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BRICS is hardly a new fulcrum of world politics

7 January 2025

One question that 2025 may begin to answer is whether the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is becoming the new center of power in world politics. Now that it has added new members (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates) and come to represent 45 percent of the world population, some believe that it is consolidating the (misleadingly named) Global South and posing a serious challenge to US and Western power. But I remain skeptical of such claims.

When Jim O’Neill, then the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, coined the ‘BRIC’ acronym in 2001, his aim was simply to identify the four emerging economies that were most likely to dominate global economic growth by 2050. But the label soon acquired a political relevance. BRIC became an informal diplomatic grouping at the 2006 United Nations General Assembly and then a formal organisation in 2009, with the first BRIC Summit. Hosted in Russia, the focus then, as it is now, was on advancing a multipolar world order. At the end of the following year, the group got its ‘S’ when South Africa joined.

A Wall Street asset class evolved into an international organisation partly because it aligned with Russia’s and China’s own aspirations to lead the developing world. The BRICS 16th summit in Russia in October 2024 was the first to include its new members. (Saudi Arabia has not yet decided whether to accept the group’s invitation to join, and Argentina’s new government declined.) Some 36 national leaders attended, as did representatives from many international organisations, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and Turkey used the occasion to present its own application for membership.

The 2024 summit focused on fostering ties across the Global South and building a multipolar world, with Russian President Vladimir Putin using the occasion to demonstrate his global diplomatic relevance despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

With more countries showing an interest in joining, it looks like the BRICS could indeed present itself as a leader of the resistance to the US-dominated international order. Some even see it as the successor to the Cold War-era Non-Aligned Movement, whose members refused to choose between the United States and the Soviet Union. But while NAM had a shared interest in resisting the US, it did not have Russia and China as founding members.

In any case, the BRICS is unlikely to succeed in formally organising the so-called Global South. Not only do its largest and most important members—China, India and Russia—all lie north of the equator, but the three are competing for leadership.

Russia and China do have a common interest in countering what they see as an American threat, and they have declared an ‘alliance without limits’. But such slogans mask major differences in their strategic perspectives. While Russia took vast swaths of territory from China in the 19^th century, when the Qing dynasty was weak, China’s economy is now 10 times the size of Russia’s. Both countries are vying for influence in Central Asia, and China is uneasy about Russia’s recruitment of its neighbor North Korea to fight in Ukraine.

An even more important limit on the BRICS as an organisation is the rivalry between China and India, which is now the world’s most populous country. Although China is much wealthier than India, it is experiencing demographic decline (like Russia), while India’s population and workforce continue to grow.

Moreover, China and India share a disputed boundary in the Himalayas, where their forces have clashed repeatedly, and the situation is further complicated by China’s traditional friendship with Pakistan. In fact, an abiding concern about China is one reason why India participates in the BRICS in the first place. While it avoids formal alliances, it has also stepped up its participation in the Quad (whose other members are the US, Japan and Australia) for the same reason.

Rather than making the BRICS stronger, the admission of new members merely imports more rivalries. Egypt and Ethiopia are locked in a dispute over a dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile River, and Iran has long-standing disputes with the UAE and prospective member Saudi Arabia. Far from making the BRICS more effective, these new intra-organisational rivalries will hamper its efforts. The Group of 77 developing countries has even more members, and it is chronically limited by internal divisions.

At their 2024 summit, BRICS+ discussed matters such as economic and security cooperation, promotion of cultural exchanges, and joint development projects focused on infrastructure and sustainability. But such talk usually does not yield significant results. In 2014, the group established the New Development Bank, which is headquartered in Shanghai; but the institution has had only modest results to date.

Likewise, the group’s stated intention of avoiding the dollar and clearing more of its members’ bilateral trade in their own currencies has made only limited headway. Any serious attempt to replace the dollar as a global reserve currency would require China to back the yuan with deep, flexible capital markets and the rule of law—and those conditions are nowhere close to being met.

So, what is the BRICS good for? As a means of escaping diplomatic isolation, it is certainly useful to Russia. As a diplomatic device for projecting leadership of the developing world, it also has been useful to China. As a channel through which to counterbalance China, it has its uses for India. And as a modest stage for touting national development, it has sometimes been useful to Brazil and South Africa. But do these functions make it a new fulcrum of world politics? I think not.

Chaos in Syria will complicate an already complicated world

12 December 2024

The Assad family’s half-century rule has come to a seemingly unexpected demise in the span of just 11 days. There is little doubt the end of the 13 years of murderous repression and civil fighting which has fragmented Syria is welcomed. But the need to avoid the establishment of a new Islamic State-style regime or the further implosion of the Syrian state into little fiefdoms requires us to pause any celebration.

While the apparent blow to Iran and Russia’s grip on the region consumes immediate oxygen, the chaos that is likely to follow is the greater strategic concern. As Bruce Hoffman reminds us, the fall of the Shah of Iran was heralded as a positive development as Ayatollah Khomeini triumphantly swept into Tehran. It was the same with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

The prospect of chaos in Syria further complicates an international scene that is already challenging Western countries and their allies—from terrorism to dealing with China and Russia. It heightens the need for them to work together.

The commentator Richard Haass is correct in his observation that the one thing that brought the opposition together is now gone, meaning we should expect fracturing. The expected power vacuum will make the Middle East less stable and fuel a more combustible mix of internecine rivalries. This will embolden regional and global terrorist actors, such as ISIS or al-Qaeda affiliates, to exploit the chaos, increasing the terrorist threat against Western countries and their allies. A more lethal and fatalistic reincarnation of Jabhat al Nusra, one of the groups in cahoots with ISIS, is also a distinct possibility.

As the founder of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Abu Mohammed al-Julani has for almost a decade tried to create an ‘Islamic republic’. While al-Julani has since walked back from previous allegiance to al-Qaeda, purportedly in favour of domestic nationalist ambitions, we should beware his skill in being all things to all people.

Assad’s departure is likely to prompt a new surge in refugees to Europe and calls from European leaders for the (premature) return of Syrian refugees. This in turn will intensify already heated debates about the political, social and economic challenges facing Europe and how it should respond.

But the biggest humanitarian impact lies in Turkey. It hosts nearly three million Syrian refugees. As the country sponsoring the forces that brought down Assad, Turkey is now in the driver’s seat. Turkey has at its disposal the umbrella group of Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army and a relationship of sorts with HTS. Turkey’s response more than any other country’s will shape what happens next.

Russia and Iran, still reeling from the effect of Assad’s fall on their influence, will try harder to protect their strategic interests. Russia could lose its naval base at Tartus in Syria. Iran no longer has a route across Syria for supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Israel is working to ensure the chaos does not pose further threats to its borders. Saying the 1974 border agreement with Syria had collapsed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli army to seize the buffer zone in the occupied Golan Heights.

The world is already dealing with overlapping conflicts, crises and tensions—including the emergence of hybrid threats—challenging the West’s ability to respond.

US president-elect Donald Trump has said the United States should ‘have nothing to do with’ the situation in Syria. While most Americans will agree with Trump, his defence and security advisers will probably recognise the need to ensure terror groups (ISIS in particular) cannot use this uncertain time to rebuild—meaning the US will still have security interests even if they decide they have no Syria domestic interests.

Only a day before the surprise and successful offensive by Syria’s opposition, the chief of MI5, unprompted by developments in Syria, said the British security agency would need to ‘pare back’ its counter-terrorism focus and make ‘uncomfortable choices’ because of the growing threat from Russia, China, Iran and other hostile states.

We should not be surprised. The challenges of prioritisation are not new. Finite resources and capacity require tough choices—especially where it requires investing in new approaches to counter the pre-eminent pacing threat of our times—China, and manifestations of Beijing’s malign influence.

China and Russia’s ‘no limits’ partnership, along with a broader network of autocratic countries—like Iran and its terrorist proxies as well as North Korea—highlights how partnerships built around a shared interest in trashing global rules, wreaking havoc and disrupting and dividing democratic societies are exploiting this turbulence and disruption.

In the same way, it will only be through partnerships and coalitions—new and old—that Western allies will be able to respond.

Sharing the burden of responding to chaos means we will all still have a price to pay (in addition to already heavy current demands), but it will mean a far lesser cost than if we allow the chaos to metastasize as we have done elsewhere before.

The new Gang of Four

30 September 2024

The Gang of Four was the name given to four senior Chinese officials closely associated with some of the Cultural Revolution’s most radical features. They lost out in the power struggle that followed Mao Zedong’s death, after which they were arrested, convicted of various crimes and imprisoned.

Fifty years later, a new Gang of Four has emerged: China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. This grouping is not a formal alliance committed to defending one another. But it is an alignment driven by shared antipathy toward the existing US-led world order and features mutual exchanges of military, economic and political support.

This Gang of Four seeks to prevent the spread of Western liberalism domestically, which they see (correctly) as a threat to their hold on power and to the authoritarian political systems they head. They also oppose US leadership abroad, including the norms the United States and its partners embrace, above all the prohibition on acquiring territory by the threat or use of force.

The gang’s mutual support takes several forms. On the eve of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, China signed an agreement with Russia declaring that their mutual friendship had ‘no limits’, while Russia expressed support for China’s position vis-a-vis Taiwan. Since then, China has echoed Russian talking points about the war in Ukraine, blaming NATO for it and amplifying Russian misinformation.

In the economic realm, China has opposed war-related sanctions against Russia, is the world’s largest importer of Iranian oil and has long subsidised North Korea. Militarily, Iran has provided missiles and drones to Russia, North Korea has provided artillery shells and China seems to have provided dual-use technologies and industrial inputs with military applications that the US and its allies have tried to keep out of Russia’s hands. Russia has reportedly reciprocated by assisting these countries in improving their nuclear, missile, or submarine programs, and by sharing intelligence about Western weapons systems gleaned from its war with Ukraine.

Unfortunately, no single or simple policy will suffice to counter this alignment. There is no diplomatic opportunity to exploit divisions between them, in contrast to the early 1970s, when the US leveraged Sino-Soviet tensions to draw China toward the West. Further complicating matters, China is fundamentally different from the other three. It is integrated into the global economy and a major trading partner for many countries in the Western security orbit. Efforts to isolate China economically or to use trade and investment to shape its behaviour will have limited impact.

China also stands alone among the four in seeking not to overturn the existing international order so much as to bend it toward its foreign-policy goals. Iran, North Korea and Russia are far less integrated into the global economy, though they have one another as a source of imports and markets, and Iran and Russia have other trade partners. India remains a major purchaser of Russian energy and arms. Dozens of so-called Global South countries have refused to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine or support sanctions against Russia.

North Korea is the most isolated of the four, but its vulnerability to sanctions is limited by China’s interest in preventing it from collapsing, fearing instability on its border and a united Korea tied to the West. Russia, given its reliance on North Korean artillery, will also likely provide Kim Jong-un’s regime with greater assistance.

To confront this challenge, the US, in coordination with South Korea, could explore relaxing sanctions in exchange for steps by North Korea to limit the scale of its nuclear and missile programs. Close ties between the US and South Korea should work to discourage North Korean aggression.

Russia, for its part, must not prevail over Ukraine. This requires maintaining long-term military support for Ukraine while extending security assurances and European Union membership, all of which would signal to Vladimir Putin that he is wrong to think that he can outlast the West. This would not bring peace, but it could set the stage for diplomacy that ends the fighting and preserves Ukraine’s independence. Standing up for Ukraine also demonstrates to China that it should not expect a free hand with Taiwan.

In the case of Iran, the long-term priority must be to ensure—through diplomacy or the threat or use of military force—that it does not develop nuclear weapons. The immediate goals should be to rein in Tehran’s support for its havoc-wreaking proxies across the Middle East (admittedly easier said than done) and to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a regional conflict (which Iran may not want, given its domestic challenges).

China presents the most complicated challenge of the four, owing to its strategic ambitions and willingness to use its economic heft and military might to achieve its objectives. Dialogue, deterrence, and, at times, reassurance will be required to influence Chinese behaviour and leverage its interest in maintaining access to technology and markets.

The US and its partners need to assume this new alignment will persist and potentially deepen. That should not preclude diplomatic contacts, which are a tool, not a favour. Diplomacy reinforces the message that the US goal is policy change, not regime change, if only because regime change is beyond reach and could encourage even less restraint among the Gang of Four.

US and Western influence will also reflect US and Western strength. This implies the need to repair defence industrial bases across the US, Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and to enhance and integrate military capabilities to account for the possibility of a multi-region conflict. Moreover, the West must create supply chains for critical goods that do not rely on these four countries.

The US also must modernise its nuclear arsenal in response to China’s massive nuclear buildup (and North Korea’s relentless one) and the possibility that the New START agreement with Russia will expire in 2026. At home, the US ought to reduce its soaring debt (now higher than its GDP) and prevent its political divisions from interfering with its international commitments.

But the principal tool for countering the Gang of Four is an effective counter-alignment. Fortunately, it already exists in the web of alliances and partnerships in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The challenge for the US is to provide the presence and predictability that such relationships require. For America’s partners, the challenge is to contribute more toward common defence and to coordinate policy to meet shared challenges—including those posed by the Gang of Four.

The other proliferation

29 August 2024

Mention ‘proliferation’ and most people will assume that you are talking about the spread of nuclear weapons. For good reason. Nine countries—China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United States and the Britain—possess them. But many more have the ability and conceivably the motive to produce them. There is also the danger that terrorist groups could obtain one or more of these weapons, enabling them to inflict horrific damage.

This sort of proliferation is often described as ‘horizontal’. The biggest immediate focus remains Iran, which has dramatically reduced the time it would require to develop one or more nuclear devices. An Iran with nuclear weapons might use them. Even if not, it might calculate that it could safely coerce or attack Israel or one or more of its Arab neighbours directly, or thorough one of its proxies, with non-nuclear, conventional weapons.

A nuclear-armed Iran would likely trigger a regional arms race. Several of its neighbours, particularly Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, might well develop or acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Such a dynamic would further destabilise the world’s most troubled and volatile region.

But as important as this scenario is, another type of proliferation now merits attention: vertical proliferation, namely, increases in the quality and/or quantity of the nuclear arsenals of the nine countries that already possess these weapons. The danger is not only that nuclear weapons might be used in a war but also that the possibility of war would increase by emboldening governments—like Iran in the scenario above—to act more aggressively in pursuit of their geopolitical goals in the belief that they may act with impunity.

The fastest-growing nuclear arsenal in the world today belongs to China. China appears to believe that if it can match the US in this realm, it can deter the US from intervening on Taiwan’s behalf during any crisis over the island. China is on pace to catch up to the US and Russia in a decade and is showing no interest either in participating in arms-control talks that would slow down its buildup or placing a ceiling on its capabilities.

Then there is North Korea. Neither economic sanctions nor diplomacy has succeeded in curtailing its nuclear program. North Korea is now thought to possess more than 50 warheads. Some are on missiles with intercontinental range and improving accuracy. Both China and Russia have assisted it and further Russian assistance is likely given North Korea’s provision of weapons to Russia for use in Ukraine.

Again, the question is not only what North Korea might do with its nuclear arsenal. It is not farfetched to imagine a North Korean attack on South Korea or even Japan using conventional forces, coupled with a nuclear-backed threat to the US not to intervene. It is precisely this possibility that is fuelling public pressure in South Korea to develop nuclear weapons, demonstrating that vertical proliferation can trigger horizontal proliferation, especially if countries currently protected by the US come to doubt America’s willingness to put itself at risk to defend them.

Russia offers another reason for worry. Russia and the US have the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals. Both are constrained by arms-control agreements, such as the New START Treaty, that limits the number of nuclear warheads that each can deploy to 1,550. Additional warheads may be kept in storage, though.

The agreement also limits how many launchers—planes, missiles and submarines—carrying nuclear weapons can be fielded. And the pact also includes various arrangements to facilitate verification so that the two governments can be confident that the other is complying.

New START, which was ratified in 2011 and extended several times since, is due to expire in February 2026. Russia might well refuse to extend the treaty again, possibly because the performance of its armed forces in Ukraine has left it more dependent than ever on its nuclear arsenal. Or it may seek to barter its willingness to continue abiding by the agreement for US concessions on Ukraine.

What worries Washington is not only what Russia might do but also that the US now faces three adversaries with nuclear weapons who could coordinate their policies and pose a unified nuclear front in a crisis. All this is prompting the US to rethink its own nuclear posture.

In March, the US government reportedly completed its periodic review of its nuclear forces. At a minimum, billions of dollars will be spent on a new generation of bombers, missiles and submarines. At worst, we could be entering an era of unstructured nuclear competition.

It all adds up to a dangerous moment. The taboo associated with nuclear weapons has grown weaker with time; few were alive when the US used nuclear weapons twice against Japan to hasten World War II’s end. Indeed, Russian officials have hinted strongly at their readiness to use nuclear weapons in the context of the war in Ukraine.

Nuclear weapons played a stabilising role during the Cold War. Arguably, their existence helped keep it cold. But there were only two decision-makers, and each had an inventory that could survive a first strike by the other, enabling it to retaliate in kind, thereby strengthening deterrence. And both sides mostly acted with a degree of caution, lest their competition escalate to direct conflict and precipitate a disastrous nuclear exchange.

Three and a half decades after the Cold War’s end, a new world is emerging, one characterised by nuclear arms races, potential new entrants into an ever less exclusive nuclear-weapons club and a long list of deep disagreements over political arrangements in the Middle East, Europe and Asia. This is not a situation that lends itself to a solution, but at best to effective management. One can only hope the leaders of this era will be up to the challenge.

The non-proliferation problem

11 July 2024

Avril Haines, the US director of national intelligence, warned in March that ‘Russia’s need for support in the context of Ukraine has forced it to grant some long-sought concessions to China, North Korea and Iran with the potential to undermine, among other things, long-held non-proliferation norms.’

How much does this matter? Some theorists have long been sceptical about efforts to limit the spread of nuclear weapons, even arguing that proliferation can be a stabilising force. If the horrors associated with nuclear weapons are one reason why there have been no wars between great powers since 1945, they argue, perhaps the same effect can be replicated at the regional level. India and Pakistan developed a nuclear balance in the 1990s, and there have been no disastrous consequences so far.

But would prudence still prevail in a world of ‘nuclear-armed porcupines?’ US President John F. Kennedy did not think so. As he put it during a March 1963 press conference,

With all of the history of war, and the human race’s history, unfortunately has been a good deal more war than peace, with nuclear weapons distributed all through the world, and available, and the strong reluctance of any people to accept defeat, I see the possibility in the 1970’s of the President of the United States having to face a world in which 15 or 20 or 25 nations may have these weapons. I regard that as the greatest possible danger and hazard.

Later that year, Kennedy signed a treaty banning atmospheric nuclear testing, setting the stage for the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which now has 191 members. The treaty’s five recognised nuclear-weapons states—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China—pledged not to spread nuclear weapons, and its 186 other members pledged not to develop them. Israel, India, and Pakistan refused to sign the NPT and did develop nuclear weapons; North Korea signed the treaty but then withdrew to develop its nuclear program.

That brings the total of nuclear-armed states to nine, which is far from perfect, but much better than Kennedy predicted. Defenders of this imperfect regime argue that the rate of spread is as important as the number of states possessing the bomb, because greater predictability improves the prospect of maintaining stability. Already, Saudi Arabia has threatened to develop nuclear weapons if Iran does. If there are regional cascades of new nuclear-armed states, the probability of accidents and miscalculations would increase substantially.

Haines explicitly mentioned Iran and North Korea. Both had been under United Nations sanctions in which China, Russia and the West cooperated. Until recently, Russia had a long history of supporting non-proliferation. Not only did it sign the NPT, but it also adopted the 1978 Nuclear Suppliers Group Guidelines, under which vendors of civil nuclear equipment agreed to exercise prudence in their export policies. Now that Vladimir Putin is becoming dependent on North Korean military supplies to sustain his war in Ukraine, however, he has ended Russia’s cooperation on non-proliferation.

While Iran has long had a nuclear-weapons program based on enriched uranium, it has gone through fits and starts in response to external pressures. The regime has been careful to keep its production of highly enriched uranium below the threshold needed to produce a nuclear arsenal. But with Russia relying on Iranian drones, China relying on Iranian oil, and Donald Trump having foolishly scrapped the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, international cooperation on non-proliferation has broken down here, too.

Moreover, some believe (probably mistakenly) that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if the Ukrainians had kept the nuclear weapons that they inherited when the Soviet Union collapsed. If this assumption gains traction, the prospects for non-proliferation will worsen.
I am reminded of a similar situation in the past (which I recollect in my memoir, A Life in the American Century). Following the oil crisis of 1973, the conventional wisdom was that the world would need to turn to nuclear energy. But because many believed (incorrectly) that the world was running out of uranium, everyone set their sights on reprocessed plutonium, a by-product of burning uranium in nuclear reactors

Forecasts at the time suggested that some 46 countries would be reprocessing plutonium by 1990. If so, the world would be awash in weapons-grade material, and the risk of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism would increase catastrophically. In 1974, India became the first state beyond the five listed in the NPT to launch what it euphemistically termed a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’.

Soon thereafter, France agreed to sell a plutonium-reprocessing plant to Pakistan, where Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had vowed that his country would eat grass before letting India develop a nuclear monopoly in South Asia. In Latin America, Germany was selling a uranium-enrichment plant to Brazil, and Argentina was looking at plutonium. As many other countries quietly explored their options, it appeared as if a nuclear-arms race was underway.

Fortunately, it never materialised. US President Jimmy Carter pursued a non-proliferation policy that succeeded in slowing the momentum. Only two additional countries have developed the bomb since the 1970s. While everyone assumed that not much could be done about proliferation, Carter thought otherwise. Thanks to his administration’s efforts, the French-Pakistani and German-Brazilian deals were scuttled. The US created an international commission to study the nuclear fuel cycle, and this reduced momentum toward reprocessing plutonium and the use of breeder reactors that make it.

Those harbouring doubts about the viability of non-proliferation ought to consider this lesson from history. Even if proliferation cannot be stopped, it can be slowed, and that can make all the difference.

Nicaragua’s anti-democratic turn has geopolitical implications

5 July 2024

Nicaragua continues to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. In May, it was reported that President Daniel Ortega had exiled Sheynnis Palacios, the reigning Miss Universe, and her family from the country. The ban is disappointing but predictable for a government that has become increasingly authoritarian, repressive, and paranoid, especially since mass protests erupted over proposed social-security reforms in 2018.

Palacios’s supposed crime was inspiring celebrations in the streets of Managua last November, following her unexpected Miss Universe win, the first for Nicaragua and Central America. Gatherings on this scale had not occurred since the 2018 protests, which were met with brutal violence: Ortega’s regime killed more than 300 people and even criminalised the Nicaraguan flag. At her crowning, Palacios, who had participated in the anti-government demonstrations, wore a blue and white dress that was widely interpreted as a nod to the flag, but did not say anything overtly political. At first, the government viewed her win as a rare public-relations victory, before abruptly changing course and accusing the Miss Nicaragua pageant director of plotting a coup.

By targeting Palacios and her family, Ortega’s regime is sending a clear message: dissidence and opposition, whether real or perceived, will not be tolerated in Nicaragua. That is true even for international figures and apolitical platforms like the Miss Universe pageant. Such a severe clampdown is indicative of a rogue government unwilling to meet its international obligations.

That is why the international community must pay closer attention to Ortega’s dictatorial behaviour, which has so far been overlooked or met with toothless resolutions and ineffective sanctions (a notable exception being the latest round of US sanctions on gold, Nicaragua’s top commodity export). For decades, Ortega’s government has chipped away at individual rights and the rule of law, a process that has accelerated sharply over the past six years. This disturbing descent into full-blown authoritarianism should concern Nicaragua’s neighbours, the US and other democracies.

Since the 2018 protests, the Nicaraguan government has shut down more than 45 media outlets, arresting journalists and confiscating their property. During the 2021 elections, Ortega jailed nearly 40 political opponents and barred any credible opposition parties. And, as of May 2024, the government is detaining 11 religious leaders without access to legal counsel. More worryingly, no one seems to be safe from Ortega’s predatory regime: the government has expropriated more than $250 million worth of private assets, not just from businesses but also from universities and NGOs, supposedly for the benefit of the poor.

Nicaragua is a small country, but its turn away from democracy has far-reaching geopolitical implications. Ortega’s alliances with some of the world’s most authoritarian regimes, including Russia, China, and Iran, threaten to destabilise Central America. The region already struggles with political volatility, the delivery of basic services, high levels of migration, and violent crime and physical insecurity, all of which could worsen as autocratic leaders gain influence.

The forced exile of Palacios may sound like the plot of a bad film, but it is not an isolated incident. The banishing of a beauty queen is a symptom of a much larger crisis and a stark reminder of the systemic and long-term erosion of democratic norms in Nicaragua. The international response must be unequivocal.

The response to authoritarian rulers typically includes public statements, sanctions, and diplomatic isolation, which the US, Canada, and the European Union have already implemented against Ortega’s government. But his regime’s continued use of repressive tactics calls into question these measures’ efficacy. International policymakers must therefore re-evaluate their approach and act more assertively. That could mean imposing more targeted sanctions (similar to those on the gold sector), increasing support for exiled Nicaraguan activists and politicians, referring the situation to the International Criminal Court for investigation, and pressuring the multilateral development banks providing finance to the country to improve oversight and demand accountability.

Ortega’s continued efforts to silence dissent and consolidate power violate Nicaraguans’ human rights, undermine regional stability, and weaken democratic norms. The window for peaceful resolution is narrowing, and Western governments must act quickly to help reverse Nicaragua’s authoritarian drift.

Want a robust Australian munitions industry? Study Iran

6 May 2024

Iran knows a thing or two about robust supplies of guided munitions. Australia should learn from it.

Under the new National Defence Strategy, Australia now plans to create a domestic industry to make guided weapons and explosive ordnance. The first phase, in 2023–25, involves detailed planning, early funding and a $37.4m contract to begin assembling Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GLMRS) munitions in 2025. The components will be imported from the United States.

Australia will make progressively more GMLRS parts in the second phase, in 2026–30. Over time, local fabrication of parts will improve supply chain resilience for GMLRS (an army battlefield weapon whose name is pronounced ‘gimmlers’).

Iran exports many different kinds of munitions, such as rockets, missiles and so-called kamikaze drones to proxy forces across the Middle East and increasingly to Russia. Its export strategy includes transferring complete munitions; supplying components to be assembled by the customer; selling upgrade kits for rounds already in stock; and establishing foreign manufacturing capabilities. For example, the Houthi’s small defence industry combines engines and guidance systems imported from Iran with material available locally, such as fiberglass.

Far more than the export schemes of other munitions makers, Iran’s assumes that external actors may cut supply chains, which therefore must be made resilient. At times, Iran’s sales are covert, involve smuggling or breach international sanctions, all conditions that challenge regularity in supply. So Iran is far more willing than other manufacturers to depart from standard, vulnerable arrangements for sole-source, long-term supply.

A flow-on is that the weapon systems intended to be made outside Iran are often simplified designs that semi-skilled personnel can make in rudimentary factories. Exported weapons are often developed and produced by Iranian state entities, minimising use of intellectual property belonging to others. The most extreme simplification for local production is seen in Gaza, where Hamas has used Iranian designs and technical expertise to create a robust industry that makes rockets using building materials and explosive from unexploded Israeli bombs.

Don’t dismiss such practices as bizarre. They may be relevant to Australia.

Australia should plan on the possibility of component and material supplies for munitions being at times highly constrained. In a major conflict, supplier countries may be unable to make parts available for export; physical or cyber attack may knock out their factories; and hostile action may sever supply routes.

The more complicated the munition component, the more likely that Australia will need to import it. Economies of scale work against Australia setting up production lines for intricate items, such as seekers, and arms makers prefer to keep manufacturing of them to themselves.

Australia should therefore stock imported components to continue local high-rate munitions manufacturing. An ability to sustain six to 12 months of full-rate war production using stocked components should give us enough time to find new sources.

Moreover, following Iran’s example, Australia and the original manufacturer might find ways to simplify the product intended to be made in Australia. The simpler manufacturing can be made, the more alternative suppliers can be established locally, further enhancing supply chain resilience. Costs might also be reduced. Russia is licence-manufacturing the Iranian Shahed drone, planning to lower unit costs from about US$300,000 to US50,000 by making the design easier to build.

Similarly, Russia, short of specialised chips for its missiles, has substituted chips taken from foreign consumer goods.

Australia’s civilian domain has vast numbers of devices using semi-conductor chips that in extremis might be similarly accessed to feed into an Australian munitions production line. Parts may come from old phones, for example. However, this would require having already modified the munition design to be able to use such components.

Studying how Iran approaches design and manufacturing of munitions may not seem to be an obvious move as Australia prepares to develop its own industry. But our supply chains share a crucial characteristic with those between Iran and its customers: they can be easily cut.

The new Great War for Civilisation: defending the Ukraine front

19 March 2024

There are times when we must deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. You will hear ministers and departments warn us of that pragmatic requirement when wicked problems and intractable issues arise and we must settle for less than what we want.

But there are times when we must not settle for less, when our national security, diplomacy, and military necessity face a crisis in which ‘the world as it is’ must be confronted, reshaped and returned to the world as we wish it to be—to the world as it was before the crisis arose.

With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now is such a time.

In Australia, there is a view in some quarters that the invasion does not engage our national interest directly and substantially and that we have more pressing regional priorities from which we cannot be distracted nor our resources diverted. That attitude ignores key geostrategic realities and requires recalibration. This crisis isn’t about defending a country that’s 15,000km away; it’s about defending our hard-won modern form of civilisation.

The bedrock of the rules-based international order, upon which our post-1945 civilisation is founded, is under deliberate attack by Russia and its direct military supporters, including North Korea. We must invest in the defence of Ukraine as if the invasion is an existential threat to our regional peaceful future—because it is.

Australia and other nations have faced existential crises to liberal democracy before, although in the case of the defence of Ukraine we are yet to adequately realise the connection to our prior experiences, or to unify as we did in the past in an unfaltering international collective response. We should resolve to make good those inadequacies in 2024, and Australia should be the remedy’s vociferous champion. Our regional stability and security depend in large part on a Ukrainian victory.

What are some lessons of the past? We refer to the global war of 1914–1918 as the First World War, but in 1914 and 1915 the full measure of hostilities was not grasped, let alone were they conceived as the first of two monumental calamities. At the time, writers mostly referred to it as the Great War, but eventually that was shorthand for the war’s full title, what the victors would recognise as the Great War for Civilisation.

By 1919 an Inter-Allied Committee had agreed how victory was to be marked for the sailors, soldiers and aircrew of the victorious nations. A Victory Medal was to be separately struck by each of them, and the various national versions would have certain common features: the riband was set down as a double rainbow symbolising the calm after the storm, and the reverse was to be inscribed ‘The Great War for Civilisation’. More than 20 countries issued the Victory Medal , including the British Empire nations, France, the US, Japan, Italy, Belgium, Portugal and Greece.

Although we did not know in 1914 that the war would eventually become the Great War for Civilisation, by 1919 like-minded nations recognised that that was precisely what had happened. We knew what victory was. We were allied in the steadfast defence of the ideals of civilisation, we were unified in our understanding of victory (and the unity needed to achieve it), and we were determined to create the world as we wanted it to be. 

More than 100 years later, we should not come to the same understanding slowly or half-heartedly via the battlefields of Ukraine.

Although in the 21st century the nature of war has changed, we are already engaged in a New Great War for Civilisation. It’s just that the conflict does not follow the readily recognisable formula of a multinational mass-casualty war, nor have we grasped the full measure of hostilities yet. And we live in the strategic hope that 2023 was as bad as it will get. 

An allied resistance to the hostilities directed against our form of civilisation has not yet coalesced. Our concept of how this conflict will end is vague, finding passive expression in the untested faith that ‘we won’t lose’ or ‘we are not involved’. And we do not appreciate the importance of the Ukraine front in this war.

This war being waged against our civilisation is fought on many fronts, all of them escalating and substantially damaging. If nothing else, we are spending more and more money to barely hold our ground, as the AUKUS security arrangement demonstrates. We are now shoring up with increased military spending the international system that used to be maintained by agreements, laws and diplomacy.

Our modern civilisation is built on rules and the concept of ordered dispute resolution based on agreed principles and values, upheld by international jurisprudence and arbitration. With increasing audacity and recklessness, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and non-state actors such as Yemen’s Houthi faction deliberately disregard the constraints of international law and convention. They undertake armed territorial expansion, overt military aggression and coercion, and repudiation of arms control frameworks.

All these actions are designed to weaken the foundations of the rules-based international order upon which our civilisation is built and to normalise our acceptance of a new era in which might equals right and the weak must accede without resistance to the strong. The modern fundamentals of our civilisation are under sustained attack, on many fronts: cyber, digital economy, maritime trade, counter-terrorism, international law, arms control, space weaponisation, and nuclear and chemical weapons non-proliferation.  

Open and unrestricted warfare with the object of territorial expansion and annexation is underway on the Ukraine front, and Russia is perverting trust and confidence in the United Nations by abrogating its responsibilities to uphold and defend the UN Charter as a Permanent Member of the Security Council. Is our response to these troubles, forced on us by Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and others, to adjust to them as the new normal? Or do we take up arms in collective defence against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end those troubles? That is the question.

While Western countries are refining and improving their fights on their home fronts to defend themselves against cyber attacks and against foreign interference and terrorism, and while we are now practiced in co-operating to defend and protect maritime trade routes and civilian shipping, we are yet to respond unanimously, unambiguously and unreservedly to the fighting on the Ukraine front.

Aside from the global implications, Australia must recognise that this is not a Ukraine problem; this is a Russia problem. We should be alert to Russia’s direct geographic threat to our own regional security. Russia is a Pacific Rim nation and it is reinforcing its Pacific fleet.

Vladivostok, the fleet headquarters, is only 900km from Japan, Australia’s second largest trading partner and a key strategic security partner. The next nearest countries to Vladivostok are South Korea (our third largest trading partner), North Korea (which is actively supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), and China (our largest trading partner). 

There are not two Russias, an aggressive European Russia and a separate Pacific Rim Russia that has the peace, stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region at heart. There is only one Russia, and it has demonstrated that it is prepared to gamble military force and disregard the international rules-based order to achieve President Vladimir Putin’s geostrategic objectives. Russia’s military gamble has to be made a losing bet—preferably in Ukraine rather than in the maritime domain around Vladivostok. It is in Australia’s direct national interest for regional Indo-Pacific security and prosperity that Ukraine wins and Russia returns to acting as a responsible permanent member of the UN Security Council. That would be deterrence in action, which is a core principle of Australia’s regional security strategy.

We do not need to send troops from liberal democracies to fight on the ground in some sort of International Division; Ukraine’s citizens are prepared to fight and die in defence of their homeland. But if they are to fight as our deterrence proxies in defence of the international rules-based order, then what they need—and what they deserve—is our whole-hearted practical military and humanitarian supply chain to swing into action behind them.

In our reluctance and tardiness to do this, we have forgotten the lesson of the US arms support given to the then-Mujahadeen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989, and we have forgotten the defeat of the then-Soviet military at the hands of a desperate and dedicated population determined to resist occupation. What we achieved then can be achieved for Ukraine. 

In 1918 Australia’s greatest battlefield commander, Lieutenant-General Sir John Monash, made an observation that is as true for Ukraine’s troops in 2024 as it was for Australian troops in 1918:

The true role of infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward.

These are words for liberal democracies to live by.  The line is drawn in Ukraine, and that is where our principles and values must dig in.