Indian Strategic Studies: 08/01/24

1 August 2024

India’s Indo-Pacific Strategic Outlook: Limitations and Opportunities

Kanchi Mathur

Over the last decade, India has become one of the most sought-after regional powers in the Indo-Pacific region. The country has embraced its role as a security provider of the Indian Ocean region and is a preferred diplomatic partner of emerging regional powers of Southeast Asia. A cornerstone of India’s strategic priorities in the Indo-Pacific is the relationship it shares with the United States. Being major defence partners, India and the US hope to use their long-term partnership to build a more integrated Indo-Pacific. As such this has made India a key linchpin in its latticework of allies and partners in the region. However, as India’s strategic and diplomatic responsibilities get more pronounced, there continue to be limitations with lingering challenges that threaten to slow down India’s plans.

India’s Strategic Outlook on the Indo-Pacific Region

In the Indo-Pacific region, there are three theatres of specific concern for India. First is the Northwest Indian Ocean region which includes the Gulf of Aden and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in the Arabian Sea, Second is the Indonesian Archipelago which encloses the Straits of Malacca, Lombok, and Sunda, Third is the Southern African region whose waters merge into the Indian Ocean.

Afghan Women Face Unyielding Hardship Under Taliban Rule – OpEd

Iqra Awan

The landscape of Afghanistan, scarred by decades of conflict, now witnesses another chapter of oppression as the Taliban’s stringent regime imposes severe restrictions on women, exacerbating their daily struggles and dismantling years of hard-won progress in women’s rights.

Education: A Dream Deferred

The return of the Taliban has seen the abrupt closure of schools for girls beyond the primary level. Secondary education has become a forbidden territory, leaving a generation of young women stranded in their pursuit of knowledge and advancement. The Taliban’s decrees have extinguished the hopes of many aspiring students, curtailing their intellectual and professional aspirations.

The deprivation of education not only limits personal growth but also hinders the socio-economic development of the nation. The absence of educated women in the workforce stifles innovation, reduces family incomes, and perpetuates cycles of poverty and dependency.

Employment: A Constricted Sphere

The professional landscape for Afghan women has drastically shrunk under the Taliban’s rule. Women, who once held significant positions in various sectors, including healthcare, education, and governance, are now forced out of their jobs or relegated to working from home under stringent supervision. The loss of employment opportunities has profound implications for the economic stability of families and communities.

It’s Not Curtains Down Yet For Bangladesh Unrest – Analysis

P. K. Balachandran

Even after restoration of calm, Sheikh Hasina regime finds pretexts to continue repression and student agitators and opposition parties vow to continue struggle for restoration of democracy.

It is not “curtains down” yet on the month-long violent agitation in Bangladesh over quotas in recruitment for white-collar government jobs.

Though violence ceased after the Supreme Court reduced the controversial quota for special categories from 56% to 7%, arrests of student leaders and opposition activists continue unabated.

The government cited the possibility of Bangladeshi students replicating the 2022 Sri Lankan mass action called “Aragalaya” in which government offices in Colombo were stormed and occupied, crippling the State machinery and forcing the President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country.

“There was a Sri Lanka-style plot to occupy Ganabhaban, the official residence of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, on July 19,” claimed the ruling Awami League’s General Secretary Obaidul Quader.

Impossible For China To Dominate — U.S. Tightens Screws In Indo-Pacific To Check PLA, Fortify Allies & Military Bases

Air Marshal Anil Chopra

The U.S. is working closely with regional allies South Korea and Japan to boost military capabilities. More importantly, pro-US President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. led the Philippine government in working closely with the U.S. to create many new military bases.

It is time to examine these and see how they impact the power balance.

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) is the oldest and largest unified combatant command of the U.S. armed forces and is responsible for the entire Indo-Pacific region.

The 375,000 service personnel are expected to secure more than 260 million sq. km, or roughly 52 percent of the Earth’s surface, stretching from the West Coast of the United States to the East Coast maritime borderline waters of India and from the Arctic to the Antarctic.

China’s Worldview in the Petroyuan Era - Opinion

Guan Kiong Teh

Monday 10 June 2024 marked the first international business day since the expiry of the 1974 agreement on military and economic aid signed between the Nixon administration and Prince Fahd Ibn Abd al-Aziz Al Saud. Henceforth, Saudi Arabia is free to sign oil trade agreements that involve payment in any currency, having previously been restricted to US Dollars. Although the actual impact of the end of this agreement will only be apparent in time, it is difficult to envision a future where the US dollar’s status as the dominant foreign reserve currency will not come under threat amongst the United Nations’ G77 nations. In 1999, US Dollars accounted for 71% of global foreign currency reserves, which had dropped to 58% in 2022.

Could Nixon and Kissinger have predicted the present economic climate? Perhaps some of it. Russia and the United States are back at loggerheads, but not directly at war. The opinions of Middle Eastern states still matter, although the term ‘buffer state’ counts for a lot less in an era where any organized (or indeed disorganized) body of people with access to the internet has the ability to broadcast propaganda directly to computers, smartphones, smart watches… the list goes on. Kissinger, who only died last November, believed until his death that Russo-American relations are even more strained than during the Brezhnev years of his premiership. But crucially, neither could have predicted what the Petrodollar would be replaced by upon its demise: the Petroyuan. This, to an extent, is due to China’s immeasurably stronger economic position with Hong Kong (increasingly) under its jurisdiction – a pipe dream without the integrity Britain displayed in its respect of the 1898 Convention (bear in mind – the modern Chinese state did not come into existence for fifty-one years after the convention was signed).

JH-XX: China's New Stealth Bomber That Has the Air Force Freaked Out

Brandon J. Weichert

Is China's JH-XX Stealth Bomber Ready to Challenge the U.S.?

The Chinese military has been on a rampant modernization spree for more than a decade. Each advance gets China one step closer to parity with the U.S. military. And the closer that China’s military gets to America’s in terms of technological capabilities, the more America’s leaders – civilian and military alike – almost universally downplay the China threat.

At some point, however, the Americans won’t be able to ignore the problem China poses. More frighteningly, soon the Chinese may develop a system that totally upends the U.S. military’s advantage in a potential fight for the Indo-Pacific.

The JH-XX

Enter the People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s (PLAAF’s) JH-XX bomber. The elusive aircraft, rumored to be China’s stealth bomber, is getting more attention, especially as the Americans unveil their new stealth bomber, the B-21 Raider.

NATO’s New Mission: Keep America in, Russia Down, and China Out

Tereza Novotna, Youngjun Kim, and Silvia Menegazzi

As NATO commemorated its 75th anniversary at the summit in Washington D.C., the organization found itself at a critical juncture: expanding cooperation with the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) countries, among them South Korea. NATO’s strategic pivot to the Indo-Pacific has become crucial not only for maintaining global stability but also for addressing the interconnected challenges posed by actors like Russia and North Korea on the one hand and China on the other.

In the words of NATO’s first Secretary General, Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, the alliance was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Nowadays, particularly should Donald Trump be re-elected as the U.S. president, the mission has evolved: to keep the Americans (still) engaged, to hold Russia’s aggressive actions in Europe down, and to prevent China’s influence from expanding in the Indo-Pacific region. In other words, NATO has been taking its lessons from the Euro-Atlantic area to prepare for contingencies in the Indo-Pacific.

Tech self-reliance helps shield China from Windows outage

Although Microsoft Windows' "blue screen of death" hit millions of users worldwide, including banks, airlines, hospitals and hotels, China was largely unaffected as the country's technology independence and self-sufficiency efforts have provided a protective shield.

Chinese industrial players and experts said on Sunday that the Windows outage caused by a third-party cloud software faulty update left millions computers inoperable triggering chaos across many economic sectors, and the incident has prompted global cybersecurity concerns, highlighting the importance of tech independence.

Analysts also noted that given a mistake by one company can paralyze half the planet, countries cannot count on others for their national and economic security. They urged other countries to do their own research and development or diversify their suppliers to reduce dependence on US tech firms.

China testing 'dual use' technology on secret spaceplane likely, experts say

Stefanie Schappert

In June, a Chinese spacecraft, on its third mission, was observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then manoeuvring back to within a few hundred meters of it.

Alternatively, the experts also say the observed spacecraft – similar to the Boeing X-37B robot spaceplane (pictured above) used by NASA and the US military – could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites.

"It's obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them," said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

"But it also has non-military applications. Gaining experience with this kind of grab and release is good if you want to for instance ... refuel your own satellites."

Beijing Can Take the South China Sea Without Firing a Shot - Opinion

Oriana Skylar Mastro

Over the past 15 years, China has expanded its once-minimal military presence in the South China Sea into a significant one.

Beijing has laid claim to nearly all of the strategic waterway, a vital shipping lifeline for the global economy that is rich in energy and fishery resources. China has used nonmilitary assets such as its Coast Guard, fishing vessels and maritime militia to bully its neighbors, blockade their ships and build Chinese military bases on disputed islands.

America is partly to blame. It has condemned China’s behavior, but, eager to avoid escalation, has consistently refrained from standing up militarily, which has only further emboldened Beijing. A new approach is needed. The United States must take real action to strengthen alliances and confront China before it eventually takes control of this hugely important body of water without firing a shot.

The dangerous myth of ‘Arab unity’

Alaa al-Ameri

At the heart of the instability of the Middle East is the myth of ‘Arab unity’. It’s a myth that is often promoted by the United Nations which, since 7 October, has repeatedly shown itself to be sympathetic to the most reactionary forces in the Arab world.

Speaking at the Arab League Summit in Bahrain in May, UN secretary-general António Guterres blamed divisions within the Arab world on ‘outsiders stoking sectarian tensions’. He urged the attending Arab states to break ‘the vicious circle of division and foreign manipulation’, which he condemned for causing terrorism and undermining a ‘prosperous future for the people of the Arab world’.

Far from promoting a stable and prosperous future, this mirage of ‘Arab unity’, and the obsession with blaming nefarious ‘outsiders’, is only holding the Middle East back.

Indeed, the illusory quest for ‘Arab unity’ is what gave us Islamism and Baathism. These ideologies, at the heart of both brutal regimes and terror groups, have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the Middle East and beyond. They have also distorted and erased thousands of years of cultural richness, nuance and diversity – not unlike the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century.

Phoenix successor redux: the USN’s range riposte to China’s PL-17?

Douglas Barrie

Thirty-two years after the US Navy cancelled its project to replace the Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix long-range air-to-air missile (AAM), the service has introduced into service a likely 300–400+ kilometre-range AAM to fulfil an apparently similar role known as the AIM-174B. Based on the Raytheon RIM-174/SM-6 Standard surface-to-air missile (SAM), the AIM-174 was a previously classified Special Access Program.

The AIM-174B was seen carried by a Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet participating in the June RIMPAC 2024 exercise in what may have been a planned move to declassify the project. Along with the AIM-174B, pictures have also appeared of the DATM-174 – the DATM nomenclature standing for Dummy Air Training Missile. Imagery of an F/A-18 carrying an SM-6 first appeared first on social media in 2021, with the test round painted orange. At that point, however, neither the intended application nor the project’s status was known.

High value targets

A possible target set for the now-in-service AIM-174B is what are sometimes referred to as high value airborne assets (HVAA). HVAAs include airborne early warning, electromagnetic combat and intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft as well as aircraft capable of carrying long-range anti-ship missiles of various descriptions. The new missile could possibly also provide a capability against air-launched ballistic missiles. The AIM-174B is intended primarily for the Indo-Pacific to counter to developments within the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) and naval aviation.

On The Outside Looking In: Turkiye’s Peripheral Role in European Defence-industrial Collaboration Since the End of the Cold War

Karl Dewey, Haena Jo, Fenella McGerty, Ester Sabatino & Tom Waldwyn

Since the end of the Cold War, Turkiye and other European states have had to grapple with an ever-changing economic and security context. While this has incentivised industrial consolidation, joint programmes and the creation of cooperation mechanisms among many European states, Turkiye has almost always been on the outside.

In the late 1990s, reduced defence spending in Europe and mergers in the US drove some of the largest European defence manufacturers to respond with their own consolidation process. This took place largely in the aerospace domain, where costs were higher, and led to the creation of multinational firms such as Airbus, AgustaWestland and MBDA. This rush towards consolidation by European firms had largely ended by 2001, and most of the later attempts at merging large firms resulted in failure. By contrast, the key elements of Turkiye’s defence industry had already been created and consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s. From the 1980s, Turkish companies cooperated with European and other foreign firms through joint ventures in Turkiye, before abandoning that strategy from 2004 onwards and instead pursuing indigenous designs, often with foreign subcontractors. These approaches have resulted in a far more capable Turkish defence industry than was previously the case.

NATO’s Newfound Revival With Beijing And Moscow In Mind – Analysis

Collins Chong Yew Keat

The 75th anniversary of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) created new arguments on the relevance and future scope of NATO, in both its geographical coverage and its ideological standing. The world’s oldest military pact remains the biggest, and continues to provide the reach of security assurances and deterrence which have drawn the scrambling of other Asian powers to also be a part of the security net.

Sweden and Finland broke from their conventional neutrality affiliations to join NATO, sending a clear message that when push comes to shove and in the areas of national interests and survival, security trumps all other considerations.

From the summit in Washington this month, the US under the Biden administration tried to reinject new dynamism of strength and hope, where Washington pledged to deploy longer range missiles in Germany in 2026, being the most potent U.S. weapons to be based on the European continent since the Cold War.

Small drones allow infantry units to see farther on the battlefield

Mark Pomerleau

The proliferation and availability of small drones is allowing Army units at lower echelons to see and sense farther, negating the need for larger or more exquisite platforms or risking forward observers.

As part of a new Army concept, the 25th Infantry Division has been able to test new equipment that its commander said made it more lethal, agile and mobile.

“At a company level or even at a battalion level, they relied on assets predominantly from the brigade or higher level — assets that required sustainment and security,” Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, commander of 25th ID, told reporters Friday. “Now we have small unmanned aerial systems in the hands of squad leaders that can see three to five kilometers from their current position, which allows them to understand the battlefield better, protect themselves and creates increased lethality from their overall awareness.”

These UAS provide smaller units the ability to project farther and find targets, making them more mobile. A key tenet of future battle is the ability for units to be more dispersed given the advanced technologies potential nation-state adversaries possess to track U.S. forces. Top Army officials have stressed that there is nowhere to hide on the modern battlefield anymore due to overhead imagery and advanced sensors.

On US trip, Netanyahu found support as usual — but also problems ahead

Simon Speakman Cordall

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is used to being the centre of attention on his trips to the United States, basking in the glow of bipartisan support and ignoring the few American politicians who choose to criticise his country.

But his latest trip came at an inflexion point in the race for the US presidency, with Democrat President Joe Biden announcing the day before Netanyahu’s arrival that he would be dropping out of running for re-election. Instead of finding politicians eager to meet him, Netanyahu spent most of his trip being overshadowed by local events.

Then, he was forced to cut short his trip after a rocket attack on a Druze town in the occupied Golan Heights killed 12 people on Saturday. Israel has blamed Hezbollah for the attack, but the Lebanon-based group has denied responsibility.

Israeli retaliation in Lebanon seems inevitable

FOR ALMOST ten months Israel and Hizbullah, a Lebanese Shia militia and political party, have stuck to unwritten rules in their low-intensity war. Both sides know their foe has fearsome firepower and so have tried to limit their strikes. They have aimed either for military targets or for evacuated border towns from which an estimated 150,000 civilians have fled.

America Beware: Russia is Waging a Broader War with Tactics Both Seen and Unseen

Glenn Corn

Every night I am awoken by air alerts from Kyiv. A few months back, while traveling to that city I put the “Air Alert App” on my cell phone to keep track of attacks on the city by the Russians. When I returned to the U.S., I decided to keep the application running to try to maintain a sense of how often the Russians were attacking Kyiv. That was in mid-April. And since returning the siren goes off at least once, often twice a night. Just Kyiv. My application does not track all of Russia’s air strikes against cities and towns across Ukraine. But the Russians are targeting Ukraine’s critical infrastructure all across war torn Ukraine and are even extending their operations to targets outside of Ukraine.

Recently, when I woke up to one of the sirens, I noticed that instead of the usual one or two alerts, there were four. Then, I opened a message from a friend who said the Russians had launched one of their most brutal strikes against Ukraine in recent months, lobbing 40 missiles inside of five Ukrainian cities – civilian areas — with one of those strikes hitting the Okhmatdyt Children’s hospital in Kyiv, ripping through the dialysis ward.

During an April visit to Kyiv for The Cipher Brief’s Kyiv Economic & Security Forum, Ukrainian authorities described how the Russian Armed Forces were specifically targeting Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and civilian targets. The goal? To terrorize the Ukrainian population into submission.

Ukraine's IT army is a 'world first' in cyberwarfare but it's a major gamble for the government, experts say

Cameron Manley

Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian government issued a clarion call to tech wizzes around the world to use their skills in the fight against the invading nation.

"We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents," Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's then-deputy prime minister, wrote on X at the time.

Eager volunteers quickly responded to the plea, and within a month, the group's Telegram channel counted around 300,000 subscribers.

As the number of members increased, so did the IT army's activity, and by late May, the group had already launched an estimated 2,000 cyberattacks on Russian organizations, Ukraine's Digital Transformation Ministry said on Telegram.

A spokesperson for the group, who goes by the name Ted, told Business Insider that they "currently see tens of thousands of devices and possibly thousands of people behind them."

Kamala Harris Isn’t Going Back

Jelani Cobb

In January, 1972, Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, appeared at a Baptist church in Brooklyn and announced her candidacy for President of the United States. Chisholm was a singular force in American politics of the time: her support for civil rights and legal abortion made her a pivotal connection between the interests of African Americans and the emerging, mostly white, reproductive-rights movement. But, despite her status as a trailblazer, her campaign—set against an entirely white, entirely male field of rivals for the Democratic Party’s nomination—was more often than not treated as a lark. The newly formed Congressional Black Caucus, of which she was a founder, did not endorse her. (Many members chose to support George McGovern, the eventual nominee.) The political calculations were clear: the nation would not support a Black woman, and the better play was to back a viable candidate who might eventually provide a return on the investment.

Fifty-two years later, Kamala Harris’s ascent to being the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party represents, on many levels, a sharp contrast to Chisholm’s story. (Harris, during her 2020 Presidential run, nodded to her predecessor’s significance by incorporating a color scheme and typography similar to Chisholm’s 1972 campaign materials into her own.) Chisholm waged a shoestring effort, using her own savings to keep her campaign afloat; for Harris, word of President Joe Biden’s exit from the race unleashed a torrent of cash to support her candidacy. ActBlue reported a hundred-and-five-million-dollar haul within roughly the first twenty-four hours. The next day, Voto Latino committed to forty-four million. Chisholm essentially had to build her own electorate as she campaigned; Harris’s entry into the Presidential contest sparked a reported seven-hundred-per-cent increase in voter registrations.

The Perils of Groupthink - and How to Challenge It

Lawrence Freedman

During those early months of 2020, when we were reeling from the impact of Covid-19 and lockdown, my coping mechanism was to research why we were apparently so unprepared, and why the government had moved so quickly from complacency at the start of March 2020 to panic three weeks later as it realised it was failing to contain the virus with disastrous consequences.

To occupy myself I attempted a history of decision-making, which was eventually published here, using material easily accessible on-line. In addition to this rudimentary research I had also served on the public inquiry into the Iraq War. So I was asked to comment on how I would approach an eventual Covid inquiry.

Of course, and unsurprisingly, a judge, Baroness Heather Hallett, was appointed to lead the inquiry and much time has been spent interrogating witnesses. Nonetheless it has got on with its task and we can now evaluate its work with the publication of its first report.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s Real-World School of Foreign Policy

Linda Robinson

Seventy-six countries have had at least one woman president or prime minister, and 118 have not. The United States is among the latter group, but that may finally change with the presumptive nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s candidate. The historic nature of this event cannot be overstated, due to the many barriers that women in politics must surmount. Should Harris win, her success will be based on her performance as a candidate and her merits for the office, which is as it should be—not because of her gender but despite her gender.

Many features of the U.S. presidential system, its electoral college, and its winner-take-all electoral rules, have made it difficult for a woman to reach the top office, despite women’s economic, professional, and educational accomplishments. The lack of national childcare and family leave and male-dominated political parties and fundraising networks count among the many structural impediments that prevent women from competing on a level playing field. But one of the most significant impediments to women winning the presidency is a persistent belief by almost half (49 percent) that men are better equipped to lead countries, simply because they are men. Digging deeper, a central component of this prejudice is skepticism that women can handle the existential life-and-death decisions posed by foreign policy crises—arguably the most critical single role of the chief executive and commander in chief. According to the Pew Research Center, 37 percent of those surveyed say men are better at national security and defense versus five percent who say women do better.

Russia, adapting tactics, advances in Donetsk and takes more Ukrainian land

Francesca Ebel and Serhii Korolchuk

Russian forces have mounted an arc of attack in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, pushing through intense summer heat in a bid to extend Moscow’s steady territorial gains and capture the city of Pokrovsk, a key transit junction.

The offensive is underway as Ukraine continues to suffer from a shortage of soldiers and as election turmoil in the United States has set off new speculation that Kyiv may soon be forced to negotiate a surrender of lands.

After an influx of American weapons and money helped Ukraine blunt a renewed invasion of the northeast Kharkiv region in May, preventing a major breakthrough and dashing Moscow’s hopes of surrounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian commanders have refocused their attention on the Donetsk region, perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top territorial goal.

The reinvasion of the Kharkiv region, while yielding limited gains, nonetheless diverted Ukrainian resources. Oleksandr, 30, a battalion commander of the 47th brigade, fighting near Ocheretyne, said that Ukrainian forces are struggling and that Putin’s prize increasingly seems within Russia’s reach.

Harris tells Netanyahu ‘it is time’ to end the war in Gaza and bring the hostages home

AAMER MADHANI

Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday said she urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a cease-fire deal soon with Hamas so that dozens of hostages held by the militants in Gaza since Oct. 7 can return home.

Harris said she had a “frank and constructive” conversation with Netanyahu in which she affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself but also expressed deep concern about the high death toll in Gaza over nine months of war and the “dire” humanitarian situation there.

With all eyes on the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Harris largely reiterated President Joe Biden’s longstanding message that it’s time to find an endgame to the brutal war in Gaza, where more than 39,000 Palestinians have died. Yet she offered a more forceful tone about the urgency of the moment just one day after Netanyahu gave a fiery speech to Congress in which he defended the war, vowed “total victory” against Hamas and made relatively scant mention of cease-fire negotiations.

“There has been hopeful movement in the talks to secure an agreement on this deal,” Harris told reporters shortly after meeting with Netanyahu. “And as I just told Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is time to get this deal done.”

How four U.S. presidents unleashed economic warfare across the globe

Jeff Stein and Federica Cocco

In Cuba, sanctions imposed by the United States more than 60 years ago have failed to dislodge the communist regime — but they’ve made it more difficult to get critical medical supplies to the island.

In Iran, U.S. sanctions that date to the 1970s have not forced out Tehran’s theocratic rulers — but they have pushed the country to forge close alliances with Russia and China.

In Syria, dictator Bashar al-Assad remains in power despite 20 years of U.S. sanctions — but the country is struggling to rebuild from civil war, and more Syrians than ever are expected to need critical humanitarian assistance this year.

Today, the United States imposes three times as many sanctions as any other country or international body, targeting a third of all nations with some kind of financial penalty on people, properties or organizations. They have become an almost reflexive weapon in perpetual economic warfare, and their overuse is recognized at the highest levels of government. But American presidents find the tool increasingly irresistible.

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