The Real and Imagined Problems of the Middle Eastern Arms Trade The methods and motivations behind the U.S. arms sales in the Middle East are not the stuff of sound regional policy. by Paul R. Pillar

One of the latest steps in the Trump administration’s never-ending pressure on Iran in its attempt to extend a United Nations-imposed embargo prohibiting the export to, or import from, Iran of conventional arms. At a rhetorical level, the administration’s pitch is easy to make—no American politician ever lost votes by arguing against arms going to Iran. But the administration says nothing about the background and context of the embargo, which it would if it really were concerned about arms and insecurity in the Middle East. 

The embargo in question never was intended to address the problem of destabilizing conventional arms transfers. Instead, it was one more sanction, along with other economic sanctions, that were placed on Iran as inducements for Tehran to negotiate limitations on its nuclear program that would preclude the possible development of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Iran did so negotiate, leading to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which closed all possible paths to an Iranian nuke and entered into force in 2015.  

It would have been logical for the arms embargo, along with the other sanctions having the same purpose, to be lifted once Iran fully complied with its obligations under the JCPOA. But the United States argued for a delay, and Iran, as one of the concessions it made during the negotiation, agreed to a five-year continuation. That five-year period ends in October. 

Iran has exceeded some of the nuclear limits in the JCPOA during the past year but has done so only as a delayed, measured, and reversible response to the Trump administration’s earlier wholesale violations of the agreement, with Iran intending the move as counterpressure to induce a return to full compliance with the JCPOA. Indefinite extension of the arms embargo would be one more blow against the JCPOA, among the many other efforts by the Trump administration to destroy the agreement altogether. Destruction would mean an end to the JCPOA’s restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program, a possible nuclear arms race in the Persian Gulf region, and the elevation of nuclear, not conventional, arms as the prime security worry in the Middle East. 

The conventional arms trade is indeed a destabilizing factor in the Middle East, but a multilateral approach that does more than pressure one regional state would be needed to address that problem effectively. Moreover, if any state were to be targeted, targeting Iran would hardly dent the problem. 

According to data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), arms exports to the Middle East have increased 87 percent over the past five years and now represent more than a third of the global arms trade. So there is a region-wide problem worth addressing. 

It is clear who stands out on the recipient end of that problem. Saudi Arabia imported the most arms of any country in the world during 2014–2018, the period examined in the most recent SIPRI report. Saudi Arabia’s purchases of arms during that time increased 192 percent over the previous five years. 

It also is clear who stands out on the seller end. The United States is the world’s most prolific seller of armaments. More than half of U.S. arms exports in 2014–2018 went to the Middle East. Saudi Arabia received 22 percent of worldwide U.S. military exports. 

Both ends of this pattern are continuing. Data compiled by the Forum on the Arms Trade in late 2019 showed U.S. arms sales that year more than doubling from 2018. Over the next five years, Saudi Arabia is scheduled to receive ninety-eight more combat aircraft, eighty-three tanks, and defensive missile systems from the United States. The Trump administration and the Saudi regime have signed letters of intent that would see $350 billion in U.S. arms going to the Saudis over the next ten years. 

These deals widen ever further the military gap between the Gulf Arab states and an Iran with much inferior equipment. Lifting the arms embargo currently in question would do little to change that imbalance. The Islamic Republic—quite unlike the previous regime of the Shah of Iran—has never been a big spender in the international arms market. The continuation of other economic sanctions, the decrease in oil revenue, and Iran’s overall financial stringency make any change in that pattern unlikely. Even in 2017, before the Trump administration re-imposed sanctions that had been eased under the JCPOA, the International Institute for Strategic Studies assessed that high cost would continue to limit any Iranian purchases of advanced weapons systems. 

Arms transfers as a problem in regional destabilization is to be measured not just in the number of transfers but also the uses to which the arms are put. Arms from the United States have been used in the harsh crackdowns that have abused human rights in Egypt.  They have been used in the also abusive—and periodically very deadly—Israeli occupation of, and assaults on, Palestinian territories. Most obviously in recent years, U.S. arms provided to Saudi Arabia have helped to turn Yemen into what is commonly described as the worst current manmade humanitarian disaster. The Saudi aerial assault on Yemen has been the biggest factor in making that disaster. According to the Yemen Data Project, the bombing campaign has killed or injured more than seventeen thousand civilians as of March 2019. 

The U.S. arms provided to the Gulf Arabs have been destabilizing in other ways. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have given U.S.-made weapons to militias to buy influence in Yemen. Some of the arms have gone to radical Salafists, including ones with ties to Al Qaeda. Some have even made it into the hands of the Houthi rebels whom the Saudi-led war is supposed to be against. 

The methods and motivations behind the U.S. arms sales involved are not the stuff of sound regional policy. An in-depth New York Times article run under the headline “Why Bombs Made in America Have Been Killing Civilians in Yemen” showed that the sales have been motivated far more by generating business for Raytheon and other defense contractors than by any thought of bringing security to that part of the Middle East. 

This part of the arms trade has pitted the Trump administration against Congress. Last year Trump vetoed a bipartisan resolution that—following what many other countries had already done—would have ended U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen. The administration also circumvented Congress and swept aside normal approval procedures for an $8 billion arms deal with the Saudis by declaring it an “emergency” step.  This irregularity reportedly was one of the subjects of inquiry by the State Department’s inspector general—along with investigations into Mike Pompeo’s use of taxpayer funds for private purposes—before Pompeo got Trump to fire the IG. 

Yes, there are major problems with aspects of the arms trade in the Middle East, but problems will not be solved by subjugating everything to the obsession with Iran.

Senate China Hawks Want to Crack Down On Student Visas These newly proposed bills reflect long-standing concerns about competition with China. by Matthew Petti

Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) have proposed a bill to ban Chinese nationals from receiving U.S. student visas for science, technology, engineering and mathematics research. 

The Trump administration has been cracking down on researchers with links to China as U.S. authorities accuse China of industrial espionage. Cotton and Blackburn’s bill, introduced on Wednesday, would ban Chinese researchers in certain fields from the United States altogether. 

“Beijing exploits student and research visas to steal science, technology, engineering and manufacturing secrets from U.S. academic and research institutions,” Blackburn said in a statement. “We’ve fed China’s innovation drought with American ingenuity and taxpayer dollars for too long.” 

Cotton has previously railed against the presence of Chinese students in American science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs. He told Fox News last month that Chinese students should only be allowed “to come here and study Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers.”

“That’s what they need to learn from America,” Cotton said. “They don’t need to learn quantum computing and artificial intelligence from America.” 

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) had proposed his own bill last week to freeze student visas to Chinese nationals until federal agencies can conduct a “thorough national security evaluation and clearance” of Chinese students already in the United States. 

Cotton and Blackburn’s bill ups the ante, banning these visas indefinitely for STEM students. 

It would also expand the definition of espionage to include China’s alleged technology theft. 

The proposed bill does not apply to students from Hong Kong and Taiwan, both of which are treated separately from mainland China under U.S. law, as well as members of “religious or ethnic groups systematically oppressed by” China’s ruling Communist Party. 

The crackdown on technology transfer reflects long-standing Republican concerns about competition with China. 

“For decades now, China has bent, and abused, and broken the rules of the international economic system to its own benefit,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said in a Senate floor speech last week. “They have stolen our intellectual property and forced our companies to transfer sensitive trade secrets and technology.” 

Lawmakers on the other side of the aisle are also concerned with industrial espionage but tend to see foreign students as an asset rather than a liability to the United States. 

Four leading Democrats proposed their own bill on Wednesday to create a national Technology Directorate, which would invest $100 billion in advanced research and development over the next five years. 

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), one of the lawmakers who introduced the bill, had written an essay on technological competition in May 2019, arguing that “America’s tradition of welcoming immigrants gives us an advantage over Chinese insularity.” 

“Taxpayers spend approximately 70 billion dollars in higher education each year. Why turn away brilliant minds who benefit from this investment and want to build their companies in America?” Khanna wrote. “We should staple green cards to our international STEM graduates’ diplomas.” 

Pompeo: U.S. Could Make Moves Against International Criminal Court In “Coming Days” “I think that the ICC and the world will see that we are determined to prevent having Americans and our friends and allies in Israel and elsewhere hauled in by this corrupt ICC.” by Matthew Petti

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the United States will “push back” against the “corrupt” International Criminal Court in the coming days.

Pompeo has slammed the international tribunal over its inquiries into U.S. actions in Afghanistan and Israeli actions in the Palestinian territories. His Monday comments, on a podcast hosted by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, hinted that the United States could retaliate soon.

“You’ll see in the coming days a series of announcements not just from the State Department, from all across the United States government, that attempt to push back against what the ICC is up to,” he said. “I think that the ICC and the world will see that we are determined to prevent having Americans and our friends and allies in Israel and elsewhere hauled in by this corrupt ICC.”

The ICC gave a green light in March to investigate U.S. forces in Afghanistan for “acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence” allegedly committed in 2003 and 2004.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, also recommended last month that the court charge Israeli forces for alleged war crimes in the Palestinian territories, which Israel captured in 1967 and intends to annex with U.S. support.

Pompeo emphasized that the United States and Israel are not party to the 1998 treaty that created the court. Both countries had signed it at first but withdrew before it could take effect.

The ICC has convicted former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba, Congolese rebel leaders Germain Katanga and Thomas Lubanga, and Malian rebel leader Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi for war crimes.

It also has 23 open cases in ten conflicts around the world.

The probe into the Afghan war—which applies to both U.S. forces and the Taliban rebels—would be the first ever prosecution of U.S. troops by the ICC.

“I think the whole world can see this isn’t what the ICC was set up for. It was about rogue regimes,” Pompeo had told Fox and Friends in March. “Not institutions like America. When somebody gets it wrong here, we hold our own accountable. We always have. We always will.”

Pompeo has also faced bipartisan pressure to shield Israel from any ICC prosecution. Hundreds of legislators from both houses of Congress signed letters on May 13 calling on the Secretary of State to prevent “politicization” and “misuse” of the ICC in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Germany, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Hungary, Uganda, and the Czech Republic have also urged the ICC to drop its investigations of Israel.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the ICC a “rare strategic threat” at a cabinet meeting last month.

The disagreement hinges on whether Palestine is an independent state. The Palestinian Authority, which governs part of the Palestinian territories, joined the ICC in 2015, and has filed several complaints against Israel.

Pompeo wrote on May 15 that the United States does “not believe the Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state, and they therefore are not qualified to obtain full membership.”

But the ICC has defended its efforts as a professional law enforcement investigation.

“Fact: my Office is executing its mandate concerning Palestine situation [sic] with utmost professionalism, independence & objectivity in strict conformity with the [1998 treaty],” Bensouda wrote on social media last month. “Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is simply misled & unfounded.”

Eyewitness Report: American Carnage Comes to Washington TNI editor Jacob Heilbrunn investigates the aftermath of looting and rioting in Washington, DC. by Jacob Heilbrunn

Fast evening, as I strolled through my neighborhood in Friendship Heights, I stumbled onto several gangs that were intent on trashing businesses along Friendship Heights. I had enough sense to avoid continuing on to Wisconsin Avenue after I saw a number of figures skulking about near the J. Crew store but after I made a left to avoid them, I ran into some twenty youths, male and female, not a few decked out in ski masks and batons. Better to walk past them, I reckoned, than to try to flee. They ran after me laughing and shouting but it turned out that their real object was looting a store around the corner.

I don’t mean to make too much of this episode. But one interesting thing about that encounter that struck me immediately was that there were no police around. Zip. Nada. I was on my lonesome. I wasn’t Artur Sammler in Saul Bellow’s novel Mr. Sammler’s Planet courting trouble. Instead, I stumbled into it. Had the protesters, as the liberal argot insists on terming them, decided it was open season on me, I would have been a goner. You’re never as alone as in that kind of situation. Suddenly, the platitudes about the legitimate protestations of the protesters seem to take on a new, perhaps less benign, aspect.

This morning, after I walked to Wisconsin Avenue to inspect the damage, I heard that about one hundred police had later shown up but apparently did nothing to stop the looting. The wiser course, or so I’m incessantly told, is to let the looters loot. Criminals, in other words, gonna ride tonight. Really? It’s news to me that the looter gets to set the terms of the encounter with law enforcement. Nor is this all. I read in the Washington Post that the owner of Teaism near Dupont Circle, which got vandalized, is announcing that the trashing of her establishment was regrettable but no biggie. The rage of the protestors, we are told, supposedly legitimates violence. Sorry, but this strikes me as a kind of liberal Stockholm Syndrome.

These sentiments were fortified by a trip I made to downtown Washington today. The CVS next to my office building was trashed.

In the one that was attacked in Friendship Heights, the vandals made off with drugs and prescription forms. Did they do the same downtown? Then there was the mutilation of the statues of the various war heroes—oh, I’m sorry, old dead white men—in Farragut Square and Lafayette Park. They were festooned with all kinds of scatological language and denunciations of America, or AmeriKKKa, as one person spray-painted on a makeshift Secret Service compound in Lafayette Park.

It was disconcerting, as well, to see the defacement of the statue of Tadeusz Kościuszko, the Polish freedom fighter who also joined George Washington’s Continental Army. As it happened, he directed in his will that the proceeds from his American estate be dedicated to purchasing the freedom of slaves, including his close friend Thomas Jefferson’s. Hard to see what contribution to liberty scribbling “Fuck 12” on his statue is supposed to make.

After being MIA, it seems that the Washington police and mayor Muriel Bowser are finally going to attempt to create some semblance of order tonight, starting with a 7 p.m. curfew. It’s about time. They won’t get much help from President Donald Trump, who has essentially washed his hands of both the coronavirus pandemic and the current strife afflicting America. The last thing Trump wants to do is have to take some responsibility for restoring order. Instead, he continues to vent at the governors and issue apocalyptic-sounding, but ultimately meaningless, tweets that simply stir up more animosity and acrimony.

As I finished my walk around downtown, the acrid stench of the smoke from the fire at St. John’s Church lingering in the air, I passed the venerable Hay-Adams Hotel. Poor John Hay and Henry Adams. They experienced America when it was first emerging as a great world power at the turn of the nineteenth century. Their refined sensibilities would have been aghast at the profanities marring the portico of their Washington landmark, a small but vivid testament to the decay of a declining America.

Next to the Hay-Adams was a more recent but no less striking reminder of the respect that America once commanded, the “Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute.” It was all boarded up. So much for the optimism that personified Reagan’s presidency.

What the Gipper would have made of the decline and fall that America is experiencing is not hard to imagine. Goethe once remarked, “Amerika, du hast es besser--America, you have it better.” Whether that will remain the case has become an open question.  

Pandemic Pressure: The Coronavirus Is Antagonizing America’s Relationships China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, have hoped to counter U.S. military pressures and economic sanctions in an effort to overstretch U.S. political-military and financial capabilities across the world through both symmetrical and asymmetrical military measures and actions. It is crucial to seek out new diplomatic options to prevent a new arms race, if not a major-power war. by Hall Gardner

The coronavirus pandemic is beginning to press the Trump administration to reconsider some defense options and military deployments, but the crisis has not yet begun to fundamentally transform Donald Trump’s Peace through Strength doctrine which promises “strategic predictability, operational unpredictability.”

I.                Peace through Strength?

The primary focus of Trump’s so-called Peace through Strength doctrine is to counter and deter the military capabilities of what the Pentagon calls “revisionist powers,” such Russia and China, and “rogue states,” such as Iran and North Korea, in its 2018 National Defense Strategy. The irony, however, is that Trump’s doctrine is failing miserably in that it is pushing China, Russia and Iran, if not North Korea, even closer together in the formation of a “Eurasian axis”—so that the mutual interests of these states outweigh their differences. Now, Russia and China are even closer to forging a formal defense alliance.

Although their actions do not appear to be coordinated at this time, China, Russia, Iran, as well as North Korea, have all hoped to counter U.S. military pressures and economic sanctions in an effort to overstretch U.S. political-military and financial capabilities across the world through both symmetrical and asymmetrical military measures and actions. It is crucial to seek out new diplomatic options—in an effort to prevent a new arms race, if not a major-power war.

II. Iran

Perhaps the most immediate strategic impact of the pandemic was on Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy toward Iran—after the March–April 2020 USS Theodore Roosevelt affair. In speaking truth to power, Captain Brett Crozier’s demands (the US was “not at war. Sailors do not need to die”) to move most of his crew onshore to Guam in order to save them from the spread of the coronavirus nevertheless forced the U.S. Navy to redeploy a second aircraft carrier, the USS Harry Truman, out of the Arabo-Persian Gulf region and toward the Pacific at a moment of heightened US-Iran tensions.

At that time, Trump threatened to attack Iranian ships that have been harassing U.S. naval forces. In a tit for tat, Iran then threatened to target U.S. naval forces. Such threats and counter-threats illustrate the need for a “hotline” to de-escalate the conflict. Yet such a U.S.-Iran “hotline” may not be sufficient to prevent war—given the fact that Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” strategy on Iran has failed to bring about diplomatic compromise.

U.S.-Iran tensions have continued to mount after the Trump administration dumped the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal that had been negotiated by the UN, the European Union, and the Obama administration. Tehran has continued to press ahead on its nuclear enrichment program and it tested a new military satellite with limited military and reconnaissance capabilities in late April. The satellite launch represented a political statement designed to show Iranian resolve in the face of U.S. pressures, yet it nevertheless raised American fears that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards might eventually be able to mount nuclear warheads on intercontinental missiles in the future.

Concurrently, the Trump administration has hoped to augment international pressures on the Iranian regime and prevent it from importing small conventional arms at a time when Russia, China, India and Turkey—which have all been impacted by U.S. sanctions on Iran—have not been playing along. In particular, China and Iran have expanded their military partnership and energy deals potentially worth $400 billion—but with conditions that could lead Iran to become a “colony” of China. In the effort to obtain international support for new sanctions on Iran, the Trump administration has ironically wanted to claim that the US still belongs to the JCPOA nuclear deal after dumping it with great fanfare in 2018.

If the Trump administration is eventually successful in bringing back UN sanctions on Iran, then the JCPOA  nuclear deal is very likely to collapse—which could trigger a new nuclear crisis.

III. China

Ironically, the USS Theodore Roosevelt affair may have provided the Trump administration with a way to shift its strategic focus toward China while still seeking to pressure Iran in other ways besides the deployment of vulnerable aircraft carriers.

In a sign of ongoing U.S.-China tensions, the U.S. Navy conducted yet another “freedom of navigation operation” in late April by sending the guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill to assert “navigational rights and freedoms” in the Spratly Islands. This was just after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused China of exploiting the media attention raised by the coronavirus pandemic in order to “bully” its neighbors in the South China Sea.  

Here, the Trump administration has threatened stronger sanctions and tariffs on China’s exports to the United States by pointing its finger at the Chinese Communist Party as being responsible for the pandemic and affirming that Washington does not blame the Chinese people. This threat of “punishment” nevertheless helps to fuel Chinese nationalism and has raised Chinese Communist Party fears of stronger US support for the democracy movement in Hong Kong and for regime change.

As stated by Army Gen. Joseph Votel in a House Armed Services Committee meeting in February 2018, the Trump administration has feared that Tehran’s eventual membership in the Chinese-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) would boost Iran’s power and influence. In effect, from the Trump administration perspective, Iranian SCO membership would represent the “keystone” that would help solidify a Russia-China axis in Eurasia and in the wider Middle East as a potential “threat” to Israeli, Saudi, and US global interests.

Trump administration “maximum pressure” strategy on Iran is consequently intended to disrupt China’s Belt and Road Initiative and to break a burgeoning Sino-Russian Eurasian alliance that is attempting to draw states such as Iran, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela, Pakistan, and possibly the Philippines, even closer to Russia and China. Beijing is concurrently attempting to attract and influence Central and Eastern European States in the 16+1 forum. For its part, Berlin has hoped to sustain the China market for its exports but is beginning to debate China’s investments in Germany’s strategic industries and other issues that provide Beijing with strategic leverage over German foreign and economic policy.

In addition to expanding its Belt and Road Initiative throughout the world, Beijing has hoped to establish a Chinese version of the US Monroe Doctrine in the East and South China seas in its regional rivalry with ASEAN members, while concurrently threatening to unify with Taiwan by force if necessary—as President-for-life Xi Jinping threatened in January 2019.

Moreover, while U.S.-China political-military tensions have augmented during the pandemic, with each side propagandizing against the other, Beijing has attempted to capitalize on Trump’s anti-European Union protectionism by providing medical assistance to Germany, France, Italy and Serbia to help these countries fight the coronavirus pandemic—while hoping to turn a divided Europe away from American influence. Italy—now the sick man of Europe—signed a memorandum becoming a member of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative in March 2019.

IV. Russia

With respect to Russia, the United States and NATO have been engaging in a renewed military confrontation in eastern Europe at least since Moscow’s preclusive annexation of Crimea and political-military interference in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The United States and Russia have been engaging in nuclear and conventional weapons build-ups in the regions of Kaliningrad/ Baltic Sea, Crimea/ Black Sea, and Syria/ eastern Mediterranean.

Moscow’s preclusive expansion toward Ukraine and Syria has been coupled with efforts to play its energy card in an effort to attract Central and Eastern European states, Turkey and even Germany (Nord Stream 2) closer to Russian interests and away from the United States and EU-backed Three Seas Initiative, for example. 

While the pandemic appears to be further antagonizing the United States and China, it appears to be pushing Moscow and Beijing even closer together. Moscow is planning a new gas pipeline to China and a new railway that would connect the ports of the Arctic and India Oceans as part of their burgeoning Eurasian alliance.  For its part, China has boosted oil purchases from Russia, thereby helping to keep Russian energy corporations solvent.

 In response to alleged Russian violations of the 1987 INF treaty, the United States has dropped out that treaty, and could soon drop out of New START—a possible option that has been rationalized, at least in part, by the claim that China is not part of the New START treaty. The United States had previously dropped out of the 1972 ABM treaty in order to deploy missile defense systems in Europe and Asia that are seen as potential threats to both Russia and China, as well as Iran and North Korea through what I have called the “insecurity-security dialectic” and the new “Butter Battle” arms rivalry that additionally threatens to tear apart the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act.

The United States, Russia, China, and now Japan, are all engaging in a new arms race to develop hypersonic weaponry while concurrently deploying low yield nuclear weapons on both tactical and long-range missile systems. The deployment of low yield nuclear weapons appears to signal a move to develop an actual nuclear warfighting capability. And the United States threat to deploy intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region could provoke a formal Sino-Russian military alliance.

V. U.S. Allies 

 In addition to Trump’s threats not to support NATO and other Allies who did not spend a sufficient amount of their GDP on defense (as determined by Trump), the Trump administration’s Peace through Strength doctrine is concurrently working to unsettle U.S. allies who cannot be absolutely certain if the United States will come to their defense.

Here, for example, the Trump administration has pulled heavy B52 bombers, plus B-1s and B-2 stealth bombers, from Guam in order to reduce potential targets for China’s “Guam killer” missile, the DF-26, and North Korea’s Hwason-12, while deploying these long-range bombers, armed with long-range strike missiles and supported by aerial refueling tankers, much more randomly. Pentagon spokespersons have argued that these heavy bombers can reach the Pacific in less than a day from their mainland bases in places like North Dakota and Louisiana.

But here, Louisiana is one area hit by the coronavirus. And these bomber deployments will still delay reaction times in the new world of hypersonic warfare—thereby raising Allied concerns and potentially sparking regional arms races if American Allies continue to fear that the United States will not back their security. Given projections that the total U.S. national debt could possibly reach the $40 trillion range somewhere in the years 2026–27, Allied fears are also bound to augment significantly if there are massive cuts in U.S. defense expenditure in an effort to reduce U.S. national debts. But this scenario will prevail only if Washington cannot soon reduce tensions through engaged diplomacy with China, Russia and Iran, as well as North Korea, among other states.

VI. Engaged Diplomacy: Iran, China, Russia

What is needed is a new U.S. and European diplomatic strategy intended to split the burgeoning alliance between Russia, China, and Iran, and that draws Russia closer to the United States and European Union, while concurrently seeking a concerted U.S.-EU-Russian strategy that seeks to channel China’s rise to hegemonic status—in the process of reducing global tensions and demilitarizing an increasingly dangerous world.

With respect to Iran, an alternative diplomatic approach is to return to the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal and then negotiate a follow-on nuclear agreement that builds upon that deal. In working with the Europeans, as well as with Russia and China, such an approach would additionally seek to implement a Missile Technology Control regime for missile programs throughout the entire Middle East and to try to prevent all destabilizing arms transfers to the countries in that region. Such an approach would accordingly encourage Iran-Saudi negotiations to put an end to their proxy wars in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria. Here, all states in the region (and in the world) could pledge a no-first-use of any kind of weapon of mass destruction.

The increasing risk is that even if the United States and/or Israel do not go to war with Iran over its nuclear enrichment and missile programs, Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy and tough sanctions—coupled with the recent collapse of world oil prices—risk the dangerous destabilization of Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, among other weak states.

As illustrated by the U.S. drone assassination of the Iranian Quds force leader Major General Qassem Soliemani, along with pro-Iranian Iraqi militia leaders, Iraq—which has increasingly been rocked by pro- and anti-Iranian protest—is becoming a new battlefield for the United States and Iran, along with Syria. Contrary to Trump administration assurances, this regional crisis is opening the door for the return of Daesh (Islamic State)—which has recently augmented ambushes, IED attacks, and assassinations in Diyala, Kirkuk, Anbar, Dijah, and Salahuddin, Iraq. Other militant groups of differing ideologies could also come to the forefront throughout the region.

With respect to China, Washington, Beijing, and Taipei need to forge a new arrangement that builds upon the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act before the latter accord is discarded. This new arrangement can be accomplished by the implementation of joint United States, China and international security guarantees for Taiwan. Such an approach would seek to implement U.S.-Chinese security cooperation and joint regional state development projects in the South and East China seas. Likewise, a cooperative U.S.-China policy toward North Korea—in effort to reduce both the conventional and nuclear weapons build-up between Seoul and Pyongyang through confidence measures and investments in North Korea to boost wages and employment—can help stimulate the United States and China to additionally cooperate in the East and South China seas.

With respect to Russia, the United States should extend the New START treaty before it expires in February 2021, but then concurrently work toward a new multilateral arms reduction agreement that includes China’s intermediate-range missile systems if possible. The United States should also participate directly in a trilateral diplomacy involving France, Germany, Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine. NATO and Russia likewise need to work out a rapprochement that leads to a significant reduction of their respective military build-ups in eastern Europe through the implementation of confidence and security-building measures, while seeking compromise over the Russian annexation of Crimea. This approach could be based on the formal recognition of a neutral Ukraine and on a U.S.-NATO-EU-Russia cooperative security approach toward the Baltic, Caucasus, and Black Sea regions.

In this regard, the 2015–2020 European Deterrence Initiative has tended to augment U.S. defense spending for an American forward presence that seeks to counter Moscow, but that also contains Germany/Europe under a U.S.-led NATO aegis. Instead, Washington should be seeking ways to boost all-European contributions for military spending—but in the process of creating a more equitable sharing of U.S.-EU defense and security burdens and responsibilities—so as to eventually establish a U.S.-European-Ukrainian-Russian entente.

To re-emphasize, there will be no long-lasting peace until the United States and EU begin to reach out for a general entente with Russia that will seek to channel Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions—while concurrently seeking joint security and economic accords with China.

Young People are Key to a Nicotine-Free Future Here are five things that governments need to do to ensure that a smoke-free future is realised. by Sam Filby and Corné van Walbeek

Tobacco use kills more than 8 million people each year. Most adult smokers start smoking before the age of 20. This implies that if one can get through adolescence without smoking, the likelihood of being a smoker in adulthood is greatly reduced.

Preventing young people from becoming addicted to tobacco and related products is therefore key to a smoke-free future.

With the advent of novel tobacco products and the tobacco industry falsely marketing them as less harmful than their combustible counterparts, the adage “prevention is better than cure” has never been more important for governments to heed if we are to achieve a smoke-free future.

Here are five things that governments need to do to ensure that a smoke-free future is realised.

1. Raise taxes on tobacco products

Tobacco taxation is one of the most effective population-based strategies for decreasing tobacco consumption. On average, a 10% increase in the price of cigarettes reduces demand for cigarettes by between 4% and 6% for the general adult population.

Because they lack disposable income and have a limited smoking history, young people are more responsive to price increases than their adult counterparts. Young people’s price responsiveness is also explained by the fact that they are also more likely to smoke if their peers smoke. This suggests that an increase in tobacco taxes also indirectly reduces youth smoking by decreasing smoking among their peers.

2. Introduce 100% smoke-free environments

Smoke-free policies reduce opportunities to smoke and erode societal acceptance of smoking. Most countries have some form of smoke-free policy in place. But there are still many public spaces where smoking happens. Many of these places are frequented by young people – or example, smoking sections in nightclubs and bars – contributing to the idea that smoking is acceptable and “normal”.

Research from the United States shows that creating smoke-free spaces reduces youth smoking uptake and the likelihood of youth progressing from experimental to established smokers. In the United Kingdom, smoke-free places have been linked to a reduction in regular smoking among teenagers, and research from Australia finds that smoke-free policies were directly related to a drop in youth smoking prevalence between 1990 and 2015. By adopting 100% smoke-free policies governments can denormalise smoking and turn youth away from tobacco and related products.

3. Adopt plain packaging and graphic health warnings

The tobacco industry uses sleek and attractive designs to market its dangerous products to young people. All tobacco products should therefore be subject to plain packaging and graphic health warnings so that their attractive packaging designs do not lead youth to underestimate the harm of using these products. Currently 125 countries require graphic images on the packaging of tobacco products. Countries like South Africa that rely on a text warning message are far behind the curve. Plain packaging on tobacco products has been adopted in 13 countries to date and, in January 2020, Israel became the first country to apply plain packaging to e-cigarettes.

4. Outlaw tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship

Traditional advertising and promotion of tobacco products has been banned in most parts of the world. But the tobacco industry has developed novel ways of keeping its products in the public eye.

Some common strategies used by the industry to target youth include hiring “influencers” to promote tobacco and nicotine products on social media, sponsoring events, and launching new flavours that are appealing to youth, such as bubble gum and cotton candy, which encourages young people to underestimate the potential harm of using them. Evidence also shows how the tobacco industry uses point-of-sale marketing to target children by encouraging vendors to position tobacco and related products near sweets, snacks and cooldrinks, especially in outlets close to schools.

Governments need to outlaw these tactics and impose hefty fines on tobacco companies that make any attempt to circumvent the law.

5. Educate young people

Given that tobacco kills half of its long-term users, the tobacco industry needs to get young people addicted to its products to ensure its survival. Young people need to be made aware of this. Governments should launch counter-advertising campaigns that educate young people on the tactics employed by the industry to target them so that they do not fall prey to them.