(This article was written by Derk Jan Eppink and appeared in Wynia’s Week. Derk Jan Eppink: Sahra Wagenknecht heeft in Duitsland de sleutels tot de macht in handen)

For the first time since the departure of Angela Merkel, as the most prominent politician from eastern Germany, a new East German phenomenon is rising on the horizon of German politics: Sahra Wagenknecht (55). After resounding election results with her Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) in the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, she is also a newcomer in the state of Brandenburg, where elections will be held on Sunday 22 September. Wagenknecht seems indispensable for forming a coalition, and next year there are federal elections for a new Bundestag. She is a rising star, but who is Sahra Wagenknecht?

A good opportunity to travel to Cottbus once again, to observe her during a rally in front of the ‘Stadthalle Cottbus’. In December 1989 I was in that town to make a report for NRC Handelsblad about the ‘hinterland’ of the GDR, then still unknown territory. Cottbus, in the southeast of Germany near the Polish border and with an old town that has since been quite nicely restored, still shows the remnants of GDR architecture. Being anything other than ‘East German’ is almost impossible here. And that is fertile soil for Sahra Wagenknecht’s campaign.

In front of the Stadthalle several hundred people have gathered to listen to the ‘phenomenon’. She appears precisely on time, überpünktlich, on the stage, which is shielded by an iron fence because in Erfurt she was recently attacked by a man who sprayed red paint over her. Security guards keep an eye on the audience, and directly behind the stage stand two cars: her official car and a black Mercedes with a flashing light. She can no longer go out on the street alone.

Wagenknecht, born in Jena, with an East German mother and a father – from the Persia of the Shah – who studied in West Berlin and above all demonstrated against the Peacock Throne in Tehran. He returned to Persia in the early 1970s – when Sahra was 3 years old – and was never heard from again.

Wagenknecht started out as a communist in the GDR and became a member of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), of all years in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. She turned into a convinced Marxist, wanted to preserve a ‘reformed GDR’ and was against the reunification of Germany. Anyone who now confronts her with this gets an answer such as she gave recently in the Tagesspiegel, that former chancellor Angela Merkel in the GDR ‘was once secretary of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), responsible for agitation and propaganda. I assume there are nice quotations from that too, if you look for them’.

The turnaround in Wagenknecht began after her friendship with Oskar Lafontaine (80), whom she would marry in 2014. Lafontaine was an SPD politician, a former candidate to become chancellor and finance minister at the time of chancellor Gerhard Schröder. That combination led to an explosion and Lafontaine left the SPD.

He became a sort of father figure who maneuvered Wagenknecht toward the more practical insights of the social market economy. Her Marxist background can still be heard in her strictly ordered speeches; straight-lined as taught in the Parteischule. Rhetoric is her strong point, and a ‘practical joke’ does not feature in her repertoire. West German politicians are no match for her in debate; she dominates.

Wagenknecht’s winning formula is that BSW is left-wing on economic matters but right-wing on migration, and turns against woke, which she ridicules above all as a fashionable phenomenon of the German greens, the ‘oat milk and café latte politicians’. In Cottbus that goes down well.

Wagenknecht does mark a difference with the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) through a businesslike use of language about migration. No tirades against foreigners. She links this theme to the consequences of excessive immigration for housing, education and healthcare. ‘The situation in education is deplorable; the majority of the children do not speak German when they start school’.

She also points to the housing shortage, while more and more asylum seekers are traveling to Germany. Germany is short of 700,000 homes, rents are rising, and East Germans in particular are getting squeezed. Conclusion: Germany cannot cope with this wave of immigration.

Wagenknecht draws loud applause as soon as she starts on the war in Ukraine. She calls the Russian invasion of Ukraine ‘a crime’, but believes that the arms deliveries must be ended immediately as soon as Putin agrees to a ceasefire along the current front line. ‘Then there must be negotiations about what should happen with those territories. The best thing is to ask the people in the Donbas and Crimea in a referendum under UN supervision which country they want to belong to.’

Wagenknecht draws a moral equivalence between Russia and the United States. The listeners go into ecstasy when she starts on that, because the ‘Westbindung’ that has characterized West Germany is entirely absent in East Germany. ‘How many countries has the US reduced to ashes, with millions dead; how many people has America killed with drone attacks?’ It goes down like sweet cake. In possible coalition negotiations in the states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg she wants to put the war in Ukraine on the table.

And the state governments must speak out against the stationing of new American long-range missiles in Germany. The red-green government in Berlin, and also the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU, shudder at the thought that East German states will pursue their own ‘Ostpolitik’. She characterizes the red-green federal government as ‘Moral Weltmeister’, which in the Netherlands is known as the wagging finger.

With 13 to 15 percent of the vote in East Germany, Wagenknecht is at the center of power. The CDU as well as the SPD and Greens categorically exclude the AfD. What is called a ‘cordon sanitaire’ in France and Belgium is, in Germany, in the tradition of building walls, called a ‘Brandmauer’. The AfD is too radicalized to be able to form part of a power structure. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) summed up the situation well: ‘Sie ist Partei, sie ist Machtfaktor’. Wagenknecht holds the key.

In Brandenburg the SPD has governed since 1990 and minister-president Dietmar Woidke has threatened voters with resignation if the AfD becomes larger than the SPD. History teaches that ‘me or chaos’ is a risky formula at a time of angry voters. In the polls the AfD is in first place. The greens are struggling around the 5% electoral threshold and the liberal FDP has been wiped off the map throughout East Germany, as has Die Linke, Wagenknecht’s former party. With the Brandmauer in Brandenburg, Wagenknecht gets the keys in her hands here too.

Petite histoire. At her birth in the GDR, Wagenknecht was registered as Sarah in the population register. She later wanted to change this to the Persian spelling of Sarah, Sahra, in honor of her father. The GDR authorities firmly refused. ‘Unlawful’. Upon her registration as a member of the Bundestag she made it Sahra, and that stuck. She is tenacious. Our eastern neighbors are going to have a lot more fun with Wagenknecht.

Derk Jan Eppink is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

The Trump-Harris debate—with 67 million viewers, the most watched in 16 years—was a 3-on-1 travesty. Megyn Kelly’s take (4:34) on the moderators shows extreme moderator anti-Republican bias, so ingrained that drastic measures must be taken. There are preliminary indications that Trump may have picked up undecided voter support, but even if so, reform is urgently needed. There are fixes at hand, but getting the Democrats to agree requires that Trump wins the election, as they benefit from today’s bias.

Truly Neutral Rules: (1) candidates and their campaign staffs prepare questions for the opposing candidate(s); (2) each side decides which topics to raise; (3) questions are limited to 30 seconds, to prevent candidates from making speeches disguised as questions; (4) candidates fact-check each other; (5) moderators are time-keepers only, cutting off mics when each time segment expires; (6) keep the new practice of no in-studio audiences.

My views come primarily from my years of watching debates—until, after the first presidential debate in 2016, I soured on watching live contests.

At age 13, I watched the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon debates. One lesson learned was that appearances do matter: JFK was move-star handsome, well-dressed—he was told that light blue shirt and makeup would work well with he black-and-white TVs of the time—and exuded charisma and charm. Alas for Nixon, he was on the wrong side of all three; his post-shaving five-o’clock shadow showed up by lunchtime. Viewers gave JFK the edge, while radio listeners thought Nixon won.

There were no debates in 1964, 1968 and 1972. In 1968, a very close election, the outcome might have been different had the charismatic RFK, tragically assassinated and not saddled with Vietnam, been the Democratic candidate; RFK could well have swayed enough voters. Debates might have have had to include George Wallace, whose 10 million voters delivered five states and 46 electoral votes in the still solidly Democratic South. Epic landslides made debates irrelevant in 1964 and 1972.

Came 1976, and debates were revived. The GOP tickets introduced a new feature that factored in some debates: the catastrophic gaffe. In the vice-presidential debate, Senator Dole, a genuine war hero, crippled while trying to help a comrade, called the two world wars, plus the Korean and Vietnam conflicts “Democrat wars” (0:46)—adding that the total killed and wounded came to 1.6 million, equal to the population of Detroit. President Ford, in one of his debates with Jimmy Carter, said in response to stellar NY Times foreign correspondent Max Frankel, asking about Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, that their populations did not see themselves dominated by the Soviets; given a change to retract, Ford repeated his view. He was belatedly vindicated on November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.

In 1980 the race was roughly dead even going into the final week. President Carter and Reagan met alone that might (Independent John Anderson had participated in the first debate, a month earlier). That night, Reagan closed by asking voters: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” He cited Carter’s stagflation economy, and serial retreat abroad, The race margin held through the workweek, but over Saturday, Sunday and Monday, the numbers tipped decisively to Reagan, who won on the issues foremost in voters’ minds.

In 1984, Reagan won in a monster landslide. His debate with Carter’s former vice-president, Walter Mondale, decided little. Reagan had faded at the end of the first debate. This led a journalist to ask Reagan, who was to turn 73 shortly after Inauguration Day 1985, if his age should be an issue.

Reagan answered (0:45), looking at Mondale, then 56, that he promised not to use his opponent’s “youth and inexperience” against him. The audience roared, and Mondale, always a good sport, laughed.

In 1988, Bush handily defeated a weak Democrat, former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. The year’s noteworthy debate moment came when vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, who had served in the Congress Senate with JFK, pounced (0:49) on Dan Quayle’s citing having had as much experience in Congress as did JFK when he ran for president. To which Bentsen delivered a zinger: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. And senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy!” The audience, packed with Democrats, erupted.

In the next five quadrennial debates, only one produced a truly noteworthy moment. The 1992 debates produced no fireworks, and were a veritable three-ring circus. In 1996, 2004, and 2008, ditto. But 2000 produced one extraordinary episode, that may well have cost then-vice president Al Gore the White House, given the razor-thin final margin. (Officially, Bush 43 won Florida, and the Electoral College majority, by only 537 votes in a protracted recount.) In one of the debates, Gore wandered over to Bush, physically invading his personal space (0:17) on stage, a major breach of debate etiquette.

In 2012 there was a new element introduced: moderator fact-checking. CNN moderator Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney on what Obama said about the murder by Arab terrorists of three special ops defenders guarding our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where then-U.S. ambassador, J. Christopher Stephens, also perished. Crowley fact-check was, alas, not fully factual. In the event,Obama was handily re-elected.

In 2016, I watched the first debate only, and was disgusted as the moderator, NBC’s Lester Holt, interceded on Hillary’s behalf after her dismal showing in the first thirty minutes. That did it for me and suffering through debates, praying that my preferred candidate wouldn’t make a fatal gaffe. In 2020, it is generally conceded that Trump’s constant interrupting of Joe Biden cost him the win. Lest Trump do better a second time, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) used Trump’s recent recovery from Covid as an excuse to deny him a second debate. As if the candidates could not have been in separate booths, socially distant. The GOP co-chair of the CPD called (4:01) the performance of the ABC moderators the worst he’d ever seen in the 33 debates he’d run as CPD co-chair, from 1988 through 2020. (In 2024, Biden rejected CPD debate sponsorship.)

True, no amount of reform can nullify advantages of looks, charm, charisma. And sheer luck can play a role. But lots can—and should—be done to minimize bias and caprice. The voters—for whose benefit political debates are presumably aired—deserve maximum transparency.

Bottom Line. An earlier generation of moderators tried to be fair: Their biases—impossible for anyone to completely eliminate—never decided a debate. Today’s generation of pseudo-journalists that moderate political debates are overwhelmingly—about 90 percent—ardently pro-Democrat. Reforming debate rules would enable voters to better appraise candidates.

John C. Wohlstetter is the author of Presidential Succession: Constitution, Congress and National Security (Gold Institute Press, 2024)

(This article was written by Shea Bradley-Farrell and appeared in Human Events. SHEA BRADLEY-FARRELL: We must end the Russia-Ukraine war)

Presidential candidate Kamala Harris repeatedly promises “unwavering” support for U.S. aid to Ukraine against what she calls Russia’s “unprovoked war ” of aggression. But in a recent interview , her presidential opponent, former President Donald Trump, made a statement about the Russia- Ukraine war that the mainstream media would not report: “Biden was saying all the wrong things … one … was … ‘ Ukraine will go into NATO’ … (and) I said, this guy’s going to start a war.”

Trump was right – although the popular narrative is that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unlawful invasion into Ukraine was “unprovoked” this is not technically or historically true. The fault for the invasion is Putin’s alone, but the Biden-Harris administration and NATO bear some responsibility for its provocation.

Understanding this can guide U.S. policy makers in bringing a quick end to a costly conflict – ultimately cooling tensions currently fanning the flames of nuclear war.

For context, consider the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 , when U.S. security policy established the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ sphere of interest and rejected the influence of other global powers. This included the Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union built missile-launching sites in Cuba. The doctrine states: “We … declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.”

In 1990, with U.S. victory in the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, diplomatic gestures and political assurances by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker (and other Western leaders) created the impression that NATO would not expand east — in exchange for Russian support of German reunification.

But, eastward expansion is exactly what NATO did, creeping ever closer to Russian borders.

Though no formal, legal guarantee was given to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents, informal assurances, were “repeatedly” given then and again later , that NATO would move (in Baker’s words), “not one inch eastward.” More importantly, the documents show this is what the Soviet Union was “led to believe.” Although these assertions are hotly debated, a significant number of scholars, experts and practitioners agree .

Subsequent events point to Russia wanting cooperation and peace in exchange for security. For example, in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Russia guaranteed a free and independent state to Ukraine , along with the U.S. and United Kingdom, if Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons, the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

But in 1999, Western allies began turning former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO members, extending farther east –to Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Baltic States – all while Soviet leaders protested that the U.S. was in violation of a non-expansion arrangement. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, U.S. National Security Advisor under former President Jimmy Carter and a fierce anti-Communist, even offered a detailed argument and timeline for NATO expansion, including Ukraine .

Almost a decade later, in 2008, President George W. Bush was told by advisors that Ukraine in NATO was considered a military threat and “redline” for the entire political class of Russia. International affairs expert Jeffrey Sachs explains , “It is exactly as if Mexico said, ‘We think it would be great to have Chinese military bases on the Rio Grande. We can’t see why the U.S. would have any problem with that.’” But today, Biden-Harris and allies assert that Ukraine will become a NATO member. NATO has, in fact, added sixteen (16) new members since 1990.

George Kennan, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1952) and author of U.S. policy for Soviet containment, gave a warning in 1997 that should have given today’s policymakers insight into the Russian psyche and response: “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era … ”

Even in November 2021, at the brink of the Russian invasion, Putin told his foreign ministry to push for guarantees about Ukraine’s neutrality. Other concerns were the West’s supply of modern lethal weaponry to Ukraine, NATO military infrastruture and maneuvers close to Russian borders, and the presence of U.S. anti-missile defense systems in Romania and Poland. Putin asked for “legal guarantees” regarding neutrality because Western “verbal commitments” had not been kept.

In December 2021, as Biden protested Russia’s build up of military forces on Ukraine borders, Putin continued to demand legal guarantees.

Could Russian expansion, first into Crimea (2014) and then into four Ukraine provinces (2022), be considered (from the Russian point of view) self-defense?

Putin also saw opportunity in the destabilization of the Crimean government (which favored Ukraine’s neutrality) during the Obama adminsistration, and in a weak U.S. administration under Biden-Harris, invading Ukraine almost immediately after the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal.

Today, Putin continues to ask for security guarantees regarding Ukraine’s neutrality.

Recognizing that NATO expansion provoked Putin’s (destructive) attempt to reestablish a zone along Russia’s western border should make it clear that sending U.S. weapons to Ukraine will not end the war, only escalate it . Moreover, Ukraine, full of government corruption and dependent on Western resources, is not NATO-ready.

Tragically, the false narrative that Putin wants “uncontrolled expansion to the west” has trapped NATO into a war that grinds on without end, sacrificing some 500,000 lives, weakening Europe, plunging the U.S. farther into debt, and driving Russia toward China, both of whom benefited from supposedly punitive U.S. sanctions.

Lasting peace can only come through U.S.-initiated negotiations, based on guarantees of Ukraine neutrality and non-expansion of NATO. Geographical concessions to Russia are likely while Ukraine gains back monetary concessions for the loss of territory, critical infrastructure, and life.

An estimated over 34,000 Ukrainian civilians and 200,000 Ukrainian forces have become casualities of this war. War is expected to continue to grind on, without a decisive victory. How much longer until commonsense diplomacy and peace prevail?

Shea Bradley-Farrell is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. Economic policies may offer gains for US presidential rivals)

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are both advancing populist economic messages aimed at the American electorate. Populism, by definition, involves the promotion of political ideas that resonate with the general populace, often setting them in opposition to a perceived elite.

This economic rhetoric primarily targets low-income voters, who made up 35 percent of the total 168 million eligible voters in the 2020 presidential election. In the upcoming Nov. 5 election, campaign experts estimate that low-income voters could constitute up to 7 percent of the undecided electorate — a segment that could prove decisive. Among them are blue-collar workers in industrial states like Pennsylvania, where job declines have had a significant impact.

The economic themes of this election cycle diverge from those of previous campaigns, which largely centered on middle-class benefits. The current discourse has shifted leftward, focusing on addressing the economic needs of a demographic that may determine the election’s outcome.

Two prominent examples of this populist economic messaging are Trump’s proposal to eliminate taxes on tips and Harris’ commitment to subsidized housing and a federal ban on price gouging for food. Harris has recently shifted her position to align with Trump’s no-tax-on-tips policy. Trump, in turn, accused Harris of idea theft, labeling her a “copycat” and a “flip-flopper,” asserting on his social media platform, Truth Social, that “this was a TRUMP idea — she has no ideas, she can only steal from me.”

Harris has been criticized for a lack of detail in her economic policies, leading The Economist to describe her platform as offering “only the vaguest of policy proposals.” Conversely, Trump’s tax suggestion is likely to have a more substantial impact on the economic direction of the next administration than Harris’ initiatives.

Harris’ proposed economic models, such as capping grocery prices, face significant challenges. Many states and cities already have laws against food price increases. Moreover, the implementation of federally subsidized housing is complex, as it involves the interplay of local government regulations, zoning laws and building codes. States in the US often employ the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit to provide tax credits aiding rent payments, relying on local funding to support affordable housing. Even if Harris now supports Trump’s no-tax-on-tips proposal, her interpretation and implementation could differ, potentially introducing new tax categories.

Trump is vigorously promoting his policy as common sense, claiming that it was inspired not by economic theory but by a conversation with a restaurant owner who lamented the high taxes on tips. Early assessments indicate that this policy, if enacted, could significantly alter the federal budget. According to one association’s report: “While servers aren’t the only tipped workers, the restaurant industry is the second-largest private sector employer in America, employing roughly 15 million people … Restaurants are also the No. 1 employer of single mothers, Americans without college degrees and the recently incarcerated. The tips generated by these positions are critical to the financial health of these often-forgotten groups.”

The potential consequences include reduced tax revenues, an increased budget deficit and the possibility of tax evasion. The policy might also bolster the cash economy, although the prevalence of credit transactions, such as tips paid by Visa, could mitigate this. Congressional approval is necessary for the policy to become law, which could either complicate or simplify the enforcement of minimum wage laws across states. The labor market might also shift, with workers gravitating toward sectors benefiting from the no-tax-on-tips policy. However, no comprehensive study has yet evaluated the policy’s full implications.

The Los Angeles Times observes similarities in the economic plans of Trump and Harris, suggesting that the latter’s version of the no-tax-on-tips plan could mirror Trump’s. If both candidates agree on the need to support economically disadvantaged Americans, it could signal the potential for bipartisan solutions to the nation’s economic challenges. However, the current divisive campaign rhetoric suggests that reconciliation remains unlikely.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Sin respeto del enemigo)

The Islamic State has announced new attacks following the one in Solingen in Germany, which cost three dead and seven wounded in a knife attack by an illegal Syrian immigrant who was under a deportation order. In a communiqué it calls on all Muslims to murder Europeans in revenge for the war in Gaza. The Islamic State wants to profit from the climate of hatred toward Israel and the West that has broken out among Muslims residing in Europe, massively supported by the left and by some European governments, as a result of Israel’s war against Hamas. This has happened before: that the Islamic State strives not to be eclipsed by Hamas or other jihadist groups.

What is indeed novel, according to German experts on jihadism, is that the communiqué, in its pages titled “Jihad in Europe,” not only displays the usual ferocious hatred but openly mocks Germany, its government and the West in general. The murderers are laughing at us. And they expound at length in their mockery of the German government’s anti-terrorist measures after this attack, which has shaken Germany like few others. And which has laid absolutely bare that the German security forces have lost control over an Islamist population that arrived in waves ever since Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the border in September 2015. Germany will one day have a government that declares Merkel one of the beings who has done the most harm to the nation and to all of Europe, surpassed only by the great Nazi and communist murderers of the 20th century. In any case, Germany then received the coup de grâce to its internal security and to its social cohesion, the two immense achievements that had brought peace and immense prosperity after 1945.

The mockery of the jihadist enemy sounds very much like the mockery of the murderer Nicolás Maduro these days, who laughs at everyone because he knows that he kills and knows how to kill and is willing to do so, and for that reason he has the upper hand over all those who, from within the democracies, are not going to do anything to him. Maduro counts on an army of accomplices among those who rule in the countries that supposedly defend those who win elections against those who lose them and torture and murder to remain in power. The jihadists too count on their accomplices: the volunteers who are aware of the interests of Iran or Qatar or so many others, and the involuntary ones, who are all those Westerners who do not understand that they are facing people who want to exterminate them.

The Islamic State communiqué openly laughs at its enemy, to whom it denies all respect and in whose fear and confusion it demonstrably delights. It alludes to the ban on carrying knives in Germany, which has been proposed after the recent attacks, and suggests to its followers that they can also use “hammers and birthday cakes.” The novelty of the communiqué lies in this mockery, which is a sort of coming out of the closet from restrained mockery into the lewd laughter of humiliation. With the following message: “We laugh at you because we are going to beat you, because we believe and you do not, because we defend what is ours and want to impose it and you no longer even know what is yours.” It should surprise no one. It marks a grave trend that has been developing for decades but is now widespread. The radicalized Muslim communities in Europe have always cultivated hatred and contempt for the decadence and immorality of their Western hosts.

But not open mockery. As the German singer and songwriter Heinz Rudolf Kunze said years ago in a song called Willkommen Ihr Mörder (Welcome, Murderers): “When they are among themselves they laugh a lot at us,” at us Westerners who are so tolerant that we do not defend what is ours. At the weak Westerners who let them take from us, little by little, everything: from space in medical consultations, to aid with the taxpayer’s money for those who never contribute anything and who spread a parasitic culture of good conscience because it weakens the enemy, to the granting of housing and even the streets they occupy to pray without anyone daring to dispute their occupation of public space.

In the communiqué they now openly laugh at the impotence of the German government to halt these attacks and say that if the authorities are going to set about measuring the length of blades, some people can resort to a birthday cake — with explosives inside, of course — or to some good hammers, which also kill. All of this reflects the untenable situation that has been created by Western governments that try to confront jihadist terrorism as if it were a Western criminal phenomenon. And on top of that they attack those who do know how to deal with these forces of criminal fanatical delirium because they know them from within — see the Israeli security forces.

Western civilization is beginning to enter its death throes in a lack of self-respect that has already crystallized into the general contempt of its worst enemies. Those who are incapable of defending their own people and what is theirs have no excuse. But on top of that they receive the deserved contempt of their enemies. To those of us who still believe there is a remedy, however hard and traumatic and perhaps by now very dramatic, I leave the phrase of Ramiro de Maeztu: “To be is to defend oneself.” If we want to go on being, let us defend ourselves from the enemies and the traitors alike.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Shea Bradley-Farrell and appeared in Human Events. SHEA BRADLEY-FARRELL: Escalation in Ukraine could lead to a nuclear conflict)

Since Russia’s unlawful invasion into Ukraine, the Biden-Harris administration has shirked diplomacy in favor of policies that increasingly guarantee escalation of the war. Now Ukrainian soldiers claim about 480 square miles in Russia’s Kursk region with U.S. and NATO armored vehicles and weapons – killing and injuring Russian civilians.

This should concern Americans. But the Biden-Harris administration has no objections, only justification . Moscow believes the U.S. not only created the conditions for the incursion, but also helped plan it .

“The West is fighting us with the hands of the Ukrainians ,” Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk. Imagine the jarring psychological impact on Russian citizens watching German-built tanks roll in – reminiscent of World War II.

Despite what D.C. hawks claim, Putin has repeatedly communicated, before and during the war, that NATO enlargement to Ukraine initiated his invasion , not Russian expansionism into Central Europe. However, the tragic irony is that although Russian expansion is not likely, a broader and nuclear war could be.

The U.S. has become a de facto combatant in the Russia-Ukraine war; we are no longer neutral bystanders. But hardly anyone seems to notice our insidious walk-up to triggering a broader war or nuclear strike.

President Joe Biden continually insisted (“Okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys”) that the U.S. must limit the type of weapons we send to Ukraine, and the ways the weapons could be used against Russia, to avoid a direct NATO conflict with Russia and prevent, in his words, “World War III.”

But the Biden-Harris administration has continuously changed policy to supply Ukraine with increasingly more weapons, with more sophisticated and advanced capability and more lethality . U.S. policy previously held that U.S. weapons could only be used to attack Russians within Ukraine, but our weapons are now increasingly being used within Russian territory .

Russia has warned that the U.S. would “cross a red line” as a “direct party to the conflict” if it supplied longer-range missiles to Kyiv.

But in April 2024, in a major policy shift, the Biden administration secretly shipped a longer-range version of ATACMS to Ukraine with a range of about 190 miles and capability to strike deep into Russian territory. Ukraine used these to target a Russian military airfield in Crimea and troops in the southeast of Ukraine. However, the condition that U.S. missiles could not be used to attack inside Russia still holds.

But for how long? Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continues to push the U.S. to lift restrictions, demanding to strike Russian targets as far as 300 miles into Russian territory.

And, in May 2024, the Biden-Harris administration did another major “about face,” allowing Ukraine to use U.S. artillery and “fire short-range rockets from HIMARS launchers” to conduct “limited” strikes against military targets inside Russian territory. NATO powers –Germany and others, including France – are following suit.

This is the first time a U.S. president has allowed strikes within borders of a nuclear-armed adversary, despite Putin’s warning that this could provoke retaliation and war . Biden’s White House gaslights the American people, characterizing the strikes as “acts of self-defense.”

In June 2024, Russia expanded tactical nuclear weapons drills to a military district bordering Baltic NATO member states plus Norway, Poland, and Finland. Coincidence? Of course not.

This summer the first fighter jets – the U.S.-made F-16 – also arrived in Ukraine and started operations against Russia, despite Biden’s previous assurances (“ don’t kid yourself ”) that sending offensive weapons like F-16s or tanks would, again , start “World War III.” The U.S. has also sent M1Abrams tanks.

How far will we go? Humiliating and provoking a Great Power with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world, run by an authoritarian government, is not smart. We cannot predict what Russia may do if we continue in this way. Knowing and understanding the “red line” of an adversary isn’t weakness, it’s wisdom.

Escalation to nuclear combat could come at the U.S. in unanticipated ways. Putin, angered and embarrassed by the strikes and incursion into Russia, could decide to use a radiological or tactical nuclear weapon, on his own evacuated terrain in Kursk. Employment of such an “area denial weapon” would severely restrict any efforts to traverse or occupy the terrain and create a buffer, plus send an extremely powerful and unmistakable message to Zelenskyy, Biden and NATO.

Recent headlines that Ukraine is “turning the tables” on Russia are deceptive. As Ukraine moves further into Russian territory, Russia makes equal gains in the east of Ukraine, capturing the city of Serhivvka and advancing ever closer to a vital logistics hub. Since February 2022, Russian troops have claimed more than 18% of Ukraine , resulting in “horrific casualties” for Ukrainians. War is expected to grind on, without a decisive victory.

How far then, will we go? The further we escalate, the more desperate all leaders will act. Once broader or nuclear war starts, it will be too late to “un-ring the bell.”

Yet, no Western leader save Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has given serious discussion, thought, or action to the negotiation of peace. In fact, Orbán visited Zelenskyy to discuss peace, but was visciously ridiculed for also visiting Putin to do the same. Why?

Why is Western diplomacy dormant in detering the ongoing devastation of Ukraine, and a potential walk up to world-wide war?

It is incumbent upon the United States to stop the escalation of weapons and warfare, and bring about immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations, based on Ukrainian neutrality and Russian reparations. Only wise U.S. leadership can bring peace and stop a potentially bigger and more devastating war.

Shea Bradley-Farrell is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. Ukraine’s shock strategy sets off alarm bells in Russia)

On Aug. 6, Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. Within two days, almost 1,000 Ukrainian troops had entered the territory. The Russian government immediately declared a state of emergency, and Russian reserves were mobilized. Russia has designated its defense as a counterterrorism operation.

A Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson hinted at the motive behind the Ukrainian offensive, saying: “The sooner Russia agrees (to peace), the sooner Ukrainian raids on Russian territory will stop.” President Vladimir Putin responded by saying the invasion is “an attempt by Kyiv to stop Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region and gain leverage in possible future peace talks.” However, there is a need to analyze the strategic implications of Ukraine’s incursion into Russian soil.

Ukraine’s military has attempted to regain its lost territories by launching drone strikes inside the Russian Federation, along with a few attacks staged by anti-Putin Russian exile militias inside their homeland.

The Kursk offensive marks a new strategy by Kyiv. It is a surprise military operation. So far, Ukraine has managed to occupy several villages and towns, forcing over 100,000 Russian residents to flee. This could also be described as a shock strategy to force the Russians to reassess their calculations in the war. Nevertheless, this operation has not significantly altered the battlefield realities.

Ukraine planned the attack in secret, with troop movements initially announced as training exercises. Even the senior officers who received the orders to advance into Russia were informed of the military plan just days before it began.

This is the first foreign incursion into Russia since the Second World War. “I’m happy to be riding a tank into Russia; it’s better than them driving tanks into our country,” a Ukrainian soldier told The New York Times.

The Russian government has accused the West of colluding with the Ukrainians to strike Russia. Moscow insists that its stance on future negotiations with Kyiv will not change as a result of the incursion.

It is unclear how much support the invasion has generated among the Ukrainian people. The size of the land occupied by Ukraine is small compared with the areas taken by Russia from Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022. And if Ukraine aims to embarrass Russia, military analysts must assess whether battlefield embarrassment of an enemy can translate into ultimate victory. Another strategic question is whether the incursion can break the current political and military stalemate over the war.

Ukraine will be hoping to achieve a military success similar to its counteroffensive in the summer of 2022, which helped to reclaim the northeastern region of Kharkiv. However, Kyiv has not disclosed the number of casualties resulting from the Kursk incursion.

Russia might mobilize more troops and civilians to expel the Ukrainians from Kursk. This situation could evoke memories of Russia’s fight against Nazi Germany in the Second World War. Putin could proclaim it as another “Great Patriotic War,” referencing the Soviet resistance.

Additionally, Ukraine could use its control of Kursk as a bargaining chip for the territories Russia has occupied in Ukraine over the past two-and-a-half years. Among the areas taken by Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine are Kherson Oblast, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Donetsk People’s Republic, Luhansk Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, and the southernmost part of Mykolaiv Raion (Kinburn Peninsula). This does not include the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in February 2014. Russia has captured more territory from Kyiv than Ukraine has seized from Moscow. Thus, Ukraine may not be able to force the Kremlin into making significant concessions to return Kursk to the Russian Federation.

If the fighting continues until the US presidential election, or if Ukraine is forced to retreat from Kursk, the Democrats may appear weak before the electorate for supporting a failing war. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is also a problem for Donald Trump because many Republicans want Ukraine to defeat Russia, and oppose his call for Kyiv to accept some territorial losses to achieve a ceasefire. So far, Vice President Kamala Harris has remained silent on Ukraine’s invasion.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in Warrior Maven. Is There Now a Massive Global Nuclear Arms Race?)

For most of the nuclear age nuclear weapons were thought by the West to be instruments of deterrence, to prevent war. Today, over time, the criminal enterprises such as Russia, China, and North Korea, that masquerade as legitimate nation-states, see nuclear weapons as instruments of coercion and blackmail. This unnerving point was underscored by the unanimous October 2023 Strategic Posture Commission report and echoed by another new Congressionally initiated report on the National Security Strategy of the United States just issued in July 2024.

On the anniversary of the use of two nuclear weapons against Japan at the end of World War II, it’s appropriate to examine again whether President Truman made the right decision. Most analysis treats Truman’s decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki as unnecessary at best and even criminal at worst, as solely a political move to intimidate the USSR, detract from Moscow’s role in defeating the Japanese and to show folks who was boss. On top of which, it is often claimed the Japanese government was ready to surrender, primarily as it anticipated a coming blockade of the homeland. In short, no such use of nuclear weapons was necessary.

As part of the almost ritualistic assessment of Truman’s decision, this year saw a slight twist in the assessments. A new poll was taken using word for word the same questions Roper polls used in 1945 to test American attitudes toward the use of nuclear weapons. One analysis led by Scott Sagan was disappointed most Americans actually support a strong and robust deterrent, as well as generally supporting the Truman decision to end WW2 by using nuclear weapons.

Such polls also show a public resistant to accepting the idea of lessening the salience of nuclear deterrence in US security policy. And that any such policy would also have to persuade Russia and China to lessen the role of nuclear weapons in their security strategies, a prospect not even far over the horizon let alone possible in the near-term.

In fact, the very opposite is occurring. Over two decades ago, Russia issued a 1999 directive to develop low-yield, highly accurate, battlefield nuclear weapons, a plan implemented by Russian President Putin. China also has built over 300 new ICBM silos just in the past few years and is now beginning to fill the silos with two types of missiles—which can each carry 3-10 warheads.

Projections by James Howe are that around 2035-45, Russia could have 7000+ deployed strategic long-range nuclear warheads, while Chris Yeaw of the University of Nebraska projects China and Russia together could easily have 10,000 deployed nuclear weapons by 2035-40.

In the face of such numbers, what sense does it make to assume nuclear US restraint will be mirrored by China and Russia when the two latter countries have been building new nuclear weapon systems for between 10-20 years? And have even accelerated the pace of their acquisition to where the recently retired commander of the US Strategic Command described China’s nuclear growth as “breathtaking.”

The critics of US nuclear modernization continue to complain the US is accelerating or initiating an arms race when in fact the very opposite is the case. In 2002-3 and 2010, the US reduced its nuclear forces from six thousand down to one thousand five hundred and fifty and limited its theater or regional nuclear forces to around two hundred gravity bombs in Europe. The US nuclear modernization plan now moving forward replaces only the force structure allowed by the New START treaty. And even if we uploaded all our current SLBM and ICBM forces with more warheads, we might be able to deploy somewhere around an additional 1000 warheads over the next 3-4 years but probably not considerably more, hardly an example of the US leading an arms race.

While Russia joined the US in both nuclear arms deals in 2002 and 2010, the theater systems they already had measured in the multiple thousands of warheads and were not under any arms limits. And Russia also has long-range systems that are also not under an any arms limits such as the Backfire bomber, while their ability to buildup far beyond the START limits continues to grow.

The question on the table is thus how reckless Xi and Putin will be with their projected very large arsenals, and will they use nuclear weapons not only for coercion but actually employ such weapons? To say nothing of the rulers in Iran and North Korea who are top state sponsors of terror and are allied closely with China and Russia and each other.

Unless the US builds a deterrent second to none, we may find out the hard way when nuclear weapons are used, as both Russia and China have both threatened to do on a serial basis.

Some global zero advocates minimize China’s buildup and still try and characterize the nuclear strategy of China as reflecting a “minimal deterrent” which is often described as a simple plan to retaliate only with limited nuclear weapons. And not use nuclear weapons first nor use nuclear weapons for coercive purposes or against nations that were non-nuclear powers.

But when Chinese government officials were cited threatening Japan with nuclear strikes should Japan come to the defense of Taiwan, the whitewash of Chinese nuclear strategy disappeared. And just so everyone understood, China emphasized “just as happened in WWII” Japan would be defeated.

So, is the US justified in building a better deterrent in the face of China and Russia building up?

A new assessment of the bombing in Japan at the end of WWII reveals that using the evidence in radio communications of the Japanese which the US was intercepting reveals the central role played by the nuclear strikes in Japan, especially the second nuclear bomb, in persuading the Japanese emperor to break the deadlock in his war cabinet and agree to an unconditional surrender.

Secondary but in the mix was the threat of a naval blockade of the islands. But of no special importance was the Russian presence in Northeast China and NE Asia with respect to the Japanese decision to adopt unconditional surrender, although the Russian presence may have impacted the regional decisions of some Japanese forces on the Asian mainland to stop fighting.

The end of the war and the Japanese surrender was not just a relief from the prospects of an island invasion and more than one million American and allied soldier casualties. While one million Japanese civilians tragically were lost in the war, often left unmentioned are the eighteen million civilians killed in China, Burma (now Myanmar), Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea at the hands of Imperial Japan. The end of the war ended the continued awful loss of civilian life throughout East Asia, a development that must also be weighed in the mix.

And the end of the near half century of brutal Japanese occupation of Korea finally freed the Korean people to create the ROK as a beacon of economic prosperity and freedom—despite a terrible war in 1950-53 brought about by North Korea, China, and the USSR.

The lessons of August1945 over Japan are that deterrence works. Especially when demonstrated as the US did on August 6th and August 9th. The incredible damage done to the two cities just with the use of two bombs seared into the world’s memory the nature of atomic warfare, especially when weapons some 20 or 50-fold bigger than the two weapons used against Hiroshima and Nagasaki became parts of the nuclear forces around the world.

That may be one reason no such weapons have been used since, over a period of 79 years.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. The key issues as Harris mulls her vice presidential pick)

After President Joe Biden last month dropped out of the US presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. She has received a slew of endorsements from influential figures in her party, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Harris has now requested vetting material for several prominent Democrats for her consideration as to who could be her running mate. Her campaign has announced that the name of her vice presidential candidate will be announced by Aug. 7.

Among those being vetted are Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, while the name of Michigan Sen. Gary Peters has also been mentioned recently. Other Democratic leaders could be contacted, but their names are being kept secret. Harris is fully cognizant that she must win in the following seven swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

There are limitations on Harris as she deliberates her choices. It would be very odd if she selected former First Lady Michelle Obama or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, as voters might not accept a two-woman presidential ticket. Each of the candidates have strengths and weaknesses. None of them are well known on a national scale. Cooper has already withdrawn from consideration as a potential vice presidential nominee. All of them share Harris’ liberal views, such as the right of women to have abortions, legalizing recreational or medical marijuana and hindering the ability to have access to weapons unless there is a need for them. Notably, all of them support President Biden’s backing of the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu in its war against the Palestinians in Gaza.

These candidates have many vulnerabilities. All lack foreign policy and national security experience. Shapiro is Jewish and Harris could lose Michigan if the big Arab and Muslim communities in that state withhold their support, fearing that Shapiro might advocate strongly for Israel. Shapiro also faces tough opposition from advocates of public schools. He supports private school vouchers. Public school teachers’ unions are against private school vouchers because they give tax credits to the rich for not educating their children in public schools.

Kelly will resign his Senate seat if chosen, allowing the Republican governor of Arizona to select a Republican to replace him. This would deprive the Democrats of their majority in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Peters of Michigan has many credentials, among them being his family’s long history in America. One of his ancestors fought alongside George Washington during the Revolutionary War. However, this is not a reason to vote for him. He has been losing popularity and barely won his Senate seat in 2020. By selecting him, Harris would aim to win the 15 electoral votes of Michigan. But people in America vote for the president, not the vice president. For example, Richard Nixon won the election in 1968 but lost Maryland, which was the home state of his running mate Spiro Agnew.

Beshear in 2019 signed an executive order that restored the voting rights of more than 140,000 people convicted of a felony crime. He justified this by saying that they had served their sentences and that their voting rights should not be denied. Nevertheless, many Americans fear that there could be loopholes and errors in a system granting voting rights to felons, as it could permit people convicted of crimes to manipulate it.

There is no electoral advantage in choosing Walz, as Minnesota has voted Democratic since 1972. And there is no guarantee that his selection would help Harris win the two neighboring states of Wisconsin and Michigan.

Importantly, the vice presidential nominee selected by Harris will have to debate against Republican counterpart J.D. Vance. So far, Vance has been on the attack against the Democrats. He is putting them on the defensive in each argument he enters.

The problem for Harris is that she cannot find a vice presidential candidate who is more conservative than her. She is not deliberating the choice of a centrist Democrat. This represents a governing dilemma for the Democratic Party, which is now adopting many left-wing and radical liberal ideas and policies. The party’s ticket for US president could alienate many conservative-leaning Democrats, who might find it more rewarding to vote for Donald Trump if Harris is joined on the ticket by another liberal politician with similar convictions.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

Brief Historical Background

Southeast Asia is known as a region prone to territorial disputes, which present a serious challenge to regional stability. The experience of colonial rule was one of the contributing factors due to arbitrary demarcation. One security challenge of note in the region derived from complex territorial disputes centers around the South China Sea (SCS).

The body of water is one of the largest semi enclosed seas in the world with an area of 648,000 square nautical miles and encompasses vital routes linking the Pacific and Indian Oceans with $5.35 trillion worth of trade passing its waters annually, almost one-third of all global maritime trade. Equally contributing to the significance of the SCS is what lies underneath: oil, gas and potential hydrocarbon reserves.

The SCS is highly contentious with China and four other Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam — involved in disputes featuring the Spratly and Paracel Island chains being contested. Although most of the disputes involve China, Vietnam and the Philippines, recent tensions primarily have been between Beijing and Manila.

From eleven to nine – dash line

China claims almost the entirety of the SCS, popularly visualized as the “nine-dash line”. It was first shown on a Republic of China-issued map in 1947 with an 11-dash line and later the Chinese Communist Party adopted the map in 1949 with two dashes removed to give the Gulf of Tonkin to Communist North Vietnam.

In 2009, China reinforced the map’s international status by submitting a diplomatic note to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf with the attachment of a nine-dash line map, the day after Malaysia and Vietnam submitted their joint submission, and claimed that Beijing has indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the SCS.

However, it hasn’t been clear what the nine-dash line signifies. Does China claim the bits of reef and land inside the line or does China claims all surrounding waters?

Geopolitical complexity in the disputed waters has become more apparent due to the intensified great power rivalry between China and the United States. The issue was brought up for the first time in 2010 at the multilateral platform that is internationally recognized as one of the world’s strongest forums when it comes to the SCS, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Vietnam brought up the issue at that time to then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She expressed that Washington has national interest in open access to Asia’s maritime commons, freedom of navigation, as well as respect for international law in the SCS, despite maintaining neutrality in the disputes. The attempt from Vietnam to internationalize the issue to get a solution was understandable, given the power asymmetry between China and other disputants. On the other hand, Beijing has always been clear about its preference in solving the disputes with direct bilateral negotiations and perceived the role of the U.S. in the disputes as an interference; this sentiment remains to this day.

Serious clashes from 1974 involving China, Vietnam and the Philippines

However, it is important to note that even before the statement from China that indicated the involvement from the U.S. will only make the matters worse, disputes have already involved serious clashes.

The deadliest of these incidents was the Sino–South Vietnam battle of the Paracel Islands in 1974 and Johnson South Reef skirmish in 1988. The Paracels, composed of 130 small coral islands and reefs, are presently claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan and China, but have been under the latter’s control when it forcibly ejected South Vietnamese troops from the chain, in the process killing 74 Vietnamese service members. The latter clash, located in the southwestern Spratly Islands, saw Chinese forces drive off the Vietnamese military presence and resulted in the deaths of 64 Vietnamese sailors and marines.

A significant incident without fatalities occurred in early 2012, when China and the Philippines were involved in a standoff at Scarborough Shoal located in the northern Spratlys. Both countries claim the shoal as a part of their national territory and accused each other of intruding on the other. Two years later, tensions rose over China’s placement of a giant state-owned oil rig inside Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). This incident marked the first time that Beijing had sent one of its oil rigs into another state’s EEZ without prior permission. The clash featured the ramming of boats between the two and an explosion of large anti-China protests inside Vietnam.

Looking at the dynamic of the tensions, especially over the past decade, the disputants appear under no illusion that such incidents won’t be repeated in the future. As a result, closer defence cooperation between Vietnam and especially the Philippines with Washington has increased.

Tension between China and the U.S., however, was accentuated during the pandemic. The Trump administration insisted that China needed to be held accountable for the spread of the Covid–19 virus. While other governments were distracted with the outbreak throughout 2020, Beijing managed to build up activities in the disputed islands by establishing administrative districts on the Spratly and Paracel islands.

In the same year, the U.S. had toughened the stance by officially rejecting specific claims made by China in the disputed waters for the first time. The Biden administration adopted a similarly strong position. During her 2022 visit to Jakarta for the ASEAN summit, Vice President Harris stated that America was in the region to stay, giving reassurance to allies that Washington had their backs. One may argue whether Washington’s strategy has been effective in deterring Beijing’s increasingly aggressive moves, but the gradual change of tone was clear. The U.S. also has a major role in the region by conducting Freedom of Navigation operations and sent military aircraft and warships into the South China Sea.

In July 2023, Vietnam, in a display highlighting just how important it considers territorial integrity matters, preemptively banned the Hollywood movie Barbie over a scene featuring the disputed nine–dash line on a cartoon map. A recent Center for Strategic and International Studies report showed that Hanoi has accelerated its land reclamation and dredging activities some seven-fold over the past three years. However, the ramping up to approximately 2,360 acres pales in contrast to China’s activities, which measure some 4,650 acres since 2013.

A month later, prior to the ASEAN Summit, China’s Ministry of Natural Resources unveiled its “standard map” with a tenth dash added to the east, which includes eastern part of Taiwan. Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and the Philippines subsequently rejected the new map while Indonesia insisted that the drawing of territorial lines must be in accordance with international laws. By the end of last year, China and the Philippines involved in a dispute on Scarborough Shoal where Chinese vessels blasted water cannons to prevent Filipino fishing vessels from reaching the shoal.

More recently, the more noticeable tension has been between China and the Philippines. The larger power was less than pleased when President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who was elected in 2022, embraced closer ties with the U.S. During this past June’s standoff which featured Chinese vessels engaged in ramming and towing of Filipino boats in the Spratly Islands’ Second Thomas Shoal, Washington warned that it’s obligated to defend Manila in any major conflict with an external actor under a 1951 mutual defense treaty.

In March 2024, China and the Philippines involved in another incident at the shoal. The Philippines had grounded a World War II-era warship in 1999 and has maintained regular rotation and resupply missions to deliver supplies ever since, while China has deployed regular coast guard patrols since 2013. The shoal has been the spot of contention between the two, as China has sought to prevent the Philippines from resupplying the grounded vessel. Both countries stated that they were protecting their sovereignty.

However, it is important to remember the tribunal’s South China Sea in 2016 found that China’s nine-dash line were without legal claims. The International Permanent Arbitration in the Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines. The panel also concluded that Beijing does not have a right over the resources within the nine-dash line that covers almost the entire disputed waters. It also ruled that Spratly Islands are not islands in a legal sense, rather rocks or low tide elevations. (For example, Second Thomas Shoal is identified as a submerged reef.)

Beyond a regional issue

The SCS disputes have also become an issue affecting relations between the U.S., China and to certain extent, Washington’s western allies.

The future trajectory of the tensions very much depends on not only the level of commitment of the claimant countries to regional stability and its impact of global economy, but also America’s willingness to prioritise the issue amid the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine.

President Biden was noticeably absent from the 26th ASEAN summit in Jakarta last September, which seemed to participants and observers to contradict Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement that Washington’s long term focus remains in the Asian Pacific.

The rivalry between the U.S. and China is affecting ASEAN’s role in facilitating dialogue in order to seek for a solution. Additionally, the organization’s centrality may be difficult to keep, since some member countries may be closer to Beijing than others. For example, Cambodia, a close ally to China, blocked a 2012 ASEAN consensus statement on the SCS and did so again four years later. There is no guarantee that this behavior will not be repeated in future deliberations, even as forging a consensus on what steps need to be taken to prevent further incidents becomes increasingly necessary. ASEAN members may also need to balance demands of great powers with their commitments to the organization.

NATO summit and Indo–Pacific

At the most recent NATO Summit in Washington, the alliance couldn’t ignore the Indo-Pacific issue. Despite the focus of discussion about issues within the member states, such as the election in France and United Kingdom, as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine, the alliance’s communique acknowledged that the Indo-Pacific developments have affected Euro-Atlantic security. This view was also reflected by incorporating the Indo-Pacific (IP-4) countries of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, the third time they were invited to a summit.

The involvement of NATO members and allies in the region isn’t new. In 2021, Germany sent its first warship to Indo-Pacific region for the first time in 20 years to support other western countries and object to Beijing’s territorial claims. That same year, the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, along with naval vessels from the U.S., Japan, Canada, New Zealand and the Netherlands, conducted combined exercise in the west Philippine sea.

Since the stability of the SCS waterways is related to prosperity in Europe, other NATO member states are expected in the future to engage more with the U.S. in the Indo-Pacific region via the conducting of freedom of navigation operations to send a message to China that challenging the rule-based order doesn’t only mean going against Washington, but also its western allies.

The tensions will continue to ebb and flow and likely between China and the Philippines with the Spratly Island chains being the focal point. China will likely continue to ignore the 2016 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea ruling and stick with the “indisputable sovereignty” since “ancient time” as the basis for its claims. ASEAN members will remain divided on their response to China’s more assertive moves and sooner or later have an impact on ASEAN’s centrality in dealing with regional security issues, including the SCS.

While the Vietnamese land reclamation brings more militarisation to the disputed waters, it is less likely to create serious tensions. Hanoi’s move seems to be more about boosting its presence in the SCS amid the rising tensions.

De-escalation attempts through the expected legally binding document Code of Conduct of the South China Sea is less likely to be signed by both China and ASEAN members anytime soon.

The conflict is unlikely to be resolved, but conflict management is possible. Recently, China and the Philippines held talks, in which they agreed to defuse ongoing tensions. However, de-escalation is unlikely to be permanent.

China and the United States are likely to keep the status quo in the disputed waters in the near future, despite their intensified rivalry.