The U.S. military-first approach to Asia continued last week as the USS Michigan, a nuclear-powered, guided-missile submarine, arrived in South Korea as part of a new agreement between Washington and Seoul designed to reassure the latter about the strength of the U.S. commitment to its ally.
Following their meeting in April, South Korean President Yoon and President Biden issued the Washington Declaration that restated the American commitment to defend South Korea. Under that agreement the U.S. promised to “enhance the regular visibility of strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula.” The USS Michigan’s visit to South Korea was the first by an American submarine since 2017, and there are likely going to be many more to follow in the coming years.
By itself, this show of force is not necessarily a problem, but a lopsided approach to North Korea and to East Asia more generally that emphasizes military power to the exclusion of other tools cannot reduce tensions or resolve outstanding disputes. The more shows of force that the U.S. makes to reassure South Korea, the more likely it is that North Korea will respond with more of its provocative missile testing and possibly even with a new nuclear test.
U.S. reassurance of allies needs to be balanced with assurances to adversaries, or these gestures of support will stoke tensions and make already dangerous situations more unstable. In that sense, making shows of force can quickly become self-defeating if the U.S. and its allies want to avoid a new crisis.
Unfortunately, there is not much evidence that the U.S. is consistently employing other tools of statecraft to balance the shows of force and military exercises that it has been doing with South Korea and with other allies in the region. The emphasis always seems to be on displaying strength and power projection with little evidence of the flexibility and openness to compromise that are required for de-escalation and diplomatic engagement.
U.S. North Korea policy remains frozen with goals and coercive measures that haven’t made sense or worked for the last 20 years, and on that front there is no sign of a thaw anytime soon. A policy of sticks and more sticks is what brought things to their current state, so we shouldn’t expect to get different results if the policy remains unchanged.
One of the reasons why South Korea demands reassurance is that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal continues to grow unabated, so the best way to address that concern is by working towards an arms control regime that would place limits on the size of the arsenal. The U.S. won’t be able to get North Korea to eliminate its arsenal, but it might be able to secure an agreement that keeps their arsenal under the certain level.
North Korea is already deterred, so it isn’t clear what real benefit the U.S. or South Korea gets from these displays. It’s not as if Pyongyang doesn’t understand how powerful the United States is. After all, their preoccupation with building up a nuclear arsenal is driven in no small part by their fear of an American attack. The U.S. often acts as if our leaders believe that adversaries doubt Washington’s willingness to use force against them, but this is something that other states have no trouble believing. In the North Korean case, their government takes it for granted that the U.S. may use force against them, but they don’t believe promises that it won’t.
Under these circumstances, sending more military assets into the region, even if it is only for a short time, is unlikely to make the situation any better. It is reminiscent of how the U.S. will sometimes fly long-range bombers to the Middle East to “send a message” to Iran, as if the Iranian government had forgotten that the U.S. can attack them. It amounts to little more than saber-rattling that does nothing to address the underlying disputes that could escalate into conflict.
There may be occasions when shows of force are appropriate, but the U.S. should realize that these symbolic gestures can come with real costs when they reinforce mutual hostility and mistrust with adversaries. When other states make overt displays of their military power, the U.S. does not usually view these displays as harmless or defensive actions. Just as the U.S. tends to see such actions by other states as threatening and provocative, the other states see U.S. shows of force in the same way. Combative posturing tends to strengthen hardliners in both governments and makes efforts to reduce tensions much riskier politically.
The submarine visit is intended primarily as a signal to North Korea, but it also sends a message to China, whose government had already denounced the plans for it as soon as the Declaration was published. On this issue, the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. of “provoking bloc confrontation, undermining the nuclear non-proliferation system, damaging the strategic interests of other countries, exacerbating tensions on the Korean peninsula, undermining regional peace and stability, and running counter to the goal of the denuclearization of the peninsula.”
The USS Michigan’s visit is bound to antagonize China just as Secretary Blinken was in Beijing to try to stabilize the relationship. Maybe it is a coincidence that the two visits are happening so close to one another, but the timing is hardly optimal.
The U.S. approach to Asia, like much of the rest of our foreign policy, suffers from over-militarization. That has the effect of encouraging arms racing and causing relations with China to deteriorate rapidly, and it creates tensions that many of our allies and partners in the region find worrying.
As international relations scholar Van Jackson observed more than a year ago, “U.S. policy toward the world’s most important region is no more than a mashup of the residual inertia from Trump’s military-first Asia policy with a revival of then-U.S. President Barack Obama’s well-intentioned but ill-fated “pivot to Asia,” which also had a heavily militarized agenda.”
Nothing has happened in the last year to disprove that claim. If anything, the military-first approach has intensified since then. The Biden administration’s most notable initiatives in the Asia-Pacific have all been focused on increased military cooperation and power projection, and there has been nothing comparable in the other areas.
The pitfalls of a military-first approach are not just that it destabilizes Asia, but that it also neglects constructive economic statecraft and diplomatic engagement when these other tools would be both more useful and less costly. Any one part of the military-first approach might seem reasonable enough in isolation, but taken together these things put the U.S. and Asia on a dangerous course that could and should be avoided.
To have a more balanced and constructive approach to Asia, the U.S. needs to deemphasize shows of force and implicit threats to use force and focus its engagement efforts on commerce and diplomacy.
Ben Freeman testifies in front of the subcommittee on investigations. Photo: Khody Akhavi
The recent merger between the PGA Tour and Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF)-backed LIV Golf is not simply a business deal, but rather a part of a long-term foreign influence effort, warned the Quincy Institute’s Ben Freeman during his testimony in front of the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations on Wednesday.
“We’d be naive to believe that the PIF’s actions related to the PGA Tour are not part of the Kingdom’s much larger lobbying, public relations, and broader influence operation in the U.S,” Freeman said.
In June, the PGA Tour and LIV Golf — having been embroiled in a legal fight for over a year — announced that they were joining forces. According to the official announcement of the merger, the PIF, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, would “initially be the exclusive investor in the new entity,” and, going forward, “have the exclusive right to further invest in the new entity.”
Freeman says this so-called sportswashing is the latest means by which authoritarian regimes and other foreign actors look to launder their reputation in the U.S. “Foreign powers spend more than a half billion dollars every year on lobbying and public relations firms,” he previously wrote in Sports Business Journal. “Dozens of former senators and representatives and hundreds of former high-ranking U.S. military officers are on their payrolls. They donate tens of millions of dollars every year to influence the nation’s top think tanks and give billions to America’s colleges and universities. ”
Saudi Arabia’s sportswashing campaign has already moved beyond golf, and beyond the U.S., including recent investments into soccer and tennis. Four soccer teams owned by the PIF spent a combined $886 million on player transfers this summer, with three of the the 10 biggest spending clubs in the world being owned by the Saudi fund, according to CNBC.
The Saudi Arabian government has been accused of committing gross human rights abuses, a number of which were described during the hearing, including the killing of hundreds of asylum seekers at the country’s border with Yemen, the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, and the recent death sentence for a retired teacher who criticized the Saudi government on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Questions have even been raised about the Saudi government’s links to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. But, says Freeman, their goal is to get the general public to ignore these violations. “They want Americans to associate Saudi Arabia with golf, and not with 9/11."
Business-wise the PIF is unlikely to see a positive return on investment from the golf merger. “If the Saudi government is not buying into a profitable investment what are they buying?” Freeman asked. “In short, silence. They want to muzzle Americans critical of the regime. And, they want to rebrand themselves. ”
These rebranding efforts can have serious implications for American foreign policy, as many foreign governments seek to affect Washington’s agenda. As Freeman pointed out, the hearing takes place as the Biden administration weighs offering Riyadh a security guarantee in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel.
How Washington reacts also has consequences beyond Saudi Arabia, said Freeman. "If the U.S. once again offers little resistance or oversight of an authoritarian regime’s sportswashing efforts, this could become a blueprint for how to garner influence in the U.S."
Image: esfera via shutterstock.com
Niger’s July 26 military coup, which ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, has created a volatile situation. While France and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) threaten military action against the Nigerien junta under the guise, respectively, of protecting French diplomatic and military facilities and restoring Niger’s constitutional order, the crisis risks escalating into a regional conflict.
Each of Niger’s seven neighbors has a unique set of interests and perspectives on Niger’s situation. Algeria, which shares a 620-mile border with Niger, is focused on promoting stability and a return to Niger’s constitutional order while also preventing foreign powers from violating the country’s sovereignty.
Algiers is concerned about instability spilling into neighboring countries (including Algeria) and violent extremists exploiting the turmoil in Niger itself. Memories of Algeria’s “Black Decade” (1991-99), in which a jihadist insurgency and a state-led crackdown led to much bloodshed, remain vivid in Algerian minds. No Algerian takes peace and stability at home for granted.
“National security officials in Algiers already have their hands full due to increasing tensions with Morocco to the west, continued instability in Libya to the east, and the worsening economic situation in Tunisia, also to the east,” Gordon Gray, the former U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, told RS. “Uncertainty to the south, i.e., along the border with Niger, is yet another problematic development they will need to deal with.”
In 2012, three hardline jihadist terrorist groups — al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and Ansar Dine — gained control of two-thirds of Mali, including territory bordering Algeria. Algerians worried about these armed extremists’ ability to threaten Algeria’s security. The 2013 In Amenas hostage crisis further informed Algeria’s understandings of its vulnerability to transnational terror groups operating in neighboring countries. Today, Algerian officials have similar concerns about instability in Niger creating opportunities for the ISIS- and al-Qaida-linked terrorist groups operating in the country to wage attacks throughout the region.
Algerian officials also worry about the devastating impact that the situation could have on Niger’s 25 million people. ECOWAS-imposed sanctions on Niger in the wake of the July 26 coup do not include humanitarian exemptions, and Algeria’s government worries that political turmoil and a worsening economic situation in Niger could prompt refugee flows into Algeria and other neighboring countries, further threatening regional stability.
Algeria’s concerns about Niger’s crisis go beyond the threat of terrorism and worsening humanitarian disasters. Although in favor of restoring Niger’s constitutional order, Algiers strongly opposes military intervention by foreign forces.
“Algeria opposes all kinds of external intervention in North Africa and the Sahel, whether it is military or political. Algiers stands firm by the principle of sovereignty and considers any foreign presence in its neighborhood as an infringement on the local countries' sovereignty, regardless of the nature of the foreign intervention or presence,” Ricardo Fabbiani, North Africa project director for the International Crisis Group, told RS.
“For Algeria, a military intervention against Niger would be a catastrophe. The Algerians point out that the previous interventions in Libya and Mali have exacerbated pre-existing problems, rather than solving them,” he added. "These operations have a significant political and security impact, with repercussions that can be felt for decades.”
In this sense, Algeria occupies a somewhat unique position — at odds with both France and ECOWAS threatening to wage a military campaign to reverse the coup on one side, and Burkina Faso and Mali vowing to militarily assist Niger’s junta if ECOWAS attacks on the other.
Seeing itself as a regional heavyweight, Algeria’s sensibilities and principles guide the country’s foreign policy. Having existed as a French colony before waging a war for independence (1954-62), Algerians view national sovereignty as sacrosanct. This history helps one understand the North African country’s past opposition to foreign interventions in Libya, Iraq, Mali, and Syria.
Viewing itself as a vanguard in anti-imperialist, pan-African, and Arab nationalist causes, Algeria will always oppose Western (especially French) military intervention in Africa, the Middle East, or anywhere in the Global South. Whereas many states evolve in their foreign policy strategies, Algeria’s firm commitment to certain principles, concepts, and institutions has remained consistent over the decades, making Algiers’ stance vis-a-vis Niger both predictable and characteristic.
Within this context, Algeria is playing a leading role in advocating for a diplomatic solution to the Nigerien crisis that prevents any external military intervention. Last month, Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf visited three ECOWAS member-states — Nigeria, Benin, and Ghana — on orders from President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. After the visits, Attaf proposed a six-month transition plan to bring civilian rule and democracy back to Niger.
He stressed Algeria’s opposition to foreign military intervention and affirmed that external actors will be barred from transiting Algerian airspace as part of any intervention. The six-point plan’s objective is to “formulate political arrangements with the acceptance of all parties in Niger without excluding any party” within the six-month-window, according to Algeria’s top diplomat, who has also had contacts with junta members, as well as Nigerian civilian leaders. Overseeing this process should be a “civilian power led by a consensus figure.”
Before Attaf announced Algeria’s plan, Niger’s military leadership, backed by Burkina Faso and Mali, laid out its own very different plan. The junta called for a three-year transition period to restore constitutional order. ECOWAS has summarily rejected that plan, asserting that three years is much too long. Some members even called the junta’s proposal a “provocation.”
Algeria is hoping that its proposal offers a middle ground that saves face on all sides but also leads to a restoration of democracy in Niger while preventing any military action against the landlocked and sanctioned country.
Fortunately for Algeria, there is growing international support from foreign governments, such as Italy’s, for its mediation efforts as the standoff over Niger intensifies. “If successful, this diplomatic effort could strengthen Algeria's role in the Sahel, which is one of Algeria's long-term goals in the area,” said Fabiani.
Washington has not yet taken a position on Algeria’s plan and has generally followed a more cautious approach than Paris, a source of irritation between the two NATO allies. Despite an early unsuccessful mission by a top State Department official to engage the junta, the U.S. has thus far declined to label Bazoum’s ouster a “coup,” a legal determination that would require the U.S. to end military aid to Niamey, a key counterterrorism partner in the Sahel for years.
“The United States remains focused on diplomatic efforts toward a peaceful resolution to preserve Niger’s hard-earned democracy,” a State Department spokesperson told RS. “We all want a peaceful end to this crisis and the preservation of the constitutional order.”
Looking ahead, officials in Algiers understand that they must address the Nigerien crisis pragmatically while accepting the limitations of Algeria’s influence in Niamey. Algerian policymakers are “working on a shortened timeline for the transition” and Algiers “thinks that the coup is difficult to reverse,” which leaves them believing that “the quickest route out of this predicament is by accelerating the transition announced by the military junta and guaranteeing Bazoum's personal safety,” explained Fabiani. “Yet, it is unclear what leverage Algeria has to make this happen and, most importantly, how willing to listen are the military authorities, given the regional polarization around this issue.”
“Today, Algiers doesn't want to antagonize the military junta in Niger, nor does it want to push for a military intervention,” Dalia Ghanem, a Middle East and North Africa Senior Analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies, told RS. “Yet, Algiers learned that this noninterference stance is no longer efficient because it leaves the door open to foreign meddling like in Libya. The country’s [leadership is] hence stuck between an old doctrine and the new regional realities. The country had no other [option] than [to] maximize security at its borders and this can't be done without hard choices being taken.”
In the public eye, Algeria will continue investing diplomatic energy into its six-month transition plan. Yet, as Gray told RS, “Behind the scenes, Algeria will be seeking ways to cooperate with the military junta to ensure the security of its southern border.”
FILE PHOTO: An ethnic Armenian soldier looks through binoculars as he stands at fighting positions near the village of Taghavard in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, January 11, 2021. Picture taken January 11, 2021. REUTERS/Artem Mikryukov/File Photo/File Photo
The geopolitical repercussions from the war in Ukraine continue to reverberate across Eurasia.
With global attention preoccupied by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has been depriving the estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenian population in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh access to humanitarian aid in a blockade that has lasted over eight months and has recently intensified.
Much to Armenia’s consternation, the 2,000 Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in the enclave since the most recent round of fighting in 2020 have appeared ineffective in the face of increasing Azerbaijani pressure against the besieged Armenian population.
As a result, Armenia is openly seeking to diversify its security relationship away from Russia, its longstanding ally, including conducting joint military drills with the United States in Armenia that began Monday and is set to end on September 20.
Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, has increasingly expressed a sense of betrayal at Moscow’s inability, or unwillingness, to lend support to its treaty ally since last September when Azerbaijani armed forces attacked Armenia’s internationally recognized territory and where they still occupy 10 square kilometers, according to Armenian officials.
The Backdrop of Current Tensions
The two former Soviet Republics fought the First Nagorno-Karabakh War during the early 1990s after the indigenous Armenian majority in the autonomous oblast proclaimed their independence from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a full-scale war broke out between the two newly independent countries, eventually leaving tens of thousands casualties dead and hundreds of thousands displaced between 1992 and 1994. The war ended with a victory by Armenia.
A Russian-brokered ceasefire resulted in Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions of Azerbaijan proper. The United Nations and international community, however, continued to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.
After over 25 years of unsuccessful negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the U.S., France, and Russia, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, bolstered by the “brotherly” military support from NATO member Turkey and years of stockpiling Israel-supplied weapons, launched an all-out assault to recapture the disputed territory in September 2020.
The 44-day war saw Azerbaijan secure a military victory with further territorial gains guaranteed under a Moscow-brokered ceasefire, leaving a rump self-governing Nagorno-Karabakh Republic alongside a Russian peacekeeping contingent as stipulated by the November 2020 ceasefire agreement. That agreement also guaranteed that a link between the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and Armenia, the Lachin Corridor, would be sustained and controlled by the Russian peacekeeping contingent. The status of Nagorno-Karabakh and its inhabitants remained unresolved.
Last December, however, Baku effectively blockaded the Lachin Corridor and, five months later, it established a checkpoint on the road, formalizing the blockade. While the European Union, Russia, the U.S., and even the International Court of Justice have increasingly called for lifting the blockade, Azerbaijan remains defiant. The Azerbaijan foreign ministry insists that claims of a blockade are “completely baseless” and has accused Armenians of transporting arms into the territory, a claim Yerevan denies. Nevertheless, even the International Committee of the Red Cross struggles to continue its vital deliveries into the territory, resulting in what several United Nations Special Rapporteurs describe as a “dire humanitarian crisis.”
There were hopes the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been at the heart of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, would be resolved by negotiations facilitated by a complementary EU and U.S. approach (although a separate track by Moscow also persists). However, the ongoing blockade has dimmed hopes for a viable negotiated settlement.
Current Tensions
The war in Ukraine has drained the Kremlin’s military resources and room for maneuver, especially in a region like the South Caucasus where Russia vies with Turkey for regional hegemony. Moscow’s increased reliance on Ankara over the last 18 months to balance against the West diplomatically has resulted in its inability to fulfill its own obligations in the ceasefire agreement following the 2020 war.
Given this new reality, Armenia has started to hedge against Moscow by actively searching for new military partners and security guarantors.
The publicity surrounding Eagle Partner 2023, the Armenian-hosted joint military exercise with the U.S., clearly worries the Kremlin, which has said it would “deeply analyze” the latest events. However, these exercises are “narrowly focused on peacekeeping operations” and do not represent a “breakthrough in U.S.-Armenia defense cooperation,” according to Benyamin Poghosyan, senior fellow at APRI, a Yerevan-based think tank.
Nevertheless, the exercises follow Armenia’s refusal in January to host Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization exercises on its territory, citing the organization’s unwillingness to support Yerevan during last September’s escalation by Azerbaijan.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, has recently made a distinctly public effort to distance itself from Russian actions in Ukraine and even from Moscow itself. In just the last weeks Yerevan has moved to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and recalled its ambassador to the CSTO. Pashinyan said depending solely on Russia for security was a “strategic mistake.” Pashinyan’s spouse, Anna Hakobyan, traveled to Kyiv last week and delivered the first package of Armenian humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
However, the fact remains that only Russia has sent peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, and that these peacekeepers are all that stands between the local Armenian population and Azerbaijani conquest, almost certainly leading to massacre and expulsion. As Poghosyan sees it, the driving cause behind a potential new attack is “Azerbaijan’s desire to establish control over Nagorno Karabakh without providing any status or special rights to Armenians.”
This aligns with the view of Shujat Ahmadzada, a Baku-based researcher on foreign and security policies of the South Caucasus countries, who believes Azerbaijan is pursuing a “3D policy” with regard to Nagorno-Karabakh. The three D’s stand for “De-internationalization, De-territorialization, and De-institutionalization.” Such a process is intended to transform the status of the ethnic Armenians living there into a “purely ‘internal matter’ of Azerbaijan'' while “incorporating the self-governing institutions into the Azerbaijani political system in such a way that there is no single territorially defined unit for the ethnic Armenian community.”
While the deployment of over 80 U.S. troops on Armenian soil will hopefully guarantee against imminently anticipated Azerbaijani attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenia itself, Washington’s move in a region Moscow has long viewed as a vital interest does not come without risk. Moscow views Washington’s increased involvement as the Biden administration taking advantage of Russia’s war in Ukraine in order to weaken or challenge its influence in the South Caucasus region, where Russia has a history of over 200 years of regional military domination.
The latest American proposal for unblocking the Lachin Corridor plans to simultaneously open an alternative route to Nagorno-Karabakh through the Azerbaijani town of Aghdam. However, Armenians have regarded this proposal as a clear threat. Tigran Grigoryan, a Karabakh-born analyst and head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, a Yerevan-based think tank, assessed that, even if both the Lachin Corridor and the Aghdam route were to be opened, the potential remained for Baku to again close the corridor and create a “new status quo on the ground.”
Recent reports show that the first delivery of aid by the Russian Red Cross has entered Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. However, the acute crisis in food, energy, and humanitarian supplies continues as the Lachin Corridor remains shut and Azerbaijan continues its buildup along the border regions.
The Biden administration would do better to use its leverage over Azerbaijan to ensure an end to the Lachin Corridor blockade while simultaneously working to achieve a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that would both recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty and provide enforceable guarantees for the future rights and security of the Armenian population there. For such an approach to work would likely require coordination with Russia.
While such a scenario might be hard to imagine, Washington and Moscow have worked together in the past over Nagorno-Karabakh, even when relations were severely strained elsewhere. Such coordination is particularly compelling given the tens of thousands in the enclave who currently face famine. Rather than taking steps that Moscow views as threatening to its military presence in the South Caucasus (a process which led to disastrous consequences for neighboring Georgia 15 years ago), Washington, and the region itself, would be better off if American involvement instead demonstrated its commitment to ensuring human rights.
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©2023 Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
©2023 Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Inc. All Rights Reserved.