• 288: The Real Key to Victory in Ukraine: Why Sustaining the Fight Is Everything in a War of Attrition, submitted on 2022-06-29 22:35:48+08:00.
• 289: The Real Key to Victory in Ukraine: Why Sustaining the Fight Is Everything in a War of Attrition, submitted on 2022-06-29 22:42:42+08:00.
• 290: NATO’s Hard Road Ahead: The Greatest Threats to Alliance Unity Will Come After the Madrid Summit, submitted on 2022-06-29 22:46:46+08:00.
• 291: What America Should Do If the Iran Nuclear Deal Talks Fail: Outsourcing Middle East Security to Israel Is a Bad Plan B, submitted on 2022-07-01 22:49:57+08:00.

288: The Real Key to Victory in Ukraine: Why Sustaining the Fight Is Everything in a War of Attrition, submitted on 2022-06-29 22:35:48+08:00.

—– 288.1 —–2022-06-29 22:36:38+08:00:

Find Foreign Affairs on Telegram: https://t.me/Foreign_Affairs_Magazine

289: The Real Key to Victory in Ukraine: Why Sustaining the Fight Is Everything in a War of Attrition, submitted on 2022-06-29 22:42:42+08:00.

—– 289.1 —–2022-06-29 22:42:50+08:00:

Find Foreign Affairs on Telegram: https://t.me/Foreign_Affairs_Magazine

290: NATO’s Hard Road Ahead: The Greatest Threats to Alliance Unity Will Come After the Madrid Summit, submitted on 2022-06-29 22:46:46+08:00.

—– 290.1 —–2022-06-29 22:47:28+08:00:

[SS from the article by Charles A. Kupchan]

“Thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO’s Madrid Summit takes place this week against the backdrop of a resurgent Western alliance. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine compels NATO to return to its founding mission of providing collective defense against Russia. Members of the alliance are demonstrating remarkable unity and resolve as they funnel arms to Ukraine, increase defense spending, bolster the alliance’s eastern flank, and impose severe economic sanctions against Russia.
The invasion of Ukraine has shown that NATO is back, but the reality is that it never went away. The alliance was actually in good shape even before Putin launched his errant war, which is one of the reasons that it has been able to respond to developments in Ukraine with such alacrity and solidarity. Since the Cold War’s end, NATO has demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt to the times, undertaking operations far afield, including in Afghanistan and in the Balkans, and opening its doors to Europe’s new democracies. As a consequence of the war in Ukraine, an already strong NATO just got stronger.
But despite its clean bill of health and demonstrable unity, NATO faces a thicket of thorny issues, and discussions in Madrid will only just begin to address them. The war in Ukraine will, of course, dominate the summit. The conversation is poised to focus on the easy part: getting more arms to the frontlines. But NATO also needs to take up the hard part: when and how to marry the flow of weapons to a diplomatic strategy aimed at producing a cease-fire and follow-on negotiations over territory. The urgency of making that pivot stems from the need not just to end the death and destruction but to limit the war’s economic spillover, which could threaten the Atlantic alliance from within by eroding solidarity and weakening the West’s democratic foundations. The conflict in Ukraine also puts on NATO’s agenda a set of additional challenges: managing the future of enlargement, channeling Europe’s growing geopolitical aspirations, and building a transatlantic architecture that can accommodate the ever more complex and diverse issues facing the West.”

291: What America Should Do If the Iran Nuclear Deal Talks Fail: Outsourcing Middle East Security to Israel Is a Bad Plan B, submitted on 2022-07-01 22:49:57+08:00.

—– 291.1 —–2022-07-01 22:51:47+08:00:

[SS from the article Maria Fantappie and Vali Nasr]

“U.S. President Joe Biden’s July trip to the Middle East comes at a delicate moment. There is a last gasp effort underway to revive stalled talks between the United States and Iran on restoring the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal aimed at preventing the Islamic Republic from being able to develop a nuclear weapon. Since the last round of talks in Vienna, Tehran has accelerated its program and will soon become a threshold nuclear state. When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)—the UN nuclear watchdog—censured the country for failing to cooperate with inspectors, the Iranian government further curtailed IAEA monitoring of its nuclear program and announced new underground advanced enrichment facilities.

Israel, however, has long promised that it will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran, and it is working outside of multilateral institutions to realize that goal. Israel has assassinated Iranian scientists and military officials. It has conducted air attacks on Iranian targets in Syria and expanded its strike capabilities, presumably in preparation for new attacks on Iranian nuclear sites and military facilities. With American backing, the Israelis are also seeking to organize a number of Arab states into a military alliance against Iran. According to The Wall Street Journal, the United States convened a meeting last March with security officials from Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to integrate intelligence sharing and air defense systems to combat aerial threats from Iran.
These developments are scrambling Washington’s plans for the Middle East. The Biden administration has argued that the revival of the JCPOA is the best way to control Iran’s nuclear program. But failing that, it appears prepared to adopt Israel’s current approach to containing Iran. That entails further tightening the economic noose around Iran’s neck by forcing the country out of the oil market. And it means the United States would support Israel in carrying out attacks inside Iran and in its effort to weave a coalition of Arab states to contain the country. The latter is, in essence, a new function for the Abraham Accords, the signature foreign policy achievement of the Trump administration, which tied Israel to Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates in what amounts to an anti-Iran bloc. Left unspoken is that the accords may evolve into a functioning military defense pact, buttressed by the United States.

The situation recalls the 1970s, when U.S. President Richard Nixon subcontracted Middle East security to the shah of Iran. Similarly, the Biden administration is, in effect, handing over the task of containing Iran to Israel. This is a risky approach: unlike some 50 years ago, this time the U.S.-designated policeman for the region is not trying to avoid conflict but is the regional actor most clearly pushing for escalation. Washington should adopt a different strategy, one aimed at averting conflict by combining beefed-up regional security with encouraging stronger diplomatic ties between Iran and Arab states—one of the few things that could help reduce the mounting tensions in the Middle East.”