Liana Fix

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In February, former U.S. President Donald Trump encouraged Russia’s leadership to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member that does not spend two percent of its GDP on defense. Trump has made similar incendiary comments before. Europe should take his threats seriously. He is once again the presumptive Republican candidate for president of the United States, and he leads Joe Biden, the incumbent, in many recent polls.

Should he be elected to a second term, Trump’s attitudes toward Ukraine, Russia, and NATO—and his mercurial and self-interested mindset—will be pivotal for the war in Ukraine. Trump will likely disrupt the entire transatlantic relationship far more than he did during his first presidency.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukrainian soldiers in Luhansk region, Ukraine, November 2023. Alina Smutko / Reuters.

On November 1, Ukraine’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, changed the debate about his country’s war with Russia with a statement. “Just like in the first World War”, he said in an interview with The Economist, the Ukrainian and Russian militaries “have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate”. Unless a massive leap in military technology gives one side a decisive advantage, “there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough”. These words prompted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to issue a rebuttal. The war “is not a stalemate, I emphasize this”, Zelensky argued. A deputy head of the office of the president noted that the comments stirred “panic” among Ukraine’s Western allies.…  Seguir leyendo »

Germany’s New Normal?

Regional elections in Germany are rarely newsworthy outside of the country, but last week’s elections in Bavaria and Hesse—coming at the halfway point for the tenure of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government—were different. Both states are ruled by conservative minister presidents favored for reelection, while the progressive “traffic light” coalition that governs at the national level in Berlin—a three-party grouping composed of the Social Democrats (“red”), the Greens, and the liberal Free Democratic Party (“yellow”)— is currently deeply unpopular, earning approval ratings of less than 40 percent in recent national polls. So, much like U.S. midterm elections, which usually send a rebuke to the administration in power, these contests ought to have been shoo-ins for the incumbents from the Christian Democrat Union (CDU), the conservative party that is in opposition at the national level.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukrainian military cadets in Kyiv, September 2023. Viacheslav Ratynskyi / Reuters

When Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014, Kyiv had many supporters. France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States sought the restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty through sanctions on Russia and through diplomacy, but they refused direct military involvement. Only belatedly did they provide lethal military assistance—not until 2019, in Washington’s case.

By late February of 2022, however, as Russia amassed its forces on the Ukrainian border, that reluctance had mostly melted away. The brutal invasion that followed, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s charismatic leadership, generated a first round of Western military and financial aid. Ukraine’s stunning battlefield successes in September and October 2022 opened the door to even more ambitious support.…  Seguir leyendo »

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Berlin, June 2023. Nadja Wohlleben / Reuters.

In 2020, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called on Europe to forge its “own way” with China and distance itself from the “open confrontation” approach pursued by U.S. President Donald Trump. The goal of Borrell’s “Sinatra doctrine”, so named in reference to the song “My Way”, was for the EU to avoid becoming either “a Chinese colony or an American colony” amid a Cold War–like struggle between Washington and Beijing. Striking such a balance, Borrell argued, would allow Europe to retain the benefits of strong economic ties with China, which he and most other European policymakers at that time saw as far outweighing the risk of giving Beijing too much influence.…  Seguir leyendo »

Wagner private mercenary company fighters in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, June 2023. Alexander Ermochenko / Reuters

Russia’s war against Ukraine has destroyed Putin’s mystique as an untouchable autocrat. Before February 24, 2022, Putin may have looked unscrupulous and aggressive, but through his military moves in Syria, Crimea, and beyond, he could seem like a capable strategist. Then, in one stroke, Putin showed his ineptitude by invading a country that posed no threat to Russia and by witnessing failure after failure in his military enterprise—the latest of is the short-lived armed rebellion the mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin carried out this weekend, which has just undermined Putin’s mystique autocrat.

Putin abetted the rise of Prigozhin and ignored the warning signs about the Wagner Group, Prigozhin’s out-of-control private military company.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu in Moscow, April 2023. Russian Defense Ministry / Reuters

Over the past year, China has made the best of Russia’s war against Ukraine, emerging as one of the conflict’s few beneficiaries. It has styled itself as a measured peacemaker while gaining substantial leverage over Russia. Beijing has been Moscow’s most conspicuous and consequential backer in the war, pledging a “no limits” partnership with Russia shortly before the February 2022 invasion and helping keep Russia’s wartime economy afloat. Moscow’s growing reliance on China has been lucrative and useful for Beijing—and this economic dependence will likely continue and deepen. China’s rhetorical commitment to “multipolarity” in geopolitics has encouraged many countries in the global South to remain aloof from the war, unwilling to rally to Ukraine’s cause.…  Seguir leyendo »

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s working visit to Washington last Friday came almost exactly one year after a landmark speech promising a U-turn in German foreign defense policy, given just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. The speech spoke of a Zeitenwende — a pivotal moment in time — and the word has since become shorthand for German foreign policy thinking under Scholz.

But one year into its Zeitenwende, Berlin is struggling to turn bold promises into reality. Scholz had committed to spending more than 2 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product on defense and to supporting Ukraine with heavy weapons.…  Seguir leyendo »

Putin’s Last Stand

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine was meant to be his crowning achievement, a demonstration of how far Russia had come since the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991. Annexing Ukraine was supposed to be a first step in reconstructing a Russian empire. Putin intended to expose the United States as a paper tiger outside Western Europe and to demonstrate that Russia, along with China, was destined for a leadership role in a new, multipolar international order.

It hasn’t turned out that way. Kyiv held strong, and the Ukrainian military has been transformed into a juggernaut, thanks in part to a close partnership with the United States and Western allies.…  Seguir leyendo »

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, November 2022. Kay Nietfeld / Pool / Reuters

When Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s federal president and former foreign minister, received the Kissinger Prize in November 2022, he gave a candid assessment of his country’s (and his own) foreign policy failures. Since the world has changed, he said, “we must cast off old ways of thinking and old hopes”, including the idea that “economic exchange will bring about political convergence”. In the future, Steinmeier declared, Berlin must learn from the past and “reduce one-sided dependencies” not just on Russia but also on China.

As the war in Ukraine rages on, few German politicians would take issue with the assertion that Berlin must reduce its energy dependence on Moscow.…  Seguir leyendo »

People watching smoke rising from damaged sections of the bridge over the Kerch Strait, Crimea, October 2022. Stringer / Reuters

Ukraine’s liberation of the city of Kherson at the beginning of November was more than just a dramatic military victory. In its battlefield win, Ukraine called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bluff. Just two months earlier, Putin had publicly declared Kherson and other Ukrainian territories to be a part of Russia, implicitly placing them under Russia’s nuclear protection. Putin had hoped that the fear of nuclear attack would compel Ukraine to tread lightly and make its supporters back off. His plan did not work.

Kherson is unlikely to be the end of Ukraine’s successful counteroffensive. The greatest prize lies farther to the south: the Crimean Peninsula, where the war began in 2014.…  Seguir leyendo »

For the first time in the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin must contend with the serious prospect of losing it. Early setbacks around Kyiv and Chernigov had been balanced by Russian gains in the south and the east; they could be justified as tactical retreats and thus as Russian choices, regardless of whether they truly were. By contrast, the near rout of Russian soldiers in the Kharkiv region on September 10—and the rapid reconquest by Ukrainian forces of territory spanning some 2,000 square miles in the east and south—clearly showed that Ukraine was on top and that Russian troops may continue to fall to future such offensives.…  Seguir leyendo »

On patrol near Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, July 2022. Dmytro Smolienko / Reuters

The war in Ukraine will soon enter its sixth month. For all the talk of Russia crossing the West’s red lines with its conduct in the war and of the West crossing Russia’s red lines with its military assistance to Ukraine, the true red lines have not yet been breached. At the outset of the war, both sides hashed out a set of invisible rules—unspoken but nonetheless real. They include Russia’s acceptance of allied heavy-weapons deliveries and intelligence support for Ukraine, but not the use of Western troops. And they include Western states’ grudging acceptance of Russian conventional warfare within Ukraine’s borders (eager as these countries are to see Moscow defeated), as long as the conflict does not lead to the use of weapons of mass destruction.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, June 2022. Handout / Reuters

In recent days, many Western observers of the war in Ukraine have begun to worry that the tide is turning in Russia’s favor. Massive artillery fire is yielding incremental Russian gains in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, and Russia is bringing in new forces. Ukrainian troops are drained and exhausted. Russia is trying to create a fait accompli and to make reality conform to its imperial ambitions through “passportization”—the quick provision of Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens in Russian-occupied areas—and the forced introduction of Russian administrative structures in Ukrainian territory. The Kremlin likely intends to occupy eastern and southern Ukraine indefinitely and to eventually move on Odessa, a major port city in southern Ukraine and a hub of commerce that connects Ukraine to the outside world.…  Seguir leyendo »

Mourning at a cemetery in Bucha, Ukraine, April 2022. Zohra Bensemra / Reuters

All wars end, and their closing moments are often vivid and memorable. Take, for instance, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865, which brought an end to the U.S. Civil War. Or the armistice that terminated World War I, signed by Germany and the Allies in a train car near Paris in November 1918. Or the end of the Cold War, symbolized by the toppling of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and, later, the lowering of the Soviet flag from the Kremlin on Christmas Day of 1991. These scenes loom large in the cultural imagination as decisive moments that provided the sense of a definitive ending.…  Seguir leyendo »

The twentieth century’s two world wars are an endless source of precedents and analogies. The lead-up to World War II produced the Munich analogy, an allusion to the 1938 British and French decision to permit Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia. “Munich” has become shorthand for “appeasement”. The aftermath of the war produced the Nuremberg analogy, a reference to the public trials of the surviving leaders of the utterly defeated Nazi regime. “Nuremberg” now stands for “unconditional surrender”.

By contrast, the conclusion of World War I had been unclear and incomplete. Berlin did not fall in November 1918. Instead, the government waging the war dissolved; Kaiser Wilhelm went into exile.…  Seguir leyendo »