Tag Archive for: US Foreign Policy

Allan Gyngell, diplomat, analyst, writer, commentator—and ferociously deep thinker

Perhaps now, more than ever, is the time when Australia needs outstanding foreign policy thinkers. It has lost one of its best with the death of Allan Gyngell after a short illness.

When he relinquished the national presidency of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) a few months ago, he saw it as his last job. But had he lived on, he had too much energy and too much to say to have stopped there. His voice would have continued to be heard and heeded for its sagacity.

In Australia’s foreign policy world, there are the diplomats, the analysts, the writers and the commentators. Allan was unusual in that he was all of these. And in all these roles he thought, ferociously and deeply.

He started his working life as a diplomat in the Foreign Affairs intake of 1969 which produced a record number of agency heads across Canberra, to say nothing of senior ambassadorial appointments.

Allan had Character-in the old-fashioned sense.

He showed guts at an early stage. In 1972, he and a few others wrote a letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald criticising racist comments by former Labor leader Arthur Calwell.

As one of his contemporaries remarked, ‘particularly in that era, not many of us would have taken that risk. He could have lost his job!’

Allan was posted as a diplomat to Rangoon, Singapore and Washington. In all these capitals he worked with distinction. But he developed his reputation as a policy thinker and doer in Australia itself.

Allan worked in the policy engine-room of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in the Hawke years, after which he was foreign policy adviser to Paul Keating. He then left government and later became founding director of the Lowy Institute.

Under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Allan returned to government as head of the then Office of National Assessments.

In recent years he was an honorary professor at the ANU, and AIIA president.

And in between all this, he wrote the seminal work on Australian foreign policy: ‘Fear of

Abandonment’.

Allan attached importance to a clear delineation between intelligence analysis and policy formulation.

And he believed that if you got the policy substance right, the rest should follow.

The core of Allan’s thinking was about what was best for Australian interests—economic, security and perhaps less obviously, the respect of others. He always put Australia first. But he never argued along bludgeoning, nationalist lines. Rather he saw effective international policies and engagement as crucial to this country’s future.

Allan saw Australia’s external outlook in terms of our place in the region as broadly defined, of our security interests to which the relationship with the United States was central, and as an active participant in global and regional multilateral machinery.

Of these broad policy areas, Allan’s work in government will be best remembered for his focus on the region.

As foreign policy adviser, Allan was a key figure in Keating’s emphasis on Asia, particularly on Indonesia. He led the secret negotiations which produced the 1995 Australia-Indonesia security agreement. He was also heavily involved In Keating’s push for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings to be held at leaders’ level—with the first such summit hosted by President Clinton in Seattle in 1993.

But perhaps Allan’s most important legacy will lie with his work on developing a more thoughtful and broader foreign policy culture in Australia.

He understood that Australians needed to be more engaged on foreign policy issues affecting them.

Nobody serious about understanding Australian foreign policy can avoid reading ‘Fear of Abandonment’.

His work as founding director of the Lowy Institute took Australia into the world of major think tanks. Moreover, Allan’s introduction of a Lowy opinion poll led to a much clearer understanding of Australian public attitudes to external issues.

And under Allan as national president, the AIIA for the first time had a fully functioning branch in every Australian state and territory. He will also be remembered for over 100 podcasts from the AIIA with ANU academic Darren Lim.

Beyond all this there were his personal qualities as a friend and mentor. He had an innate discipline. He was never a show pony, always a gentleman.

Our thoughts are with his wife, Catherine, and his family.

 

Is trade China’s trump card?

It took US President Joe Biden’s administration quite a while to produce its national security strategy, which it finally released in October. Though the White House did issue an interim document in March 2021, the final product seems to have required more work than anticipated.

The reason isn’t difficult to understand. While the interim document focused primarily on China and treated Russia more as a regional nuisance, reality intervened with a vengeance in February when Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a war to ‘denazify’, ‘demilitarize’ and essentially eliminate Ukraine. Where the interim strategy had described Russia as ‘disruptive’, the final one acknowledges that it ‘now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability’, owing to its embrace of ‘an imperialist foreign policy’.

Nonetheless, China still looms largest in the Biden administration’s strategic outlook, as well it should. The final document makes clear that China is America’s ‘only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so’. As Graham Allison of Harvard University has observed with his ‘Thucydides trap’ thesis, both China’s rising power and the fear that it instils in the dominant power are driving the strategic and foreign-policy narrative.

Yet of all the instruments that the United States could deploy in this new great-power competition, a major one is missing from its new strategy: trade. This omission is especially glaring because China owes its own rise to its success as a trading power.

Earlier US administrations understood that trade was key to America’s global dominance. President Barack Obama’s 2015 national security strategy, for example, outlined an ambitious trade agenda designed to put the US ‘at the centre of a free trade zone covering two-thirds of the global economy’. The Obama administration then negotiated a trade pact with 11 other Pacific rim countries, excluding China, and a transatlantic investment agreement. But both the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership were scrapped by president Donald Trump, whose administration framed trade, falsely, as a source of American humiliation and impoverishment.

True, the Biden strategy does note, in passing, that ‘America’s prosperity also relies on a fair and open trade and international economic system’. But it deliberately avoids the word ‘free’ in its reference to trade, and it draws no policy conclusions from this important observation. Instead, it emphasises measures ‘beyond trade’, with numerous references to efforts by the EU–US Trade and Technology Council and the Quad grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the US to address supply-chain issues through tighter technology and investment controls. These are undoubtedly important concerns. But such measures are no substitute for a strong policy oriented towards opening global markets for trade and investment.

Recent experience shows why pursuing new trade agreements should remain a top priority. The EU-South Korea free-trade agreement is only a little over a decade old, but it has already boosted bilateral trade by more than 50%, with far-reaching benefits for both sides. By the same token, trade between the European Union and the United Kingdom has already declined by approximately 15% since Brexit, with obvious deleterious effects for the UK economy, in particular. While there are no new tariffs, many more rules, regulations and standards now must be navigated. Free-trade agreements are often taken for granted. But as these examples show, they matter a lot.

While China doesn’t always live up to its commitments under trade agreements, that has not prevented it from deepening its trade relations. While rather thin, the new Chinese-centred Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is now the widest trade agreement in the world, and China has also applied to join the successor to the TPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (the US has not).

The importance of China’s aggressive trade agenda should not be underestimated. China may not invade other countries (yet), but it is eagerly building trade and economic relationships, and there is no question that these also strengthen its political power. The difference between China’s and America’s trade trajectories is already striking. Of the world’s 193 countries, only 20 count the US—still the world’s largest economy—as their number-one trading partner. This list includes Canada, Mexico and many small Caribbean and Central American economies, but not a single Asian or African country.

By contrast, China is now the EU’s largest trading partner, and the rest of the world is increasingly divided between these two trading powers. In addition to dominating much of the Pacific region, China is very important in Africa and is making significant inroads in Latin America. Strikingly, there are now more than 100 countries that trade twice as much with China as they do with the US.

Between the glaring omission of trade from its national security strategy and the strengthening protectionist tendencies in its domestic policymaking, the US is clearly at risk of falling behind. While the EU can and should advocate deeper and more open global trade relations, the absence of the US from these efforts means that China will continue to gain the upper hand. That will have obvious geopolitical ramifications down the road. American leaders should reconsider their current stance before it is too late.

Who’s winning the war in Ukraine?

Despite Ukraine’s recent impressive counteroffensive around Kharkiv, the war with Russia has reached a prolonged deadlock. But there is one clear winner: the US arms industry.

Some view these companies as the ‘arsenal of democracy’, as US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called the American industrial effort to support the Allies during the early days of World War II. And their role in helping Ukraine fend off Russian occupation is undeniable. But their profit motive and influence over American foreign policy threaten to turn the arsenal against democracy itself.

For years, the US arms industry—together with other major arms exporters such as Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Israel—has reaped the benefits of protracted wars and long-term military alliances. American contractors, now in control of 39% of the global arms trade, began rearming Europe long before Russia invaded Ukraine. While arms exports declined by almost 5% globally between 2017 and 2021, Europe increased its rearmament commitments by 19%.

In the United States, defence contractors are among the biggest lobbyists in Washington. In late 2019, Transparency International described how ‘dark money’ groups persuade members of Congress to approve arms sales to repressive regimes. Even in the case of arms sales to Israel, the five biggest US weapons producers spend three to five times as much on lobbying Congress as Israel’s powerful lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

For decades, the arms industry has been a hidden hand shaping US foreign policy—including its unnecessary wars. US President Dwight Eisenhower warned of precisely that in his 1961 farewell address: ‘the acquisition of unwarranted influence’ by America’s ‘immense military establishment and a large arms industry’ could lead to ‘the disastrous rise of misplaced power’.

Within a few years, the US became disastrously entangled in the Vietnam War. And when the memories of that defeat faded, other failed, costly conflicts followed, notably the two Iraq wars and the 20-year war in Afghanistan, which ended ignominiously in 2021.

Of course, none of this justifies Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal revisionism or his war of aggression in Ukraine. Still, it’s difficult to understand the history of NATO or evaluate the merits of its proposed enlargement without considering how much time and money the US arms industry spent lobbying for it.

Since the late 1990s, America’s major defence contractors have advocated expanding NATO, despite a near-universal consensus among high-level US security officials that enlargement was unnecessarily provocative and would likely trigger the resurgence of Russian revisionist nationalism.

Enlargement, it turned out, was driven mainly by domestic political considerations. Dan Rostenkowski, the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee until 1994 and an outspoken member of the Polish lobby in Congress, threatened to obstruct budget and other legislation unless NATO enlargement included Poland.

The arms lobby cheered. Following the end of the Cold War, defence contractors hoped enlargement would offset shrinking demand by creating a new market for their products. The US Committee to Expand NATO—an advocacy organisation founded in 1996 by Bruce L. Jackson, then the director of strategic planning at Lockheed Martin—was practically a creation of the defence industry.

The accession of ex-communist Central European countries like Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic proved very lucrative for US manufacturers of advanced weapons systems. The windfall didn’t escape Democratic US Senator Tom Harkin, who in a 1997 Senate hearing characterised the Clinton administration’s push for NATO enlargement as ‘a Marshall Plan for defense contractors who are chomping at the bit to sell weapons and make profits’.

Admitting Finland and Sweden to NATO will similarly open up a big new market for US defence contractors, because the alliance’s interoperability rule would bind them to American-made defence systems. The war in Ukraine has exposed the extent of Europe’s failure to achieve ‘strategic autonomy’: 60% of Europe’s military capabilities are currently sourced from outside the European Union.

This has spurred European policymakers to formulate plans to reduce the bloc’s dependency on US-made weapons. In the hope of getting some of the €200 billion in increased defence spending approved by the EU in May, European arms manufacturers and investment banks have even gone so far as to classify their industry as making ‘a positive contribution to “social sustainability”’ under the EU’s environmental, social and governance criteria.

In the short run, however, it is the US arms industry that will benefit the most from Europe’s defence spending spree. The US State Department, for example, recently approved a US$8.4 billion sale of F-35 fighter jets to Germany. And to governments in Central and Eastern Europe, buying American has always been the best way to ensure US protection.

Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy is bound to be a long one. The US has spent six times as much on research and technology as a proportion of its defence budget as European countries have. And thanks to the largesse of Congress, which earlier this year increased the US defence budget by 9% to a record high of more than US$800 billion, the American arms industry is all but guaranteed to maintain its technological advantage for many more years.

There are of course compelling political and moral reasons for America’s decision to answer the Ukrainian people’s call for help. But it is also evident that if the US fails to limit the influence that the enormous military–industrial complex has over its foreign policy, it will find itself mired in many more armed conflicts, not all of them as easily justified as the war in Ukraine.

America’s China challenge

At this year’s Aspen Security Forum (which I co-chair) in July, China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, appealed for better understanding of his country. But there was considerable debate among the assembled experts about China’s objectives. President Xi Jinping has announced China’s intention to outpace America in critical technologies such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology by 2030, and many analysts predict that China’s GDP (measured at market exchange rates) will surpass that of the US early in the next decade. Is China seeking to displace the US as the world’s leading power by the centenary of communist rule in 2049?

China has made impressive progress over the past few decades, and US strategists describe it as the ‘pacing challenge’ in a great-power competition.

What happens over the next three decades will depend on many unknowns. Some analysts see China declining after failing to escape the ‘middle-income trap’’ Others envisage it hitting a plateau because of demographic constraints, low factor productivity and Xi’s policy of favouring state-owned firms over private companies. In addition, China faces serious problems of rising inequality and environmental degradation. Xi’s ‘China dream’ and any other linear projection could be derailed by unexpected events such as a war over Taiwan or a financial crisis.

Here again, some experts at Aspen were more pessimistic than others. There is never a single future, only many possible scenarios, and which one becomes more likely will depend in part on what China does and how the US chooses to respond.

Just as there are many possible futures, America risks many possible failures as it responds to the China challenge, so a prudent strategy must consider more than one. The most dramatic failure would be a major war. Even if the US were to prevail, a military conflict between the world’s two largest economies would make the global economic effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine look modest by comparison.

Security analysts at Aspen focused on Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, as a potential trigger for a Sino-American war. The US has long tried to dissuade Taiwan from declaring de jure independence and to deter China from using force against the island. But Chinese military capabilities have been increasing, and while US President Joe Biden has denied that American policy has changed, Chinese officials claim that high-level US visits to Taiwan—most recently by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi—are hollowing out the policy. One could imagine the two sides stumbling into war as Europe’s major powers did in 1914.

A second type of disaster would be a prolonged cold war fuelled by growing demonisation of China in US domestic politics. Such an outcome would preclude Sino-American cooperation in governing the world economy or coping with ecological interdependence, most crucially in responding to pandemics and climate change. Similarly, US–China competition that prevented cooperation in slowing the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons would be costly for all.

The US would also suffer if it were unable to manage domestic political polarisation and address its social and economic problems, resulting in a loss of focus and a severe weakening of the technological dynamism that enables it to compete successfully with a rising China. Similarly, the growth of a populist nativism that curtails immigration or weakens US support for international institutions and alliances could lead to a competitive failure.

Finally, there can be a failure of US vision and values. To be sure, realism and prudence are necessary conditions for a successful strategy towards China. The US doesn’t have the capacity to make China democratic; only the Chinese can do that. But a sense of vision about democratic values and human rights also is important to generate the soft power that benefits America by attracting rather than coercing allies. That’s why a successful US response to the China challenge starts at home and must be based on preserving America’s democratic institutions.

The US should also invest in research and development, including through the US$280 billion ‘Chips and Science Act’ recently passed by Congress, to maintain its technological advantage in critical industries. And America should remain open to the world (including to Chinese students), rather than retreating behind a curtain of fear and declinism.

In terms of foreign and security policy, the US needs to restructure its legacy military forces to adapt to technological change, and strengthen its alliance structures, including NATO and partnerships with Japan, Australia and South Korea. After all, the share of the world economy accounted for by America and its allies is double that of China and Russia combined. The US needs to enhance relations with India, including through the diplomatic framework of the Quad, an informal four-country security grouping that also includes Japan and Australia.

America should also strengthen its participation in and supplement the international institutions it created to set standards and manage interdependence. Lastly, it is important to cooperate with China where possible on issues of transnational interdependence.

In his recent book, The avoidable war: the dangers of a catastrophic conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd advocates setting a goal of ‘managed strategic competition’’ In the short term, rising nationalism in China and the assertive policies of Xi’s government mean that the US will probably have to spend more time on the rivalry side of the equation. But if America avoids ideological demonisation, shuns misleading Cold War analogies and maintains its alliances, it can successfully manage the China challenge.

New survey reveals extent of Arab countries’ loss of faith in democracy

In a highly polarised world, authoritarianism thrives in the Middle East. According to a credible survey, a majority of citizens across the Arab world are losing faith in democracy as a system of governance to deliver economic stability. It startlingly indicates a reversal of what the popular uprisings of the so-called Arab Spring demanded more than a decade ago. This will be music to the ears of autocratic rulers but a source of profound dismay to democracy promoters around the world.

The findings come from an opinion survey conducted by the Arab Barometer network for BBC News Arabic. It involved interviews with nearly 23,000 people in nine Arab countries and the Palestinian territories. Most interviewees agreed with the proposition that ‘an economy is weak under democracy’ and therefore democracy was not a high priority for them.

This flies in the face of the demand for democratic reforms in the Arab Spring protests that swept several Arab countries in 2011 and 2012. The uprisings caused the demise of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya (though, in the case of the latter, with the help of NATO’s intervention). They triggered a very bloody conflict in Syria and put a number of pro-Western oil-rich conservative Arab rulers on notice. Iran also felt the impact as it provided impetus for opposition to its theocratic order.

Whereas Yemen, Libya and Syria remained mired in bloody conflicts, prompting interventions by outside actors for conflicting geopolitical interests, Egypt rapidly reverted to authoritarian rule, and the status quo forces prevailed over forces of change elsewhere in the region. Tunisia flourished as the only beacon of hope for pro-democracy advocates, but, since 2021, it too has been on a slippery slope towards authoritarian rule. President Kais Saied has virtually demolished the country’s elected parliamentary system in support of strong presidential rule. His actions have outraged pro-democracy forces, but he has justified them on the grounds that the system had not brought about stability and prosperity. He appears to command sufficient support not only from state instrumentalities of power, but also from those pockets of the population that have found a transition to democracy too taxing.

The only Arab segment that has expressed a preference for democracy are the Palestinians in Israel’s occupied territories. Yet, they are isolated, and many analysts would argue that they have been abandoned by most of the Arab countries. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco have normalised relations with Israel, and Saudi Arabia has forged informal ties with the Jewish state. Egypt and Jordan have peace treaties with Israel. This is a far cry from the days when most of the Arab states conditioned any form of relations with Israel on an end to its occupation of the Palestinian lands and the creation of an independent Palestinian state out of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.

US democracy, not to mention that of its traditional European allies, used to inspire many in the Arab world. But that doesn’t seem to be the case any longer, given the democratic chaos that has come to dominate the American landscape, and the manner in which the US has behaved geopolitically in the region. America’s botched invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and support for the status quo in the Middle East have not only raised serious questions about its reliability as an ally, but also diminished its status as an effective global actor in the face of the rise of China and Russia as formidable rivals.

Many in the Arab domain could see that close-fisted rule has worked in China and Russia in propelling them to new heights. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may be very distressful for most of them, but it has also prompted the US and its allies to approach the leaders of the oil-rich Arab states seeking relief from soaring energy prices. US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, have found it expedient to forget their past denouncement of Saudi Arabia’s de factor ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and embraced him despite his alleged role in the murder of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.

In this evolving polarised world, the balance is certainly tipping in favour of authoritarianism in the Middle East. This presents a challenge that the US and its democratic allies may not be able to overcome easily. We’re already in the midst of another Cold War between democracies and autocracies, and Arab rulers may continue to reap benefits from it in strengthening their hold on their societies for the foreseeable future.

Can America’s ailing democracy continue to hold global sway?

US President Joe Biden has framed America’s confrontation with China and Russia as an open-ended contest between democracy and autocracy. If that’s true, an American victory will depend not only on the country’s ability to outcompete its adversaries, but also on its success at safeguarding democracy at home.

On the former imperative, the US is well-positioned to succeed, thanks to a series of diplomatic masterstrokes. For starters, at the recent G7 and NATO summits, Biden cemented a broad alliance spanning Europe and Asia against Russia and China. This follows the quick mobilisation of Western governments to support Ukraine and punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for the war he launched there in February.

Biden has also taken advantage of Chinese aggression towards its neighbours to consolidate American alliances in East Asia. The Quad—comprising Australia, India, Japan and the US—has been deepening its strategic cooperation. In short, the Biden administration has proved its ability to rally America’s democratic allies abroad to stand up to their autocratic adversaries.

At home, however, the pillars of America’s democratic institutions are crumbling. Despite his election defeat in 2020, Donald Trump maintains a vicelike grip on the Republican Party. Some 70% of Republican voters still believe Trump’s lie that his loss was due to massive electoral fraud. Unwilling to risk losing support, nearly all congressional Republican leaders either parrot these lies or maintain a cowardly silence.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders are effectively taking a sledgehammer to the pillars of US democracy. In 2021, at least 19 states—all but two of them Republican-controlled—enacted 34 laws to restrict access to voting. And a month before the 2020 election, congressional Republicans pushed through the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, despite having refused even to hold hearings on a Supreme Court nominee during President Barack Obama’s final year in office.

This points to the most alarming recent development for US democracy: the politicisation of the US Supreme Court. Now packed with far-right justices, the court issued a series of radical rulings last month that undermine women’s rights, environmental protection and public safety, while severely damaging its own standing as an independent institution.

As bad as things are, the crisis of American democracy may be just beginning. The Republican Party seems likely to regain control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. And there’s no telling what the 2024 presidential election will bring. One cannot rule out the possibility of Trump returning to the White House—a development that would put US democracy in grave danger.

It’s not hard to explain why Biden is winning the cold war abroad but losing the fight for democracy at home. The US and its allies are still far ahead of their autocratic adversaries in critical areas, not least military and technological capabilities. And Russia and China consistently engage in the kind of aggression and bullying that drives smaller countries into the arms of the US.

To defend American democracy, however, Biden—and US democrats more broadly—must overcome structural obstacles embedded in the country’s constitution. By design, the US system gives some voters far more influence than others. Most glaringly, while seats in the House of Representatives roughly correspond to a state’s share of the US population, all states get two seats in the Senate. Today, Republicans hold 50% of the Senate’s seats, but represent only 43% of the US population.

Americans in less populous states also have more power over the executive, because the president is elected indirectly, via the Electoral College. Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000—both Republicans—won the presidency despite having lost the popular vote. This structural advantage means that Republicans can pander to a radical minority and still wield just as much power as Democrats.

Republicans also benefit from a poisoned media environment in which firms like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News reap massive profits by promoting conspiracy theories. Here, the structural impediment to change would be relatively easy to address: pillars of the US financial establishment like BlackRock and Vanguard—two of Fox’s biggest investors—need only stop investing in firms that are systematically undermining American democracy. But there’s no reason to think that they will.

None of this bodes well for America’s prospects in the new cold war. Yes, there is still a chance that the Democrats can retain enough power to defend American democracy. In that case, the US could continue to build on the positive momentum the Biden administration has generated with its recent foreign policy manoeuvres.

But if the Republican Party takes Congress and/or the White House in the coming elections, the US will, at the very least, lose its ideological appeal. It might still manage to rally its democratic allies to challenge China and Russia, but only on the basis of narrow national interests, rather than shared values. What is now an ideological struggle between democracies and autocracies could thus become an all-out clash of global titans.

That is the best-case scenario. In the worst case, the consolidation of minority rule and the rise of an illiberal regime in the US could unleash civil unrest, pitting a de facto disenfranchised majority against an increasingly authoritarian minority. It is hard to imagine that a country beset by such turmoil could possibly lead a coalition of democracies on the world stage.

Madeleine Albright’s potent legacy for women

I first met Madeleine Albright in 1988, when I was a very junior staffer on Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis’s presidential campaign and she was one of his foreign-policy advisers, alongside Harvard professor Joseph S. Nye, Jr, who was already a star in the foreign-policy firmament. Madeleine was teaching at Georgetown and was already a political veteran, having worked with Walter Mondale, Edmund Muskie and Geraldine Ferraro.

Virtually anyone connected to the Dukakis campaign or Democratic foreign-policy circles would have predicted that Nye was going to become secretary of state at some point, not Madeleine. But, eight years later, it was who Madeleine secured the post—the first woman ever to do so. She was working for a different president, Bill Clinton, whose wife, Hillary Clinton, was a passionate and effective feminist.

It was widely reported at the time that Hillary had lobbied hard for Madeleine’s appointment, just as of course men have lobbied for other men for centuries. But it was the first time I saw the power of networks of women in power, and it was a turning point for an entire generation of women in foreign policy.

Madeleine herself lived by the maxim she declared often, most notably when introducing Hillary Clinton at a 2016 rally during Clinton’s presidential campaign: ‘There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.’ Susan Rice, who served as national security adviser under President Barack Obama and now heads President Joe Biden’s domestic policy council, was a mentee of Madeleine’s. So was Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Suzy George, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s chief of staff, also worked for Madeleine for years. And there were so many more.

More broadly, Madeleine was always willing to give a talk, write a blurb or put in a good word for a promising young woman aspiring to a foreign-policy career. She mentored and advanced plenty of men as well, but for women of my generation, she was a both a public inspiration and a private booster.

Ironically, however, Madeleine didn’t focus on advancing women around the world as a foreign-policy issue. It was Hillary Clinton, who became the third female secretary of state, who did that. Both were graduates of Wellesley, one of America’s most distinguished all-women colleges, and strong feminists. But as the first female secretary of state, Madeleine needed to prove that she could be just as tough as the men.

Madeleine was known for being more hawkish than the US military. As her successor Colin Powell recounts in his memoir, back when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they argued over whether to intervene in Bosnia. When Powell demurred, Madeleine retorted: ‘What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’

A daughter of Czechoslovakia—a country dismembered by the Nazis and subjugated by the Soviets—Madeleine was a passionate champion of American global leadership in the service of democracy everywhere. In her experience, the United States truly was ‘the indispensable nation’—and she welcomed the responsibility and hard work that that role entailed.

Indeed, while Madeleine was idealistic, she was also deeply practical. I often quote one of her many memorable lines: ‘Democracy must deliver.’ Madeleine knew that people can’t live on ideals alone, and was prepared to get into the details of what a healthy democracy needs to survive, at home and abroad. She wrote countless books and articles, delivered speeches, made investments and served on several boards, all in the service of ensuring that ordinary people understood both the stakes and demands of the struggle for self-government and human rights.

Along the way, Madeleine’s gift for pithy phrase-making and humor and her down-to-earth manner made her beloved by audiences. I heard her speak many times, and often saw people respond with unexpected delight. She spoke candidly about the human side of the foreign-policy business; for example, in her memoir, she describes the challenge of finding hairstylists during her travels. Her wonderful 2009 book, Read my pins: stories from a diplomat’s jewel box, explores how her carefully selected brooches helped make diplomatic history.

Madeleine understood the critical importance of helping ordinary Americans understand the world better. And unlike so many of her foreign-policy peers, she wasn’t afraid to shed some gravitas to that end. That folksiness may explain why she wasn’t really recognised as a foreign-policy thinker, as a strategist or theorist, by many of her peers. But she brought foreign policy home to people around the world.

Madeleine’s achievements—including those she racked up during her remarkable 20-year post-government career as an entrepreneur, investor, author, campaigner, counselor and elder—should inspire us all. She blazed not only a new trail, but a new style. For those of us who have tried to follow in her footsteps, her death leaves a gaping hole. I hope that she is now in that special place in heaven for women who help other women.

Even with its head severed, Islamic State may continue to bite

‘Last night’s operation took a major terrorist leader off the battlefield, and it sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you.’

With these words, President Biden announced a US special forces counterterrorism operation that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi in Syria’s Idlib province on 3 February. Also known as Haji Abdullah, al-Qurayshi killed himself and his family with an explosive device as US forces, supported by the Kurdish Syrian Defence Forces, raided the multi-storey house where he was hiding in the village of Atme, near the Turkish border. The Pentagon described al-Qurayshi as a very hands-on leader keen to restore the lethality and higher operational tempo IS once enjoyed, and said his death was a significant blow to the terror group.

Al-Qurayshi came to power in 2019, following the death of his predecessor in almost identical circumstances. Three years ago, as US special forces approached his hideout in Idlib province, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and his two children. Both IS leaders were denounced as cowards by the US presidents who authorised the raids.

The al-Qurayshi raid continues the decapitation strikes—colloquially described as cutting off the head of the snake—that were a key element of US counterterrorism strategy in the global war on terror. Such strikes have long been part of the military arsenal, especially in counterinsurgency, but how successful they are as a counterterrorism tool is not straightforward.

The raids on the two IS leaders were preceded by assassinations of key al-Qaeda figures, including Osama and Hamza bin Laden, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar al-Awlaki, and IS-forerunner al-Qaeda in Iraq’s Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. These strikes have often involved civilian casualties. The US says it sets out to minimise such casualties, and the risk to its own forces, with an assessment it refers to as a calculated risk matrix which includes the use of drones or special forces.

Biden’s message after al-Qurayshi’s killing struck a familiar tone, presenting the operation as a necessary one carried out with precision and ethical foresight to minimise civilian casualties. The curious mix of showing teeth to bite off the snake’s head while using declaredly measured force is in line with tradition. It’s reminiscent of President Barack Obama’s approach and his 2011 statement that the world was ‘a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden’. This framing stands in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s self-congratulatory claims that ‘Baghdadi died like a dog’ and his bizarre tweet of a medal ceremony for Conan, the military dog involved in that raid, with its picture superimposed on the face a decorated Vietnam veteran.

January’s Hasakah prison break demonstrated that IS has planning capability and a leadership structure functional enough to execute large operations with dire consequences. Yet, rather than constituting a knee-jerk response to this attack, the Pentagon said the raid was the product of months of careful planning and risk assessment, relied on strong partner structures in the region and was designed to minimise civilian casualties. Civilians are said to have been killed in the latest raid when al-Qurayshi detonated his explosive device and in a firefight started by his lieutenant and wife.

The approach is clearly much more considered than it was under Trump, but the assumption that it dealt IS a major blow indicates that the US is continuing down the same broad path that is not necessarily a forward-looking strategy.

Many analysts and scholars are rightly sceptical of the effectiveness of leadership decapitation—in particular as a counterterrorism strategy to defeat or substantially incapacitate an adversary. Even as a tactic in a wider strategic toolkit, it has limits. The extent to which such operations destabilise a group is very context- and time-sensitive. It depends on the leader’s charisma and influence and the group’s aims and organisational make-up, especially how hierarchical and centralised its internal structure is, alongside variables in the surrounding conditions.

It would be rare for the killing of a single leader to spell the demise of a terrorist group, and even less likely in a multi-generational movement like jihadism whose enduring ideological cause and appeal ensure a steady supporter base. So far, IS has shown an ability to adapt. The current phase of its trajectory—from jihadi proto-state with centralised territorial control to a decentralised model with local affiliates—affords IS greater overall resilience, with the ability to mitigate losses in one area.

Moreover, on the modern jihadi battlefield, martyrdom is an article of faith as much as an act of strategic pragmatism. The death of a leader would be anticipated with at least some forethought and contingency planning, if not a detailed succession strategy. Al-Qurayshi was the nom de guerre of Amir Muhammad Said Abdel-Rahman al-Mawla, a 45-year-old Iraqi who served in Saddam Hussein’s military before joining al-Qaeda in Iraq following the US invasion. He had been known to US forces since 2008 when, as an AQI judge, he was captured and imprisoned. As a graduate of the finishing school for extremists that was Camp Bucca, plus a degree in Islamic jurisprudence from a theology seminary in Mosul, his credentials mirrored those of the first IS leader, al-Baghdadi.

When al-Qurayshi assumed the IS leadership, there was debate on why he was chosen and what controversy surrounding his heritage might mean for the future of IS leadership and which lineage the new leader may come from. Yet, as scholars of IS’s military strategy point out it is, like its media strategy, ‘intentional, broad, comprehensive and most of all—patient.’

This means that al-Qurayshi’s death is likely bring an element of uncertainty and instability to IS temporarily and leave a dent in the group’s operational capabilities in at least Syria and Iraq. Further strikes may follow to target the tiers of leadership below him. Yet the operation is unlikely to have an enduring impact on the group’s command structure and overall operations. A Pentagon report from February 2020 came to that conclusion after al-Baghdadi’s death.

This gives Biden’s threat less bite; it appears more as a talking point to project ongoing faith in America’s counterterrorism capability from ‘over the horizon’. Considering the strategic and humanitarian implications of the Hasakah battle, one author’s point that the ‘the gap between disaster and triumph was narrow’ seems apt beyond that particular attack.

Curiously, in nature a snake’s head can still bite when it is no longer attached to its body.

How China views the Ukraine crisis

Beijing may be 6,500 kilometeres from Kyiv, but the geopolitical stakes for China in the escalating crisis over Ukraine’s fate couldn’t be higher. If Russia invades Ukraine and precipitates a drawn-out conflict with the United States and its Western allies (though a direct military confrontation is unlikely), China obviously stands to benefit. America will need to divert strategic resources to confront Russia, and its European allies will be even more reluctant to heed US entreaties to join its anti-China coalition.

But if US President Joe Biden defuses the crisis by acceding to some of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands, China will likely end up worse off strategically. While Putin will reap the benefits of his coercive diplomacy, and Biden will avoid a potential quagmire in Eastern Europe, China will find itself the sole focus of America’s national security strategy. Worse still, after Putin has skilfully exploited the US obsession with China to re-establish Russia’s sphere of influence, the strategic value of his China card may depreciate significantly.

For Putin, capitalising on Biden’s fear of being dragged into a conflict with a secondary adversary (Russia) in order to extract critical security concessions is a risky but smart move. But ordering an invasion of Ukraine—and thus effectively volunteering to be America’s primary geopolitical adversary, at least in the short to medium term—is hardly in the Kremlin’s interest. Crippling Western sanctions and the high costs of fighting an insurgency in Ukraine would almost certainly weaken Russia significantly and make Putin himself both domestically unpopular and more dependent on Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Intriguingly, despite the high stakes for China in the Ukraine crisis, the Chinese government has been extremely careful about showing its hand. While the heightened tensions dominate Western media headlines, Ukraine receives scant coverage in the official Chinese press. Between 15 December (when Putin and Xi held a virtual summit) and 24 January this year, the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, carried only one article about the crisis—on the inconclusive talks in mid-January between Russia and the US and its NATO allies. Editorials or commentaries voicing Chinese support for Russia also are notable by their absence.

Even more intriguingly, the summary of the Putin–Xi summit released by the Kremlin claimed that Xi supported Putin’s demand for Western security guarantees precluding NATO’s further eastward expansion, but the Chinese version, published by the official Xinhua news agency, contained no such reference. Instead of explicitly endorsing Putin’s position, Xi’s statement was vague and general pabulum about ‘providing firm mutual support on issues involving each other’s core interests’.

The pattern continued when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi spoke to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on 27 January. Western media characterised Wang’s statement on Ukraine as an expression of support for Putin. In fact, Wang planted China’s diplomatic stake squarely on the sidelines, saying only that ‘Russia’s reasonable security concerns should be stressed and resolved.’

Chinese reticence on Ukraine suggests that Xi is carefully hedging his bets. To be sure, Putin’s aggressive diplomacy is serving Chinese interests, at least for now. Should he decide to invade Ukraine and divert US strategic focus away from China, so much the better.

But, assuming that Xi doesn’t know the Kremlin’s real intentions vis-à-vis Ukraine (it’s doubtful that Putin has shared them with his Chinese counterpart), he is prudent not to show his own cards either. Any expression of unequivocal Chinese support for Putin’s demands could leave China with little wiggle room. At worst, goading Putin down the path of war could be construed in some circles in Moscow as a diabolical Chinese plot to use Russia as a strategic pawn in the Sino-American cold war. Alternatively, should Putin choose to pocket face-saving gains in order to avoid a potential disaster, China would look foolish for having backed the Kremlin’s unattainable demands.

Strategic uncertainty aside, China’s rulers know that explicitly supporting Putin will almost certainly antagonise the European Union, which is now China’s second-largest trading partner. In Chinese policymakers’ strategic calculation, it is vital to prevent the US from recruiting the EU into its anti-China coalition.

Ukraine’s independence and security are crucial to the EU, and Chinese efforts to aid and abet Putin would trigger a European backlash. At a minimum, the EU could make China pay by restricting technology transfers and expressing more diplomatic support for Taiwan. In particular, the EU’s Eastern European members, which have fewer trade ties with China but are most threatened by Russia’s aggressive stance, are in a much stronger position than large member states to play the Taiwan card as retaliation against China. Few in the Chinese leadership are likely to consider that a risk worth taking.

China’s leaders are realists and know that they can do little to influence the outcome of the crisis in Ukraine even if they choose to intervene publicly. With Putin holding most of the cards in the ongoing standoff, China’s diplomatic support is unlikely to alter the strategic calculus of the principal protagonists in Washington, Brussels or even Moscow. Its influence will increase dramatically only if Putin rolls the dice and invades Ukraine, because he will then need Chinese economic support to lessen the impact of Western sanctions.

But for now, all this is speculative as far as Xi is concerned. Although a superpower, China is temporarily reduced to being an onlooker, watching both anxiously and hopefully on the sidelines as the Ukraine crisis unfolds.

Biden’s defence and national security strategies will make or break US response to global challenges

As US President Joe Biden enters his second year in office, his administration is expected to soon release a slew of strategic documents that will set out how it will approach and respond to a rapidly deteriorating international security environment. These documents—nested together like Babushka dolls—will give us the clearest understanding yet of how the US intends to use all levers of national power to approach intensifying geostrategic competition and respond to the long-term structural challenge China poses to the international system.

So, what can we expect these strategies to cover?

At the core of Biden’s response will be the overarching US national security strategy. Mandated by Congress through the 1986 Goldwater–Nichols Act, national security strategies are published early in a president’s time in office to set out the security challenges facing the country and explain how an administration will address them.

Last March, Biden released interim national security strategic guidance, the first time such a document has been issued by the White House. Coming off the 6 January Capitol insurrection and the turmoil of Donald Trump’s administration, it was heavily focused on strengthening democracy at home; investing in America’s national strengths; rebuilding alliances and partnerships; re-engaging in the international system; and responding to increased geostrategic competition, including the ‘sustained challenge’ to the stable and open international system from China.

While predicting is a precarious art, it seems safe to assume that the full strategy will cover similar themes. The US will likely remain primarily focused on outcompeting China at a systemic level, while ensuring guardrails are in place to prevent tensions from veering into conflict. Global challenges that transcend borders and require collective action—such as climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic—will likely feature heavily, particularly as a way to re-establish US leadership internationally. The third major focus of the strategy will likely be domestic renewal, with a focus on reinvigorating the US’s national strengths to build a more resilient, prosperous and secure nation.

Sitting underneath the national security strategy, the long-awaited national defence strategy will set out a plan for how America will respond to an increasingly complicated and complex security landscape. With China the Pentagon’s top priority, judging by a number of recent remarks by top US officials, the defence strategy will likely focus on raising the costs for China to change its calculations on Taiwan. It will also likely focus on preparing the US for great-power conflict; establishing integrated deterrence across multiple domains; and dispersing forces and assets to better project power across the Indo-Pacific.

One of the US’s greatest strengths is its network of allies and partners around the world—a powerful force multiplier and deterrent in itself—and we can expect the defence strategy to elevate the importance of allies and partners, particularly to address global security challenges and allow the US to enhance its focus on the Indo-Pacific.

Alongside the national defence strategy, the Pentagon is also expected to release a missile defence review and a nuclear posture review. The review of the US’s missile defence policy and posture will be set in a landscape of increasingly sophisticated adversaries. The administration’s nuclear strategy and posture have been the subject of fierce debate due to Biden’s long-time support for the US to move to a sole-purpose or no-first-use nuclear declaratory policy, which would prohibit the use of nuclear weapons by the US except as a response to a nuclear attack. Given the concerns among allies and partners around the world, it’s unlikely the review will bring any change to US nuclear declaratory policy. What will be of interest, however, is how it responds to the rapid scaling up of China’s nuclear arsenal.

With the overarching national security and defence strategies and reviews, one hopes the Biden administration will bring a truly integrated, whole-of-government approach to the table. This must be more than a congressionally mandated bureaucratic exercise, because Biden’s strategies will help make or break how the US responds to this decisive next decade of geostrategic competition. Facing challenges on multiple fronts—from Russia and Iran to Myanmar and North Korea—the test for the Biden administration will be how it prioritises and addresses them. Translating strategy to action is hard at the best of times, let alone for an ‘overstretched hegemon’ with an unwieldy bureaucracy, ongoing domestic upheaval and a fractured political landscape.

The US will have to balance the pull of international responsibilities and multiple, immediate crises by remaining clear-eyed and focused on the long-term structural challenge presented by China. The problems that lie ahead have no historical precedent but they aren’t for the US alone to face or to solve. With our own equities and interests in maintaining the rules-based international order, Australia—and other like-minded nations—will watch the release of Biden’s strategies closely. It’s a decisive decade for all of us.