Indian Strategic Studies: 08/04/24

4 August 2024

Outcomes of the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting

S. L. Narasimhan

The annual Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting was held in Japan on July 29, during which the Quad members—Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—convened to discuss the progress made and future actions of the Quad. The meeting comes amid global geopolitical conflicts, including the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas conflict, and China’s increasing aggression in the West-Pacific. India is expected to host a Quad Leaders’ Summit later in 2024.

Q1: Is the Quad a security grouping?

A1: The Quad emanated from a core partnership group that was established by Australia, India, Japan, and the United States to coordinate humanitarian assistance and disaster relief efforts after the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The four countries formally started the Quad in 2007; however, it fizzled out after the first meeting. It was revived in 2017, at a time when the bilateral relationships between these four countries had improved significantly.

Several analysts have referred to the Quad as the “Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.” However, none of the four countries that form the Quad have officially called the Quad a security grouping. The only two security-related subjects that the Quad covers are cybersecurity and maritime security, both of which can be considered nontraditional security subjects. Therefore, one can conclude that the Quad is not a security grouping.

Q2: Is “Squad” the new Quad?

A2: The “Squad” is an informal Indo-Pacific grouping that is comprised of Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States. The calls for the creation of the Squad seem to be in response to the recent dangerous maneuvers in the South and East China Seas and the frequent stand-offs between China and the Philippines in the Second Thomas Shoal.

Indian Foreign Policy Under Narendra Modi: A Decade of Transformation

Siddharthya Roy

On June 8, 2024, Narendra Modi etched his name in the annals of Indian history, surpassing all previous non-Congress prime ministers to become the longest-serving leader in this category. This feat stands as a testament to his grip on the Indian political landscape and his commanding influence over the nation’s domestic affairs.

However, as Modi assumes the role of India’s figurehead for the next five years, the future trajectory of India’s foreign policy demands a thorough and multifaceted examination that goes beyond the veneer of his political longevity.

Modi’s victory also demands a careful analysis of how his domestic politics, rhetoric, and success have affected – and will affect – his foreign policy and India’s standing on the world stage.

Provincial to Premier

For one, Modi’s accomplishment of winning a third term – and, immediately after that, being invited to the G-7 summit as an observer – is a testament to his journey from a once-dismissed “provincial leader” and “regional satrap” to a statesman with a commanding presence on the international stage.

Explained: Japan’s Defense White Paper 2024 And US ‘Extended Deterrence’

Dr. Rajaram Panda

Introduction

On 12 July 2024, Japan published The Defense of Japan 2024 White Paper. (1) This is its landmark 50th edition, with the inaugural edition published in 1970. Since 1976, the White Paper has come out every year. This year also marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Self-Defense Forces. The annual report was approved by the Cabinet at a meeting the same day. It is packed with tough assessments of what it says is an increasingly fraught regional security environment that includes “an aggressive China, nuclear-armed North Korea and revanchist Russia”. (2)

The concept behind the front cover of the White Paper showed Japan working hard to forge its “sword” to avoid having to draw it as a deterrent to prevent any aggression against Japan. For the first time, Tokyo sounded a direct warning against the growing risk of a grave situation akin to Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine occurring in East Asia. Expressing alarm over China, North Korea and Russia, the White Paper stated that a situation similar to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine may occur in the Indo-Pacific region in future, particularly in East Asia. (3)

The popular Asahi Shimbun observed in an editorial that while Japan needs a stable program and strengthens its defences to stay abreast of changes in its security environment, “excessive reliance on armed forces may prove counterproductive as this only generates unwanted tension”. (4)

Is this unit the future of Army combat formations?

Todd South

Soldiers out of Hawaii are building a new, agile type of unit that could be the future when it comes to how the Army fields ground combat forces in far-flung West Pacific battlefields.

A “light brigade combat team” made up of soldiers from 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division recently completed a six-month rotation as part of the service’s Operation Pathways program that pairs Army units with partner forces in the region for training in the host nation.

Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, 25th ID commander, told reporters Friday that the brigade trained, tested and used various new technologies and equipment for the first time during the tour.

Soldiers worked alongside Philippine counterparts with the 7th Infantry Division out of Fort Magsaysay, Philippines.

Does China Prefer Harris or Trump?

Wang Jisi, Hu Ran, and Zhao Jianwei

Over the past few weeks, the upheavals in the U.S. presidential election season have drawn enormous global attention. Even before the summer began, countries were weighing the implications of former President Donald Trump’s return to the White House and, conversely, what a second term for U.S. President Joe Biden might bring. To many countries, these two possibilities presented markedly different prospects for geopolitics and for the future role of the United States in world affairs.

Then came nine remarkable days in July, during which Trump was almost assassinated and Biden abruptly announced that he would not seek reelection. Upending the U.S. presidential race for both parties, these events have created further uncertainty about the coming direction of the United States. Many countries see an increasingly stark divergence between the anticipated continuation of Biden’s internationalist foreign policy under a future President Kamala Harris and a far more isolationist approach under a reelected President Trump and his running mate, J. D. Vance.

From China, however, the view is somewhat different. Eight years ago, the first Trump administration ushered in a far more confrontational approach to relations with Beijing, which many Chinese observers found bewildering. Rather than treating China as a trading partner and sometimes a rival, the United States began to call it a “revisionist power,” a strategic competitor, and even a threat. More striking still, despite changes in tone, the Biden administration, has reinforced that shift and even taken it further on some issues. Indeed, there seems to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington that China must now be treated as a major adversary, with a growing contingent of analysts arguing for a cold war framing.

Interview with Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine: Lost Decade – The US Pivot and the Rise of Chinese Power

Octavian Manea

To debate the past and the future of the US pivot to the Indo-Pacific, Ambassador Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine have agreed to discuss their new book, Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power, for this Strategy Debrief. Ambassador Blackwill, could you provide an overview of the main arguments in your new book?

Ambassador Blackwill: We would like to make four points at the outset, which we hope will summarise our book. First, that the Obama-Clinton pivot to Asia announced in the fall of 2011 was a radical change in US grand strategy. Throughout its history, the United States had been a Europe-first nation. Now Asia would be America’s first external priority with first claim on US resources and attention. Two, however, this revolution in US grand strategy never happened. Despite the astonishing rise of Chinese power and influence during the 2010s, the US did not pivot to Asia, and did not devote additional resources to meet China’s challenge. Indeed, the United States is in a much weaker position in Asia today in terms of the balance of military power, the economic domain and diplomatic influence than when the pivot was announced in 2011. That is why this was the “Lost Decade”. Three, this US failure to respond in the 2010s to the momentous growth in Chinese power and influence in Asia and beyond, we believe, represents one of the three most critical US foreign policy failures since the end of World War II, along with Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 escalation in Vietnam and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And finally, we think it is more important than ever for the US to pivot to Asia.

China’s evolving Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia

Sin Lu Tan

As the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) enters its second decade, Beijing seems focused on filling in the fine details of the project’s ambitious outline, first announced by President Xi Jinping in 2013. It appears that the next iteration of the BRI will shift away from grand mega-projects to prioritise ‘small and beautiful’ high-quality projects. The green economy seems to be a particular focus, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi noting during a press conference in early March that China will ‘redouble efforts to build a green Silk Road’.

Indeed, 2023 marked the ‘greenest’ year for the BRI, with green-energy investments reaching US$9.5 billion. Investments in critical minerals and mining, green technology (such as electric vehicles and batteries) and green energy (production and transmission) are now key elements of China’s strategic engagement framework for pursuing small, beautiful and green projects.

China is likely seeking to lead in green industries where it has achieved dominance, such as critical minerals, solar cells, batteries and electric vehicles (EVs). Moreover, in light of increasing pressure from the United States and its allies and partners – which seek to limit China’s market access to their domestic green industries – Beijing is ramping up green investments in Southeast Asia to redirect exports, nearshore supply chains and consolidate regional influence.

The Houthis’ Dream Come True

Robert F. Worth

The Houthi militia, born in the wilds of northwestern Yemen, has been wanting a war with Israel for decades. Its distinctive five-line motto, printed on flags and chanted at rallies by the group’s faithful, includes the lines “Death to Israel” and “Curses on the Jews.”

The Houthis got their wish on July 19, when one of their drones struck a high-rise in Tel Aviv, killing one man and wounding four others. The blast signaled a troubling new reality: Already embattled with Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north, Israel is now fighting yet another Islamist group, one that has succeeded—however modestly—in penetrating its fabled air defenses.

The Houthis are not a threat just to Israel, which promptly retaliated with air strikes on a Houthi-controlled Red Sea port. They have grown steadily more dangerous and volatile in recent months. They have maintained and even stepped up their attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea—ostensibly in support of Gaza—despite a large-scale U.S.-military effort to stop them. In a dramatic video that surfaced on July 20, Ukrainian guards on the deck of a container ship in the Red Sea fired at an unmanned “suicide boat” streaming toward them, until it exploded in a ball of fire. The top U.S. commander in the Middle East recently issued an alarming report saying that the military effort to constrain the Houthis is failing and must be expanded.

The situation in the Red Sea is not getting better

Joseph L. Votel

For decades, the free flow of commerce and navigation in the Middle East was a central national security interest of the United States. Iran challenged this interest almost immediately after the revolutionary government came to power in 1979. Iranian actions at that time led to US responses like Operation Earnest Will, which brought together an array of joint military and civilian resources to successfully reflag and escort Kuwaiti tankers under threat from Iranian attacks in 1987 and 1988 — preserving the free flow of Gulf oil that was critical to our economy at the time.

During my tour as the commander (2016-2019) of US Central Command (CENTCOM), our naval ships were harassed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps fast boats dozens of times every month. But our forces’ demonstrated readiness to protect themselves, coupled with an effective public information campaign, brought the situation back under control. In October 2016, when the Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthis attacked USS Mason in the Red Sea, we decisively struck back against the group’s radar and missile sites. While those direct attacks stopped, the Houthis and Iran saw an opportunity for an asymmetric challenge — an opportunity they are exploiting today.

Netanyahu risking regional war for his own political survival - Opinion

Asher Kaufman

Israel’s apparent assassinations of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s top military leader, in Beirut, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, have raised again the specter of a regional war involving regional adversaries – one that could potentially drag the United States into the fray.

By targeting these two leaders, the Israeli government has demonstrated that it is willing to risk an escalation of conflict into new fronts. This comes despite some senior defense chiefs sending, at best, conflicting messages in recent months over whether the Israeli Defense Forces are adequately prepared, after nine months of confrontation in Gaza, for a full-scale war in Lebanon or elsewhere.

As a scholar of Lebanon and Israel, I have followed the recent events in the region with growing concern. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be betting that Iran and Hezbollah have no real appetite for full-scale war and would rather continue a policy of continued attrition against Israel.

US faces growing threats, and we’re woefully unprepared. Here’s how to fix that.

Jane Harman and Eric Edelman

The national security threats against the U.S. are as significant as and more complex than they were at the height of the Cold War or even World War II. We are not prepared to meet these threats today and could, in very short order, find ourselves in a war across multiple theaters with peer and near-peer adversaries that we could lose.

This is the key finding of a commission established by Congress, which we chaired, to review the current National Defense Strategy, published in 2022. Our bipartisan, unanimous recommendations lay out the steps needed now to avoid this outcome.

Our country has lost its decades-long uncontested military dominance, especially in the Western Pacific. China’s military and industrial strength rivals and in some ways outpaces our own. Its cyber and space capabilities are designed to deter or prevent us from interfering with its aggressive actions in the Western Pacific.

Israel Says It Killed Hamas Military Chief in July Airstrike

Carrie Keller-Lynn

Israel has determined that it killed top Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif in a July airstrike, the country’s military said Thursday, eliminating a planner of the Oct. 7 attacks and a militant it had tried to kill for decades.

Deif is the most senior military leader of the U.S.-designated terrorist group whom Israel says it has killed in more than nine months of fighting in the Gaza Strip and the third high-ranking enemy of the country to be declared dead in 48 hours.

Israel said Tuesday it had killed Fuad Shukr, a top commander with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, in an airstrike in Beirut, and Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in a mysterious strike just hours later in Tehran, an attack Iran blamed on Israel.

Those two attacks provoked furious responses from Hezbollah and Iran and have sparked concerns of an escalatory spiral that could lead to a wider Middle East war.

U.S. Looks for Ways to Revive Gaza Cease-Fire Talks

Lara Seligman and Michael R. Gordon

The Biden administration is scrambling to salvage prospects for a Gaza cease-fire after the political leader of Hamas was killed in a strike in Tehran, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the talks and leaving officials worried that Israel may now face major retaliatory attacks on two fronts.

On Tuesday, Israel said it was responsible for an airstrike in southern Beirut that killed a senior leader of Lebanon-based Hezbollah. Hours later, Ismail Haniyeh, one of the key negotiators in the long-stalled cease-fire talks, was dead in a mysterious strike in Iran’s capital.

Israel hasn’t claimed responsibility for the strike on Haniyeh, but Hamas and Iran blamed the attack on Israel.

While U.S. officials said they expected the Beirut attack, the Tehran strike caught Washington off guard and almost immediately darkened the already remote prospects for a U.S.-brokered Gaza cease-fire. Even more alarming to the U.S., the killings threatened to unleash new and more severe reprisals against Israel and potentially American forces in the region by Iran and its proxies.

Russia launches one of war’s biggest drone attacks on Ukraine

Svitlana Vlasova and Lauren Kent

Russia has launched one of the largest drone attacks on Ukraine since the war began, mainly targeting overnight the region in and around the capital Kyiv, according to the Ukrainian military, which said all 89 drones fired were shot down.

It marks the largest attack on the capital so far this year, and the seventh time Russia has targeted Kyiv this month, military officials said on Wednesday.

The “massive” attack lasted more than seven hours and the drones came in two waves, Kyiv officials said, adding that “not a single drone reached its target.”

There were no hits to residential or critical infrastructure and no casualties in the Kyiv region, according to regional military head Ruslan Kravchenko. However, 13 houses were damaged and rescuers extinguished one fire caused by the downed drones. “The majority of the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] debris fell outside of the settlements,” he added.

Dramatic video released by the Ukrainian Air Force shows one drone on fire, falling from the sky and landing in a field — causing a large cloud of smoke but no visible damage.

ISIS-K Goes Global The World Is Not Ready to Confront a New International Terror Threat

Colin P. Clarke and Lucas Webber

Over the past few weeks, French authorities have uncovered several terrorist plots targeting the 2024 Olympic Games, which began last week in Paris. In one of them, an 18-year-old Chechen man planned to attack an Olympic soccer match in the French city of Saint-Étienne. He was allegedly in contact with a member of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). The disrupted plot was just the latest in a spike of terrorist activity linked to ISIS. The group’s affiliate, the South Asian–based Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), is responsible for several successful international terrorist attacks this year alone—at a memorial service in Kerman, Iran, in early January; at a church in Istanbul later that month; and at a concert hall outside Moscow in March. The attacks in Iran and Russia combined left nearly 250 people dead and hundreds more wounded. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, where ISIS-K is based, the group claims responsibility for multiple smaller-scale attacks each month.

ISIS-K is not the only source of a heightened terror threat. In a recent essay in Foreign Affairs, the scholar Graham Allison and the former CIA deputy director Michael Morell compared the current security environment to that of the period leading up to al Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001. The warning lights for large-scale violence, they concluded, are flashing as brightly today as in the years before 9/11, when high-profile attacks targeted U.S. embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen. Of the many threats Allison and Morell outlined, however, ISIS-K is among the most concerning, given its capabilities and intent.

Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood network feared; report finds groups engage in ideological attacks on U.S.

Bill Gertz

The Palestinian militant group Hamas operates an extensive network of supporters in the U.S. linked to the international Muslim Brotherhood jihadist group, according to a report by a former federal counterterrorism expert.

John D. Guandolo, a former FBI agent and former Pentagon counterterrorism strategist who has studied the global Islamist movement extensively, stated in a new report that both Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) are engaged in ideological attacks on the U.S. system and pose major internal security threats.

Hamas influence operations can be seen throughout the U.S. in the spate of anti-Israel protests following the group’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel that killed some 1,200 people and ignited a war in the Gaza Strip.

One key feature of the Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood activities is a close alliance with Marxist and communist groups in the U.S., the report contends. It report said recent pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli demonstrations in cities and on college campuses across the country should serve as a warning.

Rebuilding the U.S. Navy Won’t Be Easy - Opinion

Seth Cropsey

The U.S. Navy is a ship without a rudder. The longer the service is allowed to decay, the more precarious America’s strategic situation will become. Turning things around won’t be easy. The best solution would be to retain every combat ship in the current fleet and encourage allies to pitch in with their own industrial bases. This expansion will require substantial funding, particularly in the workforce.

The Suez Canal is one of the world’s busiest maritime highways, connecting the Mediterranean and Red seas and creating a shortcut for ships sailing from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. This route is the center of the broader Eurasian trade system on which American power relies. It has helped the U.S. become one of the wealthiest, most powerful nations in the world. It has also enabled the construction of alliances across Eurasia, as powers ranging from Germany and Poland to South Korea and Japan are far less threatened by a U.S. that seeks commercial access and upholds freedom than by a China or Russia that demands a monopoly on commerce.

Since 2023 the Houthis have harassed ships exiting and entering the Suez Canal but sunk few vessels. Well-trained American and allied surface combatant crews have intercepted scores of missiles and drones, and U.S. Navy strike fighter squadrons have bombed Houthi missile launch sites. Nevertheless, insurance premiums for the Suez route have increased, and the Suez Canal Authority has lost almost 70% of its shipping traffic despite lower transit fees.

US needs to double down on directed energy weapons

Michael Hochberg

In the 1980s, the United States faced a profound challenge: winning a conventional war in Europe against a numerically superior Soviet army.

Technological innovation – most notably the development of smart, precision munitions – provided a solution. Instead of needing tens or even hundreds of unguided munitions to hit a target, one smart munition would often suffice.

This meant that a single plane could destroy a whole series of Russian tanks in a single mission, or strike a series of logistics and infrastructure targets, with the expectation of hitting nearly every one.

This produced a revolutionary asymmetry and made huge Soviet investments obsolete. Precision provided a way to defeat scale.

Today, the US faces a similar situation: its adversaries are mass-producing drones and missiles at enormous scale. A revolutionary new technology is desperately needed in order to make this investment obsolete.

Trump Shooter Began Buying Guns, Bomb Materials More Than a Year Ago, FBI Says

Sadie Gurman and C. Ryan Barber

The gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump began making dozens of gun-related purchases and stocking up on bomb-making materials more than a year ago, FBI officials said Monday, the strongest indication yet that he had been planning an attack well before he opened fire on the former president.

Thomas Matthew Crooks made 25 different gun-related buys online between spring 2023 and the first half of this year, and bought material used in explosives six times, officials said, offering new glimpses into their far-ranging investigation into the July 13 shooting at a campaign rally in western Pennsylvania.

FBI officials said Crooks, 20 years old, searched online for information about power plants, mass-shooting events, improvised explosive devices and the May assassination attempt on Slovakia’s prime minister, said Kevin Rojek, the FBI special agent in charge in Pittsburgh.

“While the FBI’s investigation may not have yet determined a motive, we believe the subject made significant efforts to conceal his activities,” Rojek said. “Additionally, we believe his actions can also show careful planning ahead of the campaign rally.”

Integrate to Win From Competition Through Conflict: Create a Joint Force Information Warfare Component Commander

Tam N. Pham, & Walter A. Berbrick

Throughout the history of warfare, militaries have sought advantages by conducting information warfare (IW) to affect the perception and behavior of adversaries.1 Advances in IW capabilities are increasing the reach, speed, and effectiveness by which individuals, organizations, and systems can collect, process, disseminate, or act on information—and deny adversaries the same.2 The United States is not the only power to recognize the importance of IW in achieving national objectives. Russia and China have made great strides in improving and employing their IW capabilities to offset U.S. joint (and allied combined) forces in competition and conflict.3 Russia’s and China’s ability to employ synchronized IW capabilities rapidly and coherently to gain information advantages across the operational environment has allowed them, in some cases, to seize the initiative or exploit the information environment to counter U.S. military superiority.4

More recently, the Ukrainian leadership has used IW effectively to discredit Russia’s “special military operation” and its false claims that Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration is a Nazi regime that must be “de-Nazified.” Along the same lines, some of Ukraine’s strongest supporters, such as the United States, were effective in rallying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and European Union to Ukraine’s military aid and bringing wide condemnation of Russia’s unprovoked war on Ukraine.5 The information warfare lessons from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war highlight the value of information superiority in modern warfare and have helped Ukraine tremendously in getting timely support from the West and others while thwarting Russia’s ability to gain the initiative or control the information environment in this conflict.6

The U.S. Wanted to Knock Down Huawei. It’s Only Getting Stronger.

Liza Lin, Stu Woo and Raffaele Huang

Five years ago, Washington sanctioned Huawei, cutting off the Chinese company’s access to advanced U.S. technologies because it feared the telecommunications giant would spy on Americans and their allies. Many in the industry thought it would ring the death knell for one of China’s most vital tech players.

Huawei struggled at first—but now it’s come roaring back.

Bolstered by billions of dollars in state support, Huawei has expanded into new businesses, boosted its profitability and found fresh ways to curb its dependence on U.S. suppliers. It has held on to its leading position in the global telecom-equipment market, despite American efforts to squeeze Huawei out of its allies’ networks. And it’s making a big comeback in high-end smartphones, using sophisticated new chips developed in-house to take buyers from Apple.

Along the way, a company that portrayed itself as independent from Beijing has morphed into something more like a national champion, helping China wean itself off foreign suppliers—part of a broader campaign to eliminate U.S. technology in China, dubbed “Delete A,” for Delete America. Its resurgence shows why it’s so hard for America to contain China’s technological ambitions.

Head of Project 2025 Steps Down Following Trump Criticism

Andrew Restuccia and Vivian Salama

The Heritage Foundation official who leads Project 2025, the conservative road map for the next Republican administration, is stepping down after former President Donald Trump and his aides publicly criticized the group and Democrats decried its proposals as radical and dangerous.

Paul Dans, the group’s director, informed Heritage Foundation staff this week of his decision to step down, according to people familiar with the discussions. Dans didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump campaign senior advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita pounced on the news. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign—it will not end well for you,” they said in a statement.

In recent weeks, Wiles made calls to Heritage officials asking them to lower Project 2025’s profile, according to people familiar with the discussions. LaCivita made his distaste for the group known at the Republican National Convention this month when he called Project 2025 a “pain in the ass.”

War is Not Just

L. Lance Boothe

Let us discuss war as it is, not as we would like it to be. Regulating war is pointless, and our time and energy would be better spent fighting war quickly, decisively, and with single-minded ruthlessness rather than fretting over ethics. Acting as if law applies to war is a foolish hinderance on its conduct. War drives toward extremes. War should go to these extremes as quickly as possible where it is fought in such a vicious manner that it persuades enemies and neutrals alike that war with us is not worth waging. After all, the victor writes history – “What I have written I have written,” the infamous Pontius Pilate declared[1] – and in so doing the narrative is established.

The justness of the cause in war depends on perspective. As the Athenians told the Melians in 416 B.C. according to Thucydides, “justice is only a factor in human decisions when the parties are on equal footing. Those in positions of power do what their power permits, while the weak have no choice but to accept it.”[2] Melian independence meant nothing to Athens. The Athenians pursued their own interests. They were justified in their own eyes. Subsequently, Athens made quick work of Melos, killing every man on the island and enslaving the rest.

Can Anyone Govern Gaza?

Daniel Byman

When the devastating war in the Gaza Strip ends, someone will have to govern the territory. It’s a job that many have held. Israel occupied the strip between 1967, when it conquered Gaza, and 1994, when it transferred official control of most affairs to the newly created Palestinian Authority in the heady days of the Oslo peace negotiations—although Israel maintained 21 settlements there until 2005. In 2006, Hamas won the legislative elections in the Palestinian territories, and in 2007 it pushed its rivals out of Gaza by force. Hamas then governed Gaza, albeit with many Israeli restrictions, until Israel dislodged it in response to the October 7, 2023, attacks. Today, Gaza has no functioning government.

When the shooting stops, Gaza will remain a political and economic wasteland. As of mid-July, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 38,000 Gazans are dead. According to UNWRA, 1.9 million—about 80 percent of the territory’s population—are displaced. About 80 percent of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure—such as homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities—has been destroyed or damaged, according to the World Health Organization. Now that Hamas no longer polices the territory, crime is rife. Gaza’s economy was stagnant before October 7, but today, there is no economy to speak of. The population will be even more dependent on outside aid than before.

Defending the Dollar

Chris Borges

The U.S. dollar is at the center of the global economy, comprising 90 percent of foreign exchange transactions and 60 percent of foreign reserves. The dollar’s key international role, known as “dollar dominance,” has important advantages for the United States. But it also means that a less-dominant dollar would come with costs for the American economy and national security.

While the dollar remains dominant today, global economic trends and policy decisions at home may be undermining it. As foreign nations increasingly grow wealthy, the demand for foreign currencies naturally goes up. Meanwhile, Washington’s frequent use of dollar-based sanctions can lead foreign governments, businesses, and individuals to look for alternative currencies.

Join CSIS’s Scott Miller as we dive into the world of global trade and finance to show how currencies and geopolitical power are fundamentally linked.

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