the Netherlands announced similar
training high-end AI models are skyrocketing. Independent export controls on advanced chip manufacturing equipment
estimates put the cost to train some of the largest models in the to China. Collectively, the United States, the Netherlands, and
tens of millions of dollars. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently Japan control 90 percent of the global market for semicon-
estimated that training GPT-4 cost more than $100 million. ductor manufacturing equipment. For the most advanced
Tech companies are throwing billions of dollars at AI. After equipment of all—extreme ultraviolet lithography machines
the success of ChatGPT, Microsoft announced a $10 billion used to make leading-edge chips—a single Dutch company,
investment in OpenAI. Anthropic reportedly plans to spend ASML, holds a monopoly. If the three countries cooper-
$1 billion to train its next-generation AI model. ate, they can deny China the equipment needed to produce
advanced chips. Coupled with U.S. export controls
on the chips themselves, these measures aim to
lock China out of buying or building the chips
What is clear is that current needed to train the largest AI models.
As AI models become more capable and rely on
state-of-the-art AI models are ever increasing amounts of computing power, AI
not safe and no one knows how hardware is poised to become a global strategic
to reliably make them safe. asset. Semiconductors today are a foundational
technology that is embedded into all manner of
digital devices, such as phones, cars, and internet-
connected devices. But the changes under-
way suggest a different trajectory. The field of
This race to spend on computing hardware is segregat- AI is transitioning to an era in which compiling the most
ing the AI community, concentrating power in the hands advanced semiconductors is more like possessing highly
of the few companies training the most advanced models. enriched uranium—a global strategic asset that is difficult
Academics are locked out of accessing cutting-edge AI mod- to acquire but gains access to powerful new capabilities.
els because they can’t afford to train them. Major tech com- The United States and its allies have a major advantage in
panies, on the other hand, have deep pockets. They have this new contest. Their control over the technology needed to
the spending capacity to invest tens of billions of dollars manufacture advanced chips is like having the opportunity to
per year on major tech projects if they see a payoff. If cur- control global uranium production in 1938. Yet there are other
rent trends continue—if companies keep investing and AI forces at work, in the form of technology, market incentives,
keeps improving—computing power could increase many and geopolitics, that could cause this control to evaporate.
more orders of magnitude in the next decade. The field of AI The greatest dangers come from proliferation. AI risks
could be headed into a world where a small number of major are more easily managed when only a few actors can access
tech companies are the gatekeepers to extremely powerful the most capable AI systems. As powerful AI models prolif-
AI systems and everyone else depends on them for access. erate, they are more likely to end up in the hands of actors
who are less safety-conscious or who want to cause harm.
GIVEN THE STAKES, it’s not surprising that the geopolitics of Controlling hardware is a critical step, but that alone is not
AI hardware is also heating up. In October 2022, the Biden enough to limit proliferation. Trained models can prolifer-
administration issued export controls on the most advanced ate easily. Once they have been released, they can easily be
AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to modified or misused. Managing AI risks requires a compre-
China. While the most advanced chips are not made in the hensive approach to protecting powerful models so they do
United States—they are manufactured in Taiwan and South not fall into the hands of malicious actors.

SUMMER 2023 37
 A powerful asymmetry runs through the technical real- generation model DALL·E were released after 14 and 15 months,
ities of how AI systems use chips. Cutting-edge AI models respectively. The most cutting-edge AI models, such as GPT-
require immense amounts of computing hardware for train- 4, are restricted, but open-source models are not far behind.
ing, but once the model has been trained, it uses orders of The ease of transferring and modifying trained models
magnitude less computing resources to run (a process known has worrisome implications for controlling proliferation
as “inference”). This means that access to large amounts of of potentially dangerous AI models. National security ana-
computing hardware is a barrier to training new models— lysts have worried about the dangers of “loose nukes” and
but not for using trained models, making AI much easier to the potentially devastating consequences of terrorists get-
proliferate than nuclear technology. ting their hands on a nuclear weapon. Countering nuclear
Trained models are software. They can be leaked, sto- proliferation requires controlling both the underlying tech-
len, or released open-source online. One of Meta’s most nology used to make nuclear weapons and the finished weap-
advanced AI models recently leaked online. In February, ons themselves. But possessing one nuclear weapon doesn’t
Meta announced LLaMA, a new state-of-the-art large lan- give an actor the ability to make more copies and share them
guage model. To help bridge the hardware divide for academic with millions of people over the internet. Because they are
researchers who don’t have the resources to train language software, AI models can be easily copied, modified, and
models at the same scale as big tech companies, Meta shared transferred. The release of trained AI models could render
the model “on a case-by-case basis” with members of the AI irrelevant attempts to control hardware at the training level.
research community. Within a week, the model had leaked To prevent against misuse of powerful models, comprehen-
on 4chan, making it no longer possible for Meta to carefully sive controls must encompass trained models as well.
manage access. A week and a half later, AI researchers had
compressed the model to run on a laptop and even a smart- UNLIKE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE OR SPACE RACE, the development
phone. The comparatively small hardware requirements for of powerful, dual-use AI is being led by private companies.
running models mean that once a model has been released, Governments need to get off the sidelines. They shouldn’t
hardware is no longer an effective constraint on proliferation. compete with the private sector to train large models, but
Once released, trained models can easily be modified or governments are needed to create regulatory structures to
misused. Trained models can be “fine-tuned” for specific ensure powerful AI models are safe and secure. AI research-
tasks, such as fine-tuning a language model to code software. ers worry about the “alignment problem”—that is, ensuring
Fine-tuning can be done relatively cheaply. After LLaMA’s that an AI system’s goals are aligned with human values. But
release, researchers at Stanford University fine-tuned a ver- the incentives of corporate actors are not fully aligned with
sion they dubbed Alpaca for less than $600. AI researchers the public good either.
can also strip off embedded safety features, removing guard- The current state of AI competition in the private sector has
rails against abuse. When the start-up Stability AI released several unhealthy dynamics. Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI
the open-source image generation model Stable Diffusion last are engaging in a “race to the bottom” on safety, deploying AI
August, within hours users had disabled the NSFW content models before they are fully safe. Other companies, such as
filter and invisible digital watermarking on the images. Once Meta and Stability AI, have shared models widely, enabling
a model is in the open, there is no way to prevent its misuse. rapid proliferation without adequate safeguards in place
Despite these risks, there is a strident community of open- against misuse. But AI is not the first industry where profit
source advocates who actively push for greater proliferation of motives have undermined the public good. Government reg-
AI models. The AI community has had a long history of open- ulation has enabled clean air and water, safe food and drugs,
source collaboration, with data sets, trained models, and AI and safe highways and air travel. Government regulation of
tools shared freely in online repositories such as GitHub and AI is needed to ensure the most powerful dual-use AI models
Hugging Face. OpenAI dropped a bombshell on the AI com- are built and deployed safely and to reduce proliferation risks.
munity in 2019 when it temporarily restricted the release of Global AI governance begins at the hardware level.
its then-cutting-edge language model, GPT-2, one of the first Hardware is the most controllable input to building AI sys-
companies to shift to a more closed approach. Since then, other tems, and massive amounts of hardware are required to
leading AI labs (with the notable exception of Meta’s) have train the most capable AI models. The U.S. government has
followed OpenAI in not releasing their most powerful mod- already placed controls on advanced chips and chipmaking
els. The result has been a backlash in the AI community, with equipment, but these controls will not be effective in lim-
companies such as Stability AI championing an open-source iting proliferation without export controls on powerful
approach and releasing their models freely so that others can trained models as well. Limiting the proliferation of power-
benefit. Open-source equivalents of GPT-3 and the image ful AI models requires securing hardware across the entire

38
lifecycle of AI production: chips, training, and trained models. practices. OpenAI brought in more than 50 outside experts
The United States and its allies have begun taking steps to for months of red-teaming before deploying GPT-4. Potential
lock down access to advanced chips, but additional measures harms assessed included generating disinformation, aid-
are needed. Without adequate enforcement, export controls on ing in creating chemical or biological weapons, conducting
chips will be ineffective. Chips can be diverted or sold through cyberattacks, and the emergence of power-seeking behav-
intermediaries. The Chinese AI firm SenseTime, which has ior such as self-replication or acquiring resources. OpenAI
been blacklisted by the U.S. government for human rights vio- then applied mitigation measures to improve model safety
lations, reportedly gained access to prohibited chips through before deployment. Despite these precautions, public
third parties. Increased government resources and new tools deployment of the model elicited further vulnerabilities
for chip tracking are essential to ensure that banned actors as users found ways to “jailbreak” the model and circum-
cannot accumulate large amounts of controlled chips. vent safeguards, permitting a wide range of behaviors from
Computing hardware must also be controlled at data cen- telling offensive jokes to synthesizing chemical weapons.
ters where it is used for training models. Another Chinese firm Testing can improve model safety, although at present there
blacklisted for human rights abuses, iFLYTEK, reportedly are no means to make models robustly safe against misuse.
circumvented U.S. controls by renting chips in data centers, Industry and government must work together to develop
rather than buying them outright. Current U.S. export controls safety standards and best practices. Early engagement
apply only to chip sales. They do not restrict cloud computing between the White House and frontier AI labs is promising.
companies from providing chips as a service, a loophole that Following Biden’s meeting with top AI lab CEOs, the White
could allow prohibited actors to access computing resources House announced that several leading AI developers would
through cloud providers. Governments should institute “know- participate in an independent, public evaluation of their sys-
your-customer” requirements, similar to those for the finan- tems. Independent, third-party audits of AI lab practices can
cial industry, for cloud computing companies to prevent illicit also help provide public assurance of lab safety compliance.
actors from training powerful AI models. Transparency is essential to help society understand,
anticipate, and respond to the risks of powerful AI
models. OpenAI published a “system card” simul-
taneous with GPT-4’s public announcement that
outlined the results of testing for various harms.
Unlike in the space race or Public awareness of the risks of AI models, con-
the Manhattan Project, the sistent with responsible disclosure practices that
leading actors in AI research allow companies to first mitigate vulnerabilities,
can help improve safety and societal resilience.
are not governments but Trained models must also be secure against
private companies. theft or proliferation. Stringent cybersecurity mea-
sures will be required to prevent theft or leaks.
The Biden administration recently announced
that government cybersecurity experts are col-
Government oversight and regulation of large-scale training laborating with top AI labs to help secure their models and
runs will also be needed. AI companies training powerful AI networks. Export controls may be required on powerful, dual-
models should be required to report to the government infor- use models. Export controls on chips will be meaningless if
mation about their training runs, including model size and banned actors can simply acquire trained models.
design, data sets used, and the amount of computing power In some cases, restrictions may be required for how models
used in training. Over time, as safety standards develop, a gov- are used to prevent abuse. “Structured access” is one poten-
ernment licensing regime may be required for training runs tially promising approach, where AI services are provided
that are likely to result in sufficiently capable dual-use AI sys- through the cloud and the model itself is not disseminated.
tems, such as above a certain threshold of computing power. Use can be monitored to ensure that models are not being
Once trained, models must be subject to rigorous testing used for illicit purposes, such as cyberattacks.
to ensure they are safe before deployment. AI companies AI technology is racing forward, and governments must
should be required to conduct a risk assessment and allow move faster to keep up. The exponential pace of AI prog-
third-party experts to “red team” the model, or test it to ress—and growing risks—is out of pace with government
identify vulnerabilities and potential harms prior to deploy- action. Excessive regulation will stifle industry, but mov-
ment. Leading AI labs are already adopting some of these ing too slow may lead to societal harms and even a backlash

SUMMER 2023 39
against AI deployment. Caution is warranted at the frontier
of AI development. Governments must work closely with AI
labs to mitigate against a race to the bottom on safety and
Washington
rapid proliferation of potentially harmful systems.
Can Lead on AI
INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION will be needed to effectively govern
powerful AI systems. Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, recently advo-
By Paul Scharre
cated for the creation of an “IAEA for AI,” a global AI regulatory
regime akin to the International Atomic Energy Agency that
governs nuclear technology. A common objection in Washing- THE MOST CAPABLE AI MODELS, such as ChatGPT, use mas-
ton to regulating frontier AI development is that China won’t sive amounts of computing hardware. To lead in AI, the
be inhibited by such regulations and will simply race ahead. United States must maintain its leadership position in
In May, Defense Department Chief Information Officer John AI hardware.
Sherman argued against the proposed six-month pause on The United States has a major advantage in this com-
developing AI systems more powerful than the current state- petition: U.S. companies occupy key chokepoints in
of-the-art model, GPT-4, stating, “If we stop, guess who is not the global chip supply chain. The United States and a
going to stop? Potential adversaries overseas.” handful of close allies and partners—Japan, the Neth-
The reality, though, is that the United States and its allies erlands, South Korea, and Taiwan—control access to
control the underlying hardware needed to train powerful AI the most advanced AI hardware. The White House has
systems. Potential adversaries don’t need to agree for an AI already used this leverage to deny China access to the
nonproliferation regime to be effective. Chinese labs are not far most advanced chips and chipmaking equipment. It must
behind top U.S. and British labs today, but U.S. export controls capitalize on this advantage by controlling global access
may widen the gap as Chinese researchers are forced to use to computing hardware while maintaining control over
older, slower chips. Working with allies, the United States has key chokepoints over the long term. Increased research
an opportunity to put in place a global AI governance regime and development are also critical to secure U.S. domi-
that conditions access to computing resources on compliance nance in next-generation semiconductor technology.
with safety, security, and nonproliferation practices. The United States should work with allies to control access
In the long run, market incentives, geopolitics, and tech- to computing hardware across the AI production life
nology improvements could undermine attempts to control cycle to limit proliferation. U.S. export controls will slow
proliferation. U.S. export controls incentivize foreign com- China’s ability to build the most advanced AI systems, like
panies to de-Americanize supply chains, reducing their reli- GPT-4, but further measures are needed. Chip tracking
ance on U.S. technology so that they are no longer affected can aid in enforcement, and controls are needed for cloud
by U.S. restrictions. The U.S. government must be careful computing services used to train powerful AI models.
to use export controls sparingly and, whenever possible, The U.S. government should also work with industry to
in a multilateral framework to reduce incentives for a U.S.- establish safety regulations on large-scale training runs.
independent chip supply chain. China is working hard to Finally, export controls and cybersecurity measures are
grow its indigenous chipmaking industry. Multilateral export required to secure powerful trained models.
controls on chipmaking equipment will slow China’s progress Even as the U.S. government moves to lock down
but not halt it forever. Restrictions on trained models will access to large amounts of AI hardware today, it’s vitally
likely only slow proliferation, as leaks or theft causes models important that the United States remains in a leadership
to spread over time. Improvements in algorithms may reduce
the hardware needed to train powerful AI models, enabling
proliferation. Yet slowing proliferation can still be valuable.
Nuclear nonproliferation efforts have not stopped prolifer-
ation entirely, but they have slowed it dramatically and have buy time for improved safety standards, societal resilience,
been successful in limiting the number of nuclear-armed or improved international cooperation. Controls for AI hard-
states. Nonproliferation has also succeeded in permitting ware can start with the United States and its allies but should
the spread of nuclear technology for peaceful use. Thirty-two expand over time. Cooperation with competitor nations to
countries operate civilian nuclear reactors, far more than the ensure AI is developed safely should not be ruled out. The
nine nuclear-armed states. Chinese government has actually moved faster than the U.S.
Controlling the spread of dangerous AI capabilities could government in regulating AI, enacting regulations on deep-

40 Illustration by ERIK CARTER

 building a hub of leading-edge chip manufacturing to
create a domestic ecosystem of chip companies, sup-
pliers, and human talent. Fostering this ecosystem will
help U.S. companies remain dominant in next-genera-
tion chip technology, sustaining U.S. leverage over key
supply chain chokepoints.
The United States needs to work with industry and
academia to boost U.S. competitiveness in this new era
of hardware-intensive AI models. The rising costs of com-
puting hardware for training the most cutting-edge AI
models are concentrating power in the hands of a small
number of tech companies and locking academics out
of frontier AI research. The government should invest
in data and computing resources for academics to help
level the playing field. Congress should fund the National
AI Research Resource to empower researchers with the
tools needed to compete in this new era of AI.
The U.S. government must also work with industry to
develop sensible regulations on powerful AI models to avoid
position to control hardware over the long term. U.S. lever- societal harm and manage the risks of a backlash against
age stems from the role U.S. companies play in key choke- AI. A growing number of voices are raising the alarm about
points in the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in potential risks from AI, from job disruption to human extinc-
chip manufacturing equipment. The United States must tion. In recent months, several leading AI researchers have
retain control over key hardware chokepoints by keep- called for a pause on developing more powerful systems.
ing U.S. companies dominant in these core technologies. The White House has begun talks with top AI lab CEOs on
Excessive export controls incentivize foreign companies safety measures, but additional steps are needed. Govern-
to de-Americanize their supply chains to circumvent U.S. ment and industry must work together to put in place reg-
controls. To reduce this risk, the U.S. government should ulations to mitigate against the worst potential harms and
use export controls judiciously and work with allies to guard against proliferation. As safety standards develop, the
make controls multilateral. The goal should not be to cut United States should work with other nations to establish
off China from all U.S. technology but to keep China depen- global governance over powerful AI capabilities.
dent on U.S. technology so that the United States can control This new era of AI poses tremendous risks, but the
China’s access to the most powerful AI systems. United States has core strengths in AI hardware that cre-
The United States must invest in R&D to keep U.S. ate opportunities to manage these risks. By focusing on
companies dominant in next-generation semiconduc- maintaining its leadership in hardware, the United States
tor manufacturing technology. The more than $52 bil- can position itself to lead an AI-driven future. Q
lion in subsidies provided by the CHIPS and Science Act
is a major investment in U.S. semiconductor competi- BECOME AN INSIDER: Go deeper on the big stories with
tiveness. But the United States needs to be strategic in exclusive online access to analysis like this with an
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fakes in January and publishing draft rules on generative AI this should not be an excuse for inaction. AI technology is
in April. International cooperation on nuclear nonprolifer- moving quickly, and solutions are urgently needed. Q
ation has evolved over time, with additional refinements
added in response to global problems. The IAEA Additional PAUL SCHARRE is the vice president and director of studies
Protocol was approved in 1997, more than 50 years after the at the Center for a New American Security and author
first atomic test. Global AI governance will similarly evolve of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial
over time. Regulations must adapt with the technology, but Intelligence.

SUMMER 2023 41
 AI IS WINNING
T H E A I R AC E

Success isn’t just staying ahead of China.

BY MARIANO FLORENTINO CUELLAR

AND MATT SHEEHAN

ONE OF THE QUESTIONS WE GET MOST FREQUENTLY from officials in Washington is: “Who’s
winning the U.S.-China AI race?” The answer is simple and unsettling: Artificial
intelligence is winning, and we’re nowhere near ready for what it will bring.
In the past decade, cutting-edge AI systems moved from beating simple video
games to solving decades-old scientific challenges such as protein folding, speed-
ing up scientific discovery and accelerating the development of small-molecule
drugs. The fastest-moving branch of AI is spawning large language models, such as
OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Much progress in these models stems from a relatively simple
engineering insight—the scaling hypothesis—that has been carefully implemented
using specialized software and vast arrays of networked computers. The hypoth-
esis predicts that the bigger an AI model is—the more data, computations, and
parameters it incorporates—the better it will perform and the more it will be able
to mimic or achieve intelligence irrespective of whether it is generating a draft of a
speech, writing computer software, designing new weapons, or teaching kids math.
AI scientists are divided on where this is all headed. Some see the scaling hypoth-
esis continuing to bear fruit as the relevant systems are refined by humans, and
eventually by the machines themselves, until we build models that surpass human
intelligence. Others are skeptical of large language models and doubt that scaling
them up will yield anything comparable to human intelligence. If the scaling group
is right, the risks from powerful models that behave unpredictably could be cat-
astrophic—or even existential. These models are already capable of articulating
plans to get around constraints imposed by their designers.
But even if scaling skeptics are right, the AI of today is still set to transform our
economy and society. Large language models will expand educational opportuni-
ties, but they will also likely reproduce biases and “hallucinate” falsehoods, gener-
ating text that sounds plausible but isn’t rooted in reality. Operating on the internet,
these models will hire workers, deceive people, and reshape social relationships.
Cumulatively, this will stress-test our economic, political, and social fabric.

42 Illustration by BRIAN STAUFFER

 Regardless of which camp is right, the technical drivers of should keep working to create a strategic advantage, but it also
recent AI progress—returns to scale in the construction of must confront the reality that China is likely here to stay in AI.
models—mean that the United States can’t bank on decisively What does this mean for U.S. AI policy? The United States
“winning” an AI race with China and then regulating the tech- can’t make “winning” the AI race a prerequisite to govern-
nology afterward. The core algorithmic breakthroughs power- ing the technology effectively and regulating it where nec-
ing today’s large language models have been around for years; essary. It must instead simultaneously prepare for a world
much of the recent progress comes from labs simply tweaking in which China remains equipped with highly advanced AI
the core algorithmic ideas and using ever larger models to learn systems and also one where AI transforms the United States
from vast tracts of data. China’s progress on AI can be slowed, itself. Businesses will be deploying generative AI models to
in other words, but likely can’t be stopped. As AI advances and displace workers and create dazzling new products, while
diffuses throughout society, it will challenge the United States others use those same models to defraud individuals, spread
and its open society as much as—if not more than—China. misinformation, and gain new access to knowledge posing
To meet the moment, then, U.S. leaders need to change biosecurity and cybersecurity risks.
their definition of success in AI policy. Success in AI policy Tackling these challenges at home will require not only
isn’t just staying ahead of China. It requires developing a an appreciation of all the benefits that may come from these
relationship to the technology that Americans can live with new and emerging AI models but also a willingness to exper-
and one that reduces the risk of catastrophic accidents in U.S. iment with new governance structures for AI. Courts are
interactions with China. Instead of simply plowing ahead as available to resolve liability disputes involving AI. Agencies
fast as possible, we must do the hard work necessary to strike across the U.S. federal government are already grappling with
a balance between promoting progress on AI and prudently concrete issues by requiring algorithmic explainability when
governing the technology in a manner that makes sense for an applicant is denied credit and applying rules on native
Americans and the world. advertising to generative systems that manipulate users.
Allocating more money so these agencies can hire AI-literate
FEARS THAT CHINA WILL SURPASS the United States in AI loom policy advisors would accelerate the technical capabilities
over all policy discussion of the technology in Washing- of the government. If government action is necessary to pre-
ton. China is indeed a serious competitor, producing top AI vent catastrophic AI risks, these technically proficient pol-
research papers on par with the United States and deploying icymakers can help craft those policies.
the technology across its economy and its domestic surveil- Whether by carefully crafting legislation or through appro-
lance apparatus. When it comes to building the most powerful priate executive actions, society’s use of AI models can be
AI models, China has been a fast follower behind U.S. labs, subject to meaningful transparency requirements, further
often producing comparable models within a couple years. strengthened by requiring third-party bench-marking and
And geopolitically China’s divergent interests pose major audits for the most powerful models with potential capabili-
challenges for the United States. Its authoritarian uses of ties that defy their creators’ intentions or limits. Establishing
AI—for surveillance and tracking of ethnic minorities— sophisticated regulatory markets for these types of audits—
serve as an inspiration to autocrats and a warning sign for allowing appropriately vetted third parties to certify that
democratic societies. certain models are safe and otherwise behave roughly as con-
Taken together, these tensions have led the U.S. govern- templated—will take time. But a useful interim step would be
ment to roll out a raft of policies targeting China’s AI develop- requirements on developers of the largest and most capable
ment, with the most effective being last year’s export controls models to conduct a reliable “catastrophic risk assessment,”
on the chips used to train AI systems. Further limits on Chi- outlining the measures taken to investigate and mitigate
nese access to AI-relevant hardware and software may follow. these dangers, and to publish the results. A carefully tailored,
But despite these constraints, China’s AI capabilities aren’t nonbureaucratic registration scheme could help ensure that
going away. The country has the domestic AI ecosystem—the these models receive the necessary vetting before being made
research talent, data, and corporate investment—to remain available to hundreds of millions or even billions of people.
near the global cutting edge. And the nature of AI’s recent We can already anticipate the central objection: If we imple-
advancements—its returns to scale—means that there isn’t ment even limited measures to govern AI, we will give China
some secret research breakthrough that we just need to keep an edge. But those who fear that this type of AI regulation
out of China’s hands. Last year’s chip controls represent a in the United States will give China a leg up likely haven’t
significant but not insurmountable hurdle when it comes been paying attention to China’s own AI governance mea-
to scaling up large models. Using the chips, research talent, sures. Over the past two years, China has rolled out some of
and know-how available to it, China can continue scaling, the most detailed and demanding regulations on its own AI
iterating, and improving its best models. The U.S. government companies, including security assessments for algorithms

44
 and mandatory disclosures of training data and model speci- end, the restrictions on chips may end up acting as a mean-
fications. In April, China followed this up with a draft regula- ingful tax on Chinese AI development but not a hard limit.
tion specifically targeting generative AI. The draft combines That means we must also prepare for a long-term U.S.-
obligations unique to China’s political system, such as requir- China relationship in which both countries are equipped
ing that generated content reflect “socialist core values,” with with powerful AI systems that could cause catastrophes if
mainstream international demands, such as protections on not handled carefully. As impressive as today’s AI systems
intellectual property. Notably, the regulation imposes require- are, they remain brittle and prone to unpredictable behavior.
ments that both the training data and generated outputs be As those systems are woven into both countries’ economies
“true and accurate”—an extremely daunting task for models and militaries, the risk of AI accidents will go up. For exam-
that are trained on billions of webpages and are known to ple, military AI systems intended to identify and respond
regularly produce factually incorrect statements. to an incoming attack could mistake unusual levels of glare
The draft regulation is the subject of much debate within for kinetic activity, kicking off defensive or retaliatory mea-
Chinese AI policy circles, showcasing the Chinese govern- sures that rapidly escalate. This is what happened during
ment’s own attempt to balance effective regulation with AI the late Cold War, when the Soviet Union’s automated mis-
leadership. Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s desire to sile detection system mistook glare reflecting off clouds for
guide Chinese AI development, the large majority of mean- an incoming nuclear attack. At the time, the decision of one
ingful work is still being done in private sector labs and aca- Soviet soldier to label this a false positive likely prevented a
demic settings, where researchers face resource constraints nuclear holocaust. Despite decades of advances in AI since
and fear that onerous regulations will impede their own work. then, today’s systems remain prone to these types of mis-
takes when faced with highly unusual inputs.
Under these conditions, it won’t be enough for the United
States to simply have the more powerful AI system. Meaningful
Over the past two years, China has safety for Americans will require that both sides implement
safeguards on their systems. These could include agreements
rolled out some of the most detailed not to incorporate AI into nuclear command and more exten-
and demanding regulations on sive technical exchanges between AI scientists in the two coun-
its own AI companies. tries on techniques to ensure the safety of advanced AI systems.
Getting there will require tough political and technical con-
versations between the United States and China. During some
of the tensest and most dangerous moments of the Cold War,
We may not agree with the Chinese government’s motives the Pugwash Conferences served as a forum at which scientists
for regulating AI (preserving its existing controls on infor- from the United States and the Soviet Union could continue
mation) or its methods for doing so (state-defined limits on to engage with one another to reduce nuclear risks, helping to
training data and outputs). But we also cannot let the fantasy lay the groundwork for the nuclear test ban and nonprolifera-
of a completely unregulated technological rival prevent us tion treaties and earning a Nobel Peace Prize. As AI advances
from governing AI in way that’s consistent with our values. and diffuses in both countries, strategic engagement to reduce
tail risks will be an essential tool for keeping Americans safe.
INTERNATIONALLY, WE NEED TO DO TWO THINGS at once: com- As China and the United States simultaneously compete
pete aggressively and prepare for a world of parity as well as while occasionally exploring pathways to reduce tensions,
cross-border opportunities and risks. We should seek to main- AI is on the cusp of reshaping our society at a fundamental
tain an edge over China, with controls on semiconductors as level. We cannot let naive hopes or geopolitical fears prevent
our best tool. Of the three building blocks of modern AI—data, us from facing this moment head on. Yes, the United States
semiconductors, and engineering talent—chips are by far the must work to maintain an AI edge over China. But that can-
easiest to control. Leading-edge chips, and the highly special- not come at the expense of the policies that will help Ameri-
ized tools needed to fabricate them, are still produced in just a cans—and eventually, much of the rest of the world—benefit
handful of places, all of which remain broadly aligned with the the most from AI models and keep their greatest risks at bay.
U.S. government. By limiting China’s access to these chips, the The United States cannot let its principles or safety become
United States can meaningfully hamper China’s AI industry. collateral damage in its quest to outpace China at all costs. Q
But none of these controls are airtight, and over the medium
and long term, China may well circumvent the controls, either MARIANOFLORENTINO CUÉLLAR is the president of the
by developing methods to train AI models on older chips or Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where
by learning how to fabricate leading-edge chips itself. In the MATT SHEEHAN is a fellow.

SUMMER 2023 45
 AI HAS ENTERED
T H E S I T UA T I O N R O O M

How data lets us see with BY STANLEY

MCCHRYSTAL AND
unprecedented clarity. ANSHU ROY

46
AT THE START OF 2022, SEASONED RUSSIA EXPERTS and national Some of what AI does is not very different from traditional
security hands in Washington watched in disbelief as Rus- sleuthing. Twitter users, after all, posted open-source satel-
sian President Vladimir Putin massed his armies on the lite images showing Russian equipment collecting near the
borders of Ukraine. Was it all a bluff to extract more conces- border before the war. But it would take thousands of open-
sions from Kyiv and the West, or was he about to unleash a source investigators or intelligence analysts to replicate just
full-scale land war to redraw Europe’s borders for the first one small part of the machine model. What AI can do—and
time since World War II? The experts shook the snow globe of humans cannot—is look at everything everywhere at once
their vast professional expertise, yet the debate over Putin’s and very fast. Think of The Big Short, the movie about curious
intentions never settled on a conclusion. bankers wading through masses of mortgage data, finding sus-
But in Silicon Valley, we had already concluded that Putin picious quirks, and sleuthing house-to-house to uncover the
would invade—four months before the Russian attack. By shenanigans that led to the 2007 subprime crisis. AI is The Big
the end of January, we had predicted the start of the war Short a million times over—looking not only at mortgages but
almost to the day. at everything that could conceivably be interesting and doing
How? Our team at Rhombus Power, made up largely of it simultaneously, automatically, and virtually in real time.
scientists, engineers, national security experts, and for- Just as importantly, the machines are dispassionate, mak-
mer national security practitioners, was looking at a com- ing it easier to circumvent human biases and wishful thinking.
pletely different picture than the traditional foreign-policy Some experienced Russia policy hands didn’t want to believe
community. Relying on artificial intelligence to sift through that Putin would start a war with so few troops, such poorly
almost inconceivable amounts of online and satellite data, our prepared units, and such a high risk of economic disaster for
machines were aggregating actions on the ground, counting Russia. They were right about the state of Putin’s preparations
inputs that included movements at missile sites and local but projected their own definition of rationality onto the Rus-
business transactions, and building heat maps of Russian sian leader. When the machines sift through historical pat-
activity virtually in real time. terns, they do not care for human notions of what a “rational”
We got it right because we weren’t bound by the limitations Putin might do—only for the likelihood that an observed pat-
of traditional foreign-policy analysis. We weren’t trying to tern has led to a certain outcome in the past. With the model
divine Putin’s motivations, nor did we have to wrestle with using countless data points from 2014 to the present moment,
our own biases and assumptions trying to interpret his words. including Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, there were plenty
Instead, we were watching what the Russians were actually of patterns and outcomes to observe.
doing by tracking often small but highly important pieces It is less important that the large language models got it
of data that, when aggregated effectively, became powerful right and many lifelong experts did not. As we know from the
predictors. All kinds of details caught our attention: Weap- early days of AI, machines are just as capable of hallucinating
ons systems moved to the border regions in 2021 for what as human beings. More important is that we recognize that this
the Kremlin claimed were military drills were still there, tool has vast consequences for national security and foreign
as if pre-positioned for future forward advances. Russian policy going forward—and acknowledge how little we have
officers’ spending patterns at local businesses made it obvi- wrestled with those implications so far. Ask yourself: What
ous they weren’t planning on returning to barracks, let alone can technology predict today about the likely course of the
home, anytime soon. By late October 2021, our machines Russia-Ukraine war? What, for that matter, can it tell us about
were telling us that war was coming. the future of warfare, geopolitics, and national security plan-
ning? As our team saw in the run-up to last year’s invasion,
DID THE MACHINES TELL US WITH 100 PERCENT CERTAINTY that Rus- technology can already tell us more than we could have imag-
sia would invade? No, but they told us that the pattern of ined only a decade ago. And it will be able to tell us far more a
Russian activities leading up the war made it extraordinarily decade from now—if we are prepared to make the most of it.
likely that Putin would order the attack. In fact, that is how AI In a world where data can help us see and anticipate with
works: Large language models learn by sifting through past unprecedented clarity, we must leverage our new capabili-
data—in our case, about 10 years’ worth, going back to just ties and empower decision-makers by reorganizing processes
before Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. They look for pat- designed around the inputs of human beings. The U.S. govern-
terns: Whenever X has happened in the past, Y has often been ment’s systems for handling information and making national
the outcome. Sometimes the correlation is weak, but other security decisions were perfected for 20th-century situation
times the pattern is strong. Add up enough of these signals, rooms, where the best brains deliberated face-to-face around
and our system can make aggression predictions in future a table, not for 21st-century data and network technologies.
hot spots around the globe with specific levels of confidence. Now, we need not just a bigger table and situation room—but

Illustration by BRIAN STAUFFER SUMMER 2023 47

their digital versions. Some of the participants of future delib- Ready or not, AI already makes it possible to look at a mul-
erations won’t be human at all but thinking machines that will titude of possible futures and for us to know with surpris-
empower the experts with inferences, intervention points, ingly quantifiable likelihood which of them may or may not
and what-if scenarios at faster and faster speeds of relevance. happen. Even more importantly, it gives policymakers the
Instead of decision-makers gathering to debate how to react capacity to war-game and pressure-test possible responses
to an unfolding crisis, as the old system was constructed to during a real crisis situation—in minutes or hours, not days
do, they will need to routinely handle predictions of events or weeks as in traditional tabletop exercises. The quantity
before they happen. That alone will require a rethinking of of data we analyze helps predict the next card in an oppo-
how national security decisions are made. nent’s deck with previously unimaginable confidence. It is
Today, a confluence of developments—including the ubiq- increasingly difficult to catch a technologically equipped
uity of sensors, ever faster computers, the power of algo- nation by surprise.
rithms, and the open-source revolution—have brought us But in many ways, while AI can make the picture clearer,
to a moment when more information than ever before can it only makes decision-makers’ choices more complex. In
suddenly be collected, stored, and accessed. Now, it is also the run-up to the Russian invasion, the Biden administra-
interoperable and manipulable by AI. In our headquarters, tion took the innovative step of publicizing its judgments
we use, aggregate, and, with the help of AI, make sense of all on classified intelligence about Russia’s war preparations
types of data, including early indicators, suspicious financial and broadcasting it to every capital. If AI makes it possible
fingerprints, logistics activities, weapons flows, and subtle to consistently deduce your opponent’s next step, how will
changes in infrastructure construction, as well as the tone that affect diplomatic and negotiating strategy? The possi-
and content of media reports. The result is a digital nervous bilities are dizzying.
system that warns decision-makers about gathering threats,
often much earlier than in the past. BY NOW, IT SHOULD BE CLEAR that increasingly powerful AI
For example, our system flashed a warning sign well ahead cannot be a substitute for human judgment. As valuable as
of China’s massive missile and aircraft overflights of Tai- the insights generated by the models can be, policymakers
wanese waters following then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy must still decide what to do with the information. Just like
Pelosi’s visit to the island in August 2022. Similarly, the sys- human-generated intelligence assessments, AI-enabled
tem predicted heightened risk around Japan ahead of U.S. understanding always comes with a likelihood of an event
President Joe Biden’s visit in May 2022. The media later happening—never 100 percent certainty. It always takes
reported unusual flights in the area by Chinese and Russian confidence and courage to act in time to change events; in
strategic bomber aircraft. The system anticipated political some ways, making decisions based on AI takes even more
instability in Sri Lanka months in advance, and it also flashed confidence because it means making a bet on a prediction
Chinese activities in Kiribati and the Solomon Islands. from an unconventional source.
In all of these instances, the U.S. government could con- Policymakers will therefore need to inject a dose of humil-
ceivably have received similar alerts from traditional intel- ity into the ways they incorporate such tools into their work,
ligence sources. But importantly, the AI-generated warning just as they do with fallible human-derived inputs. The entire
often comes earlier, thanks to the power and speed of data system needs to lean into the fact that predictions will, at
aggregation and sense-making models. What’s more, human times, be wrong. AI has not created a crystal ball: Rather than
resources are limited. Conventional intelligence might be expecting infallible accuracy to drive decisions on, say, the
focused on a handful of known hot spots, while seemingly battlefield, the important thing is to have transparency about
placid regions of the globe may be barely moni-
tored. AI can be your eyes when your human eyes
are looking elsewhere.
Earlier warnings of impending events increase free-
dom of action across the entire spectrum of national Decision-makers will need
security—including the diplomatic, informational, to routinely handle predictions
military, and economic spheres. Faster insights might of events before they happen,
also help prevent, change, or mitigate an adverse out-
come before it happens. Right now, even as soldiers,
requiring a rethinking of how
politicians, and diplomats shape the final outcome national security decisions are made.
in Ukraine, we’re sifting data in California to predict
where Russia might strike next.

48
 the inputs that led to a conclusion. This process should be past—from Pearl Harbor to the Cuban missile crisis to 9/11—
even more rigorous for AI-enabled judgments than for those anticipation and the ubiquity of actionable information will
that rely on traditional means. define the rest of the 21st century.
Many of the experts who have spent a lifetime studying And we have barely scratched the surface of the questions
countries, geopolitics, statecraft, and war will remain indis- AI’s role in national security will pose. In a world where infor-
pensable in a world of AI-informed foreign policy. These mation dominance is the great advantage, how does the
professionals must be the checks and guardrails on tech- United States know it is maintaining an edge over its rivals
nology-driven decisions, just as the technology is a check on and competitors? Are Washington and its allies investing in
human judgment with its known downsides of groupthink the right technologies and concepts? Are they adopting them
and blind spots. Ultimately, we can augment human intelli- at the necessary speed and scale to be able to deter and, if
gence, diplomacy, and military planning with a technolog- needed, defeat future aggression?
ical edge—and project forward instead of mainly looking Then there are the really tough questions for policymakers.
back. In the military sphere, AI won’t determine the course If we can now anticipate moves by adversaries or bad actors
of every battle, but it will expand options and increase free- years in advance, what is our responsibility to act? What is
dom of action to make decisions at the speed of relevance. the role of diplomacy? How do policymakers ensure that
As we make further advances in predictive technology, lead- AI’s predictive powers don’t simply become an easy justifi-
ers and policymakers will face a whole new set of challenges. cation for preemptively using military force, when doing so
Having so much information will force policymakers to decide would not align with U.S. interests and values? What is the
which of the many situations anticipated by the machines international legitimacy or legality for lethal action based
are most critical to prepare for. And the growing power of on predictions made by AI? Is there an obligation to share
prediction will sharply lessen the sense of uncertainty that warnings publicly? Is there any role for strategic ambiguity
often slows down the policy process, forcing governments to in a world made transparent by AI—or will Washington want
make faster decisions instead of covering all bets and prepar- adversaries to know that it knows what they’re planning?
ing for all eventualities. There will be fewer excuses for delay- When is inaction justified—or even essential?
MAXAR TECHNOLOGIES/GETTY IMAGES/PLANET LABS PBC

ing until the course of events removes all doubt—or for what AI is not science fiction. It is here now, and it has entered
CIA Director William Burns has called admiring the problem. the door of the situation room. Our technology is miles ahead.
The earth-shattering ability of enhanced foresight is some- But we are only now beginning to develop the human capac-
thing governments have yet to prepare for, in their personnel ity to use it—and the organizational, procedural, and doctri-
and processes, national security doctrines, and much else. nal changes that will be indispensable if we are to reap AI’s
When adversaries use the same technologies, it will create national security benefits in time. Q
the game-changing reality of mutually assured transparency:
a new situation in which they know that we know what they STANLEY M C CHRYSTAL is a retired U.S. Army general and
are planning several steps ahead and vice versa. Just as sur- an advisor to Rhombus Power, where ANSHU ROY is the
prise and uncertainty defined the big security events of the founder and CEO.

SUMMER 2023 49
 Alondra Nelson

‘W E CAN’T STOP on why scientists alone

can’t mitigate the

O U R S E LV E S ’ immense risks of AI.

BY R AVI AGR AWAL

50
 A STRANGE THING IS HAPPENING in the world of artificial intelli- you use Face ID on your smartphone, rental and mortgage
gence. The very people who are leading its development are decisions, recruitment and employment decisions, Zoom—
warning of the immense risks of their work. A recent state- all of this is AI, algorithmic systems, in some way. We know
ment released by the nonprofit Center for AI Safety, signed that there are benefits: There’s convenience. We save time.
by hundreds of important AI executives and researchers, We have the ability to track large sums of information and
said: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a data, to help make predictions, and to make better decisions.
global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as But there are also many challenges both created by AI and
pandemics and nuclear war.” exacerbated by AI: destabilization in the employment sector
Extinction? Nuclear war? If they’re so worried, why don’t and what it’ll mean for the future of work if more of the work
these scientists just stop? that we do becomes automated. AI systems are trained on
It’s easier said than done. Nuclear scientists didn’t stop historical data, and what they output often are historical and
until they perfected the bomb. And AI has innumerable ben- sometimes incorrect and discriminating outputs that have
efits, too. But the statement, alongside a chorus of recent calls implications for people’s ability to have access to resources
for government regulation of AI, raises several questions: and social mobility. There are security vulnerabilities. All of
What should the rules governing the development of AI look the concerns we have about cybersecurity are at scale when
like? Who crafts them? Who polices them? How do these we think about the new advanced AI. There are sustainability
norms exist in tandem with society’s existing laws? How do issues; disinformation, misinformation, the erosion of democ-
we account for differences among cultures and countries? racy and public trust; and then, of course, the potentially cata-
For answers, I turned to the academic and policy advi- strophic outcomes that my colleagues warned about recently.
sor Alondra Nelson, who served in the White House for the There are quite a lot of challenges and quite a lot of risks.
first two years of U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration. But it’s an opportunity for us to work together across sec-
Nelson was the first African American and the first woman tors and to think together about how to mitigate these risks.
of color to lead the Office of Science and Technology Pol- RA: AI itself isn’t new. There are risks and benefits that peo-
icy and led the drafting of an influential Blueprint for an ple like you have been working on for years. But something
AI Bill of Rights. Nelson is currently a professor at the Insti- seems to have shifted in the last few months. What is that
tute for Advanced Study, an independent research center exactly? Is it that the technology itself has advanced so much
in Princeton, New Jersey. I interviewed Nelson on FP LIVE, recently? Is it because we see more real-world applications,
the magazine’s platform for live journalism. What follows is such as ChatGPT, in a way that we didn’t a few months ago?
a condensed and edited transcript. AN: It’s both those things. It’s that we have a fascinating,
RAVI AGRAWAL: Industry leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam fun, and scary new technology. We have large language mod-
Altman, recently warned of the risk of extinction from AI. els, foundation models, which are more like the creation of
What do you make of these warnings? the internet in that they have multifaceted uses. They’re
ALONDRA NELSON: When business leaders, entrepreneurs, more infrastructural and ubiquitous. You can create chat-
and leading scientists warn us, we should take those warn- bots to answer questions for you in a way that seems almost
ings seriously. But we also need to remember that we have humanlike. You can create new images using applications and
an opportunity to create a different future for how we want technologies such as Midjourney. These can happen almost
this to play out. The same voices who are ringing the bell of instantaneously if there’s a significant computational power.
warning have a very important role to play in partnership What it has also created is competition among some of
with government and civil society in creating this different the big technology companies to be the first, the best, and
future. It may even mean taking our time before rolling things to win in this space. Some of the conversation about risk and
out to make sure that they’re safe and effective. caution on AI is about their own concerns about whether
If you use the climate crisis as a parallel, we are doing they will stop themselves when they have such a tremen-
R&D and innovation around new kinds of green and clean dous profit imperative, and the incentive is to outcompete
technology. We are working in the geopolitical space around other companies and other countries and to be the first in
things such as the Paris climate accords. There are other class in a particular product or market. We’ve got some com-
ways in which we have to work across sectors—and we can plicated incentive structures here that lead very powerful,
STEPHEN VOSS/REDUX PICTURES

do this with AI as well. creative, talented people who’ve brought us some amazing
RA: At a very basic level, how do you even characterize the tools—technologists, engineers, designers—to also say, “We
risks from AI? Is there agreement on that characterization? can’t stop ourselves.”
AN: There is agreement that there’s risk. AI has already suf- RA: This is also a public sector race. The United States
fused our lives. We are already living in a world in which there and China are competing to be first on who uses AI. How
is AI all around us: daily transactions, daily interactions, if important is that race?

SUMMER 2023 51
 AN: It’s a complicated issue. We were able during the Cold of the regulatory tools from national security: export con-
War to have both an adversarial relationship and a collabo- trols, sanctions, having a real understanding of tracking the
rative research relationship with the Soviet Union. If we’re hardware, about where systems are going, who’s building
serious about the risk, we need to be thinking about ways that them, how are they’re being built.
you can close doors and open windows, as we say in geopoli- While we haven’t been successful in Congress over the last
tics. But it is also the case that there are malicious state actors couple of years, lots of pieces of legislation have been intro-
and national security concerns about keeping the American duced that are the right types of legislation. Many of us, cer-
public, democratic societies, and the globe safe, and we need tainly in the United States, know that we need general data
to be clear-eyed about what that’s going to require as well. privacy protection and to think about competition and anti-
RA: How should we begin to think about regulation? trust. After the generative AI turn, powerful multinational,
AN: We need to begin immediately. There are regulations often U.S.-based companies are consolidating more power.
that can already be used to help us get a handle on AI. Soon In some ways, we are quite familiar with the things that we
after the generative AI turn happened, the U.S. Copyright need to do. The challenge we face is around the political will to
Office had to decide whether or not you could give copy- get them done. The ChatGPT large language model moment has
right to something that was created by generative AI, and been invigorating and energizing for some and challenging and
the answer was no. If there wasn’t a human actor generating scary for others. It has opened up the possibility for a broader
it, it didn’t get a copyright. public conversation about these issues so that the public
Lina Khan at the Federal Trade Commission has been can push their lawmakers to get this legislation over the line.
extraordinarily artful with regards to this. She put out a state- RA: Tell us why we need an AI Bill of Rights and how some-
ment in April that said there is no AI exception to the law, thing like that would be different from a government trying
which is to say that any of the laws that we have around dis- to impose regulation on companies or countries.
crimination, around bias, consumer liability, these sorts of AN: There are things that should remain true even as the
things, apply whether or not an algorithmic system or an AI technology changes over time. My team spent a year talking
tool is being used. We would want to empower governments, to developers, to academic researchers, to people in civil
policymakers, and legislators—just because we have a shiny society, and to the American public.
new object that is operating in the social space right now, it We distilled this into five principles that are actionable:
doesn’t mean that the laws, regulations, policies, and guidance Systems should be safe and effective. You should have pro-
that we have in place do not already pertain to those things. tection against algorithmic discrimination. We should have
We may also need new rules and regulations. What’s going data privacy. You should know if an AI system is being used,
to happen with the labor market? We might have decided and you should have an alternative if you don’t want to engage
that copyright in the U.S. context must have a human being with an AI system, particularly for critical access to services
assigned to someone, but how are we thinking about train- and goods, etc.
ing data? How are we thinking about intellectual property? RA: How can we build global rules? There’s a danger that
We also want to think about what sits in the civil sphere with every country thinking about these questions indi-
and what needs to sit in the national security sphere, and vidually, we’ll have a quilt patchwork of rules that malign
there may be overlapping pieces there. Long-term risk and actors could exploit.
those kinds of concerns are perhaps better dealt with some AN: That’s the challenge that we face. There are lots of efforts
at coordination. The Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development has had principles and regulatory sugges-
tions around AI since 2019. The G-7 agreed to coordinate on AI
through something called the Hiroshima AI process in May.
These conversations will be happening with the G-20 and in
various constellations of actors. This is one of the most signif-
icant issues of our time because it is an infrastructural issue
and because it can have multiplicative impacts and transfor-
mative effects. It will require international collaboration in the
same way we do with other high-risk, high-stakes endeavors.
BECOME AN INSIDER: Insiders have
The United Nations has been working hard in this space as
exclusive online access to Q&As,
well, and we need to use all of this and take the potential risk
including condensed transcripts of
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Join today at ForeignPolicy.com/Insider. with actors we’re comfortable with and actors we sometimes
are adversarial with. Q

52
C A N C H AT G P T We asked the latest
generative AI system to

E X PL A I N analyze Russia’s 2014

invasion of Crimea.
Here’s how it fared against
GEOPOLITICS? a college student.

53
 To the reader: In this exercise, you will be presented with two unsigned articles
on Russia’s annexation of Crimea. One was written by an undergraduate student, and
the other was generated by OpenAI’s latest language model, GPT-4, using ChatGPT Plus,
a paid, premium version of the popular chatbot. Both responded to an identical prompt:
“Please write a 600-700-word essay arguing that allowing Russia to annex Crimea paved

ESSAY 1

The Annexation of Crimea: A Precursor to Larger Conflict in Ukraine

By Lauren Grachuk

IN THE GEOPOLITICAL CHESS GAME, the annexation of effective deterrence has contributed to the subse-
Crimea by Russia in 2014 marked a significant shift quent escalation of the conflict in Ukraine.
in power dynamics. This event, far from being a mere The annexation of Crimea, therefore, created a
territorial dispute, signaled a potential resurgence of dangerous precedent. What began as a territorial dis-
Russian expansionism and effectively undermined pute evolved into a larger war, challenging the estab-
the post-Cold War order. This essay argues that the lished norms of international relations and posing
annexation of Crimea paved the way for a larger war profound questions about the future of peace and
in Ukraine by destabilizing the region, emboldening security in the region.
Russian assertiveness, and exposing the weakness of The destabilization of Ukraine following the annex-
the international community’s response. ation of Crimea fueled separatist sentiments in the
The annexation of Crimea was a calculated move Donbas region, leading to a violent and protracted
that destabilized Ukraine and the region. Crimea, with conflict. The annexation also created a power vac-
its strategic location and large Russian-speaking pop- uum in the region, enabling the rise of various armed
ulation, was an ideal target for Russia’s expansionist groups and intensifying the conflict.
ambitions. The annexation, by altering Ukraine’s ter- The assertiveness displayed by Russia during the
ritorial integrity and sovereignty, triggered a domino annexation of Crimea has further escalated the con-
effect, destabilizing the Donbas region and leading flict in Ukraine. By demonstrating its willingness to
to a protracted conflict in eastern Ukraine. use force to alter borders, Russia sent a clear message
By annexing Crimea, Russia demonstrated its read- to the international community about its geopolitical
iness to use military force to achieve geopolitical ambitions. This brazen display of force was a catalyst
goals. This action emboldened Russia, escalating for further aggression.
its assertiveness in the region. The annexation was Finally, the inadequacy of the international
not an isolated incident but part of a larger pattern response to the annexation of Crimea has exacer-
of Russian aggression, which was further evidenced bated the conflict in Ukraine. The imposition of eco-
by its direct and indirect involvement in the war in nomic sanctions by the West has not deterred Russia
eastern Ukraine. from pursuing its aggressive policies.
The international response to the annexation of The annexation of Crimea by Russia marked a turn-
Crimea exposed the limitations and weaknesses of ing point in the conflict in Ukraine. It destabilized the
existing mechanisms to prevent such violations. region, emboldened Russia, and exposed the limita-
Despite strong condemnations and the imposition tions of the international community. As such, it paved
of sanctions by the West, Russia faced no signifi- the way for a larger war in Ukraine, posing a profound
cant military or political repercussions. This lack of threat to peace and security in the region. Q

EDITOR’S NOTE: In order to preserve the original text from GPT-4 and the student author, the only changes made to each essay were for
FP house style and small trims for length. We also converted footnotes to links in the online versions of both essays for easier reading.

54 Previous page: Illustration by BRIAN STAUFFER

the way for a larger war in Ukraine, stating your core argument in the first few paragraphs.
Please cite all sources using footnotes.” You will be asked to guess which was written
using artificial intelligence. On the next spread, we will reveal the true authors, share
FOREIGN POLICY’s editorial comments, and offer an analysis of the strengths and limitations
of AI in producing foreign-policy analysis.

ESSAY 2

The Russian-Ukrainian War: A Decade in the Making

By Lauren Grachuk

THE RUSSIAN ANNEXATION OF CRIMEA, a formerly Ukrainian The international response to these continued
peninsula, comprised the largest seizure of foreign conflicts remained limited and ineffective. The EU
land since the end of World War II. It defied a univer- imposed further—largely ineffective—sanctions, and
sal, international understanding held throughout the many countries publicly denounced the conflicts,
latter half of the 20th century: Independent countries but Western countries still refused to provide mili-
maintain their territorial integrity. The invasion of tary support. These smaller conflicts continued for
Ukraine marked a similar departure from interna- nearly a decade without significant Western military
tional norms. The seizure of Crimea began a series of interference or international attention.
smaller invasions in eastern Ukraine, all indisputably It is clear these conflicts, beginning with the
linked to the Ukrainian war. The lack of international Crimean invasion, were a part of Russia’s employment
response to the annexation of Crimea implied a similar of “salami tactics” to eventually annex Ukraine in its
passivity in the event of a larger invasion, lowering the entirety. Salami tactics refer to a method of slowly tak-
perceived risk of attempting a comparable occupation ing control of a region by occupying numerous small
and encouraging Russian action. portions. Russia invaded Ukraine piecemeal, slice by
The annexation of Crimea received little interna- territorial slice, long before the official invasion began.
tional response or outcry in 2014. The European Union The Crimean invasion assured Russia the interna-
levied ineffective economic sanctions on the newly tional community would not respond with violence
Russian-controlled territory. The United Nations to small-scale annexations. The lack of international
formally maintained Crimea’s independence, but response to the Ukrainian conflict eventually con-
it did not pursue further action beyond this state- vinced Russia the use of salami tactics was no lon-
ment. There was no NATO response to the Russian ger necessary, and the country began the full-scale
encroachment. The lack of troop deployments or invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The lack of international
physical military aid meant European and North support for Ukraine in the wake of Crimea directly
American countries held little stake in the conflict. ensured Russia’s confidence and ability to incite con-
Contemporary researchers denounced the lack of flict in the region and further its territorial expansion.
international assistance. These scholars feared the The Ukraine war formally began in 2022; however,
annexation signaled the start of a larger conflict and Russia’s preparation to seize control in the region
believed the ineffectual Western response would began with the invasion of Crimea in 2014 and con-
encourage further Russian expansion and invasion. tinued over nearly a decade. The lack of international
These fears were soon realized. response to the initial annexation, as well as follow-
Russia continuously engaged in further Ukrainian ing acts of territorial seizure throughout this period,
seizure after 2014, just as researchers predicted. The encouraged Russia to continue. This allowance from
annexation began a series of armed conflicts in east- international communities directly paved the way for
ern Ukraine, resulting in over 14,000 casualties. a larger conflict to begin in Ukraine. Q

SUMMER 2023 55
FP’s
Verdict
By Sasha Polakow-Suransky

CHATGPT, FOR ALL ITS AMUSING POETIC OUTPUT ,

riddle-solving prowess, and on-demand com-
position, is essentially doing one thing: spit-
ting out what it considers the next most likely
word in a sequence.
“Generative AI systems are quite good at
mimicking the patterns of human language,”
said Sarah Myers West, the managing director
of the AI Now Institute and a former advisor
on AI to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
But, she added, “they lack any of the context
or depth of human understanding and often
are trained on static data sets that aren’t up
to date with events in the world.” The result?
“They serve more as [a] picture of what peo- 1
THE REVEAL: ESSAY 1
ple said on the internet up until a year or two “Geopolitical chess
ago than they are a meaningful reflection of game” is a bit of a By GPT-4
the reality we live in.” cliche. Best to avoid.
When instructed to write in the style of IN THE GEOPOLITICAL CHESS GAME 1 , the annex-
a widely published author, such as the late 2 ation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 marked a
Christopher Hitchens, ChatGPT and other Between whom? The significant shift in power dynamics 2 . This
large language models can be very good mim- West and Russia? event, far from being a mere territorial dis-
ics. When it comes to producing original ana- Russia and Ukraine? pute, signaled a potential resurgence of Rus-
lytical content, though, they struggle—and the sian expansionism and effectively undermined
tone can seem vague or overly generalized. 3 the post-Cold War order. This essay argues 3
As Flynn Coleman, an international human Don’t need “this essay that the annexation of Crimea paved the way
rights lawyer and the author of A Human Algo- argues.” It sounds too for a larger war in Ukraine by destabilizing the
rithm: How Artificial Intelligence Is Redefin- academic. region, emboldening Russian assertiveness 4 ,
ing Who We Are, told FOREIGN POLICY via and exposing the weakness of the interna-
email: “These tools are not capable of origi- 4 tional community’s response.
nal, authentic, or empathetic human thought.” A bit redundant. The annexation of Crimea was a calculated
“They cannot replicate the creativity, Could just say move that destabilized Ukraine and the region.
nuance, and critical thinking that we pos- “emboldening Crimea, with its strategic location and large
sess, nor can they generate and interrogate Russia.” Russian-speaking population, was an ideal
original arguments,” she added. target for Russia’s expansionist ambitions.
While the chatbot is capable of self- 5 The annexation, by altering Ukraine’s territo-
improvement and correction, its writing and Do you mean rial integrity and sovereignty 5 , triggered a
rewriting are formulaic rather than imagi- depriving it of domino effect, destabilizing the Donbas region
native. Its limitations were evident in this sovereignty over and leading to a protracted conflict in east-
assignment—such as when we instructed its own territory? ern Ukraine.
it, in an earlier interaction, to rewrite a pas-
sage arguing for a negotiated cease-fire while

56
 Images produced by Stable Diffusion (center) and
two others from Midjourney when given the prompt
“Editorial illustration showing how Russia’s annexation
of Crimea led to wider war in Ukraine.”

Like ChatGPT, AI image tools lack critical thinking and

empathy—skills needed to turn complicated topics into
original conceptual illustration. Increasingly, however,
these tools can produce convincing knockoffs and
deepfakes, especially when given prescriptive prompts,
such as which visual metaphor to employ or which
artists to mimic. This February, the U.S. Copyright Office
ruled that illustrations produced for a comic book by the
AI program Midjourney were in violation of U.S. copyright
law. “A person who provides text prompts to Midjourney
does not ‘actually form’ the generated images and is not
the ‘master mind’ behind them,” the office wrote.
—Lori Kelley, FP creative director

By annexing Crimea, Russia demonstrated sentiments in the Donbas region, leading to a 6

its readiness to use military force to achieve violent and protracted conflict. The annexation This is a little
geopolitical goals. This action emboldened also created a power vacuum in the region 7 , repetitive of the
Russia, escalating its assertiveness in the enabling the rise of various armed groups 8 and wording in the intro.
region 6 . The annexation was not an isolated intensifying the conflict. Let’s alter the
incident but part of a larger pattern of Russian The assertiveness displayed by Russia during language here a bit.
aggression, which was further evidenced by the annexation of Crimea has further escalated
its direct and indirect involvement in the war the conflict in Ukraine. By demonstrating its 7
in eastern Ukraine. willingness to use force to alter borders, Rus-
Do you mean
The international response to the annexation sia sent a clear message to the international
the Donbas
of Crimea exposed the limitations and weak- community about its geopolitical ambitions.
specifically here?
nesses of existing mechanisms to prevent such This brazen display of force was a catalyst 9
violations. Despite strong condemnations and for further aggression.
8
the imposition of sanctions by the West, Russia Finally, the inadequacy of the international
faced no significant military or political reper- response to the annexation of Crimea has exac- Such as? Name
cussions. This lack of effective deterrence has erbated the conflict in Ukraine. The imposi- a few groups.
contributed to the subsequent escalation of tion of economic sanctions by the West has
9
the conflict in Ukraine. not deterred Russia from pursuing its aggres-
The annexation of Crimea, therefore, created sive policies. The lead author you
a dangerous precedent. What began as a terri- The annexation of Crimea by Russia marked cite in your footnote
torial dispute evolved into a larger war, chal- a turning point in the conflict in Ukraine. It here is not one of the
lenging the established norms of international destabilized the region, emboldened Russia, authors of the report.
relations and posing profound questions about and exposed the limitations of the interna- Please include the
the future of peace and security in the region. tional community. As such, it paved the way correct citation.
The destabilization of Ukraine following for a larger war in Ukraine, posing a profound
the annexation of Crimea fueled separatist threat to peace and security in the region. Q

SUMMER 2023 57
taking into account possible Ukrainian objections. Given preparing this feature. In an earlier iteration of the exer-
this prompt, it was not able to produce any genuine analysis cise, GPT-4 fabricated some sources with real authors on
of how or why Ukraine might object. GPT-4 instead simply plausible topics in plausible journals—but the actual titles
modified the text mechanically, urging Western nations to and dates provided led to articles that didn’t exist; in other
“respect Ukraine’s sovereign decisions.” cases, GPT-4 provided realistic-looking links to JSTOR with
In academia, there are well-founded fears that AI-generated authentic citations, yet a reference to a real book about
content won’t be detectable by existing tools such as pla- Crimea published in 2010 came with a link that led to an
giarism software. Students are already using tools such as article from 1950 on polynomials in a Scandinavian math-
ChatGPT to produce essays that aren’t original but could still ematics journal.
get a passing grade. Paul Musgrave, an assistant professor of (The model does appear to be learning, however. Eight
political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst weeks later, most of these hallucinations seemed to have sub-
who helped facilitate this project—by asking his students sided; in the article we feature, it provided a genuine list of
to submit essays, one of which we chose to feature here, by references to real articles on the topic of Crimea and Ukraine.)
undergraduate Lauren Grachuk—observed that “it’s a great The failure to distinguish truth from falsehood or the ten-
machine for regurgitating the conventional wisdom, and dency to generate hallucinated content that is presented—and
like all conventional then accepted—as reli-
wisdom, it’s imprecise able information online
and unfounded.” Still, does have more sinister
he said, “the thing about implications. There are,
all of this for me is how for instance, fears that
easy it is for ChatGPT to as some news and pub-
get a C or a B … but how lishing outlets experi-
hard it is to get an A or ment with using large
even a B+.” language models, false
The reason ChatGPT AI-produced content
has not yet cleared could flood the internet
that bar has to do with and that future models
its inability to detect feeding on that data set
or test what is true or will replicate and propa-
false. In March, lin- gate falsehoods, making
guists Noam Chomsky it increasingly difficult
and Ian Roberts and AI to discern fact from fic-
expert Jeffrey Watu- tion in online sources.
mull wrote an essay Those risks increase
in the New York Times when it comes to AI-
pointing out that cur- generated images and
rent large language models cannot go beyond description videos, which have an arguably greater capacity to misrep-
and prediction and, as such, “are stuck in a prehuman or resent reality and deceive viewers—especially in the event of
nonhuman phase of cognitive evolution.” deepfake videos or shocking AI-generated images of public
As David Schardt noted in a March article for the Cen- figures emerging, say, at the height of a political campaign.
ter for Science in the Public Interest, “even when provided Chris Meserole and Alina Polyakova presciently addressed
with accurate information, ChatGPT can get it wrong. Some- this topic in FOREIGN POLICY in 2018, noting that such images
times it puts words, names, and ideas together that appear are difficult to counter because “the algorithms that generate
to make sense but actually don’t belong together.” Indeed, the fakes continuously learn how to more effectively repli-
many users have catalogued references to articles that don’t cate the appearance of reality.”
exist and fake legal case citations. These are still early days for large language models, and
As Chomsky and his colleagues wrote, “machine learn- the pace of development is extremely rapid. “The reality is
ing systems can learn both that the earth is flat and that that these tools aren’t going anywhere and will only grow in
the earth is round. They trade merely in probabilities that popularity—Pandora’s box has been opened,” Coleman said. Q
change over time.”
Some of ChatGPT’s forays into fiction quickly became SASHA POLAKOWSURANSKY is a deputy editor at FOREIGN
evident during our interactions with the chatbot while POLICY.

58 Illustration by BRIAN STAUFFER

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 REVIEW

Works depicting Black

astronauts line the portal
to the “New Black Futures”
section of the Afrofuturism
exhibition at the Smithsonian
National Museum of African
American History and Culture
(NMAAHC) in Washington.
SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

The Infinite Possibilities

of Afrofuturism
A kaleidoscopic history
of Black futures at the Smithsonian.
By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

SUMMER 2023 61
 AFROFUTURISM AS AN IDEA is so big that extreme excitement and
some degree of disappointment were both, for me, inevitable
emotional responses to the exhibition, which features more
than 100 objects from music, film, television, comic books,
fashion, theater, literature, and beyond that showcase more
than a century of Afrofuturism’s “rich history of expression”
and impact on American culture. Upon walking through the
glass doors, I was so excited and overwhelmed that my eyes
magine that Benjamin Banneker, Phillis Wheat- welled up with tears and I struggled not to jump and shout.
ley, Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, and Frederick Douglass, Beyond the introductory placard, there are three screens
instead of being tasked with fighting slavery and arguing for that correspond with audio that fills the room, which cura-
Black humanity, crewed a spaceship together. This is what tors titled “Zone 1: The History of Black Futures.” Once I had
comes to mind upon entering the new exhibition “Afro- calmed my nerves enough to pay attention, I immediately
futurism: A History of Black Futures” at the Smithsonian became aware of Womack’s voice, and she was talking about
National Museum of African American History and Cul- my intellectual forebear, astronomer Benjamin Banneker.
ture (NMAAHC). Described by the exhibition as a “Colonial Afrofuturist”
This is not the first time a visitor to the NMAAHC is con- (a strange modifier at best to choose for “Afrofuturism”),
fronted with the feeling of boarding a spaceship. Known by Banneker fought colonial articulations of what research-
many as the “Blacksonian,” the museum itself, located in ers in science studies sometimes call “racist science” in an
the heart of Washington, D.C., is a significant work of Afro- exchange of letters with none other than Thomas Jefferson.
futurist art, politics, design, and engineering, with its struc- Banneker was himself empirical evidence that being mela-
ture mirroring a Yoruba-design crown that looks ready for nated was not a barrier to having a thriving and successful
liftoff. Every time the museum comes into view while walk- intellect. A biography by historian Charles A. Cerami claims
ing down 14th Street NW, I have the thought that it is like a that Banneker was likely of Dogon heritage, though I do not
phoenix rising from the ashes. I have often asked myself: find the argument convincing. The curators seemingly chose
Why this particular association? And I have come to real- to emphasize this idea as fact to suggest that doing astro-
ize that it is because Black humanity is itself a phoenix: No nomical work was his specific cultural inheritance, since
matter how many times colonizers and white supremacists the Dogon, an ethnic group indigenous to areas of contem-
have tried to destroy our communities, languages, and inte- porary Mali and part of Burkina Faso, are known to be—and
rior worlds, we have been resilient. Black livingness, as Black are presented in the exhibition as—people with a history of
Canadian scholar Katherine McKittrick has called it, is an scientific engagement with the night sky.
Afrofuturist endeavor. I have some concerns about the way that the Dogon are
Afrofuturism is difficult to define, and for me, this is invoked to point to evidence of African scientific intellect.
actually one of its pleasures. It is a kaleidoscope that offers Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu spent part of his career
multiple readings depending on the viewer’s perspective. arguing against this desire to assert the science-ness of Afri-
Writer and cultural critic Mark Dery, who has the unique cans, rather than acknowledging that Africans, like any other
role of being the only white person we see in the entire large and diverse population of humans, including Europe-
exhibition, coined the term “Afrofuturism” in the intro- ans, have engaged in mysticisms as well as rational knowl-
duction to a series of interviews with Samuel R. Delany, edge production.
Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose that he published in 1993 as an My misgivings aside, there was something spiritually ful-
essay under the title “Black to the Future.” In the museum’s filling about having Banneker feature in the discussion vid-
own definition, “Afrofuturism expresses notions of Black eos that draw the visitor’s attention before anything else in
identity, agency and freedom through art, creative works the room. Seeing a scientist front and center in the Afrofu-
and activism that envision liberated futures for Black life.” turist story is long overdue. Black scientists are too often
Broadly speaking, it is a set of cultural practices that, as treated like a figment of the Afrofuturist artistic and literary
my friend, author Ytasha L. Womack, writes in the exhibi-
tion’s companion book, connect “to us through radiating
lines of liberation, mysticism, imagination, and technol-
ogy.” Womack talks of “Afrofuturist sensibilities,” while the
We as Black people are able
exhibition’s subtitle urges us to receive Afrofuturism as a to construct our own sense
history of Black futures. of peoplehood.

62
 REVIEW

included in the exhibition but is available to viewers just a

few floors up. As Clinton shares, “We decided to get a space-
ship and drive it through the galaxy, and that was our con-
cept of the next place you hadn’t seen Blacks.”
In this context, it was also important to see social scientist
Alondra Nelson—one of the early interlocutors of Afrofuturist
discourse, who was at the time of filming the principal dep-
uty director for science and society at the White House Office
of Science and Technology Policy—appear alongside Wom-
ack, Dery, and Clinton discussing the legacy of Afrofuturism.
The exit from Zone 1 takes us into a portal that precedes
Zone 2. The portal is a small corridor that was perhaps my
favorite location in the entire exhibition. With speakers
placed on every single wall, adjacent to works of art portray-
ing Black astronauts, visitors are treated to a surround-sound
audio clip of American experimental jazz musician Sun Ra
explaining that he is an “ambassador from the intergalactic
The exterior of the NMAAHC is juxtaposed with
the Washington Monument, situated at the regions of the council of outer space. I do not come to you as
center of the National Mall in the U.S. capital. a reality. I come to you as a myth because that is what Black
people are.” The immersion experience of the portal’s sur-
round sound felt like the perfect homage to Sun Ra and his
imagination, when in reality we’ve been here engaging in message that we as Black people are able to construct our
the Afrofuturist practice of imagining ourselves as scientists own sense of peoplehood, that we are mythological in the
and constructing ourselves into scientific lives. Presenting best possible way, and that we are very much “of” the cosmos.
Banneker, as well as poet Phillis Wheatley, as technologists
and futurists is a powerful reframing that sets the stage for UPON EXITING THE PORTAL, the viewer is greeted with the response
the rooms that follow. They envisioned us, and that makes to this call: “Zone 2: New Black Futures,” which houses dis-
them Afrofuturists. plays about scientific racism as well as the masterpiece of
the exhibition, a section on “Music and Afrofuturism.” It
IN ZONE 1, WE ARE INTRODUCED TO the blue light motif that opens with the words of cultural critic and Afrofuturism
invokes not just spaceships but also thoughts of the night theorist Greg Tate: “Being Black in America is a science fic-
sky. Indeed, the room is rather dark, occasionally making it tion experience.”
difficult to see details on the Yoruba bowl sculpted by Olowe This zone, the largest room in the exhibition, features two
ALAN KARCHMER/SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

of Ise or the Dogon stool on display. At the same time, the screens at the center of the room showing clips and pho-
room’s lighting and ethereal music create an atmosphere that tos of music videos and performances by Black artists who
feels foundationally Afrofuturist. I wrote my Ph.D. disser- were influenced by and who helped define Afrofuturism,
tation with musician Janelle Monáe’s Afrofuturist-inspired including Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child,” Lee “Scratch” Per-
albums Metropolis: The Chase Suite and The ArchAndroid ry’s “I Am a Madman,” Sun Ra’s “Space Is the Place,” Nona
on repeat, and hearing her intone “You’re free, but in your Hendryx’s “I Need Love,” Outkast’s “Prototype,” and Parlia-
mind / your freedom’s in a bind” as I walked through the ment Funkadelic’s “Mothership Connection.” The screens
exhibition told me that I was at the beginning of an import- hang in the center of the room, and beneath them are valu-
ant journey through Afrofuturism. able artifacts: Monáe’s ArchAndroid costume; Outkast mem-
Also featured on screen in Zone 1 is George Clinton, the ber André 3000’s notebook paired with an explanation for
storied leader of the band Parliament Funkadelic, who speaks how he came by his Afrofuturist name; Sun Ra’s space harp;
about the importance of Afrofuturism to him, arguably one of Hendryx’s spacesuit; and Bernie Worrell’s cosmic-themed
its most important avatars. “Afrofuturism is something I’ve costume from Parliament Funkadelic’s 1996 Mothership
been waiting on for a long time,” Clinton says. He discusses Reconnection Tour.
his famous Mothership—a 1,500-pound model space lander The wall to the left houses facsimiles of albums whose
complete with mirrored panels and red and blue lights that visual artwork and content exhibit futurist themes, includ-
often appeared on stage at Parliament Funkadelic concerts ing Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet, Stevie Wonder’s
and which, for unfortunate structural reasons, could not be Innervisions, Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come,

SUMMER 2023 63
and Big K.R.I.T.’s Cadillactica. The albums on display show
that Afrofuturism’s influence cannot be isolated to a sin-
gle genre but instead appears across the wide spectrum of
Black musical production.
The specific emphasis on the importance of hip-hop duo
Outkast’s work and the inclusion of artists such as Big K.R.I.T.
called to mind André 3000’s famous 1995 Source Awards state-
ment: “The South’s got something to say.” And I wish that
everything it had to say specifically in the context of Afro-
futurism had been given more room to breathe in this exhi-
bition, which was bursting out of the space that it had to be
confined to. Regina Bradley’s Chronicling Stankonia: The Rise
of the Hip-Hop South has forcefully made the case that where
American cultural production is concerned, the Black South
is a crucial part of the story, not just yesterday but also today.
On the wall adjacent to the album display are three screens
featuring slideshows of Afrofuturist visual art, including paint-
ings, fashion, and design. I was tantalized by an Alma Thomas
painting, and I experienced a bit of heartache when I realized
that this was the only way I would see one in this exhibition.
In her marvelous book Charting the Afrofuturist Imaginary
in African American Art, scholar Elizabeth Carmel Hamilton Rights history is under fire from authoritarians who fear the
describes Thomas’s work as an exemplar of “the Black female power of children who learn history’s lessons.
fantastic”—representations of Black women that offer possibil- In Zone 3, we are treated to the Uhura uniform—which,
ities that “exist in the realm of imagination and fantasy.” I was yes, made me emotional. Here was the uniform of “the first
hoping to see Thomas’s work up close, to spend time looking Negro astronaut,” as Ebony magazine declared her in 1967.
at the movement of color in her painting. But in a slideshow, For me, a Black Trekkie and space geek, this was royal attire.
we only get a few seconds with each work of art. It stood between the flight suit that Trayvon Martin—the
The rest of Zone 2 is composed of costumes and images from Black Florida teenager who once dreamed of working in avi-
Afrofuturist television shows, though the presentation is some- ation before he was fatally shot in 2012 while walking home
what checkered. Despite multiple photos and videos of Black from a convenience store—wore while participating in an
actors from Star Trek: Discovery—including gay Afro-Latinx aviation education program and Obama-era NASA Admin-
barrier-breaker Wilson Cruz—there were no physical items istrator Charles Bolden’s actual space flight suit. We are also
from the show, such as one of Black costume designer Gersha treated to a display featuring the still very few Black NASA
Phillips’s innovative designs. I didn’t spend too much time astronauts and what feels like an abortive mention of the
fretting about this, since I knew that I would soon be treated “first person of African descent in space,” Cuban revolution-
to the uniform that Black actress Nichelle Nichols wore as the ary Arnaldo Tamayo Mendéz.
character of Uhura from the original Star Trek series. What is missing, however, is any critique of the militarism
that has so often underpinned U.S. interest in visiting space.
BEFORE WE ARE TREATED TO the full, space-faring denouement The problem isn’t the cost of the journeys—despite the com-
in “Zone 3: Infinite Possibilities,” we pass through a por- ments in the portal, which if they were complete might have
tal where we can hear Gil Scott-Heron’s 1970 spoken-word reflected Martin Luther King Jr.’s late-stage stance that the
poem “Whitey on the Moon,” which critiques U.S. govern- Vietnam War was a theft not just from Vietnamese but also
ment spending on the Apollo moon landings while Black from the American social safety net.
Americans languished in poverty. This audio is paired with
a video featuring Black people protesting and criticizing the
U.S. space program. This is the closest the exhibition gets to Black scientists are too
noticing the way Black activism of the Civil Rights Era over-
laps with and is foundational to the Afrofuturism of today.
often treated like a figment
This is something I missed and feel is sorely needed, partic- of the Afrofuturist artistic
ularly in this precarious moment when the teaching of Civil and literary imagination.

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 REVIEW

The “Music and

Afrofuturism”
portion of the
exhibition (far left)
and the 3D-printed
costume that
Chadwick Boseman
wore in Black
Panther.

The Afrofuturism exhibition chooses not to engage with Afrofuturism is read through political and national borders.
critics of certain elements of Afrofuturism. There is, for Yet at the end I was reminded of the power and impor-
example, no reflection on the 2013 Mundane Afrofuturist tance of an exhibition like this one. As I gazed at the Uhura
Manifesto, which notes, “This dream of utopia can encour- costume, I thought about how I had to wait until I was 40
age us to forget that outer space will not save us from injus- years old to see this. I wondered what it would be like for a
tice.” Zone 3 does link Afrofuturism to the Black Lives Matter 10-year-old to experience an exhibition like this, how trans-
movement, and Martin’s flight suit is in some sense the formative it could be to their sense of self, to their spirit. In
gateway to that aspect. But the zone feels small, the oppo- the end, this didn’t remain hypothetical for long.
site of Zone 1 and Zone 2’s capacious engagement with the As I stood in front of the 3D-printed costume that Chad-
question of what Afrofuturism can teach us. wick Boseman wore as the titular character in the Black
It is here, as with elsewhere in the exhibition, that I also Panther film—which takes place in the fictional African
noted the decision to uncritically include men who have been nation of Wakanda, envisioned as an Afrofuturistic sanc-
accused of sexual misconduct, including Afrika Bambaataa, tuary of Black excellence and scientific achievement—a
Michael Jackson, and Neil deGrasse Tyson. I wondered what class of Black children who were probably around 8 years
other figures might have deserved attention instead, espe- old came through. They were noisy and boisterous and
cially when, with the space limitations, hard choices had getting on their teacher’s nerves. I loved it. Many of them
to be made. It is here also that there is any serious acknowl- touched the glass surrounding the costume, maybe slapped
edgement of Afrofuturism beyond the United States’ colo- it a little harder than they should have. One boy, his hair in
nial borders, and the engagement is not substantial. dreadlocks, ran up to it, shouting that it was the Black Pan-
ther’s costume. “I must kneel before it!” he said, and he got
INDEED, EARLY ON in both the exhibition and its companion down on his knees and looked up.
book, one runs up against a conflict: Is Afrofuturism a dis- His generation has something that mine did not because
tinctly African American practice? NMAAHC curator Kevin our ancestors had the vision to dream up a museum—
M. Strait articulates it as such in the book’s introduction. a political and cultural project—that might contain exhibi-
Womack and several other contributors offer alternative tions like this one. As I watched him kneel, I realized that I
formulations, speaking instead of the practices of a diverse, was living in an Afrofuturist dream come to life. Q
global Black diaspora. The focus of the exhibition itself is on
African American experiences and practices; this is hardly CHANDA PRESCODWEINSTEIN is an assistant professor of
surprising given the museum’s name and discursive orienta- physics and astronomy and core faculty in women’s and
tion. It does raise the question, though, of what is lost when gender studies at the University of New Hampshire.

SUMMER 2023 65
 Banking On It
How the Fed became the lender
of last resort to the whole world.
By David Wessel

erome Powell never expected to become the world’s most powerful

economic policymaker. A lawyer by training, not an economist, he
was named to the U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2012
because he had impressed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
in helping to cajole congressional Republicans to raise the debt
ceiling, and the Obama administration decided to pair a Republi-
can (Powell) with a Democrat (Jeremy Stein) to get
two board nominees through the Senate. Powell Federal Reserve Chairman
Jerome Powell waits
would likely have been content to cap his career to deliver remarks at a
as vice chair of the Fed board in Washington or as president of conference in Washington
the New York Fed, the most prominent of the Fed’s 12 regional on June 17, 2022.
banks. But in 2017, then-U.S. President Donald Trump had other
ideas. Reluctant to reappoint Janet Yellen, a Democrat, to a second four-year
KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGES

term as Fed chair, he took the recommendation of his Treasury secretary, Steven
Mnuchin, and chose Powell for the job.
When Powell was sworn in as chair in February 2018, the U.S. unemployment
rate was around 4 percent, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure was hovering
around its 2 percent target, and GDP was growing at a healthy annual rate of around
2.8 percent. From a macroeconomic perspective, that was central banker nirvana.

66
 REVIEW

It didn’t last. If it had, two recent books by Fed reporters response to the pandemic with just enough historical con-
would not have been written: Jeanna Smialek’s Limitless text to provide necessary perspective. It’s the traditional,
and Nick Timiraos’s Trillion Dollar Triage. fast-paced first draft of history. The quotes demonstrate
In times of economic calm, there’s not much grist for Timiraos’s substantial access to Powell and others; the
book-length behind-the-scenes accounts from Fed beat source notes repeatedly cite “author’s interview.” Mnuchin
reporters. But Powell’s tenure has been consequential, is a major character, dubbed “Secretary Minutiae” because
weathering the COVID-19 pandemic, tumult in the U.S. Trea- of his reluctance to delegate negotiation of the details on
sury market, threats of firing by Trump, a new spotlight on COVID-19 lending programs. Although Timiraos avoids
racial inequality in the U.S. economy, a significant rethink- judging the wisdom of the Fed’s actions, Powell is clearly
ing of the Fed’s monetary policy strategy, Russia’s invasion the hero who saved the U.S. economy from collapse.
of Ukraine, the unwelcome return of inflation, and, recently, Smialek, the New York Times’ Fed reporter, also recounts
a banking crisis. And while the Fed has always been a very the pandemic but offers a more meandering story, occasion-
important actor in the U.S. and international economies— ally zigzagging chronologically. (One extraordinary foot-
the sub-subtitle of my 2009 book was “How the Federal note in Chapter 7 reads: “For context, the events related on
Reserve Became the Fourth Branch of Government”—the the pages ahead came chronologically before—in fact, in
global financial crisis and the pandemic underscored just the lead-up to—the more drastic Fed response [to the pan-
how it has effectively become the central bank and lender demic] detailed in Chapter 2.”) Her ambition is to describe
of last resort to the whole world. There is a lot for a couple the Fed’s expanding role in the economy as an institution;
of journalists to write about. she devotes about a fifth of the book to the history of the
Every Fed move—a quarter-point increase in interest rates, Fed dating back to the 1930s and includes a full chapter on
a new lending program for businesses in a pandemic, a res- climate change and digital currencies.
cue line thrown to a struggling bank—makes headlines. But Unlike Timiraos, Smialek seeks to distinguish her-
in the torrent of headlines, it can be hard to put these moves self from the “[m]any people who write about the Fed”
into context. The Smialek and Timiraos books weave recent who “suggest that its officials have saved the world” or
events into a coherent narrative and, perhaps more impor- “that they have ruined the world.” Fed officials, including
tantly, peel back the curtain on key figures making decisions Powell, are “ordinary people who control increasingly potent
that affect the entire global economy. tools,” she writes. (Maybe, but Greenspan was anything
but “ordinary”; Yellen rose to the top of a profession that
READERS SHOULD KNOW that I read these books as an insider. was—and, in many respects, still is—hostile to women; and
I covered the Fed in the Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke Bernanke won a Nobel prize.) Smialek makes a major char-
years for the Wall Street Journal and wrote a book about the acter of Neel Kashkari, the dynamic, press-friendly, and
Fed’s role in the global financial crisis. In my current job as
director of the Brookings Institution’s Hutchins Center on
Fiscal and Monetary Policy, I talk frequently to both Smialek
and Timiraos. I read and commented on Timiraos’s manu-
script. Smialek’s book opens with an unnamed interviewer
asking Powell on a webcast in the early weeks of the pan-
demic how much support the Fed could provide during the
emergency. (“There’s no limit on how much of that we can
do,” Powell said.) The interviewer was me.
The aggressive support for the economy that the Powell
Fed provided in the months that followed that conversation is
central to both books. Each one is an easy read—a digestible Limitless: The Federal Reserve
300 or so pages written clearly enough to be understood by Takes On a New Age of Crisis
readers who don’t use terms such as “basis points” in daily JEANNA SMIALEK, KNOPF, 384 PP., $30, FEBRUARY 2023
conversation while also offering enough tidbits to entertain
Trillion Dollar Triage: How Jay Powell
scrupulous Fed watchers. and the Fed Battled a President and a Pandemic
Yet while the books have obvious overlap, they are quite —and Prevented Economic Disaster
different. Timiraos, the Journal’s chief economics cor- NICK TIMIRAOS, LITTLE, BROWN AND CO.,
respondent, focuses tightly on the monetary and fiscal 352 PP., $30, MARCH 2022

SUMMER 2023 67
charismatic president of the Minneapolis Fed who has an of above-target inflation so that inflation would average
expansive view of the Fed’s remit—not because he is cen- 2 percent. On the employment side, the Fed essentially said
tral to the action but because she finds he has an “inter- it would no longer preemptively raise interest rates only
esting perspective.” Throughout the book, it’s not clear to because unemployment was projected to fall precipitously
whom she has been talking. “To protect my sources and unless it saw evidence of inflation rising to unwelcome lev-
allow a narrative format,” she writes, she doesn’t identify els. Work on the framework preceded the pandemic, but the
her sources even in footnotes. timing of the unveiling proved awkward. As Timiraos puts
So, what do we learn about Powell, who must be reminded it, the strategy effectively committed the Fed to reacting
of the giants who preceded him every time he walks by the “too late” to any uptick in inflation.
portraits of former Fed chairs that hang in the corridor out- Two of Powell’s lieutenants figure prominently in both
side his office? When the Obama administration was consid- books: Quarles and Lael Brainard, an economist appointed
ering Powell for the Fed board, Smialek reports, a memo to to the Fed in 2014 who is now chief of President Joe Biden’s
the president read, “Perhaps the biggest downside of Powell National Economic Council. Quarles worked in the U.S. Trea-
is that he would bring less thought leadership and creativity sury Department in Republican administrations, Brainard
… than some other candidates might. Nevertheless, he brings in Democratic ones.
many other strengths.” After he got to the Fed, according to In classic Washington fashion, Powell and Quarles both
Timiraos, he groused that the Fed’s Ph.D. economists talked worked at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell and at the
to him as if he were a “golden retriever.” politically well-connected private equity firm Carlyle Group.
Although Powell became an assiduous student of eco- Powell recruited Quarles to work with him at the Treasury
nomics, he doesn’t think like an economist. Timiraos sees Department in the early 1990s and recommended him to
that as a strength, at least during the pandemic. Randal Trump for the Fed post.
Quarles, who was picked by Trump to be Fed vice chair for Smialek has a great time contrasting Quarles’s free-market,
bank supervision, tells Timiraos that economist central small-government views with those of one of his heroes—and
bankers often confront a crisis and decide that “monetary his wife’s great-uncle—President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Fed
policy isn’t the right tool here.” But Powell, in Quarles’s chair Marriner Eccles, who she says was a Keynesian before
words, approached the problem by asking: “What’s the the word was invented. (Eccles, though, as she recounts, later
problem we’re facing? How can we address that?” Quarles played a key role in establishing the Fed’s independence from
says any other Fed chair would have “done much less and the White House.) Smialek describes Quarles as an “unusu-
moved much more slowly” in the pandemic’s early months, ally colorful character for a Fed official,” though the only
but Powell was clearly right. evidence she offers is his habit of peppering speeches with
If Bernanke and Yellen sometimes sound as if their first phrases such as “kaleidoscopic gallimaufry.” Timiraos dwells
language is economics, Powell’s is English. His conversa- mainly on Quarles’s role in fashioning the Fed’s response
tional style, Timiraos writes, reflects his interest in reaching to the pandemic. Smialek writes a bit more about his role—
ordinary Americans—a “Jimmy Stewart of monetary policy,” newly relevant in light of this year’s banking crisis—in loos-
as a former top Fed economist put it—though it sometimes ening some of the regulatory strings imposed on banks after
confuses financial markets, an important audience for a Fed the global financial crisis with Powell’s support and over
chair. His affability proved a huge asset for the Fed on Capitol Brainard’s strenuous objections.
Hill; members of both parties stood behind him when Trump Brainard found herself as a key economic advisor to Pow-
attacked him for refusing to significantly lower interest rates ell during the pandemic—the “lone liberal,” as Smialek
in 2019. Timiraos writes that Powell followed four rules in that puts it, on the Fed board on bank regulatory issues. Smi-
painful period: Don’t talk about Trump; when provoked, don’t alek is a Brainard fan: “Owing in large part to her thor-
return fire; stick to the economy, not politics; and develop allies oughness and competence, Brainard maintained the
outside the Oval Office. If a future Fed chair confronts similar respect of her colleagues, even though she was out of step
circumstances, those rules will be a playbook. with them ideologically—in Powell’s case, slightly, and
As both books recount, Powell presided over a significant
change in the Fed’s monetary policy strategy, tweaking the
2 percent inflation target that Bernanke established in 2012 Both books are stuffed with
because, for years, inflation had been persistently below
target, even as the unemployment rate hit historic lows.
juicy little details, reminders
In August 2020, the Powell Fed declared that after periods that policymaking is not all
of below-target inflation, the Fed would aim for periods white papers and spreadsheets.

68
 REVIEW

UNFORTUNATELY, NEITHER BOOK DELVES MUCH into how and why

the Powell Fed misread the economy or why it was slow to
pull back on its extraordinarily stimulative monetary policy.
The Fed’s tardy response to the unexpectedly rapid (though
welcome) recovery from the COVID-19 recession and Biden’s
enormous American Rescue Plan, with its $1,400-per-
person stimulus checks, contributed to today’s inflation
problem. In short, the Fed expected the spurt of inflation
to dissipate—“transitory” was the word—and kept interest
rates near zero and continued to buy long-term bonds lon-
ger than now seems wise. Low interest rates, as intended,
spurred borrowing and spending that outstripped the econ-
omy’s capacity to supply goods and services, in part because
of disruptions to supply chains. When demand exceeds
People pass the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street as the available supply, prices tend to rise; it’s a recipe for
stocks posted steep losses following emergency moves
by the Federal Reserve to try to avert a recession on March 16, increased inflation.
2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Did top Fed policymakers rely on forecasts from the Fed
staff that proved to be too optimistic about inflation? Were
they lulled into complacency by years in which unemploy-
in Quarles’s, very. She was often prepared to the point of ment fell and inflation didn’t rise? Were policymakers trying
absurdity.” Brainard, Timiraos reports, was quicker to see to demonstrate that they embraced their new framework by
the threat from COVID-19 than Quarles. She favored more keeping rates low? Did they lock themselves into inaction
forceful Fed and Treasury responses to the pandemic and by their guidance to financial markets? (Powell famously
thus was a particularly important early ally when Powell said in June 2020: “We’re not even thinking about thinking
wanted to move aggressively. In 2021, though, she became about raising rates.”) Or, given all the uncertainties about
Powell’s rival when Biden was weighing whether to reappoint how badly the pandemic would damage the economy, did
or replace him. She clearly wanted the job, but the White they simply decide that the risk of doing too much to stim-
House apparently preferred the continuity that came from ulate the economy was wiser than doing too little?
reappointing Powell (as President Barack Obama had done These questions are left unprobed. Timiraos’s reporting
with Bernanke) and perhaps thought Powell would have an ends with Biden’s November 2021 reappointment of Powell
easier time winning Senate confirmation without delays. for a second term as Fed chair; his book came out in March
Quarles has since left Washington, and Brainard has a key 2022. Smialek’s came out a year later, in February 2023, but
White House post from which she is pressing the Fed and her reporting seems to have stopped at the end of 2021. She
other regulators to undo much of what Quarles and the Trump barely mentions the aggressive series of rate hikes that the
administration did to ease up on the banks. If she ends up Fed began in March 2022, raising the key short-term rate from
succeeding Yellen as treasury secretary, people will be scru- near zero to between 4.75 percent and 5 percent in less than 12
tinizing the passages about her in these books. months and leading many forecasters in the spring of 2023—
In addition to explaining how and why the Fed did what it including the Fed’s—to predict a recession before year’s end.
did during the pandemic, both books are stuffed with juicy Powell is not prone to introspection in public. History will
little details, reminders that policymaking is not all white judge the Fed, he says. But at a Hutchins Center event last
papers and spreadsheets. In 2008, for instance, a group of November, he told me: “One piece of guidance that we gave
Utahns offered a 6-foot-tall bronze statue of Eccles to the that I probably wouldn’t do again is we said we wouldn’t
Fed, but folks at the Fed—including Kevin Warsh, the Fed lift off [raise interest rates from zero] until we saw both
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

governor who oversaw such things—were unenthusiastic maximum employment and price stability. I don’t think I
about accepting it. The Fed did eventually take it but put it would do that again.” A return of inflation, he said, simply
in a less central place. When Warsh circulated as a potential seemed unlikely after so many years of very low inflation.
Fed chair, there were published reports that because of this “And yet here we are.” Q
flap, as well as reported clashes between Quarles and Warsh
when they both worked in the George W. Bush administra- DAVID WESSEL is a senior fellow and the director of the
tion, the two men wouldn’t work well together at the Fed. Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the
This, Smialek writes, hurt Warsh’s chances. Brookings Institution.

SUMMER 2023 69
 Who Can Tell Native Stories?
A new book reaches the outer limits of what European-style
academic research can accomplish.
By B.“Toastie” Oaster

t’s not as if all Native stories are sacred. Natives like to spin a good yarn
like anybody else, telling jokes, fables, or raucous tales of the trou-
ble their buddies got into. But Native people are, without question,
storytellers. That’s part of the heritage. And sacred or not, Native sto-
ries are special. They build bonds. They can heal trauma or preserve
suppressed traditions and histories. Some carry teachings that help
guide Native children so that their minds and actions match their cul-
tures. Stories can also be hazardous in the hands of the wrong person.
Some might be inappropriate to a listener who’s too young, or outside
the tribal culture, or uninitiated into a certain life path or profession. Some must
be told exactly as the elders told them—like reciting Shakespeare.
Most ancestors in North America didn’t leave their most sacred stories lying
around in books to be misinterpreted and abused. They safeguarded these treasures
carefully through oral storytelling. This makes some Native stories extraction-
proof, transferred only with intention and consent. When a Native person receives
a story, they’re taking on a responsibility—to tell that story right, to protect it,
and to be accountable for wherever it goes and whatever damage it might do. You
can’t get a Native story without first earning the storyteller’s confidence. If you
tried to force one out of a Native person, they might fill your ear with bullshit just
KENT MONKMAN

for kicks—and maybe charge you a hundred bucks for the “sacred knowledge”
you just acquired—only to go off and tell that story to their cousins for a laugh.
Because stories are unextractable, they’re one of the last resources over which

70
 REVIEW

Native people have theoretical and practical sovereignty. Sometimes, the result is benign—we learn some inter-
And that sovereignty is sacred. esting things about 16th-century Spanish laws and politics
On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered around slavery, for example, and there’s a brief respite where
Europe is an attempt by British historian Caroline Dodds Pen- Pennock explores the history of Native North American first
nock to dig through European historical records from the age foods in Europe (“Irish” potatoes and “Italian” tomatoes, for
of tall ships, searching for Native stories. The author pores instance)—but other times it’s re-traumatizing, as when Pen-
over old papers, tracking down Indigenous people who lived nock quotes from a colonizer’s detailed description of his
in the shadows of colonizers as slaves, “wives,” and diplomats, rape of an Indigenous woman.
their presences appearing quite literally in the margins of These maneuvers reflect the European value of academic
maps, receipts, journal entries, and other loose bits of detri- detachment but do little to illuminate the Native stories Pen-
tus. The written records, however, tend to say very little about nock is after. The text sweeps the historical grounds with its
these individuals. The glimpses we get are filtered through searchlight of the white gaze, only to find that most of its
the colonial gaze: sometimes paternalistic or gawking, other Indigenous subjects have already escaped.
times overtly racist, scanty, and usually of dubious accuracy.
But the records say volumes about Europe’s belligerents, IN 1584, AS PENNOCK RECOUNTS, two Coastal Algonquin men
making this effectively a book about colonizers: figures such named Wanchese and Manteo became translators for a British
as Hernán Cortés of Spain and his greed-addled ilk, along colonizer. They were the first of many Algonquin-speaking
with their enablers, including King Charles V, Queen Isa- people to visit London—whether as travelers or captives is
bella, various popes, and the Spanish courts. Spending a unclear.
lot of time with these figures is not very fun or illuminating Though the records say almost nothing about what
for an Indigenous reader. Of course, Indigenous readers will Wanchese and Manteo did in London, we spend pages read-
likely be turned away by the book’s title, which uses a racial ing about what English gawkers thought about them, which
slur—despite the author’s attempt in the preface to justify queens and courts they were probably presented to, and
it as an ironic inversion. what ridiculous European costumes they might have worn
Pennock is clear about her good intentions—that she wants (willingly or not). Pennock pauses periodically to wonder
to see Native people empowered and represented, the agency what they must have thought of all this, speculating that
of these individuals and their contributions to global history it’s “likely that they were startled by the magnitude of the
finally acknowledged by academia. But the quest has sent the city, the teeming streets, and the expansive stone structures
author to the outer limits of what European-style academic dominating the landscape.”
research can accomplish, trying to dismantle the master’s Pennock demonstrates that it was Wanchese and Manteo
worldview using the master’s tools. Her efforts terminate in who were responsible for the English-Algonquin translations
a cul-de-sac. Obsession with paper documents can only go that European men took credit for. It’s the author’s way of
so far, and this fundamentally white approach simply ends transferring agency from the colonizer to the Indigenous
up re-platforming historical white men. people who did most of the work—a small justice to the two
travelers but not without its own shades of white saviorism.
This attempt to bestow agency is central to the objectives of
On Savage Shores: the book, a continuation of five centuries of missionaries,
How Indigenous policymakers, and teachers who believe it’s their job to help
Americans Discovered
Europe Indigenous people.
In 1585, after getting some head pats from his monarch,
CAROLINE DODDS PENNOCK,
KNOPF, 320 PP., $32.50, the colonizer who brought Wanchese and Manteo to Lon-
JANUARY 2023 don went back with them across the Atlantic to do a little
more colonizing. He ran his ship aground off the coast of
Roanoke lands, and Wanchese promptly split, escaping back
to his homelands to rabble-rouse against the colonizer he
Facing page: Welcoming the Newcomers (2019) is part
of Cree artist Kent Monkman’s mistikôsiwak (Wooden had sailed with. “He had apparently had enough of English
Boat People), a diptych of two paintings commissioned hospitality,” Pennock writes. “Once Wanchese leaves the
for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall in oversight of the English, he also largely disappears from the
New York City. The painting reimagines European
colonizers’ arrival in North America and references sources, making it hard to trace his later life,” she adds, with
both Indigenous and European art traditions. what might be a whisper of ruefulness. Indigenous readers,

SUMMER 2023 71
 if there are any, will more likely jump up and cheer at this
point: Go, Wanchese! You did it, man! Whether he went on
to foment resistance, as Pennock suggests, or marry his true
love, or get eaten by alligators, that’s Wanchese’s story. And
he managed to keep it out of the white gaze.
The white gaze has trouble with object permanence. But
Native histories do exist, and Native agency exists, whether
or not European-descended people are able to document,
organize, categorize, or define those things.

IN 2017, THE PHOTOGRAPHER JOSUÉ RIVAS (Mexica and Otomi) gave

a TEDx talk in Rapid City, South Dakota, about the impor-
tance of Indigenous people telling Indigenous stories. It was
the year after the start of protests against the Dakota Access
Pipeline at Standing Rock, where he had spent six months
documenting Indigenous resistance. “We were in charge of
our narrative, and that was powerful,” he said. “That’s how
we create our reality of our people.”

World Brief:
Rivas’s photographs focused on resilience and prayer
instead of controversy and conflict, presenting, in his words,
“a side of the story often overlooked and misunderstood by

5 minutes
the non-Native photojournalists.” Native documentarians
operate differently, Rivas said, out of respect for protocol
and cultural boundaries, by avoiding extraction and even
sometimes putting down the camera to participate in cere-

to understand mony. “By telling our own story, we are reclaiming our iden-
tity and healing our historical trauma.”
On Savage Shores is a white story about white stories

24 hours about Natives—even if it is critical of colonizers. Again and

again throughout the narrative, Pennock pauses to wonder
what the Indigenous subjects must have felt or thought.
She’s careful never to speak for them and keeps a short
FP’s flagship EVENING leash on her imagination. But at no point does she consult
contemporary Native scholarship. Only after 213 pages, in
NEWSLETTER with the very last chapter, do we finally hear from any named

what’s happening around Native people at all—Red Shirt and Black Elk, two histor-
ical figures, quoted via white people who may or may not
the world right now. have recorded them accurately.
Ógle Šá, aka Joseph Red Shirt, was a complicated figure.
He served in the U.S. Army and enrolled his own children
in the government-run Carlisle Indian Industrial School’s
inaugural class. He opposed Native resistance movements
such as Ghost Dance and those of Lakota leader Crazy
Horse; white folks considered him progressive for it. He also

The question gnawing

at the heart of this book is:
SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER AT
FOREIGNPOLICY.COM/WORLDBRIEF Should a non-Native historian
have attempted it?
 REVIEW

Miss Europe (2016) is part of

Monkman’s series The Four
Continents, which riffs off
a fresco by 18th-century Italian
painter Giambattista Tiepolo.
Each painting in Monkman’s
series examines Eurocentric
misconceptions about the world’s
regions and explores themes
of colonization, globalization,
and exploitation.

traveled with Buffalo Bill to England, where he exoticized Raymond DeMallie’s book The Sixth Grandfather, partly
Indigeneity for fawning crowds. written as an answer to the dubious authenticity of Black Elk
“In this double life, Red Shirt saw himself not at all as the Speaks. It’s from The Sixth Grandfather that Pennock quotes.
gawkers imagined him,” Pennock writes (but not before So Heháka
Š Sápa’s words reach us only after filtering through
she first quotes a white man, Buffalo Bill, on what Red Shirt no less than five intermediaries—four of them white. Why
“clearly felt” when meeting Britain’s Queen Victoria). “The not just talk to a Native person? Heháka
Š Sápa has living rel-
chief spoke poignantly to an English reporter about the future atives. There are Lakota historians working today. Instead,
of his people: ‘The Indian of the next generation will not be Pennock’s book presents Natives through layers of whiteness
the Indian of the last. Our buffaloes are nearly all gone: the and relegates them to the past.
deer have entirely vanished; and the white man takes more The question gnaws at the heart of On Savage Shores: Should
and more of our land.’” Pennock chose this quote to under- a non-Native historian have attempted this book? There are
score that Ógle Šá was not the dancing savage the English effective ways to use colonial tools against colonialism, such
took him for. But she also inadvertently recycles the “van- as when researchers last year studied place names in U.S.
ishing Indian” trope—the myth in U.S. culture and politics national parks and found that they support settler-colonial
that Native people are part of the past—with a quote that, mythologies and racism. Here, scholars were turning the white
even if it was transcribed exactly as Ógle Šá said it, serves gaze (academic research) not upon Native people but upon a
the white agenda. white system (the National Park Service) with a critical eye.
Š
Heháka Sápa, aka Black Elk, was of a different political Pennock’s formidable research skills might have been bet-
stripe. He was a leader in the Ghost Dance movement and ter spent similarly deconstructing white systems of power.
fought alongside his cousin Crazy Horse. But he joined his As for the many other North Americans who crossed the
fellow Lakota Ógle Šá on the trans-Atlantic voyage with Buf- Atlantic to visit Europe during early colonization, white aca-
Š
falo Bill. Pennock quotes Heháka Sápa about his motives for demia may never know what they thought or felt, who they
joining: “I wanted to see the great water, the great world and went on to love, and how they processed their trauma or
the ways of the white men; this is why I wanted to go.” The described to family the horrors of uncivilized Europe, where
line originally comes from an interview with white poet John class and gender disparities foreshadowed their own home-
Neihardt for his book Black Elk Speaks, which has a ques- lands’ capitalist futures. The gaze of whiteness cannot peer
tionable reputation for the degree to which the author likely into those stories, despite what must be a frustrated longing
massaged or misinterpreted Heháka Š Sápa’s words. to do so. Those Indigenous travelers kept their stories, and
During their interviews, Heháka Š Sápa spoke in Lakota, they’re heroes for it. That, perhaps, is the ultimate expres-
and his son, Ben Black Elk, translated his words into “Indian sion of Native agency, even if it’s not the one the author set
English,” the intertribal lingua franca. Neihardt would repeat out to discover. Q
sentences back in standard English, and his daughter Enid
KENT MONKMAN

would jot them down in shorthand. In some cases, Neihardt’s B. “TOASTIE” OASTER is a staff writer for High Country News
other daughter Hilda would type notes. These typed and short- writing from the Pacific Northwest. They are a citizen of
hand transcriptions are the basis for white anthropologist the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

SUMMER 2023 73
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 REVIEW

Keri Russell
as Kate Wyler
in an episode
of The Diplomat.

Art of Diplomacy
The foreign service finally gets the Netflix treatment.
By Robbie Gramer

he first thing you need to know about the U.S. State Depart-
ment, if you ever want to work there, is that most of your
job will be uncovering devious international conspira-
cies while surrounded by hot people who all personally
know the president.
Or at least that’s what the showrunners of Netflix’s glitzy
new political thriller The Diplomat would have you think.
The Diplomat follows Kate Wyler, played by Keri Russell,
a hard-nosed, no-nonsense career foreign service officer
abruptly tapped to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom in the wake of a
major international crisis. (Minor plot spoilers from here on.) She and a coterie of
her embassy co-workers find themselves tasked with preventing a bumbling British
prime minister from dragging the United States into a disastrous war in the Middle
East based on a combination of faulty intelligence and political gamesmanship (a
plot that should sound familiar, in an inverted sort of way).
And there’s an entire quasi-rom-com subplot with some Veep-like vibes, with
Wyler’s devilishly handsome and conniving soon-to-be-ex-husband, Hal (played
by Rufus Sewell), an ambitious, savvy, and insufferable diplomat in his own right.
Oh, and another sub-subplot on the political future of Wyler, who, unbeknownst
to her, is being groomed for the vice presidency.

SUMMER 2023 75
REVIEW

Ali Ahn as CIA station

chief Eidra Park
and Ato Essandoh
as Stuart Hayford,
Wyler’s deputy chief
of mission, navigate
international affairs
in The Diplomat.

The show’s creator, Debora Cahn (a veteran of other Wash- thinly veiled pay-to-play campaign donation bribe? Also,
ington-centric blockbuster shows such as Homeland and why aren’t three separate National Security Council staffers
The West Wing), clearly put a lot of effort into injecting a trying to micromanage every aspect of the ambassador’s job
dose of realism into life as a diplomat, consulting 60 experts, at every turn? I mean, that’s what actual U.S. foreign-policy
including current and former diplomats, as the show came making is all about.
together, as Politico reported. The show has drawn some- Still, some current and former officials say, there’s a patina
thing of a cult following within the State Department, maybe of authenticity that gives The Diplomat more legitimacy
because shows and movies on the State Department are so than your run-of-the-mill Washington political thriller. For
few and far between. I polled about a dozen current and for- starters, the set includes Drexel furniture, the (in)famous
mer U.S. diplomats for their views on the show to see what and ubiquitous furniture brand that fills nearly every U.S.
it gets wrong about life in the foreign service and what it government worker’s pre-furnished home abroad and was
absolutely nails, grading on the curve, of course, of it being instantly recognizable to every foreign service officer, or FSO,
a taut thriller that needs some artistic license to keep the I spoke to who watched the show.
plot humming along. “The furniture in Rufus’s guest room, that was perfect—
The short answer is: The show gets a lot of small details it looks totally like standard-issue FSO housing,” said Jeff
right, and it gets a lot of big details wrong, but some of that Rathke, the president of the American-German Institute,
can be forgiven because, in the words of one current senior who spent 24 years in the foreign service.
foreign service officer, “if it was truly realistic about life as a The show also shines a spotlight on the ambassador’s No.
diplomat, this show could be boring as hell.” 2, the deputy chief of mission, or DCM. DCMs play crucial
Even as an outsider, I had a lot of questions about how behind-the-scenes roles in managing an embassy and serving
much realism there was in the show’s first episode. How did as a fixer and confidante for the ambassador. “The dynamic
Wyler go from being told by the president she’ll be ambas- between the ambassador and the DCM in the show … it can
sador to London to actually becoming ambassador to Lon- be pretty realistic because the DCM’s job is really to help the
don without a drawn-out, eight-month-long confirmation ambassador manage her work and navigate all aspects of
process by a debilitatingly partisan Senate? Since when do the job, big and small,” said Lewis Lukens, a former senior
presidents pick ambassadors to Western European countries career diplomat who served as the DCM at the U.S. Embassy
based on actual skills and experience, instead of a $2 million in London from 2016 to 2019.
Another aspect the show gets right, Lukens and others
said, is how life in the foreign service can throw big wrenches
ALEX BAILEY/NETFLIX

into personal relationships. Ato Essandoh, who plays DCM

“If it was truly realistic about Stuart Hayford in the show, has hit a rough patch in his sit-
life as a diplomat, this show uationship with Ali Ahn, who plays CIA station chief Eidra
could be boring as hell.” Park, as they debate whether one of them has to put their

76
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REVIEW

next big career move on pause for the sake of their blossom- Movies and shows about the U.S. military or CIA are a dime
ing romance. “That’s a very foreign service problem for tan- a dozen. The State Department? Not so much.
dem couples—this tension between ‘my career, your career,’ And what is out there usually totally misses the mark
which one takes a back seat based on where we’re going to on realism in diplomacy. There was a very short-lived and
be stationed next,” Lukens said. ill-fated attempt to bring Foggy Bottom to Hollywood with
There are some other moments of realism that the show The American Embassy, a 2002 show on Fox that lasted
gets credit for, according to three current diplomats, none all of four episodes before it was pulled from air. (You can
of whom were authorized to speak on record. “Keri Russell’s find the show for free on YouTube now, but I don’t recom-
character has to put up with a lot of casual sexism. Nothing mend watching it because it is, even by 2002 standards,
more realistic about FSO life than that,” one said. objectively awful.)
Another diplomat gave the show points for realism on There’s also Luke Hobbs in the Fast & Furious franchise,
something else. “One thing the show got totally accurate was played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who gives a captivat-
when Keri Russell angrily stuffed half a blueberry muffin in ing performance as a State Department Diplomatic Security
her mouth because her job drove her to stress-eat,” this dip- Service agent who teams up with a crew of car thieves to stop
lomat said. “I can really relate to that.” a cyberterrorist from starting a global nuclear war by driv-
Russell clearly holds foreign service officers in high regard, ing muscle cars armed with rocket launchers across a frozen
lauding their underappreciated work around the world in Russian lake to blow up a nuclear submarine in The Fate of
an interview in April with Late Show host Stephen Colbert. the Furious, the 2017 cinematic tour de force that really put
“They give up their entire life [for public service]. They’re the State Department on the map.
incredible people,” Russell said. (Though, in that interview, Then, of course, there’s Madam Secretary, the six-season
she also erroneously said they don’t vote.) CBS show starring Téa Leoni as the U.S. secretary of state, who
So, what does the show get wrong? A lot, as it turns out. magically fixes vexing foreign-policy crises in neat single-hour
For starters, the show has career diplomats such as the DCM segments, just like how foreign policy works in real life.
intimately involved in presidential politics, scheming with There are so few shows on diplomacy compared with the mil-
the president’s chief of staff to vet Wyler for the vice presi- itary or intelligence community because “the reality is, we just
dency. “I don’t know any DCM who has a direct line to the don’t have that much action in our day-to-day work,” Lukens
president’s chief of staff, but even if they did, no DCM career said. The day-to-day slog of talking, negotiating, talking more,
FSO is going to touch domestic political stuff with a 10-foot and then negotiating more is undoubtedly important for U.S.
pole,” one diplomat said. national security, but it makes for bad television.
Wyler also gets flown out to London on a private jet after So, where does The Diplomat fit into the admittedly small
being tapped as ambassador—again, without a Senate con- constellation of diplomacy (or diplomacy-adjacent) shows?
firmation process. “Where in the budget request did SFOPS It’s grittier and less hokey than Madam Secretary or The
approve private jets for career diplomats to travel on? Was West Wing; it’s not as compelling as the hit Danish politi-
that from leftover FY2021 or 2022 funding, or is that new to cal drama Borgen or Russell’s other top-tier spy drama, The
the FY23 budget?” said another current diplomat, referring Americans (though in fairness, what is?); and the plotlines
to unintelligible federal budget processes that I don’t have aren’t quite as smart as some other political thrillers on Net-
the energy to fully explain, nor should you wish me to. flix, such as Australia’s Secret City or Norway’s Occupied.
Then, there are the operational security (or opsec, in gov- It’s perhaps the most realistic portrayal of life as a foreign
ernment speak) snafus, with the CIA station chief, DCM, service officer on TV, but given the dearth of options, that
and ambassador all casually chatting about highly sensitive may not be saying much.
intelligence in the middle of the office, instead of huddling At times, the show feels as if it’s trying too hard to be too
in the bland, fortress-like sensitive compartmented infor- many different things—is it a thriller with some rom-com in
mation facility (SCIF) that every embassy has for discus- it or a rom-com with some thriller in it? Is it about geopolitics
sions on the super secret stuff. “Everybody has really terrible and diplomacy or how career ambitions affect a marriage?
opsec,” said Rathke—an issue that, for a U.S. government The whole feels a lot less than the sum of its parts.
worker in real life, could be a fast track to a demotion, fir- Still, if you’re on the hunt for a more than dumb but less
ing, or prison sentence. than brilliant binge watch with entertaining plotlines, The
Still, all that the show gets wrong about life as a diplomat is Diplomat definitely scratches that itch. And binge you’ll be
probably beside the point. “It is fun to watch as a former dip- able to—it has already been picked up for a second season. Q
lomat,” Rathke said. “Does it tell you something about being a
career diplomat? No, not really, but I don’t think it’s trying to.” ROBBIE GRAMER is a staff writer at FOREIGN POLICY.

78
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 A S P E C I A L R E P O R T B Y F P A N A LY T I C S W I T H S U P P O R T F R O M M I C R O S O F T

Digital Front Lines

The three-part project combines research-based analyses, data
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the alignment of cyber and kinetic for international humanitarian law safeguard nuclear and space
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the role of the tech community in and ensure accountability for
tracking and exposing information cyberattacks against civilians and
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Cyberattacks ramped up preceding Russia’s full-scale invasion

The prevalence of cyberattacks targeting Ukraine
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FEB. 24: Putin announces

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APRIL 1: Russian
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SEPT. 1: Ukraine
counteroffensive NOV. 12: Ukrainian
forces Russian troops troops liberate Kherson
to flee Kharkiv region

Targets of destructive cyberattacks by sector, February-October 2022

Q Government Q Energy Q Financial Q Media Q Transportation Q IT/Comms
Q 4"+#,/ "*"+1šY/01/"0-,+!"/0 Q Healthcare Q Water Q Other
 Disruptions across Europe from Russian satellite hack
Cyberattack on the Viasat satellite network just hours before the
Russian invasion of Ukraine had a cascading effect across the region.

On Feb. 24, 2022, one hour before the invasion of UKRAINE, Russia
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Data sources: CNN, Council of the European Union, CSO, CyberPeace Institute, La Depeche, Microsoft, Reuters, Wired, Zero Day

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4&1%Y++ &)02--,/1#/,*Microsoft, that brings sharpened focus on the risks of, and responses
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special report. Foreign Policy’s editorial team was not involved in the creation of this content.
 It’s Not a Barbie World
By Azadeh Moaveni
arbie, the most famous doll in the world, symbol of American girl-
hood, and now the star of a feature film, carries with her, along with
many accessories, a complicated origin story. The official Mattel
history holds that Barbie was born in 1959, when creator and Mattel
co-founder Ruth Handler observed her daughter playing for hours
STYLING BY MELANIE FRANCES

with paper figures and spotted a chance to “champion and inspire

girls” by providing them with a three-dimensional doll.
The less salubrious version traces the inspiration for Barbie to a European holiday
where Handler encountered the wildly popular Bild Lilli, a leggy blonde doll sold in
tobacconist shops to adults as a novelty item, based on the character Lilli in a comic
strip of the same name published in the German tabloid Bild. Lilli was a sassy escort,

82 Photo by CLINT BLOWERS

 OBJECTS OF THE GLOBAL MOMENT
the star of every bar who was often stopped by the police for The next year, the Saudi regime also moved against Barbie,
wearing too little. Handler initially couldn’t get Mattel to banning what it called “Jewish Barbie dolls” whose “shameful
produce a grown-up doll with breasts, but her project took postures” carried a dangerous “symbol of decadence to the
off after bringing home Bild Lilli. Manufacturing of her doll, perverted West.” That wave of religious conservatism in the
which she called Barbie, began in Japan, a country experi- Middle East, which culminated in the Islamist movements
encing its own postwar agonies about sex, innocence, and that dominated the aftermath of the Arab Spring, propelled
girls’ bodies. Mattel acquired the rights to Bild Lilli in 1964. the success of Barbie’s rival in the region: Fulla, who wears
In the 1960s and ’70s, Barbie conquered the United States, hijab and abaya, pays careful attention to her eye makeup,
settling in Malibu with a poolside playhouse and acquiring and accessorizes with both handbags and a prayer mat. Fulla
a pliant boyfriend named Ken, a lady-in-waiting younger has consistently outsold Barbie across the Arab world since
sister called Skipper, and assorted friends and relatives. Her she turned up in 2003, but she has made no inroads in Iran,
early disinterest in any vocation and pursuit of independence where the romance of political Islam is dead and Barbie has
through purchases of living room decor miniaturized the retained enough appeal to prompt fresh crackdowns.
mores of postwar U.S. suburban life, of the stultifying Revo- In parts of the world where Barbie held no oppositional
lutionary Road variety. cache, she often simply flopped. In 2009, Mattel opened a
By the time she turned 40, in 1999, Barbie was a reliably divi- pink six-floor flagship Barbie store in Shanghai that failed to
sive icon aggravating Western feminists. That year, Australian attract consumers. It was the biggest retail misread in China
writer Germaine Greer was pictured biting the head off a Barbie in recent years. Mattel’s Shanghai experiment attempted to
for her book The Whole Woman, in which she rails against the market Barbie to Chinese consumers as an adult lifestyle
doll’s “non-functional body.” Others insisted the obsession with brand. The store offered a spa, Barbie-style makeovers, and
Barbie was trivial, that Barbie was probably a feminist anyway a racy clothing line designed by Sex and the City costume
(witness her long-running indifference to Ken), and that her designer Patricia Field. Chinese women did not find this
appeal was something “the First World and Third World agree alluring. Their tastes veered between Snoopy and Gucci,
on,” a column in Britain’s Independent newspaper argued. with no place in between for Barbie’s suburban bridge-and-
Like any good manufacturer, Mattel hoped as much. It tunnel aesthetic. The shop shut after two years.
embarked on launching Barbie among the emergent middle India, that other enormous untapped market Mattel eyed
classes of the non-Western world in the late 1990s and 2000s. hungrily, was also unentranced by Barbie. In the Indian
There is an extensive literature of Barbie’s international failure market, she wore a sari as “Barbie in India,” but her stan-
that brings business schools and gender specialists into con- dard physical form came across as hypersexualized and
versation. As a doll for girls modeled after a Western European borderline obscene; she remained a tourist, never becom-
erotic fantasy, Barbie, in all her travels, has encountered gen- ing, as the academic Priti Nemani put it, an “Indian doll.”
der sensibilities that she offended or simply couldn’t excite, With sales lackluster, Mattel tried again with a collection
eliciting unpredictable reactions that had more to do with that set Barbie across India’s various states, producing
societies’ own internal cultural and political fractures. “Mystical Manipuri” and “Roopvati Rajasthani” Barbie,
In the early 2000s, Barbie was banned in a number of but the doll retained its ski-jump European nose and Vic-
countries where she was resolutely popular. The Russian toria’s Secret Angels physique and, despite all its bangles
authorities, dismayed at the lingering hold Barbie had on the and chandelier earrings, did no better at all, prompting
imaginations of Russian girls since the Cold War, rejected her Mattel to focus on Lego.
in 2002, concluding that she stimulated “early sexual interest” Having toured the world with little success, Barbie is under-
among young children. The Croatian feminist Slavenka Dra- going an existential transformation in the United States.
kulic writes in her memoir How We Survived Communism and Recently, a friend’s 8-year-old daughter asked me to play
Even Laughed that for women and girls living under Soviet Barbie, and I happily agreed. Leaning down to inspect her
rule, Barbie evoked a life of freedom, comfort, and glamour, Barbie Dreamhouse, I met prosthetic leg Barbie, propped
a contrast to the “wearying immobility” of the Soviet grind, up against the hot tub, looking very serene despite her arti-
“something to be endured, not enjoyed.” ficial limb. What was the story? Had she tripped over a land
In Iran, too, Barbie captivated a secularizing middle class mine? Was Barbie now a war reporter? I asked. The 8-year-
that expressed its frustration with the Islamic regime’s politi- old looked at me confused. There was no story. Barbie was
cal suffocation by identifying with Western consumer culture. just different now. Q
I was based in Tehran in 2002 when the authorities cracked
down on stores selling Barbie and rolled out Sara and Dara, AZADEH MOAVENI is an associate professor of journalism
lumpy twins dressed in ill-fitting Iranian folk outfits who at New York University and the author of, most recently,
were a hit with next to no one. Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS.

SUMMER 2023 83
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 QUIZ

What in the World?

By Drew Gorman
The following is adapted from past editions of FP’s weekly online news quiz.
Test yourself every week at ForeignPolicy.com.

5. Which Fox News television host was 8. Where was former Pakistani
unceremoniously removed from their Prime Minister Imran Khan arrested
position on April 24? two days later?

a. At his residence in Lahore

b. In a security line at Islamabad
International Airport
1. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin c. On the streets of Karachi, eating
Netanyahu temporarily fired which an ice cream cone
cabinet minister in March after they
called on the government to halt its a. b. d. On the premises of the Islamabad
proposed judicial reform? Tucker Carlson Sean Hannity High Court

a. Communications Minister
Shlomo Karhi
b. Justice Minister Yariv Levin
c. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich
d. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant
c. d.
2. Later that month, new Scottish Jesse Watters Laura Ingraham
First Minister Humza Yousaf
promised to do what?
6. Also in April, Argentina announced
a. Officially name Irn-Bru the country’s that it would begin paying for certain
national drink imports in which currency, in a switch
away from the U.S. dollar?
b. Gain Scottish independence from the
United Kingdom a. Argentine peso b. Chinese yuan 9. That same week, the U.S.
ambassador to South Africa accused
c. Form a political alliance with the Welsh c. Brazilian real d. Russian ruble the country of doing what?
Labour party
d. Introduce legislation for the U.K. to 7. Which of the following artists a. Providing weapons to Russia
rejoin the EU performed at King Charles III’s May 7 b. Signing a secretive oil agreement
coronation concert? with Iran
3. The U.N. World Food Programme said a. Gwen Stefani b. Katy Perry c. Covering up abuses in its emerald
in early April that it needed about how mines
much funding to help Afghanistan over c. Justin Timberlake d. Paul McCartney
the next six months? d. Trying to get Elon Musk to renounce
his U.S. citizenship
a. $600 million b. $700 million
10. This quarter, scientists
c. $800 million d. $900 million discovered evidence of ancient humans
using psychoactive drugs at
4. Some days later, China claimed which burial site?
that U.S. accusations of what were
“groundless”? a. Mount of Olives, Israel
b. Es Càrritx, Spain
a. An overseas Chinese police presence
c. Kerameikos, Greece
b. The mass detention and so-called
AP AND GETTY IMAGES

reeducation of Muslim Uyghurs d. Levant Caves in the Mediterranean

Levant
c. A secret deal to supply
weapons to Russia
ANSWERS: 1. d; 2. b; 3. c; 4. a; 5. a; 6. b; 7. b; 8. d; 9. a; 10. b
d. A plan to expand its nuclear arsenal

SUMMER 2023 85
The Lionel
Gelber Prize
2023 Winner
Overreach: How China
Derailed its Peaceful Rise
Susan L. Shirk
Oxford University Press

Overreach is a masterful analysis of the

leading contemporary challenge in geopolitics
by a long-time close observer of China. Shirk’s
analysis of the vulnerability of the regime is
provocative, plausible, and full of pragmatic
potential for policymakers. She skillfully
answers two critical questions for managing
the “China problem”: how did we get here
and where are we going?
—2023 Lionel Gelber Prize Jury

The call for submissions for the 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize is now open.
CALL FOR
SUBMISSIONS Deadline for submissions is October 31, 2023. For eligibility criteria please visit:

www.munkschool.utoronto.ca/gelber