Indian Strategic Studies: 08/13/24

13 August 2024

The Maldives’ Tightrope Walk: Balancing China-India Relations Amid Mounting Debt

Eva Abdulla

The Maldives finds itself at a critical juncture, navigating the turbulent waters of great power competition in the Indian Ocean as India and China vie for influence. Once as reliable as the calm Maldivian sea in March or as predictable as rain on a July day, Maldivian foreign policy now appears to leave local observers and foreign diplomats racking their brains over which way incoming governments will turn, and by just how much.

Recent developments highlight the contradictions inherent in the country’s attempts to balance its strategic interests amid the intensifying rivalry between India and China, all while grappling with a mounting public debt crisis.

Political Landscape and Strategic Realignment

The September 2023 presidential election saw the victory of Dr. Mohamed Muizzu, marking a significant shift away from the previous administration’s foreign policy orientation.

Muizzu’s flagship election promise was removing Indian troops from the Maldives, which raised alarm bells in New Delhi while being welcomed by Beijing. The new government also vowed to review more than 100 agreements with India.

India Walks On Thin Ice In Bangladesh – Analysis

P. K. Balachandran

India’s relationship with Bangladesh touched the nadir this month when its trusted friend in Dhaka, Sheikh Hasina, quit the Prime Ministership and fled to India unable to face the wrath of her people who were denied basic democratic rights during her 15-year rule.

This was the second time that the India-Bangladesh relationship had touched the nadir. The first was in August 1975, when Hasina’s father and Father of the Nation, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was assassinated by a group of junior military officers aggrieved by Mujib’s dictatorship, his inability to shore up a crashing economy, and his alleged servitude to India, which had helped him establish Bangladesh.

From 1975 till 1996, when Mujib’s daughter Sheikh Hasina came to power as an elected Prime Minister for the first time, Bangladesh was in the grip of an anti-Indian sentiment, despite India’s direct role in establishing Bangladesh.

A Different Economic Strategy for India

Michael Mandelbaum

The national election in India this past spring produced a shocking outcome. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were widely expected to win a third five-year term and increase their majority in the Indian parliament. Standing at 303 seats out of 543 going into the voting, some BJP officials spoke of winning as many as 370, or even 400, giving the prime minister and his party a stranglehold on India’s national affairs. Instead, the BJP lost ground, winning only 240 seats.

The result touched off a search for the causes of its failure to meet expectations. There are several possibilities, all of them valid at least to some extent: dissatisfaction with the cult of personality surrounding the prime minister; opposition to his government’s violation of the norms of India’s long-standing democracy -- violations that included jailing political opponents and harassing critical journalists; and dismay at the BJP’s policy of “Hindutva” – Hindu nationalism – which took the form of discrimination against religious minorities, especially the country’s 200 million Muslims, who comprise 14 percent of the total population.

Another plausible reason for the BJP’s worse-than-expected electoral showing is India’s economic performance during the decade of Modi’s leadership. In some ways, his economic record is an impressive one. Overall economic growth averaged close to six percent per year according to official statistics, although there is some dispute about how accurate these are. The growth that India has achieved, however, has not generated jobs on anything like the scale that the country’s 1.6 billion people need. By one estimate, youth unemployment stands at 45 percent. Nothing is more important for the country’s future than creating jobs at a faster rate and in greater numbers than it has done so far.

India Launches Russian Stealth Frigates as New Delhi and Moscow Strengthen Defense Partnership

Syed Fazl-e-Haider

On July 24, New Delhi launched the first of two Russian-supplied advanced stealth frigates for the Indian Navy. India contracted four frigates from Russia in October 2016, two of which were to be built in Russia and two in India. One of the vessels, named Triput after the mighty arrow representing the indomitable spirit of the Indian Navy, was built at the Goa Shipyard in India. It is 125 meters long with a width of 15 meters and has an estimated displacement of approximately 3,600 tons and maximum speed of 28 knots (The Hindu, July 25). The first ship built in Russia is scheduled to join the Indian Navy in September, and the second ship from Russia by February 2025. The delivery of the two stealth frigates being constructed at Yantar Shipyard in Russia has been delayed mainly due to Moscow’s war against Ukraine and Western sanctions. The recent transfer comes from a $500 million technology transfer deal signed in 2018 between Goa Shipyard and Rosoboronexport, the Russian state agency overseeing the export of military and dual-use technologies. Under the deal, Rosoboronexport will assist with the local manufacturing of two frigates in material and design (The Hindu, July 15). All this is emblematic of New Delhi and Moscow expanding their military and defense partnership in recent years, as the Kremlin has had to find willing partners for military exports due to Western sanctions and seeks to expand its influence in South Asia.

India and Russia have been strategic partners since the Cold War, during which they signed the 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation (South China Morning Post, July 6). Since then, Russia has become India’s largest supplier of defense equipment. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, since 2017, Moscow has accounted for $8.5 billion of the $18.3 billion New Delhi has spent on arms imports (The Economic Times, August 14, 2023). India has purchased fighter jets, tanks, nuclear submarines, and an aircraft carrier from Russia over the decades. In 2023, Russia delivered three out of five S-400 Triumph air defense system units to India, purchased for $5.4 billion in 2018. The Indian Air Force (IAF) is also heavily dependent on Russia for spare parts of its Su-30MKI and MiG-29 fighter jets (Dawn, March 24, 2023).

Taiwan’s Latest Defense Budget Risks Falling Further Behind China

David Sacks

Taiwan’s President, Lai Ching-te, has unveiled plans to increase defense spending by nearly six percent, reaching almost $20 billion next year. While Lai stated that such an increase demonstrates Taiwan’s commitment to its security, the proposed budget does not adequately convey a sense of urgency. Instead, Taiwan’s military is set to fall further behind China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and deterrence in the Taiwan Strait will continue to erode. With Chinese pressure intensifying, Taiwan needs to increase defense spending far more rapidly to both show its partners that it takes the threat posed by China seriously and generate uncertainty within China’s leadership as to whether a blockade or invasion of the island would succeed.

Credit Where Due

Taiwan should be given credit for reversing a worrying erosion of its military capabilities. President Lai’s predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, also of the Democratic Progressive Party, pushed through seven consecutive increases to Taiwan’s defense budget, in the process nearly doubling Taiwan’s defense spending. Lai’s six percent increase is also significantly higher than the last increase Tsai oversaw, which was 3.5 percent. Taiwan’s defense spending is now equivalent to roughly 2.5 percent of GDP, exceeding the baseline set for members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Will Bangladesh Go In Iranian Way? – OpEd

The successful 1979 Iranian working-class struggle against the monarchical dictatorship was eventually snatched away from people and hijacked by reactionary religious forces, with the covert support of imperialist and colonial powers led by the CIA. The progressive character of the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom and justice gradually faded, giving way to the rise of reactionary ruling elites who concealed their power in the name of religion and nationalism. This political and economic transition has not only betrayed the aspirations of the Iranian working people but also set the stage for a repressive regime that continues to dominate the social, economic and political landscape of the country till today.

The successful mass uprising in Bangladesh, led by students, against the corrupt, nepotistic, and authoritarian government of Sheikh Hasina stands as a powerful testament to the power and resilience of democratic struggles. The Sheikh Hasina regime was challenged with widespread anger and legitimate grievances and protests from the Bangladeshi people. Her regime was unpopular among the masses. In response, her government resorted to highhanded tactics, attempting to suppress the dissent by using state police and military forces. Thousands of people were killed, injured, and unlawfully arrested by the Hasina government. However, these repressive actions only fuelled the resistance, finally culminating in the regime’s downfall and forcing Sheikh Hasina to resign and go into exile.

US mainland ultra-vulnerable to China, Russia hybrid attacks

Gabriel Honrada

The US Army’s recent Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) report warns that near-peer adversaries China and Russia are gearing up for unprecedented hybrid warfare tactics targeting the US homeland.

The report says the US homeland, traditionally considered a sanctuary, is now vulnerable to its near-peer adversaries’ conventional, hybrid and irregular warfare tactics.

The TRADOC report emphasizes that these adversaries are heavily investing in capabilities designed to disrupt and attack soft targets within US territory, leveraging information and cyber operations to create significant effects with minimal risk of escalation compared to kinetic strikes.

The TRADOC report suggests that China and Russia are likely to transition from subtle, non-attributable cyber and information operations to more overt and destructive physical actions in the event of a conflict.

It mentions the potential use of ultra-long-range systems with conventional payloads, asymmetric platforms and commercial off-the-shelf unmanned aerial systems (UAS) to target critical infrastructure and military operations.

US Warns of 'Gray Zone' Conflict With China, Russia, North Korea

Hugh Cameron

The U.S. intelligence community believes America will have to contend with increasingly frequent "gray zone" attacks by its geopolitical rivals, who are willing to employ "diverse and damaging" means to undermine the country on the world stage.

A July 31 report, published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), outlined the nature of the new threat facing the U.S., which it said "will create both concrete and intangible threats to the United States and its partners, U.S. commitments, and the international order."

"Through 2030, great power competition and international relations generally will increasingly feature an array of hostile 'gray zone' activities," the report read. "As China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia seek to challenge the United States and gain advantage over other countries through deliberate campaigns, while also trying to avoid direct war."

In the attached lexicon, the ODNI defined the "gray zone" as the realm of interstate competition which falls between peaceful interstate relations and armed conflict.

China vs. America: The Geopolitical Olympics

Graham Allison

Watching the extraordinary performance of athletes competing in the Paris Olympics is a humbling experience. It is amazing to see what fellow human beings are capable of. Each time an athlete beats the previous world record, I cheer. But like most Americans viewing coverage of these events, I’m certainly not neutral. I note which countries’ athletes win gold and which do not. I’m heartened to hear our national anthem played first and most often at the podium where the medals are awarded.

In this Olympics, as in most other races in the world today, there are two—and only two—superpowers: China and the United States. As of August 9, the United States has won thirty gold medals, compared to China’s thirty-two. In the total medal count, the U.S. athletes now have gained 104 and their Chinese competitors seventy-seven. When the last of the 987 medals are awarded next Sunday and the French hosts do their best to deliver a closing shock that matches their opening, the odds that the United States will emerge as number one are roughly 80 percent. But, of course, as Yogi Berra taught us: “it ain’t over till it’s over.” As one avid sports fan who also happens to be the President of China, Xi Jinping, has noted: “Unpredictability is what makes a sports match…exciting.”

China’s rise from essentially nowhere to become the leading rival of the United States in the Olympics mirrors its rise in virtually every other dimension to become the defining geopolitical rival in the twenty-first century. Until four decades ago, China had never won a medal in the modern Olympics. Its first medal came at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. A quarter century later, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China won forty-eight gold medals to the United State’s thirty-six. As Figure 1 shows, the United States snapped back. In Tokyo in 2021, the United States took home thirty-nine gold medals, a total of 113, compared to China’s thirty-eight and eighty-nine.

Scientist at Forefront of US Army Research Selected to Lead PRC’s Strategic Chip Production Line

Sunny Cheung

On July 30, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) announced the establishment of its third-generation chip production line in Hong Kong (HKCNA, July 30). This represents a significant move that underscores Beijing’s ambitions in the semiconductor industry. The new production line is spearheaded by renowned scientist Dr. Yitao Liao, who previously collaborated with the US Army on similar technologies. Both this new production line and Dr. Liao’s involvement raise questions about US policies toward the security and supervision of research into dual-use technology amid ongoing US-PRC rivalry.

Overview of the New Chip Production Line

The newly established chip production line is located in the Yuen Long Microelectronics Center (MEC) in Hong Kong, a facility set to be operational within this year. The project is driven by MassPhoton HK, a company founded by Dr. Yitao Liao. The primary focus of this initiative is the development of 8-inch Gallium Nitride (GaN) epitaxial wafers and the associated light emitting diode technology (LED) technology, which are essential for the advancement of third-generation semiconductor technologies (Mingpao, July 31; MassPhotonHK, last accessed August 5). The Chinese version of the company’s website mentions that they have established optical technology laboratories at Boston University in the United States—something left out of the English version.

Xi Sets Out 2029 Vision At The Third Plenum

Willy Wo-Lap Lam

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General-Secretary President Xi Jinping has consolidated his status as the anchor of efforts to attain a “high-standard socialist market economy in all respects (全面建成高水平社会主义市场经济体制)” by the year 2029 (People’s Daily, July 19; Xinhua, July 18).The enshrining of 2029 as the target for achieving these goals suggests that the Third Plenary Session of the CCP’s 20th Central Committee, which concluded on Thursday, July 18, has confirmed Xi Jinping Thought as the guiding light of the Party and nation. Likewise, the plenum guaranteed that the 71-year-old paramount leader will remain in power as CCP General Secretary and commander-in-chief for a fourth five-year term from 2027 to 2032 (Deutche Welle Chinese, July 19; rfi, July 18). Meanwhile, a thorough-going purge is being undertaken in both civilian and military sectors. While recent rumors that Xi’s wife Peng Liyuan (彭丽媛)—recently made a member of the disciplinary and assessment office of the Central Military Commission—would be elevated to the Politburo failed to materialize, the commander-in-chief’s hold over the top brass still seems to be as strong as ever (China Brief, May 24).

A Xinhua piece eulogizing “master reformer Xi Jinping (改革家习近平)” was mysteriously pulled from official media on the eve of the conclave. Beyond this, however, no voices challenging Xi’s position have been heard from rival cliques such as the Shanghai Gang, the Communist Youth League, or so-called second-generation “princelings” (rfi, July 20; CDT, July 18; rfa, July 17). Yet apparently due to Xi’s desire to appease all Party factions, the authorities have used careful and somewhat neutral language to describe his call for “high-quality development” and deepening “reform and opening up.” The relatively uncontroversial measures prescribed by the plenum and other Party and government organs seem unlikely to reinvigorate the PRC economy, which grew a disappointing 4.7 percent in the second quarter of this year (VOA, July 20, BBC Chinese, July 16).

Economic and Technological Zones: Economic Strategy in the Tibet Autonomous Region

Devendra Kumar

In June, Wang Junzheng (王君正), Party Secretary for the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR; 西藏自治区), went on an inspection tour of the Lhasa Economic-Technological Development Zone (Lhasa ETDZ, 国家级拉萨经济技术开发区) in the regional capital’s Doilungdêqên District (堆龙德庆区). While there, he instructed officials to improve various aspects of the zone to help boost businesses such as cross-border e-commerce and support Tibetan products to “go out,” creating a new source of growth for the region’s foreign trade (Lhasa Daily, June 13). The readout of Wang’s visit reflects a concerted focus on ETDZs and expanding overseas trade as local growth drivers.

The government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been trying to recalibrate Tibet’s economy over the last 15 years. In 2008, angry protests triggered a shift in government policy to massive investments in internal security and tighter control of the socio-cultural sphere (see China Brief; May 13, 2008, September 21, 2017, September 22, 2020). Although the region has registered growth rates above the national average since the 1990s, this has largely been fueled by massive subsidies and transfer payments by the central government. [1] Since 2008, the government has focused on developing the tourism, mining, and construction industries, but their potential to help shift to indigenous growth remains limited. Provincial policymakers therefore have launched an array of initiatives that broadly replicate the growth model of inland provinces (内地).

Iran Is Better Positioned to Launch Nuclear-Weapons Program, New U.S. Intelligence Assessment Says

Laurence Norman and Michael R. Gordon

Iran is pursuing research that has put it in a better position to launch a nuclear-weapons program, according to a new assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.

The shift in Washington’s view of Iran’s nuclear efforts comes at a critical time, with Iran having produced enough highly enriched nuclear fuel for a few nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community still believes that Iran isn’t currently working to build a nuclear device, a U.S. official said. Nor does it have evidence that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, is considering resuming his country’s nuclear-weapons program, which U.S. intelligence says was largely suspended in 2003.

But a July report to Congress from the director of national intelligence warned that Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”

The report omitted what has been a standard U.S. intelligence assertion for years: that Iran “isn’t currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.”

Lebanon: Nothing About This Is Normal – OpEd

Nadia Samet-Warren

A Lebanese friend and colleague once told me, “Our skin is thicker than that of a crocodile.”

And it’s true. Any type of conflict and instability you can think of, Lebanon has experienced it. Colonisation, invasion and attack; civil and proxy wars, economic collapse and political assassinations, not to mention regional turmoil and vast influxes of refugees. In recent years – amid continued political paralysis and economic collapse, compounded by the devastating port explosion four years ago – day-to-day life in Lebanon has been almost impossible.

Yet throughout it all, ordinary Lebanese people have remained incredibly strong willed and resilient.

And now, as tensions soar in the region, I am reminded again of this amazing defiance in the face of adversity. I’ve seen it for myself in my many visits over the years, with friends refusing to have evening plans derailed by a window-rattling explosion or city-wide power outages.

Iran's War and Peace Dilemma

Tom O'Connor

As Iran continues to weigh its options to retaliate for the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh late last month in Tehran, an intense debate has emerged within the highest circles of the Islamic Republic as to how to strike back at Israel without further inflaming the regional crisis surrounding the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

A major escalation is not inevitable, however.

With U.S. President Joe Biden's administration now scrambling alongside mediators Egypt and Qatar to push both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and newly ascended Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar toward achieving a breakthrough on long-deadlocked ceasefire talks, a glimmer of hope exists for a rare moment of restraint in a region otherwise consumed by conflict.

But whether such an agreement is possible or would go far enough to satisfy Tehran and its allies' appetite for revenge remains an ominous variable that looms over the Middle East.

Russian Forces Are Advancing In The Donbas: Ukraine’s Response? Invade Russia – Analysis

Mike Eckel

Ukraine has repeatedly crossed the border into Russia since the start of Moscow’s all-out invasion: intelligence operatives doing clandestine operations; drones targeting airfields hundreds of kilometers away; ragtag, unofficial militia groups raiding border villages.

This time, it’s different.

Hundreds of uniformed Ukrainian troops, backed by armored vehicles and other heavy equipment, this week punched into Russia’s Kursk region north of the Ukrainian city of Sumy. As of August 9, the troops had seized control of about 600 square kilometers of territory, and more than two dozen settlements, according to local officials, pro-war bloggers, and open-source intelligence reports.

The head-snapping incursion — the largest by Ukrainian forces since Russia launched the invasion in February 2022 — comes as Ukrainian troops struggle to hold back Russian advances in at least three locations across the 1,100-kilometer front line further to the south. Russian troops are nearing a major Donbas highway whose capture would threaten Ukrainian supply lines along the entire front.

The State Department’s Gaza Policy Has Failed

Hala Rharrit and Annelle Sheline

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants a war with Iran, as he clearly laid out in his address to the U.S. Congress last month. He returned to Israel emboldened to carry out that goal, seemingly certain of U.S. support—ordering the killing of a top Hamas official on Iranian soil just seven days later.

Ukraine’s Invasion of Russia Could Bring a Quicker End to the War

Andreas Umland

In the space of four days, the Russia-Ukraine war has dramatically shifted. The incursion of Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk region has quickly turned into the largest territorial gain by either side since the successful Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson in the fall of 2022. As of this writing, it is still unclear whether thinned-out and poorly prepared Russian forces have been able to halt the Ukrainian advance, with reports of burning columns of Russian reinforcements reminiscent of the early days of the war.

The operation demonstrates Ukraine’s ability to achieve surprise and exploit sudden breakthroughs, something at which Russia has consistently failed since the start of its invasion. It is also the first time Russia has been invaded by foreign troops since World War II, showing Russians in no uncertain terms that the bloody war they unleashed against their neighbor has come home. Ukraine’s Western supporters seem to be on board, with the White House and European Union headquarters issuing statements that it was up to Ukraine to decide on the operation.

Previously, there had been much debate in Washington, Berlin, and among a wildly speculating media about the Kremlin’s supposed red lines that would set off World War III and nuclear Armageddon, with one of the lines being taking the war to Russia with Western weapons. The latter has now occurred. The belief in uncontrolled escalation led the Biden administration and some of its partners to severely restrict both the types of weapons delivered to Ukraine and their permitted range; Ukraine has not been allowed to use Western missiles to hit military installations on the Russian side of the border, for example. Part of the effect and purpose of the Kursk operation could be to demonstrate, once again, the fallacy of the red-line argument.

‘The US Needs to Learn a Great Deal From What Ukraine Has Done’ – Gen. David Petraeus

Stash Luczkiw

US aid: too little too late?

KP: The US has been providing robust aid to Ukraine, especially with the passage of the $61 billion military aid package in April. Yet you and others have pointed out that Washington has been consistently slow in making its decisions to help. The Biden administration has been accused of obliging the Ukrainians to fight with one hand tied behind their back, of wanting the Ukrainians not to win, but to “not lose” – i.e., to survive. Likewise, the Biden administration has been averse to seeing Russia outright lose. Do you share Ukrainians’ assessment that Washington has been overly cautious?

Gen. Petraeus: The US has, of course, provided more overall assistance than just about all other contributing countries put together (though European countries and the EU have now, in aggregate, contributed a bit more than the US in total economic, humanitarian, and security assistance). And the US has provided by far the most security assistance. In fact, without US weapons systems, munitions, vehicles, logistics, coordination, etc., Ukraine would be in a vastly more challenging situation than it is today. Indeed, I believe the US also deserves considerable credit for leading the overall response very early on and ensuring that all Western countries worked together to support Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s brutal, unprovoked, and destructive invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and has continued to do so ever since diplomatically, economically, and with humanitarian assistance, as well as with enormous security assistance and intelligence support.

Surprise Attack in Kursk

Mick Ryan

The past few days in Ukraine have demonstrated, yet again, how surprise plays a major role in human competition and conflict. Regardless of the many technological developments which might inform or speed up decision-making in military and national security endeavours, surprise is an enduring feature of war.

Achieving surprise means that one can execute a plan that is unexpected by the enemy. Whether achieved through physical or virtual approaches, surprise generates a cognitive effect in one’s adversary. This feeling of perplexity, shock, and uncertainty in individuals as well as in teams, is designed by those seeking to achieve surprise to undermine an enemy’s cohesion and morale.

Soldiers, citizens and politicians have been surprised, consistently, over thousands of years of history. The writings of ancient historians such as Thucydides, Polybius, and Herodotus contain examples of nations or city states achieving victory by employing surprise, ruses and deception.

Surprise Ukraine offensive pokes Russia’s soft underbelly

Max Boot

As the war in Ukraine settled into a stalemate, two assumptions became prevalent among analysts: First, that it is nearly impossible to achieve any surprise on a battlefield blanketed by drones. Second, that it is nearly impossible to mount fast-moving offensive operations, given the extensive defenses erected by both sides. Ukraine has challenged both assumptions over the past few days with its surprise, lightning-fast thrust into Russia’s Kursk region — an area familiar to military historians as the site, during World War II, of the biggest tank battle in history.

The Ukrainian military shocked the entire world — and the Russian defenders — when it sent an armored column on Tuesday across the border from Ukraine’s Sumy region. There had been cross-border raids by Ukraine before, but those were much smaller operations conducted by Russian volunteers. This was something much more ambitious: a combined-arms offensive utilizing armored vehicles (some of them German- and U.S.-made), infantry, artillery and electronic-warfare equipment. Ukraine reportedly committed elements of four elite brigades to the operation.

This was, in fact, the kind of well-planned, well-executed assault that the Ukrainians had hoped to pull off last year, on a much grander scale, when their objective was to slice through Russian lines in southern Ukraine and break the land bridge between Crimea and Russia. That offensive failed against well-prepared Russian defenses full of mines and trenches, all covered by heavy artillery fire and large numbers of drones.

Is Russia’s War Against Ukraine Spilling Over Into Africa? – Analysis

Peter Fabricius

Russia appears to be intensifying its offensive – on various fronts – to gain influence in Africa, and its enemy Ukraine is fighting back, threatening to make the continent a major proxy battlefield.

Minor military skirmishes elsewhere in Africa exploded last week when Moscow’s Wagner (now Africa Corps) took heavy casualties in a battle with Tuareg separatists and jihadists in Tinzaouaten, Mali. This was a setback for the Kremlin, which appeared to be expanding its presence or at least rebuffing Western efforts to regain lost African ground.

Russian soldiers had already begun filling the vacuum left by the United States (US) with the withdrawal of its last troops this week from Agadez, Niger. The US base had been used to monitor Islamist extremists throughout the Sahel. In Faustin-Archange Touadéra’s Central African Republic – effectively a client state of Moscow’s for some years – Wagner operatives scuppered attempts by the US security outfit Bancroft Global Development to establish itself in Bangui in January.

The dollar is everyone’s problem - Opinion

Hippolyte Fofack

In 1971, US Treasury Secretary John Connally famously told his counterparts in the G10 that “the dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem.” Connally was being unexpectedly candid about the fact that, even though the greenback was the world’s main reserve currency, its foremost purpose was to advance US interests.

That remains true today. But in recent decades, the dollar’s central role in global trade and finance has posed more of a problem for emerging-market and developing economies (EMDEs) than for the world’s rich countries. For example, the US Federal Reserve’s current tightening cycle – like others before it – has disproportionately affected EMDEs by fuelling massive and inordinate capital outflows. This, in turn, has triggered currency gyrations that exacerbate macroeconomic challenges and increase debt-servicing costs, resulting in limited fiscal space for public investment.

Recent monetary-policy divergences between the Fed and other advanced-economy central banks are, however, stoking exchange-rate volatility in the world’s rich countries. The spillovers from the Fed’s higher-for-longer policy position are perhaps most pronounced in Japan, which has recently taken to intervening in foreign-exchange markets to stem the yen’s rapid slide.

Russia Considers Supplying Anti-Ship Missiles to Ansarallah

Andrew McGregor

On August 2, a senior US official reported that members of the Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU) are operating in the Houthi-controlled territory of Yemen in an advisory role to Yemen’s Houthi movement, Ansarallah. The report claims that GRU officers have been operating in Yemen for “several months” to assist the Houthis in targeting commercial shipping (Middle East Eye, August 2). Ansarallah has been striking shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden for over eight months in support of Gaza’s Hamas movement. Primarily using drones and missiles provided by Iran, the Houthi attacks are intended to interfere with the movement of Israeli ships or cargoes, as well as those of Israel’s main backers, the United States and the United Kingdom. The latter two powers also provide military aid and intelligence to Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion. When the United States gave Kyiv permission to use new weapons provided by the US-led Western alliance to strike targets inside Russia, Moscow began to consider striking back on a new front by providing modern anti-ship missiles to Yemen’s Houthis (Middle East Eye, June 28). The provision of sophisticated arms for Houthi use against Western shipping would represent a dangerous expansion of the conflict in Ukraine that could not easily be reversed.

The weapons in question are believed to be P-800 Oniks supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles. These sea-skimming missiles fly 10 to 15 meters (32 to 50 feet) above the water at a top speed of 1,860 miles per hour, making them extremely difficult to evade or intercept. In the absence of a Ukrainian fleet, Moscow may calculate it can put some of its anti-ship missiles to better use against Ukraine’s supporters on another front. Previously, the Kremlin had called on Ansarallah to abandon the practice of firing on international shipping in the Red Sea while condemning the US and UK counterstrikes as an “Anglo-Saxon perversion of UN Security Council resolutions” (The Moscow Times, January 12).

Friend or Foe? Researchers Put AI Models to the Test in Cyber-Warfare Scenarios

Neil J. Rubenking

For more than 65 years, the federal government has funded MITRE's security research in many fields—cancer research, radar technology, GPS, and, of course, cyber security. Nowadays, the big topic is generative AI backed by large language models (LLMs). At this year's Black Hat conference, MITRE sent a team of presenters to showcase tests they're conducting to determine whether LLMs will enhance cyber operations or open new security holes.

Are LLMs Dangerous or Helpful?

About a year ago, MITRE started fielding questions about the potential security risks of LLMs, said Michael Kourematis, a principal adversary emulation engineer. Without a way to test LLMs, however, it's difficult to know if they can generate or identify malicious code.

"We’re trying to make progress on answering that question,” he said, which includes a series of tests the MITRE team outlined here at Black Hat.

Marisa Dotter, a senior machine learning engineer, introduced the first test, which runs an LLM through a set of multiple-choice questions about a simulated cyber-ops scenario. She emphasized that they test the basic, unaugmented LLM with no special tuning.

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